Early settlement to the sixteenth century
Brussels takes its name from Broekzele, or "village of the marsh", the
community which grew up beside the wide and shallow River Senne in the
sixth century, reputedly around a chapel built here by St Géry, a French
bishop sent here to convert the pagans. A tiny and insignificant part of
Charlemagne's empire at the end of the eighth century, it was
subsequently inherited by the dukes of Lower Lorraine (or Lotharingia -
roughly Wallonia and northeast France), who constructed a fortress in
979; the first city walls were added a few decades later. Its
inhabitants protected, the village began to benefit from its position on
the trade route between Cologne and the burgeoning towns of Bruges and
Ghent, and soon became a significant trading centre in its own right.
The surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion, and
by the end of the twelfth century Brussels had a population of around
30,000.
In 1229 the city was granted its first charter by the dukes of Brabant ,
the new feudal overlords who controlled things here, on and off, for
around two hundred years, governing through seven échevins , or aldermen
, each of whom represented one of the patrician families who monopolised
the administration. This self-regarding oligarchy was deeply unpopular
with the skilled workers who made up the guilds , the only real
counterweight to the aristocrats. The guildsmen rose in rebellion in
1302 and again in 1356, when the Count of Flanders, Louis de Maele,
occupied Brussels during his dispute with Jeanne, the Duchess of Brabant.
The guildsmen rallied to the Brabantine cause under the leadership of
Everard 't Serclaes and, after ejecting the count's garrison, exacted
terms from the returning duchess. Jeanne was obliged to swear an oath -
the Joyeuse Entrée - which stipulated the rights and responsibilities of
the ruler and the ruled, effectively a charter of liberties that also
recognised the guilds and gave them more political power. This deal
between the duchess and her craftsmen led to a period of rapid expansion
and it was at this time that a second town wall was constructed, an
eight-kilometre pentagon whose lines are followed by the boulevards of
today's petit ring .
The early decades of the fifteenth century proved difficult: the cloth
industry began its long decline and there was more trouble between the
guildsmen and the patricians. Temporary solutions were, however, found
to both these problems. The craftsmen started making luxury goods for
the royal courts of Europe, while the city's governing council was
modified to contain seven aristocrats, six guildsmen and two aldermen -
a municipal compromise that was to last until the late eighteenth
century. There was a change of overlord too, when, in 1430, marriage
merged the territories of the duchy of Brabant with those of Burgundy .
Initially, this worked against the interests of the city as the first
Burgundian rulers - Philip the Good and his son Charles the Bold - paid
little regard to Brussels, and indeed Charles' ceaseless warmongering
resulted in a steep increase in taxation. But when Charles' daughter,
Mary of Burgundy , established her court in Brussels, the city gained
political stature and its guildsmen found a ready market for the luxury
goods they were already making - everything from gold jewellery and
silverware through to tapestries and illuminated books. Painters were
drawn to Mary's court, too, and Rogier van der Weyden was appointed the
city's first official artist.
Mary married Maximilian , a Habsburg prince and future Holy Roman
Emperor in 1477. She died in a riding accident five years later and her
territories passed to her husband, who ruled until 1519. Thus Brussels -
as well as the whole of present-day Belgium and Holland - was
incorporated into the Habsburg Empire. A sharp operator, Maximilian
whittled away at the power of the Brabantine and Flemish cities and
despite the odd miscalculation - he was imprisoned by the burghers of
Bruges in 1488 - had to all intents and purposes brought them to heel by
the end of the century. Maximilian was succeeded by his grandson Charles
V , whose vast kingdom included Spain, the Low Countries and large parts
of Germany and Italy. By necessity, Charles was something of a
peripatetic monarch, but he favoured Brussels, his home town, more than
any other residence, running his empire from here for a little over
twelve years, which made the city wealthy and politically important in
equal measure. Just like his grandfather, Charles kept the city's guilds
firmly under control.
The Reformation and the Revolt against Spain
The Reformation was a religious revolt that stood sixteenth-century
Europe on its head. The first stirrings were in the welter of debate
that spread across much of western Europe under the auspices of
theologians like Erasmus , who wished to cleanse the Catholic church of
its corruptions and extravagant ceremony; only later did some of these
same thinkers - principally Martin Luther - decide to support a
breakaway church. The seeds of this Protestantism fell on fertile ground
among the merchants of Brussels, whose wealth and independence had never
been easy to accommodate within a rigid caste society. Similarly, their
employees, the guildsmen and their apprentices, who had a long history
of opposing arbitrary authority, were easily convinced of the need for
reform. In 1555, Charles V abdicated , transferring his German lands to
his brother Ferdinand, and his Italian, Spanish and Low Countries
territories to his son, the fanatically Catholic Philip II . In the
short term, the scene was set for a bitter confrontation between
Catholics and Protestants, while the dynastic ramifications of the
division of the Habsburg empire were to complicate European affairs for
centuries.
After his father's abdication, Philip II decided to teach his heretical
subjects a lesson. He garrisoned Brussels and the other towns of the Low
Countries with Spanish mercenaries, imported the Inquisition and passed
a series of anti-Protestant edicts. However, other pressures on the
Habsburg Empire forced him into a tactical withdrawal and he transferred
control to his sister Margaret of Parma in 1559. Based in Brussels, the
equally resolute Margaret implemented the policies of her brother with
gusto. Initially, the repression worked, but in 1565 the Protestant
workers struck back. In Brussels and most of the other big cities
hereabouts they ran amok, sacking the churches and destroying their rich
decoration in the Iconoclastic Fury .
Protestantism had infiltrated the nobility, but the ferocity of the
rioting shocked the upper classes into renewed support for Spain. Philip
was keen to capitalize on the increase in support and, in 1567, he
dispatched the Duke of Albe , with an army of 10,000 men, to the Low
Countries to suppress his religious opponents absolutely. Margaret was
not at all pleased by Philip's decision and, when Albe arrived in
Brussels, she resigned in a huff, initiating a long period of what was,
in effect, military rule. One of Albe's first acts in the capital was to
set up the Commission of Civil Unrest, which was soon nicknamed the "
Council of Blood " after its habit of executing those it examined. No
fewer than 12,000 citizens went to the block, most famously the counts
of Egmont and Hoorn , who were beheaded on the Grand-Place in June 1568.
Once again, the repression soon backfired. The region's greatest
landowner, Prince William of Orange-Nassau, known as William the Silent
(1533-84), raised the Low Countries against the Habsburgs and swept all
before him, making a triumphant entrance into Brussels, where he
installed a Calvinist administration. Momentarily, it seemed possible
for the whole of the Low Countries to unite behind William and all
signed the Union of Brussels , which demanded the departure of foreign
troops as a condition for accepting a diluted Habsburg sovereignty. But
Philip was not inclined to compromise. In 1578, he gathered together
another army which he dispatched to the Low Countries under the command
of Alessandro Farnese, the Duke of Parma . Parma was successful,
recapturing most of modern Belgium including Brussels and finally
Antwerp in 1585. He was, however, unable to advance any further north
and the Low Countries were divided into two - the Spanish Netherlands
and the United Provinces - beginning a separation that would lead, after
many changes, to the creation of Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Spanish Netherlands
Parma was surprisingly generous in victory, but the city's weavers,
apprentices and skilled workers - the bedrock of Calvinism - still fled
north to escape the new Catholic regime, fuelling an economic boom in
the province of Holland. The migration badly dented the economy of the
Spanish Netherlands as a whole, but Brussels - the capital - was
relatively immune, its economy buoyed up by the Habsburg elite, whose
conspicuous consumption fostered luxury industries like silk weaving,
diamond processing and lace making. The city's industries also benefited
from the digging of the Willebroek canal, which linked Brussels to the
sea for the first time. This commercial restructuring underpinned a
brief flourishing of artistic life both here and, in comparable
circumstances, in Antwerp, where it was centred on Rubens and his circle,
including Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens.
Meanwhile, months before his death in 1598, Philip II had granted
control of the Spanish Netherlands to his daughter and her husband,
appointing them the Archdukes Isabella and Albert . Failing to learn
from experience, the ducal couple continued to prosecute the war against
the Protestant north, but with so little success that they were obliged
to make peace - the Twelve Year Truce - in 1609. When the truce ended,
the new Spanish king Philip IV stubbornly resumed the campaign against
the Protestants, this time as part of a general and even more
devastating conflict, the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), a largely
religious-based conflict between Catholic and Protestant countries that
involved most of western Europe. Finally, the Habsburgs were compelled
to accept the humiliating terms of the Peace of Westphalia , a general
treaty whose terms formally recognized the independence of the United
Provinces and closed the Scheldt estuary, thereby crippling Antwerp. By
these means, the commercial pre-eminence of Amsterdam was assured and
its Golden Age began.
The Thirty Years' War had devastated the Spanish Netherlands, but the
peace was perhaps as bad. Politically dependent on a decaying Spain,
economically ruined and deprived of most of its more independent-minded
citizens, the country turned in on itself, sustained by the fanatical
Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation . Literature disappeared, the
sciences vegetated and religious orders multiplied to an extraordinary
degree. In painting , artists - such as Rubens - were used to confirm
the ecclesiastical orthodoxies, their canvases full of muscular saints
and angels, reflecting a religious faith of mystery and hierarchy;
others, such as David Teniers, retreated into minutely observed realism.
The Peace of Westphalia had also freed the king of France from fear of
Germany, and the political and military history of the Spanish
Netherlands after 1648 was dominated by the efforts of Louis XIV to add
the country to his territories. Fearful of an over-powerful France, the
United Provinces and England, among others, determinedly resisted French
designs and, to preserve the balance of power, fought a long series of
campaigns beginning in the 1660s. It was during one of these wars, the
War of the Grand Alliance , that Louis XIV's artillery destroyed much of
medieval Brussels, a disaster that led to the construction of the lavish
Grand-Place that survives today.
The War of the Spanish Succession - the final conflict of the series -
was sparked by the death in 1700 of Charles II , the last of the Spanish
Habsburgs, who had willed his territories to the grandson of Louis XIV.
An anti-French coalition refused to accept the settlement and there
ensued a haphazard series of campaigns that dragged on for eleven years.
Eventually, with the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, the French abandoned
their attempt to conquer the Spanish Netherlands, which now passed under
the control of the Austrian Habsburgs in the figure of the Emperor
Charles VI.
The Austrian Netherlands
The transfer of the country from Spanish to Austrian control made little
appreciable difference: a remote imperial authority continued to operate
through an appointed governor in Brussels and the country as a whole
remained poor and backward. This sorry state of affairs began to change
in the middle of the eighteenth century when the Austrian oligarchy came
under the influence of the Enlightenment , that belief in reason and
progress - as against authority and tradition - that had first been
proselytised by French philosophers. In 1753, the arrival of a
progressive governor, the Count of Cobenzl , signified a transformation
of Habsburg policy. Cobenzl initiated an ambitious programme of public
works and set about changing the face of Brussels - which had become an
urbanised eyesore - by pushing through the grand Neoclassical boulevards
and avenues which still characterise the Upper Town.
In 1780, the Emperor Joseph II came to the throne, determined to "root
out silly old prejudices", as he put it - but his reforms were opposed
by both left and right. The liberal-minded Vonckists demanded a radical,
republican constitution, while their enemies, the conservative Statists
, insisted on the Catholic status quo. There was pandemonium and, in
1789, the Habsburgs dispatched an army to restore order. Against all
expectations, the two political groups combined and defeated the
Austrians near Antwerp in what became known as the Brabant Revolution .
In January 1790, the rebels announced the formation of the United States
of Belgium, but the country remained in turmoil and when Emperor Joseph
died in 1790, his successor, Léopold , quickly withdrew the reforming
acts and sent in his troops to restore imperial authority.
French occupation and the Kingdom of the Netherlands
The new and repressive Habsburg regime was short-lived. French
Republican armies brushed the imperial forces aside in 1794, and the
Austrian Netherlands were annexed the following year, an annexation that
was to last until 1814. The French imposed radical reforms: the Catholic
church was stripped of much of its worldly wealth, feudal privileges
were abolished, and, most unpopular of all, conscription was introduced.
The invaders were deeply resented and French authority had largely
evaporated long before Napoleon 's final defeat just outside Brussels at
the battle of Waterloo in 1815.
At the Congress of Vienna , called to settle Europe at the end of the
Napoleonic Wars, the main concern of the great powers was to bolster the
Low Countries against France. With scant regard to the feelings of those
affected, they therefore decided to establish the Kingdom of the
Netherlands , which incorporated both the old United Provinces and the
Austrian Netherlands, and on the throne they placed Frederick William of
Orange, appointed King William I . From the very beginning, the union
proved problematic - there were even two capital cities, Brussels and
The Hague - and William simply wasn't wily enough to hold things
together. Nonetheless, the union struggled on until August 25, 1830,
when the singing of a duet, Amour sacré de la Patrie , in the Brussels
opera house hit a nationalist nerve. The audience poured out onto the
streets to raise the flag of Brabant in defiance of King William,
thereby initiating a countrywide revolution . William sent in his troops,
but Great Britain and France quickly intervened to stop hostilities. In
January of the following year, at the Conference of London , the great
powers recognized Belgium's independence, with the caveat that the
country be classified a "neutral" state - that is one outside any
other's sphere of influence. To bolster this new nation, they dug out
the uncle of Queen Victoria, Prince Léopold of Saxe-Coburg, to present
with the crown.
Independent Belgium
Léopold I (1830-65) was careful to maintain his country's neutrality and
encouraged an industrial boom that saw coal mines developed, iron-making
factories established and the rapid expansion of the railway system. His
successor, Léopold II (1865-1909), further boosted industry and
supervised the emergence of Belgium as a major industrial power. The
king and the reforming Brussels burgomaster Anspach also set about
modernizing the capital. New boulevards were built; the free university
was founded; the Senne - which by then had become an open sewer - was
covered over in the city centre; many slum areas were cleared; and a
series of grandiose buildings was erected, the most unpopular of which
was the Palais de Justice, whose construction involved the forced
eviction of hundreds of workers. To round the whole thing off - and turn
Brussels into a city deserving of its king - Léopold held the golden
jubilee exhibition celebrating the founding of the Belgian state in the
newly inaugurated Le Cinquantenaire, a mammoth edifice he had built just
to the east of the old city centre.
The first fly in the royal ointment came in the 1860s and 1870s with the
first significant stirrings of a type of Flemish nationalism which felt
little enthusiasm for the unitary status of Belgium, divided as it was
between a French-speaking majority in the south of the country - the
Walloons - and the minority Dutch-speakers of the north. The Catholic
party ensured that, under the Equality Law of 1898, Dutch was ratified
as an official language, equal in status to French - the forerunner of
many long and difficult debates.
The twentieth century
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Brussels was a thriving
metropolis which took a progressive lead in a country that was
determined to keep on good terms with all the great powers. Nonetheless,
Belgium could not prevent getting caught up in World War I . Indifferent
to Belgium's proclaimed neutrality, the Germans had decided as early as
1908 that the best way to attack France was via Belgium, and this is
precisely what they did in 1914. They captured almost all of the
country, the exception being a narrow strip of territory around De
Panne. Undaunted, the new king Albert I (1909-34) and the Belgian army
bravely manned the northern part of the Allied line. It made Albert a
national hero.
The Germans returned in May 1940, launching a blitzkrieg that
overwhelmed both Belgium and the Netherlands. This time there was no
heroic resistance by the Belgian king, now Léopold III (1934-51), who
ignored the advice of his government and surrendered unconditionally and
in great haste. It is true that the Belgian army had been badly mauled
and that a German victory seemed inevitable, but the manner of the
surrender infuriated many Belgians, as did the king's refusal to form a
government in exile. It took time for the Belgians to adjust to the new
situation, but by 1941 a Resistance movement was mounting acts of
sabotage against the occupying forces - and liberation by the Allies
came three years later.
After the war, the Belgians set about the task of economic
reconstruction , helped by aid from the United States, but hindered by a
divisive controversy over the wartime activities of King Léopold. Many
felt his surrender to the Germans was cowardly and his subsequent
willingness to work with them treacherous; others pointed out his
efforts to increase the country's food rations and his negotiations to
secure the release of Belgian prisoners. Inevitably, the complex
shadings of collaboration and forced co-operation were hard to
disentangle, and the debate continued until 1950 when a referendum
narrowly recommended his return from exile. Léopold's return was,
however, marked by rioting in Brussels and across Wallonia, where the
king's opponents were concentrated, and Léopold abdicated in favour of
his son, Baudouin (1951-1993).
The development of the postwar Belgian economy follows the pattern of
most of western Europe - reconstruction in the 1950s; boom in the 1960s;
recession in the 1970s; and retrenchment in the 1980s and 1990s. In the
meantime, Brussels, which had been one of the lesser European capitals,
was turned into a major player when it became the home of the EU and
NATO - the latter organization was ejected from France on the orders of
de Gaulle in 1967. But, above all, the postwar period has been dominated
by the increasing tension between the Walloon and Flemish communities .
Every national institution is now dogged by the prerequisites of
bilingualism - speeches in parliament have to be delivered in both
languages - and in Brussels, the country's one and only bilingual region
, every instance of the written word, from road signs to the yellow
pages, has to be bilingual as well. Brussels has also been subtly
affected by the Linguistic Divide (or Language Frontier), which was
formally delineated in 1962. Bilingual Brussels is now encircled by
Flemish-speaking regions and, partly as a result, many Francophones
living in the city have developed something of a siege mentality; the
Flemish, on the other hand, can't help but notice the prevalence of
French in what is supposed to be their capital city.
Bogged down by these linguistic preoccupations - the current Prime
Minister (Guy Verhofstadt) and his cabinet squeeze in four hours of
language classes every week - the federal government often appears
extraordinarily cumbersome. In addition, much of the political class is
at least partly reliant on the linguistic divide for their jobs and,
institutionally speaking, has little incentive to see the antagonisms
resolved. A rare moment of national unity came in 1996 when communities
from both sides of the linguistic divide rose up in protest at the
Belgian police. Over 350,000 people took to the streets, demanding the
police and justice system be overhauled. This outburst of public protest
peaked again two years later when, amazingly enough, Dutroux escaped his
police guards, stole a car and headed out of the city. Although he was
subsequently recaptured, most Belgians were simply appalled.
The Dutroux affair dented the national psyche, and few Belgians believe
that the reforms imposed on the police have made much difference. Into
this psychological breach rode the royal family , one of the few
institutions to bind the country together. In 1999, the heir to the
throne, Prince Philippe, broke with tradition and married Mathilde
d'Udekem d'Acoz - a Belgian of non-royal descent, with family on both
sides of the linguistic divide. The marriage may well have healed a few
wounds, but its effects should not be over-estimated. Over 400,000
people snapped up the free travel tickets offered by the Belgian
railways, but only around twenty percent were used to come to Brussels,
and out of them one can only speculate as to how many loyal subjects
chose to wave the flag on a cold December day rather than head for the
nearest bar.
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