Records of War and Other Battles

Such an interesting experience on Monday. After having found the Archaeological Museum, I then discovered that it was not the right place to find more about the history of this building where I live. The go-to place was the Archives and these are in the Burg, centre of all things important in Brugge. I had read somewhere that No 9 Woensdagmarkt was once called the Oud Hof van Smyrna but after some time in the Archives with the experienced help of Jan Dhont, one of the archivists who specialises in house histories, no mention of that name was seen. The town records for houses in Brugge began only in 1580 and the van Smyrna name was probably much earlier than that. That being so, we also found no record of the actual age of the building, although it was referred to as one of the earliest brick-built houses in Brugge and is therefore an important building.

However, Jan found in the Land Registry 1580-1800, and printed off for me, the records since 1580 of transactions with the names involved, concerning 'my' house which was consistently referred to as Het Oorloge Mansschip. Jan could not explain the name; oorloge, occasionally spelled 'Oirloge; Orloige; Horlogie', could be from 'oorlog', war, or horloge, watch; mansschip might be a corruption of the German for a team of men. But 'schip' is a ship and there is a superb, large weather vane on top of the tall tower on the building and seems appropriate as a symbol for merchants whose trade probably came via ships. 

The building is referred to, after 1623, as two houses, a north and a south; reference is made to 'het noordelijk deel', the northern part sold separately from 'het zuidelijk deel'. One entry states that 'een minder huis', a small house, perhaps an apartment or a couple of rooms within, is to be rented out. Also, the building is described as 'het groot huis', the big house, and 'het hoekhuis', the corner house. The address was given as Woensdagmarkt with the 'oude straattnaam' given as Oosterlynghe Platse. The old name refers to the house being in the area of Brugge colonised by German merchants, the largest and most influential group of foreign merchants living and working in medieval Brugge. Although, the archivist said that it is possible that other nationalities like Russian or Turkish, might also have been living within that area.

On the first of January 1580, the building belonged to Jan Telleboom but by July 1581 his widow had sold the house to Jan Breijdele and Joris Michiels. There is a mention in this entry of Sint Donaas with some benefit of the sale of the house going to the cathedral. The building was for sale by decree, probably to pay debts, and was bought by Wouter de Clercq for Sint Walberga Church and mystifyingly, with ground rent paid to the children of Pieter Lapostole.

The details of the vagaries of ownership and the multiplicity of owners continue till March 3^rd 1784 in the records I was given. It is an enticing glimpse of the partial history of one house during a two hundred year period of Bruggean merchant life. There are records of forced sales, debts, creditors, promissory notes, rentals, inheritance tax, legal decrees and of different people acting on behalf of the two churches mentioned and also of Sint Janshospitaal. A number of times, the court has ordered the seizure of the house and all its contents. There seem to be a number of widows and 'sons of …' plus 'bankiers uit Parijs' [bankers from Paris], guarantors, several different 'koopman', merchants or businessmen, and of one man, 'Pieter Gilliodts machtig over Jan Casson uit Alicante'; Pieter literally 'had power over' Jan. That probably indicates that Pieter had the power to act on behalf of Jan from Alicante.

One interesting long entry tells of a bailiff acting on behalf of the King to forbid Jaecques van Altere from taxing, selling or giving away this property associated with the German nation. And then, there is a story to be written about Guillaume Pollet, businessman, first mentioned in November 1759 and with a narrative which eventually includes Guillaume Pollet de jonger, which finished in March 1784 only with the end of the records. Guillaume Pollet de oudere seems to have had a hair-raising life, sometimes in debt with a forced sale of the house imminent, sometimes mysteriously assigned as guarantor for some other buyer. Guillaume, in June 1780 recklessly borrowed 8000 guilders at 4% and was repeatedly not managing to pay back very much with predictable results regarding his house. By October 1781 he still owed 3435 livres. The last entry for March 1784 has the Burgemeester, the Mayor, acting on behalf of Guillaume's creditors. What a story there. Intriguing and I must improve my Dutch though rather more than a step or three up from Level 1!! My neighbour, Michele, inadvertently caught up in solving this ancient mystery, then discovered, that dear Guillaume about whom I worried, was in fact a member of the Guild of Brokers so perhaps less sinned against than sinning!

An unexpected treat on Wednesday evening. Ode Aan de Last Post, a celebration of the 30,000^th rendition of the Last Post at the Menenpoort, took place in the Burg.

                                                                                    

Hundreds of spectators enjoyed the one and a half hour programme of period music from Belgium, France, Germany, the Commonwealth, played by the band of Koninklijke Scoutsharmonie Sint-Leo with a local tenor, Georges Bullynck, Tracey McRory from Ireland on the violin, Guido Smeyers a Belgian playing the bagpipes expertly in Scottish traditional costume; Frank Deleu, Stadsbeiaardier, the important musician who plays the carillon on the top of the Beffroi, Marc Mosar both introducing, commenting AND reading Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est. Plus two buglers from the Household Division as it is now known, playing the mournful, spine-chilling Last Post, flanked by two torchbearers. [The Household Division was made up from the amalgamation of the Foot Guards, the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards, the Irish and the Welsh Guards]. The lone majestic piper in full Highland rig appeared twice, flanked by drummers, and turned out to be a Belgian, one Guido Smeyers.

Guido Smeyers, bagpiper resplendent.

In spite of a huge prolonged shower in the middle of the ceremony, spirits were high as were voices for the well-remembered marching songs of WW1; Mademoiselle from Armentieres, It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary, Pack up Your Troubles, and so on. Jerusalem and the Londonderry Air were also greeted warmly by the crowd of spectators. It was a moving ceremonial remembering the war with music, words and images on the large screen; the violin solo as background to the reading of the Dutch version of Dulce et Decorum Est, was particularly moving, with the Last Post bugle call inducing haunting and melancholic feelings. I considered, as I walked home, if that ceremony might not have caused the anti-European sentiment in the UK to stop and marvel at the improbable length of the peace in Europe since 1945, improbable given the violence and atrocities committed in Europe between 1914 and 1945. And to wonder if the union of much of Europe had not contributed hugely to this blessed state.

What a week! On Friday with two friends to Waterloo. More war with that Battle still ranked as perhaps the bloodiest, most costly in terms of lives squandered, in modern history. My interest had been particularly aroused because of the recent two hundred year celebrations but I hadn't expected to feel so involved in the pity of it all. The various exhibitions and memorials are excellent. We first saw the extensive Wellington Museum in the village of Waterloo itself, housed in the building, opposite the church, where Wellington established his HQ and where he lived. Somehow, it seemed improbable that the great man had actually lived in a house in the main street of the village, Waterloo, and planned his army's manoeuvres there in this domestic setting.

 A bus ride away, was the purpose-built Panorama, quite an elderly building, still beautiful to see outside with the spectacular panorama within, still with the power to call up the tremendous human wave upon wave of soldiers involved and killed, and the immensity of the battlefield.

The Lion's Mound with its 226 steps surveying the vista of the battlefield as a memorial to peace and the famous Allied victory, is reputed to be built upon the fathomless remnants of war, the spent ammunition and discarded rifles, bayonets and cannons remaining after June 17^th/18^th 1815.This may be apocryphal but certainly earth from various parts of the enormous battlefield were incorporated.

 But the one memorial that a visitor could particularly relate to was le Chateau d'Hougoumont, often referred to as the farm. It is at the bottom of an escarpment at Braine-l'Alleud, near Waterloo and was where Wellingon and his allies faced the Napoleonic Army in what was effectively the Battle of Waterloo. Perhaps it is the intimacy of the farm area, quite a rustic self-contained settlement before Waterloo but transformed during the battle to the strategically important pivot about which, Wellington, when asked what he wanted done if he was killed during the fighting, replied, 'Keep Hougoumont'. The fighting there raged over the two days, with ferocious hand-to-hand combat and thousands of deaths and mutilations, and both commanders desperate to retain or gain it. Now it is a tranquil, sanitised area restored over the bones of countless thousands of bodies below the soil. In one small barn there is a beautiful exhibition on Time, the vitally important ingredient of the battle; would Blucher manage to arrive in time to aid Wellington? But perhaps the most stunning is a media presentation [it is more than a film] in the great mediaeval barn; it is on three screens using close-ups, shadows, silent, snarling actors in uniform, weaponry and buildings on fire. It is difficult to describe but incredibly moving to watch in the very barn where so many died. 

 

Interesting to note that Hougoumont had been very dilapidated but was completely restored for the recent 200th anniversary celebrations and only opened, in fact, on June 18th 2015.