A short history of Belgium

When, in 57 B.C., the Roman Republic, then in control of most of the Mediterranean countries, the south of Gaul included, determined to conquer also the rest of that country, Belgium was occupied by a people of Celtic origin, called the Belgians, “Belgae.” They were a part of the larger group of the Gauls who possessed the country between the Pyrennees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the sea. The Belgians occupied, not only the actual territory of Belgium, but also a part of Northern France and of Rhenish Prussia. They formed a confederation of several tribes, among which the Nervians, dwelling in the provinces of Hainaut, Brabant, and Flanders, were the most important.

The Roman general, Julius Caesar, intrusted with the task of subduing the north of Gaul, attacked the Belgians in 57 B.C. The Roman army would have been routed by the Nervians in the first attack but for Caesar, who himself led the troops and saved the day. Notwithstanding a fierce guerrilla warfare that lasted four years, all the Belgian tribes were successively subdued and some of them exterminated. Their heroic resistance made Caesar say of them: “Among all the Gauls, the bravest are the Belgians.”

Once subdued, Belgium accepted the Roman rule and remained loyal to the Empire. Civilization was rapidly introduced; great military roads were constructed through the Belgian forests and marshes, connecting the different towns, and along their course villages were built and farms developed. Tongres and Tournai became entirely Romanized cities, where splendid monuments were built; remains of these are still to be found today. Farms were laid out and country houses were erected according to Roman pattern, with such changes as were imposed by the rigors of the northern climate. The Belgians adopted Roman manners and customs and the Latin language: they became Gallo-Romans, and even the national gods were renamed with Roman names.

If Belgium shared the splendor and the civilization of the Roman Empire, it shared also the disastrous days of its decline. There came a time when the Empire, once so strong, but now growing weaker and weaker, was quite unable to resist the hordes of barbarians, which, coming from the dark forests of Germany, threatened the rich provinces of Gaul, and Italy itself, with invasion. From the third century on, Franks and Alamans devastated Gaul and left the wealthy territories covered with ruins. The emperors did not succeed in expelling the Franks from the country: those tribes of Teutonic race were allowed to remain in the northern parts of Belgium, Flanders and Campine,[4] and became soldiers of the Empire. They early became dissatisfied with the territory allotted to them and resumed their march southward, conquering the whole of Belgium. The year 406 witnessed a terrible catastrophe. The Teutons, driven out of their country by the invasion of the Huns, burst like a hurricane upon the unfortunate provinces of Belgium, burned and devastated everything on their march, destroyed Tongres and Tournai, and finally, swarming over the Alps and the Pyrennees, invaded both Italy and Spain. After their passage, Belgium was left undefended by the Roman legions, recalled to defend Italy itself, and the Franks of Flanders and Campine occupied the abandoned territory without difficulty.

The conquest by the Franks is an important event in Belgian history. Indeed, it is from the fifth century that the bilingualism and the ethnographical dualism of Belgium may be said to date. The Franks, composed of two tribes, the Salians and the Ripuarians, advanced from the north and the east into Belgium and occupied the country in such a way that the actual provinces of Flanders, Antwerp, Limburg, the larger part of Brabant, and Liège fell into their power. Farther south they did not enter Belgium: their march was stopped by a dense and extended forest which, in Southwestern and Central Belgium, constituted the continuation of the forests of the Ardennes. The forest in question was called Sylva Carbonaria, “Coal Wood,” and covered the largest part of the actual province of Hainaut, the seat of the modern Belgian coal industry. Behind the curtain of that forest the oldest inhabitants of the country, the Gallo-Romans, remained free from oppression by the invaders and retained their Latin culture and civilization. So Belgium was separated by the Sylva Carbonaria into two quite distinct parts: the northern part, occupied by the Franks, with their Teutonic culture and civilization; the southern part, occupied by the Gallo-Romans. A line was thus drawn dividing the Belgian people, and an ethnical and linguistic duality, destined to remain for centuries one of the main characteristics of the country, was established. Indeed, the Walloons[5] of today are the descendants of the old Gallo-Romans from behind the limits of the Sylva Carbonaria, and the Flemings of Northern Belgium are the descendants of the Franks. This line drawn in the fifth century has undergone little change in the course of ages and, although the famous coal wood disappeared many centuries ago, the separation between Walloons and Flemings has remained more or less apparent down to the present. In this case the Sylva Carbonaria played a part like that of the Alps in the case of the Romanches and the Italians of the Tessino, and that of the hills of Wales and Cornwall in the case of the Britons of England.

The first king of the Franks known in history is Clodion, who conquered the countries of Tournai and Cambrai and established the seat of his realm in Tournai. It is in this town that his grave was discovered in 1653; the King was found buried, according to the customs of his people, together with his arms and royal ornaments; he was identified by the presence of a ring on which his likeness and his name were engraved.

It was from Tournai that the famous descendant of Clodion, King Clodovech, started his campaign of further conquest that gave him possession of Northern France and, after the war against the Burgundians and the West-goths (506), the control of nearly the whole of their country. From this time on, the Frankish kings established their capital at Paris. Belgium is no longer associated with the recollection of their glorious deeds.

Clodion and his successors, so far as we know by the general history of Europe, belonged to the so-called dynasty of the Merovingians. The kings of that dynasty, in the course of the seventh century, were weaklings, actually dominated by their powerful ministers, the mayors of the palace. One of these, Peppin, in 751, succeeded in becoming himself a king and was the founder of a new royal dynasty, the Carolingians.

The new dynasty was, geographically speaking, essentially a Belgian dynasty, for it had many possessions in Eastern Belgium and all its members had occupied influential offices at the court of the Austrasian kings, who, in the sixth and seventh centuries, ruled over that part of the country.

The most famous of the Carolingians is Charles the Great, who re-established the old Roman Empire (800) and who, by successful campaigns, succeeded in extending his domination over the territory lying between the river Elbe, the Bohemian mountains, and the Raab on the east, the sea on the west, the North Sea, and the Garigliano River in Italy and the Ebro River in Spain on the south.

The favorite residence of the great Emperor was at Aix, and this contributed largely to the development of Belgian trade and industry at the beginning of the ninth century. Politically abandoned by the Frankish kings when they moved to Paris, Belgium again became important in the time of Charles the Great as the most favorably located portion of the Frankish Empire.

Belgium is, indeed, for trade purposes, the natural meeting-ground of the West-European nations. Lying between England, France, Germany, and Holland, it has good water communications with each. Though not quite so near the English coast as a corner of France is, it has the great advantage of exactly fronting the mouth of the Thames. With France it is connected by the upper courses of the Lys, the Scheldt, the Sambre, and the Meuse, the last named being navigable by deep-draught vessels far into Lorraine. With Germany its connection is less direct, the outlet of the Rhine running of course through Holland.[6]

These geographical conditions played a large part in the development of Belgian trade in the time of Charles the Great. The presence of the imperial palace at Aix attracted a great deal of traffic: from every part of the empire merchants, soldiers, priests, in short all classes of people, came through Belgium in order to reach the residence of the Emperor, and their presence resulted in unparalleled prosperity in that part of the Carolingian empire. Charles the Great was not only a great soldier and legislator, but also a man who knew the importance of the Christian religion in cultural matters. During his reign the development of religious life in the different parts of the empire grew rapidly.

Something ought to be said concerning the introduction of the Christian religion into Belgium. The preaching of the gospel in Belgium goes back as far as the Roman occupation of the time of the Empire, but the religious organization of the church in the country dates from the middle of the fourth century. At that time we find in the city of Tongres the oldest historically known bishop of Belgium, St. Servatius. The historical origin of the bishoprics of Arras, Tournai, Boulogne, Cambrai--all of them at that time in Belgian territory--remains a matter of conjecture. The baptism of King Clodovech in 496 made the development of the Christian religion easier, although the conversion of the King to the Catholic faith did not at all mean the conversion of the whole people. Large parts of Belgium, especially the eastern part, remained heathen until the eighth century, and the introduction of the Christian religion in these sections of the country is mainly the work of missionaries. These missionaries worked on their own initiative, without any such prearranged plan as, for instance, existed for the introduction of Catholicism into England. It was mainly by Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries that the gospel was made known, and the most famous of those heralds of the Catholic religion was the Anglo-Saxon missionary Willibrord. The work of the missionaries was completed by the bishops, who visited large portions of their very extensive dioceses. Bishops Eligius, Amandus, Lambert, and Hubert are closely connected with the religious history of Belgium in the seventh and eighth centuries. The boundaries of the dioceses corresponded exactly with the limits of the old administrative circles of the Roman Empire, the provinces. In the eighth century, Belgium was divided into the dioceses of Noyon-Tournai, Térouanne (later Saint-Omer), Arras, Cambrai, Liège, and Utrecht. The dioceses of Utrecht and Liège were subject to the metropolitan church of Cologne, the others to the metropolitan church of Rheims.