Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

76 страница из 100

The county of Flanders grew up in the flat country between the Scheldt and the sea. Like Brittany, it had suffered terribly from Norman invasions. Like Brittany, it was not homogeneous in language and custom. In all the northern and eastern districts the Low Dutch tongue prevailed, but in the south-east, round Lille and Douai, French was spoken. Baldwin of the Iron Arm, a Carolingian official who became the son-in-law of Charles the Bald, distinguished himself by leading the Flemings to victory against the Normans, and obtained from his father-in-law an hereditary supremacy over the whole district bounded by the Scheldt, the North Sea, and the Canche, and therefore including the modern Artois with the homage of great barons like the counts of Boulogne and Saint-Pol. Four other Counts Baldwin continued their ancestor’s exploits. Of these the most famous was Baldwin V., the uncle and guardian of Philip I., and the father-in-law of William the Conqueror. It was under Baldwin V. that the Flemish towns, whose strong walls had served to shelter previous generations from the Viking marauders, first enter upon their long career of political liberty and industrial prosperity. When Baldwin V. died in 1067, the year after his son-in-law’s establishment in England, mediæval Flanders had well begun its glorious but tumultuous and blood-stained career. ⁴⁷ To the south of Flanders lay the Vermandois, round its chief town of Saint Quentin, and including the northern parts of the restricted ‘Francia’ of the tenth century. We have seen the importance of its counts in the days of the struggle of Carolingians and Capetians, and the establishment of a Capetian line of counts of Vermandois in the person of Hugh the Great, the brother of Philip I. Champagne and Blois.