governed by the Thirty-Nine, three cooptative boards of councilors who rotated annually
and were notoriously corrupt, provoking industrial and political unrest. Ghent maintained
a generally royalist posture in the conflicts of the French monarchy with the Flemish
count Gui de Dampierre; only a small contingent from Ghent joined Bruges and Ypres in
defeating the French at the Battle of the Golden Spurs, Courtrai, in 1302.
During the 14th century, Ghent was governed by two boards of aldermen, and the
magistracy was open to all social and professional groups. Occupational guilds other than
the exclusive merchant organization of the 13th century were legalized, but only after
1360 were the twenty-six seats on the councils apportioned in a fixed scheme among
groups of guilds. The government was dominated by oligarchies within the guilds and
members of poorter (landowner) families. Ghent developed a substantial shipping trade
after 1300, particularly in grain shipped from France down the Scheldt and Lys. But the
textile industry, dependent on imported English wool, continued to dominate the city at
least through mid-century. Ghent was as cripplingly dependent on England for wool for
its textile looms as on France for grain to feed its workers. Thus caught in the Anglo-
French struggles of the 1340s, the town fell under the domination of the captain Jacques
van Artevelde. After his death, Ghent continued its resistance to the new count, Louis de
Male.
When Louis’s forces stormed the city in January 1349, they installed a regime based
on the fullers’ guild, which was less inimical to his authority than that of the weavers,
who had dominated Ghent in the 1340s without excluding other groups. The weavers had
regained power and barred the fullers from the town councils by 1361. Between 1379 and
1385, Ghent waged another war against the count, who had allowed Bruges to dig a canal
toward the Lys with the intention of channeling into it south of Ghent and ending Ghent’s
lucrative control of the French grain supply. This “Ghent War” did not have the support
of the rest of Flanders, although the military power of Ghent kept pro-Ghent factions in
power intermittently elsewhere. Ghent and Flanders were thereafter ruled by Louis de
Male’s Burgundian successors, who slowly limited the cities’ autonomy. The textile
industry of Ghent, which had gone into a severe decline after 1350, revived somewhat in
the 15th century. Although Ghent rebelled in 1438 and 1451–53 against Philip the Good
of Burgundy, capitulation was inevitable. Philip and particularly his son, Charles the
Bold, attempted to control directly the choice of magistrates in the city, leading to further
rebellion against his son-in-law and successor, Maximilian of Habsburg. In the 16th
century, Ghent and Flanders were part of a Habsburg state.
David M.Nicholas
Ghent initially grew up around two monasteries, Saint-Pierre, founded by St. Amand
in the 7th century, and Saint-Bavon, also founded in the 7th century and rebuilt in the
10th. A third urban center was dominated by the stone castle built ca. 1000 on the site of
what is now the castle of the counts of Flanders (‘s Gravensteen). In order to assert his
authority over the powerful weavers’ guild, Philippe d’Alsace, count of Flanders and
Vermandois, strengthened and added to the castle after 1180, upon his return from the
Third Crusade, using as models the crusader castles of the Near East. It is deeply moated,
and the outer curtain wall, with its twenty-four watch towers, forms an oval measuring
approximately 165 feet by 200 feet. These curtain walls, reinforced by powerful
rectangular buttresses, most supporting the semicylindrical watch towers, are over 6 feet
thick. The only entrance, projecting to the east, is a rectangular châtelet terminating in
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