In 57BC, Julius Caesar came to Belgium and, after a great deal of trouble with a population he described as ‘the bravest of all the peoples of Gaul’, conquered the country. At that time, Brussels did not yet exist as a city, although two Roman roads had been built through its present site (one of which is still called chaussée Romaine). From the evidence of the bronzes, coins and funeral urns found, a number of dignitaries and officers had villas constructed in the area some decades later. During the 450 years of Roman rule, the Belgae of the southern region became heavily Latinised, while the north was left in the end to Germanic tribes.
Brussels first appeared on the scene around AD600 when St Géry, the Bishop of Cambrai, is said to have built a church at the small settlement here. At this time and later, it was known variously as Brosella, Brucella, Bruocsella, Bruohsella, Bruesella and Borsella, with as many different meanings suggested by historians. Selections include ‘stork’s nest’ and ‘dwelling near the bridge’, but the most generally accepted seems to be ‘dwelling in the marshes’. This supposedly refers to three swampy islands in the now paved-over River Senne, on which the first castle and church were built.
Local hero: crusader Godfrey of Bouillon, on place Royale
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The Middle Ages
The foundation of the city proper dates back officially to AD979, when a fortress was erected here by Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, the brother of Carolingian King Lothair of France. In the following century, the town began to take shape when, in 1047, Count Lambert II of Leuven (Louvain) built a new castle on the Coudenberg Heights (today called place Royale), surrounded by a group of houses within a walled compound. The lack of space inside meant that artisans and peasants were left unprotected outside the ramparts, thus laying the foundations for the long struggle between the city’s haves and have-nots.
Most major cities have a body of water nearby. They may be seaports, or set on river mouths, or at crossing points on rivers inland. But Brussels does not have a river. Or does it?
Well, in fact, it does. The city was originally founded on the River Senne, whose path cut directly through the centre of the old town. However, when the river became dirty and polluted following the Industrial Revolution, the people of Brussels decided on a novel and innovative solution; they would simply put the river out of sight. Work began in 1867 and was allied with a comprehensive plan by Mayor Jules Anspach to create a number of fine boulevards in the newly created landscape above. A series of culverts confined the waters and a network of sewers drained effluent from all parts of the city. Finally, the river disappeared under brick arcades, although it still flows to the present day.
In the 12th century, Brussels rose to prominence in the province of Brabant, gaining in prosperity due to its role as a centre of gold and silversmithing and as a station on the commercial route between the trading centres of Cologne and Bruges. By 1235 the city’s administration was in the hands of an oligarchy of seven patrician families known as lignages. Each contributed an échevin, or alderman, to serve on the council. Brussels expanded its trade in precious metals with international orders for minting coins. It also started a prosperous textile industry using wool imported from England. However, with male workers demanding higher wages and better working conditions, the lords began to look elsewhere for labour, and a number of béguinages (communities of religious lay women) were established, partly as a source of cheap and docile workers.
The Brussels bourgeoisie was already growing prosperous and willful. In 1291 Duke Jean I had to make tax and toll concessions to their municipal treasury. In an attempt to forestall the problems of dealing with recalcitrant artisans, the ruling oligarchy claimed the right of approval over the formation of the craft guilds–a restriction that strongly riled the artisans.
Porte de Hal, the city’s only surviving medieval gate
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The Brussels craftsmen staged a revolt demanding a greater say in city government. Some 36 professional groups were each allowed to send representatives to administer the town’s affairs. However, Brussels’ first attempt at democracy came to an abrupt end just three years later, when the army of Duke Jean II and the patrician cavalry of the lignages defeated the artisans in the bloody battle of Vilvoorde (1306). For the next 50 years the artisans were forbidden to bear arms, and uprisings rumbled on until guild privileges were gradually reinstated for certain professions..
The Burgundians
At the end of the 14th century the dukes of Burgundy took control of Brussels from their seat in Bruges, and under them good times were to be had. However, the demand for Brussels cloth declined, as at the same time textiles manufactured in England became more competitive. By 1430 Brussels cloth had practically disappeared from international markets. With no work, many artisans were forced to leave the city, and the population declined. Brussels compensated for the collapse of the textile industry by turning to tapestry weaving, for which it became renowned. The demand for skilled Brussels weavers became intense. With demand rising for other skills as well, the craft guilds began to reform and gain strength.
The Burgundian era was a golden age for the arts. Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Dirk Bouts were only the best known of a superb group of 15th-century Flemish painters. Civic pride was reflected in the great Gothic town halls that sprang up all across Belgium, though none ever surpassed Brussels’ own great jewel in the Grand-Place, surrounded by equally grand guild houses.
The painter Jan van Eyck is remembered in Bruges
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The dukes – Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, Philip the Good and Charles the Bold –asserted their supremacy with pageants and festivities to keep the people happy. However, their dominance began to disintegrate in wars with Louis XI of France, and before long the city was beset with revolts, famine and plague. Charles the Bold, Philip the Good’s successor, was in turn succeeded by his daughter Mary, who married Maximilian of Austria and thus brought the Habsburgs to Brussels.
Charles the Bold
Public domain
Habsburg Rule
In 1515 Maximilian’s grandson, the future Charles V, made his Joyeuse Entrée into Brussels as its new archduke. He moved into the palace on the Coudenberg, which was to be his only fixed residence during his peripatetic reign as king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. As Bruges lost its influence, Brussels became the capital of the Low Countries (roughly following the borders of what is now Belgium and Holland), as well as a great European centre of trade and culture.
The renowned Dutch philosopher Erasmus also enjoyed the city’s pleasant atmosphere, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder came to Brussels to paint his marvellous studies of life in the Low Countries. Brussels’ thriving trade in luxury goods at this time was enhanced by the vogue of its lace-makers and the expertise of its highly prized gunsmiths.
The Ommegang, or ‘walk-around’, the most spectacular of Brussels’ festivities, gave the resident Renaissance nobility and gentry a chance to show off their riches in a procession around the city. Originally a religious celebration of a miraculous statue of the Virgin (brought to the city in 1348), it soon became an undisguised assertion of the nobility’s civic authority. The Ommegang is still held every year in early July in the Grand-Place. It was at the event, in 1549, when Charles V introduced his son from Spain to the citizens of Brussels; in 1555, Charles abdicated in his son’s favour. The Belgians viewed the new King Philip II with suspicion.
Inquisitions, Shells and Beheadings
During Charles’ reign, Calvinists had arrived in Brussels, and the people of the Low Countries embraced the Reformation with enthusiasm. Soon, the spiritual rebellion against Catholicism became identified with the nationalist rebellion against Spanish rule, and discontent grew. Charles only dimly perceived the seriousness of this threat to Spanish power and was lax in enforcing his powers. However, Philip, who disliked his northern subjects, was less easygoing. He brought in the inquisitors and surrounded himself with Spanish soldiers, and blood began to flow.
Nationalist resistance was led by William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Philip, who in 1559 headed back to Spain, sent the Duke of Alba – the ‘bloody duke’ – to quash the revolt. Two leading landowners, counts Egmont and Hornes, more nationalists than rebels, were executed in the Grand-Place in 1568. However, the Prince of Orange was able to drive out the Spanish in 1576, whereupon Brussels enacted ferocious anti-Catholic legislation. In 1581 the Catholic religion was simply ‘abolished’.
Count Egmont
Count Egmont is remembered not just through the famous statue of him and Hornes on place du Petit-Sablon, but also through a play written by Goethe and an overture, Egmont, by Beethoven (opus 84).
Statue of counts Egmont and Hornes in place du Petit-Sablon
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This outraged Philip, who sent a large army, under the command of Alexander Farnese, to re-occupy the city. The southern provinces of the Low Countries returned to Spain and Catholicism, but the northern provinces (now the Netherlands) succeeded in breaking away and remained largely Protestant. Brussels saw a flood of Jesuits, monks and nuns to reinforce the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
Under the rule of Philip’s daughter, Archduchess Isabella, and her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria, Brussels returned to a general semblance of order (1599–1633). Life in the capital became quite fashionable, with a constant flow of ambassadors, generals, bishops and cardinals bringing a new cosmopolitan air to the court of the governors-general around the Sablon quarter. The spirit of the age found great artistic expression in the sumptuous contours of Flemish Baroque, which reached its peak with the magnificent paintings of Peter Paul Rubens.
At this time, Brussels was a haven for political exiles– Marie de Medici, Christina of Sweden, the dukes of Bouillon and Vendôme and the sons of Charles I of England. However, by the end of the century it was not quite so safe. In 1695 Louis XIV of France took his revenge for the Dutch and English shelling of his coastal towns with the wanton bombardment of Brussels. Marshal de Villeroy’s army of 70,000 men occupied Anderlecht and set up its cannons at the gate of Ninove. For two days, shells and cannonballs fell on some 4,000 buildings, killing 1,000 people, yet the city did not surrender. The Grand-Place was badly damaged, yet the Town Hall’s superb belltower survived.
Revolution to Revolution
In 1701 a dynastic wrangle brought war in Europe, and in the peace that followed, control of the southern Low Countries passed to the Austrian Habsburgs. The subsequent period of growth in Belgium was subsidised by trade links controlled by Vienna. Emperor Joseph II ruled Belgium in the last part of the 18th century with a form of enlightened despotism. His religious reforms and judicial liberalisation upset the conservative Belgians, and the centralised Vienna-controlled administration jarred with its habit of local autonomy, and nowhere more so than in Brussels.
This was at a time when the Americans had thrown off the British yoke, and the French were getting rid of their royal one. In January 1790 the old patrician families of Brussels staged a revolt, which drove the Austrians out and restored their ancient privileges under the ‘Etats Belges Unis’ (United Belgian States). The revolutionary regime was short-lived: in December, the Austrians returned, only to be ousted in 1792 by the French Revolutionary army. In 1793 the French decided simply to annex Belgium. Their influence was mixed. Increased trade with France brought more affluence, but museums and libraries were pillaged, and many able-bodied men were press-ganged into the Revolutionary army.
In the winter of 1813–14, Brussels saw the French troops depart, only for them to be replaced by Russians, Prussians, Dutch and, finally, by the British, waiting for orders to go into battle with Napoleon in 1815. The rendezvous was around 20km (12 miles) away, at Waterloo, on 18 June.
Napoleon’s defeat and the resulting Congress of Vienna brought 16 years of Dutch rule to Belgium, resurrecting old tensions and creating new ones. During Napoleon’s rule, the national language was French. Even in Flanders, French was the language of the nobility and bourgeoisie. King William of Orange introduced Dutch, previously spoken only by the lower ranks of society, into schools, municipal government and courts. French-speaking teachers were upset by the imposition of Dutch and taught the sciences in Latin. Catholics were upset by the removal of schools from church control, and liberals were upset by press censorship.
Colonne du Congrès, commemorating independence
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Independence at Last
With Paris overthrowing its monarch in July 1830, revolt was in the air. In August liberal journalists were active in Brussels, and workers were demonstrating against low pay and poor living conditions. At a performance of Daniel Auber’s opera La Muette de Portici on 25 August, the rousing aria Amour Sacré de la Patrie (Sacred Love of the Fatherland) raised the blood of the bourgeois audience. Belgians of all classes came out on to the streets in a series of civil disturbances. Rioters attacked the Palais de Justice, and sacked the homes of government ministers, while the police and army stood by. In September, King William sent troops to Brussels, and there were many casualties on both sides; when Belgium’s independence was recognised on 21 July 1831, the keys of the capital were handed over to the country’s new king, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.
With independence came high economic growth but also social, political and religious conflicts. Tensions were high between Catholics and liberals, and between Flemings (Dutch-speaking Belgians in the north) and Walloons (French-speaking Belgians in the south). Conservative Catholic provinces resisted universal suffrage and so maintained control over the government. This fuelled their fight with the liberals of the capital over education and church power. Although Brussels was nominally bilingual, French was increasingly dominant in business and state administration. The Flemings campaigned with increasing indignation for greater use of their language in the universities and law courts.
Throughout the 19th century and particularly during the reign of Leopold II (1865–1909), industrial expansion and imperial adventures in Africa, particularly in the Congo, brought great prosperity to Brussels. There was a flurry of construction, with mansions and commercial buildings rising up along the wide avenues and boulevards. As ever, the products of the luxury industries – textiles, furniture, lace, fine porcelain, paper and books – were at a premium.
Leopold II
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Brussels was once again a refuge for political exiles, notably from Poland, Italy, France and Russia. Germany’s Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx organised the socialist German Workers’ Club at Le Cygne on the Grand-Place. The two wrote the Communist Manifesto here, and then were kicked out of Belgium in 1848, when it was feared that their writings and ideas might reproduce the latest Paris Revolution. There was also an explosion of artistic achievement in the capital. Painters including James Ensor, Félicien Rops and Fernand Khnopff came together in the Groupe des XX in 1883. Brussels was also a major centre of Art Nouveau architecture under the leadership of both Victor Horta and Paul Hankar.
Musée Horta
Olivier van de Kerchove/Visit Brussels
World Wars and International Leadership
Belgium’s historic vulnerability to invasion was displayed again in August 1914, when Kaiser Wilhelm’s German armies occupied Brussels. The capital put up a heroic passive resistance, and when the Germans were defeated, Belgium expressed its new-found sense of national unity in the introduction of universal suffrage, the right to strike, a Flemish university and, finally, a truce in the church-school conflict. In the 1930s there was the emergence in Brussels, as in other European capitals, of new fascist groups drawing on social discontent and primitive chauvinism. The fascist leader Léon Degrelle achieved that which had eluded other Belgian leaders: he united Catholics, liberals and socialists in a combined effort to defeat him, resoundingly, in the 1937 elections. These grim times offered the best breeding ground for a flight into the Surrealist art of René Magritte and Paul Delvaux, and the comic-strip escapism of Hergé’s Tintin.
Then came World War II and another German occupation. The Nazis found collaborators to prepare Belgium for integration into the Reich, and Flemish and Walloon volunteers for separate Waffen-SS formations. King Leopold III’s passive acceptance of the invasion caused controversy.
After the war Belgium held a referendum in which King Leopold gained a majority of 58 percent. However, not having a majority in each province, he refused to be reinstated and was succeeded in 1951 by his son Baudouin, who proved an immensely popular monarch with both Flemings and Walloons, and the glue that held the country together. Meanwhile, somewhat ironically given its own internal strife, Belgium took on a new role as the capital of a more unified Western Europe and of the Atlantic alliance. In 1957 the EEC (now the EU) established its headquarters in Brussels. The following year the city staged a very successful World’s Fair based on the theme of building a better world for mankind, and in 1960 Belgium divested itself of its African colonies.
NATO moved its headquarters to Brussels in 1967, and the city subsequently attracted around a quarter of a million foreign residents to work in military and multinational organisations. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Belgian government introduced regional government to allow greater local decision-making. Today, with the EU having expanded up to the borders of the old Soviet Union, the city’s role as the focal point for the continent continues to develop.