no land is to be compared in merchandise to the land of Flanders.”  At Ypres, the chief centre of cloth fabrics, the population increased so rapidly that, in 1247, the sheriffs prayed Pope Innocent IV. to augment the number of parishes in their city, which contained, according to their account, about two hundred thousand persons.  So much prosperity made the Counts of Flanders very puissant lords.  “Marguerite II., called the Black, Countess of Flanders and Hainault, from 1244 to 1280, was extremely rich,” says a chronicler, “not only in lands, but in furniture, jewels, and money; and, as is not customary with women, she was right liberal and right sumptuous, not only in her largesses, but in her entertainments, and whole manner of living; insomuch that she kept up the state of queen rather than countess.”  Nearly all the Flemish towns were strongly organized communes, in which prosperity had won liberty, and which became before long small republics sufficiently powerful not only for the defence of their municipal rights against the Counts of Flanders, their lords, but for offering an armed resistance to such of the sovereigns their neighbors as attempted to conquer them or to trammel them in their commercial relations, or to draw upon their wealth by forced contributions or by plunder.  Philip Augustus had begun to have a taste of their strength during his quarrels with Count Ferdinand of Portugal, whom he had made Count of Flanders by marrying him to the Countess Joan, heiress of the countship, and whom, after the battle of Bouvines, he had confined for thirteen years in the tower of the Louvre.  Philip the Handsome laid himself open to and was subjected by the Flemings to still rougher experiences.

At the time of the latter king’s accession to the throne, Guy de Dampierre, of noble Champagnese origin, had been for five years Count of Flanders, as heir to his mother, Marguerite II.  He was a prince who did not lack courage, or, on a great emergency, high-mindedness and honor; but he was ambitious, covetous, as parsimonious as his mother had been munificent, and above all concerned to get his children married in a manner conducive to his own political importance.  He had by his two wives, Matilda of Bethune and Isabel of Luxembourg, nine sons and eight daughters, offering free scope for combinations and connections, in respect of which Guy de Dampierre was not at all scrupulous about the means of success.  He had a quarrel with his son-in-law, Florent V., Count of Holland, to whom he had given his daughter Beatrice in marriage; and another of his sons-in-law, John I., Duke of Brabant, married to another of his daughters, the Princess Marguerite, offered himself as mediator in the difference.  The two brothers-in-law went together to see their father-in-law; but, on their arrival, Guy de Dampierre seized the person of the Count of Holland, and would not release him until the Duke of Brabant offered to become prisoner in his place, and found himself