The leading industry of Flanders was weaving. England in
the Middle Ages raised great flocks of sheep, but lacking skilled workmen to
manufacture the wool into fine cloth, sent it across the Channel to Flanders. A
medieval writer declared that the whole world was clothed in English wool
manufactured by the Flemings. The taxes that were laid on the export of wool
helped to pay the expenses of English kings in their wars with the Welsh, the
Scotch, and the Irish. The wool trade also made Flanders the ally of England in
the Hundred Years' War, thus beginning that historic friendship between the two
countries which still endures.
BRUGES, GHENT AND YPRES
Among the thriving communities of Flanders three held an
exceptional position. Bruges was the mart where the trade of southern Europe,
in the hands of the Venetians, and the trade of northern Europe, in the hands
of the Hanseatic merchants, came together. Ghent, with forty thousand
workshops, and Ypres, which counted two hundred thousand workmen within its
walls and suburbs, were scarcely less prosperous. When these cities declined in
wealth, Antwerp became the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands.
