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A 'Letter of Intelligence' sent from Sluis says that Charles is 'much loocked upon, but littell respeckted. And this is not wonderful if the reports sent home by the Commonwealth agents are to be trusted. One of the spies who haunted the neighbourhood of Bruges was a Mr.
In 1513, Damme and Sluis were partly in ruins, and in the middle of the century, whole quarters of Bruges were emptied of their inhabitants, while over seven thousand destitute depended on charity.
York and Prince William thereupon retreated across the frontier, followed by the French under Pichegru, while another French general, Moreau, took Sluis and overran Dutch Flanders. This gave fresh encouragement to the patriot party, who in Amsterdam formed a revolutionary committee, of which the leaders were Gogel, Van Dam and Kraijenhoff.
A prompt and complete apology on the part of the French Government followed. On March 13, 1917, Dutch troops shot down a German plane which had flown over Sluis in Holland, ten miles northeast of Burges. Before they could capture the aviator, he succeeded in restarting his machine and in making his escape to the German lines.
The "Wise Man of Ghent" suggested, however, that in order to relieve the Communes of their oath of allegiance to Philip of Valois, who had succeeded the Capetians, Edward should declare himself the true king of France. The struggle which followed the destruction of the French fleet at Sluis was protracted, no decision being reached at the siege of Tournai.
The English came down from the windward and, as they scrambled aboard the enemy, threw quicklime into the Frenchmen's eyes. At Sluis, in 1340, to take another instance of early English naval warfare, Edward III defeated a large French fleet and a number of hired Genoese galleys lashed side by side in the little river Eede in Flanders.
As soon as there was light next morning, the English weighed anchor and sailed along the coast to the east; past lonely yellow sands, which have swarmed during recent years with workmen toiling at the construction of the immense harbour of See-Brugge, which is to be the future port of Bruges; past what was then the small fishing hamlet of Heyst; past a range of barren dunes, amongst which to-day Duinbergen, the latest of the Flemish watering-places, with its spacious hotel and trim villas, is being laid out; past a waste of storm-swept sand and rushes, on which are now the digue of Knocke, a cluster of hotels and crowded lodging-houses, and a golf-course; and so onwards till they opened the mouth of the Zwijn, and saw the French ships crowding the entrance, 'their masts appearing to be like a great wood, and beyond them the walls of Sluis rising from the wet sands left by the receding tide.
Sluis fell at the end of August, and Ostend was then at its last gasp. Urged now by the deputies of the States to make a direct effort to relieve the heroic garrison, Maurice and his cousin, after wasting some precious time in protesting against the step, began to march southward. It was too late.
"Edward obtained the assistance of the Flemings; but he did not conquer France, though he gained some splendid victories, in which the famous Black Prince figured. Van Artevelde began to dread the vengeance of the hereditary counts of Flanders, whose power he had usurped, and in 1344 he invited Edward to meet him at Sluis.
They were divided into two parties, one of which, led by De Coninck, made for the Porte Ste. Croix, while the other, under Breidel, marched to the Porte de Damme, a gateway which no longer exists, but which was then one of the most important entrances, being that by which travellers came from Damme and Sluis.
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