The lay landlords, on the other hand, were bad administrators. Dealing only with politics and war, they ignored agricultural problems; they did not come into contact with their laborers, and they left with their officers, _ministeriales_, the care of ruling and judging their servants. They preferred attendance at “tournaments,” which might be regarded as a sort of military training and as a means of learning the profession of bearer of arms. They undertook long and distant journeys in order to fight the knights of Vermandois, Champagne, and Picardy in France. And as a result both Walloons and Flemings came in contact with their French brethren in arms. The upper landlords, the dukes and counts, gave much attention, however, to the colonization and the economic improvement of the country. Northern and Western Flanders and Northern Brabant were covered with sandy soil and marshes, and thick woods were to be found in some parts as late as the end of the eleventh century. In the early part of that century, the counts of Flanders began to engage the unemployed for agricultural purposes. They turned the unproductive parts of the country into fertile meadows, suitable for pasturing cattle. Canals and dykes were constructed in order to increase the productivity of the soil. In the course of the twelfth century a sturdy populace of land laborers was attracted into Germany by the landlords of the countries of Bremen, Holstein, Thuringia, and Silesia. It was the Flemings and the people of Brabant who colonized the right bank of the river Elbe and who turned the marshes of Eastern Germany into fertile soil. Many villages still remind us today of those Flemings, and are still known as _Flämingdörfer_. On the Flemish seacoast the people were engaged in raising cattle, especially sheep and cows; another large element was employed in herring and cod fishing in the North Sea. These people were mostly of Frisian or Saxon origin; they were not descendants of the Franks. They spoke another language; they had other customs and laws; they were socially free men. When the French influence increased in Flanders, they alone retained their Germanic characteristics, and it was among them, in the fourteenth century, that were found the fiercest opponents of France. As affecting the artistic life of Belgium in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find the same influences at work which have been mentioned as operative in political and religious spheres. The Romance and Germanic ideas were absorbed, mixed, and transformed by the Belgian artists of that time.