It is significant that the movement started in Flanders before influencing the French-speaking part of the country. The Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience (1812-83) had devoted a series of books to the history of his country long before De Coster wrote his _Ulenspiegel_. The Flemish language was, at the time, struggling against great difficulties. It had been entirely neglected, from the literary point of view, during the eighteenth century, and suffered now from the natural reaction which followed the 1830 Revolution. It had reaped little benefit from the fifteen years of union with Holland, and there was a general belief, among the Flemings themselves, that it would never recover its ancient position. The Flemish literary Renaissance was initiated by a small group of intellectuals, headed by Jan Frans Willems (1793-1846), who exerted all their energy to revive Flemish customs, collect folk songs and traditions, and obtain a liberal interpretation of the Constitution which proclaimed liberty of language. The Flemish Movement received a new impulse when the young poet Albrecht Rodenbach (1856-80) spread its influence to all Flemish intellectual circles. The Flemings began to realize that they possessed in Guido Gezelle (1813-99) a religious poet whose work could bear comparison with the best French writings in the country. They saw, growing up around them, a new school of writers of great promise, and they insisted on their language being recognized, not only in principle, but in fact, as the second official language of the country. In 1898 a law was passed removing some of the causes of grievances, such as the inability of judges and officials to understand the language of the people with whom they dealt. Progressively the Flemish language came into its own in matters of education and administration, and, before the war, the only large question still under discussion was the creation of a Flemish University. The principle of such an institution had been admitted, but the relationship between this new University and the old French University of Ghent had not yet been established. [_COMMON TEMPERAMENT_]