It may seem strange that it should be left to great municipal palaces to express the spirit of a period of centralization, when local privileges were progressively sacrificed to the general interest of the State, and when the prince gathered under one sway the various States among which the Netherlands had been divided. When looking at the Gothic Town Halls of Brussels, Louvain and Bruges, with their flowered traceries and luxury of ornament, one might be misled into taking them for the palaces of the prince rather than for the expression of municipal freedom. There is nothing about them of the strength and defiance expressed in the great "halles" and belfries of Ypres, Bruges and Ghent. The latter were, as we have seen, erected for two purposes. They were, so to speak, a central citadel raised in the middle of the town, from the towers of which the sentinel sounded the alarm and called the citizens to arms to defend their privileges and protect their homes against the attacks of any enemy from outside, not excluding the prince himself. Behind their thick walls and battlements, the archives and charters of the towns were jealously preserved. On the other hand, the "halles" afforded a meeting-place for foreign and local merchants and a warehouse where their goods were stored. They constituted fortified covered markets, and the combination of these military and economic characteristics is visible in every outline of the building and reveals the dominant aspirations of an age which succeeded in emancipating the city from the autocratic rule of the suzerain and in safeguarding the trade and industry of its inhabitants. None of these features is apparent in the "hotels de ville" of the Burgundian period. Their slender outline and small proportions exclude any idea of defence. Compare, for instance, the graceful spire of Brussels with the proud and massive belfry of Bruges, and the almost feminine aspect of the Louvain Town Hall with the forbidding masculinity of the destroyed Ypres Cloth Hall. Again, the profusion of ornament and statuettes, the delicate flanking towers, especially in Bruges and Louvain, contrast with the austerity of the old "halles." These luxurious mansions were built neither for military nor for economic purposes. They are far too small to be of any use as covered markets. In fact, the new municipal buildings of the fifteenth century only preserved one characteristic of their predecessors. They were still the seat of the "echevinage," and it was within their walls that the magistrates of the town met the duke's representative, the "bailli."