Louvain has passed through successive periods of culture and barbarity ever since Julius Caesar established a permanent camp there during his campaigns against the Belgians and the Germans. In the eleventh century it became the residence of the long line of Dukes of Brabant, and was the capital until Brussels wrested this distinction from it during an uprising of weavers against their feudal masters. In the fourteenth century it had gained a population of between 100,000 and 150,000, and there were no fewer than 2,400 woolen manufactories. The weavers were a turbulent lot, however, and when they rose against the Duke Wencelaus he conquered them and forced thousands of them to flee to Holland and England. It was then that Brussels became the capital and Louvain lost its prestige as a center of the cloth-making industry. [Illustration: THE VOICE OF THE COLOGNE CHURCH SPEAKS: “Louvain, thou wast built on my foundations, spirit of my spirit, heart of my heart.”] Scholars began to pour into the town, however, to glean what learning they could from the old parchments and books which its castles contained. In 1423 Duke John IV of Brabant founded Louvain University. Students flocked there from all over the world. In the sixteenth century it had 4,000 students and forty-three colleges. The library occupied a large room with fine wood panels, carved in intricate designs. It held 150,000 volumes and thousands of manuscripts, valuable beyond price. It contained a colossal group representing a scene from the Flood, sculptured by Geerts in 1839. One block to the north of the university is the Grande Place, on which faced the Hôtel de Ville, one of the finest examples of the late Gothic style of architecture in Europe. It surpassed the town halls of Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent in elegance of detail and harmony of design. It was erected in 1448 by Mathieu de Layens, and it was from the upper windows of this building that thirteen magistrates of noble birth were hurled to their death on the spears of the populace in the streets below during the weavers’ uprising. Across the Grande Place stood the church of St. Pierre, a magnificent type of the Gothic style built on a cruciform plan and flanked by chapels holding reliquaries of the saints, life-sized wooden figures, and priceless carvings and paintings. There might have been seen the works of Van Papenhoven, Roger van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, and De Layens. REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES