Belgium’s story, as complex in pattern as the tapestry of Flemish looms, is interwoven with the bright threads of genius, and, no less, with the gold of commerce and the crimson threads of war. Proud mistress of the arts as Belgium can claim to be, she has held her own for centuries past as a vigorous industrial nation. Tribes that came across the Rhine after Caesar’s conquest of the Gauls, 57-52 before Christ, were permitted by the Romans to settle upon the lands that extended from the basin of the Meuse River to the sea. For ten centuries they diligently tilled the soil, and as diligently fought encroachment. About the year one thousand, the Counts of Flanders, whose holdings constituted one of nine Belgian principalities, fortified the towns of Bruges, Ghent, Courtrai and Ypres (broozh, gent[A], koor-tray, eep-r), and protected them with stout walls. The granting of civic charters spurred these Flemish communes to greater activity, and cloth markets were established in each walled town. It seems clear that before any race of northern Europe the Flemish turned from the plow to the counting-house, from the farm to the crafts-shop. Bruges was the most influential financial city north of the Alps, until its leadership was wrested by Antwerp and then by Ghent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Brussels, the seat of ruling princes and an important trading-station on the route from Bruges to Cologne, boasted a population of fifty thousand persons as long ago as the year 1500. Liège and Mons (monz), even then, were noted for their metal industries. [A] _g_ and _e_ as in get. [Illustration: THE STEEL WORKS OF OUGRÉE On the bank of the River Meuse, between Liège and Seraing] But the very advantages that contributed to the material advancement of Belgium were responsible for the invasions that times without number reddened her soil and enslaved her people. The territory occupied by the Netherlanders (“the people of the low lands,”--the Belgians and the Dutch) lay in the track of all the envious and ambitious nations of Europe. One war succeeded another until, in the year 1830, the Belgians freed themselves of their final and most irritating yoke by successfully employing arms against Holland. At last the Belgians’ country was their own. And now a new Belgium came into being. “Only one common trait,” says a student of Belgian history, “connected the men of the two epochs--the capacity for work.” The exploitation of the coal mines of Seraing (se-ran) and Hainaut (hay-no), the discovery of iron mines, the establishment of great foundries and manufactories, followed the consummation of national independence. A system of railways was organized that had no superior in Europe. The internal waterways of the country--the rivers, canalized rivers and canals--aided in the transportation of manufactures, land products and imports to the extent of millions of tons a year. [Illustration: HEYST