This city on the Senne first sprang into importance about the year 1200, when the great highroad was built from Bruges to Cologne, making Brussels a station on the busy trade route. The town gradually spread on to the surrounding hills. When the population was about fifty thousand, in the fourteenth century, the weaving industry was started. The counts of Louvain made their homes there, and the dukes of Burgundy, who united Flanders and Brabant, frequently held their courts there in the century following. During the reign of these powerful dukes the city became so prosperous that it was outranked only by Ghent and Bruges. Andreas Vesalius, a native of Brussels, born in 1515, deserves mention, as his name stands out in the scientific history of the world. He is called the "Founder of Human Anatomy," because of his discoveries. After studying at Louvain he became court physician to Charles V, and a distinguished professor and author. It is told how once when "Vesalius was dissecting, with the consent of his kinsmen, the body of a Spanish grandee, it was observed that the heart still gave some feeble palpitations when divided by the knife. The immediate effect of this outrage to human feelings was the denunciation of the anatomist to the Inquisition. Vesalius escaped the severe treatment of that tribunal only by the influence of the King, and by promising to perform a pilgrimage to the Holy Land." On this voyage he was shipwrecked in the Ionian Sea, and was buried on the island of Zante. From the beginning of its history Brussels has been the center of much fierce fighting. Men--and women, too--have led their armies to its attack or defense, and many thousands have died about its walls. In 1695, Marshal Villeroi of France bombarded it, reducing the lower town to ashes. Less than forty years later Marshal Saxe repeated the performance. For all that it has continued to grow and prosper. Under the Hapsburgs it was made the capital of the Low Countries, and in 1830 it was recognized as the capital of the new nation of Belgium. The last remains of its walls were removed by the late King, Leopold II, in his effort to make the city more sanitary. Besides this, he did much to modernize and beautify it as well. It became a model little capital, made up of many _communes_, forming in all a city about the size of Boston. The more I read about it, and the more I learned of the life there, the more eager I became to see it all for myself, and it was with joy that I finally received word that we could move into our new home. CHAPTER II DIPLOMATIC LIFE