My name is Roland; when I speak softly there is fire at hand, But when I roar loudly it means war in Flanderland. The original Roland was cast in 1314, or twelve years after the Battle of the Spurs. It weighed twelve thousand, five hundred pounds and was the pride of the city, but was destroyed by order of Charles V when he forced the burghers abjectly to submit to his despotism in 1540. In the lower part of the tower is the "secret room" where from 1402 the burghers kept, behind triple doors as at Bruges, the charters and privileges of the city. The famous dragon at the tip of the spire was for centuries said to have been brought from the Orient at the time of Baldwin of Constantinople, but recent researches in the archives of the city have shown that it was made at Ghent in the year 1377-78. Adjoining the Belfry is the Cloth Hall erected for the most important of the city's four hundred guilds. The upper hall is now used as a Bureau of Information for Tourists, while the lower one is a Rathskeller. Here the columns and vaulted roof greatly resemble the crypt of Girard the Devil's castle, save that the little tables and excellent Munich and Pilsen to be had there make it decidedly more cheerful. The edifice was begun in 1425 and finished, or, at least, the work was stopped, in 1441. Behind the Cloth Hall, but nestling close against it, is the quaint little entrance to the communal prison, which was built in 1741 when the prisoners were confined on the lower floor of the Cloth Hall. Over the door at the top of the façade is the celebrated bas-relief representing the legend of the Mammelokker. The carving really tells all there is to the story; which is, in brief, that, on one occasion, when an old man was condemned to die of starvation, his daughter--who just then had a baby whom she was nursing--secretly gave the breast to her aged parent, thus saving his life. While the Belfry was being built by the burghers of Ghent, France and England were drifting into the Hundred Years' War. The Count of Flanders, Louis de Nevers, was ardently loyal to France and utterly blind to the interests of the great woollen manufacturing communes over which he ruled and to those of his own dynasty. In 1336, no doubt at the instance of the King of France, he ordered all the English merchants in Flanders to be arrested and their goods confiscated. The King of England, Edward III, promptly retaliated by prohibiting the exportation of wool from England to Flanders and the sale of Flemish woollens in his Kingdom. In a few months the Flemish communes of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres found themselves facing utter ruin as a result of this economic conflict. The spinners and weavers were idle, the markets deserted, actual starvation existed, and many of the guildsmen were forced to wander off into the countryside to beg for food.