At one time Furnes ranked next to Ghent and Bruges among the cities of Flanders in official importance, if not in population and industry, its _châtellenie_ comprising fifty-two villages. In 1297 it was besieged by Robert, the Count of Artois, who fell five years later at the great battle of Courtrai. At Furnes the French arms were successful and the city was captured and sacked, "more than two thousand houses being burned in two days," according to the contemporary chronicles. Philip the Bold, the first of the Burgundian Dukes to rule over Flanders, rebuilt its fortifications, and the city was deemed worthy under Philip the Good to be designated as the place of residence of the French Dauphin, who subsequently became Louis XI, when that remarkable young man was in exile through his father's displeasure. It may well have been here that the wiliest and most unscrupulous of all the Kings of France planned that tortuous and secretive policy that--steadily pursued year after year--brought the powerful House of Burgundy low at last and made France one nation instead of two or three. The quaint old Grande Place of Furnes, while smaller than that of Dixmude, is equally picturesque. On one side is the old Meat Market, dating from the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and hard by is the _Maison des Espagnols_, or House of the Spaniards, formerly used as a town-hall and erected in the thirteenth century. The present Hotel de Ville also faces the Place and is well worth a visit, although none of its rooms are sufficiently notable to merit a detailed description. The ancient _Châtellenie_, now used as Court House, was begun in 1612--the year the Hotel de Ville was finished--and is chiefly memorable as the meeting-place of the Spanish Inquisition. This body held its sessions in the antechamber on the first floor and not in the main hall, which is decorated by a mural painting by de Vriendt representing Philip the Fair swearing to observe the rights and privileges of the city. The establishment of the Inquisition by his namesake and grandson, Philip II, affords a ghastly commentary on the manner in which that monarch kept the similar pledges with which he began his reign. Another fine old edifice on the Grande Place is the Belfry, square for half its height, then octagonal, and finally surmounted by a bulbous spire, heavy and clumsy, but none the less exceedingly quaint and picturesque. Not a few of the ancient houses around the Place and in the adjacent streets were sufficiently mediæval to have merited a visit had our stay in this fine old Flemish town been longer; but, so far as we could learn, none possessed any particular historical interest.