During the Middle Ages Ghent was, for nearly five centuries, one of the greatest cities in the Occidental world. "If you have ever been in Flanders," wrote Jean Froissart, near the close of the fourteenth century, "you are aware that Ghent is the sovereign city of Flanders in power, in wisdom, in government, in the number of its houses, in position and in all else that goes to make a great and noble city, and that three great rivers serve to bring to it ships from every part of the world." After further eulogising the three rivers referred to, which were the Scheldt, the Lys and the Lieve, the chronicler of Valenciennes added that the city could put eighty thousand men in the field, and that it would require a host of two hundred thousand warriors to capture it. These statements, though no doubt exaggerations, do not seem to the tourist so impossible of belief as corresponding figures regarding the former greatness of the other cities in Flanders, for Ghent is still "a great and noble city," while some of its once puissant rivals are now little more than country villages. In fact, to the visitor who approaches the centre of the town from either of its two principal railway stations--it has five in all--the city seems to be essentially a modern one, with fine streets similar in every way to those to be found in Antwerp or Brussels, and it is therefore with a shock of surprise that he suddenly finds himself riding past one hoary old structure after another whose frowning grey walls and massive architecture bespeak an antiquity strangely at variance with their surroundings.