[Illustration: The Tower of the Templars: Nieuport]

The history of Nieuport, from the terrible days of the Spanish invasion
down to these days of even worse fate, has been pitiable. Its former sea
trade after the Spanish invasion was never recovered, and its
population, which was beginning to be thrifty and prosperous up to 1914,
has now entirely disappeared. Nieuport is now in ashes and ruins. When I
passed the day there in the summer of 1910, it was a sleepy, quiet spot,
a small fishing village, with old men and women sitting in doorways and
on the waysides, mending nets, and knitting heavy woolen socks or
sweaters of dark blue. In the small harbor were the black hulls of
fishing boats tied up to the quaysides, and a small steamer from Ghoole
was taking on a cargo of potatoes and beets. Some barges laden with wood
were being pulled through the locks by men harnessed to a long tow rope,
and a savage dog on one of these barges menaced me with dripping fangs
and bloodshot eyes when I stopped to talk to the steersman, who sat on
the tiller smoking a short, evil-smelling pipe, while his "vrouwe" was
hanging out a heavy wash of vari-colored garments on a line from the
staff on the bow to a sweep fastened upright to the cabin wall.

The ancient fortification had long since disappeared--those "impregnable
walls of stone" which once defended the town from the assaults of Philip
the Second. I found with some difficulty a few grass-grown mounds where
they had been, and only the gray, grim tower of the Templars, standing
solitary in a turnip field, remained to show what had been a mighty
stronghold. In the town, however, were souvenirs enough to occupy an
antiquary for years to his content and profit. There was the Cloth Hall,
with its five pointed low arched doorways from which passed in and out
the Knights of the Temple gathered for the first pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. On this market square too was the great Gothic Church, one of the
largest and most important in all Flanders, and on this afternoon in the
summer of 1910, I attended a service here, while in the tower a bell
ringer played the chime of famous bells which now lie in broken
fragments amid the ashes of the fallen tower.

Here was fought the bloody "Battle of the Dunes," between the Dutch and
the Spaniards in those dim days of long ago, when the stubborn
determination of the Netherlanders overcame the might and fiery valor of
the Spanish invaders.

From time t