Flemish III

1302-1585 CE

From 1302 to 1585 CE, the Flemish wove Europe's finest cloth and painted its most luminous art — guild militias who shattered French chivalry at Kortrijk, burghers who built belfries to rival cathedrals, and masters like Van Eyck who captured the world in oil and light. Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp rose and fell as Europe's richest cities, until religious war and Spanish fury drowned the golden age in blood.