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Plaza, Martyrs’ Square – Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats 3


Image by historic.brussels

A brief description of Belgium, and the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats (Martyrs’ Square) in that description -

Among the most moving places to visit in the hub of Belgium, is Martyrs’ Square in Brussels, where over 400 heroes of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 lie buried in a crypt beneath the cobblestones. This square is usually known by its French name, La Place des Martyrs, or also by its Dutch name, De Martelaarsplaats. Many of the dead here lie not far from where they were shot, in fierce battles amid the Brussels streets and barricades.

A fantastic gravestone here honours these heroes who died for the cause of freedom, in the brief 1830-31 revolutionary war that bent the Belgian nation.

Particularly extraordinary and moving at the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats, are four gorgeous sculptures of angels, with the angels´ faces in emotively eternal expressions of grief for the courageous ones who gave their lives for the freedom of others.

These are photos from the daily life of writer, journalist and political immigrant from the US, Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs – I am a name who also has nearly died fighting for freedom for others.

These Flickr photos document my new beloved home city of Brussels, Belgium, my life among the people and Kingdom who have given me safety in the face of the threats to end me. Brussels has a noble description of as long as a safe haven to other unconventional immigrant writers, such as Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Charles Baudelaire, and Alexandre Dumas, and I shall perpetually be thankful that Brussels and Belgium have helped to care for my own life as well. I’m pleased to help convey to the world some of Brussels’ fantastic cultural heritage.

(To read about the hard work to silence me and my television journalism, the attacks on me, the smears and the threats, see the website by European journalists ‘About Les Sachs’ linked in my Flickr profile, and press articles such as ‘Two EU Writers Under Threat of Murder: Roberto Saviano and Dr Les Sachs’.)

The Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats ruins a place where today’s Belgians continue to remember and honour the heroes who died for them. Some weeks before the before group of these cinema were taken, on one rainy daylight, I stood at the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats in the pouring rain, with a small group of Belgians in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, a number of them frail and supporting themselves unsteadily with canes on the uneven cobbled surface, while a brass band was before a live audience jingoistic music. Though the rain was pouring down solidly on the Place des Martyrs, these elderly Belgians did not mind being paid sodden, no matter what the risk to their health, since these excellent people were family when the Nazis full Belgium, and that rainy day was a day to remember the Belgians who died fighting the fascist occupiers.

Quick sketch of the description of Belgium, and the past role of Martyrs’ Square -

The description of Belgium is not simple to outline. Belgium is today a nation with three authoritative languages, shiny its two large language groups of French and Dutch speakers, along with a small area whose native language is German. The Romans and Julius Caesar were in the neighbourhood over 2000 years ago, and Caesar wrote of fighting some fierce tribes here called the "Belgae", from whom the nation takes its name.

In fact, Julius Caesar referred to the Belgians or ‘Belgae’, in the very first condemn of his most well-known book, ‘De Bello Gallico’, his commentary on the ‘Gallic Wars’: « Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae … » « The whole of Gaul is on terrible terms into three parts, in one of which live the Belgians … »

As the Roman Empire fell apart, the Belgian region was home to the Merovingian kings in the early "dark ages", and then was part of the empire of Charlemagne. Under Charlemagne’s grandson Lothair and fantastic-grandson King Lothair II, the area of contemporary Belgium was part of a kingdom of ‘Lotharingia’ whose name we know today as the French ‘Lorraine’. This kingdom speedily on terrible terms among royal heirs, with ‘Upper Lorraine’ unequally inside what is now France, and Brussels apt the hub of a ‘Duchy of Lower Lorraine’ – unequally today’s Low Countries – when a castle was built in Brussels’ ancient centre around the year 979.

Borders and regional identity frenziedly to change promptly in the centuries after Charlemagne, the "high middle ages". What was ‘Lower Lorraine’ gave way to several of the fantastic mediaeval territories and dukedoms diffusion across differing sections of what is now Belgium, with names we still hear today: Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg. And various less vital territories and fiefdoms were also a part here, amid the ever-shifting landscape of mediaeval and feudal Europe.

The middle part of Belgium, counting Brussels, was the historic territory of Brabant, and the Dukes of Brabant, about the year 1100, built premises right at what is known today in Brussels as the Royal Square – Place Royale – Kongingsplaats.

Brabant and much of Belgium then came to be part of the fantastic late-mediaeval dukedom of maroon, which reached the height of shape in the 1400s with Brussels as the Burgundian hub along with Dijon. At its height, maroon was regarded by many as the richest court in all Europe. Today’s self-determining Belgium is thus a end of that long-ago much larger Renaissance realm of maroon, as well as of the even more very ancient kingdom of mediaeval Lotharingia.

The area of today’s Belgium kept its chief role in Europe in the early 1500s, as maroon in turn was enveloped into the Holy Roman Empire at its height. The towns of Belgium gave birth and upbringing to the Royal leader Charles V, who at one point ruled most of Europe from Brussels. So, about 500 years ago, Brussels was by now the ‘centre’ of Europe.

After Charles, his empire started to break apart, and the territory of today’s Belgium had a succession of foreign rulers from within Charles V’s widely-flung Habsburg family: First the Spanish, who kept hold of the territory we now call Belgium, while the Dutch to the north broke away during the Protestant Reformation. After the ‘War of the Spanish Succession’, the Habsburg territories were additional on terrible terms, with Belgium going under Austrian power from 1714 onwards.

It was under the Austrians, in the late 1700s, that elegant buildings started to be built around a large square which was named the Place Saint-Michel, or Saint Michael’s Square. This would later become Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats that you see here.

The admittance of the end of Austrian rule, and the admittance of the tale of modern self-determining Belgium, was the ‘Brabantine Revolution’ (Révolution Brabançonne – Brabantse Revolutie), whereby in 1789 much of what is now Belgium, asserted its full independence from its then-rulers, the Habsburg emperors of Austria.

In sympathy and analogous with the epoch-unreliable revolution of 1789 in next-door France, the rebellious provinces of ‘Austrian Netherlands’ also went into disturbance that same year, and confirmed the statement of the Austrian Habsburg Royal leader, and the foundation of the ‘United Belgian States’ (États-Belgiques-Unis – Verenigde Belgische Staten), which endured only for a small time in 1789-1790. The ‘Belgian’ name came from the Latin word used by Julius Caesar to spot the fierce fighting tribes who inhabited this region in Caesar’s day, the ‘Belgae’.

In 1789, the seals of the document declaring the ‘United Belgian States’ to be ‘free’ and ‘self-determining’, were garlanded by silken tassels of black, yellow and red. The flag of the small-lived Belgian nation of 1789-90, then used these three colours, though in horizontal stripes and in a uncommon order than the contemporary vertically-stripy Belgian flag.

The Austrians were able to for a small time re-assert power of Belgium in 1790, then lost it to French power in 1792, and won it back one final time in 1793-94. The French then retained power, annexing most of what is now Belgium into France in 1795. As the Napoleonic era finished, Belgium was separated from France in 1814-1815.

As Napoléon was being defeated and his Empire terminated, the European nations assembly at the Assembly of Vienna of 1814-15, plotting that the territories north of France, counting modern Belgium and Luxembourg, should all be under the Dutch monarch, making a single large buffer state between France and England.

The European powers assembly in Vienna avoided what might have seemed a more most likely thought, of uniting only Dutch-speaking regions with the Netherlands, while let the French-speaking regions of Wallonia remain united with France. The powers of 1815 did not want to reward France with protective additional room to the north, precisely in the area around where Napoléon met his final defeat at Waterloo.

But the Vienna plot of shoving the French-speakers of Wallonia into a new Dutch realm, and expanding the Dutch nation and doubling its size, proved to be very unstable. The Dutch of the Netherlands were predominantly Protestant, while the southern populations, counting the Dutch-speakers of Flanders, were predominantly Roman broad. And not only did the broad territories have large facts of French speakers, the people in Flanders also speak a practically uncommon Dutch than in the Netherlands, which led them to chafe hostile to the Dutch realm in sympathy with their French-speaking neighbours.

Tensions grew until an August, 1830 routine at the Brussels opera house, where political disturbance described on the stage, became a catalyst for disturbance in the streets.

In September of 1830 the street rebellions became a full-blown revolution for Belgian independence. The Place Saint-Michel, Saint Michael’s Square, a few hundred metres from the opera house where the fuse for revolution had been lit, became a key site for the declaration of Belgian liberty and independence, and a central site in the fierce and deadly street battles. The inner days of the revolution in September 1830 – the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th – are the dates decorated upon the tablet held by the high figure in the gravestone that you see in the photos, in place of the angel or idol of the Belgian home nation (Latin ‘patria’), with a lion by her side.

In 1830, with the hundreds of dead from the revolutionary battles, the declaration was made to bury them there at the square, which now became the Square of the Martyrs of Freedom.

The revolution was promptly flourishing. Some battles frenziedly to take place into 1831, as the Dutch made a last try to hold onto the Belgian territory, but the separation of Belgium and Luxembourg was speedily recognised and secured by the other European powers.

The Revolution of 1830 enabled Belgium to finally fulfil the dreams of the Belgian revolutionaries of 1789. The contemporary Belgian tri-colour flag was customary in 1831, using the 1789 colours of the ‘Brabantine Revolution’. Belgium became a nation and even bought a king of its own, the Protestant German Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who agreed to marry the broad daughter of the French monarch, and raise their family as French-speaking Roman Catholics, while he became the first inherited King of the Belgians.

And today, the political immigrant Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs, may owe the saving of his life in the face of the threats to murder him, to safeguard total from the royal household of the King of the Belgians, the successor of that first Belgian monarch.

Léopold I, who was born in 1790, reigned in Belgium until 1865. Early in his reign, he supervised the building of this gravestone at Martyrs’ Square. In one of the photos of the angels by the gravestone, you see between two angels the large plaque with the text in Latin. Two dates are given. The first is that of the declaration of the nation’s identity, on the 25th of September 1830, a date closely tied to the death of the martyrs buried in the crypt below. The second date, the 25th of September 1840, is the date of the completion and ardor of the main part of the gravestone, with the final line noting that this took place under Léopold I as the reigning monarch.

Though the main gravestone structure was indeed concluded and dyed-in-the-wool in 1840, the lovely and magnificent angels were added some years later, in 1848. Today, it is these sculptured angels which, above all, give Martyrs’ Square its high reputation of deep emotion and brilliance.

The buildings around the square have, over the centuries, to a degree fallen into a trying state, and you see one of the buildings undergoing inside-out wide-ranging renovation in the photos. The by and large renewal and refurbishment of Martyrs’ Square has been given a major boost, though, by the regime of Belgium’s margin Flemish-speaking region.

Belgium today is about 60 per cent Dutch-speaking, with most of the remainder French-speakers along with a few native German-speakers. Brussels itself is officially bi-lingual, and historically was predominantly a Dutch-speaking city owing to the centuries, from the mediaeval and Renaissance era down to early modern times. Though, this altered in the 1800s, and Brussels today is at least 70 per cent French-speaking, with many of the rest of Brussels residents foreign-born rather than Dutch-speaking.

Yet, in one of the many unusual paradoxes of Belgium’s governmental arrangements, the predominantly French-speaking Brussels ruins the ‘hub’ of the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, while the French language union of Belgium has its hub in the provincial city of Namur.

Thus today, the Martelaarsplaats – Place des Martyrs, is the site of major inhabitant offices of Dutch-speaking Flanders. The Flemish regime holds the two major buildings facing each other across the longer distance of the square, and the one you see in the photos in close-up with the three flags over the doorway (the EU flag, the Belgian flag, and the predominantly yellow Flemish flag) is in fact the ‘Kabinet van de Minister-Head’ of the ‘Vlaamse Regering’, or the ‘Office of the Minister-Head’ (Prime Minister) of the Flemish regime.

In front of the office of the Flemish Prime Minister, is a gravestone built in 1897 and dyed-in-the-wool to one of the fastidious martyrs of the Revolution, Jenneval. ‘Jenneval’ was the stage name of Louis Alexandre Hippolyte Dechez, as ‘Jenneval’ a well-known actor, who died from wounds in battle in October 1830. But some weeks before his death, Jenneval penned some of the original words to the Belgian inhabitant anthem, the Brabançonne. This gravestone to Jenneval was dyed-in-the-wool in 1897, on September 25th, precisely amid the 67th anniversary of the 1830 Belgian revolution for independence.

The inscriptions on the Jenneval gravestone are in both Dutch and French on contrary sides of it, though the French dedication is exceptionally ride out-worn and hard to read. The inscriptions are:

Aan Jenneval
Dichter der Brabançonne
Gesneuveld voor ‘s lands
Onafhankelijkheid
Hulde der stad Brussel
25 september 1897

À Jenneval
Poète de la Brabançonne
Mort pour l’indépendance
Nationale
Hommage de la ville
de Bruxelles
25 septembre 1897

To Jenneval
Poet of the Brabançonne
Killer for his common / the nation’s independence
A toll of the city of Brussels
25 September 1897

On the far contrary side of the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats, in front of the other Flemish regime building here, is a gravestone to another hero of the Belgian Revolution, Comte (Count) Frédéric de Mérode, who was mortally offended in battle in October 1830 and died a few days later in early November. His brother, Count Félix de Mérode, was a major figure in the Belgian provisional regime in the weeks of revolution.

The Mérode gravestone also carries inscriptions on contrary sides in both French and Dutch:

À
Frédéric de Mérode
Mort pour l’indépendance
De la patrie

Aan
Frederic de Merode
Gestorven voor de
Onafhankelijkheid
van het vaderland

To
Frédéric de Mérode
Who died for the independence
Of our home people

The map with this Flickr photo set will show you how to walk to the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats. It is a few synopsis’ walk from either the De Brouckère or Rogier métro stations, via the standard rue Neuve – Nieuwstraat shopping esplanade that runs between De Brouckère and Rogier. As you walk along the rue Neuve – Nieuwstraat, you see it noticeable a very few metres to the east along one of the intersections, at the Rue Saint-Michel – Sint-Michielsstraat, with the inner gravestone of the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats visibly noticeable.

Gravestone, Martyrs’ Square – Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats 10


Image by historic.brussels

A brief description of Belgium, and the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats (Martyrs’ Square) in that description -

Among the most moving places to visit in the hub of Belgium, is Martyrs’ Square in Brussels, where over 400 heroes of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 lie buried in a crypt beneath the cobblestones. This square is usually known by its French name, La Place des Martyrs, or also by its Dutch name, De Martelaarsplaats. Many of the dead here lie not far from where they were shot, in fierce battles amid the Brussels streets and barricades.

A fantastic gravestone here honours these heroes who died for the cause of freedom, in the brief 1830-31 revolutionary war that bent the Belgian nation.

Particularly extraordinary and moving at the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats, are four gorgeous sculptures of angels, with the angels´ faces in emotively eternal expressions of grief for the courageous ones who gave their lives for the freedom of others.

These are photos from the daily life of writer, journalist and political immigrant from the US, Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs – I am a name who also has nearly died fighting for freedom for others.

These Flickr photos document my new beloved home city of Brussels, Belgium, my life among the people and Kingdom who have given me safety in the face of the threats to end me. Brussels has a noble description of as long as a safe haven to other unconventional immigrant writers, such as Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Charles Baudelaire, and Alexandre Dumas, and I shall perpetually be thankful that Brussels and Belgium have helped to care for my own life as well. I’m pleased to help convey to the world some of Brussels’ fantastic cultural heritage.

(To read about the hard work to silence me and my television journalism, the attacks on me, the smears and the threats, see the website by European journalists ‘About Les Sachs’ linked in my Flickr profile, and press articles such as ‘Two EU Writers Under Threat of Murder: Roberto Saviano and Dr Les Sachs’.)

The Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats ruins a place where today’s Belgians continue to remember and honour the heroes who died for them. Some weeks before the before group of these cinema were taken, on one rainy daylight, I stood at the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats in the pouring rain, with a small group of Belgians in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, a number of them frail and supporting themselves unsteadily with canes on the uneven cobbled surface, while a brass band was before a live audience jingoistic music. Though the rain was pouring down solidly on the Place des Martyrs, these elderly Belgians did not mind being paid sodden, no matter what the risk to their health, since these excellent people were family when the Nazis full Belgium, and that rainy day was a day to remember the Belgians who died fighting the fascist occupiers.

Quick sketch of the description of Belgium, and the past role of Martyrs’ Square -

The description of Belgium is not simple to outline. Belgium is today a nation with three authoritative languages, shiny its two large language groups of French and Dutch speakers, along with a small area whose native language is German. The Romans and Julius Caesar were in the neighbourhood over 2000 years ago, and Caesar wrote of fighting some fierce tribes here called the "Belgae", from whom the nation takes its name.

In fact, Julius Caesar referred to the Belgians or ‘Belgae’, in the very first condemn of his most well-known book, ‘De Bello Gallico’, his commentary on the ‘Gallic Wars’: « Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae … » « The whole of Gaul is on terrible terms into three parts, in one of which live the Belgians … »

As the Roman Empire fell apart, the Belgian region was home to the Merovingian kings in the early "dark ages", and then was part of the empire of Charlemagne. Under Charlemagne’s grandson Lothair and fantastic-grandson King Lothair II, the area of contemporary Belgium was part of a kingdom of ‘Lotharingia’ whose name we know today as the French ‘Lorraine’. This kingdom speedily on terrible terms among royal heirs, with ‘Upper Lorraine’ unequally inside what is now France, and Brussels apt the hub of a ‘Duchy of Lower Lorraine’ – unequally today’s Low Countries – when a castle was built in Brussels’ ancient centre around the year 979.

Borders and regional identity frenziedly to change promptly in the centuries after Charlemagne, the "high middle ages". What was ‘Lower Lorraine’ gave way to several of the fantastic mediaeval territories and dukedoms diffusion across differing sections of what is now Belgium, with names we still hear today: Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg. And various less vital territories and fiefdoms were also a part here, amid the ever-shifting landscape of mediaeval and feudal Europe.

The middle part of Belgium, counting Brussels, was the historic territory of Brabant, and the Dukes of Brabant, about the year 1100, built premises right at what is known today in Brussels as the Royal Square – Place Royale – Kongingsplaats.

Brabant and much of Belgium then came to be part of the fantastic late-mediaeval dukedom of maroon, which reached the height of shape in the 1400s with Brussels as the Burgundian hub along with Dijon. At its height, maroon was regarded by many as the richest court in all Europe. Today’s self-determining Belgium is thus a end of that long-ago much larger Renaissance realm of maroon, as well as of the even more very ancient kingdom of mediaeval Lotharingia.

The area of today’s Belgium kept its chief role in Europe in the early 1500s, as maroon in turn was enveloped into the Holy Roman Empire at its height. The towns of Belgium gave birth and upbringing to the Royal leader Charles V, who at one point ruled most of Europe from Brussels. So, about 500 years ago, Brussels was by now the ‘centre’ of Europe.

After Charles, his empire started to break apart, and the territory of today’s Belgium had a succession of foreign rulers from within Charles V’s widely-flung Habsburg family: First the Spanish, who kept hold of the territory we now call Belgium, while the Dutch to the north broke away during the Protestant Reformation. After the ‘War of the Spanish Succession’, the Habsburg territories were additional on terrible terms, with Belgium going under Austrian power from 1714 onwards.

It was under the Austrians, in the late 1700s, that elegant buildings started to be built around a large square which was named the Place Saint-Michel, or Saint Michael’s Square. This would later become Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats that you see here.

The admittance of the end of Austrian rule, and the admittance of the tale of modern self-determining Belgium, was the ‘Brabantine Revolution’ (Révolution Brabançonne – Brabantse Revolutie), whereby in 1789 much of what is now Belgium, asserted its full independence from its then-rulers, the Habsburg emperors of Austria.

In sympathy and analogous with the epoch-unreliable revolution of 1789 in next-door France, the rebellious provinces of ‘Austrian Netherlands’ also went into disturbance that same year, and confirmed the statement of the Austrian Habsburg Royal leader, and the foundation of the ‘United Belgian States’ (États-Belgiques-Unis – Verenigde Belgische Staten), which endured only for a small time in 1789-1790. The ‘Belgian’ name came from the Latin word used by Julius Caesar to spot the fierce fighting tribes who inhabited this region in Caesar’s day, the ‘Belgae’.

In 1789, the seals of the document declaring the ‘United Belgian States’ to be ‘free’ and ‘self-determining’, were garlanded by silken tassels of black, yellow and red. The flag of the small-lived Belgian nation of 1789-90, then used these three colours, though in horizontal stripes and in a uncommon order than the contemporary vertically-stripy Belgian flag.

The Austrians were able to for a small time re-assert power of Belgium in 1790, then lost it to French power in 1792, and won it back one final time in 1793-94. The French then retained power, annexing most of what is now Belgium into France in 1795. As the Napoleonic era finished, Belgium was separated from France in 1814-1815.

As Napoléon was being defeated and his Empire terminated, the European nations assembly at the Assembly of Vienna of 1814-15, plotting that the territories north of France, counting modern Belgium and Luxembourg, should all be under the Dutch monarch, making a single large buffer state between France and England.

The European powers assembly in Vienna avoided what might have seemed a more most likely thought, of uniting only Dutch-speaking regions with the Netherlands, while let the French-speaking regions of Wallonia remain united with France. The powers of 1815 did not want to reward France with protective additional room to the north, precisely in the area around where Napoléon met his final defeat at Waterloo.

But the Vienna plot of shoving the French-speakers of Wallonia into a new Dutch realm, and expanding the Dutch nation and doubling its size, proved to be very unstable. The Dutch of the Netherlands were predominantly Protestant, while the southern populations, counting the Dutch-speakers of Flanders, were predominantly Roman broad. And not only did the broad territories have large facts of French speakers, the people in Flanders also speak a practically uncommon Dutch than in the Netherlands, which led them to chafe hostile to the Dutch realm in sympathy with their French-speaking neighbours.

Tensions grew until an August, 1830 routine at the Brussels opera house, where political disturbance described on the stage, became a catalyst for disturbance in the streets.

In September of 1830 the street rebellions became a full-blown revolution for Belgian independence. The Place Saint-Michel, Saint Michael’s Square, a few hundred metres from the opera house where the fuse for revolution had been lit, became a key site for the declaration of Belgian liberty and independence, and a central site in the fierce and deadly street battles. The inner days of the revolution in September 1830 – the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th – are the dates decorated upon the tablet held by the high figure in the gravestone that you see in the photos, in place of the angel or idol of the Belgian home nation (Latin ‘patria’), with a lion by her side.

In 1830, with the hundreds of dead from the revolutionary battles, the declaration was made to bury them there at the square, which now became the Square of the Martyrs of Freedom.

The revolution was promptly flourishing. Some battles frenziedly to take place into 1831, as the Dutch made a last try to hold onto the Belgian territory, but the separation of Belgium and Luxembourg was speedily recognised and secured by the other European powers.

The Revolution of 1830 enabled Belgium to finally fulfil the dreams of the Belgian revolutionaries of 1789. The contemporary Belgian tri-colour flag was customary in 1831, using the 1789 colours of the ‘Brabantine Revolution’. Belgium became a nation and even bought a king of its own, the Protestant German Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who agreed to marry the broad daughter of the French monarch, and raise their family as French-speaking Roman Catholics, while he became the first inherited King of the Belgians.

And today, the political immigrant Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs, may owe the saving of his life in the face of the threats to murder him, to safeguard total from the royal household of the King of the Belgians, the successor of that first Belgian monarch.

Léopold I, who was born in 1790, reigned in Belgium until 1865. Early in his reign, he supervised the building of this gravestone at Martyrs’ Square. In one of the photos of the angels by the gravestone, you see between two angels the large plaque with the text in Latin. Two dates are given. The first is that of the declaration of the nation’s identity, on the 25th of September 1830, a date closely tied to the death of the martyrs buried in the crypt below. The second date, the 25th of September 1840, is the date of the completion and ardor of the main part of the gravestone, with the final line noting that this took place under Léopold I as the reigning monarch.

Though the main gravestone structure was indeed concluded and dyed-in-the-wool in 1840, the lovely and magnificent angels were added some years later, in 1848. Today, it is these sculptured angels which, above all, give Martyrs’ Square its high reputation of deep emotion and brilliance.

The buildings around the square have, over the centuries, to a degree fallen into a trying state, and you see one of the buildings undergoing inside-out wide-ranging renovation in the photos. The by and large renewal and refurbishment of Martyrs’ Square has been given a major boost, though, by the regime of Belgium’s margin Flemish-speaking region.

Belgium today is about 60 per cent Dutch-speaking, with most of the remainder French-speakers along with a few native German-speakers. Brussels itself is officially bi-lingual, and historically was predominantly a Dutch-speaking city owing to the centuries, from the mediaeval and Renaissance era down to early modern times. Though, this altered in the 1800s, and Brussels today is at least 70 per cent French-speaking, with many of the rest of Brussels residents foreign-born rather than Dutch-speaking.

Yet, in one of the many unusual paradoxes of Belgium’s governmental arrangements, the predominantly French-speaking Brussels ruins the ‘hub’ of the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, while the French language union of Belgium has its hub in the provincial city of Namur.

Thus today, the Martelaarsplaats – Place des Martyrs, is the site of major inhabitant offices of Dutch-speaking Flanders. The Flemish regime holds the two major buildings facing each other across the longer distance of the square, and the one you see in the photos in close-up with the three flags over the doorway (the EU flag, the Belgian flag, and the predominantly yellow Flemish flag) is in fact the ‘Kabinet van de Minister-Head’ of the ‘Vlaamse Regering’, or the ‘Office of the Minister-Head’ (Prime Minister) of the Flemish regime.

In front of the office of the Flemish Prime Minister, is a gravestone built in 1897 and dyed-in-the-wool to one of the fastidious martyrs of the Revolution, Jenneval. ‘Jenneval’ was the stage name of Louis Alexandre Hippolyte Dechez, as ‘Jenneval’ a well-known actor, who died from wounds in battle in October 1830. But some weeks before his death, Jenneval penned some of the original words to the Belgian inhabitant anthem, the Brabançonne. This gravestone to Jenneval was dyed-in-the-wool in 1897, on September 25th, precisely amid the 67th anniversary of the 1830 Belgian revolution for independence.

The inscriptions on the Jenneval gravestone are in both Dutch and French on contrary sides of it, though the French dedication is exceptionally ride out-worn and hard to read. The inscriptions are:

Aan Jenneval
Dichter der Brabançonne
Gesneuveld voor ‘s lands
Onafhankelijkheid
Hulde der stad Brussel
25 september 1897

À Jenneval
Poète de la Brabançonne
Mort pour l’indépendance
Nationale
Hommage de la ville
de Bruxelles
25 septembre 1897

To Jenneval
Poet of the Brabançonne
Killer for his common / the nation’s independence
A toll of the city of Brussels
25 September 1897

On the far contrary side of the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats, in front of the other Flemish regime building here, is a gravestone to another hero of the Belgian Revolution, Comte (Count) Frédéric de Mérode, who was mortally offended in battle in October 1830 and died a few days later in early November. His brother, Count Félix de Mérode, was a major figure in the Belgian provisional regime in the weeks of revolution.

The Mérode gravestone also carries inscriptions on contrary sides in both French and Dutch:

À
Frédéric de Mérode
Mort pour l’indépendance
De la patrie

Aan
Frederic de Merode
Gestorven voor de
Onafhankelijkheid
van het vaderland

To
Frédéric de Mérode
Who died for the independence
Of our home people

The map with this Flickr photo set will show you how to walk to the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats. It is a few synopsis’ walk from either the De Brouckère or Rogier métro stations, via the standard rue Neuve – Nieuwstraat shopping esplanade that runs between De Brouckère and Rogier. As you walk along the rue Neuve – Nieuwstraat, you see it noticeable a very few metres to the east along one of the intersections, at the Rue Saint-Michel – Sint-Michielsstraat, with the inner gravestone of the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats visibly noticeable.

Gravestone to Jenneval, Martyrs’ Square – Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats 4


Image by historic.brussels

A brief description of Belgium, and the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats (Martyrs’ Square) in that description -

Among the most moving places to visit in the hub of Belgium, is Martyrs’ Square in Brussels, where over 400 heroes of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 lie buried in a crypt beneath the cobblestones. This square is usually known by its French name, La Place des Martyrs, or also by its Dutch name, De Martelaarsplaats. Many of the dead here lie not far from where they were shot, in fierce battles amid the Brussels streets and barricades.

A fantastic gravestone here honours these heroes who died for the cause of freedom, in the brief 1830-31 revolutionary war that bent the Belgian nation.

Particularly extraordinary and moving at the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats, are four gorgeous sculptures of angels, with the angels´ faces in emotively eternal expressions of grief for the courageous ones who gave their lives for the freedom of others.

These are photos from the daily life of writer, journalist and political immigrant from the US, Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs – I am a name who also has nearly died fighting for freedom for others.

These Flickr photos document my new beloved home city of Brussels, Belgium, my life among the people and Kingdom who have given me safety in the face of the threats to end me. Brussels has a noble description of as long as a safe haven to other unconventional immigrant writers, such as Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Charles Baudelaire, and Alexandre Dumas, and I shall perpetually be thankful that Brussels and Belgium have helped to care for my own life as well. I’m pleased to help convey to the world some of Brussels’ fantastic cultural heritage.

(To read about the hard work to silence me and my television journalism, the attacks on me, the smears and the threats, see the website by European journalists ‘About Les Sachs’ linked in my Flickr profile, and press articles such as ‘Two EU Writers Under Threat of Murder: Roberto Saviano and Dr Les Sachs’.)

The Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats ruins a place where today’s Belgians continue to remember and honour the heroes who died for them. Some weeks before the before group of these cinema were taken, on one rainy daylight, I stood at the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats in the pouring rain, with a small group of Belgians in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, a number of them frail and supporting themselves unsteadily with canes on the uneven cobbled surface, while a brass band was before a live audience jingoistic music. Though the rain was pouring down solidly on the Place des Martyrs, these elderly Belgians did not mind being paid sodden, no matter what the risk to their health, since these excellent people were family when the Nazis full Belgium, and that rainy day was a day to remember the Belgians who died fighting the fascist occupiers.

Quick sketch of the description of Belgium, and the past role of Martyrs’ Square -

The description of Belgium is not simple to outline. Belgium is today a nation with three authoritative languages, shiny its two large language groups of French and Dutch speakers, along with a small area whose native language is German. The Romans and Julius Caesar were in the neighbourhood over 2000 years ago, and Caesar wrote of fighting some fierce tribes here called the "Belgae", from whom the nation takes its name.

In fact, Julius Caesar referred to the Belgians or ‘Belgae’, in the very first condemn of his most well-known book, ‘De Bello Gallico’, his commentary on the ‘Gallic Wars’: « Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae … » « The whole of Gaul is on terrible terms into three parts, in one of which live the Belgians … »

As the Roman Empire fell apart, the Belgian region was home to the Merovingian kings in the early "dark ages", and then was part of the empire of Charlemagne. Under Charlemagne’s grandson Lothair and fantastic-grandson King Lothair II, the area of contemporary Belgium was part of a kingdom of ‘Lotharingia’ whose name we know today as the French ‘Lorraine’. This kingdom speedily on terrible terms among royal heirs, with ‘Upper Lorraine’ unequally inside what is now France, and Brussels apt the hub of a ‘Duchy of Lower Lorraine’ – unequally today’s Low Countries – when a castle was built in Brussels’ ancient centre around the year 979.

Borders and regional identity frenziedly to change promptly in the centuries after Charlemagne, the "high middle ages". What was ‘Lower Lorraine’ gave way to several of the fantastic mediaeval territories and dukedoms diffusion across differing sections of what is now Belgium, with names we still hear today: Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg. And various less vital territories and fiefdoms were also a part here, amid the ever-shifting landscape of mediaeval and feudal Europe.

The middle part of Belgium, counting Brussels, was the historic territory of Brabant, and the Dukes of Brabant, about the year 1100, built premises right at what is known today in Brussels as the Royal Square – Place Royale – Kongingsplaats.

Brabant and much of Belgium then came to be part of the fantastic late-mediaeval dukedom of maroon, which reached the height of shape in the 1400s with Brussels as the Burgundian hub along with Dijon. At its height, maroon was regarded by many as the richest court in all Europe. Today’s self-determining Belgium is thus a end of that long-ago much larger Renaissance realm of maroon, as well as of the even more very ancient kingdom of mediaeval Lotharingia.

The area of today’s Belgium kept its chief role in Europe in the early 1500s, as maroon in turn was enveloped into the Holy Roman Empire at its height. The towns of Belgium gave birth and upbringing to the Royal leader Charles V, who at one point ruled most of Europe from Brussels. So, about 500 years ago, Brussels was by now the ‘centre’ of Europe.

After Charles, his empire started to break apart, and the territory of today’s Belgium had a succession of foreign rulers from within Charles V’s widely-flung Habsburg family: First the Spanish, who kept hold of the territory we now call Belgium, while the Dutch to the north broke away during the Protestant Reformation. After the ‘War of the Spanish Succession’, the Habsburg territories were additional on terrible terms, with Belgium going under Austrian power from 1714 onwards.

It was under the Austrians, in the late 1700s, that elegant buildings started to be built around a large square which was named the Place Saint-Michel, or Saint Michael’s Square. This would later become Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats that you see here.

The admittance of the end of Austrian rule, and the admittance of the tale of modern self-determining Belgium, was the ‘Brabantine Revolution’ (Révolution Brabançonne – Brabantse Revolutie), whereby in 1789 much of what is now Belgium, asserted its full independence from its then-rulers, the Habsburg emperors of Austria.

In sympathy and analogous with the epoch-unreliable revolution of 1789 in next-door France, the rebellious provinces of ‘Austrian Netherlands’ also went into disturbance that same year, and confirmed the statement of the Austrian Habsburg Royal leader, and the foundation of the ‘United Belgian States’ (États-Belgiques-Unis – Verenigde Belgische Staten), which endured only for a small time in 1789-1790. The ‘Belgian’ name came from the Latin word used by Julius Caesar to spot the fierce fighting tribes who inhabited this region in Caesar’s day, the ‘Belgae’.

In 1789, the seals of the document declaring the ‘United Belgian States’ to be ‘free’ and ‘self-determining’, were garlanded by silken tassels of black, yellow and red. The flag of the small-lived Belgian nation of 1789-90, then used these three colours, though in horizontal stripes and in a uncommon order than the contemporary vertically-stripy Belgian flag.

The Austrians were able to for a small time re-assert power of Belgium in 1790, then lost it to French power in 1792, and won it back one final time in 1793-94. The French then retained power, annexing most of what is now Belgium into France in 1795. As the Napoleonic era finished, Belgium was separated from France in 1814-1815.

As Napoléon was being defeated and his Empire terminated, the European nations assembly at the Assembly of Vienna of 1814-15, plotting that the territories north of France, counting modern Belgium and Luxembourg, should all be under the Dutch monarch, making a single large buffer state between France and England.

The European powers assembly in Vienna avoided what might have seemed a more most likely thought, of uniting only Dutch-speaking regions with the Netherlands, while let the French-speaking regions of Wallonia remain united with France. The powers of 1815 did not want to reward France with protective additional room to the north, precisely in the area around where Napoléon met his final defeat at Waterloo.

But the Vienna plot of shoving the French-speakers of Wallonia into a new Dutch realm, and expanding the Dutch nation and doubling its size, proved to be very unstable. The Dutch of the Netherlands were predominantly Protestant, while the southern populations, counting the Dutch-speakers of Flanders, were predominantly Roman broad. And not only did the broad territories have large facts of French speakers, the people in Flanders also speak a practically uncommon Dutch than in the Netherlands, which led them to chafe hostile to the Dutch realm in sympathy with their French-speaking neighbours.

Tensions grew until an August, 1830 routine at the Brussels opera house, where political disturbance described on the stage, became a catalyst for disturbance in the streets.

In September of 1830 the street rebellions became a full-blown revolution for Belgian independence. The Place Saint-Michel, Saint Michael’s Square, a few hundred metres from the opera house where the fuse for revolution had been lit, became a key site for the declaration of Belgian liberty and independence, and a central site in the fierce and deadly street battles. The inner days of the revolution in September 1830 – the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th – are the dates decorated upon the tablet held by the high figure in the gravestone that you see in the photos, in place of the angel or idol of the Belgian home nation (Latin ‘patria’), with a lion by her side.

In 1830, with the hundreds of dead from the revolutionary battles, the declaration was made to bury them there at the square, which now became the Square of the Martyrs of Freedom.

The revolution was promptly flourishing. Some battles frenziedly to take place into 1831, as the Dutch made a last try to hold onto the Belgian territory, but the separation of Belgium and Luxembourg was speedily recognised and secured by the other European powers.

The Revolution of 1830 enabled Belgium to finally fulfil the dreams of the Belgian revolutionaries of 1789. The contemporary Belgian tri-colour flag was customary in 1831, using the 1789 colours of the ‘Brabantine Revolution’. Belgium became a nation and even bought a king of its own, the Protestant German Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who agreed to marry the broad daughter of the French monarch, and raise their family as French-speaking Roman Catholics, while he became the first inherited King of the Belgians.

And today, the political immigrant Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs, may owe the saving of his life in the face of the threats to murder him, to safeguard total from the royal household of the King of the Belgians, the successor of that first Belgian monarch.

Léopold I, who was born in 1790, reigned in Belgium until 1865. Early in his reign, he supervised the building of this gravestone at Martyrs’ Square. In one of the photos of the angels by the gravestone, you see between two angels the large plaque with the text in Latin. Two dates are given. The first is that of the declaration of the nation’s identity, on the 25th of September 1830, a date closely tied to the death of the martyrs buried in the crypt below. The second date, the 25th of September 1840, is the date of the completion and ardor of the main part of the gravestone, with the final line noting that this took place under Léopold I as the reigning monarch.

Though the main gravestone structure was indeed concluded and dyed-in-the-wool in 1840, the lovely and magnificent angels were added some years later, in 1848. Today, it is these sculptured angels which, above all, give Martyrs’ Square its high reputation of deep emotion and brilliance.

The buildings around the square have, over the centuries, to a degree fallen into a trying state, and you see one of the buildings undergoing inside-out wide-ranging renovation in the photos. The by and large renewal and refurbishment of Martyrs’ Square has been given a major boost, though, by the regime of Belgium’s margin Flemish-speaking region.

Belgium today is about 60 per cent Dutch-speaking, with most of the remainder French-speakers along with a few native German-speakers. Brussels itself is officially bi-lingual, and historically was predominantly a Dutch-speaking city owing to the centuries, from the mediaeval and Renaissance era down to early modern times. Though, this altered in the 1800s, and Brussels today is at least 70 per cent French-speaking, with many of the rest of Brussels residents foreign-born rather than Dutch-speaking.

Yet, in one of the many unusual paradoxes of Belgium’s governmental arrangements, the predominantly French-speaking Brussels ruins the ‘hub’ of the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, while the French language union of Belgium has its hub in the provincial city of Namur.

Thus today, the Martelaarsplaats – Place des Martyrs, is the site of major inhabitant offices of Dutch-speaking Flanders. The Flemish regime holds the two major buildings facing each other across the longer distance of the square, and the one you see in the photos in close-up with the three flags over the doorway (the EU flag, the Belgian flag, and the predominantly yellow Flemish flag) is in fact the ‘Kabinet van de Minister-Head’ of the ‘Vlaamse Regering’, or the ‘Office of the Minister-Head’ (Prime Minister) of the Flemish regime.

In front of the office of the Flemish Prime Minister, is a gravestone built in 1897 and dyed-in-the-wool to one of the fastidious martyrs of the Revolution, Jenneval. ‘Jenneval’ was the stage name of Louis Alexandre Hippolyte Dechez, as ‘Jenneval’ a well-known actor, who died from wounds in battle in October 1830. But some weeks before his death, Jenneval penned some of the original words to the Belgian inhabitant anthem, the Brabançonne. This gravestone to Jenneval was dyed-in-the-wool in 1897, on September 25th, precisely amid the 67th anniversary of the 1830 Belgian revolution for independence.

The inscriptions on the Jenneval gravestone are in both Dutch and French on contrary sides of it, though the French dedication is exceptionally ride out-worn and hard to read. The inscriptions are:

Aan Jenneval
Dichter der Brabançonne
Gesneuveld voor ‘s lands
Onafhankelijkheid
Hulde der stad Brussel
25 september 1897

À Jenneval
Poète de la Brabançonne
Mort pour l’indépendance
Nationale
Hommage de la ville
de Bruxelles
25 septembre 1897

To Jenneval
Poet of the Brabançonne
Killer for his common / the nation’s independence
A toll of the city of Brussels
25 September 1897

On the far contrary side of the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats, in front of the other Flemish regime building here, is a gravestone to another hero of the Belgian Revolution, Comte (Count) Frédéric de Mérode, who was mortally offended in battle in October 1830 and died a few days later in early November. His brother, Count Félix de Mérode, was a major figure in the Belgian provisional regime in the weeks of revolution.

The Mérode gravestone also carries inscriptions on contrary sides in both French and Dutch:

À
Frédéric de Mérode
Mort pour l’indépendance
De la patrie

Aan
Frederic de Merode
Gestorven voor de
Onafhankelijkheid
van het vaderland

To
Frédéric de Mérode
Who died for the independence
Of our home people

The map with this Flickr photo set will show you how to walk to the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats. It is a few synopsis’ walk from either the De Brouckère or Rogier métro stations, via the standard rue Neuve – Nieuwstraat shopping esplanade that runs between De Brouckère and Rogier. As you walk along the rue Neuve – Nieuwstraat, you see it noticeable a very few metres to the east along one of the intersections, at the Rue Saint-Michel – Sint-Michielsstraat, with the inner gravestone of the Place des Martyrs – Martelaarsplaats visibly noticeable.