I
Belgium is a small country of around ten million inhabitants, and alongside its next-door neighbour, the Netherlands, it lies sandwiched between the twin giants of Germany to the east and France to the west. The southern half of Belgium is Walloonia, based on the medieval cities of Charleroi and Namur and containing about forty per cent of the population. The Walloons are Gallic in language, culture and outlook. French-speaking, they have always followed their southerly neighbours, the French. The northern half of Belgium, the provinces of West-Vlaanderen, East-Vlaanderen, Antwerpen, Brabant and Limburg, constitute the ancient territory of Flanders (Vlaanderen in Flemish andFlandern in German) and its inhabitants are called the Flemish. The Flemish make up the majority of the Belgian population, about sixty per cent, and speak their own language, which is closely related to Dutch and German. The country, like so much of the Low Countries, is still quite rural, with fertile, flat farmland stretching away in all directions. The countryside is dotted with prosperous and well-kept towns and villages and a few historic cities such as Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp which dominate the landscape, geographically, politically and culturally. The racial divide between these two peoples is the dominating issue in the history of Belgium and the most important factor in understanding the men who fought in the Langemarck and its predecessor units.
Rome and the Belgae
Present-day Belgium is named after its original Celtic inhabitants, the tribe of the Belgae. As with the rest of Celtic Europe (bar far-flung Scotland and Ireland), the Belgae were conquered by the Roman legions. Over nearly four centuries of the Pax Romana the local Celts in the fertile lands of the Belgae became thoroughly Romanised and integrated into the Empire. But finally, right at the beginning of the fifth century AD, the era of imperial Rome was coming to a bloody close (at least in the West) as a vast tide of barbarian Germanic tribes moved relentlessly over what was the imperial frontier – the mighty River Rhine.
The Germans are coming
Although at the time it was thought that the Empire was suffering from a series of invasions, we now know that it was actually the frontal edge of a huge migration that had started thousands of miles east on the borders of China. As nomadic peoples such as the Huns and Scythians moved west in search of fresh grazing and hunting grounds they displaced the tribes they met, who in turn pushed other tribes to move farther to the west, and so on. The net result was an irresistible wave that came crashing into the Western Roman Empire when it was at its weakest point in more than two centuries. For Roman Gaul (modern-day Belgium and parts of France, the Netherlands and Germany east of the Rhine) that meant a host of ferocious Teutons arriving in successive migrations over more than a century. Some of the barbarians moved through Gaul and onwards to other provinces: the Visigoths and Ostrogoths to Spain, the Asding and Gepid Vandals to North Africa and the Lombards to northern Italy. Some settled specific areas and gave them their names, for example the Burgundians and Suevi se
