Visit to Lille, Flanders

Yesterday, we traveled to another old town Lille, Flanders. We had to first take a bus and then take a train and could see the lovely country side of France.The town was alive and we could see that it was getting ready for Christmas. For those of you who remember any thing from my course on Medieval societies will recollect that ,  Flanders was once a part of ancient  Frankia since the inception of the Frankish kingdom under the  Merovingian monarchs, especially  Clovis.  Flanders gradually fell under the control of the English and then Spanish. During World War II, French Flanders referred to all of  Nord- Pas de Calais  which was first attached to military administration of  German occupied Belgium, Flemish was a very prosperous medieval town but its  prosperity waned, owing to widespread European population decline following the  Black death of 1348, the disruption of trade during the Anglo-French Hundred Years war (1338–1453), and increased English cloth production. Flemish weavers had gone over to  Worstead  and Norfolk  and established the woollen industry. During the late  Middle Ages Flanders' trading towns (notably Ghent, Bruges and Ypres) once again made it one of the richest and most urbanized parts of Europe, weaving the wool of neighbouring lands into cloth for both domestic use and export. It became a very importnt cultural central of medieval Europe.