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Flemish Community Day

Belgian annual observance on 11 July

Field	Value
holiday_name	Flemish Community Day
image	Vlaamse feestdag.png
nickname	Feestdag van Vlaanderen
observedby	Flemish Community, Belgium
scheduling	same day each year
date	11 July
relatedto	French Community Day, Day of the German-speaking Community, King's Feast
duration	1 day
frequency	annual

The Flemish Community Day () is an annual holiday held in the Flemish Community of Belgium on 11 July. It is also variously translated as the Day of the Flemish Community, Flemish Community Holiday, Feast Day of the Flemish Community, Festival of the Flemish Community, or other variants.

This date was chosen by the Flemish Community of Belgium to mark the anniversary of the Battle of the Golden Spurs () in 1302.

History

In 1302, the French king Philip IV sent an army to punish the Flemish citizens of Bruges, who earlier that year rebelled against the king and attacked the French governor of Flanders (the so-called Good Friday of Bruges).

The French army was composed of about 2,500 knights and squires, supported by about 5,500 infantry. The Flemish, in contrast, fielded a town militia force of 9,000 consisting mostly of infantrymen.

The two forces clashed on 11 July in an open field outside the Flemish city of Kortrijk and the battle ended with the overwhelming victory of the Flemish militia. The commander of the French army, Robert II of Artois, was surrounded and killed on the battlefield. At least a thousand French cavaliers were also killed in the battle and the large number of the golden spurs collected from the field gave the battle its name.

The battle was romanticised in 1838 by Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience in his book De Leeuw van Vlaanderen ().

Declaration

Following the establishment of the three cultural and linguistic communities of Belgium in 1970, the Dutch Cultural Community (as it was known then) enacted a law on 6 July 1973, which prescribes the flag, the anthem and the Flemish Community Day.

Ever since then, the Flemish Community Day is observed in Flanders. Private employers are not required to award a day's holiday; however the institutions of the Flemish Government and public employers observe this holiday.

References

[http://www.belgium.be/en/about_belgium/country/belgium_in_nutshell/symbols/national_holiday/ Feast days, flags and anthems of the communities and regions of Belgium]

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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