Hendrik Conscience

Son of a French naval carpenter and a Flemish mother, Conscience fought as an eighteen-year-old volunteer in the 1830 Belgian Revolution. At a time when Dutch was considered a rustic peasant patois by the French-speaking elite, Conscience audaciously decided to write heroic novels in Flemish.

In 1838, he published De Leeuw van Vlaenderen, an epic romanticization of the 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs that gave the Flemish people their national myth, flag, and collective self-respect. He published over one hundred novels translated across Europe.