Jan Breydel

Who is Jan Breydel?

Jan Breydel is credited with leading the Bruges Matins, a violent uprising against Philip the Fair.

Breydel, who was by trade a butcher, led the Bruges Matins together with Pieter de Coninck, a weaver, in May 1302. About three weeks before, on 1 May that year, they had partaken in an attack on the castle of Male and the complete annihilation of the French garrison there. The city archives of Bruges show that Jan Breydel was present from 8 July until 10 July 1302, in Kortrijk, as a supplier of meat for the troops. On the basis of this record, it is generally accepted that he had fought on 11 July 1302 in the Battle of the Golden Spurs.

In 1308, he helped to disengage Willem van Saeftinghe, who had fought on the same side at Kortrijk six years earlier, from the church of Lissewege where Willem had barricaded himself during an uprising.

In 1309, Breydel, together with Pieter de Coninck and Jan Heem, again led an uprising in Bruges, aimed against the Treaty of Athis-sur-Orge forced upon Flanders by the French; he killed the substitute of the Count of Flanders the same year.