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 How and Why We
Make Games
This book delves into the intricate realms of games and their creation,
examining them through cultural, systemic, and, most notably, human
lenses. It explores diverse themes such as authorship, creative
responsibility, the tension between games as a product and games as a
form of cultural expression, and the myth of a universal audience.

This book analyzes why we should put politics in our games and how
hyperrealism may be a trap. It also proposes a new framework for
thinking about game narrative and a different paradigm for the
production altogether. Topics tackled are approached from a
multidisciplinary perspective, so be prepared to read both about
Peter Paul Rubens and John Carmack. There are also graphs, system
rhetorics discussions, and the market reality—stakeholders, return on
investments, and the gaming bubble bursting.

This book is written for readers passionate about the craft of making
games, including journalists and industry professionals. It offers a
more humanistic perspective on games, presented by experienced
writers who know the intricacies of game development.
How and Why We
Make Games
The Creative Confusion

Written by
Marta Fijak
Artur Ganszyniec
First edition published 2025
by CRC Press
2385 NW Executive Center Drive, Suite 320, Boca Raton FL 33431

and by CRC Press

4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

© 2025 Marta Fijak and Artur Ganszyniec

Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the
author and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the
consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the
copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to
copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any
copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may
rectify in any future reprint.

Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted,
reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publishers.

For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access
www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222
Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not
available on CCC please contact [email protected]

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.

ISBN: 978-1-032-35045-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-34332-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-32503-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.1201/9781003325031

Typeset in Caslon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
To our wives, Joannas.
Contents

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES ix

CHAPTER 1 GAMES AS A MEDIUM 1

ARTUR GANSZYNIEC

CHAPTER 2 WHY DO PEOPLE MAKE GAMES? 18

MARTA FIJAK

CHAPTER 3 THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL AUDIENCE 39

ARTUR GANSZYNIEC

CHAPTER 4 TRAPS OF REALISM 48

ARTUR GANSZYNIEC

CHAPTER 5 AUTHORIAL VOICE AND INTENT IN SYSTEM DESIGN 58

MARTA FIJAK

CHAPTER 6 THE TOPOGRAPHY OF NARRATIVE 71

MARTA FIJAK

CHAPTER 7 PLAYING WITH AUTHORSHIP 87

ARTUR GANSZYNIEC

VII
VIII CONTENTS

CHAPTER 8 WHY GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE POLITICAL 96

MARTA FIJAK

CHAPTER 9 AUTHOR AS A GROUP ENTITY: HOW IT FEELS TO

BE ONE OF 500 VOICES 107

MARTA FIJAK

CHAPTER 10 SLOW GAMES 116

ARTUR GANSZYNIEC

CHAPTER 11 GAMES OF THE END TIMES 126

MARTA FIJAK

INDEX 133
Author biographies

Marta Fijak has been making games since 2013. With a master’s degree
in experimental biology and an engineering degree in computer science,
she decided to dedicate her life to games instead. She tried every form of
game development, from basement indie with 20 players to a BAFTA-
nominated game with ~2 million players, to F2P with ~10 million
players. She has been a gameplay programmer, system and technical
designer, and eventually a lead designer and a creative director. Recently,
and not under NDA, she worked (a lot) on Frostpunk and (a little) on
Rimworld. She teaches game design at the Warsaw Film School,
consults on games, and, just in general, can not shut up about them.

Artur Ganszyniec has been making games since 2006. He is a data

analyst by education, storyteller by choice, designer by trade, and
autistic by birth. He has worked on AAA games, overseeing the story
for the first two The Witcher games, ethical mobile F2P games, and
artistic indie darlings. He teaches game design at the Lodz University
of Technology, consults on games, and works for the Polish game
industry as a part of the Polish Gamedev Workers Union.

IX
 1
GAMES AS A MEDIUM
ARTUR GANSZYNIEC

Video games were born in the late 1950s/early 1960s, so as early as

there were video displays to display the game on, computers that
could calculate what to display, and (last but not least) people who
felt the need to use their serious, room-spanning machines to
make games. This probably says something important about our
species.
Spacewar!, developed by students of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1962, is probably the first video game played on
multiple computer installations. And, because people generally like to
play with what they play, it was heavily modded by the users.
Nothing new under the sun.
The commercial history of video games started in the 1970s with
the release of Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console.
Others followed with classic arcade video games such as Computer
Space and Pong. The latter holds an important place in my personal
history of games.
My first encounter with video games happened in the late 1980s in
still-communist Poland, when my parents managed to fix a second-
hand color TV smuggled from West Germany through an extended
network of family and friends. With it came a pair of strange
controllers, and a dark gray box that you could plug into the said TV.
And on the gray box, there was a clone of Pong.
So, when in the wide Western world the video game market
swelled after the arrival of the first ROM cartridge-based home
consoles, flourished with arcade games such as Pac-Man or Space
Invaders, and then crashed flooded by too many, too derivative
products, I was learning how to beat my sister in a game of ping-
pong played on our home television.

DOI: 10.1201/9781003325031-1 1
2 HOW AND WHY WE MAKE GAMES

There are many great publications focused solely on the history of

video games, so I won’t reiterate all important points of development
here. Let me just sketch a rough timeline, with ten games that are to
be considered for preservation by the Library of Congress. This so-
called game canon highlights games that started new genres, still
significant in the industry. These games are as follows: Spacewar!—a
1962 space combat video game; Star Raiders—a 1980 space combat
video game; Zork—a 1977 text-based adventure video game;
Tetris—a 1985 puzzle video game; SimCity—a 1989 city-building
simulation video game; Super Mario Bros 3—a 1988 platform game;
Civilization I/II—a 1991, and 1996 for Civ II, turn-based strategy
4X video game; Doom—a 1993 first-person shooter; Warcraft
series—a series of real-time strategy (RTS) games that began in
1994; and Sensible World of Soccer—a 1994 football video game.
The recognition and, as The New York Times put it, “an assertion
that digital games have a cultural significance and a historical
significance” came over a half-century after Spacewar! was created
in 2006. Up to that point, video games were mostly perceived as toys,
a pastime suited for children and adolescents.
During my youth, playing video games was something that was
happening among children—and the occasional hip adults, who
introduced new technologies brought from the West. I grew up in a
small town in post-communist Poland, so your experience may vary.
But even in my youth, it was a vibrant culture, even with a slightly
homemade, post-apocalyptic vibe. Most of the hardware was second-
hand and sent back from the West (Germany or the USA, depending
on where your industrious family members emigrated) and the games
were copied over and over on magnetic audio cassettes. When they
were loading, you had to sit still and quiet, because even the slightest
tremor of the floor could result in the game not loading properly. I
still remember the feeling of holding my breath and listening to the
weird electronic noises of the cassette, wondering what game would
load and if we would find out how to play it. Most of the cassettes
were unnamed, and most of the games were in English, a language
we didn’t know.
I think that I saw my first original game when I was in high
school. The funny thing is that the games I played as a child,
although for sure not original, were not technically pirated. There
 GAMES AS A MEDIUM 3

were no software copyright laws in Poland at that time, and with no

laws, there could be no crime.
Apart from home consoles, there were video game arcades.
I remember the best the one in a seaside town, where we used to
spend our family holidays. We would pool our allowances with other
kids, and spend the money playing games. The one I remember the
most was Golden Axe which we would play in pairs, one of us
controlling the movement and the other pressing the attack buttons.
The games were expensive and we wanted to squeeze the most value
from our money.
There were also handheld consoles, but only the most fortunate
managed to get one. Our family treasure was an old GameBoy with a
single cartridge of a Mario game. It was the only GameBoy in the
area, so for a long time I had no idea that, out there, were other
cartridges with other games.
There were a lot of video games in my youth, and they were both
fascinating and mysterious. They were also a children’s thing. The
parents did not understand or care for the games, and they fell into
the wide category of “do not sit so long in front of the TV, go outside
and play!” At least, such was my experience. But from what I
gathered, many shared similar stories.
When I was at the university, the situation normalized. We had
PCs, with original games on CDs waiting to be bought, many of
which were fully localized to Polish. There were video game
magazines. But the general perception did not change much.
Games were a waste of time, entertainment (if not toys), and
something to be observed with suspicion. It was the late 1990s and
the “video games cause violence” meme was circulating in the press
and influenced the public understanding of the medium.
I graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics with a
master’s degree in data analysis and went to work in a big telecom
company. Three years later, burnt out and disillusioned, I quit and
started looking for a new gig. I decided to approach the problem with
an open mind, so when a friend, whom I knew through our tabletop
RPG sessions, reached out to me and said that they were looking for
writers to work on a new video game, I gave it a try. The game was
based on a series of books by my favorite Polish author, Andrzej
Sapkowski, and was called The Witcher.
4 HOW AND WHY WE MAKE GAMES

The interview went well and I got an offer, which I finally

accepted. But for a few days, I was two minds about it. The project
looked interesting, but it was a video game. Such a frivolous
industry—I thought—not serious at all. Not real business, and, for
sure, not art. I wanted to write, but for something that mattered. If
not books, then at least movies. But I needed money, so I joined the
team. And discovered, over the years, how wrong I was. Games
turned out to be both a serious business and an important part of
culture.
But in 2006 I saw it differently, as my worldview was shaped by
the general understanding of the matter. Movies were serious, movies
were art. But the games? They were none of those.
But in the late 1890s when movies as a medium were in their
infancy, they were seen as a vulgar form of cheap entertainment for
the working class, unsuited for telling coherent stories and arousing
emotions other than a cheap thrill. It took movies a larger part of a
century to grow from silent, black-and-white, two-minute documen-
tary episodes about a train arriving at a station, or staged comedy
sketches about the sprinkler sprinkled to the romantic classics like
Casablanca or extravagant experiments like Everything Everywhere All
at Once.
Movies left their infancy period behind. We know how to make a
movie. We know how to write a script, how to sell it, how to plan a
production, how to find the cast, how to shoot, how to edit, and how
to post-process a movie. We know how to tell a feature movie from a
short film, and a film etude. Particular methods change over time,
with the changes in technology, but we’ve reached an understanding
of what a movie is. The medium has matured.
In contrast to the movies, games are still going through their
growing pains. The medium probably left its infancy period behind,
but has it graduated from college yet? Or are we still in a cultural
high school (if not a primary education)?
It doesn’t help that video games are such a wide and varied field.
What is a game? This is a question very similar to “What is a sport?”
There are so many categories, genres, platforms, business models, etc.
that even finding a practically useful level of abstraction when talking
about our craft is a challenge. We still have no universal format for a
design doc, not talking about a “script.” We use many technologies,
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life and
Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Volumes
1 and 2
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq,

Volumes 1 and 2

Author: Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq

Editor: F. H. Blackburne Daniell

Charles Thornton Forster

Release date: December 6, 2016 [eBook #53681]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file
was
produced from images generously made available by
The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND

LETTERS OF OGIER GHISELIN DE BUSBECQ, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 ***
Transcribers note:
This is the combined version of The Life and Letters Of Ogier Ghiselin De Busbecq
Volume I and Volume II.

OGIER GHISELIN
DE BUSBECQ
VOL. I.
 AVGERIVS GISLENVS BVSBEQVIVS.
Te voce, Augeri, mulcentem Cæsaris aures
Laudauit plausis Austrius Ister aquis.
Te Ducis Ismarij flectentem pectora verbis
 Thrax rapido obstupuit Bosphorus e pelago.
Te gesfisfe domum pro nata Cæsaris, ingens
Sequana conspexit, Parisÿq3 lares
I. Lernutius.

THE
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
OGIER GHISELIN DE BUSBECQ
SEIGNEUR OF BOUSBECQUE

KNIGHT, IMPERIAL AMBASSADOR

BY

CHARLES THORNTON FORSTER, M.A.

Late Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge: Vicar of Hinxton
AND

F. H. BLACKBURNE DANIELL, M.A.

Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge: Barrister-at-Law

Πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
 1881

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)

TO

MONSIEUR JEAN DALLE

MAIRE OF BOUSBECQUE
AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS KINDNESS
AND THE VALUABLE ASSISTANCE WE HAVE
DERIVED FROM HIS RESEARCHES
THESE VOLUMES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
 PREFACE.
We ask to be allowed to introduce the Reader to a kind and
genial cicerone, who can take him back, three centuries deep, into
the Past, and show him the Turk as he was when he dictated to
Europe instead of Europe dictating to him; or conjure once more into
life Catherine de Medici, Navarre, Alençon, Guise, Marguerite the fair
and frail, and that young Queen, whom he loved so well and served
so faithfully.
 CONTENTS
OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

PAGE
Life of Busbecq 1
Turkish Letter I. 75
” ” II. 174
” ” III. 192
” ” IV. 315
 Errata.
The references in footnotes on pp. 105-250, to other passages in this volume
after p. 72, should be advanced by 2 pages, e.g. for 163, read 165.

LIFE OF BUSBECQ.

MAP OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF BOUSBECQUE

London; C. Kegan Paul & Co.--Edwd Weller.
 LIFE OF BUSBECQ.

Introductory.
The days are now past when students were content to take their
history at second hand, and there is therefore the less reason to
apologise for introducing to the reader, in an English dress, the
letters of one who was an eyewitness and actor in some of the most
important events in the sixteenth century.
Several of the most striking passages in Robertson’s History of
Charles V. are taken from Busbecq; De Thou has borrowed largely
from his letters; and the pages of Gibbon, Coxe, Von Hammer,
Ranke, Creasy, and Motley, testify to the value of information derived
from this source. It must not, however, be supposed that all that is
historically valuable in his writings has found a place in the works of
modern authors. On the contrary, the evidence which Busbecq
furnishes has often been forgotten or ignored.
A remarkable instance of this neglect is to be found in Prescott’s
account of the capture of Djerbé,1 or Gelves, by the Turks. The
historian of Philip II. has made up this part of his narrative from the
conflicting and vainglorious accounts of Spanish writers, and does
not even allude to the plain, unvarnished tale which Busbecq tells—a
tale which he must have heard from the lips of the commander of
the Christian forces, his friend Don Alvaro de Sandé, and which he
had abundant opportunities of verifying from other sources.
The revival of the Eastern Question has drawn attention in
France2 to the career and policy of one who was so successful as an
ambassador at Constantinople, and the life of Ogier Ghiselin de
Busbecq has been the subject of two treatises at least since 1860,
while a far more important work dealing with our author’s life is
about to issue from the press. Of this last we have been allowed to
see the proof-sheets, and we take this opportunity of expressing our
obligation to the author, Monsieur Jean Dalle, Maire de Bousbecque.
His book is a perfect storehouse of local information, and must prove
invaluable to any future historian of the Flemings. It is entitled
Histoire de Bousbecque.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries hardly any
author was so popular as Busbecq. More than twenty editions3 of his
letters were published in the literary capitals of Europe—Antwerp,
Paris, Bâle, Frankfort, Hanau, Munich, Louvain, Leipsic, London,
Oxford and Glasgow. His merits as a recorder of contemporary
history are briefly sketched by a writer of that period, who thus
describes his despatches to Rodolph: ‘C’est un portrait au naturel
des affaires de France sous le régne de Henri III. Il raconte les
choses avec une naïveté si grande qu’elles semblent se passer à nos
yeux. On ne trouve point ailleurs tant de faits historiques en si peu
de discours. Les grands mouvemens, comme la conspiration
d’Anvers, et les petites intrigues de la cour y sont également bien
marquées. Les attitudes (pour ainsi dire) dans lesquelles il met Henri
III., la Reine Mere, le duc d’Alençon, le roi de Navarre, la reine
Marguerite, le duc de Guise, le duc d’Espernon, et les autres
Courtisans ou Favoris de ce tems-là, nous les montrent du côté qui
nous en découvre, à coup seur, le fort et le foible, le bon et le
mauvais.’4
All who have studied the letters of Busbecq will endorse this
opinion; nor is it possible for anyone even superficially acquainted
with his writings, not to recognise the work of a man who combined
the rarest powers of observation with the greatest industry and the
greatest honesty.
He was eminently what is called ‘a many-sided man’; nothing is
above him, nothing beneath him. His political information is
important to the soberest of historians, his gossiping details would
gladden a Macaulay; the Imperial Library at Vienna is rich with
manuscripts and coins of his collection. To him scholars owe the first
copy of the famous Monumentum Ancyranum. We cannot turn to our
gardens without seeing the flowers of Busbecq around us—the lilac,
the tulip, the syringa. So much was the first of these associated with
the man who first introduced it to the West, that Bernardin de Saint
Pierre proposed to change its name from lilac to Busbequia.
Throughout his letters will be found hints for the architect, the
physician, the philologist, and the statesman; he has stories to
charm a child, and tales to make a grey-beard weep.
Of his careful and scientific investigations it is almost
unnecessary to cite examples. Never having seen a camelopard, and
finding that one had been buried at Constantinople, he had the
animal dug up, and a careful examination made of its shape and
capabilities. On his second journey to Constantinople he took a
draughtsman with him, to sketch any curious plants and animals he
might find. He sent his physician to Lemnos to make investigations
with regard to Lemnian earth—a medicine famous in those days;
while he despatched an apothecary of Pera to the Lake of Nicomedia
to gather acorus5 for his friend Mattioli, the celebrated botanist.
While furnishing information of the highest value, Busbecq never
assumes the air of a pedant. He tells his story in a frank and genial
way, not unlike that of the modern newspaper correspondent. If to
combine amusement and instruction is the highest art in this branch
of literature, he would have been invaluable as a member of the
staff of some great newspaper. Among books, Kinglake’s Eothen is
perhaps the nearest parallel to Busbecq’s Turkish letters; the former
is more finished in style—Busbecq evidently did not retouch his first
rough draft—but it does not contain one tithe of the information.
Such is the author for whom we venture to ask the attention of the
English reader.
Even to those who can read the elegant Latin in which he wrote,
it is hoped that the notes and articles appended may be found
interesting and useful. They have been gleaned from many different
quarters, and to a great extent from books inaccessible to the
ordinary student. This is specially the case with the Sketch of
Hungarian History during the Reign of Solyman. In no modern writer
were we able to find more than scattered hints and allusions to the
history of Hungary during this important epoch, when it formed the
battle-field on which the Christian and the Mussulman were deciding
the destinies of Europe.
The object of Busbecq’s mission was to stay, by the arts of
diplomacy, the advance of the Asiatic conqueror, to neutralise in the
cabinet the defeats of Essek and Mohacz. In this policy he was to a
great extent successful. He gained time; and in such a case time is
everything. What he says of Ferdinand is eminently true of himself.6
There are victories of which the world hears much—great battles,
conquered provinces, armies sent beneath the yoke—but there is
also the quiet work of the diplomatist, of which the world hears little.
In the eyes of those who measure such work aright, not even the
hero of Lepanto or the liberator of Vienna will hold a higher place
among the champions of Christendom than Ogier Ghiselin de
Busbecq.

Removal of the Rubbish.

For the rebuilding of a house, it is absolutely necessary to
remove the rubbish with which the site is encumbered.
Unfortunately, the process is equally necessary in writing the life of
Busbecq. There is rubbish of ancient date and rubbish of modern
date, which cannot be ignored and must be removed. With regard to
one story, a writer of the present time is specially bound to protest.
It is to be found in the treatise of Monsieur Rouzière, entitled, Notice
sur Auger de Busbecq, Ambassadeur du Roi Ferdinand 1er en
Turquie, et de l’Empereur Rodolphe II. en France. There is the more
need for warning the reader against it, because Monsieur Rouzière
ushers in his narrative with a long tirade against similar inventions.
‘He is not,’ he tells us, ‘a professor of history, or one of those knights
of the quill who wander from town to town discovering documents
which, like the Sleeping Beauty, are waiting for the champion who is
to break the enchanter’s spell.’ Monsieur Rouzière is specially bitter
against ‘un Américain qui vient de mourir en parcourant l’Europe
pour faire des découvertes historiques, et qui à l’Escurial avait fait la
trouvaille d’une relation sur la mort de don Carlos écrite par son
valet-de-chambre.’ With this preamble, he introduces his readers to
the following story, which is simply a romance of his own creation:
‘When Charles V. came to Flanders for the purpose of installing
his sister Mary, Queen of Hungary, in the government, he visited
Comines, in company with Gilles Ghiselin, Seigneur of Bousbecque,
father of the Ambassador. As they were entering the town, the
Seigneur, entreating Charles to wait for a few moments, knocked at
the door of a house, which, though unpretentious, had a dignity of
its own. Out of it issued a boy with sparkling eyes; so interesting
was his appearance, that the words, ‘O! what a lovely child!’ burst
from the emperor’s lips. The Seigneur bade the boy kneel down.
‘Ogier,’ said he, ‘look well at your lord; when you are older you will
serve him as faithfully as your father and grandfather.’ He then
informed the emperor that, not having any legitimate children, he
had allowed all his love to centre on this offshoot, who, he fondly
hoped, would one day be admitted into his family.’
Monsieur Rouzière is certainly not fortunate in his story;7 the
Seigneur’s name was George8 and not Gilles, and he had, moreover,
three legitimate children. A house at Comines is shown as the scene
of this event, but from inquiries made on the spot, we have
ascertained that there is no tradition connecting it with Busbecq
earlier than the publication of Monsieur Rouzière’s treatise in 1860.
He is a lively and amusing writer. It is the more to be regretted that
he has not regarded the line which separates biography from
romance.
Monsieur Huysmans, the well-known French artist, has also laid
the foundation of several errors in the striking picture which has
been purchased by the Belgian Government, and now adorns the
Hôtel de Ville of Belgian Comines. Its artistic merits make one regret
the more that he did not select one of the many dramatic events in
Busbecq’s life, instead of giving us a scene which not only is not
recorded, but never could have happened. In the first place, the
date 1555 is wrong; in no case could the scene have taken place
earlier than 1556. Secondly, Monsieur Huysmans has been led into
error by a loose translation in the French version of Busbecq’s letters
by the Abbé de Foy. For some time Busbecq was confined to his
house by the Turkish authorities. De Foy, in speaking of this
curtailment of his liberty, uses the expression ‘une étroite prison’
(whence, by the way, some have supposed that Busbecq was
confined in the Seven Towers). Monsieur Huysmans, led astray by
this phrase, and imagining that the Ambassador was confined in a
prison, straightway concluded that if he was imprisoned he must
have been arrested. On this he grounded the subject of his work,
‘Soliman fait arrêter Busbecq, diplomat Flamand, Constantinople,
1555.’ There is also a striking error in the persons represented in the
picture. When Busbecq first arrived at Constantinople Roostem was
in disgrace, and Achmet held the post of chief Vizier. The latter had
only consented to accept the seal of office on condition that the
Sultan undertook never to remove him. The Sultan kept his word.
When it was convenient to reinstate Roostem, he did not deprive
Achmet of the seal of office, but of his life. The execution of Achmet
is one of the most striking scenes recorded by Busbecq.
Unfortunately, Monsieur Huysmans had not studied his subject
sufficiently, for in his picture Roostem is in office, and Achmet stands
by as a subordinate.
As to errors of a less recent date, they are, for the most part,
such as an intelligent reader of Busbecq’s letters may correct for
himself. For instance, it is not hard to prove that the author of the
life prefixed to the Elzevir edition is wrong in stating that Busbecq’s
father died before the Ambassador went to England, when we find
that he had an interview with him after his return from our island.
Neither is there much danger of the veriest tiro being led astray by
De Foy’s suggestion that, when Busbecq came to England for the
marriage of Philip and Mary, he had long conversations with Henry
VIII., who tried to induce him to enter his service. There is, however,
danger in Howaert’s9 statement that Busbecq accompanied the
younger sons of Maximilian to Spain, and introduced them to Philip.
The story is not impossible in itself, nor is it even improbable. But
there is this suspicious circumstance about it; those who mention it
do not seem to be aware that Busbecq did accompany the two elder
sons of Maximilian, Rodolph and Ernest, to Spain in the capacity of
‘Écuyer trenchant.’ This latter fact is established on the best of
authorities, namely, the Patent of knighthood issued by the Emperor
Ferdinand to Busbecq, a copy10 of which we have, through the
kindness of a friend, been enabled to procure from the archives of
Vienna.
That Busbecq accompanied the four younger Archdukes to Spain
is perhaps doubtful, and still more doubtful is the story grafted on to
it by later hands, namely, that Busbecq pleaded the cause of the
Netherlands before Philip II., obtained the recall of Alva and the
substitution of Requesens in his place. No facts could be more
interesting if they should but prove to be true; unfortunately they
are at present without authority.

Bousbecque and its Seigneurs.

It is from the seigneury of Bousbecque that Ogier11 Ghiselin

takes the name by which he is best known, Busbecq (Latin,
Busbequius).
Properly of course his name is identical with that of the
seigneury, but, by common consent, the Ambassador is known as
Busbecq, while the name of the place, after numerous variations—
Bosbeke, Busbeke, Bousbeke, &c., has settled down into the form
Bousbecque.12
It will be necessary therefore to speak of the man by one name
and the place by another.
 The geographical position of Bousbecque has an important
bearing on the biography of the Ambassador; as the place is not
marked in English maps, a plan of the district is given in this volume
showing the relative positions of Bousbecque, Comines, Wervicq,
Halluin, &c. It will be seen that Bousbecque lies on the river Lys,
about two miles from Comines. In the times with which we shall
have to deal, it formed part of the County of Flanders; it is now part
of the French frontier, and is included in the Département du Nord.
The neighbourhood of Bousbecque has a history extending to
early times, for close to it stands Wervicq, marking with its name the
Roman station of Viroviacum; in Bousbecque itself Roman paving-
stones have been dug out on the road now known as the ‘Chemin
des Oblaers;’ whence it may be assumed that the road mentioned in
the itinerary of Antoninus, as running from Tournay to Wervicq,
passed through Bousbecque.
The depth of the river Lys, which is an affluent of the Scheldt,
exposed the neighbouring country to the attacks of the Northmen;
the hardy pirates sailed up the stream, and built their castles and
forts on the banks of the river. Their descendants became the
seigneurs, or lords, of the territories which their ancestors had won.
A distinction must here be drawn between the seigneury of
Bousbecque and the parish (now commune) of Bousbecque. The
parish of Bousbecque contained a great many other seigneuries
besides that from which it takes its name; notably, for instance, the
seigneuries of la Lys and Rhume. The first mention of Bousbecque
occurs in a deed, without date, but necessarily between 1098 and
1113; in it Baudry, bishop of Tournay, conveys to the Collegiate
Chapter of St. Peter, at Lille, the whole tithes of Roncq and half the
tithes of Halluin and Bousbecque (Busbeka).13
In 1159, Wautier, Seigneur of Halluin, husband of Barbe daughter
of the Count of Soissons, conveys to the Abbey of St. Aubert, with
the consent of his wife and his children—Wautier, Roger, Guillaume,
Alix, and Richilde—his share of the tithes of Iwuy. The Roger here
mentioned, married Agnes de Bousbecque; hence we see the high
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