Answer

Flanders´ “eternal enemy” in both texts is above all France. The Battle of the Golden Spurs which The Lion of Flanders romanticized, is a turning-point in a long historical process leading to the county of Flanders detaching itself from France. After the annexation by the French Republic in 1795 the fear of a new French offensive continued to be very real throughout the 19th century, for instance in the 1860s when it got about that the authoritarian regime of Napoleon III (Second French Empire) harboured intentions of annexation vis-à-vis Belgium.

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