_Peter de Coninck_
Although the city on the Roya had been in great measure responsible for
the success of the French arms--at the very commencement of the war she
had opened her gates to Philippe le Bel--she was destined to be the
chief factor in the great movement which ended by chasing the French
from Flanders.
Early in the spring of 1301 Philippe le Bel had resolved to make a
triumphal progress through his new domains, and on the 18th of May,
accompanied by his Queen, he arrived at Douai--having visited Courtrai,
Audenarde, Peteghem, Ghent--where he was received with the greatest
magnificence. Towards the close of the month he reached Bruges, and
Bruges would fain have surpassed her rival in the cordiality and
gorgeousness of her welcome. All the palaces and public buildings were
hung with precious stuffs; on platforms draped with taffeta stood the
wives and daughters of the burghers, arrayed in glorious apparel, and
tradition tells us how the shimmer of their gems and the lustre of their
silks aroused the envy of Isabelle of France. 'I thought,' quoth she,
'that I alone was Queen, but here I see six hundred.'
But if the _majores et potentiores_ were exuberant in their
manifestations of loyalty, the people were dumb. In vain Philippe called
the sheriffs to him, and bade them proclaim public games; no man would
take part in them. Indeed, these very games were destined to be the
source of the ill-fortune which afterwards befell the French.
The sheriffs essayed to place to the cost of the city companies the
price of the gala uniforms expressly manufactured for the occasion. The
latter refused to acknowledge the debt, and riots ensued which presently
culminated in successful rebellion. In those days there dwelt in the
city of Bruges a little wizened, one-eyed man who loved the people.
Speaking no language but his own rude mother-tongue, he knew how to
infuse so much fire into it, and to mould it into such pithy sayings,
and there was so much shrewdness in his speech, and so much sense in his
ugly head that, in spite of his physical infirmities and in spite of his
uncouth form, his influence with them was unbounded. This man was the
dean of the great Guild of Weavers, Petrus de Coninck, or, in plain
English, Peter King.
What his original station in life may have been, and what public
offices, if any, he may have filled, are questions, perhaps, which will
never be determined. May be, as Gheldorf thinks, he was a man of noble
birth who had formerly occupied some position of trust at Guy's
Court--it was by no means an unusual occurrence for Flemish noblemen in
those days to become members of city companies. May be Kervyn is right
in asserting that he was a son of the people; nor, if this were so, does
it follow that De Coninck had not been attached to his sovereign's
household; men of doubtful origin, before and since, have sometimes been
esteemed by princes, and Guy is known to have favoured his lesser folk.
Perhaps he was a Flemish Karl of the Liberty of Bruges, one of those
sturdy yeomen whose ancestors for generations back had, each of them,
cultivated his own plot of land and held it by the strength of his own
right arm.
Be this as it may, neither the baseness nor the brilliancy of De
Coninck's origin diminished or increased the esteem in which he was held
by the people. They loved him for what he was, and not for what his
forebears had been; and when, supported by the deans of five-and-twenty
guilds, in the market-place of Bruges, beneath the shadow of the great
bell tower which had just arisen from its ashes more beautiful than it
was before, he thundered at the corruption and ambition of the city
fathers and called them sycophants and knaves, the vast crowd which
thronged the market-place rallied round him to a man, and swore to
refuse the obnoxious tax--that not one groat of their hard-earned coin
should find its way into the coffers of so corrupt a municipality. In
vain the outraged sheriffs caused De Coninck and his comrades to be put
under arrest; that very night the people burst open their prison and set
them free, and when John of Ghistelle, the chief of the Leliaerts,[23]
concerted with them a plot to fall on the Clauwaerts[24] unawares and
cut down all their chiefs, the bell which should have signalled the work
of destruction was for more than one of the plotters his own passing
knell.
Somehow or other the Clauwaerts had got wind of the storm that was
brewing, and as the first shrill cry of the tocsin clanged over the
city, they flew to arms. Panic laid hold of the Leliaert host, and
though the swiftness of their heels saved some, not a few of the leaders
were reckoned amongst the slain, and others before nightfall were safely
lodged in the prison which had so lately held De Coninck and his
friends; but the measure of the great tribune's vengeance was not filled
up yet.
Jacques de Châtillon, the King's lieutenant, had for days been encamped
outside the city walls, but he deemed the force at his disposal too
small to risk a conflict. Each day, however, was bringing him fresh
recruits, and a bloody encounter was at hand, when certain men in whom
each side trusted offered their mediation. Thanks to their good offices
an arrangement was effected, and next day De Châtillon and his knights
rode into the city at the same moment that De Coninck and his friends
left it. That a man of De Coninck's stamp should have consented to act
thus is at first sight incomprehensible, but after events show that this
seemingly cowardly and vacillating conduct was inspired by no mean or
unworthy motive. So great were the odds against him that, if he had then
hazarded an engagement, nothing short of a miracle could have saved his
little band from being cut to pieces. He was well aware that if he
surrendered unconditionally the best thing he could hope for would be a
halter, and that with his life was linked at that juncture the liberty
of Flanders. He knew, too, the man he had to deal with, and that if he
gave him sufficient rope he would certainly end by hanging himself. In a
word, Châtillon's narrow, arbitrary and exasperating policy would soon
drive not a few of the Lily's staunchest supporters--for the greater
number of them were only Leliaerts from self-interest--to throw in their
lot with the Lion, and that then, with a united Flanders at his back, he
might hope to accomplish something. These events occurred in the month
of July 1301.
All this actually came to pass. No sooner had Châtillon entered Bruges
and re-established his authority than he declared all its privileges
forfeited on account of the late rebellion, and exacted, moreover, by
way of further punishment, the fourth penny of every workman's wages,
and to overawe the discontented, he began the construction of a great
citadel on the banks of the Minne Water.
In vain the burghers sent envoys to Paris to plead their cause before
the King. Châtillon's henchman, the Comte de St. Pol, had preceded them,
and their prayer and humiliation only added to his triumph; and when on
their return to Bruges they told the astonished burghers how during
their visit to Paris the Bishop of Pamiers had arrived there, charged by
the Pope to demand the release of Count Guy and of Phillippine, and how
the King had received him with insults and cast him into prison, these
men knew they had nothing to hope from the tender mercies of Philippe le
Bel.
Meanwhile the discontent at Bruges was increasing day by day. So great
was the indignation aroused by the governor's arbitrary conduct that
numbers of those who had formerly supported Philippe had now returned to
their allegiance to Guy, and by the month of November the Clauwaerts had
grown so strong that when De Coninck, taking advantage of Châtillon's
absence at Ghent, appeared once more in the market-place 'no man dared
lay hold of him.' Indeed, so terrified were the Leliaert magistrates at
his unlooked-for arrival that they fled the city, and, for the moment,
De Coninck was master of Bruges. But the people are ever a timorous and
vacillating herd, and when De Coninck failed in an attempt to win over
the Ghenters to the national side, and news came that Châtillon, at the
head of a vast host, was on his way to Bruges, so great was their terror
that they forced him to quit the town. Indeed, if he had refused to do
so he would have fallen a victim to their fury--and two days later
Châtillon marched in.
De Coninck was in no way disheartened. He knew that the burghers would
soon call him again to their aid. Moreover, during the period which had
elapsed between his first and second exodus, the prospects of the little
band of patriots had vastly improved. William of Juliers,[25] Provost
of Maestricht, a grandson of Count Guy, aroused by the woes of his
native land, had exchanged the cassock for the cuirass, and placed
himself at their head; John Breidel, Dean of the Butchers' Guild, one of
the richest men in Bruges, and perhaps, like De Coninck himself, in
brighter days a noble of Guy's Court, had thrown in his lot with them,
and by the united efforts of De Coninck and these men the standard of
the Lion now waved over Damme, and Oostburg, and Ardenburg, and the
castles of Sysseele and Maele, and if Bruges in her wild panic had
thrust the great tribune from her doors, he was not doomed to wander
shelterless and alone. Five thousand of her bravest sons were found
ready to share exile with him, and all the country round was still
staunch to the cause of freedom. And yet so unequally matched were the
combatants that the final issue could hardly be doubtful.
On the one side was Philippe le Bel, the mightiest king of his day, with
all the chivalry of Navarre, and all the chivalry of France, and
whatever knights he had been able to recruit throughout the Continent of
Europe; and on the other, the tradesmen of Flanders, headed by an exiled
priest and a handful of outlawed nobles who had been driven from their
native land.
But De Coninck regarded the matter from another point of view. On the
one side he saw tyranny and injustice, and on the other liberty and
right, and he knew that though sometimes these champions have the air of
feeble folk, in the long run they are bound to conquer; and perchance
too William, calling to mind the words which in the old church at
Maestricht he had so often chanted at Vespers:--_Deposuit potentes de
sede et exaltavit humiles_, felt confident with a confidence not of
earth that that God who chooses the feeble things of this world to
confound the strong would surely fight their battle for them.
Be this as it may, on May 17, Châtillon marched into the city, but
instead of bringing, as he had promised the burghers, only a small
escort, two thousand well-armed knights marched in with him. Forthwith
all kinds of rumours filled the air--Châtillon had brought great coils
of rope to hang the chief citizens, there was to be a general massacre
of Clauwaerts not even the women and children were to be spared. One
French knight had been so sickened at his leader's wholesale project of
vengeance that, rather than have a hand in it, he had made good his
escape from the city.
Next day the kennels of Bruges were red with blood, but it was not the
blood of her burghers. In their fear and their misery these weaklings
bethought them of the man whom they had turned from their doors. 'If you
have any pity for your fellow-citizens, if the bowels of your compassion
are not shut up against our women and our little ones, come over and
help us.' Thus they sent word to De Coninck at Damme, and before
daybreak he was at Ste. Croix, and with him was John Breidel and a host
of stalwart Flemings. A handful of burghers went out to confer with
them, and presently with a great cry the exiles burst into the city.
'_Schilt end vriendt_, for the lion of Flanders,' re-echoed through the
narrow streets, and all those who could not pronounce this shibboleth,
impossible of articulation for Gallic lips, were forthwith put to death.
So stunned and confused were they by the suddenness of the attack, and
the darkness of the night and the uncouth words of greeting which burst
from the lips of their foes, that the Frenchmen hardly showed fight at
all, but considered only how best they might quit the city, a matter not
easy of
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE ROYA]
accomplishment, for a strong guard of Flemings was posted outside each
gate. All day long the work of destruction continued, and when at last,
worn out with slaying, the Flemish sheathed their swords, the streets
and lanes of the city were red with blood and filled with dead men, and
so great was the number of corpses that it took three whole days to cast
them into the adjoining fields, and there give them burial. And yet
fortune had been kind to some of them; the lives of forty knights had
been spared, and perhaps of three-score soldiers. These men had been
cast into prison; others more fortunate still had saved alike their
lives and their liberty. Amongst them note the authors of all the
mischief, Jacques de Châtillon and Chancellor Flotte. The former, who,
with all his faults, was no coward, at first essayed to stem the tide,
but when his horse had been slain under him, seeing that resistance was
hopeless, he endeavoured to slip away unobserved, and in the darkness
and confusion succeeded in doing so. Presently, wandering about the mazy
byways in search of some refuge, he fell in with Pierre Flotte in like
predicament with himself. At last they discovered the place they were
seeking, perhaps the garret or the cellar of some warehouse giving on
one of the canals. Here these two friends, the one a prince of the blood
royal and the other the bastard of a courtezan, each of them men of
wealth and might, without victuals and without drink, lay huddled up in
a frowsy corner, expecting each moment would be their last, until once
more the shades of night fell on the town.
Then slinking forth, not without trepidation, Châtillon in the garb of a
clerk, Flotte disguised in some other fashion, each of them presently
made good his escape, and found an interval of breathing time, the first
at Courtrai, the second at Lille, during which to recruit themselves for
the great contest so soon to follow.
Truly the fourteenth century was a century of noise and adventure, and
yet somehow or other in those days, so we are told, men had no nerves.