Leatherface: A Tale of Old Flanders

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

Memory--the stern handmaiden of unruly imagination--goes back to that 21st day in October 1572 and recalls the sounds and sights which from early dawn filled the beautiful city with a presage of desolation to come; the church bells' melancholy appeal, the deserted streets, the barred and shuttered houses, the crowds of women and children and old men sitting at prayer in their own halls, the peaceful folk of a prosperous city quietly preparing for death.

At four o'clock in the afternoon the Duke of Alva rides out of the Kasteel with his staff and his bodyguard, which consists of three squadrons of cavalry, one bandera of Spanish infantry--halberdiers and pikemen--and five companies of harquebusiers, The Bandes d'Ordonnance--the local mounted gendarmerie--are on duty in the Vridachmart, and thither the Duke repairs in slow and stately majesty through silent streets, in which every window is shuttered, and where not one idler or gaffer stands to see him pass by. A cruel, ironical smile curls his thin lips beneath the drooping moustache as he notes the deserted aspect of the place.

"Terror," he mutters to himself, "or sulkiness. But they cannot eat their money or their treasures: and there must be a vast deal of it behind those walls!"

On the Vridachmart he halts with his armed escort grouped around him, the Bandes d'Ordonnance lining the market place, his standard unfurled behind him, his drummers in the front. Not a soul out upon the mart--not a head at any of the windows in the houses round! It seems as if Don Frederic Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, Lieutenant-Governor of the Netherlands and Captain-General of the Forces, was about to read a proclamation to a city of the dead.

A prolonged roll of drums commands silence for His Highness--silence which already is absolute--and then the Duke, in his usual loud and peremptory voice, demands the immediate surrender of the Prince of Orange now an outlaw in the town. And suddenly from every house around the huge market comes the answering cry: "Come and take him!" And from every doorway, from every adjoining street men come rushing along--with pikes and halberds and muskets, and from end to end of the town the defiant cry arises: "Come and take him!"

The Bandes d'Ordonnance, hastily summoned by the Duke to keep back the rabble, turn their arms against the Spanish halberdiers. Taking up the cry of "Come and take him!" they go over in a body to the side of the insurgents.

At once the Walloon arquebusiers are ordered to fire. The rebels respond this time with their own battle cry of "Orange and Liberty!" and a death-dealing volley of musketry. Whereupon the mêlée becomes general; the cavalry charges into the now serried ranks of the Orangists who are forced momentarily to retreat. They are pushed back across the mart as far as the cemetery of St. Jakab. Here they unfurl their standard, and their musketeers hold their ground with unshakable valour, firing from behind the low encircling wall with marvellous precision and quickness whilst two bodies of halbertmen and pikemen pour out in numbers from inside the church, and their artillerymen with five culverins and three falconets emerge out of the Guild House of the Tanners which is close by, and take up a position in front of the cemetery.

Alva's troops soon begin to lose their nerve. They were wholly unprepared for attack, and suddenly they feel themselves both outnumbered and hard-pressed. The Duke himself had been unprepared and had appeared upon the Vridachmart with less than two thousand men, whilst the other companies stationed in different portions of the city had not even been warned to hold themselves in readiness.

And just when the Spanish cavalry upon the Market Square is beginning to give ground the cry of "Sauve qui peut" is raised somewhere in the distance.

The Spanish and Walloon soldiery quartered in the various guild-houses, the open markets or private homesteads were just as unprepared for attack as was the garrison of the Kasteel. They had been promised that as soon as the evening Angelus had ceased to ring they could run wild throughout the city, loot and pillage as much as they desired, and that until that hour they could do no better than fill their heads with ale so as to be ready for the glorious sacking and destruction of the richest town in the Netherlands. Therefore, a goodly number of them--fresh from Mechlin--have spent the afternoon in recalling some of the pleasurable adventures there--the trophies gained, the treasure, the money, the jewels all lying ready to their hand. Others have listened open-mouthed and agape, longing to get to work on the rich city and its wealthy burghers, and all have imbibed a great quantity of very heady ale which has fuddled their brain and made them more and more drowsy as the afternoon wears on. Their captains too have spent most of the day in the taverns, drinking and playing hazard in anticipation of loot, and thus the men are not at the moment in touch with their commanders or with their comrades, and all have laid aside their arms.