To every honest burgher submission meant sorrow and bitterness of heart, but with their town in the hands of foreign mercenaries, Ghent bound hand and foot with golden fetters, sycophants and traitors in their own camp, they could but lie low and wait, and they waited for four years, and then their hour of triumph came.
It was the fall of the year 1411. The strife between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs was at its height. John was encamped in the plain of Montdidier waiting for Orléans to give battle. With him was an army of Flemings recruited from all the towns in the county. Their services, for a limited period, had been purchased by means of concessions—according to one account at the cost of a commercial union with England consecrated by an acknowledgment of the suzerainty of Henry IV. Each city was to fight under its own banner and be commanded by its own elected chiefs; on these conditions only had the burghers consented to leave their homes, and so eager was John for their services that he had made no protest even in the case of the Bruges men who had chosen Lieven van Schotclaere the burgomaster, whom he himself had deposed in 1407.
Presently the allotted term expired, the French had made no sign, and John could only prevail on the burghers to remain with him one week more by granting them fresh favours ‘on account of the good, agreeable and notable services which they have rendered us, do render us, and will, we hope, continue to render us.’ But when the week had passed and still Orléans tarried, neither prayers nor promises could induce them to further prolong their soldiering. At daybreak a mighty roar went up from the Flemish camp—Go go, wapens wapers, te Vlaendren waert, and they went. John rode out to confront them, and, with his hat off and his hands clasped, very humbly begged them to remain only four days longer; they were his brothers, he said, his comrades, the dearest friends he had; he was ready to renounce in their favour all the taxes of Flanders. But they were deaf to all his prayers; their only answer was to show the letter which limited the duration of the expedition, and to point to the ducal seal with which it was stamped.
Perceiving that it was useless to insist further, John the Fearless accompanied the Flemings as far as Péronne, where, having thanked them for their services and commissioned the Duke of Brabant to conduct them to the frontier, he bade them farewell, and almost alone set out for Paris. Thus ended the famous expedition to Montdidier, and thus did Bruges obtain her first instalment of vengeance. She had wrung from John undoubted favours, refused the only boon he asked, and received from him into the bargain a sufficiently humble acknowledgment for the ‘good, agreeable and notable services which she had daily rendered,’ but the hated Kalfvel was still in force; she was still governed by the creatures of the man who had wronged her, and of both the one and the other she was determined to be rid.
On the evening of the 6th of October, 1411, the Bruges men with Schotclaere at their head, and accompanied by the soldiery of eleven other towns, reached the great plain of Ten Belle, three leagues from home. Here they encamped for the night, here too they took counsel together, and next morning when Baldwin de Voss came out to greet them and to learn the hour of their arrival at Bruges, they replied that the Kalfvel must first be cancelled, and all grievances redressed. Whereupon the wily burgomaster with much plausible speech essayed negotiation. He would make known their wishes to the Duke, who would doubtless give favourable ear to them, but meanwhile they must lay down their arms and return peaceably to their homes. Sils ne veulent perdre, he added, la bonne grâce de mon dit seigneur, en lequelle ils estoient sur tous autres qui l’avoient suivi de son pays de Flandres.
These specious words deceived no man, and De Voss tried again. There were three points which it was beyond his power to concede. The Duke alone could repeal the gabelle, and the edicts anent confiscation, and the use of guild banners; for the rest, he was prepared to do all they wanted, but the burghers were adamant; they would never disarm, they averred, until they had obtained full satisfaction. At last, after much parleying, messengers were dispatched to the Duke, who by the advice of his Council conceded every point. The obnoxious taxes were repealed, the Kalfvel was torn up, and the officers appointed in 1407 were thrust out of the city. Thus after four years’ servitude Bruges was once more free.
The causes of the enmity between John the Fearless and his cousin Philippe of Orléans are intricate and multiple and do not come within the scope of this book, nor would the tragedy in which it culminated be here alluded to were it not that some of the chief actors were either Bruges men, or intimately connected with Bruges, notably John Gerson, the famous theologian of the Council of Pisa, and perhaps the most brilliant scholar of his day. The following are the main outlines of the story. Towards the fall of the year 1407 the Duke of Burgundy set out for Paris, determined to rid himself forever of his powerful enemy and rival the Duke of Orléans. When, however, he reached the French capital, to the surprise of all men, for all men were well aware of his morose and sullen temper, he gave favourable ear to the words of King Charles, consented to a reconciliation, had an interview with Orléans at his house, the Château de Beauté, and on the following Sunday (November 20), by way of sealing their friendship, received Holy Communion with him at the Chapel of the Augustinian Friars.
Three days after, when Orléans was at the Queen’s palace, a messenger arrived from the King to summon him to his presence. Attended by two esquires and four or five lackeys bearing torches, for the night was dark, he mounted his mule and set out for the royal abode.
Hardly had the little cavalcade left the palace gates when a band of armed men sprang out at them, crying, ‘Death, death!’ ‘Hold,’ shouted the prince, ‘je suis le Duc d’Orléans.’ ‘C’est ce que nous voulons’, was the reply, and they slashed him to death with their axes.
At that moment a tall man, with his face concealed by a red slouch hat turned down over his eyes, rushed out from Burgundy’s house and cut off the dead Duke’s hand, and with a club smashed in his skull.