Presently (January 24, 1488) the deputies returned from Ghent with news that they had failed in the object of their mission. Maximilian, who received them in the hall of his palace, was bitterly disappointed, and though at his urgent request the burghers promised to try again, from that moment he again resumed his machinations against them, and mistrust and suspicion and evil foreboding were once more rife in the city. That very night his conduct at a banquet given in his honour at the Hôtel de Richebourg by the widow of Martin Lem (burgomaster in the time of Charles the Terrible) was not a little disquieting. He had suddenly left the table to make a tour of the ramparts, carefully examining the number of guards at the gates, distributing money amongst them, and so forth. On January 27 he left the city, ostensibly for the purpose of hawking, but no one believed that sport alone was his object. So too on the 28th, and on the 31st he received two pieces of news:—Philip of Hornes was close to Bruges, and the second deputation to Ghent had been as unsuccessful as the first.
The die was cast. Maximilian drew up his German guard in the courtyard of the palace and sent messengers to Hornes to enter the town at once by the Porte des Maréchaux. The same evening, accompanied by Burgomaster Van Nieuwenhove, one of his creatures, and a small band of attendants, to this gate he came, and demanded that it should be opened; but the gatekeepers, who suspected foul play, flatly refused. No power on earth, they said, should make them open their gates. There was no time to waste in parleying, the main object being to quietly admit Hornes and his reinforcements; but the burghers were aware of what was doing, and the Regent hastened with like result to the Porte de Gand and the Porte Ste. Croix. More fortunate at the Porte Ste. Catherine, by this exit he went forth—may be its guardians believed he was bent on some further excursion—dispatched messengers to Hornes to bid him enter at this spot and not to attempt to do so by the Porte des Maréchaux, once more returned to the city and endeavoured by force to keep the way open for him. But the guardians, crying ‘Treason, treason,’ had meanwhile aroused the neighbours, and before Hornes could effect an entry they had lowered the portcullis. Whereupon Maximilian fled to the Princenhof and
summoning Écoutète Peter Lanchals bade him take measures to obtain possession of the city gates. It was too late. What had occurred at the Porte Ste. Catherine was now known throughout Bruges, and all the gates were strongly guarded by armed guildsmen. Almost in despair, the Regent gave orders to fire the town, hoping that in the confusion Hornes would somehow or other be able to effect an entrance—vain hope; the fires were no sooner kindled than extinguished. Maximilian, however, was not yet at the end of his tether. The Porte de Gand had been entrusted to Mathew Denys, Dean of Carpenters, who was said to be favourably disposed towards him. Again he sallied forth with a handful of faithful Germans, and again he was disappointed. With rude speech and violent gestures Mathew disdained his addresses. ‘Deliver your dean into my hands,’ cried Maximilian, furious at his refusal, ‘and I will load you with benefits.’ This, to the soldiers under Mathew’s command. ‘While there is a drop of blood in our veins,’ was the reply, ‘we will never abandon him.’ ‘Then at least let me leave the town,’ cried Maximilian, but neither would they grant this request; they felt sure he would be off to Damme to summon the little garrison there to join the army of Hornes.
Whereupon council of war, and assembly in the Place du bourg of all the Duke’s forces, strenuous exertions on the part of Peter Lanchals to rouse the burghers of his party to rally round Maximilian, much reluctance on their part to do so, great curiosity on the part of the multitude to learn what was going on, and no little anxiety on the part of the Germans to maintain order. Stact! Stact! they shouted, making a hedge with their halberds as the crowd pressed them closer and closer, which, in plain English, means ‘keep back,’ but in the excitement and turmoil of the moment, the people thought the soldiers cried slact, slact, that is ‘strike, strike,’ and fled helter-skelter, cry-out as they went that the Germans were going to slay them. Whereat panic unspeakable, and whilst the tocsin shrieks over the city, a host of armed guildsmen file into the market-place, bringing with them forty-nine cannons and fifty-two standards; and a crowd of trembling priests secrete in the crypt of St. Donatian’s, in the secret chambers in the thickness of the walls, in the vast grenier above the vaults, in holes and crannies, wherever they can, their relics and their art treasures, and frantically call on clerk and sacrist to save them from the Germans; messengers are sent off in hot haste to summon help from Ypres and Ghent; Maximilian, trembling for his life, withdraws to his palace, but not by way of the market-place; the whole town thrills with excitement and a burning desire for vengeance, increased tenfold when news comes of the arrest of the incendiaries, two Moors in the service of Count van Zollern. Not a burgher but was convinced that Bruges had escaped disaster by the skin of her teeth.
Meanwhile Lanchals’s house had been searched; it was found to be full of weapons, but Lanchals himself was not there—fresh proof of his nefarious designs—and in the market-place a reward of fifty livres de gros was publicly offered for his arrest.
Though the patriots Van Keyt and Van Bassevelde had been dead three years, their skulls were still impaled above the Halles—one on each of the turrets which flank its façade. To suffer them to remain there, now that the city was in their power, were an insult to the dead, and the burghers determined to remove them, were actually engaged in doing so, when suddenly the Regent’s ministers appeared on the scene, conciliatory, quaking. He was ready, they said, to pardon the people’s sedition. ‘Pardon us!’ roared a thousand throats, and a thousand fingers pointed to the ghastly relics of Maximilian’s vengeance. ‘Pardon us! The miscreant who offers us pardon is ten times more guilty than we.’