is death. "He told us," said Comines, "that
he would sooner throw the old man head-foremost down a well and jump in
himself afterwards. His father had been Duke forty-four years, and it was
time for him to retire." Adolphus being thus intractable, had been kept
in prison till after the death of Charles the Bold. To the memorable
insurrection of Ghent, in the time of the Lady Mary, he owed his liberty.
The insurgent citizens took him from prison, and caused him to lead them
in their foray against Tournay. Beneath the walls of that city he was
slain, and buried under its cathedral. And now as if his offence had not
been sufficiently atoned for by the loss of his ancestral honors, his
captivity, and his death, the earth, after the lapse of nearly a century,
had cast him forth from her bosom. There, once more beneath the sunlight,
amid a ribald crew of a later generation which had still preserved the
memory of his sin, lay the body of the more than parricide, whom
"excellent spices" had thus preserved from corruption, only to be the
mark of scorn and demoniac laughter.
A large assemblage of rioters, growing in numbers as they advanced, swept
over the province of Tournay, after accomplishing the sack of the city
churches. Armed with halberds, hammers, and pitchforks, they carried on
the war, day after day, against the images. At the convent of
Marchiennes, considered by contemporaries the most beautiful abbey in all
the Netherlands, they halted to sing the ten commandments in Marot's
verse. Hardly had the vast chorus finished the precept against graven
images;
Taiiler ne to feras imaige
De quelque chose que ce soit,
Sy bonneur luy fail on hommaige,
Bon Dieu jalousie en recoit,
when the whole mob seemed seized with sudden madness. Without waiting to
complete the Psalm, they fastened upon the company of marble martyrs, as
if they had possessed sensibility to feel the blows inflicted. In an hour
they had laid the whole in ruins.
Having accomplished this deed, they swept on towards Anchin. Here,
however, they were confronted by the Seigneur de la Tour, who, at the
head of a small company of peasants, attacked the marauders and gained a
complete victory. Five or six hundred of them were slain, others were
drowned in the river and adjacent swamps, the rest were dispersed. It was
thus proved that a little more spirit upon the part of the orderly
portion of the inhabitants, might have
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