Captain Ambrose, they rose against the city magistracy, whose sentiments
were unequivocally for Parma, and thrust them all into prison. They then
constituted a new board of fifteen, some Catholics and some Protestants,
but all patriots, of whom Gosson was chief. The stroke took the town by
surprise; and was for a moment successful. Meantime, they depended upon
assistance from Brussels. The royal and ecclesiastical party was,
however, not so easily defeated, and an old soldier, named Bourgeois,
loudly denounced Captain Ambrose, the general of the revolutionary
movement, as a vile coward, and affirmed that with thirty good
men-at-arms he would undertake to pound the whole rebel army to powder--"
a pack of scarecrows," he said, "who were not worth as many owls for
military purposes."

Three days after the imprisonment of the magistracy, a strong Catholic
rally was made in their behalf in the Fishmarket, the ubiquitous Prior of
Saint Vaast flitting about among the Malcontents, blithe and busy as
usual when storms were brewing. Matthew Doucet, of the revolutionary
faction--a man both martial and pacific in his pursuits, being eminent
both as a gingerbread baker and a swordplayer--swore he would have the
little monk's life if he had to take him from the very horns of the
altar; but the Prior had braved sharper threats than these. Moreover, the
grand altar would have been the last place to look fox him on that
occasion. While Gosson was making a tremendous speech in favor of
conscience and fatherland at the Hotel de Ville, practical John Sarrasin,
purse in hand, had challenged the rebel general, Ambrose to private
combat. In half an hour, that warrior was routed, and fled from the field
at the head of his scarecrows, for there was no resisting the power
before which the Montignys and the La Mottes had succumbed. Eloquent
Gosson was left to his fate. Having the Catholic magistracy in durance,
and with nobody to guard them, he felt, as was well observed by an
ill-natured contemporary, like a man holding a wolf by the ears, equally
afraid to let go or to retain his grasp.

His dilemma was soon terminated. While he was deliberating with his
colleagues--Mordacq, an old campaigner, Crugeot, Bertoul, and
others--whether to stand or, fly, the drums and trumpets of the advancing
royalists were heard. In another instant the Hotel de Ville was swarming
with men-at-arms, headed by Bourgeois, the veteran who had expressed so
alighting an