re were sixty-nine guests, including the kings of Bohemia and of
Navarre, and six tables 'so sumptuous with gold and silver plate, that
the like had never been seen.'

In 1473 a chapter was held at Valenciennes of the Golden Fleece. In 1540
the city entertained Charles V., the Dauphin, and the Duc d'Orleans. In
1549 a society called 'the principality of pleasure' gave a festival to
562 guests in the woolstaplers' hall. Each guest was equipped with two
flagons of silver, one for wine and the other for beer, and 1,700 pieces
of silver and gold plate furnished forth the table, of which the
chronicler observes, to the undying glory of the city, that 'all these
vessels of silver and gold belonged to dwellers at Valenciennes; and
also that _not one piece was lost_!'

The glory passed away from Valenciennes with the religious wars. The
place became a headquarters of Protestantism, and the Most Catholic King
sent his armies to deal with it. The Spaniards took Valenciennes and
long held it. In 1656, under Conde, they beat off the French under
Turenne, and it was only in 1677 that Louis XIV. finally captured it,
and turned it over to Vauban to be fortified.

As the town stands much lower than the surrounding country, Vauban
planned his works with an eye to flooding the region, if necessary, by
the waters of the Scheldt. Valenciennes stands at 25.98 metres above the
sea-level. But Anzin, the chief suburb, is at 39 metres, and the hills
beyond at 80 metres above the sea-level.

When the Spaniards got the upper hand fairly in French Flanders,
thousands of the workers in wool emigrated to England, carrying their
industry with them. Many of these emigrants naturally went into the
cloth-making West of England, and to this day I am told by genealogists
Flemish names, translated or curiously transmogrified, are to be found
in Somerset and Devonshire, which attest the extent and value to England
of the exodus. What its real proportions were it is hard now to
estimate. The chroniclers talk of a hundred thousand people going out
from Flanders to England between the defeat of the Armada in 1588 and
the repulse of the French from before Valenciennes in 1656. But the
numbers are obviously conjectural.

What is certain is, that during this period Valenciennes was the centre
of a most interesting spiral movement (to use the phrase of Goethe) in
the history of modern Europe. Coming down later to the contest between
France, under Louis XIV.,