Thomas Bassenge, brother of Nicolas, was at this time a member of the Municipal Council of Liége; and in February, 1793, he persuaded the magistrates to celebrate the revolution by destroying the Cathedral of St. Lambert, which stood near the Episcopal Palace of Érard de la Marck. The front of this church, the finest ecclesiastical building in the Principality, was a mass of elaborate carving. Statues of angels and archangels, of patriarchs and prophets, of martyrs and of saints, rose one above the other, and over them innumerable pinnacles were interlaced by a maze of slender arches, crossing each other with tracery so delicate as almost to resemble lace. Beneath this profusion of stonework the great doorway was adorned with marble statues of the benefactors of the church from the chisel of Lambert Zoutman, a sculptor of Liége; and in the interior of the building, with its marble columns and windows of old stained glass, were many paintings, the tombs of the Bishops, rich tapestries, a jewelled bust of Lambert, and many objects of value, amongst which were two golden statues sent by Charles the Bold to the shrine of the patron saint, as an act of expiation after he had destroyed the town. This building, which had survived the great disaster of the fifteenth century, was now completely wrecked. The statues and the monuments were cast down. The mausoleum of Érard de la Marck was sold and broken up. The graves were opened, the bones thrown out, and the lead of the coffins used for bullets. The clocks were sent up the Meuse in barges to France, and there turned into copper money. Everything valuable was removed, and soon nothing remained but the bare walls, which in a few years crumbled into ruins. Thus the long line of the Bishop-Princes of Liége, and the place in which for centuries they had been inaugurated, fell together. CHAPTER XXVI LIÉGE AND THE VALLEY OF THE MEUSE IN MODERN TIMES--BOUILLON The territory which the Bishops had governed was now merged in four of the nine departments into which the National Convention divided the annexed Austrian Netherlands. The department of 'Forêts,' with Luxembourg for its capital, included the Ardennes. The western portion of the old diocese was sunk in 'Sambre et Meuse,' of which Namur was the chief town. 'Ourthe' was the name given to the district in which Liége was situated. To the east lay the department of 'Meuse Inférieure,' with Maestricht for its capital. Thus the old boundaries of the Principality were entirely obliterated. The Convention conferred the rights of French citizens on the people of these districts, and commissioners were sent from Paris to divide the country into cantons, and establish a new system of local administration on the French model.