One of the predecessors of this proud citizen, Jean Bernier, gave a banquet in 1333 to all the allies of the Comte de Flanders, which is celebrated by the chroniclers as the grandest ever seen in Flanders. There 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.