The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 29: 1578, part IIIMotley, John Lothrop
History
The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 29: 1578, part III
Motley, John Lothrop
Netherlands -- Church history; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
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 opinion as to the prowess of Captain Ambrose. The tables
were turned, the miniature revolution was at an end, the counter-
revolution effected. Gosson and his confederates escaped out of a back
door, but were soon afterwards arrested. Next morning, Baron Capres, the
great Malcontent seignior, who was stationed with his regiment in the
neighbourhood, and who had long been secretly coquetting with the Prior
and Parma, marched into the city at the head of a strong detachment, and
straightway proceeded to erect a very tall gibbet in front of the Hotel
de Ville. This looked practical in the eyes of the liberated and
reinstated magistrates, and Gosson, Crugeot, and the rest were summoned
at once before them. The advocate thought, perhaps, with a sigh, that
his judges, so recently his prisoners, might have been the fruit for
another gallowstree, had he planted it when the ground was his own; but
taking heart of grace, he encouraged his colleagues--now his fellow-
culprits. Crugeot, undismayed, made his appearance before the tribunal,
arrayed in a corslet of proof, with a golden hilted sword, a scarf
embroidered with pearls and gold, and a hat bravely plumaged with white,
blue, and, orange feathers--the colors of William the Silent--of all
which finery he was stripped, however, as soon as he entered the court.
The process was rapid. A summons from Brussels was expected every hour
from the general government, ordering the cases to be brought before the
federal tribunal; and as the Walloon provinces were not yet ready for
open revolt, the order would be an inconvenient one. Hence the necessity
for haste. The superior court of Artois, to which an appeal from the
magistrates lay, immediately held a session in another chamber of the
Hotel de Ville while the lower court was trying the prisoners, and
Bertoul, Crugeot, Mordacq, with several others, were condemned in a few
hours to the gibbet. They were invited to appeal, if they chose, to the
council of Artois, but hearing that the court was sitting next door, so
that there was no chance of a rescue in the streets, they declared
themselves satisfied with the sentence. Gosson had not been tried, his
case being reserved for the morrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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