In face of evils such as these, and with the entire population clamouring for peace at any price, what could a handful of burghers do, however brave and resolute? There was but one course open to them, and early in February (1438) Bruges threw herself on the Duke's mercy; but Philippe was deaf to the prayers of her representatives, prostrate and trembling before him, nor was it until Isabelle of Portugal had thrown herself at his feet that he at length vouchsafed to hear them, and even then the declaration which he made on March 4, 1438, breathed a spirit of cynicism, in which generosity had no part. He was mighty enough, he said, to destroy the town of Bruges _et le mettre à toute misère et povreté_, but, at the same time, it did not suit his convenience to utterly crush the chief purveyor of food stuffs in his domains. For the rest, the conditions which Philippe exacted were sufficiently burthensome. Bare-headed and bare-footed the burgomaster, sheriffs and other officials must meet him a league from the city upon the next occasion he should come there, and after having sued on their knees for mercy, and made him an offering of their persons and their goods, present to him the keys of the city, which he should be free to keep or return according to his good pleasure. All this, though sufficiently galling to the burghers, inflicted on them no real or, at all events, no material injury, but the remaining conditions threatened alike their pride, their persons and their pockets--a fine of two hundred thousand golden Philippes (afterwards reduced to thirty thousand), the re-establishment of the hated _Kalfvel_ of 1407, and forty-two noble citizens, whom Philippe mentioned by name, excluded from the general amnesty which, if these terms were accepted, he professed himself ready to accord. Needless to say that Bruges acquiesced, and soon the headsman was plying his bloody trade in the market-place. Note amongst those who were condemned to death the chivalrous burgomaster, Louis van de Walle, who had saved the Duke's life at the risk of his own, during the riot of 1437, and likewise his wife and his son. Philippe showed his gratitude by commuting the death sentences of the two former to one of life-long imprisonment in Winendael Castle. But the son was executed before his parents' eyes, and Louis himself, ere he was reprieved, was put to torture. Did he wish that he had let the guildsmen have their way on that memorable occasion before the Bouverie gate? The standard-bearer of Oostcamp was another of Philippe's victims. His bloody head, adorned with that wreath of roses which Bruges had awarded to his commune for having been the first to come to her assistance when Philippe was plotting against her in 1436, was impaled on an iron spike, and set up on the parapets of the Halles.