Three days afterwards, on April 16, 1477, ambassadors arrived at Bruges from the Emperor Frederick III. to demand for his son Maximilian the hand of the girl Duchess. Louis of Gruthuise and Philip of Hornes received them solemnly with lighted torches and led them to the Princenhof. 'I understand,' was Marie's reply, 'that my father approved this match, and as for me I desire no other.' The proposed marriage was no less pleasing to the Flemish people, for though Maximilian was so short of funds that Flanders was obliged to defray his travelling expenses, 'he brought to the communes menaced by France the august support of imperial blood and the contested traditions of the suzerainty of the Germanic Cæsars.'[37] Three days later the Duke of Bavaria solemnly plighted his troth to the Duchess Marie in the name of Maximilian. The reader will call to mind how one summer's morning, at daybreak, Longfellow from the summit of the Belfry witnessed this quaint betrothal, along with many other scenes in the history of Bruges. 'I beheld proud Maximilian Kneeling humbly on the ground; I beheld the gentle Marie Hunting with her hawk and hound; And her lighted bridal chamber Where a duke slept with the queen, And the armed guard around them And the sword unsheathed between.' The poet's account of the proceedings is not quite accurate. There was no question of sleeping. The Duchess of Burgundy and the Duke of Bavaria placed themselves on the nuptial couch for an instant only, and, moreover, Marie was never a queen. She died before her husband was elected King of the Romans. Four months after the betrothal, at eleven o'clock on the night of August 18 (1477), the youthful bridegroom--he was only eighteen years of age--reached Ghent, and at once waited on Marie at the Hôtel de Ten Walle, where a sumptuous banquet had been prepared for him. When he met his _fiancée_, note the Flemish chroniclers of the day, both she and he bowed down to the ground, and they each turned deathly pale. Sign of their cordial love said some, presage of coming woe croaked others. Next day the marriage was celebrated very quietly (August 19, 1477) in the chapel of the Hôtel de Ten Walle, at six o'clock in the morning, in the presence of Louis of Gruthuise and Jean of Dadizeele, of whom later on. The same day Maximilian swore to respect the liberties of Ghent, and shortly afterwards he took a similar oath at Bruges, where the burghers had adorned their streets in his honour with bunting and greenery and flowers, and had everywhere traced this one device, significant alike of present misery and the expectation of brighter days: _Gloriosissime Princeps defende nos ne pereamus_. Alas! their hopes were doomed to disappointment. It could hardly have been otherwise. With such a feeble pilot at the helm a prosperous voyage was out of the question.