The stroke took the town by surprise; and was for a moment successful.

Meantime, they depended upon assistance from Brussels.

The royal and ecclesiastical party was, however, not so easily defeated, and an old soldier, named Bourgeois, loudly denounced Captain Ambrose, the general of the revolutionary movement, as a vile coward, and affirmed that with thirty good men-at-arms he would undertake to pound the whole rebel army to powder-- "a pack of scarecrows," he said, "who were not worth as many owls for military purposes." Three days after the imprisonment of the magistracy, a strong Catholic rally was made in their behalf in the Fishmarket, the ubiquitous Prior of Saint Vaast flitting about among the Malcontents, blithe and busy as usual when storms were brewing.

Matthew Doucet, of the revolutionary faction--a man both martial and pacific in his pursuits, being eminent both as a gingerbread baker and a swordplayer--swore he would have the little monk's life if he had to take him from the very horns of the altar; but the Prior had braved sharper threats than these.

Moreover, the grand altar would have been the last place to look fox him on that occasion.