administration, just as a thorough union of the Walloon provinces in
favor of the royal government had nearly been formed, these Orangists of
Arras risked a daring stroke. Inflamed by the harangues of Gosson, and
supported by five hundred foot soldiers and fifty troopers under one
Captain Ambrose, they rose against the city magistracy, whose sentiments
were unequivocally for Parma, and thrust them all into prison. They then
constituted a new board of fifteen, some Catholics and some Protestants,
but all patriots, of whom Gosson was chief. 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. While Gosson was making a tremendous speech in favor of
conscience and fatherland at the Hotel de Ville, practical John Sarrasin,
purse in hand, had challenged the rebel general, Ambrose to private
combat. In half an hour, that warrior was routed, and fled from the