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In Dinant this feeling was high, and there was, moreover, a manifestation of special animosity against the Count of Charolais. A rabble marched out of the city to the walls of Bouvignes, a town of Namur, loyal to Burgundy, carrying a stuffed figure with a cow-bell round its neck. Certain well-known emblems of Burgundy on a tattered mantle showed that this represented Charles of Burgundy.
They went so far as to suspend the effigy on a gallows and then riddled it with arrows and left it dangling like a scarecrow in sight of the citizens of Bouvignes.
Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at Liège, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles, because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler). The French called him Henri
The Good Duke's journey to Bouvignes where he witnessed the manner in which his authority was vindicated was his last effort. In the early summer following, on Friday, June 10th, Philip, then at Bruges, was taken ill and died on the following Monday, June 13th, between nine and ten in the evening.
As it happened, Dinant had not been very ready to open hostilities against the House of Burgundy though she was equally critical of Louis of Bourbon in his episcopal misrule. It was undoubtedly her rivalry with Bouvignes of Namur that brought her into the strife.
Certain rich citizens bought their lives with large sums, others were sold as slaves, or were hanged or beheaded, or were thrown into the Meuse. In the monasteries, life was conceded to the inmates but that was all. All their property was confiscated. The Count of St. Pol, now Constable of France, tried to intercede for the citizens with Philip who remained at Bouvignes, but to no result.
Then attended by a small escort only, he proceeded to Bouvignes, a splendid vantage point whence he could command a view of the scene of his son's intended operations. As the crisis became imminent there were a few further efforts to effect a reconciliation. When these failed, the town prepared to meet the worst.
We have been firing on everyone who showed himself, or on those thrown out of the houses, men or women. The bodies lie in the streets, in heaps a yard deep." A Saxon officer writes: "My company is at Bouvignes. Our men behave like vandals: everything is upset; the sight of the slaughtered inhabitants defies all description; not a house is left standing.
Cy fust Dinant, "Dinant was," is the sum of his description, four days after the conflagration. On September 1st, Philip, who had remained at Bouvignes while all this passed under the direction of Charles, took boat and sailed down to Namur.
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