In Our Green City, Legend's Lovers only !

Under the already overwhelming heat, three ironmongers were travelling towards Beaumont one morning in August 1549. They intended to take advantage of the duty-free fair to trade their know-how and to re-coat some frying pans, pots and basins.

But they were not good tempered, these Auvergnats. Grumbling about their gears which were so heavy that one would believe Belzébuth was inside them, they carried them on their bruised shoulders from their village of Salers across the undulating countryside of Artois and Hainaut. 

Cursing that sloping road with steep paths, which resembled their mountains in Auvergne too much, they were also cursing the beer which changed the evening parties into painful mornings. 

It was too much, Beaumont and its duty-free fair could wait. For sure, the gilded eagle on top of its pole made of oak would already be put up on the main square to mark the beginning of the festivities. It was necessary for them to have a rest. 

Not hurried at all, they  uncorked another bottle of that odd Flemish lambic beer or that pale barley beer with hop perfume. However, they were already catching sight of the silver mouth standards floating above the city ramparts. 

Two or three more miles and suffering would be over. They were clinking glasses when a rider passed them. He had great presence. Undoubtedly, his pace and clothes disclosed that he had to be a bourgeois who was attracted  by the fair as they were too.  

“Oh, my great lord! Will you feel pity for three miserable sweating hawkers with lots of blisters on their feet?”

In front of the three men slumped to the ground with a bottle in their hands, the rider could not help laughing.

“Hey you, kinglet, whether you like it or not, you will be capable of helping us!” 

As quick as lightning, they pounced on him, seized the bridle of his horse and the unfortunate rider fell down and rolled in the dust. Being threatened by a blade, the rider had to withstand  a hot full of rags and tools, the horse being loaded with the remaining material. 

 “Move forward, coxcomb ! This evening in Beaumont, you are invited in a local inn”,  the three men burst out laughing at the sight of their obedient victim. 

The quartet was in sight of Beaumont. When they reached the Saulchoy gate, everything changed. 

The man stood up straight, threw  its burden by the feet of the three crooks and hailed the Bourgeois militia:  

“Captain, help! help!  Capture these good-for-nothings. They committed towards me the crime of lese-majesty. Tie them up and bring them to the Provost in order that he should dispense justice !” 

The three men showed a fixed attitude. They had just manhandled his Majesty Charles V in person! Our beloved Emperor had come to visit the Northern Provinces to introduce his son Philippe son as his successor. 

The halberdiers rushed onto the hawkers who were immediately tied up as the sausage that they had started eating not long before. The twelve strokes of noon sounded in the bell-tower. 

While the Duke of Croÿ was convening the Mayor and the seven jurymen, the Provost, the Lieutenant-provost, the news of the arrest spread throughout the city like wildfire and everyone gathered on the market place to attend the judgement of the Great Bailiff of Hainaut.  

Craftsmen and bourgeois, priests and beguines, the Oaths of the cunners of the Martyr of Saint-Lawrence, Crossbowmen of Saint-Georges, Archers of Saint-Sebastian, noblemen and yokel of the region and also all the imperial retinue, all gathered on the main square. 

Attached to the yoke of the green bench, under the cross of justice, the Auvergnats heard the irrevocable sentence  pronounced by the Provost :

"For having committed this odious crime of lese-majesty towards our beloved sovereign, Emperor of Germany, Prince of the Netherlands and King of Spain, these Auvergnats, villains, scoundrels, rabbles, rogues and servants of this rabble, King of France, will be hanged.” 

“Their bodies will be thrown to the ravens and dogs when they have finished rotting away near the gibbet." 

Under the cheering crowd, the three sergeants of the provostship hurried up to drag the unfortunate Auvergnats towards the gallows. 

The one o’clock stroke sounded in the bell-tower. On top of his ladder, before rocking into empty space, one of them pronounced this dreadful phrase:  

"Town of Beaumont,

Town of misfortune,

Arrived at noon,

Will be hanged soon."

TRANSLATION : JM SNAUWAERT