the broken altar, had hitherto kept silence, cried, “Since so it is, let answer be made to the king that we be come hither to fight him, and not to deliver up to him our fellow-citizens;” and the Flemish envoys withdrew.  Still Philip did not give up negotiating, for the purpose of gaining time and of letting the edge wear off the Flemings’ confidence.  He returned to Paris, fetched Guy de Dampierre from the tower of the Louvre, and charged him to go and negotiate peace under a promise of returning to his prison if he were unsuccessful.  Guy, respected as he was throughout Flanders on account of his age and his long misfortunes, failed in his attempt, and, faithful to his word, went back and submitted himself to the power of Philip.  “I am so old,” said he to his friends, “that I am ready to die whensoever it shall please God.”  And he did die, on the 7th of March, 1304, in the prison of Compiegne, to which he had been transferred.  Philip, all the while pushing forward his preparations for war, continued to make protestation of pacific intentions.  The Flemish communes desired the peace necessary for the prosperity of their commerce; but patriotic anxieties wrestled with material interests.  A burgher of Ghent was quietly fishing on the banks of the Scheldt, when an old man acosted him, saying sharply, “Knowest thou not, then, that the king is assembling all his armies?  It is time the Ghentese shook off their sloth; the lion of Flanders must no longer slumber.”  In the spring of 1304, the cry of war resounded everywhere.  Philip had laid an impost extraordinary upon all real property in his kingdom; regulars and reserves had been summoned to Arras, to attack the Flemings by land and sea.  He had taken into his pay a Genoese fleet commanded by Regnier de Grimaldi, a celebrated Italian admiral; and it arrived in the North Sea, and blockaded Zierikzee, a maritime town of Zealand.  On the 10th of August, 1304, the Flemish fleet which was defending the place was beaten and dispersed.  Philip hoped for a moment that this reverse would discourage the Flemings; but it was not so at all.  A great battle took place on the 17th of August between the two land armies at Mons-en-Puelle (or, Mont-en-Pevele, according to the true local spelling), near Lille; the action was for some time indecisive, and even after it was over both sides hesitated about claiming the victory; but when the Flemings saw their camp swept off and rifled, and when they no longer found in it, say the chroniclers, “their fine stuffs of Bruges and Ypres, their wines of Rochelle, their beers of Cambrai, and their cheeses of Bethune,” they declared that they would return to their hearths; and their leaders, unable to restrain them, were obliged to shut themselves up in Lille, whither Philip, who had himself retired at first to Arras, came to besiege them.  When the first days of downheartedness were over, and at sight of the danger which threatened Lille and the remains of the Flemish army assembled