His messenger failed to return from the market-place.  His master became impatient and followed him to the scene of action with a small escort.  As they drew near, the crowd thickened and hedged them in.  The nobles became alarmed and urged the duke to return, but cries from the crowd promised safety to his person.  To the steps of the Hotel de Ville rode the duke, his face dark, menacing with suppressed wrath.[5]

As he dismounted, he turned towards a man whom he thought he saw egging on a disturbance and struck him with his riding whip, saying, “I know you.”  The man was quick enough to realise the value of the duke’s violence at that moment and cried, “Strike again,” but the Seigneur Groothuse, who had already tried to check Charles’s anger and to curb the popular turbulence, exclaimed, “For the love of God do not strike again!” The wiser burgher at once understood the unstable temper of the mob, which had been fairly civil to the duke up to this moment.  There were ugly murmurs to be heard that the blow would cost him dear.

“Indeed,” says the courtly Chastellain, “the mischief was so imminent that God alone averted it, and there was not an archer or noble or man so full of assurance that he did not tremble with fear, nor one who would not have preferred to be in India for his own safety.  Especially were they in terror for their young prince, who, they thought, was exposed to a dolorous death.”

It was Groothuse alone who averted disaster: 

“Do you not see that your life and ours hang on a silken thread?  Do you think you can coerce a rabble like this by threats and hard words—­a rabble who at this moment do not value you more than the least of us?  They are beside themselves, they have neither reason nor understanding.[6]...  If you are ready to die, I am not, except in spite of myself.  You must try quite a different method—­appease them by sweetness and save your house and your life.

“What could you do alone?  How the gods would laugh!  Your courage is out of place here unless it enables you to calm yourself and give an example to those poor sheep, wretched misled people whom you must soothe.  Go down in God’s name. [They were within the town hall.] Show yourself and you will make an impression by your good sense and all will go well.”

To this eminently sound advice the young duke yielded.  He appeared on a balcony or on the upper steps of the town hall and stood ready to harangue his unruly and turbulent subjects.  A moment sufficed to still the turmoil and the silence showed a readiness to hear him speak.