1562, Faveau and Mallart were accordingly taken from their jail and carried to the market-place, where arrangements had been made for burning them.  Simon Faveau, as the executioner was binding him to the stake, uttered the invocation, “O!  Eternal Father!” A woman in the crowd, at the same instant, took off her shoe and threw it at the funeral pile.  This was a preconcerted signal.  A movement was at once visible in the crowd.  Men in great numbers dashed upon the barriers which had been erected in the square around the place of execution.  Some seized the fagots, which had been already lighted, and scattered them in every direction; some tore up the pavements; others broke in pieces the barriers.  The executioners were prevented from carrying out the sentence, but the guard were enabled, with great celerity and determination, to bring off the culprits and to place them in their dungeon again.  The authorities were in doubt and dismay.  The inquisitors were for putting the ministers to death in prison, and hurling their heads upon the street.  Evening approached while the officials were still pondering.  The people who had been chanting the Psalms of David through the town, without having decided what should be their course of action, at last determined to rescue the victims.  A vast throng, after much hesitation, accordingly directed their steps to the prison.  “You should have seen this vile populace,” says an eye-witness, “moving, pausing, recoiling, sweeping forward, swaying to and fro like the waves of the sea when it is agitated by contending winds.”  The attack was vigorous, the defence was weak—­for the authorities had expected no such fierce demonstration, notwithstanding the menacing language which had been so often uttered.  The prisoners were rescued, and succeeded in making their escape from the city.  The day in which the execution had been thus prevented was called, thenceforward, the “day of the ill-burned,” (Journee des mau-brulez).  One of the ministers, however, Simon Faveau, not discouraged by this near approach to martyrdom, persisted in his heretical labors, and was a few years afterwards again apprehended.  “He was then,” says the chronicler, cheerfully, “burned well and finally” in the same place whence he had formerly been rescued. [Valenciennes Ms.]

This desperate resistance to tyranny was for a moment successful, because, notwithstanding the murmurs and menaces by which the storm had been preceded, the authorities had not believed the people capable of proceeding to such lengths.  Had not the heretics—­in the words of Inquisitor Titelmann—­allowed themselves, year after year, to be taken and slaughtered like lambs?  The consternation of the magistrates was soon succeeded by anger.  The government at Brussels was in a frenzy of rage when informed of the occurrence.  A bloody vengeance was instantly prepared, to vindicate the insult to the inquisition.  On the 29th of April, detachments of Bossu’s and of Berghen’s “band of ordonnance”