The Bread Riots That Began the Revolt of Ghent (1539)
The Bread Riots That Began the Revolt of Ghent (1539) — a history story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History.
Page 1
Katelijne shoved through the press of bodies with her bread-peel held like a pike, the long ash board taller than she was, and brought the iron edge of it down on the mooring rope in three hard chops. The rope frayed, snapped, and whipped back across the stones. The imperial grain barge, fat with the Emperor's rye, lurched sideways against the quay wall and began to tip. Lievin threw his shoulder into the hull to help it along, roaring at the dockers to stand clear, while Pieter scrambled up onto a bollard and grabbed the tax clerk's tally-book straight out of the man's fumbling hands, flinging it in a wide arc into the Leie. Joos hobbled forward on his cane, shouting at the crowd to pull the sacks down before the bargemen could right the vessel. Twenty sacks slid and burst across the wet cobbles, rye spilling in pale drifts, and gulls dropped screaming out of the grey sky to feast on it before the water had even closed over the drowned book.
Page 2
Ninety metres of spiral stair had left them gasping, but Pieter went up the last stretch like a squirrel, bare feet finding the oak bell-frame's crossbeams, wedging himself between the great bronze skirt of Roeland and the splintered timber cage around it. The clapper hung crooked, jammed against a swollen collar of wood. Below him Lievin braced both boots on the floor planks, fists wrapped twice round the bell rope, hauling until the sinews in his neck stood out like cords. Katelijne wedged her bread-peel under the frame's foot to stop it walking, shouting up through cupped hands. Joos clung to the ladder rung beneath Pieter, steadying the boy's ankle with one mitted hand so he wouldn't drop. Pieter drove his elbow hard into the collar, once, twice — it cracked free. The clapper swung. Roeland spoke, a single shuddering stroke that threw dust, feathers, and three dead jackdaws raining down through the beams onto all of them below.
Page 3
Katelijne rammed her shoulder into the bread cart's side, and Pieter threw his whole skinny weight against the wheel until the thing groaned and crashed over, loaves bursting free and rolling between two thousand trampling feet. Barrels came next, hauled from the tanners' stoop and stacked by rough hands into a wobbling tower taller than any man. Lievin de Zomer swarmed up them, boots scraping, huge arms dragging the black-and-white weavers' banner from under his shirt. Joos van Melle hobbled close on his cane, shouting up for balance, steadying the lowest barrel with his thin body as the stack shuddered. Lievin planted his boots on the topmost rim, higher than the Toreken's lower battlements, and let the banner crack open in the wind. Below, Katelijne scooped rolling loaves into her apron before boots crushed them, tossing them up to grasping hands. Pieter scrambled onto a barrel beside Lievin, screaming the crowd's name back at them, bobbin cap flying loose on its string.
Page 4
Down in the vaulted crypt beneath the Town Hall the air smells of tallow and old dust. The great iron-bound chest, waist-high and black with age, is dragged out from its stone niche by Lievin, who slams his axe-head again and again into the iron bands until they spring loose with a shriek of metal. Pieter scrambles underneath, bracing his bare feet against the stone and hauling with both hands until the loosened Calfvel charter comes free, its parchment stiff as board, and he drops it onto the flagstones with a slap. Katelijne snatches it up and feeds it, strip by strip, into the glowing brazier, the wax seals cracking and snapping free, rolling red across the floor like dropped coins. Joos lunges forward, crying out, his cane clattering down, but Lievin's huge arms close around him from behind, pinning him back against a charter chest. Pieter catches a rolling seal under his heel before it reaches the brazier's edge, grinning despite himself. The firelight jumps on the vault's ribs as another seal pops and skitters into the dark, and somewhere above them boots pound the floorboards of the hall.
Page 5
The great bronze serpentine, long as three men lying end to end, groaned over its wooden rollers toward the drawbridge. Ropes creaked, the winch-crew leaned their whole weight into the capstan bars, and Katelijne thumped her bread-peel against the gun's barrel to guide its crawl. Then the hauling chain snapped with a crack like a musket shot. The gun lurched sideways, rollers scattering, and slewed off the planks into the moat with a wall of brown water that drenched the crowd. A man screamed, pinned beneath the bronze where it had settled in the mud, his leg vanishing under its weight. Lievin threw himself down the bank, boots sliding, and jammed a cart-pole under the barrel. 'Pull him out, now!' he roared, heaving until the muscles of his bare arms stood like cords. Joos van Melle, bent nearly double, scrambled to grab the wounded man's shoulders and drag him clear while Pieter splashed in to steady the pole against Lievin's shove, the water closing cold over his bare ankles.
Page 6
Lievin threw his whole weight onto the sluice winch, forearms bulging as the iron teeth clanked and the gate groaned upward, the Lieve's black water surging through to swallow the meadow path beyond the ramparts. Joos van Melle hobbled along the lock beam, cane rapping, shouting directions nobody needed as a half-scuttled barge was heaved sideways and sent gurgling down to wedge itself across the channel, timbers splintering against the stone piers. Pieter scrambled out along the narrow beam to pry a jammed rope free, boots slipping on wet moss — the beam bucked, and he went over the edge with a shout swallowed by the rushing water. Katelijne was already running, peel swung flat across the current before he surfaced, and when his flailing hand caught the ash wood she hauled, boots dug hard against the stone, dragging him gasping up the bank. He lay coughing water onto the cobbles while the sluice roared on behind them, flooding the fields white under the grey sky.
Page 7
Rain hammered the Kouter into mud as carpenters slammed planks together, raising a scaffold taller than two men stacked, raw wood slick and dark with wet. Soldiers dragged Joos van Melle forward by his bent arms, his cane left behind in the crowd, his fur collar torn half off. Lievin bellowed and lunged against the pike shafts barring him, straining with his whole huge body until three men hauled him back by the shoulders. Pieter screamed and grabbed at a soldier's belt, kicking, before Katelijne wrenched him away by the collar, shielding him against her apron. They forced Joos up the ladder, his spectacles swinging wild on their scarlet ribbon, and the rope dropped over his head. When the trap slammed open the ribbon snapped and the little spectacles fell spinning down through the planks into the churned mud below. Katelijne broke from the crowd, dropped to her knees in the filth, and closed her scarred hand around them, pressing them to her chest as the crowd's roar turned to a long low moan under the freezing rain.
Page 8
The sappers came first, swarming the Keizerpoort's great gate-leaves with hammers, striking the iron hinge-pins loose with ringing blows until each leaf, taller than three men stacked, groaned and dropped free onto waiting sledges. Lievin threw his shoulder against one leaf as it toppled, trying to slow its fall, and still it crashed, splitting a cobble beneath it, the shock jarring up through his bare arms. Katelijne grabbed Pieter by the collar and hauled him back from the chains as the sledge-ropes snapped taut and oxen dragged the gate-leaf grinding away down the Brussels road, Pieter scrambling backward over loose stone, his wooden clog swinging wild on its cord. Joos leaned hard on his cane, bent double, watching the hinge-pins carted off like trophies. Then the drums came, and the Emperor rode through the empty archway on his black horse, four thousand men marching behind in steel ranks, and the city gate stood open with nothing in it but cold air and the Emperor's jutting pale face scanning the walls he had just un-made.
Page 9
The cobbles of the Prinsenhof courtyard, wide as a market square, ran dark with rain and worse. Katelijne knelt in the mud, her kirtle soaked through, hands bound behind her, a hemp noose scratching her throat. Beside her Pieter trembled barefoot, the rope biting his thin neck, his bobbin cap knocked into the filth. Horses the height of a man's chest were driven forward, hooves grinding the black-and-white weavers' banner flat into the wet stone, over and over, until the cloth tore. Lievin, kneeling tallest among them, surged up against his bonds when the emperor's guards seized his rope. He roared and twisted, dragging two men with him before the noose snapped taut and hauled him off his knees, his bald scarred head thrown back as they dragged him on his belly across the cobbles toward the gate, boot heels scraping furrows in the mud. Katelijne lunged forward despite her bonds, shoulder-checking a guard, trying to reach him, and Pieter screamed his name until a gauntleted hand struck him silent.
Page 10
Sixteen oxen leaned into their yokes, hooves slipping in the churned mud of the dike, and behind them the great bell Roeland groaned past on its timber sledge, bound in chains thick as a man's arm, headed for the foundry to be melted down. Katelijne stood at the edge of the dike road, watching the ropes strain, the wood crack and shudder. Beyond, a crane swung the fortress's first cornerstone over the ruined abbey ground, and let it drop into the wet earth with a sound like a struck drum, mud splashing up over the booted feet of the masons. Katelijne reached into her apron, pulled out a warm loaf still smelling of ash, and pressed it hard into Pieter's two hands, folding his fingers over it with her scarred one. She turned him bodily by the shoulder, pushing him away down the dike road, not looking back herself, keeping her eyes on the bell as it groaned past toward its own death.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
- Format: 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History
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