Mechelen's city theater stood opposite Margaret of Austria's palace, not far from the market square, and had been staging performances these past few days.
A Prussian magician named Carl Onslang had put on an extremely popular act. Fargeon wanted very much to figure it out, so he and Fresnel borrowed a room from the cloth merchants' guild beside Mechelen Town Hall to conduct experiments.
The twelfth-century cloth hall was the largest public building in most towns, used for inspecting and selling cloth, as well as for town councilors to meet. One could understand the town hall beside the cloth hall as having separated from it. Craft guilds had always tried to wrest greater authority over town affairs from the nobility. The nobles, meanwhile, would not surrender without a fight and give up their monopoly on power.
The most notorious example was when nobles tried to regain control of Liège by setting fire to Batches Great Hall. The coup ultimately failed, and they fled into Saint Martin Church's tower for shelter. The craftsmen set it ablaze, killing hundreds.
There were also the craftsmen of Bruges at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Most of Flanders's army consisted of commoners, while they faced noble heavy cavalry. The battle should originally have been completely one-sided, but, much like the Battle of Agincourt, the terrain was full of ditches and gullies, making cavalry charges extremely difficult. The French therefore laid wooden planks over the ground, but before the French cavalry had finished laying them down, the infantry had already attacked.
Seeing the infantry about to claim all the credit, the French commander immediately ordered part of the infantry to withdraw and let the cavalry charge. But the retreating infantry obstructed the cavalry's momentum, and Flanders's mud also hampered the horses. By the time they