“When the cock that is hereon shall crow, The foundling king herein shall go.”
They called Philip the foundling king because he had no business to expect to be king. Philip in his wrath gave up to fire and pillage the outskirts of the place. The Flemings marshalled at the top of the mountain made no movement. On the 24th of August, 1328, about three in the afternoon, the French knights had disarmed. Some were playing at chess; others “strolled from tent to tent in their fine robes, in search of amusement; “and the king was asleep in his tent after a long carouse, when all on a sudden his confessor, a Dominican friar, shouted out that the Flemings were attacking the camp. Zannequin, indeed, “came out full softly and without a bit of noise,” says Froissart, with his troops in three divisions, to surprise the French camp at three points. He was quite close to the king’s tent, and some chroniclers say that he was already lifting his mace over the head of Philip, who had armed in hot haste, and was defended only by a few knights, of whom one was waving the oriflamme round him, when others hurried up, and Zannequiii was forced to stay his hand. At two other points of the camp the attack had failed. The French gathered about the king and the Flemings about Zannequin; and there took place so stubborn a fight, that “of sixteen thousand Flemings who were there not one recoiled,” says Froissart, “and all were left there dead and slain in three heaps one upon another, without budging from the spot where the battle had begun.” The same evening Philip entered Cassel, which he set on fire, and, in a few days afterwards, on leaving for France, he said to Count Louis, before the French barons, Count, I have worked for you at my own and my barons’ expense; I give you back your land, recovered and in peace; so take care that justice be kept up in it, and that I have not, through your fault, to return; for if I do, it will be to my own profit and to your hurt.”