On 24 May 1667, Louis XIV's armies entered Walloon Flanders, and Lille's inhabitants, subjects of the Spanish Habsburgs, began to prepare for a siege. The municipal magistrates hurried to secure provisions for the town, while the confraternity of St. Jacques met to say masses in honor of their namesake, the patron saint of Spain. As the conquerors approached, Lille filled with frightened peasants seeking refuge within the city's walls. On 10 August, the city was surrounded, and by the next day Lille's bourgeoisie was in arms. Five days later, as French soldiers tried to batter down the gate at Fives, the city's inhabitants held a solemn procession to celebrate the assumption of the Virgin and to implore the city's patron saint, Notre Dame de la Treille, for aid. Three thousand people with torches marched in front of priests carrying the Blessed Sacrament, while the governor, the magistrates of the town council, and the governor's court followed en corps. Wherever the procession passed, nothing could be heard but the sound of drums, the fanfare of trumpets, and the peal of carillons and bells. When the procession reached the marketplace, a company of armed bourgeois stood ready. As soon as the Blessed Sacrament passed by, they fired their muskets into the air, and at the same time “a huge standard or banner was put at the very top of the Tower of Saint Estienne, with the Cross of Burgundy in the middle to tell the enemies that we still had Spanish and Burgundian hearts and not French, and that the besieged were all ready to die for their king … rather than to become slaves under the laws of another.”