The Saga of Manneken Pis

Around the year 1500, when Brussels was still growing and becoming richer, something happened that history would whisper about. The city was ravaged by war — perhaps against a besieging army, perhaps against enemies from within. It matters little which enemy it was; in every legend, the people of Brussels felt the same despair as they watched their enemy attempt to conquer the city through fire.

The flames spread like hungry demons. Houses blackened with smoke, roofs collapsed with the sound of thunder. Women screamed, men cursed, and children wept in their parents’ arms. The city’s ships seemed lost. The soldiers could not respond fast enough. The flames already licked at the feet of the city’s most important buildings, at the churches, at the storehouses where grain was kept for winter.

In this moment of utter destruction, a boy — young, perhaps ten years old, perhaps fifteen, the legends are not precise about age — walked through the blazing streets. He saw what no one else dared to see: a powder barrel with a burning fuse, placed at the city’s main fortification. Enemy soldiers had left it there, and no Brussels inhabitant had noticed it. In moments, that barrel would explode, the wall would collapse, and the city would be lost forever.

Without thinking — or perhaps after conceiving of his secret plan — the boy ran toward the barrel. The heat of the flames scorched his face. The smoke stung his eyes. Soldiers called to him, but their voices were swallowed by the roar of fire. He reached the barrel, and what he did would remain forever in memory: he urinated on the burning fuse.

It is a simple act, and yet — yet — it was exactly what was needed. The fuse went out. The powder became wet, rendered useless. The explosion that would have destroyed the city never happened. The wall remained standing, and because that wall remained, the defending army could regroup. Because they could regroup, they could drive back the enemy. Because they could drive back the enemy, Brussels was saved.

When the dust had settled and the flames were extinguished, the inhabitants realized what had occurred. A boy — an ordinary boy — had saved their city by using the only weapon he possessed: his own body. The courage in it lay not in sword play or tactical genius; it lay in the stubborn willingness to risk everything for something greater than oneself.

But not all legends tell the same story. In some versions — whispered by elders in the dark corners of Brussels — the story unfolds under different circumstances. A Duke of Brussels, so these legends say, was riding on horseback with his son, a small boy of only six or seven years old. The Duke and his entourage were hunting in the forests around the city, farther away than usual.

Somewhere during the hunt, the boy disappeared. Not deliberately abandoned, but slowly, gradually, as everyone was distracted, he became lost. Hours passed. The sun set. The Duke was in despair, his men searched everywhere. They called through the forests — ‘Prince! Prince!’ — but the child did not answer. Night fell, and with it came the fear that they would never find the child again.

But in a place where no one had searched, in a small village at the edge of Brussels, they found the child at last. He sat alone, and he was urinating. Not from fear, not from distress, but simply because a child must do what a child must do. When the Duke’s men asked him how he had come to be there, the child simply told the story: he had become lost, had wandered around, and eventually had arrived here. His body had saved him where his mind would have failed him.

Years passed. The boy from the first legend grew up — or the prince from the second legend grew up — and became a man. But Brussels never forgot him. The image they made of him, first only in their hearts, would eventually be cast in stone. The monument to Manneken Pis was erected in 1619, cast by the talented sculptor Hieronymus Duquesnoy, and since that day it has stood there: a small boy, eternally young, eternally brave, eternally pissing.

It is not the grandest monument in Brussels. It is not even the most impressive at first glance. But it is the most beloved, because it tells the truth about what it means to be Brusselian: small perhaps, harmless perhaps, but equipped with a kind of purposeful courage that can defy the greatest danger with nothing but the truth of its own nature.

Now, more than four hundred years later, Manneken Pis is still dressed in the finest costumes in the world. Ambassadors and royal guests bring him gifts. His wardrobe is famous throughout Europe. But beneath all this luxury — beneath all the silk and gold — he remains what he has always been: a boy, unmistakably Brusselian, who gave everything for his city.

And deep in the soul of every Brusselian, this story lives on. For Manneken Pis reminds us that heroism need not always be grand. Sometimes it is small. Sometimes it is embarrassing. Sometimes it is ridiculous. But if it springs from love for something greater than oneself, then it is eternal.