a gilt metal statue of Saint Michael, the patron saint of the City of Brussels, slaying a dragon or demon. The tower, its front archway and the main building's facade are conspicuously off-centre relative to one another. According to a legend, the architect of the building, upon discovering this "error", leapt to his death from the tower. More likely, the asymmetry of the Town Hall was an accepted consequence of the scattered construction history and space constraints. Destruction and rebuilding On 13 August 1695, during the Nine Years' War, a 70,000-strong French army under Marshal François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy, began a bombardment of Brussels in an effort to draw the League of Augsburg's forces away from their siege on French-held Namur in what is now Wallonia. The French launched a massive bombardment of the mostly defenceless city centre with cannons and mortars, setting it on fire and flattening the majority of the Grand-Place and the surrounding city. The resulting fire completely gutted the Town Hall, destroying the building's archives and art collections, including paintings by Rogier van der Weyden. Only the stone shell of the building remained standing. That it survived at all is ironic, as it was the principal target of the artillery fire. After the bombardment, the municipal government funded the Town Hall's repair, raising the money by selling houses and land. The interior was soon rebuilt and enlarged by the architect-sculptor Corneille Van Nerven, who added three rear wings in the Louis XIV style over the ruins of the former inner cloth market (), from 1706 to 1717, transforming the L-shaped building into its present configuration; a quadrilateral with an inner courtyard. Until 1795, these wings housed the States of Brabant; the representation of the three estates (nobility, clergy and commoners) to the court of the Duke of Brabant. 19th-century restorations The Town Hall underwent many restoration campaigns throughout the 19th century, first under the direction of the architect Tilman-François Suys, starting in 1840. The interior was later revised by the architect from 1860, in the style of his mentor Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Jamaer was the City of Brussels' architect and also reconstructed the King's House. The interior is now dominated by neo-Gothic: the Maximilian Room, the States of Brabant Room and their antechamber with tapestries depicting the life of Clovis, the splendid Municipal Council Room, the likewise richly furnished ballroom and the Wedding Room (formerly