of towns in the countship, to the same course of oppression and injustice as had been familiar to his predecessors; the burghers resisted him with the same, often ruffianly, energy; and when, after a six years’ struggle amongst Flemings, the Count of Flanders, who had been conquered by the burghers, owed his return as master of his countship to the King of the French, he troubled himself about nothing but avenging himself and enjoying his victory at the expense of the vanquished.  He chastised, despoiled, proscribed, and inflicted atrocious punishments; and, not content with striking at individuals, he attacked the cities themselves.  Nearly all of them, save Ghent, which had been favorable to the count, saw their privileges annulled or curtailed of their most essential guarantees.  The burghers of Bruges were obliged to meet the count half way to his castle of Vale, and on their knees implore his pity.  At Ypres the bell in the tower was broken up.  Philip of Valois made himself a partner in these severities; he ordered the fortifications of Bruges, Ypres, and Courtrai to be destroyed, and he charged French agents to see to their demolition.  Absolute power is often led into mistakes by its insolence; but when it is in the hands of rash and reckless mediocrity, there is no knowing how clumsy and blind it can be.  Neither the King of France nor the Count of Flanders seemed to remember that the Flemish communes had at their door a natural and powerful ally who could not do without them any more than they could do without him.  Woollen stuffs, cloths, carpets, warm coverings of every sort were the chief articles of the manufactures and commerce of Flanders; there chiefly was to be found all that the active and enterprising merchants of the time exported to Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Russia, and even Asia; and it was from England that they chiefly imported their wool, the primary staple of their handiwork.  “All Flanders,” says Froissart, “was based upon cloth and no wool, no cloth.”  On the other hand it was to Flanders that England, her land-owners and farmers, sold the fleeces of their flocks; and the two countries were thus united by the bond of their mutual prosperity.  The Count of Flanders forgot or defied this fact so far as in 1336, at the instigation, it is said, of the King of France, to have all the English in Flanders arrested and kept in prison.  Reprisals were not long deferred.  On the 5th of October in the same year the King of England ordered the arrest of all Flemish merchants in his kingdom and the seizure of their goods; and he at the same time prohibited the exportation of wool.  “Flanders was given over,” says her principal historian, “to desolation; nearly all her looms ceased rattling on one and the same day, and the streets of her cities, but lately filled with rich and busy workmen, were overrun with beggars who asked in vain for work to escape from misery and hunger.”  The English land-owners and farmers did not suffer so much, but were scarcely less angered; only it was to the King of France and the Count of Flanders rather than their own king that they held themselves indebted for the stagnation of their affairs, and their discontent sought vent only in execration of the foreigner.