keep a hand on the people so as to keep them to their love for the King of France, he having more authority than any one else for such a purpose, much good would result to him:  mingling, besides, with this address, some words of threatening import.”  Van Artevelde, who was not the least afraid of the threat, and who at heart was fond of the English, told the count that he would do as he had promised the communes.  “Hereupon he left the count, who consulted his confidants as to what he was to do in this business, and they counselled him to let them go and assemble their people, saying that they would kill Van Artevelde secretly or otherwise.  And indeed, they did lay many traps and made many attempts against the captain; but it was of no avail, since all the commonalty was for him.”  When the rumor of these projects and these attempts was spread abroad in the city, the excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting party, he lost no time in gaining his castle of Male.

The burghers of Ghent had their minds still filled with their late alarm when they heard that, by order, it was said, of the King of France, Count Louis had sent and beheaded at the castle of Rupehuonde, in the very bed in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Solver of Courtrai, Van Artevelde’s father-in-law, who had been kept for many months in prison for his intimacy with the English.  On the same day the Bishop of Senlis and the Abbot of St. Denis had arrived at Tournay, and had superintended the reading out in the market-place of a sentence of excommunication against the Ghentese.

It was probably at this date that Van Artevelde, in his vexation and disquietude, assumed in Ghent an attitude threatening and despotic even to tyranny.  “He had continually after him,” says Froissart, “sixty or eighty armed varlets, amongst whom were two or three who knew some of his secrets.  When he met a man whom he had hated or had in suspicion, this man was at once killed, for Van Artevelde had given this order to his varlets:  ’The moment I meet a man, and make such and such a sign to you, slay him without delay, however great he may be, without waiting for more speech.’  In this way he had many great masters slain.  And as soon as these sixty varlets had taken him home to his hotel, each went to dinner at his own house; and the moment dinner was over they returned and stood before his hotel, and waited in the street until that he was minded to go and play and take his pastime in the city, and so they attended him till supper-time.  And know that each of these hirelings had per diem four groschen of Flanders for their expenses and wages, and he had them regularly paid from week to week. . . .