“Know [he added in conclusion] that even if you consent to it I will renounce it if others prove of a different opinion, for I do not desire that the communes of Flanders be more heavily weighted than any other portion of my territory.”

The duke might have spared his trouble and his elaborate condescension.  The answer to his conciliatory request was a flat refusal to consider the matter at all.  Salt was a vital necessity to Flemish fisheries, and its cost could not be increased to the least degree without serious inconvenience.  The Flemings were wroth at his imitating the worst custom of his French kinsmen.

Philip departed from Ghent in great dudgeon.  After a time he was persuaded that the indisposition of the town to meet his reasonable wishes was not due to the citizens at large, but to the machinations of a few unruly agitators among the magistrates.  In 1449, therefore, he took a high-handed course of trying to direct the issue of the regular municipal elections, so as to ensure the choice of magistrates on whose obedience he could rely.  The appearance of Burgundian troops in Ghent, before the election of mid-August, aroused the wrath of the community, who thought that their most cherished franchises were in jeopardy.

This was the beginning of a bitter struggle between Ghent and Philip.  The duke found it no light matter to coerce the independent burghers into remembering that they were simply part of the Burgundian state. “Tantae molis erat liberam gentem in servitutem adigere!” ejaculates Meyer in the midst of his chronicle of the details of fourteen months of active hostilities.[11] Matters were long in coming to an outbreak.  Various points had been contended over, when Philip had endeavoured to change the seat of the great council, or to take divers measures tending to concentrate certain judicial or legislative functions for his own convenience, but in a manner prejudicial to the autonomy of Ghent.  His centripetal policy was disliked, but when his policy went further, and he attempted to control purely civic offices, dislike grew into resentment and the Ghenters rose in open revolt.

For a time, their opposition passed in Philip’s estimation as mere insignificant unruliness.  By 1452, however, the date of the tourney above described, it became evident that a vital issue was at stake.  The Estates of Flanders endeavoured to mediate between overlord and town, but without success.  Owing to Philip’s interference in the elections, the results were declared void, and when a new election was appointed, the Burgundians accused the city of hastily augmenting its number of legal voters by over-facile naturalisation laws.  The gilds, too, evinced a readiness to be very lenient in their scrutiny of candidates for admission to their cherished privileges, preferring, for the nonce, numbers to quality.  Occupancy of furnished rooms was declared sufficient for enfranchisement, and there were cases where mere guests of a bourgeois were hastily recorded on the lists as full-fledged citizens.