“But he whose ambitions waxed, hastened the completion of his accoutrements, and swore by St. George, the greatest oath he ever used, that he would rather go in his shirt than not accompany his father to punish his impudent rebel subjects."[13]

The approaching hostilities were watched by foreign merchants in dread of commercial disaster.

“On May 18th, the nations[14] of the merchants of Bruges departed thence to go to Ghent to try to make peace between that city and the Duke of Burgundy, and there were nations of Spain, Aragon, Portugal, and Scotland, besides the Venetians, Milanese, Genoese, and Luccans."[15]

But the men of Ghent were beyond the point where commercial arguments could stem their course.  The very day that this company arrived in the city, the burghers sallied forth six or seven thousand strong, fully equipped for offensive warfare.

Both the actual engagements and guerilla skirmishes that raged over a minute stretch of territory were characterised by an extraordinary ferocity.  Around Oudenarde, which town Philip was determined to relieve, men were beheaded like sheep.

In the first regular engagement in which Charles took part, he showed a brave front and learned the duties of a prince by rewarding others with the honour of knighthood.  Among those slain in the course of the war, were Cornelius, Bastard of Burgundy, and the gallant Jacques de Lalaing.  Philip grieved deeply over the death of the former, his favourite among his natural sons, and buried him with all honours in the Church of Ste-Gudule in Brussels.  The title by which he was known, hardly a proud one it would seem, passed to his brother Anthony.  Lalaing, too, was greatly mourned, thus prematurely cut down in his thirty-third year.

There was so much fear lest the duke’s sole legitimate heir might also perish in these conflicts where there was no mercy, that Charles was persuaded to go to visit his mother in the hope that she would keep him by her side.  She made a feast in his honour, but, to the surprise of all, the duchess, who had wished to protect her son from the mild perils of a tourney, now encouraged him with brave words to return to fight in all earnest for his inheritance.[16] He himself was very indignant at the efforts to treat him as a child.

The first truce and negotiations for peace, initiated in the summer of 1452, were broken off because the conditions were unbearable to the Ghenters.  Another year of warfare followed before the decisive battle of Gaveren, in July, 1453, forced them sadly to succumb.  There was no other course open to them.  Not only were they defeated but their numbers were decimated.[17] With full allowance for exaggeration, it is certain that the loss was very heavy.  Terms scornfully rejected at an earlier date were, in 1453, accepted with every humiliating detail.  More, the defeated rebels were bidden to be grateful that their kind sovereign had imposed nothing further to the conditions.  As to abating the severity of the articles, he declared that he would not change an a for a b.[18]