While these events were occurring at Brussels and Antwerp, a scene of a different nature was enacting at Ghent.  The Duke of Aerschot had recently been appointed to the government of Flanders by the State Council, but the choice was exceedingly distasteful to a large number of the inhabitants.  Although, since the defeat of Don John’s party in Antwerp, Aerschot had again become “the affectionate brother” of Orange, yet he was known to be the head of the cabal which had brought Matthias from Vienna.  Flanders, moreover, swarmed with converts to the Reformed religion, and the Duke’s strict Romanism was well known.  The people, therefore, who hated the Pope and adored the Prince, were furious at the appointment of the new governor, but by dint of profuse promises regarding the instant restoration of privileges and charters which had long lain dormant, the friends of Aerschot succeeded in preparing the way for his installation.

On the 20th of October, attended by twenty-three companies of infantry and three hundred horse, he came to Ghent.  That famous place was still one of the most powerful and turbulent towns in Europe.  Although diminished in importance since the commercial decline which had been the inevitable result of Philip’s bloody government, it, was still swarming with a vigorous and dangerous population and it had not forgotten the days when the iron tongue of Roland could call eighty thousand fighting men to the city banner.  Even now, twenty thousand were secretly pledged to rise at the bidding of certain chieftains resident among them; noble by birth, warmly attached to the Reformed religion, and devoted to Orange.  These gentlemen were perfectly conscious that a reaction was to be attempted in favor of Don John and of Catholicism, through the agency of the newly-appointed governor of Flanders.  Aerschot was trusted or respected by neither party.  The only difference in the estimates formed of him was, that some considered him a deep and dangerous traitor; others that he was rather foolish than malicious, and more likely to ruin a good cause than to advance the interests of a bad one.  The leaders of the popular party at Ghent believed him dangerous.  They felt certain that it was the deeply laid design of the Catholic nobles foiled as they had been in the objects with which they had brought Matthias from Vienna, and enraged as they were that the only result of that movement had been to establish the power of Orange upon a firmer basis—­to set up an opposing influence in Ghent.  Flanders, in the possession of the Catholics, was to weigh up Brabant, with its recent tendencies to toleration.  Aerschot was to counteract the schemes of Orange.  Matthias was to be withdrawn from the influence of the great heretic, and be yet compelled to play the part set down for him by those who had placed him upon the stage.  A large portion, no doubt, of the schemes here suggested, was in agitation, but the actors were hardly equal to the drama which they were attempting.  The intrigue was, however, to be frustrated at once by the hand of Orange, acting as it often did from beneath a cloud.