A triangular intrigue was now fairly established in the Walloon country.  The Duke of Alencon’s head-quarters were at Mons; the rallying-point of the royalist faction was with La Motte at Gravelines; while the ostensible leader of the states’ party, Viscount Ghent, was governor of Artois, and supposed to be supreme in Arras.  La Motte was provided by government with a large fund of secret-service money, and was instructed to be very liberal in his bribes to men of distinction; having a tender regard, however, to the excessive demands of this nature now daily made upon the royal purse.  The “little Count,” as the Prior called Lalain, together with his brother, Baron Montigny, were considered highly desirable acquisitions for government, if they could be gained.  It was thought, however, that they had the “fleur-de-lys imprinted too deeply upon their hearts,” for the effect produced upon Lalain, governor of Hainault, by Margaret of Valois, had not yet been effaced.  His brother also had been disposed to favor the French prince, but his mind was more open to conviction.  A few private conferences with La Motte, and a course of ecclesiastical tuition from the Prior—­whose golden opinions had irresistible resonance—­soon wrought a change in the Malcontent chieftain’s mind.  Other leading seigniors were secretly dealt with in the same manner.  Lalain, Heze, Havre, Capres, Egmont, and even the Viscount of Ghent, all seriously inclined their ears to the charmer, and looked longingly and lovingly as the wily Prior rolled in his tangles before them—­“to mischief swift.”  Few had yet declared themselves; but of the grandees who commanded large bodies of troops, and whose influence with their order was paramount, none were safe for the patriot cause throughout the Walloon country.

The nobles and ecclesiastics were ready to join hands in support of church and king, but in the city of Arras, the capital of the whole country, there was a strong Orange and liberal party.  Gosson, a man of great wealth, one of the most distinguished advocates in the Netherlands, and possessing the gift of popular eloquence to a remarkable degree, was the leader of this burgess faction.  In the earlier days of Parma’s administration, just as a thorough union of the Walloon provinces in favor of the royal government had nearly been formed, these Orangists of Arras risked a daring stroke.  Inflamed by the harangues of Gosson, and supported by five hundred foot soldiers and fifty troopers under one Captain Ambrose, they rose against the city magistracy, whose sentiments were unequivocally for Parma, and thrust them all into prison.  They then constituted a new board of fifteen, some Catholics and some Protestants, but all patriots, of whom Gosson was chief.  The stroke took the town by surprise; and was for a moment successful.  Meantime, they depended upon assistance from Brussels.  The royal and ecclesiastical party was, however, not so easily defeated, and an old soldier, named Bourgeois, loudly denounced Captain Ambrose, the general of the revolutionary movement, as a vile coward, and affirmed that with thirty good men-at-arms he would undertake to pound the whole rebel army to powder—­” a pack of scarecrows,” he said, “who were not worth as many owls for military purposes.”