eyes and features distorted by wrath, walking between the sheriff and a Franciscan monk, advanced through the long lane of halberdiers, in the grand hall of the Town House, and thence emerged upon the scaffold erected before the door.  He shook his fists with rage at the released magistrates, so lately his prisoners, exclaiming that to his misplaced mercy it was owing that his head, instead of their own, was to be placed upon the block.  He bitterly reproached the citizens for their cowardice in shrinking from dealing a blow for their fatherland, and in behalf of one who had so faithfully served them.  The clerk of the court then read the sentence amid a silence so profound that every syllable he uttered, and, every sigh and ejaculation of the victim were distinctly heard in the most remote corner of the square.  Gosson then, exclaiming that he was murdered without cause, knelt upon the scaffold.  His head fell while an angry imprecation was still upon his lips.

Several other persons of lesser note were hanged daring the week-among others, Matthew Doucet, the truculent man of gingerbread, whose rage had been so judiciously but so unsuccessfully directed against the Prior of Saint Vaast.  Captain Ambrose, too, did not live long to enjoy the price of his treachery.  He was arrested very soon afterwards by the states’ government in Antwerp, put to the torture, hanged and quartered.  In troublous times like those, when honest men found it difficult to keep their heads upon their shoulders, rogues were apt to meet their deserts, unless they had the advantage of lofty lineage and elevated position.

          “Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hic diadema.”

This municipal revolution and counter-revolution, obscure though they seem, were in reality of very grave importance.  This was the last blow struck for freedom in the Walloon country.  The failure of the movement made that scission of the Netherlands certain, which has endured till our days, for the influence of the ecclesiastics in the states of Artois and Hainault, together with the military power of the Malcontent grandees, whom Parma and John Sarrasin had purchased, could no longer be resisted.  The liberty of the Celtic provinces was sold, and a few high-born traitors received the price.  Before the end of the year (1578) Montigny had signified to the Duke of Alencon that a prince who avowed himself too poor to pay for soldiers was no master for him.  The Baron, therefore, came, to an understanding with La Motte and Sarrasin, acting for Alexander Farnese, and received the command of the infantry in the Walloon provinces, a merced of four thousand crowns a year, together with as large a slice of La Motte’s hundred thousand florins for himself and soldiers, as that officer could be induced to part with.