Upon the 17th August (1584) Dendermonde surrendered, and no lives were taken save those of two preachers, one of whom was hanged, while the other was drowned.  Upon the 7th September Vilvoorde capitulated, by which event the water-communication between Brussels and Antwerp was cut off.  Ghent, now thoroughly disheartened, treated with Parma likewise; and upon the 17th September made its reconciliation with the King.  The surrender of so strong and important a place was as disastrous to the cause of the patriots as it was disgraceful to the citizens themselves.  It was, however, the result of an intrigue which had been long spinning, although the thread had been abruptly, and, as it was hoped, conclusively, severed several months before.  During the early part of the year, after the reconciliation of Bruges with the King—­an event brought about by the duplicity and adroitness of Prince Chimay—­the same machinery had been diligently and almost successfully employed to produce a like result in Ghent.  Champagny, brother of the famous Cardinal Granvelle, had been under arrest for six years in that city.  His imprisonment was not a strict one however; and he avenged himself for what he considered very unjust treatment at the hands of the patriots, by completely abandoning a cause which he had once begun to favour.  A man of singular ability, courage, and energy, distinguished both for military and diplomatic services, he was a formidable enemy to the party from which he was now for ever estranged.  As early as April of this year, secret emissaries of Parma, dealing with Champagny in his nominal prison, and with the disaffected burghers at large, had been on the point of effecting an arrangement with the royal governor.  The negotiation had been suddenly brought to a close by the discovery of a flagrant attempt by Imbue, one of the secret adherents of the King, to sell the city of Dendermonde, of which he was governor, to Parma.  For this crime he had been brought to Ghent for trial, and then publicly beheaded.  The incident came in aid of the eloquence of Orange, who, up to the latest moment of his life, had been most urgent in his appeals to the patriotic hearts of Ghent, not to abandon the great cause of the union and of liberty.  William the Silent knew full well, that after the withdrawal of the great keystone-city of Ghent, the chasm between the Celtic-Catholic and the Flemish-Calvinist Netherlands could hardly be bridged again.  Orange was now dead.  The negotiations with France, too, on which those of the Ghenters who still held true to the national cause had fastened their hopes, had previously been brought to a stand-still by the death of Anjou; and Champagny, notwithstanding the disaster to Imbize, became more active than ever.  A private agent, whom the municipal government had despatched to the French court for assistance, was not more successful than his character and course of conduct would have seemed to warrant; for during his residence in Paris, he had been always drunk, and generally abusive.  This was not good diplomacy, particularly on the part of an agent from a weak municipality to a haughty and most undecided government.