“They found at this court,” wrote Stafford to Walsingham, “great fault with his manner of dealing that was sent from Gaunt.  He was scarce sober from one end of the week to the other, and stood so much on his tiptoes to have present answer within three days, or else that they of Gaunt could tell where to bestow themselves.  They sent him away after keeping him three weeks, and he went off in great dudgeon, swearing by yea and nay that he will make report thereafter.”

Accordingly, they of Ghent did bestow themselves very soon thereafter upon the King of Spain.  The terms were considered liberal, but there was, of course, no thought of conceding the great object for which the patriots were contending—­religious liberty.  The municipal privileges—­ such as they might prove to be worth under the interpretation of a royal governor and beneath the guns of a citadel filled with Spanish troops—­ were to be guaranteed; those of the inhabitants who did not choose to go to mass were allowed two years to wind up their affairs before going into perpetual exile, provided they behaved themselves “without scandal;” while on the other hand, the King’s authority as Count of Flanders was to be fully recognised, and all the dispossessed monks and abbots to be restored to their property.

Accordingly, Champagny was rewarded for his exertions by being released from prison and receiving the appointment of governor of the city:  and, after a very brief interval, about one-half of the population, the most enterprising of its merchants and manufacturers, the most industrious of its artizans, emigrated to Holland and Zeeland.  The noble city of Ghent —­then as large as Paris, thoroughly surrounded with moats, and fortified with bulwarks, ravelins, and counterscarps, constructed of earth, during the previous two years, at great expense, and provided with bread and meat, powder and shot, enough to last a year—­was ignominiously surrendered.  The population, already a very reduced and slender one for the great extent of the place and its former importance, had been estimated at 70,000.  The number of houses was 35,000, so that as the inhabitants were soon farther reduced to one-half, there remained but one individual to each house.  On the other hand, the twenty-five monasteries and convents in the town were repeopled—­with how much advantage as a set-off to the thousands of spinners and weavers who had wandered away, and who in the flourishing days of Ghent had sent gangs of workmen through the streets “whose tramp was like that of an army”—­may be sufficiently estimated by the result.

The fall of Brussels was deferred till March, and that of Mechlin (19th July, 1585) and of Antwerp (19th August, 1585), till Midsummer of the following year; but, the surrender of Ghent (10th March 1585) foreshadowed the fate of Flanders and Brabant.  Ostend and Sluys, however, were still in the hands of the patriots, and with them the control of the whole Flemish coast.  The command of the sea was destined to remain for centuries with the new republic.