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.

Baron Capres, whom Sarrasin—­being especially enjoined to purchase him—­had, in his own language, “sweated blood and water” to secure, at last agreed to reconcile himself with the King’s party upon condition of receiving the government-general of Artois, together with the particular government of Hesdin—­very lucrative offices, which the Viscount of Ghent then held by commission of the states-general.  That politic personage, however, whose disinclination to desert the liberty party which had clothed him with such high functions, was apparently so marked that the Prior had caused an ambush to be laid both for him and the Marquis Havre, in-order to obtain bodily possession of two such powerful enemies, now, at the last moment, displayed his true colors.  He consented to reconcile himself also, on condition of receiving the royal appointment to the same government which he then held from the patriot authorities, together with the title of Marquis de Richebourg, the command of all the cavalry in the royalist provinces, and certain rewards in money besides.  By holding himself at a high mark, and keeping at a distance, he had obtained his price.  Capres,