Far off as they were when they first perceived him, they made him a deep obeisance, and ‘Dear sir,’ they said, ‘we are come to you for counsel; for we are told that by your great and good sense you will restore the country of Flanders to good case. So tell us how.’ Then James Van Artevelde came forward, and said, ‘Sirs comrades, I am a native and burgher of this city, and here I have my means. Know that I would gladly aid you with all my power, you and all the country; if there were here a man who would be willing to take the lead, I would be willing to risk body and means at his side; and if the rest of ye be willing to be brethren, friends and comrades to me, to abide in all matters at my side, notwithstanding that I am not worthy of it, I will undertake it willingly.’ Then said all with one voice, ‘We promise you faithfully to abide at your side in all matters and to therewith adventure body and means, for we know well that in the whole countship of Flanders there is not a man but you worthy so to do.’ Then Van Artevelde bound them to assemble on the next day but one in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke, which had received numerous benefits from the ancestors of Sohier of Courtrai, whose son-in-law Van Artevelde was.

This bold burgher of Ghent, who was born about 1285, was sprung from a family the name of which had been for a long while inscribed in their city upon the register of industrial corporations. His father, John Van Artevelde, a cloth-worker, had been several times over sheriff of Ghent, and his mother, Mary Van Groete, was great aunt to the grandfather of the illustrious publicist called in history Grotius. James Van Artevelde in his youth accompanied Count Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Handsome, upon his adventurous expeditions in Italy, Sicily, and Greece, and to the Island of Rhodes; and it had been close by the spots where the soldiers of Marathon and Salamis had beaten the armies of Darius and Xerxes that he had heard of the victory of the Flemish burghers and workmen attacked in 1302, at Courtrai, by the splendid army of Philip the Handsome. James Van Artevelde, on returning to his country, had been busy with his manufactures, his fields, the education of his children, and Flemish affairs up to the day when, at his invitation, the burghers of Ghent thronged to the meeting on the 28th of December, 1337, in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke. There he delivered an eloquent speech, pointing out, unhesitatingly but temperately, the policy which he considered good for the country. “Forget not,” he said, “the might and the glory of Flanders. Who, pray, shall forbid that we defend our interests by using our rights? Can the King of France prevent us from treating with the King of England? And may we not be certain that if we were to treat with the King of England, the King of France would not be the less urgent in seeking our alliance? Besides, have we not with us all the communes of Brabant, of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand?” The audience cheered these words; the commune of Ghent forthwith assembled, and on the 3d of January, 1337 [according to the old style, which made the year begin at the 25th of March], re-established the offices of captains of parishes according to olden usage, when the city was exposed to any pressing danger. It was carried that one of these captains should have the chief government of the city; and James Van Artevelde was at once invested with it. From that moment the conduct of Van Artevelde was ruled by one predominant idea: to secure free and fair commercial intercourse for Flanders with England, whilst observing a general neutrality in the war between the Kings of England and France, and to combine so far all the communes of Flanders in one and the same policy. And he succeeded in this twofold purpose. “On the 29th of April, 1338, the representatives of all the communes of Flanders (the city of Bruges numbering amongst them a hundred and eight deputies) repaired to the castle of Male, a residence of Count Louis, and then James Van Artevelde set before the count what had been resolved upon amongst them. The count submitted, and swore that he would thenceforth maintain the liberties of Flanders in the state in which they had existed since the treaty of Athies. In the month of May following a deputation, consisting of James Van Artevelde and other burghers appointed by the cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres scoured the whole of Flanders, from Bailleul to Termonde, and from Ninove to Dunkerque, “to reconcile the good folks of the communes to the Count of Flanders, as well for the count’s honor as for the peace of the country.” Lastly, on the 10th of June, 1338, a treaty was signed at Anvers between the deputies of the Flemish communes and the English ambassadors, the latter declaring: “We do all to wit that we have negotiated way and substance of friendship with the good folks of the communes of Flanders, in form and manner herein-after following:—

“First, they shall be able to go and buy the wools and other merchandise which have been exported from England to Holland, Zealand, or any other place whatsoever; and all traders of Flanders who shall repair to the ports of England shall there be safe and free in their persons and their goods, just as in any other place where their ventures might bring them together.

“Item, we have agreed with the good folks and with all the common country of Flanders that they must not mix nor inter-meddle in any way, by assistance of men or arms, in the wars of our lord the king and the noble Sir Philip of Valois (who holdeth himself for King of France).”

Three articles following regulated in detail the principles laid down in the first two, and, by another charter, Edward III. ordained that “all stuffs marked with the seal of the city of Ghent might travel freely in England without being subject according to ellage and quality to the control to which all foreign merchandise was subject.” (Histoire de Flandre, by M, le Baron Kerwyn de Lettenhove, t. iii. pp. 199-203.)

Van Artevelde was right in telling the Flemings that, if they treated with the King of England, the King of France would be only the more anxious for their alliance. Philip of Valois, and even Count Louis of Flanders, when they got to know of the negotiations entered into between the Flemish communes and King Edward, redoubled their offers and promises to them. But when the passions of men have taken full possession of their souls, words of concession and attempts at accommodation are nothing more than postponements or lies. Philip, when he heard about the conclusion of a treaty between the Flemish communes and the King of England, sent word to Count Louis “that this James Van Artevelde must not, on any account, be allowed to rule, or even live, for, if it were so for long, the count would lose his land.” The count, very much disposed to accept such advice, repaired to Ghent and sent for Van Artevelde to come and see him at his hotel. He went, but with so large a following that the count was not at the time at all in a position to resist him. He tried to persuade the Flemish burgher that “if he would keep a hand on the people so as to keep them to their love for the King of France, he having more authority than any one else for such a purpose, much good would result to him: mingling, besides, with this address, some words of threatening import.” Van Artevelde, who was not the least afraid of the threat, and who at heart was fond of the English, told the count that he would do as he had promised the communes. “Hereupon he left the count, who consulted his confidants as to what he was to do in this business, and they counselled him to let them go and assemble their people, saying that they would kill Van Artevelde secretly or otherwise. And indeed, they did lay many traps and made many attempts against the captain; but it was of no avail, since all the commonalty was for him.” When the rumor of these projects and these attempts was spread abroad in the city, the excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting party, he lost no time in gaining his castle of Male.

The burghers of Ghent had their minds still filled with their late alarm when they heard that, by order, it was said, of the King of France, Count Louis had sent and beheaded at the castle of Rupehuonde, in the very bed in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Solver of Courtrai, Van Artevelde’s father-in-law, who had been kept for many months in prison for his intimacy with the English. On the same day the Bishop of Senlis and the Abbot of St. Denis had arrived at Tournay, and had superintended the reading out in the market-place of a sentence of excommunication against the Ghentese.

It was probably at this date that Van Artevelde, in his vexation and disquietude, assumed in Ghent an attitude threatening and despotic even to tyranny. “He had continually after him,” says Froissart, “sixty or eighty armed varlets, amongst whom were two or three who knew some of his secrets. When he met a man whom he had hated or had in suspicion, this man was at once killed, for Van Artevelde had given this order to his varlets: ‘The moment I meet a man, and make such and such a sign to you, slay him without delay, however great he may be, without waiting for more speech.’ In this way he had many great masters slain. And as soon as these sixty varlets had taken him home to his hotel, each went to dinner at his own house; and the moment dinner was over they returned and stood before his hotel, and waited in the street until that he was minded to go and play and take his pastime in the city, and so they attended him till supper-time. And know that each of these hirelings had per diem four groschen of Flanders for their expenses and wages, and he had them regularly paid from week to week. . . . And even in the case of all that were most powerful in Flanders, knights, esquires, and burghers of the good cities, whom he believed to be favorable to the Count of Flanders, them he banished from Flanders, and levied half their revenues. He had levies made of rents, of dues on merchandise, and all the revenues belonging to the count, wherever it might be in Flanders, and he disbursed them at his will, and gave them away without rendering any account. . . . And when he would borrow of any burghers on his word for payment, there was none that durst say him nay. In short, there was never in Flanders, or in any other country, duke, count, prince, or other, who can have had a country at his will as James Van Artevelde had for a long time.”

It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into a demagogic tyrant. But some of us may have too vivid a personal recollection of similar scenes to doubt the general truth of the picture; and we shall meet before long in the history of France during the fourteenth century with an example still more striking and more famous than that of Van Artevelde.

Whilst the Count of Flanders, after having vainly attempted to excite an uprising against Van Artevelde, was being forced, in order to escape from the people of Bruges, to mount his horse in hot haste, at night and barely armed, and to flee away to St. Omer, Philip of Valois and Edward III. were preparing, on either side, for the war which they could see drawing near. Philip was vigorously at work on the pope, the Emperor of Germany, and the princes neighbors of Flanders, in order to raise obstacles against his rival or rob him of his allies. He ordered that short-lived meeting of the states-general about which we have no information left us, save that it voted the principle that “no talliage could be imposed on the people if urgent necessity or evident utility should not require it, and unless by concession of the Estates.” Philip, as chief of feudal society, rather than of the nation which was forming itself little by little around the lords, convoked at Amiens all his vassals, great and small, laic or cleric, placing all his strength in their co-operation, and not caring at all to associate the country itself in the affairs of his government. Edward, on the contrary, whilst equipping his fleet and amassing treasure at the expense of the Jews and Lombard usurers, was assembling his Parliament, talking to it “of this important and costly war,” for which he obtained large subsidies, and accepting without making any difficulty the vote of the Commons’ House, which expressed a desire “to consult their constituents upon this subject, and begged him to summon an early Parliament, to which there should be elected, in each county, two knights taken from among the best land-owners of their counties.” The king set out for the Continent; the Parliament met and considered the exigencies of the war by land and sea, in Scotland and in France; traders, ship-owners, and mariners were called and examined; and the forces determined to be necessary were voted. Edward took the field, pillaging, burning, and ravaging, “destroying all the country for twelve or fourteen leagues to extent,” as he himself said in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he set foot on French territory, Count William of Hainault, his brother-in-law, and up to that time his ally, came to him and said that “he would ride with him no farther, for that his presence was prayed and required by his uncle, the King of France to whom he bore no hate, and whom he would go and serve in his own kingdom, as he had served King Edward on the territory of the emperor, whose vicar he was; and Edward wished him ‘God speed!’” Such was the binding nature of feudal ties that the same lord held himself bound to pass from one camp to another, according as he found himself upon the domains of one or the other of his suzerains in a war one against the other. Edward continued his march towards St. Quentin, where Philip had at last arrived with his allies, the Kings of Bohemia, Navarre, and Scotland, “after delays which had given rise to great scandal and murmurs throughout the whole kingdom.” The two armies, with a strength, according to Froissart, of a hundred thousand men on the French side, and forty-four thousand on the English, were soon facing one another, near Buironfosse, a large burgh of Picardy. A herald came from the English camp to tell the King of France that the King of England “demanded of him battle. To which demand,” says Froissart, “the King of France gave willing assent, and accepted the day, which was fixed at first for Thursday the 21st, and afterwards for Saturday the 25th of October, 1339.” To judge from the somewhat tangled accounts of the chroniclers and of Froissart himself, neither of the two kings was very anxious to come to blows. The forces of Edward were much inferior to those of Philip; and the former had accordingly taken up, as it appears, a position which rendered attack difficult for Philip. There was much division of opinion in the French camp. Independently of military grounds, a great deal was said about certain letters from Robert, King of Naples, “a mighty necromancer and full of mighty wisdom, it was reported, who, after having several times cast their horoscopes, had discovered by astrology and from experience, that, if his cousin, the King of France, were to fight the King of England, the former would be worsted.” “In thus disputing and debating,” says Froissart, “the time passed till full midday. A little afterwards a hare came leaping across the fields, and rushed amongst the French. Those who saw it began shouting and making a great halloo. Those who were behind thought that those who were in front were engaging in battle; and several put on their helmets and gripped their swords. Thereupon several knights were made; and the Count of Hainault himself made fourteen, who were thenceforth nicknamed Knights of the Hare.” Whatever his motive may have been, Philip did not attack; and Edward promptly began a retreat. They both dismissed their allies; and during the early days of. November, Philip fell back upon St. Quentin, and Edward went and took up his winter quarters at Brussels.

For Edward it was a serious check not to have dared to attack the king whose kingdom he made a pretence of conquering; and he took it grievously to heart. At Brussels he had an interview with his allies, and asked their counsel. Most of the princes of the Low Countries remained faithful to him, and the Count of Hainault seemed inclined to go back to him; but all hesitated as to what he was to do to recover from the check. Van Artevelde showed more invention and more boldness. The Flemish communes had concentrated their forces not far from the spot where the two kings had kept their armies looking at one another; but they had maintained a strict neutrality, and at the invitation of the Count of Flanders, who promised them that the King of France would entertain all their claims, Artevelde and Breydel, the deputies from Ghent and Bruges, even repaired to Courtrai to make terms with him. But as they got there nothing but ambiguous engagements and evasive promises, they let the negotiation drop, and, whilst Count Louis was on his way to rejoin Philip at St. Quentin, Artevelde, with the deputies from the Flemish communes, started for Brussels. Edward, who was already living on very confidential terms with him, told him that “if the Flemings were minded to help him to keep up the war, and go with him whithersoever he would take them, they should aid him to recover Lille, Douai, and Bethune, then occupied by the King of France. Artevelde, after consulting his colleagues, returned to Edward, and, ‘Dear sir,’ said he, ‘you have already made such requests to us, and verily if we could do so whilst keeping our honor and faith, we would do as you demand; but we be bound, by faith and oath, and on a bond of two millions of florins entered into with the pope, not to go to war with the King of France without incurring a debt to the amount of that sum, and a sentence of ex-communication; but if you do that which we are about to say to you, if you will be pleased to adopt the arms of France, and quarter them with those of England, and openly call yourself King of France, we will uphold you for true King of France; you, as King of France, shall give us quittance of our faith; and then we will obey you as King of France, and will go whithersoever you shall ordain.’”

This prospect pleased Edward mightily: but “it irked him to take the name and arms of that of which he had as yet won no tittle.” He consulted his allies. Some of them hesitated; but “his most privy and especial friend,” Robert d’Artois, strongly urged him to consent to the proposal. So a French prince and a Flemish burgher prevailed upon the King of England to pursue, as in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of the kingdom of France. King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their place of meeting for the official conclusion of the alliance; and there, in January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed. The King of England “assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England,” and thenceforth took the title of King of France.

Then burst forth in reality that war which was to last a hundred years; which was to bring upon the two nations the most violent struggles, as well as the most cruel sufferings, and which, at the end of a hundred years, was to end in the salvation of France from her tremendous peril, and the defeat of England in her unrighteous attempt. In January, 1340, Edward thought he had won the most useful of allies; Artevelde thought the independence of the Flemish communes and his own supremacy in his own country secured; and Robert d’Artois thought with complacency how he had gratified his hatred for Philip of Valois. And all three were deceiving themselves in their joy and their confidence.

Edward, leaving Queen Philippa at Ghent with Artevelde for her adviser, had returned to England, and had just obtained from the Parliament, for the purpose of vigorously pushing on the war, a subsidy almost without precedent, when he heard that a large French fleet was assembling on the coasts of Zealand, near the port of Ecluse (or Sluys), with a design of surprising and attacking him when he should cross over again to the Continent. For some time past this fleet had been cruising in the Channel, making descents here and there upon English soil, at Plymouth, Southampton, Sandwich, and Dover, and everywhere causing alarm and pillage. Its strength, they said, was a hundred and forty large vessels, “without counting the smaller,” having on board thirty-five thousand men, Normans, Picards, Italians, sailors and soldiers of all countries, under the command of two French leaders, Hugh Quiret, titular admiral, and Nicholas Behuchet, King Philip’s treasurer, and of a famous Genoese buccaneer, named Barbavera. Edward, so soon as he received this information, resolved to go and meet their attack; and he gave orders to have his vessels and troops summoned from all parts of England to Orewell, his point of departure. His advisers, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, strove, but in vain, to restrain him. “Ye are all in conspiracy against me,” said he; “I shall go; and those who are afraid can abide at home.” And go he did on the 22d of June, 1340, and aboard of his fleet “went with him many an English dame,” says Froissart, “wives of earls, and barons, and knights, and burghers, of London, who were off to Ghent to see the Queen of England, whom for a long time past they had not seen; and King Edward guarded them carefully.” “For many a long day,” said he, “have I desired to fight those fellows, and now we will fight them, please God and St. George; for, verily, they have caused me so many displeasures, that I would fain take vengeance for them, if I can but get it.” On arriving off the coast of Flanders, opposite Ecluse (or Sluys), he saw “so great a number of vessels that of masts there seemed to be verily a forest.” He made his arrangements forthwith, “placing his strongest ships in front, and manoeuvring so as to have the wind on the starboard quarter, and the sun astern. The Normans marvelled to see the English thus twisting about, and said, ‘They are turning tail; they are not men enough to fight us.’” But the Genoese buccaneer was not misled. “When he saw the English fleet approaching in such fashion, he said to the French admiral and his colleague, Behuchet, ‘Sirs, here is the King of England, with all his ships, bearing down upon us: if ye will follow my advice, instead of remaining shut up in port, ye will draw out into the open sea; for, if ye abide here, they, whilst they have in their favor sun, and wind, and tide, will keep you so short of room, that ye will be helpless and unable to manoeuvre.’ Whereupon answered the treasurer, Behuchet, who knew more about arithmetic than sea fights, ‘Let him go hang, whoever shall go out: here will we wait, and take our chance.’ ‘Sir,’ replied Barbavera, ‘if ye will not be pleased to believe me, I have no mind to work my own ruin, and I will get me gone with my galleys out of this hole.’” And out he went, with all his squadron, engaged the English on the high seas, and took the first ship which attempted to board him. But Edward, though he was wounded in the thigh, quickly restored the battle. After a gallant resistance, Barbavera sailed off with his galleys, and the French fleet found itself alone at grips with the English. The struggle was obstinate on both sides; it began at six in the morning of June 24, 1340, and lasted to midday. It was put an end to by the arrival of the re-enforcements promised by the Flemings to the King of England. “The deputies of Bruges,” says their historian, “had employed the whole night in getting under way an armament of two hundred vessels, and, before long, the French heard echoing about them the horns of the Flemish mariners sounding to quarters.” These latter decided the victory, Behuchet, Philip of Valois’ treasurer, fell into their hands; and they, heeding only their desire of avenging themselves for the devastation of Cadsand (in 1337), hanged him from the mast of his vessel “out of spite to the King of France.” The admiral, Hugh Quieret, though he surrendered, was put to death; “and with him perished so great a number of men-at-arms that the sea was dyed with blood on this coast, and the dead were put down at quite thirty thousand men.”

The very day after the battle, the Queen of England came from Ghent to join the king her husband, whom his wound confined to his ship; and at Valenciennes, whither the news of the victory speedily arrived, Artevelde, mounting a platform set up in the market-place, maintained, in the presence of a large crowd, the right which the King of England had to claim the kingdom of France. He vaunted “the puissance of the three countries, Flanders, Hainault, and Brabant, when at one accord amongst themselves, and what with his words and his great sense,” says Froissart, “he did so well that all who heard him said that he had spoken mighty well, and with mighty experience, and that he was right worthy to govern the countship of Flanders.” From Valenciennes he repaired to King Edward at Bruges, where all the allied princes were assembled; and there, in concert with the other deputies from the Flemish communes, Artevelde offered Edward a hundred thousand men for the vigorous prosecution of the war. “All these burghers,” says the modern historian of the Flemings, “had declared that, in order to promote their country’s cause, they would serve without pay, so heartily had they entered into the war.” The siege of Tournay was the first operation Edward resolved to undertake. He had promised to give this place to the Flemings; the burghers were getting a taste for conquest, in company with kings.

They found Philip of Valois better informed, and also more hot for war, than perhaps they had expected. It is said that he learned the defeat of his navy at Ecluse from his court fool, who was the first to announce it, and in the following fashion. “The English are cowards,” said he. “Why so?” asked the king. “Because they lacked courage to leap into the sea at Ecluse, as the French and Normans did.” Philip lost no time about putting the places on his northern frontier in a state of defence, he took up his quarters first at Arras, and then three leagues from Tournay, into which his constable, Raoul d’Eu, immediately threw himself, with a considerable force, and whither his allies, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Savoy, the Bishops of Liege, Metz, and Verdun, and nearly all the barons of Burgundy came and joined him. On the 27th of July, 1340, he received there from his rival a challenge of portentous length, the principal terms of which are set forth as follows:

“Philip of Valois, for a long time past we have taken proceedings, by means of messages and other reasonable ways, to the end that you might restore to us our rightful heritage of France, which you have this long while withheld from us and do most wrongfully occupy. And as we do clearly see that you do intend to persevere in your wrongful withholding, we do give you notice that we are marching against you to bring our rightful claims to an issue. And, whereas so great a number of folks assembled on our side and on yours, cannot keep themselves together for long without causing great destruction to the people and the country, we desire, as the quarrel is between you and us, that the decision of our claim should be between our two bodies. And if you have no mind to this way, we propose that our quarrel should end by a battle, body to body, between a hundred persons, the most capable on your side and on ours. And, if you have no mind either to one way or to the other, that you do appoint us a fixed day for fighting before the city of Tournay, power to power. Given under our privy seal, on the field near Tournay, the 26th day of July, in the first year of our reign in France and in England the fourteenth.”

Philip replied, “Philip, by the grace of God King of France to Edward, King of England. We have seen your letters brought to our court, as from you to Philip of Valois, and containing certain demands which you make upon the said Philip of Valois. And, as the said letters did not come to ourself, we make you no answer. Our intention is, when it shall seem good to us, to hurl you out of our kingdom for the benefit of our people. And of that we have firm hope in Jesus Christ, from whom all power cometh to us.”

Events were not satisfactory either to the haughty pretensions of Edward or to the patriotic hopes of Philip. The war continued in the north and south-west of France without any result. In the neighborhood of Tournay some encounters in the open country were unfavorable to the English and their allies; the siege of the place was prolonged for seventy-four days without the attainment of any success by assault or investment; and the inhabitants defended themselves with so obstinate a courage, that, when at length the King of England found himself obliged to raise the siege, Philip, to testify his gratitude towards them, restored them their law, that is, their communal charter, for some time past withdrawn, and “they were greatly rejoiced,” says Froissart, “at having no more royal governors, and at appointing provosts and jurymen according to their fancy.” The Flemish burghers, in spite of their display of warlike zeal, soon grew tired of being so far from their business and of living under canvas. In Aquitaine the lieutenants of the King of France had the advantage over those of the King of England; they retook or delivered several places in dispute between the two crowns, and they closely pressed Bordeaux itself both by land and sea. Edward, the aggressor, was exhausting his pecuniary resources, and his Parliament was displaying but little inclination to replenish them. For Philip, who had merely to defend himself in his own dominions, any cessation of hostilities was almost a victory. A pious princess, Joan of Valois, sister of Philip and mother-in-law of Edward, issued from her convent at Fontenelle, for the purpose of urging the two kings to make peace, or at least to suspend hostilities. “The good dame,” says Froissart, “saw there, on the two sides, all the flower and honor of the chivalry of the world; and many a time she had fallen at the feet of her brother, the King of France, praying him for some respite or treaty of agreement between himself and the English king. And when she had labored with them of France, she went her way to them of the Empire, to the Duke of Brabant, to the Marquis of Juliers, and to my Lord John of Hainault, and prayed them, for God’s and pity’s sake, that they would be pleased to hearken to some terms of accord, and would win over the King of England to be pleased to condescend thereto.” In concert with the envoys of Pope Benedict XII., Joan of Valois at last succeeded in bringing the two sovereigns and their allies to a truce, which was concluded on the 25th of September, 1340, at first for nine months, and was afterwards renewed on several occasions up to the month of June, 1342. Neither sovereign, and none of their allies, gave up anything, or bound themselves to anything more than not to fight during that interval; but they were, on both sides, without the power of carrying on without pause a struggle which they would not entirely abandon.

An unexpected incident led to its recommencement in spite of the truce: not, however, throughout France or directly between the two kings, but with fiery fierceness, though it was limited to a single province, and arose not in the name of the kingship of France, but out of a purely provincial question. John III., Duke of Brittany and a faithful vassal of Philip of Valois, whom he had gone to support at Tournay “more stoutly and substantially than any of the other princes,” says Froissart, died suddenly at Caen, on the 30th of April, 1341, on returning to his domain. Though he had been thrice married, he left no child. The duchy of Brittany then reverted to his brothers or their posterity, but his very next brother, Guy, Count of Penthievre, had been dead six years, and had left only a daughter, Joan, called the Cripple, married to Charles of Blois, nephew of the King of France. The third brother was still alive; he too was named John, had from his mother the title of Count of Montfort, and claimed to be heir to the duchy of Brittany in preference to his niece Joan. The niece, on the contrary, believed in her own right to the exclusion of her uncle. The question was exactly the same as that which had arisen touching the crown of France when Philip the Long had successfully disputed it with the only daughter of his brother Louis the Quarreller; but the Salic law, which had for more than three centuries prevailed in France, and just lately to the benefit of Philip of Valois, had no existence in the written code, or the traditions of Brittany. There, as in several other great fiefs, women had often been recognized as capable of holding and transmitting sovereignty. At the death of John III., his brother, the Count of Montfort, immediately put himself in possession of the inheritance, seized the principal Breton towns, Nantes, Brest, Rennes, and Vannes, and crossed over to England to secure the support of Edward III. His rival, Charles of Blois, appealed to the decision of the King of France, his uncle and natural protector. Philip of Valois thus found himself the champion of succession in the female line in Brittany, whilst he was himself reigning in France by virtue of the Salic law, and Edward III. took up in Brittany the defence of succession in the male line which he was disputing and fighting against in France. Philip and his court of peers declared on the 7th of September, 1341, that Brittany belonged to Charles of Blois, who at once did homage for it to the King of France, whilst John of Montfort demanded and obtained the support of the King of England. War broke out between the two claimants, effectually supported by the two kings, who nevertheless were not supposed to make war upon one another and in their own dominions. The feudal system sometimes entailed these strange and dangerous complications.

If the two parties had been reduced for leaders to the two claimants only, the war would not, perhaps, have lasted long.

In the first campaign the Count of Montfort was made prisoner at the siege of Nantes, carried off to Paris, and shut up in the tower of the Louvre, whence he did not escape until three years were over. Charles of Blois, with all his personal valor, was so scrupulously devout that he often added to the embarrassments and at the same time the delays of war. He never marched without being followed by his almoner, who took with him everywhere bread, and wine, and water, and fire in a pot, for the purpose of saying mass by the way. One day when Charles was accordingly hearing it and was very near the enemy, one of his officers, Auffroy de Montboucher, said to him, “Sir, you see right well that your enemies are yonder, and you halt a longer time than they need to take you.” “Auffroy,” answered the prince, “we shall always have towns and castles, and, if they are taken, we shall, with God’s help, recover them; but if we miss hearing of mass we shall never recover it.” Neither side, however, had much detriment from either the captivity or pious delays of its chief. Joan of Flanders, Countess of Montfort, was at Rennes when she heard that her husband had been taken prisoner at Nantes. “Although she made great mourning in her heart,” says Froissart, “she made it not like a disconsolate woman, but like a proud and gallant man. She showed to her friends and soldiers a little boy she had, and whose name was John, even as his father’s, and she said to them, ‘Ah! sirs, be not discomforted and cast down because of my lord whom we have lost; he was but one man; see, here is my little boy, who, please God, shall be his avenger. I have wealth in abundance, and of it I will give you enow, and I will provide you with such a leader as shall give you all fresh heart.’ She went through all her good towns and fortresses, taking her young son with her, re-enforcing the garrisons with men and all they wanted, and giving away abundantly wherever she thought it would be well laid out. Then she went her way to Hennebon-sur-Mer, which was a strong town and strong castle, and there she abode, and her son with her, all the winter.” In May, 1242, Charles of Blois came to besiege her; but the attempts at assault were not successful. “The Countess of Montfort, who was cased in armor and rode on a fine steed, galloped from street to street through the town, summoned the people to defend themselves stoutly, and called on the women, dames, damoisels, and others, to pull up the roads, and carry the stones to the ramparts to throw down on the assailants.” She attempted a bolder enterprise. “She sometimes mounted a tower, right up to the top, that she might see the better how her people bore themselves. She one day saw that all they of the hostile army, lords and others, had left their quarters and gone to watch the assault. She mounted her steed, all armed as she was, and summoned to horse with her about three hundred men-at-arms who were on guard at a gate which was not being assailed. She went out thereat with all her company and threw herself valiantly upon the tents and quarters of the lords of France, which were all burned, being guarded only by boys and varlets, who fled as soon as they saw the countess and her folks entering and setting fire. When the lords saw their quarters burning and heard the noise which came therefrom, they ran up all dazed and crying, ‘Betrayed! betrayed!’ so that none remained for the assault. When the countess saw the enemy’s host running up from all parts, she re-assembled all her folks, and seeing right well that she could not enter the town again without too great loss, she went off by another road to the castle of Brest [or, more probably, d’Auray, as Brest is much more than three leagues from Hennebon], which lies as near as three leagues from thence.” Though hotly pursued by the assailants, “she rode so fast and so well that she and the greater part of her folks arrived at the castle of Brest, where she was received and feasted right joyously. Those of her folks who were in Hennebon were all night in great disquietude because neither she nor any of her company returned; and the assailant lords, who had taken up quarters nearer to the town, cried, ‘Come out, come out, and seek your countess; she is lost; you will not find a bit of her.’ In such fear the folks in Hennebon remained five days. But the countess wrought so well that she had now full five hundred comrades armed and well mounted; then she set out from Brest about midnight and came away, arriving at sunrise and riding straight upon one of the flanks of the enemy’s host; there she had the gate of Hennebon castle opened, and entered in with great joy and a great noise of trumpets and drums; whereby the besiegers were roughly disturbed and awakened.”

The joy of the besieged was short. Charles of Blois pressed on the siege more rigorously every day, threatening that, when he should have taken the place, he would put all the inhabitants to the sword. Consternation spread even to the brave; and a negotiation was opened with a view of arriving at terms of capitulation. By dint of prayers Countess Joan obtained a delay of three days. The first two had expired, and the besiegers were preparing for a fresh assault, when Joan, from the top of her tower, saw the sea covered with sails: “‘See, see, she cried, the aid so much desired!’ Every one in the town, as best they could, rushed up at once to the windows and battlements of the walls to see what it might be,” says Froissart. In point of fact it was a fleet with six thousand men brought from England to the relief of Hennebon by Amaury de Clisson and Walter de Manny; and they had been a long while detained at sea by contrary winds.

“When they had landed the countess herself went to them and feasted them and thanked them greatly, which was no wonder, for she had sore need of their coming.” It was far better still when, next day, the new arrivals had attacked the besiegers and gained a brilliant victory over them. When they re-entered the place, “whoever,” says Froissart, “saw the countess descend from the castle, and kiss my lord Walter de Manny and his comrades, one after another, two or three times, might well have said that it was a gallant dame.”

All the while that the Count of Montfort was a prisoner in the tower of the Louvre, the countess his wife strove for his cause with the same indefatigable energy. He escaped in 1345, crossed over to England, swore fealty and homage to Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, and immediately returned to take in hand, himself, his own cause. But in the very year of his escape, on the 26th of September, 1345, he died at the castle of Hennebon, leaving once more his wife, with a young child, alone at the head of his party and having in charge the future of his house. The Countess Joan maintained the rights and interests of her son as she had maintained those of her husband. For nineteen years, she, with the help of England, struggled against Charles of Blois, the head of a party growing more and more powerful, and protected by France. Fortune shifted her favors and her asperities from one camp to the other. Charles of Blois had at first pretty considerable success; but on the 18th of June, 1347, in a battle in which he personally displayed a brilliant courage, he was in his turn made prisoner, carried to England, and immured in the Tower of London. There he remained nine years. But he too had a valiant and indomitable wife, Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple. She did for her husband all that Joan of Montfort was doing for hers. All the time that he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, she was the soul and the head of his party, in the open country as well as in the towns, turning to profitable account the inclinations of the Breton population, whom the presence and the ravages of the English had turned against John of Montfort and his cause. She even convoked at Dinan, in 1352, a general assembly of her partisans, which is counted by the Breton historians as the second holding of the states of their country. During nine years, from 1347 to 1356, the two Joans were the two heads of their parties in politics and in war. Charles of Blois at last obtained his liberty from Edward III. on hard conditions, and returned to Brittany to take up the conduct of his own affairs. The struggle between the two claimants still lasted eight years, with vicissitudes ending in nothing definite. In 1363 Charles of Blois and young John of Montfort, weary of their fruitless efforts and the sufferings of their countries, determined both of them to make peace and share Brittany between them. Rennes was to be Charles’s capital, and Nantes that of his rival. The treaty had been signed, an altar raised between the two armies, and an oath taken on both sides; but when Joan of Penthivre was informed of it she refused downright to ratify it. “I married you,” she said to her husband, “to defend my inheritance, and not to yield the half of it; I am only a woman, but I would lose my life, and two lives if I had them, rather than consent to any cession of the kind.” Charles of Blois, as weak before his wife as brave before the enemy, broke the treaty he had but just sworn to, and set out for Nantes to resume the war. “My lord,” said Countess Joan to him in presence of all his knights, “you are going to defend my inheritance and yours, which my lord of Montfort—wrongfully, God knows—doth withhold from us, and the barons of Brittany who are here present know that I am rightful heiress of it. I pray you affectionately not to make any ordinance, composition, or treaty whereby the duchy corporate remain not ours.” Charles set out; and in the following year, on the 29th of September, 1364, the battle of Auray cost him his life and the countship of Brittany. When he was wounded to death he said, “I have long been at war against my conscience.” At sight of his dead body on the field of battle young John of Montfort, his conqueror, was touched, and cried out, “Alas my cousin, by your obstinacy you have been the cause of great evils in Brittany: may God forgive you! It grieves me much that you are come to so sad an end.” After this outburst of generous compassion came the joy of victory, which Montfort owed above all to his English allies and to John Chandos their leader, to whom, “My Lord John,” said he, “this great fortune path come to me through your great sense and prowess: wherefore, I pray you, drink out of my cup.” “Sir,” answered Chandos, “let us go hence, and render you your thanks to God for this happy fortune you have gotten, for, without the death of yonder warrior, you could not have come into the inheritance of Brittany.” From that day forth John of Monfort remained in point of fact Duke of Brittany, and Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple, the proud princess who had so obstinately defended her rights against him, survived for full twenty years the death of her husband and the loss of her duchy.

Whilst the two Joans were exhibiting in Brittany, for the preservation or the recovery of their little dominion, so much energy and persistency, another Joan, no princess, but not the less a heroine, was, in no other interest than the satisfaction of her love and her vengeance, making war, all by herself, on the same territory. Several Norman and Breton lords, and amongst others Oliver de Clisson and Godfrey d’Harcourt, were suspected, nominally attached as they were to the King of France, of having made secret overtures to the King of England. Philip of Valois had them arrested at a tournament, and had them beheaded without any form of trial, in the middle of the market-place at Paris, to the number of fourteen. The head of Clisson was sent to Nantes and exposed on one of the gates of the city. At the news thereof, his widow, Joan of Belleville, attended by several men of family, her neighbors and friends, set out for a castle occupied by the troops of Philip’s candidate, Charles of Blois. The fate of Clisson was not yet known there; it was supposed that his wife was on a hunting excursion; and she was admitted without distrust. As soon as she was inside, the blast of a horn gave notice to her followers, whom she had left concealed in the neighboring woods. They rushed up, and took possession of the castle, and Joan de Clisson had all the inhabitants—but one—put to the sword. But this was too little for her grief and her zeal. At the head of her troops, augmented, she scoured the country and seized several places, everywhere driving out or putting to death the servants of the King of France. Philip confiscated the property of the house of Clisson. Joan moved from land to sea. She manned several vessels, attacked the French ships she fell in with, ravaged the coasts, and ended by going and placing at the service of the Countess of Montfort her hatred and her son, a boy of seven years of age, whom she had taken with her in all her expeditions, and who was afterwards the great constable, Oliver de Clisson. We shall find him under Charles V. and Charles VI. as devoted to France and her kings as if he had not made his first essays in arms against the candidate of their ancestor, Philip. His mother had sent him to England, to be brought up at the court of Edward III., but, shortly after taking a glorious part with the English in the battle of Auray, in which he lost an eye, and which secured the duchy of Brittany to the Count of Montfort, De Clisson got embroiled none the less with his suzerain, who had given John Chandos the castle of Gavre, near Nantes. “Devil take me, my lord,” said Oliver to him, “if ever Englishman shall be my neighbor;” and he went forthwith and attacked the castle, which he completely demolished. The hatreds of women whose passions have made them heroines of war are more personal and more obstinate than those of the roughest warriors. Accordingly the war for the duchy of Brittany, in the fourteenth century, has been called, in history, the war of the three Joans.

This war was, on both sides, remarkable for cruelty. If Joan de Clisson gave to the sword all the people in a castle, belonging to Charles of Blois, to which she had been admitted on a supposition of pacific intentions, Charles of Blois, on his side, finding in another castle thirty knights, partisans of the Count of Montfort, had their heads shot from catapults over the walls of Nantes, which he was besieging, and, at the same time that he saved from pillage the churches of Quimper, which he had just taken, he allowed his troops to massacre fourteen hundred inhabitants, and had his principal prisoners beheaded. One of them, being a deacon, he caused to be degraded, and then handed over to the populace, who stoned him. It is characteristic of the middle ages that in them the ferocity of barbaric times existed side by side with the sentiments of chivalry and the fervor of Christianity: so slow is the race of man to eschew evil, even when it has begun to discern and relish good. War was then the passion and habitual condition of men. They made it without motive as well as without prevision, in a transport of feeling or for the sake of pastime, to display their strength or to escape from listlessness; and, whilst making it, they abandoned themselves without scruple to all those deeds of violence, vengeance, brutal anger, or fierce delight, which war provokes. At the same time, however, the generous impulses of feudal chivalry, the sympathies of Christian piety, tender affections, faithful devotion, noble tastes, were fermenting in their souls; and human nature appeared with all its complications, its inconsistencies, and its irregularities, but also with all its wealth of prospective development. The three Joans of the fourteenth century were but eighty years in advance of the Joan of Arc of the fifteenth; and the knights of Charles V., Du Guesclin and De Clisson, were the forerunners of the Bayard of Francis I.

An incident which has retained its popularity in French history, to wit, the fight between thirty Bretons and thirty English during the just now commemorated war in Brittany, will give a better idea than any general observations could of the real, living characteristics of facts and manners, barbaric and at the same time chivalric, at that period. No apology is needed for here reproducing the chief details as they have been related by Froissart, the dramatic chronicler of the middle ages.

In 1351, “it happened on a day that Sir Robert de Beaumanoir, a valiant knight and commandant of the castle which is called Castle Josselin, came before the town and castle of Ploermel, whereof the captain, called Brandebourg [or Brembro, probably Bremborough], had with him a plenty of soldiers of the Countess of Montfort. ‘Brandebourg,’ said Robert, ‘have ye within there never a man-at-arms, or two or three, who would fain cross swords with other three for love of their ladies?’ Brandebourg answered that their ladies would not have them lose their lives in so miserable an affair as single combat, whereby one gained the name of fool rather than honorable renown. ‘I will tell you what we will do, if it please you. You shall take twenty or thirty of your comrades, as I will take as many of ours. We will go out into a goodly field where none can hinder or vex us, and there will we do so much that men shall speak thereof in time to come in hall, and palace, and highway, and other places of the world.’ ‘By my faith,’ said Beaumanoir, ‘tis bravely said, and I agree: be ye thirty, and we will be thirty, too.’ And thus the matter was settled. When the day had come, the thirty comrades of Brandebourg, whom we shall call English, heard mass, then got on their arms, went off to the place where the battle was to be, dismounted, and waited a long while for the others, whom we shall call French. When the thirty French had come, and they were in front one of another, they parleyed a little together, all the sixty; then they fell back, and made all their fellows go far away from the place. Then one of them made a sign, and forthwith they set on and fought stoutly all in a heap, and they aided one another handsomely when they saw their comrades in evil case. Pretty soon after they had come together, one of the French was slain, but the rest did not slacken the fight one whit, and they bore themselves as valiantly all as if they had all been Rolands and Olivers. At last they were forced to stop, and they rested by common accord, giving themselves truce until they should be rested, and the first to get up again should recall the others. They rested long, and there were some who drank wine which was brought to them in bottles. They rebuckled their armor, which had got undone, and dressed their wounds. Four French and two English were dead already.”

It was no doubt during this interval that the captain of the Bretons, Robert de Beaumanoir, grievously wounded and dying of fatigue and thirst, cried out for a drink. “Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir,” said one of his comrades, Geoffrey de Bois, according to some accounts, and Sire de Tinteniac, according to others. From that day those words became the war-cry of the Beaumanoirs. Froissart says nothing of this incident. Let us return to his narrative.

“When they were refreshed, the first to get up again made a sign, and recalled the others. Then the battle recommenced as stoutly as before, and lasted a long while. They had short swords of Bordeaux, tough and sharp, and boar-spears and daggers, and some had axes, and therewith they dealt one another marvellously great dings, and some seized one another by the arms a-struggling, and they struck one another, and spared not. At last the English had the worst of it; Brandebourg, their captain, was slain, with eight of his comrades, and the rest yielded themselves prisoners when they saw that they could no longer defend themselves, for they could not and must not fly. Sir Robert de Beaumanoir and his comrades, who remained alive, took them and carried them off to Castle Josselin as their prisoners; and then admitted them to ransom courteously when they were all cured, for there was none that was not grievously wounded, French as well as English. I saw afterwards, sitting at the table of King Charles of France, a Breton knight who had been in it, Sir Yvon Charnel, and he had a face so carved and cut that he showed full well how good a fight had been fought. The matter was talked of in many places, and some set it down as a very poor, and others as a very swaggering business.”

The most modern and most judicious historian of Brittany, Count Daru, who has left a name as honorable in literature as in the higher administration of the First Empire, says, very truly, in recounting this incident, “It is not quite certain whether this was an act of patriotism or of chivalry.” He might have gone farther, and discovered in this exploit not only the characteristics he points out, but many others besides. Local patriotism, the honor of Brittany, party spirit, the success of John of Montfort or Charles of Blois, the sentiment of gallantry, the glorification of the most beautiful one amongst their lady-loves, and, chiefly, the passion for war amongst all and sundry— there was something of all this mixed up with the battle of the Thirty, a faithful reflex of the complication and confusion of minds, of morals, and of wants at that forceful period. It is this very variety of the ideas, feelings, interests, motives, and motive tendencies involved in that incident which accounts for the fact that the battle of the Thirty has remained so vividly remembered, and that in 1811 a monument, unpretentious but national, replaced the simple stone at first erected on the field of battle, on the edge of the road from Ploermel to Josselin, with this inscription: “To the immortal memory of the battle of the Thirty, gained by Marshal Beaumanoir, on the 26th of March, 1350 (1351).”

With some fondness, and at some length, this portion of Brittany’s history in the fourteenth century has been dwelt upon, not only because of the dramatic interest attaching to the events and the actors, but also for the sake of showing, by that example, how many separate associations, diverse and often hostile, were at that time developing themselves, each on its own account, in that extensive and beautiful country which became France. We will now return to Philip of Valois and Edward III., and to the struggle between them for a settlement of the question whether France should or should not preserve its own independent kingship, and that national unity of which she already had the name, but of which she was still to undergo so much painful travail in acquiring the reality.

Although Edward III. by supporting with troops and officers, and sometimes even in person, the cause of the Countess of Montfort, and Philip of Valois by assisting in the same way Charles of Blois and Joan of Penthievre, took a very active, if indirect, share in the war in Brittany, the two kings persisted in not calling themselves at war; and when either of them proceeded to acts of unquestionable hostility, they eluded the consequences of them by hastily concluding truces incessantly violated and as incessantly renewed. They had made use of this expedient in 1340; and they had recourse to it again in 1342, 1343, and 1344. The last of these truces was to have lasted up to 1346; but, in the spring of 1345, Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to openly recommence war. He announced his intention to Pope Clement IV., to his own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all the cities and corporations of his kingdom. He accused Philip of having “violated, without even sending us a challenge, the truce which, out of regard to the sovereign pontiff, we had agreed upon with him, and which he had taken an oath, upon his soul, to keep. On account whereof we have resolved to proceed against him, him and all his adherents, by land and sea, by all means possible, in order to recover our just rights.” It is not quite clear what pressing reasons urged Edward to this decisive resolution. The English Parliament and people, it is true, showed more disposition to support their king in his pretensions to the throne of France, and the cause of the Count of Montfort was maintaining itself stubbornly in Brittany, but nothing seemed to call for so startling a rupture, or to promise Edward any speedy and successful issue. He had lost his most energetic and warlike adviser; for Robert d’Artois, the deadly enemy of Philip of Valois, had been so desperately wounded in the defence of Vannes against Robert de Beaumanoir, that he had returned to England only to die. Edward felt this loss severely, gave Robert a splendid funeral in St. Paul’s church, and declared that “he would listen to nought until he had avenged him, and that he would reduce the country of Brittany to such plight that, for forty years, it should not recover.” Philip of Valois, on his side, gave signs of getting ready for war. In 1343 he had convoked at Paris one of those assemblies which were beginning to be called the states-general of the kingdom, and he obtained from it certain subventions. It was likewise in 1343 and at the beginning of 1344, that he ordered the arrest, at a tournament to which he had invited them, and the decapitation, without any form of trial, of fourteen Breton and three Norman lords whom he suspected of intriguing against him with the King of England. And so Edward might have considered himself threatened with imminent peril; and, besides, he had friends to avenge. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that his fiery ambition, and his impatience to decide, once for all, that question of the French kingship which had been for five years in suspense between himself and his rival, were the true causes of his warlike resolve. However that may be, he determined to push the war vigorously forward at the three points at which he could easily wage it. In Brittany he had a party already engaged in the struggle; in Aquitaine, possessions of importance to defend or recover; in Flanders, allies with power to back him, and as angry as he himself. To Brittany he forwarded fresh supplies for the Count of Montfort; to Aquitaine he sent Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby, his own cousin, and the ablest of his lieutenants; and he himself prepared to cross over with a large army to Flanders.

The Earl of Derby met with solid and brilliant success in Aquitaine. He attacked and took in rapid succession Bergerac, La Reole, Aiguillon, Montpezat, Villefranche, and Angouleme. None of those places was relieved in time; the strict discipline of Derby’s troops and the skill of the English archers were too much for the bravery of the men-at-arms, and the raw levies, ill organized and ill paid, of the King of France; and, in a word, the English were soon masters of almost the whole country between the Garonne and the Charente. Under such happy auspices Edward III. arrived on the 7th of July, 1345, at the port of Ecluse (Sluys), anxious to put himself in concert with the Flemings touching the campaign he proposed to commence before long in the north of France. Artevelde, with the consuls of Bruges and Ypres, was awaiting him there. According to some historians, Edward invited them aboard of his galley, and represented to them that the time had come for renouncing imperfect resolves and half-measures; told them that their count, Louis of Flanders, and his ancestors, had always ignored and attacked their liberties, and that the best thing they could do would be to sever their connection with a house they could not trust; and offered them for their chieftain his own son, the young Prince of Wales, to whom he would give the title of Duke of Flanders. According to other historians, it was not King Edward, but Artevelde himself, who took the initiative in this proposition. The latter had for some time past felt his own dominion in Flanders attacked and shaken; and he had been confronted, in his own native city, by declared enemies, who had all but come to blows with his own partisans. The different industrial corporations of Ghent were no longer at one amongst themselves; the weavers had quarrelled with the fullers. Division was likewise reaching a great height amongst the Flemish towns. The burghers of Poperinghe had refused to continue recognizing the privileges of those of Ypres; and the Ypres men, enraged, had taken up arms, and, after a sanguinary melley, had forced the folks of Poperinghe to give in. Then the Ypres men, proud of their triumph, had gone and broken the weavers’ machinery at Bailleul, and in some other towns. Artevelde, constrained to take part in these petty civil wars, had been led on to greater and greater abuse, in his own city itself, of his municipal despotism, already grown hateful to many of his fellow-citizens. Whether he himself proposed to shake off the yoke of Count Louis of Flanders, and take for duke the Prince of Wales, or merely accepted King Edward’s proposal, he set resolutely to work to get it carried. The most able men, swayed by their own passions and the growing necessities of the struggle in which they may be engaged, soon forget their first intentions, and ignore their new perils. The consuls of Bruges and Ypres, present with Artevelde at his interview with King Edward in the port of Ecluse (Sluys), answered that “they could not decide so great a matter unless the whole community of Flanders should agree thereto,” and so returned to their cities. Artevelde followed them thither, and succeeded in getting the proposed resolution adopted by the people of Ypres and Bruges. But when he returned to Ghent, on the 24th of July, 1345, “those in the city who knew of his coming,” says Froissart, “had assembled in the street whereby he must ride to his hostel. So soon as they saw him they began to mutter, saying, ‘There goes he who is too much master, and would fain do with the countship of Flanders according to his own will; which cannot be borne.’ It had, besides this, been spread about the city that James Van Artevelde had secretly sent to England the great treasure of Flanders, which he had been collecting for the space of the nine years and more during which he had held the government. This was a matter which did greatly vex and incense them of Ghent. As James Van Artevelde rode along the street, he soon perceived that there was something fresh against him, for those who were wont to bow down and take off their caps to him turned him a cold shoulder, and went back into their houses. Then he began to be afraid; and so soon as he had dismounted at his house, he had all the doors and windows shut and barred. Scarcely had his varlets done so, when the street in which he lived was covered, front and back, with folk, and chiefly small crafts-folk. His hostel was surrounded and beset, front and back, and broken into by force. Those within defended themselves a long while, and overthrew and wounded many; but at last they could not hold out, for they were so closely assailed that nearly three quarters of the city were at this assault. When Artevelde saw the efforts a-making, and how hotly he was pressed, he came to a window over the street, and began to abase himself, and say with much fine language, ‘Good folks, what want ye? What is it that doth move ye? Wherefore are ye so vexed at me? In what way can I have angered ye? Tell me, and I will mend it according to your wishes.’ Then all those who had heard him answered with one voice, ‘We would have an account of the great treasure of Flanders, which you have sent to England without right or reason.’ Artevelde answered full softly, ‘Of a surety, sirs, I have never taken a denier from the treasury of Flanders; go ye back quietly home, I pray you, and come again to-morrow morning; I shall be so well prepared to render you a good account, that, according to reason, it cannot but content ye.’ ‘Nay, nay,’ they answered, with one voice, ‘but we would have it at once; you shall not escape us so; we do know of a verity that you have taken it out and sent it away to England, without our wit; for which cause you must needs die.’ When Artevelde heard this word, he began to weep right piteously, and said, ‘Sirs, ye have made me what I am, and ye did swear to me aforetime that ye would guard and defend me against all men; and now ye would kill me, and without a cause. Ye can do so an if it please you, for I am but one single man against ye all, without any defence. Think hereon, for God’s sake, and look back to bygone times. Consider the great courtesies and services that I have done ye. Know ye not how all trade had perished in this country? It was I who raised it up again. Afterwards I governed ye in peace so great, that, during the time of my government, ye have had everything to your wish, grains, wools, and all sorts of merchandise, wherewith ye are well provided and in good case.’ Then they began to shout, ‘Come down, and preach not to us from such a height; we would have account and reckoning of the great treasure of Flanders which you have too long had under control without rendering an account, which it appertaineth not to any officer to do.’ When Artevelde saw that they would not cool down, and would not restrain themselves, he closed the window, and bethought him that he would escape by the back, and get him gone to a church adjoining his hostel; but his hostel was already burst open and broken into behind, and there were more than four hundred persons who were all anxious to seize him. At last he was caught amongst them, and killed on the spot without mercy. A weaver, called Thomas Denis, gave him his death-blow. This was the end of Artevelde, who in his time was so great a master in Flanders. Poor folk exalted him at first, and wicked folk slew him at the last.”