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one of the similar dialogues between Petit Andre and Louis the Eleventh, in "Quentin Durward." The proceedings in Ghent may show the course pursued in the other cities. Commissioners were sent to that capital, to ferret out the suspected. No than a hundred and forty-seven were summoned before the council at Brussels. Their names were cried about the streets, and posted up in placards on the public buildings. Among them were many noble and wealthy individuals. The officers were particularly instructed to ascertain the wealth of the parties. Most of the accused contrived to make their escape. They preferred flight to the chance of an acquittal by the bloody tribunal,--though flight involved certain banishment and confiscation of property. Eighteen only answered the summons by repairing to Brussels. They were all arrested on the same day, at their lodgings, and, without exception, were sentenced to death! Five or six of the principal were beheaded. The rest perished on the gallows.[1057] [Sidenote: TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS.] Impatient of what seemed to him a too tardy method of following up his game, the duke determined on a bolder movement, and laid his plans for driving a goodly number of victims into the toils at once. He fixed on Ash Wednesday for the time,--the beginning of Lent, when men, after the Carnival was past, would be gathered soberly in their own dwellings.[1058] The officers of justice entered their premises at dead of night; and no less than five hundred citizens were dragged from their beds and hurried off to prison.[1059] They all received sentence of death![1060] "I have reiterated the sentence again and again," he writes to Philip, "for they torment me with inquiries whether in this or that case it might not be commuted for banishment. They weary me of my life with their importunities."[1061] He was not too weary, however, to go on with the bloody work; for in the same letter we find him reckoning that three hundred heads more must fall before it will be time to talk of a general pardon.[1062] It was common, says an old chronicler, to see thirty or forty persons arrested at once. The wealthier burghers might be seen, with their arms pinioned behind them, dragged at the horse's tail to the place of execution.[1063] The poorer sort were not even summoned to take their trial in Brussels. Their cases were despatched at once, and they were hung up, without further delay, in the city or in the suburbs.[1
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