r 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 va