rlets, 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. Ome