here was nobody else to
be met with." Especially the fine clothes of these distinguished guests
excited his warmest admiration. It was wonderful to behold, he said, "the
nobility and great richness of the princes and seignors, displayed as
well in their beautiful furs, martins and sables, as in the great chains
of fine gold which they wore twisted round their necks, and the pearls
and precious stones in their bonnets and otherwise, which they displayed
in great abundance. It was a very triumphant thing to see them so richly
dressed and accoutred."

An idea may be formed of the size and wealth of the city at this period,
from the fact that it received and accommodated sixty thousand strangers,
with their fifteen thousand horses, upon the occasion of the Emperor's
visit. Charles allowed a month of awful suspense to intervene between his
arrival and his vengeance. Despair and hope alternated during the
interval. On the 17th of March, the spell was broken by the execution of
nineteen persons, who were beheaded as ringleaders. On the 29th of April,
he pronounced sentence upon the city. The hall where it was rendered was
open to all comers, and graced by the presence of the Emperor, the Queen
Regent, and the great functionaries of Court, Church, and State. The
decree, now matured, was read at length. It annulled all the charters,
privileges, and laws of Ghent. It confiscated all its public property,
rents, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war, and in general
every thing which the corporation, or the traders, each and all,
possessed in common. In particular, the great bell--Roland was condemned
and sentenced to immediate removal. It was decreed that the four hundred
thousand florins, which had caused the revolt, should forthwith be paid,
together with an additional fine by Ghent of one hundred and fifty
thousand, besides six thousand a year, forever after. In place of their
ancient and beloved constitution, thus annihilated at a blow, was
promulgated a new form of municipal government of the simplest kind,
according to which all officers were in future to be appointed by himself
and the guilds, to be reduced to half their number; shorn of all
political power, and deprived entirely of self-government. It was,
moreover, decreed, that the senators, their pensionaries, clerks and
secretaries, thirty notable burghers, to be named by the Emperor, with
the great dean and second dean of the weavers, all dressed in black
robes