ominal prison, and with the
disaffected burghers at large, had been on the point of effecting an
arrangement with the royal governor. The negotiation had been suddenly
brought to a close by the discovery of a flagrant attempt by Imbue, one
of the secret adherents of the King, to sell the city of Dendermonde, of
which he was governor, to Parma. For this crime he had been brought to
Ghent for trial, and then publicly beheaded. The incident came in aid of
the eloquence of Orange, who, up to the latest moment of his life, had
been most urgent in his appeals to the patriotic hearts of Ghent, not to
abandon the great cause of the union and of liberty. William the Silent
knew full well, that after the withdrawal of the great keystone-city of
Ghent, the chasm between the Celtic-Catholic and the Flemish-Calvinist
Netherlands could hardly be bridged again. Orange was now dead. The
negotiations with France, too, on which those of the Ghenters who still
held true to the national cause had fastened their hopes, had previously
been brought to a stand-still by the death of Anjou; and Champagny,
notwithstanding the disaster to Imbize, became more active than ever. A
private agent, whom the municipal government had despatched to the French
court for assistance, was not more successful than his character and
course of conduct would have seemed to warrant; for during his residence
in Paris, he had been always drunk, and generally abusive. This was not
good diplomacy, particularly on the part of an agent from a weak
municipality to a haughty and most undecided government.

"They found at this court," wrote Stafford to Walsingham, "great fault
with his manner of dealing that was sent from Gaunt. He was scarce sober
from one end of the week to the other, and stood so much on his tiptoes
to have present answer within three days, or else that they of Gaunt
could tell where to bestow themselves. They sent him away after keeping
him three weeks, and he went off in great dudgeon, swearing by yea and
nay that he will make report thereafter."

Accordingly, they of Ghent did bestow themselves very soon thereafter
upon the King of Spain. The terms were considered liberal, but there was,
of course, no thought of conceding the great object for which the
patriots were contending--religious liberty. The municipal
privileges--such as they might prove to be worth under the interpretation
of a royal governor and beneath the guns of a citadel filled with Spa