to fight the matter out. He preferred to starve them, and for
that purpose he put soldiers on all the roads leading towards Ghent, and
refused to allow any provisions to be taken to the city.

The people soon ate up nearly all the food they had, and when the spring
of 1382 came they were starving. Something must be done at once, and
Philip van Artevelde decided that it was of no use to resist any longer.
He took twelve deputies with him, and went to beg the Count for mercy.
He offered to submit to any terms the Count might propose, if he would
only promise not to put any of the people to death. Philip even offered
himself as a victim, agreeing that the Count should banish him from the
country as a punishment, if he would spare the people of the town. But
the haughty Count would promise nothing. He said that all the people of
Ghent from fifteen to sixty years old must march half-way to Bruges
bareheaded, with no clothes on but their shirts, and each with a rope
around his neck, and then he would decide how many of them he would put
to death and how many he would spare.

The Count thought the poor Ghent people would have to submit to this,
and he meant to put them all to death when they should thus come out
without arms to surrender. He therefore called on his vassals to meet
him in Bruges at Easter, and to go out with him to "destroy these
troublesome burghers."

But the "troublesome burghers," as we shall see presently, were not the
kind of men to walk out bareheaded, with ropes around their necks, and
submit to destruction.

Philip van Artevelde returned sadly to Ghent, on the 29th of April, and
told the people what the Count had said. Then the gallant old soldier
Peter van den Bossche exclaimed:

"In a few days the town of Ghent shall be the most honored or the most
humbled town in Christendom."

Van Artevelde called the burghers together, and told them what the
situation was. There were 30,000 people in Ghent, and there was no food
to be had for them. There was no hope that the Count would offer any
better terms, or that anybody would come to their assistance. They must
decide quickly what they would do, and Philip said there were three
courses open to them. First, if they chose, they could wall up the gates
of the town and die of starvation. Secondly, they could accept the
Count's terms, march out with the ropes around their necks, and take
whatever punishment the Count might put upon them. If they should dec