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 varlets, 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.”