More than this, they offered to create a diversion for the English forces acting in Guienne and Gascony by raising a strong force and expelling the French garrisons still remaining in some parts of the country.

This was done.

Hugo of Hastings was appointed by the king captain-general in Flanders, and with a force of English and Flemings did good service by expelling the French from Termond and several other towns.
The character of Jacob van Artevelde has had but scant justice done to it by most of the historians of the time.

These, living in an age of chivalry, when noble blood and lofty deeds were held in extraordinary respect, had little sympathy with the brewer of Ghent, and deemed it contrary to the fitness of things that the chivalry of France should have been defied and worsted by mere mechanics and artisans.

But there can be no doubt that Artevelde was a very great man.