Reputed by the citizens to carry to the Queen Regent their positive refusal to grant the subsidy, he had, on the contrary, given an answer, in their name, in the affirmative.

For these delinquencies, the imaginary and the real, he was inhumanly tortured and afterwards beheaded.

"I know, my children," said he upon the scaffold, "that you will be grieved when you have seen my blood flow, and that you will regret me when it is too late." It does not appear, however, that there was any especial reason to regret him, however sanguinary the punishment which had requited his broken faith.
The mischief being thus afoot, the tongue of Roland, and the easily-excited spirits of the citizens, soon did the rest.

Ghent broke forth into open insurrection.

They had been willing to enlist and pay troops under their own banners, but they had felt outraged at the enormous contribution demanded of them for a foreign war, undertaken in the family interests of their distant master.