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." It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into a demagogic tyrant.

But some of us may have too vivid a personal recollection of similar scenes to doubt the general truth of the picture; and we shall meet before long in the history of France during the fourteenth century with an example still more striking and more famous than that of Van Artevelde.
Whilst the Count of Flanders, after having vainly attempted to excite an uprising against Van Artevelde, was being forced, in order to escape from the people of Bruges, to mount his horse in hot haste, at night and barely armed, and to flee away to St.Omer, Philip of Valois and Edward III.

were preparing, on either side, for the war which they could see drawing near.

Philip was vigorously at work on the pope, the Emperor of Germany, and the princes neighbors of Flanders, in order to raise obstacles against his rival or rob him of his allies.