The burghers of Poperinghe had refused to continue recognizing the privileges of those of Ypres; and the Ypres men, enraged, had taken up arms, and, after a sanguinary melley, had forced the folks of Poperinghe to give in.

Then the Ypres men, proud of their triumph, had gone and broken the weavers' machinery at Bailleul, and in some other towns.

Artevelde, constrained to take part in these petty civil wars, had been led on to greater and greater abuse, in his own city itself, of his municipal despotism, already grown hateful to many of his fellow- citizens.

Whether he himself proposed to shake off the yoke of Count Louis of Flanders, and take for duke the Prince of Wales, or merely accepted King Edward's proposal, he set resolutely to work to get it carried.

The most able men, swayed by their own passions and the growing necessities of the struggle in which they may be engaged, soon forget their first intentions, and ignore their new perils.