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She turned her face to the north as if she thought she could see or hear the siege-guns. "But you said Jimmy was in Ghent." "Jimmy," I said, "is probably in Ghent. If he isn't, he's in Antwerp. Do you know that the battlefields are down there no there to the south, where I'm pointing? There's fighting going on there now."
Louis XIV, however, fully informed of the state of public opinion and of the internal dissensions both in the United Provinces and in England, was not slow to take advantage of the situation. A powerful French army invaded Flanders and made themselves masters of Ypres and Ghent and proceeded to besiege Mons.
The Pacification of Ghent was broken at the opening of 1579 by the secession of the Walloon provinces of the southern border. It was only by a new league of the seven northern provinces, where Protestantism was dominant, in the Union of Utrecht that William of Orange could meet Parma's stroke.
The conspirator immediately mounted, and rode off towards Ghent. During his absence there had been much turbulence, but no decided outbreak, in that city. Imbize had accosted the Duke of Aerschot in the street, and demanded when and how he intended to proclaim the restoration of the ancient charters.
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 Rupelmonde, in the very bed in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Sohier of Courtrai, Van Artevelde's father-in-law, who had been kept for many months in prison for his intimacy with the English.
Not only did the river yield the town all necessary supplies from Ghent, it also opened an easy communication with the bordering province of Zealand. For, as the tide of the North Sea extends far up the Scheldt, and ebbs and flows regularly, Antwerp enjoys the peculiar advantage that the same tide flows past it at different times in two opposite directions.
Besides the secret arrangements already described for the separation of the Walloon provinces, there had been much earnest and eloquent remonstrance on the part of the states-general and of Orange many solemn embassies and public appeals. As usual, the Pacification of Ghent was the two-sided shield which hung between the parties to cover or to justify the blows which each dealt at the other.
The citizens of Bruges take him. Maximilian, with several councillors, is kept a prisoner in a house on the market-place. The magistrates are all changed, the affairs of government conducted in the name of the young Philip alone. Meantime, the estates of the other Netherlands assemble at Ghent; anxious, unfortunately, not for the national liberty, but for that of the Roman king.
He had pretended not to see his doubt and not to mind it. And he had seen it, as he saw everything, and he had minded awfully. Then came Viola's illness, which you could put down to Reggie's doubt. And after that it had been Viola pretty nearly all the time. And even at Ghent, by the tortures of anxiety she had caused him, you may say that she had spoiled his ecstasy.
The result was that the States General, meeting at Ghent, were so alarmed and angered that all the Provinces again united and by the Pacification of Ghent, resolved unanimously to demand the total withdrawal of the Spanish troops before they would admit the new Governor, Don John of Austria, Philip's illegitimate brother, the victor of Lepanto.
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