After the Lieutenant-Governor and his cortège had left the Kouter the soldiers broke ground and ran wild throughout the city. No special lodgings had been allotted to them, but apparently they had been told that they could quarter themselves where they listed. They began by taking possession of the covered markets--and this could easily have been tolerated; but many of them raided the houses of peaceful citizens in a manner most unseemly and often brutal, making terrible noise and confusion throughout the city. They treated the owners of the houses as if the latter were nought but menials and they themselves the masters of the place; so much so indeed that several families left their homes in the possession of these soldiery, and took refuge with relations who had not been thus inflicted.

Terror and misery had rapidly spread throughout the city. There were many who had not heard the proclamation of the Lieutenant-Governor, and when the rumour reached them that numbers of soldiers were billeted in the town they made preparations for immediate flight. Some even went so far as to load all their furniture and effects upon wagons, ready to go out of the city this very night--for they remembered how five years ago when first the Duke of Alva's troops were quartered in Ghent, how abominably they had behaved toward all the citizens--robbing, looting, and pillaging, for all the world as if they were bands of brigands, rather than disciplined soldiers.

Great was the terror and consternation of those who wanted to flee now when they understood that all the city gates were closed and that no one would be allowed to go through them until the Prince of Orange, who was said to be in Ghent, was delivered over to the Lieutenant-Governor.

This was indeed a terrible state of things and one destined to strike hopeless terror in the hearts of most, seeing that hardly any one inside the city knew aught of the Prince of Orange or of his comings and goings, and yet they were liable to be punished for treason in which they had had no share.

And in the meanwhile the soldiers ran riot throughout the city--even though, with much ostentation, a great deal of to-do and much beating of drums, their provosts read out at the four corners of the city a proclamation forbidding all looting and marauding, and enjoining the men under pain of hanging to take anything from the citizens without paying for it.

This proclamation was of course a mere farce, for the soldiers, despite the lateness of the hour, had at once raided the butchers', bakers', and other provision shops, and though they professed to pay for everything they took, they refused to give more than one sou for a pound of meat, and then they cut out all the bone, and threw it back in the face of the wretched butcher who tried to argue with them.

And all the while remember that these men were not Spaniards; they were Walloons of the provinces immediately adjacent to the two Flanders, and their kith and kin had also grievously suffered from Spanish arrogance and oppression. But what will men not do for money or under compulsion--or mayhap under that abject fear which the very name of Alva had brought forth into the heart of people who had once been so proud and so independent? The Seigneur de Vaernewyck puts it on record that in his opinion the employing of Walloon troops to check the so-called revolt of Ghent was an act of refined cruelty on the part of the Duke. He liked to pit brother against brother, kinsman against his own kind. He had cowed the Flemings and the Walloons to such an extent that now at last he could use one against the other, and could rely on each side being more cruel and relentless through that extraordinary perversion of human nature which makes civil strife so much more brutal and horrible than any war between the nations.

CHAPTER XIII

MY FAITHFUL WATCH-DOG

I