He nothing lacked in sovereignty but the right;
Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.”
Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde.
But the fate, like the fortune of Artevelde, was characteristic of the proverbial caprice and vacillations of republican popularity. After being for ten years or more, the idol of the people, he presumed to induce them to expel the Counts of Flanders from the succession, and to acknowledge the Black Prince, the son of his friend, as their sovereign in his stead; but his followers, startled at so bold a proposition, made a pretence for getting rid of their “protector,” and massacred Artevelde in his own house, which they burned to the ground, “Poor men raised him,” says Froissart, “and wicked men slew him.”
Thirty years after, when Flanders, by the marriage of Margaret with Philip the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, became united with that sovereignty, and the citizens were again at war amongst themselves, “the men of Ghent” elected Philip van Artevelde, godson of Queen Philippa, and her namesake, the son of their former favourite and victim, as their leader in their strifes with the burghers of Bruges, who were about to cut a canal from their city to Denys, which would have been injurious to the prosperity of Ghent, which had “the harvest of the river for her revenue,” when Philip defeated the army of Louis le Mael, entered Bruges in triumph, and carried off the Golden Dragon as large as an ox, which, till lately, surmounted the belfry of Ghent, and is said to have been brought home by the Flemings who followed Count Baldwin to Constantinople.
For sometime, in the heyday of good fortune,
“Van Artevelde in all things aped
The state and bearing of a sovereign prince;
Had bailiffs, masters of the horse, receivers,
A chamber of accompt, a hall of audience;