taxes or duties on the state. Thus were the local privileges
of the people by degrees secured and ratified; but the various
towns, making common cause for general liberty, became strictly
united together, and progressively extended their influence and
power. The confederation between Flanders and Brabant was soon
consolidated. The burghers of Bruges, who had taken the lead in
the grand national union, and had been the foremost to expel
the foreign force, took umbrage in 1323 at an arbitrary measure
of their count, Louis (called of Cressy by posthumous nomination,
from his having been killed at that celebrated fight), by which
he ceded to the count of Namur, his great-uncle, the port of
Ecluse, and authorized him to levy duties there in the style of
the feudal lords of the high country. It was but the affair of
a day to the intrepid citizens to attack the fortress of Ecluse,
carry it by assault, and take prisoner the old count of Namur.
They destroyed in a short time almost all the strong castles of
the nobles throughout the province; and having been joined by
all the towns of western Flanders, they finally made prisoners
of Count Louis himself, with almost the whole of the nobility,
who had taken refuge with him in the town of Courtrai. But Ghent,
actuated by the jealousy which at all times existed between it and
Bruges, stood aloof at this crisis. The latter town was obliged
to come to a compromise with the count, who soon afterward, on a
new quarrel breaking out, and supported by the king of France,
almost annihilated his sturdy opponents at the battle of Cassel,
where the Flemish infantry, commanded by Nicholas Zannekin and
others, were literally cut to pieces by the French knights and
men-at-arms.

This check proved the absolute necessity of union among the rival