The duke might have spared his trouble and his elaborate
condescension. The answer to his conciliatory request was a flat
refusal to consider the matter at all. Salt was a vital necessity to
Flemish fisheries, and its cost could not be increased to the least
degree without serious inconvenience. The Flemings were wroth at his
imitating the worst custom of his French kinsmen.

Philip departed from Ghent in great dudgeon. After a time he was
persuaded that the indisposition of the town to meet his reasonable
wishes was not due to the citizens at large, but to the machinations
of a few unruly agitators among the magistrates. In 1449, therefore,
he took a high-handed course of trying to direct the issue of the
regular municipal elections, so as to ensure the choice of magistrates
on whose obedience he could rely. The appearance of Burgundian troops
in Ghent, before the election of mid-August, aroused the wrath of the
community, who thought that their most cherished franchises were in
jeopardy.

This was the beginning of a bitter struggle between Ghent and Philip.
The duke found it no light matter to coerce the independent burghers
into remembering that they were simply part of the Burgundian state.
"_Tantæ molis erat liberam gentem in servitutem adigere_!" ejaculates
Meyer in the midst of his chronicle of the details of fourteen months
of active hostilities.[11] Matters were long in coming to an outbreak.
Various points had been contended over, when Philip had endeavoured
to change the seat of the great council, or to take divers measures
tending to concentrate certain judicial or legislative functions for
his own convenience, but in a manner prejudicial to the autonomy of
Ghent. His centripetal policy was disliked, but when his policy went
further, and he attempted to control purely civic offices, dislike