so richly dressed and accoutred."

An idea may be formed of the size and wealth of the city at this period,
from the fact that it received and accommodated sixty thousand strangers,
with their fifteen thousand horses, upon the occasion of the Emperor's
visit. Charles allowed a month of awful suspense to intervene between
his arrival and his vengeance. Despair and hope alternated during the
interval. On the 17th of March, the spell was broken by the execution of
nineteen persons, who were beheaded as ringleaders. On the 29th of
April, he pronounced sentence upon the city. The hall where it was
rendered was open to all comers, and graced by the presence of the
Emperor, the Queen Regent, and the great functionaries of Court, Church,
and State. The decree, now matured, was read at length. It annulled all
the charters, privileges, and laws of Ghent. It confiscated all its
public property, rents, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war,
and in general every thing which the corporation, or the traders, each
and all, possessed in common. In particular, the great bell--Roland was
condemned and sentenced to immediate removal. It was decreed that the
four hundred thousand florins, which had caused the revolt, should
forthwith be paid, together with an additional fine by Ghent of one
hundred and fifty thousand, besides six thousand a year, forever after.
In place of their ancient and beloved constitution, thus annihilated at a
blow, was promulgated a new form of municipal government of the simplest
kind, according to which all officers were in future to be appointed by
himself and the guilds, to be reduced to half their number; shorn of all
political power, and deprived entirely of self-government. It was,
moreover, decreed, that the senators, their pensionaries, clerks and
secretaries, thirty notable burghers, to be named by the Emperor, with
the great dean and second dean of the weavers, all dressed in black
robes, without their chains, and bareheaded, should appear upon an