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
appointed day, in company with fifty persons from the guilds, and fifty
others, to be arbitrarily named, in their shirts, with halters upon their
necks. This large number of deputies, as representatives of the city,
were then to fall upon their knees before the Emperor, say in a loud and
intelligible voice, by the mouth of one of their clerks, that they were
extremely sorry for the disloyalty, disobedience, infraction of laws,
commotions, rebellion, and high treason, of which they had been guilty,