Such was the prince whom the communes of Flanders had set over them, but Louis rarely honoured the Netherlands with his presence. The dissipation of his Court at Nevers was more to his taste than the humdrum respectability of his burgher nobles, and his vicious life was there less _en evidence_ and less criticised than in the democratic towns of Flanders. His absence, however, was a greater cause of embarrassment to his Flemish subjects than his presence in their midst would have been, for his lieutenant, the Lord of Aspremont, vexed them with oppressive taxes to enrich foreign favourites, and though in the great towns the influence of the burghers was powerful enough to hold him in check, in the country he had a free hand. Here dominated great Leliaert lords who had been for years past in the pay of France: the Moerkerkes, the Praets, the Ghistelles, and the rest, men who had fought, or whose fathers had fought, at Courtrai, and mindful how many of their kinsmen had fallen beneath the rude battle-axes of the Saxon Karls, thought only of vengeance. These men were wont to sally forth from their castles to take fines from those whom they feared most, and if their victims resisted, they put them to death. 'Intolerable are the manners of the Karls: with dishevelled beards, garments in tatters, and shoes in shreds, they would fain tame knights. With their knotted clubs and their long knives thrust into their girdles they are as proud as lords, and think that all the universe is theirs--God blast them! But we shall know how to chastise these men. They shall be drawn on hurdles and hanged on gibbets. The Karls must bend before us.'[27] Thus the Leliaert nobles; but they reckoned without their hosts. The spirit which animated the Saxons of Flanders in the fourteenth century was the same which had hurled their ancestors against the tyranny of Richilde in the twelfth; which had driven the Erembalds to dash themselves to pieces rather than submit to Charles the Dane; which had inspired the Blauvoets in the eleven hundreds to resist the exactions of Mathilde, and which only yesterday had nerved their fathers to withstand and conquer the armies of France.