And, as in those days, there was no lack of leaders--a Bertulph, a Wulfringhen, a Sporkin was always at hand when he was wanted--so now, in the time of their extremity, captains were found. These men led their ragged hosts against the castles of their oppressors, and soon the land was filled with smouldering ruins. Aspremont, unable to quell the storm, summoned the Count from Nevers, who entered Flanders early in 1325; but Louis had no army to curb his turbulent subjects and was thus compelled to treat with them. Philip of Axel, a citizen of Ghent, was appointed Governor of Flanders in place of the Lord of Aspremont. Fines were imposed, promises of amendment were made, but the armed bands were not dissolved, and no sooner had Louis turned his back than the trouble began again, whilst the efforts made to extinguish the conflagration only increased it. Here and there a homestead razed, some stray farmer kidnapped and perhaps hanged or broken on the wheel; these things but nerved the Karls to greater efforts, for every man believed that his turn would come next. Their chief leader was one Nicholas Zannekin, the richest and the mightiest of them all, a man of the same class as Bertulph, who, like him, despised the nobles of the Court, and, like him, was regarded as a slave. During the temporary lull of hostilities at the opening of the year, he had deemed it prudent to seek refuge in Bruges, the only town in Flanders where a man obnoxious to the authorities had some chance of saving his head, and there he soon obtained as much influence with the burghers as he had hitherto exercised over the country-folk of his own race (the men of Furnes). Nor did he cease to remind them, ground down as they were by odious and illegal taxes, of their rights as free citizens and the duties which their station imposed, and when Sohier Janssone (another popular leader) who had taken possession of Ghistelle Castle, presently appeared before the city walls with booty and captives, Bruges flew to arms. Zannekin soon rallied to his banner all the neighbouring communes. Thorhout, Roulers, Poperinghe, Nieuport, Dunkirk, Cassel, Bailleul, Furnes, threw open their gates at his approach, and wherever he went he was hailed as his country's saviour. 'The men of Furnes,' says the Flemish chronicle, 'received him as the angel of the Lord, and showed more submission to him than to any other man, and gave him greater honour than if he had been Count or King.'[28] Robert of Cassel, who had gathered together a small band to oppose him, withdrew when he saw how matters stood, but Zannekin, backed as he was by the communes, had little fear of him, and it was, moreover, bruited abroad that Robert himself was not hostile to the insurrection. Louis was now in Flanders; sometimes at Courtrai, sometimes at Ypres, often at Ghent, lavish in flattering promises to the burghers, holding out to them bright hopes of new liberties and larger privileges than any yet accorded to Flemish towns.