When in 1414 an English fleet of a hundred vessels sailed up the Zwyn and was threatening the fortress of Sluys--evil reminiscence of the conquest of Charles VI.--the burghers of Bruges refused to defend it, notwithstanding their Sovereign's earnest entreaties. 'It did not behove them,' they said by the mouth of their burgomaster, Lievin van Schotclaere, 'to protect a citadel which threatened the English less than their own liberties,' nor was it until the invaders had taken Sluys and burnt the castle that, at last, the Bruges men consented to arm, and perhaps even then there was some secret understanding between them, for the English retired at the approach of the burghers, 'slowly and without any sign of disquietude, rather after the manner of friends and allies than foes.' As for John, he withdrew to Ghent disgusted; made it known that henceforth he would reside in that city; with a lavish hand scattered gold there; succeeded in corrupting not a few of the leading burghers, and at length conciliated the goodwill of the whole town by concluding a commercial truce with England, which by putting an end to the mutual piracy of the belligerents was intended to pave the way for a regular commercial treaty. Being thus in a position to act without hindrance, he turned his attention to the truculent burghers of Bruges, and presently the watchers on the belfry--for then, as now, night and day, there were watchers on the belfry--descried slowly winding its way through the woods of Maele, like some huge silver snake, and drawing nearer and nearer to the city, a troop of armed men. In an instant the tocsin was swinging, but the signal had been given too late, and when the breathless citizens reached the market-place, they found it filled with the Duke's guard, and there on the Halles balcony was John himself with a rod in his hand--symbol of coming chastisement. Sixteen great city officers were deprived of their appointments and condemned to exile or mulcted in heavy fines, and their places were given to certain obscure citizens on whose subservience John could rely. It was gall and wormwood to the burghers, but they bent their heads to the storm, nor did they refuse to set their seal of acceptance to the humiliating _Kalfvel_ which the Duke imposed on them in place of their time-honoured charter, nor to thank him for it into the bargain, and that, though it wounded alike their pride and their pockets, curtailed their liberty, and imperilled their necks, by putting burthensome restrictions on the use of guild banners, by utterly suppressing the _maenghelt_, or monthly subsidy, which from time immemorial the corporation had granted to each of the trade guilds, and by making all kinds of vexatious enactments which were sanctioned by pain of death.