serving-men, who were in the secret, and who carried his supper into his bedchamber after his departure, as if he were still there, whereas in reality he had fled with the Lord of Ashe and four others, who led him by circuitous routes to Bois-le-Duc. [22] These men seem to have been near kinsmen of Nicholas de Swaef. As soon as it was publicly known that John had left the city, the Assembly at Vilvorde, by the advice of the French ambassador, conferred the government on Philip of Saint-Pol, who on the following day (October 2), along with Jacqueline, her mother and the Estates, triumphantly entered Brussels.[23] [23] _See_ De Dynter. Five months before the Duchess of Brabant had left her home, accompanied only by a humble serving-lad. As she wended her way through the muddy streets to her mother's lodging in the _rue de la Montagne_ the few stragglers who recognised her had stood silent as she passed, in sympathy and respect at her humiliation; and now she returned in triumph at the head of a brilliant cavalcade of churchmen, and knights and burghers; and the people welcomed her with shouts of acclamation, and with trumpets and clashing bells. How different too was her position in the palace to what it had been in former days. The fears of her poor little husband had compelled him to leave it trembling, disguised, under cover of night, and by a back door, in more pitiable condition almost than she had been when she had fled from the Coudenberg. And the man without heart and without soul, who, having robbed her of her husband's affection, thought it almost an honourable thing to stoop to the pettiness of depriving her ladies of their dinner, he, too, had gone the way of his master and his dupe, and of the corrupt crew whose pride and debauchery had in days of yore rendered her life intolerable, not one was left within the walls of the Coudenberg. She was now in the midst of friends and attended by her own people. Her will was law. She was Sovereign, and, such was the chivalrous devotion of the men who had rescued and restored her, that in the ardour of their first enthusiasm they placed her interests before their own. At the solemn assembly which took place next day in the Town Hall the Estates unanimously decided to forthwith equip an expedition to wrest from John the Pitiless 'the possessions of the Duchess which her husband had abandoned to him without her consent.' Soon a great host was assembled at Breda, hard by the cities it had been decided, in the first place, to take. Knights from every lordship in Brabant were there, and armed burghers from every town save Bois-le-Duc, and Jacqueline herself was in the midst of them.