Winter was coming on, and the city was filled with distress, for at any moment the land might be plunged in the horrors of civil war, and business was at a standstill. All that could be done had been done: Philip had issued a proclamation in which he declared that at the request of the Estates he had undertaken the government during the absence of his brother, and the Estates, in their turn, had addressed a letter to the nobles and the cities of Brabant informing them of the motives which had inspired their action. There was nothing for it but to await the issue of events. But inaction to one of Jacqueline's keen and impetuous nature was altogether impossible, and shortly after the failure of the Regent's negotiations with John, she set out with Madame the Widow for Valenciennes. The men of Brabant were unable to help her; she must seek assistance elsewhere. Philip of Burgundy was impossible: he was playing his own game. The King of France was his puppet; there was nothing to be done with him. Someone suggested England, and presently, unknown to her mother, she flitted across the Channel, determined to enlist the sympathy of her distant kinsman, King Henry V. Better had she remained in Brabant: if only she could have possessed her soul in patience she might have accomplished something. Meanwhile at Brussels and throughout Brabant the air was thick with rumours. What would the morrow bring forth? All trade was at a standstill, it was the last month of the year and the empty stomachs of men without work were already beginning to shrink from the grip of winter. Every honest burgher as he turned into his bed at night was firmly convinced that the tocsin would clang before dawn, and in the morning he was no less sure that something untoward would happen before sundown. For six weary weeks the good town of Brussels was on tenterhooks, and then, on the 20th of January 1421, she was basely betrayed into the hands of the enemy by her own magistrates. It was common knowledge that some of the patricians were disaffected, but no one imagined how far the evil had really spread until John appeared before the Louvain gate with an army of Germans. Then the renegades hoisted their true colours and then it was known for the first time that no less than four of the patrician clans had cast in their lot with his; and though the remaining three were composed for the most part of good patriots, their representatives in the city council, flustered and dismayed at the situation which had thus been suddenly sprung on them, after some feeble show at resistance, yielded to their more energetic colleagues.