The same system established in Brabant forced the duke of that province to sanction and guarantee the popular privileges, and the superiority of the people over the nobility.  Such was the result of the famous contract concluded in 1312 at Cortenbergh, by which the duke created a legislative and judicial assembly to meet every twenty-one days for the, provincial business; and to consist of fourteen deputies, of whom only four were to be nobles, and ten were chosen from the people.  The duke was bound by this act to hold himself in obedience to the legislative decisions of the council, and renounced all right of levying arbitrary taxes or duties on the state.  Thus were the local privileges of the people by degrees secured and ratified; but the various towns, making common cause for general liberty, became strictly united together, and progressively extended their influence and power.  The confederation between Flanders and Brabant was soon consolidated.  The burghers of Bruges, who had taken the lead in the grand national union, and had been the foremost to expel the foreign force, took umbrage in 1323 at an arbitrary measure of their count, Louis (called of Cressy by posthumous nomination, from his having been killed at that celebrated fight), by which he ceded to the count of Namur, his great-uncle, the port of Ecluse, and authorized him to levy duties there in the style of the feudal lords of the high country.  It was but the affair of a day to the intrepid citizens to attack the fortress of Ecluse, carry it by assault, and take prisoner the old count of Namur.  They destroyed in a short time almost all the strong castles of the nobles throughout the province; and having been joined by all the towns of western Flanders, they finally made prisoners of Count Louis himself, with almost the whole of the nobility, who had taken refuge with him in the town of Courtrai.  But Ghent, actuated by the jealousy which at all times existed between it and Bruges, stood aloof at this crisis.  The latter town was obliged to come to a compromise with the count, who soon afterward, on a new quarrel breaking out, and supported by the king of France, almost annihilated his sturdy opponents at the battle of Cassel, where the Flemish infantry, commanded by Nicholas Zannekin and others, were literally cut to pieces by the French knights and men-at-arms.

This check proved the absolute necessity of union among the rival cities.  Ten years after the battle of Cassel, Ghent set the example of general opposition; this example was promptly followed, and the chief towns flew to arms.  The celebrated James d’Artaveldt, commonly called the brewer of Ghent, put himself at the head of this formidable insurrection.  He was a man of a distinguished family, who had himself enrolled among the guild of brewers, to entitle him to occupy a place in the corporation of Ghent, which he soon succeeded in managing and leading at his pleasure.  The tyranny of the count, and the French party which