Introducing Ghent and the "Stropkes".

The people of Ghent proudly wear the nickname 'Stropke', which is actually the round part of the rope through which a convict has to stick his head before being hanged. The citizens of Ghent received this name because of the punishment inflicted on the city by its most famous citizen, Emperor Charles V.

In 1537 Ghent had refused to pay more taxes for a new war of Charles V against the king of France. To deal with his rebellious birth-city for once and for all, Charles V had the city walls destroyed. He also abolished most of the city's privileges and ordered the most important citizens to appear before him to ask for mercy while carrying a rope around their necks, as a sign that they were ready to be hanged if the Emperor would order it.

The punishment was not new. The people of Ghent had already experienced this under one of their former rulers. The first to do it, was Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1458, and this is to what the people of Ghent refer. Duke Philip was punishing the citizens for their uprising of 1448. He had already defeated the city in the bloody Battle of the Gavere in 1453, where upwards of 10,000 of Ghent's soldiers died, but Philip withheld the city's rights and privileges (a virtual shut-down in trade) until a major ceremony staged in 1458 to garner the Duke's forgiveness.

At the onset of this ceremony, Duke Philip marched the leaders of the city and its guilds outside the city walls, stripped them to their undergarments, had them kneel in the mud wearing nooses around their necks, and pledge to him eternal allegiance. After this, they led him through Ghent's streets, decorated with banners and torches and dramatized mythological and biblical scenes, including a live-action version of the Van Eycks' Ghent Altarpiece as the centerpiece.