He had advanced to the rescue of Louis, with city after city opening its arms to receive him.  He had expected to be joined on the march by Coligny, at the head of a chosen army, and he was now obliged to leave his brother to his fate, having the massacre of the Admiral and his confederates substituted for their expected army of assistance, and with every city and every province forsaking his cause as eagerly as they had so lately embraced it.  “It has pleased God,” he said, “to take away every hope which we could have founded upon man; the King has published that the massacre was by his orders, and has forbidden all his subjects, upon pain of death, to assist me; he has, moreover, sent succor to Alva.  Had it not been for this, we had been masters of the Duke, and should have made him capitulate at our pleasure.”  Yet even then he was not cast down.

Nor was his political sagacity liable to impeachment by the extent to which he had been thus deceived by the French court.  “So far from being reprehensible that I did not suspect such a crime,” he said, “I should rather be chargeable with malignity had I been capable of so sinister a suspicion.  ’Tis not an ordinary thing to conceal such enormous deliberations under the plausible cover of a marriage festival.”

Meanwhile, Count Louis lay confined to his couch with a burning fever.  His soldiers refused any longer to hold the city, now that the altered intentions of Charles IX. were known and the forces of Orange withdrawn.  Alva offered the most honorable conditions, and it was therefore impossible for the Count to make longer resistance.  The city was so important, and time was at that moment so valuable that the Duke was willing to forego his vengeance upon the rebel whom he so cordially detested, and to be satisfied with depriving, him of the prize which he had seized with such audacity.  “It would have afforded me sincere pleasure,” wrote the Duke, “over and above the benefit to God and your Majesty, to have had the Count of Nassau in my power.  I would overleap every obstacle to seize him, such is the particular hatred which I bear the man.”  Under, the circumstances, however, he acknowledged that the result of the council of war could only be to grant liberal terms.

On the 19th September, accordingly, articles of capitulation were signed between the distinguished De la None with three others on the one part, and the Seigneur de Noircarmes and three others on the side of Spain.  The town was given over to Alva, but all the soldiers were to go out with their weapons and property.  Those of the townspeople who had borne arms against his Majesty, and all who still held to the Reformed religion, were to retire with the soldiery.  The troops were to pledge themselves not to serve in future against the Kings of France or Spain, but from this provision Louis, with his English and German soldiers, was expressly excepted, the Count indignantly repudiating the idea of such a pledge, or of discontinuing his hostilities for an instant.  It was also agreed that convoys should be furnished, and hostages exchanged, for the due observance of the terms of the treaty.  The preliminaries having been thus settled, the patriot forces abandoned the town.