to retrieve the fortunes of the day.  Many were persuaded to abandon the design.  Five hundred of the most violent, however, insisted upon leaving the gates, and the governors, distinctly warning these zealots that their blood must be upon their own heads, reluctantly permitted that number to issue from the city.  The rest of the mob, not appeased, but uncertain, and disposed to take vengeance upon the Catholics within the walls, for the disaster which had been occurring without, thronged tumultuously to the long, wide street, called the Mere, situate in the very heart of the city.

Meantime the ardor of those who had sallied from the gate grew sensibly cooler, when they found themselves in the open fields.  De Beauvoir, whose men, after the victory, had scattered in pursuit of the fugitives, now heard the tumult in the city.  Suspecting an attack, he rallied his compact little army again for a fresh encounter.  The last of the vanquished Tholousians who had been captured; more fortunate than their predecessors, had been spared for ransom.  There were three hundred of them; rather a dangerous number of prisoners for a force of eight hundred, who were just going into another battle.  De Beauvoir commanded his soldiers, therefore, to shoot them all.  This order having been accomplished, the Catholics marched towards Antwerp, drums beating, colors flying.  The five hundred Calvinists, not liking their appearance, and being in reality outnumbered, retreated within; the gates as hastily as they had just issued from them.  De Beauvoir advanced close to the city moat, on the margin of which he planted the banners of the unfortunate Tholouse, and sounded a trumpet of defiance.  Finding that the citizens had apparently no stomach for the fight, he removed his trophies, and took his departure.

On the other hand, the tumult within the walls had again increased.  The Calvinists had been collecting in great numbers upon the Mere.  This was a large and splendid thoroughfare, rather an oblong market-place than a street, filled with stately buildings, and communicating by various cross streets with the Exchange and with many other public edifices.  By an early hour in the afternoon twelve or fifteen thousand Calvinists, all armed and fighting men, had assembled upon the place.  They had barricaded the whole precinct with pavements and upturned wagons.  They had already broken into the arsenal and obtained many field-pieces, which were planted at the entrance of every street and by-way.  They had stormed the city jail and liberated the prisoners, all of whom, grateful and ferocious, came to swell the numbers who defended the stronghold on the Mere.  A tremendous mischief was afoot.  Threats of pillaging the churches and the houses of the Catholics, of sacking the whole opulent city, were distinctly heard among this powerful mob, excited by religious enthusiasm, but containing within one great heterogeneous mass the elements of every crime which humanity can commit.  The alarm throughout the city was indescribable.  The cries of women and children, as they remained in trembling expectation of what the next hour might bring forth, were, said one who heard them, “enough to soften the hardest hearts.”