his army and himself, yet the Prince as still justly sanguine as to the policy of the French court.  The papers which had been found in the possession of Genlis by his conquerors all spoke one language.  “You would be struck with stupor,” wrote Alva’s secretary, “could you see a letter which is now in my power, addressed by the King of France to Louis of Nassau.”  In that letter the King had declared his determination to employ all the forces which God had placed in his hands to rescue the Netherlands from the oppression under which they were groaning.  In accordance with the whole spirit and language of the French government, was the tone of Coligny in his correspondence with Orange.  The Admiral assured the Prince that there was no doubt as to the earnestness of the royal intentions in behalf of the Netherlands, and recommending extreme caution, announced his hope within a few days to effect a junction with him at the head of twelve thousand French arquebusiers, and at least three thousand cavalry.  Well might the Prince of Orange, strong, and soon to be strengthened, boast that the Netherlands were free, and that Alva was in his power.  He had a right to be sanguine, for nothing less than a miracle could now destroy his generous hopes—­and, alas! the miracle took place; a miracle of perfidy and bloodshed such as the world, familiar as it had ever been and was still to be with massacre, had not yet witnessed.  On the 11th of August, Coligny had written thus hopefully of his movements towards the Netherlands, sanctioned and aided by his King.  A fortnight from that day occurred the “Paris-wedding;” and the Admiral, with thousands of his religious confederates, invited to confidence by superhuman treachery, and lulled into security by the music of august marriage bells, was suddenly butchered in the streets of Paris by royal and noble hands.

The Prince proceeded on his march, during which the heavy news had been brought to him, but he felt convinced that, with the very arrival of the awful tidings, the fate of that campaign was sealed, and the fall of Mons inevitable.  In his own language, he had been struck to the earth “with the blow of a sledge-hammer,”—­nor did the enemy draw a different augury from the great event.

The crime was not committed with the connivance of the Spanish government.  On the contrary, the two courts were at the moment bitterly hostile to each other.  In the beginning of the summer, Charles ix. and his advisers were as false to Philip, as at the end of it they were treacherous to Coligny and Orange.  The massacre of the Huguenots had not even the merit of being a well-contrived and intelligently executed scheme.  We have seen how steadily, seven years before, Catharine de Medici had rejected the advances of Alva towards the arrangement of a general plan for the extermination of all heretics within France and the Netherlands at the same moment.  We have seen the disgust with which Alva turned from the wretched