In truth, the advice thus given by Saint Goard on the subject of the French prisoners in Alva’s possessions, was a natural result of the Saint Bartholomew.  Here were officers and soldiers whom Charles ix. had himself sent into the Netherlands to fight for the Protestant cause against Philip and Alva.  Already, the papers found upon them had placed him in some embarrassment, and exposed his duplicity to the Spanish government, before the great massacre had made such signal reparation for his delinquency.  He had ordered Mondoucet, his envoy in the Netherlands, to use dissimulation to an unstinted amount, to continue his intrigues with the Protestants, and to deny stoutly all proofs of such connivance.  “I see that the papers found upon Genlis;” he wrote twelve days before the massacre, “have been put into the hands of Assonleville, and that they know everything done by Genlis to have been committed with my consent.”

[These remarkable letters exchanged between Charles ix. and Mondoucet have recently been published by M. Emile Gachet (chef du bureau paleographique aux Archives de Belgique) from a manuscript discovered by him in the library at Rheims.—­Compte Rendu de la Com.  Roy. d’Hist., iv. 340, sqq.]

“Nevertheless, you will tell the Duke of Alva that these are lies invented to excite suspicion against me.  You will also give him occasional information of the enemy’s affairs, in order to make him believe in your integrity.  Even if he does not believe you, my purpose will be answered, provided you do it dexterously.  At the same time you must keep up a constant communication with the Prince of Orange, taking great care to prevent discovery of your intelligence with King.”

Were not these masterstrokes of diplomacy worthy of a King whom his mother, from boyhood upwards, had caused to study Macchiavelli’s “Prince,” and who had thoroughly taken to heart the maxim, often repeated in those days, that the “Science of reigning was the science of lying”?

The joy in the Spanish camp before Mons was unbounded.  It was as if the only bulwark between the Netherland rebels and total destruction had been suddenly withdrawn.  With anthems in Saint Gudule, with bonfires, festive illuminations, roaring artillery, with trumpets also, and with shawms, was the glorious holiday celebrated in court and camp, in honor of the vast murder committed by the Most Christian King upon his Christian subjects; nor was a moment lost in apprising the Huguenot soldiers shut up with Louis of Nassau in the beleaguered city of the great catastrophe which was to render all their valor fruitless. “’T was a punishment,” said a Spanish soldier, who fought most courageously before Mons, and who elaborately described the siege afterwards, “well worthy of a king whose title is ‘The Most Christian,’ and it was still more honorable to inflict it with his own hands as he did.”  Nor was the observation a pithy sarcasm, but a frank expression of opinion, from a man celebrated alike for the skill with which he handled both his sword and his pen.