his bed, was a more faithful sentinel.  The creature sprang forward, barking furiously at the sound of hostile footsteps, and scratching his master’s face with his paws.—­There was but just time for the Prince to mount a horse which was ready saddled, and to effect his escape through the darkness, before his enemies sprang into the tent.  His servants were cut down, his master of the horse and two of his secretaries, who gained their saddles a moment later, all lost their lives, and but for the little dog’s watchfulness, William of Orange, upon whose shoulders the whole weight of his country’s fortunes depended, would have been led within a week to an ignominious death.  To his dying day, the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of the same race in his bed-chamber.  The midnight slaughter still continued, but the Spaniards in their fury, set fire to the tents.  The glare of the conflagration showed the Orangists by how paltry a force they had been surprised.  Before they could rally, however, Romero led off his arquebusiers, every one of whom had at least killed his man.  Six hundred of the Prince’s troops had been put to the sword, while many others were burned in their beds, or drowned in the little rivulet which flowed outside their camp.  Only sixty Spaniards lost their lives.

This disaster did not alter the plans of the Prince, for those plans had already been frustrated.  The whole marrow of his enterprise had been destroyed in an instant by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.  He retreated to Wronne and Nivelles, an assassin, named Heist, a German, by birth, but a French chevalier, following him secretly in his camp, pledged to take his life for a large reward promised by Alva—­an enterprise not destined, however, to be successful.  The soldiers flatly refused to remain an hour longer in the field, or even to furnish an escort for Count Louis, if, by chance, he could be brought out of the town.  The Prince was obliged to inform his brother of the desperate state of his affairs, and to advise him to capitulate on the best terms which he could make.  With a heavy heart, he left the chivalrous Louis besieged in the city which he had so gallantly captured, and took his way across the Meuse towards the Rhine.  A furious mutiny broke out among his troops.  His life was, with difficulty, saved from the brutal soldiery—­infuriated at his inability to pay them, except in the over-due securities of the Holland cities—­by the exertions of the officers who still regarded him with veneration and affection.  Crossing the Rhine at Orsoy, he disbanded his army and betook himself, almost alone, to Holland.

Yet even in this hour of distress and defeat, the Prince seemed more heroic than many a conqueror in his day of triumph.  With all his hopes blasted, with the whole fabric of his country’s fortunes shattered by the colossal crime of his royal ally, he never lost his confidence in himself nor his unfaltering trust in God.  All the cities which, but a few weeks before, had so eagerly raised his standard, now fell off at once.  He went to Holland, the only province which remained true, and which still looked up to him as its saviour, but he went thither expecting and prepared to perish.  “There I will make my sepulchre,” was his simple and sublime expression in a private letter to his brother.