He wrote another letter upon the name day, such was his anxiety upon the subject, instructing the envoy to urge upon Alva the necessity of chastising those rebels to the French crown.  “If he tells you,” continued Charles, “that this is tacitly requiring him to put to death all the French prisoners now in hand as well to cut in pieces every man in Mons, you will say to him that this is exactly what he ought to do, and that he will be guilty of a great wrong to Christianity if he does otherwise.”  Certainly, the Duke, having been thus distinctly ordered, both by his own master and by his Christian Majesty, to put every one of these Frenchmen to death, had a sufficiency of royal warrant.  Nevertheless, he was not able to execute entirely these ferocious instructions.  The prisoners already in his power were not destined to escape, but the city of Mons, in his own language, “proved to have sharper teeth than he supposed.”

Mondoucet lost no time in placing before Alva the urgent necessity of accomplishing the extensive and cold-blooded massacre thus proposed.  “The Duke has replied,” wrote the envoy to his sovereign, “that he is executing his prisoners every day, and that he has but a few left.  Nevertheless, for some reason which he does not mention, he is reserving the principal noblemen and chiefs.”  He afterwards informed his master that Genlis, Jumelles, and the other leaders, had engaged, if Alva would grant them a reasonable ransom, to induce the French in Mons to leave the city, but that the Duke, although his language was growing less confident, still hoped to take the town by assault.  “I have urged him,” he added, “to put them all to death, assuring him that he would be responsible for the consequences of a contrary course.”—­“Why does not your Most Christian master,” asked Alva, “order these Frenchmen in Mons to come to him under oath to make no disturbance?  Then my prisoners will be at my discretion and I shall get my city.”—­“Because,” answered the envoy, “they will not trust his Most Christian Majesty, and will prefer to die in Mons.”—­[Mondoucet to Charles ix., 15th September, 1572.]

This certainly was a most sensible reply, but it is instructive to witness the cynicism with which the envoy accepts this position for his master, while coldly recording the results of all these sanguinary conversations.

Such was the condition of affairs when the Prince of Orange arrived at Peronne, between Binche and the Duke of Alva’s entrenchments.  The besieging army was rich in notabilities of elevated rank.  Don Frederic of Toledo had hitherto commanded, but on the 27th of August, the Dukes of Medina Coeli and of Alva had arrived in the camp.  Directly afterwards came the warlike Archbishop of Cologne, at the head of two thousand cavalry.  There was but one chance for the Prince of Orange, and experience had taught him, four years before, its slenderness.  He might still provoke his adversary into a pitched battle,