lace; 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 young King at Bayonne, when he expressed the
opinion that to take arms against his own subjects was wholly out of the
question, and could only be followed by general ruin. "'Tis easy to see
that he has been tutored," wrote Alva to his master. Unfortunately, the
same mother; who had then instilled those lessons of hypocritical
benevolence, had now wrought upon her son's cowardly but ferocious nature
with a far different intent. The incomplete assassination of Coligny, the
dread of signal vengeance at the hands of the Huguenots, the necessity of
taking the lead in the internecine snuggle; were employed with Medicean
art, and with entire success. The King was lashed into a frenzy. Starting
to his feet, with a howl of rage and terror, "I agree to the scheme," he