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.