the troops mutinied in consequence of their pay being in arrears,
and he was detained four weeks until the cities of Holland guaranteed
their payment for three months. A few cities opened their gates
to him; but they were for the most part unimportant places, and
Mechlin was the only large town that admitted his troops. Still
he pressed on toward Mons, expecting daily to be joined by 12,000
French infantry and 3,000 cavalry under the command of Admiral
Coligny.

The prince, who seldom permitted himself to be sanguine, believed
that the goal of his hopes was reached, and that he should now be
able to drive the Spaniards from the Netherlands. But as he was
marching forward he received tidings that showed him that all his
plans were shattered, and that the prospects were darker than they
had ever before been. While the King of France had throughout been
encouraging the revolted Netherlanders, and had authorized his
minister to march with an army to their assistance, he was preparing
for a deed that would be the blackest in history, were it not
that its horrors are less appalling than those inflicted upon the
captured cities of the Netherlands by Alva. On St. Bartholomew's Eve
there was a general massacre of the Protestants in Paris, followed
by similar massacres throughout France, the number of victims being
variously estimated at from twenty-five to a hundred thousand.

Protestant Europe was filled with horror at this terrible crime.
Philip of Spain was filled with equal delight. Not only was the
danger that seemed to threaten him in the Netherlands at once and
forever, as he believed, at an end, but he saw in this destruction
of the Protestants of France a great step in the direction he had
so much at heart -- the entire extirpation of heretics throughout