Europe. He wrote letters of the warmest congratulation to the King
of France, with whom he had formerly been at enmity; while the
Pope, accompanied by his cardinals, went to the church of St. Mark
to render thanks to God for the grace thus singularly vouchsafed
to the Holy See and to all Christendom. To the Prince of Orange
the news came as a thunderclap. His troops wholly lost heart, and
refused to keep the field. The prince himself almost lost his life
at the hands of the mutineers, and at last, crossing the Rhine, he
disbanded his army and went almost alone to Holland to share the
fate of the provinces that adhered to him. He went there expecting
and prepared to die.

"There I will make my sepulcher," was his expression in the letter
in which he announced his intention to his brother. Count Louis
of Nassau had now nothing left before him but to surrender. His
soldiers, almost entirely French, refused any longer to resist,
now that the king had changed his intentions, and the city was
surrendered, the garrison being allowed to retire with their weapons.

The terms of the capitulation were so far respected; but instead
of the terms respecting the townspeople being adhered to, a council
of blood was set up, and for many months from ten to twenty of the
inhabitants were hanged, burned, or beheaded every day. The news
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, of the treachery of the King
of France towards the inhabitants of the Netherlands, and of the
horrible cruelties perpetrated upon the inhabitants of Mechlin and
other towns that had opened their gates to the Prince of Orange,
excited the most intense indignation among the people of England.

The queen put on mourning, but was no more inclined than before