The rest of the survivors struggled through the streets-falling in large numbers at every step-towards the point at which they had so lately entered the city. Here at the Kipdorp gate was a ghastly spectacle, the slain being piled up in the narrow passage full ten feet high, while some of the heap, not quite dead, were striving to extricate a hand or foot, and others feebly thrust forth their heads to gain a mouthful of air.

From the outside, some of Anjou's officers were attempting to climb over the mass of bodies in order to enter the city; from the interior, the baffled and fugitive remnant of their comrades were attempting to force their passage through the same horrible barrier; while many dropped every instant upon the heap of slain, under the blows of the unrelenting burghers. On the other hand, Count Rochepot himself, to whom the principal command of the enterprise had been intrusted by Anjou, stood directly in the path of his fugitive soldiers, not only bitterly upbraiding them with their cowardice, but actually slaying ten or twelve of them with his own hands, as the most effectual mode of preventing their retreat. Hardly an hour had elapsed from the time when the Duke of Anjou first rode out of the Kipdorp gate before nearly the whole of the force which he had sent to accomplish his base design was either dead or captive. Two hundred and fifty nobles of high rank and illustrious name were killed; recognised at once as they lay in the streets by their magnificent costume. A larger number of the gallant chivalry of France had been sacrificed—as Anjou confessed-in this treacherous and most shameful enterprise than had often fallen upon noble and honourable fields. Nearly two thousand of the rank and file had perished, and the rest were prisoners. It was at first asserted that exactly fifteen hundred and eighty-three Frenchmen had fallen, but this was only because this number happened to be the date of the year, to which the lovers of marvellous coincidences struggled very hard to make the returns of the dead correspond. Less than one hundred burghers lost their lives.

Anjou, as he looked on at a distance, was bitterly reproached for his treason by several of the high-minded gentlemen about his person, to whom he had not dared to confide his plot. The Duke of Montpensier protested vehemently that he washed his hands of the whole transaction, whatever might be the issue. He was responsible for the honour of an illustrious house, which should never be stained, he said, if he could prevent it, with such foul deeds. The same language was held by Laval, by Rochefoucauld, and by the Maréchal de Biron, the last gentleman,

whose two sons were engaged in the vile enterprise, bitterly cursing the duke to his face, as he rode through the gate after revealing his secret undertaking.

Meanwhile, Anjou, in addition to the punishment of hearing these reproaches from men of honour, was the victim of a rapid and violent fluctuation of feeling. Hope, fear, triumph, doubt, remorse, alternately swayed him. As he saw the fugitives leaping from the walls, he shouted exultingly, without accurately discerning what manner of men they were, that the city was his, that four thousand of his brave soldiers were there, and were hurling the burghers from the battlements. On being made afterwards aware of his error, he was proportionably depressed; and when it was obvious at last that the result of the enterprise was an absolute and disgraceful failure, together with a complete exposure of his treachery, he fairly mounted his horse, and fled conscience-stricken from the scene.

The attack had been so unexpected, in consequence of the credence that had been rendered by Orange and the magistracy to the solemn protestations of the duke, that it had been naturally out of any one's power to prevent the catastrophe. The prince was lodged in a part of the town. remote from the original scene of action, and it does not appear that information had reached him that anything unusual was occurring until the affair was approaching its termination. Then there was little for him to do. He hastened, however, to the scene, and, mounting the ramparts, persuaded the citizens to cease cannonading the discomfited and retiring foe. He felt the full gravity of the situation, and the necessity of diminishing the rancour of the inhabitants against their treacherous allies, if such a result were yet possible. The burghers had done their duty, and it certainly would have been neither in his power nor his inclination to protect the French marauders from expulsion and castigation.

Such was the termination of the French Fury, and it seems sufficiently strange that it should have been so much less disastrous to Antwerp than was the Spanish Fury of 1576, to which men could still scarcely allude without a shudder. One would have thought the French more likely to prove successful in their enterprise than the Spaniards in theirs. The Spaniards were enemies against whom the city had long been on its guard. The French were friends in whose sincerity a somewhat shaken confidence had just been restored. When the Spanish attack was made, a large force of defenders was drawn up in battle array behind freshlystrengthened fortifications. When the French entered at leisure through

a scarcely-guarded gate, the whole population and garrison of the town were quietly eating their dinners. The numbers of the invading forces on the two occasions did not materially differ; but at the time of the French Fury there was not a large force of regular troops under veteran generals to resist the attack. Perhaps this was the main reason for the result, which seems at first almost inexplicable. For protection against the Spanish invasion, the burghers relied on mercenaries, some of whom proved treacherous, while the rest became panic-struck. On the present occasion the burghers relied on themselves. Moreover, the French committed the great error of despising their enemy. Recollecting the ease with which the Spaniards had ravished the city, they believed that they had nothing to do but to enter and take possession. Instead of repressing their greediness, as the Spaniards had done, until they had overcome resistance, they dispersed almost immediately into by-streets, and entered warehouses to search for plunder. They seemed actuated by a fear that they should not have time to rifle the city before additional troops should be sent by Anjou to share in the spoil. They were less used to the sacking of Netherland cities than were the Spaniards, whom long practice had made perfect in the art of methodically butchering a population at first, before attention should be diverted to plundering and supplementary outrages. At any rate, whatever the causes, it is certain that the panic, which upon such occasions generally decides the fate of the day, seized upon the invaders and not upon the invaded, almost from the very first. As soon as the marauders faltered in their purpose, and wished to retreat, it was all over with them. Returning was worse than advance, and it was the almost inevitable result that hardly a man escaped death or capture.

ILLI

LIAM THE SILENT was dead. He had fallen by the hand of an assassin. That assassin had been commissioned to murder the Prince by Philip of Spain. The determination, the skill, the prudence, the bravery, the integrity and the self-denial of Prince William were rapidly establishing a united and prosperous Republic in the Netherlands, a Commonwealth capable of withstanding both the intrigues and the arms of Spain; but the great master-builder of that Republic-under God- was William the Silent. Nothing daunted his brave heart; through good report and through evil report, in prosperity, in adversity, in victory, or defeat, he still offered the same bold front to the foe. It was clear to the Spanish tyrant and those who surrounded him that nothing but the death of the Prince of Orange could preserve the Netherlands and Holland to the Crown of Spain. His death would be a greater gain than a score of victories. Let him die.

Unscrupulous as to the means if the end were attained, the Court of Spain set itself to the work of compassing the death of William the Silent. Parma was the chief agent-"looking about for a good man to murder Orange." Of hireling assassins there were many, willing enough to sell their souls for money, but, once receiving money on account, shrinking from the danger of the job. Italians, Spaniards, Lorraines, Scotchmen, Englishmen, presented themselves from time to time, and were engaged by Parma. But they all failed in doing anything more for Spain than impoverish her treasury without in the least advancing the royal cause in the Netherlands; and so at last Parma grew cautious and would not pay in advance.

In the beginning of the year 1584 an obscure, undersized, thin bearded youth, by name Balthazar Gérard, communicated to the principal of the Jesuit College, at Treves, a plan for murdering the Prince of Orange. Encouraged in his enterprise he held counsel with a celebrated Franciscan, Father Géry, and by his advice addressed a letter to Parma. In this letter he explained his plan of introducing himself to the notice of Orange as the son of an executed Calvinist; as himself warmly, though secretly, devoted to the reformed faith, a heart yearning after Geneva, and as desirous therefore of placing himself in the prince's service in order to avoid the insolence of the Papists. Having gained the confidence of those about the prince, he would suggest to them the great use which might be made of Mansfeld's-the commander of the Spanish troopssignet in forging passports for spies and other persons whom it might be expedient to send into the territory occupied by the royalists. With these or similar feints and frivolities, continued Gérard, he should obtain access to the person of the said Nassau, repeating his protestation that nothing-no hope of reward—had moved him to the enterprise, save the good zeal which he bore to the faith and true religion guarded by the Holy Mother Church, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman, and to the service of his majesty. With regard to Mansfeld's seals he had already managed to procure waxen impressions, and for this he begged pardon, as for a turpitude he never would have committed except to realize the great end in view-the murder of the Prince of Orange.

"From the general tone of the letters of Gérard," says the historian of the Dutch Republic, "he might be set down at once as a simple, religious fanatic, who felt sure that, in executing the command of Philip publicly issued to all the murderers in Europe, he was meriting well of God and