In this juncture the Huguenot champion, who was “daily at court and very well used by the king and his brothers,”[531] laid before his royal master a memoir drawn up by the celebrated Duplessis-Mornay, in which he argued that a foreign war was necessary to preserve internal peace. “The Frenchman,” he says, “who has once had a taste of war will often, from mere _gaieté de cœur_, or from want of some other enemy, fight his own countryman and friend. The Spaniard,” he continued, “is weak from the dispersion of his forces, and you have England on your side, who formerly used to take part in every quarrel against us. You will acquire a province superior to any in France by the fertility of its soil, the beauty of its cities, and the wealth of its inhabitants. The Germans will fear you, your own people will be enriched by commerce, and you, Sire, will reap immortal honor from the conquest.”[532] The motives are not very noble, but they were admirably adapted to Charles’s temper: a higher morality would have fallen dead upon his ear. Still he hesitated to declare himself, leaning toward Coligny at one moment, and toward the Catholic party at the next. Meanwhile Genlis had succeeded in collecting a number of volunteers, and was making his way toward Mons, with about 4000 men,[533] when he was met and defeated by a Spanish force under Don Frederick of Toledo (19th July, 1572). Twelve hundred of the French were left upon the field, and a much larger number were butchered by the peasantry as they were seeking to escape. Tavannes, a trustworthy authority on such a point, says that Don Frederick had been treacherously informed of the road Genlis would take with his troops. The news of this terrible overthrow caused an extraordinary agitation at court. Some fancied in their panic that the Spaniard was already at the gates of Paris; while the outspoken admiral declared that the catastrophe lay at the doors of those who had dissuaded the king from declaring himself. The government everywhere ostentatiously protested--at Rome, Vienna, Brussels, and Madrid--that they desired peace, and were not privy to the attack on Mons or the advance of Genlis; indeed Mondoucet congratulated Alva on his success over the invaders, while St. Goar assured Philip that his master saw with regret his vassals joining the rebels in the Low Countries. Neither Alva nor Philip believed this, but were determined to give no cause for a rupture of friendly relations.[534] And hence it was that when the Spanish army captured some sixty Frenchmen who tried to enter Mons, Alva only hanged a part, taking the others to Ruppelmonde to be drowned secretly in the river.