"Among the slain was Charles de Quelleue Pontivy, likewise called Soubise, because he had married Catherine, only daughter and heiress of Jean de Partenay Baron de Soubise: this Lady had entered an action against him for impotence; His naked dead body being among others dragged before the Louvre, there were ladies curious enough to examine leisurely, if they could discover the cause or the marks of the defeat of which he had been accused."
Brantome, in his memoirs of Charles IX. says, "As soon as it was day the king looked out of the window, and seeing that many people were running away in the fauxbourg St. Germain, he took a large hunting arquebuse, and shot at them many times, but in vain, for the gun did not carry so far."[30]
"He took great pleasure in seeing floating in the river, under his windows, more than four thousand dead bodies."
A French writer, Mr. du Laure, in a Description of Paris, just published, says, "About thirty thousand persons were killed on that night in Paris and in the country; few of the citizens but were either assassins or assassinated. Ambition, the hatred of the great, of a woman, the feebleness and cruelty of a king, the spirit of party, the fanaticism of the people, animated those scenes of horror, which do not depose so much against the French nation, at that time governed by strangers, as against the passions of the great, and the ill-directed zeal of the religion of an ignorant populace."
A few more modern instances of female fortitude are given in a note.[31]
MISCELLANIES. NUMBER OF SLAIN.
ON that same Saturday morning the dead Swiss, the broken furniture of the palace, and the burning woodwork of the barracks, were all gathered together in a vast heap, and set fire to. I saw this pile at twenty or thirty yards distance, and I was told that some of the women who were spectators took out an arm or a leg that was broiling, to taste: this I did not see, but I see no reason for not believing it.