"Jugulumque parans, immota tonebat
Ora senex."
Others in the room struck him also, Behm repeating his blows until the admiral fell to the floor. The murderer now ran to the window and shouted into the court-yard, "It is all over." Henry of Guise, who had been impatiently ordering his creatures to make haste, was not satisfied. "Monsieur d'Angoulême will not believe it unless he sees him," returned the Duke. Behm raised the body from the ground, and dragged it to the window to throw it out; but life was not quite extinct, and the admiral placed his foot against the wall, faintly resisting the attempt. "Is it so, old fox?" exclaimed the murderer, who drew his dagger and stabbed him several times. Then, assisted by Sarlabous, he threw the body down. It was hardly to be recognized. The bastard of Angoulême—the chevalier as he is called in some of the narratives—wiped the blood from the face of the corpse. "Yes, it is he; I know him well," said Guise, kicking the body as he spoke. "Well done, my men," he continued, "we have made a good beginning. Forward—by the King's command." He mounted his horse and rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically exclaimed as he looked at the body, "Sic transit gloria mundi." Tosinghi took the chain of gold—the insignia of his office—from the admiral's neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the Duke of Nevers, cut off the head and carried it away carefully to the Louvre. Of all who were found in the house, not one was spared except Ambrose Paré, who was escorted in safety to the palace by a detachment of Anjou's guard.
Coligny's headless trunk was left for some hours where it fell, until it became the sport of rabble children, who dragged it all round Paris. They tried to burn it, but did little more than scorch and blacken the remains, which were first thrown into the river, and then taken out again "as unworthy to be food for fish," says Claude Haton. In accordance with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was dragged by the hangman to the common gallows at Montfaucon, and there hanged up by the heels. All the court went to gratify their eyes with the sight, and Charles, unconsciously imitating the language of Vitellius, said, as he drew near the offensive corpse, "The smell of a dead enemy is always sweet." The body was left hanging for a fortnight or more, after which it was privily taken down by the admiral's cousin, Marshal Montmorency, and it now rests, after many removals, in a wall among the ruins of his hereditary castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing. What became of the head no one knows.
When Guise left the admiral's corpse lying in the court-yard, he went to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons in the King's name. He seems to have thought that Charles, indulging in one of his usual mad frolics, had come to punish him as he had punished others, like schoolboys. He opened the door and fell dead across the threshold, pierced by a dozen weapons.
When the messenger returned from the Duke of Guise with the answer that it was "too late," Catherine, fearing that such disobedience to the royal commands might incense the King and awaken him to a sense of all the horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately gave orders to anticipate the hour. Instead of waiting until the matin bell should ring out from the old clock tower of the Palace of Justice, she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower, rousing all Paris from their slumbers.
Immediately from every quarter of that ancient city uprose a tumult as of hell. The clanging of bells, the crashing doors, the rush of armed men, the musket-shots, the shrieks of their victims, and high over all the yells of the mob, fiercer and more pitiless than hungry wolves—made such an uproar that the stoutest hearts shrank appalled, and the sanest appear to have lost their reason. Women unsexed, men wanting but the strength of the wild beast, children without a single charm of youth or innocence, crowded the streets where rising day still struggled with the glare of a thousand torches. They smelt the odor of blood, and, thirsting to indulge their passions for once with impunity, committed horrors that have become the marvel of history.
Within the walls of the Louvre, within the hearing of Charles and his mother, if not actually within their sight, one of the foulest scenes of this detestable tragedy was enacted. At daybreak, says Queen Margaret of Navarre, her husband rose to go and play tennis, with a determination to be present at the King's lever, and demand justice for the assault on the admiral. He left his apartment, accompanied by the Huguenot gentlemen who had kept watch around him during the night. At the foot of the stairs he was arrested, while the gentlemen with him were disarmed, apparently without any attempt at resistance. A list of them had been carefully drawn up, which the sire D'O, quartermaster of the guards, read out. As each man answered his name, he stepped into the court-yard, where he had to make his way through a double line of Swiss mercenaries. Sword, spear, and halberd made short work of them, and two hundred, according to Davila, of the best blood of France soon lay a ghastly pile beneath the windows of the palace. Charles, it is said, looked on coldly at the horrid deed, the victims appealing in vain to his mercy. Among the gentlemen they murdered were two who had been boldest in their language to the King not many hours before—Segur, Baron of Pardaillan, and Armand de Clermont, Baron of Pilles, who with stentorian voices called upon the King to be true to his word. De Pilles took off his rich cloak and offered it to someone whom he recognized: "Here is a present from the hand of De Pilles, basely and traitorously murdered."
"I am not the man you take me for," said the other, refusing the cloak. The Swiss plundered their victims as they fell, and, pointing to the heap of half-naked bodies, described them to the spectators as the men who had conspired to kill the King and all the royal family in their sleep, and make France a republic. But more disgraceful than even this massacre was the conduct of some of the ladies in Catherine's train, of her "flying squadron," who, later in the day, inspected and laughed at the corpses as they lay stripped in the court-yard, being especially curious about the body of Soubise, from whom his wife had sought to be divorced on the ground of nullity of marriage.
A few gentlemen succeeded in escaping from this slaughter. Margaret, "seeing it was daylight," and imagining the danger past of which her sister had told her, fell asleep. But her slumbers were soon rudely broken. "An hour later," she continues, "I was awoke by a man knocking at the door and calling, 'Navarre! Navarre!' The nurse, thinking it was my husband, ran and opened it. It was a gentleman named Léran, who had received a sword-cut in the elbow and a spear-thrust in the arm; four soldiers were pursuing him, and they all rushed into my chamber after him. Wishing to save his life, he threw himself upon my bed. Finding myself clasped in his arms, I got out on the other side; he followed me, still clinging to me. I did not know the man, and could not tell whether he came to insult me or whether the soldiers were after him or me. We both shouted out, being equally frightened. At last, by God's mercy, Captain de Nançay of the guards came in, and, seeing me in this condition, could not help laughing, although commiserating me. Severely reprimanding the soldiers for their indiscretion, he turned them out of the room, and granted me the life of the poor man who still clung to me. I made him lie down and had his wounds dressed in my closet until he was quite cured. While changing my night-dress, which was all covered with blood, the captain told me what had happened, and assured me that my husband was with the King and quite unharmed. He then conducted me to the room of my sister of Lorraine, which I reached more dead than alive. As I entered the anteroom, the doors of which were open, a gentleman named Bourse, running from the soldiers who pursued him, was pierced by a halberd three paces from me. I fell almost fainting into Captain de Nançay's arms, imagining the same thrust had pierced us both. Being somewhat recovered, I entered the little room where my sister slept. While there De Moissans, my husband's first gentleman, and Armagnac, his first valet-de-chambre, came and begged me to save their lives. I went and threw myself at the feet of the King and the Queen—my mother—to ask the favor, which they at last granted me."