Meanwhile, Huguenot gentlemen entered the palace as usual, and Catholics mingled with the Huguenots who called upon Coligny.
White makes an observation that must strike all: "It is strange that the arrangements in the city, which must have been attended with no little commotion, did not rouse the suspicion of the Huguenots."
At midnight another council was held in the palace. Charles was violent and wavered, but Catharine held him to his decision, and Guise went forth to complete the work.
Between three and four in the morning, Guise, Aumale, Angoulême, Nevers, with some German and Italian soldiery, proceeded to Coligny's house. Admission was gained in the king's name, and Carl Dianowitz, or Behm, ran the admiral through, others finishing him as he fell to the floor. The body was then thrown from the window, where Guise and Angoulême treated it contemptuously. Petrucci cut off the head. The mob mutilated the body, as priests had been, by the admiral's orders, and it was finally hung on the public gallows at Montfauçon. All the occupants of the house were slain but two, Merlin and Cornaton. In the adjoining dwellings were Teligny, Rochefoucault, and others, who were all slain.
Then came the signal from Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, and the massacre became general. The Huguenot gentlemen in the Louvre were slain before the eyes of the king to the number of two hundred, says White in his text, although his footnote, citing Queen Margaret's account, says her estimate of thirty or forty is more probable.
In the city, the houses in which Huguenots lodged had been registered, and were thus easily found. The soldiers burst in, killing all they found; but the citizens seem to have gone too far. { 15} At five in the afternoon, they were ordered to lay down their arms, although the work of blood was continued for two days by the soldiery.
The details of the massacre would extend this article much too far.
Among the questions that have arisen, is the alleged firing of Charles on the drowning Huguenots thrown into the Seine. It is asserted in the party pamphlets, the _Réveille-Matin_, 1574, _Le Tocsin_, 1579, but rests chiefly on what Froude calls "the worthless authority of Brantome."