ith named Cruce went about
displaying his robust arm and boasting that he had accounted for 400
Huguenots. The streets, the front of the Louvre, the public places
were blocked by dead bodies; tumbrils[118] were hired to throw them
into the Seine, which literally for days ran red with blood.

[Footnote 118: The municipality gave presents of money to the archers
who had taken part in the massacre, to the watermen who prevented the
Huguenots from crossing the Seine, and to grave-diggers for having
buried in eight days about 1,100 bodies.]

[Illustration: PETITE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE.]

The princes of Navarre and Conde saw the privacy of their chambers
violated by a posse of archers on St. Bartholomew's morning; they were
forced to dress and were haled before the king, who with a fierce look
and glaring eyes, swore at them, reproached them for waging war upon
him, and ordered them to change their religion. On their refusal he
grew furious with rage, and by dint of threats wrung from them a
promise to go to mass.

Charles is said to have stood at a window in the Petite Galerie of the
Louvre and to have fired across the river with a long arquebus on some
Huguenots who, being lodged on the southern side, in the Huguenot
quarter, known as _la petite Geneve_, had escaped massacre, and were
riding up to learn what was passing. The statement is much canvassed
by authorities. It is at least permissible to doubt the assertion,
since the first floor[119] of the Petite Galerie, where the king is
traditionally believed to have placed himself, was not in existence
before the time of Henry IV. If the ground floor be meant, a further
difficulty arises from the fact that the southern end was not
furnished with a window in Charles IX.'s time.

[Footnote 119: Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon.]

On the 26th of August the king was forced to avow responsibility
before the Parlement for measures which he alleged had been necessary
to suppress a Huguenot insurrection aiming at the assassination of
himself and the royal family and the destruction of the Catholic
religion in France. The ears of the Catholic princes of Europe and of
the pope were abused by this specious lie; they believed that the
Catholic cause had been saved from ruin; the so-called victory was
hailed with transports of joy, and a medal was struck in Rome to
celebrate the defeat of the Huguenots.[120]

[Footnote 120: _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of