Night had come down before the final resolution was taken; but the fanatical and bloodthirsty mob of Paris might be depended upon. At the last moment, Tavannes (the son) tells us in his Memoirs, Catherine wished to draw back, but the others kept her firm. The Duke of Guise undertook to slay Coligny. The Admiral was run through with a pike, and the body tossed out of the window into the courtyard where Guise was waiting. At the Louvre the young Bourbon Princes were arrested, taken to the King, and given their choice between death and the Mass. The other Huguenot gentlemen who were in the Louvre were slain. In the morning the staircases, balls, and anti-chambers of the Palace were deeply stained with blood. When the murders had been done in the Louvre, the troops divided into parties and went to seek other victims. Almost all the Huguenot gentlemen on the north side of the river were slain, and all in the Quartier Latin. But some who lodged on the south side (among them Montgomery, and Jean de Ferrières, the Vidame de Chartres) escaped. Orders were sent to complete the massacre in the provinces. At Orléans the slaughter lasted five days, and Protestants were slain in numbers at Meaux, Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and in many other places. The total number of victims has been variously estimated. Sully, the Prime Minister of Henry IV., who had good means of knowing, says that seventy thousand perished. Several thousands were slain in Paris alone. The news was variously received by Roman Catholic Europe. The German Romanists, including the Emperor, were not slow to express their disapprobation. But Rome was illuminated in honour of the event, a medal was struck to commemorate the _Hugonotorum Strages_,[221] and Cardinal Orsini was sent to convey to the King and Queen Mother the congratulations of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. Philip of Spain was delighted, and is said to have laughed outright for the first and last time in his life. He congratulated the son on having such a mother, and the mother on having such a son. Catherine herself believed that the massacre had ended all her troubles. The Huguenots had been annihilated, she thought; and it is reported that when she saw Henry of Navarre bowing to the altar she burst out into a shrill laugh. § 15. _The Huguenot resistance after the Massacre._