They had not, however, apprehended so speedy an attack as Serbelloni now made (on the fifth of June), and, taken by surprise, were able to make but a feeble resistance. The papal troops entered the city through the breach their cannon had effected. Never did victorious army act more insolently or with greater inhumanity. None were spared; neither the sick on their beds, nor the poor in their asylums, nor the maimed that hobbled through the streets. Those were most fortunate that were first despatched. The rest were tortured with painful wounds that prolonged their agonies till death was rather desired than dreaded, or were hurled down upon pikes and halberds, or were hung to pot-hooks and roasted in the fire, or were hacked in pieces. Not a few of the women were treated with dishonor; the greater part were hung to doors and windows, and their dead bodies, stripped naked, were submitted to indignities for which the annals of warfare, except among the most ferocious savages, can scarcely supply a parallel. That the Almighty might not seem to be insulted in the persons only of living creatures formed in His own image, the fresh impiety was perpetrated of derisively stuffing leaves torn from French Bibles into the gaping wounds of the dead lying on this field of carnage. Nor did the Roman Catholics of Orange fare much better than their reformed neighbors. Mistaken for enemies, they were massacred in the public square, where they had assembled, expecting rather to receive a reward for their services in assisting the pontifical troops to enter, than to atone for their treachery by their own death.[101] [Sidenote: Francois de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets.]