In the beginning of September, intelligence reached Edinburgh, that the admiral of France, the brave, the generous, the pious Coligni, was murdered in the city of Paris, by the orders of Charles IX. Immediately on the back of this, tidings arrived of that most detestable and unparalleled scene of barbarity and treachery, the general massacre of the protestants throughout that kingdom. Post after post brought fresh accounts of the most shocking and unheard‑of cruelties. Hired cut‑throats and fanatical cannibals marched from city to city, paraded the streets, and entered into the houses of those that were marked out for destruction. No reverence was shown to the hoary head, no respect to rank or talents, no pity to tender age or sex. Infants, aged matrons, and women {216} upon the point of their delivery, were trodden under the feet of the assassins, or dragged with hooks into the rivers; others, after being thrown into prison, were instantly brought out and butchered in cold blood. Seventy thousand persons were murdered in one week. For several days, the streets of Paris literally ran with blood. The savage monarch, standing at the windows of the palace, with his courtiers, glutted his eyes with the inhuman spectacle, and amused himself with firing upon the miserable fugitives who sought shelter at his merciless gates.[286] The intelligence of this massacre (for which a solemn thanksgiving was offered up at Rome by order of the pope[287]) produced the same horror and consternation in Scotland as in every other protestant country.[288] It inflicted a deep wound on the exhausted spirit of Knox. Besides the blow struck at the reformed body, he had to lament the loss of many {217} individuals, eminent for piety, learning, and rank, whom he numbered among his acquaintance. Being conveyed to the pulpit, and summoning up the remainder of his strength, he thundered the vengeance of Heaven against “that cruel murderer and false traitor, the king of France,” and desired Le Croc, the French ambassador, to tell his master, that sentence was pronounced against him in Scotland, that the divine vengeance would never depart from him, nor from his house, if repentance did not ensue; but his name would remain an execration to posterity, and none proceeding from his loins should enjoy his kingdom in peace. The ambassador complained of the indignity offered to his master, and required the regent to silence the preacher; but this was refused, upon which he left Scotland.[289]