On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4000 Swiss mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the occasion. The sixteen sections of the city met; in the morning the people were under arms; and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding over his revenge. Visitors to Blois will recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which the official guardians of the château are wont to recite with dramatic gesture. Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the trap prepared for him; he was done to death in the king's chamber, like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of France."[118] The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "Yes," said his warder, "the king has some accounts to settle with you." Next morning the old cardinal was led out and hacked to pieces. The two bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent their being worshipped as relics. It was Christmas Eve of 1588. The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences-- "Revenge and hate bring forth their kind, Like the foul cubs their parents are."