Between three and four in the morning, Guise, Aumale, Angoulême, Nevers, with some German and Italian soldiery, proceeded to Coligny's house. Admission was gained in the king's name, and Carl Dianowitz, or Behm, ran the admiral through, others finishing him as he fell to the floor. The body was then thrown from the window, where Guise and Angoulême treated it contemptuously. Petrucci cut off the head. The mob mutilated the body, as priests had been, by the admiral's orders, and it was finally hung on the public gallows at Montfauçon. All the occupants of the house were slain but two, Merlin and Cornaton. In the adjoining dwellings were Teligny, Rochefoucault, and others, who were all slain. Then came the signal from Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, and the massacre became general. The Huguenot gentlemen in the Louvre were slain before the eyes of the king to the number of two hundred, says White in his text, although his footnote, citing Queen Margaret's account, says her estimate of thirty or forty is more probable. In the city, the houses in which Huguenots lodged had been registered, and were thus easily found. The soldiers burst in, killing all they found; but the citizens seem to have gone too far. {15} At five in the afternoon, they were ordered to lay down their arms, although the work of blood was continued for two days by the soldiery. The details of the massacre would extend this article much too far. Among the questions that have arisen, is the alleged firing of Charles on the drowning Huguenots thrown into the Seine. It is asserted in the party pamphlets, the _Réveille-Matin_, 1574, _Le Tocsin_, 1579, but rests chiefly on what Froude calls "the worthless authority of Brantome." A more important point is the number of victims. The estimates differ widely: La Popelinière, a Huguenot contemporary...1,000 Kirkaldy of Grange, in a letter to Scotland at the time, and the _Tocsin_, a pamphlet of the day, as well as Tavannes, a main actor in the slaughter...2,000 Aubigné, another Huguenot author, and Capilupi...3,000 The estimates of ambassadors at Paris are higher. Alva's bulletin...3,500 Gomez de Silva, and the Simancas archives...5,000 Neustadt letter...6,000 _Réveille-Matin_, a party pamphlet...10,000 White bases his estimate on a curious calculation. An entry in the registers of the Hôtel de Ville states that on the 9th of September certain persons received 15 livres for burying dead bodies, and on the 23d the same men received 20 livres for burying 1100. He concludes that the 15 livres represented 1500, by what rule he does not explain, "giving," he says, "a known massacre of 2600." Even on his basis, 35 livres would really represent only 1925. But according to Caveirac, who first cites this entry, 35 livres were paid for interring 1100, which would give only about 1600 in all.