Coligny's headless trunk was left for some hours where it fell, until it
became the sport of rabble children, who dragged it all round Paris.
They tried to burn it, but did little more than scorch and blacken the
remains, which were first thrown into the river, and then taken out
again "as unworthy to be food for fish," says Claude Haton. In accordance
with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was dragged by the
hangman to the common gallows at Montfaucon, and there hanged up by the
heels. All the court went to gratify their eyes with the sight, and
Charles, unconsciously imitating the language of Vitellius, said, as he
drew near the offensive corpse, "The smell of a dead enemy is always
sweet." The body was left hanging for a fortnight or more, after which
it was privily taken down by the admiral's cousin, Marshal Montmorency,
and it now rests, after many removals, in a wall among the ruins of his
hereditary castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing. What became of the head no one
knows.
When Guise left the admiral's corpse lying in the court-yard, he went
to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were
killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the
enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a
man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor
La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly
fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard
shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly
unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons in the
King's name. He seems to have thought that Charles, indulging in one of
his usual mad frolics, had come to punish him as he had punished others,
like schoolboys. He opened the door and fell dead across the threshold,
pierced by a dozen weapons.
When the messenger returned from the Duke of Guise with the answer that
it was "too late," Catherine, fearing that such disobedience to the
royal commands might incense the King and awaken him to a sense of all
the horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately
gave orders to anticipate the hour. Instead of waiting until the matin
bell should ring out from the old clock tower of the Palace of Justice,
she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that
warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower,
rousing all Paris from their slumbers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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