Both armies now retired to winter-quarters: Coligny leading the remnant of the Huguenot forces to Orleans, and Guise returning to Paris with an escort of 2400 Spanish arquebusiers. Now that St. André was killed and Montmorency a prisoner, the duke found himself the most powerful man in the kingdom. Reorganizing his troops and being strongly reinforced, he marched out early next year to lay siege to Orleans, for winter brought little cessation to the strife. Coligny, who was in great want of money, had moved into Normandy, to re-open his communications with England, having left his brother Andelot in command of the city. The latter, though suffering severely from a quartan ague, took the most active measures of defense; but Guise was no mean soldier, and had had large experience in sieges. He captured one of the suburbs by assault; his lines drawing closer every day effectually cut off all succor; the admiral was too weak to attempt to raise the siege, and the duke had fixed the final attack for the 19th February. Writing to the queen-regent, he expressed a hope that she would not be displeased if he destroyed every thing within the walls, “even to the dogs and rats,” and sowed the foundations of the city with salt. It is probable that there would have been a terrible massacre; but just as all hope seemed lost, the hand of an assassin brought deliverance (18th February, 1563). On his death-bed Duke Francis attempted to justify himself for the atrocities at Vassy, protesting that he had neither premeditated nor ordered them. But death-bed confessions are rarely authentic enough to be relied on: they are too often colored by the report of interested witnesses.[326] On this point Maimbourg and Varillas are at variance--the latter affirming that the duke prayed God to pardon all his faults, “except that of Vassy.” He is also reported to have sent a message to the queen-regent, advising her to make peace without delay, adding that “the man who would prevent it is an enemy to the king and state.” The near approach of death had probably brought that wisdom and calm judgment in which he was so deficient, for only a month earlier Throckmorton wrote of him: “The duke will in no wise accord to peace till the Protestants be utterly exterminated.”[327] When Catherine heard the news of his murder, she spoke her mind pretty plainly about him: “The man is dead I hated most of all the world.” And when Condé characterized his death as the removal of a burden, she continued: “If the kingdom has been relieved of one burden, ten have been taken off my bosom.”