g out the fugitives
and finishing the bloody work, the clergy paraded the streets
in a triumphal procession, and with jubilant prayers and hymns gave
thanks to God for their great victory. The Catholic pulpits resounded
with exultant harangues, and in honor of the event a medallion
was struck off, with the inscription "_La piete a reveille la
justice_"--_Religion has awakened justice_.

In the distant provinces of France the massacre was continued, as the
Protestants were hunted from all their hiding-places. In some
departments, as in Santonge and Lower Languedoc, the Protestants were
so numerous that the Catholics did not venture to attack them. In
some other provinces they were so few that the Catholics had nothing
whatever to fear from them, and therefore spared them; and in the
sparsely-settled rural districts the peasants refused to imbrue their
hands in the blood of their neighbors. Many thousand Protestants
throughout the kingdom in these ways escaped.

But in nearly all the populous towns, where the Catholic population
predominated, the massacre was universal and indiscriminate. In Meaux,
four hundred houses of Protestants were pillaged and devastated, and
the inmates, without regard to age or sex, utterly exterminated. At
Orleans there were three thousand Protestants. A troop of armed
horsemen rode furiously through the streets, shouting, "Courage, boys!
kill all, and then you shall divide their property." At Rouen, many of
the Protestants, at the first alarm, fled. The rest were arrested and
thrown into prison. They were then brought out one by one, and
deliberately murdered. Six hundred were thus slain. Such were the
scenes which were enacted in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Bourges, Angers,
Lyons, and scores of other cities in France. It is impossible to
ascertain with precision the number of victims. The Duke of Sully
estimates them at seventy thousand; the Bishop Perefixe at one
hundred thousand. This latter estimate is probably not exaggerated, if
we include the unhappy fugitives, who, fleeing from their homes, died
of cold, hunger, and fatigue, and all the other nameless woes which
accrued from this great calamity.

In the midst of these scenes of horror it is pleasant to record
several instances of generous humanity. In the barbarism of those
times dueling was a common practice. A Catholic officer by the name of
Vessins, one of the most fierce and irritable men in France, had a
private quarrel with a Protesta