Anjou's officers were attempting to climb over
this mass of bodies in order to enter the city; from the interior, the
baffled and fugitive remnant of their comrades were attempting to force
their passage through the same horrible barrier; while many dropped at,
every instant upon the heap of slain, under the blows of the unrelenting
burghers. On the other hand, Count Rochepot himself, to whom the
principal command of the enterprise had been entrusted by Anjou, stood
directly in the path of his fugitive soldiers, not only bitterly
upbraiding them with their cowardice, but actually slaying ten or twelve
of them with his own hands, as the most effectual mode of preventing
their retreat. Hardly an hour had elapsed from the time when the Duke of
Anjou first rode out of the Kipdorp gate, before nearly the whole of the
force which he had sent to accomplish his base design was either dead or
captive. Two hundred and fifty nobles of high rank and illustrious name
were killed; recognized at once as they lay in the streets by their
magnificent costume. A larger number of the gallant chivalry of France
had been sacrificed--as Anjou confessed--in this treacherous and most
shameful enterprise, than had often fallen upon noble and honorable
fields. Nearly two thousand of the rank and file had perished, and the
rest were prisoners. It was at first asserted that exactly fifteen
hundred and eighty-three Frenchmen had fallen, but this was only because
this number happened to be the date of the year, to which the lovers of
marvellous coincidences struggled very hard to make the returns of the
dead correspond. Less than one hundred burghers lost their lives.

Anjou, as he looked on at a distance, was bitterly reproached for his
treason by several of the high-minded gentlemen about his person, to whom
he had not dared to confide his plot. The Duke of Montpensier protested
vehemently that he washed his hands of the whole transaction, whatever
might be the issue. He was responsible for the honor of an illustrious
house, which should never be stained, he said, if he could prevent it,
with such foul deeds. The same language was held by Laval, by
Rochefoucauld, and by the Marechal de Biron, the last gentleman, whose
two sons were engaged in the vile enterprise, bitterly cursing the Duke
to his face, as he rode through the gate after revealing his secret
undertaking.

Meanwhile, Anjou, in addition to the punishment of hearing these
reproaches fr