The Huguenot Bartholomew Dupuy and his descendants

THE HUGUENOT WARS. 51
flowed down the channels in such torrents that introd.
it seemed to empty itself into the neighboring 1572.
river. In short, an innumerable multitude of
men, women, and children were involved in
one common destruction, and all the gates and
entrances to the King's palace were besmeared
with blood." It is estimated that not less
than 10,000 persons, of whom 500 were leaders
of the Huguenots, fell in Paris alone; and the
total throughout the kingdom has been estimated
by De Thou at 30,000, by SuUy at 60,-
000 and by Perefixe, a popish historian, at
100,000. Orders were sent to other parts of
the kingdom to follow the example of the capital,
but in some instances they were not
obeyed; and in other places— Laucerre, Prevos,
La Rochelle, Montauban, and Msmes—
the Huguenots defended themselves.
After the unbridled rage of the massacre .
had subsided, remorse followed with retribution
on its heels. Sully has recorded the following
statement, concerning the King:
^'From the evening of the 24th of August he
w^as observed to groan involuntarily at the recital
of the thousands of acts of cruelty made
boastingly in his presence." He also records 1572.
the following confession which the King made Confesto
his own surgeon, a Huguenot, who lived ciaries
with him in great familiarity: ''Ambrose, I ^^
know not what has happened to me these two
or three days past; but I feel my mind and
body as much at enmity with each other as if I
were seized with a fever. Sleeping or waking,
the murdered Huguenots seem ever present to
my eyes, with ghostly faces, and weltering in
blood. I wish the innocent and helpless had
been spared." The infidel Voltaire in his essay
on the civil wars of France says that, "The