His retainers attacked them, slaying men, women, and children--some sixty being killed, and a hundred or more left terribly wounded.
The Protestant nobles demanded that Francis of Guise should be punished for this atrocious massacre, but in vain; and Guise, on entering Paris, in defiance of Catharine's prohibition, was received with royal honours by the populace.

The Cardinal of Lorraine, the duke's brother, the duke himself, and their allies, the Constable Montmorency and Marshal Saint Andre, assumed so threatening an attitude that Catharine left Paris and went to Melun, her sympathies at this period being with the reformers; by whose aid, alone, she thought that she could maintain her influence in the state against that of the Guises.
Conde was forced to leave Paris with the Protestant nobles, and from all parts of France the Huguenots marched to assist him.
Coligny, the greatest of the Huguenot leaders, hesitated; being, above all things, reluctant to plunge France into civil war.

But the entreaties of his noble wife, of his brothers and friends, overpowered his reluctance.

Conde left Meaux, with fifteen hundred horse, with the intention of seizing the person of the young king; but he had been forestalled by the Guises, and moved to Orleans, where he took up his headquarters.

All over France the Huguenots rose in such numbers as astonished their enemies, and soon became possessed of a great many important cities.
Their leaders had endeavoured, in every way, to impress upon them the necessity of behaving as men who fought only for the right to worship God; and for the most part these injunctions were strictly obeyed.