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presence of one of the captain’s relatives among the Protestant congregation is further evidence of his complicity.)28
    Most of the ducal host did not enter the church, alighting in the covered market opposite the western aisle, while others were posted in the cemetery, located between the church and the Protestant meeting house. The reinforcement gendarme squadron of fifty men, already fully armed, was in the Market Square and ready to move. Groups of soldiers milled about the streets. Barely one hundred yards away they could hear hundreds of Psalm-singing voices. Once inside the church the duke convened the town’s anti-Protestant faction, headed by the provost, the prior of Wassy, and the priest. To visit the Protestant meeting would not be without precedent: the Edict of Toleration stipulated that, while royal officials could not hinder Protestant worship, they had the right to oversee assemblies. The provost, opposed by powerful interests in the town, had been unable to stop the services and he must have been delighted finally to be able to press his case in person, persuading the duke to delay his departure for Eclaron. The meeting with the provost confirmed what the duke had already seen and heard that morning. At this point he became very agitated—something had to be done.
    A later, moderate account probably has it about right when it says that the duke’s ‘design was not to do ill to any individual, but to dissipate by his presence these kinds of assemblies’. 29 There is no hint of a premeditated assault. He was determined to reprimand these rebels in person and he sent three men to announce his arrival: Gaston de la Brosse, son of Jacques and standard-bearer of the duke’s gendarmes, and two German pages. It was now that events got out of hand; the three envoys arrived at the barn door to find the minister inside delivering his sermon to 500 or so men, women, and children.30
    What happened at the door we will never know, but it seems likely that they were not permitted to enter until the minister had finished and, when they raised their voices to object, were told to be quiet. They then tried to force an entry, but were repulsed. The unarmed Protestants at the door reached for anything that would scare them off—a stone or two were thrown. La Brosse had been humiliated by ‘mere peasants’ in front of his comrades. Noblemen recognized only one way to repair honour wounded in such a public fashion; his upbringing taught him to respond in only one way. He wanted their blood and now had support on all sides, as the duke’s men rushed towards the noise of the scuffle. The first Protestants were killed vainly defending the barn door: a poor wine-seller was asked if he was a ‘Huguenot’ and when he replied that he ‘believed in Jesus Christ’ was run through with several sword thrusts; two others were cut down as they tried to make a run for it. Confusion quickly spread through the town: muskets were let off; cries of ‘Kill! Kill! By God’s death kill these Huguenots’ were heard; the trumpets of the duke’s gendarmerie company summoned them to the attack; the provost ran over to the Swan tavern and told the duke’s lackeys to put down their drinks and run to their master’s aid. Chaos reigned in the narrow streets as the duke arrived at the scene, and in the press he was unable or unwilling to hold his men back as they forced their way into the barn to exact vengeance. In this enclosed space the slaughter was face-to-face with swords and daggers, such that the ‘posts and walls of the barn were splattered with blood’. 31
    Amidst panic-stricken screams the congregation fled the slashing steel blades up the stairs and onto the barn roof, whose feeble covering, a curse during the winter months, now permitted them to clamber away and make their escape by jumping onto the town walls. Some were less lucky. Those who tried to make a run for it in the opposite direction were an easy target for the