From the outside, some of 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 from men of honor, was the victim of a rapid and violent fluctuation of feeling.  Hope, fear, triumph, doubt, remorse, alternately swayed him.  As he saw the fugitives leaping from the walls, he shouted exultingly, without accurately discerning what manner of men they were, that the city was his, that four thousand of his brave soldiers were there, and were hurling the burghers from the battlements.  On being made afterwards aware of his error, he was proportionably depressed; and when it was obvious at last that the result of the enterprise was an absolute and disgraceful failure, together with a complete exposure of his treachery, he fairly mounted his horse, and fled conscience-stricken from the scene.