3-088-604 - LTL/Heritage Images

Assassination attempt of Gaspar de Coligny, (1519-1572) by means of an attack on 22 August 1572, (1877). It was the trigger for the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in Paris during the night of 23 to 24 August 1572. After a German original, representing one of the additional sheets in the collection engraved by Jean Tortorel and Jacques Perrissin. Below left is depicted the attack against Coligny by arquebus fire, carried out by Maurevert from a window, and his death during the slaughter. Coligny was killed in his house by Besme, one of Duke Henri de Guise's German officers. He was then defenestrated and subjected to humiliation by being dragged through the streets. In other neighbouring houses Teligny and other Protestants were also massacred. Above left, one of the squires telling King Charles IX, whom he finds playing ball (jeu de paume), the news of the attack on Coligny. From "Vie Militaire et Religieuse au Moyen Age et à l'Epoque de la Renaissance", Paris, 1877.