He eluded
them, and the next morning he accused M. de Grammont of having led the
ambuscade. De Quelus then proposed that all the King's gentlemen should
meet all those of the Duke in a grand encounter to the death. The Duke's
followers gladly accepted the challenge. Three hundred men on each side
would have fought, had not the King resolutely forbidden the duel. De
Quelus, that night, led a number of gentlemen in an attack on Bussy's
lodgings. Bussy and his followers made a stout resistance, the tumult
becoming so great that the Marechal de Montmorency called out the Scotch
Guard to clear the street in front of Bussy's house; and it was time.
Several gentlemen and servants were lying in their blood; and some of
these died of their wounds.
It was openly known, about the court, that the Duke of Anjou held the
King to be privy to these attacks on Bussy, and was frightfully enraged
thereby; and that the King, in constant fear of the Duke's departure to
join the Huguenots,--which event would show the King's inability to
prevent sedition even in the royal family, and would give the Guise party
another pretext to complain of his incompetence,--would forcibly obstruct
the Duke's going.
It was this state of affairs that made Catherine de Medici again take up
her abode in the Louvre, that she might be on the ground in the event of
a family outbreak, which was little less probable to occur at night than
in the daytime.
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