Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and
assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the
queen and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards
the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly
almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband not secure of
his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant
children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and
generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most
splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood,
polluted by massacre and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated
carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their
kingdom.
Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous
slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who
composed the king's body guard. These two gentlemen, with all the
parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged
to the block and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their
heads were stuck upon spears and led the procession, whilst the
royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along,
amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances,
and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of
the furies of hell in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
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