However it may have been, on the 24th of April, 1617, M.de Vitry, captain of the guard (_capitaine de quartier_) that day in the royal army which was besieging Soissons, ordered some of his officers to provide themselves with a pistol each in their pockets, and he himself went to that door of the Louvre by which the king would have to go to the queenmother's.

When Marshal d'Ancre arrived at this door, "There is the marshal," said one of the officers; and Vitry laid hands upon him, saying, "Marshal, I have the king's orders to arrest you." "Me!" said the marshal in surprise, and attempting to resist.
[Illustration: Murder of Marshal d'Ancre----155] The officer fired upon him, and so did several others.

It was never known, or, at any rate, never told, whose shot it was that hit him; but, "Sir," said Colonel d'Ornano, going up to the young king, "you are this minute King of France: Marshal d'Ancre is dead." And the young king, before the assembled court, repeated with the same tone of satisfaction, "Marshal d'Ancre is dead." Baron de Vitry was appointed Marshal of France in the room of the favorite whom he had just murdered.

The day after the murder, the mob rushed into the church of St.German- l'Auxerrois, where the body of Marshal d'Ancre had been interred; they heaved up the slabs, hauled the body from the ground, dragged it over the pavement as far as the Pont-Neuf, where they hanged it by the feet to a gallows; and they afterwards tore it in pieces, which were sold, burned, and thrown into the Seine.

The ferocious passions of the populace were satisfied; but court-hatred and court-envy were not; they attacked the marshal's widow, Leonora Galigai.