Charles, who was personally on good terms with Coligny, hesitated, but he was too weak a youth to hold out long.
There seems to be good reason to believe that all the queen dowager and her advisers contemplated was the murder of a few leaders and that they did not foresee one of the most extensive massacres in history.
Her first attempt to have Coligny assassinated [Sidenote: August 22, 1572] aroused the anger of the Huguenot leaders and made them more dangerous than before.

A better laid and more comprehensive plan was therefore carried out on the eve of St.Bartholomew's day.

[Sidenote: Massacre of St.Bartholomew, August 24, to October 3] Early in the evening of August 23, Henry of Guise, a son of Duke Francis, and Coligny's bitterest personal enemy, went with armed men to the house of the admiral and murdered him.

From thence they proceeded to the houses of other prominent Huguenots to slay them in the same manner.

News of the man-hunt spread through the city with instant rapidity, the mob rose and massacred all the Huguenots they could find as well as a number of foreigners, principally Germans and Flemings.