Hotman, another contemporary, says 50,000.

Knowing how much figures are apt to be exaggerated even by judicious men, we must assume that this number is too large.

On the other hand the lowest estimate given by modern Catholic investigators, 5000, is certainly too small.
Probably between 10,000 and 20,000 is correct.

Those who fell were the flower of the party.
Whatever may have been the precise degree of guilt of the French rulers, which in any case was very grave, they took no pains to conceal their exultation over an event that had at last, as they believed, ground their enemies to powder.

In jubilant tone Catharine wrote to her son-in-law, Philip of Spain, that God had given her son the king of France the means "of wiping out those of his subjects who were rebellious to God and to himself." Philip sent his hearty congratulations and heard a Te Deum sung.