The revels at court went on long into the night. When his guards attempted to wake him, however, they found King Francis III unresponsive. Over the course of the evening he had been stabbed through the heart with a miniature stiletto which had blended in with his festive clothing, worn thick against the October chill.

The event caused an uproar, with courtiers scrambling over one another–many still bleary from the night before–to implicate enemies and exonerate themselves. Matters were made worse by the uncertainty of succession; Francis III was only betrothed, not yet married, and had no brothers or uncles, and had in fact been a compromise between two other claimants. It fell to the captain of the guard, a man not a generation removed from low birth, to decide the next step.

His solution was to execute every courtier, noble, guard, and page in the room with Francis III when he died.