In scene 4 of Christopher Marlowe's Massacre at Paris (1593), his dramatization of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants, which took place in 1572 and formed a central moment in the French wars of religion, Queen Mother of France, Catherine de Medici, asks the Duke of Guise: “What order will you set down for the massacre?” The Duke of Guise gives a typically smooth answer, detailing the “white crosses” and “white linen scarfs” to be worn by his men taking part in the massacre, and the “peal[s] of ordnance” that will mark the beginning and the end of the slaughter (4.30–39). In the very next scene we witness precisely that: Anjou, Dumaine, Retes, Gonzago, and Mountsorrell appear with “argent crosses” “to kill all that [they] suspect of heresy,” as cannon-fire signifies that the action has begun (5.1–3). The clockwork precision with which we see these events unfold in accordance with Guise's initial predications is not only chilling but also carried out with a swiftness that invites a dark comedy to preside over the macabre events that follow. Providing the foundations for this oddly decorous mass slaughter is the art central to all early modern intellectual modi operandi: logic.