onstable
Montmorency expressed vexation that it was imagined that the Huguenots
could get together one hundred men in a corner of the kingdom--not to
speak of an army in the immediate vicinity of the capital--without the
knowledge of himself, the head of the royal military establishment; while
Chancellor de l'Hospital said that "it was a capital crime for any servant
to alarm his prince with false intelligence, or give him groundless
suspicions of his fellow-subjects."[436]

The news, however, being soon confirmed from other sources, a spy was sent
to Chatillon-sur-Loing to report upon the admiral's movements. He brought
back word that he had found Coligny at home, and apparently engrossed in
the labors of the vintage--so quietly was the affair conducted until
within forty-eight hours of the time appointed for the general
uprising.[437] It was not until hurried tidings came from all quarters
that the roads to Chatillon and to Rosoy--a small place in Brie, where the
Huguenots had made their rendezvous--were swarming with men mounted and
armed, that the court took the alarm.

[Sidenote: Flight of the court to Paris.]

It was almost too late. The Huguenots had possession of Lagny and of the
crossing of the river Marne. The king and queen, with their suite, at
Meaux, were almost entirely unprotected, the six thousand Swiss being
still at Chateau-Thierry, thirty miles higher up the Marne. Instant orders
were sent to bring them forward as quickly as possible, and the night of
the twenty-eighth of September witnessed a scene of abject fear on the
part of the ladies and not a few of the gentlemen that accompanied Charles
and his mother. At three o'clock in the morning, under escort of the
Swiss, who had at last arrived, the court started for Paris, which was
reached after a dilatory journey that appeared all the longer because of
the fears attending it.[438] The Prince of Conde, who had been joined as
yet only by the forerunners of his army, engaged in a slight skirmish with
the Swiss; but a small band of four or five hundred gentlemen, armed only
with their swords, could do nothing against a solid phalanx of the brave
mountaineers, and he was forced to retire. Meanwhile Marshal Montmorency,
sent by Catharine to dissuade the prince, the admiral, and Cardinal
Chatillon from prosecuting their enterprise, had returned with the message
that "the Huguenots were determined to defeat the preparations made to
destroy them and their r