Nor did he confine himself to words. This time, the Government, inspired by him, showed none of its accustomed pusillanimity. A royal declaration was launched against Nevers, who, now that Condé was in prison, had assumed the leadership of his party; a second against Mayenne, Vendôme, and Bouillon; three armies were raised to take the field against them, which one by one reduced their strongholds to submission; the estates of many of their supporters were sequestrated; soldiers who had taken up arms to join them were, if captured, hanged without mercy; and, finally, a decree, duly registered by the Parlement, notwithstanding that it struck at at least one of that body, provided for the confiscation of the property of all the rebels. It was the misfortune of Richelieu and his colleagues that they passed for the creatures of a foreign favourite detested by everyone. At the beginning of December, 1616, Concini, who had remained in Normandy since the scene at the Hôtel de Condé which had led to his compulsory withdrawal from the capital, returned to Paris, more arrogant and more presumptuous than ever, and burning to avenge the humiliations he had suffered. To strike terror into the partisans of the Princes, he caused gibbets to be erected in different parts of the town; he “caused everyone to be watched and spied upon, even in the houses, to see who entered or left Paris,” and “imprisoned those who gave him the smallest umbrage, without any form of trial.” Already in possession of the citadel of Caen, he occupied the Pont-de-l’Arche, the strongest fortress in Normandy; proposed to rebuild the fort of Sainte-Catherine, above Rouen, which had been destroyed during the Wars of Religion; acquired by purchase the governments of Meulan, Pontoise, and Corbeil; offered Bassompierre 600,000 livres for his post of Colonel-General of the Swiss, and was credited with the intention of getting himself named Constable of France. It was evident that he contemplated making himself a sort of king in Normandy, and that, when the Princes were crushed, there would be no limits to his ambition. He had, however, at the beginning of 1617, a moment of alarm and despondency. The death of his only daughter, Marie Concini, to whom he was tenderly attached and for whom he had dreamed of some alliance which would unite his fortunes to those of one of the great families of France, struck him with a superstitious fear, as the precursor of the ruin of himself and his wife. “The marshal’s daughter fell ill and died,” writes Bassompierre, “at which both he and his wife were cruelly afflicted. I shall relate a conversation which passed between him and myself on the day of her death, by which one may see that he had a prevision of what afterwards happened to him.