In the dark hours of early morning, Louis XIII. led his regiments to the attack. Plunging on foot through the snow, “freely hazarding his person,” says Aubery, “and running the same risk as the least soldier in his army,” the story goes that the victory was largely owing to his own resolute courage. The marshals in command, they say, and even the Cardinal, were inclined to hesitate at an adventure that looked so dangerous. The King climbed the mountain and met a goatherd, who showed him a path by which the barricades and their defenders could be out-flanked. While the main body, under the marshals, rushed furiously on the barricades and cleared the gorge at the point of the sword, the royal musketeers scaled the rocks and drove down the enemy, first to the barricades, then along the road to Susa. In the helpless rout of his troops the Duke of Savoy narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. A few days were enough to reduce the romantic mountain town of Susa, and the relief of Casale followed at once; for the furious energy of the French, acting as one man under the inspiring force of Richelieu, was too much for Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. He sent his daughter-in-law in great magnificence to visit her royal brother at Susa, and hastily made a treaty with France, of which he was not long in repenting; but the immediate and necessary consequence was the retirement from Montferrat of the Spanish general, Don Gonzalez de Cordova. A half-promise that Philip IV. of Spain would induce the Emperor to grant the new Duke of Mantua his desired investiture was not so easy of fulfilment. There were diplomatie wheels within wheels. While Richelieu’s negotiations with Savoy and Spain were still in progress, Spain was turning a favourable ear to the Duc de Rohan, who proposed to “keep France in a state of war as long as His Catholic Majesty pleased”; undertaking that his party, if successful in establishing a Protestant republic in the south, should assure liberty of conscience and the free exercise of their religion to Catholics, on the condition of a handsome subsidy and pensions for himself and his brother. This agreement was actually signed at Madrid on May 3, when Richelieu was still at Susa, the King and the larger part of the army having already re-crossed the Alps and marched through Dauphiné to the Rhône. So far the prophecy had been fulfilled: the month of May had found the royal forces free to join Condé, Montmorency and d’Épernon, and thus to deal with the rebels in Languedoc.