But neither foreign opinion, Parliament, princes, nor cowardly counsels in her own household--for her favourite Leonora, Concini’s wife, was against her in this matter--could turn Marie de Médicis from her intention. The King and the Ministers, under her orders, haughtily denied that the Parliament had any right to interfere in affairs of State. She tried, but in vain, to win over Condé and his friends. When her failure was plain--Condé retiring into the country, publishing a manifesto which demanded the delay of the marriages and the disgrace of Concini and the old Ministers, and following up his words by raising an armed force--she replied by arresting his friend Nicolas Le Jay, a president of the Parliament and leader of the opposition there. The guards seized him at five o’clock in the morning of August 17 and hurried him into a coach. On that same morning the whole Court, conducted by the Ducs de Guise and d’Épernon with a strong body of troops, set out on the long journey to the south. President Le Jay, sorely against his will, followed the King as far as Amboise, where he was left behind as a prisoner. Concini--formerly Marquis, now also Maréchal d’Ancre--remained to oppose the princes in Picardy, of which the young Duc de Longueville was governor. The Maréchal de Bois-Dauphin (Montmorency-Laval, Marquis de Sablé) was left with a royal army of 12,000 men to protect and overawe Paris, already commanded by the guns of the Château de Vincennes, and to keep a check on the Prince de Condé. The royal progress to the south was slow and dangerous, with many delays and annoyances. Travelling was not easy even in summer weather. The long train of coaches, baggage-waggons and pack-mules, horsemen, running footmen, with the large military escort, took three days to travel the good road between Paris and Orléans, and then for some unknown reason, perhaps the uncertainty of Condé’s movements, did not arrive at Tours for ten days more. Here the Court was met by three deputies from the Huguenot assembly at Grenoble, who had just missed His Majesty at Paris, and who, “with more insolence than formerly,” says Richelieu, pressed again upon him the demands of the _Tiers État_ and requested him to proceed no further on his journey, “in which they were interested, not only as being of _la Religion prétendue réformée_, but as good Frenchmen.” In consequence of this and other disloyal proceedings, the King publicly declared the Prince de Condé and all his adherents guilty of high treason unless they laid down their arms within a month, and sent his declaration to be registered by the Parliament of Paris.