These ideas became stronger every day, and the attachment of the priests to their old customs was more stubborn than ever. It was difficult to avoid an outbreak; but it should be observed that it was provoked by the canons. These rich and powerful clerics, who were determined to oppose the alliance with all their power, and, if necessary, to defend their clerical privileges with swords and arquebuses, got together a quantity of arms in the house of De Lutry, the most fanatical of their number, in order to make use of them ‘against the city.’ On the night of the 26th of February, these reverend seigniors, as well as the principal mamelukes, crept one after another into this house, and held a consultation. A rumour spread through the city, and the citizens told one another ‘that M. de Lutry and M. de Vausier had brought together a number of people secretly to get up a riot.’ The patriots, prompt and resolute in character, were determined not to give the mamelukes the least chance of recovering their power. ‘The people rose in arms,’ the house was surrounded; it would appear that some of the chiefs of the ducal party came out, and that swords were crossed. ‘A few were wounded,’ says the chronicler. However, ‘proclamation was made to the sound of the trumpet through the city,’ and order was restored.[409] The conspiracy of the canons having thus failed, the members of the feudal and papal party thought everything lost. They fancied they saw an irrevocable fatality dragging them violently to their destruction. The principal supporters of the old order of things, engrossed by the care of their compromised security, thought only of escaping, like birds of night, before the first beams of day. They disguised themselves and slipped out unobserved, some by one gate, some by another. It was almost a universal panic. The impetuous Lutry escaped first, with one of his colleagues; the bishop-prince’s turn came next. Bitterly upbraided by the Count of Genevois for not having prevented the alliance, Pierre de la Baume took alarm both at the huguenots and the duke, and escaped to St. Claude. The agents of his Highness of Savoy trembled in their castles; the vidame hastened to depart on the one side, and the gaoler of the Château de l’Ile, who was nick-named the _sultan_, did the same on the other.