The soldiers composing the garrison were just getting out of bed. Those few who were already downstairs soon learnt who the visitors were, and rushed up to tell their comrades that the prince, whose name was so familiar to them, waited at their threshold. The soldiers were seized with enthusiasm. Some of them, looking out of the windows, cried “Vive le Prince!” Others hurried downstairs in their shirt-sleeves. Within half an hour every soldier was under arms and formed in battalion. The prince’s men stood facing it. Between the companies Napoleon and his friends took up their position. The address which the prince now delivered to the garrison had an electrical effect, and the men were wild with enthusiasm; but just as the whole battalion, under the Pretender’s orders, were about to quit the barracks in order to excite the inhabitants to rally round the Imperial standard, a first check was experienced. A garrison officer, not in the secret of the conspiracy, had rushed to Lieutenant-Colonel Puygellier’s house to inform him of what was happening at the barracks. Instantly the officer put on his uniform, and, rushing to the spot, forced his way past one of the prince’s sentinels, and dashing through the crowd at the barrack-gates, got within sight of his battalion, and waved his sword to them. Seeing the danger their chief was in--one of the Imperial party had injudiciously pointed a revolver at his head--the soldiers who, a few minutes before, had shouted “Vive le Prince!” now cried, “Vive notre Colonel!” The tide of feeling, however, quickly turned again in favour of the prince, and Colonel Puygellier, now absolutely powerless, would have been shot had not one of his officers rushed forward and shielded him with his own body. Quitting the barrack-yard, the prince, at the head of his friends and adherents, now endeavoured to enter the old town. They found the gate closed, nor did their united efforts suffice to unhinge it. The enterprise had failed. The chiefs of the popular movement, who were to second the military rising, having inferred from the non-arrival of the prince on the morning of the 5th that something had occurred, either in London or at sea, to put the French authorities on the scent, had decamped from the town. Forestier, who reached Boulogne towards noon on the 5th, with the news that the prince would land next morning, had arrived too late. Nothing now remained but to endeavour to save the prince. He himself wished to die--to be shot or cut down by his enemies; but the friends who were with him fairly dragged him down to the sea-shore in the hope of getting him safely on board the _Edinburgh Castle_. This vessel lay some distance out at sea, and the signals made to her to approach the land were unanswered, as though she had already been seized by the authorities.