On the evening of June 20, 1646, D'Epinay, and several of his countrymen encountered Philip alone. They greeted him by name, insulting both him and his mother, but eventually fled before the fierce onslaught of the youngest Palatine. The affair could not end thus. On the following morning, as he drove through the Place d'Armes, Philip caught sight of his enemy. Without a moment's thought he sprang from his curricle, and rushed upon D'Epinay. D'Epinay was armed, and received Philip on the point of his sword, wounding him in the side. Philip had no sword, but he was a Palatine, and he plunged his hunting-knife deep into the Frenchman's heart. D'Epinay fell dead, and Philip, flinging his knife from him, regained his curricle and drove off to the Spanish border.[15] Then arose a mighty storm. The Queen, passionately {211} bewailing her misfortune in having such a son, vowed that she would never look on Philip's face again. But Philip's brothers and sisters rose up in his defence. The Princess Elizabeth boldly averred that "Philip needed no apology,"[16] and, finding her position in her mother's house untenable, retreated to her Aunt at Brandenburg. And both Rupert and the Elector warmly espoused Philip's cause. "Permit me, madame," wrote Charles Louis, "to solicit your pardon for my brother Philip,--a pardon I would sooner have asked, had it ever entered my mind that he could possibly need any intercession to obtain it. The consideration of his youth, of the affront he received, and of the shame which would, all his life, have attached to him had he not revenged it, should suffice."[17] Rupert wrote, in the same strain, from Oatlands, and his letter was accompanied by a second from the Elector, in which he declared that the very asking pardon for Philip would "more justly deserve forgiving than my brother's action."[18] The Queen ultimately accorded a nominal pardon to the unfortunate Philip, for in July 1648, he was again at the Hague, under the protection of Rupert and Maurice, whom he accompanied to a dinner at which Mary, Princess of Orange, entertained her two brothers and three cousins.[19] He had, in the meantime entered the Venetian service, rather to the annoyance of the Elector, who wrote: "I could wish my brother Rupert or Maurice would undertake the Venetian business, my brother Philip being very young for such a task."[20] But neither of the other two brothers had any intention of deserting the Stuart cause, and the Elector obtained leave from the Parliament for Philip to raise a thousand men in England. For this purpose, Philip {212} visited his eldest brother in London, but stayed only a few weeks.[21] Returning to Holland, he completed his levies in the states, with some assistance from Maurice;[22] and in the autumn of 1648 he departed to Italy, whence he wrote to Rupert that the Venetians were "unworthy pantaloons."[23]