The days went slowly by. Every morning Beaumont formally summoned the defenders to surrender, only to receive a scornful defiance. But, in the meantime, famine was beginning to stare them in the face, and Charlotte recognized that, unless help arrived, it would be impossible to hold out much longer. Just, however, when her situation seemed almost desperate, she learned that a body of Huguenot cavalry under the Sieur de la Boullaye, which had succeeded in escaping from the Angers fiasco, was in the neighbourhood; and she at once determined to make an attempt to communicate with it. This, at first sight, seemed a hopeless undertaking, for the place, as we have said, had been very closely invested; but she perceived that at the rear of the château, where the rock was a sheer precipice, Beaumont had placed only a very few men, deeming it impossible for any one to descend on that side. Accordingly, when darkness fell, she caused one of her servants to be lowered by a rope down the face of the cliff; and the man, unperceived by the enemy, succeeded in making his way to La Boullaye’s camp. The besiegers, to guard against any attempt to relieve the château, had taken the precaution to fortify a large house which commanded the entrance to the town of Taillebourg. But, as soon as morning dawned, Charlotte “said good-day to the enemy with her culverins,” and, turning them upon this house, kept up so persistent and well-directed a fire, that it was soon almost in ruins; and when the Huguenots arrived, they had no difficulty in making their way into the town. Fighting continued all day, with no decisive result; but, during the night, the Catholics, who had lost some sixty men and whose commander had been taken prisoner, evacuated the town and retreated behind the Charente. La Boullaye did not pursue them; but, after placing a strong garrison in the château, escorted its brave defender to La Rochelle, where she promptly caused two ships to be fitted out, at her own expense, and despatched to Guernsey, to convey her lover and his fellow-exiles back to France. Within an hour or two of the arrival of Charlotte’s ships, Condé was on his way to La Rochelle, where he landed a few days later. “I was there,” writes Fiefbrun, “and had the honour of accompanying this princess (Mlle. de la Trémoille) to the port, where she received his Excellency with so many expressions of joy, that never was seen anything in the world to surpass in mutual affection their caresses and welcomes, followed by public rejoicings on the part of the nobility and the people which it would be impossible to describe.”[113]