Unfortunately for them, Guitry’s enterprise, on which the success of the whole movement hinged, failed through his own precipitation. Owing to some misunderstanding, he anticipated the day, and appeared with his men in the environs of Saint-Germain some time before he was expected. Catherine’s suspicions were at once aroused, and her remarkable skill in unravelling the tangled threads of even the most complicated intrigues soon placed her in possession of the whole plot. In the early hours of the following morning (23–24 February), she hurried the Court off to Paris. Charles IX., travelling in a litter, surrounded by the Swiss in battle-array, as during the retreat from Meaux, while she herself followed in her coach with Navarre and Alençon, whom she was determined not to allow out of her sight. Meanwhile, the rebels had risen in arms and issued a manifesto demanding various reforms, though it was obvious that these were only a cloak for their real intentions, and that, should the rising prove successful, its effect would be to deprive the King of Poland of the succession to the throne, which must speedily become vacant, in favour of the more accommodating Alençon. Catherine, however, invested with full powers by the illness of the King, took prompt and energetic measures to meet the danger. Three armies were despatched against the rebels of Normandy, the South, and Central France; Navarre and Alençon, who were found to be planning an attempt at escape, with the connivance of two of the latter’s favourites, La Môle and Coconnas, were shut up in the keep of the Château of Vincennes, and a commission appointed to examine them; while the two gentlemen were brought to trial on a charge of high treason, condemned and executed; the Maréchaux de Montmorency and de Cossé, who had had the temerity to come to Court to endeavour to justify their conduct, were seized and thrown into the Bastille, and orders were sent to Amiens for the arrest of Condé. Condé had not yet been guilty of any overt act of rebellion; but he had been compromised by the avowals of the pusillanimous Alençon, who had made a full confession, and also by those wrung from Coconnas in the anguish of torture.[99] Warned in time, however, he succeeded in affecting his escape, and fled to Strasburg, where he lost no time in returning publicly to the faith from which in his heart he had never wavered. His wife, to whom he had been reconciled, and who was three months pregnant, he left behind him. They were never to meet again.