During the successful assault upon Fort St. Catherine which followed the rupture of these negotiations both Antoine of Navarre and the duke of Guise were wounded, the former by an arquebus-shot in the joint of the shoulder, as it proved, mortally, because mortification of the wound could not be stayed.[615] Montgomery fought furiously in the assault, which lasted seven hours, and threatened to use his sword upon any who might seek to yield. It was a desperate and vain battle, however.[616] The King’s forces mined clear to the walls of the town, and the havoc of their explosions could not be remedied. The breach in the walls made by both mine and shot was so wide that some of the royal force rode through on horseback.[617] On Monday, October 26, the besiegers fought their way through and over the walls. In this supreme movement the English and the Catholic Germans came sharply together. No quarter was given the English in the town, the command being given “that they should all pass the sword.” Many of them were stripped naked by the victors. The wounded English who were found had their throats cut; the rest were sent to the galleys. The King entered Rouen the day after its capture, making his way over dead bodies which had been spoiled by the soldiers.[618] The royal forces now had unlimited control of the Seine below Rouen; at Caudebec they staked half the river, so that ships and boats were compelled to pass close under their guns. The Guises now anticipated a swift collapse of the Huguenot cause. All the chief towns in France save Orleans[619] and Lyons were either by inclination or compulsion obedient to the crown, which found powerful support from the property-owning and lawyer class. Politically and financially the government was stronger, although the court was in want of money at this time. The duke of Guise, the most notable captain and soldier in France, the constable and veteran marshals like Brissac and St. André, had made a combination too strong to be overcome. In this strait, the Huguenot leaders grasped at the last straw—the hope that the prince of Condé might succeed the king of Navarre as lieutenant of the realm by winning the support of liberal Catholics and the anti-Guisard element.[620] There was ground for this hope if the Calvinists could be persuaded to be a little less radical, and if the Catholic religion would be suffered without criticism to be and remain the religion of France, and the Huguenots would make no further alteration in their form of worship than the English Reformation had done.[621]