Under these circumstances the government was compelled to content itself with maintaining the line of the Loire save at La Charité, while it sought foreign succor.[1354] But the Swiss could not be expected until the middle of September, and Coligny sought to profit by the situation to take Saumur and thus secure a crossing on the lower Loire also, and Poitiers, for which purpose he divided the Protestant army,[1355] to the intense alarm of the government, which tried, through the queen mother, to delay action by drawing the admiral into an empty parley. This is the moment when the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Marguerite of France was first broached. But the admiral and Jeanne d’Albret were not to be deceived, and the siege of Poitiers was resolutely continued. (It lasted from July 25 to September 7, 1569.) The Catholic party fully appreciated that the importance of the war depended upon the success or failure of the Huguenots before this city, into which the young duke of Guise, then but nineteen years of age, had thrown himself on July 12 with all the ardor of his father before Metz. If Coligny took the town, some notable prisoners of war would have fallen into his hands, the dukes of Guise and Mayenne and the abbess of La Trinité, a sister of the cardinal of Bourbon[1356] and the ill-starred prince of Condé, the ransom of whom would have abundantly provided for the reiters in the service of the Protestants. [Illustration: SIEGE OF POITIERS, 1569 (Tortorel and Perissin)]