In this crisis Catherine de Medici kept the clearest head of all at the court. While she sought to wheedle the runaway prince with smooth words, going as far as Dreux to meet him, detachments were ordered out from Rouen, Orleans, and Chartres to surround him. But Alençon was not to be trapped and rode swiftly off toward the Loire in the hope of falling in with La Noue or the viscount of Turenne. At the same time the duke of Guise was ordered to make a vigorous resistance against the coming of Condé’s reiters. But even his army was in a bad state on account of the defection of officers and men, who had gone over to Alençon, so that new troops had to be sent him.[1715] Almost all the soldiery in the service of the King was withdrawn from Dauphiné and Languedoc and concentrated in Burgundy and Champagne.[1716] Much depended upon the result of the coming battle with the reiters. If the King’s troops were beaten, Paris would be in a serious strait between the King’s enemies. Already, in consequence of the withdrawal of troops, all Auvergne, Bourbonnais, Nivernais, Gâtinais, and the Beauce were in arms, and the gentlemen of these regions had gone over to the duke of Alençon. Only the vigilance of the garrisons at Orleans and Tours, Moulins and Nevers, enabled the crown to maintain the line of the Loire river. The reiters attempted to evade Guise and find another way of entrance into France, so that the duke left his artillery in Lorraine and by forced marches went to Sedan, with the intention of giving battle there. But the reiters, about 2,500, under Thoré, avoided an engagement and maneuvered to join a Protestant force of 2,000 Picards, and Guise fell back on Rheims in order to hold the crossing of the Aisne, meantime asking the King for reinforcements which were so slow in coming that the duke was compelled to retire to the Marne. On October 9 he established his headquarters between Château-Thierry and Epernay, near Port-à-Pinson. The encounter took place near Fismes, on the Marne, above Dormans, on October 10. Not more than fifty were killed on either side and the combat did not deter the reiters from continuing their course and crossing the Seine near Nogent-sur-Seine, which they were able to do on account of low water. Their chief loss was of two or three cornets of reiters whom Guise bribed to desert. De Thoré owed his easy escape, however, to the serious wound which the duke of Guise sustained. For a bullet struck him in the side of the face, tearing his ear clear away and so mangling the cheek that he was fearfully scarred for the rest of his life and always wore a velvet mask.[1717]