There they waited.  Soon a rustling sound was heard on the wall, and a ball of thread was lowered, to which they fastened their rope ladder.  The ladder was then hoisted to the top of the tower and attached to the end of a culverin which was levelled in an embrasure of the battlement.

Michel Frotet was the first to ascend, and after him came Charles Anselin, La Blissais and the others.  The night was dark and the wind whistled; they had to climb slowly, to hold their daggers between their teeth and feel for the rungs of the ladder with their hands and feet.  Suddenly (they were midway between the ground and the top), they felt themselves going down; the rope had slipped.  But they did not utter a sound; they remained motionless.  Their weight had caused the culverin to tip forward; it stopped on the edge of the embrasure and they slowly resumed their ascension and arrived one after another on the platform of the tower.

The sleepy sentinels did not have time to give the alarm.  The garrison was either asleep or playing dice on the drums.  A panic seized the soldiers and they fled to the dungeon.  The conspirators pursued them and attacked them in the hallways, on the staircase, and in the rooms, crushing them between the doors and slaughtering them mercilessly.  Meanwhile the townspeople arrived to lend assistance; some put up ladders, and entered the tower without encountering any resistance and plundered it.  La Perandiere, lieutenant of the castle, perceiving La Blissais, said to him:  “This, sir, is a most miserable night.”  But La Blissais impressed upon him that this was not the time for conversation.  The Count of Fontaines had not made his appearance.  They went in search of him, and found him lying dead across the threshold of his chamber, pierced by a shot from an arquebuse that one of the townspeople had fired at him, as he was about to go out, escorted by a servant bearing a light.  “Instead of rushing to face the danger,” says the author of this account,[5] “he had dressed as leisurely as if he were going to a wedding, without leaving one shoulder-knot untied.”

This outbreak in Saint-Malo, which so greatly harmed the king, did not in the least benefit the Duke de Mercoeur.  He had hoped that the people would accept a governor from his hands, his son, for example, a mere child, for that would have meant himself, but they obstinately refused to listen to it.  He sent troops to protect them, but they refused to let them enter, and the soldiers were compelled to take lodgings outside of the city.

Still, in spite of all this, they had not become more royalist, for some time later, having arrested the Marquis of La Noussaie and the Viscount of Denoual, it cost the former twelve thousand crowns to get out of prison and the latter two thousand.

Then, fearing that Pont-Brient would interrupt commercial relations with Dinan and the other cities in the Ligue, they attacked and subjected it.