Early on the morning of the third day he mounted and rode away with Paolo and three of his troopers.

Hunter had been left behind at Philippsburg for the cure of a wound that he had received at Nordlingen.

Hector was mounted on one of the horses that Enghien had given him; the other was in the hands of the Imperialists.

They traveled fast, and met with no adventure until they arrived at Poitou, where Hector learned that in the western part of the province the peasants had almost everywhere risen, had defeated the royal troops who had marched against them from La Rochelle and Nantes, and had captured and burnt any chateaux, slaying all persons of the better class who fell into their hands.
As he neared his own estate, learning that the tenants there had so far not joined the rising, but that several bodies of insurgents were in the neighbourhood, he rode still more rapidly forward.

Signs of the trouble were everywhere apparent.