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.