They say they hadn't fifty men with them.

It seems to me they are making a great fuss about nothing." "I have just heard a report," a man who had, two or three minutes before, entered the room said, "to the effect that they arrived four days since at La Rochelle, with some five or six hundred men, who joined them on the way." An exclamation of surprise broke from his hearers.
"Then we shall have trouble," one exclaimed.

"La Rochelle is a hard nut to crack, in itself; and if the prince and the Admiral have got in, the Huguenots from all the country round will rally there, and may give a good deal of trouble, after all.

What can the Catholic lords have been about, that they managed to let them slip through their hands in that way?
They must have seen, for some time, that they were making for the one place where they would be safe; unless indeed they were making down for Navarre.

That would account for the way in which all the bridges and fords across the rivers are being watched." "I expect they are watching both ways," another said.