The Parisian Leaguers did not expect to seize power without a fight, and had anticipated that the King might have to be prodded into some rash act of violence which would incite a popular uprising. But the massed column of Swiss swinging down the Rue Saint-Honoré while evidently promising violence scarcely suggested rashness. It looked as though the King, with unexpected courage and decision, intended to forestall by a coup d’état, the coup d’état planned against him.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 496