whole fleet," said he, "and a captain of a ship, if assured by the enemy
of payment for his vessel, may undertake to burn the whole armament, and
that the more easily inasmuch as he would think he was making a grand
sacrifice to God, for the sake of his religion."

Meanwhile, Soubise had broken through the feeble obstacles opposed to
him by the Duke of Vendome, and, making himself master of all the
trading-vessels he encountered, soon took possession of the Islands of
Re and Oleron and effected descents even into Medoc, whilst the Duke of
Rohan, leaving the duchess his wife, Sully's daughter, at Castres, where
he had established the seat of his government, was scouring Lower
Languedoc and the Cevennes to rally his partisans.  The insurrection was
very undecided, and the movement very irregular.  Nimes, Uzes, and Alais
closed their gates; even Montauban hesitated a long while before
declaring itself.  The Duke of Epernon ravaged the outskirts of that
place.  "At night," writes his secretary, "might be seen a thousand
fires.  Wheat, fruit trees, vines, and houses were the food that fed the
flames."  Marshal Themine did the same all round Castres, defended by
the Duchess of Rohan.

There were negotiations, nevertheless, already.  Rohan and Soubise
demanded to be employed against Spain in the Valteline, claiming the
destruction of Fort Louis; parleys mitigated hostilities; the Duke of
Soubise obtained a suspension of arms from the Dutch Admiral Haustein,
and then, profiting by a favorable gust of wind, approached the fleet,
set fire to the admiral's ship, and captured five vessels, which he towed
off to the Island of Re.  But he paid dear for his treachery: the
Hollanders, in their fury, seconded with more zeal the efforts of the
Duke of Montmorency, who had just taken the command of the squadron; the
Island of Re was retaken and Soubise obliged to retreat in a shallop to
Oleron, leaving for "pledge his sword and his hat, which dropped off in
his flight."  Nor was the naval fight more advantageous for Soubise.
"The battle was fierce, but the enemy had the worst," says Richelieu in
his Memoires: "night coming on was favorable to their designs;
nevertheless, they were so hotly pursued, that on the morrow, at
daybreak, eight of their vessels were taken."  Soubise sailed away to
England with the rest of his fleet, and the Island of Oleron surrendered.

The moment seemed to have come for crushing La Rochelle, deprived of the
naval forces that protected it; but the cardinal, still at grips with
Spain in the Valteline, was not sure of his allies before La Rochelle.
In Holland all the churches echoed with reproaches hurled by the
preachers against states that gave help against their own brethren to
Catholics; at Amsterdam the mob had besieged the house of Admiral
Haustein; and the Dutch fleet had to be recalled.  The English
Protestants were not less zealous; the Duke of Soubise had been welcomed
with enthusiasm, and, though Charles I., now King of England and married,
had refused to admit the fugitive to his presence, he would not restore
to Louis XIII. the vessels, captured from that king and his subjects,
which Soubise had brought over to Portsmouth.

The game was not yet safe; and Richelieu did not allow himself to be led
astray by the anger of fanatics who dubbed him State Cardinal.  "The
cardinal alone, to whom God gave the blessedness of serving the king and
restoring to his kingdom its ancient lustre, and to his person the power
and authority meet for royal Majesty which is the next Majesty after the
divine, saw in his mind the means of undoing all those tangles, clearing
away all those mists, and emerging to the honor of his master from all
those confusions."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv.  p. 2.]

Marshal Bassompierre was returning from his embassy to Switzerland,
having secured the alliance of the Thirteen Cantons in the affair of the
Valteline, when it was noised abroad that peace with Spain was signed.
Count du Fargis, it was said, had, in an excess of zeal, taken upon
himself to conclude without waiting for orders from Paris.  Bassompierre
was preparing a grand speech against this unexpected peace, but during
the night he reflected that the cardinal had perhaps been not so much
astonished as he would have made out.  "I gave up my speech," says he,
"and betook myself to my jubilee."

The Huguenots, on their side, yielded at the entreaties of the
ambassadors who had been sent by the English to France, "with orders to
beg the Rochellese to accept the peace which the king had offered them,
and who omitted neither arguments nor threats in order to arrive at that
conclusion; whence it came to pass that, by a course of conduct full of
unwonted dexterity, the Huguenots were brought to consent to peace for
fear of that with Spain, and the Spaniards to make peace for fear of that
with the Huguenots.

The greatest difficulty the cardinal had to surmount was in the king's
council; he was not ignorant that by getting peace made with the
Huguenots, and showing him that he was somewhat inclined to favor their
cause with the king, he might expose himself to the chance of getting
into bad odor at Rome.  But in no other way could he arrive at his
Majesty's ends.  His cloth made him suspected by the Huguenots; it was
necessary, therefore, to behave so that they should think him favorable
to them, for by so doing he found means of waiting more conveniently for
an opportunity of reducing them to the terms to which all subjects ought
to be reduced in a state, that is to say, inability to form any separate
body, and liability to accept their sovereign's wishes.

"It was a grievous thing for him to bear, to see himself so unjustly
suspected at the court of Rome, and by those who affected the name of
zealous Catholics; but he resolved to take patiently the rumors that were
current about him, apprehending that if he had determined to clear
himself of them effectually, he might not find that course of advantage
to his master or the public."

The cardinal, in fact, took it patiently, revising and then confirming
the treaty with Spain, and imposing on the Huguenots a peace so hard,
that they would never have accepted it but for the hope of obtaining at a
later period some assuagements, with the help of England, which refused
formally to help them to carry on the war.  At the first parleys the king
had said, "I am disposed enough towards peace; I am willing to grant it
to Languedoc and the other provinces.  As for La Rochelle, that is
another thing."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.]  It was ultimately
La Rochelle that paid the expenses of the war, biding the time when the
proud city, which had resisted eight kings in succession, would have to
succumb before Louis XIII. and his all-powerful minister.  Already her
independence was threatened on all sides; the bastions and new
fortifications had to be demolished; no armed vessel of war might be
stationed in her harbor.  "The way was at last open," said the cardinal,
"to the extermination of the Huguenot party, which, for a hundred years
past, had divided the kingdom."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.
p. 17.]

[Illustration: Demolishing the Fortifications----244]

The peace of 1626, then, was but a preliminary to war.  Richelieu was
preparing for it by land and sea; vessels of war were being built, troops
were being levied; and the temper of England furnished a pretext for
commencing the struggle.  King Charles I., at the instigation of his
favorite the Duke of Buckingham, had suddenly and unfeelingly dismissed
the French servants of the queen his wife, without giving her even time
to say good by to them, insomuch that "the poor princess, hearing their
voices in the court-yard, dashed to the window, and, breaking the glass
with her head, clung with her hands to the bars to show herself to her
women and take the last look at them.  The king indignantly dragged her
back with so great an effort that he tore her hands right away."  Louis
XIII. had sent Marshal Bassompierre to England to complain of the insult
done to his sister; the Duke of Buckingham wished to go in person to
France to arrange the difference, but the cardinal refused.  "Has
Buckingham ever undertaken any foreign commission without going away
dissatisfied and offended with the princes to whom he was sent?" said
Cardinal Richelieu to the king.  So the favorite of Charles I. resolved
to go to France "in other style and with other attendants than he had as
yet done; having determined to win back the good graces of the Parliament
and the people of England by the succor he was about to carry to the
oppressed Protestant churches," he pledged his property; he sold the
trading-vessels captured on the coasts of France; and on the 17th of
July, 1627, he set sail with a hundred and twenty vessels, heading for La
Rochelle.  Soubise was on board his ship; and the Duke of Rohan, notified
of the enterprise, had promised to declare himself the moment the English
set foot in France.  Already he was preparing his manifesto to the
churches, avowing that he had summoned the English to his legitimate
defence, and that, since the king had but lately been justified in
employing the arms of the Hollanders to defeat them, much more reasonably
might he appeal to those of the English their brethren for protection
against him.

This time the cardinal was ready; he had concluded an alliance with Spain
against England, "declaring merely to the King of Spain that he was
already at open war with England, and that he would put in practice with
all the power of his forces against his own states all sorts of
hostilities permissible in honorable warfare, which his Majesty also
promised to do by the month of June, 1628, at the latest."  The king set
out to go and take in person the command of the army intended to give the
English their reception.  He had gone out ill from the Parliament, where
he had been to have some edicts enregistered.  "I did nothing but tremble
all the time I was holding my bed of justice," he said to Bassompierre.
"It is there, however, that you make others tremble," replied the
marshal.  Louis XIII. was obliged to halt at Villeroy, where the cardinal
remained with him, "being all day at his side, and most frequently not
leaving him at night; he, nevertheless, had his mind constantly occupied
with giving orders, taking care above everything to let it appear before
the king that he had no fear; he preferred to put himself in peril of
being blamed or ruined in well-doing, rather than, in order to secure
himself, to do anything which might be a cause of illness to his
Majesty."  In point of fact, Richelieu was not without anxiety, for Sieur
de Toiras, a young favorite of the king's, to whom he had entrusted the
command in the Island of Re, had not provided for the defence of that
place so well as had been expected; Buckingham had succeeded in effecting
his descent.  The French were shut up in the Fort of St. Martin, scarcely
finished as it was, and ill-provisioned.  The cardinal "saw to it
directly, sending of his own money because that of the king was not to be
so quickly got at, and because he had at that time none to spare; he
despatched Abbe Marcillac, who was in his confidence, to see that
everything was done punctually and no opportunity lost.  He did not
trouble himself to make reports of all the despatches that passed, and
all the orders that were within less than a fortnight given on the
subject of this business during the king's illness, in order to provide
for everything that was necessary, and to prepare all things in such wise
that the king and France might reap from them the fruit which was shortly
afterwards gathered in."

Meanwhile La Rochelle had closed her gates to the English, and the old
Duchess of Rohan had been obliged to leave the town in order to bring
Soubise in with her.  "Before taking any resolution," replied the
Rochellese authorities to the entreaties of the duke, who was pressing
them to lend assistance to the English, "we must consult the whole body
of the religion of which La Rochelle is only one member."  An assembly
was already convoked to that end at Uzes; and when it met, on the 11th of
September, the Duke of Rohan communicated to the deputies from the
churches the letter of the inhabitants of La Rochelle, "not such an one,"
he said, "as he could have desired, but such as he must make the best
of."  The King of England had granted his aid and promised not to relax
until the Reformers had firm repose and solid contentment, provided that
they seconded his efforts.  "I bid you thereto in God's name," he added,
"and for my part, were I alone, abandoned of all, I am determined to
prosecute this sacred cause even to the last drop of my blood and to the
last gasp of my life."  The assembly fully approved of their chief's
behavior, accepting "with gratitude the King of England's powerful
intervention, without, however, loosing themselves from the humble and
inviolable submission which they owed to their king."  The consuls of the
town of Milhau were bolder in their reservations.  "We have at divers
time experienced," they wrote to the Duke of Rohan, whilst refusing to
join the movement, "that violence is no certain means of obtaining
observation of our edicts, for force extorts many promises, but the
hatred it engenders prevents them from taking effect."  The duke was
obliged to force an entrance into this small place.  La Rochelle had just
renounced her neutrality and taken sides with the English, "flattering
ourselves," they said in their proclamation, "that, having good men for
our witnesses and God for our judge, we shall experience the same
assistance from His goodness as our fathers had aforetime."

M. de La Milliere, the agent of the Rochellese, wrote to one of his
friends at the Duke of Rohan's quarters, "Sir, I am arrived from
Villeroy, where the English are not held as they are at Paris to be a
mere chimera.  Only I am very apprehensive of the September tides, and
lest the new grapes should kill us off more English than the enemy will.
I am much vexed to hear nothing from your quarter to second the exploits
of the English, being unable to see without shame foreigners showing more
care for our welfare than we ourselves show.  I know that it will not be
M. de Rohan's fault nor yours that nothing good is done.

"I forgot to tell you that the cardinal is very glad that he is no longer
a bishop, for he has put so many rings in pawn to send munitions to the
islands, that he has nothing remaining wherewith to give the episcopal
benediction.  The most zealous amongst us pray God that the sea may
swallow up his person as it has swallowed his goods.  As for me, I am not
of that number, for I belong to those who offer incense to the powers
that be."  It was as yet a time when the religious fatherland was dearer
than the political; the French Huguenots naturally appealed for aid to
all Protestant nations.  It was even now an advance in national ideas to
call the English who had come to the aid of La Rochelle foreigners.

Toiras, meanwhile, still held out in the Fort of St. Martin, and
Buckingham was beginning to "abate somewhat of the absolute confidence he
had felt about making himself master of it, having been so ill-advised as
to write to the king his master that he would answer for it."  The proof
of this was that a burgess of La Rochelle, named Laleu, went to see the
king with authority from the Duke of Angouleme, who commanded the army in
his Majesty's absence, and that "he proposed that the English should
retire, provided that the king would have Fort Louis dismantled.  The
Duke of Angouleme was inclined to accept this proposal, but the cardinal
forcibly represented all the reasons against it: "It will be said,
perhaps, that if the Island of Re be lost, it will be very difficult to
recover it;" this he allowed, but he put forward, to counterbalance this
consideration, another, that, if honor were lost, it would never be
recovered, and that, if the Island of Re were lost, he considered that
his Majesty was bound to stick to the blockade of Rochelle, and that he
might do so with success.  Upon this, his Majesty resolved to push the
siege of Rochelle vigorously, and to give the command to Mylord his
brother; "but Monsieur was tardy as usual, not wanting to serve under the
king when the health of his Majesty might permit him to return to his
army, so that the cardinal wrote to President Le Coigneux, one of the
favorite counsellors of the Duke of Orleans, to say that if imaginary
hydras of that sort were often taking shape in the mind of Monsieur, he
had nothing more to say than that there would be neither pleasure nor
profit in being mixed up with his affairs.  As for himself, he would
always do his duty."  Monsieur at last made up his mind to join the army,
and it was resolved to give aid to the forts in the Island of Re.

[Illustration: The Harbor of La Rochelle---248]

It was a bold enterprise that was about to be attempted to hold La
Rochelle invested and not quit it, and, nevertheless, to send the flower
of the force to succor a citadel considered to be half lost; to make a
descent upon an island blockaded by a large naval armament; to expose the
best part of the army to the mercy of the winds and the waves of the sea,
and of the English cannons and vessels, in a place where there was no
landing in order and under arms."  [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.
p. 361]; but it had to be resolved upon or the Island of Re lost.  Toiras
had already sent to ask the Duke of Buckingham if he would receive him to
terms.

On the 8th of October, at eight A.  M., the Duke of Buckingham was
preparing to send a reply to the fort, and he was already rejoicing "to
see his felicity and the crowning of his labors," when, on nearing the
citadel, "there were exhibited to him at the ends of pikes lots of
bottles of wine, capons, turkeys, hams, ox-tongues, and other provisions,
and his vessels were saluted with lots of cannonades, they having come
too near in the belief that those inside had no more powder."  During the
night, the fleet which was assembled at Oleron, and had been at sea for
two days past, had succeeded in landing close to the fort, bringing up
re-enforcements of troops, provisions, and munitions.  At the same time
the king and the cardinal had just arrived at the camp before La
Rochelle.

[Illustration: The King and Richelieu at La Rochelle----250]

Before long the English could not harbor a doubt but that the king's army
had recovered its real heads: a grand expedition was preparing to attack
them in the Island of Re, and the cardinal had gone in person to Oleron
and to Le Brouage in order to see to the embarkation of the troops.  "The
nobility of the court came up in crowds to take leave of his Majesty, and
their looks were so gay that it must be allowed that to no nation but the
French is it given to march so freely to death for the service of their
king or for their own honor as to make it impossible to remark any
difference between him that inflicts it and him that receives."
[_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.  p. 398.] Marshal Schomberg took the
road to Marennes, whence he sent to the cardinal for boats to carry over
all his troops.  "This took him greatly by surprise, and as his judgments
are always followed by the effect he intended, he thought that this great
following of nobility might hinder the said sir marshal from executing
his design so promptly.  However, by showing admirable diligence,
doubling both his vessels and his provisions, he found sufficient to
embark the whole."  [_Siege de La Rochelle.  Archives curieuses de
l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii.  p. 76.]  By this time the king's troops,
in considerable numbers, had arrived in the island without the English
being able to prevent their disembarkation; the enemy therefore took the
resolution of setting sail, in spite of the entreaties which the Duke of
Soubise sent them on the part of the Rochellese, those latter promising
great assistance in men and provisions, more than they could afford.  To
satisfy them, the Duke of Buckingham determined to deliver a general
assault before he departed.

The assault was delivered on the 5th and 6th of November, and everywhere
repulsed, exhausted as the besieged were.  "Those who were sick and laid
up in their huts appeared on the bastions.  There were some of them so
weak that, unable to fight, they loaded their comrades' muskets; and
others, having fought beyond their strength, being able to do no more,
said to their comrades, 'Friend, here are my arms for thee; prithee, make
my grave;' and, thither retiring, there they died."  The Duke of
Buckingham wrote to M. de Fiesque, who was holding Fort La Pree, that he
was going to embark, without waiting for any more men to make their
descent upon the island; but the king, who trusted not his enemies, and
least of all the English, from whom, even when friends, he had received
so many proofs of faithlessness and falsehood, besides that he knew
Buckingham for a man who, from not having the force of character to
decide on such an occasion, did not know whether to fight or to fly,
continued in his first determination to transport promptly all those who
remained, in order to encounter the enemy on land, fight them, and make
them for the future quake with fear if it were proposed to them to try
another descent upon his dominions.

Marshal Schomberg, thwarted by bad weather, had just rallied his troops
which had been cast by the winds on different parts of the coast, when it
was perceived that the enemy had sheered off.  M. De Toiras, issuing from
his fortress to meet the marshal, would have pursued them at once to give
them battle; but Schomberg refused, saying, "I ought to make them a
bridge of gold rather than a barrier of iron;" and he contented himself
with following the English, who retreated to a narrow causeway which led
to the little Island of Oie.  There, a furious charge of French cavalry
broke the ranks of the enemy, disorder spread amongst them, and when
night came to put an end to the combat, forty flags remained in the hands
of the king's troops, and he sent them at once to Notre-Dame, by Claude
de St. Simon, together with a quantity of prisoners, of whom the King
made a present to his sister, the Queen of England.

"Such," says the Duke of Rohan, in his Hemoires, "was the success of the
Duke of Buckingham's expedition, wherein he ruined the reputation of his
nation and his own, consumed a portion of the provisions of the
Rochellese, and reduced to despair the party for whose sake he had come
to France.  The Duke of Rohan first learned this bad news by the bonfires
which all the Roman Catholics lighted for it all through the countship of
Foix, and, later on, by a despatch from the Duke of Soubise, who exhorted
him not to lose courage, saying that he hoped to come back next spring in
condition to efface the affront received."  This latter prince had not
covered himself with glory in the expedition.  "As recompense and
consolation for all their losses," says the cardinal, "they carried off
Soubise to England.  He has not been mentioned all through this siege,
because, whenever there was any question of negotiation, no one would
apply to him, but only to Buckingham.  When there was nothing for it but
to fight, he would not hear of it.  On the day the English made their
descent, he was at La Rochelle; nobody knows where he was at the time of
the assault, but he was one of the first and most forward in the rout."

Soubise had already been pronounced guilty of high-treason by decree of
the Parliament of Toulouse; but the Duke of Rohan had been degraded from
his dignities, and "a title offered to those who would assassinate him,
which created an inclination in three or four wretches to undertake it,
who had but a rope or the wheel for recompense, it not being in any human
power to prolong or shorten any man's life without the permission of
God."  The Prince of Conde had been commissioned to fight the valiant
chief of the Huguenots, "for that he was their sworn enemy," says the
cardinal.  In the eyes of fervent Catholics the name of Conde had many
wrongs for which to obtain pardon.

The English were ignominiously defeated; the king was now confronted by
none but his revolted subjects; he resolved to blockade the place at all
points, so that it could not be entered by land or sea; and, to this end,
he claimed from Spain the fleet which had been promised him, and which
did not arrive.  "The whole difficulty of this enterprise," said the
cardinal to the king, "lies in this, that the majority will only labor
therein in a perfunctory manner."

His ordinary penetration did not deceive him: the great lords intrusted
with commands saw with anxiety the increasing power of Richelieu.  "You
will see," said Bassompierre, "that we shall be mad enough to take La
Rochelle."  "His Majesty had just then many of his own kingdom and all
his allies sworn together against him, and so much the more dangerously
in that it was secretly.  England at open war, and with all her maritime
power but lately on our coasts; the King of Spain apparently united to
his Majesty, yet, in fact, not only giving him empty words, but, under
cover of the emperor's name, making a diversion against him in the
direction of Germany.  Nevertheless the king held firm to his resolve;
and then the siege of La Rochelle was undertaken with a will."

The old Duchess of Rohan (Catherine de Parthenay Larcheveque) had shut
herself up in La Rochelle with her daughter Anne de Rohan, as pious and
as courageous as her mother, and of rare erudition into the bargain; she
had hitherto refused to leave the town; but, when the blockade commenced,
she asked leave to retire with two hundred women.  The town had already
been refused permission to get rid of useless mouths.  "All the
Rochellese shall go out together," was the answer returned to Madame de
Rohan.  She determined to undergo with her brethren in the faith all the
rigors of the siege.  "Secure peace, complete victory, or honorable
death," she wrote to her son the Duke of Rohan: the old device of Jeanne
d'Albret, which had never been forgotten by the brave chief of the
Huguenots.

At the head of the burgesses of La Rochelle, as determined as the Duchess
of Rohan to secure their liberties or perish, was the president of the
board of marine, soon afterwards mayor of the town, John Gutton, a rich
merchant, whom the misfortunes of the times had wrenched away from his
business to become a skilful admiral, an intrepid soldier, accustomed for
years past to scour the seas as a corsair.  "He had at his house," says a
narrative of those days, "a great number of flags, which he used to show
one after another, indicating the princes from whom he had taken them."
When he was appointed mayor, he drew his poniard and threw it upon the
council-table.  "I accept," he said, "the honor you have done me, but on
condition that yonder poniard shall serve to pierce the heart of whoever
dares to speak of surrender, mine first of all, if I were ever wretch
enough to condescend to such cowardice."  Of indomitable nature, of
passionate and proud character, Guiton, in fact, rejected all proposals
of peace.  "My friend, tell the cardinal that I am his very humble
servant," was his answer to insinuating speeches as well as to threats;
and he prepared with tranquil coolness for defence to the uttermost.  Two
municipal councillors, two burgesses, and a clergyman were commissioned
to judge and to punish spies and traitors; attention was concentrated
upon getting provisions into the town; the country was already
devastated, but reliance was placed upon promises of help from England;
and religious exercises were everywhere multiplied.  "We will hold out to
the last day," reiterated the burgesses.

[Illustration: John Guiton's Oath----254]

It was the month of December; bad weather interfered with the
siege-works; the king was having a line of circumvallation pushed
forward to close the approaches to the city on the land side; the
cardinal was having a mole of stone-work, occupying the whole breadth of
the roads, constructed; the king's little fleet, commanded by M. de
Guise, had been ordered up to protect the laborers; Spain had sent
twenty-eight vessels in such bad condition that those which were rolled
into the sea laden with stones were of more value.  "They were employed
Spanish-fashion," says Richelieu, "that is, to make an appearance so as
to astound the Rochellese by the union of the two crowns."  A few days
after their arrival, at the rumor of assistance coming from England, the
Spanish admiral, who had secret orders to make no effort for France,
demanded permission to withdraw his ships.  "It was very shameful of
them, but it was thought good to let them go without the king's consent,
making believe that he had given them their dismissal, and desired them
to go and set about preparing, one way or another, a large armament by
the spring."  The Rochellese were rejoicing over the treaty they had
just concluded with the King of England, who promised "to aid them by
land and sea, to the best of his kingly power, until he should have
brought about a fair and secure peace."  The mole was every moment being
washed away by the sea; and, "whilst the cardinal was employing all the
wits which God had given him to bring to a successful issue the siege of
La Rochelle to the glory of God and the welfare of the state, and was
laboring to that end more than the bodily strength granted to him by God
seemed to permit, one would have said that the sea and the winds,
favoring the English and the islands, were up in opposition and
thwarting his designs."

The king was growing tired, and wished to go to Paris; but this was not
the advice of the cardinal, and "the truths he uttered were so
displeasing to the king that he fell somehow into disgrace.  The dislike
the king conceived for him was such that he found fault with him about
everything."  The king at last took his departure, and the cardinal, who
had attended him "without daring, out of respect, to take his sunshade to
protect him against the heat of the sun, which was very great that day,"
was on his return taken ill with fever.  "I am so downhearted that I
cannot express the regret I feel at quitting the cardinal, fearing lest
some accident may happen to him," the king had said to one of his
servants: "tell him from me to take care of himself, to think what a
state my affairs would be in if I were to lose him."  When the king
returned to La Rochelle on the 10th of April, he found his army
strengthened, the line of circumvallation finished, and the mole well
advanced into the sea; the assault was becoming possible, and the king
summoned the place to surrender.  [_Siege de La Rochelle.  Archives
eurieuses de l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii.  p. 102.]  "We recognize no
other sheriffs and governors than ourselves," answered the sergeant on
guard to the improvised herald sent by the king; "nobody will listen to
you; away at once!"  It was at last announced that the re-enforcements so
impatiently expected were coming from England.  "The cardinal, who knew
that there was nothing so dangerous as to have no fear of one's enemy,
had a long while before set everything in order, as if the English might
arrive any day."  Their fleet was signalled at sea; it numbered thirty
vessels, and had a convoy of twenty barks laden with provisions and
munitions, and it was commanded by the Earl of Denbigh, Buckingham's
brother-in-law.  The Rochellese, transported with joy, "had planted a
host of flags on the prominent points of their town."  The English came
and cast anchor at the tip of the Island of Re.  The cannon of La
Rochelle gave them a royal salute.  A little boat with an English captain
on board found means of breaking the blockade; and "Open a passage," said
the envoy to the Rochellese, "as you sent notice to us in England, and we
will deliver you."  But the progress made in the works of the mole
rendered the enterprise difficult; the besieged could not attempt
anything; they waited and waited for Lord Denbigh to bring on an
engagement; on the 19th of May, all the English ships got under sail and
approached the roads.  The besieged hurried on to the ramparts; there was
the thunder of one broadside, and one only; and then the vessels tacked
and crowded sail for England, followed by the gaze "of the king's army,
who returned to make good cheer without any fear of the enemy, and with
great hopes of soon taking the town."

Great was the despair in La Rochelle: "This shameful retreat of the
English, and their aid which had only been received by faith, as they do
in the Eucharist," wrote Cardinal Richelieu, "astounded the Rochellese so
mightily that they would readily have made up their minds to surrender,
if Madame de Rohan, the mother, whose hopes for her children were all
centred in the preservation of this town, and the minister Salbert, a
very seditious fellow, had not regaled them with imaginary succor which
they made them hope for."  The cardinal, when he wrote these words, knew
nothing of the wicked proposals made to Guiton and to Salbert.  "Couldn't
the cardinal be got rid of by the deed of one determined man?" it was
asked: but the mayor refused; and, "It is not in such a way that God
willeth our deliverance," said Salbert; "it would be too offensive to His
holiness."  And they suffered on.

Meanwhile, on the 24th of May, the posterns were observed to open, and
the women to issue forth one after another, with their children and the
old men; they came gliding towards the king's encampment, but "he ordered
them to be driven back by force; and further, knowing that they had sown
beans near the counterscarps of their town, a detachment was sent out to
cut them down as soon as they began to come up, and likewise a little
corn that they had sown in some dry spots of their marshes."  Louis the
Just fought the Rochellese in other fashion than that in which Henry the
Great had fought the Parisians.

The misery in the place became frightful; the poor died of hunger, or
were cut down by the soldiery when they ventured upon shore at low tide
to look for cockles; the price of provisions was such that the richest
alone could get a little meat to eat; a cow fetched two thousand livres,
and a bushel of wheat eight hundred livres.  Madame de Rohan had been the
first to have her horses killed, but this resource was exhausted, and her
cook at last "left the town and allowed himself to be taken, saying that
he would rather be hanged than return to die of hunger."  A rising even
took place amongst the inhabitants who were clamorous to surrender, but
Guiton had the revolters hanged.  "I am ready," said he, "to cast lots
with anybody else which shall live or be killed to feed his comrade with
his flesh.  As long as there is one left to keep the gates shut, it is
enough."  The mutineers were seized with terror, and men died without
daring to speak. "We have been waiting three months for the effect of the
excellent letters we received from the King of Great Britain," wrote
Guiton on the 24th of August, to the deputies from La Rochelle who were
in London, "and, meanwhile, we cannot see by what disasters it happens
that we remain here in misery without seeing any sign of succor; our men
can do no more, our inhabitants are dying of hunger in the streets, and
all our families are in a fearful state from mourning, want, and
perplexity; nevertheless, we will hold out to the last day, but in God's
name delay no longer, for we perish."  This letter never reached its
destination; the watchmaker, Marc Biron; who had offered to convey it to
England, was arrested whilst attempting to pass the royal lines, and was
immediately hanged.  La Rochelle, however, still held out. "Their rabid
fury," says the cardinal, "gave them new strength, or rather the avenging
wrath of God caused them to be supplied therewith in extraordinary
measure by his evil spirit, in order to prolong their woes; they were
already almost at the end thereof, and misery found upon them no more
substance whereon it could feed and support itself; they were skeletons,
empty shadows, breathing corpses, rather than living men."  At the bottom
of his heart, and in spite of the ill temper their resistance caused in
him, the heroism of the Rochellese excited the cardinal's admiration.
Buckingham had just been assassinated.  "The king could not have lost a
more bitter or a more idiotic enemy; his unreasoning enterprises ended
unluckily, but they, nevertheless, did not fail to put us in great peril
and cause us much mischief," says Richelieu "the idiotic madness of an
enemy being more to be feared than his wisdom, inasmuch as the idiot does
not act on any principle common to other men, he attempts everything and
anything, violates his own interests, and is restrained by impossibility
alone."

It was this impossibility of any aid that the cardinal attempted to
impress upon the Rochellese by means of letters which he managed to get
into the town, representing to them that Buckingham, their protector, was
dead, and that they were allowing themselves to be unjustly tyrannized
over by a small number amongst them, who, being rich, had wheat to eat,
whereas, if they were good citizens, they would take their share of the
general misery.  These manoeuvres did not remain without effect: the
besieged resolved to treat, and a deputation was just about to leave the
town, when a burgess who had broken through the lines arrived in hot
haste, on his return from England; he had seen, he said, the armament all
ready to set out to save them or perish; it must arrive within a week;
the public body of La Rochelle had promised not to treat without the King
of England's participation; he was not abandoning his allies; and so the
deputies returned home, and there was more waiting still.

On the 29th of September, the English flag appeared before St. Martin de
Re; it was commanded by the Earl of Lindsay, and was composed of a
hundred and forty vessels, which carried six thousand soldiers, besides
the crews; the French who were of the religion were in the van, commanded
by the Duke of Soubise and the Count of Laval, brother of the Duke of La
Tremoille, who had lately renounced his faith in front of La Rochelle,
being convinced of his errors by a single lesson from the cardinal.
"This armament was England's utmost effort, for the Parliament which was
then being holden had granted six millions of livres to fit it out to
avenge the affronts and ignominy which the English nation had encountered
on the Island of Re, and afterwards by the shameful retreat of their
armament in the month of May."  But it was too late coming; the mole was
finished, and the opening in it defended by two forts; and a floating
palisade blocked the passage as well.  The English sent some petards
against this construction, but they produced no effect; and when, next
day, they attacked the royal fleet, the French crews lost but
twenty-eight men; "the fire-ships were turned aside by men who feared
fire as little as water."  Lord Lindsay retired with his squadron to the
shelter of the Island of Aix, sending to the king "Lord Montagu to
propose some terms of accommodation."  He demanded pardon for the
Rochellese, freedom of conscience, and quarter for the English garrison
in La Rochelle; the answer was, "that the Rochellese were subjectss of
the king, who knew quite well what he had to do with them, and that the
King of England had no right to interfere.  As for the English, they
should meet with the same treatment as was received by the French whom
they held prisoners." Montagu set out for England to obtain further
orders from the king his master.

All hope of effectual aid was gone, and the Rochellese felt it; the
French who were on board the English fleet had taken, like them, a
resolution to treat; and they had already sent to the cardinal when, on
the 29th of October, the deputies from La Rochelle arrived at the camp.
"Your fellows who were in the English army have already obtained grace,"
said the cardinal to them; and when they were disposed not to believe it,
the cardinal sent for the pastors Vincent and Gobert, late delegates to
King Charles I. "they embraced with tears in their eyes, not daring to
speak of business, as they had been forbidden to do so on pain of death."

The demands of the Rochellese were more haughty than befitted their
extreme case.  "Though they were but shadows of living men, and their
life rested solely on the king's mercy, they actually dared,
nevertheless, to propose to the cardinal a general treaty on behalf of
all those of their party, including Madame de Rohan and Monsieur de
Soubise, the maintenance of their privileges, of their governor, and of
their mayor, together with the right of those bearing arms to march out
with beat of drum and lighted match" [with the honors of war].

The cardinal was amused at their impudence, he writes in his _Memoires,_
and told them that they had no right to expect anything more than pardon,
which, moreover, they did not deserve.  "He was nevertheless anxious to
conclude, wishing that Montagu should find peace made, and that the
English fleet should see it made without their consent, which would
render the rest of the king's business easier, whether as regarded
England or Spain, or the interior of the kingdom."  On the 28th the
treaty, or rather the grace, was accordingly signed, "the king granting
life and property to those of the inhabitants of the town who were then
in it, and the exercise of the religion within La Rochelle."  These
articles bore the signature of a brigadier-general, M. de Marillac, the
king not having thought proper to put his name at the bottom of a
convention made with his subjects.

Next day, twelve deputies issued from the town, making a request for
horses to Marshal de Bassompierre, whose quarters were close by, for they
had not strength to walk.  They dismounted on approaching the king's
quarters, and the cardinal presented them to his Majesty.  "Sir," said
they, "we do acknowledge our crimes and rebellions, and demand mercy;
promising to remain faithful for the future, if your Majesty deigns to
remember the services we were able to render to the king your father."

The king gazed upon these suppliants kneeling at his feet, deputies from
the proud city which had kept him more than a year at her gates;
fleshless, almost fainting, they still bore on their features the traces
of the haughty past.  They had kept the lilies of France on their walls,
refusing to the last to give themselves to England.  "Better surrender to
a king who could take Rochelle, than to one who couldn't succor her,"
said the mayor, "John Guiton, who was asked if he would not become an
English subject.  "I know that you have always been malignants," said the
king at last, "and that you have done all you could to shake off the yoke
of obedience to me; I forgive you, nevertheless, your rebellions, and
will be a good prince to you, if your actions conform to your
protestations."  Thereupon he dismissed them, not without giving them a
dinner, and sent victuals into the town; without which, all that remained
would have been dead of hunger within two days.

The fighting men marched out, "the officers and gentlemen wearing their
swords and the soldiery with bare (white) staff in hand," according to
the conventions; as they passed they were regarded with amazement, there
not being more than sixty-four Frenchmen and ninety English: all the rest
had been killed in sorties or had died of want.  The cardinal at the same
time entered this city, which he had subdued by sheer perseverance;
Guiton came to meet him with six archers; he had not appeared during the
negotiations, saying that his duty detained him in the town.  "Away with
you!" said the cardinal, "and at once dismiss your archers, taking care
not to style yourself mayor any more on pain of death."  Guiton made no
reply, and went his way quietly to his house, a magnificent dwelling till
lately, but now lying desolate amidst the general ruin.  He was not
destined to reside there long; the heroic defender of La Rochelle was
obliged to leave the town and retire to Tournay-Boutonne.  He returned to
La Rochelle to die, in 1656.

The king made his entry into the subjugated town on the 1st of November,
1628: it was full of corpses in the chambers, the houses, the public
thoroughfares; for those who still survived were so weak that they had
not been able to bury the dead.  Madame de Rohan and her daughter, who
had not been included in the treaty, were not admitted to the honor of
seeing his Majesty.  "For having been the brand that had consumed this
people," they were sent to prison at Niort; "there kept captive, without
exercise of their religion, and so strictly that they had but one
domestic to wait upon them, all which, however, did not take from them
their courage or wonted zeal for the good of their party.  The mother
sent word to the Duke of Rohan, her son, that he was to put no faith in
her letters, since she might be made to write them by force, and that no
consideration of her pitiable condition should make her flinch to the
prejudice of her party, whatever harm she might be made to suffer."
[_Memoires du Duc de Rohan,_ t. i.  p. 395.]  Worn out by so much
suffering, the old Duchess of Rohan died in 1631 at her castle Du Pare:
she had been released from captivity by the pacification of the South.

With La Rochelle fell the last bulwark of religious liberties.
Single-handed, Duke Henry of Rohan now resisted at the head of a handful
of resolute men.  But he was about to be crushed in his turn.  The
capture of La Rochelle had raised the cardinal's power to its height; it
had, simultaneously, been the death-blow to the Huguenot party and to
the factions of the grandees.  "One of them was bold enough to say," on
seeing that La Rochelle was lost, "Now we may well say that we are all
lost."  [_Memoires de Richelieu_]

Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and the
Prince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohan
attempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier.  He believed that he was
sure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when the
detachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge the
ropes that held it were cut, and "the soldiers fell into a ditch, where
they were shot down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketry
played upon them from without."  The lieutenant fell back in all haste
upon the division of the Duke of Rohan, who retreated "to the best
Villages between Montpellier and Lunel, without ever a man from
Montpellier going out to follow and see whither he went."  The war was
wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and
Ventadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the
troops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban had
declared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholic
neighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royal
troops.  The wretched peasantry laid the blame on the Duke of Rohan,
"for one of the greatest misfortunes connected with the position of
party-chiefs is this necessity they lie under of accounting for all their
actions to the people, that is, to a monster composed of numberless
heads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason." [_Memoires de
Montmorency.]  "Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothing
difficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort of
provision, is apt to be much hampered," writes the Duke of Rohan in his
_Memoires_ (t. i.  p. 376).  It was this extreme embarrassment that
landed him in crime.  One of his emissaries, returning from Piedmont,
where he had been admitted to an interview with the ambassador of Spain,
made overtures to him on behalf of that power "which had an interest, he
said, in a prolongation of the hostilities in France, so as to be able to
peaceably achieve its designs in Italy.  The great want of money in which
the said duke then found himself, the country being unable to furnish
more, and the towns being unwilling to do anything further, there being
nothing to hope from England, and nothing but words without deeds having
been obtained from the Duke of Savoy, absolutely constrained him to find
some means of raising it in order to subsist."  And so, in the following
year, the Duke of Rohan treated with the King of Spain, who promised to
allow him annually three hundred thousand ducats for the keep of his
troops and forty thousand for himself.  In return the duke, who looked