1627-1628
Two famous edicts--The tragedy of Bouteville and Des Chapelles--The
death of Madame and its consequences--War with England--The Siege of La
Rochelle.
Richelieu had triumphed. Monsieur was safely married; for the moment
contented and _rangé_. The restless, foolish, unhappy Chalais was dead;
the Maréchal d’Ornano had died in prison, not without a suspicion of
poison which seems unjustified; the Vendôme brothers were securely
bolted into the damp dungeons of Vincennes; the Comte de Soissons had
fled to Savoy; Madame de Chevreuse, banished from the Court, had taken
refuge with Duke Charles of Lorraine; Queen Anne was in disgrace.
Conspiracy was scotched, if not killed; the storm had blown over, and
the highest in France, it seemed, lay at the Cardinal’s mercy.
By two popular edicts he pursued his plan of crushing the nobles and
making the King supreme. One destroyed, first in Brittany, then all
over France, every feudal stronghold that was not needed for the
defence of province or kingdom. Such a measure was something of a
revolution, for it struck sharply at the local strength and independent
authority of the nobles, great and small. Peasants and townspeople were
delighted to help the royal officials in smashing gates and tearing
down tall watch-towers and walls six feet thick, which had threatened
their liberty for so many centuries. As is usual in revolutions, a good
deal of injustice was done; many proprietors suffered for the sins of
a few; promised indemnities were not paid. And after all, Richelieu
or no Richelieu, civilisation was in fact advancing. Manners were
changing. Every year widened the difference between the centuries, left
Henry IV. farther behind and brought Louis XIV. nearer. Richelieu, in
his dealing with the great men, their fortresses and their governments,
only hurried the inevitable march. But he also gained his own immediate
ends.
The other famous edict forbade duels. They had long been forbidden,
under the severest penalties; but the passions of men and the usages
of society had been too strong for the law, which had become almost a
dead letter. The nobles of France fought each other “by day and night,
by moonlight, by torchlight, in the public streets and squares,” and
on the slightest quarrel. The Church protested, the law threatened,
without avail. Richelieu once more brought forward the royal authority,
forbidding duels on pain of death, with the firm intention of making an
example of any man who should dare to disobey.
The occasion was not long in coming. François de Montmorency, Comte
de Bouteville, was one of the best-known duellists in France--or
in Europe, for that matter. At twenty-seven he had already fought
twenty-two duels. Fighting was his passion. “If you want to fight,”
said the Président de Chevry to a punctilious gentleman, “go and pull a
hair out of Bouteville’s beard; _il vous fera passer votre envie_.”
In the spring of 1627 Bouteville was in Flanders, having made France
too hot to hold him. The Archduchess Isabel, from her Court at
Brussels, wrote to ask his pardon of Louis XIII., who refused it,
adding, however, that he might return to France safe from justice, on
condition that he appeared neither in Paris nor at Court. This answer
touched Bouteville’s pride. He had a quarrel with the Baron de Beuvron;
he resolved to fight it out in Paris in the teeth of King, Cardinal,
and edicts new and old. Each man had two seconds: it was a triple duel
with swords, three against three; and it was fought in broad daylight
in the Place Royale, the most fashionable square in Paris. The windows
of the high red houses were crowded with spectators.
Both principals escaped unhurt; but the Comte des Chapelles,
Bouteville’s second, killed his adversary, M. de Bussy d’Amboise,
governor of Vitry. Honour being satisfied, the survivors fled for their
lives. M. de Beuvron and two other men got away safely to England. M.
de Bouteville and M. des Chapelles, on their way to Lorraine, were
foolhardy enough to sleep at Vitry, where the fatal news had outrun
them, and “the dead man’s mother,” says Bassompierre, “arrested them.”
They were brought back to Paris, imprisoned in the Bastille, and
after a short trial sentenced to death. Then the whole opinion of
society rose passionately in their favour. Such edicts were useless;
human nature could not obey them. Men must quarrel, and there was one
honourable, approved way of settling their quarrels: they must fight.
If they did not they were scorned as cowards; the King himself sneered
at their prudence, their obedience to his own edicts. Thus cried every
gentleman in France, and the Cardinal’s heart must have echoed the cry.
Though he would not save the victims, saying that it was a question
which throat should be cut--that of the duel or that of the law; though
he listened unmoved to the prayers of their friends and relations--the
Princesse de Condé and the Duc de Montmorency were Bouteville’s
cousins, for the best blood of France ran in his veins--yet the words
with which, in his _Memoirs_, he mourns the two young men, have a ring
of sincerity. Famous for courage in their lives, it did not fail them,
he says, at the approach of a disgraceful death.
“There was nothing feeble in their speech, nothing low in their
actions. They received the news of death as if it had been that of
pardon.... They were well prepared to die.... There was one difference
between them: Bouteville appeared sad in those last hours, and the
Comte des Chapelles joyful; Bouteville sad for the faults he had
committed, and the other joyful for the hope he had of Paradise.”
The two were beheaded in the Place de Grève on June 21, 1627. Their
deaths, following on his signal triumphs of the preceding year, made
the name of Richelieu hateful and terrible to the nobles of France.
They began to feel that he might be as almighty in power as he was
relentless in action. But they did not cease to fight duels.
Another tragic event in the early summer of that year was the death of
Monsieur’s young wife, a few days after the birth of her child--not
the prince whose arrival had been anxiously expected all the winter,
the suspense adding pride and importance to Monsieur and Madame, gloom
and jealousy to the King and Queen--but a princess, afterwards known
as the Grande Mademoiselle, the greatest heiress in Europe, whose
distinguished, eccentric presence was to be familiar to the French
Court for more than sixty years.
“That death,” says Bassompierre, “changed the face of the Court, gave
rise to new designs, and in short was the cause of many evils which
have since come to pass.”
The Duchess had no more sincere mourner than Cardinal de Richelieu.
“Deplorable ... prejudicial to the welfare of the State,” he writes of
the death of Madame, “... who in ten months was wife of a great prince,
sister-in-law of the three first and greatest kings of Christendom, a
mother, and a corpse.”
The Cardinal had good reasons for his regret. Monsieur, who since his
marriage had lived peaceably, content with his own trifling amusements,
influenced by his wife’s gentle attraction rather than by a set of
ambitious favourites, now became once more a centre of varied intrigue.
And it was not only his ready disloyalty, but the constant scandal of
his private life, which induced Louis XIII. and Richelieu to do their
best to satisfy his restless spirit. The foolish and vicious boy, a
widower at nineteen, was after all the only hope of the direct royal
line.
By way of consoling the Prince and occupying his mind, “the King,”
says a memoir-writer of that century, “proposed to him all kinds of
honest exercise, principally that of the chase: there being hardly a
day on which His Majesty did not so divert himself, he imagined that
Monsieur would take the same pleasure in it”--which he did not, being
a Parisian and a gambler. “And since Monsieur possessed no house near
Paris where he could sometimes take the air, His Majesty thought well
to give him that of Limours, belonging to the Cardinal de Richelieu;
thus gratifying His Highness in the belief that he would take pleasure
in beautifying it. It was purchased at the same price for which it had
been acquired, which amounted to 400,000 _livres_, including the domain
of Montlhéry; and with a further payment of 300,000 _livres_ to the
Cardinal de Richelieu, as well for the furniture as for his expenditure
and the improvements he had made.”
The writer goes on to explain that the Cardinal gladly seized this
opportunity of getting rid of Limours.
“The Cardinal was disgusted with that house, finding it unpleasant and
unhealthy; both because of its low situation, yet without fountains
or other waters, and because of many other things that were lacking;
and he was happy to seize a good chance of getting rid of it, and
greatly to his advantage; which he could not have expected in any other
quarter. For the Queen-mother’s persuasion decided the King to gratify
the Cardinal her creature, in whom she had then every confidence.”
The last sentence hardly bears the stamp of truth. In the year 1627 and
later, Richelieu could not be described as the creature of Marie de
Médicis, and her confidence in him had almost ceased to exist.
In the spring of that year the discontent between France and England
flashed out into war. This had been imminent since the early autumn of
1626, when Charles I. roughly drove out his wife’s French household;
and Bassompierre’s embassy of remonstrance had only smoothed matters
over for the time. Richelieu did not desire war with England; it meant
a new struggle with the Huguenots. He intended to fix his own date
for that, and to make it final. He was not yet ready. But this time
Buckingham’s jealous anger and restless ambition were strong enough to
force his hand. Louis XIII. had refused to receive the Duke again at
the French Court. This, according to contemporaries, be they right or
wrong, was the chief and secret cause of the war. Outwardly, it was
brought about by quarrels and piracies on both sides at sea, as well
as by Charles I.’s sympathy with the oppressed Huguenots; but every
enemy of Richelieu’s government, Protestant or Catholic, was more or
less drawn into a coalition against him. Not only the Duc de Soubise
and his friends in England, and the Duc de Rohan in Languedoc, but Duke
Charles of Lorraine, influenced by Madame de Chevreuse, the Duke of
Savoy and his guest the Comte de Soissons, and the Archduchess Isabel,
ruler of the Low Countries, who did her best to draw Spain to England’s
side, were concerned in this great enterprise of crushing Cardinal de
Richelieu. As a fact, at this very time, Spain and France were allied
by treaty against England; but Richelieu differed from the Queen-mother
and the rest of the Catholic party in profoundly distrusting Olivarez;
and he knew, quite as well as his many enemies did, that an English
victory would leave France, divided in herself, standing alone against
Europe.
From mid-winter onward, the English fleet was preparing; through what
enormous difficulties, readers of English history know. From week to
week, all through the spring, more and more alarming reports crossed
the Channel: the English were coming; any day might see their sails in
the north-west, bearing down on the coast of France. La Rochelle was
their destination; but they could not reach the Huguenot city without
first seizing one or both of the islands, Ré and Oléron, which guard
it from the sea. Of these, Ré was now the strongest, new royal forts
having been built there since the last Huguenot revolt, to overawe the
town. Convinced that the English “could do nothing there,” Richelieu
threw himself with fiery energy into the task of strengthening Oléron
and the forts on the mainland. His letters, written during those months
to the governors of towns and castles on the coast, especially to M. de
Guron, governor of Marans, M. de Launay-Razilly, commanding in Oléron,
M. de Toiras and others, including his brother-in-law the Marquis
de Brézé, and his friend and lieutenant M. de Sourdis, Bishop of
Maillezais, afterwards Archbishop of Bordeaux--kinsman and successor of
his enemy Cardinal _Sordido_--are a really wonderful study. Few great
statesmen have shown such a genius for detail. As the danger approached
his letters flew to all parts of the coast, and in reading them one
may almost hear the heavy strokes of the axe in Breton forests, the
hammering of ship-builders, the creaking of cordage, the clank of arms
and the rolling of cannon-balls, the rumbling of waggons laden with
tools, powder, provisions for the islands. M. de Guron, through those
months of March, April and May, can have slept but little. He had to
understand “at half a word.” He had to cope with the angry tempers of
the men who worked under him; he had to consider the poor people of
the islands and to take care that the soldiers did not oppress them.
Over and over again Richelieu writes in the interest of the peasants;
they must not be taxed or tormented. In fact, they were neighbours
of his old Luçon days; a very few miles to the north, the spire of
his cathedral rose over the marshes; almost every letter shows his
familiarity with every inch of that coast.
Another characteristic point is the gentle tone in which Richelieu
writes of the Huguenots, grimly watching from the walls of La Rochelle
the strengthening of the islands, the gathering of armies, the hurrying
to their coast of a crowd of young Catholic nobles, the desperate
energy of equipment with which ships and boats were being collected
from north and south to meet the coming storm. The people of La
Rochelle were anxious, and with reason. Their minds were divided, not
altogether rejoicing in the English descent, as they proved a little
later--for when the Duc de Soubise, coming from England, presented
himself at the gates, they were shut against him until his mother,
old Madame de Rohan of the dreams and visions, went down herself to
the harbour, commanded that the gates should be opened, took his hand
and led him in. The citizens of La Rochelle might resist the rulers
of their own country, but they were not unanimously ready to welcome
a foreign invader, and it was Richelieu’s policy to encourage this
doubtfulness. Writing to M. de Navailles, commander of the cavalry in
the island of Ré, he more than once enjoins him to assure Messieurs de
la Rochelle, who might be disquieted by the warlike preparations going
on at their very gates, of the excellent intentions of His Majesty.
They need fear nothing, as long as they paid him the respect and
obedience they owed. These military works were not for their harm, but
for his own security. Again, writing to his uncle the Commander de la
Porte, governor of Angers, Richelieu says: “Let the Huguenots spread
what reports they will: provided they continue in obedience, they will
always be well treated. We intend no harm to them, but only to prevent
their doing any.”
The alarms and the frenzied preparations went on through the spring
and far into the summer, and were at their height while the Bouteville
affair and the death of Madame occupied the mind of Paris. On the day
of the royal obsequies at Saint-Denis, the English fleet had already
sailed from “Porsemus,” as Richelieu spells it, and ten or twelve days
later it appeared off La Rochelle. Louis XIII. had already left Paris
for the west coast. Monsieur was appointed lieutenant-general of the
royal armies in Poitou, which were actually commanded by the King’s old
cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême, with Louis de Marillac, brother of the
Chancellor, as second in command, and by the Marshals de Schomberg and
de Bassompierre. Later in the year, the Prince de Condé and the Duc de
Montmorency were charged with checking the Duc de Rohan in Languedoc.
By that time, Toiras being blockaded by the English in the Isle of Ré,
and the attitude of La Rochelle being no longer doubtful, Richelieu had
ceased to show patience and toleration of the King’s rebels. The day
he had long foreseen had at last arrived. “Faut ruiner les Huguenots.
Si Ré se sauve, facile. S’il se perd, plus difficile, mais faisable
et nécessaire comme l’unique remède de la perte de Ré. Autrement les
Anglois et Rochelois seroyent unis et puissans.”
These notes form part of a report drawn up by the Cardinal’s
secretaries of an interview between himself and Condé, which took
place at Richelieu in the early autumn. The words may probably have
been Condé’s: that foolish firebrand was in favour of setting the whole
kingdom in a blaze of religious war, of persecuting the Protestants and
pulling down their houses, in hopes that they might make such reprisals
as would infuriate the country against them and lead to something like
their extermination. These mad ideas were far enough from Richelieu;
but he, equally with Condé, was now resolved to crush the rebel power,
and to bring all Frenchmen under the King’s authority.
But a long and difficult struggle lay before him.
The King was ill when he left Paris, and after one day’s journey fever
seized him so violently that he could go no farther. For weeks he lay
between life and death at Villeroy, on the road to Orléans. He was
there in the middle of July, when a courier arrived from the Marquis
de Brézé, bringing news that the English had landed in Ré, and after
sharp fighting, many precious lives being lost on both sides, had
forced M. de Toiras to retire into the fort of Saint-Martin, where he
was closely besieged. No one disputed the desperate courage of Toiras;
but he earned great blame from the Cardinal for his rashness and want
of foresight; the citadel being hardly in a state of defence, and
provisioned for seven or eight weeks only. Boasting that he could drive
off the English with one arm, he had indeed never faced the possibility
of being shut up in Saint-Martin. The despised enemy was to teach him a
sharp lesson.
The situation was serious to the last degree, and Richelieu had to meet
it alone. The King was far too ill to hear such news, and his life
was more valuable to France than any forts and islands: the Cardinal
had to accept a responsibility never yet openly his. Walking gingerly
in a crowd of enemies, he had till now sheltered himself under the
authority of the King. Now he rose supreme, to give those “prompt and
powerful orders” which, as he says, were the only way to face the
storm. “A thousand cares tormented and agitated his mind; but the
greatest of all, which troubled him most, was to show no anxiety before
the King.... All the day he was with him; at night he seldom left him;
and yet his mind was always busy with the orders which secretly, from
hour to hour, he had to send out for the succour of the island and the
hindering of the English.... For he heard that there was scarcity in
the forts of Ré, and that, if not promptly relieved, they were lost.”
From the gates of Villeroy rode couriers, agents, envoys, carrying
orders and money to all parts. The State funds were so low that
Richelieu was compelled to use his own money and credit: he ventured
all without hesitation. He sent a large sum to Le Havre, for the
equipment of five ships; to Saint-Malo, for eight ships and eleven
great guns; to Brouage and Les Sables d’Olonne, that any quantity of
provisions of all kinds, wine, meat, flour, biscuit, might be ready
to be thrown into the besieged citadel. For that purpose he ordered
a number of pinnaces from Bayonne and the river-mouths on the Bay of
Biscay, which could approach the islands, sailing or rowing, when the
weather made large ships useless. Three bold sea-captains, Beaulieu,
Courcelles, and Canteleu, promised to carry victuals into Ré or to
die in the attempt. Richelieu invited help from Spain, in accordance
with treaties; but that cautious government waited to send ships till
Buckingham had sailed away for England and something like a French
navy, created by Richelieu’s marvellous practical energy and commanded
by the Duc de Guise, was cruising in the waters of La Rochelle.
This did not happen till December. No relief of Saint-Martin became
possible till the first days of October, when on a stormy night a
number of small boats slipped through the English fleet and brought in
a supply of provisions and a reinforcement of four hundred men to M.
de Toiras and his starving, exhausted garrison. By this time the King
had recovered, and he and the Cardinal had joined the army before La
Rochelle.
With their arrival the luck turned, and the English attack began
to fail, though the people of La Rochelle were now ready to give
Buckingham everything he wanted, except--for after all, they were
French--a permanent foothold in their islands. The commanders on the
coast, under Richelieu’s immediate orders, worked with double activity.
Schomberg landed in Ré, Saint-Martin was relieved, and after some hard
fighting the English were driven back with serious loss to their ships.
A few days later Buckingham sailed away to England, leaving behind him
the best part of his army, colours, horses, guns, and baggage. He never
saw France again. The English flags taken in Ré were carried in triumph
through Paris and hung up in Notre Dame.
And now the fight, one of the sternest in history, the details of which
would fill a volume, was between Cardinal de Richelieu and the proud
old city of La Rochelle, the stronghold which for two hundred years,
either in politics or religion, had repeatedly and successfully braved
the kings of France. “The Cardinal had to expect,” says M. Martin, “a
terrible resistance. The population of La Rochelle, swelled by the
zealous Huguenots of the surrounding country, numbered at least thirty
thousand souls--a race of fierce and intrepid corsairs, hardened to
fatigue and danger, accustomed, for sixty years past, to live with
restless vigilance in the perpetual state of siege which they had
imposed on themselves in order to preserve their stormy liberties.”
These liberties Richelieu was resolved that they should no longer
enjoy. And except for the support of the King and of his few trusted
lieutenants, he was almost alone in that resolution. The nobles of
France, even the commanders of the army, saw very well that the entire
conquest of the Huguenots was a long step towards their own impotence
under an absolute King and a strong Minister. Even the gay soldier
Bassompierre said half seriously, “We shall be fools enough to take La
Rochelle!” Such opinions, of which he was well aware, did not give the
Cardinal a moment’s pause. He made some attempt to disarm his enemies
by civilities to the Queen-mother, by obtaining a Cardinal’s Hat for
her saintly and distinguished friend Père de Bérulle--his own friend
in his Luçon days; but he was too clever to expect much result, and
he probably cared little at this moment, when all his instincts of a
soldier, a born general, were flaming up within him at the sight of
camps to be ruled, armies to be moved, great towering walls to be laid
low. Ruin might follow, if it must: the Huguenots should have their
lesson.
He had summoned Père Joseph, his chief counsellor, to join him before
La Rochelle. The Capuchin walked from Paris in leisurely fashion,
visiting convents in Poitou and preaching by the way. He reached the
camp on one of those days in October when the Cardinal, lately arrived,
was absent on the coast directing the despatch of fresh troops and
stores to the islands. He was lodged in the Cardinal’s quarters, a
small moated house called Pont-la-Pierre, on the sand-hills, only a
hundred paces from the flat sea-shore at Angoulins, just south of La
Rochelle. That very night there was an alarm that five hundred men
were coming in boats from the town, to blow up the house and kill or
capture the Cardinal. Though two regiments, according to Bassompierre,
were quartered at Angoulins, the house was outside immediate help, and
on a dark and windy night might well be surprised. Père Joseph had
scarcely arrived when he was invaded by M. de Marillac and two hundred
musketeers. A whole army indeed was on foot to receive the adventurers.
Regiments were lying flat among the dunes; the King himself was on
horseback all night in heavy rain, watching behind Pont-la-Pierre with
a troop of cavalry. All these precautions seemed absurd to Bassompierre
and his brother officers, who did not love the Cardinal or appreciate
the King’s anxious care for his safety. After all, the expected attack
did not come off. Either the men of La Rochelle were warned, or, as
Père Joseph thought, the weather was too much for them. He himself was
praised by the King for his intrepidity; for when he might have retired
to the royal quarters he preferred to remain at Pont-la-Pierre in
charge of the Cardinal’s papers.
The character of Louis XIII. never shows so well as in time of war.
The gloomy, nervous, irresolute young man was a daring soldier. In
spite of his weak health he shunned no hardship; the outdoor endurance
learnt in the hunting-field proved itself of real value in battle and
siege. Early in December of that year, when the regular blockade of La
Rochelle had begun, Cardinal de Richelieu wrote to the Queen-mother
with a report of the King’s health:
“... Although the country is most evil, tempest, wind and rain being
the usual course, and the soil constantly a quagmire, His Majesty does
not cease to dwell here with as much gaiety as if he were in the most
beautiful place in the world.... He is constantly at work ... he has
regulated his army, reformed his regiments ... he reviews his army,
visits his works.... The day before yesterday he spent three hours
on the dyke that he is making, to bar the harbour. Not only did he
overlook the work, but set an example by working with his own hands.
His Majesty alone does much more to advance his affairs than all those
who have the honour to be employed under his command. The men of La
Rochelle make little sorties, but are always beaten back.”
The Cardinal was wise enough to give the King the credit of all his
own marvellous doings at this time. It was practicable to blockade La
Rochelle by land; but as long as the harbour and channel were open,
it was impossible to hinder the city from receiving supplies by sea.
At the same time, the difficulties connected with the land siege were
considerable enough; and the army regulations carried out by Richelieu,
mentioned in his letter to Marie de Médicis, were as stern as they were
necessary. Three leagues of circumvallation, strengthened by forts and
redoubts, had to be held by a host of more or less undisciplined men,
whose careless commanders thought more of their own interests and their
own quarrels than of the service of the King. Before Louis and the
Cardinal arrived on the scene, the Duc d’Angoulême had been negligent
or humane enough to allow the Rochellois to come out into their fields
and gather in their harvest; and after the siege had really begun, he
allowed a hundred and twenty oxen to be smuggled one night into the
city. It might have cost a lesser man his head.
[Illustration: LOUIS XIII]
Richelieu once in full authority, no more such weakness was shown;
but if implacably stern towards the besieged, he showed himself just
and benevolent towards both the King’s soldiers and the poor peasants
of that unhappy land, who had dragged on miserable lives through
generations of religious wars. The soldiers were forbidden to rob
the peasants, or to interfere with their field work. The army was
regularly paid and provided with food and clothing, while the officers
found themselves reinforced and overshadowed by a crowd of warlike
ecclesiastics, the Bishops of Maillezais, of Mende, of Nîmes, and
others, not to mention Père Joseph and his train of friars, who fought
and fortified, preached and prayed, besieging the heretics in the
spirit of crusaders and waging a holy war for Richelieu’s political
ends.
The Duc d’Angoulême, with his fellow generals Schomberg and
Bassompierre--Monsieur having quickly withdrawn from the uncomfortable
siege to find amusement and mischief in Paris--commanding an army from
which blasphemy and crime were banished, were charged with the land
blockade and with such outside work as pulling down the castles of
rebel Huguenot nobles in the neighbouring country--among them that of
the Duc de Soubise. Warned by such severities, and impressed by the
failure of the English to succour La Rochelle, several of the Huguenot
gentlemen of Poitou came into the camp to assure the King of their
loyalty. The most distinguished among them, the Duc de la Trémoïlle,
listened to the persuasive voice of Père Joseph and became a Catholic,
and certain of his friends followed his example--a signal triumph
for Richelieu which was not encouraging to the starving heroes of La
Rochelle. Towards the same time the young Comte de Soissons returned
from Savoy, and instead of supporting the Duc de Rohan, as he had
threatened, in Languedoc, asked the King’s pardon and joined the royal
army.
In February 1628 the King’s cheerful interest in the siege suddenly
failed. The monotony of camp life, the slow advance of the necessary
works, and the horrible weather, bored him unbearably: “son ennui vint
jusqu’à tel point,” writes Richelieu, “qu’il estimoit sa vie être en
péril s’il ne faisoit un tour à Paris.” He may probably have been
right, for the damp marshes on which the army lived were hardly healthy
for a man subject to low fever; Richelieu himself was prostrated by it
several times in that spring. All the same, he was angry and scornful
at the King’s desertion. He was also uneasy on his own account, for
Paris seethed with the intrigues of his deadly enemies, and political
clouds were gathering in the south. For a moment it seemed possible
that La Rochelle would escape: the departure of both King and
Cardinal would have brought the siege to an end. In remaining alone,
Richelieu made a bold venture which was justified. The King returned
from Paris in April; in the meanwhile, he made the Cardinal his
lieutenant-general, with supreme authority over his forces by land and
sea.
Richelieu’s first care was to finish the great dyke or mole by means
of which alone the harbour of La Rochelle could be barred against all
entrance from the sea. Two famous workmen from Paris, Métezeau and
Tiriot, engineer and master-mason, undertook this tremendous piece of
work, at which the regiments laboured in turn. Several times, in the
early winter, the great beams and blocks of stone were swept away by
furious seas, but Richelieu only began again: the two arms of the mole
were well advanced in spring, and the Rochellois could watch from their
ramparts the growing of those cruel prison walls against which Atlantic
waves tumbled in vain. The narrow passage in the centre was blocked by
sunken ships laden with stones, and then the doomed city was in the
hands of her enemies: they had only to wait for her surrender.
We may see Cardinal de Richelieu as artists have fancied him, standing
on the wet rugged stones of the great mole, green water washing and
foaming almost round his feet. Immense hulls of English ships loom in
the offing, and small boats full of armed men are dancing on the waves.
The gigantic beams of the _chevaux de frise_ protecting the mole are
splintered by cannon-balls. A fresh breeze is blowing: the Cardinal’s
scarlet cloak falls back from his slight steel-clad shoulders; he wears
a sword; he is bare-headed, except for a skull-cap. He stands in his
high boots, with folded arms, looking out to sea, unmoved, confident in
his defences; while a group of soldiers and ecclesiastics, some yards
behind him, talk and stare excitedly.
The Cardinal’s mole and his other fortifications were too much for
the English fleet when it returned in May: it hardly even attempted
an attack, but sailed away in a week, leaving La Rochelle a prey to
famine, though not yet to despair.
The story of that terrible summer has often been told: how fresh
English promises, with the desperate heroism of Guiton, the famous
mayor, encouraged the town to hold out to the last; how the weak died
by thousands, and the strong lived on grass, shell-fish, stewed hides
and leather and worse food still; how old men, women and children,
driven out of the city as useless mouths, were not allowed, even at the
request of Madame de Rohan, to pass through the royal lines, but were
forced to turn back, so that many, the gates being shut upon them, died
miserably between the walls and the camp.
It was the end of September, three weeks after the murder of
Buckingham, when an English fleet and army arrived at last, too late:
a French fleet awaited them, French batteries were in full force. The
harbour was not to be entered, even by means of fire-ships, and after
two days’ hard fighting the winds of heaven declared themselves against
the luckless city; a gale forced the English to run for shelter, and
the prayers of La Rochelle could not induce them to renew the battle. A
week later the city surrendered to the King: quite half her population
were dead; less than two hundred remained of her heroic fighting men.
On October 30 Cardinal de Richelieu entered the city on horseback. It
was a fearful sight. “On trouva la ville pleine de morts, dans les
chambres, dans les maisons, et dans les rues et places publiques;” for
the wretched survivors had lacked strength to bury their dead. On the
morning of All Saints’ Day the victorious commander said mass in the
reconsecrated Church of Sainte-Marguerite, assisted by his lieutenant,
M. de Sourdis, now Archbishop of Bordeaux. He then carried the keys of
the city to meet the King, who made his state entry on the same day,
the Cardinal riding alone before His Majesty, preceded by the three
commanders of the army. An enormous convoy of provisions was a more
welcome sight to the wolfish creatures crowding in their streets full
of tragedy and falling on skeleton knees at Louis XIII.’s feet.
The city, once submissive, was treated severely, but not barbarously.
Richelieu would crush rebels with his whole strength, but he left men
free to practise their own religion, provided it did not interfere with
their obedience to the State. In this he was consistent: a wiser man
than Louis XIV., he would never have revoked the great Henry’s edict
and deprived France of a multitude of her most capable citizens. The
walls and towers of La Rochelle were razed to the ground; the city lost
her proud self-governing independence, and became subject to the royal
authority. But an amnesty was offered to the leading Huguenots, and the
Cardinal placed the gallant Guiton, corsair by nature, in command of
one of His Majesty’s ships.