Siege of La Rochelle begins--Immense difficulties of the
undertaking--Unwillingness of the great nobles to see the Huguenot
party entirely crushed--Remark of Bassompierre--Courage and energy
of Richelieu--His measures to provide for the welfare and
efficiency of the besieging army--The lines of
circumvallation--Erection of the Fort of La Fons by
Bassompierre--The construction of the mole is begun and proceeded
with in the face of great difficulties--Responsibilities of
Bassompierre--The Duc d’Angoulême accuses the marshal of a gross
piece of negligence, but the latter succeeds in turning the tables
upon his accuser--Louis XIII returns to Paris, leaving Richelieu
with the title of “Lieutenant-General of the Army”--Critical state
of affairs in Italy--Unsuccessful attempts to take La Rochelle by
surprise--Intrigues of Marie de’ Medici and the High Catholic party
against Richelieu--The King rejoins the army--Guiton elected Mayor
of La Rochelle.
The departure of the English left Richelieu face to face with La
Rochelle, “like a lion with his prey.” But the Cardinal was well aware
that it was a prey which could not be secured without a long and
terrible struggle. With its strong walls, covered on two sides by
marshes and on a third by the harbour, and its brave and hardy
population, largely composed of seafaring men inured to perils and
hardships, La Rochelle was one of the most difficult places to subdue
which it was possible to imagine. Old men remembered how the Duc d’Anjou
(afterwards Henri III) had besieged the town for months after the St.
Bartholomew, and had had nothing to show for his trouble but the graves
of 20,000 of his soldiers, and predicted that Louis XIII and Richelieu
would meet with no better fate. In fact, so long as La Rochelle retained
command of the sea, it was deemed impregnable.
Richelieu, appreciating the immense difficulties of the enterprise,
would fain have avoided it altogether; but the alliance of the
Rochellois with the English had left him no alternative, and, once
committed to it, he was resolved to carry it through, cost what it
might. For this siege, in which, as he said, “he had to conquer three
kings, those of France, England, and Spain,” he set aside all other
work, and concentrated upon it all the resources of his genius. For this
he closed his eyes momentarily to the death-struggles in Germany, to the
Austrian menace on the eastern frontier, and to the intrigues of the
Dukes of Savoy and Lorraine, and contented himself with merely holding
Rohan’s rebellion in the South in check the while he was preparing to
strike his decisive blows elsewhere.
The Cardinal had recognised, in arriving before La Rochelle, that it
would be necessary for him to supervise everything himself, and that the
obstacles which he would have to overcome were well-nigh as formidable
in the Royal camp as in those of the enemy. The majority of the great
nobles, by whom the Cardinal was feared and disliked, did not wish to
see the Huguenot party completely crushed, foreseeing that, when this
was accomplished, Richelieu would assuredly proceed to curtail their own
power; and Bassompierre undoubtedly voiced their opinion when he
exclaimed one day, laughing: “We shall be very foolish to take La
Rochelle.” Bassompierre was too loyal a servant of the Crown not to do
his duty as a soldier, whatever opinions he might hold; but there were
others who were more logical, and already, during the siege of
Saint-Martin-de-Ré, the conduct of more than one officer and more than
one army-contractor had been distinctly suspicious. This ill-will would,
unless effective means were taken to frustrate it, undoubtedly manifest
itself on a much greater scale as time went on, and would not fail to
take advantage of the least checks and the least sufferings to spread
discouragement throughout the army.
Richelieu faced the situation boldly and resolved to attack the evil at
its root. He secured the good-will and confidence of the people of the
surrounding country, and assured the provisioning of the camp, by an
ordinance which forbade the soldiers, under pain of death, to take away
the cattle of the peasants or to interfere with the work in the fields,
and instituted a special commission to receive the complaints of the
peasants against the military. He gained, at the same time, the
affection of the soldiers by the solicitude which he showed for their
welfare, arranging with the neighbouring towns for the supply of winter
clothing for the whole army and directing that the men should receive
their pay each week from the commissaries of the Treasury, instead of
allowing the money to pass, as had hitherto been the custom, through the
hands of the captains of companies, in which a good proportion of it
invariably remained. Thus, the company-officers were no longer able to
defraud the soldier of his pay or to deceive the Ministers or the
generals as to the number of effectives who were serving under them;
and, thanks to this precaution and the rigorous surveillance exercised
over the treasurers and contractors, the army employed at the siege of
La Rochelle, though larger than that which had besieged Montauban five
years before, did not cost the State even half as much. Never had a
French army taken the field in which the soldiers were better cared for
or better disciplined; never had the country surrounding a beleaguered
town been less harried and annoyed. The camp, in fact, was a pattern of
all the military virtues, which Richelieu afterwards himself compared to
a “well-ordered convent.” The comparison seems to have been justified by
the swarm of Capuchins who descended upon the Royal army in the train of
Richelieu’s confidant, the celebrated Père Joseph--“_Son Eminence
grise_”--to catechise the soldiers, and by the group of warlike
prelates--the Bishops of Maillezais, Mende, Nîmes, and others--whom the
Cardinal gathered round him to aid him in the surveillance of the
officers and contractors.
While the welfare and efficiency of the army was thus being provided
for, the siege was being busily pressed on. Lines of circumvallation
three leagues in extent, flanked by eleven forts and eighteen redoubts,
were undertaken, with the object of cutting off all approach to La
Rochelle on the land side. One of the most important was the Fort of La
Fons, to the north of the town, which was intended to intercept the
supply of pure water. On November 18 Louis XIII sent for Bassompierre
and informed him that he and the Cardinal were most anxious that a fort
should be constructed at La Fons. So soon as possible _Monsieur_ had
charged himself with this task, but, as he had left the army and
returned to Paris, the King had requested Angoulême to undertake it.
That prince, however, was unwilling to do so, unless he could have a
force of 500 horse and 5,000 foot at his disposal, as he felt certain
that the besieged would make the most determined efforts to prevent the
construction of the fort. It would be very difficult to spare so many
troops, and the King had therefore sent for Bassompierre to ascertain
whether he would undertake the work and what reinforcements he would
require for the purpose. The marshal replied that he would not require
any, and that he would engage that the approach to La Rochelle on that
side should be effectually closed within a fortnight. The King appeared
to think that Bassompierre was jesting, and asked if three more
regiments and three companies of light cavalry would be enough. The
marshal answered that, if his Majesty insisted on reinforcing him, he
must decline to undertake the affair; that on the morrow he would survey
the ground and trace out the fort, on the following day make his
preparations, and on the next take up his quarters there and begin the
work. Louis inquired what force he proposed to employ, and, on being
told that 400 infantry and 40 horse were all that he should take, “told
him that he was making game of him and that he would not suffer him to
do it.” The marshal said that, in that case, the King had better entrust
the work to someone else, as he declined to employ another man beyond
the number he had mentioned. Finally, the King allowed him to have his
way, recommending him, however, to take every precaution.
It is probable that Bassompierre would not have been nearly so ready to
offer to undertake under the protection of a few hundred men a dangerous
and important duty, for which ordinary prudence would have enjoined the
employment of a very considerable force, had not Angoulême been present
at the Council and the temptation to humiliate that prince proved too
great to resist. He had reckoned, however, on his long experience of war
to enable him to deceive an enemy who could possess little or no
knowledge of the ruses of the battlefield, and he judged rightly. The
spot where he proposed to construct his fort was flanked by two sunken
roads, and at the head of each of these roads he erected a barricade,
which he lined with troops, while the rest of his force he disposed in
the space between them. The Rochellois sallied out to the number of
1,000 or 1,200 men, but, finding themselves confronted by several
hundred soldiers, concluded that they formed but the advance-guard of a
large force which lay concealed in the sunken roads behind the
barricades, and did not venture to attack, contenting themselves with a
cannonade, which did but little damage. Thus the resourceful
Bassompierre was able to carry out the work entrusted to him with the
loss of very few men, and was highly complimented by the King on his
success.
The lines of circumvallation were, however, of but secondary importance,
for there was no serious attack to be feared from the Huguenots of the
South. It was not the land but the sea which it was necessary to close
at any price, for it was impossible to believe that the English, more
exasperated than dejected by the reverse they had sustained, would not
sooner or later make a vigorous effort to succour the metropolis of
French Protestantism. They were, indeed, in honour bound to come to the
assistance of the Rochellois, since it was they who had drawn them into
revolt.
In 1621 an Italian engineer had conceived a project of blocking the
canal of La Rochelle; but the means which he proposed--an elaborated
floating bar, an iron chain laid across vessels and rafts, and
stretching from shore to shore--was found insufficient.
However, at the end of November, another scheme was mooted.
“_Saturday, the 27th_ [November],” writes Bassompierre, “two master
masons or architects of Paris, the one named Méteseau, the other
Tiriot,[110] came to propose to construct a mole of solid stone in
the canal of La Rochelle, in order to close it. The Cardinal sent
them to me, and I approved their project, which had already been
proposed to the King by Beaulieu.”[111]
It was accordingly decided to undertake the gigantic task of blocking up
the canal with solid masonry. From the point of Coreilles, which was
beyond the range of the cannon of La Rochelle, a mole was to be thrown
out some seven hundred paces towards the opposite shore, where
Bassompierre commanded; whence, to meet it, another mole of four hundred
paces was to be constructed. The whole breadth of the canal is here
seventeen hundred paces, so that there would be, after all, a distance
of some six hundred still open, for here the water was so deep as to
render it impossible to carry the mole across it. It was therefore
decided that in this opening a number of vessels should be sunk; while
others, with their bows outward, were to be lashed together, and made
fast to the ends of the mole, so as to close the passage with a kind of
floating and armed bridge. A small squadron of the Royal fleet was to be
stationed between the mole and the inner harbour, to prevent the
vessels of the Rochellois from sallying out to burn the moored ships,
while the main part of the fleet would cruise between the canal and the
islands of Ré and Oléron to watch for the coming of the English.
The construction of the mole was begun forthwith, but it was a
heartbreaking task, and it is probable that with anyone less inflexible
than Richelieu to supervise it it would soon have been abandoned. For
more than once the stormy sea destroyed in an hour the work of a week;
and, on one occasion, the result of three months’ labour was entirely
lost, through the fault of Louis de Marillac, who had caused the mole to
be made upright, instead of slanting. But the patience of man eventually
triumphed over the fury of the elements, and little by little the
gigantic work advanced towards completion, despite the winds and the
waves.
Bassompierre, although, for political reasons, he may, like most of the
great nobles, have wished to spare the great stronghold of the Huguenot
party, carried out the duties entrusted to him with his customary zeal
and efficiency. Never probably had so much responsibility rested upon
him. He had to see that the soldiers and labourers engaged upon the mole
upon his side of the canal were promptly supplied with all they
required, so that the work might not be interrupted even for an hour. He
was responsible for the construction of all the forts and redoubts on
the western and north-western side of La Rochelle, which appear to have
been made from plans which he himself drew. He had constantly to be on
the alert, by day and night, to repel the sallies which the garrison
directed against the unfinished works, and to prevent the attempts
which, until the lines of circumvallation had been completed, were
constantly being made under cover of darkness to revictual the town.
One morning in January, 1628, the marshal received a visit from the
Marquis de Grimault, who informed him that he had been sent by the
King, who had gone to spend a few days at a château near Nantes, to
express to him his Majesty’s displeasure to learn that he had been so
negligent as to allow a large herd of cattle to be driven through his
lines into the town. In great astonishment, Bassompierre inquired who
had accused him of this, and was told that it was the Duc d’Angoulême,
from whom the King had received a letter that morning. The marshal at
once despatched one of his officers, named Lisle-Rouet, who was a noted
huntsman and could be trusted to identify the track of any animal, to
investigate the affair; but Lisle-Rouet could find no sign of a herd of
cattle having passed through their lines. He then proceeded to examine
the country on the other side of La Rochelle, where the main part of the
Royal army under Angoulême and Schomberg lay, and, by good fortune, came
upon the track of the cattle near the village of Périgny, to the
south-east of the town. He returned and reported his discovery to
Bassompierre, who at once despatched him to the King, to whom, says the
marshal, “he expressed just resentment that I had been blamed for the
faults of others, and that without having heard me or had the matter
confirmed, the King should have not only judged but condemned me on the
mere statement of my enemy”; and he offered to prove, if his Majesty
would send someone who was a huntsman with him, that the cattle had
entered the town through Angoulême’s and Schomberg’s lines.
Louis thereupon sent for the two commanders, before whom Lisle-Rouet
repeated what he had told the King. They, of course, declared that the
thing was impossible, upon which his Majesty suggested that they had
better go and examine the ground over which the cattle were said to have
passed themselves, and sent with them one of his gentlemen named
Croysilles, who, like Lisle-Rouet, was an experienced huntsman.
Croysilles confirmed the opinion of the other, and Angoulême and
Schomberg were reluctantly obliged to acknowledge that it was with
themselves, and not with Bassompierre, that the blame for a particularly
gross piece of negligence lay.
It seems probable, however, that the admission of the cattle into La
Rochelle was due to something worse than negligence, at least so far as
Angoulême was concerned. Anyway, he was most severely reprimanded both
by the King and the Cardinal, the latter being furiously indignant that
the success of operations involving so much labour and such enormous
expense should be compromised in this fashion. As for Bassompierre, the
King, “satisfied him by many words of his esteem and affection for his
person”; but it must, nevertheless, have been very galling to the
marshal to find how ready his Majesty was to credit the most unfounded
accusations against even his most intimate friends.
It was this very same unfortunate trait in Louis XIII’s character which
was just then causing his great Minister the keenest anxiety. To assure
his influence with the King it was necessary to be with him constantly,
so as to be in a position to disabuse his gloomy and fickle mind of the
suspicions which the enemies of the Cardinal were perpetually
endeavouring to implant there. Well, Louis had grown weary of the
monotony of the siege and had announced his intention of returning to
Paris. The Cardinal was profoundly alarmed. To follow the King was to
renounce La Rochelle, for no other than Richelieu was capable of
finishing the work of Richelieu; to remain, to separate from the King,
was to risk his political existence, for in Paris were his most
dangerous enemies, who would not fail to take the fullest advantage of
this opportunity his absence afforded them. How could he tell whether
some malign influence might not succeed in undermining the inconstant
monarch’s trust in him, and bringing the whole fabric of his ambition,
upon which alone it was reared, crashing to the ground? For a moment he
had almost determined to go with the King; but Père Joseph is said to
have persuaded him to stay, pointing out that, if he went, the
operations would almost certainly fail, and be followed by an outcry
which would ruin him. Anyway, he decided to remain, and Louis, who
appears to have recognised that his Minister’s resolution had something
magnanimous about it, took his departure for Paris on February 10 with
the promise that he would soon return, and left him with the title of
“Lieutenant-General of the Army,” the marshals, Bassompierre and
Schomberg, themselves being directed to take their orders from him.
“It was a singular spectacle,” says Henri Martin, “this general in the
red hat, with his staff in mitre and cowl. But the Cardinal knew how to
render terrible what so nearly touched the grotesque. He had acted up to
then in the shadow of the King; he was henceforth general, admiral,
engineer, munitioner, intendant, paymaster. He communicated the fire of
his soul to all who surrounded him. The Bishop of Mende, who was
directing under him the construction of the mole, died meanwhile, giving
orders that his body was to be interred in La Rochelle. The spirit of
the soldiery and of the lesser nobility, who did not share the mental
reservations of the grandees, rose to the same pitch.”
Meantime, however, storms were gathering on various parts of the
horizon, and all the enemies of France appeared to be striving to
prevent her achieving her political unity. Threatening preparations for
the relief of La Rochelle were going forward in the English ports;
Wallenstein was carrying all before him in Germany, and the fainting
princes of the North were sending despairing appeals for assistance;
while, worst of all, the Spaniards from the Milanese and the Duke of
Savoy had invaded the duchy of Mantua and the marquisate of Montferrato,
to which Charles of Gonzaga, Duc de Nevers, had succeeded on the death
of Vincenzo I, Duke of Mantua, in 1627, and were threatening Casale, on
the Po, a fortress which it was of the most vital importance to France
to save from falling into unfriendly hands.[112]
But, until La Rochelle was taken, France could do little or nothing to
aid her hard-pressed ally, for all the troops which could be spared from
the defence of the frontiers, save those engaged to hold Rohan and the
Huguenots of the South in check, were concentrated before the Protestant
stronghold; all the money which could be raised was being thrown into
the mud of its canal. Recognising the impossibility of abandoning the
siege, but sorely troubled by the news from Italy, Richelieu determined
to make an attempt to take La Rochelle by surprise, although he was well
aware that his chance of success was of the slightest. On March 11,
accordingly, he sent for Bassompierre and informed him that that night
he was sending Marillac to endeavour to blow up the Porte des Salines,
and instructed the marshal to have 2,000 foot and 300 horse in readiness
to support him. Bassompierre assembled his troops with all due secrecy
at the place appointed, where he was joined by the Cardinal, with a
force about equal to his own. They waited there all night, expecting
every moment to hear the sound of the explosion; but nothing happened,
and it subsequently transpired that Marillac and the men who were
carrying the petard had lost their way in the darkness.
In the early morning of the 13th another attempt was made, this time on
the south-eastern side of the town; but it failed completely, and more
than forty men were killed and wounded.
After this second fiasco, Richelieu prudently abandoned the idea of
taking La Rochelle by a _coup de main_, and, feeling very uneasy as to
what was happening in Paris, wrote to the King pressing him to hasten
his return to the army, in order to discuss with him the situation.
The Cardinal did well to be uneasy at Louis’s absence, for his enemies
at the Court had been very busy indeed, more so, in fact, even than he
appears to have imagined. This time the Queen-Mother was of the plot.
Marie, as we have seen, had supported Richelieu warmly so long as she
believed him to be her creature, prepared to place France at the mercy
of her petty passions; but gradually the unpalatable truth had begun to
dawn upon her sluggish mind that the Cardinal had been using her favour
merely as a stepping-stone to that of the King, and that it was upon the
son, and not upon the mother, that he intended to lean. The discovery
exasperated the Queen-Mother, and there were not wanting persons about
her to sympathise with her complaints against the neglect and
ingratitude of the Cardinal. Chief among these was Bérulle, recently
elevated to the cardinalate, Michel de Marillac, the Keeper of the
Seals, and other members of the High Catholic party. Loudly as these
pious souls had fulminated against the stubborn heretics of La Rochelle
in the past, they were now as little anxious for the fall of the town as
were the great nobles, though for a different reason. They knew that
with Richelieu religious considerations counted for very little in
comparison with political, and foresaw that, once the Huguenot party was
overthrown, he would make no attempt to interfere with that liberty of
conscience which the _dévots_ regarded with such indignation, and would
make use of his victory, not to revoke the Edict of Nantes, but to
thwart the designs of the House of Austria to crush the Protestant
princes of Northern Europe.
Marie and her friends had recourse to all kinds of means to detain the
King in Paris, but they did not succeed; and on April 25 he rejoined the
army, which he found larger by several thousand men than when he had
quitted it at the beginning of February, while all the works were
approaching completion.
On the following day a herald was sent to summon La Rochelle to
surrender in the name of the King; but the inhabitants refused to
receive him.
The most violent party had gained the day in this unhappy town, and the
mayoralty had become a dictatorship. On March 3 the famous admiral of
the Rochellois, Jean Guiton, had been elected mayor, against his will.
“You know not what you are doing in nominating me,” said he. “Remember
that with me there must be no talk of surrender. If anyone says a word
about that, I will kill him.” And, drawing his poniard, he threw it on
to the table of the Hôtel de Ville and gave orders that it should be
left there.
The King and the Cardinal thought for a moment of converting the
blockade into a regular siege with approaches in form, and endeavouring
to take La Rochelle by assault. But the council of war which they called
to discuss the matter objected that the only part of the fortifications
which was approachable was of immense strength, and that to attempt to
storm it would only entail a useless sacrifice of life. If Richelieu had
been as sure of the officers as he was of the soldiers, he would perhaps
have disregarded this advice, but he could not expose himself to the
chance of a serious reverse. He therefore decided that there was nothing
to be done but to continue the blockade and starve the place out. As for
the Italian situation, it was recognised that it was impossible for
France to intervene directly so long as La Rochelle remained untaken,
but authority was given to raise a force of volunteers, who were to
enter Italy by way of the Valtellina and throw themselves into Casale.