Cardinal de Richelieu

by Eleanor C. Price

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The Duc d’Angoulême, with his fellow generals Schomberg and Bassompierre—Monsieur having quickly withdrawn from the uncomfortable siege to find amusement and mischief in Paris—commanding an army from which blasphemy and crime were banished, were charged with the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.