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.
