Next day, Louis XIII sent a message to Ville-Nouvelle requesting one of the two marshals or Bassompierre to come to Picqueos; and it was decided that Bassompierre should go. He found the King in his cabinet with the Constable, the Cardinal de Retz, and Roucellaï, and it was plain that his Majesty was in a very ill-humour. “Bassompierre,” said he, “you have long been of opinion that nothing of any use would be accomplished on the side of Le Moustier.” “Your Majesty will pardon me,” answered Bassompierre, “but I never believed that everything that was proposed would succeed. Nevertheless, one must judge things by the results.” The King then told him that Schomberg and his colleagues had assured him that in five days they would be able to establish a battery of their heaviest guns on a knoll within a very short distance of the walls, and open a breach which would enable them to storm the town; and inquired what he thought about it. Bassompierre replied that, if they did succeed in establishing a battery there, the town must fall; but he very much doubted whether the enemy would allow them to do it. “And I,” exclaimed the King angrily, “refuse to wait for what they wish to do. For they are deceivers; and I will never believe anything they say again.” The Constable here interposed, and begged his Majesty to remember that the generals at Le Moustier were as much mortified as he was at the fiasco of the previous day. And he asked that they might be given another chance of redeeming their promise to take the town. To this the King agreed, and Bassompierre was told to arrange another diversion when the time for the assault to be delivered should arrive.
However, it never did arrive. During the next few days the knoll was fortified without any interference from the enemy, and nothing remained but to get the guns into position. But, on the early morning of the 25th, the garrison exploded a mine under the knoll which blew it up with its defences, and followed this up by a murderous sally against the Picardy Regiment, who were driven out of their trenches with heavy loss. Three nights later, they made another sortie, this time at the expense of the Champagne Regiment, and, breaking right through it, penetrated to the besiegers’ battery-positions and destroyed one of their largest guns.
After this it was obviously impossible to continue the siege with the smallest hope of success; the winter was coming on; the army, badly paid and badly fed, with no confidence in its leaders, and harassed incessantly by a bold and resolute enemy, was becoming demoralised and was dwindling every day from death, sickness and desertion. Of 30,000 men who had encamped before Montauban at the end of August, only 12,000 effective combatants remained; and the division before Ville-Bourbon was now so weak that its leaders were obliged to ask the Guards for assistance to enable them to hold their trenches against the perpetual attacks to which they were exposed.
On the morrow, the Constable came to Le Moustier and summoned a council of war to decide what was to be done. “Everyone saw plainly,” says Bassompierre, “that we had no longer the means of continuing the siege; but no one wished to propose that it should be abandoned.” At length, Bassompierre took upon himself to do so and urged that they should “reserve the King, themselves and this army for a better future and a more convenient season.” To this the other leaders offered no opposition, and the Constable proceeded to communicate their decision to the King. Louis XIII, with tears in his eyes, directed Bassompierre to supervise the raising of the siege, and afterwards to march, with the greater part of the army, on Monheurt, a little town on the Garonne which had just revolted, as he and the Constable desired to terminate the campaign with a success, however unimportant it might be.
To raise the siege without the risk of incurring further losses was far from an easy task, as, unless every precaution were taken, there was grave danger that the garrison, flushed with success, might sally out and fall upon the rear of the army while it was crossing the Tarn. However, Bassompierre appears to have made his arrangements with considerable skill, and on November 10 the last of the troops were withdrawn, with no more serious interference than a little skirmishing.
The disastrous result of the siege of Montauban caused general exasperation against Luynes, who met with a very bad reception from the people of Toulouse—numbers of whose relatives and friends had fallen during the siege—when he accompanied the King thither about the middle of November. The High Catholic party was particularly furious, and accused the Constable, not only of incapacity, but of treason. What was a more serious matter for him, was the fact that the King was growing weary of his favourite.
This change in Louis XIII’s attitude towards the man whom he had raised so high, and who had so long exercised such an absolute dominion over him, seems to have begun some months before; but it was at first carefully concealed from all but two or three of his intimates.
“One morning, after the siege of Saint-Jean-d’Angély,” says Bassompierre, “as the Constable was returning from dinner, and was about to enter the King’s lodging, with his Swiss and his guards marching before him, and the whole Court and the chief officers of the army following him, the King, perceiving his approach from a window, said to me: ‘See, Bassompierre, it is the King who enters.’ ‘You will pardon me, Sire,’ said I to him, ‘it is a Constable favoured by his master, who is showing your grandeur and displaying the honours you have conferred upon him to the eyes of everyone.’ ‘You do not know him,’ said he. ‘He believes that I ought to give him the rest, and wants to play the King. But I will certainly prevent him doing that, so long as I am alive.’ Upon that I said to him: ‘You are very unfortunate to have taken such fancies into your head; he is also unfortunate, because you have conceived these suspicions against him; and I still more so, because you have revealed them to me. For, one of these days, you and he will shed a few tears, and then you will be appeased; and afterwards you will act as do husbands and wives who, when they have made up their quarrels, dismiss from their service the servants to whom they had confided their ill-will towards each other. Besides, you will tell him that you have not confided your dissatisfaction with him to any save to myself and to certain others; and we shall be the sufferers. And you have seen that, last year, the mere suspicion that he entertained that you might be inclined to favour me determined him to ruin me.’
“He [the King] swore to me with great oaths that he would never speak of it, whatever reconciliation there might be between them, and that he did not intend to open his mind to anyone on this matter, save Père Arnoux and myself, and that on my life I must engage never to open mine to anyone, save Père Arnoux, and only after he [the King] shall have spoken to him, and should command me to do it. I told him that he had but to command me, and that I had already given this command to myself, as it was of importance to my future and to my life.”
A few days after this conversation, Bassompierre was sent to Paris, at which he was much relieved, “since he found that confidences of the King were very dangerous”; and when, some weeks later, he rejoined the army at the beginning of the siege of Montauban, he took care never to approach his Majesty unless he were sent for.