The King left Saint-Germain on September 17 and travelled by easy stages towards the West. Bassompierre remained in Paris until the end of the month, when he received a message from Louis telling him to follow him as quickly as possible. He set out at once and joined the King and the Cardinal at the Château of Saumery, near Blois. They both received him most cordially and told him that the King had sent orders to Angoulême to leave the army and join his Majesty at Saumur.
Although obliged to remain near the person of the King, Richelieu had practically assumed the direction of the military operations. All his efforts were at present directed towards the re-victualling of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, the situation of which was rapidly becoming desperate. His ecclesiastical lieutenants, the Bishops of Maillezais and Mende, the Abbé de Marsillac and Père Placide de Brémond, a Benedictine monk, who entitled himself the “Knight of the Crusade,” hurried from one harbour to another along the coast, assembling shallops and flat-bottomed boats, arming them, loading them with stores, and despatching them towards Ré. “I swear to you,” wrote the Cardinal to his brother-in-law, the Marquis de Brézé, “that I would as lief die as see M. de Toiras perish from want of provisions.”
At Langeais, where the King arrived on October 4, he received news from Monsieur that the garrison of Saint-Martin was reduced to such straits[108] that it was impossible for them to hold out for more than another week. Louis, in great distress, thereupon proceeded to the church of Notre-Dame-des-Ardilliers, which belonged to the Oratorians, and was held in great veneration in all the country round, to offer up prayers for the relief of his brave soldiers.
On the following day they arrived at Saumur, where, to the great satisfaction of Bassompierre, the King informed Angoulême, who had come to meet him, that so soon as he (the King) reached La Rochelle, he would have to resign his post of lieutenant-general and content himself with that of Colonel of the Light Cavalry.
On the 8th Bassompierre left his Majesty to pay a visit to his friend Bertrand d’Eschaux, Archbishop of Tours, at the Abbey of l’Hort de Poitiers, but rejoined him next day at Niort, where good news awaited him. On the night of the 7th-8th, a flotilla of thirty-five boats and small vessels, laden with men and provisions which had been collected at the Sables d’Olonne, had set out to make an attempt to run the blockade, to the cry of “Passer ou mourir,” and, aided by the darkness of the night and a strong north-west wind, the great majority of them had succeeded in getting through the English fleet and in bringing to the famished defenders of Saint-Martin-de-Ré a reinforcement of 400 men and provisions for a month.
This success turned the tables on the besiegers, who were themselves running short of food, while sickness was making such havoc in their ranks that there were now only 5,000 men fit for duty. The French forces, too, were gathering on the mainland, and an attempt to relieve the fort might be expected at any moment. In these circumstances, it had already been decided to raise the siege, when news arrived that an expedition under Lord Holland, which Charles I had, after infinite difficulties, at length succeeded in organising, was on the point of sailing from Plymouth, while, at the same time, the Rochellois, after two months of tergiversations, decided to throw in their lot with the Protestants of the South and the English, and signed a treaty with Buckingham.[109]
On the 11th Louis XIII reached Surgères, where he was met by his brother, Angoulême, and Louis de Marillac. Monsieur spoke to the King in favour of Angoulême, and recommended that he should be allowed to retain his command, and “M. d’ Angoulême recommended himself.” But the King replied that he had appointed Bassompierre and Schomberg as lieutenant-generals of his army and that he could not do anything to their prejudice. However, as it was known that his Majesty
was seldom in the same mind for two days together, except when Richelieu had made it up for him—and they believed that the Cardinal was none too well disposed towards Bassompierre—Angoulême’s friends continued to press his claims.