“Sire, in order to avoid doing anything unworthy of myself, and which might do injury to the office of marshal of France, with which you have honoured me, I am obliged, with an extreme regret, to retire from your army and to beg your Majesty very humbly to permit me to leave it. I am going to Paris to wait until the honour of your commands summons me to some place where I may be able to continue the same very humble services which I have performed in the past, demanding meanwhile, as a special favour, that you will not give credence to the evil reports which my enemies will spread abroad concerning me, until you have proved them to be true. For myself, I shall assure you that I shall be in the future what I have been in the past, to wit, your very humble and very faithful creature.”
Louis XIII must have had some little difficulty in preserving his gravity during this grandiloquent oration. He had, however, not the least intention of dispensing with the marshal’s military services, which he valued highly, and he knew that his retirement would create an exceedingly bad impression in the army, where he enjoyed great popularity. He was, besides, attached to Bassompierre, so far as his cold nature permitted him to be attached to anyone, and his lively company would contribute not a little to relieve the monotony of the long and tedious siege upon which he was about to enter. He therefore endeavoured to persuade him to remain and accept Angoulême as his colleague, and then, “perceiving that he was unable to conquer him,” bade him adieu, after having first made him promise that he would go and see the Cardinal. He then sent one of his gentlemen to Richelieu with instructions to induce Bassompierre to remain at any cost.
When the marshal arrived at Richelieu’s quarters, the Cardinal received him with a great display of affection and “even shed tears,” after which he begged him to name the terms on which he would consent to continue to give his Majesty the benefit of his military services. Bassompierre replied that under no consideration would he prejudice the dignity of his office by being associated with Angoulême, but that if he were willing to give him a separate army, quite distinct from that of the King, with his own artillery, commissariat and so forth, to besiege La Rochelle on the other side of the canal, he would remain. The Cardinal embraced him, assured him that he would give him all he demanded, and asked him to name the troops of which he desired his force to be composed; and the same day he was appointed to the command of an army, composed of three companies of the Swiss Guards, the Navarre Regiment, and five other regiments, Monsieur’s company of gensdarmes and six companies of light cavalry, together with the garrison of Fort Louis. His headquarters were to be at Laleu, a village situated about a league and a half to the north-west of La Rochelle.
This arrangement, so far as Bassompierre was concerned, was a very satisfactory termination to the dispute; but, by accepting a separate command, he lost a far greater opportunity for military distinction than had yet come his way. For the task of relieving Saint-Martin-de-Ré and driving Buckingham from the island was entrusted by the King to Schomberg, whereas if Bassompierre had consented to serve as lieutenant-general, it would certainly have been given to him, as the senior of the two marshals. It was a heavy price to pay for the gratification of his amour-propre.
Bassompierre established himself at Laleu on October 23, where three days later he held a review of his army, several hundred men from which were subsequently detached to go with Schomberg to the Île de Ré. At the beginning of November, while returning from a visit to the King at Aytré, he fell into an ambuscade which the Rochellois had laid for his benefit. His usual good fortune, however, did not desert him and he succeeded in effecting his escape.
A day or two later news arrived of the death of the Maréchal de Thémines, who had succeeded the imprisoned Duc de Vendôme as Governor of Brittany. The King offered the vacant post to Bassompierre, but, though this most important and lucrative office, which until the disgrace of Vendôme had generally been reserved for a Prince of the Blood, might well have tempted him, the marshal refused it. “I told him,” he says, “that I rendered very humble thanks for the honour which he did me in deeming me worthy of it, but that, for my part, I did not desire these great governments, which obliged me to reside there, because they were not suited to my disposition and would divert me from the course of my fortune.”
Meantime, the situation of Buckingham’s army in the Île de Ré was becoming every day more difficult and perilous. It is true that since the treaty which the duke had signed with La Rochelle, a great number of their sick and wounded had been admitted to that town, and they were better provided with provisions; but the weather was cold and wet, and the troops suffered severely in consequence. What was worse was that by October 20 more than 2,000 French troops had succeeded in getting across to the island from the mainland, and had been received within the walls of Fort La Prée and the entrenchments which had been thrown up in front of it, and their numbers might be expected to increase every day.
Everything now depended upon the arrival of Holland. If he arrived before the French in the island were sufficiently numerous to take the offensive, and Buckingham succeeded meantime in preventing Saint-Martin from being again revictualled, the place must fall, for by the second week in November he calculated that the provisions of the garrison would be exhausted. If, however, Holland’s arrival were delayed beyond the first days of that month, he dared not, with his steadily dwindling forces, take the risk of having to give battle to superior numbers and would be obliged to abandon the enterprise.
Buckingham and his officers “blinded themselves with looking” for the first signs of the coming of Holland’s fleet, but it came not. Endless difficulties had to be surmounted before it was ready to start, for men were hard to obtain and money still harder, and those charged with the fitting out of the expedition were deficient in both capacity and energy, though the King and Holland appear to have done their utmost to spur them on. At last, on October 19, Holland, with part of the expedition, sailed from Portsmouth, but was driven back to the coast by a storm. For ten days the wind blew strongly from the South-West; then on the 29th it changed, and the fleet again set sail, this time from Plymouth. But in the night a violent westerly gale came on, and it was again forced to return, with some of the ships severely damaged.
Before the end of the first week of November, Buckingham, obliged to recognise that his position was fast becoming untenable, reluctantly yielded to the counsels of those who urged him to raise the siege. He could not, however, bring himself to abandon the prey which had been so nearly his, without one last attempt to seize it; and learning that Toiras had but 500 men left capable of bearing arms, he determined to endeavour to carry the place by assault, notwithstanding that almost from the first an assault had been regarded as a hopeless operation.