The Cardinal had recognised, in arriving before La Rochelle, that it would be necessary for him to supervise everything himself, and that the obstacles which he would have to overcome were well-nigh as formidable in the Royal camp as in those of the enemy. The majority of the great nobles, by whom the Cardinal was feared and disliked, did not wish to see the Huguenot party completely crushed, foreseeing that, when this was accomplished, Richelieu would assuredly proceed to curtail their own power; and Bassompierre undoubtedly voiced their opinion when he exclaimed one day, laughing: “We shall be very foolish to take La Rochelle.” Bassompierre was too loyal a servant of the Crown not to do his duty as a soldier, whatever opinions he might hold; but there were others who were more logical, and already, during the siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, the conduct of more than one officer and more than one army-contractor had been distinctly suspicious. This ill-will would, unless effective means were taken to frustrate it, undoubtedly manifest itself on a much greater scale as time went on, and would not fail to take advantage of the least checks and the least sufferings to spread discouragement throughout the army.
Richelieu faced the situation boldly and resolved to attack the evil at its root. He secured the good-will and confidence of the people of the surrounding country, and assured the provisioning of the camp, by an ordinance which forbade the soldiers, under pain of death, to take away the cattle of the peasants or to interfere with the work in the fields, and instituted a special commission to receive the complaints of the peasants against the military. He gained, at the same time, the affection of the soldiers by the solicitude which he showed for their welfare, arranging with the neighbouring towns for the supply of winter clothing for the whole army and directing that the men should receive their pay each week from the commissaries of the Treasury, instead of allowing the money to pass, as had hitherto been the custom, through the hands of the captains of companies, in which a good proportion of it invariably remained. Thus, the company-officers were no longer able to defraud the soldier of his pay or to deceive the Ministers or the generals as to the number of effectives who were serving under them; and, thanks to this precaution and the rigorous surveillance exercised over the treasurers and contractors, the army employed at the siege of La Rochelle, though larger than that which had besieged Montauban five years before, did not cost the State even half as much. Never had a French army taken the field in which the soldiers were better cared for or better disciplined; never had the country surrounding a beleaguered town been less harried and annoyed. The camp, in fact, was a pattern of all the military virtues, which Richelieu afterwards himself compared to a “well-ordered convent.” The comparison seems to have been justified by the swarm of Capuchins who descended upon the Royal army in the train of Richelieu’s confidant, the celebrated Père Joseph—“Son Eminence grise”—to catechise the soldiers, and by the group of warlike prelates—the Bishops of Maillezais, Mende, Nîmes, and others—whom the Cardinal gathered round him to aid him in the surveillance of the officers and contractors.
While the welfare and efficiency of the army was thus being provided for, the siege was being busily pressed on. Lines of circumvallation three leagues in extent, flanked by eleven forts and eighteen redoubts, were undertaken, with the object of cutting off all approach to La Rochelle on the land side. One of the most important was the Fort of La Fons, to the north of the town, which was intended to intercept the supply of pure water. On November 18 Louis XIII sent for Bassompierre and informed him that he and the Cardinal were most anxious that a fort should be constructed at La Fons. So soon as possible Monsieur had charged himself with this task, but, as he had left the army and returned to Paris, the King had requested Angoulême to undertake it. That prince, however, was unwilling to do so, unless he could have a force of 500 horse and 5,000 foot at his disposal, as he felt certain that the besieged would make the most determined efforts to prevent the construction of the fort. It would be very difficult to spare so many troops, and the King had therefore sent for Bassompierre to ascertain whether he would undertake the work and what reinforcements he would require for the purpose. The marshal replied that he would not require any, and that he would engage that the approach to La Rochelle on that side should be effectually closed within a fortnight. The King appeared to think that Bassompierre was jesting, and asked if three more regiments and three companies of light cavalry would be enough. The marshal answered that, if his Majesty insisted on reinforcing him, he must decline to undertake the affair; that on the morrow he would survey the ground and trace out the fort, on the following day make his preparations, and on the next take up his quarters there and begin the work. Louis inquired what force he proposed to employ, and, on being told that 400 infantry and 40 horse were all that he should take, “told him that he was making game of him and that he would not suffer him to do it.” The marshal said that, in that case, the King had better entrust the work to someone else, as he declined to employ another man beyond the number he had mentioned. Finally, the King allowed him to have his way, recommending him, however, to take every precaution.
It is probable that Bassompierre would not have been nearly so ready to offer to undertake under the protection of a few hundred men a dangerous and important duty, for which ordinary prudence would have enjoined the employment of a very considerable force, had not Angoulême been present at the Council and the temptation to humiliate that prince proved too great to resist. He had reckoned, however, on his long experience of war to enable him to deceive an enemy who could possess little or no knowledge of the ruses of the battlefield, and he judged rightly. The spot where he proposed to construct his fort was flanked by two sunken roads, and at the head of each of these roads he erected a barricade, which he lined with troops, while the rest of his force he disposed in the space between them. The Rochellois sallied out to the number of 1,000 or 1,200 men, but, finding themselves confronted by several hundred soldiers, concluded that they formed but the advance-guard of a large force which lay concealed in the sunken roads behind the barricades, and did not venture to attack, contenting themselves with a cannonade, which did but little damage. Thus the resourceful Bassompierre was able to carry out the work entrusted to him with the loss of very few men, and was highly complimented by the King on his success.
The lines of circumvallation were, however, of but secondary importance, for there was no serious attack to be feared from the Huguenots of the South. It was not the land but the sea which it was necessary to close at any price, for it was impossible to believe that the English, more exasperated than dejected by the reverse they had sustained, would not sooner or later make a vigorous effort to succour the metropolis of French Protestantism. They were, indeed, in honour bound to come to the assistance of the Rochellois, since it was they who had drawn them into revolt.
In 1621 an Italian engineer had conceived a project of blocking the canal of La Rochelle; but the means which he proposed—an elaborated floating bar, an iron chain laid across vessels and rafts, and stretching from shore to shore—was found insufficient.
However, at the end of November, another scheme was mooted.
“Saturday, the 27th [November],” writes Bassompierre, “two master masons or architects of Paris, the one named Méteseau, the other Tiriot,[110] came to propose to construct a mole of solid stone in the canal of La Rochelle, in order to close it. The Cardinal sent them to me, and I approved their project, which had already been proposed to the King by Beaulieu.”[111]
It was accordingly decided to undertake the gigantic task of blocking up the canal with solid masonry. From the point of Coreilles, which was beyond the range of the cannon of La Rochelle, a mole was to be thrown out some seven hundred paces towards the opposite shore, where Bassompierre commanded; whence, to meet it, another mole of four hundred paces was to be constructed. The whole breadth of the canal is here seventeen hundred paces, so that there would be, after all, a distance of some six hundred still open, for here the water was so deep as to render it impossible to carry the mole across it. It was therefore decided that in this opening a number of vessels should be sunk; while others, with their bows outward, were to be lashed together, and made fast to the ends of the mole, so as to close the passage with a kind of floating and armed bridge. A small squadron of the Royal fleet was to be stationed between the mole and the inner harbour, to prevent the vessels of the Rochellois from sallying out to burn the moored ships, while the main part of the fleet would cruise between the canal and the islands of Ré and Oléron to watch for the coming of the English.
The construction of the mole was begun forthwith, but it was a heartbreaking task, and it is probable that with anyone less inflexible than Richelieu to supervise it it would soon have been abandoned. For more than once the stormy sea destroyed in an hour the work of a week; and, on one occasion, the result of three months’ labour was entirely lost, through the fault of Louis de Marillac, who had caused the mole to be made upright, instead of slanting. But the patience of man eventually triumphed over the fury of the elements, and little by little the gigantic work advanced towards completion, despite the winds and the waves.