For days the intrepid leader vainly endeavored to secure entrance into the city.[1558] Finally, on November 26 he was reluctantly admitted. During the cold and weary weeks of December, January, and February, while besieged and besiegers were lying on their arms upon the walls or in the trenches, La Noue alternately entreated and expostulated, urging the necessity of peace in the face of vilification, the Huguenot minister La Place even calling him “perfide traistre, déserteur de son parti.” “The word of the King,” said Catherine de Medici, to the deputies of the Reformed on one occasion, “ought to be sufficient for you.” “No,” replied one of them, “not since St. Bartholomew.”[1559] Even La Noue’s influence could not overcome the radical party in La Rochelle which imprisoned as many as advocated capitulation no matter what the terms might be. At last on March 12, 1573, the brave man gave up hope of persuading the zealot populace and returned to the King’s camp. Angry at the failure of these pacific overtures, the government forces redoubled their attacks. On March 22 the royal artillery opened a terrible fire upon the city, more than 1,500 cannon-balls being thrown. On April 7 there was a furious assault, even women fighting on the wall, and the attack was repeated on the 10th, 13th, and 14th, on the last day there being five separate attempts to take the city by storm.
Montgomery, who had been sent to England for assistance,[1560] appeared with about seventy ships, and was on the point of giving battle in the bay, when a fleet of forty vessels from the ports of Brittany and Normandy hove in sight. These ships, with what Anjou could muster, made too great a body for Montgomery to risk an engagement, and so he retired to Belle-Ile, which was made a Protestant naval base.[1561]
From Histoire au siège de La Rochelle en 1573, traduite du Latin de Philippe Cauriana (La Rochelle, 1856).
Meanwhile, the Swiss in camp had toiled in the trenches and “swamp angel” guns were established in the marshes to batter the port of St. Nicholas. On June 11 the supreme assault on La Rochelle was made and repulsed. The attacking force by an escalade gained possession of the rampart but found a mighty trench before them, so that they were constrained to beat their way along the rampart in the hopes of finding a place to cross it. Those in the camp, seeing their comrades gain the ramparts, cried, “ville gaignée!” But the Rochellois lured the enemy along the wall “and when they were entered set upon them both before and behind with such fury that they were all either slain or hurt, and the rest who were coming to succor the foremost were repulsed with great loss.”[1562]
After the failure of the great assault, because the soldiery without was so much discouraged by failure, angry for lack of pay,[1563] and weakened by losses and disease, the only recourse of the crown was to capitulate with the Rochellois[1564] with as much reservation as possible. Villeroy’s report on the condition of things before La Rochelle was too convincing to be ignored[1565]. In the first week of July, after two days’ deliberation, Charles IX signed the terms, although they were not published at once.[1566]
The general provisions were that those of La Rochelle should have life, goods, and liberty of conscience and that the town, together with Montauban, Sancerre, and Nîmes should also have “free exercise of the religion and find a garrison for themselves.” The edict declared that the memory of all things which had happened since the 24th of August should be extinguished; that the Catholic religion was to be established throughout the country, except at the four cities named. Bailiffs and judges ordinary were to see to the decent interment of those who died in the Reformed religion. Those who gave security that they would change their religion should be admitted to the universities, schools, hospitals, without hindrance, and finally that any French Protestant might sell or alienate his goods and retire to any country he pleased, provided it were not to the territory of any princes where war obtained, a provision obviously intended to protect Spain in the Netherlands.[1567]
But the fourth war of religion was not yet entirely over. While La Rochelle with 2,000 men daily labored to repair its battered walls, Sancerre was not to be tempted by the terms, and the south of France still held out. The heroic resistance of Sancerre, perched like an eagle’s nest on a steep hill above the Loire, is one of the epic stories of the sixteenth century. For nearly eight months (January 3 to August 19, 1573) the city withstood every assault and only succumbed at last when reduced to direst famine. Horses, asses, dogs, cats, rats were all consumed. Soup made of boiled parchment became a luxury. The inhabitants ate “pain de paille haschée et d’ordorze y meslant du fumier de chevaux et tout ce qu’ils pensoient avoir quelque suc.” Even the bodies of the dead were disinterred and consumed. When human nature could endure no more, Sancerre threw itself upon the mercy of its conqueror. It was granted liberty of worship and the people spared from massacre and pillage for the price of forty thousand livres; but its mediaeval glory was shorn from it. The splendid clock-tower of the town was destroyed, its ramparts razed.[1568]
In spite of the pacification at La Rochelle and the fall of Sancerre, the Midi still resisted. In Languedoc and Dauphiné the Huguenots were especially strong.[1569] Their harvests were garnered into walled towns; their army included 2,000 arquebusiers besides the Huguenot gentry and they were well prepared for further war.[1570] On the anniversary of the massacre (August 24, 1573) deputies of all the churches of the south convened at Montauban and took the preliminary steps in the formation of the great Huguenot confederation which in December assumed the direction of the war, the regulation of finances, civil administration, and religious protection.[1571]