By others he is considered to have committed an error in not having first attacked the Isle of Oléron, which was not only weakly garrisoned, but well supplied with wine and oil, and other provisions. But his great mistakes arose from his impulsive nature--a disposition often the concomitant of energy. Without waiting for the advice of Soubise, he had invested St. Martin’s; in marching to St. Martin’s, he had overlooked the Meadow Castle, as St. Pré was called by his soldiers; and that fort was now the chief impediment to his retreat.
Having been urged in vain by Soubise to remain, Buckingham aimed one last blow. He attempted to storm Fort St. Martin. He was perhaps incited to this rash and fruitless act by the taunting conduct of the besieged, who, knowing that he intended to starve them into submission, hung provisions on the walls. No breach was made, and the assault had no other result than the loss of soldiers. A retreat was then decided on. The forces could not now return by St. Pré, and a new route was to be taken. A causeway amid deep salt-marches was their only choice; and this causeway, or mound, was terminated by a bridge that joined to Rhé the second island of Vié. Here no fort to protect the bridge had been erected, and there was therefore no passage over to Vié. The French had all this time been close in pursuit. Buckingham was in the rear, and, as a contemporary observed, “had like to have been snapped,”[[86]] if he had not ridden through the troops on the narrow causeway, where more than eight or ten could not ride abreast. It was not until the English had reached the Island of Vié that the French chose to attack them; then the delay of forming a bridge gave the pursuers time to make their onset with an advantage they could not have had on the causeway, where a handful of men might have set at defiance a host. The French drove the English horse on Sir Charles Birch’s regiment of foot, and both he and Sir John Radcliffe were killed. A hot skirmish ensued. “Our men,” says a newsletter, “spoiled one another, and more were drowned than slain. The Duke was the last man in the rear, and carried himself beyond expression bravely.”[[87]] Ultimately the bridge was made good, and on the following day the embarkation of the crest-fallen English was safely effected. Buckingham was of course blamed by one faction, and excused by the other, for this failure. Denzil, afterwards Lord Holles, the great leader of the Presbyterian party, a man who, during his whole life, never changed sides, censured him in forcible terms, quoting the words of one whom he styles “a prophet of their own sides,” in saying that the enterprize was “ill begun, badly carried on, and the result accordingly most lamentable.” “It was a thousand to one,” Holles adds, “that all our ships had not been lost.” Ten days’ provision alone remained; when that was exhausted the Duke must have submitted to the enemy.[[88]] No one disputed Buckingham’s courage; he brought back, as Hume expresses it, “the vulgar praise of courage and personal bravery.” He was justly, nevertheless, condemned for the risk he ran in the retreat; for, it was said, had the General been lost, what would have become of the troops, who had retreated in disorder?
The letters in the State-Paper Office, to which reference has been made, though they do not refute the charge that the enterprize was “ill begun,” exonerate Buckingham, nevertheless, from much blame: he had every reason to expect reinforcements, for which he was continually begging; no Commander-in-Chief was ever left in a predicament more cruel; and he was justified in retiring by the certainty that provisions must soon fail, and the uncertainty of any fresh supply from the tardy and corrupt authorities at home.
The confusion in the retreat was stated to be such that “no man,” Denzil Holles wrote, “can tell what was done, nor no account can be given how any man was lost--not the lieutenant-colonel how his colonel, nor lieutenant how his captain, which was a sign that things were ill carried.” “This every man alone knows--that since England was England, it received not so dishonourable a blow.”
The loss was indeed severe; thirty standards had been taken, but more lost; four colonels killed, and about two thousand of our men perished during the retreat.
On the tenth of November the fleet left Rhé, and on the twelfth it was seen in Portsmouth Roads, Buckingham’s ship, the Triumph, being distinguished. The Duke, however, who was returning home under such painful circumstances, was not in that vessel. As the fleet neared Plymouth, he quitted his ship, and, getting into a ketch, went into the port, in order to gather some account why the succours so long expected at St. Martin’s had never arrived. He had also another step to take--that of sending off an immediate despatch to the King, in order that His Majesty might be apprized by himself alone of the great loss and failure incurred in the attempt on Rhé. The messenger was sworn, on forfeiture of his head, to secrecy.[[89]]
“Charles received the news,” Conway wrote, in reply, “with the wisdom, courage, and constancy of a great king, and has declared so much kingly justice and goodness, with affection, to the Duke, as renders his grace, in the king’s judgment, and in the opinion of all those who heard him, clear from all imputation, and honoured by his actions: all guiltiness remaining upon this State for whatsoever fault or misconduct is come to that army.” Considering the delay in sending succour, the event was thought to have been better than could have been expected.[[90]]
A letter soon followed from Sir Edward Nicholas, informing the Duke that, six weeks ago, the state of provisions at Rhé was mentioned to the King and the Lords, “but was not credited.” He recommended his patron to do nothing until after his arrival in London: all things were at a stand, he says, until the Duke should give them “life and direction.” Secretary Conway, in a letter to his son, even “joyed” to find so few had been killed, and so little, “in point of honour,” lost, taking the greatest loss to be in the quality of some half dozen persons.[[91]]
Three days after the Duke had landed at Plymouth, the Duchess wrote to him:--
"My Lord--Sence I hurd the newse of thy landing I have bine still every hower looking for you, that I cannot now till I see you sleepe in the nights, for every minite, if I do here any noyes, I think it is on from you, to tell me the happy newes what day I shall see you, for I confese I longe for it wth much imptience. I was in great hope that the bisnes you had to do at Portsmouth wood a bine don in a day, and then I should a seene you here to-morrow, but now I cannot tell when to expect you. My Lord, there has bine such ill reports made of the great lose you have had by the man that came furst, as your frends desiers you wood com to clere all wth all speede: you may leve some of the Lords there to se what you give order for don, and you need not stay yourself any longer:--this, beseeching you to com hether on Sunday or Munday wthout all fayle. I rest yours,