§ 10. Failure of the English attempt to succour it.
The only hope for Rochelle lay in the great armament which was known to be prepared in England, and which was to be conducted by Buckingham in person. The House of Commons had purchased the Petition of Right with large subsidies, and Charles, for the first time in his reign, was enabled to make an effort worthy of his dignity. But the popular hatred found a representative in the murderer Felton, and a knife struck home to the favourite's heart put an end to his projects for ever. The dissatisfaction which arrayed the English people against its government had found its way into the naval service. When the fleet arrived in September, under a new commander, all was disorganization and confusion. It returned to England without accomplishing a single object for which it had been sent forth.
§ 11. Surrender of Rochelle.
The surrender of Rochelle followed as a matter of necessity. On November 1 the king entered the conquered town in triumph. The independence of French cities was at an end.
§ 12. Cause of Richelieu's success.
The different success of the two great sieges of the year may partly be accounted for by the difference of vigour in the powers to which the threatened towns looked for succour. Charles was very far from being a Christian IV., much less a Gustavus Adolphus; and if England at unity with itself was stronger than Sweden, England distracted by civil broils was weaker than Sweden. But there were more serious reasons than these for Richelieu's victory and Wallenstein's failure. Richelieu represented what Wallenstein did not—the authority of the state. His armies were under the control of discipline; and, even if the taxation needed to support them pressed hardly upon the poor, the pressure of the hardest taxation was easy to be borne in comparison with a far lighter contribution exacted at random by a hungry and rapacious soldiery. If Richelieu had thus an advantage over Wallenstein, he had a still greater advantage over Ferdinand and Maximilian. He had been able to isolate the Rochellese by making it clear to their fellow Huguenots in the rest of France that no question of religion was at stake. The Stralsunders fought with the knowledge that their cause was the cause of the whole of Protestant Germany. The Rochellese knew that their resistance had been tacitly repudiated by the whole of Protestant France.
§13. Religious liberty of the Huguenots.
When Lewis appeared within the walls of Rochelle he cancelled the privileges of the town, ordered its walls to be pulled down and its churches to be given over to the Catholic worship. But under Richelieu's guidance he announced his resolution to assure the Protestants a continuance of the religious liberties granted by his father. No towns in France should be garrisoned by troops other than the king's. No authorities in France should give orders independently of the king. But wherever a religion which was not that of the king had succeeded in establishing its power over men's minds no attempt should be made to effect a change by force. Armed with such a principle as this, France would soon be far stronger than her neighbours. If Catholic and Huguenot could come to regard one another as Frenchmen and nothing else, what chance had foreign powers of resisting her? She had already beaten back the attack of a divided England. Would she not soon acquire a preponderance over a divided Germany? It is time for us now to ask what steps were being taken in Germany to meet or to increase the danger.