A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 9

Nowhere was this fructuating idea of the sacrifice, the immolation of man for G.o.d and of the present in prospect of eternity, more rigorously understood and practised than amongst the disciples of John du Vergier de Hauranne, Abbot of St. Cyran. More bold in his conceptions than Cardinal Berulle and St. Vincent de Paul, of a nature more austere and at the same time more ardent, he had early devoted himself to the study of theology.

Connected in his youth with a Fleming, Jansen, known under the name of Jansenius and afterwards created Bishop of Ypres, he adopted with fervor the doctrines as to the grace of G.o.d which his friend had imbibed in the school of St. Augustin, and employing in the direction of souls that zealous ardor which makes conquerors, he set himself to work to regenerate the church by penance, sanct.i.ty, and sacrifice; G.o.d supreme, reigning over hearts subdued, that was his ultimate object, and he marched towards it without troubling himself about revolts and sufferings, certain that he would be triumphant with G.o.d and for Him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Abbot of St. Cyran----234]

Victories gained over souls are from their very nature of a silent sort: but M. de St. Cyran was not content with them. He wrote also, and his book "Petrus Aurelius," published under the veil of the anonymous, excited a great stir by its defence of the rights of the bishops against the monks, and even against the pope. The Gallican bishops welcomed at that time with lively satisfaction, its eloquent pleadings in favor of their cause. But, at a later period, the French clergy discovered in St. Cyran's book free-thinking concealed under dogmatic forms. "In case of heresy any Christian may become judge," said Petrus Aurelius. Who, then, should be commissioned to define heresy? So M. de St. Cyran was condemned.

He had been already by an enemy more formidable than the a.s.semblies of the clergy of France. Cardinal Richelieu, naturally attracted towards greatness as he was at a later period towards the infant prodigy of the Pascals, had been desirous of attaching St. Cyran to himself.

"Gentlemen," said he one day, as he led back the simple priest into the midst of a throng of his courtiers, "here you see the most learned man in Europe." But the Abbot of St. Cyran would accept no yoke but G.o.d's: he remained independent, and perhaps hostile, pursuing, without troubling himself about the cardinal, the great task he had undertaken. Having had, for two years past, the spiritual direction of the convent of Port Royal, he had found in Mother Angelica Arnauld, the superior and reformer of the monastery, in her sister, Mother Agnes, and in the nuns of their order, souls worthy of him and capable of tolerating his austere instructions.

Before long he had seen forming, beside Port Royal and in the solitude of the fields, a nucleus of penitents, emulous of the hermits of the desert.

M. Le Maitre, Mother Angelica's nephew, a celebrated advocate in the Parliament of Paris, had quitted all "to have no speech but with G.o.d."

A howling (_rugissant_) penitent, he had drawn after him his brothers, MM. de Sacy and de Sericourt, and, ere long, young Lancelot, the learned author of Greek roots: all steeped in the rigors of penitential life, all blindly submissive to M. de St. Cyran and his saintly requirements. The director's power over so many eminent minds became too great. Richelieu had comprehended better than the bishops the tendency of M. de St.

Cyran's ideas and writings. "He continued to publish many opinions, new and leading to dangerous conclusions," says Father Joseph in his _Memoires,_" in such sort that the king, being advertised, commanded him to be kept a prisoner in the Bois de Vincennes." "That man is worse than six armies," said Cardinal Richelieu; "if Luther and, Calvin had been shut up when they began to dogmatize, states would have been spared a great deal of trouble."

The consciences of men and the ardor of their souls are not so easily stifled by prison or exile. The Abbot of St. Cyran, in spite of the entreaties of his powerful friends, remained at Vincennes up to the death of Cardinal Richelieu; the seclusionists of Port Royal were driven from their retreat and obliged to disperse; but neither the severities of Richelieu, nor, at a later period, those of Louis XIV., were the true cause of the ultimate powerlessness of Jansenism to bring about that profound reformation of the church which had been the dream of the Abbot of St. Cyran. He had wished to immolate sinful man to G.o.d, and he regarded sanct.i.ty as the complete sacrifice of human nature corrupt to its innermost core. Human conscience could not accept this cruel yoke; its liberty revolted against so narrow a prison; and the Protestant reformation, with a doctrine as austere as that of M. de St. Cyran, but more true and more simple in its practical application, offered strong minds the satisfaction of direct and personal relations between G.o.d and man; it saw the way to satisfy them without crushing them; and that is why the kingly power in France succeeded in stifling Jansenism without having ever been able to destroy the Protestant faith.

Cardinal Richelieu dreaded the doctrines of M. de St. Cyran, and still more those of the reformation, which went directly to the emanc.i.p.ation of souls; but he had the wit to resist ecclesiastical encroachments, and, for all his being a cardinal, never did minister maintain more openly the independence of the civil power. "The king, in things temporal, recognizes no sovereign save G.o.d." That had always been the theory of the Gallican church. "The church of France is in the kingdom, and not the kingdom in the church," said the jurisconsult Loyseau, thus subjecting ecclesiastics to the common law of all citizens.

The French clergy did not understand it so; they had recourse to the liberties of the Gallican church in order to keep up a certain measure of independence as regarded Rome, but they would not give up their ancient privileges, and especially the right of taking an independent share in the public necessities without being taxed as a matter of law and obligation. Here it was that Cardinal Richelieu withstood them: he maintained that, the ecclesiastics and the brotherhoods not having the right to hold property in France by mortmain, the king tolerated their possession, of his grace, but he exacted the payment of seignorial dues.

The clergy at that time possessed more than a quarter of the property in France; the tax to be paid amounted, it is said, to eighty millions. The subsidies further demanded reached a total of eight millions six hundred livres.

The clergy in dismay wished to convoke an a.s.sembly to determine their conduct; and after a great deal of difficulty it was authorized by the cardinal. Before long he intimated to the five prelates who were most hostile to him that they must quit the a.s.sembly and retire to their dioceses. "There are," said the Bishop of Autun, who was entirely devoted to Richelieu, "some who show great delicacy about agreeing to all that the king demands, as if they had a doubt whether all the property of the church belonged to him or not, and whether his Majesty, leaving the ecclesiastics wherewithal to provide for their subsistence and a moderate establishment, could not take all the surplus." That sort of doctrine would never do for the clergy; still they consented to pay five millions and a half, the sum to which the minister lowered his pretensions. "The wants of the state," said Richelieu, "are real; those of the church are fanciful and arbitrary; if the king's armies had not repulsed the enemy, the clergy would have suffered far more."

Whilst the cardinal imposed upon the French clergy the obligations common to all subjects, he defended the kingly power and majesty against the Ultramoutanes, and especially against the Jesuits. Several of their pamphlets had already been censured by his order when Father Sanctarel published a treatise on heresy and schism, clothed with the pope's approbation, and containing, amongst other dangerous propositions, the following: "The pope can depose emperor and kings for their iniquities or for personal incompetence, seeing that he has a sovereign, supreme, and absolute power." The work was referred to the Parliament, who ordered it to be burned in Place de Greve; there was talk of nothing less than the banishment of the entire order.

Father Cotton, superior of the French Jesuits, was summoned to appear before the council; he gave up Father Sanctarel unreservedly, making what excuse he best could for the approbation of the pope and of the general of the Jesuits. The condemnation of the work was demanded, and it was signed by sixteen French fathers. The Parliament was disposed to push the matter farther, when Richelieu, always as prudent as he was firm in his relations with this celebrated order, represented to the king that there are "certain abuses which are more easily put down by pa.s.sing them over than by resolving to destroy them openly, and that it was time to take care lest proceedings should be carried to a point which might be as prejudicial to his service as past action had been serviceable to it."

The Jesuits remained in France, and their college at Clermont was not closed; but they published no more pamphlets against the cardinal. They even defended him at need.

Richelieu's grand quarrel with the clergy was nearing its end when the climax was reached of a disagreement with the court of Rome, dating from some time back. The pope had never forgiven the cardinal for not having accepted his mediation in the affair with Spain on the subject of the Valteline; he would not accede to the desire which Richelieu manifested to become legate of the Holy See in France, as Cardinal d'Amboise had been; and when Marshal d'Estrees arrived as amba.s.sador at Rome, his resolute behavior brought the misunderstanding to a head: the pope refused the customary funeral honors to Cardinal La Valette, who had died in battle, without dispensation, at the head of the king's army in Piedmont. Richelieu preserved appearances no longer; the king refused to receive the pope's nuncio, and prohibited the bishops from any communication with him. The quarrel was envenomed by a pamphlet called _Optatus Gallus_. The cardinal's enemies represented him as a new Luther ready to excite a schism and found a patriarchate in France. Father Rabardeau, of the Jesuits' order, maintained, in reply, that the act would not be schismatical, and that the consent of Rome would be no more necessary to create a patriarchate in France than it had been to establish those of Constantinople and Jerusalem.

Urban VIII. took fright; he sent to France Julius Mazarin, at that time vice-legate, and already frequently employed in the negotiations between the court of Rome and Cardinal Richelieu, who had taken a great fancy to him. The French clergy had just obtained authority to vote the subsidy in an a.s.sembly; and the pope contented himself with this feeble concession. Mazarin put the finishing touch to the reconciliation, and received as recompense the cardinal's hat. In fact, the victory of the civil power was complete, and the independence of the crown clearly established. "His Holiness," said the cardinal, "ought to commend the zeal shown by his Majesty for the welfare of the church, and to remain satisfied with the respect shown him by an appeal to his authority which his Majesty might have dispensed with in this matter, having his Parliaments to fall back upon for the chastis.e.m.e.nt of those who lived evilly in his kingdom." In principle, the supreme question between the court of Rome and the kingly power remained undecided, and it showed wisdom on the part of Urban VIII., as well as of Cardinal Richelieu, never to fix fundamentally and within their exact limits the rights and pretensions of the church or the crown.

Cardinal Richelieu had another battle to deliver, and another victory, which was to be more decisive, to gain. During his exile at Avignon, he had written against the Reformers, violently attacking their doctrines and their precepts; he was, therefore, personally engaged in the theological strife, and more hotly than has been made out; but he was above everything a great politician, and the rebellion of the Reformers, their irregular political a.s.semblies, their alliances with the foreigner, occupied him, far more than their ministers' preaching. It was state within state that the reformers were seeking to found, and that the cardinal wished to upset. Seconded by the Prince of Conde, the king had put an end to the war which cost the life of the constable De Luynes, but the peace concluded at Montpellier on the 19th of November, 1622, had already received many a blow; pacific counsels amongst the Reformers were little by little dying out together with the old servants of Henry IV.; Du Plessis-Mornay had lately died (November 11, 1623) at his castle of Foret-sur-Sevres, and the direction of the party fell entirely into the hands of the Duke of Rohan, a fiery temper and soured by misfortunes as well as by continual efforts made on the part of his brother, the Duke of Soubise, more restless and less earnest than he. Hostilities broke out afresh at the beginning of the year 1625. The Reformers complained that, instead of demolishing Fort Louis, which commanded La Roch.e.l.le, all haste was being made to complete the ramparts they had hoped to see razed to the ground: a small royal fleet mustered quietly at Le Blavet, and threatened to close the sea against the Roch.e.l.lese. The peace of Montpellier had left the Protestants only two surety-places, Montauban and La Roch.e.l.le; and they clung to them with desperation. On the 6th of January, 1625, Soubise suddenly entered the harbor of Le Blavet with twelve vessels, and seizing without a blow the royal ships, towed them off in triumph to La Roch.e.l.le--a fatal success, which was to cost that town dear.

The royal marine had hardly an existence; after the capture made by Soubise, help had to be requested from England and Holland; the marriage of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henry IV., with the Prince of Wales, who was soon to become Charles I., was concluded; the English promised eight ships; the treaties with the United Provinces obliged the Hollanders to supply twenty, which they would gladly have refused to send against their brethren, if they could; the cardinal even required that the ships should be commanded by French captains. "One lubber may ruin a whole fleet," said he, "and a captain of a ship, if a.s.sured by the enemy of payment for his vessel, may undertake to burn the whole armament, and that the more easily inasmuch as he would think he was making a grand sacrifice to G.o.d, for the sake of his religion."

Meanwhile, Soubise had broken through the feeble obstacles opposed to him by the Duke of Vendome, and, making himself master of all the trading-vessels he encountered, soon took possession of the Islands of Re and Oleron and effected descents even into Medoc, whilst the Duke of Rohan, leaving the d.u.c.h.ess his wife, Sully's daughter, at Castres, where he had established the seat of his government, was scouring Lower Languedoc and the Cevennes to rally his partisans. The insurrection was very undecided, and the movement very irregular. Nimes, Uzes, and Alais closed their gates; even Montauban hesitated a long while before declaring itself. The Duke of Epernon ravaged the outskirts of that place. "At night," writes his secretary, "might be seen a thousand fires. Wheat, fruit trees, vines, and houses were the food that fed the flames." Marshal Themine did the same all round Castres, defended by the d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan.

There were negotiations, nevertheless, already. Rohan and Soubise demanded to be employed against Spain in the Valteline, claiming the destruction of Fort Louis; parleys mitigated hostilities; the Duke of Soubise obtained a suspension of arms from the Dutch Admiral Haustein, and then, profiting by a favorable gust of wind, approached the fleet, set fire to the admiral's ship, and captured five vessels, which he towed off to the Island of Re. But he paid dear for his treachery: the Hollanders, in their fury, seconded with more zeal the efforts of the Duke of Montmorency, who had just taken the command of the squadron; the Island of Re was retaken and Soubise obliged to retreat in a shallop to Oleron, leaving for "pledge his sword and his hat, which dropped off in his flight." Nor was the naval fight more advantageous for Soubise.

"The battle was fierce, but the enemy had the worst," says Richelieu in his Memoires: "night coming on was favorable to their designs; nevertheless, they were so hotly pursued, that on the morrow, at daybreak, eight of their vessels were taken." Soubise sailed away to England with the rest of his fleet, and the Island of Oleron surrendered.

The moment seemed to have come for crushing La Roch.e.l.le, deprived of the naval forces that protected it; but the cardinal, still at grips with Spain in the Valteline, was not sure of his allies before La Roch.e.l.le.

In Holland all the churches echoed with reproaches hurled by the preachers against states that gave help against their own brethren to Catholics; at Amsterdam the mob had besieged the house of Admiral Haustein; and the Dutch fleet had to be recalled. The English Protestants were not less zealous; the Duke of Soubise had been welcomed with enthusiasm, and, though Charles I., now King of England and married, had refused to admit the fugitive to his presence, he would not restore to Louis XIII. the vessels, captured from that king and his subjects, which Soubise had brought over to Portsmouth.

The game was not yet safe; and Richelieu did not allow himself to be led astray by the anger of fanatics who dubbed him State Cardinal. "The cardinal alone, to whom G.o.d gave the blessedness of serving the king and restoring to his kingdom its ancient l.u.s.tre, and to his person the power and authority meet for royal Majesty which is the next Majesty after the divine, saw in his mind the means of undoing all those tangles, clearing away all those mists, and emerging to the honor of his master from all those confusions." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 2.]

Marshal Ba.s.sompierre was returning from his emba.s.sy to Switzerland, having secured the alliance of the Thirteen Cantons in the affair of the Valteline, when it was noised abroad that peace with Spain was signed.

Count du Fargis, it was said, had, in an excess of zeal, taken upon himself to conclude without waiting for orders from Paris. Ba.s.sompierre was preparing a grand speech against this unexpected peace, but during the night he reflected that the cardinal had perhaps been not so much astonished as he would have made out. "I gave up my speech," says he, "and betook myself to my jubilee."

The Huguenots, on their side, yielded at the entreaties of the amba.s.sadors who had been sent by the English to France, "with orders to beg the Roch.e.l.lese to accept the peace which the king had offered them, and who omitted neither arguments nor threats in order to arrive at that conclusion; whence it came to pa.s.s that, by a course of conduct full of unwonted dexterity, the Huguenots were brought to consent to peace for fear of that with Spain, and the Spaniards to make peace for fear of that with the Huguenots.

The greatest difficulty the cardinal had to surmount was in the king's council; he was not ignorant that by getting peace made with the Huguenots, and showing him that he was somewhat inclined to favor their cause with the king, he might expose himself to the chance of getting into bad odor at Rome. But in no other way could he arrive at his Majesty's ends. His cloth made him suspected by the Huguenots; it was necessary, therefore, to behave so that they should think him favorable to them, for by so doing he found means of waiting more conveniently for an opportunity of reducing them to the terms to which all subjects ought to be reduced in a state, that is to say, inability to form any separate body, and liability to accept their sovereign's wishes.

"It was a grievous thing for him to bear, to see himself so unjustly suspected at the court of Rome, and by those who affected the name of zealous Catholics; but he resolved to take patiently the rumors that were current about him, apprehending that if he had determined to clear himself of them effectually, he might not find that course of advantage to his master or the public."

The cardinal, in fact, took it patiently, revising and then confirming the treaty with Spain, and imposing on the Huguenots a peace so hard, that they would never have accepted it but for the hope of obtaining at a later period some a.s.suagements, with the help of England, which refused formally to help them to carry on the war. At the first parleys the king had said, "I am disposed enough towards peace; I am willing to grant it to Languedoc and the other provinces. As for La Roch.e.l.le, that is another thing." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.] It was ultimately La Roch.e.l.le that paid the expenses of the war, biding the time when the proud city, which had resisted eight kings in succession, would have to succ.u.mb before Louis XIII. and his all-powerful minister. Already her independence was threatened on all sides; the bastions and new fortifications had to be demolished; no armed vessel of war might be stationed in her harbor. "The way was at last open," said the cardinal, "to the extermination of the Huguenot party, which, for a hundred years past, had divided the kingdom." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.

p. 17.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Demolishing the Fortifications----244]

The peace of 1626, then, was but a preliminary to war. Richelieu was preparing for it by land and sea; vessels of war were being built, troops were being levied; and the temper of England furnished a pretext for commencing the struggle. King Charles I., at the instigation of his favorite the Duke of Buckingham, had suddenly and unfeelingly dismissed the French servants of the queen his wife, without giving her even time to say good by to them, insomuch that "the poor princess, hearing their voices in the court-yard, dashed to the window, and, breaking the gla.s.s with her head, clung with her hands to the bars to show herself to her women and take the last look at them. The king indignantly dragged her back with so great an effort that he tore her hands right away." Louis XIII. had sent Marshal Ba.s.sompierre to England to complain of the insult done to his sister; the Duke of Buckingham wished to go in person to France to arrange the difference, but the cardinal refused. "Has Buckingham ever undertaken any foreign commission without going away dissatisfied and offended with the princes to whom he was sent?" said Cardinal Richelieu to the king. So the favorite of Charles I. resolved to go to France "in other style and with other attendants than he had as yet done; having determined to win back the good graces of the Parliament and the people of England by the succor he was about to carry to the oppressed Protestant churches," he pledged his property; he sold the trading-vessels captured on the coasts of France; and on the 17th of July, 1627, he set sail with a hundred and twenty vessels, heading for La Roch.e.l.le. Soubise was on board his ship; and the Duke of Rohan, notified of the enterprise, had promised to declare himself the moment the English set foot in France. Already he was preparing his manifesto to the churches, avowing that he had summoned the English to his legitimate defence, and that, since the king had but lately been justified in employing the arms of the Hollanders to defeat them, much more reasonably might he appeal to those of the English their brethren for protection against him.

This time the cardinal was ready; he had concluded an alliance with Spain against England, "declaring merely to the King of Spain that he was already at open war with England, and that he would put in practice with all the power of his forces against his own states all sorts of hostilities permissible in honorable warfare, which his Majesty also promised to do by the month of June, 1628, at the latest." The king set out to go and take in person the command of the army intended to give the English their reception. He had gone out ill from the Parliament, where he had been to have some edicts enregistered. "I did nothing but tremble all the time I was holding my bed of justice," he said to Ba.s.sompierre.

"It is there, however, that you make others tremble," replied the marshal. Louis XIII. was obliged to halt at Villeroy, where the cardinal remained with him, "being all day at his side, and most frequently not leaving him at night; he, nevertheless, had his mind constantly occupied with giving orders, taking care above everything to let it appear before the king that he had no fear; he preferred to put himself in peril of being blamed or ruined in well-doing, rather than, in order to secure himself, to do anything which might be a cause of illness to his Majesty." In point of fact, Richelieu was not without anxiety, for Sieur de Toiras, a young favorite of the king's, to whom he had entrusted the command in the Island of Re, had not provided for the defence of that place so well as had been expected; Buckingham had succeeded in effecting his descent. The French were shut up in the Fort of St. Martin, scarcely finished as it was, and ill-provisioned. The cardinal "saw to it directly, sending of his own money because that of the king was not to be so quickly got at, and because he had at that time none to spare; he despatched Abbe Marcillac, who was in his confidence, to see that everything was done punctually and no opportunity lost. He did not trouble himself to make reports of all the despatches that pa.s.sed, and all the orders that were within less than a fortnight given on the subject of this business during the king's illness, in order to provide for everything that was necessary, and to prepare all things in such wise that the king and France might reap from them the fruit which was shortly afterwards gathered in."

Meanwhile La Roch.e.l.le had closed her gates to the English, and the old d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan had been obliged to leave the town in order to bring Soubise in with her. "Before taking any resolution," replied the Roch.e.l.lese authorities to the entreaties of the duke, who was pressing them to lend a.s.sistance to the English, "we must consult the whole body of the religion of which La Roch.e.l.le is only one member." An a.s.sembly was already convoked to that end at Uzes; and when it met, on the 11th of September, the Duke of Rohan communicated to the deputies from the churches the letter of the inhabitants of La Roch.e.l.le, "not such an one,"

he said, "as he could have desired, but such as he must make the best of." The King of England had granted his aid and promised not to relax until the Reformers had firm repose and solid contentment, provided that they seconded his efforts. "I bid you thereto in G.o.d's name," he added, "and for my part, were I alone, abandoned of all, I am determined to prosecute this sacred cause even to the last drop of my blood and to the last gasp of my life." The a.s.sembly fully approved of their chief's behavior, accepting "with grat.i.tude the King of England's powerful intervention, without, however, loosing themselves from the humble and inviolable submission which they owed to their king." The consuls of the town of Milhau were bolder in their reservations. "We have at divers time experienced," they wrote to the Duke of Rohan, whilst refusing to join the movement, "that violence is no certain means of obtaining observation of our edicts, for force extorts many promises, but the hatred it engenders prevents them from taking effect." The duke was obliged to force an entrance into this small place. La Roch.e.l.le had just renounced her neutrality and taken sides with the English, "flattering ourselves," they said in their proclamation, "that, having good men for our witnesses and G.o.d for our judge, we shall experience the same a.s.sistance from His goodness as our fathers had aforetime."

M. de La Milliere, the agent of the Roch.e.l.lese, wrote to one of his friends at the Duke of Rohan's quarters, "Sir, I am arrived from Villeroy, where the English are not held as they are at Paris to be a mere chimera. Only I am very apprehensive of the September tides, and lest the new grapes should kill us off more English than the enemy will.

I am much vexed to hear nothing from your quarter to second the exploits of the English, being unable to see without shame foreigners showing more care for our welfare than we ourselves show. I know that it will not be M. de Rohan's fault nor yours that nothing good is done.

"I forgot to tell you that the cardinal is very glad that he is no longer a bishop, for he has put so many rings in p.a.w.n to send munitions to the islands, that he has nothing remaining wherewith to give the episcopal benediction. The most zealous amongst us pray G.o.d that the sea may swallow up his person as it has swallowed his goods. As for me, I am not of that number, for I belong to those who offer incense to the powers that be." It was as yet a time when the religious fatherland was dearer than the political; the French Huguenots naturally appealed for aid to all Protestant nations. It was even now an advance in national ideas to call the English who had come to the aid of La Roch.e.l.le foreigners.

Toiras, meanwhile, still held out in the Fort of St. Martin, and Buckingham was beginning to "abate somewhat of the absolute confidence he had felt about making himself master of it, having been so ill-advised as to write to the king his master that he would answer for it." The proof of this was that a burgess of La Roch.e.l.le, named Laleu, went to see the king with authority from the Duke of Angouleme, who commanded the army in his Majesty's absence, and that "he proposed that the English should retire, provided that the king would have Fort Louis dismantled. The Duke of Angouleme was inclined to accept this proposal, but the cardinal forcibly represented all the reasons against it: "It will be said, perhaps, that if the Island of Re be lost, it will be very difficult to recover it;" this he allowed, but he put forward, to counterbalance this consideration, another, that, if honor were lost, it would never be recovered, and that, if the Island of Re were lost, he considered that his Majesty was bound to stick to the blockade of Roch.e.l.le, and that he might do so with success. Upon this, his Majesty resolved to push the siege of Roch.e.l.le vigorously, and to give the command to Mylord his brother; "but Monsieur was tardy as usual, not wanting to serve under the king when the health of his Majesty might permit him to return to his army, so that the cardinal wrote to President Le Coigneux, one of the favorite counsellors of the Duke of Orleans, to say that if imaginary hydras of that sort were often taking shape in the mind of Monsieur, he had nothing more to say than that there would be neither pleasure nor profit in being mixed up with his affairs. As for himself, he would always do his duty." Monsieur at last made up his mind to join the army, and it was resolved to give aid to the forts in the Island of Re.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Harbor of La Roch.e.l.le---248]

It was a bold enterprise that was about to be attempted to hold La Roch.e.l.le invested and not quit it, and, nevertheless, to send the flower of the force to succor a citadel considered to be half lost; to make a descent upon an island blockaded by a large naval armament; to expose the best part of the army to the mercy of the winds and the waves of the sea, and of the English cannons and vessels, in a place where there was no landing in order and under arms." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.

p. 361]; but it had to be resolved upon or the Island of Re lost. Toiras had already sent to ask the Duke of Buckingham if he would receive him to terms.

On the 8th of October, at eight A. M., the Duke of Buckingham was preparing to send a reply to the fort, and he was already rejoicing "to see his felicity and the crowning of his labors," when, on nearing the citadel, "there were exhibited to him at the ends of pikes lots of bottles of wine, capons, turkeys, hams, ox-tongues, and other provisions, and his vessels were saluted with lots of cannonades, they having come too near in the belief that those inside had no more powder." During the night, the fleet which was a.s.sembled at Oleron, and had been at sea for two days past, had succeeded in landing close to the fort, bringing up re-enforcements of troops, provisions, and munitions. At the same time the king and the cardinal had just arrived at the camp before La Roch.e.l.le.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The King and Richelieu at La Roch.e.l.le----250]

Before long the English could not harbor a doubt but that the king's army had recovered its real heads: a grand expedition was preparing to attack them in the Island of Re, and the cardinal had gone in person to Oleron and to Le Brouage in order to see to the embarkation of the troops. "The n.o.bility of the court came up in crowds to take leave of his Majesty, and their looks were so gay that it must be allowed that to no nation but the French is it given to march so freely to death for the service of their king or for their own honor as to make it impossible to remark any difference between him that inflicts it and him that receives."

[_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii. p. 398.] Marshal Schomberg took the road to Marennes, whence he sent to the cardinal for boats to carry over all his troops. "This took him greatly by surprise, and as his judgments are always followed by the effect he intended, he thought that this great following of n.o.bility might hinder the said sir marshal from executing his design so promptly. However, by showing admirable diligence, doubling both his vessels and his provisions, he found sufficient to embark the whole." [_Siege de La Roch.e.l.le. Archives curieuses de l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii. p. 76.] By this time the king's troops, in considerable numbers, had arrived in the island without the English being able to prevent their disembarkation; the enemy therefore took the resolution of setting sail, in spite of the entreaties which the Duke of Soubise sent them on the part of the Roch.e.l.lese, those latter promising great a.s.sistance in men and provisions, more than they could afford. To satisfy them, the Duke of Buckingham determined to deliver a general a.s.sault before he departed.

The a.s.sault was delivered on the 5th and 6th of November, and everywhere repulsed, exhausted as the besieged were. "Those who were sick and laid up in their huts appeared on the bastions. There were some of them so weak that, unable to fight, they loaded their comrades' muskets; and others, having fought beyond their strength, being able to do no more, said to their comrades, 'Friend, here are my arms for thee; prithee, make my grave;' and, thither retiring, there they died." The Duke of Buckingham wrote to M. de Fiesque, who was holding Fort La Pree, that he was going to embark, without waiting for any more men to make their descent upon the island; but the king, who trusted not his enemies, and least of all the English, from whom, even when friends, he had received so many proofs of faithlessness and falsehood, besides that he knew Buckingham for a man who, from not having the force of character to decide on such an occasion, did not know whether to fight or to fly, continued in his first determination to transport promptly all those who remained, in order to encounter the enemy on land, fight them, and make them for the future quake with fear if it were proposed to them to try another descent upon his dominions.

Marshal Schomberg, thwarted by bad weather, had just rallied his troops which had been cast by the winds on different parts of the coast, when it was perceived that the enemy had sheered off. M. De Toiras, issuing from his fortress to meet the marshal, would have pursued them at once to give them battle; but Schomberg refused, saying, "I ought to make them a bridge of gold rather than a barrier of iron;" and he contented himself with following the English, who retreated to a narrow causeway which led to the little Island of Oie. There, a furious charge of French cavalry broke the ranks of the enemy, disorder spread amongst them, and when night came to put an end to the combat, forty flags remained in the hands of the king's troops, and he sent them at once to Notre-Dame, by Claude de St. Simon, together with a quant.i.ty of prisoners, of whom the King made a present to his sister, the Queen of England.

"Such," says the Duke of Rohan, in his Hemoires, "was the success of the Duke of Buckingham's expedition, wherein he ruined the reputation of his nation and his own, consumed a portion of the provisions of the Roch.e.l.lese, and reduced to despair the party for whose sake he had come to France. The Duke of Rohan first learned this bad news by the bonfires which all the Roman Catholics lighted for it all through the countship of Foix, and, later on, by a despatch from the Duke of Soubise, who exhorted him not to lose courage, saying that he hoped to come back next spring in condition to efface the affront received." This latter prince had not covered himself with glory in the expedition. "As recompense and consolation for all their losses," says the cardinal, "they carried off Soubise to England. He has not been mentioned all through this siege, because, whenever there was any question of negotiation, no one would apply to him, but only to Buckingham. When there was nothing for it but to fight, he would not hear of it. On the day the English made their descent, he was at La Roch.e.l.le; n.o.body knows where he was at the time of the a.s.sault, but he was one of the first and most forward in the rout."

Soubise had already been p.r.o.nounced guilty of high-treason by decree of the Parliament of Toulouse; but the Duke of Rohan had been degraded from his dignities, and "a t.i.tle offered to those who would a.s.sa.s.sinate him, which created an inclination in three or four wretches to undertake it, who had but a rope or the wheel for recompense, it not being in any human power to prolong or shorten any man's life without the permission of G.o.d." The Prince of Conde had been commissioned to fight the valiant chief of the Huguenots, "for that he was their sworn enemy," says the cardinal. In the eyes of fervent Catholics the name of Conde had many wrongs for which to obtain pardon.

The English were ignominiously defeated; the king was now confronted by none but his revolted subjects; he resolved to blockade the place at all points, so that it could not be entered by land or sea; and, to this end, he claimed from Spain the fleet which had been promised him, and which did not arrive. "The whole difficulty of this enterprise," said the cardinal to the king, "lies in this, that the majority will only labor therein in a perfunctory manner."

His ordinary penetration did not deceive him: the great lords intrusted with commands saw with anxiety the increasing power of Richelieu. "You will see," said Ba.s.sompierre, "that we shall be mad enough to take La Roch.e.l.le." "His Majesty had just then many of his own kingdom and all his allies sworn together against him, and so much the more dangerously in that it was secretly. England at open war, and with all her maritime power but lately on our coasts; the King of Spain apparently united to his Majesty, yet, in fact, not only giving him empty words, but, under cover of the emperor's name, making a diversion against him in the direction of Germany. Nevertheless the king held firm to his resolve; and then the siege of La Roch.e.l.le was undertaken with a will."