Volume V Part 10 (1/2)

The old d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan (Catherine de Parthenay Larcheveque) had shut herself up in La Roch.e.l.le with her daughter Anne de Rohan, as pious and as courageous as her mother, and of rare erudition into the bargain; she had hitherto refused to leave the town; but, when the blockade commenced, she asked leave to retire with two hundred women. The town had already been refused permission to get rid of useless mouths. ”All the Roch.e.l.lese shall go out together,” was the answer returned to Madame de Rohan. She determined to undergo with her brethren in the faith all the rigors of the siege. ”Secure peace, complete victory, or honorable death,” she wrote to her son the Duke of Rohan: the old device of Jeanne d'Albret, which had never been forgotten by the brave chief of the Huguenots.

At the head of the burgesses of La Roch.e.l.le, as determined as the d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan to secure their liberties or perish, was the president of the board of marine, soon afterwards mayor of the town, John Gutton, a rich merchant, whom the misfortunes of the times had wrenched away from his business to become a skilful admiral, an intrepid soldier, accustomed for years past to scour the seas as a corsair. ”He had at his house,” says a narrative of those days, ”a great number of flags, which he used to show one after another, indicating the princes from whom he had taken them.”

When he was appointed mayor, he drew his poniard and threw it upon the council-table. ”I accept,” he said, ”the honor you have done me, but on condition that yonder poniard shall serve to pierce the heart of whoever dares to speak of surrender, mine first of all, if I were ever wretch enough to condescend to such cowardice.” Of indomitable nature, of pa.s.sionate and proud character, Guiton, in fact, rejected all proposals of peace. ”My friend, tell the cardinal that I am his very humble servant,” was his answer to insinuating speeches as well as to threats; and he prepared with tranquil coolness for defence to the uttermost. Two munic.i.p.al councillors, two burgesses, and a clergyman were commissioned to judge and to punish spies and traitors; attention was concentrated upon getting provisions into the town; the country was already devastated, but reliance was placed upon promises of help from England; and religious exercises were everywhere multiplied. ”We will hold out to the last day,” reiterated the burgesses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Guiton's Oath----254]

It was the month of December; bad weather interfered with the siege-works; the king was having a line of circ.u.mvallation pushed forward to close the approaches to the city on the land side; the cardinal was having a mole of stone-work, occupying the whole breadth of the roads, constructed; the king's little fleet, commanded by M. de Guise, had been ordered up to protect the laborers; Spain had sent twenty-eight vessels in such bad condition that those which were rolled into the sea laden with stones were of more value. ”They were employed Spanish-fas.h.i.+on,” says Richelieu, ”that is, to make an appearance so as to astound the Roch.e.l.lese by the union of the two crowns.” A few days after their arrival, at the rumor of a.s.sistance coming from England, the Spanish admiral, who had secret orders to make no effort for France, demanded permission to withdraw his s.h.i.+ps. ”It was very shameful of them, but it was thought good to let them go without the king's consent, making believe that he had given them their dismissal, and desired them to go and set about preparing, one way or another, a large armament by the spring.” The Roch.e.l.lese were rejoicing over the treaty they had just concluded with the King of England, who promised ”to aid them by land and sea, to the best of his kingly power, until he should have brought about a fair and secure peace.” The mole was every moment being washed away by the sea; and, ”whilst the cardinal was employing all the wits which G.o.d had given him to bring to a successful issue the siege of La Roch.e.l.le to the glory of G.o.d and the welfare of the state, and was laboring to that end more than the bodily strength granted to him by G.o.d seemed to permit, one would have said that the sea and the winds, favoring the English and the islands, were up in opposition and thwarting his designs.”

The king was growing tired, and wished to go to Paris; but this was not the advice of the cardinal, and ”the truths he uttered were so displeasing to the king that he fell somehow into disgrace. The dislike the king conceived for him was such that he found fault with him about everything.” The king at last took his departure, and the cardinal, who had attended him ”without daring, out of respect, to take his sunshade to protect him against the heat of the sun, which was very great that day,”

was on his return taken ill with fever. ”I am so downhearted that I cannot express the regret I feel at quitting the cardinal, fearing lest some accident may happen to him,” the king had said to one of his servants: ”tell him from me to take care of himself, to think what a state my affairs would be in if I were to lose him.” When the king returned to La Roch.e.l.le on the 10th of April, he found his army strengthened, the line of circ.u.mvallation finished, and the mole well advanced into the sea; the a.s.sault was becoming possible, and the king summoned the place to surrender. [_Siege de La Roch.e.l.le. Archives eurieuses de l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii. p. 102.] ”We recognize no other sheriffs and governors than ourselves,” answered the sergeant on guard to the improvised herald sent by the king; ”n.o.body will listen to you; away at once!” It was at last announced that the re-enforcements so impatiently expected were coming from England. ”The cardinal, who knew that there was nothing so dangerous as to have no fear of one's enemy, had a long while before set everything in order, as if the English might arrive any day.” Their fleet was signalled at sea; it numbered thirty vessels, and had a convoy of twenty barks laden with provisions and munitions, and it was commanded by the Earl of Denbigh, Buckingham's brother-in-law. The Roch.e.l.lese, transported with joy, ”had planted a host of flags on the prominent points of their town.” The English came and cast anchor at the tip of the Island of Re. The cannon of La Roch.e.l.le gave them a royal salute. A little boat with an English captain on board found means of breaking the blockade; and ”Open a pa.s.sage,” said the envoy to the Roch.e.l.lese, ”as you sent notice to us in England, and we will deliver you.” But the progress made in the works of the mole rendered the enterprise difficult; the besieged could not attempt anything; they waited and waited for Lord Denbigh to bring on an engagement; on the 19th of May, all the English s.h.i.+ps got under sail and approached the roads. The besieged hurried on to the ramparts; there was the thunder of one broadside, and one only; and then the vessels tacked and crowded sail for England, followed by the gaze ”of the king's army, who returned to make good cheer without any fear of the enemy, and with great hopes of soon taking the town.”

Great was the despair in La Roch.e.l.le: ”This shameful retreat of the English, and their aid which had only been received by faith, as they do in the Eucharist,” wrote Cardinal Richelieu, ”astounded the Roch.e.l.lese so mightily that they would readily have made up their minds to surrender, if Madame de Rohan, the mother, whose hopes for her children were all centred in the preservation of this town, and the minister Salbert, a very seditious fellow, had not regaled them with imaginary succor which they made them hope for.” The cardinal, when he wrote these words, knew nothing of the wicked proposals made to Guiton and to Salbert. ”Couldn't the cardinal be got rid of by the deed of one determined man?” it was asked: but the mayor refused; and, ”It is not in such a way that G.o.d willeth our deliverance,” said Salbert; ”it would be too offensive to His holiness.” And they suffered on.

Meanwhile, on the 24th of May, the posterns were observed to open, and the women to issue forth one after another, with their children and the old men; they came gliding towards the king's encampment, but ”he ordered them to be driven back by force; and further, knowing that they had sown beans near the counterscarps of their town, a detachment was sent out to cut them down as soon as they began to come up, and likewise a little corn that they had sown in some dry spots of their marshes.” Louis the Just fought the Roch.e.l.lese in other fas.h.i.+on than that in which Henry the Great had fought the Parisians.

The misery in the place became frightful; the poor died of hunger, or were cut down by the soldiery when they ventured upon sh.o.r.e at low tide to look for c.o.c.kles; the price of provisions was such that the richest alone could get a little meat to eat; a cow fetched two thousand livres, and a bushel of wheat eight hundred livres. Madame de Rohan had been the first to have her horses killed, but this resource was exhausted, and her cook at last ”left the town and allowed himself to be taken, saying that he would rather be hanged than return to die of hunger.” A rising even took place amongst the inhabitants who were clamorous to surrender, but Guiton had the revolters hanged. ”I am ready,” said he, ”to cast lots with anybody else which shall live or be killed to feed his comrade with his flesh. As long as there is one left to keep the gates shut, it is enough.” The mutineers were seized with terror, and men died without daring to speak. ”We have been waiting three months for the effect of the excellent letters we received from the King of Great Britain,” wrote Guiton on the 24th of August, to the deputies from La Roch.e.l.le who were in London, ”and, meanwhile, we cannot see by what disasters it happens that we remain here in misery without seeing any sign of succor; our men can do no more, our inhabitants are dying of hunger in the streets, and all our families are in a fearful state from mourning, want, and perplexity; nevertheless, we will hold out to the last day, but in G.o.d's name delay no longer, for we perish.” This letter never reached its destination; the watchmaker, Marc Biron; who had offered to convey it to England, was arrested whilst attempting to pa.s.s the royal lines, and was immediately hanged. La Roch.e.l.le, however, still held out. ”Their rabid fury,” says the cardinal, ”gave them new strength, or rather the avenging wrath of G.o.d caused them to be supplied therewith in extraordinary measure by his evil spirit, in order to prolong their woes; they were already almost at the end thereof, and misery found upon them no more substance whereon it could feed and support itself; they were skeletons, empty shadows, breathing corpses, rather than living men.” At the bottom of his heart, and in spite of the ill temper their resistance caused in him, the heroism of the Roch.e.l.lese excited the cardinal's admiration.

Buckingham had just been a.s.sa.s.sinated. ”The king could not have lost a more bitter or a more idiotic enemy; his unreasoning enterprises ended unluckily, but they, nevertheless, did not fail to put us in great peril and cause us much mischief,” says Richelieu ”the idiotic madness of an enemy being more to be feared than his wisdom, inasmuch as the idiot does not act on any principle common to other men, he attempts everything and anything, violates his own interests, and is restrained by impossibility alone.”

It was this impossibility of any aid that the cardinal attempted to impress upon the Roch.e.l.lese by means of letters which he managed to get into the town, representing to them that Buckingham, their protector, was dead, and that they were allowing themselves to be unjustly tyrannized over by a small number amongst them, who, being rich, had wheat to eat, whereas, if they were good citizens, they would take their share of the general misery. These manoeuvres did not remain without effect: the besieged resolved to treat, and a deputation was just about to leave the town, when a burgess who had broken through the lines arrived in hot haste, on his return from England; he had seen, he said, the armament all ready to set out to save them or perish; it must arrive within a week; the public body of La Roch.e.l.le had promised not to treat without the King of England's partic.i.p.ation; he was not abandoning his allies; and so the deputies returned home, and there was more waiting still.

On the 29th of September, the English flag appeared before St. Martin de Re; it was commanded by the Earl of Lindsay, and was composed of a hundred and forty vessels, which carried six thousand soldiers, besides the crews; the French who were of the religion were in the van, commanded by the Duke of Soubise and the Count of Laval, brother of the Duke of La Tremoille, who had lately renounced his faith in front of La Roch.e.l.le, being convinced of his errors by a single lesson from the cardinal.

”This armament was England's utmost effort, for the Parliament which was then being holden had granted six millions of livres to fit it out to avenge the affronts and ignominy which the English nation had encountered on the Island of Re, and afterwards by the shameful retreat of their armament in the month of May.” But it was too late coming; the mole was finished, and the opening in it defended by two forts; and a floating palisade blocked the pa.s.sage as well. The English sent some petards against this construction, but they produced no effect; and when, next day, they attacked the royal fleet, the French crews lost but twenty-eight men; ”the fire-s.h.i.+ps were turned aside by men who feared fire as little as water.” Lord Lindsay retired with his squadron to the shelter of the Island of Aix, sending to the king ”Lord Montagu to propose some terms of accommodation.” He demanded pardon for the Roch.e.l.lese, freedom of conscience, and quarter for the English garrison in La Roch.e.l.le; the answer was, ”that the Roch.e.l.lese were subjectss of the king, who knew quite well what he had to do with them, and that the King of England had no right to interfere. As for the English, they should meet with the same treatment as was received by the French whom they held prisoners.” Montagu set out for England to obtain further orders from the king his master.

All hope of effectual aid was gone, and the Roch.e.l.lese felt it; the French who were on board the English fleet had taken, like them, a resolution to treat; and they had already sent to the cardinal when, on the 29th of October, the deputies from La Roch.e.l.le arrived at the camp.

”Your fellows who were in the English army have already obtained grace,”

said the cardinal to them; and when they were disposed not to believe it, the cardinal sent for the pastors Vincent and Gobert, late delegates to King Charles I. ”they embraced with tears in their eyes, not daring to speak of business, as they had been forbidden to do so on pain of death.”

The demands of the Roch.e.l.lese were more haughty than befitted their extreme case. ”Though they were but shadows of living men, and their life rested solely on the king's mercy, they actually dared, nevertheless, to propose to the cardinal a general treaty on behalf of all those of their party, including Madame de Rohan and Monsieur de Soubise, the maintenance of their privileges, of their governor, and of their mayor, together with the right of those bearing arms to march out with beat of drum and lighted match” [with the honors of war].

The cardinal was amused at their impudence, he writes in his _Memoires,_ and told them that they had no right to expect anything more than pardon, which, moreover, they did not deserve. ”He was nevertheless anxious to conclude, wis.h.i.+ng that Montagu should find peace made, and that the English fleet should see it made without their consent, which would render the rest of the king's business easier, whether as regarded England or Spain, or the interior of the kingdom.” On the 28th the treaty, or rather the grace, was accordingly signed, ”the king granting life and property to those of the inhabitants of the town who were then in it, and the exercise of the religion within La Roch.e.l.le.” These articles bore the signature of a brigadier-general, M. de Marillac, the king not having thought proper to put his name at the bottom of a convention made with his subjects.

Next day, twelve deputies issued from the town, making a request for horses to Marshal de Ba.s.sompierre, whose quarters were close by, for they had not strength to walk. They dismounted on approaching the king's quarters, and the cardinal presented them to his Majesty. ”Sir,” said they, ”we do acknowledge our crimes and rebellions, and demand mercy; promising to remain faithful for the future, if your Majesty deigns to remember the services we were able to render to the king your father.”

The king gazed upon these suppliants kneeling at his feet, deputies from the proud city which had kept him more than a year at her gates; fleshless, almost fainting, they still bore on their features the traces of the haughty past. They had kept the lilies of France on their walls, refusing to the last to give themselves to England. ”Better surrender to a king who could take Roch.e.l.le, than to one who couldn't succor her,”

said the mayor, ”John Guiton, who was asked if he would not become an English subject. ”I know that you have always been malignants,” said the king at last, ”and that you have done all you could to shake off the yoke of obedience to me; I forgive you, nevertheless, your rebellions, and will be a good prince to you, if your actions conform to your protestations.” Thereupon he dismissed them, not without giving them a dinner, and sent victuals into the town; without which, all that remained would have been dead of hunger within two days.

The fighting men marched out, ”the officers and gentlemen wearing their swords and the soldiery with bare (white) staff in hand,” according to the conventions; as they pa.s.sed they were regarded with amazement, there not being more than sixty-four Frenchmen and ninety English: all the rest had been killed in sorties or had died of want. The cardinal at the same time entered this city, which he had subdued by sheer perseverance; Guiton came to meet him with six archers; he had not appeared during the negotiations, saying that his duty detained him in the town. ”Away with you!” said the cardinal, ”and at once dismiss your archers, taking care not to style yourself mayor any more on pain of death.” Guiton made no reply, and went his way quietly to his house, a magnificent dwelling till lately, but now lying desolate amidst the general ruin. He was not destined to reside there long; the heroic defender of La Roch.e.l.le was obliged to leave the town and retire to Tournay-Boutonne. He returned to La Roch.e.l.le to die, in 1656.

The king made his entry into the subjugated town on the 1st of November, 1628: it was full of corpses in the chambers, the houses, the public thoroughfares; for those who still survived were so weak that they had not been able to bury the dead. Madame de Rohan and her daughter, who had not been included in the treaty, were not admitted to the honor of seeing his Majesty. ”For having been the brand that had consumed this people,” they were sent to prison at Niort; ”there kept captive, without exercise of their religion, and so strictly that they had but one domestic to wait upon them, all which, however, did not take from them their courage or wonted zeal for the good of their party. The mother sent word to the Duke of Rohan, her son, that he was to put no faith in her letters, since she might be made to write them by force, and that no consideration of her pitiable condition should make her flinch to the prejudice of her party, whatever harm she might be made to suffer.”

[_Memoires du Duc de Rohan,_ t. i. p. 395.] Worn out by so much suffering, the old d.u.c.h.ess of Rohan died in 1631 at her castle Du Pare: she had been released from captivity by the pacification of the South.

With La Roch.e.l.le fell the last bulwark of religious liberties.

Single-handed, Duke Henry of Rohan now resisted at the head of a handful of resolute men. But he was about to be crushed in his turn. The capture of La Roch.e.l.le had raised the cardinal's power to its height; it had, simultaneously, been the death-blow to the Huguenot party and to the factions of the grandees. ”One of them was bold enough to say,” on seeing that La Roch.e.l.le was lost, ”Now we may well say that we are all lost.” [_Memoires de Richelieu_]

Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and the Prince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohan attempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier. He believed that he was sure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when the detachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge the ropes that held it were cut, and ”the soldiers fell into a ditch, where they were shot down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketry played upon them from without.” The lieutenant fell back in all haste upon the division of the Duke of Rohan, who retreated ”to the best Villages between Montpellier and Lunel, without ever a man from Montpellier going out to follow and see whither he went.” The war was wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and Ventadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the troops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban had declared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholic neighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royal troops. The wretched peasantry laid the blame on the Duke of Rohan, ”for one of the greatest misfortunes connected with the position of party-chiefs is this necessity they lie under of accounting for all their actions to the people, that is, to a monster composed of numberless heads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason.” [_Memoires de Montmorency.] ”Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothing difficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort of provision, is apt to be much hampered,” writes the Duke of Rohan in his _Memoires_ (t. i. p. 376). It was this extreme embarra.s.sment that landed him in crime. One of his emissaries, returning from Piedmont, where he had been admitted to an interview with the amba.s.sador of Spain, made overtures to him on behalf of that power ”which had an interest, he said, in a prolongation of the hostilities in France, so as to be able to peaceably achieve its designs in Italy. The great want of money in which the said duke then found himself, the country being unable to furnish more, and the towns being unwilling to do anything further, there being nothing to hope from England, and nothing but words without deeds having been obtained from the Duke of Savoy, absolutely constrained him to find some means of raising it in order to subsist.” And so, in the following year, the Duke of Rohan treated with the King of Spain, who promised to allow him annually three hundred thousand ducats for the keep of his troops and forty thousand for himself. In return the duke, who looked forward to ”the time when he and his might make themselves sufficiently strong to canton themselves and form a separate state,” promised, in that state, freedom and enjoyment of their property to all Catholics. A piece of strange and culpable blindness for which Rohan was to pay right dearly.

It was in the midst of this cruel partisan war that the duke heard of the fall of La Roch.e.l.le; he could not find fault ”with folks so attenuated by famine that the majority of them could not support themselves without a stick, for having sought safety in capitulation;” but to the continual anxiety felt by him for the fate of his mother and sister was added disquietude as to the effect that this news might produce on his troops.