prived of their commissions all English officers in their service, who had joined the expedition to Rochelle.
But they could not move Charles. He wrote to Buckingham, congratulating him on the success of his attempt on Rhé, which was yet no success at all; promising him fresh reinforcements and provisions, and exhorting him to prosecute the war with vigour, and to listen to no proposals of peace. He applauded a proclamation which Buckingham had prepared, to assure the French protestants that the king of England had no intention of conquest, his sole object being to compel the king of France to fulfil his engagements towards the French protestants into which he had entered with them. That, spite of these engagements, he had not dismantled the Fort Louis, in the vicinity of Rochelle; but, on the contrary, had endeavoured to surprise the town and reduce it by force to comply with his own religious demands. Charles, however, ordered Buckingham to make an alteration in the manifesto, so that instead of the defence of the protestants being the sole cause of his coming, it should be the chief cause, and allow him to put forward other reasons for his hostilities as occasion might require.
With this proclamation in his hand, the duke de Rohan made a tour amongst the Huguenot churches in the south of France, where the people listened to him with enthusiasm, and all who dissented from the vow to live and die with the English liberators, were denounced as traitors. Rohan was empowered to raise forces and advance to the support of Rochelle; but Rochelle itself was in no haste to declare itself, for Richelieu had marched an army into the neighbourhood, and kept it in check. It was the last to hoist the flag of revolt, and it was for the last time.
But all this time Buckingham was experiencing the truth of the warnings of Burrough: no impression whatever was made on the citadel of St. Martin. Charles's promised reinforcements did not arrive. He wrote to explain the causes of the delay—being the difficulty of obtaining mariners, and the slowness of the commissioners of the navy; but he assured him that the earl of Holland was preparing to bring out fresh forces. On the 12th of August there was a rumour of an attempt to assassinate Buckingham by a Jesuit, with a thick three-edged knife; but a real wound was inflicted on his reputation by a French flotilla bursting the boom which he had drawn across the harbour, spite of his fleet, and throwing provisions into fort St. Martin, spite of himself. This disaster produced the most violent altercations betwixt his ill-managed army and fleet. The army charged the misfortune to the sheer negligence of the fleet, and the fleet only answered by loud clamours for pay, having, it appeared, received nothing the whole time.
Under these circumstances Buckingham displayed all the wavering confusion of mind which characterises an inefficient commander. One day he was ready to comply with the written requisition of the officers of the army to abandon the siege; the next, he determined to stay and assault the place. This state of miserable vacillation was terminated by the arrival of the earl of Holland on the 27th of October, with fifteen hundred men; and the Rochellais sending eight hundred more, it was resolved to make a general assault on the place. On the 6th of November this assault began, but the cannonade produced no effect on the adamantine works and solid walls of the fort; the slaughter of the troops on all sides was terrible, and the attempt was abandoned. Buckingham then wished himself safe on board his fleet; but unfortunately for him and his army, the marshal Schomberg had now posted himself with a strong force on the island betwixt him and his vessels. He had occupied and garrisoned Fort Prée, which Buckingham had so imprudently left in his rear, and compelled him now to defile his army along a narrow causeway across the marshes, connecting the small island of Oie with that of Rhé. Nothing could demonstrate more forcibly the utter incompetence of Buckingham for military command than thus suffering the enemy to land and lodge in the line of his retreat. Schomberg now attacked the defiling troops with his ordnance, and the cavalry in the rear. The cavalry was thrown into confusion, and the pressure and disorder on the causeway became frightful; the artillery played upon them with dreadful effect, and numbers were pushed off into the bordering bogs and salt pits and suffocated. The destruction soon amounted to twelve hundred men, and twenty pair of colours were taken. There was no want of courage exhibited by either Buckingham or his men. Courage, it has been well said, was the sole qualification for a general which he possessed; he was the last to leave the beach; and the men once off the causeway, turned resolutely and offered battle to Schomberg. But that prudent general was satisfied to let them go away, which they prepared to do, to the utter consternation of the people of Rochelle, who had risen on the strength of their promises, and were now exposed to a formidable army under the command of Gaston, duke of Orleans, and Schomberg.
A really good general, though he had suffered considerable loss, would still have thrown himself into Rochelle, and with the sea kept open by his fleet for supplies, might have yet done signal service in defence of the place. But Buckingham was no such general. He determined to withdraw, contemplating another enterprise equally impossible to him as the taking of the citadel of St. Martin. He had an idea of the glory and popularity of recovering Calais, and communicated this notable project to the king. Charles was charmed with the project, and as he had assured Buckingham that he had done wonders, and almost impossibilities on the island of Rhé, so he anticipated an equally splendid result: this in any other man except Charles, would have looked like bitter irony. In the eyes of the more sensible officers of the fleet and army, the notion of attempting the surprise of Calais with a reduced and defeated force, and such a general, was scouted as madness. Buckingham turned the prows of his fleet homewards, and arrived towards the end of November. The fleet and army were indignant at the disgraceful management of the campaign; the people at home were equally so at the waste of public money, and the ruin of national honour; but Charles received Buckingham with undiminished affection, and took to himself the blame of the failure of the expedition, because he had not been able to send sufficient reinforcements and provisions. But he was not long suffered to ran on without an impressive reminder of the consequences of this scandalously managed attempt. The people of Rochelle sent over envoys to represent to him their condition, in consequence of listening to his promises; the French were
