The siege of La Rochelle

The siege of La Rochelle, which was one of the most remarkable of the century, was already well advanced when Descartes arrived there.

It had been formed from the month of September of the previous year after the arrival of Gaston of France, whom the king had declared general of the army.

The king himself had gone there in the following October, to animate all things with his presence. The rest of the year had been spent building some forts around La Rochelle on the mainland; bringing the king’s naval army in front of the city; and laying the foundations of the famous dike in the bay’s canal, to prevent communication between the people of La Rochelle and the English, who had come to the aid of the rebels.

In February of the following year, the king had returned to Paris, having left the care of the siege and the entire army to Cardinal de Richelieu, whom he had made his lieutenant general under the pretext of the Duke of Orléans’s absence.

The king had returned to the siege in April, where he had found his camp more inconvenienced by diseases than by the sorties of the people of La Rochelle. The good order that Cardinal de Richelieu had put in the army, the fine order that was observed in the works of the siege, the obstinacy and the miseries of the besieged attracted from all sides a great number of curious people to see a spectacle that far surpassed those of Ostend and Breda for its singularity.

Descartes went to the Aunis region towards the end of August at the same time that the Count of Soissons arrived from his trip to Piedmont to greet the king; and one of the first pieces of news he learned at the camp was that of the death of the Duke of Buckingham, the English general who had just been assassinated by an Englishman named Felton.

He joined with some other gentlemen as a member of the nobility of Brittany and Poitou, whom the king had summoned to fight the English, who were believed to be appearing soon. After having seen the quarter of the king, that of Cardinal de Richelieu, and all that was most worthy of note in the disposition of the camp, he applied himself particularly to considering the works that had been made around the city, both on land and at sea.

He found above all enough to satisfy his curiosity by observing the forts and redoubts of the communication line and the construction of the dike.

The communication line surrounded the city of La Rochelle and kept it completely closed at a distance of half a league.

It was 3 leagues long, 8 feet wide and 6 feet deep.

The cavalry and infantry went under cover from the cannon of La Rochelle to the forts and redoubts by its means.

There were on this line twelve considerable forts and about eighteen redoubts. The forts were very regularly built, and almost all equal in strength and other advantages.

But Fort-Louis, commanded by Mr. de Toiras, was wider than the others, and accompanied by more bastions and half-moons. The dike completed the closure of the city on the canal that the communication line made on land. It had two forts at its ends, that of Tavannes and that of Marillac. It was in all one hundred and sixty paces, and it had a base of eighteen feet in width, ending in a platform with a five-foot slope. The greater part of this dike was of stones, and the rest was of bridges built on sunken ships and surrounded by piles and stones thrown in a slope to fortify these bridges.

The dike had an opening in the middle, making on each side of the opening a bend that advanced into the sea, where a cannon battery had been placed. Opposite the opening on the ocean side, a fort had been built on the water to prevent the English from entering, and on the other side of the opening, a floating palisade had been made inside the bay, composed of thirty-seven large ships attached to each other and turned bow towards the sea. Near the palisade were fifty-nine sunken ships, and a triangular wooden fort begun by Pompeo Targon, who was a famous engineer, nevertheless more capable of conceiving great plans than of executing them, according to the judgment that the Marquis of Spinola, who had come to see the siege of La Rochelle on his way from the Low Countries to return to Spain, made of him. Behind the dike towards the open sea, were the chandeliers of Mr. de Marillac.

These were long wooden machines sunk and tied with a large frame on top: they were arranged in the form of a hedge along the dike at the distance of the fort that had been built in front of the opening.

Then were seen the machines of Mr. Du Plessis-Besançon arranged in parallel with the chandeliers of Mr. de Marillac: and these machines were covered with a half-moon of twenty-four ships arranged in a triangle or a chevron, whose point looked towards the ocean.

This is what Mr. Descartes was curious to note, like an infinite number of other people whom this spectacle had attracted to the siege of La Rochelle.

He was not content to feed his eyes on it: he also procured the pleasure of talking about it with the engineers, and particularly with his friend Mr. Des Argues, who had had some part in all these plans, and who was considered by Cardinal de Richelieu for the great knowledge he had of mechanics.

The purpose of the siege was not to take the city by assault, but to reduce it to the necessity of surrendering; in which the king had done the honor of telling the Marquis of Spinola that he wanted to imitate the conduct that this great captain had held at the siege of Breda. Whatever lengths this manner might produce, Mr. Descartes could not resolve to leave the camp before the surrender of the city. The besieged had already been reduced for several days to living only on boiled leather with tallow, bread made from thistle roots, snails, and insects that they could dig up. These miseries had attracted still others completely unheard of, against which even the women had always been obstinate, until the presence of death made them resolve to have recourse to the king’s mercy. Their deputies went on Sunday, September 10, to throw themselves at his feet on the dike, and to ask him for the pardon that this good prince granted them with an ease of which they abused the very next day by a treachery that was supported by the hope of the aid of the English.

In fact, this aid, which consisted of a naval army of 40 ships led by the Count of Denbigh, accompanied by Mr. de Soubise and the Count of Laval, appeared in front of Saint Martin de Ré on Friday, September 29. The king immediately summoned the volunteers whom the curiosity to see the country had scattered from the army; and he himself went to recognize the enemy at the village of Laleu. The volunteers, especially the gentlemen, went with ardor to the king with the intention of signaling their zeal. The number was so great that they were obliged to separate them into three brigades, the first of which was commanded by the Count of Harcourt, the second by the Count of La Rochefoucauld, and the third by the Marquis of Nesle. Thus, Monsieur Descartes, who believed when leaving Paris that he was only going to the siege of La Rochelle as a traveler, found himself engaged again in the service, following the example of the other gentlemen of his kind, who had come like him without the intention of using their sword. This is perhaps the only occasion that can help in the justification of what Mr. Borel advanced concerning this trip of Mr. Descartes, when he claimed that he had not been simply a spectator of the siege of the city, but that he had performed military functions there as a volunteer.

Descartes found himself in the king’s quarter by this glorious engagement.

• He had the leisure to consider the vigilance and care that this prince took in arranging his army himself by sea and by land.

On Tuesday, October 3, the English were beaten and withdrew with loss.

It finished the despair of the people of La Rochelle, who had uselessly used their artillery in these 2 fights.

The English obtained from the king a cessation of arms for fifteen days, during which Lord Montagu came with a safe-conduct to greet the king on behalf of the King of England, from whom he had orders to make proposals for peace. With the help of this cessation, many English lords came to see the army of France and the works of the dike and the communication line; and several French gentlemen, among whom was Mr. Descartes, went in turn to visit the English fleet.

The people of La Rochelle who were in the English army, no longer seeing any resource in their affairs, sent deputies to the king to ask for his grace: and the very next day, which was Friday, October 27, the besieged without knowing the step of their compatriots from outside, also sent deputies to implore the mercy of the king, which was granted to them with a goodness that confounded them and that surprised the whole earth. The treaty of the reduction of the city was concluded on the day of Saints Simon and Jude; and the next day Marshal de Bassompierre led the deputies who were to prostrate themselves at the feet of the king, and ask for pardon in the name of the whole city: which they did after having been presented by Cardinal de Richelieu. The entry of the troops into the city was set for the three following days.

No more frightful spectacle had been seen since the sack of the city of Jerusalem. There was no soldier who was not seized with horror and at the same time touched with compassion, when they saw in the city, not ordinary men, but moving skeletons who threw themselves on the bread with an impetuosity that raised the heart and tore tears from the most insensitive. Police regulations were needed to prevent the avidity to eat from killing the few people who had been able to resist the famine and the other calamities of the siege. On All Saints’ Day, mass was celebrated solemnly in the church of the priests of the Oratory whom they had reestablished the day before. Cardinal de Richelieu wanted to say the first mass, and the Archbishop of Bordeaux said the second. The king made his entry in the afternoon without much pomp; and there was no more remarkable ceremony than that of the inhabitants who came out of the city in front of him two by two, and prostrated themselves with bare heads in the mud when he passed. The Te Deum was then sung by the whole court and the army; and the sermon was given by Father Suffren. The solemn procession of the Holy Sacrament through the streets of the city was postponed to Friday, November 3 because of the service for the dead, the commemoration of which fell on Thursday. Mr. Descartes, having nothing more to see in the Aunis region after the completion of this famous expedition, returned by post to Paris, where he found himself for Saint Martin’s Day.