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 Duchess 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 Rochelle, 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 Rochelle.  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 God gave the blessedness of serving the king and restoring to his kingdom its ancient lustre, 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.]