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 Rochelle, 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 Rochelle, and that he might do so with success.  Upon this, his Majesty resolved to push the siege of Rochelle 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.

[Illustration:  The Harbor of La Rochelle—–­248]

It was a bold enterprise that was about to be attempted to hold La Rochelle 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 assembled 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 Rochelle.