[Illustration:  The King and Richelieu at La Rochelle——­250]

Before long the English could not harbor a doubt but that the king’s army had recovered its real heads:  a grand expedition was preparing to attack them in the Island of Re, and the cardinal had gone in person to Oleron and to Le Brouage in order to see to the embarkation of the troops.  “The nobility of the court came up in crowds to take leave of his Majesty, and their looks were so gay that it must be allowed that to no nation but the French is it given to march so freely to death for the service of their king or for their own honor as to make it impossible to remark any difference between him that inflicts it and him that receives.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 398.] Marshal Schomberg took the road to Marennes, whence he sent to the cardinal for boats to carry over all his troops.  “This took him greatly by surprise, and as his judgments are always followed by the effect he intended, he thought that this great following of nobility might hinder the said sir marshal from executing his design so promptly.  However, by showing admirable diligence, doubling both his vessels and his provisions, he found sufficient to embark the whole.” [Siege de La Rochelle.  Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France, t. iii. p. 76.] By this time the king’s troops, in considerable numbers, had arrived in the island without the English being able to prevent their disembarkation; the enemy therefore took the resolution of setting sail, in spite of the entreaties which the Duke of Soubise sent them on the part of the Rochellese, those latter promising great assistance in men and provisions, more than they could afford.  To satisfy them, the Duke of Buckingham determined to deliver a general assault before he departed.

The assault was delivered on the 5th and 6th of November, and everywhere repulsed, exhausted as the besieged were.  “Those who were sick and laid up in their huts appeared on the bastions.  There were some of them so weak that, unable to fight, they loaded their comrades’ muskets; and others, having fought beyond their strength, being able to do no more, said to their comrades, ’Friend, here are my arms for thee; prithee, make my grave;’ and, thither retiring, there they died.”  The Duke of Buckingham wrote to M. de Fiesque, who was holding Fort La Pree, that he was going to embark, without waiting for any more men to make their descent upon the island; but the king, who trusted not his enemies, and least of all the English, from whom, even when friends, he had received so many proofs of faithlessness and falsehood, besides that he knew Buckingham for a man who, from not having the force of character to decide on such an occasion, did not know whether to fight or to fly, continued in his first determination to transport promptly all those who remained, in order to encounter the enemy on land, fight them, and make them for the future quake with fear if it were proposed to them to try another descent upon his dominions.