Marshal Schomberg, thwarted by bad weather, had just rallied his troops which had been cast by the winds on different parts of the coast, when it was perceived that the enemy had sheered off.  M. De Toiras, issuing from his fortress to meet the marshal, would have pursued them at once to give them battle; but Schomberg refused, saying, “I ought to make them a bridge of gold rather than a barrier of iron;” and he contented himself with following the English, who retreated to a narrow causeway which led to the little Island of Oie.  There, a furious charge of French cavalry broke the ranks of the enemy, disorder spread amongst them, and when night came to put an end to the combat, forty flags remained in the hands of the king’s troops, and he sent them at once to Notre-Dame, by Claude de St. Simon, together with a quantity of prisoners, of whom the King made a present to his sister, the Queen of England.

“Such,” says the Duke of Rohan, in his Hemoires, “was the success of the Duke of Buckingham’s expedition, wherein he ruined the reputation of his nation and his own, consumed a portion of the provisions of the Rochellese, and reduced to despair the party for whose sake he had come to France.  The Duke of Rohan first learned this bad news by the bonfires which all the Roman Catholics lighted for it all through the countship of Foix, and, later on, by a despatch from the Duke of Soubise, who exhorted him not to lose courage, saying that he hoped to come back next spring in condition to efface the affront received.”  This latter prince had not covered himself with glory in the expedition.  “As recompense and consolation for all their losses,” says the cardinal, “they carried off Soubise to England.  He has not been mentioned all through this siege, because, whenever there was any question of negotiation, no one would apply to him, but only to Buckingham.  When there was nothing for it but to fight, he would not hear of it.  On the day the English made their descent, he was at La Rochelle; nobody knows where he was at the time of the assault, but he was one of the first and most forward in the rout.”

Soubise had already been pronounced guilty of high-treason by decree of the Parliament of Toulouse; but the Duke of Rohan had been degraded from his dignities, and “a title offered to those who would assassinate him, which created an inclination in three or four wretches to undertake it, who had but a rope or the wheel for recompense, it not being in any human power to prolong or shorten any man’s life without the permission of God.”  The Prince of Conde had been commissioned to fight the valiant chief of the Huguenots, “for that he was their sworn enemy,” says the cardinal.  In the eyes of fervent Catholics the name of Conde had many wrongs for which to obtain pardon.

The English were ignominiously defeated; the king was now confronted by none but his revolted subjects; he resolved to blockade the place at all points, so that it could not be entered by land or sea; and, to this end, he claimed from Spain the fleet which had been promised him, and which did not arrive.  “The whole difficulty of this enterprise,” said the cardinal to the king, “lies in this, that the majority will only labor therein in a perfunctory manner.”