Yet it is but fair to admit that there was one storm which did not beat against Richelieu’s dike.  There set in against it no storm of hypocrisy from neighboring nations.  Keen works for and against Richelieu were put forth in his day,—­works calm and strong for and against him have been issuing from the presses of France and England and Germany ever since; but not one of the old school of keen writers or of the new school of calm writers is known to have ever hinted that this complete sealing of the only entrance to a leading European harbor was unjust to the world at large or unfair to the besieged themselves.

But all other obstacles Richelieu had to break through or cut through constantly.  He was his own engineer, general, admiral, prime-minister.  While he urged on the army to work upon the dike, he organized a French navy, and in due time brought it around to that coast and anchored it so as to guard the dike and to be guarded by it.

Yet, daring as all this work was, it was but the smallest part of his work.  Richelieu found that his officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and disheartening them; in face of the enemy he had to reorganize the army and to create a new military system.  He made the army twice as effective and supported it at two-thirds less cost than before.  It was his boast in his “Testament,” that, from a mob, the army became “like a well-ordered convent.”  He found also that his subordinates were plundering the surrounding country, and thus rendering it disaffected; he at once ordered that what had been taken should be paid for, and that persons trespassing thereafter should be severely punished.  He found also the great nobles who commanded in the army half-hearted and almost traitorous from sympathy with those of their own caste on the other side of the walls of La Rochelle, and from their fear of his increased power, should he gain a victory.  It was their common saying, that they were fools to help him do it.  But he saw the true point at once—­He placed in the most responsible positions of his army men who felt for his cause, whose hearts and souls were in it,—­men not of the Dalgetty stamp, but of the Cromwell stamp.  He found also, as he afterward said, that he had to conquer not only the Kings of England and Spain, but also the King of France.  At the most critical moment of the siege Louis deserted him,—­went back to Paris,—­allowed courtiers to fill him with suspicions.  Not only Richelieu’s place, but his life, was in danger, and he well knew it; yet he never left his dike and siege-works, but wrought on steadily until they were done; and then the King, of his own will, in very shame, broke away from his courtiers, and went back to his master.

And now a Royal Herald summoned the people of La Rochelle to surrender.  But they were not yet half conquered.  Even when they had seen two English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back from Richelieu’s dike, they still held out manfully.  The Duchess of Rohan, the Mayor Guiton, and the Minister Salbert, by noble sacrifices and burning words, kept the will of the besieged firm as steel.  They were reduced to feed on their horses,—­then on bits of filthy shell-fish,—­then on stewed leather.  They died in multitudes.