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Updated: June 2, 2025
Louis the Just fought the Rochellese in other fashion than that in which Henry the Great had fought the Parisians.
"Before taking any resolution," replied the Rochellese authorities to the entreaties of the duke, who was pressing them to lend assistance to the English, "we must consult the whole body of the religion of which La Rochelle is only one member."
Every day the list of deaths grew longer, and when people met in the streets they stared at each other with lean, white, hungry faces, wondering who would be the next to go. Still these heroic people had no thought of giving up. They were fighting for liberty, and they loved that more than life. The French were daily charging their works, but could not move the stubborn, starving Rochellese.
The Huguenots, on their side, yielded at the entreaties of the ambassadors who had been sent by the English to France, "with orders to beg the Rochellese to accept the peace which the king had offered them, and who omitted neither arguments nor threats in order to arrive at that conclusion; whence it came to pass that, by a course of conduct full of unwonted dexterity, the Huguenots were brought to consent to peace for fear of that with Spain, and the Spaniards to make peace for fear of that with the Huguenots.
The Rochellese immediately levied upon themselves an extraordinary tax, and put themselves in a state of defence; troops raised in the neighborhood went and occupied the heights bordering on the coast; and a bold Breton sailor, Bernard de Kercabin, put to sea to meet the enemy, with ships armed as privateers.
A little boat with an English captain on board found means of breaking the blockade; and "Open a passage," said the envoy to the Rochellese, "as you sent notice to us in England, and we will deliver you."
Out of about thirty thousand people only five thousand were left alive, and they were starving; of six hundred Englishmen who had stayed to help the Rochellese all were dead but sixty-two. Corpses lay thick in the streets, for the people were too weak, from fasting, even to bury their dead. The end had come.
When La Rochelle succumbed, Casale was still holding out; but the Duke of Savoy had already made himself master of the greater part of Montferrat; the Duke of Mantua claimed the assistance of the King of France, whose subject he was; here was a fresh battle-field against Spain; and scarcely had he been victorious over the Rochellese, when the king was on the march for Italy.
He demanded pardon for the Rochellese, freedom of conscience, and quarter for the English garrison in La Rochelle; the answer was, "that the Rochellese were subjectss of the king, who knew quite well what he had to do with them, and that the King of England had no right to interfere.
The demands of the Rochellese were more haughty than befitted their extreme case. The cardinal was amused at their impudence, he writes in his Memoires, and told them that they had no right to expect anything more than pardon, which, moreover, they did not deserve.
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