The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [205]
It was thus a question, for Richelieu, not only of ridding France of an enemy, but of revenging himself on a rival; moreover, the vengeance had to be great and terrible, and worthy in every way of a man who held the forces of an entire realm like a sword in his hand.
Richelieu knew that, in fighting England, he was fighting Buckingham; that in triumphing over England, he was triumphing over Buckingham; finally, that in humiliating England, he was humiliating Buckingham in the queen’s eyes.
Buckingham, for his part, while putting forward the honor of England, was moved by interests absolutely identical to the cardinal’s. Buckingham was also pursuing private vengeance. Under no pretext could Buckingham have returned to France as an ambassador; he would return, then, as a conqueror.
The result was that the real stake in this game, which the two most powerful kingdoms were playing for the good pleasure of two enamored men, was a mere glance from Anne d’Autriche.
The advantage had first gone to the duke of Buckingham. Arriving unexpectedly in sight of the Île de Ré with ninety vessels and some twenty thousand men, he had surprised the comte de Toiras,149 who commanded the island for the king. After a bloody battle, his landing had been effected.
Let us relate in passing that the baron de Chantal perished in this battle, leaving as an orphan a little girl eighteen months old.
This little girl was later Mme de Sévigné.150
The comte de Toiras withdrew to the Saint-Martin citadel with the garrison and threw a hundred men into a small fort known as the fort of La Prée.
This outcome had hastened the cardinal’s resolve, and while waiting until the king and he could come to take command of the siege of La Rochelle, which was decided on, he had sent Monsieur to direct the first operations, and had rushed all the troops he could dispose of to the theater of war.
Our friend d’Artagnan was part of this detachment sent as a vanguard.
The king, as we have said, was to follow as soon as he had held his bed of justice; but on getting up from this bed of justice on the twenty-eighth of June, he felt that he had caught a fever. He insisted on setting out nontheless, but, his condition having worsened, he was forced to stop at Villeroi.
Now, where the king stopped, the musketeers also stopped. The result was that d’Artagnan, who was purely and simply a guard, found himself separated, at least momentarily, from his good friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. This separation, which was only a vexation for him, would certainly have become a serious concern if he could have guessed what unknown dangers surrounded him.
He nonetheless reached the camp set up before La Rochelle without incident, towards the tenth of September of the year 1627.
Everything was in the same state: the duke of Buckingham and his Englishmen, masters of the Île de Ré, continued to besiege the citadel of Saint-Martin and the fort of La Prée, but without success, and the hostilities with La Rochelle had begun two or three days earlier over a fort that the duc d’Angoulême151 had just built near the town.
The guards, under the command of M. des Essarts, took quarters with the Minimes.152
But, as we know, d’Artagnan, preoccupied with the ambition of going over to the musketeers, had made few friends among his comrades. He thus found himself isolated and given over to his own reflections.
These reflections were hardly cheerful. For the year since his arrival in Paris, he had been embroiled in public affairs; his private affairs had not gone very far in terms of love and fortune.
In terms of love, the only woman he had loved was Mme Bonacieux, and Mme Bonacieux had disappeared without his being able to discover yet what had become of her.
In terms of fortune, he, puny as he was, had made an enemy of the cardinal, that is, of a man before whom the greatest