The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [214]
Monsieur had his quarters at Dompierre.
The king had his quarters now at Etré, now at La Jarrie.
Finally, the cardinal had his quarters on the dunes, at the pont de La Pierre, in a simple house without any entrenchment.
In this way, Monsieur kept an eye on Bassompierre, the king on the duc d’Angoulême, and the cardinal on M. de Schomberg.
Once this organization was established, they set about driving the English from the Île de Ré.
The circumstances were favorable. The English, who above all had need of good provisions in order to be good soldiers, had been eating only salted meat and bad biscuits, and had many sick men in their camp. Moreover, the sea, very rough at that time of year on the whole Atlantic coast, brought some little boat to harm every day, and the beach, from the point of l’Aiguillon to the trenches, was literally covered, at each low tide, with the wreckage of pinnaces, luggers, and feluccas. As a result, even if the king’s men kept to their camp, it was obvious that one day or another Buckingham, who only stayed on the Île de Ré out of stubbornness, would be obliged to raise the siege.
But, as M. de Toiras announced that everything was being prepared in the enemy camp for a fresh assault, the king decided that it must be brought to an end and gave the necessary orders for a decisive engagement.
As it is not our intention to give a day-by-day account of the siege, but, on the contrary, to report only the events that have to do with the story we are telling, we shall content ourselves with saying in two words that the undertaking succeeded, to the great astonishment of the king and the great glory of M. le cardinal. The English, driven back foot by foot, beaten at every encounter, crushed in the passage of the Île de Loix,157 were obliged to re-embark, leaving two thousand men on the battlefield, among them five colonels, three lieutenant colonels, two hundred and fifty captains, and twenty gentlemen of quality, four cannon, and sixty banners that were taken to Paris by Claude de Saint-Simon158 and hung with great pomp from the vaults of Notre-Dame.
Te Deums were sung in camp, and from there spread throughout France.
The cardinal was thus left free to pursue the siege without having anything to fear from the English—at least for the moment.
But, as we have just said, the respite was only momentary.
An envoy from the duke of Buckingham by the name of Montaigu159 had been captured, and they had acquired proof of a league between the Empire, Spain, England, and Lorraine.
This league was directed against France.
Moreover, in Buckingham’s quarters, which he had been forced to abandon more precipitately than he had thought, they found papers confirming this league, and which, as M. le cardinal insists in his Memoirs,160 strongly compromised Mme de Chevreuse, and consequently the queen.
It was on the cardinal that all the responsibility weighed, for one is not an absolute minister without being responsible; and so all the resources of his vast genius were strained night and day, and taken up with listening to the least rumor that arose in one of the great kingdoms of Europe.
The cardinal was aware of Buckingham’s activity and above all of his hatred. If the league that threatened France triumphed, all his influence would be lost: Spanish policy and Austrian policy would have their representatives in the cabinet at the Louvre, where they now had only partisans; he, Richelieu, the French minister, the national minister par excellence, would be ruined. The king, who, while obeying him like a child, hated him as a child hates its schoolmaster, would abandon him to the combined vengeance of Monsieur and the queen. He would thus be lost, and perhaps France along with him. He had to guard against all that.
And so one saw his couriers, who became more numerous every moment, succeeding each other day and night in that little house at the pont de La Pierre where the cardinal had taken up his residence.
There were monks so