Siege of La Rochelle
Richelieu besieged the Huguenot city of La Rochelle for fourteen months and starved out four-fifths of its population. The city was the strongest of the places de sûreté granted to French Protestants by the Edict of Nantes in 1598 — fortified towns they garrisoned themselves, which amounted to a state within the state with its own army, taxes and foreign policy. Richelieu's objection was constitutional rather than theological. He was a cardinal who allied with Protestant powers abroad throughout, and what he would not accept was an armed corporation inside France that could treat with England. The war began when Buckingham landed an English force on the Île de Ré in 1627 in support of the Huguenots and was driven off with heavy losses. The siege that followed was an engineering operation. Some 12,000 troops built a line of circumvallation twelve kilometres long with redoubts, and then, because the city could be supplied by sea, a stone and timber dyke some 1,400 metres across the harbour mouth, designed by an architect and built in the tidal channel. Two English relief fleets could not get past it. The population fell from about 27,000 to 5,000, most of the deaths from starvation. The city surrendered in October 1628. The Peace of Alès the following year removed the Huguenots' military and political privileges entirely and left their freedom of worship intact, which stood until Louis XIV revoked it in 1685. The dyke is the part engineers still discuss. It was built across a tidal harbour mouth in winter, repeatedly damaged by storms and rebuilt, and it did what fortifications rarely do, which is defeat a naval power without a naval battle.
- Year: 1627 CE
- Category: Political
