Siege of La Rochelle (1627-1628)

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Siege of La Rochelle
Sieges of Huguenot cities in the 16th and 17th centuries

The siege of La Rochelle by troops of the French King Louis XIII. began on August 4, 1627 and ended on October 28, 1628 with the surrender of the Huguenot- inhabited city.

background

In the 16th century, the Reformation radiated into France in the form of a Calvinist doctrine of faith. Especially in the southwest of the French kingdom, many people adopted the new faith and were henceforth referred to as Huguenots. Several French noble families converted to Protestantism , which exacerbated the conflicts with the crown. In 1562, the first of eight Huguenot Wars broke out, in which La Rochelle was also fought.

The city ​​of La Rochelle, located on the Bay of Biscay , was one of the most important bases of the Huguenots. The Venetian engineer Scipione Vergano was in 1569 the medieval walls of the city with modern bastions expand and ramparts, which La Rochelle one of the strongest fortresses became the Huguenots. On February 11, 1573 an army began under King Charles IX. with the siege of La Rochelle , which was ended by negotiations on July 6th of the same year. The royal troops had fired 34,000 cannonballs on the city and made eight unsuccessful assault attacks. In total, over 20,000 besiegers were killed or wounded. Since then, La Rochelle has been considered almost impregnable.

The wars came to an end under King Henry IV . Henry IV was a Huguenot himself, but in 1593 he accepted the Catholic faith. With the Edict of Nantes (1598) he guaranteed the Huguenots political and religious privileges and granted them several security posts in which they were allowed to maintain their own garrisons at state expense . After Heinrich's murder in 1610, his son was named Ludwig XIII. crowned king of France. Ludwig's absolutist efforts were directed against the special rights of the Huguenots, among other things, which provoked their resistance. In 1621 the Huguenots rose up, whereupon Ludwig XIII. went on a campaign against them. He failed in the conquest of Montauban and Montpellier and had to confirm the Edict of Nantes on October 10, 1622. The fortifications of La Rochelle and Montauban were allowed to be retained.

Benjamin de Rohan , Seigneur de Soubise, 17th century engraving
La Rochelle and environs, 1621, engraving by Jean Le Clerc

In 1624 Cardinal Richelieu became the new leading minister under Louis XIII. appointed. Richelieu stood up for the complete abolition of the special political rights of the Huguenots and exercised a great influence on King Ludwig. Ludwig tightened his policy against the Huguenots, which again led to uprisings. Under Benjamin de Rohan , the Huguenots raised troops in the province of Poitou in January 1625 . These occupied the Île de Ré west of La Rochelle and from there crossed to Oléron , where they defeated the royal garrison. Benjamin's older brother Henri II. De Rohan had meanwhile begun raising troops in Languedoc . In this situation the Huguenots made demands on the king. Louis XIII agreed to confirm the Edict of Nantes, but demanded in return that the fortifications of La Rochelle be limited to the medieval wall and the appointment of a royal administrator as the highest authority in the city. The Rohans refused and sought foreign assistance.

Benjamin de Rohan went to Protestant England to seek military aid there. He contacted the Duke of Buckingham George Villiers on that with the English king I. Karl was friends. Villiers had a fleet of 5000 men manned and went with Benjamin to La Rochelle. When they arrived outside the city on July 25, 1627, Villiers initially decided to attack the Île de Ré, which had already been occupied by royal troops. The English soldiers went ashore in the east of the island and repulsed an attack by the French, who then withdrew to the Fort de la Prée in La Flotte and Saint-Martin-de-Ré . Villiers had the fort besieged, while the residents of La Rochelle disagreed about how to behave towards the English.

course

Siege of La Rochelle by the troops of Louis XIII, Claude Lorrain

On August 4th, a royal army of 11,000 men under the command of the Duke of Angoulême arrived at La Rochelle. Angoulême suggested surrender to the city's residents, which sparked heated discussions. The royal troops were initially peaceful, but on September 10th they began to expand Fort St. Louis, west of La Rochelle. The Huguenots saw this as a provocation and took the fort under cannon fire. The royal troops returned fire. Angoulême now had a ring of field fortifications built around the city and prepared its soldiers for a lengthy siege battle. In La Rochelle every adult male was called to defend the city. Mayor Jean Guiton and Benjamin de Rohan took over the command.

On October 7th, the crews of 46 royal transport ships managed to go ashore on the Île de Ré and supply the crew of Fort St. Martin with food and ammunition. The governor of the island and commander-in-chief of the French troops, Jean de Saint-Bonnet, Marquis de Toiras had already considered capitulating because of a lack of food. On October 12, Louis XIII met. with new troops in front of La Rochelle. The royal army had now grown to a strength of over 20,000 soldiers. On November 7, Villiers ordered an assault on Fort St. Martin, which only led to the conquest of the outer wall. Villiers then planned to retreat to England, but in the night of October 8, 4,000 French soldiers crossed over to the Île de Ré and attacked the English in the morning. The fort's crew took advantage of this to attack Villiers' troops, among whom a bloodbath was wrought. Villiers was one of the few who managed to escape on a ship. He lost about 1,000 men, including half of his officers.

During the winter, Louis XIII. use other associations until the siege army in January 1628 comprised over 30,000 soldiers. Although several months had passed since the beginning of the siege, the defenders of La Rochelle had sufficient food and ammunition as they were being supplied by English ships by sea. The besiegers therefore began to build a dike in the bay of La Rochelle, with which the city should be completely cut off from the outside world. Cannons were posted on the dike and used against enemy ships. The royal side learned from a deserter that an unguarded entrance led into the city. Cardinal Richelieu set out on the night of March 13th with 5,000 soldiers to storm La Rochelle in this way. However, his scouts got lost in the marshland north of the city and only discovered the unprotected entrance in the morning. The Huguenots were alerted by the presence of numerous opponents and closed the gap in their fortifications.

“The Surrender of La Rochelle”, 17th century painting

The sea blockade was already having an effect in the spring of 1628. A famine broke out in La Rochelle, killing hundreds of people every day. The number of defectors increased while attacks were carried out on members of the city council. On some days over half of a company that had taken over the night watch on a wall was found dead. Even grass and shoe soles were consumed by the Huguenots. The inhabitants of the city could no longer count on the arrival of a relief army under Henri de Rohan. By October 12th, several English fleets arrived in front of the city, all of which were turned away by the king's troops. On October 27th, Mayor Jean Guiton opened negotiations with the besiegers. The city capitulated the next day, October 28th. Louis XIII and Richelieu and their troops marched into the city on October 30th. Guiton was banished from France, while Benjamin de Rohan managed to escape to England.

result

Before the siege, La Rochelle had about 28,000 inhabitants. 8,000 to 15,000 residents starved to death. Only about 6,000 people survived the siege. Louis XIII had spent the enormous sum of 40 million livres on the siege . The fortifications of La Rochelle were razed after the city was taken. The city's archives were taken to the Chambre des comptes in Paris, where they burned in 1735.

The Huguenots ceased to be a military power factor, but their previous religious freedoms were confirmed in the 1629 edict of grace of Alès . This stabilized the domestic political situation so that the French crown could concentrate on a power politics directed primarily against Habsburg . Under Louis XIV , the religious freedoms of the Huguenots were abolished in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau . Several hundred thousand Huguenots fled France.

See also

Web links

Commons : Siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f George William Kitchin (1827-1912): A history of France . 4th edition. tape 3 . Clarendon press, Oxford 1903, pp. 16–30 (English, online ).
  2. ↑ a b c d Dietmar Pieper, Johannes Saltzwedel : The Thirty Years War: Europe in the struggle for faith and power, 1618–1648 . DVA, 2012, ISBN 978-3-641-07931-4 , pp. 152 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ A b Ronald H. Fritze, William B. Robison: Historical dictionary of Stuart England, 1603-1689 . Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, ISBN 0-313-28391-5 , pp. 203 f . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ↑ a b c d e Hans Heinr Vögeli: History of the European State System from the Age of Reformation to the First French Revolution: 1st Abthl. From the age of the Reformation to the autocracy of Louis XIV (1519–1661) . Meyer et al. Zeller, Zurich 1856, p. 515-523 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Maxime Petit: Histoire de France illustrée . De 1610 à nos jours. tape 2 . Larousse, Paris 1909, p. 7–9 (French, online ).
  6. ↑ Le siège de La Rochelle d'après les Mémoires du cardinal de Richelieu ( Memento of February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
  7. ↑ Huguenots . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 8, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 770.
  8. ↑ a b Fernand Mourret: Histoire générale de l'Église. L'ancien régime (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles) . 2nd Edition. Bloud et Gay, Paris 1931, p. 291 (French, online ).
  9. ↑ Frank Tallett: War and Society in Early Modern Europe: from 1495 to 1715 . Psychology Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-203-41124-7 , pp. 170 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ^ Louis-Marie Meschinet de Richemond (1839–1911): Les Rochelais à travers les siècles . Jouve & Cie, Paris 1910, p. 6th f . (French, online ).