to have ever hinted that this complete sealing of
the only entrance to a leading European harbor was unjust to the world
at large or unfair to the besieged themselves.

But all other obstacles Richelieu had to break through or cut through
constantly. He was his own engineer, general, admiral, prime minister.
While he urged on the army to work upon the dike, he organized a French
navy, and in due time brought it around to that coast and anchored it so
as to guard the dike and to be guarded by it. Yet daring as all this
work was, it was but the smallest part of his work. Richelieu found that
his officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and disheartening
them; in the face of the enemy he had to reorganize the army and to
create a new military system. He made the army twice as effective and
supported it at two-thirds less cost than before. It was his boast in
his _Testament_ that, from a mob, the army became "like a well-ordered
convent."

He found also that his subordinates were plundering the surrounding
country, and thus rendering it disaffected; he at once ordered that what
had been taken should be paid for, and that persons trespassing
thereafter should be severely punished. He found also the great nobles
who commanded in the army half-hearted and almost traitorous from
sympathy with those of their own caste on the other side of the walls
of La Rochelle, and from their fear of his increased power should he
gain a victory. It was their common saying that they were fools to help
him do it. But he saw the true point at once. He placed in the most
responsible positions of his army men who felt for their cause, whose
hearts and souls were in it--men not of the Dalgetty stamp, but of the
Cromwell stamp. He found also--as he afterward said--that he had to
conquer not only the kings of England and Spain, but also the King of
France. At the most critical moment of the siege Louis defeated him,
went back to Paris, allowed courtiers to fill him with suspicions. Not
only Richelieu's place, but his life, was in danger, and he well knew
it; yet he never left his dike and siege-works, but wrought on steadily
until they were done; and then the King, of his own will, in very shame
broke away from his courtiers and went back to his master.

And now a royal herald summoned the people of La Rochelle to surrender.
But they were not yet half conquered. Even when they had seen two
English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back from