p to
Oleron, leaving for "pledge his sword and his hat, which dropped off in
his flight." Nor was the naval fight more advantageous for Soubise.
"The battle was fierce, but the enemy had the worst," says Richelieu in
his Memoires: "night coming on was favorable to their designs;
nevertheless, they were so hotly pursued, that on the morrow, at
daybreak, eight of their vessels were taken." Soubise sailed away to
England with the rest of his fleet, and the Island of Oleron surrendered.

The moment seemed to have come for crushing La Rochelle, deprived of the
naval forces that protected it; but the cardinal, still at grips with
Spain in the Valteline, was not sure of his allies before La Rochelle.
In Holland all the churches echoed with reproaches hurled by the
preachers against states that gave help against their own brethren to
Catholics; at Amsterdam the mob had besieged the house of Admiral
Haustein; and the Dutch fleet had to be recalled. The English
Protestants were not less zealous; the Duke of Soubise had been welcomed
with enthusiasm, and, though Charles I., now King of England and married,
had refused to admit the fugitive to his presence, he would not restore
to Louis XIII. the vessels, captured from that king and his subjects,
which Soubise had brought over to Portsmouth.

The game was not yet safe; and Richelieu did not allow himself to be led
astray by the anger of fanatics who dubbed him State Cardinal. "The
cardinal alone, to whom God gave the blessedness of serving the king and
restoring to his kingdom its ancient lustre, and to his person the power
and authority meet for royal Majesty which is the next Majesty after the
divine, saw in his mind the means of undoing all those tangles, clearing
away all those mists, and emerging to the honor of his master from all
those confusions." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 2.]

Marshal Bassompierre was returning from his embassy to Switzerland,
having secured the alliance of the Thirteen Cantons in the affair of the
Valteline, when it was noised abroad that peace with Spain was signed.
Count du Fargis, it was said, had, in an excess of zeal, taken upon
himself to conclude without waiting for orders from Paris. Bassompierre
was preparing a grand speech against this unexpected peace, but during
the night he reflected that the cardinal had perhaps been not so much
astonished as he would have made out. "I gave up my speech," says he,
"and betook myself to my