er
independence was threatened on all sides; the bastions and new
fortifications had to be demolished; no armed vessel of war might be
stationed in her harbor. "The way was at last open," said the cardinal,
"to the extermination of the Huguenot party, which, for a hundred years
past, had divided the kingdom." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iii.
p. 17.]

[Illustration: Demolishing the Fortifications----244]

The peace of 1626, then, was but a preliminary to war. Richelieu was
preparing for it by land and sea; vessels of war were being built, troops
were being levied; and the temper of England furnished a pretext for
commencing the struggle. King Charles I., at the instigation of his
favorite the Duke of Buckingham, had suddenly and unfeelingly dismissed
the French servants of the queen his wife, without giving her even time
to say good by to them, insomuch that "the poor princess, hearing their
voices in the court-yard, dashed to the window, and, breaking the glass
with her head, clung with her hands to the bars to show herself to her
women and take the last look at them. The king indignantly dragged her
back with so great an effort that he tore her hands right away." Louis
XIII. had sent Marshal Bassompierre to England to complain of the insult
done to his sister; the Duke of Buckingham wished to go in person to
France to arrange the difference, but the cardinal refused. "Has
Buckingham ever undertaken any foreign commission without going away
dissatisfied and offended with the princes to whom he was sent?" said
Cardinal Richelieu to the king. So the favorite of Charles I. resolved
to go to France "in other style and with other attendants than he had as
yet done; having determined to win back the good graces of the Parliament
and the people of England by the succor he was about to carry to the
oppressed Protestant churches," he pledged his property; he sold the
trading-vessels captured on the coasts of France; and on the 17th of
July, 1627, he set sail with a hundred and twenty vessels, heading for La
Rochelle. Soubise was on board his ship; and the Duke of Rohan, notified
of the enterprise, had promised to declare himself the moment the English
set foot in France. Already he was preparing his manifesto to the
churches, avowing that he had summoned the English to his legitimate
defence, and that, since the king had but lately been justified in
employing the arms of the Hollanders to defeat them, much more reaso