What happened at the Battle of Saint-Martin-de-Ré in 1622?
On 27 October 1622 the royal fleet of the Duke of Guise attacked the Huguenot fleet of La Rochelle, led by Jean Guiton, as it lay off Saint-Martin on the Île de Ré. The Rochellers sent fireships against Guise's flagship but failed to burn it, lost several ships and drew off. La Rochelle itself was not taken, and news of the Peace of Montpellier ended the campaign.1
The Île de Ré is a long, low island off La Rochelle on France's Atlantic coast, and Saint-Martin is its main town. In the autumn of 1622 the sheltered water between the island and the mainland became the stage for a sea fight between the king's fleet and the fleet of his most stubborn Protestant city.
Background: the Huguenot rebellion of 1621 to 1622
In December 1620 a general assembly of the Huguenots met at La Rochelle and divided France into eight military regions under noble commanders; Henri, Duke of Rohan, soon became the leader of the rising. Louis XIII answered with war. His army failed to take Montauban in 1621 and lifted the siege in November after heavy losses. In 1622 the king besieged Montpellier, where a truce was declared on 12 October after forty days of bombardment, and the Huguenots accepted the articles of peace on 18 October.2
La Rochelle was a Huguenot stronghold with its own fleet, and it had used it in the rebellion. Its admiral was Jean Guiton, whom the city gave command of its ships when the unrest returned.3
27 October: the battle off Saint-Martin
The royal fleet, commanded by Charles, Duke of Guise, reached the coast on 24 October and anchored at the entrance of the strait between the island and the mainland. On 27 October Guise attacked the Rochelle fleet, which lay at anchor in the open roadstead before the Île de Ré, below Saint-Martin. A print in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogued as the work of the engraver Stefano della Bella, is titled the naval combat of the Duke of Guise before La Rochelle, 1622.4
The size of the fleets is uncertain. A pamphlet printed in London in 1622, which openly takes the royal side, gives the Rochellers 70 ships. Jean-Louis Monnot, who dates the battle to 28 October and cites a letter written about a week later by Montolieu, captain of one of the royal galleys, counts 56 Rochelle ships with about 6,000 men against 70 royal ships with about 14,000.5
The fireships
The most dangerous moment came when the Rochellers set fire ships against Guise's flagship. According to the 1622 pamphlet, two vessels full of fireworks, chained together, were grappled to the admiral's ship and set its sails and rigging alight up to the masthead; the crew put the fire out in less than an hour. Monnot's account also has the flagship surrounded by fireships and freed first by two galleys and then by the galleons of the Levant squadron. Both accounts mention the great Galleon of Malta in danger and rescued.6
The Rochellers broke off while the flagship burned, and their fleet drew back. Guiton, in Monnot's account, withdrew to Saint-Martin with his damaged ships.7
Losses: whose numbers?
Every count of the losses comes from the royal side. The London pamphlet claims ten Rochelle ships sunk, more than 2,000 Rochellers killed or drowned and about 400 royal dead, and adds that twenty more Rochelle ships ran aground under the royal guns. Monnot gives lower figures: six ships and about 1,500 men lost by Guiton, about 2,000 killed or missing on both sides together, and no royal ship lost. The pamphlet's total is the kind of figure that victory reports inflate, and neither has been checked against a Rochelle record.8
Peace, and the siege that came later
Guise did not follow up. The pamphlet says he was preparing to land on the islands held by the Rochellers when a letter from the king announced peace and halted the expedition. La Rochelle accepted the Peace of Montpellier, which ended the first of these wars; the calm did not last long.9
The peace confirmed the Edict of Nantes but left the Huguenots weaker. Montpellier's walls were pulled down between November 1622 and November 1623, and only two Protestant strongholds remained: La Rochelle and Montauban. The Musée protestant notes that Guiton, who had fought Guise with great courage in 1622, was severely defeated three years later, in the sea fight off Ré of 15 September 1625; elected mayor of La Rochelle in 1628, in the middle of the Great Siege of 1627 to 1628, he led its defense until famine forced the city to surrender in late October 1628.10
