Loftus Who's There?

Travels in Place and Time
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-914198-81-6
Verlag: Daunt Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

I have invented nothing, but memory weaves its own histories. These are travel stories, ranging in place and time. Some are memories of a re-imagined past, others more personal. From the first recorded performance of Hamlet (off the coast of Africa, in 1607) via the strange foundations on which probability theory was built and the forthright epitaphs of Suffolk gravestones, these explorations expand to include the pursuit of wine, a glittering dusk on the beach of Essaouira, the simit vendors of Istanbul, an elegy for Palmyra. And much more. Vividly evocative, this collection is a coda to Simon's acclaimed Pike in the Basement, shaped by time and experience.

After a happily misspent youth (backpacking around the world, stilt walking, sawing ladies in half Simon Loftus achieved a measure of respectability as wine merchant, restaurateur and Chairman of a brewery. He is the author of Anatomy of the Wine Trade, A Pike in the Basement: Tales of a Hungry Traveller, The Invention of Memory: An Irish Family Scrapbook, and An Illustrated History of Southwold. Puligny-Montrachet was awarded the 1993 Glenfiddich Award for Wine Book of the Year.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Loftus, Simon

Leseproben

Death on the Island

I arrived in La Rochelle in the midst of a howling storm, which rattled the windows so violently that all the shutters were closed, making it impossible to see the waves churning over the black rocks below the hotel. Somewhere in that turmoil of wind and water lay the stump of a stone groyne, which is all that now remains of Cardinal Richelieu’s famous digue – the extraordinary fortified barricade that he built across the bay during the siege of 1627.

La Rochelle then was the last great Huguenot stronghold in France – a rich and proudly independent city that Richelieu was determined to subdue, as he destroyed the remnants of political and religious nonconformity on behalf of his most Catholic Majesty, Louis XIII. Thus it was that the relief of La Rochelle became, for Protestant Englishmen, a cause for righteous war – combining religious solidarity, hatred of the French and the opportunity to seize control of a key Atlantic port – but the expedition which resulted was a disaster and thousands of British soldiers perished on the Ile de Ré, a couple of miles off the coast. One of those who died was my ancestor Dudley Loftus, grandson of Adam, the great Archbishop of Dublin.

So the next day, when it was calm, I went exploring. I walked along the ramparts of the old town, peered into courtyards, squinted through the cracks of shutters and browsed in the bookshops for all I could find about the siege of La Rochelle, and the Duke of Buckingham’s expedition to relieve it. In one of these I discovered my first treasure, the reprint of a contemporary journal written by a Huguenot member of the town council, markedly sympathetic to the English forces. The book fell open at an entry for 13 September 1627: ‘On the said day was brought the certain news that two thousand five hundred Englishmen coming from Ireland had arrived to help the English.’

I also discovered a vast contemporary map of the campaign engraved by Jacques Callot, hanging in the gloomy hall of the local museum. It showed in astonishing detail the course of events on the Ile de Ré, including the terrible retreat across the salt marshes, when so many men were killed. It showed the French troops herding their enemies into a narrow defile closed by a blocked bridge, where most of the Irishmen died.

Ré lies a couple of miles off the Atlantic coast of France, just north of La Rochelle. It is in a sense a man-made island, formed by the draining and dyking of flooded marshes to join the limestone islets of Ars, Loix and Ré itself; a process of reclamation which began with the arrival of Cistercian monks, in the twelfth century. It was the monks who planted vineyards on the island and banked the marshes to make salt pans, laying the foundations of Ré’s economy. Wine and salt brought traders from the nearby mainland and merchants who made long sea voyages to the tiny harbours of Ré from England, the Netherlands and Spain; but the inhabitants of this low, windswept place were themselves indifferent seamen, clinging to the coast rather than daring the deeps of the ocean. They harvested sart (seaweed and other wrack), which they scraped from the shore with huge rakes, and gathered shellfish and shrimps from the rocky platin when the tide was low. The profits from wine and salt enriched the noble landowners (and the middlemen) but most of them lived on the mainland. For the poorest islanders, particularly those who inhabited the bleak marshes of Loix, life was hard. During the worst of the winter storms they lived on a monotonous diet of dried cuttlefish.

Then, when spring arrived, the marshes became perfect breeding grounds for all the biting insects; so much so that the islanders evolved particular forms of clothing to protect themselves and their livestock from the vicious mosquitoes. They dressed their donkeys in trousers and their women wore the quichenotte, a long bonnet supposedly designed to shade them from the sun (or from the amorous embraces of the English – quichenotte is believed by some to be a corruption of ‘kiss not’); but more probably to guard against the insects. And mosquitoes meant malaria – for the ‘ague’ was endemic on Ré, as in much of the rest of Europe, until the beginning of the twentieth century.

More grievous than any of these adversities were the horrors of war, as Ré became a battleground in the constant struggles between the French and the English, and changed hands more times than anyone could remember, to the ruin of all who lived there. It was not the insignificant place itself that anyone cared about, but its position as a base from which to attack or defend the real prize, La Rochelle.

Thus it was that in July 1627 a vast English fleet arrived off the coast of Ré, led by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

Buckingham had risen to power and fortune because he was beautiful. As a young man he caught the eye of King James and replaced a succession of previous favourites as the King’s lover; ‘your most humble slave and servant and dog Steenie’. The King, for his part, addressed Buckingham as ‘my sweet child and wife’. After James’s death, in 1625, Buckingham retained the passionate adoration of the late King’s son, Charles I.

Unlike most favourites, Buckingham proved moderately effective at reforming some of the worst corruptions of government while furthering his own interests, but vanity led him to inveigle his royal masters into a series of diplomatic and military disasters. In 1623 he led Prince Charles on a flamboyant visit to the most ritualised court in Europe, to woo ‘the King of Spain’s daughter’ with pretty gifts – only to have their advances scornfully spurned. Buckingham’s petulant revenge was to lead a huge expedition to Cádiz, hoping to repeat Drake’s exploits and ‘singe the King of Spain’s beard’. It was a shambles. So then, in order ‘to extinguish the ignominy of the former service of Cales’, Buckingham decided to attack France.

He assembled an armada of ninety ships, 3,000 sailors and an army of 6,000 men, together with their artillery and all the provisions of war. Appearances were deceptive, for the English navy was in such a poor state that only ten of the ships were Royal vessels and the rest were merchantmen, reluctantly pressed into service. More serious was the morale of the troops, many of whom had served under Buckingham in the disastrous expedition to Cádiz, eighteen months earlier. Few of the professional military commanders had any faith in their impetuous leader, and it was widely believed that the Duke himself was loth to set sail, ‘fearing some miserable death’, or was reluctant to be ‘estranged from his effeminate pleasures here at home’.

I am quoting from an extraordinary account of these events that was written by Colonel William Fleetwood, ‘an unfortunate Commander in that untoward service’. Fleetwood’s Unhappy View of the Whole Behaviour of my Lord Duke of Buckingham, at the French Island, called the Isle of Rhee is a very different version than that conveyed in the official reports to the Privy Council (which hid the shameful failures and embellished minor successes), or subsequent rewritings of history by Buckingham’s supporters. This vitriolic pamphlet echoes contemporary French accounts and seems to reflect the view of the troops. Coloured by rumour and written in rage, it has the ring of truth.

Right from the start, if Fleetwood is believed, Buckingham dithered when he should have been resolute, to disastrous effect. On the voyage to Ré he scattered his leaky fleet in futile pursuit of a few merchantmen from Dunkirk, and on arrival at the island he found the enemy well prepared. The first contingents to disembark were taken unawares ‘by some Troops of French Horsemen’ and badly decimated. It was not until three days later that Buckingham himself and the main body of the English army landed on Ré, by which time the French were ensconced behind the thick walls of their recently built citadel at St Martin, which was ‘well Victualled for a lingring Siege’.

They were led by the Marquis de Toiras, a Catholic of fierce resolution, and the English could do little except dig trenches and try to prevent supplies from reaching the fort by sea. Both sides fired spasmodic cannonades, during one of which a freak shot from the citadel flew straight into the mouth of one of the siege guns, exploding it on impact. Buckingham grew impatient with such inconclusive warfare, sent endless messages back to England demanding reinforcements and quarrelled with his officers. By August it was being reported back to Secretary Conway that Councils of War were all but abandoned, ‘because the Duke finds them other than he expected or because in this state of affairs there is little use for them. His Excellency is of Lord Conway’s disposition, to do all his business on the spur.’ Professional commanders such as Sir John Burrrows understood that laying siege to a modern fortress was all about patient vigilance, but were frequently overruled by Buckingham; and Fleetwood claims that the troops came close to mutiny. A few French sloops managed to slip through the English fleet, bringing food to the besieged citadel and taking away some of the most severely...