The Cardinal had recognised, in arriving before La Rochelle, that it would be necessary for him to supervise everything himself, and that the obstacles which he would have to overcome were well-nigh as formidable in the Royal camp as in those of the enemy. The majority of the great nobles, by whom the Cardinal was feared and disliked, did not wish to see the Huguenot party completely crushed, foreseeing that, when this was accomplished, Richelieu would assuredly proceed to curtail their own power; and Bassompierre undoubtedly voiced their opinion when he exclaimed one day, laughing: “We shall be very foolish to take La Rochelle.” Bassompierre was too loyal a servant of the Crown not to do his duty as a soldier, whatever opinions he might hold; but there were others who were more logical, and already, during the siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, the conduct of more than one officer and more than one army-contractor had been distinctly suspicious. This ill-will would, unless effective means were taken to frustrate it, undoubtedly manifest itself on a much greater scale as time went on, and would not fail to take advantage of the least checks and the least sufferings to spread discouragement throughout the army. Richelieu faced the situation boldly and resolved to attack the evil at its root. He secured the good-will and confidence of the people of the surrounding country, and assured the provisioning of the camp, by an ordinance which forbade the soldiers, under pain of death, to take away the cattle of the peasants or to interfere with the work in the fields, and instituted a special commission to receive the complaints of the peasants against the military. He gained, at the same time, the affection of the soldiers by the solicitude which he showed for their welfare, arranging with the neighbouring towns for the supply of winter clothing for the whole army and directing that the men should receive their pay each week from the commissaries of the Treasury, instead of allowing the money to pass, as had hitherto been the custom, through the hands of the captains of companies, in which a good proportion of it invariably remained. Thus, the company-officers were no longer able to defraud the soldier of his pay or to deceive the Ministers or the generals as to the number of effectives who were serving under them; and, thanks to this precaution and the rigorous surveillance exercised over the treasurers and contractors, the army employed at the siege of La Rochelle, though larger than that which had besieged Montauban five years before, did not cost the State even half as much. Never had a French army taken the field in which the soldiers were better cared for or better disciplined; never had the country surrounding a beleaguered town been less harried and annoyed. The camp, in fact, was a pattern of all the military virtues, which Richelieu afterwards himself compared to a “well-ordered convent.” The comparison seems to have been justified by