It is probable that Bassompierre would not have been nearly so ready to offer to undertake under the protection of a few hundred men a dangerous and important duty, for which ordinary prudence would have enjoined the employment of a very considerable force, had not Angoulême been present at the Council and the temptation to humiliate that prince proved too great to resist. He had reckoned, however, on his long experience of war to enable him to deceive an enemy who could possess little or no knowledge of the ruses of the battlefield, and he judged rightly. The spot where he proposed to construct his fort was flanked by two sunken roads, and at the head of each of these roads he erected a barricade, which he lined with troops, while the rest of his force he disposed in the space between them. The Rochellois sallied out to the number of 1,000 or 1,200 men, but, finding themselves confronted by several hundred soldiers, concluded that they formed but the advance-guard of a large force which lay concealed in the sunken roads behind the barricades, and did not venture to attack, contenting themselves with a cannonade, which did but little damage. Thus the resourceful Bassompierre was able to carry out the work entrusted to him with the loss of very few men, and was highly complimented by the King on his success. The lines of circumvallation were, however, of but secondary importance, for there was no serious attack to be feared from the Huguenots of the South. It was not the land but the sea which it was necessary to close at any price, for it was impossible to believe that the English, more exasperated than dejected by the reverse they had sustained, would not sooner or later make a vigorous effort to succour the metropolis of French Protestantism. They were, indeed, in honour bound to come to the assistance of the Rochellois, since it was they who had drawn them into revolt. In 1621 an Italian engineer had conceived a project of blocking the canal of La Rochelle; but the means which he proposed--an elaborated floating bar, an iron chain laid across vessels and rafts, and stretching from shore to shore--was found insufficient. However, at the end of November, another scheme was mooted. “_Saturday, the 27th_ [November],” writes Bassompierre, “two master masons or architects of Paris, the one named Méteseau, the other Tiriot,[110] came to propose to construct a mole of solid stone in the canal of La Rochelle, in order to close it. The Cardinal sent them to me, and I approved their project, which had already been proposed to the King by Beaulieu.”[111]