If we consider the embarrassment in which Charles I had been involved by his conduct of the war, we are tempted to assume that, in order to extricate himself from it, he must have opened negotiations with the two great powers with which he was at war whilst they were still at variance with one another. This however was not the case. Negotiations with France were opened at the instigation of the powers combined to resist Spain, between which an agreement had first been set on foot by James I, and had been renewed by Buckingham. Those powers regarded the breach between England and France as a misfortune, which they must endeavour to obviate if they would carry on the war against Austria and Spain with full vigour. The Republic of Venice, which felt itself most seriously threatened by these powers, made a great point of promoting a reconciliation between France and England by the agency of its ambassadors. A few days before his unhappy end, Buckingham withdrew with the Venetian ambassador, Aluise Contarini, into a retired chamber in one of his country-houses, and there concerted with him a letter of pacific import to his brother envoy in France, for him to communicate to the French court[1]. While Buckingham was preparing to strike a blow, he still hoped to procure from France tolerable conditions for the [A.D. 1629.] besieged town of Rochelle. All other difficulties he thought might then be removed in a couple of hours. But Buckingham was assassinated. When the Venetians after this event brought their negotiations before the King, who as yet knew nothing about them, he even refused to hear them. He quite recognised the necessity of finding some arrangement: ‘I acknowledge all that,’ he said one day to the ambassador; ‘but,’ he added, ‘I have arms in my hands, not to negotiate, but to save the town. My honour is at stake[2].’ Though Rochelle, as we have seen, failed to hold out, the result cannot be ascribed to King Charles. After Lindsay’s attempt to break through the mole had proved unsuccessful--we do not quite know whether on account of the superiority of the French, or from the above-mentioned deficiencies on the side of the English--Charles I gave orders to renew the attempt again, without any regard to the danger to his ships, and not to retire from the town whatever might be the cost[3]. On this the council of war had in fact resolved to lead the ships against the palisades by a way hitherto untried, when the town, despairing of help and overpowered by unendurable hardships, capitulated.