We have a journal written by one of the besieged, Pierre Méruault, son of the chief of the artillery of the garrison. He relates the sufferings of the inhabitants with minuteness. As the mole gradually rose before the port, the dearth increased. It became horrible from the month of June, 1628. From two to three hundred persons died every day. The famished had acquired so sad an experience of this kind of death, that they could foresee the very hour, and moment, when they would cease to live, and give directions for their own burial. They were driven, in this extreme distress, to send bands of children, women, and old men, from the town. Louis XIII. was not so generous as his father, Henry IV., at the siege of Paris. He ordered their repulse without pity, and even caused his soldiers to fire against some of these poor creatures, who stopped to pluck roots and herbs upon the glacis, or to gather shell-fish left by the ebbing of the tide. He commanded, also, that some crops of beans, which the besieged had grown at the foot of their counterscarps, should be destroyed. Many of the fugitives, urged by the inexorable voice of hunger, continuing to present themselves at the royal camp, gallows were erected for their summary execution; and when they came in too great numbers, lots were drawn for those who were to undergo this punishment. Others, despoiled of their clothes, were beaten and hunted out by the soldiers with rods and leathern thongs. The desire was, by sending them back into the town, that there might be more people to press upon the scanty stores. Where were the co-religionists of the inhabitants of La Rochelle? What were they doing in this last struggle for their political existence? The Duke de Rohan went to Uzès, to Milhau, to Nismes, to Cevennes, from one end of Languedoc to the other, exhorting the Huguenots to rise for the common cause. His efforts were useless; he found none but timid spirits and cold hearts, or consciences gained by the favour of the court. He repeated the motto, of which his mother, the dowager-duchess of Rohan, had reminded him from the bottom of her asylum at La Rochelle: “_Complete victory, certain peace, or honourable death_;” instead of arming and following him, he was met by every one of them with recrimination.