Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, p. 227. Wotton partly ascribes the Duke’s failure to one cause--an improvident confidence, brought with him from a Court where fortune had never deceived him. Besides, he adds, “We must consider him yet but rude in the profession of arms, though greatly of honour, and zealous in the cause.” By others he is considered to have committed an error in not having first attacked the Isle of Oléron, which was not only weakly garrisoned, but well supplied with wine and oil, and other provisions. But his great mistakes arose from his impulsive nature--a disposition often the concomitant of energy. Without waiting for the advice of Soubise, he had invested St. Martin’s; in marching to St. Martin’s, he had overlooked the Meadow Castle, as St. Pré was called by his soldiers; and that fort was now the chief impediment to his retreat. Having been urged in vain by Soubise to remain, Buckingham aimed one last blow. He attempted to storm Fort St. Martin. He was perhaps incited to this rash and fruitless act by the taunting conduct of the besieged, who, knowing that he intended to starve them into submission, hung provisions on the walls. No breach was made, and the assault had no other result than the loss of soldiers. A retreat was then decided on. The forces could not now return by St. Pré, and a new route was to be taken. A causeway amid deep salt-marches was their only choice; and this causeway, or mound, was terminated by a bridge that joined to Rhé the second island of Vié. Here no fort to protect the bridge had been erected, and there was therefore no passage over to Vié. The French had all this time been close in pursuit. Buckingham was in the rear, and, as a contemporary observed, “had like to have been snapped,”[86] if he had not ridden through the troops on the narrow causeway, where more than eight or ten could not ride abreast. It was not until the English had reached the Island of Vié that the French chose to attack them; then the delay of forming a bridge gave the pursuers time to make their onset with an advantage they could not have had on the causeway, where a handful of men might have set at defiance a host. The French drove the English horse on Sir Charles Birch’s regiment of foot, and both he and Sir John Radcliffe were killed. A hot skirmish ensued. “Our men,” says a newsletter, “spoiled one another, and more were drowned than slain. The Duke was the last man in the rear, and carried himself beyond expression bravely.”[87] Ultimately the bridge was made good, and on the following day the embarkation of the crest-fallen English was safely effected. Buckingham was of course blamed by one faction, and excused by the other, for this failure. Denzil, afterwards Lord Holles, the great leader of the Presbyterian party, a man who, during his whole life, never changed sides, censured him in forcible terms, quoting the words of one whom he styles “a prophet of their own sides,” in saying that the enterprize