Surviving the Siege: Catastrophe, Gender and Memory in La Rochelle

The siege of La Rochelle was an iconic disaster, and the religious, political and military implications of the siege and the ultimate fall of La Rochelle have fascinated historians. It has often been described as a watershed in the governance of France and the high point of French absolutism, while its implications have shaped both France and exile communities in Britain, the Low Countries and the New World. La Rochelle was an economic powerhouse, dependent on its ocean-going trade, a bustling town of some 28,000 people that included not only the usual classes of workers, artisans, entrepreneurs, merchants and migrants drawn to an active urban centre in the seventeenth century, but also the wealthy armateurs engaged in the maritime economy. By the end of the siege in 1628, it had shrunk to around 5000 people and its social, economic and religious structure had been similarly altered. Gender, religion, commerce and political authority are the threads that intertwine during the course of the siege and figure in its aftermath, and are the starting points for this chapter. The character of the siege and its perception by those who lived through it, by the ‘worthies’ of other towns and the longer term effect of memory demonstrate the potential of a single localised catastrophe on understandings of towns, their links to wider communities and to collective memory.