Île de Ré

Île de Ré lies off La Rochelle beside the Pertuis d'Antioche, a low Atlantic island shaped by tides and rival military powers. Its earlier separate islets gradually joined through silting and the construction of salt fields. Fishing locks built between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries trapped fish as the tide receded, turning the shoreline's changing water into a origin of food.

Possession followed the fortunes of Aquitaine and the English and French crowns. The Treaty of Brétigny brought English control in 1360, before the French recovered the island during the following decade. In the seventeenth century it became a focus of religious and royal conflict. The Huguenot duke of Soubise occupied Ré in 1625, but royal forces recaptured it later that year.

In 1627 Buckingham landed an English army to support La Rochelle and unsuccessfully besieged Saint-Martin. After months of fighting he withdrew with severe losses. Vauban fortified Saint-Martin in 1681 as part of the defences protecting Rochefort's naval harbour, giving the island a lasting place in the French Atlantic defensive system.