"Thirty Years War Siege Curiosity" Topic

I was wandering through the Wikipedia.org article on the Thirty Years War today and noticed something peculiar in a painting of Cardinal Richelieu at the siege of La Rochelle (link follows). There are a number of vertical(ish) wooden beams in the background- apparantly in water. I am curious what they are- things that sprang to mind included anti-ship defenses, some kind of simple trebuchets, but neither purpose seems served by these shapes. Any ideas?

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In my opinion this is a part of the seawall that French engineers built blocking the seaward access to La Rochelle.

Was to say :

I do believe they are anti-ship sea defense aswell , if you take a look at the hudge ship at sea in the background it does look like it would help avoiding one of those making an easy landing assault .

So if not part of the seawall itself it may be the embankment defense against counter-attacks from the beseiged garison or any possible sea-going relief force .

Jacques Callot " gigantic sketche" of the besiegers positions may offer more insight on the matter if you get to study it close enough .

then searching for the said sketches , I found out the french title of both this painting and others related .

So it's definitly the seawall nick-named Richelieu seawall !

english wiki looks like a better place to look then the US one :

link

some additional info found in the french wiki :
Jean Thiriot (1590-1649) was the other architect alongside Clément Metézeau (1581–1652) .
Métézeau worked on the north bank , while Thiriot worked on the "midi" bank ( southern one ) .

They were under the care of Marechal de Bassompierre , with marechal de Schomberg supervising Thiriot effort directly .

the seawall itself was "broken" by the center : it had an opening in the middle leaving a 200 meters long gap protected by numerous warships .

The seawall was 1500 meters long , 16 meter large at the base and 8 meter large at top , 20 meter high and armed with cannons turn toward seaside to prevent supplies from sea to reach the city .

The story of the siege is full of many apptents to breack through the said seawall and played a major part in the unconditional surender of la rochelle starved city .

The original seawall was built by the italian engineer Pompeo Targone but during the winter the structure failed so Metézeau built it again.

All, thank you very much for the information- very informative, and an interesting aspect of the siege I had no idea about previously.

a while ago I did found this pic in a book dating from the end of the siege . It had the victory parade for the return of louis XIII in paris after the siege as main focus . Still cannot remember or find back the notes containing the book name and the online library it came from but here is the pic I downloaded showing Louis XIII , richelieu and the court in front of the siege :

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