, before 1622 In 1623 Buckingham, now Lord Admiral and effective Foreign Minister, accompanied
Charles I, then Prince of Wales, to Spain for marriage negotiations regarding the Infanta
Maria. The negotiations had long been stuck, but it is believed that Buckingham's crassness was key to the total collapse of the agreement, and they returned in a black mood. The Spanish ambassador asked Parliament to have Buckingham executed for his behaviour in
Madrid, but Buckingham gained popularity by calling for war with Spain on his return. Buckingham headed further marriage negotiations, but when, in December 1624, the betrothal to
Henrietta Maria of
France was announced, the choice of a
Catholic was widely condemned. He visited France in May 1625 to assist in the negotiations, during which he was allegedly "embroiled in a plot to seduce the Queen of France",
Anne of Austria, according to historian
Desmond Seward. At
Amiens, "where the court took official leave of the English embassy, Buckingham climbed into a private garden where the queen was taking an evening walk", In 1625, Buckingham proposed to send an
expedition to Spain in an attempt to reenact what he viewed as the glorious actions of Sir
Francis Drake by once again seizing the main Spanish port at
Cádiz and burning the Spanish fleet in its harbour. Buckingham's past failures had provoked the
House of Commons to refuse further levies of taxation to fund his extravagant adventures, but at the same time Parliament was intrigued by the prospect of dealing a blow to the international Catholic conspiracy, and the expedition was authorized. Yet even before the troops set sail the food prepared for the expedition was consumed awaiting the
Board of Ordnance to deliver the required cannonry and musket balls. On this occasion, Buckingham himself was not in command. As experienced admirals were unavailable, Buckingham assigned command of the expedition to Sir
Edward Cecil, a battle-hardened soldier who had won renown fighting on behalf of the Dutch against the Spanish. This choice of commander proved foolhardy, as while Cecil was a good soldier on land he had no knowledge of the sea. Although Buckingham's plan was tactically sound, calling for landing further up the coast and marching the militia army on the city, the troops were badly equipped, ill-disciplined, and poorly trained. Coming upon a warehouse filled with wine, they simply got drunk, and the attack had to be called off. The English army briefly occupied a small port further down the coast before re-boarding its ships. After the embarrassing fiasco at Cádiz, Cecil decided to try to intercept a
Spanish silver fleet on its way back to Spain from
America. However, the Spanish were forewarned by their intelligence and easily avoided the planned ambush. With supplies running out and men sick and dying from starvation and disease, the English limped home in disgrace. Public opinion blamed Buckingham for yet another disaster, leading to serious political consequences. The
Parliament of 1626 began the process of
impeachment against Buckingham, causing King Charles to dissolve Parliament rather than risk a successful impeachment of his favourite. equestrian portrait, 1625,
Kimbell Art Museum Buckingham then negotiated with the French Chief Minister,
Cardinal Richelieu, for English ships to aid Richelieu in his fight against the French Protestant Huguenots, in return for French aid against the Spanish occupying the Palatinate. Seven English warships participated in operations against
La Rochelle and in the
siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, but Parliament was disgusted and horrified at the thought of English Protestants fighting French Protestants. The plan only fuelled their fears of crypto-Catholicism at court. In the end, seven English ships were delivered to the French after much debate and were employed in the conflict, although they were essentially manned by French crews, as most of the English crews had refused to serve against their coreligionists and had disembarked in
Dieppe. Following the successful
recovery of Ré island by the French forces, the
Treaty of Paris (1626) was signed between the city of La Rochelle and King Louis XIII on 5 February 1626, preserving religious freedom but imposing some guaranties against possible future rebellions. Moreover, the
French made peace with the Spanish in April 1626, destroying any remaining hope of an Anglo-French alliance against the Habsburgs and obviating any further need to make a show of siding with the French crown against the Huguenots. In 1627, Buckingham led another expeditionary force to relieve La Rochelle, once again attempting to aid the Huguenots rather than oppose them. To the remnants of the disastrous Cádiz expedition of 1625 were added newly pressed men, which allowed Buckingham to cobble together a force of around 6,000 men. Realizing he risked annihilation, Buckingham abandoned the siege and fought his way back to his ships, but at a heavy cost: altogether, Buckingham lost more than 5,000 men in the brief campaign. In April 1628, another English fleet was sent to relieve the
Huguenots, this time under the command of
William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh, but Denbigh proved hesitant to fight the large, well-armed French fleet, and returned to
Portsmouth without engaging the enemy. Thereafter, Buckingham tried to organise a third expedition, once again under his direct command, and was engaged in this enterprise when he was felled in Portsmouth by an assassin. ==Self-promotion through the arts==