Charles, Duke of Guise, organizes a landing in order to recapture the islands, using twenty borrowed Dutch warship as well as seven English ships under Henri II, Duke de Montmorency, grand admiral of France.

The Dutch fleet of twenty warships has been supplied under the terms of the 1624 Franco-Dutch Treaty of Compiègne, and is under the command of Admiral Willem Haultain de Zoete. (It will be withdrawn from French service in February 1626 after a resolution of the States-General in December 1625.)

English king Charles I and the Duke of Buckingham had negotiated with the French regent, Cardinal Richelieu, for English ships to aid Richelieu in his fight against the French Protestants (Huguenots), in return for French aid against the Spanish occupying the Palatinate (the Mansfeld expedition of 1624-25), an agreement which has led to great trouble with the English parliament, which is horrified by the help given to France against the Huguenots.

Seven English ships had been delivered by Captain Pennington after many misgivings, and are employed in the conflict, although they are essentially manned by French crews, as most of the English crews had refused to serve against their coreligionists and had disembarked in Dieppe.

The English ships duly see action against La Rochelle, however.

In an early encounter on July 16, 1625, Soubise manages to blow up the Dutch ship under Vice-Admiral Van Dorp, with a loss of three hundred Dutch sailors.