Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France
by Gilbert Parker · English · Gutenberg #30367 · 575,852 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France
Author: Gilbert Parker
Claude Glennon Bryan
Release date: October 30, 2009 [eBook #30367]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30367
Credits: E-text prepared by David T. Jones and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Canada (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD QUEBEC: THE FORTRESS OF NEW FRANCE ***
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 30367-h.htm or 30367-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30367/pg30367-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30367/30367-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
http://www.archive.org/details/oldquebecfortres00parkuoft
OLD QUEBEC
The Fortress of New France
by
GILBERT PARKER and CLAUDE G. BRYAN
With Illustrations
[Illustration: _Major General James Wolfe
from a scarce contemporary print engraved by R. Houston_]
New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1903
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1903,
by The Macmillan Company.
Set up, electrotyped, and published September, 1903. Reprinted
November, 1903.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
NOTE xvii
PRELUDE xix
CHAPTER I
EARLY VOYAGES 1
CHAPTER II
THE ERA OF CHAMPLAIN 19
CHAPTER III
THE HEROIC AGE OF NEW FRANCE 44
CHAPTER IV
"AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM" 66
CHAPTER V
ROYAL GOVERNMENT 85
CHAPTER VI
THE NOBLESSE AND THE PEOPLE 95
CHAPTER VII
FRONTENAC AND LA SALLE 110
CHAPTER VIII
FIRE, MASSACRE, AND SIEGE 134
CHAPTER IX
THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY 159
CHAPTER X
BORDER WARFARE 175
CHAPTER XI
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 187
CHAPTER XII
LIFE UNDER THE _ANCIEN RÉGIME_ 218
CHAPTER XIII
DURING THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 246
CHAPTER XIV
"HERE DIED WOLFE VICTORIOUS" 268
CHAPTER XV
MURRAY AND DE LÉVIS 299
CHAPTER XVI
THE FIRST YEARS OF BRITISH RULE 325
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIFTH SIEGE 342
CHAPTER XVIII
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS 364
CHAPTER XIX
THE STORY OF THE GREAT TRADING COMPANIES 394
CHAPTER XX
THE NEW CENTURY 422
CHAPTER XXI
THE MODERN PERIOD 443
APPENDICES 473
INDEX 479
LIST OF PLATES
Major-General James Wolfe _Frontispiece_
FACE PAGE
François-Xavier de Laval 16
Cardinal de Richelieu 48
The Earl of Chatham 187
General the Marquis Montcalm 271
General Sir Jeffrey Amherst 282
Admiral Earl St. Vincent 294
General Gage 301
The Hon. Robert Monckton 307
[1]General Sir A. P. Irving 317
General Townshend 327
Sir James Henry Craig 342
Sir John Cope Sherbrooke 355
The Fourth Duke of Richmond 368
Admiral Viscount Nelson 374
Lord Dalhousie 376
General Lord Aylmer 395
The Earl of Durham 407
Sir John Colborne 417
Lord Sydenham 424
Sir Charles Bagot 434
General Earl Cathcart 443
The Earl of Elgin 452
Lord Lisgar 458
The Marquis of Dufferin and Ava 466
[Footnote 1: Inscription on plate for 2nd Governor of Canada
1766, _read_ Lieutenant-Governor of Canada 1766.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Jacques Cartier 7
Manoir de Jacques Cartier à Limoulon 11
Arrival of Jacques Cartier at Quebec, 1535 13
Cap Rouge 17
Champlain 21
Montmorency Falls 25
Bonne Ste. Anne (Old Church) 31
Marie de l'Incarnation 51
Ursuline Nuns of Quebec (Salle d'Étude, noviciat) 55
Jesuits' College and Church 56
Château Saint Louis, 1694 57
The Ursulines' Convent 61
Monument to the First Canadian Missionary 71
Brébeuf 74
Lalement 75
Colbert 87
Old Bishop's Palace 103
New Palace Gate 105
Intendant's Palace 107
Frontenac 113
Old St. Louis Gate 117
Robert Cavelier de la Salle 123
Sir William Phipps 147
Plan of Fort St. Louis, 1683 151
The Citadel To-day (from Dufferin Terrace) 153
Notre Dame de la Victoire 157
The Citadel in Winter 173
Lieut.-General Sir William Pepperell, Bart. 189
Bienville 193
De Bougainville 197
Ruins of Château Bigot 201
Le Chien d'Or 202
Plan of the City of Quebec, 1759 207
Major-General Sir Isaac Barre 209
Sir Hugh Palliser, Bart. 213
The City of Quebec in 1759 219
Baron Grant 221
Baroness de Longueil 223
Upper Town Market To-day 225
New St. John's Gate 227
Petit Champlain Street To-day 229
Old Prescott Gate 231
A Carriole 234
Village of Beauport 235
The Basilica 239
Jesuits' Barracks 241
Calèches 243
Quebec (from Lévi) 245
De Lévis 251
Sir George Bridges Rodney, Bart. (Governor of
Newfoundland, 1759) 263
Entrance to the Citadel To-day 270
Hope Gate 272
Admiral Sir Charles Saunders 274
The Manor-House at Beauport, Montcalm's Headquarters 277
General Hospital 284
Captain James Cook 290
New Kent Gate 301
Church of the Récollets and La Grande Place 309
Old French House, St. John Street 315
Manor House, Sillery 319
Montreal in 1760 329
General Richard Montgomery 345
Cape Diamond 357
Benjamin Franklin 365
Charles Carroll of Carrollton 367
Samuel Chase 369
Breakneck Steps To-day 371
Old Parliament House, Quebec 377
H.R.H. the Duke of Kent, K.B 379
St. Lawrence River from the Citadel 381
Percée Rock 387
Hon. William Osgoode 389
New St. Louis Gate 390
Old Market Square, Upper Town 391
Frontenac Terrace To-day 392
Mr. Samuel Hearne 397
Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudson's Bay, 1777 401
Prince Rupert 403
Sir Alexander Mackenzie 415
Simon McTavish 419
Earl of Selkirk 420
Ferry-Boat on the St. Lawrence 423
Sir Gordon Drummond 427
Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, K.B. 430
General de Salaberry 435
A Beggar of Côte Beaupré 437
St. Louis Street, Place d'Armes, and New Court House 440
City Hall, Quebec 444
Lieut.-Colonel John By, R.E. 445
Sir Peregrine Maitland 448
Trappists at Mistassini 449
The Hon. Louis Joseph Papineau 451
English Cathedral 455
The Marquis of Lorne (Duke of Argyll) 461
Sir George Cartier 465
Sir John A. Macdonald 467
Sir Wilfrid Laurier 469
MAPS
1. Canada and the North American Colonies,
1680-1782 _Face page_ 110
The Environs of Quebec, 1759.
Louisbourg, to show the Sieges of 1744 and 1758.
2. Plan of Quebec, 1759. From a Map published in
London in 1760 _Page_ 207
3. Plan of the River St. Lawrence _Face page_ 268
4. Map of Upper and Lower Canada,
illustrating events until the
Campaign of 1814 _Face page_ 378
5. The Territory of the Hudson's
Bay Company, 1670-1870 _Face page_ 399
NOTE
The student of the history of the ancient capital of Canada is
embarrassed, not by the dearth but by the abundance of material at his
disposal. The present volume, therefore, makes no claim to
originality. It is but an assimilation of this generous data, and a
simple comment upon the changing scenes which were recorded by such
ancient authorities as the Jesuit priests and pioneers in their
_Relations_, and by the monumental works of Francis Parkman, whose
researches occupied more than forty years, and whose picturesque pen
has done for Canada what Prescott's did for Mexico. Admiring tribute
and gratitude must also be expressed for the years of careful study
and the unfaltering energy by which the late Mr. Kingsford produced
his valuable _History of Canada_. Nor can any one, writing of Quebec,
proceed successfully without constant reference to the historical
gleanings of Sir James Le Moine, who has spent a lifetime in the
romantic atmosphere of old-time manuscripts, and who, with Monsieur
l'Abbé Casgrain, represents, in its most attractive form, that
composite citizenship which has the wit and grace of the old _régime_
with the useful ardour of the new.
THE AUTHORS.
PRELUDE
About the walled city of Quebec cling more vivid and enduring memories
than belong to any other city of the modern world. Her foundation
marked a renaissance of religious zeal in France, and to the people
from whom came the pioneers who suffered or were slain for her, she
had the glamour of new-born empire, of a conquest renewing the
glories of the days of Charlemagne. Visions of a hemisphere controlled
from Versailles haunted the days of Francis the First, of the Grand
Monarch, of Colbert and of Richelieu, and in the sky of national hope
and over all was the Cross whose passion led the Church into the
wilderness. The first emblem of sovereignty in the vast domain which
Jacques Cartier claimed for Francis his royal master, was a cross
whereon was inscribed--
_Franciscus Primus, Dei Gratiâ Francorum Rex, Regnat._
In spite of cruel neglect due to internal troubles and that European
strife in which the motherland was engaged for so many generations,
the eyes of Frenchmen turned to their over-sea dominions with
imaginative hope, with conviction that the great continent of promise
would renew in France the glories that were Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome. How hard the patriotic colonists strove to retain those
territories which Champlain, La Salle, Maisonneuve, Joliet, and so
many others won through nameless toil and martyrdom, and how at last
the broad lands passed to another race and another flag, not by fault
or folly or lack of courage of the people, but by the criminal
corruption of the ruling few, is the narrative which runs through
these pages.
For at least the first hundred years of its existence, Quebec was New
France; and the story of Quebec in that period is the story of all
Canada. The fortress was the heart and soul of French enterprise in
the New World. From the Castle of St. Louis, on the summit of Cape
Diamond, went forth mandates, heard and obeyed in distant Louisiana.
The monastic city on the St. Lawrence was the centre of the web of
missions, which slowly spread from the dark Saguenay to Lake Superior.
The fearful tragedies of Indian warfare had their birth in the early
policy of Quebec. The fearless voyageurs, whose canoes glided into
unknown waters, ever westward--towards Cathay, as they believed--made
Quebec their base for exploration. And as time went on, the rock-built
stronghold of the north became the nerve-centre of that half-century
of conflict which left the flag of Britain waving in victory on the
Plains of Abraham.
When Montcalm in his last hours consigned to the care of the British
conquerors the colonists he had loved and for whom he had fought, he
proclaimed a momentous epoch in the world's history--the loss of an
Empire to a great nation of Europe and the gain of an Empire to
another. Within a generation the Saxon Conquistador was to suffer the
same humiliation, and to yield up that colonial territory from which
Quebec had been assailed; but the fortress city was always to both
nations the keystone of the arch of power on the American continent.
When she was lost to France, Louisiana, that vast territory along the
Mississippi--a kingdom in itself--still remained, but no high memory
cherished it, no national hope hung over it, and a hundred years ago
Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the new Western power--the United
States. As a nation the labours of France were finished in America on
the day that De Ramézay yielded up the keys of the city, and Wolfe's
war-worn legions marched through St. Louis Gate from the Plains of
Abraham.
Yet scores of thousands of the people of France remained in the city
and the province to be ruled henceforth by the intrepid race, with
which it had competed in a death-struggle for dominion through so many
adventurous and uncertain years. Victory, like a wayward imp of Fate,
had settled first upon one and then upon the other, and once before
1759 England had held the keys of the great fortress only to yield
them up again in a weak bargain; but the die was thrown for the last
time when Amherst securely quartered himself at Montreal, and Murray
at the Château St. Louis, where Frontenac and Vaudreuil had had their
day of virile governance. Never again was the banner of the golden
lilies to wave in sovereignty over the St. Lawrence, though the people
who had fought and toiled under its protection were to hold to their
birthright and sustain their language through the passing generations,
faithful to tradition and origin, but no less faithful to the Canadian
soil which their fame, their labour, and their history had made sacred
to them. Frenchmen of a vanished day they were to cherish their past
with an apprehensive devotion, and yet to keep the pact they made with
the conqueror in 1759, and later in 1774 when the Quebec Act secured
to them their religious liberty, their civic code, and their political
status. This pact, further developed in the first Union of the
English and French provinces in 1840, and afterwards in the
Confederation of 1867, has never suffered injury or real suspicion,
but was first made certain by loyalty to the British flag, in the War
of the American Revolution, and piously sealed by victorious duty and
valour in the war of 1812. The record of fidelity has been enriched
since that day in the north-west rebellion fomented by a French
half-breed in 1885, and in the late war in South Africa, where French
Canadians fought side by side with English comrades for the
preservation of the Empire.
These later acts of imperial duty are not performed by Anglicised
Frenchmen, for the pioneer race of Quebec are still a people apart in
the great Dominion so far as their civic and social, their literary
and domestic life are concerned. They share faithfully in the national
development, and honourably serve the welfare of the whole
Dominion--sometimes with a too careful and unsympathetic reserve--but
within their own beloved province they retain as zealously and more
jealously than the most devoted Highland men their language and their
customs, and faithfully conserve the civil laws which mark them off as
clearly from the English provinces as Jersey and Guernsey are
distinguished from the United Kingdom. They have changed little with
the passing years, and their city has changed less. In many respects
the Quebec of to-day is the Quebec of yesterday. Time and science have
altered its detail, but viewed from afar it seems to have altered as
little as Heidelberg and Coblenz. Lower Town huddles in artistic chaos
at the foot of the sheltering cliff, and, as aforetime, the
overhanging fort protrudes its protecting muzzles. Spires and antique
minarets which looked down upon a French settlement struggling with
foes in feathers and war-paint, still gleam from the towering rock on
which their stable foundations are laid; and after five sieges and the
passing of two and a half centuries the mother city of the continent
remains a faithful survivor of an heroic age, on historic ground
sacred to the valour of two great races.
OLD QUEBEC
CHAPTER I
EARLY VOYAGES
Living in the twentieth century, to which the uttermost parts of the
earth are revealed, and with only the undiscovered poles left to lure
us on, we cannot fully appreciate the geographical ignorance of the
Middle Ages. The travels of Marco Polo had only lately revealed the
wonders of the golden East, and in the West the Pillars of Hercules
marked earth's furthest bound. Beyond lay the _mare tenebrosum_, the
Mysterious Sea, girding the level world. England was not then one of
the first nations of the earth. She was not yet a maritime power, she
had not begun the work of colonisation and empire: the fulcrum of
Europe lay further south. But as our Tudor sovereigns were making
secure dominion in "these isles," the Byzantine Empire was moving
slowly to its end, and favouring circumstances were already making
Italy the centre of the world's commerce and culture. There the feudal
system, never deeply rooted, was declining slowly, and Italian energy
and enterprise now having larger opportunity, seized the commerce of
the East as it received vast impulse from the Crusades, and this trade
became the source of Empire.
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were now great emporiums of Oriental wares,
were waxing rich on a transport trade which had no option but to use
their ports and their vessels. Inland Florence had no part in maritime
enterprise, but was the manufacturing, literary, and art centre of
mediæval Europe. Her silk looms made her famous throughout the world,
her banks were the purse of Europe, and among her famous sons were
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da
Vinci, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci. For the development of their
commerce, the cities of the North had grouped themselves into the
great Hanseatic League, with branches in Bruges, London, Bergen, and
Novgorod. Commercialism had everywhere become the keynote of the
closing Middle Ages, inspiring that maritime enterprise which was soon
to outline a new map of the world.
The main route between the West and East had hitherto been by way of
the Red Sea and the Euphrates, and it was controlled by the Italian
cities. Italy had, therefore, no interest in finding a water route to
the East which would rob her of this profitable overland traffic. But
the experience of her sailors made them the most skilful of the
world's navigators and the readiest instruments of other nations in
expeditions of discovery. Thus Columbus of Genoa, Cabot of Venice, and
Verrazzano of Florence are found accepting commissions from foreign
sovereigns.
"The discoveries of Copernicus and Columbus," says Froude, "created,
not in any metaphor, but in plain language, a new heaven and a new
earth." The new theory of Copernicus was, indeed, one of the choicest
flowers of the Renaissance, and though timidly enunciated, it
revolutionised the world's geography. Further, the discovery of the
polarity of the magnet, and the invention of the astrolabe, gave to
the mariners of the fifteenth century a sense of security lacking to
their fathers, while the kindling flame of the New Learning led them
upon the most daring quests. The Portuguese were the first to enter on
the brilliant path of sea-going exploration which distinguishes this
century above all others. By 1486 they had already found Table
Mountain rising out of the Southern sea, and hoping always for a
passage to the East, had named it the Cape of Good Hope. Spain soon
followed her rival into these unknown regions, a policy due mainly to
the enthusiasm of Isabella of Castile, who, in spite of the
conservative apathy of the Council of Salamanca, was eager to become
the patroness of Christopher Columbus.
Although the Northmen of the tenth century had been blown almost
fortuitously upon the shores of Nova Scotia, by way of Iceland,
Greenland, and Labrador, the discovery of North America must always be
set to the credit of Christopher Columbus. From the age of fourteen he
had been upon the sea, and his keen mind was stored with all the
nautical science afforded by the awakened spirit of the time. To this
practical equipment he added a romantic temperament and a habit of
reflection which carried him to greater certainty in his convictions
than even that attained by his correspondent, the learned Toscanelli.
Assuming that the world was round--no commonplace of the time--he
determined forthwith to reach India by sailing westward. His bones lie
buried in the Western hemisphere, which his intrepidity revealed to an
astonished world.
As soon as Columbus, in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, had opened
the gates of the New World, ships from England and France began to
hasten westward across the Atlantic. The Cabots, holding to the North,
discovered Newfoundland in 1497; Denis of Honfleur explored the Gulf
of St. Lawrence in 1506; and a few years later Verrazzano coasted
along the North Atlantic seaboard in four ships fitted out for him by
the youthful Francis of Angoulême. This voyage was practically the
beginning of French enterprise in the New World.
On Verrazzano's return to Dieppe, he sent the King a written account
of his travels, and France was presently burning with excitement over
the abundant riches of the New World. Spain, meanwhile, had been
reaping the wealth of the West Indies, and Hernando Cortés was laying
a stern hand upon the treasures of Mexico. And now disasters at home
were, for a time, to rob the fickle Francis of all ambition for
transatlantic glory. In the contest for the crown of the Holy Roman
Empire he had been worsted by Charles V., and shortly afterwards the
strength of France was hopelessly shattered at Pavia, the King being
carried back a prisoner to Madrid. But when, at last, the peace of
Cambrai had somewhat restored tranquillity to France, Philippe de
Brion-Chabot, a courtier at the Louvre, decided to follow up
Verrazzano's almost forgotten exploit of ten years before, and Jacques
Cartier became the instrument of this tardy resolution.
Jacques Cartier was born at St. Malo, the white buttress of Brittany.
Daring Breton fishing-boats had often sailed as far as the cod-banks
of Newfoundland, and it is not impossible that Cartier himself had
already crossed the Atlantic before he was commissioned by Chabot.
From a child he had lived upon the sea. He was forty years old when
he received his commission, and on the 20th of April, 1634, he set
sail from his native town. Holding a northern course he came at length
to Newfoundland, and having passed through the Straits of Belle Isle
and across the Gulf, he erected a white cross at Gaspé, and sailed on
westward till Anticosti came in sight. It was then August, and as
constant westerly winds delayed his further course, he decided to
return to France. Unfortunately, however, he did not leave until he
had lured on board his ships two young Indians, whom he carried back
as trophies, sowing thereby the seed of future trouble.
His countrymen were deeply stirred by his report. Beyond a doubt the
great Gulf up which he had sailed was the water route to Cathay, and
France could hardly await the arrival of spring before sending another
expedition. By the middle of May, 1635, Cartier was ready to embark on
a second voyage, and on this occasion no less than three ships were
equipped, numbering among their officers men of birth and
quality--gentlemen in search of adventure, others eager to mend broken
fortunes, and all bent on claiming new lands for France and for the
faith. Assembling in the old cathedral they confessed their sins and
heard the Mass; and on the 19th of May the dwellers of St. Malo saw
the sails of the _Hermine_, _La Petite Hermine_, and _Emerillon_ melt
into the misty blue of the horizon. Almost immediately a fierce storm
scattered the ships, and they only came together again six weeks later
in the Straits of Belle Isle. This time Cartier coasted along the
north shore of the Gulf; and to a bay opposite Anticosti he gave the
name of St. Lawrence, upon whose festival day it was discovered. Then
for the first time a white man entered "the great river of Canada."
[Illustration: JACQUES CARTIER]
With the kidnapped Indians for pilots, the three caravels passed by
the cañon of the Saguenay, mysterious in its sombre silence. Presently
the rocky cliff of Cap Tourmente towered above them, and at length
they glided into safe anchorage off the Isle of Bacchus.[2]
To the savage Indians the mighty vessels of France were marvels from
another world, and the river was soon swarming with their birch-bark
canoes. The story of the two braves who had been carried away to
France filled them with grave wonder, and the glittering costumes of
Cartier and his officers seemed like the garments of gods. The great
chief, Donnacona, waiving regal conventions, clambered upon the deck
of the _Hermine_, where Cartier regaled him with cakes and wine, and
with a few beads purchased the amity of his naked followers. Then
Cartier set out in a small boat to explore the river.
Above the Island of Bacchus he found himself in a beautiful harbour,
on the farther side of which the great river of Canada boomed through
a narrow gorge. On the left of the basin the broader channel of the
river passed out between the Isle of Bacchus and a range of wooded
heights; while on his right, a tower of rock rose majestically from
the foam-flecked water. Among the oak and walnut trees that crowned
the summit of this natural battlement clustered the bark cabins of
Stadaconé, whence, as wide as eye could range, the Lord of Canada held
his savage sway.
[Footnote 2: Now the Island of Orleans.]
This Algonquin eyrie seemed only accessible by a long detour through
the upland, in which the rocky heights gradually descended to the
little river of St. Croix. Thither Cartier and his companions made
their way, and then, for the first time, white men gazed upon the
green landscape spread beneath that high promontory. On the north and
east the blue rim of the world's oldest mountains, then as now, seemed
to shut off a mysterious barren land; on the south and west the eye
met a fairer prospect, for beyond a sea of verdure the sun's rays
glistened upon the distant hills of unknown, unnamed Vermont. Between
these half-points of the compass the broad St. Lawrence rolled outward
to the sea, and the discovering eye followed its bending course beyond
the Isle of Bacchus and past the beetling shoulder of Cap Tourmente.
In the summer of 1535 Cartier stood entranced on this magnificent
precipice; and to-day the visitor to Quebec gazes from the King's
Bastion upon the same panorama, hardly altered by the flight of nearly
four centuries.
But Quebec had yet for many years to await its founder. Cartier's
mission was one of discovery, not colonisation; and he resolved to
push further up the river to Hochelaga, an important village of which
the Indians had told him. But Donnacona soon repented of the
information he had given, and left nothing undone to turn Cartier from
his purpose. As a last resource the magicians of Stadaconé devised a
plan to frighten the obstinate Frenchman, but the crude masquerade
arranged for that purpose provoked nothing but amusement. A large
canoe came floating slowly down the river, and when it drew near the
ships the Frenchmen beheld three black devils, garbed in dogskins, and
wearing monstrous horns upon their heads. Chanting the hideous
monotones of the medicine men, they glided past the fleet, made for
the shore, and disappeared in the thicket. Presently, Cartier's two
interpreters issued from the wood and declared that the god Coudouagny
had sent his three chief priests to warn the French against ascending
the river, predicting dire calamities if they should persist.
Cartier's reply to the Indian deity was brief and irreverent, and he
forthwith made ready to depart.
The _Hermine_ and _Emerillon_ were towed to safer moorings in the
quiet St. Croix, and with the pinnace and a small company of men
Cartier set out for Hochelaga. The journey was long and toilsome, but
by the beginning of October they came to a beautiful island, the site
of Montreal. A thousand Indians thronged the shore to welcome the
mysterious visitors, presenting gifts of fish and fruit and corn.
Then, by a well-worn trail, the savages led the way through the forest
to the foot of the mountain, and into the triple palisades of
Hochelaga.
[Illustration: MANOIR DE JACQUES CARTIER À LIMOULON]
The early frosts of autumn had already touched the trees, and Cartier,
having accomplished his exploration, hastened back to Stadaconé, where
he set about making preparations for spending the winter. A fort was
hastily built at the mouth of the St. Croix. But the exiles were
unready for the violent season that soon closed in upon them, almost
burying their fort in drifting snow and casing the ships in an armour
of glistening ice. Pent up by the biting frost, and eking out a
wretched existence on salted food, their condition grew deplorable. A
terrible scurvy assailed the camp, and out of a company of one hundred
and ten, twenty-five died, while only three or four of the rest
escaped its ravages. The flint-like ground defied their feeble
spades, and the dead bodies were hidden away in banks of snow. To make
matters still worse, the Indians grew first indifferent, and then
openly hostile. Cartier was sorely beset to conceal from them the
weakness of his garrison. At last, however, a friendly Indian told him
of a decoction by which the scurvy might be cured. The leaves of a
certain evergreen were put to brew, and this medicine proved the
salvation of the decimated company.
By and by came the spring; and when at last sun and rain had loosed
the fetters of ice, Cartier determined to return to France. Before the
ships weighed anchor, however, Donnacona and four of his companions
were enticed on board, and with these sorry trophies the French
captain turned his prows homeward. At midsummer-time the
storm-battered ships glided once more into the rock-bound harbour of
St. Malo.
Five years elapsed before France sent another expedition into the New
World. The perennial conflict with Charles V. kept the French king's
mind fixed on his home dominions, and Chabot, Cartier's former patron,
had fallen upon evil times. At last, however, a new adventurer
appeared in the person of the Sieur de Roberval, a nobleman of
Picardy. The elaborate but almost incomprehensible text of the royal
patent described the new envoy as Lord of Norembega, Viceroy and
Lieutenant-General in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle
Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Baccalaos. Under him
Cartier was persuaded to take the post of Captain-General. The objects
of the enterprise were discovery, colonisation, and the conversion of
the Indians; albeit the instruments for this pious purpose were more
than doubtful, their five ships being freighted for the most part with
thieves and malefactors recruited from the prisons of France.
[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF JACQUES CARTIER AT QUEBEC, 1535]
An unexpected delay occurring at St. Malo, it was determined that
Cartier should sail at once, and that Roberval should follow as soon
as possible with additional ships and supplies. Accordingly, on the
23rd of May, 1541, Cartier again spread his sails for the West, and
after a stormy passage arrived in the St. Lawrence. The uncertain
attitude of the Indians, however, prompted him to establish his colony
further westward than Stadaconé, and he continued his course up the
river and dropped anchor at Cap Rouge.
Summer and autumn passed away and brought no sign of Roberval. A
gloomy winter further damped the spirits of the colonists at
Charlesburg-Royal; and when the ice had gone out of the river, Cartier
gathered his company back into the ships and set sail again for
France. At Newfoundland he encountered the belated Roberval. High
words were exchanged, and, as a result, the fiery Viceroy sailed alone
to New France; and Cartier, bidding Canada a last farewell, held on
his way to St. Malo.
Francis Parkman transcribes from the manuscript of Thevet the
following incident which marked Roberval's voyage:--"The Viceroy's
company was of a mixed complexion. There were nobles, officers,
soldiers, sailors, adventurers, with women, too, and children. Of the
women, some were of birth and station, and among them a damsel called
Marguerite, a niece of Roberval himself. In the ship was a young
gentleman who had embarked for love of her. His love was too well
requited, and the stern Viceroy, scandalised and enraged at a passion
which scorned concealment and set shame at defiance, cast anchor by
the haunted island (the Isle of Demons), landed his indiscreet
relative, gave her four arquebuses for defence, and with an old woman
nurse who had pandered to the lovers, left her to her fate. Her
gallant threw himself into the surf, and by desperate effort gained
the shore, with two more guns and a supply of ammunition. The ship
weighed anchor, receded, vanished; they were left alone. Yet not so,
for the demon-lords of the island beset them day and night, raging
round their hut with a confused and hungry clamouring, striving to
force the frail barrier. The lovers had repented of their sin, though
not abandoned it, and Heaven was on their side. The saints vouchsafed
their aid, and the offended Virgin, relenting, held before them her
protecting shield. In the form of beasts and other shapes abominably
and unutterably hideous, the brood of hell, howling in baffled fury,
tore at the branches of the sylvan dwelling; but a celestial hand was
ever interposed, and there was a viewless barrier which they might not
pass. Marguerite became pregnant. Here was a double prize--two souls
in one, mother and child. The fiends grew frantic, but all in vain.
She stood undaunted amid these horrors, but her lover, dismayed and
heart-broken, sickened and died. Her child soon followed; then the old
woman nurse found her unhallowed rest in that accursed soil, and
Marguerite was left alone. Neither reason nor courage failed her; and
when assailed by the demons, she shot at them with her gun. They
answered with hellish merriment, and thenceforth she placed her trust
in Heaven alone. There were foes around her of the upper, no less than
of the nether, world. Of these the bears were the most redoubtable,
yet as they were vulnerable to mortal weapons, she killed three of
them--all, says the story, 'as white as an egg.'
"It was two years and five months from her landing on the island,
when, far out at sea, the crew of a small fishing-craft saw a column
of smoke curling upward from the haunted shore. Was it a device of the
fiends to lure them to their ruin? They thought so, and kept aloof.
But misgiving seized them. They warily drew near, and descried a
female figure in wild attire waving signals from the strand. Thus, at
length, was Marguerite rescued, and restored to her native France,
where, a few years later, the cosmographer Thevet met her at Natron,
in Perigord, and heard the tale of wonder from her own lips."[3]
[Illustration: Francois Xavier de Laval,
First Bishop of Quebec.]
[Footnote 3: Parkman's _Pioneers of France_, p. 203.]
Meanwhile, Roberval sailed on up the St. Lawrence, and established
himself at Cap Rouge, in the deserted forts of Charlesburg-Royal built
by Cartier. But the inexperience and imprudence of the haughty
Viceroy soon put his establishment in sore straits. Ignorance of
physical conditions and disregard of natural laws of health had always
been the chief cause of suffering among these transatlantic exiles,
and Roberval now added a lamentable want of perception and solicitude.
Unlike Cartier, the inexorable Viceroy did not recognise his colonists
as companions in privation, but ruled them with a rod of iron. The
pillory, the whipping-post, and the scaffold were distressing features
in his system. Then came winter, famine, and the scurvy. Fifty of the
settlers died, and by spring even the headstrong Roberval was ready to
forsake his enterprise. His departure ends the earliest period of
French adventure in America.
[Illustration: CAP ROUGE]
Thenceforth, for more than half a century, France writhed in civil
war, and spared no vessel to explore the great river of Canada. For
all these years New France was left to its aboriginal inhabitants and
to fate.
CHAPTER II
THE ERA OF CHAMPLAIN
The name of Champlain must ever stand before all others in the history
of Quebec. He was the founder of the city, and for more than a quarter
of a century he was its very life. If repeated disappointment and
misfortune could have brought this great empire-builder to despair; if
obstacles apparently impossible to overcome could have turned the hero
from his purpose, Quebec would not be to-day the oldest city in the
western hemisphere. As it was, his character gave the keynote not only
to the great fortress-capital, but to the whole history of New France.
He was an embodiment at once of the religious zeal and of the mediæval
spirit of romance which carried the Bourbon lilies into the trackless
wilderness of North America, at a time when English colonisation
contented itself with a narrow strip on the Atlantic seaboard.
Samuel de Champlain was born in 1567 at the small seaport of Brouage,
on the Bay of Biscay. His father was a captain in the French navy, in
which profession the son also received early training. In the conflict
between the King and the rebellious Duc de Mercoeur and the League,
Champlain was found on the Royalist side; and Henry the Fourth
rewarded his faithful subject with a pension and a place at court. But
the war in Brittany was not long over before Champlain became
restless. The spirit of adventure beat strong in his veins, and at
length he determined upon a project which, while it should serve the
purpose of the King, was also well spiced with peril. Proceeding to
Cadiz, where his uncle was Pilot-General of the Spanish marine,
Champlain obtained command of one of the ships in Don Francisco
Colombo's fleet, bound for the West Indies. On this voyage he was
absent from France more than two years, visiting not only the West
Indies, but also Mexico and Central America.
On his return, these travels gave him an unusual importance at the
French court; and when, in 1603, the aged De Chastes, Governor of
Dieppe, decided to seal his pious life with an enterprise for the King
and for the Church, the adventurous Champlain became the instrument of
his purpose.
De Chastes' two small vessels set sail from Honfleur, one commanded by
Pontgravé, the other by Champlain. The voyage was long but
uneventful. Pontgravé's former trading-post at Tadousac had been
abandoned, and they held their lonely way up the St. Lawrence, past
the mantling rock of Stadaconé, on to the wooded heights of Hochelaga.
Cartier's Indian village of sixty-eight years before had
disappeared--undoubtedly swept from existence by the relentless
Iroquois. At this point, however, the foaming St. Louis rapids barred
their way, and the caravels were turned homeward. With wind and
current down the river, and out through the Gulf, in due season they
came safely to Havre de Grace.
[Illustration: CHAMPLAIN]
In their absence the Sieur de Chastes had died; but De Monts, another
courtier at the Louvre, succeeded to the patent for colonising in the
New World. Exploration was not to rest, and Champlain and the Baron de
Poutrincourt accompanied the new Deputy in his Acadian expedition of
1604. Once more the Atlantic was crossed. Passing Cap la Hêve the
explorers sought a suitable site for their colony along this coast,
and when they reached the beautiful basin of Annapolis, hemmed in by a
circle of wooded hills, the artistic Poutrincourt was charmed, and
forthwith obtained from De Monts a private grant of the surrounding
country. He established his demesne here, naming the place Port Royal,
while Champlain and De Monts, continuing their way around the Bay of
Fundy, came at length to the bleak island of St. Croix, where they
founded their colony.
There is no need to present fully the vicissitudes of the tiny
settlement. Scurvy and the rigours of the first winter carried off
thirty-five colonists out of a total of seventy-nine. The winter of
1606-1607 was happily much less severe; moreover, Champlain's "Ordre
de Bon-Temps," and Lescarbot's wit and gaiety contributed to cheer the
shivering exiles. In the spring, however, the first ship from St. Malo
brought bad news from France. The enemies of De Monts at home had
triumphed, and had persuaded the King to cancel the charter of the
Deputy. In a way this contretemps led to the founding of Quebec.
Although De Monts was no longer Lieutenant-General of Acadia, he was
yet unwilling to give up the scheme which appealed so strongly to his
adventurous nature. On his return to Paris, his influence had been
sufficient to secure for one year a monopoly of the new fur trade.
Champlain, cherishing the memory of the voyage of the previous year,
persuaded him that the valley of the St. Lawrence would serve his
purpose better even than Acadia, and between them they planned an
expedition in which profit and adventure were evenly mingled. Two
ships were fitted out--the one commanded by Champlain, the other by
the elder Pontgravé. The latter was to revive the old trading-station
of Tadousac, while Champlain was to establish, further inland, a
fortified post from which expeditions might set forth to find the
hoped-for passage to Cathay.
Pontgravé sailed from Honfleur on the 5th of April, 1608, Champlain
following on the 13th of the same month. His was the first ship to
carry a permanent colony to New France. Crossing the wide gulf by
Anticosti, the little vessel of Champlain stopped at Tadousac to do a
timely service for his colleague who was now further up the river. The
stately grandeur of the scene was not new to Champlain. Five years
before he had glided past the yawning cañon through which the dark
Saguenay rushed down from the north; he had gazed upon the blue
sky-line of the Laurentian mountains; in the caravel of De Chastes the
surging tide had carried him past the Isle of Bacchus and the milky
cataract of Montmorency.
Anon the channel narrows; on the left are the Heights of Levi, and on
the right a frowning cliff shoulders far into the stream. Here ancient
Stadaconé stood; but the Iroquois passed over it long since, and the
village is gone. On this spot Champlain decided to establish his post,
and what site could be more suitable than that found by the Breton
mariners as they rounded the point of Orleans? They had entered a
beautiful harbour where an armada might safely ride at anchor. On
their left the Heights of Levi formed the southern boundary of the
glistening basin; on their right, a tiny river murmured through the
lowlands; and beyond it a rugged promontory thrust into the current a
tower of rock, commanding the narrow channel into which the mighty St.
Lawrence was here compressed. The solitude of a forest wilderness now
hung over the site of Stadaconé. On the narrow wooded strand at the
base of this rocky eyrie, Champlain made a landing.
[Illustration: MONTMORENCY FALLS]
Trees were felled, and in the clearing the log foundations of
"L'Habitation" were laid. Ere the summer ended it was completed; and a
sketch from Champlain's own unskilled pencil has preserved its
grotesque likeness. First of all there was a moat, then a staunch wall
of logs, with loopholes for musketry, and, inside, three buildings
and a courtyard. Over all rose a dove-cot, quaintly mediæval, and
prettily symbolical of Champlain's peaceful invasion. But Indians were
Indians, and two or three small cannon were accordingly mounted on
salient platforms on the riverside. A large storehouse was also built
inside the palisade; and presently Champlain laid out a flower garden.
In preparing against foes without, however, Champlain had taken no
thought for foes within. Not all of the little company had the same
enthusiasm as their leader, and a plot was set on foot to destroy him,
and sell Quebec to the Spaniards and the Basques. Fortunately the
fidelity of his pilot saved Champlain from assassination. Warning
reached him in time, and he dealt fearlessly and rigorously with the
mutinous crew. The four ringleaders were decoyed on board a pinnace
from Tadousac, and seized and put in irons. The body of the chief
conspirator swung next morning from the cross-trees, and his three
companions were sent back to the galleys of France. A free pardon for
the minor malcontents secured their loyalty from that time forward.
In September, Pontgravé set sail for France, and Champlain and his
twenty-eight companions made ready for the winter. Frost and snow came
early that year, and a devastating scurvy invaded the Habitation. The
improvident Montagnais huddled in their birch tepees about the fort,
raving for food, and perishing with disease; while of the twenty-eight
Frenchmen there were only eight despairing survivors to greet the
returning spring. On the 5th of June, however, Pontgravé's ship again
arrived at Quebec, to the joy of Champlain and his stricken
companions.
Summer warmed their enthusiasm anew, and the dauntless explorer now
thought only of pressing on westward to Cathay. To further this
project, he consented to ally himself with the Hurons and Algonquins
in an attack upon the Iroquois, and for several days their dusky
allies swarmed in and around Quebec. At length, towards the end of
June, the war-party set out. Champlain embarked in a shallop with
eleven men, armed with arquebuse and match-lock, sword and
breast-plate; and the painted, shrilling foresters swarmed up the
river in their bark canoes. From the St. Lawrence they passed into the
Iroquois River.[4]
After destroying one of the Mohawk towns, the victorious raiders
returned to Quebec. Champlain, "the man with the iron breast," had
cemented his alliance with the northern tribes, and from this time
forth Quebec became the great emporium for the fur trade of the
continent.
[Footnote 4: Now the Richelieu.]
In 1613 Champlain's enthusiasm was kindled by the tale of one Nicolas
de Vignau, who claimed to have traced the Ottawa to its source in a
great lake, which also emptied itself through a northern river into an
unknown sea. Champlain set off with Vignau and three others to
establish this new route to Cathay. In two birch canoes they proceeded
up the St. Lawrence and into the rushing Ottawa. Portaging around the
seething Chaudière, they came at length to Allumette Island. Here the
old Algonquin chief, Tessouat, received them; but he presently
convinced Champlain that there was no such northern route as he looked
to find. Whereupon Vignau confessed his imposture, and Champlain
generously let him go unpunished.
Meanwhile, De Monts had wearied of his New World enterprise, and to
secure the interests of his colony Champlain was constrained to make
annual voyages to France. In 1612 he found a protector in the Comte de
Soissons, who appointed the discoverer his deputy in New France.
Soissons, however, died in the same year; but fortunately the Prince
of Condé, by whom he was succeeded, was also well-disposed, and
retained Champlain as his lieutenant.
Up to this time Quebec had realised only an elementary form of
colonisation. The entire population numbered less than fifty persons,
and the city consisted of the fortified post at the foot of the cliff,
with a few cabins clustering about the log palisades. But on his
visit to France in 1615, Champlain took a step forward in his policy.
Hitherto the dwellers at Quebec had been transients. They came not to
take up residence, but to trade, intending to return again to France
as soon as possible. The fear of a death unshriven likewise
contributed to tentative settlement; and to meet the latter want,
Champlain resolved to establish a church in his colony. Four Récollet
friars--Franciscans of the Strict Observance--were easily persuaded to
return with him to Quebec. Burning with holy zeal, they confessed
their sins, received absolution, and embarked at Honfleur on the 24th
of April, 1615. A month later they arrived at Tadousac, and sailed on
to Quebec. Every new arrival increased the surprise of the bewildered
Indians, who gazed with suspicion upon the four mendicant friars, in
their coarse, gray _soutanes_ girt at the waist with the knotted cord
of St. Francis of Assisi, and wearing peaked _capotes_ and thick
wooden sandals.
The site of the first church in New France was selected without delay.
It stood on the strand near the Cul-de-sac, a little distance from the
Habitation. Its construction was simple and speedy, and before the end
of June the half-hundred citizens of Quebec knelt upon the bare ground
and reverently listened to the first Mass ever said in Canada. The
guns of the ship in the harbour, and the cannon on the ramparts,
boomed forth in honour of the event. That day the priesthood began its
long _régime_. The colonial policy of New France had now been
definitely shaped. Henceforth this new Power would stride into the
wilderness with the crucifix in one hand and the sword in the
other--for God and for the King; by baptism, binding the heathen to
the faith, and by co-operation with the native tribes against the
Iroquois, making Quebec the heart and soul of the vast Indian country,
whose boundaries no one knew, and whose wealth none could divine.
[Illustration: BONNE STE. ANNE (OLD CHURCH)]
In pursuance of this policy, Father Dolbeau, with much suffering,
accompanied the roving Montagnais to their northern hunting-grounds.
Their wanderings were so wide that, before he returned, the priest
had encountered the Esquimaux of Labrador. Meanwhile, Père Joseph made
his way to the Sault St. Louis, where a mighty concourse of savages
was assembled; and when the war-conference was ended he went back with
the Hurons to their villages. Champlain and Étienne Brulé, the most
daring bushman in New France, followed him thither by way of the
Ottawa, Lake Nipissing, French River, and the Georgian Bay. Thus Lake
Huron was discovered. Then, from Cahiagué, the Huron capital, set out
the memorable war-party of 1615, which came near to altering the fate
of the Colony. Up the Severn, across Lake Simcoe, thence by portage
route to the valley of the Trent, they arrived at Lake Ontario.
Crossing to the south shore, they hid their canoes in the forest and
were soon in Iroquois territory; but when they came within sight of
the Onondaga town, Champlain was no longer able to control his naked
allies, and in spite of his precautions they rushed the palisade, only
to be beaten back and scattered. The muskets of the twelve Frenchmen
alone saved a rout, Champlain himself being wounded; and with much
chagrin the dispersed Hurons made their way back to Lake Ontario. They
refused even to escort their wounded leader to Quebec as they had
promised, and he was obliged to spend the winter in the lodge of one
of the chiefs. He hunted and fished with the Hurons, and in one of
these expeditions he was lost in the forest for several days, being
only saved by that wonderful resource which marked his character. When
the spring came again Champlain set off for Quebec, guided by his kind
host Durantal. He reached the fort in July, after an absence of a
year, and the inhabitants, who had long since believed him dead,
assembled in the Récollet church for a special thanksgiving
service--nor without good reason, for upon the inveterate ruler and
leader depended the destiny of France in America.
The condition of the little colony had not improved during the absence
of the governing and inspiring spirit. From the force of
circumstances, it did not at once improve upon Champlain's return.
These first settlers of Quebec, whose food and living were easily got,
and with no ambition to work or trade, idled their time away. Gambling
and drinking were their common diversions, the more reckless spirits
taking to the woods and adopting the savage life of the hunting
tribes. These became the famous _coureurs de bois_, the picturesque
vagrants who were destined in the succeeding years to constitute so
serious a "problem" in the administration of New France. At first
Champlain could do little more than hold his colony together.
Intelligent as his purposes were, he received no help from the Court
of France or from the Viceroy De Monts, though the importance of the
enterprise of colonisation was set before Europe with every
circumstance of national pride and no detail of responsibility.
A painful evidence of the slight importance which the Louvre attached
to New France is furnished by the frequent and easy changes in its
patronage to which reference has already been made. On the
imprisonment of Condé, the young Duc de Montmorency purchased for a
song the Lieutenancy of New France, and he in turn sold it to his
nephew, Henri Lévis, the Duc de Ventadour. All except De Ventadour had
been moved by the lust of gain; in his case, however, the motive was
religious--to win the infidels of the New World to the faith of the
Old. The Jesuits were his chosen instruments; and accordingly, in the
summer of 1625, Charles Lalement, Enemond Masse, and Jean de Brébeuf,
landed at Quebec. No guns boomed a welcome to the disciples of Loyola.
No salvos of artillery hailed their arrival. Their reception was even
distressing. In the temporary absence of Champlain, the Calvinist
Émery de Caen was in charge of the fort, and in the violence of his
heresy refused them shelter. The inhabitants, likewise, declined to
admit the newcomers to their homes. In despair at such treatment the
three Jesuits were on the point of returning to France, when the
hospitable Récollets invited them to the convent at Notre Dame des
Anges. In September the Jesuits made a clearing on the opposite side
of the St. Charles, and here they began to build a convent of their
own. Thus had the forty-three French exiles, who now made the
permanent population of Quebec, a sufficiency of both Récollets and
Jesuits for their spiritual guidance. Lalement soon became the keeper
of Champlain's conscience, and from this time forward the Jesuits were
to have their way in New France.
In 1627 Richelieu's policy of absolutism was extended also to the New
World. Revoking the charter of De Caen the Huguenot merchant, he
organised the Company of One Hundred Associates, of which he was
himself the head. In return for sovereign powers and a perpetual
monopoly of the fur trade, this society was to people New France with
artisans and colonists, whom they were pledged to provide with cleared
lands for agriculture and to maintain. Huguenots, moreover, were to be
for ever excluded from the colony.
For a time the new company took an honest view of its obligations--but
only for a time. Within a year or so, Quebec was again on the verge of
starvation; and in the spring of 1629 the famished inhabitants were
eagerly awaiting the Company's ships from France. By July their
patience was almost worn out, when at last the watchers at Cap
Tourmente brought the news that a fleet of six vessels had reached
Tadousac. Quebec could scarcely await their arrival, and the more
eager inhabitants prepared to meet the ships down the river. But
suddenly two Indian canoes swung round the point of Orleans. These
made hot haste for the rock, and breathlessly announced that the fleet
in the river was a hostile English squadron, and that a fishing
village had already been pillaged and destroyed. Joy now became
consternation. Unknown to the distant colony, war between France and
England had been declared.
Quebec was not left long in suspense, for next day the messengers of
the English admiral, Sir David Kirke, himself a Huguenot refugee,
arrived with a demand for surrender. The heart of the valiant
Champlain was wrung. He had inspected his empty magazine and the
rickety fort which the improvidence of the Company had allowed to fall
into ruin. But even the weakness of his starved and paltry garrison
did not affect his fortitude. Kirke's envoy was courteously dismissed,
with the bold assurance that Quebec would defend itself to the last
man. Champlain still clung to the hope that supplies would arrive from
France; and even as he uttered his bold defiance, De Roquemont's
convoy and fleet of transports had entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Quebec strained eager eyes for the succouring sail. Night and day the
tiny garrison stood to the guns, resolving to spend their remaining
fifty pounds of gunpowder with equal fervour in welcome of friend or
foe.
But weeks wore into months, and misery and despair proportionately
increased. Here were nearly a hundred persons huddled in a decayed
fortress in the wilderness, with seven ounces of pounded pease for a
daily ration. By and by this supply also failed, and the starving
inhabitants were driven into the wood in search of acorns and roots.
Then came the news, which Champlain had long been dreading, that De
Roquemont's fleet had fallen into the hands of Sir David Kirke. The
last hope of saving Quebec was now brushed away. But the English fleet
did not yet summon the garrison to surrender, and instead of making
immediate assault, Kirke continued to blockade the River and the Gulf.
Another winter dragged by, and spring came again. The people continued
to starve, ever hoping that the enemy would raise the siege. This hope
was not to be fulfilled. On the 19th of July three English ships
sailed up the river, and with the apathy of despair the gallant
Champlain and his sixteen famished soldiers watched them anchor in the
basin. The bitter end was come.
Next day, the 20th of July, 1629, the English flag floated, for the
first time, over the fortress of Quebec. "There was not in the sayde
forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this examinate's
knowledge, any victuals, save only one tubb of bitter roots"--such is
the evidence of one of Kirke's captains. This, in brief, is the story
of the first of the five sieges of Quebec.
When Lewis Kirke, the Admiral's brother, took possession of the city
in the name of King Charles, he treated his captives with high
courtesy. The French inhabitants were given the option of remaining in
peaceful possession of their homes, or being transported back to
France. Louis Hébert, the chemist, and his relatives the Couillards,
the only two families of colonists in the strict sense of the word,
elected to remain on their small holdings. Champlain and the Jesuits,
choosing to return to France, embarked in the ship of Thomas Kirke,
who was sailing down the river to join his brother's fleet at
Tadousac. When they were opposite Mal Baie, about twenty-five leagues
below Quebec, a strange sail bore in sight. She proved to be a French
ship which had stolen past Tadousac with succours for Quebec. The
_George_ immediately gave chase, a sharp fight ensued, but in the end
the Frenchman struck his flag, and the new prize was borne down the
river.
Sir David Kirke now continued homeward with his prisoners. They
reached Plymouth in October, and from here the devoted and patriotic
Champlain went to London to urge the French ambassador to seek the
restitution of Quebec. Its capture had actually occurred after the
declaration of peace, and on that ground was held invalid. Champlain
pleaded well and in the end prevailed. It was not, however, until 1632
that the fortress was restored to France by the Treaty of St.
Germain-en-Laye; and it is probable that the mercenary Charles held
such a concession cheap when weighed in the scale with four hundred
thousand golden crowns, the promised dowry of Henrietta Maria.
During the three years of English occupation Quebec had made no
progress. The Indians had found in the newcomers a spirit in rough
contrast with the forbearance and good-fellowship of the French.
Disliking the brusqueness of the new rulers, the Algonquins now
shunned the city. Even the fort had been burned to the ground, and the
Hébert homestead alone made a sweet oasis in a desert of neglect and
dilapidation.
Such was the condition of the settlement in the summer of 1632, when
Émery de Caen again sailed into the harbour. He had come to take over
possession from the English. Despite his old antipathy, his fierce
Calvinism, he now brought with him--in some sense the price of his
commission--the Jesuits Père de Nouë and Père le Jeune; and joyfully
the exiled French gathered at the house of honest Hébert to hear Mass
after the lapse of three years.
It is not clear why the Huguenot De Caen was chosen to retake
possession of Quebec. The expedition was fitted out at his own
expense; and for recompense, a monopoly of the fur trade was granted
him for one year. At the end of that time the Company of One Hundred
Associates was to resume the privileges of its charter. Thus it
happened that, in 1633, Champlain was reappointed Governor of New
France by the astute Richelieu.
With three vessels Champlain set sail on the 23rd of March, and two
months later he look over the command of Quebec from De Caen. The next
two years passed placidly for the city. The Indians rejoiced to have
"the man with the iron breast" back in their lodges, and the harbour
swarmed once more with friendly canoes. Meanwhile, trade increased
with the Indians, and the settlement became a genuine commercial
colony. On one occasion as many as seven hundred Hurons flocked to
Quebec with their hunting trophies, and at length every midsummer came
to be marked by an Indian Fair. Père le Jeune's _Relation_ gives a
quaint description of one of the annual visits of the tribes. On the
24th of July, 1633, the harbour was dotted with fur-laden canoes from
the Ottawa and from Lake Huron. Landing at the Cul-de-sac, the dusky
braves took possession of the strand below the rock, where they
hastily set up their portable huts of birch-bark. "Some," says the
Jesuit chronicler, "had come only to gamble or to steal; others out of
mere curiosity; while the wiser and more businesslike among them had
come to barter their furs and sacks of tobacco leaves." The second day
of the visitation was marked by a solemn conclave of the chiefs and
the officers of Fort St. Louis--a smoking pow-wow for the exchange of
compliments and wampum.
The courtyard of the fort witnessed this garish function. The chiefs
and principal men of each village grouped themselves together. Some
were garbed in beaver skins, others in the shaggy hide of the bear.
Still others were guiltless of apparel, and all bore themselves with
an excessive dignity bordering on burlesque. Brébeuf, Daniel, and
Davost stood by in their sable vestments; and in the midst of all was
Champlain surrounded by the soldiers of his garrison. The next two
days were given up to trade--a beaver-skin exchanging for a tin
kettle, a bright cloth, or a string of beads. On the fifth day a huge
feast was given, by means of which savage appetites forced the French
to disgorge a moiety of their profit. But before another dawn the
Indians had vanished, and Quebec smiled to see its storehouses full of
furs.
By this time the little settlement had more than ever taken on the
appearance of a mission. The Récollets had virtually been excluded
from New France, the influence of the Jesuits having permeated even
the official atmosphere of Fort St. Louis. It has been claimed that,
in his younger years, Champlain was a Huguenot. It is more likely he
was a Catholic of a liberal type; and certainly in his last years a
Jesuit became his spiritual adviser. Both the soldier and the merchant
gave way to the priestly influence in the purposes of Government. The
cross was to precede the sword of empire on the march into the
wilderness.
In the midst of peace and progress a heavy loss was now to befall
Quebec. Champlain, beyond sixty-eight years of age, lay prostrate in
the fort. His last illness had come upon him, and on Christmas Day,
1635, the father of New France passed away. Soldiers, priests, and
settlers sorrowfully followed his remains to the little church on the
cliff, Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, which Champlain himself had
founded in honour of the restitution of the city, and where he had
renewed so often his faith and hope and courage.
A great spirit had crossed the bourne. The whole history of Canada has
no fairer pages than those which deal with the deeds of the founder of
Quebec. His was a character great and unselfish, often mistaken, but
always high-minded and just; not free from the credulity that
characterised his generation, but with a spirit of romantic endurance
which leaves the New World still his debtor; with a love of high
emprise unsullied by lust of gain or by cruelty or vain-glory. Like
Moses, he went forth into a land of promise; and, like Moses, the
place of his sepulchre is not known. It is, however, recorded that his
remains were placed "_dans un sépulcre particulier_." During the
administration of Montmagny a small chapel adjoining Notre Dame de la
Recouvrance came to be known as "Champlain's Chapel," and for a long
time this was believed to mark the founder's tomb. But in 1856 an
excavation at the foot of Breakneck Stairs revealed a curious vault
containing human bones; and later investigation has led to the belief
that the last resting-place of Champlain was a rocky niche part way
down Mountain Hill, in full view of the strand upon which his early
Habitation was built.
CHAPTER III
THE HEROIC AGE OF NEW FRANCE
The Indians with whom the French explorers first came in contact were
of the Algonquin family. Under different tribal names this race spread
itself over the Atlantic seaboard from Carolina to Hudson's Bay, and
farther west than the Great Lakes. In the comparatively small area now
forming northern New York lived the Iroquois, or Five Nation Indians,
who, like the Helvetii of old, out-stripped all the other tribes in
valour, and at the time of the arrival of the Europeans were engaged
in reducing their Algonquin foes to subjection. The Hurons, who figure
so prominently in early Canadian annals, were of Iroquois stock; but
owing to their situation in the Georgian Bay peninsula, and their
alliance with the neighbouring Algonquins, they became the especial
object of Iroquois enmity, and the feud went on till they were
exterminated.
The story of this conflict so closely concerns the history of Quebec,
that the period intervening between the death of Champlain and the
establishment of Royal Government has been described as the Heroic Age
of New France. Indeed, on looking back over the trials of that period,
it seems incredible that the colony was able to weather the storms of
Iroquois savagery by which it was swept. But this dark misery was so
clearly the outcome of French colonial policy, that a reference to the
underlying principles of that system is necessary.
The French idea of colonisation was propagandism. True, it was not
actually born of that deep principle, but rather of high adventure and
of the alluring mystery of discovery. Religion, however, very soon
became its prevailing impulse. The expedition of Verrazzano had its
_raison d'être_ in nothing higher than the cupidity of Francis I., who
was dazzled by legends of Mexican gold and Peruvian silver; but
religion inspired Cartier to his great adventure ten years later.
The Old World was in the throes of the Reformation. With shafts of
heresy, Luther in Germany and Calvin in France were assailing the
Catholic Church, and devout Catholics like Cabot had conceived the
idea of requiting the Church for her losses in the Old World by
religious conquests in the New. Roberval's voyage had been likewise
undertaken for discovery, settlement, and the conversion of the
Indians. The aged De Chastes, the patron of Champlain, had been
animated almost entirely by a religious motive, and the explorer's
own frequent declaration was that "the salvation of a single soul is
worth more than an empire."
Such sentiments alone were enough to explain the friendship of
Champlain with the Hurons and Algonquins, on whose lands he had
settled his colony, and to whom the French owed something at least in
the way of assistance or protection. But apart from sense of a
religious obligation, he was forced to depend on the Indians to guide
him through the country he wished to explore, and their goodwill was
also necessary to develop the fur trade for the great companies. It
was natural, therefore, that Champlain should enter into alliance with
the neighbouring tribes, whose amity meant so much to the struggling
settlement. But New France was destined to reap bitter fruits from
this seeding.
The offensive and defensive bond against the Iroquois almost cost the
colony its existence. It was, in fact, another Hundred Years' War with
a foe as implacable as death itself. The constant aim of the French
was to organise and harmonise the tribes against their common enemy,
and to establish a league of which Quebec would be the heart and head.
All this was in direct contrast with the English system, which took no
account whatever of the Indian tribes. The English colonists in
Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Virginia displaced the Indian; the
French made him part of their system. New France was a trading colony,
New England an agricultural colony. The French, with few exceptions,
did not go to the New World to make a home, but to secure fortunes;
the English colonists went to the New World to settle; they bore with
them their household gods.
For a hundred years or more, New France was dependent on Old France
for provisions; and even up to the death of Champlain, there were, in
fact, only two plots of ground under cultivation by French
settlers--that of Louis Hébert in Upper Town, and the small farm of
the Récollects on the St. Charles. In New England, the settlers first
of all cleared the land, laid out their farms, and stored their
provisions against the winter season. They traded with the Indians and
acquired wealth, and for their greater convenience they made purchases
in the Old World. Thus, from the first days almost, the New England
Colonies were self-contained, while New France depended on Europe to a
degree amazing and pathetic. This fact strikes the keynote of the
French _régime_, explaining, as it does, most of the trials and
tribulations of New France in its perennial warfare with the Iroquois,
and in the later friction with New England.
Nor is it astonishing that New France never became self-reliant. From
first to last her natural growth was throttled, either by the greed
of the fur companies or by the mistaken paternalism of the Bourbons.
The Company of One Hundred Associates, which Richelieu founded in
1624, was no improvement on the previous administrations of New
France, in spite of its elaborate charter and the fact that Richelieu
himself was at the head of it. The fur companies were doubly politic
in discouraging agriculture, for the purchase of peltries thus became
practically the sole industry of the colony, while at the same time
the people were left dependent upon the stores of the company for
food. The colonisation of New England was intensive, the colonisation
of New France extensive; New England cleared and built as occasion
demanded; New France merely established bases from which to penetrate
the wilderness. Before the death of Champlain, the white crosses which
her pioneers were wont to set up were to be found as far west as Lake
Huron, and before the close of the seventeenth century they dotted the
trackless forests from Michillimackinac to New Orleans. It is not
surprising, then, that the Indians became an important factor in the
history of Canada.
[Illustration: Cardinal de Richelieu
from the Versailles Gallery]
M. de Montmagny, Champlain's successor, arrived in the spring of 1636.
He was a Knight of Malta, a brave soldier, and a religious fanatic.
During the twelve years of his administration, Quebec was almost
constantly defending itself against the Iroquois. Redoubled efforts
to convert the Indians also mark this period. The first of these
efforts was the pious project of M. de Sillery, a Knight of Malta. De
Sillery had wearied of the gay court of Fontainebleau, and in 1637 he
supplied the means whereby the Jesuit Le Jeune established a hostel
for converted Algonquins. The site chosen was a few miles up the river
from Quebec; and although Iroquois hostility soon made havoc of the
mission, the spot is known to this day as Sillery Cove.
In the same year, 1637, the Jesuits began a wooden structure in the
rear of the fort, resolving to devote the six thousand crowns donated
by the Marquis de Gamache, to the founding of a school for Indian
children, and a college for French boys. Father Daniel brought down
the first pupil from the Huron country, when he returned to Quebec,
and the interpreter Nicollet skilfully induced several other Indian
families to send hostages to the Jesuit seminary. But the untamed
savage drank shyly at the fountain of learning, and Father Le Jeune
relates of the dusky scholars that one ran away, two ate themselves to
death, a fourth was kidnapped by his affectionate parent, and three
others stole a canoe, loaded it to the gunwale with such commodities
and food as they could lay hands upon, and escaped up the river. The
indefatigable Jesuits, however, were not to be discouraged, and they
still wrote with delight of their savage province. Their ardent
_Relations_ were sent regularly to France, and the hearts of
princesses in the Faubourg St. Germain, and of nuns in the convents of
Montmartre were alike fired with zeal for the Canadian mission.
"Is there no charitable and virtuous lady," pleaded Le Jeune, "who
will come to this country to gather up the blood of Christ by teaching
His word to the little Indian girls?" Thirteen nuns in a single
convent straightway vowed their lives to the far-off mission; but the
touching appeal of the Jesuit father sank deepest of all in the heart
of the fever-stricken Madame de la Peltrie.
A review of the early life of Madame de la Peltrie makes it easy to
understand how her mind was readily inflamed by the tearful _Relations
des Jesuits_. As a child religious ecstasy had possessed her ardent
mind; and her father, a gentleman of Normandy, was continually
striving against her inclinations for the cloister. Twice he carried
her back from a convent whither she had fled, and by a series of
devices at length contrived a happy marriage for her. At twenty-two
she was left a widow and childless, and once more the fervour of her
early years consumed her. She resolved afresh to be a nun. Her father
entreated and, under threat of disinheritance, commanded her to marry
again. Meanwhile, what was being done in Canada came to her
knowledge, and increased her ardour tenfold. A Jesuit, of whom she
sought counsel in her dilemma, suggested a casuistical compromise.
Through him a formal marriage was arranged, and the death of her
father soon afterwards left herself and her revenues free for pious
enterprise in New France.
[Illustration: MARIE DE L'INCARNATION]
Repairing to the Ursuline Convent at Tours, Madame de la Peltrie made
choice of three nuns to share with her the bliss of founding a convent
at Quebec. The most remarkable of these was the devout Marie de
l'Incarnation. At this time the latter was forty years of age, tall,
stately, and forceful in appearance, and with a history as romantic as
that of Madame de la Peltrie herself. At seventeen she had made an
unhappy marriage. Two years later her husband died, and left her with
an infant son. She gave the child into the charge of her sister, and
devoted herself to solitude and religious meditation. Visions,
ecstasies, rapture, and dejection took alternate possession of her
mind. Fastings and the severest forms of discipline henceforward made
up the melancholy routine of the life of the "holy widow." Love for
her child for a long time kept her from taking the veil, but at
length, by prayer and fasting, she emancipated herself from this
maternal weakness of the flesh, and was rapturously received by the
Ursulines of Tours. Yet in spite of the vagaries of her devout mind,
Madame de l'Incarnation possessed a singular aptness for practical
affairs. Several of her early years had been spent in the house of her
brother-in-law, where she had displayed an amazing talent for the
ordinary business of life. A knowledge of this trait had doubtless led
the Jesuits to press her appointment as Superior of the new Ursuline
Convent which Madame de la Peltrie proposed establishing at Quebec.
Meanwhile, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, Richelieu's niece, had also been
moved by the pleadings from Quebec, and she determined to found a
Hôtel-Dieu. Three nuns of the Hospital were entrusted with this
project.
The ship bearing Madame de la Peltrie, the three Ursulines, and the
three Hospitalières set sail from Dieppe early in May, 1639. The
excitement and activity of the outer world must have contrasted
strangely with the peacefulness of their quiet cloisters; yet the
frail nuns were buoyed up by a marvellous enthusiasm and a noble
faith. This faith, however, was destined to be sorely tried. Winds and
waves beset them on the way, icebergs struck terror into their
spirits, and it was not till the middle of July that the leaking ship
came to anchor in the harbour of Tadousac. Thence they proceeded in
small boats up the river; and on the 1st of August the welcoming
cannon of Fort St. Louis boomed forth, and Quebec was _en fête_ in
honour of so notable an arrival.
Pending the erection of a suitable building at Quebec, the nuns of the
Hospital established themselves at the mission palisade of Sillery,
and the Ursulines began their work in the small wooden structure on
the river's brink below the rock. An outbreak of smallpox among the
Indians soon over-crowded their wretched tenement, and infected
savages came thither only to die. Worn out with labour, the
indefatigable nuns continued bravely to contend with the disease and
suffering around them, and the monuments of their high endurance and
beautiful devotion are to be found to-day in the ivy-clad cloisters in
Garden Street, where the gentle Ursulines still minister to the
maidens of French Canada; and in the pretentious hospital on Palace
Hill where nuns still care tenderly for the sick and dying, and read
the inspiring history of their order back to 1639.
About the middle of the seventeenth century a stranger in Quebec would
have been surprised to find that the city lacked nothing so much as
people. Reversing the natural law of supply and demand, it built
churches before it had worshippers, schools before it had scholars,
and hospitals before it had patients. The purpose was to attract
settlement by preparing beforehand for the wants of colonists. These
early establishments have, however, justified themselves by a
continuous and permanent history, and Quebec is now, as it was nearly
three centuries ago, a city of churches and convents. The bells rang
then, as now, from morning till night, Gregorian chants streamed out
through convent windows, and the black-robed priest was the soul of
all.
Montmagny rebuilt in stone the fort on the precipice, and spared
nothing to give the place a formidable appearance. For safety the
church and presbytery of the Jesuits stood close to the parapet. The
Ursulines, with less caution, began to build their tiny convent in the
neighbouring woods. The first Hôtel-Dieu was rising on the cliff
overlooking the valley of the St. Charles, and not far away was the
new farm of Louis Hébert, the chemist--all together making a picture
of progress. Champlain's first Habitation had fallen to ruin, but a
few wooden tenements still remained to mark the earliest settlement in
Lower Town, and the Church of the Récollets told the tale of past
perils and an unfailing faith. A league or so up the river was the
Algonquin mission of Sillery, with its clustered cabins and rude
oratory, surrounded by a palisade.
[Illustration: URSULINE NUNS OF QUEBEC (SALLE D'ÉTUDE, NOVICIAT>)]
Montmagny was a _dévoté_ surrounded by a suite as pious as himself.
Through these amenable spirits the Jesuits were supreme not only in
matters of religion, but in matters of state. Indeed, in this
ecclesiastically governed community there was little distinction
between sacred and secular matters. The church was the centre of
affairs. A stake was planted before the sacred edifice bearing a
placard of warning against blasphemy, drunkenness, and neglect of the
Mass. A pillory, with chain and iron collar, and a wooden horse, stood
close by--suggestive means of religious correction.
[Illustration: JESUITS COLLEGE AND CHURCH
(Latter destroyed by fire, 1807)]
Even the recreations of the people partook of a religious character.
The feast of St. Joseph, the patron saint of New France, was
celebrated with pious display. On May-Day the young people of Quebec
tripped about a maypole surmounted by a triple crown in honour of
Jesus, Maria, and Joseph. The annual visits of the Company's ships
from France, however, temporarily disturbed the calm of the monastic
city. The genuflexions of drunken sailors were seldom in honour of St.
Joseph; and the ribald humours of visiting mariners profaned for a
season the quiet rock of Quebec.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU ST. LOUIS, 1694]
But throughout this missionary period the hatchet of the Iroquois was
suspended over the city. Their dreaded war-cry rang all too often
through the adjacent forests, and their stealthy tomahawks found
victims even under the guns of Fort St. Louis. So daring became the
incursions of the implacable savages that the settlers did not dare to
till their lands. To pass from one post to another without a strong
escort meant risk of death or capture; and capture was more dreaded
than death itself. Every year had its tale of surprises and
massacres. The sleepless sentries on the ramparts, and the staunch
palisades of the fort seemed insufficient protection against a foe as
silent as an arrow and as swift in speeding upon its victim. At this
time also the Jesuit missions among the distant Hurons were suffering
unknown horrors; but the tale of their disasters is for another
chapter.
Successive governors of Quebec--Montmagny, D'Ailleboust, and
D'Argenson--pleaded with the home authorities to send reinforcements
for their feeble garrison, by whom alone Quebec hoped to escape the
ever-dreaded catastrophe. Through press of home affairs, and official
neglect and indifference, these requests continued to be disregarded.
Reprisals were taken against the Iroquois whenever opportunities
occurred; but even these were all too rare.
In May, 1660, an Iroquois captive was brought to Quebec. A stake was
erected in the _Place d'Armes_, and in the sight of the populace the
Indian was burned to death. A deed of this nature, occurring with the
apparent sanction of the religious governor of a civilised community,
must be taken to reflect the terrible pressure of suffering which made
such inhuman reprisals possible. The savage nature of this vengeance
was softened to the eyes of many by the poor casuistry of the Jesuits,
who gave out, and believed, that the soul of the Mohawk would go
straight to Paradise on the wings of his unwelcome baptism.
This particular Indian met his fate with the wonderful fortitude of
his race, but not with their stoic silence. Instead, he breathed out
threatenings, and promised the fell destruction of the pale-faced
interlopers. Even now, he told them, hundreds of his kinsmen were
gathering upon the Ottawa and St. Lawrence for the final effacement of
Quebec, and with hideous fury the baptized savage called down upon
them the wrath of his gods.
Forthwith Quebec became deeply alarmed. The desultory attacks of the
Iroquois were now to be exchanged for a deliberate assault in which
the whole strength of the Five Nations should be thrown into the
struggle. The Ursulines and nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu forsook their
convents to take refuge in the fortified college of the Jesuits,
whither the fugitives from the surrounding settlements also fled. A
company of soldiers took up their quarters in the Ursuline Convent,
the redoubts of the fort were strengthened, and barricades were
erected in the streets of Lower Town. All night long sentries paced
the parapets, peering anxiously into the surrounding darkness, and
straining their ears for the creeping tread in the thicket.
After several days of watching, however, no Iroquois appeared, and the
inhabitants began to breathe freely again. The more courageous
returned to their deserted homes and farms, but the timid still clung
to the blockhouse. The panic had also spread to Ville Marie,[5] and
the imminence of this danger produced one of the most brilliant
exploits which Canadian history records--a feat of daring closely
resembling, and not surpassed by, the achievement of Leonidas in the
Pass of Thermopylæ.
The story is one of the finest in the picturesque pages of Parkman,
part of whose narrative is here transcribed.
[Footnote 5: Now Montreal.]
* * * * *
Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, was a young man of good
family, who had come to the colony three years before, at the age of
twenty-two. He had held some military rank in France, and it was not
long before he set on foot a remarkable Indian enterprise. Sixteen
young men caught his spirit, struck hands with him, and pledged their
word. They bound themselves by oath to accept no quarter, made their
wills, confessed, and received the sacrament. After a solemn farewell,
they embarked in several canoes, well supplied with arms and
ammunition. Descending the St. Lawrence, they entered the mouth of the
Ottawa, crossed the Lake of Two Mountains, and slowly advanced against
the current of the river. A few days later they reached the foot of
the formidable rapid called the "Long Sault," where a tumult of waters
foaming among ledges and boulders barred their onward way. Besides, it
was needless to go farther. The Iroquois were sure to pass the Sault,
and could be fought here as well as elsewhere.
[Illustration: THE URSULINES' CONVENT]
Just below the rapid stood a palisade fort, the work of an Algonquin
war-party of the preceding autumn. It was a mere enclosure of trunks
of small trees planted in a circle, and was already ruinous. Such as
it was, the Frenchmen took possession. They made their fires and slung
their kettles on the neighbouring shore. Here they were soon
afterwards joined by a small party of friendly Indians, consisting of
about forty Hurons from Quebec, under their brave and wily chief
Étienne Annahotaha, and five Algonquins led by Mituvemeg. Daulac made
no objection to their company, so they all bivouacked together.
In a day or two their scouts came in with tidings that two Iroquois
canoes were coming down the Sault. Daulac had only time to set his men
in ambush before the advance canoes of the enemy swept down the river.
A few of the Iroquois escaped the Frenchmen's volley, and fleeing into
the forest, they reported their mischance to their main body, 200 in
number, on the river above. Thereupon a fleet of canoes suddenly
appeared, bounding down the rapids, filled with warriors eager for
revenge. The allies had barely time to escape to their fort, leaving
their kettles still slung over the fires. The Iroquois made a hasty
attack, but being repulsed, they withdrew and fell to building a rude
fort of their own in the neighbouring forest. This gave the French
breathing-time, and they used it for strengthening their defences.
They planted a row of stakes within their palisade, to form a double
fence, and filled the intervening space with earth and stones to the
height of a man, leaving twenty loopholes or more, at each of which
three marksmen were stationed.
Their work was still unfinished when the Iroquois were upon them
again. They had broken to pieces the birch canoes of the French and
their allies, and kindling the bark, rushed up to pile it blazing
against the palisade; but so brisk and steady a fire met them that
they recoiled, and at last gave way. Again and again, however, they
came on, each time leaving many of their bravest fighters dead upon
the ground. At length, their spirits dashed, the warriors drew back. A
canoe was hastily sent down the river to call to their aid five
hundred Iroquois who were mustered near the mouth of the Richelieu.
Meanwhile, the defenders of the fort were harassed night and day with
a spattering fire and a constant menace of attack. Thus five days
passed. Hunger, thirst, and want of sleep wrought fatally on the
strength of the French and their allies, who, pent up together in a
narrow prison, fought and prayed by turns. Deprived as they were of
water, they could not swallow the crushed Indian corn which was their
only food. Some of them, under cover of a brisk fire, ran down to the
river and filled such small vessels as they had. But this meagre
supply only tantalised their thirst, and they now dug a hole in the
fort, to be rewarded at last by a little muddy water oozing through
the clay.
On the fifth day an uproar of unearthly yells from seven hundred
savage throats, mingled with a clattering salute of musketry, told the
Frenchmen that the expected reinforcement had come. Soon a crowd of
warriors mustered for the attack. Cautiously they advanced,
screeching, leaping, and firing as they came on; but the French were
at their posts, and every loophole darted its tongue of fire. Besides
muskets, they had heavy musketoons of large calibre, which, scattering
scraps of lead and iron among the throng of savages, often maimed
several of them at one discharge. The Iroquois, astonished at the
persistent vigour of the defence, fell back discomfited. The fire of
the French had told upon them with deadly effect. Three days more wore
away in a series of futile attacks; and during all this time Daulac
and his men, reeling with exhaustion, fought and prayed, sure of a
martyr's reward.
At length the Iroquois determined upon a grand final assault. Large
and heavy shields, four or five feet high, were made by lashing
together three split logs with the aid of cross-bars, and covered with
these mantelets a chosen band advanced, followed by the motley throng
of warriors. In spite of a brisk fire they reached the palisade, and
crouching below the range of shot, hewed furiously with their hatchets
to cut their way through. Daulac had crammed a large musketoon with
powder, and lighting a fuse, he tried to throw it over the barrier, to
burst like a grenade among the savages without; but it struck the
ragged top of one of the palisades, fell back among the Frenchmen and
exploded, killing and wounding several of them. In the confusion which
followed, the Iroquois got possession of the loopholes, and thrusting
in their guns, fired on those within. In a moment they had torn a
breach in the palisade, then another and another. The brave Daulac was
struck dead, but the survivors kept up the now hopeless fight. With
sword, hatchet, or knife, they threw themselves against the throng of
enemies, striking and stabbing with the fury of madmen, till the
Iroquois, despairing of taking them alive, fired volley after volley
and shot them down. All was over, and a burst of triumphant yells
proclaimed the dear-bought victory.
To the colony it proved salvation. The Iroquois had had fighting
enough. If seventeen Frenchmen and a handful of Indian allies, behind
a picket fence, could hold seven hundred warriors at bay so long, what
might they expect from many such fighting behind walls of stone? For
that year they thought no more of capturing Quebec and Ville Marie,
but returned to their villages dejected and amazed, to howl over their
losses, and nurse their dashed courage for a day of vengeance.
CHAPTER IV
"AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM"
If on its material side French colonial policy took account of the
Indian, it did so much more on its religious side. Quebec was the
farthest outpost of Catholicism. New France was for ever to be free
from the taint of heresy, allowing none but Catholic settlers within
her gates; and Huguenots, as we have seen, were specifically excluded.
The Indians were to be rescued from heathen darkness and led into the
sacred light of the Church. Jesuit missions thus became a salient
feature in the early history of Quebec, the nerve centre of the
movement being the palisaded convent on the little St. Charles.
To go back in review. On the retrocession of Quebec by the English,
under the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, in the time of Champlain, the
influence of the Jesuits was sufficient to secure for themselves the
undivided control of the Canadian mission. Returning to Quebec in
1632, Father Le Jeune and his two companions had established
themselves in the half-ruined convent of Notre Dame des Anges, built
by the Récollets sixteen years before. The log stockade enclosed two
buildings, the smaller of which served as storehouse, stable, and
workshop, and the larger as chapel and refectory. Four tiny cells
opened off the latter, and in these the fathers lodged, while the lay
brothers and the workmen found apartments in the garret and the
cellar. The regimen of this crude establishment was severely ascetic.
The day began with early Mass and closed with evening prayers. The
intervening time was spent by the laymen in cultivating the little
clearing, and by the fathers in hearing confessions at the fort a mile
away, or in struggling with the Algonquin idiom, by the vague
assistance of one Pierre, an Indian proselyte, who, in weakness of
flesh, ran away when the season of Lent drew near.
The strength of the Jesuits was increased in the spring of 1633 by the
arrival of four new priests. Of these the most remarkable was Jean de
Brébeuf, the descendant of a noble family in Normandy, and destined to
prove his own nobility by an intrepid zeal and an almost incredible
courage.
Le Jeune's distressful experiment with a band of wandering Algonquins
had convinced the Jesuits that their schemes of mission-conquest could
not bear much fruit if they were confined to the vagrant tribes of
the north. Farther west in the peninsula of the great lakes lived
Indians of fixed habits and domicile, and otherwise further advanced
towards civilisation than the improvident hunting tribes round about
Quebec. Of these the most notable were the Hurons. As long before as
1615 the Récollet Le Caron had gone among them, and several years
later Brébeuf had made the perilous lodges of Ihonatiria his
habitation, but had at length returned to France. On his coming to
Quebec again in the spring of 1633, Brébeuf anxiously turned his
thoughts towards his former mission, awaiting only a favourable
opportunity to forsake the comparative safety of the city of Quebec
for the gloomy shores of Lake Huron and "the greater glory of God."
Midsummer brought the annual swarm of Hurons to the trading fair at
Quebec. For a week the all but naked savages overran the little
settlement, their animal curiosity almost driving the French to
distraction, and their casual peculations causing much annoyance. But
their presence was a necessary evil, if the Fur Company was to declare
its dividends. Hence long-suffering courtesy became essential both to
the peace of the city and to future interests so much at stake.
A powerful consideration with the community was the anxiety of the
Jesuits to go back with the Indians to their villages on Lake Huron.
Champlain, when governor, had espoused this project in the most
seductive of his speeches. "These are our fathers," he had announced
to the sixty chiefs gathered for the nonce in the quadrangle of the
Fort. "We love them more than we love ourselves. The whole French
nation honours them. They do not go among you for your furs. They have
left their friends and their country to show you the way to the happy
hunting-grounds. If you love the French, as you say you do, then love
and honour these our fathers, and care for them in your distant
villages."
But the wind bloweth where it listeth, and the Indian mind was no more
sure. Above all else it lacked definiteness; it was touched by
rhetoric. Champlain's auditors had been thrilled with deep emotion.
They were for embarking at once with the Jesuits. Then they had
faltered, and by the next day they had decided to depart without them.
For another year, therefore, the fathers had remained at Notre Dame
des Anges, studying the Huron language for future use, and caring
meantime for the spiritual welfare of the half-hundred French
residents of Quebec.
The summer of 1634 once more saw the city given over to the visiting
Hurons. The old persuasive palaver was repeated, and this time with
more success. When the trading fair was over, Brébeuf, Daniel, and
Davost set off with the savage fleet, each in a different canoe,
facing a journey of nine hundred miles fraught with many perils, but
with none so ominous as the sullen and menacing mood of their heathen
conductors.
Week after week they pressed toilfully up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa;
barefooted they struggled over the rocky portages, with a pittance of
pounded maize for their daily ration, and mother-earth for their
nightly couch. Davost's guide robbed and abandoned him at an island in
the Upper Ottawa. Daniel was likewise deserted; but the giant Brébeuf
yielded to no hardships, and surpassed even the seasoned savages in
strength and endurance. On the shore of the Georgian Bay, however, his
guide at length abandoned him. But Brébeuf had been here in a former
year, and his instinctive woodcraft guided him twenty miles through
the forest to the palisaded village of Ihonatiria.
"Echom has come again," cried the inhabitants, as they recognised the
towering figure of the Jesuit who had departed from them five years
before; and they opened again their lodges to the missionary.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE FIRST CANADIAN MISSIONARY]
After days of anxious waiting, Brébeuf had the joy of seeing Daniel
and Davost arrive at Ihonatiria. The hardships and dangers they had
endured, and the indignities they had suffered from their brutal
guides, were only outweighed by their zealous delight in reaching at
length the scene of their devoted labours. The Hurons aided them in
the construction of a log mission-house; and when the fathers had
decorated the interior with highly-coloured pictures of the saints and
the glittering regalia of the Church, the red men filled it to
overflowing. A striking clock and a magnifying glass, however, were
the chief objects of wonderment, and the credulous Indians regarded
the priests as the workers of miracles. This awe and respect the
fathers turned to good account, gathering the children into the
mission-house for daily instruction. With a mind also to the physical
welfare of their flock, they succeeded in reconstructing the palisades
and fort of the Huron village.
Yet with all the outward respect in which the Jesuits were held, their
doctrines made little or no impression upon the Indian mind. The adult
Hurons had a superstitious fear of baptism, and shunned the sign of
the cross as a spell. Under these difficulties the Jesuits laboured,
saving stricken children from a dark hereafter by the furtive
administration of the dreaded sacrament.
With what boldness they dared to assume, Brébeuf and his companions
condemned the infernal practices of the so-called medicine-men, whose
accomplishments ranged from the curing of snake-bites to the casting
out of devils. To them all diseases of the body called for much the
same treatment, varied only in the proportion of vehemence allowed in
their incantations and at medicine-feasts. The disgraceful orgies
attending these "cures" led the priests to interfere: a policy which
enraged the sorcerers of the tribe, and presently put the lives of the
missionaries in jeopardy.
The summer of 1635 was marked by a great drought. The maize and beans
withered in the sun; and in spite of the hoarse invocations of the
medicine-men and the fierce efforts of the tribal rain-maker the sky
stayed cloudless. Thereupon the Jesuits were accused. The cross upon
the mission-house had frightened the bird of thunder[6] away from
Ihonatiria. Such were the charges which the sorcerers brought against
the Jesuits; and the superstitious Hurons believed that they were
true. However, a timely vow was made to St. Joseph, the chosen
protector of the Hurons, and in answer to their ardent prayers the
rain fell in welcome torrents--so Brébeuf writes--and calamity was
averted for a time.
Meanwhile the work of the Jesuits extended. With headquarters still at
Ihonatiria, they made visits to the neighbouring villages; and for the
greater success of the mission, new priests were drawn from Quebec. By
1640 those labouring among the Hurons and the neutral nation further
south numbered thirteen.
[Footnote 6: The Indian belief regarding thunder was as follows: "It
is a man in the form of a turkey-cock. The sky is his palace, and he
remains in it when the air is clear. When the clouds begin to grumble,
he descends to the earth to gather up snakes and other objects which
the Indians call _okies_. The lightning flashes wherever he opens or
closes his wings. If the storm is more violent than usual, it is
because his young are with him and aiding in the noise as well as they
can."--_Relation des Jesuits_, 1636.]
[Illustration: BRÉBEUF]
It is not possible within the limits of a single chapter to portray
the character and follow the fortunes of all those heroic souls, who
gave up home and country and worldly ambition to bury themselves in
the unknown wilds of the West, and to walk with their lives in their
hands among the cannibal tribes of New France. The motto which
Ignatius Loyola had adopted for his order was, "Ad Majorem Dei
Gloriam," and in their perilous missions its members practised
absolute obedience to quasi-military discipline. To name but four,
Brébeuf, Lalement, Garnier, and Jogues were all destined to tragic
deaths, and the story of their martyrdom is one of the most sorrowful
in the history of the land.
[Illustration: LALEMENT]
The suffering caused by the pestilence of 1637 was much more severe
than those periodical afflictions by which the Indians were visited.
Virulent smallpox was a feature of the plague, and the pious offices
of priests and the incantations of the medicine-men alike proved
unavailing. Clearly, some black spell had been cast upon the nation.
First it was ascribed to a serpent, then to a spotted frog, then to a
demon in the muskets of the French. The Jesuits were accused of
compassing death by magic. The striking clock, which aforetime had
merely astonished them, was now an engine of calamity; and the
litanies floating out through the windows of the mission-house were
fatal incantations. Yet the Indians were afraid to lay hands upon
these dealers in death. Awe held them back from wreaking their
sinister designs upon the fearless men who went as ever into the
pestilential tepees, that through the mystic drop and sign they might
rescue the poor victims from an eternity of woe.
At length it became clear to the Jesuits that fear alone would not
much longer stay the hatchets of the now hopeless Hurons. Daily they
expected to meet a violent death, and a letter, still extant, drawn up
by five priests in the form of a last testament, shows the unfaltering
fortitude of men whose dearest ambition was a martyr's death. The
intervention of a squaw saved Du Peron from the tomahawk uplifted to
brain him; an unseen hand delivered Ragueneau; Le Mercier and Brébeuf
confounded their assailants with the courage of their demeanour; and
only Chaumont suffered, being assaulted and severely wounded. Knowing,
however, that their death had been finally decided upon, the Jesuits
gave a _festin d'adieu_--one of those farewell feasts which Huron
custom enjoined on those about to die; and the courageous resignation
of this band of martyrs filled even the tents of the ungodly with a
superstitious awe. Once more the annihilating blow was averted; and
from this time forward the peril threatening the Jesuit mission came
not from the Hurons themselves, but from their implacable enemies, the
Iroquois.
The year 1640 was drawing to a close when, after a few years' respite,
the terrible war-whoop of the Five Nation Indians again rang through
Canadian woods. Quebec was continually threatened by the Mohawks,
whose highway of attack was the river Richelieu; and the Hurons were
assailed by the Western tribe of the Iroquois confederacy. The
pestilence of 1637 had ruined Ihonatiria, and for greater security the
Jesuits resolved upon a large central establishment, in lieu of small
missions in the several Huron villages. They chose for a site the
mouth of the river Wye, which empties into Matchedash Bay. Here, in
1639, they built the mission of Ste. Marie. In the extreme peril of
Indian warfare, the Hurons fled thither for food and baptism; and the
hunger of three thousand neophytes and refugees soon put the fortified
mission on short rations.
Isaac Jogues and a score of Huron warriors were despatched to Quebec
for food and clothing. They reached the city in safety, although the
St. Lawrence was closely beset by hostile Iroquois. Returning in
twelve canoes laden with necessaries for the destitute Ste. Marie,
Father Jogues and his companions fell into the hands of a Mohawk
war-party. Some were killed on the spot, and the others were carried
up the Richelieu and across Lake Champlain to a more awful fate. First
they were made to run a gauntlet of Mohawk war-clubs; then they were
placed upon a scaffold, where the women lacerated them with knives and
clam-shells, and the children applied fire-brands to their naked
bodies. This torture was repeated in each of the three Mohawk
villages. Goupil, a lay brother, was soon afterwards murdered, and
Jogues lived the life of a slave until some Dutch settlers on the
Hudson effected his ransom and put him on board a ship bound for
France.
In the following year, however, Jogues came back to Quebec, and on
behalf of the suffering city he undertook to negotiate a peace with
the Mohawks. Armed with gifts and belts of wampum, he set out
fearlessly to face his former tormentors. For a short time the wampum
saved him, but he was soon obliged to return to Quebec. The French,
however, were determined to win the Iroquois, politically and
religiously, and no danger was great enough to check them.
Accordingly, in the late summer of 1646, Jogues was again despatched
to the post which by this time had come to be known as the Mission of
the Martyrs; and at last, on the 18th of October, he was foully
murdered in the lodge of a Mohawk chief.
In the preceding winter Anne de Nouë, a Jesuit of noble descent and
frail physique, set off from Quebec to minister to the garrison at
Fort Richelieu. In spite of his sixty-three years, he did not shrink
from the perils of frost and snow which lay before him. On his
snow-shoes and with a few days' provisions he set forth upon the path
of sacrifice. A blizzard overtook him on the frozen river, he lost his
way, and some days later his martyred body was discovered kneeling in
the snow.
Meanwhile the dangers farther west were not decreasing. Iroquois
attacks and Huron reprisals were ever threatening the Jesuit missions,
and the last great blow was soon to fall. In the summer of 1648 an
Iroquois war-party crept up to the gates of St. Joseph. Most of the
warriors had gone to Quebec, but the palisade still contained Father
Daniel and close upon a thousand women and children and old men. An
early Mass had crowded the chapel, and the priest, clothed in full
vestments, was exhorting the neophytes to be strong in the faith, when
the dreaded war-cry rang through the village. The panic-stricken
Hurons sought in vain to save themselves from stark slaughter, but
Daniel met his death calmly at the door of his burning church. Seven
hundred prisoners were taken, and the retiring Iroquois left of St.
Joseph only a heap of ruins.
The destruction of the mission was, however, but the prelude to the
final extinction of the Huron nation. Terror-stricken they awaited the
blow, in spite of the efforts of the Jesuits to rouse them to strong
defence. All winter a formidable war-party of the Mohawks and Senecas
roved through the Huron woods, and in early spring they fell upon St.
Ignace and St. Louis. The first village was burned with no show of
resistance, and its four hundred inhabitants were either tomahawked or
kept for torture. Only three escaped, and these fled to St. Louis,
about a league away. Here Brébeuf and Lalement endeavoured to rally
the panic-stricken villagers. By sunrise the invaders were upon them.
Brought to bay, the Hurons fought bravely. The giant Brébeuf stood in
the breach and cheered them by his hopeful courage. Twice the Iroquois
fell back, but at their third advance drove in the shattered palisade.
Those of the Hurons who still lived were made prisoners; the two
Jesuits were bound together, and the clustering cabins of St. Louis
were given to the flames.
Returning to the ruins of St. Ignace, the Iroquois made preparations
for the despatch of their prisoners. Brébeuf and Lalement were
stricken to the soul by the carnival of blood; yet their own
martyrdom was to be made the most cruel of all. Brébeuf was first
bound to a stake, all the while continuing to speak words of comfort
to his fellow-captives. Enraged by this behaviour, the Iroquois tore
away his lower lip and thrust a hot iron into his throat. No sound or
sign of pain escaped the tortured priest. Then Lalement was also led
out, that each might witness the other's pangs. Strips of bark smeared
with pitch enveloped the naked body of Lalement, and after making him
fast to a stake they set the bark on fire. Round Brébeuf's neck a
collar of red-hot hatchets was hung; and in mockery of baptism the
savages poured kettles of scalding water upon the heads of both.
Brébeuf was scalped, his tormentors drinking the blood, thus to endow
themselves with his unflinching courage. After four hours the noblest
Jesuit of all was dead; but Lalement was kept alive for seventeen
hours, until a pitiful hatchet ended his voiceless misery. So died two
men whose memory has ennobled the history of the land for which they
laboured, and adds to the fame and honour of their race.
At Ste. Marie, Bressani, Ragueneau, and their French companions
awaited the Iroquois onslaught. But the fugitive Hurons, gathering for
a last resistance, had checked the Iroquois' further advance, and
after a fierce battle the latter withdrew southward with an army of
wretched captives.
That day the Hurons as a nation ceased to exist. Abandoning their
remaining villages, they dispersed in small bands to roam northward
and eastward, while a few established themselves at Isle St. Joseph,
thinking to protect themselves here from their inveterate foes. As for
the Jesuits, Garnier and Chabanel still laboured among the Tobacco
nation farther to the south; but they too became the victims of the
Iroquois before this fatal year was over.
Famine and the rigours of winter presently worked sad havoc upon the
little band to whom Ragueneau now ministered at Isle St. Joseph, and
in the spring renewed attacks of the Iroquois led the Hurons to decide
upon a remarkable enterprise. This was to migrate to Quebec and take
refuge under the guns of Fort St. Louis.
On the 10th of June all was ready for the departure, the sorrowing
Hurons bidding good-bye to the home of their fathers, and the Jesuits
to the country consecrated by the blood of their martyrs. Proceeding
by the Georgian Bay, Lake Nipissing, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence,
the fleet of canoes reached Quebec before the end of July, 1650. And
while Quebec was ready to open her gates to the sorrowful remnant of a
once great nation, her own position was sorely beset. Food was scarce
and lodgings scarcer in the palisaded city. However, the Ursulines and
the nuns of the Hospital made every effort to provide shelter for the
exiled race, and the Jesuits themselves bore the chief burden of their
converts. In the following year, 1651, four hundred more Hurons found
their way to Quebec, and together they established a settlement on the
Island of Orleans. Here, in sight of the protecting ramparts of the
city, this decimated people lived for a time secure. But the Iroquois
were set upon nothing less than their annihilation, and in 1656 they
made a descent upon the quiet island and carried off many captives.
The terrified Hurons were then removed to the city itself and lodged
in a square enclosure almost adjoining Fort St. Louis. A map of 1660
places the "Fort des Sauvages" on the site of the present _Place
d'Armes_. Here they dwelt for about ten years in the same uncertain
security enjoyed by Quebec itself. Then they removed to Ste. Foye,
four miles west of the city, and again changing their abode six years
later, they founded the village of Old Lorette.
Standing to-day on Dufferin Terrace, the observer sees spread beneath
him the picturesque Côte de Beaupré, a graceful upland losing itself
in the Laurentian foot-hills. A shining spire in the middle distance
arrests the eye. It marks the village of Ancient Lorette, a nine
miles' drive from Quebec, where a pitiful moiety of Canada's noblest
Indian tribe ekes out an existence by the making of baskets and beaded
moccasins, and by that nonchalant culture of the soil which still
marks the primitive man.
CHAPTER V
ROYAL GOVERNMENT
In the year 1660 the French population of Quebec numbered something
over six hundred. The fur company continued to drive a fair trade in
peltries, but the prosperity of the city itself was woefully retarded
by the constant menace of the Iroquois. The Baron d'Avaugour held the
office of Governor, and his strong sense of military authority brought
him into conflict with the Church, by this time become the real
controller of the State. This revered power was still further to
impose its authority and influence through and by the person of
François-Xavier Laval, the first Bishop of Canada, a man of as great
ability as piety, an ecclesiastical statesman trained in the school of
Mazarin. His career gives significance to a later epoch.
The fur traders had always found brandy their most attractive
commodity in dealing with the thirsty savage; and Père Lalement gives
a sad picture of the misery entailed. "They have brought themselves
to nakedness," he writes, "and their families to beggary. They have
even gone so far as to sell their children to procure the means of
satisfying their raging passion. I cannot describe the evils caused by
these disorders to the infant Church. My ink is not black enough to
paint them in proper colours. It would require the gall of the dragon
to express the bitterness we have experienced from them. It may
suffice to say that we lose in one month the fruits of the toil and
labour of thirty years." Accordingly, the Church now decided to
prohibit it entirely, and a law was passed making it a capital
offence. Two men paid the extreme penalty; and a woman also was
condemned to the scaffold. When, however, the clergy interfered to
save her, the rigorous but consistent D'Avaugour declared he would
punish no more breaches of this law. Brandy now flowed like water, and
the thunder of the pulpit was henceforth disregarded. Exasperated by
this treatment, the priests carried their grievance to the Louvre,
where they received little satisfaction.
[Illustration: COLBERT]
In the same year a deputy of another sort journeyed to France. Pierre
Boucher's mission was to lay before the King the desperate condition
of the colony, particularly in the matter of defence. Louis XIV. had
but recently ascended the throne of the Bourbons, and Richelieu and
Mazarin had been in turn succeeded by Colbert as the royal adviser.
The envoy from Quebec was presently received at the Court, and the
tale of suffering and neglect which he unfolded convinced Colbert that
the Company of One Hundred Associates was scandalously evading the
obligations imposed by its charter. Accordingly, in 1663, a royal
edict went forth revoking its powers and privileges. This was a
turning-point in the history of New France; for although the company
founded by Richelieu was succeeded by an unwieldy corporation of
Colbert's design, from this time forward the Crown itself took over
the control of the distant colony.
The Grand Monarch, indeed, took a finely comprehensive view of his
position. He held himself in every sense the father of his people, and
by a nice condescension the citizens of Quebec were included in the
patriarchal fold. The far-away city on the borders of the world was no
longer to be abandoned to the avaricious whims of a trading company:
the King himself would now take it under his royal care. Daniel de
Rémy, Sieur de Courcelles, was appointed Governor, with Jean Baptiste
Talon as Intendant; and the valorous Marquis de Tracy was commissioned
to New France as the King's personal representative, with instructions
to settle the domestic friction of the colony, and to deal a fatal
blow to the Iroquois, the "scourge of Canada."
* * * * *
On the 30th of June, 1665, De Tracy's caravels cast anchor in the
basin of Quebec, the ships of De Courcelles and the Intendant being
still at sea. The cannon of Fort St. Louis boomed a welcome down the
gorge of the St. Lawrence, while the eager burghers crowded the
ramparts and prepared to welcome the most distinguished company in the
most brilliant pageant yet seen upon the soil of New France.
The royal pennant flew at the flag-ship's masthead, and the decks were
thronged with the brilliant uniforms of the regiment of
Carignan-Salières, whom the King had sent to destroy the enemies of
New France. In the midst stood the stately Marquis, gorgeous in
vice-regal robes and attended by a suite of nobles and gallants from
the court of Fontainebleau. The mysteries and wonders of the West had
stirred the romantic minds of the volatile courtiers, and the mission
to convert New France to the Catholic faith gave to De Tracy's
expedition the complexion of a mediæval crusade.
Presently the gaily-decked pinnace drew in to the landing-stage of the
Cul-de-sac, where stood the notables of the New World city. Bishop
Laval in pontificals, surrounded by the priests of his diocese,
awaited the royal envoy at the top of Mountain Hill, which was then
the only practicable highway between the Lower and the Upper Town.
To-day the visitor landing at the quay reaches the terrace by the same
route; but the present graceful declivity of Mountain Hill is little
like the tortuous pathway of corduroy by which De Tracy and his
glittering retinue made their toilsome way to the public square by the
Jesuits' College. First came a company of guards in the royal livery,
then four pages and six valets, and by the side of the King's
Lieutenant-General, resplendent in gold lace and gay ribbons, walked
the young nobles of his train. The cathedral bells pealed forth
joyously, and the _Te Deum_ began a day of public rejoicing.
The vessels bearing the new Governor and Intendant, however, suffered
the most hapless violence. Talon's ship was 117 days at sea, and De
Courcelles' was hardly more fortunate; but at length they, too, cast
anchor beneath the rocky battlement, and Quebec was now flooded with
soldiers of the regiment of Carignan-Salières. These bronzed veterans
of Savoy came to New France fresh from the Turkish wars, and the sight
of their plumed helmets and leathern bandoleers, as they marched
through the narrow streets, promised the colonists a speedy riddance
of their enemies. The health of Louis XIV. was nowhere in his broad
dominions drunk more heartily than in Quebec.
At the close of the year extensive preparations were made for the
chastisement of the Iroquois. De Courcelles had determined upon a
stroke of almost foolhardy boldness: to march over the snow into the
country of the Mohawks, a distance of three hundred leagues. Thick ice
had formed on the St. Lawrence, and on the 9th of January the
audacious Governor set off at the head of his fiery columns.
Officers and men alike shared the burdens of transport, but the
soldiers of Europe were embarrassed by the unaccustomed snow-shoes
which the deep snow forced them to use. Some got no farther than
Three Rivers, but the more hardy held their way up the valley of the
Richelieu to Lake Champlain and across the Hudson. An unfortunate
circumstance, however, had deprived them of guides, and all efforts to
find and surprise the Mohawk towns proved unsuccessful. Wandering by
mistake beyond Saratoga Lake, they came near to the Dutch village of
Corlaer,[7] where, half-frozen and half-starved, they bivouacked in
the neighbouring woods. A few days later envoys appeared from Albany
to demand why the French had invaded the territories of the Duke of
York; and then, for the first time, De Courcelles learned that the New
Netherlands had passed into English hands.
De Courcelles' explanation was courteously accepted, and having been
supplied with provisions, he prepared to retrace his steps to Quebec.
His intended victims, the Mohawks, harassed the retreat, killing and
taking prisoners; while sixty of his men perished from hunger and
exposure before he came in sight of the St. Lawrence, and many more
fell before he reached Quebec.
In spite of apparent failure, however, this expedition, like that
undertaken by Daulac, had a good effect upon the Iroquois, who had
come to regard themselves as too remote for French assault.
[Footnote 7: Now Schenectady.]
They now sent embassies to Quebec seeking a treaty of peace, an idea
to which, naturally, the French were not opposed. But the occasion was
too much for Iroquois malice and lust of blood; for even whilst terms
were under discussion, a band of French hunters was set upon by the
Mohawks. The Marquis de Tracy, now thoroughly aroused to the
sufferings of his countrymen, determined to strike a sudden and
crushing blow. The Iroquois deputies, still in Quebec praying for
peace, were seized and imprisoned, and a formidable force once more
prepared to invade the country of the Five Nations.
It was in early October, 1666, that De Tracy and De Courcelles left
Quebec at the head of thirteen hundred men. Of these, six hundred were
regulars of Carignan-Salières, an equal number were irregulars from
Quebec, under command of Répentigny, and a hundred Indian scouts from
the missions ranged the woods. A hundred rugged colonists, commanded
by the brave Charles le Moyne, joined the advancing column at
Montreal. With confidence this imposing force swept on to annihilate
the enemies of New France.
At the mysterious sound of the French drum-beat the Mohawks of the
first village fled in terror, and the invaders pressed on to the
second, third, and fourth towns, to find them also deserted. At
Andaraqué, their largest village, the Mohawks prepared to make a final
stand; but the first appearance of the French army and the roll of
their "devil-drums" as they emerged from the forest put the savages to
instant flight. Andaraqué, the last native stronghold, being thus
abandoned, with its stores of corn and winter supplies, the French
took what provisions they needed for their return journey, set fire to
the town, and having planted on the site a white cross in the name of
the King, they turned their faces homeward. The remaining Indian
villages were given to the flames, and although the Mohawks had
escaped with their lives, the French were content to leave them to the
severities of coming winter.
This policy was successful, for by the time spring came again, not
only the Mohawks, but their four confederate nations, were anxious to
make a sincere peace with the avenging soldiers of New France.
Hostages were exchanged, several representative chiefs remaining in
Quebec. The Jesuits again undertook the Mission of the Martyrs,
desiring both to win the savages into the fold of the Church and at
the same time to wean the Iroquois from their friendliness towards the
colonies of England, with whom the French were soon to enter into
deadly conflict for the mastery of the North American continent.
The Marquis de Tracy, having in due time fulfilled the King's
commission, embarked for France, and with him departed the glittering
_entourage_ which for almost two years had cast upon the court of
Quebec some reflection of the glories of Versailles. The regiment of
Carignan-Salières was disbanded, but its officers, for the most part,
elected to remain in Canada and accept the gift of seigneuries which
the King distributed on conditions of fealty and homage. The soldiers
settled on the fiefs as _censitaires_ and became the retainers of the
seigneurs. The feudal system, with all its antique forms, was thus
imported into French Canada, further to cripple her progress in the
race with the English colonies, where the individual was allowed to
develop freely, evolving his own laws, and creating conditions best
suited to his new estate. Talon became the royal instrument of a
system which had its beginning and end in the maintenance of kingly
authority.
CHAPTER VI
THE NOBLESSE AND THE PEOPLE
The Canadian seigneur held his lands of the King, and the _habitants_,
or cultivators of the soil, held theirs of the seigneur upon the
performance of specific duties and the payment of _cens et rente_.
These tributes varied curiously in kind and amount; and on St.
Martin's Day, when the _censitaires_ commonly liquidated the
obligations of their tenure, the seigneurie presented an animated
scene. Here were gathered all the tenants, bearing wheat, eggs, and
live capons to pay for their long narrow farms, at a rate ranging from
four to sixteen francs.
The annual delivery of his handful of sous and his bundle of produce
did not, however, complete the obligations of the _censitaire_.
Throughout the year he must grind his grain at the seigneur's mill,
paying one bushel in every fourteen for the service, bake his bread in
the seigneur's oven, work for him one or two days in the year, and
forfeit one fish in every eleven to the lord of the manor. Military
service, however, was no part of the _habitant's_ duty as a tenant;
for the judicious Colbert, jealous always for the power of the
monarchy, had clipped this ancient feature from Canadian feudalism,
and given absolute military control of the country to the Governor at
Quebec. The seigneur's judicial powers varied according to the
importance of his fief. Barons were empowered to erect gallows and
pillories, but the ordinary judicial powers of a Canadian seigneur
were confined to Middle and Low justice, which comprehended only minor
offences.
The solicitous interest of Louis XIV. in the affairs of New France
promised much for the country's prosperity; and every ship sailing to
the St. Lawrence carried out a fresh batch of emigrants. For all of
these the King paid out of his own pocket, and it cost him a pretty
penny to respond to Intendant Talon's persistent appeals for more
settlers. Agencies were established at several points in France to
recruit colonists, and grants of money and land were held out as
inducements to new settlers. In this way the King and Colbert managed
to send out about three hundred men each year. But, as might be
expected of emigration state-aided and scarcely voluntary, Quebec
became a city of men chiefly, there being few women besides cloistered
nuns. There had always been a demand for wives, but now that the
soldiers and officers of the Carignan-Salières had elected to remain
in the country, the scarcity of women induced a matrimonial famine.
Talon speedily apprised Colbert of the situation, and the most comely
inmates of the refuge hospitals of Paris and Lyons were summoned to
fill this void. In 1665 one hundred of the "King's girls" arrived in
Quebec, almost instantly to be provided with partners; and although
the supply was doubled in the following year, it yet remained below
the conjugal demand.
To supply the needs of the seigneurs also became a real problem.
Talon, with grim humour, demanded a consignment of young ladies; and
in 1667 he was able to announce as follows: "They send us eighty-four
girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are
fifteen or twenty of pretty good birth; several of them are really
_demoiselles_, and tolerably well brought up." Amusing evidence,
however, of the exceeding delicacy of such a market is found in a
letter, in which the match-making Intendant alludes to the supply of
the year 1670. "It is not expedient," he ungallantly writes to
Colbert, "to send more _demoiselles_. I have had this year fifteen of
them instead of the four I asked for."
La Hontan, writing a few years later, cannot refrain from exercising
keen but slanderous wit at the expense of these fair cargoes from
Quebec so gladly received. His description, albeit scandalous, is
amusing: "After the regiment of Carrigan was disbanded, ships were
sent out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the
direction of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three
classes. These vestals were, so to speak, piled one on the other in
three different halls, where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a
butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the flock. There was
wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three harems; for
here were to be seen the tall and the short, the blond and the brown,
the plump and the lean; everybody, in short, found a shoe to fit him.
At the end of a fortnight not one was left. I am told that the
plumpest were taken first, because it was thought that, being less
active, they were more likely to keep at home, and that they could
resist the winter cold better. Those who wanted a wife applied to the
directresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their
possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the
three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The
marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and
notary, and the next day the Governor caused the couple to be
presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two
barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money."
On their part the girls were permitted to reject any suitor who
displeased them; and at these annual marriage fairs the contest for
favour was keen on both sides. But the paternalism of the Grand
Monarch went even farther than the mere enlistment of wives for the
colonists. Bounties were offered on early marriages; and the maid who
married before she was sixteen received the "King's gift" of twenty
livres, in addition to her ordinary dowry. Bachelors who refused to
marry were rendered as uncomfortable as possible, and were taxed for
their abstinence or timidity. Children were likewise made a good
asset, and blessed was the man whose house was full of them. Thus runs
an edict of the time: "...In future all inhabitants of the said
country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten,
born in lawful wedlock, not being priests, maids, or nuns, shall each
be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a
pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have
twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres, and that, to this
effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children
every year in the months of June and July to the Intendant of justice,
police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having
verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half
in cash, and the other half at the end of each year."
It was not by accident but by design that an aristocratic class was
created in French Canada. The perpetual contrast between the English
and the French systems of colonisation was but the difference between
natural evolution and artificial construction. The Canadian
aristocracy was a consistent detail of the latter and in keeping with
Louis' ambitious scheme of personal government. The caste system
grafted upon the stem of the colonial plant was a picturesque
adornment to the life of Quebec, but a doubtful experiment from any
other point of view, as time proved.
For the most part the Canadian _noblesse_ were either officers of the
disbanded Carignan-Salières regiment, or _gentilhommes_ who had come
to the New World in search of adventure or gain. In both cases they
were unsuited to the hard and restrictive conditions of a rugged
country. The soldiers steadfastly refused to beat their swords into
ploughshares or their spears into pruning-hooks, and most of them
accepted a state not far removed from actual want, rather than stain
their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became
the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these
families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the
bounties granted to large families--an ineffective resource, inasmuch
as hungry children but consumed the supply and renewed the demand.
Disdaining work of any sort, the Canadian _gentilhomme_ yet gave
himself airs that were in amusing contrast to his shabby coat and
empty stomach. The world, he held, owed him a living without the
labour of his hands, and to him "the world" was Louis the perpetual
almsgiver.
The official correspondence of the period describes in some detail the
pangs of these ill-conditioned gentry. "Two days ago," writes the
Governor of Quebec in 1686, "Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of
Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of
bread. He says that he will put his ten children in charge of any one
who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army
again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can.
I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough.
Other families are in the same condition. They come to me with tears
in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you
to send them aid. There is need that the King should provide support
for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the
English."
Nor was this impecunious _noblesse_ merely a passive burden to New
France, for the dignified hardships of their estate soon bred active
conditions equally distressing to those in authority. Having no
inducement to remain peacefully at home, the sons of the seigneurs
took to the woods, often enticing the more unsettled of their own
_habitants_ to follow them thither to a life of unbridled freedom and
outlawry. Reckless bushrangers, they carried on an illicit trade with
the Indians, diverting peltries from the fur company at Quebec, and
demoralising the savage proselytes of the missions. In this
unfortunate way the _gentilhomme_ and his children compromised with
labour and managed to keep body and soul together.
Harsh edict and cruel ordinance were repeatedly launched against the
practices of these well-bred offenders, but the ready covert of the
forest made the evasion of the King's justice an easy matter.
Moreover, the Church, while it suffered much from such children, did
not venture to reprove too strongly their flagrant excesses, lest they
should thenceforth dispense altogether with her sacraments; for a
furtive life in the wild woods did not prevent the superstitious
_coureurs de bois_ from occasionally coming to confession or to Mass.
[Illustration: OLD BISHOP'S PALACE (AT THE TOP OF MOUNTAIN HILL)]
A royal edict ordered that any person going into the woods without a
license should be whipped and branded for the first offence, and sent
for life to the galleys for the second; while a third offence was
punishable by death. The whole criminal code of Quebec was, indeed, of
a piece with this; and an obvious feature was the quasi-religious
character of most of the offences. The edict against blasphemy read as
follows: "...All persons convicted of profane swearing or blaspheming
the name of God, the most Holy Virgin, His Mother, or the Saints,
shall be condemned for the first offence to a pecuniary fine according
to their possessions and the greatness and enormity of the oath and
blasphemy; and if those thus punished repeat the said oaths, then for
the second, third, and fourth time they shall be condemned to a
double, triple, and quadruple fine; and for the fifth time they shall
be set in the pillory on Sunday or other festival days, there to
remain from eight in the morning till one in the afternoon, exposed to
all sorts of opprobrium and abuse, and be condemned besides to a heavy
fine; and for the sixth time they shall be led to the pillory, and
there have the upper lip cut with a hot iron; and for the seventh time
they shall be led to the pillory and have the lower lip cut; and if,
by reason of obstinacy and inveterate bad habit, they continue after
all these punishments to utter the said oaths and blasphemies, it is
our will and command that they have the tongue completely cut out, so
that thereafter they cannot utter them again."[8]
A citizen who had the temerity to eat meat during Lent without
priestly permission was condemned to be tied three hours to the public
stake, then led to the door of the church, there on his knees to ask
pardon of God and the King. For approving of the execution of Charles
I. by his English subjects, one Paul Dupuy was held to have libelled
the monarchy and to have encouraged sedition. He was condemned to be
dragged from prison by the public executioner, led in his shirt, with
a rope about his neck and a torch in his hand, to the gate of the
fort, there to beg pardon of the King; thence down Mountain Hill to
the pillory of Lower Town to be branded on the cheek with a
fleur-de-lis, and set in the stocks. Poor Dupuy's crime was not yet
expiated, for, according to the remainder of the sentence, he was to
be "led back to prison and put in irons till the information against
him shall be completed."[9] Convicts and felons were sometimes
tortured before being strangled. The execution usually took
place at _Buttes-à-Neveu_, a little hillock on the Plains of
Abraham,--afterwards to become more justly celebrated and less
notorious,--and the dead body, enclosed in an iron cage, was left
hanging for months at the top of Cape Diamond, a terror to children
and a gruesome warning to evildoers.
[Footnote 8: _Edit du Roy contre les Jureurs et Blasphémateurs_,
1666.]
[Footnote 9: _Jugements et Délibérations du Conseil Supérieur_.]
[Illustration: NEW PALACE GATE]
The people of Quebec were regularly apprised of the laws under which
they lived. On Sundays after Mass the ordinances of the Intendant were
read at the doors of the churches. These related to any number of
subjects--regulations of inns and markets, poaching, sale of brandy,
pew-rents, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, domestic servants,
quarrelling in church, fast driving, the careful observance of feast
days, and so on.
Law-breakers were tried by the Superior Council, which met for that
purpose every Monday morning in the ante-chamber of the Governor's
apartment at Fort St. Louis. The Governor himself presided at the
Round Table, the bar of justice; on his right sat the bishop, and on
his left the Intendant, the councillors sitting in order of
appointment. Such at least was the _venue_ until about 1684, when the
old brewery which Talon had built in Lower Town on the bank of the
river St. Charles was transformed into a _Palais de Justice_. The
altered structure served also as a residence for the King's judicial
proxy, and was commonly known as the Palace of the Intendant.[10] It
was an imposing mixture of timber and masonry, and at the close of the
seventeenth century was the most considerable building in Quebec.
While lacking the glorious site of the Castle of St. Louis, in point
of interior decoration it far eclipsed this château of the Governor.
[Footnote 10: The declivity above its site is still known as Palace
Hill.]
[Illustration: INTENDANT'S PALACE]
The present dilapidated tenements clustering about the foot of Palace
Hill can, of course, give no idea of the natural position of the
ancient _Palais de l'Intendant_. La Potherie, who visited Quebec in
1698, and Charlevoix, who writes in 1720, describe this district as
the most beautiful in the city. Instead of the crowded quays of
to-day there was a terraced lawn bordered with flower gardens; and
where now the winches creak and rattle, and the railway engines hiss
and scream, birds sang among willow-trees, and the Angelus echoed
through a quiet woodland. Across the St. Charles lay the well-ordered
grounds of the Jesuit monastery, and farther to the west the lonely
spire of the General Hospital peeped through the ancient trees.
Such were the pleasing _environs_ of the block of buildings which went
by the name of _Le Palais_. In form it was almost a square, each side
measuring about one hundred and twenty feet. An arched gateway, facing
the sheer cliff, led into a large courtyard in which were situated the
entrances to the Intendant's residence, the Court of Justice, the
King's stores, and the prison. Soon it was also to be the site of _La
Friponne_, the scene of the ribald revels of Bigot.
CHAPTER VII
FRONTENAC AND LA SALLE
The picturesque figure of Count Frontenac now enters upon the stage of
Canadian history. Broken in health, De Courcelles had asked to be
recalled; and ominous signs of Iroquois hostility showed the need of a
strong man for the dangerous post of governor. This strong man was
Frontenac, whose courageous and vigorous administration in a period of
_Sturm und Drang_ has induced Goldwin Smith to call him "the Clive of
Quebec."
Born in 1620, of ancient Basque family, he was the son of a
distinguished member of the household of Louis XIII., the King himself
being the child's godfather. Frontenac's youthful passion was to be a
soldier, and at the early age of fifteen he went to the war in Holland
to serve under the Prince of Orange. Within the next few years he took
a distinguished part in the sieges of Hesdin, Arras, Aire, Callioure,
and Perpignan. At twenty-three he commanded a Norman regiment in the
Italian wars, and at twenty-six he was raised to the rank of Maréchal
de Camp. This was wonderful progress in the profession of war, even in
an age when war was the sport of kings and soldiers fought for the
mere love of fighting. Frontenac at least was one of these devotees,
and when, in 1669, a Venetian embassy came to France to beg for a
general to aid them against the Turks in Candia, the great Turenne
selected him for this honourable duty.
Returning from the campaign in Candia with increased honour and
distinction, Frontenac was appointed Governor of New France in 1672.
The text of the royal commission indicates the extent of the
activities which Frontenac had crowded into a life of fifty-two years,
giving him his full title as: "_Louis de Buade, Comte de Palluau et
Frontenac, Seigneur de l'Isle Savary, Mestre de camp du régiment de
Normandie, Maréchal de camp dans les armées du Roy, et Gouverneur et
Lieutenant-Général en Canada, Acadia, Isle Terreneuve, et autre pays
de la France septentrionale...._"
There appear, however, to have been reasons other than his eminence
which led to the New World appointment of Frontenac. Far back, in
1646, he had contracted an unfortunate marriage. The dashing
brigadier-general of twenty-eight had won the immature affections of
Anne de la Grange-Trianon, a maid of sixteen. Her father's opposition
to the match made it necessary for the lovers to resort
surreptitiously to the little Church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, which
had the privilege of uniting couples without the consent of their
parents. But Frontenac and his bride were ill-mated. Both were
possessed of imperious tempers and wayward minds. For a time they held
together, then suddenly they separated--Frontenac to find a soothing
excitement in the clash of arms, and the precocious Comtesse to divert
herself in the brilliant _salons_ of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the
grand-daughter of Henry of Navarre.
The memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon allude with a humorous sympathy
to Frontenac's appointment: "He was a man of excellent parts"--writes
this garrulous chronicler--"living much in society, and completely
ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of his wife; and
he was given the government of Canada to deliver him from her, and
afford him some means of living." A more scandalous report of the
motive which sent Frontenac to Quebec is to be found in a whimsical
ditty which gained quiet currency in the Louvre--
"Je suis ravi que le roi, notre sire,
Aime la Montespan;
Moi, Frontenac, je me creve de rire,
Sachant ce qui lui pend;
Et je dirai, sans être des plus bestes,
Tu n'as que mon reste,
Roi,
Tu n'as que mon reste."
[Illustration: FRONTENAC]
Be these things as they may, Frontenac came on the scene of his new
dominion with the evident purpose of devoting himself to its best
interests. The city turned out in its best finery to welcome the new
Governor; but to the lifelong courtier, bred in the household of
royalty itself, this display appeared primitive and garish. As he
recalled the usual brilliance of even the provincial courts of France,
the rude and rugged walls of Castle St. Louis loomed before his
critical eye in depressing contrast. And yet in his reception
spectacular features were not entirely wanting. The Hurons from
ancient Lorette flocked to the city to greet their new white chief;
the _coureurs de bois_ in bold effrontery came to take the measure of
their new antagonist; the sombre Jesuits with much misgiving hailed
the arrival of so virile an executive; and the soldiers of the
garrison acclaimed the gallant bearer of such prowess with salvos of
artillery and a _feu de joie_.
Once duly installed, Frontenac could see no reason why even the
wilderness-colony of New France should forgo the rightful forms and
functions of a royal province. His mind wandered back regretfully to
the old days of the Estates General, which the kings of France were
carefully burying in the cemetery of disuse. Technically they still
existed, although the makers of absolute monarchy gave them no place
in the machinery of government. Loving pomp and circumstance,
Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing the Estates General in New
France.
The Jesuits were more than ready to constitute the order of the
clergy, the small groups of _gentilhommes_ made eager nobles, while
the Quebec _bourgeoisie_, although they had never played the part
before, called themselves the _Tiers État_, and meekly awaited the
further pleasure of the commanding Frontenac.
By and by all was ready, and heralds posted at the door of the
Jesuits' church, which had been gorgeously decorated for the occasion,
sounded the assembly. Frontenac, brilliantly apparelled, took his
place upon the dais; the gallant _noblesse_, in various attire,
grouped themselves protectingly about his person; the sable Jesuits
looked critically on; while the Third Estate hung breathlessly upon
the gracious motions of his Excellency. A sunbeam from Versailles had
fallen upon the rock in the wilderness, and Quebec once more basked in
the splendour of a royal province.
One person of eminence, however, looked askance at the assembled
"States." The Intendant Talon too well knew the temper of the King to
play with this fire so like to kindle his wrath. A disciple of
Colbert, he knew that all constitutional or traditional forms standing
in the path of absolutism were doomed to destruction.
[Illustration: OLD ST. LOUIS GATE]
As for Frontenac, he went his own unheeding way until a letter came
from Colbert in this strain: "Your assembling of the inhabitants to
take the oath of fidelity, and your division of them into three
estates, may have had a good effect for the moment; but it is well for
you to observe that you are always to follow, in the government of
Canada, the forms in use here; and since our kings have long regarded
it as good for their service not to convoke the States General of the
kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage,
you, on your part, should very rarely, or to speak more correctly,
never, give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should
even, as the colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the
syndic who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants; for it
is well that each should speak for himself, and no one for all."
Thus at one fell swoop perished the only chance which ever came to
French Canada of growing into a self-governing colony and of working
out its own destiny. The physical conditions and administrative
necessities of the land were, indeed, from first to last,
misapprehended by its distant rulers.
For a time Frontenac nursed the chagrin natural to a proud and haughty
nature thwarted in its purposes. Straightway he fell foul of Talon,
and the latter withdrew to France. It was natural also that he should
quarrel with the Jesuits and the Bishop, for where there was any
question of mastery, he was always ready to contend. As an instance,
the Bishop had pronounced the sale of brandy to the Indians a sin; and
in view of the fact that the traffic was licensed under royal
authority, Frontenac with his accustomed vehemence pronounced the
prohibition seditious. He accused the Jesuits of keeping the Indians
in perpetual wardship, and of thinking more of beaver-skins than of
souls.
The next conflict was with a foeman well worthy of his steel. An
officer named Perrot had been appointed Governor of Montreal through
the influence of Talon, his uncle by marriage; and as it was a matter
of common knowledge that Perrot was the patron and shared the profits
of the _coureurs de bois_, the enmity of Frontenac was roused against
him, gaining vigour from the fact that Perrot carried his head too
high. Bizard, another officer, was despatched with three guardsmen to
Montreal, to arrest one Lieutenant Carion, who had assisted certain
notable _coureurs de bois_ in their escape from justice; and Perrot,
frenzied by this trespass upon his own domain, seized the Governor's
officers. On hearing of such a reprisal, Frontenac's wrath was kindled
sevenfold. He knew, however, that Perrot was only to be apprehended by
strategy, and accordingly a letter was despatched, inviting him to
come to Quebec to explain the affair. Perrot, already alarmed at his
own boldness in resisting vice-regal authority, obediently set out for
the court of Frontenac, attended by a Sulpitian priest, the Abbé
Salignac de Fénelon.
High words marked the interview of Frontenac and Perrot, and as a
result the latter found himself a prisoner in Château St. Louis. In
due time he was brought before the sovereign council and convicted of
obstructing the King's justice. He was confined for almost a year, and
then, as the priests also joined in protest against the autocratic
governance of Frontenac, it was judged prudent to refer the matter to
the King. Perrot was accordingly taken from prison and shipped to
France for a new trial. The result, however, was the vindication of
Frontenac, both Louis and Colbert being determined to uphold the royal
authority. Perrot was sentenced to three weeks in the Bastile, after
which he tendered submission to Frontenac, and was again commissioned
Governor of Montreal.
Henceforth friendship took the place of enmity, and the two governors
now conspired to patronise the _coureurs de bois_. These were halcyon
days for the picturesque banditti, whose periodical visits disturbed
the wonted calm of the saintly city. The inhabitants shut themselves
up in their houses while these bacchanals ran riot in the streets,
bedecked in French and Indian finery, and making hideous both day and
night with their ribald _chansons_. Yet even these roystering forest
rovers were destined to bear a part in building up French empire in
the West.
The _coureurs de bois_ were in fact the most intrepid explorers of New
France, and their rovings were turned to account under the tactful
guidance of Talon. Talon's aim was to occupy the interior of the
continent, control the rivers which watered it, and hold this vast
forest domain for France against all other nations; and for this
Imperial work he enrolled the daring Jesuit priests and the
adventurous fur-traders. His chief reliance, however, was upon those
Frenchmen whose civilised _ennui_ had driven them to the restless life
of the woods.
In the pursuit of this "forward" policy, the Jesuits had already
established missions on Manatoulin Island, at Sault Ste. Marie, at
Michillimackinac, at La Pointe on the western end of Lake Superior,
and at Green Bay near the foot of Lake Michigan. These remote posts
were visited from time to time by Indians from the far west, who
brought news of a great river flowing southwards. Talon's enthusiasm
for enterprise in the unknown west was doubled by the report, and he
forthwith despatched an expedition under the leadership of Joliet and
Père Marquette to take possession of the Father of Waters.
Louis Joliet was a native French Canadian, born at Quebec in 1645. His
exceptional brilliancy while a student at the Jesuits' College
attracted the attention of Talon; but at the age of seventeen, the
forest proved more alluring than the priesthood, and he became an
adventurous fur-trader. His companion, the Père Marquette, was a
fearless Jesuit, who in 1670 had undertaken a mission at the western
end of Lake Superior. The destruction of this post, however, sent him
back to Michillimackinac, where he was working when ordered westward
with Joliet.
Leaving St. Ignace in the middle of May, 1673, the two voyageurs
proceeded to the head of Lake Michigan, ascended the Fox River,
portaged to the Wisconsin, and on the 17th of June reached the
Mississippi. They descended this broad and rapid stream as far as the
mouth of the Arkansas. It now seemed clear that the great river
emptied, not into the Vermilion Sea[11] as was currently conjectured,
but into the Gulf of Mexico; and fearing to fall into the hands of the
Spaniards, the explorers decided to retrace their steps. They reached
Green Bay before the end of September, and here the Jesuit remained to
recruit his failing strength, while Joliet kept on his way to Quebec.
Nine years were to pass by before the navigation of the Mississippi,
thus begun, was to be completed by the greatest of all Canadian
adventurers.
[Footnote 11: Gulf of California.]
[Illustration: ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE]
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, was born at Rouen, of a family of
wealthy merchants, on the 2nd of November, 1643. As a child he was
sent to a Jesuits' school; and although, like Joliet, he soon
abandoned all idea of entering the priesthood, he nevertheless
retained a pious enthusiasm which gave a mediæval colouring to the
stirring romance of his after-life. With a small allowance from his
family, La Salle embarked for Canada in 1666. Through his brother, a
priest of St. Sulpice, he was granted a feudal fief at Lachine, and
under his resolute occupation the hitherto dangerous seigneury became
a strong bulwark for the trembling settlement of Montreal. Young,
gallant, and winning, La Salle drew the Indians about him by his
dashing courage and by the magnetism of his person; and, whether
through weakness of flesh or strength of spirit, he disappeared among
them and withdrew from civilisation for the space of three years, a
term which he employed in achieving mastery of Indian dialects and
gaining knowledge of their character. On his return to Quebec in 1673,
he found favour in the eyes of Frontenac, and an inexplicable sympathy
united the proud veteran of a hundred fights and the debonair
_coureur de bois_, beneath whose dreamy countenance the Governor read
reckless valour and invincible determination.
In 1677 La Salle was despatched to France to procure royal authority
for following up the explorations of Joliet and Marquette. He also
applied for a patent of nobility; and as this request was strongly
supported by Frontenac, he was made seigneur over a large tract of
land, including the fort of Cataraqui,[12] and was empowered to build
and occupy other forts in furtherance of exploration. The opening
sentences of this instrument show the King's anxiety to extend his
vast dominions in the New World: "Louis, by the grace of God, King of
France and Navarre, to our dear and well-beloved Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de la Salle, greeting. We have received with favour the very
humble petition made us in your name, to permit you to labour at the
discovery of the western parts of New France; and we have the more
willingly entertained this proposal since we have nothing more at
heart than the exploration of this country, through which, to all
appearances, a way may be found to Mexico...."
[Footnote 12: Later called Fort Frontenac, and the site of the present
city of Kingston.]
To La Salle the commission was full of promise, for his ardent mind
was filled with bold designs. He foresaw a time when French
enterprise, leaving the rugged civilisation on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, would seize upon the rich valley of the Mississippi; a
fortified post at the mouth of the Father of Waters would hold the
interior of the continent against the Spaniards; and the peltries and
buffalo hides of the great West would fill his forts with gold. With
Henri de Tonty, La Motte de Lussière, Father Hennepin, and thirty men,
La Salle hastened to Quebec in the summer of 1678, and without loss of
time he organised his first expedition to the distant Mississippi.
The story of that enterprise is a tale of disaster which has few
parallels in history. A perilous passage over Lake Ontario in a
ten-ton vessel brought them to Niagara. Above the falls they built
_The Griffin_, a schooner of forty-five tons, to carry the necessities
of the Mississippi settlement westward by way of the Great Lakes. This
vessel was lost by some obscure calamity, and the conjecture is that
she foundered in Lake Michigan. La Salle now found himself at the head
of a mutinous company stranded at Fort Crèvecoeur on the Illinois,
facing a winter with practically no provisions. Six of his men
deserted, and on two occasions treachery all but deprived him of his
life.
In the circumstances La Salle saw only one possible course before him:
to return to Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies and material for
further progress. Leaving Tonty his trusted lieutenant in charge of
Fort Crèvecoeur, he set out with an Indian guide and four Frenchmen.
The hardships and disasters of the journey deprived him of his
companions, one by one, but he pressed on alone. "During sixty-five
days he had toiled almost incessantly, travelling about a thousand
miles through a country beset with every form of peril and
obstruction.... In him an unconquerable mind held at its service a
frame of iron, and taxed it to its utmost endurance. The pioneer of
Western pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a man of thought,
trained amid arts and letters."[13]
This first chapter of his reverses, however, was not yet completed;
for even while La Salle was getting succour for his company on the
Illinois, a letter arrived from Tonty telling him of the mutiny of the
garrison and the wilful destruction of Fort Crèvecoeur with all it
held. The calamitous news would have killed the spirit of any one less
courageous than La Salle; but the bold explorer, whose whole life was
a long grapple with adversity, prepared with all haste to return to
the rescue of Tonty, who, he hoped forlornly, had survived the
mutinous treachery. By the 10th of August he was ready, and with a new
outfit and twenty-five men he set out once more for the distant
Illinois.
[Footnote 13: Parkman, _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_,
chap. xiv.]
After three months of toil and hardship he came again to Fort
Crèvecoeur. Anxiety for Tonty and his faithful companions had
consumed him all the way. Yet he was unprepared for the shocking sight
that met his eyes. The once populous town of the Illinois was now a
valley of dry bones; the bodies of women and children strewed the
plain, and the charred trophies of Illinois warriors hung tragically
upon blackened stakes. Such were the terrible marks of an Iroquois
visitation.
Wolves ran howling away as the Frenchmen drew near, and voracious
buzzards wheeled overhead. Anxiously La Salle sought among the
revolting remnants for any sign of Tonty; but none was to be found,
and although the relief expedition continued for weeks and months to
search for their missing comrades, it was spring before the explorer
heard with joy that his lieutenant had found refuge among the
Pottawattamies. Meanwhile, his resources for the Mississippi
expedition had been again dissipated, and once more he returned to
Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies.
Soon, for the third time, the persistent adventurer set his face
towards the west. His company now included twenty-three Frenchmen and
eighteen Indians, equipped with all the care his former experiences
could suggest. Summer had gone before his plans were completed; but
all seasons were alike to La Salle, and in the early autumn his
expedition began. Lake Huron was reached in October, Fort Miami a few
weeks later, and on the 6th of February their canoes glided out of the
Illinois into the eddying current of the Mississippi.
Down past the turbid Missouri they swept, and beyond the mouth of the
Ohio. Every day brought them newer signs of spring, and every day saw
the spirits of La Salle rising at the happy consciousness of fulfilled
ambition. On the 13th of March they encamped near the mouth of the
Arkansas, and three hundred miles below they were well received by the
Natchez Indians. On the 6th of April the great river divided before
them into three wide channels: La Salle followed that of the west;
Tonty took the middle course; and D'Autray descended the eastern
passage. On the 19th of April the three parties met on the Gulf of
Mexico. A cross bearing the arms of France was set up, and the country
was named Louisiana after the Grand Monarch.
The Louisiana of to-day conveys no idea of the vast tract of country
defined by La Salle's proclamation of 1682. To the explorer it meant
the extent of the mighty continent, stretching westward from the
Alleghanies to the Rockies, and north and south from Lake Superior to
the Gulf of Mexico. All former accessions of territory were small
beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French
enterprise. Yet the very magnitude of this new success made for the
undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length
and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far
that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven
irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic
vision pictured a greater New France in the valley of the Mississippi,
governed by himself--a prosperous trading colony shipping cargoes of
beaver-skins directly to Europe by way of the Gulf of Mexico. Quebec,
however, was the home of his enemies. His former reverses had
shattered the faith of creditors, while the Canadian merchants envied
him the monopoly of the Western trade. They heaped calumny upon his
enterprises, labelled him a _coureur de bois_, and persistently
wrecked his schemes. Final success enabled La Salle in a measure to
disregard these annoyances; but when the new Governor, La Barre, went
the length of seizing Fort Frontenac--thus cutting off the far west
from its supplies--and even declared him an outlaw, La Salle, although
he had but lately recovered from a fever, made up his mind to carry
his cause to France.
In the spring of 1684, therefore, the weatherbeaten woodsman of the
New World stood before the throne of the Grand Monarch; and although
the Court had greater terrors for him than the Canadian forests, yet
he was able to set forth the rights of his case with the honest
boldness of a frontiersman and the force of a cultured intellect.
Louis followed his words with deepest interest, and was moved to carry
out a purpose which for some time had possessed his mind. Within three
months four armed vessels, bearing nearly four hundred men, set sail
from Rochelle for the Gulf of Mexico. A new commission empowered the
explorer to establish a fort on the southern gulf, from which to
harass the Spaniards, and to fortify a base near the mouth of the
Mississippi for the effective control of Louisiana.
But the story of this, the final enterprise of La Salle, is a
sickening record of disaster. After a stormy passage three of the four
vessels reached St. Domingo, the _St. Francois_ having fallen a prey
to Spanish buccaneers. At St. Domingo a violent fever threatened the
leader's life and mind, and delayed further progress for almost two
months. At length, near the end of December, they entered the Gulf of
Mexico; but the uncertainties of its navigation were further increased
by dense fogs; and when, after days of anxious searching, the fleet
came to anchor off a low-lying marshy coast, La Salle had sailed four
hundred miles beyond the mouth of the river he sought. Unaware of his
mistake, he determined to land and build a temporary fort; but the
frigate _Aimable_, laden with stores, was wrecked upon a reef;
Beaujeu, the recreant commander of the _Joly_, deserted his leader and
made sail for France, and presently La Salle was left with only the
little frigate _Belle_. Soon afterwards this vessel also sank beneath
the stormy waters of the forbidden sea.
Thus, by accident and by disease the imposing expedition which had
left Rochelle in the midsummer of 1684 was now reduced to a wretched
band of starvelings, huddled together on the malarial sands of the
Mexican gulf. In this last extremity La Salle saw one hope of
salvation, and the magnitude of his new project was characteristic of
the invincible adventurer whom fate had so often buffeted in vain. At
the head of half his followers he boldly set out for Canada overland,
hoping to bring back succour to the desolate maroons who still
remained at Matagorda Bay.
Throughout his undertakings the virile mind of La Salle had always
held his fellows in willing or unwilling subjection. The weak were
glad to lean upon his strength, and to these he was the "guardian
angel."[14] To others, however, his fine reserve and distinguished
manner were causes of gnawing discontent. This evident lack of
frankness in dealing with his companions contrasted strangely with
that keen appreciation of the character of the Indians which had
brought him such success in his intercourse with them. The handful of
men with whom he set out from Matagorda Bay on the 7th of June, 1687,
besides a few whose admiration for their leader knew no bounds, also
included others who, like the children of Israel, thirsted for the
life of him who had led them out into the wilderness to die.
[Footnote 14: "...Notre Ange tutélaire, le Sieur de la
Salle."--Douay.]
Week after week the little band of Frenchmen struggled on, now through
a sea of prairie grass, now wading through deep savannahs, and
presently swimming or fording streams which blocked their progress.
Despair invaded the camp, and hostile murmurings arose against La
Salle and the little group who remained true to him. A terrible plot
was on foot. Presently the blow fell. Moranget, La Salle's nephew, was
despatched with an axe; Nika, the faithful Shawanoe, and Saget, the
leader's servant, were murdered as they slept. As for La Salle, a
wanton bullet pierced his brain. Thus the man who had braved the
poisoned arrows of the Iroquois and the hatchets of Indians without
number, against whose iron strength deadly fevers had stormed in vain,
whose fortitude had been unbroken by the almost incredible
perversities of fortune--this paladin of the wilderness was at last
laid low by the hand of a traitor. The New World has no more piteous
tale than that of the unabated sufferings of La Salle, who knew no
fear and acknowledged no defeat, even at the hands of a relentless
destiny. It has no nobler record than the tale of his life.
CHAPTER VIII
FIRE, MASSACRE, AND SIEGE
At Quebec, Frontenac did what he could to promote the bold designs of
La Salle. Nevertheless, the explorer had been forced to furnish his
own men and supplies, getting trading privileges in return--an
arrangement by which the King had all the glory without any of the
risk. There were those in Quebec, indeed, who suspected the Governor
of having a personal interest in La Salle's adventures, and enemies
were not slow to credit him further with a share in profits from
illegal trade in furs. The Intendant Duchesneau fomented these
suspicions, and his letters to the King and the minister were filled
with black charges against Frontenac. The latter, in his turn, called
the Intendant to account; and Quebec was then ranged into two
camps--the Bishop and the Jesuits siding with the Intendant, while the
Récollet friars and the merchants supported Frontenac. Every ship
carried home to France a budget of letters filled with charges and
countercharges, until it became apparent to the Court that a bitter
civil strife was raging in the distant colony; and the King, unable to
judge between the antagonists, finally recalled them both.
The new Governor, La Barre, met with ill-omens on arrival. His
predecessor had scarce departed when Quebec was visited by the first
of those destructive fires which were destined to rage so often
through its winding streets. The summer of 1682 had been exceptionally
dry, and on the night of the 4th of August a fire began in the house
of Étienne Planchon and spread with dreadful speed over the whole of
Lower Town. Fifty-five houses were burnt to the ground on this
occasion, and Lower Town became a heap of ashes. One house alone
escaped, that of the merchant Aubert de la Chesnaye; and more than
half the wealth of Canada was destroyed.
If so be that misfortunes ever come singly, the history of Quebec at
least has never been able to afford an example; and as if destructive
fire were an insufficient visitation of angry fate, other misfortunes,
no less cruel, now came upon the city. In these years, indeed, it
seemed that Nature herself was leagued with the enemies of Quebec; for
in the _Jesuit Relations_ we have a circumstantial if highly
imaginative account of a violent earthquake which visited the
Province in 1663:--
"Many of the French inhabitants and Indians," says the
writer, "who were eye-witnesses to the scene, state that
a great way up the river of Trois Rivières, about
eighteen miles below Quebec, the hills which bordered the
river on either side, and which were of a prodigious
height, were torn from their foundations and plunged into
the river, causing it to change its course and spread
itself over a large tract of land recently
cleared;...lakes appeared where none ever existed before;
mountains were overthrown, swallowed up by the gaping
earth, or precipitated into adjacent rivers, leaving in
their place frightful chasms or level plains....Rivers in
many parts of the country sought other beds, or totally
disappeared. The earth and mountains were violently split
and rent in innumerable places, creating chasms and
precipices whose depths have never yet been ascertained.
Such devastation was also occasioned in the woods, that
more than a thousand acres in one neighbourhood were
completely overturned."
Another account of this event is given by an Ursuline sister:--
"The first shock of earthquake took place on 5th
February, 1663, about half-past five in the evening. The
weather was calm and serene, when we heard a terrible
noise and humming sound like that of a great number of
heavy carriages rolling over a paved floor swiftly. After
this one heard, both above and below the earth and on all
sides, as it were a confused mingling of waves and
billows, which caused sensations of horror. Sounds were
heard as of stones upon the roof, in the garrets, and
chambers; a thick dust spread around; doors opened and
shut of themselves. The bells of all our churches and
clocks sounded of themselves; and the steeples as well as
the houses swayed to and fro, like trees in a great wind.
And all this in the midst of a horrible confusion of
furniture turned over, stones falling, boards breaking,
walls cracking, and the cries of domestic animals, of
which some entered the houses and some went out; in a
word, it seemed to be the eve of the Day of Judgment
whose signs were witnessed. Very different impressions
were made on us. Some went forth for fear of being buried
in the ruins of our house, which was seen to jog as if
made of cards; others prostrated themselves at the foot
of the altar, as if to die there. One good lay sister was
so terrified that her body trembled for an hour without
ability to stop the agitation. When the second shock
came, at eight o'clock the same evening, we were all
ranged in our stalls at the choir. It was very violent,
and we all expected death every moment, and to be
engulfed in the ruins of the building....No person was
killed. The conversions were extraordinary, and one
ecclesiastic assured me that he had taken more than eight
hundred confessions."
Such things as these seemed not to dampen the ardour of those whose
fortunes were cast in New France. Personal prowess and force of
character were the natural result of trouble and disaster. La Barre,
however, proved a dire exception to the rule. His hands shook in the
hour of trial; he weakly grasped occasion. The magnificent but
tragical career of La Salle had annexed a vast domain to the French
possessions in North America, while Du Lhut, La Durantaye, Nicolas
Perrot, and the rest of the _coureurs de bois_ had, by their
adventurous trading, given even the remote Sioux and Assiniboins an
interest in the fur trade of France. By this rapid expansion of French
influence the Five Nation Indians at last saw themselves hemmed in by
tribes under the influence of Quebec, their hunting grounds limited to
a small and now partly exhausted area. In order to procure guns and
ammunition from their English friends they were compelled to take
thought for the decreasing peltries. A destructive raid into the
Illinois valley was the first step in their new policy, which was the
annihilation of all those tribes which traded with the French, and the
diversion of the beaver trade to the wealthier merchants of New
England.
At all hazards New France was bound to prevent this dire blow from
falling upon her allies, whose adherence to the pact rested upon the
ability of French arms to protect them. But French prestige among the
Indians so suffered under the weak-kneed administration of La Barre,
that the Iroquois became bolder in contravening the treaty of peace,
while the Western tribes were on the point of going over to the
English. These circumstances prompted the expedition of 1684.
With a hundred regulars, an equal number of Canadians, and a composite
band of Indians, La Barre set out from Quebec to destroy the Senecas.
News had been sent to the French trading posts of the north, and it
was arranged that the main column should be joined at Niagara by a
force of Hurons, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawattamies, and Foxes, whom the
_coureurs de bois_ had rallied for a last supreme effort. But in spite
of the strength of this array, it was not expected by those who knew
the vacillating Governor that he would be successful. Even the most
sceptical, however, were not prepared for the woeful fiasco which
followed. Instead of advancing to destroy his enemies, La Barre
summoned them to a council, where the Seneca deputies were not slow to
perceive the weakness of their foe, and contemptuously dictated terms
of peace. Thus the French were degraded in the eyes of their Indian
allies, who returned disgusted to their homes. The event being taken
seriously in France, La Barre was recalled, and the Marquis de
Denonville appointed in his place.
It was now becoming clearer that English intrigue was behind all these
troubles with the Iroquois. Dongan, the Catholic Governor of New York
at this period, a resourceful and adroit politician, formed the design
of absorbing the territory of the Iroquois into the domain of James
II. of England; and the Indians, while they resisted his ulterior
purpose, were yet glad enough to get English guns for their warfare
against the French. Besides this direct official action, Dongan
encouraged English traders to go among the Canadian Indians and wean
them from their alliance with Quebec.
At first the rivalry was but a diplomatic duel between Denonville and
Dongan, England and France being then at peace. Soon, however, the
colonies of the two nations were waging a border warfare of their own.
While the English were urging the Iroquois against their rivals, the
furtive hand of the French was evident in the raids of the Abenakis
upon the woods of Acadie; but at this early stage of the dispute the
two Powers disclaimed all approval of these savage reprisals.
In 1687 Governor Denonville, mustering a strong force at Quebec, moved
quickly up the St. Lawrence upon the Senecas. Like La Barre he invited
a number of chiefs to a conference, but when they came he
treacherously seized and sent them to the galleys of France. He then
crossed from Fort Frontenac, ravaging and burning their villages and
towns. Not only the Senecas but the whole Iroquois confederacy burned
to avenge the terrible warfare of Denonville. In small bands they
ranged the woods round about Quebec and the river settlements, darting
to and fro like silent shadows, so that for months the French suffered
daily the anguish of battle, murder, and sudden death. Disciplined
soldiers were helpless against this stealthy warfare, and a man walked
in danger of his life even within the palisades.
Great as was their distress, however, it was but a prelude to one of
the cruellest incidents in Canadian history. The night of the 4th of
August, 1689, being heavy with thunderclouds, fifteen hundred Iroquois
warriors, under cover of the darkness, crept upon the settlement of
Lachine, at the western end of the Island of Montreal. They scattered
stealthily among the cabins, and at a given signal surprised the
victims in their beds. More than two hundred men, women, and children
were tomahawked in cold blood or carried off to a lingering death, the
lurid flames of the burning seigneury telling their bitter tale to the
watchers at Montreal. New France was faint with horror; and once more
she sighed for the strong protecting arm of Frontenac.
Meanwhile, the English Revolution of 1688 had driven James II. from
the throne, and the French king had taken up the cause of the Stuarts
against William of Orange. England and France were face to face in
Europe, and in the New World the veiled conflict between the rival
colonies now gave place to open war. The King by this time realised
that Frontenac, for all his seventy years and his reputation for
rashness, was the only man qualified to fill the difficult post of
Governor, and accordingly sent him again to New France. He reached
Quebec about the middle of October. It was evening, and the citizens
had gathered at the quay with torches of welcome, while fireworks and
illuminations blazed in his honour over the streets of the Upper Town.
Vigorous in spite of his years, the grizzled hero of the siege of
Arras stood once more on the soil of New France, and notwithstanding
the perfunctory homage of the Jesuits and the studied reserve of the
Intendant Champigny, a feeling of relief thrilled Quebec. An
enterprise of almost incredible difficulty was to be laid upon the
shoulders of the veteran ruler. This was nothing less than an attack
upon New York as a preliminary step to the overthrow of all New
England. A land force was to descend on Albany, proceeding by way of
the Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, while two frigates were
to assail New York from the sea. The naval project, however, was so
feeble and uncertain, so ill-starred, that adverse winds on the
Atlantic brought it to an untimely end.
Having abandoned for the moment the expedition against New York,
Frontenac turned his attention first to the ever-present Indian
problem. The defection of the north-western tribes was becoming more
and more probable notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the
_coureurs de bois_. Indians were fast losing faith in French
protection, and before all else it was necessary to make the Iroquois
understand that the great _Onontio_[15] had returned to chastise them.
Aiming therefore at the revival of French prestige, the Governor
organised "The three war-parties," a step which may be considered as
the initial move in that desperate conflict which left the flag of
England floating over the citadel of Quebec.
The three war-parties, each consisting of regulars, _coureurs de
bois_, and Indians, were now despatched from Montreal, Three Rivers,
and Quebec. The deep snows of a Canadian winter lay upon the ground as
these forces of destruction sallied forth. Leaving Montreal, the first
party passed down the frozen St. Lawrence, and into the wintry ravines
of the Richelieu, and after a march of terrible hardship, now plunging
through snow-drifts, now benumbed by frost, wading knee-deep through
the melting swamps, they came at last to the unguarded palisades of
the Dutch settlement of Corlaer, or Schenectady. It was midnight as
they stole through the streets of the sleeping village, now suddenly
wakened by a hideous war-whoop, the signal for a massacre as terrible
as that of Lachine.
[Footnote 15: The Indian name for Count Frontenac.]
With a similarity of grim details the other two war-parties attacked
the rival colonies of New England. Under cover of the night the band
from Three Rivers fell upon Salmon Falls, a village on the borders of
New Hampshire, and put its inhabitants to the sword. The victors then
joined the column which Portneuf had led from Quebec, and together
they moved down Casco Bay to Fort Loyal, where the settlers of the
district had assembled for a vigorous defence. The New Englanders held
out for several days against the French and the Abenakis, but at
length agreed to surrender with the honours of war. Portneuf's pledge
of protection, however, was shamelessly broken, and the Indian allies
fell upon the helpless captives without restraint.
Such success amply fulfilled the expectations of Frontenac, and the
wavering tribes of the West now hastened to Quebec to confirm their
allegiance. In New France elation took the place of gloom, and
bonfires burned among the settlements along the St. Lawrence. In New
England, however, the threefold atrocity produced an effect that
boded ill for Canada. In their eagerness to avenge this outrage, the
Atlantic colonies, up to this time disunited and isolated, now pledged
themselves to union against a common peril, and planned the conquest
of the country. A force of colonial militia set out from Albany
against Montreal, while a naval attack was directed against Port Royal
and Quebec. Sir William Phipps sailed from Nantasket with a fleet of
seven vessels, appearing on the 11th of May before Port Royal, whose
commandant surrendered without a blow.
The admiral who won this bloodless victory is one of the most notable
figures in New World history. William Phipps was born on the Kennebec
in 1650, and spent his early life tending sheep in the rude border
settlement of New England. But ambition and love of adventure not
being satisfied by a pastoral life, the youth soon adopted the trade
of a ship-carpenter and came to Boston. Here fortune in the form of a
wealthy widow smiled upon him, and he is next found searching for a
wrecked treasure-ship in the Spanish Main. The romantic sailor was,
however, at first unsuccessful in his quest; but as he had awakened
the interest of the Duke of Albemarle, he obtained from this nobleman
a frigate for a similar adventure off the coast of Hispaniola. In the
course of this latter voyage his buccaneer crew rebelled, and
single-handed the powerful Phipps drove them from the quarter-deck.
Success at length rewarded him, the treasure-ship was raised, and
through the influence of his illustrious patron the bucolic New
Englander received a knighthood. Sir William Phipps thus returned to
his castle in the Green Lane of North Boston with the glamour of the
court upon him, and was chosen by the colonists of Massachusetts to
carry out their bold designs against Quebec.
Meanwhile, Frontenac anticipated coming danger by strengthening the
city. Nature had made the position impregnable on the river side, but
in the rear it was still open to attack. All through the winter gangs
of men were employed in cutting timber in the forest, and dragging
hewn palisades to the city, where Frontenac superintended the erection
of stout barricades. While the Governor was thus engaged news reached
him that Winthrop was marching upon Montreal, and thither he hastened
with all speed. Circumstances, however, had conspired to render futile
the expedition from New York and Connecticut; and intestine quarrels,
followed by Iroquois defection, wrecked the English enterprise before
it had come within striking distance of Montreal.
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM PHIPPS]
In the meantime Sir William Phipps had sailed for Quebec with a fleet
of more than thirty sail, two thousand men, and four months' supplies.
The hope of receiving help from England had somewhat delayed the
expedition, and it was the 9th of August before the admiral slipped
his cables in the harbour of Nantasket. As this American armada
comprised vessels ranging in size from the flag-ship _Six Friends_,
with forty-four guns, down to the fishing smacks of Gloucester, its
progress was slow. The most serious difficulty, however, was the
absence of a pilot who knew the dangerous navigation of the St.
Lawrence. Nevertheless, Phipps decided to grope his way up the river.
However, news of the invasion had already reached Quebec, and Prévost,
the town Mayor, despatched a messenger to Frontenac at Montreal,
pressing on meanwhile with the fortifications already so well under
way.
Nature had left the cliffs of Quebec accessible at only those three
points where later stood Prescott, Hope and Palace Gates, and Prévost
secured these by means of barricades and earthworks. The strand of the
St. Charles, from the Palace of the Intendant to the Sault-au-Matelot,
was protected by a continuous palisade, and the fortifications begun
by Frontenac in the previous winter having since been completed, now
afforded adequate protection upon the landward side of the town.
Moreover, several batteries were disposed at salient points. In the
garden which flanks the present Dufferin Terrace was a battery of
eight guns; while the high cliff of the Sault-au-Matelot and the
barricade at Palace Hill were each defended by six guns. The windmill
on Mount Carmel was converted into a small battery, a number of light
pieces also being collected in the square opposite the Jesuits'
College, to serve as a reserve battery for any weak spot in the
defences. Six, eighteen, and twenty-four pounders were mounted on the
wharves of Lower Town. For several days the men from the surrounding
parishes had been flocking into the city, and by the evening of the
15th of October about twenty-seven hundred regulars and militia were
gathered within the fortifications. Next day the sun rose upon the New
England fleet moored in the expansive basin of Quebec.
[Illustration: PLAN OF FORT ST. LOUIS, 1683]
All that was possible in the way of defence had been accomplished, but
in the face of such imposing naval strength the assault was awaited
with anxiety. The women and children repaired to the stone convents
for refuge, and the men stood by the guns. The siege, however, was not
to open with a cannonade, but a parley. A boat put out from the _Six
Friends_ with a flag of truce, and soon an English lieutenant landed
at the Cul-de-sac, bearing a letter for the commander of the garrison.
Before receiving the missive, Frontenac devised a useful and whimsical
stratagem to raise the prestige of the beleaguered city. Phipps's
messenger was first of all blindfolded. Then two sergeants led the
bewildered envoy by a devious route from the quay up to Fort St.
Louis, and over the triple barricades of Mountain Hill, while the
noisy soldiers thronged him, and the din of the streets was designedly
increased. Finally they took the bandage from his eyes. Before him
stood the haughty Frontenac in the brilliant uniform of a French
marshal, and the council-room of the Château was crowded with the
officers of his staff, tricked off in laces of gold and silver with
ribbons and plumes, powder and perukes.
[Illustration: THE CITADEL TO-DAY (FROM DUFFERIN TERRACE)]
Withal, the English envoy was equal to the occasion. If the strength
of Quebec and its garrison filled him with surprise, he gave no sign
of it, but with a dignity rivalling that of the French Governor
delivered his admiral's summons to surrender. "Your answer positive
in an hour," recited the postscript, "returned by your own trumpet
with the return of mine, is required upon the peril that will ensue."
Frontenac and his _aides_ were not in the least prepared to accept the
brusque demands of Sir William Phipps. Fort Royal, it is true, had
been cowed into an immediate surrender, but the blustering sailor of
New England had mistaken Quebec and its commandant.
For a moment the fiery Count controlled his temper, then it blazed
forth with wonted ardour. "Tell your General," he exclaimed, "that I
will answer him only by the mouths of my cannon, that he may learn
that the fortress of Quebec is not to be summoned after this fashion.
Let him do his best, and I shall do mine."
Blindfolded once more, the bearer of the flag of truce again scrambled
over the barricades, and was led down to the river's brink.
To Phipps, the challenge of Frontenac seemed to outdo his own in
boldness, and he was filled with doubt by the envoy's accounts of the
strength of Quebec. The black rock of Cape Diamond now seemed to tower
above him more grimly than ever, and with some misgiving he at length
adopted a bold plan of assault. The infantry, under Major Walley, were
to land on the flats of Beauport, cross the St. Charles when the tide
was out, and assail the flank of the town on the side of the Côte Ste.
Geneviève; while Phipps himself was to cannonade the city from the
river, land a storming party, and gain the Upper Town by way of the
barricades.
For two more days he delayed putting this plan into operation; and
when attempted it was badly managed. Frontenac had despatched
Sainte-Hélène[16] with three hundred sharpshooters to oppose any
landing on the Beauport shore, a force which was unequal to the task;
for Major Walley, though harassed by their fire, succeeded in making
his way at the head of 1300 men to the ford on the river St. Charles.
Phipps, however, instead of co-operating with the land force, had made
a premature movement, and leaving his moorings had sailed up the
channel opposite the city, there to engage in a terrific duel with the
guns of Fort St. Louis and the several batteries of Upper Town. Cannon
and mortars belched forth their missiles with the rapidity of
musketry, making an uproar as of a great battle. The English gunners
made poor practice, however, and the projectiles falling within the
city did almost no damage. Twenty-six cannon-balls dropped harmlessly
in the garden of the Ursuline convent, and furnished new ammunition
for the garrison. On the other hand, the decks of the attacking
vessels were swept by fire from the cliffs. One shot carried away the
ensign of the flag-ship, and another tore away her rigging and
shattered her mizzen, and the rest of the fleet was similarly
battered.
[Footnote 16: Of the gallant Le Moyne family, of whom also was
d'Iberville, the soldier, explorer, and governor.]
This unequal cannonade continued for two days before Phipps realised
its futility. On shore, Walley persisted for three days in attempting
to force his way across the St. Charles; but his field-pieces were
half buried in the mud, sickness had attacked his camp, and the rain
and sleet of an early winter completed his discomfiture. Seeing,
moreover, that their admiral had now ceased to fight, and that
Frontenac was thus able to concentrate defence upon the landward side,
the militiamen felt the hopelessness of further assault and returned
to the ships. After this rebuff Phipps weighed anchor and dropped down
stream with his battered armada.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LA VICTOIRE]
Quebec had been saved, though not without dire peril and sore straits;
for before the withdrawal of the enemy the crowded city had already
felt the pinch of famine, and the violence of the batteries had all
but emptied her magazines. Throughout the bombardment a picture of the
Holy Family had hung inviolate on the spire of the Basilica, defying
the heretical cannonade; and in cloister and chapel the beleaguered
citizens had ceaselessly invoked their favourite saints. To one and
all the victory was of Heaven, and in the midst of her rejoicing
Quebec did not forget to redeem her vows. The little chapel of Notre
Dame de la Victoire, hidden among the quaint windings of the streets
below the Terrace, still stands as a monument to that religious
fidelity with which the citizens of Quebec had faced another of their
many perils.
CHAPTER IX
THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY
The great strength of its natural position had enabled the city to
withstand the late siege; but Frontenac saw clearly that the defences
would not be sufficient to meet a resolute assault, and it was
resolved to reconstruct the fortifications on a larger scale. The
great engineer Vauban furnished plans which were carried out under
Frontenac's personal direction. For twenty leagues around the
_habitants_ were pressed into this service, and such was the general
anxiety to make the city impregnable, that even the _gentilhommes_
gave themselves to pick and spade. A line of solid earthworks soon
extended on the flank of the city from Cape Diamond to the St.
Charles; and at the summit of the Cape, now for the first time
embraced within the forti
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/30367