France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV

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Title: France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV

Author: Francis Parkman

Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6875]
Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA, PART V: COUNT FRONTENAC, NEW FRANCE, LOUIS XIV ***

France and England
in
North America

A Series of Historical Narratives.

by Francis Parkman

Author of the "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," "The Oregon
Trail," "The Old Régime in Canada," etc.

Part Fifth.

Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company.
1877.

Entered According to Act of Congress in the year 1877, by
Francis Parkman,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Cambridge:
Press of John Wilson and Son.

Count Frontenac
and
New France
Under Louis XIV.

by Francis Parkman

Author of "Pioneers of France in the New World," "The Jesuits in North
America," "The Discovery of the Great West," and "The Old Régime in
Canada."

Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company.
1877.

Entered According to Act of Congress in the year 1877, by
Francis Parkman,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Cambridge:
Press of John Wilson and Son.

PREFACE.

The events recounted in this book group themselves in the main about a
single figure, that of Count Frontenac, the most remarkable man who ever
represented the crown of France in the New World. From strangely
unpromising beginnings, he grew with every emergency, and rose equal to
every crisis. His whole career was one of conflict, sometimes petty and
personal, sometimes of momentous consequence, involving the question of
national ascendancy on this continent. Now that this question is put at
rest for ever, it is hard to conceive the anxiety which it wakened in
our forefathers. But for one rooted error of French policy, the future
of the English-speaking races in America would have been more than
endangered.

Under the rule of Frontenac occurred the first serious collision of the
rival powers, and the opening of the grand scheme of military occupation
by which France strove to envelop and hold in check the industrial
populations of the English colonies. It was he who made that scheme
possible.

In "The Old Régime in Canada," I tried to show from what inherent causes
this wilderness empire of the Great Monarch fell at last before a foe,
superior indeed in numbers, but lacking all the forces that belong to a
system of civil and military centralization. The present volume will
show how valiantly, and for a time how successfully, New France battled
against a fate which her own organic fault made inevitable. Her history
is a great and significant drama, enacted among untamed forests, with a
distant gleam of courtly splendors and the regal pomp of Versailles.

The authorities on which the book rests are drawn chiefly from the
manuscript collections of the French government in the Archives
Nationales, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and, above all, the vast
repositories of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies. Others are from
Canadian and American sources. I have, besides, availed myself of the
collection of French, English, and Dutch documents published by the
State of New York, under the excellent editorship of Dr. O'Callaghan,
and of the manuscript collections made in France by the governments of
Canada and of Massachusetts. A considerable number of books,
contemporary or nearly so with the events described, also help to throw
light upon them; and these have all been examined. The citations in the
margins represent but a small part of the authorities consulted.

This mass of material has been studied with extreme care, and peculiar
pains have been taken to secure accuracy of statement. In the preface of
"The Old Régime," I wrote: "Some of the results here reached are of a
character which I regret, since they cannot be agreeable to persons for
whom I have a very cordial regard. The conclusions drawn from the facts
may be matter of opinion: but it will be remembered that the facts
themselves can be overthrown only by overthrowing the evidence on which
they rest, or bringing forward counter-evidence of equal or greater
strength; and neither task will be found an easy one."

The invitation implied in these words has not been accepted. "The Old
Régime" was met by vehement protest in some quarters; but, so far as I
know, none of the statements of fact contained in it have been attacked
by evidence, or even challenged. The lines just quoted are equally
applicable to this volume. Should there be occasion, a collection of
documentary proofs will be published more than sufficient to make good
the positions taken. Meanwhile, it will, I think, be clear to an
impartial reader that the story is told, not in the interest of any race
or nationality, but simply in that of historical truth.

When, at the age of eighteen, I formed the purpose of writing on
French-American history, I meant at first to limit myself to the great
contest which brought that history to a close. It was by an afterthought
that the plan was extended to cover the whole field, so that the part of
the work, or series of works, first conceived, would, following the
sequence of events, be the last executed. As soon as the original scheme
was formed, I began to prepare for executing it by examining localities,
journeying in forests, visiting Indian tribes, and collecting materials.
I have continued to collect them ever since, so that the accumulation is
now rather formidable; and, if it is to be used at all, it had better be
used at once. Therefore, passing over for the present an intervening
period of less decisive importance, I propose to take, as the next
subject of this series, "Montcalm and the Fall of New France."

Boston, 1 Jan., 1877.

Contents

Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.

PREFACE.

CHAPTER I. 1620-1672.

COUNT AND COUNTESS FRONTENAC.

Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Madame de Frontenac • Orleans • The
Maréchale de Camp • Count Frontenac • Conjugal Disputes • Early Life of
Frontenac • His Courtship and Marriage • Estrangement • Scenes at St.
Fargeau • The Lady of Honor dismissed • Frontenac as a Soldier • He is
made Governor of New France • Les Divines

CHAPTER II. 1672-1675

FRONTENAC AT QUEBEC.

Arrival • Bright Prospects • The Three Estates of New France • Speech of
the Governor • His Innovations • Royal Displeasure • Signs of Storm •
Frontenac and the Priests • His Attempts to civilize the Indians •
Opposition • Complaints and Heart-burnings

CHAPTER III. 1673-1675.

FRONTENAC AND PERROT.

La Salle • Fort Frontenac • Perrot • His Speculations • His Tyranny •
The Bush-rangers • Perrot revolts • Becomes alarmed • Dilemma of
Frontenac • Mediation of Fénelon • Perrot in Prison • Excitement of the
Sulpitians • Indignation of Fénelon • Passion of Frontenac • Perrot on
Trial • Strange Scenes • Appeal to the King • Answers of Louis XIV. and
Colbert • Fénelon rebuked.

CHAPTER IV. 1675-1682.

FRONTENAC AND DUCHESNEAU.

Frontenac receives a Colleague • He opposes the Clergy • Disputes in the
Council • Royal Intervention • Frontenac rebuked • Fresh Outbreaks •
Charges and Countercharges • The Dispute grows hot • Duchesneau
condemned and Frontenac warned • The Quarrel continues • The King loses
Patience • More Accusations • Factions and Feuds • A Side Quarrel • The
King threatens • Frontenac denounces the Priests • The Governor and the
Intendant recalled • Qualities of Frontenac.

CHAPTER V. 1682-1684.

LE FEBVRE DE LA BARRE.

His Arrival at Quebec • The Great Fire • A Coming Storm • Iroquois
Policy • The Danger imminent • Indian Allies of France • Frontenac and
the Iroquois • Boasts of La Barre • His Past Life • His Speculations •
He takes Alarm • His Dealings with the Iroquois • His Illegal Trade •
His Colleague denounces him • Fruits of his Schemes • His Anger and his
Fears.

CHAPTER VI. 1684.

LA BARRE AND THE IROQUOIS.

Dongan • New York and its Indian Neighbors • The Rival Governors •
Dongan and the Iroquois • Mission to Onondaga • An Iroquois Politician •
Warnings of Lamberville • Iroquois Boldness • La Barre takes the Field •
His Motives • The March • Pestilence • Council at La Famine • The
Iroquois defiant • Humiliation of La Barre • The Indian Allies • Their
Rage and Disappointment • Recall of La Barre.

CHAPTER VII. 1685-1687.

DENONVILLE AND DONGAN.

Troubles of the New Governor • His Character • English Rivalry •
Intrigues of Dongan • English Claims • A Diplomatic Duel • Overt Acts •
Anger of Denonville • James II. checks Dongan • Denonville emboldened •
Strife in the North • Hudson's Bay • Attempted Pacification • Artifice
of Denonville • He prepares for War.

CHAPTER VIII. 1687.

DENONVILLE AND THE SENECAS.

Treachery of Denonville • Iroquois Generosity • The Invading Army • The
Western Allies • Plunder of English Traders • Arrival of the Allies •
Scene at the French Camp • March of Denonville • Ambuscade • Battle •
Victory • The Seneca Babylon • Imperfect Success.

CHAPTER IX. 1687-1689.

THE IROQUOIS INVASION.

Altercations • Attitude of Dongan • Martial Preparation • Perplexity of
Denonville • Angry Correspondence • Recall of Dongan • Sir Edmund Andros
• Humiliation of Denonville • Distress of Canada • Appeals for Help •
Iroquois Diplomacy • A Huron Macchiavel • The Catastrophe • Ferocity
of the Victors • War with England • Recall of Denonville.

CHAPTER X. 1689-1690.

RETURN OF FRONTENAC.

Versailles • Frontenac and the King • Frontenac sails for Quebec •
Projected Conquest of New York • Designs of the King • Failure • Energy
of Frontenac • Fort Frontenac • Panic • Negotiations • The Iroquois in
Council • Chevalier d'Aux • Taunts of the Indian Allies • Boldness of
Frontenac • An Iroquois Defeat • Cruel Policy • The Stroke parried.

CHAPTER XI. 1690.

THE THREE WAR-PARTIES.

Measures of Frontenac • Expedition against Schenectady • The March • The
Dutch Village • The Surprise • The Massacre • Prisoners spared • Retreat
• The English and their Iroquois Friends • The Abenaki War • Revolution
at Boston • Capture of Pemaquid • Capture of Salmon Falls • Capture of
Fort Loyal • Frontenac and his Prisoner • The Canadians encouraged.

CHAPTER XII. 1690.

MASSACHUSETTS ATTACKS QUEBEC.

English Schemes • Capture of Port Royal • Acadia reduced • Conduct of
Phips • His History and Character • Boston in Arms • A Puritan Crusade •
The March from Albany • Frontenac and the Council • Frontenac at
Montreal • His War Dance • An Abortive Expedition • An English Raid •
Frontenac at Quebec • Defences of the Town • The Enemy arrives.

CHAPTER XIII. 1690.

DEFENCE OF QUEBEC.

Phips on the St. Lawrence • Phips at Quebec • A Flag of Truce • Scene at
the Château • The Summons and the Answer • Plan of Attack • Landing of
the English • The Cannonade • The Ships repulsed • The Land Attack •
Retreat of Phips • Condition of Quebec • Rejoicings of the French •
Distress at Boston.

CHAPTER XIV. 1690-1694.

THE SCOURGE OF CANADA.

Iroquois Inroads • Death of Bienville • English Attack • A Desperate
Fight • Miseries of the Colony • Alarms • A Winter Expedition • La
Chesnaye burned • The Heroine of Verchères • Mission Indians • The
Mohawk Expedition • Retreat and Pursuit • Relief arrives • Frontenac
Triumphant.

CHAPTER XV. 1691-1695.

AN INTERLUDE.

Appeal of Frontenac • His Opponents • His Services • Rivalry and Strife
• Bishop Saint-Vallier • Society at the Château • Private Theatricals •
Alarm of the Clergy • Tartuffe • A Singular Bargain • Mareuil and the
Bishop • Mareuil on Trial • Zeal of Saint-Vallier • Scandals at Montreal
• Appeal to the King • The Strife composed • Libel against Frontenac.

CHAPTER XVI. 1690-1694.

THE WAR IN ACADIA.

State of that Colony • The Abenakis • Acadia and New England • Pirates •
Baron de Saint-Castin • Pentegoet • The English Frontier • The French
and the Abenakis • Plan of the War • Capture of York • Villebon • Grand
War-party • Attack of Wells • Pemaquid rebuilt • John Nelson • A Broken
Treaty • Villieu and Thury • Another War-party • Massacre at Oyster
River.

CHAPTER XVII. 1690-1697.

NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND.

The Frontier of New England • Border Warfare • Motives of the French •
Needless Barbarity • Who were answerable? • Father Thury • The Abenakis
waver • Treachery at Pemaquid • Capture of Pemaquid • Projected Attack
on Boston • Disappointment • Miseries of the Frontier • A Captive
Amazon.

CHAPTER XVIII. 1693-1697.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH RIVALRY.

Le Moyne d'Iberville • His Exploits in Newfoundland • In Hudson's Bay •
The Great Prize • The Competitors • Fatal Policy of the King • The
Iroquois Question • Negotiation • Firmness of Frontenac • English
Intervention • War renewed • State of the West • Indian Diplomacy •
Cruel Measures • A Perilous Crisis • Audacity of Frontenac.

CHAPTER XIX. 1696-1698.

FRONTENAC ATTACKS THE ONONDAGAS.

March of Frontenac • Flight of the Enemy • An Iroquois Stoic • Relief
for the Onondagas • Boasts of Frontenac • His Complaints • His Enemies •
Parties in Canada • Views of Frontenac and the King • Frontenac prevails
• Peace of Ryswick • Frontenac and Bellomont • Schuyler at Quebec •
Festivities • A Last Defiance.

CHAPTER XX. 1698.

DEATH OF FRONTENAC.

His Last Hours • His Will • His Funeral • His Eulogist and his Critic •
His Disputes with the Clergy • His Character.

CHAPTER XXI. 1699-1701.

CONCLUSION.

The New Governor • Attitude of the Iroquois • Negotiations • Embassy to
Onondaga • Peace • The Iroquois and the Allies • Difficulties • Death of
the Great Huron • Funeral Rites • The Grand Council • The Work of
Frontenac finished • Results.

APPENDIX.

INDEX.

[Illustration: Map of Canada and Adjacent Countries towards the Close of
the 17th century.]

CHAPTER I.
1620-1672.

Count and Countess Frontenac.

At Versailles there is the portrait of a lady, beautiful and young. She
is painted as Minerva, a plumed helmet on her head, and a shield on
her arm. In a corner of the canvas is written Anne de La Grange-Trianon,
Comtesse de Frontenac. This blooming goddess was the wife of the future
governor of Canada.

Madame de Frontenac, at the age of about twenty, was a favorite
companion of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the grand-daughter of Henry
IV. and daughter of the weak and dastardly Gaston, Duke of Orleans.
Nothing in French annals has found more readers than the story of the
exploit of this spirited princess at Orleans during the civil war of the
Fronde. Her cousin Condé, chief of the revolt, had found favor in her
eyes; and she had espoused his cause against her cousin, the king. The
royal army threatened Orleans. The duke, her father, dared not leave
Paris; but he consented that his daughter should go in his place to hold
the city for Condé and the Fronde.

The princess entered her carriage and set out on her errand, attended by
a small escort. With her were three young married ladies, the Marquise
de Bréauté, the Comtesse de Fiesque, and the Comtesse de Frontenac. In
two days they reached Orleans. The civic authorities were afraid to
declare against the king, and hesitated to open the gates to the
daughter of their duke, who, standing in the moat with her three
companions, tried persuasion and threats in vain. The prospect was not
encouraging, when a crowd of boatmen came up from the river and offered
the princess their services. "I accepted them gladly," she writes, "and
said a thousand fine things, such as one must say to that sort of people
to make them do what one wishes." She gave them money as well as fair
words, and begged them to burst open one of the gates. They fell at once
to the work; while the guards and officials looked down from the walls,
neither aiding nor resisting them. "To animate the boatmen by my
presence," she continues, "I mounted a hillock near by. I did not look
to see which way I went, but clambered up like a cat, clutching brambles
and thorns, and jumping over hedges without hurting myself. Madame de
Bréauté, who is the most cowardly creature in the world, began to cry
out against me and everybody who followed me; in fact, I do not know if
she did not swear in her excitement, which amused me very much." At
length, a hole was knocked in the gate; and a gentleman of her train,
who had directed the attack, beckoned her to come on. "As it was very
muddy, a man took me and carried me forward, and thrust me in at this
hole, where my head was no sooner through than the drums beat to salute
me. I gave my hand to the captain of the guard. The shouts redoubled.
Two men took me and put me in a wooden chair. I do not know whether I
was seated in it or on their arms, for I was beside myself with joy.
Everybody was kissing my hands, and I almost died with laughing to see
myself in such an odd position." There was no resisting the enthusiasm
of the people and the soldiers. Orleans was won for the Fronde. [1]

[1] Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, I. 358-363 (ed. 1859).

The young Countesses of Frontenac and Fiesque had constantly followed
her, and climbed after her through the hole in the gate. Her father
wrote to compliment them on their prowess, and addressed his letter à
Mesdames les Comtesses, Maréchales de Camp dans l'armée de ma fille
contre le Mazarin. Officers and soldiers took part in the pleasantry;
and, as Madame de Frontenac passed on horseback before the troops, they
saluted her with the honors paid to a brigadier.

When the king, or Cardinal Mazarin who controlled him, had triumphed
over the revolting princes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier paid the penalty
of her exploit by a temporary banishment from the court. She roamed from
place to place, with a little court of her own, of which Madame de
Frontenac was a conspicuous member. During the war, Count Frontenac had
been dangerously ill of a fever in Paris; and his wife had been absent
for a time, attending him. She soon rejoined the princess, who was at
her château of St. Fargeau, three days' journey from Paris, when an
incident occurred which placed the married life of her fair companion in
an unexpected light. "The Duchesse de Sully came to see me, and brought
with her M. d'Herbault and M. de Frontenac. Frontenac had stopped here
once before, but it was only for a week, when he still had the fever,
and took great care of himself like a man who had been at the door of
death. This time he was in high health. His arrival had not been
expected, and his wife was so much surprised that everybody observed it,
especially as the surprise seemed to be not at all a pleasant one.
Instead of going to talk with her husband, she went off and hid herself,
crying and screaming because he had said that he would like to have her
company that evening. I was very much astonished, especially as I had
never before perceived her aversion to him. The elder Comtesse de
Fiesque remonstrated with her; but she only cried the more. Madame de
Fiesque then brought books to show her her duty as a wife; but it did no
good, and at last she got into such a state that we sent for the curé
with holy water to exorcise her." [2]

[2] Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, II. 265. The curé's holy
water, or his exhortations, were at last successful.

Count Frontenac came of an ancient and noble race, said to have been of
Basque origin. His father held a high post in the household of Louis
XIII., who became the child's god-father, and gave him his own name. At
the age of fifteen, the young Louis showed an incontrollable passion for
the life of a soldier. He was sent to the seat of war in Holland, to
serve under the Prince of Orange. At the age of nineteen, he was a
volunteer at the siege of Hesdin; in the next year, he was at Arras,
where he distinguished himself during a sortie of the garrison; in the
next, he took part in the siege of Aire; and, in the next, in those of
Callioure and Perpignan. At the age of twenty-three, he was made colonel
of the regiment of Normandy, which he commanded in repeated battles and
sieges of the Italian campaign. He was several times wounded, and in
1646 he had an arm broken at the siege of Orbitello. In the same year,
when twenty-six years old, he was raised to the rank of maréchal de
camp, equivalent to that of brigadier-general. A year or two later, we
find him at Paris, at the house of his father, on the Quai des
Célestins. [3]

[3] Pinard, Chronologie Historique-militaire, VI.; Table de la
Gazette de France; Jal, Dictionnaire Critique, Biographique, et
d'Histoire, art. "Frontenac;" Goyer, Oraison Funèbre du Comte de
Frontenac.

In the same neighborhood lived La Grange-Trianon, Sieur de Neuville, a
widower of fifty, with one child, a daughter of sixteen, whom he had
placed in the charge of his relative, Madame de Bouthillier. Frontenac
fell in love with her. Madame de Bouthillier opposed the match, and told
La Grange that he might do better for his daughter than to marry her to
a man who, say what he might, had but twenty thousand francs a year. La
Grange was weak and vacillating: sometimes he listened to his prudent
kinswoman, and sometimes to the eager suitor; treated him as a
son-in-law, carried love messages from him to his daughter, and ended by
refusing him her hand, and ordering her to renounce him on pain of being
immured in a convent. Neither Frontenac nor his mistress was of a pliant
temper. In the neighborhood was the little church of St. Pierre aux
Bœufs, which had the privilege of uniting couples without the consent of
their parents; and here, on a Wednesday in October, 1648, the lovers
were married in presence of a number of Frontenac's relatives. La Grange
was furious at the discovery; but his anger soon cooled, and complete
reconciliation followed. [4]

[4] Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, IX. 214 (ed. Monmerqué); Jal,
Dictionnaire Critique, etc.

The happiness of the newly wedded pair was short. Love soon changed to
aversion, at least on the part of the bride. She was not of a tender
nature; her temper was imperious, and she had a restless craving for
excitement. Frontenac, on his part, was the most wayward and headstrong
of men. She bore him a son; but maternal cares were not to her liking.
The infant, François Louis, was placed in the keeping of a nurse at the
village of Clion; and his young mother left her husband, to follow the
fortunes of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who for a time pronounced her
charming, praised her wit and beauty, and made her one of her ladies of
honor. Very curious and amusing are some of the incidents recounted by
the princess, in which Madame de Frontenac bore part; but what is more
to our purpose are the sketches traced here and there by the same sharp
pen, in which one may discern the traits of the destined saviour of New
France. Thus, in the following, we see him at St. Fargeau in the same
attitude in which we shall often see him at Quebec.

The princess and the duke her father had a dispute touching her
property. Frontenac had lately been at Blois, where the duke had
possessed him with his own views of the questions at issue. Accordingly,
on arriving at St. Fargeau, he seemed disposed to assume the character
of mediator. "He wanted," says the princess, "to discuss my affairs with
me: I listened to his preaching, and he also spoke about these matters
to Préfontaine (her man of business). I returned to the house after our
promenade, and we went to dance in the great hall. While we were
dancing, I saw Préfontaine walking at the farther end with Frontenac,
who was talking and gesticulating. This continued for a long time.
Madame de Sully noticed it also, and seemed disturbed by it, as I was
myself. I said, 'Have we not danced enough?' Madame de Sully assented,
and we went out. I called Préfontaine, and asked him, 'What was
Frontenac saying to you?' He answered: 'He was scolding me. I never saw
such an impertinent man in my life.' I went to my room, and Madame de
Sully and Madame de Fiesque followed. Madame de Sully said to
Préfontaine: 'I was very much disturbed to see you talking with so much
warmth to Monsieur de Frontenac; for he came here in such ill-humor that
I was afraid he would quarrel with you. Yesterday, when we were in the
carriage, he was ready to eat us.' The Comtesse de Fiesque said, 'This
morning he came to see my mother-in-law, and scolded at her.'
Préfontaine answered: 'He wanted to throttle me. I never saw a man so
crazy and absurd.' We all four began to pity poor Madame de Frontenac
for having such a husband, and to think her right in not wanting to go
with him." [5]

[5] Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, II. 267.

Frontenac owned the estate of Isle Savary, on the Indre, not far from
Blois; and here, soon after the above scene, the princess made him a
visit. "It is a pretty enough place," she says, "for a man like him. The
house is well furnished, and he gave me excellent entertainment. He
showed me all the plans he had for improving it, and making gardens,
fountains, and ponds. It would need the riches of a superintendent of
finance to execute his schemes, and how anybody else should venture to
think of them I cannot comprehend."

"While Frontenac was at St. Fargeau," she continues, "he kept open
table, and many of my people went to dine with him; for he affected to
hold court, and acted as if everybody owed duty to him. The conversation
was always about my affair with his Royal Highness (her father), whose
conduct towards me was always praised, while mine was blamed. Frontenac
spoke ill of Préfontaine, and, in fine, said every thing he could to
displease me and stir up my own people against me. He praised every
thing that belonged to himself, and never came to sup or dine with me
without speaking of some ragoût or some new sweetmeat which had been
served up on his table, ascribing it all to the excellence of the
officers of his kitchen. The very meat that he ate, according to him,
had a different taste on his board than on any other. As for his silver
plate, it was always of good workmanship; and his dress was always of
patterns invented by himself. When he had new clothes, he paraded them
like a child. One day he brought me some to look at, and left them on my
dressing-table. We were then at Chambord. His Royal Highness came into
the room, and must have thought it odd to see breeches and doublets in
such a place. Préfontaine and I laughed about it a great deal. Frontenac
took everybody who came to St. Fargeau to see his stables; and all who
wished to gain his good graces were obliged to admire his horses, which
were very indifferent. In short, this is his way in every thing." [6]

[6] Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, II. 279; III. 10.

Though not himself of the highest rank, his position at court was, from
the courtier point of view, an enviable one. The princess, after her
banishment had ended, more than once mentions incidentally that she had
met him in the cabinet of the queen. Her dislike of him became intense,
and her fondness for his wife changed at last to aversion. She charges
the countess with ingratitude. She discovered, or thought that she
discovered, that in her dispute with her father, and in certain
dissensions in her own household, Madame de Frontenac had acted secretly
in opposition to her interests and wishes. The imprudent lady of honor
received permission to leave her service. It was a woful scene. "She saw
me get into my carriage," writes the princess, "and her distress was
greater than ever. Her tears flowed abundantly: as for me, my fortitude
was perfect, and I looked on with composure while she cried. If any
thing could disturb my tranquility, it was the recollection of the time
when she laughed while I was crying." Mademoiselle de Montpensier had
been deeply offended, and apparently with reason. The countess and her
husband received an order never again to appear in her presence; but
soon after, when the princess was with the king and queen at a comedy in
the garden of the Louvre, Frontenac, who had previously arrived,
immediately changed his position, and with his usual audacity took a
post so conspicuous that she could not help seeing him. "I confess," she
says, "I was so angry that I could find no pleasure in the play; but I
said nothing to the king and queen, fearing that they would not take
such a view of the matter as I wished." [7]

[7] Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, III. 270.

With the close of her relations with "La Grande Mademoiselle," Madame de
Frontenac is lost to sight for a while. In 1669, a Venetian embassy came
to France to beg for aid against the Turks, who for more than two years
had attacked Candia in overwhelming force. The ambassadors offered to
place their own troops under French command, and they asked Turenne to
name a general officer equal to the task. Frontenac had the signal honor
of being chosen by the first soldier of Europe for this most arduous and
difficult position. He went accordingly. The result increased his
reputation for ability and courage; but Candia was doomed, and its chief
fortress fell into the hands of the infidels, after a protracted
struggle, which is said to have cost them a hundred and eighty thousand
men. [8]

[8] Oraison funèbre du Comte de Frontenac, par le Père Olivier Goyer. A
powerful French contingent, under another command, co-operated with the
Venetians under Frontenac.

Three years later, Frontenac received the appointment of Governor and
Lieutenant-General for the king in all New France. "He was," says
Saint-Simon, "a man of excellent parts, 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." [9] Certain scandalous songs of
the day assign a different motive for his appointment. Louis XIV. was
enamoured of Madame de Montespan. She had once smiled upon Frontenac;
and it is said that the jealous king gladly embraced the opportunity of
removing from his presence, and from hers, a lover who had forestalled
him. [10]

[9] Memoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, II. 270; V. 336.

[10] Note of M. Brunet, in Correspondance de la Duchesse d'Orléans,
I. 200 (ed. 1869).

The following lines, among others, were passed about secretly among the
courtiers:--

"Je suis ravi que le roi, notre sire,
Aime la Montespan;
Moi, Frontenac, je me crève 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."

Mademoiselle de Montpensier had mentioned in her memoirs, some years
before, that Frontenac, in taking out his handkerchief, dropped from his
pocket a love-letter to Mademoiselle de Mortemart, afterwards Madame de
Montespan, which was picked up by one of the attendants of the princess.
The king, on the other hand, was at one time attracted by the charms of
Madame de Frontenac, against whom, however, no aspersion is cast.

The Comte de Grignan, son-in-law of Madame de Sévigné, was an
unsuccessful competitor with Frontenac for the government of Canada.

Frontenac's wife had no thought of following him across the sea. A more
congenial life awaited her at home. She had long had a friend of humbler
station than herself, Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise, daughter of an obscure
gentleman of Poitou, an amiable and accomplished person, who became
through life her constant companion. The extensive building called the
Arsenal, formerly the residence of Sully, the minister of Henry IV.,
contained suites of apartments which were granted to persons who had
influence enough to obtain them. The Duc de Lude, grand master of
artillery, had them at his disposal, and gave one of them to Madame de
Frontenac. Here she made her abode with her friend; and here at last she
died, at the age of seventy-five. The annalist Saint-Simon, who knew the
court and all belonging to it better than any other man of his time,
says of her: "She had been beautiful and gay, and was always in the best
society, where she was greatly in request. Like her husband, she had
little property and abundant wit. She and Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise,
whom she took to live with her, gave the tone to the best company of
Paris and the court, though they never went thither. They were called
Les Divines. In fact, they demanded incense like goddesses; and it was
lavished upon them all their lives."

Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise died long before the countess, who retained in
old age the rare social gifts which to the last made her apartments a
resort of the highest society of that brilliant epoch. It was in her
power to be very useful to her absent husband, who often needed her
support, and who seems to have often received it.

She was childless. Her son, François Louis, was killed, some say in
battle, and others in a duel, at an early age. Her husband died nine
years before her; and the old countess left what little she had to her
friend Beringhen, the king's master of the horse. [11]

[11] On Frontenac and his family, see Appendix A.

CHAPTER II.
1672-1675.

Frontenac at Quebec.

Frontenac was fifty-two years old when he landed at Quebec. If time had
done little to cure his many faults, it had done nothing to weaken the
springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe middle age, he was as
keen, fiery, and perversely headstrong as when he quarrelled with
Préfontaine in the hall at St. Fargeau.

Had nature disposed him to melancholy, there was much in his position to
awaken it. A man of courts and camps, born and bred in the focus of a
most gorgeous civilization, he was banished to the ends of the earth,
among savage hordes and half-reclaimed forests, to exchange the
splendors of St. Germain and the dawning glories of Versailles for a
stern gray rock, haunted by sombre priests, rugged merchants and
traders, blanketed Indians, and wild bush-rangers. But Frontenac was a
man of action. He wasted no time in vain regrets, and set himself to his
work with the elastic vigor of youth. His first impressions had been
very favorable. When, as he sailed up the St. Lawrence, the basin of
Quebec opened before him, his imagination kindled with the grandeur of
the scene. "I never," he wrote, "saw any thing more superb than the
position of this town. It could not be better situated as the future
capital of a great empire." [1]

[1] Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.

That Quebec was to become the capital of a great empire there seemed in
truth good reason to believe. The young king and his minister Colbert
had labored in earnest to build up a new France in the west. For years
past, ship-loads of emigrants had landed every summer on the strand
beneath the rock. All was life and action, and the air was full of
promise. The royal agent Talon had written to his master: "This part of
the French monarchy is destined to a grand future. All that I see around
me points to it; and the colonies of foreign nations, so long settled on
the seaboard, are trembling with fright in view of what his Majesty has
accomplished here within the last seven years. The measures we have
taken to confine them within narrow limits, and the prior claim we have
established against them by formal acts of possession, do not permit
them to extend themselves except at peril of having war declared against
them as usurpers; and this, in fact, is what they seem greatly to fear."
[2]

[2] Talon au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1671.

Frontenac shared the spirit of the hour. His first step was to survey
his government. He talked with traders, colonists, and officials;
visited seigniories, farms, fishing-stations, and all the infant
industries that Talon had galvanized into life; examined the new ship on
the stocks, admired the structure of the new brewery, went to Three
Rivers to see the iron mines, and then, having acquired a tolerably
exact idea of his charge, returned to Quebec. He was well pleased with
what he saw, but not with the ways and means of Canadian travel; for he
thought it strangely unbecoming that a lieutenant-general of the king
should be forced to crouch on a sheet of bark, at the bottom of a birch
canoe, scarcely daring to move his head to the right or left lest he
should disturb the balance of the fragile vessel.

At Quebec he convoked the council, made them a speech, and administered
the oath of allegiance. [3] This did not satisfy him. He resolved that
all Quebec should take the oath together. It was little but a pretext.
Like many of his station, Frontenac was not in full sympathy with the
centralizing movement of the time, which tended to level ancient rights,
privileges, and prescriptions under the ponderous roller of the
monarchical administration. He looked back with regret to the day when
the three orders of the state, clergy, nobles, and commons, had a place
and a power in the direction of national affairs. The three orders still
subsisted, in form, if not in substance, in some of the provinces of
France; and Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing them in Canada.
Not only did he cherish the tradition of faded liberties, but he loved
pomp and circumstance, above all, when he was himself the central figure
in it; and the thought of a royal governor of Languedoc or Brittany,
presiding over the estates of his province, appears to have fired him
with emulation.

[3] Registre du Conseil Souverain.

He had no difficulty in forming his order of the clergy. The Jesuits and
the seminary priests supplied material even more abundant than he
wished. For the order of the nobles, he found three or four
gentilshommes at Quebec, and these he reinforced with a number of
officers. The third estate consisted of the merchants and citizens; and
he formed the members of the council and the magistrates into another
distinct body, though, properly speaking, they belonged to the third
estate, of which by nature and prescription they were the head. The
Jesuits, glad no doubt to lay him under some slight obligation, lent him
their church for the ceremony that he meditated, and aided in decorating
it for the occasion. Here, on the twenty-third of October, 1672, the
three estates of Canada were convoked, with as much pomp and splendor as
circumstances would permit. Then Frontenac, with the ease of a man of
the world and the loftiness of a grand seigneur, delivered himself of
the harangue he had prepared. He wrote exceedingly well; he is said also
to have excelled as an orator; certainly he was never averse to the
tones of his own eloquence. His speech was addressed to a double
audience: the throng that filled the church, and the king and the
minister three thousand miles away. He told his hearers that he had
called the assembly, not because he doubted their loyalty, but in order
to afford them the delight of making public protestation of devotion to
a prince, the terror of whose irresistible arms was matched only by the
charms of his person and the benignity of his rule. "The Holy
Scriptures," he said, "command us to obey our sovereign, and teach us
that no pretext or reason can dispense us from this obedience." And, in
a glowing eulogy on Louis XIV., he went on to show that obedience to him
was not only a duty, but an inestimable privilege. He dwelt with
admiration on the recent victories in Holland, and held forth the hope
that a speedy and glorious peace would leave his Majesty free to turn
his thoughts to the colony which already owed so much to his fostering
care. "The true means," pursued Frontenac, "of gaining his favor and his
support, is for us to unite with one heart in laboring for the progress
of Canada." Then he addressed, in turn, the clergy, the nobles, the
magistrates, and the citizens. He exhorted the priests to continue with
zeal their labors for the conversion of the Indians, and to make them
subjects not only of Christ, but also of the king; in short, to tame and
civilize them, a portion of their duties in which he plainly gave them
to understand that they had not hitherto acquitted themselves to his
satisfaction. Next, he appealed to the nobles, commended their
gallantry, and called upon them to be as assiduous in the culture and
improvement of the colony as they were valiant in its defence. The
magistrates, the merchants, and the colonists in general were each
addressed in an appropriate exhortation. "I can assure you, messieurs,"
he concluded, "that if you faithfully discharge your several duties,
each in his station, his Majesty will extend to us all the help and all
the favor that we can desire. It is needless, then, to urge you to act
as I have counselled, since it is for your own interest to do so. As for
me, it only remains to protest before you that I shall esteem myself
happy in consecrating all my efforts, and, if need be, my life itself,
to extending the empire of Jesus Christ throughout all this land, and
the supremacy of our king over all the nations that dwell in it."

He administered the oath, and the assembly dissolved. He now applied
himself to another work: that of giving a municipal government to
Quebec, after the model of some of the cities of France. In place of the
syndic, an official supposed to represent the interests of the citizens,
he ordered the public election of three aldermen, of whom the senior
should act as mayor. One of the number was to go out of office every
year, his place being filled by a new election; and the governor, as
representing the king, reserved the right of confirmation or rejection.
He then, in concert with the chief inhabitants, proceeded to frame a
body of regulations for the government of a town destined, as he again
and again declares, to become the capital of a mighty empire; and he
farther ordained that the people should hold a meeting every six months
to discuss questions involving the welfare of the colony. The boldness
of these measures will scarcely be appreciated at the present day. The
intendant Talon declined, on pretence of a slight illness, to be present
at the meeting of the estates. He knew too well the temper of the king,
whose constant policy it was to destroy or paralyze every institution or
custom that stood in the way of his autocracy. The despatches in which
Frontenac announced to his masters what he had done received in due time
their answer. The minister Colbert wrote: "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." [4]

[4] Frontenac au Roi, 2 Nov., 1672; Ibid., 13 Nov., 1673; Harangue du
Comte de Frontenac en l'Assemblée à Quebec; Prestations de Serment, 23
Oct., 1672; Réglement de Police fait par Monsieur le Comte de Frontenac;
Colbert à Frontenac, 13 Juin, 1673.

Here, in brief, is the whole spirit of the French colonial rule in
Canada; a government, as I have elsewhere shown, of excellent
intentions, but of arbitrary methods. Frontenac, filled with the
traditions of the past, and sincerely desirous of the good of the
colony, rashly set himself against the prevailing current. His municipal
government, and his meetings of citizens, were, like his three estates,
abolished by a word from the court, which, bold and obstinate as he was,
he dared not disobey. Had they been allowed to subsist, there can be
little doubt that great good would have resulted to Canada.

Frontenac has been called a mere soldier. He was an excellent soldier,
and more besides. He was a man of vigorous and cultivated mind,
penetrating observation, and ample travel and experience. His zeal for
the colony, however, was often counteracted by the violence of his
prejudices, and by two other influences. First, he was a ruined man, who
meant to mend his fortunes; and his wish that Canada should prosper was
joined with a determination to reap a goodly part of her prosperity for
himself. Again, he could not endure a rival; opposition maddened him,
and, when crossed or thwarted, he forgot every thing but his passion.
Signs of storm quickly showed themselves between him and the intendant
Talon; but the danger was averted by the departure of that official for
France. A cloud then rose in the direction of the clergy.

"Another thing displeases me," writes Frontenac, "and this is the
complete dependence of the grand vicar and the seminary priests on the
Jesuits, for they never do the least thing without their order: so that
they (the Jesuits) are masters in spiritual matters, which, as you know,
is a powerful lever for moving every thing else." [5] And he complains
that they have spies in town and country, that they abuse the
confessional, intermeddle in families, set husbands against wives, and
parents against children, and all, as they say, for the greater glory of
God. "I call to mind every day, Monseigneur, what you did me the honor
to say to me when I took leave of you, and every day I am satisfied more
and more of the great importance to the king's service of opposing the
slightest of the attempts which are daily made against his authority."
He goes on to denounce a certain sermon, preached by a Jesuit, to the
great scandal of loyal subjects, wherein the father declared that the
king had exceeded his powers in licensing the trade in brandy when the
bishop had decided it to be a sin, together with other remarks of a
seditious nature. "I was tempted several times," pursues Frontenac, "to
leave the church with my guards and interrupt the sermon; but I
contented myself with telling the grand vicar and the superior of the
Jesuits, after it was over, that I was very much surprised at what I had
heard, and demanded justice at their hands. They greatly blamed the
preacher, and disavowed him, attributing his language, after their
custom, to an excess of zeal, and making many apologies, with which I
pretended to be satisfied; though I told them, nevertheless, that their
excuses would not pass current with me another time, and, if the thing
happened again, I would put the preacher in a place where he would
learn how to speak. Since then they have been a little more careful,
though not enough to prevent one from always seeing their intention to
persuade the people that, even in secular matters, their authority ought
to be respected above any other. As there are many persons here who have
no more brains than they need, and who are attached to them by ties of
interest or otherwise, it is necessary to have an eye to these matters
in this country more than anywhere else." [6]

[5] Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.

[6] Frontenac au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1673.

The churchmen, on their part, were not idle. The bishop, who was then in
France, contrived by some means to acquaint himself with the contents of
the private despatches sent by Colbert in reply to the letters of
Frontenac. He wrote to another ecclesiastic to communicate what he had
learned, at the same time enjoining great caution; "since, while it is
well to acquire all necessary information, and to act upon it, it is of
the greatest importance to keep secret our possession of such
knowledge." [7]

[7] Laval à------, 1674. The letter is a complete summary of the
contents of Colbert's recent despatch to Frontenac. Then follows the
injunction to secrecy, "estant de très-grande conséquence que l'on ne
sache pas que l'on aye rien appris de tout cela, sur quoi néanmoins il
est bon que l'on agisse et que l'on me donne tous les advis qui seront
nécessaires."

The king and the minister, in their instructions to Frontenac, had dwelt
with great emphasis on the expediency of civilizing the Indians,
teaching them the French language, and amalgamating them with the
colonists. Frontenac, ignorant as yet of Indian nature and unacquainted
with the difficulties of the case, entered into these views with great
heartiness. He exercised from the first an extraordinary influence over
all the Indians with whom he came in contact; and he persuaded the most
savage and refractory of them, the Iroquois, to place eight of their
children in his hands. Four of these were girls and four were boys. He
took two of the boys into his own household, of which they must have
proved most objectionable inmates; and he supported the other two, who
were younger, out of his own slender resources, placed them in
respectable French families, and required them to go daily to school.
The girls were given to the charge of the Ursulines. Frontenac
continually urged the Jesuits to co-operate with him in this work of
civilization, but the results of his urgency disappointed and
exasperated him. He complains that in the village of the Hurons, near
Quebec, and under the control of the Jesuits, the French language was
scarcely known. In fact, the fathers contented themselves with teaching
their converts the doctrines and rites of the Roman Church, while
retaining the food, dress, and habits of their original barbarism.

In defence of the missionaries, it should be said that, when brought in
contact with the French, the Indians usually caught the vices of
civilization without its virtues; but Frontenac made no allowances. "The
Jesuits," he writes, "will not civilize the Indians, because they wish
to keep them in perpetual wardship. They think more of beaver skins than
of souls, and their missions are pure mockeries." At the same time he
assures the minister that, when he is obliged to correct them, he does
so with the utmost gentleness. In spite of this somewhat doubtful
urbanity, it seems clear that a storm was brewing; and it was fortunate
for the peace of the Canadian Church that the attention of the truculent
governor was drawn to other quarters.

CHAPTER III.
1673-1675.

Frontenac and Perrot.

Not long before Frontenac's arrival, Courcelle, his predecessor, went to
Lake Ontario with an armed force, in order to impose respect on the
Iroquois, who had of late become insolent. As a means of keeping them in
check, and at the same time controlling the fur trade of the upper
country, he had recommended, like Talon before him, the building of a
fort near the outlet of the lake. Frontenac at once saw the advantages
of such a measure, and his desire to execute it was stimulated by the
reflection that the proposed fort might be made not only a safeguard to
the colony, but also a source of profit to himself.

At Quebec, there was a grave, thoughtful, self-contained young man, who
soon found his way into Frontenac's confidence. There was between them
the sympathetic attraction of two bold and energetic spirits; and though
Cavelier de la Salle had neither the irritable vanity of the count, nor
his Gallic vivacity of passion, he had in full measure the same
unconquerable pride and hardy resolution. There were but two or three
men in Canada who knew the western wilderness so well. He was full of
schemes of ambition and of gain; and, from this moment, he and Frontenac
seem to have formed an alliance, which ended only with the governor's
recall.

In telling the story of La Salle, I have described the execution of the
new plan: the muster of the Canadians, at the call of Frontenac; the
consternation of those of the merchants whom he and La Salle had not
taken into their counsels, and who saw in the movement the preparation
for a gigantic fur trading monopoly; the intrigues set on foot to bar
the enterprise; the advance up the St. Lawrence; the assembly of
Iroquois at the destined spot; the ascendency exercised over them by the
governor; the building of Fort Frontenac on the ground where Kingston
now stands, and its final transfer into the hands of La Salle, on
condition, there can be no doubt, of sharing the expected profits with
his patron. [1]

[1] Discovery of the Great West, chap. vi.

On the way to the lake, Frontenac stopped for some time at Montreal,
where he had full opportunity to become acquainted with a state of
things to which his attention had already been directed. This state of
things was as follows:--

When the intendant, Talon, came for the second time to Canada, in 1669,
an officer named Perrot, who had married his niece, came with him.
Perrot, anxious to turn to account the influence of his wife's relative,
looked about him for some post of honor and profit, and quickly
discovered that the government of Montreal was vacant. The priests of
St. Sulpice, feudal owners of the place, had the right of appointing
their own governor. Talon advised them to choose Perrot, who thereupon
received the desired commission, which, however, was revocable at the
will of those who had granted it. The new governor, therefore, begged
another commission from the king, and after a little delay he obtained
it. Thus he became, in some measure, independent of the priests, who, if
they wished to rid themselves of him, must first gain the royal consent.

Perrot, as he had doubtless foreseen, found himself in an excellent
position for making money. The tribes of the upper lakes, and all the
neighboring regions, brought down their furs every summer to the annual
fair at Montreal. Perrot took his measures accordingly. On the island
which still bears his name, lying above Montreal and directly in the
route of the descending savages, he built a storehouse, and placed it in
charge of a retired lieutenant named Brucy, who stopped the Indians on
their way, and carried on an active trade with them, to the great profit
of himself and his associate, and the great loss of the merchants in the
settlements below. This was not all. Perrot connived at the desertion of
his own soldiers, who escaped to the woods, became coureurs de bois, or
bush-rangers, traded with the Indians in their villages, and shared
their gains with their commander. Many others, too, of these forest
rovers, outlawed by royal edicts, found in the governor of Montreal a
protector, under similar conditions.

The journey from Quebec to Montreal often consumed a fortnight. Perrot
thought himself virtually independent; and relying on his commission
from the king, the protection of Talon, and his connection with other
persons of influence, he felt safe in his position, and began to play
the petty tyrant. The judge of Montreal, and several of the chief
inhabitants, came to offer a humble remonstrance against disorders
committed by some of the ruffians in his interest. Perrot received them
with a storm of vituperation, and presently sent the judge to prison.
This proceeding was followed by a series of others, closely akin to it,
so that the priests of St. Sulpice, who received their full share of
official abuse, began to repent bitterly of the governor they had
chosen.

Frontenac had received stringent orders from the king to arrest all the
bush-rangers, or coureurs de bois; but, since he had scarcely a soldier
at his disposal, except his own body-guard, the order was difficult to
execute. As, however, most of these outlaws were in the service of his
rival, Perrot, his zeal to capture them rose high against every
obstacle. He had, moreover, a plan of his own in regard to them, and had
already petitioned the minister for a galley, to the benches of which
the captive bush-rangers were to be chained as rowers, thus supplying
the representative of the king with a means of transportation befitting
his dignity, and at the same time giving wholesome warning against the
infraction of royal edicts. [2] Accordingly, he sent orders to the
judge, at Montreal, to seize every coureur de bois on whom he could lay
hands.

[2] Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.

The judge, hearing that two of the most notorious were lodged in the
house of a lieutenant named Carion, sent a constable to arrest them;
whereupon Carion threatened and maltreated the officer of justice, and
helped the men to escape. Perrot took the part of his lieutenant, and
told the judge that he would put him in prison, in spite of Frontenac,
if he ever dared to attempt such an arrest again. [3]

[3] Mémoire des Motifs qui ont obligé M. le Comte de Frontenac de faire
arrêter le Sieur Perrot.

When Frontenac heard what had happened, his ire was doubly kindled. On
the one hand, Perrot had violated the authority lodged by the king in
the person of his representative; and, on the other, the mutinous
official was a rival in trade, who had made great and illicit profits,
while his superior had, thus far, made none. As a governor and as a man,
Frontenac was deeply moved; yet, helpless as he was, he could do no more
than send three of his guardsmen, under a lieutenant named Bizard, with
orders to arrest Carion and bring him to Quebec.

The commission was delicate. The arrest was to be made in the dominions
of Perrot, who had the means to prevent it, and the audacity to use
them. Bizard acted accordingly. He went to Carion's house, and took him
prisoner; then proceeded to the house of the merchant Le Ber, where he
left a letter, in which Frontenac, as was the usage on such occasions,
gave notice to the local governor of the arrest he had ordered. It was
the object of Bizard to escape with his prisoner before Perrot could
receive the letter; but, meanwhile, the wife of Carion ran to him with
the news, and the governor suddenly arrived, in a frenzy of rage,
followed by a sergeant and three or four soldiers. The sergeant held the
point of his halberd against the breast of Bizard, while Perrot, choking
with passion, demanded, "How dare you arrest an officer in my government
without my leave?" The lieutenant replied that he acted under orders of
the governor-general, and gave Frontenac's letter to Perrot, who
immediately threw it into his face, exclaiming: "Take it back to your
master, and tell him to teach you your business better another time.
Meanwhile you are my prisoner." Bizard protested in vain. He was led to
jail, whither he was followed a few days after by Le Ber, who had
mortally offended Perrot by signing an attestation of the scene he had
witnessed. As he was the chief merchant of the place, his arrest
produced a great sensation, while his wife presently took to her bed
with a nervous fever.

As Perrot's anger cooled, he became somewhat alarmed. He had resisted
the royal authority, and insulted its representative. The consequences
might be serious; yet he could not bring himself to retrace his steps.
He merely released Bizard, and sullenly permitted him to depart, with a
letter to the governor-general, more impertinent than apologetic. [4]

[4] Mémoire des Motifs, etc.

Frontenac, as his enemies declare, was accustomed, when enraged, to foam
at the mouth. Perhaps he did so when he learned the behavior of Perrot.
If he had had at command a few companies of soldiers, there can be
little doubt that he would have gone at once to Montreal, seized the
offender, and brought him back in irons; but his body-guard of twenty
men was not equal to such an enterprise. Nor would a muster of the
militia have served his purpose; for the settlers about Quebec were
chiefly peaceful peasants, while the denizens of Montreal were disbanded
soldiers, fur traders, and forest adventurers, the best fighters in
Canada. They were nearly all in the interest of Perrot, who, if
attacked, had the temper as well as the ability to make a passionate
resistance. Thus civil war would have ensued, and the anger of the
king would have fallen on both parties. On the other hand, if Perrot
were left unpunished, the coureurs de bois, of whom he was the patron,
would set no bounds to their audacity, and Frontenac, who had been
ordered to suppress them, would be condemned as negligent or incapable.

Among the priests of St. Sulpice at Montreal was the Abbé Salignac de
Fénelon, half-brother of the celebrated author of Télémaque. He was a
zealous missionary, enthusiastic and impulsive, still young, and more
ardent than discreet. One of his uncles had been the companion of
Frontenac during the Candian war, and hence the count's relations with
the missionary had been very friendly. Frontenac now wrote to Perrot,
directing him to come to Quebec and give account of his conduct; and he
coupled this letter with another to Fénelon, urging him to represent to
the offending governor the danger of his position, and advise him to
seek an interview with his superior, by which the difficulty might be
amicably adjusted. Perrot, dreading the displeasure of the king, soothed
by the moderate tone of Frontenac's letter, and moved by the assurances
of the enthusiastic abbé, who was delighted to play the part of
peace-maker, at length resolved to follow his counsel. It was
mid-winter. Perrot and Fénelon set out together, walked on snow-shoes a
hundred and eighty miles down the frozen St. Lawrence, and made their
appearance before the offended count.

Frontenac, there can be little doubt, had never intended that Perrot,
once in his power, should return to Montreal as its governor; but that,
beyond this, he meant harm to him, there is not the least proof. Perrot,
however, was as choleric and stubborn as the count himself; and his
natural disposition had not been improved by several years of petty
autocracy at Montreal. Their interview was brief, but stormy. When it
ended, Perrot was a prisoner in the château, with guards placed over him
by day and night. Frontenac made choice of one La Nouguère, a retired
officer, whom he knew that he could trust, and sent him to Montreal to
command in place of its captive governor. With him he sent also a judge
of his own selection. La Nouguère set himself to his work with vigor.
Perrot's agent or partner, Brucy, was seized, tried, and imprisoned; and
an active hunt was begun for his coureurs de bois. Among others, the two
who had been the occasion of the dispute were captured and sent to
Quebec, where one of them was solemnly hanged before the window of
Perrot's prison; with the view, no doubt, of producing a chastening
effect on the mind of the prisoner. The execution was fully authorized,
a royal edict having ordained that bush-ranging was an offence
punishable with death. [5] As the result of these proceedings, Frontenac
reported to the minister that only five coureurs de bois remained at
large; all the rest having returned to the settlements and made their
submission, so that farther hanging was needless.

[5] Édits et Ordonnances, I. 73.

Thus the central power was vindicated, and Montreal brought down from
her attitude of partial independence. Other results also followed, if we
may believe the enemies of Frontenac, who declare that, by means of the
new commandant and other persons in his interest, the governor-general
possessed himself of a great part of the trade from which he had ejected
Perrot, and that the coureurs de bois, whom he hanged when breaking laws
for his rival, found complete impunity when breaking laws for him.

Meanwhile, there was a deep though subdued excitement among the priests
of St. Sulpice. The right of naming their own governor, which they
claimed as seigniors of Montreal, had been violated by the action of
Frontenac in placing La Nouguère in command without consulting them.
Perrot was a bad governor; but it was they who had chosen him, and the
recollection of his misdeeds did not reconcile them to a successor
arbitrarily imposed upon them. Both they and the colonists, their
vassals, were intensely jealous of Quebec; and, in their indignation
against Frontenac, they more than half forgave Perrot. None among them
all was so angry as the Abbé Fénelon. He believed that he had been used
to lure Perrot into a trap; and his past attachment to the
governor-general was turned into wrath. High words had passed between
them; and, when Fénelon returned to Montreal, he vented his feelings in
a sermon plainly levelled at Frontenac. [6] So sharp and bitter was it,
that his brethren of St. Sulpice hastened to disclaim it; and Dollier de
Casson, their Superior, strongly reproved the preacher, who protested in
return that his words were not meant to apply to Frontenac in
particular, but only to bad rulers in general. His offences, however,
did not cease with the sermon; for he espoused the cause of Perrot with
more than zeal, and went about among the colonists to collect
attestations in his favor. When these things were reported to Frontenac,
his ire was kindled, and he summoned Fénelon before the council at
Quebec to answer the charge of instigating sedition.

[6] Information faite par nous, Charles le Tardieu, Sieur de Tilly.
Tilly was a commissioner sent by the council to inquire into the affair.

Fénelon had a relative and friend in the person of the Abbé d'Urfé, his
copartner in the work of the missions. D'Urfé, anxious to conjure down
the rising storm, went to Quebec to seek an interview with Frontenac;
but, according to his own account, he was very ill received, and
threatened with a prison. On another occasion, the count showed him a
letter in which D'Urfé was charged with having used abusive language
concerning him. Warm words ensued, till Frontenac, grasping his cane,
led the abbé to the door and dismissed him, berating him from the top of
the stairs in tones so angry that the sentinel below spread the report
that he had turned his visitor out of doors. [7]

[7] Mémoire de M. d'Urfé à Colbert, extracts in Faillon.

Two offenders were now arraigned before the council of Quebec: the first
was Perrot, charged with disobeying the royal edicts and resisting the
royal authority; the other was the Abbé Fénelon. The councillors were at
this time united in the interest of Frontenac, who had the power of
appointing and removing them. Perrot, in no way softened by a long
captivity, challenged the governor-general, who presided at the council
board, as a party to the suit and his personal enemy, and took exception
to several of the members as being connections of La Nouguère. Frontenac
withdrew, and other councillors or judges were appointed provisionally;
but these were challenged in turn by the prisoner, on one pretext or
another. The exceptions were overruled, and the trial proceeded, though
not without signs of doubt and hesitation on the part of some of the
councillors. [8]

[8] All the proceedings in the affair of Perrot will be found in full in
the Registre des Jugements et Déliberations du Conseil Supérieur. They
extend from the end of January to the beginning of November, 1674.

Meanwhile, other sessions were held for the trial of Fénelon; and a
curious scene ensued. Five councillors and the deputy attorney-general
were seated at the board, with Frontenac as presiding judge, his hat on
his head and his sword at his side, after the established custom.
Fénelon, being led in, approached a vacant chair, and was about to seat
himself with the rest, when Frontenac interposed, telling him that it
was his duty to remain standing while answering the questions of the
council. Fénelon at once placed himself in the chair, and replied that
priests had the right to speak seated and with heads covered.

"Yes," returned Frontenac, "when they are summoned as witnesses, but not
when they are cited to answer charges of crime."

"My crimes exist nowhere but in your head," replied the abbé. And,
putting on his hat, he drew it down over his brows, rose, gathered his
cassock about him, and walked in a defiant manner to and fro. Frontenac
told him that his conduct was wanting in respect to the council, and to
the governor as its head. Fénelon several times took off his hat, and
pushed it on again more angrily than ever, saying at the same time
that Frontenac was wanting in respect to his character of priest, in
citing him before a civil tribunal. As he persisted in his refusal to
take the required attitude, he was at length told that he might leave
the room. After being kept for a time in the anteroom in charge of a
constable, he was again brought before the council, when he still
refused obedience, and was ordered into a sort of honorable
imprisonment. [9]

[9] Conteste entre le Gouverneur et l'Abbé de Fénelon; Jugements et
Déliberations du Conseil Supérieur, 21 Août, 1674.

This behavior of the effervescent abbé, which Frontenac justly enough
characterizes as unworthy of his birth and his sacred office, was,
nevertheless, founded on a claim sustained by many precedents. As an
ecclesiastic, Fénelon insisted that the bishop alone, and not the
council, had the right to judge him. Like Perrot, too, he challenged his
judges as parties to the suit, or otherwise interested against him. On
the question of jurisdiction, he had all the priests on his side. Bishop
Laval was in France; and Bernières, his grand vicar, was far from
filling the place of the strenuous and determined prelate. Yet the
ecclesiastical storm rose so high that the councillors, discouraged and
daunted, were no longer amenable to the will of Frontenac; and it was
resolved at last to refer the whole matter to the king. Perrot was taken
from the prison, which he had occupied from January to November, and
shipped for France, along with Fénelon. An immense mass of papers was
sent with them for the instruction of the king; and Frontenac wrote a
long despatch, in which he sets forth the offences of Perrot and
Fénelon, the pretensions of the ecclesiastics, the calumnies he had
incurred in his efforts to serve his Majesty, and the insults heaped
upon him, "which no man but me would have endured so patiently." Indeed,
while the suits were pending before the council, he had displayed a
calmness and moderation which surprised his opponents. "Knowing as I
do," he pursues, "the cabals and intrigues that are rife here, I must
expect that every thing will be said against me that the most artful
slander can devise. A governor in this country would greatly deserve
pity, if he were left without support; and, even should he make
mistakes, it would surely be very pardonable, seeing that there is no
snare that is not spread for him, and that, after avoiding a hundred of
them, he will hardly escape being caught at last." [10]

[10] Frontenac au Ministre, 14 Nov., 1674. In a preceding letter, sent
by way of Boston, and dated 16 February, he says that he could not
suffer Perrot to go unpunished without injury to the regal authority,
which he is resolved to defend to the last drop of his blood.

In his charges of cabal and intrigue, Frontenac had chiefly in view the
clergy, whom he profoundly distrusted, excepting always the Récollet
friars, whom he befriended because the bishop and the Jesuits opposed
them. The priests on their part declare that he persecuted them,
compelled them to take passports like laymen when travelling about the
colony, and even intercepted their letters. These accusations and many
others were carried to the king and the minister by the Abbé d'Urfé, who
sailed in the same ship with Fénelon. The moment was singularly
auspicious to him. His cousin, the Marquise d'Allègre, was on the point
of marrying Seignelay, the son of the minister Colbert, who, therefore,
was naturally inclined to listen with favor to him and to Fénelon, his
relative. Again, Talon, uncle of Perrot's wife, held a post at court,
which brought him into close personal relations with the king. Nor were
these the only influences adverse to Frontenac and propitious to his
enemies. Yet his enemies were disappointed. The letters written to him
both by Colbert and by the king are admirable for calmness and dignity.
The following is from that of the king:--

"Though I do not credit all that has been told me concerning various
little annoyances which you cause to the ecclesiastics, I nevertheless
think it necessary to inform you of it, in order that, if true, you may
correct yourself in this particular, giving to all the clergy entire
liberty to go and come throughout all Canada without compelling them to
take out passports, and at the same time leaving them perfect freedom as
regards their letters. I have seen and carefully examined all that you
have sent touching M. Perrot; and, after having also seen all the papers
given by him in his defence, I have condemned his action in imprisoning
an officer of your guard. To punish him, I have had him placed for a
short time in the Bastile, that he may learn to be more circumspect in
the discharge of his duty, and that his example may serve as a warning
to others. But after having thus vindicated my authority, which has been
violated in your person, I will say, in order that you may fully
understand my views, that you should not without absolute necessity
cause your commands to be executed within the limits of a local
government, like that of Montreal, without first informing its governor,
and also that the ten months of imprisonment which you have made him
undergo seems to me sufficient for his fault. I therefore sent him to
the Bastile merely as a public reparation for having violated my
authority. After keeping him there a few days, I shall send him back to
his government, ordering him first to see you and make apology to you
for all that has passed; after which I desire that you retain no
resentment against him, and that you treat him in accordance with the
powers that I have given him." [11]

[11] Le Roi à Frontenac, 22 Avril, 1675.

Colbert writes in terms equally measured, and adds: "After having spoken
in the name of his Majesty, pray let me add a word in my own. By the
marriage which the king has been pleased to make between the heiress of
the house of Allègre and my son, the Abbé d'Urfé has become very closely
connected with me, since he is cousin german of my daughter-in-law; and
this induces me to request you to show him especial consideration,
though, in the exercise of his profession, he will rarely have occasion
to see you."

As D'Urfé had lately addressed a memorial to Colbert, in which the
conduct of Frontenac is painted in the darkest colors, the almost
imperceptible rebuke couched in the above lines does no little credit to
the tact and moderation of the stern minister.

Colbert next begs Frontenac to treat with kindness the priests of
Montreal, observing that Bretonvilliers, their Superior at Paris, is his
particular friend. "As to M. Perrot," he continues, "since ten months of
imprisonment at Quebec and three weeks in the Bastile may suffice to
atone for his fault, and since also he is related or connected with
persons for whom I have a great regard, I pray you to accept kindly the
apologies which he will make you, and, as it is not at all likely that
he will fall again into any offence approaching that which he has
committed, you will give me especial pleasure in granting him the honor
of your favor and friendship." [12]

[12] Colbert à Frontenac, 13 Mai, 1675.

Fénelon, though the recent marriage had allied him also to Colbert,
fared worse than either of the other parties to the dispute. He was
indeed sustained in his claim to be judged by an ecclesiastical
tribunal; but his Superior, Bretonvilliers, forbade him to return to
Canada, and the king approved the prohibition. Bretonvilliers wrote to
the Sulpitian priests of Montreal: "I exhort you to profit by the
example of M. de Fénelon. By having busied himself too much in worldly
matters, and meddled with what did not concern him, he has ruined his
own prospects and injured the friends whom he wished to serve. In
matters of this sort, it is well always to stand neutral." [13]

[13] Lettre de Bretonvilliers, 7 Mai, 1675; extract in Faillon. Fénelon,
though wanting in prudence and dignity, had been an ardent and devoted
missionary. In relation to these disputes, I have received much aid from
the research of Abbé Faillon, and from the valuable paper of Abbé
Verreau, Les deux Abbés de Fénelon, printed in the Canadian Journal de
l'Instruction Publique, Vol. VIII.

CHAPTER IV.
1675-1682.

Frontenac and Duchesneau.

While writing to Frontenac in terms of studied mildness, the king and
Colbert took measures to curb his power. In the absence of the bishop,
the appointment and removal of councillors had rested wholly with the
governor; and hence the council had been docile under his will. It was
now ordained that the councillors should be appointed by the king
himself. [1] This was not the only change. Since the departure of the
intendant Talon, his office had been vacant; and Frontenac was left to
rule alone. This seems to have been an experiment on the part of his
masters at Versailles, who, knowing the peculiarities of his temper,
were perhaps willing to try the effect of leaving him without a
colleague. The experiment had not succeeded. An intendant was now,
therefore, sent to Quebec, not only to manage the details of
administration, but also to watch the governor, keep him, if possible,
within prescribed bounds, and report his proceedings to the minister.
The change was far from welcome to Frontenac, whose delight it was to
hold all the reins of power in his own hands; nor was he better pleased
with the return of Bishop Laval, which presently took place. Three
preceding governors had quarrelled with that uncompromising prelate; and
there was little hope that Frontenac and he would keep the peace. All
the signs of the sky foreboded storm.

[1] Édits et Ordonnances, I. 84.

The storm soon came. The occasion of it was that old vexed question of
the sale of brandy, which has been fully treated in another volume, [2]
and on which it is needless to dwell here. Another dispute quickly
followed; and here, too, the governor's chief adversaries were the
bishop and the ecclesiastics. Duchesneau, the new intendant, took part
with them. The bishop and his clergy were, on their side, very glad of a
secular ally; for their power had greatly fallen since the days of Mézy,
and the rank and imperious character of Frontenac appear to have held
them in some awe. They avoided as far as they could a direct collision
with him, and waged vicarious war in the person of their friend the
intendant. Duchesneau was not of a conciliating spirit, and he felt
strong in the support of the clergy; while Frontenac, when his temper
was roused, would fight with haughty and impracticable obstinacy for any
position which he had once assumed, however trivial or however mistaken.
There was incessant friction between the two colleagues in the exercise
of their respective functions, and occasions of difference were rarely
wanting.

[2] The Old Régime in Canada.

The question now at issue was that of honors and precedence at church
and in religious ceremonies, matters of substantial importance under the
Bourbon rule. Colbert interposed, ordered Duchesneau to treat Frontenac
with becoming deference, and warned him not to make himself the partisan
of the bishop; [3] while, at the same time, he exhorted Frontenac to
live in harmony with the intendant. [4] The dispute continued till the
king lost patience.

[3] Colbert à Duchesneau, 1 Mai, 1677.

[4] Ibid., 18 Mai, 1677.

"Through all my kingdom," he wrote to the governor, "I do not hear of so
many difficulties on this matter (of ecclesiastical honors) as I see in
the church of Quebec." [5] And he directs him to conform to the practice
established in the city of Amiens, and to exact no more; "since you
ought to be satisfied with being the representative of my person in the
country where I have placed you in command."

[5] Le Roy à Frontenac, 25 Avril, 1679.

At the same time, Colbert corrects the intendant. "A memorial," he
wrote, "has been placed in my hands, touching various ecclesiastical
honors, wherein there continually appears a great pretension on your
part, and on that of the bishop of Quebec in your favor, to establish an
equality between the governor and you. I think I have already said
enough to lead you to know yourself, and to understand the difference
between a governor and an intendant; so that it is no longer necessary
for me to enter into particulars, which could only serve to show you
that you are completely in the wrong." [6]

[6] Colbert à Duchesneau, 8 Mai, 1679

Scarcely was this quarrel suppressed, when another sprang up. Since the
arrival of the intendant and the return of the bishop, the council had
ceased to be in the interest of Frontenac. Several of its members were
very obnoxious to him; and chief among these was Villeray, a former
councillor whom the king had lately reinstated. Frontenac admitted him
to his seat with reluctance. "I obey your orders," he wrote mournfully
to Colbert; "but Villeray is the principal and most dangerous instrument
of the bishop and the Jesuits." [7] He says, farther, that many people
think him to be a Jesuit in disguise, and that he is an intriguing
busybody, who makes trouble everywhere. He also denounces the
attorney-general, Auteuil, as an ally of the Jesuits. Another of the
reconstructed council, Tilly, meets his cordial approval; but he soon
found reason to change his mind concerning him.

[7] Frontenac au Ministre, 14 Nov., 1674

The king had recently ordered that the intendant, though holding only
the third rank in the council, should act as its president. [8] The
commission of Duchesneau, however, empowered him to preside only in the
absence of the governor; [9] while Frontenac is styled "chief and
president of the council" in several of the despatches addressed to him.
Here was an inconsistency. Both parties claimed the right of presiding,
and both could rest their claim on a clear expression of the royal will.

[8] Declaration du Roy, 23 Sept., 1675.

[9] "Présider au Conseil Souverain en l'absence du dit Sieur de
Frontenac."--Commission de Duchesneau, 5 Juin, 1675.

Frontenac rarely began a new quarrel till the autumn vessels had sailed
for France; because a full year must then elapse before his adversaries
could send their complaints to the king, and six months more before the
king could send back his answer. The governor had been heard to say, on
one of these occasions, that he should now be master for eighteen
months, subject only to answering with his head for what he might do. It
was when the last vessel was gone in the autumn of 1678 that he demanded
to be styled chief and president on the records of the council; and he
showed a letter from the king in which he was so entitled. [10] In spite
of this, Duchesneau resisted, and appealed to precedent to sustain his
position. A long series of stormy sessions followed. The councillors in
the clerical interest supported the intendant. Frontenac, chafed and
angry, refused all compromise. Business was stopped for weeks.
Duchesneau lost temper, and became abusive. Auteuil tried to interpose
in behalf of the intendant. Frontenac struck the table with his fist,
and told him fiercely that he would teach him his duty. Every day
embittered the strife. The governor made the declaration usual with him
on such occasions, that he would not permit the royal authority to
suffer in his person. At length he banished from Quebec his three most
strenuous opponents, Villeray, Tilly, and Auteuil, and commanded them to
remain in their country houses till they received his farther orders.
All attempts at compromise proved fruitless; and Auteuil, in behalf of
the exiles, appealed piteously to the king.

[10] This letter, still preserved in the Archives de la Marine, is dated
12 Mai, 1678. Several other letters of Louis XIV. give Frontenac the
same designation.

The answer came in the following summer: "Monsieur le Comte de
Frontenac," wrote Louis XIV., "I am surprised to learn all the new
troubles and dissensions that have occurred in my country of New France,
more especially since I have clearly and strongly given you to
understand that your sole care should be to maintain harmony and peace
among all my subjects dwelling therein; but what surprises me still more
is that in nearly all the disputes which you have caused you have
advanced claims which have very little foundation. My edicts,
declarations, and ordinances had so plainly made known to you my will,
that I have great cause of astonishment that you, whose duty it is to
see them faithfully executed, have yourself set up pretensions entirely
opposed to them. You have wished to be styled chief and president on the
records of the Supreme Council, which is contrary to my edict concerning
that council; and I am the more surprised at this demand, since I am
very sure that you are the only man in my kingdom who, being honored
with the title of governor and lieutenant-general, would care to be
styled chief and president of such a council as that of Quebec."

He then declares that neither Frontenac nor the intendant is to have the
title of president, but that the intendant is to perform the functions
of presiding officer, as determined by the edict. He continues:--

"Moreover, your abuse of the authority which I have confided to you in
exiling two councillors and the attorney-general for so trivial a cause
cannot meet my approval; and, were it not for the distinct assurances
given me by your friends that you will act with more moderation in
future, and never again fall into offences of this nature, I should have
resolved on recalling you." [11]

[11] Le Roy à Frontenac, 29 Avril, 1680. A decree of the council of
state soon after determined the question of presidency in accord with
this letter. Édits et Ordonnances, I. 238.

Colbert wrote to him with equal severity: "I have communicated to the
king the contents of all the despatches which you have written to me
during the past year; and as the matters of which they treat are
sufficiently ample, including dissensions almost universal among those
whose duty it is to preserve harmony in the country under your command,
his Majesty has been pleased to examine all the papers sent by all the
parties interested, and more particularly those appended to your
letters. He has thereupon ordered me distinctly to make known to you his
intentions." The minister then proceeds to reprove him sharply in the
name of the king, and concludes: "It is difficult for me to add any
thing to what I have just said. Consider well that, if it is any
advantage or any satisfaction to you that his Majesty should be
satisfied with your services, it is necessary that you change entirely
the conduct which you have hitherto pursued." [12]

[12] Colbert à Frontenac, 4 Dec., 1679. This letter seems to have been
sent by a special messenger by way of New England. It was too late in
the season to send directly to Canada. On the quarrel about the
presidency, Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679; Auteuil au Ministre,
10 Aug., 1679; Contestations entre le Sieur Comte de Frontenac et M.
Duchesneau, Chevalier. This last paper consists of voluminous extracts
from the records of the council.

This, one would think, might have sufficed to bring the governor to
reason, but the violence of his resentments and antipathies overcame the
very slender share of prudence with which nature had endowed him. One
morning, as he sat at the head of the council board, the bishop on his
right hand, and the intendant on his left, a woman made her appearance
with a sealed packet of papers. She was the wife of the councillor
Amours, whose chair was vacant at the table. Important business was in
hand, the registration of a royal edict of amnesty to the coureurs de
bois. The intendant, who well knew what the packet contained, demanded
that it should be opened. Frontenac insisted that the business before
the council should proceed. The intendant renewed his demand, the
council sustained him, and the packet was opened accordingly. It
contained a petition from Amours, stating that Frontenac had put him in
prison, because, having obtained in due form a passport to send a canoe
to his fishing station of Matane, he had afterwards sent a sail-boat
thither without applying for another passport. Frontenac had sent for
him, and demanded by what right he did so. Amours replied that he
believed that he had acted in accordance with the intentions of the
king; whereupon, to borrow the words of the petition, "Monsieur the
governor fell into a rage, and said to your petitioner, 'I will teach
you the intentions of the king, and you shall stay in prison till you
learn them;' and your petitioner was shut up in a chamber of the
château, wherein he still remains." He proceeds to pray that a trial may
be granted him according to law. [13]

[13] Registre du Conseil Supérieur, 16 Aoûst, 1681.

Discussions now ensued which lasted for days, and now and then became
tempestuous. The governor, who had declared that the council had nothing
to do with the matter, and that he could not waste time in talking about
it, was not always present at the meetings, and it sometimes became
necessary to depute one or more of the members to visit him. Auteuil,
the attorney-general, having been employed on this unenviable errand,
begged the council to dispense him from such duty in future, "by
reason," as he says, "of the abuse, ill treatment, and threats which he
received from Monsieur the governor, when he last had the honor of being
deputed to confer with him, the particulars whereof he begs to be
excused from reporting, lest the anger of Monsieur the governor should
be kindled against him still more." [14] Frontenac, hearing of this
charge, angrily denied it, saying that the attorney-general had
slandered and insulted him, and that it was his custom to do so. Auteuil
rejoined that the governor had accused him of habitual lying, and told
him that he would have his hand cut off. All these charges and
countercharges may still be found entered in due form on the old records
of the council at Quebec.

[14] Registre du Conseil Supérieur, 4 Nov., 1681.

It was as usual upon the intendant that the wrath of Frontenac fell most
fiercely. He accuses him of creating cabals and intrigues, and causing
not only the council, but all the country, to forget the respect due to
the representative of his Majesty. Once, when Frontenac was present at
the session, a dispute arose about an entry on the record. A draft of it
had been made in terms agreeable to the governor, who insisted that the
intendant should sign it. Duchesneau replied that he and the clerk would
go into the adjoining room, where they could examine it in peace, and
put it into a proper form. Frontenac rejoined that he would then have no
security that what he had said in the council would be accurately
reported. Duchesneau persisted, and was going out with the draft in his
hand, when Frontenac planted himself before the door, and told him that
he should not leave the council chamber till he had signed the paper.
"Then I will get out of the window, or else stay here all day," returned
Duchesneau. A lively debate ensued, and the governor at length yielded
the point. [15]

[15] Registre de Conseil Supérieur, 1681.

The imprisonment of Amours was short, but strife did not cease. The
disputes in the council were accompanied throughout with other quarrels
which were complicated with them, and which were worse than all the
rest, since they involved more important matters and covered a wider
field. They related to the fur trade, on which hung the very life of the
colony. Merchants, traders, and even habitants, were ranged in two
contending factions. Of one of these Frontenac was the chief. With him
were La Salle and his lieutenant, La Forêt; Du Lhut, the famous leader
of coureurs de bois; Boisseau, agent of the farmers of the revenue;
Barrois, the governor's secretary; Bizard, lieutenant of his guard; and
various others of greater or less influence. On the other side were the
members of the council, with Aubert de la Chesnaye, Le Moyne and all his
sons, Louis Joliet, Jacques Le Ber, Sorel, Boucher, Varennes, and many
more, all supported by the intendant Duchesneau, and also by his fast
allies, the ecclesiastics. The faction under the lead of the governor
had every advantage, for it was sustained by all the power of his
office. Duchesneau was beside himself with rage. He wrote to the court
letters full of bitterness, accused Frontenac of illicit trade,
denounced his followers, and sent huge bundles of procès-verbaux and
attestations to prove his charges.

But if Duchesneau wrote letters, so too did Frontenac; and if the
intendant sent proofs, so too did the governor. Upon the unfortunate
king and the still more unfortunate minister fell the difficult task of
composing the quarrels of their servants, three thousand miles away.
They treated Duchesneau without ceremony. Colbert wrote to him: "I have
examined all the letters, papers, and memorials that you sent me by the
return of the vessels last November, and, though it appears by the
letters of M. de Frontenac that his conduct leaves something to be
desired, there is assuredly far more to blame in yours than in his. As
to what you say concerning his violence, his trade with the Indians, and
in general all that you allege against him, the king has written to him
his intentions; but since, in the midst of all your complaints, you say
many things which are without foundation, or which are no concern of
yours, it is difficult to believe that you act in the spirit which the
service of the king demands; that is to say, without interest and
without passion. If a change does not appear in your conduct before next
year, his Majesty will not keep you in your office." [16]

[16] Colbert à Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678.

At the same time, the king wrote to Frontenac, alluding to the
complaints of Duchesneau, and exhorting the governor to live on good
terms with him. The general tone of the letter is moderate, but the
following significant warning occurs in it: "Although no gentleman in
the position in which I have placed you ought to take part in any trade,
directly or indirectly, either by himself or any of his servants, I
nevertheless now prohibit you absolutely from doing so. Not only abstain
from trade, but act in such a manner that nobody can even suspect you of
it; and this will be easy, since the truth will readily come to light."
[17]

[17] Le Roy à Frontenac, 12 Mai, 1678.

Exhortation and warning were vain alike. The first ships which returned
that year from Canada brought a series of despatches from the intendant,
renewing all his charges more bitterly than before. The minister, out of
patience, replied by berating him without mercy. "You may rest assured,"
he concludes, "that, did it not appear by your later despatches that the
letters you have received have begun to make you understand that you
have forgotten yourself, it would not have been possible to prevent the
king from recalling you." [18]

[18] Colbert à Duchesneau, 25 Avril, 1679.

Duchesneau, in return, protests all manner of deference to the governor,
but still insists that he sets the royal edicts at naught; protects a
host of coureurs de bois who are in league with him; corresponds with Du
Lhut, their chief; shares his illegal profits, and causes all the
disorders which afflict the colony. "As for me, Monseigneur, I have done
every thing within the scope of my office to prevent these evils; but
all the pains I have taken have only served to increase the aversion of
Monsieur the governor against me, and to bring my ordinances into
contempt. This, Monseigneur, is a true account of the disobedience of
the coureurs de bois, of which I twice had the honor to speak to
Monsieur the governor; and I could not help telling him, with all
possible deference, that it was shameful to the colony and to us that
the king, our master, of whom the whole world stands in awe, who has
just given law to all Europe, and whom all his subjects adore, should
have the pain of knowing that, in a country which has received so many
marks of his paternal tenderness, his orders are violated and scorned;
and a governor and an intendant stand by, with folded arms, content with
saying that the evil is past remedy. For having made these
representations to him, I drew on myself words so full of contempt and
insult that I was forced to leave his room to appease his anger. The
next morning I went to him again, and did all I could to have my
ordinances executed; but, as Monsieur the governor is interested with
many of the coureurs de bois, it is useless to attempt to do any thing.
He has gradually made himself master of the trade of Montreal; and, as
soon as the Indians arrive, he sets guards in their camp, which would be
very well, if these soldiers did their duty and protected the savages
from being annoyed and plundered by the French, instead of being
employed to discover how many furs they have brought, with a view to
future operations. Monsieur the governor then compels the Indians to pay
his guards for protecting them; and he has never allowed them to trade
with the inhabitants till they had first given him a certain number of
packs of beaver skins, which he calls his presents. His guards trade
with them openly at the fair, with their bandoleers on their shoulders."

He says, farther, that Frontenac sends up goods to Montreal, and employs
persons to trade in his behalf; and that, what with the beaver skins
exacted by him and his guards under the name of presents, and those
which he and his favorites obtain in trade, only the smaller part of
what the Indians bring to market ever reaches the people of the colony.
[19]

[19] Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.

This despatch, and the proofs accompanying it, drew from the king a
sharp reproof to Frontenac.

"What has passed in regard to the coureurs de bois is entirely contrary
to my orders; and I cannot receive in excuse for it your allegation that
it is the intendant who countenances them by the trade he carries on,
for I perceive clearly that the fault is your own. As I see that you
often turn the orders that I give you against the very object for which
they are given, beware not to do so on this occasion. I shall hold you
answerable for bringing the disorder of the coureurs de bois to an end
throughout Canada; and this you will easily succeed in doing, if you
make a proper use of my authority. Take care not to persuade yourself
that what I write to you comes from the ill offices of the intendant. It
results from what I fully know from every thing which reaches me from
Canada, proving but too well what you are doing there. The bishop, the
ecclesiastics, the Jesuit fathers, the Supreme Council, and, in a word,
everybody, complain of you; but I am willing to believe that you will
change your conduct, and act with the moderation necessary for the good
of the colony." [20]

[20] Le Roy à Frontenac, 29 Avril, 1680.

Colbert wrote in a similar strain; and Frontenac saw that his position
was becoming critical. He showed, it is true, no sign of that change of
conduct which the king had demanded; but he appealed to his allies at
court to use fresh efforts to sustain him. Among the rest, he had a
strong friend in the Maréchal de Bellefonds, to whom he wrote, in the
character of an abused and much-suffering man: "You exhort me to have
patience, and I agree with you that those placed in a position of
command cannot have too much. For this reason, I have given examples of
it here such as perhaps no governor ever gave before; and I have found
no great difficulty in doing so, because I felt myself to be the master.
Had I been in a private station, I could not have endured such
outrageous insults without dishonor. I have always passed over in
silence those directed against me personally; and have never given way
to anger, except when attacks were made on the authority of which I have
the honor to be the guardian. You could not believe all the annoyances
which the intendant tries to put upon me every day, and which, as you
advise me, I scorn or disregard. It would require a virtue like yours to
turn them to all the good use of which they are capable; yet, great as
the virtue is which has enabled you to possess your soul in tranquillity
amid all the troubles of the court, I doubt if you could preserve such
complete equanimity among the miserable tumults of Canada." [21]

[21] Frontenac au Maréchal de Bellefonds, 14 Nov., 1680.

Having given the principal charges of Duchesneau against Frontenac, it
is time to give those of Frontenac against Duchesneau. The governor says
that all the coureurs de bois would be brought to submission but for the
intendant and his allies, who protect them, and carry on trade by their
means; that the seigniorial house of Duchesneau's partner, La Chesnaye,
is the constant resort of these outlaws; and that he and his associates
have large storehouses at Montreal, Isle St. Paul, and Rivière du Loup,
whence they send goods into the Indian country, in contempt of the
king's orders. [22] Frontenac also complains of numberless provocations
from the intendant. "It is no fault of mine that I am not on good terms
with M. Duchesneau; for I have done every thing I could to that end,
being too submissive to your Majesty's commands not to suppress my
sharpest indignation the moment your will is known to me. But, Sire, it
is not so with him; and his desire to excite new disputes, in the hope
of making me appear their principal author, has been so great that the
last ships were hardly gone, when, forgetting what your Majesty had
enjoined upon us both, he began these dissensions afresh, in spite of
all my precautions. If I depart from my usual reserve in regard to him,
and make bold to ask justice at the hands of your Majesty for the wrongs
and insults I have undergone, it is because nothing but your authority
can keep them within bounds. I have never suffered more in my life than
when I have been made to appear as a man of violence and a disturber of
the officers of justice: for I have always confined myself to what your
Majesty has prescribed; that is, to exhorting them to do their duty when
I saw that they failed in it. This has drawn upon me, both from them and
from M. Duchesneau, such cutting affronts that your Majesty would hardly
credit them." [23]

[22] Mémoire et Preuves du Désordre des Coureurs de Bois.

[23] Frontenac au Roy, 2 Nov., 1681.

In 1681, Seignelay, the son of Colbert, entered upon the charge of the
colonies; and both Frontenac and Duchesneau hastened to congratulate
him, protest their devotion, and overwhelm him with mutual accusations.
The intendant declares that, out of pure zeal for the king's service, he
shall tell him every thing. "Disorder," he says, "reigns everywhere;
universal confusion prevails throughout every department of business;
the pleasure of the king, the orders of the Supreme Council, and my
ordinances remain unexecuted; justice is openly violated, and trade is
destroyed; violence, upheld by authority, decides every thing; and
nothing consoles the people, who groan without daring to complain, but
the hope, Monseigneur, that you will have the goodness to condescend to
be moved by their misfortunes. No position could be more distressing
than mine, since, if I conceal the truth from you, I fail in the
obedience I owe the king, and in the fidelity that I vowed so long since
to Monseigneur, your father, and which I swear anew at your hands; and
if I obey, as I must, his Majesty's orders and yours, I cannot avoid
giving offence, since I cannot render you an account of these disorders
without informing you that M. de Frontenac's conduct is the sole cause
of them." [24]

[24] Duchesneau au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1681.

Frontenac had written to Seignelay a few days before: "I have no doubt
whatever that M. Duchesneau will, as usual, overwhelm me with
fabrications and falsehoods, to cover his own ill conduct. I send proofs
to justify myself, so strong and convincing that I do not see that they
can leave any doubt; but, since I fear that their great number might
fatigue you, I have thought it better to send them to my wife, with a
full and exact journal of all that has passed here day by day, in order
that she may extract and lay before you the principal portions.

"I send you in person merely the proofs of the conduct of M. Duchesneau,
in barricading his house and arming all his servants, and in coming
three weeks ago to insult me in my room. You will see thereby to what a
pitch of temerity and lawlessness he has transported himself, in order
to compel me to use violence against him, with the hope of justifying
what he has asserted about my pretended outbreaks of anger." [25]

[25] Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1681.

The mutual charges of the two functionaries were much the same; and, so
far at least as concerns trade, there can be little doubt that they were
well founded on both sides. The strife of the rival factions grew more
and more bitter: canes and sticks played an active part in it, and now
and then we hear of drawn swords. One is reminded at times of the
intestine feuds of some mediæval city, as, for example, in the following
incident, which will explain the charge of Frontenac against the
intendant of barricading his house and arming his servants:--

On the afternoon of the twentieth of March, a son of Duchesneau, sixteen
years old, followed by a servant named Vautier, was strolling along the
picket fence which bordered the descent from the Upper to the Lower Town
of Quebec. The boy was amusing himself by singing a song, when
Frontenac's partisan, Boisseau, with one of the guardsmen, approached,
and, as young Duchesneau declares, called him foul names, and said that
he would give him and his father a thrashing. The boy replied that he
would have nothing to say to a fellow like him, and would beat him if he
did not keep quiet; while the servant, Vautier, retorted Boisseau's
abuse, and taunted him with low birth and disreputable employments.
Boisseau made report to Frontenac, and Frontenac complained to
Duchesneau, who sent his son, with Vautier, to give the governor his
version of the affair. The bishop, an ally of the intendant, thus
relates what followed. On arriving with a party of friends at the
château, young Duchesneau was shown into a room in which were the
governor and his two secretaries, Barrois and Chasseur. He had no sooner
entered than Frontenac seized him by the arm, shook him, struck him,
called him abusive names, and tore the sleeve of his jacket. The
secretaries interposed, and, failing to quiet the governor, opened the
door and let the boy escape. Vautier, meanwhile, had remained in the
guard-room, where Boisseau struck at him with his cane; and one of the
guardsmen went for a halberd to run him through the body. After this
warm reception, young Duchesneau and his servant took refuge in the
house of his father. Frontenac demanded their surrender. The intendant,
fearing that he would take them by force, for which he is said to have
made preparation, barricaded himself and armed his household. The bishop
tried to mediate, and after protracted negotiations young Duchesneau was
given up, whereupon Frontenac locked him in a chamber of the château,
and kept him there a month. [26]

[26] Mémoire de l'Evesque de Quebec, Mars, 1681 (printed in Revue
Canadienne, 1873). The bishop is silent about the barricades of which
Frontenac and his friends complain in several letters.

The story of Frontenac's violence to the boy is flatly denied by his
friends, who charge Duchesneau and his partisans with circulating libels
against him, and who say, like Frontenac himself, that the intendant
used every means to exasperate him, in order to make material for
accusations. [27]

[27] See, among other instances, the Défense de M. de Frontenac par un
de ses Amis, published by Abbé Verreau in the Revue Canadienne, 1873.

The disputes of the rival factions spread through all Canada. The most
heinous offence in the eyes of the court with which each charged the
other was the carrying of furs to the English settlements; thus
defrauding the revenue, and, as the king believed, preparing the ruin of
the colony. The intendant farther declared that the governor's party
spread among the Indians the report of a pestilence at Montreal, in
order to deter them from their yearly visit to the fair, and thus by
means of coureurs de bois obtain all their beaver skins at a low price.
The report, according to Duchesneau, had no other foundation than the
fate of eighteen or twenty Indians, who had lately drunk themselves to
death at La Chine. [28]

[28] Plumitif du Conseil Souverain, 1681.

Montreal, in the mean time, was the scene of a sort of by-play, in which
the chief actor was the local governor, Perrot. He and Frontenac appear
to have found it for their common interest to come to a mutual
understanding; and this was perhaps easier on the part of the count,
since his quarrel with Duchesneau gave sufficient employment to his
natural pugnacity. Perrot was now left to make a reasonable profit from
the illicit trade which had once kindled the wrath of his superior; and,
the danger of Frontenac's anger being removed, he completely forgot the
lessons of his imprisonment.

The intendant ordered Migeon, bailiff of Montreal, to arrest some of
Perrot's coureurs de bois. Perrot at once arrested the bailiff, and sent
a sergeant and two soldiers to occupy his house, with orders to annoy
the family as much as possible. One of them, accordingly, walked to and
fro all night in the bed-chamber of Migeon's wife. On another occasion,
the bailiff invited two friends to supper: Le Moyne d'Iberville and one
Bouthier, agent of a commercial house at Rochelle. The conversation
turned on the trade carried on by Perrot. It was overheard and reported
to him, upon which he suddenly appeared at the window, struck Bouthier
over the head with his cane, then drew his sword, and chased him while
he fled for his life. The seminary was near at hand, and the fugitive
clambered over the wall. Dollier de Casson dressed him in the hat and
cassock of a priest, and in this disguise he escaped. [29] Perrot's
avidity sometimes carried him to singular extremities. "He has been
seen," says one of his accusers, "filling barrels of brandy with his own
hands, and mixing it with water to sell to the Indians. He bartered with
one of them his hat, sword, coat, ribbons, shoes, and stockings, and
boasted that he had made thirty pistoles by the bargain, while the
Indian walked about town equipped as governor." [30]

[29] Conduite du Sieur Perrot, Gouverneur de Montréal en la Nouvelle
France, 1681; Plainte du Sieur Bouthier, 10 Oct., 1680; Procès-verbal
des huissiers de Montréal.

[30] Conduite du Sieur Perrot. La Barre, Frontenac's successor, declares
that the charges against Perrot were false, including the attestations
of Migeon and his friends; that Dollier de Casson had been imposed upon,
and that various persons had been induced to sign unfounded statements
without reading them. La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683.

Every ship from Canada brought to the king fresh complaints of
Duchesneau against Frontenac, and of Frontenac against Duchesneau; and
the king replied with rebukes, exhortations, and threats to both. At
first he had shown a disposition to extenuate and excuse the faults of
Frontenac, but every year his letters grew sharper. In 1681 he wrote:
"Again I urge you to banish from your mind the difficulties which you
have yourself devised against the execution of my orders; to act with
mildness and moderation towards all the colonists, and divest yourself
entirely of the personal animosities which have thus far been almost
your sole motive of action. In conclusion, I exhort you once more to
profit well by the directions which this letter contains; since, unless
you succeed better herein than formerly, I cannot help recalling you
from the command which I have intrusted to you." [31]

[31] Le Roy à Frontenac, 30 Avril, 1681.

The dispute still went on. The autumn ships from Quebec brought back the
usual complaints, and the long-suffering king at length made good his
threat. Both Frontenac and Duchesneau received their recall, and they
both deserved it. [32]

[32] La Barre says that Duchesneau was far more to blame than Frontenac.
La Barre au Ministre, 1683. This testimony has weight, since Frontenac's
friends were La Barre's enemies.

The last official act of the governor, recorded in the register of the
council of Quebec, is the formal declaration that his rank in that body
is superior to that of the intendant. [33]

[33] Registre du Conseil-Supérieur, 16 Fév., 1682.

The key to nearly all these disputes lies in the relations between
Frontenac and the Church. The fundamental quarrel was generally covered
by superficial issues, and it was rarely that the governor fell out with
anybody who was not in league with the bishop and the Jesuits. "Nearly
all the disorders in New France," he writes, "spring from the ambition
of the ecclesiastics, who want to join to their spiritual authority an
absolute power over things temporal, and who persecute all who do not
submit entirely to them." He says that the intendant and the councillors
are completely under their control, and dare not decide any question
against them; that they have spies everywhere, even in his house; that
the bishop told him that he could excommunicate even a governor, if he
chose; that the missionaries in Indian villages say that they are equals
of Onontio, and tell their converts that all will go wrong till the
priests have the government of Canada; that directly or indirectly they
meddle in all civil affairs; that they trade even with the English of
New York; that, what with Jesuits, Sulpitians, the bishop, and the
seminary of Quebec, they hold two-thirds of the good lands of Canada;
that, in view of the poverty of the country, their revenues are
enormous; that, in short, their object is mastery, and that they use all
means to compass it. [34] The recall of the governor was a triumph to
the ecclesiastics, offset but slightly by the recall of their
instrument, the intendant, who had done his work, and whom they needed
no longer.

[34] Frontenac, Mémoire adressé à Colbert, 1677. This remarkable paper
will be found in the Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans
l'Amérique Septentrionale; Mémoires et Documents Originaux, edited by M.
Margry. The paper is very long, and contains references to attestations
and other proofs which accompanied it, especially in regard to the trade
of the Jesuits.

Thus far, we have seen Frontenac on his worst side. We shall see him
again under an aspect very different. Nor must it be supposed that the
years which had passed since his government began, tempestuous as they
appear on the record, were wholly given over to quarrelling. They had
their periods of uneventful calm, when the wheels of administration ran
as smoothly as could be expected in view of the condition of the colony.
In one respect at least, Frontenac had shown a remarkable fitness for
his office. Few white men have ever equalled or approached him in the
art of dealing with Indians. There seems to have been a sympathetic
relation between him and them. He conformed to their ways, borrowed
their rhetoric, flattered them on occasion with great address, and yet
constantly maintained towards them an attitude of paternal superiority.
When they were concerned, his native haughtiness always took a form
which commanded respect without exciting anger. He would not address
them as brothers, but only as children; and even the Iroquois, arrogant
as they were, accepted the new relation. In their eyes Frontenac was by
far the greatest of all the "Onontios," or governors of Canada. They
admired the prompt and fiery soldier who played with their children, and
gave beads and trinkets to their wives; who read their secret thoughts
and never feared them, but smiled on them when their hearts were true,
or frowned and threatened them when they did amiss. The other tribes,
allies of the French, were of the same mind; and their respect for their
Great Father seems not to have been permanently impaired by his
occasional practice of bullying them for purposes of extortion.

Frontenac appears to have had a liking not only for Indians, but also
for that roving and lawless class of the Canadian population, the
coureurs de bois, provided always that they were not in the service of
his rivals. Indeed, as regards the Canadians generally, he refrained
from the strictures with which succeeding governors and intendants
freely interlarded their despatches. It was not his instinct to clash
with the humbler classes, and he generally reserved his anger for those
who could retort it.

He had the air of distinction natural to a man familiar all his life
with the society of courts, and he was as gracious and winning on some
occasions as he was unbearable on others. When in good humor, his ready
wit and a certain sympathetic vivacity made him very agreeable. At times
he was all sunshine, and his outrageous temper slumbered peacefully till
some new offence wakened it again; nor is there much doubt that many of
his worst outbreaks were the work of his enemies, who knew his foible,
and studied to exasperate him. He was full of contradictions; and,
intolerant and implacable as he often was, there were intervals, even in
his bitterest quarrels, in which he displayed a surprising moderation
and patience. By fits he could be magnanimous. A woman once brought him
a petition in burlesque verse. Frontenac wrote a jocose answer. The
woman, to ridicule him, contrived to have both petition and answer
slipped among the papers of a suit pending before the council. Frontenac
had her fined a few francs, and then caused the money to be given to her
children. [35]

[35] Note by Abbé Verreau, in Journal de l'Instruction Publique
(Canada), VIII. 127.

When he sailed for France, it was a day of rejoicing to more than half
the merchants of Canada, and, excepting the Récollets, to all the
priests; but he left behind him an impression, very general among the
people, that, if danger threatened the colony, Count Frontenac was the
man for the hour.

CHAPTER V.
1682-1684.

LeFebvre de la Barre.

When the new governor, La Barre, and the new intendant, Meules, arrived
at Quebec, a dismal greeting waited them. All the Lower Town was in
ashes, except the house of the merchant Aubert de la Chesnaye, standing
alone amid the wreck. On a Tuesday, the fourth of August, at ten o'clock
in the evening, the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu were roused from their early
slumbers by shouts, outcries, and the ringing of bells; "and," writes
one of them, "what was our terror to find it as light as noonday, the
flames burned so fiercely and rose so high." Half an hour before,
Chartier de Lotbinière, judge of the king's court, heard the first
alarm, ran down the descent now called Mountain Street, and found every
thing in confusion in the town below. The house of Etienne Planchon was
in a blaze; the fire was spreading to those of his neighbors, and had
just leaped the narrow street to the storehouse of the Jesuits. The
season was excessively dry; there were no means of throwing water except
kettles and buckets, and the crowd was bewildered with excitement and
fright. Men were ordered to tear off roofs and pull down houses; but the
flames drove them from their work, and at four o'clock in the morning
fifty-five buildings were burnt to the ground. They were all of wood,
but many of them were storehouses filled with goods; and the property
consumed was more in value than all that remained in Canada. [1]

[1] Chartier de Lotbinière, Procès-verbal sur l'Incendie de la Basse
Ville; Meules au Ministre, 6 Oct., 1682; Juchereau, Histoire de
l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 256.

Under these gloomy auspices, Le Febvre de la Barre began his reign. He
was an old officer who had achieved notable exploits against the English
in the West Indies, but who was now to be put to a test far more severe.
He made his lodging in the château; while his colleague, Meules, could
hardly find a shelter. The buildings of the Upper Town were filled with
those whom the fire had made roofless, and the intendant was obliged to
content himself with a house in the neighboring woods. Here he was ill
at ease, for he dreaded an Indian war and the scalping-knives of the
Iroquois. [2]

[2] Meules au Ministre, 6 Oct., 1682.

So far as his own safety was concerned, his alarm was needless; but not
so as regarded the colony with whose affairs he was charged. For those
who had eyes to see it, a terror and a woe lowered in the future of
Canada. In an evil hour for her, the Iroquois had conquered their
southern neighbors, the Andastes, who had long held their ground against
them, and at one time threatened them with ruin. The hands of the
confederates were now free; their arrogance was redoubled by victory,
and, having long before destroyed all the adjacent tribes on the north
and west, [3] they looked for fresh victims in the wilderness beyond.
Their most easterly tribe, the Mohawks, had not forgotten the
chastisement they had received from Tracy and Courcelle. They had
learned to fear the French, and were cautious in offending them; but it
was not so with the remoter Iroquois. Of these, the Senecas at the
western end of the "Long House," as they called their fivefold league,
were by far the most powerful, for they could muster as many warriors as
all the four remaining tribes together; and they now sought to draw the
confederacy into a series of wars, which, though not directed against
the French, threatened soon to involve them. Their first movement
westward was against the tribes of the Illinois. I have already
described their bloody inroad in the summer of 1680. [4] They made the
valley of the Illinois a desert, and returned with several hundred
prisoners, of whom they burned those that were useless, and incorporated
the young and strong into their own tribe.

[3] Jesuits in North America.

[4] Discovery of the Great West.

This movement of the western Iroquois had a double incentive, their love
of fighting and their love of gain. It was a war of conquest and of
trade. All the five tribes of the league had become dependent on the
English and Dutch of Albany for guns, powder, lead, brandy, and many
other things that they had learned to regard as necessities. Beaver
skins alone could buy them, but to the Iroquois the supply of beaver
skins was limited. The regions of the west and north-west, the upper
Mississippi with its tributaries, and, above all, the forests of the
upper lakes, were occupied by tribes in the interest of the French,
whose missionaries and explorers had been the first to visit them, and
whose traders controlled their immense annual product of furs. La Salle,
by his newly built fort of St. Louis, engrossed the trade of the
Illinois and Miami tribes; while the Hurons and Ottawas, gathered about
the old mission of Michillimackinac, acted as factors for the Sioux, the
Winnebagoes, and many other remote hordes. Every summer they brought
down their accumulated beaver skins to the fair at Montreal; while
French bush-rangers roving through the wilderness, with or without
licenses, collected many more. [5]

[5] Duchesneau, Memoir on Western Indians in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX.
160.

It was the purpose of the Iroquois to master all this traffic, conquer
the tribes who had possession of it, and divert the entire supply of
furs to themselves, and through themselves to the English and Dutch.
That English and Dutch traders urged them on is affirmed by the French,
and is very likely. The accomplishment of the scheme would have ruined
Canada. Moreover, the Illinois, the Hurons, the Ottawas, and all the
other tribes threatened by the Iroquois, were the allies and "children"
of the French, who in honor as in interest were bound to protect them.
Hence, when the Seneca invasion of the Illinois became known, there was
deep anxiety in the colony, except only among those in whom hatred of
the monopolist La Salle had overborne every consideration of the public
good. La Salle's new establishment of St. Louis was in the path of the
invaders; and, if he could be crushed, there was wherewith to console
his enemies for all else that might ensue.

Bad as was the posture of affairs, it was made far worse by an incident
that took place soon after the invasion of the Illinois. A Seneca chief
engaged in it, who had left the main body of his countrymen, was
captured by a party of Winnebagoes to serve as a hostage for some of
their tribe whom the Senecas had lately seized. They carried him to
Michillimackinac, where there chanced to be a number of Illinois,
married to Indian women of that neighborhood. A quarrel ensued between
them and the Seneca, whom they stabbed to death in a lodge of the
Kiskakons, one of the tribes of the Ottawas. Here was a casus belli
likely to precipitate a war fatal to all the tribes about
Michillimackinac, and equally fatal to the trade of Canada. Frontenac
set himself to conjure the rising storm, and sent a messenger to the
Iroquois to invite them to a conference.

He found them unusually arrogant. Instead of coming to him, they
demanded that he should come to them, and many of the French wished him
to comply; but Frontenac refused, on the ground that such a concession
would add to their insolence, and he declined to go farther than
Montreal, or at the utmost Fort Frontenac, the usual place of meeting
with them. Early in August he was at Montreal, expecting the arrival of
the Ottawas and Hurons on their yearly descent from the lakes. They soon
appeared, and he called them to a solemn council. Terror had seized them
all. "Father, take pity on us," said the Ottawa orator, "for we are like
dead men." A Huron chief, named the Rat, declared that the world was
turned upside down, and implored the protection of Onontio, "who is
master of the whole earth." These tribes were far from harmony among
themselves. Each was jealous of the other, and the Ottawas charged the
Hurons with trying to make favor with the common enemy at their expense.
Frontenac told them that they were all his children alike, and advised
them to live together as brothers, and make treaties of alliance with
all the tribes of the lakes. At the same time, he urged them to make
full atonement for the death of the Seneca murdered in their country,
and carefully to refrain from any new offence.

Soon after there was another arrival. La Forêt, the officer in command
at Fort Frontenac, appeared, bringing with him a famous Iroquois chief
called Decanisora or Tegannisorens, attended by a number of warriors.
They came to invite Frontenac to meet the deputies of the five tribes at
Oswego, within their own limits. Frontenac's reply was characteristic.
"It is for the father to tell the children where to hold council, not
for the children to tell the father. Fort Frontenac is the proper place,
and you should thank me for going so far every summer to meet you." The
Iroquois had expressed pacific intentions towards the Hurons and
Ottawas. For this Frontenac commended him, but added: "The Illinois also
are children of Onontio, and hence brethren of the Iroquois. Therefore
they, too, should be left in peace; for Onontio wishes that all his
family should live together in union." He confirmed his words with a
huge belt of wampum. Then, addressing the flattered deputy as a great
chief, he desired him to use his influence in behalf of peace, and gave
him a jacket and a silk cravat, both trimmed with gold, a hat, a scarlet
ribbon, and a gun, with beads for his wife, and red cloth for his
daughter. The Iroquois went home delighted. [6]

[6] For the papers on this affair, see N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX.

Perhaps on this occasion Frontenac was too confident of his influence
over the savage confederates. Such at least was the opinion of
Lamberville, Jesuit missionary at Onondaga, the Iroquois capital. From
what he daily saw around him, he thought the peril so imminent that
concession on the part of the French was absolutely necessary, since not
only the Illinois, but some of the tribes of the lakes, were in danger
of speedy and complete destruction. "Tegannisorens loves the French," he
wrote to Frontenac, "but neither he nor any other of the upper Iroquois
fear them in the least. They annihilate our allies, whom by adoption of
prisoners they convert into Iroquois; and they do not hesitate to avow
that after enriching themselves by our plunder, and strengthening
themselves by those who might have aided us, they will pounce all at
once upon Canada, and overwhelm it in a single campaign." He adds that
within the past two years they have reinforced themselves by more than
nine hundred warriors, adopted into their tribes. [7]

[7] P. Jean de Lamberville à Frontenac, 20 Sept., 1682.

Such was the crisis when Frontenac left Canada at the moment when he was
needed most, and Le Febvre de la Barre came to supplant him. The new
governor introduces himself with a burst of rhodomontade. "The
Iroquois," he writes to the king, "have twenty-six hundred warriors. I
will attack them with twelve hundred men. They know me before seeing me,
for they have been told by the English how roughly I handled them in the
West Indies." This bold note closes rather tamely; for the governor
adds, "I think that if the Iroquois believe that your Majesty would have
the goodness to give me some help, they will make peace, and let our
allies alone, which would save the trouble and expense of an arduous
war." [8] He then begs hard for troops, and in fact there was great need
of them, for there were none in Canada; and even Frontenac had been
compelled in the last year of his government to leave unpunished various
acts of violence and plunder committed by the Iroquois. La Barre painted
the situation in its blackest colors, declared that war was imminent,
and wrote to the minister, "We shall lose half our trade and all our
reputation, if we do not oppose these haughty conquerors." [9]

[8] La Barre au Roy, (4 Oct.?) 1682.

[9] La Barre à Seignelay, 1682.

A vein of gasconade appears in most of his letters, not however
accompanied with any conclusive evidence of a real wish to fight. His
best fighting days were past, for he was sixty years old; nor had he
always been a man of the sword. His early life was spent in the law; he
had held a judicial post, and had been intendant of several French
provinces. Even the military and naval employments, in which he
afterwards acquitted himself with credit, were due to the part he took
in forming a joint-stock company for colonizing Cayenne. [10] In fact,
he was but half a soldier; and it was perhaps for this reason that he
insisted on being called, not Monsieur le Gouverneur, but Monsieur le
Général. He was equal to Frontenac neither in vigor nor in rank, but he
far surpassed him in avidity. Soon after his arrival, he wrote to the
minister that he should not follow the example of his predecessors in
making money out of his government by trade; and in consideration of
these good intentions he asked for an addition to his pay. [11] He then
immediately made alliances with certain merchants of Quebec for carrying
on an extensive illicit trade, backed by all the power of his office.
Now ensued a strange and miserable complication. Questions of war
mingled with questions of personal gain. There was a commercial
revolution in the colony. The merchants whom Frontenac excluded from his
ring now had their turn. It was they who, jointly with the intendant and
the ecclesiastics, had procured the removal of the old governor; and it
was they who gained the ear of the new one. Aubert de la Chesnaye,
Jacques Le Ber, and the rest of their faction, now basked in official
favor; and La Salle, La Forêt, and the other friends of Frontenac, were
cast out. There was one exception. Greysolon Du Lhut, leader of coureurs
de bois, was too important to be thus set aside. He was now as usual in
the wilderness of the north, the roving chief of a half savage crew,
trading, exploring, fighting, and laboring with persistent hardihood to
foil the rival English traders of Hudson's Bay. Inducements to gain his
adhesion were probably held out to him by La Barre and his allies: be
this as it may, it is certain that he acted in harmony with the faction
of the new governor. With La Forêt it was widely different. He commanded
Fort Frontenac, which belonged to La Salle, when La Barre's associates,
La Chesnaye and Le Ber, armed with an order from the governor, came up
from Montreal, and seized upon the place with all that it contained. The
pretext for this outrage was the false one that La Salle had not
fulfilled the conditions under which the fort had been granted to him.
La Forêt was told that he might retain his command, if he would join the
faction of La Barre; but he refused, stood true to his chief, and soon
after sailed for France.

[10] He was made governor of Cayenne, and went thither with Tracy in
1664. Two years later, he gained several victories over the English, and
recaptured Cayenne, which they had taken in his absence. He wrote a book
concerning this colony, called Description de la France Équinoctiale.
Another volume, called Journal du Voyage du Sieur de la Barre en la
Terre Ferme et Isle de Cayenne, was printed at Paris in 1671.

[11] La Barre à Seignelay, 1682.

La Barre summoned the most able and experienced persons in the colony to
discuss the state of affairs. Their conclusion was that the Iroquois
would attack and destroy the Illinois, and, this accomplished, turn upon
the tribes of the lakes, conquer or destroy them also, and ruin the
trade of Canada. [12] Dark as was the prospect, La Barre and his
fellow-speculators flattered themselves that the war could be averted
for a year at least. The Iroquois owed their triumphs as much to their
sagacity and craft as to their extraordinary boldness and ferocity. It
had always been their policy to attack their enemies in detail, and
while destroying one to cajole the rest. There seemed little doubt that
they would leave the tribes of the lakes in peace till they had finished
the ruin of the Illinois; so that if these, the allies of the colony,
were abandoned to their fate, there would be time for a profitable trade
in the direction of Michillimackinac.

[12] Conference on the State of Affairs with the Iroquois, Oct., 1682,
in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 194.

But hopes seemed vain and prognostics illusory, when, early in spring, a
report came that the Seneca Iroquois were preparing to attack, in force,
not only the Illinois, but the Hurons and Ottawas of the lakes. La Barre
and his confederates were in dismay. They already had large quantities
of goods at Michillimackinac, the point immediately threatened; and an
officer was hastily despatched, with men and munitions, to strengthen
the defences of the place. [13] A small vessel was sent to France with
letters begging for troops. "I will perish at their head," wrote La
Barre to the king, "or destroy your enemies;" [14] and he assures the
minister that the Senecas must be attacked or the country abandoned.
[15] The intendant, Meules, shared something of his alarm, and informed
the king that "the Iroquois are the only people on earth who do not know
the grandeur of your Majesty." [16]

[13] La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683.

[14] La Barre au Roy, 30 Mai, 1683.

[15] La Barre au Ministre, 30 Mai, 1683.

[16] Meules au Roy, 2 Juin, 1683.

While thus appealing to the king, La Barre sent Charles le Moyne as
envoy to Onondaga. Through his influence, a deputation of forty-three
Iroquois chiefs was sent to meet the governor at Montreal. Here a grand
council was held in the newly built church. Presents were given the
deputies to the value of more than two thousand crowns. Soothing
speeches were made them; and they were urged not to attack the tribes of
the lakes, nor to plunder French traders, without permission. [17] They
assented; and La Barre then asked, timidly, why they made war on the
Illinois. "Because they deserve to die," haughtily returned the Iroquois
orator. La Barre dared not answer. They complained that La Salle had
given guns, powder, and lead to the Illinois; or, in other words, that
he had helped the allies of the colony to defend themselves. La Barre,
who hated La Salle and his monopolies, assured them that he should be
punished. [17] It is affirmed, on good authority, that he said more than
this, and told them they were welcome to plunder and kill him. [18] The
rapacious old man was playing with a two-edged sword.

[17] Soon after La Barre's arrival, La Chesnaye is said to have induced
him to urge the Iroquois to plunder all traders who were not provided
with passports from the governor. The Iroquois complied so promptly,
that they stopped and pillaged, at Niagara, two canoes belonging to La
Chesnaye himself, which had gone up the lakes in Frontenac's time, and
therefore were without passports. Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en
Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, etc., depuis l'année 1682. (Published by
the Historical Society of Quebec.) This was not the only case in which
the weapons of La Barre and his partisans recoiled against themselves.

[18] Belmont, Histoire du Canada (a contemporary chronicle).

[19] See Discovery of the Great West. La Barre denies the assertion, and
says that he merely told the Iroquois that La Salle should be sent home.

Thus the Illinois, with the few Frenchmen who had tried to defend them,
were left to perish; and, in return, a brief and doubtful respite was
gained for the tribes of the lakes. La Barre and his confederates took
heart again. Merchandise, in abundance, was sent to Michillimackinac,
and thence to the remoter tribes of the north and west. The governor and
his partner, La Chesnaye, sent up a fleet of thirty canoes; [20] and, a
little later, they are reported to have sent more than a hundred. This
forest trade robbed the colonists, by forestalling the annual market of
Montreal; while a considerable part of the furs acquired by it were
secretly sent to the English and Dutch of New York. Thus the heavy
duties of the custom-house at Quebec were evaded; and silver coin was
received in payment, instead of questionable bills of exchange. [21]
Frontenac had not been faithful to his trust; but, compared to his
successor, he was a model of official virtue.

[20] Mémoire adressé a MM. les Intéressés en la Société de la Ferme et
Commerce du Canada, 1683.

[21] These statements are made in a memorial of the agents of the
custom-house, in letters of Meules, and in several other quarters. La
Barre is accused of sending furs to Albany under pretext of official
communication with the governor of New York.

La Barre busied himself with ostentatious preparation for war; built
vessels at Fort Frontenac, and sent up fleets of canoes, laden or partly
laden with munitions. But his accusers say that the king's canoes were
used to transport the governor's goods, and that the men sent to
garrison Fort Frontenac were destined, not to fight the Iroquois, but to
sell them brandy. "Last year," writes the intendant, "Monsieur de la
Barre had a vessel built, for which he made his Majesty pay heavily;"
and he proceeds to say that it was built for trade, and was used for no
other purpose. "If," he continues, "the two (king's) vessels now at Fort
Frontenac had not been used for trading, they would have saved us half
the expense we have been forced to incur in transporting munitions and
supplies. The pretended necessity of having vessels at this fort, and
the consequent employing of carpenters, and sending up of iron, cordage,
sails, and many other things, at his Majesty's charge, was simply in the
view of carrying on trade." He says, farther, that in May last, the
vessels, canoes, and men being nearly all absent on this errand, the
fort was left in so defenceless a state that a party of Senecas,
returning from their winter hunt, took from it a quantity of goods, and
drank as much brandy as they wanted. "In short," he concludes, "it is
plain that Monsieur de la Barre uses this fort only as a depot for the
trade of Lake Ontario." [22]

[22] Meules à Seignelay, 8 July, 1684. This accords perfectly with
statements made in several memorials of La Salle and his friends.

In the spring of 1683, La Barre had taken a step as rash as it was
lawless and unjust. He sent the Chevalier de Baugis, lieutenant of his
guard, with a considerable number of canoes and men, to seize La Salle's
fort of St. Louis on the river Illinois; a measure which, while
gratifying the passions and the greed of himself and his allies, would
greatly increase he danger of rupture with the Iroquois. Late in the
season, he despatched seven canoes and fourteen men, with goods to the
value of fifteen or sixteen thousand livres, to trade with the tribes of
the Mississippi. As he had sown, so he reaped. The seven canoes passed
through the country of the Illinois. A large war party of Senecas and
Cayugas invaded it in February. La Barre had told their chiefs that they
were welcome to plunder the canoes of La Salle. The Iroquois were not
discriminating. They fell upon the governor's canoes, seized all the
goods, and captured the men. [23] Then they attacked Baugis at Fort St.
Louis. The place, perched on a rock, was strong, and they were beaten
off; but the act was one of open war.

[23] There appears no doubt that La Barre brought this upon himself. His
successor, Denonville, writes that the Iroquois declared that, in
plundering the canoes, they thought they were executing the orders they
had received to plunder La Salle's people. Denonville, Mémoire adressé
ou Ministre sur les Affaires de la Nouvelle France, 10 Août, 1688. The
Iroquois told Dongan, in 1684, "that they had not don any thing to the
French but what Monsr. delaBarr Ordered them, which was that if they
mett with any French hunting without his passe to take what they had
from them." Dongan to Denonville, 9 Sept., 1687.

When La Barre heard the news, he was furious. [24] He trembled for the
vast amount of goods which he and his fellow-speculators had sent to
Michillimackinac and the lakes. There was but one resource: to call out
the militia, muster the Indian allies, advance to Lake Ontario, and
dictate peace to the Senecas, at the head of an imposing force; or,
failing in this, to attack and crush them. A small vessel lying at
Quebec was despatched to France, with urgent appeals for immediate aid,
though there was little hope that it could arrive in time. She bore a
long letter, half piteous, half bombastic, from La Barre to the king. He
declared that extreme necessity and the despair of the people had forced
him into war, and protested that he should always think it a privilege
to lay down life for his Majesty. "I cannot refuse to your country of
Canada, and your faithful subjects, to throw myself, with unequal
forces, against the foe, while at the same time begging your aid for a
poor, unhappy people on the point of falling victims to a nation of
barbarians." He says that the total number of men in Canada capable of
bearing arms is about two thousand; that he received last year a hundred
and fifty raw recruits; and that he wants, in addition, seven or eight
hundred good soldiers. "Recall me," he concludes, "if you will not help
me, for I cannot bear to see the country perish in my hands." At the
same time, he declares his intention to attack the Senecas, with or
without help, about the middle of August. [25]

Here we leave him, for a while, scared, excited, and blustering.

[24] "Ce qui mit M. de la Barre en fureur." Belmont, Histoire du Canada.

[25] La Barre au Roy, 5 Juin, 1684.

CHAPTER VI.
1684.

La Barre and the Iroquois.

The Dutch colony of New Netherland had now become the English colony of
New York. Its proprietor, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. of
England, had appointed Colonel Thomas Dongan its governor. He was a
Catholic Irish gentleman of high rank, nephew of the famous Earl of
Tyrconnel, and presumptive heir to the earldom of Limerick. He had
served in France, was familiar with its language, and partial to its
king and its nobility; but he nevertheless gave himself with vigor to
the duties of his new trust.

The Dutch and English colonists aimed at a share in the western fur
trade, hitherto a monopoly of Canada; and it is said that Dutch traders
had already ventured among the tribes of the Great Lakes, boldly
poaching on the French preserves. Dongan did his utmost to promote their
interests, so far at least as was consistent with his instructions from
the Duke of York, enjoining him to give the French governor no just
cause of offence. [1]

[1] Sir John Werden to Dongan, 4 Dec., 1684; N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 353.
Werden was the duke's secretary.

Dongan has been charged with instigating the Iroquois to attack the
French. The Jesuit Lamberville, writing from Onondaga, says, on the
contrary, that he hears that the "governor of New England (New York),
when the Mohawk chiefs asked him to continue the sale of powder to them,
replied that it should be continued so long as they would not make war
on Christians." Lamberville à La Barre, 10 Fév., 1684.

The French ambassador at London complained that Dongan excited the
Iroquois to war, and Dongan denied the charge. N. Y. Col. Docs., III.
506, 509.

For several years past, the Iroquois had made forays against the borders
of Maryland and Virginia, plundering and killing the settlers; and a
declared rupture between those colonies and the savage confederates had
more than once been imminent. The English believed that these
hostilities were instigated by the Jesuits in the Iroquois villages.
There is no proof whatever of the accusation; but it is certain that it
was the interest of Canada to provoke a war which might, sooner or
later, involve New York. In consequence of a renewal of such attacks,
Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, came to Albany in the
summer of 1684, to hold a council with the Iroquois.

The Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas were the offending tribes. They all
promised friendship for the future. A hole was dug in the court-yard of
the council house, each of the three threw a hatchet into it, and Lord
Howard and the representative of Maryland added two others; then the
hole was filled, the song of peace was sung, and the high contracting
parties stood pledged to mutual accord. [2] The Mohawks were also at the
council, and the Senecas soon after arrived; so that all the confederacy
was present by its deputies. Not long before, La Barre, then in the heat
of his martial preparations, had sent a messenger to Dongan with a
letter, informing him that, as the Senecas and Cayugas had plundered
French canoes and assaulted a French fort, he was compelled to attack
them, and begging that the Dutch and English colonists should be
forbidden to supply them with arms. [3] This letter produced two
results, neither of them agreeable to the writer: first, the Iroquois
were fully warned of the designs of the French; and, secondly, Dongan
gained the opportunity he wanted of asserting the claim of his king to
sovereignty over the confederacy, and possession of the whole country
south of the Great Lakes. He added that, if the Iroquois had done wrong,
he would require them, as British subjects, to make reparation; and he
urged La Barre, for the sake of peace between the two colonies, to
refrain from his intended invasion of British territory. [4]

[2] Report of Conferences at Albany, in Colden, History of the Five
Nations, 50 (ed. 1727, Shea's reprint).

[3] La Barre à Dongan, 15 Juin, 1684.

[4] Dongan à La Barre, 24 Juin, 1684.

Dongan next laid before the assembled sachems the complaints made
against them in the letter of La Barre. They replied by accusing the
French of carrying arms to their enemies, the Illinois and the Miamis.
"Onontio," said their orator, "calls us his children, and then helps our
enemies to knock us in the head." They were somewhat disturbed at the
prospect of La Barre's threatened attack; and Dongan seized the occasion
to draw from them an acknowledgment of subjection to the Duke of York,
promising in return that they should be protected from the French. They
did not hesitate. "We put ourselves," said the Iroquois speaker, "under
the great sachem Charles, who lives over the Great Lake, and under the
protection of the great Duke of York, brother of your great sachem." But
he added a moment after, "Let your friend (King Charles) who lives over
the Great Lake know that we are a free people, though united to the
English." [5] They consented that the arms of the Duke of York should be
planted in their villages, being told that this would prevent the French
from destroying them. Dongan now insisted that they should make no
treaty with Onontio without his consent; and he promised that, if their
country should be invaded, he would send four hundred horsemen and as
many foot soldiers to their aid.

[5] Speech of the Onondagas and Cayugas, in Colden, Five Nations, 63
(1727).

As for the acknowledgment of subjection to the king and the Duke of
York, the Iroquois neither understood its full meaning nor meant to
abide by it. What they did clearly understand was that, while they
recognized Onontio, the governor of Canada, as their father, they
recognized Corlaer, the governor of New York, only as their brother. [6]
Dongan, it seems, could not, or dared not, change this mark of equality.
He did his best, however, to make good his claims, and sent Arnold
Viele, a Dutch interpreter, as his envoy to Onondaga. Viele set out for
the Iroquois capital, and thither we will follow him.

[6] Except the small tribe of the Oneidas, who addressed Corlaer as
Father. Corlaer was the official Iroquois name of the governor of New
York; Onas (the Feather, or Pen), that of the governor of Pennsylvania;
and Assarigoa (the Big Knife, or Sword), that of the governor of
Virginia. Corlaer, or Cuyler, was the name of a Dutchman whom the
Iroquois held in great respect.

He mounted his horse, and in the heats of August rode westward along the
valley of the Mohawk. On a hill a bow-shot from the river, he saw the
first Mohawk town, Kaghnawaga, encircled by a strong palisade. Next he
stopped for a time at Gandagaro, on a meadow near the bank; and next, at
Canajora, on a plain two miles away. Tionondogué, the last and strongest
of these fortified villages, stood like the first on a hill that
overlooked the river, and all the rich meadows around were covered with
Indian corn. The largest of the four contained but thirty houses, and
all together could furnish scarcely more than three hundred warriors.
[7]

[7] Journal of Wentworth Greenhalgh, 1677, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III.
250.

When the last Mohawk town was passed, a ride of four or five days still
lay before the envoy. He held his way along the old Indian trail, now
traced through the grass of sunny meadows, and now tunnelled through the
dense green of shady forests, till it led him to the town of the
Oneidas, containing about a hundred bark houses, with twice as many
fighting men, the entire force of the tribe. Here, as in the four Mohawk
villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and, still
advancing, came at length to a vast open space where the rugged fields,
patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a broad, low hill,
crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga. There were from one to
two hundred of these large bark dwellings, most of them holding several
families. The capital of the confederacy was not fortified at this time,
and its only defence was the valor of some four hundred warriors. [8]

[8] Journal of Greenhalgh. The site of Onondaga, like that of all the
Iroquois towns, was changed from time to time, as the soil of the
neighborhood became impoverished, and the supply of wood exhausted.
Greenhalgh, in 1677, estimated the warriors at three hundred and fifty;
but the number had increased of late by the adoption of prisoners.

In this focus of trained and organized savagery, where ferocity was
cultivated as a virtue, and every emotion of pity stifled as unworthy of
a man; where ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held with the
tenacity of a people who joined the extreme of wildness with the extreme
of conservatism,--here burned the council fire of the five confederate
tribes; and here, in time of need, were gathered their bravest and their
wisest to debate high questions of policy and war.

The object of Viele was to confirm the Iroquois in their very
questionable attitude of subjection to the British crown, and persuade
them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through the
intervention of Dongan, or at least with his consent. The envoy found
two Frenchmen in the town, whose presence boded ill to his errand. The
first was the veteran colonist of Montreal, Charles le Moyne, sent by La
Barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference. They had known him, in
peace or war, for a quarter of a century; and they greatly respected
him. The other was the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville, who had long lived
among them, and knew them better than they knew themselves. Here, too,
was another personage who cannot pass unnoticed. He was a famous
Onondaga orator named Otréouati, and called also Big Mouth, whether by
reason of the dimensions of that feature or the greatness of the wisdom
that issued from it. His contemporary, Baron La Hontan, thinking perhaps
that his French name of La Grande Gueule was wanting in dignity,
Latinized it into Grangula; and the Scotchman, Colden, afterwards
improved it into Garangula, under which high-sounding appellation Big
Mouth has descended to posterity. He was an astute old savage, well
trained in the arts of Iroquois rhetoric, and gifted with the power of
strong and caustic sarcasm, which has marked more than one of the chief
orators of the confederacy. He shared with most of his countrymen the
conviction that the earth had nothing so great as the league of the
Iroquois; but, if he could be proud and patriotic, so too he could be
selfish and mean. He valued gifts, attentions, and a good meal, and
would pay for them abundantly in promises, which he kept or not, as his
own interests or those of his people might require. He could use bold
and loud words in public, and then secretly make his peace with those he
had denounced. He was so given to rough jokes that the intendant,
Meules, calls him a buffoon; but his buffoonery seems to have been often
a cover to his craft. He had taken a prominent part in the council of
the preceding summer at Montreal; and, doubtless, as he stood in full
dress before the governor and the officers, his head plumed, his face
painted, his figure draped in a colored blanket, and his feet decked
with embroidered moccasins, he was a picturesque and striking object. He
was less so as he squatted almost naked by his lodge fire, with a piece
of board laid across his lap, chopping rank tobacco with a
scalping-knife to fill his pipe, and entertaining the grinning circle
with grotesque stories and obscene jests. Though not one of the
hereditary chiefs, his influence was great. "He has the strongest head
and the loudest voice among the Iroquois," wrote Lamberville to La
Barre. "He calls himself your best friend.... He is a venal creature,
whom you do well to keep in pay. I assured him I would send him the
jerkin you promised." [9] Well as the Jesuit knew the Iroquois, he was
deceived if he thought that Big Mouth was securely won.

[9] Letters of Lamberville in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. For specimens of Big
Mouth's skill in drawing, see ibid., IX. 386.

Lamberville's constant effort was to prevent a rupture. He wrote with
every opportunity to the governor, painting the calamities that war
would bring, and warning him that it was vain to hope that the league
could be divided, and its three eastern tribes kept neutral, while the
Senecas were attacked. He assured him, on the contrary, that they would
all unite to fall upon Canada, ravaging, burning, and butchering along
the whole range of defenceless settlements. "You cannot believe,
Monsieur, with what joy the Senecas learned that you might possibly
resolve on war. When they heard of the preparations at Fort Frontenac,
they said that the French had a great mind to be stripped, roasted, and
eaten; and that they will see if their flesh, which they suppose to have
a salt taste, by reason of the salt which we use with our food, be as
good as that of their other enemies." [10] Lamberville also informs the
governor that the Senecas have made ready for any emergency, buried
their last year's corn, prepared a hiding place in the depth of the
forest for their old men, women, and children, and stripped their towns
of every thing that they value; and that their fifteen hundred warriors
will not shut themselves up in forts, but fight under cover, among trees
and in the tall grass, with little risk to themselves and extreme danger
to the invader. "There is no profit," he says, "in fighting with this
sort of banditti, whom you cannot catch, but who will catch many of your
people. The Onondagas wish to bring about an agreement. Must the father
and the children, they ask, cut each other's throats?"

[10] Lamberville to La Barre, 11 July, 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
253.

The Onondagas, moved by the influence of the Jesuit and the gifts of La
Barre, did in fact wish to act as mediators between their Seneca
confederates and the French; and to this end they invited the Seneca
elders to a council. The meeting took place before the arrival of Viele,
and lasted two days. The Senecas were at first refractory, and hot for
war, but at length consented that the Onondagas might make peace for
them, if they could; a conclusion which was largely due to the eloquence
of Big Mouth.

The first act of Viele was a blunder. He told the Onondagas that the
English governor was master of their country; and that, as they were
subjects of the king of England, they must hold no council with the
French without permission. The pride of Big Mouth was touched. "You
say," he exclaimed to the envoy, "that we are subjects of the king of
England and the Duke of York; but we say that we are brothers. We must
take care of ourselves. The coat of arms which you have fastened to that
post cannot defend us against Onontio. We tell you that we shall bind a
covenant chain to our arm and to his. We shall take the Senecas by one
hand and Onontio by the other, and their hatchet and his sword shall be
thrown into deep water." [11]

[11] Colden, Five Nations, 80 (1727).

Thus well and manfully did Big Mouth assert the independence of his
tribe, and proclaim it the arbiter of peace. He told the warriors,
moreover, to close their ears to the words of the Dutchman, who spoke as
if he were drunk; [12] and it was resolved at last that he, Big Mouth,
with an embassy of chiefs and elders, should go with Le Moyne to meet
the French governor.

[12] Lamberville to La Barre, 28 Aug., 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
257.

While these things were passing at Onondaga, La Barre had finished his
preparations, and was now in full campaign. Before setting out, he had
written to the minister that he was about to advance on the enemy, with
seven hundred Canadians, a hundred and thirty regulars, and two hundred
mission Indians; that more Indians were to join him on the way; that Du
Lhut and La Durantaye were to meet him at Niagara with a body of
coureurs de bois and Indians from the interior; and that, "when we are
all united, we will perish or destroy the enemy." [13] On the same day,
he wrote to the king: "My purpose is to exterminate the Senecas; for
otherwise your Majesty need take no farther account of this country,
since there is no hope of peace with them, except when they are driven
to it by force. I pray you do not abandon me; and be assured that I
shall do my duty at the head of your faithful colonists." [14]

[13] La Barre au Ministre, 9 July, 1684.

[14] La Barre au Roy, même date.

A few days after writing these curiously incoherent epistles, La Barre
received a letter from his colleague, Meules, who had no belief that he
meant to fight, and was determined to compel him to do so, if possible.
"There is a report," wrote the intendant, "that you mean to make peace.
It is doing great harm. Our Indian allies will despise us. I trust the
story is untrue, and that you will listen to no overtures. The expense
has been enormous. The whole population is roused." [15] Not satisfied
with this, Meules sent the general a second letter, meant, like the
first, as a tonic and a stimulant. "If we come to terms with the
Iroquois, without first making them feel the strength of our arms, we
may expect that, in future, they will do every thing they can to
humiliate us, because we drew the sword against them, and showed them
our teeth. I do not think that any course is now left for us but to
carry the war to their very doors, and do our utmost to reduce them to
such a point that they shall never again be heard of as a nation, but
only as our subjects and slaves. If, after having gone so far, we do not
fight them, we shall lose all our trade, and bring this country to the
brink of ruin. The Iroquois, and especially the Senecas, pass for great
cowards. The Reverend Father Jesuit, who is at Prairie de la Madeleine,
told me as much yesterday; and, though he has never been among them, he
assured me that he has heard everybody say so. But, even if they were
brave, we ought to be very glad of it; since then we could hope that
they would wait our attack, and give us a chance to beat them. If we do
not destroy them, they will destroy us. I think you see but too well
that your honor and the safety of the country are involved in the
results of this war." [16]

[15] Meules à La Barre, 15 July, 1684.

[16] Meules à La Barre, 14 Août, 1684. This and the preceding letter
stand, by a copyist's error, in the name of La Barre. They are certainly
written by Meules.

While Meules thus wrote to the governor, he wrote also to the minister,
Seignelay, and expressed his views with great distinctness. "I feel
bound in conscience to tell you that nothing was ever heard of so
extraordinary as what we see done in this country every day. One would
think that there was a divided empire here between the king and the
governor; and, if things should go on long in this way, the governor
would have a far greater share than his Majesty. The persons whom
Monsieur la Barre has sent this year to trade at Fort Frontenac have
already shared with him from ten to twelve thousand crowns." He then
recounts numerous abuses and malversations on the part of the governor.
"In a word, Monseigneur, this war has been decided upon in the cabinet
of Monsieur the general, along with six of the chief merchants of the
country. If it had not served their plans, he would have found means to
settle every thing; but the merchants made him understand that they were
in danger of being plundered, and that, having an immense amount of
merchandise in the woods in nearly two hundred canoes fitted out last
year, it was better to make use of the people of the country to carry on
war against the Senecas. This being done, he hopes to make extraordinary
profits without any risk, because one of two things will happen: either
we shall gain some considerable advantage over the savages, as there is
reason to hope, if Monsieur the general will but attack them in their
villages; or else we shall make a peace which will keep every thing safe
for a time. These are assuredly the sole motives of this war, which has
for principle and end nothing but mere interest. He says himself that
there is good fishing in troubled waters. [17]

[17] The famous voyageur, Nicolas Perrot, agrees with the intendant.
"Ils (La Barre et ses associés) s'imaginèrent que sitost que le François
viendroit à paroistre, l'Irroquois luy demanderoit miséricorde, quil
seroit facile d'establir des magasins, construire des barques dans le
lac Ontario, et que c'estoit un moyen de trouver des richesses." Mémoire
sur les Mœurs, Coustumes, et Relligion des Sauvages, chap. xxi.

The Sulpitian, Abbé Belmont, says that the avarice of the merchants was
the cause of the war; that they and La Barre wished to prevent the
Iroquois from interrupting trade; and that La Barre aimed at an
indemnity for the sixteen hundred livres in merchandise which the
Senecas had taken from his canoes early in the year. Belmont adds that
he wanted to bring them to terms without fighting.

"With all our preparations for war, and all the expense in which
Monsieur the general is involving his Majesty, I will take the liberty
to tell you, Monseigneur, though I am no prophet, that I discover no
disposition on the part of Monsieur the general to make war against the
aforesaid savages. In my belief, he will content himself with going in a
canoe as far as Fort Frontenac, and then send for the Senecas to treat
of peace with them, and deceive the people, the intendant, and, if I may
be allowed with all possible respect to say so, his Majesty himself.

"P. S.--I will finish this letter, Monseigneur, by telling you that he
set out yesterday, July 10th, with a detachment of two hundred men. All
Quebec was filled with grief to see him embark on an expedition of war
tête-à-tête with the man named La Chesnaye. Everybody says that the war
is a sham, that these two will arrange every thing between them, and, in
a word, do whatever will help their trade. The whole country is in
despair to see how matters are managed." [18]

[18] Meules au Ministre, 8-11 Juillet, 1684.

After a long stay at Montreal, La Barre embarked his little army at La
Chine, crossed Lake St. Louis, and began the ascent of the upper St.
Lawrence. In one of the three companies of regulars which formed a part
of the force was a young subaltern, the Baron la Hontan, who has left a
lively account of the expedition. Some of the men were in flat boats,
and some were in birch canoes. Of the latter was La Hontan, whose craft
was paddled by three Canadians. Several times they shouldered it through
the forest to escape the turmoil of the rapids. The flat boats could not
be so handled, and were dragged or pushed up in the shallow water close
to the bank, by gangs of militia men, toiling and struggling among the
rocks and foam. The regulars, unskilled in such matters, were spared
these fatigues, though tormented night and day by swarms of gnats and
mosquitoes, objects of La Hontan's bitterest invective. At length the
last rapid was passed, and they moved serenely on their way, threaded
the mazes of the Thousand Islands, entered what is now the harbor of
Kingston, and landed under the palisades of Fort Frontenac.

Here the whole force was soon assembled, the regulars in their tents,
the Canadian militia and the Indians in huts and under sheds of bark. Of
these red allies there were several hundred: Abenakis and Algonquins
from Sillery, Hurons from Lorette, and converted Iroquois from the
Jesuit mission of Saut St. Louis, near Montreal. The camp of the French
was on a low, damp plain near the fort; and here a malarious fever
presently attacked them, killing many and disabling many more. La Hontan
says that La Barre himself was brought by it to the brink of the grave.
If he had ever entertained any other purpose than that of inducing the
Senecas to agree to a temporary peace, he now completely abandoned it.
He dared not even insist that the offending tribe should meet him in
council, but hastened to ask the mediation of the Onondagas, which the
letters of Lamberville had assured him that they were disposed to offer.
He sent Le Moyne to persuade them to meet him on their own side of the
lake, and, with such of his men as were able to move, crossed to the
mouth of Salmon River, then called La Famine.

The name proved prophetic. Provisions fell short from bad management in
transportation, and the men grew hungry and discontented. September had
begun; the place was unwholesome, and the malarious fever of Fort
Frontenac infected the new encampment. The soldiers sickened rapidly. La
Barre, racked with suspense, waited impatiently the return of Le Moyne.
We have seen already the result of his mission, and how he and
Lamberville, in spite of the envoy of the English governor, gained from
the Onondaga chiefs the promise to meet Onontio in council. Le Moyne
appeared at La Famine on the third of the month, bringing with him Big
Mouth and thirteen other deputies. La Barre gave them a feast of bread,
wine, and salmon trout, and on the morning of the fourth the council
began.

Before the deputies arrived, the governor had sent the sick men homeward
in order to conceal his helpless condition; and he now told the Iroquois
that he had left his army at Fort Frontenac, and had come to meet them
attended only by an escort. The Onondaga politician was not to be so
deceived. He, or one of his party, spoke a little French; and during the
night, roaming noiselessly among the tents, he contrived to learn the
true state of the case from the soldiers.

The council was held on an open spot near the French encampment. La
Barre was seated in an arm-chair. The Jesuit Bruyas stood by him as
interpreter, and the officers were ranged on his right and left. The
Indians sat on the ground in a row opposite the governor; and two lines
of soldiers, forming two sides of a square, closed the intervening
space. Among the officers was La Hontan, a spectator of the whole
proceeding. He may be called a man in advance of his time; for he had
the caustic, sceptical, and mocking spirit which a century later marked
the approach of the great revolution, but which was not a characteristic
of the reign of Louis XIV. He usually told the truth when he had no
motive to do otherwise, and yet was capable at times of prodigious
mendacity. [19] There is no reason to believe that he indulged in it on
the present occasion, and his account of what he now saw and heard may
probably be taken as substantially correct. According to him, La Barre
opened the council as follows:--

"The king my master, being informed that the Five Nations of the
Iroquois have long acted in a manner adverse to peace, has ordered me to
come with an escort to this place, and to send Akouessan (Le Moyne) to
Onondaga to invite the principal chiefs to meet me. It is the wish of
this great king that you and I should smoke the calumet of peace
together, provided that you promise, in the name of the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to give entire satisfaction
and indemnity to his subjects, and do nothing in future which may
occasion rupture."

[19] La Hontan attempted to impose on his readers a marvellous story of
pretended discoveries beyond the Mississippi; and his ill repute in the
matter of veracity is due chiefly to this fabrication. On the other
hand, his account of what he saw in the colony is commonly in accord
with the best contemporary evidence.

Then he recounted the offences of the Iroquois. First, they had
maltreated and robbed French traders in the country of the Illinois;
"wherefore," said the governor, "I am ordered to demand reparation, and
in case of refusal to declare war against you."

Next, "the warriors of the Five Nations have introduced the English into
the lakes which belong to the king my master, and among the tribes who
are his children, in order to destroy the trade of his subjects, and
seduce these people from the obedience they owe him. I am willing to
forget this; but, should it happen again, I am expressly ordered to
declare war against you."

Thirdly, "the warriors of the Five Nations have made sundry barbarous
inroads into the country of the Illinois and Miamis, seizing, binding,
and leading into captivity an infinite number of these savages in time
of peace. They are the children of my king, and are not to remain your
slaves. They must at once be set free and sent home. If you refuse to do
this, I am expressly ordered to declare war against you."

La Barre concluded by assuring Big Mouth, as representing the Five
Nations of the Iroquois, that the French would leave them in peace if
they made atonement for the past, and promised good conduct for the
future; but that, if they did not heed his words, their villages should
be burned, and they themselves destroyed. He added, though he knew the
contrary, that the governor of New York would join him in war against
them.

During the delivery of this martial harangue, Big Mouth sat silent and
attentive, his eyes fixed on the bowl of his pipe. When the interpreter
had ceased, he rose, walked gravely two or three times around the lines
of the assembly, then stopped before the governor, looked steadily at
him, stretched his tawny arm, opened his capacious jaws, and uttered
himself as follows:--

"Onontio, I honor you, and all the warriors who are with me honor you.
Your interpreter has ended his speech, and now I begin mine. Listen to
my words.

"Onontio, when you left Quebec, you must have thought that the heat of
the sun had burned the forests that make our country inaccessible to the
French, or that the lake had overflowed them so that we could not escape
from our villages. You must have thought so, Onontio; and curiosity to
see such a fire or such a flood must have brought you to this place. Now
your eyes are opened; for I and my warriors have come to tell you that
the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks are all alive. I
thank you in their name for bringing back the calumet of peace which
they gave to your predecessors; and I give you joy that you have not dug
up the hatchet which has been so often red with the blood of your
countrymen.

"Listen, Onontio. I am not asleep. My eyes are open; and by the sun that
gives me light I see a great captain at the head of a band of soldiers,
who talks like a man in a dream. He says that he has come to smoke the
pipe of peace with the Onondagas; but I see that he came to knock them
in the head, if so many of his Frenchmen were not too weak to fight. I
see Onontio raving in a camp of sick men, whose lives the Great Spirit
has saved by smiting them with disease. Our women had snatched
war-clubs, and our children and old men seized bows and arrows to attack
your camp, if our warriors had not restrained them, when your messenger,
Akouessan, appeared in our village."

He next justified the pillage of French traders on the ground, very
doubtful in this case, that they were carrying arms to the Illinois,
enemies of the confederacy; and he flatly refused to make reparation,
telling La Barre that even the old men of his tribe had no fear of the
French. He also avowed boldly that the Iroquois had conducted English
traders to the lakes. "We are born free," he exclaimed, "we depend
neither on Onontio nor on Corlaer. We have the right to go whithersoever
we please, to take with us whomever we please, and buy and sell of
whomever we please. If your allies are your slaves or your children,
treat them like slaves or children, and forbid them to deal with anybody
but your Frenchmen.

"We have knocked the Illinois in the head, because they cut down the
tree of peace and hunted the beaver on our lands. We have done less than
the English and the French, who have seized upon the lands of many
tribes, driven them away, and built towns, villages, and forts in their
country.

"Listen, Onontio. My voice is the voice of the Five Tribes of the
Iroquois. When they buried the hatchet at Cataraqui (Fort Frontenac) in
presence of your predecessor, they planted the tree of peace in the
middle of the fort, that it might be a post of traders and not of
soldiers. Take care that all the soldiers you have brought with you,
shut up in so small a fort, do not choke this tree of peace. I assure
you in the name of the Five Tribes that our warriors will dance the
dance of the calumet under its branches; and that they will sit quiet on
their mats and never dig up the hatchet, till their brothers, Onontio
and Corlaer, separately or together, make ready to attack the country
that the Great Spirit has given to our ancestors."

The session presently closed; and La Barre withdrew to his tent, where,
according to La Hontan, he vented his feelings in invective, till
reminded that good manners were not to be expected from an Iroquois. Big
Mouth, on his part, entertained some of the French at a feast which he
opened in person by a dance. There was another session in the afternoon,
and the terms of peace were settled in the evening. The tree of peace
was planted anew; La Barre promised not to attack the Senecas; and Big
Mouth, in spite of his former declaration, consented that they should
make amends for the pillage of the traders. On the other hand, he
declared that the Iroquois would fight the Illinois to the death; and La
Barre dared not utter a word in behalf of his allies. The Onondaga next
demanded that the council fire should be removed from Fort Frontenac to
La Famine, in the Iroquois country. This point was yielded without
resistance; and La Barre promised to decamp and set out for home on the
following morning. [20]

[20] The articles of peace will be found in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 236.
Compare Memoir of M. de la Barre regarding the War against the Senecas,
ibid., 239. These two documents do not agree as to date, one placing the
council on the 4th and the other on the 5th.

Such was the futile and miserable end of the grand expedition. Even the
promise to pay for the plundered goods was contemptuously broken. [21]
The honor rested with the Iroquois. They had spurned the French,
repelled the claims of the English, and by act and word asserted their
independence of both.

[21] This appears from the letters of Denonville, La Barre's successor.

La Barre embarked and hastened home in advance of his men. His camp was
again full of the sick. Their comrades placed them, shivering with ague
fits, on board the flat-boats and canoes; and the whole force, scattered
and disordered, floated down the current to Montreal. Nothing had been
gained but a thin and flimsy truce, with new troubles and dangers
plainly visible behind it. The better to understand their nature, let us
look for a moment at an episode of the campaign.

When La Barre sent messengers with gifts and wampum belts to summon the
Indians of the Upper Lakes to join in the war, his appeal found a cold
response. La Durantaye and Du Lhut, French commanders in that region,
vainly urged the surrounding tribes to lift the hatchet. None but the
Hurons would consent, when, fortunately, Nicolas Perrot arrived at
Michillimackinac on an errand of trade. This famous coureur de bois--a
very different person from Perrot, governor of Montreal--was well
skilled in dealing with Indians. Through his influence, their scruples
were overcome; and some five hundred warriors, Hurons, Ottawas, Ojibwas,
Pottawatamies, and Foxes, were persuaded to embark for the rendezvous at
Niagara, along with a hundred or more Frenchmen. The fleet of canoes,
numerous as a flock of blackbirds in autumn, began the long and weary
voyage. The two commanders had a heavy task. Discipline was impossible.
The French were scarcely less wild than the savages. Many of them were
painted and feathered like their red companions, whose ways they
imitated with perfect success. The Indians, on their part, were but
half-hearted for the work in hand, for they had already discovered that
the English would pay twice as much for a beaver skin as the French; and
they asked nothing better than the appearance of English traders on the
lakes, and a safe peace with the Iroquois, which should open to them the
market of New York. But they were like children with the passions of
men, inconsequent, fickle, and wayward. They stopped to hunt on the
shore of Michigan, where a Frenchman accidentally shot himself with his
own gun. Here was an evil omen. But for the efforts of Perrot, half the
party would have given up the enterprise, and paddled home. In the
Strait of Detroit there was another hunt, and another accident. In
firing at a deer, an Indian wounded his own brother. On this the
tribesmen of the wounded man proposed to kill the French, as being the
occasion of the mischance. Once more the skill of Perrot prevailed; but
when they reached the Long Point of Lake Erie, the Foxes, about a
hundred in number, were on the point of deserting in a body. As
persuasion failed, Perrot tried the effect of taunts. "You are cowards,"
he said to the naked crew, as they crowded about him with their wild
eyes and long lank hair. "You do not know what war is: you never killed
a man and you never ate one, except those that were given you tied hand
and foot." They broke out against him in a storm of abuse. "You shall
see whether we are men. We are going to fight the Iroquois; and, unless
you do your part, we will knock you in the head." "You will never have
to give yourselves the trouble," retorted Perrot, "for at the first
war-whoop you will all run off." He gained his point. Their pride was
roused, and for the moment they were full of fight. [22]

[22] La Potherie, II. 159 (ed. 1722). Perrot himself, in his Mœurs des
Sauvages, briefly mentions the incident.

Immediately after, there was trouble with the Ottawas, who became
turbulent and threatening, and refused to proceed. With much ado, they
were persuaded to go as far as Niagara, being lured by the rash
assurance of La Durantaye that three vessels were there, loaded with a
present of guns for them. They carried their canoes by the cataract,
launched them again, paddled to the mouth of the river, and looked for
the vessels in vain. At length a solitary sail appeared on the lake. She
brought no guns, but instead a letter from La Barre, telling them that
peace was made, and that they might all go home. Some of them had
paddled already a thousand miles, in the hope of seeing the Senecas
humbled. They turned back in disgust, filled with wrath and scorn
against the governor and all the French. Canada had incurred the
contempt, not only of enemies, but of allies. There was danger that
these tribes would repudiate the French alliance, welcome the English
traders, make peace at any price with the Iroquois, and carry their
beaver skins to Albany instead of Montreal.

The treaty made at La Famine was greeted with contumely through all the
colony. The governor found, however, a comforter in the Jesuit
Lamberville, who stood fast in the position which he had held from the
beginning. He wrote to La Barre: "You deserve the title of saviour of
the country for making peace at so critical a time. In the condition in
which your army was, you could not have advanced into the Seneca country
without utter defeat. The Senecas had double palisades, which could not
have been forced without great loss. Their plan was to keep three
hundred men inside, and to perpetually harass you with twelve hundred
others. All the Iroquois were to collect together, and fire only at the
legs of your people, so as to master them, and burn them at their
leisure, and then, after having thinned their numbers by a hundred
ambuscades in the woods and grass, to pursue you in your retreat even to
Montreal, and spread desolation around it." [23]

[23] Lamberville to La Barre, 9 Oct., 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
260.

La Barre was greatly pleased with this letter, and made use of it to
justify himself to the king. His colleague, Meules, on the other hand,
declared that Lamberville, anxious to make favor with the governor, had
written only what La Barre wished to hear. The intendant also informs
the minister that La Barre's excuses are a mere pretence; that everybody
is astonished and disgusted with him; that the sickness of the troops
was his own fault, because he kept them encamped on wet ground for an
unconscionable length of time; that Big Mouth shamefully befooled and
bullied him; that, after the council at La Famine, he lost his wits, and
went off in a fright; that, since the return of the troops, the officers
have openly expressed their contempt for him; and that the people would
have risen against him, if he, Meules, had not taken measures to quiet
them. [24] These, with many other charges, flew across the sea from the
pen of the intendant.

[24] Meules au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1684.

The next ship from France brought the following letter from the king:--

Monsieur de la Barre,--Having been informed that your years do not
permit you to support the fatigues inseparable from your office of
governor and lieutenant-general in Canada, I send you this letter to
acquaint you that I have selected Monsieur de Denonville to serve in
your place; and my intention is that, on his arrival, after resigning to
him the command, with all instructions concerning it, you embark for
your return to France.

Louis.

La Barre sailed for home; and the Marquis de Denonville, a pious colonel
of dragoons, assumed the vacant office.

CHAPTER VII.
1685-1687.

Denonville and Dongan.

Denonville embarked at Rochelle in June, with his wife and a part of his
family. Saint-Vallier, the destined bishop, was in the same vessel; and
the squadron carried five hundred soldiers, of whom a hundred and fifty
died of fever and scurvy on the way. Saint-Vallier speaks in glowing
terms of the new governor. "He spent nearly all his time in prayer and
the reading of good books. The Psalms of David were always in his hands.
In all the voyage, I never saw him do any thing wrong; and there was
nothing in his words or acts which did not show a solid virtue and a
consummate prudence, as well in the duties of the Christian life as in
the wisdom of this world." [1]

[1] Saint-Vallier, État Présent de l'Église, 4 (Quebec, 1856).

When they landed, the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu were overwhelmed with the
sick. "Not only our halls, but our church, our granary, our hen-yard,
and every corner of the hospital where we could make room, were filled
with them." [2]

[2] Juchereau, Hôtel-Dieu, 283.

Much was expected of Denonville. He was to repair the mischief wrought
by his predecessor, and restore the colony to peace, strength, and
security. The king had stigmatized La Barre's treaty with the Iroquois
as disgraceful, and expressed indignation at his abandonment of the
Illinois allies. All this was now to be changed; but it was easier to
give the order at Versailles than to execute it in Canada. Denonville's
difficulties were great; and his means of overcoming them were small.
What he most needed was more troops and more money. The Senecas,
insolent and defiant, were still attacking the Illinois; the tribes of
the north-west were angry, contemptuous, and disaffected; the English of
New York were urging claims to the whole country south of the Great
Lakes, and to a controlling share in all the western fur trade; while
the English of Hudson's Bay were competing for the traffic of the
northern tribes, and the English of New England were seizing upon the
fisheries of Acadia, and now and then making piratical descents upon its
coast. The great question lay between New York and Canada. Which of
these two should gain mastery in the west?

Denonville, like Frontenac, was a man of the army and the court. As a
soldier, he had the experience of thirty years of service; and he was in
high repute, not only for piety, but for probity and honor. He was
devoted to the Jesuits, an ardent servant of the king, a lover of
authority, filled with the instinct of subordination and order, and, in
short, a type of the ideas, religious, political, and social, then
dominant in France. He was greatly distressed at the disturbed condition
of the colony; while the state of the settlements, scattered in broken
lines for two or three hundred miles along the St. Lawrence, seemed to
him an invitation to destruction. "If we have a war," he wrote, "nothing
can save the country but a miracle of God."

Nothing was more likely than war. Intrigues were on foot between the
Senecas and the tribes of the lakes, which threatened to render the
appeal to arms a necessity to the French. Some of the Hurons of
Michillimackinac were bent on allying themselves with the English. "They
like the manners of the French," wrote Denonville; "but they like the
cheap goods of the English better." The Senecas, in collusion with
several Huron chiefs, had captured a considerable number of that tribe
and of the Ottawas. The scheme was that these prisoners should be
released, on condition that the lake tribes should join the Senecas and
repudiate their alliance with the French. [3] The governor of New York
favored this intrigue to the utmost.

[3] Denonville au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1686.

Denonville was quick to see that the peril of the colony rose, not from
the Iroquois alone, but from the English of New York, who prompted them.
Dongan understood the situation. He saw that the French aimed at
mastering the whole interior of the continent. They had established
themselves in the valley of the Illinois, had built a fort on the lower
Mississippi, and were striving to entrench themselves at its mouth. They
occupied the Great Lakes; and it was already evident that, as soon as
their resources should permit, they would seize the avenues of
communication throughout the west. In short, the grand scheme of French
colonization had begun to declare itself. Dongan entered the lists
against them. If his policy should prevail, New France would dwindle to
a feeble province on the St. Lawrence: if the French policy should
prevail, the English colonies would remain a narrow strip along the sea.
Dongan's cause was that of all these colonies; but they all stood aloof,
and left him to wage the strife alone. Canada was matched against New
York, or rather against the governor of New York. The population of the
English colony was larger than that of its rival; but, except the fur
traders, few of the settlers cared much for the questions at issue. [4]
Dongan's chief difficulty, however, rose from the relations of the
French and English kings. Louis XIV. gave Denonville an unhesitating
support. James II., on the other hand, was for a time cautious to
timidity. The two monarchs were closely united. Both hated
constitutional liberty, and both held the same principles of supremacy
in church and state; but Louis was triumphant and powerful, while James,
in conflict with his subjects, was in constant need of his great ally,
and dared not offend him.

[4] New York had about 18,000 inhabitants (Brodhead, Hist. N. Y., II.
458). Canada, by the census of 1685, had 12,263.

The royal instructions to Denonville enjoined him to humble the
Iroquois, sustain the allies of the colony, oppose the schemes of
Dongan, and treat him as an enemy, if he encroached on French territory.
At the same time, the French ambassador at the English court was
directed to demand from James II. precise orders to the governor of New
York for a complete change of conduct in regard to Canada and the
Iroquois. [5] But Dongan, like the French governors, was not easily
controlled. In the absence of money and troops, he intrigued busily with
his Indian neighbors. "The artifices of the English," wrote Denonville,
"have reached such a point that it would be better if they attacked us
openly and burned our settlements, instead of instigating the Iroquois
against us for our destruction. I know beyond a particle of doubt that
M. Dongan caused all the five Iroquois nations to be assembled last
spring at Orange (Albany), in order to excite them against us, by
telling them publicly that I meant to declare war against them." He
says, further, that Dongan supplies them with arms and ammunition,
incites them to attack the colony, and urges them to deliver
Lamberville, the priest at Onondaga, into his hands. "He has sent
people, at the same time, to our Montreal Indians to entice them over to
him, promising them missionaries to instruct them, and assuring them
that he would prevent the introduction of brandy into their villages.
All these intrigues have given me not a little trouble throughout the
summer. M. Dongan has written to me, and I have answered him as a man
may do who wishes to dissimulate and does not feel strong enough to get
angry." [6]

[5] Seignelay to Barillon, French Ambassador at London, in N. Y. Col.
Docs., IX. 269.

[6] Denonville à Seigneloy, 8 Nov., 1686.

Denonville, accordingly, while biding his time, made use of counter
intrigues, and, by means of the useful Lamberville, freely distributed
secret or "underground" presents among the Iroquois chiefs; while the
Jesuit Engelran was busy at Michillimackinac in adroit and vigorous
efforts to prevent the alienation of the Hurons, Ottawas, and other lake
tribes. The task was difficult; and, filled with anxiety, the father
came down to Montreal to see the governor, "and communicate to me,"
writes Denonville, "the deplorable state of affairs with our allies,
whom we can no longer trust, owing to the discredit into which we have
fallen among them, and from which we cannot recover, except by gaining
some considerable advantage over the Iroquois; who, as I have had the
honor to inform you, have labored incessantly since last autumn to rob
us of all our allies, by using every means to make treaties with them
independently of us. You may be assured, Monseigneur, that the English
are the chief cause of the arrogance and insolence of the Iroquois,
adroitly using them to extend the limits of their dominion, and uniting
with them as one nation, insomuch that the English claims include no
less than the Lakes Ontario and Erie, the region of Saginaw (Michigan),
the country of the Hurons, and all the country in the direction of the
Mississippi." [7]

[7] Denonville à Seignelay, 12 Juin, 1686.

The most pressing danger was the defection of the lake tribes. "In spite
of the king's edicts," pursues Denonville, "the coureurs de bois have
carried a hundred barrels of brandy to Michillimackinac in a single
year; and their libertinism and debauchery have gone to such an
extremity that it is a wonder the Indians have not massacred them all to
save themselves from their violence and recover their wives and
daughters from them. This, Monseigneur, joined to our failure in the
last war, has drawn upon us such contempt among all the tribes that
there is but one way to regain our credit, which is to humble the
Iroquois by our unaided strength, without asking the help of our Indian
allies." [8] And he begs hard for a strong reinforcement of troops.

[8] Ibid.

Without doubt, Denonville was right in thinking that the chastising of
the Iroquois, or at least the Senecas, the head and front of mischief,
was a matter of the last necessity. A crushing blow dealt against them
would restore French prestige, paralyze English intrigue, save the
Illinois from destruction, and confirm the wavering allies of Canada.
Meanwhile, matters grew from bad to worse. In the north and in the west,
there was scarcely a tribe in the French interest which was not either
attacked by the Senecas or cajoled by them into alliances hostile to the
colony. "We may set down Canada as lost," again writes Denonville, "if
we do not make war next year; and yet, in our present disordered state,
war is the most dangerous thing in the world. Nothing can save us but
the sending out of troops and the building of forts and blockhouses. Yet
I dare not begin to build them; for, if I do, it will bring down all the
Iroquois upon us before we are in a condition to fight them."

Nevertheless, he made what preparations he could, begging all the while
for more soldiers, and carrying on at the same time a correspondence
with his rival, Dongan. At first, it was courteous on both sides; but it
soon grew pungent, and at last acrid. Denonville wrote to announce his
arrival, and Dongan replied in French: "Sir, I have had the honor of
receiving your letter, and greatly rejoice at having so good a neighbor,
whose reputation is so widely spread that it has anticipated your
arrival. I have a very high respect for the king of France, of whose
bread I have eaten so much that I feel under an obligation to prevent
whatever can give the least umbrage to our masters. M. de la Barre is a
very worthy gentleman, but he has not written to me in a civil and
befitting style." [9]

[9] Dongan to Denonville, 13 Oct., 1685, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX, 292.

Denonville replied with many compliments: "I know not what reason you

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