My dear Dr. Ellis:
When, in my youth, I proposed to write a series of books on the French in America, you encouraged the attempt, and your helpful kindness has followed it from that day to this. Pray accept the dedication of this volume in token of the grateful regard of
Very faithfully yours,
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.
CHAPTER III. 1660, 1661. THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT.
CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.
CHAPTER V. 1659, 1660. LAVAL AND ARGENSON.
CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR.
CHAPTER VII. 1661-1664. LAVAL AND DUMESNIL
CHAPTER VIII. 1657-1665. LAVAL AND MÉZY.
CHAPTER IX. 1662-1680. LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY.
CHAPTER X. 1661-1665. ROYAL INTERVENTION.
CHAPTER XI. 1666, 1667. THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED.
CHAPTER XII. 1665-1672. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER XIII 1661-1673. MARRIAGE AND POPULATION.
CHAPTER XIV. 1665-1672. THE NEW HOME.
CHAPTER XV. 1663-1763. CANADIAN FEUDALISM.
CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA.
CHAPTER XVII. 1663-1763. TRADE AND INDUSTRY.
CHAPTER XVIII. 1663-1702. THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION.
CHAPTER XIX. 1663-1763. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.
CHAPTER XX. 1640-1763. MORALS AND MANNERS.
CHAPTER XXI. 1663-1763. CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM.
“The physiognomy of a government,” says De Tocqueville, “can best be judged in its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge of the spirit and the faults of the administration of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope.”
The monarchical administration of France, at the height of its power and at the moment of its supreme triumph, stretched an arm across the Atlantic and grasped the North American continent. This volume attempts to show by what methods it strove to make good its hold, why it achieved a certain kind of success, and why it failed at last. The political system which has fallen, and the antagonistic system which has prevailed, seem, at first sight, to offer nothing but contrasts; yet out of the tomb of Canadian absolutism come voices not without suggestion even to us. Extremes meet, and Autocracy and Democracy often touch hands, at least in their vices.
The means of knowing the Canada of the past are ample. The pen was always busy in this outpost of the old monarchy. The king and the minister demanded to know every thing; and officials of high and low degree, soldiers and civilians, friends and foes, poured letters, despatches, and memorials, on both sides of every question, into the lap of government. These masses of paper have in the main survived the perils of revolutions and the incendiary torch of the Commune. Add to them the voluminous records of the Superior Council of Quebec, and numerous other documents preserved in the civil and ecclesiastical depositories of Canada.
The governments of New York and of Canada have caused a large part of the papers in the French archives, relating to their early history, to be copied and brought to America, and valuable contributions of material from the same quarter have been made by the State of Massachusetts and by private Canadian investigators. Nevertheless, a great deal has still remained in France, uncopied and unexplored. In the course of several visits to that country, I have availed myself of these supplementary papers, as well as of those which had before been copied, sparing neither time nor pains to explore every part of the field. With the help of a system of classified notes, I have collated the evidence of the various writers, and set down without reserve all the results of the examination, whether favorable or unfavorable. Some of them 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. *
I have received most valuable aid in my inquiries from the great knowledge and experience of M. Pierre Margry, Chief of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris. I beg also warmly to acknowledge the kind offices of Abbé Henri Raymond Casgrain and Grand Vicar Cazeau, of Quebec, together with those of James LeMoine, Esq., M. Eugène Taché, Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, and other eminent Canadians, and Henry Harrisse, Esq.
The few extracts from original documents, which are printed in the appendix, may serve as samples of the material out of which the work has been constructed. In some instances their testimony
* Those who wish to see the subject from a point of view
opposite to mine cannot do better than consult the work of
the Jesuit Charlevoix, with the excellent annotation of Mr.
Shea. (History and General Description of New France, by the
Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J., translated with notes by
John Gilmary Shea. 6 vols. New York: 1866-1872.)
might be multiplied twenty-fold. When the place of deposit of the documents cited in the margin is not otherwise indicated, they will, in nearly all cases, be found in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.
In the present book we examine the political and social machine; in the next volume of the series we shall see this machine in action.
Boston, July 1, 1874.
The Iroquois War.—Father Poncet.—His Adventures.—Jesuit Boldness.—Le Moyne’s Mission.—Chaumonot and Dablon.—Iroquois Ferocity.—The Mohawk Kidnappers.—Critical Position.—The Colony of Onondaga.—Speech of Chaumonot.—Omens of Destruction.—Device of the Jesuits.—The Medicine Feast.—The Escape.
Duversière.—Mance and Bourgeoys.—Miracle.—A Pious Defaulter.—Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Montreal in 1659.—The Hospital Nuns.—The Nuns and the Iroquois.—More Miracles—The Murdered Priests.—Brigeac and Closse.—Soldiers of the Holy Family.
Suffering and Terror.—François Hertel.—The Captive Wolf.—The threatened Invasion.—Daulac des Ormeaux.—The Adventurers at the Long Saut.—The Attack.—A Desperate Defence.—A Final Assault.—The Fort taken.
Domestic Strife.—Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Abbé Queylus.—François de Laval.—The Zealots of Caen.—Gallican and Ultramontane.—The Rival Claimants.—Storm at Quebec.—Laval Triumphant.
François de Laval.—His Position and Character.—Arrival of Argenson.—The Quarrel.
Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois d’Avaugour.—The Brandy Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The Earthquake.
Péronne Dumesnil.—The Old Council.—Alleged Murder.—The New Council.—Bourdon and Villeray.—Strong Measures.—Escape of Dumesnil.—Views of Colbert.
LAVAL AND MÉZY.
The Bishop’s Choice.—A Military Zealot.—Hopeful Beginnings.—Signs of Storm.—The Quarrel.—Distress of Mézy.—He Refuses to Yield.—His Defeat and Death.
Laval’s Visit to Court.—The Seminary.—Zeal of the Bishop.—His Eulogists.—Church and State.—Attitude of Laval.
Fontainebleau.—Louis XIV.—Colbert.—The Company of the West.—Evil Omens.—Action of the King.—Tracy, Courcelle, and Talon.—The Regiment of Carignan-Salières.—Tracy at Quebec.—Miracles.—A Holy War.
Courcelle’s March.—His Failure and Return.—Courcelle and the Jesuits.—Mohawk Treachery.—Tracy’s Expedition.—Burning of the Mohawk Towns.—French and English.—Dollier de Casson at St. Anne.—Peace.—The Jesuits and the Iroquois.
Talon.—Restriction and Monopoly.—Views of Colbert.—Political Galvanism.—A Father of the People.
Shipment of Emigrants.—Soldier Settlers.—Importation of Wives.—Wedlock.—Summary Methods.—The Mothers of Canada.—Bounties on Marriage.—Celibacy Punished.—Bounties on Children.—Results.
Military Frontier.—The Canadian Settler.—Seignior and Vassal.—Example of Talon.—Plan of Settlement.—Aspect of Canada.—Quebec.—The River Settlements.—Montreal.—The Pioneers.
Transplantation of Feudalism.—Precautions.—Faith and Homage. —The Seignior.—The Censitaire.—Royal Intervention.—The Gentilhomme.—Canadian Noblesse.
Nature of the Government.—The Governor.—The Council.—Courts and Judges.—The Intendant.—His Grievances.—Strong Government.—Sedition and Blasphemy.—Royal Bounty.—Defects and Abuses.
Trade in Fetters.—The Huguenot Merchants.—Royal Patronage.—The Fisheries.—Cries for Help.—Agriculture.—Manufactures.—Arts of Ornament.—Finance.—Card Money.—Repudiation.—Imposts.—The Beaver Trade.—The Fair at Montreal.—Contraband Trade.—A Fatal System.—Trouble and Change.—The Coureurs de Bois.-The Forest.—Letter of Carheil.
The Jesuits and the Iroquois.—Mission Villages.—Michillimackinac.—Father Carheil.—Temperance.—Brandy and the Indians.—Strong Measures.—Disputes.—License and Prohibition.—Views of the King.—Trade and the Jesuits.
Church and State.—The Bishop and the King.—The King ana the Cure's.—The New Bishop.—The Canadian Curé.—Ecclesiastical Rule.—Saint-Vallier and Denonville.—Clerical Rigor.—Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Courcelle and Châtelain.—The Recollets.—Heresy and Witchcraft.—Canadian Nuns.—Jeanne Le Ber.—Education.—The Seminary.—Saint Joachim.—Miracles of Saint Anne.—Canadian Schools.
Social Influence of the Troops.—A Petty Tyrant.—Brawls.—Violence and Outlawry.—State of the Population.—Views of Denonville.—Brandy.—Beggary.—The Past and the Present.—Inns.—State of Quebec.—Fires.—The Country Parishes.—Slavery.—Views of La Hontan.—Of Hocquart.—Of Bougainville—Of Kalm.—Of Charlevoix.
Formation of Canadian Character.—The Rival Colonies.—England and France.—New England.—Characteristics of Race.—Military Qualities.—The Church.—The English Conquest.
The Iroquois War.—Father Poncet.—His Adventures.—Jesuit Boldness.—Le Moyne’s Mission.—Chaumonot and Dablon.—Iroquois Ferocity.—The Mohawk Kidnappers.—Critical Position.—The Colony of Onondaga.—Speech op Chaumonot.—Omens of Destruction.—Device of the Jesuits.—The Medicine Feast.—The Escape.
In the summer of 1653, all Canada turned to fasting and penance, processions, vows, and supplications. The saints and the Virgin were beset with unceasing prayer. The wretched little colony was like some puny garrison, starving and sick, compassed with inveterate foes, supplies cut off, and succor hopeless.
At Montreal, the advance guard of the settlements, a sort of Castle Dangerous, held by about fifty Frenchmen, and said by a pious writer of the day to exist only by a continuous miracle, some two hundred Iroquois fell upon twenty-six Frenchmen. The Christians were outmatched, eight to one; but, says the chronicle, the Queen of Heaven was on their side, and the Son of Mary refuses nothing to his holy mother. * Through her intercession, the Iroquois shot so wildly that at their first fire every bullet missed its mark, and they met with a bloody defeat. The palisaded settlement of Three Rivers, though in a position less exposed than that of Montreal, was in no less jeopardy. A noted war-chief of the Mohawk Iroquois had been captured here the year before, and put to death; and his tribe swarmed out, like a nest of angry hornets, to revenge him. Not content with defeating and killing the commandant, Du Plessis Bochart, they encamped during winter in the neighboring forest, watching for an opportunity to surprise the place. Hunger drove them off, but they returned in spring, infesting every field and pathway; till, at length, some six hundred of their warriors landed in secret and lay hidden in the depths of the woods, silently biding their time. Having failed, however, in an artifice designed to lure the French out of their defences, they showed themselves on all sides, plundering, burning, and destroying, up to the palisades of the fort. **
Of the three settlements which, with their feeble dependencies, then comprised the whole of Canada, Quebec was least exposed to Indian attacks, being partially covered by Montreal and Three Rivers. Nevertheless, there was no safety this year, even
* Le Mercier, Relation, 1653, 3.
** So bent were they on taking the place, that they brought
their families, in order to make a permanent settlement.—
Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 6 Sept., 1653.
under the cannon of Fort St. Louis. At Cap Rouge, a few miles above, the Jesuit Poncet saw a poor woman who had a patch of corn beside her cabin, but could find nobody to harvest it. The father went to seek aid, met one Mathurin. Franchetot, whom he persuaded to undertake the charitable task, and was returning with him, when they both fell into an ambuscade of Iroquois, who seized them and dragged them off. Thirty-two men embarked in canoes at Quebec to follow the retreating savages and rescue the prisoners. Pushing rapidly up the St. Lawrence, they approached Three Rivers, found it beset by the Mohawks, and bravely threw themselves into it, to the great joy of its defenders and discouragement of the assailants.
Meanwhile, the intercession of the Virgin wrought new marvels at Montreal, and a bright ray of hope beamed forth from the darkness and the storm to cheer the hearts of her votaries. It was on the 26th of June that sixty of the Onondaga Iroquois appeared in sight of the fort, shouting from a distance that they came on an errand of peace, and asking safe-conduct for some of their number. Guns, scalping-knives, tomahawks, were all laid aside; and, with a confidence truly astonishing, a deputation of chiefs, naked and defenceless, came into the midst of those whom they had betrayed so often. The French had a mind to seize them, and pay them in kind for past treachery; but they refrained, seeing in this wondrous change of heart the manifest hand of Heaven. Nevertheless, it can be explained without a miracle. The Iroquois, or, at least, the western nations of their league, had just become involved in war with their neighbors the Eries, * and “one war at a time” was the sage maxim of their policy.
All was smiles and blandishment in the fort at Montreal; presents were exchanged, and the deputies departed, bearing home golden reports of the French. An Oneida deputation soon followed; but the enraged Mohawks still infested Montreal and beleaguered Three Rivers, till one of their principal chiefs and four of their best warriors were captured by a party of Christian Hurons. Then, seeing themselves abandoned by the other nations of the league and left to wage the war alone, they, too, made overtures of peace.
A grand council was held at Quebec. Speeches were made, and wampum-belts exchanged. The Iroquois left some of their chief men as pledges of sincerity, and two young soldiers offered themselves as reciprocal pledges on the part of the French. The war was over; at least Canada had found a moment to take breath for the next struggle. The fur trade was restored again, with promise of plenty; for the beaver, profiting by the quarrels of their human foes, had of late greatly multiplied. It was a change from death to life; for Canada lived on the beaver, and, robbed of this,
* See Jesuits in North America, 438. The Iroquois, it will
be remembered, consisted of five “nations,” or tribes,—the
Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. For an
account of them, see the work just cited, Introduction.
her only sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began. *
“Yesterday,” writes Father Le Mercier, “all was dejection and gloom; to-day, all is smiles and gayety. On Wednesday, massacre, burning, and pillage; on Thursday, gifts and visits, as among friends. If the Iroquois have their hidden designs, so, too, has God.
“On the day of the Visitation of the Holy Virgin, the chief, Aontarisati, ** so regretted by the Iroquois, was taken prisoner by our Indians, instructed by our fathers, and baptized; and, on the same day, being put to death, he ascended to heaven. I doubt not that he thanked the Virgin for his misfortune and the blessing that followed, and that he prayed to God for his countrymen.
“The people of Montreal made a solemn vow to celebrate publicly the fête of this mother of all blessings; whereupon the Iroquois came to ask for peace.
“It was on the day of the Assumption of this Queen of angels and of men that the Hurons took at Montreal that other famous Iroquois chief, whose capture caused the Mohawks to seek our alliance.
“On the day when the Church honors the Nativity of the Holy Virgin, the Iroquois granted Father
* According to Le Mercier, beaver to the value of from
200,000 to 300,000 livres was yearly brought down to the
colony before the destruction of the Hurons (1649-50). Three
years later, not one beaver skin was brought to Montreal
during a twelvemonth, and Three Rivers and Quebec had barely
enough to pay for keeping the fortifications in repair.
** The chief whose death had so enraged the Mohawks.
Poncet his life; and he, or rather the Holy Virgin and the holy angels, labored so well in the work of peace, that on St. Michael’s Day it was resolved in a council of the elders that the father should be conducted to Quebec, and a lasting treaty made with the French.” *
Happy as was this consummation, Father Poncet’s path to it had been a thorny one. He has left us his own rueful story, written in obedience to the command of his superior. He and his companion in misery had been hurried through the forests, from Cap Rouge on the St. Lawrence to the Indian towns on the Mohawk. He tells us how he slept among dank weeds, dropping with the cold dew; how frightful colics assailed him as he waded waist-deep through a mountain stream; how one of his feet was blistered and one of his legs benumbed; how an Indian snatched away his reliquary and lost the precious contents. “I had,” he says, “a picture of Saint Ignatius with our Lord bearing the cross, and another of Our Lady of Pity surrounded by the five wounds of her Son. They were my joy and my consolation; but I hid them in a bush, lest the Indians should laugh at them.” He kept, however, a little image of the crown of thorns, in which he found great comfort, as well as in communion with his patron saints, Saint Raphael, Saint Martha, and Saint Joseph. On one occasion he asked these celestial friends for something to soothe his thirst, and for a bowl of broth to revive his strength. Scarcely had he framed the petition when an Indian gave
* Relation, 1653, 18.
him some wild plums; and in the evening, as he lay fainting on the ground, another brought him the coveted broth. Weary and forlorn, he reached at last the lower Mohawk town, where, after being stripped, and, with his companion, forced to run the gauntlet, he was placed on a scaffold of bark, surrounded by a crowd of grinning and mocking savages. As it began to rain, they took him into one of their lodges, and amused themselves by making him dance, sing, and perform various fantastic tricks for their amusement. He seems to have done his best to please them; “but,” adds the chronicler, “I will say in passing, that as he did not succeed to their liking in these buffooneries (singeries), they would have put him to death, if a young Huron prisoner had not offered himself to sing, dance, and make wry faces in place of the father, who had never learned the trade.”
Having sufficiently amused themselves, they left him for a time in peace; when an old one-eyed Indian approached, took his hands, examined them, selected the left forefinger, and calling a child four or five years old, gave him a knife, and told him to cut it off, which the imp proceeded to do, his victim meanwhile singing the Vexilla Regis. After this preliminary, they would have burned him, like Franchetot, his unfortunate companion, had not a squaw happily adopted him in place, as he says, of a deceased brother. He was installed at once in the lodge of his new relatives, where, bereft of every rag of Christian clothing, and attired in leggins, moccasins, and a greasy shirt, the astonished father saw himself transformed into an Iroquois. But his deliverance was at hand. A special agreement providing for it had formed a part of the treaty concluded at Quebec; and he now learned that he was to be restored to his countrymen. After a march of almost intolerable hardship, he saw himself once more among Christians; Heaven, as he modestly thinks, having found him unworthy of martyrdom.
“At last,” he writes, “we reached Montreal on the 21st of October, the nine weeks of my captivity being accomplished, in honor of Saint Michael and all the holy angels. On the 6th of November the Iroquois who conducted me made their presents to confirm the peace; and thus, on a Sunday evening, eighty-and-one days after my capture,—that is to say, nine times nine days,—this great business of the peace was happily concluded, the holy angels showing by this number nine, which is specially dedicated to them, the part they bore in this holy work.” * This incessant supernaturalism is the key to the early history of New France.
Peace was made; but would peace endure? There was little chance of it, and this for several reasons. First, the native fickleness of the Iroquois, who, astute and politic to a surprising degree, were in certain respects, like all savages, mere grown-up children. Next, their total want of control over their fierce and capricious young warriors, any one of whom could break the peace with
* Poncet in Relation, 1653,17. On Poncet’s captivity see
also Moral Pratique des Jésuites, vol. xxxiv. (4to) chap.
xii.
impunity whenever he saw fit; and, above all, the strong probability that the Iroquois had made peace in order, under cover of it, to butcher or kidnap the unhappy remnant of the Hurons who were living, under French protection, on the island of Orleans, immediately below Quebec. I have already told the story of the destruction of this people and of the Jesuit missions established among them. * The conquerors were eager to complete their bloody triumph by seizing upon the refugees of Orleans, killing the elders, and strengthening their own tribes by the adoption of the women, children, and youths. The Mohawks and the Onondagas were competitors for the prize. Each coveted the Huron colony, and each was jealous lest his rival should pounce upon it first.
When the Mohawks brought home Poncet, they covertly gave wampum-belts to the Huron chiefs, and invited them to remove to their villages. It was the wolf’s invitation to the lamb. The Hurons, aghast with terror, went secretly to the Jesuits, and told them that demons had whispered in their ears an invitation to destruction. So helpless were both the Hurons and their French supporters, that they saw no recourse but dissimulation. The Hurons promised to go, and only sought excuses to gain time.
The Onondagas had a deeper plan. Their towns were already full of Huron captives, former converts of the Jesuits, cherishing their memory and constantly repeating their praises. Hence their
* Jesuits in North America.
tyrants conceived the idea that by planting at Onondaga a colony of Frenchmen under the direction of these beloved fathers, the Hurons of Orleans, disarmed of suspicion, might readily be led to join them. Other motives, as we shall see, tended to the same end, and the Onondaga deputies begged, or rather demanded, that a colony of Frenchmen should be sent among them.
Here was a dilemma. Was not this, like the Mohawk invitation to the Hurons, an invitation to butchery? On the other hand, to refuse would probably kindle the war afresh. The Jesuits had long nursed a project bold to temerity. Their great Huron mission was ruined; but might not another be built up among the authors of this ruin, and the Iroquois themselves, tamed by the power of the Faith, be annexed to the kingdoms of Heaven and of France? Thus would peace be restored to Canada, a barrier of fire opposed to the Dutch and English heretics, and the power of the Jesuits vastly increased. Yet the time was hardly ripe for such an attempt. Before thrusting a head into the tiger’s jaws, it would be well to try the effect of thrusting in a hand. They resolved to compromise with the danger, and before risking a colony at Onondaga to send thither an envoy who could soothe the Indians, confirm them in pacific designs, and pave the way for more decisive steps. The choice fell on Father Simon Le Moyne.
The errand was mainly a political one; and this sagacious and able priest, versed in Indian languages and customs, was well suited to do it.
“On the second day of the month of July, the festival of the Visitation of the Most Holy Virgin, ever favorable to our enterprises, Father Simon Le Moyne set out from Quebec for the country of the Onondaga Iroquois.” In these words does Father Le Mercier chronicle the departure of his brother Jesuit. Scarcely was he gone when a band of Mohawks, under a redoubtable half-breed known as the Flemish Bastard, arrived at Quebec; and, when they heard that the envoy was to go to the Onondagas without visiting their tribe, they took the imagined slight in high dudgeon, displaying such jealousy and ire that a letter was sent after Le Moyne, directing him to proceed to the Mohawk towns before his return. But he was already beyond reach, and the angry Mohawks were left to digest their wrath.
At Montreal, Le Moyne took a canoe, a young Frenchman, and two or three Indians, and began the tumultuous journey of the Upper St. Lawrence. Nature, or habit, had taught him to love the wilderness life. He and his companions had struggled all day against the surges of La Chine, and were bivouacked at evening by the Lake of St. Louis, when a cloud of mosquitoes fell upon them, followed by a shower of warm rain. The father, stretched under a tree, seems clearly to have enjoyed himself. “It is a pleasure,” he writes, “the sweetest and most innocent imaginable, to have no other shelter than trees planted by Nature since the creation of the world.” Sometimes, during their journey, this primitive tent proved insufficient, and they would build a bark hut or find a partial shelter under their inverted canoe. Now they glided smoothly over the sunny bosom of the calm and smiling river, and now strained every nerve to fight their slow way against the rapids, dragging their canoe upward in the shallow water by the shore, as one leads an unwilling horse by the bridle, or shouldering it and bearing it through the forest to the smoother current above. Game abounded; and they saw great herds of elk quietly defiling between the water and the woods, with little heed of men, who in that perilous region found employment enough in hunting one another.
At the entrance of Lake Ontario they met a party of Iroquois fishermen, who proved friendly, and guided them on their way. Ascending the Onondaga, they neared their destination; and now all misgivings as to their reception at the Iroquois capital were dispelled. The inhabitants came to meet them, bringing roasting ears of the young maize and bread made of its pulp, than which they knew no luxury more exquisite. Their faces beamed welcome. Le Moyne was astonished. “I never," he says, “saw the like among Indians before.” They were flattered by his visit, and, for the moment, were glad to see him. They hoped for great advantages from the residence of Frenchmen among them; and, having the Erie war on their hands, they wished for peace with Canada. “One would call me brother,” writes Le Moyne; “another, uncle; another, cousin. I never had so many relations.”
He was overjoyed to find that many of the Huron converts, who had long been captives at Onondaga, had not forgotten the teachings of their Jesuit instructors. Such influence as they had with their conquerors was sure to be exerted in behalf of the French. Deputies of the Senecas, Cayugas, and Oneidas at length arrived, and, on the 10th of August, the criers passed through the town, summoning all to hear the words of Onontio. The naked dignitaries, sitting, squatting, or lying at full length, thronged the smoky hall of council The father knelt and prayed in a loud voice, invoking the aid of Heaven, cursing the demons who are spirits of discord, and calling on the tutelar angels of the country to open the ears of his listeners. Then he opened his packet of presents and began his speech. “I was full two hours," he says, “in making it, speaking in the tone of a chief, and walking to and fro, after their fashion, like an actor on a theatre.” Not only did he imitate the prolonged accents of the Iroquois orators, but he adopted and improved their figures of speech, and addressed them in turn by their respective tribes, bands, and families, calling their men of note by name, as if he had been born among them. They were delighted; and their ejaculations of approval—hoh-hoh-hoh—came thick and fast at every pause of his harangue. Especially were they pleased with the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh presents, whereby the reverend speaker gave to the four upper nations of the league four hatchets to strike their new enemies, the Eries; while by another present he metaphorically daubed their faces with the war-paint. However it may have suited the character of a Christian priest to hound on these savage hordes to a war of extermination which they had themselves provoked, it is certain that, as a politician, Le Moyne did wisely; since in the war with the Eries lay the best hope of peace for the French.
The reply of the Indian orator was friendly to overflowing. He prayed his French brethren to choose a spot on the lake of Onondaga, where they might dwell in the country of the Iroquois, as they dwelt already in their hearts. Le Moyne promised, and made two presents to confirm the pledge. Then, his mission fulfilled, he set out on his return, attended by a troop of Indians. As he approached the lake, his escort showed him a large spring of water, possessed, as they told him, by a bad spirit. Le Moyne tasted it, then boiled a little of it, and produced a quantity of excellent salt. He had discovered the famous salt-springs of Onondaga. Fishing and hunting, the party pursued their way till, at noon of the 7th of September, Le Moyne reached Montreal. *
When he reached Quebec, his tidings cheered for a while the anxious hearts of its tenants; but an unwonted incident soon told them how hollow was the ground beneath their feet. Le Moyne, accompanied by two Onondagas and several Hurons and Algonquins, was returning to Montreal, when he and his companions were set upon by a war-party
* Journal du Père Le Moine, Relation, 1654, chaps, vi. vii.
of Mohawks. The Hurons and Algonquins were killed. One of the Onondagas shared their fate, and the other, with Le Moyne himself, was seized and bound fast. The captive Onondaga, however, was so loud in his threats and denunciations, that the Mohawks released both him and the Jesuit. * Here was a foreshadowing of civil war, Mohawk against Onondaga, Iroquois against Iroquois. The quarrel was patched up, but fresh provocations were imminent.
The Mohawks took no part in the Erie war, and hence their hands were free to fight the French and the tribes allied with them. Reckless of their promises, they began a series of butcheries, fell upon the French at Isle aux Oies, killed a lay brother of the Jesuits at Sillery, and attacked Montreal. Here, being roughly handled, they came for a time to their senses, and offered terms, promising to spare the French, but declaring that they would still wage war against the Hurons and Algonquins. These were allies whom the French were pledged to protect; but so helpless was the colony, that the insolent and humiliating proffer was accepted, and another peace ensued, as hollow as the last. The indefatigable Le Moyne was sent to the Mohawk towns to confirm it, “so far,” says the chronicle, “as it is possible to confirm a peace made by infidels backed by heretics.” ** The Mohawks received him with great rejoicing; yet his
* Compare Relation, 1654, 33, and Lettre de Marie de
l’Incarnation, 18 Octobre, 1654.
** Copie de Deux Lettres envoyées de la Nouvelle France au
Père Procureur des Missions de la Compagnie de Jésus.
life was not safe for a moment. A warrior, feigning madness, raved through the town with uplifted hatchet, howling for his blood; but the saints watched over him and balked the machinations of hell. He came off alive and returned to Montreal, spent with famine and fatigue.
Meanwhile a deputation of eighteen Onondaga chiefs arrived at Quebec. There was a grand council. The Onondagas demanded a colony of Frenchmen to dwell among them. Lauson, the governor, dared neither to consent nor to refuse. A middle course was chosen, and two Jesuits, Chaumonot and Dablon, were sent, like Le Moyne, partly to gain time, partly to reconnoitre, and partly to confirm the Onondagas in such good intentions as they might entertain. Chaumonot was a veteran of the Huron mission, who, miraculously as he himself supposed, had acquired a great fluency in the Huron tongue, which is closely allied to that of the Iroquois. Dablon, a new-comer, spoke, as yet, no Indian.
Their voyage up the St. Lawrence was enlivened by an extraordinary bear-hunt, and by the antics of one of their Indian attendants, who, having dreamed that he had swallowed a frog, roused the whole camp by the gymnastics with which he tried to rid himself of the intruder. On approaching Onondaga, they were met by a chief who sang a song of welcome, a part of which he seasoned with touches of humor, apostrophizing the fish in the river Onondaga, naming each sort, great or small, and calling on them in turn to come into the nets of the Frenchmen and sacrifice life cheerfully for their behoof. Hereupon there was much laughter among the Indian auditors. An unwonted cleanliness reigned in the town; the streets had been cleared of refuse, and the arched roofs of the long houses of bark were covered with red-skinned children staring at the entry of the “black robes.” Crowds followed behind, and all was jubilation. The dignitaries of the tribe met them on the way, and greeted them with a speech of welcome. A feast of bear’s meat awaited them; but, unhappily, it was Friday, and the fathers were forced to abstain.
“On Monday, the 15th of November, at nine in the morning, after having secretly sent to Paradise a dying infant by the waters of baptism, all the elders and the people having assembled, we opened the council by public prayer.” Thus writes Father Dablon. His colleague, Chaumonot, a Frenchman bred in Italy, now rose, with a long belt of wampum in his hand, and proceeded to make so effective a display of his rhetorical gifts that the Indians were lost in admiration, and their orators put to the blush by his improvements on their own metaphors. “If he had spoken all day,” said the de lighted auditors, “we should not have had enough of it.” “The Dutch,” added others, “have neither brains nor tongues; they never tell us about Paradise and Hell; on the contrary, they lead us into bad ways.”
On the next day the chiefs returned their answer. The council opened with a song or chant, which was divided into six parts, and which, according to Dablon, was exceedingly well sung. The burden of the fifth part was as follows:—
“Farewell war; farewell tomahawk; we have been fools till now; henceforth we will be brothers; yes, we will be brothers.”
Then came four presents, the third of which enraptured the fathers. It was a belt of seven thousand beads of wampum. “But this,” says Dablon, “was as nothing to the words that accompanied it.” “It is the gift of the faith,” said the orator; “it is to tell you that we are believers; it is to beg you not to tire of instructing us; have patience, seeing that we are so dull in learning prayer; push it into our heads and our hearts.” Then he led Chaumonot into the midst of the assembly, clasped him in his arms, tied the belt about his waist, and protested, with a suspicious redundancy of words, that as he clasped the father, so would he clasp the faith.
What had wrought this sudden change of heart? The eagerness of the Onondagas that the French should settle among them, had, no doubt, a large share in it. For the rest, the two Jesuits saw abundant signs of the fierce, uncertain nature of those with whom they were dealing. Erie prisoners were brought in and tortured before their eyes, one of them being a young stoic of about ten years, who endured his fate without a single outcry. Huron women and children, taken in war and adopted by their captors, were killed on the slightest provocation, and sometimes from mere caprice.
For several days the whole town was in an uproar with the crazy follies of the “dream feast,” * and one of the Fathers nearly lost his life in this Indian Bedlam.
One point was clear; the French must make a settlement at Onondaga, and that speedily, or, despite their professions of brotherhood, the Onondagas would make war. Their attitude became menacing; from urgency they passed to threats; and the two priests felt that the critical posture of affairs must at once be reported at Quebec. But here a difficulty arose. It was the beaver-hunting season; and, eager as were the Indians for a French colony, not one of them would offer to conduct the Jesuits to Quebec in order to fetch one. It was not until nine masses had been said to Saint John the Baptist, that a number of Indians consented to forego their hunting, and escort Father Dablon home. ** Chaumonot remained at Onondaga, to watch his dangerous hosts and soothe their rising jealousies.
It was the 2d of March when Dablon began his journey. His constitution must have been of iron, or he would have succumbed to the appalling hardships of the way. It was neither winter nor spring. The lakes and streams were not yet open, but the half-thawed ice gave way beneath the foot. One of the Indians fell through and was drowned. Swamp and forest were clogged with sodden snow,
* See Jesuits in North America, 67.
** De Quen, Relation, 1656, 35. Chaumonot, in his
Autobiography, ascribes the miracle to the intercession of
the deceased Brébeuf.
and ceaseless rains drenched them as they toiled on, knee-deep in slush. Happily, the St. Lawrence was open. They found an old wooden canoe by the shore, embarked, and reached Montreal after a journey of four weeks.
Dablon descended to Quebec. There was long and anxious counsel in the chambers of Fort St. Louis. The Jesuits had information that, if the demands of the Onondagas were rejected, they would join the Mohawks to destroy Canada. But why were they so eager for a colony of Frenchmen? Did they want them as hostages, that they might attack the Hurons and Algonquins without risk of French interference; or would they massacre them, and then, like tigers mad with the taste of blood, turn upon the helpless settlements of the St. Lawrence? An abyss yawned on either hand. Lauson, the governor, was in an agony of indecision, but at length declared for the lesser and remoter peril, and gave his voice for the colony. The Jesuits were of the same mind, though it was they, and not he, who must bear the brunt of danger. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” said one of them, “and, if we die by the fires of the Iroquois, we shall have won eternal life by snatching souls from the fires of Hell.”
Preparation was begun at once. The expense fell on the Jesuits, and the outfit is said to have cost them seven thousand livres,—a heavy sum for Canada at that day. A pious gentleman, Zachary Du Puys, major of the fort of Quebec, joined the expedition with ten soldiers; and between thirty and forty other Frenchmen also enrolled themselves, impelled by devotion or destitution. Four Jesuits, Le Mercier, the superior, with Dablon, Menard, and Frémin, besides two lay brothers of the order, formed, as it were, the pivot of the enterprise. The governor made them the grant of a hundred square leagues of land in the heart of the Iroquois country,—a preposterous act, which, had the Iroquois known it, would have rekindled the war; but Lauson had a mania for land-grants, and was himself the proprietor of vast domains which he could have occupied only at the cost of his scalp.
Embarked in two large boats and followed by twelve canoes filled with Hurons, Onondagas, and a few Senecas lately arrived, they set out on the 17th of May “to attack the demons,” as Le Mercier writes, “in their very stronghold.” With shouts, tears, and benedictions, priests, soldiers, and inhabitants waved farewell from the strand. They passed the bare steeps of Cape Diamond and the mission-house nestled beneath the heights of Sillery, and vanished from the anxious eyes that watched the last gleam of their receding oars. *
Meanwhile three hundred Mohawk warriors had taken the war-path, bent on killing or kidnapping the Hurons of Orleans. When they heard of the departure of the colonists for Onondaga, their rage was unbounded; for not only were they full of jealousy towards their Onondaga confederates, but they had hitherto derived great profit from the
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettres, 1656. Le Mercier,
Relation, 1657 chap. iv. Chaulmer, Nouveau Monde, II. 265,
322, 319.
control which their local position gave them over the traffic between this tribe and the Dutch of the Hudson, upon whom the Onondagas, in common with all the upper Iroquois, had been dependent for their guns, hatchets, scalping-knives, beads, blankets, and brandy. These supplies would now be furnished by the French, and the Mohawk speculators saw their occupation gone. Nevertheless, they had just made peace with the French, and, for the moment, were not quite in the mood to break it. To wreak their spite, they took a middle course, crouched in ambush among the bushes at Point St. Croix, ten or twelve leagues above Quebec, allowed the boats bearing the French to pass unmolested, and fired a volley at the canoes in the rear, filled with Onondagas, Senecas, and Hurons. Then they fell upon them with a yell, and, after wounding a lay brother of the Jesuits who was among them, flogged and bound such of the Indians as they could seize. The astonished Onondagas protested and threatened; whereupon the Mohawks feigned great surprise, declared that they had mistaken them for Hurons, called them brothers, and suffered the whole party to escape without further injury. *
The three hundred maurauders now paddled their large canoes of elm-bark stealthily down the current, passed Quebec undiscovered in the dark night of the 19th of May, landed in early morning on the island of Orleans, and ambushed
* Compare Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre 14 Aout, 1656, Le
Jeune. Relation, 1657, 9.
themselves to surprise the Hurons as they came to labor in their cornfields. They were tolerably successful, killed six, and captured more than eighty, the rest taking refuge in their fort, where the Mohawks dared not attack them.
At noon, the French on the rock of Quebec saw forty canoes approaching from the island of Orleans, and defiling, with insolent parade, in front of the town, all crowded with the Mohawks and their prisoners, among whom were a great number of Huron girls. Their captors, as they passed, forced them to sing and dance. The Hurons were the allies, or rather the wards of the French, who were in every way pledged to protect them. Yet the cannon of Fort St. Louis were silent, and the crowd stood gaping in bewilderment and fright. Had an attack been made, nothing but a complete success and the capture of many prisoners to serve as hostages could have prevented the enraged Mohawks from taking their revenge on the Onondaga colonists. The emergency demanded a prompt and clear-sighted soldier. The governor, Lauson, was a gray-haired civilian, who, however enterprising as a speculator in wild lands, was in no way matched to the desperate crisis of the hour. Some of the Mohawks landed above and below the town, and plundered the houses from which the scared inhabitants had fled. Not a soldier stirred and not a gun was fired. The French, bullied by a horde of naked savages, became an object of contempt to their own allies.
The Mohawks carried their prisoners home, burned six of them, and adopted or rather enslaved the rest. *
Meanwhile the Onondaga colonists pursued their perilous way. At Montreal they exchanged their heavy boats for canoes, and resumed their journey with a flotilla of twenty of these sylvan vessels. A few days after, the Indians of the party had the satisfaction of pillaging a small band of Mohawk hunters, in vicarious reprisal for their own wrongs. On the 26th of June, as they neared Lake Ontario, they heard a loud and lamentable voice from the edge of the forest; whereupon, having beaten their drum to show that they were Frenchmen, they beheld a spectral figure, lean and covered with scars, which proved to be a pious Huron, one Joachim Ondakout, captured by the Mohawks in their descent on the island of Orleans, five or six weeks before. They had carried him to their village and begun to torture him; after which they tied him fast and lay down to sleep, thinking to resume their pleasure on the morrow. His cuts and burns being only on the surface, he had the good fortune to free himself from his bonds, and, naked as he was, to escape to the woods. He held his course northwestward, through regions even now a wilderness, gathered wild strawberries to sustain life, and, in fifteen days, reached the St. Lawrence, nearly dead with exhaustion. The Frenchmen gave him food and a canoe, and the living skeleton paddled with a light heart for Quebec.
The colonists themselves soon began to suffer
* See Perrot Mœurs des Sauvages, 106.
from hunger. Their fishing failed on Lake Ontario and they were forced to content themselves with cranberries of the last year, gathered in the meadows. Of their Indians, all but five deserted them. The Father Superior fell ill, and when they reached the mouth of the Oswego many of the starving Frenchmen had completely lost heart. Weary and faint, they dragged their canoes up the rapids, when suddenly they were cheered by the sight of a stranger canoe swiftly descending the current. The Onondagas, aware of their approach, had sent it to meet them, laden with Indian corn and fresh salmon. Two more canoes followed, freighted like the first; and now all was abundance till they reached their journey’s end, the Lake of Onondaga. It lay before them in the July sun, a glittering mirror, framed in forest verdure.
They knew that Çhaumonot with a crowd of Indians was awaiting them at a spot on the margin of the water, which he and Dablon had chosen as the site of their settlement. Landing on the strand, they fired, to give notice of their approach, five small cannon which they had brought in their canoes. Waves, woods, and hills resounded with the thunder of their miniature artillery. Then reembarking, they advanced in order, four canoes abreast, towards the destined spot. In front floated their banner of white silk, embroidered in large letters with the name of Jesus. Here were Du Puys and his soldiers, with the picturesque uniforms and quaint weapons of their time; Le Mercier and his Jesuits in robes of black; hunters and bush-rangers; Indians painted and feathered for a festal day. As they neared the place where a spring bubbling from the hillside is still known as the “Jesuits’ Well,” they saw the edge of the forest dark with the muster of savages whose yells of welcome answered the salvo of their guns. Happily for them, a flood of summer rain saved them from the harangues of the Onondaga orators, and forced white men and red alike to seek such shelter as they could find. Their hosts, with hospitable intent, would fain have sung and danced all night; but the Frenchmen pleaded fatigue, and the courteous savages, squatting around their tents, chanted in monotonous tones to lull them to sleep. In the morning they woke refreshed, sang Te Deum, reared an altar, and, with a solemn mass, took possession of the country in the name of Jesus. *
Three things, which they saw or heard of in their new home, excited their astonishment. The first was the vast flight of wild pigeons which in spring darkened the air around the Lake of Onondaga; the second was the salt springs of Salina; the third was the rattlesnakes, which Le Mercier describes with excellent precision, adding that, as he learns from the Indians, their tails are good for toothache and their flesh for fever. These reptiles, for reasons best known to themselves, haunted the neighborhood of the salt-springs, but did not intrude their presence into the abode of the French.
On the 17th of July, Le Mercier and Chamnonot,
* Le Mercier, Relation, 1657, 14.
escorted by a file of soldiers, set out for Onondaga, scarcely five leagues distant. They followed the Indian trail, under the leafy arches of the woods, by hill and hollow, still swamp and gurgling brook, till through the opening foliage they saw the Iroquois capital, compassed with cornfields and girt with its rugged palisade. As the Jesuits, like black spectres, issued from the shadows of the forest, followed by the plumed soldiers with shouldered arquebuses, the red-skinned population swarmed out like bees, and they defiled to the town through gazing and admiring throngs. All conspired to welcome them. Feast followed feast throughout the afternoon, till, what with harangues and songs, bear’s meat, beaver-tails, and venison, beans, corn, and grease, they were wellnigh killed with kindness. “If, after this, they murder us,” writes Le Mercier, “it will be from fickleness, not premeditated treachery.” But the Jesuits, it seems, had not sounded the depths of Iroquois dissimulation. *
There was one exception to the real or pretended joy. Some Mohawks were in the town, and their orator was insolent and sarcastic; but the ready tongue of Chaumonot turned the laugh against him and put him to shame.
Here burned the council fire of the Iroquois, and at this very time the deputies of the five tribes were assembling. The session opened on the 24th.
* The Jesuits were afterwards told by Hurons, captive among
the Mohawks and the Onondagas, that, from the first, it was
intended to massacre the French as soon as their presence
had attracted the remnant of the Hurons of Orleans into the
power of the Onondagas. Lettre du P Ragueneau au R. P.
Provincial, 31 Août, 1658.
In the great council house, on the earthen floor and the broad platforms beneath the smoke-begrimed concave of the bark roof, stood, sat, or squatted, the wisdom and valor of the confederacy; Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; sachems, counsellors, orators, warriors fresh from Erie victories; tall, stalwart figures, limbed like Grecian statues.
The pressing business of the council over, it was Chaumonot’s turn to speak. But, first, all the Frenchmen, kneeling in a row, with clasped hands sang the Veni Creator, amid the silent admiration of the auditors. Then Chaumonot rose, with an immense wampum-belt in his hand.
“It is not trade that brings us here. Do you think that your beaver skins can pay us for all our toils and dangers? Keep them, if you like; or, if any fall into our hands, we shall use them only for your service. We seek not the things that perish. It is for the Faith that we have left our homes to live in your hovels of bark, and eat food which the beasts of our country would scarcely touch. We are the messengers whom God has sent to tell you that his Son became a man for the love of you; that this man, the Son of God, is the prince and master of men; that he has prepared in heaven eternal joys for those who obey him, and kindled the fires of hell for those who will not receive his word. If you reject it, whoever you are,—Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, or Oneida,—know that Jesus Christ, who inspires my heart and my voice, will plunge you one day into hell. Avert this ruin; be not the authors of your own destruction; accept the truth; listen to the voice of the Omnipotent.”
Such, in brief, was the pith of the father’s exhortation. As he spoke Indian like a native, and as his voice and gestures answered to his words, we may believe what Le Mercier tells us, that his hearers listened with mingled wonder, admiration, and terror. The work was well begun. The Jesuits struck while the iron was hot, built a small chapel for the mass, installed themselves in the town, and preached and catechised from morning till night.
The Frenchmen at the lake were not idle. The chosen site of their settlement was the crown of a hill commanding a broad view of waters and forests. The axemen fell to their work, and a ghastly wound soon gaped in the green bosom of the woodland. Here, among the stumps and prostrate trees of the unsightly clearing, the blacksmith built his forge, saw and hammer plied their trade; palisades were shaped and beams squared, in spite of heat, mosquitoes, and fever. At one time twenty men were ill, and lay gasping under a wretched shed of bark; but they all recovered, and the work went on till at length a capacious house, large enough to hold the whole colony, rose above the ruin of the forest. A palisade was set around it, and the Mission of Saint Mary of Gannentaa * was begun.
France and the Faith were intrenched on the Lake of Onondaga. How long would they remain
* Gannentaa or Ganuntaah is still the Iroquois name for
Lake Onondaga. According to Morgan, it means “Material for
Council Fire.”
there? The future alone could tell. The mission, it must not be forgotten, had a double scope, half ecclesiastical, half political. The Jesuits had essayed a fearful task,—to convert the Iroquois to God and to the king, thwart the Dutch heretics of the Hudson, save souls from hell, avert ruin from Canada, and thus raise their order to a place of honor and influence both hard earned and well earned. The mission at Lake Onondaga was but a base of operations. Long before they were lodged and fortified here, Chaumonot and Ménard set out for the Cayugas, whence the former proceeded to the Senecas, the most numerous, and powerful of the five confederate nations; and in the following spring another mission was begun among the Oneidas. Their reception was not unfriendly; but such was the reticence and dissimulation of these inscrutable savages, that it was impossible to foretell results. The women proved, as might be expected, far more impressible than the men; and in them the fathers placed great hope; since in this, the most savage people of the continent, women held a degree of political influence never perhaps equalled in any civilized nation. *
* Women, among the Iroquois, had a council of their own,
which, according to Lafitau, who knew this people well, had
the initiative in discussion, subjects presented by them
being settled in the council of chiefs and elders. In this
latter council the women had an orator, often of their own
sex, to represent them. The matrons had a leading voice in
determining the succession of chiefs. There were also female
chiefs, one of whom, with her attendants, came to Quebec
with an embassy in 1655 (Marie de l’Incarnation). In the
torture of prisoners, great deference was paid to the
judgment of the women, who, says Champlain, were thought
more skilful and subtle than the men.
The learned Lafitau, whose book appeared in 1724, dwells at
length on the resemblance of the Iroquois to the ancient
Lycians, among whom, according to Grecian writers, women
were in the ascendant. “Gynecocracy, or the rule of women,”
continues Lafitau, “which was the foundation of the Lycian
government, was probably common in early times to nearly all
the barbarous people of Greece” Mœurs des Sauvages, I. 460.
But while infants were baptized and squaws converted, the crosses of the mission were many and great. The devil bestirred himself with more than his ordinary activity; “for,” as one of the fathers writes, “when in sundry nations of the earth men are rising up in strife against us (the Jesuits), then how much more the demons, on whom we continually wage war!” It was these infernal sprites, as the priests believed, who engendered suspicions and calumnies in the dark and superstitious minds of the Iroquois, and prompted them in dreams to destroy the apostles of the faith. Whether the foe was of earth or hell, the Jesuits were like those who tread the lava-crust that palpitates with the throes of the coming eruption, while the molten death beneath their feet glares white-hot through a thousand crevices. Yet, with a sublime enthusiasm and a glorious constancy, they toiled and they hoped, though the skies around were black with portent.
In the year in which the colony at Onondaga was begun, the Mohawks murdered the Jesuit Garreau, on his way up the Ottawa. In the following spring, a hundred Mohawk warriors came to Quebec, to carry more of the Hurons into slavery, though the remnant of that unhappy people, since the catastrophe of the last year, had sought safety in a palisaded camp within the limits of the French town, and immediately under the ramparts of Fort St. Louis. Here, one might think, they would have been safe; but Charny, son and successor of Lauson, seems to have been even more imbecile than his father, and listened meekly to the threats of the insolent strangers who told him that unless he abandoned the Hurons to their mercy, both they and the French should feel the weight of Mohawk tomahawks. They demanded further, that the French should give them boats to carry their prisoners; but, as there were none at hand, this last humiliation was spared. The Mohawks were forced to make canoes, in which they carried off as many as possible of their victims.
When the Onondagas learned this last exploit of their rivals, their jealousy knew no bounds, and a troop of them descended to Quebec to claim their share in the human plunder. Deserted by the French, the despairing Hurons abandoned themselves to their fate, and about fifty of those whom the Mohawks had left obeyed the behest of their tyrants and embarked for Onondaga. They reached Montreal in July, and thence proceeded towards their destination in company with the Onondaga warriors. The Jesuit Ragueneau, bound also for Onondaga, joined them. Five leagues above Montreal, the warriors left him behind; but he found an old canoe on the bank, in which, after abandoning most of his baggage, he contrived to follow with two or three Frenchmen who were with him. There was a rumor that a hundred Mohawk warriors were lying in wait among the Thousand Islands, to plunder the Onondagas of their Huron prisoners. It proved a false report. A speedier catastrophe awaited these unfortunates.
Towards evening on the 3d of August, after the party had landed to encamp, an Onondaga chief made advances to a Christian Huron girl, as he had already done at every encampment since leaving Montreal. Being repulsed for the fourth time, he split her head with his tomahawk. It was the beginning of a massacre. The Onondagas rose upon their prisoners, killed seven men, all Christians, before the eyes of the horrified Jesuit, and plundered the rest of all they had. When Ragueneau protested, they told him with insolent mockery that they were acting by direction of the governor and the superior of the Jesuits, The priest himself was secretly warned that he was to be killed during the night; and he was surprised in the morning to find himself alive. * On reaching Onondaga, some of the Christian captives were burned, including several women and their infant children. **
The confederacy was a hornet’s nest, buzzing with preparation, and fast pouring out its wrathful swarms. The indomitable Le Moyne had gone again to the Mohawks, whence he wrote that two hundred of them had taken the war-path against the Algonquins of Canada; and, a little later, that all were gone but women, children, and old men. A great
* Lettre de Ragueneau au R. P. Provincial, 9 Août, 1657
(Rel., 1657).
** Ibid., 21 Août, 1658 (Rel., 1658).
war-party of twelve hundred Iroquois from all the five cantons was to advance into Canada in the direction of the Ottawa. The settlements on the St. Lawrence were infested with prowling warriors, who killed the Indian allies of the French, and plundered the French themselves, whom they treated with an insufferable insolence; for they felt themselves masters of the situation, and knew that the Onondaga colony was in their power. Near Montreal they killed three Frenchmen. “They approach like foxes,” writes a Jesuit, “attack like lions, and disappear like birds.” Charny, fortunately, had resigned the government in despair, in order to turn priest, and the brave soldier Aillebout had taken his place. He caused twelve of the Iroquois to be seized and held as hostages. This seemed to increase their fury. An embassy came to Quebec and demanded the release of the hostages, but were met with a sharp reproof and a flat refusal.
At the mission on Lake Onondaga the crisis was drawing near. The unbridled young warriors, whose capricious lawlessness often set at naught the monitions of their crafty elders, killed wantonly at various times thirteen Christian Hurons, captives at Onondaga. Ominous reports reached the ears of the colonists. They heard of a secret council at which their death was decreed. Again, they heard that they were to be surprised and captured, that the Iroquois in force were then to descend upon Canada, lay waste the outlying settlements, and torture them, the colonists, in sight of their countrymen, by which they hoped to extort what terms they pleased. At length, a dying Onondaga, recently converted and baptized, confirmed the rumors, and revealed the whole plot.
It was to take effect before the spring opened; but the hostages in the hands of Aillebout embarrassed the conspirators and caused delay. Messengers were sent in haste to call in the priests from the detached missions, and all the colonists, fifty-three in number, were soon gathered at their fortified house on the lake. Their situation was frightful. Fate hung over them by a hair, and escape seemed hopeless. Of Du Puys’s ten soldiers, nine wished to desert, but the attempt would have been fatal. A throng of Onondaga warriors were day and night on the watch, bivouacked around the house. Some of them had built their huts of bark before the gate, and here, with calm, impassive faces, they lounged and smoked their pipes; or, wrapped in their blankets, strolled about the yards and outhouses, attentive to all that passed. Their behavior was very friendly. The Jesuits, themselves adepts in dissimulation, were amazed at the depth of their duplicity; for the conviction had been forced upon them that some of the chiefs had nursed their treachery from the first. In this extremity Du Puys and the Jesuits showed an admirable coolness, and among them devised a plan of escape, critical and full of doubt, but not devoid of hope.
First, they must provide means of transportation; next, they must contrive to use them undis covered. They had eight canoes, all of which combined would not hold half their company. Over the mission-house was a large loft or garret, and here the carpenters were secretly set at work to construct two large and light flat-boats, each capable of carrying fifteen men. The task was soon finished. The most difficult part of their plan remained.
There was a beastly superstition prevalent among the Hurons, the Iroquois, and other tribes. It consisted of a “medicine” or mystic feast, in which it was essential that the guests should devour every thing set before them, however inordinate in quantity, unless absolved from duty by the person in whose behalf the solemnity was ordained; he, on his part, taking no share in the banquet. So grave was the obligation, and so strenuously did the guests fulfil it, that even their ostrich digestion was sometimes ruined past redemption by the excess of this benevolent gluttony. These festins à manger tout had been frequently denounced as diabolical by the Jesuits, during their mission among the Hurons; but now, with a pliancy of conscience as excusable in this case as in any other, they resolved to set aside their scruples, although, judged from their point of view, they were exceedingly well founded.
Among the French was a young man who had been adopted by an Iroquois chief, and who spoke the language fluently. He now told his Indian father that it had been revealed to him in a dream that he would soon die unless the spirits were appeased by one of these magic feasts. Dreams were the oracles of the Iroquois, and woe to those who slighted them. A day was named for the sacred festivity. The fathers killed their hogs to meet, the occasion, and, that nothing might be wanting, they ransacked their stores for all that might give piquancy to the entertainment. It took place in the evening of the 20th of March, apparently in a large enclosure outside the palisade surrounding the mission-house. Here, while blazing fires or glaring pine-knots shed their glow on the wild assemblage, Frenchmen and Iroquois joined in the dance, or vied with each other in games of agility and skill. The politic fathers offered prizes to the winners, and the Indians entered with zest into the sport, the better, perhaps, to hide their treachery and hoodwink their intended victims; for they little suspected that a subtlety, deeper this time than their own, was at work to countermine them. Here, too, were the French musicians; and drum, trumpet, and cymbal lent their clangor to the din of shouts and laughter. Thus the evening wore on, till at length the serious labors of the feast began. The kettles were brought in, and their steaming contents ladled into the wooden bowls which each provident guest had brought with him. Seated gravely in a ring, they fell to their work. It was a point of high conscience not to flinch from duty on these solemn occasions; and though they might burn the young man to-morrow, they would gorge themselves like vultures in his behoof to-day.
Meantime, while the musicians strained their lungs and their arms to drown all other sounds, a band of anxious Frenchmen, in the darkness of the cloudy night, with cautious tread and bated breath, carried the boats from the rear of the mission-house down to the border of the lake. It was near eleven o’clock. The miserable guests were choking with repletion. They prayed the young Frenchman to dispense them from further surfeit. “Will you suffer me to die?” he asked, in piteous tones. They bent to their task again, but Nature soon reached her utmost limit; and they sat helpless as a conventicle of gorged turkey-buzzards, without the power possessed by those unseemly birds to rid themselves of the burden. “That will do,” said the young man; “you have eaten enough; my life is saved. Now you can sleep till we come in the morning to waken you for prayers.” * And one of his companions played soft airs on a violin to lull them to repose. Soon all were asleep, or in a lethargy akin to sleep. The few remaining Frenchmen now silently withdrew and cautiously descended to the shore, where their comrades, already embarked, lay on their oars anxiously awaiting them. Snow was falling fast as they pushed out upon the murky waters. The ice of the winter had broken up, but recent frosts had glazed the surface with a thin crust. The two boats led the way, and the canoes followed in their wake, while men in the bows of the foremost boat broke the ice with clubs as they advanced. They reached
* Lettre de Marie de l'Incarnation a son fils, 4 Octobre,
1658.
the outlet and rowed swiftly down the dark current of the Oswego. When day broke, Lake Onondaga was far behind, and around them was the leafless, lifeless forest.
When the Indians woke in the morning, dull and stupefied from their nightmare slumbers, they were astonished at the silence that reigned in the mission-house. They looked through the palisade. Nothing was stirring but a bevy of hens clucking and scratching in the snow, and one or two dogs imprisoned in the house and barking to be set free The Indians waited for some time, then climbed the palisade, burst in the doors, and found the house empty. Their amazement was unbounded. How, without canoes, could the French have escaped by water? and how else could they escape? The snow which had fallen during the night completely hid their footsteps. A superstitious awe seized the Iroquois. They thought that the “black-robes” and their flock had flown off through the air.
Meanwhile the fugitives pushed their flight with the energy of terror, passed in safety the rapids of the Oswego, crossed Lake Ontario, and descended the St. Lawrence with the loss of three men drowned in the rapids. On the 3d of April they reached Montreal, and on the 23d arrived at Quebec. They had saved their lives; but the mission of Onondaga was a miserable failure. *
* On the Onondaga mission, the authorities are Marie de
l'incarnation,
Lettres Historiques, and Relations des Jésuites, 1657 and
1658, where the story is told at length, accompanied with
several interesting letters and journals. Chaumonok in his
Autobiographie, speaks only of the
Seneca mission, and refers to the Relations for the rest.
Dollier de Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal, mentions
the arrival of the fugitives at that place, the sight of
which, he adds complacently, cured them of their fright. The
Journal des Supérieurs des Jésuites chronicles with its
usual brevity the ruin of the mission and the return of the
party to Quebec.
The Jesuits, in their account, say nothing of the
superstitious character of the feast. It is Marie de
l’Incarnation who lets out the secret. The Jesuit
Charlevoix, much to his credit, repeats the story without
reserve.
The Sulpitian ’Allet, in a memoir printed in the Morale
Pratique des Jésuites, says that the French placed effigies
of soldiers, made of straw, in the fort, to deceive the
Indians. He adds that the Jesuits found very little sympathy
at Quebec.
Dauversière.—Mance and Bourgeoys.—Miracle.—A Pious Defaulter.— Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Montreal in 1659.—The Hospital Nuns.—The Nuns and the Iroquois.—More Miracles.—The Murdered Priests.—Brigeac and Closse.—Soldiers of the Holy Family.
On the 2d of July, 1659, the ship “St. André” lay in the harbor of Rochelle, crowded with passengers for Canada. She had served two years as a hospital for marines, and was infected with a contagious fever. Including the crew, some two hundred persons were on board, more than half of whom were bound for Montreal. Most of these were sturdy laborers, artisans, peasants, and soldiers, together with a troop of young women, their present or future partners; a portion of the company set down on the old record as “sixty virtuous men and thirty-two pious girls.” There were two priests also, Vignal and Le Maître, both destined to a speedy death at the hands of the Iroquois. But the most conspicuous among these passengers for Montreal were two groups of women in the habit of nuns, under the direction of Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance. Marguerite Bourgeoys, whose kind, womanly face bespoke her fitness for the task, was foundress of the school for female children at Montreal; her companion, a tall, austere figure, worn with suffering and care, was directress of the hospital. Both had returned to France for aid, and were now on their way back, each with three recruits, three being the mystic number, as a type of the Holy Family, to whose worship they were especially devoted.
Amid the bustle of departure, the shouts of sailors, the rattling of cordage, the flapping of sails, the tears and the embracings, an elderly man, with heavy plebeian features, sallow with disease, and in a sober, half-clerical dress, approached Mademoiselle Mance and her three nuns, and, turning his eyes to heaven, spread his hands over them in benediction. It was Le Boyer de la Dauversière, founder of the sisterhood of St. Joseph, to which the three nuns belonged. “Now, O Lord,” he exclaimed, with the look of one whose mission on earth is fulfilled, “permit thou thy servant to depart in peace!”
Sister Maillet, who had charge of the meagre treasury of the community, thought that something more than a blessing was due from him; and asked where she should apply for payment of the interest of the twenty thousand livres which Mademoiselle Mance had placed in his hands for investment. Dauversière changed countenance, and replied, with a troubled voice: “My daughter, God will provide for you. Place your trust in
Him.” * He was bankrupt, and had used the money of the sisterhood to pay a debt of his own, leaving the nuns penniless.
I have related in another place ** how an association of devotees, inspired, as they supposed, from heaven, had undertaken to found a religious colony at Montreal in honor of the Holy Family. The essentials of the proposed establishment were to be a seminary of priests dedicated to the Virgin, a hospital to Saint Joseph, and a school to the Infant Jesus; while a settlement was to be formed around them simply for their defence and maintenance. This pious purpose had in part been accomplished.
It was seventeen years since Mademoiselle Mance had begun her labors in honor of Saint Joseph. Marguerite Bourgeoys had entered upon hers more recently; yet even then the attempt was premature, for she found no white children to teach. In time, however, this want was supplied, and she opened her school in a stable, which answered to the stable of Bethlehem, lodging with her pupils in the loft, and instructing them in Roman Catholic Christianity, with such rudiments of mundane knowledge as she and her advisers thought fit to impart.
Mademoiselle Mance found no lack of hospital work, for blood and blows were rife at Montreal, where the woods were full of Iroquois, and not a moment was without its peril. Though years
* Faillon, Vie de M’lle Mance, I. 172. This volume is
illustrated with a portrait of Dauversière.
** The Jesuits in North America.
began to tell upon her, she toiled patiently at her dreary task, till, in the winter of 1657, she fell on the ice of the St. Lawrence, broke her right arm, and dislocated the wrist. Bouchard, the surgeon of Montreal, set the broken bones, but did not discover the dislocation. The arm in consequence became totally useless, and her health wasted away under incessant and violent pain. Maisonneuve, the civil and military chief of the settlement, advised her to go to France for assistance in the work to which she was no longer equal; and Marguerite Bourgeoys, whose pupils, white and red, had greatly multiplied, resolved to go with her for a similar object. They set out in September, 1658, landed at Rochelle, and went thence to Paris. Here they repaired to the seminary of St. Sulpice; for the priests of this community were joined with them in the work at Montreal, of which they were afterwards to become the feudal proprietors.
Now ensued a wonderful event, if we may trust the evidence of sundry devout persons. Olier, the founder of St. Sulpice, had lately died, and the two pilgrims would fain pay their homage to his heart, which the priests of his community kept as a precious relic, enclosed in a leaden box. The box was brought, when the thought inspired Mademoiselle Mance to try its miraculous efficacy and invoke the intercession of the departed founder. She did so, touching her disabled arm gently with the leaden casket. Instantly a grateful warmth pervaded the shrivelled limb, and from that hour its use was restored. It is true that the Jesuits ventured to doubt the Sulpitian miracle, and even to ridicule it; but the Sulpitians will show to this day the attestation of Mademoiselle Mance herself, written with the fingers once paralyzed and powerless. * Nevertheless, the cure was not so thorough as to permit her again to take charge of her patients.
Her next care was to visit Madame de Bullion, a devout lady of great wealth, who was usually designated at Montreal as “the unknown benefactress,” because, though her charities were the mainstay of the feeble colony, and though the source from which they proceeded was well known, she affected, in the interest of humility, the greatest secrecy, and required those who profited by her gifts to pretend ignorance whence they came. Overflowing with zeal for the pious enterprise, she received her visitor with enthusiasm, lent an open ear to her recital, responded graciously to her appeal for aid, and paid over to her the sum, munificent at that day, of twenty-two thousand francs. Thus far successful, Mademoiselle Mance repaired to the town of La Flèche to visit Le Royer de la Dauversière.
It was this wretched fanatic who, through visions and revelations, had first conceived the plan of a hospital in honor of Saint Joseph at Montreal. ** He had found in Mademoiselle Mance a zealous and efficient pioneer; but the execution of his scheme required a community of hospital nuns, and
* For an account of this miracle, written in perfect good
faith and supported by various attestations, see Faillon,
Vie de M’lle Mance, chap. iv.
** See The Jesuits in North America.
therefore he had labored for the last eighteen years to form one at La Flèche, meaning to despatch its members in due time to Canada. The time at length was come. Three of the nuns were chosen, Sisters Brésoles, Mace, and Maillet, and sent under the escort of certain pious gentlemen to Rochelle, Their exit from La Flèche was not without its difficulties. Dauversière was in ill odor, not only from the multiplicity of his debts, but because, in his character of agent of the association of Montreal, he had at various times sent thither those whom his biographer describes as "the most virtuous girls to be found at La Flèche,” intoxicating them with religious excitement, and shipping them for the New World against the will of their parents. It was noised through the town that he had kidnapped and sold them; and now the report spread abroad that he was about to crown his iniquity by luring away three young nuns. A mob gathered at the convent gate, and the escort were forced to draw their swords to open a way for the terrified sisters.
Of the twenty-two thousand francs which she had received, Mademoiselle Mance kept two thousand for immediate needs, and confided the rest to the hands of Dauversière, who, hard pressed by his creditors, used it to pay one of his debts; and then, to his horror, found himself unable to replace it. Racked by the gout and tormented by remorse, he betook himself to his bed in a state of body and mind truly pitiable. One of the miracles, so frequent in the early annals of Montreal, was vouchsafed in answer to his prayer, and he was enabled to journey to Rochelle and bid farewell to his nuns. It was but a brief respite; he returned home to become the prey of a host of maladies, and to die at last a lingering and painful death.
While Mademoiselle Mance was gaining recruits in La Flèche, Marguerite Bourgeoys was no less successful in her native town of Troyes, and she rejoined her companions at Rochelle, accompanied by Sisters Châtel, Crolo, and Raisin, her destined assistants in the school at Montreal. Meanwhile, the Sulpitians and others interested in the pious enterprise, had spared no effort to gather men to strengthen the colony, and young women to serve as their wives; and all were now mustered at Rochelle, waiting for embarkation. Their waiting was a long one. Laval, bishop at Quebec, was allied to the Jesuits, and looked on the colonists of Montreal with more than coldness. Sulpitian writers say that his agents used every effort to discourage them, and that certain persons at Rochelle told the master of the ship in which the emigrants were to sail that they were not to be trusted to pay their passage-money. Hereupon ensued a delay of more than two months before means could be found to quiet the scruples of the prudent commander. At length the anchor was weighed, and the dreary voyage begun.
The woe-begone company, crowded in the filthy and infected ship, were tossed for two months more on the relentless sea, buffeted by repeated storms, and wasted by a contagious fever, which attacked nearly all of them and reduced Mademoiselle Mance to extremity. Eight or ten died and were dropped overboard, after a prayer from the two priests. At length land hove in sight; the piny odors of the forest regaled their languid senses as they sailed up the broad estuary of the St. Lawrence and anchored under the rock of Quebec.
High aloft, on the brink of the cliff, they saw the fleur-de-lis waving above the fort of St. Louis, and, beyond, the cross on the tower of the cathedral traced against the sky; the houses of the merchants on the strand below, and boats and canoes drawn up along the bank. The bishop and the Jesuits greeted them as co-workers in a holy cause, with an unction not wholly sincere. Though a unit against heresy, the pious founders of New France were far from unity among themselves. To the thinking of the Jesuits, Montreal was a government within a government, a wheel within a wheel. This rival Sulpitian settlement was, in their eyes, an element of disorganization adverse to the disciplined harmony of the Canadian Church, which they would fain have seen, with its focus at Quebec, radiating light unrefracted to the uttermost parts of the colony. That is to say, they wished to control it unchecked, through their ally, the bishop.
The emigrants, then, were received with a studious courtesy, which veiled but thinly a stiff and persistent opposition. The bishop and the Jesuits were especially anxious to prevent the La Flèche nuns from establishing themselves at Montreal, where they would form a separate community, under Sulpitian influence; and, in place of the newly arrived sisters, they wished to substitute nuns from the Hôtel Dieu of Quebec, who would be under their own control. That which most strikes the non-Catholic reader throughout this affair is the constant reticence and dissimulation practised, not only between Jesuits and Montrealists, but among the Montrealists themselves. Their self-devotion, great as it was, was fairly matched by their disingenuousness. *
All difficulties being overcome, the Montrealists embarked in boats and ascended the St. Lawrence, leaving Quebec infected with the contagion they had brought. The journey now made in a single night cost them fifteen days of hardship and danger. At length they reached their new home. The little settlement lay before them, still gasping betwixt life and death, in a puny, precarious infancy. Some forty small, compact houses were ranged parallel to the river, chiefly along the fine of what is now St. Paul’s Street. On the left there was a fort, and on a rising ground at the right a massive windmill of stone, enclosed with a wall or palisade pierced for musketry, and answering the purpose of a redoubt or block-house. ** Fields, studded with charred and blackened stumps,
* See, for example, chapter iv. of Faillon’s Life of
Mademoiselle Mance. The evidence is unanswerable, the writer
being the partisan and admirer of most of those whose pieuse
tromperie, to use the expression of Dollier de Casson, he
describes in apparent unconsciousness that any body will see
reason to cavil at it.
** Lettre du Vicomte d’Argenson, Gouverneur du Canada, 4
Août, 1659, MS
between which crops were growing, stretched away to the edges of the bordering forest; and the green, shaggy back of the mountain towered over all.
There were at this time a hundred and sixty men at Montreal, about fifty of whom had families, or at least wives. They greeted the new-comers with a welcome which, this time, was as sincere as it was warm, and bestirred themselves with alacrity to provide them with shelter for the winter. As for the three nuns from La Flèche, a chamber was hastily made for them over two low rooms which had served as Mademoiselle Mance’s hospital. This chamber was twenty-five feet square, with four cells for the nuns, and a closet for stores and clothing, which for the present was empty, as they had landed in such destitution that they were forced to sell all their scanty equipment to gain the bare necessaries of existence. Little could be hoped from the colonists, who were scarcely less destitute than they. Such was their poverty,—thanks to Dauversiere’s breach of trust,—that when their clothes were worn out, they were unable to replace them, and were forced to patch them with such material as came to hand. Maisonneuve, the governor, and the pious Madame d’Aillebout, being once on a visit to the hospital, amused themselves with trying to guess of what stuff the habits of the nuns had originally been made, and were unable to agree on the point in question. *
* Annales des Hospitalières de Villemarie, par la Sœur
Morin, a contemporary record, from which Faillon gives long
extracts.
Their chamber, which they occupied for many years, being hastily built of ill-seasoned planks, let in the piercing cold of the Canadian winter through countless cracks and chinks; and the driving snow sifted through in such quantities that they were sometimes obliged, the morning after a storm, to remove it with shovels. Their food would freeze on the table before them, and their coarse brown bread had to be thawed on the hearth before they could cut it. These women had been nurtured in ease, if not in luxury. One of them, Judith de Brésoles, had in her youth, by advice of her confessor, run away from parents who were devoted to her, and immured herself in a convent, leaving them in agonies of doubt as to her fate. She now acted as superior of the little community. One of her nuns records of her that she had a fervent devotion for the Infant Jesus; and that, along with many more spiritual graces, he inspired her with so transcendent a skill in cookery, that “with a small piece of lean pork and a few herbs she could make soup of a marvellous relish.” * Sister Macé was charged with the care of the pigs and hens, to whose wants she attended in person, though she, too, had been delicately bred. In course of time, the sisterhood was increased by additions from without; though more than twenty girls who entered the hospital as novices recoiled from the hardship, and took husbands in the colony. Among
* “C’était par son recours à l’Enfant Jésus qu’elle
trouvait tous ces secrets et d’autres semblables,” writes in
our own day the excellent annalist, Faillon.
a few who took the vows, Sister Jumeau should not pass unnoticed. Such was her humility, that, though of a good family and unable to divest herself of the marks of good breeding, she pretended to be the daughter of a poor peasant, and persisted in repeating the pious falsehood till the merchant Le Ber told her flatly that he did not believe her.
The sisters had great need of a man to do the heavy work of the house and garden, but found no means of hiring one, when an incident, in which they saw a special providence, excellently supplied the want. There was a poor colonist named Jouaneaux to whom a piece of land had been given at some distance from the settlement. Had he built a cabin upon it, his scalp would soon have paid the forfeit; but, being bold and hardy, he devised a plan by which he might hope to sleep in safety without abandoning the farm which was his only possession. Among the stumps of his clearing there was one hollow with age. Under this he dug a sort of cave, the entrance of which was a small hole carefully hidden by brushwood. The hollow stump was easily converted into a chimney; and by creeping into his burrow at night, or when he saw signs of danger, he escaped for some time the notice of the Iroquois. But, though he could dispense with a house, he needed a barn for his hay and corn; and while he was building one, he fell from the ridge of the roof and was seriously hurt. He was carried to the Hôtel Dieu, where the nuns showed him every attention, until, after a long confinement, he at last recovered. Being of a grateful nature and enthusiastically devout, he was so touched by the kindness of his benefactors, and so moved by the spectacle of their piety, that he conceived the wish of devoting his life to their service. To this end a contract was drawn up, by which he pledged himself to work for them as long as strength remained; and they, on their part, agreed to maintain him in sickness or old age.
This stout-hearted retainer proved invaluable; though, had a guard of soldiers been added, it would have been no more than the case demanded. Montreal was not palisaded, and at first the hospital was as much exposed as the rest. The Iroquois would skulk at night among the houses, like wolves in a camp of sleeping travellers on the prairies; though the human foe was, of the two, incomparably the bolder, fiercer, and more bloodthirsty. More than once one of these prowling savages was known to have crouched all night in a rank growth of wild mustard in the garden of the nuns, vainly hoping that one of them would come out within reach of his tomahawk. During summer, a month rarely passed without a fight, sometimes within sight of their windows. A burst of yells from the ambushed marksmen, followed by a clatter of musketry, would announce the opening of the fray, and promise the nuns an addition to their list of patients. On these occasions they bore themselves according to their several natures. Sister Morin, who had joined their number three years after their arrival, relates that Sister Brésoles and she used to run to the belfry and ring the tocsin to call the inhabitants together. “From our high station,” she writes, “we could sometimes see the combat, which terrified us extremely, so that we came down again as soon as we could, trembling with fright, and thinking that our last hour was come. When the tocsin sounded, my Sister Maillet would become faint with excess of fear; and my Sister Macé, as long as the alarm continued, would remain speechless, in a state pitiable to see. They would both get into a corner of the rood-loft, before the Holy Sacrament, so as to be prepared for death; or else go into their cells. As soon as I heard that the Iroquois were gone, I went to tell them, which comforted them and seemed to restore them to life. My Sister Brésoles was stronger and more courageous; her terror, which she could not help, did not prevent her from attending the sick and receiving the dead and wounded who were brought in.”
The priests of St. Sulpice, who had assumed the entire spiritual charge of the settlement, and who were soon to assume its entire temporal charge also, had for some years no other lodging than a room at the hospital, adjoining those of the patients. They caused the building to be fortified with palisades, and the houses of some of the chief inhabitants were placed near it, for mutual defence. They also built two fortified houses, called Ste. Marie and St. Gabriel, at the two extremities of the settlement, and lodged in them a considerable number of armed men, whom they employed in clearing and cultivating the surrounding lands, the property of their community. All other outlying houses were also pierced with loopholes, and fortified as well as the slender means of their owners would permit. The laborers always carried their guns to the field, and often had need to use them. A few incidents will show the state of Montreal and the character of its tenants.
In the autumn of 1657 there was a truce with the Iroquois, under cover of which three or four of them came to the settlement. Nicolas Godé and Jean Saint-Père were on the roof of their house, laying thatch; when one of the visitors aimed his arquebuse at Saint-Père, and brought him to the ground like a wild turkey from a tree. Now ensued a prodigy; for the assassins, having cut off his head and carried it home to their village, were amazed to hear it speak to them in good Iroquois, scold them for their perfidy, and threaten them with the vengeance of Heaven; and they continued to hear its voice of admonition even after scalping it and throwing away the skull. * This story, circulated at Montreal on the alleged authority of the Indians themselves, found believers among the most intelligent men of the colony.
Another miracle, which occurred several years later, deserves to be recorded. Le Maître, one of the two priests who had sailed from France with Mademoiselle Mance and her nuns, being one day at the fortified house of St. Gabriel, went out with the laborers, in order to watch while they were at their work. In view of a possible enemy, he had girded himself with an earthly sword; but seeing no sign of danger, he presently took out his breviary, and, while reciting his office with eyes bent on the page, walked into an ambuscade of Iroquois, who rose before him with a yell.
He shouted to the laborers, and, drawing his sword, faced the whole savage crew, in order, probably, to give the men time to snatch their guns. Afraid to approach, the Iroquois fired and killed him; then rushed upon the working party, who escaped into the house, after losing several of their number. The victors cut off the head of the heroic priest, and tied it in a white handkerchief which they took from a pocket of his cassock. It is said that on reaching their villages they were astonished to find the handkerchief without the slightest stain of blood, but stamped indelibly with the features of its late owner, so plainly marked that none who had known him could fail to recognize them. * This not very original miracle, though it found eager credence at Montreal, was received coolly, like other Montreal miracles, at Quebec; and Sulpitian writers complain that the bishop, in a long letter which he wrote to the Pope, made no mention of it whatever.
Le Maître, on the voyage to Canada, had been accompanied by another priest, Guillaume de Vignal, who met a fate more deplorable than that of his companion, though unattended by any
* This story is told by Sister Morin, Marguerite Bourgeoys,
and Dollier de Casson, on the authority of one Lavigne, then
a prisoner among the Iroquois, who declared that he had seen
the handkerchief the hands of the returning warriors.
recorded miracle. Le Maître had been killed in August. In the October following, Vignal went with thirteen men, in a flat-boat and several canoes, to Isle à la Pierre, nearly opposite Montreal, to get stone for the seminary which the priests had recently begun to build. With him was a pious and valiant gentleman named Claude de Brigeac, who, though but thirty years of age, had come as a soldier to Montreal, in the hope of dying in defence of the true church, and thus reaping the reward of a martyr. Vignal and three or four men had scarcely landed when they were set upon by a large band of Iroquois who lay among the bushes waiting to receive them. The rest of the party, who were still in their boats, with a cowardice rare at Montreal, thought only of saving themselves. Claude de Brigeac alone leaped ashore and ran to aid his comrades. Vignal was soon mortally wounded. Brigeac shot the chief dead with his arquebuse, and then, pistol in hand, held the whole troop for an instant at bay; but his arm was shattered by a gun-shot, and he was seized, along with Vignal, René Cuillérier, and Jacques Dufresne. Crossing to the main shore, immediately opposite Montreal, the Iroquois made, after their custom, a small fort of logs and branches, in which they ensconced themselves, and then began to dress the wounds of their prisoners. Seeing that Vignal was unable to make the journey to their villages, they killed him, divided his flesh, and roasted it for food.
Brigeac and his fellows in misfortune spent a woful night in this den of wolves; and in the morning their captors, having breakfasted on the remains of Vignal, took up their homeward march, dragging the Frenchmen with them. On reaching Oneida, Brigeac was tortured to death with the customary atrocities. Cuillérier, who was present, declared that they could wring from him no cry of pain, but that throughout he ceased not to pray for their conversion. The witness himself expected the same fate, but an old squaw happily adopted him, and thus saved his life. He eventually escaped to Albany, and returned to Canada by the circuitous but comparatively safe route of New York and Boston.
In the following winter, Montreal suffered an irreparable loss in the death of the brave Major Closse, a man whose intrepid coolness was never known to fail in the direst emergency. Going to the aid of a party of laborers attacked by the Iroquois, he was met by a crowd of savages, eager to kill or capture him. His servant ran off. He snapped a pistol at the foremost assailant, but it missed fire. His remaining pistol served him no better, and he was instantly shot down “He died,” writes Dollier de Casson, “like a brave soldier of Christ and the king.” Some of his friends once remonstrating with him on the temerity with which he exposed his life, he replied, “Messieurs, I came here only to die in the service of God; and if I thought I could not die here, I would leave this country to fight the Turks, that I might not be deprived of such a glory.” *
The fortified house of Ste. Marie, belonging to the priests of St. Sulpice, was the scene of several hot and bloody fights. Here, too, occurred the following nocturnal adventure. A man named Lavigne, who had lately returned from captivity among the Iroquois, chancing to rise at night and look out of the window, saw by the bright moon-fight a number of naked warriors stealthily gliding round a corner and crouching near the door, in order to kill the first Frenchman who should go out in the morning. He silently woke his comrades; and, having the rest of the night for consultation, they arranged their plan so well, that some of them, sallying from the rear of the house, came cautiously round upon the Iroquois, placed them between two fires, and captured them all.
The summer of 1661 was marked by a series of calamities scarcely paralleled even in the annals of this disastrous epoch. Early in February, thirteen colonists were surprised and captured; next came a fight between a large band of laborers and two hundred and sixty Iroquois; in the following month, ten more Frenchmen were killed or taken; and thenceforth, till winter closed, the settlement had scarcely a breathing space. “These hobgoblins,” writes the author of the Relation of this year, “sometimes appeared at the edge of the woods, assailing us with abuse; sometimes they glided stealthily into the midst of the fields, to surprise the men at work; sometimes they approached the houses, harassing us without ceasing, and, like importunate harpies or birds of prey, swooping down on us whenever they could take us unawares.”
Speaking of the disasters of this year, the soldier-priest, Dollier de Casson, writes: “God, who afflicts the body only for the good of the soul, made a marvellous use of these calamities and terrors to hold the people firm in their duty towards Heaven. Vice was then almost unknown here, and in the midst of war religion flourished on all sides in a manner very different from what we now see in time of peace.”
The war was, in fact, a war of religion. The small redoubts of logs, scattered about the skirts of the settlement to serve as points of defence in case of attack, bore the names of saints, to whose care they were commended. There was one placed under a higher protection and called the Redoubt of the Infant Jesus. Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the pious and valiant governor of Montreal, to whom its successful defence is largely due, resolved, in view of the increasing fury and persistency of the Iroquois attacks, to form among the inhabitants a military fraternity, to be called “Soldiers of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph;” and to this end he issued a proclamation, of which the following is the characteristic beginning:—
“We, Paul de Chomedey, governor of the island of Montreal and lands thereon dependent, on information given us from divers quarters that the Iroquois have formed the design of seizing upon this settlement by surprise or force, have thought it our duty, seeing that this island is the property of the Holy Virgin, * to invite and exhort those zealous for her service to unite together by squads, each of seven persons; and after choosing a corporal by a plurality of voices, to report themselves to us for enrolment in our garrison, and, in this capacity, to obey our orders, to the end that the country may be saved.”
Twenty squads, numbering in all one hundred and forty men, whose names, appended to the proclamation, may still be seen on the ancient records of Montreal, answered the appeal and enrolled themselves in the holy cause.
The whole settlement was in a state of religious exaltation. As the Iroquois were regarded as actual myrmidons of Satan in his malign warfare against Mary and her divine Son, those who died in fighting them were held to merit the reward of martyrs, assured of a seat in paradise.
And now it remains to record one of the most heroic feats of arms ever achieved on this continent. That it may be rated as it merits, it will be well to glance for a moment at the condition of Canada, under the portentous cloud of war which constantly overshadowed it. **
* This is no figure of speech. The Associates of Montreal,
after receiving a grant of the island from Jean de Lauson,
placed it under the protection of the Virgin, and formally
declared her to be the proprietor of it from that day forth
for ever.
** In all that relates to Montreal, I cannot be
sufficiently grateful to the Abbé Faillon, the
indefatigable, patient, conscientious chronicler of its
early history; an ardent and prejudiced Sulpitian, a priest
who three centuries ago would have passed for credulous,
and, withal, a kind-hearted and estimable man. His numerous
books on his favorite theme, with the vast and heterogeneous
mass of facts which they embody, are invaluable, provided
their partisan character be well kept in mind. His recent
death leaves his principal work unfinished. His Histoire de
la Colonie Française en Canada—it might more fitly be
called Histoire du Montréal—is unhappily little more than
half complete.
Suffering and Terror.—Francois Hertel.—The Captive Wolf—The threatened Invasion.—Daulac des Ormeaux.—The Adventurers at the Long Saut.—The Attack.—A Desperate Defence.—A Final Assault.—The Fort taken.
Canada had writhed for twenty years, with little respite, under the scourge of Iroquois war. During a great part of this dark period the entire French population was less than three thousand. What, then, saved them from destruction? In the first place, the settlements were grouped around three fortified posts, Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, which in time of danger gave asylum to the fugitive inhabitants. Again, their assailants were continually distracted by other wars, and never, except at a few spasmodic intervals, were fully in earnest to destroy the French colony. Canada was indispensable to them. The four upper nations of the league soon became dependent on her for supplies; and all the nations alike appear, at a very early period, to have conceived the policy on which they afterwards distinctly acted, of balancing the rival settlements of the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, the one against the other. They would torture, but not kill. It was but rarely that, in fits of fury, they struck their hatchets at the brain; and thus the bleeding and gasping colony fingered on in torment.
The seneschal of New France, son of the governor Lauson, was surprised and killed on the island of Orleans, along with seven companions. About the same time, the same fate befell the son of Godefroy, one of the chief inhabitants of Quebec. Outside the fortifications there was no safety for a moment. A universal terror seized the people. A comet appeared above Quebec, and they saw in it a herald of destruction. Their excited imaginations turned natural phenomena into portents and prodigies. A blazing canoe sailed across the sky; confused cries and lamentations were heard in the air; and a voice of thunder sounded from mid-heaven. * The Jesuits despaired for their scattered and persecuted flocks. “Everywhere,” writes their superior, “we see infants to be saved for heaven, sick and dying to be baptized, adults to be instructed, but everywhere we see the Iroquois. They haunt us like persecuting goblins. They kill our new-made Christians in our arms. If they meet us on the river, they kill us. If they find us in the huts of our Indians, they burn us and them together.” ** And he appeals urgently for troops to destroy them, as a holy work inspired by God, and needful for his service.
Canada was still a mission, and the influence of
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, Sept., 1661.
** Relation, 1660 (anonymous), 3.
the church was paramount and pervading. At Quebec, as at Montreal, the war with the Iroquois was regarded as a war with the hosts of Satan. Of the settlers’ cabins scattered along the shores above and below Quebec, many were provided with small iron cannon, made probably by blacksmiths in the colony; but they had also other protectors. In each was an image of the Virgin or some patron saint, and every morning the pious settler knelt before the shrine to beg the protection of a celestial hand in his perilous labors of the forest or the farm.
When, in the summer of 1658, the young Vicomte d’Argenson came to assume the thankless task of governing the colony, the Iroquois war was at its height. On the day after his arrival, he was washing his hands before seating himself at dinner in the hall of the Chateau St. Louis, when cries of alarm were heard, and he was told that the Iroquois were close at hand. In fact, they were so near that their war-whoops and the screams of their victims could plainly be heard. Argenson left his guests, and, with such a following as he could muster at the moment, hastened to the rescue; but the assailants were too nimble for him. The forests, which grew at that time around Quebec, favored them both in attack and in retreat. After a year or two of experience, he wrote urgently to the court for troops. He adds that, what with the demands of the harvest, and the unmilitary character of many of the settlers, the colony could not furnish more than a hundred men for offensive operations. A vigorous aggressive war, he insists, is absolutely necessary, and this not only to save the colony, but to save the only true faith; “for,” to borrow his own words, “it is this colony alone which has the honor to be in the communion of the Holy Church. Everywhere else reigns the doctrine of England or Holland, to which I can give no other name, because there are as many creeds as there are subjects who embrace them. They do not care in the least whether the Iroquois and the other savages of this country have or have not a knowledge of the true God, or else they are so malicious as to inject the venom of their errors into souls incapable of distinguishing the truth of the gospel from the falsehoods of heresy; and hence it is plain that religion has its sole support in the French colony, and that, if this colony is in danger, religion is equally in danger.” *
Among the most interesting memorials of the time are two letters, written by François Hertel, a youth of eighteen, captured at Three Rivers, and carried to the Mohawk towns in the summer of 1661. He belonged to one of the best families of Canada, and was the favorite child of his mother, to whom the second of the two letters is addressed. The first is to the Jesuit Le Moyne, who had gone to Onondaga, in July of that year, to effect the release of French prisoners in accordance with the terms of a truce. ** Both letters were written on birch bark:—
* Papiers d’Argenson; Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre des
Iroquois, 1659 (1660?). MS.
** Journal des Jésuites, 300.
My Reverend Father:—The very day when you left Three Rivers I was captured, at about three in the afternoon, by four Iroquois of the Mohawk tribe. I would not have been taken alive, if, to my sorrow, I had not feared that I was not in a fit state to die. If you came here, my Father, I could have the happiness of confessing to you; and I do not think they would do you any harm; and I think that I could return home with you. I pray you to pity my poor mother, who is in great trouble. You know, my Father, how fond she is of me. I have heard from a Frenchman, who was taken at Three Rivers on the 1st of August, that she is well, and comforts herself with the hope that I shall see you. There are three of us Frenchmen alive here. I commend myself to your good prayers, and particularly to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I pray you, my Father, to say a mass for me. I pray you give my dutiful love to my poor mother, and console her, if it pleases you.
My Father, I beg your blessing on the hand that writes to you, which has one of the fingers burned in the bowl of an Indian pipe, to satisfy the Majesty of God which I have offended. The thumb of the other hand is cut off; but do not tell my mother of it.
My Father, I pray you to honor me with a word from your hand in reply, and tell me if you shall come here before winter.
Your most humble and most obedient servant,
François Hertel.
The following is the letter to his mother, sent probably, with the other, to the charge of Le Moyne:—
My most dear and honored Mother:—I know very well that my capture must have distressed you very much I ask you to forgive my disobedience. It is my sins that have placed me where I am. I owe my life to your prayers, and those of M. de Saint-Quentin, and of my sisters. I hope to see you again before winter. I pray you to tell the good brethren of Notre Dame to pray to God and the Holy Virgin for me, my dear mother, and for you and all my sisters.
Your poor
Fanchon
This, no doubt, was the name by which she had called him familiarly when a child. And who was this “Fanchon,” this devout and tender son of a fond mother? New England can answer to her cost. When, twenty-nine years later, a band of French and Indians issued from the forest and fell upon the fort and settlement of Salmon Falls, it was François Hertel who led the attack; and when the retiring victors were hard pressed by an overwhelming force, it was he who, sword in hand, held the pursuers in check at the bridge of Wooster River, and covered the retreat of his men. He was ennobled for his services, and died at the age of eighty, the founder of one of the most distinguished families of Canada. * To the New England of old he was the abhorred chief of Popish malignants and murdering savages. The New England of to-day will be more just to the brave defender of his country and his faith.
In May, 1660, a party of French Algonquins captured a Wolf, or Mohegan, Indian, naturalized among the Iroquois, brought him to Quebec, and burned him there with their usual atrocity of torture. A modern Catholic writer says that the Jesuits could not save him; but this is not so. Their influence over the consciences of the colonists
* His letters of nobility, dated 1716, will be found in
Daniel's Histoire des Grandes Familles Françaises du Canada,
404.
was at that time unbounded, and their direct political power was very great. A protest on their part, and that of the newly arrived bishop, who was in their interest, could not have failed of effect. The truth was, they did not care to prevent the torture of prisoners of war, not solely out of that spirit of compliance with the savage humor of Indian allies which stains so often the pages of French American history, but also, and perhaps chiefly, from motives purely religious. Torture, in their eyes, seems to have been a blessing in disguise. They thought it good for the soul, and in case of obduracy the surest way of salvation. “We have very rarely indeed,” writes one of them, “seen the burning of an Iroquois without feeling sure that he was on the path to Paradise; and we never knew one of them to be surely on the path to Paradise without seeing him pass through this fiery punishment.” * So they let the Wolf burn; but first, having instructed him after their fashion, they baptized him, and his savage soul flew to heaven out of the fire. "Is it not,” pursues the same writer, “a marvel to see a wolf changed at one stroke into a lamb, and enter into the fold of Christ, which he came to ravage?”
Before he died he requited their spiritual cares with a startling secret. He told them that eight hundred Iroquois warriors were encamped below Montreal; that four hundred more, who had wintered on the Ottawa, were on the point of joining them; and that the united force would swoop upon
* Relation, 1660, 31.
Quebec, kill the governor, lay waste the town, and then attack Three Rivers and Montreal. * This time, at least, the Iroquois were in deadly earnest. Quebec was wild with terror. The Ursulines and the nuns of the Hôtel Dieu took refuge in the strong and extensive building which the Jesuits had just finished, opposite the Parish Church. Its walls and palisades made it easy of defence; and in its yards and court were lodged the terrified Hurons, as well as the fugitive inhabitants of the neighboring settlements. Others found asylum in the fort, and others in the convent of the Ursulines, which, in place of nuns, was occupied by twenty-four soldiers, who fortified it with redoubts, and barricaded the doors and windows. Similar measures of defence were taken at the Hôtel Dieu, and the streets of the Lower Town were strongly barricaded. Everybody was in arms, and the Qui vive of the sentries and patrols resounded all night. **
Several days passed, and no Iroquois appeared. The refugees took heart, and began to return to their deserted farms and dwellings. Among the rest was a family consisting of an old woman, her daughter, her son-in-law, and four small children, living near St. Anne, some twenty miles below Quebec. On reaching home the old woman and the man went to their work in the fields, while the mother and children remained in the house.
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, 26 Juin, 1660.
** On this alarm at Quebec compare Marie de l’Incarnation,
25 Juin, 1660; Relation, 1660, 5; Juchereau, Histoire de
l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 126 and Journal des Jésuites 282.
Here they were pounced upon and captured by eight renegade Hurons, Iroquois by adoption, who placed them in their large canoe, and paddled up the river with their prize. It was Saturday, a day dedicated to the Virgin; and the captive mother prayed to her for aid, “feeling,” writes a Jesuit, “a full conviction that, in passing before Quebec on a Saturday, she would be delivered by the power of this Queen of Heaven.” In fact, as the marauders and their captives glided in the darkness of night by Point Levi, under the shadow of the shore, they were greeted with a volley of musketry from the bushes, and a band of French and Algonquins dashed into the water to seize them. Five of the eight were taken, and the rest shot or drowned. The governor had heard of the descent at St. Anne, and despatched a party to lie in ambush for the authors of it. The Jesuits, it is needless to say, saw a miracle in the result. The Virgin had answered the prayer of her votary. “Though it is true,” observes the father who records the marvel, “that, in the volley, she received a mortal wound.” The same shot struck the infant in her arms. The prisoners were taken to Quebec, where four of them were tortured with even more ferocity than had been shown in the case of the unfortunate Wolf. * Being questioned, they confirmed his story,
* The torturers were Christian Algonquins, converts of the
Jesuits. Chaumonot, who was present to give spiritual aid to
the sufferers, describes the scene with horrible minuteness.
“I could not,” he says, “deliver them from their torments.”
Perhaps not: but it is certain that the Jesuits as a body,
with or without the bishop, could have prevented the
atrocity, had they seen fit. They sometimes taught their
converts to pray for their enemies. It would have been well
had they taught them not to torture them. I can recall but
one instance in which they did so. The prayers for enemies
were always for a spiritual, not a temporal good. The
fathers held the body in slight account and cared little
what happened to it.
and expressed great surprise that the Iroquois had not come, adding that they must have stopped to attack Montreal or Three Rivers. Again all was terror, and again days passed and no enemy appeared. Had the dying converts, so charitably despatched to heaven through fire, sought an unhallowed consolation in scaring the abettors of their torture with a lie? Not at all. Bating a slight exaggeration, they had told the truth. Where, then, were the Iroquois? As one small point of steel disarms the lightning of its terrors, so did the heroism of a few intrepid youths divert this storm of war and save Canada from a possible ruin.
In the preceding April, before the designs of the Iroquois were known, a young officer named Daulac, commandant of the garrison of Montreal, asked leave of Maisonneuve, the governor, to lead a party of volunteers against the enemy. His plan was bold to desperation. It was known that Iroquois warriors in great numbers had wintered among the forests of the Ottawa. Daulac proposed to waylay them on their descent of the river, and fight them without regard to disparity of force. The settlers of Montreal had hitherto acted solely on the defensive, for their numbers had been too small for aggressive war. Of late their strength had been somewhat increased, and Maisonneuve, judging that a display of enterprise and boldness might act as a check on the audacity of the enemy, at length gave his consent.
Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, was a young man of good family, who had come to the colony three years before, at the age of twenty-two. He had held some military command in France, though in what rank does not appear. It was said that he had been involved in some affair which made him anxious to wipe out the memory of the past by a noteworthy exploit; and he had been busy for some time among the young men of Montreal, inviting them to join him in the enterprise he meditated. Sixteen of them caught his spirit, struck hands with him, and pledged their word. They bound themselves by oath to accept no quarter; and, having gained Maisonneuve’s consent, they made their wills, confessed, and received the sacraments. As they knelt for the last time before the altar in the chapel of the Hôtel Dieu, that sturdy little population of pious Indian-fighters gazed on them with enthusiasm, not unmixed with an envy which had in it nothing ignoble. Some of the chief men of Montreal, with the brave Charles Le Moyne at their head, begged them to wait till the spring sowing was over, that they might join them; but Daulac refused. He was jealous of the glory and the danger, and he wished to command, which he could not have done had Le Moyne been present.
The spirit of the enterprise was purely mediaeval. The enthusiasm of honor, the enthusiasm of adventure, and the enthusiasm of faith, were its motive forces. Danlac was a knight of the early crusades among the forests and savages of the New World. Yet the incidents of this exotic heroism are definite and clear as a tale of yesterday. The names, ages, and occupations of the seventeen young men may still be read on the ancient register of the parish of Montreal; and the notarial acts of that year, preserved in the records of the city, contain minute accounts of such property as each of them possessed. The three eldest were of twenty-eight, thirty, and thirty-one years respectively. The age of the rest varied from twenty-one to twenty-seven. They were of various callings,—soldiers, armorers, locksmiths, lime-burners, or settlers without trades. The greater number had come to the colony as part of the reinforcement brought by Maisonneuve in 1653.
After a solemn farewell they embarked in several canoes well supplied with arms and ammunition. They were very indifferent canoe-men; and it is said that they lost a week in vain attempts to pass the swift current of St. Anne, at the head of the island of Montreal. At length they were more successful, and entering the mouth of the Ottawa, crossed the Lake of Two Mountains, and slowly advanced against the current.
Meanwhile, forty warriors of that remnant of the Hurons who, in spite of Iroquois persecutions, still lingered at Quebec, had set out on a war-party, led by the brave and wily Etienne Annahotaha, their most noted chief. They stopped by the way at Three Rivers, where they found a band of Christian
Algonquins under a chief named Mituvemeg An'nahotaha challenged him to a trial of courage, and it was agreed that they should meet at Montreal, where they were likely to find a speedy opportunity of putting their mettle to the test. Thither, accordingly, they repaired, the Algonquin with three followers, and the Huron with thirty-nine.
It was not long before they learned the departure of Daulac and his companions. “For,” observes the honest Dollier de Casson, “the principal fault of our Frenchmen is to talk too much.” The wish seized them to share the adventure, and to that end the Huron chief asked the governor for a letter to Daulac, to serve as credentials. Maisonneuve hesitated. His faith in Huron valor was not great, and he feared the proposed alliance. Nevertheless, he at length yielded so far as to give Annahotaha a letter in which Daulac was told to accept or reject the proffered reinforcement as he should see fit. The Hurons and Algonquins now embarked and paddled in pursuit of the seventeen Frenchmen.
They meanwhile had passed with difficulty the swift current at Carillon, and about the first of May reached the foot of the more formidable rapid called the Long Saut, where a tumult of waters, foaming among ledges and boulders, barred the onward way. It was needless to go farther. The Iroquois were sure to pass the Saut, and could be fought here as well as elsewhere. Just below the rapid, where the forests sloped gently to the shore, among the bushes and stumps of the rough clearing made in constructing it, stood a palisade fort, the work of an Algonquin war-party in the past autumn. It was a mere enclosure of trunks of small trees planted in a circle, and was already ruinous. Such as it was, the Frenchmen took possession of it. Their first care, one would think, should have been to repair and strengthen it; but this they seem not to have done: possibly, in the exaltation of their minds, they scorned such precaution. They made their fires, and slung their kettles on the neighboring shore; and here they were soon joined by the Hurons and Algonquins. Daulac, it seems, made no objection to their company, and they all bivouacked together. Morning and noon and night they prayed in three different tongues; and when at sunset the long reach of forests on the farther shore basked peacefully in the level rays, the rapids joined their hoarse music to the notes of their evening hymn.
In a day or two their scouts came in with tidings that two Iroquois canoes were coming down the Saut. Daulac had time to set his men in ambush among the bushes at a point where he thought the strangers likely to land. He judged aright. The canoes, bearing five Iroquois, approached, and were met by a volley fired with such precipitation that one or more of them escaped the shot, fled into the forest, and told their mischance to their main body, two hundred in number, on the river above. A fleet of canoes suddenly appeared, bounding down the rapids, filled with warriors eager for revenge. The allies had barely time to escape to their fort, leaving their kettles still slung over the fires. The Iroquois made a hasty and desultory attack, and were quickly repulsed. They next opened a parley, hoping, no doubt, to gain some advantage by surprise. Failing in this, they set themselves, after their custom on such occasions, to building a rude fort of their own in the neighboring forest.
This gave the French a breathing-time, and they used it for strengthening their defences. Being provided with tools, they planted a row of stakes within their palisade, to form a double fence, and filled the intervening space with earth and stones to the height of a man, leaving some twenty loopholes, at each of which three marksmen were stationed. Their work was still unfinished when the Iroquois were upon them again. They had broken to pieces the birch canoes of the French and their allies, and, kindling the bark, rushed up to pile it blazing against the palisade; but so brisk and steady a fire met them that they recoiled and at last gave way. They came on again, and again were driven back, leaving many of their number on the ground, among them the principal chief of the Senecas. Some of the French dashed out, and, covered by the fire of their comrades, hacked off his head, and stuck it on the palisade, while the Iroquois howled in a frenzy of helpless rage. They tried another attack, and were beaten off a third time.
This dashed their spirits, and they sent a canoe to call to their aid five hundred of their warriors who were mustered near the mouth of the Richelieu. These were the allies whom, but for this untoward check, they were on their way to join for a com bined attack on Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. It was maddening to see their grand project thwarted by a few French and Indians ensconced in a paltry redoubt, scarcely better than a cattle-pen; but they were forced to digest the affront as best they might.
Meanwhile, crouched behind trees and logs, they beset the fort, harassing its defenders day and night with a spattering fire and a constant menace of attack. Thus five days passed. Hunger, thirst, and want of sleep wrought fatally on the strength of the French and their allies, who, pent up together in their narrow prison, fought and prayed by turns. Deprived as they were of water, they could not swallow the crushed Indian corn, or “hominy,” which was their only food. Some of them, under cover of a brisk fire, ran down to the river and filled such small vessels as they had; but this pittance only tantalized their thirst. They dug a hole in the fort, and were rewarded at last by a little muddy water oozing through the clay.
Among the assailants were a number of Hurons, adopted by the Iroquois and fighting on their side. These renegades now shouted to their countrymen in the fort, telling them that a fresh army was close at hand; that they would soon be attacked by seven or eight hundred warriors; and that their only hope was in joining the Iroquois, who would receive them as friends. Annahotaha’s followers, half dead with thirst and famine, listened to their seducers, took the bait, and, one, two, or three at a time, climbed the palisade and ran over to the enemy, amid the hootings and execrations of those whom they deserted. Their chief stood firm; and when he saw his nephew, La Mouche, join the other fugitives, he fired his pistol at him in a rage. The four Algonquins, who had no mercy to hope for, stood fast, with the courage of despair.
On the fifth day an uproar of unearthly yells from seven hundred savage throats, mingled with a clattering salute of musketry, told the Frenchmen that the expected reinforcement had come; and soon, in the forest and on the clearing, a crowd of warriors mustered for the attack. Knowing from the Huron deserters the weakness of their enemy, they had no doubt of an easy victory. They advanced cautiously, as was usual with the Iroquois before their blood was up, screeching, leaping from side to side, and firing as they came on; but the French were at their posts, and every loophole darted its tongue of fire. Besides muskets, they had heavy musketoons of large calibre, which, scattering scraps of lead and iron among the throng of savages, often maimed several of them at one discharge. The Iroquois, astonished at the persistent vigor of the defence, fell back discomfited. The fire of the French, who were themselves completely under cover, had told upon them with deadly effect. Three days more wore away in a series of futile attacks, made with little concert or vigor; and during all this time Daulac and his men, reeling with exhaustion, fought and prayed as before, sure of a martyr’s reward.
The uncertain, vacillating temper common to all Indians now began to declare itself. Some of the Iroquois were for going home. Others revolted at the thought, and declared that it would be an eternal disgrace to lose so many men at the hands of so paltry an enemy, and yet fail to take revenge. It was resolved to make a general assault, and volunteers were called for to lead the attack. After the custom on such occasions, bundles of small sticks were thrown upon the ground, and those picked them up who dared, thus accepting the gage of battle, and enrolling themselves in the forlorn hope. No precaution was neglected. Large and heavy shields four or five feet high were made by lashing together three split logs with the aid of cross-bars. Covering themselves with these mantelets, the chosen band advanced, followed by the motley throng of warriors. In spite of a brisk fire, they reached the palisade, and, crouching below the range of shot, hewed furiously with their hatchets to cut their way through. The rest followed close, and swarmed like angry hornets around the little fort, hacking and tearing to get in.
Daulac had crammed a large musketoon with powder, and plugged up the muzzle. Lighting the fuse inserted in it, he tried to throw it over the barrier, to burst like a grenade among the crowd of savages without; but it struck the ragged top of one of the palisades, fell back among the Frenchmen and exploded, killing and wounding several of them, and nearly blinding others. In the confusion that followed, the Iroquois got possession of the loopholes, and, thrusting in their guns, fired on those within. In a moment more they had torn a breach in the palisade; but, nerved with the energy of desperation, Daulac and his followers sprang to defend it. Another breach was made, and then another. Daulac was struck dead, but the survivors kept up the fight. With a sword or a hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other, they threw themselves against the throng of enemies, striking and stabbing with the fury of madmen; till the Iroquois, despairing of taking them alive, fired volley after volley and shot them down. All was over, and a burst of triumphant yells proclaimed the dear-bought victory.
Searching the pile of corpses, the victors found four Frenchmen still breathing. Three had scarcely a spark of life, and, as no time was to be lost, they burned them on the spot. The fourth, less fortunate, seemed likely to survive, and they reserved him for future torments. As for the Huron deserters, their cowardice profited them little. The Iroquois, regardless of their promises, fell upon them, burned some at once, and carried the rest to their villages for a similar fate. Five of the number had the good fortune to escape, and it was from them, aided by admissions made long afterwards by the Iroquois themselves, that the French of Canada derived all their knowledge of this glorious disaster. *
* When the fugitive Hurons reached Montreal, they were
unwilling to confess their desertion of the French, and
declared that they and some others of their people, to the
number of fourteen, had stood by them to the last. This was
the story told by one of them to the Jesuit Chaumonot, and
by him communicated in a letter to his friends at Quebec The
substance of this letter is given by Marie de l’Incarnation,
in her letter to her son of June 25, 1660. The Jesuit
Relation of this year gives another long account of the
affair, also derived from the Huron deserters, who this time
only pretended that ten of their number remained with the
French. They afterwards admitted that all had deserted but
Annaliotaha, as appears from the account drawn up by Dollier
de Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal. Another
contemporary, Belmont, who heard the story from an Iroquois,
makes the same statement. All these writers, though two of
them were not friendly to Montreal, agree that Daulac and
his followers saved Canada from a disastrous invasion. The
governor, Argenson, in a letter written on the fourth of
July following, and in his Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre
des Iroquois, expresses the same conviction. Before me is an
extract, copied from the Petit Registre de la Cure de
Montréal, giving the names and ages of Daulac’s men. The
Abbé Faillon took extraordinary pains to collect all the
evidence touching this affair. See his Histoire de la
Colonie Française, II. chap. xv. Charlevoix, very little to
his credit, passes it over in silence, not being partial to
Montreal.
To the colony it proved a salvation. The Iroquois had had fighting enough. If seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron, behind a picket fence, could hold seven hundred warriors at bay so long, what might they expect from many such, fighting behind walls of stone? For that year they thought no more of capturing Quebec and Montreal, but went home dejected and amazed, to howl over their losses, and nurse their dashed courage for a day of vengeance.
Domestic Strife.—Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Abbé Queylus.—Francois de Laval.—The Zealots of Caen.—Gallican and Ultramontane.—The Rival Claimants.—Storm at Quebec—Laval Triumphant.
Canada, gasping under the Iroquois tomahawk, might, one would suppose, have thought her cup of tribulation full, and, sated with inevitable woe, have sought consolation from the wrath without in a holy calm within. Not so, however; for while the heathen raged at the door, discord rioted at the hearthstone. Her domestic quarrels were wonderful in number, diversity, and bitterness. There was the standing quarrel of Montreal and Quebec, the quarrels of priests with each other, of priests with the governor, and of the governor with the intendant, besides ceaseless wranglings of rival traders and rival peculators.
Some of these disputes were local and of no special significance; while others are very interesting, because, on a remote and obscure theatre, they represent, sometimes in striking forms, the contending passions and principles of a most important epoch of history. To begin with one which even to this day has left a root of bitterness behind it.
The association of pious enthusiasts who had founded Montreal * was reduced in 1657 to a remnant of five or six persons, whose ebbing zeal and overtaxed purses were no longer equal to the devout but arduous enterprise. They begged the priests of the Seminary of St. Sulpice to take it off their hands. The priests consented; and, though the conveyance of the island of Montreal to these its new proprietors did not take effect till some years later, four of the Sulpitian fathers, Queylus, Souart, Galinée, and Allet, came out to the colony and took it in charge. Thus far Canada had had no bishop, and the Sulpitians now aspired to give it one from their own brotherhood. Many years before, when the Recollets had a foothold in the colony, they too, or at least some of them, had cherished the hope of giving Canada a bishop of their own. ** As for the Jesuits, who for nearly thirty years had of themselves constituted the Canadian church, they had been content thus far to dispense with a bishop; for, having no rivals in the field, they had felt no need of episcopal support.
The Sulpitians put forward Queylus as their candidate for the new bishopric. The assembly of French clergy approved, and Cardinal Mazarin
* See Jesuits in North America, chap. xv.
** Mémoire qui faiet pour l’affaire des P.P. Recollects de
la province de St Denys ditte de Paris touchant le droigt
qu’ils ont depuis l’an 1615, d’aller en Quanada soubs
l’authorité de Sa Maiesté, etc. 1637.
himself seemed to sanction, the nomination. The Jesuits saw that their time of action was come. It was they who had borne the heat and burden of the day, the toils, privations, and martyrdoms, while as yet the Sulpitians had done nothing and endured nothing. If any body of ecclesiastics was to have the nomination of a bishop, it clearly belonged to them, the Jesuits. Their might, too, matched their right. They were strong at court; Mazarin withdrew his assent, and the Jesuits were invited to name a bishop to their liking.
Meanwhile the Sulpitians, despairing of the bishopric, had sought their solace elsewhere. Ships bound for Canada had usually sailed from ports within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen, and the departing missionaries had received their ecclesiastical powers from him, till he had learned to regard Canada as an outlying section of his diocese. Not unwilling to assert his claims, he now made Queylus his vicar-general for all Canada, thus clothing him with episcopal powers, and placing him over the heads of the Jesuits. Queylus, in effect, though not in name, a bishop, left his companion Souart in the spiritual charge of Montreal, came down to Quebec, announced his new dignity, and assumed the curacy of the parish. The Jesuits received him at first with their usual urbanity, an exercise of self-control rendered more easy by their knowledge that one more potent than Queylus would soon arrive to supplant him. *
* A detailed account of the experiences of Queylus at
Quebec, immediately after his arrival, as related by
himself, will be found in a memoir by the Sulpitian Allet,
in Morale Pratique des Jésuites, XXXIV. chap, xii. In
chapter ten of the same volume the writer says that he
visited Queylus at Mont St. Valérien, after his return from
Canada. “II me prit à part; nous nous promenâmes assez
longtemps dans le jardin et il m’ouvrit son cœur sur la
conduite des Je'suites dans le Canada et partout ailleurs
Messieurs de St. Sulpice savent bien ce qu’il m’en a pu
dire, et je suis assuré qu’ils ne diront pas que je l’ai du
prendre pour des mensonges."
The vicar of the Archbishop of Rouen was a man of many virtues, devoted to good works, as he understood them; rich, for the Sulpitians were under no vow of poverty; generous in almsgiving, busy, indefatigable, overflowing with zeal, vivacious in temperament and excitable in temper, impatient of opposition, and, as it seems, incapable, like his destined rival, of seeing any way of doing good but his own. Though the Jesuits were outwardly courteous, their partisans would not listen to the new curé’s sermons, or listened only to find fault, and germs of discord grew vigorously in the parish of Quebec. Prudence was not among the virtues of Queylus. He launched two sermons against the Jesuits, in which he likened himself to Christ and them to the Pharisees. “Who,” he supposed them to say, “is this Jesus, so beloved of the people, who comes to cast discredit on us, who for thirty or forty years have governed church and state here, with none to dispute us?” * He denounced such of his hearers as came to pick flaws in his discourse, and told them it would be better for their souls if they lay in bed at home, sick of a “good quartan fever.” His ire was greatly kindled by a letter of the Jesuit Pijart, which fell into his hands through a female adherent, the pious
* Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.
Madame d’Aillebout, and in which that father declared that he, Queylus, was waging war on him and his brethren more savagely than the Iroquois. * “He was as crazy at sight of a Jesuit,” writes an adverse biographer, “as a mad dog at sight of water.” ** He cooled, however, on being shown certain papers which proved that his position was neither so strong nor so secure as he had supposed; and the governor, Argenson, at length persuaded him to retire to Montreal. ***
The queen mother, Anne of Austria, always inclined to the Jesuits, had invited Father Le Jeune, who was then in France, to make choice of a bishop for Canada. It was not an easy task. No Jesuit was eligible, for the sage policy of Loyola had excluded members of the order from the bishopric. The signs of the times portended trouble for the Canadian church, and there was need of a bishop who would assert her claims and fight her battles. Such a man could not be made an instrument of the Jesuits; therefore there was double need that he should be one with them in sympathy and purpose. They made a sagacious choice. Le Jeune presented to the queen mother the name of François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, Abbé de Montigny.
Laval, for by this name he was thenceforth known, belonged to one of the proudest families of Europe, and, churchman as he was, there is
* Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.
** Viger, Notice Historique sur l’Abbé de Queylus.
*** Papiers d’Argenson.
much in his career to remind us that in his veins ran the blood of the stern Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency. Nevertheless, his thoughts from childhood had turned towards the church, or, as his biographers will have it, all his aspirations were heavenward. He received the tonsure at the age of nine. The Jesuit Bagot confirmed and moulded his youthful predilections; and, at a later period, he was one of a band of young zealots, formed under the auspices of Bernières de Louvigni, royal treasurer at Caen, who, though a layman, was reputed almost a saint. It was Bernières who had borne the chief part in the pious fraud of the pretended marriage through which Madame de la Peltrie escaped from her father’s roof to become foundress of the Ursulines of Quebec. * He had since renounced the world, and dwelt at Caen, in a house attached to an Ursuline convent, and known as the Hermitage. Here he lived like a monk, in the midst of a community of young priests and devotees, who looked to him as their spiritual director, and whom he trained in the maxims and practices of the most extravagant, or, as his admirers say, the most sublime ultramontane piety. **
The conflict between the Jesuits and the Jansenists was then at its height. The Jansenist doctrines of election and salvation by grace, which sapped the power of the priesthood and impugned the authority of the Pope himself in his capacity of holder of the keys of heaven, were to the Jesuits
* See Jesuits in North America, chap. xiv.
** La Tour, Vie de Laval, gives his maxims at length.
an abomination; while the rigid morals of the Jansenists stood in stern contrast to the pliancy of Jesuit casuistry. Bernières and his disciples were zealous, not to say fanatical, partisans of the Jesuits. There is a long account of the “Hermitage" and its inmates from the pen of the famous Jansenist, Nicole; an opponent, it is true, but one whose qualities of mind and character give weight to his testimony. *
“In this famous Hermitage,” says Nicole, “the late Sieur de Bernières brought up a number of young men, to whom he taught a sort of sublime and transcendental devotion called passive prayer, because in it the mind does not act at all, but merely receives the divine operation; and this devotion is the source of all those visions and revelations in which the Hermitage is so prolific.” In short, he and his disciples were mystics of the most exalted type. Nicole pursues: “After having thus subtilized their minds, and almost sublimed them into vapor, he rendered them capable of detecting Jansenists under any disguise, insomuch that some of his followers said that they knew them by the scent, as dogs know their game; but the aforesaid Sieur de Bernières denied that they had so subtile a sense of smell, and said that the mark by which he detected Jansenists was their disapproval of his teachings or their opposition to the Jesuits.”
The zealous band at the Hermitage was aided in
* Mémoire pour faire connoistre l'esprit et la conduite de
la Compagnie établie en la ville de Caen, appéllée
l'Hermitage (Bibliothèque Nationnale Imprimés Partie
Réservée). Written in 1660.
its efforts to extirpate error by a sort of external association in the city of Caen, consisting of merchants, priests, officers, petty nobles, and others, all inspired and guided by Bernières. They met every week at the Hermitage, or at the houses of each other. Similar associations existed in other cities of France, besides a fraternity in the Rue St. Dominique at Paris, which was formed by the Jesuit Bagot, and seems to have been the parent, in a certain sense, of the others. They all acted together when any important object was in view.
Bernières and his disciples felt that God had chosen them not only to watch over doctrine and discipline in convents and in families, but also to supply the prevalent deficiency of zeal in bishops and other dignitaries of the church. They kept, too, a constant eye on the humbler clergy, and whenever a new preacher appeared in Caen, two of their number were deputed to hear his sermon and report upon it. If he chanced to let fall a word concerning the grace of God, they denounced him for Jansenistic heresy. Such commotion was once raised in Caen by charges of sedition and Jansenism, brought by the Hermitage against priests and laymen hitherto without attaint, that the Bishop of Bayeux thought it necessary to interpose; but even he was forced to pause, daunted by the insinuations of Bernières that he was in secret sympathy with the obnoxious doctrines.
Thus the Hermitage and its affiliated societies constituted themselves a sort of inquisition in the interest of the Jesuits; “for what,” asks Nicole “might not be expected from persons of weak minds and atrabilious dispositions, dried up by constant fasts, vigils, and other austerities, besides meditations of three or four hours a day, and told continually that the church is in imminent danger of ruin through the machinations of the Jansenists, who are represented to them as persons who wish to break up the foundations of the Christian faith and subvert the mystery of the Incarnation; who believe neither in transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, nor indulgences; who wish to abolish the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of Penitence, oppose the worship of the Holy Virgin, deny freewill and substitute predestination in its place, and, in fine, conspire to overthrow the authority of the Supreme Pontiff.”
Among other anecdotes, Nicole tells the following: One of the young zealots of the Hermitage took it into his head that all Caen was full of Jansenists, and that the curés of the place were in league with them. He inoculated four others with this notion, and they resolved to warn the people of their danger. They accordingly made the tour of the streets, without hats or collars, and with coats unbuttoned, though it was a cold winter day, stopping every moment to proclaim in a loud voice that all the curés, excepting two, whom they named, were abettors of the Jansenists. A mob was soon following at their heels, and there was great excitement. The magistrates chanced to be in session, and, hearing of the disturbance, they sent constables to arrest the authors of it. Being brought to the bar of justice and questioned by the judge, they answered that they were doing the work of God, and were ready to die in the cause; that Caen was full of Jansenists, and that the curés had declared in their favor, inasmuch as they denied any knowledge of their existence. Four of the five were locked up for a few days, tried, and sentenced to a fine of a hundred livres, with a promise of further punishment should they again disturb the peace. *
The fifth, being pronounced out of his wits by the physicians, was sent home to his mother, at a village near Argentan, where two or three of his fellow zealots presently joined him. Among them, they persuaded his mother, who had hitherto been, devoted to household cares, to exchange them for a life of mystical devotion. “These three or four persons,” says Nicole, “attracted others as imbecile as themselves.” Among these recruits were a number of women, and several priests. After various acts of fanaticism, “two or three days before last Pentecost,” proceeds the narrator, “they all set out, men and women, for Argentan. The priests had drawn the skirts of their cassocks over their heads, and tied them about their necks with twisted straw. Some of the women had their heads bare, and their hair streaming loose over their shoulders. They picked up filth on the road, and rubbed their faces with it, and the most zealous ate it, saying that it was necessary to mortify the taste. Some
* Nicole is not the only authority for this story. It is
also told by a very different writer. See Notice Historique
de l'Abbaye de Ste. Claire d’Arqentan, 124,
held stones in their hands, which they knocked together to draw the attention of the passers-by. They had a leader, whom they were bound to obey; and when this leader saw any mud-hole particularly deep and dirty, he commanded some of the party to roll themselves in it, which they did forthwith. *
“After this fashion, they entered the town of Argentan, and marched, two by two, through all the streets, crying with a loud voice that the Faith was perishing, and that whoever wished to save it must quit the country and go with them to Canada, whither they were soon to repair. It is said that they still hold this purpose, and that their leaders declare it revealed to them that they will find a vessel ready at the first port to which Providence directs them. The reason why they choose Canada for an asylum is, that Monsieur de Montigny (Laval), Bishop of Petræa, who lived at the Hermitage a long time, where he was instructed in mystical theology by Monsieur de Bernières, exercises episcopal functions there; and that the Jesuits, who are their oracles, reign in that country.”
This adventure, like the other, ended in a collision with the police. “The priests,” adds Nicole, “were arrested, and are now waiting trial, and the rest were treated as mad, and sent back with shame and confusion to the places whence they had come.”
* These proceedings were probably intended to produce the
result which was the constant object of the mystics of the
Hermitage; namely, the “annihilation of self,” with a view
to a perfect union with God. To become despised of men was
an important, if not an essential, step in this mystical
suicide.
Though these pranks took place after Laval had left the Hermitage, they serve to characterize the school in which he was formed; or, more justly speaking, to show its most extravagant side. That others did not share the views of the celebrated Jansenist, may be gathered from the following passage of the funeral oration pronounced over the body of Laval half a century later:—
“The humble abbé was next transported into the terrestrial paradise of Monsieur de Bernières. It is thus that I call, as it is fitting to call it, that famous Hermitage of Caen, where the seraphic author of the ‘Christian Interior’ (Bernières) transformed into angels all those who had the happiness to be the companions of his solitude and of his spiritual exercises. It was there that, during four years, the fervent abbé drank the living and abounding waters of grace which have since flowed so benignly over this land of Canada. In this celestial abode his ordinary occupations were prayer, mortification, instruction of the poor, and spiritual readings or conferences; his recreations were to labor in the hospitals, wait upon the sick and poor, make their beds, dress their wounds, and aid them in their most repulsive needs.” *
In truth, Laval’s zeal was boundless, and the exploits of self-humiliation recorded of him were unspeakably revolting. ** Bernières himself regarded
* Eloge funèbre de Messire François Xavier de Laval-
Montmorency, par Messire de la Colombière, Vicaire Général.
** See La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. I. Some of them were
closely akin to that of the fanatics mentioned above, who
ate “immondices d’animaux” to mortify the taste.
him as a light by which to guide his own steps in ways of holiness. He made journeys on foot about the country, disguised, penniless, begging from door to door, and courting scorn and opprobrium, “in order,” says his biographer, “that he might suffer for the love of God.” Yet, though living at this time in a state of habitual religious exaltation, he was by nature no mere dreamer; and in whatever heights his spirit might wander, his feet were always planted on the solid earth. His flaming zeal had for its servants a hard, practical nature, perfectly fitted for the battle of life, a narrow intellect, a stiff and persistent will, and, as his enemies thought, the love of domination native to his blood.
Two great parties divided the Catholics of France,—the Gallican or national party, and the ultramontane or papal party. The first, resting on the Scriptural injunction to give tribute to Cæsar, held that to the king, the Lord’s anointed, belonged the temporal, and to the church the spiritual power. It held also that the laws and customs of the church of France could not be broken at the bidding of the Pope. * The ultramontane party, on the other hand, maintained that the Pope, Christ’s vicegerent on earth, was supreme over earthly rulers, and should of right hold jurisdiction over the clergy of all Christendom, with powers of appointment and removal. Hence they claimed for him the right of nominating bishops in
* See the famous Quatre Articles of 1682, in which the
liberties of the Gallican Church are asserted.
France. This had anciently been exercised by assemblies of the French clergy, but in the reign of Francis I. the king and the Pope had combined to wrest it from them by the Concordat of Bologna. Under this compact, which was still in force, the Pope appointed French bishops on the nomination of the king, a plan which displeased the Gallicans, and did not satisfy the ultramontanes.
The Jesuits, then as now, were the most forcible exponents of ultramontane principles. The church to rule the world; the Pope to rule the church; the Jesuits to rule the Pope: such was and is the simple programme of the Order of Jesus, and to it they have held fast, except on a few rare occasions of misunderstanding with the Vicegerent of Christ. * In the question of papal supremacy, as in most things else, Laval was of one mind with them.
Those versed in such histories will not be surprised to learn that, when he received the royal nomination, humility would not permit him to accept it; nor that, being urged, he at length bowed in resignation, still protesting his unworthiness. Nevertheless, the royal nomination did not take effect. The ultramontanes outflanked both the king and the Gallicans, and by adroit strategy made the new prelate completely a creature of the papacy. Instead of appointing him Bishop of Quebec, in accordance with the royal initiative, the Pope made him his vicar apostolic for Canada,
* For example, not long after this time, the Jesuits,
having a dispute with Innocent XI., threw themselves into
the party of opposition.
thus evading the king’s nomination, and affirming that Canada, a country of infidel savages, was excluded from the concordat, and under his (the Pope’s) jurisdiction pure and simple. The Gallicans were enraged. The Archbishop of Rouen vainly opposed, and the parliaments of Rouen and of Paris vainly protested. The papal party prevailed. The king, or rather Mazarin, gave his consent, subject to certain conditions, the chief of which was an oath of allegiance; and Laval, grand vicar apostolic, decorated with the title of Bishop of Petræa, sailed for his wilderness diocese in the spring of 1659. * He was but thirty-six years of age, but even when a boy he could scarcely have seemed young.
Queylus, for a time, seemed to accept the situation, and tacitly admit the claim of Laval as his ecclesiastical superior; but, stimulated by a letter from the Archbishop of Rouen, he soon threw himself into an attitude of opposition, ** in which the popularity which his generosity to the poor had won for him gave him an advantage very annoying to his adversary. The quarrel, it will be seen, was three-sided,—Gallican against ultramontane, Sulpitian against Jesuit, Montreal against Quebec. To Montreal the recalcitrant abbé, after a brief visit to Quebec, had again retired; but even here, girt with his Sulpitian brethren and compassed with
* Compare La Tour, Vie de Laval, with the long statement in
Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 315-335. Faillon gives
various documents in full, including the royal letter of
nomination and those in which the King gives a reluctant
consent to the appointment of the vicar apostolic.
** Journal des Jésuites, Sept., 1657.
partisans, the arm of the vicar apostolic was long enough to reach him.
By temperament and conviction Laval hated a divided authority, and the very shadow of a schism was an abomination in his sight. The young king, who, though abundantly jealous of his royal power, was forced to conciliate the papal party, had sent instructions to Argenson, the governor, to support Laval, and prevent divisions in the Canadian church. * These instructions served as the pretext of a procedure sufficiently summary. A squad of soldiers, commanded, it is said, by the governor himself, went up to Montreal, brought the indignant Queylus to Quebec, and shipped him thence for France. ** By these means, writes Father Lalemant, order reigned for a season in the church.
It was but for a season. Queylus was not a man to bide his defeat in tranquillity, nor were his brother Sulpitians disposed to silent acquiescence. Laval, on his part, was not a man of half measures. He had an agent in France, and partisans strong at court. Fearing, to borrow the words of a Catholic writer, that the return of Queylus to Canada would prove “injurious to the glory of God,” he bestirred himself to prevent it. The young king, then at Aix, on his famous journey to the frontiers of Spain to marry the Infanta, was induced to write to Queylus, ordering him to remain in France. *** Queylus, however, repaired to Rome; but even
* Lettre du Roi à d’Argenson, 14 Mai, 1659.
** Belmont, Histoire du Canada, a.d. 1659. Memoir by Abbé
d’Allet, in Morale Pratique des Jésuites, XXXIV. 725.
*** Lettre du Roi a Queylus, 27 Feb., 1660.
against this movement provision had been made: accusations of Jansenism had gone before him, and he met a cold welcome. Nevertheless, as he had powerful friends near the Pope, he succeeded in removing these adverse impressions, and even in obtaining certain bulls relating to the establishment, of the parish of Montreal, and favorable to the Sulpitians.
Provided with these, he set at nought the king’s letter, embarked under an assumed name, and sailed to Quebec, where he made his appearance on the 3d of August, 1661, * to the extreme wrath of Laval.
A ferment ensued. Laval’s partisans charged the Sulpitians with Jansenism and opposition to the will of the Pope. A preacher more zealous than the rest denounced them as priests of Antichrist; and as to the bulls in their favor, it was affirmed that Queylus had obtained them by fraud from the Holy Father. Laval at once issued a mandate forbidding him to proceed to Montreal till ships should arrive with instructions from the King. ** At the same time he demanded of the governor that he should interpose the civil power to prevent Queylus from leaving Quebec. *** As Argenson, who wished to act as peacemaker between the belligerent fathers, did not at once take the sharp measures required of him, Laval renewed his demand on the next day, calling on him, in the name of God and the king, to compel Queylus to yield the obedience
* Journal des Jésuites, Août, 1661.
** Lettre de Laval à Queylus, 4 Août, 1661.
***Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, Ibid.
due to him, the vicar apostolic. * At the same time he sent another to the offending abbé, threatening to suspend him from priestly functions if he persisted in his rebellion. **
The incorrigible Queylus, who seems to have lived for some months in a simmer of continual indignation, set at nought the vicar apostolic as he had set at nought the king, took a boat that very night, and set out for Montreal under cover of darkness. Great was the ire of Laval when he heard the news in the morning. He despatched a letter after him, declaring him suspended ipso facto, if he did not instantly return and make his submission. *** This letter, like the rest, failed of the desired effect; but the governor, who had received a second mandate from the king to support Laval and prevent a schism, **** now reluctantly interposed the secular arm, and Queylus was again compelled to return to France. (v)
His expulsion was a Sulpitian defeat. Laval, always zealous for unity and centralization, had some time before taken steps to repress what he regarded as a tendency to independence at Montreal. In the preceding year he had written to the Pope: “There are some secular priests (Sulpitians) at Montreal, whom the Abbé de Queylus brought out with him in 1657, and I have named for the
* Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, 5 Août, 1661.
** Lettre de Laval a Queylus, Ibid.
**** Ibid, 6 Août, 1661.
**** Lettre du Roi à d’Argenson, 13 Mai, 1660.
(v) For the governor’s attitude in this affair, consult the
Papiers d'Argentan, containing his despatches.
functions of curé the one among them whom I thought the least disobedient.” The bulls which Queylus had obtained from Rome related to this very curacy, and greatly disturbed the mind of the vicar apostolic. He accordingly wrote again to the Pope: “I pray your Holiness to let me know your will concerning the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen. M. l’Abbé de Queylus, who has come out this year as vicar of this archbishop, has tried to deceive us by surreptitious letters, and has obeyed neither our prayers nor our repeated commands to desist. But he has received orders from the king to return immediately to France, to render an account of his disobedience, and he has been compelled by the governor to conform to the will of his Majesty. What I now fear is that, on his return to France, by using every kind of means, employing new artifices, and falsely representing our affairs, he may obtain from the court of Rome powers which may disturb the peace of our church; for the priests whom he brought with him from France, and who five at Montreal, are animated with the same spirit of disobedience and division; and I fear, with good reason, that all belonging to the seminary of St. Sulpice, who may come hereafter to join them, will be of the same disposition. If what is said is true, that by means of fraudulent letters the right of patronage of the pretended parish of Montreal has been granted to the superior of this seminary, and the right of appointment to the Archbishop of Rouen, then is altar reared against altar in our church of Canada; for the clergy of Montreal will always stand in opposition to me, the vicar apostolic, and to my successors.” *
These dismal forebodings were never realized The Holy See annulled the obnoxious bulls; the Archbishop of Rouen renounced his claims, and Queylus found his position untenable. Seven years later, when Laval was on a visit to France, a reconciliation was brought about between them. The former vicar of the Archbishop of Rouen made his submission to the vicar of the Pope, and returned to Canada as a missionary. Laval’s triumph was complete, to the joy of the Jesuits, silent, if not idle, spectators of the tedious and complex quarrel.
* Lettre de Laval au Pape, 22 Oct., 1661. Printed by
Faillon, from the original in the archives of the
Propaganda.
François de Laval.—His Position and Character.—Arrival of Argenson.—The Quarrel.
We are touching delicate ground. To many excellent Catholics of our own day Laval is an object of veneration. The Catholic university of Quebec glories in bearing his name, and certain modern ecclesiastical writers rarely mention him in terms less reverent than “the virtuous prelate,” or “the holy prelate.” Nor are some of his contemporaries less emphatic in eulogy. Mother Juchereau de Saint-Denis, Superior of the Hôtel Dieu, wrote immediately after his death: “He began in his tenderest years the study of perfection, and we have reason to think that he reached it, since every virtue which Saint Paul demands in a bishop was seen and admired in him;” and on his first arrival in Canada, Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, Superior of the Ursulines, wrote to her son that the choice of such a prelate was not of man, but of God. “will not,” she adds, “say that he is a saint, but I may say with truth that he lives like a saint and an apostle.” And she describes his austerity of life; how he had but two servants, a gardener—whom he lent on occasion to his needy neighbors—and a valet; how he lived in a small hired house, saying that he would not have one of his own if he could build it for only five sous; and how, in his table, furniture, and bed, he showed the spirit of poverty, even, as she thinks, to excess. His servant, a lay brother named Houssart, testified, after his death, that he slept on a hard bed, and would not suffer it to be changed even when it became full of fleas; and, what is more to the purpose, that he gave fifteen hundred or two thousand francs to the poor every year. * Houssart also gives the following specimen of his austerities: “I have seen him keep cooked meat five, six, seven, or eight days in the heat of summer, and when it was all mouldy and wormy he washed it in warm water and ate it, and told me that it was very good.” The old servant was so impressed by these and other proofs of his master’s sanctity, that “I determined,” he says, “to keep every thing I could that had belonged to his holy person, and after his death to soak bits of linen in his blood when his body was opened, and take a few bones and cartilages from his breast, cut off his hair, and keep his clothes, and such things, to serve as most precious relics.” These pious cares were not in vain, for the relics proved greatly in demand.
* Lettre du Frère Houssart, ancien serviteur de Mg'r de
Laval a M. Tremblay, 1 Sept., 1708. This letter is printed,
though with one or two important omissions, in the Abeille,
Vol. I. (Quebec, 1848.)
Several portraits of Laval are extant. A drooping nose of portentous size; a well-formed forehead; a brow strongly arched; a bright, clear eye; scanty hair, half hidden by a black skullcap; thin lips, compressed and rigid, betraying a spirit not easy to move or convince; features of that indescribable cast which marks the priestly type: such is Laval, as he looks grimly down on us from the dingy canvas of two centuries ago.
He is one of those concerning whom Protestants and Catholics, at least ultramontane Catholics, will never agree in judgment. The task of eulogizing him may safely be left to those of his own way of thinking. It is for us to regard him from the standpoint of secular history. And, first, let us credit him with sincerity. He believed firmly that the princes and rulers of this world ought to be subject to guidance and control at the hands of the Pope, the vicar of Christ on earth. But he himself was the Pope’s vicar, and, so far as the bounds of Canada extended, the Holy Father had clothed him with his own authority. The glory of God demanded that this authority should suffer no abatement, and he, Laval, would be guilty before Heaven if he did not uphold the supremacy of the church over the powers both of earth and of hell.
Of the faults which he owed to nature, the principal seems to have been an arbitrary and domineering temper. He was one of those who by nature lean always to the side of authority; and in the English Revolution he would inevitably have stood for the Stuarts; or, in the American Revolution, for the Crown. But being above all things a Catholic and a priest, he was drawn by a constitutional necessity to the ultramontane party, or the party of centralization. He fought lustily, in his way, against the natural man; and humility was the virtue to the culture of which he gave his chief attention, but soil and climate were not favorable. His life was one long assertion of the authority of the church, and this authority was lodged in himself. In his stubborn fight for ecclesiastical ascendancy, he was aided by the impulses of a nature that loved to rule, and could not endure to yield. His principles and his instinct of domination were acting in perfect unison, and his conscience was the handmaid of his fault. Austerities and mortifications, playing at beggar, sleeping in beds full of fleas, or performing prodigies of gratuitous dirtiness in hospitals, however fatal to self-respect, could avail little against influences working so powerfully and so insidiously to stimulate the most subtle of human vices. The history of the Roman church is full of Lavals.
The Jesuits, adepts in human nature, had made a sagacious choice when they put forward this conscientious, zealous, dogged, and pugnacious priest to fight their battles. Nor were they ill pleased that, for the present, he was not Bishop of Canada, but only vicar apostolic; for, such being the case, they could have him recalled if, on trial, they did not like him, while an unacceptable bishop would be an evil past remedy.
Canada was entering; a state of transition. Hitherto ecclesiastical influence had been all in all. The Jesuits, by far the most educated and able body of men in the colony, had controlled it, not alone in things spiritual, but virtually in things temporal also; and the governor may be said to have been little else than a chief of police, under the direction of the missionaries. The early governors were themselves deeply imbued with the missionary spirit. Champlain was earnest above all things for converting the Indians; Montmagny was half-monk, for he was a Knight of Malta; Aillebout was so insanely pious, that he lived with his wife like monk and nun. A change was at hand. From a mission and a trading station, Canada was soon to become, in the true sense, a colony; and civil government had begun to assert itself on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The epoch of the martyrs and apostles was passing away, and the man of the sword and the man of the gown—the soldier and the legist—were threatening to supplant the paternal sway of priests; or, as Laval might have said, the hosts of this world were beleaguering the sanctuary, and he was called of Heaven to defend it. His true antagonist, though three thousand miles away, was the great minister Colbert, as purely a statesman as the vicar apostolic was purely a priest. Laval, no doubt, could see behind the statesman’s back another adversary, the devil.
Argenson was governor when the crozier and the sword began to clash, which is merely another way of saying that he was governor when Laval arrived. He seems to have been a man of education, moderation, and sense, and lie was also an earnest Catholic; but if Laval had his duties to God, so had Argenson his duties to the king, of whose authority he was the representative and guardian. If the first collisions seem trivial, they were no less the symptoms of a grave antagonism. Argenson could have purchased peace only by becoming an agent of the church.
The vicar apostolic, or, as he was usually styled, the bishop, being, it may be remembered, titular Bishop of Petræa in Arabia, presently fell into a quarrel with the governor touching the relative position of their seats in church,—a point which, by the way, was a subject of contention for many years, and under several successive governors. This time the case was referred to the ex-governor, Aillebout, and a temporary settlement took place. * A few weeks after, on the fête of Saint Francis Xavier, when the Jesuits were accustomed to ask the dignitaries of the colony to dine in their refectory after mass, a fresh difficulty arose,—Should the governor or the bishop have the higher seat at table? The question defied solution; so the fathers invited neither of them. **
Again, on Christmas, at the midnight mass, the deacon offered incense to the bishop, and then, in obedience to an order from him, sent a subordinate to offer it to the governor, instead of offering it himself. Laval further insisted that the priests of the choir should receive incense before the governor
* Lalemant, in Journal des Jesuites, Sept., 1659.
** Ibid., Dec., 1659.
received it. Argenson resisted, and a bitter quarrel ensued. *
The late governor, Aillebout, had been churchwarden ex officio; ** and in this pious community the office was esteemed as an addition to his honors. Argenson had thus far held the same position; but Laval declared that he should hold it no longer. Argenson, to whom the bishop had not spoken on the subject, came soon after to a meeting of the wardens, and, being challenged, denied Laval’s right to dismiss him. A dispute ensued, in which the bishop, according to his Jesuit friends, used language not very respectful to the representative of royalty. ***
On occasion of the “solemn catechism,” the bishop insisted that the children should salute him before saluting the governor. Argenson hearing of this, declined to come. A compromise was contrived. It was agreed that when the rival dignitaries entered, the children should be busied in some manual exercise which should prevent their saluting either. Nevertheless, two boys, “enticed and set on by their parents,” saluted the governor first, to the great indignation of Laval. They were whipped on the next day for breach of orders. ****
Next there was a sharp quarrel about a sentence pronounced by Laval against a heretic, to which the governor, good Catholic as he was, took
* Lalemant, in Journal des Jésuites, Dec., 1659; Lettre
d’Argenson MM. de la Compagnie de St. Sulpice.
** Livre des Délibérations de la Fabrique de Québec.
*** Journal des Jésuites, Nov., 1660
**** Ibid., Feb., 1661.
exception. * Palm Sunday came, and there could be no procession and no distribution of branches, because the governor and the bishop could not agree on points of precedence. ** On the day of the Fête Dieu, however, there was a grand procession, which stopped from time to time at temporary altars, or reposoirs, placed at intervals along its course. One of these was in the fort, where the soldiers were drawn, up, waiting the arrival of the procession. Laval demanded that they should take off their hats. Argenson assented, and the soldiers stood uncovered. Laval now insisted that they should kneel. The governor replied that it was their duty as soldiers to stand; whereupon the bishop refused to stop at the altar, and ordered the procession to move on. ***
The above incidents are set down in the private journal of the superior of the Jesuits, which was not meant for the public eye. The bishop, it will be seen, was, by the showing of his friends, in most cases the aggressor. The disputes in question, though of a nature to provoke a smile on irreverent lips, were by no means so puerile as they appear. It is difficult in a modern democratic society to conceive the substantial importance of the signs and symbols of dignity and authority, at a time and among a people where they were adjusted with the most scrupulous precision, and accepted by all classes as exponents of relative degrees in the social and political scale. Whether
* Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1661.
** Ibid., Avril, 1661.
*** Ibid., Juin, 1661.
the bishop or the governor should sit in the higher seat at table thus became a political question, for it defined to the popular understanding the position of church and state in their relations to government
Hence it is not surprising to find a memorial, drawn up apparently by Argenson, and addressed to the council of state, asking for instructions when and how a governor—lieutenant-general for the king—ought to receive incense, holy water, and consecrated bread; whether the said bread should be offered him with sound of drum and fife; what should be the position of his seat at church; and what place he should hold in various religious ceremonies; whether in feasts, assemblies, ceremonies, and councils of a purely civil character, he or the bishop was to hold the first place; and, finally, if the bishop could excommunicate the inhabitants or others for acts of a civil and political character, when the said acts were pronounced lawful by the governor.
The reply to the memorial denies to the bishop the power of excommunication in civil matters, assigns to him the second place in meetings and ceremonies of a civil character, and is very reticent as to the rest. *
Argenson had a brother, a counsellor of state, and a fast friend of the Jesuits. Laval was in correspondence with him, and, apparently sure of sympathy, wrote to him touching his relations with the governor. “Your brother,” he begins,
* Advis et Résolutions demandés sur la Nouvelle France.
“received me on my arrival with extraordinary kindness;” but he proceeds to say that, perceiving with sorrow that he entertained a groundless distrust of those good servants of God, the Jesuit fathers, he, the bishop, thought it his duty to give him in private a candid warning which ought to have done good, but which, to his surprise, the governor had taken amiss, and had conceived, in consequence, a prejudice against his monitor. *
Argenson, on his part, writes to the same brother, at about the same time. “The Bishop of Petræa is so stiff in opinion, and so often transported by his zeal beyond the rights of his position, that he makes no difficulty in encroaching on the functions of others; and this with so much heat that he will listen to nobody. A few days ago he carried off a servant girl of one of the inhabitants here, and placed her by his own authority in the Ursuline convent, on the sole pretext that he wanted to have her instructed, thus depriving her master of her services, though he had been at great expense in bringing her from France. This inhabitant is M. Denis, who, not knowing who had carried her off, came to me with a petition to get her out of the convent. I kept the petition three days without answering it, to prevent the affair from being noised abroad. The Reverend Father Lalemant, with whom I communicated on the subject, and who greatly blamed the Bishop of Petræa, did all in his power to have the girl given up quietly, but
* Lettre de Laval à M. d’Argenson, frère du Gouverneur, 20
Oct, 1659.
without the least success, so that I was forced to answer the petition, and permit M. Denis to take his servant wherever he should find her; and, if I had not used means to bring about an accommodation, and if M. Denis, on the refusal which was made him to give her up, had brought the matter into court, I should have been compelled to take measures which would have caused great scandal, and all from the self-will of the Bishop of Petræa, who says that a bishop can do what he likes, and threatens nothing but excommunication.” *
In another letter he speaks in the same strain of this redundancy of zeal on the part of the bishop, which often, he says, takes the shape of obstinacy and encroachment on the rights of others. “It is greatly to be wished,” he observes, “that the Bishop of Petræa would give his confidence to the Reverend Father Lalemant instead of Father Ragueneau;” ** and he praises Lalemant as a person of excellent sense. “It would be well,” he adds, “if the rest of their community were of the same mind; for in that case they would not mix themselves up with various matters in the way they do, and would leave the government to those to whom God has given it in charge.”***
One of Laval’s modern admirers, the worthy Abbé Ferland, after confessing that his zeal may now and then have savored of excess, adds in his defence, that a vigorous hand was needed to
* “—Qui dict quun Evesque peult ce qu’il veult et ne
menace que dexcommunication.” Lettre d’Argenson a son
Frère, 1659.
** Lettre d’Argenson à son Frère, 21 Oct., 1659.
*** Ibid., 7 July, 1660.
compel the infant colony to enter “the good path;” meaning, of course, the straitest path of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. We may hereafter see more of this stringent system of colonial education, its success, and the results that followed.
Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois d’Avaugour.—The Brandt Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The Earthquake.
When Argenson arrived to assume the government, a curious greeting had awaited him. The Jesuits asked him to dine; vespers followed the repast; and then they conducted him into a hall, where the boys of their school—disguised, one as the Genius of New France, one as the Genius of the Forest, and others as Indians of various friendly tribes—made him speeches by turn, in prose and verse. First, Pierre du Quet, who played the Genius of New France, presented his Indian retinue to the governor, in a complimentary harangue. Then four other boys, personating French colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse. Charles Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people, and appealing to Argenson for aid. Jean François Bourdon, in the character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the Huron. The Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from the interior, who, being unable to speak French, addressed the governor in their native tongues, which the Genius proceeded to interpret. Two other boys, in the character of prisoners just escaped from the Iroquois, then came forward, imploring aid in piteous accents; and, in conclusion, the whole troop of Indians, from far and near, laid their bows and arrows at the feet of Argenson, and hailed him as their chief. *
Besides these mock Indians, a crowd of genuine savages had gathered at Quebec to greet the new “Ononthio.” On the next day—at his own cost, as he writes to a friend—he gave them a feast, consisting of “seven large kettles full of Indian corn, peas, prunes, sturgeons, eels, and fat, which they devoured, having first sung me a song, after their fashion.” **
These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one. He could find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred warriors of the Iroquois; *** and he begs the proprietary company which he represented to send him a hundred more, who could serve as soldiers or laborers, according to the occasion.
* La Reception de Monseigneur le Vicomte d’Argenson par
toutes les nations du pais de Canada a son entrée au
gouvernement de la Nouvelle France; a Quebecq au College de
la Compagnie de Jésus, le 28 de Juillet de l’année 1658. The
speeches, in French and Indian, are here given verbatim,
with the names of all the boys who took part in the
ceremony.
** Papiers d’Argenson. Kebec, 5 Sept., 1658.
*** Mémoire sur le subject (sic) de la Guerre des Iroquois,
1659.
The company turned a deal ear to his appeals. They had lost money in Canada, and were grievously out of humor with it. In their view, the first duty of a governor was to collect their debts, which, for more reasons than one, was no easy task. While they did nothing to aid the colony in its distress, they beset Argenson with demands for the thousand pounds of beaver-skins, which the inhabitants had agreed to send them every year, in return for the privilege of the fur trade, a privilege which the Iroquois war made for the present worthless. The perplexed governor vents his feelings in sarcasm. “They (the company) take no pains to learn the truth; and, when they hear of settlers carried off and burned by the Iroquois, they will think it a punishment for not settling old debts, and paying over the beaver-skins.” * “I wish,” he adds, “they would send somebody to look after their affairs here. I would gladly give him the same lodging and entertainment as my own.”
Another matter gave him great annoyance. This was the virtual independence of Montreal; and here, if nowhere else, he and the bishop were of the same mind. On one occasion he made a visit to the place in question, where he expected to be received as governor-general; but the local governor, Maisonneuve, declined, or at least postponed, to take his orders and give him the keys of the fort. Argenson accordingly speaks of Montreal as “a place which makes so much noise, but which is
* Papiers d’Argenson, 21 Oct., 1659.
of such small account.” * He adds that, besides wanting to be independent, the Montrealists want to monopolize the fur trade, which would cause civil war; and that the king ought to interpose to correct their obstinacy.
In another letter he complains of Aillebout, who had preceded him in the government, though himself a Montrealist. Argenson says that, on going out to fight the Iroquois, he left Aillebout at Quebec, to act as his lieutenant; that, instead of doing so, he had assumed to govern in his own right; that he had taken possession of his absent superior’s furniture, drawn his pay, and in other respects behaved as if he never expected to see him again. “When I returned,” continues the governor, “I made him director in the council, without pay, as there was none to give him. It was this, I think, that made him remove to Montreal, for which I do not care, provided the glory of our Master suffer no prejudice thereby.” **
These extracts may, perhaps, give an unjust impression of Argenson, who, from the general tenor of his letters, appears to have been a temperate and reasonable person. His patience and his nervous system seem, however, to have been taxed to the utmost. His pay could not support him. “The costs of living here are horrible,” he writes. “I have only two thousand crowns a year for all my expenses, and I have already been forced to
* Papiers d’Argenson, 4 Août, 1659.
** Ibid. Double de la lettre escripte par le Vaisseau du
Gaigneur, parti la 6 Septembre (1658).
run into debt to the company to an equal amount.” * Part of his scanty income was derived from a fishery of eels, on which sundry persons had encroached, to his great detriment. ** “I see no reason,” he adds, “for staying here any longer. When I came to this country, I hoped to enjoy a little repose, but I am doubly deprived of it; on one hand by enemies without, and incessant petty disputes within; and, on the other, by the difficulty I find in subsisting. The profits of the fur trade have been so reduced that all the inhabitants are in the greatest poverty. They are all insolvent, and cannot pay the merchants their advances.”
His disgust at length reached a crisis. “I am resolved to stay here no longer, but to go home next year. My horror of dissension, and the manifest certainty of becoming involved in disputes with certain persons with whom I am unwilling to quarrel, oblige me to anticipate these troubles, and seek some way of living in peace. These excessive fatigues are far too much for my strength. I am writing to Monsieur the President, and to the gentlemen of the Company of New France, to choose some other man for this government.” *** And again, “if you take any interest in this country, see that the person chosen to command here has, besides the true piety necessary to a Christian in every condition of life, great firmness of character and strong bodily health. I assure you that without these
* Ibid. Lettre a M de Morangi, 5 Sept., 1658.
** Délibérations de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle France.
*** Papiers d'Arqenson. Lettre à son Frère, 1659.
qualities he cannot succeed. Besides, it is absolutely necessary that he should be a man of property and of some rank, so that he will not be despised for humble birth, or suspected of coming here to make his fortune; for in that case he can do no good whatever.” *
His constant friction with the head of the church distressed the pious governor, and made his recall doubly a relief. According to a contemporary writer, Laval was the means of delivering him from the burden of government, having written to the President Lamoignon to urge his removal. ** Be this as it may, it is certain that the bishop was not sorry to be rid of him.
The Baron Dubois d’Avaugour arrived to take his place. He was an old soldier of forty years service, *** blunt, imperative, and sometimes obstinate to perverseness; but full of energy, and of a probity which even his enemies confessed. “He served a long time in Germany while you were there,” writes the minister Colbert to the Marquis de Tracy, “and you must have known his talents, as well as his bizarre and somewhat impracticable temper.” On landing, he would have no reception, being, as Father Lalemant observes, “an enemy of all ceremony.” He went, however, to see the Jesuits, and “took a morsel of food in our refectory.” **** Laval was prepared to receive
* Ibid. Lettre (à son Frère?), 4 Nov., 1660. The originals
of Argenson’s letters were destroyed in the burning of the
library of the Louvre by the Commune.
** Lachenaye, Mémoire sur le Canada.
*** Avaugour, Mémoire, 4 Août, 1663.
**** Lalemant, Journal des Jésuites, Sept., 1661.
him with all solemnity at the church; but the governor would not go. He soon set out on a tour of observation as far as Montreal, whence he returned delighted with the country, and immediately wrote to Colbert in high praise of it, observing that the St. Lawrence was the most beautiful river he had ever seen. *
It was clear from the first that, while he had a prepossession against the bishop, he wished to be on good terms with the Jesuits. He began by placing some of them on the council; but they and Laval were too closely united; and if Avaugour thought to separate them, he signally failed. A few months only had elapsed when we find it noted in Father Lalemant’s private journal that the governor had dissolved the council and appointed a new one, and that other “changes and troubles” had befallen The inevitable quarrel had broken out; it was a complex one, but the chief occasion of dispute was fortunate for the ecclesiastics, since it placed them, to a certain degree, morally in the right.
The question at issue was not new. It had agitated the colony for years, and had been the spring of some of Argenson’s many troubles. Nor did it cease with Avaugour, for we shall trace its course hereafter, tumultuous as a tornado. It was simply the temperance question; not as regards the colonists, though here, too, there was great room for reform, but as regards the Indians.
Their inordinate passion for brandy had long been the source of excessive disorders. They drank
* Lettre d’Avaugour au Ministre, 1661.
expressly to get drunk, and when drunk they were like wild beasts. Crime and violence of all sorts ensued; the priests saw their teachings despised and their flocks ruined. On the other hand, the sale of brandy was a chief source of profit, direct or indirect, to all those interested in the fur trade, including the principal persons of the colony. In Argenson’s time, Laval launched an excommunication against those engaged in the abhorred traffic; for nothing less than total prohibition would content the clerical party, and besides the spiritual penalty, they demanded the punishment of death against the contumacious offender. Death, in fact, was decreed. Such was the posture of affairs when Avaugour arrived; and, willing as he was to conciliate the Jesuits, he permitted the decree to take effect, although, it seems, with great repugnance. A few weeks after his arrival, two men were shot and one whipped, for selling brandy to Indians. * An extreme though partially suppressed excitement shook the entire settlement, for most of the colonists were, in one degree or another, implicated in the offence thus punished. An explosion soon followed; and the occasion of it was the humanity or good-nature of the Jesuit Lalemant.
A woman had been condemned to imprisonment for the same cause, and Lalemant, moved by compassion, came to the governor to intercede for her. Avaugour could no longer contain himself, and answered the reverend petitioner with characteristic
* Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1661.
bluntness. “You and your brethren were the first to cry out against the trade, and now you want to save the traders from punishment. I will no longer be the sport of your contradictions. Since it is not a crime for this woman, it shall not be a crime for anybody.” * And in this posture he stood fast, with an inflexible stubbornness.
Henceforth there was full license to liquor dealers. A violent reaction ensued against the past restriction, and brandy flowed freely among French and Indians alike. The ungodly drank to spite the priests and revenge themselves for the “constraint of consciences,” of which they loudly complained. The utmost confusion followed, and the principles on which the pious colony was built seemed upheaved from the foundation. Laval was distracted with grief and anger. He outpoured himself from the pulpit in threats of divine wrath, and launched fresh excommunications against the offenders; but such was the popular fury, that he was forced to yield and revoke them. **
Disorder grew from bad to worse. “Men gave no heed to bishop, preacher, or confessor,” writes Father Charlevoix. “The French have despised the remonstrances of our prelate, because they are supported by the civil power,’ says the superior of the Ursulines. “He is almost dead with grief, and pines away before our eyes.”
Laval could bear it no longer, but sailed for
* La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. V.
** Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1662. The sentence of
excommunication is printed in the Appendix to the Esquisse
de la Vie de Laval. It bears date February 24. It was on
this very day that he was forced to revoke it.
France, to lay his complaints before the court, and urge the removal of Avaugour. He had, besides, two other important objects, as will appear hereafter. His absence brought no improvement. Summer and autumn passed, and the commotion did not abate. Winter was drawing to a close, when, at length, outraged Heaven interposed an awful warning to the guilty colony.
Scarcely had the bishop left his flock when the skies grew portentous with signs of the chastisement to come. “We beheld,” gravely writes Father Lalemant, “blazing serpents which flew through the air, borne on wings of fire. We beheld above Quebec a great globe of flame, which lighted up the night, and threw out sparks on all sides. This same meteor appeared above Montreal, where it seemed to issue from the bosom of the moon, with a noise as loud as cannon or thunder, and after sailing three leagues through the air it disappeared behind the mountain whereof this island bears the name.” *
Still greater marvels followed. First, a Christian Algonquin squaw, described as “innocent, simple, and sincere,” being seated erect in bed, wide awake, by the side of her husband, in the night between the fourth and fifth of February, distinctly heard a voice saying, “Strange things will happen to-day; the earth will quake!” In great alarm she whispered the prodigy to her husband, who told her that she lied. This silenced her for a time; but when, the next morning, she went into the forest
* Lalemant. Relation, 1663, 2.
with her hatchet to cut a faggot of wood, the same dread voice resounded through the solitude, and sent her back in terror to her hut. *
These things were as nothing compared with the marvel that befell a nun of the hospital, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin, who died five years later, in the odor of sanctity. On the night of the fourth of February, 1663, she beheld in the spirit four furious demons at the four corners of Quebec, shaking it with a violence which plainly showed their purpose of reducing it to ruins; “and this they would have done,” says the story, “if a personage of admirable beauty and ravishing majesty [Christ], whom she saw in the midst of them, and who, from time to time, gave rein to their fury, had not restrained them when they were on the point of accomplishing their wicked design.” She also heard the conversation of these demons, to the effect that people were now well frightened, and many would be converted; but this would not last long, and they, the demons, would have them in time, “Let us keep on shaking,” they cried, encouraging each other, “and do our best to upset every thing.” **
Now, to pass from visions to facts: “At half-past five o’clock on the morning of the fifth,” writes Father Lalemant, “a great roaring sound was heard at the same time through the whole extent
* Lalemant, Relation, 1663, 6.
** Ragueneau, Vie de Catherine de St. Augustin, Liv. IV.
chap. i. The same story is told by Juchereau, Lalemant, and
Marie de l'Incarnation, to whom Charlevoix erroneously
ascribes the vision, as does also the Abbe La Tour.
of Canada. This sound, which produced an effect as if the houses were on fire, brought everybody out of doors; but instead of seeing smoke and flame, they were amazed to behold the walls shaking, and all the stones moving as if they would drop from their places. The houses seemed to bend first to one side and then to the other. Bells sounded of themselves; beams, joists, and planks cracked; the ground heaved, making the pickets of the palisades dance in a way that would have seemed incredible had we not seen it in divers places.
“Everybody was in the streets; animals ran wildly about; children cried; men and women, seized with fright, knew not where to take refuge, expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of the houses, or swallowed up in some abyss opening under their feet. Some, on their knees in the snow, cried for mercy, and others passed the night in prayer; for the earthquake continued without ceasing, with a motion much like that of a ship at sea, insomuch that sundry persons felt the same qualms of stomach which they would feel on the water. In the forests the commotion was far greater. The trees struck one against the other as if there were a battle between them; and you would have said that not only their branches, but even their trunks started out of their places and leaped on each other with such noise and confusion that the Indians said that the whole forest was drunk.” Mary of the Incarnation gives a similar account, as does also Frances Juchereau de Saint-Ignace; and these contemporary records are sustained to some extent by the evidence of geology. * A remarkable effect was produced on the St. Lawrence, which was so charged with mud and clay that for many weeks the water was unfit to drink. Considerable hills and large tracts of forest slid from their places, some into the river, and some into adjacent valleys. A number of men in a boat near Tadoussac stared aghast at a large hill covered with trees, which sank into the water before their eyes; streams were turned from their courses; water-falls were levelled; springs were dried up in some places, while in others new springs appeared. Nevertheless, the accounts that have come down to us seem a little exaggerated, and sometimes ludicrously so; as when, for example, Mother Mary of the Incarnation tells us of a man who ran all night to escape from a fissure in the earth which opened behind him and chased him as he fled.
It is perhaps needless to say that “spectres and phantoms of fire, bearing torches in their hands,” took part in the convulsion. “The fiery figure of a man vomiting flames” also appeared in the air, with many other apparitions too numerous to mention. It is recorded that three young men were on their way through the forest to sell brandy to the Indians, when one of them, a little in advance of the rest, was met by a hideous spectre which nearly
* Professor Sterry Hunt, whose intimate knowledge of
Canadian geology is well known, tells me that the shores of
the St. Lawrence are to a great extent formed of beds of
gravel and clay resting on inclined strata of rock, so that
earth-slides would be the necessary result of any convulsion
like that of 1663. He adds that the evidence that such
slides have taken place on a great scale is very distinct at
various points along the river, especially at Les
Eboulemcns. Professor Sterry Hunt, whose intimate knowledge of
Canadian geology is well known, tells me that the shores of
the St. Lawrence are to a great extent formed of beds of
gravel and clay resting on inclined strata of rock, so that
earth-slides would be the necessary result of any convulsion
like that of 1663. He adds that the evidence that such
slides have taken place on a great scale is very distinct at
various points along the river, especially at Les
Eboulemcns on the north shore.
killed him with fright. He had scarcely strength enough to rejoin his companions, who, seeing his terror, began to laugh at him. One of them, however, presently came to his senses, and said: “This is no laughing matter; we are going to sell liquor to the Indians against the prohibitions of the church, and perhaps God means to punish our disobedience.” On this they all turned back. That night they had scarcely lain down to sleep when the earthquake roused them, and they ran out of their hut just in time to escape being swallowed up along with it. *
With every allowance, it is clear that the convulsion must have been a severe one, and it is remarkable that in all Canada not a life was lost. The writers of the day see in this a proof that God meant to reclaim the guilty and not destroy them. At Quebec there was for the time an intense revival of religion. The end of the world was thought to be at hand, and everybody made ready for the last judgment. Repentant throngs beset confessionals and altars; enemies were reconciled; fasts, prayers, and penances filled the whole season of Lent. Yet, as we shall see, the devil could still find wherewith to console himself.
It was midsummer before the shocks wholly ceased and the earth resumed her wonted calm. An extreme drought was followed by floods of rain, and then Nature began her sure work of
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 20 Aout, 1663. It
appears from Morton, Josselyn, and other writers, that the
earthquake extended to New England and New Netherlands,
producing similar effects on the imagination of the people.
reparation. It was about this time that the thorn which had plagued the church was at length plucked out. Avaugour was summoned home.
He took his recall with magnanimity, and on his way wrote at Gaspé a memorial to Colbert, in which he commends New France to the attention of the king. “The St. Lawrence,” he says, “is the entrance to what may be made the greatest state in the world;” and, in his purely military way, he recounts the means of realizing this grand possibility. Three thousand soldiers should be sent to the colony, to be discharged and turned into settlers after three years of service. During these three years they may make Quebec an impregnable fortress, subdue the Iroquois, build a strong fort on the river where the Dutch have a miserable wooden redoubt, called Fort Orange [Albany], and finally open a way by that river to the sea. Thus the heretics will be driven out, and the king will be master of America, at a total cost of about four hundred thousand francs yearly for ten years. He closes his memorial by a short allusion to the charges against him, and to his forty years of faithful service; and concludes, speaking of the authors of his recall, Laval and the Jesuits:
“By reason of the respect I owe their cloth, I will rest content, monseigneur, with assuring you that I have not only served the king with fidelity, but also, by the grace of God, with very good success, considering the means at my disposal.” * He had, in truth, borne himself as a brave and experienced
* Avaugour, Mémoire, Gaspé 4 Août 1663.
soldier; and he soon after died a soldier’s death, while defending the fortress of Zrin, in Croatia, against the Turks. *
* Lettre de Colbert au Marquis de Tracy, 1664. Mémoire du
Boy, pout servir d’instruction au Sieur Talon
Péronne Dumesnil.—The Old Council.—Alleged Murder.—The New Council.—Bourdon And Villeray.—Strong Measures.—Escape Of Duhesnil.—Views Of Colbert.
Though the proposals of Avaugour’s memorial were not adopted, it seems to have produced a strong impression at court. For this impression the minds of the king and his minister had already been prepared. Two years before, the inhabitants of Canada had sent one of their number, Pierre Boucher, to represent their many grievances and ask for aid. * Boucher had had an audience of the young king, who listened with interest to his statements; and when in the following year he returned to Quebec, he was accompanied by an officer named Dumont, who had under his command a hundred soldiers for the colony, and was commissioned to report its condition and resources. The movement
* To promote the objects of his mission, Boucher wrote a
little book, Histoire Véritable et Naturelle des Mœurs et
Productions du Pays de la Nouvelle France. He dedicates it
to Colbert.
** A long journal of Dumont is printed anonymously in the
Relation of 1663.
seemed to betoken that the government was wakening at last from its long inaction.
Meanwhile the Company of New France, feudal lord of Canada, had also shown signs of returning life. Its whole history had been one of mishap, followed by discouragement and apathy; and it is difficult to say whether its ownership of Canada had been more hurtful to itself or to the colony. At the eleventh hour it sent out an agent invested with powers of controller-general, intendant, and supreme judge, to inquire into the state of its affairs. This agent, Péronne Dumesnil, arrived early in the autumn of 1660, and set himself with great vigor to his work. He was an advocate of the Parliament of Paris, an active, aggressive, and tenacious person, of a temper well fitted to rip up an old abuse or probe a delinquency to the bottom. His proceedings quickly raised a storm at Quebec.
It may be remembered that, many years before, the company had ceded its monopoly of the fur trade to the inhabitants of the colony, in consideration of that annual payment in beaver-skins which had been so tardily and so rarely made. The direction of the trade had at that time been placed in the hands of a council composed of the governor, the superior of the Jesuits, and several other members. Various changes had since taken place, and the trade was now controlled by another council, established without the consent of the company, * and composed of the principal persons in the colony. The members of this council, with certain
* Registres du Conseil du Roy; Réponse a la requeste
présentée au Roy.
prominent merchants in league with them, engrossed all the trade, so that the inhabitants at large profited nothing by the right which the company had ceded; * and as the councillors controlled not only the trade but all the financial affairs of Canada, while the remoteness of their scene of operations made it difficult to supervise them, they were able, with little risk, to pursue their own profit, to the detriment both of the company and the colony. They and their allies formed a petty trading oligarchy, as pernicious to the prosperity of Canada as the Iroquois war itself.
The company, always anxious for its beaver-skins, made several attempts to control the proceedings of the councillors and call them to account, but with little success, till the vigorous Dumesnil undertook the task, when, to their wrath and consternation, they and their friends found themselves attacked by wholesale accusations of fraud and embezzlement. That these charges were exaggerated there can be little doubt; that they were unfounded is incredible, in view of the effect they produced.
The councillors refused to acknowledge Dumesnil’s powers as controller, intendant, and judge, and declared his proceedings null. He retorted by charging them with usurpation. The excitement increased, and Dumesnil’s life was threatened.
He had two sons in the colony. One of them, Péronne de Mazé, was secretary to Avaugour, then on his way up the St. Lawrence to assume the
* Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat, 7 Mars, 1657. Also Papiers
d’Argenson, and Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Etat, 15
Mars, 1656.
government. The other, Péronne des Touches, was with his father at Quebec. Towards the end of August this young man was attacked in the street in broad daylight, and received a kick which proved fatal. He was carried to his father’s house, where he died on the twenty-ninth. Dumesnil charges four persons, all of whom were among those into whose affairs he had been prying, with having taken part in the outrage; but it is very uncertain who was the immediate cause of Des Touches’s death. Dumesnil, himself the supreme judicial officer of the colony, made complaint to the judge in ordinary of the company; but he says that justice was refused, the complaint suppressed by authority, his allegations torn in pieces, and the whole affair hushed. *
At the time of the murder, Dumesnil was confined to his house by illness. An attempt was made to rouse the mob against him, by reports that he had come to the colony for the purpose of laying taxes; but he sent for some of the excited inhabitants, and succeeded in convincing them that he was their champion rather than their enemy. Some Indians in the neighborhood were also instigated to kill him, and he was forced to conciliate them by presents.
* Dumesnil, Mémoire. Under date August 31 the Journal des
Jésuite makes this brief and guarded mention of the affair:
“Le fils de Mons. du Mesnil... fut enterré le mesme jour,
tué d’un coup de pié par N.” Who is meant by N. it is
difficult to say. The register of the parish church records
the burial as follows:—
L’an 1661. Le 30 Aoust a esté enterré au Cemetiere de
Quebec Michel peronne dit Sr. des Touches fils de Mr. du
Mesnil décédé le Jour precedent a sa Maison.
He soon renewed his attacks, and in his quality of intendant called on the councillors and their allies to render their accounts, and settle the long arrears of debt due to the company. They set his demands at naught. The war continued month after month. It is more than likely that when in the spring of 1662 Avaugour dissolved and reconstructed the council, his action had reference to these disputes; and it is clear that when in the following August Laval sailed for France, one of his objects was to restore the tranquillity which Dumesnil’s proceedings had disturbed. There was great need; for, what with these proceedings and the quarrel about brandy, Quebec was a little hell of discord, the earthquake not having as yet frightened it into propriety.
The bishop’s success at court was triumphant. Not only did he procure the removal of Avaugour, but he was invited to choose a new governor to replace him. * This was not all; for he succeeded in effecting a complete change in the government of the colony. The Company of New France was called upon to resign its claims; ** and, by a royal edict of April, 1663, all power, legislative, judicial, and executive, was vested in a council composed of the governor whom Laval had chosen, of Laval himself, and of five councillors, an attorney-general, and a secretary, to be chosen by Laval and the governor jointly. *** Bearing with them blank
* La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. V.
** See the deliberations and acts to this end in Edits et
Ordonnances concernant le Canada, 1. 30-32.
*** Edit de Création du Conseil Supérieur de Quebec.
commissions to be filled with the names of the new functionaries, Laval and his governor sailed for Quebec, where they landed on the fifteenth of September. With them came one Gaudais-Dupont, a royal commissioner instructed to inquire into the state of the colony.
No sooner had they arrived than Laval and Mézy, the new governor, proceeded to construct the new council. Mézy knew nobody in the colony, and was, at this time, completely under Laval’s influence. The nominations, therefore, were virtually made by the bishop alone, in whose hands, and not in those of the governor, the blank commissions had been placed. * Thus for the moment he had complete control of the government; that is to say, the church was mistress of the civil power.
Laval formed his council as follows: Jean Bourdon for attorney-general; Rouer de Villeray, Juchereau de la Berté, Ruette d’Auteuil, Le Gardeur de Tilly, and Matthieu Damours for councillors; and Peuvret de Mesnu for secretary. The royal commissioner, Gaudais, also took a prominent place at the board. ** This functionary was on the point of marrying his niece to a son of Robert Giffard,
* Commission actroyée au Sieur Gaudais. Mémoire pour servir
d’instruction au Sieur Gaudais. A sequel to these
instructions, marked secret, shows that, notwithstanding
Laval’s extraordinary success in attaining his objects, he
and the Jesuits were somewhat distrusted. Gaudais is
directed to make, with great discretion and caution, careful
inquiry into the bishop’s conduct, and with equal secrecy to
ascertain why the Jesuits had asked for Avaugour’s recall.
** As substitute for the intendant, an officer who had been
appointed but who had not arrived.
who had a strong interest in suppressing Dumesnil’s accusations. * Dumesnil had laid his statements before the commissioner, who quickly rejected them, and took part with the accused.
Of those appointed to the new council, their enemy Dumesnil says that they were "incapable persons,” and their associate Gaudais, in defending them against worse charges, declares that they were “unlettered, of little experience, and nearly all unable to deal with affairs of importance.” This was, perhaps, unavoidable; for, except among the ecclesiastics, education was then scarcely known in Canada. But if Laval may be excused for putting incompetent men in office, nothing can excuse him for making men charged with gross public offences the prosecutors and judges in their own cause; and his course in doing so gives color to the assertion of Dumesnil, that he made up the council expressly to shield the accused and smother the accusation. **
The two persons under the heaviest charges received the two most important appointments: Bourdon, attorney-general, and Villeray, keeper of
* Dumesnil here makes one of the few mistakes I have been
able to detect in his long memorials. He says that the name
of the niece of Gaudais was Marie Nau. It was, in fact,
Michelle-Therese Nau, who married Joseph, son of Robert
Giffard, on the 22d of October, 1663. Dumesnil had forgotten
the bride’s first name. The elder Giffard was surety for
Repentigny, whom Dumesnil charged with liabilities to the
company, amounting to 644,700 livres. Giffard was also
father-in-law of Juchereau de la Ferte, one of the accused.
** Dumesnil goes further than this, for he plainly
intimates that the removing from power of the company, to
whom the accused were responsible, and the placing in power
of a council formed of the accused themselves, was a device
contrived from the first by Laval and the Jesuits, to get
their friends out of trouble.
the seals. La Ferté was also one of the accused. * Of Villeray, the governor Argenson had written in 1059: “Some of his qualities are good enough, but confidence cannot be placed in him, on account of his instability.” ** In the same year, he had been ordered to France, “to purge himself of sundry crimes wherewith he stands charged.” *** He was not yet free of suspicion, having returned to Canada under an order to make up and render his accounts, which he had not yet done. Dumesnil says that he first came to the colony in 1651, as valet of the governor Lauson, who had taken him from the jail at Rochelle, where he was imprisoned for a debt of seventy-one francs, “as appears by the record of the jail of date July eleventh in that year.” From this modest beginning he became in time the richest man in Canada. **** He was strong in orthodoxy, and an ardent supporter of the bishop and the Jesuits. He is alternately praised and blamed, according to the partisan leanings of the writer.
* Bourdon is charged with not having accounted for an
immense quantity of beaver-skins which had passed through
his hands during twelve years or more, and which are valued
at more than 300,000 livres. Other charges are made against
him in connection with large sums borrowed in Lauson’s time
on account of the colony. In a memorial addressed to the
king in council, Dumesnil says that, in 1662, Bourdon,
according to his own accounts, had in his hands 37,516
livres belonging to the company, which he still retained.
Villeray’s liabilities arose out of the unsettled accounts
of his father-in-law, Charles Sevestre, and are set down at
more than 600,000 livres. La Ferté’s are of a smaller
amount. Others of the council were indirectly involved in
the charges.
** Lettre d’Argenson, 20 Nov., 1659.
*** Edit du Roy, 13 Mai, 1659.
**** Lettre de Colbert a Frontenac, 17 Mai, 1674.
Bourdon, though of humble origin, was, perhaps, the most intelligent man in the council. He was chiefly known as an engineer, but he had also been a baker, a painter, a syndic of the inhabitants, chief gunner at the fort, and collector of customs for the company. Whether guilty of embezzlement or not, he was a zealous devotee, and would probably have died for his creed. Like Villeray, he was one of Laval’s stanchest supporters, while the rest of the council were also sound in doctrine and sure in allegiance.
In virtue of their new dignity, the accused now claimed exemption from accountability; but this was not all. The abandonment of Canada by the company, in leaving Dumesnil without support, and depriving him of official character, had made his charges far less dangerous. Nevertheless, it was thought best to suppress them altogether, and the first act of the new government was to this end.
On the twentieth of September, the second day after the establishment of the council, Bourdon, in his character of attorney-general, rose and demanded that the papers of Jean Péronne Dumesnil should be seized and sequestered. The council consented, and, to Complete the scandal, Villeray was commissioned to make the seizure in the presence of Bourdon. To color the proceeding, it was alleged that Dumesnil had obtained certain papers unlawfully from the greffe or record office. “As he was thought,” says Gaudais, “to be a violent man."
Bourdon and Villeray took with them ten soldiers, well armed, together with a locksmith and the secretary of the council. Thus prepared for every contingency, they set out on their errand, and appeared suddenly at Dumesnil's house between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. “The aforesaid Sieur Dumesnil,” further says Gaudais, “did not refute the opinion entertained of his violence; for he made a great noise, shouted robbers! and tried to rouse the neighborhood, outrageously abusing the aforesaid Sieur de Villeray and the attorney-general, in great contempt of the authority of the council, which he even refused to recognize.”
They tried to silence him by threats, but without effect; upon which they seized him and held him fast in a chair; “me,” writes the wrathful Dumesnil, “who had lately been their judge.” The soldiers stood over him and stopped his mouth while the others broke open and ransacked his cabinet, drawers, and chest, from which they took all his papers, refusing to give him an inventory, or to permit any witness to enter the house. Some of these papers were private; among the rest were, he says, the charges and specifications, nearly finished, for the trial of Bourdon and Villeray, together with the proofs of their “peculations, extortions, and malversations.” The papers were enclosed under seal, and deposited in a neighboring house, whence they were afterwards removed to the council-chamber, and Dumesnil never saw them again. It may well be believed that this, the inaugural act of the new council, was not allowed to appear on its records. *
On the twenty-first, Villeray made a formal report of the seizure to his colleagues; upon which, “by reason of the insults, violences, and irreverences therein set forth against the aforesaid Sieur de Villeray, commissioner, as also against the authority of the council,” it was ordered that the offending Dumesnil should be put under arrest; but Gaudais, as he declares, prevented the order from being carried into effect.
Dumesnil, who says that during the scene at his house he had expected to be murdered like his son, now, though unsupported and alone, returned to the attack, demanded his papers, and was so loud in threats of complaint to the king that the council were seriously alarmed. They again decreed his arrest and imprisonment; but resolved to keep the decree secret till the morning of the day when the last of the returning ships was to sail for France. In this ship Dumesnil had taken his passage, and they proposed to arrest him unexpectedly on the point of embarkation, that he might have no time to prepare and despatch a memorial to the court. Thus a full year must elapse before his complaints could reach the minister, and seven or eight months more before a reply could be returned to Canada. During this long delay the affair would have time to cool. Dumesnil received a secret warning of
* The above is drawn from the two memorials of Gaudais and
of Dimesnil. They do not contradict each other as, to the
essential facts.
this plan, and accordingly went on board another vessel, which was to sail immediately. The council caused the six cannon of the battery in the Lower Town to be pointed at her, and threatened to sink her if she left the harbor; but she disregarded them, and proceeded on her way.
On reaching France, Dumesnil contrived to draw the attention of the minister Colbert to his accusations, and to the treatment they had brought upon him. On this Colbert demanded of Gaudais, who had also returned in one of the autumn ships, why he had not reported these matters to him. Gaudais made a lame attempt to explain his silence, gave his statement of the seizure of the papers, answered in vague terms some of Dumesnil’s charges against the Canadian financiers, and said that he had nothing to do with the rest. In the following spring Colbert wrote as follows to his relative Terron, intendant of marine:—
“I do not know what report M. Gaudais has made to you, but family interests and the connections which he has at Quebec should cause him to be a little distrusted. On his arrival in that country, having constituted himself chief of the council, he despoiled an agent of the Company of Canada of all his papers, in a manner very violent and extraordinary, and this proceeding leaves no doubt whatever that these papers contained matters the knowledge of which it was wished absolutely to suppress. I think it will be very proper that you should be informed of the statements made by this agent, in order that, through him, an exact knowledge may be acquired of every thing that has taken place in the management of affairs.” *
Whether Terron pursued the inquiry does not appear. Meanwhile new quarrels had arisen at Quebec, and the questions of the past were obscured in the dust of fresh commotions. Nothing is more noticeable in the whole history of Canada, after it came under the direct control of the Crown, than the helpless manner in which this absolute government was forced to overlook and ignore the disobedience and rascality of its functionaries in this distant transatlantic dependency.
As regards Dumesnil’s charges, the truth seems to be, that the financial managers of the colony, being ignorant and unpractised, had kept imperfect and confused accounts, which they themselves could not always unravel; and that some, if not all of them, had made illicit profits under cover of this confusion. That their stealings approached the enormous sum at which Dinesnil places them is not to be believed. But, even on the grossly improbable assumption of their entire innocence, there can be no apology for the means, subversive of all justice, by which Laval enabled his partisans and supporters to extricate themselves from embarrassment.——
* Lettre de Colbert a Terron, Rochelle, 8 Fev., 1664. “Il a
spolié un agent de la Compagnie de Canada de tous ses
papiers d’une manière fort violente et extraordinaire, et ce
procédé ne laisse point à douter que dans ces papiers il n’y
eût des choses dont on a voulu absolument supprimer la
connaissance.” Colbert seems to have received an exaggerated
impression of the part borne by Gaudais in the seizure of
the papers.
NOTE.—Dumesnil’s principal memorial, preserved in the archives of the Marine and Colonies, is entitled Mémoire concernant les Affaires du Canada, qui montre et fait voir que sous prétexte de la Gloire de Dieu, d’Instruction des Sauvages, de servir le Roy et de faire la nouvelle Colonie, il a été pris et diverti trois millions de livres ou environ. It forms in the copy before me thirty-eight pages of manuscript, and bears no address; but seems meant for Colbert, or the council of state. There is a second memorial, which is little else than an abridgment of the first. A third, bearing the address Au Roy et a nos Seigneurs du Conseil (d’Etat), and signed Peronne Dumesnil, is a petition for the payment of 10,132 livres due to him by the company for his services in Canada, “ou il a perdu son fils assassiné par les comptables du dit pays, qui n’ont voulu rendre compte au dit suppliant, Intendant, et ont pillé sa maison, ses meubles et papiers le 20 du mois de Septembre dernier, dont il y a acte.”
Gaudais, in compliance with the demands of Colbert, gives his statement in a long memorial, Le Sieur Gaudais Dupont à Monseigneur de Colbert, 1664.
Dumesnil, in his principal memorial, gives a list of the alleged defaulters, with the special charges against each, and the amounts for which he reckons them liable. The accusations cover a period of ten or twelve years, and sometimes more. Some of them are curiously suggestive of more recent “rings.” Thus Jean Gloria makes a charge of thirty-one hundred livres (francs) for fireworks to celebrate the king’s marriage, when the actual cost is said to have been about forty livres. Others are alleged to have embezzled the funds of the company, under cover of pretended payments to imaginary creditors; and Argenson himself is said to have eked out his miserable salary by drawing on the company for the pay of soldiers who did not exist.
The records of the Council preserve a guarded silence about this affair. I find, however, under date 20 Sept., 1663, “Pouvoir â M. de Villeray de faire recherche dans la maison d’un nommé du Mesnil des papiers appartenants au Conseil concernant Sa Majesté;” and under date 18 March, 1664, “Ordre pour l’ouverture du coffre contenant les papiers de Dumesnil,” and also an “Ordre pour mettre l’Inventaire des biens du Sr. Dumesnil entre les mains du Sr. Fillion.”
The Bishop’s Choice.—A Military Zealot.—Hopeful Beginnings.—Signs of Storm.—The Quarrel.—Distress of Mézy.—He Refuses to Yield.—His Defeat and Death.
We have seen that Laval, when at court, had been invited to choose a governor to his liking. He soon made his selection. There was a pious officer, Saffray de Mézy, major of the town and citadel of Caen, whom he had well known during his long stay with Bernières at the Hermitage. Mézy was the principal member of the company of devotees formed at Caen under the influence of Bernières and his disciples. In his youth he had been headstrong and dissolute. Worse still, he had been, it is said, a Huguenot; but both in life and doctrine his conversion had been complete, and the fervid mysticism of Bernières acting on his vehement nature had transformed him into a red-hot zealot. Towards the hermits and their chief he showed a docility in strange contrast with his past history, and followed their inspirations with an ardor which sometimes overleaped its mark.
Thus a Jacobin monk, a doctor of divinity, once came to preach at the church of St. Paul at Caen; on which, according to their custom, the brotherhood of the Hermitage sent two persons to make report concerning his orthodoxy. Mézy and another military zealot, “who,” says the narrator, “hardly know how to read, and assuredly do not know their catechism,” were deputed to hear his first sermon; wherein this Jacobin, having spoken of the necessity of the grace of Jesus Christ in order to the doing of good deeds, these two wiseacres thought that he was preaching Jansenism; and thereupon, after the sermon, the Sieur de Mézy went to the proctor of the ecclesiastical court and denounced him. *
His zeal, though but moderately tempered with knowledge, sometimes proved more useful than on this occasion. The Jacobin convent at Caen was divided against itself. Some of the monks had embraced the doctrines taught by Bernières, while the rest held dogmas which he declared to be contrary to those of the Jesuits, and therefore heterodox. A prior was to be elected, and, with the help of Bernières, his partisans gained the victory, choosing one Father Louis, through whom the Hermitage gained a complete control in the convent. But the adverse party presently resisted, and complained to the provincial of their order, who came to Caen to close the dispute by deposing Father Louis. Hearing of his approach, Bernières asked
* Nicole, Mémoire pour faire connoistre l’espnt et la
conduite de la Compagnie appellée l'Hermitage.
aid from his military disciple, and De Mézy sent him a squad of soldiers, who guarded the convent doors and barred out the provincial. *
Among the merits of Mézy, his humility and charity were especially admired; and the people of Caen had more than once seen the town major staggering across the street with a beggar mounted on his back, whom he was bearing dry-shod through the mud in the exercise of those virtues. ** In this he imitated his master Bernières, of whom similar acts are recorded. *** However dramatic in manifestation, his devotion was not only sincere but intense. Laval imagined that he knew him well. Above all others, Mézy was the man of his choice; and so eagerly did he plead for him, that the king himself paid certain debts which the pious major had contracted, and thus left him free to sail for Canada.
His deportment on the voyage was edifying, and the first days of his accession were passed in harmony. He permitted Laval to form the new council, and supplied the soldiers for the seizure of Dumesnil’s papers. A question arose concerning Montreal, a subject on which the governors and the bishop rarely differed in opinion. The present instance was no exception to the rule. Mézy removed Maisonneuve, the local governor, and immediately replaced him; the effect being, that whereas
* ibid.
** Juchereau, Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu, 149.
*** See the laudatory notice of Bernières de Louvigny in
the Nouvelle Biographie Universelle.
he had before derived his authority from the seigniors of the island, he now derived it from the governor-general. It was a movement in the interest, of centralized power, and as such was cordially approved by Laval
The first indication to the bishop and the Jesuits that the new governor was not likely to prove in their hands as clay in the hands of the potter, is said to have been given on occasion of an interview with an embassy of Iroquois chiefs, to whom Mézy, aware of their duplicity, spoke with a decision and haughtiness that awed the savages and astonished the ecclesiastics.
He seems to have been one of those natures that run with an engrossing vehemence along any channel into which they may have been turned. At the Hermitage he was all devotee; but climate and conditions had changed, and he or his symptoms changed with them. He found himself raised suddenly to a post of command, or one which was meant to be such. The town major of Caen was set to rule over a region far larger than France. The royal authority was trusted to his keeping, and his honor and duty forbade him to break the trust. But when he found that those who had procured for him his new dignities had done so that he might be an instrument of their will, his ancient pride started again into life, and his headstrong temper broke out like a long-smothered fire. Laval stood aghast at the transformation. His lamb had turned wolf.
What especially stirred the governor’s dudgeon was the conduct of Bourdon, Villeray, and Auteuil, those faithful allies whom Laval had placed on the council, and who, as Mézy soon found, were wholly in the bishop’s interest. On the 13th of February he sent his friend Angoville, major of the fort, to Laval, with a written declaration to the effect that he had ordered them to absent themselves from the council, because, having been appointed “on the persuasion of the aforesaid Bishop of Petræa, who knew them to be wholly his creatures, they wish to make themselves masters in the aforesaid council, and have acted in divers ways against the interests of the king and the public for the promotion of personal and private ends, and have formed and fomented cabals, contrary to their duty and their oath of fidelity to his aforesaid Majesty.” * He further declares that advantage had been taken of the facility of his disposition and his ignorance of the country to surprise him into assenting to their nomination; and he asks the bishop to acquiesce in their expulsion, and join him in calling an assembly of the people to choose others in their place. Laval refused; on which Mézy caused his declaration to be placarded about Quebec and proclaimed by sound of drum.
The proposal of a public election, contrary as it was to the spirit of the government, opposed to the edict establishing the council, and utterly odious to the young autocrat who ruled over France, gave
* Ordre de M. de Mézy de faire sommation a l’Evêque de
Petrée, 13 Fev., 1664. Notification du dit Ordre, mène date.
(Registre du Conseil Supérieur.)
Laval a great advantage. “I reply,” he wrote, “to the request which Monsieur the Governor makes me to consent to the interdiction of the persons named in his declaration, and proceed to the choice of other councillors or officers by an assembly of the people, that neither my conscience nor my honor, nor the respect and obedience which I owe to the will and commands of the king, nor my fidelity and affection to his service, will by any means permit me to do so.” *
Mézy was dealing with an adversary armed with redoubtable weapons. It was intimated to him that the sacraments would be refused, and the churches closed against him. This threw him into an agony of doubt and perturbation; for the emotional religion which had become a part of his nature, though overborne by gusts of passionate irritation, was still full of life within him. Tossing between the old feeling and the new, he took a course which reveals the trouble and confusion of his mind. He threw himself for counsel and comfort on the Jesuits, though he knew them to be one with Laval against him, and though, under cover of denouncing sin in general, they had lashed him sharply in their sermons. There is something pathetic in the appeal he makes them. For the glory of God and the service of the king, he had come, he says, on Laval’s solicitation, to seek salvation in Canada; and being under obligation to the bishop, who had recommended him to the king, he felt bound to show proofs of his gratitude on every occasion.
* Réponse de l'Evêque de Petrée, 16 Fev., 1664.
Yet neither gratitude to a benefactor nor the respect due to his character and person should be permitted to interfere with duty to the king, “since neither conscience nor honor permit us to neglect the requirements of our office and betray the interests of his Majesty, after receiving orders from his lips, and making oath of fidelity between his hands.” He proceeds to say that, having discovered practices of which he felt obliged to prevent the continuance, he had made a declaration expelling the offenders from office; that the bishop and all the ecclesiastics had taken this declaration as an offence; that, regardless of the king’s service, they had denounced him as a calumniator, an unjust judge, without gratitude, and perverted in conscience; and that one of the chief among them had come to warn him that the sacraments would be refused and the churches closed against him. “This,” writes the unhappy governor, “has agitated our soul with scruples; and we have none from whom to seek light save those who are our declared opponents, pronouncing judgment on us without knowledge of cause. Yet as our salvation and the duty we owe the king are the things most important to us on earth, and as we hold them to be inseparable the one from the other: and as nothing is so certain as death, and nothing so uncertain as the hour thereof; and as there is no time to inform his Majesty of what is passing and to receive his commands; and as our soul, though conscious of innocence, is always in fear,—we feel obliged, despite their opposition, to have recourse to the reverend father casuists of the House of Jesus, to tell us in conscience what we can do for the fulfilment of our duty at once to God and to the king.” *
The Jesuits gave him little comfort. Lalemant, their superior, replied by advising him to follow the directions of his confessor, a Jesuit, so far as the question concerned spiritual matters, adding that in temporal matters he had no advice to give. ** The distinction was illusory. The quarrel turned wholly on temporal matters, but it was a quarrel with a bishop. To separate in such a case the spiritual obligation from the temporal was beyond the skill of Mézy, nor would the confessor have helped him.
Perplexed and troubled as he was, he would not reinstate Bourdon and the two councillors. The people began to clamor at the interruption of justice, for which they blamed Laval, whom a recent imposition of tithes had made unpopular. Mézy thereupon issued a proclamation, in which, after mentioning his opponents as the most subtle and artful persons in Canada, he declares that, in consequence of petitions sent him from Quebec and the neighboring settlements, he had called the people to the council chamber, and by their advice had appointed the Sieur de Chartier as attorney-general in place of Bourdon.***
Bourdon replied by a violent appeal from the
* Mézy aux PP. Jésuites, Fait au Château de Quebec ce
dernier jour de Février, 1664.
** Lettre du P. H. Lalemant a Mr. le Gouverneur.
*** Declaration du Sieur de Mézy, 10 Mars, 1664.
governor to the remaining members of the council, * on which Mézy declared him excluded from all public functions whatever, till the king’s pleasure should be known. ** Thus church and state still frowned on each other, and new disputes soon arose to widen the breach between them. On the first establishment of the council, an order had been passed for the election of a mayor and two aldermen (échevins) for Quebec, which it was proposed to erect into a city, though it had only seventy houses and less than a thousand inhabitants. Repentigny was chosen mayor, and Madry and Charron aldermen; but the choice was not agreeable to the bishop, and the three functionaries declined to act, influence having probably been brought to bear on them to that end. The council now resolved that a mayor was needless, and the people were permitted to choose a syndic in his stead. These municipal elections were always so controlled by the authorities that the element of liberty which they seemed to represent was little but a mockery. On the present occasion, after an unaccountable delay of ten months, twenty-two persons cast their votes in presence of the council, and the choice fell on Charron. The real question was whether the new syndic should belong to the governor or to the bishop. Charron leaned to the governor’s party. The ecclesiastics insisted that the people were dissatisfied, and a new election was ordered, but the voters did not come. The governor now
* Bourdon au Conseil, 13 Mars, 1664.
** Ordre du Gouverneur, 13 Mars, 1664.
sent messages to such of the inhabitants as he knew to be in his interest, who gathered in the council chamber, voted under his eye, and again chose a syndic agreeable to him. Laval’s party protested in vain. *
The councillors held office for a year, and the year had now expired. The governor and the bishop, it will be remembered, had a joint power of appointment; but agreement between them was impossible. Laval was for replacing his partisans, Bourdon, Villeray, Auteuil, and La Ferté. Mézy refused; and on the eighteenth of September he reconstructed the council by his sole authority, retaining of the old councillors only Amours and Tilly, and replacing the rest by Denis, La Tesserie, and Péronne de Maze, the surviving son of Dumesnil.
Again Laval protested; but Mézy proclaimed his choice by sound of drum, and caused placards to be posted, full, according to Father Lalemant, of abuse against the bishop. On this he was excluded from confession and absolution. He complained loudly; “but our reply was,” says the father, “that God knew every thing.” **
This unanswerable but somewhat irrelevant response failed to satisfy him, and it was possibly on this occasion that an incident occurred which is recounted by the bishop’s eulogist, La Tour. He says that Mézy, with some unknown design, appeared before the church at the head of a band of soldiers, while Laval was saying mass. The service over, the bishop presented himself at the door, on which, to
* Registre du Conseil Supérieur.
** Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1664.
the governor's confusion, all the soldiers respectfully saluted him. * The story may have some foundation, but it is not supported by contemporary evidence.
On the Sunday after Mézy’s coup d’etat, the pulpits resounded with denunciations. The people listened, doubtless, with becoming respect; but their sympathies were with the governor; and he, on his part, had made appeals to them at more than one crisis of the quarrel. He now fell into another indiscretion. He banished Bourdon and Villeray, and ordered them home to France.
They carried with them the instruments of their revenge, the accusations of Laval and the Jesuits against the author of their woes. Of these accusations one alone would have sufficed. Mézy had appealed to the people. It is true that he did so from no love of popular liberty, but simply do make head against an opponent; yet the act alone was enough, and he received a peremptory recall. Again Laval had triumphed. He had made one governor and unmade two, if not three. The modest Levite, as one of his biographers calls him in his earlier days, had become the foremost power in Canada.
Laval had a threefold strength at court; his high birth, his reputed sanctity, and the support of the Jesuits. This was not all, for the permanency of his position in the colony gave him another advantage. The governors were named for three
* La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. VII. It is charitable to
ascribe this writer’s many errors to carelessness.
years, and could be recalled at any time; but the vicar apostolic owed his appointment to the Pope, and the Pope alone could revoke it. Thus he was beyond reach of the royal authority, and the court was in a certain sense obliged to conciliate him. As for Mézy, a man of no rank or influence, he could expect no mercy. Yet, though irritable and violent, he seems to have tried conscientiously to reconcile conflicting duties, or what he regarded as such. The governors and intendants, his successors, received, during many years, secret instructions from the court to watch Laval, and cautiously prevent him from assuming powers which did not belong to him. It is likely that similar instructions had been given to Mézy, * and that the attempt to fulfil them had aided to embroil him with one who was probably the last man on earth with whom he would willingly have quarrelled.
An inquiry was ordered into his conduct; but a voice more potent than the voice of the king had called him to another tribunal. A disease, the result perhaps of mental agitation, seized upon him and soon brought him to extremity. As he lay gasping between life and death, fear and horror took possession of his soul. Hell yawned before his fevered vision, peopled with phantoms which long and lonely meditations, after the discipline of Loyola, made real and palpable to his thought. He smelt the fumes of infernal brimstone, and
* The royal commissioner, Gaudais, who came to Canada with
Mézy, had, as before mentioned, orders to inquire with great
secrecy into th« conduct of Laval. The intendant, Talon, who
followed immediately after, had similar instructions.
heard the bowlings of the damned. He saw the frown of the angry Judge, and the fiery swords of avenging angels, hurling wretches like himself, writhing in anguish and despair, into the gulf of unutterable woe. He listened to the ghostly counsellors who besieged his bed, bowed his head in penitence, made his peace with the church, asked pardon of Laval, confessed to him, and received absolution at his hands; and his late adversaries, now benign and bland, soothed him with promises of pardon, and hopes of eternal bliss.
Before he died, he wrote to the Marquis de Tracy, newly appointed viceroy, a letter which indicates that even in his penitence he could not feel himself wholly in the wrong. * He also left a will in which the pathetic and the quaint are curiously mingled. After praying his patron, Saint Augustine, with Saint John, Saint Peter, and all the other saints, to intercede for the pardon of his sins, he directs that his body shall be buried in the cemetery of the poor at the hospital, as being unworthy of more honored sepulture. He then makes various legacies of piety and charity. Other bequests follow, one of which is to his friend Major Angoville, to whom he leaves two hundred francs, his coat of English cloth, his camlet mantle, a pair of new shoes, eight shirts with sleeve buttons, his sword and belt, and a new blanket for the major’s servant. Felix Aubert is to have fifty francs, with a gray jacket, a small coat of gray serge, “which,” says the testator, “has been worn for a while,” and a
* Lettre de Mézy au Marquis de Tracy, 26 Avril 1665.
pair of long white stockings. And in a codicil he farther leaves to Angoville his best black coat, in order that he may wear mourning for him. *
His earthly troubles closed on the night of the sixth of May. He went to his rest among the paupers; and the priests, serenely triumphant, sang requiems over his grave.
NOTE:—Mézy sent home charges against the bishop and the Jesuits which seem to have existed in Charlevoix’s time, but for which, as well as for those made by Laval, I have sought in vain.
The substance of these mutual accusations is given thus by the minister Colbert, in a memorial addressed to the Marquis de Tracy, in 1665: “Les Jésuites l’accusent d’avarice et de violences; et lui qu’ils voulaient entreprendre sur l’autorité qui lui a été commise par le Roy, en sorte que n’ayant que de leurs créatures dans le Conseil Souverain, toutes les résolutions s’y prenaient selon leurs sentiments.”
The papers cited are drawn partly from the Registres du Conseil Supérieur, still preserved at Quebec, and partly from the Archives of the Marine and Colonies. Laval’s admirer, the abbé La Tour, in his eagerness to justify the bishop, says that the quarrel arose from a dispute about precedence between Mézy and the intendant, and from the ill-humor of the governor because the intendant shared the profits of his office. The truth is, that there was no intendant in Canada during the term of Mezy’s government. One Robert had been appointed to the office, but he never came to the colony. The commissioner Gaudais, during the two or three months of his stay at Quebec, took the intendant’s place at the council-board; but harmony between Laval and Mézy was unbroken till after his departure. Other writers say that the dispute arose from the old question about brandy. Towards the end of the quarrel there was some disorder from this source, but even then the brandy question was subordinate to other subjects of strife.
* Testament du Sieur de Mézy. This will, as well as the
letter, is engrossed in the registers of the council.
LaVal’s Visit to Court.—The Seminary.—Zeal oF the Bishop.—His Eulogists.—Church and State.—Attitude of Laval.
That memorable journey of Laval to court, which caused the dissolution of the Company of New France, the establishment of the Supreme Council, the recall of Avaugour, and the appointment of Mézy, had yet other objects and other results. Laval, vicar apostolic and titular bishop of Petræa, wished to become in title, as in fact, bishop of Quebec. Thus he would gain an increase of dignity and authority, necessary, as he thought, in his conflicts with the civil power; “for,” he wrote to the cardinals of the Propaganda, “I have learned from long experience how little security my character of vicar apostolic gives me against those charged with political affairs: I mean the officers of the Crown, perpetual rivals and contemners of the authority of the church.” *
* For a long extract from this letter, copied from the
original in the archives of the Propaganda at Rome, see
Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 432
This reason was for the Pope and the cardinals. It may well be believed that he held a different language to the king. To him he urged that the bishopric was needed to enforce order, suppress sin, and crush heresy. Both Louis XIV. and the queen mother favored his wishes; * but difficulties arose and interminable disputes ensued on the question, whether the proposed bishopric should depend immediately on the Pope or on the Archbishop of Rouen. It was a revival of the old quarrel of Gallican and ultramontane. Laval, weary of hope deferred, at length declared that he would leave the colony if he could not be its bishop in title; and in 1674, after eleven years of delay, the king yielded to the Pope’s demands, and the vicar apostolic became first bishop of Quebec.
If Laval had to wait for his mitre, he found no delay and no difficulty in attaining another object no less dear to him. He wished to provide priests for Canada, drawn from the Canadian population, fed with sound and wholesome doctrine, reared under his eye, and moulded by his hand. To this end he proposed to establish a seminary at Quebec. The plan found favor with the pious king, and a decree signed by his hand sanctioned and confirmed it. The new seminary was to be a corporation of priests under a superior chosen by the bishop; and, besides its functions of instruction, it was vested with distinct and extraordinary powers. Laval,
* Anne d'Autriche a Laval, 23 Avril, 1662; Louis XIV. au
Pape, 28 Jan., 1664; Louis XIV. au Duc de Créquy,
Ambassadeur à Rome, 28 June, 1664.
an organizer and a disciplinarian by nature and training, would fain subject the priests of his diocese to a control as complete as that of monks in a convent. In France, the curé or parish priest was, with rare exceptions, a fixture in his parish, whence he could be removed only for grave reasons, and through prescribed forms of procedure. Hence he was to a certain degree independent of the bishop. Laval, on the contrary, demanded that the Canadian curé should be removable at his will, and thus placed in the position of a missionary, to come and go at the order of his superior. In fact, the Canadian parishes were for a long time so widely scattered, so feeble in population, and so miserably poor, that, besides the disciplinary advantages of this plan, its adoption was at first almost a matter of necessity. It added greatly to the power of the church; and, as the colony increased, the king and the minister conceived an increasing distrust of it. Instructions for the “fixation” of the curés were repeatedly sent to the colony, and the bishop, while professing to obey, repeatedly evaded them. Various fluctuations and changes took place; but Laval had built on strong foundations, and at this day the system of removable curés prevails in most of the Canadian parishes. *
Thus he formed his clergy into a family with
* On the establishment of the seminary. Mandement de
l’Evêque de Petrée, pour l’Etablissement du Séminaire de
Québec; Approbation du Roy (Edits et Ordonnances, I. 33,
35); La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. VI.; Esquisse de la Vie de
Laval, Appendix. Various papers bearing on the subject are
printed in the Canadian Abeille, from originals in the
archives of the seminary.
himself at its head. His seminary, the mother who had reared them, was further charged to maintain them, nurse them in sickness, and support them in old age. Under her maternal roof the tired priest found repose among his brethren; and thither every year he repaired from the charge of his flock in the wilderness, to freshen his devotion and animate his zeal by a season of meditation and prayer.
The difficult task remained to provide the necessary funds. Laval imposed a tithe of one-thirteenth on all products of the soil, or, as afterwards settled, on grains alone. This tithe was paid to the seminary, and by the seminary to the priests. The people, unused to such a burden, clamored and resisted; and Mézy, in his disputes with the bishop, had taken advantage of their discontent. It became necessary to reduce the tithe to a twenty-sixth, which, as there was little or no money among the inhabitants, was paid in kind. Nevertheless, the scattered and impoverished settlers grudged even this contribution to the support of a priest whom many of them rarely saw; and the collection of it became a matter of the greatest difficulty and uncertainty. How the king came to the rescue, we shall hereafter see.
Besides the great seminary where young men were trained for the priesthood, there was the lesser seminary where boys were educated in the hope that they would one day take orders. This school began in 1668, with eight French and six Indian pupils, in the old house of Madame
Couillard; but so far as the Indians were concerned it was a failure. Sooner or later they all ran wild in the woods, carrying with them as fruits of their studies a sufficiency of prayers, offices, and chants learned by rote, along with a feeble smattering of Latin and rhetoric, which they soon dropped by the way. There was also a sort of farm-school attached to the seminary, for the training of a humbler class of pupils. It was established at the parish of St. Joachim, below Quebec, where the children of artisans and peasants were taught farming and various mechanical arts, and thoroughly grounded in the doctrine and discipline of the church. * The Great and Lesser Seminary still subsist, and form one of the most important Roman Catholic institutions on this continent. To them has recently been added the Laval University, resting on the same foundation, and supported by the same funds.
Whence were these funds derived? Laval, in order to imitate the poverty of the apostles, had divested himself of his property before he came to Canada; otherwise there is little doubt that in the fulness of his zeal he would have devoted it to his favorite object. But if he had no property he had influence, and his family had both influence and wealth. He acquired vast grants of land in the best parts of Canada. Some of these he sold or exchanged; others he retained till the year
*Annales du Petit Séminaire de Quebec, see Abeille, Vol. I.;
Notice Historique sur le Petit Séminaire de Quebec, Ibid.,
Vol. II.; Notice Historique sur la Paroisse de St. Joachim,
Ibid., Vol. I. The Abeille is a journal published by the
seminary.
1680, when he gave them, with nearly all else that he then possessed, to his seminary at Quebec. The lands with which he thus endowed it included the seigniories of the Petite Nation, the island of Jesus, and Beaupré. The last is of great extent, and at the present day of immense value. Beginning a few miles below Quebec, it borders the St. Lawrence for a distance of sixteen leagues, and is six leagues in depth, measured from the river. From these sources the seminary still draws an abundant revenue, though its seigniorial rights were commuted on the recent extinction of the feudal tenure in Canada.
Well did Laval deserve that his name should live in that of the university which a century and a half after his death owed its existence to his bounty. This father of the Canadian church, who has left so deep an impress on one of the communities which form the vast population of North America, belonged to a type of character to which an even justice is rarely done. With the exception of the Canadian Garneau, a liberal Catholic, those who have treated of him, have seen him through a medium intensely Romanist, coloring, hiding, and exaggerating by turns both his actions and the traits of his character. Tried by the Romanist standard, his merits were great; though the extraordinary influence which he exercised in the affairs of the colony were, as already observed, by no means due to his spiritual graces alone. To a saint sprung from the haute noblesse, Earth and Heaven were alike propitious. When the vicar general Colombière pronounced his funeral eulogy in the sounding periods of Bossuet, he did not fail to exhibit him on the ancestral pedestal where his virtues would shine with redoubled lustre. “The exploits of the heroes of the House of Montmorency,” exclaims the reverend orator, “form one of the fairest chapters in the annals of Old France; the heroic acts of charity, humility, and faith, achieved by a Montmorency, form one of the fairest in the annals of New France. The combats, victories, and conquests of the Montmorency in Europe would fill whole volumes; and so, too, would the triumphs won by a Montmorency, in America, over sin, passion, and the devil.” Then he crowns the high-born prelate with a halo of fourfold saintship. “It was with good reason that Providence permitted him to be called Francis: for the virtues of all the saints of that name were combined in him; the zeal of Saint Francis Xavier, the charity of Saint Francis of Sales, the poverty of Saint Francis of Assissi, the self-mortification of Saint Francis Borgia; but poverty was the mistress of his heart, and he loved her with incontrollable transports.”
The stories which Colombière proceeds to tell of Laval’s asceticism are confirmed by other evidence, and are, no doubt, true. Nor is there any reasonable doubt that, had the bishop stood in the place of Brebeuf or Charles Lalemant, he would have suffered torture and death like them. But it was his lot to strive, not against infidel savages, but against countrymen and Catholics, who had no disposition to burn him, and would rather have done him reverence than wrong.
To comprehend his actions and motives, it is necessary to know his ideas in regard to the relations of church and state. They were those of the extreme ultramontanes, which a recent Jesuit preacher has expressed with tolerable distinctness. In a sermon uttered in the Church of Notre Dame, at Montreal, on the first of November, 1872, he thus announced them. “The supremacy and infallibility of the Pope; the independence and liberty of the church; the subordination and submission of the state to the church; in case of conflict between them, the church to decide, the state to submit: for whoever follows and defends these principles, life and a blessing; for whoever rejects and combats them, death and a curse.” *
These were the principles which Laval and the Jesuits strove to make good. Christ was to rule in Canada through his deputy the bishop, and God’s law was to triumph over the laws of man. As in the halcyon days of Champlain and Montmagny, the governor was to be the right hand of the church, to wield the earthly sword at her bidding, and the council was to be the agent of her high behests.
France was drifting toward the triumph of the parti dévot, the sinister reign of petticoat and cassock, the era of Maintenon and Tellier, and the
* This sermon was preached by Father Braun, S. J., on
occasion of the “Golden Wedding,” or fiftieth anniversary,
of Bishop Bourget of Montreal. A large body of the Canadian
clergy were present, some of whom thought his expressions
too emphatic. A translation by another Jesuit is published
in the “Montreal Weekly Herald” of Nov. 2, 1872; and the
above extract is copied verbatim.
fatal atrocities of the dragonnades. Yet the advancing tide of priestly domination did not flow smoothly. The unparalleled prestige which surrounded the throne of the young king, joined to his quarrels with the Pope and divisions in the church itself, disturbed, though they could not check its progress. In Canada it was otherwise. The colony had been ruled by priests from the beginning, and it only remained to continue in her future the law of her past. She was the fold of Christ; the wolf of civil government was among the flock, and Laval and the Jesuits, watchful shepherds, were doing their best to chain and muzzle him.
According to Argenson, Laval had said, “A bishop can do what he likes;” and his action answered reasonably well to his words. He thought himself above human law. In vindicating the assumed rights of the church, he invaded the rights of others, and used means from which a healthy conscience would have shrunk. All his thoughts and sympathies had run from childhood in ecclesiastical channels, and he cared for nothing outside the church. Prayer, meditation, and asceticism had leavened and moulded him. During four years he had been steeped in the mysticism of the Hermitage, which had for its aim the annihilation of self, and through self-annihilation the absorption into God. * He had passed from a life of visions to a life of action. Earnest to fanaticism, he saw but one great object, the glory of God on earth. He was penetrated by the poisonous casuistry of the Jesuits,
* See the maxims of Bernieres published by La Tour.
based on the assumption that all means are permitted when the end is the service of God; and as Laval, in his own opinion, was always doing the service of God, while his opponents were always doing that of the devil, he enjoyed, in the use of means, a latitude of which we have seen him avail himself.
Fontainebleau.—Louis XIV.—Colbert.—The Company of the West.—Evil Omens.—Action op the King.—Tracy, Coürcelle, And Talon.—The Regiment Of Carignan-Sallères.—Tracy at Quebec.—Miracles.—A Holy War.
Leave Canada behind; cross the sea, and stand, on an evening in June, by the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. Beyond the broad gardens, above the long ranges of moonlit trees, rise the walls and pinnacles of the vast chateau; a shrine of history, the gorgeous monument of lines of vanished kings, haunted with memories of Capet, Valois, and Bourbon.
There was little thought of the past at Fontainebleau in June, 1661. The present was too dazzling and too intoxicating; the future, too radiant with hope and promise. It was the morning of a new reign; the sun of Louis XIV. was rising in splendor, and the rank and beauty of France were gathered to pay it homage. A youthful court, a youthful king; a pomp and magnificence such as Europe had never seen; a delirium of ambition, pleasure, and love,—wrought in many a young heart an enchantment destined to be cruelly broken. Even old courtiers felt the fascination of the scene, and tell us of the music at evening by the borders of the lake; of the gay groups that strolled under the shadowing trees, floated in gilded barges on the still water, or moved slowly in open carriages around its borders. Here was Anne of Austria, the king’s mother, and Marie Thérèse, his tender and jealous queen; his brother, the Duke of Orleans, with his bride of sixteen, Henriette of England; and his favorite, that vicious butterfly of the court, the Count de Guiche. Here, too, were the humbled chiefs of the civil war, Beaufort and Condé, obsequious before their triumphant master. Louis XIV., the centre of all eyes, in the flush of health and vigor, and the pride of new-fledged royalty, stood, as he still stands on the canvas of Philippe de Champagne, attired in a splendor which would have been effeminate but for the stately port of the youth who wore it. *
Fortune had been strangely bountiful to him. The nations of Europe, exhausted by wars and dissensions, looked upon him with respect and fear. Among weak and weary neighbors, he alone was strong. The death of Mazarin had released him from tutelage; feudalism in the person of Condé
* On the visit of the court at Fontainebleau in the summer
of 1661, see Mémoires de Madame de Motteville, Mémoires de
Madame de La Fayette, Mémoires de l’Abbé de Choisy, and
Walckenaer, Mémoires sur Madame de Sevigné.
was abject before him; he had reduced his parliaments to submission; and, in the arrest of the ambitious prodigal Fouquet, he was preparing a crashing blow to the financial corruption which had devoured France.
Nature had formed him to act the part of king. Even his critics and enemies praise the grace and majesty of his presence, and he impressed his courtiers with an admiration which seems to have been to an astonishing degree genuine. He carried airs of royalty even into his pleasures; and, while his example corrupted all France, he proceeded to the apartments of Montespan or Fontanges with the majestic gravity of Olympian Jove. He was a devout observer of the forms of religion; and, as the buoyancy of youth passed away, his zeal was stimulated by a profound fear of the devil. Mazarin had reared him in ignorance; but his faculties were excellent in their way, and, in a private station, would have made him an efficient man of business. The vivacity of his passions, and his inordinate love of pleasure, were joined to a persistent will and a rare power of labor. The vigorous mediocrity of his understanding delighted in grappling with details. His astonished courtiers saw him take on himself the burden of administration, and work at it without relenting for more than half a century. Great as was his energy, his pride was far greater. As king by divine right, he felt himself raised immeasurably above the highest of his subjects; but, while vindicating with unparalleled haughtiness his claims to supreme authority, he was, at the outset, filled with a sense of the duties of his high place, and fired by an ambition to make his reign beneficent to France as well as glorious to himself.
Above all rulers of modern times, he was the embodiment of the monarchical idea. The famous words ascribed to him, “I am the state,” were probably never uttered; but they perfectly express his spirit. “It is God’s will,” he wrote in 1666, “that whoever is born a subject should not reason, but obey;” * and those around him were of his mind. “The state is in the king,” said Bossuet, the great mouthpiece of monarchy; “the will of the people is merged in his will. Oh kings, put forth your power boldly, for it is divine and salutary to human kind.” **
For a few brief years, his reign was indeed salutary to France. His judgment of men, when not obscured by his pride and his passion for flattery, was good; and he had at his service the generals and statesmen formed in the freer and bolder epoch that had ended with his accession. Among them was Jean Baptiste Colbert, formerly the intendant of Mazarin’s household, a man whose energies matched his talents, and who had preserved his rectitude in the midst of corruption. It was a hard task that Colbert imposed on his proud and violent nature to serve the imperious king, morbidly jealous of his authority, and resolved to
* Œuvres de Louis XIV., II. 283.
** Bossuet, Politique tirée de l’Ecriture sainte, 70.
(1843).
accept no initiative but his own. He must counsel while seeming to receive counsel, and lead while seeming to follow. The new minister bent himself to the task, and the nation reaped the profit. A vast system of reform was set in action amid the outcries of nobles, financiers, churchmen, and all who profited by abuses. The methods of this reform were trenchant and sometimes violent, and its principles were not always in accord with those of modern economic science; but the good that resulted was incalculable. The burdens of the laboring classes were lightened, the public revenues increased, and the wholesale plunder of the public money arrested with a strong hand. Laws were reformed and codified; feudal tyranny, which still subsisted in many quarters, was repressed; agriculture and productive industry of all kinds were encouraged, roads and canals opened; trade stimulated, a commercial marine created, and a powerful navy formed as if by magic. *
It is in his commercial, industrial, and colonial policy that the profound defects of the great minister’s system are most apparent. It was a system of authority, monopoly, and exclusion, in which the government, and not the individual, acted always the foremost part. Upright, incorruptible, ardent for the public good, inflexible, arrogant, and domineering, he sought to drive France into paths of prosperity, and create colonies by the
* On Colbert, see Clement, Histoire de Colbert. Clément,
Lettres et Mémoires de Colbert; Chéruel, Administration
monarchique en France, II chap, vi Henri Martin, Histoire de
France, XIII., etc.
energy of an imperial will. He feared, and with reason, that the want of enterprise and capital among the merchants would prevent the broad and immediate results at which he aimed; and, to secure these results, he established a series of great trading corporations, in which the principles of privilege and exclusion were pushed to their utmost limits. Prominent among them was the Company of the West. The king signed the edict creating it on the 24th of May, 1664. Any person in the kingdom or out of it might become a partner by subscribing, within a certain time, not less than three thousand francs. France was a mere patch on the map, compared to the vast domains of the new association. Western Africa from Cape Verd to the Cape of Good Hope, South America between the Amazon and the Orinoco, Cayenne, the Antilles, and all New France, from Hudson’s Bay to Virginia and Florida were bestowed on it for ever, to be held of the Crown on the simple condition of faith and homage. As, according to the edict, the glory of God was the chief object in view, the company was required to supply its possessions with a sufficient number of priests, and diligently to exclude all teachers of false doctrine. It was empowered to build forts and war-ships, cast cannon, wage war, make peace, establish courts, appoint judges, and otherwise to act as sovereign within its own domains. A monopoly of trade was granted it for forty years. * Sugar from the Antilles, and furs from Canada, were the chief source of expected profit; and Africa was to supply the slaves to raise the sugar. Scarcely was the grand machine set in motion, when its directors betrayed a narrowness and blindness of policy which boded the enterprise no good. Canada was a chief sufferer. Once more, bound hand and foot, she was handed over to a selfish league of merchants; monopoly in trade, monopoly in religion, monopoly in government. Nobody but the company had a right to bring her the necessaries of life; and nobody but the company had a right to exercise the traffic which alone could give her the means of paying for these necessaries. Moreover, the supplies which it brought were insufficient, and the prices which it demanded were exorbitant. It was throttling its wretched victim. The Canadian merchants remonstrated. ** It was clear that, if the colony was to live, the system must be changed; and a change was accordingly ordered. The company gave up its monopoly of the fur trade, but reserved the right to levy a duty of one-fourth of the beaver-skins, and one-tenth of the moose-skins: and it also reserved the entire trade of Tadoussac; that is to say, the trade of all the tribes between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson’s Bay. It retained besides the exclusive right of transporting furs in its own ships, thus controlling the commerce of Canada, and discouraging, or rather extinguishing, the enterprise of Canadian merchants. On its part, it was required to pay governors, judges, and all the colonial officials out of the duties which it levied. ****
Yet the king had the prosperity of Canada at heart; and he proceeded to show his interest in her after a manner hardly consistent with his late action in handing her over to a mercenary guardian. In fact, he acted as if she had still remained under his paternal care. He had just conferred the right of naming a governor and intendant upon the new company; but he now assumed it himself, the company, with a just sense of its own unfitness, readily consenting to this suspension of one of its most important privileges. Daniel de Rémy, Sieur de Courcelle, was appointed governor, and Jean Baptiste Talon intendant. (v) The nature of this duplicate government will appear hereafter. But, before appointing rulers for Canada, the king had appointed a representative of the Crown for all his American domains. The Maréchal d’Estrades had for some time held the title of viceroy for America; and, as he could not fulfil the duties of that office, being at the time ambassador in Holland, the Marquis de Tracy was sent in his place, with the title of lieutenant-general.——
* Arrêt du Conseil du Roy qui accorde a la Compagnie le
quart des castors, le dixième des orignaux et la traite de
Tadoussac: Instruction a Monseigneur de Tracy et a Messieurs
le Gouverneur et L'Intendant.
This company prospered as little as the rest of Colbert’s
trading companies. Within ten years it lost 3,523,000
livres, besides blighting the colonies placed under its
control. Recherches sur les Finances, cited by Clement,
Histoire de Colbert.
** Commission de Lieutenant Général en Canada, etc., pour
M. de Courcelle, 23 Mais, 1665; Commission d’intendant de la
Justice, Police, et Finances en Canada, etc., pour M. Talon,
23 Mars, 1665.
*** Commission de Lieutenant Général de l’Amérique
Méridionale et Septentrionale pour M. Prou Conseil du Roy
qui accorde a la Compagnie le quart des castors, le dixième
des orignaux et la traite de Tadoussac: Instruction a
Monseigneur de Tracy et a Messieurs le Gouverneur et
L'Intendant.
This company prospered as little as the rest of Colbert’s
trading companies. Within ten years it lost 3,523,000
livres, besides blighting the colonies placed under its
control. Recherches sur les Finances, cited by Clement,
Histoire de Colbert.
**** Commission de Lieutenant Général en Canada, etc., pour
M. de Courcelle, 23 Mais, 1665; Commission d’intendant de la
Justice, Police, et Finances en Canada, etc., pour M. Talon,
23 Mars, 1665.
(v) Commission de Lieutenant Général de l’Amérique
Méridionale et Septentrionale pour M. Prouville de Tracy, 19
Nov., 1663.
Canada at this time was an object of very considerable attention at court, and especially in what was known as the parti dévot. The Relations of the Jesuits, appealing equally to the spirit of religion and the spirit of romantic adventure, had, for more than a quarter of a century, been the favorite reading of the devout, and the visit of Laval at court had greatly stimulated the interest they had kindled. The letters of Argenson, and especially of Avaugour, had shown the vast political possibilities of the young colony, and opened a vista of future glories alike for church and for king.
So, when Tracy set sail he found no lack of followers. A throng of young nobles embarked with him, eager to explore the marvels and mysteries of the western world. The king gave him two hundred soldiers of the regiment of Carignan-Salières, and promised that a thousand more should follow. After spending more than a year in the West Indies, where, as Mother Mary of the Incarnation expresses it, “he performed marvels and reduced everybody to obedience,” he at length sailed up the St. Lawrence, and, on the thirtieth of June, 1665, anchored in the basin of Quebec. The broad, white standard, blazoned with the arms of France, proclaimed the representative of royalty; and Point Levi and Cape Diamond and the distant Cape Tourmente roared back the sound of the saluting cannon. All Quebec was on the ramparts or at the landing-place, and all eyes were strained at the two vessels as they slowly emptied their crowded decks into the boats alongside. The boats at length drew near, and the lieutenant-general and his suite landed on the quay with a pomp such as Quebec had never seen before.
Tracy was a veteran of sixty-two, portly and tall, “one of the largest men I ever saw,” writes Mother Mary; but he was sallow with disease, for fever had seized him, and it had fared ill with him on the long voyage. The Chevalier de Chaumont walked at his side, and young nobles surrounded him, gorgeous in lace and ribbons and majestic in leonine wigs. Twenty-four guards in the king’s livery led the way, followed by four pages and six valets; * and thus, while the Frenchmen shouted and the Indians stared, the august procession threaded the streets of the Lower Town, and climbed the steep pathway that scaled the cliffs above. Breathing hard, they reached the top, passed on the left the dilapidated walls of the fort and the shed of mingled wood and masonry which then bore the name of the Castle of St. Louis; passed on the right the old house of Couillard and the site of Laval’s new seminary, and soon reached the square betwixt the Jesuit college and the cathedral. The bells were ringing in a phrensy of welcome. Laval in pontificals, surrounded by priests and Jesuits, stood waiting to receive the deputy of the king; and, as he greeted Tracy and offered him the holy water, he looked with anxious curiosity to see what manner of man he was. The signs were auspicious. The deportment of the lieutenant-general
* Juchereau says that this was his constant attendance when
he went abroad.
left nothing to desire. A prie-dieu had been placed for him. He declined it. They offered him a cushion, but he would not have it; and, fevered as he was, he knelt on the bare pavement with a devotion that edified every beholder. Te Deum was sung, and a day of rejoicing followed.
There was good cause. Canada, it was plain, was not to be wholly abandoned to a trading company. Louis XIV. was resolved that a new France should be added to the old. Soldiers, settlers, horses, sheep, cattle, young women for wives, were all sent out in abundance by his paternal benignity. Before the season was over, about two thousand persons had landed at Quebec at the royal charge. “At length,” writes Mother Juchereau, “our joy was completed by the arrival of two vessels with Monsieur de Courcelle, our governor; Monsieur Talon, our intendant, and the last companies of the regiment of Carignan.” More state and splendor more young nobles, more guards and valets: for Courcelle, too, says the same chronicler, “had a superb train; and Monsieur Talon, who naturally loves glory, forgot nothing which could do honor to the king.” Thus a sunbeam from the court fell for a moment on the rock of Quebec. Yet all was not sunshine; for the voyage had been a tedious one, and disease had broken out in the ships. That which bore Talon had been a hundred and seventeen days at sea, * and others were hardly more fortunate. The hospital was crowded with the sick; so, too, were the church and the neighboring houses;
* Talon au ministre, 4 Oct., 1665.
and the nuns were so spent with their labors that seven of them were brought to the point of death. The priests were busied in converting the Huguenots, a number of whom were detected among the soldiers and emigrants. One of them proved refractory, declaring with oaths that he would never renounce his faith. Falling dangerously ill, he was carried to the hospital, where Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin bethought her of a plan of conversion. She ground to powder a small piece of a bone of Father Brebeuf, the Jesuit martyr, and secretly mixed the sacred dust with the patient’s gruel; whereupon, says Mother Juchereau, “this intractable man forthwith became gentle as an angel, begged to be instructed, embraced the faith, and abjured his errors publicly with an admirable fervor.” *
Two or three years before, the church of Quebec had received as a gift from the Pope, the bodies or bones of two saints; Saint Flavian and Saint Félicité. They were enclosed in four large coffers or reliquaries, and a grand procession was now ordered in their honor. Tracy, Courcelle, Talon, and the agent of the company, bore the canopy of the Host. Then came the four coffers on four decorated litters, carried by the principal ecclesiastics. Laval followed in pontificals. Forty-seven priests, and a long file of officers, nobles, soldiers, and inhabitants, followed the precious relics amid the sound of music and the roar of cannon. **
* Le Mercier tells the same story in the Relation of 1665.
** Compare Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, 16 Oct., 1660,
with La Tour Vie de Laval, chap. x.
“It is a ravishing thing,” says Mother Mary, “to see how marvellously exact is Monsieur de Tracy, at all these holy ceremonies, where he is always the first to come, for he would not lose a single moment of them. He has been seen in church for six hours together, without once going out.” But while the lieutenant-general thus edified the colony, he betrayed no lack of qualities equally needful in his position. In Canada, as in the West Indies, he showed both vigor and conduct. First of all, he had been ordered to subdue or destroy the Iroquois, and the regiment of Carignan-Salières was the weapon placed in his hands for this end, Four companies of this corps had arrived early in the season, four more came with Tracy, more yet with Salières, their colonel, and now the number was complete. As with slouched hat and plume, bandoleer, and shouldered firelock, these bronzed veterans of the Turkish wars marched at the tap of drum through the narrow street, or mounted the rugged way that led up to the fort, the inhabitants gazed with a sense of profound relief. Tame Indians from the neighboring missions, wild Indians from the woods, stared in silent wonder at their new defenders. Their numbers, their discipline, their uniform, and their martial bearing, filled the savage beholders with admiration.
Carignan-Salières was the first regiment of regular troops ever sent to America by the French government. It was raised in Savoy by the Prince of Carignan in 1644, but was soon employed in the service of France; where, in 1652, it took a conspicuous part, on the side of the king, in the battle with Condé and the Fronde at the Porte St. Antoine. After the peace of the Pyrenees, the Prince of Carignan, unable to support the regiment, gave it to the king, and it was, for the first time, incorporated into the French armies. In 1664, it distinguished itself, as part of the allied force of France, in the Austrian war against the Turks. In the next year it was ordered to America, along with the fragment of a regiment formed of Germans, the whole being placed under the command of Colonel de Salières. Hence its double name. *
Fifteen heretics were discovered in its ranks, and quickly converted. ** Then the new crusade was preached; the crusade against the Iroquois, enemies of God and tools of the devil. The soldiers and the people were filled with a zeal half warlike and half religious. “They are made to understand,” writes Mother Mary, “that this is a holy war, all for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The fathers are doing wonders in inspiring them with true sentiments of piety and
* For a long notice of the regiment of Carignan-Salières
(Lorraine), see Susane, Ancienne Infanterie Française V 236.
The portion of it which returned to France from Canada
formed a nucleus for the reconstruction of the regiment,
which, under the name of the regiment of Lorraine, did not
cease to exist as a separate organization till 1794. When it
came to Canada it consisted, says Susane, of about a
thousand men, besides about two hundred of the other
regiment incorporated with it. Compare Mémoire du Roy pour
servir d’instruction au Sieur Talon, which corresponds very
nearly with Susane’s statement.
** Besides these, there was Berthier, a captain, “Voilà”
writes Talon to the king, “le 16me converti; ainsi votre
Majesté moissonne déjà à pleines mains de la gloire pour
Dieu, et pour elle bien de la renommée dans toute l’étendue
de la Chrétienté” Lettre au 7 Oct., 1665.
devotion. Fully five hundred soldiers have taken the scapulary of the Holy Virgin. It is we (the Ursulines), who make them; it is a real pleasure to do such work;” and she proceeds to relate a “beau miracle” by which God made known his satisfaction at the fervor of his military servants.
The secular motives for the war were in themselves strong enough; for the growth of the colony absolutely demanded the cessation of Iroquois raids, and the French had begun to learn the lesson that, in the case of hostile Indians, no good can come of attempts to conciliate, unless respect is first imposed by a sufficient castigation. It is true that the writers of the time paint Iroquois hostilities in their worst colors. In the innumerable letters which Mother Mary of the Incarnation sent home every autumn, by the returning ships, she spared no means to gain the sympathy and aid of the devout; and, with similar motives, the Jesuits in their printed Relations, took care to extenuate nothing of the miseries which the pious colony endured. Avaugour, too, in urging the sending out of a strong force to fortify and hold the country, had advised that, in order to furnish a pretext and disarm the jealousy of the English and Dutch, exaggerated accounts should be given of danger from the side of the savage confederates. Yet, with every allowance, these dangers and sufferings were sufficiently great.
The three upper nations of the Iroquois were comparatively pacific; but the two lower nations, the Mohawks and Oneidas, were persistently hostile; making inroads into the colony by way of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu, murdering and scalping, and then vanishing like ghosts. Tracy’s first step was to send a strong detachment to the Richelieu to build a picket fort below the rapids of Chambly, which take their name from that of the officer in command. An officer named Sorel soon afterwards built a second fort on the site of the abandoned palisade work built by Montmagny, at the mouth of the river, where the town of Sorel now stands; and Salières, colonel of the regiment, added a third fort, two or three leagues above Chambly. * These forts could not wholly bar the passage against the nimble and wily warriors who might pass them in the night, shouldering their canoes through the woods. A blow, direct and hard, was needed, and Tracy prepared to strike it.
Late in the season an embassy from the three upper nations—the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—arrived at Quebec, led by Garacontié, a famous chief whom the Jesuits had won over, and who proved ever after a staunch friend of the French. They brought back the brave Charles Le Moyne of Montreal, whom they had captured some three months before, and now restored as a peace-offering, taking credit to themselves that “not even one of his nails had been torn out, nor any part of his body burnt.” ** Garacontié made a
* See the map in the Relation of 1665. The accompanying
text of the Relation is incorrect.
** Explanation of the eleven Presents of the Iroquois
Ambassadors. N. Y Colonial Docs.. IX. 37
peace speech, which, as rendered by the Jesuits, was an admirable specimen of Iroquois eloquence; but, while joining hands with him and his companions, the French still urged on their preparations to chastise the contumacious Mohawks.
Courcelle’s March.—His Failure and Return.—Courcelle and the Jesuits.—Mohawk Treachery.—Tracy’s Expedition.—Burning of the Mohawk Towns.—French and English.—Dollier de Casson at St. Anne.—Peace.—The Jesuits and the Iroquois.
The governor, Courcelle, says Father Le Meircier, “breathed nothing but war,” and was bent on immediate action. He was for the present subordinate to Tracy, who, however, forebore to cool his ardor, and allowed him to proceed. The result was an enterprise bold to rashness. Courcelle, with about five hundred men, prepared to march in the depth of a Canadian winter to the Mohawk towns, a distance estimated at three hundred leagues. Those who knew the country, vainly urged the risks and difficulties of the attempt. The adventurous governor held fast to his purpose, and only waited till the St. Lawrence should be well frozen. Early in January, it was a solid floor; and on the ninth the march began. Officers and men stopped at Sillery, and knelt in the little mission chapel before the shrine of Saint Michael, to ask the protection and aid of the warlike archangel; then they resumed their course, and, with their snow-shoes tied at their backs, walked with difficulty and toil over the bare and slippery ice. A keen wind swept the river, and the fierce cold gnawed them to the bone. Ears, noses, fingers, hands, and knees were frozen; some fell in torpor, and were dragged on by their comrades to the shivering bivouac. When, after a march of ninety miles, they reached Three Rivers, a considerable number were disabled, and had to be left behind; but others joined them from the garrison, and they set out again. Ascending the Richelieu, and passing the new forts at Sorel and Chambly, they reached at the end of the month the third fort, called Ste. Thérèse. On the thirtieth they left it, and continued their march up the frozen stream. About two hundred of them were Canadians, and of these seventy were old Indian-fighters from Montreal, versed in woodcraft, seasoned to the climate, and trained among dangers and alarms. Courcelle quickly learned their value, and his “Blue Coats,” as he called them, were always placed in the van. * Here, wrapped in their coarse blue capotes, with blankets and provisions strapped at their backs, they strode along on snow-shoes, which recent storms had made indispensable. The regulars followed as they could. They were not yet the tough and experienced woodsmen that they and their descendants afterwards became; and their snow
* Doll du Montréal, a.d. 1665, 1666.
shoes embarrassed them, burdened as they were with the heavy loads which all carried alike, from Courcelle to the lowest private.
Lake Champlain lay glaring in the winter sun, a sheet of spotless snow; and the wavy ridges of the Adirondack? bordered the dazzling landscape with the cold gray of their denuded forests. The long procession of weary men crept slowly on under the lee of the shore; and when night came they bivouacked by squads among the trees, dug away the snow with their snow-shoes, piled it in a bank around them, built their fire in the middle, and crouched about it on beds of spruce or hemlock; * while, as they lay close packed for mutual warmth, the winter sky arched them like a vault of burnished steel, sparkling with the cold diamond lustre of its myriads of stars. This arctic serenity of the elements was varied at times by heavy snow-storms; and, before they reached their journey’s end, the earth and the ice were buried to the unusual depth of four feet. From Lake Champlain they passed to Lake George, ** and the frigid glories of its snow-wrapped mountains; thence crossed to the Hudson, and groped their way through the woods in search of the Mohawk towns. They soon went astray; for thirty Algonquins, whom they had taken as guides, had found
* One of the men, telling the story of their sufferings to
Daniel Gookin, of Massachusetts, indicated this as their
mode of encamping. See Mass. Hist. Coll., first series, I.
161.
** Carte des grands lacs, Ontario et autres... et des pays
traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle our aller attaquer
les agniés (Mohawks), 1666.
the means of a grand debauch at Fort Ste. Thérèse, drunk themselves into helplessness, and lingered behind. Thus Courcelle and his men mistook the path, and, marching by way of Saratoga Lake and Long Lake, * found themselves, on Saturday the twentieth of February, close to the little Dutch hamlet of Corlaer or Schenectady. Here the chief man in authority told them that most of the Mohawks and Oneidas had gone to war with another tribe. They, however, caught a few stragglers, and had a smart skirmish with a party of warriors, losing an officer and several men. Half frozen and half starved, they encamped in the neighboring woods, where, on Sunday, three envoys appeared from Albany, to demand why they had invaded the territories of his Royal Highness the Duke of York. It was now that they learned for the first time that the New Netherlands had passed into English hands, a change which boded no good to Canada. The envoys seemed to take their explanations in good part, made them a present of wine and provisions, and allowed them to buy further supplies from the Dutch of Schenectady. They even invited them to enter the village, but Courcelle declined, partly because the place could not hold them all, and partly because he feared that his men, once seated in a chimney-corner, could never be induced to leave it.
Their position was cheerless enough; for the vast beds of snow around them were soaking slowly under a sullen rain, and there was danger
* Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et
Courcelle, etc.
that the lakes might thaw and cut off their retreat. “Ye Mohaukes,” says the old English report of the affair, “were all gone to their Castles with resolution to fight it out against the french, who, being refresht and supplyed with the aforesaid provisions, made a shew of marching towards the Mohaukes Castles, but with faces about, and great sylence and dilligence, return’d towards Cannada.” “Surely,” observes the narrator, “so bould and hardy an attempt hath not hapned in any age.” * The end hardly answered to the beginning. The retreat, which began on Sunday night, was rather precipitate. The Mohawks hovered about their rear, and took a few prisoners; but famine and cold proved more deadly foes, and sixty men perished before they reached the shelter of Fort Ste. Thérèse. On the eighth of March, Courcelle came to the neighboring fort of St. Louis or Chambly. Here he found the Jesuit Albanel acting as chaplain; and, being in great ill humor, he charged him with causing the failure of the expedition by detaining the Algonquin guides. This singular notion took such possession of him, that, when a few days after he met the Jesuit Frémin at Three Rivers, he embraced him ironically, saying, at the same time, “My father, I am the unluckiest gentleman in the world; and you, and the rest of you, are the cause of it.” ** The pious Tracy, and the prudent
* A Relation of the Governr. of Cannada, his March with 600
Volunteire into if Territoryes of His Roy all Highnesse the
Duke of Yorke in America. See Doc. Hist. N. Y. I. 71.
** Journal des Jésuites, Mars, 1666. .
Talon, tried to disarm his suspicions, and with such success that he gave up an intention he had entertained of discarding his Jesuit confessor, and forgot or forgave the imagined wrong.
Unfortunate as this expedition was, it produced a strong effect on the Iroquois by convincing them that their forest homes were no safe asylum from French attacks. In May, the Senecas sent an embassy of peace; and the other nations, including the Mohawks, soon followed. Tracy, on his part, sent the Jesuit Bêchefer to learn on the spot the real temper of the savages, and ascertain whether peace could safely be made with them. The Jesuit was scarcely gone when news came that a party of officers hunting near the outlet of Lake Champlain had been set upon by the Mohawks, and that seven of them had been captured or killed. Among the captured was Leroles, a cousin of Tracy, and among the killed was a young gentleman named Chasy, his nephew.
On this the Jesuit envoy was recalled; twenty-four Iroquois deputies were seized and imprisoned; and Sorel, captain in the regiment of Carignan, was sent with three hundred men to chastise the perfidious Mohawks. If, as it seems, he was expected to attack their fortified towns or “castles,” as the English call them, his force was too small. This time, however, there was no fighting. At two days from his journey’s end, Sorel met the famous chief called the Flemish Bastard, bringing back Leroles and his fellow-captives, and charged, as he alleged, to offer full satisfaction for the murder of Chasy.
Sorel believed him, retraced his course, and with the Bastard in his train returned to Quebec.
Quebec was full of Iroquois deputies, all bent on peace or pretending to be so. On the last day of August, there was a grand council in the garden of the Jesuits. Some days later, Tracy invited the Flemish Bastard and a Mohawk chief named Agariata to his table, when allusion was made to the murder of Chasy. On this the Mohawk, stretching out his arm, exclaimed in a braggart tone, “This is the hand that split the head of that young man.” The indignation of the company may be imagined. Tracy told his insolent guest that he should never kill anybody else; and he was led out and hanged in presence of the Bastard. * There was no more talk of peace. Tracy prepared to march in person against the Mohawks with all the force of Canada.
On the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, “for whose glory,” says the chronicler, “this expedition is undertaken,” Tracy and Courcelle left Quebec with thirteen hundred men. They crossed Lake Champlain, and launched their boats again on the waters of St. Sacrament, now Lake George. It was the first of the warlike pageants that have made that fair scene historic. October had begun, and the romantic wilds breathed the buoyant life of the most inspiring of American seasons, when
* This story rests chiefly on the authority of Nicolas
Perrot, Mœurs des Saurages, 113. La Potherie also tells it,
with the addition of the chief’s name. Colden follows him.
The Journal des Jésuites mentions that the chief who led the
murderers of Chasy arrived at Quebec on the sixth of
September. Marie de l’Incarnation mentions the hanging of an
Iroquois at Quebec, late in the autumn, for violating the
peace.
the blue-jay screams from the woods; the wild duck splashes along the lake; and the echoes of distant mountains prolong the quavering cry of the loon; when weather-stained rocks are plumed with the fiery crimson of the sumac, the claret hues of young oaks, the amber and scarlet of the maple, and the sober purple of the ash; or when gleams of sunlight, shot aslant through the rents of cool autumnal clouds, chase fitfully along the glowing sides of painted mountains. Amid this gorgeous euthanasia of the dying season, the three hundred boats and canoes trailed in long procession up the lake, threaded the labyrinth of the Narrows, that sylvan fairy-land of tufted islets and quiet waters, and landed at length where Fort William Henry was afterwards built. *
About a hundred miles of forests, swamps, rivers, and mountains, still lay between them and the Mohawk towns. There seems to have been an Indian path; for this was the ordinary route of the Mohawk and Oneida war-parties: but the path was narrow, broken, full of gullies and pitfalls, crossed by streams, and in one place interrupted by a lake which they passed on rafts. A hundred and ten “Blue Coats,” of Montreal, led the way, under Charles Le Moyne. Repentigny commanded the levies from Quebec. In all there were six hundred Canadians; six hundred regulars; and a hundred Indians from the missions, who ranged the woods in front, flank, and rear, like hounds on the scent. Red or white, Canadians or regulars, all were full
* Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle,
etc.
of zeal. “It seems to them," writes Mother Mary, “that they are going to lay siege to Paradise, and win it and enter in, because they are fighting for religion and the faith.” * Their ardor was rudely tried. Officers as well as men carried loads at their backs, whence ensued a large blister on the shoulders of the Chevalier de Chaumont, in no way used to such burdens. Tracy, old, heavy, and infirm, was inopportunely seized with the gout. A Swiss soldier tried to carry him on his shoulders across a rapid stream; but midway his strength failed, and he was barely able to deposit his ponderous load on a rock. A Huron came to his aid, and bore Tracy safely to the farther bank. Courcelle was attacked with cramps, and had to be carried for a time like his commander. Provisions gave out, and men and officers grew faint with hunger. The Montreal soldiers had for chaplain a sturdy priest, Doilier de Casson, as large as Tracy and far stronger; for the incredible story is told of him that, when in good condition, he could hold two men seated on his extended hands. ** Now, however, he was equal to no such exploit, being not only deprived of food, but also of sleep, by the necessity of listening at night to the confessions of his pious flock; and his shoes, too, had failed him, nothing remaining but the upper leather, which gave him little comfort among the sharp stones. He bore up manfully, being by nature brave and
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 16 Oct., 1666.
** Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, extract
given by J. Vigor in appendix to Histoire du Montréal
(Montreal, 1868).
light-hearted; and, when a servant of the Jesuits fell into the water, he threw off his cassock and leaped after him. His strength gave out, and the man was drowned; but a grateful Jesuit led him aside and requited his efforts with a morsel of bread. * A wood of chestnut-trees full of nuts at length stayed the hunger of the famished troops.
It was Saint Theresa’s day when they approached the lower Mohawk town. A storm of wind and rain set in; but, anxious to surprise the enemy, they pushed on all night amid the moan and roar of the forest; over slippery logs, tangled roots, and oozy mosses; under dripping boughs and through saturated bushes. This time there was no want of good guides; and when in the morning they issued from the forest, they saw, amid its cornfields, the palisades of the Indian stronghold. They had two small pieces of cannon brought from the lake by relays of men, but they did not stop to use them. Their twenty drums beat the charge, and they advanced to seize the place by coup-de-main. Lucidly for them, a panic had seized the Indians. Not that they were taken by surprise, for they had discovered the approaching French, and, two days before, had sent away their women and children in preparation for a desperate fight; but the din of the drums, which they took for so many devils in the French service; and the armed men advancing from the rocks and thickets in files that seemed interminable,—so wrought on the scared imagination of the warriors that they fled in terror to their next
* Dollier de Casson, Histoire du Montréal, a.d 1665, 1666.
town, a short distance above. Tracy lost no time, but hastened in pursuit. A few Mohawks were seen on the hills, yelling and firing too far for effect. Repentigny, at the risk of his scalp, climbed a neighboring height, and looked down on the little army, which seemed so numerous as it passed beneath, “that,” writes the superior of the Ursulines, “he told me that he thought the good angels must have joined with it; whereat he stood amazed.”
The second town or fort was taken as easily as the first; so, too, were the third and the fourth. The Indians yelled, and fled without killing a man; and still the troops pursued, following the broad trail which led from town to town along the valley of the Mohawk. It was late in the afternoon when the fourth town was entered, * and Tracy thought that his work was done; but an Algonquin squaw who had followed her husband to the war, and who had once been a prisoner among the Mohawks, told him that there was still another above. The sun was near its setting, and the men were tired with their pitiless marching; but again the order was given to advance. The eager squaw showed the way, holding a pistol in one hand and leading Courcelle-with the other; and they soon came in sight of Andaraqué, the largest and strongest of the Mohawk forts. The drums beat with fury, and the troops prepared to attack, but there were none to oppose them. The scouts sent forward, reported
* Marie de l'Incarnation says that there were four towns in
all I follow the Acte de prise de possession, made on the
spot. Five are here mentioned.
that the warriors had fled. The last of the savage strongholds was in the hands of the French.
“God has done for us,” says Mother Mary, “what he did in ancient days for his chosen people, striking terror into our enemies, insomuch that we were victors without a blow. Certain it is that there is miracle in all this; for, if the Iroquois had stood fast, they would have given us a great deal of trouble and caused our army great loss, seeing how they were fortified and armed, and how haughty and bold they are.”
The French were astonished as they looked about them. These Iroquois forts were very different from those that Jogues had seen here twenty years before, or from that which in earlier times set Champlain and his Hurons at defiance. The Mohawks had had counsel and aid from their Dutch friends, and adapted their savage defences to the rules of European art. Andaraqué was a quadrangle formed of a triple palisade, twenty feet high, and flanked by four bastions. Large vessels of bark filled with water were placed on the platform of the palisade for defence against fire. The dwellings which these fortifications enclosed were in many cases built of wood, though the form and arrangement of the primitive bark lodge of the Iroquois seems to have been preserved. Some of the wooden houses were a hundred and twenty feet long, with fires for eight or nine families. Here and in subterranean caches was stored a prodigious quantity of Indian-corn and other provisions; and all the dwellings were supplied with carpenters’ tools, domestic utensils, and many other appliances of comfort.
The only living things in Andaraqué, when the French entered, were two old women, a small boy, and a decrepit old man, who, being frightened by the noise of the drums, had hidden himself under a canoe. From them the victors learned that the Mohawks, retreating from the other towns, had gathered here, resolved to fight to the last; but at sight of the troops their courage failed, and the chief was first to run, crying out, “Let us save ourselves, brothers; the whole world is coming against us.”
A cross was planted, and at its side the royal arms. The troops were drawn up in battle array, when Jean Baptiste du Bois, an officer deputed by Tracy, advancing sword in hand to the front, proclaimed in a loud voice that he took possession in the name of the king of all the country of the Mohawks; and the troops shouted three times, Vive le Roi. *
That night a mighty bonfire illumined the Mohawk forests; and the scared savages from their hiding-places among the rocks saw their palisades, their dwellings, their stores of food, and all their possessions, turned to cinders and ashes. The two old squaws captured in the town, threw themselves in despair into the flames of their blazing homes. When morning came, there was nothing left of Andaraqué but smouldering embers, rolling their pale smoke against the painted background of the
* Acte de priss de possession, 17 Oct., 1666.
October woods. Te Deum was sung and mass said; and then the victors began their backward march, burning, as they went, all the remaining forts, with all their hoarded stores of corn, except such as they needed for themselves. If they had failed to destroy their enemies in battle, they hoped that winter and famine would do the work of shot and steel.
While there was distress among the Mohawks, there was trouble among their English neighbors, who claimed as their own the country which Tracy had invaded. The English authorities were the more disquieted, because they feared that the lately conquered Dutch might join hands with the French against them. When Nicolls, governor of New York, heard of Tracy’s advance, he wrote to the governors of the New England colonies, begging them to join him against the French invaders, and urging that, if Tracy’s force were destroyed or captured, the conquest of Canada would be an easy task. There was war at the time between the two crowns; and the British court had already entertained this project of conquest, and sent orders to its colonies to that effect. But the New England governors, ill prepared for war, and fearing that their Indian neighbors, who were enemies of the Mohawks, might take part with the French, hesitated to act, and the affair ended in a correspondence, civil if not sincere, between Nicolls and Tracy. * The treaty of Breda, in the following year, secured peace for a time between the rival colonies.
* See the correspondence in N. Y. Col. Docs. III. 118-156.
Compare Hutchinson Collection, 407, and Mass. Hist. Coll.
XVIII. 102.
The return of Tracy was less fortunate than his advance. The rivers, swollen by autumn rains, were difficult to pass; and in crossing Lake Champlain two canoes were overset in a storm, and eight men were drowned. From St. Anne, a new fort built early in the summer on Isle La Motte, near the northern end of the lake, he sent news of his success to Quebec, where there was great rejoicing and a solemn thanksgiving. Signs and prodigies had not been wanting to attest the interest of the upper and nether powers in the crusade against the myrmidons of hell. At one of the forts on the Richelieu, “the soldiers,” says Mother Mary, “were near dying of fright. They saw a great fiery cavern in the sky, and from this cavern came plaintive voices mixed with frightful howlings. Perhaps it was the demons, enraged because we had depopulated a country where they had been masters so long, and had said mass and sung the praises of God in a place where there had never before been any thing but foulness and abomination.”
Tracy had at first meant to abandon Fort St. Anne; but he changed his mind after returning to Quebec. Meanwhile the season had grown so late that there was no time to send proper supplies to the garrison. Winter closed, and the place was not only ill provisioned, but was left without a priest. Tracy wrote to the superior of the Sulpitians at Montreal to send one without delay; but the request was more easily made than fulfilled, for he forgot to order an escort, and the way was long and dangerous. The stout-hearted Dollier de Casson was told, however, to hold himself ready to go at the first opportunity. His recent campaigning had left him in no condition for braving fresh hardships, for he was nearly disabled by a swelling on one of his knees. By way of cure he resolved to try a severe bleeding, and the Sangrado of Montreal did his work so thoroughly that his patient fainted under his hands. As he returned to consciousness, he became aware that two soldiers had entered the room. They told him that they were going in the morning to Chambly, which was on the way to St. Anne; and they invited him to go with them. “Wait till the day after to-morrow,” replied the priest, “and I will try.” The delay was obtained; and, on the day fixed, the party set out by the forest path to Chambly, a distance of about four leagues. When they reached it, Dollier de Casson was nearly spent, but he concealed his plight from the commanding officer, and begged an escort to St. Anne, some twenty leagues farther. As the officer would not give him one, he threatened to go alone, on which ten men and an ensign were at last ordered to conduct him. Thus attended, he resumed his journey after a day’s rest. One of the soldiers fell through the ice, and none of his comrades dared help him. Dollier de Casson, making the sign of the cross, went to his aid, and, more successful than on the former occasion, caught him and pulled him out. The snow was deep; and the priest, having arrived in the preceding summer, had never before worn snow-shoes, while a sack of clothing, and his portable chapel which he carried at his back, joined to the pain of his knee and the effects of his late bleeding, made the march a purgatory.
He was sorely needed at Fort St. Anne. There was pestilence in the garrison. Two men had just died without absolution, while more were at the point of death, and praying for a priest. Thus it happened that when the sentinel descried far off, on the ice of Lake Champlain, a squad of soldiers approaching, and among them a black cassock, every officer and man not sick, or on duty, came out with one accord to meet the new-comer. They overwhelmed him with welcome and with thanks. One took his sack, another his portable chapel, and they led him in triumph to the fort. First he made a short prayer, then went his rounds among the sick, and then came to refresh himself with the officers. Here was La Motte de la Lucière, the commandant; La Durantaye, a name destined to be famous in Canadian annals; and a number of young subalterns. The scene was no strange one to Dollier de Casson, for he had been an officer of cavalry in his time, and fought under Turenne; * a good soldier, without doubt, at the mess table or in the field, and none the worse a priest that he had once followed the wars. He was of a lively humor, given to jests and mirth; as pleasant a father as ever said Benedicite. The soldier and
* Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson,
extracts from copy in possession of the late Jacques Viger.
the gentleman still lived under the cassock of the priest. He was greatly respected and beloved; and his influence as a peace-maker, which he often had occasion to exercise, is said to have been remarkable. When the time demanded it, he could use arguments more cogent than those of moral suasion. Once, in a camp of Algonquins, when, as he was kneeling in prayer, an insolent savage came to interrupt him, the father, without rising, knocked the intruder flat by a blow of his fist, and the other Indians, far from being displeased, were filled with admiration at the exploit. *
His cheery temper now stood him in good stead; for there was dreary work before him, and he was not the man to flinch from it. The garrison of St. Anne had nothing to live on but salt pork and half-spoiled flour. Their hogshead of vinegar had sprung a leak, and the contents had all oozed out. They had rejoiced in the supposed possession of a reasonable stock of brandy; but they soon discovered that the sailors, on the voyage from France, had emptied the casks and filled them again with salt-water. The scurvy broke out with fury. In a short time, forty out of the sixty men became victims of the loathsome malady. Day or night, Doilier de Casson and Forestier, the equally devoted young surgeon, had no rest. The surgeon’s strength failed, and the priest was himself slightly attacked with the disease. Eleven men
* Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, cited
by Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 395, 396
died; and others languished for want of help, for their comrades shrank from entering the infected dens where they lay. In their extremity some of them devised an ingenious expedient. Though they had nothing to bequeath, they made wills in which they left imaginary sums of money to those who had befriended them, and thenceforth they found no lack of nursing.
In the intervals of his labors, Dollier de Casson would run to and fro for warmth and exercise on a certain track of beaten snow, between two of the bastions, reciting his breviary as he went, so that those who saw him might have thought him out of his wits. One day La Motte called out to him as he was thus engaged, “Eh, Monsieur le curé, if the Iroquois should come, you must defend that bastion. My men are all deserting me, and going over to you and the doctor.” To which the father replied, “Get me some litters with wheels, and I will bring them out to man my bastion. They are brave enough now; no fear of their running away.” With banter like this, they sought to beguile their miseries; and thus the winter wore on at Fort St. Anne. *
Early in spring they saw a troop of Iroquois approaching, and prepared as well as they could to make fight; but the strangers proved to be
* The above curious incidents are told by Dollier de
Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal, preserved in manuscript
in the Mazarin Library at Paris. He gives no hint that the
person in question was himself, but speaks of him as un
ecclésiastique. His identity is, however, made certain by
internal evidence, by a passage in the Notice of Grandet,
and by other contemporary allusions.
ambassadors of peace. The destruction of the Mohawk towns had produced a deep effect, not on that nation alone, but also on the other four members of the league. They were disposed to confirm the promises of peace which they had already made; and Tracy had spurred their good intentions by sending them a message that, unless they quickly presented themselves at Quebec, he would hang all the chiefs whom he had kept prisoners after discovering their treachery in the preceding summer. The threat had its effect: deputies of the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas presently arrived in a temper of befitting humility. The Mohawks were at first afraid to come: but in April they sent the Flemish Bastard with overtures of peace; and in July, a large deputation of their chiefs appeared at Quebec. They and the rest left some of their families as hostages, and promised that, if any of their people should kill a Frenchman, they would give them up to be hanged. *
They begged, too, for blacksmiths, surgeons, and Jesuits to live among them. The presence of the Jesuits in their towns was in many ways an advantage to them; while to the colony it was of the greatest importance. Not only was conversion to the church justly regarded as the best means of attaching the Indians to the French, and alienating them from the English; but the Jesuits living in the midst of them could influence even those whom they could not convert, soothe rising jealousies,
* Lettre du Père Jean Pierron, de la Compagnie de Jésus,
escripte de la Motte (Fort Ste. Anne) sur le lac Champlain,
le 12me d’aoust. 1667
counteract English intrigues, and keep the rulers of the colony informed of all that was passing in the Iroquois towns. Thus, half Christian missionaries, half political agents, the Jesuits prepared to resume the hazardous mission of the Iroquois. Frémin and Pierron were ordered to the Mohawks, Bruyas to the Oneidas, and three others were named for the remaining three nations of the league. The troops had made the peace; the Jesuits were the rivets to hold it fast; and peace endured without absolute rupture for nearly twenty years. Of all the French expeditions against the Iroquois, that of Tracy was the most productive of good.
Talon.—Restriction and Monopoly.—Views of Colbert.—Political Galvanism.—A Father of the People.
Tracy’s work was done, and he left Canada with the glittering noblesse in his train. Courcelle and Talon remained to rule alone; and now the great experiment was begun. Paternal royalty would try its hand at building up a colony, and Talon was its chosen agent. His appearance did him no justice. The regular contour of his oval face, about which fell to his shoulders a cataract of curls, natural or supposititious; the smooth lines of his well-formed features, brows delicately arched, and a mouth more suggestive of feminine sensibility than of masculine force,—would certainly have misled the disciple of Lavater. * Yet there was no want of manhood in him. He was most happily chosen for the task placed in his hands, and from first to last approved himself a vigorous executive officer. He was a true disciple of Colbert, formed in his school and animated by his spirit.
* His portrait is at the Hôtel Dieu of Quebec. An engraving
from it will be found in the third volume of Shea’s
Charlevoix.
Being on the spot, he was better able than his master to judge the working of the new order of things. With regard to the company, he writes that it will profit by impoverishing the colony; that its monopolies dishearten the people and paralyze enterprise; that it is thwarting the intentions of the king, who wishes trade to be encouraged; and that, if its exclusive privileges are maintained, Canada in ten years will be less populous than now. * But Colbert clung to his plan, though he wrote in reply that to satisfy the colonists he had persuaded the company to forego the monopolies for a year. ** As this proved insufficient, the company was at length forced to give up permanently its right of exclusive trade, still exacting its share of beaver and moose skins. This was its chief source of profit; it begrudged every sou deducted from it for charges of government, and the king was constantly obliged to do at his own cost that which the company should have done. In one point it showed a ceaseless activity; and this was the levying of duties, in which it was never known to fail.
Trade, even after its exercise was permitted, was continually vexed by the hand of authority. One of Tracy’s first measures had been to issue a decree reducing the price of wheat one half. The council took up the work of regulation, and fixed the price of all imported goods in three several tariffs,—one for Quebec, one for Three Rivers, and
* Talon a Colbert, 4 Oct., 1665.
** Colbert a Talon, 5 Avril, 1666.
one for Montreal. * It may well be believed that there was in Canada little capital and little enterprise. Industrially and commercially, the colony was almost dead. Talon set himself to galvanize it; and, if one man could have supplied the intelligence and energy of a whole community, the results would have been triumphant.
He had received elaborate instructions, and they indicate an ardent wish for the prosperity of Canada. Colbert had written to him that the true means to strengthen the colony was to “cause justice to reign, establish a good police, protect the inhabitants, discipline them against enemies, and procure for them peace, repose, and plenty.” ** “And as,” the minister further says, “the king regards his Canadian subjects, from the highest to the lowest, almost as his own children, and wishes them to enjoy equally with the people of France the mildness and happiness of his reign, the Sieur Talon will study to solace them in all things and encourage them to trade and industry. And, seeing that nothing can better promote this end than entering into the details of their households and of all their little affairs, it will not be amiss that he visit all their settlements one after the other in order to learn their true condition, provide as much as possible for their wants, and, performing the duty of a good head of a family, put them in the way of making some profit.” The intendant was also told to encourage fathers to inspire their children with
* Tariff of Prices, in N. Y. Colonial Docs. IX. 36
** Colbert a Talon, 6 Avril, 1666.
piety, together with “profound love and respect for the royal person of his Majesty.” *
Talon entered on his work with admirable zeal. Sometimes he used authority, sometimes persuasion, sometimes promises of reward. Sometimes, again, he tried the force of example. Thus he built a ship to show the people how to do it, and rouse them to imitation. ** Three or four years later, the experiment was repeated. This time it was at the cost of the king, who applied the sum of forty thousand livres *** to the double purpose of promoting the art of ship-building, and saving the colonists from vagrant habits by giving them employment. Talon wrote that three hundred and fifty men had been supplied that summer with work at the charge of government. ****
He despatched two engineers to search for coal, lead, iron, copper, and other minerals. Important discoveries of iron were made; but three generations were destined to pass before the mines were successfully worked. (v) The copper of Lake Superior raised the intendants hopes for a time, but he was soon forced to the conclusion that it was too remote to be of practical value. He labored vigorously to develop arts and manufactures; made a barrel of tar, and sent it to the king as a specimen; caused some of the colonists to make cloth
* Instruction au Sieur Talon, 27 Mars, 1665.
** Talon a Colbert, Oct., 1667; Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev.,
1668.
*** Dépêche de Colbert, 11 Fev., 1671.
**** Talon a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1671.
(v) Charlevoix speaks of these mines as having been
forgotten for seventy years, and rediscovered in his time.
After passing. through various hands, they were finally
worked on the king’s account.
of the wool of the sheep which the king had sent out; encouraged others to establish a tannery, and also a factory of hats and of shoes. The Sieur Follin was induced by the grant of a monopoly to begin the making of soap and potash. * The people were ordered to grow hemp, ** and urged to gather the nettles of the country as material for cordage; and the Ursulines were supplied with flax and wool, in order that they might teach girls to weave and spin.
Talon was especially anxious to establish trade between Canada and the West Indies; and, to make a beginning, he freighted the vessel he had built with salted cod, salmon, eels, pease, fish-oil, staves, and planks, and sent her thither to exchange her cargo for sugar, which she was in turn to exchange in France for goods suited for the Canadian market. *** Another favorite object with him was the fishery of seals and white porpoises for the sake of their oil; and some of the chief merchants were urged to undertake it, as well as the establishment of stationary cod-fisheries along the Lower St. Lawrence. But, with every encouragement, many years passed before this valuable industry was placed on a firm basis.
Talon saw with concern the huge consumption of wine and brandy among the settlers, costing them, as he wrote to Colbert, a hundred thousand livres a year; and, to keep this money in the
* Registre du Conseil Souverain.
** Marie de l’Incarnation, Choix des Lettres de 871.
*** Le Mercier, Rel. 1667, 3; Dépêches de Talon
colony, he declared his intention of building a brewery. The minister approved the plan, not only on economic grounds, but because “the vice of drunkenness would thereafter cause no more scandal by reason of the cold nature of beer, the vapors whereof rarely deprive men of the use of judgment.” * The brewery was accordingly built, to the great satisfaction of the poorer colonists.
Nor did the active intendant fail to acquit himself of the duty of domiciliary visits, enjoined upon him by the royal instructions; a point on which he was of one mind with his superiors, for he writes that “those charged in this country with his Majesty’s affairs are under a strict obligation to enter into the detail of families.” ** Accordingly we learn from Mother Juchereau, that "he studied with the affection of a father how to succor the poor and cause the colony to grow; entered into the minutest particulars; visited the houses of the inhabitants, and caused them to visit him; learned what crops each one was raising; taught those who had wheat to sell it at a profit, helped those who had none, and encouraged everybody.” And Dollier de Casson represents him as visiting in turn every house at Montreal, and giving aid from the king to such as needed it. *** Horses, cattle, sheep, and other domestic animals, were sent out at the royal charge in considerable numbers, and
* Colbert à Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
** Mémoire de 1667.
*** Histoire du Montréal, a.d. 1666, 1667.
distributed gratuitously, with an order that none of the young should be killed till the country was sufficiently stocked. Large quantities of goods were also sent from the same high quarter. Some of these were distributed as gifts, and the rest bartered for corn to supply the troops. As the intendant perceived that the farmers lost much time in coming from their distant clearings to buy necessaries at Quebec, he caused his agents to furnish them with the king’s goods at their own houses, to the great annoyance of the merchants of Quebec, who complained that their accustomed trade was thus forestalled. *
These were not the only cares which occupied the mind of Talon. He tried to open a road across the country to Acadia, an almost impossible task, in which he and his successors completely failed. Under his auspices, Albanel penetrated to Hudson’s Bay, and Saint Lusson took possession in the king’s name of the country of the Upper Lakes. It was Talon, in short, who prepared the way for the remarkable series of explorations described in another work. ** Again and again he urged upon Colbert and the king a measure from which, had it taken effect, momentous consequences must have sprung. This was the purchase or seizure of New York, involving the isolation of New England, the subjection of the Iroquois, and the undisputed control of half the continent.
* Talon a Colbert, 10 Nov., 1670.
** Discovery of the Great West
Great as were his opportunities of abusing his trust, it does not appear that he took advantage of them. He held lands and houses in Canada, * owned the brewery which he had established, and embarked in various enterprises of productive industry; but, so far as I can discover, he is nowhere accused of making illicit gains, and there is reason to believe that he acquitted himself of his charge with entire fidelity. ** His health failed in 1668, and for this and other causes he asked for his recall. Colbert granted it with strong expressions of regret; and when, two years later, he resumed the intendancy, the colony seems to have welcomed his return.
* In 1682, the Intendant Meules, in a despatch to the
minister, makes a statement of Talon’s property in Quebec.
The chief items are the brewery and a house of some value on
the descent of Mountain Street. He owned, also, the valuable
seigniory, afterwards barony, Des Islets, in the immediate
neighborhood.
** Some imputations against him, not of much weight, are,
however, made in a memorial of Aubert de la Chesnaye, a
merchant of Quebec
Shipment of Emigrants.—Soldier Settlers.—Importation of Wives.—Wedlock.—Summary Methods.—The Mothers of Canada.—Bounties on Marriage.—Celibacy Punished.—Bounties on Children.—Results.
The peopling of Canada was due in the main to the king. Before the accession of Louis XIV. the entire population, priests, nuns, traders, and settlers, did not exceed twenty-five hundred; * but scarcely had he reached his majority when the shipment of men to the colony was systematically begun. Even in Argenson’s time, loads of emigrants sent out by the Crown were landed every year at Quebec. The Sulpitians of Montreal also brought over colonists to people their seigniorial estate; the same was true on a small scale of one or two other proprietors, and once at least the company sent a considerable number: yet the government was the chief agent of emigration. Colbert did the work, and the king paid for it.
In 1661, Laval wrote to the cardinals of the Propaganda, that during the past two years the
* Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, II 4
king had spent two hundred thousand livres on the colony; that, since 1659, he had sent out three hundred men a year; and that he had promised to send an equal number every summer during ten years. * These men were sent by squads in merchant-ships, each one of which was required to carry a certain number. In many instances, emigrants were bound on their arrival to enter into the service of colonists already established. In this case the employer paid them wages, and after a term of three years they became settlers themselves. **
The destined emigrants were collected by agents in the provinces, conducted to Dieppe or Rochelle, and thence embarked. At first men were sent from Rochelle itself, and its neighborhood; but Laval remonstrated, declaring that he wanted none from that ancient stronghold of heresy. *** The people of Rochelle, indeed, found no favor in Canada. Another writer describes them as “persons of little conscience, and almost no religion,” adding that the Normans, Percherons, Picards, and peasants of the neighborhood of Paris, are docile, industrious, and far more pious. “It is important,” he concludes, “in beginning a new colony, to sow good seed.” **** It was, accordingly, from the north-western provinces that most of the emigrants
* Lettre de Laval envoyée à Rome. 21 Oct., 1661 (extract in
Faillon from Archives of the Propaganda).
** Marie de l’Incarnation, 18 Août, 1664. These engagés
were some times also brought over by private persons.
*** Colbert a Laval, 18 Mars, 1664.
**** Mémoire de 1664 (anonymous)
were drawn. * They seem in the main to have been a decent peasantry, though writers who, from their position, should have been well informed, have denounced them in unmeasured terms. ** Some of them could read and write, and some brought with them a little money.
Talon was constantly begging for more men, till Louis XIV. at length took alarm. Colbert replied to the over-zealous intendant, that the king did not think it expedient to depopulate France, in order to people Canada; that he wanted men for his armies; and that the colony must rely chiefly on increase from within. Still the shipments did not cease; and, even while tempering the ardor of his agent, the king gave another
* See a paper by Garneau in Le National of Quebec, 28
October, 1856, embodying the results of research among the
papers of the early notaries of Quebec. The chief emigration
was from Paris, Normandy, Poitou, Pays d’Aunis, Brittany,
and Picardy. Nearly all those from Paris were sent by the
king from houses of charity.
** “Une foule d'aventuriers, ramasses au hazard en France,
presque tous de la lie du peuple, la plupart obérés de
dettes ou chargés de crimes.” etc. La Tour, Vie de Laval,
Liv. IV. “Le vice a obligé la plupart de chercher ce pays
comme un asile pour se mettre à couvert de leurs crimes,”
Meules, Dépêché de 1682. Meules was intendant in that year.
Marie de l’Incarnation, after speaking of the emigrants as
of a very mixed character, says that it would have been far
better to send a few who were good Christians, rather than
so many who give so much trouble. Lettre du—Oct., 1669.
Le Clerc, on the other hand, is emphatic in praise, calling
the early colonists, “très honnêtes gens, avant de la
probité, de la droiture, et de la religion.... L’on a
examiné et choisi les habitants, et renvoyé en France les
personnes vicieuses.” If, he adds, any such were left “ils
effacaient glorieusement par leur pénitence les taches de
leur première condition.” Charlevoix is almost as strong in
praise as La Tour in censure. Both of them wrote in the next
century. We shall have means hereafter of judging between
these conflicting statements.
proof how much he had the growth of Canada at heart. *
The regiment of Carignan-Salières had been ordered home, with the exception of four companies kept in garrison, ** and a considerable number discharged in order to become settlers. Of those who returned, six companies were, a year or two later, sent back, discharged in their turn, and converted into colonists. Neither men nor officers were positively constrained to remain in Canada; but the officers were told that if they wished to please his Majesty this was the way to do so; and both they and the men were stimulated by promises and rewards. Fifteen hundred livres were given to La Motte, because he had married in the country and meant to remain there. Six thousand livres were assigned to other officers, because they had followed, or were about to follow, La Motte’s example; and twelve thousand were set apart to be distributed to the soldiers under similar conditions. *** Each soldier who consented to remain and settle was promised a grant of land and a hundred livres in money; or, if he preferred it, fifty livres with provisions for a year. This military colonization had a strong and lasting influence on the character of the Canadian people.
* The king had sent out more emigrants than he had
promised, to judge from the census reports during the years
1666, 1667, and 1668. The total population for those years
is 3418, 4312, and 5870, respectively. A small part of this
growth may be set down to emigration not under government
auspices, and a large part to natural increase, which was
enormous at this time, from causes which will soon appear.
** Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
*** Ibid.
But if the colony was to grow from within, the new settlers must have wives. For some years past, the Sulpitians had sent out young women for the supply of Montreal; and the king, on a larger scale, continued the benevolent work. Girls for the colony were taken from the hospitals of Paris and of Lyons, which were not so much hospitals for the sick as houses of refuge for the poor. Mother Mary writes in 1665 that a hundred had come that summer, and were nearly all provided with husbands, and that two hundred more were to come next year. The case was urgent, for the demand was great. Complaints, however, were soon heard that women from cities made indifferent partners; and peasant girls, healthy, strong, and accustomed to field work, were demanded in their place. Peasant girls were therefore sent, but this was not all. Officers as well as men wanted wives; and Talon asked for a consignment of young ladies. His request was promptly answered. In 1667, he writes: “They send us eighty-four girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are fifteen or twenty of pretty good birth; several of them are really demoiselles, and tolerably well brought up.” They complained of neglect and hardship during the voyage. “I shall do what I can to soothe their discontent,” adds the intendant; “for if they write to their correspondents at home how ill they have been treated it would be an obstacle to your plan of sending us next year a number of select young ladies.” *
* “Des demoiselles bien choisies.” Talon a Colbert, 27 Oct.
1667.
Three years later we find him asking for three or four more in behalf of certain bachelor officers. The response surpassed his utmost wishes; and he wrote again: “It is not expedient to send more demoiselles. I have had this year fifteen of them, instead of the four I asked for.” *
As regards peasant girls, the supply rarely equalled the demand. Count Frontenac, Courcelle’s successor, complained of the scarcity: “If a hundred and fifty girls and as many servants,” he says, “had been sent out this year, they would all have found husbands and masters within a month.” **
The character of these candidates for matrimony has not escaped the pen of slander. The caustic La Hontan, writing fifteen or twenty years after, draws the following sketch of the mothers of Canada: “After the regiment of Carignan was disbanded, ships were sent out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the direction of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three classes. These vestals were, so to speak, piled one on the other in three different halls, where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the
* Talon 'a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1671.
** Frontenac a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1672. This year only eleven
girls had been sent. The scarcity was due to the
indiscretion of Talon, who had written to the minister that,
as many of the old settlers had daughters just becoming
marriageable, it would be well, in order that they might
find husbands, to send no more girls from France at present.
The next year, 1673, the king writes that, though he is
involved in a great war, which needs all his resources, he
has nevertheless sent sixty more girls.
flock. There was wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three harems; for here were to be seen the tall and the short, the blond and the brown, the plump and the lean; everybody, in short, found a shoe to fit him. At the end of a fortnight not one was left. I am told that the plumpest were taken first, because it was thought that, being less active, they were more likely to keep at home, and that they could resist the winter cold better. Those who wanted a wife applied to the directresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and a notary, and the next day the governor-general caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money.” *
As regards the character of the girls, there can be no doubt that this amusing sketch is, in the main, maliciously untrue. Since the colony began, it had been the practice to send back to France women of the class alluded to by La Hontan, as soon as they became notorious. ** Those who were
* La Hontan, Nouveaux Voyages, I. 11 (1709). In some of the
other editions, the same account is given in different
words, equally lively and scandalous.
** This is the statement of Boucher, a good authority. A
case of the sort in 1658 is mentioned in the correspondence
of Argenson. Boucher says further, that an assurance of good
character was required from the relations or friends of the
girl who wished to embark. This refers to a period anterior
to 1663, when Boucher wrote his book. Colbert evidently
cared for no qualification except the capacity of maternity.
not taken from institutions of charity usually belonged to the families of peasants overburdened with children, and glad to find the chance of establishing them. * How some of them were obtained appears from a letter of Colbert to Harlay, Archbishop of Rouen. “As, in the parishes about Rouen,” he writes, “fifty or sixty girls might be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to be married, I beg you to employ your credit and authority with the curés of thirty or forty of these parishes, to try to find in each of them one or two girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of a settlement in life.” **
Mistakes nevertheless occurred. “Along with the honest people,” complains Mother Mary, “comes a great deal of canaille of both sexes, who cause a great deal of scandal.” *** After some of the young women had been married at Quebec, it was found that they had husbands at home. The priests
* Témoignage de la Mère du Plessis de Sainte-Helène
(extract in Faillon).
** Colbert a l’Archevêque de Rouen, 27 Fev., 1670.
That they were not always destitute may be gathered from a
passage in one of Talon’s letters. “Entre les filles qu’on
fait passer ici il y en a qui ont de légitimes et
considérables prétentions aux successions de leurs parents,
même entre celles qui sont tirées de l’Hôpital Général.” The
General Hospital of Paris had recently been established
(1656) as a house of refuge for the “Bohemians,” or vagrants
of Paris. The royal edict creating it says that “les pauvres
mendiants et invalides des deux sexes y seraient enfermés
pour estre employés aux manufactures et aultres travaux
selon leur pouvoir.” They were gathered by force in the
streets by a body of special police, called “Archers de
l’Hôpital.” They resisted at first, and serious riots
ensued. In 1662, the General Hospital of Paris contained
6262 paupers. See Clement, Histoire de Colbert, 113. Mother
de Sainte-Helène says that the girls sent from this asylum
had been there from childhood in charge of nuns.
*** “Beaucoup de canaille de l’un et l’autre sexe qui
causent beaucoup de scandale.” Lettre du—Oct., 1669.
became cautious in tying the matrimonial knot, and Colbert thereupon ordered that each girl should provide herself with a certificate from the cure or magistrate of her parish to the effect that she was free to marry. Nor was the practical intendant unmindful of other precautions to smooth the path to the desired goal. “The girls destined for this country,” he writes, “besides being strong and healthy, ought to be entirely free from any natural blemish or any thing personally repulsive.” *
Thus qualified canonically and physically, the annual consignment of young women was shipped to Quebec, in charge of a matron employed and paid by the king. Her task was not an easy one, for the troop under her care was apt to consist of what Mother Mary in a moment of unwonted levity calls “mixed goods.” ** On one occasion the office was undertaken by the pious widow of Jean Bourdon. Her flock of a hundred and fifty girls, says Mother Mary, “gave her no little trouble on the voyage; for they are of all sorts, and some of them are very rude and hard to manage.” Madame Bourdon was not daunted. She not only saw her charge distributed and married, but she continued to receive and care for the subsequent ship-loads as they arrived summer after summer. She was
* Talon a Colbert, 10 Nov., 1670.
** “Une marchandise mêlée.” Lettre du—1668. In that year,
1668, the king spent 40,000 livres in the shipment of men
and girls. In 1669, a hundred and fifty girls were sent; in
1670, a hundred and sixty-five; and Talon asks for a hundred
and fifty or two hundred more to supply the soldiers who had
got ready their houses and clearings, and were now prepared
to marry. The total number of girls sent from 1665 to 1673,
inclusive, was about a thousand.
indeed chief among the pious duennas of whom La Hontan irreverently speaks. Marguerite Bourgeoys did the same good offices for the young women sent to Montreal. Here the “king’s girls," as they were called, were all lodged together in a house to which the suitors repaired to make their selection. “I was obliged to live there myself,” writes the excellent nun, “because families were to be formed;” * that is to say, because it was she who superintended these extemporized unions. Meanwhile she taught the girls their catechism, and, more fortunate than Madame Bourdon, inspired them with a confidence and affection which they retained long after.
At Quebec, where the matrimonial market was on a larger scale, a more ample bazaar was needed. That the girls were assorted into three classes, each penned up for selection in a separate hall, is a statement probable enough in itself, but resting on no better authority than that of La Hontan. Be this as it may, they were submitted together to the inspection of the suitor; and the awkward young peasant or the rugged soldier of Carignan was required to choose a bride without delay from among the anxious candidates. They, on their part, were permitted to reject any applicant who displeased them, and the first question, we are told, which most of them asked was whether the suitor had a house and a farm.
Great as was the call for wives, it was thought prudent to stimulate it. The new settler was at once
* Extract in Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 214.
enticed and driven into wedlock. Bounties were offered on early marriages. Twenty livres were given to each youth who married before the age of twenty, and to each girl who married before the age of sixteen. * This, which was called the “king’s gift,” was exclusive of the dowry given by him to every girl brought over by his orders. The dowry varied greatly in form and value; but, according to Mother Mary, it was sometimes a house with provisions for eight months. More often it was fifty livres in household supplies, besides a barrel or two of salted meat. The royal solicitude extended also to the children of colonists already established. “I pray you,” writes Colbert to Talon, “to commend it to the consideration of the whole people, that their prosperity, their subsistence, and all that is dear to them, depend on a general resolution, never to be departed from, to marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years and girls at fourteen or fifteen; since abundance can never come to them except through the abundance of men.” ** This counsel was followed by appropriate action. Any father of a family who, without showing good cause, neglected to marry his children when they had reached the ages of twenty and sixteen was fined; *** and each father thus delinquent was required to present himself every six months to the local authorities to declare what
* Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat du Roy (see Edits et Ordonnances,
I. 67).
** Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
*** Arrêts du Conseil d’Etat, 1669 (cited by Faillon);
Arrêt du Conseil d Etat, 1670 (see Edits et Ordonnances, I.
67); Ordonnance du Roy, 5 Avril, 1669. See Clément,
Instructions, etc., de Colbert, III. 2me Partie, 657.
reason, if any, he had for such delay. * Orders were issued, a little before the arrival of the yearly ships from France, that all single men should marry within a fortnight after the landing of the prospective brides. No mercy was shown to the obdurate bachelor. Talon issued an order forbidding unmarried men to hunt, fish, trade with the Indians, or go into the woods under any pretence whatsoever. ** In short, they were made as miserable as possible. Colbert goes further. He writes to the intendant, “those who may seem to have absolutely renounced marriage should be made to bear additional burdens, and be excluded from all honors: it would be well even to add some marks of infamy.” *** The success of these measures was complete. “No sooner,” says Mother Mary, “have the vessels arrived than the young men go to get wives; and, by reason of the great number they are married by thirties at a time.” Throughout the length and breadth of Canada, Hymen,
* Registre du Conseil Souverain.
** Talon au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1670. Colbert highly
approves this order. Faillon found a case of its enforcement
among the ancient records of Montreal. In December, 1670,
François Le Noir, an inhabitant of La Chine, was summoned
before the judge, because, though a single man, he had
traded with Indians at his own house. He confessed the fact,
but protested that he would marry within three weeks after
the arrival of the vessels from France, or, failing to do
so, that he would give a hundred and fifty livres to the
church of Montreal, and an equal sum to the hospital.
On this condition he was allowed to trade, but was still
forbidden to go into the woods. The next year he kept his
word, and married Marie Magdeleine Charbonnier, late of
Paris.
The prohibition to go into the woods was probably intended
to prevent the bachelor from finding a temporary Indian
substitute for a French wife.
*** “Il serait à propos de leur augmenter les charges, de
les priver de tous honneurs, même d’y ajouter quelque marque
d’infamie.” Lettre du 20 Fev., 1668.
if not Cupid, was whipped into a frenzy of activity. Dollier de Casson tells us of a widow who was married afresh before her late husband was buried. *
Nor was the fatherly care of the king confined to the humbler classes of his colonists. He wished to form a Canadian noblesse, to which end early marriages were thought needful among officers and others of the better sort. The progress of such marriages was carefully watched and reported by the intendant. We have seen the reward bestowed upon La Motte for taking to himself a wife, and the money set apart for the brother officers who imitated him. In his despatch of October, 1667, the intendant announces that two captains are already married to two damsels of the country; that a lieutenant has espoused a daughter of the governor of Three Rivers; and that “four ensigns are in treaty with their mistresses, and are already half engaged.” ** The paternal care of government, one would think, could scarcely go further.
It did, however, go further. Bounties were offered on children. The king, in council, passed a decree “that in future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not
* Histoire du Montréal, A.B. 1671, 1672.
** “Quatre enseignes sont en pourparler avec leurs
maîtresses et sent déjà à demi engagés.” Dépêche du 27 Oct.,
1667. The lieutenant was René Gaultier de Varennes, who on
the 26th September, 1667, married Marie Boucher, daughter of
the governor of Three Rivers, aged twelve years. One of the
children of this marriage was Varennes de la Vérendrye,
discoverer of the Rocky Mountains.
being priests, monks, or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by his Majesty to the said country a pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres; and that, to this effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year in the months of June or July to the intendant of justice, police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of each year.” * This was applicable to all. Colbert had before offered a reward, intended specially for the better class, of twelve hundred livres to those who had fifteen children, and eight hundred to those who had ten.
These wise encouragements, as the worthy Faillon calls them, were crowned with the desired result. A despatch of Talon in 1670 informs the minister that most of the young women sent out last summer are pregnant already, and in 1671 he announces that from six hundred to seven hundred children have been born in the colony during the year; a prodigious number in view of the small population. The climate was supposed to be particularly favorable to the health of women, which
* Edits et Ordonnances, I. 67. It was thought at this time
that the Indians, mingled with the French, might become a
valuable part of the population. The reproductive qualities
of Indian women, therefore, became an object of Talon’s
attention, and he reports that they impair their fertility
by nursing their children longer than is necessary; “but,”
he adds, “this obstacle to the speedy building up of the
colony can be overcome by a police regulation.” Mémoire sur
l’Etat Présent du Canada, 1667,
is somewhat surprising in view of recent American experience. “The first reflection I have to make,” says Dollier de Casson, “is on the advantage that women have in this place (Montreal) over men, for though the cold is very wholesome to both sexes, it is incomparably more so to the female, who is almost immortal here.” Her fecundity matched her longevity, and was the admiration of Talon and his successors, accustomed as they were to the scanty families of France.
Why with this great natural increase joined to an immigration which, though greatly diminishing, did not entirely cease, was there not a corresponding increase in the population of the colony? Why, more than half a century after the king took Canada in charge, did the census show a total of less than twenty-five thousand souls? The reasons will appear hereafter.
It is a peculiarity of Canadian immigration, at this its most flourishing epoch, that it was mainly an immigration of single men and single women. The cases in which entire families came over were comparatively few. * The new settler was found
* The principal emigration of families seems to have been
in 1669 when, at the urgency of Talon, then in France, a
considerable number were sent out. In the earlier period the
emigration of families was, relatively, much greater. Thus,
in 1634, the physician Giffard brought over seven to people
his seigniory of Beauport. Before 1663, when the king took
the colony in hand, the emigrants were for the most part
apprenticed laborers.
The zeal with which the king entered into the work of
stocking his colony is shown by numberless passages in his
letters, and those of his minister. “The end and the rule of
all your conduct,” says Colbert to the intendant Bouteroue,
“should be the increase of the colony; and on this point you
should never be satisfied, but labor without ceasing to find
every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants,
attracting new ones, and multiplying them by marriage.”
Instruction pour M. Bouteroue, 1668.
by the king; sent over by the king; and supplied by the king with a wife, a farm, and sometimes with a house. Well did Louis XIV. earn the title of Father of New France. But the royal zeal was spasmodic. The king was diverted to other cares, and soon after the outbreak of the Dutch war in 1672 the regular despatch of emigrants to Canada wellnigh ceased; though the practice of disbanding soldiers in the colony, giving them lands, and turning them into settlers, was continued in some degree, even to the last.
Military Frontier.—The Canadian Settler.—Seignior and Vassal.—Example of Talon.—Plan of Settlement.—Aspect of Canada.—Quebec.—The River Settlements.—Montreal.—The Pioneers.
We have seen the settler landed and married; let us follow him to his new home. At the end of Talon’s administration, the head of the colony, that is to say the island of Montreal and the borders of the Richelieu, was the seat of a peculiar colonization, the chief object of which was to protect the rest of Canada against Iroquois incursions. The lands along the Richelieu, from its mouth to a point above Chambly, were divided in large seigniorial grants among several officers of the regiment of Carignan, who in their turn granted out the land to the soldiers, reserving a sufficient portion as their own. The officer thus became a kind of feudal chief, and the whole settlement a permanent military cantonment admirably suited to the object in view. The disbanded soldier was practically a soldier still, but he was also a farmer and a landholder.
Talon had recommended this plan as being in accordance with the example of the Romans. “The practice of that politic and martial people,” he wrote, “may, in my opinion, be wisely adopted in a country a thousand leagues distant from its monarch. And as the peace and harmony of peoples depend above all things on their fidelity to their sovereign, our first kings, better statesmen than is commonly supposed, introduced into newly conquered countries men of war, of approved trust, in order at once to hold the inhabitants to their duty within, and repel the enemy from without.” *
The troops were accordingly discharged, and settled not alone on the Richelieu, but also along the St. Lawrence, between Lake St. Peter and Montreal, as well as at some other points. The Sulpitians, feudal owners of Montreal, adopted a similar policy, and surrounded their island with a border of fiefs large and small, granted partly to officers and partly to humbler settlers, bold, hardy, and practised in bush-fighting. Thus a line of sentinels was posted around their entire shore, ready to give the alarm whenever an enemy appeared. About Quebec the settlements, covered as they were by those above, were for the most part of a more pacific character.
To return to the Richelieu. The towns and villages which have since grown upon its banks and along the adjacent shores of the St. Lawrence owe their names to these officers of Carignan, ancient lords of the soil: Sorel, Chambly, Saint Ours,
* Projets de Réglemens, 1667 (see Edits et Ordonnances, II.
29).
Contrecœur, Yarennes, Verchères. Yet let it not be supposed that villages sprang up at once. The military seignior, valiant and poor as Walter the Penniless, was in no condition to work such magic. His personal possessions usually consisted of little but his sword and the money which the king had paid him for marrying a wife. A domain varying from half a league to six leagues in front on the river, and from half a league to two leagues in depth, had been freely given him. When he had distributed a part of it in allotments to the soldiers, a variety of tasks awaited him: to clear and cultivate his land; to build his seigniorial mansion, often a log hut; to build a fort; to build a chapel; and to build a mill. To do all this at once was impossible. Chambly, the chief proprietor on the Richelieu, was better able than the others to meet the exigency. He built himself a good house, where, with cattle and sheep furnished by the king, he lived in reasonable comfort. * The king’s fort, close at hand, spared him and his tenants the necessity of building one for themselves, and furnished, no doubt, a mill, a chapel, and a chaplain. His brother officers, Sorel excepted, were less fortunate. They and their tenants were forced to provide defence as well as shelter. Their houses were all built together, and surrounded by a palisade, so as to form a little fortified village. The ever-active benevolence of the king had aided them in the task, for the soldiers were still maintained by him
* Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672. Marie de
l’Incarnation speaks of these officers on the Richelieu as
très honnêtes gens.
while clearing the lands and building the houses destined to be their own; nor was it till this work was done that the provident government despatched them to Quebec with orders to bring back wives. The settler, thus lodged and wedded, was required on his part to aid in clearing lands for those who should come after him. *
It was chiefly in the more exposed parts of the colony, that the houses were gathered together in palisaded villages, thus forcing the settler to walk or paddle some distance to his farm. He naturally preferred to build when he could on the front of his farm itself, near the river, which supplied the place of a road. As the grants of land were very narrow, his house was not far from that of his next neighbor, and thus a line of dwellings was ranged along the shore, forming what in local language was called a côte, a use of the word peculiar to Canada, where it still prevails.
The impoverished seignior rarely built a chapel. Most of the early Canadian churches were built with funds furnished by the seminaries of Quebec or of Montreal, aided by contributions of material and labor from the parishioners. ** Meanwhile mass was said in some house of the neighborhood by
* “Sa Majesté semble prétendre faire la dépense entière pour
former le commencement des habitations par l’abattis du
bois, la culture et semence de deux arpens de terre,
l’avance de quelques farines aux familles venantes,” etc.,
etc. Projets de Réglemens, 1667. This applied to civil and
military settlers alike. The established settler was allowed
four years to clear two arpents of land for a new-comer. The
soldiers were maintained by the king during a year, while
preparing their farms and houses. Talon asks that two years
more be given them. Talon au Roy. 10 Nov., 1670
** La Tour, Vie de Laval, chap. x.
a missionary priest, paddling his canoe from village to village, or from côte to côte.
The mill was an object of the last importance. It was built of stone and pierced with loopholes, to serve as a blockhouse in case of attack. The great mill at Montreal was one of the chief defences of the place. It was at once the duty and the right of the seignior to supply his tenants, or rather vassals, with this essential requisite, and they on their part were required to grind their grain at his mill, leaving the fourteenth part in payment. But for many years there was not a seigniory in Canada, where this fraction would pay the wages of a miller and, except the ecclesiastical corporations, there were few seigniors who could pay the cost of building. The first settlers were usually forced to grind for themselves after the tedious fashion of the Indians.
Talon, in his capacity of counsellor, friend, and father to all Canada, arranged the new settlements near Quebec in the manner which he judged best, and which he meant to serve as an example to the rest of the colony. It was his aim to concentrate population around this point, so that, should an enemy appear, the sound of a cannon-shot from the Chateau St. Louis might summon a numerous body of defenders to this the common point of rendezvous. * He bought a tract of land near Quebec, laid it out, and settled it as a model seigniory, hoping, as he says, to kindle a spirit of emulation among the new-made seigniors to whom he
* Projets de Réglemens, 1667.
had granted lands from the king. He also laid out at the royal cost three villages in the immediate neighborhood, planning them with great care, and peopling them partly with families newly arrived, partly with soldiers, and partly with old settlers, in order that the new-comers might take lessons from the experience of these veterans. That each village might be complete in itself, he furnished it as well as he could with the needful carpenter, mason, blacksmith, and shoemaker. These inland villages, called respectively Bourg Royal, Bourg la Reine, and Bourg Talon, did not prove very thrifty. * Wherever the settlers were allowed to choose for themselves, they ranged their dwellings along the watercourses. With the exception of Talon’s villages, one could have seen nearly every house in Canada, by paddling a canoe up the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu. The settlements formed long thin lines on the edges of the rivers; a convenient arrangement, but one very unfavorable to defence, to ecclesiastical control, and to strong government. The king soon discovered this; and repeated orders were sent to concentrate the inhabitants and form Canada into villages, instead of côtes. To do so would have involved a general revocation of grants and abandonment of houses and clearings, a measure too arbitrary and too wasteful, even for Louis XIV., and one extremely difficult to enforce. Canada persisted in attenuating herself, and the royal will was foiled.
* In 1672, the king, as a mark of honor, attached these
villages to Talon’s seigniory. Documents on Seigniorial
Tenure.
As you ascended the St. Lawrence, the first harboring place of civilization was Tadoussao, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where the company had its trading station, where its agents ruled supreme, and where, in early summer, all was alive with canoes and wigwams, and troops of Montagnais savages, bringing their furs to market. Leave Tadoussac behind, and, embarked in a sailboat or a canoe, follow the northern coast. Far on the left, twenty miles away, the southern shore lies pale and dim, and mountain ranges wave their faint outline along the sky. You pass the beetling rocks of Mai Bay, a solitude but for the bark hut of some wandering Indian beneath the cliff; the Eboulements with their wild romantic gorge, and foaming waterfalls; and the Bay of St. Paul with its broad valley and its woody mountains, rich with hidden stores of iron. Vast piles of savage verdure border the mighty stream, till at length the mountain of Cape Tourmente upheaves its huge bulk from the bosom of the water, shadowed by lowering clouds, and dark with forests. Just beyond, begin the settlements of Laval’s vast seigniory of Beaupré, which had not been forgotten in the distribution of emigrants, and which, in 1667, contained more inhabitants than Quebec itself. * The ribbon of rich meadow land that borders that beautiful shore, was yellow with wheat
* The census of 1667 gives to Quebec only 448 souls; Côte
de Beaupré, 656; Beauport, 123; Island of Orleans, 529;
other settlements included under the government of Quebec,
1,011; Côte de Lauzon (south shore), 113; Trois Rivières and
its dependencies, 666; Montreal, 766. Both Beaupré and Isle
d’Orleans belonged at this time to the bishop.
in harvest time, and on the woody slopes behind, the frequent clearings and the solid little dwellings of logs continued for a long distance to relieve the sameness of the forest. After passing the cataract af Montmorenci, there was another settlement, much smaller, at Beauport, the seigniory of the ex-physician Giffard, one of the earliest proprietors in Canada. The neighboring shores of the island of Orleans were also edged with houses and clearings. The promontory of Quebec now towered full in sight, crowned with church, fort, chateau, convents, and seminary. There was little else on the rock. Priests, nuns, government officials, and soldiers, were the denizens of the Upper Town; while commerce and the trades were cabined along the strand beneath. * From the gallery of the chateau, you might toss a pebble far down on their shingled roofs. In the midst of them was the magazine of the company, with its two round towers and two projecting wings. It was here that all the beaver-skins of the colony were collected, assorted, and shipped for France. The so-called chateau St. Louis was an indifferent wooden structure planted on a site truly superb; above the Lower Town, above the river, above the ships, gazing abroad on a majestic panorama of waters, forests, and mountains. ** Behind it was the area of the fort, of which it formed one side. The
* According to Juchereau, there were seventy houses at
Quebec about the time of Tracy’s arrival.
** In 1660, an exact inventory was taken of the contents of
the fort and chateau; a beggarly account of rubbish. The
chateau was then a long low building roofed with shingles.
governor lived in the chateau, and soldiers were on guard night and day in the fort. At some little distance was the convent of the Ursulines, ugly but substantial, * where Mother Mary of the Incarnation ruled her pupils and her nuns; and a little further on, towards the right, was the Hôtel Dieu. Between them were the massive buildings of the Jesuits, then as now facing the principal square. At one side was their church, newly finished; and opposite, across the square, stood and still stands the great church of Notre Dame. Behind the church was Laval’s seminary, with the extensive enclosures belonging to it. The sénéchaussée or court-house, the tavern of one Jacques Boisdon on the square near the church, and a few houses along the line of what is now St. Louis Street, comprised nearly all the civil part of the Upper Town. The ecclesiastical buildings were of stone, and the church of Notre Dame and the Jesuit College were marvels of size and solidity in view of the poverty and weakness of the colony. **
Proceeding upward along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, one found a cluster of houses at Cap Rouge, and, further on, the frequent rude beginnings of a seigniory. The settlements thickened on
* There is an engraving of it in Abbé Casgrain’s
interesting Vie de Marie de l'Incarnation. It was burned in
1686.
** The first stone of Notre Dame de Quebec was laid in
September, 1647, and the first mass was said in it on the
24th of December, 1650. The side walls still remain as part
of the present structure. The Jesuit college was also begun
in 1647. The walls and roof were finished in 1649. The
church connected with it, since destroyed, was begun in
1666. Journal des Jésuites.
approaching Three Rivers, a fur-trading hamlet enclosed with a square palisade. Above this place, a line of incipient seigniories bordered the river, most of them granted to officers: Laubia, a captain; Labadie, a sergeant; Moras, an ensign; Berthier, a captain; Raudin, an ensign; La Valterie, a lieutenant. * Under their auspices, settlers, military and civilian, were ranging themselves along the shore, and ugly gaps in the forest thickly set with stumps bore witness to their toils. These settlements rapidly extended, till in a few years a chain of houses and clearings reached with little interruption from Quebec to Montreal. Such was the fruit of Tracy’s chastisement of the Mohawks, and the influx of immigrants that followed.
As you approached Montreal, the fortified mill built by the Sulpitians at Point aux Trembles towered above the woods; and soon after the newly built chapel of the Infant Jesus. More settlements followed, till at length the great fortified mill of Montreal rose in sight; then the long row of compact wooden houses, the Hôtel Dieu, and the rough masonry of the seminary of St. Sulpice. Beyond the town, the clearings continued at intervals till you reached Lake St. Louis, where young Cavelier de la Salle had laid out his seigniory of La Chine, and abandoned it to begin his hard career of western exploration. Above the island of Montreal,
* Documents on the Seigniorial Tenure; Abstracts of Titles.
Most of these grants, like those on the Richelieu, were made
by Talon in 1672; but the land had, in many cases, been
occupied and cleared in anticipation of the title.
the wilderness was broken only by a solitary trading station on the neighboring Isle Perot.
Now cross Lake St. Louis, shoot the rapids of La Chine, and follow the southern shore downward. Here the seigniories of Longueuil, Boucherville, Yarennes, Verchères, and Contrecoeur were already begun. From the fort of Sorel one could visit the military seigniories along the Richelieu or descend towards Quebec, passing on the way those of Lussaudière, Becancour, Lobinière, and others still in a shapeless infancy. Even far below Quebec, at St. Anne de la Pocatière, River Ouelle, and other points, cabins and clearings greeted the eye of the passing canoeman.
For a year or two, the settler’s initiation was a rough one; but when he had a few acres under tillage he could support himself and his family on the produce, aided by hunting, if he knew how to use a gun, and by the bountiful profusion of eels which the St. Lawrence never failed to yield in their season, and which, smoked or salted, supplied his larder for months. In winter he hewed timber, sawed planks, or split shingles for the market of Quebec, obtaining in return such necessaries as he required. With thrift and hard work he was sure of comfort at last; but the former habits of the military settlers and of many of the others were not favorable to a routine of dogged industry. The sameness and solitude of their new life often became insufferable; nor, married as they had been, was the domestic hearth likely to supply much consolation. Yet, thrifty or not, they multiplied apace.
“A poor man,” says Mother Mary, “will have eight children and more, who run about in winter with bare heads and bare feet, and a little jacket on their backs, live on nothing but bread and eels, and on that grow fat and stout.” With such treatment the weaker sort died; but the strong survived, and out of this rugged nursing sprang the hardy Canadian race of bush-rangers and bush-fighters.
Transplantation Of Feudalism.—Precautions.—Faith And Hope —Age.—The Seignior.—The Censitaire.—Royal Intervention.—The Gentilhomme.—Canadian Noblesse.
Canadian society was beginning to form itself, and at its base was the feudal tenure. European feudalism was the indigenous and natural growth of political and social conditions which preceded it. Canadian feudalism was an offshoot of the feudalism of France, modified by the lapse of centuries, and further modified by the royal will.
In France, as in the rest of Europe, the system had lost its vitality. The warrior-nobles who placed Hugh Capet on the throne, and began the feudal monarchy, formed an aristocratic republic, and the king was one of their number, whom they chose to be their chief. But, through the struggles and vicissitudes of many succeeding reigns, royalty had waxed and oligarchy had waned. The fact had changed and the theory had changed with it. The king, once powerless among a host of turbulent nobles, was now a king indeed. Once a chief, because his equals had made him so, he was now the anointed of the Lord. This triumph of royalty had culminated in Louis XIV. The stormy energies and bold individualism of the old feudal nobles had ceased to exist. They who had held his predecessors in awe had become his obsequious servants. He no longer feared his nobles; he prized them as gorgeous decorations of his court, and satellites of his royal person.
It was Richelieu who first planted feudalism in Canada. * The king would preserve it there, because with its teeth drawn he was fond of it, and because, as the feudal tenure prevailed in Old France, it was natural that it should prevail also in the New. But he continued as Richelieu had begun, and moulded it to the form that pleased him. Nothing was left which could threaten his absolute and undivided authority over the colony. In France, a multitude of privileges and prescriptions still clung, despite its fall, about the ancient ruling class. Few of these were allowed to cross the Atlantic, while the old, lingering abuses, which had made the system odious, were at the same time lopped away. Thus retrenched, Canadian feudalism was made to serve a double end; to produce a faint and harmless reflection of French aristocracy, and simply and practically to supply agencies for distributing land among the settlers.
The nature of the precautions which it was held to require appear in the plan of administration which Talon and Tracy laid before the minister.
* By the charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates,
1627.
They urge that, in view of the distance from France, special care ought to be taken to prevent changes and revolutions, aristocratic or otherwise, in the colony, whereby in time sovereign jurisdictions might grow up, as formerly occurred in various parts of France. * And, in respect to grants already made, an inquiry was ordered, to ascertain “if seigniors in distributing lands to their vassals have exacted any conditions injurious to the rights of the Crown and the subjection due solely to the king.” In the same view the seignior was denied any voice whatever in the direction of government; and it is scarcely necessary to say that the essential feature of feudalism in the day of its vitality, the requirement of military service by the lord from the vassal, was utterly unknown in Canada. The royal governor called out the militia whenever he saw fit, and set over it what officers he pleased.
The seignior was usually the immediate vassal of the Crown, from which he had received his land gratuitously. In a few cases, he made grants to other seigniors inferior in the feudal scale, and they, his vassals, granted in turn to their vassals, the habitants or cultivators of the soil. ** Sometimes
* Projet de Réglement fait par MM. de Tracy et Talon pour
la justice et la distribution des terres du Canada, Jan. 24,
1667.
** Most of the seigniories of Canada were simple fiefs; but
there were some exceptions. In 1671, the king, as a mark of
honor to Talon, erected his seigniory Des Islets into a
barony; and it was soon afterwards made an earldom, comté.
In 1676, the seigniory of St. Laurent, on the island of
Orleans, once the property of Laval, and then belonging to
François Berthelot, councillor of the king, was erected into
an earldom. In 1681, the seigniory of Portneuf, belonging to
Réné Robineau, chevalier, was made a barony. In 1700, three
seigniories on the south side of the St. Lawrence were
united into the barony of Lcngueuil. See Papers on the
Feudal Tenure in Canada, Abstract of Titles.
the habitant held directly of the Crown, in which case there was no step between the highest and lowest degrees of the feudal scale. The seignior held by the tenure of faith and homage, the habitant by the inferior tenure en censive. Faith and homage were rendered to the Crown or other feudal superior whenever the seigniory changed hands, or, in the case of seigniories held by corporations, after long stated intervals. The following is an example, drawn from the early days of the colony, of the performance of this ceremony by the owner of a fief to the seignior who had granted it to him. It is that of Jean Guion, vassal of Giffard, seignior of Beauport. The act recounts how, in presence of a notary, Guion presented himself at the principal door of the manor-house of Beauport; how, having knocked, one Boullé, farmer of Giffard, opened the door, and in reply to Guion’s question if the seignior was at home, replied that he was not, but that he, Boullé, was empowered to receive acknowledgments of faith and homage from the vassals in his name. “After the which reply,” proceeds the act, the said Guion, being at the principal door, placed himself on his knees on the ground, with head bare, and without sword or spurs, and said three times these words: “Monsieur de Beauport, Monsieur de Beauport, Monsieur de Beauport, I bring you the faith and homage which I am bound to bring you on account of my fief Du Buisson, which I hold as a man of faith of your seigniory of Beauport, declaring that I offer to pay my seigniorial and feudal dues in their season, and demanding of you to accept me in faith and homage as aforesaid.” *
The following instance is the more common one of a seignior holding directly of the Crown. It is widely separated from the first in point of time, having occurred a year after the army of Wolfe entered Quebec. Philippe Noël had lately died, and Jean Noël, his son, inherited his seigniory of Tilly and Bonsecours. To make the title good, faith and homage must be renewed. Jean Noël was under the bitter necessity of rendering this duty to General Murray, governor for the king of Great Britain. The form is the same as in the case of Guion, more than a century before. Noël repairs to the Government House at Quebec, and knocks at the door. A servant opens it. Noël asks if the governor is there. The servant replies that he is. Murray, informed of the visitor’s object, comes to the door, and Noël then and there, “without sword or spurs, with bare head, and one knee on the ground,” repeats the acknowledgment of faith and homage for his seigniory. He was compelled, however, to add a detested innovation, the oath of fidelity to his Britannic Majesty, coupled with a pledge to keep his vassals in obedience to the new sovereign. **
The seignior was a proprietor holding that relation to the feudal superior which, in its pristine
* Ferland, Notes sur les Registres de Notre Dame de Québec,
65. This was a fief en roture, as distinguished from a fief
noble, to which judicial powers and other privileges were
attached.
** See the act in Observations de Sir L. H. Lafontaine,
Bart., sur la Tenure Seignetiriale, 217, note.
character, has been truly described as servile in form, proud and bold in spirit. But in Canada this bold spirit was very far from being strengthened by the changes which the policy of the Crown had introduced into the system. The reservation of mines and minerals, oaks for the royal navy, roadways, and a site, if needed, for royal forts and magazines, had in it nothing extraordinary. The great difference between the position of the Canadian seignior and that of the vassal proprietor of the Middle Ages lay in the extent and nature of the control which the Crown and its officers held over him. A decree of the king, an edict of the council, or an ordinance of the intendant, might at any moment change old conditions, impose new ones, interfere between the lord of the manor and his grantees, and modify or annul his bargains, past or present. He was never sure whether or not the government would let him alone; and against its most arbitrary intervention he had no remedy.
One condition was imposed on him which may be said to form the distinctive feature of Canadian feudalism; that of clearing his land within a limited time on pain of forfeiting it. The object was the excellent one of preventing the lands of the colony from lying waste. As the seignior was often the penniless owner of a domain three or four leagues wide and proportionably deep, he could not clear it all himself, and was therefore under the necessity of placing the greater part in the hands of those who could. But he was forbidden to sell any part of it which he had not cleared. He must grant it without price, on condition of a small perpetual rent; and this brings us to the cultivator of the soil, the censitaire, the broad base of the feudal pyramid. *
The tenure en censive by which the censitaire held of the seignior consisted in the obligation to make annual payments in money, produce, or both. In Canada these payments, known as cens et rente, were strangely diverse in amount and kind; but, in all the early period of the colony, they were almost ludicrously small. A common charge at Montreal was half a sou and half a pint of wheat for each arpent. The rate usually fluctuated in the early times between half a sou and two sous, so that a farm of a hundred and sixty arpents would pay from four to sixteen francs, of which a part would be in money and the rest in live capons, wheat, eggs, or all three together, in pursuance of contracts as amusing in their precision as they are bewildering in their variety. Live capons,
* The greater part of the grants made by the old Company of
New France were resumed by the Crown for neglect to occupy
and improve the land, which was granted out anew under the
administration of Talon. The most remarkable of these
forfeited grants is that of the vast domain of La Citière,
large enough for a kingdom. Lauson, afterwards governor, had
obtained it from the company, but had failed to improve it.
Two or three sub-grants which he had made from it were held
valid; the rest was reunited to the royal domain. On
repeated occasions at later dates, negligent seigniors were
threatened with the loss of half or the whole of their land,
and various cases are recorded in which the threat took
effect. In 1741, an ordinance of the governor and intendant
reunited to the royal domain seventeen seigniories at one
stroke; but the former owners were told that if within a
year they cleared and settled a reasonable part of the
forfeited estates, the titles should be restored to them.
Edits et Ordonnances, II. 555. In the case of the habitant
or censitaire forfeitures for neglect to improve the land
and live on it are very numerous.
estimated at twenty sous each, though sometimes not worth ten, form a conspicuous feature in these agreements, so that on pay-day the seignior’s barnyard presented an animated scene. Later in the history of the colony grants were at somewhat higher rates. Payment was commonly made on St. Martin’s day, when there was a general muster of tenants at the seigniorial mansion, with a prodigious consumption of tobacco and a corresponding retail of neighborhood gossip, joined to the outcries of the captive fowls bundled together for delivery, with legs tied, but throats at full liberty.
A more considerable but a very uncertain source of income to the seignior were the lods et ventes, or mutation fines. The land of the censitaire passed freely to his heirs; but if he sold it, a twelfth part of the purchase-money must be paid to the seignior. The seignior, on his part, was equally liable to pay a mutation fine to his feudal superior if he sold his seigniory; and for him the amount was larger, being a quint, or a fifth of the price received, of which, however, the greater part was deducted for immediate payment. This heavy charge, constituting, as it did, a tax on all improvements, was a principal cause of the abolition of the feudal tenure in 1854.
The obligation of clearing his land and living on it was laid on seignior and censitaire alike; but the latter was under a variety of other obligations to the former, partly imposed by custom and partly established by agreement when the grant was made. To grind his grain at the seignior’s mill, bake his bread in the seignior’s oven, work for him one or more days in the year, and give him one fish in every eleven, for the privilege of fishing in the river before his farm; these were the most annoying of the conditions to which the censitaire was liable. Few of them were enforced with much regularity. That of baking in the seignior’s oven was rarely carried into effect, though occasionally used for purposes of extortion. It is here that the royal government appears in its true character, so far as concerns its relations with Canada, that of a well-meaning despotism. It continually intervened between censitaire and seignior, on the principle that “as his Majesty gives the land for nothing, he can make what conditions he pleases, and change them when he pleases.” * These interventions were usually favorable to the censitaire. On one occasion an intendant reported to the minister, that in his opinion all rents ought to be reduced to one sou and one live capon for every arpent of front, equal in most cases to forty superficial arpents. ** Every thing, he remarks, ought to be brought down to the level of the first grants “made in days of innocence,” a happy period which he does not attempt to define. The minister replies that the diversity of the rent is, in fact, vexatious, and that, for his part, he is disposed to abolish it altogether. *** Neither he nor the intendant gives the slightest hint of any compensation
* This doctrine is laid down in a letter of the Marquis de
Beauharnois, governor, to the minister, 1734.
** Lettre de Raudot, père, au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1707.
*** Lettre de Ponchartrain à Raudot, père, 13 Juin, 1708.
to the seignior. Though these radical measures were not executed, many changes were decreed from time to time in the relations between seignior and censitaire, sometimes as a simple act of sovereign power, and sometimes on the ground that the grants had been made with conditions not recognized by the Coutume de Paris. This was the code of law assigned to Canada; but most of the contracts between seignior and censitaire had been agreed upon in good faith by men who knew as much of the Coutume de Paris as of the Capitularies of Charlemagne, and their conditions had remained in force unchallenged for generations. These interventions of government sometimes contradicted each other, and often proved a dead letter. They are more or less active through the whole period of the French rule.
The seignior had judicial powers, which, however, were carefully curbed and controlled. His jurisdiction, when exercised at all, extended in most cases only to trivial causes. He very rarely had a prison, and seems never to have abused it. The dignity of a seigniorial gallows with high justice or jurisdiction over heinous offences was granted only in three or four instances. *
Four arpents in front by forty in depth were the ordinary dimensions of a grant en censive. These ribbons of land, nearly a mile and a half long, with one end on the river and the other on
* Baronies and comtés were empowered to set up gallows and
pillories, to which the arms of the owner were affixed. See,
for example, the edict creating the Barony des Islets.
the uplands behind, usually combined the advantages of meadows for cultivation, and forests for timber and firewood. So long as the censitaire brought in on St. Martin’s day his yearly capons and his yearly handful of copper, his title against the seignior was perfect. There are farms in Canada which have passed from father to son for two hundred years. The condition of the cultivator was incomparably better than that of the French peasant, crushed by taxes, and oppressed by feudal burdens far heavier than those of Canada. In fact, the Canadian settler scorned the name of peasant, and then, as now, was always called the habitant. The government held him in wardship, watched over him, interfered with him, but did not oppress him or allow others to oppress him. Canada was not governed to the profit of a class, and if the king wished to create a Canadian noblesse he took care that it should not bear hard on the country. *
Under a genuine feudalism, the ownership of land conferred nobility; but all this was changed. The king and not the soil was now the parent of honor. France swarmed with landless nobles, while roturier land-holders grew daily more numerous. In Canada half the seigniories were in roturier or plebeian hands, and in course of time some of them
* On the seigniorial tenure, I have examined the whole of
the mass of papers printed at the time when the question of
its abolition was under discussion. A great deal of legal
research and learning was then devoted to the subject. The
argument of Mr. Dunkin in behalf of the seigniors, and the
observations of Judge Lafontaine, are especially
instructive, as is also the collected correspondence of the
governors and intendants with the central government on
matters relating to the seigniorial system.
came into possession of persons on very humble degrees of the social scale. A seigniory could be bought and sold, and a trader or a thrifty habitant might, and often did become the buyer. * If the Canadian noble was always a seignior, it is far from being true that the Canadian seignior was always a noble.
In France, it will be remembered, nobility did not in itself imply a title. Besides its titled leaders, it had its rank and file, numerous enough to form a considerable army. Under the later Bourbons, the penniless young nobles were, in fact, enrolled into regiments, turbulent, difficult to control, obeying officers of high rank, but scorning all others, and conspicuous by a fiery and impetuous valor which on more than one occasion turned the tide of victory. The gentilhomme, or untitled noble, had a distinctive character of his own, gallant, punctilious, vain; skilled in social and sometimes in literary and artistic accomplishments, but usually ignorant of most things except the handling of his rapier. Yet there were striking exceptions; and to say of him, as has been said, that “he knew nothing but how to get himself killed,” is hardly just to a body which has produced some of the best writers and thinkers of France.
Sometimes the origin of his nobility was lost in
* In 1712, the engineer Catalogne made a very long and
elaborate report on the condition of Canada, with a full
account of all the seigniorial estates. Of ninety-one
seigniories, fiefs, and baronies, described by him, ten
belonged to merchants, twelve to husbandmen, and two to
masters of small river craft. The rest belonged to religious
corporations, members of the council, judges, officials of
the Crown, widows, and discharged officers or their sons.
the mists of time; sometimes he owed it to a patent from the king. In either case, the line of demarcation between him and the classes below him was perfectly distinct; and in this lies an essential difference between the French noblesse and the English gentry, a class not separated from others by a definite barrier. The French noblesse, unlike the English gentry, constituted a caste.
The gentilhomme had no vocation for emigrating. He liked the army and he liked the court. If he could not be of it, it was something to live in its shadow. The life of a backwoods settler had no charm for him. He was not used to labor; and he could not trade, at least in retail, without becoming liable to forfeit his nobility. When Talon came to Canada, there were but four noble families in the colony. * Young nobles in abundance came out with Tracy; but they went home with him. Where, then, should be found the material of a Canadian noblesse? First, in the regiment of Carignan, of which most of the officers were gentilshommes; secondly, in the issue of patents of nobility to a few of the more prominent colonists. Tracy asked for four such patents; Talon asked for five more; ** and such requests were repeated at intervals by succeeding governors and intendants, in behalf of those who had gained their favor by merit or otherwise. Money smoothed the path.
* Talon, Mémoire sur l'Etat présent du Canada, 1667. The
families of Repentigny, Tilly, Poterie, and Aillebout appear
to be meant.
** Tracy’s request was in behalf of Bourdon, Boucher,
Auteuil, and Juchereau. Talon’s was in behalf of Godefroy,
Le Moyne, Denis, Amiot, and Couillard to advancement, so far
had noblesse already fallen from its old estate.
Thus Jacques Le Ber, the merchant, who had long kept a shop at Montreal, got himself made a gentleman for six thousand livres. *
All Canada soon became infatuated with noblesse; and country and town, merchant and seignior, vied with each other for the quality of gentilhomme. If they could not get it, they often pretended to have it, and aped its ways with the zeal of Monsieur Jourdain himself. “Everybody here,” writes the intendant Meules, “calls himself Esquire, and ends with thinking himself a gentleman.” Successive intendants repeat this complaint. The case was worst with roturiers who had acquired seigniories. Thus Noel Langlois was a good carpenter till he became owner of a seigniory, on which he grew lazy and affected to play the gentleman. The real gentilshommes, as well as the spurious, had their full share of official stricture. The governor Denonville speaks of them thus: “Several of them have come out this year with their wives, who are very much cast down; but they play the fine lady, nevertheless. I had much rather see good peasants; it would be a pleasure to me to give aid to such, knowing, as I should, that within two years their families would have the means of living at ease; for it is certain that a peasant who can and will work is well off in this country, while our nobles with nothing to do can never be any thing but beggars. Still they ought not to be
* Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 325.
driven off or abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.” *
The intendant Duchesneau writes to the same effect: “Many of our gentilshommes, officers, and other owners of seigniories, lead what in France is called the life of a country gentleman, and spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. As their requirements in food and clothing are greater than those of the simple habitants, and as they do not devote themselves to improving their land, they mix themselves up in trade, run in debt on all hands, incite their young habitants to range the woods, and send their own children there to trade for furs in the Indian villages and in the depths of the forest, in spite of the prohibition of his Majesty. Yet, with all this, they are in miserable poverty.” ** Their condition, indeed, was often deplorable. “It is pitiful,” says the intendant Champigny, “to see their children, of which they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on them but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields.” *** In another letter he asks aid from the king for Repentigny with his thirteen children, and for Tilly with his fifteen. “We must give them some corn at once,” he says, “or they will starve.” **** These were two of the original four noble families of Canada. The family of Aillebout, another of the four, is described as equally destitute. “Pride and sloth,” says the same intendant,
* Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
** Lettre de Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.
*** Lettre de Champigny au Ministre, 26 Août, 1687.
**** Ibid., 6 Nov., 1687.
“are the great faults of the people of Canada, and especially of the nobles and those who pretend to be such. I pray you grant no more letters of nobility, unless you want to multiply beggars.” * The governor Denonville is still more emphatic: “Above all things, monseigneur, permit me to say that the nobles of this new country are every thing that is most beggarly, and that to increase their number is to increase the number of do-nothings. A new country requires hard workers, who will handle the axe and mattock. The sons of our councillors are no more industrious than the nobles; and their only resource is to take to the woods, trade a little with the Indians, and, for the most part, fall into the disorders of which I have had the honor to inform you. I shall use all possible means to induce them to engage in regular commerce; but as our nobles and councillors are all very poor and weighed down with debt, they could not get credit for a single crown piece.” ** “Two days ago,” he writes in another letter, “Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put his ten children into the charge of any who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can. I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough. Other families are
* Mémoire instructif sur le Canada, joint a la lettre de M.
de Champigny du 10 May, 1691.
** Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1685.
in the same condition. They come to me with tears in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you to send them aid. There is need that the king should provide support for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the English.” * Again he writes that the sons of the councillor D’Amours have been arrested as coureurs de bois, or outlaws in the bush; and that if the minister does not do something to help them, there is danger that all the sons of the noblesse, real or pretended, will turn bandits, since they have no other means of living.
The king, dispenser of charity for all Canada, came promptly to the rescue. He granted an alms of a hundred crowns to each family, coupled with a warning to the recipients of his bounty that “their misery proceeds from their ambition to live as persons of quality and without labor.” ** At the same time, the minister announced that no more letters of nobility would be granted in Canada; adding, “to relieve the country of some of the children of those who are really noble, I send you (the governor) six commissions of Gardes de la Marine, and recommend you to take care not to give them to any who are not actually gentilshommes." The Garde de la Marine answered to the midshipman of the English or American service. As the six commissions could bring little relief to the crowd of needy youths, it was further ordained
* Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
(Condensed in the translation.)
** Abstract of Denonville’s Letters, and of the Minister’s
Answers, in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 317, 318.
that sons of nobles or persons living as such should be enrolled into companies at eight sous a day for those who should best conduct themselves, and six sous a day for the others. Nobles in Canada were also permitted to trade, even at retail, without derogating from their rank. *
They had already assumed this right, without waiting for the royal license; but thus far it had profited them little. The gentilhomme was not a good shopkeeper, nor, as a rule, was the shop-keeper’s vocation very lucrative in Canada. The domestic trade of the colony was small; and all trade was exposed to such vicissitudes from the intervention of intendants, ministers, and councils, that at one time it was almost banished. At best, it was carried on under conditions auspicious to a favored few and withering to the rest. Even when most willing to work, the position of the gentilhomme was a painful one. Unless he could gain a post under the Crown, which was rarely the case, he was as complete a political cipher as the meanest habitant. His rents were practically nothing, and he had no capital to improve his seigniorial estate. By a peasant’s work he could gain a peasant’s living, and this was all. The prospect was not inspiring. His long initiation of misery was the natural result of his position and surroundings; and it is no matter of wonder that he threw himself into the only field of action which in time of peace was open to him. It was trade, but trade seasoned by adventure and
* Lettre de Meules au Ministre, 1685.
ennobled by danger; defiant of edict and ordinance, outlawed, conducted in arms among forests and savages,—in short, it was the Western fur trade. The tyro was likely to fail in it at first, but time and experience formed him to the work. On the Great Lakes, in the wastes of the Northwest, on the Mississippi and the plains beyond, we find the roving gentilhomme, chief of a gang of bushrangers, often his own habitants; sometimes proscribed by the government, sometimes leagued in contraband traffic with its highest officials, a hardy vidette of civilization, tracing unknown streams, piercing unknown forests, trading, fighting, negotiating, and building forts. Again we find him on the shores of Acadia or Maine, surrounded by Indian retainers, a menace and a terror to the neighboring English colonist. Saint-Castin, Du Lhut, La Durantaye, La Salle, La Motte-Cadillac, Iberville, Bienville, La Vérendrye, are names that stand conspicuous on the page of half-savage romance that refreshes the hard and practical annals of American colonization. But a more substantial debt is due to their memory. It was they, and such as they, who discovered the Ohio, explored the Mississippi to its mouth, discovered the Rocky Mountains, and founded Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans.
Even in his earliest day, the gentilhomme was not always in the evil plight where we have found him. There were a few exceptions to the general misery, and the chief among them is that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. Charles Le Moyne, son of an innkeeper of Dieppe and founder of a family the most truly eminent in Canada, was a man of sterling qualities who had been long enough in the colony to learn how to live there. * Others learned the same lesson at a later day, adapted themselves to soil and situation, took root, grew, and became more Canadian than French. As population increased, their seigniories began to yield appreciable returns, and their reserved domains became worth cultivating. A future dawned upon them; they saw in hope their names, their seigniorial estates, their manor-houses, their tenantry, passing to their children and their children’s children. The beggared noble of the early time became a sturdy country gentleman; poor, but not wretched; ignorant of books, except possibly a few scraps of rusty Latin picked up in a Jesuit school; hardy as the hardiest woodsman, yet never forgetting his quality of gentilhomme; scrupulously wearing its badge, the sword, and copying as well as he could the fashions of the court, which glowed on his vision across the sea in all the effulgence of Versailles, and beamed with reflected ray from the chateau of Quebec. He was at home among his tenants, at home among the Indians, and never more at home than when, a gun in his hand and a crucifix on his breast, he took the war-path with a
* Berthelot, proprietor of the comté of St. Laurent, and
Robineau, of the barony of Portneuf, may also be mentioned
as exceptionally prosperous. Of the younger Charles Le
Moyne, afterwards Baron de Longueuil,
Frontenac the governor says, “son fort et sa maison nous
donnent une idée des chateaux de France fortifiez.” His fort
was of Stone and flanked with four towers. It was nearly
opposite Montreal, on the south shore.
crew of painted savages and Frenchmen almost as wild, and pounced like a lynx from the forest on some lonely farm or outlying hamlet of New England. How New England hated him, let her records tell. The reddest blood streaks on her old annals mark the track of the Canadian gentil-homme.
Nature Of The Government.—The Governor.—The Council, Courts and Judges.—The Intendant.—His Grievances.—Strong Government.—Sedition and Blasphemy.—Royal Bounty.—Defects and Abuses.
The government of Canada was formed in its chief features after the government of a French province. Throughout France the past and the present stood side by side. The kingdom had a double administration; or rather, the shadow of the old administration and the substance of the new. The government of provinces had long been held by the high nobles, often kindred to the Crown; and hence, in former times, great perils had arisen, amounting during the civil wars to the danger of dismemberment. The high nobles were still governors of provinces; but here, as elsewhere, they had ceased to be dangerous. Titles, honors, and ceremonial they had in abundance; but they were deprived of real power. Close beside them was the royal intendant, an obscure figure, lost amid the vainglories of the feudal sunset, but in the name of the king holding the reins of government; a check and a spy on his gorgeous colleague. He was the king’s agent: of modest birth, springing from the legal class; owing his present to the king, and dependent on him for his future; learned in the law and trained to administration. It was by such instruments that the powerful centralization of the monarchy enforced itself throughout the kingdom, and, penetrating beneath the crust of old prescriptions, supplanted without seeming to supplant them. The courtier noble looked down in the pride of rank on the busy man in black at his side; but this man in black, with the troop of officials at his beck, controlled finance, the royal courts, public works, and all the administrative business of the province.
The governor-general and the intendant of Canada answered to those of a French province. The governor, excepting in the earliest period of the colony, was a military noble; in most cases bearing a title and sometimes of high rank. The intendant, as in France, was usually drawn from the gens de robe, or legal class. * The mutual relations of the two officers were modified by the circumstances about them. The governor was superior in rank to the intendant; he commanded the troops, conducted relations with foreign colonies and Indian tribes, and took precedence on all occasions of ceremony. Unlike a provincial
* The governor was styled in his commission, Gouverneur et
Lieutenant-Général en Canada, Acadie, Isle de Terreneuve, et
autres pays de la France Septentrionale; and the intendant,
Intendant de la Justice, Police, et Finances in Canada,
Acadie, Terreneuve, et autres pays de la France
Septentrionale
governor in France, he had great and substantial power, The king and the minister, his sole masters, were a thousand leagues distant, and he controlled the whole military force. If he abused his position, there was no remedy but in appeal to the court, which alone could hold him in check. There were local governors at Montreal and Three Rivers; but their power was carefully curbed, and they were forbidden to fine or imprison any person without authority from Quebec. *
The intendant was virtually a spy on the governor-general, of whose proceedings and of every thing else that took place he was required to make report. Every year he wrote to the minister of state, one, two, three, or four letters, often forty or fifty pages long, filled with the secrets of the colony, political and personal, great and small, set forth with a minuteness often interesting, often instructive, and often excessively tedious. ** The governor, too, wrote letters of pitiless length; and each of the colleagues was jealous of the letters of the other. In truth, their relations to each other were so critical, and perfect harmony so rare, that they might almost be described as natural enemies. The court, it is certain, did not desire their perfect accord; nor, on the other hand, did it wish them to quarrel: it aimed to keep them on such terms
* The Sulpitian seigniors of Montreal claimed the right of
appointing their own local governor. This was denied by the
court, and the excellent Sulpitian governor, Maisonneuve,
was removed by De Tracy, to die in patient obscurity at
Paris. Some concessions were afterwards made in favor of the
Sulpitian claims.
** I have carefully read about two thousand pages of these
letters.
that, without deranging the machinery of administration, each should be a check on the other. *
The governor, the intendant, and the supreme council or court, were absolute masters of Canada under the pleasure of the king. Legislative, judicial, and executive power, all centred in them. We have seen already the very unpromising beginnings of the supreme council. It had consisted at first of the governor, the bishop, and five councillors chosen by them. The intendant was soon added to form the ruling triumvirate; but the appointment of the councillors, the occasion of so many quarrels, was afterwards exercised by the king himself. ** Even the name of the council underwent a change in the interest of his autocracy, and he commanded that it should no longer be called the Supreme, but only the Superior Council. The same change had just been imposed on all the high tribunals of France. *** Under the shadow of the fleur-de-lis, the king alone was to be supreme.
In 1675, the number of councillors was increased to seven, and in 1703 it was again increased to twelve; but the character of the council or court
* The governor and intendant made frequent appeals to the
court to settle questions arising between them. Several of
these appeals are preserved. The king wrote replies on the
margin of the paper, but they were usually too curt and
general to satisfy either party.
** Déclaration du Roi du 16me Juin, 1703. Appointments were
made by the king many years earlier. As they were always
made on the recommendation of the governor and intendant,
the practical effect of the change was merely to exclude the
bishop from a share in them. The West India Company made the
nominations during the ten years of its ascendancy.
*** Cheruel, Administration Monarchique en France, II. 100.
remained the same. It issued decrees for the civil, commercial, and financial government of the colony, and gave judgment in civil and criminal causes according to the royal ordinances and the Coutume de Paris. It exercised also the function of registration borrowed from the parliament of Paris. That body, it will be remembered, had no analogy whatever with the English parliament. Its ordinary functions were not legislative, but judicial; and it was composed of judges hereditary under certain conditions. Nevertheless, it had long acted as a check on the royal power through its right of registration. No royal edict had the force of law till entered upon its books, and this custom had so deep a root in the monarchical constitution of France, that even Louis XIV., in the flush of his power, did not attempt to abolish it. He did better; he ordered his decrees to be registered, and the humbled parliament submissively obeyed. In like manner all edicts, ordinances, or declarations relating to Canada were entered on the registers of the superior council at Quebec. The order of registration was commonly affixed to the edict or other mandate, and nobody dreamed of disobeying it. *
The council or court had its attorney-general, who heard complaints and brought them before the tribunal if he thought necessary; its secretary, who kept its registers, and its huissiers or attendant officers. It sat once a week; and, though
* Many general edicts relating to the whole kingdom are
also registered on the books of the council, but the
practice in this respect was by no means uniform.
it was the highest court of appeal, it exercised at first original jurisdiction in very trivial cases. * It was empowered to establish subordinate courts or judges throughout the colony. Besides these there was a judge appointed by the king for each of the three districts into which Canada was divided, those of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. To each of the three royal judges were joined a clerk and an attorney-general under the supervision and control of the attorney-general of the superior court, to which tribunal appeal lay from all the subordinate jurisdictions. The jurisdiction of the seigniors within their own limits has already been mentioned. They were entitled by the terms of their grants to the exercise of “high, middle, and low justice;” but most of them were practically restricted to the last of the three, that is, to petty disputes between the habitans, involving not more than sixty sous, or offences for which the fine did not exceed ten sous. ** Thus limited, their judgments were often useful in saving time, trouble, and money to the disputants. The corporate seigniors of Montreal long continued to hold a feudal court in form, with attorney-general, clerk, and huissier; but very few other seigniors were in a condition to imitate them. Added to all these tribunals was the bishop’s court at Quebec to try causes held to be within the province of the church.
* See the Registres du Conseil Supérieur, preserved at
Quebec. Between 1663 and 1673 are a multitude of judgments
on matters great and small; from murder, rape, and
infanticide, down to petty nuisances, misbehavior of
servants, and disputes about the price of a sow.
** Doutre et Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, 135.
The office of judge in Canada was no sinecure. The people were of a litigious disposition, partly from their Norman blood, partly perhaps from the idleness of the long and tedious winter, which gave full leisure for gossip and quarrel, and partly from the very imperfect manner in which titles had been drawn and the boundaries of grants marked out, whence ensued disputes without end between neighbor and neighbor.
“I will not say,” writes the satirical La Hontan, "that Justice is more chaste and disinterested here than in France; but, at least, if she is sold, she is sold cheaper. We do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not infest Canada yet. Everybody pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges. The judges have only four hundred francs a year, a great temptation to look for law in the bottom of the suitor’s purse. Four hundred francs! Not enough to buy a cap and gown, so these gentry never wear them.” *
Thus far La Hontan. Now let us hear the king; himself. “The greatest disorder which has hitherto existed in Canada,” writes Louis XIV. to the intendant Meules, “has come from the small degree of liberty which the officers of justice have had in the discharge of their duties, by reason of the violence to which they have been subjected, and the part they have been obliged to take in the
* La Hontan, I. 21 (ed. 1705). In some editions, the above
is expressed in different language.
continual quarrels between the governor and the intendant; insomuch that justice having been administered by cabal and animosity, the inhabitants have hitherto been far from the tranquillity and repose which cannot be found in a place where everybody is compelled to take side with one party or another.” *
Nevertheless, on ordinary local questions between the habitants, justice seems to have been administered on the whole fairly; and judges of all grades often interposed in their personal capacity to bring parties to an agreement without a trial. From head to foot, the government kept its attitude of paternity.
Beyond and above all the regular tribunals, beyond and above the council itself, was the independent jurisdiction lodged in the person of the king’s man, the intendant. His commission empowered him, if he saw fit, to call any cause whatever before himself for judgment; and he judged exclusively the cases which concerned the king, and those involving the relations of seignior and vassal. ** He appointed subordinate judges, from whom there was appeal to him; but from his decisions, as well as from those of the superior council, there was no appeal but to the king in his council of state.
On any Monday morning one would have found the superior council in session in the antechamber
* Instruction du Roy pour le Sieur de Meules, 1682.
** See the commissions of various intendants, in Edits et
Ordonnances
of the governor’s apartment, at the Chateau St. Louis. The members sat at a round table. At the head was the governor, with the bishop on his right, and the intendant on his left. The councillors sat in the order of their appointment, and the attorney-general also had his place at the board. As La Hontan says, they were not in judicial robes, but in their ordinary dress, and all but the bishop wore swords.1 The want of the cap and gown greatly disturbed the intendant Meules, and he begs the minister to consider how important it is that the councillors, in order to inspire respect, should appear in public in long black robes, which on occasions of ceremony they should exchange for robes of red. He thinks that the principal persons of the colony would thus be induced to train up their children to so enviable a dignity; “and,” he concludes, “as none of the councillors can afford to buy red robes, I hope that the king will vouchsafe to send out nine such. As for the black robes, they can furnish those themselves.” ** The king did not respond, and the nine robes never arrived.
The official dignity of the council was sometimes exposed to trials against which even red gowns might have proved an insufficient protection. The same intendant urges that the tribunal ought to be provided immediately with a house of its own.
"It is not decent,” he says, “that it should sit in the governor’s antechamber any longer. His guards and valets make such a noise, that we
* Compare La Poterie, I. 260, and La Tour, Vie de Laval,
Liv. VII.
** Meules au Ministre, 28 Sept. 1685.
cannot hear each other speak. I have continually to tell them to keep quiet, which causes them to make a thousand jokes at the councillors as they pass in and out.” * As the governor and the council were often on ill terms, the official head of the colony could not always be trusted to keep his attendants on their good behavior. The minister listened to the complaint of Meules, and adopted his suggestion that the government should buy the old brewery of Talon, a large structure of mingled timber and masonry on the banks of the St. Charles. It was at an easy distance from the chateau; passing the Hôtel Dieu and descending the rock, one reached it by a walk of a few minutes. It was accordingly repaired, partly rebuilt, and fitted up to serve the double purpose of a lodging for the intendant and a court-house. Henceforth the transformed brewery was known as the Palace of the Intendant, or the Palace of Justice; and here the council and inferior courts long continued to hold their sessions.
Some of these inferior courts appear to have needed a lodging quite as much as the council. The watchful Meules informs the minister that the royal judge for the district of Quebec was accustomed in winter, with a view to saving fuel, to hear causes and pronounce judgment by his own fireside, in the midst of his children, whose gambols disturbed the even distribution of justice. **
The superior council was not a very harmonious
* Meules au Ministre, 12 Nov., 1681.
** Ibid.
body. As its three chiefs, the man of the sword, the man of the church, and the man of the law, were often at variance, the councillors attached themselves to one party or the other, and hot disputes sometimes ensued. The intendant, though but third in rank, presided at the sessions, took votes, pronounced judgment, signed papers, and called special meetings. This matter of the presidency was for some time a source of contention between him and the governor, till the question was set at rest by a decree of the king.
The intendants in their reports to the minister do not paint the council in flattering colors. One of them complains that the councillors, being busy with their farms, neglect their official duties. Another says that they are all more or less in trade. A third calls them uneducated persons of slight account, allied to the chief families and chief merchants in Canada, in whose interest they make laws; and he adds that, as a year and a half or even two years usually elapse before the answer to a complaint is received from France, they take advantage of this long interval to the injury of the king’s service. * These and other similar charges betray the continual friction between the several branches of the government.
The councillors were rarely changed, and they usually held office for life. In a few cases the king granted to the son of a councillor yet living the right of succeeding his father when the charge
* Meules au Ministre 12 Nov, 1684.
should become vacant. * It was a post of honor and not of profit, at least of direct profit. The salaries were very small, and coupled with a prohibition to receive fees.
Judging solely by the terms of his commission, the intendant was the ruling power in the colony. He controlled all expenditure of public money, and not only presided at the council but was clothed in his own person with independent legislative as well as judicial power. He was authorized to issue ordinances having the force of law whenever he thought necessary, and, in the words of his commission, “to order every thing as he shall see just and proper.” ** He was directed to be present at councils of war, though war was the special province of his colleague, and to protect soldiers and all others from official extortion and abuse; that is, to protect them from the governor. Yet there were practical difficulties in the way of his apparent power. The king, his master, was far away; but official jealousy was busy around him, and his patience was sometimes put to the proof. Thus the royal judge of Quebec had fallen into irregularities. “I can do nothing with him,” writes the intendant; “he keeps on good terms with the governor and council and sets me at naught.” The governor had, as he thought, treated him amiss. “You have told me,” he writes to the
* A son of Amours was named in his father’s lifetime to
succeed him, as was also a son of the attorney-general
Auteuil. There are several other cases. A son of Tilly, to
whom the right of succeeding his father had been granted,
asks leave to sell it to the merchant La Chesnaye.
** Commissions of Bouteroue, Duchesneau, Meules, etc.
minister, “to bear every thing from him and report to you;” and he proceeds to recount his grievances Again, "the attorney-general is bold to insolence, and needs to be repressed. The king’s interposition is necessary.” He modestly adds that the intendant is the only man in Canada whom his Majesty can trust, and that he ought to have more power. *
These were far from being his only troubles. The enormous powers with which his commission clothed him were sometimes retrenched by contradictory instructions from the king; ** for this government, not of laws but of arbitrary will, is marked by frequent inconsistencies. When he quarrelled with the governor, and the governor chanced to have strong friends at court, his position became truly pitiable. He was berated as an imperious master berates an offending servant. “Your last letter is full of nothing but complaints.” “You have exceeded your authority.” “Study to know yourself and to understand clearly the difference there is between a governor and an intendant.” “Since you fail to comprehend the difference between you and the officer who represents the king’s person, you are in danger of being often condemned, or rather of being recalled, for his Majesty cannot endure so many petty complaints, founded on nothing but a certain quasi equality between the governor and you, which you assume, but which
* Meules au Ministre, 12 Nov., 1684.
** Thus, Meules is flatly forbidden to compel litigants to
bring causes before him (Instruction pour le Sieur de
Meules, 1682), and this prohibition is nearly of the same
date with the commission in which the power to do so is
expressly given him.
does not exist.” “Meddle with nothing beyond your functions.” “Take good care to tell me nothing but the truth.” “You ask too many favors for your adherents.” “You must not spend more than you have authority to spend, or it will be taken out of your pay.” In short, there are several letters from the minister Colbert to his colonial man-of-all-work, which, from beginning to end, are one continued scold. *
The luckless intendant was liable to be held to account for the action of natural laws. “If the population does not increase in proportion to the pains I take,” writes the king to Duchesneau, “you are to lay the blame on yourself for not having executed my principal order (to promote marriages) and for having failed in the principal object for which I sent you to Canada.” **
A great number of ordinances of intendants are preserved. They were usually read to the people at the doors of churches after mass, or sometimes by the curé from his pulpit. They relate to a great variety of subjects,—regulation of inns and markets, poaching, preservation of game, sale of brandy, rent of pews, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, matrimonial quarrels, fast driving, wards and guardians, weights and measures, nuisances, value of coinage, trespass on lands, building churches, observance of Sunday, preservation of timber, seignior and vassal, settlement of boundaries, and many
* The above examples are all taken from the letters of
Colbert to the intendant Duchesneau. It is an extreme case,
but other intendants are occasionally treated with scarcely
more ceremony.
** Le Roi à Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.
other matters. If a curé with some of his parishioners reported that his church or his house needed repair or rebuilding, the intendant issued an ordinance requiring all the inhabitants of the parish, “both those who have consented and those who have not consented,” to contribute materials and labor, on pain of fine or other penalty. * The militia captain of the cote was to direct the work and see that each parishioner did his due part, which was determined by the extent of his farm; so, too, if the grand voyer, an officer charged with the superintendence of highways, reported that a new road was wanted or that an old one needed mending, an ordinance of the intendant set the whole neighborhood at work upon it, directed, as in the other case, by the captain of militia. If children were left fatherless, the intendant ordered the curé of the parish to assemble their relations or friends for the choice of a guardian. If a censitaire did not clear his land and live on it, the intendant took it from him and gave it back to the seignior. **
Chimney-sweeping having been neglected at Quebec, the intendant commands all householders promptly to do their duty in this respect, and at the same time fixes the pay of the sweep at six sous a chimney. Another order forbids quarrelling in church. Another assigns pews in due order of precedence to the seignior, the captain of militia, and the wardens. The intendant Raudot, who seems
* See, among many examples, the ordinance of 24th December,
1716. Edits et Ordonnances, II. 443.
** Compare the numerous ordinances printed in the second
and third volumes of Edits et Ordonnances.
to have been inspired even more than the others with the spirit of paternal intervention, issued a mandate to the effect that, whereas the people of Montreal raise too many horses, which prevents them from raising cattle and sheep, “being therein ignorant of their true interest.... Now, therefore, we command that each inhabitant of the côtes of this government shall hereafter own no more than two horses or mares and one foal; the same to take effect after the sowing-season of the ensuing year, 1710, giving them time to rid themselves of their horses in excess of said number, after which they will be required to kill any of such excess that may remain in their possession.” * Many other ordinances, if not equally preposterous, are equally stringent; such, for example, as that of the intendant Bigot, in which, with a view of promoting agriculture, and protecting the morals of the farmers by saving them from the temptations of cities, he proclaims to them: “We prohibit and forbid you to remove to this town (Quebec) under any pretext whatever, without our permission in writing, on pain of being expelled and sent back to your farms, your furniture and goods confiscated, and a fine of fifty livres laid on you for the benefit of the hospitals. And, furthermore, we forbid all inhabitants of the city to let houses or rooms to persons coming from the country, on pain of a fine of a hundred livres, also applicable to the hospitals.” ** At about the same time a royal edict, designed to prevent the undue subdivision of farms, forbade the country
* Edits et Ordonnances, II. 273.
** Ibid., II. 399.
people, except such as were authorized to live in villages, to build a house or barn on any piece of land less than one and a half arpents wide and thirty arpents long; * while a subsequent ordinance of the intendant commands the immediate demolition of certain houses built in contravention of the edict. **
The spirit of absolutism is everywhere apparent. “It is of very great consequence,” writes the intendant Meules, “that the people should not be left at liberty to speak their minds.” ***
Hence public meetings were jealously restricted. Even those held by parishioners under the eye of the curé to estimate the cost of a new church seem to have required a special license from the intendant. During a number of years a meeting of the principal inhabitants of Quebec was called in spring and autumn by the council to discuss the price and quality of bread, the supply of firewood, and other similar matters. The council commissioned two of its members to preside at these meetings, and on hearing their report took what action it thought best. Thus, after the meeting held in February, 1686, it issued a decree, in which, after a long and formal preamble, it solemnly ordained, “that besides white-bread and light brown-bread, all bakers shall hereafter make dark brown-bread whenever the same shall be required.” **** Such assemblies, so controlled, could scarcely, one would think, wound
* Edits et Ordonnances, I. 585.
** Ibid., II. 400.
*** “Il ne laisse pas d’être de très grande conséquence de
ne pas laisser la liberté au peuple de dire son sentiment.”
—Meules au Ministre, 1685.
**** Edits et Ordonnances, II. 112.
the tenderest susceptibilities of authority; yet there was evident distrust of them, and after a few years this modest shred of self-government is seen no more. The syndic, too, that functionary whom the people of the towns were at first allowed to choose, under the eye of the authorities, was conjured out of existence by a word from the king. Seignior, censitaire, and citizen were prostrate alike in flat subjection to the royal will. They were not free even to go home to France. No inhabitant of Canada, man or woman, could do so without leave; and several intendants express their belief that without this precaution there would soon be a falling off in the population.
In 1671 the council issued a curious decree. One Paul Dupuy had been heard to say that there is nothing like righting one’s self, and that when the English cut off the head of Charles I. they did a good thing, with other discourse to the like effect The council declared him guilty of speaking ill of royalty in the person of the king of England, and uttering words tending to sedition. He was condemned to be dragged from prison by the public executioner, and led in his shirt, with a rope about his neck, and a torch in his hand, to the gate of the Chateau St. Louis, there to beg pardon of the king; thence to the pillory of the Lower Town to be branded with a fleur-de-lis on the cheek, and set in the stocks for half an hour; then to be led back to prison, and put in irons “till the information against him shall be completed.” *
* Jugements et Délibérations du Conseil Supérieur.
If irreverence to royalty was thus rigorously chastised, irreverence to God was threatened with still sharper penalties. Louis XIV., ever haunted with the fear of the devil, sought protection against him by his famous edict against swearing, duly registered on the books of the council at Quebec. “It is our will and pleasure,” says this pious mandate, “that all persons convicted of profane swearing or blaspheming the name of God, the most Holy Virgin, his mother, or the saints, be condemned for the first offence to a pecuniary fine according to their possessions and the greatness and enormity of the oath and blasphemy; and if those thus punished repeat the said oaths, then for the second, third, and fourth time they shall be condemned to a double, triple, and quadruple fine; and for the fifth time, they shall be set in the pillory on Sunday or other festival days, there to remain from eight in the morning till one in the afternoon, exposed to all sorts of opprobrium and abuse, and be condemned besides to a heavy fine; and for the sixth time, they shall be led to the pillory, and there have the upper lip cut with a hot iron; and for the seventh time, they shall be led to the pillory and have the lower lip cut; and if, by reason of obstinacy and inveterate bad habit, they continue after all these punishments to utter the said oaths and blasphemies, it is our will and command that they have the tongue completely cut out, so that thereafter they cannot utter them again.” * All those who should hear anybody
* Edit du Roy contre les Jureurs et Blasphémateurs, du 30me
Juillet, 1666 See Edits et Ordonnances, I. 62.
swear were further required to report the fact to the nearest judge within twenty-four hours, on pain of fine.
This is far from being the only instance in which the temporal power lends aid to the spiritual. Among other cases, the following is worth mentioning: Louis Gaboury, an inhabitant of the island of Orleans, charged with eating meat in Lent without asking leave of the priest, was condemned by the local judge to be tied three hours to a stake in public, and then led to the door of the chapel, there on his knees, with head bare and hands clasped, to ask pardon of God and the king. The culprit appealed to the council, which revoked the sentence and imposed only a fine. *
The due subordination of households had its share of attention. Servants who deserted their masters were to be set in the pillory for the first offence, and whipped and branded for the second; while any person harboring them was to pay a fine of twenty francs. ** On the other hand, nobody was allowed to employ a servant without a license. ***
In case of heinous charges, torture of the accused was permitted under the French law; and it was sometimes practised in Canada. Condemned murderers and felons were occasionally tortured before being strangled; and the dead body, enclosed in a kind of iron cage, was left hanging for months at the top of Cape Diamond, a terror to children and a warning to evil-doers. Yet, on the whole,
* Doutre et Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, 163.
** Réglement de Police, 1676.
*** Edits et Ordonnances, II. 53.
Canadian justice, tried by the standard of the time, was neither vindictive nor cruel.
In reading the voluminous correspondence of governors and intendants, the minister and the king, nothing is more apparent than the interest with which, in the early part of his reign, Louis XIV. regarded his colony. One of the faults of his rule is the excess of his benevolence; for not only did he give money to support parish priests, build churches, and aid the seminary, the Ursulines, the missions, and the hospitals; but he established a fund destined, among other objects, to relieve indigent persons, subsidized nearly every branch of trade and industry, and in other instances did for the colonists what they would far better have learned to do for themselves.
Meanwhile the officers of government were far from suffering from an excess of royal beneficence. La Hontan says that the local governor of Three Rivers would die of hunger if, besides his pay, he did not gain something by trade with the Indians; and that Perrot, local governor of Montreal, with one thousand crowns of salary, traded to such purpose that in a few years he made fifty thousand crowns. This trade, it may be observed, was in violation of the royal edicts. The pay of the governor-general varied from time to time. When La Poterie wrote it was twelve thousand francs a year, besides three thousand which he received in his capacity of local governor of Quebec. * This would hardly
* In 1674, the governor-general received 20,718 francs, out
of which he was to pay 8,718 to his guard of twenty men and
officers. Ordonnance du Roy, 1675. Yet in 1677, in the Etat
de la Dépense que le Roy veut et ordonne estre faite, etc.,
the total pay of the governor-general is set down at 3,000
francs, and so also in 1681, 1682, and 1687. The local
governor of Montreal was to have 1,800 francs, and the
governor of Three Rivers 1,200. It is clear, however, that
this Etat de dépense is not complete, as there is no
provision for the intendant. The first councillor received
500 francs, and the rest 300 francs each, equal in Canadian
money to 400. An ordinance of 1676 gives the intendant
12,000 francs. It is tolerably clear that the provision of
3,000 francs for the governor-general was meant only to
apply to his capacity of local governor of Quebec.
tempt a Frenchman of rank to expatriate himself; and yet some, at least, of the governors came out to the colony for the express purpose of mending their fortunes; indeed, the higher nobility could scarcely, in time of peace, have other motives for going there. The court and the army were their element, and to be elsewhere was banishment. We shall see hereafter by what means they sought compensation for their exile in Canadian forests. Loud complaints sometimes found their way to Versailles. A memorial addressed to the regent duke of Orleans, immediately after the king’s death, declares that the ministers of state, who have been the real managers of the colony, have made their creatures and relations governors and intendants, and set them free from all responsibility. High colonial officers, pursues the writer, come home rich, while the colony languishes almost to perishing. * As for lesser offices, they were multiplied to satisfy needy retainers, till lean and starving Canada was covered with official leeches, sucking, in famished desperation, at her bloodless veins.
The whole system of administration centred in
* Mémoire addressé au Régent 1716
the king, who, to borrow the formula of his edicts, “in the fulness of our power and our certain knowledge,” was supposed to direct the whole machine, from its highest functions to its pettiest intervention in private affairs. That this theory, like all extreme theories of government, was an illusion, is no fault of Louis XIV. Hard-working monarch as he was, he spared no pains to guide his distant colony in the paths of prosperity. The prolix letters of governors and intendants were carefully studied; and many of the replies, signed by the royal hand, enter into details of surprising minuteness. That the king himself wrote these letters is incredible; but in the early part of his reign he certainly directed and controlled them. At a later time, when more absorbing interests engrossed him, he could no longer study in person the long-winded despatches of his Canadian officers. They were usually addressed to the minister of state, who caused abstracts to be made from them, for the king’s use, and perhaps for his own. * The minister or the minister’s secretary could suppress or color as he or those who influenced him saw fit.
In the latter half of his too long reign, when cares, calamities, and humiliations were thickening around the king, another influence was added to make the theoretical supremacy of his royal will more than ever a mockery. That prince of annalists, Saint-Simon, has painted Louis XIV. ruling his realm from the bedchamber of Madame de
* Many of these abstracts are still preserved in the
Archives of the Marine and Colonies.
Maintenons seated with his minister at a small table beside the fire, the king in an arm-chair, the minister on a stool with his bag of papers on a second stool near him. In another arm-chair, at another table, on the other side of the fire, sat the sedate favorite, busy to all appearance with a book or a piece of tapestry, but listening to every thing that passed. “She rarely spoke,” says Saint-Simon, “except when the king asked her opinion, which he often did; and then she answered with great deliberation and gravity. She never or very rarely showed a partiality for any measure, still less for any person; but she had an understanding with the minister, who never dared do otherwise than she wished. Whenever any favor or appointment was in question, the business was settled between them beforehand. She would send to the minister that she wanted to speak to him, and he did not dare bring the matter on the carpet till he had received her orders.” Saint-Simon next recounts the subtle methods by which Maintenon and the minister, her tool, beguiled the king to do their will, while never doubting that he was doing his own. “He thought,” concludes the annalist, “that it was he alone who disposed of all appointments; while in reality he disposed of very few indeed, except on the rare occasions when he had taken a fancy to somebody, or when somebody whom he wanted to favor had spoken to him in behalf of somebody else.” *
* Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, XIII. 38, 39 (Cheruel,
1857). Saint-Simon, notwithstanding the independence of his
character, held a high position at court; and his acute and
careful observation, joined to his familiar acquaintance
with ministers and other functionaries, both in and out of
office, gives a rare value to his matchless portraitures.
Add to all this the rarity of communication with the distant colony. The ships from France arrived at Quebec in July, August, or September, and returned in November. The machine of Canadian government, wound up once a year, was expected to run unaided at least a twelvemonth. Indeed, it was often left to itself for two years, such was sometimes the tardiness of the overburdened government in answering the despatches of its colonial agents. It is no matter of surprise that a writer well versed in its affairs calls Canada the “country of abuses.” *
* Etat présent du Canada, 1768.
Trade in Fetters.—The Hüguenot Merchants.—Royal Patronage.—The Fisheries.—Cries for Help.—Agriculture.—Manufactures.—Arts of Ornament.—Finance.—Card Money.—Repudiation.—Imposts.—The Beaver Trade.—The Fair at Montreal.—Contraband Trade.—A Fatal System.—Trouble and Change.—The Coureurs de Bois.—The Forest.—Letter of Carheil.
We have seen the head of the colony, its guiding intellect and will: it remains to observe its organs of nutrition. Whatever they might have been under a different treatment, they were perverted and enfeebled by the regimen to which they were subjected.
The spirit of restriction and monopoly had ruled from the beginning. The old governor Lauson, seignior for a while of a great part of the colony, held that Montreal had no right to trade directly with France, but must draw all her supplies from Quebec; * and this preposterous claim was revived in the time of Mézy. The successive companies to whose hands the colony was consigned had a baneful effect on individual enterprise. In 1674,
* Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 244.
the charter of the West India Company was revoked, and trade was declared open to all subjects of the king; yet commerce was still condemned to wear the ball and chain. New restrictions were imposed, meant for good, but resulting in evil. Merchants not resident in the colony were forbidden all trade, direct or indirect, with the Indians. * They were also forbidden to sell any goods at retail except in August, September, and October; ** to trade anywhere in Canada above Quebec; and to sell clothing or domestic articles ready made. This last restriction was designed to develop colonial industry. No person, resident or not, could trade with the English colonies, or go thither without a special passport, and rigid examination by the military authorities. *** Foreign trade of any kind was stiffly prohibited. In 1719, after a new company had engrossed the beaver trade, its agents were empowered to enter all houses in Canada, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and search them for foreign goods, which when found were publicly burned. **** In the next year, the royal council ordered that vessels engaged in foreign trade should be captured by force of arms, like pirates, and confiscated along with their cargoes; (v) while anybody having an article of foreign manufacture in his possession was subjected to a heavy fine. (v*)
Attempts were made to fix the exact amount of profit which merchants from France should be
* Réglement de Police, 1676, Art. xl.
** Edits et Ord., II. 100.
*** Ibid., I. 489.
**** Ibid.. I. 402.
(v) Ibid., I. 425.
(v*) Ibid., I. 505.
allowed to make in the colony. One of the first acts of the superior council was to order them to bring their invoices immediately before that body, which thereupon affixed prices to each article. The merchant who sold and the purchaser who bought above this tariff were alike condemned to heavy penalties; and so, too, was the merchant who chose to keep his goods rather than sell them at the price ordained. * Resident merchants, on the other hand, were favored to the utmost. They could sell at what price they saw fit; and, according to La Hontan, they made great profit by the sale of laces, ribbons, watches, jewels, and similar superfluities to the poor but extravagant colonists.
A considerable number of the non-resident merchants were Huguenots, for most of the importations were from the old Huguenot city of Rochelle. No favor was shown them; they were held under rigid restraint, and forbidden to exercise their religion, or to remain in the colony during winter without special license. ** This sometimes bore very hard upon them. The governor Denonville, an ardent Catholic, states the case of one Bernon, who had done great service to the colony, and whom La Hontan mentions as the principal French merchant in the Canadian trade. “It is a pity,” says Denonville, “that he cannot be converted. As he is a Huguenot, the bishop wants me to order him home this autumn, which I have done, though he
* Edits et Ord., II. 17, 19.
** Réglement de Police, 1676. Art. xxxvii.
carries on a large business, and a great deal of money remains due to him here.” *
For a long time the ships from France went home empty, except a favored few which carried furs, or occasionally a load of dried pease or of timber. Payment was made in money when there was any in Canada, or in bills of exchange. The colony, drawing every thing from France, and returning little besides beaver skins, remained under a load of debt. French merchants were discouraged, and shipments from France languished. As for the trade with the West Indies, which Talon had tried by precept and example to build up, the intendant reports in 1680 that it had nearly ceased; though six years later it grew again to the modest proportions of three vessels loaded with wheat. **
The besetting evil of trade and industry in Canada was the habit they contracted, and were encouraged to contract, of depending on the direct aid of government. Not a new enterprise was set on foot without a petition to the king to lend a helping hand. Sometimes the petition was sent through the governor, sometimes through the intendant; and it was rarely refused. Denonville writes that the merchants of Quebec, by a combined effort, had sent a vessel of sixty tons to France with colonial produce; and he asks that the royal commissaries at Rochefort be instructed to buy the whole cargo, in order to encourage so
* Denonville au Ministre, 1685.
** Ibid., 1686. The year before, about 18,000 minots of
grain were sent hither. In 1736, the shipments reached
80,000 minots.
deserving an enterprise. One Hazeur set up a saw-mill, at Mai Bay. Finding a large stock of planks and timber on his hands, he begs the king to send two vessels to carry them to France; and the king accordingly did so. A similar request was made in behalf of another saw-mill at St. Paul’s Bay. Denonville announces that one Riverin wishes to embark in the whale and cod fishery, and that though strong in zeal he is weak in resources. The minister replies, that he is to be encouraged, and that his Majesty will favorably consider his enterprise. * Various gifts were soon after made him. He now took to himself a partner, the Sieur Chalons; whereupon the governor writes to ask the minister’s protection for them. “The Basques,” he says, “formerly carried on this fishery, but some monopoly or other put a stop to it.” The remedy he proposes is homoeopathic. He asks another monopoly for the two partners. Louis Joliet, the discoverer of the Mississippi, made a fishing station on the island of Anticosti; and he begs help from the king, on the ground that his fishery will furnish a good and useful employment to young men. The Sieur Vitry wished to begin a fishery of white porpoises, and he begs the king
* The interest felt by the king in these matters is shown
in a letter signed by his hand in which he enters with
considerable detail into the plans of Riverin. Le Roy à
Denonville et Champigny, 1 Mai, 1689. He afterwards ordered
boats, harpooners, and cordage to be sent him, for which he
was to pay at his convenience. Four years later, he
complains that, though Riverin had been often helped, his
fisheries were of slight account. “Let him take care,”
pursues the king, “that he does not use his enterprises as a
pretext to obtain favors.”. Mémoire du Roy a Frontenac et
Champigny, 1693
to give him two thousand pounds of cod-line and two thousand pounds of one and two inch rope. His request was granted, on which he asked for five hundred livres. The money was given him, and the next year he asked to have the gift renewed. *
The king was very anxious to develop the fisheries of the colony. “His Majesty,” writes the minister, “wishes you to induce the inhabitants to unite with the merchants for this object, and to incite them by all sorts of means to overcome their natural laziness, since there is no other way of saving them from the misery in which they now are.” ** “I wish,” says the zealous Denonville, “that fisheries could be well established to give employment to our young men, and prevent them from running wild in the woods;” and he adds mournfully, “they (the fisheries) are enriching Boston at our expense.” “They are our true mines,” urges the intendant Meules; “but the English of Boston have got possession of those of Acadia, which belong to us; and we ought to prevent it.” It was not prevented; and the Canadian
* All the above examples are drawn from the correspondence
of the governor and intendant with the minister, between
1680 and 1699, together with a memorial of Hazeur and
another of Riverin, addressed to the minister.
Vitry’s porpoise-fishing appears to have ended in failure.
In 1707 the intendant Raudot granted the porpoise fishery of
the seigniory of Riviere Ouelle to six of the habitans.
This fishery is carried on here successfully at the present
day. A very interesting account of it was published in the
Opinion Publique, 1873, by my friend Abbé Casgrain, whose
family residence is the seigniorial mansion of Riviere
Ouelle.
** Mémoire pour Denonville et Champigny, 8 Mars, 1688.
fisheries, like other branches of Canadian industry, remained in a state of almost hopeless languor. *
The government applied various stimulants. One of these, proposed by the intendant Duchesneau, is characteristic. He advises the formation of a company which should have the exclusive right of exporting fish; but which on its part should be required to take, at a fixed price, all that the inhabitants should bring them. This notable plan did not find favor with the king. ** It was practised, however, in the case of beaver skins, and also in that of wood-ashes. The farmers of the revenue were required to take this last commodity at a fixed price, on their own risk, and in any quantity offered. They remonstrated, saying that it was unsalable; adding that, if the inhabitants would but take the trouble to turn it into potash, it might be possible to find a market for it. The king released them entirely, coupling his order to that effect with a eulogy of free trade. ***
In all departments of industry, the appeals for help are endless. Governors and intendants are so many sturdy beggars for the languishing colony.
* The Canadian fisheries must not be confounded with the
French fisheries of Newfoundland, which were prosperous, but
were carried on wholly from French ports.
In a memorial addressed by the partners Chalons and Riverin
to the minister Seignelay, they say: “Baston (Boston) et
toute sa colonie nous donne un exemple qui fait honte à
nostre nation, puisqu’elle s’augmente tous les jours par
cette pesche (de la morue) qu’elle fait la plus grande
partie sur nos costes pendant que les François ne s’occupent
à rien.” Meules urges that the king should undertake the
fishing business himself since his subjects cannot or will
not.
** Ministre a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678
*** Le Roy a Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.
“Send us money to build storehouses, to which the habitants can bring their produce and receive goods from the government in exchange.” “Send us a teacher to make sailors of our young men: it is a pity the colony should remain in such a state for want of instruction for youth.” * “We want a surgeon: there is none in Canada who can set a bone.” ** “Send us some tilers, brick-makers, and potters.” *** “Send us iron-workers to work our mines.” **** “It is to be wished that his Majesty would send us all sorts of artisans, especially potters and glass-workers.” (v) “Our Canadians need aid and instruction in their fisheries; they need pilots.” (v*)
In 1688, the intendant reported that Canada was entirely without either pilots or sailors; and, as late as 1712, the engineer Catalogne informed the government that, though the St. Lawrence was dangerous, a pilot was rarely to be had. “There ought to be trade with the West Indies and other places,” urges another writer. “Everybody says it is best, but nobody will undertake it. Our merchants are too poor, or else are engrossed by the fur trade.” (v**)
The languor of commerce made agriculture languish. “It is of no use now,” writes Meules,
* Mémoire a Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignday, présenté
par les Sieurs Chalons et Riverin, 1686.
** Champigny au Ministre, 1688.
*** Ibid.
**** Denonville au Ministre, 1686.
(v) Mémoire de Catalogue, 1712.
(v*) Denonville au Ministre, 1686.
(v**) Mémoire de Chalons et Riverin présenté au Marquis de
Seignelay.
in 1682, “to raise any crops except what each family wants for itself.” In vain the government sent out seeds for distribution. In vain intendants lectured the farmers, and lavished well-meant advice. Tillage remained careless and slovenly. “If,” says the all-observing Catalogne, “the soil were not better cultivated in Europe than here, three-fourths of the people would starve.” He complains that the festivals of the church are so numerous that not ninety working days are left during the whole working season. The people, he says, ought to be compelled to build granaries to store their crops, instead of selling them in autumn for almost nothing, and every habitant should be required to keep two or three sheep. The intendant Champigny calls for seed of hemp and flax, and promises to visit the farms, and show the people the lands best suited for their culture. He thinks that favors should be granted to those who raise hemp and flax as well as to those who marry. Denonville is of opinion that each habitant should be compelled to raise a little hemp every year, and that the king should then buy it of him at a high price. * It will be well, he says, to make use of severity, while, at the same time, holding out a hope of gain; and he begs that weavers be sent out to teach the women and girls, who spend the winter in idleness, how to weave and spin. Weaving and spinning, however, as well as the culture of hemp and flax, were neglected till 1705, when the loss of a ship laden with goods for the colony
* Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov.. 1685
gave the spur to home industry; and Madame de Repentigny set the example of making a kind of coarse blanket of nettle and linden bark. *
The jealousy of colonial manufactures shown by England appears but rarely in the relations of France with Canada. According to its light, the French government usually did its best to stimulate Canadian industry, with what results we have just seen. There was afterwards some improvement. In 1714, the intendant Bégon reported that coarse fabrics of wool and linen were made; that the sisters of the congregation wore cloth for their own habits as good as the same stuffs in France; that black cloth was made for priests, and blue cloth for the pupils of the colleges. The inhabitants, he says, have been taught these arts by necessity. They were naturally adroit at handiwork of all kinds; and during the last half century of the French rule, when the population had settled into comparative stability, many of the mechanic arts were practised with success, notwithstanding the assertion of the Abbé La Tour that every thing but bread and meat had still to be brought from France. This change may be said to date from the peace of Utrecht, or a few years before it. At that time, one Duplessis had a new vessel on the stocks. Catalogne, who states the fact, calls it the beginning of ship-building in Canada, evidently ignorant that Talon had made a fruitless beginning more than forty years before.
Of the arts of ornament not much could have
* Beauharnois et Raudot au Ministre, 1705.
been expected; but, strangely enough, they were in somewhat better condition than the useful arts. The nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu made artificial flowers for altars and shrines, under the direction of Mother-Juchereau; * and the boys of the seminary were taught to make carvings in wood for the decoration of churches. ** Pierre, son of the merchant Le Ber, had a turn for painting, and made religious pictures, described as very indifferent. *** His sister Jeanne, an enthusiastic devotee, made embroideries for vestments and altars, and her work was much admired.
The colonial finances were not prosperous. In the absence of coin, beaver-skins long served as currency. In 1669, the council declared wheat a legal tender, at four francs the minot or three French bushels; **** and, five years later, all creditors were ordered to receive moose-skins in payment at the market rate. (v) Coin would not remain in the colony. If the company or the king sent any thither, it went back in the returning ships. The government devised a remedy. A coinage was ordered for Canada one-fourth less in value than that of France. Thus the Canadian livre or franc was worth, in reality, fifteen sous instead of twenty. (v*) This shallow expedient produced only a nominal rise of prices, and coin fled the colony as before.
* Juchereau, Hist, de l'Hôtel-Dieu, 244.
** Abeille, II., 13.
*** Faillon, Vie de Mlle. Le Ber, 331.
**** Edits et Ord., II. 47.
(v) Ibid., II. 55.
(v*) This device was of very early date. See Boucher, Hist.
Véritable chap, xiv
Trade was carried on for a time by means of negotiable notes, payable in furs, goods, or farm produce. In 1685, the intendant Meules issued a card currency. He had no money to pay the soldiers, “and not knowing,” he informs the minister, “to what saint to make my vows, the idea occurred to me of putting in circulation notes made of cards, each cut into four pieces; and I have issued an ordinance commanding the inhabitants to receive them in payment.” * The cards were common playing cards, and each piece was stamped with a fleur-de-lis and a crown, and signed by the governor, the intendant, and the clerk of the treasury at Quebec. ** The example of Meules found ready imitation. Governors and intendants made card money whenever they saw fit; and, being worthless everywhere but in Canada, it showed no disposition to escape the colony. It was declared convertible not into coin, but into bills of exchange; and this conversion could only take place at brief specified periods. “The currency used in Canada,” says a writer in the last years of the French rule, “has no value as a representative of money. It is the sign of a sign.” *** It was card representing paper, and this paper was very often dishonored. In 1714, the amount of card rubbish had risen to two million livres. Confidence was lost, and trade was half dead. The minister Ponchartrain came to the rescue, and promised to
* Meules au Ministre, 24 Sept., 1685.
** Mémoire addressé au Régent, 1715.
*** Considérations sur l’Etat du Canada, 1758.
redeem it at half its nominal value. The holders preferred to lose half rather than the whole, and accepted the terms. A few of the cards were redeemed at the rate named; then the government broke faith, and payment ceased. “This afflicting news,” says a writer of the time, “was brought out by the vessel which sailed from France last July.”
In 1717, the government made another proposal, and the cards were converted into bills of exchange. At the same time a new issue was made, which it was declared should be the last. * This issue was promptly redeemed, but twelve years later another followed it. In the interval, a certain quantity of coin circulated in the colony; but it underwent fluctuations through the intervention of government; and, within eight years, at least four edicts were issued affecting its value. ** Then came more promises to pay, till, in the last bitter years of its existence, the colony floundered in drifts of worthless paper.
One characteristic grievance was added to the countless woes of Canadian commerce. The government was so jealous of popular meetings of all kinds, that for a long time it forbade merchants to meet together for discussing their affairs; and, it was not till 1717 that the establishment of a bourse or exchange was permitted at Quebec and Montreal. ***
In respect of taxation, Canada, as compared with
* Edits et Ord., I. 370.
** Ibid., 400, 432, 436, 484.
*** Doutre et Lareau, Hist, du Droit Canadien, 254.
France, had no reason to complain. If the king permitted governors and intendants to make card money, he permitted nobody to impose taxes but himself. The Canadians paid no direct civil tax, except in a few instances where temporary and local assessments were ordered for special objects. It was the fur trade on which the chief burden fell. One-fourth of the beaver-skins, and one-tenth of the moose-hides, belonged to the king; and wine, brandy, and tobacco contributed a duty of ten per cent. During a long course of years, these were the only imposts. The king, also, retained the exclusive right of the fur trade at Tadoussac. A vast tract of wilderness extending from St. Paul’s Bay to a point eighty leagues down the St. Lawrence, and stretching indefinitely northward towards Hudson’s Bay, formed a sort of royal preserve, whence every settler was rigidly excluded. The farmers of the revenue had their trading-houses at Tadoussac, whither the northern tribes, until war, pestilence, and brandy consumed them, brought every summer a large quantity of furs.
When, in 1674, the West India Company, to whom these imposts had been granted, was extinguished, the king resumed possession of them. The various duties, along with the trade of Tadoussac, were now farmed out to one Oudiette and his associates, who paid the Crown three hundred and fifty thousand livres for their privilege. *
* The annual return to the king from the ferme du Canada
was, for some years, 119,000 francs (livres). Out of this
were paid from 35,000 to 40,000 francs a year for “ordinary
charges.” The governor, intendant, and all troops except the
small garrisons of Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers, were
paid from other sources. There was a time when the balance
must have been in the king’s favor; but profit soon changed
to loss, owing partly to wars, partly to the confusion into
which the beaver trade soon fell. “His Majesty,” writes the
minister to the governor in 1698, “may soon grow tired of a
colony which, far from yielding him any profit, costs him
immense sums every year.”
We come now to a trade far more important than all the rest together, one which absorbed the enterprise of the colony, drained the life-sap from other branches of commerce, and, even more than a vicious system of government, kept them in a state of chronic debility,—the hardy, adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur trade. In the eighteenth century, Canada exported a moderate quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called ginseng, and a few other commodities; but from first to last she lived chiefly on beaver-skins. The government tried without ceasing to control and regulate this traffic; but it never succeeded. It aimed, above all things, to bring the trade home to the colonists, to prevent them from going to the Indians, and induce the Indians to come to them. To this end a great annual fair was established by order of the king at Montreal. Thither every summer a host of savages came down from the lakes in their bark canoes. A place was assigned them at a little distance from the town. They landed, drew up their canoes in a line on the bank, took out their packs of beaver-skins, set up their wigwams, slung their kettles, and encamped for the night. On the next day, there was a grand council on the common, between St. Paul Street and the river. Speeches of compliment were made amid a solemn smoking of pipes. The governor-general was usually present, seated in an arm-chair, while the visitors formed a ring about him, ranged in the order of their tribes. On the next day the trade began in the same place. Merchants of high and low degree brought up their goods from Quebec, and every inhabitant of Montreal, of any substance, sought a share in the profit. Their booths were set along the palisades, of the town, and each had an interpreter, to whom he usually promised a certain portion of his gains. The scene abounded in those contrasts—not always edifying, but always picturesque—which mark the whole course of French Canadian history. Here was a throng of Indians armed with bows and arrows, war-clubs, or the cheap guns of the trade; some of them completely naked except for the feathers on their heads and the paint on their faces; French bush-rangers tricked out with savage finery; merchants and habitants in their coarse and plain attire, and the grave priests of St. Sulpice robed in black. Order and sobriety were their watchwords, but the wild gathering was beyond their control. The prohibition to sell brandy could rarely be enforced; and the fair ended at times in a pandemonium of drunken frenzy. The rapacity of trade, and the license of savages and coureurs de bois, had completely transformed the pious settlement.
A similar fair was established at Three Rivers, for the Algonquin tribes north of that place. These yearly markets did not fully answer the desired object. There was a constant tendency among the inhabitants of Canada to form settlements above Montreal, in order to intercept the Indians on their way down, drench them with brandy, and get their furs from them at low rates in advance of the fair. Such settlements were forbidden, but not prevented. The audacious “squatter” defied edict and ordinance and the fury of drunken savages, and boldly planted himself in the path of the descending trade.-Nor is this a matter of surprise; for he was usually the secret agent of some high colonial officer, an intendant, the local governor, or the governor-general, who often used his power to enforce the law against others, and to violate it himself.
This was not all; for the more youthful and vigorous part of the male population soon began to escape into the woods, and trade with the Indians far beyond the limits of the remotest settlements. Here, too, many of them were in league with the authorities, who denounced the abuse while secretly favoring the portion of it in which they themselves were interested. The home government, unable to prevent the evil, tried to regulate it. Licenses were issued for the forest trade. * Their number was limited to twenty-five, and the privileges which they conferred varied at different periods. In La Hontan’s time, each license authorized the departure of two canoes loaded with goods. One canoe only was afterwards allowed, bearing three men with about four hundred pounds of freight. The licenses were sometimes sold for the profit of government, but many were given to widows of
* Ordres du Roy au sujet de la Traite du Canada, 1681.
officers and other needy persons, to the hospitals, or to favorites and retainers of the governor. Those who could not themselves use them sold them to merchants or voyageurs, at a price varying from a thousand to eighteen hundred francs. They were valid for a year and a half; and each canoeman had a share in the profits, which, if no accident happened, were very large. The license system was several times suppressed and renewed again; but, like the fair at Montreal, it failed completely to answer its purpose, and restrain the young men of Canada from a general exodus into the wilderness. *
The most characteristic features of the Canadian fur trade still remain to be seen. Oudiette and his associates were not only charged with collecting the revenue, but were also vested with an exclusive right of transporting all the beaver-skins of the colony to France. On their part they were compelled to receive all beaver-skins brought to their magazines; and, after deducting the fourth belonging to the king, to pay for the rest at a fixed price. This price was graduated to the different qualities of the fur; but the average cost to the collectors was a little more than three francs a pound. The inhabitants could barter their furs with merchants; but the merchants must bring them all to the magazines of Oudiette, who paid in receipts convertible into bills of exchange. He soon found himself burdened with such a mass
* Before me is one of these licenses, signed by the
governor Denonville. A condition of carrying no brandy is
appended to it.
of beaver-skins, that the market was completely glutted. The French hatters refused to take them all; and for the part which they consented to take, they paid chiefly in hats, which Oudiette was not allowed to sell in France, but only in the French West Indies, where few people wanted them. An unlucky fashion of small hats diminished the consumption of fur and increased his embarrassments, as did also a practice common among the hatters of mixing rabbit fur with the beaver. In his extremity he bethought him of setting up a hat factory for himself under the name of a certain licensed hatter, thinking thereby to alarm his customers into buying his stock. * The other hatters rose in wrath and petitioned the minister. The new factory was suppressed, and Oudiette soon became bankrupt. Another company of farmers of the revenue took his place with similar results. The action of the law of supply and demand was completely arrested by the peremptory edict which, with a view to the prosperity of the colony and the profit of the king, required the company to take every beaver-skin offered.
All Canada, thinking itself sure of its price, rushed into the beaver trade, and the accumulation of unsalable furs became more and more suffocating. The farmers of the revenue could not meet their engagements. Their bills of exchange were unpaid, and Canada was filled with distress and consternation. In 1700, a change of system was ordered. The monopoly of exporting beaver
* Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687.
was placed in the hands of a company formed of the chief inhabitants of Canada. Some of them hesitated to take the risk; but the government was not to be trifled with, and the minister, Ponchartrain, wrote in terms so peremptory, and so menacing to the recusants, that, in the words of a writer of the time, he “shut everybody’s mouth.” About a hundred and fifty merchants accordingly subscribed to the stock of the new company, and immediately petitioned the king for a ship and a loan of seven hundred thousand francs. They were required to take off the hands of the farmers of the revenue an accumulation of more than six hundred thousand pounds of beaver, for which, however, they were to pay but half its usual price. The market of France absolutely refused it, and the directors of the new company saw no better course than to burn three-fourths of the troublesome and perishable commodity; nor was this the first resort to this strange expedient. One cannot repress a feeling of indignation at the fate of the interesting and unfortunate animals uselessly sacrificed to a false economic system. In order to rid themselves of what remained, the directors begged the king to issue a decree, requiring all hatters to put at least three ounces of genuine beaver-fur into each hat.
All was in vain. The affairs of the company fell into a confusion which was aggravated by the bad faith of some of its chief members. In 1707, it was succeeded by another company, to whose magazines every habitant or merchant was ordered to bring every beaver-skin in his possession within forty-eight hours; and the company, like its predecessors, was required to receive it, and pay for it in written promises. Again the market was overwhelmed with a surfeit of beaver. Again the bills of exchange were unpaid, and all was confusion and distress. Among the memorials and petitions to which this state of things gave birth, there is one conspicuous by the presence of good sense and the absence of self-interest. The writer proposes that there should be no more monopoly, but that everybody should be free to buy beaver-skins and send them to France, subject only to a moderate duty of entry. The proposal was not accepted. In 1721, the monopoly of exporting beaver-skins was given to the new West India Company; but this time it was provided that the government should direct from time to time, according to the capacities of the market, the quantity of furs which the company should be forced to receive. *
Out of the beaver trade rose a huge evil, baneful to the growth and the morals of Canada. All that was most active and vigorous in the colony took to the woods, and escaped from the control of intendants, councils, and priests, to the savage freedom
* On the fur trade the documents consulted are very
numerous. The following are the most important: Mémoire sur
ce qui concerne le Commerce du Castor et ses dépendances,
1715; Mémoire concernant le Commerce le Traite entre les
François et les Sauvages, 1691; Mémoire sur le Canada
addressé au Régent, 1715; Mémoire sur les Affaires de Canada
dans leur Estât présent, 1696; Mémoire des Négotiants de la
Rochelle qui font Commerce en Canada sur la Proposition de
ne plus recevoir les Castors et d'engager les Habitants a la
Culture des Terres et Pesche de la Molue, 1696; Mémoire du
Sr. Riverin sur la Traite et la Ferme du Castor, 1696;
Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687, etc.
of the wilderness. Not only were the possible profits great; but, in the pursuit of them, there was a fascinating element of adventure and danger. The bush-rangers or coureurs de bois were to the king an object of horror. They defeated his plans for the increase of the population, and shocked his native instinct of discipline and order. Edict after edict was directed against them; and more than once the colony presented the extraordinary spectacle of the greater part of its young men turned into forest outlaws. But severity was dangerous. The offenders might be driven over to the English, or converted into a lawless banditti, renegades of civilization and the faith. Therefore, clemency alternated with rigor, and declarations of amnesty with edicts of proscription. Neither threats nor blandishments were of much avail. We hear of seigniories abandoned; farms turning again into forests; wives and children left in destitution. The exodus of the coureurs de bois would take, at times, the character of an organized movement. The famous Du Lhut is said to have made a general combination of the young men of Canada to follow him into the woods. Their plan was to be absent four years, in order that the edicts against them might have time to relent. The intendant Duchesneau reported that eight hundred men out of a population of less than ten thousand souls had vanished from sight in the immensity of a boundless wilderness. Whereupon the king ordered that any person going into the woods without a license should be whipped and branded for the first offence, and sent lor life to the galleys for the second. * The order was more easily given than enforced. “I must not conceal from you, monseigneur,” again writes Duchesneau, “that the disobedience of the coureurs de bois has reached such a point that everybody boldly contravenes the king’s interdictions; that there is no longer any concealment; and that parties are collected with astonishing insolence to go and trade in the Indian country. I have done all in my power to prevent this evil, which may cause the ruin of the colony. I have enacted ordinances against the coureurs de bois; against the merchants who furnish them with goods; against the gentlemen and others who harbor them, and even against those who have any knowledge of them, and will not inform the local judges. All has been in vain; inasmuch as some of the most considerable families are interested with them, and the governor lets them go on and even shares their profits.” ** “You are aware, monseigneur,” writes Denonville, some years later, “that the coureurs de bois are a great evil, but you are not aware how great this evil is. It deprives the country of its effective men; makes them indocile, debauched, and incapable of discipline, and turns them into pretended nobles, wearing the sword and decked out with lace, both they and their relations, who all affect to be gentlemen and ladies. As for cultivating the soil, they will not hear of it.
* Le Roy a Frontenac, 30 Avril, 1681. On another occasion,
it was ordered that any person thus offending should suffer
death.
** N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 131.
This, along with the scattered condition of the settlements, causes their children to be as unruly as Indians, being brought up in the same manner. Not that there are not some very good people here, but they are in a minority.” * In another despatch he enlarges on their vagabond and lawless ways, their indifference to marriage, and the mischief caused by their example; describes how, on their return from the woods, they swagger like lords, spend all their gains in dress and drunken revelry, and despise the peasants, whose daughters they will not deign to marry, though they are peasants themselves.
It was a curious scene when a party of coureurs de bois returned from their rovings. Montreal was their harboring place, and they conducted themselves much like the crew of a man-of-war paid off after a long voyage. As long as their beaver-skins lasted, they set no bounds to their riot. Every house in the place, we are told, was turned into a drinking shop. The new-comers were bedizened with a strange mixture of French and Indian finery; while some of them, with instincts more thoroughly savage, stalked about the streets as naked as a Pottawattamie or a Sioux. The clamor of tongues was prodigious, and gambling and drinking filled the day and the night. When at last they were sober again, they sought absolution for their sins; nor could the priests venture to bear too hard on their unruly penitents,
* Denonville, Mémoire sur l’Estât des Affaires de le
Nouvelle France.
lest they should break wholly with the church and dispense thenceforth with her sacraments.
Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the coureurs de bois built forts of palisades at various points throughout the West and Northwest. They had a post of this sort at Detroit some time before its permanent settlement, as well as others on Lake Superior and in the valley of the Mississippi. They occupied them as long as it suited their purposes, and then abandoned them to the next comer. Michillimackinac was, however, their chief resort; and thence they would set out, two or three together, to roam for hundreds of miles through the endless meshwork of interlocking lakes and rivers which seams the northern wilderness.
No wonder that a year or two of bush-ranging spoiled them for civilization. Though not a very valuable member of society, and though a thorn in the side of princes and rulers, the coureur de bois had his uses, at least from an artistic point of view; and his strange figure, sometimes brutally savage, but oftener marked with the lines of a dare-devil courage, and a reckless, thoughtless gayety, will always be joined to the memories of that grand world of woods which the nineteenth century is fast civilizing out of existence. At least, he is picturesque, and with his red-skin companion serves to animate forest scenery. Perhaps he could sometimes feel, without knowing that he felt them, the charms of the savage nature that had adopted him. Rude as he was, her voice may not always have been meaningless for one who knew her haunts so well; deep recesses where, veiled in foliage, some wild shy rivulet steals with timid music through breathless caves of verdure; gulfs where feathered crags rise like castle walls, where the noonday sun pierces with keen rays athwart the torrent, and the mossed arms of fallen pines cast wavering shadows on the illumined foam; pools of liquid crystal turned emerald in the reflected green of impending woods; rocks on whose rugged front the gleam of sunlit waters dances in quivering light; ancient trees hurled headlong by the storm to dam the raging stream with their forlorn and savage ruin; or the stern depths of immemorial forests, dim and silent as a cavern, columned with innumerable trunks, each like an Atlas upholding its world of leaves, and sweating perpetual moisture down its dark and channelled rind; some strong in youth, some grisly with decrepit age, nightmares of strange distortion, gnarled and knotted with wens and goitres; roots intertwined beneath like serpents petrified in an agony of contorted strife; green and glistening mosses carpeting the rough ground, mantling the rocks, turning pulpy stumps to mounds of verdure, and swathing fallen trunks as bent in the impotence of rottenness, they lie outstretched over knoll and hollow, like mouldering reptiles of the primeval world, while around, and on and through them, springs the young growth that battens on their decay,—the forest devouring its own dead. Or, to turn from its funereal shade to the light and life of the open woodland, the sheen of sparkling lakes, and mountains basking in the glory of the summer noon, flecked by the shadows of passing clouds that sail on snowy wings across the transparent azure.
Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half-savage coureur de bois as a romantic lover of nature. He liked the woods because they emancipated him from restraint. He liked the lounging ease of the camp-fire, and the license of Indian villages. His life has a dark and ugly side, which is nowhere drawn more strongly than in a letter written by the Jesuit Carheil to the intendant Champigny. It was at a time when some of the outlying forest posts, originally either missions or transient stations of coureurs de bois, had received regular garrisons. Carheil writes from Michillimackinac, and describes the state of things around him like one whom long familiarity with them had stripped of every illusion.
But here, for the present, we pause; for the father touches on other matters than the coureurs de bois, and we reserve him and his letter for the next chapter.
The Jesuits and the Iroquois.—Mission Villages.—Michillimackinac. —Father Carheil.—Temperance.—Brandy and the Indians.—Strong Measures.—Disputes.—License and Prohibition.—Views of the King.—Trade and the Jesuits.
For a year or two after De Tracy had chastised the Mohawks, and humbled the other Iroquois nations, all was rose color on the side of that dreaded confederacy. The Jesuits, defiant as usual of hardship and death, had begun their ruined missions anew. Bruyas took the Mission of the Martyrs among the Mohawks; Milet, that of Saint Francis Xavier, among the Oneidas; Lamberville, that of Saint John the Baptist among the Onondagas; Carheil, that of Saint Joseph among the Cayugas; and Raffeix and Julien Gamier shared between them the three missions of the Senecas. The Iroquois, after their punishment, were in a frame of mind so hopeful, that the fathers imagined for a moment that they were all on the point of accepting the faith. This was a consummation earnestly to be wished, not only from a religious, but also from a political point of view. The complete conversion of the Iroquois meant their estrangement from the heretic English and Dutch, and their firm alliance with the French. It meant safety for Canada, and it ensured for her the fur trade of the interior freed from English rivalry. Hence the importance of these missions, and hence their double character. While the Jesuit toiled to convert his savage hosts, he watched them at the same time with the eye of a shrewd political agent; reported at Quebec the result of his observations, and by every means in his power sought to alienate them from England, and attach them to France.
Their simple conversion, by placing them wholly under his influence, would have outweighed in political value all other agencies combined; but the flattering hopes of the earlier years soon vanished. Some petty successes against other tribes so elated the Iroquois, that they ceased to care for French alliance or French priests. Then a few petty reverses would dash their spirits, and dispose them again to listen to Jesuit counsels. Every success of a war-party was a loss to the faith, and every reverse was a gain. Meanwhile a more repulsive or a more critical existence than that of a Jesuit father in an Iroquois town is scarcely conceivable. The torture of prisoners turned into a horrible festivity for the whole tribe; foul and crazy orgies in which, as the priest thought, the powers of darkness took a special delight; drunken riots, the work of Dutch brandy, when he was forced to seek refuge from death in his chapel, a sanctuary which superstitious fear withheld the Indians from violating; these, and a thousand disgusts and miseries, filled the record of his days, and he bore them all in patience. Not only were the early Canadian Jesuits men of an intense religious zeal, but they were also men who lived not for themselves but for their order. Their faults were many and great, but the grandeur of their self-devotion towers conspicuous over all.
At Caughnawaga, near Montreal, may still be seen the remnants of a mission of converted Iroquois, whom the Jesuits induced to leave the temptations of their native towns and settle here, under the wing of the church. They served as a bulwark against the English, and sometimes did good service in time of war. At Sillery, near Quebec, a band of Abenaquis, escaping from the neighborhood of the English towards the close of Philip’s War, formed another mission of similar character. The Sulpitians had a third at the foot of the mountain of Montreal, where two massive stone towers of the fortified Indian town are standing to this day. All these converted savages, as well as those of Lorette and other missions far and near, were used as allies in war, and launched in scalping parties against the border settlements of New England.
Not only the Sulpitians, but also the seminary priests of Quebec, the Recollets, and even the Capuchins, had missions more or less important, and more or less permanent; but the Jesuits stood always in the van of religious and political propagandism; and all the forest tribes felt their influence, from Acadia and Maine to the plains beyond the Mississippi. Next in importance to their Iroquois missions were those among the Algonquins of the northern lakes. Here was the grand domain of the beaver trade; and the chief woes of the missionary sprang not from the Indians, but from his own countrymen. Beaver-skins had produced an effect akin to that of gold in our own day, and the deepest recesses of the wilderness were invaded by eager seekers after gain. The focus of the evil was at Father Marquette’s old mission of Michillimackinac.
First, year after year came a riotous invasion of coureurs de bois, and then a garrison followed to crown the mischief. Discipline was very weak at these advanced posts, and, to eke out their pay, the soldiers were allowed to trade; brandy, whether permitted or interdicted, being the chief article of barter. Father Etienne Carheil was driven almost to despair; and he wrote to the intendant, his fast friend and former pupil, the long letter already mentioned. “Our missions,” he says, “are reduced to such extremity that we can no longer maintain them against the infinity of disorder, brutality, violence, injustice, impiety, impurity, insolence, scorn, and insult, which the deplorable and infamous traffic in brandy has spread universally among the Indians of these parts.... In the despair in which we are plunged, nothing remains for us but to abandon them to the brandy sellers as a domain of drunkenness and debauchery.”
He complains bitterly of the officers in command of the fort, who, he says, far from repressing disorders, encourage them by their example, and are even worse than their subordinates, “insomuch that all our Indian villages are so many taverns for drunkenness and Sodoms for iniquity, which we shall be forced to leave to the just wrath and vengeance of God.” He insists that the garrisons are entirely useless, as they have only four occupations: first, to keep open liquor shops for crowds of drunken Indians; secondly, to roam from place to place, carrying goods and brandy under the orders of the commandant, who shares their profits; thirdly, to gamble day and night; fourthly, to “turn the fort into a place which I am ashamed to call by its right name;” and he describes, with a curious amplitude of detail, the swarms of Indian girls who are hired to make it their resort. “Such, monseigneur, are the only employments of the soldiers maintained here so many years. If this can be called doing the king service, I admit that such service is done for him here now, and has always been done for him here; but I never saw any other done in my life.” He further declares that the commandants oppose and malign the missionaries, while of the presents which the king sends up the country for distribution to the Indians, they, the Indians, get nothing but a little tobacco, and the officer keeps the rest for himself. *
* Of the officers in command at Michillimackinac while
Carheil was there, he partially excepts La Durantaye from
his strictures, but bears very hard on La Motte-Cadillac,
who hated the Jesuits and was hated by them in turn. La
Motte, on his part, writes that “the missionaries wish to be
masters wherever they are, and cannot tolerate anybody above
themselves.” N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 587. For much more
emphatic expressions of his views concerning them, see two
letters from him, translated in Sheldon’s Early History of
Michigan.
From the misconduct of officers and soldiers, he passes to that of the coureurs de bois and licensed traders; and here he is equally severe. He dilates on the evils which result from permitting the colonists to go to the Indians instead of requiring the Indians to come to the settlements. “It serves only to rob the country of all its young men, weaken families, deprive wives of their husbands, sisters of their brothers, and parents of their children; expose the voyagers to a hundred dangers of body and soul; involve them in a multitude of expenses, some necessary, some useless, and some criminal; accustom them to do no work, and at last disgust them with it for ever; make them live in constant idleness, unlit them completely for any trade, and render them useless to themselves, their families, and the public. But it is less as regards the body than as regards the soul, that this traffic of the French among the savages is infinitely hurtful. It carries them far away from churches, separates them from priests and nuns, and severs them from all instruction, all exercise of religion, and all spiritual aid. It sends them into places wild and almost inaccessible, through a thousand perils by land and water, to carry on by base, abject, and shameful means a trade which would much better be carried on at Montreal.”
But in the complete transfer of the trade to Montreal, he sees insuperable difficulties, and he proceeds to suggest, as the last and best resort, that garrisons and officers should be withdrawn, and licenses abolished; that discreet and virtuous persons should be chosen to take charge of all the trade of the upper country; that these persons should be in perfect sympathy and correspondence with the Jesuits; and that the trade should be carried on at the missions of the Jesuits and in their presence. *
This letter brings us again face to face with the brandy question, of which we have seen something already in the quarrel between Avaugour and the bishop. In the summer of 1648, there was held at the mission of Sillery a temperance meeting; the first in all probability on this continent. The drum beat after mass, and the Indians gathered at the summons. Then an Algonquin chief, a zealous convert of the Jesuits, proclaimed to the crowd a late edict of the governor imposing penalties for drunkenness, and, in his own name and that of the other chiefs, exhorted them to abstinence, declaring that all drunkards should be handed over to the French for punishment. Father Jerome Lalemant looked on delighted. “It was,” he says, “the finest public act of jurisdiction exercised among the Indians since I have been in this country. From the beginning of the world they have all thought themselves as great lords, the one as the other, and never before submitted to their chiefs any further than they chose to do so.” *
* Lettre du Pere Etienne Carheil de la Compagnie de Jésus à
l'Intendant Champigny, Michillimackinac, 30 Août, 1702
(Archives Nationales) Lalemant, Rel, 1648, p. 43.
There was great need of reform; for a demon of drunkenness seemed to possess these unhappy tribes. Nevertheless, with all their rage for brandy, they sometimes showed in regard to it a self-control quite admirable in its way. When at a fair, a council, or a friendly visit, their entertainers regaled them with rations of the coveted liquor, so prudently measured out that they could not be the worse for it, they would unite their several portions in a common stock, which they would then divide among a few of their number, thus enabling them to attain that complete intoxication which, in their view, was the true end of all drinking. The objects of this singular benevolence were expected to requite it in kind on some future occasion.
A drunken Indian with weapons within reach, was very dangerous, and all prudent persons kept out of his way. This greatly pleased him; for, seeing everybody run before him, he fancied himself a great chief, and howled and swung his tomahawk with redoubled fury. If, as often happened, he maimed or murdered some wretch not nimble enough to escape, his countrymen absolved him from all guilt, and blamed only the brandy. Hence, if an Indian wished to take a safe revenge on some personal enemy, he would pretend to be drunk; and, not only murders but other crimes were often committed by false claimants to the bacchanalian privilege.
In the eyes of the missionaries, brandy was a fiend with all crimes and miseries in his train; and, in fact, nothing earthly could better deserve the epithet infernal than an Indian town in the height of a drunken debauch. The orgies never ceased till the bottom of the barrel was reached. Then came repentance, despair, wailing, and bitter invective against the white men, the cause of all the woe. In the name of the public good, of humanity, and above all of religion, the bishop and the Jesuits denounced the fatal traffic.
Their case was a strong one; but so was the case of their opponents. There was real and imminent danger that the thirsty savages, if refused brandy by the French, would seek it from the Dutch and English of New York. It was the most potent lure and the most killing bait. Wherever it was found, thither the Indians and their beaver-skins were sure to go, and the interests of the fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound up with it. Nor was this all, for the merchants and the civil powers insisted that religion and the saving of souls were bound up with it no less; since, to repel the Indians from the Catholic French, and attract them to the heretic English, was to turn them from ways of grace to ways of perdition. * The argument, no doubt, was dashed largely with hypocrisy in those who used it; but it was one which the priests were greatly perplexed to answer.
In former days, when Canada was not yet transformed from a mission to a colony, the Jesuits entered with a high hand on the work of reform.
* “Ce commerce est absolument nécessaire pour attirer les
sauvages dans les colonies françoises, et par ce moyen leur
donner les premières teintures de la foy.” Mémoire de
Colbert, joint à sa lettre à Duchesneau du 24 Mai, 1678.
It fared hard with the culprit caught in the act of selling brandy to Indians. They led him, after the sermon, to the door of the church; where, kneeling on the pavement, partially stript and bearing in his hand the penitential torch, he underwent a vigorous flagellation, laid on by Father Le Mercier himself, after the fashion formerly practised in the case of refractory school-boys. * Bishop Laval not only discharged against the offenders volleys of wholesale excommunication, but he made of the offence a “reserved case;” that is, a case in which the power of granting absolution was reserved to himself alone. This produced great commotion, and a violent conflict between religious scruples and a passion for gain. The bishop and the Jesuits stood inflexible; while their opponents added bitterness to the quarrel by charging them with permitting certain favored persons to sell brandy, unpunished, and even covertly selling it themselves. **
* Mémoire de Dumesnil, 1671.
** Lettre de Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, 24 Oct., 1693.
After speaking of the excessive rigor of the bishop, he
adds: “L’on dit, et il est vrai, que dans ces temps si
fâcheux, sous prétexte de pauvreté dans les familles,
certaines gens avoient permission d’en traiter, je crois
toujours avec la réserve de ne pas enivrer.” Dumesnil,
Mémoire de 1671, says that Laval excommunicated all brandy-
sellers, “à l’exception, néanmoins, de quelques particuliers
qu’il voulait favoriser.” He says further that the bishop
and the Jesuit Ragueneau had a clerk whom they employed at
500 francs a year to trade with the Indians, paying them in
liquors for their furs; and that for a time the
ecclesiastics had this trade to themselves, their severities
having deterred most others from venturing into it. La
Salle, Mémoire de 1678, declares that, “Ils (les Jésuites)
refusent l’absolution a ceux qui ne veulent pas promettre de
n’en plus vendre, et s’ils meurent en cet état, ils les
privent de la sépulture ecclésiastique: au contraire, ils so
permettent à eux mesmes sans aucune difficulté ce mesme
trafic, quoyque toute sorte de trafic soit interdite à tous
les ecclésiastiques par les ordonnances du Roy et par une
bulle expresse du Pape.” I give these assertions as I find
them, and for what they are worth.
Appeal was made to the king, who, with his Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience on one side, and Colbert, guardian of his worldly interests on the other, stood in some perplexity. The case was referred to the fathers of the Sorbonne, and they, after solemn discussion, pronounced the selling of brandy to Indians a mortal sin. * It was next referred to an assembly of the chief merchants and inhabitants of Canada, held under the eye of the governor, intendant, and council, in the Chateau St. Louis. Each was directed to state his views in writing. The great majority were for unrestricted trade in brandy; a few were for a limited and guarded trade; and two or three declared for prohibition. ** Decrees of prohibition were passed from time to time, but they were unavailing. They were revoked, renewed, and revoked again. They were, in fact, worse than useless; for their chief effect was to turn traders and coureurs de bois into troops of audacious contrabandists. Attempts were made to limit the brandy trade to the settlements, and exclude it from the forest country, where its regulation was impossible; but these attempts, like the others, were of little avail. It is worthy of notice that, when brandy was forbidden everywhere else, it was permitted in the trade of Tadoussac, carried on for the profit of government. ***
* Délibération de la Sorbonne sur la Traite des Boissons, 8
Mars, 1676.
** Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée tenue au Château de St.
Louis de Québec, le 26 Oct., 1676, et jours suivants.
*** Lettre de Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, 24 Oct., 1693.
In the course of the quarrel a severe law passed by the
General Court of Massachusetts against the sale of liquors
to Indians was several times urged as an example to be
imitated. A copy of it was sent to the minister, and is
still preserved in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.
In spite of the Sorbonne, in spite of Père La Chaise, and of the Archbishop of Paris, whom he also consulted, the king was never at heart a prohibitionist. * His Canadian revenue was drawn from the fur trade; and the singular argument of the partisans of brandy, that its attractions were needed to keep the Indians from contact with heresy, served admirably to salve his conscience. Bigot as he was, he distrusted the Bishop of Quebec, the great champion of the anti-liquor movement. His own letters, as well as those of his minister, prove that he saw or thought that he saw motives for the crusade very different from those inscribed on its banners. He wrote to Saint-Vallier, Laval’s successor in the bishopric, that the brandy trade was very useful to the kingdom of France; that it should be regulated, but not prevented; that the consciences of his subjects must not be disturbed by denunciations of it as a sin; and that “it is well that you (the bishop) should take care that the zeal of the ecclesiastics is not excited by personal interests and passions.” ** Perhaps he alludes to the spirit of encroachment and domination which he and his minister in secret instructions to their officers often impute to the bishop and the clergy, or perhaps he may have in mind other accusations which had reached him
* See, among other evidence, Mémoire sur la Traite des
Boissons, 1678.
** Le Roy à Saint-Vallier, 7 Avril, 1691
from time to time during many years, and of which the following from the pen of the most noted of Canadian governors will serve as an example. Count Frontenac declares that the Jesuits greatly exaggerate the disorders caused by brandy, and that they easily convince persons “who do not know the interested motives which have led them to harp continually on this string for more than forty years.... They have long wished to have the fur trade entirely to themselves, and to keep out of sight the trade which they have always carried on in the woods, and which they are carrying on there now.” *
Trade of the Jesuits.—As I have observed in a former volume, the charge against the Jesuits of trading in beaver-skins dates from the beginning of the colony. In the private journal of Father Jerome Lalemant, their superior, occurs the following curious passage, under date of November, 1645: “Pour la traite des castors. Le 15 de Nov. le bruit estant qu’on s’en alloit icy publier la defense qui auoit esté publiée aux Trois Riuieres que pas vu n’eut à traiter avec les sauvages, le P. Vimont demanda à Mons. des Chastelets commis general si nous serions de pire condition soubs eux que soubs Messieurs de la Compagnie. La conclusion fut que non et que cela iroit pour nous à U ordinaire, mais que nous le fissions doucement.” Journal des Jésuites. Two years after, on the request of Lalemant, the governor Montmagny, and his destined successor Aillebout, gave the Jesuits a certificate to the effect that “les pères de la compagnie de Jésus sont innocents de la calomnie qui leur a été imputée, et ce qu’ils en ont fiait a été pour le bien de la communauté et pour un bon sujet.” This leaves it to be inferred that they actually traded, though with good intentions. In 1664, in reply to similar “calumnies,” the Jesuits made by proxy a declaration before the council, stating, “que les dits Révérends Pères Jésuites n’ont fait jamais aucune profession de vendre et n’ont jamais rien vendu, mais seulement que les marchandises qu’ils donnent aux particuliers ne sont que pour avoir leurs
* Frontenac au Ministre, 29 Oct., 1676.
nécessités.” This is an admission in a thin disguise. The word nécessités is of very elastic interpretation. In a memoir of Talon, 1667, he mentions, “la traite de pelleteries qu’on assure qu’ils (les Jésuites) font aux Outaouacks et au Cap de la Madeleine; ce que je ne sais pas de science certaine.”
That which Talon did not know with certainty is made reasonably clear for us by a line in the private journal of Father Le Mercier, who writes under date of 17 August, 1665, “Le Père Frémin remonte supérieur au Cap de la Magdeleine, ou le temporel est en bon estât. Comme il est delivre de tout soin d'aucune traite, il doit s’appliquer à l’instruction tant des Montagnets que des Algonquins.” Father Charles Albanel was charged, under Frémin, with the affairs of the mission, including doubtless the temporal interests, to the prosperity of which Father Le Merciei alludes, and the cares of trade from which Father Frémin was delivered. Cavelier de la Salle declared in 1678, “Le père Arbanelle (Albanel) jésuite a traité au Cap (de la Madeleine) pour 700 pistoles de peaux d’orignaux et de castors; luy mesme me l’a dit en 1667. Il vend le pain, le vin, le bled, le lard, et il tient magazin au Cap aussi bien que le frère Joseph à Québec. Ce frère gagne 500 pour 100 sur tous les peuples. Ils (les Jésuites) ont bâti leur collège en partie de leur traite et en partie de l’emprunt.” La Salle further says that Frémin, being reported to have made enormous profits, “ce père répondit au gouverneur (qui lui en avait fait des plaintes) par un billet que luy a conservé, que c’estoit une calomnie que ce grand gain prétendu; puisque tout ce qui se passoit par ses mains ne pouvoit produire par an que quatre mille de revenant bon, tous frais faits, sans comprendre les gages des domestiques.” La Salle gives also many other particulars, especially relating to Michillimackinac, where, as he says, the Jesuits had a large stock of beaver-skins. According to Peronne Dumesnil, Mémoire de 1671, the Jesuits had at that time more than 20,000 francs a year, partly from trade and partly from charitable contributions of their friends in France.
The king repeatedly forbade the Jesuits and other ecclesiastics in Canada to carry on trade. On one occasion he threatened strong measures should they continue to disobey him. Le Roi à Frontenac, 28 Avril, 1677. In the same year the minister wrote to the intendant Duchesneau: “Vous ne sauriez apporter trop de precautions pour abolir entièrement la coustume que les Ecclesiastiques séculiers et réguliers avaient pris de traitter ou de faire traitter leurs valets,” 18 Avril, 1677.
The Jesuits entered also into other branches of trade and industry with a vigor and address which the inhabitants of Canada might have emulated with advantage. They were successful fishers of eels. In 1646, their eel-pots at Sillery are said to have yielded no less than forty thousand eels, some of which they sold at the modest price of thirty sous a hundred. Ferland, Notes sur les Registres de N. D. de Québec, 82. The members of the order were exempted from payment of duties, and in 1674 they were specially empowered to construct mills, including sugar-mills, and beep slaves, apprentices, and hired servants. Droit Canadien, 180.
Church and State.—The Bishop and the King.—The King and the Cures.—The New Bishop.—The Canadian Cure.—Ecclesiastical Rule.—Saint-Vallier and Denonville.—Clerical Rigor.—Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Courcelle and Châtelain.—The Recollets.—Heresy and Witchcraft.—Canadian Nuns.—Jeanne Le Ber.—Education.—The Seminary.—Saint Joachim.—Miracles op Saint Anne.—Canadian Schools.
When Laval and the Jesuits procured the recall of Mézy, they achieved a seeming triumph; yet it was but a defeat in disguise. While ordering home the obnoxious governor, the king and Colbert made a practical assertion of their power too strong to be resisted. A vice-regal officer, a governor, an intendant, and a regiment of soldiers, were silent but convincing proofs that the mission days of Canada were over, and the dream of a theocracy dispelled for ever. The ecclesiastics read the signs of the times, and for a while seemed to accept the situation.
The king on his part, in vindicating the civil power, had shown a studious regard to the sensibilities of the bishop and his allies. The lieutenant-general Tracy, a zealous devotee, and the intendant Talon, who at least professed to be one, were not men to offend the clerical party needlessly. In the choice of Courcelle, the governor, a little less caution had been shown. His chief business was to fight the Iroquois, for which he was well fitted, but he presently showed signs of a willingness to fight the Jesuits also. The colonists liked him for his lively and impulsive speech; but the priests were of a different mind, and so, too, was his colleague Talon, a prudent person who studied the amenities of life and knew how to pursue his ends with temper and moderation. On the subject of the clergy he and the governor substantially agreed, but the ebullitions of the one and the smooth discretion of the other were mutually repugnant to both. Talon complained of his colleague’s impetuosity; and Colbert directed him to use his best efforts to keep Courcelle within bounds and prevent him from publicly finding fault with the bishop and the Jesuits.* Next we find the minister writing to Courcelle himself to soothe his ruffled temper, and enjoining him to act discreetly, “because,” said Colbert, “as the colony grows the king’s authority will grow with it, and the authority of the priests will be brought back in time within lawful bounds.” **
Meanwhile, Talon had been ordered to observe carefully the conduct of the bishop and the Jesuits, “who,” says the minister, “have hitherto nominated governors for the king, and used every
* Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
** Colbert a Courcelle, 19 Mai, 1669
means to procure the recall of those chosen without their participation; * filled offices with their adherents, and tolerated no secular priests except those of one mind with them.” ** Talon, therefore, under the veil of a reverent courtesy, sharply watched them. They paid courtesy with courtesy, and the intendant wrote home to his master that he saw nothing amiss in them. He quickly changed his mind. “I should have had less trouble and more praise,” he writes in the next year, “if I had been willing to leave the power of the church ¦where I found it.” *** “It is easy,” he says again,
“to incur the ill-will of the Jesuits if one does not accept all their opinions and abandon one’s self to their direction even in temporal matters; for their encroachments extend to affairs of police, which concern only the civil magistrate;” and he recommends that one or two of them be sent home as disturbers of the peace. **** They, on their part, changed attitude towards both him and the governor. One of them, Father Bardy, less discreet than the rest, is said to have preached a sermon against them at Quebec, in which he likened them to a pair of toadstools springing up in a night, adding that a good remedy would soon be found, and that Courcelle would have to run home like other governors before him. (v)
Tracy escaped clerical attacks. He was
* Instruction au Sieur Talon.
** Mémoire pour M. de Tracy.
*** Talon au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1666.
**** Talon, Mémoire de 1667.
(v) La Salle, Mémoire de 1678 This sermon was preached on
the 12th of March, 1667.
extremely careful not to provoke them; and one of his first acts was to restore to the council the bishop’s adherents, whom Mézy had expelled. * And if, on the one hand, he was too pious to quarrel with the bishop, so, on the other, the bishop was too prudent to invite collision with a man of his rank and influence.
After all, the dispute between the civil and ecclesiastical powers was not fundamental. Each had need of the other. Both rested on authority, and they differed only as to the boundary lines of their respective shares in it. Yet the dispute of boundaries was a serious one, and it remained a source of bitterness for many years. The king, though rigidly Catholic, was not yet sunk in the slough of bigotry into which Maintenon and the Jesuits succeeded at last in plunging him. He had conceived a distrust of Laval, and his jealousy of his royal authority disposed him to listen to the anti-clerical counsels of his minister. How needful they both thought it to prune the exuberant growth of clerical power, and how cautiously they set themselves to do so, their letters attest again and again. “The bishop,” writes Colbert, “assumes a domination far beyond that of other bishops throughout the Christian world, and particularly in the kingdom of France.” ** “It is the will of his Majesty that you confine him and the Jesuits within just bounds, and let none of them
* A curious account of his relations with Laval is given in
a letter of La Motte-Cadillac, 28 September, 1694.
** Colbert a Duchesneau, 1 Mai, 1677.
overstep these bounds in any manner whatsoever. Consider this as a matter of the greatest importance, and one to which you cannot give too much attention.” * “But,” the prudent minister elsewhere writes, “it is of the greatest consequence that the bishop and the Jesuits do not perceive that the intendant blames their conduct.” **
It was to the same intendant that Colbert wrote, “it is necessary to diminish as much as possible the excessive number of priests, monks, and nuns, in Canada.” Yet in the very next year, and on the advice of Talon, he himself sent four more to the colony. His motive was plain. He meant that they should serve as a counterpoise to the Jesuits. *** They were mendicant friars, belonging to the branch of the Franciscans known as the Recollets; and they were supposed to be free from the ambition for the aggrandizement of their order which was imputed, and with reason, to the Jesuits. Whether the Recollets were free from it or not, no danger was to be feared from them; for Laval and the Jesuits were sure to oppose them, and they would need the support of the government too much to set themselves in opposition to it. “The more Recollets we have,” says Talon, “the better will the too firmly rooted authority of the others be balanced.” ****
While Louis XIV. tried to confine the priests to
* Colbert a Duchesneau, 28 Avril, 1677.
** Instruction pour M. Bouteroue, 1668.
*** Mémoire succinct des principaux points des intentions
du Roy sur le pays de Canada, 18 Mai, 1669.
**** Talon au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1670.
their ecclesiastical functions, he was at the same time, whether from religion, policy, or both combined, very liberal to the Canadian church, of which, indeed, he was the main-stay. In the yearly estimate of “ordinary charges” of the colony, the church holds the most prominent place; and the appropriations for religious purposes often exceed all the rest together. Thus, in 1667, out of a total of 36,360 francs, 28,000 are assigned to church uses. * The amount fluctuated, but was always relatively large. The Canadian curés were paid in great part by the king, who for many years gave eight thousand francs annually towards their support. Such was the poverty of the country that, though in 1685 there were only twenty-five curés, ** each costing about five hundred francs a year, the tithes utterly failed to meet the expense. As late as 1700, the intendant declared that Canada without the king’s help could not maintain more than eight or nine curés. Louis XIV. winced under these steady demands, and reminded the bishop that more than four thousand curés in France lived on less than two hundred francs a year. *** “You say,” he wrote to the intendant, “that it is impossible for a Canadian curé to live on five hundred francs. Then you
* Of this, 6,000 francs were given to the Jesuits, 6,000 to
the Ursulines, 9,000 to the cathedral, 4,000 to the
seminary, and 3,000 to the Hôtel-Dieu. Etat de dépense,
etc., 1677. The rest went to pay civil officers and
garrisons. In 1682, the amount for church uses was only
12,000 francs. In 1687 it was 13,500. In 1689, it rose to
34,000, including Acadia.
** Increased soon after to thirty-six by Saint-Vallier,
Laval’s successor.
*** Mémoire a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678; Le Roy a
Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.
must do the impossible to accomplish my intentions, which are always that the curés should live on the tithes alone.” * Yet the head of the church still begged for money, and the king still paid it. “We are in the midst of a costly war,” wrote the minister to the bishop, “yet in consequence of your urgency the gifts to ecclesiastics will be continued as before.” ** And they did continue. More than half a century later, the king was still making them, and during the last years of the colony he gave twenty thousand francs annually to support Canadian curés. ***
The maintenance of curés was but a part of his bounty. He endowed the bishopric with the revenues of two French abbeys, to which he afterwards added a third. The vast tracts of land which Laval had acquired were freed from feudal burdens, and emigrants were sent to them by the government in such numbers that, in 1667, the bishop’s seigniory of Beaupré and Orleans contained more than a fourth of the entire population of Canada. **** He had emerged from his condition of apostolic poverty to find himself the richest land-owner in the colony.
If by favors like these the king expected to lead the ecclesiastics into compliance with his
* Le Roy a Duchesneau, 30 Avril, 1681.
** Le Ministre a l’Evêque, 8 Mai, 1694.
*** Bougainville, Mémoire, 1757.
**** Entire population, 4,312; Beaupré and Orleans, 1,185.
Recensement de 1667. Laval, it will be remembered,
afterwards gave his lands to the seminary of Quebec. He
previously exchanged the island of Orleans with the Sieur
Berthelot for the island of Jesus. Berthelot gave him a
large sum of money in addition.
wishes, he was doomed to disappointment. The system of movable curés, by which the bishop like a military chief could compel each member of his clerical army to come and go at his bidding, was from the first repugnant to Louis XIV. On the other hand, the bishop clung to it with his usual tenacity. Colbert denounced it as contrary to the laws of the kingdom. * “His Majesty has reason to believe,” he writes, “that the chief source of the difficulty which the bishop makes on this point is his wish to preserve a greater authority over the curés.” ** The inflexible prelate, whose heart was bound up in the system he had established, opposed evasion and delay to each expression of the royal will; and even a royal edict failed to produce the desired effect. In the height of the dispute, Laval went to court, and, on the ground of failing health, asked for a successor in the bishopric. The king readily granted his prayer. The successor was appointed; but when Laval prepared to embark again for Canada, he was given to understand that he was to remain in France. In vain he promised to make no trouble; *** and it was not till after an absence of four years that he was permitted to return, no longer as its chief, to his beloved Canadian church. ****
* Le Ministre a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678.
** Instruction a M. de Meules, 1682.
*** Laval au Père la Chaise, 1687. This forms part of a
curious correspondence printed in the Foyer Canadien for
1866, from originals in the Archevêché of Quebec.
**** From a mémoire of 18 Feb., 1685 (Archives de
Versailles) it is plain that the court, in giving a
successor to Laval, thought that it had ended the vexed
question of movable curés.
Meanwhile Saint-Vallier, the new bishop, had raised a new tempest. He attacked that organization of the seminary of Quebec by which Laval had endeavored to unite the secular priests of Canada into an attached and obedient family, with the bishop as its head and the seminary as its home, a plan of which the system of movable curés was an essential part. The Canadian priests, devoted to Laval, met the innovations of Saint-Vallier with an opposition which seemed only to confirm his purpose. Laval, old and worn with toil and asceticism, was driven almost to despair. The seminary of Quebec was the cherished work of his life, and, to his thinking, the citadel of the Canadian church; and now he beheld it battered and breached before his eyes. His successor, in fact, was trying to place the church of Canada on the footing of the church of France. The conflict lasted for years, with the rancor that marks the quarrels of non-combatants of both sexes. “He” (Saint-Vallier), says one of his opponents, “has made himself contemptible to almost everybody, and particularly odious to the priests born in Canada; for there is between them and him a mutual antipathy difficult to overcome.” * He is described by the same writer as a person “without reflection and judgment, extreme in all things, secret and artful, passionate when opposed, and a flatterer when he wishes to gain his point.” This amiable critic adds that Saint-Vallier believes a
* The above is from an anonymous paper, written apparently
in 1695 and entitled Mémoire pour le Canada.
bishop to be inspired, in virtue of his office, with a wisdom that needs no human aid, and that whatever thought comes to him in prayer is a divine inspiration to be carried into effect at all costs and in spite of all opposition.
The new bishop, notwithstanding the tempest he had raised, did not fully accomplish that establishment of the curés in their respective parishes which the king and the minister so much desired. The Canadian curé was more a missionary than a parish priest; and nature as well as Bishop Laval threw difficulties in the way of settling him quietly over his charge.
On the Lower St. Lawrence, where it widens to an estuary, six leagues across, a ship from France, the last of the season, holds her way for Quebec, laden with stores and clothing, household utensils, goods for Indian trade, the newest court fashions, wine, brandy, tobacco, and the king’s orders from Versailles. Swelling her patched and dingy sails, she glides through the wildness and the solitude where there is nothing but her to remind you of the great troubled world behind and the little troubled world before. On the far verge of the ocean-like river, clouds and mountains mingle in dim confusion; fresh gusts from the north dash waves against the ledges, sweep through the quivering spires of stiff and stunted fir-trees, and ruffle the feathers of the crow, perched on the dead bough after his feast of mussels among the sea-weed. You are not so solitary as you think. A small birch canoe rounds the point of rocks, and it bears two men; one in an old black cassock, and the other in a buckskin coat; both working hard at the paddle to keep their slender craft off the shingle and the breakers. The man in the cassock is Father Morel, aged forty-eight, the oldest country curé in Canada, most of his brethren being in the vigor of youth as they had need to be. His parochial charge embraces. a string of incipient parishes extending along the south shore from Riviere du Loup to Rivière du Sud, a distance reckoned at twenty-seven leagues, and his parishioners number in all three hundred and twenty-eight souls. He has administered spiritual consolation to the one inhabitant of Kamouraska; visited the eight families of La Bouteillerie and the five families of La Combe; and now he is on his way to the seigniory of St. Denis with its two houses and eleven souls. *
The father lands where a shattered eel-pot high and dry on the pebbles betrays the neighborhood of man. His servant shoulders his portable chapel, and follows him through the belt of firs, and the taller woods beyond, till the sunlight of a desolate clearing shines upon them. Charred trunks and limbs encumber the ground; dead trees, branchless, barkless, pierced by the woodpeckers, in part black with fire, in part bleached by sun and frost, tower ghastly and weird above the labyrinth of forest ruins, through which the priest and his
* These particulars are from the Plan général de l’estât
présent des missions du Canada, fait en l’année, 1683. It is
a list and description of the parishes with the names and
ages of the cures, and other details. See Abeille, I. This
paper was drawn up by order of Laval.
follower wind their way, the cat-bird mewing, and the blue-jay screaming as they pass. Now the golden-rod and the aster, harbingers of autumn, fringe with purple and yellow the edge of the older clearing, where wheat and maize, the settler’s meagre harvest, are growing among the stumps.
Wild-looking women, with sunburnt faces and neglected hair, run from their work to meet the curé; a man or two follow with soberer steps and less exuberant zeal; while half-savage children, the coureurs de bois of the future, bareheaded, barefooted, and half-clad, come to wonder and stare. To set up his altar in a room of the rugged log cabin, say mass, hear confessions, impose penance, grant absolution, repeat the office of the dead over a grave made weeks before, baptize, perhaps, the last infant; marry, possibly, some pair who may or may not have waited for his coming; catechize as well as time and circumstance would allow the shy but turbulent brood of some former wedlock: such was the work of the parish priest in the remoter districts. It was seldom that his charge was quite so scattered, and so far extended as that of Father Morel; but there were fifteen or twenty others whose labors were like in kind, and in some cases no less arduous. All summer they paddled their canoes from settlement to settlement; and in winter they toiled on snow-shoes over the drifts; while the servant carried the portable chapel on his back, or dragged it on a sledge. Once, at least, in the year, the curé paid his visit to Quebec, where, under the maternal roof of the seminary he made his retreat of meditation and prayer, and then returned to his work. He rarely had a house of his own, but boarded in that of the seignior or one of the habitants. Many parishes or aggregations of parishes had no other church than a room fitted up for the purpose in the house of some pious settler. In the larger settlements, there were churches and chapels of wood, thatched with straw, often ruinous, poor to the last degree, without ornaments, and sometimes without the sacred vessels necessary for the service. * In 1683, there were but seven stone churches in all the colony. The population was so thin and scattered that many of the settlers heard mass only three or four times a year, and some of them not so often. The sick frequently died without absolution, and infants without baptism.
The splendid self-devotion of the early Jesuit missions has its record; so, too, have the unseemly bickerings of bishops and governors: but the patient toils of the missionary curé rest in the obscurity where the best of human virtues are buried from age to age. What we find set down concerning him is, that Louis XIV. was unable to see why he should not live on two hundred francs a year as well as a village curé by the banks of the Garonne. The king did not know that his cassock and all his clothing cost him twice as much and lasted half as long; that he must have a canoe and a man to paddle it; and that when on his
* Saint-Vallier, Estat présent de l’Eglise et de la Colonie
Française, 22ed. 18nt-Vallier, Estat présent de l’Eglise
et de la Colonie Française, 22 (ed. 1856).
annual visit the seminary paid him five or six hundred francs, partly in clothes, partly in stores, and partly in money, the end of the year found him as poor as before except only in his conscience.
The Canadian priests held the manners of the colony under a rule as rigid as that of the Puritan churches of New England, but with the difference that in Canada a large part of the population was restive under their control, while some of the civil authorities, often with the governor at their head, supported the opposition. This was due, partly to an excess of clerical severity, and partly to the continued friction between the secular and ecclesiastical powers. It sometimes happened, however, that a new governor arrived, so pious that the clerical party felt that they could rely on him. Of these rare instances the principal is that of Denonville, who, with a wife as pious as himself, and a young daughter, landed at Quebec, in 1685. On this, Bishop Saint-Vallier, anxious to turn his good dispositions to the best account, addressed to him a series of suggestions or rather directions for the guidance of his conduct, with a view to the spiritual profit of those over whom he was appointed to rule. The document was put on file, and the following are some of the points in it. It is divided into five different heads: “Touching feasts,” “touching balls and dances,” “touching comedies and other declamations,” “touching dress,” “touching irreverence in church.” The governor and madame his wife are desired to accept no invitations to suppers, that is to say late dinners, as tending to nocturnal hours and dangerous pastimes; and they are further enjoined to express dissatisfaction, and refuse to come again, should any entertainment offered them be too sumptuous. “Although,” continues the bishop under the second head of his address, “balls and dances are not sinful in their nature, nevertheless they are so dangerous by reason of the circumstances that attend them, and the evil results that almost inevitably follow, that, in the opinion of Saint Francis of Sales, it should be said of them as physicians say of mushrooms, that at best they are good for nothing;” and, after enlarging on their perils, he declares it to be of great importance to the glory of God and the sanctification of the colony, that the governor and his wife neither give such entertainments nor countenance them by their presence. “Nevertheless,” adds the mentor, “since the youth and vivacity of mademoiselle their daughter requires some diversion, it is permitted to relent somewhat, and indulge her in a little moderate and proper dancing, provided that it be solely with persons of her own sex, and in the presence of madame her mother; but by no means in the presence of men or youths, since it is this mingling of sexes which causes the disorders that spring from balls and dances.” Private theatricals in any form are next interdicted to the young lady. The bishop then passes to the subject of her dress, and exposes the abuses against which she is to be guarded. “The luxury of dress,” he says, “appears in the rich and dazzling fabrics wherein the women and girls of Canada attire themselves, and which are far beyond their condition and their means; in the excess of ornaments which they put on; in the extraordinary head-dresses which they affect, their heads being uncovered and full of strange trinkets; and in the immodest curls so expressly forbidden in the epistles of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, as well as by all the fathers and doctors of the church, and which God has often severely punished, as may be seen by the example of the unhappy Pretextata, a lady of high quality, who, as we learn from Saint Jerome, who knew her, had her hands withered, and died suddenly five months after, and was precipitated into hell, as God had threatened her by an angel; because, by order of her husband, she had curled the hair of her niece, and attired her after a worldly fashion.” *
Whether the Marquis and Marchioness Denonville profited by so apt and terrible a warning, or whether their patience and good-nature survived the episcopal onslaught, does not appear on record. The subject of feminine apparel received great attention, both from Saint-Vallier and his
* “Témoin entr’autres l’exemple de la malheureuse
Prétextate, dame de grande condition, laquelle au rapport de
S. Jérôme, dont elle étoit connue, eut les mains desséchées
et cinq mois après mourut subitement et fut précipitée en
enfer, ainsi que Dieu l’en avoit menacée par un Ange pour
avoir par le commandement de son mari frisé et habillé
mondainement sa nièce.” Divers points a représenter a Mr. le
Gouverneur et à Madame la Gouvernante, signé Jean, évesque
de Québec. (Registre de l’Evêché de Québec.) The bishop on
another occasion holds up the sad fate of Pretextata as a
warning to Canadian mothers; but in the present case he
slightly changes the incidents to make the story more
applicable to the governor and his wife.
predecessor, each of whom issued a number of pastoral mandates concerning it. Their severest denunciations were aimed at low-necked dresses, which they regarded as favorite devices of the enemy for the snaring of souls; and they also used strong language against certain knots of ribbons called fontanges, with which the belles of Quebec adorned them heads. Laval launches strenuous invectives against “the luxury and vanity of women and girls, who, forgetting the promises of their baptism, decorate themselves with the pomp of Satan, whom they have so solemnly renounced; and, in their wish to please the eyes of men, make themselves the instruments and the captives of the fiend.” *
In the journal of the superior of the Jesuits we find, under date of February 4, 1667, a record of the first ball in Canada, along with the pious wish, “God grant that nothing further come of it.” Nevertheless more balls were not long in following; and, worse yet, sundry comedies were enacted under no less distinguished patronage than that of Frontenac, the governor. Laval denounced them vigorously, the Jesuit Dablon attacked them in a violent sermon; and such excitement followed that the affair was brought before the royal council, which declined to interfere. ** This flurry,
* Mandement contre le luxe et la vanité des femmes et des
filles, 1682. (Registres de l'Evêché de Québec.) A still
more vigorous denunciation is contained in Ordonnance contre
les vices de luxe et d’impureté, 1690. This was followed in
the next year by a stringent list of rules called Réglement
pour la conduite des fidèles de ce diocèse.
** Arrêts du 24 et 28 juin par lesquels cette affaire (des
comédies) est renvoyésn& Sa Majesté, 1681. (?) (Registre du
Conseil Souverain.)
however, was nothing to the storm raised ten or twelve years later by other dramatic aggressions, an account of which will appear in the sequel of this volume.
The morals of families were watched with unrelenting vigilance. Frontenac writes in a mood unusually temperate, “they (the priests) are full of virtue and piety, and if their zeal were less vehement and more moderate they would perhaps succeed better in their efforts for the conversion of souls; but they often use means so extraordinary, and in France so unusual, that they repel most people instead of persuading them. I sometimes tell them my views frankly and as gently as I can, as I know the murmurs that their conduct excites, and often receive complaints of the constraint under which they place consciences. This is above all the case with the ecclesiastics at Montreal, where there is a curé from Franche Comté who wants to establish a sort of inquisition worse than that of Spain, and all out of an excess of zeal.” *
It was this curé, no doubt, of whom La Hontan complains. That unsanctified young officer was quartered at Montreal, in the house of one of the inhabitants. “During a part of the winter I was hunting with the Algonquins; the rest of it I spent here very disagreeably. One can neither go on a pleasure party, nor play a game of cards, nor visit the ladies, without the curé knowing it and preaching about it publicly from his pulpit. The priests excommunicate
* Frontenac au Ministre, 20 Oct., 1691.
masqueraders, and even go in search of them to pull off their masks and overwhelm them with abuse. They watch more closely over the women and girls than their husbands and fathers. They prohibit and burn all books but books of devotion. I cannot think of this tyranny without cursing the indiscreet zeal of the curé of this town. He came to the house where I lived, and, finding some books on my table, presently pounced on the romance of Petronius, which I valued more than my life because it was not mutilated. He tore out almost all the leaves, so that if my host had not restrained me when I came in and saw the miserable wreck, I should have run after this rampant shepherd and torn out every hair of his beard.” *
La Motte-Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, seems to have had equal difficulty in keeping his temper. “Neither men of honor nor men of parts are endured in Canada; nobody can live here but simpletons and slaves of the ecclesiastical domination. The count (Frontenac) would not have so many troublesome affairs on his hands if he had not abolished a Jericho in the shape of a house built by messieurs of the seminary of Montreal, to shut up, as they said, girls who caused scandal; if he had allowed them to take officers and soldiers to go into houses at midnight and carry off women from their husbands and whip them till the blood flowed because they had been at a ball or worn a mask; if he had said nothing against the curés
* La Hontan, I. 60 (ed. 1709). Other editions contain the
same story to different words.
who went the rounds with the soldiers and compelled women and girls to shut themselves up in their houses at nine o’clock of summer evenings; if he had forbidden the wearing of lace, and made no objection to the refusal of the communion to women of quality because they wore a fontange; if he had not opposed excommunications flung about without sense or reason; if, I say, the count had been of this way of thinking he would have stood as a nonpareil, and have been put very soon on the list of saints, for saint-making is cheap in this country.” *
While the Sulpitians were thus rigorous at Montreal, the bishop and his Jesuit allies were scarcely less so at Quebec. There was little goodwill between them and the Sulpitians, and some of the sharpest charges against the followers of Loyola are brought by their brother priests at Montreal. The Sulpitian Allet writes: “The Jesuits hold such domination over the people of this country that they go into the houses and see every thing that passes there. They then tell what they have learned to each other at their meetings, and on this information they govern their policy. The Jesuit, Father Ragueneau, used to go every day down to the Lower Town, where the merchants live, to find out all that was going on in their families; and he often made people get up from table to confess to him.” Allet goes on to say that Father Châtelain also went continually to the Lower Town with the same object, and that some
* La Motte-Cadillac à-, 28 Sept., 1694.
of the inhabitants complained of him to Courcelle, the governor. One day Courcelle saw the Jesuit, who was old and somewhat infirm, slowly walking by the Château, cane in hand, on his usual errand, on which he sent a sergeant after him to request that he would not go so often to the Lower Town, as the people were annoyed by the frequency of his visits. The father replied in wrath, “Go and tell Monsieur de Courcelle that I have been there ever since he was governor, and that I shall go there after he has ceased to be governor;” and he kept on his way as before. Courcelle reported his answer to the superior, Le Mercier, and demanded to have him sent home as a punishment; but the superior effected a compromise. On the following Thursday, after mass in the cathedral, he invited Courcelle into the sacristy, where Father Châtelain was awaiting them; and here, at Le Mercier’s order, the old priest begged pardon of the offended governor on his knees. *
The Jesuits derived great power from the confessional; and, if their accusers are to be believed, they employed unusual means to make it effective. Cavelier de la Salle says: “They will confess nobody till he tells his name, and no servant till he tells the name of his master. When a crime is confessed, they insist on knowing the name of the accomplice, as well as all the circumstances, with
* Mémoire d’Allet. The author was at one time secretary to
Abbé Quélus. The paper is printed in the Morale pratique des
Jésuites. The above is one of many curious statements which
it contains.
the greatest particularity. Father Châtelain especially never fails to do this. They enter as it were by force into the secrets of families, and thus make themselves formidable; for what cannot be done by a clever man devoted to his work, who knows all the secrets of every family; above all when he permits himself to tell them when it is for his interest to do so?” *
The association of women and girls known as the Congregation of the Holy Family, which was formed under Jesuit auspices, and which met every Thursday with closed doors in the cathedral, is said to have been very useful to the fathers in their social investigations. ** The members are affirmed to have been under a vow to tell each other every good or evil deed they knew of every person of their acquaintance; so that this pious gossip became a copious source of information to those in a position to draw upon it. In Talon’s time the Congregation of the Holy Family caused such commotion in Quebec that he asked the council to appoint a commission to inquire into its proceedings. He was touching dangerous ground. The affair was presently hushed, and the application cancelled on the register of the council. ***
The Jesuits had long exercised solely the function of confessors in the colony, and a number of
* La Salle, Mémoire, 1678.
** See Discovery of the Great West, 105.
*** Représentation faite au conseil au sujet de certaines
assemblées de femmes ou filles sous le nom de la Sainte
Famille, 1667. (Registre du Conseil Souverain.) The paper is
cancelled by lines drawn over it; and the following minute,
duly attested, is appended to it: “Rayé du consentement de
M. Talon”
curious anecdotes are on record showing the reluctance with which they admitted the secular priests, and above all the Recollets, to share in it. The Recollets, of whom a considerable number had arrived from time to time, were on excellent terms with the civil powers, and were popular with the colonists; but with the bishop and the Jesuits they were not in favor, and one or two sharp collisions took place. The bishop was naturally annoyed when, while he was trying to persuade the king that a curé needed at least six hundred francs a year, these mendicant friars came forward with an offer to serve the parishes for nothing; nor was he, it is likely, better pleased when, having asked the hospital nuns eight hundred francs annually for two masses a day in their chapel, the Recollets underbid him, and offered to say the masses for three hundred. * They, on their part, complain bitterly of the bishop, who, they say, would gladly have ordered them out of the colony, but being unable to do this, tried to shut them up in their convent, and prevent them from officiating as priests among the people. “We have as little liberty,” says the Recollet writer, “as if we were in a country of heretics.” He adds that the inhabitants ask earnestly for the ministrations of the friars, but that the bishop replies with invectives and calumnies against the order, and that
* “Mon dit sieur l’evesque leur fait payer (aux
hospitalières) 800L. par an pour deux messes qu’il leur fait
dire par ses Séminaristes que lei Récollets leurs voisins
leur offrent pour 300L.” La Barre au Ministre, 1682.
when the Recollets absolve a penitent he often annuls the absolution. *
In one respect this Canadian church militant achieved a complete success. Heresy was scoured out of the colony. When Maintenon and her ghostly prompters overcame the better nature of the king, and wrought on his bigotry and his vanity to launch him into the dragonnades; when violence and lust bore the crucifix into thousands of Huguenot homes, and the land reeked with nameless infamies; when churches rang with Te Deums, and the heart of France withered in anguish; when, in short, this hideous triumph of the faith was won, the royal tool of priestly ferocity sent orders that heresy should be treated in Canada as it had been treated in France. ** The orders were needless. The pious Denonville replies, “Praised be God, there is not a heretic here.” He adds that a few abjured last year, and that he should be very glad if the king would make them a present. The Jesuits, he further says, go every day on board the ships in the harbor to look after the new converts from France. *** Now and then at a later day a real or suspected Jansenist found his way to Canada, and sometimes an esprit fort, like
* Mémoire instructif contenant la conduite des PP.
Récollets de Paris en leurs missions de Canada, 1684. This
paper, of which only a fragment is preserved, was written in
connection with a dispute of the Recolléts with the bishop
who opposed their attempt to establish a church in Quebec.
** Mémoire du Roy a Denonville, 31 Mai, 1686. The king here
orders the imprisonment of heretics who refuse to abjure, or
the quartering of soldiers on them. What this meant the
history of the dragonnades will show.
*** Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
La Hontan, came over with the troops; but on the whole a community more free from positive heterodoxy perhaps never existed on earth. This exemption cost no bloodshed. What it did cost we may better judge hereafter.
If Canada escaped the dragonnades, so also she escaped another infliction from which a neighboring colony suffered deplorably. Her peace was never much troubled by witches. They were held to exist, it is true; but they wrought no panic. Mother Mary of the Incarnation reports on one occasion the discovery of a magician in the person of a converted Huguenot miller who, being refused in marriage by a girl of Quebec, bewitched her, and filled the house where she lived with demons, which the bishop tried in vain to exorcise. The miller was thrown into prison, and the girl sent to the Hôtel-Dieu, where not a demon dared enter. The infernal crew took their revenge by creating a severe influenza among the citizens. *
If there are no Canadian names on the calendar of saints, it is not because in by-ways and obscure places Canada had not virtues worthy of canonization. Not alone her male martyrs and female devotees, whose merits have found a chronicle and a recognition; not the fantastic devotion of Madame d’Aillebout, who, lest she should not suffer enough, took to herself a vicious and refractory servant girl, as an exercise of patience; and not certainly the mediaeval pietism of Jeanne Le Ber, the
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre de—Sept., 1661.
venerated recluse of Montreal. There are others quite as worthy of honor, whose names have died from memory. It is difficult to conceive a self-abnegation more complete than that of the hospital nuns of Quebec and Montreal. In the almost total absence of trained and skilled physicians, the burden of the sick and wounded fell upon them. Of the two communities, that of Montreal was the more wretchedly destitute, while that of Quebec was exposed, perhaps, to greater dangers. Nearly every ship from France brought some form of infection, and all infection found its way to the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec. The nuns died, but they never complained. Removed from the arena of ecclesiastical strife, too busy for the morbidness of the cloister, too much absorbed in practical benevolence to become the prey of illusions, they and their sister community were models of that benign and tender charity of which the Roman Catholic Church is so rich in examples. Nor should the Ursulines and the nuns of the Congregation be forgotten among those who, in another field of labor, have toiled patiently according to their light.
Mademoiselle Jeanne Le Ber belonged to none of these sisterhoods. She was the favorite daughter of the chief merchant of Montreal, the same who, with the help of his money, got himself ennobled. She seems to have been a girl of a fine and sensitive nature; ardent, affectionate, and extremely susceptible to religious impressions. Religion at last gained absolute sway over her. Nothing could appease her longings or content the demands of her excited conscience but an entire consecration of herself to heaven. Constituted as she was, the resolution must have cost her an agony of mental conflict. Her story is a strange, and, as many will think, a very sad one. She renounced her suitors, and wished to renounce her inheritance; but her spiritual directors, too far-sighted to permit such a sacrifice, persuaded her to hold fast to her claims, and content herself with what they called “poverty of heart.” Her mother died, and her father, left with a family of young children, greatly needed her help; but she refused to leave her chamber where she had immured herself. Here she remained ten years, seeing nobody but her confessor and the girl who brought her food. Once only she emerged, and this was when her brother lay dead in the adjacent room, killed in a fight with the English. She suddenly appeared before her astonished sisters, stood for a moment in silent prayer by the body, and then vanished without uttering a word. “Such,” says her modern biographer, “was the sublimity of her virtue and the grandeur of her soul.” Not content with this domestic seclusion, she caused a cell to be made behind the altar in the newly built church of the Congregation, and here we will permit ourselves to cast a stolen glance at her through the narrow opening through which food was passed in to her. Her bed, a pile of straw which she never moved, lest it should become too soft, was so placed that her head could touch the partition, that alone separated it from the Host on the altar. Here she lay wrapped in a garment of coarse gray serge, worn, tattered, and unwashed. An old blanket, a stool, a spinning-wheel, a belt and shirt of haircloth, a scourge, and a pair of shoes made by herself of the husks of Indian-corn, appear to have formed the sum of her furniture and her wardrobe. Her employments were spinning and working embroidery for churches. She remained in this voluntary prison about twenty years; and the nun who brought her food testifies that she never omitted a mortification or a prayer, though commonly in a state of profound depression, and what her biographer calls “complete spiritual aridity.”
When her mother died, she had refused to see, her; and, long after, no prayer of her dying father could draw her from her cell. “In the person of this modest virgin,” writes her reverend eulogist, “we see, with astonishment, the love of God triumphant over earthly affection for parents, and a complete victory of faith over reason and of grace over nature.”
In 1711, Canada was threatened with an attack by the English; and she gave the nuns of the Congregation an image of the Virgin on which she had written a prayer to protect their granary from the invaders. Other persons, anxious for a similar protection,, sent her images to write upon; but she declined the request. One of the disappointed applicants then stole the inscribed image from the granary of the Congregation, intending to place it on his own when the danger drew near. The English, however, did not come, their fleet having suffered a ruinous shipwreck ascribed to the prayers of Jeanne Le Ber. “It was,” writes the Sulpitian Belmont, “the greatest miracle that ever happened since the days of Moses.” Nor was this the only miracle of which she was the occasion. She herself declared that once when she had broken her spinning-wheel, an angel came and mended it for her. Angels also assisted in her embroidery, “no doubt,” says Mother Juchereau, “taking great pleasure in the society of this angelic creature.” In the church where she had secluded herself, an image of the Virgin continued after her death to heal the lame and cure the sick. *
Though she rarely permitted herself to speak, yet some oracular utterance of the sainted recluse would now and then escape to the outer world. One of these was to the effect that teaching poor girls to read, unless they wanted to be nuns, was robbing them of their time. Nor was she far wrong, for in Canada there was very little to read except formulas of devotion and lives of saints. The dangerous innovation of a printing-press had not invaded the colony, ** and the first Canadian newspaper dates from the British conquest.
All education was controlled by priests or nuns. The ablest teachers in Canada were the Jesuits. Their college of Quebec was three years older than
* Faillon, L’Héroine chrétienne du Canada, ou Vie de Mlle.
Le Ber. This is a most elaborate and eulogistic life of the
recluse. A shorter account of her will be found in
Juchereau, Hôtel-Dieu. She died in 1714, at the age of
fifty-two.
** A printing-press was afterwards brought to Canada, but
was soon sent back again.
Harvard. We hear at an early date of public disputations by the pupils, after the pattern of those tournaments of barren logic which preceded the reign of inductive reason in Europe, and of which the archetype is to be found in the scholastic duels of the Sorbonne. The boys were sometimes permitted to act certain approved dramatic pieces of a religious character, like the Sage Visionnaire. On one occasion they were allowed to play the Cid of Corneille, which, though remarkable as a literary work, contained nothing threatening to orthodoxy. They were taught a little Latin, a little rhetoric, and a little logic; but against all that might rouse the faculties to independent action, the Canadian schools prudently closed their doors. There was then no rival population, of a different origin and a different faith, to compel competition in the race of intelligence and knowledge. The church stood sole mistress of the field. Under the old régime the real object of education in Canada was a religious and, in far less degree, a political one. The true purpose of the schools was: first, to make priests; and, secondly, to make obedient servants of the church and the king. All the rest was extraneous and of slight account. In regard to this matter, the king and the bishop were of one mind. “As I have been informed,” Louis XIV writes to Laval, “of your continued care to hold the people in their duty towards God and towards me by the good education you give or cause to be given to the young, I write this letter to express my satisfaction with conduct so salutary, and to exhort you to persevere in it.” *
The bishop did not fail to persevere. The school for boys attached to his seminary became the most important educational institution in Canada. It was regulated by thirty-four rules, “in honor of the thirty-four years which Jesus lived on earth.” The qualities commended to the boys as those which they should labor diligently to acquire were, “humility, obedience, purity, meekness, modesty, simplicity, chastity, charity, and an ardent love of Jesus and his Holy Mother.” ** Here is a goodly roll of Christian virtues. What is chiefly noticeable in it is, that truth is allowed no place. That manly but unaccommodating virtue was not, it seems, thought important in forming the mind of youth. Humility and obedience lead the list, for in unquestioning submission to the spiritual director lay the guaranty of all other merits.
We have seen already that, besides this seminary for boys, Laval established another for educating the humbler colonists. It was a sort of farm-school, though besides farming various mechanical trades were also taught in it. It was well adapted to the wants of a great majority of Canadians, whose tendencies were any thing but bookish; but here, as elsewhere, the real object was religious. It enabled the church to extend her influence over classes which the ordinary schools could not reach. Besides manual training, the pupils were taught to
* Le Roy a Laval, 9 Avril, 1667 (extract in Faillon).
** Ancien règlement du Petit Séminaire de Québec, see
Abeille VIII., no. 32.
read and write; and for a time a certain number of them received some instruction in Latin. When, in 1686, Saint-Vallier visited the school, he found in all thirty-one boys under the charge of two priests; but the number was afterwards greatly reduced, and the place served, as it still serves, chiefly as a retreat during vacations for the priests and pupils of the seminary of Quebec. A spot better suited for such a purpose cannot be conceived.
From the vast meadows of the parish of St. Joachim, that here border the St. Lawrence, there rises like an island a low flat hill, hedged round with forests like the tonsured head of a monk. It was here that Laval planted his school. Across the meadows, a mile or more distant, towers the mountain promontory of Cape Tourmente. You may climb its woody steeps, and from the top, waist-deep in blueberry-bushes, survey, from Kamouraska to Quebec, the grand Canadian world outstretched below; or mount the neighboring heights of St. Anne, where, athwart the gaunt arms of ancient pines, the river lies shimmering in summer haze, the cottages of the habitants are strung like beads of a rosary along the meadows of Beaupré, the shores of Orleans bask in warm light, and far on the horizon the rock of Quebec rests like a faint gray cloud; or traverse the forest till the roar of the torrent guides you to the rocky solitude where it holds its savage revels. High on the cliffs above, young birch-trees stand smiling in the morning sun; while in the abyss beneath the snowy waters plunge from depth to depth, and, half way down, the slender hare-bell hangs from its mossy nook, quivering in the steady thunder of the cataract. Game on the river; trout in lakes, brooks, and pools; wild fruits and flowers on meadows and mountains,—a thousand resources of honest and wholesome recreation here wait the student emancipated from books, but not parted for a moment from the pious influence that hangs about the old walls embosomed in the woods of St. Joachim. Around on plains and hills stand the dwellings of a peaceful peasantry, as different from the restless population of the neighboring states as the denizens of some Norman or Breton village.
Above all, do not fail to make your pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Anne. You may see her chapel four or five miles away, nestled under the heights of the Petit Cap. Here, when Aillebout was governor, he began with his own hands the pious work, and a habitant of Beaupré, Louis Guimont, sorely afflicted with rheumatism, came grinning with pain to lay three stones in the foundation, in honor probably of Saint Anne, Saint Joachim, and their daughter, the Virgin. Instantly he was cured. It was but the beginning of a long course of miracles continued more than two centuries, and continuing still. Their fame spread far and wide. The devotion to Saint Anne became a distinguishing feature of Canadian Catholicity, till at the present day at least thirteen parishes bear her name. But of all her shrines none can match the fame of St. Anne du Petit Cap. Crowds flocked thither on the week of her festival, and marvellous cures were wrought unceasingly, as the sticks and crutches hanging on the walls and columns still attest. Sometimes the whole shore was covered with the wigwams of Indian converts who had paddled their birch canoes from the farthest wilds of Canada. The more fervent among them would crawl on their knees from the shore to the altar. And, in our own day, every summer a far greater concourse of pilgrims, not in paint and feathers, but in cloth and millinery, and not in canoes, but in steamboats, bring their offerings and their vows to the “Bonne Sainte Anne.” *
To return to Laval’s industrial school. Judging from repeated complaints of governors and intendants of the dearth of skilled workmen, the priests in charge of it were more successful in making good Catholics than in making good masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and weavers; and the number of pupils, even if well trained, was at no time sufficient to meet the wants of the colony; ** for, though the Canadians showed an aptitude for
* For an interesting account of the shrine at the Petit
Cap, see Casgrain, Le Pélérinage de la Bonne Sainte Anne, a
little manual of devotion printed at Quebec. I chanced to
visit the old chapel in 1871, during a meeting of the parish
to consider the question of reconstructing it, as it was in
a ruinous state. Passing that way again two years after, I
found the old chapel still standing, and a new one, much
larger, half finished
** Most of them were moreover retained, after leaving the
school, by the seminary, as servants, farmers, or vassals.
La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. VI
mechanical trades, they preferred above all things the savage liberty of the backwoods.
The education of girls was in the hands of the Ursulines and the nuns of the Congregation, of whom the former, besides careful instruction in religious duties, taught their pupils “all that a girl ought to know.” * This meant exceedingly little besides the manual arts suited to their sex; and, in the case of the nuns of the Congregation, who taught girls of the poorer class, it meant still less. It was on nuns as well as on priests that the charge fell, not only of spiritual and mental, but also of industrial, training. Thus we find the king giving to a sisterhood of Montreal a thousand francs to buy wool, and a thousand more for teaching girls to knit. ** The king also maintained a teacher of navigation and surveying at Quebec on the modest salary of four hundred francs.
During the eighteenth century, some improvement is perceptible in the mental status of the population. As it became more numerous and more stable, it also became less ignorant; and the Canadian habitant, towards the end of the French rule, was probably better taught, so far as concerned religion, than the mass of French peasants. Yet secular instruction was still extremely meagre, even in the noblesse. “In spite of this defective education,” says the famous navigator, Bougainville, who knew the colony well in its last years, “the
* A lire, à écrire, les prières, les mœurs chrétiennes, et
tout ce qu'une fille doit savoir. Marie de l'Incarnation,
Lettre du 9 Août, 1668.
** Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1686.
Canadians are naturally intelligent. They do not know how to write, but they speak with ease and with an accent as good as the Parisian.” * He means, of course, the better class. “Even the children of officers and gentlemen,” says another writer, “scarcely know how to read and write; they are ignorant of the first elements of geography and history.” ** And evidence like this might be extended.
When France was heaving with the throes that prepared the Revolution; when new hopes, new dreams, new thoughts,—good and evil, false and true,—tossed the troubled waters of French society, Canada caught something of its social corruption, but not the faintest impulsion of its roused mental life. The torrent surged on its way; while, in the deep nook beside it, the sticks and dry leaves floated their usual round, and the unruffled pool slept in the placidity of intellectual torpor. ***
* Bougainville, Mémoire de 1757 (see Margry, Relations
inédites).
** Mémoire de 1736; Detail de toute la Colonie (published
by Hist. Soc. of Quebec).
*** Several Frenchmen of a certain intellectual eminence
made their abode in Canada from time to time. The chief
among them are the Jesuit Lafitau, author of Mœurs des
Sauvages Américains; the Jesuit Charlevoix, traveller and
historian; the physician Sarrazin; and the Marquis de la
Galisonnière, the most enlightened of the French governors
of Canada. Sarrazin, a naturalist as well as a physician,
has left his name to the botanical genus Sarracenia, of
which the curious American species, S. purpurea, the
“pitcher-plant,” was described by him. His position in the
colony was singular and characteristic. He got little or no
pay from his patients; and, though at one time the only
genuine physician in Canada (Callieres et Beauharnois au
Ministre, 3 Nov., 1702), he was dependent on the king for
support. In 1699, we find him thanking his Majesty for 300
francs a year, and asking at the same time for more, as he
has nothing else to live on. ( Callères et Champigny au
Ministre, 20 Oct., 1699.) Two years later the governor
writes that, as he serves almost everybody without fees, he
ought to have another 300 francs. (Ibid., 5 Oct., 1701.) The
additional 300 francs was given him; but, finding it
insufficient, he wanted to leave the colony. “He is too
useful,” writes the governor again: “we cannot let him go.”
His yearly pittance of 600 francs, French money, was at one
time re-enforced by his salary as member of the Superior
Council. He died at Quebec in 1734.
Social Influence of the Troops.—A Petty Tyrant.—Brawls.—Violence and Outlawry.—State of the Population.—Views of Denonville.—Brandy.—Beggary.—The Past and the Present.—Inns.—State of Quebec.—Fires.—The Country Parishes.—Slavery.—Views of La Hontan.—Of Hocquart.—Of Bougainville.—Of Kalm.—Of Charlevoix.
The mission period of Canada, or the period anterior to the year 1663, when the king took the colony in charge, has a character of its own. The whole population did not exceed that of a large French village. Its extreme poverty, the constant danger that surrounded it, and, above all, the contagious zeal of the missionaries, saved it from many vices, and inspired it with an extraordinary religious fervor. Without doubt an ideal picture has been drawn of this early epoch. Trade as well as propagandism was the business of the colony, and the colonists were far from being all in a state of grace; yet it is certain that zeal was higher, devotion more constant, and popular morals more pure, than at any later period of the French rule.
The intervention of the king wrought a change. The annual shipments of emigrants made by him were, in the most favorable view, of a very mixed character, and the portion which Mother Mary calls canaille was but too conspicuous. Along with them came a regiment of soldiers fresh from the license of camps and the excitements of Turkish wars, accustomed to obey their officers and to obey nothing else, and more ready to wear the scapulary of the Virgin in campaigns against the Mohawks than to square their lives by the rules of Christian ethics. “Our good king,” writes Sister Morin, of Montreal, “has sent troops to defend us from the Iroquois, and the soldiers and officers have ruined the Lord’s vineyard, and planted wickedness and sin and crime in our soil of Canada.” * Few, indeed, among the officers followed the example of one of their number, Paul Dupuy, who, in his settlement of Isle aux Oies, below Quebec, lived, it is said, like a saint, and on Sundays and fête days exhorted his servants and habitans with such unction that their eyes filled with tears. ** Nor, let us hope, were there many imitators of Major La Fredière, who, with a company of the regiment, was sent to garrison Montreal, where he ruled with absolute sway over settlers and soldiers alike. His countenance naturally repulsive was made more so by the loss of an eye; yet he was irrepressible in gallantry, and women and girls fled in terror from the military Polyphemus. The men, too, feared and hated him, not without reason. One morning a settler named Demers was hoeing his field, when
* Annales de l'Hôtel-Dieu St Joseph, cited by Faillon.
** Juchereau, Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 511
he saw a sportsman gun in hand striding through his half-grown wheat. “Steady there, steady," he shouted in a tone of remonstrance; but the sportsman gave no heed. “Why do you spoil a poor man’s wheat?” cried the outraged cultivator. “If I knew who you were, I would go and complain of you.” “Whom would you complain to?” demanded the sportsman, who then proceeded to walk back into the middle of the wheat, and called out to Demers, “You are a rascal, and I’ll thrash you.” “Look at home for rascals,” retorted Demers, “and keep your thrashing for your dogs.” The sportsman came towards him in a rage to execute his threat. Demers picked up his gun, which, after the custom of the time, he had brought to the field with him, and, advancing to meet his adversary, recognized La Fredière, the commandant. On this he ran off. La Fredière sent soldiers to arrest him, threw him into prison, put him in irons, and the next day mounted him on the wooden horse, with a weight of sixty pounds tied to each foot. He repeated the torture a day or two after, and then let his victim go, saying, “If I could have caught you when I was in your wheat, I would have beaten you well.”
The commandant next turned his quarters into a dram-shop for Indians, to whom he sold brandy in large quantities, but so diluted that his customers, finding themselves partially defrauded of their right of intoxication, complained grievously. About this time the intendant Talon made one of his domiciliary visits to Montreal, and when, in his character of father of the people, he inquired if they had any complaints to make, every tongue was loud in accusation against La Fredière. Talon caused full depositions to be made out from the statements of Demers and other witnesses. Copies were deposited in the hands of the notary, and it is from these that the above story is drawn. The tyrant was removed, and ordered home to France. *
Many other officers embarked in the profitable trade of selling brandy to Indians, and several garrison posts became centres of disorder. Others, of the regiment became notorious brawlers. A lieutenant of the garrison of Montreal named Carion, and an ensign named Morel, had for some reason conceived a violent grudge against another ensign named Lormeau. On Pentecost day, just after vespers, Lormeau was walking by the river with his wife. They had passed the common and the seminary wall, and were in front of the house of the younger Charles Le Moyne, when they saw Carion coming towards them. He stopped before Lormeau, looked him full in the face, and exclaimed, “Coward.” “Coward yourself,” returned Lormeau; “take yourself off.” Carion drew his sword, and Lormeau followed his example. They exchanged a few passes; then closed, and fell to the ground grappled together. Lormeau’s wig fell off; and Carion, getting the uppermost, hammered his bare head with the hilt of his sword. Lormeau’s
* Information contre La Fredière. See Faillon, Colonie
Française, III. 886. The dialogue, as here given from the
depositions, is translated as closely as possible.See
Faillon, Colonie Française, III.
wife, in a frenzy of terror, screamed murder. One of the neighbors, Monsieur Belêtre, was at table with Charles Le Moyne and a Rochelle merchant named Baston. He ran out with his two guests, and they tried to separate the combatants, who still lay on the ground foaming like a pair of enraged bull-dogs. All their efforts were useless. “Very well,” said Le Moyne in disgust, “if you won’t let go, then kill each other if you like.” A former military servant of Carion now ran up, and began to brandish his sword in behalf of his late master. Carion’s comrade, Morel, also arrived, and, regardless of the angry protest of Le Moyne, stabbed repeatedly at Lormeau as he lay. Lormeau had received two or three wounds in the hand and arm with which he parried the thrusts, and was besides severely mauled by the sword-hilt of Carion, when two Sulpitian priests, drawn by the noise, appeared on the scene. One was Fremont, the curé; the other was Dollier de Casson. That herculean father, whose past soldier life had made him at home in a fray, and who cared nothing for drawn swords, set himself at once to restore peace, upon which, whether from the strength of his arm, or the mere effect of his presence, the two champions released their gripe on each other’s throats, rose, sheathed their weapons, and left the field. *
Montreal, a frontier town at the head of the
* Requête de Lormeau a M. d'Aillebout. Dépositions de MM.
de Longueuïl (Le Moyne), de Baston, de Belêtre, et autres.
Cited by Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 393.
colony, was the natural resort of desperadoes, offering, as we have seen, a singular contrast between the rigor of its clerical seigniors and the riotous license of the lawless crew which infested it. Dollier de Casson tells the story of an outlaw who broke prison ten or twelve times, and whom no walls, locks, or fetters could hold. “A few months ago,” he says, “he was caught again, and put into the keeping of six or seven men, each with a good gun. They stacked their arms to play a game of cards, which their prisoner saw fit to interrupt to play a game of his own. He made a jump at the guns, took them under his arm like so many feathers, aimed at these fellows with one of them, swearing that he would kill the first who came near him, and so, falling back step by step, at last bade them good-by, and carried off all their guns. Since then he has not been caught, and is roaming the woods. Very likely he will become chief of our banditti, and make great trouble in the country when it pleases him to come back from the Dutch settlements, whither they say he is gone along with another rascal, and a French woman so depraved that she is said to have given or sold two of her children to the Indians.” *
When the governor, La Barre, visited Montreal, he found there some two hundred reprobates gambling, drinking, and stealing. If hard pressed by justice, they had only to cross the river and place themselves beyond the seigniorial jurisdiction. The military settlements of the Richelieu
* Dollier de Casson, Histoire de Montréal, 1671, 72
were in a condition somewhat similar, and La Barre complains of a prevailing spirit of disobedience and lawlessness. * The most orderly and thrifty part of Canada appears to have been at this time the cote of Beaupré, belonging to the seminary of Quebec. Here the settlers had religious instruction from their curés, and industrial instruction also if they wanted it. Domestic spinning and weaving were practised at Beaupré sooner than in any other part of the colony.
When it is remembered that a population which in La Barre’s time did not exceed ten thousand, and which forty years later did not much exceed twice that number, was scattered along both sides of a great river for three hundred miles or more; that a large part of this population was in isolated groups of two, three, five, ten, or twenty houses at the edge of a savage wilderness; that between them there was little communication except by canoes; that the settlers were disbanded soldiers, or others whose fives had been equally adverse to habits of reflection or self-control; that they rarely saw a priest, and that a government omnipotent in name had not arms long enough to reach them,—we may listen without surprise to the lamentations of order-loving officials over the unruly condition of a great part of the colony. One accuses the seigniors, who, he says, being often of low extraction, cannot keep their vassals in order. ** Another dwells sorrowfully on the “terrible dispersion” of
* La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683.
** Catalogne, Mémoire addressé au Ministre, 1712
the settlements where the inhabitants "live in a savage independence.” But it is better that each should speak for himself, and among the rest let us hear the pious Denonville.
“This, monseigneur, seems to me the place for rendering you an account of the disorders which prevail not only in the woods, but also in the settlements. They arise from the idleness of young persons, and the great liberty which fathers, mothers, and guardians have for a long time given them, or allowed them to assume, of going into the forest under pretence of hunting or trading. This has come to such a pass, that, from the moment a boy can carry a gun, the father cannot restrain him and dares not offend him. You can judge the mischief that follows. These disorders are always greatest in the families of those who are gentilshommes, or who through laziness or vanity pass themselves off as such. Having no resource but hunting, they must spend their lives in the woods, where they have no curés to trouble them, and no fathers or guardians to constrain them. I think, monseigneur, that martial law would suit their case better than any judicial sentence.
“Monsieur de la Barre suppressed a certain order of knighthood which had sprung up here, but he did not abolish the usages belonging to it. It was thought a fine thing and a good joke to go about naked and tricked out like Indians, not only on carnival days, but on all other days of feasting and debauchery. These practices tend to encourage the disposition of our young men to live like sav ages, frequent their company, and be for ever unruly and lawless like them. I; cannot tell you, monseigneur, how attractive this Indian life is to all our youth. It consists in doing nothing, caring for nothing, following every inclination, and getting out of the way of all correction.” He goes on to say that the mission villages governed by the Jesuits and Sulpitians are models of good order, and that drunkards are never seen there except when they come from the neighboring French settlements; but that the other Indians who roam at large about the colony, do prodigious mischief, because the children of the seigniors not only copy their way of life, but also run off with their women into the woods. *
“Nothing,” he continues, “can be finer or better conceived than the regulations framed for the government of this country; but nothing, I assure you, is so ill observed as regards both the fur trade and the general discipline of the colony. One great evil is the infinite number of drinking-shops, which makes it almost impossible to remedy the disorders resulting from them. All the rascals and idlers of the country are attracted into this business of tavern-keeping. They never dream of tilling the soil; but, on the contrary, they deter the other inhabitants from it, and end with ruining
* Raudot, who was intendant early in the eighteenth
century, is a little less gloomy in his coloring, but says
that Canadian children were without discipline or education,
had no respect for parents or cure's, and owned no
superiors. This, he thinks, is owing to “la folle tendresse
des parents qui les empêche de les corriger et de leur
former le caractère qu’ils ont dur et féroce.”
them. I know seigniories where there are but twenty houses, and moire than half of them dram shops. At Three Rivers there are twenty-five houses, and liquor may be had at eighteen or twenty of them. Villemarie (Montreal) and Quebec are on the same footing.”
The governor next dwells on the necessity of finding occupation for children and youths, a matter which he regards as of the last importance. "It is sad to see the ignorance of the population at a distance from the abodes of the curés, who are put to the greatest trouble to remedy the evil by travelling from place to place through the parishes in their charge.” *
La Barre, Champigny, and Duchesneau write in a similar strain. Bishop Saint-Vallier, in an epistolary journal which he printed of a tour through the colony made on his first arrival, gives a favorable account of the disposition of the people, especially as regards religion. He afterwards changed his views. An abstract made from his letters for the use of the king states that he "represents, like M. Denonville, that the Canadian youth are for the most part wholly demoralized.” **
"The bishop was very sorry,” says a correspondent of the minister at Quebec, "to have so much exaggerated in the letter he printed at Paris the morality of the people here.” *** He preached a sermon on the sins of the inhabitants and issued a pastoral mandate, in which he says, "Before we
* Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov. 1685.
** N. Y. Colonial Documents, IX. 278.
*** Ibid., IX. 388.
knew our flock we thought that the English and the Iroquois were the only wolves we had to fear; but God having opened our eyes to the disorders of this diocese, and made us feel more than ever the weight of our charge, we are forced to confess that our most dangerous foes are drunkenness, luxury, impurity, and slander.” *
Drunkenness was at this time the most destructive vice in the colony. One writer declares that most of the Canadians drink so much brandy in the morning, that they are unfit for work all day. ** Another says that a canoe-man when he is tired will lift a keg of brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor from the bung-hole, after which, having spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed supperless; and that, what with drink and hardship, he is an old man at forty. Nevertheless the race did not deteriorate. The prevalence of early marriages, and the birth of numerous offspring before the vigor of the father had been wasted, ensured the strength and hardihood which characterized the Canadians. As Denonville describes them so they long remained. “The Canadians are tall, well-made, and well set on their legs (bienplantés sur leurs jambes), robust, vigorous, and accustomed in time of need to live on little. They have intelligence and vivacity, but are wayward, light-minded, and inclined to debauchery.”
As the population increased, as the rage for
* Ordonnance contre les vices de l’ivrognerie, luxe, et
impureté, 31 Oct., 1690.
** N Y. Colonial Documents. IX. 398.
bush-ranging began to abate, and, above all, as the curés multiplied, a change took place for the better. More churches were built, the charge of each priest was reduced within reasonable bounds, and a greater proportion of the inhabitants remained on their farms. They were better watched, controlled, and taught, by the church. The ecclesiastical power, wherever it had a hold, was exercised, as we have seen, with an undue rigor, yet it was the chief guardian of good morals; and the colony grew more orderly and more temperate as the church gathered more and more of its wild and wandering flock fairly within its fold. In this, however, its success was but relative. It is true that in 1715 a well-informed writer says that the people were “perfectly instructed in religion;” * but at that time the statement was only partially true.
During the seventeenth century, and some time after its close, Canada swarmed with beggars, a singular feature in a new country where a good farm could be had for the asking. In countries intensely Roman Catholic begging is not regarded as an unmixed evil, being supposed to promote two cardinal virtues,—charity in the giver and humility in the receiver. The Canadian officials nevertheless tried to restrain it. Vagabonds of both sexes were ordered to leave Quebec, and nobody was allowed to beg without a certificate of poverty from the curé or the local judge. ** These orders were not
* Mémoire addressé au Regent.
** Réglement de Police, 1676.
always observed. Bishop Saint-Vallier writes that he is overwhelmed by beggars, * and the intendant echoes his complaint. Almshouses were established at Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec; ** and when Saint-Vallier founded the General Hospital, its chief purpose was to serve, not as a hospital in the ordinary sense of the word, but as a house of refuge, after the plan of the General Hospital of Paris. *** Appeal, as usual, was made to the king. Denonville asks his aid for two destitute families, and says that many others need it. Louis XIV. did not fail to respond, and from time to time he sent considerable sums for the relief of the Canadian poor. ****
Denonville says, “The principal reason of the poverty of this country is the idleness and bad conduct of most of the people. The greater part of the women, including all the demoiselles, are very lazy.” (v) Meules proposes as a remedy that the king should establish a general workshop in the colony, and pay the workmen himself during the first five or six years. (v*) “The persons here,” he says, “who have wished to make a figure are nearly all so overwhelmed with debt that they may be
* N. Y. Colonial Documents, IX. 279.
** Edits et Ordonnances, II. 119.
*** On the General Hospital of Quebec, see Juchereau, 355.
In 1692, the minister writes to Frontenac and Champigny that
they should consider well whether this house of refuge will
not “augmenter la fainéantise parmi les habitans,” by giving
them a sure support in poverty.
**** As late as 1701, six thousand livres were granted
Callieres au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1701.
(v) Denonville et Champigny au Ministre, 6 Nov,, 1687.
(v*) Meules au Ministre, 12 Nov., 1682.
considered as in the last necessity.” * He adds that many of the people go half-naked even in winter. “The merchants of this country,” says the intendant Duchesneau, “are all plunged in poverty, except five or six at the most; it is the same with the artisans, except a small number, because the vanity of the women and the debauchery of the men consume all their gains. As for such of the laboring class as apply themselves steadily to cultivating the soil, they not only live very well, but are incomparably better off than the better sort of peasants in France.” **
All the writers lament the extravagant habits of the people; and even La Hontan joins hands with the priests in wishing that the supply of ribbons, laces, brocades, jewelry, and the like, might be cut off: by act of law. Mother Juchereau tells us that, when the English invasion was impending, the belles of Canada were scared for a while into modesty in order to gain the favor of heaven; but, as may be imagined, the effect was short, and Father La Tour declares that in his time all the fashions except rouge came over regularly in the annual ships.
The manners of the mission period, on the other hand, were extremely simple. The old governor, Lauzon, lived on pease and bacon like a laborer, and kept no man-servant. He was regarded, it is true, as a miser, and held in slight account. *** Magdeleine Boucher, sister of the governor of Three Rivers,
* Meules, Mémoire touchant le Canada et l’Acadie, 1684.
** Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.
*** Mémoire d’Aubert de la Chesnaye, 1676
brought her husband two hundred francs in money, four sheets, two table-cloths, six napkins of linen and hemp, a mattress, a blanket, two dishes, six spoons and six tin plates, a pot and a kettle, a table and two benches, a kneading-trough, a chest with lock and key, a cow, and a pair of hogs. * But the Bouchers were a family of distinction, and the bride’s dowry answered to her station. By another marriage contract, at about the same time, the parents of the bride, being of humble degree, bind themselves to present the bridegroom with a barrel of bacon, deliverable on the arrival of the ships from France. **
Some curious traits of this early day appear in the license of Jean Boisdon as innkeeper. He is required to establish himself on the great square of Quebec, close to the church, so that the parishioners may conveniently warm and refresh themselves between the services; but he is forbidden to entertain anybody during high mass, sermon, catechism, or vespers. *** Matters soon changed; Jean Boisdon lost his monopoly, and inns sprang up on all hands. They did not want for patrons, and we find some of their proprietors mentioned as among the few thriving men in Canada. Talon tried to regulate them, and, among other rules, ordained that no innkeeper should furnish food or drink to any hired laborer whatever, or to any
* Contrat de marriage, cited by Ferland, Notes, 73.
** Contrat de marriage, cited by Benjamin Suite in Revue
Canadienne, IX. 111.
*** Acte officielle, 1648, cited by Ferland. Cours
d’Histoire du Canada, I. 865.
person residing in the place where his inn was situated. An innkeeper of Montreal was fined for allowing the syndic of the town to dine under his roof. *
One gets glimpses of the pristine state of Quebec through the early police regulations. Each inhabitant was required to make a gutter along the middle of the street before his house, and also to remove refuse and throw it into the river. All dogs, without exception, were ordered home at nine o’clock. On Tuesdays and Fridays there was a market in the public square, whither the neighboring habitants, male and female, brought their produce for sale, as they still continue to do. Smoking in the street was forbidden, as a precaution against fire; householders were required to provide themselves with ladders, and when the fire alarm was rung all able-bodied persons were obliged to run to the scene of danger with buckets or kettles full of water. ** This did not prevent the Lower Town from burning to the ground in 1682. It was soon rebuilt, but a repetition of the catastrophe seemed very likely. “This place,” says Denonville, “is in a fearful state as regards fire; for the houses are crowded together out of all reason, and so surrounded with piles of cord-wood that it is pitiful to see.” *** Add to this the stores of hay for the cows kept by many of the inhabitants for the benefit of their swarming progeny.
* Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 405.
** Réglement de Police, 1672. Ibid., 1676.
*** Denonville au Ministre, 20 Août, 1686
The houses were at this time low, compact buildings, with gables of masonry, as required by law; but many had wooden fronts, and all had roofs covered with cedar shingles. The anxious governor begs that, as the town has not a sou of revenue, his Majesty will be pleased to make it the gift of two hundred crowns’ worth of leather fire-buckets. * Six or seven years after, certain citizens were authorized by the council to import from France, at their own cost, “a pump after the Dutch fashion, for throwing water on houses in case of fire.” ** How a fire was managed at Quebec appears from a letter of the engineer, Yasseur, describing the burning of Laval’s seminary in 1701. Vasseur was then at Quebec, directing the new fortifications. On a Monday in November, all the pupils of the seminary and most of the priests went, according to their weekly custom, to recreate themselves at a house and garden at St. Michel, a short distance from town. The few priests who remained went after dinner to say vespers at the church. Only one, Father Petit, was left in the seminary, and he presently repaired to the great hall to rekindle the fire in the stove and warm the place against the return of his brethren. His success surpassed his wishes. A firebrand snapped out in his absence and set the pine floor in a blaze. Father Boucher, curé of Point Levi, chanced to come in, and was half choked by the smoke. He cried fire! the servants
* Denonville au Ministre, 20 Août, 1685.
** Réglement de 1691, extract in Ferland.
ran for water; but the flames soon mastered them; they screamed the alarm, and the bells began to ring. Vasseur was dining with the intendant at his palace by the St. Charles, when he heard a frightened voice crying out, “Monsieur, you are wanted; you are wanted.” He sprang from table, saw the smoke rolling in volumes from the top of the rock, ran up the steep ascent, reached the seminary, and found an excited crowd making a prodigious outcry. He shouted for carpenters. Four men came to him, and he set them at work with such tools as they had to tear away planks and beams, and prevent the fire from spreading to the adjacent parts of the building; but, when he went to find others to help them, they ran off. He set new men in their place, and these too ran off the moment his back was turned. A cry was raised that the building was to be blown up, on which the crowd scattered for their lives. Vasseur now gave up the seminary for lost, and thought only of cutting off the fire from the rear of the church, which was not far distant. In this he succeeded, by tearing down an intervening wing or gallery. The walls of the burning building were of massive stone, and by seven o’clock the fire had spent itself. We hear nothing of the Dutch pump, nor does it appear that the soldiers of the garrison made any effort to keep order. Under cover of the confusion, property was stolen from the seminary to the amount of about two thousand livres, which is remarkable, considering the religious character of the building, and the supposed piety of the people. “There were more than three hundred persons at the fire," says Yasseur; “but thirty picked men would have been worth more than the whole of them.” *
August, September, and October were the busy months at Quebec. Then the ships from France discharged their lading, the shops and warehouses of the Lower Town were filled with goods, and the habitants came to town to make their purchases. When the frosts began, the vessels sailed away, the harbor was deserted, the streets were silent again, and like ants or squirrels the people set at work to lay in their winter stores. Fathers of families packed their cellars with beets, carrots, potatoes, and cabbages; and, at the end of autumn, with meat, fowls, game, fish, and eels, all frozen to stony hardness. Most of the shops closed, and the long season of leisure and amusement began. New Year’s day brought visits and mutual gifts. Thence till Lent dinner parties were frequent, sometimes familiar and sometimes ceremonious. The governor’s little court at the chateau was a standing example to all the aspiring spirits of Quebec, and forms and orders of precedence were in some houses punctiliously observed. There were dinners to the military and civic dignitaries and their wives, and others, quite distinct, to prominent citizens. The wives and daughters of the burghers of Quebec are said to have been superior in manners to women of the corresponding
* Vasseur au Ministre, 2-4 Nov., 1701. Like Denonville
before him, he urges the need of fire-buckets.
class in France. “They have wit,” says La Potherie, “delicacy, good voices, and a great fondness for dancing. They are discreet, and not much given to flirting; but when they undertake to catch a lover it is not easy for him to escape the bands of Hymen.” *
So much for the town. In the country parishes, there was the same autumnal stowing away of frozen vegetables, meat, fish, and eels, and unfortunately the same surfeit of leisure through five months of the year. During the seventeenth century, many of the people were so poor that women were forced to keep at home from sheer want of winter clothing. Nothing, however, could prevent their running from house to house to exchange gossip with the neighbors, who all knew each other, and, having nothing else to do, discussed each other’s affairs with an industry which often bred bitter quarrels. At a later period, a more general introduction of family weaving and spinning served at once to furnish clothing and to promote domestic peace.
The most important persons in a parish were the curé, the seignior, and the militia captain. The seignior had his bench of honor in the church. Immediately behind it was the bench of the militia captain, whose duty it was to drill the able-bodied men of the neighborhood, direct road-making and other public works, and serve as deputy to the intendant, whose ordinances he was required to enforce. Next in honor came the local judge any there was, and the church-wardens.
* La Potherie. I. 279.
The existence of slavery in Canada dates from the end of the seventeenth century. In 1688, the attorney-general made a visit to Paris, and urged upon the king the expediency of importing negroes from the West Indies as a remedy for the scarcity and dearness of labor. The king consented, but advised caution, on the ground that the rigor of the climate would make the venture a critical one. * A number of slaves were brought into the colony; but the system never flourished, the climate and other circumstances being hostile to it. Many of the colonists, especially at Detroit and other outlying posts, owned slaves of a remote Indian tribe, the Pawnees. The fact is remarkable, since it would be difficult to find another of the wild tribes of the continent capable of subjection to domestic servitude. The Pawnee slaves were captives taken in war and sold at low prices to the Canadians. Their market value was much impaired by their propensity to run off.
It is curious to observe the views of the Canadians taken at different times by different writers. La Hontan says, “They are vigorous, enterprising, and indefatigable, and need nothing but education. They are presumptuous and full of self-conceit, regard themselves as above all the nations of the earth, and, unfortunately, have not the veneration for their parents that they ought to have. The women are generally pretty; few of them are
* Instruction au Sr. de Frontenac, 1689. On Canadian
slavery, see a long paper, l'Esclavage en Canada, published
by the Historical Society of Montreal.
brunettes; many of them are discreet, and a good number are lazy. They are fond to the last degree of dress and show, and each tries to outdo the rest in the art of catching a husband.” *
Fifty years later, the intendant Hocquart writes, “The Canadians are fond of distinctions and attentions, plume themselves on their courage, and are extremely sensitive to slights or the smallest corrections. They are self-interested, vindictive, prone to drunkenness, use a great deal of brandy, and pass for not being at all truthful. This portrait is true of many of them, particularly the country people: those of the towns are less vicious. They are all attached to religion, and criminals are rare. They are volatile, and think too well of themselves, which prevents their succeeding as they might in farming and trade. They have not the rude and rustic air of our French peasants. If they are put on their honor and governed with justice, they are tractable enough; but their natural disposition is indocile.” *
The navigator Bougainville, in the last years of the French rule, describes the Canadian habitant as essentially superior to the French peasant, and adds, “He is loud, boastful, mendacious, obliging, civil, and honest; indefatigable in hunting, travelling, and bush-ranging, but lazy in tilling the soil.” ***
The Swedish botanist, Kalm, an excellent observer, was in Canada a few years before Bougainville,
* La Hontan, II. 81 (ed. 1709).
** Mémoire de 1736.
*** Mémoire de 1757, printed in Margry, Relations Inédites.
and sketches from life the following traits of Canadian manners. The language is chat of the old English translation. “The men here (at Montreal) are extremely civil, and take their hats off to every person indifferently whom they meet in the streets. The women in general are handsome; they are well bred and virtuous, with an innocent and becoming freedom. They dress out very fine on Sundays, and though on the other days they do not take much pains with the other parts of their dress, yet they are very fond of adorning their heads, the hair of which is always curled and powdered and ornamented with glittering bodkins and aigrettes. They are not averse to taking part in all the business of housekeeping, and I have with pleasure seen the daughters of the better sort of people, and of the governor (of Montreal) himself, not too finely dressed, and going into kitchens and cellars to look that every thing be done as it ought. What I have mentioned above of their dressing their heads too assiduously is the case with all the ladies throughout Canada. Their hair is always curled even when they are at home in a dirty jacket, and short coarse petticoat that does not reach to the middle of their legs. On those days when they pay or receive visits they dress so gayly that one is almost induced to think their parents possess the greatest honors in the state. They are no less attentive to have the newest fashions, and they laugh at each other when they are not dressed to each other’s fancy. One of the first questions they propose to a stranger is, whether he is married; the next, how he likes the ladies of the country, and whether he thinks them handsomer than those of his own country; and the third, whether he will take one home with him. The behavior of the ladies seemed to me somewhat too free at Quebec, and of a more becoming modesty at Montreal. Those of Quebec are not very industrious. The young ladies, especially those of a higher rank, get up at seven and dress till nine, drinking their coffee at the same time. When they are dressed, they place themselves near a window that opens into the street, take up some needlework and sew a stitch now and then, but turn their eyes into the street most of the time. When a young fellow comes in, whether they are acquainted with him or not, they immediately lay aside their work, sit down by him, and begin to chat, laugh, joke, and invent double-entendres, and this is reckoned being very witty. In this manner they frequently pass the whole day, leaving their mothers to do the business of the house. They are likewise cheerful and content, and nobody can say that they want either wit or charms. Their fault is that they think too well of themselves. However, the daughters of people of all ranks without exception go to market and carry home what they have bought. The girls at Montreal are very much displeased that those at Quebec get husbands sooner than they. The reason of this is that many young gentlemen who come over from France with the ships are captivated by the ladies at Quebec and marry them; but, as these gentlemen seldom go up to Montreal, the girls there are not often so happy as those of the former place." *
Long before Kalm’s visit, the Jesuit Charlevoix, a traveller and a man of the world, wrote thus of Quebec in a letter to the Duchesse de Lesdiguières: “There is a select little society here which wants nothing to make it agreeable. In the salons of the wives of the governor and of the intendant, one finds circles as brilliant as in other countries.” These circles were formed partly of the principal inhabitants, but chiefly of military officers and government officials, with their families. Charlevoix continues, “Everybody does his part to make the time pass pleasantly, with games and parties of pleasure; drives and canoe excursions in summer, sleighing and skating in winter. There is a great deal of hunting and shooting, for many Canadian gentlemen are almost destitute of any other means of living at their ease. The news of the day amounts to very little indeed, as the country furnishes scarcely any, while that from Europe comes all at once. Science and the fine arts have their turn, and conversation does not fail. The Canadians breathe from their birth an air of liberty, which makes them very pleasant in the intercourse of life, and our language is nowhere more purely spoken. One finds here no rich persons whatever, and this is a great pity; for the Canadians like to get the credit of their money, and scarcely anybody
* Kalm, Travels into North America, translated into English
by John Reinold Forster (London, 1771), 56, 282, etc.
amuses himself with hoarding it. They say it is very different with our neighbors the English, and one who knew the two colonies only by the way of living, acting, and speaking of the colonists would not hesitate to judge ours the more flourishing. In New England and the other British colonies, there reigns an opulence by which the people seem not to know how to profit; while in New France poverty is hidden under an air of ease which appears entirely natural. The English colonist keeps as much and spends as little as possible: the French colonist enjoys what he has got, and often makes a display of what he has not got. The one labors for his heirs: the other leaves them to get on as they can, like himself. I could push the comparison farther; but I must close here: the king’s ship is about to sail, and the merchant vessels are getting ready to follow. In three days perhaps, not one will be left in the harbor.” * And now we, too, will leave Canada. Winter draws near, and the first patch of snow lies gleaming on the distant mountain of Cape Tourmente. The sun has set in chill autumnal beauty, and the sharp spires of fir-trees on the heights of Sillery stand stiff and black against the pure cold amber of the fading west. The ship sails in the morning; and, before the old towers of Rochelle rise in sight, there will be time to smoke many a pipe, and ponder what we have seen on the banks of the St Lawrence.
* Charlevoix. Journal Historique 80 (ed. 1744).
Formation op Canadian Character.—The Rival Colonies.—England and France.—New England.—Characteristics op Race.—Military Qualities.—The Church.—The English Conquest.
Not institutions alone, but geographical position, climate, and many other conditions unite to form the educational influences that, acting through successive generations, shape the character of nations and communities.
It is easy to see the nature of the education, past and present, which wrought on the Canadians and made them what they were. An ignorant population, sprung from a brave and active race, but trained to subjection and dependence through centuries of feudal and monarchical despotism, was planted in the wilderness by the hand of authority, and told to grow and flourish. Artificial stimulants were applied, but freedom was withheld. Perpetual intervention of government, regulations, restrictions, encouragements sometimes more mischievous than restrictions, a constant uncertainty what the authorities would do next, the fate of each man resting less with himself than with another, volition enfeebled, self-reliance paralyzed,—the condition, in short, of a child held always under the rule of a father, in the main well-meaning and kind, sometimes generous, sometimes neglectful, often capricious, and rarely very wise,—such were the influences under which Canada grew up. If she had prospered, it would have been sheer miracle. A man, to be a man, must feel that he holds his fate, in some good measure, in his own hands.
But this was not all. Against absolute authority there was a counter influence, rudely and wildly antagonistic. Canada was at the very portal of the great interior wilderness. The St. Lawrence and the Lakes were the highway to that domain of savage freedom; and thither the disfranchised, half-starved seignior, and the discouraged habitant who could find no market for his produce, naturally enough betook themselves. Their lesson of savagery was well learned, and for many a year a boundless license and a stiff-handed authority battled for the control of Canada. Nor, to the last, were church and state fairly masters of the field. The French rule was drawing towards its close when the intendant complained that though twenty-eight companies of regular troops were quartered in the colony, there were not soldiers enough to keep the people in order. * One cannot but remember that in a neighboring colony, far more populous, perfect order prevailed, with no other
* Mémoire de 1736 (printed by the Historical Society of
Quebec).
guardians than a few constables chosen by the people themselves.
Whence arose this difference, and other differences equally striking, between the rival colonies? It is easy to ascribe them to a difference of political and religious institutions; but the explanation does not cover the ground. The institutions of New England were utterly inapplicable to the population of New France, and the attempt to apply them would have wrought nothing but mischief. There are no political panaceas, except in the imagination of political quacks. To each degree and each variety of public development there are corresponding institutions, best answering the public needs; and what is meat to one is poison to another. Freedom is for those who are fit for it. The rest will lose it, or turn it to corruption. Church and state were right in exercising authority over a people which had not learned the first rudiments of self-government. Their fault was not that they exercised authority, but that they exercised too much of it, and, instead of weaning the child to go alone, kept him in perpetual leading-strings, making him, if possible, more and more dependent, and less and less fit for freedom.
In the building up of colonies, England succeeded and France failed. The cause lies chiefly in the vast advantage drawn by England from the historical training of her people in habits of reflection, forecast, industry, and self-reliance,—a training which enabled them to adopt and maintain an invigorating system of self-rule, totally inapplicable to their rivals.
The New England colonists were far less fugitives from oppression than voluntary exiles seeking the realization of an idea. They were neither peasants nor soldiers, but a substantial Puritan yeomanry, led by Puritan gentlemen and divines in thorough sympathy with them. They were neither sent out by the king, governed by him, nor helped by him. They grew up in utter neglect, and continued neglect was the only boon they asked. Till their increasing strength roused the jealousy of the Crown, they were virtually independent; a republic, but by no means a democracy. They chose their governor and all their rulers from among themselves, made their own government and paid for it, supported their own clergy, defended themselves, and educated themselves. Under the hard and repellent surface of New England society lay the true foundations of a stable freedom,—conscience, reflection, faith, patience, and public spirit. The cement of common interests, hopes, and duties compacted the whole people like a rock of conglomerate; while the people of New France remained in a state of political segregation, like a basket of pebbles held together by the enclosure that surrounds them.
It may be that the difference of historical antecedents would alone explain the difference of character between the rival colonies; but there are deeper causes, the influence of which went far to determine the antecedents themselves. The Germanic race, and especially the Anglo-Saxon branch of it, is peculiarly masculine, and, therefore, peculiarly fitted for self-government. It submits its action habitually to the guidance of reason, and has the judicial faculty of seeing both sides of a question. The French Celt is cast in a different mould. He sees the end distinctly, and reasons about it with an admirable clearness; but his own impulses and passions continually turn him away from it. Opposition excites him; he is impatient of delay, is impelled always to extremes, and does not readily sacrifice a present inclination to an ultimate good. He delights in abstractions and generalizations, cuts loose from unpleasing facts, and roams through an ocean of desires and theories.
While New England prospered and Canada did not prosper, the French system had at least one great advantage. It favored military efficiency. The Canadian population sprang in great part from soldiers, and was to the last systematically reinforced by disbanded soldiers. Its chief occupation was a continual training for forest war; it had little or nothing to lose, and little to do but fight and range the woods. This was not all. The Canadian government was essentially military. At its head was a soldier nobleman, often an old and able commander, and those beneath him caught his spirit and emulated his example. In spite of its political nothingness, in spite of poverty and hardship, and in spite even of trade, the upper stratum of Canadian society was animated by the pride and fire of that gallant noblesse which held war as its only worthy calling, and prized honor more than life. As for the habitant, the forest, lake, and river were his true school; and here, at least, he was an apt scholar. A skilful woodsman, a bold and adroit canoe-man, a willing fighter in time of need, often serving without pay, and receiving from government only his provisions and his canoe, he was more than ready at any time for any hardy enterprise; and in the forest warfare of skirmish and surprise there were few to match him. An absolute government used him at will, and experienced leaders guided his rugged valor to the best account.
The New England man was precisely the same material with that of which Cromwell formed his invincible “Ironsides;” but he had very little forest experience. His geographical position cut him off completely from the great wilderness of the interior. The sea was his field of action. Without the aid of government, and in spite of its restrictions, he built up a prosperous commerce, and enriched himself by distant fisheries, neglected by the rivals before whose doors they lay. He knew every ocean from Greenland to Cape Horn, and the whales of the north and of the south had no more dangerous foe. But he was too busy to fight without good cause, and when he turned his hand to soldiering it was only to meet some pressing need of the hour. The New England troops in the early wars were bands of raw fishermen and farmers, led by civilians decorated with military titles, and subject to the slow and uncertain action of legislative bodies. The officers had not learned to command, nor the men to obey. The remarkable exploit of the capture of Louisburg, the strongest fortress in America, was the result of mere audacity and hardihood, backed by the rarest good luck.
One great fact stands out conspicuous in Canadian history,—the Church of Rome. More even than the royal power she shaped the character and the destinies of the colony. She was its nurse and almost its mother; and, wayward and headstrong as it was, it never broke the ties of faith that held it to her. It was these ties which, in the absence of political franchises, formed under the old regime the only vital coherence in the population. The royal government was transient; the church was permanent. The English conquest shattered the whole apparatus of civil administration at a blow, but it left her untouched. Governors, intendants, councils, and commandants, all were gone; the principal seigniors fled the colony; and a people who had never learned to control themselves or help themselves were suddenly left to their own devices. Confusion, if not anarchy, would have followed but for the parish priests, who in a character of double paternity, half spiritual and half temporal, became more than ever the guardians of order throughout Canada.
This English conquest was the grand crisis of Canadian history. It was the beginning of a new life. With England came Protestantism, and the Canadian church grew purer and better in the presence of an adverse faith. Material growth, an increased mental activity, an education real though fenced and guarded, a warm and genuine patriotism, all date from the peace of 1763. England imposed by the sword on reluctant Canada the boon of rational and ordered liberty. Through centuries of striving she had advanced from stage to stage of progress, deliberate and calm, never breaking with her past, but making each fresh gain the base of a new success, enlarging popular liberties while bating nothing of that height and force of individual development which is the brain and heart of civilization; and now, through a hard-earned victory, she taught the conquered colony to share the blessings she had won. A happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.