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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07ed790 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #53000 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53000) diff --git a/old/53000-0.txt b/old/53000-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d98c086..0000000 --- a/old/53000-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11761 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America, Part -IV: The Old Regime In Canada, by Francis Parkman - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: France and England in North America, Part IV: The Old Regime In Canada - -Author: Francis Parkman - -Illustrator: Various - -Release Date: September 7, 2016 [EBook #53000] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN N. AMERICA *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - -FRANCE AND ENGLAND in NORTH AMERICA - -FOURTH PART - -THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA - -TWENTY-SIXTH EDITION - -BY FRANCIS PARKMAN - -BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY - -1874 - - -[Illustration: 0003] - - -[Illustration: 0007] - - -[Illustration: 0009] - - - -GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, D.D. - -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, - -FRANCIS PARKMAN. - - - - -PREFACE. - -“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. - - - - -DETAILED CONTENTS - - -I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION. - - -CHAPT I. 1653-1658. - -THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA. - -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. - - -CHAPT II. 1642-1661. - -THE HOLT WARS OF MONTREAL. - -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. - - -CHAPT III. 1660, 1661. - -THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT. - -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. - - -CHAPT IV. 1657-1668. - -THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC. - -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. - - -CHAPT V. 1659, 1660. - -LAVAL AND ARGENSON. - -François de Laval.--His Position and Character.--Arrival of -Argenson.--The Quarrel. - - -CHAPT VI. 1658-1663. - -LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. - -Reception of Argenson.--His Difficulties.--His Recall.--Dubois -d’Avaugour.--The Brandy Quarrel.--Distress of Laval.--Portents.--The -Earthquake. - - -CHAPT VII. 1661-1661. - -LAVAL AND DUMESNIL. - -Péronne Dumesnil.--The Old Council.--Alleged Murder.--The New -Council.--Bourdon and Villeray.--Strong Measures.--Escape of -Dumesnil.--Views of Colbert. - - -CHAPT VIII. 1657-1665. - -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. - - -CHAPT IX. 1662-1680. - -LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY. - -Laval’s Visit to Court.--The Seminary.--Zeal of the Bishop.--His -Eulogists.--Church and State.--Attitude of Laval. - - - -II. THE COLONY AND THE KING. - - -CHAPT X. 1661-1665. - -ROYAL INTERVENTION. - -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. - - -CHAPT XI. 1666, 1667. - -THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED. - -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. - - -CHAPT XII. 1665-1672. - -PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. - -Talon.--Restriction and Monopoly.--Views of Colbert.--Political -Galvanism.--A Father of the People. - - -CHAPT XIII. 1661-1673. - -MARRIAGE AND POPULATION. - -Shipment of Emigrants.--Soldier Settlers.--Importation of -Wives.--Wedlock.--Summary Methods.--The Mothers of Canada.--Bounties on -Marriage.--Celibacy Punished.--Bounties on Children.--Results. - - -CHAPT XIV. 1665-1672. - -THE NEW HOME. - -Military Frontier.--The Canadian Settler.--Seignior and -Vassal.--Example of Talon.--Plan of Settlement.--Aspect of -Canada.--Quebec.--The River Settlements.--Montreal.--The Pioneers. - - -CHAPT XV. 1663-1763. - -CANADIAN FEUDALISM. - -Transplantation of Feudalism.--Precautions.--Faith and Homage. ---The Seignior.--The Censitaire.--Royal Intervention.--The -Gentilhomme.--Canadian Noblesse. - - -CHAPT XVI. 1663-1763. - -THE RULERS OF CANADA. - -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. - - -CHAPT XVII. 1663-1763. - -TRADE AND INDUSTRY. - -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. - - -CHAPT XVIII. 1663-1702. - -THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION. - -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. - - -CHAPT XIX. 1663-1763. - -PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. - -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. - - -CHAPT XX. 1640-1763. - -MORALS AND MANNERS - -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. - - -CHAPT XXI. 1663-1763. - -CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM. - -Formation of Canadian Character.--The Rival Colonies.--England -and France.--New England.--Characteristics of Race.--Military -Qualities.--The Church.--The English Conquest. - - - - -I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION. - - - - -CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA. - - -_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 newcomer, 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 landgrants, -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 warpath, 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. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -1642-1661. - -THE HOLY WARS OF MONTREAL. - -_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 coworkers 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 newcomers -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 illseasoned 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 flatboat 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 gunshot, 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. - - - - -CHAPTER III. 1660, 1661. THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT. - - -_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 newmade 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 cattlepen; 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 crossbars. 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. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC. - - -_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 selfcontrol 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 passersby. They had a leader, whom they were bound to -obey; and when this leader saw any mudhole 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. - - - - -CHAPTER V. 1659, 1660. LAVAL AND ARGENSON. - - -_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. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. - - -_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; waterfalls 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 - - - - -CHAPTER VII. 1661-1664. LAVAL AND DUMESNIL - - -_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.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. 1657-1665. 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._ - - -|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 dryshod 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. - - - - -CHAPTER IX. 1662-1680. LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY. - - -_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. - - - - -II. THE COLONY AND THE KING. - - - - -CHAPTER X. 1661-1665. ROYAL INTERVENTION. - - -_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 warships, 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. - - - - -CHAPTER XI. 1666, 1667. THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED. - - -_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 snowshoes 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 snowshoes, 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 snowshoes, 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 fairyland 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 snowshoes, 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 -saltwater. 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. - - - - -CHAPTER XII. 1665-1672. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. - - -_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 - - - - -CHAPTER XIII 1661-1673. MARRIAGE AND POPULATION. - - -_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. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV. 1665-1672. THE NEW HOME. - - -_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 newcomer. 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 newcomers -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 exphysician 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. - - - - -CHAPTER XV. 1663-1763. CANADIAN FEUDALISM. - - -_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 payday 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_. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA. - - -_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 armchair, the minister on a stool with his bag of papers -on a second stool near him. In another armchair, 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. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII. 1663-1763. TRADE AND INDUSTRY. - - -_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 sawmill, 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 -sawmill 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 woodashes. 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 armchair, 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, warclubs, 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 newcomers 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 -campfire, 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. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII. 1663-1702. THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION. - - -_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. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX. 1663-1763. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. - - -_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 mainstay. 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 landowner 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 seaweed. 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 goldenrod 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 snowshoes 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 byways 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 farsighted -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 reenforced by his salary as member of the Superior - Council. He died at Quebec in 1734. - - - - -CHAPTER XX. 1640-1763. MORALS AND MANNERS. - - -_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). - - - - -CHAPTER XXI. 1663-1763. CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM. - - -_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. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America, -Part IV: The Old Regime In Canada, by Francis Parkman - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN N. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: France and England in North America, Part IV: The Old Regime In Canada - -Author: Francis Parkman - -Illustrator: Various - -Release Date: September 7, 2016 [EBook #53000] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN N. AMERICA *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - FRANCE AND ENGLAND in NORTH AMERICA - </h1> - <h3> - FOURTH PART - </h3> - <h3> - THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA - </h3> - <h3> - TWENTY-SIXTH EDITION - </h3> - <h2> - BY FRANCIS PARKMAN - </h2> - <h3> - BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY - </h3> - <h3> - 1874 - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0007.jpg" alt="0007 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0007.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0010.jpg" alt="0010 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0010.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - Figure of Chomedey de Maisonneuve .... Frontispiece <br /> From the - Maisonneuve Monument by Philippe Hébert, in the Place D'Armes, Montreal. - </h5> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0183.jpg" alt="0183 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0183.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - The Death of Dollard<br /> Bas-relief from the Maisonneuve Monument by - Philippe Hébert, in the Place D'Armes, Montreal. - </h5> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/map.jpg" alt="map " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/map.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h3> - GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, D.D. - </h3> - <p> - My dear Dr. Ellis: - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> - <p> - Very faithfully yours, - </p> - <h3> - FRANCIS PARKMAN. - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> DETAILED CONTENTS </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <b>I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION.</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. 1660, 1661. THE HEROES OF THE LONG - SAUT. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. 1659, 1660. LAVAL AND ARGENSON. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. 1661-1664. LAVAL AND DUMESNIL </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. 1657-1665. LAVAL AND MÉZY. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. 1662-1680. LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY. - </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> <b>II. THE COLONY AND THE KING.</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. 1661-1665. ROYAL INTERVENTION. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. 1666, 1667. THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. 1665-1672. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII 1661-1673. MARRIAGE AND POPULATION. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. 1665-1672. THE NEW HOME. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. 1663-1763. CANADIAN FEUDALISM. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA. - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. 1663-1763. TRADE AND INDUSTRY. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. 1663-1702. THE MISSIONS. THE - BRANDY QUESTION. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. 1663-1763. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. 1640-1763. MORALS AND MANNERS. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. 1663-1763. CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM. </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PREFACE. - </h2> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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.) -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Boston, July 1, 1874. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - DETAILED CONTENTS - </h2> - <h3> - I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION. - </h3> - <h3> - CHAPT I. 1653-1658. - </h3> - <h3> - THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT II. 1642-1661. - </h3> - <h3> - THE HOLT WARS OF MONTREAL. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT III. 1660, 1661. - </h3> - <h3> - THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT IV. 1657-1668. - </h3> - <h3> - THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT V. 1659, 1660. - </h3> - <h3> - LAVAL AND ARGENSON. - </h3> - <p> - François de Laval.—His Position and Character.—Arrival of - Argenson.—The Quarrel. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT VI. 1658-1663. - </h3> - <h3> - LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. - </h3> - <p> - Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois - d’Avaugour.—The Brandy Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The - Earthquake. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT VII. 1661-1661. - </h3> - <h3> - LAVAL AND DUMESNIL. - </h3> - <p> - Péronne Dumesnil.—The Old Council.—Alleged Murder.—The - New Council.—Bourdon and Villeray.—Strong Measures.—Escape - of Dumesnil.—Views of Colbert. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT VIII. 1657-1665. - </h3> - <p> - LAVAL AND MÉZY. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT IX. 1662-1680. - </h3> - <h3> - LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY. - </h3> - <p> - Laval’s Visit to Court.—The Seminary.—Zeal of the Bishop.—His - Eulogists.—Church and State.—Attitude of Laval. - </p> - <h3> - II. THE COLONY AND THE KING. - </h3> - <h3> - CHAPT X. 1661-1665. - </h3> - <h3> - ROYAL INTERVENTION. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XI. 1666, 1667. - </h3> - <h3> - THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XII. 1665-1672. - </h3> - <h3> - PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. - </h3> - <p> - Talon.—Restriction and Monopoly.—Views of Colbert.—Political - Galvanism.—A Father of the People. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XIII. 1661-1673. - </h3> - <h3> - MARRIAGE AND POPULATION. - </h3> - <p> - Shipment of Emigrants.—Soldier Settlers.—Importation of Wives.—Wedlock.—Summary - Methods.—The Mothers of Canada.—Bounties on Marriage.—Celibacy - Punished.—Bounties on Children.—Results. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XIV. 1665-1672. - </h3> - <h3> - THE NEW HOME. - </h3> - <p> - Military Frontier.—The Canadian Settler.—Seignior and Vassal.—Example - of Talon.—Plan of Settlement.—Aspect of Canada.—Quebec.—The - River Settlements.—Montreal.—The Pioneers. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XV. 1663-1763. - </h3> - <h3> - CANADIAN FEUDALISM. - </h3> - <p> - Transplantation of Feudalism.—Precautions.—Faith and Homage. - —The Seignior.—The Censitaire.—Royal Intervention.—The - Gentilhomme.—Canadian Noblesse. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XVI. 1663-1763. - </h3> - <h3> - THE RULERS OF CANADA. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XVII. 1663-1763. - </h3> - <h3> - TRADE AND INDUSTRY. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XVIII. 1663-1702. - </h3> - <h3> - THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XIX. 1663-1763. - </h3> - <h3> - PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XX. 1640-1763. - </h3> - <h3> - MORALS AND MANNERS - </h3> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <h3> - CHAPT XXI. 1663-1763. - </h3> - <h3> - CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM. - </h3> - <p> - Formation of Canadian Character.—The Rival Colonies.—England - and France.—New England.—Characteristics of Race.—Military - Qualities.—The Church.—The English Conquest. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION. - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - her only sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began. * - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “The people of Montreal made a solemn vow to celebrate publicly the <i>fête</i> - of this mother of all blessings; whereupon the Iroquois came to ask for - peace. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - “On the day when the Church honors the Nativity of the Holy Virgin, the - Iroquois granted Father - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Relation, 1653, 18. -</pre> - <p> - 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 (<i>singeries</i>), 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Vexilla Regis</i>. 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Poncet in Relation, 1653,17. On Poncet’s captivity see - also Moral Pratique des Jésuites, vol. xxxiv. (4to) chap. - xii. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Jesuits in North America. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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—<i>hoh-hoh-hoh</i>—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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Journal du Père Le Moine, Relation, 1654, chaps, vi. vii. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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:— - </p> - <p> - “Farewell war; farewell tomahawk; we have been fools till now; henceforth - we will be brothers; yes, we will be brothers.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettres, 1656. Le Mercier, - Relation, 1657 chap. iv. Chaulmer, Nouveau Monde, II. 265, - 322, 319. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Compare Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre 14 Aout, 1656, Le - Jeune. Relation, 1657, 9. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - The Mohawks carried their prisoners home, burned six of them, and adopted - or rather enslaved the rest. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - The colonists themselves soon began to suffer - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * See Perrot Mœurs des Sauvages, 106. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Te Deum</i>, reared an altar, and, with a solemn mass, - took possession of the country in the name of Jesus. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - On the 17th of July, Le Mercier and Chamnonot, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Le Mercier, Relation, 1657, 14. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Veni Creator</i>, amid the silent admiration of the - auditors. Then Chaumonot rose, with an immense wampum-belt in his hand. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - France and the Faith were intrenched on the Lake of Onondaga. How long - would they remain - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Gannentaa or Ganuntaah is still the Iroquois name for - Lake Onondaga. According to Morgan, it means “Material for - Council Fire.” -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Ragueneau au R. P. Provincial, 9 Août, 1657 - (Rel., 1657). - - ** Ibid., 21 Août, 1658 (Rel., 1658). -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>festins - à manger tout</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Marie de l'Incarnation a son fils, 4 Octobre, - 1658. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II. - </h2> - <h3> - 1642-1661. - </h3> - <h3> - THE HOLY WARS OF MONTREAL. - </h3> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n 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. - </p> - <p> - 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!” - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> - <p> - Him.” * He was bankrupt, and had used the money of the sisterhood to pay a - debt of his own, leaving the nuns penniless. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Faillon, Vie de M’lle Mance, I. 172. This volume is - illustrated with a portrait of Dauversière. - - ** The Jesuits in North America. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0141.jpg" alt="0141 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0141.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - Jérôme Le Royer de la Dauversière<br /> From an engraving by L. Massard. - </h5> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - High aloft, on the brink of the cliff, they saw the <i>fleur-de-lis</i> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Annales des Hospitalières de Villemarie, par la Sœur - Morin, a contemporary record, from which Faillon gives long - extracts. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Relation</i> 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 - <i>Redoubt of the Infant Jesus</i>. 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:— - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III. 1660, 1661. THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>anada 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Canada was still a mission, and the influence of - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, Sept., 1661. - - ** Relation, 1660 (anonymous), 3. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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:— - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Papiers d’Argenson; Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre des - Iroquois, 1659 (1660?). MS. - - ** Journal des Jésuites, 300. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Your most humble and most obedient servant, - </p> - <p> - François Hertel. - </p> - <p> - The following is the letter to his mother, sent probably, with the other, - to the charge of Le Moyne:— - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Your poor - </p> - <p> - Fanchon - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * His letters of nobility, dated 1716, will be found in - Daniel's Histoire des Grandes Familles Françaises du Canada, - 404. -</pre> - <p> - 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?” - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Relation, 1660, 31. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>Qui vive</i> of the sentries and patrols - resounded all night. ** - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/2063.jpg" alt="2063 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/2063.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - The Ursuline Convent - </h5> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>anada, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - The Sulpitians put forward Queylus as their candidate for the new - bishopric. The assembly of French clergy approved, and Cardinal Mazarin - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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." -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657. -</pre> - <p> - 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. *** - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/2165.jpg" alt="2165 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/2165.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, Abbé de Montigny. - </h5> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657. - - ** Viger, Notice Historique sur l’Abbé de Queylus. - - *** Papiers d’Argenson. -</pre> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * See Jesuits in North America, chap. xiv. - - ** La Tour, Vie de Laval, gives his maxims at length. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - “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 <i>passive prayer</i>, 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.” - </p> - <p> - The zealous band at the Hermitage was aided in - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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, -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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:— - </p> - <p> - “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’ (<i>Bernières</i>) 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.” * - </p> - <p> - In truth, Laval’s zeal was boundless, and the exploits of self-humiliation - recorded of him were unspeakably revolting. ** Bernières himself regarded - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * See the famous Quatre Articles of 1682, in which the - liberties of the Gallican Church are asserted. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * For example, not long after this time, the Jesuits, - having a dispute with Innocent XI., threw themselves into - the party of opposition. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - partisans, the arm of the vicar apostolic was long enough to reach him. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Journal des Jésuites, Août, 1661. - - ** Lettre de Laval à Queylus, 4 Août, 1661. - - ***Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, Ibid. -</pre> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>ipso facto</i>, 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) - </p> - <p> - 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 (<i>Sulpitians</i>) - at Montreal, whom the Abbé de Queylus brought out with him in 1657, and I - have named for the - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Laval au Pape, 22 Oct., 1661. Printed by - Faillon, from the original in the archives of the - Propaganda. -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V. 1659, 1660. LAVAL AND ARGENSON. - </h2> - <p> - <i>François de Laval.—His Position and Character.—Arrival of - Argenson.—The Quarrel.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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.) -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0057.jpg" alt="0057 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0057.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - La Tour and the Governor <br /> Drawn by B. West Clinedinst - </h5> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lalemant, in Journal des Jesuites, Sept., 1659. - - ** Ibid., Dec., 1659. -</pre> - <p> - received it. Argenson resisted, and a bitter quarrel ensued. * - </p> - <p> - The late governor, Aillebout, had been churchwarden <i>ex officio</i>; ** - 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. *** - </p> - <p> - 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. **** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>reposoirs</i>, 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. *** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1661. - - ** Ibid., Avril, 1661. - - *** Ibid., Juin, 1661. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>a purely civil character</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Advis et Résolutions demandés sur la Nouvelle France. -</pre> - <p> - “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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Laval à M. d’Argenson, frère du Gouverneur, 20 - Oct, 1659. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>a bishop can do what he likes</i>, and threatens nothing - but excommunication.” * - </p> - <p> - 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.”*** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “—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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. - </h2> - <p> - <i>Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois - d’Avaugour.—The Brandt Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The - Earthquake.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 (<i>the company</i>) 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Papiers d’Argenson, 21 Oct., 1659. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Papiers d’Argenson, 4 Août, 1659. - - ** Ibid. Double de la lettre escripte par le Vaisseau du - Gaigneur, parti la 6 Septembre (1658). -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>bizarre</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0229.jpg" alt="0229 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0229.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - Dubois d'Avaugour<br /> From an engraving by P. Aubry, in the Bibliothèque - Nationale. - </h5> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Their inordinate passion for brandy had long been the source of excessive - disorders. They drank - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre d’Avaugour au Ministre, 1661. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1661. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - Laval could bear it no longer, but sailed for - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lalemant. Relation, 1663, 2. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 [<i>Christ</i>], - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - reparation. It was about this time that the thorn which had plagued the - church was at length plucked out. Avaugour was summoned home. - </p> - <p> - 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 [<i>Albany</i>], 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: - </p> - <p> - “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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Avaugour, Mémoire, Gaspé 4 Août 1663. -</pre> - <p> - soldier; and he soon after died a soldier’s death, while defending the - fortress of Zrin, in Croatia, against the Turks. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Colbert au Marquis de Tracy, 1664. Mémoire du - Boy, pout servir d’instruction au Sieur Talon -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII. 1661-1664. LAVAL AND DUMESNIL - </h2> - <p> - <i>Péronne Dumesnil.—The Old Council.—Alleged Murder.—The - New Council.—Bourdon And Villeray.—Strong Measures.—Escape - Of Duhesnil.—Views Of Colbert.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hough 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - seemed to betoken that the government was wakening at last from its long - inaction. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Registres du Conseil du Roy; Réponse a la requeste - présentée au Roy. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat, 7 Mars, 1657. Also Papiers - d’Argenson, and Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Etat, 15 - Mars, 1656. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - The two persons under the heaviest charges received the two most important - appointments: Bourdon, attorney-general, and Villeray, keeper of - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>greffe</i> or record office. “As he was thought,” - says Gaudais, “to be a violent man." - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>robbers!</i> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * The above is drawn from the two memorials of Gaudais and - of Dimesnil. They do not contradict each other as, to the - essential facts. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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:— - </p> - <p> - “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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.—— - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - Gaudais, in compliance with the demands of Colbert, gives his statement in - a long memorial, Le Sieur Gaudais Dupont à Monseigneur de Colbert, 1664. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII. 1657-1665. LAVAL AND MÉZY. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Nicole, Mémoire pour faire connoistre l’espnt et la - conduite de la Compagnie appellée l'Hermitage. -</pre> - <p> - aid from his military disciple, and De Mézy sent him a squad of soldiers, - who guarded the convent doors and barred out the provincial. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * ibid. - - ** Juchereau, Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu, 149. - - *** See the laudatory notice of Bernières de Louvigny in - the Nouvelle Biographie Universelle. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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.) -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Réponse de l'Evêque de Petrée, 16 Fev., 1664. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.*** - </p> - <p> - Bourdon replied by a violent appeal from the - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 (<i>échevins</i>) 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Bourdon au Conseil, 13 Mars, 1664. - - ** Ordre du Gouverneur, 13 Mars, 1664. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Registre du Conseil Supérieur. - - ** Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1664. -</pre> - <p> - the governor's confusion, all the soldiers respectfully saluted him. * The - story may have some foundation, but it is not supported by contemporary - evidence. - </p> - <p> - On the Sunday after Mézy’s <i>coup d’etat</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. VII. It is charitable to - ascribe this writer’s many errors to carelessness. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Mézy au Marquis de Tracy, 26 Avril 1665. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Testament du Sieur de Mézy. This will, as well as the - letter, is engrossed in the registers of the council. -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX. 1662-1680. LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY. - </h2> - <p> - <i>LaVal’s Visit to Court.—The Seminary.—Zeal oF the Bishop.—His - Eulogists.—Church and State.—Attitude of Laval.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hat 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.” * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - Thus he formed his clergy into a family with - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - *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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>haute - noblesse</i>, 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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; <i>the subordination and submission of the state to the church</i>; - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - France was drifting toward the triumph of the <i>parti dévot</i>, the - sinister reign of petticoat and cassock, the era of Maintenon and Tellier, - and the - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 <i>verbatim</i>. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * See the maxims of Bernieres published by La Tour. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II. THE COLONY AND THE KING. - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X. 1661-1665. ROYAL INTERVENTION. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>eave 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Œuvres de Louis XIV., II. 283. - - ** Bossuet, Politique tirée de l’Ecriture sainte, 70. - (1843). -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. **** - </p> - <p> - 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.—— - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - Canada at this time was an object of very considerable attention at court, - and especially in what was known as the <i>parti dévot</i>. The <i>Relations</i> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Juchereau says that this was his constant attendance when - he went abroad. -</pre> - <p> - left nothing to desire. A <i>prie-dieu</i> 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. <i>Te Deum</i> was sung, and a day of rejoicing - followed. - </p> - <p> - 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; - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Talon au ministre, 4 Oct., 1665. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - devotion. Fully five hundred soldiers have taken the scapulary of the Holy - Virgin. It is we (<i>the Ursulines</i>), who make them; it is a real - pleasure to do such work;” and she proceeds to relate a “<i>beau miracle</i>” - by which God made known his satisfaction at the fervor of his military - servants. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Relations</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI. 1666, 1667. THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Doll du Montréal, a.d. 1665, 1666. -</pre> - <p> - shoes embarrassed them, burdened as they were with the heavy loads which - all carried alike, from Courcelle to the lowest private. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Their position was cheerless enough; for the vast beds of snow around them - were soaking slowly under a sullen rain, and there was danger - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et - Courcelle, etc. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. . -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Sorel believed him, retraced his course, and with the Bastard in his train - returned to Quebec. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle, - etc. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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). -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>coup-de-main</i>. 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Dollier de Casson, Histoire du Montréal, a.d 1665, 1666. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - that the warriors had fled. The last of the savage strongholds was in the - hands of the French. - </p> - <p> - “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.” - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>caches</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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, <i>Vive le Roi</i>. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Acte de priss de possession, 17 Oct., 1666. -</pre> - <p> - October woods. <i>Te Deum</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * See the correspondence in N. Y. Col. Docs. III. 118-156. - Compare Hutchinson Collection, 407, and Mass. Hist. Coll. - XVIII. 102. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Benedicite</i>. The soldier - and - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, - extracts from copy in possession of the late Jacques Viger. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, cited - by Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 395, 396 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XII. 1665-1672. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. - </h2> - <p> - <i>Talon.—Restriction and Monopoly.—Views of Colbert.—Political - Galvanism.—A Father of the People.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>racy’s work was - done, and he left Canada with the glittering <i>noblesse</i> 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * His portrait is at the Hôtel Dieu of Quebec. An engraving - from it will be found in the third volume of Shea’s - Charlevoix. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Talon a Colbert, 4 Oct., 1665. - - ** Colbert a Talon, 5 Avril, 1666. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Tariff of Prices, in N. Y. Colonial Docs. IX. 36 - - ** Colbert a Talon, 6 Avril, 1666. -</pre> - <p> - piety, together with “profound love and respect for the royal person of - his Majesty.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. **** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Registre du Conseil Souverain. - - ** Marie de l’Incarnation, Choix des Lettres de 871. - - *** Le Mercier, Rel. 1667, 3; Dépêches de Talon -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Colbert à Talon, 20 Fev., 1668. - - ** Mémoire de 1667. - - *** Histoire du Montréal, a.d. 1666, 1667. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Talon a Colbert, 10 Nov., 1670. - - ** Discovery of the Great West -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIII 1661-1673. MARRIAGE AND POPULATION. - </h2> - <p> - <i>Shipment of Emigrants.—Soldier Settlers.—Importation of - Wives.—Wedlock.—Summary Methods.—The Mothers of Canada.—Bounties - on Marriage.—Celibacy Punished.—Bounties on Children.—Results.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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. - </p> - <p> - In 1661, Laval wrote to the cardinals of the Propaganda, that during the - past two years the - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, II 4 -</pre> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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) -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - proof how much he had the growth of Canada at heart. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>demoiselles</i>, - 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.” * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “Des demoiselles bien choisies.” Talon a Colbert, 27 Oct. - 1667. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>demoiselles</i>. I - have had this year fifteen of them, instead of the four I asked for.” * - </p> - <p> - 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.” - ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - Mistakes nevertheless occurred. “Along with the honest people,” complains - Mother Mary, “comes a great deal of <i>canaille</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0135.jpg" alt="0135 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0135.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - Marguerite Bourgeoys<br /> From an engraving by L Massard. - </h5> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Great as was the call for wives, it was thought prudent to stimulate it. - The new settler was at once - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Extract in Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 214. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - Nor was the fatherly care of the king confined to the humbler classes of - his colonists. He wished to form a Canadian <i>noblesse</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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, -</pre> - <p> - 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 (<i>Montreal</i>) 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIV. 1665-1672. THE NEW HOME. - </h2> - <p> - <i>Military Frontier.—The Canadian Settler.—Seignior and - Vassal.—Example of Talon.—Plan of Settlement.—Aspect of - Canada.—Quebec.—The River Settlements.—Montreal.—The - Pioneers.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Projets de Réglemens, 1667 (see Edits et Ordonnances, II. - 29). -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672. Marie de - l’Incarnation speaks of these officers on the Richelieu as - très honnêtes gens. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>côte</i>, a use of the word peculiar to Canada, where it still - prevails. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “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. -</pre> - <p> - a missionary priest, paddling his canoe from village to village, or from - <i>côte</i> to <i>côte</i>. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Projets de Réglemens, 1667. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>côtes</i>. 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * In 1672, the king, as a mark of honor, attached these - villages to Talon’s seigniory. Documents on Seigniorial - Tenure. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>sénéchaussée</i> 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - the wilderness was broken only by a solitary trading station on the - neighboring Isle Perot. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XV. 1663-1763. CANADIAN FEUDALISM. - </h2> - <p> - <i>Transplantation Of Feudalism.—Precautions.—Faith And Hope - —Age.—The Seignior.—The Censitaire.—Royal - Intervention.—The Gentilhomme.—Canadian Noblesse.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>anadian 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * By the charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates, - 1627. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitants</i> or cultivators of - the soil. ** Sometimes - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - the <i>habitant</i> 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 <i>habitant</i> by - the inferior tenure <i>en censive</i>. 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.” * - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/2010.jpg" alt="2019 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/2010.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - Jean Guion before Monsieur de Beauport - </h5> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - The seignior was a proprietor holding that relation to the feudal superior - which, in its pristine - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>censitaire</i>, - the broad base of the feudal pyramid. * - </p> - <p> - The tenure <i>en censive</i> by which the <i>censitaire</i> held of the - seignior consisted in the obligation to make annual payments in money, - produce, or both. In Canada these payments, known as <i>cens et rente</i>, - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - A more considerable but a very uncertain source of income to the seignior - were the <i>lods et ventes</i>, or mutation fines. The land of the <i>censitaire</i> - 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 <i>quint</i>, - 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. - </p> - <p> - The obligation of clearing his land and living on it was laid on seignior - and <i>censitaire</i> 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 <i>censitaire</i> 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 <i>censitaire</i> - 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 <i>censitaire</i>. - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - to the seignior. Though these radical measures were not executed, many - changes were decreed from time to time in the relations between seignior - and <i>censitaire</i>, 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 <i>Coutume de Paris</i>. This was the code of law - assigned to Canada; but most of the contracts between seignior and <i>censitaire</i> - had been agreed upon in good faith by men who knew as much of the <i>Coutume - de Paris</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>high - justice</i> or jurisdiction over heinous offences was granted only in - three or four instances. * - </p> - <p> - Four arpents in front by forty in depth were the ordinary dimensions of a - grant <i>en censive</i>. These ribbons of land, nearly a mile and a half - long, with one end on the river and the other on - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - the uplands behind, usually combined the advantages of meadows for - cultivation, and forests for timber and firewood. So long as the <i>censitaire</i> - 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 <i>habitant</i>. - 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 <i>noblesse</i> he took care that it should not bear hard on the - country. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>roturier</i> - land-holders grew daily more numerous. In Canada half the seigniories were - in <i>roturier</i> or plebeian hands, and in course of time some of them - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>habitant</i> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>gentilhomme</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - Sometimes the origin of his nobility was lost in - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>noblesse</i> and the English gentry, a class not separated - from others by a definite barrier. The French <i>noblesse</i>, unlike the - English gentry, constituted a caste. - </p> - <p> - The <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 <i>noblesse?</i> First, in the regiment - of Carignan, of which most of the officers were <i>gentilshommes</i>; - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 <i>noblesse</i> already fallen from its old estate. -</pre> - <p> - Thus Jacques Le Ber, the merchant, who had long kept a shop at Montreal, - got himself made a gentleman for six thousand livres. * - </p> - <p> - All Canada soon became infatuated with <i>noblesse</i>; and country and - town, merchant and seignior, vied with each other for the quality of <i>gentilhomme</i>. - 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 <i>Esquire</i>, and ends with - thinking himself a gentleman.” Successive intendants repeat this - complaint. The case was worst with <i>roturiers</i> 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 <i>gentilshommes</i>, 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 325. -</pre> - <p> - driven off or abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.” * - </p> - <p> - The intendant Duchesneau writes to the same effect: “Many of our <i>gentilshommes</i>, - 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 <i>habitants</i>, 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 <i>habitants</i> 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - “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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i>, - 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 <i>noblesse</i>, real - or pretended, will turn bandits, since they have no other means of living. - </p> - <p> - 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 (<i>the governor</i>) - six commissions of <i>Gardes de la Marine</i>, and recommend you to take - care not to give them to any who are not actually <i>gentilshommes</i>." - The <i>Garde de la Marine</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - They had already assumed this right, without waiting for the royal - license; but thus far it had profited them little. The <i>gentilhomme</i> - 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 <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 <i>habitant</i>. 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Lettre de Meules au Ministre, 1685. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>gentilhomme</i>, - chief of a gang of bushrangers, often his own <i>habitants</i>; 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. - </p> - <p> - Even in his earliest day, the <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 <i>gentilhomme</i>; - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>gentil-homme</i>. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>gens - de robe</i>, 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - that, without deranging the machinery of administration, each should be a - check on the other. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Supreme</i>, but only the <i>Superior</i> - Council. The same change had just been imposed on all the high tribunals - of France. *** Under the shadow of the <i>fleur-de-lis</i>, the king alone - was to be supreme. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>Coutume de - Paris</i>. 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>huissiers</i> or attendant officers. It - sat once a week; and, though - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>habitans</i>, 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 <i>huissier</i>; 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Hontan, I. 21 (ed. 1705). In some editions, the above - is expressed in different language. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - On any Monday morning one would have found the superior council in session - in the antechamber - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Instruction du Roy pour le Sieur de Meules, 1682. - - ** See the commissions of various intendants, in Edits et - Ordonnances -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - "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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Compare La Poterie, I. 260, and La Tour, Vie de Laval, - Liv. VII. - - ** Meules au Ministre, 28 Sept. 1685. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - The superior council was not a very harmonious - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Meules au Ministre, 12 Nov., 1681. - - ** Ibid. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Meules au Ministre 12 Nov, 1684. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>quasi</i> equality between the governor and you, which you - assume, but which - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 (<i>to promote - marriages</i>) and for having failed in the principal object for which I - sent you to Canada.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - <i>cote</i> 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 - <i>grand voyer</i>, 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 <i>censitaire</i> did not clear his land and live on it, - the intendant took it from him and gave it back to the seignior. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>côtes</i> 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 (<i>Quebec</i>) 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Edits et Ordonnances, II. 273. - - ** Ibid., II. 399. -</pre> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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.” *** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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, <i>censitaire</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Jugements et Délibérations du Conseil Supérieur. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Edit du Roy contre les Jureurs et Blasphémateurs, du 30me - Juillet, 1666 See Edits et Ordonnances, I. 62. -</pre> - <p> - swear were further required to report the fact to the nearest judge within - twenty-four hours, on pain of fine. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. *** - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Doutre et Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, 163. - - ** Réglement de Police, 1676. - - *** Edits et Ordonnances, II. 53. -</pre> - <p> - Canadian justice, tried by the standard of the time, was neither - vindictive nor cruel. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>did for the colonists what they would far better have - learned to do for themselves</i>. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - The whole system of administration centred in - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Mémoire addressé au Régent 1716 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Many of these abstracts are still preserved in the - Archives of the Marine and Colonies. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Etat présent du Canada, 1768. -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVII. 1663-1763. TRADE AND INDUSTRY. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 244. -</pre> - <p> - 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*) - </p> - <p> - Attempts were made to fix the exact amount of profit which merchants from - France should be - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Edits et Ord., II. 17, 19. - - ** Réglement de Police, 1676. Art. xxxvii. -</pre> - <p> - carries on a large business, and a great deal of money remains due to him - here.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - <i>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.</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 (<i>the fisheries</i>) 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 <i>habitans</i>. - 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. -</pre> - <p> - fisheries, like other branches of Canadian industry, remained in a state - of almost hopeless languor. * - </p> - <p> - 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. *** - </p> - <p> - In all departments of industry, the appeals for help are endless. - Governors and intendants are so many sturdy beggars for the languishing - colony. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - “Send us money to build storehouses, to which the <i>habitants</i> 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*) - </p> - <p> - 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**) - </p> - <p> - The languor of commerce made agriculture languish. “It is of no use now,” - writes Meules, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>habitant</i> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov.. 1685 -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - Of the arts of ornament not much could have - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Beauharnois et Raudot au Ministre, 1705. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>minot</i> 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>fleur-de-lis</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Meules au Ministre, 24 Sept., 1685. - - ** Mémoire addressé au Régent, 1715. - - *** Considérations sur l’Etat du Canada, 1758. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>bourse</i> - or exchange was permitted at Quebec and Montreal. *** - </p> - <p> - In respect of taxation, Canada, as compared with - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Edits et Ord., I. 370. - - ** Ibid., 400, 432, 436, 484. - - *** Doutre et Lareau, Hist, du Droit Canadien, 254. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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.” -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>habitants</i> 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i>, had completely transformed - the pious settlement. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Ordres du Roy au sujet de la Traite du Canada, 1681. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>voyageurs</i>, 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Before me is one of these licenses, signed by the - governor Denonville. A condition of carrying no brandy is - appended to it. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitant</i> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>coureurs - de bois</i>; 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - It was a curious scene when a party of <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Denonville, Mémoire sur l’Estât des Affaires de le - Nouvelle France. -</pre> - <p> - lest they should break wholly with the church and dispense thenceforth - with her sacraments. - </p> - <p> - Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>coureur de bois</i> 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. - </p> - <p> - Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half-savage <i>coureur de bois</i> - 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 <i>coureurs - de bois</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - But here, for the present, we pause; for the father touches on other - matters than the <i>coureurs de bois</i>, and we reserve him and his - letter for the next chapter. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVIII. 1663-1702. THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>or 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - First, year after year came a riotous invasion of <i>coureurs de bois</i>, - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - From the misconduct of officers and soldiers, he passes to that of the <i>coureurs - de bois</i> 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>coureurs de - bois</i> 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. *** - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 (<i>the bishop</i>) 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * See, among other evidence, Mémoire sur la Traite des - Boissons, 1678. - - ** Le Roy à Saint-Vallier, 7 Avril, 1691 -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - <i>Trade of the Jesuits.</i>—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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Frontenac au Ministre, 29 Oct., 1676. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIX. 1663-1763. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668. - - ** Colbert a Courcelle, 19 Mai, 1669 -</pre> - <p> - 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, - </p> - <p> - “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) - </p> - <p> - Tracy escaped clerical attacks. He was - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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.” **** - </p> - <p> - While Louis XIV. tried to confine the priests to - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. *** - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - If by favors like these the king expected to lead the ecclesiastics into - compliance with his - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. **** - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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” (<i>Saint-Vallier</i>), 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * The above is from an anonymous paper, written apparently - in 1695 and entitled Mémoire pour le Canada. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>habitants</i>. - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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). -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 - <i>fontanges,</i> 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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.) -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - The morals of families were watched with unrelenting vigilance. Frontenac - writes in a mood unusually temperate, “they (<i>the priests</i>) 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Frontenac au Ministre, 20 Oct., 1691. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 (<i>Frontenac</i>) 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Hontan, I. 60 (ed. 1709). Other editions contain the - same story to different words. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>fontange</i>; - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Motte-Cadillac à-, 28 Sept., 1694. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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?” * - </p> - <p> - 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. *** - </p> - <p> - The Jesuits had long exercised solely the function of confessors in the - colony, and a number of - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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” -</pre> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * “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. -</pre> - <p> - when the Recollets absolve a penitent he often annuls the absolution. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>Te Deums</i>, - 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 <i>esprit fort</i>, like - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - *** Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre de—Sept., 1661. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>Sage Visionnaire</i>. 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Le Roy a Laval, 9 Avril, 1667 (extract in Faillon). - - ** Ancien règlement du Petit Séminaire de Québec, see - Abeille VIII., no. 32. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitants</i> - 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. - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/2205.jpg" alt="2205 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/2205.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - Saint Anne of the Petit Cap - </h5> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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 -</pre> - <p> - mechanical trades, they preferred above all things the savage liberty of - the backwoods. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitant</i>, - 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 <i>noblesse</i>. “In - spite of this defective education,” says the famous navigator, - Bougainville, who knew the colony well in its last years, “the - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. *** - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XX. 1640-1763. MORALS AND MANNERS. - </h2> - <p> - <i>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.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>canaille</i> 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 <i>habitans</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Annales de l'Hôtel-Dieu St Joseph, cited by Faillon. - - ** Juchereau, Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 511 -</pre> - <p> - 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.” - </p> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - wife, in a frenzy of terror, screamed <i>murder</i>. 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. * - </p> - <p> - Montreal, a frontier town at the head of the - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/2219.jpg" alt="2219" width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/2219.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <h5> - He made a jump at the guns, took them under his arm like so many feathers - </h5> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Dollier de Casson, Histoire de Montréal, 1671, 72 -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>cote</i> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683. - - ** Catalogne, Mémoire addressé au Ministre, 1712 -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - “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 <i>gentilshommes</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - “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. * - </p> - <p> - “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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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.” -</pre> - <p> - 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 (<i>Montreal</i>) - and Quebec are on the same footing.” - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - "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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov. 1685. - - ** N. Y. Colonial Documents, IX. 278. - - *** Ibid., IX. 388. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 (<i>bienplantés sur leurs jambes</i>), 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.” - </p> - <p> - As the population increased, as the rage for - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Ordonnance contre les vices de l’ivrognerie, luxe, et - impureté, 31 Oct., 1690. - - ** N Y. Colonial Documents. IX. 398. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Mémoire addressé au Regent. - - ** Réglement de Police, 1676. -</pre> - <p> - 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. **** - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>demoiselles</i>, 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” ** - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>rouge</i> - came over regularly in the annual ships. - </p> - <p> - 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, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Meules, Mémoire touchant le Canada et l’Acadie, 1684. - - ** Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679. - - *** Mémoire d’Aubert de la Chesnaye, 1676 -</pre> - <p> - 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. ** - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * 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. -</pre> - <p> - 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. * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitants</i>, 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 405. - - ** Réglement de Police, 1672. Ibid., 1676. - - *** Denonville au Ministre, 20 Août, 1686 -</pre> - <p> - 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 <i>sou</i> 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 <i>fire!</i> the servants - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Denonville au Ministre, 20 Août, 1685. - - ** Réglement de 1691, extract in Ferland. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitants</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Vasseur au Ministre, 2-4 Nov., 1701. Like Denonville - before him, he urges the need of fire-buckets. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Potherie. I. 279. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Instruction au Sr. de Frontenac, 1689. On Canadian - slavery, see a long paper, l'Esclavage en Canada, published - by the Historical Society of Montreal. -</pre> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - 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.” * - </p> - <p> - The navigator Bougainville, in the last years of the French rule, - describes the Canadian <i>habitant</i> 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.” *** - </p> - <p> - The Swedish botanist, Kalm, an excellent observer, was in Canada a few - years before Bougainville, - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * La Hontan, II. 81 (ed. 1709). - - ** Mémoire de 1736. - - *** Mémoire de 1757, printed in Margry, Relations Inédites. -</pre> - <p> - and sketches from life the following traits of Canadian manners. The - language is chat of the old English translation. “The men here (<i>at - Montreal</i>) 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 (<i>of Montreal</i>) 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 <i>double-entendres</i>, - 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." * - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>salons</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Kalm, Travels into North America, translated into English - by John Reinold Forster (London, 1771), 56, 282, etc. -</pre> - <p> - 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. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Charlevoix. Journal Historique 80 (ed. 1744). -</pre> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXI. 1663-1763. CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM. - </h2> - <p> - <i>Formation op Canadian Character.—The Rival Colonies.—England - and France.—New England.—Characteristics op Race.—Military - Qualities.—The Church.—The English Conquest.</i> - </p> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ot 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>habitant</i> 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 - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Mémoire de 1736 (printed by the Historical Society of - Quebec). -</pre> - <p> - guardians than a few constables chosen by the people themselves. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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 <i>noblesse</i> which held war as its only worthy calling, - and prized honor more than life. As for the <i>habitant</i>, 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <p> - 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. - </p> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America, -Part IV: The Old Regime In Canada, by Francis Parkman - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN N. 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- <head>
- <title>
- France and England in North America, by Francis Parkman
- </title>
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America, Part
-IV: The Old Regime In Canada, by Francis Parkman
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: France and England in North America, Part IV: The Old Regime In Canada
-
-Author: Francis Parkman
-
-Illustrator: Various
-
-Release Date: September 7, 2016 [EBook #53000]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN N. AMERICA ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- FRANCE AND ENGLAND in NORTH AMERICA
- </h1>
- <h3>
- FOURTH PART
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA
- </h3>
- <h3>
- TWENTY-SIXTH EDITION
- </h3>
- <h2>
- BY FRANCIS PARKMAN
- </h2>
- <h3>
- BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
- </h3>
- <h3>
- 1874
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0007.jpg" alt="0007 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0007.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0010.jpg" alt="0010 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0010.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Figure of Chomedey de Maisonneuve .... Frontispiece <br /> From the
- Maisonneuve Monument by Philippe Hébert, in the Place D'Armes, Montreal.
- </h5>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0183.jpg" alt="0183 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0183.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- The Death of Dollard<br /> Bas-relief from the Maisonneuve Monument by
- Philippe Hébert, in the Place D'Armes, Montreal.
- </h5>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/map.jpg" alt="map " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/map.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h3>
- GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, D.D.
- </h3>
- <p>
- My dear Dr. Ellis:
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
- <p>
- Very faithfully yours,
- </p>
- <h3>
- FRANCIS PARKMAN.
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> DETAILED CONTENTS </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <b>I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION.</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. 1660, 1661. THE HEROES OF THE LONG
- SAUT. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. 1659, 1660. LAVAL AND ARGENSON. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. 1661-1664. LAVAL AND DUMESNIL </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. 1657-1665. LAVAL AND MÉZY. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. 1662-1680. LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> <b>II. THE COLONY AND THE KING.</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. 1661-1665. ROYAL INTERVENTION. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. 1666, 1667. THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. 1665-1672. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII 1661-1673. MARRIAGE AND POPULATION.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. 1665-1672. THE NEW HOME. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. 1663-1763. CANADIAN FEUDALISM. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA.
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. 1663-1763. TRADE AND INDUSTRY. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. 1663-1702. THE MISSIONS. THE
- BRANDY QUESTION. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. 1663-1763. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. 1640-1763. MORALS AND MANNERS. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. 1663-1763. CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM. </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- PREFACE.
- </h2>
- <p>
- “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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.)
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Boston, July 1, 1874.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- DETAILED CONTENTS
- </h2>
- <h3>
- I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- CHAPT I. 1653-1658.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT II. 1642-1661.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE HOLT WARS OF MONTREAL.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT III. 1660, 1661.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT IV. 1657-1668.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT V. 1659, 1660.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- LAVAL AND ARGENSON.
- </h3>
- <p>
- François de Laval.—His Position and Character.—Arrival of
- Argenson.—The Quarrel.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT VI. 1658-1663.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois
- d’Avaugour.—The Brandy Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The
- Earthquake.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT VII. 1661-1661.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- LAVAL AND DUMESNIL.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Péronne Dumesnil.—The Old Council.—Alleged Murder.—The
- New Council.—Bourdon and Villeray.—Strong Measures.—Escape
- of Dumesnil.—Views of Colbert.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT VIII. 1657-1665.
- </h3>
- <p>
- LAVAL AND MÉZY.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT IX. 1662-1680.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Laval’s Visit to Court.—The Seminary.—Zeal of the Bishop.—His
- Eulogists.—Church and State.—Attitude of Laval.
- </p>
- <h3>
- II. THE COLONY AND THE KING.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- CHAPT X. 1661-1665.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- ROYAL INTERVENTION.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XI. 1666, 1667.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XII. 1665-1672.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Talon.—Restriction and Monopoly.—Views of Colbert.—Political
- Galvanism.—A Father of the People.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XIII. 1661-1673.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- MARRIAGE AND POPULATION.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Shipment of Emigrants.—Soldier Settlers.—Importation of Wives.—Wedlock.—Summary
- Methods.—The Mothers of Canada.—Bounties on Marriage.—Celibacy
- Punished.—Bounties on Children.—Results.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XIV. 1665-1672.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE NEW HOME.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Military Frontier.—The Canadian Settler.—Seignior and Vassal.—Example
- of Talon.—Plan of Settlement.—Aspect of Canada.—Quebec.—The
- River Settlements.—Montreal.—The Pioneers.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XV. 1663-1763.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- CANADIAN FEUDALISM.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Transplantation of Feudalism.—Precautions.—Faith and Homage.
- —The Seignior.—The Censitaire.—Royal Intervention.—The
- Gentilhomme.—Canadian Noblesse.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XVI. 1663-1763.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE RULERS OF CANADA.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XVII. 1663-1763.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- TRADE AND INDUSTRY.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XVIII. 1663-1702.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XIX. 1663-1763.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XX. 1640-1763.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- MORALS AND MANNERS
- </h3>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <h3>
- CHAPT XXI. 1663-1763.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Formation of Canadian Character.—The Rival Colonies.—England
- and France.—New England.—Characteristics of Race.—Military
- Qualities.—The Church.—The English Conquest.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
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- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
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- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
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- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- her only sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began. *
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The people of Montreal made a solemn vow to celebrate publicly the <i>fête</i>
- of this mother of all blessings; whereupon the Iroquois came to ask for
- peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “On the day when the Church honors the Nativity of the Holy Virgin, the
- Iroquois granted Father
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Relation, 1653, 18.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>singeries</i>), 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Vexilla Regis</i>. 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Poncet in Relation, 1653,17. On Poncet’s captivity see
- also Moral Pratique des Jésuites, vol. xxxiv. (4to) chap.
- xii.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Jesuits in North America.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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—<i>hoh-hoh-hoh</i>—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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Journal du Père Le Moine, Relation, 1654, chaps, vi. vii.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “Farewell war; farewell tomahawk; we have been fools till now; henceforth
- we will be brothers; yes, we will be brothers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettres, 1656. Le Mercier,
- Relation, 1657 chap. iv. Chaulmer, Nouveau Monde, II. 265,
- 322, 319.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Compare Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre 14 Aout, 1656, Le
- Jeune. Relation, 1657, 9.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Mohawks carried their prisoners home, burned six of them, and adopted
- or rather enslaved the rest. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The colonists themselves soon began to suffer
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * See Perrot Mœurs des Sauvages, 106.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Te Deum</i>, reared an altar, and, with a solemn mass,
- took possession of the country in the name of Jesus. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the 17th of July, Le Mercier and Chamnonot,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Le Mercier, Relation, 1657, 14.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Veni Creator</i>, amid the silent admiration of the
- auditors. Then Chaumonot rose, with an immense wampum-belt in his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- France and the Faith were intrenched on the Lake of Onondaga. How long
- would they remain
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Gannentaa or Ganuntaah is still the Iroquois name for
- Lake Onondaga. According to Morgan, it means “Material for
- Council Fire.”
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Ragueneau au R. P. Provincial, 9 Août, 1657
- (Rel., 1657).
-
- ** Ibid., 21 Août, 1658 (Rel., 1658).
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>festins
- à manger tout</i> 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Marie de l'Incarnation a son fils, 4 Octobre,
- 1658.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER II.
- </h2>
- <h3>
- 1642-1661.
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE HOLY WARS OF MONTREAL.
- </h3>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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!”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
- <p>
- Him.” * He was bankrupt, and had used the money of the sisterhood to pay a
- debt of his own, leaving the nuns penniless.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Faillon, Vie de M’lle Mance, I. 172. This volume is
- illustrated with a portrait of Dauversière.
-
- ** The Jesuits in North America.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0141.jpg" alt="0141 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0141.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Jérôme Le Royer de la Dauversière<br /> From an engraving by L. Massard.
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- High aloft, on the brink of the cliff, they saw the <i>fleur-de-lis</i>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Annales des Hospitalières de Villemarie, par la Sœur
- Morin, a contemporary record, from which Faillon gives long
- extracts.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Relation</i> 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- <i>Redoubt of the Infant Jesus</i>. 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:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER III. 1660, 1661. THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>anada 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Canada was still a mission, and the influence of
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, Sept., 1661.
-
- ** Relation, 1660 (anonymous), 3.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:—
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Papiers d’Argenson; Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre des
- Iroquois, 1659 (1660?). MS.
-
- ** Journal des Jésuites, 300.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Your most humble and most obedient servant,
- </p>
- <p>
- François Hertel.
- </p>
- <p>
- The following is the letter to his mother, sent probably, with the other,
- to the charge of Le Moyne:—
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Your poor
- </p>
- <p>
- Fanchon
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * His letters of nobility, dated 1716, will be found in
- Daniel's Histoire des Grandes Familles Françaises du Canada,
- 404.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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?”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Relation, 1660, 31.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Qui vive</i> of the sentries and patrols
- resounded all night. **
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/2063.jpg" alt="2063 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/2063.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- The Ursuline Convent
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>anada, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Sulpitians put forward Queylus as their candidate for the new
- bishopric. The assembly of French clergy approved, and Cardinal Mazarin
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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."
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/2165.jpg" alt="2165 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/2165.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, Abbé de Montigny.
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1657.
-
- ** Viger, Notice Historique sur l’Abbé de Queylus.
-
- *** Papiers d’Argenson.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * See Jesuits in North America, chap. xiv.
-
- ** La Tour, Vie de Laval, gives his maxims at length.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- “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 <i>passive prayer</i>, 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The zealous band at the Hermitage was aided in
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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,
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “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’ (<i>Bernières</i>) 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- In truth, Laval’s zeal was boundless, and the exploits of self-humiliation
- recorded of him were unspeakably revolting. ** Bernières himself regarded
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * See the famous Quatre Articles of 1682, in which the
- liberties of the Gallican Church are asserted.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * For example, not long after this time, the Jesuits,
- having a dispute with Innocent XI., threw themselves into
- the party of opposition.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- partisans, the arm of the vicar apostolic was long enough to reach him.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Journal des Jésuites, Août, 1661.
-
- ** Lettre de Laval à Queylus, 4 Août, 1661.
-
- ***Lettre de Laval a d’Argenson, Ibid.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>ipso facto</i>, 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)
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>Sulpitians</i>)
- at Montreal, whom the Abbé de Queylus brought out with him in 1657, and I
- have named for the
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Laval au Pape, 22 Oct., 1661. Printed by
- Faillon, from the original in the archives of the
- Propaganda.
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER V. 1659, 1660. LAVAL AND ARGENSON.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>François de Laval.—His Position and Character.—Arrival of
- Argenson.—The Quarrel.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.)
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0057.jpg" alt="0057 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0057.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- La Tour and the Governor <br /> Drawn by B. West Clinedinst
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lalemant, in Journal des Jesuites, Sept., 1659.
-
- ** Ibid., Dec., 1659.
-</pre>
- <p>
- received it. Argenson resisted, and a bitter quarrel ensued. *
- </p>
- <p>
- The late governor, Aillebout, had been churchwarden <i>ex officio</i>; **
- 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. ****
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>reposoirs</i>, 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1661.
-
- ** Ibid., Avril, 1661.
-
- *** Ibid., Juin, 1661.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>a purely civil character</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Advis et Résolutions demandés sur la Nouvelle France.
-</pre>
- <p>
- “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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Laval à M. d’Argenson, frère du Gouverneur, 20
- Oct, 1659.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>a bishop can do what he likes</i>, and threatens nothing
- but excommunication.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “—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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VI. 1658-1663. LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Reception of Argenson.—His Difficulties.—His Recall.—Dubois
- d’Avaugour.—The Brandt Quarrel.—Distress of Laval.—Portents.—The
- Earthquake.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>the company</i>) 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Papiers d’Argenson, 21 Oct., 1659.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Papiers d’Argenson, 4 Août, 1659.
-
- ** Ibid. Double de la lettre escripte par le Vaisseau du
- Gaigneur, parti la 6 Septembre (1658).
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>bizarre</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0229.jpg" alt="0229 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0229.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Dubois d'Avaugour<br /> From an engraving by P. Aubry, in the Bibliothèque
- Nationale.
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Their inordinate passion for brandy had long been the source of excessive
- disorders. They drank
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre d’Avaugour au Ministre, 1661.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1661.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Laval could bear it no longer, but sailed for
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lalemant. Relation, 1663, 2.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 [<i>Christ</i>],
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- reparation. It was about this time that the thorn which had plagued the
- church was at length plucked out. Avaugour was summoned home.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 [<i>Albany</i>], 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:
- </p>
- <p>
- “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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Avaugour, Mémoire, Gaspé 4 Août 1663.
-</pre>
- <p>
- soldier; and he soon after died a soldier’s death, while defending the
- fortress of Zrin, in Croatia, against the Turks. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Colbert au Marquis de Tracy, 1664. Mémoire du
- Boy, pout servir d’instruction au Sieur Talon
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VII. 1661-1664. LAVAL AND DUMESNIL
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Péronne Dumesnil.—The Old Council.—Alleged Murder.—The
- New Council.—Bourdon And Villeray.—Strong Measures.—Escape
- Of Duhesnil.—Views Of Colbert.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hough 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- seemed to betoken that the government was wakening at last from its long
- inaction.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Registres du Conseil du Roy; Réponse a la requeste
- présentée au Roy.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat, 7 Mars, 1657. Also Papiers
- d’Argenson, and Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Etat, 15
- Mars, 1656.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- The two persons under the heaviest charges received the two most important
- appointments: Bourdon, attorney-general, and Villeray, keeper of
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>greffe</i> or record office. “As he was thought,”
- says Gaudais, “to be a violent man."
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>robbers!</i>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * The above is drawn from the two memorials of Gaudais and
- of Dimesnil. They do not contradict each other as, to the
- essential facts.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.——
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Gaudais, in compliance with the demands of Colbert, gives his statement in
- a long memorial, Le Sieur Gaudais Dupont à Monseigneur de Colbert, 1664.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VIII. 1657-1665. LAVAL AND MÉZY.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Nicole, Mémoire pour faire connoistre l’espnt et la
- conduite de la Compagnie appellée l'Hermitage.
-</pre>
- <p>
- aid from his military disciple, and De Mézy sent him a squad of soldiers,
- who guarded the convent doors and barred out the provincial. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * ibid.
-
- ** Juchereau, Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu, 149.
-
- *** See the laudatory notice of Bernières de Louvigny in
- the Nouvelle Biographie Universelle.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.)
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Réponse de l'Evêque de Petrée, 16 Fev., 1664.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.***
- </p>
- <p>
- Bourdon replied by a violent appeal from the
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>échevins</i>) 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Bourdon au Conseil, 13 Mars, 1664.
-
- ** Ordre du Gouverneur, 13 Mars, 1664.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Registre du Conseil Supérieur.
-
- ** Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1664.
-</pre>
- <p>
- the governor's confusion, all the soldiers respectfully saluted him. * The
- story may have some foundation, but it is not supported by contemporary
- evidence.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the Sunday after Mézy’s <i>coup d’etat</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. VII. It is charitable to
- ascribe this writer’s many errors to carelessness.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Mézy au Marquis de Tracy, 26 Avril 1665.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Testament du Sieur de Mézy. This will, as well as the
- letter, is engrossed in the registers of the council.
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER IX. 1662-1680. LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>LaVal’s Visit to Court.—The Seminary.—Zeal oF the Bishop.—His
- Eulogists.—Church and State.—Attitude of Laval.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hat 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.” *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus he formed his clergy into a family with
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- *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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>haute
- noblesse</i>, 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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; <i>the subordination and submission of the state to the church</i>;
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- France was drifting toward the triumph of the <i>parti dévot</i>, the
- sinister reign of petticoat and cassock, the era of Maintenon and Tellier,
- and the
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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 <i>verbatim</i>.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * See the maxims of Bernieres published by La Tour.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II. THE COLONY AND THE KING.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER X. 1661-1665. ROYAL INTERVENTION.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>eave 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Œuvres de Louis XIV., II. 283.
-
- ** Bossuet, Politique tirée de l’Ecriture sainte, 70.
- (1843).
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. ****
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.——
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- Canada at this time was an object of very considerable attention at court,
- and especially in what was known as the <i>parti dévot</i>. The <i>Relations</i>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Juchereau says that this was his constant attendance when
- he went abroad.
-</pre>
- <p>
- left nothing to desire. A <i>prie-dieu</i> 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. <i>Te Deum</i> was sung, and a day of rejoicing
- followed.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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;
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Talon au ministre, 4 Oct., 1665.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- devotion. Fully five hundred soldiers have taken the scapulary of the Holy
- Virgin. It is we (<i>the Ursulines</i>), who make them; it is a real
- pleasure to do such work;” and she proceeds to relate a “<i>beau miracle</i>”
- by which God made known his satisfaction at the fervor of his military
- servants.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Relations</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XI. 1666, 1667. THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Doll du Montréal, a.d. 1665, 1666.
-</pre>
- <p>
- shoes embarrassed them, burdened as they were with the heavy loads which
- all carried alike, from Courcelle to the lowest private.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Their position was cheerless enough; for the vast beds of snow around them
- were soaking slowly under a sullen rain, and there was danger
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et
- Courcelle, etc.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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. .
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sorel believed him, retraced his course, and with the Bastard in his train
- returned to Quebec.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle,
- etc.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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).
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>coup-de-main</i>. 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Dollier de Casson, Histoire du Montréal, a.d 1665, 1666.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- that the warriors had fled. The last of the savage strongholds was in the
- hands of the French.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>caches</i> 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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, <i>Vive le Roi</i>. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Acte de priss de possession, 17 Oct., 1666.
-</pre>
- <p>
- October woods. <i>Te Deum</i> 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * See the correspondence in N. Y. Col. Docs. III. 118-156.
- Compare Hutchinson Collection, 407, and Mass. Hist. Coll.
- XVIII. 102.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Benedicite</i>. The soldier
- and
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson,
- extracts from copy in possession of the late Jacques Viger.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, cited
- by Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 395, 396
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XII. 1665-1672. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Talon.—Restriction and Monopoly.—Views of Colbert.—Political
- Galvanism.—A Father of the People.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>racy’s work was
- done, and he left Canada with the glittering <i>noblesse</i> 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * His portrait is at the Hôtel Dieu of Quebec. An engraving
- from it will be found in the third volume of Shea’s
- Charlevoix.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Talon a Colbert, 4 Oct., 1665.
-
- ** Colbert a Talon, 5 Avril, 1666.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Tariff of Prices, in N. Y. Colonial Docs. IX. 36
-
- ** Colbert a Talon, 6 Avril, 1666.
-</pre>
- <p>
- piety, together with “profound love and respect for the royal person of
- his Majesty.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. ****
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Registre du Conseil Souverain.
-
- ** Marie de l’Incarnation, Choix des Lettres de 871.
-
- *** Le Mercier, Rel. 1667, 3; Dépêches de Talon
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Colbert à Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
-
- ** Mémoire de 1667.
-
- *** Histoire du Montréal, a.d. 1666, 1667.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Talon a Colbert, 10 Nov., 1670.
-
- ** Discovery of the Great West
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIII 1661-1673. MARRIAGE AND POPULATION.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Shipment of Emigrants.—Soldier Settlers.—Importation of
- Wives.—Wedlock.—Summary Methods.—The Mothers of Canada.—Bounties
- on Marriage.—Celibacy Punished.—Bounties on Children.—Results.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- In 1661, Laval wrote to the cardinals of the Propaganda, that during the
- past two years the
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, II 4
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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)
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- proof how much he had the growth of Canada at heart. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>demoiselles</i>,
- 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.” *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “Des demoiselles bien choisies.” Talon a Colbert, 27 Oct.
- 1667.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>demoiselles</i>. I
- have had this year fifteen of them, instead of the four I asked for.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- Mistakes nevertheless occurred. “Along with the honest people,” complains
- Mother Mary, “comes a great deal of <i>canaille</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0135.jpg" alt="0135 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/0135.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Marguerite Bourgeoys<br /> From an engraving by L Massard.
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Great as was the call for wives, it was thought prudent to stimulate it.
- The new settler was at once
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Extract in Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 214.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- Nor was the fatherly care of the king confined to the humbler classes of
- his colonists. He wished to form a Canadian <i>noblesse</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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,
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>Montreal</i>) 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIV. 1665-1672. THE NEW HOME.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Military Frontier.—The Canadian Settler.—Seignior and
- Vassal.—Example of Talon.—Plan of Settlement.—Aspect of
- Canada.—Quebec.—The River Settlements.—Montreal.—The
- Pioneers.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Projets de Réglemens, 1667 (see Edits et Ordonnances, II.
- 29).
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672. Marie de
- l’Incarnation speaks of these officers on the Richelieu as
- très honnêtes gens.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>côte</i>, a use of the word peculiar to Canada, where it still
- prevails.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- a missionary priest, paddling his canoe from village to village, or from
- <i>côte</i> to <i>côte</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Projets de Réglemens, 1667.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>côtes</i>. 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * In 1672, the king, as a mark of honor, attached these
- villages to Talon’s seigniory. Documents on Seigniorial
- Tenure.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>sénéchaussée</i> 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- the wilderness was broken only by a solitary trading station on the
- neighboring Isle Perot.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XV. 1663-1763. CANADIAN FEUDALISM.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Transplantation Of Feudalism.—Precautions.—Faith And Hope
- —Age.—The Seignior.—The Censitaire.—Royal
- Intervention.—The Gentilhomme.—Canadian Noblesse.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>anadian 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * By the charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates,
- 1627.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitants</i> or cultivators of
- the soil. ** Sometimes
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- the <i>habitant</i> 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 <i>habitant</i> by
- the inferior tenure <i>en censive</i>. 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.” *
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/2010.jpg" alt="2019 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/2010.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Jean Guion before Monsieur de Beauport
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- The seignior was a proprietor holding that relation to the feudal superior
- which, in its pristine
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>censitaire</i>,
- the broad base of the feudal pyramid. *
- </p>
- <p>
- The tenure <i>en censive</i> by which the <i>censitaire</i> held of the
- seignior consisted in the obligation to make annual payments in money,
- produce, or both. In Canada these payments, known as <i>cens et rente</i>,
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- A more considerable but a very uncertain source of income to the seignior
- were the <i>lods et ventes</i>, or mutation fines. The land of the <i>censitaire</i>
- 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 <i>quint</i>,
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The obligation of clearing his land and living on it was laid on seignior
- and <i>censitaire</i> 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 <i>censitaire</i> 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 <i>censitaire</i>
- 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 <i>censitaire</i>.
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- to the seignior. Though these radical measures were not executed, many
- changes were decreed from time to time in the relations between seignior
- and <i>censitaire</i>, 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 <i>Coutume de Paris</i>. This was the code of law
- assigned to Canada; but most of the contracts between seignior and <i>censitaire</i>
- had been agreed upon in good faith by men who knew as much of the <i>Coutume
- de Paris</i> 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>high
- justice</i> or jurisdiction over heinous offences was granted only in
- three or four instances. *
- </p>
- <p>
- Four arpents in front by forty in depth were the ordinary dimensions of a
- grant <i>en censive</i>. These ribbons of land, nearly a mile and a half
- long, with one end on the river and the other on
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- the uplands behind, usually combined the advantages of meadows for
- cultivation, and forests for timber and firewood. So long as the <i>censitaire</i>
- 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 <i>habitant</i>.
- 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 <i>noblesse</i> he took care that it should not bear hard on the
- country. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>roturier</i>
- land-holders grew daily more numerous. In Canada half the seigniories were
- in <i>roturier</i> or plebeian hands, and in course of time some of them
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitant</i>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>gentilhomme</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sometimes the origin of his nobility was lost in
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>noblesse</i> and the English gentry, a class not separated
- from others by a definite barrier. The French <i>noblesse</i>, unlike the
- English gentry, constituted a caste.
- </p>
- <p>
- The <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 <i>noblesse?</i> First, in the regiment
- of Carignan, of which most of the officers were <i>gentilshommes</i>;
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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 <i>noblesse</i> already fallen from its old estate.
-</pre>
- <p>
- Thus Jacques Le Ber, the merchant, who had long kept a shop at Montreal,
- got himself made a gentleman for six thousand livres. *
- </p>
- <p>
- All Canada soon became infatuated with <i>noblesse</i>; and country and
- town, merchant and seignior, vied with each other for the quality of <i>gentilhomme</i>.
- 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 <i>Esquire</i>, and ends with
- thinking himself a gentleman.” Successive intendants repeat this
- complaint. The case was worst with <i>roturiers</i> 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 <i>gentilshommes</i>, 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 325.
-</pre>
- <p>
- driven off or abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- The intendant Duchesneau writes to the same effect: “Many of our <i>gentilshommes</i>,
- 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 <i>habitants</i>, 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 <i>habitants</i> 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- “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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i>,
- 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 <i>noblesse</i>, real
- or pretended, will turn bandits, since they have no other means of living.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>the governor</i>)
- six commissions of <i>Gardes de la Marine</i>, and recommend you to take
- care not to give them to any who are not actually <i>gentilshommes</i>."
- The <i>Garde de la Marine</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- They had already assumed this right, without waiting for the royal
- license; but thus far it had profited them little. The <i>gentilhomme</i>
- 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 <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 <i>habitant</i>. 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Lettre de Meules au Ministre, 1685.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>gentilhomme</i>,
- chief of a gang of bushrangers, often his own <i>habitants</i>; 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Even in his earliest day, the <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 <i>gentilhomme</i>;
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>gentil-homme</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVI. 1663-1763. THE RULERS OF CANADA.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>gens
- de robe</i>, 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- that, without deranging the machinery of administration, each should be a
- check on the other. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Supreme</i>, but only the <i>Superior</i>
- Council. The same change had just been imposed on all the high tribunals
- of France. *** Under the shadow of the <i>fleur-de-lis</i>, the king alone
- was to be supreme.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Coutume de
- Paris</i>. 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>huissiers</i> or attendant officers. It
- sat once a week; and, though
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitans</i>, 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 <i>huissier</i>; 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Hontan, I. 21 (ed. 1705). In some editions, the above
- is expressed in different language.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- On any Monday morning one would have found the superior council in session
- in the antechamber
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Instruction du Roy pour le Sieur de Meules, 1682.
-
- ** See the commissions of various intendants, in Edits et
- Ordonnances
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Compare La Poterie, I. 260, and La Tour, Vie de Laval,
- Liv. VII.
-
- ** Meules au Ministre, 28 Sept. 1685.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- The superior council was not a very harmonious
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Meules au Ministre, 12 Nov., 1681.
-
- ** Ibid.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Meules au Ministre 12 Nov, 1684.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>quasi</i> equality between the governor and you, which you
- assume, but which
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>to promote
- marriages</i>) and for having failed in the principal object for which I
- sent you to Canada.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- <i>cote</i> 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
- <i>grand voyer</i>, 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 <i>censitaire</i> did not clear his land and live on it,
- the intendant took it from him and gave it back to the seignior. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>côtes</i> 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 (<i>Quebec</i>) 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Edits et Ordonnances, II. 273.
-
- ** Ibid., II. 399.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” ***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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, <i>censitaire</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Jugements et Délibérations du Conseil Supérieur.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Edit du Roy contre les Jureurs et Blasphémateurs, du 30me
- Juillet, 1666 See Edits et Ordonnances, I. 62.
-</pre>
- <p>
- swear were further required to report the fact to the nearest judge within
- twenty-four hours, on pain of fine.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Doutre et Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, 163.
-
- ** Réglement de Police, 1676.
-
- *** Edits et Ordonnances, II. 53.
-</pre>
- <p>
- Canadian justice, tried by the standard of the time, was neither
- vindictive nor cruel.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>did for the colonists what they would far better have
- learned to do for themselves</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The whole system of administration centred in
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Mémoire addressé au Régent 1716
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Many of these abstracts are still preserved in the
- Archives of the Marine and Colonies.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Etat présent du Canada, 1768.
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVII. 1663-1763. TRADE AND INDUSTRY.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 244.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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*)
- </p>
- <p>
- Attempts were made to fix the exact amount of profit which merchants from
- France should be
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Edits et Ord., II. 17, 19.
-
- ** Réglement de Police, 1676. Art. xxxvii.
-</pre>
- <p>
- carries on a large business, and a great deal of money remains due to him
- here.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>the fisheries</i>) 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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 <i>habitans</i>.
- 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- fisheries, like other branches of Canadian industry, remained in a state
- of almost hopeless languor. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- In all departments of industry, the appeals for help are endless.
- Governors and intendants are so many sturdy beggars for the languishing
- colony.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- “Send us money to build storehouses, to which the <i>habitants</i> 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*)
- </p>
- <p>
- 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**)
- </p>
- <p>
- The languor of commerce made agriculture languish. “It is of no use now,”
- writes Meules,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitant</i>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov.. 1685
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of the arts of ornament not much could have
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Beauharnois et Raudot au Ministre, 1705.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>minot</i> 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>fleur-de-lis</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Meules au Ministre, 24 Sept., 1685.
-
- ** Mémoire addressé au Régent, 1715.
-
- *** Considérations sur l’Etat du Canada, 1758.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>bourse</i>
- or exchange was permitted at Quebec and Montreal. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- In respect of taxation, Canada, as compared with
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Edits et Ord., I. 370.
-
- ** Ibid., 400, 432, 436, 484.
-
- *** Doutre et Lareau, Hist, du Droit Canadien, 254.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.”
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitants</i> 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i>, had completely transformed
- the pious settlement.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Ordres du Roy au sujet de la Traite du Canada, 1681.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>voyageurs</i>, 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Before me is one of these licenses, signed by the
- governor Denonville. A condition of carrying no brandy is
- appended to it.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitant</i>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>coureurs
- de bois</i>; 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a curious scene when a party of <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Denonville, Mémoire sur l’Estât des Affaires de le
- Nouvelle France.
-</pre>
- <p>
- lest they should break wholly with the church and dispense thenceforth
- with her sacraments.
- </p>
- <p>
- Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>coureur de bois</i> 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half-savage <i>coureur de bois</i>
- 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 <i>coureurs
- de bois</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- But here, for the present, we pause; for the father touches on other
- matters than the <i>coureurs de bois</i>, and we reserve him and his
- letter for the next chapter.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVIII. 1663-1702. THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>or 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- First, year after year came a riotous invasion of <i>coureurs de bois</i>,
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- From the misconduct of officers and soldiers, he passes to that of the <i>coureurs
- de bois</i> 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>coureurs de
- bois</i> 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. ***
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>the bishop</i>) 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * See, among other evidence, Mémoire sur la Traite des
- Boissons, 1678.
-
- ** Le Roy à Saint-Vallier, 7 Avril, 1691
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Trade of the Jesuits.</i>—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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Frontenac au Ministre, 29 Oct., 1676.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIX. 1663-1763. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
-
- ** Colbert a Courcelle, 19 Mai, 1669
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
- <p>
- “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)
- </p>
- <p>
- Tracy escaped clerical attacks. He was
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” ****
- </p>
- <p>
- While Louis XIV. tried to confine the priests to
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- If by favors like these the king expected to lead the ecclesiastics into
- compliance with his
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. ****
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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” (<i>Saint-Vallier</i>), 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * The above is from an anonymous paper, written apparently
- in 1695 and entitled Mémoire pour le Canada.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>coureurs de bois</i> 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 <i>habitants</i>.
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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).
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- <i>fontanges,</i> 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.)
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- The morals of families were watched with unrelenting vigilance. Frontenac
- writes in a mood unusually temperate, “they (<i>the priests</i>) 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Frontenac au Ministre, 20 Oct., 1691.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>Frontenac</i>) 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Hontan, I. 60 (ed. 1709). Other editions contain the
- same story to different words.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>fontange</i>;
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Motte-Cadillac à-, 28 Sept., 1694.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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?” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. ***
- </p>
- <p>
- The Jesuits had long exercised solely the function of confessors in the
- colony, and a number of
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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”
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * “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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- when the Recollets absolve a penitent he often annuls the absolution. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Te Deums</i>,
- 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 <i>esprit fort</i>, like
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- *** Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre de—Sept., 1661.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>Sage Visionnaire</i>. 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Le Roy a Laval, 9 Avril, 1667 (extract in Faillon).
-
- ** Ancien règlement du Petit Séminaire de Québec, see
- Abeille VIII., no. 32.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitants</i>
- 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.
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/2205.jpg" alt="2205 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/2205.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- Saint Anne of the Petit Cap
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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
-</pre>
- <p>
- mechanical trades, they preferred above all things the savage liberty of
- the backwoods.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitant</i>,
- 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 <i>noblesse</i>. “In
- spite of this defective education,” says the famous navigator,
- Bougainville, who knew the colony well in its last years, “the
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. ***
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XX. 1640-1763. MORALS AND MANNERS.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>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.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>canaille</i> 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 <i>habitans</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Annales de l'Hôtel-Dieu St Joseph, cited by Faillon.
-
- ** Juchereau, Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 511
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- wife, in a frenzy of terror, screamed <i>murder</i>. 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- Montreal, a frontier town at the head of the
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/2219.jpg" alt="2219" width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <h5>
- <a href="images/2219.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
- <h5>
- He made a jump at the guns, took them under his arm like so many feathers
- </h5>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Dollier de Casson, Histoire de Montréal, 1671, 72
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>cote</i>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683.
-
- ** Catalogne, Mémoire addressé au Ministre, 1712
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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 <i>gentilshommes</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- “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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- “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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.”
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>Montreal</i>)
- and Quebec are on the same footing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- "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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov. 1685.
-
- ** N. Y. Colonial Documents, IX. 278.
-
- *** Ibid., IX. 388.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 (<i>bienplantés sur leurs jambes</i>), 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.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As the population increased, as the rage for
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Ordonnance contre les vices de l’ivrognerie, luxe, et
- impureté, 31 Oct., 1690.
-
- ** N Y. Colonial Documents. IX. 398.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Mémoire addressé au Regent.
-
- ** Réglement de Police, 1676.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. ****
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>demoiselles</i>, 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>rouge</i>
- came over regularly in the annual ships.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Meules, Mémoire touchant le Canada et l’Acadie, 1684.
-
- ** Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.
-
- *** Mémoire d’Aubert de la Chesnaye, 1676
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. **
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * 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.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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. *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitants</i>, 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 405.
-
- ** Réglement de Police, 1672. Ibid., 1676.
-
- *** Denonville au Ministre, 20 Août, 1686
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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 <i>sou</i> 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 <i>fire!</i> the servants
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Denonville au Ministre, 20 Août, 1685.
-
- ** Réglement de 1691, extract in Ferland.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitants</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Vasseur au Ministre, 2-4 Nov., 1701. Like Denonville
- before him, he urges the need of fire-buckets.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Potherie. I. 279.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Instruction au Sr. de Frontenac, 1689. On Canadian
- slavery, see a long paper, l'Esclavage en Canada, published
- by the Historical Society of Montreal.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- The navigator Bougainville, in the last years of the French rule,
- describes the Canadian <i>habitant</i> 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.” ***
- </p>
- <p>
- The Swedish botanist, Kalm, an excellent observer, was in Canada a few
- years before Bougainville,
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * La Hontan, II. 81 (ed. 1709).
-
- ** Mémoire de 1736.
-
- *** Mémoire de 1757, printed in Margry, Relations Inédites.
-</pre>
- <p>
- and sketches from life the following traits of Canadian manners. The
- language is chat of the old English translation. “The men here (<i>at
- Montreal</i>) 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 (<i>of Montreal</i>) 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 <i>double-entendres</i>,
- 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." *
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>salons</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Kalm, Travels into North America, translated into English
- by John Reinold Forster (London, 1771), 56, 282, etc.
-</pre>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Charlevoix. Journal Historique 80 (ed. 1744).
-</pre>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXI. 1663-1763. CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM.
- </h2>
- <p>
- <i>Formation op Canadian Character.—The Rival Colonies.—England
- and France.—New England.—Characteristics op Race.—Military
- Qualities.—The Church.—The English Conquest.</i>
- </p>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ot 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>habitant</i> 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
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Mémoire de 1736 (printed by the Historical Society of
- Quebec).
-</pre>
- <p>
- guardians than a few constables chosen by the people themselves.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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 <i>noblesse</i> which held war as its only worthy calling,
- and prized honor more than life. As for the <i>habitant</i>, 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <p>
- 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.
- </p>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America,
-Part IV: The Old Regime In Canada, by Francis Parkman
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