[Footnote 6: The Indian belief regarding thunder was as follows: "It is a man in the form of a turkey-cock. The sky is his palace, and he remains in it when the air is clear. When the clouds begin to grumble, he descends to the earth to gather up snakes and other objects which the Indians call okies. The lightning flashes wherever he opens or closes his wings. If the storm is more violent than usual, it is because his young are with him and aiding in the noise as well as they can."—Relation des Jesuits, 1636.]



It is not possible within the limits of a single chapter to portray the character and follow the fortunes of all those heroic souls, who gave up home and country and worldly ambition to bury themselves in the unknown wilds of the West, and to walk with their lives in their hands among the cannibal tribes of New France. The motto which Ignatius Loyola had adopted for his order was, "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam," and in their perilous missions its members practised absolute obedience to quasi-military discipline. To name but four, Brebeuf, Lalement, Garnier, and Jogues were all destined to tragic deaths, and the story of their martyrdom is one of the most sorrowful in the history of the land.



The suffering caused by the pestilence of 1637 was much more severe than those periodical afflictions by which the Indians were visited. Virulent smallpox was a feature of the plague, and the pious offices of priests and the incantations of the medicine-men alike proved unavailing. Clearly, some black spell had been cast upon the nation. First it was ascribed to a serpent, then to a spotted frog, then to a demon in the muskets of the French. The Jesuits were accused of compassing death by magic. The striking clock, which aforetime had merely astonished them, was now an engine of calamity; and the litanies floating out through the windows of the mission-house were fatal incantations. Yet the Indians were afraid to lay hands upon these dealers in death. Awe held them back from wreaking their sinister designs upon the fearless men who went as ever into the pestilential tepees, that through the mystic drop and sign they might rescue the poor victims from an eternity of woe.

At length it became clear to the Jesuits that fear alone would not much longer stay the hatchets of the now hopeless Hurons. Daily they expected to meet a violent death, and a letter, still extant, drawn up by five priests in the form of a last testament, shows the unfaltering fortitude of men whose dearest ambition was a martyr's death. The intervention of a squaw saved Du Peron from the tomahawk uplifted to brain him; an unseen hand delivered Ragueneau; Le Mercier and Brebeuf confounded their assailants with the courage of their demeanour; and only Chaumont suffered, being assaulted and severely wounded. Knowing, however, that their death had been finally decided upon, the Jesuits gave a festin d'adieu—one of those farewell feasts which Huron custom enjoined on those about to die; and the courageous resignation of this band of martyrs filled even the tents of the ungodly with a superstitious awe. Once more the annihilating blow was averted; and from this time forward the peril threatening the Jesuit mission came not from the Hurons themselves, but from their implacable enemies, the Iroquois.

The year 1640 was drawing to a close when, after a few years' respite, the terrible war-whoop of the Five Nation Indians again rang through Canadian woods. Quebec was continually threatened by the Mohawks, whose highway of attack was the river Richelieu; and the Hurons were assailed by the Western tribe of the Iroquois confederacy. The pestilence of 1637 had ruined Ihonatiria, and for greater security the Jesuits resolved upon a large central establishment, in lieu of small missions in the several Huron villages. They chose for a site the mouth of the river Wye, which empties into Matchedash Bay. Here, in 1639, they built the mission of Ste. Marie. In the extreme peril of Indian warfare, the Hurons fled thither for food and baptism; and the hunger of three thousand neophytes and refugees soon put the fortified mission on short rations.

Isaac Jogues and a score of Huron warriors were despatched to Quebec for food and clothing. They reached the city in safety, although the St. Lawrence was closely beset by hostile Iroquois. Returning in twelve canoes laden with necessaries for the destitute Ste. Marie, Father Jogues and his companions fell into the hands of a Mohawk war-party. Some were killed on the spot, and the others were carried up the Richelieu and across Lake Champlain to a more awful fate. First they were made to run a gauntlet of Mohawk war-clubs; then they were placed upon a scaffold, where the women lacerated them with knives and clam-shells, and the children applied fire-brands to their naked bodies. This torture was repeated in each of the three Mohawk villages. Goupil, a lay brother, was soon afterwards murdered, and Jogues lived the life of a slave until some Dutch settlers on the Hudson effected his ransom and put him on board a ship bound for France.

In the following year, however, Jogues came back to Quebec, and on behalf of the suffering city he undertook to negotiate a peace with the Mohawks. Armed with gifts and belts of wampum, he set out fearlessly to face his former tormentors. For a short time the wampum saved him, but he was soon obliged to return to Quebec. The French, however, were determined to win the Iroquois, politically and religiously, and no danger was great enough to check them. Accordingly, in the late summer of 1646, Jogues was again despatched to the post which by this time had come to be known as the Mission of the Martyrs; and at last, on the 18th of October, he was foully murdered in the lodge of a Mohawk chief.

In the preceding winter Anne de Noue, a Jesuit of noble descent and frail physique, set off from Quebec to minister to the garrison at Fort Richelieu. In spite of his sixty-three years, he did not shrink from the perils of frost and snow which lay before him. On his snow-shoes and with a few days' provisions he set forth upon the path of sacrifice. A blizzard overtook him on the frozen river, he lost his way, and some days later his martyred body was discovered kneeling in the snow.

Meanwhile the dangers farther west were not decreasing. Iroquois attacks and Huron reprisals were ever threatening the Jesuit missions, and the last great blow was soon to fall. In the summer of 1648 an Iroquois war-party crept up to the gates of St. Joseph. Most of the warriors had gone to Quebec, but the palisade still contained Father Daniel and close upon a thousand women and children and old men. An early Mass had crowded the chapel, and the priest, clothed in full vestments, was exhorting the neophytes to be strong in the faith, when the dreaded war-cry rang through the village. The panic-stricken Hurons sought in vain to save themselves from stark slaughter, but Daniel met his death calmly at the door of his burning church. Seven hundred prisoners were taken, and the retiring Iroquois left of St. Joseph only a heap of ruins.

The destruction of the mission was, however, but the prelude to the final extinction of the Huron nation. Terror-stricken they awaited the blow, in spite of the efforts of the Jesuits to rouse them to strong defence. All winter a formidable war-party of the Mohawks and Senecas roved through the Huron woods, and in early spring they fell upon St. Ignace and St. Louis. The first village was burned with no show of resistance, and its four hundred inhabitants were either tomahawked or kept for torture. Only three escaped, and these fled to St. Louis, about a league away. Here Brebeuf and Lalement endeavoured to rally the panic-stricken villagers. By sunrise the invaders were upon them. Brought to bay, the Hurons fought bravely. The giant Brebeuf stood in the breach and cheered them by his hopeful courage. Twice the Iroquois fell back, but at their third advance drove in the shattered palisade. Those of the Hurons who still lived were made prisoners; the two Jesuits were bound together, and the clustering cabins of St. Louis were given to the flames.

Returning to the ruins of St. Ignace, the Iroquois made preparations for the despatch of their prisoners. Brebeuf and Lalement were stricken to the soul by the carnival of blood; yet their own martyrdom was to be made the most cruel of all. Brebeuf was first bound to a stake, all the while continuing to speak words of comfort to his fellow-captives. Enraged by this behaviour, the Iroquois tore away his lower lip and thrust a hot iron into his throat. No sound or sign of pain escaped the tortured priest. Then Lalement was also led out, that each might witness the other's pangs. Strips of bark smeared with pitch enveloped the naked body of Lalement, and after making him fast to a stake they set the bark on fire. Round Brebeuf's neck a collar of red-hot hatchets was hung; and in mockery of baptism the savages poured kettles of scalding water upon the heads of both. Brebeuf was scalped, his tormentors drinking the blood, thus to endow themselves with his unflinching courage. After four hours the noblest Jesuit of all was dead; but Lalement was kept alive for seventeen hours, until a pitiful hatchet ended his voiceless misery. So died two men whose memory has ennobled the history of the land for which they laboured, and adds to the fame and honour of their race.

At Ste. Marie, Bressani, Ragueneau, and their French companions awaited the Iroquois onslaught. But the fugitive Hurons, gathering for a last resistance, had checked the Iroquois' further advance, and after a fierce battle the latter withdrew southward with an army of wretched captives.

That day the Hurons as a nation ceased to exist. Abandoning their remaining villages, they dispersed in small bands to roam northward and eastward, while a few established themselves at Isle St. Joseph, thinking to protect themselves here from their inveterate foes. As for the Jesuits, Garnier and Chabanel still laboured among the Tobacco nation farther to the south; but they too became the victims of the Iroquois before this fatal year was over.

Famine and the rigours of winter presently worked sad havoc upon the little band to whom Ragueneau now ministered at Isle St. Joseph, and in the spring renewed attacks of the Iroquois led the Hurons to decide upon a remarkable enterprise. This was to migrate to Quebec and take refuge under the guns of Fort St. Louis.

On the 10th of June all was ready for the departure, the sorrowing Hurons bidding good-bye to the home of their fathers, and the Jesuits to the country consecrated by the blood of their martyrs. Proceeding by the Georgian Bay, Lake Nipissing, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, the fleet of canoes reached Quebec before the end of July, 1650. And while Quebec was ready to open her gates to the sorrowful remnant of a once great nation, her own position was sorely beset. Food was scarce and lodgings scarcer in the palisaded city. However, the Ursulines and the nuns of the Hospital made every effort to provide shelter for the exiled race, and the Jesuits themselves bore the chief burden of their converts. In the following year, 1651, four hundred more Hurons found their way to Quebec, and together they established a settlement on the Island of Orleans. Here, in sight of the protecting ramparts of the city, this decimated people lived for a time secure. But the Iroquois were set upon nothing less than their annihilation, and in 1656 they made a descent upon the quiet island and carried off many captives. The terrified Hurons were then removed to the city itself and lodged in a square enclosure almost adjoining Fort St. Louis. A map of 1660 places the "Fort des Sauvages" on the site of the present Place d'Armes. Here they dwelt for about ten years in the same uncertain security enjoyed by Quebec itself. Then they removed to Ste. Foye, four miles west of the city, and again changing their abode six years later, they founded the village of Old Lorette.

Standing to-day on Dufferin Terrace, the observer sees spread beneath him the picturesque Cote de Beaupre, a graceful upland losing itself in the Laurentian foot-hills. A shining spire in the middle distance arrests the eye. It marks the village of Ancient Lorette, a nine miles' drive from Quebec, where a pitiful moiety of Canada's noblest Indian tribe ekes out an existence by the making of baskets and beaded moccasins, and by that nonchalant culture of the soil which still marks the primitive man.



CHAPTER V

ROYAL GOVERNMENT

In the year 1660 the French population of Quebec numbered something over six hundred. The fur company continued to drive a fair trade in peltries, but the prosperity of the city itself was woefully retarded by the constant menace of the Iroquois. The Baron d'Avaugour held the office of Governor, and his strong sense of military authority brought him into conflict with the Church, by this time become the real controller of the State. This revered power was still further to impose its authority and influence through and by the person of Francois-Xavier Laval, the first Bishop of Canada, a man of as great ability as piety, an ecclesiastical statesman trained in the school of Mazarin. His career gives significance to a later epoch.

The fur traders had always found brandy their most attractive commodity in dealing with the thirsty savage; and Pere Lalement gives a sad picture of the misery entailed. "They have brought themselves to nakedness," he writes, "and their families to beggary. They have even gone so far as to sell their children to procure the means of satisfying their raging passion. I cannot describe the evils caused by these disorders to the infant Church. My ink is not black enough to paint them in proper colours. It would require the gall of the dragon to express the bitterness we have experienced from them. It may suffice to say that we lose in one month the fruits of the toil and labour of thirty years." Accordingly, the Church now decided to prohibit it entirely, and a law was passed making it a capital offence. Two men paid the extreme penalty; and a woman also was condemned to the scaffold. When, however, the clergy interfered to save her, the rigorous but consistent D'Avaugour declared he would punish no more breaches of this law. Brandy now flowed like water, and the thunder of the pulpit was henceforth disregarded. Exasperated by this treatment, the priests carried their grievance to the Louvre, where they received little satisfaction.



In the same year a deputy of another sort journeyed to France. Pierre Boucher's mission was to lay before the King the desperate condition of the colony, particularly in the matter of defence. Louis XIV. had but recently ascended the throne of the Bourbons, and Richelieu and Mazarin had been in turn succeeded by Colbert as the royal adviser. The envoy from Quebec was presently received at the Court, and the tale of suffering and neglect which he unfolded convinced Colbert that the Company of One Hundred Associates was scandalously evading the obligations imposed by its charter. Accordingly, in 1663, a royal edict went forth revoking its powers and privileges. This was a turning-point in the history of New France; for although the company founded by Richelieu was succeeded by an unwieldy corporation of Colbert's design, from this time forward the Crown itself took over the control of the distant colony.

The Grand Monarch, indeed, took a finely comprehensive view of his position. He held himself in every sense the father of his people, and by a nice condescension the citizens of Quebec were included in the patriarchal fold. The far-away city on the borders of the world was no longer to be abandoned to the avaricious whims of a trading company: the King himself would now take it under his royal care. Daniel de Remy, Sieur de Courcelles, was appointed Governor, with Jean Baptiste Talon as Intendant; and the valorous Marquis de Tracy was commissioned to New France as the King's personal representative, with instructions to settle the domestic friction of the colony, and to deal a fatal blow to the Iroquois, the "scourge of Canada."

* * * * *

On the 30th of June, 1665, De Tracy's caravels cast anchor in the basin of Quebec, the ships of De Courcelles and the Intendant being still at sea. The cannon of Fort St. Louis boomed a welcome down the gorge of the St. Lawrence, while the eager burghers crowded the ramparts and prepared to welcome the most distinguished company in the most brilliant pageant yet seen upon the soil of New France.

The royal pennant flew at the flag-ship's masthead, and the decks were thronged with the brilliant uniforms of the regiment of Carignan-Salieres, whom the King had sent to destroy the enemies of New France. In the midst stood the stately Marquis, gorgeous in vice-regal robes and attended by a suite of nobles and gallants from the court of Fontainebleau. The mysteries and wonders of the West had stirred the romantic minds of the volatile courtiers, and the mission to convert New France to the Catholic faith gave to De Tracy's expedition the complexion of a mediaeval crusade.

Presently the gaily-decked pinnace drew in to the landing-stage of the Cul-de-sac, where stood the notables of the New World city. Bishop Laval in pontificals, surrounded by the priests of his diocese, awaited the royal envoy at the top of Mountain Hill, which was then the only practicable highway between the Lower and the Upper Town. To-day the visitor landing at the quay reaches the terrace by the same route; but the present graceful declivity of Mountain Hill is little like the tortuous pathway of corduroy by which De Tracy and his glittering retinue made their toilsome way to the public square by the Jesuits' College. First came a company of guards in the royal livery, then four pages and six valets, and by the side of the King's Lieutenant-General, resplendent in gold lace and gay ribbons, walked the young nobles of his train. The cathedral bells pealed forth joyously, and the Te Deum began a day of public rejoicing.

The vessels bearing the new Governor and Intendant, however, suffered the most hapless violence. Talon's ship was 117 days at sea, and De Courcelles' was hardly more fortunate; but at length they, too, cast anchor beneath the rocky battlement, and Quebec was now flooded with soldiers of the regiment of Carignan-Salieres. These bronzed veterans of Savoy came to New France fresh from the Turkish wars, and the sight of their plumed helmets and leathern bandoleers, as they marched through the narrow streets, promised the colonists a speedy riddance of their enemies. The health of Louis XIV. was nowhere in his broad dominions drunk more heartily than in Quebec.

At the close of the year extensive preparations were made for the chastisement of the Iroquois. De Courcelles had determined upon a stroke of almost foolhardy boldness: to march over the snow into the country of the Mohawks, a distance of three hundred leagues. Thick ice had formed on the St. Lawrence, and on the 9th of January the audacious Governor set off at the head of his fiery columns.

Officers and men alike shared the burdens of transport, but the soldiers of Europe were embarrassed by the unaccustomed snow-shoes which the deep snow forced them to use. Some got no farther than Three Rivers, but the more hardy held their way up the valley of the Richelieu to Lake Champlain and across the Hudson. An unfortunate circumstance, however, had deprived them of guides, and all efforts to find and surprise the Mohawk towns proved unsuccessful. Wandering by mistake beyond Saratoga Lake, they came near to the Dutch village of Corlaer,[7] where, half-frozen and half-starved, they bivouacked in the neighbouring woods. A few days later envoys appeared from Albany to demand why the French had invaded the territories of the Duke of York; and then, for the first time, De Courcelles learned that the New Netherlands had passed into English hands.

De Courcelles' explanation was courteously accepted, and having been supplied with provisions, he prepared to retrace his steps to Quebec. His intended victims, the Mohawks, harassed the retreat, killing and taking prisoners; while sixty of his men perished from hunger and exposure before he came in sight of the St. Lawrence, and many more fell before he reached Quebec.

In spite of apparent failure, however, this expedition, like that undertaken by Daulac, had a good effect upon the Iroquois, who had come to regard themselves as too remote for French assault.

[Footnote 7: Now Schenectady.]

They now sent embassies to Quebec seeking a treaty of peace, an idea to which, naturally, the French were not opposed. But the occasion was too much for Iroquois malice and lust of blood; for even whilst terms were under discussion, a band of French hunters was set upon by the Mohawks. The Marquis de Tracy, now thoroughly aroused to the sufferings of his countrymen, determined to strike a sudden and crushing blow. The Iroquois deputies, still in Quebec praying for peace, were seized and imprisoned, and a formidable force once more prepared to invade the country of the Five Nations.

It was in early October, 1666, that De Tracy and De Courcelles left Quebec at the head of thirteen hundred men. Of these, six hundred were regulars of Carignan-Salieres, an equal number were irregulars from Quebec, under command of Repentigny, and a hundred Indian scouts from the missions ranged the woods. A hundred rugged colonists, commanded by the brave Charles le Moyne, joined the advancing column at Montreal. With confidence this imposing force swept on to annihilate the enemies of New France.

At the mysterious sound of the French drum-beat the Mohawks of the first village fled in terror, and the invaders pressed on to the second, third, and fourth towns, to find them also deserted. At Andaraque, their largest village, the Mohawks prepared to make a final stand; but the first appearance of the French army and the roll of their "devil-drums" as they emerged from the forest put the savages to instant flight. Andaraque, the last native stronghold, being thus abandoned, with its stores of corn and winter supplies, the French took what provisions they needed for their return journey, set fire to the town, and having planted on the site a white cross in the name of the King, they turned their faces homeward. The remaining Indian villages were given to the flames, and although the Mohawks had escaped with their lives, the French were content to leave them to the severities of coming winter.

This policy was successful, for by the time spring came again, not only the Mohawks, but their four confederate nations, were anxious to make a sincere peace with the avenging soldiers of New France. Hostages were exchanged, several representative chiefs remaining in Quebec. The Jesuits again undertook the Mission of the Martyrs, desiring both to win the savages into the fold of the Church and at the same time to wean the Iroquois from their friendliness towards the colonies of England, with whom the French were soon to enter into deadly conflict for the mastery of the North American continent.

The Marquis de Tracy, having in due time fulfilled the King's commission, embarked for France, and with him departed the glittering entourage which for almost two years had cast upon the court of Quebec some reflection of the glories of Versailles. The regiment of Carignan-Salieres was disbanded, but its officers, for the most part, elected to remain in Canada and accept the gift of seigneuries which the King distributed on conditions of fealty and homage. The soldiers settled on the fiefs as censitaires and became the retainers of the seigneurs. The feudal system, with all its antique forms, was thus imported into French Canada, further to cripple her progress in the race with the English colonies, where the individual was allowed to develop freely, evolving his own laws, and creating conditions best suited to his new estate. Talon became the royal instrument of a system which had its beginning and end in the maintenance of kingly authority.



CHAPTER VI

THE NOBLESSE AND THE PEOPLE

The Canadian seigneur held his lands of the King, and the habitants, or cultivators of the soil, held theirs of the seigneur upon the performance of specific duties and the payment of cens et rente. These tributes varied curiously in kind and amount; and on St. Martin's Day, when the censitaires commonly liquidated the obligations of their tenure, the seigneurie presented an animated scene. Here were gathered all the tenants, bearing wheat, eggs, and live capons to pay for their long narrow farms, at a rate ranging from four to sixteen francs.

The annual delivery of his handful of sous and his bundle of produce did not, however, complete the obligations of the censitaire. Throughout the year he must grind his grain at the seigneur's mill, paying one bushel in every fourteen for the service, bake his bread in the seigneur's oven, work for him one or two days in the year, and forfeit one fish in every eleven to the lord of the manor. Military service, however, was no part of the habitant's duty as a tenant; for the judicious Colbert, jealous always for the power of the monarchy, had clipped this ancient feature from Canadian feudalism, and given absolute military control of the country to the Governor at Quebec. The seigneur's judicial powers varied according to the importance of his fief. Barons were empowered to erect gallows and pillories, but the ordinary judicial powers of a Canadian seigneur were confined to Middle and Low justice, which comprehended only minor offences.

The solicitous interest of Louis XIV. in the affairs of New France promised much for the country's prosperity; and every ship sailing to the St. Lawrence carried out a fresh batch of emigrants. For all of these the King paid out of his own pocket, and it cost him a pretty penny to respond to Intendant Talon's persistent appeals for more settlers. Agencies were established at several points in France to recruit colonists, and grants of money and land were held out as inducements to new settlers. In this way the King and Colbert managed to send out about three hundred men each year. But, as might be expected of emigration state-aided and scarcely voluntary, Quebec became a city of men chiefly, there being few women besides cloistered nuns. There had always been a demand for wives, but now that the soldiers and officers of the Carignan-Salieres had elected to remain in the country, the scarcity of women induced a matrimonial famine.

Talon speedily apprised Colbert of the situation, and the most comely inmates of the refuge hospitals of Paris and Lyons were summoned to fill this void. In 1665 one hundred of the "King's girls" arrived in Quebec, almost instantly to be provided with partners; and although the supply was doubled in the following year, it yet remained below the conjugal demand.

To supply the needs of the seigneurs also became a real problem. Talon, with grim humour, demanded a consignment of young ladies; and in 1667 he was able to announce as follows: "They send us eighty-four girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are fifteen or twenty of pretty good birth; several of them are really demoiselles, and tolerably well brought up." Amusing evidence, however, of the exceeding delicacy of such a market is found in a letter, in which the match-making Intendant alludes to the supply of the year 1670. "It is not expedient," he ungallantly writes to Colbert, "to send more demoiselles. I have had this year fifteen of them instead of the four I asked for."

La Hontan, writing a few years later, cannot refrain from exercising keen but slanderous wit at the expense of these fair cargoes from Quebec so gladly received. His description, albeit scandalous, is amusing: "After the regiment of Carrigan was disbanded, ships were sent out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the direction of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three classes. These vestals were, so to speak, piled one on the other in three different halls, where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the flock. There was wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three harems; for here were to be seen the tall and the short, the blond and the brown, the plump and the lean; everybody, in short, found a shoe to fit him. At the end of a fortnight not one was left. I am told that the plumpest were taken first, because it was thought that, being less active, they were more likely to keep at home, and that they could resist the winter cold better. Those who wanted a wife applied to the directresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and notary, and the next day the Governor caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money."

On their part the girls were permitted to reject any suitor who displeased them; and at these annual marriage fairs the contest for favour was keen on both sides. But the paternalism of the Grand Monarch went even farther than the mere enlistment of wives for the colonists. Bounties were offered on early marriages; and the maid who married before she was sixteen received the "King's gift" of twenty livres, in addition to her ordinary dowry. Bachelors who refused to marry were rendered as uncomfortable as possible, and were taxed for their abstinence or timidity. Children were likewise made a good asset, and blessed was the man whose house was full of them. Thus runs an edict of the time: "...In future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not being priests, maids, or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres, and that, to this effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year in the months of June and July to the Intendant of justice, police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of each year."

It was not by accident but by design that an aristocratic class was created in French Canada. The perpetual contrast between the English and the French systems of colonisation was but the difference between natural evolution and artificial construction. The Canadian aristocracy was a consistent detail of the latter and in keeping with Louis' ambitious scheme of personal government. The caste system grafted upon the stem of the colonial plant was a picturesque adornment to the life of Quebec, but a doubtful experiment from any other point of view, as time proved.

For the most part the Canadian noblesse were either officers of the disbanded Carignan-Salieres regiment, or gentilhommes who had come to the New World in search of adventure or gain. In both cases they were unsuited to the hard and restrictive conditions of a rugged country. The soldiers steadfastly refused to beat their swords into ploughshares or their spears into pruning-hooks, and most of them accepted a state not far removed from actual want, rather than stain their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the bounties granted to large families—an ineffective resource, inasmuch as hungry children but consumed the supply and renewed the demand. Disdaining work of any sort, the Canadian gentilhomme yet gave himself airs that were in amusing contrast to his shabby coat and empty stomach. The world, he held, owed him a living without the labour of his hands, and to him "the world" was Louis the perpetual almsgiver.

The official correspondence of the period describes in some detail the pangs of these ill-conditioned gentry. "Two days ago," writes the Governor of Quebec in 1686, "Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put his ten children in charge of any one who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can. I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough. Other families are in the same condition. They come to me with tears in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you to send them aid. There is need that the King should provide support for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the English."

Nor was this impecunious noblesse merely a passive burden to New France, for the dignified hardships of their estate soon bred active conditions equally distressing to those in authority. Having no inducement to remain peacefully at home, the sons of the seigneurs took to the woods, often enticing the more unsettled of their own habitants to follow them thither to a life of unbridled freedom and outlawry. Reckless bushrangers, they carried on an illicit trade with the Indians, diverting peltries from the fur company at Quebec, and demoralising the savage proselytes of the missions. In this unfortunate way the gentilhomme and his children compromised with labour and managed to keep body and soul together.

Harsh edict and cruel ordinance were repeatedly launched against the practices of these well-bred offenders, but the ready covert of the forest made the evasion of the King's justice an easy matter. Moreover, the Church, while it suffered much from such children, did not venture to reprove too strongly their flagrant excesses, lest they should thenceforth dispense altogether with her sacraments; for a furtive life in the wild woods did not prevent the superstitious coureurs de bois from occasionally coming to confession or to Mass.



A royal edict ordered that any person going into the woods without a license should be whipped and branded for the first offence, and sent for life to the galleys for the second; while a third offence was punishable by death. The whole criminal code of Quebec was, indeed, of a piece with this; and an obvious feature was the quasi-religious character of most of the offences. The edict against blasphemy read as follows: "...All persons convicted of profane swearing or blaspheming the name of God, the most Holy Virgin, His Mother, or the Saints, shall be condemned for the first offence to a pecuniary fine according to their possessions and the greatness and enormity of the oath and blasphemy; and if those thus punished repeat the said oaths, then for the second, third, and fourth time they shall be condemned to a double, triple, and quadruple fine; and for the fifth time they shall be set in the pillory on Sunday or other festival days, there to remain from eight in the morning till one in the afternoon, exposed to all sorts of opprobrium and abuse, and be condemned besides to a heavy fine; and for the sixth time they shall be led to the pillory, and there have the upper lip cut with a hot iron; and for the seventh time they shall be led to the pillory and have the lower lip cut; and if, by reason of obstinacy and inveterate bad habit, they continue after all these punishments to utter the said oaths and blasphemies, it is our will and command that they have the tongue completely cut out, so that thereafter they cannot utter them again."[8]

A citizen who had the temerity to eat meat during Lent without priestly permission was condemned to be tied three hours to the public stake, then led to the door of the church, there on his knees to ask pardon of God and the King. For approving of the execution of Charles I. by his English subjects, one Paul Dupuy was held to have libelled the monarchy and to have encouraged sedition. He was condemned to be dragged from prison by the public executioner, led in his shirt, with a rope about his neck and a torch in his hand, to the gate of the fort, there to beg pardon of the King; thence down Mountain Hill to the pillory of Lower Town to be branded on the cheek with a fleur-de-lis, and set in the stocks. Poor Dupuy's crime was not yet expiated, for, according to the remainder of the sentence, he was to be "led back to prison and put in irons till the information against him shall be completed."[9] Convicts and felons were sometimes tortured before being strangled. The execution usually took place at Buttes-a-Neveu, a little hillock on the Plains of Abraham,—afterwards to become more justly celebrated and less notorious,—and the dead body, enclosed in an iron cage, was left hanging for months at the top of Cape Diamond, a terror to children and a gruesome warning to evildoers.

[Footnote 8: Edit du Roy contre les Jureurs et Blasphemateurs, 1666.]

[Footnote 9: Jugements et Deliberations du Conseil Superieur.]



The people of Quebec were regularly apprised of the laws under which they lived. On Sundays after Mass the ordinances of the Intendant were read at the doors of the churches. These related to any number of subjects—regulations of inns and markets, poaching, sale of brandy, pew-rents, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, domestic servants, quarrelling in church, fast driving, the careful observance of feast days, and so on.

Law-breakers were tried by the Superior Council, which met for that purpose every Monday morning in the ante-chamber of the Governor's apartment at Fort St. Louis. The Governor himself presided at the Round Table, the bar of justice; on his right sat the bishop, and on his left the Intendant, the councillors sitting in order of appointment. Such at least was the venue until about 1684, when the old brewery which Talon had built in Lower Town on the bank of the river St. Charles was transformed into a Palais de Justice. The altered structure served also as a residence for the King's judicial proxy, and was commonly known as the Palace of the Intendant.[10] It was an imposing mixture of timber and masonry, and at the close of the seventeenth century was the most considerable building in Quebec. While lacking the glorious site of the Castle of St. Louis, in point of interior decoration it far eclipsed this chateau of the Governor.

[Footnote 10: The declivity above its site is still known as Palace Hill.]



The present dilapidated tenements clustering about the foot of Palace Hill can, of course, give no idea of the natural position of the ancient Palais de l'Intendant. La Potherie, who visited Quebec in 1698, and Charlevoix, who writes in 1720, describe this district as the most beautiful in the city. Instead of the crowded quays of to-day there was a terraced lawn bordered with flower gardens; and where now the winches creak and rattle, and the railway engines hiss and scream, birds sang among willow-trees, and the Angelus echoed through a quiet woodland. Across the St. Charles lay the well-ordered grounds of the Jesuit monastery, and farther to the west the lonely spire of the General Hospital peeped through the ancient trees.

Such were the pleasing environs of the block of buildings which went by the name of Le Palais. In form it was almost a square, each side measuring about one hundred and twenty feet. An arched gateway, facing the sheer cliff, led into a large courtyard in which were situated the entrances to the Intendant's residence, the Court of Justice, the King's stores, and the prison. Soon it was also to be the site of La Friponne, the scene of the ribald revels of Bigot.



CHAPTER VII

FRONTENAC AND LA SALLE

The picturesque figure of Count Frontenac now enters upon the stage of Canadian history. Broken in health, De Courcelles had asked to be recalled; and ominous signs of Iroquois hostility showed the need of a strong man for the dangerous post of governor. This strong man was Frontenac, whose courageous and vigorous administration in a period of Sturm und Drang has induced Goldwin Smith to call him "the Clive of Quebec."

Born in 1620, of ancient Basque family, he was the son of a distinguished member of the household of Louis XIII., the King himself being the child's godfather. Frontenac's youthful passion was to be a soldier, and at the early age of fifteen he went to the war in Holland to serve under the Prince of Orange. Within the next few years he took a distinguished part in the sieges of Hesdin, Arras, Aire, Callioure, and Perpignan. At twenty-three he commanded a Norman regiment in the Italian wars, and at twenty-six he was raised to the rank of Marechal de Camp. This was wonderful progress in the profession of war, even in an age when war was the sport of kings and soldiers fought for the mere love of fighting. Frontenac at least was one of these devotees, and when, in 1669, a Venetian embassy came to France to beg for a general to aid them against the Turks in Candia, the great Turenne selected him for this honourable duty.

Returning from the campaign in Candia with increased honour and distinction, Frontenac was appointed Governor of New France in 1672. The text of the royal commission indicates the extent of the activities which Frontenac had crowded into a life of fifty-two years, giving him his full title as: "Louis de Buade, Comte de Palluau et Frontenac, Seigneur de l'Isle Savary, Mestre de camp du regiment de Normandie, Marechal de camp dans les armees du Roy, et Gouverneur et Lieutenant-General en Canada, Acadia, Isle Terreneuve, et autre pays de la France septentrionale...."

There appear, however, to have been reasons other than his eminence which led to the New World appointment of Frontenac. Far back, in 1646, he had contracted an unfortunate marriage. The dashing brigadier-general of twenty-eight had won the immature affections of Anne de la Grange-Trianon, a maid of sixteen. Her father's opposition to the match made it necessary for the lovers to resort surreptitiously to the little Church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, which had the privilege of uniting couples without the consent of their parents. But Frontenac and his bride were ill-mated. Both were possessed of imperious tempers and wayward minds. For a time they held together, then suddenly they separated—Frontenac to find a soothing excitement in the clash of arms, and the precocious Comtesse to divert herself in the brilliant salons of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the grand-daughter of Henry of Navarre.

The memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon allude with a humorous sympathy to Frontenac's appointment: "He was a man of excellent parts"—writes this garrulous chronicler—"living much in society, and completely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of his wife; and he was given the government of Canada to deliver him from her, and afford him some means of living." A more scandalous report of the motive which sent Frontenac to Quebec is to be found in a whimsical ditty which gained quiet currency in the Louvre—

"Je suis ravi que le roi, notre sire, Aime la Montespan; Moi, Frontenac, je me creve de rire, Sachant ce qui lui pend; Et je dirai, sans etre des plus bestes, Tu n'as que mon reste, Roi, Tu n'as que mon reste."



Be these things as they may, Frontenac came on the scene of his new dominion with the evident purpose of devoting himself to its best interests. The city turned out in its best finery to welcome the new Governor; but to the lifelong courtier, bred in the household of royalty itself, this display appeared primitive and garish. As he recalled the usual brilliance of even the provincial courts of France, the rude and rugged walls of Castle St. Louis loomed before his critical eye in depressing contrast. And yet in his reception spectacular features were not entirely wanting. The Hurons from ancient Lorette flocked to the city to greet their new white chief; the coureurs de bois in bold effrontery came to take the measure of their new antagonist; the sombre Jesuits with much misgiving hailed the arrival of so virile an executive; and the soldiers of the garrison acclaimed the gallant bearer of such prowess with salvos of artillery and a feu de joie.

Once duly installed, Frontenac could see no reason why even the wilderness-colony of New France should forgo the rightful forms and functions of a royal province. His mind wandered back regretfully to the old days of the Estates General, which the kings of France were carefully burying in the cemetery of disuse. Technically they still existed, although the makers of absolute monarchy gave them no place in the machinery of government. Loving pomp and circumstance, Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing the Estates General in New France.

The Jesuits were more than ready to constitute the order of the clergy, the small groups of gentilhommes made eager nobles, while the Quebec bourgeoisie, although they had never played the part before, called themselves the Tiers Etat, and meekly awaited the further pleasure of the commanding Frontenac.

By and by all was ready, and heralds posted at the door of the Jesuits' church, which had been gorgeously decorated for the occasion, sounded the assembly. Frontenac, brilliantly apparelled, took his place upon the dais; the gallant noblesse, in various attire, grouped themselves protectingly about his person; the sable Jesuits looked critically on; while the Third Estate hung breathlessly upon the gracious motions of his Excellency. A sunbeam from Versailles had fallen upon the rock in the wilderness, and Quebec once more basked in the splendour of a royal province.

One person of eminence, however, looked askance at the assembled "States." The Intendant Talon too well knew the temper of the King to play with this fire so like to kindle his wrath. A disciple of Colbert, he knew that all constitutional or traditional forms standing in the path of absolutism were doomed to destruction.



As for Frontenac, he went his own unheeding way until a letter came from Colbert in this strain: "Your assembling of the inhabitants to take the oath of fidelity, and your division of them into three estates, may have had a good effect for the moment; but it is well for you to observe that you are always to follow, in the government of Canada, the forms in use here; and since our kings have long regarded it as good for their service not to convoke the States General of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage, you, on your part, should very rarely, or to speak more correctly, never, give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should even, as the colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the syndic who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants; for it is well that each should speak for himself, and no one for all."

Thus at one fell swoop perished the only chance which ever came to French Canada of growing into a self-governing colony and of working out its own destiny. The physical conditions and administrative necessities of the land were, indeed, from first to last, misapprehended by its distant rulers.

For a time Frontenac nursed the chagrin natural to a proud and haughty nature thwarted in its purposes. Straightway he fell foul of Talon, and the latter withdrew to France. It was natural also that he should quarrel with the Jesuits and the Bishop, for where there was any question of mastery, he was always ready to contend. As an instance, the Bishop had pronounced the sale of brandy to the Indians a sin; and in view of the fact that the traffic was licensed under royal authority, Frontenac with his accustomed vehemence pronounced the prohibition seditious. He accused the Jesuits of keeping the Indians in perpetual wardship, and of thinking more of beaver-skins than of souls.

The next conflict was with a foeman well worthy of his steel. An officer named Perrot had been appointed Governor of Montreal through the influence of Talon, his uncle by marriage; and as it was a matter of common knowledge that Perrot was the patron and shared the profits of the coureurs de bois, the enmity of Frontenac was roused against him, gaining vigour from the fact that Perrot carried his head too high. Bizard, another officer, was despatched with three guardsmen to Montreal, to arrest one Lieutenant Carion, who had assisted certain notable coureurs de bois in their escape from justice; and Perrot, frenzied by this trespass upon his own domain, seized the Governor's officers. On hearing of such a reprisal, Frontenac's wrath was kindled sevenfold. He knew, however, that Perrot was only to be apprehended by strategy, and accordingly a letter was despatched, inviting him to come to Quebec to explain the affair. Perrot, already alarmed at his own boldness in resisting vice-regal authority, obediently set out for the court of Frontenac, attended by a Sulpitian priest, the Abbe Salignac de Fenelon.

High words marked the interview of Frontenac and Perrot, and as a result the latter found himself a prisoner in Chateau St. Louis. In due time he was brought before the sovereign council and convicted of obstructing the King's justice. He was confined for almost a year, and then, as the priests also joined in protest against the autocratic governance of Frontenac, it was judged prudent to refer the matter to the King. Perrot was accordingly taken from prison and shipped to France for a new trial. The result, however, was the vindication of Frontenac, both Louis and Colbert being determined to uphold the royal authority. Perrot was sentenced to three weeks in the Bastile, after which he tendered submission to Frontenac, and was again commissioned Governor of Montreal.

Henceforth friendship took the place of enmity, and the two governors now conspired to patronise the coureurs de bois. These were halcyon days for the picturesque banditti, whose periodical visits disturbed the wonted calm of the saintly city. The inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses while these bacchanals ran riot in the streets, bedecked in French and Indian finery, and making hideous both day and night with their ribald chansons. Yet even these roystering forest rovers were destined to bear a part in building up French empire in the West.

The coureurs de bois were in fact the most intrepid explorers of New France, and their rovings were turned to account under the tactful guidance of Talon. Talon's aim was to occupy the interior of the continent, control the rivers which watered it, and hold this vast forest domain for France against all other nations; and for this Imperial work he enrolled the daring Jesuit priests and the adventurous fur-traders. His chief reliance, however, was upon those Frenchmen whose civilised ennui had driven them to the restless life of the woods.

In the pursuit of this "forward" policy, the Jesuits had already established missions on Manatoulin Island, at Sault Ste. Marie, at Michillimackinac, at La Pointe on the western end of Lake Superior, and at Green Bay near the foot of Lake Michigan. These remote posts were visited from time to time by Indians from the far west, who brought news of a great river flowing southwards. Talon's enthusiasm for enterprise in the unknown west was doubled by the report, and he forthwith despatched an expedition under the leadership of Joliet and Pere Marquette to take possession of the Father of Waters.

Louis Joliet was a native French Canadian, born at Quebec in 1645. His exceptional brilliancy while a student at the Jesuits' College attracted the attention of Talon; but at the age of seventeen, the forest proved more alluring than the priesthood, and he became an adventurous fur-trader. His companion, the Pere Marquette, was a fearless Jesuit, who in 1670 had undertaken a mission at the western end of Lake Superior. The destruction of this post, however, sent him back to Michillimackinac, where he was working when ordered westward with Joliet.

Leaving St. Ignace in the middle of May, 1673, the two voyageurs proceeded to the head of Lake Michigan, ascended the Fox River, portaged to the Wisconsin, and on the 17th of June reached the Mississippi. They descended this broad and rapid stream as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. It now seemed clear that the great river emptied, not into the Vermilion Sea[11] as was currently conjectured, but into the Gulf of Mexico; and fearing to fall into the hands of the Spaniards, the explorers decided to retrace their steps. They reached Green Bay before the end of September, and here the Jesuit remained to recruit his failing strength, while Joliet kept on his way to Quebec. Nine years were to pass by before the navigation of the Mississippi, thus begun, was to be completed by the greatest of all Canadian adventurers.

[Footnote 11: Gulf of California.]



Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, was born at Rouen, of a family of wealthy merchants, on the 2nd of November, 1643. As a child he was sent to a Jesuits' school; and although, like Joliet, he soon abandoned all idea of entering the priesthood, he nevertheless retained a pious enthusiasm which gave a mediaeval colouring to the stirring romance of his after-life. With a small allowance from his family, La Salle embarked for Canada in 1666. Through his brother, a priest of St. Sulpice, he was granted a feudal fief at Lachine, and under his resolute occupation the hitherto dangerous seigneury became a strong bulwark for the trembling settlement of Montreal. Young, gallant, and winning, La Salle drew the Indians about him by his dashing courage and by the magnetism of his person; and, whether through weakness of flesh or strength of spirit, he disappeared among them and withdrew from civilisation for the space of three years, a term which he employed in achieving mastery of Indian dialects and gaining knowledge of their character. On his return to Quebec in 1673, he found favour in the eyes of Frontenac, and an inexplicable sympathy united the proud veteran of a hundred fights and the debonair coureur de bois, beneath whose dreamy countenance the Governor read reckless valour and invincible determination.

In 1677 La Salle was despatched to France to procure royal authority for following up the explorations of Joliet and Marquette. He also applied for a patent of nobility; and as this request was strongly supported by Frontenac, he was made seigneur over a large tract of land, including the fort of Cataraqui,[12] and was empowered to build and occupy other forts in furtherance of exploration. The opening sentences of this instrument show the King's anxiety to extend his vast dominions in the New World: "Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre, to our dear and well-beloved Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, greeting. We have received with favour the very humble petition made us in your name, to permit you to labour at the discovery of the western parts of New France; and we have the more willingly entertained this proposal since we have nothing more at heart than the exploration of this country, through which, to all appearances, a way may be found to Mexico...."

[Footnote 12: Later called Fort Frontenac, and the site of the present city of Kingston.]

To La Salle the commission was full of promise, for his ardent mind was filled with bold designs. He foresaw a time when French enterprise, leaving the rugged civilisation on the banks of the St. Lawrence, would seize upon the rich valley of the Mississippi; a fortified post at the mouth of the Father of Waters would hold the interior of the continent against the Spaniards; and the peltries and buffalo hides of the great West would fill his forts with gold. With Henri de Tonty, La Motte de Lussiere, Father Hennepin, and thirty men, La Salle hastened to Quebec in the summer of 1678, and without loss of time he organised his first expedition to the distant Mississippi.

The story of that enterprise is a tale of disaster which has few parallels in history. A perilous passage over Lake Ontario in a ten-ton vessel brought them to Niagara. Above the falls they built The Griffin, a schooner of forty-five tons, to carry the necessities of the Mississippi settlement westward by way of the Great Lakes. This vessel was lost by some obscure calamity, and the conjecture is that she foundered in Lake Michigan. La Salle now found himself at the head of a mutinous company stranded at Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois, facing a winter with practically no provisions. Six of his men deserted, and on two occasions treachery all but deprived him of his life.

In the circumstances La Salle saw only one possible course before him: to return to Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies and material for further progress. Leaving Tonty his trusted lieutenant in charge of Fort Crevecoeur, he set out with an Indian guide and four Frenchmen. The hardships and disasters of the journey deprived him of his companions, one by one, but he pressed on alone. "During sixty-five days he had toiled almost incessantly, travelling about a thousand miles through a country beset with every form of peril and obstruction.... In him an unconquerable mind held at its service a frame of iron, and taxed it to its utmost endurance. The pioneer of Western pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a man of thought, trained amid arts and letters."[13]

This first chapter of his reverses, however, was not yet completed; for even while La Salle was getting succour for his company on the Illinois, a letter arrived from Tonty telling him of the mutiny of the garrison and the wilful destruction of Fort Crevecoeur with all it held. The calamitous news would have killed the spirit of any one less courageous than La Salle; but the bold explorer, whose whole life was a long grapple with adversity, prepared with all haste to return to the rescue of Tonty, who, he hoped forlornly, had survived the mutinous treachery. By the 10th of August he was ready, and with a new outfit and twenty-five men he set out once more for the distant Illinois.

[Footnote 13: Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, chap. xiv.]

After three months of toil and hardship he came again to Fort Crevecoeur. Anxiety for Tonty and his faithful companions had consumed him all the way. Yet he was unprepared for the shocking sight that met his eyes. The once populous town of the Illinois was now a valley of dry bones; the bodies of women and children strewed the plain, and the charred trophies of Illinois warriors hung tragically upon blackened stakes. Such were the terrible marks of an Iroquois visitation.

Wolves ran howling away as the Frenchmen drew near, and voracious buzzards wheeled overhead. Anxiously La Salle sought among the revolting remnants for any sign of Tonty; but none was to be found, and although the relief expedition continued for weeks and months to search for their missing comrades, it was spring before the explorer heard with joy that his lieutenant had found refuge among the Pottawattamies. Meanwhile, his resources for the Mississippi expedition had been again dissipated, and once more he returned to Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies.

Soon, for the third time, the persistent adventurer set his face towards the west. His company now included twenty-three Frenchmen and eighteen Indians, equipped with all the care his former experiences could suggest. Summer had gone before his plans were completed; but all seasons were alike to La Salle, and in the early autumn his expedition began. Lake Huron was reached in October, Fort Miami a few weeks later, and on the 6th of February their canoes glided out of the Illinois into the eddying current of the Mississippi.

Down past the turbid Missouri they swept, and beyond the mouth of the Ohio. Every day brought them newer signs of spring, and every day saw the spirits of La Salle rising at the happy consciousness of fulfilled ambition. On the 13th of March they encamped near the mouth of the Arkansas, and three hundred miles below they were well received by the Natchez Indians. On the 6th of April the great river divided before them into three wide channels: La Salle followed that of the west; Tonty took the middle course; and D'Autray descended the eastern passage. On the 19th of April the three parties met on the Gulf of Mexico. A cross bearing the arms of France was set up, and the country was named Louisiana after the Grand Monarch.

The Louisiana of to-day conveys no idea of the vast tract of country defined by La Salle's proclamation of 1682. To the explorer it meant the extent of the mighty continent, stretching westward from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, and north and south from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. All former accessions of territory were small beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French enterprise. Yet the very magnitude of this new success made for the undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic vision pictured a greater New France in the valley of the Mississippi, governed by himself—a prosperous trading colony shipping cargoes of beaver-skins directly to Europe by way of the Gulf of Mexico. Quebec, however, was the home of his enemies. His former reverses had shattered the faith of creditors, while the Canadian merchants envied him the monopoly of the Western trade. They heaped calumny upon his enterprises, labelled him a coureur de bois, and persistently wrecked his schemes. Final success enabled La Salle in a measure to disregard these annoyances; but when the new Governor, La Barre, went the length of seizing Fort Frontenac—thus cutting off the far west from its supplies—and even declared him an outlaw, La Salle, although he had but lately recovered from a fever, made up his mind to carry his cause to France.

In the spring of 1684, therefore, the weatherbeaten woodsman of the New World stood before the throne of the Grand Monarch; and although the Court had greater terrors for him than the Canadian forests, yet he was able to set forth the rights of his case with the honest boldness of a frontiersman and the force of a cultured intellect. Louis followed his words with deepest interest, and was moved to carry out a purpose which for some time had possessed his mind. Within three months four armed vessels, bearing nearly four hundred men, set sail from Rochelle for the Gulf of Mexico. A new commission empowered the explorer to establish a fort on the southern gulf, from which to harass the Spaniards, and to fortify a base near the mouth of the Mississippi for the effective control of Louisiana.

But the story of this, the final enterprise of La Salle, is a sickening record of disaster. After a stormy passage three of the four vessels reached St. Domingo, the St. Francois having fallen a prey to Spanish buccaneers. At St. Domingo a violent fever threatened the leader's life and mind, and delayed further progress for almost two months. At length, near the end of December, they entered the Gulf of Mexico; but the uncertainties of its navigation were further increased by dense fogs; and when, after days of anxious searching, the fleet came to anchor off a low-lying marshy coast, La Salle had sailed four hundred miles beyond the mouth of the river he sought. Unaware of his mistake, he determined to land and build a temporary fort; but the frigate Aimable, laden with stores, was wrecked upon a reef; Beaujeu, the recreant commander of the Joly, deserted his leader and made sail for France, and presently La Salle was left with only the little frigate Belle. Soon afterwards this vessel also sank beneath the stormy waters of the forbidden sea.

Thus, by accident and by disease the imposing expedition which had left Rochelle in the midsummer of 1684 was now reduced to a wretched band of starvelings, huddled together on the malarial sands of the Mexican gulf. In this last extremity La Salle saw one hope of salvation, and the magnitude of his new project was characteristic of the invincible adventurer whom fate had so often buffeted in vain. At the head of half his followers he boldly set out for Canada overland, hoping to bring back succour to the desolate maroons who still remained at Matagorda Bay.

Throughout his undertakings the virile mind of La Salle had always held his fellows in willing or unwilling subjection. The weak were glad to lean upon his strength, and to these he was the "guardian angel."[14] To others, however, his fine reserve and distinguished manner were causes of gnawing discontent. This evident lack of frankness in dealing with his companions contrasted strangely with that keen appreciation of the character of the Indians which had brought him such success in his intercourse with them. The handful of men with whom he set out from Matagorda Bay on the 7th of June, 1687, besides a few whose admiration for their leader knew no bounds, also included others who, like the children of Israel, thirsted for the life of him who had led them out into the wilderness to die.

[Footnote 14: "...Notre Ange tutelaire, le Sieur de la Salle."—Douay.]

Week after week the little band of Frenchmen struggled on, now through a sea of prairie grass, now wading through deep savannahs, and presently swimming or fording streams which blocked their progress. Despair invaded the camp, and hostile murmurings arose against La Salle and the little group who remained true to him. A terrible plot was on foot. Presently the blow fell. Moranget, La Salle's nephew, was despatched with an axe; Nika, the faithful Shawanoe, and Saget, the leader's servant, were murdered as they slept. As for La Salle, a wanton bullet pierced his brain. Thus the man who had braved the poisoned arrows of the Iroquois and the hatchets of Indians without number, against whose iron strength deadly fevers had stormed in vain, whose fortitude had been unbroken by the almost incredible perversities of fortune—this paladin of the wilderness was at last laid low by the hand of a traitor. The New World has no more piteous tale than that of the unabated sufferings of La Salle, who knew no fear and acknowledged no defeat, even at the hands of a relentless destiny. It has no nobler record than the tale of his life.



CHAPTER VIII

FIRE, MASSACRE, AND SIEGE

At Quebec, Frontenac did what he could to promote the bold designs of La Salle. Nevertheless, the explorer had been forced to furnish his own men and supplies, getting trading privileges in return—an arrangement by which the King had all the glory without any of the risk. There were those in Quebec, indeed, who suspected the Governor of having a personal interest in La Salle's adventures, and enemies were not slow to credit him further with a share in profits from illegal trade in furs. The Intendant Duchesneau fomented these suspicions, and his letters to the King and the minister were filled with black charges against Frontenac. The latter, in his turn, called the Intendant to account; and Quebec was then ranged into two camps—the Bishop and the Jesuits siding with the Intendant, while the Recollet friars and the merchants supported Frontenac. Every ship carried home to France a budget of letters filled with charges and countercharges, until it became apparent to the Court that a bitter civil strife was raging in the distant colony; and the King, unable to judge between the antagonists, finally recalled them both.

The new Governor, La Barre, met with ill-omens on arrival. His predecessor had scarce departed when Quebec was visited by the first of those destructive fires which were destined to rage so often through its winding streets. The summer of 1682 had been exceptionally dry, and on the night of the 4th of August a fire began in the house of Etienne Planchon and spread with dreadful speed over the whole of Lower Town. Fifty-five houses were burnt to the ground on this occasion, and Lower Town became a heap of ashes. One house alone escaped, that of the merchant Aubert de la Chesnaye; and more than half the wealth of Canada was destroyed.

If so be that misfortunes ever come singly, the history of Quebec at least has never been able to afford an example; and as if destructive fire were an insufficient visitation of angry fate, other misfortunes, no less cruel, now came upon the city. In these years, indeed, it seemed that Nature herself was leagued with the enemies of Quebec; for in the Jesuit Relations we have a circumstantial if highly imaginative account of a violent earthquake which visited the Province in 1663:—

"Many of the French inhabitants and Indians," says the writer, "who were eye-witnesses to the scene, state that a great way up the river of Trois Rivieres, about eighteen miles below Quebec, the hills which bordered the river on either side, and which were of a prodigious height, were torn from their foundations and plunged into the river, causing it to change its course and spread itself over a large tract of land recently cleared;...lakes appeared where none ever existed before; mountains were overthrown, swallowed up by the gaping earth, or precipitated into adjacent rivers, leaving in their place frightful chasms or level plains....Rivers in many parts of the country sought other beds, or totally disappeared. The earth and mountains were violently split and rent in innumerable places, creating chasms and precipices whose depths have never yet been ascertained. Such devastation was also occasioned in the woods, that more than a thousand acres in one neighbourhood were completely overturned."

Another account of this event is given by an Ursuline sister:—

"The first shock of earthquake took place on 5th February, 1663, about half-past five in the evening. The weather was calm and serene, when we heard a terrible noise and humming sound like that of a great number of heavy carriages rolling over a paved floor swiftly. After this one heard, both above and below the earth and on all sides, as it were a confused mingling of waves and billows, which caused sensations of horror. Sounds were heard as of stones upon the roof, in the garrets, and chambers; a thick dust spread around; doors opened and shut of themselves. The bells of all our churches and clocks sounded of themselves; and the steeples as well as the houses swayed to and fro, like trees in a great wind. And all this in the midst of a horrible confusion of furniture turned over, stones falling, boards breaking, walls cracking, and the cries of domestic animals, of which some entered the houses and some went out; in a word, it seemed to be the eve of the Day of Judgment whose signs were witnessed. Very different impressions were made on us. Some went forth for fear of being buried in the ruins of our house, which was seen to jog as if made of cards; others prostrated themselves at the foot of the altar, as if to die there. One good lay sister was so terrified that her body trembled for an hour without ability to stop the agitation. When the second shock came, at eight o'clock the same evening, we were all ranged in our stalls at the choir. It was very violent, and we all expected death every moment, and to be engulfed in the ruins of the building....No person was killed. The conversions were extraordinary, and one ecclesiastic assured me that he had taken more than eight hundred confessions."

Such things as these seemed not to dampen the ardour of those whose fortunes were cast in New France. Personal prowess and force of character were the natural result of trouble and disaster. La Barre, however, proved a dire exception to the rule. His hands shook in the hour of trial; he weakly grasped occasion. The magnificent but tragical career of La Salle had annexed a vast domain to the French possessions in North America, while Du Lhut, La Durantaye, Nicolas Perrot, and the rest of the coureurs de bois had, by their adventurous trading, given even the remote Sioux and Assiniboins an interest in the fur trade of France. By this rapid expansion of French influence the Five Nation Indians at last saw themselves hemmed in by tribes under the influence of Quebec, their hunting grounds limited to a small and now partly exhausted area. In order to procure guns and ammunition from their English friends they were compelled to take thought for the decreasing peltries. A destructive raid into the Illinois valley was the first step in their new policy, which was the annihilation of all those tribes which traded with the French, and the diversion of the beaver trade to the wealthier merchants of New England.

At all hazards New France was bound to prevent this dire blow from falling upon her allies, whose adherence to the pact rested upon the ability of French arms to protect them. But French prestige among the Indians so suffered under the weak-kneed administration of La Barre, that the Iroquois became bolder in contravening the treaty of peace, while the Western tribes were on the point of going over to the English. These circumstances prompted the expedition of 1684.

With a hundred regulars, an equal number of Canadians, and a composite band of Indians, La Barre set out from Quebec to destroy the Senecas. News had been sent to the French trading posts of the north, and it was arranged that the main column should be joined at Niagara by a force of Hurons, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawattamies, and Foxes, whom the coureurs de bois had rallied for a last supreme effort. But in spite of the strength of this array, it was not expected by those who knew the vacillating Governor that he would be successful. Even the most sceptical, however, were not prepared for the woeful fiasco which followed. Instead of advancing to destroy his enemies, La Barre summoned them to a council, where the Seneca deputies were not slow to perceive the weakness of their foe, and contemptuously dictated terms of peace. Thus the French were degraded in the eyes of their Indian allies, who returned disgusted to their homes. The event being taken seriously in France, La Barre was recalled, and the Marquis de Denonville appointed in his place.

It was now becoming clearer that English intrigue was behind all these troubles with the Iroquois. Dongan, the Catholic Governor of New York at this period, a resourceful and adroit politician, formed the design of absorbing the territory of the Iroquois into the domain of James II. of England; and the Indians, while they resisted his ulterior purpose, were yet glad enough to get English guns for their warfare against the French. Besides this direct official action, Dongan encouraged English traders to go among the Canadian Indians and wean them from their alliance with Quebec.

At first the rivalry was but a diplomatic duel between Denonville and Dongan, England and France being then at peace. Soon, however, the colonies of the two nations were waging a border warfare of their own. While the English were urging the Iroquois against their rivals, the furtive hand of the French was evident in the raids of the Abenakis upon the woods of Acadie; but at this early stage of the dispute the two Powers disclaimed all approval of these savage reprisals.

In 1687 Governor Denonville, mustering a strong force at Quebec, moved quickly up the St. Lawrence upon the Senecas. Like La Barre he invited a number of chiefs to a conference, but when they came he treacherously seized and sent them to the galleys of France. He then crossed from Fort Frontenac, ravaging and burning their villages and towns. Not only the Senecas but the whole Iroquois confederacy burned to avenge the terrible warfare of Denonville. In small bands they ranged the woods round about Quebec and the river settlements, darting to and fro like silent shadows, so that for months the French suffered daily the anguish of battle, murder, and sudden death. Disciplined soldiers were helpless against this stealthy warfare, and a man walked in danger of his life even within the palisades.

Great as was their distress, however, it was but a prelude to one of the cruellest incidents in Canadian history. The night of the 4th of August, 1689, being heavy with thunderclouds, fifteen hundred Iroquois warriors, under cover of the darkness, crept upon the settlement of Lachine, at the western end of the Island of Montreal. They scattered stealthily among the cabins, and at a given signal surprised the victims in their beds. More than two hundred men, women, and children were tomahawked in cold blood or carried off to a lingering death, the lurid flames of the burning seigneury telling their bitter tale to the watchers at Montreal. New France was faint with horror; and once more she sighed for the strong protecting arm of Frontenac.

Meanwhile, the English Revolution of 1688 had driven James II. from the throne, and the French king had taken up the cause of the Stuarts against William of Orange. England and France were face to face in Europe, and in the New World the veiled conflict between the rival colonies now gave place to open war. The King by this time realised that Frontenac, for all his seventy years and his reputation for rashness, was the only man qualified to fill the difficult post of Governor, and accordingly sent him again to New France. He reached Quebec about the middle of October. It was evening, and the citizens had gathered at the quay with torches of welcome, while fireworks and illuminations blazed in his honour over the streets of the Upper Town. Vigorous in spite of his years, the grizzled hero of the siege of Arras stood once more on the soil of New France, and notwithstanding the perfunctory homage of the Jesuits and the studied reserve of the Intendant Champigny, a feeling of relief thrilled Quebec. An enterprise of almost incredible difficulty was to be laid upon the shoulders of the veteran ruler. This was nothing less than an attack upon New York as a preliminary step to the overthrow of all New England. A land force was to descend on Albany, proceeding by way of the Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, while two frigates were to assail New York from the sea. The naval project, however, was so feeble and uncertain, so ill-starred, that adverse winds on the Atlantic brought it to an untimely end.

Having abandoned for the moment the expedition against New York, Frontenac turned his attention first to the ever-present Indian problem. The defection of the north-western tribes was becoming more and more probable notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the coureurs de bois. Indians were fast losing faith in French protection, and before all else it was necessary to make the Iroquois understand that the great Onontio[15] had returned to chastise them. Aiming therefore at the revival of French prestige, the Governor organised "The three war-parties," a step which may be considered as the initial move in that desperate conflict which left the flag of England floating over the citadel of Quebec.

The three war-parties, each consisting of regulars, coureurs de bois, and Indians, were now despatched from Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. The deep snows of a Canadian winter lay upon the ground as these forces of destruction sallied forth. Leaving Montreal, the first party passed down the frozen St. Lawrence, and into the wintry ravines of the Richelieu, and after a march of terrible hardship, now plunging through snow-drifts, now benumbed by frost, wading knee-deep through the melting swamps, they came at last to the unguarded palisades of the Dutch settlement of Corlaer, or Schenectady. It was midnight as they stole through the streets of the sleeping village, now suddenly wakened by a hideous war-whoop, the signal for a massacre as terrible as that of Lachine.

[Footnote 15: The Indian name for Count Frontenac.]

With a similarity of grim details the other two war-parties attacked the rival colonies of New England. Under cover of the night the band from Three Rivers fell upon Salmon Falls, a village on the borders of New Hampshire, and put its inhabitants to the sword. The victors then joined the column which Portneuf had led from Quebec, and together they moved down Casco Bay to Fort Loyal, where the settlers of the district had assembled for a vigorous defence. The New Englanders held out for several days against the French and the Abenakis, but at length agreed to surrender with the honours of war. Portneuf's pledge of protection, however, was shamelessly broken, and the Indian allies fell upon the helpless captives without restraint.

Such success amply fulfilled the expectations of Frontenac, and the wavering tribes of the West now hastened to Quebec to confirm their allegiance. In New France elation took the place of gloom, and bonfires burned among the settlements along the St. Lawrence. In New England, however, the threefold atrocity produced an effect that boded ill for Canada. In their eagerness to avenge this outrage, the Atlantic colonies, up to this time disunited and isolated, now pledged themselves to union against a common peril, and planned the conquest of the country. A force of colonial militia set out from Albany against Montreal, while a naval attack was directed against Port Royal and Quebec. Sir William Phipps sailed from Nantasket with a fleet of seven vessels, appearing on the 11th of May before Port Royal, whose commandant surrendered without a blow.

The admiral who won this bloodless victory is one of the most notable figures in New World history. William Phipps was born on the Kennebec in 1650, and spent his early life tending sheep in the rude border settlement of New England. But ambition and love of adventure not being satisfied by a pastoral life, the youth soon adopted the trade of a ship-carpenter and came to Boston. Here fortune in the form of a wealthy widow smiled upon him, and he is next found searching for a wrecked treasure-ship in the Spanish Main. The romantic sailor was, however, at first unsuccessful in his quest; but as he had awakened the interest of the Duke of Albemarle, he obtained from this nobleman a frigate for a similar adventure off the coast of Hispaniola. In the course of this latter voyage his buccaneer crew rebelled, and single-handed the powerful Phipps drove them from the quarter-deck. Success at length rewarded him, the treasure-ship was raised, and through the influence of his illustrious patron the bucolic New Englander received a knighthood. Sir William Phipps thus returned to his castle in the Green Lane of North Boston with the glamour of the court upon him, and was chosen by the colonists of Massachusetts to carry out their bold designs against Quebec.

Meanwhile, Frontenac anticipated coming danger by strengthening the city. Nature had made the position impregnable on the river side, but in the rear it was still open to attack. All through the winter gangs of men were employed in cutting timber in the forest, and dragging hewn palisades to the city, where Frontenac superintended the erection of stout barricades. While the Governor was thus engaged news reached him that Winthrop was marching upon Montreal, and thither he hastened with all speed. Circumstances, however, had conspired to render futile the expedition from New York and Connecticut; and intestine quarrels, followed by Iroquois defection, wrecked the English enterprise before it had come within striking distance of Montreal.



In the meantime Sir William Phipps had sailed for Quebec with a fleet of more than thirty sail, two thousand men, and four months' supplies. The hope of receiving help from England had somewhat delayed the expedition, and it was the 9th of August before the admiral slipped his cables in the harbour of Nantasket. As this American armada comprised vessels ranging in size from the flag-ship Six Friends, with forty-four guns, down to the fishing smacks of Gloucester, its progress was slow. The most serious difficulty, however, was the absence of a pilot who knew the dangerous navigation of the St. Lawrence. Nevertheless, Phipps decided to grope his way up the river. However, news of the invasion had already reached Quebec, and Prevost, the town Mayor, despatched a messenger to Frontenac at Montreal, pressing on meanwhile with the fortifications already so well under way.

Nature had left the cliffs of Quebec accessible at only those three points where later stood Prescott, Hope and Palace Gates, and Prevost secured these by means of barricades and earthworks. The strand of the St. Charles, from the Palace of the Intendant to the Sault-au-Matelot, was protected by a continuous palisade, and the fortifications begun by Frontenac in the previous winter having since been completed, now afforded adequate protection upon the landward side of the town. Moreover, several batteries were disposed at salient points. In the garden which flanks the present Dufferin Terrace was a battery of eight guns; while the high cliff of the Sault-au-Matelot and the barricade at Palace Hill were each defended by six guns. The windmill on Mount Carmel was converted into a small battery, a number of light pieces also being collected in the square opposite the Jesuits' College, to serve as a reserve battery for any weak spot in the defences. Six, eighteen, and twenty-four pounders were mounted on the wharves of Lower Town. For several days the men from the surrounding parishes had been flocking into the city, and by the evening of the 15th of October about twenty-seven hundred regulars and militia were gathered within the fortifications. Next day the sun rose upon the New England fleet moored in the expansive basin of Quebec.



All that was possible in the way of defence had been accomplished, but in the face of such imposing naval strength the assault was awaited with anxiety. The women and children repaired to the stone convents for refuge, and the men stood by the guns. The siege, however, was not to open with a cannonade, but a parley. A boat put out from the Six Friends with a flag of truce, and soon an English lieutenant landed at the Cul-de-sac, bearing a letter for the commander of the garrison. Before receiving the missive, Frontenac devised a useful and whimsical stratagem to raise the prestige of the beleaguered city. Phipps's messenger was first of all blindfolded. Then two sergeants led the bewildered envoy by a devious route from the quay up to Fort St. Louis, and over the triple barricades of Mountain Hill, while the noisy soldiers thronged him, and the din of the streets was designedly increased. Finally they took the bandage from his eyes. Before him stood the haughty Frontenac in the brilliant uniform of a French marshal, and the council-room of the Chateau was crowded with the officers of his staff, tricked off in laces of gold and silver with ribbons and plumes, powder and perukes.



Withal, the English envoy was equal to the occasion. If the strength of Quebec and its garrison filled him with surprise, he gave no sign of it, but with a dignity rivalling that of the French Governor delivered his admiral's summons to surrender. "Your answer positive in an hour," recited the postscript, "returned by your own trumpet with the return of mine, is required upon the peril that will ensue."

Frontenac and his aides were not in the least prepared to accept the brusque demands of Sir William Phipps. Fort Royal, it is true, had been cowed into an immediate surrender, but the blustering sailor of New England had mistaken Quebec and its commandant.

For a moment the fiery Count controlled his temper, then it blazed forth with wonted ardour. "Tell your General," he exclaimed, "that I will answer him only by the mouths of my cannon, that he may learn that the fortress of Quebec is not to be summoned after this fashion. Let him do his best, and I shall do mine."

Blindfolded once more, the bearer of the flag of truce again scrambled over the barricades, and was led down to the river's brink.

To Phipps, the challenge of Frontenac seemed to outdo his own in boldness, and he was filled with doubt by the envoy's accounts of the strength of Quebec. The black rock of Cape Diamond now seemed to tower above him more grimly than ever, and with some misgiving he at length adopted a bold plan of assault. The infantry, under Major Walley, were to land on the flats of Beauport, cross the St. Charles when the tide was out, and assail the flank of the town on the side of the Cote Ste. Genevieve; while Phipps himself was to cannonade the city from the river, land a storming party, and gain the Upper Town by way of the barricades.