Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER]

Charles de La Tour with his Huguenots hides safely ensconced behind his
slab palisades with the swarthy faces of half a hundred Indian
retainers lighted up by the huge logs at blaze on the hearth. Charles
de La Tour takes counsel with himself. English at Port Royal, English
at Cape Breton, English on the mainland at Boston, English ships
passing and repassing his lone lodge in the wilderness, he will be
safer, will Charles de La Tour, with wider distance between himself and
the foe; and he will take more peltries where there are fewer traders.
Still keeping his fort in Nova Scotia, La Tour goes across Fundy Bay
and builds him a second, stronger fort on St. John River, New
Brunswick, near where Carleton town stands to-day.

Then two things happened that upset all plans.

{63} The Hundred Associates are given _all_ Canada--Quebec and Acadia.
Founded by Cardinal Richelieu, the Hundred Associates are violently
Catholic, violently anti-Protestant. Charles de La Tour need expect no
favors, if indeed the grant that he holds from Biencourt be not
assailed. Double reason for moving the most of his possessions across
Fundy Bay to St. John River.

Then the Englishmen, under the Kirke brothers, capture Quebec. As luck
or ill luck will have it, among the French captured from the French
ships of the Hundred Associates down at Tadoussac, is Claude de La
Tour, the father of Charles. Claude de La Tour was a Protestant. This
and his courtly manner and his noble birth commended him to the English
court. What had France done for Claude de La Tour? Placed him under
the ban on account of his religion.

Claude de La Tour promptly became a British subject, received the title
Baronet of Nova Scotia with enormous grants of land on St. John River,
New Brunswick, married an English lady in waiting to the Queen, and
sailed with three men-of-war for Nova Scotia to win over his son
Charles. No writer like Marc Lescarbot was present to describe the
meeting between father and son; but one can guess the stormy
scene,--the war between love of country and love of father, the guns of
the father's vessels pointing at the son's fort, the guns of the son's
fort pointing at the father's vessels. The father's arguments were
strong. What had France done for the La Tours? By siding with England
they would receive safe asylum in case of persecution and enormous
grants of land on St. John River. But the son's arguments were
stronger. The father must know from his English bride--maid in waiting
to the English Queen--that England had no intentions of keeping her
newly captured possessions in Canada, but had already decided to trade
them back to France for a dowry to the English Queen. If Canada were
given back to France, what were English grants in New Brunswick worth?
"If those who sent you think me capable of betraying my country even at
the prayer of my father, they are mightily mistaken," thundered the
young man, ordering his gunners to their places. {64} "I don't
purchase honors by crime! I don't undervalue the offer of England's
King; but the King of France is just as able to reward me! The King of
France has confided the defense of Acadia to me; and I'll defend it to
my last breath."

Stung by his son's rebuke, the elder La Tour retired to his ship, wrote
one more unavailing appeal, then landed his mariners to rush the fort.
But the rough bush lopers inside the palisades were expert marksmen.
Their raking cross fire kept the English at a distance, and the father
could neither drive nor coax his men to the sticking point of courage
to scale palisades in such an unnatural war. Claude de La Tour was now
in an unenviable plight. He dare not go back to France a traitor. He
could not go back to England, having failed to win the day. The son
built him a dwelling outside the fort; and there this famous courtier
of two great nations, with his noble wife, retired to pass the end of
his days in a wildwood wilderness far enough from the gaudy tinsel of
courts. The fate of both husband and wife is unknown.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LA TOUR'S POSSESSIONS IN ACADIA]

Charles de La Tour's predictions were soon verified. The Treaty of
St.-Germain-en-Laye, in 1632, gave back all Canada to France; and the
young man's loyalty was rewarded by the French King confirming the
father's English patent to the lands of St. John River, New Brunswick.
Perhaps he expected more. He certainly wanted to be governor of
Acadia, and may have looked for fresh title to Port Royal, which
Biencourt had deeded {65} to him. His ambition was embittered.
Cardinal Richelieu of the Hundred Associates had his own favorites to
look after. Acadia is divided into three provinces. Over all as
governor is Isaac Razilli, chief of the Hundred Associates. La Tour
holds St. John. One St. Denys is given Cape Breton; and Port Royal,
the best province of all, falls to Sieur d'Aulnay de Charnisay, friend
and relative of Richelieu; and when Razilli dies in 1635, Charnisay,
with his strong influence at court, easily secures the dead man's
patents with all land grants attached. Charnisay becomes governor of
Acadia.

For a second time La Tour is thwarted. Things are turning out as his
father had foretold. Who began the border warfare matters little.
Whether Charnisay as lord of all Acadia first ordered La Tour to
surrender St. John, or La Tour, holding his grant from Biencourt to
Port Royal, ordered Charnisay to give up Annapolis Basin, war had
begun,--such border warfare as has its parallel only in the raids of
rival barons in the Middle Ages. Did La Tour's vessels laden with furs
slip out from St. John River across Fundy Bay bound for France? There
lay at Cape Sable and Sable Island Charnisay's freebooters, Charnisay's
wreckers, ready to board the ship or lure her a wreck on Sable Island
reefs by false lights. It is unsafe to accept as facts the charges and
countercharges made by these two enemies; but from independent sources
it seems fairly certain that Charnisay, unknown to Cardinal Richelieu,
was a bit of a freebooter and wrecker; for his men made a regular
business of waylaying English ships from Boston, Dutch ships from New
York, as they passed Sable Island; and Charnisay's name became
cordially hated by the Protestant colonies of New England. La Tour,
being Huguenot, could count on firm friends in Boston.

Countless legends cling to Fundy Bay of the forays between these two.
In 1640 La Tour and his wife, cruising past Annapolis Basin in their
fur ships, rashly entered and attacked Port Royal. Their ship was run
aground by Charnisay's vessels and captured; but the friars persuaded
the victor to set La Tour and his wife free, pending an appeal to
France. France, of {66} course, decided in favor of Charnisay, who was
of royal blood, a relative of Richelieu's, in high favor with the
court. La Tour's patent was revoked and he was ordered to surrender
his fort on the St. John.

[Illustration: CARDINAL RICHELIEU]

In answer, La Tour loaded his cannon, locked the fort gates, and bade
defiance to Charnisay. Charnisay sails across Fundy Bay in June, 1643,
with a fleet of four vessels and five hundred men to bombard the fort.
La Tour was without provisions, though his store ship from France lay
in hiding outside, blocked from entering by Charnisay's fleet. Days
passed. Resistance was hopeless. On one side lay the impenetrable
forest; on the other, Charnisay's fleet. On the night of June 12th, La
Tour and his wife slipped from a little sally port in the dark, ran
along the shore, and, evading spies, succeeded in rowing out to the
store ship. Ebb tide carried them far from the four men-of-war
anchored fast in front of the abandoned fort. Then sails out, the
store ship fled for Boston, where La Tour and his wife appealed for aid.

The Puritans of Boston had qualms of conscience about interfering in
this French quarrel; but they did not forget that Charnisay's wreckers
had stripped their merchant ships come to grief on the reefs of Sable
Island. La Tour gave the Boston merchants a mortgage on all his
belongings at St. John, and in return obtained four vessels, fifty
mariners, ninety-two soldiers, {67} thirty-eight cannon. With this
fleet he swooped down on Fundy Bay in July. Charnisay's vessels lay
before Fort St. John, where the stubborn little garrison still held
out, when La Tour came down on him like an enraged eagle. Charnisay's
fur ships were boarded, scuttled, and sunk, while the commander himself
fled in terror for Port Royal. All sails pressed, La Tour pursued
right into Annapolis Basin, wounding seven of the enemy, killing three,
taking one prisoner. Charnisay's one remaining vessel grounded in the
river. A fight took place near the site of the mill which Poutrincourt
had built long ago, but Charnisay succeeded in gaining the shelter of
Port Royal, where his cannon soon compelled La Tour to fly from
Annapolis Basin. Charnisay found it safer to pass that winter in
France, and La Tour gathered in all the peltry traffic of the bay.

Early in 1644 Charnisay returned and sent a friar to secure the
neutrality of the New Englanders. All summer negotiations dragged on
between Boston and Port Royal, La Tour meanwhile scouring land and sea
unchecked, packing his fort with peltries. Finally, Charnisay promised
to desist from all fur trade along the coast if the New England
colonies would remain neutral; and the colonies promised not to aid La
Tour. La Tour was now outlawed by the French government, and Charnisay
had actually induced New England to promise not to convey either La
Tour or his wife to or from Bay of Fundy in English boats.

La Tour chanced to be absent from his fort in 1645. Like a bird of
prey Charnisay swooped on St. John River; but he had not reckoned on
Madame La Tour--Frances Marie Jacqueline. With the courage and agility
of a trained soldier, she commanded her little garrison of fifty and
returned the raider's cannonade with a fury that sent Charnisay limping
back to Port Royal with splintered decks, twenty mangled corpses
jumbled aft, and a dozen men wounded to the death lying in the hold.

With all the power of France at his back Charnisay had been defeated by
a woman,--the Huguenot wife of an outlaw! He must reduce La Tour or
stand discredited before the world. {68} Furious beyond words, he
hastened to France to prepare an overwhelming armament.

But Madame La Tour was not idle. She, too, hastened across the
Atlantic to solicit aid in London. One can imagine how Charnisay
gnashed his teeth. Here, at last, was his chance. The Boston vessels
were not to convey the La Tours back to Acadia. Like a hawk Charnisay
cruised the sea for the outcoming ship with its fair passenger; but
Madame La Tour had made a cast-iron agreement with the master of the
sailing vessel to bring her direct to Boston. Instead of this, the
vessel cruised the St. Lawrence, trading with the Indians, and so
delayed the aid coming to La Tour; but when Charnisay's searchers came
on board off Sable Island, Madame La Tour was hidden among the freight
in the hold. For the delay she sued the sailing master in Boston and
obtained a judgment of 2000 pounds; and when he failed to pay, had his
cargo seized and sold, and with the proceeds equipped three vessels to
aid her outlawed husband. So the whole of 1646 passed, each side
girding itself for the final fray.

April, 1647, spies brought word to Charnisay that La Tour was absent
from his fort. Waiting not a moment, Charnisay hurried ships,
soldiers, cannon across the bay. Inside La Tour's fort was no
confusion. Madame La Tour had ordered every man to his place. Day and
night for three days the siege lasted, Charnisay's men closing in on
the palisades so near they could bandy words with the fighters on the
galleries inside the walls. Among La Tour's fighters were Swiss
mercenaries--men who fight for the highest pay. Did Charnisay in the
language of the day "grease the fist" of the Swiss sentry, or was it a
case of a boorish fellow refusing to fight under a woman's command?
Legend gives both explanations; but on Easter Sunday morning
Charnisay's men gained entrance by scaling the walls where the Swiss
sentry stood. Madame La Tour rushed her men to an inner fort loopholed
with guns. Afraid of a final defeat that would disgrace him before all
the world, Charnisay called up generous terms if she would surrender.
To save the {69} lives of the men Madame La Tour agreed to honorable
surrender, and the doors were opened. In rushed Charnisay! To his
amazement the woman had only a handful of men. Disgusted with himself
and boiling over with revenge for all these years of enmity, Charnisay
forgot his promise and hanged every soul of the garrison but the
traitor who acted as executioner, compelling Madame La Tour to watch
the execution with a halter round her neck amid the jeers of the
soldiery. Legend says that the experience drove her insane and caused
her death within three weeks. Charnisay was now lord of all Acadia,
with 10,000 pounds worth of Madame La Tour's jewelry transferred to
Port Royal and all La Tour's furs safe in the warehouses of Annapolis
Basin; but he did not long enjoy his triumph. He had the reputation of
treating his Indian servants with great brutality. On the 24th of May,
1650, an Indian was rowing him up the narrows near Port Royal.
Charnisay could not swim. Without apparent cause the boat upset. The
Indian swam ashore. The commander perished. Legend again avers that
the Indian upset the boat to be revenged on Charnisay for some
brutality.

[Illustration: MAP OF ANNAPOLIS BASIN]

La Tour had been wandering from Newfoundland to Boston and Quebec
seeking aid, but a lost cause has few friends, and if La Tour turned
pirate on Boston boats, he probably thought he was justified in paying
off the score of Boston's bargain with Charnisay. Later he turned
trader with the Indians from Hudson Bay, and found friends in Quebec.
Word of his wrongs reached the French court. When Charnisay perished,
La Tour was at last appointed lieutenant governor of Acadia. Widow
{70} Charnisay, left with eight children, all minors, made what
reparation she could to La Tour by giving back the fort on the St.
John, and La Tour, to wipe out the bitter enmity, married the widow of
his enemy in February of 1653.

But this was not the seal of peace on his troubled life. Cromwell was
now ascendant in England, and Major Sedgwick of Boston, in 1654, with a
powerful fleet, captured Port Royal and St. John. Weary of fighting
what seemed to be destiny, La Tour became a British subject, and with
two other Englishmen was granted the whole of Acadia. Ten years later
his English partners bought out his rights, and La Tour died in the
land of his many trials about 1666. A year later the Treaty of Breda
restored Acadia to France.

{71}

CHAPTER V

FROM 1635 TO 1650

Mystics come to Canada--A city built of dreams--First night at
Montreal--Maisonneuve fights raiders--Le Jeune joins the
hunters--Brebeuf goes to Lake Huron--Life at the Huron mission--The
scourge of the Iroquois--The fight at St. Louis--Rageneau's converts
resist--Flight of the Hurons

While Charles de La Tour and Charnisay scoured the Bay of Fundy in
border warfare like buccaneers of the Spanish Main, what was Quebec
doing?

The Hundred Associates were to colonize the country; but fur trading
and farming never go together. One means the end of the other; and the
Hundred Associates shifted the obligation of settling the country by
granting vast estates called seigniories along the St. Lawrence and
leaving to these new lords of the soil the duty of bringing out
habitants. Later they deeded over for an annual rental of beaver skins
the entire fur monopoly to the Habitant Company, made up of the leading
people of New France. So ended all the fine promises of four thousand
colonists.

Years ago Pontgrave had learned that the Indians of the Up-Country did
not care to come down the St. Lawrence farther than Lake St. Peter's,
where Iroquois foe lay in ambush; and the year before Champlain died a
double expedition had set out from Quebec in July: one to build a fort
north of Lake St. Peter's at the entrance to the river with three
mouths,--in other words, to found Three Rivers; the other, under Father
Brebeuf, the Jesuit, and Jean Nicolet, the wood runner, to establish a
mission in the country of the Hurons and to explore the Great Lakes.

In fact, it must never be forgotten that Champlain's ambitions in
laying the foundations of a new nation aimed just as much to establish
a kingdom of heaven on earth as to win a new kingdom for France.
Always, in the minds of the fathers of New France, Church was to be
first; State, second. When Charles de Montmagny, Knight of Malta,
landed in Quebec one June morning in 1636, to succeed Champlain as
governor of New France, he noticed a crucifix planted by the path side
where {72} viceroy and officers clambered up the steep hill to Castle
St. Louis. Instantly Montmagny fell to his knees before the cross in
silent adoration, and his example was followed by all the gay train of
beplumed officers. The Jesuits regarded the episode as a splendid omen
for New France, and set their chapel organ rolling a _Te Deum_ of
praise, while Governor and retinue filed before the altars with bared
heads.

It was in the same spirit that Montreal was founded.

The Jesuits' letters on the Canadian missions were now being read in
France. Religious orders were on fire with missionary ardor. The
Canadian missions became the fashion of the court. Ladies of noble
blood asked no greater privilege than to contribute their fortunes for
missions in Canada. Nuns lay prostrate before altars praying night and
day for the advancement of the heavenly kingdom on the St. Lawrence.
The Jesuits had begun their college in Quebec. The very year that
Champlain had first come to the St. Lawrence there had been born in
Normandy, of noble parentage, a little girl who became a passionate
devotee of Canadian missions. To divert her mind from the calling of a
nun, her father had thrown her into a whirl of gayety from which she
emerged married; but her husband died in a few years, and Madame de la
Peltrie, left a widow at twenty-two, turned again heart and soul to the
scheme of endowing a Canadian mission. Again her father tried to
divert her mind, threatening to cut off her fortune if she did not
marry. An engagement to a young noble, who was as keen a devotee as
herself, quieted her father and averted the loss of her fortune. On
the death of her father the formal union was dissolved, and Madame de
la Peltrie proceeded to the Ursuline Convent of Tours, where the
Jesuits had already chosen a mother superior for the new institution to
be founded at Quebec--Marie of the Incarnation, a woman of some fifty
years, a widow like Madame de la Peltrie, and, like Madame de la
Peltrie, a mystic dreamer of celestial visions and divine communings
and heroic sacrifices. How much of truth, how much of self-delusion,
{73} lay in these dreams of heavenly revelation is not for the outsider
to say. It is as impossible for the practical mind to pronounce
judgment on the mystic as for the mystic to pronounce sentence on the
scientist. Both have their truths, both have their errors; and by
their fruits are they known.

[Illustration: MADAME DE LA PELTRIE (After a picture in the Ursuline
Convent, Quebec)]

May 4th, 1639, Madame de la Peltrie and Marie of the Incarnation
embarked from Dieppe for Canada. In the ship were also another
Ursuline nun, three hospital sisters to found the Hotel Dieu at Quebec,
Father Vimont, superior of Quebec Jesuits, and two other priests. The
boat was like a chapel. Ship's bell tolled services. Morning prayer
and evensong were chanted from the decks, and the pilgrims firmly
believed that their vows allayed a storm. July 1st they were among the
rocking dories of the Newfoundland fishermen, and then on the 15th the
little sailboat washed and rolled to anchor inshore among the fur
traders under the heights of Tadoussac.

At sight of the somber Saguenay, the silver-flooded St. Lawrence, the
frowning mountains, the far purple hills, the primeval forests through
which the wind rushed with the sound of the sea, the fishing craft
dancing on the tide like cockle boats, the grizzled fur traders bronzed
as the crinkled oak forests where they passed their lives, the tawny,
naked savages agape at these white-skinned women come from afar, the
hearts of the {74} housed-up nuns swelled with emotions strange and
sweet,--the emotions of a new life in a new world. And when they
scrambled over the rope coils aboard a fishing schooner to go on up to
Quebec, and heard the deep-voiced shoutings of the men, and witnessed
the toilers of the deep fighting wind and wave for the harvest of the
sea, did it dawn on the fair sisterhood that God must have workers
_out_ in the strife of the world, as well as workers _shut up_ from the
world inside convent walls? Who knows? . . . Who knows? At
Tadoussac, that morning, to both Madame de la Peltrie and Marie of the
Incarnation it must have seemed as if their visions had become real.
And then the cannon of Quebec began to thunder till the echoes rolled
from hill to hill and shook--as the mystics thought--the very
strongholds of hell. Tears streamed down their cheeks at such welcome.
The whole Quebec populace had rallied to the water front, and there
stood Governor Montmagny in velvet cloak with sword at belt waving hat
in welcome. Soldiers and priests cheered till the ramparts rang. As
the nuns put foot to earth once more they fell on their knees and
kissed the soil of Canada. August 1st was fete day in Quebec. The
chapel chimes rang . . . and rang again their gladness. The organ
rolled out its floods of soul-shattering music, and deep-throated chant
of priests invoked God's blessing on the coming of the women to the
mission. So began the Ursuline Convent of Quebec and the Hotel Dieu of
the hospital sisters; but Montreal was still a howling wilderness
untenanted by man save in midsummer, when the fur traders came to
Champlain's factory and the canoes of the Indians from the Up-Country
danced down the swirling rapids like sea birds on waves.

The letters from the Jesuit missions touched more hearts than those of
the mystic nuns.

In Anjou dwelt a receiver of taxes--Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere,
a stout, practical, God-fearing man with a family, about as far removed
in temperament from the founders of the Ursulines as a character could
well be. Yet he, too, had mystic {75} dreams and heard voices bidding
him found a mission in the tenantless wilderness of Montreal. To the
practical man the thing seems sheer moon-stark madness. If Dauversiere
had lived in modern days he would have been committed to an asylum.
Here was a man with a family, without a fortune, commanded by what he
thought was the voice of Heaven to found a hospital in a wilderness
where there were no people. Also in Paris dwelt a young priest, Jean
Jacques Olier, who heard the self-same voices uttering the self-same
command. These two men were unknown to each other; yet when they met
by chance in the picture gallery of an old castle, there fell from
their eyes, as it were, scales, and they beheld as in a vision each the
other's soul, and recognized in each fellow-helper and comrade of the
spirit. To all this the practical man cries out "Bosh"! Yet Montreal
is no bosh, but a stately city, and it sprang from the dreams--"fool
dreams," enemies would call them--of these two men, the Sulpician
priest and the Anjou tax collector.

Hour after hour, arm in arm, they walked and talked, the man of prayers
and the man of taxes. People or no people at Montreal, money or no
money, they decided that the inner voice must be obeyed. A Montreal
Society was formed. Six friends joined. What would be equal to
$75,000 was collected. There were to be no profits on this capital.
It was all to be invested to the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Unselfish if you like, foolish they may have been, but not hypocrites.

First of all, they must become Seigneurs of Montreal; but the island of
Montreal had already been granted by the Hundred Associates to one
Lauson. To render the title doubly secure, Dauversiere and Olier
obtained deeds to the island from Lauson and from the Hundred
Associates.

Forty-five colonists, part soldiers, part devotees, were then gained as
volunteers; but a veritable soldier of Heaven was desired as commander.
Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, was noted for his heroism in
war and zeal in religion. When other officers returned from battle for
wild revels, Maisonneuve withdrew to play the flute or pass hours in
religious {76} contemplation. His name occurred to both Dauversiere
and Olier as fittest for command; but to make doubly sure, they took
lodgings near him, studied his disposition, and then casually told him
of their plans and asked his cooeperation. Maisonneuve was in the prime
of life, on the way to high service in the army. His zeal took fire at
thought of founding a Kingdom of God at Montreal; but his father
furiously opposed what must have seemed a mad scheme. Maisonneuve's
answer was the famous promise of Christ: "No man hath left house or
brethren or sister for my sake but he shall receive a hundredfold."

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