Crusaders of New France by William Bennett Munro

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CRUSADERS OF NEW FRANCE

THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES

ALLEN JOHNSON EDITOR

GERHARD R. LOMER
CHARLES W. JEFFERYS
ASSISTANT EDITORS

CRUSADERS OF NEW FRANCE

A CHRONICLE OF THE FLEUR-DE-LIS IN THE WILDERNESS

BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

1918

To my good friend
FATHER HENRI BEAUDE
(_Henri d'Arles_)
this tribute to the men
of his race and faith is
affectionately inscribed.

CONTENTS

I. FRANCE OF THE BOURBONS
II. A VOYAGEUR OF BRITTANY
III. THE FOUNDING OF NEW FRANCE
IV. THE AGE OF LOUIS QUATORZE
V. THE IRON GOVERNOR
VI. LA SALLE AND THE VOYAGEURS
VII. THE CHURCH IN NEW FRANCE
VIII. SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA
IX. THE COUREURS-DE-BOIS
X. AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY, AND TRADE
XI. HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
INDEX

CRUSADERS OF NEW FRANCE

CHAPTER I

FRANCE OF THE BOURBONS

France, when she undertook the creation of a Bourbon empire beyond the
seas, was the first nation of Europe. Her population was larger than
that of Spain, and three times that of England. Her army in the days
of Louis Quatorze, numbering nearly a half-million in all ranks, was
larger than that of Rome at the height of the imperial power. No
nation since the fall of Roman supremacy had possessed such resources
for conquering and colonizing new lands. By the middle of the
seventeenth century Spain had ceased to be a dangerous rival; Germany
and Italy were at the time little more than geographical expressions,
while England was in the throes of the Puritan Revolution.

Nor was it only in the arts of war that the hegemony of the Bourbon
kingdom stood unquestioned. In art and education, in manners and
fashions, France also dominated the ideas of the old continent, the
dictator of social tastes as well as the grim warrior among the
nations. In the second half of the seventeenth century France might
justly claim to be both the heart and the head of Europe. Small wonder
it was that the leaders of such a nation should demand to see the
"clause in Adam's will" which bequeathed the New World to Spain and
Portugal. Small wonder, indeed, that the first nation of Europe should
insist upon a place in the sun to which her people might go to trade,
to make land yield its increase, and to widen the Bourbon sway. If
ever there was a land able and ready to take up the white man's
burden, it was the France of Louis XIV.

The power and prestige of France at this time may be traced, in the
main, to three sources. First there were the physical features, the
compactness of the kingdom, a fertile soil, a propitious climate, and
a frontage upon two great seas. In an age when so much of a nation's
wealth came from agriculture these were factors of great importance.
Only in commerce did the French people at this time find themselves
outstripped by their neighbors. Although both the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean bathed the shores of France, her people were being
outdistanced on the seas by the English and the Dutch, whose
commercial companies were exploiting the wealth of the new continents
both east and west. Yet in France there was food enough for all and to
spare; it was only because the means of distributing it were so poor
that some got more and others less than they required. France was
supporting at this time a population half as large as that of today.

Then there were qualities of race which helped to make the nation
great. At all periods in their history the French have shown an almost
inexhaustible stamina, an ability to bear disasters, and to rise from
them quickly, a courage and persistence that no obstacles seem able to
thwart. How often in the course of the centuries has France been torn
apart by internecine strife or thrown prostrate by her enemies only to
astonish the world by a superb display of recuperative powers! It was
France that first among the kingdoms of Europe rose from feudal chaos
to orderly nationalism; it was France that first among continental
countries after the Middle Ages established the reign of law
throughout a powerful realm. Though wars and turmoils almost without
end were a heavy drain upon Gallic vitality for many generations,
France achieved steady progress to primacy in the arts of peace.
None but a marvellous people could have made such efforts without
exhaustion, yet even now in the twentieth century the astounding vigor
of this race has not ceased to compel the admiration of mankind.

In the seventeenth century, moreover, France owed much of her national
power to a highly-centralized and closely-knit scheme of government.
Under Richelieu the strength of the monarchy had been enhanced and the
power of the nobility broken. When he began his personal rule, Louis
XIV continued his work of consolidation and in the years of his long
reign managed to centralize in the throne every vestige of political
power. The famous saying attributed to him, "The State! I am the
State!" embodied no idle boast. Nowhere was there a trace of
representative government, nowhere a constitutional check on the
royal power. There were councils of different sorts and with varied
jurisdictions, but men sat in them at the King's behest and were
removable at his will. There were _parlements_, too, but to mention
them without explanation would be only to let the term mislead, for
they were not representative bodies or parliaments in the ordinary
sense: their powers were chiefly judicial and they were no barrier in
the way of the steady march to absolutism. The political structure of
the Bourbon realm in the age of Louis XIV and afterwards was simple:
all the lines of control ran upwards and to a common center. And all
this made for unity and autocratic efficiency in finance, in war, and
in foreign affairs.

Another feature which fitted the nation for an imperial destiny was
the possession of a united and militant church. With heresy the
Gallican branch of the Catholic Church had fought a fierce struggle,
but, before the seventeenth century was far advanced, the battle had
been won. There were heretics in France even after Richelieu's time,
but they were no longer a source of serious discord. The Church,
now victorious over its foes, became militant, ready to carry its
missionary efforts to other lands--ready, in fact, for a new crusade.

These four factors, rare geographical advantages, racial qualities
of a high order, a strongly centralized scheme of government, and a
militant church, contributed largely to the prestige which France
possessed among European nations in the seventeenth, century. With all
these advantages she should have been the first and not the last to
get a firm footing in the new continents. Historians have recorded
their reasons why France did not seriously enter the field of American
colonization as early as England, but these reasons do not impress one
as being good. Foreign wars and internal religious strife are commonly
given and accepted as the true cause of French tardiness in following
up the pioneer work of Jacques Cartier and others. Yet not all the
energy of nearly twenty million people was being absorbed in these
troubles. There were men and money to spare, had the importance of the
work overseas only been adequately realized.

The main reason why France was last in the field is to be found in the
failure of her kings and ministers to realize until late in the day
how vast the possibilities of the new continent really were. In a
highly centralized and not over-populated state the authorities must
lead the way in colonial enterprises; the people will not of their
own initiative seek out and follow opportunities to colonize distant
lands. And in France the authorities were not ready to lead. Sully,
who stood supreme among the royal advisers in the closing years of
the sixteenth century, was opposed to colonial ventures under all
circumstances. "Far-off possessions," he declared, "are not suited to
the temperament or to the genius of Frenchmen, who to my great regret
have neither the perseverance nor the foresight needed for such
enterprises, but who ordinarily apply their vigor, minds, and courage
to things which are immediately at hand and constantly before their
eyes." Colonies beyond the seas, he believed, "would never be anything
but a great expense." That, indeed, was the orthodox notion in circles
surrounding the seat of royal power, and it was a difficult notion to
dislodge.

Never until the time of Richelieu was any intimation of the great
colonial opportunity, now quickly slipping by, allowed to reach
the throne, and then it was only an inkling, making but a slight
impression and soon virtually forgotten. Richelieu's great Company of
1627 made a brave start, but it did not hold the Cardinal's interest
very long. Mazarin, who succeeded Richelieu, took no interest in the
New World; the tortuous problems of European diplomacy appealed far
more strongly to his Italian imagination than did the vision of a New
France beyond the seas. It was not until Colbert took the reins
that official France really displayed an interest in the work of
colonization at all proportionate to the nation's power and resources.

Colbert was admirably fitted to become the herald of a greater France.
Coming from the ranks of the _bourgeoisie_, he was a man of affairs,
not a cleric or a courtier as his predecessors in office had been. He
had a clear conception of what he wanted and unwearied industry in
moving towards the desired end. His devotion to the King was beyond
question; he had native ability, patience, sound ideas, and a firm
will. Given a fair opportunity, he would have accomplished far more
for the glory of the fleur-de-lis in the region of the St. Lawrence
and the Great Lakes of America. But a thousand problems of home
administration were crowded upon him, problems of finance, of
industry, of ecclesiastical adjustment, and of social reconstruction.
In the first few years of his term as minister he could still find a
little time and thought for Canada, and during this short period he
personally conducted the correspondence with the colonial officials;
but after 1669 all this was turned over to the Minister of Marine, and
Colbert himself figured directly in the affairs of the colony no more.
The great minister of Louis XIV is remembered far more for his work at
home than for his services to New France.

As for the French monarchs of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV was
the first and only one to take an active and enduring interest in the
great crusade to the northern wilderness. He began his personal reign
about 1660 with a genuine display of zeal for the establishment of a
colony which would by its rapid growth and prosperity soon crowd the
English off the new continent. In the selection of officials to carry
out his policy, his judgment, when not subjected to sinister pressure,
was excellent, as shown in his choice of Frontenac. Nor did the King's
interest in the colony slacken in the face of discouragement. It kept
on to the end of his reign, although diminishing somewhat towards the
close. It could not well do otherwise than weaken during the European
disasters which marked his later years. By the death of Louis XIV in
1715 the colony lost its most unwavering friend. The shrewdest of
French historians, De Tocqueville, has somewhere remarked that "the
physiognomy of a government may be best judged in the colonies....
When I wish to study the spirit and faults of the administration of
Louis XIV," he writes, "I must go to Canada, for its deformity is
there seen as through a microscope." That is entirely true. The
history of New France in its picturesque alternation of sunshine and
shadow, of victory and defeat, of pageant and tragedy, is a chronicle
that is Gallic to the core. In the early annals of the northland one
can find silhouetted in sharp relief examples of all that was best and
all that was worst in the life of Old France. The political framework
of the colony, with its strict centralization, the paternal regulation
of industry and commerce, the flood of missionary zeal which poured
in upon it, the heroism and courage of its priests and voyageurs, the
venality of its administrative officials, the anachronism of a feudal
land-tenure, the bizarre externals of its social life, the versatility
of its people--all these reflected the paternity of New France.

The most striking weakness of French colonial policy in the
seventeenth century was its failure to realize how vastly different
was the environment of North America from that of Central Europe.
Institutions were transplanted bodily, and then amazement was
expressed at Versailles because they did not seem to thrive in the new
soil. Detailed instructions to officials in New France were framed by
men who had not the slightest grasp of the colony's needs or problems.
One busybody wrote to the colonial Intendant that a bake-oven should
be established in every seigneury and that the _habitants_ should
be ordered to bring their dough there to be made into bread. The
Intendant had to remind him that, in the long cold winters of the St.
Lawrence valley, the dough would be frozen stiff if the habitants,
with their dwellings so widely scattered, were required to do
anything of the kind. Another martinet gravely informed the colonial
authorities that, as a protection against Indian attacks "all the
seigneuries should be palisaded." And some of the seigneurial estates
were eight or ten miles square! The dogmatic way in which the colonial
officials were told to do this and that, to encourage one thing and
to discourage another, all by superiors who displayed an astounding
ignorance of New World conditions, must have been a severe trial to
the patience of those hard-working officials who were never without
great practical difficulties immediately before their eyes.

Not enough heed was paid, moreover, to the advice of men who were on
the spot. It is true that the recommendations sent home to France by
the Governor and by the Intendant were often contradictory, but even
where the two officials were agreed there was no certainty that their
counsel would be taken. With greater freedom and discretion the
colonial government could have accomplished much more in the way of
developing trade and industry; but for every step the acquiescence of
the home authorities had first to be secured. To obtain this consent
always entailed a great loss of time, and when the approval arrived
the opportunity too often had passed. From November until May there
was absolutely no communication between Quebec and Paris save that in
a great emergency, if France and England happened to be at peace, a
dispatch might be sent by dint of great hardship to Boston with a
precarious chance that it would get across to the French ambassador in
London. Ordinarily the officials sent their requests for instructions
by the home-going vessels from Quebec in the autumn and received their
answers by the ships which came in the following spring. If any plans
were formulated after the last ship sailed in October, it ordinarily
took eighteen months before the royal approval could be had for
putting them into effect. The routine machinery of paternalism thus
ran with exasperating slowness.

There was, however, one mitigating feature in the situation. The hand
of home authority was rigid and its beckonings were precise; but as
a practical matter it could be, and sometimes was, disregarded
altogether. Not that the colonial officials ever defied the King or
his ministers, or ever failed to profess their intent to follow the
royal instructions loyally and to the letter. They had a much safer
plan. When the provisions of a royal decree seemed impractical or
unwise, it was easy enough to let them stand unenforced. Such decrees
were duly registered in the records of the Sovereign Council at Quebec
and were then promptly pigeonholed so that no one outside the little
circle of officials at the Chateau de St. Louis ever heard of them.
In one case a new intendant on coming to the colony unearthed a royal
mandate of great importance which had been kept from public knowledge
for twenty years.

Absolutism, paternalism, and religious solidarity were characteristic
of both France and her colonies in the great century of overseas
expansion. There was no self-government, no freedom of individual
initiative, and very little heresy either at home or abroad.
The factors which made France strong in Europe, her unity, her
subordination of all other things to the military needs of the nation,
her fostering of the sense of nationalism--these appeared prominently
in Canada and helped to make the colony strong as well. Historians of
New France have been at pains to explain why the colony ultimately
succumbed to the combined attacks of New England by land and of Old
England by sea. For a full century New France had as its next-door
neighbor a group of English colonies whose combined populations
outnumbered her own at a ratio of about fifteen to one. The relative
numbers and resources of the two areas were about the same,
proportionately, as those of the United States and Canada at the
present day. The marvel is not that French dominion in America finally
came to an end but that it managed to endure so long.

CHAPTER II

A VOYAGEUR OF BRITTANY

The closing quarter of the fifteenth century in Europe has usually
been regarded by historians as marking the end of the Middle Ages. The
era of feudal chaos had drawn to a close and states were being
welded together under the leadership of strong dynasties. With this
consolidation came the desire for expansion, for acquiring new lands,
and for opening up new channels of influence. Spain, Portugal, and
England were first in the field of active exploration, searching for
stores of precious metals and for new routes to the coasts of Ormuz
and of India. In this quest for a short route to the half-fabulous
empires of Asia they had literally stumbled upon a new continent which
they had made haste to exploit. France, meanwhile, was dissipating her
energies on Spanish and Italian battlefields. It was not until the
peace of Cambrai in 1529 ended the struggle with Spain that France
gave any attention to the work of gaining some foothold in the New
World. By that time Spain had become firmly entrenched in the lands
which border the Caribbean Sea; her galleons were already bearing home
their rich cargoes of silver bullion. Portugal, England, and even
Holland had already turned with zeal to the exploration of new
lands in the East and the West: French fishermen, it is true, were
lengthening their voyages to the west; every year now the rugged old
Norman and Breton seaports were sending their fleets of small vessels
to gather the harvests of the sea. But official France took no active
interest in the regions toward which they went. Five years after the
peace of Cambrai the Breton port of St. Malo became the starting point
of the first French voyageur to the St. Lawrence. Francis I had been
persuaded to turn his thoughts from gaming and gallantries to the
trading prospects of his kingdom, with the result that in 1534 Jacques
Cartier was able to set out on his first voyage of discovery. Cartier
is described in the records of the time as a corsair--which means that
he had made a business of roving the seas to despoil the enemies of
France. St. Malo, his birthplace and home, on the coast of Brittany,
faces the English Channel somewhat south of Jersey, the nearest of the
Channel Islands. The town is set on high ground which projects out
into the sea, forming an almost landlocked harbor where ships may ride
at ease during the most tumultuous gales. It had long been a notable
nursery of hardy fishermen and adventurous navigators, men who had
pressed their way to all the coasts of Europe and beyond.

Cartier was one of these hardy sailors. His fathers before him had
been mariners, and he had himself learned the way of the great waters
while yet a mere youth. Before his expedition of 1534 Jacques Cartier
had probably made a voyage to Brazil and had in all probability more
than once visited the Newfoundland fishing-banks. Although, when
he sailed from St. Malo to become the pathfinder of a new Bourbon
imperialism, he was forty-three years of age and in the prime of his
days, we know very little of his youth and early manhood. It is enough
that he had attained the rank of a master-pilot and that, from his
skill in seamanship, he was considered the most dependable man in
all the kingdom to serve his august sovereign in this important
enterprise.

Cartier shipped his crew at St. Malo, and on the 20th of April, 1534,
headed his two small ships across the great Atlantic. His company
numbered only threescore souls in all. Favored by steady winds his
vessels made good progress, and within three weeks he sighted the
shores of Newfoundland where he put into one of the many small harbors
to rest and refit his ships. Then, turning northward, the expedition
passed through the straits of Belle Isle and into the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. Coasting along the northern shore of the Gulf for a short
distance, Cartier headed his ships due southward, keeping close to the
western shore of the great island almost its whole length; he then
struck across the lower Gulf and, moving northward once more, reached
the Baie des Chaleurs on the 6th July. Here the boats were sent ashore
and the French were able to do a little trading with the Indians.
About a week later, Cartier went northward once more and soon sought
shelter from a violent gulf storm by anchoring in Gaspe Bay. On the
headland there he planted a great wooden cross with the arms of
France, the first symbol of Bourbon dominion in the New Land, and the
same symbol that successive explorers, chanting the _Vexilla Regis_,
were in time to set aloft from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of
Mexico. It was the augury of the white man's coming.

Crossing next to the southerly shore of Anticosti the voyageurs almost
circled the island until the constant and adverse winds which
Cartier met in the gradually narrowing channel forced him to defer
indefinitely his hope of finding a western passage, and he therefore
headed his ships back to Belle Isle. It was now mid-August, and the
season of autumnal storms was drawing near. Cartier had come to
explore, to search for a westward route to the Indies, to look for
precious metals, not to establish a colony. He accordingly decided to
set sail for home and, with favoring winds, was able to reach St. Malo
in the early days of September.

In one sense the voyage of 1534 had been a failure. No stores of
mineral wealth had been discovered and no short route to Cipango or
Cathay. Yet the spirit of exploration had been awakened. Carrier's
recital of his voyage had aroused the interest of both the King and
his people, so that the navigator's request for better equipment to
make another voyage was readily granted. On May 19, 1535, Cartier once
more set forth from St. Malo, this time with three vessels and with a
royal patent, empowering him to take possession of new lands in his
sovereign's name. With Cartier on this voyage there were over one
hundred men, of whom the majority were hardened Malouins, veterans of
the sea. How he found accommodation for all of them, with supplies and
provisions, in three small vessels whose total burden was only two
hundred and twenty tons, is not least among the mysteries of this
remarkable voyage.[1]

[Footnote 1: The shipbuilders old measure for determining tonnage was
to multiply the length of a vessel minus three-quarters of the beam by
the beam, then to multiply the product by one-half the beam, then
to divide this final product by 94. The resulting quotient was the
tonnage. On this basis Cartier's three ships were 67 feet length by 23
feet beam, 57 feet length by 17 feet beam, and 48 feet length by 17
feet beam, respectively.]

The trip across the ocean was boisterous, and the clumsy caravels had
a hard time breasting the waves. The ships were soon separated by
alternate storms and fog so that all three did not meet at their
appointed rendezvous in the Straits of Belle Isle until the last week
in July. Then moving westward along the north, shore of the Gulf, they
passed Anticosti, crossed to the Gaspe shore, circled back as far as
the Mingan islands, and then resumed a westward course up the great
river. As the vessels stemmed the current but slowly, it was well into
September when they cast anchor before the Indian village of Stadacona
which occupied the present site of Lower Quebec.

Since it was now too late in the season to think of returning at once
to France, Cartier decided to spend the winter at this point. Two of
the ships were therefore drawn into the mouth of a brook which entered
the river just below the village, while the Frenchmen established
acquaintance with the savages and made preparations for a trip farther
up the river in the smallest vessel. Using as interpreters two young
Indians whom he had captured in the Gaspe region during his first
voyage in the preceding year, Cartier was able to learn from the
Indians at Stadacona that there was another settlement of importance
at Hochelaga, now Montreal. The navigator decided to use the remaining
days of autumn in a visit to this settlement, although the Stadacona
Indians strenuously objected, declaring that there were all manner
of dangers and difficulties in the way. With his smallest vessel and
about half of his men, Cartier, however, made his way up the river
during the last fortnight in September.

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