Chapter X…

Chapter X

1654-1657

IROQUOIS AND JESUITS

THE DEPARTURE OF THE JESUITS

RENEWAL OF HOSTILITIES IN THE SPRING--PEACE--WAMPUM NECKLACES AND BELTS--MONTREAL HEADQUARTERS OF PEACE PARLEYS--AUTUMN ATTACKS--"LA BARRIQUE"--MONTREAL LEFT SEVERELY ALONE--CHIEF "LA GRANDE ARMES"--M. DE LAUSON PERSECUTING MONTREAL--THE COMPLETION OF THE PARISH CHURCH--PENDING ECCLESIASTICAL CHANGES IN MONTREAL--NOTES: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN MONTREAL--PONCET--JOGUES--LE MOYNE--BUTEAUX--DRUILLETTES--ALBANEL--LE JEUNE--PARKMAN'S ESTIMATE OF THE SUCCESS OF THE JESUIT MISSIONS--DR. GRANT'S APPRECIATION OF THEIR WORK.

The fictitious and temporary peace which had intervened when de Maisonneuve arrived in the autumn of 1653, and had allowed the settlers to resume the work of building their homes outside the fort, was shortly to be broken.

Indeed, during the year just described there were not wanting indications, early in the spring of 1654, of the renewal of hostilities, when a young surgeon engaged in setting his beaver traps was carried off in a canoe by the lurking Onondaga Indians. In the beginning of May a band of the same Iroquois, who had not heard of this act of perfidy, were well received when coming for trade and they sent a canoe back for the stolen man. In the meantime, about seven hundred Hurons descended to Montreal with thirteen Iroquois captives made on the journey down. These were given to the Iroquois captain, who remained as a hostage till the canoe returned, in the hope of making peace. Soon the surgeon was brought back with a delegation, bearing twenty necklaces of wampum as signs of peace from the Iroquois nation.

One of the significant gifts was to recognize and consolidate the position of Ville Marie as the headquarters of peace treaties, which had been lately so constituted by the governor of Quebec, who had transferred to Montreal the treaty pole which had been erected at Quebec in the autumn of 1653 as a sign of peace. Its position at Montreal signified the recognized place for parley councils for peace overtures. This was an adroit move on the part of de Lauson. It recognized that Montreal was the frontier post and the most accessible, and also it was a standing eulogium of the diplomatic ability of de Maisonneuve to deal with the natives, and it might keep the enemy higher up the river away from Quebec.

Unfortunately, as we have said, these Iroquois were divided into five nations, who often acted without concert, so that protestations of peace by wampum belts had always to be taken for what they were worth. Montreal was soon to be in daily dread of assault. Thus in the autumn, when in fancied security, owing to the recent renewal of peace, the ordinary precautions were being neglected at Montreal in the busy building and farming operations, a band of Iroquois were in ambuscade around. The sentinel was standing on a tree stump, leisurely surveying the country around, when an Iroquois who had stealthily approached, hiding at intervals behind other stumps, suddenly pounced upon him and seizing him by the legs, threw him over his shoulders and set off in flight with the bewildered soldier shrieking for his life and fighting as best he could. His cries aroused the men in the field and they pursued them until they came up to the Iroquois band with their chief at their head. They would have fared badly had not Lambert Closse come up with his men. Recognizing the chief, who was known by the French as "La Barrique," or "The Hogshead," because of his barrel-like corpulency, he ordered one of his best shots cautiously to get within fighting distance, and pick him off.

Meanwhile Hogshead, unaware of impending disaster, was standing on a stump haranguing his men and urging them to the attack, when he received a charge of heavy lead full in his body and he fell to the ground bathed in blood. Thinking him dead, his followers fled incontinently.

But he did not die, for under the skillful care of the doctors and Jeanne Mance, he was tended at the hospital and recovered, though he was seriously crippled for the rest of his days. Their charity changed his fierce disposition. When he left he promised never to go on the warpath against them again but that he would return later to conclude a peace, as indeed he did, though not so easily as he could have wished.

For a time the Iroquois left Montreal severely alone. "Let us not go thither," they would say. "They are devils there." They turned to attack the settlement of the Ile des Oies below Quebec instead. But later, on May 31, 1655, they attacked the colony and killed one Dabigeon.

Then they passed over to the other side of the St. Lawrence and pretended to be another tribe, and sent delegates to parley with the fort. Charles Le Moyne, who had just come from Quebec, recognized them as the assailants at the Ile des Oies and, suspecting treachery, they were told to come the next day. Finally, an engagement took place and five Iroquois were taken prisoners to the camp, among them Chief La Plume (or "The Feather"). Another parley now took place, and a peace was agreed upon on the proposition of Chief La Grande Armée, on condition that all the captives on both sides should be exchanged, and that peace with the Hurons and Algonquins should be observed as long as they should not advance above Three Rivers. Among the French restored were the captives taken at Ile des Oies, one of whom, Elizabeth Moyen, then a child, married Lambert Closse in 1657, and her sister Marie who remained with Jeanne Mance twenty years.

Peace concluded, the work of agriculture was pushed on although, taught by sad experience, the men went to the fields armed as usual. In order to pursue this in greater safety, de Maisonneuve, by a permission given on August 25, 1655, in the name of the Company allowed the colonists to cultivate and enjoy the fruits of the lands on the "domain of the Seigneurs," which were nearer to the fort than their own concessions. When the time came for them to be able to till the latter, the lands on the domain should be handed back. These negotiations were put into the hands of Lambert Closse, for de Maisonneuve had chosen him to hold the reins of government while he himself made a third journey to France this autumn, as the next chapter will relate.

These peace arrangements at Montreal always meant the interchange of presents which were a burden on the community instead of on the governor of Quebec, whom the early historians, with M. de Belmont, accuse of "persecuting Montreal."

In addition to what we know, de Lauson wanted to levy a tax on all imports to Montreal. He took it ill that Montreal had its storehouse at Quebec, wishing it to purchase its necessities from Quebec. He also wanted the Company of Montreal to send out more men than they found convenient. All this brought him a letter of Louis XIV in favour of Montreal.

Misfortunes clouded the last days of de Lauson. He left for France in the summer of 1656 and died in Paris on February 16, 1666, at the age of eighty-two years. His sons, for whom he had planned great possessions in Canada, did not live long after their father's departure from Canada, and he saw nearly all his family extinct before his death and all their properties reverting to the king on account of their conditions of grant not being fulfilled. His ineffectual tenure of office was due to his inefficiency, aggravated by the cruel abandonment of the French colony by the great Company.

M. de Lauson was succeeded in the post of governor general by his son, Charles de Lauson-Charny. But his administration was no more successful than that of his father. Indeed the office was not to his taste and he prevailed upon M. d'Ailleboust, who had arrived from France on September 12, 1657, to take his place, and six days after he sailed back home, disgusted with the vanities of the world, so that he entered the ecclesiastical state, returning later to work in the sacred ministry in Canada.

Meanwhile the new parish church, begun two years ago, was being completed, the funds, owing to the poverty of the colonists, being largely supplied by the Seigneurs. It was adjoined to the Hôtel-Dieu on St. Paul Street, so that it might suffice for the citizens and the sick. It was dedicated to St. Joseph, the patron of the hospital, and was opened in 1656. In the foundation and under the doorway of entrance there was placed, within the first stone, the following inscription, engraven as a leaden plate: "Cette première pierre a été posée en l'honneur de St. Joseph, l'an 1656, le 28 Août.

Jesus! Maria! Joseph!"

This building, which served up to 1689 as the parish church of the colony, was adjoined to the hospital situated on the street which was formed a little afterwards by the first houses constructed at Ville Marie and called St. Paul, and was placed at the corner of another street which was called from the name of the church, St. Joseph, today known as St. Sulpice. The body of the building was of wood, about eighty feet long, thirty broad, and twenty feet high; the church being at one end, covering about fifty feet, and surmounted by a bell tower with two bells. The good folk of Ville Marie were proud to see their new temple.

Affairs were now in a bad state; the Iroquois were uncurbed and unsettled through the weak administration of de Lauson, and thus prepared for the bitter war again to be proclaimed at the end of 1657.

But at present, in the summer of 1657, there was nothing but anticipation of the arrival of the governor and the four Sulpicians who were to be the parish clergy, with a permanent abode and a settled ecclesiastical status.

The Jesuits who had so long served the mission were to be free to go to the up-country Indians--their long connection with the settlement was to be severed.

NOTE

THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES AT MONTREAL

(From 1642 to August 12, 1657, when the Sulpicians succeeded them.)

The first mayor of Montreal, Commander Jacques Viger, has collected in a little manuscript book preserved in the Archives of St. Marie's College at Montreal the list of Jesuits serving Montreal from 1642-1657 as follows:

Joseph Poncet, 1642-4; Joseph Imbert Duperon, 1642-3; Ambroise Daoust, 1643; Gabriel Druillettes, 1643-5; Isaac Jogues, 1645; Jacques Buteaux, 1645; Paul Le Jeune, 1645-6; Adrien Daran, 1646; Georges d'Eudemare, 1647-8; Jean de Quen, 1648-50; Pierre Bailloquet, 1648; Charles Albanel, 1650; André Richard, 1650; Siméon Le Moyne, 1650; Claude Pijart, 1650 to August 12, 1657.

Fifteen Jesuits resident in fifteen years. This does not account for names of other distinguished missionaries visiting, whose names appear on the registers as having officiated at Ville Marie baptisms, marriages, deaths and other documents during this early period. Mr. E. Z. Massicotte in his "Les Colons de Montreal de 1642-1667," gives some of these as follows:

1649--Jérome Lalemant, June 1st to 11th, May 19th to 24th.

1650--Paul Ragueneau, two days.

1655--Claude Dablon passed through Montreal in October, also on the 30th of March, 1666. He would also have signed 3-5-'62 a document concerning Hudson Bay.

1656--Joseph Marie Chaumont, October, the bearer of a message for the Iroquois in 1661, was at Montreal in 1662, resided at Montreal in 1663.

1656--Léonard Gareau, wounded in a combat on August 30th, buried September 2d.

1657--François? le Mercier, July 24th.

Of the Montreal Jesuits, there are some who merit special mention here.

JOSEPH ANTOINE PONCET DE LA RIVIERE

Joseph Antoine Poncet de la Rivière, of aristocratic birth, was born in Paris and entered the Society of Jesus in his nineteenth year as a novice. His studies finished, he came to New France in 1639. He shortly went to the Huron mission. We next find him, 1642-4, the first priest in charge of the mission chapel at the fort of Montreal. After this he ministered at Quebec. On his return from a visit to the Iroquois, he went down the St. Lawrence and was the first white man to glide through the Thousand Islands. He was giving the alarm to the colonists at Cape Rouge in the summer of 1653, when he was himself seized by the savages. He bore a remembrance of the ill treatment of his captivity in the form of a lost finger, which a little child had been ordered to cut off. He was afterwards released to the Dutch at Fort Orange and returned to Quebec on November 5th, "just nine times nine days after my capture," he says. We next know him as the storm centre of ecclesiastical differences between Montreal and Quebec. As a result of this Poncet was sent back to Europe. He was installed as French penitentiary at Loretto, and later was sent to Martinique, where he died on June 18, 1675.

ISAAC JOGUES

Isaac Jogues was born at Orléans, France, January 10, 1607. His first schooling was at Rouen and he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Paris in his seventeenth year. Having finished his studies and period of teaching we find him in his twenty-ninth year reaching Canada in 1636 in the same vessel as Champlain's successor, Montmagny. Two or three weeks later, that same October, Jogues began his missionary work, joining a flotilla of Huron canoes and sailing 900 miles over dangerous rivers and lakes, skirting rapids and precipices and making many toilsome "portages" through dense forests, pools and marshes, to the great Lake Huron which was known as "Fresh Water Sea."

Such was Jogues' first experience of missionary life. Living on Indian corn and water, sleeping on rocks and in the woods, battling day after day against a rapid current, dragging heavy burdens over the long portages, a part of the time with a sick boy on his shoulder--till he staggered through the triple stockade of the Indian town of Ihonitiria and fell into the arms of de Brébeuf and his Jesuit companions. In this new mission field one of the first works entrusted to his practical sagacity, which stood his fellow missionaries in good stead, was the construction of Fort Ste. Marie, whose ruins, discovered in 1859, testify to the solidity of the outworks. His first apostolic work away from Fort Ste. Marie was among the Petuns, or Tobacco Indians. In September, 1641, he went with the Jesuit Raimbault to found a mission among the Ojibways or Chippewas on the upper reaches of Lake Huron at a place called by the missionaries Sault Ste. Marie, today a great centre of commerce. They were the first white men to stand on the shores of Lake Superior.

We next find him back at Georgian Bay. Supplies were being exhausted and Jogues offered to go to Quebec, a thousand miles off, for them. This done, on the way back in the first week of August, 1642, his party was surprised by the hostile Mohawks and captured. While being taken up country he was most brutally tortured, beaten by sticks, clubs and knives, and his wounds torn open by the long nails of the Indians. The joints of his fingers were gnawed off or burned off at intervals. On the arrival of the party at Ossernenon, on the north bank of the Mohawk, a captive Christian woman was compelled, under threat of death, to saw off with a jagged shell the thumb of the priest. But he was not killed, as so many of his party were.

On the 29th of September, 1642, René Goupil, his faithful companion, was tomahawked in the skull for making the sign of the cross on the head of a child. The place is identified as Auriesville.

When Goupil was dead, Jogues was alone and began his awful captivity of more than a year, each moment of which was a martyrdom. In the "Relation," which his superior commanded him to write, he has left us a partial account of the horrors he endured. Employed in the filthiest and most degrading of occupations he was regarded with greater contempt than the most degraded squaw of the village. Heavy burdens were heaped on his crippled and mangled shoulders, and he was made to tramp fifty, sixty and sometimes a hundred miles after his savage masters, who delighted to exhibit him wherever they went. His naked feet left bloody tracks upon the ice or flints of the road; his flesh was rotting with disease, and his wounds were gangrened; he was often beaten to the earth by the fists or clubs of crazy and drunken Indians, and more than once he saw the tomahawk above his head and heard his death sentence pronounced. The wretched deerskin they persuaded him to wear was swarming with vermin; he was often in a condition of semi-starvation as he crouched in a corner of the filthy wigwam and saw the savages gorging themselves with meat, which had been first offered to the demons, and which he therefore refused to eat, though his savage masters raged against the implied contempt to their gods. For thirteen months he thus remained a captive. Yet he baptized more than seventy persons, most of them Huron captives, at the point of death. Often Jogues would rush into the flames up to the stake for this purpose. During this time, on June 30, 1643, he secured a scrap of paper on which he wrote to Montmagny that the Mohawks were about to make a raid on Fort Richelieu. This message, carried for him by a Huron, warned the garrison in time and the Indians were repulsed. This defeat was traced to Jogues and his death was expected. But in the meantime an order came from Governor Kieft of Manhattan to the commandant at Fort Orange to secure his release at all costs. This required the co-operation of Jogues. In spite of his harsh treatment the prisoner was unwilling at first to enter into the plot, feeling it to be his duty to remain at his post. At last he consented. He was conveyed to the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange (Albany), which the angry Mohawks threatened to burn, but fearful of risking a war with the Dutch while they were fighting with the French, after a parley they consented to relinquish their claim on the black robe for 300 livres. A six-day journey brought him to Manhattan which he described as "seven leagues in circuit and on it is a fort to serve as a commencement of a town to be built there, and to be called New Amsterdam." At this town, as at the place of his escape, he was kindly treated by the famous Dominic Johannes Megapolensis, Jr., the first person who went to New York at the invitation of Killaen van Rensselaer to look after the spiritual affairs of the colony. After a month's sojourn at Manhattan, Father Jogues left on November 5, 1643, in a wretched little vessel which, after a severe tossing on the Atlantic, reached Falmouth, in Cornwall, at the end of December, hotly pursued by some of Cromwell's ships, for the rebellion against Charles I was then in progress.

In Falmouth he was robbed, at the point of the pistol, of all his belongings, by some marauders lurking round the port. At last, having secured a free passage in a dirty collier, he was flung on Christmas morning, 1643, on the coast of Brittany, but after eight days he reached the Jesuit College at Rennes--and at last the emaciated, haggard tramp was recognized as the lost Isaac Jogues, of whose capture the "Relations" had warned them.

Honour was now meted out to this humble Jesuit much to his discomfiture. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV, called him to court and compelled him to throw back his cloak and tell of the hideous manner in which his fingers had been eaten or burned. The queen, descending from the throne, took his hand in hers and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, devoutly kissed the mutilated members and exclaimed: "People write romances for us--but was ever a romance like this? And it is all true."

This form of public exhibition was displeasing to Jogues but the permission granted by Pope Urbain VIII, at the request of some of his admirers, to have the canonical impediment raised against his faculty to say mass because of his mutilated fingers, was a source of gratification. The answer of Urbain to the request was "Indignum esset martyrum Christi, Christi non bibere sanguinem"--"it would be wrong to prevent the martyr of Christ from drinking the blood of Christ."

Isaac Jogues did not loiter to be lionized in Paris, but in June was in Quebec, and was now appointed to serve the sick and hearten the defenders of the stockade of Montreal. In July he was present at a parley with the Indians at a conference held at Three Rivers, where he met Father Bressani, who had also had a similar experience of the tortures of the Iroquois and whose fingers were also wanting. After a treaty had been made Jogues returned to Montreal. One result of this treaty was that an ambassador was to be sent to the Mohawks and Father Jogues, as he spoke the Iroquois tongue, was appointed to revisit those who had so ill used him. But it was two years later before the actual embassy started from Three Rivers, on May 16, 1646. Father Jogues reached Lake Andiatarocté on the eve of Corpus Christi, the feast of the Blessed Sacrament, and called it the "Lake of the Blessed Sacrament." A century later this was renamed by Sir William Johnson "Lake George" in honour of the English king. On June 5th Jogues reached Ossernenon, and in his character as ambassador was well received. At the council held on June 10th or June 16th the party returned, reaching Quebec on July 3rd. Jogues petitioned to be sent back to the Mohawks as a missionary. On September 27th he left Quebec for the Iroquois country. He wrote to a friend: "Ibo sed non redibo--I go but I shall not return," as though his fate were revealed to him.

Before he reached Ossernenon he learned that the hatchet had been dug up to meet him. As an ambassador he had been respected, but as a Christian missionary a hostile reception awaited him. An innocent box of vestments left behind him on his previous visit was the cause. A pestilence had broken out and the crops were withered. Therefore these misfortunes were due to the Manitou in the box. Jogues could have avoided Ossernenon and returned to Quebec, but he faced his enemies, who met him with the sorcerer, Ondersonk. Jogues wore his clerical garb. His garments were stripped off him; he was slashed with knives and led, mangled and bleeding, to the scene of his recent triumph as an ambassador. A council was held at Tionnontoguen to see what was to be done with him. The Wolf-Tortoise family were against killing him, as were most of the Bears, and he was spared.

But the Bears, bent on vengeance, invited the wounded Jogues to a feast on October 18th. He left his cabin and followed to the festive wigwam, and as he entered a Mohawk, waiting behind the door brought down his axe with a crash on to his skull. His head was hacked off and fixed on a stake of the palisade, and his body was flung into the Mohawk River hard by.

There is no reasonable doubt but that the place of his martyrdom occurred at Auriesville on the south shore of the Mohawk just above the Schoharie. "So died," says Ingram Kip, the Protestant bishop of California, "one of that glorious band that had shown greater devotion in the cause of Christianity than has ever been seen since the time of the Apostles; men whose lives and sufferings reveal a story more touching and pathetic than anything in the records of our country, and whose names should ever be kept in grateful remembrance; stern, high-wrought men who might have stood high in court or camp, and who could contrast their desolate state in the lowly wigwam with the refinement and affluence that waited on them in their earlier years, but who had given up home and love of kindred and the golden ties of relationship for God and man."

Another famous missionary who served Montreal and who often passed through it on his journeys to and fro, was Siméon Le Moyne, who was born about 1601. He entered the society at the age of nineteen and in 1638 he was at work in the Canadian mission field, chiefly among the Hurons, among whom he was known as "Wane," or phonetically in English "Won," the "w" taking the place of the missing "m" in their language, the result being an attempt to reproduce the French pronunciation of "Moyne." His early experiences at Lake Huron brought him in touch with those other heroes, Brébeuf, Daniel, Lalemant, Jogues, and others, many of whom were to be killed. He saw the annihilation of the Hurons and wandered with the remnants over hill and dell and stream, ministering to them. In 1654 he accepted the dangerous mission to the Iroquois at Onondaga, leaving his life in the hands of the Almighty. His object was to pacify the Iroquois as an ambassador, to give comfort to the Huron captives and to prepare the way for a permanent mission. On his return to Quebec he recommended this, and the Jesuits Dablon and Chauminot were appointed. He held several councils and distributed presents.[76] Le Moyne was endowed with a sense of humour. "Le Moyne," says the Rev. T. J. Campbell, "tells us that on this occasion he strutted around like an actor, gesticulating extravagantly, imitating the manners of their great orators, each time winning great grunts of applause from the attendant chiefs and keeping up his eloquence for two hours." The amusing part is that it was told in Huron, of which the Iroquois had only a general knowledge: it was the parent stock. The impressive manner he assumed--he was a past master in mimicry--no doubt overwhelmed them and possibly whimpered interpretations were being given at the same time to let them know what he was saying.

On his return, before reaching Montreal, we are told by Charlevoix that Le Moyne was in a canoe with two Onondagas, the Hurons and Algonquins following. As they approached Montreal they were surprised to find themselves surrounded by several canoes full of Mohawks, who poured a volley upon them from their muskets. The Hurons and Algonquins were all killed, as well as one of the Onondagas. Le Moyne was taken and bound as a prisoner of war, and the Onondaga was told to return home, but he protested that he could not abandon the missionary, who had been confided to him by the sachems of his canton and he menaced the Mohawks with all the wrath of the Upper Iroquois. At first they laughed at his threats, but when they saw that he would not flinch they unbound their prisoner and put him in the hands of his faithful conductor, who led him to Montreal. The chief, who was at the head of these Mohawks, was known as the Flemish Bastard.

The Upper Iroquois, the Agnieronnons, those among whom Isaac Jogues had been killed in 1646, jealous of the distinction paid to their kinsman, the Onondagas, desired an envoy to be sent to them. Accordingly the "Relation" of 1656 tells how Father Le Moyne left Montreal on August 17th with twelve Iroquois and a Frenchman. He arrived at the Village of Agniée (Auriesville) on September 17th. He then visited Ossernenon and later went on to Manhattan to visit the Dutch, after which he returned to Ossernenon, leaving for Montreal in November, lucky to escape with his life, having however promised the Mohawks to give them missionaries. In the meantime the Onondagas had been already favoured by missionaries, and a body of fifty Frenchmen, the nucleus of a trading post. Again the jealousy of the Mohawks of Ossernenon caused a second and a third visit from the diplomatic Le Moyne.

The trading post at Onondaga collapsed through the Frenchmen, hearing of a plot to massacre them, decamping by night and making their way to Montreal.

The perfidious Iroquois of Onondaga, angry at their discovered treachery, were now joined by the Mohawks and for two years the St. Lawrence witnessed bloody fights. Christian Huron settlements were burned and pillaged, and white and red men massacred. Montreal was the storm centre of war.

"One day in July (1661), when the storm was at its height, a number of Iroquois canoes were seen coming down the river towards Montreal. The garrison rushed to the stockade and watched them as they approached the shore. In front was a flag of truce. The savage warriors, in paint and feathers, stepped out as if assured of a friendly reception. The gate was thrown open and, followed by four French captives, the Iroquois advanced into the town. The spokesman was the redoubtable Cayuga chief, named Saonchiowaga. Solemnly he broke the bonds of the French prisoners and promised the liberation of others still in the Onondaga country. Then he began his address, offering his presents meanwhile. Coming to the fifth present he said: 'This is to bring the Frenchman back to us. We still keep his mat; his house is still standing in Ganentoa. His fire is still lighted, and his fields have been tilled and await his return for his hand to gather the harvest.' Then, altering his tone and raising aloft the last belt, he exclaimed: A black gown must come to us; otherwise there will be no peace. On his coming depends the lives of twenty Frenchmen at Onondaga.' And he placed in the governor's hand a leaf of a book, on the margin of which the twenty unfortunate captives had written their names." Campbell, Vol. I, p. 102.

Although many thought this a trick to lure others to death Father Le Moyne offered to go to test its sincerity, and on July 21, 1661, he left Montreal for Onondaga. There he was successful in concluding peace with the help of Garagontié, "The Sun that Advances," who shortly went down to Montreal to negotiate peace. But his withdrawal was a sorry turn for Le Moyne, whom the Iroquois lads would have burned alive on the scaffold at the stake. He escaped on one occasion with some frightful scalds which took six months to heal. At another time he was nearly tomahawked. The return of Garagontié alone made his work of charity among the Onondagas possible. He had plenty to do to look after the French captives and to secure their ransom. In this he was largely successful and returned to Montreal in the summer of 1662. The "Relations" record this as follows: "On the last day of August, 1662, the father made his appearance in a canoe below the Falls of St. Louis, having around him all the happy rescued ones and a score of Onondagas, who from being enemies, had become their boatmen. They landed amid the cheers and embraces of all the French of Montreal, and following Father Le Moyne proceeded to the church to thank God."

Wars prevented him going back to Onondaga, but he applied for the post in 1664. His shattered health, however, stood in the way, and he died in 1665, sick of a fever at Cape Madeleine, opposite Three Rivers. He may be called the Apostle of the Onondagas.

JAMES BUTEAUX

James Buteaux was born at Abbeville, in France, on April 11, 1600, and joined the Canadian mission shortly after it was handed over to the French. He served the Algonquin missions and while at Montreal not only did he accompany the Christian Indians in their fights, but he heartened the little garrison at home, as also the good Maisonneuve, who was then realizing what his declaration had meant when he had told Montmagny that he would stay in Montreal if every tree were an Iroquois. He was a most devoted missionary, although he was a frail man. "I have often seen him," says Father de Quen, "tramping in the dark through three or four feet of snow, groping along by the light of a lantern which the howling wind would often tear from his hand or extinguish, while he himself would perhaps be flung by the violence of the storm down some icy trail into the snowdrifts below. This would be surprising news," continues the writer, "for those who remember him in France, frail to the last degree and almost always a valetudinarian." This happened at Sillery and his devotedness, no doubt, was similar at Montreal.

His whole life was led midst the alarms of war. On the 10th of May, 1652, when, with a Huron and a Frenchman, on a journey from his beloved Three Rivers on a mission to the White Fish tribe, he was fallen upon by Iroquois. The Huron was seized and the priest and Frenchman fell riddled with bullets. The savages then rushed upon them with their knives and tomahawks, stripped them naked and flung them into the river.

GABRIEL DRUILLETTES

Gabriel Druillettes, it is said, was born in 1593, but it is certain he came to Canada on August 15, 1643, in the same ship with the Jesuits Garreau and Chabanel, both subsequently being slain by the Indians. He served Montreal for a short time, but his after-career as the "Apostle of Maine" entitles him to considerable fame in early American history. In 1670 he went to the West. In 1671 the white-haired missionary was at the solemn "prise de possession" at Sault Ste. Marie, ordered by Talon. He remained at the Sault till 1679, whence he journeyed to Quebec to rest after his long missionary wanderings, dying two years later, full of years and good works.

CHARLES ALBANEL

Charles Albanel was born in 1613 and came to America on August 23, 1649, and in the following year was at Montreal. His after-career was one of adventure. He may be called the missionary of the Hudson Bay. In his second visit there in 1674 he went expressly as Frontenac's secret agent to induce Radisson to abandon the service of the Hudson's Bay Company; in fact he handed Radisson a letter from Colbert offering him a position in the French navy, the payment of all his debts and a gratuity of 400 pounds sterling if he would return to his allegiance. The adventurer eventually accepted the proposition. Charles Albanel was taken prisoner to England because he did endeavour to convert "ye Indians and persuade them not to trade with ye English."

He is described as a "little ould man born of English parentage." He was set free, and was in France in 1675, on July 22d set sail for America. Coming back from Canada his superiors kept him away from the Hudson Bay territory and sent him west, and the "little ould man" of 1674 died twenty-two years later, as a missionary at Sault Ste. Marie on January 11, 1696.

PAUL LE JEUNE

Paul Le Jeune, whom the distinguished historian of New York, Dr. O'Callaghan, calls the Father of the Canadian missions, one among many reasons for this title being, that, when Canada was restored to the French, he was elected as superior of the missions, was born at Châlons-sur-Marne in July, 1591, and arrived in Canada in 1632.[77] He was the friend of Champlain, whose funeral oration he pronounced in 1635. He was highly esteemed by Montmagny. As superior of the missions he ruled from Miscou to Lake Huron, but he was glad enough to serve humbly in the ranks when Father Vimont became provincial. Thus it is that we find him serving the mission of Montreal. In 1649 he returned to France as procurator of the French missions in Canada. Later on when there was a question of naming a bishop of Quebec, Father Le Jeune was the choice of the queen regent. Charles Lalemant and Ragueneau were also mentioned, but the general of the Jesuits forbade the consideration of any Jesuit for that post. Laval, as we know, was eventually appointed. In 1661, it was Le Jeune who made the touching and fearless appeal to Louis XIV himself for the perishing colony. This helped to open the eyes of the monarch and was the herald of better times which, however, did not occur till 1666, two years after the death of Le Jeune, when de Tracy's and de Courcelles' handful of men brought the peace which lasted for fifteen years.

It would be tedious to the reader to give further autobiographical notes. Yet the importance of these Montreal missionaries for the colonization of New France and the civilization of the Indians justifies the space we have allotted.

Parkman in his "Jesuits," pages 318-320, sums up the success of their missions thus:

"When we look for the results of those missions we soon become aware that the influence of the French and the Jesuits extended far beyond the circle of converts. It eventually modified and softened the manners of many unconverted tribes.

"In the wars of the next century we do not find those examples of diabolical atrocity with which the earlier annals are crowded. The savage burned his enemies alive, it is true, but he rarely ate them; neither did he torment them with the same deliberation and persistency. He was a savage still, but not so often a devil. * * * In this softening of manner, such as it was, and in the obedient Catholicity of a few hundred tamed savages gathered at stationary missions in Canada, we find after a century had elapsed all the results of the heroic toil of the Jesuits. The missions had failed because the Indians had ceased to exist. Of the great tribes on whom rested the hopes of the early Canadian fathers, nearly all were virtually extinct. The missionaries built laboriously and well, but they were doomed to build on a falling foundation. The Indians melted away, not because civilization destroyed them, but because their own ferocity and untractable indolence made it impossible that they should exist in its presence. Either the plastic energies of a higher race, or the servile pliancy of a lower one, would each in its way have preserved them; as it was, their extinction was a foregone conclusion. As for the religion which the Jesuits taught them, however Protestants may carp at it, it was the only form of Christianity likely to take root in their crude and barbarous nature."

The following appreciation of the early Jesuits, taken from "The Dominion of Canada--The Brave Days of Old," by a Protestant writer, Professor Grant, of Kingston, may be of interest as coming from a later day pen:

"Eyes and heart alternately glow and fill as we read the endless 'Relations' of their faith and failures, their heaped-up measure of miseries, their boundless wisdom, their heroic martyrdoms. We forget our traditional antipathy to the name of Jesuit. The satire of Pascal, the memories of the Inquisition and the political history of the order, is all forgotten. We dislike to have our sympathies checked by reminders, that in Canada as elsewhere, they were the consistent, formidable foes of liberty; that their love of power not only embroiled them continually with the civil authorities, but made them jealous of the Recollects and Sulpicians, unwilling that any save their own order--or, as we say, sect--should share in the dangers and glory of converting the infidels of New France. How can we, sitting at home in ease, we who have entered into their labours, criticize men before whose spiritual white heat every mountain melted away; who carried the cross in advance of the most adventurous 'coureurs de bois,' or guides, who taught agriculture to the Indian on the Georgian Bay before a dozen farms had been cleared on the St. Lawrence--drove or carried cattle through unbroken forest around the countless rapids and cataracts of the Ottawa and French rivers that they might wean the Hurons from nomadic habits and make of them a nation; who shrank from no hardship and no indignity if by any means they might save some of the miserable savages who heaped indignities upon themselves; who instituted hospitals and convents wherever they went, always (in the spirit of their masters) caring most for the weak, the decrepit, the aged; and submitted themselves, without thinking of escape, to inutterable tortures rather than lose an opportunity of administering the last sacraments to those who had fallen under the hatchets of the Iroquois! Few Protestants have any idea of the extraordinary missionary activity of the Church of Rome in the seventeenth century. Few Englishmen know to what extent French society was inspired then by religious fervour. Few Canadians have any knowledge of the spiritual inheritance of which they are the heirs. It would be well for all of us to read Parkman's 'Jesuits in North America,' if we cannot get hold of the original 'Relations;' for the story, looked at even from a Protestant and republican standpoint, is one to do us all good, revealing as it does the spiritual bonds that link into oneness of faith Protestant and Roman Catholic, and teaching that beneath the long black robe of the dreaded Jesuit is to be found, not so much that disingenuousness and those schemes of worldly ambition usually associated with the name, but a passionate devotion to the Saviour, love for the souls of men and the fixed steadfastness of the martyr's spirit that remains unshaken when heart and flesh faint and fail.

"The prophetic words of the father superior of the Jesuits in 1647 stir the heart of the Christian--by whatsoever name known among men--like the blasts of a trumpet: 'We shall die; we shall be captured, burned, butchered. Be it so. Those who die in their beds do not always die the best death. I see none of our Company cast down.' And truly, in spite of failures, these men did a great work. Seeds of divine truth they sowed broadcast over the wilderness. Gradually they tempered the ferocity of the Indian character, and mitigated the horrors of Indian war. They induced the remnants of many tribes to settle under the shadow of their missions protected by forts. Portions even of the terrible Iroquois settled in Canada and the church has, on the whole, no children more obedient, and Queen Victoria certainly no subjects more loyal."--(Scribner's Magazine, quoted in Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 1879.)

FOOTNOTES:

[76] He discovered the salt springs at Onondaga (Syracuse).

[77] Paul le Jeune in 1632 wrote the first letter of the Relations of the Jesuits.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XI

1655-1658

THE COMING OF THE SULPICIANS

(1657)

MAISONNEUVE GOES TO FRANCE--ARRANGES FOR HOSPITALIERES AND SULPICIANS--BISHOPRIC FOR NEW FRANCE--THE NOMINATIONS OF DE QUEYLUS AND LAVAL--THE APPOINTMENT DELAYED--THE DEATH OF M. OLIER--THE ARRIVAL OF DE QUEYLUS AND MAISONNEUVE AT QUEBEC--TWO RIVAL "GRANDS VICAIRES"--DE QUEYLUS GOES TO MONTREAL AND QUICKLY RETURNS TO RULE THE CHURCH IN QUEBEC--THE INTRUSION RESENTED--THE SULPICIANS IN MONTREAL--TRIBUTE TO THEM AS CIVIC AND RELIGIOUS ADMINISTRATORS--IROQUOIS HOSTILITIES RESUMED--THE HEAD OF JEAN ST. PERE--THE CHURCH IN MONTREAL TAKES ON "PARISH" PRETENSIONS--CHURCH WARDENS AND "LA FABRIQUE"--THE FIRST SCHOOL HOUSE--THE FLIGHT TO MONTREAL FROM ONONDAGA--PRECAUTIONARY ORDINANCES BY MAISONNEUVE--FORTIFIED REDOUBTS--THE ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTE SETTLED--DE QUEN "GRAND VICAIRE" OF QUEBEC, DE QUEYLUS OF MONTREAL--BON SECOURS CHURCH DELAYED--JEANNE MANCE AND MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS VISIT FRANCE.

In the autumn of 1655, profiting by the peace concluded, and seeing the progress of the town well under way, the governor left Montreal under the charge of Lambert Closse, and sailed for France. His object was threefold (1) to promote the erection of an episcopal seat in Canada; (2) to secure, as originally arranged, permanent parish priests for Montreal from M. Olier's Seminary of St. Sulpice, since the Jesuits, being missionaries, desired their men to be ready to visit the far-off tribes; and (3) to bring back the sisters of the Institute of Hospitalières, erected lately by M. de la Dauversière, in view of the service of the Hôtel-Dieu.

On arriving in France, an agreement was entered into by which three or four of the Hospitalières of La Flèche should come to Montreal when all was ready. M. Olier, who had wished to finish his days in Canada, chose for Maisonneuve three of his priests, Gabriel de Queylus, whom he named superior; Gabriel Souart, Dominic Galinier, and a deacon, M. d'Allet.

In the choice of M. Gabriel de Thubières de Lévy Queylus as superior, the Associates saw their likely nominee as the bishop whom they wished to have in the see of New France. They had him in view in promoting the creation of the episcopal see before the assembly of the bishops on August 9, 1656, through the good services of Mgr. Godeau, Bishop of Vence. This was again brought up before the assembly on January 10, 1657, and Cardinal Mazarin, then present, undertook to interest the king in the formation of the episcopal see as desired. On this occasion the name of the Abbé de Queylus was mentioned to Cardinal Mazarin by the bishop of Vence as a man of approved "probity, capacity and zeal, who possesses an abbacy of considerable value. He is willing to sacrifice himself in this new episcopate, in a barbarous country, so far from all consolation; and his person is agreeable to the Jesuit fathers." (Procès Verbal of the General Assembly, January 10, 1657.)

M. de Queylus had many and great qualifications. He was a doctor of theology. His capacity and zeal had been shown as the superior of the community of the parish of St. Sulpice at Paris, when he was Olier's right hand man. He had laboured in the ecclesiastical reform of several dioceses in Languedoc and had established the diocesan Seminary of Viviers, which he sustained by his liberality. He enjoyed the abbacy of Loc Dieu. He had a private income--a valuable thing for a bishop in a poor diocese; and his choice, it was alleged, was likely to please the Jesuits.

This latter was an important argument, for this Order had been on the ground so long, that they were the most fitted to understand the needs of a missionary country, and of the natives whose languages they spoke. They were zealous, able men, who had become necessary, and their blood had been freely spent in the work of colonization and Christianity. It would have been most appropriate to have chosen a bishop from among them, except that the democratic spirit of the order is against the acceptance of dignities, unless forced upon them. Seeing this, it was etiquette and the wisdom of the Church not to impose an ecclesiastical superior above them, without consulting their wishes.

But there is no proof of the above assertion that the Jesuits approved of de Queylus; indeed, on the contrary, as soon as they learned of his nomination in the same month of January, they proposed the Abbé François de Laval de Montmorency, to the king, as their candidate for the projected see of New France. This opposition shelved the immediate question of the appointment of a bishop, which was delayed till the consecration of Laval on December 8, 1658.

Meanwhile M. Olier thought that there should be no delay in the Sulpicians taking up the pastoral work of Montreal. Accordingly we find M. de Queylus and his three companions at Nantes waiting to embark, when the sad news came that M. Olier had died at Paris on Easter Monday, April 2, 1657.

This was a great blow, since M. Olier was looked upon as the soul of the Montreal mission. The departure was postponed till the middle of May. In the meantime the missionaries had recourse to the Archbishop of Rouen with whom, by prescription, the jurisdiction of New France lay, seeing that it had not been revoked by the Holy See in 1643. From him they received by letters dated April 22, 1657, all the accustomed powers granted on such occasions to Canadian missionaries. But the Abbé de Queylus received, in addition a "proprio motu" from the archbishop, appointing him his "grand vicar for all New France." This was a false step on the part of the Archbishop of Rouen and M. de Queylus, for it put, even the superior of the Jesuit missionaries under the local superior of Montreal, a most unwise proceeding. Secondly, the archbishop forgot that already the Jesuit superior had been granted similar powers and he had not revoked them. He should certainly have foreseen inevitable friction. To Rouen is to be attributed the long drawn out battle now to commence between Quebec and Montreal.

On May 17, 1657, the four missionaries set sail with M. de Maisonneuve, M. and Mme. d'Ailleboust and other passengers.

On reaching the Isle of Orleans, two leagues from Quebec, Maisonneuve and the Montreal party disembarked, desirous to proceed immediately by another vessel to Montreal. But M. d'Ailleboust, arriving at Quebec on July 29th, announced the coming of the Sulpicians, so that kind-hearted Père de Quen, formerly in charge of Montreal and now superior of the Jesuit missions, immediately set forth for the Ile d'Orleans to call upon them. He congratulated Queylus on his letters of vicar general, and induced him to come to Quebec. It is strange that de Queylus, with the letters he bore, did not call directly upon the Jesuit superior whom he was to supplant. There is no doubt that the position of the Abbé Queylus was not understood by the Jesuits. Faillon, in his history of "La Colonie Française," says quite wrongly that there was an express clause, in the authorization of the new grand vicar, now disclosed to Father de Quen, especially mentioning the immediate cession of those powers already granted to the Jesuit superior of the missionaries. M. de Queylus, no doubt in good faith read this into his letters but he weakly explained that he would confine the exercise of his powers to Montreal. The letter of the archbishop certainly did not specifically revoke previous powers given to the Jesuits. Father de Quen as a canonist pointed out that it was more consistent that the Abbé de Queylus, in doubt as to the revocation of the Jesuits' powers, should follow out the full powers of universal jurisdiction claimed by him. On this the grand vicar, who did not need much pressure, made with the assent of Père de Quen an official visit of the parish church which was under the charge of Father Poncet, the first Jesuit missionary at Montreal in 1642. Father de Quen's action was weak, but wise, as he thought, at this time. M. de Queylus confirmed the friendly Father Poncet in the government of the parish of Quebec and handed to him the bull of indulgence of Pope Alexander VII on the occasion of his exaltation to the pontificate.

Father de Quen explained his temporizing acquiescence in a manuscript letter, in Latin to the general of the society, of September 3, 1658. "It is true that I did not wish to exercise any act [of jurisdiction, as a vicar general] from that day on which M. l'Abbé Queylus laid his letters patent of authority before me lest any evil should thence arrive; however, I could not, nor would not, yield my jurisdiction (potestatus et res) until I became certain that it had been revoked by his Eminence the Archbishop of Rouen, who had granted it to me." Thus the Jesuit acted constitutionally and wisely. Rouen would now be approached by him.

In the meantime, after having been recognized as "grand vicaire" M. de Queylus with the Sulpicians proceeded to Ville Marie. On August 12th Père Claude Pijart, the missionary, gave over the exercise of his ministry to M. Gabriel Souart who now became the curé or parish priest. Father Pijart remained in Montreal for some time, but, on September 3rd, he was in Quebec, where he was appointed to take the place of Père Poncet, in the charge of the parish church. Père Poncet, though a zealous and enterprising man, had shown himself a difficult subject, and his obedience and his spirit of independence had been already called in question in a letter to Rome. As this may be accounted the beginning of the ecclesiastical trouble between Montreal and Quebec we will follow Père Pijart.

On arriving at Quebec, Père Pijart found that the injudicious Père Poncet had been deposed from his office by his superior, Père de Quen, as a consequence of his promulgation of the bull left behind by the grand vicar, announcing the opening of the jubilee for August 12th. Père de Quen, now no longer acting as grand vicar, but still the superior of the Jesuit missions of Canada, had apparently been ignorant of the arrival of this bull, and he considered that as his religious superior and that of most of the clergy in the country he should have had notification of it and he deposed the parish priest, Père Poncet,--a power which he had arranged with M. de Queylus to retain as a religious superior according to acknowledged ecclesiastical etiquette. The position was a new one. Time only could straighten out the inevitable difficulties arising in a double régime now commencing. Père Poncet meanwhile, appointed to the Indian mission of Onondaga started the year previously, left Quebec on August 28th and, passing by Montreal, informed the "grand vicaire" of the loss of his parish. The latter impetuously prevailed on him to suspend his journey, forgetful that in his inexperience he was committing a new breach of church etiquette in interfering with the orders of the Jesuit superior to his own subject, and together they arrived, with M. d'Ailleboust and the deacon, M. d'Allet, acting as Queylus' secretary, at Quebec on September 12th.

On September 18th, Father Poncet was sent by de Quen back to France, a sad return for an heroic man but obedience for the Jesuit is the formal test of heroism.

M. d'Ailleboust was now called upon to act as governor general, replacing M. de Lauson-Charny ad interim, till another was formally appointed. On arriving M. Queylus, superseding Father Pijart, unwisely and ambitiously took up the functions of parish priest himself in the hitherto Jesuit church and remained there for a year. This was open hostility. He was assisted on occasions by the chaplain of the Ursulines, M. Guillaume Vignal, and that of the Hôtel-Dieu, M. Jean Lebey, both secular priests. M. Queylus lived at the château with the governor general while the Jesuits inhabited the official presbytery. The position was electrical and there was open hostility. There were two factions. Occasional interchange of courtesies and ministry were, however, carried on and a semblance of diplomatic peace at last arrived at, so that d'Argenson, the new governor general, writing on September 5, 1658, a year later, says: "I was surprised, after having heard in France of the little differences between the reverend Jesuits and M. l'Abbé de Queylus, to see the union between them and the church entirely at peace." He recommended, however, the appointment of a bishop as a solution of the difficulty. D'Argenson had arrived unexpectedly at Quebec on July 11th. He brought over powers to settle the ecclesiastical "impasse." During the year the Jesuits had communicated with the archbishop of Rouen, Mgr. de Harlay, and a brief of March 30, 1656, written in French, arranged that there should be two "grands vicaires," one for the Quebec district in the person of the superior of the Jesuits, and M. de Queylus, who should exercise his jurisdiction in that of Montreal only. This was not communicated to M. de Queylus till August 8th. He was at first inclined to dispute the situation, but d'Argenson, assuring him of the cognizance of the Company of Montreal of this matter, he "peacefully" acquiesced, departing from Quebec on August 21st with M. and Mme. d'Ailleboust, whose presence was no longer required there. During his stay in Quebec M. Queylus founded the church of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, since, the great Canadian shrine, the scene of many pilgrimages, and in many ways showed himself a progressive administrator. He was certainly an active man, with the defects of his qualities.

The explanation of the letter brought by d'Argenson is as follows: Shortly after the surprise received by the appearance of the Sulpician vicar general the superior of the Jesuits, Père de Quen wrote to Father Brisacier, the Jesuit rector of the college at Rouen, to ask him to enquire of his Grace the Archbishop of Rouen if he had withdrawn his faculties as vicar general or not.

He also wrote at the same time to the general of the order, Goswin Nickel, acquainting him of the new situation in Canada. On December 17, 1657, the general himself also wrote to Father Brisacier in Latin as follows: "Father J. de Quen, superior of the Canadian missions, has written to me on September 20th of this year, that he and his subjects are being harassed by the Abbé de Queylus, sent out there last summer by his Eminence the Archbishop of Rouen, to act as his vicar general, asserting that the marriages celebrated by fathers acting as parish priests are null; that they are abusing the power and jurisdiction of the vicar general which they had obtained; that he could dispose of our men 'ad libitum,' and other things which have no little disturbed the nascent church. The evil might increase from day to day unless his Grace the Archbishop, through his zeal and piety, will early look into the matter. Your Reverence will see whether you can obtain from him either that the power of this abbé may be revoked or that he shall so treat with ours that he shall have come to New France not for its destruction but for its upbuilding." (Arch. Gen., 89.)

The final response to the difficulty came to Quebec on July 11, 1658, when the letter of Mgr. de Harlay, the archbishop of Rouen, arrived.

"To put an end to the differences," he says, "which have intervened between the Sieur Abbé de Queylus and the venerable superior of the Jesuits of the house of Quebec, both our grands vicaires in the part of our diocese called La Nouvelle France, until it may be more amply provided for by your authority, we have ordered that Sieur Abbé de Queylus shall exercise hereafter and from the day of the present ordinance, the vicariate which we have given him, according to the powers we have given him, in the extent of the Island of Montreal; as also the superior of the Jesuits of the house of Quebec shall exercise the same powers that we have accorded him, without either one or the other of the two grands vicaires being able to undertake anything in their different territories without the consent of the one and the other." This act was made and signed at Paris on March 30, 1658.

It would certainly appear then that Father de Quen's powers had never been revoked, that Abbé de Queylus had forced the sense of his letters patent accorded April 22, 1657, since in giving him an extended jurisdiction he did not revoke previous powers given. There were to be two independent parallel vicariates under Rouen. In a later letter of September 3, 1658, of Father de Quen to the general of his order, he interprets the above as a confirmation of his previous powers, and not a new concession.

"The Most Eminent Archbishop of Rouen has sent me letters in which he confirms the power conceded by him to us now since many years, of vicar general of Quebec and in other adjacent places. He has written also to the Abbé de Queylus a letter which has constituted him vicar general in the Island of Montreal only." (Arch. Gen., S. J.)

In spite of the storm clouds gathered over them, the arrival of the Sulpicians at Montreal was welcomed. They represented to the colonists, the Company of Notre-Dame de Montreal that had brought them out. M. de Queylus was wealthy and a member of the Company of Montreal, and the others were self supporting members of a body, to whom it had already been proposed by the Company to hand over the seigneury of the whole island, as indeed happened in 1663. This meant material advancement for the church and progress for the settlement. Although the Jesuits were very much loved by the people, their number was small, they had no settled income and frequently they were called to absent themselves from Montreal. The permanent presence of four Sulpicians, with the prospects of an assured continuity, was indeed gratifying also from a spiritual point of view. The honour of receiving them fell to Jeanne Mance, and they were allotted the large room in the hospital, which was at once the refectory, recreation, study, and bedroom, all in one. There they remained till the stone house named the Seminary was built for them. M. Souart being a doctor could also be on hand for assistance to the hospital sick.

Meanwhile, the peaceful situation at Ville Marie, during the above negotiations, claims our attention.

The advent of the Sulpicians marks the growth of organized progress in the development of the religious and civic life of Montreal. It was due to them that the church began to take on parish proportions, one of their first acts being the foundation of the "Oeuvre de Fabrique" soon to be chronicled. It was the mission of the Jesuits to be the hardy pioneers to succour the spiritual needs during their early days of the handful of struggling settlers; that of the Sulpicians to develop the sense of civic administration and to guide it for many generations. A modern historian[78] writing in 1887, pays the following tribute to the Sulpicians:

"Thus not only the city but the entire Island of Montreal today possesses an ecclestiastico-civil status, that is now denied even to Rome. This circumstance must never be overlooked, for it has been far-reaching in its influence. Montreal's first lessons in Christian civilization were taken under the auspices I have just described--among the best, it may safely be said, that the France of the period could furnish--and every Protestant church, as well as every other institution in the city, has felt the powerful sway of the gentlemen of the Seminary."

The position of the Catholic Church in the city with its many beautiful churches and educational establishments stands largely as a monument to the important seeds sown in this coming in 1657.

M. de Queylus did not stay long in Ville Marie, for on September 3rd he started for Quebec, as said, to assume the control of the parish church.

On October 25, 1857, the Sulpicians were to experience their first taste of war, for they had three burials in one day in the same sepulchre. On this day, Nicholas Godé was building his house at Point St. Charles, assisted by his son-in-law, Jean Saint Père, the notary, and Jacques Noël, their hired assistant, when several of a band of Indians who had been in the neighbourhood, approached the house and were hospitably treated. After a meal the three had gone unarmed on the roof, which they were covering, when their guests treacherously fired at them, and their hosts came toppling off the roof like wounded sparrows. Nicholas Godé and Jacques Noël they scalped, but cutting the head off Jean Saint Père, they fled with it, to exhibit his handsome headpiece to their braves.

Dollier de Casson, who arrived in Montreal later, says that he heard the following story from the lips of trustworthy persons, among them a man, whom Marguerite Bourgeoys in her memoirs names a M. Cuillérier, who having been a prisoner among the Iroquois spoke their language, and had heard the story from the savages themselves, that the head of Jean Saint Père proved a trouble to them, for he reproached them in very good Iroquois in such words as these: "You kill us, and you do many cruel things to us; you wish to wipe out the French in this country. You will not come to your wish. You will have to take care, for one day we shall be your masters and you will obey us." And this, although the deceased knew no word of Iroquois; wherever they were, day and night, they heard the voice; in their vexation they scalped the head and threw the troublesome skull away, but they still heard the accusing voice. Dollier de Casson believed the story and thought he must not pass it over in obscurity. A modern historian would explain that the frightened Indians only heard subjectively the voice of their accusing conscience.

Not ignoring this sign of the approaching outbreak of hostilities, d'Ailleboust, at Quebec, gave instructions, on November 1st, that all Iroquois approaching the forts should be seized, looking upon the late act as a declaration of war.

Two Iroquois had been seized by de Maisonneuve, one of them an Onondagan, but not wishing by these arrests to compromise the Jesuits at the mission at Onondaga he sent this Indian with three letters addressed to them, asking them to explain the massacre at Point St. Charles and telling them that the prisoners were being retained in honourable custody, until it was learned whether the late attack had been made by their people or not.

Amid such anxious times the new church, begun in 1656, was rapidly nearing completion, assisted by the funds provided by the Sulpicians. It was a modest building of wood and stood on the corner of St. Joseph (St. Sulpice Street of today) and St. Paul. There it stood till 1678, the first "parish" church, till it was given over entirely to the hospital for the sick.

The church at Montreal now took on parochial airs and pretentions although it was not canonically erected as a parish till 1678, and it must have its marguilliers, or church wardens. Accordingly at an election held November 21, 1657, Louis Prud'homme, Jean Gervaise and Gilbert Barbier were appointed. This day must be taken as the birthday of the foundation of the parish of Montreal. The parish or at least the establishment of the "Fabrique" or corporation for the management of the temporals of the church school was next to be set up. A stable in stone, 36 by 18 feet, situated near the hospital, with a plot of playing ground of forty-eight perches, was donated by the Company through Maisonneuve by act of January 22, 1658. "The present concession made to be of service for the instruction of the girls of Montreal as well as for the dwelling for the said Marguerite Bourgeoys, and after her decease, to perpetuity," this latter being inserted because it was understood that Marguerite would found a body to continue the work after her. She was then thirty-eight years of age. The donation was accepted and witnessed by the chief officers of the community: M. Souart, curé; M. Galinier, vicaire; the then church wardens; Marin Jannot, syndic; Lambert Closse, "major of the island," Mademoiselle Mance, administratrice of the hospital, and Charles Le Moyne, storekeeper of the Company.

Montreal of today is perhaps the greatest educational centre on this continent. It receives its students from all parts. Let us then glance at the description given by Marguerite Bourgeoys, in her memoirs, of the humble beginnings of the first home of education in Montreal: "Four years after my arrival M. de Maisonneuve was good enough to give me a stone stable to make a school of it and to lodge there persons to conduct it. This stable has served as a dovecot and a home for cattle. It had a granary loft above to sleep in, to which it was necessary to ascend by an outside staircase. I had it cleaned and a chimney put in, and all that was necessary for schoolkeeping." School was opened on April 30. She was assisted by Marguerite Picard who on November 5 married Nicholas Godé and afterwards became Madame Lamontagne, Sieur de la Montague, son of Nicholas, the joiner, who came in 1642. The girls too old to go to school Marguerite formed, on July 2, 1658, into a pious girls' club, or sodality, on the lines of the Congregation of Externes at Troyes, of which she herself had been a member. Thus the house became known as the "Congregation."

The next date of interest this year (1658) is that of April 3rd, "when," says Dollier de Casson, "fifty Frenchmen reached here under the command of M. Dupuis, with the Jesuit fathers who had been forced to leave the mission of Onondaga for fear of being burned alive by the Iroquois. Several of their people, less disposed than they to death by being burned alive, as well as to any other kind which Providence might please to send, had such a fright that they were only cured when they came in sight of Montreal, a like miracle occurring here several times."

This is the sequel of the letters sent by Maisonneuve, and its story must be told. The letters were not delivered, but instead the treacherous Indian messenger told the Onondagas that the French had just allied themselves with the Algonquins to make war against them. This angering the Onondagans, they concerted with the Mohawks and a delegation went to Quebec, arriving on January 3, 1658, to demand the return of their twelve prisoners detained as hostages. But M. d'Ailleboust gave them little satisfaction and they departed in February.

In the same month a secret gathering was held, at Agnié of a few of the most influential heads of all the Iroquois nations, and there was sworn a war of extermination of the whites if their captives were not returned, and they would commence with the settlement of the black robes at Onondaga, which had been settled with them at their own invitation in 1656. A Christian Iroquois revealed this plot to the missionaries at Onondaga and these communicated it to Quebec. But how to escape from their own impending slaughter, the like of which had been witnessed on August 3, 1657, when seven Christians had been slain, by these same Onondagas before the horrified eyes of Father Ragueneau, then on his way, to be similarly repeated when, on reaching Onondaga, some of the Christian captives were burned, including several women and their infant children.

As Father Ragueneau was among the fugitives that came to Montreal with Zacharie Dupuis, we may take his story as substantially that which the terrified party told to the horror-stricken Montrealers but with more harrowing details. But first a note on the relater. Paul Ragueneau, born in Paris in 1605, came to Canada when he was thirty-one years of age. In 1646 he was superior of the Huron missions. He was an ideal superior and was very much valued by de Lauson and d'Avaugour on the supreme council. He left Canada in 1662 and acted as the procurator for the Canadian missions in Paris. He died in 1680, on September 3. A year after Father Dablon had sailed with his fifty Frenchmen over Lake Onondaga he was followed by Paul Ragueneau in August, 1657, with a band of thirteen or sixteen Senecas, thirty Onondagas and about fifty Christian Hurons. On the way there was a general butchery of the Hurons by the rest of the party which Ragueneau was forced to witness. When he reached Onondaga his practiced eye took in the unsettled situation. The lives of the French colonists were treacherously foresworn to Indian butchery. This plot became clearer as the autumn passed. In the early months of 1658, Ragueneau, who was superior, called in gradually the missionaries from the outstations and it was arranged with Dupuis, the French commandant, to make a secret flight on the night of March 21, 1658.

Ragueneau's official account of this, to be found in the "Relations" of this year, is as follows: "The resolution was taken to quit the country forthwith, even though the difficulties seemed unsurmountable. To supply the want of canoes we built, in secret, two boats of a novel structure to pass the rapids. They were flat-bottomed and could carry considerable freight, with fourteen or fifteen men on each. We had, besides, four Algonquin and four Iroquois canoes. The difficulty was to build and launch them without being detected, for without secrecy we could only expect a general massacre.

"After succeeding in finishing the boats we invited the savages in our neighbourhood to a solemn banquet, and spared neither the noise of drums nor instruments of music, to deceive them as to our purpose. At the feast, every one vied with each other in uttering the most piercing shrieks, now of revelry, now of war. The savages sang and danced in French fashion, and the French after the manner of the Indians. Presents were given and the greatest tumult was kept up to cover the noise of forty of our people outside, who were launching the boats. The feast was concluded, the guests retired and were soon overpowered by sleep, and we slipped out by the back way to the boats.

"The little lake on which we sailed in the darkness of the night froze as we advanced. God, however, delivered us and, after having advanced all night and all the following day, we arrived in the evening at Lake Ontario. The first day was the most dangerous. Ten or twelve Iroquois could have intercepted us, for the river was narrow, and ten leagues down the stream it leaped over a frightful precipice. It took us four hours to carry our boats around it, through a dense and unknown forest. The perils in which we walked made us shudder after we escaped them. We had no bed at night but the snow, after having passed entire days in icy water.

"Ten days after our departure we reached the St. Lawrence, but it was frozen and we had to cut a channel through the ice. Two days after our little fleet nearly foundered in the rapids. We were in the Long Sault without knowing it. We found ourselves in the midst of breakers, with rocks on all sides, against which the mountains of water flung us at every stroke of our paddles. The cries of our people, mingling with the roar of the waters, added to the horror of the scene. One of our canoes was engulfed in the breakers and barred the passage through which we all had to pass. Three Frenchmen were drowned there; a fourth fortunately saved himself by clinging to the canoe. He was picked up at the foot of the Sault just as his strength was giving out and he was letting go his hold. On the 3rd of April we landed at Montreal at the beginning of the night."

At Montreal, the fugitives were received with tender solicitude and the graphic details recounted at length. Thus the first attempt to plant Christianity in New York territory, after two years had come to a disastrous end.

Radisson, the half-civilized Frenchman, who had spent his early manhood as an adopted Iroquois, had accompanied Ragueneau from Montreal to Onondaga and back, tells the story in his "Travels." He dwells mostly on the occurrences of the feast, when the Indians gorged themselves so, that it was suggested to the priest by a Frenchman, probably by Radisson himself, that the fugitives should massacre them in their helpless drunken stupor and sleep--a suggestion which Ragueneau repudiated.

The surprise of the Onondagas next day was afterwards learned. "When night had given place to day," wrote Ragueneau, "darkness to light, the barbarians awoke from sleep and, leaving their cabins, roved around our well-locked house. They were astonished at the profound silence that reigned there. They saw no one going in or out. They heard no voice. They thought at first that we were at prayer or in council but, the day advancing, and the prayers not coming to an end, they knocked at the door. The dogs, which we had designedly left behind, answered by barking." Radisson's account adds that the idea of a religious ceremony going on within was stimulated by a pig who had a bell rope attached to his leg, so that whenever he moved the bell pealed.

"The cock crows which they heard in the morning," says Ragueneau, "and the noise of the dogs, made them think that the masters were not far off, and they recovered their patience, which they had lost. But at length the sun began to go down, and no person answering either to the voice of men or the cries of the dogs, they scaled the house to see what might be the condition of our men in this terrible silence. Astonishment now gave place to fright. They opened the door; the chiefs enter, descend to the cellar and mount to the garret. Not a Frenchman made his appearance, dead or alive. They thought they had to deal with devils."

This was further borne in upon them, because they had seen no boats. A search in the woods not revealing the fugitives, they came to the conclusion that the Frenchmen had vanished, and might as mysteriously reappear, to fall upon their village.

The news of this disaster and the fear of a terrible uprisal at the hands of the frustrated Iroquois caused the governor to issue the ordinance of March 18, 1658, which was promulgated by Bénigne Basset, the successor to Notary Saint Père. In this the habitants were again ordered as formerly to provide themselves with arms and to fortify their houses; not to endanger their lives, but to work as far as possible in groups; to retire to their homes at the sound of the bell at night and not to leave until next morning without absolute necessity. They were not to go far for their hunting expeditions without special permission, and they were not to use any of the canots or chaloupes that were not their own without the express consent of the proprietors, unless it was a case of saving life.

Such precautions as these manifested the prudence of the governor and was the reason why there had been only one Frenchman killed between the date of the Point St. Charles massacre, October, 1657, to April, 1660. This solitary death was that of Sylvester Vacher dit Saint Julien, who was slain in 1659 near the Lac des Loutres close to the town. We may mention here several of the means adopted this year and the following to secure public safety. On the east, a new mill was built on a rising mound, afterwards called Citadel Hill, which was later the site of Dalhousie Square and is now the site of the Viger station. This was fortified as a redoubt and, together with the old fort mill at Windmill Point on the west, guarded the river front.

In addition the Sulpicians built two fortified farmhouses as redoubts or citadels in the extreme ends of the settlement to guard the labourers there--that of Ste. Marie on the east and that of St. Gabriel, named after M. Gabriel de Queylus, on the west. M. de Queylus interested himself in city planning also and he mapped out the lines on which the city should extend. An important protection was also secured by the construction of a well of one hundred feet in diameter, built by Jacques Archambault at the order of the governor, "in the middle of the court," or of the "place d'armes" of the fort, as it read in the contract of October 8, 1658. So far the water used had been supplied by the river, but fear of invasion and siege, and possible burning of the fort by the Iroquois, rendered this precaution very wise. In the next year, 1659, a similar well was placed in the hospital garden by order of M. de Queylus, and in the following year, 1660, a third contract was signed by Jacques Archambault for Charles Le Moyne, Jacques Leber and Jacques Tessard, for the mutual assistance of their houses near the hospital; and during this year also a storehouse of 60 by 30 feet was built by Francis Bailly dit Lafleur in the interior of the fort to guard the grain of the hospital.

The war was now in full swing.

After the visit of the refugees from Onondaga, the Montrealers in 1658 were in daily fear, for while Three Rivers was being attacked about June 13th by the Iroquois, a similar onslaught was valiantly repulsed at Ville Marie. At Quebec the new governor general, Pierre de Voyer, vicomte d'Argenson, who had arrived on July 11th, experienced his first acquaintance with his hazardous position, when he was aroused at his meal on the next day by the cry of "aux armes."

Such excitements added to his anxieties in settling the dispute as to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, occupied him constantly. These being solved satisfactorily for a time, to the great delight of the Montrealers, the "grand vicaire" of the district of Montreal, M. de Queylus, arrived about the end of August, 1658.

"On August 21st, he had left Quebec 'aegre' (with chagrin)," wrote Father Vimont in a later letter to the general: "but to the great joy of the Jesuits, who had a stormy time with M. de Queylus during his conflict there." On the 26th of August Father Pijart, now at Quebec, writes to his superior in Rome, "Vivimus hic quieti, ex quo Dominus Abbas de Queylus mandato Domini archiepiscopi Rhotomagensis alio abiit--We are living here in peace since the Abbé de Queylus has gone elsewhere by order of the archbishop of Rouen." (Arch. Gen. S. J.)

The Sulpician, Dollier de Casson's, account runs thus: "He went to console Montreal by his presence and to dwell there to the great happiness of all, especially to the lively satisfaction of MM. Souart and Galinier, who did not fear to advance well in front in the wood without any apprehension of the Iroquois, to get ahead of his bark coming up the river to testify to the joy that they had at his return." He was followed by six persons from Quebec who filled three chaloupes. In this dangerous time such protection was necessary. M. Faillon, in his history, says that it seems that the greater part of this company "joined to do him honour."

Certainly his advent would have given no one at Montreal more satisfaction than Marguerite Bourgeoys and Mademoiselle Mance, who were waiting for him.

In the spring of 1657 Marguerite Bourgeoys became interested in building a chapel in wood on land granted for the purpose by Maisonneuve, at some distance from her home. The ecclesiastical superior was then Père Pijart, who gave her permission and named it in advance "Notre-Dame de Bon Secours." "Our Lady of Good Help," as a standing prayer against the Iroquois. Père Siméon Le Moyne laid the first stone in the spring of 1657, and Lambert Closse, acting governor during the absence of M. de Maisonneuve, placed the necessary inscriptions on a copper plate. Marguerite and her sisters laboured themselves and were helped by the settlers; some carted sand, others wood, and others acted as masons. Everyone was personally approached by her for some service, however small. In the spring of 1658 she applied to obtain the permission of M. de Queylus, then still in Quebec, but he ordered her to suspend her work till his return, which was not until the last week of August, for he did not wish any other enterprise to conflict with the establishment of the parish church. Thus the operations came to a standstill till 1659, when it was finished.[79] The arrival, therefore, of M. de Queylus was awaited with anxiety by Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance. The latter, having fallen on the ice on January 28th, 1657, had been suffering with a dislocated right wrist and had lost the use of her hand in spite of the efforts of the local surgeons. She had found herself useless for her hospital work. Thus she was desirous of the help of the Hospitalières of St. Joseph, promised but not sent, since the buildings to accommodate them had not yet been constructed. Besides, there were not enough funds to maintain them, so that now Jeanne Mance approached M. Queylus with her idea of visiting Madame de Bullion for the additional funds and then to bring back the Hospitalières. In addition she could consult the best physicians in France on the cure of her wrist. The grand vicaire approved of her journey.

At the same time Marguerite Bourgeoys, seeing herself without workers for the future development of her teaching institution, asked permission to accompany Mademoiselle Mance, who needed assistance in her crippled condition, and to seek teachers among her old friends of the Congregation of Troyes.

But although M. de Queylus had consented to the plan of Jeanne Mance, he nevertheless was desirous of seeing the hospital work undertaken by a branch of the Quebec Hospitalières, whose acquaintance he had made. Consequently under the pretext of change of air, he had two of them sent on to Montreal, and these arrived two days before the departure of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys.

Jeanne Mance, however, had no intention of giving the control of the hospital to any but the La Flèche Hospitalières, and being, by the act of foundation, the administratrix of the Hôtel-Dieu, she appointed a pious widow known as "Mademoiselle" de la Bardillère, to replace her, and the continuance of the Quebec nuns in Montreal was only justified by the acceptance of the invitation of Marguerite Bourgeoys to teach school during her absence. The two foundresses left Ville Marie on September 20, 1658, and embarked at Quebec on a merchant vessel on October 14th. They proceeded to La Flèche to see M. de la Dauversière and thence to Paris. At the touch of the casket containing the heart of M. Olier, her biographers tell of the complete cure of Jeanne Mance's helpless wrist and hand, the news of which spread among the pious ladies and supporters of the Company of Montreal, and created a great sensation in Paris.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] "A History of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, St. Gabriel Street, Montreal," by the Rev. Robert Campbell, M. A., the last pastor, 1887.

[79] M. Huguet Latour in his note on L'église de Notre Dame de Bonsecours in the Annuaire de Montreal, 1874, says that it was finished in 1659. The second chapel, which was of stone, was also built by Marguerite Bourgeoys and by her given to the Marguilliers of the parish in June, 1678. The benediction of the first stone was given on June 30, 1673, by M. Gabriel Souart, Curé, and the church was blessed and the first mass said there on August 15, 1675. This was the first stone church in the whole of the island of Montreal. It was reduced to ashes in 1754, but was rebuilt in 1771 and altered since several times.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XII

1659

THE NEW REINFORCEMENT FOR MONTREAL

THE COMING OF LAVAL

RETROSPECT OF MAISONNEUVE'S JUDICIAL SENTENCES--FIRST DEATH SENTENCE--INJURIOUS LANGUAGE--CALUMNY--BANISHMENT--GAMES OF CHANCE, DRUNKENNESS AND BLASPHEMY, ETC., FORBIDDEN--THE GOVERNOR GENERAL AND THE LOCAL GOVERNOR OF MONTREAL--A PESSIMISTIC PICTURE OF MONTREAL IN 1659--A BISHOP FOR NEW FRANCE--LAVAL, CONSECRATED BISHOP OF PETREA IN ARABIA, ARRIVES AT QUEBEC AS VICAR APOSTOLIC--DE QUEYLUS RECALLED TO FRANCE--THE REINFORCEMENT ARRIVES WITH JEANNE MANCE AND MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS--THE STORY OF ITS JOURNEY--DIFFICULTIES AT LA FLECHE--SHIP FEVER ON THE ST. ANDRE--DIFFICULTIES AT QUEBEC--LAVAL WOULD RETAIN THE HOSPITALIERES BROUGHT BY JEANNE MANCE--THEY ARE FINALLY ALLOWED TO PROCEED TO THE HOTEL DIEU OF MONTREAL.

Before we narrate the outcome of the visit to France of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys, who returned on September 7th to Quebec, and also the events leading up to the coming of Laval on June 16th, we shall still keep the setting of Montreal as the background of our story.

So far we have considered Maisonneuve as a military governor. He was also a judge. This was a special privilege superadded to his commission as a "gouverneur particulier," which office, per se, did not include the administration of justice. Several of his judgments being extant, a study of them reveals a picture of the social life of Montreal hitherto unconsidered.

The journal of the Jesuits relates that towards September, 1648, a drummer had been condemned to death at Montreal for a detestable crime not specified, but as the clergy were secretly opposed to the execution of the sentence, it was arranged that he should be sent to Quebec to use his right of appeal. There the sentence was commuted to service in the galleys or, in exchange for his liberty, he should exercise the duty of public executioner, which latter condition was accepted. Heretofore there is no record of any condemnation to death.

Sometimes the cases coming before Maisonneuve were of a purely domestic nature. On July 3, 1658, two women having quarrelled, each laid a complaint against the other of bad language. The wrong appearing to be on both sides, Maisonneuve gave each twenty-four hours, for their anger to evaporate, and to declare before Basset, the greffier, and two witnesses, that they had spoken in pure anger. If either of them refused she should pay fifty livres to the parish church and besides be forcibly constrained to acknowledge her fault. Both wisely took the cheaper course, as the acts of Basset prove.[80]

De Maisonneuve's skill had been shown in a judgment of July 13, 1656. A brave soldier, Saint Jacques, one Sunday morning when coming out of church after mass, had been attacked with a stick at the hands of an irate woman. He gallantly did not retaliate but contented himself with taking the case before the governor. The good lady was present, confident in the justice of her cause, for she accused the soldier of having got his deserts by her trouncing for having uttered a calumny against her honour. On cross-examination it appears that she heard the calumny, through another soldier, who related it to her as coming from the lips of Saint Jacques. This witness being called, he now owned that he had told the calumny to the woman but he had invented the story himself out of frivolousness, and that Saint Jacques was guiltless. This malicious meddler was ordered by Maisonneuve to pay a fine of twenty livres to the church, as his offence had been against God, and fifty to the woman for her wounded honour. She, in turn, for having struck an innocent man was condemned to pay twenty livres to the church for the offence against God, and to pay back to the wounded victim of her misplaced energy, the fifty livres received from the meddler.

In the case of grave public scandals de Maisonneuve had recourse to the sentence of banishment. A soldier of the garrison, having been appointed to be on guard at Point St. Charles, was accused of daily absenting himself from the guardhouse of the redoubt, and being found annoying an honest woman with his unseemly and scandalous discourse. In his sentence of November 4, 1658, Maisonneuve says: "We have cast him out of the garrison and condemned him to pay a penalty of 200 livres, applicable to some poor girls, to help them to get married at Ville Marie." In 1660 Maisonneuve, who was no respecter of persons, ordered perpetual banishment to one of the principal men of Montreal[81] for an offence with a woman; and her he permitted the husband either to send back to her father and mother, or to keep her shut up for the rest of her days.

We have referred to an ordinance issued in 1658 to insure public safety. He had now to issue proclamations to safeguard public morals. Accordingly, as his short notice of July 9th forbidding, under pain of confiscation, liquor to be smuggled from the boats arriving in the harbour, and requiring his permission, had not apparently been sufficiently observed, on the 18th day of January, 1659, he drew up a long proclamation, that was posted up by Basset, the official clerk of justice, at the parish church next day at the end of vespers, so that no one might be ignorant of it.

Maisonneuve, forced by circumstances revealed in the proclamation, was determined to put down the passion for games of chance, strong drink and blasphemy, as soon as they should show themselves. It is not difficult to imagine excesses creeping in during the long winter evenings in a small enclosed garrison town, where there was no outlet for higher forms of amusement, especially as fear of invasion kept the inhabitants closely confined. Three of his garrison, Sébastien Dupuis, Nicholas Duval and Pierre Papin, having, through drink and gambling, found themselves unable to pay their debts, had deserted the garrison and fled the neighbourhood. They were arrested at a distance of only four leagues from Ville Marie, brought back and confined in irons in the fort on January 8, 1659.

After stating the causes leading to his proclamation of January 18th the governor continued: "In consequence we forbid (1) Any person whatsoever, of whatever rank or condition, an inhabitant of this place or elsewhere, to sell, wholesale or retail, under any pretext whatsoever, without an order from us, expressed in writing, any intoxicating liquor, under penalty of an arbitrary fine, the payment of which will be rigidity and forcibly exacted (à lesquelles on sera contraint par corps).

"(2) Moreover, we interdict all games of chance.

"(3) We rescind and annul any promise, written or verbal, direct or indirect, made or to be made, as well for the aforesaid game or for any other sort of game, with a prohibition to tavern keepers to sue in a court of justice for the recovery of this kind of debts under a penalty of twenty livres' fine, and of the confiscation of the sums demanded.

"(4) As for those who shall be convicted of having taken to excess wine, eau de vie, or other intoxicating liquors, or having sworn by or blasphemed the holy name of God, they shall be chastised, either by an arbitrary fine or by corporal punishment, according to the exigency of the case.

"(5) To obviate the above mentioned desertions we declare, by the present observance, that all the fugitives shall be by the same convicted of the crime of desertion; and, moreover, that all who shall abet them in their flight, whether by concealment or assistance of any kind, shall be considered to be guilty of the same crime."

This vigilance and firmness had its results, for we do not find any record of any contravention of any section of the above till February 22, 1663, when a man was severely punished for drunkenness and blasphemy.

When spring was approaching this same year of 1659, by a decree of April 5th, knowing the restlessness of the men to go fishing and hunting, and thus risk their own individual lives besides hindering the establishment of a lasting peace by provoking the enemy, he forbade them, under pain of punishment, to go to any place for hunting or fishing where they might be in danger of falling into the enemy's hands.

Later on in the year, on Pentecost Sunday, Maisonneuve published a decree of His Majesty, already given in council March 9, 1657, forbidding the sale of wine or eau de vie to the Indians under pain of corporal punishment.

A picture of Montreal of this year is preserved for us in the state papers under date of March 4, 1659, by the new governor-general, the young Vicomte d'Argenson, who had arrived less than a year ago in Canada and who now came in the spring of 1659 to visit Montreal.

He was a man of upright conduct, virtuous life and full of devotion for the development of the colony. He came with great ideas of his prerogatives as governor-general in relation to the subordinate position of a local governor such as obtained in other provinces of the kingdom of France. But he had to be made aware of the special privileges granted to Maisonneuve as the representative of the Company of Montreal.

Arriving at Montreal, he expected honours paid to him such as a governor-general would receive in France, when on entering a fortress he would have the keys given to him with other like signs of submission.

The governor of Montreal received him with politeness, but without absolutely refusing the keys, put difficulties in the way lest he should seem to acknowledge his inferior position to the representative of the Company of One Hundred Associates. The case required diplomacy and adroitness, and Maisonneuve acted tactfully. As for receiving the "mot d'ordre" he only accepted this on the third day and then he sent his major for it.

D'Argenson realized the situation which the independent Maisonneuve had created, and doubtless it is in consequence of these painful impressions that he penned the following pessimistic description of the settlement.

After complaining of his reception he adds: "I must talk with you about Montreal, a place which makes a deal of noise and is of little consequence. I speak from knowledge; I have been there this spring, and I can assure you that if I were a painter I should soon finish my picture of it.

"Montreal is an island, difficult enough to land at, even in a chaloupe, by reason of the great currents of the St. Lawrence river. These meet each other at its landing place, and particularly at a half league below. There is a fort where the chaloupes lay by, and which is falling into ruins. A redoubt has been commenced and a mill has been erected on a little eminence very advantageously situated for the defence of the settlement. There are about forty houses, nearly all facing one another, and in this they are well placed, since they in part defend one another. There are fifty heads of families and one hundred and sixty men in all. Finally, there are only two hundred arpents of land tilled, belonging to the Gentlemen of the Company, of which a half is appropriated to the hospital, so that no more than a hundred remains to them; and the enjoyment of these is not entirely theirs, these arpents having been cultivated by private individuals, to whom have been given the fruits of their labour until these Gentlemen of the Company of Montreal shall have furnished the equivalent of their work on the concessions belonging to the habitants."

Governor d'Argenson's short stay in Montreal makes his account slightly inaccurate for, besides the portion of the hundred acres already cultivated, which were only lent temporarily, the habitants were allowed, at a convenient time, to break land on the rest of the Domain of the Seigneurs, in quantity they required according to their concessions, whether it was land on which timber was still standing or where it was simply felled and not cut.

If d'Argenson had arrived later, when the reinforcement of 109 men sent out by the Sulpicians in the fall had built the fortified houses of St. Gabriel and Ste. Marie, his picture would have taken longer to paint; but he arrived at a time when the labourers had to abandon their fields for fear of Iroquois ambuscades. Still the long stretch of land, dotted with charred and blackened stumps, between which the few tilled arpents could be seen sparse and thin in the early spring, would have looked a barren and a gloomy sight to a jaundiced critic had he been able to be unimpressed by the beauty of Mount Royal dignifying the landscape. Moreover, the little progress made after seventeen years must have surprised him. We must not, therefore, be too hard on the young governor-general, then thirty-three years old. For his government was one of the best of those yet sent to represent France, and his bravery and good judgment did much to restrain the Iroquois; but he was abandoned by the company he represented as well as by the French government. He could not depend on the help of Montreal to share his expenses, nor upon the poverty-stricken habitants of Quebec. The main support of the colony, trade in peltry, was bad at Quebec. Living was very expensive and no laughing matter. His own salary of 2,000 écus and the grant of 2,000 others for the upkeep of the garrison were not enough to sustain the situation. It is no wonder that we find him writing, in August, that he did not see the advantage of continuing in his office, especially as he urged the plea of bad health. Still he was not recalled from his arduous and unremunerative position, but continued to give fresh proof of his zeal for the good of the colony.

Meanwhile in France, steps were being taken which would bring M. de Laval to the ecclesiastical rule of Canada, thus unifying the ecclesiastical system, at present endangered by the presence of two vicar generals of the diocese of Rouen.

We have related the early events of the Montreal Company to secure a bishop for Canada as far back as 1645. But the contention of the Jesuits that the time was not ripe in the then unprogressive state of the colony, together with the unsettled times, with war nearly always impending, had delayed such an appointment. We have seen the agitation renewed by the Company on de Maisonneuve's late visit when their candidate was M. de Queylus; while that of the Jesuits, who were now more ready to admit the advisability of a bishop, was one of their former students at the Collège Royal of La Flèche and now a secular priest, François de Laval de Montmorency. They had not desired one of themselves to be appointed, since it was not in accordance with their constitution to seek dignities, and consequently in 1650 the names of the Canadian Jesuits, Charles Lalemant, Ragueneau and Le Jeune, submitted by the Company of the Hundred Associates, were withdrawn as candidates by Goswin Nickel, the vicar general of the order.

We have seen sufficient of the ecclesiastical troubles between Père de Quen, the ecclesiastical superior of Quebec, and M. de Queylus, that of Montreal, both "grands vicaires" of the archbishop of Rouen, to see that a bishop was necessary to restore the unity of government. The experience that the Jesuits had had of M. de Queylus made them more anxious than ever to push their candidate.

François de Laval was born on April 30, 1622, in the Château de Montigny-sur-Aure in the diocese of Chartres, of the illustrious house of Montmorency. At the age of nine years he was sent to the Royal College of La Flèche, taught by the Jesuits, to commence his literary studies. He finished his philosophy course in 1641, and during that time he had made the acquaintance of many Jesuit priests who afterwards joined the Canadian mission. The next four years he studied theology at Paris, till 1645. It was thought that he would take priest's orders, but on the death of his two brothers in 1644 and 1645 he was persuaded by his cousin, the bishop of Evreux, to renounce his canonship in the cathedral of Evreux and take his brother's place in the family in caring for his mother, Madame de Montigny. The bishop died on July 22, 1646, not before repenting of his advice to François, whom he exhorted to go back to the priesthood, and he named him archdeacon of the church of Evreux. Laval now renounced his right of primogeniture and his title to the Seigneury of Montigny in favor of his brother, Jean Louis de Laval, and taking his degree in canon law, received priesthood orders on September 22, 1647.

Fur three years he remained in Paris and associated with the congregation of pious laymen and others, mostly graduates from Jesuit colleges. In 1650 he joined a small group of five of these earnest men who lived in common in a kind of religious life under the direction of the Jesuit, Père Bagot, and a society was formed under the title of the "Society of Good Friends," with the purpose of charitable and social work. These five men were increased to twelve, of whom some were priests.

In 1652 the Jesuit, Père de Rhodes, one of the most remarkable men of the Cochin-China missions, came to Paris in search of recruits to form an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and it fell to the lot of three of the priests of the Society of Good Friends to be chosen to have their names sent to Rome as suitable bishops for the purpose, François Paillu, canon of St. Martin de Tours; Bernard Picquet (or Piques), doctor of the Sorbonne, and François de Laval, archdeacon of Evreux. The long negotiations did not end till 1658, when Paillu was named vicar apostolic of Tonkin, and two others of the above society vicars apostolic of Cochin-China and China.

In the meantime in 1657, on the nomination of Queylus for the bishopric of New France, the Jesuits made their overtures to Laval to adopt him as their candidate for the same post, and he accepted. The curia at Rome moved slowly and it was not till fifteen months later that the bull naming the Abbé François de Laval de Montigny, bishop of Petrea in Arabia and vicar apostolic of Canada was promulgated. On December 8th, the papal nuncio consecrated him in the church of the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés.

When the archbishop of Rouen, Mgr. de Harlay, who had looked upon New France as a part of his diocese, heard of this, he resented it and obtained a decree of the parliament of Rouen ordering word to all the officers of the kingdoms and the subjects of the king, to refuse to accept the new vicar apostolic.

Louis XIV on March 27, 1659, retorted by letters patent bidding acceptance of Laval, but on the other side he wished "that these episcopal functions should be exercised without prejudice to the rights of the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, that is to say the archbishop of Rouen; and that, while awaiting the erection of a bishopric, of which the titulary occupant shall be the suffragan of the archbishop."

Rome objected to the concession granted in the clause "without prejudice to the rights of the jurisdiction of the Ordinary" because it could not admit the pretensions of the archbishop of Rouen. However, M. de Harlay, supported by Mazarin, maintained his position and Laval left La Flèche on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1659, for Canada, accompanied by the new superior of the Jesuit missions, Father Jérome Lalemant, who had formerly worked in the missions and now came, sent by the general of the Jesuits, Goswin Nickel, at the special request of Laval.

He arrived unannounced at Quebec, on June 16th, as a simple vicar apostolic, a bishop indeed, but with his see in far-off Arabia, and shorn of the dignity of canons and a chapter, and the external emblems of a bishop in his own see. The colony could not support, with its scanty revenues, such a position. Still he was the first ecclesiastical superior, and thus he brought unity to the church government, then split between the superior of the Jesuits at Quebec and the Abbé de Queylus, at Montreal.

On arriving Laval found the colony in two divisions: on the one side, the majority, composed of the missionaries, the communities of religious women, and those colonists most sincerely devoted to the church; on the other the governor, the partisans of the Abbé de Queylus and a group of traders who scented trouble on the appearance of a man whose unflinching character would not allow him to truckle his duty or his conscience.

The situation was greatly cleared when, seven weeks after the arrival of Laval, de Queylus went down from Montreal, reaching Quebec on September 7th, and gave his submission and ceased to be grand vicaire. At first he was uncertain whether his own powers as independent head of the church in Montreal still held good, but the letters patent of the king, dated March 27, 1659, received by d'Argenson, left no doubt on the point.

Thus submission was made all the easier because de Queylus did not know of the determination of the archbishop of Rouen to maintain him in his function in Montreal. Indeed new letters patent, with a letter from the king, dated May 11, 1659, were now on the way, confirming him in his position without prejudice to the jurisdiction of the vicar apostolic.

On May 14, 1659, the king, repenting of his letter to Mgr. de Harlay, sent two lettres de cachet, one to Laval and the other to Governor d'Argenson, derogating the appointment of May 11th.

The king's letter to d'Argenson contained this: "The letter that I have accorded to the archbishop of Rouen, it is my intention that neither he nor the grands vicaires shall avail themselves of, until by the authority of the church it has been declared if this archbishop is in the right in his pretension that new France is in his diocese."

All these letters arrived by the St. André on September 8th, with the reinforcement brought back by Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance.

After the conflicting nature of their contents were mastered the position of de Queylus remained as after his submission.

Queylus returned to Montreal and later came back to Quebec, from which he departed on October 2d on the St. André on its return voyage.

The causes of his departure are shrouded in silence, and in guarded words d'Argenson writes: "I do not send you the reasons in writing for fear lest the letter shall fall into other hands."

Dollier de Casson says: "After the arrival of the reinforcement and of the Hospitalières at Ville Marie we witnessed the return of M. de Queylus to France, which afflicted this place very much," adding as a commentary: "Thus in this life are its sweets mixed with bitterness." Laval in his letter to the Propaganda laconically says: "In Galliam ipse transfretavit" (he sailed over to France).

This would look as if the voyage was of a voluntary nature. It was otherwise. Laval feared the opposition of de Queylus; he looked upon him as a rival, a disturber of the peace by his continued presence in the country, and had written to France shortly after his arrival, asking a lettre de cachet for his removal. M. de Queylus was a powerful personality and had the support of an active minority. Already on his return to Montreal in the previous year the two other secular priests, chaplains of the convent, at Quebec, had left Canada on this account, and sixty persons had accompanied him on his journey back to Montreal on that occasion.

After his recent visit to Laval and while he was welcoming new recruits at Montreal, the lettre de cachet arrived for his departure.

Speaking of the position of Laval after the receipt of the letter of May 11th, the journal of the Jesuits on September 7th says that "he disposed all things sovereignly at Quebec and Montreal." Laval's critics would translate it "imperiously" or "high-handedly," for, according to the history of Canada by M. Belmont, Laval, in acquainting de Queylus of his recall persuaded the governor to assist the departure of his friend from Montreal with a squad of soldiers; or rather, as M. d'Allet, his secretary, reports in his Mémoire, "with a considerable number of our men as for some military expedition." But may not this escort have been one of honour and protection in war time rather than one of ignominy? The governor general himself carried out this order and this escort may therefore have been appropriate on such an occasion, both for the governor and his friend. Two others were removed with the late grand vicaire, M. d'Allet and another Sulpician, though d'Allet got no further than Quebec, at which place sickness detained him during the winter.

We can imagine the grief of the Montrealers watching their departure at the little harbour at the mouth of the St. Peter River near the fort. But though silenced at present, Queylus is not finally suppressed, for we shall find him back again at Montreal before the end of two years. In the meantime he was determined to clinch the matter of the disputed jurisdiction. Before leaving, however, he had the satisfaction of having received on September 7th at Quebec, and having accompanied to Montreal, the new recruits led by Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys, whose experiences, since leaving Ville Marie in the previous year, must now be chronicled.

After the cure of her hand and wrist on February 2, 1659, Jeanne Mance visited Madame de Bullion, who gave her 22,000 livres, of which 20,000 were to be set aside for the annual income to support four Hospitalières at Montreal, from M. de la Dauversière's foundation at La Flèche. In addition, this lady paid Jeanne's passage and gave her presents for the church as well as money to assist struggling families in Montreal. In all, Madame de Bullion had given 60,000 écus or 1,000,000 francs to the Montreal work.

At Troyes, Marguerite Bourgeoys had been equally successful, having received the co-operation of three workers, Edmée Chastel (Aimée Chatel), Catherine Crolo, and Marguerite Raisin. Mademoiselle Catherine Gauchet de Belleville also joined the party. She was the cousin of M. Souart and came from the parish of St. Sulpice in Paris. She was then sixteen years old. In 1665 she married Migeon de Brausaat. At La Flèche three Hospitalière Sisters of St. Joseph were chosen: Judith Moreau de Brésoles, Catherine Massé and Marie Maillé, with Marie Polo, their servant, and the departure of the party from La Flèche was fixed for May 25th.

But they did not leave peaceably, for there was a party at La Flèche, which had resented the previous consignments of "pious young girls" that had been previously taken to Montreal through the instrumentality of M. de la Dauversière, it being alleged that this enthusiast, as he was thought, had done it against the wishes of their parents. Open persecution broke out against him. Dollier de Casson tells us that there was a popular resentment; each one murmured, "M. de la Dauversière is leading these girls away by force; we must stop it." In their anxiety many could not sleep that night; but next morning, May 26th, M. Robert Saint André, an admirer of M. de la Dauversière, who, with his wife, was returning to Montreal, forced, with the assistance of other gentlemen, a way on to the ship for the girls, at the point of the sword. On reaching Rochelle M. Dauversière's party was met by agents from Mgr. Laval, who wished to restrain their departure on the ground that they were not wanted in Canada, as one institute of Hospitalières was sufficient. We have seen that even M. de Queylus was of this opinion. But M. de la Dauversière's resolution was unshaken. "If they do not go this year they will never go." The La Flèche institute had been founded for Montreal; the departure of the Hospitalières had been delayed several years. He now carried his point.

New embarrassments arose. The owner of the ship, doubtless influenced by the agents, refused to weigh anchor without the passage money being paid in advance; he appears even to have profited by this circumstance to raise the price. But Jeanne Mance, never to be taken by surprise, immediately obtained the money from a merchant in consequence of a contract which she made with a group of colonists who were coming "en famille." These latter obliged themselves, on June 5th, before Notary Demontreau, as a body to reimburse their debts to her in two years. In addition they were indebted to Jeanne Mance for 199 livres 8 sols, which she turned over for hotel expenses to Daniel Guerry, mine host of the Grâce-de-Dieu.[82]

The above money was not to be paid, however, till ten years after, when Mademoiselle Mance gave them a deed of acquittance in 1669, made out by Maître Basset, the town clerk.

At last the recruit force for Montreal was ready and it embarked on the St. André (Captain Poulet) on June 29th. Besides the ladies with the two foundresses, there were two Sulpicians, MM. de Vignal and Le Maître, and a body of sixty-two men, and forty-seven women, or marriageable girls honest families, most of whom were from Marans in Saintonge and more or less interrelated, who were sent out at the expense of the company and of the Hôtel-Dieu, the third of the trilogy of religious institutions to minister at Montreal in this early period. There were other settlers who paid their own expenses. In addition there were sixteen or seventeen young women for Quebec.

The St. André, containing about two hundred souls, set sail for Rochelle on July 2d. It was a veritable pesthouse of infection, having been used as a hospital troop-ship two years ago, and it had never been quarantined, so that hardly were they on their way when the contagion declared itself. The food of the emigrants was the poorest; the accommodations of the barest and most primitive description; the supply of fresh water very limited. For two months sickness and furious tempests and contrary winds afflicted the wretched vessel. Eight or ten died, but most were sick, among them Marguerite Bourgeoys but principally Jeanne Mance, who was reduced to the last extremity. The ship became a hospital and among the devoted nurses none were more so than the women for the Hôtel-Dieu of Montreal.

At last Quebec harbour was reached on September 7th but disembarkation took place next day. Here the sick were landed, a work in which Mgr. de Laval gave his personal service, "tending the sick and making their beds," as the Annales of the Hôtel-Dieu relate. The hospital was filled with the convalescents but the rest of the Montreal party put up at the storehouse sheds of the "Magasin de Montréal."

Marguerite Bourgeoys was the first to be able to lead her party from Quebec and she arrived at Montreal just a year after her departure, on September 29th, carrying the little Thibaudeau baby (the three other Thibaudeau children had died on the ocean) that she had tended on the voyage and which she had allowed the father to nurse at Quebec, but he, unlucky wight, having let it get burned, she had again taken care of the poor sufferer on the journey up the river.

Mademoiselle Mance remained behind, still too sick to travel. Moreover, the opposition of the vicar apostolic Monseigneur de Laval, to the Hospitalières for Montreal, had to be met. He examined their constitution, drawn up by a married man, M. de la Dauversière, and found it different from other congregations. They wore secular clothing. Though erected canonically in October, 1643, they only took simple vows and they had not yet received the approbation of Rome. He thought it would be better for them to go back to France or seek admission to the Hospitalières of the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec, a constituted regular institution, which could form a branch to serve Montreal. But their superior, Judith de Moreau de Brésoles, and her companions, did not acquiesce with either suggestion.

Moreover, a practical difficulty of money matters prevented this, for the Associates of Montreal had declared they would withdraw their alms altogether, if any others went to the Hôtel-Dieu but those already chosen, and in addition if the Quebec Sisterhood should take up the Hôtel-Dieu at Montreal, that part of the foundation given by Madame d'Aiguillon for Quebec should be diverted to Montreal. This solved the difficulty for, as Mère Jucherau, in the Annales of the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec, says: "Monseigneur liked to keep up our community with its revenue rather than to share our funds between two houses, neither of which could support the other."

On October 2d the Hôtel-Dieu Sisters of Montreal left with full authorization to exercise their work until ordered otherwise. On October 20th they received from Maisonneuve the act of the "prise de possession" of the Hôtel-Dieu, dated from the governor's house, which was still in the fort. On October 26th the St. André returned to France, bearing the Abbé de Queylus, as before related. Jeanne Mance started a week later for Montreal but she was here on November 3d and had the satisfaction of being present at the marriage of the widow, "Miss" Bardillières, whom she had left in charge of the hospital and who now wedded Jacques Testard, Sieur de la Forest. It was a notable wedding, the witnesses' names including, besides Jeanne Mance, those of Maisonneuve and the governor of Three Rivers and many notables. Hospital work has since conduced to match-making in Montreal as heretofore.[83]

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Records of punishment for injurious words are also to be found on May 20, 1660; September 20, 1662; August, 1663; June, 1665. Women figure largely in these cases.

[81] This man was afterwards allowed to return, perhaps on appeal. It is certain he reformed and gave a perpetual foundation to the church.

[82] The original copies of these documents lately transcribed by Mr. E. Z. Massicotte, city archivist, can be seen at the archives' office or printed in the Numismatic and Antiquarian Journal, published at the Château Ramezay, Third Series, No. 2, Vol. X.

[83] On the reinforcement of 1659 Mr. E. Z. Massicotte, city archivist of Montreal, has recently published in the "Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Society Journal, Third Series, No. 2, Vol X," a copy of the statement of men, women and girls who crossed to Montreal in 1659, found lately in the city archives of the courthouse. The contingent, including those from Quebec and those who died from the ship fever, consisted of about two hundred souls. Of those who arrived at Montreal the list contains 102 names. The list made of those of Jeanne Mance's party before sailing enumerates 109 persons. Two of these did not embark and a note in the margin mentions that they were "hidden"; of the remaining 107, there were 60 men and youths, 39 women--married and single--and 8 children of tender age. Of the men there were two priests--M. Jacques Le Maistre, slain by the Iroquois on the 29th of August, 1661, and M. Guillaume, also slain by the Iroquois on the 25th of October, 1661; 6 "soldiers for the fort," of whom one was Pierre Picoté de Bélestre; 7 masons, 3 sawyers, 1 carpenter, 9 tillers, 2 woodcutters and tillers, 1 baker and tiller, 2 joiners, and 26 whose occupations are unknown. Of the unmarried women the mother superior, Judith Moreau de Brésoles, and Sisters Catherine Macé and Marie Maillet came to found the "Hospitalières de St. Joseph," the religious order to carry on the Hôtel-Dieu. These, with the addition of their servant, Marie Polo, came with Jeanne Mance. With Marguerite Bourgeoys there came the future sisters for the foundation of the "Congregation of Notre Dame," Mademoiselles Catherine Croleau (or Crolo), Marie Raisin and Anne Hiou (or Iou).

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XIII

1660

HOW MONTREAL SAVED NEW FRANCE

DOLLARD'S EXPLOIT AT THE LONG SAULT

UNIVERSAL FEAR OF IROQUOIS IN THE COLONY--THE GARRISON OFFICERS AT MONTREAL--ADAM DOLLARD, SIEUR DES ORMEAUX--THE PERMISSION FROM THE GOVERNOR TO LEAD AN ATTACK UP COUNTRY--HIS COMPANIONS--PREPARATIONS--WILLS AND THE SACRAMENTS--THE FLOTILLA OF CANOES--THE LONG SAULT REACHED--THE DILAPIDATED IROQUOIS WAR CAMP--ANONTAHA AND MITIWEMEG--THE AMBUSH AND ATTACK--THE RETREAT TO THE STOCKADE--THE SIEGE--THIRST--THE ALGONQUINS DESERT--FIVE HUNDRED IROQUOIS ALLIES ARRIVE--THE TERRIBLE ATTACK AND RESISTANCE--A GLORIOUS DEFEAT--RADISSON'S ACCOUNT--THE INVENTORY OF DOLLARD--UNPAID BILLS--THE NAMES OF THE "COMPANIONS"--NEW FRANCE SAVED--A CONVOY OF BEAVER SKINS REACHES MONTREAL--A REINFORCEMENT OF TROOPS FROM FRANCE ASKED FOR TO WIPE OUT THE IROQUOIS.

Ever since the flight to Montreal of the French from Onondaga under Dupuis on April 3, 1658, there had been constant fear of a concerted attempt by the Five Nations to exterminate, by fire and slaughter, the whole French population. In 1659 a Huron refugee to Quebec brought the news of the preparation of a great allied army for this fell purpose. This was confirmed at Quebec in the spring of 1660 by an Iroquois captive ally; that 800 Iroquois had assembled at Roche Fondue, near Montreal, to be joined by 400 more who were even then pouring down upon Quebec by way of Montreal and Three Rivers. Believing that Montreal and Three Rivers were besieged, Quebec was in the throes of alarm. The outlying houses were abandoned. Most of the settlers were either concentrated in the fort or in the Jesuit house, while the Ursulines and Hospitalières and others were in Upper Town; the rest barricaded themselves with many guards in the Lower Town. The monasteries, denuded of their occupants, were also guarded, and the cries of "qui vive?" of the patrol, each night warned the Iroquois lurking around that all were on the alert, and restrained any attempt to set fire to the houses.

That the enemy never came, is due to the heroic venturesomeness of a band of young Montrealers who had meanwhile bearded the lion in his den, and diverted the attack from the French, thus saving New France.

The garrison of Montreal had thought long of how to meet the threatened invasion, till at last the daring plan of a young officer of twenty-five years of age, Adam Dollard, was accepted. In the spring of 1660 the officers were now, besides the governor, Major Raphael Lambert Closse, M. Zacharie Dupuis, Pierre Picoté de Bélestre and the young Adam Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux. Major Lambert Closse had been married on July 24, 1657, and he was now no longer living in the fort, for he had been given by the Associates, in recognition of his bravery and his merits, his own lands, the first fief granted in Montreal, a hundred arpents, "à simple hommage et sans justice." He had now received letters of nobility, for whereas before he has simply been styled sergeant major of the garrison, in his marriage contract he is named "écuyer" (esquire), on December 9th after the arrival of Maisonneuve and that of the Sulpicians, he is called "noble homme, écuyer." We have already mentioned that he was the commandant of the Island of Montreal. On leaving the fort Lambert Closse still retained his office of major, but he was replaced at the fort by M. Zacharie du Puis, the same who had been received coldly at Quebec after the retreat under him from Onondaga, but whose services were welcomed and esteemed at Montreal by the governor, de Maisonneuve, who named him assistant major; and he is also spoken of as "commandant of the Island of Montreal," a title found ascribed also to Lambert Closse. Then we may class Charles Le Moyne, the official interpreter and storekeeper, as in some way an officer. Among the late arrivals two others had been at least adjoined to the military staff. One of these was Picoté de Bélestre, a doctor as well as a fighting man, and he proved of valuable assistance to the settlement. Dollier de Casson says of him that "he adorned this place, as well in war as in peace, on account of the advantageous qualities he possessed for one and the other." He is spoken of sometimes as a "commandant," sometimes as an officer of the garrison.

The other is Adam Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, a young man of twenty-five years of age. There is little known of his antecedents. The actual date of his arrival is not certain but, according to the latest researches made by Mr. E. Z. Massicotte, city archivist of Montreal (April, 1912), the first document, in which his name appears as witnessing a land transfer, is dated September 10, 1658.

As he figures frequently in acts after this, it is not likely that he came much before that date, for he was not present on December 29, 1657, at the marriage of Jeanne Le Moyne with Jacques Leber, a young man of his own age, nor at that of Michel Messier and of Anne Le Moyne, February 18, 1658; while after the above date, on September 15, 1658, he was present at that of Jacques Mousseaux and of Marguerite Soviot, and on October 3, 1658, he was godfather to Elizabeth Moyen, daughter of Lambert Closse and Elizabeth Moyen, married the year previously, and thenceforward he appeared frequently at public ceremonies.

In this act, Dollard is styled "volontaire," a volunteer, which may signify that he was only as yet attached to the garrison or that he had taken service freely and not on wages. The Notary Basset gives him, sometimes, the title of "commandant"; at others that of "officer of the garrison."

Mr. Massicotte proves, from the inventory of Dollard's effects after his death, that he had intended to settle, having formed a building society, explained before as then customary, with Picoté de Bélestre, to break land and to cultivate it in view of a future homestead. We have the record of de Bélestre's concession and of a debt to be paid to the succession of "the late Adam Dollard" the sum of 79 livres, 10 sols, for fifty-three days' work, by men employed by the deceased to work on the same concession.

It is therefore probable that Dullard was contemplating his own homestead and that, in his turn, de Bélestre would assist, according to the contracts before noticed.

Dollard was by no means wealthy; indeed the number of his personal effects at his death was less than those shown in the inventories of the greater part of the settlers dying before him, even of the bachelors. The sum total of these possessions has been estimated at eighty-five livres, or 1,700 sous! But we must remember that a sou would at that time buy five to ten times more than now.

The quality, however, of his varied but slight wardrobe and of the articles of toilette not mentioned in other inventories gives ground for the tradition that he was of a superior caste to the ordinary colonist. The ordinary tradition is, following Dollier de Casson, that this young man of good family had already had some command in the army in France, but had done some foolish act, and that he had joined Maisonneuve with the desire of doing some notable deed of valour or self-sacrifice to rehabilitate himself in his own eyes, and those of his friends.

The spelling of his name has been a subject of controversy. Mr. Massicotte has established that there is no doubt, since we have his signature at the city hall archives, that he signed himself "Dollard." "Daulat" and "Daulac," the variant readings, are the mistakes of copyists writing phonetically rather than orthographically, since the three are pronounced practically the same. There is a scarcely imperceptible nuance of sound differing.[84]

We have given these minute facts, since the exploit we are about to relate is one of the most stirring and notable in Canadian history, and the story of Montreal can well expatiate on one of its own heroes.

Adam Dollard it was who, by his boldness, persuaded de Maisonneuve from his Fabian policy of defence which had, as we have seen, made him, so far, content to drive the Iroquois away from the fort to their ambuscades around. In April, 1660, he obtained permission from the governor to take a band of volunteers up country and there do battle. The fear of the Iroquois must have been indeed desperate for one so young to have secured such a permission from Maisonneuve.

Dollard's enthusiasm, which had led the sixteen young men, two of whom were thirty and thirty-one years of age and the rest between twenty-one and twenty-seven, and most of whom had arrived in 1653, to strike hands with him to follow him if the governor gave consent, now spurred them on to make all the needful preparations. In order to purchase the necessary arms, food and boats to man the expedition, we find records extant of loans being sought as, for example, the following, signed by Dollard with his own private paraphe, or flourish, after his name, according to the custom of the time:

"I, the undersigned, acknowledge my indebtedness to Jean Haubichon of the sum of forty livres plus three livres which I promise to pay to him on my return. Done at Ville Marie, the fifteenth of April, sixteen hundred and sixty.

Dollard (with paraphe)."

Major Closse, Picoté de Bélestre and Charles Le Moyne would gladly have thrown in their lot with him, but prudence suggested to them that they should finish the spring seeding, and then to lead forth a body of forty men. The impetuous Dollard could not brook delay. Besides he wanted the command, and this was his opportunity in life. Moreover, his young men were eager to start. Before leaving on their perilous path to glory, they swore a sacred oath of fidelity among themselves not to ask for quarter, and the better to keep their plighted word and to face death without fear, they resolved each to make his will and to clear his consciences by a confession of his sins, and to approach in a body the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the symbol of unity and fellowship.

Each point was faithfully carried out. The sight of these young men at this last solemn event in the parish church must have been thrilling to their friends and families, fearful, yet proud of the warriors who were setting out, perchance to die for their king and their faith.[85]

At last, on April 19th the flotilla of canoes started up the stream, but when nearby to an adjacent island (probably St. Paul) they heard a cry of alarm. Thinking that, near at hand, was the quarry they were going, so far, to seek, Dollard bore down upon the Iroquois, repulsing them with such vigour that had they not taken to the woods, leaving behind their canoes and spoils to save their lives, they would assuredly all have been captured.

But this victory was attended by the loss of three of his men--Nicholas Duval, a servant at the fort, killed by the Indians, and two others who, unaccustomed to the management of their canoe, had been drowned in the engagement. Dollard seized the spoils, left behind by the Iroquois, and, moreover, a canoe which served him in good stead later in the expedition. Meanwhile the party made their way back sadly to Ville Marie with the dead body, without doubt to assist at the burial of Nicholas Duval on April 20th, for the parish registers give this date. The other bodies had not as yet been discovered.

They were joined by one of the young men who had failed in his oath and penitently sought to redeem himself. Thus the seventeen was now complete.

As men, who might never see their friends again, they bade a general adieu to Ville Marie, and again embarked on the fateful journey whence no one returned to tell the tale. Though bold of heart, many of them were not expert at handling their canoes, so that they were delayed eight days at a rapid (Ste. Anne's) at the end of the Island of Montreal. But their indomitable courage surpassed their inexperience, and they reached, on May 1st, the end of the tumultuous rapids of the Long Leap, or the "Long Sault," at the foot of the Chaudières Fall, on the Ottawa River, at a distance of about eight or ten leagues above Montreal.

There Dollard found a dilapidated war camp abandoned by the Iroquois, the previous autumn. It was not flanked, but defended only by a wretched palisading. It was dangerously overlooked too by a neighbouring wooden slope. Within this feeble fortress, for want of better protection, he cantoned his men and there awaited the canoes of the enemy who must come down the Sault in single file on their return from the chase.

Soon, to their surprise, a body of forty Hurons and four Algonquins came with credentials from the governor of Montreal, requesting Dollard to admit them to a share in their glorious enterprise. These were led by the chief, Anontaha, the Huron, and Mitiwemeg, the Algonquin. Anontaha had descended from Quebec with his Hurons, the relics of a once powerful nation, to waylay Iroquois returning from hunting, and at Three Rivers he had met Mitiwemeg with his Algonquins on a like quest. Having challenged each other's valour, they determined to push to Montreal, where likely there would be an opportunity with the Iroquois to test each other's courage in the fight. Arrived at Montreal the French, "whose fault, it is," says Dollier de Casson, "to talk too much," told them of the whereabouts of Dollard's expedition. Amazed at the daring of so slight a force, and jealous of having been forestalled in the work of falling upon the Iroquois, they sought permission to join them; there the vaunting chiefs could show their valour. Accordingly they arrived with de Maisonneuve's letter which warned Dollard not to put his trust in their bravery, but to act as if he had his Frenchmen alone to help him.

Dollard received their parties to his future sorrow. Thus reinforced the anxious warriors bivouacked around the redoubt, near the hoarse-sounding waters of the leaping rapids. At last, those on scout duty reported the coming of the advance guard of 300 Iroquois down the stream. These were on their way to join the 400 more at the Richelieu Islands to attack Three Rivers, Quebec and then Montreal.

Down to the place where they would likely land, Dollard led his men and ensconced them in ambush, till two canoes filled with Iroquois arrived, and no sooner had these put foot on land than the land force fired into their midst, but so precipitously that some escaped, and running across the woods to meet their party on the shore above, cried out: "We have been defeated at the little fort, which is quite near here. There is a party of French and Indians there."

Their approach found the party in prayer from which they arose hurriedly, seeking the shelter of the palisading and leaving in the confusion their kettles slung over the camp fires preparing for their meal.

The Iroquois quickly advanced towards the redoubt, thinking to reduce it easily, but they were frequently repulsed, with much loss and confusion. Driven back, and refused a parley, by which they sought to entice the Frenchmen from the fort, the enemy began to construct a retrenchment facing the redoubt, determined to begin the siege. Meanwhile, during this delay, the brave defenders strengthened their outworks (it would seem an obvious duty too long delayed) by building a second palisading within and filling in the space between, with stones and earth to a man's height, in such way, however, that they were loopholes large enough to put three gunmen at each. When the enemy began next to approach, they poured their scrap iron and lead into them with deadly effect. To add to their rage and humiliation the Iroquois saw the heads of their comrades placed on the tops of the stockade palisades. They now broke up the French and Huron canoes, and putting them into a blaze sought to fire the stockade with them. But finding themselves unable, even with their numbers, to capture the fort, they sent a canoe to warn the 500 at the Richelieu Islands to come to their assistance. While delaying for their reinforcement they blockaded the fort, thinking at least to force it to capitulate, through thirst. For a week the enemy's fire could not be of avail. Thirst, consequent on the dearth of water in the interior of the fort, might yet effect their surrender. Water was so scarce that the defenders could hardly swallow their hominy (rough Indian corn). Their efforts at digging were rewarded only by a little trickling stream of muddy water, altogether insufficient to quench their thirst. Thus they were forced to make sudden sallies to the river, 200 feet away, under shelter of the guns from the fort, to fill their small pots of water, since they had already lost their kettles and tin pans.

The Iroquois now called upon the parched Hurons cooped up within the wretched hole to give themselves up and receive good quarter. Else they would surely die, since a reinforcement of 500 men was coming.

These perfidious weaklings, listening to the voice of the tempters, yielded, and they were to be seen deserting stealthily by the gate or scrambling over the palisadings. This heartbreaking sight was too much for the brave chief Anontaha, who aimed his pistol at his fleeing nephew, "The Fly," but missed his aim in his bitter rage.

There were now only twenty-three to guard the fort, Dollard and his dauntless sixteen, Anontaha, and Mitiwemeg and his four faithful followers.

On the fifth day the 500 allies arrived. On they came to the fort with their frightful war cries but quickly they retired, leaving their dead around the fort and many others escaping, having lead within them that made them ill content. Thus for three days the fight was hourly renewed by the Iroquois, sometimes attacking in a body, sometimes in bands; sometimes they battered the fortress with trunks of trees; still the defenders would not yield, resolved to die to a man first. This obstinate and unexpected resistance made the enemy think that the fugitive Hurons had given a false tale of the numbers within the fort. So the time passed for the hungering and thirsting men within, weary and sleepless, but full of resolution, which they renewed with prayer, till called to fight again for dear life's sake.

On the eighth day, many Iroquois would fain have given up, but the eyes of others blazed with rage at the immortal disgrace they foresaw if they should be set to naught by a handful of whites. They determined to carry the fort by main force or perish in the attempt.

But this was a hardy and dangerous deed courting death. On such an occasion it was the custom when volunteers for the first ranks were needed, that sticks were thrown on to the ground and those that dared pick them up were considered the bravest, and took the foremost place of danger; so now the self-elected braves led the way for a bloody encounter, carrying each an impromptu shield or fence made of united logs each four or five feet in height lashed together, under shelter of which they moved with bowed heads and crouched forms. They crept nearer and nearer the palisade under the shower of shot from arquebus and musketoon that rained fire and shot upon them from the loopholes of the fort. At the gates, and on the palisade wall, the good axe and sabre of the Frenchmen dealt out death upon the stormers. At length, they had reached the palisade and strove to break their way in with axe and battering ram. As a last despairing act, Dollard, having loaded a heavy musketoon to the muzzle, and having lit the fuse, attempted to throw it over the palisading so that it would explode in the midst of the foe clambering up the posts or pulling them down. By ill luck it caught an obstacle on the inside of the palisading and it rebounded back, exploding in the fort, blinding many with its charge and killing several of the gallant whites. This gave great courage to the besiegers and the piles were wrenched away, and the gates forced. Breaches were made on all sides in the fortification and a fierce hand to hand fight of axe and sword and pistol ensued, and in the mêlée the brave Dollard fell at last. Their leader fallen, each survivor fought like a lion brought to bay, dealing death around until his own turn came. With sword or hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other, maddened with hunger, thirst and exposure, and ablaze with religious and martial enthusiasm, they turned each upon their enemies, like madmen. But, unable to take them alive with their overpowering numbers, the Iroquois shot them down mercilessly, to fall upon the camp enclosure already heaped up high with their own dead.

At last not one of the defenders was standing and quickly the revengeful Iroquois searched among the bodies to see if any Christian lived and could be reserved for torture later. Three others were found on the point of death. These they shortly consigned to the flames but a fourth they took prisoner and reserved for cruel refinements later. Among those fallen were Anontaha, the Huron, and Mitiwemeg, the Algonquin, with his three faithful companions. As to the treacherous Hurons, they did not keep their word to them as they promised, but sent them to their Iroquois villages to be afterwards burned alive to satisfy their baulked revenge at their rough handling by the heroic seventeen.

Some five, however, escaped and it was through one of them Louis, "a good Christian but a poor soldier"--that the first news was brought at last to Montreal, on June 3d, that so many of the enemy had been killed within and without the fort that the bodies served to make a path to ascend the palisades and pass over into the fort. Gradually the news was confirmed by others arriving, and the truth was sifted from the conflicting accounts of these cowards, whose stories strove to shield their shameful desertion of their friends.

Shortly after the disaster the fur trader, Radisson, passed down the Long Sault after a brush with the Iroquois. He visited the palisaded fort and saw the gaping wounds in the stockade burnt by the assailants and saw the scalps of the Indians still flaunting from the pickets. In the neighbourhood there was not a tree, he remarks, that was not shot with bullets. "It was terrible," he says, "for we came there eight days after the defeat." Not until he reached Montreal did he learn of the full significance of what he had seen.

The dearly bought victory made the Iroquois shy for a time of engaging with the French, for if, they said, but seventeen could hold out so long in a paltry palisaded picket against such odds, and with such great loss to their assailants, it would be better to leave them alone in their own houses and settlements. Thus the tide of war was checked. The threatened extermination of the whites was averted. Quebec and Three Rivers breathed again. It was the voluntary sacrifice of the picked flowers of the Montreal youth, that found its Thermopylae at the Long Sault, and thus saved Canada!

"This was the common belief at the time," says Dollier de Casson, who arrived in Montreal in the sixth year after this event and whose relation is the basis of all modern accounts of this magnificent disaster, "for otherwise the country would have been swept away and lost, which leads men to say that even if the establishment of Montreal had only had the advantage of having saved the country in this adventure, and of having served as a public victim in the persons of seventeen of its sons who then lost their lives, it ought, for all posterity, if ever Canada comes to anything, to be accounted as of some considerable importance since it has saved it on this occasion, without mentioning others."[86]

"What though beside the foaming flood entombed their ashes lie, All earth becomes the monument of men who nobly die."

We must now descend from the poetic to the commonplace of prose. In doing so, we shall have an insight into the customs of the time.

The inventory of the belongings of Adam Dullard, then in the possession of his partner, Picoté de Bélestre, is preserved in the city archives dated October 6, 1660, as well as the record of the sale by auction which took place November 9, 1661, before the door of the house of Jean Gervaise. Every item is recorded, belonging to the deceased down to his night cap. Such things as a sword with a broken handle; a baldric, of English cow leather, with iron buckles; a poor jerkin of gray with a poor lining in the same colour; a little packet of poor linen; a poor black hat; a bad pair of Indian racquettes, and so on. The most valuable article was a jerkin with breeches and white hose, the whole of superior material, estimated at eighteen livres. But this apparel, according to the note adjoined, was returned by order of the governor to Sieur de Brigeac, to whom they belonged.

In the inventory is added the following unpaid bill:

"Declared by Jacques Beauchamp, fourteenth September, 1660. Seven days' work in the winter at 30 sols a day, 10 livres 10 sols; plus 2 days and a half at 40 sols, 5 livres; plus for his washing during six months, 7 livres 10 sols; plus for the making of 4 shirts and other smaller linens 4 livres; plus the sale of a black hat 4 livres."

The names of Dollard's companions are to be found in the parish register for June 3, 1660, as follows: 1. Adam Dollard (Sieur des Ormeaux), commander, aged 25 years; 2. Jacques Brassier, aged 25 years; 3. Jean Tavernier dit la Lochetière, armourer, aged 25 years; 4. Nicholas Tillemont, sawyer, aged 25 years; 5. Laurent Hébert dit La Rivière, aged 27 years; 6. Alonié des Lestres, lime burner, aged 31 years; 7. Nicolas Josselin, aged 25 years; 8. Robert Jurié, aged 24 years; 9. Jacques Boisseau dit Cognac, aged 23 years; 10. Louis Martin, aged 21 years; 11. Christophe Augier dit des Jardins, aged 26 years; 12. Etienne Robin dit des Forges, aged 27 years; 13. Jean Valets, aged 27 years; 14. René Doussin (Sieur de Ste. Cécile), soldier of the garrison, aged 30 years; 15. Jean Lecomte, aged 26 years; 16. Simon Grenet; 17. François Crusson dit Pilote, aged 24 years.

The date of the heroic adventure of the Long Sault is put by Dollier de Casson to May 26th or 27th, following the notice by M. Souart in the parish register for June 3rd, which says, on the testimony of the Huron Louis, that the exploit took place eight days before. But M. de Belmont places it on May 21st. This is more likely to be correct, since we have the records of the inventory of the goods of Jacques Boisseau, made on May 25th, and of Jean Valets, on May 26th.

Similar sales were made of the goods of the other heroes. It is to be noticed that nearly all left racquettes, or snowshoes, behind them, it then being spring.

Though Montreal was for the moment the Saviour of New France, de Maisonneuve had learned enough from the fugitives from the Long Sault to make him fear the downpour of the revengeful Iroquois either that autumn or the next spring. Consequently he put the town in a state of defence--by fortifying the fort, the Hôtel-Dieu, the mill on the hill, the lonely redoubts, St. Gabriel and Ste. Marie, recently constructed by de Queylus and the Sulpicians, and then hastened to give the news of the exploit of Dollard to Three Rivers and Quebec. The joyful tidings gave Quebec pause to breathe again in peace. For five months public prayers had been daily held in the churches for God's protection of the country and for the five weeks preceding the news, there had been no repose by day or by night.

Yet d'Argenson, the governor, also feared a descent upon Quebec before the harvest, and there would then be utter famine. On July 4th he wrote to France to have provisions sent back immediately, for "we are more in war than ever and in still greater famine.... We have little or no wheat, and there are three months to await for the harvest, which we are in great danger of not gathering, if the Iroquois carry out their resolution to ravage our lands."

Luckily there was no such disaster. Instead great joy was brought to the colony, for on August 19th[87] sixty canoes, led by 300 friendly Ottawan Indians, came to Ville Marie, laden with 200,000 livres' worth of beaver peltry. A quarter of this was left at Montreal and the rest taken to Three Rivers. This resumption of trade, so necessary for the colony, gave courage, for many were thinking of leaving the country on account of the continued warfare which crippled commerce. The merchants were in great part recouped for their losses and the people were enabled to buy from France the many necessities of life, which the money from the sale of beaver skins could alone provide.

But trade and peace and the progress of Christianity could only be secured by reinforcement from France, and this year we find d'Argenson writing to France to show the necessity of sending troops. The Jesuit "Relation" of this year urges the same. "Let France only say 'I wish it,' and with this word it opens heaven to an infinity of heathens; it gives life to this colony; it preserves for itself its New France and acquires a glory worthy of a most Christian kingdom.

"Saint Louis formerly planted the fleur-de-lys in the soil of the crescent. Today it would be a no less glorious conquest to make a country of infidels into a holy land than to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the infidel. Once more, let France's will destroy the Iroquois and it is done. Two regiments of brave soldiers would overthrow them."

Hope entered into the hearts of the colonists now, since France was at peace, having concluded a treaty with Spain, and it was thought that now was the acceptable hour, the time of salvation, and for this purpose Father Le Jeune, then the procurator of the Jesuit missions in Paris, before the end of the year 1660 was asked to present a petition to Louis XIV and to plead for New France across the sea.

The king heard the "sighs and sobs of the poor afflicted colony," and promised troops; but again New France was forgotten, except by the Company of One Hundred Associates, inasmuch as they claimed the annual rental of a thousand beaver skins.

The call was not to be heard for some years yet.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] To explain the "c" in Daulac it must be remembered that in French manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the final "t" and final "c" were interchangeable, or rather written in the same character which stood for a "t" or a "c." (Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, Third Series, No. 2, Vol. IX, April, 1912.)

[85] Parkman, speaking of this event in "The Old Régime in Canada," says: "The spirit of the enterprise was purely mediæval. The enthusiasm of honour, the enthusiasm of adventure and the enthusiasm of faith were its motive forces. Daulac (sic) was a knight of the early Crusades among the forests and savages of the New World."

[86] It appears that thirty years after the famous defence of the Long Sault, a band of a hundred Iroquois were fired upon as they passed Bout de l'Isle to help Phipps in his attack on Quebec. Four of the Indians were shot, and the remainder turned upon the attacking band of twenty-five habitants recruited from the district about Pointe-aux-Trembles and led by a certain Sieur Colombain. Sixteen of the Frenchmen were killed, but the Indians abandoned their intended voyage to Quebec. (Cf. The recent discovery by Mr. E. Z. Massicotte, recorded in the Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal of August, 1914.)

[87] Cf. Faillon, "Histoire de Colonie Française." An act by Bénigne Basset of July 22, 1660, is recorded of a "Société" or partnership made by Médard Chod de Groseilliers with Charles Le Moyne. Cf. E. Z. Massicotte in "Les Colons de Montréal de 1642-1667" and "Bulletin des Reserches Historiques" (1904). The circumstances are as follows: In 1658 Chouard de Groseilliers and Pierre d'Esprit de Radisson started from Three Rivers for an expedition for the west. They stopped at Montreal and were joined by some Frenchmen. They were the first Europeans to go as far as the south of Lake Superior, making Chouamigon their headquarters, and thence brought down to Montreal the largest convoy of furs hitherto known. They arrived shortly after Dollard's disaster in the month of July. To make the convoy as profitable as possible Chouard de Groseilliers made the act of "Société" with Charles Le Moyne to divide the profits of the sales of the peltry brought down by his Indians, at Montreal, Three Rivers and Quebec. This is doubtless one and the same party as that of August 19th, mentioned above, who may have reached Montreal later with de Groseilliers.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XIV

1661-1662

HOSTILITIES AND LOSSES

MONTREAL THE THEATRE OF IROQUOIS CARNAGE--THE FIRST SULPICIAN SLAUGHTERED, M. LE MAITRE--THE SECOND, M. VIGNAL--THE FIRST VISIT OF LAVAL TO MONTREAL--THE ABBE DE QUEYLUS AGAIN APPEARS--ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES LEGAL, NOT PERSONAL--THE DEATH OF LAMBERT CLOSSE--THE EXPLOIT OF PICOTE DE BELESTRE--MAISONNEUVE'S ORDINANCE AGAINST SALE OF LIQUOR TO INDIANS--INDIAN ORGIES AND BLOODSHED--THE GOVERNOR GENERAL AT QUEBEC DISAPPROVES OF MAISONNEUVE'S ACTION--THE FAMOUS LIQUOR TRAFFIC DISPUTES--JEANNE MANCE LEAVES FOR FRANCE.

The year 1661 saw the renewal of hostilities of the Iroquois from Montreal to Cape Tourment, "but," says Marie de l'Incarnation writing in September of this year, "Montreal has been the principal theatre of their carnage."

On February 25th a party of Montrealers were going to work in the fields unarmed, not fearing any ill, since there was usually no fear of Iroquois attacks at this early season, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded by sixty of their foes. There was only one weapon among them and that a small pistol borne by Charles Le Moyne, and, unable to defend themselves with their tools, they sought safety in flight to the town, but not without thirteen being captured.

On March 24th 200 Iroquois fell upon a body of Montrealers and captured ten. Had they not been now armed the numbers would have been more. The "Relation" of this year, speaking of these losses says: "After the capture of the thirteen in the month of February, ten others fell into the same captivity. Then later more, and still more, in such sort that, during the whole summer this island was constantly harassed by these goblin imps who sometimes appeared on the outskirts of the woods, contenting themselves with hurling insults at us; sometimes they glided stealthily into the midst of the field, to fall upon the workmen by surprise; sometimes they drew near our houses, ceaselessly annoying us, and like unfortunate harpies or evil birds of prey, would swoop down on us unawares."

Of the ten captured in March four were butchered in the neighbouring woods; their bodies, brutally dismembered, hacked and burned, were discovered by the dogs of the town, who came back each day glutted with blood. This led to their being followed to their foul feasting place. "Such disasters made the people turn their thoughts to eternity," says the pious Dollier de Casson. "Vice was then almost unknown at Ville Marie, and in the time of war, religion flourished there on all sides in quite a different manner than it does today, in that of peace."

Three Rivers and Quebec suffered similarly. Near Quebec the sénéchal of New France, M. Jean de Lauson, son of the former governor, fell a victim on June 22nd. On this same day a picturesque scene occurred at Montreal, when two canoes of Iroquois arrived under the protection of a white flag of peace, and bringing with them four French prisoners. It was an embassy of the two nations Onondaga and Oi8guere, who professed to be neutral. They parleyed offering the release of the four prisoners and twenty others at Onondaga; requesting that hospital sisters such as those at Quebec should be sent them, and insisting as the main condition of the release that a black robe be sent. M. Maisonneuve sent this proposal on to Quebec with the result that Father Le Moyne, the Jesuit, was deputed to accompany the ambassadors to Onondaga. On the arrival of Father Le Moyne at Montreal the four Frenchmen were exchanged for the eight Iroquois prisoners held, for a year past, in Montreal.

After their departure other Iroquois onslaughts resulted in the death of Jean Valets, at Point St. Charles, on August 14th, of the Sulpician M. Lemaître, and that of Gabriel de Rée with him on August 29th, near St. Gabriel's fortified farmhouse. M. Lemaître was saying his breviary in the fields and acting as a lookout, somewhat apart from the fourteen or fifteen workmen, when he suddenly came across an ambush of sixty Iroquois. Seizing a cutlass and facing the savage crew, he called out to the workers to hurry with their arms. He was now shot by the Iroquois and running towards his friends he dropped down dead. These managed to make their way to the farmhouse but left one man, Gabriel de Rée, dead on the field. The Iroquois cut off the heads of each, and one of them, a Christian renegade, put on the dead priest's soutane, and wearing a shirt over it for a surplice, went stalking around the body in mockery of the Christian burial service. The early memoirs of this event further tell that the head of the murdered priest had spoken after being severed from the body, and that when it had been carried away in a white handkerchief, probably taken from the pockets of his soutane, the features of the dead man became perfectly imprinted upon it. This handkerchief had been seen in the camp by a French prisoner, Lavigne, who tried in vain to obtain possession of it for, recognizing the features of the dead priest, he had learned of his massacre. This story he told to Dollier de Casson, who records it in his "Histoire de Montréal."

Meanwhile the party that had taken Father Le Moyne to Onondaga with the promise of leading back the twenty French prisoners in forty days had not returned, and great fear was entertained at Montreal for their safety. On October 5th, however, nine were brought back by the intercession of the friendly chief named Garacontié, the rest having been kept behind with Father Le Moyne during the coming winter.

On October 25th another disaster occurred in the little island à la Pierre, above St. Helen's Island,[88] whither a party had gone the day before to quarry stone for the new seminary, for up to this the Sulpicians still dwelt in the Hôtel-Dieu. Along with the party, joining them on the second day, was M. Lemaître's successor as "economus;" another Sulpician priest, M. Vignal, who went to supervise the work. Hardly had the party in the first boat, in which was M. Vignal, put foot to land, when they fell into an ambuscade, and M. Vignal was pierced with a sword, along with Sieur de Brigeac, a young soldier of thirty years of age; M. Maisonneuve's private secretary, René Cuillérier, and Jacques Dufresne. M. Vignal was thrown in the enemy's canoes and taken to La Prairie de la Madeleine, facing Montreal. The rest of the French escaped, except Jean Baptiste Moyen, who was left mortally wounded.

After two days they put the priest to death, roasted his body on a funeral pyre and ate it. His bones were never found. This death gave great grief at Montreal as well as Quebec, for M. Vignal it will be remembered had been the chaplain of the Hospitalières there.

After this cruel and horrible repast the party broke up; the Mohawks took Jacques Dufresne with them, while the Oneidas led away the Sieur de Brigeac and René Cuillérier. Both of these were condemned to be burned and de Brigeac, after being horribly mutilated and slowly burned, succumbed after twenty-four hours' torture, "praying," as the Historian de Casson relates, "for the conversion of his tormentors without uttering a cry of complaint."

The same fate awaited Cuillérier, but he had an intercessor in the person of the sister of the chief, who wished to adopt him as her brother. Eventually he escaped to the Dutch at Fort Orange, and he finally made his way back to Montreal in the following year.

During the summer the Vicar Apostolic, Mgr. Laval, made his first visit to Montreal. He was received with honour on the evening of August 21st. On this occasion he showed great solicitude for the Hospitalières of the Hôtel-Dieu, who, by the failure of M. Dauversière, now become a bankrupt, had lost the funds entrusted to him, and had nothing to live on, unless the one thousand livres' income, granted to the Company of Montreal by Madame de Bullion for the support of a hospital, was transferred to them. They were now thinking of going back to France, but Mgr. Laval arranged, on the request of the inhabitants of Montreal, that the income of the hospital could support them.

At the same time Montreal was visited again by the Abbé de Queylus. He arrived at Quebec, incognito, on the third day of August. Since his absence he had not been idle in pushing the ecclesiastical position of Montreal, for on calling on the vicar apostolic, he astonished him by communicating to him the results of his visit to Rome, viz., the apostolic Bull of the Dateria, creating Montreal into an independent parish, and a mandate from the archbishop of Rouen charging the bishop of Petrea to preside at the installation of M. de Queylus as the canonical "parochus." Finally the vicar general reminded M. de Queylus of the lettre de cachet of February 27, 1660, forbidding his return. Queylus retorted by quoting a contradictory "lettre de cachet" annulling it. The vicar general refused to accept the Bull of the Dateria on the ground that it was obtained surreptitiously, and he cancelled the jurisdiction of Rouen as incompatible with his own as vicar apostolic. On August 4th he forbade Queylus to go to Montreal under penalty of disobedience. This he communicated to d'Argenson, but the night of the 5th or 6th of August saw de Queylus making for Montreal furtively by canoe, with no obstacle placed in his way by the sympathetic governor. M. de Queylus had large landed property interests in Montreal, in fact he was one of the largest proprietors and one of its chief mainstays. It was therefore argued that he could not, as a private individual, be stayed from attending to his business there. On the 6th, Laval issued the ecclesiastical suspension of de Queylus unless he returned to Quebec. Meanwhile the abbé remained at Montreal and no doubt received Laval on his official visit of August 21st, already mentioned. On August 29th he grieved with his brethren over the massacre of his fellow Sulpician, M. Lemaître, and he performed several important business transactions as "Superior of Ecclesiastics Associated for the Conversion of the Savages."

In the meantime Laval had written to Rome exposing his case. He looked upon the peculiar pretensions for ecclesiastical monopoly of Montreal and the presence of Queylus, as injurious to the interests of the church in Canada, as menacing its unity and fostering schism. Accordingly prevailing in this view, his protests brought letters demanding the return to France of M. de Queylus, which took place October 22d, from Quebec, the new Governor d'Avaugour being intrusted with its execution.

It is well to avoid reading into these ecclesiastical disputes personal hostility or the clash of rancour among high placed churchmen. Each would have fought, lawyer-like, on principle, for a case of canonical jurisdiction not yet settled in the ecclesiastical courts, owing to the doubt remaining as to the validity of the overlordship of Rouen and the acquiescence of Rome in its pretensions. Law at that time seems also to have been unsatisfactorily managed, and the facility with which "lettres de cachet" were sent to and fro, countermanding one another, did not tend to simplify matters, as we have seen.

Add to these the difficulties inherent in the foundation of a young French colony and the inevitable struggles for precedence and "locus standi," especially among representatives of a nation that adored etiquette and the preceding quarrel will be looked upon as an interesting episode in a difficult period of history rather than as an ecclesiastical scandal needlessly resuscitated by the historian, for the purpose of opening old sores. Later on it will be seen that when the archbishop of Rouen had relinquished his pretension, de Queylus returned in 1668 as Laval's appointed vicar general at Montreal, and the Sulpicians had no greater friend than the fighting bishop.

The same remarks could apply to the struggles that had been going on in Quebec between Laval and d'Argenson in the matter of social precedence. The relations of the church to the state had not been clearly defined in a new country, primarily established for the promotion of Christianity, and it would still take some time to straighten them out.

On September 11th of this year d'Argenson was formally succeeded in the reins of office by the Baron du Bois d'Avaugour, arrived on August 31st, but it must not be understood that his quarrels with Laval were the cause of this. The Vicomte's term of office, as we know, had already been renewed for a second term, and he had sent in his resignation more than once, urging ill health as an explanation. His loss was, however, felt at Montreal by the Sulpicians, on whose side he had ranged himself in the above disputes with Laval. His administration would have been more successful if he could have been more impersonal in such encounters.

M. d'Argenson was shortly followed to France by the founder of Boucherville, Pierre Boucher, ex-governor of Three Rivers. He left on October 31st on a mission as special agent to promote the recognition of the need of national help from France, if Canada was to remain a white man's land. He was sustained by the new governor, d'Avaugour, and by d'Argenson, now in France; with what success we shall hear.

1662

The parish register of Montreal has the following sad entry: "1662-February 6. Le Sieur Lambert Closse, sergeant-major de la garnison; Simon Le Roy, Jean Lecompte et Louis Brisson,[89] tué par les Iroquois."

On this date, February 6th, the brave Lambert Closse met his death at the hands of those he had so often withstood. The place of the combat was somewhere near the corner of Craig Street and St. Lambert Hill. A tablet placed by the Antiquarian Society erected on the south corner of St. Lambert Hill and St. James Street, near the site of his house, reads: "Near to this place Raphael Lambert Closse, first town major of Ville Marie, fell bravely defending some colonists attacked by Iroquois, 6th February, 1662. In his honour St. Lambert's Hill received its name."

His biographer, Dollier de Casson, says he died "as a good soldier of Christ and the king." He was one of those chivalrous knights who looked upon the Montreal venture as a holy crusade against the infidels, and death to him was victory. "Gentlemen," he once explained, "I am not come here, except to die for God in the service of arms. If I did not believe I should die so, I should leave this land and go to fight against the Turk so as not to be deprived of this glory." He left behind his young widow of nineteen years, Elizabeth Moyen, and a child, Jeanne Cécile Closse, now two years old. Some colonists, being fallen upon in the fields by the Iroquois, Lambert ran, as was his wont, to their assistance. He would have saved them had he not been basely deserted by a cowardly Fleming, his serving man. The historian of the "Relations" for 1662 says, "He has justly merited the praise of having saved Montreal by his arms and his reputation."

On May 6, 1662, Picoté de Bélestre signalized that Montreal had still brave men to follow in his footsteps by the brilliant defense of the Fort Ste. Marie. This redoubt on the east, with the corresponding outlying one, on the west, of St. Gabriel, was a most valuable fortress, without which, as a writer has remarked, Montreal "would have been snuffed like a penny dip."

The Fort Ste. Marie was opposite the little rapid, down the harbour, still known as Ste. Marie's Current, and was placed among some fifty acres which had been cleared and cultivated in prehistoric days by the Indians. The site of the above event is recorded by a tablet on the corner of Campeau and Lagauchetière streets: "Here Trudeau, Roulier and Langevin-Lacroix resisted fifty Iroquois." The three men were returning to the habitation after their day's work in the fields, when suddenly one of them cried: "To arms! The enemy is upon us!" At the same moment a large party of Iroquois, who had been lurking here all day, rose and fired. Each Frenchman seized his musket and fled to a hole nearby, called "the redoubt." This they held stoutly till rescued by Bélestre, the commandant of Ste. Marie. After a brisk fight the enemy finally retired to the woods.

Apart from these alarms from the Iroquois, a new danger to life had arisen from the drunken fits of the Indian allies. On the night of June 23-24 Michel Louvard dit Desjardins had been slain before his door in Montreal by a savage, "Wolf." This produced the following ordinance from de Maisonneuve on June 24th:

"In consequence of the murder committed last night on the person of one named Desjardins by drunken savages, caused by the sale of intoxicating liquors, notwithstanding previous prohibitions given both by the Baron du Bois d'Avaugour, lieutenant general of His Majesty, and Mgr. the Bishop of Petrea, vicar apostolic; after having considered, in consequence of the sales of these drinks, the dangers of a general massacre of the inhabitants by the savages, for which there are weighty presumptions, having regard to the ordinary insolences of these latter, and considering, besides, the ordinary crimes committed on this subject by the French, of which we shall shortly inform the Baron d'Avaugour and the Bishop of Petrea, so that there shall be established good order on the subject of the sale of liquors, as well as for the good of the inhabitants and for the savages; we, while awaiting this order by virtue of the power we have received from His Majesty, have prohibited and do now prohibit all kinds of persons, of whatsoever quality and condition, from selling, giving or trading intoxicating drinks to the savages, under such pains and punishments as we shall judge proper to inflict, to procure the service of God and the good of this habitation."

This looks but just and wise; but it was also bold, seeing that the prohibition of the sale of liquor was at that moment a burning question at Quebec. It was especially bold, seeing that Maisonneuve adroitly challenged the governor general to stand by his own previous legislation, which he was now tacitly neglecting to enforce. It will be seen that de Maisonneuve made reference to powers "we have received from the king." Shortly after the publication of this ordinance the Baron d'Avaugour visited Montreal and he flatly doubted the right to introduce these words, especially as he had lately taken the stand of permitting liquor traffic with the Indians. As the governor of Montreal had been used slightingly and jealously of late by the governor general, he did not show him his documentary authority, although the reader will remember that the royal edict of March 7, 1657, warranted the words.

KEY TO SIGNATURES ON OPPOSITE PAGE

Paul de Chomedey L. Closse Issabelle Moyen Paul Ragueneau Jeanne Mance Claude Pijart Marie Moyen François le Mercier François Duperon Marin Jannot Jacques Vautié P. Gadoys N. G. (Nicolas Gadois) R. Le Cavelier Jehan Gervaise Nicolas hubert Marguerite Gilbert barbier Landreau Jacques picot Catherine primoit Maturine Godé Caterine de la vaux Janne Lemoine Chartier

This marriage contract between Lambert Closse and Elizabeth Moyen must have been signed by Jean de St. Père, the first notary of Montreal, but his signature appears to have faded. The flourishes or paraphes at the end of the names were customary at the period to insure against imitation.

This is now the place to introduce the famous quarrels about the liquor trade, which were of passionate interest in New France in the seventeenth century.

It is claimed by the French that the English were the first to introduce the liquor curse to the natives, in payment for furs. When the French returned to Quebec the traders followed suit in spite of the prohibitions of Champlain, Montmagny, d'Ailleboust, de Maisonneuve, de Queylus and Laval.

The letters of the Jesuit missionaries and the contemporary memorialists reveal a shameful story of vice, mingled with that of the establishment of a Christian civilization. Drink made the savages and the Christian neophytes yield to the most deplorable depths of immorality and barbarous brutality. The delights of conviviality gave way to disgusting debaucheries, quarrels and bloody fights. Fathers slaughtered their children; husbands, their wives; and the women became veritable furies. Children, boys and girls, were all demoralized. After a night's carouse the cabins of the Indians were a gruesome sight, heartbreaking to those responsible for the morality of the country. The good nuns were shocked at naked men and women running amuck in the streets of Quebec, clearing all before them at the point of the sword. Notwithstanding prohibitions and ordinances, the scenes of carouses and of carnage continued, because the minority, the traders, maintained the right as necessary for trade alliances with the natives, asserting that they were not responsible for the abuse. On his arrival Laval fought the custom fiercely and finally found himself forced, on May 6, 1660, to fulminate the terrors of the church's excommunication "ipso facto" against the traffickers, and in this he was supported by the Jesuit missionaries. This had a decided effect, backed up by the severe sanctions, even those of death, promulgated by the secular arm of the state, represented by the Baron d'Avaugour.

An unfortunate incident, trivial in itself, destroyed this harmony. It came from the characteristic inflexibility of the soldier governor. He had all the qualities of a soldier who, having made up his mind, is immovable, but he had the defects of these same qualities. What in a good cause would have been constancy in maintaining a point of honour became pigheadedness and impracticability in another. A woman of Quebec had been taken, selling a bottle of wine to the Indians. Her friends and relatives interceded for her to the priest, Father Lalemant, who in turn approached the governor. The governor must have been in a bad humour and not very philosophical, for he did not distinguish between clemency and justice, between a general command and an extenuating circumstance, or legitimate exemption. It was the priest's part to urge clemency, the governor's to exercise justice. Father Lalemant was answered brusquely: "Since the selling of eau de vie is not punishable for this woman, it shall not be so for anyone"--the answer of the man of the sword and not of the lawyer or statesman. Soon the word went around that the governor tolerated the liquor traffic. The obstinate and headstrong soldier would not retract his hasty words and disorders began again. The governor was inactive and shut his eyes, but Laval levelled his threats again at the traders, who now openly revolted, saying they would not be dictated to by bishop, priest, preacher or confessor, since the viceroy was on their side.

It was under these circumstances that de Maisonneuve issued his ordinance forbidding at Montreal what was known to be permitted at Quebec. Hence the passage of arms between the two governors as described. Maisonneuve was supported by the clergy of Montreal. Affairs went from bad to worse at Quebec and on August 12, 1662, the vicar apostolic went to France to place the liquor situation before the king. Thither also went the secretary of the Baron d'Avaugour, Péronne de Mazé, to justify his master and the traders.

Charge and countercharge, and recriminations, exercised the French court. The bishop and the Jesuits were accused of too much severity and clericalism, the governor and traders of too much laxity and avarice. The problem of the relations of church and state had still to be worked out in New France. In the meantime the bishop won; the Sorbonne in 1662 had justified his action; the liquor traffic was forbidden and d'Avaugour was to be recalled. When Laval returned next year, the new governor, de Mésy, accompanied him, the man of his own choice--an unfortunate one as we shall see.

The month following, September, 1662, de Maisonneuve wished to go to France, his object being to secure troops and to arrange for the transfer of the seigneurship of the island from the nearly moribund Company of Montreal to the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Before leaving he appointed the town major, Zacharie Dupuis to take his place and an ordinance to that effect was put up at the door of the parish church dated September 10, 1662. On September 16th he started with Jeanne Mance and the Abbé Souart, conducted by M. Jacques Leber. When at Quebec d'Avaugour forbade Maisonneuve to depart on the ground that he was needed in Montreal to quell the sedition that had arisen there in July in reference to the establishment of a storehouse by the Company of One Hundred Associates. This was but a pretext. Maisonneuve, however, consented to return. Mademoiselle Mance set sail alone on September 20th.

On his return to Montreal Maisonneuve busied himself in promoting agriculture. There were four classes now living at Montreal: The "habitants," or settlers, who took up the lands and were self-supporting, these alone having the rights of trading in peltry; the soldiers of the garrison; hired workers by contract for a definite time; and day labourers.

By an ordinance of November 4, 1662, Maisonneuve gave permission to soldiers and hired workers to cultivate four arpents on the seigneurs' domain, till four others equally cultivated were given them elsewhere. As a further inducement, those taking up land would be granted peltry privileges like the habitants. Sixty-three responded to this before the end of the year.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Moffatt's island, five-eighths of a mile from the south shore, now the wharf terminus of the Champlain branch of the Grand Trunk Railway.

[89] Two of these were "travailleurs ou volontaires," or day labourers. In his ordinance of November 4, 1662, Maisonneuve showed no favour to these who, for the most part, were rather a charge on the young colony than a benefit. At Three Rivers they early became a considerable nuisance. In 1653, on January 14, Pierre Boucher, the local governor, ordered them to become habitants, or servants of habitants, and on March 2, 1668, he made a new ordinance conceived in these terms: "On the advice which has been given us that there are still labourers who are neither habitants, nor servants of habitants, and who live under the name of 'volontaires' (free workers), we forbid them to take more than twenty sous a day and fifteen livres a month with their food, under penalty of prison and of the cat-o'-nine tails (fouet) at the hands of the hangman, and it is forbidden them to trade any peltry with the savages." At Montreal at this date the labourers were not so troublesome, but out of them later developed many of the restless "coureurs de bois."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XV

1663-1664

THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL AND THE SEIGNEURS OF THE ISLAND

GREAT CHANGES, PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL

MILITIA SQUADS ESTABLISHED--THE FORMATION OF THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY FAMILY--THE EARTHQUAKE AT MONTREAL--POLITICAL CHANGES--THE RESIGNATION OF THE COMPANY OF ONE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES--CANADA BECOMES A CROWN COLONY--THE TRANSFER OF THE SEIGNEURY OF THE ISLAND FROM THE COMPANY OF MONTREAL TO THE "GENTLEMEN OF THE SEMINARY"--ROYAL GOVERNMENT--THE APPOINTMENT OF THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL--CHANGE IN THE MONTREAL JUDICIAL SYSTEM--FORMER HOME RULE PRIVILEGES RESCINDED--MONTREAL UNDER QUEBEC--PIERRE BOUCHER'S DESCRIPTION OF CANADA AND MONTREAL--SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PERIOD--MONTREAL SOLDIERY--THE ELECTION OF POLICE JUDGES--ATTEMPT TO SUPPLANT MAISONNEUVE AS LOCAL GOVERNOR--DISCORD IN THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL.

Meanwhile the war was still in progress and news had come that the Iroquois had determined to seize Montreal, by surprise or force, as their own post, after putting the inhabitants to fire and sword. To meet this threat, de Maisonneuve issued an ordinance, January 27, 1663, inviting the colonists to form into militia squads of seven persons of which one should be elected corporal, for the purpose of supplementing the regular garrison soldiers. On February 4th "to the end that the country may be saved," he established a camp volant, or flying squadron, composed of twenty such squads, to be known under the title of the Militia of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, "since this island is the property of the Holy Virgin." It will be remembered that already de Maisonneuve had established his Military Confraternity, or guard of sixty-two. In all things the religious character of the foundation of Montreal is seen.

At Quebec the liquor traffic with the Indians went on more boldly, owing to the absence of Mgr. Laval, and disorders were multiplied, such as the burning of one of the houses on the night of January 23d.

An event, which is reported from many sources and was regarded as a supernatural visitation was, however, more effective in putting the fear of the Lord into the liquor traffickers than all the previous thunderings of the clergy.

On February 5th, the eve of Carnival Monday, or "lundi gras," the first hoarse rumblings of an earthquake which were noted all over Canada, were heard at Ville Marie while M. Souart, the curé, was holding prayers in the church, and after five or six minutes the earth began to swell and move. The terror-stricken people left the church lest they should perish in the ruins. At the Hôtel-Dieu, many of the sick ran out and spent the night on the rolling snow-covered ground. The gayeties of carnival were abandoned and fear fell upon the people. The tremblings lasted for seven or eight minutes.

One direct effect of the earthquake was to make the ladies form, under the suggestion of Père Chaumonot, the Jesuit, then on a visit to Montreal, and with the co-operation of M. Souart, a pious association under the name of the "Confraternity of the Holy Family." Its formation, on July 31st, was greatly promoted by Madame d'Ailleboust, widow of Louis d'Ailleboust, the former governor general, who, since his death in 1660, had taken up her abode at the Hôtel-Dieu. It was approved in March 1665, by Mgr. Laval. Subsequent associations spread all over Canada for two centuries.

The pictures given of the earthquake are most graphically painted by writers of the period, such as those in the "Relations." In the forest the trees were apparently at war, being uprooted and cast against one another, so that the Indians said the forest was intoxicated. The hills and mountains were in the same confusion. Mountains were laid low and the valleys were filled up. The ice beds of the rivers broke up and the water, mingled with mud, poured up in jets on high. The streams quitted their beds or changed the colours of their waters, some yellow, others red; the great St. Lawrence was whitish for eight days. To the affrighted people it seemed that the spirits of darkness and the powers of the air were permitted to league themselves. But there was little loss of life "and the harvest," says Sister Marie de l'Incarnation, "was never more fruitful. There were no sicknesses. You see by this that God only wounds to bless and that his inflictions which we have experienced, are only the chastisement of a good Father." The effects of this earthquake still are visible. From Cape Tourment to Tadoussac there were changes in the contour of the land and of the banks of the St. Lawrence. The picturesque name, Les Eboulements, in the Bay of St. Paul, records the fall of a hill nearby into the river, thus forming the present island. The earthquake spread to New England and the New Netherlands, and similar terrors affected the minds of the people as in Canada.

While these warlike physical changes were terrifying Canada, in France the constitution of the bodies governing its temporal law and order were also being overhauled in a more peaceful manner. On February 24th the few remaining rich members of the Company of One Hundred Associates, which had the monopoly of New France since 1626, were constrained, seeing impending dissolution by force, to offer the resignation of their charters, by a renunciation pure and simple.

In the March following this was accepted by the king. The colony came at last directly under the crown and happier times were in store for it. Splendid colonizing ideas were being prepared by Louis XIV and Jean Baptiste Colbert, the successor of Mazarin, which if carried out would have prevented the necessity of the cession of 1760. The words of the edict will not surprise our readers.

"Since it has pleased God," says this prince, "to give peace to our kingdom, we have nothing more strongly to heart than the re-establishment of commerce, as being the source and the principle of the abundance which we take upon ourselves to procure for our people. This has led us to inform ourselves of the state of New France which our king, our very honoured lord and father, had given over by a treaty of 1626 to a company of one hundred persons. But in place of learning that this country had been populated as it should be, considering the long time of its possession, we have recognized with regret that not only the number of its inhabitants is very small, but that they are every day in danger of being driven out by the Iroquois. Recognizing, besides, that this company of one hundred men is nearly extinct owing to the voluntary retirement of a great number, and that the few remaining are not powerful enough to maintain this country, by sending forces and men necessary to swell and defend it, we have resolved to take it from the hands of this company, which has resigned it to our good purposes. For which reasons we declare that all the rights of property, justice and seigneurie granted by our most honoured lord and father, by the charter of April 29, 1626, shall be and do remain reunited to our crown, to be henceforth exercised in our name by the officers whom we shall name to this effect."

Thus the future Canadian society was being thought out on the basis of an over-parental feudalism, probably the best form for the times, though it sadly crippled the initiative of the French-Canadian population, with results seen to this day. Yet the population was no more than twenty-five hundred souls, of which eight hundred were at Quebec.

At the same time the negotiations for the transfer of the seigneury of the island of Montreal were completed. During the visit of Mademoiselle Mance several meetings of the Company of Montreal had been held, the members of which, with the exception of some directors of the Seminary of Paris, and M. de Maisonneuve, were reduced to five. On March 9th the act of transfer, to be found in the Edicts and Ordinances of the Province of Quebec, states that:

"Considering the great blessings, which God has poured upon the Island of Montreal for the conversion of the savages and the edification of the French, by the help of MM. Olier, de Renty and others, for twenty years; and now, in later years the gentlemen of the Seminary of St. Sulpice have laboured by their care and zeal to uphold this good work, having exposed their persons and having made contributions for the good of the colony and increase of the glory of God; the Associates desiring moreover to contribute on their part by seconding the pious designs of the Gentlemen of the Seminary, and in honour of the memory of the founder and one of the promoters and benefactors of the work of Montreal, they have, after several conferences on the subject, and in furtherance of the greater glory of God, given to these gentlemen all the proprietorial rights which they have in the Island of Montreal, as also the seigneurial manor house, called the Fort, the farm, the tilled lands and all the rights that they have in their island."[90]

In this donation special reference was made to the services of M. de Maisonneuve. He was to continue, during his life, governor and captain of the island and of the seigneurial manor house under, however, the pleasure of the Gentlemen of the Seminary. He was to have, in place of remuneration, half of the farm lands and the revenues of the mill.

He was to have his apartments in the seigneurial manor house, in which the Gentlemen of the Seminary, as Seigneurs, shall henceforth have the right to live.

After some hesitation, in view of the expense of the undertaking, the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Paris, on March 31st, finally undertook the work for which their founder had always intended them, and Montreal was saved from the abandonment which at one time during the negotiations looked imminent. There was a desire to have M. de Queylus sent back, but Laval, then in Paris, was adamant in his firmness.

On his part, he was very well received at court. The king would have Laval made "Bishop of Quebec" and he gave him the abbey revenues of Maubec in the diocese of Bourges to sustain the position when the see of Quebec should be erected, which was not to be for many years. The most important preparation for the better government of New France, and one in favor of Laval, was the edict, published in March by the king, of the appointment of a Sovereign Council to sit at Quebec, unless judged more convenient elsewhere. This was to consist of the governor general, the bishop, or in default the highest ecclesiastic on the spot, the intendant when appointed, five councillors and a procureur du roi.

The nomination of these councillors was to be made conjointly by the governor general and the bishop, and they could dismiss them or continue them at pleasure. This gave Laval greater power than before, for hitherto under d'Avaugour, he had only a right to be called to the council with a "voix délibératrice," as a simple councillor among creatures chosen by the governor general. The Baron d'Avaugour was recalled,[91] and Laval was constrained to name his successor, his choice falling unfortunately on M. Saffray de Mézy, then town major of Caen, whom he had formerly met at the Hermitage of Caen, where M. Bernières gathered his pious friends whom he thought he could rely on to extend the glory of God. De Mézy's letters were signed on May 1st, before d'Avaugour's second year of the usual term of three years was completed. On March 26th Laval, in preparation for rearing a colonial clergy, erected a seminary and united it with that of the Foreign Missionaries of Paris, from whom he wished to draw some volunteers.

In the April following he obtained an edict from the king regulating the "dime" for church support and the poor rate, to be fixed at the thirteenth part of the income of each colonist. It was arranged also that the curés should be removable at the will of the bishop and his successors.

The bishop of Petrea reached Quebec on September 15th with the new governor general, de Mézy, and M. Louis Gaudais, Sieur du Pont. The latter had been sent by the king as an envoy to enquire into the government of d'Avaugour, and in addition to report on the most convenient means for the colonization and cultivation of the country. The troops which the king had desired to send to subdue the Iroquois were not as yet at liberty to come, but in their place, 100 families containing 500 persons, with expenses defrayed for a year, were dispatched this year.

By September 28th the new councillors, Rouer de Villeray, keeper of the seals; Jucherau de la Ferté, M. Ruette d'Auteuil, Legardeur de Tilly, d'Amours; and the new king's procurator, M. Bourdoin, with Gaudais, the royal commissioner acting as intendant ad interim, had collaborated with de Mézy and Laval and had issued a severe edict forbidding the liquor traffic with the Indians.

There was now great stir under the new form of Royal Government. Mézy and Laval were announced as Chiefs of the Council. The inhabitants made offer of their "foi et hommage" for their land tenures. Officers for the administration of justice, according to civil law, were appointed. Regulations for commerce and social progress were promulgated. New France was declared a province or a kingdom and Quebec a "town." A mayor, Legardeur de Repentigny, and two aldermen, Jean Maudry and Claude Charron, were elected, and municipal life seemed promised. These officers met on October 6th, but by November 14th their election was revoked by the council and the office of syndic again restored. This abortive municipal life was apparently too great a stride in the autocratic government then in vogue. Yet Canada was beginning to emerge from its petty parish condition and its struggling state. The privilege granted Laval of exacting one-thirteenth part of the fruits of the earth and of a man's labour on the earth for church establishment was not satisfactory, and finally it was reduced to one-twentieth for the rest of monseigneur's life; later it was reduced by Laval to a twenty-sixth.

The taking over of the colony as a royal possession began to affect other places than Quebec. At Montreal, the assumption of the seigneurial duties and privileges was not without difficulty. On August 18th, the commission which had been privately given by M. de Bretonvilliers to M. Souart was publicly ratified. But hardly had the Sovereign Council been installed than it took away the right of the Seigneurs to administer justice in civil and criminal cases, and on September 28th appointed M. Arthur de Sailly as judge, Charles Le Moyne, king's procurator, Bénigne Basset as chief clerk and notary of the sénéchal's court, all of whom took the oath on October 19th.

Similar inferior courts of justice were also established at Three Rivers; appeal could be made on trivial causes to the supreme council. The customary law of Paris, or "coutume de Paris," based on the civil law of Rome, was the fundamental law of Canada, and still governs the civil rights of the people.

Hitherto Maisonneuve had acted as administrator of justice, but now the seigneurs named Charles d'Ailleboust des Musseaux as judge and retained Bénigne Basset as clerk of the Seigneurs.

The new appointments, made over their heads in defiance of their rights, caused M. Souart, on behalf of the seigneurs, to go to Quebec with M. de Maisonneuve, to protest. But while there, de Mézy dealt a further blow by presenting Maisonneuve with his commission of governor of Montreal, thereby intimating that the seigneurs had no right of appointment. M. Souart, relying on the decree of 1644 giving this power to the seigneurs, then the Company of Montreal, protested, and he was ordered to produce the letters patent for proof; meanwhile de Maisonneuve was to act as governor of Montreal, by the power just granted by the governor general, till the king should order otherwise.

In the meantime de Maisonneuve acted on his new commission but always without prejudice to the rights of the seigneurs. This loyalty was also shared by Bénigne Basset for, in a contract of marriage for November 16, 1663, he signs himself as clerk in the royal sénéchal's court, notary royal, and clerk for the seigneurs. It may be for this reason that he was supplanted later in his office in the sénéchal's court by Sieur de Mouchy, who had been appointed by the Sovereign Council "for good reasons." Maisonneuve's position at Montreal was also getting insecure. There was now an effort on foot to bring Montreal under control of Quebec as the seat of the royal government and the veteran, de Maisonneuve, as an adherent of the old ways, was jealously viewed by de Mézy and perhaps by Laval. Certainly Montreal was now being dominated by the newly-imported royal policy.

But the new colonial policy was to bring good results from the new blood infused. If wisely handled, the new régime would have worked permanent good.

The resignation of the Company of New France, on February 24, 1663, was accepted by the king in March of the same year, and the edict on the creation of the Supreme Council followed in the April following.

From the date of the establishment of the Supreme Council, September 18, 1663, Civil Government may be said to have begun. Hitherto no deliberative board had sat to discuss the affairs of the colony. There had been a vague and indefinite system of government by the chartered companies, but there had been no constituted hierarchy, either in the political or in the judicial order.

The council was modeled on that of the parliament of Paris. The terms of the "ordonnance" of its creation indicated that the king wished to create here, in Canada, an authority to supply what the parliament of Paris, seeing its great distance away, could not provide for. Yet the Sovereign Council was never a real parliament, although it contained in germ, if not actually, all the power of one. The dignity of the new body was so great later that when Frontenac came as a governor he considerably astonished the simple burgesses of the little fortress of Quebec with all the pomp at his command. He would be in truth a "Viceroy," and Gascon that he was, he would play the part. Others also in their sphere would reproduce the usages of the Paris mother parliament; hence the troubles about "préséance," among the counsellors, which seem so trivial to us, but not so to them, punctilious in their observance of their high positions. With Paris for an example, it is not surprising that Frontenac dismissed his counsellors, when it suited him, for did not Louis le Soleil do the same himself?

The "ordonnance" of the creation of the council, after indicating the composition of its members and outlining its general powers, then continues: "Moreover we give power to the said council to commission, at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers and in all other places, as many, and in the manner as it shall deem necessary, persons as shall judge in the first instance without chicanery and delay, the procedures of different proceedings which may arise between private persons, and shall name clerks, notaries and scriveners, surgeons and other officers of justice whom they shall judge proper, our desire being to drive all chicanery as far as possible out of the said country of New France, with the end that prompt and speedy justice may be rendered."

The Sovereign Council was held at Quebec but it ruled over Montreal, not in broad lines of general policy only, but in what we would call village politics. It went into very small details indeed and the parish church portals were frequently posted with proclamations from Quebec. There does not seem to have been much home rule for Montreal in those days.

A picture of this period is presented in the "Histoire Véritable et Naturelle de la Nouvelle France," dedicated to Colbert, the minister, by a letter written from Three Rivers on October 8, 1663, by Pierre Boucher, who had been sent to France by the inhabitants of La Nouvelle France for help, in 1662, when he had conversed with Colbert personally.

His object was to explain the physical and natural history of the country to encourage colonization. He expresses surprise that the country still remained inadequately populated, but he warns Colbert against any policy of sending criminals to this country. Tramps were not wanted in Canada. If any insinuated themselves they knew, how to hang them, as elsewhere. Doubtful women were not tolerated either. Those women that came were vouched for by responsible persons or relatives.

Speaking of the climate he says: "From the beginning of May, the heat is extremely great, though we are only coming out of the depth of winter. This is the reason why everything goes ahead and in less than no time the earth is covered with verdure. It is remarkable that the wheat sown at the end of April or as late as May 21st is harvested in September. The winter is very cold, but it is a bright frost, and for the most part the days are beautiful and serene.

"Mont Royal, the last of our settlements, is situated on a beautiful and great island. The lands are very good and produce grain in abundance; everything is going on well there; fishing and hunting are also very good."

Montreal is described as having a rich soil, but requiring horses[92] to till it. As these are expensive he hopes the "bon roi" would assist, especially by exterminating the Iroquois, who killed the cattle. Most of its trees were oak. There was no hemp, but the soil was suitable for its cultivation.

Speaking of the caribous he says that the males have forked feet, which in running, open so widely that they never sink in the winter snows no matter how deep these may be. He speaks of the skill of the beavers in constructing their dams, which the waters cannot break through, saying that they thus arrest the courses of little streams, inundating a great part of the country and forming pools for them in which to play and to have their dwellings. The savages had the greatest difficulty on their hunting expeditions in destroying these dams.

Describing social life, he says that the country produced strong boys and girls, but they were led to study with difficulty. Wine was drunk in the best houses, beer in others, and a favourite drink in common use was "bouillon." Some houses were built of stone covered with pine boards, some were built with upright posts filled in with masonry; others were framework buildings of wood. There were no women servants in Canada. Most of the men started as servants and in a few years were at their ease working for themselves. He advised all who came to Canada to be ready to put their hands to anything, building or land clearing. They should bring provisions for two years, especially flour. He gives many other details showing the value of money and the price of things. The great difficulty beyond the mosquitoes and the length of the winter was the fear of the stealthy Iroquois who were here, there and everywhere, never attacking but when they were in strong force. When discovered they take to flight, and as they are so agile in their movements, it is difficult to pursue them. He trusted the "bon roi" would assist in destroying them. "And," says Boucher, "it would not be a difficult thing to get rid of them, for they consist but of eight to nine hundred men capable of bearing arms. It required only prudence and sufficient force to destroy them."

Boucher was accompanied from France by Dumont, an officer in charge of 100 soldiers. In Dumont's account of his visit, written in 1663 in the "Relations," he says of Montreal that the inhabitants were the most soldierly in the country--a remark made also by Boucher. Boucher's mission to France helped to persuade the king to take over the colony as a royal possession. When the king's forces came to exterminate the Iroquois the Montreal fighting men did justice to their reputation, as we shall see.

At this period the mode of living was very simple. The house was one long room lighted by three windows, in which all the family ate, slept and worked. At the bottom of the apartment was the bed of the parents, against the wall; in a corner a contrivance which served as a bench by day and a bed by night for the children. On the right, as you entered, you would have seen the open chimney rising a little above the room, and slung from a chain was the family cooking pot. Near the fireside was a small staircase or ladder leading to the grain loft above lighted by one or two small windows. A table and a few chairs or benches or a collapsible chair and table in one, completed the primitive furniture in the living room.

But we must not forget the old gun hanging over the bed, ready at hand during the night should the Iroquois suddenly attack. This served also as the family forager for meat, and game, both feathered and "red skins." There was good shooting in the neighbourhood of Montreal, with plenty of ducks and partridges. It is recounted that in 1663 a hunter in Quebec brought down thirty-two grey turtle doves with one shot. On the rivers they were so numerous that the rowers could hit the troublesome birds with their paddles. The settlers, when they had collected all they needed and salted there for the winter, had abundance left over to give to the dogs and the pigs.

There was not much hunting in the woods by Montrealers, but the Indians brought into the market near the fort, the original "place d'armes," a goodly amount of bear, elk, venison, wild cow, moose, beaver and muskrats, and other meats.

On "fish days" the good Montrealer had no excuse for not keeping church abstinence, for eels sold at an écu a hundred, and sturgeons, shad, dory, pike, carp, groundlings, brill and maskinongé abounded. From Quebec they received the salmon and the herring, trout from Malbaie and white fish from Three Rivers.

Provisions, clothing and property originally were exchanged by barter, e. g., a small lot of land went for two cows and a pair of stockings; a larger piece would go for two bulls, a cow and a little money.

Money became less rare when the troops arrived. Meanwhile the war with the Iroquois was carried on with the usual incidents, as already described.

At Montreal there seems to have been more fear of the exactions of Quebec than of the incursions of Iroquois. Quebec had endeavoured to restrain all trade to itself, and in consequence of this monopoly prices were very high in Montreal, and many households were in want. At the same time there were complaints as to the adequacy of the police arrangement, so that there seemed to be ground for fearing some sedition.

Accordingly on February 15, 1664, Paul de Chomedey published an ordinance ordering the habitants to assemble on the Sunday following, February 24th, to the place called the "hangar," to elect five of the principal inhabitants to regulate the matters of police for the town.

This day, the weather being bad, saw very few at the voting place, and we find the syndic, Urbain Bauderau, asking for a reannouncement of the same ordinance for next Sunday, March 2d. This was done, and at least 226 were present, to judge by the votes recorded. The following were elected police judges: Louis Prud'homme, 23 votes; Jacques Le Moyne, 23; Gabriel le Sel, Sieur du Clos, 19; Jacques Picot, Sieur de la Brie, 24; Jean Leduc, 19.

Dated March 6th, another document of de Maisonneuve is preserved, in which it is recorded that the above five had been ordered to appear before the governor to take the oath, and had done so, but Le Sel and Leduc, having said and declared that they did not know how to write or sign, the three others signed the commission of appointment. Meanwhile the position of de Maisonneuve as governor of Montreal was becoming insecure and in June of this year he was called to Quebec by M. de Mézy who named Captain Etienne Pézard, Sieur de la Touche, to succeed him in his position. What the reason was, beyond the jealousy of the governor general, or a possible secret instruction from the government, we do not know. Yet this latter appointment never took place, for we find de Maisonneuve still governor till his final removal by Tracy at the end of 1665, and even then M. Dupuis, the town major, was only appointed as commandant till Perrot was officially appointed in 1669.[93]

At Quebec the early months of 1664 were signalized by the outburst in flame of the smouldering dissatisfactions and the growing discord marring the harmony hitherto existing between Laval and de Mézy, the joint chiefs of the Sovereign Council. The dual rule was found impossible, especially as the council was considered by de Mézy to be a packed one in favour of Laval. It came to a head on February 3d, when the governor sent his major, the Sieur d'Angouville, to announce to the bishop that he had forbidden three of the council, de Villeray, d'Auteuil and Bourdon, the king's procurator, to appear at the council until they had been justified by the king for the cabals he alleged had been fomented against himself by them. He prayed the bishop to confirm this interdiction of those "who had been named in his favour" and to proceed in the nomination of three others. He did more: he proclaimed the same interdiction at the sound of the drum by a proclamation signed also by the three other councillors. Further, on February 13th, he published another declaration forbidding several practices which he said he felt bound to stop, so as not to betray the interests of the king.

This rupture was inevitably the result of the impossible dual government. In France the vesting of temporal power in a bishop was not so likely to prove unsuccessful as in a new country needing a military governor. But to place the spiritual and civil authorities "ex aequo" in civil government was not the wise move for the good of the church it had been intended to be.

M. de Mézy no doubt felt the weakness of his position. The moral strength of government would be dominated by the bishop and in a conflict the councillors and others would side with the bishop as vicar apostolic, who was irremovable, except by the pope, until death, while the governor general could be recalled even before his three years were completed. Hence his patience was tried and his dignity hurt; thus he lost his head and went beyond his powers. On the other hand, the bishop would honestly not have been prepared for this outburst. With pain and astonishment Laval replied, on February 16th, that he could not in honour or in conscience ratify the suspension of the councillors until they should be convicted of their alleged crimes against the governor.

The suspension of Bourdon, the king's procurator, held up the administration of justice. This Mézy endeavoured to correct by appointing, on March 10th, against the will of Laval, another, in the person of the Sieur Chartier. He went further and arbitrarily dissolved the council on September 18th, and on the 24th established another without the consent and participation of the bishop.

On September 23d M. Bourdon sailed to France at the command of de Mézy to render an account of his service to the king. In October de Mézy published again, at the beat of the drum, another proclamation, which incensed the ecclesiastical party.

The dissentions in Quebec could not but have a disquieting effect on Montreal, now politically more dependent on Quebec than ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[90] The seigneury of St. Sulpice, already granted, is included in this as part of the whole.

[91] D'Avaugour received the news as a magnanimous soldier. On his way home he wrote from Gaspé a memorial to Colbert in which he commends New France to the king. "The St. Lawrence," he says, "is the entrance to what may be made the greatest state in the world." In his purely military way he recounts the means of making this grand possibility by a military colonization.

[92] One horse only had reached Canada previously. It arrived June 20, 1647, and was presented to the governor, Montmagny.

[93] Etienne Pézard de la Touche never acted as governor of Montreal owing to the rigorous protestations raised by the Seigneurs of the island. M. de la Touche seems to have arrived in Canada in 1661 and by the 10th of October of that year he is to be found acting as lieutenant of the garrison of Three Rivers, in which locality he remained till 1664, when he became a captain. On June 20th he married Madeleine Mulois de la Borde and M. de Maisonneuve as governor assisted at the ceremony. On the same day or the next by a curious irony of fate there is found the nomination of the newly married captain, dated from Quebec, as Maisonneuve's successor. When the news became known at Montreal it was looked upon by the governor general de Mésy as an arrogation of the powers of the Seigneurs of Montreal, and an attempt on the part of the recently created Sovereign Council to test its jurisdiction over Montreal. The triumph of the seigneurs was evident, for on July 23d following, de Maisonneuve was accorded by the sovereign council his emoluments for the upkeep of the garrison for the current year, and on July 28th is found as governor granting a new concession of land, a practice he continued till May, 1665. On the other hand, on July 23d, de la Touche is recorded as in charge of the accounts of the garrison of Three Rivers. On August 8th M. de Mésy apparently by way of a consolation accorded him the seigneury of Batiscan and of Cap de la Madeleine, and the new seigneur busied himself in his new position. Meanwhile de Maisonneuve's days were numbered. (Cf. Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 1914, No. 2, article by E. Z. Massicotte.)

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XVI

1665

THE RECALL OF DE MAISONNEUVE

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL DE COURCELLES AND THE INTENDANT TALON ARRIVE--THE DUAL REIGN INHARMONIOUS--SIEUR DE TRACY, LIEUTENANT GENERAL OF THE KING FOR NORTH AMERICA, ARRIVES--THE CARIGNAN-SALLIERES REGIMENT--CAPTURE OF CHARLES LE MOYNE BY IROQUOIS--BUILDING OF OUTLYING FORTS--PREPARATIONS FOR WAR--THE DISMISSAL OF MAISONNEUVE--AN UNRECOGNIZED MAN--HIS MONUMENT--MAISONNEUVE IN PARIS--A TRUE CANADIAN.

The strained relations at Quebec and Montreal were soon to be relieved for a time by the death of de Mézy, who died on the night of May 5-6, 1665, thus being saved the painful investigations into his government which were ordered by Louis XIV, and were to be conducted by the new governor, M. de Courcelles, and the intendant, Jean Baptiste Talon. They, having received their letters of appointment on March 23d, were now on their way with a secret commission to look into the administration of the spiritual and temporal power of New France. M. de Courcelles was given power over all the local governors of Canada, and the Sovereign Council, to settle differences between its members, and to have command over all His Majesty's subjects, ecclesiastics, nobles, soldiers and others of whatever dignity or condition, but this under the supervision of M. Alexandre de Pourville, Sieur de Tracy, who was shortly expected to be in Canada. This latter had been appointed on November 19, 1663, the lieutenant general of the king for l'Amérique Méridionale et Septentrionale, and was to proceed to Canada as soon as possible.

As for Talon, the Colbert of New France, and the first intendant in Canada, he was given unlimited authority in police, civil, judiciary and financial matters, independently of M. de Courcelles.

This distribution of power was bound, in the beginning, to create trouble. Perfect harmony could not be expected while the intendant, though not of equal dignity with the governor, was treated with great consideration and was looked upon to act as a check and spy on the governor. This dual reign was as likely to cause friction as had that of the governor and the bishop hitherto. Still it was a most valuable and useful office in the progress of the country, and Talon used it well.

Before the arrival of de Courcelles and Talon, on April 25th, an attack had been made on the Hôtel-Dieu at Montreal, when four of their men were fallen upon by the Indians; one was killed, another mortally wounded and two others were taken prisoners. This made Montreal look more eagerly for the arrival of the troops promised to exterminate the Iroquois.

On June 17th and 19th, four companies of the Carignan-Sallières regiment, which had sailed from Rochelle, arrived at Quebec, while de Tracy himself, with the four others which had served with him in the French Islands, reached Quebec on June 30th. In the train of the tall and portly veteran of sixty-two, was a gay and glittering throng of finely dressed young noblemen, and gentlemen adventurers, eager to witness the wonders of New France. Never was such splendour seen in Canada as that, when Laval received de Tracy and his bronzed veterans recently come from Hungary, where they had fought the Turks, and who now, with their picturesque soldiery accoutrements and trained movements marched stately to the fort to the beat of the drums. Assuredly at last the Iroquois would be exterminated by such disciplined forces.

This infantry regiment, which at the conclusion of the war was to leave many of its soldiers to settle down near Montreal and become the founders of many of the best Canadian families, had originally been raised in 1644 by Thomas François de Savoie, Prince of Carignan, the head of the house of Carignan, who fought for France in Italy. His son, after him, also commanded this regiment, which took henceforth the name of Carignan. In 1659, after having joined the regiment of Colonel Balthasar, he incorporated this with his own and it was handed over to the French king, who placed M. Henri de Chapelais, Sieur de Sallières, the colonel of another regiment incorporated with it, to command it in the absence of the prince, under his orders. Hence the combination became known as the Carignan-Sallières regiment and consisted of about 1,000 men from the Carignan-Balthasar regiment and 200 of the Sallières. The portion of the troop which returned to France became the nucleus of a reconstructed regiment which under the name of Lorraine existed till 1794.

The regiment had, however, not yet all arrived. That portion led by Colonel de Sallières himself did not come till August 18th or 19th, while the last companies reached New France with de Courcelles and Talon, on September 12th. These latter added to the splendour of Quebec "for," says Mother Jucherau, "M. de Courcelles, our governor, had a superb train and M. Talon, who naturally loves glory, forgot nothing which could do honour to the king." At last the numbers were complete, but many were put into the hospitals, sick from disease, and from the long voyage, which had taken M. Talon's party 117 days at sea. This sickness was one of the reasons which delayed the war against the Iroquois till next year.

Meanwhile at Montreal news had arrived of the capture on the Ile Ste. Thérèse, of Charles Le Moyne who, in July, had been given leave by de Maisonneuve to join the friendly "wolves" in a hunting expedition. He, however, escaped death, for he threatened them with dire revenge. "There will come a great number of French soldiers," he said, "who will burn your villages; they are even now arriving at Quebec. Of that I have certain information."

In preparation for the coming war, de Tracy, soon after his arrival, determined to build forts at the entrances to the routes leading to and from the Iroquois country. These were to be garrisoned by the soldiers of the Carignan regiments so far arrived. The first fort was placed at the mouth of the Richelieu River, to replace that originally built by de Montmagny, and quickly ruined in 1642. It was built under the direction of one of the officers, M. Sorel, whose name was afterwards given to this place, A second was constructed at the foot of a rapid of the Richelieu River and it received the name of Chambly, from another Carignan officer. M. de Sallières constructed the third at another rapid of the same river and it gained its name of Fort Ste. Thérèse from the saint's day occurring on October 15th, the day of its completion. A fourth, St. John, was built at the foot on another rapid of the Richelieu. The fifth was built by another officer, M. Lamothe, on an island of Lake Champlain, at a distance of four leagues from its mouth and was named Ste. Anne.

After their completion, the soldiers were distributed for winter to Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal. Colonel de Sallières was in command at the latter. As provisions were scarce in the storehouses of the company, Talon wrote to Colbert on October 4, 1665:

"I have sent merchandise to Montreal and on the advice of M. de Tracy I have added some ammunition from the king's stores to be distributed to the inhabitants. But in return I expect to receive from them wheat and vegetables, as well as elk skins, to make stronger canoes than those covered with birch bark."

Hearing of the preparation for war, an embassy from the three upper nations under Garacontié, the chief friendly to the French, met de Tracy at Quebec, bringing back with them Charles Le Moyne unscathed, and parleying for peace. But the two insolent lower tribes against whose marauderings the forts had been built, were still contumacious and to be punished presently.

By November, the forts were completed and the peace from Iroquois attacks was so secure that the body of Father Duperon, the old Jesuit missioner at Montreal, who had died at Chambly, was taken to Quebec to be buried. This same month, on November 24th, another Jesuit well known at Montreal, Simon Le Moyne, died at Cap de la Madeleine. He was a man of remarkable courage, tact and ability, and his name will ever be remembered in Canadian history as the first European recorded to have ascended the St. Lawrence River.

A greater sorrow than the imprisonment of Le Moyne was to afflict Montreal in the enforced departure of "its father, and very dear governor," who had served the colony for nearly twenty-four years, and was now to be a sacrifice to the centralizing policy of the new government, which had long looked with envy on the power of the seigneurs of Montreal to name their governor. The policy pursued by de Mézy, and temporarily checked, was now adopted by the Marquis de Tracy, with no uncertain significance.

The joy at the arrival of the troops, now turned to bitterness. The nature of de Maisonneuve's dismissal was conveyed in the appointment, on October 23d, of his successor. "Having permitted," ran de Tracy's letter, "M. de Maisonneuve, governor of Montreal, to make a journey to France for his own private affairs, we have judged that we can make no better choice for a commander in his absence than the person of Sieur Dupuis, and this as long as we shall judge convenient." Under the glove of velvet, can be seen the hand of iron.

This stroke of diplomacy, delicate enough in its way, cut deep enough to wound de Maisonneuve's friends. The charge of inefficiency was read into the veiled dismissal by Marguerite Bourgeoys, his faithful adviser. "He was ordered to return to France," says Sister Morin, "as being incapable of the place and rank of governor he held here; which I could scarcely have believed, had not Sister Bourgeoys assured me of it. He took the order as that of the will of God and crossed over to France, not to make complaint of the bad treatment he had received but to live simply and humbly, an unrecognized man."

De Maisonneuve was left a poor man; he had made no fortune in Canada, as others had done. He had contented himself with being the father of his people. His devotion and attachment to Montreal had stood in the way of his acceptance of the governor generalship. He left under a cloud, but his memory has been vindicated in the noble monument to him in the Place d'Armes of Montreal. There is hardly to be found a higher ideal of Christian knighthood in the whole history of our Canadian heroes.

On his return to France, he led a simple Christian life. His heart was in Montreal, and in his modest home at the Fossé St. Victor, his greatest delight was sometimes to receive a Canadian visitor, for whom he felt a fatherly affection.

His retreat was visited in 1670 by Marguerite Bourgeoys, who thus describes it in the account of her journey to obtain the letters patent for her new institution: "The morning of my arrival I went to the Seminary of St. Sulpice to learn where I could find M. de Maisonneuve. He was lodged at the Fossé St. Victor, near the church of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine, and I arrived at his house rather late. Only a few days before he had constructed a cabin and furnished a little room after the Canadian manner so as to entertain any persons who should come from Canada. I knocked at the door and he himself came down to open it, for he lived on the second floor with his servant, Louis Frins, and he opened the door for me with very great joy." Many other kindnesses did this simple gentleman do for her and for other Canadians, for whom he acted as the kindly agent while they were in Paris.

A true Canadian! May his memory remain forever green at Montreal! He died on September 9, 1676, and his funeral obsequies were carried out in the church hard by his home, above mentioned. Dollier de Casson, in his history of the city, treats the painful incident of the governor's departure thus:

"Speaking of the arrival of the ships and of the 'grand monde' which came to Montreal this year, and of the extreme joy because of the king's goodness in making his victorious arms glare and glitter, all the same these joys were diluted for the more intelligent with much bitterness when they saw M. Maisonneuve, their father and very dear governor, depart this time for good, leaving them in the hands of others, from whom they could not expect the same freedom, the same love, and the same fidelity in putting down the vices, which have since taken effect with those other disgraces and miseries, which had never up to then appeared to the point at which they have since been seen."

It is commonly thought that Maisonneuve arrived at Montreal in his fortieth year. He lived there twenty-three years. After that he spent eleven in France, thus dying at the age of seventy-four years.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us