A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 12

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CHAPTER IV

FRENCH AND ENGLISH DOWN TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT

Down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht, the Iroquois formed the first line of the foes of Canada. Behind them were the English.

[Sidenote: _Little communication in early times between Canada and the English colonies._]

[Sidenote: _Route from the Atlantic to Quebec by the line of the Kennebec._]

After Quebec had been in 1632 given back to France, the English on the Atlantic coast, and the French on the St. Lawrence, for many years came little into contact with each other. In Acadia the two nations overlapped, with results which are told elsewhere, and it was the same in Newfoundland; but the French colonists at Quebec and the English colonists at Boston or in Virginia were far apart. We read of an English traveller finding his way, in 1640, from the coast of Maine, up the Kennebec river and by the Chaudiere, to Quebec, his journey being noted as an explorer's feat with an ultimate design of reaching the North Sea; while a few years later, in 1647-51, the same route became better known, and was taken by French emissaries of peace to the New England states.

[Sidenote: _Proposals for a treaty between the English and French colonies._]

Negotiations were then on foot, at the instance of Winthrop, Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, for a treaty of commerce between the English and French colonies in North America, and it was suggested that they should keep peace with each other even in the event of war in Europe between the respective mother countries.[1] Such a treaty {124} might have been made and kept, if there had been no native question; but each side had Indian friends and Indian foes, and could not afford to alienate the one or add to the number of the other. The French wanted New England support against the Iroquois, and with the Iroquois the New Englanders had no quarrel. Thus the friendly overtures between the two parties came to nothing; but Frenchmen on the river of Canada and Englishmen by the open sea went their own ways, having no direct dealings with each other in war or peace.

[Footnote 1: A like sensible policy was pursued in the little island of St. Kitts, when first colonized by French and English. They agreed to keep the peace whether or not France and Great Britain were at war. See vol. ii of this series, chap. iv, p. 135. See also Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol. ii, p. 426.]

[Sidenote: _The English take New York._]

A change came when the English, in 1664, took possession of New York.

They too had now a river--the Hudson--which carried them inland; they became neighbours and friends of the Five Nations; and their natural line of expansion was in the direction of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. From this time onward collision between French and English was inevitable, and it was equally inevitable that the colony of New York should be the central point of the contest.

[Sidenote: _Want of union between the English colonies._]

Before the Dutchmen on Manhattan Island and in the valley of the Hudson became subjects of the British Crown, they had themselves absorbed the Swedish colonists on the Delaware. The result, therefore, of New York becoming a British province was to link together the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. It has been said above that English colonization in North America was more compact and more continuous than French. In other words, though the English colonists many times outnumbered the French, they were less dispersed through the wilderness. But the compactness and continuity was comparative only. Continuity of English colonization meant little more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could plant {125} a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without committing a trespa.s.s and fighting for its place. There was no continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood.

Separately they were planted. Their surroundings, their traditions, their interests were all distinct. Sprung in the main from one stock, and speaking one language, they had little else in common. They had not even the bond of a common religious creed.

[Sidenote: _Dissensions in New York._]

Within each single colony there was division still. Settlements and homesteads were often far from one another, and political or religious dissensions supplemented geographical separation. New York was an instance in point. Alone among the colonies, it had a good waterway for any distance inland; but there was little community of interest between the settlers at Albany or Schenectady, and the seaport at Manhattan Island, except so far as the latter commanded the import and export trade of the Hudson valley. The settlers at the mouth of the Hudson were merchants and seafaring men. The settlers inland were farmers, landholders, and traders with the Indians. The former were exposed to attack by sea, but recked little of the French in Canada or their Indian allies. The latter had nothing to fear from a hostile fleet, but were constantly in danger from an inroad from Canada. Then there were feuds of race and religion. The English overpowered the Dutch, and with the English came in the rule of the Duke of York, Roman Catholic influence, and a policy too often dictated by France.

[Sidenote: _Leisler's rebellion._]

The Revolution, which turned out the Stuarts in England, was followed by a rising in New York. There was a cleavage, not so much on lines of race, as on those of politics and religion. The extreme Protestants and Republicans, whose stronghold was in and about the town of New York, rose against the existing system, which was upheld by the more {126} moderate and aristocratic section of the population, who were stronger up country, and were supported by such men as Schuyler, the chief magistrate of Albany. Jacob Leisler, a German, led the revolutionary party, and in 1689, backed by the militia, he deposed the Lieutenant-Governor and took the government into his own hands. He played the part of Cromwell for two years until, in 1691, regular troops were sent out from England, when he was deserted by his followers, imprisoned, and hanged; and the ordinary methods of colonial government were resumed.

[Sidenote: _Want of union made the English impotent against the French._]

Colony being thus divided from colony, and the one colony which directly ab.u.t.ted on Canada being divided against itself, it was long before the English made any headway against the French on the St.

Lawrence. At almost any given date the French had a larger number of regular troops available, supported by Canadian rangers, whose life was spent in border warfare--the whole being under one Governor, who was, as has been seen, invariably a man of considerable military experience. On the sea the English could more than hold their own, but the sea-route from New York or Boston to Quebec was long and troublesome. If such an expedition was taken in hand, there could be no secrecy and no speed in the matter. There was gathering of ships and transports; discussions as to the quota of each colony; selection of a leader because he was a good neighbour or a popular citizen, rather than for any naval or military capacity. There was sailing round the coast, taking Acadia on the way, and finally arrival before Quebec after men and ships had dropped off and the French had been forewarned and forearmed. Thus down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht English efforts against the French in Canada amounted to little more than giving arms and supplies to the Five Nations, making occasional counter raids by land, and still more occasional demonstrations by sea.

{127} [Sidenote: _First proposal for joint action against the French._]

It will be remembered[2] that in February, 1666, the French commander, Courcelles, on his bold midwinter expedition against the Mohawks, strayed from his route, and found himself near Corlaer or Schenectady, where he learnt that the English had become masters of New York, and that there was an English garrison at Albany. This was the first intrusion of the French into the Hudson valley. Tracy's expedition against the Mohawk towns later in the same year gave Colonel Nicolls, the first English Governor of New York, occasion to invite the New England colonies to join him in attacking the French.

They refused, fearing that, if they sided with the Iroquois, they would be exposed to attack from the Abenakis, who were on their borders, and who were friends of the French, foes of the Five Nations. Some twenty years then pa.s.sed without open rupture. New York was retaken by the Dutch and regained by the English. The colonization of Canada went on. The Iroquois remained comparatively quiet, and in Frontenac's first term of administration western exploration and western trade began to determine French policy in Canada and English policy in New York.

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 104.]

[Sidenote: _Thomas Dongan._]

[Sidenote: _Meeting between the English Governors and the chiefs of the Five Nations._]

[Sidenote: _Bad feeling between French and English._]

In 1683, after Frontenac had come to Canada for the first time and gone again, New York was given in the Irish Catholic, Thomas Dongan, a Governor of strength and foresight. In the following year, at a conference held at Albany, at which Lord Howard of Effingham, the Governor of Virginia, was present, the alliance between the English and the Five Nations was formally confirmed; and, a.s.sured of English aid and protection, the Iroquois turned their strength against Canada. Though there was peace between Great Britain and France in James II's time, the relations between New York and Canada were the reverse of friendly. The French knew that the Five Nations were backed by the English. Dongan on his part was resolved that the {128} trade of the West should not be left exclusively in French hands.

Angry letters pa.s.sed between him and Denonville, English and Dutch traders on the lakes were intercepted by the Canadians, and a party from Montreal captured and looted three English trading posts on Hudson Bay. In 1688 Dongan was recalled, and in the following year news reached the American colonies of the Revolution in England.

[Sidenote: _French plan for attacking New York._]

[Sidenote: _Frontenac's raiding parties._]

The expulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of William III to the throne of Great Britain meant war with France; and at this critical moment Frontenac came back to Canada. He came back with a plan, devised by Callieres and approved by the King, for attacking New York by land and sea. A stillborn scheme it proved, through untoward delays, but its conception indicated that New York was recognized by the French Government and its advisers as the key of the position in North America. While plans were being laid by the French for the invasion of New York the Iroquois invaded Canada, and the ma.s.sacre of Lachine faced Frontenac on his return in 1689. Next year he sent out against the English colonies the three expeditions which have been already mentioned.[3]

[Footnote 3: See above, p. 113.]

[Sidenote: _The capture of Schenectady._]

The first started from Montreal in depth of winter, following the familiar route of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, and intending to strike a blow at Albany. The men were picked for the work, Frenchmen and Indians, about 250 in all, led by the best of Canadian rangers, such as Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brothers. They toiled through ice and snow, and, turning off from the path to Albany, in the darkness of a winter's night they fell upon the Dutch settlement of Schenectady. It was the time of Leisler's movement, when New York was in the throes of revolution. The village was unguarded, its gates were open, its inmates were asleep. A blockhouse manned by eight or nine militiamen from {129} Connecticut was stormed, and the scene was one of helpless ma.s.sacre.

[Sidenote: _The attack on Salmon Falls and Falmouth._]

The second party, smaller in number, consisting of some fifty French and Abenaki Indians, left Three Rivers towards the end of January, and near the end of March made a night attack on the settlement of Salmon Falls, on the borders of New Hampshire and Maine. Again the English, sleeping and unprepared, were murdered in their beds, and the murderers, making good their retreat, joined forces with the third and strongest party, which had set out from Quebec to attack the settlement of Falmouth at Cas...o...b..y. Falmouth stood where the town of Portland in Maine now stands. There was a fort at the place--Fort Loyal--into which the outlying settlers gathered with their families when the attacking force of four or five hundred men appeared. After a short defence the commander, Sylva.n.u.s Davies by name, surrendered on solemn promise, according to his own circ.u.mstantial account, of quarter and freedom for the whole company.

The terms were immediately broken, and all the English were ma.s.sacred or carried into captivity.

[Sidenote: _Effect of the French raids._]

Thus three separate raids on the English colonies, sent out under Frontenac's orders in the year 1690, were all successful. They were well devised, and carried out with skill, courage, and determination.

The English and Dutch settlers, on their side, showed the greatest negligence and little stubbornness or competence in self-defence. The immediate result was to invigorate the French and their Indian allies; but the causes of their momentary success were the causes of their ultimate failure; and even at the moment these marauding exploits threatened new danger to Canada. The French succeeded because, leagued with savages, they in all things likened themselves to their companions, they habited themselves in Indian dress, their warriors were ferocious as Indian warriors, their priests hounded on to blood. They succeeded because their trade was war not peace, {130} because they were roving adventurers who had only their lives to lose, ravening among quiet men of substance who had homes and wives and children to be plundered and slain. It was as certain that in course of time the cause of the English colonists would prevail, as that the Highland clans, who in Scotland marauded their southern neighbours, would eventually be broken, or that the Five Nations themselves, if left to fight alone, would eventually go down before the settled life of Canada.

[Sidenote: _They tended to unite the English colonists._]

On this occasion three blows were struck, nearly at the same time, at three separate points in a long undefended line. The adoption of this policy by the French, and still more the fact of its success, in reality tended to remove the one great obstacle to British supremacy in North America. When Sylva.n.u.s Davies, taken at Fort Loyal and carried prisoner to Quebec, asked Frontenac the reason for the savage raid on the Cas...o...b..y settlement, he was told that it was reprisal for the support given to the Iroquois by New York. His rejoinder, which was to the effect that New England should not be called upon to answer for the doings of New York, showed how little community of sentiment or interest existed in the English colonies. The one great source of weakness to the English cause, the greatest source of strength to the French, was the disunion of the English colonies and their indifference to each other. Consolidation could come only through partnership in suffering, and pressure from a common foe.

This was the lesson which Frontenac taught, when his border ruffians carried havoc from the head waters of the Hudson to the sea-coast of Maine.

[Sidenote: _The colonies determine to attack Canada._]

The lesson was never fully learnt as long as the Atlantic colonies were British possessions and Canada was French; but for a time the French outrages produced some semblance of common action on the other side; and at a conference held at Albany, in 1690, it was resolved to attack Canada by land and sea. The land expedition, taking the route {131} of Lake Champlain, was a failure, ending in a small raid on the French settlement of La Prairie; and the main effort was made by sea.

On sea the New Englanders showed the way, led by the men of Ma.s.sachusetts.

[Sidenote: _Ma.s.sachusetts takes the lead._]

[Sidenote: _Capture of Port Royal._]

The 'Bostonnais,' as the French called them, were dangerous foes of Canada. Puritans, Republicans, sea-fighters, sea-traders, they were all that the Canadians were not. They were strong in numbers too. At the end of the seventeenth century, Boston was a town of some 7,000 inhabitants, and the population of the whole colony was estimated at not far short of 50,000, against less than 15,000 French in Canada.