A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 7

[Sidenote: _Company of the One Hundred a.s.sociates formed by Richelieu._]

He had formed a company of merchants, chiefly connected with Rouen and St. Malo, who nominally controlled the trade of the St. Lawrence; but they were not at one amongst themselves, some were Catholics, others were Huguenots, while the merchants of La Roch.e.l.le refused to join the combination, {70} and traded in defiance of the monopoly which the rival towns claimed to possess. Various changes followed.

About the beginning of 1620, Conde was succeeded as Viceroy of New France by the Duc de Montmorency, and in 1625 the latter sold his office to his nephew the Duc de Ventadour. In 1621, the privileges enjoyed by the Rouen and St. Malo company were transferred to two Huguenot merchants, the brothers De Caen: the result was ill feeling, and on the St. Lawrence open feuds between the old and the new monopolists, until in 1623 some kind of union was formed. Eventually, in 1627, all former privileges were annulled, and the control of Canada pa.s.sed into the hands of a new strong company, known as the One Hundred a.s.sociates, at the head of which was Richelieu.

[Sidenote: _Building of the fort at Quebec._]

During these troubled years, amid the squabbles of conflicting interests, the one source of strength and steadfastness for the Frenchmen on the St. Lawrence was Champlain's own personality, while the two princ.i.p.al events were the building of the fort at Quebec, and the coming of the Jesuit missionaries. As Lieutenant of the King and representative of the Viceroys of New France, Champlain's difficult task was to hold the balance even between the rival traders and to maintain some semblance of law and order along the water highway of Canada. In former years, as an explorer he had obtained unrivalled influence among the Indians; now, as Governor, he brought the same qualities of tact and firmness into play in keeping the peace among his turbulent countrymen. From 1620 to 1624, he was continuously in Canada, and on the rock of Quebec he built a fort stronger and more substantial than the wooden buildings which ab.u.t.ted on the river below. Well situated, able to withstand ten thousand men,[26] such was an English account a few years later of this fort, when enlarged and completed--the fort {71} St. Louis at Quebec. The merchants grudged the money and the men for the work, but the building of a substantial fortress on the St. Lawrence was a step forward towards the French dominion of Canada.

[Footnote 26: _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1574-1660, p.

139, under the year 1632.]

[Sidenote: _Coming of the Jesuits to Canada._]

[Sidenote: _Their policy._]

[Sidenote: _Supported by the French Government._]

The year 1625 was the year in which the first Jesuit missionaries came into Canada. In that year the Duc de Ventadour became Viceroy of New France: he was closely connected with the Jesuit order, and began his regime by sending out priests at his own expense. Their coming marked an epoch in Canadian history. The Franciscan brethren, who were already in the field, and who welcomed the new-comers on their arrival, were men of a different stamp. Devoted missionaries, they kept to their work; they claimed, outwardly at least, no religious monopoly; they had no wish to control the temporal power; and they lived at peace with all men. The Jesuits, on the other hand, imported religious despotism. The Jesuit emissaries were brave men, none more so; they were self-sacrificing to an extreme, venturesome and tenacious, indifferent to danger, and fearless of death. They were tactful in their dealings with the Indians, and were trained in a school of diplomacy which has never been excelled. But they were the champions of exclusiveness, and the enemies of freedom. Their coming meant that one form of religion was to supplant all others--that the spiritual power was, as far as in them lay, to dominate all things and all men; and that while much was to be done, it was to be done for instead of by the colonists and the natives, from above instead of from below, on a rigid system--strong in itself but inimical to healthy growth, to that variety of life, of thought, and of outward form which helps on the expansion of a young community. From their training and their organization, the Jesuits would in any case have had great influence on the fortunes of the land to which they came; but their influence was greater in that their despotic views harmonized for the time being with the policy {72} of the Bourbon Kings and their ministers. For absolute monarchy had taken root in France; and in the French dependencies, as in the mother country, there was to be henceforth political and religious despotism. That the spiritual power might grow too strong was a distant danger, and in France hardly a practical possibility. In the meantime Kings and priests went hand in hand, co-operating against liberty in church and state alike. Protestantism meant liberty. The Jesuits abhorred the Huguenots because they deemed them heretics: the French Kings and their ministers oppressed them rather on political than on religious grounds, but were glad to use the religious argument in support of political aims.

[Sidenote: _Oppression of the Huguenots in France._]

[Sidenote: _Its effects in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The Huguenots excluded from New France._]

On the death of Henry IV in 1610, his young son, Louis XIII, became King of France. In 1624 Richelieu became his minister. In 1627 the discontent of the Huguenots culminated in the open revolt of the town of La Roch.e.l.le; and its fall, after a ten months' siege, gave the King and the cardinal mastery over the Protestants of France. The effect on Canada of this unsuccessful rising was twofold. It involved the exclusion of Huguenot settlers, and it involved also the hostility of England. The patent granted in 1627 to the company of New France, known as the One Hundred a.s.sociates, provided that every colonist who went out to Canada must be a Catholic, and when in the following year Richelieu received the submission of the Roch.e.l.lois, he was well able to enforce this arbitrary provision. It is difficult at the present day to comprehend a policy, initiated and approved by a statesman of consummate ability, which could not but result in blighting the infancy of the greatest French colony. The English colonies were in the main pre-eminently homes of freedom, dwelling-places for men whose political and religious opinions found scant favour in the United Kingdom. For the English race the New World redressed the balance of the Old; and though the {73} colonists who went out from Europe to America, were in their turn prejudiced and narrow-minded, their want of tolerance was not forced upon them from without, and members of one or other unpopular sect, when persecuted in one province, could find refuge in another. Maryland was a British colony, founded under Roman Catholic auspices; its neighbour, Pennsylvania, was founded and dominated by Quaker influence; throughout British North America there were examples of all opinions and of all creeds. The men on the spot quarrelled with and persecuted each other; but persecution and exclusion were not ordained from home. It would have been bad for the British Empire if from all settlements, which the English formed and maintained, Roman Catholics had been rigidly kept out; but it was far worse for France when her Kings and ministers closed the French colonies to the Huguenots.

[Sidenote: _Merits of the Huguenots as colonists._]

[Sidenote: _War between England and France._]

The Huguenots were the best of the French traders; they were men of substance; they were capable, enterprising, and resolute. They were beyond others of their countrymen, the pioneers of trade and colonization, and had led the way in the New World. De Monts was a Huguenot, the De Caens were Huguenots, Champlain himself is said to have been of Huguenot parentage. The exclusion of the French Protestants from Canada meant depriving Canada of the cla.s.s of Frenchmen who were most capable of colonizing the country and developing its trade. Their fault, in the eyes of the French Government, was their independence; that they did not conform to the state religion, and that by not conforming they were politically an element of danger. But what was deemed a fault in France would, in colonizing America, have been a virtue; inasmuch as in the field of adventure, trade, and settlement in new lands, the men who are least bound by old-world systems and traditional views are of most value.

If fair play had been given to the French Protestants, Canada would have been far stronger than it {74} ever was while it belonged to France, and probably it would have continued to belong to France down to the present day. For the closing of Canada to the Huguenots, followed as it was afterwards by their ejection from France, not only weakened France and her colonies, but strengthened the rival nations and their colonies. The French citizens who had begun to build up the French colonial empire, helped to build up instead the colonial empires of other European nations; and the oppressions which they suffered brought them the sympathy, at times the armed sympathy, of the Protestant nations of Europe. The rising of the citizens of La Roch.e.l.le was accompanied by war between England and France.

Buckingham's expedition for the relief of the city, ill planned and ill led, was a fiasco, completing the ruin of the Roch.e.l.lois instead of bringing them relief; but on the other side of the Atlantic, where English adventurers could take advantage of a time of war without being hampered by court favourites, there was a different tale to tell.

[Sidenote: _David Kirke_]

Sir William Alexander,[27] a Scotch favourite of James I, had in the year 1621 obtained from the King a grant of Acadia, or, as it was styled in the patent, Nova Scotia. The patent was renewed by Charles I. When war broke out between Great Britain and France, Alexander combined with certain London merchants, styled 'Adventurers to Canada,' or 'Adventurers in the Company of Canada,' to strike a blow at the French in North America. Prominent among these merchants was George Kirke, a Derbyshire man, who had married the daughter of a merchant of Dieppe. Three ships were fitted out under the command of Kirke's three sons, David, Lewis, and Thomas, David Kirke being in charge of the expedition. The Kirkes were furnished with letters of marque from the King, authorizing {75} them to attack French ships and French settlements in America; and, well armed and equipped, they sailed over the Atlantic, entering the St. Lawrence at the beginning of July, 1628.

[Footnote 27: A further account of Sir William Alexander is given below, p. 173.]

[Sidenote: _attacks the French on the St. Lawrence_]

[Sidenote: _and destroys a French fleet._]

Below Quebec was the trading station at Tadoussac, and higher up than Tadoussac, less than thirty miles below Quebec, there was a small farming establishment--a 'pet.i.te ferme'--at Cape Tourmente, whence the garrison at Quebec drew supplies. Kirke took up his position at Tadoussac, and sent a small party up the river, who burnt and rifled the buildings at Cape Tourmente and killed the cattle. He then dispatched some of his prisoners to Quebec and called upon Champlain to surrender. The summons was rejected, though the garrison was in sore straits. The Iroquois had been of late on the warpath, and the inroads of Indians on the one hand and of English on the other, meant starvation to the handful of men on the rock of Quebec. Yet Richelieu had not been unmindful of Canada. While these events were happening, a French fleet of eighteen vessels had sailed from Dieppe, laden with arms and supplies, and bringing also some settlers with their families, and the inevitable accompaniment of priests. It was the first effort made by the newly formed French company, an earnest of their intention to give strength and permanence to New France. The expedition reached Gaspe Point, at the entrance of the St. Lawrence; but between them and Quebec were the Kirkes and their ships. Instead of moving up the river to attack Quebec, the English admiral went down the river to intercept the new-comers. The English ships were but three to eighteen; but the three ships were fitted and manned for war. The French vessels were transports only, freighted with stores and non-combatants, unable either to fight or to escape. On July 18, Kirke attacked them, and seventeen out of the eighteen ships fell into his hands. Ten vessels he emptied and burnt, the rest of his prizes, {76} with all the cargo and prisoners, he carried off in triumph to Newfoundland.

[Sidenote: _First English capture of Quebec._]

There was bitterness in France when the news came of this great disaster; there was distress and hopelessness at Quebec, where Champlain still held out through the following winter. Kirke had gone back to England; but when July came round again in 1629, he reappeared in the St. Lawrence, with a stronger fleet than before.

The Frenchmen at Quebec were by this time starved out, they had no alternative but to surrender; and on July 22, 1629, the English flag was for the first time hoisted on the rocky citadel of Canada. There was little booty for the conquerors, nothing but beaver skins, which were subsequently sequestrated, and Canadian pines were cut down to freight the English ships. Kirke's ships carried back to England Champlain and his companions, who thence returned to their homes in France; and Quebec was left in charge of an English garrison.

[Sidenote: _Convention of Susa and Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye._]

[Sidenote: _Canada given back to France._]

The Merchant Adventurers had done their work well. With little or no loss, unaided by the Government, they had driven the French from Canada and annexed New France. Had Queen Elizabeth been on the throne of England, she would have scolded and then approved; and would have kept for her country the fruits of English daring and English success. The bold freebooter, Kirke, would have found favour in her eyes; she would have honoured and rewarded him, as she honoured and rewarded Drake. But the Stuarts were cast in a different mould, and no English minister at the time was a match for Richelieu. Before Quebec had fallen, Charles of England and Louis of France had concluded the Convention of Susa, on April 24, 1629; and the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, signed nearly three years later, on March 29, 1632, definitely restored to France her possessions in North America.[28] No consideration was {77} embodied in the treaty for the surrender of Canada, but State Papers have made clear that the price was the unpaid half of Queen Henrietta Maria's marriage dowry. For this sum, already due and wrongly outstanding, Canada was sold. It was a pitiful proceeding, unworthy of an English King, but typical of a Stuart. It is noteworthy that early in the seventeenth century both the Cape and Canada might have become and remained British colonies.

In 1620 two sea captains formally annexed the Cape, before any settlement had as yet been founded at Table Bay; but their action was never ratified by the Government at home.[29] Nine years later Kirke took Quebec, and again the work was undone. So the Dutch in the one case, and the French in the other, made colonies where the English might have run their course; and generations afterwards, Great Britain took again, with toil and trouble, what her adventurers, with truer instinct than her rulers possessed, had claimed and would have kept in earlier days. It is noteworthy, too, that state policy was in great measure responsible for the earlier French loss of Canada, as it was mainly responsible for the later. It is true that Quebec was taken while the French Protestants were still to some extent tolerated, and that a Protestant, De Caen, was selected to receive it back again, when the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was carried into effect. But there were Huguenots on board Kirke's ships, serving under a commander whose mother was of Huguenot blood; and the schism which had broken out in France and {78} culminated for the time in the siege and fall of La Roch.e.l.le, left the best of the French traders and colonizers half-hearted servants of France. Canada was given back, but it was given back to the French Government rather than to the French people; and, as years went on, the St. Lawrence saw no more of the stubborn, strong heretics who had sung their Protestant hymns on its banks. Frenchmen, as gallant as they were, had afterwards the keeping of Canada; but, state-ridden and priest-ridden, they lacked initiative and commercial enterprise.

Freedom was to be found in the backwoods among the _coureurs de bois_, but it was the freedom of lawlessness, unleavened by the steadfast sobriety which marked the Calvinists of France.

[Footnote 28: The Convention of Susa provided that all acts of hostility should cease, and that the articles and contracts as to the marriage of the English Queen should be confirmed. The Treaty of St.

Germain-en-Laye, or rather one of two treaties signed on the same day, provided for the rest.i.tution to France of all places occupied by the English in New France, Acadia, and Canada. Instructions to make rest.i.tution were to be given to the commanders at Port Royal, Fort Quebec, and Cape Breton. General de Caen was named in the treaty as the French representative to arrange for the evacuation of the English. The places were to be restored in the same condition as they had been in at the time of capture, all arms taken were to be made good, and a sum was to be paid for the furs, &c., which had been carried off.]

[Footnote 29: See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 19.]

[Sidenote: _Death of Champlain._]

In July, 1632, the French regained Quebec. In May, 1633, Champlain came back to Canada. For two and a half years he governed it under the French company, and on Christmas Day, 1635, he died at Quebec in the sixty-ninth year of his age. New France owed all to him. Amid every form of difficulty and intrigue, in Europe and in America, among white men and among red, he had held resolutely to his purpose.

His life was pure, his aims were high, his judgment sound, and his foresight great. He lived for the country in which he was born and for that in which he died; but 'the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men',[30] and not in France or Canada alone is lasting honour paid to his name.

[Footnote 30: Thuc., bk. ii, chap. xliii (Jowett's translation).]

NOTE.--For Canadian history down to the death of Champlain, see, among modern books, more especially

PARKMAN'S _Pioneers of France in the New World_, and KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. i.

{79}

CHAPTER III

THE SETTLEMENT OF CANADA AND THE FIVE NATION INDIANS

[Sidenote: _Colonization by the medium of Chartered Companies characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe._]

To trade and to colonize through the medium of Chartered Companies has been characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe. Chartered Companies have not been peculiar to England. The Dutch worked entirely through two great companies; the Danes adopted the same system; and various companies played their part in the early history of French colonization. Herein lay the main difference, in the field of colonial enterprise, between the northern peoples and the southerners who had preceded them. In the case of Spain and Portugal all was done under the immediate control of the Crown. These two nations were concerned with conquest rather than with settlement; and, if the Portuguese were traders, their commerce was not the result of private venture, but was created and supported by the Government. The Spaniards and Portuguese were first in the field.

East and West lay before them, and they divided the world in secure monopoly. The northerners came in--they came in tentatively; policy kept the Governments in the background for fear of incurring war, and freedom of individual action was more ingrained in these races than in the Latin peoples of the south. So freebooters sailed here and there, at one time honoured, at another in disgrace; merchants took shares in this or that venture, and Chartered Companies came into being.

[Sidenote: _French Chartered Companies._]

In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the Netherlands West India Company practically {80} included the whole nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England, the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main, working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in England, the companies were private a.s.sociations, but Court favour was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them, until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone.

[Sidenote: _The company of the One Hundred a.s.sociates._]

Trade jealousies hampered the beginnings of Canadian settlement; there was neither free trade in Canada nor unquestioned monopoly. To cure this evil Richelieu, in 1627, brought into being the company of the One Hundred a.s.sociates, nominally a private a.s.sociation, really the offspring of the Government. Its sphere extended from Florida to the North Sea, and from east to west as far as discovery should extend along the rivers of Canada. It controlled all trade except the fisheries, and it enjoyed sovereign rights in so far that it was ent.i.tled to confer t.i.tles and tenures, subject to the approval of the Crown. The chief officers were to be nominated by the King, but under the Sovereign the company was feudal lord of New France; of its soil and its inland waters, with all that they produced. A statesman projected the company, and, with keen insight into the wants of New France, Richelieu laid down as one of the terms of its charter that settlers were to be introduced in specified numbers, especially and immediately settlers of the artisan cla.s.s; but these provisions were made to a large extent barren by excluding the Huguenots. At the outset the new French company, with all its backing, was foiled in its efforts by the English Merchant Adventurers. The first transports {81} sent out, bearing settlers and supplies, were captured by Kirke.