Canada: the Empire of the North Part 16

[Ill.u.s.tration: ATTACK ON QUEBEC, 1690]

"My faith, Messieurs!" exclaimed one of the French prisoners aboard Phips' ship; "now you _have_ lost your chance! Those {182} are the coureurs de bois from Montreal and the bushrovers of the Pays d'en Haut, eight hundred strong."

The news at last spurred Phips to action. All that night the people of Quebec could hear the English drilling, and shouting "_G.o.d save King William_!" with beat of drum and trumpet calls that set the echoes rolling from Cape Diamond; and on the 18th small boats landed fourteen hundred men to cross the St. Charles River and a.s.sault the Lower Town, while the four largest ships took up a position to cannonade the city.

It was four in the afternoon before the soldiers had been landed amid peppering bullets from the Le Moyne bushrovers. Only a few cannon shots were fired, and they did no damage but to kill an urchin of the Upper Town.

Firing began in earnest on the morning of October 19. The river was churned to fury and the reverberating echoes set the rocks crashing from Cape Diamond, but it was almost impossible for the English to shoot high enough to damage the upper fort. It was easy for the French to shoot down, and great wounds gaped from the hull of Phips' ship, while his masts went over decks in flame, flag and all. The tide drifted the admiral's flag on sh.o.r.e. The French rowed out, secured the prize, and a jubilant shout roared from Lower Town, to be taken up and echoed and reechoed from the Castle! For two more days bombs roared in midair, plunging through the roofs of houses in Lower Town or ricochetting back harmless from the rock wall below Castle St. Louis.

At the St. Charles the land forces were fighting blindly to effect a crossing, but the Le Moyne bushrovers lying in ambush repelled every advance, though Ste. Helene had fallen mortally wounded. On the morning of the 21st the French could hardly believe their senses. The land forces had vanished during the darkness of a rainy night, and ship after ship, sail after sail, was drifting downstream--was it possible?--in retreat. Another week's bombarding would have reduced Quebec to flame and starvation; but another week would have exposed Phips' fleet to wreckage from winter weather, and he had drifted down to Isle Orleans, where the {183} dismantled fleet paused to rig up fresh masts. It was Madame Jolliet who suggested to the Puritan commander an exchange of the prisoners captured at Port Royal with the English from Maine and New Hampshire held in Quebec. She was sent ash.o.r.e by Phips and the exchange was arranged. Winter gales a.s.sailed the English fleet as it pa.s.sed Anticosti, and what with the wrecked and wounded, Phips' loss totaled not less than a thousand men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTLE ST. LOUIS, QUEBEC]

Frontenac had been back in Canada only a year, and in that time he had restored the prestige of French power in America. The Iroquois were glad to sue for peace, and his bitterest enemies, the Jesuits, joined the merrymakers round the bonfires of acclaim kindled in the old Governor's honor as the English retreated, and the joy bells pealed out, and processions surged shouting through the streets of Quebec!

From Hudson Bay to the Mississippi, from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the land of the Sioux, French power reigned supreme. Only Port Nelson, high up on the west coast of Hudson Bay, remained unsubdued, draining the furs of the prairie tribes to England away from Quebec. Iberville had captured it in the fall of 1694, at the cost of his brother Chateauguay's life; but when Iberville departed from Hudson Bay, English men-of-war had come out in 1696 and wrested back this most valuable of all the fur posts. It was now determined to drive the English forever from Hudson Bay. Le Moyne d'Iberville was chosen for the task.

April, 1697, Serigny Le Moyne was dispatched from France with five men-of-war to be placed under the command of Iberville at Placentia, Newfoundland, whence he was "to proceed {184} to Hudson Bay and to leave not a vestige of the English in the North." The frigates left Newfoundland July 8. Three weeks later they were crushing through the ice jam of Hudson Straits. Iberville commanded the _Pelican_ with two hundred and fifty men. Bienville, a brother, was on the same ship.

Serigny commanded the _Palmier_, and there were three other frigates, the _Profound_, the _Violent_, the _Wasp_. Ice locked round the fleet at the west end of Hudson Straits, and fog lay so thick there was nothing visible of any ship but the masthead. For eighteen days they lay, crunched and rammed and separated by the ice drive, till on August 25, early in the morning, the fog suddenly lifted. Iberville saw that Serigny's ship had been carried back {185} in the straits. The _Wasp_ and _Violent_ were not to be seen, but straight ahead, locked in the ice, stood the _Profound_, and beside the French vessel three English frigates, the _Hampshire_, the _Deering_, the _Hudson's Bay_, on their annual voyage to Nelson! A lane of water opened before Iberville.

Like a bird the _Pelican_ spread her wings to the wind and fled.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF QUEBEC (after Franquelin, 1683)]

September 3 Iberville sighted Port Nelson, and for two days cruised the offing, scanning the sea for the rest of his fleet. Early on September 5 the sails of three vessels heaved and rose above the watery horizon.

Never doubting these were his own ships, Iberville signaled. There was no answer. A sailor scrambled to the masthead and shouted down terrified warning. These were not the French ships! They were the English frigates bearing straight down on the single French vessel commanded by Iberville!

On one side was the enemy's fort, on the other the enemy's fleet coming over the waves before a clipping wind, all sails set. Of Iberville's crew forty men were ill of scurvy. Twenty-five had gone ash.o.r.e to reconnoiter. He had left one hundred and fifty fighting men. Amid a rush of orders, ropes were stretched across decks for handhold, cannon were unplugged, and the batterymen below decks stripped themselves for the hot work ahead. The soldiers a.s.sembled on decks, sword in hand, and the Canadian bushrovers stood to the fore, ready to leap across the enemy's decks.

By nine in the morning the ships were abreast, and roaring cannonades from the English cut the decks of the _Pelican_ to kindling wood and set the masts in flame. At the same instant one fell blast of musketry mowed down forty French; but Iberville's batterymen below decks had now ceased to pour a stream of fire into the English hulls. The odds were three to one, and for four hours the battle raged, the English shifting and sheering to lock in death grapple, Iberville's sharpshooters peppering the decks of the foe.

It had turned bitterly cold. The blood on the decks became ice, and each roll of the sea sent wounded and dead weltering {186} from rail to rail. Such holes had been torn in the hulls of both English and French ships that the gunners below decks were literally looking into each other's smoke-grimmed faces. Suddenly all hands paused. A frantic scream cleft the air. The vessels were careening in a tempestuous sea, for the great ship _Hampshire_ had refused to answer to the wheel, had lurched, had sunk,--sunk swift as lead amid hiss of flames into the roaring sea! Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men escaped. The frigate _Hudson's Bay_ surrendered and the _Deering_ fled. Iberville was victor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LANDING OF IBERVILLE'S MEN AT PORT NELSON (After La Potherie)]

But a storm now broke in hurricane gusts over the sea. Iberville steered for land, but waves drenched the wheel at every wash, and, driving before the storm, the _Pelican_ floundered in the sands a few miles from Nelson. All lifeboats had been shot away. In such a sea the Canadian canoes were useless. The shattered masts were tied in four-sided racks. To these {187} Iberville had the wounded bound, and the crew plunged for the sh.o.r.e. Eighteen men perished going ash.o.r.e in the darkness. On land were two feet of snow. No sooner did the French castaways build fires to warm their benumbed limbs than bullets whistled into camp. Governor Bayly of Port Nelson had sent out his sharpshooters. Luckily Iberville's other ships now joined him, and, mustering his forces, the dauntless French leader marched against the fort. Storm had permitted the French to land their cannon undetected.

Trenches were cast up, and three times Serigny Le Moyne was sent to demand surrender.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTURE OF FORT NELSON BY THE FRENCH (After La Potherie)]

"The French are desperate," he urged. "They must take the fort or perish of want, and if you continue the fight there will be no mercy given."

The Hudson's Bay people capitulated and were permitted to march out with arms, bag and baggage. An English ship carried the refugees home to the Thames.

The rest of Iberville's career is the story of colonizing the Mississippi. He was granted a vast seigniory on the Bay of {188} Chaleur, and in 1699 given a t.i.tle. On his way from the Louisiana colony to France his ship had paused at Havana. Here Iberville contracted yellow fever and died while yet in the prime of his manhood, July 9, 1706.

After the victory on Hudson Bay the French were supreme in America and Frontenac supreme in New France. The old white-haired veteran of a hundred wars became the idol of Quebec. Friends and enemies, Jesuits and Recollets, paid tribute to his worth. In November of 1698 the Governor pa.s.sed from this life in Castle St. Louis at the good old age of seventy-eight. He had demonstrated--demonstrated in action so that his enemies acknowledged the fact--that the sterner virtues of the military chieftain go farther towards the making of great nationhood than soft sentiments and religious emotionalism.

{189}

CHAPTER X

FROM 1698 TO 1713

Petty regulations and blue laws--Ma.s.sacre of Deerfield--Madame Freneuse, the painter lady--"Old Wooden Sword"--Subercase at Port Royal--Paul Mascarene's plight--Court dandies cause naval disaster

While Frontenac was striking terror into the heart of New England with his French Canadian bushrovers, the life of the people went on in the same grooves. Spite of a dozen raids on the Iroquois cantons, there was still danger from the warriors of the Mohawk, but the Iroquois braves had found a new stamping ground. Instead of attacking Canada they now crossed westward to war on the allies of the French, the tribes of the Illinois and the Mississippi; and with them traveled their liege friends, English traders from New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The government of Canada continued to be a despotism, pure and simple.

The Supreme Council, consisting of the governor, the intendant, the bishop, and at different times from three to twelve councilors, stood between the people and the King of France, transmitting the King's will to the people, the people's wants to the King; and the laws enacted by the council ranged all the way from criminal decrees to such petty regulations as a modern city wardman might pa.s.s. Laws enacted to meet local needs, but subject to the veto of an absent ruler, who knew absolutely nothing of local needs, exhibited all the absurdities to be expected. The King of France desires the Sovereign Council to discourage the people from using horses, which are supposed to cause laziness, as "it is needful the inhabitants keep up their snowshoe travel so necessary in their wars." "If in two years the numbers of horses do not decrease, they are to be killed for meat." Then comes a law that reflects the presence of the bishop at the governing board.

Horses have become the pride of the country beaux, and the gay be-ribboned carrioles are the distraction of the village cure. "Men are forbidden to gallop their horses within a third of a mile from the church on {190} Sundays." New laws, regulations, arrests, are promulgated by the public crier, "crying up and down the highway to sound of trumpet and drum," chest puffed out with self-importance, gold braid enough on the red-coated regalia to overawe the simple habitants.

Though the companies holding monopoly over trade yearly change, monopoly is still all-powerful in New France,--so all pervasive that in 1741, in order to prevent smuggling to defraud the Company of the Indies, it is enacted that "people using chintz-covered furniture" must upholster their chairs so that the stamp "La Cie des Indes" will be visible to the inspector. The matter of money is a great trouble to New France. Beaver is coin of the realm on the St. Lawrence, and though this beaver is paid for in French gold, the precious metal almost at once finds its way back to France for goods; so that the colony is without coin. Government cards are issued as coin, but as Europe will not accept card money, the result is that gold still flows from New France, and the colony is flooded with paper money worthless away from Quebec.

As of old, the people may still plead their own cases in lawsuits before the Sovereign Council, but now the privileges of caste and cla.s.s and feudalism begin to be felt, and it is enacted that gentlemen may plead their own cases before the council only "when wearing their swords." Young men are urged to qualify as notaries. In addition to the t.i.tle of "Sieur," baronies are created in Canada, foremost among them that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. The feudal seignior now has his coat of arms emblazoned on the church pew where he worships, on his coach door, and on the stone entrance to his mansion. The habitants are compelled to grind their wheat at his mill, to use his great bake oven, to patronize his tannery. The seigniorial mansion itself is taking on more of pomp. Cherry and mahogany furniture have replaced homemade, and the rough-cast walls are now covered with imported tapestries.

Not gently does the Sovereign Council deal with delinquents. In 1735 it is enacted of a man who suicided, "that the corpse be tied to a cart, dragged on a hurdle, head down, face to ground, {191} through the streets of the town, to be hung up by the feet, an object of derision, then cast into the river in default of a cesspool." Criminals who evade punishment by flight are to be hanged in effigy. Montreal citizens are ordered to have their chimneys cleaned every month and their houses provided with ladders. Also "the inhabitants of Montreal must not allow their pigs to run in the street," and they "are forbidden to throw s...o...b..a.l.l.s at each other," and--a regulation which people who know Montreal winters will appreciate--"they are ordered to make paths through the snow before their houses,"--to all of which petty regulations did royalty subscribe sign manual.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONTEMPORARY MAP (after La Hontan, 1689) (The line shows the French idea of the territory under English control)]

The Treaty of Ryswick closed the war between France and England the year before Frontenac died, but it was not known in Canada till 1698.

As far as Canada was concerned it was no peace, barely a truce. Each side was to remain in possession of what it held at the time of the treaty, which meant that France retained all Hudson Bay but one small fort. Though the English of Boston had captured Port Royal, they had left {192} no sign of possession but their flag flying over the tenantless barracks. The French returned from the woods, tore the flag down, and again took possession; so that, by the Treaty of Ryswick, Acadia too went back under French rule.

Indeed, matters were worse than before the treaty, for there could be no open war; but when English settlers spreading up from Maine met French traders wandering down from Acadia, there was the inevitable collision, and it was an easy trick for the rivals to stir up the Indians to raid and ma.s.sacre and indiscriminate butchery. For Indian raids neither country would be responsible to the other. The story belongs to the history of the New England frontier rather than to the record of Canada. It is a part of Canada's past which few French writers tell and all Canadians would fain blot out, but which the government records prove beyond dispute. Indian warfare is not a thing of grandeur at its best, but when it degenerates into the braining of children, the bayoneting of women, the mutilation of old men, it is a horror without parallel; and the amazing thing is that the white men, who painted themselves as Indians and helped to wage this war, were so sure they were doing G.o.d's work that they used to kneel and pray before beginning the butchery. To understand it one has to go back to the Middle Ages in imagination. New France was violently Catholic, New England violently Protestant. Bigotry ever looks out through eyes of jaundiced hatred, and in destroying what they thought was a false faith, each side thought itself instrument of G.o.d. As for the French governors behind the scenes, who pulled the strings that let loose the h.e.l.ldogs of Indian war, they were but obeying the kingcraft of a royal master, who would use Indian warfare to add to his domain.

"The English have sent us presents to drive the Black Gowns away,"

declared the Iroquois in 1702 regarding the French Jesuits. "You did well," writes the King of France to his Viceroy in Quebec, "to urge the Abenakis of Acadia to raid the English of Boston." The Treaty of Ryswick became {193} known at Quebec towards the end of 1698. The border warfare of ravage and butchery had begun by 1701, the English giving presents to the Iroquois to attack the French of the Illinois, the French giving presents to the Abenakis to raid the New England borders. Quebec offers a reward of twenty crowns for the scalp of every white man brought from the English settlements. New England retaliates by offering 20 pounds for every Indian prisoner under ten years of age, 40 pounds for every scalp of full-grown Indian.

Presently the young _n.o.blesse_ of New France are off to the woods, painted like Indians, leading crews of wild bushrovers on ambuscade and midnight raid and border foray.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HERTEL DE ROUVILLE]

"We must keep things stirring towards Boston," declared Vaudreuil, the French governor. Midwinter of 1704 Hertel de Rouville and his four brothers set out on snowshoes with fifty-one bushrovers and two hundred Indians for Ma.s.sachusetts. Dressed in buckskin, with musket over shoulder and dagger in belt, the forest rangers course up the frozen river beds southward of the St. Lawrence, and on over the height of land towards the Hudson, two hundred and fifty miles through pine woods snow padded and silent as death. Two miles from Deerfield the marchers run short of food. It is the last day of February, and the sun goes down over rolling snowdrifts high as the slab stockades of the little frontier town whose hearth-fire smoke hangs low in the frosty air, curling and clouding and lighting to rainbow colors as the ambushed {194} raiders watch from their forest lairs. Snowshoes are laid aside, packs unstrapped, muskets uncased and primed, belts reefed tighter.

Twilight gives place to starlight. Candles on the supper tables of the settlement send long gleams across the snow. Then the villagers hold their family prayers, all unconscious that out there in the woods are the bushrovers on bended knees, uttering prayers of another sort.

Lights are put out. The village lies wrapped in sleep. Still Rouville's raiders lie waiting, shivering in the snow, till starlight fades to the gray darkness that precedes dawn. Then the bushrovers rise, and at moccasin pace, noiseless as tigers, skim across the snow, over the drifts, over the tops of the palisades, and have dropped into the town before a soul has awakened. There is no need to tell the rest. It was not war. It was butchery. Children were torn from their mother's breast to be brained on the hearthstone. Women were hacked to pieces. Houses were set on fire, and before the sun had risen thirty-eight persons had been slaughtered, and the French rovers were back on the forest trail, homeward bound with one hundred and six prisoners. Old and young, women of frail health and children barely able to toddle, were hurried along the trail at bayonet point. Those whose strength was unequal to the pace were summarily knocked on the head as they f.a.gged, or failed to ford the ice streams. Twenty-four perished by the way. Of the one hundred and six prisoners scattered as captives among the Indians, not half were ever heard of again. The others were either bought from the Indians by Quebec people, whose pity was touched, or placed round in the convents to be converted to the Catholic faith. These were ultimately redeemed by the government of Ma.s.sachusetts.

New England's fury over such a raid in time of peace knew no bounds.

Yet how were the English to retaliate? To pursue an ambushed Indian along a forest trail was to follow a vanishing phantom.

From earliest times Boston had kept up trade with Port Royal, and of late years Port Royal had been infested with French pirates, who raided Boston shipping. Colonel Ben {195} Church of Long Island, a noted bushfighter, of gunpowder temper and form so stout that his men had always to hoist him over logs in their forest marches, went storming from New York to Boston with a plan to be revenged by raiding Acadia.

Rouville's bushrovers had burned Deerfield the first of March. By May, Church had sailed from Boston with six hundred men on two frigates and half a hundred whaleboats, on vengeance bent. First he stopped at Baron St. Castin's fort in Maine. St. Castin it was who led the Indians against the English of Maine. The baron was absent, but his daughter was captured, with all the servants, and the fort was burned to the ground. Then up Fundy Bay sailed Church, pausing at Pa.s.samaquoddy to knock four Frenchmen on the head; pausing at Port Royal to take eight men prisoners, kill cattle, ravage fields; pausing at Basin of Mines to capture forty habitants, burn the church, and cut the dikes, letting the sea in on the crops; pausing at Beauba.s.sin, the head of Fundy Bay, in August, to set the yellow wheat fields in flames!

Then he sailed back to Boston with French prisoners enough to insure an exchange for the English held at Quebec.

No sooner had English sails disappeared over the sea than the French came out of the woods. St. Castin rebuilt his fort in Maine. The local Governor, who had held on with his gates shut and cannon pointed while Church ravaged Port Royal village, now strengthened his walls.

Acadia took a breath and went on as before,--a little world in itself, with the pirate ships slipping in and out, loaded to the water line with Boston booty; with the buccaneer Ba.s.set throwing his gold round like dust; with the brave soldier Bonaventure losing his head and losing his heart to the painted lady, Widow Freneuse, who came from n.o.body knew where and lived n.o.body knew how, and plied her mischief of winning the hearts of other women's husbands. "She must be sent away,"

thundered the priest from the pulpit, straight at the garrison officer whose heart she dangled as her trophy. "She must be sent away,"