Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France Part 1

Old Quebec.

by Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan.

NOTE

The student of the history of the ancient capital of Canada is embarra.s.sed, not by the dearth but by the abundance of material at his disposal. The present volume, therefore, makes no claim to originality. It is but an a.s.similation of this generous data, and a simple comment upon the changing scenes which were recorded by such ancient authorities as the Jesuit priests and pioneers in their _Relations_, and by the monumental works of Francis Parkman, whose researches occupied more than forty years, and whose picturesque pen has done for Canada what Prescott's did for Mexico. Admiring tribute and grat.i.tude must also be expressed for the years of careful study and the unfaltering energy by which the late Mr. Kingsford produced his valuable _History of Canada_. Nor can any one, writing of Quebec, proceed successfully without constant reference to the historical gleanings of Sir James Le Moine, who has spent a lifetime in the romantic atmosphere of old-time ma.n.u.scripts, and who, with Monsieur l'Abbe Casgrain, represents, in its most attractive form, that composite citizenship which has the wit and grace of the old _regime_ with the useful ardour of the new.

THE AUTHORS.

PRELUDE

About the walled city of Quebec cling more vivid and enduring memories than belong to any other city of the modern world. Her foundation marked a renaissance of religious zeal in France, and to the people from whom came the pioneers who suffered or were slain for her, she had the glamour of new-born empire, of a conquest renewing the glories of the days of Charlemagne. Visions of a hemisphere controlled from Versailles haunted the days of Francis the First, of the Grand Monarch, of Colbert and of Richelieu, and in the sky of national hope and over all was the Cross whose pa.s.sion led the Church into the wilderness. The first emblem of sovereignty in the vast domain which Jacques Cartier claimed for Francis his royal master, was a cross whereon was inscribed--

_Franciscus Primus, Dei Gratia Francorum Rex, Regnat._

In spite of cruel neglect due to internal troubles and that European strife in which the motherland was engaged for so many generations, the eyes of Frenchmen turned to their over-sea dominions with imaginative hope, with conviction that the great continent of promise would renew in France the glories that were Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. How hard the patriotic colonists strove to retain those territories which Champlain, La Salle, Maisonneuve, Joliet, and so many others won through nameless toil and martyrdom, and how at last the broad lands pa.s.sed to another race and another flag, not by fault or folly or lack of courage of the people, but by the criminal corruption of the ruling few, is the narrative which runs through these pages.

For at least the first hundred years of its existence, Quebec was New France; and the story of Quebec in that period is the story of all Canada. The fortress was the heart and soul of French enterprise in the New World. From the Castle of St. Louis, on the summit of Cape Diamond, went forth mandates, heard and obeyed in distant Louisiana.

The monastic city on the St. Lawrence was the centre of the web of missions, which slowly spread from the dark Saguenay to Lake Superior.

The fearful tragedies of Indian warfare had their birth in the early policy of Quebec. The fearless voyageurs, whose canoes glided into unknown waters, ever westward--towards Cathay, as they believed--made Quebec their base for exploration. And as time went on, the rock-built stronghold of the north became the nerve-centre of that half-century of conflict which left the flag of Britain waving in victory on the Plains of Abraham.

When Montcalm in his last hours consigned to the care of the British conquerors the colonists he had loved and for whom he had fought, he proclaimed a momentous epoch in the world's history--the loss of an Empire to a great nation of Europe and the gain of an Empire to another. Within a generation the Saxon Conquistador was to suffer the same humiliation, and to yield up that colonial territory from which Quebec had been a.s.sailed; but the fortress city was always to both nations the keystone of the arch of power on the American continent.

When she was lost to France, Louisiana, that vast territory along the Mississippi--a kingdom in itself--still remained, but no high memory cherished it, no national hope hung over it, and a hundred years ago Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the new Western power--the United States. As a nation the labours of France were finished in America on the day that De Ramezay yielded up the keys of the city, and Wolfe's war-worn legions marched through St. Louis Gate from the Plains of Abraham.

Yet scores of thousands of the people of France remained in the city and the province to be ruled henceforth by the intrepid race, with which it had competed in a death-struggle for dominion through so many adventurous and uncertain years. Victory, like a wayward imp of Fate, had settled first upon one and then upon the other, and once before 1759 England had held the keys of the great fortress only to yield them up again in a weak bargain; but the die was thrown for the last time when Amherst securely quartered himself at Montreal, and Murray at the Chateau St. Louis, where Frontenac and Vaudreuil had had their day of virile governance. Never again was the banner of the golden lilies to wave in sovereignty over the St. Lawrence, though the people who had fought and toiled under its protection were to hold to their birthright and sustain their language through the pa.s.sing generations, faithful to tradition and origin, but no less faithful to the Canadian soil which their fame, their labour, and their history had made sacred to them. Frenchmen of a vanished day they were to cherish their past with an apprehensive devotion, and yet to keep the pact they made with the conqueror in 1759, and later in 1774 when the Quebec Act secured to them their religious liberty, their civic code, and their political status. This pact, further developed in the first Union of the English and French provinces in 1840, and afterwards in the Confederation of 1867, has never suffered injury or real suspicion, but was first made certain by loyalty to the British flag, in the War of the American Revolution, and piously sealed by victorious duty and valour in the war of 1812. The record of fidelity has been enriched since that day in the north-west rebellion fomented by a French half-breed in 1885, and in the late war in South Africa, where French Canadians fought side by side with English comrades for the preservation of the Empire.

These later acts of imperial duty are not performed by Anglicised Frenchmen, for the pioneer race of Quebec are still a people apart in the great Dominion so far as their civic and social, their literary and domestic life are concerned. They share faithfully in the national development, and honourably serve the welfare of the whole Dominion--sometimes with a too careful and unsympathetic reserve--but within their own beloved province they retain as zealously and more jealously than the most devoted Highland men their language and their customs, and faithfully conserve the civil laws which mark them off as clearly from the English provinces as Jersey and Guernsey are distinguished from the United Kingdom. They have changed little with the pa.s.sing years, and their city has changed less. In many respects the Quebec of to-day is the Quebec of yesterday. Time and science have altered its detail, but viewed from afar it seems to have altered as little as Heidelberg and Coblenz. Lower Town huddles in artistic chaos at the foot of the sheltering cliff, and, as aforetime, the overhanging fort protrudes its protecting muzzles. Spires and antique minarets which looked down upon a French settlement struggling with foes in feathers and war-paint, still gleam from the towering rock on which their stable foundations are laid; and after five sieges and the pa.s.sing of two and a half centuries the mother city of the continent remains a faithful survivor of an heroic age, on historic ground sacred to the valour of two great races.

OLD QUEBEC

CHAPTER I

EARLY VOYAGES

Living in the twentieth century, to which the uttermost parts of the earth are revealed, and with only the undiscovered poles left to lure us on, we cannot fully appreciate the geographical ignorance of the Middle Ages. The travels of Marco Polo had only lately revealed the wonders of the golden East, and in the West the Pillars of Hercules marked earth's furthest bound. Beyond lay the _mare tenebrosum_, the Mysterious Sea, girding the level world. England was not then one of the first nations of the earth. She was not yet a maritime power, she had not begun the work of colonisation and empire: the fulcrum of Europe lay further south. But as our Tudor sovereigns were making secure dominion in "these isles," the Byzantine Empire was moving slowly to its end, and favouring circ.u.mstances were already making Italy the centre of the world's commerce and culture. There the feudal system, never deeply rooted, was declining slowly, and Italian energy and enterprise now having larger opportunity, seized the commerce of the East as it received vast impulse from the Crusades, and this trade became the source of Empire.

Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were now great emporiums of Oriental wares, were waxing rich on a transport trade which had no option but to use their ports and their vessels. Inland Florence had no part in maritime enterprise, but was the manufacturing, literary, and art centre of mediaeval Europe. Her silk looms made her famous throughout the world, her banks were the purse of Europe, and among her famous sons were Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci. For the development of their commerce, the cities of the North had grouped themselves into the great Hanseatic League, with branches in Bruges, London, Bergen, and Novgorod. Commercialism had everywhere become the keynote of the closing Middle Ages, inspiring that maritime enterprise which was soon to outline a new map of the world.

The main route between the West and East had hitherto been by way of the Red Sea and the Euphrates, and it was controlled by the Italian cities. Italy had, therefore, no interest in finding a water route to the East which would rob her of this profitable overland traffic. But the experience of her sailors made them the most skilful of the world's navigators and the readiest instruments of other nations in expeditions of discovery. Thus Columbus of Genoa, Cabot of Venice, and Verrazzano of Florence are found accepting commissions from foreign sovereigns.

"The discoveries of Copernicus and Columbus," says Froude, "created, not in any metaphor, but in plain language, a new heaven and a new earth." The new theory of Copernicus was, indeed, one of the choicest flowers of the Renaissance, and though timidly enunciated, it revolutionised the world's geography. Further, the discovery of the polarity of the magnet, and the invention of the astrolabe, gave to the mariners of the fifteenth century a sense of security lacking to their fathers, while the kindling flame of the New Learning led them upon the most daring quests. The Portuguese were the first to enter on the brilliant path of sea-going exploration which distinguishes this century above all others. By 1486 they had already found Table Mountain rising out of the Southern sea, and hoping always for a pa.s.sage to the East, had named it the Cape of Good Hope. Spain soon followed her rival into these unknown regions, a policy due mainly to the enthusiasm of Isabella of Castile, who, in spite of the conservative apathy of the Council of Salamanca, was eager to become the patroness of Christopher Columbus.

Although the Northmen of the tenth century had been blown almost fortuitously upon the sh.o.r.es of Nova Scotia, by way of Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador, the discovery of North America must always be set to the credit of Christopher Columbus. From the age of fourteen he had been upon the sea, and his keen mind was stored with all the nautical science afforded by the awakened spirit of the time. To this practical equipment he added a romantic temperament and a habit of reflection which carried him to greater certainty in his convictions than even that attained by his correspondent, the learned Toscanelli.

a.s.suming that the world was round--no commonplace of the time--he determined forthwith to reach India by sailing westward. His bones lie buried in the Western hemisphere, which his intrepidity revealed to an astonished world.

As soon as Columbus, in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, had opened the gates of the New World, ships from England and France began to hasten westward across the Atlantic. The Cabots, holding to the North, discovered Newfoundland in 1497; Denis of Honfleur explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506; and a few years later Verrazzano coasted along the North Atlantic seaboard in four ships fitted out for him by the youthful Francis of Angouleme. This voyage was practically the beginning of French enterprise in the New World.

On Verrazzano's return to Dieppe, he sent the King a written account of his travels, and France was presently burning with excitement over the abundant riches of the New World. Spain, meanwhile, had been reaping the wealth of the West Indies, and Hernando Cortes was laying a stern hand upon the treasures of Mexico. And now disasters at home were, for a time, to rob the fickle Francis of all ambition for transatlantic glory. In the contest for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire he had been worsted by Charles V., and shortly afterwards the strength of France was hopelessly shattered at Pavia, the King being carried back a prisoner to Madrid. But when, at last, the peace of Cambrai had somewhat restored tranquillity to France, Philippe de Brion-Chabot, a courtier at the Louvre, decided to follow up Verrazzano's almost forgotten exploit of ten years before, and Jacques Cartier became the instrument of this tardy resolution.

Jacques Cartier was born at St. Malo, the white b.u.t.tress of Brittany.

Daring Breton fishing-boats had often sailed as far as the cod-banks of Newfoundland, and it is not impossible that Cartier himself had already crossed the Atlantic before he was commissioned by Chabot.

From a child he had lived upon the sea. He was forty years old when he received his commission, and on the 20th of April, 1634, he set sail from his native town. Holding a northern course he came at length to Newfoundland, and having pa.s.sed through the Straits of Belle Isle and across the Gulf, he erected a white cross at Gaspe, and sailed on westward till Anticosti came in sight. It was then August, and as constant westerly winds delayed his further course, he decided to return to France. Unfortunately, however, he did not leave until he had lured on board his ships two young Indians, whom he carried back as trophies, sowing thereby the seed of future trouble.

His countrymen were deeply stirred by his report. Beyond a doubt the great Gulf up which he had sailed was the water route to Cathay, and France could hardly await the arrival of spring before sending another expedition. By the middle of May, 1635, Cartier was ready to embark on a second voyage, and on this occasion no less than three ships were equipped, numbering among their officers men of birth and quality--gentlemen in search of adventure, others eager to mend broken fortunes, and all bent on claiming new lands for France and for the faith. a.s.sembling in the old cathedral they confessed their sins and heard the Ma.s.s; and on the 19th of May the dwellers of St. Malo saw the sails of the _Hermine_, _La Pet.i.te Hermine_, and _Emerillon_ melt into the misty blue of the horizon. Almost immediately a fierce storm scattered the ships, and they only came together again six weeks later in the Straits of Belle Isle. This time Cartier coasted along the north sh.o.r.e of the Gulf; and to a bay opposite Anticosti he gave the name of St. Lawrence, upon whose festival day it was discovered. Then for the first time a white man entered "the great river of Canada."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JACQUES CARTIER]

With the kidnapped Indians for pilots, the three caravels pa.s.sed by the canon of the Saguenay, mysterious in its sombre silence. Presently the rocky cliff of Cap Tourmente towered above them, and at length they glided into safe anchorage off the Isle of Bacchus.[2]

To the savage Indians the mighty vessels of France were marvels from another world, and the river was soon swarming with their birch-bark canoes. The story of the two braves who had been carried away to France filled them with grave wonder, and the glittering costumes of Cartier and his officers seemed like the garments of G.o.ds. The great chief, Donnacona, waiving regal conventions, clambered upon the deck of the _Hermine_, where Cartier regaled him with cakes and wine, and with a few beads purchased the amity of his naked followers. Then Cartier set out in a small boat to explore the river.

Above the Island of Bacchus he found himself in a beautiful harbour, on the farther side of which the great river of Canada boomed through a narrow gorge. On the left of the basin the broader channel of the river pa.s.sed out between the Isle of Bacchus and a range of wooded heights; while on his right, a tower of rock rose majestically from the foam-flecked water. Among the oak and walnut trees that crowned the summit of this natural battlement cl.u.s.tered the bark cabins of Stadacone, whence, as wide as eye could range, the Lord of Canada held his savage sway.

[Footnote 2: Now the Island of Orleans.]

This Algonquin eyrie seemed only accessible by a long detour through the upland, in which the rocky heights gradually descended to the little river of St. Croix. Thither Cartier and his companions made their way, and then, for the first time, white men gazed upon the green landscape spread beneath that high promontory. On the north and east the blue rim of the world's oldest mountains, then as now, seemed to shut off a mysterious barren land; on the south and west the eye met a fairer prospect, for beyond a sea of verdure the sun's rays glistened upon the distant hills of unknown, unnamed Vermont. Between these half-points of the compa.s.s the broad St. Lawrence rolled outward to the sea, and the discovering eye followed its bending course beyond the Isle of Bacchus and past the beetling shoulder of Cap Tourmente.

In the summer of 1535 Cartier stood entranced on this magnificent precipice; and to-day the visitor to Quebec gazes from the King's Bastion upon the same panorama, hardly altered by the flight of nearly four centuries.

But Quebec had yet for many years to await its founder. Cartier's mission was one of discovery, not colonisation; and he resolved to push further up the river to Hochelaga, an important village of which the Indians had told him. But Donnacona soon repented of the information he had given, and left nothing undone to turn Cartier from his purpose. As a last resource the magicians of Stadacone devised a plan to frighten the obstinate Frenchman, but the crude masquerade arranged for that purpose provoked nothing but amus.e.m.e.nt. A large canoe came floating slowly down the river, and when it drew near the ships the Frenchmen beheld three black devils, garbed in dogskins, and wearing monstrous horns upon their heads. Chanting the hideous monotones of the medicine men, they glided past the fleet, made for the sh.o.r.e, and disappeared in the thicket. Presently, Cartier's two interpreters issued from the wood and declared that the G.o.d Coudouagny had sent his three chief priests to warn the French against ascending the river, predicting dire calamities if they should persist.

Cartier's reply to the Indian deity was brief and irreverent, and he forthwith made ready to depart.

The _Hermine_ and _Emerillon_ were towed to safer moorings in the quiet St. Croix, and with the pinnace and a small company of men Cartier set out for Hochelaga. The journey was long and toilsome, but by the beginning of October they came to a beautiful island, the site of Montreal. A thousand Indians thronged the sh.o.r.e to welcome the mysterious visitors, presenting gifts of fish and fruit and corn.

Then, by a well-worn trail, the savages led the way through the forest to the foot of the mountain, and into the triple palisades of Hochelaga.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MANOIR DE JACQUES CARTIER a LIMOULON]

The early frosts of autumn had already touched the trees, and Cartier, having accomplished his exploration, hastened back to Stadacone, where he set about making preparations for spending the winter. A fort was hastily built at the mouth of the St. Croix. But the exiles were unready for the violent season that soon closed in upon them, almost burying their fort in drifting snow and casing the ships in an armour of glistening ice. Pent up by the biting frost, and eking out a wretched existence on salted food, their condition grew deplorable. A terrible scurvy a.s.sailed the camp, and out of a company of one hundred and ten, twenty-five died, while only three or four of the rest escaped its ravages. The flint-like ground defied their feeble spades, and the dead bodies were hidden away in banks of snow. To make matters still worse, the Indians grew first indifferent, and then openly hostile. Cartier was sorely beset to conceal from them the weakness of his garrison. At last, however, a friendly Indian told him of a decoction by which the scurvy might be cured. The leaves of a certain evergreen were put to brew, and this medicine proved the salvation of the decimated company.

By and by came the spring; and when at last sun and rain had loosed the fetters of ice, Cartier determined to return to France. Before the ships weighed anchor, however, Donnacona and four of his companions were enticed on board, and with these sorry trophies the French captain turned his prows homeward. At midsummer-time the storm-battered ships glided once more into the rock-bound harbour of St. Malo.

Five years elapsed before France sent another expedition into the New World. The perennial conflict with Charles V. kept the French king's mind fixed on his home dominions, and Chabot, Cartier's former patron, had fallen upon evil times. At last, however, a new adventurer appeared in the person of the Sieur de Roberval, a n.o.bleman of Picardy. The elaborate but almost incomprehensible text of the royal patent described the new envoy as Lord of Norembega, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Baccalaos. Under him Cartier was persuaded to take the post of Captain-General. The objects of the enterprise were discovery, colonisation, and the conversion of the Indians; albeit the instruments for this pious purpose were more than doubtful, their five ships being freighted for the most part with thieves and malefactors recruited from the prisons of France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARRIVAL OF JACQUES CARTIER AT QUEBEC, 1535]

An unexpected delay occurring at St. Malo, it was determined that Cartier should sail at once, and that Roberval should follow as soon as possible with additional ships and supplies. Accordingly, on the 23rd of May, 1541, Cartier again spread his sails for the West, and after a stormy pa.s.sage arrived in the St. Lawrence. The uncertain att.i.tude of the Indians, however, prompted him to establish his colony further westward than Stadacone, and he continued his course up the river and dropped anchor at Cap Rouge.

Summer and autumn pa.s.sed away and brought no sign of Roberval. A gloomy winter further damped the spirits of the colonists at Charlesburg-Royal; and when the ice had gone out of the river, Cartier gathered his company back into the ships and set sail again for France. At Newfoundland he encountered the belated Roberval. High words were exchanged, and, as a result, the fiery Viceroy sailed alone to New France; and Cartier, bidding Canada a last farewell, held on his way to St. Malo.