Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

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One incident seemed for a moment likely to rob the intriguer of the
fruits of his ingenuity. The Iroquois who had escaped in the skirmish
contrived to reach Fort Frontenac some time after the last visit of
the Rat. He told what had happened; and, after being treated with the
utmost attention, he was sent to Onondaga, charged with explanations
and regrets. The Iroquois dignitaries seemed satisfied, and Denonville
wrote to the minister that there was still good hope of peace. He
little knew his enemy. They could dissemble and wait; but they neither
believed the governor nor forgave him. His supposed treachery at La
Famine, and his real treachery at Fort Frontenac, filled them with a
patient but unextinguishable rage. They sent him word that they were
ready to renew the negotiation; then they sent again, to say that
Andros forbade them. Without doubt they used his prohibition as a
pretext. Months passed, and Denonville remained in suspense. He did
not trust his Indian allies, nor did they trust him. Like the Rat and
his Hurons, they dreaded the conclusion of peace, and wished the war
to continue, that the French might bear the brunt of it, and stand
between them and the wrath of the Iroquois. [Footnote: _Denonville au
Ministre_, 9 _Nov_., 1688.]

In the direction of the Iroquois, there was a long and ominous
silence. It was broken at last by the crash of a thunderbolt. On the
night between the fourth and fifth of August, a violent hail-storm
burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. Lawrence a little
above Montreal. Concealed by the tempest and the darkness, fifteen
hundred warriors landed at La Chine, and silently posted themselves
about the houses of the sleeping settlers, then screeched the
war-whoop, and began the most frightful massacre in Canadian history.
The houses were burned, and men, women, and children indiscriminately
butchered. In the neighborhood were three stockade forts, called Rémy,
Roland, and La Présentation; and they all had garrisons. There was
also an encampment of two hundred regulars about three miles distant,
under an officer named Subercase, then absent at Montreal on a visit
to Denonville, who had lately arrived with his wife and family. At
four o'clock in the morning, the troops in this encampment heard a
cannon-shot from one of the forts. They were at once ordered under
arms. Soon after, they saw a man running towards them, just escaped
from the butchery. He told his story, and passed on with the news to
Montreal, six miles distant. Then several fugitives appeared, chased
by a band of Iroquois, who gave over the pursuit at sight of the
soldiers, but pillaged several houses before their eyes. The day was
well advanced before Subercase arrived. He ordered the troops to
march. About a hundred armed inhabitants had joined them, and they
moved together towards La Chine. Here they found the houses still
burning, and the bodies of their inmates strewn among them or hanging
from the stakes where they had been tortured. They learned from a
French surgeon, escaped from the enemy, that the Iroquois were all
encamped a mile and a half farther on, behind a tract of forest.
Subercase, whose force had been strengthened by troops from the forts,
resolved to attack them; and, had he been allowed to do so, he would
probably have punished them severely, for most of them were helplessly
drunk with brandy taken from the houses of the traders. Sword in hand,
at the head of his men, the daring officer entered the forest; but, at
that moment, a voice from the rear commanded a halt. It was that of
the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, just come from Montreal, with positive
orders from Denonville to run no risks and stand solely on the
defensive. Subercase was furious. High words passed between him and
Vaudreuil, but he was forced to obey.

The troops were led back to Fort Roland, where about five hundred
regulars and militia were now collected under command of Vaudreuil. On
the next day, eighty men from Fort Rémy attempted to join them; but
the Iroquois had slept off the effect of their orgies, and were again
on the alert. The unfortunate detachment was set upon by a host of
savages, and cut to pieces in full sight of Fort Roland. All were
killed or captured, except Le Moyne de Longueuil, and a few others,
who escaped within the gate of Fort Rémy. [Footnote: _Recueil de ce
qui s'est passé en Canada depuis l'année_ 1682; _Observations on the
State of Affairs in Canada_, 1689, _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 431;
Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_; _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Nov_.,
1689. This detachment was commanded by Lieutenant de la Rabeyre, and
consisted of fifty French and thirty Indian converts.]

Montreal was wild with terror. It had been fortified with palisades
since the war began; but, though there were troops in the town under
the governor himself, the people were in mortal dread. No attack was
made either on the town or on any of the forts, and such of the
inhabitants as could reach them were safe; while the Iroquois held
undisputed possession of the open country, burned all the houses and
barns over an extent of nine miles, and roamed in small parties,
pillaging and scalping, over more than twenty miles. There is no
mention of their having encountered opposition; nor do they seem to
have met with any loss but that of some warriors killed in the attack
on the detachment from Fort Rémy, and that of three drunken stragglers
who were caught and thrown into a cellar in Fort La Présentation. When
they came to their senses, they defied their captors, and fought with
such ferocity that it was necessary to shoot them. Charlevoix says
that the invaders remained in the neighborhood of Montreal till the
middle of October, or more than two months; but this seems incredible,
since troops and militia enough to drive them all into the St.
Lawrence might easily have been collected in less than a week. It is
certain, however, that their stay was strangely long. Troops and
inhabitants seem to have been paralyzed with fear.

At length, most of them took to their canoes, and recrossed Lake St.
Louis in a body, giving ninety yells to show that they had ninety
prisoners in their clutches. This was not all; for the whole number
carried off was more than a hundred and twenty, besides about two
hundred who had the good fortune to be killed on the spot. As the
Iroquois passed the forts, they shouted, "Onontio, you deceived us,
and now we have deceived you." Towards evening, they encamped on the
farther side of the lake, and began to torture and devour their
prisoners. On that miserable night, stupefied and speechless groups
stood gazing from the strand of La Chine at the lights that gleamed
along the distant shore of Châteaugay, where their friends, wives,
parents, or children agonized in the fires of the Iroquois, and scenes
were enacted of indescribable and nameless horror. The greater part of
the prisoners were, however, reserved to be distributed among the
towns of the confederacy, and there tortured for the diversion of the
inhabitants. While some of the invaders went home to celebrate their
triumph, others roamed in small parties through all the upper parts of
the colony, spreading universal terror. [2]

Canada lay bewildered and benumbed under the shock of this calamity;
but the cup of her misery was not full. There was revolution in
England. James II., the friend and ally of France, had been driven
from his kingdom, and William of Orange had seized his vacant throne.
Soon there came news of war between the two crowns. The Iroquois alone
had brought the colony to the brink of ruin; and now they would be
supported by the neighboring British colonies, rich, strong, and
populous, compared to impoverished and depleted Canada.

A letter of recall for Denonville was already on its way. [Footnote:
_Le Roy à Denonville_, 31 _Mai_, 1689.] His successor arrived in
October, and the marquis sailed for France. He was a good soldier in a
regular war, and a subordinate command; and he had some of the
qualities of a good governor, while lacking others quite as essential.
He had more activity than vigor, more personal bravery than firmness,
and more clearness of perception than executive power. He filled his
despatches with excellent recommendations, but was not the man to
carry them into effect. He was sensitive, fastidious, critical, and
conventional, and plumed himself on his honor, which was not always
able to bear a strain; though as regards illegal trade, the besetting
sin of Canadian governors, his hands were undoubtedly clean. [3] It is
said that he had an instinctive antipathy for Indians, such as some
persons have for certain animals; and the _coureurs de bois_, and
other lawless classes of the Canadian population, appeared to please
him no better. Their license and insubordination distressed him, and
he constantly complained of them to the king. For the Church and its
hierarchy his devotion was unbounded; and his government was a season
of unwonted sunshine for the ecclesiastics, like the balmy days of the
Indian summer amid the gusts of November. They exhausted themselves in
eulogies of his piety; and, in proof of its depth and solidity, Mother
Juchereau tells us that he did not regard station and rank as very
useful aids to salvation. While other governors complained of too many
priests, Denonville begged for more. All was harmony between him and
Bishop Saint-Vallier; and the prelate was constantly his friend, even
to the point of justifying his worst act, the treacherous seizure of
the Iroquois neutrals. [Footnote: Saint-Vallier, _État Présent_, 91,
92 (Quebec, 1856).] When he left Canada, the only mourner besides the
churchmen was his colleague, the intendant Champigny; for the two
chiefs of the colony, joined in a common union with the Jesuits, lived
together in unexampled concord. On his arrival at court, the good
offices of his clerical allies gained for him the highly honorable
post of governor of the royal children, the young Dukes of Burgundy,
Anjou, and Berri.


[1] La Hontan, I. 180 (1709). Most of the details of the story are
drawn from this writer, whose statement I have compared with that of
Denonville, in his letter dated Nov. 9, 1688; of Callières, Jan.,
1689; of the _Abstract of Letters from Canada_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs_.,
IX. 393; and of the writer of _Relation des Évenements de la Guerre_,
8 _Oct._, 1688. Belmont notices the affair with his usual conciseness.
La Hontan's account is sustained by the others in most, though not in
all of its essential points. He calls the Huron chief _Adario, ou le
Rat_. He is elsewhere mentioned as Kondiarouk, Kondiaront, Souoias,
and Souaiti. La Hontan says that the scene of the treachery was one of
the rapids of the St. Lawrence, but more authentic accounts place it
at La Famine.

[2] The best account of the descent of the Iroquois at La Chine is
that of the _Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en Canada_, 1682-1712. The
writer was an officer under Subercase, and was on the spot. Belmont,
superior of the mission of Montreal, also gives a trustworthy account
in his _Histoire du Canada_. Compare La Hontan, I. 193 (1709), and La
Potherie, II. 229. Farther particulars are given in the letters of
Callières, 8 Nov.; Champigny, 16 Nov.; and Frontenac, 15 Nov.
Frontenac, after visiting the scene of the catastrophe a few weeks
after it occurred, writes: "Ils (_les Iroquois_) avoient bruslé plus
de trois lieues de pays, saccagé toutes les maisons jusqu'aux portes
de la ville, enlevé plus de six vingt personnes, tant hommes, femmes,
qu'enfants, après avoir massacré plus de deux cents dont ils avoient
cassé la teste aux uns, bruslé, rosty, et mangé les autres, ouvert le
ventre des femmes grosses pour en arracher les enfants, et fait des
cruautez inouïes et sans exemple." The details given by Belmont, and
by the author of _Histoire de l'Eau de Vie en Canada_, are no less
revolting. The last-mentioned writer thinks that the massacre was a
judgment of God upon the sale of brandy at La Chine.

Some Canadian writers have charged the English with instigating the
massacre. I find nothing in contemporary documents to support the
accusation. Denonville wrote to the minister, after the Rat's
treachery came to light, that Andros had forbidden the Iroquois to
attack the colony. Immediately after the attack at La Chine, the
Iroquois sachems, in a conference with the agents of New England,
declared that "we did not make war on the French at the persuasion of
our brethren at Albany; for we did not so much as acquaint them of our
intention till fourteen days after our army had begun their march."
_Report of Conference_ in Colden, 103.

[3] "I shall only add one article, on which possibly you will find it
strange that I have said nothing; namely, whether the governor carries
on any trade. I shall answer, no; but my Lady the Governess (_Madame
la Gouvernante_), who is disposed not to neglect any opportunity for
making a profit, had a room, not to say a shop, full of goods, till
the close of last winter, in the château of Quebec, and found means
afterwards to make a lottery to get rid of the rubbish that remained,
which produced her more than her good merchandise." _Relation of the
State of Affairs in Canada_, 1688, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 388.
This paper was written at Quebec.




CHAPTER X.

1689, 1690.

RETURN OF FRONTENAC. VERSAILLES.--FRONTENAC AND THE KING.--FRONTENAC
SAILS FOR QUEBEC.--PROJECTED CONQUEST OF NEW YORK.--DESIGNS OF THE
KING.--FAILURE.--ENERGY OF FRONTENAC.--FORT FRONTENAC.--PANIC.--
NEGOTIATIONS.--THE IROQUOIS IN COUNCIL.--CHEVALIER D'AUX.--TAUNTS OF
THE INDIAN ALLIES.--BOLDNESS OF FRONTENAC.--AN IROQUOIS DEFEAT.--
CRUEL POLICY.--THE STROKE PARRIED.


The sun of Louis XIV had reached its zenith. From a morning of
unexampled brilliancy it had mounted to the glare of a cloudless noon;
but the hour of its decline was near. The mortal enemy of France was
on the throne of England, turning against her from that new point of
vantage all the energies of his unconquerable genius. An invalid built
the Bourbon monarchy, and another invalid battered and defaced the
imposing structure: two potent and daring spirits in two frail bodies,
Richelieu and William of Orange.

Versailles gave no sign of waning glories. On three evenings of the
week, it was the pleasure of the king that the whole court should
assemble in the vast suite of apartments now known as the Halls of
Abundance, of Venus, of Diana, of Mars, of Mercury, and of Apollo. The
magnificence of their decorations, pictures of the great Italian
masters, sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, tapestries, vases and statues
of silver and gold; the vista of light and splendor that opened
through the wide portals; the courtly throngs, feasting, dancing,
gaming, promenading, conversing, formed a scene which no palace of
Europe could rival or approach. Here were all the great historic names
of France, princes, warriors, statesmen, and all that was highest in
rank and place; the flower, in short, of that brilliant society, so
dazzling, captivating, and illusory. In former years, the king was
usually present, affable and gracious, mingling with his courtiers and
sharing their amusements; but he had grown graver of late, and was
more often in his cabinet, laboring with his ministers on the task of
administration, which his extravagance and ambition made every day
more burdensome. [Footnote: Saint-Simon speaks of these assemblies.
The halls in question were finished in 1682; and a minute account of
them, and of the particular use to which each was destined, was
printed in the _Mercure Français_ of that year. See also Soulié,
_Notice du Musée impérial de Versailles_, where copious extracts from
the _Mercure_ are given. The _grands appartements_ are now entirely
changed in appearance, and turned into an historic picture gallery.]

There was one corner of the world where his emblem, the sun, would not
shine on him. He had done his best for Canada, and had got nothing for
his pains but news of mishaps and troubles. He was growing tired of
the colony which he had nursed with paternal fondness, and he was more
than half angry with it because it did not prosper. Denonville's
letters had grown worse and worse; and, though he had not heard as yet
of the last great calamity, he was sated with ill tidings already.

Count Frontenac stood before him. Since his recall, he had lived at
court, needy and no longer in favor; but he had influential friends,
and an intriguing wife, always ready to serve him. The king knew his
merits as well as his faults; and, in the desperate state of his
Canadian affairs, he had been led to the resolution of restoring him
to the command from which, for excellent reasons, he had removed him
seven years before. He now told him that, in his belief, the charges
brought against him were without foundation. [Footnote: _Journal de
Dangeau_, II. 390. Frontenac, since his recall, had not been wholly
without marks of royal favor. In 1685, the king gave him a
"gratification" of 3,500 francs. _Ibid_., I. 205.] "I send you back to
Canada," he is reported to have said, "where I am sure that you will
serve me as well as you did before; and I ask nothing more of you."
[Footnote: Goyer, _Oraison Funèbre du Comte de Frontenac_.] The post
was not a tempting one to a man in his seventieth year. Alone and
unsupported,--for the king, with Europe rising against him, would give
him no more troops,--he was to restore the prostrate colony to hope
and courage, and fight two enemies with a force that had proved no
match for one of them alone. The audacious count trusted himself, and
undertook the task; received the royal instructions, and took his last
leave of the master whom even he after a fashion honored and admired.

He repaired to Rochelle, where two ships of the royal navy were
waiting his arrival, embarked in one of them, and sailed for the New
World. An heroic remedy had been prepared for the sickness of Canada,
and Frontenac was to be the surgeon. The cure, however, was not of his
contriving. Denonville had sent Callières, his second in command, to
represent the state of the colony to the court, and beg for help.
Callières saw that there was little hope of more troops or any
considerable supply of money; and he laid before the king a plan,
which had at least the recommendations of boldness and cheapness. This
was to conquer New York with the forces already in Canada, aided only
by two ships of war. The blow, he argued, should be struck at once,
and the English taken by surprise. A thousand regulars and six hundred
Canadian militia should pass Lake Champlain and Lake George in canoes
and bateaux, cross to the Hudson and capture Albany, where they would
seize all the river craft and descend the Hudson to the town of New
York, which, as Callières stated, had then about two hundred houses
and four hundred fighting men. The two ships were to cruise at the
mouth of the harbor, and wait the arrival of the troops, which was to
be made known to them by concerted signals, whereupon they were to
enter and aid in the attack. The whole expedition, he thought, might
be accomplished in a month; so that by the end of October the king
would be master of all the country. The advantages were manifold. The
Iroquois, deprived of English arms and ammunition, would be at the
mercy of the French; the question of English rivalry in the west would
be settled for ever; the king would acquire a means of access to his
colony incomparably better than the St. Lawrence, and one that
remained open all the year; and, finally, New England would be
isolated, and prepared for a possible conquest in the future.

The king accepted the plan with modifications, which complicated and
did not improve it. Extreme precautions were taken to insure secrecy;
but the vast distances, the difficult navigation, and the accidents of
weather appear to have been forgotten in this amended scheme of
operation. There was, moreover, a long delay in fitting the two ships
for sea. The wind was ahead, and they were fifty-two days in reaching
Chedabucto, at the eastern end of Nova Scotia. Thence Frontenac and
Callières had orders to proceed in a merchant ship to Quebec, which
might require a month more; and, on arriving, they were to prepare for
the expedition, while at the same time Frontenac was to send back a
letter to the naval commander at Chedabucto, revealing the plan to
him, and ordering him to sail to New York to co-operate in it. It was
the twelfth of September when Chedabucto was reached, and the
enterprise was ruined by the delay. Frontenac's first step in his new
government was a failure, though one for which he was in no way
answerable. [1]

It will be well to observe what were the intentions of the king
towards the colony which he proposed to conquer. They were as follows:
If any Catholics were found in New York, they might be left
undisturbed, provided that they took an oath of allegiance to the
king. Officers, and other persons who had the means of paying ransoms,
were to be thrown into prison. All lands in the colony, except those
of Catholics swearing allegiance, were to be taken from their owners,
and granted under a feudal tenure to the French officers and soldiers.
All property, public or private, was to be seized, a portion of it
given to the grantees of the land, and the rest sold on account of the
king. Mechanics and other workmen might, at the discretion of the
commanding officer, be kept as prisoners to work at fortifications and
do other labor. The rest of the English and Dutch inhabitants, men,
women, and children, were to be carried out of the colony and
dispersed in New England, Pennsylvania, or other places, in such a
manner that they could not combine in any attempt to recover their
property and their country. And, that the conquest might be perfectly
secure, the nearest settlements of New England were to be destroyed,
and those more remote laid under contribution. [2]

In the next century, some of the people of Acadia were torn from their
homes by order of a British commander. The act was harsh and violent,
and the innocent were involved with the guilty; but many of the
sufferers had provoked their fate, and deserved it.

Louis XIV. commanded that eighteen thousand unoffending persons should
be stripped of all that they possessed, and cast out to the mercy of
the wilderness. The atrocity of the plan is matched by its folly. The
king gave explicit orders, but he gave neither ships nor men enough to
accomplish them; and the Dutch farmers, goaded to desperation, would
have cut his sixteen hundred soldiers to pieces. It was the scheme of
a man blinded by a long course of success. Though perverted by
flattery and hardened by unbridled power, he was not cruel by nature;
and here, as in the burning of the Palatinate and the persecution of
the Huguenots, he would have stood aghast, if his dull imagination
could have pictured to him the miseries he was preparing to inflict.
[Footnote: On the details of the projected attack of New York, _Le Roy
à Denonville_, 7 _Juin_, 1689; _Le Ministre à Denonville, même date_;
_Le Ministre à Frontenac, même date_; _Ordre du Roy à Vaudreuil, même
date_; _Le Roy au Sieur de la Caffinière, même date_; _Champigny au
Ministre_, 16 _Nov._, 1689.]

With little hope left that the grand enterprise against New York could
succeed, Frontenac made sail for Quebec, and, stopping by the way at
Isle Percée, learned from Récollet missionaries the irruption of the
Iroquois at Montreal. He hastened on; but the wind was still against
him, and the autumn woods were turning brown before he reached his
destination. It was evening when he landed, amid fireworks,
illuminations, and the firing of cannon. All Quebec came to meet him
by torchlight; the members of the council offered their respects, and
the Jesuits made him an harangue of welcome. [Footnote: La Hontan, I.
199.] It was but a welcome of words. They and the councillors had done
their best to have him recalled, and hoped that they were rid of him
for ever; but now he was among them again, rasped by the memory of
real or fancied wrongs. The count, however, had no time for
quarrelling. The king had told him to bury old animosities and forget
the past, and for the present he was too busy to break the royal
injunction. [Footnote: _Instruction pour le Sieur Comte de Frontenac_,
7 _Juin_, 1689.] He caused boats to be made ready, and in spite of
incessant rains pushed up the river to Montreal. Here he found
Denonville and his frightened wife. Every thing was in confusion. The
Iroquois were gone, leaving dejection and terror behind them.
Frontenac reviewed the troops. There were seven or eight hundred of
them in the town, the rest being in garrison at the various forts.
Then he repaired to what was once La Chine, and surveyed the miserable
waste of ashes and desolation that spread for miles around.

To his extreme disgust, he learned that Denonville had sent a Canadian
officer by secret paths to Fort Frontenac, with orders to Valrenne,
the commandant, to blow it up, and return with his garrison to
Montreal. Frontenac had built the fort, had given it his own name, and
had cherished it with a paternal fondness, reinforced by strong hopes
of making money out of it. For its sake he had become the butt of
scandal and opprobrium; but not the less had he always stood its
strenuous and passionate champion. An Iroquois envoy had lately with
great insolence demanded its destruction of Denonville; and this
alone, in the eyes of Frontenac, was ample reason for maintaining it
at any cost. [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Nov._, 1689.] He
still had hope that it might be saved, and with all the energy of
youth he proceeded to collect canoes, men, provisions, and arms;
battled against dejection, insubordination, and fear, and in a few
days despatched a convoy of three hundred men to relieve the place,
and stop the execution of Denonville's orders. His orders had been but
too promptly obeyed. The convoy was scarcely gone an hour, when, to
Frontenac's unutterable wrath, Valrenne appeared with his garrison. He
reported that he had set fire to every thing in the fort that would
burn, sunk the three vessels belonging to it, thrown the cannon into
the lake, mined the walls and bastions, and left matches burning in
the powder magazine; and, further, that when he and his men were five
leagues on their way to Montreal a dull and distant explosion told
them that the mines had sprung. It proved afterwards that the
destruction was not complete; and the Iroquois took possession of the
abandoned fort, with a large quantity of stores and munitions left by
the garrison in their too hasty retreat. [Footnote: _Frontenac au
Ministre_, 15 _Nov._, 1689; _Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en Canada
depuis l'année_ 1682.]

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