Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

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Though not himself of the highest rank, his position at court was,
from the courtier point of view, an enviable one. The princess, after
her banishment had ended, more than once mentions incidentally that
she had met him in the cabinet of the queen. Her dislike of him became
intense, and her fondness for his wife changed at last to aversion.
She charges the countess with ingratitude. She discovered, or thought
that she discovered, that in her dispute with her father, and in
certain dissensions in her own household, Madame de Frontenac had
acted secretly in opposition to her interests and wishes. The
imprudent lady of honor received permission to leave her service. It
was a woeful scene. "She saw me get into my carriage," writes the
princess, "and her distress was greater than ever. Her tears flowed
abundantly: as for me, my fortitude was perfect, and I looked on with
composure while she cried. If any thing could disturb my tranquility,
it was the recollection of the time when she laughed while I was
crying." Mademoiselle de Montpensier had been deeply offended, and
apparently with reason. The countess and her husband received an order
never again to appear in her presence; but soon after, when the
princess was with the king and queen at a comedy in the garden of the
Louvre, Frontenac, who had previously arrived, immediately changed his
position, and with his usual audacity took a post so conspicuous that
she could not help seeing him. "I confess," she says, "I was so angry
that I could find no pleasure in the play; but I said nothing to the
king and queen, fearing that they would not take such a view of the
matter as I wished." [Footnote: _Memoires de Mademoiselle de
Montpensier_, III. 270.]

With the close of her relations with "La Grande Mademoiselle," Madame
de Frontenac is lost to sight for a while. In 1669, a Venetian embassy
came to France to beg for aid against the Turks, who for more than two
years had attacked Candia in overwhelming force. The ambassadors
offered to place their own troops under French command, and they asked
Turenne to name a general officer equal to the task. Frontenac had the
signal honor of being chosen by the first soldier of Europe for this
most arduous and difficult position. He went accordingly. The result
increased his reputation for ability and courage; but Candia was
doomed, and its chief fortress fell into the hands of the infidels,
after a protracted struggle, which is said to have cost them a hundred
and eighty thousand men. [Footnote: _Oraison funèbre du Comte de
Frontenac, par le Père Olivier Goyer_. A powerful French contingent,
under another command, co-operated with the Venetians under
Frontenac.]

Three years later, Frontenac received the appointment of Governor and
Lieutenant-General for the king in all New France. "He was," says
Saint-Simon, "a man of excellent parts, living much in society, and
completely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of
his wife; and he was given the government of Canada to deliver him
from her, and afford him some means of living." [Footnote: _Memoires
du Duc de Saint-Simon_, II. 270; V. 336.] Certain scandalous songs of
the day assign a different motive for his appointment. Louis XIV. was
enamoured of Madame de Montespan. She had once smiled upon Frontenac;
and it is said that the jealous king gladly embraced the opportunity
of removing from his presence, and from hers, a lover who had
forestalled him. [1]

Frontenac's wife had no thought of following him across the sea. A
more congenial life awaited her at home. She had long had a friend of
humbler station than herself, Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise, daughter of
an obscure gentleman of Poitou, an amiable and accomplished person,
who became through life her constant companion. The extensive building
called the Arsenal, formerly the residence of Sully, the minister of
Henry IV., contained suites of apartments which were granted to
persons who had influence enough to obtain them. The Duc de Lude,
grand master of artillery, had them at his disposal, and gave one of
them to Madame de Frontenac. Here she made her abode with her friend;
and here at last she died, at the age of seventy-five. The annalist
Saint-Simon, who knew the court and all belonging to it better than
any other man of his time, says of her: "She had been beautiful and
gay, and was always in the best society, where she was greatly in
request. Like her husband, she had little property and abundant wit.
She and Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise, whom she took to live with her,
gave the tone to the best company of Paris and the court, though they
never went thither. They were called _Les Divines_. In fact, they
demanded incense like goddesses; and it was lavished upon them all
their lives."

Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise died long before the countess, who retained
in old age the rare social gifts which to the last made her apartments
a resort of the highest society of that brilliant epoch. It was in her
power to be very useful to her absent husband, who often needed her
support, and who seems to have often received it.

She was childless. Her son, François Louis, was killed, some say in
battle, and others in a duel, at an early age. Her husband died nine
years before her; and the old countess left what little she had to her
friend Beringhen, the king's master of the horse. [Footnote: On
Frontenac and his family, see Appendix A.]


[1] Note of M. Brunet, in _Correspondance de la Duchesse d'Orléans_,
I. 200 (ed. 1869). The following lines, among others, were passed
about secretly among the courtiers:--

"Je suis ravi que le roi, notre sire,
Aime la Montespan;
Moi, Frontenac, je me crève de rire,
Sachant ce qui lui pend;
Et je dirai, sans être des plus bestes,
Tu n'as que mon reste,
Roi,
Tu n'as que mon reste."

Mademoiselle de Montpensier had mentioned in her memoirs, some years
before, that Frontenac, in taking out his handkerchief, dropped from
his pocket a love-letter to Mademoiselle de Mortemart, afterwards
Madame de Montespan, which was picked up by one of the attendants of
the princess. The king, on the other hand, was at one time attracted
by the charms of Madame de Frontenac, against whom, however, no
aspersion is cast.

The Comte de Grignan, son-in-law of Madame de Sévigné, was an
unsuccessful competitor with Frontenac for the government of Canada.




CHAPTER II.

1672-1675.

FRONTENAC AT QUEBEC.

ARRIVAL.--BRIGHT PROSPECTS.--THE THREE ESTATES OF NEW FRANCE.--SPEECH
OF THE GOVERNOR.--HIS INNOVATIONS.--ROYAL DISPLEASURE.--SIGNS OF
STORM.--FRONTENAC AND THE PRIESTS.--HIS ATTEMPTS TO CIVILIZE THE
INDIANS.--OPPOSITION.--COMPLAINTS AND HEART-BURNINGS.


Frontenac was fifty-two years old when he landed at Quebec. If time
had done little to cure his many faults, it had done nothing to weaken
the springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe middle age, he
was as keen, fiery, and perversely headstrong as when he quarrelled
with Préfontaine in the hall at St. Fargeau.

Had nature disposed him to melancholy, there was much in his position
to awaken it. A man of courts and camps, born and bred in the focus of
a most gorgeous civilization, he was banished to the ends of the
earth, among savage hordes and half-reclaimed forests, to exchange the
splendors of St. Germain and the dawning glories of Versailles for a
stern gray rock, haunted by sombre priests, rugged merchants and
traders, blanketed Indians, and wild bush-rangers. But Frontenac was a
man of action. He wasted no time in vain regrets, and set himself to
his work with the elastic vigor of youth. His first impressions had
been very favorable. When, as he sailed up the St. Lawrence, the basin
of Quebec opened before him, his imagination kindled with the grandeur
of the scene. "I never," he wrote, "saw any thing more superb than the
position of this town. It could not be better situated as the future
capital of a great empire." [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 2
_Nov._, 1672.]

That Quebec was to become the capital of a great empire there seemed
in truth good reason to believe. The young king and his minister
Colbert had labored in earnest to build up a new France in the west.
For years past, ship-loads of emigrants had landed every summer on the
strand beneath the rock. All was life and action, and the air was full
of promise. The royal agent Talon had written to his master: "This
part of the French monarchy is destined to a grand future. All that I
see around me points to it; and the colonies of foreign nations, so
long settled on the seaboard, are trembling with fright in view of
what his Majesty has accomplished here within the last seven years.
The measures we have taken to confine them within narrow limits, and
the prior claim we have established against them by formal acts of
possession, do not permit them to extend themselves except at peril of
having war declared against them as usurpers; and this, in fact, is
what they seem greatly to fear." [Footnote: _Talon au Ministre_, 2
_Nov_., 1671.]

Frontenac shared the spirit of the hour. His first step was to survey
his government. He talked with traders, colonists, and officials;
visited seigniories, farms, fishing-stations, and all the infant
industries that Talon had galvanized into life; examined the new ship
on the stocks, admired the structure of the new brewery, went to Three
Rivers to see the iron mines, and then, having acquired a tolerably
exact idea of his charge, returned to Quebec. He was well pleased with
what he saw, but not with the ways and means of Canadian travel; for
he thought it strangely unbecoming that a lieutenant-general of the
king should be forced to crouch on a sheet of bark, at the bottom of a
birch canoe, scarcely daring to move his head to the right or left
lest he should disturb the balance of the fragile vessel.

At Quebec he convoked the council, made them a speech, and
administered the oath of allegiance. [Footnote: _Registre du Conseil
Souverain._] This did not satisfy him. He resolved that all Quebec
should take the oath together. It was little but a pretext. Like many
of his station, Frontenac was not in full sympathy with the
centralizing movement of the time, which tended to level ancient
rights, privileges, and prescriptions under the ponderous roller of
the monarchical administration. He looked back with regret to the day
when the three orders of the state, clergy, nobles, and commons, had a
place and a power in the direction of national affairs. The three
orders still subsisted, in form, if not in substance, in some of the
provinces of France; and Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing
them in Canada. Not only did he cherish the tradition of faded
liberties, but he loved pomp and circumstance, above all, when he was
himself the central figure in it; and the thought of a royal governor
of Languedoc or Brittany, presiding over the estates of his province,
appears to have fired him with emulation.

He had no difficulty in forming his order of the clergy. The Jesuits
and the seminary priests supplied material even more abundant than he
wished. For the order of the nobles, he found three or four
_gentilshommes_ at Quebec, and these he reinforced with a number of
officers. The third estate consisted of the merchants and citizens;
and he formed the members of the council and the magistrates into
another distinct body, though, properly speaking, they belonged to the
third estate, of which by nature and prescription they were the head.
The Jesuits, glad no doubt to lay him under some slight obligation,
lent him their church for the ceremony that he meditated, and aided in
decorating it for the occasion. Here, on the twenty-third of October,
1672, the three estates of Canada were convoked, with as much pomp and
splendor as circumstances would permit. Then Frontenac, with the ease
of a man of the world and the loftiness of a _grand seigneur_,
delivered himself of the harangue he had prepared. He wrote
exceedingly well; he is said also to have excelled as an orator;
certainly he was never averse to the tones of his own eloquence. His
speech was addressed to a double audience: the throng that filled the
church, and the king and the minister three thousand miles away. He
told his hearers that he had called the assembly, not because he
doubted their loyalty, but in order to afford them the delight of
making public protestation of devotion to a prince, the terror of
whose irresistible arms was matched only by the charms of his person
and the benignity of his rule. "The Holy Scriptures," he said,
"command us to obey our sovereign, and teach us that no pretext or
reason can dispense us from this obedience." And, in a glowing eulogy
on Louis XIV., he went on to show that obedience to him was not only a
duty, but an inestimable privilege. He dwelt with admiration on the
recent victories in Holland, and held forth the hope that a speedy and
glorious peace would leave his Majesty free to turn his thoughts to
the colony which already owed so much to his fostering care. "The true
means," pursued Frontenac, "of gaining his favor and his support, is
for us to unite with one heart in laboring for the progress of
Canada." Then he addressed, in turn, the clergy, the nobles, the
magistrates, and the citizens. He exhorted the priests to continue
with zeal their labors for the conversion of the Indians, and to make
them subjects not only of Christ, but also of the king; in short, to
tame and civilize them, a portion of their duties in which he plainly
gave them to understand that they had not hitherto acquitted
themselves to his satisfaction. Next, he appealed to the nobles,
commended their gallantry, and called upon them to be as assiduous in
the culture and improvement of the colony as they were valiant in its
defence. The magistrates, the merchants, and the colonists in general
were each addressed in an appropriate exhortation. "I can assure you,
messieurs," he concluded, "that if you faithfully discharge your
several duties, each in his station, his Majesty will extend to us all
the help and all the favor that we can desire. It is needless, then,
to urge you to act as I have counselled, since it is for your own
interest to do so. As for me, it only remains to protest before you
that I shall esteem myself happy in consecrating all my efforts, and,
if need be, my life itself, to extending the empire of Jesus Christ
throughout all this land, and the supremacy of our king over all the
nations that dwell in it." He administered the oath, and the assembly
dissolved. He now applied himself to another work: that of giving a
municipal government to Quebec, after the model of some of the cities
of France. In place of the syndic, an official supposed to represent
the interests of the citizens, he ordered the public election of three
aldermen, of whom the senior should act as mayor. One of the number
was to go out of office every year, his place being filled by a new
election; and the governor, as representing the king, reserved the
right of confirmation or rejection. He then, in concert with the chief
inhabitants, proceeded to frame a body of regulations for the
government of a town destined, as he again and again declares, to
become the capital of a mighty empire; and he farther ordained that
the people should hold a meeting every six months to discuss questions
involving the welfare of the colony. The boldness of these measures
will scarcely be appreciated at the present day. The intendant Talon
declined, on pretence of a slight illness, to be present at the
meeting of the estates. He knew too well the temper of the king, whose
constant policy it was to destroy or paralyze every institution or
custom that stood in the way of his autocracy. The despatches in which
Frontenac announced to his masters what he had done received in due
time their answer. The minister Colbert wrote: "Your assembling of the
inhabitants to take the oath of fidelity, and your division of them
into three estates, may have had a good effect for the moment; but it
is well for you to observe that you are always to follow, in the
government of Canada, the forms in use here; and since our kings have
long regarded it as good for their service not to convoke the
states-general of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish
insensibly this ancient usage, you, on your part, should very rarely,
or, to speak more correctly, never, give a corporate form to the
inhabitants of Canada. You should even, as the colony strengthens,
suppress gradually the office of the syndic, who presents petitions in
the name of the inhabitants; for it is well that each should speak for
himself, and no one for all." [Footnote: _Frontenac au Roi_, 2 _Nov._,
1672; _Ibid._, 13 _Nov._, 1673; _Harangue du Comte de Frontenac en
l'Assemblée à Quebec_; _Prestations de Serment_, 23 _Oct._, 1672;
_Réglement de Police fait par Monsieur le Comte de Frontenac_;
_Colbert à Frontenac_, 13 _Juin_, 1673.]

Here, in brief, is the whole spirit of the French colonial rule in
Canada; a government, as I have elsewhere shown, of excellent
intentions, but of arbitrary methods. Frontenac, filled with the
traditions of the past, and sincerely desirous of the good of the
colony, rashly set himself against the prevailing current. His
municipal government, and his meetings of citizens, were, like his
three estates, abolished by a word from the court, which, bold and
obstinate as he was, he dared not disobey. Had they been allowed to
subsist, there can be little doubt that great good would have resulted
to Canada.

Frontenac has been called a mere soldier. He was an excellent soldier,
and more besides. He was a man of vigorous and cultivated mind,
penetrating observation, and ample travel and experience. His zeal for
the colony, however, was often counteracted by the violence of his
prejudices, and by two other influences. First, he was a ruined man,
who meant to mend his fortunes; and his wish that Canada should
prosper was joined with a determination to reap a goodly part of her
prosperity for himself. Again, he could not endure a rival; opposition
maddened him, and, when crossed or thwarted, he forgot every thing but
his passion. Signs of storm quickly showed themselves between him and
the intendant Talon; but the danger was averted by the departure of
that official for France. A cloud then rose in the direction of the
clergy.

"Another thing displeases me," writes Frontenac, "and this is the
complete dependence of the grand vicar and the seminary priests on the
Jesuits, for they never do the least thing without their order: so
that they (_the Jesuits_) are masters in spiritual matters, which, as
you know, is a powerful lever for moving every thing else." [Footnote:
_Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov_., 1672.] And he complains that they
have spies in town and country, that they abuse the confessional,
intermeddle in families, set husbands against wives, and parents
against children, and all, as they say, for the greater glory of God.
"I call to mind every day, Monseigneur, what you did me the honor to
say to me when I took leave of you, and every day I am satisfied more
and more of the great importance to the king's service of opposing the
slightest of the attempts which are daily made against his authority."
He goes on to denounce a certain sermon, preached by a Jesuit, to the
great scandal of loyal subjects, wherein the father declared that the
king had exceeded his powers in licensing the trade in brandy when the
bishop had decided it to be a sin, together with other remarks of a
seditious nature. "I was tempted several times," pursues Frontenac,
"to leave the church with my guards and interrupt the sermon; but I
contented myself with telling the grand vicar and the superior of the
Jesuits, after it was over, that I was very much surprised at what I
had heard, and demanded justice at their hands. They greatly blamed
the preacher, and disavowed him, attributing his language, after their
custom, to an excess of zeal, and making many apologies, with which I
pretended to be satisfied; though I told them, nevertheless, that
their excuses would not pass current with me another time, and, if the
thing happened again, I would put the preacher in a place where he
would learn how to speak. Since then they have been a little more
careful, though not enough to prevent one from always seeing their
intention to persuade the people that, even in secular matters, their
authority ought to be respected above any other. As there are many
persons here who have no more brains than they need, and who are
attached to them by ties of interest or otherwise, it is necessary to
have an eye to these matters in this country more than anywhere else."
[Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 13 _Nov._, 1673.]

The churchmen, on their part, were not idle. The bishop, who was then
in France, contrived by some means to acquaint himself with the
contents of the private despatches sent by Colbert in reply to the
letters of Frontenac. He wrote to another ecclesiastic to communicate
what he had learned, at the same time enjoining great caution; "since,
while it is well to acquire all necessary information, and to act upon
it, it is of the greatest importance to keep secret our possession of
such knowledge." [Footnote: _Laval à_ ----, 1674. The letter is a
complete summary of the contents of Colbert's recent despatch to
Frontenac. Then follows the injunction to secrecy, "estant de
très-grande conséquence que l'on ne sache pas que l'on aye rien appris
de tout cela, sur quoi néanmoins il est bon que l'on agisse et que
l'on me donne tous les advis qui seront nécessaires."]

The king and the minister, in their instructions to Frontenac, had
dwelt with great emphasis on the expediency of civilizing the Indians,
teaching them the French language, and amalgamating them with the
colonists. Frontenac, ignorant as yet of Indian nature and
unacquainted with the difficulties of the case, entered into these
views with great heartiness. He exercised from the first an
extraordinary influence over all the Indians with whom he came in
contact; and he persuaded the most savage and refractory of them, the
Iroquois, to place eight of their children in his hands. Four of these
were girls and four were boys. He took two of the boys into his own
household, of which they must have proved most objectionable inmates;
and he supported the other two, who were younger, out of his own
slender resources, placed them in respectable French families, and
required them to go daily to school. The girls were given to the
charge of the Ursulines. Frontenac continually urged the Jesuits to
co-operate with him in this work of civilization, but the results of
his urgency disappointed and exasperated him. He complains that in the
village of the Hurons, near Quebec, and under the control of the
Jesuits, the French language was scarcely known. In fact, the fathers
contented themselves with teaching their converts the doctrines and
rites of the Roman Church, while retaining the food, dress, and habits
of their original barbarism.

In defence of the missionaries, it should be said that, when brought
in contact with the French, the Indians usually caught the vices of
civilization without its virtues; but Frontenac made no allowances.
"The Jesuits," he writes, "will not civilize the Indians, because they
wish to keep them in perpetual wardship. They think more of beaver
skins than of souls, and their missions are pure mockeries." At the
same time he assures the minister that, when he is obliged to correct
them, he does so with the utmost gentleness. In spite of this somewhat
doubtful urbanity, it seems clear that a storm was brewing; and it was
fortunate for the peace of the Canadian Church that the attention of
the truculent governor was drawn to other quarters.




CHAPTER III.

1673-1675.

FRONTENAC AND PERROT.

LA SALLE.--FORT FRONTENAC.--PERROT.--HIS SPECULATIONS.--HIS
TYRANNY.--THE BUSH-RANGERS.--PERROT REVOLTS.--BECOMES ALARMED.--
DILEMMA OF FRONTENAC.--MEDIATION OF FÉNELON.--PERROT IN
PRISON.--EXCITEMENT OF THE SULPITIANS.--INDIGNATION OF FÉNELON.--
PASSION OF FRONTENAC.--PERROT ON TRIAL.--STRANGE SCENES.--APPEAL TO
THE KING.--ANSWERS OF LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.--FÉNELON REBUKED.


Not long before Frontenac's arrival, Courcelle, his predecessor, went
to Lake Ontario with an armed force, in order to impose respect on the
Iroquois, who had of late become insolent. As a means of keeping them
in check, and at the same time controlling the fur trade of the upper
country, he had recommended, like Talon before him, the building of a
fort near the outlet of the lake. Frontenac at once saw the advantages
of such a measure, and his desire to execute it was stimulated by the
reflection that the proposed fort might be made not only a safeguard
to the colony, but also a source of profit to himself.

At Quebec, there was a grave, thoughtful, self-contained young man,
who soon found his way into Frontenac's confidence. There was between
them the sympathetic attraction of two bold and energetic spirits; and
though Cavelier de la Salle had neither the irritable vanity of the
count, nor his Gallic vivacity of passion, he had in full measure the
same unconquerable pride and hardy resolution. There were but two or
three men in Canada who knew the western wilderness so well. He was
full of schemes of ambition and of gain; and, from this moment, he and
Frontenac seem to have formed an alliance, which ended only with the
governor's recall.

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