Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

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"At last, the daylight came again; and, as the darkness disappeared,
our anxieties seemed to disappear with it. Everybody took courage
except Mademoiselle Marguérite, wife of the Sieur Fontaine, who being
extremely timid, as all Parisian women are, asked her husband to carry
her to another fort ... He said, 'I will never abandon this fort while
Mademoiselle Madelon (_Madeleine_) is here.' I answered him that I
would never abandon it; that I would rather die than give it up to the
enemy; and that it was of the greatest importance that they should
never get possession of any French fort, because, if they got one,
they would think they could get others, and would grow more bold and
presumptuous than ever. I may say with truth that I did not eat or
sleep for twice twenty-four hours. I did not go once into my father's
house, but kept always on the bastion, or went to the blockhouse to
see how the people there were behaving. I always kept a cheerful and
smiling face, and encouraged my little company with the hope of speedy
succor.

"We were a week in constant alarm, with the enemy always about us. At
last Monsieur de la Monnerie, a lieutenant sent by Monsieur de
Callières, arrived in the night with forty men. As he did not know
whether the fort was taken or not, he approached as silently as
possible. One of our sentinels, hearing a slight sound, cried, 'Qui
vive?' I was at the time dozing, with my head on a table and my gun
lying across my arms. The sentinel told me that he heard a voice from
the river. I went up at once to the bastion to see whether it was
Indians or Frenchmen. I asked, 'Who are you?' One of them answered,
'We are Frenchmen: it is La Monnerie, who comes to bring you help.' I
caused the gate to be opened, placed a sentinel there, and went down
to the river to meet them. As soon as I saw Monsieur de la Monnerie, I
saluted him, and said, 'Monsieur, I surrender my arms to you.' He
answered gallantly, 'Mademoiselle, they are in good hands.' 'Better
than you think,' I returned. He inspected the fort, and found every
thing in order, and a sentinel on each bastion. 'It is time to relieve
them, Monsieur' said I: 'we have not been off our bastions for a week.'"
[3] A band of converts from the Saut St. Louis arrived soon after,
followed the trail of their heathen countrymen, overtook them on Lake
Champlain, and recovered twenty or more French prisoners. Madeleine de
Verchères was not the only heroine of her family. Her father's fort
was the Castle Dangerous of Canada; and it was but two years before
that her mother, left with three or four armed men, and beset by the
Iroquois, threw herself with her followers into the blockhouse, and
held the assailants two days at bay, till the Marquis de Crisasi came
with troops to her relief. [Footnote: La Potherie, I. 326.]

From the moment when the Canadians found a chief whom they could
trust, and the firm old hand of Frontenac grasped the reins of their
destiny, a spirit of hardihood and energy grew up in all this rugged
population; and they faced their stern fortunes with a stubborn daring
and endurance that merit respect and admiration.

Now, as in all their former wars, a great part of their suffering was
due to the Mohawks. The Jesuits had spared no pains to convert them,
thus changing them from enemies to friends; and their efforts had so
far succeeded that the mission colony of Saut St. Louis contained a
numerous population of Mohawk Christians. [Footnote: This mission was
also called Caghnawaga. The village still exists, at the head of the
rapid of St. Louis, or La Chine.] The place was well fortified; and
troops were usually stationed here, partly to defend the converts and
partly to ensure their fidelity. They had sometimes done excellent
service for the French; but many of them still remembered their old
homes on the Mohawk, and their old ties of fellowship and kindred.
Their heathen countrymen were jealous of their secession, and spared
no pains to reclaim them. Sometimes they tried intrigue, and sometimes
force. On one occasion, joined by the Oneidas and Onondagas, they
appeared before the palisades of St. Louis, to the number of more than
four hundred warriors; but, finding the bastions manned and the gates
shut, they withdrew discomfited. It was of great importance to the
French to sunder them from their heathen relatives so completely that
reconciliation would be impossible, and it was largely to this end
that a grand expedition was prepared against the Mohawk towns.

All the mission Indians in the colony were invited to join it, the
Iroquois of the Saut and Mountain, Abenakis from the Chaudière, Hurons
from Lorette, and Algonquins from Three Rivers. A hundred picked
soldiers were added, and a large band of Canadians. All told, they
mustered six hundred and twenty-five men, under three tried leaders,
Mantet, Courtemanche, and La Noue. They left Chambly at the end of
January, and pushed southward on snow-shoes. Their way was over the
ice of Lake Champlain, for more than a century the great thoroughfare
of war-parties. They bivouacked in the forest by squads of twelve or
more; dug away the snow in a circle, covered the bared earth with a
bed of spruce boughs, made a fire in the middle, and smoked their
pipes around it. Here crouched the Christian savage, muffled in his
blanket, his unwashed face still smirched with soot and vermilion,
relics of the war-paint he had worn a week before when he danced the
war-dance in the square of the mission village; and here sat the
Canadians, hooded like Capuchin monks, but irrepressible in loquacity,
as the blaze of the camp-fire glowed on their hardy visages and fell
in fainter radiance on the rocks and pines behind them.

Sixteen days brought them to the two lower Mohawk towns. A young
Dutchman who had been captured three years before at Schenectady, and
whom the Indians of the Saut had imprudently brought with them, ran
off in the night, and carried the alarm to the English. The invaders
had no time to lose. The two towns were a quarter of a league apart.
They surrounded them both on the night of the sixteenth of February,
waited in silence till the voices within were hushed, and then
captured them without resistance, as most of the inmates were absent.
After burning one of them, and leaving the prisoners well guarded in
the other, they marched eight leagues to the third town, reached it at
evening, and hid in the neighboring woods. Through all the early
night, they heard the whoops and songs of the warriors within, who
were dancing the war-dance for an intended expedition. About
midnight, all was still. The Mohawks had posted no sentinels; and one
of the French Indians, scaling the palisade, opened the gate to his
comrades. There was a short but bloody fight. Twenty or thirty Mohawks
were killed, and nearly three hundred captured, chiefly women and
children. The French commanders now required their allies, the mission
Indians, to make good a promise which, at the instance of Frontenac,
had been exacted from them by the governor of Montreal. It was that
they should kill all their male captives, a proceeding which would
have averted every danger of future reconciliation between the
Christian and heathen Mohawks. The converts of the Saut and the
Mountain had readily given the pledge, but apparently with no
intention to keep it; at least, they now refused to do so.
Remonstrance was useless; and, after burning the town, the French and
their allies began their retreat, encumbered by a long train of
prisoners. They marched two days, when they were hailed from a
distance by Mohawk scouts, who told them that the English were on
their track, but that peace had been declared in Europe, and that the
pursuers did not mean to fight, but to parley. Hereupon the mission
Indians insisted on waiting for them, and no exertion of the French
commanders could persuade them to move. Trees were hewn down, and a
fort made after the Iroquois fashion, by encircling the camp with a
high and dense abatis of trunks and branches. Here they lay two days
more, the French disgusted and uneasy, and their savage allies
obstinate and impracticable.

Meanwhile, Major Peter Schuyler was following their trail, with a body
of armed settlers hastily mustered. A troop of Oneidas joined him; and
the united parties, between five and six hundred in all, at length
appeared before the fortified camp of the French. It was at once
evident that there was to be no parley. The forest rang with
war-whoops; and the English Indians, unmanageable as those of the
French, set at work to entrench themselves with felled trees. The
French and their allies sallied to dislodge them. The attack was
fierce, and the resistance equally so. Both sides lost ground by
turns. A priest of the mission of the Mountain, named Gay, was in the
thick of the fight; and, when he saw his neophytes run, he threw
himself before them, crying, "What are you afraid of? We are fighting
with infidels, who have nothing human but the shape. Have you
forgotten that the Holy Virgin is our leader and our protector, and
that you are subjects of the King of France, whose name makes all
Europe tremble?" [Footnote: _Journal de Jacques Le Ber_, extract in
Faillon, _Vie de Mlle. Le Ber, Appendix._] Three times the French
renewed the attack in vain; then gave over the attempt, and lay quiet
behind their barricade of trees. So also did their opponents. The
morning was dark and stormy, and the driving snow that filled the air
made the position doubly dreary. The English were starving. Their
slender stock of provisions had been consumed or shared with the
Indians, who, on their part, did not want food, having resources
unknown to their white friends. A group of them squatted about a fire
invited Schuyler to share their broth; but his appetite was spoiled
when he saw a human hand ladled out of the kettle. His hosts were
breakfasting on a dead Frenchman.

All night the hostile bands, ensconced behind their sylvan ramparts,
watched each other in silence. In the morning, an Indian deserter told
the English commander that the French were packing their baggage.
Schuyler sent to reconnoitre, and found them gone. They had retreated
unseen through the snow-storm. He ordered his men to follow; but, as
most of them had fasted for two days, they refused to do so till an
expected convoy of provisions should arrive. They waited till the next
morning, when the convoy appeared: five biscuits were served out to
each man, and the pursuit began. By great efforts, they nearly
overtook the fugitives, who now sent them word that, if they made an
attack, all the prisoners should be put to death. On this, Schuyler's
Indians refused to continue the chase. The French, by this time, had
reached the Hudson, where to their dismay they found the ice breaking
up and drifting down the stream. Happily for them, a large sheet of it
had become wedged at a turn of the river, and formed a temporary
bridge, by which they crossed, and then pushed on to Lake George. Here
the soft and melting ice would not bear them; and they were forced to
make their way along the shore, over rocks and mountains, through
sodden snow and matted thickets. The provisions, of which they had
made a dépôt on Lake Champlain, were all spoiled. They boiled
moccasons for food, and scraped away the snow to find hickory and
beech nuts. Several died of famine, and many more, unable to move, lay
helpless by the lake; while a few of the strongest toiled on to
Montreal to tell Callières of their plight. Men and food were sent
them; and from time to time, as they were able, they journeyed on
again, straggling towards their homes, singly or in small parties,
feeble, emaciated, and in many instances with health irreparably
broken. [4]

"The expedition," says Frontenac, "was a glorious success." However
glorious, it was dearly bought; and a few more such victories would be
ruin. The governor presently achieved a success more solid and less
costly. The wavering mood of the north-western tribes, always
oscillating between the French and the English, had caused him
incessant anxiety; and he had lost no time in using the defeat of
Phips to confirm them in alliance with Canada. Courtemanche was sent
up the Ottawa to carry news of the French triumph, and stimulate the
savages of Michillimackinac to lift the hatchet. It was a desperate
venture; for the river was beset, as usual, by the Iroquois. With ten
followers, the daring partisan ran the gauntlet of a thousand dangers,
and safely reached his destination; where his gifts and his harangues,
joined with the tidings of victory, kindled great excitement among the
Ottawas and Hurons. The indispensable but most difficult task
remained: that of opening the Ottawa for the descent of the great
accumulation of beaver skins, which had been gathering at
Michillimackinac for three years, and for the want of which Canada was
bankrupt. More than two hundred Frenchmen were known to be at that
remote post, or roaming in the wilderness around it; and Frontenac
resolved on an attempt to muster them together, and employ their
united force to protect the Indians and the traders in bringing down
this mass of furs to Montreal. A messenger, strongly escorted, was
sent with orders to this effect, and succeeded in reaching
Michillimackinac, though there was a battle on the way, in which the
officer commanding the escort was killed. Frontenac anxiously waited
the issue, when after a long delay the tidings reached him of complete
success. He hastened to Montreal, and found it swarming with Indians
and _coureurs de bois_. Two hundred canoes had arrived, filled with
the coveted beaver skins. "It is impossible," says the chronicle, "to
conceive the joy of the people, when they beheld these riches. Canada
had awaited them for years. The merchants and the farmers were dying
of hunger. Credit was gone, and everybody was afraid that the enemy
would waylay and seize this last resource of the country. Therefore it
was, that none could find words strong enough to praise and bless him
by whose care all this wealth had arrived. _Father of the People,
Preserver of the Country_, seemed terms too weak to express their
gratitude." [Footnote: _Relation de ce qui s'est passé de plus
remarquable en Canada_, 1692, 1693. Compare La Potherie, III. 185.]

While three years of arrested sustenance came down together from the
lakes, a fleet sailed up the St. Lawrence, freighted with soldiers and
supplies. The horizon of Canada was brightening.


[1] As this fight under Valrenne has been represented as a French
victory against overwhelming odds, it may be well to observe the
evidence as to the numbers engaged. The French party consisted,
according to Bénac, of 160 regulars and Canadians, besides Indians. La
Potherie places it at 180 men, and Frontenac at 200 men. These two
estimates do not include Indians; for the author of the Relation of
1682-1712, who was an officer on the spot at the time, puts the number
at 300 soldiers, Canadians, and savages.

Schuyler's official return shows that his party consisted of 120
whites, 80 Mohawks, and 66 River Indians (Mohegans): 266 in all. The
French writer Bénac places the whole at 280, and the intendant
Champigny at 300. The other French estimates of the English force are
greatly exaggerated. Schuyler's strength was reduced by 27 men left to
guard the canoes, and by a number killed or disabled at La Prairie.
The force under Valrenne was additional to the 700 or 800 men at La
Prairie (Relation, 1682-1712). Schuyler reported his loss in killed at
21 whites, 16 Mohawks, and 6 Mohegans, besides many wounded. The
French statements of it are enormously in excess of this, and are
irreconcilable with each other.

[2] _Lettres du Roy et du Ministre_, 1693, 1694. Cape Diamond was
now for the first time included within the line of circumvallation at
Quebec. A strong stone redoubt, with sixteen cannon, was built upon
its summit.

In 1854, in demolishing a part of the old wall between the fort of
Quebec and the adjacent "Governor's Garden," a plate of copper was
found with a Latin inscription, of which the following is a
translation:--

"In the year of Grace, 1693, under the reign of the Most August, Most
Invincible, and Most Christian King, Louis the Great, Fourteenth of
that name, the Most Excellent and Most Illustrious Lord, Louis de
Buade, Count of Frontenac, twice Viceroy of all New France, after
having three years before repulsed, routed, and completely conquered
the rebellious inhabitants of New England, who besieged this town of
Quebec, and who threatened to renew their attack this year,
constructed, at the charge of the king, this citadel, with the
fortifications therewith connected, for the defence of the country and
the safety of the people, and for confounding yet again a people
perfidious towards God and towards its lawful king. And he has laid
this first stone."

[3] _Récit de Mlle. Magdelaine de Verchères, âgée de 14 ans_
(Collection de l'Abbé Ferland). It appears from Tanguay, _Dictionnaire
Généalogique_, that Marie-Madeleine Jarret de Verchères was born in
April, 1678, which corresponds to the age given in the _Récit_. She
married Thomas Tarleu de la Naudière in 1706, and M. de la Perrade, or
Prade, in 1722. Her brother Louis was born in 1680, and was therefore,
as stated in the Récit, twelve years old in 1692. The birthday of the
other, Alexander, is not given. His baptism was registered in 1682.
One of the brothers was killed at the attack of Haverhill, in 1708.

Madame de Ponchartrain, wife of the minister, procured a pension for
life to Madeleine de Verchères. Two versions of her narrative are
before me. There are slight variations between them, but in all
essential points they are the same. The following note is appended to
one of them: "Ce récit fut fait par ordre de Mr. de Beauharnois,
gouverneur du Canada."

[4] On this expedition, _Narrative of Military Operations in Canada_,
in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 550; _Relation de ce qui s'est passé de
plus remarquable en Canada_, 1692, 1693; _Callières au Ministre_, 1
_Sept_., 1693; La Potherie, III. 169; _Relation de_ 1682-1712;
Faillon, _Vie de Mlle. Le Bar_, 313; Belmont, _Hist. du Canada_;
Beyard and Lodowick, _Journal of the Late Actions of the French at
Canada_; _Report of Major Peter Schuyler_, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IV.
16; Colden, 142.

The minister wrote to Callières, finding great fault with the conduct
of the mission Indians. _Ponchartrain à Callières_, 8 _Mai_, 1694.




CHAPTER XV

1691-1695.

AN INTERLUDE.

APPEAL OF FRONTENAC.--HIS OPPONENTS.--HIS SERVICES.--RIVALRY AND
STRIFE.--BISHOP SAINT-VALLIER.--SOCIETY AT THE CHÂTEAU.--PRIVATE
THEATRICALS.--ALARM OF THE CLERGY.--TARTUFFE.--A SINGULAR
BARGAIN.--MAREUIL AND THE BISHOP.--MAREUIL ON TRIAL.--ZEAL OF
SAINT-VALLIER.--SCANDALS AT MONTREAL.--APPEAL TO THE KING.--THE STRIFE
COMPOSED.--LIBEL AGAINST FRONTENAC.


While the Canadians hailed Frontenac as a father, he found also some
recognition of his services from his masters at the court. The king
wrote him a letter with his own hand, to express satisfaction at the
defence of Quebec, and sent him a gift of two thousand crowns. He
greatly needed the money, but prized the letter still more, and wrote
to his relative, the minister Ponchartrain: "The gift you procured for
me, this year, has helped me very much towards paying the great
expenses which the crisis of our affairs and the excessive cost of
living here have caused me; but, though I receive this mark of his
Majesty's goodness with the utmost respect and gratitude, I confess
that I feel far more deeply the satisfaction that he has been pleased
to express with my services. The raising of the siege of Quebec did
not deserve all the attention that I hear he has given it in the midst
of so many important events, and therefore I must needs ascribe it to
your kindness in commending it to his notice. This leads me to hope
that whenever some office, or permanent employment, or some mark of
dignity or distinction, may offer itself, you will put me on the list
as well as others who have the honor to be as closely connected with
you as I am; for it would be very hard to find myself forgotten
because I am in a remote country, where it is more difficult and
dangerous to serve the king than elsewhere. I have consumed all my
property. Nothing is left but what the king gives me; and I have
reached an age where, though neither strength nor goodwill fail me as
yet, and though the latter will last as long as I live, I see myself
on the eve of losing the former: so that a post a little more secure
and tranquil than the government of Canada will soon suit my time of
life; and, if I can be assured of your support, I shall not despair of
getting such a one. Please then to permit my wife and my friends to
refresh your memory now and then on this point." [Footnote: _Frontenac
au Ministre_, 20 _Oct_., 1691.] Again, in the following year: "I have
been encouraged to believe that the gift of two thousand crowns, which
his Majesty made me last year, would be continued; but apparently you
have not been able to obtain it, for I think that you know the
difficulty I have in living here on my salary. I hope that, when you
find a better opportunity, you will try to procure me this favor. My
only trust is in your support; and I am persuaded that, having the
honor to be so closely connected with you, you would reproach
yourself, if you saw me sink into decrepitude, without resources and
without honors." [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Sept_.,
1692.] And still again he appeals to the minister for "some permanent
and honorable place attended with the marks of distinction, which are
more grateful than all the rest to a heart shaped after the right
pattern." [Footnote: _Ibid_., 25 _Oct_., 1693.] In return for these
sturdy applications, he got nothing for the present but a continuance
of the king's gift of two thousand crowns.

Not every voice in the colony sounded the governor's praise. Now, as
always, he had enemies in state and Church. It is true that the
quarrels and the bursts of passion that marked his first term of
government now rarely occurred, but this was not so much due to a
change in Frontenac himself as to a change in the conditions around
him. The war made him indispensable. He had gained what he wanted, the
consciousness of mastery; and under its soothing influence he was less
irritable and exacting. He lived with the bishop on terms of mutual
courtesy, while his relations with his colleague, the intendant, were
commonly smooth enough on the surface; for Champigny, warned by the
court not to offend him, treated him with studied deference, and was
usually treated in return with urbane condescension. During all this
time, the intendant was complaining of him to the minister. "He is
spending a great deal of money; but he is master, and does what he
pleases. I can only keep the peace by yielding every thing."
[Footnote: _Champigny au Ministre_, 12 _Oct_., 1691.] "He wants to
reduce me to a nobody." And, among other similar charges, he says that
the governor receives pay for garrisons that do not exist, and keeps
it for himself. "Do not tell that I said so," adds the prudent
Champigny, "for it would make great trouble, if he knew it."
[Footnote: _Ibid_.,4 _Nov_., 1693.] Frontenac, perfectly aware of
these covert attacks, desires the minister not to heed "the falsehoods
and impostures uttered against me by persons who meddle with what does
not concern them." [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Sept_.,
1692.] He alludes to Champigny's allies, the Jesuits, who, as he
thought, had also maligned him. "Since I have been here, I have spared
no pains to gain the goodwill of Monsieur the intendant, and may God
grant that the counsels which he is too ready to receive from certain
persons who have never been friends of peace and harmony do not some
time make division between us. But I close my eyes to all that, and
shall still persevere." [Footnote: _Ibid_., 20 _Oct_., 1691.] In
another letter to Ponchartrain, he says: "I write you this in private,
because I have been informed by my wife that charges have been made to
you against my conduct since my return to this country. I promise you,
Monseigneur, that, whatever my accusers do, they will not make me
change conduct towards them, and that I shall still treat them with
consideration. I merely ask your leave most humbly to represent that,
having maintained this colony in full prosperity during the ten years
when I formerly held the government of it, I nevertheless fell a
sacrifice to the artifice and fury of those whose encroachments, and
whose excessive and unauthorized power, my duty and my passionate
affection for the service of the king obliged me in conscience to
repress. My recall, which made them masters in the conduct of the
government, was followed by all the disasters which overwhelmed this
unhappy colony. The millions that the king spent here, the troops that
he sent out, and the Canadians that he took into pay, all went for
nothing. Most of the soldiers, and no small number of brave Canadians,
perished in enterprises ill devised and ruinous to the country, which
I found on my arrival ravaged with unheard-of cruelty by the Iroquois,
without resistance, and in sight of the troops and of the forts. The
inhabitants were discouraged, and unnerved by want of confidence in
their chiefs; while the friendly Indians, seeing our weakness, were
ready to join our enemies. I was fortunate enough and diligent enough
to change this deplorable state of things, and drive away the English,
whom my predecessors did not have on their hands, and this too with
only half as many troops as they had. I am far from wishing to blame
their conduct. I leave you to judge it. But I cannot have the
tranquillity and freedom of mind which I need for the work I have to
do here, without feeling entire confidence that the cabal which is
again forming against me cannot produce impressions which may prevent
you from doing me justice. For the rest, if it is thought fit that I
should leave the priests to do as they like, I shall be delivered from
an infinity of troubles and cares, in which I can have no other
interest than the good of the colony, the trade of the kingdom, and
the peace of the king's subjects, and of which I alone bear the
burden, as well as the jealousy of sundry persons, and the iniquity of
the ecclesiastics, who begin to call impious those who are obliged to
oppose their passions and their interests." [Footnote: "L'iniquité des
ecclésiastiques qui commencent à traiter d'impies ceux qui sont
obligés de resister à leurs passions et à leurs interêts." _Frontenac
au Ministre_, 20 _Oct_., 1691.]

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