This, then, was the reason for Radisson a second time deserting the French flag. He was compelled by “the statecraft” of Louis XIV, and this reason, as a man of honor, he could not reveal in his journals.
On the 10th of May, 1684, Radisson landed in London. He was welcomed by Sir James Hayes and forthwith carried in honor to Windsor, where he took the oath of fidelity as a British subject—a fealty from which he never swerved to the end of his life. In a week, he was ready to leave. Three ships sailed this year, The Happy Return, under Captain Bond; The Success, under Outlaw, who had been with Ben Gillam, and a little sloop called The Adventure for inland waters, under Captain Geyer. Radisson went on board The Happy Return. Groseillers had long since left France for Quebec, where he settled at Three Rivers with his family. Favorable winds carried the ships forward without storm or stop, to the straits, which luckily presented open water. Inside the bay, ice and heavy seas separated the vessels. Sixty miles from Port Nelson The Happy Return was caught and held. Fearing that the French at Nelson, under young Chouart Groseillers, might attack the English if the other ships arrived first, Radisson asked permission of Governor Phipps, who had superseded Bridgar, to take seven of the crew and row the sixty miles ashore. It was a daring venture. Ice floes were tossing in a heavy sea, but by rowing might and main, portaging over the ice where the way was blocked, and seeking shelter on the lee side of a floe when the wind became too rough, Radisson and his men came safely to Port Nelson in forty-eight hours, spending only one night in the gig-boat on the sea. Radisson was amazed to find the French fort on Hayes River deserted. Indians presently told him the reason. Barely had he left the bay the year before when the annual frigate of the English company came to port. Young Chouart Groseillers trusted to the loyalty of the Indians as a defense against the English till he learned that the savages had been offered a barrel of gunpowder to massacre the French. Then Chouart hastily withdrew up Hayes River above the first rapids to the camping place of the Assiniboines, whose four hundred warriors were ample protection.
Young Groseillers’ anger at the turn of affairs knew no bounds. In his fort were twelve thousand beaver skins and eight thousand other pelts of the same value as beaver. To the expedition the year before, he had contributed £500 of his own money, and the cargo of that voyage had been confiscated at Quebec. Now, he had rich store of pelts to compensate for the two years’ toil, and by the order of the French Government—a secret back-stairs, treacherous order which could not stand daylight and would brand him as a renegade—he was to turn these furs over to the enemy. The young man was furious, and surrendered his charge with an ill grace. Radisson had been commissioned to offer the Frenchmen employment in the English Company at £100 a year for Chouart, £50 for Durvall, Lamotte, Greymaire and the rest. They heard his offer in sullen silence, for it meant they must forswear allegiance to France. They preferred to remain free-lances and take chances of crossing overland to Quebec two thousand miles through the wilderness.
Then came what was truly the crowning treachery. A square deal is safest in the long run. The man of double dealing forgets that he often compels men, who would otherwise deal squarely, to meet him on his own ground—double dealing; to stoop to the trickery that his dishonesty has taught.
Radisson had been assured that the Frenchmen left in Hudson Bay should be free to do as they wished, or if they joined the English they should be well treated; but when they evinced no haste to become English subjects, Governor Phipps took his own counsel. By September, a new fort had been built on Hayes River five miles from the mouth. The Indians had come down stream with an enormous trade and Radisson had made a treaty of peace between them and the English, which has lasted to this day. Finally, the cargo of beaver was on board The Happy Return. Sailors were chanting their sing-song as they ran round the capstan bars heaving up anchor on September the 4th, when Governor Phipps suddenly summoned a final council on board the decks of The Happy Return. To this council came the unsuspecting Frenchmen from the shore. Three—as it happened—had gone to the woods, but young Groseillers and the rest clambered up the accommodation ladder for last orders. No sooner were they on board, than sails were run out. The Happy Return spread her wings to the wind and was off for England carrying the unwilling Frenchmen passengers.
In a trice, hands were on pistols and swords out, but Radisson besought the outraged Frenchmen to restrain their anger. What was their strength against an armed crew of ruffians only too glad of a scuffle to put them all to the sword? It was a sullen, sad home-coming for the adventurer. Uncle and nephew were scarcely on speaking terms, and the trick of Governor Phipps must have opened Radisson’s eyes to the treatment he might expect now that he was completely in the power of the English. The boat reached Portsmouth on October 23. Not waiting for coach, Radisson took horse and rode fast and furious to London. He was at once taken before the Company. He was publicly thanked for his services, presented with a set of silver and given a present of a hundred guineas. He became the lion of the hour. Nor did he forget his French confrères. The committee at once voted each of the Frenchmen twenty shillings a week for pocket money and ordered their board paid. Later, Mr. Radisson is authorized to offer them salaries ranging from £100 a year to £50 if they will join the Company. But they are in no haste to join the Company, and strangely, when they evince intentions of going across to France—a thousand obstructions arise as out of the ground. They are watched—even threatened; politely, of course, but threatened with arrest. Some suave-tongued gentleman points out an advantageous marriage that young Chouart might make with some well-dowered English belle, like his Uncle Radisson, who had married Mary Kirke. Monsieur Chouart shrugs his shoulders. He hasn’t a very high opinion of the way Radisson has managed his marriage affairs.
But when they find that they can gain their liberty in no other way, these young French knights of the wilderness, they accept service in the English company to be sent to the bay forthwith, and take out “papers of denizenation,” which can be broken with less damage to conscience than an oath of fealty and the forswearing of France. And all the while, they are burning with rage that bodes ill for Governor Phipps’ trick on the deck of The Happy Return. Letters came from France to Chouart, letters from one Duluth, who is pushing north from Lake Superior; letters from one Comporté, who has offered to go overland and “wipe the English from the bay”; messages from a bush-loper, one Péré, who is useful to the king of France as a spy. To Comporté, Chouart writes: “I am not at liberty to do as I wish. All the advantages offered do not for a moment cause me to waver. I shall be happy to meet you by the route you travel. I will perish or be at the place you desire me to go. It is saying enough. I will keep my word.” To his mother at Three Rivers, the young Frenchman confesses: “Orders have been given to arrest me if I try to leave. I will cause it to be known in France that I never wished to follow the English. I will abandon this nation. I have been forced here by my Uncle’s subterfuges. See M. Duluth in my behalf and M. Péré and all our good friends.” “All our good friends,” are the bushrangers who are working overland north from the St. Lawrence to intercept the trade of Hudson Bay—especially “Mons. Péré.”
And the same French Government that has compelled Radisson to go back to England, issues orders to the Governor of New France—M. de Denonville, “to arrest Radisson wherever he may be found,” “to reward young Groseillers if he will desert from Hudson’s Bay,” and “to pay fifty pistolles” to any man who seizes Radisson. And the reason for this duplicity of statecraft? Plain enough. The Stuart throne is tottering in England. When it falls, there falls also the secret treaty with France. His Most Christian Majesty does not wish to relinquish claim to one foot of ground in the North, and well might he not—it was an empire as large as half Europe.
Meantime, the Company was proceeding on the even tenor of its ways. Dividends of 50 per cent. were paid in ’83, the same in ’84, despite interception of furs by the French overlanders. In the suit for loss by the owners of Ben Gillam’s ship, the Company had emerged triumphant—its monopoly vindicated, and in 1684, Captain Walker of the south coast coming out of the bay on The Diligence, captured another pirate ship, The Expectation, whose owners again tested the Company’s claim to exclusive trade on the bay, by a lawsuit; and again the Company came out a victor—its monopoly justified by the courts. Three of the ships—Happy Return, Captain Bond; Owners’ Good Will, Captain Lucas, and Success, Captain Outlaw—were yearly chartered from Sir Stephen Evance, a rich goldsmith, who had become a heavy shareholder in the Company. Besides these, there were The Perpetuana Merchant, Captain Hume, with Smithsend as mate; The Diligence, Captain Walker; the sloop Adventure, Captain Geyer, and one frigate; in all a fleet of seven vessels, each carrying from twelve to twenty men plying to and from the bay. It was in 1686 that the sloop was sent north of Nelson to Churchill River, named after the great General—to open trade on the river where Munck’s Danes had suffered such frightful disaster. About this time, too, poor London boys began to go out as apprentices—scullions, valets, general knockabouts—among whom was one Henry Kelsey engaged at £8 a year, and his keep for Port Nelson. When James, Duke of York, became king, the position of governor of the Company was vacated, and Sir James Hayes, who seems always to have been the Company’s emissary in all court matters, is directed by the governing committee “to bespeak the Lord John Churchill to dynner at ye Rummor Tavernne in Queen’s Street” on business for the company’s very great interests. What that business was became evident at the General Court of the Adventurers called on April 2, 1685, when my Lord Churchill is elected governor by unanimous ballot. Phipps remains at Nelson as local governor, Sargeant at Albany, Nixon at Moose. Bridgar has been transferred to Rupert River, not important now, because the French are luring the Indians away, and Radisson is general superintendent of all trade, spending the winters in London to arrange the furs for sale and to choose the out-going cargoes, going each summer to the bay to barter with the Indians.