And a march forced against the very powers of the elements, it had proved. No tents were carried; only the blanket, knapsack fashion, tied to each man’s back. Bivouac was made under the stars. No provisions but what each blanket carried! No protection but the musket over shoulder, the war axe and powderhorn, and pistol in belt! No reward but the vague promise of loot from the English wigwamming—as the Indians say—on the Northern Bay! Do the border raids of older lands record more heroic daring than this? A march through six-hundred miles of trackless forest in midwinter, then down the maelstrom sweep of torrents swollen by spring thaw, for three-hundred miles to the juniper swamps of rotting windfall and dank forest growth around the bay?
If the march had been difficult by snowshoe, it was ten-fold more now. Unknown cataracts, unknown whirlpools, unknown reaches of endless rapids dashed the canoes against the ice jam, under huge trunks of rotting trees lying athwart the way, so that Pierre d’Iberville’s canoe was swamped, two of his voyageurs swept to death before his eyes, and two others only saved by d’Iberville, himself, leaping to the rescue and dragging them ashore. In places, the ice had to be cut away with hatchets. In places, portage was made over the ice jams, men sinking to their armpits in a slither of ice and snow. For as long as eleven miles, the canoes were tracked over rapids with the men wading barefoot over ice-cold, slippery river bed.
It had been no play, this fur-trade raid, and now Iberville was back from his scouting, having seen with his own eyes that the English fur traders were really wigwamming on the bay—by which the Indians meant “wintering.” Hastily, all burdens of blanket and food and clothes were cast aside and cached. Hastily, each raider fell to his knees invoking the blessing of Ste. Anne, patron saint of Canadian voyageur. Hastily, the Jesuit Sylvie passed from man to man absolving all sin; for these men fought with all the Spartan ferocity of the Indian fighter—that it was better to die fighting than to suffer torture in defeat.
Then each man recharged his musket lest the swamp mists had dampened powder. Perhaps, Iberville reminded his bush-lopers that the Sovereign Council of Quebec had a standing offer of ten crowns reward for every enemy slain, twenty crowns for every enemy captured. Perhaps, old Chevalier de Troyes called up memories of Dollard’s fight on the Long Sault twenty years before, and warned his thirty soldiers that there was no retreat now through a thousand miles of forest. They must win or perish! Perhaps Dechesnay, the fur trader, told these wood-rovers that in at least one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s forts were fifty-thousand crowns’ worth of beaver to be divided as spoils among the victors. De Troyes led his soldiers round the fore to make a feint of furious onslaught from the water front. Iberville posted his Indians along each flank to fire through the embrasures of the pickets. Then, with a wild yell, the French raiders swooped upon the sleeping fort. Iberville and his brothers, Ste. Hélène and Maricourt, were over the rear pickets and across the courtyard, swords in hand, before the sleepy gunner behind the main gate could get his eyes open. One blow of Ste. Hélène’s saber split the fellow’s head to the collar bone. The trunk of a tree was used to ram the main gate. Iberville’s Indians had hacked down the rear pickets, and he, himself, led the way into the house. Before the sixteen terrified inmates dashing out in their shirts had realized what was happening, the raiders were masters of Moose. Only one man besides the gunner was killed, and he was a Frenchman slain by the cross-fire of his comrades. Cellars were searched, but there was small loot. Furs were evidently stored elsewhere, but the French were the richer by sixteen captives, twelve portable cannon, and three-thousand pounds of powder. Flag unfurled, muskets firing, sod heaved in air, Chevalier de Troyes took possession of the fort for the Most Redoubtable, Most Mighty, Most Christian King of France, though a cynic might wonder how such an act was accomplished in time of peace, when the sole object of the raid had been the rescue of Monsieur Péré, imprisoned as a spy.
Eastward of Moose, a hundred and thirty miles along the south coast of the bay on Rupert’s River, was the other fort, stronger, the bastions of stone, with a dock where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships commonly anchored for the summer. Northwestward of Moose, some hundred miles, was a third fort, Albany, the citadel of the English fur traders’ strength, forty paces back from the water. Unassailable by sea, it was the storehouse of the best furs. It was decided to attack Rupert first. Staying only long enough at Moose to build a raft to carry Chevalier de Troyes and his prisoners along the coast, the raiders set out by sea on the 27th of June.
Petition to the H. B. C. signed by Churchill, or Marlborough.
Iberville led the way with two canoes and eight or nine men. By sailboat, it was necessary to round a long point of land. By canoe, this land could be portaged, and Iberville was probably the first man to blaze the trail across the swamp, which has been used by hunters from that day to this. By the first of July, he had caught a glimpse of Rupert’s bastions through the woods. Concealing his Indians, he went forward to reconnoiter. To his delight, he espied the Company’s ship with the H. B. C. ensign flying that signified Governor Bridgar was on board. Choosing the night, as usual, for attack, Iberville stationed his bandits where they could fire on the decks if necessary. Then he glided across the water to the schooner.
Hand over fist, he was up the ship’s sides when the sleeping sentinel awakened with a spring at his throat. One cleft of Iberville’s sword, and the fellow rolled dead at the Frenchman’s feet. Iberville then stamped on the deck to call the crew aloft, and sabered three men in turn as they tumbled up the hatchway, till the fourth, Governor Bridgar, himself, threw up his hands in unconditional surrender of the ship and crew of fourteen. Twice in four years, Bridgar found himself a captive. The din had alarmed the fort. Though the bastions were dismantled for repairs, gates were slammed shut and musketry poured hot shot through the embrasures, that kept the raiders at a distance. Again, it was the Le Moyne brothers who led the fray. The bastions served the usual two-fold purpose of defense and barracks. Extemporizing ladders, Iberville went scrambling up like a monkey to the roofs, hacked holes through the rough thatch of the bastions and threw down hand grenades at the imminent risk of blowing himself as well as the enemy to eternity. “It was,” says the old chronicle, “with an effect most admirable”—which depends on the point of view; for when the defenders were driven from the bastions to the main house inside, gates were rammed down, palisades hacked out, and Iberville with his followers, was on the roof of the main house throwing down more bombs. As one explosive left his hand, a terrified English woman dashed up stairs into the room directly below. Iberville shouted for her to retire. The explosion drowned his warning, and the next moment he was down stairs dashing from hall to hall, candle in hand, followed by the priest, Sylvie. A plaintive cry came from the closet of what had been the factor’s room. Followed by his powder-grimed, wild raiders, Iberville threw open the door. With a scream, there fell at his feet a woman with a shattered hip. However black a record these raiders left for braining children and mutilating women, four years later in what is now New York State, they made no war on women here. Lifting her to a bed, the priest Sylvie and Iberville called in the surgeon, and barring the door from the outside, forbade intrusion. The raid became a riot. The French possessed Rupert, though little the richer but for the ship and thirty prisoners.
The wild wood-rovers were now strong enough to attempt Albany, three hundred miles northwest. It was at Albany that the French spy Péré was supposed to be panting for rescue. It was also at Albany that the English fur traders had their greatest store of pelts. As usual, Iberville led off in canoes; De Troyes, the French fur traders, the soldiers and the captives following with the cannon on the ship. It was sunset when the canoes launched out from Rupert River. To save time by crossing the south end of the bay diagonally, they had sheered out from the coast when there blew down from the upper bay one of those bitter northeast gales, that at once swept a maelstrom of churning ice floes about the cockleshell birch canoes. To make matters worse, fog fell thick as night. A birch canoe in a cross sea is bad enough. With ice floes it was destruction.