Season now followed season, and each saw the French but little better than prisoners in their three towns on the St. Lawrence. If they ventured very far out of these fortified posts, it was only to give the Iroquois a chance to spring upon them and bear back their scalps in triumph to their lodges in the wilderness. The French might have made a treaty of alliance with their English neighbours in New England, who had now set up a number of towns and were flourishing, although they too were at the mercy of the surrounding savages. But the French Governor made it a condition of the treaty that the New Englanders should help Canada to exterminate the terrible Iroquois. This the English colonists were loath to do; they had no wish to bring the Iroquois tomahawks down upon their heads also, as the French had done; and so the plan fell through. After a time one of the Iroquois tribes, having lost a great many of their fighting men in the long war, began to think of making recruits. The idea occurred to them that the unfortunate Hurons and Algonquins, who had joined their fortunes to the French, would be the very men for their purpose, if they could only induce them to desert the alliance. Forthwith they sent courtiers to announce to the Hurons that they no longer bore them any grudge and were willing to adopt them—to receive them into the bosom of their lodges. But it soon appeared that all the Iroquois were not unanimous in their approval of this plan, and as their treachery was well known, the Hurons and Algonquins, now settled on the Isle of Orleans near Quebec, naturally hesitated about accepting the offer. The few foolish ones who trusted in Iroquois good faith were actually tomahawked by their so-called friends on the way to the Iroquois lodges. In attempting to punish a band of Iroquois ambushed near his fort, Du Plessis Bochat, the Governor of Three Rivers, lost his life; Father Buteaux was killed on his way to his mission, and another priest, Father Poucet, was borne away to a Mohawk village, and after being tortured was sent back to Quebec to offer peace to the French. Peace was indeed welcome, but the French were naturally still suspicious. The truth was that the Iroquois were then too busily engaged in destroying the Eries, a tribe which had burned one of their most illustrious chiefs, to spare time to massacre the pale-faces. As the chief, a Seneca, had stood with unquivering nerve at the stake he had cried out, "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!" for he knew the Senecas would avenge his death. Much, then, as the Governor, De Lauzon, wanted peace, neither he nor his Indian allies knew how far they could trust the Iroquois. It was at last decided that if the Onondagas, one of the five Iroquois nations, would receive a Jesuit mission, a body of Hurons should be sent under escort to be adopted into their tribe. From the Onondagas there came a message to say they would agree to this, and in June 1656 the expedition set out from Quebec. It consisted of a large body of Hurons, as well as Onondagas, fifty French soldiers, led by the brave captain, Dupuy, and two priests, Dablon and Chaumonot. Scarcely was the party well under way, when a band of Mohawks fell upon them, and before they pretended to discover that they were attacking members of their own confederacy, they had killed and wounded a number of Onondagas. Profuse excuses and apologies followed, the Mohawks explaining that they took them, the Onondagas, for Hurons. The expedition was suffered to proceed. The truth is, the Mohawks were jealous of the Onondagas in obtaining an alliance with the French and Hurons. To show their power and their contempt of the pale-faces, they continued their journey eastward to the Isle of Orleans, and under the very guns of the fort of Quebec surprised the defenceless Hurons who dwelt there, and fiercely murdered or captured all they came upon, even the women and children. In broad daylight they paddled their fleet of bark canoes in front of Quebec, laughing and yelling defiance to the French, and making their unhappy captives join in dancing and songs of triumph. The Governor this time was a weak man, and all he could do was to wring his hands and regret bitterly that he had ever sent any mission to the Onondagas. He began to fear for their safety.
Not wholly unfounded were the Governor's alarms. At first all went smoothly enough with the little band of Frenchmen in the heart of the Onondaga country. This particular tribe of the Iroquois appeared delighted at the coming of the French. But quickly signs of danger began to multiply. The pale-face soldiers grew aware that a plot was on foot to murder them in the little fort they had built, close to where the present prosperous city of Syracuse now stands. Dupuy, being an able and courageous man, resolved by some means or another to foil the savages and escape back to Canada. This is the stratagem he hit upon; it was the custom of these Indians to hold mystic feasts, at which it was a point of honour to eat everything that was set before them by their hosts. If a man failed to eat the whole of a dish—even to the fifth helping—it was taken by the host as a personal insult. Dupuy planned such a feast, and arranged to stuff them so plentifully that not a single brave would be capable of rising from the banquet. The plan worked perfectly, the Indians not observing that the French concealed most of their food instead of eating it, so that by midnight the gorged and drunken Onondagas were sunk in a gluttonous sleep. Dupuy had taken good care beforehand to build secretly within his fort a number of large, light, flat-bottomed skiffs, and now when dawn came the Frenchmen stole away, carrying these with them to the Oswego River, reaching Quebec at last, in spite of ice and rapids, with the loss of only three men, who were drowned. The Indians pursued, but their birch-bark canoes were useless on the icy stream, and they had to give up the chase.
The escape from the Onondagas was a very clever and daring deed, and shows the material the colonists of New France were made of in those days. A deed still more daring and important was to follow. The Iroquois threw off the mask and determined to deal the French in Canada a deadly blow. A mighty force of the Five Nations was organised, to meet at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers, and swoop down first upon Montreal and then upon the other settlements. It so happened that there lived in Ville Marie at this time a young nobleman, Daulac des Ormeaux, who chose to be known to the other colonists as Adam Dollard. Having left France in order to escape the consequences of some rash act, he burned for some chance to retrieve the honour of his name. The valiant youth now saw with joy the long-looked-for opportunity arrive at his door, and he obeyed the summons. From the Governor did Dollard obtain leave to lead a party of volunteers against the savage foe. Gathering sixteen gallant fellows about him, all swore a solemn oath to give or take no quarter, but by sheer force of their arms break the force of the blow which was about to descend on their beloved town. A mad enterprise truly did it seem, but for sheer valour nothing finer has been known since fearless Leonidas and his handful of Greeks held the pass at Thermopylae. The seventeen heroes, together kneeling, took the Sacrament at the hands of the pale priest, and set forth for the Long Sault (or Rapids) of the Ottawa. There in the dense woods they found a disused old Indian stockade by which the invading host had to pass. Entrenching themselves as well as they could, they waited. A few friendly Hurons and Algonquins joined them, wondering at the hardihood of the pale-face warriors, and shamed into lending them a helping hand. The storm broke. A horde of 700 screaming savages, picked men of the Iroquois, flung themselves upon them. Easy work it seemed to crush out this feeble band. To their astonishment, Dollard and his men beat them back. Again and again they came on, and again and again were they repulsed. By this time, appalled at the fearful odds against them, the friendly Indians had fled from the side of the besieged, all but one Huron chief, Annahotaha, and four Algonquins. These stood firm. Every loophole in the stockade darted its tongue of fire; so faultless was the aim that nearly every time a musket rang out an Iroquois fell dead. Fortunately Dollard had brought plenty of ammunition. Some musketoons of large calibre, from whose throats scraps of lead and iron belched forth, slew and wounded several of the enemy at a single discharge. Thus three days wore away and still the terrible struggle came to no end. In the intervals, by day and night, Dollard and his men offered up prayers to Heaven on their knees in the melting snow. Their food was now gone, and, worse still, they had no water. No hope now remained save to keep the Iroquois a few hours longer at bay; they were certain only of a martyr's reward. On the part of the besiegers so many men had they lost that they sickened of the fight, and some amongst them even counselled going home. But other chiefs shrank from such a disgrace.
"Shall we," they cried, "confess ourselves beaten by so paltry an enemy? Our squaws would laugh in our faces! Let us now rather band ourselves together and storm the fort of the white men, at whatever cost."
A general assault was made. So high by this time was piled the bodies of the Iroquois, that their fellows could now leap over the stockade. Dollard fell, and one after another of the exhausted defenders was slain, although each fought like a madman, a sword or hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other. Amongst the heap of corpses one Frenchman still breathed, and he was dragged out and tortured. This was the end; thus perished Dollard and his valiant sixteen, whose names are imperishably written in the annals of Montreal. Nor did they offer their lives to the Iroquois hatchets in vain. The Iroquois had been taught a lesson, and to their lodges the tribe slunk back like whipped curs. "If," said they, "seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron can, behind a picket fence, hold seven hundred of our best warriors at bay, what defence would their hundreds do behind yonder ramparts of stone?" And so the colony of New France was saved.
The cowardly native allies of the French in this fight were not to escape the penalty of their treacherous desertion. The Iroquois turned upon them, burning some on the spot, and making captives of others. Five only succeeded in escaping to carry the tale of the defence, the butchery, and the martyrdom to Ville Marie.
It seemed, however, as if Canada had only been saved in order to perish from other causes. The colony was impoverished and torn, besides, with civil and religious dissensions. The Society of Notre Dame of Montreal, those rich and influential persons in France who had founded the city, now wearied of their enterprise. It was turned over to the great Seminary of St. Sulpicius, and a number of Sulpician fathers were sent out to take charge and to found a seminary in Montreal. Amongst these was the Abbe de Queylus, who hoped the King would eventually make him a bishop. But the Jesuits were too powerful not to prevent any priest but a Jesuit from receiving such an appointment, and at last succeeded in getting François de Laval, Bishop of Petræa, appointed to control the Church in Canada. A striking figure was Laval, playing a great part in the early history of Canada; but in spite of his virtue, he was narrow-minded and domineering, perpetually quarrelling with the various Governors of the colony during the next thirty-five years.
So desperate did the people of New France become at the dangers which surrounded them, at the quarrels between the Bishop and the Governor, at the excesses of the fur-traders, who insisted on intoxicating the Indians and themselves with brandy, that it hardly needed the terrible earthquake which took place in 1663 to make them lose heart altogether. The total population then was some two thousand souls, and the Company of the Hundred Associates had been found powerless to settle, develop, and defend the country properly. Thinking only of the profits of the fur trade, it had shamefully neglected its promises, and when any of its officials made money in Canada, they at once went home to spend it. All this was pointed out by the Marquis d'Avaugour when the Governorship at last fell from his hands; and remembering that others, including Laval, had made the same charge, Colbert, the new Minister of young King Louis the Fourteenth, decided to plead the cause of Canada to his master. It was on his advice that King Louis resolved to take the government directly into his own hands. By royal edict was revoked the charter of the Hundred Associates, and three men appointed as a Sovereign Council in Canada to carry out royal authority. These three officials were the Governor, the Bishop, and the Intendant, the latter having charge of the commerce and finances of the colony. To the post of Governor the Sieur de Courcelle was appointed, and Jean Baptiste Talon became Intendant. The office of Bishop, of course, continued to be filled by Laval.
