Daulac had crammed a large musketoon with powder, and plugged up the muzzle. Lighting the fuse inserted in it, he tried to throw it over the barrier, to burst like a grenade among the crowd of savages without; but it struck the ragged top of one of the palisades, fell back among the Frenchmen and exploded, killing and wounding several of them, and nearly blinding others. In the confusion that followed, the Iroquois got possession of the loopholes, and, thrusting in their guns, fired on those within. In a moment more they had torn a breach in the palisade; but, nerved with the energy of desperation, Daulac and his followers sprang to defend it. Another breach was made, and then another. Daulac was struck dead, but the survivors kept up the fight. With a sword or a hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other, they threw themselves against the throng of enemies, striking and stabbing with the fury of madmen; till the Iroquois, despairing of taking them alive, fired volley after volley and shot them down. All was over, and a burst of triumphant yells proclaimed the dear-bought victory.
Searching the pile of corpses, the victors found four Frenchmen still breathing. Three had scarcely a spark of life, and, as no time was to be lost, they burned them on the spot. The fourth, less fortunate, seemed likely to survive, and they reserved him for future torments. As for the Huron deserters, their cowardice profited them little. The Iroquois, regardless of their promises, fell upon them, burned some at once, and carried the rest to their villages for a similar fate. Five of the number had the good fortune to escape, and it was from them, aided by admissions made long afterwards by the Iroquois themselves, that the French of Canada derived all their knowledge of this glorious disaster. *
* When the fugitive Hurons reached Montreal, they were
unwilling to confess their desertion of the French, and
declared that they and some others of their people, to the
number of fourteen, had stood by them to the last. This was
the story told by one of them to the Jesuit Chaumonot, and
by him communicated in a letter to his friends at Quebec The
substance of this letter is given by Marie de l’Incarnation,
in her letter to her son of June 25, 1660. The Jesuit
Relation of this year gives another long account of the
affair, also derived from the Huron deserters, who this time
only pretended that ten of their number remained with the
French. They afterwards admitted that all had deserted but
Annaliotaha, as appears from the account drawn up by Dollier
de Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal. Another
contemporary, Belmont, who heard the story from an Iroquois,
makes the same statement. All these writers, though two of
them were not friendly to Montreal, agree that Daulac and
his followers saved Canada from a disastrous invasion. The
governor, Argenson, in a letter written on the fourth of
July following, and in his Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre
des Iroquois, expresses the same conviction. Before me is an
extract, copied from the Petit Registre de la Cure de
Montréal, giving the names and ages of Daulac’s men. The
Abbé Faillon took extraordinary pains to collect all the
evidence touching this affair. See his Histoire de la
Colonie Française, II. chap. xv. Charlevoix, very little to
his credit, passes it over in silence, not being partial to
Montreal.
To the colony it proved a salvation. The Iroquois had had fighting enough. If seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron, behind a picket fence, could hold seven hundred warriors at bay so long, what might they expect from many such, fighting behind walls of stone? For that year they thought no more of capturing Quebec and Montreal, but went home dejected and amazed, to howl over their losses, and nurse their dashed courage for a day of vengeance.
CHAPTER IV. 1657-1668. THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.
Domestic Strife.—Jesuit and Sulpitian.—Abbé Queylus.—Francois de Laval.—The Zealots of Caen.—Gallican and Ultramontane.—The Rival Claimants.—Storm at Quebec—Laval Triumphant.
Canada, gasping under the Iroquois tomahawk, might, one would suppose, have thought her cup of tribulation full, and, sated with inevitable woe, have sought consolation from the wrath without in a holy calm within. Not so, however; for while the heathen raged at the door, discord rioted at the hearthstone. Her domestic quarrels were wonderful in number, diversity, and bitterness. There was the standing quarrel of Montreal and Quebec, the quarrels of priests with each other, of priests with the governor, and of the governor with the intendant, besides ceaseless wranglings of rival traders and rival peculators.