The regiment of Carignan-Salières had been ordered home, with the exception of four companies kept in garrison, ** and a considerable number discharged in order to become settlers. Of those who returned, six companies were, a year or two later, sent back, discharged in their turn, and converted into colonists. Neither men nor officers were positively constrained to remain in Canada; but the officers were told that if they wished to please his Majesty this was the way to do so; and both they and the men were stimulated by promises and rewards. Fifteen hundred livres were given to La Motte, because he had married in the country and meant to remain there. Six thousand livres were assigned to other officers, because they had followed, or were about to follow, La Motte’s example; and twelve thousand were set apart to be distributed to the soldiers under similar conditions. *** Each soldier who consented to remain and settle was promised a grant of land and a hundred livres in money; or, if he preferred it, fifty livres with provisions for a year. This military colonization had a strong and lasting influence on the character of the Canadian people.
* The king had sent out more emigrants than he had
promised, to judge from the census reports during the years
1666, 1667, and 1668. The total population for those years
is 3418, 4312, and 5870, respectively. A small part of this
growth may be set down to emigration not under government
auspices, and a large part to natural increase, which was
enormous at this time, from causes which will soon appear.
** Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.
*** Ibid.
But if the colony was to grow from within, the new settlers must have wives. For some years past, the Sulpitians had sent out young women for the supply of Montreal; and the king, on a larger scale, continued the benevolent work. Girls for the colony were taken from the hospitals of Paris and of Lyons, which were not so much hospitals for the sick as houses of refuge for the poor. Mother Mary writes in 1665 that a hundred had come that summer, and were nearly all provided with husbands, and that two hundred more were to come next year. The case was urgent, for the demand was great. Complaints, however, were soon heard that women from cities made indifferent partners; and peasant girls, healthy, strong, and accustomed to field work, were demanded in their place. Peasant girls were therefore sent, but this was not all. Officers as well as men wanted wives; and Talon asked for a consignment of young ladies. His request was promptly answered. In 1667, he writes: “They send us eighty-four girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are fifteen or twenty of pretty good birth; several of them are really demoiselles, and tolerably well brought up.” They complained of neglect and hardship during the voyage. “I shall do what I can to soothe their discontent,” adds the intendant; “for if they write to their correspondents at home how ill they have been treated it would be an obstacle to your plan of sending us next year a number of select young ladies.” *
* “Des demoiselles bien choisies.” Talon a Colbert, 27 Oct.
1667.
Three years later we find him asking for three or four more in behalf of certain bachelor officers. The response surpassed his utmost wishes; and he wrote again: “It is not expedient to send more demoiselles. I have had this year fifteen of them, instead of the four I asked for.” *
As regards peasant girls, the supply rarely equalled the demand. Count Frontenac, Courcelle’s successor, complained of the scarcity: “If a hundred and fifty girls and as many servants,” he says, “had been sent out this year, they would all have found husbands and masters within a month.” **
The character of these candidates for matrimony has not escaped the pen of slander. The caustic La Hontan, writing fifteen or twenty years after, draws the following sketch of the mothers of Canada: “After the regiment of Carignan was disbanded, ships were sent out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the direction of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three classes. These vestals were, so to speak, piled one on the other in three different halls, where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the
* Talon 'a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1671.
** Frontenac a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1672. This year only eleven
girls had been sent. The scarcity was due to the
indiscretion of Talon, who had written to the minister that,
as many of the old settlers had daughters just becoming
marriageable, it would be well, in order that they might
find husbands, to send no more girls from France at present.
The next year, 1673, the king writes that, though he is
involved in a great war, which needs all his resources, he
has nevertheless sent sixty more girls.
flock. There was wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three harems; for here were to be seen the tall and the short, the blond and the brown, the plump and the lean; everybody, in short, found a shoe to fit him. At the end of a fortnight not one was left. I am told that the plumpest were taken first, because it was thought that, being less active, they were more likely to keep at home, and that they could resist the winter cold better. Those who wanted a wife applied to the directresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and a notary, and the next day the governor-general caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money.” *
As regards the character of the girls, there can be no doubt that this amusing sketch is, in the main, maliciously untrue. Since the colony began, it had been the practice to send back to France women of the class alluded to by La Hontan, as soon as they became notorious. ** Those who were