No Canadian, under the French rule, stands in a more conspicuous or more deserved eminence than Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. In the seventeenth century, most of those who acted a prominent part in the colony were born in Old France; but Iberville was a true son of the soil. He and his brothers, Longueuil, Serigny, Assigny, Maricourt, Sainte-Hélène, the two Châteauguays, and the two Bienvilles, were, one and all, children worthy of their father, Charles Le Moyne of Montreal, and favorable types of that Canadian noblesse, to whose adventurous hardihood half the continent bears witness. Iberville was trained in the French navy, and was already among its most able commanders. The capture of Pemaquid was, for him, but the beginning of greater things; and, though the exploits that followed were outside the main theatre of action, they were too remarkable to be passed in silence.
The French had but one post of any consequence on the Island of Newfoundland, the fort and village at Placentia Bay; while the English fishermen had formed a line of settlements two or three hundred miles along the eastern coast. Iberville had represented to the court the necessity of checking their growth, and to that end a plan was settled, in connection with the expedition against Pemaquid. The ships of the king were to transport the men; while Iberville and others associated with him were to pay them, and divide the plunder as their compensation. The chronicles of the time show various similar bargains between the great king and his subjects.
Pemaquid was no sooner destroyed, than Iberville sailed for Newfoundland, with the eighty men he had taken at Quebec; and, on arriving, he was joined by as many more, sent him from the same place. He found Brouillan, governor of Placentia, with a squadron formed largely of privateers from St. Malo, engaged in a vain attempt to seize St. John, the chief post of the English. Brouillan was a man of harsh, jealous, and impracticable temper; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he and Iberville could act in concert. They came at last to an agreement, made a combined attack on St. John, took it, and burned it to the ground. Then followed a new dispute about the division of the spoils. At length it was settled. Brouillan went back to Placentia, and Iberville and his men were left to pursue their conquests alone.
There were no British soldiers on the island. The settlers were rude fishermen without commanders, and, according to the French accounts, without religion or morals. In fact, they are described as "worse than Indians." Iberville now had with him a hundred and twenty-five soldiers and Canadians, besides a few Abenakis from Acadia. ¹ It was mid-winter when he began his march. For two months he led his hardy band through frost and snow, from hamlet to hamlet, along those forlorn and desolate coasts, attacking each in turn and carrying havoc everywhere. Nothing could exceed the hardships of the way, or the vigor with which they were met and conquered. The chaplain Baudoin gives an example of them in his diary. "January 18th. The roads are so bad that we can find only twelve men strong enough to beat the path. Our snow-shoes break on the crust, and against the rocks and fallen trees hidden under the snow, which catch and trip us; but, for all that, we cannot help laughing to see now one, and now another, fall headlong. The Sieur de Martigny fell into a river, and left his gun and his sword there to save his life."
[1] The reinforcement sent him from Quebec consisted of fifty soldiers, thirty Canadians, and three officers. Frontenac au Ministre, 28 Oct., 1696.
A panic seized the settlers, many of whom were without arms as well as without leaders. They imagined the Canadians to be savages, who scalped and butchered like the Iroquois. Their resistance was feeble and incoherent, and Iberville carried all before him. Every hamlet was pillaged and burned; and, according to the incredible report of the French writers, two hundred persons were killed and seven hundred captured, though it is admitted that most of the prisoners escaped. When spring opened, all the English settlements were destroyed, except the post of Bonavista and the Island of Carbonnière, a natural fortress in the sea. Iberville returned to Placentia, to prepare for completing his conquest, when his plans were broken by the arrival of his brother Serigny, with orders to proceed at once against the English at Hudson's Bay. [2]
[2] On the Newfoundland expedition, the best authority is the long diary of the chaplain Baudoin, Journal du Voyage que j'ai fait avec M. d'Iberville; also, Mémoire sur l'Entreprise de Terreneuve, 1696. Compare La Potherie, I. 24-52. A deposition of one Phillips, one Roberts, and several others, preserved in the Public Record Office of London, and quoted by Brown in his History of Cape Breton, makes the French force much greater than the statements of the French writers. The deposition also says that at the attack of St. John's "the French took one William Brew, an inhabitant, a prisoner, and cut all round his scalp, and then, by strength of hands, stript his skin from the forehead to the crown, and so sent him into the fortifications, assuring the inhabitants that they would serve them all in like manner if they did not surrender."
St. John's was soon after reoccupied by the English.
Baudoin was one of those Acadian priests who are praised for services "en empeschant les sauvages de faire la paix avec les Anglois, ayant mesme esté en guerre avec eux." Champigny au Ministre, 24 Oct., 1694.
It was the nineteenth of May, when Serigny appeared with five ships of war, the "Pelican," the "Palmier," the "Wesp," the "Profond," and the "Violent." The important trading-post of Fort Nelson, called Fort Bourbon by the French, was the destined object of attack. Iberville and Serigny had captured it three years before, but the English had retaken it during the past summer, and, as it commanded the fur-trade of a vast interior region, a strong effort was now to be made for its recovery. Iberville took command of the "Pelican," and his brother of the "Palmier." They sailed from Placentia early in July, followed by two other ships of the squadron, and a vessel carrying stores. Before the end of the month they entered the bay, where they were soon caught among masses of floating ice. The store-ship was crushed and lost, and the rest were in extreme danger. The "Pelican" at last extricated herself, and sailed into the open sea; but her three consorts were nowhere to be seen. Iberville steered for Fort Nelson, which was several hundred miles distant, on the western shore of this dismal inland sea. He had nearly reached it, when three sail hove in sight; and he did not doubt that they were his missing ships. They proved, however, to be English armed merchantmen: the "Hampshire" of fifty-two guns, and the "Daring" and the "Hudson's Bay" of thirty-six and thirty-two. The "Pelican" carried but forty-four, and she was alone. A desperate battle followed, and from half past nine to one o'clock the cannonade was incessant. Iberville kept the advantage of the wind, and, coming at length to close quarters with the "Hampshire," gave her repeated broadsides between wind and water, with such effect that she sank with all on board. He next closed with the "Hudson's Bay," which soon struck her flag; while the "Daring" made sail, and escaped. The "Pelican" was badly damaged in hull, masts, and rigging; and the increasing fury of a gale from the east made her position more critical every hour. She anchored, to escape being driven ashore; but the cables parted, and she was stranded about two leagues from the fort. Here, racked by the waves and the tide, she split amidships; but most of the crew reached land with their weapons and ammunition. The northern winter had already begun, and the snow lay a foot deep in the forest. Some of them died from cold and exhaustion, and the rest built huts and kindled fires to warm and dry themselves. Food was so scarce that their only hope of escape from famishing seemed to lie in a desperate effort to carry the fort by storm, but now fortune interposed. The three ships they had left behind in the ice arrived with all the needed succors. Men, cannon, and mortars were sent ashore, and the attack began.