Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France

by Gilbert Parker; Claude Glennon Bryan

THE NOBLESSE AND THE PEOPLE

The Canadian seigneur held his lands of the King, and the habitants, or cultivators of the soil, held theirs of the seigneur upon the performance of specific duties and the payment of cens et rente. These tributes varied curiously in kind and amount; and on St. Martin's Day, when the censitaires commonly liquidated the obligations of their tenure, the seigneurie presented an animated scene. Here were gathered all the tenants, bearing wheat, eggs, and live capons to pay for their long narrow farms, at a rate ranging from four to sixteen francs.

The annual delivery of his handful of sous and his bundle of produce did not, however, complete the obligations of the censitaire. Throughout the year he must grind his grain at the seigneur's mill, paying one bushel in every fourteen for the service, bake his bread in the seigneur's oven, work for him one or two days in the year, and forfeit one fish in every eleven to the lord of the manor. Military service, however, was no part of the habitant's duty as a tenant; for the judicious Colbert, jealous always for the power of the monarchy, had clipped this ancient feature from Canadian feudalism, and given absolute military control of the country to the Governor at Quebec. The seigneur's judicial powers varied according to the importance of his fief. Barons were empowered to erect gallows and pillories, but the ordinary judicial powers of a Canadian seigneur were confined to Middle and Low justice, which comprehended only minor offences.

The solicitous interest of Louis XIV. in the affairs of New France promised much for the country's prosperity; and every ship sailing to the St. Lawrence carried out a fresh batch of emigrants. For all of these the King paid out of his own pocket, and it cost him a pretty penny to respond to Intendant Talon's persistent appeals for more settlers. Agencies were established at several points in France to recruit colonists, and grants of money and land were held out as inducements to new settlers. In this way the King and Colbert managed to send out about three hundred men each year. But, as might be expected of emigration state-aided and scarcely voluntary, Quebec became a city of men chiefly, there being few women besides cloistered nuns. There had always been a demand for wives, but now that the soldiers and officers of the Carignan-Salières had elected to remain in the country, the scarcity of women induced a matrimonial famine.

Talon speedily apprised Colbert of the situation, and the most comely inmates of the refuge hospitals of Paris and Lyons were summoned to fill this void. In 1665 one hundred of the "King's girls" arrived in Quebec, almost instantly to be provided with partners; and although the supply was doubled in the following year, it yet remained below the conjugal demand.

To supply the needs of the seigneurs also became a real problem. Talon, with grim humour, demanded a consignment of young ladies; and in 1667 he was able to announce as follows: "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." Amusing evidence, however, of the exceeding delicacy of such a market is found in a letter, in which the match-making Intendant alludes to the supply of the year 1670. "It is not expedient," he ungallantly writes to Colbert, "to send more demoiselles. I have had this year fifteen of them instead of the four I asked for."

La Hontan, writing a few years later, cannot refrain from exercising keen but slanderous wit at the expense of these fair cargoes from Quebec so gladly received. His description, albeit scandalous, is amusing: "After the regiment of Carrigan 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 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 notary, and the next day the Governor 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."

On their part the girls were permitted to reject any suitor who displeased them; and at these annual marriage fairs the contest for favour was keen on both sides. But the paternalism of the Grand Monarch went even farther than the mere enlistment of wives for the colonists. Bounties were offered on early marriages; and the maid who married before she was sixteen received the "King's gift" of twenty livres, in addition to her ordinary dowry. Bachelors who refused to marry were rendered as uncomfortable as possible, and were taxed for their abstinence or timidity. Children were likewise made a good asset, and blessed was the man whose house was full of them. Thus runs an edict of the time: "...In future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not being priests, maids, or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres, and that, to this effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year in the months of June and July to the Intendant of justice, police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of each year."

It was not by accident but by design that an aristocratic class was created in French Canada. The perpetual contrast between the English and the French systems of colonisation was but the difference between natural evolution and artificial construction. The Canadian aristocracy was a consistent detail of the latter and in keeping with Louis' ambitious scheme of personal government. The caste system grafted upon the stem of the colonial plant was a picturesque adornment to the life of Quebec, but a doubtful experiment from any other point of view, as time proved.