Quaint and Historic Forts of North America

by John Martin Hammond

The first fortifications were little more than gun platforms placed at an advantageous position so as to command the river. Their site became the location of Castle St. Louis and is to-day the eastern end of the Dufferin Terrace. So it is easy to remember where Champlain laid the foundations of the new city.

By courtesy of Detroit Publishing Company

THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC

The new seat of power was shortly to see its master exerting his authority in a way not to be lightly mistaken. Treachery was plotted by some among Champlain’s followers, who planned to assassinate their chief and sell his new city to the Spaniards. News of this move was brought to Champlain’s ears. He caused the ringleaders to be seized by his soldiers and hung in the fort until dead. In this fashion the stronghold saw its first acts of violence. Scurvy marked the passage of the first winter in the New World of the little fort’s defenders, and by the spring only the most hardy were alive.

The years which came between 1608 and 1629, the date of the first formal siege of Quebec, brought enlargement and strength to both the fort and the city. During this period both had been frequently surrounded by hostile Indians, who feared the white man’s guns too much to attempt an attack by storm but who prowled around beneath the very ramparts of the fort seeking for unwary adventurers who might be without the gates. The control of the little colony in France had passed through various hands, but always the chief executive in the New World had been its founder, the rugged Champlain. The year 1629 finds the little colony in the possession of the Company of the 100 Associates, an organization founded by His Excellency, Cardinal Richelieu, and of which His Eminence was himself a member, and the winter of this year finds the colony in its usual desperate straits, beleaguered by winter and by savage foe and deserted in all but name by its sponsors in France.

In the spring of 1629 the inhabitants of Quebec were gladdened by the intelligence that a fleet had been discerned from Cap Tourmente in the mouth of the river and that it was even then approaching the city. It was supposed that this was the long-wished-for squadron of relief ships and that all would be prosperity and good cheer in the town for a time now. The citizens assembled on the walls of the fort to descry the distant sail, when word was brought by a friendly Indian that the looked-for vessels, far from being messengers of peace, were, in fact, emissaries of war; that they were English, and that they had just burned and pillaged a fishing village in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion on the way up the river. War had been declared between England and France and Quebec had not received word of it! Joy was changed to woe.

The next day emissaries arrived from Sir David Kirke, the English admiral in command of the fleet, demanding the surrender of the town and the fort, but Champlain, believing that help would soon arrive from France and not being of the temper, anyhow, which quickly gives up, turned these messengers away with words of defiance. The first siege of Quebec was now begun.

To tell the truth it was an informal sort of matter, anyhow, this first siege of Quebec. The English vessels pounded away at the town for a day or two in a casual fashion and then drifted down the river. The French, on their part, had but fifty pounds of powder and were very careful about wasting any of this. Time passed and still no aid came from distant France. At length the intelligence which Champlain had been dreading was brought to him. The long-awaited French relief ships had entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence only to be overcome and seized by the English blockader. Hope had now departed, and when, in July, three English ships sailed up to the town, Champlain and his sixteen soldiers watched them apathetically because they knew that they, themselves, could do no more. Quebec was surrendered to the English and on July 20, 1629, the English flag for the first time flew over the little settlement. Said one of Kirke’s captains: “There was not in the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this examinate’s knowledge, any victuals save only one tubb of bitter roots.”