For fifty years France paid no attention to Canada, and the few settlers or their descendants left by Cartier or Roberval were unheeded and unsuccoured; but in 1598 the taste for colonial adventure revived, and Henry IV. appointed the Marquis de la Roche his lieutenant-general in Canada, with power to partition discovered lands into seigniories and fiefs, to be held under feudal tenure, and as a compensation for military services when required. La Roche fitted out but one vessel, and unfortunately reinforced his crew with forty malefactors from the prisons. It is sufficient here to state that Sable Island, a barren sand bank, and a rude part of Acadia (now called Nova Scotia), were first settled on and afterwards abandoned; and that to private enterprise, rather than to royal decree, the French nation were at last indebted for a permanent and profitable colonisation in Canada. M. Pontgrave, a merchant of St. Malo, who had distinguished himself by making several profitable fur voyages to Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay river, engaged as an associate M. Chauvin, a naval officer who obtained from Henry IV. in 1600 a commission, granting him an exclusive trade with Canada, and other privileges. Chauvin associated other persons with him in his enterprise, and made two successful trading voyages to Tadoussac, where the Indians gave the most valuable furs in exchange for mere trifles. Chauvin died in 1603, but Commander De Chatte, or De Chaste, governor of Dieppe, founded a company of merchants at Rouen, to carry on the fur trade on an extensive scale; an armament was equipped under Pontgrave, and a distinguished naval officer named Samuel Champlain, who sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Sault St. Louis in 1603. On the death of Chauvin, which happened in the ensuing year, Pierre Dugast Sieur de Monts, a Calvinist and gentleman of the bedchamber to Henry IV. received a patent conferring on him the exclusive trade and government of the territories situate between 40° and 54° of lat.; and although of the reformed religion, the Sieur was enjoined to convert the native Indians to the Roman Catholic tenets. De Monts continued the Company founded by his predecessors, and fitted out an expedition in 1604 of four vessels, two of which were destined for Acadia, then an object of attraction. Suffice it to say, that trading ports were established at several places: the fur trade prosperously carried on; the Acadian colony neglected; and Quebec made the capital of the future New France, founded by Samuel Champlain on the 3d July, 1608. The various Indian tribes contiguous to the new settlement, namely, the Algonquins, the Hurons, &c. who were at war with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, solicited and obtained the aid of the French. Champlain taught them the use of fire-arms, which the Iroquois also acquired from their English friends in the adjacent territory; and hence began the ruinous wars, which have ended in the nearly total extermination of the Indians of the North American continent, wherever they have come in contact with the Europeans and their descendants. But little success attended the first colonization on the banks of the St. Lawrence; in 1622, fourteen years after its establishment, Quebec had not a population exceeding fifty souls.[[3]] The mischievous policy of making religion (and that of the Jesuit caste) a part of the colonial policy, long hampered the French settlers; and to remedy the distressed condition of the colony, the commerce of Canada, heretofore vested in the hands of one or two individuals, was transferred in 1627 to a powerful association, called the Company of a hundred Partners, composed of clergy and laity, under the special management of the celebrated Cardinal Richelieu. The primary object of the Company was the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith, by means of zealous Jesuits; the secondary, an extension of the fur trade, of commerce generally, and the discovery of a route to the Pacific Ocean and to China, through the great rivers and lakes of New France.
This Company held Canada or New France, with the extensive privileges of a feudal seigniory under the king, to whom were owing fealty and homage, and the presentation of a crown of gold at every new accession to the throne. With the right of soil, a monopoly of trade was granted, the king reserving for the benefit of all his subjects only the cod and whale fisheries in the gulf and coast of St. Lawrence; and to such colonists as might not be servants of the Company, was secured the right of trading with the Indians for peltries (skins), it being understood that on pain of confiscation they should bring all their beaver skins to the factors of the Company, who were bound to purchase them at 40 sous a-piece. Under the new system, “protestants and other heretics,” as well as Jews, were entirely excluded from the colony, and a Jesuit corps was to be supported by the Company. Thus monopoly and bigotry went hand in hand, and no auspicious Providence attended the efforts of such a selfish and fanatic project.
The very first vessels despatched by the new religio-commercial-company for Quebec, were captured by the English. In 1628, a squadron of English vessels, under the command of Sir David Kertk, a French refugee, visited Tadoussac, and destroyed the houses and cattle about Cape Tourmente; Kertk and his little band next proceeded to Gaspé bay, where he met M. de Roquemont, one of the hundred partners, commanding a squadron of vessels, freighted with emigrant families, and all kinds of provisions. Roquemont was provoked to a battle, and lost the whole of his fleet, provisions, &c.; and the last hope of the colony of Quebec was blasted by the shipwreck of two Jesuit missionaries, on the coast of Nova Scotia, in a vessel laden with provisions for the starving colonists, who were now reduced to an allowance of five ounces of bread per day. Kertk, reinforced by some more English vessels, commanded by his two brothers, sent them up the St. Lawrence, when they easily captured Quebec on the 20th July, 1629: and, on the 20th October, Champlain arrived at Plymouth, on his return to France, most of his countrymen having, however, remained in Canada. While Quebec was being captured by Kertk and his English squadron, peace was under ratification between England and France; and, in 1632, (the latter power having previously opened a negotiation with England,) Quebec, Acadia, (Nova Scotia,) and Isle Royal, (Cape Breton,) were ceded to France, and Champlain resumed the government of Canada. The Jesuits, with their accustomed zeal, commenced anew their efforts; and from this period to the final British conquest in 1760, a rivalship and growing hostility, partly religious and partly commercial, took place between the French and English settlers in North America, which were evinced by mutual aggressions, while profound peace existed between their respective sovereigns in Europe.
A minute detail of local occurrences would be out of place in a work of this nature; it may be sufficient to say, that from this period, (1674,) when the population, embracing converted Indians, did not exceed eight thousand, the French settlement in Canada continued to increase, and as it rose in power, and assumed offensive operations on the New England frontier, the jealousy of the British colonists became roused, and both parties, aided alternately by the Indians, carried on a destructive and harassing border warfare. And here it may not be amiss to observe, how much the progress of the British colonists in New York, New England, &c., and the prosperity of the French in Canada, were influenced during successive years by the strength and moral character of their respective sovereigns. I may allude, for instance, to the licentious reign of Louis XV., and the vigorous administration of William III., during whose governments the progress of their respective colonies was retarded or advanced by the example or stimulus afforded by the mother country; thus demonstrating how much, under a monarchy, the character and happiness of nations are influenced by the principles and habits of their rulers.
For many years the French in Canada made head against the assaults of their less skilful, but more persevering neighbours, owing to the active cooperation and support which the Canadians received from their Indian allies, whom the British were by nature less adapted for conciliating; but at length the latter, seeing the necessity for native cooperation, conciliated the favour of the aborigines, and turned the tide of success in their own favour. The hostilities waged by the Indians were dreadful. Setting little value on life, they fought with desperation, and gave no quarter; protected by the natural fastnesses of their country, they chose in security their own time for action, and when they had enclosed their enemies in a defile, or amidst the intricacies of the forest, the war-whoop of the victor and the death-shriek of the vanquished were almost simultaneously heard; and while the bodies of the slain served for food to the savage, the scalped head of the white man was a trophy of glory, and a booty of no inconsiderable value to its possessor. The Canadians themselves sometimes experienced the remorseless fury of their Indian forces. On the 26th of July, 1688, Le Rat, a chief of the Huron tribe, mortified by the attempt of the French commanders to negotiate a peace with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, without consulting the wishes of their Huron allies, urged his countrymen, and even stimulated the Iroquois, to aid him in an attack on Montreal. The colonists were taken by surprise, a thousand of them slain, and the houses, crops, and cattle on the island destroyed. Charlevais, in his history of La Nouvelle France, says of the Indians, “Ils ouvrirent le sein des femmes enceintes pour en arracher le fruit qu’elles portoient; ils mirent des enfans tous vivant à la broche, et contraignirent les mères de les tourner pour les faire rôtir!” The French, reinforced from Europe, sent a strong force in February, 1690, who massacred the greater part of the unresisting inhabitants of Shenectaday. According to Colden, (p. 78,) the Indians whom the French took prisoners in the battle at Shenectaday, were cut into pieces and boiled to make soups for the Indian allies who accompanied the French! Such were the desolating effects of European colonization on the continent of America, equalling, in fact, as regards the destruction of human life, the miseries inflicted by the Spaniards on the more peaceful and feeble Indians of the West India islands.
The massacre of the Indians at Shenectaday by the French had the effect of inducing the Iroquois and other nations to become more closely attached to the English, and the French were compelled to act on the defensive, and keep within their own territory. Our countrymen at Albany were at first so much alarmed at the determined hostility of the French, that they prepared to abandon the territory; but, at this crisis, the New England colonists came to an understanding, and formed a coalition for their mutual defence. Commissioners were sent to New York, and a mission despatched to London, explaining their views, and soliciting aid towards the successful completion of the naval and military expedition which was planned against the French settlements in Canada, in 1690.
Aylmer, Upper Canada.
What a signal change had taken place in the views and relative position of the parties, when, but a few years after, those very colonists sent to France, whose dominion in Canada they had been the chief instruments in annihilating, for succour and support in their war of independence against Great Britain!
The plan of attack on Canada by the New England colonists, which they fitted out at an expense of £150,000 (a heavy one to them at this period), was twofold—1st, by land, and inland navigation on the southern frontier of the French; and 2d, by a fleet, under Sir W. Phipps, with a small army on board, which was sent round by sea from Boston to attack Quebec. The force of the English was undisciplined; it consisted of colonists who were stimulated by deadly resentment to avenge the murder of their numerous relatives and friends, who had been slain by the French and their Indian allies. Quebec was formally summoned by Sir W. Phipps to surrender, and bravely defended by the Sieur de Frontenac, who compelled his foes to return to Boston with considerable loss in ships and men, owing to the delay and bad management of the commander, who, had he persevered in his efforts, would undoubtedly have starved out the garrison. The attack on Quebec by land had, without waiting for cooperating with the fleet, previously failed; so that the French were thus enabled to meet and defeat their enemies in detail, a policy which a good general, when assailed by superior numbers, will usually adopt.