1 For the derivation of the name 'Acadia,' see Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 243, note. Cadie is an Indian word meaning place or region. 'It is obviously a Micmac or Souriquois affix used in connexion with other words to describe the natural characteristics of a place or locality' (Bourinot's monograph on 'Cape Breton,' Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. ix, sec. 2, p. 185). For the name 'Canada,' see above, [note 37].
By the end of the seventeenth century the French had three spheres of influence and colonization in North America—the country of the St. Lawrence, the seaboard between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and the New England colonies, and Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi. To join them and encircle the English colonies was the aim of French statesmanship. It was an impossible aim, inevitably frustrated by geographical conditions and by want of colonists; but the conception was a great one, large as the new continent in which it was framed, and able men tried to work it out, but tried in vain.
| The French as colonizers. |
Much has been written of French methods of colonization; writers have been at pains to enumerate the shortcomings of the French, and have carefully explained whence those mistakes arose. But there is less to wonder at in the failures than in the great successes to be credited to France. Being part of the continent of Europe, and ever embroiled in continental politics, when she competed with England as a colonizing power, she competed with one hand tied.2 Changeable, it is said, were the French and their policy; their kings and courtiers may have been changeable, but the charge does not lie against the French nation.
2 This is pointed out in Professor Seeley's Expansion of England, course i, lecture 5.
They were trading up the Senegal early in the seventeenth century, and there they are at the present day. From the dawn of their colonial enterprise they tried to obtain possession of Madagascar; they have their object now. Nearly four centuries ago they fished off the coasts of Newfoundland, and England has good cause to know that they fish there still. To the St. Lawrence went Cartier from St. Malo, and by the same route generations of Frenchmen entered steadily into America, until Quebec had fallen and the St. Lawrence was theirs no more. The French were versatile in their colonial dealings; they were quickly moving and constantly moving; but they saw clearly and they followed tenaciously; they were strong and staunch, and they proved themselves to be a wonderful people.
Yet there must have been some element of weakness in the French character, in that they bred and obeyed bad rulers who did not live for France, but for whom France was sacrificed; who crushed liberty, political and religious, who drove out industry with the Huguenots, and squandered the heritage of the nation. Englishmen, comparatively early in their history, reckoned with priests first and with kings afterwards. They did most of their work at home before they made their colonial empire; they colonized new worlds as a reformed people; the French tried to colonize under absolutism and priestcraft. It might not have been so, it probably would not have been so, if the religious policy of the French Government had been other than it was. The Huguenots, if not persecuted and eventually in great measure driven out, would have given France the one thing wanting to make her colonization successful, the spirit of private enterprise independent of court favour, the child and the parent of freedom, the determined foe of a deadening religious despotism.
| Attempts at French colonization in Brazil and Florida. |
In the sixteenth century, after Cartier's voyages to the St. Lawrence, we hear little of the French in North America. The Breton fishermen followed their calling, crossed the Atlantic year after year, and came back with cargoes of fish and with furs procured by barter with the Indians; but no French settlement was founded either in Canada or in Acadia. In France itself the last half of the century was a time of civil war; the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place, the house of Valois came to an end, and in 1589 Henry of Navarre became King of France. Before his accession to the Crown, two attempts at French colonization were made, in Brazil and in Florida. The colonists were mainly Huguenots, and their enterprise was backed by the great Protestant leader Coligny. The earlier attempt, designed to plant a settlement on the harbour of Rio Janeiro, was short-lived, because ill led by a violent tyrannical man, Villegagnon. The first settlers arrived in 1555; by the end of 1558 they had all disappeared. Still more tragical was the outcome of the venture in Florida. In 1562 a band of would-be colonists sailed from Dieppe, under the command of Jean Ribault. They reached Florida in safety, and built a small fort towards the northern end of the peninsula, in which thirty men were left behind while Ribault returned to France. In the following year, the survivors of the thirty came back to Europe, having abandoned the fort and experienced every extremity of thirst and hunger while crossing the Atlantic in a ship of their own making. Again in 1564, a Huguenot expedition, under René de Laudonnière, sailed for Florida, and the settlers planted themselves on the St. John's river, then known as the river of May. In 1565 Ribault joined them with reinforcements and supplies. Well known from its surpassing horror is the story of the French settlement. A Spanish force under Menendez, a fanatic as treacherous and as savage as Philip II himself, took up a position to the south where the town of St. Augustine now stands, and overpowering the Frenchmen in detachments, butchered them with every accompaniment of cruelty and guile. The French fort passed into Spanish hands, but within three years time an avenging freebooter came from France, Domenic de Gourgues; the Spaniards in their turn were shot and hung, and the banks of the St. John's river were left desolate.
Ill managed, badly supported were these French ventures to Brazil and Florida. Had they been well led and given some little encouragement and assistance, the result might have been far different. Protestants might have gained a firm foothold in Central and Southern America. France might have won from Spain and Portugal a great domain. As it was, the attempts resulted in utter failure, and great opportunities were lost never to be regained.