| French Chartered Companies. |
In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the Netherlands West India Company practically included the whole nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England, the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main, working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in England, the companies were private associations, but Court favour was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them, until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone.
| The company of the One Hundred Associates. |
Trade jealousies hampered the beginnings of Canadian settlement; there was neither free trade in Canada nor unquestioned monopoly. To cure this evil Richelieu, in 1627, brought into being the company of the One Hundred Associates, nominally a private association, really the offspring of the Government. Its sphere extended from Florida to the North Sea, and from east to west as far as discovery should extend along the rivers of Canada. It controlled all trade except the fisheries, and it enjoyed sovereign rights in so far that it was entitled to confer titles and tenures, subject to the approval of the Crown. The chief officers were to be nominated by the King, but under the Sovereign the company was feudal lord of New France; of its soil and its inland waters, with all that they produced. A statesman projected the company, and, with keen insight into the wants of New France, Richelieu laid down as one of the terms of its charter that settlers were to be introduced in specified numbers, especially and immediately settlers of the artisan class; but these provisions were made to a large extent barren by excluding the Huguenots. At the outset the new French company, with all its backing, was foiled in its efforts by the English Merchant Adventurers. The first transports sent out, bearing settlers and supplies, were captured by Kirke. Quebec fell and New France was lost. The Convention of Susa and the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye were signed and executed, and the One Hundred Associates resumed their charge of Canada. Under them Champlain held the government of New France till he died, being succeeded by a soldier, M. de Montmagny, who reached Quebec in June, 1636.
| Three Rivers. Montreal. Sorel. |
In 1634, while Champlain was still alive, a fort was begun at Three Rivers. The first permanent settlement at Montreal dates from the spring of 1642, and in the same year Fort Richelieu was founded on the site of the present town of Sorel,1 where the Richelieu—the river of the Iroquois—joins the St. Lawrence. For many years Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal practically comprised New France. Outside them were fur-traders and Jesuit missionaries, carrying their lives in their hands. A few farms were taken up along the river above and below Quebec, but colonization was almost non-existent, and small groups of priests and soldiers at two or three points on the St. Lawrence feebly upheld the power of France in North America.
1 'So called from M. de Saurel, who reconstructed the fort in 1665' (Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. i, p. 185).
| Slow progress of Canada up to 1663. |
The company of the One Hundred Associates lasted till 1663, and little they did for the land or for themselves. At the end of their tenure, the whole French population of Canada hardly reached 2,500 souls. It had been an integral part of the company's programme to people Canada with French men and French women, but, inasmuch as Huguenots were rigidly excluded, the motive for emigration was wanting. The Catholic citizens of France were comfortable at home. They might wish to trade with Canada, but they did not wish to spend their lives there. The soldiers of France went out only under orders; they looked for brighter battlefields than the North American backwoods. Priests and nuns alone felt a call to cross the Atlantic, to face the most rigorous winters and the most savage foes. The French religion was firmly planted in North America during these early years, but the French people were left behind.
De Montmagny was Governor for twelve years, till 1648. His successors under the company's régime were D'Ailleboust, De Lauzon, the Vicomte d'Argenson, and Baron d'Avaugour. Under the Governors there were commandants of the garrisons at Three Rivers and Montreal; and from 1636 onwards there was some kind of Council for framing ordinances and regulating the administration of justice, the Governor and the leading ecclesiastics being always members, and representatives of the settlers being from time to time admitted. In 1645, moreover, the company was reorganized, and the fur trade, which had been vested in the Associates, was handed over to the colonists. Notwithstanding, there was little increase of strength and little growth of population till the year 1663, and up to that date the history of Canada is no more than a record of savage warfare and missionary enterprise.