Le Moyne's mission was to the Onondagas, and its result was an application from that tribe that a French settlement should be established among them. The invitation was accepted; and in the summer of 1656 between forty and fifty Frenchmen established themselves on Lake Onondaga, in the very heart of the Iroquois country. It was a desperate enterprise. The men could ill be spared from Quebec, and they were but hostages among the Five Nations. The Indians pretended peace, but even while the Onondagas were escorting the Frenchmen up the river, the Mohawks attacked the expedition, and subsequently under the very guns of Quebec carried off Huron captives from the Isle of Orleans. For a little less than two years, the small band of French colonists remained amid the Onondagas, in hourly peril of their lives; and finally, towards the end of 1658, at dead of night, while the Indians were overcome by gluttony and debauch, they launched their boats and canoes on the Oswego river, reached Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, and found themselves once more at Montreal.
It was a fit ending to the first stage of Canadian history—a hopeless venture, a confession of weakness, a hairsbreadth escape. So far there had been no colonization of Canada. There had been one wise, far-seeing man—Champlain. Brave soldiers had come from France, and still braver priests. There had been going in and out among the natives, toil and hardship, adventure and loss of life. But the French had as yet no real hold on Canada. Between Quebec and the Three Rivers—between the Three Rivers and Montreal, not they but the Iroquois were masters of the St. Lawrence. A trading company claimed to rule: its rule was nothingness. Within Quebec bishops and Governors quarrelled for precedence: under its walls the Mohawks yelled defiance. Montreal, the story goes, was only saved by a band of Frenchmen, who, in a log hut on the Ottawa, sold their lives as dearly as the heroes of Greek or Roman legend; and to crown it all, at the beginning of 1663, the shock of a mighty earthquake was felt throughout the land, making the forts and convents tremble, sending, as it were, a shiver through the feeble frame of New France.
| The One Hundred Associates surrender their charter. |
It was the prelude of a better time. In March, 1663, the One Hundred Associates surrendered their charter to the Crown. A century later, by the Peace of Paris in 1763, France lost Canada. In those hundred years a fair trial was given to French colonization. How much was done to leave the impress of a great nation on Canada, the province of Quebec to-day will testify. Wherein the work was found wanting is told in history.
| The Company of the West. |
In 1663, we read, Canada became a Royal Province. It passed out of the keeping of a company and came under the direct control of the French King and his ministers. The statement requires some modification, for in 1664 Colbert created a new Chartered Company, the Company of the West, whose sphere, like that of the Netherlands West India Company, included the whole of the western half of the world, so far as it was or might be French—America North and South, the West Indies, and West Africa. Canada was within the terms of its charter, which included a monopoly of trade for forty years and, on paper, sovereign rights within the wide limits to which the charter extended. Thus the members of the company claimed to be feudal Seigniors of the soil of New France and to nominate the Council of Government, with the exception of the Governor and Intendant; while from the dues which they levied the cost of government was to be defrayed.
Such was the outline and the intention of the scheme: the actual result was that the carrying trade was monopolized by the company, together with one-fourth of the beaver skins of all Canada, and the whole of the traffic of the lower St. Lawrence, which centred at Tadoussac. Out of their monopoly they paid all or part of the expenses of government, but the administration practically remained in the hands of the Crown. Like its predecessor, this company was a miserable failure. It lasted for ten years only, and during those years it was an incubus on Canada.
| Chartered Companies ill suited to France. |
The truth was that Chartered Companies were alien to the genius of France, or at any rate of Roman Catholic France—the France of the Bourbons. Her greatest ministers, Richelieu and Colbert, were, it is true, loth to discard the system. They wished to give French merchants a direct interest in building up a colonial empire. They saw the English working by means of companies. They saw the Dutch giving to the state the outward semblance of private enterprise. Companies, they argued, would promote French trade and colonization, as they had promoted the trade and colonization of rival nations. But Richelieu and Colbert were despotic ministers of arbitrary Kings; the companies which they created were as lifeless and as helpless as their titles were high-sounding and pretentious. They lasted as long, and only as long, as they were backed by the Crown. They were swept away as easily as they were formed; and they left no lasting impress on French colonial history.