| Complaints of the Hudson Bay Company against the seizure of their forts. The English forts recovered. |
This successful raid was organized and carried out in a time of peace between the English and French Crowns; and, when the Englishmen who had been taken prisoners at the forts found their way home, the Hudson Bay Company laid the case before the Government, demanding satisfaction for the wrong done and restitution of their property. There was little likelihood of redress while James II was King of England. On November 16, 1686, he concluded a treaty of neutrality with the French King, the Treaty of Whitehall; and a mixed commission of French and English was appointed to inquire into the claims of the company. No settlement was arrived at: in 1688 came the Revolution in England; in 1692 the battle of La Hogue crippled the French at sea; and at length, in 1693, an English expedition was sent to Hudson Bay which recovered all the forts in James Bay.
| Iberville takes Port Nelson and the forts in James Bay. They are recovered by the English. |
The northernmost post of the Hudson Bay Company, the post on the Nelson river, or rather on the Hayes river, which flows into the same estuary, had not been taken by the French in their buccaneering expedition of 1686. It was known indifferently as Port Nelson or Fort York. It was at some distance from the forts in James Bay, and promised to be an outlet for trade from the regions west of the great lakes. It had been threatened by the French in 1690, and in October, 1694, the bold and restless Iberville, who had returned to Canada in 1687, appeared before it with two ships. After a short siege it capitulated, and was renamed Fort Bourbon; and Iberville followed up his success by recapturing the forts in James Bay. Thus, by the middle of 1695, the French held every post in Hudson Bay. In the next year came English ships, and all the positions were regained for England.
| Fresh raid by Iberville. The Peace of Ryswick. The Peace of Utrecht. Hudson Bay secured to England. |
Once more, in 1697, Iberville appeared on the scene. He had in the meantime taken Fort Pemaquid on the Acadian frontier, and overrun Newfoundland; and starting from Placentia, with four ships of war sent out from France, he made sail for Hudson Bay. The destination was Port Nelson; but the vessels became separated, and with a single ship, Iberville, when nearing the fort, came into collision with three armed English merchantmen. The bold Frenchman closed with them, one to three, sank one of the vessels, took a second, while the third made its escape. A heavy gale came on, his own ship was driven ashore and broken up; but landing with his men, he was rejoined shortly afterwards by the rest of the French squadron, and laying siege to the fort compelled it to capitulate. This feat of arms took place early in September, 1697; on the twentieth of the same month the Peace of Ryswick was signed, and under its terms the French were placed in possession of all the Hudson Bay forts, with the exception of Fort Albany.15 They held them down to the year 1713, when the Peace of Utrecht in no uncertain words gave back to Great Britain 'to be possessed in full right for ever, the Bay and Straits of Hudson, together with all lands, seas, seacoasts, rivers and places situate in the same Bay and Straits and which belong thereunto, no tracts of land or of sea being excepted, which are at present possessed by the subjects of France.' Boundaries, which by the treaty were to be defined, were never fixed; but no French ship appeared again with hostile intent in Hudson Bay until the year 1782.
15 The manner in which the Treaty of Ryswick worked out in favour of the French in Hudson Bay is explained, as far as it can be explained, in Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. iii, pp. 39-41.
NOTE.—For the first part of the above chapter, see
KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. ii.
Sir J. BOURINOT'S Cape Breton (referred to [above], note).
The same author's Canada, in the 'Story of the Nations' Series, chap. vii, and
Dr. PATTERSON'S Paper on Sir William Alexander and the Scottish Attempt to Colonize Acadia, published in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. x, 1892.
For the second part, see KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. iii.
Two books have recently been published on the Hudson Bay Company, viz: The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company, by GEORGE BRYCE, M.A., LL.D., and The Great Company (1667-1871), by BECKLES WILSON.