The treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, established the cession of Acadia to the English by its “ancient limits.” When the French saw that the English pretension to claim by these words all the territory between the St. Lawrence River and the ocean, was sure to cut them off by water from their colony at Quebec, in case of another war, they on their part confined such “ancient limits” to the peninsula now called Nova Scotia. France, to strengthen the means of maintaining her interpretation, founded the fortress and naval station of Louisbourg.
About the same time the French also determined to strengthen the fortifications of Quebec and Montreal; and in 1721 Joncaire established a post among the Senecas at Niagara.[8]
In 1725 Vaudreuil died. Ferland curtly says that the Governor’s wife was the man of the family; but so far as the record shows, the preservation of Canada to France during the earlier part of his administration was largely due to his vigilance and discretion. Great judgment and skill were shown in dealing with the Indians. A letter of remonstrance from Peter Schuyler bears witness that contemporary judgment condemned his policy in raiding upon the New England colonies; but in forming our estimate of his character we must remember that the French believed that similar atrocities, committed by the Iroquois in the Valley of the St. Lawrence, were instigated by the English.
The administration[9] of M. de Beauharnois, his successor, who arrived in the colony in 1726, was not conspicuous. He appears to have been personally popular, and to have appreciated fairly the needs of Canada. The Iroquois were no longer hostile. The days of the martyrdom of the Brebeufs and the Lallemands were over.[10] In the Far West a company of traders founded a settlement at the foot of Lake Pepin, which they called Fort Beauharnois. As the trade with the Valley of the Mississippi developed, routes of travel began to be defined. Three of these were especially used,—one by way of Lake Erie, the Maumee, and the Wabash, and then down the Ohio; another by way of Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, a portage to the Illinois, and down that river; a third by way of Green Bay, Fox River, and the Wisconsin,—all three being independent of La Salle’s route from the foot of Lake Michigan to the Kankakee and Illinois rivers.[11] By special orders from France, Joncaire’s post at Niagara had been regularly fortified. The importance of this movement had been fully appreciated by the English. As an offset to that post, a trading establishment had been opened at Oswego; and now that a fort was built at Niagara, Oswego was garrisoned. The French in turn constructed a fort at Crown Point, which threatened Oswego, New York, and New England.
The prolonged peace permitted considerable progress in the development of the agricultural resources of the country. Commerce was extended as much as the absurd system of farming out the posts, and the trading privileges retained by the governors, would permit. Postal arrangements were established between Montreal and Quebec in 1721. The population at that time was estimated at twenty-five thousand. Notwithstanding the evident difficulty experienced in taking care of what country the French then nominally possessed, M. Varenne de Vérendrye in 1731 fitted out an expedition to seek for the “Sea of the West,”[12] and actually penetrated to Lake Winnipeg.
The foundations of society were violently disturbed during this administration by a quarrel which began in a contest over the right to bury a dead bishop. Governor, Intendant, council, and clergy took part. “Happily,” says a writer to whom both Church and State were dear, “M. de Beauharnois did not wish to take violent measures to make the Intendant obey him, otherwise we might have seen repeated the scandalous scenes of the evil days of Frontenac.”
After the fall of Louisbourg, in 1745, Beauharnois was recalled, and Admiral de la Jonquière was commissioned as his successor; but he did not then succeed in reaching his post. It is told in a later chapter how D’Anville’s fleet, on which he was embarked, was scattered in 1746; and when he again sailed, the next year, with other ships, an English fleet captured him and bore him to London.
