Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

The information we possess respecting the life of Count Frontenac prior to his appointment to the governorship of Canada is far from being as complete as might be wished. Such particulars as the records of the period furnish have been carefully gathered by Parkman and others;[6] and it is doubtful whether any further facts of importance will come to light. He was born—there is nothing to show where—in 1620, one year after the great minister, Colbert, under whom he was destined to serve. His family belonged to the small principality of Béarn, now incorporated in the Department of the Basses Pyrénées, which, made an appanage to the French Crown by Henry of Navarre, was only formally incorporated with the kingdom of France in the very year in which Frontenac was born. His father, Henri de Buade, was colonel of the regiment of Navarre, but has not otherwise passed into history. His grandfather, Antoine de Buade, Seigneur de Frontenac and Baron de Palluau, was a man of more distinction, being not only state councillor under Henry IV, but first steward of the royal household and governor of St. Germain-en-Laye. He is described in the memoirs of Philip Hurault as "one of the oldest servants of the king." His children used to play familiarly with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII; and the association thus formed lasted for some time after their playmate became king, which he did, nominally, at the age of nine, upon the assassination of his father, Henry IV. The Frontenac family was thus noble, though not of the highest nobility; and its connection with the domestic life of the royal family gave it no doubt an additional measure of influence. The youthful king, with whom the young Frontenacs played, became the father of Louis XIV.

Louis de Buade, Count Frontenac, the subject of this narrative, felt early in life a call to arms. The Thirty Years' War broke out in 1618; and when France, in 1635, under the astute guidance of Cardinal Richelieu, interfered on the Protestant side, Frontenac, then fifteen years of age, was sent to Holland to serve under the Prince of Orange. He seems to have acquitted himself with bravery and distinction in many different sieges and engagements both in the Low Countries and in Italy. He was wounded many times: at the siege of Orbitello in 1646 he had an arm broken. In this year he was raised to the rank of maréchal de camp, or brigadier-general. Three years before, at the age of twenty-three, he had been made colonel of the regiment of Normandy. His service appears to have been continuous, or nearly so, till the war was brought to a conclusion in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia. In the year mentioned we find him resting from the alarms and fatigues of war in his father's house on the Quai des Célestins at Paris. Close by lived an attractive young lady of sixteen, daughter of a certain M. de la Grange-Trianon, Sieur de Neuville, with whom, as became his age and profession, the returned warrior fell deeply in love. His passion was returned sufficiently to lead the young lady, when her father's consent could not be obtained, to marry her suitor at one of the churches in Paris authorized to solemnize marriages, in more or less urgent cases, without the consent of parents. The marriage was not a happy one. Madame de Frontenac soon conceived a positive aversion for her husband, and they seem, at a very early period, to have ceased to live together, though not before the birth of a son. The child was placed in the charge of a village nurse, and little more is heard of him, except that when he grew up he embraced the profession of arms, and died, it is not certain how, at a comparatively early age. The mother joined the train of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. These were the days of the Fronde—the abortive rebellion against the fiscal iniquities of Mazarin during the minority of Louis XIV—and in following the fortunes of her patroness, whose father, the king's uncle, had joined the opposition, the young countess had some strange adventures.

What part, if any, Frontenac himself took in the troubles of the period, does not appear; probably none, for although somewhat turbulent by nature, as will abundantly appear hereafter, he was not without a large element of caution, particularly where persons in high authority were concerned. It is certain, at least, that, when the strife was over, he enjoyed a good position at court, as Mademoiselle de Montpensier notes, having met him more than once in the cabinet of the queen. He possessed a property on the Indre, in the neighbourhood of Blois, and here he attempted to keep up a state far beyond his income. "Your means are very slender and your waste is great," said the chief-justice to Sir John Falstaff; and the same observation might not inaptly have been addressed to Frontenac. He prided himself extravagantly upon his horses, his table, his servants—in a word, on everything that was his; entertained largely, and ran himself hopelessly into debt. In 1669 the French government sent a contingent to assist the Venetians in defending Candia (Crete), against the Turks. The Venetians offered to place their own troops under French command, and Frontenac had the high honour of being recommended by Turenne, the greatest military leader of the age, for the position. In this struggle the Turks triumphed; the island fell into their power; and Frontenac returned to France with enhanced military prestige, but without any amelioration of his financial position. Saint Simon describes him as "a man of good abilities, holding a prominent position in society, but utterly ruined." He adds that he could not bear the haughty temper of his wife, and that his appointment as governor of Canada was given to him in order to relieve him of her, and afford him some means of living. His wife's temper was not more haughty probably than his own; neither apparently was disposed to show any deference to the wishes of the other. Madame de Frontenac, who was a woman of keen intelligence, without any large amount of feminine tenderness, took too dispassionate a measure of her husband's qualities to satisfy his rather exacting self-esteem. She must have had some means of her own, for, though she did not go to court, she lived for many years surrounded by the best people and enjoying a high degree of social authority. Though she did not accompany her husband to Canada, and probably was not invited to do so, it is plausibly conjectured that her influence in court circles stood him in good stead on more than one occasion.

Frontenac's commission as governor was dated 6th April 1672, but he did not leave France till midsummer. It is interesting to know that M. de Grignan, Madame de Sévigné's son-in-law, was a candidate for the same position. Had he obtained it, and had his wife, the accomplished daughter of a still more accomplished mother, accompanied him, what flashes of light on Canadian society might we not have obtained from that mother's correspondence! Unfortunately no vestige of Frontenac's private correspondence with either his wife or any one else remains. Courcelles and Talon were still at Quebec when he arrived. From the former he obtained a full account of his expedition to Lake Ontario; and from the latter much information as to the general condition of the country, the various enterprises in the way of exploration that had already been undertaken, and the further ones that it might be well to organize. Frontenac, who had the eye of a soldier for a good military position, was much impressed by what Courcelles told him of Cataraqui; and from the first the idea of establishing a fortified post at that point took strong possession of his mind.

The new governor was not a young man—he was fifty-two years of age—but his natural force, either of body or of mind, was not abated. To a man of his tastes and habits there were many privations involved in a residence in a country like Canada; but there were compensations, the chief of which, perhaps, was to be found in the opportunity afforded him of exercising a semi-royal pomp and power; while a close second, it cannot be doubted, was the chance of rehabilitating his shattered fortunes. It would be unjust, at the same time, to suppose that the man who had fought through so many hard campaigns was not sincerely desirous of serving his king and country in the new position to which he had been assigned. The first important step that he took was a characteristic one, namely, an attempt to constitute in Canada the "three estates" of nobles, clergy, and people, of which the kingdom of France was nominally constituted. True, the three estates, or "States-General," as they were properly called, had not been summoned in the mother country since 1614, and it was doubtful if their existence as an organ of political authority, or even of political opinion, was more than theoretical. This fact might have caused another man to hesitate, but not Count Frontenac; to him the idea of gathering representatives of the country round him, marshalling them in their respective orders, and, after addressing them in the name of the king, requiring them to take the oath of allegiance in his presence, was too alluring to be put aside. So the summons went forth, and the assembly was held on one of the last days of October in the new church of the Jesuits. The "estates" were constituted, the oaths were taken, and the governor stirred the feelings of his audience, consisting, he says, of over a thousand persons, by referring to the victories which his royal master had that year achieved in his war with Holland. Everything, indeed, passed off beautifully; but when a report of the proceedings reached the minister, Colbert, his response was of a somewhat chilling nature. The immediate effect of the assembly might, perhaps, he said, be good, but "it is well for you to observe that, as you are always to follow the forms in force here, and as our kings have considered it for a long time advantageous not to assemble the States-General of their kingdom, with the object perhaps of insensibly abolishing that ancient form, you also ought only very rarely, or—to speak more correctly—never, give that form to the corporate body of the inhabitants of that country." Colbert did not even approve—though perhaps on this point he was expressing more particularly the views of the king—of the election of "syndics" to represent the interests of the population of Quebec. "Let every one," he said, "speak for himself; it is not desirable to have any one authorized to speak for all." This was absolutism with a vengeance. It answered for the day; but could the minister have looked forward to 1789 he would have seen that the "ancient form," which it was proposed to extinguish by desuetude, was destined, like a blazing star that suddenly flashes a strange light in the heavens, to leap into a new life, amazing, consuming, resistless.

The views of the governor, it must be admitted, were, in this whole matter, decidedly in advance of those of the minister, able administrator as the latter undoubtedly was. Frontenac had come to Canada to uphold the royal authority in the fullest sense, but he appears to have had a perception that, in a new country where so much responsibility was necessarily thrown upon individuals, there ought to be a certain measure of spontaneous political life. Masterful as he was himself by nature, it is not recorded that he ever dwelt on the necessity of repressing individual liberty; it is the intendant, Meulles, a dozen years later, who writes: "It is of very great importance that the people should not be allowed to speak their minds."[7]

No, the quarter in which Frontenac conceived the authority of his royal master might, perhaps, be threatened, was a different one altogether; in other words the battle he foresaw was not against the political aspirations of the people, but against the excessive claims and pretensions of the ecclesiastical power. This idea did not originate in his own mind. The instructions which he brought out with him, while they eulogized the zeal and piety of the Jesuits, hinted that they might seek to extend their authority beyond its proper limits, in which case Frontenac was to "give them kindly to understand the conduct they ought to observe"; and if they did not amend their ways, he was, as the document read, "skilfully to oppose their designs in such a way that no rupture may ensue, and no distinct intention on your part to thwart their purposes may be apparent." The court had, indeed, for several years been under the impression that cautions of this kind to its representatives were necessary. In Talon's instructions, drafted in the year 1664, the troubles that had occurred between previous governors and the bishop were rehearsed, and the inference was at least suggested that these might in part have arisen from the domineering spirit of the prelate. He had had his way with Argenson, Avaugour, and Mézy; but, if the civil power was not to pale entirely before the ecclesiastical, it was about time that the series of his victories should close. Other despatches to Courcelles, Bouteroue (interim intendant during Talon's temporary absence in France), and Frontenac himself contain observations of a like tenor.

The redoubtable vicar-apostolic was not in Canada when Frontenac arrived. He had sailed for France in the month of May to press the important matter of his appointment as bishop of Quebec. A letter which he wrote to the cardinals of the propaganda almost immediately on his arrival serves to show the reasons he had for desiring this change of status, and, incidentally, his opinion of the civil officers of the Crown. "I have learnt," he says, "by a long experience how insecure the office of vicar-apostolic is against those who are entrusted with political affairs, I mean the officers of the court, the perpetual rivals and despisers of the ecclesiastical power, who steadily contend that the authority of a vicar-apostolic is open to doubt, and should be kept within certain limits. That is why, having considered the whole matter very carefully, I have fully determined to resign that office, and not to return to New France, unless the bishopric of Quebec is constituted, and unless I am provided and armed with the bulls constituting me the Ordinary."[8] These are the words of a man who knows his own mind, and, we may add, of one who is prepared to fight his enemies to a finish. He may not have known, before he arrived in France, what man, and what kind of a man, had been selected as successor to Courcelles; but we may be sure that, when he found out, he was not less impressed than before with the need for a strengthening of his position.

Louis XIV had himself for thirteen years been pressing, at intervals, upon the Holy See the expediency of establishing a bishopric in New France, but without much success. There were some points of difference between the French court and the Roman authorities as to the conditions under which the projected diocese should be created, and the latter showed a wonderful skill in prolonging the negotiations. Finally, the only point in dispute was whether the new bishop should be a suffragan of one of the French archbishops, as desired by the king, or directly dependent on the Pope. This point was conceded by the king in December 1673; but it was not till October 1674 that the necessary bull was issued. In the following April Laval took the oath of fealty to the king as bishop of Quebec, with jurisdiction over the whole of Canada, and shortly afterwards he set sail for the scene of his pastoral labours. Thus it was that for nearly three years Frontenac had no direct relations with the head of the Canadian church.

Was this interval, then, one of peace? Not entirely. Frontenac defines his position and raises a note of alarm in his very first despatch to the minister for the colonies.[9] He was dissatisfied, he said, with "the complete subserviency of the priests of the seminary at Quebec, and the bishop's vicar-general to the Jesuit fathers, without whose orders they never do anything. Thus," he adds, "they [the Jesuits] are indirectly the masters of whatever relates to the spiritual, which, as you are aware, is a great machine for moving all the rest." He thinks they have gained an ascendency even over the Superior of the Récollets;[10] and he expresses the wish that the ecclesiastics of that order could be replaced by abler men who could hold their own against the Jesuit influence. He mentions that he had expressed his surprise in strong terms to the Jesuit fathers at Ste. Foy that not one of their Indian converts had been taught the French language, and had told them that they "should bethink themselves, when rendering the savages subjects of Jesus Christ, of making them subjects of the king also—that the true way to make them Christians was to make them men." The governor had probably noticed that lack of vigorous, self-helping manhood in the Indian converts, which is hinted at even in the Jesuit Relations, and which had certainly been conspicuous in the christianized Huron tribe in the crisis of their struggle with the Iroquois. As regards teaching them the French language, the missionaries had their own well-defined reasons for not doing so. They did not wish to bring them into too close contact with the French inhabitants, lest they should unlearn the lessons of morality and religion that had been taught to them. The great object which the priests had in view was to build up a kingdom not of this world; and, as the object which the king and his officers had mainly in view was to enlarge and strengthen the French dominions, it is not surprising that there was clashing now and again. Frontenac, in writing to Colbert, seems to have felt assured of sympathy in his somewhat anti-clerical, or, at least, anti-Jesuit, attitude; otherwise he would never have ventured to make, as he does in the same despatch, the unjustifiable statement that the Jesuit missionaries were quite as much interested in the beaver trade as in the conversion of souls, and that most of their missions were pure mockeries. It was of Colbert that Madame de Maintenon said: "He only thinks of his finances, and never of religion."