Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

To the credit of the ecclesiastics it must be said that, whoever despaired of the situation in Canada, they never did. At the very time when the fortunes of the colony were at the lowest ebb, and the secular chiefs were debating whether it would not be necessary to retire, bag and baggage, the subject which chiefly occupied the minds of the clergy was the organization and government of the church. M. de Maisonneuve had brought out with him four Sulpician priests to minister to the needs of the inhabitants of Montreal, and one of them, M. de Queylus, was the bearer of letters from the Archbishop of Rouen, to whose diocese New France was attached, creating him vicar-general for the whole colony. Availing himself of the powers so conferred, M. de Queylus assumed the direction of the church in Canada; and when some signs of reluctance to recognize his authority manifested themselves in Quebec, he went to that city, took personal charge of the parish, and enforced at least an outward show of submission. The Sulpicians had hoped that M. de Queylus would be made bishop; but the Jesuits, who for many years had been in exclusive charge of the religious interests of the colony, were considered to have the best right to make the nomination. They chose, with characteristic wisdom, a man who was destined to fill a most important place in the history of Canada, François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, Abbé de Montigny. The negotiations for the appointment of the new prelate were of a very perplexed and protracted character, and it was not till the summer of 1659 that he arrived in Quebec, and then not as bishop of Quebec, but as vicar-apostolic, with the title of Bishop of Petraea in partibus. Laval was a man of great piety, and inflexible determination; and for a time there was friction between him and M. de Queylus, who, in his capacity as vicar-general of the Archbishop of Rouen, was disposed to claim an independent position for himself. Laval cut the controversy short by persuading the governor to ship M. de Queylus off to France; and, when he returned the following year, to ship him back again. This time the Sulpician had to remain at home for several years; and the descendant of the Montmorencys achieved the first of a long series of victories over opposing forces.

In mentioning these incidents, however, we have run ahead by two or three years of the strict sequence of events. Argenson, the new governor, arrived on the 11th July 1658. He had hardly been twenty-four hours at his post before the Iroquois gave him a hint what to expect by making a raid in the immediate neighbourhood of Quebec. In the following year the whole country, but particularly Quebec, was thrown into trepidation over the news that an army composed of twelve hundred warriors, gathered from the five Iroquois nations, was advancing with fixed determination to wipe out all the French settlements. It would be needless to repeat here, even if the limits of a very cursory narrative permitted it, the glorious feat of arms by which this great danger was turned aside from the colony. The story of our Canadian Thermopylæ is familiar to every school-boy and school-girl in Canada. Suffice it to say that the constancy of Dollard and the handful of companions who perished with him in defending a position they had hastily fortified on the river Ottawa, directly in the path of the invaders, so disheartened the latter that they relinquished their enterprise. When so few could hold so many at bay, what might not be expected when attack should be made on the fortified posts of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec? The abandonment, however, of their larger design did not involve any discontinuance of their accustomed mode of warfare. We hear of horrible butcheries committed on settlers in the neighbourhood of Montreal and even of Quebec; it seemed as if the colony could never get rest from its tormentors. The new governor was a man of courage and ability, but he lacked the means of effectually guarding against these treacherous attacks, while the destitute condition in which he found the colony filled him with discouragement. Whether general starvation or massacre was the more imminent danger was sometimes a grave question. Other difficulties arose. Argenson and Laval, the civil and religious heads of the state, found themselves at variance on points of ceremony and precedence; and the bishop, whose self-confidence was unbounded, undertook to give the governor certain doubtless well-meant admonitions, which the latter did not take in good part. The governor's health may, or may not, have been good, but he alleged that he was suffering from physical infirmities, and asked for his recall. He left for France in September 1661, his successor, Baron Dubois d'Avaugour, having arrived a few weeks previously. A remark which he made respecting the head of the Canadian church, in a letter written a year before his departure, may perhaps be put on record: "I can say with truth that his zeal on many occasions bears close resemblance to an extraordinary attachment to his own opinions, and a strong desire to encroach on the rights and duties of others."

The Baron d'Avaugour only remained two years in the country. When he arrived an earnest effort was being made by the clergy, headed by the bishop, to have the law against selling liquor to the Indians strictly enforced. The law was not popular in the country, and Avaugour thought it altogether too severe; still he allowed it to take effect in the case of two men who had been sentenced to death, and of one who had been condemned to be publicly whipped. Shortly afterwards a woman was imprisoned for a similar offence, and the Jesuit father, Lalemant, having pleaded for a relaxation of the law in her case, Avaugour, glad of a pretext to do away with it altogether, said that if the woman was not to be punished, no one should be. The result was that liquor began to be sold to the natives almost without restraint, and with effects which one of the ecclesiastics said he had no ink black enough to describe. Doubtless they were bad enough. The bishop fulminated from his episcopal throne against the practice, and launched excommunications right and left, but with little effect. He then decided on going to France and laying the whole matter before the government. He left in the summer of 1662; and it was while he was absent, that is to say in February of the following year, that an earthquake occurred of which the most extraordinary descriptions have come down to us. The only moderate account is that given by Avaugour himself, who says in a despatch: "On the 5th of February we had an earthquake, which continued during half a quarter of an hour, and was sufficiently strong to extort from us a good act of contrition. It was repeated from time to time during nine days, and was perceptible until the last of the month, but steadily diminishing." This was all an unimaginative mind like that of the baron could make of it, but not so with minds of another order. One pious soul saw four demons tugging at the four corners of the sky, and threatening universal ruin, which they would have effected had not a higher spirit appeared on the scene. We read that the air was filled with howlings as of lost spirits, and flashings of strange, unearthly lights, not to speak of a little detail of blazing serpents flying abroad on wings of fire. But the marvels that took place in the aerial regions were surpassed, if possible, by those that were witnessed on the solid earth. To take only one example out of many: some sailors coming from Gaspé, as Père Charlevoix relates, saw a mountain "skipping like a ram," after which it spun round several times, and finally sank out of sight. Houses swayed to and fro till their walls nearly touched the street, and yet righted themselves in the end. Quebec and Montreal, which, even at this early period, did not pull well together, were somewhat at variance concerning the significance of the phenomenon. At Montreal the favourite theory was that the devil was enraged to find God so well served in the colony; at Quebec the humbler view prevailed that the earthquake was a solemn warning to the people to abandon their evil ways, and be obedient to the teachings of the clergy. Considering that, despite the prohibitions of the clergy, the liquor traffic was just then at its height, the admonition could not have come more opportunely.

Laval, whose reputation for piety gave him great influence, the Abbé Faillon tells us, at the not altogether puritanical court of Louis XIV, was completely successful in his mission. Not only was the uncomplying Avaugour recalled, but the bishop himself was requested to nominate a successor. If the bishop had consulted the men by whom he had himself been chosen, he would likely have got good advice; but he followed his own judgment entirely and made a terrible blunder, as he did in a still more important matter some years later. His choice fell on a M. de Mézy, recommended to him by the possession of an exalted and almost hysterical type of piety; and the two embarking on the same vessel arrived at Quebec on the 15th September 1663.

It would be taking a very one-sided and radically unjust view of Laval's character to consider him simply as a man of ability with a strong propensity to autocratic rule. A man of ability he was, and his temper was unbending; but that, from first to last, he took the deepest and most unselfish interest in the welfare of the Canadian people, and also of the Indian tribes, is not open to a moment's question; nor can it be denied that his views on the whole were broad and statesmanlike. It was when he was in France, in 1662, that he arranged for the establishment of that historic institution, the Quebec Seminary, the higher development of which is seen in the Laval University of to-day. A few years after his return he established the Lesser Seminary (Petit Séminaire), as a school where boys could get a sound education under religious auspices, and whence the more promising among them might be drafted into the Grand Séminaire with a view to their preparation for the priesthood. Memorable also were the services rendered by him in the organization of a parochial system for Canada, which before his advent had been treated almost wholly as a mission field.

In February of the year 1663, the Company of New France, whose affairs had been going from bad to worse, made a voluntary surrender of all their rights and privileges to the king, leaving it to his discretion to make them such compensation as might be just for the capital they had sunk in their not very well-directed efforts. The king accepted the surrender, and, as a means of providing for the better administration of justice in the colony, and also the due control of its finances, he created by royal edict a Sovereign Council, which was to consist of the governor, the bishop, or other senior ecclesiastic, and five councillors chosen by them jointly. A year later he proceeded to charter a completely new company—as if the régime of companies had not been sufficiently tried—under the name of the West India Company. To it the entire trade of all the French possessions in America and on the west coast of Africa was transferred. The new company was virtually the creation of the great administrator, Colbert; and it may be assumed that he trusted to his own vigorous oversight and control to make it a success. He hoped, in fact, to succeed where a Richelieu had failed; experience had yet to teach him that no administrative ability, however eminent, can obtain prosperity from a system of close monopoly.

It was not long before Laval and his pocket governor (as he had hoped Mézy would be) found themselves at daggers drawn. The quarrel was of so trifling a character that its details need not detain us; suffice it to say, that Laval represented the case to the court and procured his nominee's dismissal. The unfortunate man, however, whose weak mind was assailed with the most distressing spiritual fears, when he found himself under the ban of the church, accomplished a hasty reconciliation with the offended powers, and died, desperately penitent, before his successor reached Canada.

The West India Company was empowered by its charter to nominate the governor of Canada, but had voluntarily ceded that power to the king. The latter, under the inspiration probably of Colbert, was now taking a great interest in Canada. He was not going to leave it any longer at the mercy of the Iroquois, if a thousand or more good French soldiers could avail for its protection. As lieutenant-general over all his possessions in America, he appointed a brave old soldier of much distinction, the Marquis de Tracy; as governor of Canada in particular, M. de Courcelles; and as intendant—a new office—M. Jean Baptiste Talon. The Carignan-Salières Regiment, about twelve hundred strong, had been detailed for service in Canada, and was sent out in detachments, which arrived at intervals during the summer; Tracy himself with four companies reaching Quebec in June. Many of the men were landed sick of fever; twenty had died on shipboard in the St. Lawrence. Mère l'Incarnation, in one of her letters, attributes the malady to their having opened the portholes when they got into the river, and let in the fresh air too suddenly. In these days one is apt to conjecture that it was the confined air, not the fresh air, that did the mischief, and that the portholes might with advantage have been opened earlier.

Tracy was eager to move against the enemy, but, as he was obliged to await the arrival of the rest of his troops, he improved the interval by erecting forts on the line of his intended march, one at the mouth of the river Richelieu, known at that time as the Iroquois River, a second at Chambly, some forty miles up the stream, and two others at points still higher up. While this work was in progress Courcelles, the governor, Talon, the intendant, and the remainder of the troops reached Quebec (September 1665). Courcelles was even more eager for war than his superior officer; and as it was too late when the forts were finished, and the health of the troops had been sufficiently restored, to attempt a summer campaign, he obtained the consent of the marquis to organize a mid-winter one. Old inhabitants, who knew something of the rigour of the climate and the difficulties to be encountered on the march, tried to dissuade him from his purpose, but in vain. With a fatuity, of which military history furnishes too many examples, Courcelles despised all such counsels of prudence. He started with five hundred men on the 10th of January, marching on the frozen St. Lawrence. The cold was fearful, and the expedition had proceeded but a short distance when the sufferings of the men became almost unendurable. At Three Rivers a number had to be left behind who had been disabled by frost-bites. Some reinforcements having been obtained at that point, the little army again set forth. Two hundred men out of the whole force were Canadians, and these naturally proved the fittest for the undertaking; nor did their superior quality fail to impress Courcelles. At last the expedition reached the Mohawk country, but the enemy were not there; they had gone off on some warlike adventure of their own. There was some burning of deserted cabins; but the position of the invading force began to be a precarious one, for the winter was now merging into spring, and there was danger that if the ice melted in the streams, their retreat would be cut off. The Mohawks were already hovering in their rear. By the time they reached the nearest of their forts they had lost sixty men by cold and hunger. The only thing that can be said in favour of the expedition is that it greatly impressed the minds of the Iroquois, as proving that the French had now the means of turning the tables on them and carrying the war into their own country.

The Iroquois showed some disposition to negotiate for peace; but nothing came of it, and in September a larger expedition set out, commanded by Tracy himself, with Courcelles as second in command. This time they not only reached the Iroquois country, but, the savages having fled in panic, they were able at their ease to destroy a number of fortified villages and large quantities of food that had been laid up for the winter. The Iroquois were deeply impressed by these vigorous proceedings. They saw that a great change had come over the situation and resources of the French colony, when, instead of submitting helplessly to attack, they could equip two expeditions in one year to seek them out in their own habitations. They hastened, therefore, to renew their propositions of peace, and, as this time they were clearly in earnest, Tracy concluded a peace with them which held good for several years. The colony now had a rest, and the beneficial effects of it were soon evident. Two years later the Jesuit annalist writes: "It is beautiful now to see nearly all the banks of our river St. Lawrence occupied by new settlements, stretching along more than eighty leagues, making navigation not only more agreeable by the sight of houses dotting the riverside, but also more convenient through an increase in the number of resting-places." A charming picture is here given in very simple words.