Accordingly the copies of records of the judicial archives of Montreal of September 17-19, preserved in the greffe of the city, containing these informations against la Fredière before M. d'Ailleboust, remain as standing evidence produced by Jean Beaudoin, Mathurin Marsta, André Demers, Claude Jaudoin, Anne Thomasse, his wife, and Marie Anne Hardye, wife of Pierre Malet, of the justice of the above charges. Those who wish to read the scandalous details can do so at will.
One of the charges against la Fredière had been that of selling liquor to the savages, and of fraudulently diluting it, at that. He was not without imitators among the officers who, not content with selling them liquor in their settlements, followed them to their hunting fields, so that through their continual drunken orgies, the savages brought back but few skins, and thus the habitants of Montreal, who had gone to great expense in advancing them on credit, arms, powder and provisions, were reduced to great want. Dollier de Casson, contrasting the singlemindedness of M. de Maisonneuve with the new régime of avaricious officers, says that if things went on so, the country would be ruined.
"It is impossible that it can hold together," he says in his account of the year 1667, "if individuals have not the wherewith to buy utensils, linen, clothes, in a country where wheat has no value. Owing to the cupidity of the officers, the inhabitants, not having any peltry for exchange, are forced to sell their arms to provide the wherewith to cover themselves, and having only their feet and arms to defend themselves, they will become the prey of the Iroquois, should they wish to begin to war again."
Speaking of this period Marie l'Incarnation (letter of October, 1669) says "that it would have been better to have less inhabitants and better Christians," and Dollier de Casson in his history of the year 1664, bewailing the departure of M. de Maisonneuve, says that "since Montreal had fallen into other hands, vices unknown before had crept in."
The common soldiers followed the licenses of their betters and were within an ace of endangering the safety of the colony by rekindling the smouldering embers of Iroquois hatred. In their greed the soldiers of the Montreal garrison had killed a Seneca chief for his peltry, having plied him with brandy and killed him. His body they loaded with weights to sink it, but it was found floating by some Iroquois who brought it to Montreal, and thus the murder was out. As we have related they were put to death, on the day of the departure of La Salle for the West. About the same time, in the winter of 1668-69, three other scamps who had left the Carignan Regiment and settled at Montreal cruelly massacred six Oneidas (Onneiouts) on the banks of the River Mascouche, first intoxicating them in their cabin, and then during the night falling on them, not even sparing the woman and her young children. And this for a load of fifty elk and beaver skins! One of the assassins confessed the brutal deed to La Salle, as we have said, before departing.
The first armed attack on life at Montreal among Frenchmen was also committed by a soldier, viz., by Carion, a lieutenant of La Motte's regiment, on the person of M. de Lormeau, an ensign of M. de Gué's company, in payment of a grudge. The case was brought up before M. d'Ailleboust in May, 1671, and the records of the greffe giving the depositions of the witnesses, tell an exciting story, of how, on Pentecost evening, after vespers and just before the first sound of the "salut" pealed, the Sieur de Lormeau was walking with his wife towards the common and had passed the seminary enclosure, apparently on the way to his dwelling, when nearing the house of Charles Le Moyne, of Longueuil, who was at table entertaining Picoté de Bélestre and a merchant of Rochelle named Baston, they saw M. de Carion coming to meet them. They advanced towards him and they were near Migeon de Branssat's house when Carion, seeking a pretext for provocation, called out, "Coward! Why have you struck this child? Why don't you attack me?" "Coward yourself!" was the reply. "Go away!" On the instant Carignan's sword is out and de Lormeau follows suit. Three or four blows are struck and they clinch one another. In the struggle Carion, taking his sword by the blade, tries to plunge its point into de Lormeau's stomach. De Lormeau's péruque now falling to the ground, Carion takes the opportunity of seizing his sword by the hilt and deals blows with its pommel on de Lormeau's unprotected head till the blood began to flow. Whereupon de Lormeau's lady, Marie Roger Lepage, terror-stricken and beside herself, runs back to Charles Le Moyne's house and disturbs the supper party by crying, "Murder! Murder! M. de Bélestre, come out!" The three, leaving the table, rushed to separate the struggling officers but in vain. Picoté de Bélestre then exclaimed in indignation: "Since you won't separate, then kill yourselves if you want to." And now, one called Gilles, a former servant of M. Carion, comes on the scene with drawn sword, brandishing it in defence of his master, but doing no damage. M. Morel, an ensign in the same company as Carion and a partner in the same quarrel against de Lormeau, also comes on with naked sword and makes a thrust at de Lormeau, much to Charles Le Moyne's disgust strongly expressed, at seeing an unarmed man so struck.
By this time de Lormeau had received three wounds, when two priests from the seminary ran out to separate them, M. de Frémont and M. Dollier de Casson, the strapping soldier priest, whose presence soon acted as a peacemaker. But de Lormeau took the affair to the court, as we have seen.
The military introduced a love of gayety, good cheer and dissipation into the colony. In Quebec in 1667, on February 4th, the first ball was held and the Jesuit journal of the period adds this reflection: "May God grant that there are no sad consequences."
At Montreal, larcenies, breaches of respect for authority, blasphemies and Sabbath breaking are now recorded.
In 1670 an attempt was made for the first time, in Montreal to make a corner in wheat to the detriment of the poor. By an act of January 26, 1671, Talon fixed the price at three livres and two sous the bushel, and punished a refractory miller, de la Touche-Champlain who, profiting by the dearth of wheat, sold it at twenty sous, and even then it was mixed with Indian corn.