FRANÇOIS LE MOYNE DE BIENVILLE
LE MOYNE D'IBERVILLE
Seven of these sons lived long enough to die heroically on the field of battle or to become distinguished administrators of the colonies. These were native born and of obscure parentage, yet they aspired to positions which were in those days rarely given but to those of noble birth coming from France. From all these notable sons, d'Iberville stands out giantlike; his actions being almost legendary in their records of heroism.
We now treat of his invasion of Newfoundland made conjointly with de Sérigny, his brother, after he had seized a frigate of twenty-four cannons at the entrance of the River St. Jean and captured Pemaquid on August 15, 1696, whither he had sailed in command of the Envieux; thence he sailed again to Placentia in Newfoundland. There he set out to take St. John, the chief port of the English, which he burned to the ground. During the winter he led a hardy party through hamlet after hamlet—each man provided with a musket, a battle axe, a dagger knife and snowshoes, and when the spring of 1697 opened all the English posts were destroyed according to orders received from the minister dated March 31, 1696, except those of Bona Vista and the Island of Carbonnière. Thus the safety from invasion of Canada by the English was hoped to be rendered secure. When d'Iberville had returned to Placentia, of which he had been appointed governor in advance, as well as of all the posts seized by him, and was preparing to attack the two remaining British strongholds, his brother de Sérigny arrived, commissioner by the king in the March previously to thrust the English from Hudson's Bay. With him came five ships of war, the Pelican, the Palmier, the Profond, the Violent and the Wasp; the latter with the Dragon, not arrived apparently, was for d'Iberville. Sérigny's instructions were to take the advice of his brother, who was undertaking the expense of the expedition. He was to destroy all the English forts in the bay and to leave no vestiges of them; the prisoners were to be sent to France or even England. It was to be a war of extermination of English influence and a strife for the possession by New France of the fur trade. Fort Bourbon (Fort York of today), or Fort Nelson, as the English called it, was the chief object of attack. Already the two brothers had captured it, three years before, but it had been retaken by the English, to whom it was valuable as it commanded the fur trade of the interior. How d'Iberville, sailing on the Pelican, and Sérigny on the Palmier after storms arrived at the bay and steered mid the threatening ice of the bay into the open sea to Fort Nelson, 300 miles of those bleak inland waters, and how he triumphed over ice and storms and the English, this also takes us too far from Montreal to describe with justice.
Suffice it to say, this glorious campaign assured France for many years of the possession of the countries of the north and the intrepid sailor commandant left in a few days for Europe, leaving his brother de Sérigny in command of the bay. On November 7th he reached the shores of France and having obtained from the government permission to reconnoitre the mouths of the Mississippi, he left in 1698 and never saw Canada again.
Léon Guérin in his "Histoire Maritime de France," draws this picture of d'Iberville: "He was a hero in the full significance of the expression." He adds, "If his campaigns, prodigious in their results, obtained by the most feeble materials, had had Europe for their witness, instead of the echoless seas bounding the neighbourhood of the pole, he would have had, in life and after death, a name as celebrated as those of Jean Bart, Duguay, Trouin and des Tourvilles."