We must now turn to the conquest of the West which was being planned by Frontenac and the success of which meant continued prosperity for Montreal as the centre of the paltry trade rather than Albany. La Motte-Cardillac at Michillimackinac, Tonti and La Forêt at the fortified rock of St. Louis on the Illinois, Nicholas Perrot, the voyageur, among the Mississippi tribes—all were trying to keep their allies at peace with one another and the French. Frontenac was determined to strike a blow up west against the resolute Iroquois who were the scourge of Canada, supplied with arms from Albany. Things had been going so badly that a memoir to Champigny and Frontenac on May 26th tells how the king for the present had decided to abandon Michillimackinac and all the posts of the West, to withdraw all the congés to the coureurs de bois and to return to the ancient custom of relying on the savages themselves to bring their peltries to Montreal.
On April 21, 1697, the king wrote to Frontenac from Marly, arranging for him to attack Boston and perhaps Manhattan; but on April 27th, while still outlining the same offensive measures against the English, he allowed the posts of Michillimackinac, St. Louis and Frontenac to be continued but forbade the soldiers to trade there. Meanwhile he had been considering Frontenac's plan of attacking the Iroquois, and it had his entire approval, expressed in his letter written next day. These conflicting instructions probably arrived by the same ship. Champigny and others had been writing to the king and directing his various policies. Fort Frontenac—his darling first love—it was the cherished hope of the governor to re-establish and repair. Others opposed him and wrote to the minister, who informed Frontenac that Fort Frontenac "must absolutely be abandoned." The letter arrived the day after the governor had sent 700 men to Lake Ontario to repair it. The Intendant Champigny wanted their early recall, but the inflexible Frontenac refused and the fort was repaired, garrisoned and victualed for a year. It would have been a blunder to give up these forest posts. They were necessary for the trade and the growth of the country. The early isolation of the colony could never be repeated. On July 4, 1697, 200 men set out with Frontenac from Montreal and on July 19th he reached Frontenac. With him was de Callières, suffering from the gout and mounted on a horse, commanding the first line, and Vaudreuil the second, as they marched to Onondaga, with the aged governor carried in an armchair when they reached it; they found it burned by the inhabitants, who had saved themselves by flight. The campaign was not successful. Frontenac had not delivered his blow; but it was the forerunner of the peace of 1701 with the Iroquois, for they feared the old indefatigable man.
Early in May, 1698, a party of Dutch with "Sieur Abraham," an Iroquois, arrived in Montreal with the news that peace had been declared in Europe and at the end of May, Major Peter Schuyler arrived accompanied by Delius, the minister of Albany, with a copy of the treaty of Ryswick [150] in French and Latin and bringing back French prisoners in exchange for English, who nearly all preferred to remain. But the Iroquois free nations still remained unpacified and Frontenac was again prepared to direct his force against them to press the French claims to sovereignty over them as opposed to those of the British.
On November 22d the aged governor, now in his seventy-eighth year and seized with a mortal illness, was strong enough to make his last will and testament. On the 28th he died, having become reconciled to the Intendant Champigny, who wrote that the governor had died with the sentiments of a true Christian. He was buried by his desire on the Friday after his death in the church of the Recollects at Quebec, whom he had favoured so considerably. His great faults were overtowered by his many eminent qualities. He was the greatest captain in the seventeenth century in Canada. The Jesuit historian, Charlevoix, says: "New France owed to him all that it was at his death," "He found the colony enfeebled," says another cleric historian, Abbé Gauthier, "attacked on all sides, despised by its enemies; he left it in peace, increased and respected; again he has been called the Saviour of New France." He had succeeded in suppressing the Iroquois and had warred successfully against the English. He had encouraged and upheld the expedition of that brave son of Montreal, d'Iberville, in Acadia, Newfoundland and at Hudson's Bay and the enterprises of that intrepid explorer, La Salle, in the West; surely, he merits a tribute in the history of Montreal!
NOTE
We are indebted for the story of Madeleine de Verchères to a document found in the "Collection Moreau Saent-Mery," Vol. 6, entitled, "Relation des faits Héroïques de Mademoiselle Marie Madeleine de Verchères (âgée de 14 ans) contre les Iroquois en l'année 1692, le 22 Octobre à huit heures du matin." This description was made by Madeleine Verchères herself on the request of the intendant (named April 1, 1702), M. le Marquis de Beauharnois, arriving from France to take possession of his office. The event it seems had caused a stir at court and therefore a more detailed account was desired. In a previous letter written on October 15, 1699, a modest account of the story had been told accompanying a petition to Madame la Comtesse de Maurepas, wife of the secretary of the marine department, requesting a pension of 50 crowns, as was commonly given to the widows of officers, in view of her father's poverty—"he has been fifty-five years in the King's service." In default she asked the promotion of one of her brothers, a cadet in the army, to be an ensign. "He knows service, he has been engaged in several expeditions against the Iroquois. I have even had one of my brothers burned by them." Thus even the very young fought. This young cadet was then only about nineteen years of age. At this period many of the sons of the noblesse were sent to France to enter the army or navy as cadets. There are to be found complaints from the ministers of these departments that youths as young as thirteen and fifteen years are being sent. These youths were early accustomed to bear arms; hence the haste to get into the regular service and to obtain commissions. D'Iberville was only fourteen years of age when he entered the French navy, and only twenty-five when he was sent by Denonville to Hudson's Bay.
The following version of the story of Madeleine de Verchères, based on her own description above, may be fitly recorded here. Not far from Montreal and the St. Lawrence stands the Village of Verchères, near which was the scene of Madeleine Jarret's heroism. In early years that countryside had been erected into a seigneury and at the time of the exploit, Madeleine Jarret's father was the Seigneur of Verchères. The defence of Verchères took place during the last week of October, 1692. At the time Seigneur Jarret was in Quebec on official business and his wife was in Montreal. The head of the household was the daughter Madeleine, a girl of fourteen years, the other members of the family in the fort being two brothers of Madeleine, who were mere lads, both younger than herself. On the morning of October 22d, the inhabitants of the seigneury went as usual to their work in the adjacent fields—and most of them never to return—leaving in the fort Madeleine, her two brothers, an old man of eighty and a number of women and children. Such were the conditions at the Seigneury of Verchères when the Iroquois suddenly burst upon the place.
