Montreal, 1535-1914. Vol. 1. Under the French Régime, 1535-1760

by William H. Atherton

Roberval could not get his party together for April. Indeed it seemed that he needed Jacques Cartier's assistance, for on October 17, 1540, we find him receiving a commission similar to Roberval's to take over fifty prisoners. In this charge he is allowed and permitted "to take the little galleon, called L'Emerillon which he now has of us, the which is already old and rotten, in order to serve in repairing those of the ships which shall have need of it," without rendering any account of it. But it was not till May 23d of the year following, 1541, that Cartier set sail with five ships, well furnished and victualed for two years. He went without Roberval, because as the King had sent Cartier letters "whereby he did expressly charge him to depart and set sail immediately upon the sight and receipt thereof, on pain of incurring his displeasure, and as Roberval had not got his artillery, powder and ammunitions ready he told Cartier to go on ahead and he would prepare a ship or two at Honfleur whither he expected his things were to come. Having mustered and reviewed "the gentleman soldiers and mariners which were retained and chosen for the performance of the said voyage, he gave unto Captain Cartier full authority to depart and go before and to govern all things as if he had been there in person."

So Cartier sailed away, on May 23d. We will leave the misfortunes on the way to be read in Cartier's memoir of the third voyage. At last, however, Cartier arrived at the mouth of what is now Cape Rouge River and found a spot where a fort should be built on the high point now called Redclyffe. This fort he called Charlesbourg Royal, doubtless after Charles, Duke of Orléans, son of Francis I. He put three of the vessels in haven, and after the two others were emptied of all that was destined for the colony, Cartier sent them back and with them in command Marc Jalobert, his brother-in-law, and Etienne Noël, his nephew, to tell King Francis that they had begun to construct a fort, but that Monsieur de Roberval was not yet come and that he feared that by occasion of contrary winds and tempests he was driven back to France. They departed for St. Malo on September 2d.

Things were progressing at the fort; the land was tilled and the fort was begun to be built; but now a party consisting of Cartier, Martin de Painport, with other gentlemen, and the remnant of the mariners, departed with two boats "with victuals to go as far as Hochelaga of purpose to view and understand the fashion of the Saults of water." The Viscount de Beaupré stayed behind for the guarding and government of all things in the fort. Cartier's party reached the rapids passing Tutonaguy, which we identify as the site of Montreal, but we have no record of his staying there. Cartier's memoirs of the voyage break off here. However, as we are interested only in the colonizing movement, we get sufficient information from Roberval's account of his voyage of the fate of the Charlesbourg attempt. Roberval says that Cartier left for France at the end of September, 1541, and that he himself after having set sail from Honfleur, on the 16th of April, 1542, arrived at Newfoundland on the 7th of June following, where he found Cartier on his way home. Cartier explained that he had left the fort because he had not been able, with his little troupe, to resist the savages who roamed daily around the fort, and were very harassing. However, Cartier and his men praised the country highly, as being very rich and fertile, adding that they had taken away many diamonds, and a certain quantity of gold ore which Roberval examined and found good. Roberval had arrived with three great vessels fitted out at the expense of the King, with 200 souls, men and women and some gentlemen, among them being the Sieur de Lenneterre, his lieutenant, Lespinay, his ensign, the Captain Guinecourt, and the pilot, Jean Alphonse. He ordered Cartier to retrace his steps to Charlesbourg, believing that the new recruitment was able to resist the attacks of the enemy. But Cartier, and his following, departed secretly the following night. Whether or not this flight was disloyal, or born of fear, or of vainglory, since Roberval asserted, that Cartier had fled being desirous of getting first to France to acquaint the king of his discoveries, certain it is that it was wise. For this first royal colonizing party composed of so many men and women from the jails of France was fated to be a most lamentable failure. Famine and lawlessness marked its sojourn at Charlesbourg. It was well that New France should not be born of such material for citizenship. This voyage has an interest for Montrealers in that Roberval passed by it on a voyage to the Sault.

Cartier never seems to have been blamed by the king for his desertion of Roberval, but, it is said, he was sent back to recall him for more useful service in France. Of this fourth voyage of Jacques Cartier we have no record. We find him settled in France, ennobled and known as the Sieur de Limoilou, although there is a tradition, not well founded, that he made a fifth voyage to Canada. He lived an honoured man in St. Malo to his death. In the margin of the old record of the Town of St. Malo under date of September 1, 1557, we find the following:

"This said Wednesday about five o'clock in the morning died Jacques Cartier."

Cartier's name is no longer to be associated with the further history of Canada, except in the memory of a grateful people, who will come to admire the memory of this brave sailor, daring adventurer, missionary and historian—the discoverer of Canada and Montreal. We shall see, however, how this spirit of enterprise for Canadian extension was carried on by his nephews.

We cannot help feeling sorry for Roberval. He was a young man of energy and had great ideas as a colonizer. He went out, according to Charlevoix, with the Royal Commission as "Lord of Norumberga, Viceroy and Lieutenant General of Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle-Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos." He was recalled for more useful service!

After Cartier had ceased visiting the St. Lawrence, the care of the French government for the development and colonization of Canada seems to have been neglected from 1543 to 1603. Cartier's discoveries were not appreciated; it was reserved for Champlain three-quarters of a century later, to follow in his footsteps. As Champlain is the trader par excellence of Canada and of Montreal, we may now briefly trace the history of our trade.

Although discovery and colonization were so long abandoned still the banks of Newfoundland and the mouth of the St. Lawrence were frequented yearly by hardy Normans and Bretons as before, for the cod and whale fishery there. [21] Trading with the natives in peltry became insensibly mingled with the occupation of fisherman and Tadoussac grew to be a public market for this sort of commerce and exchange. There we would have found many good friends of Jacques Cartier, among them Capt. Marc Jalobert, his brother-in-law, who visited Hochelaga in 1535 and Etienne Noël, his nephew, also a sturdy captain under Cartier in his third voyage. There, too, would have been Jacques Noël, his great-nephew, who reports in a letter of 1557 that he had gone on his uncle's traces up the St. Lawrence as far as the Great Sault. This visit to Hochelaga makes us interested in him, the more so, as it was this Noël, associated with Sieur de la Jaunaye-Chaton and the nephew of Jacques Cartier, who in 1558 applied to Henry III for a charter similar to that granted by Francis I to their uncle, appealing for this favour on the ground that their uncle had spent, from his own pocket in the service of the king in the voyage of 1541, a sum in excess of that which he had received from the king, and had been allowed no recompense; nor had indeed his heirs. Warned by the failures and the expenses of the past the King demurred. Cartier's nephew then compromised. They offered to renew their uncle's design and to form a French colony in Canada to Christianize the savages, all at their own expense, provided that the king would grant them the sole privilege for twelve years of trading with the inhabitants, principally in peltry and that he would forbid interference of rivals with them in this privilege and in the exploitation of a mine discovered by them. To this the King consented by a favour of January 14, 1588. This monopoly, the first of its kind, was soon revoked at the instance of jealous rival traders of St. Malo who obtained a revocation of the charter on the 5th of May following for they considered that the good things coming from Jacques Cartier's discoveries were to be shared in by all of St. Malo, since they belonged to all and not to his nephews alone.