The letters of Montcalm from Montreal, which have been carefully studied by M. Thomas Chapais in his "Montcalm," published in 1911, reveal to us a sad state of corruption and venality in high places at Quebec and Montreal. We may quote M. Chapais' estimate of the situation. In answer to the charge that Montcalm hated the Canadians he says: "This is not so; he loved our people and appreciated their real qualities at their true value. He wrote to M. Moras (the minister of marine) on July 11, 1767: 'What a colony! What a people!... They are all thoroughly men of character and courage!' He had sympathy for the 'Canadian simple habitant,' who for his part loved and respected him, and Montcalm had reason to believe, as he said, that he was popular. But he had little esteem for a great number of the Canadian high functionaries and officers of the country. He criticized their vanity, their spirit of boastfulness, their duplicity and their unscrupulousness. We believe that he was too inclined to generalize to the point of pushing his antipathies too far. He did not guard himself against the anti-colonial prejudice, with which the troops of the line were certainly affected and which, in spite of himself, made his judgment err at times. A Canadian historian is wounded in his national 'amour propre' in reading the journal and letters of Montcalm. The allusions to Canadian insincerity, Canadian braggadocio, Canadian rudeness, occurred too frequently for our liking. And we rightly find that the spirit of ill-humour and caustic carping is too easily indulged in, to the detriment of the sons of the soil. But we must not, for this reason, tax with injustice and with blind prejudice all the severe strictures passed by Montcalm. Hélas! We are forced to agree that he had under his eyes spectacles of a nature calculated to ruffle an honest soul and a clear-sighted mind, pretentious incapacity, insatiable cupidity, shameless indelicacy and dishonesty. And we ought not to be astonished that bitter expressions had been ready to mount from his heart to his lips. Doubtless distinctions have to be made and Montcalm knew how to make them. Thus we find frequently from his pen eulogiums on de Villiers, de Contrecœur, de Ligneris, de la Naudière, de Langy, Marin and many other Canadian officers. But when he denounces the robberies of Cadet, of Péan, of Duchesneau and of so many other peculators, can we accuse him with injustice because these were born in Canada?"
This leads us to speak of the "grande société" of functionaries who were waxing rich at the public expense at Quebec and Montreal. The chief of these was Bigot, the intendant, a Frenchman; with him were the Canadians, Cadet, Péan, Duchesnaux; and acting in concert with them at Montreal was the Frenchman Varin, in charge of the commissariat department, who had associated with him Martel, the keeper of the stores, and the Sieur de Pénisseault, whom they placed in charge of a store to monopolize the commerce of Montreal. This is known as "La Friponne," or "The Cheat," after the parent one at Quebec.
This notorious group of men, with whom were others less conspicuous, were then in the very height of their successful efforts to "get rich quick," in the system of peculation and robbery established by Bigot.
Bigot was a type of the adventurer that helped to ruin Canada. His great objective was to make his fortune as quickly as possible. Eager for pleasure, a dissolute gamester, fastidious in his tastes, pushing his love of luxury to incredible excesses, he had need to make money quickly to satisfy his craving for the enjoyments of life. Withal, he was an intelligent, active worker, full of resources and address, clever to surmount obstacles and even to render great services to the country in difficult situations.
From his arrival in Canada he had joined illicitly in commerce with the Gradis, shipowners of Bordeaux, as well as with Bréard, controller of the marine at Quebec, whom he had interested in his business affairs in order to buy his complicity.
The intendant juggled away the rights of His Majesty's customs in declaring the merchandise brought in by his Bordeaux accomplices, as that of the king. The royal stores were always found to be needing just those articles, which their vessels always had in abundance. The sales were concluded under fictitious names or of those who lent them for the nefarious purpose. The controller, Bréard, complacently signed the invoices and marked fictitious prices. Finally Bigot bought these goods for the king at an extravagant rate. Others became associated with the embezzlers and soon it became a public scandal. Among those daring speculators were the infamous triumvirate, of whom two were men of low extraction but of undoubted ability, Duchesneau, Bigot's secretary, the son of a Quebec shoemaker; Cadet, the son of a butcher and himself once a cattle watcher of a Charlesbourg habitant; the third was Hugues Péan, Sieur de Levandière, son of a former adjutant at Quebec.
The illicit liaison of this man's wife with Bigot and the complacent acquiescence of Péan in the arrangement was public property. Like Louis XV, Bigot had his Pompadour and her influence was considerable.
The extent of misery to which these schemers drove the common people seems almost incredible. These associates, with whom Bigot and the triumvirate were popularly connected and whom the public designated "la grande société" soon came to lay their hands on all "le grande commerce." A spacious building was constructed near the intendancy, on ground belonging to the crown. Vast storehouses were built there. The ostensible object was to sell goods by retail, but in reality the design was to warehouse all the goods habitually needed by the government stores. Each year Bigot had to send to the court a list of the goods necessary for government purposes for the coming year. This was always left incomplete. Hence in a short time there was a dearth, and then it was found by the luckiest of chances that the stores of the associates always had just the desired articles in stock. Thus retail merchants were excluded by this monopoly and prices were raised, and the privileged establishment was baptized by the long-suffering public under the name of "La Friponne" (the cheat).
