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HISTORY OF CANADA

PART I (NEW FRANCE)

_C. P. LUCAS_




HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE




A HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH COLONIES VOL. V

CANADA--PART I HISTORICAL


BY

C. P. LUCAS, C.B.

OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD AND THE COLONIAL OFFICE


OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

MDCCCCI




OXFORD

PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

BY HORACE HART, M.A.

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




CONTENTS

                                                                 PAGE
CHAP. I.    EUROPEAN DISCOVERERS IN NORTH AMERICA TO THE END OF
            THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1

CHAP. II.   SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDING OF QUEBEC  . . . .   35

CHAP. III.  THE SETTLEMENT OF CANADA AND THE FIVE NATION INDIANS   79

CHAP. IV.   FRENCH AND ENGLISH DOWN TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT  . .  123

CHAP. V.    THE MISSISSIPPI AND LOUISIANA  . . . . . . . . . . .  147

CHAP. VI.   ACADIA AND HUDSON BAY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  170

CHAP. VII.  LOUISBOURG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  191

CHAP. VIII. THE PRELUDE TO THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR  . . . . . . . .  216

CHAP. IX.   THE CONQUEST OF CANADA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  250

CHAP. X.    THE CONQUEST OF CANADA (_continued_) . . . . . . . .  289

CHAP. XI.   GENERAL SUMMARY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  329

APPENDIX I.  LIST OF FRENCH GOVERNORS OF CANADA  . . . . . . . .  350

APPENDIX II. DATES OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF
             CANADA DOWN TO 1763 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  351




LIST OF MAPS


1. Map of the French and English possessions in North America in
   the middle of the eighteenth century

2. Map of New England, New York, and Central Canada, showing the
   waterways

3. Map of Louisbourg

4. Map of Quebec




[Illustration: Map of the French and English Possessions in NORTH
AMERICA in the Middle of the 18th Century]




{1}

HISTORY OF CANADA




CHAPTER I

EUROPEAN DISCOVERERS IN NORTH AMERICA TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY


[Sidenote: _The British possessions in North America._]

The British possessions in North America consist of Newfoundland and
the Dominion of Canada. Under the Government of Newfoundland is a
section of the mainland coast which forms part of Labrador, extending
from the straits of Belle Isle on the south to Cape Chudleigh on the
north.

The area of these possessions, together with the date and mode of
their acquisition, is as follows:--

  _Name._         _How acquired._    _Date._  _Area in square miles._

  Newfoundland    Settlement        1583-1623         40,200
  and Labrador                                       120,000

  Canada          Cession [Quebec]    1763         3,653,946

[Sidenote: _British possessions in North America and West Indies
contrasted._]

In the Introduction to a previous volume,[1] it was pointed out that
all the British possessions in the New World have one common feature;
viz. that they have been, in the main, fields of European settlement,
and not merely trading stations or conquered dependencies; but that,
in other respects--in climate, in geography, and in what may be
called the strata of colonization--the West Indian and North American
provinces of the Empire stand at opposite poles to each other. It may
be added that, in North America, European colonization was later in
time and slower in development than {2} in the central and southern
parts of the continent; and, in order to understand why this was the
case, some reference must be made to the geography of North America,
more especially in its relation to Europe, and also to its first
explorers, their motives, and their methods.

[Footnote 1: Vol. ii, _West Indies_, pp. 3, 4.]

[Sidenote: _Geographical outline of America._]

The Old World lies west and east. In the New World the line of length
is from north to south. The geographical outline of America, as
compared with that of Europe and Asia, is very simple. There is a
long stretch of continent, with a continuous backbone of mountains,
running from the far north to the far south. The mountains line the
western coast; on the eastern side are great plains, great rivers,
broken shores, and islands. Midway in the line of length, where the
Gulf of Mexico runs into the land, and where, further south, the
Isthmus of Darien holds together North and South America by a narrow
link, the semicircle of West Indian islands stand out as
stepping-stones in the ocean for wayfarers from the old continent to
the new.

[Sidenote: _North and South America._]

The two divisions of the American continent are curiously alike. They
have each two great river-basins on the eastern side. The basin of
the St. Lawrence is roughly parallel to that of the Amazon; the basin
of the Mississippi to that of La Plata. The North American coast,
however, between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and that of the
Mississippi, is more varied and broken, more easy of access, than the
South American shores between the Amazon and La Plata. On the other
hand, South America has an attractive and accessible northern coast,
in strong contrast to the icebound Arctic regions; and the Gulf of
Venezuela, the delta of the Orinoco, and the rivers of Guiana, have
called in traders and settlers from beyond the seas.

[Sidenote: _South America colonized from both sides, North America
only from the eastern side._]

The history of colonization in North America has been, in the main,
one of movement from east to west. In South America, on the other
hand, the western side played almost from the first at least as
important a part as the eastern. {3} The story of Peru and its Inca
rulers shows that in old times, in South America, there was a
civilization to be found upon the western side of the Andes, and the
shores of the Pacific Ocean. European explorers penetrated into and
crossed the continent rather from the north and west than from the
east; and Spanish colonization on the Pacific coast was, outwardly at
least, more imposing and effective than Portuguese colonization on
the Atlantic seaboard. The great mass of land on the earth's surface
is in the northern hemisphere; and in the extreme north the shores of
the Old and New Worlds are closest to each other. Here, where the
Arctic Sea narrows into the Behring Straits, it is easier to reach
America from the west than from the east, from Asia than from Europe;
but to pass from the extremity of one continent to the extremity of
another is of little avail for making history; and the history of
North America has been made from the opposite side, which lies over
against Europe, where the shores are indented by plenteous bays and
estuaries, and where there are great waterways leading into the heart
of the interior.

[Sidenote: _The rivers of North America._]

[Sidenote: _English colonization in North America._]

The main outlets of North America are, as has been said, the St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi; while, on the long stretch of coast
between them, the most important river is the Hudson, whose valley is
a direct and comparatively easy highroad from the Atlantic to Lake
Champlain and the St. Lawrence basin; and here it may be noticed
that, though a Bristol ship first discovered North America, and
though, from the time of Ralegh onwards, North America became the
main scene of British colonization, the English allowed other nations
to secure the keys of the continent, and ran the risk of being cut
off from the interior. The French forestalled them on the St.
Lawrence, and later took possession of the mouth of the Mississippi.
The Dutch planted themselves on the Hudson between New England and
the southern colonies, and New York, the present chief city of
English-speaking America, was once New Amsterdam. Of all {4}
colonizing nations the English have perhaps been the least scientific
in their methods; and in no part of the world were their mistakes
greater than in North America, where their success was eventually
most complete. There was, however, one principle in colonization to
which they instinctively and consistently held. While they often
neglected to safeguard the obvious means of access into new-found
countries, and, as compared with other nations, made comparatively
little use of the great rivers in any part of the world, they laid
hold on coasts, peninsulas, and islands, and kept their population
more or less concentrated near to the sea. Thus, when the time of
struggle came, they could be supported from home, and were stronger
at given points than their more scientific rivals. If the French laid
their plans to keep in their own hands the Mississippi, the Ohio, and
the St. Lawrence, and thereby to shut off the colonies of the
Atlantic seaboard from the continent behind, those colonies had the
advantage of close contact with the sea, of comparatively continuous
settlement, and of yearly growing power to break through the weak and
unduly extended line with which the competing race tried to hem them
in.

But this contest between French and English, based though it was on
geographical position, belongs to the Middle Ages of European
colonization in America: let us look a little further back, and see
how the Old and the New Worlds first came into touch with each other.

[Sidenote: _Bacon on the discovery of North America._]

In his history of King Henry VII, Bacon refers to the 'memorable
accident' of the Cabots' great discovery, in the following
passage:--'There was one Sebastian Gabato, a Venetian living in
Bristow, a man seen and expert in cosmography and navigation. This
man, seeing the success and emulating perhaps the enterprise of
Christopherus Columbus in that fortunate discovery towards the
south-west, which had been by him made some six years before,
conceited with himself that lands might likewise be discovered
towards {5} the north-west. And surely it may be he had more firm and
pregnant conjectures of it than Columbus had of his at the first. For
the two great islands of the Old and New World, being in the shape
and making of them broad towards the north and pointed towards the
south, it is likely that the discovery first began where the lands
did nearest meet. And there had been before that time a discovery of
some lands which they took to be islands, and were indeed the
continent of America towards the north-west.'[2] Bacon goes on to
surmise that Columbus had knowledge of this prior discovery, and was
guided by it in forming his own conjectures as to the existence of
land in the far west; and it is at least not unlikely that, when he
visited Iceland in 1477, he would have heard tales of the Norsemen's
voyages to America.[3]

[Footnote 2: Spedding's edition of Bacon's works, 1870, vol. vi, p.
196.]

[Footnote 3: For this visit, see Washington Irving's _Life and
Voyages of Columbus_, bk. i, ch. vi.]

[Sidenote: _Pre-Columbian explorations._]

It would be out of place in this book to make more than a passing
reference to the much-vexed question, how far the New World was known
to Europeans before the days of Columbus and the Cabots. Indeed, if
all the stories on the subject were proved, the fact would yet remain
that, for all practical purposes, America was first revealed to the
nations of Europe, when Columbus took his way across the Atlantic. It
was likely that, when his discovery had been made, men would rise up
to assert that it was not so great and not so new as had been at
first imagined. The French claimed priority for a countryman of their
own;[4] stories of Welsh and Irish settlement in America passed into
circulation; the romance of the brothers Zeni was published, a tale
of supposed Venetian adventure in the fourteenth century to the
islands of the far north; and it was contended, more prosaically and
with greater show of reason, that Basque fishermen had frequented {6}
the banks of Newfoundland, before that island was discovered for
England and thereby earned its present name.

[Footnote 4: Cousin of Dieppe, who claimed to have discovered America
in 1488, four years before Columbus reached the West Indies.]

[Sidenote: _Voyages of the Norsemen._]

The story of the Norsemen's voyages has a sounder foundation than any
other of these early traditions and tales. Iceland is nearer to
Greenland than to Norway: it has been abundantly proved that colonies
were established and fully organized in Greenland in the Middle Ages;
and it seems on the face of it unlikely that the enterprise and
adventure of the seafaring sons of the north would have stopped short
at this point, instead of carrying them on to the mainland of
America.

[Sidenote: _Their alleged discovery of North America._]

The Norse are said to have come to Iceland about 875 A.D., where
Christian Irish had already preceded them; and, in the following
year, rocks far to the west were sighted by Gunnbiorn. A century
later, in 984, Eric the Red came back from a visit to Gunnbiorn's
land, calling it by the attractive name of Greenland. About 986,
Bjarni Herjulfson, sailing from Iceland to Greenland, sighted land to
the south-west; and, a few years later, about the year 1000, Leif,
the son of Eric, who had brought the Christian religion to Greenland,
sailed in search of the south-western land which Bjarni had seen. The
record of his voyage claims to be the record of the discovery of
America. He found the rocky barren shores of Labrador and
Newfoundland, and called them from their appearance Helluland, or
'slateland.' He passed on to the mouth of the St. Lawrence and to
Nova Scotia, calling it Markland, or the 'land of woods.' Then
sailing still further south, he came to a land where vines grew wild,
and which he called Vinland. This last was, it would seem, the New
England coast, between Boston and New York; and here in after times,
for a like reason, English settlers gave the name of Martha's or
Martin's Vineyard to an island, which lies close to the shore south
of Cape Cod.[5] In Vinland, it is stated, a Norse colony was {7}
founded a few years after Leif's visit; and trade--mainly a timber
trade--was carried on with Greenland down to the year 1347, after
which all is a blank.

[Footnote 5: A little further to the south on the coast of New
Jersey, or Maryland, Verrazano 'saw in this country many vines
growing naturally' (Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 360, 1810 ed.).]

No authentic inscriptions or remains, indicating Scandinavian
discovery or settlement in America, have, it is said, been found
anywhere outside Greenland, except at one point in the very far
north;[6] and in their absence these northern tales cannot be
absolutely verified. It can only be said that, in all probability,
America was known to the Northmen in the Middle Ages, but that what
happened in these dark days in the extreme north of Europe and the
extreme north of America has no direct bearing upon the history of
European colonization.

[Footnote 6: See Justin Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of
America_, (vol. i, chap. ii) on 'Pre-Columbian Explorations.' The
writer says, 'Nowhere in America, except on an island on the east
shore of Baffin's Bay, has any authentic runic inscription been found
outside of Greenland.' Reference should be made to the first chapter
of Mr. Raymond Beazley's _John and Sebastian Cabot_ ('Builders of
Greater Britain' series, 1898), in which the dates and particulars of
the Norse discovery of America, as given above, are somewhat
modified.]

[Sidenote: _The way to the East._]

At the time when modern history opens, there were two parts of the
world which were--to use the Greek philosopher's phrase--'ends in
themselves.' One was Europe or rather Southern Europe, the other was
the East Indies; and the great problem was to find the best and
shortest way from the one point to the other.

[Sidenote: _Africa and America places on the road._]

The overland trade routes through Syria and Egypt--by which Genoa,
Venice, and the other city states of the Middle Ages had grown
rich--had fallen in the main under Moslem control; and, accordingly,
the growing nations of Europe began to take to the open sea. On the
ocean, India can be reached from Europe either by going east or by
going west. In the former case Africa comes in the way, in the latter
America; and the position of these {8} two continents in the modern
history of the world is, in their earliest stage, that of having been
places on the road, not final goals.

The Portuguese tried the way by Africa and succeeded. Vasco de Gama
rounded the Cape, sailed up the eastern coast of Africa, and crossed
to India. The Spaniards set sail in the opposite direction, and,
failing in their original design, found instead a New World.

Let us suppose that the conditions had been reversed, that Southern
Africa, when reached, had proved as attractive as the West Indies;
that its shores had been fertile and easy of access; that its rivers
had been navigable, and that its turning-point had been as distant as
Cape Horn; that, on the contrary, Columbus had discovered a channel
through America, where he sought for it at the Isthmus of Darien, had
found the American coasts and islands as little inviting as Africa,
and behind them an expanse of sea no wider than the Indian Ocean. In
that case America would have remained the Dark Continent, to be
passed by, as Africa was passed by, on the way to the East; and
hinging on this one central fact, that the Indies were the goal of
discovery, the whole history of colonization would have been changed.
As it was, the Spaniards, in the first place, found their way barred
by America; and, in the second place, found America too good to be
passed by, even if a thoroughfare had been found. Thus they assumed
that they had really reached the Indies on their furthest side; and,
by the time that the mistake had been finally cleared up, the riches
and wonders of the New World had given it a position and standing of
its own, over and above all considerations respecting the best way to
the East.

America then was discovered by being taken on the way to some other
part of the world; it could not be passed by like Africa; and it was
more attractive than Africa. Thus it was early colonized, while the
great mass of the African {9} continent was left, almost down to our
own day, unexplored and unknown.

[Sidenote: _Reasons why the discovery and settlement of North America
was later than that of Central and South America._]

This statement, however, only holds true of that part of America
which the Spaniards made their own; and the further question
arises--Why was the discovery and settlement of North America a much
slower process than the Spanish conquest and colonization of Central
America and the West Indies? The north of Newfoundland is in the same
latitude as the south of England; the mouth of the St. Lawrence lies
directly over against the ports of Brittany; a line drawn due east
from New York would almost pass through Madrid: therefore it seems as
though sailors going westward from Europe would naturally make their
way in the first instance to the North American coast; and, as a
matter of fact, Cabot probably sighted the shores of Newfoundland,
Nova Scotia, or Labrador before Columbus set foot upon the mainland
of South America.

[Sidenote: _Spain and Portugal the natural centres for Western
discovery._]

[Sidenote: _The Spaniards went to the south-west._]

There are, however, ample historical and geographical reasons for the
fact that, at the beginning of modern history, the stream of European
discovery and colonization took a south-westerly rather than a
westerly direction. The main course of European civilization has on
the whole been from south-east to north-west. Its centre gradually
shifted from Asia Minor and Phoenicia to Greece, from Greece to Rome,
and finally from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of the
Atlantic. The peninsula of Spain and Portugal stands half-way between
the inner and the outer sea, and accordingly geography marked out
this country to be the birthplace of the new and wider history of the
world. Further, at the time when modern history begins, the Spaniards
and Portuguese were better trained, more consolidated, more nearly
come to their prime, more full of expansive force than the peoples of
Northern Europe; so that their history combined with their
geographical position to place them in {10} the front rank among the
movers of the world. But Spain and Portugal look south-west: both
countries are hot, sunny lands, and, while adventurers to the unknown
would in any case be more attracted to regions where they would
expect light and heat and tropical growth and colour, than to the
bare, bleak stretches of the north, most of all would a southern race
set out to find a new world in a southerly or south-westerly
direction. Again, as has been seen, the early explorers were seeking
for a sea-road to the Indies; and, as the tales of the Indies were
glowing tales of glowing lands, men were more likely at first to
start in search of them by way of the Equator than by way of the
Pole.

And they had guidance in their course. The Canaries, Madeira, and the
Azores, lying away in the ocean to the south-west, were the
half-mythical goals of ancient navigation. The Spaniards would
naturally make for them in the first instance, and so far help
themselves on their westward way. Wind and tide would prescribe the
same line of discovery. The way to the West Indies is made easy by
the north-easterly trade winds, whereas the passage to North America
is in the teeth of the prevailing wind from the west. Those who take
ship from Europe to North America meet the opposing force of the Gulf
Stream; voyagers to the south-west, on the contrary, are borne by the
Equatorial Current from the African coast to the Caribbean Sea.

[Sidenote: _The West Indies more attractive than North America._]

Easier to reach than North America, the West Indies and Central
America were also more attractive when reached. The Spaniards found
riches beyond their hopes, pearls in the sea, gold and silver in the
land, and a race of natives who could be forced to fish for the one
and to mine for the other. When they had discovered the New World,
there was every inducement to make them forthwith conquer and
colonize in countries where living promised to be more luxurious than
in their own land. Adventurers to North America, on the contrary,
found greater cold than they had {11} left behind them in the same
latitudes in Europe, desolate shores, little trace of precious metal,
and natives whom it was dangerous to offend and impossible to
enslave. In the far north the cod fisheries were discovered, and furs
were to be obtained by barter from the North American Indians; but
such trade was not likely to lead to permanent settlement in the near
future. Its natural outcome was not the founding of colonies, the
building of cities, and the subjugation of continents, but, at the
most, repeated visits in the summer time to the Newfoundland banks,
or spasmodic excursions up the course of the St. Lawrence. Thus, for
a century after Columbus first sailed to the west, while Central and
South America became organized into a collection of Spanish
provinces, the extreme north was left to Basque, Breton, and English
fishermen; and the coast between the St. Lawrence and the
Mississippi, where the English race was eventually to make its
greatest effort and achieve its greatest success--this, the present
territory of the United States, was, with the exception of Florida,
little visited and scarcely known.

[Sidenote: _Effect of finding mineral wealth in Central America._]

The discovery of minerals in a district brings about dense population
and a hurried settlement. Men come to fisheries or hunting-grounds at
stated times, and leave to come again. The progress of agricultural
colonization, if steady and continuous, is usually very slow. Thus,
where Central America gave gold and silver, there adventurers from
Europe hurried in and stayed. The fisheries of Newfoundland saw men
come and go; the sea was there the attraction, not the land. The
agricultural resources of Virginia and New England were left
undeveloped by Europeans, until the time came when business-like
companies were formed by men who could afford to wait, and when
enthusiasts went over the Atlantic not so much to make money as to
live patiently and in the fear of God.

[Sidenote: _The North-West Passage._]

But, though the sixteenth century passed away before men's eyes,
which were dazzled with the splendour of the {12} tropics, had given
more than passing glances to the sober landscape of North America,
discoverers from Cabot onwards were not idle; and from the first, the
ever powerful hope of finding a new road to the Indies took
adventurers to the north-west in spite of cold and wind and tide.
Because North America was unattractive in itself, therefore men seem
to have imagined that it must be on the way to something better; and
also, because it was unattractive in itself, they did not wait to see
what could be made out of it, but kept perpetually pushing on to a
further goal. They argued, as Bacon shows in the passage already
quoted, and argued rightly, that in the north the Old and New Worlds
were nearest together, and that here therefore was the point at which
to cross from one to the other. They found sea channels evidently
leading towards the west; they saw the great river of Canada[7] come
widening down from the same quarter; and thus, long after the quest
of the Indies had in Central America been swallowed up in the riches
found on the way, in North America it remained the one great object
of the men who went out from Europe, and of the Kings who sent them
out.

[Footnote 7: The idea that there was a way to the Indies by the St.
Lawrence long continued. Thus Lescarbot writes (_Nova Francia_,
Erondelle's translation, 1609, chap. xiii, p. 87) of the great river
of Canada as 'taking her beginning from one of the lakes which do
meet at the stream of her course (and so I think), so that it hath
two courses, the one from the east towards France, the other from the
west towards the south sea.']

As the first discoverer, Cabot, set sail to find the passage to
Cathay, 'having great desire to traffic for the spices as the
Portingals did,'[8] so all who came after during the century of
exploration kept the same end firmly in view. Francis I of France
dispatched Verrazano to find the passage to the East; Cartier, the
Breton sailor, came back from the St. Lawrence with tales which
savoured of the Indies, of 'a river that goeth south-west, from
whence there is a whole {13} month's sailing to go to a certain land
where there is neither ice nor snow seen'[9]--of a 'country of
Saguenay, in which are infinite rubies, gold and other
riches'[10]--of 'a land where cinnamon and cloves are gathered';[11]
and his third voyage was, in his King's words, 'to the lands of
Canada and Hochelaga, which form the extremity of Asia towards the
west.'[12] Frobisher's voyage in 1576 led to the formation of a
company of Cathay. As early as 1527, Master Robert Thorne wrote 'an
information of the parts of the world' discovered by the Spaniards
and Portuguese, and 'of the way to the Moluccas by the north.' Sir
Humphrey Gilbert published 'a discourse' 'to prove a passage by the
north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies'; and Richard Hakluyt
himself, in the 'epistle dedicatory' to Philip Sydney, which forms
the preface to his collection of _Divers Voyages touching the
discovery of America_,[13] sums up the arguments for the existence of
'that short and easy passage by the north-west which we have hitherto
so long desired.' In short, the record of the sixteenth century in
North America was, in the main, a record of successive voyagers
seeking after a way to the East, supplemented by the fishing trade
which was attracted to the shores of Newfoundland.

[Footnote 8: Gomara, quoted by Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 30 (1810 ed.).]

[Footnote 9: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 278.]

[Footnote 10: Ibid. p. 281.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid. p. 285.]

[Footnote 12: See Parkman's _Pioneers of France in the New World_
(25th ed., 1888), p. 217.]

[Footnote 13: Published in 1582; edited by the Hakluyt Society in
1850.]

[Sidenote: _The early voyagers to North America were of various
nationalities._]

The two men who opened America to Europe were of Italian
parentage--Columbus the Genoese, and Cabot, born at Genoa, domiciled
at Venice.[14] The two great trading republics of the Middle Ages at
once crowned their work in the world, and signed their own death
warrant, in providing Spain and England with the sailors whose
discoveries transferred the centre of life and movement from the
Mediterranean {14} to the Atlantic. The King of France too turned to
Italy for a discoverer to rival Columbus and Cabot, and sent
Verrazano the Florentine, at the end of 1523, to search out the
coasts of North America.

[Footnote 14: As to Cabot's parentage see below, p. 18. If the
voyages of the Zeni were genuine, the Venetians could have claimed a
yet older share in the record of European connexion with America.]

At the first dawn of discovery those coasts were not wholly given
over to French or English adventurers. Though Florida was the
northern limit of Spanish conquest and settlement, Spanish claims
extended indefinitely over the whole continent; and the French King's
scheme for the colonization of Canada, in 1541, under the leadership
of Cartier and Roberval, roused the suspicion of the Spanish court as
an attempt to infringe an acknowledged monopoly. The Portuguese at
the very first took part in north-western discovery, and with good
reason; for it was their own Indies which were the final goal, and
they could not afford to leave to other nations to find a shorter way
thither than their own route round the Cape. Thus it was that Corte
Real set out from Lisbon for the north-west in the year 1500, having
'craved a general license of the King Emmanuel to discover the
Newfoundland,' and 'sailed unto that climate which standeth under the
north in 50 degrees of latitude.'[15] We find, too, records of
Portuguese working in the same direction under foreign flags. In 1501
two patents were granted by Henry VII of England to English and
Portuguese conjointly to explore, trade, and settle in America;[16]
and, in 1525, Gomez, who had served under Magellan, and who, like
Magellan, was a Portuguese in the service of Spain, set out from the
Spanish port of Corunna to search for the North-West Passage.[17]

[Footnote 15: See Purchas' _Pilgrims_, pt. 2, bk. x, chap. i. A brief
'collection of voyages, chiefly of Spaniards and Portugals, taken out
of Antoine Galvano's Book of the Discoveries of the World.']

[Footnote 16: See Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol.
i, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 17: See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, p. 10.]

[Sidenote: _The Basque fishermen._]

Basque fishermen were among the very first visitors to Newfoundland,
and, even after the North American continent {15} was becoming a
sphere of French and English colonization, to the exclusion of the
southern nations of Europe, the Spaniards and Portuguese still held
their own in the fisheries. The record of almost every voyage to
Newfoundland notices Spanish or Portuguese ships plying their trade
on the banks.[18] A writer[19] in the year 1578, on 'the true state
and commodities of Newfoundland,' tells us that, according to his
information, there were at that date above one hundred Spanish ships
engaged in the cod fisheries, in addition to twenty or thirty whalers
from Biscay; that the Portuguese ships did not exceed fifty, and that
those owned by French and Bretons numbered about one hundred and
fifty. Edward Hayes, the chronicler of Gilbert's last voyage in 1583,
relates how the Portuguese at Newfoundland provisioned the English
admiral's ships for their return voyage, and adds that 'the Portugals
and French chiefly have a notable trade of fishing upon this
bank.'[20]

[Footnote 18: See Parkman's _Pioneers of France in the New World_
(25th ed., 1888), pp. 189, 190, and notes.]

[Footnote 19: Anthony Parkhurst. The letter was written to Hakluyt,
and published in his collection, vol. iii, p. 171.]

[Footnote 20: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 190.]

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Government still
claimed for its subjects the right to fish on the Newfoundland coast,
among other grounds on that of prior discovery, a claim which was
only finally relinquished under the provisions of the Peace of Paris
in 1763;[21] and, writing {16} about the same date, the author of the
_European Settlements in America_ noted that the Spaniards still
shared in the fishery.[22]

[Footnote 21: As to the question whether Basque fishermen had found
their way to Newfoundland before Cabot, see the note to p. 189 of Mr.
Parkman's _Pioneers of France in the New World_. The reasons for
thinking that these fishermen forestalled Cabot seem to be--(1) the
argument of probability; (2) assertions of old writers to that
effect; (3) the application of the Basque name 'Baccalaos' to
Newfoundland, and the statement of Peter Martyr that Cabot found that
word in use for codfish among the natives; (4) the claim advanced by
the Spanish Government to right of fishing at Newfoundland on the
ground of prior discovery by Biscayan fishermen. As to this last
point, see _Papers relative to the rupture with Spain, 1762_. One
source of friction at this time between Great Britain and Spain was
what Pitt styles in a dispatch (p. 3) 'the stale and inadmissible
pretensions of the Biscayans and Guipuscoans to fish at
Newfoundland.' As to this claim, the Earl of Bristol, British
minister at Madrid, writes (p. 53), 'With regard to the Newfoundland
fishery, Mr. Wall urged, what I have also conveyed in some former
despatches, that the Spaniards indeed pleaded, in favour of their
claim to a share of the Bacallao trade, the first discovery of that
island.']

[Footnote 22: _European Settlements in America_, pt. 6, chap. xxviii,
'Newfoundland.' The author (? Burke) says, 'The French and Spaniards,
especially the former, have a large share (in the fishery).']

Hayes, who has just been quoted, tells us that more than thirty years
before he wrote, i.e. about 1550, the Portuguese had touched at Sable
Island and left there 'both neat and swine to breed.' In the same way
they left live stock at Mauritius on their way to and from the East;
and in like manner the Spaniards landed pigs at the Bermudas[23] on
their early voyages to the West Indies.

[Footnote 23: See vol. i of this series, p. 163, and vol. ii, p. 6
and note. Lescarbot states that the French Baron de Léry, who
attempted to found a colony in North America in 1518, left cattle on
Sable Island. See Parkman's _Pioneers of France_, p. 193, and Doyle's
_History of the English in America_, vol. i, chap. v, p. 111.]

[Sidenote: _Names in North America indicate visits from Southern
Europe._]

If evidence were wanted that, in the oldest days of movement from
Europe to the West, southern sailors did not go only to tropical
America, it would be found in the naming of the North American coasts
and islands. The first point on the coast of North America, sighted
by the first discoverer--the Italian Cabot--was spoken of under the
Italian name of Prima Terra Vista. The name Baccalaos[24] tells of
voyages of the Basques, as Cape Breton of visitors from Brittany;
and, {17} after Corte Real's voyages, the east coast of Newfoundland
was, as old maps testify, christened for a while Terra de Corte
Reall.[25] Soon, however, the Spaniards found Mexico, Peru, and
Central America enough and more than enough to absorb their whole
attention; the Portuguese were over-weighted by their eastern empire
and Brazil: and North America was given over, first to be explored
and then to be settled, by the peoples of the north of Europe; who
gathered strength as their southern rivals declined, and whose work
was more lasting because more slow.

[Footnote 24: 'Baccalaos' is the Spanish name for codfish. It is of
Basque origin. Cabot, it is stated, gave the name generally to the
lands which he found. The name was subsequently applied more
especially to Newfoundland. Thus Edward Hayes in his account of Sir
Humphrey Gilbert's last voyage, under the heading 'a brief relation
of the Newfoundland and the commodities thereof' (Hakluyt, iii, 193),
speaks of 'that which we do call the Newfoundland and the Frenchmen
Bacalaos.' Various small islands, however, in these parts were also
given this name by different writers. At the present day, on the maps
of Newfoundland, an islet off the east coast, at the extreme north of
the peninsula of Avalon, bears the name of Baccalieu. See Parkman, p.
189 note as above, and the chapter on the voyages of the Cabots in
Justin Winsor's history, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 25: The name 'Labrador' is supposed to have been derived
from the fact that some North American natives, brought back in one
of the ships which accompanied Corte Real on this second voyage, were
said to be 'admirably calculated for labour and the best slaves I
have ever seen.' Hence the name 'Laboratoris terra,' or Labrador. On
Thorne's map (1527) printed in the _Divers Voyages to America_, there
appears 'Nova terra Laboratorum dicta.' Sir Clements Markham, in his
edition of the _Journal of Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real_ (Hakluyt
Society, 1893, Int. p. 51, note), says: 'There is no reference to
Labrador in any of the authorities for the voyages of Corte Real. The
King of Portugal is said to have hoped to derive good slave labour
from the lands discovered by Corte Real. That is all. The name
Labrador is not Portuguese; and Corte Real was never on the Labrador
coast.' Another derivation given is: 'This land was discovered by the
English from Bristol, and named Labrador because the one who saw it
first was a labourer from the Azores.' One more derivation is that
Labrador was the name of the Basque captain of a fishing-vessel. See
Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, pp. 2, 46, and Parkman's _Pioneers
of France in the New World_, p. 216, note.]

[Sidenote: _The Cabots._]

On March 5, 1496, King Henry VII of England granted a patent to 'John
Cabot, citizen of Venice,' and to his three sons--Lewis, Sebastian,
and Sancius--empowering them 'to discover unknown lands under the
king's banner.'[26] Under this patent--'the earliest surviving
document which connects England with the New World'[27]--North
America was discovered.

[Footnote 26: Quoted from the marginal note to the patent. See
Hakluyt's _Divers Voyages touching the discovery of America_,
published by the Hakluyt Society, 1850, p. 21.]

[Footnote 27: From Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol.
i, chap. iv.]

Almost every point connected with the voyages of the Cabots is dark
and doubtful. What the father did and what {18} the son, whence they
came, and whither they went, is all uncertain. The tale of Columbus
and his voyages is known to all the world; but readers are left to
grope after the Cabots, as the latter groped after the strange wild
regions of the north-west.

John Cabot, it would seem, was a Genoese who settled in Venice. There
he was admitted to the rights of citizenship. He married a Venetian
lady, and in Venice probably his three sons were born and passed
their childhood. He travelled on the sea, visiting the coasts of
Arabia, and forming, it may be, schemes to discover a new route to
the far East. He came to England, having previously attempted to gain
support for his projected voyages in Spain and Portugal, and he took
up his residence in either London or Bristol. The exact date of his
arrival in this country is unknown; but, either shortly before or
shortly after he came, Columbus crossed the Atlantic for the first
time in 1492. The news gave a stimulus to other would-be discoverers,
and encouraged the Kings of Europe to further their plans. Hence
Cabot and his sons obtained their patent in 1496. It was little that
King Henry VII gave to the Italian sailors. Their voyages were to be
made 'upon their own proper costs and charges,' and in return for his
licence, the King was to receive a fifth of the profits. The
enterprise was countenanced but not supported by the state, and the
English Government in these early days, as in the times which came
after, left the work of discovery and colonization in the hands of
private adventurers. Bristol was the port of departure, and a Bristol
book contains the following notice of the voyage:--'In the year 1497,
the 24th of June, on St. John's day, was Newfoundland found by
Bristol men in a ship called the _Matthew_.'[28] John Cabot and
Sebastian his son probably both sailed in the _Matthew_, and they
commanded a crew of English sailors. The voyage {19} was a short
summer venture, beginning in May and ending with the close of July or
the beginning of August. America was seen and touched, the land-fall
being either the northern end of Cape Breton island, or the coast of
Labrador, or Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland. The English flag was
planted on American soil, but no exploration took place; nothing was
achieved but the one great fact of discovery. In the following
February, new letters patent were issued--on this occasion to John
Cabot alone; and a second time, in the summer of 1498, the ships
started from Bristol. Again, it is conjectured, both father and son
were on board; and this time the North American coast seems to have
been skirted from the region of icebergs and the banks of
Newfoundland as far south as the Carolinas. In reference to this
second voyage, Sebastian Cabot wrote that he sailed 'unto the
latitude of sixty-seven degrees and a half under the North Pole,' and
'finding still the open sea without any manner of impediment, he
thought verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaio
which is in the East.'[29] The way to the East, however, was left
unopened, to tantalize after-comers, and to be a kind of 'will o' the
wisp,' leading men on to barren shores and Arctic seas, though the
continent which they had already found was worth all the riches of
the Indies.

[Footnote 28: Barrett's _History and Antiquities of Bristol_
(Bristol, 1789), p. 172.]

[Footnote 29: From Ramusio, quoted in 'a note of Sebastian Cabot's
voyage of discovery' (Hakluyt's _Divers Voyages_, p. 25). For the
much-vexed question of the Cabots and their voyages, reference should
be made to _John Cabot the Discoverer of North America and Sebastian
his son_, by Henry Harrisse, London, 1896; to the _Journal of
Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real_, edited for the Hakluyt Society by
Sir Clements Markham, 1893; to Doyle's _History of the English in
America_, vol. i, Appendix B, 'The Cabots and their Voyages'; and to
Mr. Raymond Beazley's _John and Sebastian Cabot_ ('Builders of
Greater Britain' series, 1898). The result of a great deal of
learning is after all little but conjecture.]

[Sidenote: _Corte Real._]

The next great voyager to North America was Gaspar Corte Real, a
Portuguese. Twice he sailed to the north-west, in 1500 and 1501, on
the earlier voyage sighting Greenland {20} and the east coast of
Newfoundland, and on the later working north from Chesapeake Bay. He
was lost on the second voyage; and his brother Miguel, who went in
search of him in 1502, after finding 'many entrances of rivers and
havens,' was lost also.[30]

[Footnote 30: The voyages of the Corte Reals are given in Purchas'
_Pilgrims_, pt. 2, bk. x. See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, on
Cortereal, Verrazano, &c. See also the volume of the Hakluyt Society
referred to in the previous note.]

[Sidenote: _French explorers._]

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, Frenchmen
took their place among the explorers of the world, and the Norman and
Breton seaports began to send their ships across the Atlantic. Denys
of Honfleur is said to have reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506;
in 1508, Aubert of Dieppe brought American Indians back to France;
and in 1518 Baron de Léry made the first, a stillborn, attempt to
found a French colony in North America.[31]

[Footnote 31: See above, p. 16, note 23.]

[Sidenote: _Verrazano._]

At the end of the fifteenth century, the consolidation of France had
been completed by the marriage of Charles VIII with Anne of Brittany,
and from this time France began to compete with Spain. Francis I came
to the throne in 1515, and his personal rivalry with Charles V,
German Emperor and Spanish King in one, quickened the competition
between the French and Spanish peoples. Thus it was that the French
court turned its attention to the work of exploration, and Francis
sent forth the Italian Verrazano with four ships from Dieppe 'to
discover new lands by the ocean.'[32] Sailing at the end of 1523,
Verrazano was driven back by tempest; but, starting again, he left
Madeira to cross the Atlantic on January 17, 1524. He reached the
shores of Carolina; then coasted northward, landing at various
points; and, having sailed as far north as {21} Newfoundland--'the
land that in times past was discovered by the Britons (Bretons),
which is in fifty degrees'--he 'concluded to return into France.'

[Footnote 32: From 'The relation of John Verarzanus,' given in
Hakluyt's _Divers Voyages_, p. 55, and there also headed 'The
Discovery of Morum Bega' (Norumbega). It is given too in the ordinary
collection, vol. iii, p. 357.]

He brought home to his King a sober and systematic report of the
North American coast--a report which meant business, and was not
tricked out with vague surmises and impossible tales; but, within a
year from his return, the strength of France was for a while broken
at the battle of Pavia. He himself died soon afterwards, hanged, it
is said, by the Spaniards as a pirate; and for ten years there is no
record of any French explorer following in his steps, though French
ships found their way over the ocean to the cod-fisheries of
Newfoundland.

[Sidenote: _Cartier._]

The year 1534 is a memorable one in the annals alike of France and of
North America. It is the year from which must be dated the first
beginnings of New France on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The
discoverer of Canada was Jacques Cartier, a Breton sailor of St.
Malo. He went out to explore the unknown world, not at his own risk,
but as the agent of Brian Chabot, High Admiral of France. Sailing
from St. Malo, on April 20, 1534, he came to Newfoundland, passed
through the straits of Belle Isle, and entered the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. He sailed into Chaleurs Bay under the July sun, describing
the country as 'hotter than the country of Spain, and the fairest
that can possibly be found';[33] and, having set up a cross on Gaspé
Peninsula, he reached St. Malo again on September 5, bringing with
him two Indian children as living memorials of his voyage.

[Footnote 33: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 257.]

He had discovered a hot, fair land, widely different from the bleak
and rock-bound coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the good
report which he brought of his discoveries was more than enough to
find him backing for a second venture. Accordingly, in the following
year, on May 19, 1535, he sailed again from St. Malo, and, reaching
{22} the straits of Belle Isle after storm and tempest, took his way,
the first of European explorers, up the great river of Canada. He
moored his three ships below the rock of Quebec--then the site of
Stadaconé, a native Indian village, and the dwelling-place of a chief
Donnaconna, who is styled in the narrative the Lord of Canada. There
he left his two larger vessels, and pushed on in his pinnace and
boats to the town of Hochelaga. That town, the Indians had told him,
was the capital of the land; and he found it, palisaded and fortified
in native fashion, where Montreal now stands.[34] The Frenchmen were
received as gods by the Indians; they were asked, like the Apostles
of old, to touch and heal the sick; and, ever mindful of the duty of
spreading the Christian religion, they read the gospel to their
savage admirers in the strange French tongue, to cure their souls if
they could not mend their bodies.

[Footnote 34: As Mr. Parkman points out (_Pioneers of France_, p.
212), Quebec and Montreal were in old days, as now, the centres of
population in Lower Canada. 'Stadaconé and Hochelaga, Quebec and
Montreal, in the sixteenth century, as in the nineteenth, were the
centres of Canadian population.']

Returning down stream to their ships, they passed the winter
underneath Quebec, amid ice and snow, stricken with scurvy, and
distrustful of their Indian neighbours; and at length, on the return
of summer, they set sail for France, carrying away the Indian chief
Donnaconna and some of his companions, to die in a far-off land. They
reached St. Malo in the middle of July, 1536, and so ended Cartier's
second voyage to 'the New found lands by him named New France.'[35]

[Footnote 35: End of the narrative of Cartier's second voyage in
Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 285.]

[Sidenote: _Failure of Roberval's attempt at colonization._]

Between four and five years passed, and then the Breton sailor set
out again. This time a definite scheme of settlement was projected,
the instructions were more elaborate than before, the preparations
were on a larger scale. The money {23} was found by the crown, and
the King was to receive one-third of the profits. A French nobleman,
De Roberval, was to go out as the King's lieutenant in the New World,
and was given the title of Lord of Norumbega,[36] while Cartier was
appointed Captain-General. The objects of the expedition were to
explore, to colonize, and to convert the heathen; and its leaders
were, like Columbus, empowered to recruit colonists from the prisons
at home. Cartier set out in advance of Roberval, in May, 1541. Again
he sailed up the St. Lawrence, reached in his boats a point above
Montreal, and, as before, wintered on the river; but this time at the
mouth of the Cap Rouge, some way higher up than Quebec. His leader,
Roberval, did not start till April, 1542; and, when in June he
reached St. John's harbour in Newfoundland, he was met by Cartier,
who had broken up his colony in disgust, and was on his way home to
France. In spite of Roberval's remonstrances, Cartier left by night
on his return voyage, and the Lord of Norumbega went on alone to the
St. Lawrence. He planted his settlement at Cap Rouge, where Cartier
had last sojourned, but it proved a miserable failure. The supplies
were insufficient, the Governor turned out a savage despot, and after
about a year the colony came to an end.

[Sidenote: _Norumbega._]

[Footnote 36: As to Norumbega, see Parkman's _Pioneers of France_,
pp. 216 and 253, notes, and Justin Winsor, vol. iii, chap. vi, on
'Norumbega and its English explorers.' The writer of this latter
chapter (p. 185) says the territory of Norumbega never included
Baccalaos, 'though Baccalaos, an old name of Newfoundland, sometimes
included New England.' Norumbega, an Indian name, covered the
district now included in the state of Maine, and was sometimes
extended to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the north, and part of
New England on the south. Michael Loki's map (1582) makes Norumbega
the whole district between the river and gulf of St. Lawrence and the
Hudson. The river of Norumbega was the Penobscot, and on it a city of
Norumbega was given a fabulous existence. Lescarbot (_Histoire de la
Nouvelle France_, 1609, bk. i, chap. i) speaks of 'pais qu'on a
appellé d'un nom Alleman Norumbega, lequel est par les quarante cinq
degrez.']

With this disappointing and disastrous failure, the curtain fell on
the prologue of the great drama of New France, and did not rise again
for more than fifty years. For the French, {24} as for the English,
the sixteenth century was a time of exploring, of training, of making
experiments; and it was not till the seventeenth century dawned that
permanent colonization began. Then in the Bourbons the French had
rulers who, with all their faults, were abler and stronger than the
princes of the house of Valois; and in Champlain they had a leader as
daring as, and more statesmanlike than, Cartier. But it was by
Cartier that the ground had been broken and the seed first sown. His
voyages made Canada[37] in some sort familiar to Europeans. He opened
the St. Lawrence to be the highway into North America,[38] and he
gave to the hill above the native town of Hochelaga the name of the
Royal Mount, which is still perpetuated in Montreal. He brought the
French into Canada, and, though his settlement failed, the French
connexion remained. Fishermen and fur-traders followed in his steps,
and in fullness of time the New France, which his discoveries
conceived, was brought to birth and grew to greatness.

[Footnote 37: For the meaning of the name 'Canada,' see Parkman's
_Pioneers of France_, p. 202, note. It is of Indian origin, probably
meaning 'town.' Cartier called the country about Quebec Canada,
having Saguenay below and Hochelaga above. Donnaconna, the native
chief at Quebec, was called Lord of Canada.]

[Footnote 38: On his second voyage Cartier sailed into a bay at the
mouth of the St. Lawrence, where he stayed from the eighth to the
twelfth of August, and 'named the said gulf St. Lawrence his bay'
(Hakluyt, iii, 263), St. Lawrence's Day being the 10th of August.
Hence the river, which he called the river of Hochelaga or the great
river of Canada, derived its name. See Parkman, p. 202.]

[Sidenote: _English exploration in North America in the sixteenth
century._]

[Sidenote: _Hore's voyage._]

[Sidenote: _Acts of Parliament relating to the Newfoundland
fisheries._]

A Bristol ship[39] having first discovered North America, it might
have been expected that the years succeeding Cabot's voyages would
have been fruitful in English adventure to the West; but, as far as
records show, little was done by Englishmen during the first half of
the sixteenth century to open up the New World; and even Cartier's
bold exploits roused little or no spirit of rivalry in Great Britain.
Indeed, all through {25} this century no English voyager seems to
have turned his mind to Canada and its river. The explorers went to
the Arctic seas, the would-be colonizers to Newfoundland or Virginia.
Between 1500 and 1550 two voyages alone have been actually
chronicled, though passing reference is made to others. Of these two,
the first was in 1527, when Albert de Prado, a canon of St. Paul's,
sailed with two ships in search of the Indies, reaching Newfoundland
and the North American coast. The second was in 1536, under a leader
named Hore--a voyage of which a graphic account is given in Hakluyt.
On the coast of Newfoundland the adventurers suffered the last
extremes of starvation, until at length even cannibalism began among
them; and the survivors owed their safety to the coming of a French
ship, which they seized and in which they returned home. It is clear,
however, that before the middle of the century the Newfoundland
fisheries had become a recognized branch of English trade, for the
traffic was safeguarded by two Acts of Parliament, one passed in
1540, in Henry VIII's reign, the other in 1548, in the reign of King
Edward VI. The object of the second Act was to prohibit the exaction
of any dues by way of licence from men engaged in the Iceland or
Newfoundland fishing trade, and Hakluyt's note upon it is that 'by
this Act it appeareth that the trade out of England to Newfoundland
was common and frequented about the beginning of the reign of Edward
VI, namely, in the year 1548.'[40]

[Footnote 39: For this passage, see Doyle's _History of the English
in America_, vol. i, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 40: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 170.]

[Sidenote: _Return of Sebastian Cabot to England._]

About this date Sebastian Cabot again appears upon the scene. In 1512
he had entered the Spanish service; and, after a visit to England,
had returned to Spain, where, from 1518 to 1547, he held the
appointment of Pilot-Major to the King and Emperor Charles V.[41] At
the end of 1547 or the beginning of 1548, he was induced in his old
age to come back to the land, for and from which, more than half a
century {26} before, his or his father's great discovery had been
made; and King Edward VI rewarded his services by appointing him
Grand Pilot in England. His mind was still set on finding a way to
the Indies by the Northern Sea. He became governor of 'the mystery
and company of the Merchant Adventurers for the discovery of regions,
dominions, islands, and places unknown'; and in Hakluyt's pages[42]
may be found his instructions 'for the direction of the intended
voyage for Cathay.'

[Footnote 41: See _The Dictionary of National Biography_, s. v.]

[Footnote 42: Vol. i, p. 251.]

[Sidenote: _The North-East Passage and Sir Hugh Willoughby._]

[Sidenote: _The Muscovy Company._]

The company was not finally incorporated by royal charter till
1554-5, but in the preceding year, 1553, they sent out an expedition
of three ships to try for a North-East Passage. The leader of the
expedition, Sir Hugh Willoughby, was, with the crews of two ships,
frozen to death on the coast of Lapland; but Richard Chancellor, the
captain of the third ship, reached the port on which the town of
Archangel now stands, and made his way overland to Moscow. This was
the beginning of British trade with Russia. The Merchant Adventurers
became known as the Muscovy Company, and their efforts were directed
to the overland traffic between Asia and Europe, which came by
Bokhara, Astrakhan, and the Volga, to the meeting of the east and
west at Novgorod.

[Sidenote: _Martin Frobisher._]

But, important as was this new development of trade, the British
explorers, whose names have lived, still took their way for the most
part over the Atlantic, making ever for the West. In June, 1576,
Martin Frobisher sailed from Blackwall to the north-west 'for the
search of the straight or passage to China.'[43] He sighted
Greenland; and, sailing west, came to the inlet in the American
coast, north of the Hudson Straits, which, after him, was called
Frobisher Bay. This arm of the sea he took to be a passage between
the two continents, the right-hand coast, as he went west, seeming to
be Asia, the left-hand coast America. He came back {27} to Harwich in
October, bringing with him a sample of black stone supposed to
contain gold; and thus, to the vain hope of a short passage to the
Indies, he added the more dangerous attraction of possible mineral
wealth in the Arctic regions. Men's hopes were raised; a company of
Cathay was formed, with Michael Lok for governor; and, as their
Captain-General, Frobisher sailed again in May, 1577, 'for the
further discovering of the passage to Cathay.'[44] Again he sighted
Greenland. Again he reached the bay which had been the turning-point
of his former voyage. He took possession of the barren northern land
in his Queen's name; and, when he came back in September, 'Her
Majesty named it very properly Meta Incognita, as a mark and bound
utterly hitherto unknown.'[45] The voyage was fruitless, but the
stones brought home were still thought to promise gold, and so, in
the following May, Frobisher started once more on a third voyage to
the north. Fifteen ships went with him from Harwich, bearing 'a
strong fort or house of timber'[46] to be set up on arrival in the
Arctic regions, and intended to shelter one hundred men through the
coming winter. The hundred men included miners, goldfiners,
gentlemen, artisans, 'and all necessary persons'[46]--as though this
desolate region were to become the scene of a thriving colony. They
set sail, reached the coast of Greenland, and claimed it in the
Queen's name. They fell in with the Esquimaux; they crossed the
channel now known as Davis Strait to the Meta Incognita; and they
came back in the autumn with no result beyond the report of a new
imaginary island. This was the end of Frobisher's enterprise, but in
the next forty years other English sailors followed where he had gone
before, and opened up to geographical knowledge fresh stretches of
icebound coast and wintry sea. Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and others,
gave their names to straits and bays, but it is impossible here to
trace the record of their courage and endurance. {28} No quest has
ever been so fruitful of daring, patient seamanship, none has ever
been so barren of practical results, as that for the North-West
Passage. What Frobisher went to find in the sixteenth century,
Franklin still sought in the nineteenth: and through all the ages of
British exploration has run the ever receding hope of finding a short
way through ice and snow to the sunny lands of the East.

[Footnote 43: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 52.]

[Footnote 44: Ibid. p. 56.]

[Footnote 45: Ibid. p. 104.]

[Footnote 46: Ibid. p. 105.]

[Sidenote: _Sir Humphrey Gilbert._]

In Great Britain the sixteenth century was the age of adventurers,
casting about for ways to other worlds, or freebooting where Spain
and Portugal claimed ownership of land and sea; but in that time two
men stand out as having had definite views of settlement, and as
having been colonizers in advance of their age. They are Sir Humphrey
Gilbert and his half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh. Edward Hayes, the
author of a narrative of Gilbert's attempt to found a colony in
Newfoundland, speaks of him as 'the first of our nation that carried
people to erect an habitation and government in those northerly
countries of America,'[47] and no nobler Englishman could well be
found to head the list of English colonizers of the New World.
Chivalrous in nature, bold in action, he was at the same time 'famous
for his knowledge both by sea and land';[48] and it was his
_Discourse to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the
East Indies_, which is said to have determined Frobisher to explore
the north.

[Footnote 47: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 185.]

[Footnote 48: From Fuller's _Worthies of Devonshire_.]

[Sidenote: _His patent of colonization._]

In June, 1578, Gilbert obtained from Queen Elizabeth his celebrated
patent 'for the inhabiting and planting of our people in
America.'[49] The grant was a wide one. It gave him full liberty to
explore and settle in any 'remote heathen and barbarous lands,
countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian
prince or people'; and it constituted him full owner of the land
where he settled, within {29} a radius of two hundred leagues from
the place of settlement. It was subject only to a reservation to the
Crown of one-fifth of the gold and silver found, and to a condition
that advantage should be taken of the grant within six years. For
three or four years Gilbert's efforts to colonize under this patent
were fruitless; he organized an expedition which came to nothing, and
other men, to whom he temporarily resigned his rights, were equally
unsuccessful.

[Footnote 49: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 174.]

[Sidenote: _His voyage to Newfoundland._]

At length, on June 11, 1583, he set sail from Cawsand Bay, near
Plymouth, to try his luck for the last time in the western world.
There were five ships, one of which was fitted out by Ralegh,[50] and
one, the _Golden Hind_, had for its captain and owner, Edward Hayes,
the chronicler of the voyage. The company numbered 260 men all told,
including shipwrights, carpenters, and other artisans, 'mineral men
and refiners,' 'morris dancers' and other caterers of amusement 'for
solace of our people and allurement of the savages.'[51] These last
were evidence that more was projected than mere temporary
exploration. It was intended, writes Hayes, 'to win' the savages 'by
all fair means possible'; and with this end in view the freight of
the ships included 'petty haberdashery wares to barter with those
simple people.' On the third of August the little fleet entered the
harbour of St. John's in Newfoundland, where they found thirty-six
ships of all nations. They came expecting resistance, but met with
none. When Gilbert made known his intention to proclaim British
sovereignty over the island, the sailors and fishermen present seem
to have willingly acquiesced; and when he wanted to revictual and
refit his ships, the necessary supplies were readily forthcoming.[52]

[Footnote 50: This ship deserted soon after starting.]

[Footnote 51: Hakluyt, vol. iii, pp. 189, 190.]

[Footnote 52: Hayes says, 'The Portugals (above other nations) did
most willingly and liberally contribute' (Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 192).
See above, p. 15.]

[Sidenote: _Newfoundland declared to be a British possession._]

The want of a settled authority, of some guarantee for law {30} and
order, in the harbours and on the coasts of Newfoundland, was no
doubt felt by those who came year by year to the fisheries, and Sir
Humphrey Gilbert's name and high repute may well have been known to
others than his own countrymen. Two days after his arrival he took
formal possession of the land, with ceremony of rod and turf, in the
name of his sovereign; the arms of England were set up; three simple
laws were enacted--providing that the recognized religion should be
in accordance with the forms of the Church of England, safeguarding
the sovereign rights of the Queen of England, and enjoining due
respect for her name; and then Gilbert issued land grants as
proprietor of the soil. In the words of one of the accounts which
Hakluyt has preserved,[53] 'he did let, set, give, and dispose of
many things as absolute Governor there, by virtue of Her Majesty's
letters patents.'

[Footnote 53: Peckham's account, Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 209.]

Thus was Newfoundland declared to be a British possession, and such
are its claims to be our oldest colony. The annexation was complete
in form and substance; no protest was entered against it by those
whom it concerned; land was granted by the recognized proprietor, and
nothing was wanting to constitute a claim which should last, and has
lasted, to all time. Frobisher proclaimed the sovereignty of England
over Arctic lands, but his proclamation was as barren as the shores
over which it extended. Gilbert, on the contrary, went to a place
where European sailors had long foregathered; he went there as an
English Governor; his authority was unquestioned, his grants were
accepted, and when he read his commission and set up the arms of
England at the harbour of St. John, he took the first step, and a
very long step, towards British dominion in the New World.

[Sidenote: _Gilbert's death._]

Gilbert had great hopes of finding precious metal in Newfoundland;
and his principal mining expert, a Saxon, {31} promised him a rich
yield of silver from the ore which was collected in the island. That
ore, however, was lost early on the voyage home, and the miner
himself was lost with it in the wreck of the largest ship--the
_Delight_. A far greater loss, however, was in store for the
ill-fated expedition. They left St. John's on August 20, making for
Sable Island, which had been stocked years before by the
Portuguese.[54] In a few days the _Delight_ foundered on a rock; and
the weather became so bad that, at the end of the month, Gilbert
consented to make for home. He was in the smallest ship, the
_Squirrel_, a little ten-ton vessel, as being the best suited to
explore the creeks and inlets of the American coast; and, in spite of
the remonstrances of his companions, he would not leave her on the
return voyage. 'We are as near heaven by sea as by land,' were his
last words, before the ship went down in the middle of the Atlantic
with all on board; and thus, fearless and faithful unto death, he
found his resting-place in the sea. The story is one which stands out
to all time in the annals of English adventure and English
colonization. It was meet and right that the founder of the first
English colony should be a Devonshire sailor of high repute, of
stainless name, chivalrous, unselfish, strong in the fear of God. It
was no less meet that his grave should be in the stormy Atlantic,
midway between the Old World and the New. Thus those who came after
had a forerunner of the noblest type; and the ships, which from that
time to this have carried Englishmen to America, may ever have been
passing by where Humphrey Gilbert went to his rest.

[Footnote 54: See above, p. 16.]

[Sidenote: _Sir Walter Ralegh._]

[Sidenote: _His attempts to colonize Virginia._]

Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, was cast in the same
mould, but the record of his doings lies in the main beyond the range
of this book. Virginia and Guiana were the scenes of his attempts at
colonization, not Newfoundland or the coasts and rivers of Canada. In
1584, the year after {32} Gilbert had been lost at sea, Ralegh
obtained from Queen Elizabeth a patent which was practically the same
as Gilbert's grant of 1578; and, at the end of April, he sent out two
ships, commanded by two captains named Amidas and Barlow, to explore
and report upon a likely place for an English settlement.[55]

[Footnote 55: Accounts of this and the following voyages are given in
the third volume of Hakluyt. See also the first book of John Smith's
general history of Virginia, _The English Voyages to the Old
Virginia_, in Mr. Arber's edition, _The English Scholar's Library_.]

They sailed more towards the south than previous English explorers,
and eventually reached the island of Roanoke, which is now within the
limits of North Carolina. Everything seemed bright and sweet and
healthful, and the natives of the country were friendly and
hospitable, 'such as live after the manner of the golden age.'[56] So
they came back in the autumn with a story full of hope for the
future, and the virgin Queen christened the land of promise Virginia.

[Footnote 56: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 304.]

Ralegh lost no time in sending out settlers. In the next year, 1585,
seven ships started with 108 colonists on board. The expedition was
commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, and among other captains with him
was Thomas Cavendish, afterwards celebrated, like Drake, for sailing
round the world. Ralph Lane, a soldier of fortune, was chosen to
remain in charge of the colony, and with him was Amidas, the explorer
of the previous year, who was styled 'Admiral of the country.' They
went by the West Indies, touching at the Spanish islands of Porto
Rico and Hispaniola, and, at the end of June, they reached Roanoke.
Here they formed their settlement, and, when Grenville and his ships
left in August and September, they brought back as bright a report as
Amidas and Barlow had given the year before.

Already, however, before Grenville's departure, there had been
friction between the Indians and the new-comers; and, as months went
on, the new-born colony became in constant {33} danger of
extermination. Still Lane contrived to hold his own, exploring north
and west, gleaning reports of pearls and mines, and a possible
passage to the south sea, until the winter and spring were past and
the month of June had come again. A fleet of twenty-three ships was
then seen out at sea, and, to the joy of the settlers, proved to be
an English expedition under Sir Francis Drake, who was returning home
laden with spoils from the Spanish main. Drake, at Lane's request,
placed one of his ships with seamen and supplies at the disposal of
the colony; but a storm arose, and the ship was blown out to sea.
Daunted by this fresh trouble, the settlers determined to give up
their enterprise and return home. They asked for passages on board
Drake's vessels: the request was granted; and they abandoned Roanoke
only a fortnight before Grenville arrived with relief, long expected
and long delayed. Finding the island deserted, Grenville left fifteen
men in possession and himself came home.

So far, Ralegh's scheme had failed; but the failure was due to
untoward circumstances, not to the nature of the country, and he
still persevered in his efforts. The very next year, in 1587, he sent
out a fresh band of settlers, 150 in number; giving them for a leader
John White, who had taken part in the former expedition. The
arrangements for forming a colony were more fully organized than
before; and to White and twelve Assistants Ralegh 'gave a charter and
incorporated them by the name of Governor and Assistants of the city
of Ralegh in Virginia.'[57] When the colonists reached Roanoke, they
found that the fifteen men left by Grenville had disappeared, driven
out, as they learnt, by the Indians. Notwithstanding, they renewed
the old settlement; and, in the face of native enmity, began again
the work of colonizing America. Before the end of the summer, White
sailed for England, to give an account of what had been done; and, on
his return home, Ralegh prepared to send {34} relief to the colony.
But war with Spain was now on hand, freebooting was more attractive
than colonizing, one attempt and another to send ships to Virginia
miscarried; and when at length, late in 1589, White reached the scene
of his settlement, he found it dismantled and deserted. So ended the
first attempt to colonize Virginia. Success was not to come for a few
more years, until the sixteenth century had passed and gone.

[Footnote 57: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 341.]

[Sidenote: _General results of the sixteenth century._]

Before 1600, Newfoundland had been annexed by Great Britain, but not
one single English or French colony had as yet taken root in America.
Nevertheless the century was far from barren of results. The way had
been made plain, the ground had been cleared, the wild oats of
adventure and knight-errantry had been sown, and the peoples were
sobering down to steadier and more prudent enterprise. Beaten on the
sea, raided and plundered in their own tropical domain, the Spaniards
were ceasing to be a terror and a hindrance to the nations of
Northern Europe; and, as the latter grew from youth to lusty manhood,
the map of the great North American continent unfolded itself before
their eyes. Then Champlain went to work in Canada, and John Smith in
Virginia; Jesuits on the St. Lawrence, and Puritans in the New
England states; and so the grain of mustard-seed, cast into American
soil, grew into a great tree, which already, before three centuries
have ended, bids fair to overshadow the earth.


N.B.--The references to Hakluyt made in the notes above are to the
1810 edition.


Among modern books most use has been made in this chapter of:--

  PARKMAN'S _Pioneers of France in the New World_;
  DOYLE'S _History of the English in America_, vol. i; and
  JUSTIN WINSOR'S _Narrative and Critical History of America_.

Reference should also be made to Sir J. BOURINOT'S monograph on 'Cape
Breton,' first published in the _Proceedings and Transactions of the
Royal Society of Canada_, vol. ix, 1891, and since published
separately.




{35}

CHAPTER II

SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDING OF QUEBEC


The history of Canada has been so often and so well told, that an
attempt simply to reproduce the narrative would be worse than
superfluous. The scheme of the present series is, in the field of
colonization and within the present limits of the British Empire, to
trace the connexion between history and geography; and from this
point of view more especially the story of New France will be
recorded.

[Sidenote: _New France._]

Various parts of the world, now British possessions, were once owned
by other European nations, notably by the Dutch or French. The last
volume of the series dealt with what was in past times a dependency
of the Netherlands, the Cape Colony, the mother colony of South
Africa. The present volume deals with a land which the French made
peculiarly their own; where, as hardly anywhere else, they settled,
though not in large numbers; not merely conquering or ruling the
conquered, not only leaving a permanent impress of manners, law, and
religion, but slowly and partially colonizing a country and forming a
nation.

Lower Canada, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was rightly included
under the wider name of New France, for here France and the French
were reproduced in weakness and in strength. It was a land well
suited to the French character and physique. Much depended on tactful
dealings with the North American Indians, a species of diplomacy in
which Frenchmen excelled. The commercial value of Canada consisted
mainly in the fur trade, an adventurous kind of traffic more
attractive to the {36} Frenchman of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries than plodding agriculture or the life of a counting-house.
On the rivers and lakes, coming and going was comparatively easy; the
short bright summers and the long winters made the country one of
strong contrasts. To a bold, imaginative, somewhat restless people
there was much to charm in Canada.

But Canada meant far less in earlier days than now it means. It meant
the banks of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, and of the lakes
from which it flows. The Maritime Provinces of the present Dominion,
or at any rate Nova Scotia, were not in Canada properly so called,
but bore the name of La Cadie or Acadia,[1] and the great North-West
was an unknown land.

[Footnote 1: For the derivation of the name 'Acadia,' see Parkman's
_Pioneers of France in the New World_, p. 243, note. _Cadie_ is an
Indian word meaning place or region. 'It is obviously a Micmac or
Souriquois affix used in connexion with other words to describe the
natural characteristics of a place or locality' (Bourinot's monograph
on 'Cape Breton,' _Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society
of Canada_, vol. ix, sec. 2, p. 185). For the name 'Canada,' see
above, p. 24. note 37.]

By the end of the seventeenth century the French had three spheres of
influence and colonization in North America--the country of the St.
Lawrence, the seaboard between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and the
New England colonies, and Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi.
To join them and encircle the English colonies was the aim of French
statesmanship. It was an impossible aim, inevitably frustrated by
geographical conditions and by want of colonists; but the conception
was a great one, large as the new continent in which it was framed,
and able men tried to work it out, but tried in vain.

[Sidenote: _The French as colonizers._]

Much has been written of French methods of colonization; writers have
been at pains to enumerate the shortcomings of the French, and have
carefully explained whence those mistakes arose. But there is less to
wonder at in the failures than in the great successes to be credited
to France. Being {37} part of the continent of Europe, and ever
embroiled in continental politics, when she competed with England as
a colonizing power, she competed with one hand tied.[2] Changeable,
it is said, were the French and their policy; their kings and
courtiers may have been changeable, but the charge does not lie
against the French nation.

[Footnote 2: This is pointed out in Professor Seeley's _Expansion of
England_, course i, lecture 5.]

They were trading up the Senegal early in the seventeenth century,
and there they are at the present day. From the dawn of their
colonial enterprise they tried to obtain possession of Madagascar;
they have their object now. Nearly four centuries ago they fished off
the coasts of Newfoundland, and England has good cause to know that
they fish there still. To the St. Lawrence went Cartier from St.
Malo, and by the same route generations of Frenchmen entered steadily
into America, until Quebec had fallen and the St. Lawrence was theirs
no more. The French were versatile in their colonial dealings; they
were quickly moving and constantly moving; but they saw clearly and
they followed tenaciously; they were strong and staunch, and they
proved themselves to be a wonderful people.

Yet there must have been some element of weakness in the French
character, in that they bred and obeyed bad rulers who did not live
for France, but for whom France was sacrificed; who crushed liberty,
political and religious, who drove out industry with the Huguenots,
and squandered the heritage of the nation. Englishmen, comparatively
early in their history, reckoned with priests first and with kings
afterwards. They did most of their work at home before they made
their colonial empire; they colonized new worlds as a reformed
people; the French tried to colonize under absolutism and
priestcraft. It might not have been so, it probably would not have
been so, if the religious policy of the French Government had been
other than it was. {38} The Huguenots, if not persecuted and
eventually in great measure driven out, would have given France the
one thing wanting to make her colonization successful, the spirit of
private enterprise independent of court favour, the child and the
parent of freedom, the determined foe of a deadening religious
despotism.

[Sidenote: _Attempts at French colonization in Brazil and Florida._]

In the sixteenth century, after Cartier's voyages to the St.
Lawrence, we hear little of the French in North America. The Breton
fishermen followed their calling, crossed the Atlantic year after
year, and came back with cargoes of fish and with furs procured by
barter with the Indians; but no French settlement was founded either
in Canada or in Acadia. In France itself the last half of the century
was a time of civil war; the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place,
the house of Valois came to an end, and in 1589 Henry of Navarre
became King of France. Before his accession to the Crown, two
attempts at French colonization were made, in Brazil and in Florida.
The colonists were mainly Huguenots, and their enterprise was backed
by the great Protestant leader Coligny. The earlier attempt, designed
to plant a settlement on the harbour of Rio Janeiro, was short-lived,
because ill led by a violent tyrannical man, Villegagnon. The first
settlers arrived in 1555; by the end of 1558 they had all
disappeared. Still more tragical was the outcome of the venture in
Florida. In 1562 a band of would-be colonists sailed from Dieppe,
under the command of Jean Ribault. They reached Florida in safety,
and built a small fort towards the northern end of the peninsula, in
which thirty men were left behind while Ribault returned to France.
In the following year, the survivors of the thirty came back to
Europe, having abandoned the fort and experienced every extremity of
thirst and hunger while crossing the Atlantic in a ship of their own
making. Again in 1564, a Huguenot expedition, under René de
Laudonnière, sailed for Florida, and the settlers planted themselves
on the {39} St. John's river, then known as the river of May. In 1565
Ribault joined them with reinforcements and supplies. Well known from
its surpassing horror is the story of the French settlement. A
Spanish force under Menendez, a fanatic as treacherous and as savage
as Philip II himself, took up a position to the south where the town
of St. Augustine now stands, and overpowering the Frenchmen in
detachments, butchered them with every accompaniment of cruelty and
guile. The French fort passed into Spanish hands, but within three
years time an avenging freebooter came from France, Domenic de
Gourgues; the Spaniards in their turn were shot and hung, and the
banks of the St. John's river were left desolate.

Ill managed, badly supported were these French ventures to Brazil and
Florida. Had they been well led and given some little encouragement
and assistance, the result might have been far different. Protestants
might have gained a firm foothold in Central and Southern America.
France might have won from Spain and Portugal a great domain. As it
was, the attempts resulted in utter failure, and great opportunities
were lost never to be regained.

[Sidenote: _La Roche's patent._]

As the sixteenth century drew to a close, a patent was issued by the
French King to a Breton nobleman, the Marquis de la Roche, to
colonize in North America. The terms of the patent were
preposterously wide, conferring sovereignty over Canada, together
with a monopoly of trade. The results were proportionately small. La
Roche set sail in 1598, in a single ship with a cargo of convicts. He
landed them at Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, and sailed
back to France, leaving them to their fate. Five years later, in
1603, eleven of the number, who had survived, were rescued and
brought home again.

[Sidenote: _Chauvin and Pontgravé._]

[Sidenote: _De Chastes._]

About a year after La Roche's fruitless voyage, in 1599 or 1600, two
other Frenchmen, Chauvin, a sea captain, and Pontgravé, a St. Malo
merchant, also obtained a patent to {40} colonize in Canada. Their
object was to monopolize the fur trade, and they attempted a
settlement at Tadoussac, where the Saguenay river flows into the St.
Lawrence. During a whole winter a small party was left at the
station, but no permanent colony was formed; and a second and third
voyage had no lasting results. Chauvin died, and in 1602 or 1603 a
new patent was granted to De Chastes, a man of rank and station, who
associated with himself Pontgravé, and secured the services of Samuel
Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Samuel Champlain._]

In order of time, Champlain's name stands second in the list of the
men to whom New France in America was due. It stands second in time
to the name of Cartier; in order of merit it heads the list. Cartier
was a great explorer, but his work ended with discovery; Champlain
founded a colony. The history of Canada as a French possession has
gained in attractiveness, in that it began and ended with a
high-minded, chivalrous leader. It began with Champlain, it ended
with Montcalm. Born on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, the
adventurous son of a seafaring father, Champlain fought for the King
in Brittany, and was given by him a retainer in the shape of a small
pension. The war over, he travelled for two years in the Spanish
Indies, and, visiting Panama, conceived the idea of a ship canal
across the isthmus. After his return home, he took service under De
Chastes' company, and in 1603 sailed with Pontgravé for the St.
Lawrence. The voyage was one of exploration only. Champlain ascended
the river as far as Montreal, gathering geographical information from
the Indians, but attempting no settlement; and when he returned to
France in a few months' time, he found that his employer, De Chastes,
was dead.

[Sidenote: _De Monts' patent._]

[Sidenote: _The first French settlement in Acadia._]

[Sidenote: _Port Royal._]

Yet another royal patent was granted, in 1603, to De Monts, a
Huguenot gentleman of the French court, its object being the
colonization of Acadia, and Acadia being defined as extending from
the fortieth degree of north latitude, which runs {41} through[3]
Philadelphia, to the forty-sixth degree, which is north of Montreal.
De Monts took into partnership the members of De Chastes' company,
and in 1604 two vessels sailed for America. They carried a mixed
freight, Huguenots and Roman Catholics, gentlemen of fortune, and
vagrants impressed under the King's commission. De Monts and
Champlain were on board the first ship, Pontgravé followed in the
second, with supplies for the future colony. They steered not for the
St. Lawrence, but for the coast of Nova Scotia; and entering the Bay
of Fundy they discovered Annapolis harbour, which was given the name
of Port Royal. The first settlement, however, was made on an islet
off the mouth of the St. Croix river, which now forms the boundary
between New Brunswick and the state of Maine; and there through the
winter De Monts and Champlain stayed with a scurvy-stricken company,
numbering seventy-nine in all, of whom nearly half died. On the
return of spring and the advent of relief from France, the leaders
coasted south along the shores of Maine, and of what were in after
years the New England states; and coming back to their station in
August, they moved the settlement across the Bay of Fundy, and
established themselves on the inlet of Annapolis harbour. De Monts
then returned to France, leaving Pontgravé and Champlain to hold the
post through the winter of 1605.

[Footnote 3: For De Monts' patent see the _Calendar of State Papers_,
Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 4, entry 10, Nov. 8, 1603. It was a patent
'for inhabiting Acadia, Canada, and other places in New France,' and
De Monts was appointed the French King's Lieutenant-General 'for to
represent our person in the countries, territories, coasts, and
confines of La Cadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree.']

[Sidenote: _Lescarbot._]

In the following summer, ships came back from France just in time to
prevent the settlement at Port Royal from being broken up in despair.
They brought with them the advocate Lescarbot, the historian of New
France. Again there was exploring down the American coast, and again
Champlain and his associates held their own through the winter. The
{42} outlook of the little colony was promising. The season was mild,
the natives were friendly, supplies were plentiful, gardens were laid
out and corn was sown. But in the late spring of 1607 news came from
home that the patent had been cancelled, and before the summer ended
Port Royal was abandoned.

[Sidenote: _De Poutrincourt._]

[Sidenote: _Jesuit influence._]

For nearly three years the place was left desolate, and then, in
1610, one of De Monts' associates came back again. It was the Baron
de Poutrincourt, to whom the harbour, when first discovered, had been
granted by De Monts. The Jesuits were at the time strong at the
French court, stronger still after the assassination of King Henry IV
in this same year. They, or the ladies of the court, who were their
tools, bought shares in the venture, and Jesuit priests went out to
Acadia, thwarting and quarrelling with Poutrincourt and his son. Both
the two great dangers which always threatened and finally ruined the
French power in North America came into being at this date, the
exclusive influence of the Jesuits and English competition.

[Sidenote: _Argall's raid from Virginia._]

[Sidenote: _Destruction of Port Royal._]

In 1606 the Virginia company was incorporated, and in the following
year British colonization on the mainland of North America began with
the founding of Jamestown. There are many miles of coast between
Acadia and Virginia, between the Bay of Fundy and Chesapeake Bay, but
French and English soon crossed each other's paths. In 1613 a ship
sailed from France, sent out under Jesuit influence, with a view to
founding a settlement on the North American coast. After touching at
Port Royal, the party sailed southwards to the coast of Maine, and
landed in the region of the Penobscot river. Hardly had their tents
been set up on the shore, when an English ship came in sight,
captured the French vessel, which was lying at anchor, uprooted the
would-be colony, and took all the Frenchmen prisoners. The invaders
hailed from Jamestown; they were commanded by Samuel Argall, an
unscrupulous freebooter. {43} His pretext was that the Frenchmen were
taking up ground within the limits of the patents granted by the
English King to his subjects, but his act was little more than
piracy. Some of the Frenchmen were set adrift in an open boat, and
eventually reached France in safety; the rest were carried prisoners
to Jamestown, whence Argall set sail again, commissioned by the
governor of Virginia to attack Port Royal. He reached, plundered, and
burnt the fort, its commander, Biencourt, with the rest of the
settlers, being absent in the fields, for it was harvest time; but
the colony was not finally blotted out, and the French still kept a
foothold in Acadia.

[Sidenote: _Champlain on the St. Lawrence._]

Champlain's first voyage to North America in 1603 had taken him to
the St. Lawrence. From 1604-7 Acadia had been the scene of his
labours, until De Monts' patent had been revoked. In 1608 he returned
to the river of Canada. On the line of the St. Lawrence he carried
out the work of his life, and by its banks he died. In the course
which French colonization in America and its first great leader took,
may be traced the influence on history of geography and race.

[Sidenote: _Comparison of English and French colonization in North
America._]

[Sidenote: _English colonial enterprise in the seventeenth century
the result of private co-operation._]

In English colonial history, as writers on the subject have pointed
out,[4] the age of adventure was distinct from the age of settlement.
Ralegh was the latest product of the times of romance, an his
attempts at colonization were premature and unsuccessful. To some
extent a similar distinction may be made in French colonial history:
Cartier may be taken as a representative of the earlier age,
Champlain of the later; but the line of demarcation is much fainter,
much less real, in the case of the French than in that of the
English. To English and French alike adventure had meant private
enterprise, usually but not always countenanced by kings, generally
carried out under cover of royal licences or patents, so vague as to
be almost meaningless, granted one day, liable to be {44} cancelled
the next. When the age of romance passed away in England with the
passing of the sixteenth century, adventurers in the ordinary sense
in great measure disappeared, with the exception of the Arctic
explorers, who, like Hudson and Baffin, still sailed to the desolate
North. Private enterprise, on the other hand, not only survived, but
it grew stronger, more business-like, more independent of court
favour. It was private enterprise still, but under new forms, the
enterprise not of individual freebooters, or of knights errant, but
of associations of citizens, some of the associations being chartered
commercial companies, while others were bands of colonizers and
colonists united by a common antagonism and a common creed. Their
objects were not in the air, they did not live in dreamland, they
went out or sent out others, not so much to discover new lands, as to
occupy and appropriate lands which had already been found, to make
new English homes on the other side of the Atlantic.

[Footnote 4: See e.g. Doyle's _History of the English in America_,
vol. i, chap. vi.]

[Sidenote: _The new patents of English colonization._]

[Sidenote: _Motives of English colonization in the seventeenth
century._]

[Sidenote: _The English kept near to the sea._]

In theory the commercial companies were, like the individual
patentees of the former generation, working under the authority of
the Crown. Indeed that authority was far more strongly proclaimed
than before, and for vague generalities were substituted very
definite restrictions; but this was only a sign of a new time. It
indicated that a stage had been reached when more was known, when
practical business was being taken in hand, and when, therefore, the
slipshod patents, which had hitherto sufficed, would no longer avail.
Because private enterprise really meant more, therefore the
Government said more, and the very defining of the work and
circumscribing of its sphere made the results sounder, more lasting,
and more substantial. It was not the lust of conquest, it was not the
glamour of adventure, it was not a wish to proselytize in religion or
to add new provinces to the domain of a European kingdom which made
the English colonize North America. There were two {45} main motives
at work. One was the desire to find or to do something which would
pay, the other was a longing to live under more independent
conditions than existed in the mother country. The settlers went to
lands where natives dwelt, and, therefore, dealings with the North
American Indians in war and peace ensued; but the English did not go
to the New World in the main to conquer or to convert the Indians,
they went to live and to make their living pay. Instinct was at work
in English colonization, the instinct of self-preservation, of
extension, of always moving a little further and winning a little
more; but there was no high scheme of universal dominion for the
English King or the English creed. Against any such views the New
England colonies were a living protest, and in Virginia, Maryland, or
Carolina they found no place. All of these colonies were prosaic,
unromantic communities: they were groups of Englishmen, living,
grumbling, working and squabbling, with varieties of opinions and
differences of outward forms, half protected, half worried by the
home Government, building up unconsciously, illogically, amid much
that was mean and small, what was to be in the end a mighty nation.
Instinct, too, kept the colonists for the most part near to the sea.
They fringed the Atlantic over which they had come, and ever renewed
their strength as more emigrants came in; they strayed no doubt to
some extent as years went on, taking up farms inland and clearing the
backwoods; but, on the whole, there was continuity of colonization, a
gradual widening of the belt of settlement, expansion on the part of
the settlers themselves, as opposed to planting in the heart of the
continent military outposts, or isolated mission stations.

[Sidenote: _The French colonized inland._]

[Sidenote: _Comparison of French colonization in Canada and Dutch
colonization in South Africa._]

With the French in Canada the case was different. Except in Acadia
and Cape Breton Island, and to a limited extent in Newfoundland, they
had no hold on the sea coast: and Acadia had for many years little
connexion with the {46} land of the St. Lawrence. Canada, as a sphere
of colonization, began when the open sea had been left far behind. It
was an inland territory with a great river and great lakes. No two
parts of the world are more unlike than Canada and South Africa.
Canada has a river highway into it, excellent water communication by
lake and stream, and, until the Rocky mountains are reached, no
mountain barriers are interposed to cut off the interior from the
coast regions or one district from another. South Africa is almost
devoid of natural harbours, its rivers are valueless for purposes of
navigation. Its ranges of hills or mountains rise one behind the
other, barring the way from the coast to the interior, severing one
section of the territory from another. Yet, curiously enough,
somewhat similar results followed from diametrically opposite
geographical conditions. No two races in the world were and are more
unlike each other than the Dutch and the French, unlike in character,
in tradition, in political and religious training. But the Dutch in
South Africa and the French in Canada resembled each other in this,
that they were and remained very few in number, planted in an
unlimited area, and that men lived in either case under a rigid
system. The restrictive rule of the Netherlands East India Company in
South Africa led to trekking, to wandering in the wilderness, and the
difficulties of communication increased the wandering tendency,
because the wanderers, who wished no longer to be controlled by the
government at Cape Town, could not easily be followed up. The French
rule in Canada was restrictive too, restrictive in matters of
politics, of commerce, and of religion. It was a despotism which
allowed no vestige of freedom or self-government; but it was a far
stronger and more active despotism than that of the Netherlands
Company. The Dutch sought a trade monopoly, the French a territorial
dominion. The Dutch were at pains to minimize their responsibilities.
The French policy was {47} one of conquest and conversion; they
looked to holding in subjection the lands and the peoples of the New
World. They worked under a government which was absolute, but whose
absolutism, in the main, encouraged perpetual moving forward, and
they worked in a land where moving forward was comparatively easy.
Thus dispersion ensued on a greater scale than in South Africa. The
negative force which promoted trekking in the Cape Colony was present
also in Canada--antipathy to a rigid system, to hard and fast rules;
and the counterpart of the Dutch voortrekkers, though under very
different conditions, was to be found in the Canadian fur-traders and
_coureurs de bois_. But in South Africa the positive force was
wanting which shaped Canadian history, the forward policy of an
ambitious state. The agents of the French Government in Canada,
military and religious, went far afield--adventurous and
enterprising, intriguing with savage races, establishing outposts in
the interior, strong to carry out a preconceived plan of a great
French dominion. The malcontent Dutchmen in South Africa moved slowly
and sleepily away in their wagons to be out of reach; the country
aided their intent by being difficult of access. Along the rivers and
the lakes of Canada the Frenchmen lightly passed, those who worked
the will of the Government as well as those who were impatient of
control.

[Sidenote: _Contrast between English and French in North America._]

The rivalry then between the two European nations who colonized North
America, the English and the French, was rivalry at every point. It
was a conflict of race, of religion, of geographical conditions, of
new and old, of European government and American colonists. On the
one side were seaboard settlements, comparatively continuous, in
which there was much instinct and little policy, much freedom and
little system; where the population steadily grew by natural causes
and by immigration, democratic communities in which the real work was
done from below, the products of {48} a wholly different era from
that which preceded it, and in which picturesque adventurers had
failed to colonize. On the other side were the beginnings of
continental colonization along the natural lines of communication.
The dispersion was great, the settlers were few, the settlements were
weak. All was done from above, except where unlicensed adventurers
roamed the woods. The elements of an older day were preserved and
stereotyped, attractive but unprogressive. Old forms transplanted to
a New World did not lose their life, but renewed it. Feudal customs
took root in the soil. Despotism, supported by the Roman Catholic
Church, did not survive merely, but grew stronger. The adventurer
remained an adventurer, and did not turn into a businesslike
colonist. There was much that was great, there was more that was
uniform, but there was little or no growth.

[Sidenote: _Elements of strength on the French side._]

The ultimate outcome of such a contest must necessarily have been, in
the course of generations, the triumph of the side on which were the
forces and the views of the coming time. But, while the struggle
lasted, the French gained not a little from being less vulnerable
than the English, as being more dispersed; from being better situated
for purposes of attack; from being organized, so far as there was
organization, under one government and one system instead of many;
from the extraordinary energy and quickness of some of the French
leaders in Canada; from the strong military element in the
population; from the fanatical devotion of the French missionaries;
and last, but not least, from the Frenchmen's better handling of the
natives.

[Sidenote: _The waterways of North America._]

The sources of the Mississippi are close to the western end of Lake
Superior, and the eastern half of North America is therefore nearly
an island, created by the Mississippi, the great lakes, the St.
Lawrence, and the sea. An inner circle is formed by the Mississippi,
the Ohio, Lakes Erie, Ontario, and the St. Lawrence, the head waters
of the Ohio river being within easy distance of Lake Erie. The course
of the Ohio {49} is from north-east to north-west. It flows, very
roughly, parallel to the Alleghany mountains, and drains their
western sides. The Alleghanies in their turn are parallel to the
Atlantic, and between them and the sea is a coast belt from north to
south. Here was the scene of the English settlements. Here, cut off
by mountain ranges from the Mississippi valley and from the inland
plains, the Virginians and the New Englanders made their home. 'The
New England man,' writes Parkman, 'had very little forest experience.
His geographical position cut him off completely from the great
wilderness of the interior. The sea was his field of action.'[5]

[Footnote 5: _The Old Régime in Canada_, chap. xxi, p. 399 (14th ed.,
1885).]

[Sidenote: _The Hudson river and Lake Champlain._]

But there is one direct route, with nearly continuous waterways, from
the Atlantic seaboard to the St. Lawrence. It runs due north up the
Hudson river, is continued by Lakes George and Champlain between the
Adirondack mountains on the west, and on the east the Green mountains
of Vermont; and from the northern end of Lake Champlain it follows
the outlet of that lake, the Richelieu river, for seventy to eighty
miles into the St. Lawrence. The head waters of the Hudson are hard
by Lake George, but at the present day navigation ceases at Troy, 151
miles from the sea, where is the confluence of the Mohawk river, and
from whence the Champlain canal runs direct to Lake Champlain. The
distance from Troy to Lake George is in straight line about fifty
miles. This route was all-important for attack and defence in the
wars between England and France, and it was well for Great Britain
that, at a comparatively early stage in the colonization of America,
she took over the Dutch settlements in the valley of the Hudson,
gaining control of that river and linking New England to the southern
colonies.

[Sidenote: _The St. Lawrence._]

From the mouth of the Hudson at New York to where the Richelieu joins
the St. Lawrence, a straight line drawn on {50} the map from south to
north measures rather under 400 miles. It is much the same distance,
on a very rough estimate, from the confluence of the Richelieu and
the St. Lawrence to the point where the St. Lawrence opens into the
sea. This point is generally taken to be the Point de Monts, which is
on the northern bank of the river, in north latitude 49 degrees 15
minutes, and west longitude 67 degrees 30 minutes, though the Gaspé
peninsula, on the southern side of the estuary, extends much further
to the east. Thus the centre of the St. Lawrence basin is equidistant
from the mouth of that river and from the mouth of the Hudson,[6] and
between these two points, before the days of railways, there was no
easily accessible route from the sea to Montreal.

[Footnote 6: Hennepin in _A New Discovery of a vast Country in
America_ (English ed., London, 1698, pt. 2, p. 129), speaking of the
St. Lawrence, says: 'The middle of the river is nearer to New York
than to Quebec, the capital town of Canada.' This is of course
incorrect, but it shows appreciation of the directness of the route
to the St. Lawrence by the Hudson river.]

Following up the St. Lawrence from the Point de Monts, at about a
distance of 140 miles, the mouth of the Saguenay is reached on the
northern side. There stood and stands Tadoussac, in old days a great
centre of the fur trade, and the earliest foothold of the French in
Canada. From the mouth of the Saguenay to Quebec is about 120 miles,
and from Quebec to Montreal is rather over 160. Nearly halfway
between Quebec and Montreal, over seventy miles from the former and
over ninety from the latter, is the town of Three Rivers, situated on
the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, at its confluence with the St.
Maurice river, one of the oldest and one of the most important French
settlements in Canada. Here is the limit of the tideway, and above
this point the St. Lawrence expands for some thirty miles into Lake
St. Peter. At the upper end of this lake or expanse of river, on the
southern side, the Richelieu joins the St. Lawrence, with the town of
Sorel at {51} its mouth, and forty-five miles higher up is Montreal.
From Montreal to Kingston, where the St. Lawrence issues from Lake
Ontario, is a distance of 180 to 190 miles by river, past rapids well
known to readers and to tourists, and past the Thousand islands. Thus
the total length of the St. Lawrence, from the lakes to the opening
into the gulf, is rather over 600 miles.

[Sidenote: _The great lakes._]

The great lakes of the St. Lawrence basin cover a surface of nearly
100,000 square miles--an area larger than that of Great Britain.
Lakes Ontario and Erie, connected by the Niagara river, continue the
direct line of the St. Lawrence, Lake Erie more especially lying due
south-west and north-east; but from the extreme end of this
last-named lake the channel of communication takes a sharp curve to
the north in the Detroit river, Lake St. Clair, and the St. Clair
river, which link together Lakes Erie and Huron. Lake Huron, the
centre of the whole group, stretches back towards the east and
south-east in Georgian Bay, while on the north-west it is connected
with Lake Michigan by the straits of Michillimackinac or Mackinac,
and with Lake Superior by St. Mary's straits and rapids, the Sault
St. Marie. The rivers which feed Lake Superior are the head waters of
the St. Lawrence, and one of them, the St. Louis, which enters the
lake at its extreme western end, has its source hard by the source of
the Mississippi. The total length of lake and river on the line of
the St. Lawrence is over 2,000 miles.

[Sidenote: _The route of the Ottawa river._]

It has been said that Lakes Ontario and Erie continue the main course
of the St. Lawrence in its south-westerly and north-easterly
direction, that the channel which feeds Lake Erie at its western end
comes down from the north, and that the central lake which is then
reached--Lake Huron--breaks back towards the east. Thus the direct
line from Montreal to the centre of the lake system is not up the St.
Lawrence, but along one of its largest tributaries, which enters the
main river at Montreal. This tributary is the Ottawa, flowing {52}
from the north-west in a course broken by falls and rapids. One
hundred and thirty miles from its confluence with the St. Lawrence,
just below the Chaudière falls, now stands the city of Ottawa, the
capital of the Canadian Dominion, connected with Lake Ontario by the
Rideau canal; and rather under 200 miles above Ottawa, where the
Mattawa river enters from the west, there is nearly continuous water
communication in a due westerly direction with Lake Nipissing, which
lake is in turn connected by the French river with the great inlet of
Lake Huron known as Georgian Bay. Champlain early explored this
route--the direct route to the west, and along it as far as Lake
Nipissing now runs the Canadian Pacific Railway. French river flows
into the northern end of Georgian Bay. At its south-easternmost end,
that bay runs into the land in the direction of Lake Ontario; and in
the middle of the broad isthmus between the two lakes lies Lake
Simcoe.

[Sidenote: _Canada a geographical federation._]

Such in rough outline is the basin of the St. Lawrence. It is a
network of lakes and rivers which finds no parallel, unless it be in
Central Africa. The present Dominion of Canada is not merely a
political federation; it is a federation of regions which are
geographically separate from each other. There is the eastern
seaboard, the old Acadia; there is the basin of the St. Lawrence;
there are the plains of the North-West and the regions of the Hudson
Bay; and there are the lands of the Pacific coast. Only one of these
four regions, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was the main scene of
early Canadian history. Acadia comes into the story, it is true, but
until the eighteenth century only indirectly, in connexion with the
English colonies on the Atlantic coast rather than with the French in
Canada. English and French collided on the shores of Hudson Bay; they
collided also in Newfoundland; but Hudson Bay and Newfoundland alike
were outside the sphere of Canada. The great prairies of the
North-West were a possibility of the distant future; but not {53}
till the days of railways did the western half of the present
Dominion come within the range of practical politics. Along the St.
Lawrence and its tributaries the drama of Canadian history was
played; the furthest horizon was the Mississippi and the whole line
of the lakes; a nearer view was bounded by the Ohio valley; while the
immediate foreground was formed by the St. Lawrence from Quebec to
Lake Ontario, the centremost point being the confluence of the
Richelieu with the main river.

Movement, constant movement, these waterways suggested; exploration,
adventure, and ultimately conquest; pressing onward by strength or
skill through a boundless area, with something unknown always beyond;
making portages round impossible rapids, forcing paths through
interminable forests, dealing with half-hidden foes. The land was one
for the traveller, the explorer, the missionary, the soldier, the
hunter, the fur-trader, but not so much for the settler and the
agriculturist. Thus it was that the age of adventurers was
perpetuated along the St. Lawrence, while the English colonists
between the Alleghanies and the sea were living steady lives attached
to the soil.

[Sidenote: _The main object of North American exploration was a route
to the East._]

The great motive force of modern adventure was, as has been seen, the
search for a direct route to the East. Engaged in this search Henry
Hudson, in 1609, piloted the Dutch into the Hudson river.[7]
Champlain's first expedition up the Ottawa was due to a lying tale
that along that river had been found a way to the sea. La Salle, the
explorer of the Mississippi, had his mind ever set on the East, and
his Seigniory above Montreal was named La Chine; for, 'like {54}
Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a passage to the
south sea, and a new road for commerce to the riches of China and
Japan.'[8] Many long years passed before the geography of North
America was known with any accuracy, and in the meantime the recesses
of the continent, from which the rivers flowed, seemed to hide the
secret of a thoroughfare by the West to the East. Similarly, from the
time when Columbus sought for and thought he had found the Indies in
the New World, down to our own day, the natives of America have been
known as Indians.

[Footnote 7: Hudson in 1609 sought for a North-West Passage about the
fortieth degree of latitude. 'This idea had been suggested to Hudson
by some letters and maps which his friend Captain Smith had sent him
from Virginia, and by which he informed him that there was a sea
leading into the western ocean by the north of Virginia.' See _A
Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets
relating to New Netherland_, by G. M. Asher, LL.D. (Amsterdam,
Frederick Müller, 1868), Introd. pp. xxv, xxvi.]

[Footnote 8: Parkman's _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_
(1885 ed.), p. 8.]

[Sidenote: _The Indians of North America._]

[Sidenote: _The Algonquins._]

The two native races, with which the history of Canada is mainly
concerned, are the Algonquins and the Huron Iroquois. The former were
far the more numerous of the two, and were spread over a much larger
area. They included under different names the Indians of the lower
St. Lawrence, of Acadia, New England, and the Atlantic states as far
as the Carolinas--the Montagnais, the Abenakis, the Micmacs, the
Narragansetts, the Pequods, and others. The Delawares, too, were
members of the race, and Algonquin tribes were to be found on the
Ottawa, at Lake Nipissing, on the further shores of the great lakes,
in Michigan and Illinois. From the day when Champlain joined forces
with them against their hereditary foes the Iroquois, they ranged
themselves for the most part on the side of the French.

[Sidenote: _The Huron Iroquois._]

The Hurons or Wyandots and the Iroquois were distinct from the
Algonquins and akin to each other. When Cartier visited the St.
Lawrence, the native towns which he found on the sites of Quebec and
Montreal seem to have been inhabited by Indians of this race; but by
Champlain's time the towns had disappeared, and those who dwelt in
them had sought other strongholds. Though related in blood and
speech, these two groups of tribes were deadly foes of each other.
The Hurons, like the Algonquins, were allied to the {55} French; the
Iroquois, guided partly by policy and partly by antipathy to the
European intruders into Canada and their Indian friends, were as a
rule to be found in amity with the English. The region of the upper
St. Lawrence and of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, was the home of
the Huron Iroquois race. The Huron country lay between Georgian Bay
of Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe. South of the Hurons, the northern
shore of Lake Erie and both sides of the Niagara river were held by
the Neutral Nation, neutral as between the Iroquois and the Hurons,
and akin to both. The Eries on the southern side of Lake Erie, and
the Andastes on the lower Susquehanna, were also of Huron Iroquois
stock; but the foremost group of the race, the strongest by far,
though not the most numerous, of all the North American Indians, were
the Iroquois themselves, the celebrated Five Nations of Canadian
story.

[Sidenote: _The country of the Five Nations._]

The Erie canal, which, in its 352 miles of length, connects Lake Erie
at Buffalo with the Hudson river at West Troy and Albany, runs
through the country of the Five Nations. That country extended along
the southern side of Lake Ontario from the Genesee river on the west
to the Hudson on the east, while due north of the Hudson, the outlet
of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, was in
old days known as the river of the Iroquois. The Mohawk river, along
which the Erie canal is now carried, was, on the Atlantic side, the
highway to the land of the Iroquois, and it bore the name of the best
known of the Five Nations, the whole confederacy being sometimes
spoken or written of as Mohawks.[9] The route up the river provided
nearly continuous communication by water between the Hudson and Lake
Ontario. From its confluence with the Hudson the Mohawk was followed
to the head of its navigation, whence there was a short portage of
about four miles {56} to Wood Creek, a stream running into the Oneida
lake, and the Oneida lake was linked to Lake Ontario by the Oswego
river. All this line was under Iroquois control; and the westernmost
of the Five Nations, the Senecas, commanded also the trade route to
Lake Erie.

[Footnote 9: The Mohawks, however, were not the strongest of the five
in number. They were outnumbered by the Senecas.]

[Sidenote: _The Five Nations._]

The name 'Iroquois' is said to be of French origin: the true title of
the Five Nations was an Indian word,[10] signifying 'people of the
long house.' Their dwellings were oblong in form, often of great
length; and, as were their dwellings, so also was their
dwelling-place. Side by side the Five Nations stretched in line from
west to east, as may be told by lakes and rivers in New York State,
which to this day bear their names. Farthest to the west were the
Senecas; next came the Cayugas, the people of the marsh. The third in
line, the central people of the league, within whose borders was the
federal Council house, were the Onondagas, the mountaineers; the
Oneidas followed; and easternmost of all were the Mohawks.[11]

[Footnote 10: Hodenosaunee.]

[Footnote 11: In a report of a committee of the Council held at New
York, Nov. 6, 1724, on the subject of a petition of the London
merchants against the Act of 1720, given in Colden's _History of the
Five Indian Nations of Canada_ (3rd ed., London, 1755), p. 226, the
Five Nations are placed as follows: the Mohawks but 40 miles due west
of Albany, and within the English settlements; the Oneidas about 100
miles west of Albany, and near the head of the Mohawk river; the
Onondagas about 130 miles west of Albany; the Cayugas 160; and the
Senecas 240.]

[Sidenote: _Small numbers of the Iroquois._]

[Sidenote: _Their geographical position. They held the border line
between French and English._]

In all the history of European colonization no group of savages,
perhaps, ever played so prominent a part as the Iroquois; none were
so courted and feared; none made themselves felt so heavily for a
long period of years together. This fact was not due to their
numbers, for they were comparatively few, and Parkman estimates that
'In the days of their greatest triumphs their united cantons could
not have mustered four thousand warriors.'[12] Yet they attacked and
{57} blotted out other Indian races equal to or outnumbering
themselves. They nearly destroyed the French settlements in Canada;
and all through the contest between Great Britain and France in
America, they were a force to be reckoned with by either side. Their
alliance was sought, their enmity was dreaded. Their strength was due
to the geographical position which they held, and to their national
characteristics; while their policy was influenced by the differing
conditions of the white people with whom they had to deal. Their home
has been described. It was the southern frontier of central Canada,
the borderland between the French and English spheres of trade and
settlement. Here they lived, in a position where a weak race would
have been ground in pieces between opposing forces, but where a
strong race, conscious of its advantages and able to use them, could
more than hold its own. 'Nothing,' wrote Charlevoix, 'has contributed
more to render them formidable than the advantage of their situation,
which they soon discovered, and know very well how to take advantage
of it. Placed between us and the English, they soon conceived that
both nations would be obliged to court them; and it is certain that
the principal attention of both colonies, since their settlement, has
been to gain them or at least to engage them to remain neuter.'[13]

[Footnote 12: _Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (1885 ed.), vol. i, chap. i, p.
21. Charlevoix says: 'All their forces joined together have never
amounted to more than 5,000 or 6,000 fighting men' (_Letters to the
Duchess of Lesdiguières_, Engl. tr., London, 1763, p. 185). On the
other hand, in _A Concise Account of North America_, by Major Robert
Rogers (London, 1765), p. 206, it is stated that 'when the English
first settled in America they (the Iroquois) could raise 15,000
fighting men.']

[Footnote 13: Charlevoix, as above, pp. 184-5.]

[Sidenote: _Their strength of character and policy._]

A strong race the Iroquois were. In cruelty and endurance, in bold
conception and swift execution, they had few, if any, rivals among
the natives of North America, and in their grasp of something like
state policy they had no equals. As savages, pure and simple, they
reached the highest level; they might indeed have had a greater and
more lasting future, if their level had not been so high. The Kaffir
races of South Africa in our own time have produced good {58}
fighting material; some of their leaders have shown skilful
generalship and no small statecraft; but they have been loosely knit
together, little bound as a whole by the ties of country or of kin;
and from this very weakness has come their salvation, in that they
could and can be recast in a new mould. It was not so with the North
American Indians, least of all with the Iroquois. They were
stereotyped in savagery, and, when the white men came among them, it
was too late for them to change; but, as savages of the most
ferocious type, as ruthless murdering hunters of men, they developed
an organization which was evidence at once of intellectual and
physical strength, and of a wild kind of moral discipline.

[Sidenote: _Their political organization._]

It is rare to find among savages a confederacy which will outlive a
single expedition or one season's war. When there is cohesion, it is
usually under savage despots like the Zulu Kings, who habituate their
followers to military discipline, and keep them attached partly by
fear and partly by the memory or hope of successful bloodshed; but
among the Five Nations the rule of one man had no place, and, though
warring was their normal condition, the federation lasted in peace as
well. They were doubly federated. Not only were there five nations or
tribes, but there were also eight clans which included the whole of
the Five Nations, members of each clan being found in each nation.
The five nations had in fact originally been one, composed of eight
clans. Each clan was named after some beast or bird, which formed its
totem or coat of arms, the three leading clans bearing those of the
tortoise, the bear, and the wolf.[14] The {59} clan tie was a family
tie; the members of each clan, to whichever nation they belonged,
were as brothers and sisters, and there was no intermarrying between
them. Inheritance ran in the female line, and the children belonged
to the mother's clan. The clans gave the chieftains to the separate
nations and to the confederacy. The highest chiefs were known as
_sachems_, a civil rather than a military title, and the Council of
fifty sachems formed the principal governing body of the league, the
place of honour being given to the head sachem of the Onondagas.
There was also a Council of subordinate chiefs, and a wider body, a
Senate--in whose deliberations men of age and experience took part,
irrespective of hereditary rank. The form of government was the same
for each of the five nations as for the whole confederacy. There was
no law but much custom, despotism was unknown, and so was anarchy.
There was something Homeric about the Iroquois. Like the Greeks of
the legendary age, they were perpetually fighting in spasmodic
fashion, with great cruelty, with every form of guile as well as
force; and when not fighting they held innumerable councils, making
many and long-winded speeches. Apart from personal bravery, the one
sound element in their system and character was, strange as it may
appear, some measure of what the early Greeks valued under the term
[Greek: aidos] or reverence. The Iroquois reverenced long-standing
customs, social position, and the voice of age. War was their trade,
but the highest dignities attached to the civil chieftain more than
to the successful warrior. They dealt out shameless violence to all
beyond their pale, but within the ranks of their own people they
recognized much more than mere physical strength or skill in
butchery.

[Footnote 14: These three leading clans so put into the shade all the
others that in some old writers these alone are recognized. Thus
Colden says (vol. i, p. 1): 'Each of these nations is again divided
into three tribes or families, who distinguish themselves by three
different arms or ensigns, the tortoise, the bear, and the wolf.' A
full account of the Iroquois organization is given by Parkman in the
first chapter of the _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, and in the introduction
to _The Jesuits in North America_. See also the chapter on Canadian
and Iroquois Indians in Sir J. G. Bourinot's _Canada_, in the 'Story
of the Nations' series. It will be seen from the note to the
Introduction, p. lv, of _The Jesuits in North America_ (1885 ed.),
that the number of the clans as given above, and their presence in
each tribe, is not absolutely certain.]

[Sidenote: _The Iroquois in some respects resembled the Spartans._]

In their organization they had advanced beyond the stage {60} which
is outlined in the Iliad. They were far more democratic than the
Greeks of Homeric time. In savage sort they framed and kept a polity
of the kind which Aristotle tells us is the most perfect type of
constitution, being a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. The
hereditary principle was strong, but chieftainship did not pass from
father to son owing to the rule of female succession. The councils of
the nation found place for all whose qualifications were for the
public good. High standing, age, experience, eloquence, strength of
arm, all were recognized in this strange community. To Sparta Colden
likens the confederacy of the Five Nations, in that, in either case,
the national customs trained the minds and the bodies of the people
for war;[15] but the likeness extends to other points as well. As far
as a Greek state and a band of North American savages can be
compared, in their social and political training, in their inflexible
rules, in their recognition of merit combined with unswerving
adherence to the principle of priority of families and clans, no less
than in their heartless indifference to pain whether inflicted on
themselves or others, the Iroquois Indians resembled the citizens of
the famous Greek state. But whatever comparison may be made with
either ancient or modern communities, the story of the Five Nations
presents the curious problem of a group of savages of the very worst
type, who yet in some sort solved the difficulties which the most
civilized peoples find so great--those of reconciling democracy with
hereditary privileges, and federal union with local independence.

[Footnote 15: P. 14., 'On these occasions the state of Lacedaemon
ever occurs to my mind, which that of the Five Nations in many
respects resembles, their laws and customs being in both framed to
render the minds and bodies of the people fit for war.' Parkman, too,
says of them, 'Never since the days of Sparta were individual life
and national life more completely fused into one'; see _The Jesuits
in North America_ (1885 ed.), Introduction, p. lx.]

[Sidenote: _Principle of adoption among the Iroquois._]

Constantly weakened by the strain of war, to some extent {61} they
renewed their strength by the principle of adoption.[16] Of the
prisoners whom they took, most were put to death with nameless
tortures, but many were admitted to their tribes; and in one instance
they incorporated a whole people. This was the Tuscaroras, a kindred
tribe from the Carolinas, driven north by war with the colonists
early in the eighteenth century. About 1715, they were admitted into
the league as a sixth nation, though not on equal terms, and were
assigned a dwelling-place among the Oneidas and Onondagas.

[Footnote 16: 'They strictly follow one maxim, formerly used by the
Romans to increase their strength, that they encourage the people of
other nations to incorporate with them' (Colden, p. 5).]

[Sidenote: _Their sphere of influence._]

[Sidenote: _Their feud with the French._]

The tribes of the Huron Iroquois stock were agriculturists to a
greater extent than the Algonquins. In other words, they had passed
out of the nomad stage and made permanent homes. Still, they lived in
great measure by the chase; they were born hunters as they were born
warriors, and furs and beaver skins were the products which they
bartered for the white man's goods. The Five Nations hunted and
raided far beyond the limits of their cantons. In 1687, Dongan,
Governor of New York, wrote of them: 'The Five Nations are the most
warlike people in America, and are a bulwark between us and other
tribes. They go as far as the South Sea, the North-West Passage, and
Florida to war.'[17] Their interests as well as their pride demanded
that on the upper St. Lawrence, as well as on Lakes Erie and Ontario,
their power should be paramount. As far as other groups of Indians
were concerned, they ensured their object, conquering and in great
measure exterminating the Hurons, the Neutral Nation, and the Eries;
but they knew well that the few Frenchmen in Canada were more
dangerous to their ascendency, and possibly to their existence, than
any native tribe or race, however numerous. The French began by
making the Iroquois their foes. Champlain had hardly {62} settled at
Quebec, when he joined the Hurons and Algonquins in an expedition
against them. Thenceforward the Five Nations were the enemies of
France. This result would probably have followed in any case, and it
is difficult to suppose that one early action determined all
succeeding history. It was rather the beginning of an inevitable
struggle for the control of the upper St. Lawrence and of the
Canadian fur trade. On all sides of their own country the Iroquois,
like other masterful peoples, extended their sphere of influence; but
their real outlet was to the north, towards the lakes and the great
river. On this side the white men were most active and restless, ever
sending their emissaries a little further on, ever putting themselves
in evidence in some new tribe or village.[18] The French were not
content to live outside the Indians; nor were they content, having
found a resting-place, to stay there. To be in and among the natives,
to control and to convert them, to be the recognized protectors of
the land and its peoples, to be the ultimate recipients of the
produce of the country, and the guardians of the channels by which
the produce was conveyed--no smaller aims sufficed for the French in
Canada. In the pursuit of these objects they directly competed with
the Iroquois Indians. Great was the territory, few in number were the
Frenchmen and Iroquois alike; but they were rivals for ascendency on
the same river, and there was not room for both.

[Footnote 17: _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1685-8, No. 1160,
pp. 328-9, Dongan to the Lords of Trade, March, 1687.]

[Footnote 18: 'But this justice must be done to the French, that they
far exceeded the English in the daring attempts of some of their
inhabitants, in travelling very far among unknown Indians,
discovering new countries, and everywhere spreading the fame of the
French name and grandeur' (Colden, p. 35).]

Because they were enemies of the French, the Iroquois naturally
became the allies of the English; but before they had much, if any
experience of the latter, they had come into contact with a third
European people, the Dutch on the Hudson river.

[Sidenote: _The Dutch on the Hudson river._]

[Sidenote: _New Netherland._]

In 1609, the year after the founding of Quebec, Henry {63} Hudson, an
Englishman in the Netherlands service, sailed at the beginning of
September into the river which still bears his name, seeking, as he
sought till his death, a North-West Passage to Asia. The name of New
Netherland was formally given to the scene of his discovery in 1614,
and in 1615 a small fort was built on Manhattan Island--the first
little seed of the city of New York. In 1621, the Netherlands West
India Company came into being; and in the following year New
Netherland, with the beaver trade, which was its chief attraction,
was placed in the hands of the company. In settling on the Hudson the
Dutch conflicted with English claims, and the Government of the
Netherlands seem to have recognized that there was a flaw in their
title. However, the existence of New Netherland as a Dutch possession
continued till the year 1664, when it was surrendered to an English
force sent out by the Duke of York, who had obtained from his
brother, Charles II, a grant of the territory. The English occupation
was confirmed by the Peace of Breda in 1667; and though a Dutch fleet
recovered the colony in 1673, in the following year, by the Treaty of
Westminster, it was finally given up to the English.

New Amsterdam, afterwards New York, was the chief settlement of New
Netherland; but Dutch trade and colonization extended up the valley
of the Hudson, where tracts of land were obtained by _patroons_ or
large landowners, who were granted exclusive privileges by the
company on condition of planting families of settlers upon their
holdings. The chief inland colony was Rensselaerswyck, called after
an Amsterdam merchant of the name of Rensselaer, and its centre was
Fort Orange, now Albany; while on the Mohawk river, about twenty
miles above its confluence with the Hudson, and rather less in a
direct line from Albany, was the settlement of Schenectady.[19]

[Footnote 19: For an account of the Dutch on the Hudson see _A
Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets
relating to {64} New Netherland_, by G. M. Asher, LL.D. (Amsterdam,
Frederick Müller, 1868), referred to above. See also Justin Winsor's
_Narrative and Critical History of America_, vol. iv, chap. viii.]

[Sidenote: _Friendship between the Dutch and the Iroquois._]

Traders wherever they went, all the world over, the Dutchmen were at
pains to keep peace with the Iroquois. Their dealings with them were
on the same lines as the dealings of their countrymen with the
Hottentots in the early days of the Cape Colony.[20] They bought and
sold, and got good value for their money, paying, for instance, no
more than forty florins for Manhattan Island. But the mere fact of
paying for what they took was in their favour, for it was a
recognition that the natives were the rightful owners of the land. In
course of time they came into conflict with the Mohican Indians along
the banks of the Hudson; but with the Five Nations, the nearest of
whom were the Mohawks, they were ever in friendship. They were not
actually in the Mohawk country, but on its borders; they were
neighbours, not intruders; they took the furs which the Indians had
to barter, giving in exchange European goods, and notably firearms.
Thus Albany became a friendly meeting-place between the Iroquois
Indians and the white men of the Hudson colony. The two peoples did
not clash with one another in any way, but met as friends and equals,
and supplied each others' wants.

[Footnote 20: See vol. iv of this series, chap. ii, p. 43.]

The one object of the Dutch being to trade, and the whole people
being traders, a twofold result followed, promoting friendly
relations between them and the Mohawks. Not only did the Indians
realize that they had nothing to fear, and much to gain, from having
for their neighbours Europeans who had no views of war or conquest,
and through whose agency they could arm themselves against the more
aggressive Europeans on the Canadian side; but also, as we may well
suppose, the Dutch traders included the best of the Dutchmen, which
was not the case with either the French or the English. At any rate,
we read that the Dutch in the Hudson valley 'gained the hearts of the
Five Nations by {65} their kind usage',[21] and in memory of a
Dutchman named Cuyler, whom the Indians held in special honour, the
Iroquois in after years always gave to the British Governor of New
York the title of 'Corlaer'.[22]

[Footnote 21: Colden, vol. i, p. 34.]

[Footnote 22: Parkman's _Count Frontenac_ (1885 ed.), p. 93, note.]

[Sidenote: _The English inherited the Iroquois alliance._]

Into this kindly heritage the English entered;[23] and, though their
treatment of the Indians left much to be desired, the alliance, if
often strained, was, in the case of the Mohawks at any rate, never
sundered; and finally, at the close of the War of Independence, many
of the Five Nation Indians, after fighting for England, migrated into
Canada, and were assigned lands in the province of Ontario, where
their descendants are still to be found. In the words of the Indian
orators, a chain of friendship held together the English and the
Iroquois. 'Our chain,' they said, 'is a strong chain, it is a silver
chain, it can neither rust nor be broken';[24] and it would be
difficult to overrate the advantage which accrued to the English
colonies from their traditional alliance with the strongest natives
of North America.

[Footnote 23: Colden, as above, 'In 1664, New York being taken by the
English, they likewise entered into a friendship with the Five
Nations.']

[Footnote 24: Colden, p. 125.]

[Sidenote: _The founding of Quebec._]

In the summer of 1608, Champlain founded the first French settlement
at Quebec. A year before, the English had settled at Jamestown in
Virginia. A year later, the Dutch found their way to the Hudson. Till
his death, at the end of 1635, the story of Champlain is the story of
Canada. His colleagues in the new enterprise were men with whom he
had already worked in Acadia--De Monts and Pontgravé. De Monts had
obtained from the King one year's monopoly of the Canadian fur trade,
and two ships which he sent to the St. Lawrence were in charge of
Pontgravé and Champlain respectively. Pontgravé, the merchant, stayed
at Tadoussac through the summer, bartering with the Indians and
coming to blows with Basque traders, who held {66} the French King's
patent of little account. Champlain, the explorer, went higher up the
river, and erected wooden buildings by the water-side, on the site of
the lower town of Quebec. There he stayed through the winter, while
his friend went home, and, when Pontgravé returned in the following
summer, travels and adventures began which made Champlain's name
great among the Indian tribes of Canada.

[Sidenote: _Champlain's explorations and collision with the
Iroquois._]

His first expedition, in 1609, was to the lake which is still called
after him. He went as an ally of the Huron and the Algonquin Indians
against their enemies the Iroquois. Up the St. Lawrence, up the
Richelieu, and on to Lake Champlain he took his way, and at the head
of the lake, somewhere near the site where Fort Ticonderoga
afterwards stood, the white men's firearms dispersed the warriors of
the Five Nations and won a victory. The summer of 1609 ended, and
Champlain went back to France, returning to Canada in the following
spring.[25]

[Footnote 25: Canada was first known as New France after Champlain's
return to Europe, in 1609 (Charlevoix's _Histoire Générale de la
Nouvelle France_, 1744 ed., vol. i, bk. iv, p. 149).]

[Sidenote: _His difficulties in France._]

De Monts' monopoly had expired and had not been renewed, but none the
less he and his associates persevered in their enterprise, opening up
the trade of the St. Lawrence, while others shared the profits. Again
Champlain joined forces with the friendly Indians against the
Iroquois, and a second victory was the result. Before the summer of
1610 ended, he was back in Europe, having learnt in the meantime that
his friend and patron, King Henry IV, had been stabbed to death in
the streets of Paris. On his next visit to Canada, in 1611, he
cleared the ground for a future settlement at Montreal, having noted
its advantages as a meeting-place for the Indian tribes from the
Ottawa and the great lakes. The late months of that year and the
whole of 1612 he spent in France, trying to devise some organization
under which the work of building up the French power in Canada {67}
might be successfully carried on. There was now no company in
existence, there was no royal mandate; personal favour and protection
had passed away with the death of Henry of Navarre. The French court
was a scene of growing priestly influence and of numberless
intrigues; while New France on the St. Lawrence was a 'no man's
land,' infested in summer time by crowds of fur-traders, who owned no
rule and knew no law, in winter deserted by white men, except the few
struggling settlers at Quebec. To form some kind of trade's union
under an acknowledged authority was the one thing needful, and with a
view to this end Champlain sought for and obtained the patronage of a
member of the royal house. The Count de Soissons, a Bourbon prince,
was appointed Lieutenant-General of the King for New France, and when
he died, shortly after his appointment, the place was taken by
another Bourbon, the Prince of Condé. The deputy of these princes was
Champlain himself; he was given control over the Canadian fur trade,
and he endeavoured to reconcile the rival interests of the western
ports of France by forming a combination of traders, to which all
could be admitted who had an interest in Canada. The scheme was
partially carried out, but unfortunately jealousies, commercial and
religious, precluded the establishment of a single united company.

[Sidenote: _The imposture of Nicolas de Vignau._]

To make money by trade for himself or others was not the first object
of Champlain's life. Exploration, with the Indies as its final goal,
was in his mind, and the formation of a colony which should indeed be
New France. While he still sojourned in Europe, a Frenchman, Nicolas
de Vignau, came back from Canada, telling a tale that up the Ottawa
river and beyond its sources he had found an outlet to the sea. Early
in 1613 Champlain recrossed the Atlantic, went up the St. Lawrence to
Montreal Island, and thence, taking De Vignau with him, followed the
course of the Ottawa as far as the Île des Allumettes. He went no
further. The {68} story of a way to the sea was exposed, as a
cunningly devised fable, by the Indians of the upper Ottawa, among
whom the impostor had sojourned when he concocted his lies; and, but
for Champlain's interposition, he would then and there have paid for
his falsehood with his life. Champlain, however, spared him, retraced
his steps, and went back again to France, where he spent a year and
more before he again visited Canada.

[Sidenote: _The Recollet friars._]

[Sidenote: _Le Caron._]

[Sidenote: _The first mission to the Hurons._]

Towards the end of May, 1615, he reached Quebec. He brought with him
this time a small band of missionaries, four friars of the Recollet
branch of the Franciscan order; and now mission work began in Canada.
One of the friars, Le Caron, with twelve other Frenchmen in the
company, visited for the first time the Huron country, and Champlain
followed close upon his steps. Ascending the Ottawa for the second
time, he passed the point which he had reached two years before, and
by the Mattawa river and Lake Nipissing came to the shores of Lake
Huron. Coasting southward along Georgian Bay, he found himself at
length among the Huron towns, where Le Caron was already busy
preaching a new faith to the heathen. An expedition against the
Iroquois had been determined on, and with the Huron warriors and
their allies, Champlain set out for the enemy's land. His route took
him across Lake Simcoe, down the series of small lakes which feed the
river Trent, and by that river to Lake Ontario, then seen by him for
the first time. Crossing the lake, he landed at the site of Oswego,
and marched into the midst of the Five Nations' cantons. From the
military point of view the expedition was a disastrous failure, for
an attack on a palisaded Iroquois town miscarried, Champlain himself
was wounded, and the invaders retreated beaten and disheartened.
Among the Hurons Champlain spent the winter; next year, returning
down the Ottawa, he came back to Quebec, in the midsummer of 1616,
and subsequently he sailed for France.

{69} [Sidenote: _Result of the first eight years of New France._]

Eight years had now passed since the founding of Quebec. Lakes Huron
and Ontario had been reached, the Ottawa route had been explored, the
friendship of the Hurons had been secured at the price of enmity with
the Iroquois, missionaries were converting or trying to convert the
Indians, and fur trading was briskly carried on; but colonization had
made as yet little or no way. There were a few permanent residents at
Quebec; but lower down at Tadoussac, and higher up at Three Rivers
and Montreal, where in the summer white men and coloured foregathered
to exchange their wares, in the winter no Frenchmen were to be found,
unless it were one or other of the much enduring Recollet
missionaries. In France it was the trade of Canada, not its
settlement, that was matter of concern. As in the case of
Newfoundland, the merchants of the western seaports of England set
themselves to keep the island from being permanently colonized,
anxious that the fishing traffic should remain in their own hands: so
in the case of Canada, the merchants of the western seaboard of
France regarded colonization as at best a useless expense, at worst a
measure by which they might lose command of the fur trade. The
climate of Newfoundland and of the St. Lawrence region was not such
as to induce Englishmen or Frenchmen to make these lands their homes.
Rather they seemed places for summer trips alone, to be left in
winter icebound and desolate. Trade interests and nature combined to
check the colonization of Canada; that anything was done in the way
of settlement in the early years of the seventeenth century was due
to missionary enthusiasm and to the foresight and tenacity of
Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Dispute among French traders._]

[Sidenote: _Company of the One Hundred Associates formed by
Richelieu._]

He had formed a company of merchants, chiefly connected with Rouen
and St. Malo, who nominally controlled the trade of the St. Lawrence;
but they were not at one amongst themselves, some were Catholics,
others were Huguenots, while the merchants of La Rochelle refused to
join the combination, {70} and traded in defiance of the monopoly
which the rival towns claimed to possess. Various changes followed.
About the beginning of 1620, Condé was succeeded as Viceroy of New
France by the Duc de Montmorency, and in 1625 the latter sold his
office to his nephew the Duc de Ventadour. In 1621, the privileges
enjoyed by the Rouen and St. Malo company were transferred to two
Huguenot merchants, the brothers De Caen: the result was ill feeling,
and on the St. Lawrence open feuds between the old and the new
monopolists, until in 1623 some kind of union was formed. Eventually,
in 1627, all former privileges were annulled, and the control of
Canada passed into the hands of a new strong company, known as the
One Hundred Associates, at the head of which was Richelieu.

[Sidenote: _Building of the fort at Quebec._]

During these troubled years, amid the squabbles of conflicting
interests, the one source of strength and steadfastness for the
Frenchmen on the St. Lawrence was Champlain's own personality, while
the two principal events were the building of the fort at Quebec, and
the coming of the Jesuit missionaries. As Lieutenant of the King and
representative of the Viceroys of New France, Champlain's difficult
task was to hold the balance even between the rival traders and to
maintain some semblance of law and order along the water highway of
Canada. In former years, as an explorer he had obtained unrivalled
influence among the Indians; now, as Governor, he brought the same
qualities of tact and firmness into play in keeping the peace among
his turbulent countrymen. From 1620 to 1624, he was continuously in
Canada, and on the rock of Quebec he built a fort stronger and more
substantial than the wooden buildings which abutted on the river
below. Well situated, able to withstand ten thousand men,[26] such
was an English account a few years later of this fort, when enlarged
and completed--the fort {71} St. Louis at Quebec. The merchants
grudged the money and the men for the work, but the building of a
substantial fortress on the St. Lawrence was a step forward towards
the French dominion of Canada.

[Footnote 26: _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1574-1660, p.
139, under the year 1632.]

[Sidenote: _Coming of the Jesuits to Canada._]

[Sidenote: _Their policy._]

[Sidenote: _Supported by the French Government._]

The year 1625 was the year in which the first Jesuit missionaries
came into Canada. In that year the Duc de Ventadour became Viceroy of
New France: he was closely connected with the Jesuit order, and began
his régime by sending out priests at his own expense. Their coming
marked an epoch in Canadian history. The Franciscan brethren, who
were already in the field, and who welcomed the new-comers on their
arrival, were men of a different stamp. Devoted missionaries, they
kept to their work; they claimed, outwardly at least, no religious
monopoly; they had no wish to control the temporal power; and they
lived at peace with all men. The Jesuits, on the other hand, imported
religious despotism. The Jesuit emissaries were brave men, none more
so; they were self-sacrificing to an extreme, venturesome and
tenacious, indifferent to danger, and fearless of death. They were
tactful in their dealings with the Indians, and were trained in a
school of diplomacy which has never been excelled. But they were the
champions of exclusiveness, and the enemies of freedom. Their coming
meant that one form of religion was to supplant all others--that the
spiritual power was, as far as in them lay, to dominate all things
and all men; and that while much was to be done, it was to be done
for instead of by the colonists and the natives, from above instead
of from below, on a rigid system--strong in itself but inimical to
healthy growth, to that variety of life, of thought, and of outward
form which helps on the expansion of a young community. From their
training and their organization, the Jesuits would in any case have
had great influence on the fortunes of the land to which they came;
but their influence was greater in that their despotic views
harmonized for the time being with the policy {72} of the Bourbon
Kings and their ministers. For absolute monarchy had taken root in
France; and in the French dependencies, as in the mother country,
there was to be henceforth political and religious despotism. That
the spiritual power might grow too strong was a distant danger, and
in France hardly a practical possibility. In the meantime Kings and
priests went hand in hand, co-operating against liberty in church and
state alike. Protestantism meant liberty. The Jesuits abhorred the
Huguenots because they deemed them heretics: the French Kings and
their ministers oppressed them rather on political than on religious
grounds, but were glad to use the religious argument in support of
political aims.

[Sidenote: _Oppression of the Huguenots in France._]

[Sidenote: _Its effects in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The Huguenots excluded from New France._]

On the death of Henry IV in 1610, his young son, Louis XIII, became
King of France. In 1624 Richelieu became his minister. In 1627 the
discontent of the Huguenots culminated in the open revolt of the town
of La Rochelle; and its fall, after a ten months' siege, gave the
King and the cardinal mastery over the Protestants of France. The
effect on Canada of this unsuccessful rising was twofold. It involved
the exclusion of Huguenot settlers, and it involved also the
hostility of England. The patent granted in 1627 to the company of
New France, known as the One Hundred Associates, provided that every
colonist who went out to Canada must be a Catholic, and when in the
following year Richelieu received the submission of the Rochellois,
he was well able to enforce this arbitrary provision. It is difficult
at the present day to comprehend a policy, initiated and approved by
a statesman of consummate ability, which could not but result in
blighting the infancy of the greatest French colony. The English
colonies were in the main pre-eminently homes of freedom,
dwelling-places for men whose political and religious opinions found
scant favour in the United Kingdom. For the English race the New
World redressed the balance of the Old; and though the {73} colonists
who went out from Europe to America, were in their turn prejudiced
and narrow-minded, their want of tolerance was not forced upon them
from without, and members of one or other unpopular sect, when
persecuted in one province, could find refuge in another. Maryland
was a British colony, founded under Roman Catholic auspices; its
neighbour, Pennsylvania, was founded and dominated by Quaker
influence; throughout British North America there were examples of
all opinions and of all creeds. The men on the spot quarrelled with
and persecuted each other; but persecution and exclusion were not
ordained from home. It would have been bad for the British Empire if
from all settlements, which the English formed and maintained, Roman
Catholics had been rigidly kept out; but it was far worse for France
when her Kings and ministers closed the French colonies to the
Huguenots.

[Sidenote: _Merits of the Huguenots as colonists._]

[Sidenote: _War between England and France._]

The Huguenots were the best of the French traders; they were men of
substance; they were capable, enterprising, and resolute. They were
beyond others of their countrymen, the pioneers of trade and
colonization, and had led the way in the New World. De Monts was a
Huguenot, the De Caens were Huguenots, Champlain himself is said to
have been of Huguenot parentage. The exclusion of the French
Protestants from Canada meant depriving Canada of the class of
Frenchmen who were most capable of colonizing the country and
developing its trade. Their fault, in the eyes of the French
Government, was their independence; that they did not conform to the
state religion, and that by not conforming they were politically an
element of danger. But what was deemed a fault in France would, in
colonizing America, have been a virtue; inasmuch as in the field of
adventure, trade, and settlement in new lands, the men who are least
bound by old-world systems and traditional views are of most value.
If fair play had been given to the French Protestants, Canada would
have been far stronger than it {74} ever was while it belonged to
France, and probably it would have continued to belong to France down
to the present day. For the closing of Canada to the Huguenots,
followed as it was afterwards by their ejection from France, not only
weakened France and her colonies, but strengthened the rival nations
and their colonies. The French citizens who had begun to build up the
French colonial empire, helped to build up instead the colonial
empires of other European nations; and the oppressions which they
suffered brought them the sympathy, at times the armed sympathy, of
the Protestant nations of Europe. The rising of the citizens of La
Rochelle was accompanied by war between England and France.
Buckingham's expedition for the relief of the city, ill planned and
ill led, was a fiasco, completing the ruin of the Rochellois instead
of bringing them relief; but on the other side of the Atlantic, where
English adventurers could take advantage of a time of war without
being hampered by court favourites, there was a different tale to
tell.

[Sidenote: _David Kirke_]

Sir William Alexander,[27] a Scotch favourite of James I, had in the
year 1621 obtained from the King a grant of Acadia, or, as it was
styled in the patent, Nova Scotia. The patent was renewed by Charles
I. When war broke out between Great Britain and France, Alexander
combined with certain London merchants, styled 'Adventurers to
Canada,' or 'Adventurers in the Company of Canada,' to strike a blow
at the French in North America. Prominent among these merchants was
George Kirke, a Derbyshire man, who had married the daughter of a
merchant of Dieppe. Three ships were fitted out under the command of
Kirke's three sons, David, Lewis, and Thomas, David Kirke being in
charge of the expedition. The Kirkes were furnished with letters of
marque from the King, authorizing {75} them to attack French ships
and French settlements in America; and, well armed and equipped, they
sailed over the Atlantic, entering the St. Lawrence at the beginning
of July, 1628.

[Footnote 27: A further account of Sir William Alexander is given
below, p. 173.]

[Sidenote: _attacks the French on the St. Lawrence_]

[Sidenote: _and destroys a French fleet._]

Below Quebec was the trading station at Tadoussac, and higher up than
Tadoussac, less than thirty miles below Quebec, there was a small
farming establishment--a 'petite ferme'--at Cape Tourmente, whence
the garrison at Quebec drew supplies. Kirke took up his position at
Tadoussac, and sent a small party up the river, who burnt and rifled
the buildings at Cape Tourmente and killed the cattle. He then
dispatched some of his prisoners to Quebec and called upon Champlain
to surrender. The summons was rejected, though the garrison was in
sore straits. The Iroquois had been of late on the warpath, and the
inroads of Indians on the one hand and of English on the other, meant
starvation to the handful of men on the rock of Quebec. Yet Richelieu
had not been unmindful of Canada. While these events were happening,
a French fleet of eighteen vessels had sailed from Dieppe, laden with
arms and supplies, and bringing also some settlers with their
families, and the inevitable accompaniment of priests. It was the
first effort made by the newly formed French company, an earnest of
their intention to give strength and permanence to New France. The
expedition reached Gaspé Point, at the entrance of the St. Lawrence;
but between them and Quebec were the Kirkes and their ships. Instead
of moving up the river to attack Quebec, the English admiral went
down the river to intercept the new-comers. The English ships were
but three to eighteen; but the three ships were fitted and manned for
war. The French vessels were transports only, freighted with stores
and non-combatants, unable either to fight or to escape. On July 18,
Kirke attacked them, and seventeen out of the eighteen ships fell
into his hands. Ten vessels he emptied and burnt, the rest of his
prizes, {76} with all the cargo and prisoners, he carried off in
triumph to Newfoundland.

[Sidenote: _First English capture of Quebec._]

There was bitterness in France when the news came of this great
disaster; there was distress and hopelessness at Quebec, where
Champlain still held out through the following winter. Kirke had gone
back to England; but when July came round again in 1629, he
reappeared in the St. Lawrence, with a stronger fleet than before.
The Frenchmen at Quebec were by this time starved out, they had no
alternative but to surrender; and on July 22, 1629, the English flag
was for the first time hoisted on the rocky citadel of Canada. There
was little booty for the conquerors, nothing but beaver skins, which
were subsequently sequestrated, and Canadian pines were cut down to
freight the English ships. Kirke's ships carried back to England
Champlain and his companions, who thence returned to their homes in
France; and Quebec was left in charge of an English garrison.

[Sidenote: _Convention of Susa and Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye._]

[Sidenote: _Canada given back to France._]

The Merchant Adventurers had done their work well. With little or no
loss, unaided by the Government, they had driven the French from
Canada and annexed New France. Had Queen Elizabeth been on the throne
of England, she would have scolded and then approved; and would have
kept for her country the fruits of English daring and English
success. The bold freebooter, Kirke, would have found favour in her
eyes; she would have honoured and rewarded him, as she honoured and
rewarded Drake. But the Stuarts were cast in a different mould, and
no English minister at the time was a match for Richelieu. Before
Quebec had fallen, Charles of England and Louis of France had
concluded the Convention of Susa, on April 24, 1629; and the Treaty
of St. Germain-en-Laye, signed nearly three years later, on March 29,
1632, definitely restored to France her possessions in North
America.[28] No consideration was {77} embodied in the treaty for the
surrender of Canada, but State Papers have made clear that the price
was the unpaid half of Queen Henrietta Maria's marriage dowry. For
this sum, already due and wrongly outstanding, Canada was sold. It
was a pitiful proceeding, unworthy of an English King, but typical of
a Stuart. It is noteworthy that early in the seventeenth century both
the Cape and Canada might have become and remained British colonies.
In 1620 two sea captains formally annexed the Cape, before any
settlement had as yet been founded at Table Bay; but their action was
never ratified by the Government at home.[29] Nine years later Kirke
took Quebec, and again the work was undone. So the Dutch in the one
case, and the French in the other, made colonies where the English
might have run their course; and generations afterwards, Great
Britain took again, with toil and trouble, what her adventurers, with
truer instinct than her rulers possessed, had claimed and would have
kept in earlier days. It is noteworthy, too, that state policy was in
great measure responsible for the earlier French loss of Canada, as
it was mainly responsible for the later. It is true that Quebec was
taken while the French Protestants were still to some extent
tolerated, and that a Protestant, De Caen, was selected to receive it
back again, when the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was carried into
effect. But there were Huguenots on board Kirke's ships, serving
under a commander whose mother was of Huguenot blood; and the schism
which had broken out in France and {78} culminated for the time in
the siege and fall of La Rochelle, left the best of the French
traders and colonizers half-hearted servants of France. Canada was
given back, but it was given back to the French Government rather
than to the French people; and, as years went on, the St. Lawrence
saw no more of the stubborn, strong heretics who had sung their
Protestant hymns on its banks. Frenchmen, as gallant as they were,
had afterwards the keeping of Canada; but, state-ridden and
priest-ridden, they lacked initiative and commercial enterprise.
Freedom was to be found in the backwoods among the _coureurs de
bois_, but it was the freedom of lawlessness, unleavened by the
steadfast sobriety which marked the Calvinists of France.

[Footnote 28: The Convention of Susa provided that all acts of
hostility should cease, and that the articles and contracts as to the
marriage of the English Queen should be confirmed. The Treaty of St.
Germain-en-Laye, or rather one of two treaties signed on the same
day, provided for the restitution to France of all places occupied by
the English in New France, Acadia, and Canada. Instructions to make
restitution were to be given to the commanders at Port Royal, Fort
Quebec, and Cape Breton. General de Caen was named in the treaty as
the French representative to arrange for the evacuation of the
English. The places were to be restored in the same condition as they
had been in at the time of capture, all arms taken were to be made
good, and a sum was to be paid for the furs, &c., which had been
carried off.]

[Footnote 29: See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 19.]

[Sidenote: _Death of Champlain._]

In July, 1632, the French regained Quebec. In May, 1633, Champlain
came back to Canada. For two and a half years he governed it under
the French company, and on Christmas Day, 1635, he died at Quebec in
the sixty-ninth year of his age. New France owed all to him. Amid
every form of difficulty and intrigue, in Europe and in America,
among white men and among red, he had held resolutely to his purpose.
His life was pure, his aims were high, his judgment sound, and his
foresight great. He lived for the country in which he was born and
for that in which he died; but 'the whole earth is the sepulchre of
famous men',[30] and not in France or Canada alone is lasting honour
paid to his name.

[Footnote 30: Thuc., bk. ii, chap. xliii (Jowett's translation).]


NOTE.--For Canadian history down to the death of Champlain, see,
among modern books, more especially

  PARKMAN'S _Pioneers of France in the New World_, and
  KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. i.




{79}

CHAPTER III

THE SETTLEMENT OF CANADA AND THE FIVE NATION INDIANS


[Sidenote: _Colonization by the medium of Chartered Companies
characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe._]

To trade and to colonize through the medium of Chartered Companies
has been characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe. Chartered
Companies have not been peculiar to England. The Dutch worked
entirely through two great companies; the Danes adopted the same
system; and various companies played their part in the early history
of French colonization. Herein lay the main difference, in the field
of colonial enterprise, between the northern peoples and the
southerners who had preceded them. In the case of Spain and Portugal
all was done under the immediate control of the Crown. These two
nations were concerned with conquest rather than with settlement;
and, if the Portuguese were traders, their commerce was not the
result of private venture, but was created and supported by the
Government. The Spaniards and Portuguese were first in the field.
East and West lay before them, and they divided the world in secure
monopoly. The northerners came in--they came in tentatively; policy
kept the Governments in the background for fear of incurring war, and
freedom of individual action was more ingrained in these races than
in the Latin peoples of the south. So freebooters sailed here and
there, at one time honoured, at another in disgrace; merchants took
shares in this or that venture, and Chartered Companies came into
being.

[Sidenote: _French Chartered Companies._]

In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the
Netherlands West India Company practically {80} included the whole
nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England,
the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the
Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main,
working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might
be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern
systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in
England, the companies were private associations, but Court favour
was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly
interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them,
until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that
makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone.

[Sidenote: _The company of the One Hundred Associates._]

Trade jealousies hampered the beginnings of Canadian settlement;
there was neither free trade in Canada nor unquestioned monopoly. To
cure this evil Richelieu, in 1627, brought into being the company of
the One Hundred Associates, nominally a private association, really
the offspring of the Government. Its sphere extended from Florida to
the North Sea, and from east to west as far as discovery should
extend along the rivers of Canada. It controlled all trade except the
fisheries, and it enjoyed sovereign rights in so far that it was
entitled to confer titles and tenures, subject to the approval of the
Crown. The chief officers were to be nominated by the King, but under
the Sovereign the company was feudal lord of New France; of its soil
and its inland waters, with all that they produced. A statesman
projected the company, and, with keen insight into the wants of New
France, Richelieu laid down as one of the terms of its charter that
settlers were to be introduced in specified numbers, especially and
immediately settlers of the artisan class; but these provisions were
made to a large extent barren by excluding the Huguenots. At the
outset the new French company, with all its backing, was foiled in
its efforts by the English Merchant Adventurers. The first transports
{81} sent out, bearing settlers and supplies, were captured by Kirke.
Quebec fell and New France was lost. The Convention of Susa and the
Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye were signed and executed, and the One
Hundred Associates resumed their charge of Canada. Under them
Champlain held the government of New France till he died, being
succeeded by a soldier, M. de Montmagny, who reached Quebec in June,
1636.

[Sidenote: _Three Rivers. Montreal. Sorel._]

In 1634, while Champlain was still alive, a fort was begun at Three
Rivers. The first permanent settlement at Montreal dates from the
spring of 1642, and in the same year Fort Richelieu was founded on
the site of the present town of Sorel,[1] where the Richelieu--the
river of the Iroquois--joins the St. Lawrence. For many years Quebec,
Three Rivers, and Montreal practically comprised New France. Outside
them were fur-traders and Jesuit missionaries, carrying their lives
in their hands. A few farms were taken up along the river above and
below Quebec, but colonization was almost non-existent, and small
groups of priests and soldiers at two or three points on the St.
Lawrence feebly upheld the power of France in North America.

[Footnote 1: 'So called from M. de Saurel, who reconstructed the fort
in 1665' (Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol. i, p. 185).]

[Sidenote: _Slow progress of Canada up to 1663._]

The company of the One Hundred Associates lasted till 1663, and
little they did for the land or for themselves. At the end of their
tenure, the whole French population of Canada hardly reached 2,500
souls. It had been an integral part of the company's programme to
people Canada with French men and French women, but, inasmuch as
Huguenots were rigidly excluded, the motive for emigration was
wanting. The Catholic citizens of France were comfortable at home.
They might wish to trade with Canada, but they did not wish to spend
their lives there. The soldiers of France went out only under orders;
they looked for brighter battlefields than the North American
backwoods. Priests and nuns {82} alone felt a call to cross the
Atlantic, to face the most rigorous winters and the most savage foes.
The French religion was firmly planted in North America during these
early years, but the French people were left behind.

De Montmagny was Governor for twelve years, till 1648. His successors
under the company's régime were D'Ailleboust, De Lauzon, the Vicomte
d'Argenson, and Baron d'Avaugour. Under the Governors there were
commandants of the garrisons at Three Rivers and Montreal; and from
1636 onwards there was some kind of Council for framing ordinances
and regulating the administration of justice, the Governor and the
leading ecclesiastics being always members, and representatives of
the settlers being from time to time admitted. In 1645, moreover, the
company was reorganized, and the fur trade, which had been vested in
the Associates, was handed over to the colonists. Notwithstanding,
there was little increase of strength and little growth of population
till the year 1663, and up to that date the history of Canada is no
more than a record of savage warfare and missionary enterprise.

[Sidenote: _The foundation of Montreal._]

Religious enthusiasts founded Montreal, and the foundation of
Montreal was a challenge to the Iroquois. Always the enemies of the
French, the Five Nations saw in the settlement a new menace to their
power. Above the Richelieu river, they looked on the St. Lawrence as
more especially within their own domain; and when Frenchmen took up
ground on the island of Montreal, the Indians resented the intrusion
with savage bitterness and with more than savage foresight. On the
part of the French, state policy had nothing to say to the new
undertaking, nor was it a commercial venture. It was simply and
solely the outcome of religious zeal untempered by discretion.

[Sidenote: _The Jesuits in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _They did not promote colonization._]

The Jesuits had abundantly advertised in France the spiritual needs
of Canada. They had much to tell, and they told it well, skilful in
narrative as they were bold in action. {83} They attracted money to
the missionary cause, they enlisted brave men, and, still more, brave
and beautiful women. Convents were founded in America, and hospitals;
priests and nuns led and lost heroic lives, to widen the influence of
the Roman Catholic Church, and to convert the heathen. The deeds
done, and the sufferings endured, commanded, and still command
admiration, yet withal there was an element of barrenness in the
work; it was magnificent, but it was not colonization. It was unsound
in two main essentials. First and foremost, liberty was wanting. The
white men and the red were to be dominated alike: North America and
its peoples were to be in perpetual leading strings, prepared for
freedom in the world to come by unquestioning obedience on this side
the grave. The Protestant, however narrow and prejudiced in his
dealings and mode of life, in theory held and preached a religion
which set free, a gospel of glorious liberty. The Roman Catholic
missionary preached and acted self-sacrifice so complete, that all
freedom of action was eliminated. There was a second and a very
practical defect in the system. What Canada wanted was a white
population, married settlers, men with wives and children. What the
Jesuits asked for, and what they secured, was a following of
celibates, men and women sworn to childlessness. The Protestant
pastor in New England lived among his flock as one of themselves; he
made a human home, and gave hostages to fortune; a line of children
perpetuated his name, and family ties gave the land where he settled
another aspect than that of a mission field. The Roman Catholic
priest was tied to his church, but to nothing else. At her call he
was here to-day, and, it might be, gone to-morrow. He more than
shared the sufferings and the sorrows of those to whom he ministered,
but his life was apart from theirs, and he left no children behind
him. Martyrs and virgins the Roman Catholic Church sent out to
Canada, but it did not send out men and women. In comparing {84}
English and French colonization in America, two points of contrast
stand out above all others--the much larger numbers of English
settlers, and the much greater activity of French missionaries. Both
facts were in great measure due to the influence of the Roman
Catholic religion, and notably to the celibacy of its ministers.

[Sidenote: _Religious enthusiasts in Canada._]

Histories of Canada give full space to the names, the characters, and
the careers of the bishops, priests, and nuns who moulded the
childhood of New France, and to the struggle for supremacy between
the Jesuits and rival sects. We have portraits of the Jesuit heroes
Breboeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, Isaac Jogues, and many others; of the
ladies whose wealth or whose personal efforts founded the Hôtel Dieu
at Quebec and at Montreal; of Madame de la Peltrie, Marie Guyard the
Mère de l'Incarnation, Jeanne Mance, and Marguerite Bourgeoys; of
Laval the first of Canadian bishops; but the record of their devoted
lives has only an indirect bearing on the history of colonization. It
will be enough to notice very shortly the founding of Montreal, and
the episode of the Huron missions, as being landmarks in Canadian
story.

[Sidenote: _Montreal settled by a company connected with St.
Sulpice._]

Montreal, it will be remembered, had been in Cartier's time the site
of an Indian town, which afterwards disappeared. Champlain had marked
it out as a place for a future settlement, and the keen eyes of the
Jesuits looked to the island as a mission centre. It had become the
property of De Lauzon, one of the One Hundred Associates and
afterwards Governor of Canada, and he transferred his grant to a
company, the Company of Montreal, formed exclusively for the service
of religion, and especially connected with the priests of St.
Sulpice. The first settlers numbered about sixty in all, in charge of
a chivalrous soldier, De Maisonneuve, and including one of the
religious heroines of the time, Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, who was
entrusted with funds by a rich French lady to found a hospital. They
arrived in Canada in 1641, {85} and in spite of the warnings of the
Governor, who urged that they should settle within reach of Quebec on
the Island of Orleans, they chose their site at Montreal in the same
autumn, and in the following spring began to build a settlement.
Ville Marie was the name given to it at the time, the enterprise
being dedicated to the Virgin. At the first ceremony, on landing, a
Jesuit priest bade the little band of worshippers be of good courage,
for they were as the grain of mustard seed; and now the distant,
dangerous outpost of France in North America, which a few
whole-hearted zealots founded, has become the great city of Montreal.

[Sidenote: _The influence of religion on colonization._]

Religion has been a potent force in colonial history. On the one hand
it has promoted emigration. It carried the Huguenots from France to
other lands. It peopled New England with Puritans. On the other hand,
it has sent forerunners of the coming white men among the coloured
races, bearers of a message of peace, but too often bringing in their
train the sword. As explorers and as pioneers, missionaries have done
much for colonization; but from another point of view they have
endangered the cause by going too fast and too far. In South Africa,
a hundred years ago, the work, the speeches, and the writings of
Protestant missionaries led indirectly to the dispersion of
colonists, to race feuds, and to political complications which, but
for this agency, would certainly have been postponed, and might
possibly never have arisen. Similarly in Canada, Jesuit activity and
forwardness added to the difficulties and dangers with which the
French settlers and their rulers had to contend.

[Sidenote: _Montreal and the Five Nations._]

The Governor, who vainly attempted to dissuade the founders of
Montreal from going so far afield, was right in his warnings. Very
few were the French in North America, their struggle for existence
was hard, their enemies were watchful and unrelenting. Safety lay in
concentration, in making Quebec a strong and comparatively populous
centre, in keeping aloof from the Iroquois, instead of straying
within {86} their range. To form a weak settlement 160 miles higher
up the river than Quebec, within striking distance of the Five
Nations, was to provoke the Indians and to offer them a prey. This
was the immediate result of the foundation of Montreal. Year after
year went by, and there was the same tale to tell: a tale of a hand
to mouth existence, of settlers cooped up within their palisades,
ploughing the fields at the risk of their lives, cut off by twos and
threes, murdered or carried into captivity. Moreover, between
Montreal in its weakness and the older and stronger settlement at
Quebec, there was an element of jealousy. What with rival commandants
and rival ecclesiastics, controversy within and ravening Iroquois
without, the early days of the French in Canada were days of sorrow.

[Sidenote: _The Huron missions._]

Far away from civilization in the seventeenth century was Montreal,
but further still was the Huron country. The first white man to visit
the Hurons was the Recollet friar, Le Caron, in the year 1615, and
from that date onward, till Kirke took Quebec, a very few Franciscan
and Jesuit priests preached their faith by the shores of Georgian
Bay. Suspended for a short time, while the English held Canada, the
missions were resumed by the Jesuits in 1634, foremost among the
missionaries being Father de Breboeuf, who had already worked among
the Hurons, and came back to work and die.

Few stories are so dramatic, few have been so well told[2] as the
tale of the Huron missions. No element of tragedy is wanting. The
background of the scene gives a sense of distance and immensity. The
action is comprised in very few years, years of bright promise,
speedily followed by absolute desolation. The contrast between the
actors on either side is as great as can be found in the range of
human life, between savages almost superhuman in savagery, and
Christian preachers almost superhuman in endurance and {87}
self-sacrifice; and all through there runs the pity of it, the pathos
of a religion of love bearing as its first-fruits barren martyrdom
and wholesale extermination.

[Footnote 2: By Francis Parkman in _The Jesuits in North America_.]

Between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay the Hurons dwelt, accessible to
the Frenchmen only by the Ottawa river and Lake Nipissing, for the
Iroquois barred the alternative route up the St. Lawrence and by Lake
Ontario. Montreal was left far behind, and many miles of a toilsome,
dangerous route were traversed, until by the shores of the great
freshwater sea were found the homes of a savage but a settled people.
To men inspired by religion and by Imperial views of religion, who
looked to be the ministers of a world-wide power, including and
dominating all the kingdoms of the earth, the greatness of the
distances, the remoteness of the land, the unbounded area of unknown
waters stretching far off to the west, were but calls to the
imagination and incentives to redoubled effort.

But, ambitious as they were, the Jesuits were not mere enthusiasts:
they were practical and politic men, diplomatists in the American
backwoods as at the Court of France. Not wandering outcasts, like the
Algonquins of the lower St. Lawrence; not, like the Iroquois, wholly
given to perpetual murder; with some peaceful impulses, traders to a
small extent, and tillers of the ground, and above all, since
Champlain first came among them, sworn allies of the French--the
Hurons seemed such a people as might be moulded to a new faith, and
become a beacon attracting other North American natives to the light
of Christianity. So the Jesuit fathers went among them in 1634, and
in 1640 built and fortified a central mission station--St. Marie--a
mile from where a little river--the Wye--flows into an inlet of Lake
Huron.

To convert a race of suspicious savages is no easy task. The priests
carried their lives in their hands. They were pitted against native
sorcerers, they were called upon to give {88} rain, they were held
responsible for small-pox. Yet year by year, by genuine goodness and
by pious fraud, they made headway, until some eleven mission posts
were in existence among the Hurons and the neighbouring tribes, the
most remote station being at the outlet of Lake Superior. The promise
was good. Money was forthcoming from France. There were eighteen
priests at work, there were lay assistants, there was a handful of
French soldiers. Earthly as well as spiritual wants were supplied at
St. Marie, and far off in safety at Quebec was a seminary for Huron
children. It seemed as though on the far western horizon of discovery
and colonization, the Roman Catholic Church was achieving a signal
triumph, its agents being Frenchmen, and its political work being
credited to France. Yet after fifteen years all was over, and the
land was left desolate without inhabitants. The heathen learnt from
their Christian teachers to obey and to suffer, but in learning they
lost the spirit of resistance and of savage manhood. As in Paraguay,
a more submissive race, under Jesuit influence, dwindled in numbers,
so even the Hurons, after the French priests came among them, seem to
have become an easier prey than before to their hereditary foes.

[Sidenote: _Destruction of the missions by the Iroquois._]

[Sidenote: _Dispersion of the Hurons._]

In July, 1648, the mission station of St. Joseph, fifteen miles from
St. Marie, was utterly destroyed, the priest in charge was shot dead,
and 700 prisoners were carried off. In the following year 1,200
warriors of the Five Nations swept like a torrent through the Huron
cantons, fifteen native towns were attacked, ravaged, and burnt, and
the brave priest, De Breboeuf, was tortured and slain. Other devoted
missionaries shared his fate; the shepherds were slaughtered, and the
survivors of the flock were scattered abroad. For the Hurons made
little or no attempt to defend themselves; fear came upon them and
trouble; they fell down, and there was none to help them. The fort at
St. Marie stood, for even the Iroquois hesitated to attack armed
walls; but its purpose {89} was gone with the slaughter and
dispersion of the Huron clans. The priests who still lived abandoned
it, and spent a miserable winter with a crowd of Indian fugitives on
a neighbouring island in Lake Huron. There too they built a fort; but
famine and the Iroquois followed them, and in 1650 they left the
country, taking with them to Quebec some 300 Huron converts. The
refugees were settled on the Isle of Orleans; yet even there, five or
six years later, they were attacked by the Iroquois, and at length
they found a secure abiding-place at Lorette, near the banks of the
river St. Charles. The rest of their kinsfolk were scattered abroad.
Some were incorporated in the Five Nations. Others, driven from point
to point, were found in after years at the northern end of Lake
Michigan or at Detroit, and, under the new name of Wyandots, played
some part in later Canadian history; but the Huron nation was blotted
out, the Huron country became a desert, and the light which had shone
brightly for a few years in the far-off land was put out for ever.

[Sidenote: _Weakness of the French in Canada._]

Most readers of the story of the Huron missions will study it mainly
as an episode in religious enterprise. They will note the heroism of
the Jesuit priests--their faithfulness unto death, their constancy
under torture and suffering not surpassed by the stoicism of the
North American Indians themselves. They will mourn the failure of
their efforts, the butchery, the martyrdom, but will record that all
was not absolutely thrown away; for even in the lodges of the Five
Nations we read that some of the nameless Hurons held to the faith
which their French teachers loved and served so well. But this is not
the true moral of the story. The significance of the events lay in
proving the French to be weak and the Iroquois to be strong, in
demonstrating with horrible thoroughness that the white men in Canada
were powerless to protect their friends, in thus making more
difficult what was difficult enough already, in retarding the
progress of {90} European colonization in Canada. The want of
concentration, the attempt to do too much, the somewhat paralysing
influence of the particular form of the Christian religion which the
French brought with them--all these elements of weakness came out in
connexion with the Huron missions; and meanwhile precious years were
lost to France which could not be afterwards made good; for in these
same years the English, not producing martyrs and heroes, so much as
fathers of families, were taking firm root in North American soil,
plodding slowly but surely along the road to colonization.

[Sidenote: _The strength and ferocity of the Iroquois._]

The Iroquois were like man-eating tigers. The taste of human blood
whetted their appetite for more. Fresh from the slaughter of the
Hurons, in 1650-1 they fell upon the Neutral Nation, whose home was
on the northern shore of Lake Erie, stretching to the east across the
Niagara river. The Neutrals had held aloof from Iroquois and Huron
alike, whence their name; but their neutrality did not protect them
from utter extermination at the hands of the Five Nations. Over
against them on the southern side of the lake were the Eries, second
to none as ferocious savages, and known to the French as the 'Nation
of the Cats.' Their turn came next, in 1654-5. They fought hard,
behind palisades and with poisoned arrows; but they too were blotted
out, and only on the south were left native warriors to cope with the
conquering Iroquois. These were the Andastes, on the line of the
Susquehanna river, who year after year gave blow for blow, until they
too succumbed to superior numbers.

Nothing withstood the Five Nations; yet their fighting men were few,
and their losses great. For the time they nearly ruined the French
cause in Canada, but in the end their work of destruction rendered
the triumph of the white man more inevitable and more complete. They
broke up and killed out tribes, whose forces, if united to their own,
might have overwhelmed the Europeans; and in doing so {91} they
sapped their own strength. They kept up their numbers only by the
incorporation of natives who had learned to look to Europeans for
guidance and support; and in course of time, fallen from their high
estate, they found salvation not as leaders of red men but as allies
of white.

[Sidenote: _Mission of Le Moyne to the Five Nations._]

It seems marvellous that the confederation held together, and there
were, it is true, occasional outbursts of inter-tribal jealousy and
suspicion. Difference of geographical position tended to difference
of policy. The most determined foes of the French were the
Mohawks--the easternmost nation, supplied with firearms by the
Dutchmen at Albany, and having easy access to the St. Lawrence. At
the other end of the line the Senecas had their hands full in the
Erie war, and were little disposed, while it lasted, to molest the
Europeans. In the centre, the Onondagas, always few in numbers and
already recruited by captive Hurons, were minded to attract to their
ranks the Huron refugees at Quebec. So about the autumn of 1653,
overtures of peace were made to the French, even the Mohawks for the
moment dissembling their enmity; and in the following year a Jesuit
priest, Le Moyne, was sent as an envoy to the Iroquois country.

The mission was notable in more ways than one. Le Moyne was the first
white man to follow up the St. Lawrence from Montreal to Lake
Ontario, and his journey marked the beginning of diplomatic relations
between the French and the Iroquois. Thenceforward there was always
the nucleus of a French party among the Five Nations, the elements of
a divided policy in lieu of solid hostility to the French. Here was
an illustration too of the value of the Jesuit priests to the French
cause, as well as of the danger of employing them. None equalled
these priests in the statecraft necessary for dealing with savages,
but none were at the time in question so ready in season or out of
season to promote a forward policy, involving future complications
and dispersion of strength.

{92} [Sidenote: _Attempt at a French settlement among the Five
Nations._]

Le Moyne's mission was to the Onondagas, and its result was an
application from that tribe that a French settlement should be
established among them. The invitation was accepted; and in the
summer of 1656 between forty and fifty Frenchmen established
themselves on Lake Onondaga, in the very heart of the Iroquois
country. It was a desperate enterprise. The men could ill be spared
from Quebec, and they were but hostages among the Five Nations. The
Indians pretended peace, but even while the Onondagas were escorting
the Frenchmen up the river, the Mohawks attacked the expedition, and
subsequently under the very guns of Quebec carried off Huron captives
from the Isle of Orleans. For a little less than two years, the small
band of French colonists remained amid the Onondagas, in hourly peril
of their lives; and finally, towards the end of 1658, at dead of
night, while the Indians were overcome by gluttony and debauch, they
launched their boats and canoes on the Oswego river, reached Lake
Ontario and the St. Lawrence, and found themselves once more at
Montreal.

It was a fit ending to the first stage of Canadian history--a
hopeless venture, a confession of weakness, a hairsbreadth escape. So
far there had been no colonization of Canada. There had been one
wise, far-seeing man--Champlain. Brave soldiers had come from France,
and still braver priests. There had been going in and out among the
natives, toil and hardship, adventure and loss of life. But the
French had as yet no real hold on Canada. Between Quebec and the
Three Rivers--between the Three Rivers and Montreal, not they but the
Iroquois were masters of the St. Lawrence. A trading company claimed
to rule: its rule was nothingness. Within Quebec bishops and
Governors quarrelled for precedence: under its walls the Mohawks
yelled defiance. Montreal, the story goes, was only saved by a band
of Frenchmen, who, in a log hut on the Ottawa, sold their lives as
dearly as the heroes of Greek or Roman legend; and to crown it all,
{93} at the beginning of 1663, the shock of a mighty earthquake was
felt throughout the land, making the forts and convents tremble,
sending, as it were, a shiver through the feeble frame of New France.

[Sidenote: _The One Hundred Associates surrender their charter._]

It was the prelude of a better time. In March, 1663, the One Hundred
Associates surrendered their charter to the Crown. A century later,
by the Peace of Paris in 1763, France lost Canada. In those hundred
years a fair trial was given to French colonization. How much was
done to leave the impress of a great nation on Canada, the province
of Quebec to-day will testify. Wherein the work was found wanting is
told in history.

[Sidenote: _The Company of the West._]

In 1663, we read, Canada became a Royal Province. It passed out of
the keeping of a company and came under the direct control of the
French King and his ministers. The statement requires some
modification, for in 1664 Colbert created a new Chartered Company,
the Company of the West, whose sphere, like that of the Netherlands
West India Company, included the whole of the western half of the
world, so far as it was or might be French--America North and South,
the West Indies, and West Africa. Canada was within the terms of its
charter, which included a monopoly of trade for forty years and, on
paper, sovereign rights within the wide limits to which the charter
extended. Thus the members of the company claimed to be feudal
Seigniors of the soil of New France and to nominate the Council of
Government, with the exception of the Governor and Intendant; while
from the dues which they levied the cost of government was to be
defrayed.

Such was the outline and the intention of the scheme: the actual
result was that the carrying trade was monopolized by the company,
together with one-fourth of the beaver skins of all Canada, and the
whole of the traffic of the lower St. Lawrence, which centred at
Tadoussac. Out of their monopoly they paid all or part of the
expenses of government, {94} but the administration practically
remained in the hands of the Crown. Like its predecessor, this
company was a miserable failure. It lasted for ten years only, and
during those years it was an incubus on Canada.

[Sidenote: _Chartered Companies ill suited to France._]

The truth was that Chartered Companies were alien to the genius of
France, or at any rate of Roman Catholic France--the France of the
Bourbons. Her greatest ministers, Richelieu and Colbert, were, it is
true, loth to discard the system. They wished to give French
merchants a direct interest in building up a colonial empire. They
saw the English working by means of companies. They saw the Dutch
giving to the state the outward semblance of private enterprise.
Companies, they argued, would promote French trade and colonization,
as they had promoted the trade and colonization of rival nations. But
Richelieu and Colbert were despotic ministers of arbitrary Kings; the
companies which they created were as lifeless and as helpless as
their titles were high-sounding and pretentious. They lasted as long,
and only as long, as they were backed by the Crown. They were swept
away as easily as they were formed; and they left no lasting impress
on French colonial history.

[Sidenote: _Canada under the Crown._]

We may take it then that, in 1663, Canada in effect passed to the
French King and became what would now be styled a Crown Colony.
Strong hands ministered to it, and it grew in strength. New France
was fostered, was ruled and organized, was supplied, though sometimes
sparingly, with means of defence and offence. It was developed on
rigidly prescribed lines. It was given a social and political system.
Capable and enterprising men were concerned in making its history,
and its history was made on a distinct type imported from the Old
World, and little modified by the New. What this system was, and how
far under it the colonists were able to cope with their coloured
foes, will be told in the remaining pages of this chapter.

[Sidenote: _The Government of Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The Supreme Council._]

The Government of Canada was a despotism. Under the {95} King of
France, whose word was law, the whole power was centred in the
Governor, the Intendant, and the Council, known at first as the
Supreme Council, afterwards as the Superior or the Sovereign Council.
This Council was created by royal edict in April, 1663. It was at
once a legislative body, and a High Court of Justice. It consisted of
the Governor, the Intendant, the bishop, and five other councillors,
afterwards increased to seven, and again to twelve. The councillors
were appointed by the King, and held office usually for life. They
deliberated, they legislated, they judged, they wrangled among
themselves; they followed the lead of Governor, Intendant, or bishop,
according as one or the other was strongest for the time being, and
the strongest for the time being was the man who had the ear of the
King and his minister.

[Sidenote: _The law of Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The courts of justice._]

The law of the land was the Customary Law of Paris, supplemented by
three kinds of ordinances. There were the royal edicts sent out from
France and registered by the Council in Canada; there were the
decrees made by the Council; and in the third place, there were the
ordinances of the Intendant, who was invested with legislative
authority by the King. The Council, as has been stated, was a
judicial as well as a legislative body. It was the court of appeal
for the colony, and in early days it was also a court of first
instance. There were minor courts of justice, too, established by the
Council, and three judges of the three districts of Quebec, Three
Rivers, and Montreal respectively, appointed by the King. In
addition, the feudal Seigniors[3] of Canada exercised a petty, and
usually little more than nominal, jurisdiction among their vassals,
while the Intendant enjoyed {96} extensive judicial powers, emanating
from and subordinate to the King alone.

[Footnote 3: The judicial powers of the Seignior varied. In a very
few cases the Seignior could administer _haute justice_, i.e. try
crimes on the Seigniory which were punishable with death. For all
important cases there was right of appeal. See Kingsford's _History
of Canada_, vol. i, p. 365, and Parkman's _Old Régime in Canada_
(14th ed.), pp. 252, 269.]

[Sidenote: _The Governor._]

The highest executive officer was the Governor. He had control of the
armed forces, and was responsible for the peace and safety of New
France. He called out the militia when he thought fit; foreign policy
and native policy were in his charge. In old and troubled times
distance gave to the Governors of colonies and provinces actual power
far exceeding the terms or the intent of their commission. They were
the men on the spot. They held the sword; and, when a serious crisis
arose, their word was obeyed. Especially was this the case in Canada,
cut off for half the year from communication with France, and girt
with foreign and with savage foes. Few years passed without wars or
rumours of wars. Each Canadian settlement was a garrison; and
strength, if not full authority, tended to centre in the hands of the
commander of the forces, the trained soldier who held for the time
the Governorship of Canada.

[Sidenote: _The Intendant._]

Yet, unless he had, like Count Frontenac, great force of character,
or was in favour at the Court of Versailles, and when war was not
imminent, his influence was hardly more, it was often less, than that
of the Intendant. The Governor was the representative of the Crown.
The Intendant was the King's agent, the steward of his province, his
own man. He was a civilian, usually a lawyer, and therefore, in most
cases, of greater business capacity, and more skilled in penmanship,
than the Governor with his military training. His intimate relations
with King and minister, coupled with experience of legal advocacy,
tended to give more weight to his representations than to those of
the Governor at the Court of France. The Intendant, not the Governor,
presided at the Council; and as legislator or judge, he was
responsible to the King alone. In time of peace, and in matters of
internal administration, he had perhaps more real power than the
Governor, and even when fighting times called the {97} soldier to the
front, the Intendant, dealing with supplies and accounts, controlled
in great measure the sinews of war.

[Sidenote: _The bishop._]

By the side of the Governor and the Intendant at the council sat the
bishop, spiritually supreme, and with power by no means confined to
spiritual matters. How strong, politically, was the Church in France
before the Revolution, the cardinal prime ministers bear witness, and
the priest-ridden wives and mistresses of the Bourbon Kings. It was
stronger still in Canada. Priests formed no small part of the scanty
population of New France; they made a large part of its history. The
schools and hospitals were built by the Church, and the Church owned
much of the land. Well organized and disciplined, with clear and
definite aims, the ministers of the Church made their power felt in
council chamber and in palace; too often they ruled the rulers; and
the first and greatest bishop of Canada, Bishop Laval, made or unmade
the Governors of New France.

[Sidenote: _Defects in the political system of New France.
Centralization of power._]

Such was the political system of Canada, while Canada was a province
of France. Power was centralized, and the ordinary safeguards of
freedom were wholly wanting. Executive, legislative, and judicial
functions were placed in the same hands. There was not a shred of
popular representation, there was not even a vestige of municipal
rights.[4] Canada was good for priests and, to some extent, for
soldiers; there was room in it and a living for an agricultural
peasantry, and for the trapper and backwoodsman, who was a law to
himself. Where the St. Lawrence flowed by the island of Montreal, or
under the rock of Quebec, there were the beginnings of cities with
dwellers in them, but there were no citizens in Canada.

[Footnote 4: Count Frontenac on first arriving in Canada attempted to
give the Canadians some voice in the government by calling together
the three estates, and by allowing the citizens of Quebec to elect
three aldermen. He incurred the royal displeasure by his proceedings,
and his measures came to nothing. See Parkman's _Count Frontenac and
New France_ (14th ed.), pp. 16, &c., and see below, p. 107.]

{98} [Sidenote: _Friction between the officials._]

Though power was centralized, it was not entrusted locally to one man
alone. The maxim of despotism is _Divide et impera_; and on this
principle the Kings of France ruled Canada. The Governor and the
Intendant each corresponded directly with the King and his minister.
Each was wholly independent of the other, and yet their respective
functions were not clearly enough defined to prevent friction and
deadlock. The other members of the Council were subordinate neither
to the Governor nor to the Intendant, in so far that they were
appointed, and could be removed, by the King alone. For this division
of authority there was some excuse. On the assumption that both the
Governor and the Intendant might be thieves, it was prudent to set a
thief to catch a thief. The system minimized the possibility of
tyranny in a distant dependency, where the colonists had no voice in
making the laws, and no control over the administration. One
all-powerful officer might have become a tyrant; but two or more, if
evilly disposed, might be trusted to expose each other's misdoings
with a view to securing favour at home. Chartered Companies took the
same line in this respect as the French Kings. The British East India
Company held their Governor-General in check through his Council; the
Dutch East India Company created in their dependencies the office of
Independent Fiscal, which corresponded in great measure to that of
Intendant.[5] But the plan devised by Louis XIV and Colbert for the
government of Canada had grave defects. Division of authority meant
weakness, where strength was urgently needed; it led to personal
jealousy, to party feeling, to corruption, and to intrigue; it
lessened the sense of responsibility, for each officer could throw
the blame on another; and it left the fortunes of Canada in the hands
of the man who, for the time being, had, irrespective of any office
he held, the {99} strongest character, or the least scruple, or the
largest share of Court favour.

[Footnote 5: See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 75 and notes.]

[Sidenote: _Emigration from France to Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The settlers and_]

The King of France created the government of Canada. He created also
the people. In less than ten years from the date when he took the
colony in hand the population was more than doubled. Shiploads of
male emigrants were sent out from France, and cargoes of future wives
and mothers. Wedlock was prescribed, celibacy was proscribed,
bounties were, in Roman fashion, given to early marriages and to
large families. The privilege of remaining single was reserved for
priests and nuns; the lay members of the community were bidden to be
fruitful and multiply, and they obeyed the King's commands with much
success. They were honest folk, the Canadian settlers, not convicted
felons sent out from French prisons. No doubt there were among the
emigrants men and women who were glad to leave France, and of whom
France was glad to be rid; but there was no convict strain in the
population, and the _coureurs de bois_, unlicensed though they were,
were not mere outlaws, like the Australian bushrangers.

[Sidenote: _the Feudal System._]

[Sidenote: _Canadian feudalism was purely artificial._]

When an emigrant came to Canada, he could not return to France
without a passport, but he might possibly drift into the backwoods or
to the Dutch or English colonies. Efforts were therefore made to
attach him to the soil. For this purpose a kind of Feudal System was
introduced, somewhat diluted to suit the place and the time. The
essence of feudalism in bygone days had been military tenure and
oligarchy. Time had been in France when the nobles were stronger than
the King, but in the reign of Louis XIV they were little more than
courtiers. They had become ornamental rather than useful; yet even
under a Bourbon despotism, tradition, long descent, ownership of wide
and well-cultivated lands, and rights over a considerable number of
serfs or peasants, gave the French noblesse considerable social
influence. In Canada feudalism had no military {100} aspect. There
was, it is true, a Canadian militia, but it had no connexion with the
feudal tenure of land. Very few of the Canadian Seigniors were of
noble birth, all were poor, their honours were brand new, their
domains were backwoods with occasional clearings, their vassals were
nearly as good men as themselves. The Feudal System in Canada was not
born of the soil, it was simply a device of a benevolent despot for
allotting and settling land, for artificially grading and classifying
an artificially-formed people, and for giving to a new country some
element of old-world respectability.

[Sidenote: _The Seigniors._]

[Sidenote: _The Habitans and their tenure._]

The Seignior held his land, in most cases, directly from the Crown.
He held it as a free gift from the King by title of faith and homage.
He held it on condition of bringing it into cultivation; and, if he
sold his Seigniory, one-fifth of the price as a rule was paid to the
Crown. There was no immemorial title to the land. The title was given
by an arbitrary overlord, and by the same could be revoked. The
condition of cultivation was annexed in order to promote settlement,
and inasmuch as most Seigniors, owing to poverty and the size of the
holdings, could not themselves fulfil the condition, they granted
lands in turn to other settlers, who held of them as they held of the
King. These other settlers were the _Habitans_, the cultivators of
the soil, and their tenancy was the tenure of _cens et rente_, whence
they were known in legal phrase as _Censitaires_. In other words,
they paid a small rent in money, or in kind, or in both. If they sold
their holdings, the Seignior received one-twelfth of the
purchase-money. They were required to grind their corn at the
Seignior's mill, to pay for the privilege of fishing one fish in
every eleven caught, and to comply with sundry other small demands,
in addition to having justice meted out occasionally at the
Seignior's hands.

These conditions may have been found in some instances petty and
annoying, but to Frenchmen of the seventeenth {101} and eighteenth
century they can hardly have been onerous. They were limited and
safeguarded, as they had been created, by the royal will; and it was
not till the year 1854, after Canada had known British rule for
nearly a hundred years, that they were swept away. That a purely
artificial system should have lasted so long and caused apparently so
little friction and discontent, argues no little skill in those who
invented it, and proves that it was not ill suited to the wants, and
harmonized with the traditions, of the colonists of Canada. It is
impossible to imagine the Puritan settler in New England submitting
to such minute regulations, taking his corn to a Seignior's mill,
baking his bread at a Seignior's oven, paying homage to another
settler set over him by a distant King. But Frenchmen could be
drilled and organized. They understood being planted out in rows,
like so many trees. Their religion and their training tended to
unquestioning obedience, and they throve in quiet sort under
restrictions which the grim and stubborn New Englander would have
trodden under foot.

[Sidenote: _Military colonization in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The Carignan Regiment._]

Though feudalism on the St. Lawrence had no military basis, military
colonization played a great part in the early settlement of Canada.
The Intendant, Talon, Colbert's right-hand man in his Canadian
schemes, took in this matter the Romans for his model. As the Romans
planted military colonies along the frontiers of their provinces,
including Gaul itself, so Colbert and Talon determined to ensure the
security of Canada by placing a barrier of soldier-colonists on the
border. There was a famous French regiment known as the
Carignan-Salières Regiment. It had been raised in Savoy by a Prince
of Carignan. It had lately fought with distinction side by side with
the Austrians against the Turks, and in 1665, under Colonel de
Salières, was sent out to Canada, the first regiment of the line
which had ever landed in New France. The main outlet for Iroquois
incursions was the line of the Richelieu river. On that river forts
were {102} built and garrisoned, and along its banks and also along
the St. Lawrence, between the mouth of the Richelieu and the island
of Montreal, time-expired soldiers were planted out as settlers.
Officers and men alike were given grants of land and bounties in
money, and the soldiers were kept for a year by the King, while
building their houses and clearing their land. The theory was that
the officers should be Seigniors, and that the soldiers who had
served under them should become tenants of their old commanders.
Where the lands were most exposed, the houses were grouped together
within palisades. Elsewhere they were detached from one another,
forming a line of dwellings along the river-side, whence the
settlements were known as _côtés_.

[Sidenote: _Size of the Seigniories._]

The usual size of a Seigniory, whether granted to a soldier or to a
civilian, was four arpents in front by forty in depth. In other
words, an arpent[6] being rather less than an acre, the frontage of a
Seigniory was about 260 yards long, while the depth was about 2,600,
or a mile and a half. This long hinterland contained the corn land,
the timber, and the hunting-grounds, but the most valuable and
distinctive feature in the Seigniories was the river frontage. In a
word, Canadian colonization consisted of a series of river-side
settlements, forming a long, narrow, military frontier, with a
wilderness behind.

[Footnote 6: The _arpent de Paris_ was .845 of an acre or 36801.7
English square feet; therefore one side of the arpent was about 64
yards.]

[Sidenote: _Strong contrasts in Canadian history._]

Such was the colony, its land, and its people. There is no exact
parallel to be found in the story of other European colonies. None of
them, perhaps, started with such very strong contrasts. Canada was
not a seaboard colony, it was a purely inland colony; yet its
settlements were so many little ports, and its active life was mainly
by, and on, the water. It was pre-eminently not a colony of towns or
of townsfolk, yet Quebec was as much the heart of Canada as Paris was
of France, and the conquest of Canada consisted {103} in the taking
of Quebec and Montreal. It was not a plantation colony, it was not a
mining colony, it was not a pastoral colony; it was a colony of
agriculturists and hunters, and its trade, such as it was, came not
so much from agriculture as from the chase. No colonists were ever
more carefully drilled and organized than the Canadian
agriculturists; none ever lived a life of more unbounded freedom than
the Canadian _coureurs de bois_. The drilling and organization of the
one element, and the roving enterprise of the other, combined to
produce a good fighting population; but the extremes in either case
were too great to result in forming a community, which should be at
once stable and progressive. What was natural in Canada was not
colonization. What was colonization, that is to say permanent
European settlement in the land, was purely artificial. The system of
settlement was cleverly conceived, and skilfully as well as humanely
carried into effect; but it depended not on law so much as on the
personal will of an absolute master. It was wanting in safeguards, it
was wanting in elasticity, it stunted individual effort, and it
contained no element of growth. A full-blown colony was called into
being under regulations which implied childhood, and the result was
to leave the Canadians contented so long as they knew no other rules
of life, but to leave them standing still, while their English
rivals, neither too lawless nor too conservative, grew out of infancy
into clumsy manhood, and proved their strength when the fullness of
the time was come.

[Sidenote: _Arrival of De Tracy, De Courcelles, and Talon._]

On June 30, 1665, the Marquis de Tracy arrived at Quebec. He had been
appointed by the King of France Lieutenant-General for the time being
of all his American possessions, including the West Indies; and,
before coming to Canada, he had visited Cayenne and the French West
India Islands. His mission was temporary, to put the colony in a
proper state of defence, and to inaugurate the system of
administration devised by the King. The new Governor {104} of Canada,
De Courcelles, and the Intendant, Talon, landed in September of the
same year. They were good men for their respective posts--the one a
keen soldier, the other, Talon, a born administrator, whose power of
organization and creative genius left a lasting mark on New France.

[Sidenote: _Operations against the Iroquois._]

The most pressing need of the colony was security against Iroquois
raids. Before the year 1665 ended, three forts had been built on the
Richelieu; one, Sorel, at its mouth, a second below the rapids at
Chambly, a third at some little distance above the rapids. The line
of communication was strengthened by the construction of sixteen or
seventeen miles of road from Chambly to the bank of the St. Lawrence
opposite Montreal, and in the following year a fourth fort was built
near the northern end of Lake Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Expedition of Courcelles;_]

The Frenchmen determined to strike soon and hard at the Five Nations.
In January, 1666, in dead of winter, Courcelles led an expedition
against them up the Richelieu, by Lakes Champlain and George, on to
the head waters of the Hudson river. The route, well known in after
years, was unfamiliar then, and instead of turning to the west into
the country of the Mohawks, the Frenchmen found themselves in the
middle of February near the small Dutch settlement of Schenectady,
where they were challenged as invaders of an English province, for in
1664 the Duke of York had become proprietor of New Netherland. It was
news to the French commander that the valley of the Hudson had passed
into British hands--unwelcome news, and would have been more
unwelcome, had he foreseen the results of the change on after
history. Of all events which strengthened the English cause in
America against the French, the most important perhaps was the
substitution of English for Dutch ownership of the present State of
New York. At the time, no rupture took place between French and
English, and, after an interchange of courtesies, Courcelles led his
troops back to Canada, losing men through cold and privation, and
{105} by the hands of the Mohawks, who dogged his retreat. He had
achieved nothing, yet the daring of his venture seems to have
impressed the Indians, and he had gained knowledge which was soon to
tell.

[Sidenote: _and of Tracy._]

In September of the same year he set out again with 1,300 men, the
whole commanded by Tracy in person. This time no mistake was made as
to the route. The hearts of the Mohawks failed them. They fled before
the invaders, leaving their strongholds empty and undefended. Each
village in turn was burnt to the ground, the stores were destroyed or
carried off, and, homeless and starving, the Indians were glad to
make peace with the French, leaving Canada unmolested for some years
to come. During those years the colony grew stronger, the
administration was recast, the settlements were organized, and,
beyond the line of colonization, explorers carried French influence
further to the west.

In 1667, Tracy returned to France. In 1671, Courcelles and Talon
followed him. In 1672, Count Frontenac came out as Governor to
Canada.

[Sidenote: _Prominence of individual leaders in the early history of
Canada._]

It has been noted above how great are the contrasts in the story of
Canada, and, so far as it was colonized, how much in the system was
artificial, how little was the result of natural growth. The record
of Canada, as compared with that of the English colonies in America,
is much more a series of biographies, much less a chronicle of a
community. Of the great men, whose lives and doings make up Canadian
history in French times, it may be said that some created Canada,
while others were Canada's own creations. In other words, some were
in but not of Canada; they came out from France to make, to rule, to
save, or to try to save, the French colony on the St. Lawrence; while
others, though many of them also came out from home, and all of them
were in their way builders of New France, yet were the outcome of
Canada itself, the result of the unbounded freedom of its backwoods,
{106} their deeds being done and their lives spent mainly beyond the
limits of the Canadian settlements. To the first class belong, among
others, Champlain (though Champlain's name might in truth appear in
either list), Talon, Frontenac, and Montcalm. The second class
comprises the names of explorers such as La Salle, of Du Luth, the
noted _coureur de bois_, and of Iberville, the bold guerilla chief,
who raided the English in Newfoundland and on Hudson Bay, who carried
out La Salle's unfinished work in Louisiana, and of whom, when dead,
Charlevoix wrote: 'The late M. d'Iberville, who had all the good
qualities of his country without any of its defects, would have led
them (his countrymen) to the end of the world.'[7]

[Footnote 7: Charlevoix's _Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières_,
Eng. tr., 1763, p. 104.]

Of these last there will be more to tell. Of the former class it may
be said that, while not children of Canada, their influence on the
history of the colony and their distinction in Canadian annals was in
proportion to the extent to which New France was the land of their
adoption. If we except discoverers, the three greatest names in
Canadian history are Champlain, Frontenac, and Montcalm, all three of
whom died at Quebec.

[Sidenote: _Count Frontenac._]

The strongly marked contrasts characteristic of Canada and its story
are illustrated in the case of Count Frontenac. Like other Governors,
before and after him, he came out from the very centre of
civilization, the Court of France: from serving in the finest army in
the world, he came to rule a barbarous borderland, and to command
troops, the majority of whom were backwoodsmen or native Indians, or
at best a half-disciplined militia. He did not come young to the
work. He was fifty-two on his arrival. When he was appointed Governor
for the second time, in 1689, he was in his seventieth year. He had
great merits and great defects. He was pretentious, arrogant, violent
and overbearing, {107} insubordinate to his employers, somewhat
unscrupulous in his policy, and not cleanhanded in repairing his
broken fortunes. On the other hand, he was resourceful, fearless, and
determined; he stood by his friends, he was not unkindly, he had in
many respects broad views, and above all he believed in Canada, its
fortunes, and its peoples. He had in a high degree the admirable
French quality of adapting himself to places and to men. He was
trusted and revered by the Indians beyond any other French or English
Governor, for, while he refused to treat them as equals, he humoured
their customs and to some extent walked in their ways. His force of
character impressed native and colonist alike. He took Canada in hand
at a time of danger and disorganization. When he died, he left her on
the lines of prosperity and possible greatness.

[Sidenote: _His first government._]

The term of his first government lasted for ten years, from 1672 to
1682. They were years of constant wrangling and worry. He was at
daggers drawn with the Jesuits, and his quarrels with his colleagues
on the Council, notably the Intendant, Duchesnau, were similar to the
disputes between Warren Hastings and Francis at another time and
place. The end of it was that both Frontenac and Duchesnau were
recalled; but Frontenac had left his mark, and after seven years'
interval, during which two governors failed, he was sent back at a
critical time to Canada.

[Sidenote: _His attempt to introduce political representation._]

[Sidenote: _Jealousy between Quebec and Montreal._]

Two incidents in his first administration may be picked out as
illustrating the boldness of his character, and implying foresight
and breadth of view unusual in a French Governor under Louis XIV. The
first was his crude attempt, already noticed,[8] to form a kind of
Canadian parliament on the old French model, with the three estates
of clergy, nobles, and people. It was a rash step to take immediately
after his arrival, when he could not have known the conditions of the
colony, and must have known well the wishes of the King. {108} It
brought upon him a severe reprimand from home, and his scheme came to
nothing. But the step, if ill timed, was in the right direction. Some
semblance of popular assembly would have done much for Canada, if
only as tending to create a national sentiment and to allay local
jealousies. For among the many elements of weakness in the colony in
its early days was the semi-independence of Montreal. Montreal was
the commercial dépôt for the upper St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the
great lakes. It was the meeting-place of French and native
fur-traders. In it centred the natural wealth of Canada, and to it
resorted the most enterprising and the least settled part of the
population. It was jealous of the older settlement of Quebec, which
was the seat of government, the centre of law and order, and which,
being nearer the sea, commanded the import and export trade with
Europe. Under its feudal Seigniors, the Sulpician monks, Montreal
claimed to have some voice in the appointment of the local Governor;
and Perrot its Governor, in the early days of Frontenac's first
administration, defied within the limits of his district the
authority of the Governor-General, and imprisoned his officers.

[Footnote 8: See above, p. 97, note.]

[Sidenote: _Founding of Fort Frontenac._]

The second event to be specially noted was the building of a fort on
the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, at the point where it flows
out of Lake Ontario. The place was known to the Indians as Cataraqui.
It is now the site of the town of Kingston. The new fort, built in
1673, the year after Frontenac came to Canada, was named after him,
Fort Frontenac. Its building marked the onward movement of the
French. Hitherto their main concern had been to secure mastery of the
central St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal, together with the
command of the Richelieu river. Among the Iroquois, they had fought
chiefly with the Mohawks, the easternmost and nearest of the Five
Nations. But before Frontenac came, and long before the central St.
Lawrence was wholly safe, traders and missionaries had {109} gained
knowledge of the western lakes, and Fort Frontenac was built to be at
once a new outpost of the colony, guarding the upper reaches of the
St. Lawrence, and a starting-point for further exploiting the trade
routes of the west. By building it, the Frenchmen made good their
claim to the river of Canada for its whole length from the lakes to
the sea, and planted themselves at the entrance of a new and vast
system of waterways.

As the St. Lawrence on its upward course broadens into Lake Ontario,
so, as the French went further west, the story of Canada widens out.
From the tale of two or three river settlements it slowly grows into
the history of a continent. The struggle becomes more and more a
struggle not so much for bare existence as for supremacy. The
Iroquois were a deadly danger still, but the danger largely consisted
in the fact that behind them was a strong and, as a rule to them, a
friendly European colony--the English State of New York. Every year
intensified the rivalry between French and English. Every year showed
that both sought to control the trade of the west. The main practical
issue, for the time being, was whether the furs from the lake region
should come down the St. Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec, or be
diverted to Albany through the country of the Five Nations. The
Iroquois held the key of the position, and they knew it. Unless they
could be taught either to fear or to love the French, there was
little hope for Canada.

[Sidenote: _The French come into contact with the Senecas._]

As the French moved up the St. Lawrence, and along Lake Ontario, they
passed along the line of the Five Nations, and came directly into
conflict with the furthermost and the strongest of the five, the
Senecas. After Tracy's successful expedition against the Mohawks in
1666, the Iroquois gave comparatively little trouble for some years.
They knew well the difference between a strong and a weak _Onontio_,
as they styled the Governor of Canada, and for Courcelles, and his
successor Frontenac, they had a wholesome respect. {110} When
Frontenac was recalled, in 1682, there was a different tale to tell.

[Sidenote: _Frontenac recalled and succeeded by La Barre._]

His successor in that year was La Barre, an old soldier of some
distinction, who had been Governor of Cayenne, which he recaptured
from the English. In Canada he proved to be an irresolute commander
and an incapable administrator, notable even among Canadian officials
for greed of gain. The Iroquois became more and more menacing. The
Senecas especially, at the western end of the line, who had never yet
felt in any measure the weight of the French arm, raided the Indians
of the Illinois, who were nominally under French protection,
threatened the tribes of the lakes, and were in a fair way to master
the trade on which Canada depended. There had been some prospect of a
rupture between the Five Nations and the English, owing to border
forays on Virginia and Maryland; but in 1684, at a great council held
at Albany, the old alliance was solemnly renewed. There was no hope
from this quarter for the French.

[Sidenote: _His expedition against the Iroquois._]

[Sidenote: _Its failure._]

[Sidenote: _He is succeeded by De Denonville._]

La Barre, whatever may have been his faults, was in a most difficult
position, but made up his mind to take the offensive, hoping by a
demonstration of force to bring the Iroquois to terms. Having
collected troops and native allies, he moved up the St. Lawrence in
the summer of 1684, from Montreal to Fort Frontenac. There he waited
while his force sickened with malarial fever. After delay he moved
his men across to the southern side of Lake Ontario, and encamped at
a place called La Famine, where more men went down with fever. There,
at length, deputies of the Iroquois came to meet him. He talked
swelling words, but the state of his camp gave them the lie. He made
a kind of truce, in which the Indians practically dictated the terms,
and he retreated down the river again, having encouraged his enemies,
disgusted his allies, brought embarrassment on the colony, and
procured his own recall. He was succeeded in the following year by
the Marquis de Denonville.

{111} [Sidenote: _His expedition against the Senecas._]

[Sidenote: _Posts placed at Niagara and Detroit._]

Denonville was at once more capable and more honest than La Barre,
but he had still greater difficulties to contend with. The Iroquois
were now quite out of hand, and Dongan, the able Governor of New
York, was taking a stronger line than was the wont of most Governors
in the English colonies, making a bold bid for the control of the
lake region. However, ample reinforcements were sent from France with
orders to attack the Five Nations, and in the summer of 1687 the
French Governor set out with an overwhelming force against the
Senecas. His troops, nearly 3,000 in all, mustered at Irondequoit
Bay, halfway along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. From thence a
route led southwards to the chief town of the Senecas. Many of the
Seneca warriors were out of the country at the time, and the French,
advancing in strength, dispersed the savages who remained, reached
the town, already burnt and deserted, and after destroying corn and
devastating the neighbouring land, returned to the lake. A fort was
then built at the further end of the lake, below Niagara,[9] to
command the junction of Lakes Erie and Ontario, as in the previous
year a stockade had been constructed on the strait of Detroit, to
control the passage from Lake Huron to Lake Erie; after which the
Governor returned to Montreal.

[Footnote 9: In March of this same year Dongan was urging on the
Lords of Trade the building of an English fort at Niagara, or as he
called it, Oneigra, 'near the great lake on the way whereby our
people go hunting and trading. It is very necessary for our trade and
correspondence with the Indians, and for securing our right to the
country' (_Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1685-8, p. 328).]

[Sidenote: _Fruitlessness of the expedition._]

[Sidenote: _The massacre of Lachine._]

The French, to quote Colden's words,[10] had 'got nothing but dry
blows by this expedition.' Denonville had not done enough. He had
enraged the confederate Indians without crippling them. A few months
before, with odious treachery, he had ordered some friendly Iroquois
to be kidnapped and sent to France to serve in the galleys. The
tribesmen of the prisoners neither forgave nor forgot, and in less
than two {112} years' time they paid the debt. On the island of
Montreal, some eight miles above the town to the south-west, at the
head of rapids now cut by a canal, and at the lower end of the broad
reach of the St. Lawrence--which bears the name of Lake St.
Louis--was the settlement of Lachine. At the beginning of August,
1689, at dead of night and under cover of a storm, many hundred
Iroquois warriors broke in upon the settlers. Two hundred of the
French were butchered there and then. One hundred and twenty were
carried off, some to be tortured and burnt almost within sight of
their countrymen, others to be gradually done to death in the lodges
of the Five Nations. A detachment of eighty French soldiers was also
cut to pieces, and outside forts and palisades the country was a
scene of death and desolation.

[Footnote 10: _History of the Five Nations_ (3rd ed.), vol. i, chap.
v, p. 82.]

[Sidenote: _Abandonment of Fort Frontenac. Recall of Denonville and
return of Frontenac._]

The horrors of Lachine stand out in Canadian history as a kind of
Sicilian Vespers or Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The upper part of
the colony, Montreal and its neighbourhood, was paralysed with
terror, and once more, for a moment, the Iroquois seemed to threaten
the very existence of New France. It was not so in fact. Below Three
Rivers Canada was safe, and the savages did not, as in old days,
parade their triumph beneath the cliffs of Quebec. Meanwhile
Denonville had already been recalled, his last act being to order in
his panic the evacuation and destruction of Fort Frontenac; and the
old Frenchman, after whom that fort had been named, came back in his
seventieth year to save and to rule Canada.

[Sidenote: _Callières._]

Another competent man returned with Frontenac, after a short visit to
France--Callières, the Governor of Montreal. He was a strong second
in command, and, when Frontenac died, was appointed to succeed him,
and carried on his work. The two commanders arrived in the autumn of
1689, to find all in confusion and distress; but Frontenac was not
forgotten. His presence gave confidence, and even among the {113}
Iroquois his name secured respect. It was his habit to see with his
own eyes, to take his own line, to act with promptitude and decision.
These qualities, when coupled with ten years' previous experience of
the colony, were invaluable at a crisis. He might quarrel with
Intendants, browbeat Councillors, and denounce Jesuit priests; but to
the settlers he gave security, to the adventurous backwoodsmen of the
West he was a congenial leader, and to the Indians he was the great
_Onontio_, whose actions matched his words.

[Sidenote: _Confidence restored by Frontenac._]

[Sidenote: _His dealings with the Indians._]

For the time he was not in a position to carry war into the Iroquois
country, and the Iroquois would not listen to friendly overtures. He
contented himself, therefore, with strengthening the forts and
defences of the colony and with issuing proclamations to the wavering
tribes of the lakes. It was one thing when La Barre or Denonville
spoke, it was another when the words were those of Frontenac. His
next step was to intimidate the English allies of the Five Nations,
and to send three raiding parties into New England and New York. This
was the kind of irregular warfare for which the Canadians were best
suited. All three expeditions were successful; and their success,
coupled with two defeats of parties of Iroquois on the Ottawa, by Du
Luth in 1689 and Nicolas Perrot in 1690, both noted leaders of
_coureurs de bois_, gave new heart to Canada. Before the summer of
1690 ended, the Indians of the upper lakes came down in force to
trade at Montreal, and the grey-headed Governor-General of New France
led the war dance, hatchet in hand, appealing to savages in savage
fashion, as only a versatile Frenchman could.

It was a typical proceeding. French priests turned heathens into
Christians, but left them on their savage lines. French hunters lived
among Indians, adopting Indian garb and Indian methods; and the great
Governor of Canada, who of all others was a ruler of men, led a
yelling crowd in their native prelude for war, as sure in {114}
self-esteem, as sure in the esteem of his company, as if he were
treading a minuet in stately fashion at the Court of Versailles. The
English had no such address; but not having it they ran less risk for
the future of their kind. They kept the heathen, for the most part,
outside their pale. They did little to convert them. They did little
to befriend or protect them. But the English race remained stronger
and purer in its dour isolation than the assimilated and assimilating
Frenchmen of what was then Upper Canada.

[Sidenote: _Insecurity of the French settlers above Three Rivers._]

Raids and counter raids went on. Of the part which the English took
in the fighting, something will be said presently. So far as the
struggle was between the French and the Five Nations, the scene of
action was either the Ottawa river, or the angle between the
Richelieu and the St. Lawrence. Always important, as being the direct
trade route from Lake Huron, the Ottawa was more important now,
seeing that there was a larger population in Canada than in bygone
days dependent on the fur trade, and that since Denonville's abortive
expedition against the Senecas, the massacre of Lachine, and the
evacuation of Fort Frontenac, the French had lost command of the
upper St. Lawrence.

The corner of land lying between Chambly on the Richelieu and
Montreal was the old battlefield of French and Iroquois. By this
line, before Tracy's expedition of 1666, the Mohawks had raided
Canada; by this line, once more, their war-parties came. Below the
Three Rivers, at Quebec and in its neighbourhood, there was no fear
of the Indians, though there was both apprehension and reality of
English invasion, and distress from English blockade of Canadian
trade. But in the upper half of the colony, of which Montreal was the
centre, there was no security for life or property outside
fortifications and stockades.

[Sidenote: _Madeleine de Verchères._]

Some twenty miles below Montreal, on the southern bank of the St.
Lawrence, in the troubled belt of land between that river and the
Richelieu, was the Seigniory of Verchères. {115} There was on it a
fort and a blockhouse, which, in the last week of October, 1692, was
the scene of one of the most picturesque episodes in all the annals
of border warfare. The Seignior, a military man, was absent, the fort
was nearly empty, for the able-bodied men were working in the fields,
when the Iroquois came down on the place. The Seignior's daughter,
Madeleine de Verchères, a girl of fourteen, took charge of the fort,
having for a garrison, over and above women and children, two
terrified soldiers, one hired man-servant, one refugee settler, an
old man of eighty, and two small boys, her brothers. She gave the
command, she placed each at his post, she misled the savages by a
show of imaginary force, and watching day and night she held them at
bay, until, at the end of a week, a party of soldiers came to her
relief from Montreal. Years afterwards the tale of the siege was
taken down from her own lips; and her name lives, and deserves to
live, in the history of Canada. The girl's heroism is the chief, but
not the only, point of the story. That the Mohawks should have
prowled round the fort for a week without seriously attempting to
take it, and without finding out that it was nearly defenceless,
shows how helpless and stupid these noted warriors were when face to
face with a fortification. On the other hand, that a post, only
twenty miles distant from Montreal, was left for a week without
relief, proves how paralysed, or at least how weakened, were the
French by a long series of Indian incursions. This was in Frontenac's
time; but Frontenac had the English on his hands, and was short of
men. Had it been otherwise, there would have been no beleaguering of
girls in forts, and Canada would have lost a pretty story.

[Sidenote: _Revival of the French cause._]

As it was, the scale soon turned in favour of the French. In dead of
winter, at the beginning of 1693, a mixed body of Canadians and
Indians broke in upon the Mohawk towns, and, in spite of a somewhat
disastrous retreat, inflicted considerable loss on their persistent
enemies; while later {116} in the year, at the bidding of the sturdy
old Governor, a strong party of _coureurs de bois_ came down the
Ottawa, convoying a long pent-up and most welcome cargo of furs. This
'gave as universal joy to Canada as the arrival of the galleons give
in Spain';[11] and Frontenac was hailed as the father of the people.

[Footnote 11: Colden's _History of the Five Nations_ (3rd ed.), vol.
i, chap. ix, p. 159.]

[Sidenote: _The Iroquois complain of English inaction._]

More soldiers came out from France, and the Iroquois began to lose
heart. Many of their warriors had fallen, and not a few, converted by
the Jesuits, had settled in Canada, being known to their heathen
countrymen as the 'praying Indians.'[12] From the English colonies
little or no help had come, beyond supplies of arms and ammunition.
The councils at Albany produced on the English side pretentious
speeches, criticism, encouragement, and promises which were never
fulfilled; but the words of the Indians were more to the point, 'the
whole burden of the war lies on us alone ... we alone cannot continue
the war against the French by reason of the recruits they daily
receive from the other side the Great Lake.'[13] They had been
faithful to the English alliance, more faithful than the English
deserved, and more faithful than any civilized nation would have been
under like circumstances; but they tired of fighting singlehanded,
and the chain of the covenant began to rust.

[Footnote 12: The converted Iroquois were settled at Caughnawaga,
which was on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, at the Sault St.
Louis, and directly opposite Lachine. They were often called
Caughnawagas.]

[Footnote 13: Colden, vol. i, chap. x, p. 176.]

[Sidenote: _Their policy towards the French._]

[Sidenote: _Barbarity of Frontenac._]

In default of active aid from the English, there were two policies
open to them--to make terms with the French, and to detach from the
French cause the Indian tribes of the lakes. They pursued both
policies at once: they invited Frontenac to meet them and the English
at Albany; he refused. He refused also to come to a meeting at
Onondaga. {117} They then sent a deputation to Quebec in 1694; and
Frontenac offered a peace which should include the Indian allies of
the French and exclude the English. Two nations of the confederacy
were ready to accept these terms; the other three rejected them, and
there was no peace. In the meantime the Iroquois intrigued with the
Lake Indians, and, attracted by the prospect of English goods, the
latter came near exchanging the French alliance for combination with
the Five Nations and the English. To prevent this result, Frontenac
and his officers had resort to infamous methods. Not only at the
forest post of Michillimackinac, but at Montreal itself, the French
compelled the wavering Indians to burn Iroquois prisoners to death,
in order to make peace impossible, and joined themselves in the
torture and butchery. Few worse instances of barbarous policy are
recorded in history.

[Sidenote: _Fort Frontenac reoccupied._]

Such means alone would not attain the desired end. Nothing, the
Governor knew, would avail except acknowledged mastery over the Five
Nations. The most obvious confession of weakness on the French side
in Denonville's disastrous time had been the evacuation of Fort
Frontenac; and never had Denonville's successor slackened his
determination to reoccupy the post, which, if he had arrived in
Canada a day or two earlier, would not have been abandoned. The time
came in the summer of 1695. A force, secretly and quickly gathered,
was sent up from Montreal; the walls of the fort still standing were
repaired; and the Iroquois were startled by the news that the post,
which they most dreaded, and which most menaced their confederacy,
was again manned by a French garrison. Frontenac was just in time.
The day after the expedition started, orders came from France that
the fort should not be reoccupied; but he refused to recall his
troops, and set himself to justify, by further measures, his
disobedience to the home Government.

[Sidenote: _Frontenac's expedition against the Five Nations._]

In July, 1696, he set out from Montreal at the head of {118} over
2,000 men. The military strength of Canada was well represented;
there were French soldiers of the line, Canadian militia, and
friendly Indians. With the old Governor went his best
officers--Callières leading the van of the march, Vaudreuil bringing
up the rear. The force reached Fort Frontenac, crossed Lake Ontario,
and, landing at the mouth of the Oswego river, worked their way up,
by stream and lake and portage, towards the goal of the
expedition--Onondaga, the central town and meeting-place of the Five
Nations. What had happened before happened again. The Indians
retreated into the forest before superior numbers, leaving the French
a barren conquest over the smouldering ashes of the native town and
the standing corn. The Oneidas' village and maize fields were also
laid waste, and then the invaders retraced their steps.

[Sidenote: _Death of Frontenac._]

Though the expedition was recorded by the French as a success,
Frontenac had done no more than Denonville in his march against the
Senecas, and a writer on the English side contemptuously refers to it
as 'a kind of heroic dotage'.[14] The show of force, however, seems
to have had the effect of inclining the Iroquois to peace, of proving
once more that the French were more active than the English, and that
the arm of _Onontio_ was longer than that of the Governor of New
York. Early in 1698 came news of the Peace of Ryswick. The Five
Nations were subjects neither of England nor of France, but both
Canada and New York claimed them. Sturdily to the last, Frontenac
repelled English pretensions and half-hearted Indian advances; but
the hand of death was upon him, and on November 28, 1698, he died at
Quebec, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

[Footnote 14: Colden, vol. i, chap. xii, p. 202.]

[Sidenote: _His services to Canada._]

He had rid Canada in a great measure from the scourge of murdering
savages. He had humbled the Iroquois to some extent; he had certainly
won their respect. How he withstood the English in open warfare, and
how he {119} encouraged Frenchmen of his own bold type to explore and
to claim the far West, remains to be told. He was a great man for the
time and place, great in fearlessness, in self-reliance, in
foresight, and in unflinching tenacity of purpose. The element of
bombast and arrogance in his character helped him, as it helped other
Frenchmen, whose names have lived, in handling native races. As a
ruler of wild men, whether coloured or white, he was unsurpassed. The
ruthlessness of his policy has left a stain upon his memory; but he
gave life and confidence to Canada in time of trouble, and but for
him there would have been no future for New France.

[Sidenote: _The Iroquois make peace with the French._]

His deeds and his character bore fruit immediately after his death.
At the invitation of his successor, Callières, a general meeting of
all the Indian tribes was held at Montreal, in 1701, to which the
Iroquois condescended to send representatives. Peace was made; and
the French, whom the Five Nations had brought to the brink of ruin,
emerged from the contest as acknowledged arbitrators between the
native races of North America.

[Sidenote: _Causes which inclined the Iroquois to peace. Loss of
numbers._]

Thus, with the close of the seventeenth century, came in effect the
close of the life-and-death struggle between the Five Nation Indians
and the Canadian settlers. What were the causes which brought the
Iroquois to terms? The first and most potent was loss of numbers.
Continual bloodshed had reduced the male population of the
confederates by half;[15] and mixture by adoption, it may well be
supposed, had brought some alloy into the old fighting breed. When
white men meet coloured men in war, there is always the same tale to
tell. The white men suffer reverses, as long as they are a handful,
and until the native race has lost a certain proportion of its
warriors. Then strength, and knowledge, and discipline prevail; and
the issue is no longer in doubt. But no other coloured race in the
history of colonization fought with Europeans, man for man, like the
Iroquois, and never {120} submitting, treated sullenly as equals only
when the white race were absolutely superior in numbers. Big
battalions in the end usually determine the course of history. They
certainly decided the fate of North America. Numerical strength
turned the scale in favour of the French, as against the Iroquois. It
subsequently turned the scale in favour of the English, as against
the French.

[Footnote 15: See Parkman's _Count Frontenac_, last page, note.]

[Sidenote: _Personality of Frontenac._]

The second cause which influenced the Iroquois was Frontenac's
personality. In dealing with him the Indians dealt, and knew that
they dealt, with a man who in the greatest straits would never give
way an inch. There was no compromise in his policy. He meant to be
master; the savages knew it, and respected him accordingly. He did
not live to complete his work, and it was not thoroughly completed;
but he lived long enough to cripple the Five Nations, and after his
time their strength declined.

[Sidenote: _Shortcomings of the English._]

A third cause was the failure of the English. They missed their
opportunities. The path of English colonization has been strewn with
lost opportunities. The end has been achieved in most cases, and in
most parts of the world; but it has been achieved only after long
years of toil, expense, and loss of life, which a little foresight
might well have avoided. There was no Frontenac on the English side,
no man who went in advance of his Government, who framed and forced a
strong policy. One Governor of New York, the Irishman Dongan, was
active and determined, but those who came after did little. The
element of compromise in the English character, and in the policy of
the English Government, made itself felt. Colony was jealous of
colony, petty legislatures wrangled, and farmers resented being
called to fight instead of sowing or harvesting their crops. Over and
above all, whether as friends or as foes, the Frenchmen stretched out
their right hands to the native races of North America; the English
lived their lives apart, and for the time they paid the penalty.

{121} [Sidenote: _Founding of Detroit._]

[Sidenote: _La Mothe Cadillac._]

Thus the Five Nations made peace with the French at Montreal. At the
very same time, at Albany,[16] they gave the English a title to the
lake regions. In the year 1686, by Denonville's orders, Du Luth, with
a party of _coureurs de bois_, established a French outpost on the
strait (Detroit) between Lakes Huron and Erie,[17] his object being
to prevent the fur trade of the upper lakes passing down that way to
the Iroquois country, and thence to the English market at Albany. The
post was not maintained; but some years afterwards a more permanent
occupation took place. Frontenac had died; but he left behind him men
trained in his school, keen on a forward policy, on holding in the
interests of France and in their own the passes of the West. Such a
man was La Mothe Cadillac, who in 1694 had been sent to take command
at Michillimackinac. He urged upon the French Government the
importance of controlling the outlet from Lake Huron to Lake Erie,
and, having obtained their consent, was the founder of the city of
Detroit. He began the work in July, 1701, but before his expedition
actually reached the place, the Five Nations took alarm, recognizing
that Detroit, like Fort Frontenac, would limit their range and
endanger their power.

[Footnote 16: The great meeting at Montreal was held on Aug. 4, 1701.
The deed of cession referred to in the text was dated July 19, 1701.]

[Footnote 17: See above, p. 111.]

[Sidenote: _The Iroquois cede their hunting-grounds to the King of
England._]

They sent representatives of all their nations to Albany, and there,
on July 19, 1701, ceded to the King of England their 'beaver
hunting-ground,' retaining for themselves the right of free hunting.
The deed was of the most formal character, attested by the totem
marks of all the Five Nations.[18] It is an interesting document,
setting forth that the Iroquois had already subjected themselves and
their lands 'on this side of Cataraqui (Ontario) lake wholly to the
Crown of {122} England,' and conveying to the King a wide area to the
north of the lake, which the Five Nations claimed as their
hunting-ground in right of conquest. The tract was estimated at 800
miles in length by 400 in breadth, extending on the north to Lake
Superior, on the west to Chicago, and it specifically included
Detroit,[19] the French designs on which were stated as the reason
for making the cession. A white man's hand must have drawn the deed.
It gave away the Iroquois entirely. Hitherto they had stubbornly
rejected any English claim to sovereignty. Brother the Governor of
New York had been, but not father, and no allegiance had been offered
to the King of England; but in the conveyance William III figured as
'the great lord and master' of the Five Nations, and on paper the
acknowledgement of British sovereignty was complete.

[Footnote 18: A certified copy in manuscript sent home at the time
may be seen at the Record Office, and a printed copy is included in
the New York documents.]

[Footnote 19: Spoken of in the deed in one place as 'Tiengsachrondio
alias Fort de Tret.']

It was a piece of parchment only, and as such and no more the
Iroquois probably regarded it; but it embodied a small element of
fact. These hardheaded, hardhanded Indians were gradually being worn
down by the white men on either side, owing such measure of
independence as they still retained not so much to their own fighting
strength as to the constant enmity between Great Britain and France.
When war broke out again, after Queen Anne's accession, they remained
for the most part neutral; what they had claimed and conveyed as
their hunting-ground passed more and more under French control,
while, as the result of Marlborough's victories on the other side of
the Atlantic, their own land and its cantons was awarded to Great
Britain in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht.[20]

[Footnote 20: Clause xv of the Treaty of Utrecht ran as follows: 'The
subjects of France inhabiting Canada, and others, shall hereafter
give no hinderance or molestation to the Five Nations or Cantons of
Indians subject to the dominion of Great Britain nor to the other
natives of America who are friends to the same.']

[Illustration: Map of New England, New York & Central Canada, showing
the Waterways]




{123}

CHAPTER IV

FRENCH AND ENGLISH DOWN TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT


Down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht, the Iroquois formed the
first line of the foes of Canada. Behind them were the English.

[Sidenote: _Little communication in early times between Canada and
the English colonies._]

[Sidenote: _Route from the Atlantic to Quebec by the line of the
Kennebec._]

After Quebec had been in 1632 given back to France, the English on
the Atlantic coast, and the French on the St. Lawrence, for many
years came little into contact with each other. In Acadia the two
nations overlapped, with results which are told elsewhere, and it was
the same in Newfoundland; but the French colonists at Quebec and the
English colonists at Boston or in Virginia were far apart. We read of
an English traveller finding his way, in 1640, from the coast of
Maine, up the Kennebec river and by the Chaudière, to Quebec, his
journey being noted as an explorer's feat with an ultimate design of
reaching the North Sea; while a few years later, in 1647-51, the same
route became better known, and was taken by French emissaries of
peace to the New England states.

[Sidenote: _Proposals for a treaty between the English and French
colonies._]

Negotiations were then on foot, at the instance of Winthrop, Governor
of Massachusetts, for a treaty of commerce between the English and
French colonies in North America, and it was suggested that they
should keep peace with each other even in the event of war in Europe
between the respective mother countries.[1] Such a treaty {124} might
have been made and kept, if there had been no native question; but
each side had Indian friends and Indian foes, and could not afford to
alienate the one or add to the number of the other. The French wanted
New England support against the Iroquois, and with the Iroquois the
New Englanders had no quarrel. Thus the friendly overtures between
the two parties came to nothing; but Frenchmen on the river of Canada
and Englishmen by the open sea went their own ways, having no direct
dealings with each other in war or peace.

[Footnote 1: A like sensible policy was pursued in the little island
of St. Kitts, when first colonized by French and English. They agreed
to keep the peace whether or not France and Great Britain were at
war. See vol. ii of this series, chap. iv, p. 135. See also
Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol. ii, p. 426.]

[Sidenote: _The English take New York._]

A change came when the English, in 1664, took possession of New York.
They too had now a river--the Hudson--which carried them inland; they
became neighbours and friends of the Five Nations; and their natural
line of expansion was in the direction of the St. Lawrence and the
great lakes. From this time onward collision between French and
English was inevitable, and it was equally inevitable that the colony
of New York should be the central point of the contest.

[Sidenote: _Want of union between the English colonies._]

Before the Dutchmen on Manhattan Island and in the valley of the
Hudson became subjects of the British Crown, they had themselves
absorbed the Swedish colonists on the Delaware. The result,
therefore, of New York becoming a British province was to link
together the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. It has been
said above that English colonization in North America was more
compact and more continuous than French. In other words, though the
English colonists many times outnumbered the French, they were less
dispersed through the wilderness. But the compactness and continuity
was comparative only. Continuity of English colonization meant little
more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with
those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could
plant {125} a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without
committing a trespass and fighting for its place. There was no
continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony
was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood.
Separately they were planted. Their surroundings, their traditions,
their interests were all distinct. Sprung in the main from one stock,
and speaking one language, they had little else in common. They had
not even the bond of a common religious creed.

[Sidenote: _Dissensions in New York._]

Within each single colony there was division still. Settlements and
homesteads were often far from one another, and political or
religious dissensions supplemented geographical separation. New York
was an instance in point. Alone among the colonies, it had a good
waterway for any distance inland; but there was little community of
interest between the settlers at Albany or Schenectady, and the
seaport at Manhattan Island, except so far as the latter commanded
the import and export trade of the Hudson valley. The settlers at the
mouth of the Hudson were merchants and seafaring men. The settlers
inland were farmers, landholders, and traders with the Indians. The
former were exposed to attack by sea, but recked little of the French
in Canada or their Indian allies. The latter had nothing to fear from
a hostile fleet, but were constantly in danger from an inroad from
Canada. Then there were feuds of race and religion. The English
overpowered the Dutch, and with the English came in the rule of the
Duke of York, Roman Catholic influence, and a policy too often
dictated by France.

[Sidenote: _Leisler's rebellion._]

The Revolution, which turned out the Stuarts in England, was followed
by a rising in New York. There was a cleavage, not so much on lines
of race, as on those of politics and religion. The extreme
Protestants and Republicans, whose stronghold was in and about the
town of New York, rose against the existing system, which was upheld
by the more {126} moderate and aristocratic section of the
population, who were stronger up country, and were supported by such
men as Schuyler, the chief magistrate of Albany. Jacob Leisler, a
German, led the revolutionary party, and in 1689, backed by the
militia, he deposed the Lieutenant-Governor and took the government
into his own hands. He played the part of Cromwell for two years
until, in 1691, regular troops were sent out from England, when he
was deserted by his followers, imprisoned, and hanged; and the
ordinary methods of colonial government were resumed.

[Sidenote: _Want of union made the English impotent against the
French._]

Colony being thus divided from colony, and the one colony which
directly abutted on Canada being divided against itself, it was long
before the English made any headway against the French on the St.
Lawrence. At almost any given date the French had a larger number of
regular troops available, supported by Canadian rangers, whose life
was spent in border warfare--the whole being under one Governor, who
was, as has been seen, invariably a man of considerable military
experience. On the sea the English could more than hold their own,
but the sea-route from New York or Boston to Quebec was long and
troublesome. If such an expedition was taken in hand, there could be
no secrecy and no speed in the matter. There was gathering of ships
and transports; discussions as to the quota of each colony; selection
of a leader because he was a good neighbour or a popular citizen,
rather than for any naval or military capacity. There was sailing
round the coast, taking Acadia on the way, and finally arrival before
Quebec after men and ships had dropped off and the French had been
forewarned and forearmed. Thus down to the date of the Treaty of
Utrecht English efforts against the French in Canada amounted to
little more than giving arms and supplies to the Five Nations, making
occasional counter raids by land, and still more occasional
demonstrations by sea.

{127} [Sidenote: _First proposal for joint action against the
French._]

It will be remembered[2] that in February, 1666, the French
commander, Courcelles, on his bold midwinter expedition against the
Mohawks, strayed from his route, and found himself near Corlaer or
Schenectady, where he learnt that the English had become masters of
New York, and that there was an English garrison at Albany. This was
the first intrusion of the French into the Hudson valley. Tracy's
expedition against the Mohawk towns later in the same year gave
Colonel Nicolls, the first English Governor of New York, occasion to
invite the New England colonies to join him in attacking the French.
They refused, fearing that, if they sided with the Iroquois, they
would be exposed to attack from the Abenakis, who were on their
borders, and who were friends of the French, foes of the Five
Nations. Some twenty years then passed without open rupture. New York
was retaken by the Dutch and regained by the English. The
colonization of Canada went on. The Iroquois remained comparatively
quiet, and in Frontenac's first term of administration western
exploration and western trade began to determine French policy in
Canada and English policy in New York.

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 104.]

[Sidenote: _Thomas Dongan._]

[Sidenote: _Meeting between the English Governors and the chiefs of
the Five Nations._]

[Sidenote: _Bad feeling between French and English._]

In 1683, after Frontenac had come to Canada for the first time and
gone again, New York was given in the Irish Catholic, Thomas Dongan,
a Governor of strength and foresight. In the following year, at a
conference held at Albany, at which Lord Howard of Effingham, the
Governor of Virginia, was present, the alliance between the English
and the Five Nations was formally confirmed; and, assured of English
aid and protection, the Iroquois turned their strength against
Canada. Though there was peace between Great Britain and France in
James II's time, the relations between New York and Canada were the
reverse of friendly. The French knew that the Five Nations were
backed by the English. Dongan on his part was resolved that the {128}
trade of the West should not be left exclusively in French hands.
Angry letters passed between him and Denonville, English and Dutch
traders on the lakes were intercepted by the Canadians, and a party
from Montreal captured and looted three English trading posts on
Hudson Bay. In 1688 Dongan was recalled, and in the following year
news reached the American colonies of the Revolution in England.

[Sidenote: _French plan for attacking New York._]

[Sidenote: _Frontenac's raiding parties._]

The expulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of William III to the
throne of Great Britain meant war with France; and at this critical
moment Frontenac came back to Canada. He came back with a plan,
devised by Callières and approved by the King, for attacking New York
by land and sea. A stillborn scheme it proved, through untoward
delays, but its conception indicated that New York was recognized by
the French Government and its advisers as the key of the position in
North America. While plans were being laid by the French for the
invasion of New York the Iroquois invaded Canada, and the massacre of
Lachine faced Frontenac on his return in 1689. Next year he sent out
against the English colonies the three expeditions which have been
already mentioned.[3]

[Footnote 3: See above, p. 113.]

[Sidenote: _The capture of Schenectady._]

The first started from Montreal in depth of winter, following the
familiar route of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, and intending to
strike a blow at Albany. The men were picked for the work, Frenchmen
and Indians, about 250 in all, led by the best of Canadian rangers,
such as Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brothers. They toiled through
ice and snow, and, turning off from the path to Albany, in the
darkness of a winter's night they fell upon the Dutch settlement of
Schenectady. It was the time of Leisler's movement, when New York was
in the throes of revolution. The village was unguarded, its gates
were open, its inmates were asleep. A blockhouse manned by eight or
nine militiamen from {129} Connecticut was stormed, and the scene was
one of helpless massacre.

[Sidenote: _The attack on Salmon Falls and Falmouth._]

The second party, smaller in number, consisting of some fifty French
and Abenaki Indians, left Three Rivers towards the end of January,
and near the end of March made a night attack on the settlement of
Salmon Falls, on the borders of New Hampshire and Maine. Again the
English, sleeping and unprepared, were murdered in their beds, and
the murderers, making good their retreat, joined forces with the
third and strongest party, which had set out from Quebec to attack
the settlement of Falmouth at Casco Bay. Falmouth stood where the
town of Portland in Maine now stands. There was a fort at the
place--Fort Loyal--into which the outlying settlers gathered with
their families when the attacking force of four or five hundred men
appeared. After a short defence the commander, Sylvanus Davies by
name, surrendered on solemn promise, according to his own
circumstantial account, of quarter and freedom for the whole company.
The terms were immediately broken, and all the English were massacred
or carried into captivity.

[Sidenote: _Effect of the French raids._]

Thus three separate raids on the English colonies, sent out under
Frontenac's orders in the year 1690, were all successful. They were
well devised, and carried out with skill, courage, and determination.
The English and Dutch settlers, on their side, showed the greatest
negligence and little stubbornness or competence in self-defence. The
immediate result was to invigorate the French and their Indian
allies; but the causes of their momentary success were the causes of
their ultimate failure; and even at the moment these marauding
exploits threatened new danger to Canada. The French succeeded
because, leagued with savages, they in all things likened themselves
to their companions, they habited themselves in Indian dress, their
warriors were ferocious as Indian warriors, their priests hounded on
to blood. They succeeded because their trade was war not peace, {130}
because they were roving adventurers who had only their lives to
lose, ravening among quiet men of substance who had homes and wives
and children to be plundered and slain. It was as certain that in
course of time the cause of the English colonists would prevail, as
that the Highland clans, who in Scotland marauded their southern
neighbours, would eventually be broken, or that the Five Nations
themselves, if left to fight alone, would eventually go down before
the settled life of Canada.

[Sidenote: _They tended to unite the English colonists._]

On this occasion three blows were struck, nearly at the same time, at
three separate points in a long undefended line. The adoption of this
policy by the French, and still more the fact of its success, in
reality tended to remove the one great obstacle to British supremacy
in North America. When Sylvanus Davies, taken at Fort Loyal and
carried prisoner to Quebec, asked Frontenac the reason for the savage
raid on the Casco Bay settlement, he was told that it was reprisal
for the support given to the Iroquois by New York. His rejoinder,
which was to the effect that New England should not be called upon to
answer for the doings of New York, showed how little community of
sentiment or interest existed in the English colonies. The one great
source of weakness to the English cause, the greatest source of
strength to the French, was the disunion of the English colonies and
their indifference to each other. Consolidation could come only
through partnership in suffering, and pressure from a common foe.
This was the lesson which Frontenac taught, when his border ruffians
carried havoc from the head waters of the Hudson to the sea-coast of
Maine.

[Sidenote: _The colonies determine to attack Canada._]

The lesson was never fully learnt as long as the Atlantic colonies
were British possessions and Canada was French; but for a time the
French outrages produced some semblance of common action on the other
side; and at a conference held at Albany, in 1690, it was resolved to
attack Canada by land and sea. The land expedition, taking the route
{131} of Lake Champlain, was a failure, ending in a small raid on the
French settlement of La Prairie; and the main effort was made by sea.
On sea the New Englanders showed the way, led by the men of
Massachusetts.

[Sidenote: _Massachusetts takes the lead._]

[Sidenote: _Capture of Port Royal._]

The 'Bostonnais,' as the French called them, were dangerous foes of
Canada. Puritans, Republicans, sea-fighters, sea-traders, they were
all that the Canadians were not. They were strong in numbers too. At
the end of the seventeenth century, Boston was a town of some 7,000
inhabitants, and the population of the whole colony was estimated at
not far short of 50,000, against less than 15,000 French in Canada.
At the very time that the French and Indian raid on Casco Bay took
place, a fleet of seven or eight ships with 700 men on board sailed
from Boston for Acadia, took possession of Port Royal with other
French settlements on the Acadian coast, and returned in little more
than a month's time with prisoners, booty, and renown.

[Sidenote: _William Phipps._]

The commander of the expedition was William Phipps, a typical product
of the seaboard colonies. Starting as a New England ship-carpenter,
he had turned rover and buccaneer; and finding a sunken Spanish
treasure-ship, had won himself riches and a knighthood. He was brave,
not too scrupulous or cleanhanded, a good seaman, and a patriotic
man. He was well fitted for irregular warfare on a small scale, but
his capacity was limited, and he did not rise to the level of
greatness. After his success in Acadia, Phipps seemed obviously the
man to achieve the conquest of Canada.

[Sidenote: _Condition of Quebec._]

Sixty years had passed since David Kirke took Quebec. A better leader
than Phipps, he had had an easy task in starving out an infant
settlement. The interval had been for Quebec a time of comparative
peace. Sheltered on the land side by Three Rivers, Montreal, and the
military outposts of the Richelieu, the town was practically safe
from the Iroquois, while civil wars and Stuart Kings in England
prevented invasion from the sea. One year and another {132} the furs
which came down the river, or the supplies which were brought from
France, were intercepted; but in the main the capital of New France
enjoyed security and peace. It had grown, but was a very small town
still, ill fortified, except by nature, and, if fortune and skill had
combined, might well have been taken. But in 1690 there was no luck
and little skill on the attacking side. The land campaign, which was
to have kept Frontenac and his best troops at Montreal, failed just
in time to enable all the available French forces to concentrate at
Quebec. England, when asked by Massachusetts to help the expedition
by arms and ammunition, sent nothing; and, while the appeal was being
made, valuable time was lost. Phipps was at first too leisurely and
afterwards too impatient to succeed, and wind and weather befriended
the Frenchmen in Quebec.

[Sidenote: _Phipps' expedition against Quebec._]

[Sidenote: _Its failure._]

It was the ninth of August when the New England commander sailed from
Nantucket with thirty-four ships, and soldiers and sailors to the
number of 2,200 men. It was the sixteenth of October when he anchored
before Quebec. He sent a pompous summons to surrender, which provoked
an insulting reply, and then prepared to land his troops below the
town, to attack it in rear, while his ships opened fire in front. It
was a hopeless enterprise. The night after the English fleet
appeared, strong reinforcements came in from Montreal, and Frontenac
had at his disposal not far short of 3,000 fighting men. On the
eighteenth, the New England levies were landed on the Beauport shore,
having the river St. Charles between them and Quebec. They were
between 1,200 and 1,300 in number, commanded by Major Walley. Short
of food and supplies, sickening in the wet weather, out-numbered by
disciplined troops and Canadian rangers, who fought under cover and
with the advantage of the ground, they could do nothing but prove
themselves brave and stubborn men. Phipps on shipboard gave them no
support, wasting his ammunition in a wild and useless cannonade {133}
against the face of the cliff and the walls of the upper town; and in
ten days time all the men were re-embarked and the ships set sail for
home.

[Sidenote: _Boldness of the attempt._]

So ended in complete failure the attempt of Massachusetts to take
Quebec. Yet it was a bold and masterful effort on the part of one
undeveloped English colony. It had in it the elements of strength,
and under different conditions might have earned success. As it was,
the citizen soldiers and sailors of Boston, led by an
ex-ship-carpenter, faced Count Frontenac and all the trained strength
of New France, their retreat was unmolested, and their failure was
hailed as a miraculous deliverance for Quebec.[4]

[Footnote 4: Phipps, before he made his attack, was told by French
prisoners of the path up the cliff above the town, by which Wolfe
subsequently took Quebec; but he preferred to attack from Beauport.]

[Sidenote: _Death of Phipps._]

Phipps had not proved himself to be a great commander. He failed too
as Governor of Massachusetts, to which post he was appointed in the
following year; but he had the merit of dogged determination to fight
the French in Canada; and, had he lived longer, he might again have
tried his hand at besieging Quebec. A few weeks after his repulse and
return to Boston, he sailed to England to urge upon the home
Government an active policy against New France, and that policy he
continued to advocate until he died, in 1695, at the early age of
forty-four.

[Sidenote: _Wheeler's abortive expedition._]

On either side, the true line of defence was to carry war into the
enemy's country. It was thus that Frontenac defended Canada. It was
by constant raids that the Iroquois maintained their position; and
the counsel which those astute savages gave to their English friends
was to combine and attack Quebec. 'Strike at Quebec,' urged Phipps on
the English Government; 'strike at Boston and New York' was the
advice which the leaders of Canada one after another tendered to King
Louis. No help had been sent from England to the late expedition
against Quebec, but Phipps' {134} subsequent representations led to
an English fleet being dispatched to the West Indies in the winter of
1692, under command of Admiral Wheeler. The ships were intended to
take Martinique, then to go on to Boston, and embarking a force of
New Englanders under Phipps to sail for Quebec. Again there was a
failure. Wheeler lost more than half his soldiers and sailors in the
West Indies from yellow fever; and, when he reached Boston in
midsummer of 1693, bringing the sickness with him, the Massachusetts
Government decided that it was hopeless to attempt to carry out the
scheme.

[Sidenote: _Fighting on the New York frontier._]

[Sidenote: _New York protected by the Iroquois._]

In spite of the massacre at Schenectady, New York suffered less than
New England from border war. In 1691, in a second attack on the
French settlement of La Prairie over against Montreal, the English
and Dutch colonists achieved some success, carrying out the raid
which they had planned, and cutting their way back hand to hand
through a party of French troops who tried to bar their retreat. The
Iroquois were the salvation of New York. Their raids into Canada
safeguarded the rival colony, and when the Five Nations were not on
the warpath, the French hesitated to attack their English allies, for
fear of provoking a fresh incursion of savages. It has been seen that
the Iroquois tended more and more to a policy of neutrality, worn by
constant fighting, tired of English inaction, and discerning that
their true interest lay in siding with neither French nor English.
Still, with the exception of their converted countrymen settled in
Canada, they were not likely to band with the French against the
English. To do so would have been to break with old ties and
traditions, to close their best market, to combine with their
deadliest foes against friends of long standing, whose faults had
been after all but faults of omission. This the French knew well:
they were content to leave New York alone, provided they themselves
were left alone by the Iroquois, and so long as {135} the traders of
New York did not seriously threaten their command of the West.

[Sidenote: _The Abenakis on the borders of New England._]

It was otherwise in the case of New England. The Abenaki Indians on
the borders of the New England colonies had always been in the French
interest. Jesuit influence was strong among them: they had been
taught that Christianity could go hand in hand with ferocity, and
that murder of white heretics might be not only a pleasure but a
duty. Here the object of the French was not to keep the Indians
quiet, but to spur them on. As they dreaded lest their Indian allies
on the upper lakes should come to terms with the Iroquois,[5] and
enforced barbarities to make peace impossible, so in the closing
years of the seventeenth century and the early years of the
eighteenth, they incited the Abenaki warriors against the border
settlements of Maine and New Hampshire, butchering, looting, carrying
into captivity, their one object being to keep alive the taste of
blood, lest, lured by the prospect of peaceful and profitable trade
with the neighbouring English, the Abenakis should drift apart from
New France.

[Footnote 5: See above, p. 117.]

[Sidenote: _Port Royal reoccupied by the French._]

[Sidenote: _French and Indian raids on York, Wells, and Oyster
River._]

A Canadian officer, Villebon, was specially deputed to take charge of
Acadia, and organize war-parties against the English settlers. He
reoccupied Port Royal, and at the beginning of 1692 the work of
massacre was taken seriously in hand. The first point of attack was
the border settlement of York on the sea-coast of Maine: it was laid
waste early in February, with all the usual horrors of Indian
warfare. In June, another seaside settlement--Wells, about twenty
miles to the north of York--was attacked by a large party; but some
thirty militiamen, headed by a determined officer, Convers by name,
made a stubborn defence, and beat off the assailants. Two years later
the settlement at Oyster River was surprised, and its inhabitants
killed or carried off.

[Sidenote: _Backwardness of the New Englanders in self-defence._]

There was one way, and one only, to put a stop to this {136}
destructive warfare; to build strong forts in advanced positions; to
give them adequate garrisons under competent officers; to patrol the
frontier constantly with bodies of armed border police, and to harry
the Indian marauders by land and sea. New England--and New England
meant Massachusetts--was perfectly able to adopt and to maintain such
a policy. The New Englanders were many against comparatively few;
they had as a rule command of the sea; but the colonists did not like
the expense or the personal service which was involved; the Boston
citizens did not feel the full force of the blows which struck the
outlying farms and homesteads; and the petifogging Government too
often employed men to command who knew little or nothing of
soldiering.

[Sidenote: _Fort Pemaquid._]

[Sidenote: _Chubb's treachery._]

There was one point, in particular, which should have been strongly
fortified and strongly garrisoned. This was Fort Pemaquid, on the
sea-coast between the mouths of the Kennebec and the Penobscot. It
was to New England, and to the Abenakis, what Fort Frontenac was to
Canada and to the Iroquois, an advanced post covering the English
colonies and menacing the Indians. In 1689, most of the English
garrison having been withdrawn, it had been surprised and taken by
the Abenakis. In 1692, Phipps, then Governor of Massachusetts, acting
under orders from the King, rebuilt and regarrisoned it. Iberville,
sent by Frontenac in the following year, with two ships of war,
reconnoitred the fort but did not venture to attack it. In 1696, it
was in charge of an incompetent commander, Chubb, who made himself
odious to the Indians by a gross act of treachery. Some Abenaki
chiefs had been invited to the fort under pledge of personal safety,
to exchange prisoners; and, acting under instructions from Stoughton,
Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, Chubb laid an ambush for them,
killed some and kidnapped others.

[Sidenote: _Surrender of Pemaquid._]

It was a proceeding as impolitic as it was immoral, and quickly
brought retribution. Early in 1696, two ships of {137} war came out
from France, and, taking on board troops from Quebec, coasted round
the Acadian peninsula, capturing on the way some English vessels,
including an armed frigate. Off the mouth of the St. John the French
received reinforcements, sent down by Villebon from his Fort Naxouat,
which stood higher up the river; and a further band of Indians joined
them at Pentegoet, the fort of the French adventurer St. Castin, at
the mouth of the river Penobscot. The expedition led by Iberville,
St. Castin, and others sailed on to Pemaquid, and on August 14
demanded its surrender. Chubb returned a contemptuous reply, and
backed his words by promptly surrendering next day, on condition of
safe conduct for himself and his men. He went back to Boston in
safety and disgrace, and a year later was murdered by Indians.

[Sidenote: _Abortive French expedition against Boston._]

The loss of Fort Pemaquid was a serious blow to the English, and in
the next year, 1697, the French Government determined to follow up
their success by attacking Boston. A strong fleet was sent out to
Newfoundland under the Marquis de Nesmond. Its orders were to defeat
any English vessels off that coast, and sailing south to the mouth of
the Penobscot to take up Canadian troops and Indian allies. The
expedition was then to proceed to take Boston, and, having
accomplished this object, to overrun the whole of New England to the
north of that city. Frontenac had the land forces in readiness,
proposing to take command himself; but on this occasion the French
took a leaf out of the English book; the fleet was detained by
contrary winds till the summer was past, the combination failed, and
all the grand scheme came to nothing at all. For Boston read Quebec,
and the record of this failure might be the record of one of the
stillborn enterprises, by which the English from time to time hoped
to reduce Canada.

[Sidenote: _Treaty of Ryswick._]

[Sidenote: _War of the Spanish Succession._]

The Treaty of Ryswick signed in 1697, and formally proclaimed in
America in 1698, settled nothing. It gave {138} breathing-space to
Louis XIV and his enemies, and, while it lasted, there was a respite
from border forays for the English colonies in North America. But no
attempt was made to adjust boundaries, or to remove causes of past
and future disputes, and the only specific provision, which the
treaty contained with regard to America, referred to Hudson Bay. Both
sides knew that the truce was not likely to be long-lived, and its
end came when, in 1701, the King of France promised the exiled James
II on his deathbed to acknowledge his son as rightful King of
England. In the following year war broke out again, the War of the
Spanish Succession, the war which, after Marlborough's victories,
ended with the Peace of Utrecht.

[Sidenote: _French raids on Wells, Casco Bay, Deerfield, and
Haverhill._]

It was in Europe that the battle of the American colonies was fought,
in Flanders and at Blenheim, rather than on the St. Lawrence or on
the coasts of Acadia and New England. There was fighting in America,
but it was in the main fighting of the same indecisive kind as had
gone before--murder, pillage, and the like; and history repeated
itself with singular fidelity. On May 4, 1702, war was declared: in
August, 1703, the old work of raiding the New England frontier was
resumed. The settlement at Wells, which had suffered before, was the
first to suffer again; the neighbouring settlements, as far as Casco
Bay, were marauded by the Abenaki Indians; and the fort at Casco was
hard beset, until relieved by an armed vessel from Massachusetts. In
the following year, at the end of February, 1704, the village of
Deerfield was attacked by night by some 250 French and Indians. It
stood on the Connecticut river, on the north-western frontier of
Massachusetts, and at the date of the attack contained in all nearly
300 human beings. Of them about fifty were killed, and over 100 were
carried off, among the latter being the minister of the place, John
Williams, who survived to tell a tale of almost incredible loss and
suffering in a narrative entitled _The Redeemed Captive returning to
Sion_. A similar {139} attack was made, in 1708, on the village of
Haverhill on the Merrimac river, which cost the lives of about fifty
villagers; and one after another the border settlements, during these
troubled years, were infested by savages appearing from and
disappearing in the backwoods under cover of night. The authors of
the outrages were the French rulers of Canada; their agents were in
the main converted Indians; the series of raids was not so much the
spontaneous movement of natives against white men, as a crusade
against heretics, prompted and led by Europeans, and carried out by
Indian warriors on the lines of Indian warfare. There was much
vicarious suffering. The past inroads of the Iroquois into Canada led
to years of retaliation on New England: retaliation on New England
induced the New Englanders in their turn to attack Acadia.

[Sidenote: _Port Royal threatened by Major Church and Colonel
March._]

In 1691, the year after Phipps had taken Port Royal, a new charter
was granted by the Crown to Massachusetts, which included Acadia
within the limits of the colony. But in the same year, and in the
very month of September in which the charter was given, the Frenchman
Villebon reoccupied Port Royal, and four years later, Massachusetts,
unwilling or unable to make good its claim, petitioned the British
Government to take over its rights and responsibilities in regard to
the Acadian peninsula. Whether in English or in French hands, Port
Royal remained a small, ill-fortified, and poorly defended post,
constantly open to, and constantly threatened with attack. In 1704,
after and in consequence of the French raid on Deerfield, a
buccaneering force from New England, under Major Benjamin Church,
appeared before it, having previously burnt the Acadian settlement of
Grand Pré, but sailed away without venturing to attack the fort. In
1707, a stronger expedition was sent from Massachusetts and the
neighbouring colonies under Colonel John March; but again, though the
troops landed, skirmished, and began a siege, the enterprise came to
nothing.

{140} [Sidenote: _Samuel Vetch._]

In 1709 preparations were made for more vigorous and more effective
action. In the previous year the colony of Massachusetts resolved to
appeal to the British Government for help from home to attack Canada.
Their emissary to England was Samuel Vetch, a notable man of the time
in North American history. He was a Scotchman, the son of a
Presbyterian minister, born and bred in Puritan surroundings; he had
served in the Cameronian regiment, and had fought on the continent in
William III's armies. After the Peace of Ryswick he went out with
other would-be colonists to the Isthmus of Darien, and, on the
failure of the scheme, came over to New York. There he married and
engaged in trade with Canada, gaining a knowledge of New France, its
river, and its people, which subsequently stood him in good stead.
Like Phipps, he was a shrewd, self-made man, whose enemies accused
him, apparently with reason, of illicit dealings; like Phipps, he had
seen the world outside New England and New York; and, having seen it
and having taken stock of Canada as well as of the English colonies,
he was a warm advocate, as Phipps had been before him, of united and
aggressive action against the French.

[Sidenote: _His mission to England._]

[Sidenote: _British aid promised to New England._]

Quite recently, in 1705, he had been in Canada, to negotiate exchange
of prisoners and a treaty of peace between Massachusetts and the
French. Both Dudley, the Governor of Massachusetts, and Vaudreuil,
the Canadian Governor, were inclined to peace, but the negotiations
broke down in consequence of Vaudreuil's demand that the other
English colonies in North America should also be included in the
treaty--a condition which Dudley was not in a position to guarantee.
Vetch was for some little time on this occasion both at Quebec and at
Montreal. When, therefore he visited England in 1708, he brought with
him accurate first-hand knowledge of the enemy's land and people. He
was well received. Marlborough's victories supported his plea for a
decisive campaign in America, and early in 1709 he was {141} sent
back over the Atlantic with the promise of a fleet and five regiments
of British troops amounting to 3,000 men. The colonists on their part
were to raise contingents of specified strength, and attack by sea
was to be combined with a land expedition by way of Lake Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Attitude of the colonies._]

[Sidenote: _Land expedition under Colonel Nicholson._]

[Sidenote: _Its retreat._]

Even now some of the colonies hung back. Pennsylvania, out of reach
of French attack and dominated by Quakers, sent no help in men or
money. New Jersey sent money but no men. New York however abandoned
its neutrality, threw in its lot with New England, and persuaded some
of the Five Nations to take up arms again against the French, the
Senecas only, under the influence of a skilful French agent,
Joncaire, holding aloof. Fifteen hundred men were gathered for the
land march, and, under the command of Colonel Francis Nicholson,
advanced to Wood Creek, which is connected with Lake Champlain. He
entrenched himself there, and his outposts came into collision with
the advance guard of a French force sent to surprise him under
Ramesay, Governor of Montreal. The French fell back to Chambly, and
Nicholson waited week after week for news of the English fleet, until
pestilence broke out among his troops, and he was compelled to
retreat.

[Sidenote: _Non-arrival of the English fleet._]

Meanwhile at Boston every preparation had been made, according to the
orders of the English Government. Men, stores, transports were
gathered, but all to no purpose, for no fleet came. It was due in
May, and not till October came the news that the ships and men
intended for America had been sent instead to Portugal. Once more
there was a respite for Canada, once more the hearts of the English
colonists were made sick by hope deferred. They had done their part,
and all the trouble and expense and, in Nicholson's army, loss of
life had been for nought.

[Sidenote: _Fresh representations to the home Government._]

Yet the representatives of Massachusetts still pressed the home
Government to take action against New France. Nicholson went to
England at the end of the year, and {142} pleaded the cause of the
colonies, pleading it with authority, as having been
Lieutenant-Governor of New York and Governor of Maryland. One of the
Schuylers too followed him to England from New York, bringing a party
of Mohawk chiefs to see and be seen.

[Sidenote: _Reduction of Port Royal by Nicholson._]

If Canada were not to be invaded, at least Port Royal might be taken,
and Imperial aid was promised to attain the latter object. An English
force, timed to reach Boston in March, 1710, arrived there in July;
and in September Nicholson sailed for Port Royal at the head of a
strong expedition. He reached it on September 24. For a week there
was some fighting, but the French were hopelessly outnumbered; and on
October 1, the fort surrendered. Port Royal, henceforth known as
Annapolis, now passed in permanence into English hands, and with it
the English became masters of all Acadia.

[Sidenote: _Political changes in England._]

[Sidenote: _Jeremiah Dummer._]

[Sidenote: _The expedition of 1711._]

[Sidenote: _Its arrival at Boston._]

After taking Port Royal Nicholson returned to London, again to urge
an attack on Canada. Before he arrived, there had been in August,
1710, a change of ministry. Godolphin had been dismissed, and
Marlborough's enemies, Harley and Bolingbroke, were in power.
Bolingbroke had in his service a New Englander, trained at Harvard
University--Jeremiah Dummer--who had become agent of Massachusetts in
England, and who set forth in pamphlets the colonists' case, and
urged the vital importance of conquering Canada. His writings,
combined with the personal representations of Nicholson, persuaded
ministers, who were anxious to father an enterprise which might weigh
in the balance of public opinion against Marlborough's victories; and
in April, 1711, fifteen men of war, with forty-six transports, sailed
for America, carrying seven regiments of the line, five of which were
from the army in Flanders. The regulars numbered 5,000 men, exclusive
of sailors and marines, and they were to be supplemented on arrival
by colonial levies. They reached Boston, after a fair passage,
towards the end of June.

{143} [Sidenote: _Feeling of the colonists._]

The force was fully strong enough to take Quebec, provided that two
requisites were forthcoming--the hearty co-operation of the colonists
and capable leaders. The colonists did their part, but not with a
whole heart and not without misgivings. They had asked for British
troops, but, notwithstanding, there was a suspicion in the minds of
many that a strong force landed in America might be used to subvert
colonial liberties, and to reduce the communities of New England to
the position of Crown Colonies. The French knew that such a spirit
was abroad, and did their best to foster it. It was fostered too by
other causes. There was something new in the action of the British
Government. The American settlers were accustomed to refusal of aid
from home, to promises of aid made but not fulfilled, to tardy and
inadequate assistance. But on the present occasion an unusually large
force of veteran troops arrived at Boston at a fortnight's notice.

[Sidenote: _The expedition sails from Boston._]

Nicholson landed with the news of the coming fleet on June 8, on the
twenty-fourth the fleet appeared. Its destination had been kept
secret, and it was provisioned only for the voyage to America. On its
arrival, therefore, it was necessary to impress men and supplies:
pilots too were wanted and were not forthcoming: the King's officers
found the colonists difficult to deal with: the colonists resented
peremptory orders, and sheltered deserters from the army and the
fleet. Still the authorities of Massachusetts loyally backed the
expedition; preparations went forward; and on July 30 the ships set
sail for the St. Lawrence, carrying, in addition to the English
forces, two Massachusetts regiments, which numbered about 1,500 men,
and were commanded by Vetch, now Governor of Annapolis.

[Sidenote: _Nicholson's advance towards Lake Champlain._]

[Sidenote: _Admiral Walker and General Hill._]

The orthodox plan of invading Canada involved a twofold attack, by
land on Montreal, by sea on Quebec. Accordingly, while the fleet was
sailing round the North American coast, Nicholson collected troops at
Albany, and advanced as far as {144} Wood Creek at the head of 2,300
men, 800 of whom were Iroquois. Thence he intended to push his way
down Lake Champlain. He was a competent commander, but the leaders of
the main expedition were not. Little is known of the admiral, Sir
Hovenden Walker, and it does not appear why he was chosen for so
important a post. The general, Hill, familiar enough to London
society as Jack Hill, had hitherto shown no military capacity.
Marlborough had set his face against his promotion, and he owed his
rise entirely to Court favour, for he was brother of Abigail Hill
(Lady Masham), now the ruling favourite of Queen Anne. Sister and
brother alike had been befriended by the Duchess of Marlborough; by
intrigue, Abigail Hill had supplanted her benefactress in the Queen's
favour; and with her aid Harley and Bolingbroke, themselves
arch-intriguers, turned out Godolphin and procured Marlborough's
disgrace. The price of her assistance was the appointment of her
incompetent brother to command seasoned troops well fitted to conquer
Canada.

[Sidenote: _Disaster to the fleet in the St. Lawrence._]

Rounding Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, the fleet, on August 18,
put into Gaspé Bay. By the evening of the twenty-second it was at the
mouth of the St. Lawrence, and in foggy weather the unskilful
admiral, many miles out of his course, headed straight for the
northern shore of the river, under the impression that he was too
close to land on the southern side. At dead of night he was roused
from his berth with the unwelcome news that the ship was among
breakers; and turned her head just in time to avoid running upon
rocks. The ships which followed his disastrous lead were not so
fortunate, and eight of the transports were dashed to pieces on the
reefs with a loss of about 1,000 lives.[6] The place where the
catastrophe occurred was one of the {145} rocky islets, known as the
Egg Islands, about twenty miles to the north of the Point de Monts.

[Footnote 6: According to one English account 884 soldiers were lost,
according to another 740 soldiers and women. The number of sailors
lost is not given.]

[Sidenote: _The expedition abandoned._]

For two days the ships were busied in picking up survivors from the
wrecks. On the twenty-fifth a council of war was held, and it was
resolved to abandon the expedition. A message was sent to recall
Nicholson and his troops from their advance on Montreal; the fleet
sailed back to Sydney harbour in Cape Breton Island. A suggestion to
attack Placentia in Newfoundland was rejected. The New England
transports returned to Boston, and the English fleet went home to
Portsmouth,[7] where--to complete the fiasco--the admiral's ship blew
up, costing the lives of some 400 seamen.

[Footnote 7: Swift, in the _Journal to Stella_, says that the ship
blew up in the Thames, but the accident seems to have taken place at
Spithead; see Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol. ii, pp. 468-9.
There are various references to this expedition and to Hill in the
_Journal to Stella_. Hill was subsequently placed in command at
Dunkirk, while that port was being held as security for the execution
of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.]

Of the two commanders, Hill escaped formal censure. Luckily for him,
Swift's bitter pen was at the service of the political clique with
which he was connected. Walker, more culpable, was also less
fortunate: deprived of his command he emigrated first to South
Carolina and afterwards to Barbados, where he died, having written
his own version of the expedition,[8] which in no way tended to
redeem his reputation.

[Footnote 8: _A full account of the late Expedition to Canada_, by
Sir Hovenden Walker (London, 1720).]

[Sidenote: _Ignominious end of the expedition._]

Such was the end of the enterprise, intended to eclipse the great
deeds of Marlborough. There have been many shortcomings and many
disasters in the military annals of England, but few instances are on
record of so much incompetence, verging almost on cowardice. Phipps'
expedition against Quebec was a complete failure, but at least he led
his band of untrained farmers and fishermen safely up and down the
St. Lawrence, and gave Count Frontenac a taste of powder and shot.
Walker and Hill, {146} with the best of ships and the best of men,
blundered and turned back at the mouth of the river; at the first
mishap they abandoned everything. No wonder the Frenchmen deemed that
the saints watched over Canada.

[Sidenote: _The Treaty of Utrecht._]

The result can hardly have confirmed the American colonies in their
allegiance to England. As a matter of fact, England had been fighting
their battle against France, but her successes had been on the other
side of the Atlantic; whereas in America, under the eyes of the
colonists, there had been little but failure. One substantial gain
there was--the capture of Port Royal; but this easy feat had been
previously achieved by Massachusetts alone without any aid from home.
The conquest of Canada, which had been well within reach, now seemed
as far off as ever; and the Treaty of Utrecht--which, if Marlborough
had been left to follow up his career of victory, and if a commander
of his choosing had been sent with his troops across the seas, might
have forestalled the famous treaty of fifty years later--did not even
secure the whole seaboard to England, or confine the French to the
river of Canada. Acadia, according to its ancient limits, was ceded
to the British Crown, the French gave up their possessions in
Newfoundland, and their hold on Hudson Bay: but on a section of the
Newfoundland coast they were granted fishing rights, to be a fruitful
source of future trouble; and, keeping Cape Breton Island, they
reared in it the fortress of Louisbourg, to be a stronghold second
only to that of Quebec. Once more England lost her opportunity, and
the settlement, which should have been made in 1713, was postponed
till 1763.


NOTE.--For the substance of chaps. iii, iv, and v, see among modern
books,

  KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vols. i and ii,

and the following works of Parkman:

  _The Jesuits in North America_;
  _The Old Régime in Canada_;
  _Count Frontenac and New France_;
  _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_.




{147}

CHAPTER V

THE MISSISSIPPI AND LOUISIANA


[Sidenote: _French and English views in North America._]

What were the French and English fighting for in North America? The
answer seems obvious, for North America itself. But what did North
America mean? It had a different meaning to different interests. The
New Englander cared for little but the New England colonies, and the
immediately adjacent lands and seas. To the Acadian settlers the
Acadian peninsula, to the Canadian _habitant_ the banks of the St.
Lawrence, were all in all. The inland colonists of New York had in
their minds not merely the safety of their colony, within its
ill-defined boundaries, but also paramount influence over the Five
Nations, and unrestricted trade with the western Indians. Longheaded
governors of New York and Massachusetts took a still wider view; but
the widest of all was held by the French Governors of Canada, and by
the roving Canadians, who, with restless spirit and undaunted
enterprise, claimed seas and rivers before they were reached or
known, magnifying tales of far-off lands and peoples, building in the
air and bringing down to earth a fabric of continental dominion. As a
rule, the English view was too circumscribed, the French view was too
diffuse. The strength of the English lay in effective occupation
within narrow limits; the French committed the blunder of perpetually
forcing competition upon rivals who had larger resources; but to them
belonged the great merit of grasping in some sort the true meaning of
North America, and never letting slip the problems of the future.

{148} [Sidenote: _The search for the Western sea._]

The explorers' aim was always to reach the further sea. That it must
be somewhere to the west, in the opposite direction to the homes from
whence they came, they knew or conjectured; but of the immense
distance at which it lay, and of the Rocky Mountain barrier which
must be surmounted to find it, they were wholly ignorant. They
followed the water, and, when they had gained some knowledge of the
great lakes, they reached the closely adjoining sources of the
tributaries of the Mississippi, the Wisconsin, the Ohio, and the
Illinois; and, borne with the stream, they came in due course not to
the west but to the south, not to the Pacific but to the Gulf of
Mexico.

[Sidenote: _The missionaries and Western discovery._]

There was the usual mixture of motives--love of adventure, love of
gain, political ambition, religious fervour. There was rivalry and
competition. One trader or band of traders was jealous of another.
One man or set of men was backed by the Governor for the time being,
another secured the favour of the Intendant. Missionaries played a
great part in exploration. At first they led the van of discovery;
they were always in or near the front rank; but, as years went on,
and as the simple desire of adding to geographical knowledge, of
opening new fields for France and for Christianity, became more and
more alloyed with commercial greed, the ministers of religion, when
heart-whole themselves, realized that the multiplication of trading
posts in the backwoods meant lawlessness of white men, deterioration
of natives; and they no longer gave hearty support to the bold French
adventurers whose enterprise opened up the West.

[Sidenote: _The gates of the waterways of Canada._]

It will be noticed, on reference to a map of Canada--or rather of
that part of the Dominion which was comprised in New France--not only
that there is water communication from end to end, from the extreme
west of Lake Superior to the Atlantic, but also that there are very
distinct points along the way, which are, so to speak, natural
toll-bars, {149} where the waters narrow, where the rivers or lakes
meet. Here the explorer must pass to reach a goal beyond; here the
trader could intercept traffic; here the missionary was sure to find
Indians to be converted, and _coureurs de bois_ to be reclaimed;
these were the places which must be occupied by the would-be
sovereigns of North America. Consequently, at these points of vantage
along the route, at one time and another, mission stations, trading
posts, and forts were planted.

Montreal itself, at the head of the colony, at the beginning of its
hinterland, commanded the junction of the Ottawa and the St.
Lawrence. At Cataraqui, where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake Ontario,
Fort Frontenac was built. A little above the outlet of the Niagara
river into Lake Ontario and below the falls, another French fort was
reared, Fort Niagara; while on the channel between Lakes Erie and
Huron was the fort of Detroit. The Iroquois, as we have seen, knew as
well as the French the value of these positions: they feared and
resented the building of the forts, as limiting the range of their
power, and taking from them the control of the fur trade. On the
upper lakes there were at least two posts of prime importance: one
was the Sault St. Marie at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake
Superior, the other was Michillimackinac at the junction of Lake
Huron and Lake Michigan. It must not be supposed that the points
mentioned were occupied in chronological order, as they have been
enumerated above; or that there was any regular series of occupants,
that the explorer came first, followed by the missionary, the trader,
and so forth: but the net result was that French enterprise and
French statesmanship took and kept the gateways on the highroad of
Upper Canada.

[Sidenote: _Lake Michigan._]

[Sidenote: _Michillimackinac._]

[Sidenote: _Green Bay._]

[Sidenote: _The route to the Mississippi from Green Bay,_]

Lake Michigan was known to the French as the 'Lac des Illinois.' The
narrows where it joins Lake Huron were the straits of
Michillimackinac, now Mackinac or Mackinaw; and on their northern
side stood the trading station of the {150} same name, and the
mission of St. Ignace. Within the straits on the western side, is a
large indentation, forming a sheet of water which runs south-west,
nearly parallel to the main lake. This was at first called, after
certain Indians who lived on its shores, the Baie des Puans; but it
was subsequently named the Grande Baie, and this title was corrupted
into Green Bay, its present name. The Fox river flows into the head
of Green Bay, and, if the upward course of this river is followed
through Lake Winnebago and beyond, a point is reached at which the
waters of the Wisconsin river are not more than a mile and a half
distant. The Wisconsin is a tributary of the Mississippi.

[Sidenote: _and from the end of Lake Michigan._]

A slightly longer portage was needed to reach the Mississippi basin
from the end of Lake Michigan. Still it was a matter of very few
miles to leave the lake, where the city of Chicago now stands, and to
strike one or other of the branches of the Illinois river, the
nearest being the stream known as Des Plaines. Canoes launched on
that stream were carried down into the Illinois, and so to the
Mississippi at a point far south of its confluence with the
Wisconsin.

[Sidenote: _The Ohio route._]

For adventurers bold enough to diverge from the line of lakes, and to
pass overland within reach of the dreaded Five Nations, there was yet
a third route, more direct than the other two, to the great river. It
was a route well known in after years, and followed the course of the
Ohio. The Ohio, the 'beautiful river,' for such is the meaning of its
name,[1] is formed by the junction of two rivers, the Alleghany and
the Monongahela. At their junction, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, the French founded Fort Duquesne, and where Fort Duquesne
stood is now the city of Pittsburg. The northern branch, the
Alleghany, takes its rise near the southern shore of Lake Erie. One
of its affluents flows out of Lake Chautauqua, about eight miles
south of Lake Erie, at the point where there is now the small town of
Portland; {151} another, the Rivière aux Boeufs, now called French
Creek, is very little further from the lake, over against Presque Île
and the present town of Erie. A day's march through the forest would
therefore bring a traveller from Lake Erie to a stream which, when in
full volume, would carry his canoe into the Alleghany, the Ohio, and
so to the Mississippi far down its course. No wonder the line of the
Ohio became, when geographical knowledge had made some way, a central
feature in French politics and French strategy in North America.

[Footnote 1: The name was given it by the Iroquois.]

[Sidenote: _The head waters of the Mississippi closely adjoin the St.
Lawrence basin._]

From the above it will be seen how closely the head waters of the
Mississippi adjoin the St. Lawrence basin, how short the land journey
was from the one to the other. The natives of North America made
exploration difficult, but from a geographical point of view, the
discoverer's path was comparatively easy.

[Sidenote: _Early exploration on the upper lakes._]

The upper lakes, Lakes Huron and Superior, were visited and explored
before there was any adequate knowledge of Lakes Ontario and Erie,
and there is no record of white men passing from Lake Erie to Lake
Huron by the strait of Detroit before the year 1670. The Five Nations
barred the upper St. Lawrence, and the Niagara river and portage; but
they did not control to the same extent the alternative route from
Montreal to Lake Huron by the Ottawa river. Thus it was that the
Jesuits found their way to the Hurons, on Georgian Bay, long before
any mission enterprise was attempted on the lower lakes, and as early
as 1640 there were Jesuit missionaries at the outlet of Lake
Superior, the Sault St. Marie. Later, after the dispersion of the
Hurons, there was for a while a mission at the western end of Lake
Superior, the place being known as La Pointe, and the mission as the
mission of St. Esprit.

[Sidenote: _Jean Nicollet._]

The first white man to reach Lake Michigan was Jean Nicollet. He was
a native of Cherbourg, and had come to Canada as early as 1618.
Sojourning among the Nipissing {152} Indians, he heard from them of
the western tribes; and, listening to Indian tales, seems to have
conjectured that a people might be reached in the far West who could
be none other than Chinese. With these pictures in his mind, he went,
about 1635, as an ambassador of peace to the Puans or Winnebagos, who
dwelt on the Green Bay of Michigan, and arrived among them, so the
story goes, in an embroidered dress of Chinese damask, as being
appropriate to the people whom he hoped to find. He did not find
Chinamen, but came near finding the Mississippi; and a claim was made
in after years on his behalf that he actually was the first
discoverer of that river. The claim however must be disallowed, and
the honour of discovering the great river belongs to the two
Frenchmen, Joliet and Marquette, who did not reach it till 1673.

[Sidenote: _Promoters of discovery._]

After the destruction of the Huron missions, it was difficult enough
for some years to keep life in the struggling colony of New France;
and it was not until the King had taken Canada in hand, had sent out
soldiers and settlers, had commissioned Tracy and Courcelles to curb
the Iroquois, and the Intendant, Talon, to introduce order and
system, that progress was made in exploring and opening up the West.
The promoters of exploration were Talon himself, before he returned
to France; and subsequently the Governor, Frontenac; the Sulpician
and Jesuit missionaries, especially the latter; and laymen
adventurers, the foremost of whom was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la
Salle. La Salle's name is for all time connected with the
Mississippi, but Joliet and Marquette were before him in reaching the
main river.

[Sidenote: _Joliet and Marquette._]

Of these two companions in travel, Louis Joliet was a layman, though
connected with the Jesuits by early training. Born in Canada, he had
been sent by Talon to look for copper by Lake Superior, and was
subsequently picked out to discover the mysterious river. Jacques
Marquette was a Jesuit priest, of the earlier and purer type--a
saintly man, {153} humble and single in mind, who early wore his life
away in labouring for his faith. He had come out from France in 1666,
and about the year 1668 was sent as a missionary to the upper lakes.
On the shores of Lake Superior he ministered to Huron and Ottawa
refugees at the mission of St. Esprit, where he heard from Illinois
visitors of the great river, and from which point, though he knew it
not, one feeder of the Mississippi, the St. Croix river, is at no
great distance. A Sioux raid broke up the mission, and with the
retreating Hurons he established himself at Michillimackinac, where,
about 1670, he founded the mission of St. Ignace. About the same
time, a mission was also established at the head of Green Bay, and
from this point the two travellers, at the end of May, 1673, went
forward to the Mississippi.

[Sidenote: _They reach the Mississippi._]

The course up the Fox river and across Lake Winnebago had already
been taken by other missionaries, who had not, however, gone as far
as the Wisconsin. That river was now reached, and on June 17 it
carried the explorers' canoes out into the Mississippi. Down stream
they went, past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the
Ohio, until they came to the confluence of the Arkansas river. There
they turned, assured in their own minds that the outlet of the
Mississippi was in the Gulf of Mexico--not, as had been supposed, in
the Gulf of California--and fearing lest, if they lost their lives at
the hands of Indians or of Spaniards,[2] the tale of their discovery
might be lost also. They came back by way of the Illinois and Des
Plaines rivers, made the portage to Lake Michigan, and reached Green
Bay at the end of September, having made known to white men the great
river of the West.

[Footnote 2: The lower Mississippi had long been known to the
Spaniards.]

[Sidenote: _Their return._]

[Sidenote: _Marquette's second journey and death._]

Joliet went back to Quebec to report to the Governor, losing all his
papers by the way in the rapids of Lachine. He lived to visit Hudson
Bay and the coasts of Labrador. Marquette, in broken health, stayed
rather more than a year {154} at the Green Bay mission. Then, in the
winter of 1674-5, accompanied by two French _voyageurs_, he revisited
the Illinois river, carrying for the last time his message of
Christianity to savages, who heard him gladly, and followed him back,
a dying man, as far as Lake Michigan. In the month of May he embarked
on the lake, making for Michillimackinac; but, as he went, the end
came, and he was put on shore to die. His companions buried him at
the lonely spot where he died, but at a later date his bones were
brought to Michillimackinac by Indians who had loved him well, and
were laid to rest with all reverence in the chapel of his own
mission.

[Sidenote: _La Salle._]

[Sidenote: _His Seigniory at Lachine._]

Marquette, like David Livingstone at a later date, was a missionary
explorer. He was carried forward by a faith which could remove
mountains. La Salle was cast in another mould. His gift was not
religious enthusiasm, but the set purpose of a resolute, masterful
man, who made a life-study of his subject. He was born at Rouen, the
birthplace of much western enterprise, and went to Canada in the same
year as Marquette, the year 1666. An elder brother, who was a
Sulpician priest, had gone out before him; and from the Sulpicians,
as feudal lords of the island of Montreal, La Salle obtained a grant
of the Seigniory of Lachine, eight miles higher up the river than
Montreal itself. Here he laid out a settlement, but, as the name 'La
Chine' testifies,[3] his mind was set on finding a route to China and
the East, and in 1669 he gave up his grant, receiving compensation
for improvements, and spent what little money he had in beginning his
work of discovery.

[Footnote 3: See above, p. 53.]

[Sidenote: _He reaches the Ohio._]

His early wanderings have not been clearly traced, but there is no
reason to doubt that, in the years 1669-71, he found his way from
Lakes Ontario and Erie through the Iroquois country to the Ohio. It
was perhaps a more difficult feat to accomplish than the subsequent
discovery of {155} the Mississippi by way of the lakes. The land
journey was longer, and took the explorer well within range of the
Five Nations. His success proved his capacity for treating with
natives--a quality in which he resembled his staunch friend and
supporter Count Frontenac.

[Sidenote: _His character._]

Among white men he had, like Frontenac, many enemies, suspicious
priests and jealous merchants. The Jesuits had little love for a man
who had no love for them; and the Canadian merchants regarded him as
a dangerous rival, recognizing no doubt the element of tenacity in
his character. It was the character of one who could hold as well as
find, and who was not likely to rest content with the barren honours
of discovery. There were in him contradictory elements, and his
strength was balanced by failings, which became more conspicuous in
the later stages of his adventurous career. He was not in all points
a typical Frenchman. He had, it is true, address in dealing with
North American Indians; he could lay his case well before the Court
and the ministers of France. He enjoyed the friendship and
countenance of Count Frontenac, and from more than one of his
companions in travel, notably Henri de Tonty, he won unbounded
devotion. But he was wanting, as a leader, in tact and sympathy.
Solitary and self-contained, facing all dangers, enduring all
privations, he spared neither himself nor others. Mutiny and
desertion were in consequence rife amongst those who served him, and
in the end he lost his life at the hands of his own followers. He had
statesmanlike conceptions. He mapped out New France, in his own mind,
as extending from sea to sea, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to that
of Mexico. Like other Frenchmen, he went too far and tried to do too
much; but, if he made mistakes, he was at least no visionary. Until
the last stage of his career, his ends were clearly kept in view, and
he measured the means to attain them, though he did not always
measure aright.

[Sidenote: _La Salle at Fort Frontenac._]

He gave up one Seigniory to find the Ohio. It was not {156} long
before he obtained another. Count Frontenac came out to govern
Canada, for the first time, in 1672; and determined, as has been
told,[4] to build a fort at the outlet of Lake Ontario. Guided, it
would seem, by La Salle's advice, he built it in 1673, at the mouth
of the Cataraqui river. In 1675, La Salle, who had paid a visit to
France in the autumn of the previous year, became by royal grant
Seignior of the new fort and settlement, to which he gave the name of
Fort Frontenac. It was a strong position to hold, whether for making
money by trade or for prosecuting westward discovery; and bitter was
the jealousy against the young Frenchman, who, at thirty-two years of
age, and after no more than nine years' residence in Canada, had in
spite of strong opposition achieved so much.

[Footnote 4: See above, p. 108.]

[Sidenote: _His plans for Western discovery._]

Two years he remained at Cataraqui, rebuilding and strengthening the
fort, clearing the ground and constructing small vessels for trading
purposes on Lake Ontario: then, ready to move forward again, he went
back to France in 1677, and laid before the King and Colbert a
further memorial for permission to discover and colonize the
countries of the West. He asked to be confirmed in his Seigniory at
Fort Frontenac, to be allowed to establish two other stations, and to
be given rights as Seignior and Governor over whatever lands he might
discover and colonize within twenty years. He promised, if his
request were granted, to plant a colony at the outlet of Lake Erie,
and to waive all claim to any share in the trade between the Indians
of the western lakes and Canada.

[Sidenote: _He is given a royal patent._]

These conditions are worth special note. La Salle was prepared to
assure to France one more link in the chain of rivers and lakes: he
was prepared too to disarm trading jealousy by renouncing any plans
for intercepting the existing fur trade. He asked in return for a
free hand to the south-west, in the lands of the Ohio, the Illinois,
and the Mississippi. The answer of the King, given in May, 1678, was
permission 'to labour at the discovery of the western parts of New
France {157} ... through which to all appearance a way may be found
to Mexico,'[5] and for that purpose to build forts and enjoy
possession of them as at Fort Frontenac. The concession was limited
to five years; and, while a monopoly in buffalo skins was granted to
the petitioner, he was prohibited, as he had contemplated, from
trading with the tribes whose furs came down to Montreal.

[Footnote 5: Quoted by Parkman in his _La Salle_ (11th ed.), p. 112.]

[Sidenote: _Henri de Tonty._]

[Sidenote: _Father Hennepin._]

Having secured this patent, La Salle raised funds in France for the
furtherance of his enterprise; and in July, 1678, set sail from La
Rochelle to Canada, taking with him an Italian officer, Tonty, who
had been recommended to him by the Prince de Conti, and whose
subsequent faithfulness to his leader became almost proverbial. A
companion of a different kind joined him on his return to Canada,
Father Hennepin, a Flemish friar, a brave and sturdy traveller, but a
man of great personal vanity and convicted of telling more than
travellers' tales. He published an account of his travels in La
Salle's lifetime, and, after his death, put forth a new edition,[6]
claiming to have anticipated La Salle in descending the Mississippi
to the sea. The story has been proved to be an absolute imposture,
the more discreditable that it was an attempt to rob a dead man of
honour dearly bought.

[Footnote 6: The first book, published at Paris in 1683, was entitled
_Description de la Louisiane nouvellement découverte_. The second,
published at Utrecht in 1697, was headed _Nouvelle découverte d'un
très grand pays situé dans l'Amérique_.]

[Sidenote: _La Salle builds a fort at Niagara._]

On his return from France, La Salle dispatched a party of men in
advance to Lake Michigan, to trade and to collect stores against his
own arrival. He then set himself, taking Fort Frontenac as his basis,
to plant a post at the mouth of the Niagara river below the falls;
and, above the falls, to build a ship of some appreciable size for
the navigation of the upper lakes. The plan was well thought out. He
would hold both ends of Lake Ontario; and, the continuity of advance
being broken by the falls of Niagara, he would have, above the {158}
falls, an armed vessel plying for merchandise between Niagara and the
end of Lake Michigan, where again there should be another fort or
factory to safeguard the portage to the waters of the Mississippi.

[Sidenote: _Suspicions of the Senecas._]

It was specially necessary to hold both ends of Lake Ontario, for
here was the land of the Senecas. Jealously and sullenly they watched
the Frenchmen's work, through the winter of 1678-9, not wholly
reassured by a visit from La Salle himself to the chief town of the
tribe; but they attempted no armed opposition. Thus the beginning was
made of the first Fort Niagara,[7] on the eastern bank of the river,
in the angle formed by its junction with Lake Ontario; while on the
same side of the water, five miles above the falls, where a stream
called the Cayuga creek enters the main river, a ship was built
bearing the name and the emblem of the _Griffin_, the appropriate
arms of truculent Count Frontenac.

[Footnote 7: Denonville's fort, referred to above, p 111, was a later
structure.]

[Sidenote: _The voyage of the 'Griffin' to Michillimackinac._]

[Sidenote: _Loss of the ship._]

On August 7, 1679, the _Griffin_ started on her voyage up Lake Erie.
On the tenth--the feast of Sainte Claire--she had passed up the
Detroit river and was in Lake St. Clair. Against the strong current
of the St. Clair river, she found her way into Lake Huron, and,
buffeted by storm and wind, reached in the course of the same month
the mission of St. Ignace at Michillimackinac. Of the advanced party
of traders sent there in the previous year, some had deserted;
others, who remained true, were found at Green Bay with a rich store
of furs; and on the eighteenth of September La Salle parted with his
vessel, sending her to carry back the furs to the portage at Niagara.
He never saw the ship again, and her fate was never known.
Foundering, it would seem, in Lake Michigan, she left her owner to
wait in vain for her return, in want of food, in want of stores for
his onward march, with followers whom he could not trust, with Indian
tribes to master or appease, with winter making the way harder and
the wilderness more drear.

{159} [Sidenote: _La Salle builds a fort at the end of Lake
Michigan._]

[Sidenote: _He descends the Illinois river._]

After dispatching the _Griffin_ homeward, La Salle pushed on in
canoes to the south-eastern end of Lake Michigan. There, at the mouth
of the St. Joseph river, which he called the Miami, he built a fort.
December came on, but forward he went, up the St. Joseph, across to
the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, and down that stream and
the Illinois river to where the Illinois Indians were encamped for
the time near the present town of Peoria. His plan had been to build
another ship on the Illinois, and sail down that river and the
Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _He builds Fort Crèvecoeur on the Illinois._]

[Sidenote: _He returns to Canada._]

The new year, 1680, opened badly for his enterprise. The Indians were
suspicious, his men were deserting, no news had come of the ill-fated
_Griffin_. Yet he held staunchly to his purpose. Again he reared a
fort--Fort Crèvecoeur--a little lower down the Illinois than the
Indian camp, and again in the far-off wilds, in dead of winter, he
turned his men to shipbuilding. Without fittings and supplies it was
impossible to proceed, and, accordingly, he determined to go back
himself and bring the needed stores. Leaving Tonty in charge of the
fort, he retraced his steps to Lake Michigan. At Fort Miami he learnt
beyond question the loss of the _Griffin_. Across the then unknown
peninsula of Michigan he took his way, reached the Detroit river,
struck Lake Erie, and, passing by way of Niagara, arrived at Fort
Frontenac in sixty-five days from leaving the Illinois, having in
March and April achieved a feat of travel almost unparalleled even in
the early history of Canada. Going down to Montreal, he obtained
supplies, and again set his face undaunted to the West.

[Sidenote: _He goes back to the West._]

[Sidenote: _Iroquois raid on the Illinois._]

[Sidenote: _Tonty lost_]

As he came and went, he heard of nothing but disaster. The men left
at Fort Crèvecoeur under Tonty's command broke out in open mutiny,
and some of them were intercepted on their way back to Fort
Frontenac, having destroyed the forts on the Illinois and St. Joseph,
looted their employer's property at Michillimackinac and Niagara, and
being minded {160} to crown their villainy by killing La Salle
himself. They met their fate--were shot or imprisoned--and La Salle
pushed on to Tonty's succour. Towards the close of the year he was
back on the Illinois river, only to find a scene of utter desolation.
In his absence, the Iroquois had invaded the land and swept all
before them. Skeletons of men and women, empty huts, an abandoned
fort, the hull of a half-built ship, all told a tale of brutish
warfare and a ruined enterprise. Tonty was not to be found; and,
after following the Illinois down to its confluence with the
Mississippi, La Salle returned to Lake Michigan, and wintered on the
St. Joseph river at Fort Miami, which had been destroyed by the
mutineers but was again rebuilt.

[Sidenote: _and found._]

[Sidenote: _His adventures._]

With the spring of 1681 there came a gleam of hope. The western
Indians, terror-stricken by the Iroquois--and Indian immigrants from
the east, driven out by the English colonists--gathered for
protection to the brave, enduring Frenchman, took him for their
leader, and hearkened to his word. News came that Tonty was in safety
at Green Bay; and at length, about the end of May, La Salle and he
joined hands again at Michillimackinac. Tonty had a tale of heroism
to tell. Left in charge of the garrison at Fort Crèvecoeur, he had
gone, according to his leader's instructions, to prospect a site for
a fort a little higher up the river. When his back was turned, his
followers destroyed the fort, carried off the stores, and left him
with five other Frenchmen, two of whom were Recollet friars, among
the Illinois Indians. True to his trust, he stayed among them, when
the hordes of the Five Nations broke in, bent on destruction. Between
the contending forces he held his life in the balance, vainly
striving to stem the tide of massacre; and, having done all that man
could do, found his way back to the lakes, saved by his own fearless
honesty and by respect for the French name.

[Sidenote: _Hennepin's travels on the upper Mississippi._]

[Sidenote: _Du Luth._]

Of the expedition which started in the ill-fated _Griffin_, there was
still another prominent member to be accounted {161} for. This was
Father Hennepin. Before La Salle turned home from Fort Crèvecoeur in
the spring of 1680, he sent two Frenchmen of his company, and with
them Father Hennepin, to explore and to trade on the upper
Mississippi. Hennepin and his companions went down the Illinois; and,
ascending the Mississippi, fell among the Sioux or Dakota Indians.
Carried off to the Sioux lodges, in the present State of Minnesota,
the Frenchmen sojourned among them for some months, half captives and
half guests, until they were found by Du Luth, fur-trader and
_coureur de bois_, who had already explored these regions, and had
crossed from Lake Superior to the Mississippi by the line of the St.
Croix river. In his company, Hennepin returned up the Wisconsin; and,
before the year 1680 ended, was safe at Michillimackinac. In the
following year he went back to Montreal; and soon afterwards,
returning to Europe, published the book to which reference has
already been made. He was the first European to describe the upper
Mississippi and its tributaries, and the Falls of St. Anthony
preserve the name of his patron saint--St. Anthony of Padua.

[Sidenote: _La Salle descends the Mississippi._]

[Sidenote: _Fort Prudhomme built on the Mississippi._]

The descent to the sea, which in after years he falsely claimed to
have made, was soon afterwards achieved by La Salle. After rejoining
Tonty at Michillimackinac, he went back with him to Fort Frontenac
and Montreal, and once more procured men and money to renew his
enterprise. Again turning west, he reached Fort Miami late in the
autumn of 1681, and on the shortest day his expedition left Lake
Michigan. Crossing from the St. Joseph to the Chicago creek, and from
the latter to the Des Plaines river, the northern tributary of the
Illinois, they embarked--fifty-four Frenchmen and Indians, including
thirteen women and children--in six canoes, and took their way
steadily down stream. They joined the Mississippi, they passed the
mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Halfway between the Ohio and the
Arkansas, {162} on the east bank of the Mississippi, they built and
manned a small wooden fort, naming it Fort Prudhomme after one of
their number who for a while lost himself in the woods. Again holding
on their course, under softer skies than those of Canada, they
reached the mouth of the Arkansas river, whence Joliet and Marquette
had turned back; and there, among friendly and wondering Indians,
they proclaimed the French King lord of the land. Below the Arkansas
they came to other Indian tribes, such as the Spaniards had known,
who, under dome-shaped roofs, worshipped the sun. At length the river
parted into three channels, as it neared the sea; and, dividing into
three parties, the bold voyagers soon met again on the shore of the
Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _La Salle reaches the Gulf of Mexico._]

[Sidenote: _Louisiana._]

It was April 9, 1682, when, on the southernmost edge of the new
domain, a column was reared inscribed with the arms of France and
with the name of _Louis le Grand_. The secret of the great river was
won at last, from its source to its mouth; and, claiming all the
lands which it watered for the Crown of France,[8] La Salle called
them by the name 'Louisiana.'

[Footnote 8: In La Salle's proclamation the basin of the Ohio was
excluded from Louisiana, as the words are 'from the mouth of the
great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio' (Parkman's _La
Salle_, 12th ed., p. 286).]

[Sidenote: _He returns up stream._]

[Sidenote: _The colony on the Illinois._]

[Sidenote: _Fort St. Louis._]

His canoes could not face the open sea, so the explorers retraced
their course up stream. They suffered from want of food, the natives
attacked them, and La Salle himself was sorely stricken by fever,
which kept him many weeks at Fort Prudhomme. It was not till
September that he reached Michillimackinac, and rejoined Tonty, who
had gone on before him. The winter of 1682-3 was spent in
establishing a colony of French and Indians on the Illinois. The
place selected for the purpose was on the southern bank of the river,
some distance above the site of Fort Crèvecoeur, where a high
precipitous cliff towered over wood and stream. The rock had been
marked by La Salle in his former sojourn on {163} the river, and it
was during Tonty's visit to the spot[9] that Fort Crèvecoeur was
looted and left. Had the Illinois river been the Rhine, the rock
would in mediaeval times have been crowned by the castle of a border
noble; and on its summit was now built a wooden fort, Fort St. Louis
of the Illinois. Round the fort the Indians gathered for protection
and for trade, the peasantry as it were of the western wilderness,
clustering under the shelter of a feudal stronghold; for in virtue of
the royal patent, La Salle was the Seignior of the place. It promised
to be a strong outpost of French dominion, if its connexion with
Canada was kept intact.

[Footnote 9: See above, p. 160. A full description of the rock, known
afterwards as 'Starved Rock,' is given in Parkman's _La Salle_ (12th
ed.), pp. 293-4, and note.]

[Sidenote: _Opposition to La Salle in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _He returns to France._]

New France was made by a few individual men, of whom La Salle was
one. Their work was perpetually undone by want of efficient
co-operation, or rather by efficient antagonism, on the part of their
fellow countrymen. Fort Frontenac, Niagara, armed and trading vessels
on the upper lakes, Fort Miami, where the lakes end, a fort on the
Illinois--constituted the basis of a scheme worthy of support, but
support was wanting. Frontenac had been recalled in 1682; and his
successor, La Barre, leagued with the enemies of La Salle, cut off
his supplies, detained his men, maligned him to the King, seized his
Seigniory at Fort Frontenac, and sent an officer to take possession
of the fort on the Illinois. La Salle had but one remedy left, to
appeal to the King in person; and with that object he sailed for
France in 1683, never to see Canada again. His troubled fighting life
was soon to end, and its closing scenes were crowded with disaster.
He seems to some extent to have lost his balance, to have acted with
insufficient knowledge, and to have changed hardihood into
recklessness. Yet in all that he attempted there was continuity of
aim from first to last, and his final wild adventure, as it seemed to
be, had its bearing on the story of the Canadian Dominion.

{164} The patent, which had been given to him in 1678, authorized
discovery, trade, and the building of forts, but said nothing of
founding colonies. The policy of the French Government was always in
the main a forward policy; but the French King and his ministers had
the good sense to discourage proposals for colonizing the backwoods,
because they saw the obvious danger of dispersing through a large
area the scanty population of New France. It was therefore easy for
La Salle's enemies to denounce his schemes as opposed to the royal
will, as drawing off colonists from the St. Lawrence, where they were
sorely needed, and teaching the able-bodied men of Canada to become
not _habitans_ but _coureurs de bois_. These were the charges which
La Salle had to rebut. He met them by propounding a still bolder plan
than his former ventures, and he induced the King to give his
sanction to an enterprise for French colonization on the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _His schemes for colonization on the Gulf of Mexico._]

It happened that, at the date when he arrived in Paris, there was bad
blood between France and Spain, resulting for a short space in open
war. The Spaniards claimed to exclude French ships from the Gulf of
Mexico, and King Louis, with his minister Seignelay, Colbert's son,
contemplated meeting these claims by taking and holding a post on the
Gulf. Some scheme of the kind had already been submitted to them by a
Spanish refugee from Peru, Count Penalossa by name; and when La Salle
advanced similar proposals, suggesting the establishment of a French
colony on or near the mouth of the Mississippi, to be connected with
Canada, and to be the basis for attacking and conquering the northern
province of Mexico, New Biscay, his words fell on willing ears. He
spoke with authority. Alone among Frenchmen at the Court of France,
he had reached the mouth of the great river, and could tell to a
King, with lust of conquest, a story of lands to be won for France,
and of peoples ready to follow her lead.

{165} [Sidenote: _The plan accepted, and La Salle reinstated in
favour._]

The result was that La Salle's rivals in Canada were discomfited, and
peremptory orders were sent to La Barre to restore his Seigniory at
Fort Frontenac and his station on the Illinois; while an expedition,
destined for the Gulf of Mexico, was fitted out at La Rochelle, and
eventually sailed on July 24, 1684.

[Sidenote: _La Salle's motives._]

What was in La Salle's mind in suggesting this southern adventure can
only be conjectured. Was it the last desperate stake of a ruined
gambler? Or was it an over-sanguine attempt to realize the great
object of his life, to master the far West by moving up instead of
down its waterways, by entering not through Canada, where every step
would be dogged by jealousy and intrigue, but through the mouths of
the Mississippi, where climate and natives would be less formidable
foes than the Governor of Canada and his unscrupulous clique of
confederates? If, as it is reasonable to suppose, he still clung with
the determination of his character to the western enterprise, in
which he had already achieved so much, he added to it a
highly-coloured picture of conquest in Mexico; and he drew his map of
Mexico as adjoining the lands on the Mississippi, omitting in
ignorance most of the wide area of intervening territory, now
included in the State of Texas.

[Sidenote: _The expedition sails._]

[Sidenote: _It reaches the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico._]

[Sidenote: _Landing on the shores of Texas._]

Four vessels set sail, freighted with all things necessary to found a
colony, carrying soldiers, artisans, married women, and young girls.
They were a doomed company; from first to last all went wrong. There
was divided command, and Beaujeu, the admiral of the ships, a Norman
like La Salle, had with some reason little confidence in the
expedition or its leader. They made in the first instance for St.
Domingo, but one of the four ships which was carrying the stores was
cut off by Spanish buccaneers before reaching the island. At St.
Domingo, La Salle was laid low with fever; and, while he was between
life and death, his followers rioted and sickened on shore. After a
delay of two months, the {166} expedition started again, weakened by
desertion and disease. The ships entered the Gulf of Mexico,
passed--without knowing it--the mouths of the Mississippi, and on New
Year's Day, 1685, anchored off the coast of Texas. Somewhere on this
coast, in the vicinity either of Matagorda Bay or of Galveston Bay,
La Salle effected a landing, where a series of lagoons that lined the
shore concealed, as he thought, the main outlet of the Mississippi.
Disaster still attended the enterprise: one of the ships was wrecked
on the reefs, the natives of the land proved unfriendly; and when
Beaujeu, the admiral, having given what help he could, sailed away in
the middle of March, he left behind on desolate shores a despondent
band of French men and women groping for a river which could not be
found, in present trouble and without clear guidance for the future.

[Sidenote: _Founding of Fort St. Louis._]

[Sidenote: _Distress of the settlement._]

[Sidenote: _Attempt to reach Canada._]

Skirting the sea-line, the would-be colonists had reached a large
bay, into the head of which a river ran; and on the banks of this
stream La Salle formed a settlement, to which, as to his colony on
the Illinois, he gave the name of Fort St. Louis. Gathered within
palisades, the settlers worked and waited, dwindling in numbers,
while their leader explored, but explored in vain. Setting out at the
end of October, 1685, La Salle returned in the following March,
having accomplished nothing and having lost his last vessel, a small
frigate, the _Belle_. Again in a month's time, towards the end of
April, 1686, he set out to make his way to Canada; once more, in
October, he returned to the fort, baffled and disappointed. His
followers were sadly reduced in numbers: of some 180, no more than
forty-five were left; and of them he could trust but few. Return to
France was cut off, and from France time had shown that no help was
forthcoming. There was no alternative but to make one more attempt to
reach Canada, and thence to bring rescue to the fort in Texas.

[Sidenote: _Death of La Salle._]

It was a forlorn hope at best, but the attempt was made. {167} Half
of the company remained at the fort. The others, including La Salle's
brother, the Abbé Cavelier, and two young nephews, followed La Salle
himself on his northward journey. It was on January 7, 1687, that the
party set out to make their way painfully over prairies, across
rivers, through forest, thicket, and scrub. On March 19, near the
Trinity river, La Salle fell dead, ambushed and shot by his own men.
No career ever had a more squalid or pitiable ending. It ended in
commonplace mutiny and murder. Three or four scoundrels, discontented
and badly handled, nursed their personal grudges against a severe and
domineering leader, until, in an outbreak of irritation, they killed
three of his immediate following and the leader himself.

[Sidenote: _Fate of his company._]

The brother escaped; so did one of the nephews, and Joutel, a
gardener's son from Rouen--the most honest and capable of the
band--who afterwards told the unvarnished tale. They companied for a
while with the murderers, roaming among the Indians of the west,
until one and another of the guilty men fell by each other's hands or
strayed into savagery. In the end seven Frenchmen, with the help of
Indian guides, reached the Arkansas river, found an outpost
established there by Tonty, made their way thence to the Illinois,
and so to Canada and France. On the Illinois and in Canada they
concealed, from policy or fear, the fact of La Salle's death. In the
dead man's name his brother, the coward priest, obtained from Tonty
advances for his home journey; and it was not till after he was safe
in Europe, in the autumn of 1688, that the tragedy came to light.

[Sidenote: _Indifference in France as to La Salle's death._]

Few seemed to care. A man had gone, who by the age of forty-three had
achieved great deeds, had dared and suffered much; but he was a man
who had few friends and many enemies, and he served a Government in
whose eyes failure was a crime, and to which gratitude was unknown.
{168} An order was given that, if the murderers reappeared in Canada,
they should be arrested, and with that order the name of La Salle
passed out of official ken.

[Sidenote: _Extermination of the colony in Texas._]

[Sidenote: _Tonty's faithfulness._]

The Government made no attempt to relieve the hapless exiles in
Texas. They were left to perish, just as, many years before, the
Huguenot settlers in Florida had been abandoned and betrayed. Tonty
alone was mindful of his friend. Already, in 1686, before La Salle
had started on his last march, he had descended the Mississippi to
its mouth, and had searched the coast in vain, hoping to bring
succour and relief; and when, in the autumn of 1688, he knew the full
truth, again he started, to save if possible the remnant of the
expedition. He penetrated to the Red river and beyond, but could not
reach the fort in Texas; and it was from Spanish sources that the
fate of the last settlers was afterwards known. An expedition from
Mexico, sent to root out the intruders, found the fort a desolate
ruin. The Indians had been beforehand in the work of destruction, and
had butchered or carried off the inmates, two or three of whom
exchanged captivity among savages for Spanish prisons.

[Sidenote: _Importance of La Salle's work._]

Such was the end of La Salle's last venture--misery, ruin, death,
and, for the time, comparative oblivion. Yet his name lives in
history and deserves to live, and his work was not all undone. We
look back not merely on his hardihood and his sufferings. We see in
him not only an explorer of the boldest type; but he stands out
pre-eminently as the man, who, above all others, grasped the
conception of a North American dominion, which should be from sea to
sea--based on the great geographical factor in North America, its
nearly continuous water communication--and in which the natives of
North America should be banded together in war and peace, under the
leadership of France. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth
of the Mississippi, by river and lake, his vision was that Frenchmen
and their native subjects should come and go, carrying from fort to
{169} fort, from settlement to settlement, the produce of forest and
prairie, the wealth of the West.

It was a great conception, too great to be realized; but it
harmonized with the genius of the French people. Their gift was to be
ever moving, their strength was not to sit still. What success they
won was on the lines that La Salle marked out. With all his failures,
he knew the land and he knew his race.

[Sidenote: _Colonization of Louisiana by Iberville._]

The eighteenth century had not ended before the colonization of
Louisiana became more than a dream. Tonty continued to urge it. The
English threatened to take it in hand; Spain was reasserting her
claim to the ownership of the Gulf of Mexico; and, lest the French
should be excluded altogether, Le Moyne d'Iberville, best of Canadian
leaders, obtained permission to sail for the Mississippi. More
skilful than La Salle, or better informed, he reached its mouth in
March, 1699; but the first settlements were made to the east of the
river, at Biloxi in the present State of Mississippi, and on Mobile
Bay. It was not till the year 1718 that the city of New Orleans was
first founded by Bienville, Iberville's brother, who at intervals
governed Louisiana for many years. Bandied about from Crown to
company, and from company to Crown, the prey of speculators, the
scene, like Canada itself, of artificial settlement and regulated
colonization, Louisiana made but slow progress. Yet in time it became
a factor to be reckoned with in North American history, and to
connect it with Canada was in the eighteenth century the aim of the
rulers of New France.

[Sidenote: _The Illinois abandoned by the French._]

In 1702, Tonty left Fort St. Louis on the Illinois to join Iberville
in the south, and, except for a few years at a little later date,
that fort was abandoned. The Indians, too, who had gathered round it,
dispersed; some of them moved down to the Mississippi; and connexion
between Canada and Louisiana was afterwards sought not so much by the
Illinois river, as by the line of the Ohio, the earliest scene of La
Salle's discoveries.




{170}

CHAPTER VI

ACADIA AND HUDSON BAY


In the last chapter the main stream of Canadian history has been
followed down to the Treaty of Utrecht. New France was essentially
the colony on the St. Lawrence; but with the story of Canada proper
the story of Acadia is interwoven, and Acadia under another name now
forms part of the Canadian Dominion. To complete the tale to 1713, it
is necessary to go back to the early days of settlement in the
present Maritime Provinces of the Dominion. Some notice must also be
made of English commercial enterprise on the northern side of Canada,
the shores of Hudson Bay.

[Sidenote: _Acadia._]

Acadia, Acadie--a name which the French took from the
Indians[1]--included an ill-defined region. Whoever held it, at any
given time, naturally claimed as large an area as possible, and,
after it was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, the
question of the boundary was a fruitful source of trouble. Under the
French, Acadia was roughly coterminous with the present provinces of
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine; but
Acadia proper was the peninsula of Nova Scotia. There, and on the
immediately adjoining coast of the mainland, the fighting and the
raids took place. It was not until after the Peace of Utrecht was
signed that Cape Breton Island, whose name recalls the nationality of
early voyagers to North America, became, under the new title of Île
Royale, a renowned stronghold of France; while Prince Edward Island,
the Île de {171} St. Jean, played little part in the early history of
North America.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 36, note.]

[Sidenote: _The peninsula of Nova Scotia._]

Linked to the continent by the isthmus of Chignecto, sixteen miles in
breadth, the peninsula of Nova Scotia runs for some 300 miles
north-east and south-west, parallel to the North American coast. From
that coast it is separated on the southern side of the isthmus by the
Bay of Fundy--the Baie Françoise as it was called in old days--a bay
into which the sea runs strong and which divides at the head, forming
on the left, the mainland side, Chignecto Bay, on the right the Basin
of Mines. The shores of this latter land-locked basin were in the
eighteenth century a well-known scene of Acadian settlement, and here
stood the village of Grand Pré. On the same side of Nova Scotia,
lower down than the Basin of Mines, is Annapolis harbour, better
known in old days as Port Royal. The opposite sides of New Brunswick
and Maine are deeply indented by the estuaries of various rivers--the
St. John, the St. Croix, now the border stream between Canada and the
United States, and, further south, the Penobscot and the Kennebec,
names that constantly occur in the story of Acadian and New England
warfare. Cape Sable--the sand cape--is the southernmost point of Nova
Scotia: midway on the Atlantic side of the peninsula is Halifax
harbour, formerly known as Chebucto; and on the north the narrow
strait known as the Gut of Canso divides Nova Scotia proper from Cape
Breton Island. Cape Breton Island on the south, Newfoundland on the
north, mark the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They are the
buttresses of the main gateway of Canada.

[Sidenote: _Geographical importance of Acadia._]

Sea-girt and sea-beaten was and is Acadia, with broken shores and
many bays, where fishermen and freebooters came and went: a land to
nurse a hardy race in small and scattered settlements, nestling in
nooks and corners by inlets of the sea. Its importance did not lie in
natural riches, but in its geographical position. It was the
borderland of French and {172} English colonization. Whoever held in
strength Acadia and Cape Breton on the one side, and Newfoundland on
the other, could command the river of Canada.

[Sidenote: _Acadia was in the English sphere of colonization, but was
all important to France._]

Taking the two spheres of colonization, the seaboard settlements of
the English on the one hand, the inland river settlements of the
French on the other, it is clear that Acadia naturally belonged to
the former; it was within the sphere of which Boston was the centre,
not within that which was ruled by Quebec. The coasts of Maine, of
New Brunswick, and of Nova Scotia prolong the shores of New England:
any dividing line has been made by man not by nature. The Boston
fishermen went faring north, not into strange waters or by foreign
coasts, for land and sea were as their own. Between Quebec and Port
Royal, on the other hand, there was no natural connexion, yet the
possession of Acadia was of more vital importance to France than to
England. With Acadia in French hands the New England colonies could
still grow in strength; but English occupation of Acadia, Cape
Breton, and Newfoundland meant the beginning of the end for New
France, the closing of the St. Lawrence, if England kept command of
the sea. Thus it was that in the negotiations which ended in the
Treaty of Utrecht the French King fought hard to keep Acadia, and,
thwarted in this endeavour, made the most of Cape Breton Island,
rearing in it the strong fortress of Louisbourg.

[Sidenote: _Early settlers in Acadia._]

Acadia then was a borderland, and its history resembled that of other
borderlands. Its first settlers were French, and the majority of the
scanty population remained French in language, in tradition, in
religion, in sympathy; but for years rival adventurers squabbled and
fought, with doubtful allegiance to England or France.

[Sidenote: _The De la Tours._]

We have seen how in 1613 the freebooter Argall,[2] sailing up from
Virginia, destroyed Poutrincourt's settlement at Port Royal. In spite
of this disaster, Biencourt, {173} Poutrincourt's son, with a handful
of Frenchmen, few but sturdy, still held fast to the shores of
Acadia. Among them was a French Huguenot, Claude Étienne de la Tour,
who with his son, Charles de la Tour, had come out from France in or
about the year 1609. When the Port Royal settlement was broken up, he
crossed over to the mouth of the Penobscot, and held a station there
until the year 1626, when he was driven out by an expedition from New
England. Biencourt appears to have died either in Acadia or in France
about the year 1623, and the younger La Tour became the foremost man
among the French settlers, holding a small fort near Cape Sable,
which seems to have been known by various names--Fort Louis, Fort
l'Omeroy or Lomeron, and Fort or Port Latour. In 1627, according to
the ordinary account, the father went to France to interest the
French Government in the fortunes of Acadia, and to secure the
position and title of Governor for his son. It was the year in which
Richelieu founded the company of the One Hundred Associates, and in
1628 a French squadron was sent out to America. The ships were
intercepted by David Kirke, and Claude de la Tour, who was on board,
was carried a prisoner to England.

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 42.]

[Sidenote: _Sir William Alexander._]

[Sidenote: _His patent._]

[Sidenote: _Nova Scotia._]

Acadia had by this time acquired a second name, its present name of
Nova Scotia. A Scotch scholar of some repute, William Alexander, born
near Stirling, became tutor to Prince Henry, son of James VI of
Scotland and I of England, and rose to high favour at Court. He was a
prolific writer, composed tragedies and sonnets, and after the King's
death completed a metrical version of the Psalms which James had
begun. In 1621 Sir William Alexander, as he then was, obtained from
the King a grant of the Acadian peninsula, Cape Breton Island, and
all the mainland from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence, the whole
territory within these wide limits being given the name of New
Scotland or Nova Scotia.

The terms of the charter were of the most liberal kind, and {174}
Alexander was constituted Lieutenant-General for the King, with
practically sovereign powers. The grant was made as an appanage of
the kingdom of Scotland; and, in seeking for and obtaining it,
Alexander seems to have been stimulated by the fact that an English
charter had lately been given to Fernando Gorges in the region of New
England. In other words, the patent represented the effort of an
energetic Scotchman to bring his country and his people into line
with the English in the field of western adventure.

[Sidenote: _Alexander's scheme of colonization._]

[Sidenote: _The baronets of Nova Scotia._]

Cape Breton Island he made over to another Scotchman, Sir Robert
Gordon, of Lochinvar, and went to work to find settlers for the rest
of his domain. His scheme was not taken up warmly; two ships were
sent out in 1622 and 1623, but no settlement was formed, and he found
himself involved in a debt of 6,000 pounds. He tried to rouse
enthusiasm for the colonization of New Scotland by publishing a
pamphlet entitled _An Encouragement to Colonies_; and, finding that
it met with little response, he hit upon the device of inducing the
King, who a few years before had created baronets of Ulster, to
establish also an order of baronets of New Scotland. The recipients
of the honour were to have grants of land on the other side of the
Atlantic, and the fees which they paid would, it was hoped, recoup
past losses and provide funds for future colonization.

[Sidenote: _Renewal of the patent by Charles I._]

King James having died, his successor Charles I, in 1625, renewed
Alexander's patent, and formally ratified the creation of the Nova
Scotian order, the honours being to a certain extent taken up under
pressure from the King. A new expedition was now set on foot, but in
the meantime news came that Richelieu had formed a rival company, and
that the French were preparing to make good their old title to
Acadia. The prospect of foreign competition gave fresh vigour to the
enterprise; Kirke offered his services to Alexander, and in 1628
captured Richelieu's squadron; while earlier in the same year four
ships in charge of {175} Alexander's son landed a party of settlers
safely at Port Royal, who established themselves on the site of the
old French settlement. In the following year Kirke took Quebec.

[Sidenote: _The elder La Tour joins Alexander._]

The elder La Tour, we have seen, was brought a prisoner to England.
There he seems to have transferred his allegiance to Great Britain,
in the words of an old record to have 'turned tenant'[3] to the
English King. According to one account, he married a maid of honour
to the Queen. At any rate, he threw in his lot with Alexander, was
created a baronet of Nova Scotia, and in 1630 received for himself
and his son--also created a baronet--two baronies in the Nova Scotian
peninsula. In the same year he seems to have returned to Acadia with
some more Scotch colonists, and vainly attempted to induce his son,
who was still holding the fort near Cape Sable, to come over to the
British cause, and take up the grant and honours which had been
conferred upon him. The son, we read, would yield neither to
persuasion nor to force, and the elder La Tour apparently went on to
the Scotch settlement at Port Royal.

[Footnote 3: _Calendar of State Papers_, Colonial, 1574-1660, pp.
119-20.]

[Sidenote: _Fort Latour built._]

[Sidenote: _Acadia restored to France._]

Already, in 1629, the Convention of Susa had been signed between the
Kings of England and France. Charles La Tour received a message of
encouragement from France; and, coming to terms with his father,
crossed over to the mainland, where he built Fort Latour at the mouth
of the river St. John.[4] In 1631 he was appointed
Lieutenant-Governor by the French King; and in 1632 the Treaty of St.
Germain-en-Laye restored to France 'all the places occupied in New
France, Acadia, and Canada' by British subjects.

[Footnote 4: The exact date at which the La Tours founded the fort is
very uncertain.]

[Sidenote: _The Scotch settlement at Port Royal abandoned._]

This treaty put an end to Scotch colonization of Acadia, and nothing
is now left to tell of Alexander's enterprise beyond the name of Nova
Scotia. The Scotch emigrants returned {176} home, or were lost among
the outnumbering French, and the old station of Port Royal was either
at the time or a few years afterwards entirely deserted. The site on
the northern or western side of Annapolis Basin was subsequently
known as Scots Fort; but the later Port Royal, which Phipps and
Nicholson took, was situated five miles away, on the other side of
the estuary, and is now the town of Annapolis.

[Sidenote: _Death of Alexander._]

Alexander never made good his losses. He died in 1640, in high honour
and position, having been Secretary of State for Scotland and
ennobled as Earl of Stirling and Viscount Canada; but he must have
learnt, as all who had dealings with the Stuarts learnt, not to put
his trust in princes; for his well-meant scheme to make a New
Scotland, which should rival New France, ended, through the tortuous
policy of the King whom he served, in utter failure.

[Sidenote: _Razilly, Denys, and D'Aunay._]

Isaac de Razilly was sent by Richelieu to receive Acadia back from
Alexander's representatives, upon the conclusion of the Treaty of
1632, and to be Governor of the country. With him went out, among
other settlers, Nicholas Denys, a native of Tours, and Charles de
Menou de Charnizay, known also as the Chevalier d'Aunay. Acadia now
became the scene of intestine feuds between Frenchmen with rival
claims and interests.

[Sidenote: _French adventurers in Acadia._]

It is exceedingly difficult to trace the relations between the
various adventurers, where they went and what they did. Razilly, who
was Governor-in-chief, settled at La Héve on the Atlantic coast of
Nova Scotia. D'Aunay seems to have driven out the New Englanders from
the Penobscot, and taken possession of Pentegoet at its mouth.
Charles La Tour held his fort on the estuary of the St. John, his
father having died or disappeared from the story, and raided, in or
about 1633, an outpost established by the Plymouth settlers at
Machias, north of the Penobscot. Denys formed trading stations at
Chedabucto, now Guysboro, at the eastern end of the Nova Scotian
peninsula, and in Cape Breton Island, {177} leaving to posterity an
account of Acadia and Cape Breton, in his book entitled _Description
des Costes de l'Amérique Septentrionale_.[5]

[Footnote 5: Charlevoix's account is that Acadia was divided into
three provinces, both for government and for ownership. Razilly had
the superior command over all, and was given Port Royal and the
mainland south to New England; Charles La Tour had the Acadian
peninsula, excluding Port Royal; and Denys had the northern district
from Canso to Gaspé, including Cape Breton Island. This leaves out
D'Aunay, and the arrangement, if it existed, was modified, inasmuch
as Razilly settled at La Héve, and Charles La Tour was on the river
of St. John.]

[Sidenote: _Feud between D'Aunay and Charles La Tour._]

Razilly died in 1635 or 1636; his brother, Claude de Razilly,
assigned his rights in Acadia to D'Aunay, and between the latter and
Charles La Tour a deadly quarrel ensued. D'Aunay, it would seem,
re-established Port Royal on the present site of Annapolis, making it
the principal settlement of Acadia instead of La Héve. His rival, La
Tour, had strong claims both on France and on Acadia. He had been far
longer in the country than D'Aunay, he had in trying circumstances
retained his allegiance to the Crown of France, he had been given a
commission by the King, and moreover something was owing to him in
virtue of the grants which Alexander had made in 1630 to his father
and himself, which grants appear to have been subsequently construed
into a transfer of the whole of Alexander's patent. However, D'Aunay
had the ear of the French Court.

It is stated[6] that, in 1638, the King prescribed certain boundaries
between the two rivals, but the delimitation had no effect; for in
1640 La Tour seems to have attacked Port Royal, with the result that
he was taken prisoner with his wife, both being released at the
intercession of French priests. In the next year, 1641, D'Aunay
obtained an order from home which revoked La Tour's commission and
empowered his enemy to seize him, if he refused to submit, and send
him prisoner to France. La Tour now turned for help to New England,
and, in 1643, after long and scriptural {178} debates by the Puritans
as to the lawfulness of aiding 'idolaters,'[7] succeeded in hiring
four ships at Boston to join him in raiding D'Aunay's property. In
the following year, however, an emissary from D'Aunay came to Boston
to protest against English interference; and in October, 1644, a
convention was concluded between the New Englanders and D'Aunay,
providing for mutual peace and free trade.

[Footnote 6: By Haliburton in his _History of Nova Scotia_, vol. i,
p. 53.]

[Footnote 7: The younger La Tour was not, like his father, a
Huguenot.]

[Sidenote: _Madame La Tour._]

[Sidenote: _D'Aunay gains possession of Fort Latour._]

D'Aunay had now the upper hand, and Madame La Tour becomes the
heroine of the story. She had followed her husband's fortunes with
undaunted courage, and had been to France to plead his cause. Going
on to London, she took passage on board ship, the master contracting
to take her to Fort Latour. Instead of carrying out his contract, he
wasted time in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and finally landed her at
Boston, where she brought an action against him and was awarded
damages of 2,000 pounds. Reaching Fort Latour, she was attacked there
by D'Aunay in 1645,[8] while her husband was absent, and the garrison
reduced to a very few men. She held the fort, notwithstanding, with
so much determination, and in spite of treachery within the walls,
that D'Aunay agreed to a capitulation, by which all the lives of the
defenders were to be spared. The terms were broken as soon as he
obtained possession of the fort, and the whole of the garrison was
put to death, with the exception of Madame La Tour and one man who
was spared to act as hangman to the rest. Madame La Tour herself was
compelled to witness the execution with a rope round her neck, and
three weeks afterwards she died.

[Footnote 8: According to Haliburton, D'Aunay besieged Madame La Tour
in the fort twice, being beaten off the first time. Kingsford gives
the date of the siege as 1647.]

[Sidenote: _Later career of Charles La Tour._]

Ruined and an outlaw, La Tour found his way to Newfoundland, where he
tried in vain to enlist the aid of the {179} English governor, Sir
David Kirke. He is said also to have visited Quebec and Hudson Bay,
and in his distress to have made an ill return for the kindness which
had been shown to him at Boston, by raiding a ship from that port and
ejecting her crew on to the Nova Scotian coast in the middle of
winter. Ultimately, in 1650, D'Aunay died, and La Tour, who must have
had a keen eye to business, some little time after married the widow.
New complications now arose. A creditor of D'Aunay, Le Borgne by
name, came out from France to enforce his claims against D'Aunay's
property, and in virtue of those claims to take possession of Acadia.
He first attacked Denys[9] at Chedabucto, and took him prisoner. He
was next preparing to attack La Tour, when events took a wholly
different turn, and the English again became masters of Acadia.

[Footnote 9: Denys went to France and secured, in 1654, the
restitution of his property, together with a commission as Governor
from Cape Canso to Cape Rosiers or Race, i.e. of Cape Breton, Prince
Edward Island, and Newfoundland. He was then raided by another
Frenchman, Giraudière. He seems to have eventually given up his
stations in Cape Breton, and in 1679 was at Quebec, old and blind.]

[Sidenote: _The English under Sedgwick take Acadia._]

Cromwell, in 1654, sent out an expedition to take Manhattan Island
from the Dutch, Major-General Sedgwick being in command. Peace being
made with the Netherlands, the force intended to drive the Dutch out
of Manhattan was turned against the French in Acadia; and in quick
succession, Sedgwick reduced the fort at Penobscot, La Tour's station
on the St. John, and Port Royal, where Le Borgne was at the time.[10]
Mazarin attempted to recover these posts under the twenty-fifth
article of the Treaty of Westminster of November 3, 1655; but, less
complaisant than the Kings who {180} preceded or who followed him,
Cromwell refused to entertain the proposals for a transfer.

[Footnote 10: Sedgwick was shortly afterwards sent to Jamaica, where
he died in June, 1656. In Appendix xxviii to Carlyle's _Oliver
Cromwell_, reference is made to the taking of the French forts in
Acadia, with the following characteristic but not very accurate note:
'Oliver kept his forts and his Acadie through all French treaties for
behoof of his New Englanders. Not till after the Restoration did the
country become French again, and continue such for a century or so.']

[Sidenote: _La Tour and Temple become owners of Acadia._]

[Sidenote: _Death of La Tour._]

La Tour now turned to account the fact that he had been created a
Nova Scotian baronet and received a grant from Alexander; he became a
British subject; and on August 10, 1656, letters patent were issued
by which he became, under the name of Sir Charles La Tour, joint
owner of Acadia with Sir Thomas Temple and William Crowne. Very
shortly afterwards he sold his interest to Temple, but appears to
have remained in Acadia, where he died in 1666.

[Sidenote: _Acadia restored to France by the Treaty of Breda._]

Temple, who received a commission from Cromwell as Governor of
Acadia, and went out there in 1657, laid out money in the country and
carried on trade with energy and success. He maintained the existing
stations, planted a new settlement at Jemseg on the St. John river,
higher up than Fort Latour, and drove out a son of Le Borgne, who
attempted to reoccupy La Héve; but, like Alexander before him, he
suffered at the hands of the Stuarts, for Charles II, after renewing
his commission as Governor and creating him a baronet of Nova Scotia,
subsequently, in spite of remonstrances from Massachusetts, restored
Acadia to France by the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, in return for
French concessions in the West Indies. Temple attempted to dispute
the extent covered by the treaty, but with no effect; and, in 1670,
the whole area became again a French possession. Temple retired to
Boston with a promise of 16,200 pounds which he never received, and
finally died in London in 1674.

The above is a bare recital of early days in Acadia, when it was, in
effect, no man's land. The story might be made picturesque, with La
Tour and his first wife for hero and heroine, with some embellishment
of Alexander's scheme, and a little dressing of D'Aunay, Denys, and
the other adventurers who come on the scene; but in truth it is a
very slender record of two or three Frenchmen and Englishmen, who did
a little trade or a little fishing on desolate {181} shores, and who
plundered each other in rather squalid fashion--left to themselves by
their rulers, except when their acts or their claims had a bearing on
international questions.

[Sidenote: _Acadia under French rule._]

When Temple retired in 1670 in favour of a new French commander, De
Grandfontaine, the total number of settlers in Acadia did not exceed
400. Some new French colonists now came in: the beginning of
settlement was made at Chignecto and the Basin of Mines, and
communication was for a time opened by land between Acadia and
Quebec. The great majority of the French inhabitants were at Port
Royal; but Pentegoet on the Penobscot was the seat of government,
until, in 1674, it was taken and plundered by a Dutch privateering
vessel, the same fate befalling the fort of Jemseg on the St. John
river. Chambly, who had succeeded Grandfontaine as Commander in
Acadia, was carried off a prisoner to Boston, and Pentegoet was for
the time abandoned by the French. Two years later, in 1676, it was
occupied by the Dutch; but the latter were in their turn driven out
by the New Englanders,[11] and the place passed into the hands of a
Frenchman notable in Acadian border warfare, the Baron de St. Castin.

[Footnote 11: In the Government records at The Hague, under date Oct.
27, 1678, there is a claim of the Netherlands West India Company
against Great Britain to the forts of Penobscot and St. John in
Acadie and Nova Scotia, and a request that they may be allowed to
remain in quiet and peaceable possession thereof.]

[Sidenote: _St. Castin at Pentegoet._]

He was a Béarnese, and had come out to Canada as an officer in the
Carignan Regiment. Finding, like other Frenchmen, a charm in forest
life, he drifted off to Acadia and lived as an Indian among Indians,
a devout Roman Catholic, but in other respects a native chief, with
his squaws and following of savage warriors. He established himself
at Pentegoet, on or near the site of the old fort, where Castine now
stands; he raided and was raided; in time of peace making money by
trade, in time of war joining in the border forays. For Pentegoet was
the southernmost {182} station of the French, standing on soil
claimed by the English, and granted by Charles II to the Duke of
York. Similarly, Pemaquid, near the Kennebec, established in 1677,
was the northernmost post of the English; and, if there was a line
between the two nations, it was between Pentegoet and Pemaquid. But
French influence extended to the Kennebec river, and Indian converts
of French priests were to be found in the immediate neighbourhood of
Pemaquid.

[Sidenote: _French priests and the Abenaki Indians._]

In 1676, the war between the New Englanders and the neighbouring
Indians, known as Philip's war, came to an end, leaving bitterness
between the conquered natives and victorious colonists. Hatred of the
English meant love of the French; and the Abenaki Indians of Acadia
and Maine, under the tutelage of fanatical and unscrupulous French
priests, became trained to enmity with the heretics; many of them
migrated to mission stations in Canada; while those who remained
behind were ever ready to obey the call to murder and pillage. In
Acadia, even more than in Canada proper, the Indian as a convert
became the tool of the Frenchman, and the Frenchman lent himself to
the barbarism of the Indian. The full effects of the unnatural blend
were seen and felt a little later on; but for twenty years after the
Treaty of Breda and the restoration of Acadia to France, there was
more often peace than war between the English and the French; and the
Boston fishermen were, about 1678, licensed for the time being by the
French Commandant, La Vallière, to ply their trade on the Acadian
coasts.

[Sidenote: _French Governors and colonists of Acadia._]

With some trading of this kind and with a good deal of privateering,
the years passed by. Perrot, who had been Governor of Montreal and
had distinguished himself even among French officials of the time for
corrupt practices, succeeded La Vallière in 1684, with a commission
as Governor of Acadia. Still intent on enriching himself by illicit
trade, he was recalled in 1687, and his place was taken by Meneval.
The latter, like Perrot, was subordinate to the {183}
Governor-General of Canada, and the number of colonists whom he ruled
was, according to a census held in 1686, 858, 600 of whom lived at or
near Port Royal, and the remainder chiefly at Beaubassin at the head
of Chignecto Bay, and on the Basin of Mines.

[Sidenote: _Acadia ceded to England by the Peace of Utrecht._]

In 1688, Andros, then Governor of the New England colonies, plundered
St. Castin's station at Pentegoet; the French and Indians retaliated,
taking the fort of Pemaquid in the following year; and there followed
a long series of butcheries and reprisals, of which an account has
already been given in a preceding chapter, the taking of Fort Royal
by Phipps in 1690, and, in 1710, its final surrender to Nicholson. In
the end, the Treaty of Utrecht provided in its twelfth article that
'all Nova Scotia or Accadie with its ancient boundaries' should be
'yielded and made over to the Queen of Great Britain and to her Crown
for ever.'

[Sidenote: _Henry Hudson sails to the Arctic regions and is lost._]

[Sidenote: _The search for the North-West Passage._]

[Sidenote: _Button._]

We have seen[12] that, in 1609, Henry Hudson led Dutchmen into the
present State of New York, and left his name to the river on which
the city of New York stands. In the following year, he took service
under an English syndicate, to make a further attempt to find a
North-West Passage to the Indies. In April, 1610, he started in a
small ship, the _Discovery_, found his way through Hudson Straits
into Hudson Bay, wintered at the extreme south-eastern end of James'
Bay, and, cast adrift by his mutinous followers in the following
summer, never saw home again, 'dearly purchasing the honour of having
this large Strait and Bay called after his name.'[13] The Arctic
seas, where he met his death, and where his name has lived through
the centuries, were visited again and again by English explorers,
still seeking for the North-West Passage. One voyager after another
went out, hoping to return by China and the East. In April, 1612,
Captain Button set forth with two ships, one of which was {184}
Hudson's old vessel, the _Discovery_, reached the western coast of
Hudson Bay--which was long called after him, Button's Bay--wintered
at Port Nelson, at the mouth of the Nelson river, and returned in the
autumn of 1613.

[Footnote 12: See above, p. 63.]

[Footnote 13: Oldmixon's _British Empire in America_ (1741 ed.), vol.
i, p. 543.]

[Sidenote: _Royal charter granted to the Merchants Discoverers of the
North-West Passage._]

His instructions had been drawn up by the young Prince of Wales,
Prince Henry, who died not long afterwards; and three months after
Button started, the merchants at whose expense both his expedition
and Hudson's had been fitted out, were incorporated under royal
charter as the 'Company of the Merchants of London Discoverers of the
North-West Passage,' having the Prince of Wales as governor or
'Supreme Protector,' and including among many well-known names that
of Richard Hakluyt.

[Sidenote: _Gibbons._]

[Sidenote: _Bylot and Baffin._]

In 1614, the _Discovery_ was sent out again under the command of
Captain Gibbons, but returned in the same year, having penetrated no
further than Hudson Strait. In 1615, Bylot and Baffin set sail for
the North, again taking with them the _Discovery_; they too returned
in the same year, concluding that the North-West Passage was not to
be found by the way of Hudson Straits. Once more, in the next year,
1616, the same men went out, and once more the stout old ship, the
_Discovery_, carried them, the voyage resulting in the exploration of
Baffin Bay. For two years after their return there was a respite from
Arctic voyages, but in 1619 Captain Hawkridge led a fresh expedition,
which proved a failure.

[Sidenote: _Luke Foxe and Thomas James._]

Much money had now been spent in the attempt to find a North-West
Passage, and little had been achieved; but after an interval of
twelve years, in 1631, two more Arctic voyages took place. One
expedition was commanded by a Yorkshireman, Luke Foxe, the other by
Captain Thomas James, who was connected with Bristol. The former was
backed by London merchants, the latter was a Bristol venture; but
both received sanction and encouragement from the King. James' voyage
was unfortunate and barren of result; but Foxe, {185} though he did
not find the Passage, which was the one aim and object of all these
early attempts, completed the exploration of Hudson Bay, and
penetrated further north than previous sailors by the way of what is
still known as Fox Channel.

[Sidenote: _The period of discovery in the far North followed by
trading enterprise._]

With these two voyages the first chapter in Arctic discovery comes to
an end. As in the record of English colonization we have a distinct
break between the time of discovery and adventure on the one hand,
and the time of trade and settlement on the other, so even in the far
North there was a time of exploration, followed after an interval by
a time of trade. All the early voyages, which have been recounted
above, were voyages of discovery, and, though they were fitted out
for the most part by syndicates of merchants, their object was not to
bring back furs, or to establish trading stations, but to search for
a new route to the East.[14]

[Footnote 14: A most excellent account of the early voyages in search
of a North-West Passage is given in Mr. Miller Christy's Introduction
to the _Voyages of Foxe and James to the North-West_ (Hakluyt
Society, 1894).]

[Sidenote: _Zachariah Gillam._]

[Sidenote: _Radisson and Des Groseilliers._]

Forty years passed away and, in the year 1668, an English ship once
more found its way into Hudson Bay. The ship was named the _Nonsuch_,
her commander was Captain Zachariah Gillam, and Prince Rupert seems
to have had a hand in sending her out. The expedition was designed to
establish trade with the Indians, and Gillam wintered in James Bay,
near where Hudson had wintered in 1610, building a fort called
Charles Fort at the mouth of a river which was named Rupert river.
The fort was subsequently known as Fort Rupert or Rupert House. It is
stated that this new enterprise was undertaken in consequence of
information received from two French settlers in Canada named
Radisson and Des Groseilliers, and that the latter was on board
Gillam's ship, while Radisson had embarked on another vessel which
started from England with Gillam, but put back on account of stress
of weather.

{186} [Sidenote: _French claims to priority in Hudson Bay._]

How far these two Frenchmen contributed to the beginning of trade in
Hudson Bay, and to the founding of the Hudson Bay Company, has been a
matter of much controversy. The question was originally of some
importance, for French claims to priority of occupation in the Arctic
regions rested in large measure on the real or the alleged doings of
the two adventurers. Like the rest of the world, they must have heard
of the existence of Hudson Bay, for the voyages to discover the
North-West Passage, though not made by Frenchmen, were not made in
secret; and they had gathered information from the Indians of Canada
as to the possibilities of fur trading in these northern regions.
They had more than once attempted, between 1658 and 1663, to make
their way by land to the bay, but never seem to have reached its
shores; and the first recorded overland visit from Canada, is that of
a French priest, Albanel, who, in 1671-2, journeyed from Quebec to
Lake St. John, and thence, by the line of the Rupert river, came to
the sea, to find an English factory already established at the mouth
of the river.

[Sidenote: _Incorporation of the Hudson Bay Company._]

[Sidenote: _Rupert's Land._]

Gillam returned to England in 1669, and on May 2, 1670, the Hudson
Bay Company came into existence. On that day Charles II issued a
royal charter, creating a corporate body under the title of 'The
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's
Bay.' Prince Rupert was the first Governor; Albemarle, Ashley, and
Arlington were among the original grantees. The preamble of the
charter recited that the persons named had 'at their own great cost
and charges, undertaken an expedition for Hudson's Bay, in the
North-West part of America, for the discovery of a new passage into
the South Sea, and for the finding some trade for furs, minerals, and
other considerable commodities'; and in their corporate capacity the
Company were constituted absolute lords and proprietors, with a
complete monopoly of trade of all the lands and seas 'that lie within
the entrance of the straits, commonly called Hudson's {187} Straits,'
so far as they were not already actually granted to or possessed by
British subjects, or the subjects of any other Christian Prince or
State. The charter enacted that 'the said land' should be 'from
henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of our plantations or colonies
in America, called Rupert's Land.'

[Sidenote: _Operations of the company._]

Armed with practically unlimited powers over an unlimited area, the
company lost little time in sending out ships and establishing
factories. In addition to Fort Rupert at the south-eastern end of
James Bay, Fort Hayes, or Moose Fort, was constructed at the
south-western end of the bay, at the mouth of the Moose river; and
some distance to the north of the latter fort, Fort Albany was placed
at the outlet of the Albany river. Voyages were also made to the
mouth of the Nelson river, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, but no
attempt was made to plant a factory there till the year 1682.

[Sidenote: _Collision between French and English in Hudson Bay._]

[Sidenote: _A Canadian company formed._]

It was in that year and at Fort Nelson, as it was called, that French
and English first came into collision in the far North. Radisson and
Des Groseilliers, who had taken service with the English in
consequence of being fined by the Governor of Canada for making their
early journeys without his licence, subsequently returned to Canada,
and piloted their countrymen by sea into Hudson Bay. A company was
formed in Canada in 1682, the Compagnie du Nord, and sent out an
expedition from Quebec with these two men on board. They reached the
Nelson river; a few days before they arrived a Boston vessel appeared
on the scene, and a few days subsequently a vessel came from England,
sent by the Hudson Bay Company to build a fort. After a short
interval the French overpowered the English; but two years later, in
1684, Radisson and Des Groseilliers having in the meantime again come
back to the Hudson Bay Company, that company recovered its fort, and
the French lost their footing on Hudson Bay.

{188} [Sidenote: _Attack made overland from Canada on the English
forts on Hudson Bay._]

In the following year two Frenchmen passed overland from the bay to
Canada by the Abbitibbi river, Lake Temiscaming, and the Ottawa; and
it was determined to send a Canadian expedition by that route to
attack the factories of the Hudson Bay Company. The rulers of Canada
viewed with distrust English settlements to the north of New France,
as they feared and distrusted the English colonies on the southern
side, and they determined if possible to strangle them in infancy.
Denonville was now Governor of Canada; and early in the year 1686 he
dispatched a party of soldiers and Canadians to attack the forts on
Hudson Bay. It was the kind of expedition in which French Canadians
excelled, indifferent to privation and hardship, trained to toil
through ice and snow, through unknown forests, making the rivers the
highways for sleigh or canoe. Their leader was De Troyes, and with
him went three sons of the celebrated Le Moyne family, including the
most noted of them, Iberville. The Frenchmen followed the line of the
Ottawa and the Abbitibbi, and in June, 1686, surprised and took Fort
Hayes on the outlet of the Moose river. Crossing the eastern end of
James Bay on the floating ice, they next reached Fort Rupert, seized
a ship which was moored in front of the fort, and overpowered the
fort itself. The sea was by this time open to navigation, and in
canoes and the captured vessel the victorious Frenchmen turned west
to attack Fort Albany. There was here some semblance of siege, but
the little English garrison was forced to capitulate, and leaving
Iberville in charge of the fort, which was renamed Fort St. Anne, De
Troyes returned in November to Canada.

[Sidenote: _Complaints of the Hudson Bay Company against the seizure
of their forts._]

[Sidenote: _The English forts recovered._]

This successful raid was organized and carried out in a time of peace
between the English and French Crowns; and, when the Englishmen who
had been taken prisoners at the forts found their way home, the
Hudson Bay Company laid the case before the Government, demanding
satisfaction for the wrong done and restitution of their property.
{189} There was little likelihood of redress while James II was King
of England. On November 16, 1686, he concluded a treaty of neutrality
with the French King, the Treaty of Whitehall; and a mixed commission
of French and English was appointed to inquire into the claims of the
company. No settlement was arrived at: in 1688 came the Revolution in
England; in 1692 the battle of La Hogue crippled the French at sea;
and at length, in 1693, an English expedition was sent to Hudson Bay
which recovered all the forts in James Bay.

[Sidenote: _Iberville takes Port Nelson and the forts in James Bay._]

[Sidenote: _They are recovered by the English._]

The northernmost post of the Hudson Bay Company, the post on the
Nelson river, or rather on the Hayes river, which flows into the same
estuary, had not been taken by the French in their buccaneering
expedition of 1686. It was known indifferently as Port Nelson or Fort
York. It was at some distance from the forts in James Bay, and
promised to be an outlet for trade from the regions west of the great
lakes. It had been threatened by the French in 1690, and in October,
1694, the bold and restless Iberville, who had returned to Canada in
1687, appeared before it with two ships. After a short siege it
capitulated, and was renamed Fort Bourbon; and Iberville followed up
his success by recapturing the forts in James Bay. Thus, by the
middle of 1695, the French held every post in Hudson Bay. In the next
year came English ships, and all the positions were regained for
England.

[Sidenote: _Fresh raid by Iberville._]

[Sidenote: _The Peace of Ryswick._]

[Sidenote: _The Peace of Utrecht._]

[Sidenote: _Hudson Bay secured to England._]

Once more, in 1697, Iberville appeared on the scene. He had in the
meantime taken Fort Pemaquid on the Acadian frontier, and overrun
Newfoundland; and starting from Placentia, with four ships of war
sent out from France, he made sail for Hudson Bay. The destination
was Port Nelson; but the vessels became separated, and with a single
ship, Iberville, when nearing the fort, came into collision with
three armed English merchantmen. The bold Frenchman closed with them,
one to three, sank one of the vessels, took a second, {190} while the
third made its escape. A heavy gale came on, his own ship was driven
ashore and broken up; but landing with his men, he was rejoined
shortly afterwards by the rest of the French squadron, and laying
siege to the fort compelled it to capitulate. This feat of arms took
place early in September, 1697; on the twentieth of the same month
the Peace of Ryswick was signed, and under its terms the French were
placed in possession of all the Hudson Bay forts, with the exception
of Fort Albany.[15] They held them down to the year 1713, when the
Peace of Utrecht in no uncertain words gave back to Great Britain 'to
be possessed in full right for ever, the Bay and Straits of Hudson,
together with all lands, seas, seacoasts, rivers and places situate
in the same Bay and Straits and which belong thereunto, no tracts of
land or of sea being excepted, which are at present possessed by the
subjects of France.' Boundaries, which by the treaty were to be
defined, were never fixed; but no French ship appeared again with
hostile intent in Hudson Bay until the year 1782.

[Footnote 15: The manner in which the Treaty of Ryswick worked out in
favour of the French in Hudson Bay is explained, as far as it can be
explained, in Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol. iii, pp. 39-41.]


NOTE.--For the first part of the above chapter, see

  KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. ii.
  Sir J. BOURINOT'S _Cape Breton_ (referred to above, p. 34, note).
  The same author's _Canada_, in the 'Story of the Nations' Series,
    chap. vii, and
  Dr. PATTERSON'S Paper on _Sir William Alexander and the Scottish
    Attempt to Colonize Acadia_, published in the _Proceedings and
    Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, vol. x, 1892.

For the second part, see KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii.

Two books have recently been published on the Hudson Bay Company,
viz: _The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company_, by GEORGE
BRYCE, M.A., LL.D., and _The Great Company (1667-1871)_, by BECKLES
WILSON.




{191}

CHAPTER VII

LOUISBOURG


[Sidenote: _Cape Breton Island under the provisions of the Peace of
Utrecht._]

[Sidenote: _Importance of the island to France._]

The Treaty of Utrecht provided that 'the island called Cape Breton,
as also all others both in the mouth of the river of St. Lawrence and
in the gulf of the same name, shall hereafter belong of right to the
French, and the Most Christian King shall have all manner of liberty
to fortify any place or places there.' It was an important provision.
Driven from Acadia and Newfoundland, with the reservation of certain
fishing rights along a specified part of the Newfoundland coast, the
French would have lost the seaboard altogether but for the possession
of these islands at the entrance of the river of Canada.

A French eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745 described, in
a contemporary pamphlet, the value of Cape Breton Island to France.
It was used, he says, to provide a place for the French settlers who
were leaving Newfoundland after the cession of that island to Great
Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, but 'this was not all. It was
necessary that we should retain a position that would make us at all
times masters of the entrance to the River which leads to New
France.'[1] Similar testimony to its value is given by an English
writer. 'Cape Breton Island is a subject no good Englishman can write
or read with pleasure. The giving of it to the French by the Treaty
of Utrecht may prove as great a loss to the Kingdom, as the Sinking
Fund amounts {192} to or even the charge of the last war.'[2] Cape
Breton, in short, kept open for France the mouth of the St. Lawrence,
and the story of New France became more than ever the story of that
river, and of the waterways which connected it with the far West, and
with the newborn French colony in Louisiana.

[Footnote 1: _Louisbourg in 1745_, the anonymous _Lettre d'un
habitant de Louisbourg_, translated and edited by Professor Wrong
(Toronto, 1897), p. 26.]

[Footnote 2: Oldmixon's _British Empire in America_ (1741 ed.), vol.
i, p. 37.]

From 1713, for thirty years, there was nominally peace between Great
Britain and France. In 1743, English troops assisted the Austrians
and defeated the French at the battle of Dettingen; but war was not
formally proclaimed between the two powers until the following year,
1744, when it lasted for four years, being terminated by the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. During the years of so-called peace, French
Governors, French priests, French explorers and border leaders lost
no opportunity of strengthening the French position in North America.

[Sidenote: _Controversy as to the boundaries of Acadia._]

Intrigue and covert force were notably at work in Acadia. By the
Treaty of Utrecht, King Louis ceded to Great Britain 'all Nova Scotia
or Accadie with its ancient boundaries.' What were the ancient
boundaries? They were left to be demarcated by commissioners of the
two nations; but no demarcation ever took place, and meanwhile French
on the one hand, and English on the other, construed the term
'Acadia' according to their respective interests. While Acadia was
French, the French widened, the English narrowed, the area to which
the name might apply. When Acadia became English, the contention was
reversed; and the French, who had included in Acadia a large extent
of mainland, claimed that the peninsula of Nova Scotia alone was
covered by the terms of the treaty.

[Sidenote: _The Acadians and French intrigues._]

Within that peninsula there were, at the time when the treaty was
signed, some two thousand French settlers--a simple peasantry,
uneducated, priest-ridden, of the same type as the _habitans_ of the
St. Lawrence; but more primitive, {193} more old-fashioned, clinging
to their homes, to their national traditions, to their faith. Under
the fourteenth article of the treaty, French subjects were given
liberty to remove themselves within one year; if they preferred to
remain and become subjects of the British Crown, they were to enjoy
the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion 'as far as the laws
of Great Britain do allow the same.' The Acadians themselves did not
wish to leave their farms and homesteads, nor did the English, when
they took over Acadia, wish to lose the white settlers of the
peninsula, who might reasonably be expected to become loyal and
valuable citizens. The French authorities, on the other hand, desired
to remove them in order to populate their own territories and deplete
the ceded lands. Thus from the outset the intention of the treaty was
frustrated, and the unfortunate Acadians suffered between two
masters. As years went on, English and French views alike changed.
The French, having by priestly influence rendered the Acadians
thoroughly disaffected to English rule, and having year by year
stronger hope of recovering Acadia, wished the Acadians to remain
where they were, a growing hostile population around a weak English
garrison. The English, on the other hand, seeing the impossibility of
securing the loyalty of the peasantry, wished to be rid of them, and
in the end deported large numbers of them to other lands.

[Sidenote: _Annapolis neglected by the home Government._]

The main agents of mischief were on the one side French priests,
political and religious fanatics, who threatened and cajoled their
flocks; on the other the British Government, which left Acadia to
take care of itself. It is deplorable to read the accounts given of
Annapolis, as Port Royal was now called, and of the state of its
garrison. What should have been the strong and thriving capital of a
British province, remained for years nothing more than practically a
very weak outpost in the enemy's country.

[Sidenote: _The Acadians and the oath of allegiance._]

A long time passed in vainly attempting to make the {194} Acadians
swear allegiance to the King of England. At length, in 1730, Governor
Philipps reported that he had succeeded in persuading each adult
member of the population to 'promise and solemnly swear on the faith
of a Christian that I will be thoroughly faithful and will truly obey
his Majesty George II'; but the adoption of this form of words had
little effect on the minds or the conduct of the French settlers.
Strength to insist on loyalty and to punish traitorous dealing was
not supplied from home; the Governors were unable to enforce their
proclamations, and the governed were irritated by orders which were
not carried into effect. Meanwhile, from 1720 onwards, Louisbourg
grew up in artificial strength, the Dunkirk of America, the most
powerful fortress on the Atlantic coast. Money and soldiers came out
from France, while the British possession almost under the guns of
the fortress was starved and neglected. To reconquer Acadia for the
French, writes the eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745,
'it was only necessary to appear before this English colony ... and
to land a few men'; and yet in 1745 Acadia had been in British
keeping for thirty-five years.

[Sidenote: _The Abenaki Indians._]

On the mainland, French policy was the same as in the Acadian
peninsula, nominally to keep the peace, secretly to incite the
natives to war. For generations the Abenaki Indians had raided at
frequent intervals the New England frontier; yet fear and the
necessities of trade might at length have kept them quiet, had it not
been for the instigation of the Canadian Government and its priestly
agents. In 1713, and again in 1717, Abenaki chiefs had come to terms
with Massachusetts; but there could be no peace as long as the
savages were carefully instructed that the English were the enemies
of their religion and the robbers of their lands. The savages were in
truth in a hard case. Peace meant the aggressive growth of the white
men's settlements, inevitable encroachment on the red men's heritage.
War {195} meant cutting off the New England trade, and inadequate
support from France. They sent to Quebec to ask what aid they might
expect from Canada. 'I will send you in secret,' said the Governor
Vaudreuil, 'tomahawks, powder, and shot.' It was such a reply as the
English Governors of New York had been wont to give to the Iroquois;
and the Abenakis, like the Iroquois, were little satisfied with it.
To fight the battles of France while the French looked on, was not
what the Indians wished or understood. Yet their priests taught them
to do it, and the Canadian Government stiffened their resolution by
sending in mission Indians from Canada.

[Sidenote: _Sebastian Rasle._]

[Sidenote: _His mission destroyed and himself killed._]

[Sidenote: _Peace between the Indians and New Englanders._]

The foremost French emissary among the Abenaki Indians at this time
was a Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rasle, keen in controversy,
uncompromising in zeal, a bitter foe of the English, but not so
utterly inhuman as were some of his colleagues. His mission was among
the Norridgewocks, high up on the Kennebec river, where the head
waters of that river flowing down to the Atlantic are at no very
great distance from the Chaudière river which runs into the St.
Lawrence. Against this place, in August, 1724, a strong body of men
was sent from Massachusetts. They rowed up the Kennebec in
whaleboats, and, landing at some distance below the Indian village,
marched on it, and took it by surprise. Rasle was shot dead, the
Indians were killed or dispersed, their homes were burnt to the
ground; and the expedition returned in safety, having struck a strong
and relentless blow at a centre of French and Indian hostility to the
English colonists. War went on for some little time longer, and the
English raided the tribes of the Penobscot. At length, in 1726, the
Indians came to terms; and a peace was concluded which lasted for
many years, dépôts being established at various points, where the
natives could to their advantage barter furs with the traders of New
England.

[Sidenote: _The Indians were the tools of the French Government and
its agents._]

The principal point to notice in the dreary record of {196} murder
and pillage is the attitude of the Canadian Government and their
superiors in France. Letters were intercepted, proving beyond dispute
that the Indians were acting under the direct encouragement of the
French authorities. In time of peace and nominal friendship the old
struggle was ever going on. North America was a chessboard. On the
French side the Indians were in front, pawns in the game. Behind them
was the King temporarily in check, bishops or their representatives,
half-breed knights of tortuous movement, and the castles of
Louisbourg and Quebec.

[Sidenote: _Oswego._]

[Sidenote: _Fort Rouillé or Toronto._]

The mouth of the Niagara river had long been held in intermittent
fashion by the French, and by 1720, in spite of jealous opposition on
the part of the Five Nation Indians, a permanent fort was built
there. The English in their turn, in the year 1727, established and
garrisoned a trading fort at Oswego, on the southern shore of Lake
Ontario,[3] Burnet, the Governor of New York, finding the necessary
funds, as the colonial Legislature would not vote the money. The
establishment of this station was a serious blow to French trade,
nullifying to a large extent the advantage of holding Niagara. In
vain the Canadians tried to incite the Five Nations to destroy it;
and in vain, in 1749, they planted a rival post, Fort Rouillé, at
Toronto,[4] on the other side of the lake, to command the direct
route to Lake Huron by Lake Simcoe. To Oswego the Indians brought
their furs, and the traffic enriched the Iroquois and their English
neighbours in New York.

[Footnote 3: See the letter from Governor Burnet to the Board of
Trade, dated New York, May 9, 1727: 'I have this spring sent up
workmen to build a stone house of strength at a place called Oswego,
at the mouth of the Onnondage river, where our principal trade with
the far Nations is carried on. I have obtained the consent of the Six
Nations to build it.' Papers relating to Oswego in O'Callaghan's
_Documentary History of New York_, vol. i, p. 447.]

[Footnote 4: The name of Toronto appears before the founding of this
fort. On the old maps, i.e. on Delisle's map of Canada, published in
1703, Lake Simcoe appears as Lake Toronto.]

[Sidenote: _Crown Point._]

But, menacing as was this outpost on the lake to the {197} commercial
interests of Canada, greater danger threatened both New England and
New York from another move made by the French. Far up on Lake
Champlain, at the point where the lake narrows into a wide river,
stretching many miles to the south, there is a small isthmus on the
western side standing out boldly in the lake. It was known to the
English as Crown Point; and here in 1731, at the instance of a
well-known French officer, the Chevalier Saint Luc de la Corne, the
French built a fort commanding the strait, and named it Fort St.
Frederic. The English colonies protested, but did not use united
force to back their protests; and the position remained, fortified in
time of peace, an evidence of French claims and a base for future
attack.

[Sidenote: _War between England and France._]

[Sidenote: _An outpost at Canso overpowered by the French, who
threaten Annapolis._]

War began again in March, 1744, and in May the French commander at
Louisbourg took action. There was a small fishing village at Canso,
on the narrow arm of the sea which divides Nova Scotia from Cape
Breton Island. It was guarded by a blockhouse, garrisoned by about
eighty English soldiers. A far stronger force from Louisbourg came
against it, the garrison surrendered, and the place was burnt. The
Frenchman who commanded the expedition, Duvivier, a descendant of La
Tour, was then sent to attack Annapolis, and appeared before it in
August. Ill fortified, ill garrisoned, the little town had at least a
good English officer in charge--Major Mascarene, of Huguenot descent.
The French offered terms of capitulation, threatening the arrival of
more troops from Louisbourg; but these reinforcements did not arrive,
the Acadians did not rise in mass, and in September the besiegers
disappeared, having effected nothing.

[Sidenote: _New England and Acadia._]

Neglected by the British Government, Acadia was valued by New
England. Massachusetts had in past years taken and held Port Royal,
and knew well that English interests in America were not compatible
with the French regaining the Acadian peninsula. The taking of Canso,
the attempt {198} to take Port Royal or Annapolis, roused the
'Bostonnais,' and led to an enterprise second to none in colonial
history.

[Sidenote: _William Shirley._]

The Governor of Massachusetts at the time was William Shirley. A
Sussex man, son of a merchant in the City of London, bred to the law,
he had gone out to Boston in 1731, and in ten years' time, by
judicious pushing, became Governor of the colony. He was a layman
with military instincts, and, taking up the rôle of Cato, never
ceased to preach to the ministers at home and to his fellow colonists
on the spot, that Canada must be conquered, and the French driven
from North America. His policy was good and clearsighted, his
military ability was of no large order; but, like William Phipps,
while he loved himself, he loved his country also; and eventually,
after falling under a cloud, and being relegated to the government of
the Bahamas, he came back to end his days in Massachusetts as a
private citizen, and was buried at Boston in 1771.

[Sidenote: _His scheme for attacking Louisbourg._]

To this enterprising man, it is said, the idea of attacking
Louisbourg with colonial forces was suggested by William Vaughan, a
New Englander, interested in the fishing trade on the coast of Maine.
The scheme seemed a wild one. A fortress strong, as far as the newest
military skill and unlimited money could strengthen it, was to be
attacked and taken by untrained colonists. Yet there were solid hopes
of success, and the dream came true. The English prisoners, carried
from Canso to Louisbourg, had been sent on to Boston, and told of the
actual condition of the French. The garrison at Louisbourg was not
very numerous: they were ill commanded and mutinous. If the
fortifications were formidable, within them were the elements of
weakness.

[Sidenote: _The scheme adopted by Massachusetts._]

[Sidenote: _William Pepperell._]

Shirley called the Massachusetts Assembly together in secret session,
and propounded his scheme for an expedition against Louisbourg. The
scheme was rejected. Soon afterwards a petition in its favour was
presented from Boston and other coast towns: the question came again
before the {199} Assembly, and the proposals were carried by one
vote. All the English colonies down to and including Pennsylvania
were invited to help; but, though New York sent a little money and a
few guns, the enterprise was practically left to New England alone.
Massachusetts contributed about 3,000 men, Connecticut, 500; and
William Pepperell, shipbuilder and merchant of Kittery Point, Maine,
was named as commander. He was of Devonshire descent, a colonel of
militia, and, though he had little military experience, he was a man
of good judgement and common sense.

[Sidenote: _Admiral Warren._]

A request had been sent to England for ships of war, and Warren, the
English commodore at Antigua in the West Indies, was asked to bring
his squadron. When the message reached him, he was without orders
from home, and refused to sail; but almost immediately afterwards
permission came, and he left at once for the North American coast,
joining the expedition, which had already started, at their
rendezvous at Canso.

[Sidenote: _The expedition starts._]

It was on March 24, 1745 that the New Englanders left Boston; on or
about April 4 the transports began to arrive at Canso. They carried
men who knew little or nothing of scientific warfare, and for whom
amateur strategists had drawn up fantastic plans of campaign; but
they were colonists of tough English breed, their Puritan
proclivities had been strengthened by the Methodist revival, and the
great preacher, George Whitfield, had given to Pepperell for the
motto of the expedition 'Nil desperandum Christo duce.'

[Illustration: Map of Louisbourg]

[Sidenote: _Louisbourg and its surroundings._]

'Louisbourg is built upon a tongue of land which stretches out into
the sea and gives the town an oblong shape. It is about half a league
in circumference.'[5] The tongue of land in question is part of a
larger peninsula running out to the south and east from the coast of
Cape Breton Island. The little promontory, which was covered by the
{200} town and fortifications of Louisbourg, has an almost due
easterly direction, and it is prolonged to the east by reefs ending
in a small rocky island, on which the French erected a battery to
command the mouth of the harbour, the channel being about half a mile
wide. The harbour lay to the north and north-east of the town; on the
other side was the ocean. To the west of the whole peninsula, of
which the Louisbourg promontory was but a small part, is a large
semicircular bay, known as Gabarus Bay. Surrounded by the sea on all
sides but one, on that one side--the western side--the town was
strongly protected by a ditch and rampart, outside which was marshy
ground. Moreover, almost due north of the town, on the edge of the
harbour, was a battery, known as the Grand Battery, over against the
Island Battery which has been already mentioned. Nature, French
money, and French engineers had combined to make a stronghold, which
seemed almost impregnable.

[Footnote 5: From the anonymous _Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg_,
translated by Professor Wrong, pp. 27, 28.]

[Sidenote: _The French garrison._]

The garrison consisted of between 500 and 600 regular troops, with
1,300 to 1,400 militia.[6] Among the regulars were Swiss soldiers,
who had mutinied at the preceding Christmas time and infected their
French comrades with the spirit of insubordination. They mutinied, it
was said, about their rations, as to the 'butter and bacon' which the
King supplied. In Louisbourg, as elsewhere in Canada, peculation was
rife, and officers and commissaries made profit at the privates'
expense. The Governor, Duquesnel, had died in the previous October.
His successor, Duchambon, was not the man for a crisis. The walls
were there and brave men behind them, but confidence in a determined
and prescient leader was wanting; and, as the consequence of
maladministration, we read that 'the regular soldiers were
distrusted, so that it was necessary to charge the inhabitants with
the most dangerous duties.'

[Footnote 6: It is difficult to make out from the _Lettre d'un
habitant_ whether or not the 1,300 to 1,400 men included the
regulars, but probably not.]

{201} [Sidenote: _The English land in Gabarus Bay._]

[Sidenote: _The Grand Battery occupied by the English._]

Having waited for about three weeks at Canso, and rebuilt and
garrisoned the blockhouse, the New Englanders went on to their
destination. On April 30 the transports sailed into Gabarus Bay,
making for Flat Point, three miles due west of Louisbourg. A small
French force was detached to oppose them; but the boats made good
their landing, two miles further to the west, at a little inlet
called Freshwater Cove. Here the whole force of 4,000 men was
disembarked; and, two days later, a party under Vaughan, having
marched behind the town, found the Grand Battery deserted and
occupied it, turning its guns in due course upon their rightful
owners. The precipitate abandonment of this battery by the French, on
the ground that its defences were inadequate, proved a fatal blunder,
giving the besiegers a firm position in the rear of the town, whereas
the direct attack was over swamp and marsh.

[Sidenote: _Beginning of the siege._]

[Sidenote: _Capture of the 'Vigilant.'_]

The siege now began in earnest. Warren's squadron, which was at a
later stage reinforced from England, blockaded the harbour, and on
May 19 achieved an important success in capturing the _Vigilant_, a
large French ship of war, whose supplies of food and ammunition,
destined for the garrison, passed instead into the hands of the
besiegers. Warren could not however enter the harbour, as long as the
Island Battery commanded the entrance.

[Sidenote: _Spirit of the New Englanders._]

The bulk of the work fell on the land force, and well they did it.
Ill clothed, ill housed, suffering so much from exposure and
privations, that at one time out of 4,000 men little more than
one-half were fit for duty, without transport, dragging the guns
themselves across the morasses, without skilled engineers, and with
hardly any trained gunners, they none the less pushed the siege with
boisterous audacity, mingling religious fervour with schoolboy
recklessness. They fought better in this way--their own way--than by
adhering to strict military rule, and their commander, William
Pepperell, knew his men. His was a difficult task. {202} There was
some little friction between the King's man and the colonist, but, on
the whole, Warren on the sea and Pepperell on the land worked in
harmony, due in no small measure to the tact and good sense of the
New England commander.

[Sidenote: _The besiegers threatened from the mainland._]

There was a further danger to the besiegers, of attack from the
mainland side. Canadians and Indians were reported to be marching to
the relief of the garrison. They were a party sent from Canada to
besiege Annapolis, who drew off and marched for Louisbourg on
receiving an urgent message for help from Duchambon, but arrived only
in time to hear that the town had surrendered and to retreat again in
safety into Acadia.

[Sidenote: _Attempt on the Island Battery, which fails._]

As long as the Island Battery remained intact, it was or seemed
impossible to attack from the sea. Accordingly an attempt was made to
take it. At midnight, on May 26, a storming party put out in boats
from the Grand Battery, and rowed to the strongly fortified rock on
which the Island Battery stood. The result was an entire failure.
Firing under cover, the French wrecked many of the boats, and shot
down the soldiers who landed. The English lost 189 men, being nearly
half the attacking force, 119 of whom were taken prisoners. It was
clear that the battery could not be taken by assault, and the
besiegers proceeded gradually to cripple it by mounting guns on
Lighthouse Point, being the opposite side of the narrow entrance to
the harbour. These guns did good execution, and, while the Island
Battery lost its sting, the defences of the town on the land side
were steadily weakened by the besiegers' fire.

[Sidenote: _Final assault threatened._]

[Sidenote: _The town capitulates._]

At length Warren and Pepperell decided that the time had come to
assault the town simultaneously by land and sea. The French saw what
was intended; they were worn with fatigue and anxiety; their houses
were riddled with shot and shell; and the townspeople urged the
Governor to capitulate. Fair terms were granted by the English
commanders, who knew that their own position was none too secure. The
{203} garrison was allowed to march out with the honours of war, and
safe transport to France was guaranteed to the officers and men, as
well as to the inhabitants of Louisbourg, on the promise that none
should bear arms against England for the space of a year. On these
conditions Duchambon surrendered, and on June 17, after a siege of
forty-seven days, the English became masters of Louisbourg.

[Sidenote: _Warren and Pepperell._]

The capitulation was made jointly to Pepperell and Warren. The French
eye-witness of the siege is at pains to distinguish between them; for
Warren he has nothing but praise, for Pepperell the reverse. 'Mr.
Warren,' he writes, 'is a young man about thirty-five years old, very
handsome, and full of the noblest sentiments.' Against Pepperell he
brings charges of bad faith in carrying out the terms of the
capitulation, adding, 'What could we expect from a man who, it is
said, is the son of a shoemaker at Boston?' As a matter of fact,
Pepperell, on occupying Louisbourg, kept his undisciplined men well
in hand, much to their disgust, and little loot rewarded their weeks
of toil and suffering. To Warren's sailors, on the other hand, there
accrued a large amount of prize-money; for, by the device of keeping
the French flag flying after the surrender of the town had taken
place, various French vessels were decoyed and captured.

[Sidenote: _The success mainly due to the colonists._]

In after years, when the American colonies had taken arms against the
mother country, men argued as to whether the taking of Louisbourg was
due to the English sailors and their commander, or to the colonists.
As a matter of fact, neither without the other could have achieved
success, but the enterprise was conceived by the colonists, on the
colonists fell the brunt of the fighting, and to them, not to
England, the chief credit was due. 'The enterprise,' says the French
writer already quoted, 'was less that of the nation or of the King
than of the inhabitants of New England alone.' It was in truth a
wonderful feat, and till our own times it was never sufficiently
appreciated.

{204} [Sidenote: _Reception of the news in England, and at Boston._]

There was rejoicing in England; but England in the year 1745, the
year of the Jacobite rebellion, had other sights before her eyes, and
other sounds in the ears of her people. It may well have been, too,
that joy at success over the enemy of the nation was alloyed by
uneasy and unworthy consciousness of the growing strength and
self-confidence of the New England beyond the sea. But to Boston the
tidings were tidings of unmixed joy and pride. The Lord had risen to
fight for His chosen people, the dour and stubborn Puritan, and the
stronghold of the idolaters was laid low.

'Good Lord,' said the old and usually long-winded Chaplain Moody, in
his grace before dinner at the end of the siege, 'we have so much to
thank Thee for that time will be too short, and we must leave it for
eternity.'[7]

[Footnote 7: Quoted in Parkman's _A Half Century of Conflict_ (1892
ed.), vol. ii, p. 153.]

[Sidenote: _Sermon at Boston on the event._]

A General Thanksgiving was held at Boston on Thursday July 18, 1745.
At the South Church in that city the Rev. Thomas Prince, one of the
pastors, preached on the great New England victory. He took for his
text 'This is the Lord's doing: it is marvellous in our eyes'; and
his sermon, which has been preserved to us,[8] well illustrates the
view which the Puritans of Massachusetts took of their success. The
hand of the Lord was visible to them in every detail of the 'most
adventurous enterprise against the French settlements at Cape Breton
and their exceeding strong city of Louisbourg, for warlike power the
pride and terror of these northern seas.' The preacher recounted the
advantages which the island gave to France, its abundance of pit
coal, its commodious harbours, 'its happy situation in {205} the
centre of our fishery at the entrance of the Bay and River of
Canada.' He noted the natural and artificial strength of the walled
city, added to for thirty years, until Louisbourg became 'the Dunkirk
of North America, and in some respects of greater importance.' He
traced the finger of God in the circumstances preliminary to and
attending its capture; how the British prisoners, carried to
Louisbourg, on their return to Boston brought information 'whereby we
came to be more acquainted with their situation and the proper places
of landing and attacking'; how the New Englander had accounts 'of the
uneasiness of the Switzers there for want of pay and provision'; how
the weather was fair, the men were willing, supplies were plentiful;
how God guided the decision of the Court of Representatives, and
timed the arrival of 'the brave and active Commodore Warren, a great
friend to these Plantations.' The landing, the taking of the Grand
Battery, the 'happy harmony between our various officers,' even
disease, reverse, toil and labour, all were signs of a particular
Providence working out His great design and leading His people into a
place of shelter. Thus was Louisbourg taken 'by means of so small a
number, less than 4,000 land men, unused to war, undisciplined, and
that had never seen a siege in their lives.' 'As it was,' said the
preacher, referring to the Treaty of Utrecht, 'one of the chief
disgraces of Queen Anne's reign to resign this island to the French,
it is happily one of the glories of King George II's to restore it to
the British empire.' The measure of joy at the taking of Louisbourg
must also have been the measure of disappointment at its subsequent
retrocession by the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

[Footnote 8: _Extraordinary events, the doings of God, and marvellous
in pious eyes_. Illustrated in a sermon at the South Church in Boston
(New England), on the General Thanksgiving, Thursday, July 18, 1745.
Occasioned by taking the city of Louisbourg, on the isle of Cape
Breton, by New England soldiers, assisted by a British squadron. By
Thomas Prince, M.A. Pamphlet, Boston and London, 5th ed. 1746.
Dedicated to H. E. William Shirley.]

[Sidenote: _Subsequent career of Pepperell_]

Of the two men who led the English to victory on this memorable
occasion, Pepperell was made a baronet--the first colonist to receive
that honour: he lived to help his countrymen still further in their
struggle with France. Through his exertions a royal regiment was
raised in {206} America, and the New England shipping yards added a
fine frigate to the British navy. He died in 1759, holding the
commission of Lieutenant-General in the British army.

[Sidenote: _and Warren._]

Warren, in 1747, took part, as second in command, in Anson's naval
victory over the French off Cape Finisterre, and in the same year he
was elected member of Parliament for Westminster. He died in 1752, at
the age of forty-nine, one of the richest commoners in England; and a
monument to him stands in the north transept of Westminster Abbey. It
tells that he was a 'Knight of the Bath, a Vice Admiral of the Red
Squadron of the fleet, and member of the City and Liberty of
Westminster'; but it does not tell how close was his sympathy with
the English in America, married, as he was, to an American lady, and
owner of estates in Manhattan Island and on the Mohawk river; nor,
amid the verbiage of eighteenth-century adulation, is there any
mention of the part which he took in helping the New England
colonists to conquer Louisbourg.

[Sidenote: _The New Englanders garrison Louisbourg._]

[Sidenote: _Relieved by regular troops._]

The New Englanders garrisoned Louisbourg for the better part of a
year. The soldiers were discontented, with some reason. Their success
had brought them little or no profit: they wanted to be back on their
farms: the town which they occupied was dismantled and insanitary;
pestilence broke out, and 'the people died like rotten sheep.'[9]
Shirley came up from Boston to keep the soldiers quiet, but not till
April, 1746, were the colonists relieved by regular troops, sent from
Gibraltar. Warren then took sole command for a short time, being
succeeded by another sailor, Commodore Knowles.

[Footnote 9: Quoted in Parkman's _A Half Century of Conflict_, vol.
ii, p. 166.]

[Sidenote: _Preparations for invasion of Canada._]

[Sidenote: _The plan miscarries._]

Shirley intended the capture of Louisbourg to be but the beginning of
the end, the end being the conquest of Canada. The French Government,
on the other hand, were determined to recover their fortress. Each
was for the time disappointed. In the early months of 1746, the
colonies, {207} elated by their recent and great success, cheerfully
answered to the call for soldiers to invade Canada. The home
Government promised eight battalions, and had them ready for
embarkation at Portsmouth; the plan of campaign--the usual plan of
dual invasion by the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain--was duly
outlined; Quebec was thrown into a state of alarm and hurried
preparation, when, as so often before, all came to nothing, owing to
the shuffling and delays of the ministers of the Crown, in this
instance the incompetent Duke of Newcastle. The troops destined for
America were diverted to Europe; one more opportunity was lost; one
more nail was driven into the coffin of colonial loyalty. Realizing,
as the autumn of 1746 drew on, that an invasion of Canada was now out
of the question, Shirley determined to attack the French advanced
position at Crown Point with the New York and Massachusetts levies;
but this plan, too, was frustrated by news of a coming fleet from
France, and the fears of Quebec were transferred to Boston.

[Sidenote: _Failure of a counter expedition by the French._]

The fleet in question left La Rochelle at midsummer in the year 1746.
It consisted of twenty-one ships of war and a number of transports,
carrying 3,000 troops. The whole was under the command of the Duc
d'Anville. Disaster in the form of tempest and pestilence attended
the expedition from first to last. The ships were scattered on the
ocean, and it was not until the end of September that the admiral,
with three ships, reached Chebucto (now Halifax) harbour. Here, while
waiting for the rest of the fleet, he died; and the vice-admiral,
D'Estournel, arriving immediately afterwards, saw no hope for the
shattered expedition but to return to France. His officers, on the
other hand, urged an attack on Annapolis, and D'Estournel, in a fit
of mortification and mental distress, put an end to his life. The
command now devolved on the Marquis de la Jonquière, a naval officer,
who had gone out on board the fleet to take over the {208} government
of Canada. He waited into October at Chebucto, the Acadians brought
him provisions, but his men still died of disease day by day. He
sailed for Annapolis, but encountered fresh storms off Cape Sable;
and at length the miserable remains of the fleet made their way back
to France, the loss of life having been, it was said, 2,500 men. In
the following year, 1747, La Jonquière again set out from France in
another fleet, but again he failed to reach Canada; the ships were
encountered and defeated off Cape Finisterre by Anson and Warren, and
the outgoing Governor of Canada was carried a prisoner to England.

[Sidenote: _Canadian raids._]

The main operations of the war were supplemented by the usual series
of raids from Canada. In the winter of 1745, Fort Saratoga,
thirty-six miles from Albany, was attacked and taken by French and
Indians from Crown Point; the place was burnt, and its inhabitants
were carried into captivity. It was again reoccupied by the English,
but in 1747 was evacuated and burnt as indefensible, to the disgust
of the Five Nation Indians, who looked upon the proceeding as
evidence of weakness and cowardice. Another successful French attack
was made, in August, 1746, on Fort Massachusetts, standing on an
eastern tributary of the Hudson, on the line of communication between
Albany and the Connecticut river. In short, for three years, the
borders of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were harried by
Canadians and Indians, using the French fort at Crown Point as their
base.

[Sidenote: _French success at Grand Pré._]

But the most notable success in this petty warfare was achieved on
the Acadian frontier. The isthmus of Chignecto, which connects the
Nova Scotian peninsula with the mainland, was, at the time of
D'Anville's expedition, held by a comparatively strong force of
Canadians under De Ramesay. Fearing for the safety of Annapolis and
the rest of Acadia, Shirley sent reinforcements from Massachusetts,
consisting of some 500 men under Colonel Noble, who in December,
{209} 1746, reached the Basin of Mines, and occupied the village of
Grand Pré. They were quartered throughout the village, taking no
sufficient precautions against surprise; Ramesay therefore, on
hearing of the position, determined towards the latter end of January
to attack them. He had with him the best of the Canadian partisan
leaders; and unable, owing to an accident, to take personal charge of
the expedition, he placed the command in the hands of Coulon de
Villiers.

In the depth of winter, with sledges and snow-shoes, the French set
out; they started from the isthmus on January 23, on February 10 they
were on the outskirts of Grand Pré. Under cover of night, one party
and another attacked the detached houses in which the English were
lodged; Colonel Noble and over seventy of his followers were killed;
sixty were wounded, fifty-four were taken prisoners. The rest
capitulated, on condition of safe return to Annapolis; and on
February 14 they marched out, leaving Grand Pré in the hands of the
French, who in their turn shortly afterwards retired to their old
position at Chignecto. It was a brilliant feat of arms, but, like
most of these border attacks, had no lasting effect. Grand Pré was in
a few weeks' time reoccupied by the English; and not long afterwards
the French retired from the Acadian frontier into Canada.

[Sidenote: _Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle._]

[Sidenote: _Louisbourg given back to France._]

The war, known in history as the War of the Austrian Succession, had
brought to none of the combatants much honour or profit. On the
continent the Austrians and their English allies met with little
success, on the sea the French were equally unsuccessful. The end was
a peace, as between England and France, based on the principle of
mutual restitution, such a peace as left the seeds of future war.
England gave back Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island, France gave back
Madras, which had surrendered in 1746 to Labourdonnais. The treaty
contained the somewhat humiliating {210} provision, that English
hostages should be given to France until the restitution of
Louisbourg had actually taken place.

[Sidenote: _Foundation of Halifax._]

[Sidenote: _The peace from the English and from the colonial point of
view._]

In July, 1749, the French re-entered their fortress; and in the same
year a large body of settlers was sent out by the British Government
to Chebucto harbour, where the city of Halifax was founded. The
settlement was designed to be a rival to Louisbourg. Its foundation
was evidence that the Imperial Government was at length not wholly
indifferent to the value of Acadia; and Halifax is almost unique,
among English cities in America, in having owed its origin to the
direct action of the State. But no founding of new townships, we may
well imagine, could compensate the New Englanders for losing the
fruits of their victory. It is said that the first answer of King
George II, when pressed to give back Louisbourg to France was that it
belonged not to him but to the people of Boston. If these were his
words, he spoke truly; the Massachusetts men had won the town, and
England gave it away. Yet on no other terms could peace be secured;
and it is not easy to pass a fair criticism on the transaction. Then,
as now, England had to reckon with conflicting interests within her
Empire. Then, as now, she had self-governing colonies which
necessarily did not see eye to eye on all points with the mother
country. The horizon of New England was bounded by the Atlantic, and
the fate of a factory in the East Indies, or even international
arrangements on the continent of Europe, were beyond the colonists'
ken. They saw only that their blood and their money had been given in
vain, and that the fortress, which they had wrested from France, was
hers again. English statesmen, on the other hand, looked east as well
as west; and near home, across the Channel, was the spectacle of
campaigns that brought more loss than gain. As successful war in
Europe had given Acadia to the English, so want of success in the
{211} same quarter reacted on America. The account was made up, the
balance was struck, and the retrocession of Louisbourg was the price
of peace. But it was a heavy price to pay, for it seemed to have been
paid by the American colonists alone; and, had not another war soon
followed, and Louisbourg been again taken by a general whom the
Americans loved, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle might have passed into
history as not merely a disappointment but an irretrievable disaster.

[Sidenote: _Western discovery._]

French exploration in North America followed, as has been seen, the
line of the lakes and the rivers. From Louisiana, in the first half
of the eighteenth century, various expeditions were made in a
westerly direction--up the Red River, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and
its tributary the Kansas river--the object of the French explorers
being to enter into friendly relations with the Comanches and other
Indians of the western plains, and gradually to open up trade with
New Mexico and the city of Santa Fé; in other words, to reach Spanish
America, an object which did not commend itself to Spain.

[Sidenote: _Knowledge gained of Lake of the Woods and Lake
Winnipeg._]

[Sidenote: _Fort built in the Sioux country._]

Before the year 1700, the course of the upper Mississippi was known.
Nicolas Perrot, in or about 1685, is said to have established posts
where the river widens out into Lake Pepin; and further north, French
_coureurs de bois_, or _voyageurs_, as they began to be called,
gained information of the Lake of the Woods, and of the Lac des
Assiniboines, now Lake Winnipeg. The principal Indian tribes in the
regions of the upper Mississippi were Sioux; and, with a view to
making them friends to France, and penetrating through their country
to the western sea, the Jesuit traveller Charlevoix recommended, in
1723, that a mission should be established among them. A few years
later, in 1727, a company was formed for trading in the Sioux
country, and built a new fort on Lake Pepin called, after the then
Governor of Canada, Fort Beauharnois. The Sioux, however, {212}
proved intractable neighbours, and ten years later the fort was
abandoned.

[Sidenote: _Verendrye._]

In 1728, there was a small French outpost at Nipigon, at the western
end of Lake Superior, on its northern side--where the river Nipigon
flows from the lake of the same name into Lake Superior. The
commander was Pierre de Varennes de la Verendrye, son of a lieutenant
of the Carignan Regiment, who had settled at and been Governor of
Three Rivers. As a young man, La Verendrye had crossed the sea to
fight in the armies of France, and had been badly wounded on the
field of Malplaquet. He lived to leave his name high in the list of
western explorers. At his distant station on Lake Superior, he heard
the stories that Indians brought, mixture of fact and fable, of
waters to the west that led to the long-sought-for sea; he offered to
follow up the clue, and, with the usual opposition from jealous
Canadian merchants, and the usual barren authority from the French
Government to explore at his own expense, in return for the grant of
a monopoly of the fur trade to the west and north of Lake Superior,
he gave the rest of his life to western discovery.

[Sidenote: _The water-parting on the west of Lake Superior._]

As the water-parting between the basin of the St. Lawrence and that
of the Mississippi is hardly marked by any height of land, so the
divide between the chain of lakes which feed the St. Lawrence and the
more westerly waters, of which Lake Winnipeg is the centre, is a
slight rise of ground which it is difficult to distinguish on the
maps. A low range of hills runs round the western end of Lake
Superior, at the highest point not more than 1,000 feet above the
level of the lake. These uplands separate the tributaries of Lake
Superior and the St. Lawrence from the feeders of Lake Winnipeg.
There were two routes across the divide, one leaving Lake Superior at
Thunder Bay, near the point where Port Arthur now stands, and
following for a short distance the present line of the Canadian
Pacific Railway; {213} the other a little further south, leaving the
lake at or near Pigeon river, and going westward along the present
boundary line between Canada and the United States. On this latter
route was the Grand Portage, by which the _voyageurs_ crossed the
water-parting at about sixty miles distance from Lake Superior, and
reached Rainy Lake. Rainy Lake drains into the Lake of the Woods, and
the Lake of the Woods drains into Lake Winnipeg. This last great
lake, fed by the Saskatchewan, the Assiniboine, the Red River, and
many other rivers and lakes, finds its outlet by the Nelson river to
Hudson Bay, and a chain of posts carried from Lake Superior to Lake
Winnipeg would tend to divert the western fur trade from Hudson Bay
to the St. Lawrence.

[Sidenote: _Verendrye's journeys and forts._]

[Sidenote: _His sons near the Rocky mountains._]

In the summer of 1731, La Verendrye started west by the Grand
Portage; and in the next eight or nine years established posts along
the water line, from Rainy Lake to where the Saskatchewan river
enters Lake Winnipeg from the north-west. One of these forts or
stations was Fort La Reine on the Assiniboine river, which formed the
starting-point for an advance over the western plains through what is
now the State of Dakota. In 1742, two of his sons made their way from
the Assiniboine to the Missouri, crossed the latter river, and,
traversing the prairies in a westerly and south-westerly direction,
reached the country drained by the tributaries of the Yellowstone
river. How far they went is matter of conjecture, and doubt is thrown
on their claim to have been the first discoverers of the Rocky
mountains. It is stated that, on January 1, 1743, they came in sight
of high mountains, which are supposed to have been the Bighorn range
in Wyoming and Montana, an eastern buttress of the Rocky mountains,
lying in front of the Yellowstone National Park; but no mention is
made in the story of snowy peaks, such as would indicate discovery of
the great mountain barrier of America. The explorers {214} came back
in fifteen months' time. Their father died in 1749, and, like other
pioneers, they reaped but little fruit, in honour or in profit, from
all their labours. They did not find the western sea, they possibly
did not descry the Rocky mountains; but to La Verendrye and his sons
it must be credited that a new water area in the far west was fully
made known to the world, and that trade routes were opened beyond the
basin of the St. Lawrence and the basin of the Mississippi, reaching
to the great Saskatchewan river and to the waters which flow into
Hudson Bay.

[Sidenote: _The Rocky mountains._]

The Rocky mountains, as we know them, were not known in the
eighteenth century.[10] In 1793 Sir Alexander Mackenzie crossed them
far in the North, by the line of the Peace river, and reached the
Pacific Ocean on the coast of British Columbia; but the full
revelation of the main range dates from the year 1805, when Lewis and
Clarke followed the Missouri to its source, and thence made their way
over the mountain barrier to the western sea. In short, as long as
Canada was New France, and for years afterwards, it was for trading
and for colonizing purposes a region of inland waters; it was not
also, as it now is, a land of plains, with a background of giant
mountains, and behind them the further ocean. Yet it was to reach the
further ocean that Europeans first came into Canada, and the earnest
expectation of the earliest {215} explorers has in our own time found
more than fulfilment in a Dominion from sea to sea.

[Footnote 10: In Jeffreys' _American Atlas_, 1775, the Assiniboils
(sic) or St. Charles river is prolonged to the Pacific by a dotted
line, entitled the 'River of the West.' Below it a range of mountains
is traced from north to south, with the note, 'Hereabouts are
supposed to be the mountains of bright stones mentioned in the map of
the Indian Ochagach.' In Carver's _Travels through North America in
1766-8_, published in 1778, p. 121, the Rocky mountains 'are called
the Shining Mountains from an infinite number of chrystal stones of
amazing size with which they are covered, and which, when the sun
shines full upon them, sparkle so as to be seen at a very great
distance.' Morse's _American Geography_, 1794, shows the Rocky
mountains on the map of America. In the text they are called 'Shining
Mountains.' In Arrowsmith's _Map of North America_, dated 1795-6,
they are called Stony Mountains. In a later edition of 1811 the name
'Rocky Mountains' appears.]


NOTE.--For the substance of the above chapter, see

  KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii;
  PARKMAN'S _A Half Century of Conflict_;
  Sir J. BOURINOT'S _Cape Breton_ (referred to above on p. 34, note);
    and
  _Louisbourg in 1745_, the anonymous _Lettre d'un habitant de
    Louisbourg_, edited and translated by Professor WRONG, (Toronto,
    1897).




{216}

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRELUDE TO THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR


The fifteen years from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 to the
Peace of Paris in 1763 include the most stirring and picturesque
times in the history of Canada. They were masculine years, when, in
all parts of the world, great men did great things. They were the
years when Montcalm and Wolfe fought and died on the St. Lawrence;
when Robert Clive mastered India; when Chatham redeemed England from
littleness; and when Frederick of Prussia became known for all time
as Frederick the Great, by standing grimly foursquare against the
continent of Europe in the Seven Years' War.

[Sidenote: _The southern colonies drawn into the struggle with
France._]

The Seven Years' War only began in 1756; but before that date, before
war between France and England had formally been proclaimed, French
and English were fighting hard in North America. We have the same
sphere of war as before, and in large measure the same plans of
campaign, trouble and conflict in and on the borders of Acadia, siege
and capture of Louisbourg, attack up the St. Lawrence against
Quebec--at last a successful attack, and prolonged fighting along the
line of Lakes George and Champlain. The Five Nation Indians played
their part in the war, though a more subordinate part than in earlier
times; the cantons most within range of the English remaining under
English influence and being more adroitly managed than in earlier
days, while the westernmost tribes, the Senecas, inclined to the
French side. But a new feature came into the struggle, the {217}
result of the inevitable advance of white men on either side in the
course of years. The English colonies to the south of New York began
to take a more active part than formerly in the conflict with France.
The Virginians appeared on the scene, and among the Virginians was
prominent the name of George Washington. The great French scheme of
holding the rivers of North America and their basins implied that the
English colonies should not cross the Alleghany mountains. Great
schemes never allow for the ordinary every day work of nature and
man. It was certain that, as the English multiplied, they would go
further and further afield; and in due time, from Pennsylvania and
from Virginia, English traders and backwoodsmen made their way into
the valley of the Ohio.

[Sidenote: _The Ohio._]

[Sidenote: _Celeron de Bienville._]

The Ohio, which La Salle first made known to the world, is, as has
been pointed out, the connecting link on the inner line of the North
American waterways--starting from the confines of the St. Lawrence
basin near the shores of Lake Erie, and reaching the Mississippi
comparatively low down in its course. The outer line is much more
extensive, continuing along the great lakes until from Lake Michigan
the Mississippi is reached by the Wisconsin or the Illinois. Along
this outer line the French had hitherto worked. It took them more
directly to the far West; and, passing along it, they only skirted
instead of traversing the region where the Iroquois were in strength;
but, had they allowed the English to lay firm hold of the Ohio
valley, Canada and Louisiana would have been severed, and down the
Ohio would have come a challenge to French sovereignty over the West.
Thus it was that, in the year 1749, the year after the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de la
Galissonière, sent one of his officers, Celeron de Bienville, to
register the claims of France to the Ohio river and the lands which
it watered and drained.

[Sidenote: _His mission to the Ohio._]

Starting up the St. Lawrence from the island of Montreal, {218}
Celeron landed on the shores of Lake Erie; and, making a portage to
Lake Chautauqua, reached the head waters of the Ohio. Down stream he
went, into the Alleghany, down the Alleghany to where, meeting the
Monongahela, it becomes the Ohio, and down the Ohio to the confluence
of the Miami river, not far from the site of Cincinnati city. Here he
left the Ohio, and, ascending the Miami, crossed overland to the
Maumee river, on which there was a small French post. The Maumee
flows into the south-western end of Lake Erie, and down its stream he
returned to Canada.

[Sidenote: _English intrusion into the Ohio valley._]

At various points along the route he buried leaden plates, with
inscriptions asserting the title of the King of France to the lands
of the Ohio and its tributaries; and he affixed to trees the arms of
France on sheets of tin, to tell all comers that the French were
lords of the country. It was time that some assertion of French
claims was made in these regions. He found parties of English
traders, as he went, and the Indians showed no love for France. There
had been for some time past a migration of Indians into the Ohio
valley. Many of the Iroquois had settled there: and if among the
various races, notably among the Delawares, there were those whose
traditional sympathies were with the owners of Canada, there were
more who appreciated the present benefit of English trade. Prominent
among the friends of the English were the Indians of the Miami
confederacy, whose centre was at Pique Town or Pickawillany on the
Miami river.

[Sidenote: _The Ohio company._]

Celeron came and went. He had made a demonstration on behalf of
France, but not a demonstration in force. His expedition was
memorable as the prelude to coming events; but no definite action was
taken for about three years. La Galissonière was succeeded as
Governor of Canada by the Marquis de la Jonquière,[1] who died in
1752, and was {219} followed by the Marquis Duquesne. Meantime, an
Ohio company was formed on the English side, consisting mainly of
Virginians, and English traders and emissaries were active among the
Indians of the Ohio. Yet the English, like the French, achieved no
tangible results. Pennsylvania and Virginia were jealous of each
other, and the Legislature in each state opposed the Governor. Both
Assemblies were invited to build a fort at the junction of the
Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, which formed the key of the
position; but both refused.

[Footnote 1: De la Jonquière had been named Governor of Canada in
1746, and made two unsuccessful attempts to reach Quebec, one in that
year on board D'Anville's fleet, and a second in 1747, when he was
taken prisoner in the fight off Cape Finisterre (see above, pp. 207,
208). He finally arrived in 1749.]

[Sidenote: _The French attack the Miamis._]

Thus matters drifted on until, in June, 1752, a Frenchman, Langlade,
came down from the lakes with a band of Indian warriors, attacked the
Miamis at Pickawillany, took the town, and killed its chief--who was
known to the French as La Demoiselle, and who was feared by them as a
warm friend of their English rivals. The place was a centre of
English trade, there were English traders in it when the attack was
made, and this French success was the beginning of action, on a
larger scale than had hitherto been attempted, for the conquest and
control of the Ohio valley.

[Sidenote: _Halifax._]

Founded in 1749, Halifax, on the coast of Nova Scotia, was, in 1752,
a town of 4,000 inhabitants. Had the settlement been made thirty
years earlier, immediately after the Peace of Utrecht instead of
after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the story of Acadia would have
been a different and probably a happier one. Mascarene at Annapolis,
and Shirley at Boston, saw the necessity of introducing English
settlers into the peninsula in order to balance the French
malcontents, and the British Government, when giving back Louisbourg
to France, recognized at length that steps must be taken to
strengthen the English hold on Nova Scotia. It was determined to
recruit the English, or at any rate the Protestant, {220} element in
the population from Europe, from the North American colonies, and
from the ranks of the men who were withdrawn from Louisbourg; and
Chebucto harbour on the Atlantic coast of the Nova Scotian peninsula
was selected as the scene of a new township to be well fortified and
strongly garrisoned.

[Sidenote: _The first settlers at Halifax._]

[Sidenote: _Cornwallis._]

Here was created the city of Halifax, called after the Earl of
Halifax, at the time 'First Lord of Trade and Plantations.' In
founding it, the English had regard to the methods by which the
French had established their colonies on the St. Lawrence. Halifax
was in its origin a military colony. The first settlers consisted
largely of officers and privates of the army and navy, who, when
peace was concluded, received their discharge and who were
supplemented by a certain number of labourers and artizans.
Parliament voted 40,000 pounds in aid of the initial expenses. Free
passages, free grants of land, and the cost of subsistence for a year
after landing were provided, privileges which secured a considerable
number of colonists; 1,400 immigrants were landed from the first
batch of transports at Chebucto harbour,[2] and others followed. A
good Governor was appointed, Colonel Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord
Cornwallis who surrendered at Yorktown and ruled India.

[Footnote 2: It is difficult to make out the numbers. The above
figure is given by Cornwallis in a letter to the Lords of Trade, July
24, 1749 (see Mr. Brymer's _Catalogue of Canadian Archives_, 'Nova
Scotia,' p. 142). On the other hand passages were taken for over
2,500 (p. 138). Haliburton says, 'in a short time 3,760 adventurers
with their families were entered for embarkation.' Parkman puts the
number at about 2,500, including women and children, Kingsford at
1,176 settlers with their families. Parliament for some years
continued to make annual grants for the colonization of Nova Scotia,
'which collected sums,' says Haliburton, 'amounted to the enormous
sum of 415,584 pounds 14_s_. 11_d_.']

[Sidenote: _The Lunenburg settlement._]

Old soldiers do not always make good colonists, and Cornwallis wrote
home complaining of their want of industry, contrasting the English
unfavourably with a few Swiss who were among the newcomers, and
suggesting that an effort {221} should be made to introduce
Protestant emigrants from Germany. Accordingly, German Lutherans were
brought over through an agent at Rotterdam, the majority of whom
were, in 1753, planted out at Lunenburg, a little to the south-west
of Halifax, on the same side of the peninsula. Thus the outer margin
of Nova Scotia was being sparsely colonized with English, Swiss, and
German Protestants, while on the side towards the mainland, along the
shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Roman Catholic Acadians remained
French in heart and sympathies.

[Sidenote: _The commissioners to fix the limits of Acadia._]

[Sidenote: _Designs of the French on Acadia._]

For three years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French
and English commissioners, appointed to determine the limits of the
French and English possessions in North America, wrangled at Paris,
William Shirley being one of the English delegates; but they never
came to any conclusion. The French now refused even to concede that
the whole of the Acadian peninsula belonged to England, and wished to
confine English sovereignty to its southern coasts. They were in fact
resolved by bluff or by force either to regain Acadia, or, in default
of attaining that object, to make its condition one of permanent
insecurity and unrest. As related in the last chapter,[3] immediately
after the Peace of Utrecht the intention of the French Government had
been to transplant the Acadians to French soil, to Cape Breton Island
and to Prince Edward Island, then known as Île St. Jean. For this
policy they subsequently substituted the more dangerous plan of not
removing the Acadians, but encouraging them to consider themselves
still as French subjects while remaining under the British flag.
After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, however, they reverted
to their project of transplantation, finding that the British
Government were resolved no longer to treat their subjects in Acadia
as neutrals, and realizing that the Governor had now force at his
back.

[Footnote 3: See above, p. 193.]

{222} [Sidenote: _Position of the Acadians._]

[Sidenote: _Attitude of Cornwallis._]

The Acadians claimed to be exempt from bearing arms in defence of
their country and their country's rulers, in other words against the
French and the Indian allies of the French. They were not free
agents; they were terrorized by the French Government and the French
priests, notorious among whom was a ruffian named Le Loutre,
Vicar-General of Acadia. Spiritual excommunication and Indian
hostility threatened them, if they acted with loyalty to the British
King, whose subjects they had been for nearly forty years. How
faithless and unscrupulous was the policy of the French is abundantly
shown by official dispatches, proving that the Canadian Governor, La
Jonquière, with the sanction of the French Government at home,
accepted and endorsed Le Loutre's villainous schemes for preventing
the Acadians from taking the full oath of allegiance, and for
instigating the Indians of the peninsula to murder the English
settlers. Cornwallis treated the Acadians with kindly firmness. Some
of them asked to be allowed to leave the country, and he promised
permission to those who should obtain passports, when peace and
tranquillity were restored. For the moment he declined to allow them
to cross the frontier, as it would mean sending them among French and
Indians, who would compel them to bear arms against the English
Government.

[Sidenote: _Beaubassin occupied by English troops._]

[Sidenote: _Fort Lawrence._]

The frontier, as far as any line was provisionally recognized, was a
little stream on the isthmus of Chignecto. On the mainland side the
French had occupied a hill called Beauséjour, on the Nova Scotian
side was the village of Beaubassin. In April, 1750, Cornwallis sent a
force of some 400 men under Major Lawrence to occupy a position at or
near Beaubassin, and to guard the isthmus. On his arrival, Lawrence
found Beaubassin in flames. Le Loutre and his Indians had set fire to
the place, and compelled the hapless residents to cross over to the
French lines. The English left, but returned in September in stronger
force; their landing was disputed by Le Loutre's savages, who were
driven off, {223} and a fort was built and garrisoned, called after
the name of the commander, Fort Lawrence.

[Sidenote: _Murder of Captain Howe._]

French and English now faced each other across a narrow stream, the
French completed their fort at Beauséjour, and the temper of Le
Loutre's Indians was shown by a horrible incident, the murder of an
English officer, Captain Howe. Howe had gone out in answer to a flag
of truce, which appeared from the French lines; but the bearer of the
white flag was an Indian disguised in French uniform, who lured the
Englishman into an ambush, where he was mortally wounded. The French
themselves attributed this act of wanton wickedness to Le Loutre.

[Sidenote: _Colonel Lawrence._]

[Sidenote: _Acadian emigration._]

In 1752 Cornwallis returned to England, and was succeeded as Governor
of Acadia by Colonel Hopson, who had been in command at Louisbourg,
when that town was given back to France; the latter was, in the
autumn of 1753, succeeded by Colonel Lawrence. The Acadian
population, which in 1749 numbered between 12,000 and 13,000 souls,
five years later was reduced to little more than 9,000. The
emigration which caused the reduction in numbers was largely the
result of a French terror, and on the mainland, or in the Île St.
Jean, the unfortunate emigrants endured misery unknown in their old
homes in Acadia. Those who find in the subsequent rooting up of
Acadian settlement an instance of English cruelty with little
parallel in history, would do well to remember that the process had
already been going on at the hands of the French; and the lot of the
Acadians under the French flag was in no wise preferable to the
fortunes of those who were carried, as it were, into captivity in the
English colonies.

[Sidenote: _De Vergor._]

[Sidenote: _Surrender of the French fort Beauséjour._]

The catastrophe, of which so much has been made in prose and verse,
happened in the year 1755. It was not an isolated incident, but part
of a general plan--which for the time miscarried--of breaking the
French power in North America. The commandant of the French fort at
{224} Beauséjour was De Vergor, son of Duchambon who surrendered
Louisbourg in 1745. He owed his position to Bigot, the notorious
Intendant of Canada. By his side, and with as much or more authority,
was Le Loutre, the evil genius of Acadia. The French contemplated
attack on the English: Lawrence, in communication with Shirley,
determined to forestall them. Some two thousand men came up from
Massachusetts, enlisted under John Winslow--a name which New
Englanders honoured--and, landing at the isthmus early in June,
joined the English garrison at Fort Lawrence, the whole force being
under Colonel Monckton. In a few days' time the bombardment of the
French fort began; but, before there had been any serious fighting,
De Vergor surrendered. The garrison marched out with the honours of
war, and Fort Beauséjour was renamed Fort Cumberland.

[Sidenote: _The French driven from Acadia._]

[Sidenote: _End of Le Loutre._]

This success was speedily followed by the capitulation of another
French fort at Baie Verte, at the northern end of the isthmus, and by
the evacuation of a post on the mainland, at the mouth of the river
St. John. The whole of Acadia on both sides of the isthmus thus
passed into English hands. De Vergor some time afterwards was put on
trial at Quebec for his feeble and incapable conduct, but influential
friends procured his acquittal; and he remained in Canada to earn
further obloquy, as commandant of the French outpost which was
surprised by Wolfe in his memorable climb by night up to the Plains
of Abraham.[4] Le Loutre disappeared from the scene of his wickedness
in North America. He fled in disguise to Quebec, and, sailing for
France, was taken prisoner and spent eight years in captivity in the
island of Jersey. He seems to have died in his bed in France--a
better fate than he deserved.

[Footnote 4: See below, pp. 306, 307.]

[Sidenote: _The expulsion of the Acadians._]

The victory of the English arms was followed by the removal of the
bulk of the Acadian population from Acadia. This policy had been
determined upon as the only practicable {225} alternative to
unqualified obedience. Such obedience, until it was too late and the
die had already been cast, the Acadians refused to give. They would
not swear heart-whole allegiance to King George; they had abetted his
enemies year after year; many of them had actually borne arms against
the English; and with Louisbourg in threatening strength in the
immediate neighbourhood, with manifold other difficulties to
face--for before the actual expulsion Braddock's defeat and death on
the Monongahela river had occurred--it was absolutely necessary for
the English authorities to make the Nova Scotian peninsula
permanently safe. The time to strike was while there was an adequate
force on the spot, and before the Massachusetts contingent returned
to Boston.

Sternly and relentlessly Governor Lawrence took his measures; at
Beaubassin, at Annapolis, round the shores of the Basin of Mines,
where the most pleasing features of Acadian settlement were to be
found, the majority of able-bodied men were secured; and, as the
transports came up, groups of peasants were carried off to other
lands. In the actual work of expulsion, no unnecessary harshness
appears to have been used; families were as a rule kept together, and
went out hand in hand into exile; but they were taken, an ignorant
and bewildered crowd, from the homes of their childhood, and were
transported, helpless and hopeless, to distant countries, where there
was another religion and another race. The pity of it was that, after
forty years of so-called English government, the Acadians never
believed that that Government, when it threatened or decreed, would
be as good as its word. When therefore the blow came, it stunned a
people who had been bred in the belief that much would be said and
nothing would be done.

[Sidenote: _The number transported._]

[Sidenote: _Their fate._]

Some 6,000 in all were removed, out of a total population of a little
over 9,000. Of these, over 3,000 had had their homes round the Basin
of Mines, the majority of whom {226} were dwellers in the village and
district of Grand Pré. The others came from the isthmus, or from
Annapolis. They were dispersed abroad among the English colonies in
North America, from Massachusetts southwards; but the colonies were
not all willing to receive them, and from Virginia and South Carolina
many were sent on to England. Some, it is said, found their way to
Louisiana, while of those who had escaped transportation a certain
number took refuge at Quebec. A considerable remnant was left behind
in Acadia, and some of the exiles 'wandered back to their native land
to die in its bosom';[5] but those who were left behind in Acadia,
and those who returned, were not enough to leaven to any great extent
the future history of the peninsula.

[Footnote 5: From Longfellow's _Evangeline_.]

[Sidenote: _Different views as to the policy of expulsion._]

What judgment may fairly be passed upon this measure of expulsion?
The traditional view has been that the removal of the Acadians from
Acadia was an injustice and a crime--an arbitrary and cruel act,
parallel on a smaller scale to the earlier expulsion of the Huguenots
from France. According to this view the English were oppressors,
rooting out and carrying captive a harmless and innocent peasantry--

  Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
  Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of heaven.

Longfellow has given us this picture in _Evangeline_, and it has been
drawn in similar outlines by various hands. In the foreground are
bands of terror-stricken peasants, driven on board ship amid mourning
and lamentation. In the background are burning homesteads, emptiness
where there had been plenty, desolation where yesterday the children
played.

A different view is given by later writers who have more closely
tested the facts. Their conclusion is that the expulsion of the
Acadians, stern and even cruel as it was, was more or less a
political necessity; that the Acadians {227} themselves were sinners
as well as sinned against; and that they were sinned against more by
men of their own race and religion than by the English.

This latter view is probably nearer the truth. There is always,
especially in England, a tendency to sympathize unreasonably with the
weak against the strong, and, when severe measures are taken, to
condemn those measures almost unheard. The Acadians, in their
primitive agricultural life, in their farms gathered round the
village church, were picturesque objects of sympathy; and, whenever a
fine or a punishment is inflicted on a whole district or on a whole
community, the innocent no doubt suffer with the guilty. But there
are conditions under which no lasting effect can be produced without
collective dealing, and the Acadians were not transported beyond the
sea until for many years half-measures had been tried, and tried in
vain. These farmers had been gently treated under English rule; many
of them had been born and brought up under it; a large proportion of
their number had requited the treatment by actively abetting or
tacitly conniving at the unceasing petty warfare, by which French
borderers and Indian savages year after year took English lives and
pillaged English homes. Was it unreasonable that, if they would not
be loyal subjects in Acadia, they should be moved elsewhere, and
that, instead of being sent to increase the hostile population of
Canada, they should be dispersed among the British colonies on the
North American coast?

It must be remembered that the tale of their sufferings has probably
not been minimized. French writers would naturally exaggerate what
actually occurred, and American accounts, until recent years, would
not be likely to be unduly friendly to England. It must be
remembered, too, that half as many as were transported by the English
had already been induced or forced by the French to emigrate to their
possessions; and we have it on French evidence that those who, {228}
when the sentence of expatriation was passed, took refuge in Canada,
suffered as much as or more than their compatriots suffered in the
English colonies.

[Sidenote: _True causes of the catastrophe._]

It is difficult to blame Colonel Lawrence for the step which he took
under the conditions of the time and place. On the other hand, it is
difficult to believe that the Acadians fully deserved their doom. The
responsibility for the wholesale misery, in which a small community
was involved, must be shared between the French Government and its
agents on the one hand, notably the priests, and on the other the
British Government in earlier years. Had the French been loyal to the
terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, had they ceased to instil the spirit
of disaffection into the minds of men who were no longer their
subjects, had they discountenanced instead of encouraging acts of
barbarity, had they not made religion a cloak for maliciousness, and
used the ministers of religion as political agitators of the worst
and most unscrupulous type, Acadia and the Acadians would have
prospered under the British Government as Canada and the Canadians
prospered in after years. Again if, when Acadia was ceded by the
treaty, Great Britain had recognized her responsibilities, had given
adequate protection and enforced the law, loyalty and obedience would
have brought happiness in its train, and a generation would have
grown up not attempting the impossible task of serving two masters.
The true verdict of history on the melancholy episode is this. The
misery which befell the Acadians was the result of not using force at
the right time, and of the evil potency of priestcraft.

[Sidenote: _French forts established on the route from the great
lakes to the Ohio._]

Before Acadia had been depopulated, much had happened in the west.
Always unready, the English colonies let slip the opportunity of
occupying the upper valley of the Ohio, and the French seized the
opening which their rivals might have closed. Early in 1753, the
Canadian Governor, Duquesne, sent a force of considerable strength
under an {229} old and tried officer, Marin, to establish
communication between the great lakes and the Ohio, and to hold the
route by a chain of forts. Launched upon Lake Erie, Marin and his men
held their way past the point where Celeron had landed; and, instead
of taking the portage to Chautauqua, disembarked further along the
southern shore of the lake at Presque Île, where the town of Erie now
stands. Here a fort was built, and a road cut southwards through the
woods for about 21 miles to the Rivière aux Boeufs. This stream, now
known as French Creek, flows into the Alleghany river, and is
navigable for canoes when the water is high. Where the road struck
the river a second fort was built, called Fort Le Boeuf. Thus the way
was cleared from the lakes to the sources of the Ohio, and either end
of the portage was guarded by a blockhouse.

[Sidenote: _Distress of the French._]

So far the enterprise had succeeded, and success had produced the
usual effect upon the wavering Indian mind, inclining the tribes of
the Ohio to the side which took the initiative and gave outward and
visible signs of strength. But the French were only at the outset of
their enterprise. As the year wore on, their ranks were thinned by
disease; their commander, Marin, died; and, when winter came, but
three hundred men were left to hold the forts on Lake Erie and French
Creek. The intention had been to push down the latter river, and,
where it joined the Alleghany, to build a third fort. This fort in
turn was to be a starting-point for a further advance to the main
objective, the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers.

[Sidenote: _The routes to the Ohio._]

[Sidenote: _Fort Cumberland._]

All through early Canadian history, we find the clue to the various
movements on either side is studying the waterways. As in the centre
of the two conflicting lines of advance, the English moved up the
Hudson and the French up the Richelieu, to find their battleground on
Lakes George and Champlain, so further to the west, in the region of
the Ohio, the Alleghany and its feeders brought the French down from
{230} Canada, while the English moved north along the line of the
Monongahela and its tributary the Youghiogany. These streams take
their rise amid the parallel ranges of the Alleghanies, in that
border country of the three States of Virginia, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania, which was the scene of the hardest fighting between
North and South in the American Civil War. Near where the Monongahela
starts on its northern course to the Ohio, but divided by mountains,
is the source of the northern branch of the Potomac, which runs into
the Atlantic. This latter river flows at first north-east between two
mountain ranges; and, where it turns to the east, cutting its way
through the hills, a small stream, known as Wills Creek, joins it
from the north. At this point was a station of the Ohio Company,
shortly afterwards called Fort Cumberland, after the English duke.
This was the base of the British advance; but mountains had to be
crossed to reach the Monongahela valley; it was easier to come down
from Canada to the Ohio than to march upon it from the Atlantic side.

[Sidenote: _Robert Dinwiddie._]

The Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, in the year 1753, the titular
Governor being in England, was Robert Dinwiddie, a cross-grained
Scotchman. He had none of the arts of popularity, but none the less
was a watchful guardian of his country's interests. Like William
Shirley in Massachusetts, he was a determined opponent of French
pretensions; but he was less tactful than Shirley in managing a
colonial Legislature, and less happily placed, in that the
Legislatures of the southern provinces were far behind the New
Englanders in public spirit. Hearing of the French advance from Lake
Erie, he lost no time in making a counter claim, and sent a messenger
to Fort Le Boeuf to warn off foreign trespassers from what he
conceived to be the domain of the King of England. The messenger was
George Washington, just come to man's estate.

[Sidenote: _George Washington's first mission._]

[Sidenote: _Apathy of the southern colonies._]

In November, 1753, Washington left Wills Creek. In {231} January,
1754, he returned to Virginia, having in the depth of winter
traversed the frost-bound backwoods, and risked his life in crossing
the Alleghany river. His journey in either direction took him by the
old Indian town of Venango, at the confluence of the French Creek
with the Alleghany, where there had been an English trading house:
this was now occupied by a French outpost. There could be no doubt
that the Governor of Canada intended to be master of the Ohio. Still
the British colonies remained apathetic or half-hearted. Virginia
voted 10,000 pounds; North Carolina gave some money; a handful of
troops in Imperial pay was placed at Dinwiddie's disposal; but the
money and the men were utterly inadequate to the occasion, and
Pennsylvania, the state which, with Virginia, was most concerned, did
nothing at all. For Pennsylvania was the home of Quakers and Germans,
the former averse to war on principle, the latter indifferent to the
conflicting claims of alien races.

[Sidenote: _The French build Fort Duquesne._]

The crisis came on apace. In February, 1754, a month after
Washington's return, Dinwiddie sent a small detachment over the
mountains to build a fort at the junction of the Monongahela and
Alleghany. While the work was in hand, a strong Canadian force came
down in April from the north and overpowered the Virginians. A fort
was built, but it was a French fort, and became memorable in history
under the name of Fort Duquesne. Dinwiddie determined to drive the
French back, if possible, from this new position, and he set
Washington to the task--impossible to perform with the only available
troops, amounting to 300 or 400 men.

[Sidenote: _Washington marches on Fort Duquesne._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Jumonville._]

[Sidenote: _Surrender of Fort Necessity and retreat of Washington._]

From Wills Creek to Fort Duquesne was a distance of 120 to 140 miles,
with two ranges of mountains to be crossed, before half the journey
was accomplished, and the Monongahela reached. Making a road over the
first range, the main range of the Alleghanies, Washington, about the
end of May, reached open ground known as the Great Meadows, having
still in front of him the Laurel hills, through which {232} the two
branches of the Monongahela find their way to the Ohio. A few miles
further on, guided by Indian scouts, he surprised an advance party
sent out from Fort Duquesne, and killed their commander, Jumonville.
Assassination was the term which the French applied to the death of
this officer, claiming that he was the peaceful bearer of a summons
to the English to retire from the land; but there is no reason to
doubt that Washington was justified in using force, and that the
Frenchman was killed in fair fight. Returning to his camp, and
entrenching it under the suitable name of Fort Necessity, the English
commander awaited a counter attack. Small reinforcements reached him,
and he pushed on over the Laurel ridge; but, hearing that the French
were advancing in force, fell back again to Fort Necessity. Stronger
in numbers, the French, from their base at Fort Duquesne, marched
forward under Jumonville's brother, Coulon de Villiers; and, after a
nine hours' fight, Fort Necessity surrendered; the English, under the
terms of the surrender, retreated across the Alleghanies, and the
French returned in triumph to Fort Duquesne. For the time, they were
beyond dispute masters of the Ohio valley, and the young Virginian,
whose name now stands first in the great history of the United States
of America, crawled back over the mountains, defeated and undone.

American history is great as a whole, but the back records of its
component parts are full of what is mean and contemptible. We are
accustomed, in the chronicles of the English race, to trace the
errors of its rulers, and to find them put right by the good sense
and strong character of the people; but, if we turn to the provincial
annals of the American States, when the fate of the continent seemed
to be trembling in the balance, the rulers sent out from home must be
credited with patriotism and some measure of foresight, while the
peoples were or appeared to be selfish and blind. New England alone
stands out in a brighter light, ready to {233} sacrifice money and
men in the national cause. With the enemy on their borders, the New
Englanders knew what the danger was; further south the Alleghany
mountains bounded the horizon of the colonists. State Assemblies
squabbled with their Governors, each little province was passively
indifferent to or actively jealous of its neighbour, all alike were
with good reason suspicious of the mother country; while on the other
side the fighting strength of Canada, centralized under a despotic
Government, one in aim and sympathy, was menacing and dangerous out
of all proportion to the resources of the country or the numbers of
its people.

[Sidenote: _Movement towards union of the English colonies._]

Yet some attempt had been made at concerted action on the part of the
English colonies. It emanated from the Government at home. In
September, 1753, the Lords of Trade wrote round to the Governors of
the various North American provinces, directing them to invite their
respective Legislatures to adopt a uniform policy towards the
Indians. In consequence, a conference was held at Albany, at which
seven of the colonies were represented--Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The
Commissioners met representatives of the Five Nation Indians, whose
hereditary friendship for the English cause was fast turning into
hatred and contempt. They pacified the angry Indians to some extent,
and renewed the old covenant of friendship, then turned to
constitution-making, at the instance of Franklin, one of the
Commissioners from Pennsylvania.

[Sidenote: _Franklin's scheme._]

[Sidenote: _It is not accepted._]

Franklin had a scheme for North American union, comprising a
President appointed by the Crown, and a general Council elected by
the taxpayers of the colonies, the number of representatives of each
colony to be determined by the amount of taxes paid. Plenary powers
were to be given to the President and Council, including even power
to make war and peace. Had the scheme been carried out, North America
would have become one great self-governing colony, {234} in some
respects more independent, in others more restricted than the
self-governing colonies of Great Britain at the present day.
Franklin's proposals, though his fellow commissioners were inclined
to approve them, pleased neither the colonies nor the mother country.
They were premature. The colonies were too jealous of their local
liberties to accept the scheme. The mother country still distrusted
the colonies, and dreaded the strength which union would bring.
Moreover, the immediate necessity was united action, not
constitutional change. The French must first be driven back; and with
this object Dinwiddie made an earnest appeal to the ministry in
England.

[Sidenote: _Troops sent from England and from France._]

[Sidenote: _The 'Alcide' and the 'Lys' intercepted by Admiral
Boscawen._]

The appeal was not made in vain; two regiments of infantry, the 44th
and 48th, now the Essex and Northampton regiments, were ordered to
embark for Virginia, and sailed from Cork in January, 1755, with
Major-General Braddock in command. The French Government, taking
alarm, ordered out 3,000 men under Baron Dieskau, a German serving in
the French army; and at the beginning of May, 1755, eighteen French
ships sailed from Brest carrying to Canada the troops and their
commander, and taking out at the same time a new Governor-General,
the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Most of the vessels reached their
destination in safety; but two, the _Alcide_ and _Lys_, were
intercepted by the English Admiral Boscawen, off the coast of
Newfoundland, were fired into, and compelled to surrender.[6] There
was still supposed to be peace between Great Britain and France, but
the backwoods of America and the waters of the Atlantic echoed to the
sounds of war.

[Footnote 6: The _Alcide_ was overpowered by the _Dunkirk_, commanded
by the afterwards famous Admiral Lord Howe.]

[Sidenote: _Scheme of the English campaign against Canada._]

At four points, according to the English plan of campaign Canada was
to be threatened and the French advance was to be checked. Braddock,
with his two English regiments, was to march on Fort Duquesne. From
Albany the second and {235} the third expeditions were to start. One,
marching due north, was to master Crown Point on Lake Champlain; the
other, taking the route of the Five Nation cantons, and having for
its advanced base Oswego on Lake Ontario, was to reduce the French
fort at Niagara. The fourth effort was to be made in Acadia. This
last enterprise proved successful, as has already been seen, Shirley
having previously prepared the way by building a fort on the mainland
behind the peninsula, at the portage between the Kennebec and the
Chaudière rivers. What fate befell the other expeditions must now be
told.

[Sidenote: _General Braddock._]

History has been unkind to General Braddock. His name is associated
for ever with a great disaster in North America, as the name of Wolfe
is linked to a crowning victory. Like Wolfe, Braddock was mortally
wounded on the field of battle; he was defeated, and obloquy was
heaped on his name. Wolfe triumphed, and all men spoke well of him.
The accounts of Braddock are largely derived from the spiteful gossip
collected by Horace Walpole, and from the writings of Franklin--never
a lover of the mother country, and, after the War of Independence,
glad, like others of his countrymen, to throw the blame of an English
defeat upon a commander sent out from England. We have a portrait
given us of a brutal, blustering, and incompetent soldier, a man of
coarse habits and broken fortunes, with little to recommend him but
personal honesty and courage. 'Braddock is a very Iroquois in
disposition,'[7] writes Horace Walpole. Before the fatal battle the
same writer tells us in the same letter, 'the duke (of Cumberland) is
much dissatisfied at the slowness of General Braddock, who does not
march as if he was at all impatient to be scalped.' After the
disaster he writes, 'Braddock's defeat still remains in the situation
of the longest battle that ever was fought with nobody.'[8] The {236}
Braddocks of England, with all their failings, have deserved better
of their country than the Horace Walpoles.

[Footnote 7: _Letters of Horace Walpole_ (Bohn's ed., 1861), vol. ii,
p. 459 (Letter of Aug. 25, 1755).]

[Footnote 8: Ibid. p. 473 (Letter of Sept. 30, 1755).]

Born in 1695, the son of an officer in the Coldstream Guards, and an
officer of the Guards himself, he was sixty years old when sent out
to America by the Duke of Cumberland. He had the reputation of being
a very severe disciplinarian, and yet we have Walpole's own admission
that while serving at Gibraltar, 'he made himself adored.'[9] He was
criticized by Franklin as being too self-confident, and as having too
high an opinion of European as compared with colonial troops; but, on
the other hand, the scanty colonial levies which reached him had not
shown high fighting qualities, and his care for transport and
supplies, together with his anxiety to conciliate and use the Indians
on the line of march, were evidence of prudence and military
forethought. Burke wrote of him as 'abounding too much in his own
sense for the degree of military knowledge he possessed';[10] but
probably Wolfe's judgement upon him was sound, that 'though not a
master of the difficult art of war, he was yet a man of sense and
courage,'[11] and we may reasonably infer that the shortcomings of
the colonists were unjustly visited on his head.

[Footnote 9: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, p. 461 (Letter of Aug. 28,
1755).]

[Footnote 10: _Annual Register_, 1758, p. 4.]

[Footnote 11: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 324.]

[Sidenote: _Braddock's march on Fort Duquesne._]

Late in February, 1755, the English troops and their commander
reached Hampton in Virginia, at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. In
due course they were sent up the Potomac to Alexandria, where in
April Braddock met the Governors of the various colonies, including
Shirley, and settled with them the plan of campaign. He himself
prepared to march on Fort Duquesne by the route which Washington had
taken, but found endless difficulty in obtaining horses, wagons, and
supplies. Virginia and Pennsylvania were still half-hearted, and
inclined to think that the danger {237} of French invasion was a
scare created in the interests of the Ohio Company. It was not the
first time, and not the last, that a real crisis has been interpreted
as the work of a designing few. However, a base was established, as
before, at Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, and early in June the
march began.

The force consisted of about 2,000 men, 1,350 of whom belonged to the
two regiments of the line. There were some 250 Virginia rangers, and
the rest were detachments from New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas.
The troops were formed in two brigades, under Sir Peter Halkett and
Colonel Dunbar. Washington, ill with fever, was attached to
Braddock's staff, by the General's own request. Steadily and well the
advance on Fort Duquesne was made; a road was cleared through forests
and over mountains; and every precaution was taken against surprise.
But progress was inevitably slow; and, at a distance of forty miles
from Fort Cumberland, Braddock, on Washington's advice, resolved to
push forward with the larger half of his troops, leaving the
remainder with the heavy baggage to follow under charge of Colonel
Dunbar. The object was to reach Fort Duquesne before reinforcements
could arrive from Canada.

[Sidenote: _The fight on the Monongahela._]

At the end of the first week in July, Braddock was eight miles
distant from the French fort, at a point where a little stream,
called Turtle Creek, flows into the Monongahela. He was on the same
side of the latter river as the fort, which stood on the right bank
of the Monongahela, in the angle which it forms with the Alleghany;
but the direct route passed through country suitable for ambuscade;
and he therefore resolved to make a short détour, crossing the
Monongahela, and recrossing it lower down the stream. On July 9, the
movement was successfully carried out; no opposition at either ford
being offered by the enemy. The troops moved on; and, early in the
afternoon, at a little distance from the river, as the line of march
crossed a shallow {238} forest-clad ravine, there was a sudden check;
a French officer sprang out in front of the advancing column, and
forthwith, in a moment, at his signal, the thickets were alive with
foes.

[Sidenote: _Rout of the English._]

The scene which followed was one not uncommon in the story of
colonial warfare. The first attack was answered by artillery fire;
the French commander, De Beaujeu, was killed, and many of the
Canadians fled. But the majority of the enemy, with whom the English
had to deal, were Indians, who dispersed on this side and on that,
hiding behind trees, and attacking either flank of the column, active
and noisy out of all proportion to their numbers. The English
vanguard fell back, the supports crowded up, the redcoated soldiers
stood in close formation, an easy mark for the invisible foe. They
fired at nothing, for nothing could be seen; all around was a hideous
din, from every side came bullets dealing death. The men were
bewildered, the ammunition began to fail, confusion turned into
panic, and, when at length the order for retreat was given, there was
a headlong flight.

[Sidenote: _Braddock mortally wounded._]

The survivors rushed across the river, taking with them the General
mortally wounded; no stand was made at the first crossing or at the
second; and when, in about two days' time, the fugitives reached
Dunbar's camp, many miles distant, they found panic prevailing there
also. The retreat was continued to Fort Cumberland, stores, guns, and
wagons being abandoned; and not many days after Fort Cumberland had
been reached, Dunbar marched off with the remains of the regular
troops to Philadelphia.

[Sidenote: _Death of Braddock._]

Braddock had shown conspicuous bravery, if not conspicuous judgment,
on the battlefield. He was shot through the lungs as the retreat
began, and bade his men leave him where he fell. They carried him,
however, from the fight; and for four days he lingered, reaching
Dunbar's camp, and dying at Great Meadows on July 13. Of 1,460 {239}
British and colonial officers and men who took part in the battle,
nearly 900 were killed or wounded. Those who escaped, escaped with
their lives alone. On the French side the numbers engaged appear not
to have exceeded 900, three-fourths of whom were Indians. The English
force included over 1,200 regulars; the battle therefore resulted in
a crushing defeat of troops of the line by a smaller number of
Indians, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen and Canadians, led by French
officers.

[Sidenote: _Blame for the disaster._]

The disaster was attributed to the incompetence of the General, and
the bad quality of the regular troops; it was said that the few
Virginians who were present fought well, in contrast to their English
comrades; that, knowing bush fighting, and taking cover, they were
driven into the open by Braddock, only to be shot down like the rest.
These accounts must be taken with reserve; the testimony of
Washington and others was prejudiced in favour of the colonial and
against the British soldier; Braddock did not live to give his own
version of the matter; and the two regular regiments, having been
brought up to strength since their arrival in America, included many
colonists in their ranks. Yet it must be supposed that, as the column
neared its destination unopposed, there was some slackening of
precaution, for which the General must be held to blame; while Wolfe
set down the defeat to the bad conduct of the infantry, writing in
strong terms of the want of military training in the English army, as
compared with the armies of the continent.[12]

[Footnote 12: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 324.]

[Sidenote: _Bad conduct of the colonies of Virginia and
Pennsylvania._]

But, even if the defeat and rout on the Monongahela was due to the
shortcomings of the English troops and their commander, we may well
ask why troops from the mother country were needed to protect the
frontiers of the two strong colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The whole story shows these colonies in the worst possible light.
They {240} had ample warning of the importance of securing Fort
Duquesne; they allowed it to fall into the hands of the French; they
threw on the mother country the onus of recovering it: they hindered
Braddock rather than helped him; and, when he failed, they debited
him and his men with the whole blame of failure. It was not wonderful
that soldiers fresh from England should be stampeded at their first
venture in forest warfare, but it was wonderful that the men on the
spot should be so utterly indifferent to the calls, both of
patriotism and of self-interest, as to contribute to the disaster.

[Sidenote: _They suffer in consequence._]

Bad as was the failure, it was a blessing in disguise. The colonies
concerned were for a time left to bear their own burdens; French and
Indians harried their frontiers; homesteads and villages were burnt;
women and children were butchered or carried into captivity. While
sleek Quakers and garrulous Assembly men prated of peace and local
liberties, the outlying settlements were given over to fire and
sword; until the southern colonists began to learn the lesson, which
New England had long since learnt, that the first duty of any
community is self-defence.

[Sidenote: _William Johnson._]

[Sidenote: _His influence with the Five Nation Indians._]

On the Mohawk river, about thirty miles to the north-west of Albany,
there lived a nephew of Sir Peter Warren, named William Johnson. He
had come out to America in 1738, when he was twenty-three years old,
to manage estates which his uncle had bought on the confines of the
Five Nation Indians. He lived a semi-savage life, in a house
constructed as a fort and named Fort Johnson or Mount Johnson, taking
to wife first a German woman, and then an Iroquois. His position
among the Indians was not unlike that which the Baron de Castin had
held in bygone years on the Penobscot. He knew and understood the
natives and their ways, he spoke their language, and his honest
dealings contrasted favourably with the rascalities of the border
traders. He was a type of man, more common on the French side than on
the English, {241} who lived within, not outside, the circle of
native life; and, having these versatile attributes, it is almost
superfluous to add that he was an Irishman. For the rest, Johnson was
a man of force and energy, whose tact and talents were by no means
confined to the backwoods. He did good service to his King and
country, and was not at all inclined to hide his light under a
bushel. His value to the English cause in North America cannot be
overestimated. His personal influence among the Mohawks
counterbalanced the influence of the Frenchman Joncaire among the
Senecas at the other end of the confederacy; and, being appointed
Superintendent of, or Commissioner for, Indian affairs, he, and he
alone, kept alive the old covenant of friendship between the English
and the Five Nation Indians.

[Sidenote: _He commands the expedition against Crown Point._]

[Sidenote: _Building of Fort Edward._]

When it was decided to send an expedition against Crown Point,
Shirley gave him the command, and Braddock confirmed the appointment.
He had no military experience, though he was a colonel of militia;
but the whole force under him consisted of colonists, preferring to
be led by a man who knew the country and its people than by a trained
soldier. Preparations were made for raising 6,000 to 7,000 men.
Massachusetts, as usual, contributed the largest levy; the other New
England colonies and New York sent or promised smaller forces, and
some 300 Mohawk Indians joined the expedition, finding that it was
commanded by the white man, whom of all others they trusted and
loved. The actual numbers engaged, however, did not much exceed 3,000
fighting men. In July they met at Albany and moved up the Hudson, for
about forty-five miles, to the 'Carrying Place,' the spot where the
portage begins to the waters which run to the St. Lawrence. Here, on
the eastern side of the Hudson, a beginning was made of a fort,
called for the time Fort Lyman, after Phineas Lyman, second in
command of the expedition, but a little later rechristened Fort
Edward.

[Sidenote: _Course of the Hudson._]

The Hudson river rises in the Adirondack mountains, to {242} the west
of Lake George, and flows in a south-easterly direction, until it
reaches a point south-west by south of the southern end of the lake.
Here for some miles it takes a due easterly course, at right angles
to the line of the lake, until, at Sandy Hill, near where Fort Edward
was founded, it turns due south, and flows due south into the
Atlantic. It appears to prolong to southward the line of Lake George
and Lake Champlain; but the watersheds are distinct, the two lakes in
question drain to the north, and eventually discharge through the
Richelieu river into the St. Lawrence.

[Sidenote: _Lakes George and Champlain._]

They form a long narrow basin running north and south between the
Adirondacks on the west and the Green mountains of Vermont on the
east. No stream of any size feeds Lake George; it stretches for
between thirty and forty miles from south-west to north-east,
overshadowed by the Adirondacks; and, narrowing at the northern end,
finds an outlet into Lake Champlain by a semicircular channel, which
enters the larger lake from west to east. This channel is broken by
rapids, and in the angle which it forms with Lake Champlain stands
Ticonderoga.

Lake Champlain is here a broad river rather than a lake, having
narrowed into the similitude of a river from where, fifteen miles
further north, the isthmus of Crown Point juts out on the western
side of the lake. But it does not end at Ticonderoga, where it meets
the waters of Lake George. It continues southwards in a direct line,
very roughly parallel to Lake George, still narrowing in its upward
course, through the marshes known as the Drowned Lands, past a little
subsidiary lake on the western side known as South Bay, over against
which now stands the small town of Whitehall, and ending in a stream
known as Wood Creek. The sources of Wood Creek are but a few miles
distant from the point, already noted, where the Hudson turns south
to form the central valley of New York State, and where Johnson, in
the summer of 1755, was busy constructing Fort Lyman.

{243} [Sidenote: _Johnson encamps at the end of Lake George._]

Johnson's objective was Crown Point; and to reach it he had a choice
of two parallel routes, either of which involved a portage from the
Hudson watershed to that of Lake Champlain. He could take either the
western line by Lake George, or the eastern line by Wood Creek. He
chose the former, and making a road for fourteen miles from Fort
Lyman to the head--the southern end--of Lake George, encamped there
at the end of August with over 2,000 men, leaving 500 men behind to
garrison Fort Lyman.

[Sidenote: _Dieskau at Crown Point._]

The French in the meantime had not been idle. When Dieskau arrived in
Canada with his troops, it was intended that he should operate on
Lake Ontario, and reduce the English outpost at Oswego; but, as soon
as news came of Johnson's expedition, the plan was changed, and he
hurried up the Richelieu with reinforcements to protect Crown Point.
By the time that Johnson reached Lake George, there were assembled at
Crown Point over 3,500 men--French soldiers, Canadians, and Indians.

[Sidenote: _He advances to Ticonderoga and up the southern arm of
Lake Champlain,_]

The two alternative routes from Fort Lyman to Crown Point converged
at Ticonderoga, or, as the French called it, Carillon. Dieskau
therefore moved forward to that place, to block the English advance.
He had not yet learnt that Johnson was encamped at Lake George, but
was under the impression that the advanced guard of the English,
instead of the rearguard, was at Fort Lyman. Accordingly, he laid his
plans to push rapidly up the southern arm of Lake Champlain, and to
take Fort Lyman before reinforcements could arrive; or, if Johnson
had already marched to Lake George, to cut the line of his
communications. French and English were in fact advancing, or
preparing to advance, south and north respectively, on parallel
lines.

[Sidenote: _and cuts Johnson's communications._]

A flying column of 1,500 men set out from Ticonderoga; the water
carried them as far as South Bay, where they left their boats, and
marching thence through the forest between Lake George and Wood
Creek, they struck the road which {244} Johnson had made from Fort
Lyman to the lake, at a point three miles from the fort, eleven from
the lake. They had thus intercepted Johnson's communications and cut
him off from his base of supplies. From prisoners Dieskau learnt the
disposition of Johnson's forces, and he took counsel whether to
attack the fort or the encampment by the lake. Capture of the fort
had been the original object of the march; but in deference to the
Indians, who little loved assault on fortified positions, it was
decided to take the second alternative and advance on the lake.

[Sidenote: _Johnson's counter plan._]

[Sidenote: _The English fall into an ambush._]

Meanwhile, warned of what had happened, Johnson prepared a
counter-stroke. What Dieskau had done, he could do also; if the
Frenchman had cut his communications, he in his turn could intercept
Dieskau's line of retreat; and, with this object, on the morning of
the eighth of September, a force of 1,000 men was sent out from the
camp to strike the French in the rear. The whole formed a pretty
picture of backwood manoeuvres; but, like the Boers in South Africa,
the Canadians proved themselves more mobile than the English, and
more skilful in ambuscade. At three miles distance from the camp,
after an hour's march, the English fell into a carefully-laid trap.
On the road in front were the French regulars; in the forest on
either flank Canadians and Indians lay in wait for their prey.
Advancing without due precaution, though they had a band of Mohawks
with them, the English were completely surprised; the head of the
column was driven in on the rear, the whole force became (in
Dieskau's words) like a pack of cards, and fell back with heavy loss
in rout to the camp, the retreat being partially covered by a
detachment sent out by Johnson on hearing of the engagement.

[Sidenote: _The French attack the camp and are defeated._]

[Sidenote: _Dieskau taken prisoner._]

At the camp hasty preparations were made for defence, behind wagons
and fallen trees, and in a short time the enemy appeared. The French
regulars attacked boldly and well, but the Canadians and Indians were
out of hand, the {245} commander of the Canadians, Legardeur de Saint
Pierre, having already been killed. For three or four hours there was
furious firing; but the English had artillery, the French had not,
and this advantage, coupled with the lines of defence, decided the
issue. Dieskau was disabled by a wound; the attack slackened; at
length the defenders left their entrenchments and charged their foes,
and late in the afternoon the whole French force was routed and fled,
leaving their wounded General in the hands of the enemy. Some of the
Canadians and Indians had already fallen back to the scene of the
morning's fight, intent on scalps and plunder. Here a scouting party
from Fort Lyman fell upon them, and, after a hard struggle, drove
them into further retreat.

Both sides lost heavily, but the balance of the day's fighting was
unquestionably in favour of the English. On the French side the
regulars showed to more advantage than their colonial and Indian
allies, and Dieskau deserved a better fate than wounds and captivity.
While lying wounded, we read, he was again shot by a French deserter,
and, when he was brought into the English camp, the Mohawks, whose
chief had been killed, threatened his life. Johnson, however, who had
himself been wounded, took every care of his prisoner; in due course
he was sent over to England; and eventually, disabled for further
service, he returned to France, where he died in 1767.

[Sidenote: _Results of the fight._]

[Sidenote: _Fort William Henry._]

The most was made of this repulse of the French. It came as a set-off
to the defeat of Braddock. Johnson was made a baronet and received
5,000 pounds. The Lac du Sacrement he had already renamed Lake
George, the encampment at the head of the lake blossomed out into
Fort William Henry, and another of the King's sons provided the name
of Fort Edward for the fort at the Carrying Place. Yet the object of
the expedition was not achieved; no attempt was made at a further
advance; the French were unmolested in their retreat, and retained
their hold on Crown Point and {246} Ticonderoga also. Johnson
remained encamped by the lake, with a force raised to a total of
3,600 men, until November was drawing to a close, when, a garrison
being left to hold Fort William Henry through the winter, the rest of
the army disbanded to their homes.

[Sidenote: _Shirley's advance to Lake Ontario._]

While Johnson was moving north from Albany to attack Crown Point,
William Shirley went west, with the intention of reducing the French
fort at Niagara and cutting off Canada from the upper lakes. He
started from Albany in July with some 1,500 men, mainly colonial
troops in Imperial pay, and took his way along the line of the Five
Nation cantons. He moved up the Mohawk river, past Schenectady and
past Johnson's home, made the portage from the Mohawk to the stream
called, like the feeder of Lake Champlain, Wood or Wood's Creek,
which runs into Lake Oneida, and by the outlet of that lake, now the
Oswego river, to Lake Ontario.

[Sidenote: _Oswego and Niagara._]

[Sidenote: _The expedition abandoned._]

Where the river joined Lake Ontario stood the small English fort of
Oswego, founded in 1727, and regarded with the utmost jealousy by the
French.[13] The French fort at Niagara was 130 to 140 miles to the
west of Oswego, while due north of the latter place, at a distance of
over fifty miles across Lake Ontario, was Fort Frontenac. The
garrisons of both the French forts had been reinforced on hearing of
Shirley's advance, and an attack on Fort Niagara involved the danger
of a counter attack on Oswego from Fort Frontenac. On the other hand,
Fort Frontenac was fully strong enough to repel any direct attempt to
take it. The English, moreover, experienced great difficulty in
collecting provisions or an adequate fleet of boats, and after some
weeks' delay it was resolved to abandon the expedition. Before
October ended, Shirley returned to Albany by the way he went, leaving
700 men to garrison Oswego and strengthen its defences,
communications with Albany being maintained by two blockhouses which
had been built at either end of the {247} four miles' portage between
the Mohawk river and Wood Creek--Fort Williams on the Mohawk river,
where the town of Rome now stands, and Fort Bull on Wood Creek.

[Footnote 13: See above, p. 196.]

[Sidenote: _Results of the year's campaign_]

Thus the campaigning of the busy year 1755 came to an end. The main
forces on either side disbanded, or went into garrison for the
winter; Washington and a few hundred Virginians tried to safeguard
the harried frontiers of the southern colonies; Robert Rogers,
boldest of New England rangers, went scouting up the line of Lake
George. The forts stood isolated in the wintry backwoods, waiting for
the stirring times which were coming on forthwith.

[Sidenote: _in favour of the French._]

Neither French nor English had much cause to boast of the results of
the year's fighting. On either side a General had been sent out from
Europe; the English General had been killed, the French General had
been wounded and taken prisoner. But, on the whole, the French had
undoubtedly gained and the English had lost. The English had taken
the offensive, they had planned attack all along the line, and in the
main their schemes had conspicuously failed. Only in the extreme east
had they achieved substantial success. Acadia had been permanently
secured, if there could be security as long as the fortress of
Louisbourg remained in French hands. In the extreme west they had
been badly beaten, and the French had acquired full control of the
Ohio valley. On Lake Ontario they had done nothing at all. On the
main central line of advance they had set out to take Crown Point,
and had to be content with repelling a counter attack by the French.
The more New England had been concerned in the war, the better the
English had fared; the further west or south they operated, the
greater was their want of success.

[Sidenote: _Effect of geography on the English side of the war._]

The most striking feature to notice in the events of the year is the
effect of distance, when not counteracted by steam and telegraphy. It
will be noted how far removed in every sense was America from Europe
in the middle of the {248} eighteenth century, and how far removed in
every sense were the American colonies from one another. Here was
fighting going on at all points on the border line of French and
English America, and yet France and England were nominally at peace.
New England was raising her levies with patriotism and spirit,
meeting a common foe with common feeling, and, it may be added, with
common sense. New York and Virginia could, on the other hand,
scarcely be prevailed upon to move; while Pennsylvania was as
indifferent as though the fighting had been on another continent. We
may and must put down much to political causes, to social and
religious prejudices; and Canada proved that, even in the eighteenth
century, long distances did not necessarily preclude concerted
action; but, where settlement had begun and continued for generations
at widely different points on the American continent, and on
absolutely separate and independent lines, war and peace were alike
localized, and there was little or no cohesion between the colonies
and the mother country, or between one colony and another. The
history of the English North American colonies had been the history
not of one but of many communities. No uniform system held them
together, no sentiment of the distant past was strong enough to
counteract geography. Only, as colonization spread in the long course
of years, the dwellers in one province came into contact with the
dwellers in another, and both the one and the other came face to face
with the French advance. Then the pressure of common danger made for
union, and the race instinct gathered strength. The mother country
sent out soldiers; colonists were enlisted in royal regiments to
supplement the provincial militias; and in clumsy, most imperfect
fashion, the English in North America began to shape themselves into
a nation.

One keen English observer, at any rate--General Wolfe--saw at once
the present defects of the English colonies in North America, and the
great future which lay before them. {249} 'These colonies,' he wrote
in 1758, 'are deeply tinged with the vices and bad qualities of the
mother country.' But he added, 'This will, some time hence, be a vast
empire, the seat of power and learning. Nature has refused them
nothing, and there will grow a people out of our little spot,
England, that will fill this vast space, and divide this great
portion of the globe with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the
other half.'[14]

[Footnote 14: Wolfe to his mother, Louisbourg, Aug. 11, 1758
(Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 454).]


NOTE.--For the above see

  KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii, and
  PARKMAN'S _Montcalm and Wolfe_.

The period dealt with in this and the two succeeding chapters is
covered by

  A. G. BRADLEY'S recent work, _The Fight with France for North
    America_ (1900).




{250}

CHAPTER IX

THE CONQUEST OF CANADA


[Sidenote: _The Seven Years' War._]

In May, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France. In June,
France declared war against Great Britain. The war between these two
nations formed part of the Seven Years' War, one of the most widely
extended and, in its results, one of the most decisive in history. In
the first number of the _Annual Register_, for the year 1758,[1]
Edmund Burke wrote: 'The war, into which all parties and interests
seem now to be so perfectly blended, arose from causes which
originally had not the least connexion, the uncertain limits of the
English and French territories in America, and the mutual claims of
the houses of Austria and Brandenburg on the Duchy of Silesia.' After
three years of the war, in September, 1759, Horace Walpole wrote in
his laughing style, 'I believe the world will come to be fought for
somewhere between the north of Germany and the back of Canada.'[2]

[Footnote 1: p. 2.]

[Footnote 2: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 249 (Letter of
Sept. 13, 1759).]

[Sidenote: _Numerical superiority of the English in America._]

On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia
for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and
Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia,
and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British
colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One
or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better
peopled with white colonists than Canada.

{251} [Sidenote: _Official corruption in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _Bigot and his gang._]

Nor was want of numbers the only disadvantage under which Canada
laboured. The currency, principally paper money, was depreciated.
Provisions were scarce, seeing that the farmers were constantly
called away to fight, and that supplies from beyond the sea were
liable to be intercepted. The government was corrupt, and the high
officials cheated the King on the one hand and the _habitans_ on the
other with the greatest impartiality. Canadian history, all through
its course, as long as Canada was a province of France, was tainted
by official corruption. The officials were traders also, and the
public service was largely in the hands of commercial rings. What
happened in the mother country happened also in her greatest colony.
One official's wife became another official's mistress, and the
husband who gave up the wife was rewarded with pickings at the
expense of the public and of the Crown. The evil was at its worst in
the last days of New France. The Intendant was then Bigot, a clever
Frenchman who had come out in 1748, and round him gathered a gang of
unscrupulous adventurers, whose misdeeds were fully brought to light
after the crisis was over and the colony was lost. Among them were
Cadet, butcher and contractor, who was made Commissary-General; Péan,
Varin, and others, who, one at Quebec and another at Montreal, formed
stores and created monopolies, buying and selling at artificial
prices, sucking the life-blood of an extravagant Government in France
and of a poor community in America.

[Sidenote: _Vaudreuil._]

In past years, supreme authority in Canada had been shared between
the Governor and the Intendant, and quarrels in abundance had arisen
between the holders of the two offices; but, at the time when the
Seven Years' War began, the Governor and the Intendant were at one.
The Intendant Bigot, and the Governor De Vaudreuil, were on excellent
terms. Vaudreuil, son of a previous Governor-General of Canada,
received his appointment in 1755, having {252} already been Governor
of Louisiana. He was a vain man, of some but not great capacity,
called to high office in a difficult time, and not equal to the task
which was imposed upon him. Surrounded by cleverer and more
unscrupulous men of Bigot's type, he did nothing to check the evils
which were ruining Canada.

[Sidenote: _Division between Canadians and Frenchmen._]

[Sidenote: _Different classes of troops engaged in the war._]

The principal point to note about him is that he was a Canadian by
birth. This fact was the source of mischief. In lieu of the old feud
between the Governor and the Intendant, there came into being a new
line of cleavage, which tended to divide the mother country from the
colony. The Governor had always been supreme in military matters;
but, when war in North America grew to be more than a series of
border forays, it became necessary to send out skilled generals from
France. Dieskau was sent, and after him came a greater man, Montcalm.
Friction then arose between the Governor and the General, accentuated
in consequence of the Governor being a Canadian. All the Governors of
Canada, including Vaudreuil, had seen service, or had at any rate
been trained to war, but they were usually either sailors or
connected with the forces which were attached to the navy and under
the Minister of Marine. On both the English and the French side in
North America there were, at the time of the Seven Years' War, three
classes of troops engaged. On the English side there were the regular
regiments sent out from home, and brought up to strength by
recruiting in the colonies. There were also regiments entirely raised
in the colonies, but still royal regiments in the pay of the Crown,
such for instance as the four battalions of Royal Americans, first
raised by Loudoun's orders, and famous in after times as the 60th or
the King's Royal Rifle Corps.[3] Lastly, there were the purely
colonial levies. On {253} the French side there were in the first
place regiments of the line from France. In the second place there
were the _troupes de la Marine_, regiments or companies mainly raised
in France, but permanently stationed in Canada, to form a standing
garrison and to develop into military colonists. In the third place
there was the Canadian militia, including all the adult males between
the years of fifteen and sixty. Only the first of these three classes
of troops was under the direct command of the General from France.
After Montcalm's arrival they numbered rather over 4,000 men, about
one-fourth of whom were in garrison at Louisbourg. The _troupes de la
Marine_ amounted at most to about 2,500 men. The Canadian militia on
paper numbered 15,000, but very few of them were to be found in the
field at any given time or place. The General corresponded with the
Minister for War; when in action he took command of all the forces
present, but the nominal Commander-in-Chief was the Governor, who was
by way of directing the campaign, and who reported to the Minister of
Marine. Thus, both at home and in Canada, there was divided
responsibility at a time when all depended on the most complete
co-operation and single control.

[Footnote 3: They were originally the 62nd or Royal American Regiment
of foot. The men were chiefly German and Swiss Protestants, and about
one-third of the officers were of the same nationalities. On the
disbanding of Shirley's and Pepperell's Regiments, which were
numbered 50th and 51st, the Royal Americans became the 60th Regiment.
Their motto, 'Celer et audax,' is said, without much authority, to
have been first given them by Wolfe.]

[Sidenote: _The strength of Canada._]

The strength of Canada, on the other hand, consisted in the divisions
of her adversaries, the separate grumbling English colonies; in the
incompetence of the English Government at home; in the fact that the
routes for attack from Canada favoured quick movement from the base;
and most of all in the support which the Frenchmen received from the
red men, notably from the mission Indians. The Indians went hand in
hand with the Canadians; the one and the other loved irregular
warfare; the one and the other answered {254} to the call of the
Governor of Canada, rather than of the General who looked on war as
he had known it in Europe--more scientific, more continuous, better
controlled, and more humane than the savage outbursts of killing and
plundering which were the product of American backwoods.

[Sidenote: _Canadian raid on the route between Albany and Oswego._]

As winter turned into spring, in 1756, before war had been proclaimed
in Europe, and before Montcalm had come out, the Canadians made a
move. The most distant and isolated English outpost was Oswego on
Lake Ontario. Its communication with Albany depended on the two
little forts which, as told in the last chapter,[4] had been
constructed to guard the four miles' portage between the Mohawk river
and Wood Creek, the stream which feeds Lake Oneida. Towards the end
of March, a party of Canadians and Indians, sent by Vaudreuil and
commanded by an officer named De Léry, surprised the fort on the
latter river, Fort Bull, killed or captured the small garrison, and
destroyed the building with all its contents. The damage was repaired
by Shirley, in whose eyes Oswego was of supreme importance, and who,
in the winter of 1755, had formulated new schemes for a comprehensive
campaign against Canada, including as before the reduction of the
French forts on Lake Ontario.

[Footnote 4: See above, pp. 246, 247.]

[Sidenote: _Weakness of Oswego._]

[Sidenote: _Colonel Bradstreet._]

If this last object was to be achieved, it was absolutely necessary
that Oswego should be made so strong in men and munitions, as not
merely to hold its own, but to dominate the rival forts at Frontenac,
Toronto, and Niagara. These conditions were very far from being
fulfilled, and Shirley can hardly be acquitted of blame in the
matter. The garrison of Oswego was weakened by winter sickness, the
fortifications were hopelessly incomplete, the supplies were scanty
and uncertain. The French raid in March was followed by a
strengthening of the French positions on Lake Ontario, and Coulon de
Villiers, a well-known Canadian leader, took up new ground at Sandy
Creek to eastward of, and at no {255} great distance from, the
English fort. From Albany, early in the summer, Shirley sent up
supplies to Oswego in charge of a strong body of colonists under
Colonel John Bradstreet, a New Englander who did other good service
later in the war. Bradstreet reached his destination in safety, but
on his return up the Oswego river, at the beginning of July, was
attacked by Villiers, whom he beat off after heavy fighting and
considerable loss on either side.

[Sidenote: _French designs on Oswego._]

Vaudreuil was as determined to drive the English from Lake Ontario,
as Shirley was to secure for his countrymen control over the
navigation of the lake; and at the time that Bradstreet's fight took
place, Montcalm had already been some weeks in Canada. The French
knew from the reports of their scouts the weakness of Oswego, they
knew too that the English were concentrating in another direction for
an attack on Ticonderoga: an advance in force on Oswego was likely to
succeed: if not successful, it would at least draw off some of the
English troops from the main campaign. Accordingly, an expedition was
taken in hand, commanded by Montcalm in person.

[Sidenote: _Montcalm marches against it._]

In July, Montcalm was at Ticonderoga. Returning rapidly to Montreal,
he pushed up the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac; and early in August,
moving his troops by night, crossed Lake Ontario, at the outlet of
the St. Lawrence, passing to Wolfe Island, and thence to Sackett's
Harbour in the south-eastern corner of the lake. Here a force of
Canadians, including the remains of Villiers' troops, was awaiting
him; and he advanced with about 3,000 men, including three regiments
of the line, and an adequate supply of artillery, some of the guns
having been taken from General Braddock's force. Undiscovered by the
English, the expedition moved westward, the main body coasting the
shore, the Canadians marching on land, until at night time, on August
10, they took up a position at little more than a mile's distance
from Oswego.

{256} [Sidenote: _Position of Oswego._]

There were at this time, in consequence of Shirley's efforts, three
forts at Oswego or Chouaguen, as the French called it. The old fort
and trading house stood on the western bank of the Onondaga or Oswego
river, where it enters the lake. On the same side of the river, about
600 yards to the westward, was a 'small unfinished redoubt, badly
enough entrenched with earth on two sides.'[5] It was called a fort,
and pompously named Fort George, but, as a matter of fact, it was
used as, and was little better than, a cattle-pen. On the eastern
side of the river, over against the old fort, at a distance of 470
yards, was a newly-built, square-shaped blockhouse, known as Fort
Ontario. It was built wholly of timber; and, while strong enough to
resist such firearms as Indians could bring, it was of no avail
against artillery.

[Footnote 5: See 'Papers relating to Oswego,' in O'Callaghan's
_Documentary History of New York_, vol. i, pp. 488-503.]

[Sidenote: _The French attack._]

[Sidenote: _Oswego surrenders._]

The French prepared to bombard this eastern fort, but, before their
trenches were complete, it was evacuated, and the garrison was
withdrawn across the river. The abandonment was inevitable, but it
sealed the fate of the main fort, which, for protection on the lake
and river side, depended on Fort Ontario. One day's fighting saw the
conclusion of the matter. The French brought their guns into position
by the side of the abandoned fort; and, firing across the river,
riddled Fort Oswego. At the same time, Canadians and Indians forded
the river higher up, and attacked on the southern side. The English
commander, Colonel Mercer, was killed: the troops, consisting mainly
of convalescents and recruits, were not in condition for a stubborn
defence; women and children found no shelter from the enemy's fire;
the position was hopeless, and the garrison surrendered. The
prisoners, who were carried off, numbered about 1,600; guns, boats,
and supplies fell into the hands of the French, the forts were burnt
to the ground, and every vestige of British occupation was for the
time obliterated.

{257} [Sidenote: _Effect of the fall of Oswego._]

The news of the fall of Oswego, after so many years of British
occupation, caused consternation in England. Colonel Daniel Webb, who
at the time was bringing up reinforcements along the line of the
Mohawk and Wood Creek rivers, beat a hurried and discreditable
retreat, burning the forts at the Carrying Place[6] and blocking the
waterway with fallen timber. In England the blow followed on that of
the capture of Minorca, for which Byng was made a scapegoat. 'Minorca
is gone, Oswego gone, the nation is in a ferment,' wrote Horace
Walpole; and again, 'Oswego, of ten times more importance even than
Minorca, is so annihilated that we cannot learn the particulars.'[7]
It was in truth a great success for France, the result of a plan
boldly conceived and brilliantly executed. The garrison had been
taken completely by surprise; in four days from the date when
Montcalm landed within reach of the forts, he had achieved his
object, and left the English no foothold on Lake Ontario. The defeat
of Braddock had given to France command of the Ohio; the fall of
Oswego gave her undisputed mastery of the lakes. All the west, and
all the ways to the west, were now in her hands, and her forces could
be concentrated on the central line of advance to the south up Lake
Champlain. There already some way had been made, for, in addition to
holding Crown Point, the French were now firmly planted at
Ticonderoga.

[Footnote 6: Fort Williams was rebuilt in 1758, and named Fort
Stanwix. See below, p. 282.]

[Footnote 7: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, pp. 41, 42
(Letter of Nov. 4, 1756).]

Great as were the immediate material results of Montcalm's success,
the indirect moral advantage which the French derived from it was
greater still. Oswego, Burke reminds us in the _Annual Register_ for
1758,[8] was 'designed to cover the country of the Five Nations, to
secure the Indian trade, to interrupt the communication between the
{258} French northern and southern establishments, and to open a way
to our arms to attack the forts of Frontenac and Niagara.' A few
pages later, he describes the effect of the disaster in the following
words: 'Since Oswego had been taken, the French remained entirely
masters of all the lakes, and we could do nothing to obstruct their
collecting the Indians from all parts, and obliging them to act in
their favour. But our apprehensions (or what shall they be called?)
did more in favour of the French than their conquests. Not satisfied
with the loss of that important fortress, we ourselves abandoned to
the mercy of the enemy all the country of the Five Nations, the only
body of Indians who preserved even the appearance of friendship to
us. The forts we had at the Great Carrying Place were demolished,
Wood Creek was industriously stopped up and filled with logs, by
which it became evident to all those who knew that country that our
communication with our allied Indians was totally cut off, and, what
was worse, our whole frontier left perfectly uncovered to the
irruption of the enemy's savages.'

[Footnote 8: pp. 13, 29.]

[Sidenote: _The Iroquois discouraged._]

The effect of what had happened on the minds of the Five Nation
Indians was disastrous. Oswego had covered their cantons, it had been
the entrepôt of trade between them and the west. They saw it swept
away with little or no resistance. They saw Webb hurry back towards
Albany, only anxious, as it seemed, to quit the country unmolested.
Hesitating constantly between the French and English alliance, they
had now every reason to prefer the former; and, had it not been for
Johnson's influence with the Mohawks, the Iroquois would, for the
time at any rate, have abandoned the English cause in disgust and
contempt.[9]

[Footnote 9: Sir William Johnson, writing to the Lords of Trade on
Sept. 10, 1756, says: 'Oswego in our hands, fortified and secured by
us, and our having a navigation on Lake Ontario, was not only a curb
to the power of the French that way, but esteemed by the Six Nations,
whenever they joined our arms, as a secure cover to them and their
habitations against the resentment of the French.' Later in the same
letter he speaks of the fort as 'the barrier of the Six Nations,' and
says that, in consequence of its capture, 'the spirit they had
recently shown in our favour was sunk and overawed by the success of
the French' (O'Callaghan's _Documentary History of New York_, vol.
ii, pp. 733, 734).]

{259} Moreover, the achievement differed in kind from the ordinary
Canadian raid. Troops had been moved, artillery brought up, transport
organized in rapid, skilful fashion, which betokened leadership of no
ordinary kind; the new General from France had at once made himself
felt, and friend and foe alike recognized that Canada was being
defended and the English colonies attacked by a soldier of high order
in the Marquis de Montcalm.

[Sidenote: _Montcalm._]

Few characters in colonial history are so interesting and attractive
as that of Montcalm. Interest attaches to him not only on account of
his own personality, but also because he illustrates the better side
of the soldier-aristocrats of France. Born in 1712, near Nîmes in the
south of France, he came out in middle life to North America, having
seen hard fighting in various parts of the continent, and owing the
Canadian command to his own merits, not to Court influence. He was
the head of his family, owner of the ancestral estate, straitened in
means, and with ten children to provide for; loving his home, loving
his mother, his wife and children, following arms as his profession
for honour and for a livelihood. He was well educated, and in every
sense a gentleman of France, with a quick, impetuous Southern spirit,
but the heart of an affectionate and chivalrous man. His coming
lifted the war on the Canadian side to a higher plane; he used the
savage tools which he found to hand, but he did not love them,[10]
nor did he love the corruption and chicanery which made the
Government of New France a squalid {260} reproduction of the
Government at home. A great man--Champlain--brought New France to
birth; her end was ennobled by the death of Montcalm. Of his military
talent it would be difficult even for an expert to judge, for it must
always be a matter of doubt how far Montcalm, like Wolfe, may have
been 'felix opportunitate mortis.' Neither the one nor the other was
tried in the command of big battalions on European battlefields; but
in quick aggressive movement, such as resulted in the capture of
Oswego, as well as in the patient defensive tactics which he
displayed at Quebec, Montcalm proved himself to be a skilful
commander.

[Footnote 10: This is contrary to what Wolfe wrote, when before
Louisbourg, to Amherst. 'Montcalm has changed the very nature of war,
and has forced us, in some measure, to a deterring and dreadful
vengeance' (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, pp. 440, 441). But none the
less it was the case that, with Montcalm's arrival, war on the French
side became what it never had been before, something more than a
series of semi-savage raids.]

[Sidenote: _Levis, Bourlamaque, and Bougainville._]

He was ably supported by his second in command, De Levis, who lived
to be a duke and a marshal of France, and a third good officer,
Bourlamaque, came out at the same time. Montcalm's own aide de camp
was De Bougainville, more famed in after years on sea than land. His
name stands first in the list of French navigators; he was the rival
and contemporary of Captain Cook. Good leaders France sent out to
America in the spring of 1756, but she sent few troops with them. The
campaign on the continent absorbed her strength, and New France was
lost in consequence.

[Sidenote: _The English leaders. Webb, Abercromby, and Loudoun._]

[Sidenote: _Recall of Shirley._]

Montcalm and his officers arrived in May; in June and July three
English commanders appeared on the scene--Colonel Daniel Webb,
General Abercromby, and Lord Loudoun. Of these three, Webb in a
subordinate command and Loudoun as Commander-in-Chief were failures.
Abercromby, possibly the best of the three, was not a success; he was
in Wolfe's opinion 'a heavy man.'[11] The trio were a type of the
soldiers that the English Government chose, while England, to quote
the Prussian King Frederick's words, was in labour, and before she
brought forth a man. While sending out inadequate officers from home,
the Government recalled William Shirley, who, whatever his faults may
have been, embodied more than any one man in America {261}
enterprising and heart-whole resistance to the national foe. He left
on the arrival of Loudoun, having to the last used all his influence
to prepare manfully for the coming campaign. Thus the summer of 1756
found the two sides ill matched in point of commanders; if the
chances of war were at all even, the forces led by Montcalm could not
fail to outwit and surprise the troops which were guided by the
slow-moving Scotch laird, the Earl of Loudoun.[12]

[Footnote 11: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 451.]

[Footnote 12: John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun, had served in the
Highland campaign of 1745. In America he appears to have shown
himself wanting in quickness, in tact, and in strategical ability.
Franklin accused him of indecision. The colonial saying about him was
that he was like the sign of St. George over an inn, always on
horseback but never moving on. There is a pleasant notice of him in
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, when Boswell and Johnson dined at his
house on the tour to the Hebrides.]

[Sidenote: _Robert Rogers._]

Yet the English had some useful men among them, though not in the
first rank. William Johnson has already been noticed. John Winslow,
who had adequately commanded the New England contingent in Acadia,
was now in charge of the provincial troops at Fort William Henry,
near Johnson's old camping-ground at the southern end of Lake George.
In the same force was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire, whose name is
still borne by a cliff on Lake George, known as 'Rogers' Rock.'
Rogers raised and commanded companies of New England scouts, known as
the Rangers, which were multiplied as the war went on, and as the
value of the men and their leader became more apparent. His journal
is a model of clear, concise military writing, recounting in
straightforward fashion feats of extraordinary daring and hardihood.
As Johnson in his mastery over the Indians rivalled and perhaps
excelled the French, so no Canadian partizan understood border
warfare better than Robert Rogers. We read that on one occasion, when
he had been reported as killed and the report proved false, the
Indians in the French interest, who had been committing atrocities,
repented from fear when they learnt that Rogers was still alive, and
blamed {262} the French for encouraging them, as they said, to do the
actions for which vengeance awaited them. It was something to have on
the English side men who, in the Canadian style of fighting, were as
good as or better than the Canadians themselves; and, in the absence
of competent generals, fighting backwoodsmen, like Robert Rogers, at
least served to remind Canada that the English colonies had a nasty
sting.

[Sidenote: _End of the campaign of 1756._]

The programme for 1756--Shirley's programme--had included an advance
to and from Oswego, and an advance from Fort William Henry against
Ticonderoga. When Loudoun arrived, he countermanded the first
movement, though he subsequently sent Webb too late up the Mohawk
river in order to reinforce Oswego. Montcalm's swift action then
disconcerted all English plans, Oswego was lost, the forward move
down Lake George was countermanded, and the summer ended with nothing
for the English to record but one crushing defeat.

[Sidenote: _Fruitless French attack on Fort William Henry._]

In November, the main body of the troops on either side went back
into winter quarters, and Fort William Henry was left in charge of a
small garrison of between 400 and 500 men, belonging to the 44th
Regiment and the Rangers, commanded by Major Eyre. In the early
spring of 1757, an attempt was made to surprise them by an expedition
sent up from Montreal under the command of Rigaud de Vaudreuil,
brother of the Governor of Canada. The attacking force started
towards the end of February, and on March 19 appeared before the
fort. The next day they offered terms of surrender, which were
refused; and, after vainly attempting to reduce the fort till the
twenty-fourth, they retreated down Lake George, having burnt some
boats and outbuildings, but otherwise inflicted little loss.

[Sidenote: _Loudoun's abortive expedition against Louisbourg._]

The spring came on, and the early summer, and Loudoun matured a plan,
which he had formed for attacking Louisbourg in force, as a
preliminary to a further attack on Quebec. {263} His plan was
accepted in London, and the Government determined to send out a
strong fleet to co-operate with him, the rendezvous to be the harbour
of Halifax. Like previous schemes of the same kind, the enterprise
failed through untoward delays. The fleet under Admiral Holborne,
consisting of fifteen ships of the line, and conveying transports
with from 5,000 to 6,000 men on board, did not sail till May 5, and
did not reach Halifax till early in July. Loudoun, meanwhile, had
drawn off the bulk of his troops, including Rogers and his Rangers,
from the New York frontier; and, after vainly waiting at New York for
news of the English Admiral, set sail for Halifax on June 20,
reaching his destination on the last day of that month.

The combined forces were nearly 12,000 strong, but the time for
attack had gone by. Hearing of the English preparations, the French
Government had sent a fleet at least as strong as Holborne's across
the Atlantic, under Admiral La Motte; and the English commanders
learnt that Louisbourg was being defended by ships as numerous as
their own, and by a garrison in which the troops of the line alone
were said to number 6,000 men. The enterprise was accordingly
abandoned. In the middle of August Loudoun re-embarked the majority
of his troops for New York. Holborne twice reconnoitred Louisbourg in
the hope of bringing on a sea-fight. The second time, in the middle
of September, a storm shattered his vessels, and the whole expedition
utterly collapsed.[13] 'It is time,' wrote Horace Walpole[14] in
despondent terms, 'for England to slip her own cables and float away
into some unknown ocean.' On {264} his way back to New York, Loudoun
was met with bad news--that Fort William Henry had fallen.

[Footnote 13: While Loudoun's troops were waiting at Halifax, he
employed them in raising vegetables. In consequence, Lord Charles
Hay, who was third in command, charged him with expending the
nation's wealth 'in making sham fights and planting cabbages.' Lord
Charles Hay was sent back to England, and a court-martial was held
upon him, but the incident served to bring ridicule on the
expedition.]

[Footnote 14: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 103 (Letter
of Sept. 3, 1757, written before the final break-up of the fleet).]

[Sidenote: _Montcalm prepares to attack Fort William Henry._]

When he started for Louisbourg, he left Webb in command of the small
forces which remained to cover the New York frontier. He seems to
have thought that the troops were sufficient not only to hold the
French in check, but also to threaten Ticonderoga. Montcalm, on the
other hand, saw his opportunity and determined, while he had superior
numbers, to strike a blow which should rival his former achievement
at Oswego. Throughout July the French troops concentrated at
Ticonderoga, provisions were brought up, and a road was made past the
rapids, by which Lake George discharges into Lake Champlain. A number
of Indians were gathered from all quarters to join in the expedition,
mission Indians taught to kill the heretic English, and savages from
the wild and barbarous west. Scouting parties went forth, some along
Lake George, others up the parallel southern arm of Lake Champlain;
and, with Robert Rogers far away in Nova Scotia, they did much
damage, on one occasion killing or taking prisoners two out of three
hundred New Englanders. At the end of the month the main advance
began.

[Sidenote: _The fort and its surroundings._]

Fort William Henry was about thirty miles distant from the French
lines. It was a strong square fort, built near the southern edge of
Lake George, a little to the west of the spot where Sir William
Johnson two years before had formed his camp. The road from the fort
to Fort Edward ran for a short distance due east, skirting the shore
of the lake, and then turned inland to the south and south-east. On
rising ground to the east of the road, beyond the point where it took
the southward turn, the English had an entrenched camp, separated
from the fort by swampy ground. After the attack on the fort in the
preceding spring, Major Eyre and his troops had been replaced by
others under the command of Colonel Monro, the main body consisting
of 600 {265} men of the 35th, now the Sussex Regiment. When news came
that the French were on the point of advancing, Webb sent up 1,000
colonial troops from Fort Edward; and, when the attack began, Monro
had with him about 2,400 men, while Webb, who had only 1,600 men left
at Fort Edward, sent urgent messages to New York for reinforcements.

[Sidenote: _The French advance._]

On July 30, Levis moved forward with the French vanguard, marching
along the western shore of Lake George; the main body of troops under
Montcalm followed in boats on August 1, the whole force amounting to
between 7,000 and 8,000 men. Two detachments, one commanded by La
Corne, the other by Levis, marched round the fort, and took up
positions on its southern side, to cut off communication with Webb;
La Corne occupied the road to Fort Edward, while Levis encamped a
little further to the west. Montcalm landed his big guns at a little
inlet, still called Artillery Cove, about half a mile in a direct
line from the fort, and, after a summons to surrender on August 3,
began his trenches on the night of the fourth.

[Sidenote: _The fort surrenders._]

A far better defence was made than at Oswego. For four days the
garrison held out bravely, hoping for relief from the south. Their
guns were heard at Fort Edward; the urgency of their case was known;
but Webb, though some 2,000 militia had reached him, felt himself too
weak to make any advance. At length the situation became hopeless,
and on August 9 Monro surrendered. The terms of capitulation were
that the garrison should be escorted to Fort Edward, on condition
that they would not serve again for eighteen months, and that all
French prisoners taken in the war should be restored. The fort with
all that it contained was handed over to the French. The surrender
included the entrenched camp as well as the fort: the fort was
evacuated; and the whole garrison, with the exception of a few sick
and wounded, were gathered into the camp, retaining their arms, but
without ammunition.

{266} [Sidenote: _The massacre of Fort William Henry._]

Before night fell, the French Indians plundered the fort, and
butchered some of the sick. Early on the following morning, the
English troops began their march to Fort Edward; the Indians broke in
among them, seizing and stripping men, women, and children; and, at a
signal given by the Christian Abenakis from the Penobscot--Indians
who had known the teaching and training of men like Le Loutre--a
wholesale massacre began. Montcalm and his officers, however, used
every effort to protect the English, with the result that not more
than fifty were murdered, and 600 carried off, 400 of whom were
promptly recovered; and the broken band of fugitives in due course
found their way to Fort Edward.

[Sidenote: _Blame attaching to the French._]

This was the episode well known in colonial annals as the massacre of
Fort William Henry, told of in history and in romance.[15] The
horrors have no doubt been exaggerated, if, as appears to have been
the case, the death-roll did not exceed the number given above. Still
it was a horrible incident, and brought righteous discredit on the
French cause. Though Montcalm, when the mischief had begun, acted
with promptitude and vigour, it was well within his power to have
prevented the possibility of any such outrage. His Indians numbered
but 1,800, and he had 3,000 regular troops from France to hold them
in check. The Canadian militia, too, numbered 2,500 men; but probably
the seed of the evil lay in the disinclination of the colonial French
and their officers to interfere with their Indian allies. It had
become the tradition in Canada to live down to the Indians in matters
of war, to attach them and to hold them by humouring their savage
instincts; and it may well be believed that, if Canadian soldiers or
Canadian officers were concerned in seeing the terms of capitulation
carried out, they would prefer injuring the English to offending the
Indians. Three years later, in the advance on Montreal, we read of
{267} Sir William Johnson, under Amherst's orders, strongly
repressing the Iroquois' lust for French blood, and Amherst reporting
that not a peasant woman or child had been hurt, nor a house burnt,
since he entered the enemy's country. Better control of the savages
in their employ gave the English fewer friends among them, but in the
end it was one, and not the least, of the causes of their gaining the
supremacy in North America.

[Footnote 15: e.g. in Fennimore Cooper's _Last of the Mohicans_.]

[Sidenote: _Webb's conduct._]

It was disputed at the time, and is still matter of dispute, whether
Webb from Fort Edward might have saved the fort by the lake. The view
generally taken of his conduct was probably coloured by the memory of
his frightened retreat down the Mohawk river in the preceding year.
He could muster but 4,000 men all told; and, had he advanced and met
with disaster, no force would have been left to keep Montcalm from
marching on Albany, and possibly on New York itself. He risked
nothing, and possibly he was wise; but the catastrophe which happened
within his reach was in part, rightly or wrongly, debited to his
account, and the feeling deepened in England and in America that on
the English side leaders of men were sadly wanting.

[Sidenote: _The French raid the German Flats._]

One more success was scored by the French before the winter came on.
In October, Vaudreuil sent out from Montreal a raiding party of the
old type, consisting of about 300 Canadians and Indians under an
officer named Belêtre. They went up the St. Lawrence into Lake
Ontario, landed on its southern shore, at some distance east of the
ruins of Oswego, crossed to the portage between the Mohawk and Wood
Creek, where the forts were no longer standing, and moved down the
Mohawk to raid the outlying settlements. Between the head waters of
the Mohawk and Schenectady, on the northern side of the river, was
the district known as the German Flats, where German colonists had
been planted about the year 1720. They came from the Palatinate, and
their group of houses bore the name of the settlement or village
{268} of the Palatines. In the second week of November, Belêtre's
party broke in among them, burnt houses and barns, killed cattle,
horses, and some of the inhabitants, carried off over a hundred
prisoners, and retired in safety in face of a weak detachment from a
little English fort on the other side of the river, and of a stronger
body of troops whom Lord Howe brought up from Schenectady too late to
retrieve the disaster.

[Sidenote: _The French triumphant in North America._]

[Sidenote: _William Pitt._]

This was the end of the campaign, the high-water mark of French
successes in North America. At the end of 1757, the English had been
beaten at all points. They had failed to attack Louisbourg, they had
been driven from Lake George, the country of the Five Nation Indians
was nearly cut off, all hold on the rivers and the lakes was gone.
The outlook was dark in the extreme: it is always darkest before
dawn, and as a matter of fact dawn had already begun; for William
Pitt, who had been dismissed from office in April, was recalled by
the unanimous voice of the people of England before the end of June,
and, leaving to the incompetent Duke of Newcastle the name of Prime
Minister, controlled, as Secretary of State and Leader of the House
of Commons, the soldiers, the sailors, the subsidies and the foreign
policy of his country.[16]

[Footnote 16: Lord Chesterfield in a letter to his son dated May 18,
1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 137, Letter 298), wrote as follows of the
Newcastle-Pitt combination: 'The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt jog
on like man and wife, that is, seldom agreeing, often quarrelling,
but by mutual interest upon the whole not parting.']

[Sidenote: _Want of a leader on the English side._]

The wars of England have usually run the same course. They have begun
with blunders and reverses, but ended in success. The English do not
love war, and are rarely prepared for it. They begin fighting in
half-hearted fashion, before the nation makes up its mind that the
cause is worth a real effort and serious expenditure of money and
life. There is groping about for a leader, for some one who will say
distinctly what is to be done, and will prove as good as {269} his
word. If such a man is found, the people will follow; they forgive a
man who makes mistakes provided, as the saying is, that he makes
something. Then the resources of the country are concentrated and
utilized, and under articulate and sympathetic leadership the cause
of the nation prospers. If England in the year 1757 needed some one
controlling will, much more was the want felt in her North American
colonies. The demoralization caused by feeble ministries in England
had its baleful effect in America; nerveless government at home
strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of the colonies. Nothing but
common danger gave them any common life; and, though Pitt's advent to
power partially corrected the evil, Pitt was in England not in
America. To the end the uniting force came from without rather than
from within: the colonies followed the lead of Pitt and his generals,
but to the mother country not to the colonies was due the conquest of
Canada.

[Sidenote: _Distress in Canada._]

That Canada must be conquered, when England made her effort, was
inevitable. The French appeared triumphant; they had moved forward;
they had struck heavy blows; but behind the fighting line, even on
the surface, they were in straits. The garrison of Fort William Henry
had not been taken prisoners to Canada, because Canada could hardly
feed them;[17] and the winter of 1757, which followed the brilliant
campaign, was a winter of distress. Bread was wanting; horses were
eaten for meat; the troops were mutinous and only kept in order by
Levis' firmness and tact; the finances were in a ruinous condition;
there were winter gaieties and winter gambling, but Canada before its
conquest was in much the same condition as the mother country on the
brink of the Revolution.

[Footnote 17: Similarly, after the fall of Oswego, Horace Walpole
wrote, 'The massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of the
two regiments that were made prisoners there are actually arrived at
Plymouth, the provisions at Quebec being too scanty to admit
additional numbers.' _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, pp. 44,
45 (Letter of Nov. 13, 1756).]

{270} [Sidenote: _French plan of campaign for 1758._]

Both sides laid their plans for the coming year. The French scheme
included a movement by Levis from Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario,
across to the site of Oswego, and thence, after securing the alliance
or the allegiance of the Iroquois, down the Mohawk valley, so as to
co-operate with the main army under Montcalm advancing from
Ticonderoga. The success of this project of Vaudreuil's, which was
never carried into effect, presupposed that the bulk of the English
troops would again be drawn off to attack Louisbourg, for it was
known or suspected in Canada that another attempt on Louisbourg was
in contemplation.

[Sidenote: _Pitt's plan._]

Pitt's plan of campaign was not new or original. The experience of
long years had painfully taught what were the points where Canada
must be attacked, if any permanent success was to be achieved. First
and foremost was Louisbourg. With Louisbourg in English hands, the
St. Lawrence could be blocked and Canada starved out. But the English
minister had no intention of denuding the inland frontier of the
British colonies, in order to take the French fortress in Cape
Breton. On the contrary, he laid his plans also for an advance on
Ticonderoga, and for the recovery of Fort Duquesne. He conceived no
new scheme, but into old schemes he put new life. The novelties which
he introduced were abundance of English troops, prompt instead of
dilatory movement, and above all capable leaders--inspired with his
own spirit, and in their turn inspiring the men whom they led. There
was to be an end of the 'delays, misfortunes, disappointments and
disgraces,'[18] which had so long been associated in the English mind
with war in America.

[Footnote 18: _Annual Register_ for 1758, p. 70.]

[Sidenote: _Strong English forces sent to America._]

On December 30, 1757, he addressed a circular letter to the Governors
of the North American colonies, asking for levies of 20,000 men. On
February 19, 1758, a strong fleet set sail for Halifax, to be
directed against Louisbourg, while other English squadrons blocked
the French ports {271} in Europe, and kept the enemy's ships from
crossing the Atlantic. It was a rare thing for an English expedition
for America to start betimes, instead of waiting for orders and
counter orders, until the season for active work was far spent. It
was unheard of, too, for so many English troops to be sent into the
New World. Twelve thousand soldiers, nearly all regulars, took part
in the Louisbourg expedition. Abercromby on Lake George commanded,
when summer came on, 15,000 men, of whom fully 6,000 were regulars.
Six thousand men took part in the march against Fort Duquesne, of
whom 1,600 were Imperial troops. Thus in the year 1758 England had
more than 20,000 regular soldiers employed in North America, enough
force, as Lord Chesterfield thought, when coupled with the colonial
troops, 'to eat up the French alive in Canada, Quebec, and
Louisbourg, if we have but skill and spirit enough to exert it
properly.'[19]

[Footnote 19: Lord Chesterfield to his son, Feb. 8, 1758 (1775 ed.,
vol. iv, p. 124; Letter 293).]

[Sidenote: _The English commanders._]

The skill and the spirit were forthcoming also, though not at once in
full measure, and not at all points. Loudoun was recalled. Abercromby
was left to take his place, but with him was placed as brigadier a
young officer of rare promise, Lord Howe. Jeffrey Amherst was picked
out to command the troops against Louisbourg, and of his three
brigadiers one was Lawrence, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and another
was Wolfe. In the further west, the command of the expedition against
Fort Duquesne was given to a resolute Scotch soldier, Forbes.
Gradually in his choice of officers Pitt sifted the chaff from the
grain, young men were brought to the front, merit was preferred to
seniority. Amherst was forty-one years of age, Wolfe was thirty-one,
Howe was thirty-three. Lord Chesterfield wrote of them in February,
1758, 'Abercromby is to be the sedentary and not the acting
commander. Amherst, Lord Howe, and Wolfe are to be the acting and I
hope the active officers. I wish they may agree.'[20]

[Footnote 20: Ibid.]

{272} [Sidenote: _The fleet sails for Louisbourg. Admiral Boscawen._]

The fleet which sailed for North America, carrying the hopes and the
fortunes of England, was commanded by Admiral Boscawen. He had seen
service in the East and West, off Cartagena and Pondicherry; and it
was he who in the year 1755, before France and England were at war,
had, as has already been told, attacked and taken the two French
ships, the _Alcide_ and the _Lys_, off the North American coast.[21]
He had Churchill blood in his veins, for Arabella Churchill was his
grandmother; and he was known as 'Old Dreadnought,' after a ship of
that name which he had commanded. He was a determined, hard-fighting
sailor, with little respect for neutrality in time or place if there
was a chance of striking a blow for England.

[Footnote 21: See above, p. 234.]

[Sidenote: _Amherst._]

His colleague, General Amherst, like Wolfe, was born in Kent. Joining
the Guards in 1731, he made his name on the Continent. He was present
at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and served on the Duke of Cumberland's
staff. Unlike most of the commanders of the time, he lived to be an
old man, and was Commander-in-Chief of the English army before he
died; but his good work was all done in America in the years 1758-60,
while he was still in early middle age, and when he conquered Canada.
He was a good soldier of the cautious type, not wanting either in
vigour or determination, but making sure of each point before he
moved further. What Carlyle says of the Parliamentary general, Lord
Essex, might be said of Amherst--he was a 'somewhat elephantine' man.

[Sidenote: _The first and second siege of Louisbourg compared._]

The ships took time to go over the sea, and did not reach Halifax
until well into May. On the second of June they sailed into Gabarus
Bay and came in sight of Louisbourg. The second siege and capture of
Louisbourg was very similar to the first, except that in 1758 much
larger forces were engaged on either side, and more military skill
was shown than in 1745. The earlier siege was, on the English side,
{273} as far as the land forces were concerned, purely a colonial
venture. On the later occasion very few colonial troops were
employed. The French had in garrison 3,000 regulars, and the
residents of the town who bore arms made up nearly another thousand,
the besiegers on land outnumbering the besieged in the proportion of
three to one. In harbour there were twelve French ships of war, with
a complement of 3,000 men--no match for Boscawen's overpowering
fleet. The fortifications of Louisbourg were strong, but not so
strong as they were reputed. It was stated that prior to 1755 nothing
had been done to repair the damage done in the first siege.[22] The
French had a good commander, the Chevalier de Drucour; and his wife,
according to the accounts of the time, was as brave as himself. In
1758 the English landed in the same place as in 1745; the siege took
almost exactly the same number of days; the Grand Battery on the
north shore of the harbour was, as before, evacuated by the French;
once more the English mounted guns on Lighthouse Point, from which
the French had retired, and battered to pieces the Island Battery,
which guarded the mouth of the harbour. Again, as in 1745, a small
force of Canadians and Indians tried to make a diversion from inland,
and again the attempt was quite ineffectual. The seas and the skies,
however, in spite of the time of year, were far less kind to the
besiegers on the later than on the earlier occasion.

[Footnote 22: In the _Annual Register_ for 1758, pp. 179-81, is given
a translation of a letter from Drucour, the French Governor of
Louisbourg, after he had been taken prisoner to England. It is dated
Andover, Oct. 1, 1758. Referring to the defences of Louisbourg, he
speaks of 'a fortification (if it could deserve the name) crumbling
down in every flank, face, and courtine, except the right flank of
the King's bastion, which was remounted the first year after my
arrival.']

[Sidenote: _Landing effected by Wolfe._]

The real difficulty was the initial difficulty, that of landing on an
awkward coast in bad weather, with an enemy lining the shore. The
French had made full preparations, and had {274} their men, guns, and
batteries ready along the fringe of Gabarus Bay; while, for nearly a
week, surf and fog made any attempt at landing impracticable. At
length, at daybreak on June 8, three strong parties under the three
brigadiers put out in boats from the transports, and rowed for the
shore at three separate points. The main effort was intended to be
made on the extreme left, at Freshwater Cove, by the party commanded
by Wolfe. As the boats neared the land, the French opened a heavy
fire, and Wolfe signalled a retreat; but, by happy accident or by
design, one or more of the boats misinterpreted the sign, and made
good their landing a little to the right of the cove, where the cliff
gave some slight shelter from the enemy's fire. The rest then
followed in support, and, with no slight loss of men and boats, the
English carried the French position, and drove their opponents back
within range of the Louisbourg guns.

[Sidenote: _The siege pressed._]

The disembarkation now went on under difficulties. On June 18 the
siege guns were landed, and gradually the English formed their
encampment, drew their lines, and opened their trenches, beleaguering
the fortress on the western side, where the peninsula on which the
town of Louisbourg stood joined the mainland. The lines started from
the sea at Flat Point cove, and extended in a semicircle for about
two miles inland. Meanwhile, on the twelfth of June, Wolfe had
marched round the harbour, and subsequently mounted his guns at
Lighthouse Point on the opposite side. By the twenty-fifth he had
silenced the Island Battery, and thus commanded the mouth of the
harbour, where the French in consequence sunk several of their ships
to bar any attack by Boscawen.

The town was now fully invested by land and sea; such French ships as
still remained were cooped up in the harbour, and the fall of
Louisbourg was merely a question of time. But the operations took
time. The besiegers had the same difficulty as had been experienced
in 1745, in advancing {275} across a belt of swamp. Day and night
passed in incessant work, under fire of the enemy's guns, and
interrupted by sorties of the garrison; but slowly and surely the
trenches were drawn nearer to the town. On the twenty-first of July
three out of the five remaining French ships took fire from a shell
and were destroyed, and on the twenty-fifth the two last were
successfully attacked by a detachment of English sailors, who rowed
into the harbour at night time, and among whom was James Cook, not
yet known to fame. One ship was grounded and burnt, the other was
towed off by its captors.

[Sidenote: _The town surrenders._]

[Sidenote: _Louisbourg dismantled._]

This bold feat brought matters to a climax. The land defences were in
ruins, the garrison was worn out, there was nothing to stop a general
assault by land and sea. On the twenty-sixth the French Governor
asked for terms. Unconditional surrender was demanded and refused;
but before the message of refusal reached the English camp, it was
withdrawn, at the instance, it was said, of the Intendant or
Commissary-General, who represented the civilian element in the town.
The articles of capitulation were signed, between 5,000 and 6,000
French soldiers and sailors became prisoners of war, and on July 27
the English forces entered Louisbourg. Two years later, in 1760, all
the fortifications were demolished, and the town was practically
blotted out. No chance was left of again handing back to France a
fortress which had so long threatened English interests in America.
Halifax was henceforth to be unrivalled on the coast; and at the
present day the once famous harbour of Louisbourg is in the keeping
of Cape Breton fishermen.

[Sidenote: _Wolfe's services at Louisbourg._]

[Sidenote: _Time lost by the English._]

The English Parliament voted thanks to Amherst and Boscawen; but to
Wolfe, who as a subordinate was not mentioned, the thanks of the
nation were mainly due. He 'shone extremely at Louisbourg,'[23] wrote
Horace Walpole, and Walpole owns that he did not love him. Had he
been {276} in supreme command, the siege would probably have ended
earlier, and greater results would have been achieved. His own view,
at any rate, as expressed in a private letter written after his
return to England, was that both during the siege and after it
valuable time was lost.[24] It is certain that when the expedition
was sent out, more was hoped from it than the capture of Louisbourg
alone. On May 18, 1758, Lord Chesterfield wrote: 'By this time I
believe the French are entertained in America with the loss of Cape
Breton, and, in consequence of that, Quebec; for we have a force
there equal to both those undertakings, and officers there now that
will execute what Lord L---- (Loudoun) never would so much as
attempt.'[25] The French on their side, as we learn from a subsequent
letter from Drucour, were aware of the importance of prolonging the
siege, in order to prevent Abercromby being reinforced, or an attack
being made on Quebec;[26] and all honour is due to the memory of the
brave {277} French commander for the determined stand which he made.
Before the siege ended, Abercromby had been beaten back from
Ticonderoga, and breathing time had been given to the defenders of
Canada.

[Footnote 23: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 207 (Letter
of Feb. 9, 1759).]

[Footnote 24: 'We lost time at the siege, still more after the siege,
and blundered from the beginning to the end of the campaign' (from a
letter written Dec. 1, 1758; Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 465).
Similarly, Wolfe wrote from the camp before Louisbourg, on July 27,
1758, the day after the capitulation: 'If this force had been
properly managed, there was an end of the French colony in North
America in one campaign' (Wright, p. 449).]

[Footnote 25: Lord Chesterfield to his son, May 18, 1758 (1775 ed.,
vol. iv, p. 136; Letter 298).]

[Footnote 26: See the letter already quoted above, p. 273, note.
Drucour is explaining why he would not allow the French ships to
leave Louisbourg harbour, 'It was our business to defer the
determination of our fate as long as possible. My accounts from
Canada assured me that M. de Montcalm was marching to the enemy and
would come up with them between July 15 and 20. I said then "if the
ships leave the harbour on June 10 (as they desire), the English
admiral will enter it immediately after," and we should have been
lost before the end of the month, which would have put it in the
power of the generals of the besiegers to have employed the months of
July and August in sending succours to the troops marching against
Canada, and to have entered the river St. Lawrence at the proper
season.' In a 'Scheme for taking Louisbourg,' which was submitted to
Pitt by Brigadier Waldo (who had been on Pepperell's expedition) on
Nov. 7, 1757, fourteen days were given to Louisbourg to hold out when
once duly invested, and an attack on Quebec was contemplated as the
immediate result of its fall (Brymer's _Report on Canadian Archives_,
1886, pp. 151-3).]

[Sidenote: _Wolfe returns to England._]

Yet it was but the end of July when Louisbourg fell, and, if Wolfe
had had his way, the ships would have gone on to Quebec. Even Amherst
might have gone on but for the bad news from Abercromby, which
confirmed his habitual caution, and retarded instead of quickening
his movements. One officer, Lord Rollo, was sent to reduce the Île
St. Jean; another, Monckton, cleared the valley of the St. John river
on the mainland. Wolfe was dispatched to Gaspé Bay and the mouth of
the St. Lawrence, to harry the settlers and the fishermen; and when
he had accomplished his task, which was little to his taste, he
sailed for home angry and disappointed that more had not been done,
and that his advice had not been taken. Amherst, in the meantime, had
gone with six regiments to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George.

[Sidenote: _The Maritime Provinces finally secured to England._]

The capture of Louisbourg secured to England all that should have
been hers when the Treaty of Utrecht was being negotiated. The
English were now in full occupation of the Maritime Provinces of
Canada. More than half of the comparatively small French population
of Cape Breton was, at the people's own wish, shipped to France; and
of the residents in the Île St. Jean, mainly Acadian refugees, a
large proportion was similarly transported, while others found their
way to Canada. Cape Breton was attached to Nova Scotia, to be
subsequently separated from that province and again rejoined. The Île
St. Jean was placed under the same Government, and before the century
ended, in the year 1799, its name was changed to Prince Edward Island
in honour of the Duke of Kent, the father of Her late Majesty Queen
Victoria.

[Sidenote: _Abercromby's advance._]

By Loudoun's recall, Abercromby was left in chief command of the
British forces in North America. He had with him, {278} as one of his
brigadiers, Lord Howe, who commanded the 55th Regiment. In May, 1758,
he was at Albany preparing for the summer's work. In June he moved up
to the end of Lake George, where his force, amounting to 15,000 men,
gathered to drive the French back on Canada. The colonies had
answered well to Pitt's appeal, and contributed 9,000 men to the
total. On July 5 the army embarked in boats; on the sixth they landed
without opposition at the northern end of the lake, on the western
side of the water, and began their march on Ticonderoga through the
forest, having on their right the semicircular stream which connects
Lake George and Lake Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Lord Howe killed._]

The right centre column was led by Lord Howe, and, as the soldiers
groped their way through the dense thickets, they stumbled across a
party of French, who had been sent out to reconnoitre, had also lost
their way, and found their retreat cut off. A confused skirmish
followed, with more numerical loss to the French than to the English;
but Howe was shot dead, and his life by common consent meant the life
of the expedition. All night the army remained under arms in the
forest, and on the morning of the seventh marched back to the
landing-place.

[Sidenote: _The approach to the French position at Ticonderoga._]

It was a matter of very few miles to the French position. The river,
which carries the waters of Lake George into Lake Champlain, and
enters the latter lake at Ticonderoga, has a course of about eight
miles; but they are eight miles of a semicircle, and the distance in
a straight line from Lake George to Ticonderoga is much shorter. The
English had landed at the head of the river; about two miles lower
down rapids begin, and here was the portage leading from the head to
the bottom of the rapids, and forming the chord of an arc, the arc
being between three and four miles of broken water. The lower bridge
of the portage, where there was a sawmill, was well within two miles
of the French Fort Carillon. At the head of the rapids the French had
held an advanced {279} post, which was withdrawn on the approach of
Abercromby's army, and, when the main force of that army landed to
wander in the forest, a detachment was sent on down the river and
occupied the deserted position. On the seventh, while the main body
again was resting at the landing-place, Bradstreet was sent forward
to the post at the bottom of the rapids, which was also found to be
deserted, and here on the evening of the seventh the main body
encamped, the bridge being repaired, and the encampment being on the
same side of the river as Ticonderoga.

[Sidenote: _Montcalm's dispositions._]

Montcalm, who was joined by Levis on the night of the seventh, had
with him rather under 4,000 men, the majority of whom were regulars.
Outnumbered as he was by three or four to one, his position was
perilous in the extreme, for his retreat could easily be cut off. He
determined, however, to make a stand, and on rising ground on the
inland--the western--side of the little peninsula on which Fort
Carillon or Ticonderoga[27] was built, at a distance of rather over
half a mile from the fort, he formed at the eleventh hour
entrenchments of timber, fringed on the outside by a network of
'felled trees, the branches pointed outwards,'[28] and carefully laid
so as to entangle and annoy the enemy.

[Footnote 27: Ticonderoga, according to Rogers' _Journals_ (p. 22,
note), is an 'Indian name signifying the meeting or confluence of
three waters.']

[Footnote 28: Abercromby's dispatch to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _The English repulse at Ticonderoga._]

[Sidenote: _Retreat of Abercromby._]

Against this position Abercromby ordered an attack on July 8. He had
been told by French prisoners that Montcalm's force was stronger than
it actually was, and that further reinforcements were shortly to
arrive. In consequence he hurried his movements, and without bringing
up any guns, which apparently he had left behind him, he determined,
thinking that the entrenchment had not been completed, to trust
entirely to the bayonet. The result was the inevitable result of a
frontal attack, delivered in the open, against an enemy fighting
under cover and undisturbed by {280} artillery fire. For four hours
charge after charge was made, and at the close of the day the English
had achieved nothing and had lost nearly 2,000 men. The casualties in
the Black Watch alone amounted to 500. Abercromby had still 13,000
men left, but he had no stomach for further fighting. On the
following day he ordered a retreat, and the whole force went back to
the southern end of Lake George.

[Sidenote: _Triumph of Montcalm._]

At Oswego and at Fort William Henry, Montcalm had shown how to
concentrate superior forces at a given point rapidly and effectively,
and how to use them when concentrated to the best possible advantage.
At Ticonderoga, he showed how to make the most of very inferior
numbers, by utilizing every natural and artificial advantage, and
every mistake of the foe. It was a great triumph for him; it produced
joy in Canada, and discouragement in England; but, as Mr. Parkman
points out, it is difficult to see how he could possibly have
succeeded, if Abercromby had taken any other course than the one
which he actually took. Wolfe summed up the matter aright, when, in
the following December, he referred in a private letter to 'the
famous post at Ticonderoga, where Mr. Abercromby by a little
soldiership and a little patience might, I think, have put an end to
the war in America.'[29]

[Footnote 29: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 469.]

[Sidenote: _Tribute to Lord Howe._]

Almost as disastrous as the repulse itself was the death of Lord
Howe, which preceded it. The eldest of three distinguished brothers,
the second of whom was the famous admiral, and the third the not so
successful general in the American War of Independence, he was not
thirty-four years old when he was killed, and had only landed in
America in the previous year. Yet he had lived long enough for all
men to speak well of him, and all to love him. In his dispatch giving
an account of the operations, Abercromby wrote: 'He was very
deservedly universally beloved and respected through {281} the whole
army.'[30] Pitt testified in more stilted phrases that 'he was by the
universal voice of army and people a character of ancient times, a
complete model of military virtue in all its branches.'[31] Wolfe
loved him dearly, and his letters show how highly he valued 'his
abilities, spirit and address.'[32] He writes of him as 'the very
best officer in the King's service,' as 'the noblest Englishman that
has appeared in my time,' as 'truly a great man.' 'This country has
produced nothing like him in my time; his death cannot be enough
lamented.' Similar testimony is given by Robert Rogers, the Ranger,
who was with the force when he fell: 'This noble and brave officer
being universally beloved by both officers and soldiers of the army,
his fall was not only most sincerely lamented, but seemed to produce
an almost universal consternation and langour through the whole.'[33]
But the most striking honour to his name and memory was paid by the
province of Massachusetts. In 1759 the Court of Assembly ordered a
monument to him to be placed in Westminster Abbey, which still
records 'the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and
of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command.'
Burke, in the _Annual Register_ for 1758,[34] gives the clue to the
affection with which the colonists regarded Lord Howe: 'From the
moment he landed in America he had wisely conformed, and made his
regiment conform, to the kind of service which the country required.'
Howe's life, he adds, was 'long enough for his honour, but not for
his country.' In truth, had he lived, and had Wolfe lived, the
history of the English in America might have been widely different.
Two men who in youth had so inspired their time, and so impressed
American colonists with the sense of leadership, might well {282}
have averted the War of Independence, or by military genius have
given it another issue.

[Footnote 30: Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]

[Footnote 31: _Grenville Correspondence_, vol. i, p. 262.]

[Footnote 32: Wright, pp. 426, 448, 450, 465, 469.]

[Footnote 33: Rogers' _Journals_, p. 114, note.]

[Footnote 34 pp. 72, 73.]

[Sidenote: _Bradstreet takes Fort Frontenac._]

From July to October Abercromby remained at one end of Lake George,
and Montcalm, who had received heavy reinforcements, at the other.
Parties of Rangers and Canadians attacked each other on the Wood
Creek line, but the main bodies were inactive. The presence of the
English force had the advantage, however, of holding in their front
so large a number of the enemy that the latter were unable adequately
to protect other positions, and in consequence they lost Fort
Frontenac. That competent officer, Colonel Bradstreet, had already
proposed an expedition against this point, and when he renewed his
proposal after the battle of Ticonderoga, Abercromby gave his
consent, and spared him 3,600 men for the purpose, noting that 'he is
not only very active, but has great knowledge of the country.'[35]

[Footnote 35: Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]

In August he moved up the Mohawk, took his troops past the Carrying
Place from that river, where, on the site of Fort Williams, General
Stanwix was busy building a new fort, reached the ruins of Oswego,
put out across the lake, and on August 25 landed close to Fort
Frontenac. By the twenty-seventh he had the fort at the mercy of his
guns, and the small garrison of a little over a hundred men
surrendered. The prisoners were sent on parole to Montreal, to be
exchanged for a corresponding number of English; the fort was burnt,
and guns, ships, and supplies were carried off or destroyed. It was
an excellent piece of work for the English side; 'a great stroke,' as
Wolfe wrote on hearing of it.[36] Great material damage was caused to
the French by, temporarily at any rate, cutting their communications
with the west, and intercepting supplies which had been intended for
{283} the forts on the Ohio and on the upper lakes. The moral effect
was greater still. The time-honoured French fort on Lake Ontario, the
earliest French post on the lakes, had been with little effort taken
and blotted out, reminding the waverers among the Five Nation Indians
that, in spite of reverses, the English arm was strong and
far-reaching, and the English alliance was for them a valuable asset.

[Footnote 36: Letter of Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p.
457). In another letter (p. 465) he writes: 'Bradstreet's coup was
masterly. He is a very extraordinary man.']

[Sidenote: _Amherst becomes Commander-in-Chief in North America._]

Early in October Amherst came up to Abercromby's camp, and the two
generals decided not to make a further attempt on Ticonderoga until
the following year. 'General Amherst,' wrote Wolfe, 'thought the
entrenchments so improved as to require more ceremony in the second
attack than the season would allow of.'[37] The troops were
accordingly sent into winter quarters, and in November Abercromby
received a letter of recall. Amherst became in his stead
Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America.

[Footnote 37: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 469.]

[Sidenote: _The expedition against Fort Duquesne._]

By the end of October campaigning was over for the year in the east,
and in the centre; but it was not so in the west, where
Brigadier-General Forbes was marching on Fort Duquesne.

[Sidenote: _General Forbes._]

Forbes was an older man than the other English commanders, who
achieved success in the war; and he seems to have been over sixty in
the year 1758.[38] He proved himself to be a man of great fortitude
and resolution, tactful in dealing with colonists or Indians, a
brave, sure, and careful soldier. His task was to give security to
the harried frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and to clear the
French out of the Ohio valley. With this end he had to collect and
equip a force, the large majority of whom were provincials; to get
money and men out of two colonies, which were very jealous alike of
the mother country and of {284} each other; to make choice between
two conflicting routes, and to detach the Ohio Indians as far as
possible from the French cause.

[Footnote 38: For his age see Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol.
iv, p. 192, note. He has been generally put down as a younger man.]

[Sidenote: _Reasons why the expedition made slow progress._]

A long time was taken over the preliminaries, and over the expedition
itself, the object of which was not attained until the end of
November; but the delays were not only the consequence of want of
transport, and of Forbes' own ill health, they were also the result
of design. The longer the English kept their enemies waiting to be
attacked, the fewer those enemies were likely to be; for the Indians,
and the militia of New France, did not love to keep the field for any
long time together. Moreover, as Forbes wrote to Pitt,[39] October
and November were the best hunting months for the Indians, which they
were therefore not willing to devote to war; while, on the other
hand, they were months when the leaves fell and left the backwoods
easier to reconnoitre and less easy for ambuscade.

[Footnote 39: Letter of Forbes to Pitt, Oct. 20, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _Preparation for advance._]

[Sidenote: _A new route taken._]

Forbes came to Philadelphia in April; and through the early summer
months his force gradually assembled, and moved to the front. When
the numbers were complete, they amounted to over 6,000 men, in the
main southern colonists, but including a strong regiment of
Highlanders. The second in command was a good man for the work,
Bouquet, one of the Swiss officers of the Royal Americans. The
advanced base was formed at Raestown, now Bedford, in Pennsylvania,
distant about ninety miles from Fort Duquesne. It was some thirty
miles north-east of Fort Cumberland, from which Braddock had started
on his disastrous march; and a keen controversy arose as to whether
the old route should be followed, or a new road taken. Opening a road
to the Ohio meant, when the fighting was over, giving to the State,
within or near whose boundaries the road ran, control of the trade.
Virginia accordingly pressed for the old and more southerly route,
Pennsylvania for the northern line. In spite {285} of Washington's
arguments, the latter was chosen; it was shorter and more direct, and
on the whole presented fewer natural difficulties than the other. The
first forty miles led due west over the main Alleghany range and the
Laurel hills, to a place called Loyalhannon; and by the end of August
Bouquet had a road cut to this place, a dépôt established, and
preparations made for carrying on the track through fifty miles of
less difficult country to Fort Duquesne.

[Sidenote: _An advance attack on Fort Duquesne repulsed with loss._]

[Sidenote: _The Ohio Indians desert the French._]

Every care was being taken by the commanders; but notwithstanding,
before the end came, there was in a smaller measure a repetition of
Braddock's reverse. In the middle of September, Major Grant, an
officer of the Highlanders, obtained permission from Bouquet to march
out from Loyalhannon with between 700 and 800 men,[40] for the
purpose of reconnoitring Fort Duquesne. He arrived at night time
close to the fort; intended a night attack, which miscarried;
repeated the attempt to attack on the following day, and having
broken up his force into small parties, was badly beaten and himself
taken prisoner. The total British casualties numbered about 280, the
survivors finding their way back to Bouquet at Loyalhannon. 'This was
a most terrible check to my small army,' wrote Forbes,[41] but the
reverse was more than counterbalanced shortly afterwards by a success
of a different kind. From the first Forbes had spared no pains to
secure the friendship of the Indians; and in October, in large
measure through the good offices of a Moravian missionary, a general
council was held, at which the tribes of the Ohio made their peace
with the English, deserting the French cause as rats leave a sinking
ship.

[Footnote 40: Forbes' own dispatch mentions 900.]

[Footnote 41: Forbes to Pitt, Raestown, Oct. 20, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _The final advance on Fort Duquesne._]

[Sidenote: _The fort abandoned by the French and occupied by the
English._]

It was November before Forbes joined Bouquet at Loyalhannon. He was
broken in body, but resolute to carry {286} through the expedition,
in spite of the lateness of the season. The road had been cut to
within easy reach of the French fort; and, on November 18, 2,500 men,
picked out of the force, advanced in three columns, carrying with
them only what was absolutely necessary in the way of supplies, and
their brave commander on a litter. At a day's march from Fort
Duquesne, it was reported that the fort had been evacuated and burnt;
and when the English reached it on the twenty-fifth, they found that
the news was true. Weakened by the desertion of the Indians, and by
having disbanded some of the militia, whom he could not feed, in want
of the provisions which Bradstreet had intercepted at Fort Frontenac,
the French commander, De Ligneris, saw no alternative but to blow up
the fort, and retreat more than a hundred miles up the Alleghany to
the junction of that river with French Creek, leaving the valley of
the Ohio in English hands, as events proved, for ever.

[Sidenote: _Foundation of Pittsburg._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Forbes._]

For the moment Forbes' chief care was to build at once on the site of
Fort Duquesne a temporary stockade, which could be held by a small
garrison through the winter. In the following year a permanent fort
was built. The name of Fort Duquesne was exchanged for that of Fort
Pitt, and the city of Pittsburg still recalls the statesman who
recovered for the British colonies the rich western lands which are
watered by the Ohio. 'I have used the freedom of giving your name to
Fort Duquesne,' wrote Forbes to Pitt two days after he had reached
the fort, 'as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by
your spirit that now makes us masters of the place.'[42] The honest
soldier, whom the English minister sent to do the work, and who did
it when the colonies concerned should have done it for themselves,
did not long survive his success. Patient and suffering, John Forbes
was carried back to Philadelphia, where he {287} died in the
following March, having shown a steadfast, single-minded devotion to
duty, rare even in the rich record of British soldiers.

[Footnote 42: Forbes to Pitt, Pittsburg, Nov. 27, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _Results of the campaign of 1758._]

[Sidenote: _Canada receives little help from France._]

With the English occupation of Fort Duquesne, the campaigning of 1758
in North America came to an end. It been a long season, and for
England distinctly a successful though also to a certain extent a
disappointing one. 'I do not reckon that we have been fortunate this
year in America,' wrote Wolfe on December 1; 'our force was so
superior to the enemy's that we might hope for greater success.'[43]
He wrote in ignorance that Fort Duquesne had been taken, but,
notwithstanding, his view of the situation was the true one. At
Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, Fort Duquesne, there had been great and
substantial successes. At Ticonderoga there had been a bad check; but
the French had made nothing of it afterwards. They were now on the
defensive and playing a losing game. Yet that more might and should
have been done by the English commanders with their great superiority
of numbers cannot be doubted. Had Wolfe been in Amherst's place, and
Lord Howe in Abercromby's, the year 1758 might well have been the
last year of French rule in North America. But the end was only
postponed for a short time, the resources of Canada in men and in
supplies were becoming insufficient to sustain the war: the country
was practically in a state of blockade; and Bougainville, who was
sent at the beginning of winter to France to plead the cause of
Canada, met with little success. A very few soldiers, some supplies,
and honours for the generals, were the result of his mission. France
was engrossed in the war in Europe, and not as many hundreds were
sent to North America as England sent thousands. Vaudreuil, in the
meantime, was intriguing against Montcalm, whose genius and
determination had prolonged the unequal {288} fight, and on whom,
with Levis and Bourlamaque, lay the heavy burden of defending a
ruined State, and checking, at this point and at that, the flowing
tide of English invasion.

[Footnote 43: Wright, p. 464.]


NOTE.--For the above see, among modern books,

  KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vols. iii and iv;
  PARKMAN'S _Montcalm and Wolfe_; and
  WRIGHT'S _Life of Wolfe_.




{289}

CHAPTER X

THE CONQUEST OF CANADA (_continued_)


When Wolfe reached England from Louisbourg in November, 1758, he
wrote to Pitt offering himself for further service in America, 'and
particularly in the river St. Lawrence, if any operations are to be
carried on there.'[1] Before Christmas, Pitt had appointed him to
command an expedition in the coming year against Quebec.

[Footnote 1: Wolfe to Pitt, Nov. 22, 1758 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_,
p. 464). There was some misunderstanding as to his return to England.
See the correspondence quoted by Mr. Kingsford in the note to vol.
iv, p. 155, of his _History_.]

[Sidenote: _Wolfe's early life and character._]

Wolfe was born at Westerham, in Kent, on January 2, 1727, and was
therefore not thirty-three years old when he was killed at Quebec in
September, 1759. He was the son of a soldier, and received his first
commission before he was fifteen. He was present at Dettingen, and at
Culloden; and, subsequently to the latter battle, after an interval
of fighting in the Netherlands, where he distinguished himself at the
battle of Laffeldt, he was stationed for a considerable time in
Scotland. Service in the Highlands, it may be noted, in Jacobite
times, was not bad training for service in North America. In
September, 1757, after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, he took
part in the expedition against Rochefort, to the south of La
Rochelle, on the west coast of France--an enterprise as utterly
barren of results as was the Duke of Buckingham's venture against the
same area of coast when Charles I was King. Lord Howe and Wolfe {290}
were among the few who gained any credit from the expedition. In the
following year, Wolfe served at Louisbourg.

Horace Walpole writes of him: 'Ambition, activity, industry, passion
for the service, were conspicuous in Wolfe. He seemed to breathe for
nothing but fame, and lost no moments in qualifying himself to
compass his object.'[2] These words are partly true, but do not tell
the whole truth. Wolfe was ambitious, active, and industrious, but he
cared for more than fame alone. His dramatic death in the hour of
victory, while he was still very young, makes it impossible to form
an adequate estimate of his real worth as a soldier; but all that is
known of him points to his having been, in spite of persistent ill
health, a great military genius, and a rare leader of men. He seems
to have resembled Nelson in his fighting qualities, and to have had
the same lovable nature, coupled with a higher standard of life. Like
Nelson, in warfare he always took the offensive if possible--took it,
as at Quebec, in spite of smaller numbers and a less favourable
position. 'An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the Indians and
ruin the French,' were his words to Amherst in a letter written after
the taking of Louisbourg.[3]

[Footnote 2: Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of King George II_ (1847
ed.), vol. iii, p. 171.]

[Footnote 3: Louisbourg, Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright, p. 457).]

Like Nelson, he loved his men, and his men loved him. According to
the old story, when the Duke of Newcastle told the King that Wolfe
was mad, the King expressed a wish that he would bite his other
generals. This was precisely what Wolfe did. He infected to some
extent those above him, to a great extent those under his command. He
was a man after Pitt's own heart; wherever he was, he made himself
felt, giving a living fire and force to the army. Coupled with this
vitality was a thorough knowledge of his profession, gained not only
on actual battlefields and {291} training-grounds, but also from
voluminous reading.[4] Nature gave him a hot temper and fearless
independence of spirit; he was in consequence impatient, and perhaps
unduly critical, of the mistakes of those above him; but he was the
soul of honour and chivalry, and his private life was marked by
tender love for his mother, stanch attachment to his friends, and
kindness to all dependent upon him, including dumb animals. In his
lifetime he enjoyed 'a large share of the friendship and almost the
universal goodwill of mankind.'[5] In a word, English history has
produced no truer type of hero than James Wolfe.

[Footnote 4: In Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, pp. 342-5, is given a
letter of Wolfe's, dated July, 1756, recommending a long list of
books for a young soldier to read. Reference is made at the beginning
of the letter to a French book recently published (Turpin's _Essai
sur l'art de la guerre_), and it is interesting to find that Forbes,
in a letter to Pitt from Raestown, dated Oct. 20, 1758, stated that
in his march on Fort Duquesne he was acting on the principles laid
down in that book.]

[Footnote 5: From the 'Character of General Wolfe' in the _Annual
Register_ for 1759, p. 282.]

[Sidenote: _Wolfe's brigadiers. Monckton. Murray. George Townshend.
Carleton. Howe. Admiral Saunders._]

At the siege of Louisbourg, Wolfe was one of three brigadiers under
General Amherst. When he was given the command of the expedition
against Quebec, three brigadiers were placed under him--Monckton,
Townshend, and Murray. They were all of noble birth, and two of them
at any rate were good soldiers. Monckton, the senior of the three,
had shown his efficiency in Acadia, and at the siege of Louisbourg.
Murray proved his worth both before and after the capture of Quebec,
in a civil as well as in a military capacity. The least satisfactory
of the three was George Townshend, elder brother of the better known
Charles Townshend, not wanting in capacity, but deficient in loyalty
to his commander; a somewhat jealous and bitter-natured man, who had
the backing of political and aristocratic connexion. Horace Walpole
writes of him as a man 'whose proud and sullen and contemptuous
temper never suffered him to wait for thwarting his superiors till
risen to a level {292} with them. He saw everything in an ill-natured
and ridiculous light--a sure prevention of ever being seen himself in
a great or favourable one.'[6] The Quartermaster-General of the force
was Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, well known in Canadian
history, a great personal friend of Wolfe's, though out of favour
with the King. Howe, younger brother of the man whose untimely death
Wolfe so deeply lamented, commanded the light infantry, and led them
in the van of the force up the cliffs of Quebec. Lastly, an admirable
officer was in charge of the fleet, Saunders, who nineteen years
before had sailed round the world with Lord Anson in the _Centurion_.

[Footnote 6: _Memoirs of the Reign of King George II_ (1847 ed.),
vol. iii, pp. 171, 172.]

[Sidenote: _Small number of troops commanded by Wolfe._]

[Sidenote: _Start of the expedition._]

The troops, whom Wolfe and his officers commanded, were too few for
the difficult task with which they were entrusted. They were to have
numbered 12,000; as a matter of fact their total did not reach 9,000.
Some were in America already, but the large majority sailed from
England with Wolfe and Saunders, leaving England in the middle of
February, anchoring at Halifax at the end of April, moving on to
Louisbourg in May, when the ice was disappearing, and arriving in
front of Quebec towards the end of June--a small squadron, under
Admiral Durell, having already ascended the St. Lawrence in advance
of the main fleet. As they went up the river, 'the prevailing
sentimental toast amongst the officers' was 'British colours on every
French fort, port, and garrison in America.'[7]

[Footnote 7: From Knox's _Historical Journal of the Campaigns in
North America_ (London, 1769), vol. i, p. 279.]

[Sidenote: _General plan of campaign in North America._]

The expedition against Quebec was only part of a general plan of
campaign. While Wolfe was operating in the St. Lawrence, it was
intended that Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, with a larger army,
should move northward by way of Lake Champlain; and, reducing the
French forts at {293} Ticonderoga and Crown Point, make his way to
the St. Lawrence, in time to co-operate with Wolfe's force, or to
draw off a number of the defenders of Quebec for the protection of
Montreal. As events turned out, Amherst gave little support to Wolfe.
On the contrary, the main French army under Montcalm went to and
remained at Quebec; and Wolfe, with the smaller force and far the
more difficult enterprise to undertake, had to rely on his own
resources alone. Montcalm had probably gauged the respective merits
of Amherst and Wolfe. Had Amherst been in command of the Quebec
expedition, and Wolfe leading the central advance, it is reasonable
to suppose that the French general would have entrusted the defence
of Quebec to a smaller force, and with the bulk of his army would
have confronted the more dangerous English leader on the line of Lake
Champlain.

[Sidenote: _Amherst's difficulties._]

Amherst, however, it is fair to note, had, as Commander-in-Chief, to
direct his attention to other points as well as the direct northern
line of advance. When the spring opened, the forts on the Mohawk
river had been re-established, and Fort Duquesne was held by the
small garrison which Forbes had placed there. But Oswego was still
desolate, and the English had no post on Lake Ontario. The French
held a strong position at Niagara; they commanded the routes from the
lakes to Fort Duquesne; they could bring reinforcements of Canadians
and Indians from the west as well as up the St. Lawrence--if any
could be spared from this quarter. Forbes, the leader in the west,
was dead. Under these circumstances a cautious commander, though not
perhaps a brilliant one, might hesitate to invade central Canada
until some further security was attained on the western side.

[Sidenote: _Prideaux sent against Niagara._]

[Sidenote: _Haldimand attacked at Oswego: he beats off the French._]

General Stanwix was accordingly sent to reinforce Fort Duquesne, and,
having made that position secure, to press forward, if possible, up
the Alleghany and French Creek rivers, in order to co-operate with
another force which, under General Prideaux, was ordered to ascend
the Mohawk river, {294} reoccupy Oswego, and from Oswego as the base
to attack Niagara. Prideaux concentrated his troops at Schenectady
towards the end of May, about 5,000 in number, including two
regiments of regulars. Sir William Johnson joined him with Indian
warriors from the Five Nations; and with him too, as second in
command, was Colonel Haldimand, like Bouquet a Swiss by birth, and
twenty years later Governor-General of Canada. Strengthening the
outposts on the line of communication as he advanced, Prideaux made
his way to Oswego, and, leaving Haldimand there to rebuild the fort,
started westwards on July 1 for Niagara, carrying his men in boats
along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Soon after he left,
Haldimand's force at Oswego was attacked by 1,000 Canadians and
Indians, who came up the St. Lawrence under the command of St. Luc de
la Corne; but, though taken by surprise, the garrison beat off their
assailants with little loss.

[Sidenote: _Fort Niagara._]

The French fort at Niagara was in good condition for defence. It
stood in the angle between the Niagara river and the lake, on what is
now the American side of the river; a road had been made past the
falls, and there were two outposts, one above and the other below the
falls. A competent French officer, Pouchot, was in command; his
garrison, when the English appeared, numbered 500 men more or less,
and he sent messages to bring up reinforcements from the forts on the
Ohio route--Presque Île, Fort Leboeuf, and Machault or Venango--in
addition to Indians and Rangers from Detroit and the west, who were
already coming down to the aid of Canada.

[Sidenote: _Death of Prideaux._]

[Sidenote: _Johnson takes command and defeats the French relief
force._]

[Sidenote: _Surrender of Niagara._]

On July 8 Prideaux summoned the fort to surrender, and, his summons
being rejected, began to invest the place. No great skill was shown
in the investment, and on July 20 the English general was
accidentally killed by the bursting of a shell from one of his own
guns. The command devolved on Johnson, who heard that a relief {295}
force was coming down Lake Erie--a force which numbered at least
1,200 men all told, and was led by some of the best border fighters
in Canada, including Ligneris, who had in the preceding year been in
charge of Fort Duquesne. Johnson marched out to intercept them on the
road between the fort and the falls, attacked them at once in front
and on the flank, and gained a complete victory. The French officers
were taken prisoners, their troops were utterly routed and broken up,
and the survivors retreated westward to Detroit, abandoning Lake Erie
and the whole of the Ohio country. It was on July 24 that the fight
took place, and on the following day Pouchot, having verified the
news of the French defeat, surrendered Niagara. One of the terms of
the surrender was that the prisoners should be protected from the
Indians by an English escort, the massacre at Fort William Henry
being evidently borne in mind; and on this condition six hundred
Frenchmen were sent to New York.

[Sidenote: _Result of its fall._]

Thus, for the second time, Sir William Johnson had rendered signal
service to the English cause; and with the fall of Niagara the French
lost all command of the lower lakes. Their only communication now
with Detroit and the far West was by the old route of the Ottawa
river, and their scheme of conquest in the lands of the Ohio was
wholly and for ever undone. 'The taking of Niagara broke off
effectually that communication, so much talked of and so much
dreaded, between Canada and Louisiana; and by this stroke one of the
capital political designs of the French, which gave occasion to the
present war, was defeated in its direct and immediate object.'[8] On
hearing of the success, Amherst sent up General Gage to replace
Prideaux, with orders to come down the St. Lawrence and join in the
combination against central Canada; but the force was small, Gage,
like Amherst, was cautious, and the summer passed {296} away without
any further success by the troops on Lake Ontario.

[Footnote 8: _Annual Register_ for 1759, p. 34.]

[Sidenote: _Amherst's advance._]

[Sidenote: _The French abandon Ticonderoga and Crown Point._]

While Prideaux and Johnson were operating against Niagara, Amherst
had begun his northward movement. He had carefully secured his
communications by fortified posts, and, before June ended, had
gathered a force of 11,000 men at the southern end of Lake George,
the scene of so many encampments and so much fighting. On July 21 he
embarked his troops, followed the line of Abercromby's advance in the
previous year, found the famous entrenchment, which had foiled
Abercromby's troops, deserted, but the fort itself still held. On the
evening of the twenty-sixth, however, deserters brought news that the
garrison was in retreat, and shortly afterwards a loud explosion told
its own tale. Ticonderoga had been abandoned and blown up. The French
commander opposed to Amherst was Bourlamaque, and his orders were to
fall back before the English to the outlet of Lake Champlain, where a
small island in the Richelieu river, the Île aux Noix, could easily
be defended, blocking the enemy's advance on Montreal. He had a force
of over 3,000 men, the rearguard of which, consisting of 400 men, had
held Ticonderoga for two or three days, to cover the retreat of the
main force. On August 1, Crown Point was found to be abandoned also,
and the way north, down Lake Champlain, lay open to the invaders of
Canada. Amherst entered Crown Point on August 4, and on the following
day wrote to Pitt: 'I shall take fast hold of it, and not neglect at
the same time to forward every measure I can to enable me to pass
Lake Champlain.'

[Sidenote: _Amherst's inaction._]

Now was the time for the quick aggressive movement which Wolfe
practised and preached, but the Commander-in-Chief fell miserably
short of the occasion. August went by, and September, but Robert
Rogers and his Rangers, who harried the French Indians on the river
St. Francis {297} north-east of Lake Champlain, were the only
fighting members of Amherst's army. Time was spent in constructing a
new fort at Crown Point; in making a road eastward from Lake
Champlain, opposite Crown Point, to the Connecticut river; in
building vessels to overpower four little armed sloops, which
represented French naval enterprise on the lake. In the middle of
October Amherst embarked his troops to go north, met with wind and
storm, returned to Crown Point, and made all snug for the winter.
This was not the way to conquer Canada: the real work was done by
another man at another place. While the main English army loitered on
the shores of Lake Champlain, Wolfe had laid down his life in victory
on the Plains of Abraham.

[Illustration: Map of Quebec]

[Sidenote: _The harbour of Quebec._]

[Sidenote: _The northern bank of the St. Lawrence._]

By a Canadian Act of 1858, the harbour of Quebec, for the purposes of
the Act, is defined as extending from the Cap Rouge river, about
eight miles above Quebec, to the Montmorency, about the same distance
below the city. At Quebec, and for many miles above, the St. Lawrence
is a tidal river. Below Quebec the river flows due north-east, and is
divided into two channels by the island of Orleans, which also lies
due north-east and south-west, being twenty miles long with a maximum
breadth of six miles. The inland--the south-western--end of the
island points directly at the rock of Quebec, which runs out from the
northern shore of the St. Lawrence, facing straight down the river,
at four miles distance from the island. The two channels, looking up
stream, unite at the end of the island, and form a semicircular basin
just below Quebec, where the northern shore recedes. Immediately
above this basin the rock of Quebec on the north of the river, and
Point Levis on the southern mainland, jut out towards each other,
narrowing the St. Lawrence to a breadth of considerably less than a
mile. Above Quebec the upward course of the river is still south-west
by west. The northern bank is continuously steep, and at five to six
miles' distance from Quebec on this side is Sillery Cove. {298}
Between two and three miles further on, nearly due west, is Cap
Rouge. Over against Sillery the Chaudière river flows in from the
south, forming in old days a possible route to the St. Lawrence for
those who followed up the course of the Kennebec from the coast of
Maine.[9]

[Footnote 9: See above, p. 123.]

Miles of river-side cliff culminate in the promontory on which Quebec
stands, and the south-western end of which is known as Cape Diamond.
From the river above the town, Quebec, if man combined with nature,
was almost inaccessible. Below, the eastern side of the city is girt
by the winding River St. Charles, beyond which are the meadows of
Beauport, with shoals in front and high ground behind; and, past the
little Beauport river, which is very roughly equidistant from the St.
Charles and the Montmorency, the northern bank of the St. Lawrence is
again more or less fringed with steep ground as far as, and beyond,
the falls, over which the Montmorency takes its way into the great
river.

[Sidenote: _The strength of the French position._]

Nature had given Quebec a position of unique strength; man had added
fortifications; and, when Wolfe came before it, 16,000 soldiers,
including French, Canadians, and Indians, were mustered for its
defence, under one of the most skilful generals of his day. There was
a garrison in Quebec itself; but the main army was encamped below the
city, and lined entrenchments from the St. Charles to the
Montmorency, Montcalm's head quarters being on the further side of
the Beauport river. To defeat an army nearly double the strength of
his own, and to take the citadel which, since the days of Kirke and
Champlain, had proved impregnable, was the hopeless task assigned to
Wolfe. It was a task which he accomplished.

[Sidenote: _Wolfe's troops superior in quality to Montcalm's._]

[Sidenote: _Importance of commanding the river._]

[Sidenote: _Co-operation of English army and navy._]

Over and above his own leadership, he had two points in his favour.
His troops were better than those commanded by Montcalm. The majority
of Montcalm's men were Canadian militia, disinclined for long
continuous service, {299} which kept them away from their farms, and,
while excellent for raiding purposes or for fighting under cover, not
to be relied on if ever they should be brought face to face with
English regiments in the open field. Wolfe, moreover, gained complete
command of the river. Such ships as the French possessed had been
sent high up the St. Lawrence out of harm's way; and, though the guns
of Quebec commanded the river strait immediately below the rock, as
the siege went on some of the English vessels, and many boats, were
taken past the promontory, so that the St. Lawrence was securely held
both below and above the city. In war and in peace English sailors
and soldiers have known how to support each other. At the sieges of
Louisbourg the admirals co-operated in every possible way with the
leaders of the land forces, and equally hearty was the co-operation
of the two arms of the service before Quebec. Admiral Saunders, with
Durell and Holmes, did all that men could do to second Wolfe in his
difficult enterprise.

[Sidenote: _The island of Orleans occupied._]

[Sidenote: _Vaudreuil's fireships._]

[Sidenote: _Point Levis occupied._]

Piloted by Canadian prisoners or by their own determined seamen, the
British ships had threaded their way up the St. Lawrence, and on June
26 anchored on the southern side of the Isle of Orleans. That night a
party of Rangers landed on the island, meeting with some slight
opposition, and the next day the whole force disembarked and marched
across the island towards its westernmost point, the Point of
Orleans. There the city of Quebec came in full view, 'at once a
tempting and a discouraging sight.'[10] Hardly had the troops landed
when, on the same day, a heavy storm broke upon the English ships,
and drove some of the transports ashore; while, little more than
twenty-four hours later, a new danger threatened the fleet in the
form of fireships sent down from Quebec. This was a pet scheme of
Vaudreuil, but, like the author of the scheme, the ships did nothing
more than splutter and make a noise, scaring the {300} English
outpost at the Point of Orleans. Some stranded, others were towed
ashore by the English sailors--none of them reached the fleet which
they were intended to destroy. On the evening of the next day, the
twenty-ninth, part of Monckton's brigade was carried across the mile
and a half of water which separates the island of Orleans at its
westernmost point from the mainland on the southern shore; on the
thirtieth the rest of the brigade was landed, and occupied Point
Levis. Here batteries were erected under fire from Quebec; and, after
a futile, half-hearted attempt had been made to dislodge the English
by a party of Canadians, who crossed the river higher up on the night
of July 12, the guns opened fire on the city opposite, and began the
work--which went on for weeks--of knocking its buildings to pieces.

[Footnote 10: _Annual Register_ for 1759, p. 35.]

[Sidenote: _Landing effected on the northern shore below the
Montmorency._]

[Sidenote: _Division of Wolfe's force._]

[Sidenote: _The English ships gain the upper river._]

[Sidenote: _Montcalm on the defensive._]

Before the batteries at Point Levis were complete, Wolfe had sent
troops across to the northern shore of the St. Lawrence, lower down
the river, and occupied the heights on the eastern side of the
Montmorency river, which more or less commanded the extreme left of
the French line, where Levis was stationed. The movement was not
effected without some loss to the Rangers, who were ambushed by a
party of Indians. The latter had crossed the Montmorency by a ford
above the falls, but the ford was too securely guarded on the French
side to justify any attempt on the part of Wolfe's small force to
attack in this direction. It was the English general's plan to
reconnoitre and threaten every point in turn of the French position,
to divide the enemy's forces if possible, and if possible to induce
Montcalm to take the offensive. With this object, Wolfe ran great
risks. One part of his army was at Point Levis, another below the
Montmorency, a third small detachment held the Point of Orleans. On
July 18 his ships began to run the gauntlet of the Quebec batteries
and reach the upper river, while boats were dragged overland by Point
Levis to co-operate above the city. A still further division of the
attacking force {301} was then made, and Carleton was sent some
eighteen miles up stream to land and raid on the northern shore. But
though the movement drew off a certain number of French troops from
the Beauport lines to watch the enemy above Quebec, Montcalm
persisted in playing a waiting game, in making no attack, and running
no risk. His policy was no doubt a sound one. It is true that Quebec
was being riddled with shot and shell, that the farmers and villagers
in the country round were suffering, that the Canadians and Indians
were losing heart at the apparent inaction of their leaders, but time
and place were on the side of the French, and as the weeks went on
the wisdom of patient defence became more and more apparent.

[Sidenote: _Frontal attack on the French lines by the Montmorency._]

At the end of July, Wolfe determined to try to force the French
entrenchments where they abutted on the Montmorency river. The plan
involved a frontal attack on a very strong position, and it was only
possible to make the attempt when the tide was out. At low tide the
Montmorency could be forded below the falls, and the General proposed
to land Monckton's brigade on the shore of the St. Lawrence, above
the Montmorency, in face of the French lines, and to support it by
marching Townshend's and Murray's troops, who held the heights below
the Montmorency, across the ford at the mouth of the latter river.
The two forces converging were to carry an advanced French redoubt
which stood on the flat a little beyond high-water mark, and, if the
French still refused battle, to assault the heights beyond.

[Sidenote: _The English repulsed with heavy loss._]

Monckton's men, embarked mainly at Point Levis, were moved up and
down the river through the day, keeping the French in doubt as to
where the attack would be made. A ship of war was anchored in a
position to cover the ford of the Montmorency, while two large
flat-bottomed boats carrying guns, or, as Knox called them, 'two
armed transport cats (catamarans) drawing little water,'[11] were
taken in {302} close to shore, and left to be stranded as the tide
went out. Towards evening the water was low, the guns opened fire,
and, after some delay in finding a landing-place, the men began to
disembark on the muddy edge of the river. The Grenadiers, with some
of the Royal Americans, who were first landed, rushed forward and
seized the redoubt, which the French abandoned. They then hurried on,
without waiting for the main body of troops, to attack the higher
ground behind. This premature movement ruined the enterprise.
Advancing without order or formation up slippery slopes, in a storm
of rain, under heavy fire, the Grenadiers were hurled back to the
redoubt with a loss of over 400 men, and were brought off by Wolfe,
who saw the uselessness of repeating the attack in the deepening
shades of evening. Some of the troops were re-embarked, the others
retreated in good order across the ford, and the day ended in
failure, though the bulk of the English army had taken no part in the
fight. In his General Order on the following day Wolfe commented
severely, and with reason, upon the 'impetuous, irregular, and
unsoldierlike proceedings' of the Grenadiers, reminding them that
'the Grenadiers could not suppose that they alone could beat the
French army.'[12] The blame for the disaster rested solely with the
soldiers of the advanced party, who, in eagerness to attack, lost all
order and discipline; but the effect was much the same as though the
leaders had blundered. The small English army had lost a number of
men, who could ill be spared; the defenders of Quebec gained heart,
their enemies were correspondingly dispirited.

[Footnote 11: Knox, vol. i, p. 354.]

[Footnote 12: Knox, vol. ii, p. 1.]

[Sidenote: _Operations on the upper river._]

[Sidenote: _Levis sent to Montreal to oppose Amherst._]

Wolfe still held his ground below the Montmorency, but moved more of
his men than before above Quebec. Here Murray was placed in command,
with Admiral Holmes in charge of the ships and boats. Bougainville,
with 1,500 men, was detached by Montcalm to watch the enemy's {303}
movements and to guard the northern shore; but, on both sides of the
river, both above and below the town, the English spread havoc and
destroyed supplies. The waterway being blocked by Holmes' vessels and
the country round Quebec being desolated, Montcalm's army could only
be fed by a toilsome overland transport of many miles, until the
means of transport failed, when provisions were again sent down the
river, running the blockade usually under cover of night. Meanwhile,
early in August, the French had learnt of the fall of Niagara and the
abandonment of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and to meet Amherst's
expected advance Levis was sent up to Montreal with 800 men. In this
respect, and in no other, Amherst's operations helped Wolfe. As
events turned out, it was of incalculable importance to the English
that, when the battle of Quebec took place, Montcalm's able
lieutenant was not on the field.

[Sidenote: _Critical position of Wolfe._]

[Sidenote: _His illness._]

[Sidenote: _His brigadiers recommend an attempt above the city._]

The position of the French was critical, but that of the English was
more critical still. The summer was waning. The English troops were
dwindling in numbers from casualties and disease. Worst of all, when
the middle of August was past, worn in mind and body, Wolfe was laid
low with fever in the camp at Montmorency. On his life, as the
soldiers who loved him knew, hung all the hopes of the expedition.
While recovering, but still unable to move, he submitted to his
brigadiers three alternative plans for attacking Montcalm's lines.
They met on August 29, and, rejecting all three proposals, counselled
an attempt above the city. 'We are of opinion,' they wrote, 'that the
most probable method of striking an effectual blow is to bring the
troops to the south shore, and to carry the operations above the
town. If we can establish ourselves on the north shore, the Marquis
de Montcalm must fight us on our own terms. We are between him and
his provisions, and between him and the army opposing General
Amherst.'[13] Their {304} advice, which was unanimous, was taken
without demur, and Wolfe proceeded with the desperate task of putting
it into execution.

[Footnote 13: Wright, p. 545.]

[Sidenote: _Wolfe's despondency._]

That he had little hope of success is shown by the tone of his
correspondence. In his last dispatch to Pitt, dated September 2, he
wrote, 'there is such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at
a loss how to determine.'[14] To Admiral Saunders, two or three days
before, he had written of himself as 'a man that must necessarily be
ruined';[14] and in his last letter to his mother, written on August
31, he spoke of being determined to leave the service at the earliest
opportunity.[14] Townshend, meanwhile, in private, criticized him
much as Wolfe himself had criticized his superior officers the year
before. 'General Wolfe's health,' he wrote to his wife, 'is but very
bad: his generalship, in my poor opinion, is not a bit better.'[15]
Yet, sick and despondent as he was, Wolfe did not lie down in the
furrow. For past failures he blamed no one but himself; manfully he
faced the future in all its gloom; and, if Townshend felt little
confidence in his leading, the soldiers knew better; and he led them
to victory.

[Footnote 14: Wright, pp. 548, 549, 553.]

[Footnote 15: From the _Townshend Papers_. The letter is quoted in
full by Kingsford in his _History of Canada_, vol. iv, p. 226, note.]

[Sidenote: _Disposition of Wolfe's army at the end of August._]

At the end of August, the following was the disposition of the
English forces. Murray, with Admiral Holmes, was operating above the
city; Monckton was at Point Levis, and near him Admiral Saunders,
with the main English fleet, was anchored in the basin of Quebec.
Wolfe himself, with Townshend, was still encamped on the northern
shore below the Montmorency; and Admiral Durell, with the rearguard
of the fleet, was watching the river below. Amherst's successes were
known to Wolfe and his colleagues, but they soon learnt also that no
help could be expected from him. September was on them, and at the
end of September, or at {305} latest by the middle of October, the
campaign would close. Whatever had to be done must be done quickly.

[Sidenote: _The camp at the Montmorency broken up, and the troops
moved up the river._]

[Sidenote: _Montcalm deceived._]

On September 3 the English camp by the Montmorency was broken up, and
the troops were moved to the Point of Orleans and Point Levis. On the
fifth, Murray's troops, which had returned to Point Levis, were
marched up the southern shore and embarked on Holmes' vessels; they
were followed by battalions of Monckton's and Townshend's brigades;
and by September 7 nearly 4,000 troops, with the necessary supplies,
were moving up and down the river above Quebec, menacing a landing at
this point or at that, wearying Bougainville's force, now raised to
3,000 men, which, with its head quarters at Cap Rouge, was required
to keep pace with the enemy's fleet, and to guard the heights on the
northern bank of the St. Lawrence. Montcalm knew that the English
force above Quebec had been strengthened; but he seems not to have
known the full extent of Wolfe's preparations. English forces at
Point Levis and on the island of Orleans still faced the Beauport
lines, while Saunders' fleet lay directly off Quebec. The French
general regarded Wolfe's movements on the upper river as feints; the
main attack, if attack there should be, he expected below the town.

[Sidenote: _Preparation for the final attack._]

There was bad weather on September 7 and 8, and Wolfe landed a large
proportion of his men from the crowded transports high up on the
southern shore. Early on the twelfth they were put on board again,
and orders were issued for the coming night. Two days' provisions
each soldier took with him; and in the General Order, the last which
Wolfe issued, officers and men alike were bid to 'remember what their
country expects from them.' It was a signal such as Nelson gave at
the battle of Trafalgar.

[Sidenote: _The landing-place selected._]

On September 10, looking through his telescope from the southern
shore across the river, Wolfe had noted a path running up the
opposite bank from a little cove rather more {306} than a mile and a
half higher up the river than the citadel of Quebec. The place was
known as the Anse au Foulon, and now bears the name of Wolfe's Cove.
The bank is between 200 and 300 feet high, and at the top were to be
seen the tents of a French outpost. Here he determined to attempt a
landing. On the night of the twelfth the troops, whom he had on
board, were to drop down the river with the ebbing tide, half going
on in boats, the rest following in the transports, while another
smaller force, left under Colonel Burton at Point Levis, was to move
up the southern shore, to be ferried across in support of the attack.
Saunders, meanwhile, as night came on, was to threaten the Beauport
lines.

[Sidenote: _Fortune favours Wolfe._]

Fortune had hitherto been unkind to Wolfe; now all went well. The
many chances which a night attack involves, when the crisis came, all
favoured the English. Their boats, as they came down stream, were
taken by the sentries for French provision boats, which had been
expected. Bougainville, who, before night fell and before the tide
turned, had seen the ships drift up stream instead of down, was
completely misled. Montcalm looked for danger from the fleet in front
of him, and knew not what the tide was bringing down.

[Sidenote: _The descent of the river._]

[Sidenote: _The landing._]

[Sidenote: _French picket surprised._]

[Sidenote: _The heights gained and line of battle formed._]

It was about two o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth when the
boats cast off from the ships, and took their way down stream. Howe
led with twenty-four men of the light infantry, who had volunteered
for the first ascent. Close behind was Wolfe himself; and it has been
told in many books, how, as the stream bore him on in darkness to
glory and the grave, he repeated the well-known lines of Gray's
Elegy.[16] The leading boat was carried a little below the spot where
the path runs down to the shore. About four o'clock in the morning,
an hour before daybreak, the men scrambled up the side of the wooded
cliff, and surprised the French picket at the top. Its commander,
Vergor, who had surrendered {307} Fort Beauséjour in Acadia, was
wounded when trying to escape, and taken prisoner. The way being
clear, the rest of the troops followed. The boats, having discharged
their first cargo, brought off the remainder of the force from the
transports, and carried over Burton's men from the opposite bank.
About six o'clock, the daylight of a cloudy morning showed the whole
army at the top of the cliffs; and, moving forward towards Quebec,
Wolfe formed his line of battle within a mile of the city, on the
part of the plateau known as the Plains of Abraham.

[Footnote 16: Gray's _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_ was
first published in 1751.]

Between four and five thousand men had been landed; but some were
kept in reserve, or left to guard the landing, and less than 4,000
men formed the fighting line. Monckton's brigade on the right abutted
on the edge of the cliffs. Murray held the centre with three
regiments, the 47th, the 58th, and the 78th Highlanders.[17]
Townshend was posted on the left. The left could be turned, for the
force was too small to extend across the plain; and therefore, while
the rest of the troops faced Quebec, Townshend's men, drawn up at
right angles to their comrades, fronted the high ground known as the
Côte St. Geneviève, which overlooks the river St. Charles above the
city. Howe's light infantry covered the rear. One gun[18] had been
dragged up the cliff; but, when the fight began, the English had no
other artillery. The French in this respect were in not much better
case, {308} for they hurried to the battlefield with few big guns to
back them. The fight was one of infantry alone.

[Footnote 17: The 78th Highlanders, who fought with Wolfe, were not
the ancestors of the present regiment of that number. The regiments
of the present day who carry Quebec on their colours are the 15th
(1st battalion East Yorkshire Regiment), the 28th (1st battalion
Gloucestershire Regiment), the 35th (1st battalion Royal Sussex), the
43rd (1st battalion Oxfordshire Light Infantry), the 47th (1st
battalion Loyal North Lancashire), the 48th (1st battalion
Northamptonshire Regiment), the 58th (2nd battalion Northamptonshire
Regiment), and the 60th Rifles (two battalions).]

[Footnote 18: Townshend's dispatch of Sept. 20 says distinctly 'we
had been able to bring up but one gun.' Knox, on the other hand,
says, 'About eight o'clock we had two pieces of short brass
six-pounders playing on the enemy' (Knox, vol. ii, pp. 70, 128).]

[Sidenote: _Montcalm hurries to give battle._]

Saunders' pretence at landing on the Beauport shore had kept
Montcalm's army on the alert all the night. At six in the morning,
riding towards Quebec, the French general learnt that the English had
landed, and saw in the distance the enemy's lines. He brought his
troops from Beauport with what speed he could; crossed the St.
Charles; passed by or through the city; and marshalled his force
beyond for instant fight. He had with him, it would seem, not more
than 5,000 men. The garrison of Quebec remained within the walls, and
a large proportion of the army did not leave their encampment, for
the further lines by the Montmorency were some miles distant, and the
shore had still to be protected. He might have waited to bring up
more troops, and to give time to Bougainville to operate in the
enemy's rear; but his communications were threatened, his supplies
were short, Wolfe, if given breathing space, could throw up
entrenchments, and with his command of the river, make his position
absolutely safe. The one hope was to hurl him back over the cliffs,
while yet his foothold was insecure; and to strike before the ardour
of the Canadians and Indians had time to cool.

[Sidenote: _The battle of Quebec._]

[Sidenote: _Defeat of the French._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Wolfe._]

Between nine and ten o'clock the French were in battle array, and
advanced over a little ridge which lay between Wolfe's army and
Quebec. Wolfe's soldiers had had two hours' rest, and steadily moved
forward, reserving their fire by the General's orders. At forty
yards' distance the word of command was given; and two volleys of
musketry decided the battle. The fire came from the whole English
line, the French fell like corn under the reaper's scythe, a charge
with bayonets and claymores followed, 'the Highlanders chased them
vigorously towards Charles river, and the 58th to the suburb close to
John's Gate.'[19] Montcalm's army {309} became a routed rabble.
Stricken already earlier in the fight, Wolfe on the right, while
preparing to lead the final charge, received his death wound. He was
carried to the rear; heard, while still conscious, that the enemy
were in flight; turned on his side, thanked God, and died in peace.

[Footnote 19: Knox, vol. ii, p. 71.]

[Sidenote: _Death of Montcalm._]

[Sidenote: _Monckton wounded._]

[Sidenote: _Townshend in command._]

It was all over before noon. The English casualties numbered between
six and seven hundred, the French lost double that number, and they
too were bereft of their leader. As Montcalm retreated towards Quebec
with his flying troops, he was shot through the body. He reached a
house in the city, lingered for some hours, and, before the following
day broke, like Wolfe he had gone to his rest. 'It was a very
singular affair,' was Horace Walpole's cold-blooded comment; 'the
generals on both sides slain, the second in command wounded; in
short, very near what battles should be, in which only the principals
ought to suffer.'[20] The French lost not only Montcalm, but also the
officer next in rank on the field. On the English side, Monckton, who
would have succeeded Wolfe, was severely wounded, though he was able,
on the fifteenth, to sign a short and simple dispatch, reporting the
'very signal victory'; and the command devolved on Townshend.
Threatened by Bougainville, who came up too late from behind with
2,000 men, and retreated again, Townshend recalled his troops and
entrenched them; cannon and supplies were brought up from the river,
and communication with the ships was made safe.

[Footnote 20: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 258 (Letter
of Oct. 19, 1759).]

[Sidenote: _Disorderly retreat of the French._]

Behind the St. Charles the French were all in confusion. Vaudreuil
called a council of war, and determined on an immediate retreat,
abandoning all the lines which Montcalm had held so long and so well,
and leaving the garrison of Quebec to surrender, as soon as
provisions failed. The retreat began that same night with no
semblance of order; and, circling inland past the English lines, the
fugitives made {310} their way towards Montreal, hurrying in panic
far beyond Cap Rouge, where Bougainville was still stationed, to
Jacques Cartier, thirty miles distant from Quebec.

[Sidenote: _Siege of Quebec._]

[Sidenote: _Levis rallies the French too late._]

[Sidenote: _The city surrenders._]

With Wolfe and Montcalm expired the genius of either army. It was
characteristic of Wolfe that, while dying, he sent an order to cut
off the French retreat; but in the interval between the battle on the
thirteenth and the capitulation of Quebec on the eighteenth, we do
not read that any attempt was made to intercept the French, nor did
Saunders land men to occupy the deserted Beauport lines. Townshend
steadily made his trenches and besieged in form; while the French
commandant of Quebec, Ramesay, with a weak garrison, and little or no
food, was urged by his own people to capitulate. He had orders from
Vaudreuil to surrender in due time, and, though counter messages
came, they came too late. Too late Levis at Montreal had heard of the
disaster; hurrying back, he turned the beaten troops at Jacques
Cartier; he started with them on the eighteenth to save Quebec; but
on that very morning Quebec was given up. The afternoon before, an
assault on the town was threatened above, while a landing from the
river was threatened below. Distrusting the promises of relief,
Ramesay yielded to the pressure put on him by soldiers and civilians
alike; at eight o'clock, on the morning of the eighteenth, the terms
of surrender were signed; and that same day advanced parties of the
English army held the gates of Quebec.

[Sidenote: _Murray left in charge._]

[Sidenote: _Saunders sails for home,_]

The English commanders debated whether or not they could hold the
city through the coming winter, and determined at all hazards to do
so. Murray was placed in command with a garrison of about 7,000 men;
a month passed in repairing the fortifications, in landing and
storing supplies; and on October 18, Admiral Saunders, with the first
portion of the fleet, set sail for England. As he neared home, at the
entrance of the Channel, he learnt that Hawke was about to engage a
French fleet from Brest. He sailed {311} off to join him 'without
landing his glory,'[21] but came too late, for Hawke had already
fought his fight and won his victory in Quiberon Bay. Saunders had
deserved well of his country, for without his active, untiring
support the land forces would never have taken Quebec. He outlived
Wolfe for sixteen years, and was privately buried in Westminster
Abbey in December, 1775.

[Footnote 21: Letter from Horace Walpole dated 'November 30th, of the
great year' (1759), vol. iii, p. 268.]

[Sidenote: _and Townshend._]

Townshend, too, went home, his enemies said, to exaggerate his own
merits and belittle Wolfe's memory. An anonymous letter to 'an
honourable brigadier-general,' attributed to Junius among others,[22]
appeared in the following year, and attacked him with bitterness,
some of which he probably deserved. He passed into political life,
and as Viceroy of Ireland achieved a doubtful repute.

[Footnote 22: See the _Grenville Papers_, 1852, 3rd ed. Introductory
notes relating to Lord Temple and the authorship of Junius at the
beginning of vol. iii, pp. lxxxviii-xc.]

[Sidenote: _Wolfe's body brought to England._]

Wolfe's body was brought to England, and buried where his father had
been laid earlier in the year, in the vaults of Greenwich parish
church. A monument to him, voted by Parliament, stands in Westminster
Abbey, and his name lives, and will for ever live, in the hearts of
men.

[Sidenote: _Cotton's letters to Grenville._]

The news of his victory and death, and of the fall of Quebec, reached
England on October 17. It came but two or three days after his latest
dispatches, which gave little hope of success. There are two
interesting letters among the _Grenville Papers_, written to
Grenville by the Rev. Nathaniel Cotton, from on board the _Princess
Amelia_ at Île Madame in the St. Lawrence. The first is dated August
27 to September 6; the second bears the date of September 20. The
first, repeating former letters, is not hopeful. It points out the
insufficiency of Wolfe's force, the necessity of co-operation on the
part of Amherst; and it refers to 'unrevealed causes' militating
against the enterprise, {312} which may be taken to mean want of
harmony between Wolfe and Townshend. The later letter begins with the
following words: 'I have the satisfaction to acquaint you that
through the smiles of Providence we are in safe and quiet possession
of Quebec.'[23]

[Footnote 23: _Grenville Papers_, vol. i, pp. 318-26.]

[Sidenote: _Reception of the news in England._]

Very dramatic was the revulsion of feeling in England, when all was
known. No submarine cables then told the story of the war from day to
day. Only a few dispatches and letters at long intervals were brought
over the Atlantic, recording at first slow progress, then reverse,
disappointment, and the General's sickness and despondency. The rock
of Quebec seemed still impregnable; and, as the bright summer waned
into autumn, public confidence gave place to gloom. Then in
mid-October, when to North American lands the Indian summer gives a
second brightness, tidings came from over the sea that the victory
was won, and that the price paid for it was the life of Wolfe. There
followed, as Burke well said, a 'mourning triumph.'[24] Joy was
sobered by the sense of loss, and the picture of a desolate home
appealed, as it always appeals, to Englishmen's minds. They thought
of the mother, lately widowed, now childless, whose sickly son had
been her joy and pride; and many, we may not doubt, thought also of
the French home, whose master had gone out and came not again.

[Footnote 24: _Annual Register_ for 1759, p. 43.]

[Sidenote: _Was Wolfe's attack a great military feat?_]

The question naturally suggests itself, whether Wolfe's landing and
attack was a desperate venture, justified only by success, the last
throw of the dice by a man who had described himself as one who must
necessarily be ruined; or whether it was the supreme effort of a
military genius? It is impossible to study the story without coming
to the conclusion that the second is the true view. No doubt fortune
favoured him; no doubt the enterprise was full of risk; but from
first to last as little as possible was left to {313} chance, and
from first to last a master mind made itself felt. The main point to
remember is that he had secured absolute command of the river;
wherever therefore he landed, on high ground not commanded by the
enemy's guns, if for a few hours only he could make good his landing,
his way of retreat was absolutely safe. Montcalm knew this, and hence
his immediate attack. Then we have the movements which baffled
Montcalm and Bougainville alike; we have time and place calculated to
a nicety, every commander and every man told what to do and doing it,
the landing effected by break of day, the battlefield carefully
selected, the men duly rested, the battle line cautiously and safely
formed, the respective merits of the two forces accurately
gauged--the one, in Wolfe's own words, a small number of good
soldiers, the other 'a numerous body of armed men (I cannot call it
an army).'[25] There was no rush or hurry about the landing, the
advance, or the fight. The soldiers kept their fire till told to use
it: they charged when and not until their leader bade them. The whole
was a thought-out feat of steady daring.

[Footnote 25: Wolfe to his mother, Aug. 31, and to Lord Holderness,
Sept. 9 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, pp. 553, 563).]

[Sidenote: _If Wolfe had not succeeded._]

Another question which is worth considering is: What would have been
the result if Wolfe had not succeeded, if Quebec had not been taken,
and the English fleet had sailed off down the St. Lawrence, either
carrying the army home, or leaving it, as at one time during the
siege had been contemplated, to go into winter quarters at the Île
aux Coudres lower down the river? A failure would have been recorded,
and Wolfe above all others would have so regarded it; but,
notwithstanding, the expedition would not have been in vain. Quebec
would have been left in ruins, the banks of the St. Lawrence, with
emptied farms and homesteads, would have been a scene of desolation;
though Montcalm would have lived to fight again, Canada in all human
probability {314} must have fallen. For Canada was being starved out;
and, if the French Government a year before could spare but few
troops and supplies for New France, much less were the necessary
troops and supplies likely to be forthcoming after another year of
exhausting war on the Continent. On December 16, Amherst wrote to
Pitt from New York: 'From the present posts His Majesty's army is now
in possession of, if no stroke was to be made, Canada must fall or
the inhabitants starve.' He wrote with information given him by one
of his officers, Major Grant, who had been a prisoner in Canada.
Grant's words were: ''Tis believed that the colony, though in great
distress, may subsist for a year, without receiving supplies from
France'; but it could only subsist by using up all the live stock in
the land. The English command of the water was killing Canada, the
farmers and peasantry were sickening of the war; though Amherst wrote
after the fall of Quebec, the saving of Quebec would in no way have
fed Canada.

[Sidenote: _Results of his success on the future history of Canada._]

Unless, then, some great reversal of existing conditions had taken
place, or unless peace had been declared, Canada would have been
conquered, even if Wolfe had not triumphed and Quebec had not fallen
in September, 1759. But widely different would have been the result
on after history, and herein lies the true lesson to be drawn from
the record of the siege and capture of Quebec, and of the death of
Wolfe and Montcalm. It is the most conclusive answer, if answer were
needed, to those--fifty years ago they were many--who ignore or
minimize the effect of sentiment on the making and the preserving of
nations. The noble picturesqueness of the story, its accompaniments
of heroism and death, were of untold value in the work of
reconciliation; and of untold value was the legacy to a yet unformed
people of one of the great landmarks in history. In a sense, which it
is easier to feel than to express, two rival races, under two rival
leaders, unconsciously joined hands on the Plains of Abraham. The
{315} noise of war seemed to be stilled, the bitterness of competing
races and creeds to be allayed, by sharing in an episode which
appealed to all time and to all mankind. The dramatic ending of the
old order blessed the birth of the new; the instinct of human pathos
brought men together; and out of divergent elements made a nation.
Born far away in different lands, in death Wolfe and Montcalm were
not divided; and the soil on which they died has become the sacred
heritage of a people, whose union is stronger than the divisions of
religion, language, and race.

[Sidenote: _Successes of England in 1759._]

In the _Annual Register_ for 1759,[26] summing up the results of the
year to Great Britain, Burke wrote: 'In no one year since she was a
nation, has she been favoured with so many successes, both by sea and
land, and in every quarter of the globe.' It was a bright year for
England in every sense of the word. The sun had shone upon her soil
and upon her arms. In America, in India, at Minden, at Quiberon, she
had triumphed. 'I call it this ever warm and victorious year,' wrote
Walpole on October 21, 'we have not had more conquest than fine
weather. One would think we had plundered East and West Indies of
sunshine.'[27]

[Footnote 26: p. 56.]

[Footnote 27: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 259 (Letter
of Oct. 21, 1759).]

[Sidenote: _The winter at Quebec._]

[Sidenote: _Levis' plans for recovering the city._]

The winter which followed was a trying one for the garrison at
Quebec. They held the battered town, amid constant rumours of attack,
ill provided with warm clothing, with scanty supplies of firewood,
suffering much from sickness, and, as Knox tells us, in arrears of
pay, 'from which they might derive many comforts and refreshments
under their present exigencies.'[28] Outposts were established at
Point Levis, Sainte Foy, Lorette, and Cap Rouge; and here and there
skirmishes took place with parties of the enemy. Levis was at
Montreal, bent upon recovering Quebec. When the English fleet had
left, he sent messages to France to ask that {316} provisions might
be sent as early as possible in the coming year, with ships of war,
timed to arrive in the St. Lawrence before the English should return,
and numerous enough to hold the river for France. Meanwhile, he
debated whether or not to attack Quebec in mid-winter, and attempt to
carry it by a _coup de main_; but eventually determined to await the
coming of spring and the opening of the waters. Thus the anxious
winter passed, and the middle of April came. Attack became imminent,
and Murray knew it. He ordered the French residents to leave Quebec,
called in his outposts, and with a force sadly reduced by sickness
awaited Levis' army.

[Footnote 28: vol. ii, p. 241.]

[Sidenote: _His advance in the spring of 1760._]

At the end of October the effective strength of the garrison had been
7,313. On March 1 the number of fighting men, owing to scurvy and
other diseases, was reduced to 4,800;[29] and, though April, with its
milder weather, saw the beginning of recovery, the English force was
greatly outmatched by the enemy, for Levis had with him, all told, at
least 10,000 men.[30] About April 20, the French advance from
Montreal began. The troops were brought down the river in ships and
boats, and, landing some thirty miles above Quebec, crossed the Cap
Rouge river and marched on to Lorette and Sainte Foy.

[Footnote 29: Knox, vol. ii, p. 267.]

[Footnote 30: Knox gives the French numbers as 15,000, against 3,140
English (p. 295).]

[Sidenote: _The battle of Sainte Foy, and defeat of the English._]

On April 27, Murray offered battle at Sainte Foy; but the French made
no move, and he fell back to Quebec, leaving Levis to occupy Sainte
Foy that same night. Before seven o'clock on the next morning he
marched out again, bent on fighting, if possible, before Levis had
secured his position, and anxious not to be cooped up behind the
fortifications of Quebec, too weak to withstand a vigorous
bombardment. The English force numbered 3,140 men, with eighteen
pieces of cannon; and, as the men carried entrenching tools, it {317}
would seem that Murray contemplated throwing up lines outside the
city. The battle took place on the same plateau where Wolfe and
Montcalm had fought; it lasted about the same time, for two hours;
but the result was widely different. Seeing the French still on the
march, and not yet in battle order, Murray ordered an immediate
attack. His artillery did good execution, and, on the right and left
wings, the light infantry and the Rangers respectively won an initial
success. But the tide soon turned. On the right the advancing English
were drawn into swampy ground; on the left they came under fire from
French troops covered by the woods. Outnumbered and outflanked, the
whole force was compelled to retreat into Quebec, having lost their
guns and 1,100 men. The French losses appear to have been heavier,
numbering according to some accounts from 1,800 to 2,000 men.

[Sidenote: _Critical position of Murray._]

[Sidenote: _Levis loses his opportunity._]

Murray's position was now exceedingly critical. Two days after the
battle no more than 2,100 soldiers were returned as fit for duty; but
the General and his men were fully determined not to lose Quebec. On
May 1 he sent off a frigate to Louisbourg and Halifax to hasten
relief; and, day and night alike, officers and men worked with common
spirit, strengthening the defences, and mounting the guns. The French
lost their opportunity. Had they attacked the town at once, before
the garrison had recovered from the effects of the defeat, 'Quebec
would,' in Captain Knox's opinion, 'have reverted to its old
masters';[31] and the leisurely nature of Levis' operations seems to
bear out the view, to which French prisoners gave currency, that he
had only intended to invest the town, and wait the arrival of a
French fleet.

[Footnote 31: p. 301.]

[Sidenote: _Relief of Quebec._]

He landed his stores and munitions at the Anse au Foulon, Wolfe's
landing-place, and gradually pushed forward his lines, while the
English position in front of him steadily {318} grew stronger, and in
the besieged garrison confidence took the place of despondency. A
storm on the river, it was reported in the city, cost the French
guns, provisions, and ammunition. Bourlamaque, who, as an engineer by
training, was placed in charge of the siege, was wounded; and when,
on the forenoon of May 9, a strange ship sailed up the river into the
basin of Quebec, and hoisted the English colours, little doubt could
be left that any attempt to regain the city would be in vain. The
ship in question was the _Lowestoft_ frigate, and she brought 'the
agreeable intelligence of a British fleet being masters of the St.
Lawrence, and nigh at hand to sustain us.'[32] The news, in Captain
Knox's words, was as grateful as when the garrison of Vienna, hard
pressed by the Turks, beheld Sobieski's army marching to their
relief.

[Footnote 32: Knox, vol. ii, p. 310.]

[Sidenote: _Retreat of Levis._]

But one swallow does not make a summer, and some days passed before
any other British ships appeared. On May 11 the French batteries
opened, answered by 150 guns from Quebec: and bombardment went on
without much damage, until, on the evening of the fifteenth, the
_Vanguard_ ship of war and the _Diana_ frigate anchored before
Quebec. The next morning the British ships passed up the river at
flood tide, and attacked a small French squadron above the city. The
French commander, Vauquelin, made a brave fight, but his few little
vessels were nearly all destroyed. On that night and on the
seventeenth, the French were in full retreat with the English at
their heels. Guns, scaling ladders, baggage, ammunition, sick and
wounded, were left behind. The siege of Quebec was raised, the
English, after the disastrous battle of April 28, not having lost
more than thirty men; and Murray, by his brave and able defence, made
more than amends for his previous reverse.

[Sidenote: _Reception in England of the news of Murray's defeat and
subsequent relief._]

In England the news of his defeat, followed after a short interval by
the news of his relief, resulted in a curious reproduction of the
excitement of the previous year. In a letter {319} dated June 19,
1760, Mr. Jenkinson in London wrote to Grenville, 'We all here blame
Mr. Murray, and are not at all satisfied with the reasons he assigns
for leaving the town to attack the enemy ... As it is, however, I
understand that there are no expectations that it (Quebec) can be
saved, and indeed I am told that Murray himself gives little reason
to hope it. The relief from Amherst is certainly impossible, and I do
not think that he has ever shown activity enough to make one hope
that he would make an attempt vigorous enough, even if there was a
mere chance of success.'[33] On the following ninth of July, we have
in the same _Grenville Papers_ a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to
Lord Temple, referring to 'the great and almost unexpected event of
recovering Quebec and turning the loss entirely upon the French.'[33]
Similarly Horace Walpole, on hearing the bad news, wrote: 'We are on
a sudden reading our book backwards.' The good news came, and he
chronicled it with 'Quebec is come to life again.'[34] Many cold and
hot fits had been the result of news from North America since the
year 1755; but, with the failure of Levis to retake Quebec, English
anxiety as to the issue of the strife was finally dispelled. What was
left was work for which Amherst was eminently suited, steady crushing
out of the remains of resistance, slow and certain invasion, where no
brilliant effort was needed or required.

[Footnote 33: _Grenville Papers_, vol. i, pp. 343-5.]

[Footnote 34: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, pp. 317, 323
(Letters of June 20 and 28, 1760).]

[Sidenote: _The final advance on Montreal._]

[Sidenote: _Murray ascends the river._]

A threefold English advance on Montreal was planned. Murray was to
move up the river from Quebec. Brigadier Haviland was to force the
passage of the Île aux Noix at the end of Lake Champlain, and strike
the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal. Amherst himself, with the main
army, starting from Oswego on Lake Ontario, was to come down the
river from the west. Murray was first in motion. He embarked {320}
2,400 men on ships and boats, and on July 14 took his way up stream,
followed and joined on August 17 by two regiments from Louisbourg,
which was being dismantled and abandoned. The troops went slowly up
the river, passed French outposts at various points, landed here and
there, here and there exchanged shots, and were often supplied with
provisions by the peasantry, who preferred bargaining to fighting,
and many of whom took the oath of allegiance. At Sorel, at the mouth
of the Richelieu river, Bourlamaque was stationed with a
comparatively strong force to prevent a junction between Murray and
Haviland, who was coming down from Lake Champlain; but no battle took
place, and, after Murray had reluctantly burnt the deserted houses of
the inhabitants of Sorel, who were absent in arms, the English on the
river, and the French on either bank, moved onward side by side
towards Montreal. By the end of August, Murray was encamped on an
island a few miles below Montreal, gradually gathering intelligence
of Haviland's and Amherst's advance; and on September 7 he landed on
the island of Montreal itself. During the voyage up the river two
facts had become manifest. One was that the country higher up the St.
Lawrence was less impoverished, and supplies were more plentiful,
than in the neighbourhood of Quebec. The other was that the
Canadians, who still had something to lose, were anxious for peace.
The constant advance of the English, the obvious futility of
Vaudreuil's boasts and threats, the good treatment of the inhabitants
who offered no resistance, had due effect. The country side
surrendered, the militia deserted, the French regulars began to
follow suit; and the few remaining troops, driven back on Montreal,
recognized the hopelessness of their position.

[Sidenote: _Haviland's advance._]

Haviland started from Crown Point on August 11 with about 3,500 men,
including Rogers with some of his Rangers, and a few Indians. He took
with him also some {321} light artillery. The boats which carried the
force made their way to the northern end of Lake Champlain, entered
the Richelieu river, and on the twentieth landed some of the troops
on the eastern bank of the river, over against the Île aux Noix. Here
Bougainville was stationed with a considerable force, behind
fortifications which had been strengthened in the previous winter.
Some miles further on down the Richelieu river, at St. John's,
another French force was in position, under an officer named
Roquemaure. Bougainville gave Haviland, in Knox's words, 'the trouble
to break ground and erect batteries';[35] but the English, having
attacked and taken the French vessels which lay below the Île aux
Noix, and cut off the garrison's retreat by the river, Bougainville
crossed from the island to the western bank on the twenty-seventh,
and made his way with difficulty through the woods to St. John's,
where he joined Roquemaure. On the twenty-eighth the few men left on
the Île aux Noix surrendered; on the twenty-ninth the French
abandoned St. John's also; the fort at Chambly surrendered on
September 1; as Haviland advanced, the Canadians deserted wholesale;
and the remains of Bougainville's and Roquemaure's troops, falling
back to the St. Lawrence, joined Bourlamaque's force, and were
carried over to the island of Montreal. By September 6, Haviland's
army was encamped at Longueuil on the southern shore of the river,
directly opposite Montreal.

[Footnote 35: Knox, vol. ii, p. 394.]

[Sidenote: _Amherst's advance._]

[Sidenote: _La Présentation._]

By the end of July, Amherst's army was assembling at Albany. The
colonial troops came up slowly, and valuable time was lost. The
General moved on to Schenectady, left that place on June 21, and
reached Oswego on July 9. At Oswego he stayed for a month, waiting
for the full complement of the expedition, and collecting the boats
on which the force was to descend the St. Lawrence. Sir William
Johnson joined him with a number of Indians, {322} while the white
troops reached a total of 10,000 men, rather more than half of whom
were regulars. On August 10 the army embarked. They sailed and rowed
to the end of Lake Ontario, entered the St. Lawrence, made their way
through the Thousand Islands, and by the fifteenth reached the French
mission station of La Présentation, now Ogdensburg, at the mouth of
the Oswegatchie river, where the Abbé Piquet--the apostle of the
Iroquois, as he was called--had, since the year 1749, endeavoured to
win the Five Nations to the French.[36]

[Footnote 36: See _Documentary History of New York_, vol. i, pp.
433-40 (Papers relating to the early settlement at Ogdensburg). The
Abbé Piquet retired in this year (1760) to Louisiana, and thence to
France, where he died in 1781. His mission on the Oswegatchie river,
or Rivière de la Présentation, was a good sample of the aggressive
French missions in Canada. Its object was to bring over the western
tribes of the Five Nations to the French religion and French
interests.]

[Sidenote: _Fort Levis taken._]

[Sidenote: _Amherst before Montreal._]

A little lower down, on an island in the St. Lawrence, at the head of
the rapids, the French had a fortified outpost. They called the
island Île Royale, and the fort upon it Fort Levis. The officer in
charge was Pouchot, who had commanded at Niagara in the preceding
year, and had been exchanged with other prisoners. From the
eighteenth to the twenty-fourth of August, Amherst attacked the fort.
From either bank, and from the neighbouring islands, the British guns
poured in their fire, supported by the armed vessels of the
expedition; and on the twenty-fifth, after a brave defence, Pouchot
surrendered. On the thirty-first, Amherst began the descent of the
rapids, watched by La Corne and a band of Canadians. A number of
boats were lost, and eighty-four men were drowned; but the main body
was carried safely onward, and by September 5 reached the Île Perrot,
a few miles above the island of Montreal. On the sixth, Amherst
landed at Lachine, and, marching forward, encamped that night
directly in front of Montreal.

[Sidenote: _Negotiations for surrender._]

[Sidenote: _Montreal capitulates, and with it the whole of Canada._]

The next day the French commanders negotiated for {323} surrender,
Murray having meanwhile landed on the island, and begun his march
towards Montreal, on the opposite side to that on which Amherst was
encamped. Vaudreuil and Levis tried to extract better terms from
Amherst than the latter was inclined to grant; and Levis, in
particular, strove hard to modify the provision that all the French
troops in Canada should lay down their arms, and not serve again
during the war. His protests were in vain. Amherst returned answer in
strong words, that he was resolved by the terms of the capitulation
to mark his sense of the infamous conduct of which the French troops
had been guilty, in exciting the savages to barbarities in the course
of the war. With 2,400 men opposed to about 17,000 in the three
English forces, the Frenchmen had no option but to surrender. On
September 8 the terms of capitulation were signed, and the whole of
Canada passed into the keeping of Great Britain.

[Sidenote: _Amherst on the conduct of the French Indians._]

Amherst's reference to French dealings with the Indians, and to the
dealings of the Indians in French employ, the authority for which is
Captain Knox's book, deserves to be noted. When two white races are
pitted against each other in savage lands, the final mastery will
rest with the one which, less than the other, comes down to the
savage level. The French had sinned more than the English in this
respect; and it is significant that, at the surrender of Niagara,
they stipulated for protection against the Indian allies of the
English, and that at the surrender of Montreal they made a similar
request. On the second occasion Amherst answered, and answered truly,
that no cruelties had been committed by the Indians on the English
side. A few days before, at the taking of Fort Levis, a large
proportion of Johnson's Indians had deserted when not allowed to use
their scalping knives; and probably the majority of the English
shared Captain Knox's opinion of them, that 'this is quite uniform
with their conduct on all occasions whenever {324} opportunity seems
to offer for their being serviceable to us.'[37] The truth was that
the English did not love the Indians or Indian ways; they suffered in
consequence while the fate of war was still in the balance; but in
the end they gained, as a ruling race, for the humanity of Amherst
and the men whom he commanded stood to the credit of Great Britain in
the coming time.

[Footnote 37: Knox, vol. ii, p. 413. According to Knox, Johnson
collected 1,330 Indians belonging to seventeen tribes. This number
was reduced at the time of embarkation to 706, and afterwards by
desertion to 182.]

[Sidenote: _End of the war._]

With the capitulation of Montreal, the war in North America ended.
Already in the past July some French ships bringing supplies, which
had reached the Baie des Chaleurs in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, had
been followed up and destroyed in the Restigouche river by Commander
Byron; and while Montreal was being given up, a detachment from the
English garrison at Quebec reduced the French outpost at Jacques
Cartier. The surrender of Montreal included all Canada, and Robert
Rogers was sent by Amherst to take over Detroit, Michillimackinac,
and other of the western outposts of New France. They were peaceably
occupied at the time, but three years later were the scene of hard
fighting in consequence of the dangerous Indian rising under Pontiac.
Amherst himself left Canada almost immediately, but remained in
America as Commander-in-Chief, having his head quarters at New York,
until peace was signed, when he returned to England. Vaudreuil and
his subordinates went back to France, to be brought heavily to
account for their shortcomings; and until the peace, or rather until
Pontiac's revolt had been put down a year later, Canada remained
under military rule.

[Sidenote: _Canada under military rule._]

There were three Governors, subordinate to the
Commander-in-Chief--General Murray at Quebec, Colonel Burton at Three
Rivers, and General Gage, who eventually took over {325} Amherst's
command, at Montreal. Matters seem to have gone in the main smoothly.
The Canadian people, worn with war, desired only rest and fair
dealing, and fair dealing they received at the hands of the British
commanders, among whom Murray was a conspicuously humane man.
Criminal jurisdiction was placed in the hands of British officers,
but civil cases were left to be settled by the captains of militia in
the various parishes according to the custom of the people, with the
right of appeal to the Governor. More publicity was given by
proclamation to the orders and regulations of the Governors than had
been the case in French times; and though the status was one of
military occupation, there was a nearer approach to freedom, or at
any rate more even-handed justice, than in the days when Bigot and
his confederates robbed the peasantry in the name of the French King.

[Sidenote: _Events in Europe._]

[Sidenote: _Death of King George II._]

[Sidenote: _Rise of Bute and resignation of Pitt._]

Meanwhile events moved fast in Europe. The fall of Montreal was
followed in a few weeks' time by the death of King George II. He died
on October 25, 1760, and with the accession of George III there came
a change in English policy. The 'King's friends,' as they were
called, by intrigue and bribery gradually gained power. Bute, the
royal favourite, led them, and strongly supported a peace policy. In
March, 1761, he became a Secretary of State, and in the following
October Pitt resigned. Success had perhaps told against the great
English minister. The main work to which he had put his hand had been
accomplished; among the colleagues who intrigued against him, or who
resented his imperious leadership, there may well have been in some
minds an honest wish to give the country rest and to lighten the
heavy burdens which war imposed. Already peace negotiations with
France had been opened, but the discovery that the French Government
had formed a secret compact with Spain stiffened Pitt's policy, and
he urged the desirability of striking the first blow and declaring
war against {326} Spain. On this issue he parted company with the
other ministers, except Lord Temple, and retired from office. A few
months later, in May, 1762, Newcastle resigned, and Bute was left
supreme.

[Sidenote: _Greatness of Pitt._]

No eulogy on Pitt can exaggerate the services which he rendered to
England. 'He revived the military genius of our people, he supported
our allies, he extended our trade, he raised our reputation, he
augmented our dominions.'[38] He gave to the world a splendid
illustration of an English statesman who was as good as his word;
who, unlike the ordinary run of Parliamentary leaders, did not shift
his course or seek for compromise. He believed in the destiny of his
country, and shaped that destiny on world-wide lines. His faults,
which were not few, are forgiven by his countrymen, for he loved
England much.

[Footnote 38: _Annual Register_ for 1761, p. 47.]

[Sidenote: _War with Spain._]

[Sidenote: _English reverse in Newfoundland._]

The mean men who supplanted him could not undo what he had done. The
beginning of the year 1762 saw them at war with Spain, and still
Englishmen struck blow after blow. In 1761, while Pitt was still in
office, Belle Île, off the French coast, had been taken, and in the
West Indies and in India there had been gains. In 1762 more West
Indian islands were captured, and Spain lost for the time Havana in
the West, the Philippines in the East. Curiously enough the one
reverse experienced by the English was in North America, St. John's
in Newfoundland being surprised and taken in June, 1762, though it
was recovered in the following September.

[Sidenote: _The Peace of Paris._]

In spite of continued success Bute was resolved on peace, the
negotiations being entrusted to the Duke of Bedford, who was one of
the extreme peace party. The preliminaries were concluded in
November, 1762; they were approved by Parliament, and on February 10,
1763, the Peace of Paris was signed. Under its provisions the French
King renounced all pretensions to Nova Scotia or Acadia, and ceded
'in full {327} right Canada with all its dependencies, as well as the
island of Cape Breton and all the other islands and coasts in the
gulf and river St. Lawrence.' A line drawn down the middle of the
river Mississippi defined the inland frontier; all territory on the
left side of the river, 'except the town of New Orleans and the
island in which it is situated,' being ceded to Great Britain. Two
clauses, however, in the treaty marred the completeness of the
cession. They renewed the rights of fishing and drying on part of the
Newfoundland coast, which had been given to French subjects by the
Treaty of Utrecht; and they ceded in full right to the King of France
the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, to serve as a shelter to
French fishermen, on condition that the islands should not be
fortified. Here were the seeds of future trouble, sown by other hands
than those of Pitt. Yet, considering the character and inclinations
of the men who held power in England at this critical time, the
country had reason to congratulate itself on the result of the
negotiations.[39] Spain paid for her interference in the quarrel with
France by the loss of Florida, which became a British possession; in
turn she received from France Louisiana. Thus the Seven Years' War
ended, {328} closing the story of New France; and on the line of the
St. Lawrence, under British rule, grew up the Canadian nation.

[Footnote 39: Lord Chesterfield's views on the preliminaries of the
Peace of Paris, not yet fully known when he wrote, are interesting.
In a letter dated Nov. 13, 1762 (1775 ed., vol. iv, pp. 190, 191,
Letter 328), he writes, 'We have by no means made so good a bargain
with France (i.e. as with Spain), for in truth what do we get by it
except Canada, with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi,
and that is all? As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in
Newfoundland, they are very well _per la predica_, and for the
Commissary whom we shall employ, for he will have a good salary from
hence to see that those restrictions are complied with, and the
French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be
broken through. It is plain to me that the French fishery will be
exactly what it was before the war.... But, after all I have said,
the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered
that no one single person, who carried on this negotiation on our
parts, was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before.
Upon the whole then the acquisition of Canada has cost us four score
millions sterling.']


NOTE.--For the above, see the books specified at the end of the
preceding chapter.

In these two chapters the original dispatches have been consulted,
and much use has been made of

  KNOX'S _Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America_
    (London, 1769).




{329}

CHAPTER XI

GENERAL SUMMARY


In order to sum up the story of New France, it is proposed in the
present chapter to try to answer the four following questions. What
effect had geography on the history of Canada down to the year 1763?
Why did France lose Canada? What were the respective merits and
defects of the French and English systems and policies in North
America? And lastly, was the contest between the two powers and the
victory of one inevitable, and was it beneficial? These four
questions overlap each other, and the answers involve considerable
repetition of what has gone before; but a short general summary may
be useful to those who care to study the earlier history of Canada in
reference to the general history of colonization.

[Sidenote: _Position of the French among colonizing nations._]

From the time of Columbus down to the middle of the nineteenth
century, five nations, all on the western side of Europe, were mainly
concerned in carrying European trade, conquest, and settlement into
other parts of the world. They were the Spaniards, the Portuguese,
the Dutch, the French, and the English. Of these five nations, the
Spaniards had what may be called a continental career. They overran
and mastered an immense area of mainland. The Portuguese, the Dutch,
and the English, on the other hand, while they differed from each
other in many points, were alike in this, that they were traders and
seafarers, not so much attempting an inland dominion, as securing
footholds on sea coasts, peninsulas, and islands. The French stood
midway between the Spaniards and the other three nations. They were
not {330} continental conquerors to the same extent as the Spaniards,
they did not confine themselves to the fringes of the land to the
same extent as the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. They were
what France made them to be.

[Sidenote: _Twofold character of France and the French._]

France is an integral part of the continent of Europe; but it is
also, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, the westernmost
province of that continent; and it has a long indented seaboard open
to the Atlantic. The country has a double outlook, its people have
had a twofold character and a double history. It is noteworthy that,
while the French, to judge from the greatest event in their
history--the French Revolution--and to judge from their writing and
thought, have been the most thorough and logical, the most
uncompromising of peoples, their record has yet been in a sense one
of continual compromise, or at least one of perpetual combination of
opposite extremes. The northern and southern races, the northern and
southern religions, have had their meeting-ground in France. France,
which has been notable for violent political changes, had and has the
strongest element of conservatism in its population. No nation is
more quick-witted than the French, yet in none is there more plodding
industry.

[Sidenote: _Canada well suited to be a sphere of French
colonization._]

In the fullness of time, the French people had their call to take
part in the over-sea expansion of Europe, and they found their way to
Canada. They entered the New World at its widest point, where the
American continent extends furthest from west to east; but they
entered it also at the point where the interior of the continent is
most accessible from the sea by means of a great navigable river and
a group of lakes. Thus the advent of the French into Canada meant the
coming of a people, who in their old home were partly continental,
partly sea-going, into a sphere of colonization, which was a vast
extent of continent, but which at the same time was more intersected
and more dominated by water than perhaps any other portion of the
mainland of the globe. {331} Like came to like when the French came
to Canada. Their old home had given them at once the instincts of
land conquerors, and the knowledge of men whose way is on the waters.
Quick to move and loving motion, they found the route into the New
World to be one which invited and facilitated quick movement; for,
important as is inland water communication at the present day, it was
all important before the days of railways. The great highroad of
North America was the St. Lawrence, and that highroad became owned by
a quick, ambitious people, who were not content to remain as traders
by the side of the sea.

[Sidenote: _Greatness of the St. Lawrence water system._]

The combination of accessibility from the open sea, of length of
navigable waters, and of volume of waters, makes the St. Lawrence
basin almost, if not quite unique. Up to Three Rivers, 330 miles from
the sea, the St. Lawrence is a tidal river. Up to the Falls of
Niagara, 600 miles from the sea--nearly as far as London is from
Berlin--there is no break of navigation. From the westernmost point
of Lake Superior to the Atlantic is a distance of 2,000 miles--much
further than is the distance from London to St. Petersburg. Lake
Superior alone is larger in size than Scotland.

[Sidenote: _It is almost connected with the basin of the Mississippi,
of Hudson Bay, and of the Hudson river._]

[Sidenote: _Colonization in Canada was colonization by water._]

Further, this wonderful chain of waters, as has been pointed out, is
nearly continuous with the Mississippi basin on the southern side,
and on the north-western side with the lakes and rivers which drain
into Hudson Bay; while one of the smaller affluents of the St.
Lawrence, the Richelieu river, carries into the St. Lawrence the
waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the southern end of Lake
George being but very few miles distant from the upper waters of the
Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic. In short, Canada, within
its ancient limits, was a network of inland waters. Here was a
continent to be conquered and settled by water rather than by land,
and the congenial task of conquering and attempting to settle it was
allotted by Providence to the French.

{332} [Sidenote: _The geography of Canada favoured motion._]

Canada then suited the French, and the French suited Canada; but the
effect of the geography of Canada on an incoming race, with the
instincts and the characteristics of the French, was to stimulate
their natural inclination to attempt too much and to go too fast and
too far. The incomers moved quickly along the lines of communication,
and went into the heart of the continent; but permanent settlement
lagged behind, and was confined to the edges of the inland waters.
For, while nature had given to Canada, in her rivers and lakes, the
best of roads, away from those rivers and lakes the land was
difficult to penetrate. Thus Canada was colonized only by the water
side, and what settlement there was, was characterized by length
without breadth; while, beyond the point where continuous settlement
ended, the very easiness of movement carried forward enterprising
French officers, priests, and traders, until there was a skeleton
outline of French dominion, which was never filled in, from the Gulf
of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _Settlement held close to the water side._]

[Sidenote: _Two distinct kinds of colonists in Canada._]

Geography, too, had this effect upon the population. The rivers were
so entirely all in all, that they made the settled portion of the
French Canadians very settled, and the fluid portion very fluid.
Those who wished to stay in one place stayed by the river bank, which
was the roadside, because it was the roadside, and because behind and
away from the river there was not open ground but dense forest.
Those, on the other hand, who were inclined to roam, were carried by
the waters wheresoever they wished, with the backwoods at hand,
should hiding-places be required. Thus Canada bred two distinct
species of colonists, the _habitans_ of the central St. Lawrence, and
the _voyageurs_ or _coureurs de bois_. As in their old home, so still
more in their new, the French race comprised contradictory elements.

[Sidenote: _Effect of the Canadian climate on colonization._]

[Sidenote: _It made against continuity_]

Climate counts for much in the formation of a people, and in
determining its history. The climate of Eastern {333} Canada inclines
to extremes. It favours quickness but not continuity of action. The
summer is short, but very hot and bright; the winter is long and
severe, but again not unfavourable to movement over the frozen
surface of water and ground. Eastern Canada is not by nature a land
open all the year round to steady work, but one in which settlers
have a limited time wherein to till the ground, followed by a long,
close season; while wanderers can in summer and winter alike indulge
their vagrant instincts. The tendency therefore of the Canadian
climate, as regards its influence on an incoming race, with a
restless and impatient element in its character, was to stimulate the
restlessness, and to discourage colonization in the sense of
attachment to the soil.

[Sidenote: _and against the policy of the French Government._]

In winter, the St. Lawrence is closed to shipping. Consequently New
France was for several months in each year cut off from all
communication with the mother country. Here again the effect of
climate was to break continuity of colonization; and, moreover, the
forces of nature were employed against the policy of the French
Government, for the effect of long breaks in communication must have
been to develop a separate life in New France, evidence of which is
to be found in the jealousy existing, in Vaudreuil's and Montcalm's
time, between natives of France and natives of Canada; whereas the
unaltering aim of French Kings and ministers was simply to reproduce
France in America, and to keep the colony under constant and rigid
control from home. The effects of the summer, therefore, on Canada
were counteracted by winter isolation; and one more element of
contradiction was introduced into French history in North America.

[Sidenote: _Canada had no minerals._]

[Sidenote: _This was one cause of the small population._]

The natural products of a country are an important factor in making
its people. Canada, as compared with most other fields of
colonization, with Spanish America for instance, or the East Indies,
was a poor land. It had practically no mineral wealth, though traces
of iron and copper were found {334} in the region of Lake Superior.
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century Charlevoix wrote: 'The
first source of the ill fortune of this country, which is honoured
with the name of New France, was the report which was at first spread
through the kingdom that it had no mines; and they did not enough
consider that the greatest advantage that can be drawn from a colony
is the increase of trade. And to accomplish this, it requires people,
and these peoplings must be made by degrees, so that it will not
appear in such a kingdom as France.'[1] The great weakness of Canada
was the paucity of the white population. Had mines been discovered,
the colony would no doubt have been much stronger, for a far greater
number of colonists would have come out from France; and, while the
character of the people would have been, in a sense, at least as
restless as it actually was, the restlessness would have been
localized in the mining areas, which would have become large centres
of population.

[Footnote 1: Charlevoix's _Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières_,
giving an account of a voyage to Canada (Eng. translation, 1763, p.
31). The letters began in 1720.]

[Sidenote: _Agriculture, fisheries, and fur-trading._]

In the absence of minerals Canada depended on agriculture, fisheries,
and fur-trading. Of these three industries, agriculture alone
conduced to permanent settlement. The fisheries did not directly much
concern the life of the colony up the St. Lawrence river, for the
fishing-grounds were mainly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the
coasts of Newfoundland and Acadia; nor did fishing, when the
fishermen found their principal market in Europe, and were in great
measure domiciled in Europe, contribute much to the colonization of
North America. Fur-trading again, the great speciality of Canada,
made for movement and for wandering life, not for colonization. This
is pointed out by Charlevoix, who dwells upon the evil results of
giving licences to trade, as encouraging vagabondism, and notes as
{335} the second cause of the ill fortune of Canada, the want of
resolution in its people, and their constant moving from place to
place, instead of carefully selecting a place for settlement and
staying there.[2]

[Footnote 2: Charlevoix (as above), pp. 31-5.]

The real wealth of Eastern Canada was, as it still is, agricultural;
but the history of colonization proves that agricultural colonies,
while very sound and sure, progress very slowly; and to the
impatient, enterprising Frenchman, who was inclined to seek fortune
over the seas, farming in Canada, with a Canadian winter to face,
offered little attraction. It is true that the English North American
colonies were also agricultural colonies; but they had a great
advantage over New France, in that their coasts were open all the
year round, resulting in a maritime trade, which could never be
enjoyed by Canada. Moreover New England, at any rate, was peopled by
colonists who went out, not to make their fortunes, and not to build
up a dominion for their King, but to make their homes, and their
children's homes, on the agricultural pattern, in as kindly a soil
as, and in a kindlier climate than, that of Canada.

[Sidenote: _Canada better suited for war than peace._]

New France then was a country where movement was easy, and where the
incentives to settlement were not great; and in its white population,
or at any rate in a large proportion of that population, there was a
strong element of restlessness, added to great power of conciliating
and assimilating savages; while the religious and political policy of
its rulers was, in the main, a forward policy. The result was that
the Canadians were more successful in motion than at rest, in making
war than in keeping peace. 'The English Americans,' writes
Charlevoix, 'are entirely averse to war because they have much to
lose; they do not regard the savages, because they think they have no
occasion for them. The youth of the French, for the contrary reasons,
hate {336} peace, and live well with the savages, whose esteem they
gain during a war and have their friendship at all times.[3]

[Footnote 3: Charlevoix (as above), p. 27.]

[Sidenote: _The Canadians as fighters._]

The Canadians were to the English settlers in New England or New
York, very much what the Highlanders of Scotland, in past centuries,
were to the dwellers in the Lowlands. Their forte was in raiding
their English rivals; and, as they were better qualified to excel in
war than in peace, so in war they were more capable of quick,
spasmodic action, than of bearing continuous and steady strain. 'They
seem not to be masters of a certain impetuosity, which makes them
fitter for a _coup de main_, or a sudden expedition, than for the
regular and settled operations of a campaign. It has also been
remarked, that amongst a great number of brave men, who have
distinguished themselves in the late war, there have been few found
who had talents to command. This was perhaps because they had not
sufficiently learnt how to obey.'[4] On the other hand, it must be
remembered that Canada also contained a stationary population on the
banks of the St. Lawrence, who more and more, as years went on,
learnt what war meant and preferred peace; and that the colony was
not devoid of trading centres, the largest of which were Quebec and
Montreal, and all of which, including for instance, Niagara, Detroit,
and Michillimackinac, were inland ports.

[Footnote 4: Charlevoix (as above), p. 104.]

[Sidenote: _The English had the better position in North America,
larger numbers, and command of the sea._]

If the above was the effect of geography on the history of France in
North America, it is not difficult to answer the question, Why did
the French lose Canada? They lost it because the English had the
better position in North America; because the English population in
North America largely outnumbered the French; because, when the
crisis came, the English made their main effort in North America,
whereas the French devoted their resources and their energies
primarily to continental war in Europe; and lastly, because {337} the
English secured command of the sea, and in consequence command of the
St. Lawrence also. But then the further question arises: What
produced this balance of advantage on the English side?

[Sidenote: _There is no valid reason why the English originally
secured the better geographical position in North America._]

It is not easy to determine why the better lot in North America, as
regards geography, fell to Great Britain and not to France. It was
hardly a question of prior discovery. The first pioneer for England,
Cabot, struck the New World at Newfoundland or Cape Breton, far north
of what became the main sphere of British colonization. The first
authenticated pioneer on behalf of France, Verrazano, found his way
to the present shores of the United States. The French connexion with
the St. Lawrence dated from Cartier's voyages; but those voyages,
though they gave the right of discovery, did not result at the time
in effective occupation. It was little more than an accident that the
English settled in Virginia and New England, and the French in Acadia
and on the St. Lawrence; though the fact of having found the St.
Lawrence, and the attraction of a great river, which might be the
long-wished-for, and long-dreamt-of, highroad to the far East, may
well have dictated to French instincts where New France should be. At
any rate, the English gained the great initial advantage of a far
larger seaboard, open at all times of the year, and a climate which
was more favourable to European colonization. 'Along the continent of
America which we possess,' wrote Wolfe from Louisbourg in 1758,
'there is a variety of climate, and, for the most part, healthy and
pleasant.... Such is our extent of territory upon this fine
continent, that an inhabitant may enjoy the kind influence of
moderate warmth all the year round.'[5]

[Footnote 5: Wolfe to his mother, Aug. 11, 1758 (Wright, p. 454).]

[Sidenote: _English superiority in numbers mainly due to French
policy towards the Huguenots._]

With this advantage, it was natural that there should be greater
immigration into the English colonies than into Canada. But this was
not the only, or the main, cause of the superior numbers in the
English colonies. The main {338} cause was the policy of the French
Government, and especially its religious policy. The most fatal
mistake made by the French in regard to North America was the
exclusion of the Huguenots. The men who wished to leave England went
to the present United States. The men who wished to leave France were
not allowed to go to Canada, and went in considerable numbers to
England and her colonies. The effect, therefore, of Roman Catholic
exclusiveness was that, though France had a far greater population
than England, the greatest French colony failed for want of
colonists. Nor was it only a matter of quantity, but a matter of
quality also. The Huguenots were the type of men who would make
homes, create business, and build up communities beyond the seas.
They were of the same strong fibre as the New England Puritans. In
the competition of the coming time, New France was doomed in
consequence of being closed to the French Protestants.

[Sidenote: _Numerical superiority of the English forces in North
America in the Seven Years' War._]

[Sidenote: _Canada was conquered by Great Britain, not by the English
colonies._]

When the Seven Years' War came, the English colonists in North
America outnumbered the French by thirteen to one; but, at the
moment, superiority in numbers was largely counterbalanced by the
want of union in the English colonies, whereas Canada was one.
Therefore the issue largely depended on the forces and the leaders
sent out by the two mother countries respectively. England, inspired
by Pitt, sent out abundant troops. France, inspired by Madame de
Pompadour, kept nearly all her troops to fight Frederick of Prussia,
with his few English and Hanoverian allies. The result was the defeat
of the French in North America, and the British conquest of Canada.
Whatever might have been the result if the crisis had been postponed,
it was not the British colonists but the troops from England, who, in
1758-60, decided the fate of North America. It is customary, in
writing accounts of the colonial wars of Great Britain, to emphasize
the merits of the colonial soldiers, who have the advantage of
knowing the country and the mode of {339} fighting appropriate to it;
and to depreciate the regulars sent from home. Reverses, like that of
Braddock, are written and read from a colonial point of view; and in
America, more especially, the colonists' side has been emphasized in
consequence of the results of the subsequent War of Independence.
But, as a matter of fact, excellent as were some of the colonial
troops, such as Robert Rogers' Rangers, Canada was conquered by
soldiers from England under able English generals like Wolfe and
Amherst; and similarly the burden of the defence of Canada fell
mainly on Montcalm and the few regiments which had been spared to him
from France.

[Sidenote: _The English command of the water._]

As the French kept for war on the continent of Europe the troops
which should have been sent to North America, so they allowed the
English to gain control of the water, over which alone troops and
supplies could be sent to New France. 'The possession of Canada,'
writes Captain Mahan, 'depended upon sea power.'[6] After the victory
of Hawke in Quiberon Bay, and other English successes on sea, Burke,
in the _Annual Register_ for 1760,[7] wrote that France 'was obliged
to sit, the impotent spectator of the ruin of her colonies, without
being able to send them the slightest succour. It was then she found
what it was to be inferior at sea.' Especially important was the
command of the water to those who would hold Canada, for two reasons;
because Canada, poor and undeveloped, was dependent on supplies from
Europe, to a greater extent than the English colonies[8] in North
America; and because she could and must be attacked by the St.
Lawrence.

[Footnote 6: _Influence of Sea Power upon History_ (6th ed.), p.
294.]

[Footnote 7: p. 9.]

[Footnote 8: Thus Charlevoix (as above, p. 38) says Canada 'has
always had more from France than it could pay.']

The command of the sea meant the command of the St. Lawrence; and the
command of the St. Lawrence was indispensable for the reduction of
Quebec and Montreal. The downfall of New France began when the Treaty
of {340} Utrecht took from her, in Acadia, the best part of her
scanty seaboard; the downward process was arrested when Louisbourg,
taken by Massachusetts, was restored to the French; it began again
with the second capture of Louisbourg. The seaport was taken in one
year; in the next the river port, Quebec, was lost also. This would
not have happened had the French not divided their energies so
completely as to give Great Britain superiority on the water. They
attempted too much at home, and the same fault, if we turn to
consider their system and policy in North America, was carried into
the New World.

[Sidenote: _French and English systems and policies in North America
compared._]

It is roughly true to say that in North America the French had a
definite policy and a definite system; but the policy, though
brilliant in conception, was quite impracticable, and the system was
radically unsound. The English in North America, on the other hand,
had rarely any policy and never any system.

[Sidenote: _Hopelessness of the French scheme for dominion in North
America._]

The French policy was an imperial policy. It was clear, consistent,
and far-reaching. The object aimed at was a French dominion in North
America, the lines of communication being the two great rivers, the
St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. Canada and Louisiana were to be
joined; the English were to be kept between the Alleghanies and the
Atlantic; the French King was to be lord of all; the French religion
was to be supreme; the Indians were to be converted and made French
in sympathies and interests. The scheme was brilliant, but it was
impossible; and it is difficult to understand why it is considered by
historians to have been so dangerous to the future of the British
colonies. White men of one race, sparsely scattered over two sides of
a gigantic triangle, were to control white men of another but equally
masculine race, thirteen times as numerous, who held the base of the
triangle, the base being the seaboard. The attempt became more
impracticable every year, for every year the actual preponderance of
numbers on the English {341} side increased, and every year the white
men gained on the red men, who alone could make the realization of
the French dream even conceivably possible.

[Sidenote: _French native policy._]

[Sidenote: _Its merits._]

Ample reference has already been made to the dealings of the French
with the Indians. There is much to praise and much to blame in what
may be called the native policy of France in North America. The
object of the French Government was, as Charlevoix points out, to
'frenchify' the savages;[9] and, as an instance of the value of the
Indians to the cause of France in America, he cites 'the Abenaquis,
who, though few in numbers, were during the two last wars the
principal bulwark of New France against New England.'[9] With the
exception of the Five Nation Indians, the natives of North America
were almost wholly on the side of the French as against the English,
in spite of the fact that the English offered them a better market
and sold them better wares. The reason was that the French relations
to the Indians were more human than those of the English. No doubt,
among the English colonists were Quakers and Moravians, whose tenets
bade them deal gently with the people of the soil; and on the New
York frontier, from Dutch times, there had been friendship, sometimes
warmer sometimes cooler, between the Dutch and the English colonists
on the one hand, and the Iroquois on the other. But the ordinary
English colonist's view of the red man was the Old Testament
view--hard, exclusive, and often cruel. The Puritan New Englander
took the land of the heathen in possession, and from his standpoint
there was not room in it for him and them. Widely different was the
French view. The Indians were not to be excluded from, but
incorporated in, the French dominion. The King of France, and his
representative the Governor of Canada, were to be the fathers, and
the Indians were to be the obedient and trusting children. The
missions taught the {342} same lesson. The Indians were not to be
exterminated, but to be fruitful and multiply as dutiful children of
France and of the Roman Catholic Church. On these lines the French
acted consistently from first to last; and their unaltering policy
contrasted favourably with the halting, uncertain dealings of the
English, which changed from year to year, and were different in the
different colonies. The way to win a black man's or a red man's
affections is to treat him, if not as an equal, at least as a man,
and to be constant in the treatment. For this reason, the Indians
loved the French better than the English. Very rarely on the English
side appeared a man, like Sir William Johnson, who possessed the
mixture of firmness and sympathy which attracted and conciliated the
Indians, and which was common among the French.

[Footnote 9: Charlevoix (as above), pp. 34, 35.]

[Sidenote: _Its defects._]

But there was a very dark side to the French policy and system in
regard to the North American Indians. In the first place, as has been
abundantly shown in the preceding pages, the French authorities,
temporal and spiritual, kept the savages on their side by
sanctioning, or at least not repressing, their savagery; and notably
the mission Indians of Canada, the special protégés of the priests,
were foremost in barbarous warfare against white Christians of a
different shade of religion. In the second place, the political
system of Canada, which indirectly created the Canadian vagrants, the
_coureurs de bois_, produced, in doing so, indianized Frenchmen,
differing little from frenchified Indians. Here again we can take
Charlevoix's testimony. He writes that 'some vagabonds, who had taken
a liking to independency and a wandering life, had remained among the
savages, from whom they could not be distinguished but by their
vices.'[10] If the French were more human than the English in their
dealings with the Indians, they were more human for evil as well as
for good; and, whatever was the result on the Indians, {343} there is
no question as to the result on the French and English respectively,
of their different lines of action towards the red men. The English
race gained greatly in the end in soundness and in progress, from
keeping outside the Indian circle and not coming down to the Indian
level.

[Footnote 10: Charlevoix (as above), p. 34.]

[Sidenote: _Merits of French settlement in Canada._]

It has been said above that the French system in North America was
radically unsound. It was unsound, in that it was based on political
and religious exclusiveness. There was the one great fundamental
mistake of excluding the Huguenots, and there were various other
important defects. But, on the hypothesis that the most independent
and most progressive element in France was to have no place in New
France, it is open to question whether the system of colonization,
which Louis XIV, Colbert, and Talon devised, and which remained the
basis of the colony, deserves the somewhat severe criticism which it
has received at the hands of historians. It is true that the system
was most artificial, that it contained no element of freedom or
self-government, and that when, long years after it came into being,
many of the restrictions were removed in consequence of the English
conquest of Canada, the colonists were deeply sensible of the relief.
It is true, too, that reaction against these restrictions, while
still in existence, produced the semi-savage race of _coureurs de
bois_, and that, through placing the power in the hands of a few
individuals, without providing any check of local representation or
local public opinion, an atmosphere of wholesale corruption and
intrigue was produced. But none the less there was an undoubted
element of soundness and strength in the settlement of New France;
and a considerable amount of shrewdness was shown in taking a certain
material from the old country and placing it in the New World, under
familiar conditions. The military side of the colonization was
skilfully handled; and the peasants, who had been in tutelage in
France to lord, to King, and to Church, found themselves in their new
homes {344} under similar guidance, instead of being turned into
strange ways, for which by bringing up they were not fitted. The
system, artificial as it was, produced permanent settlement of
considerable strength and great tenacity, which, under a more liberal
régime, has resulted in the French-speaking Canadian people of the
present day.

[Sidenote: _Canada, as compared with the English colonies, was one._]

[Sidenote: _The English colonies were separate from the mother
country, and from each other._]

There were divisions in Canada, and various contradictory elements in
its history; but, as against foreign rivals and for purposes of
offence and defence, the colony was one, under one Government and one
Church, and in line with the mother country. Widely different was the
case of the English colonies. They were rarely in harmony with the
mother country, or with each other. They had little or no instinct of
imperialism. They had the instinct of self-preservation, and if
seriously attacked were to some extent prepared, unless Quaker
influence was dominant, to protect themselves, and to accept aid from
the mother country. But their traditions and their inclinations made
for peace, not for war; for isolation, not for union. Their
forefathers' aim and object had been to create and maintain separate
and self-dependent communities, not to be in substance amenable to
home control. Here is a French view of the New Englanders given by
the anonymous eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745: 'These
singular people have a system of laws and protection peculiar to
themselves, and their Governor carries himself like a monarch.'[11]
If the fault of the Canadian system was too rigid uniformity and too
complete subordination to the mother country, the English colonies
suffered from the opposite extreme, from utter want of uniformity and
complete absence of system. Different constitutions, different shades
of religious beliefs, different phases of settlement--all created
disunion. Common origin made a bond with the mother country, but the
Governors {345} sent from England could tell those who sent them how
deficient was the habit of obedience to the British Crown.

[Footnote 11: Professor Wrong's translation, p. 37.]

[Sidenote: _The English colonists alone no match for Canada._]

[Sidenote: _Shortcomings of the home Government._]

Common danger alone produced occasional signs of common action. The
New England colonies, whose borders were most within reach of French
raids, and whose shores reached to Acadia, showed far the most public
spirit, and far the most power of combination. The southern colonies
awoke only when the French in the Ohio valley did them active and
present hurt; but, with many times the numbers of the Canadian
population, the English colonies as a rule showed themselves to be no
match for Canada. The first decisive treaty in North America--the
Peace of Utrecht, which gave Acadia to Great Britain--was the result
of fighting by English, not colonial soldiers, and not in America,
but in Flanders under Marlborough. The second decisive treaty, the
Peace of Paris in 1763, was the result of fighting in America, but
mainly by British not colonial troops, and under British generals.
The 'Bostonnais' alone among the English colonists were objects of
apprehension to the French; and, if it were not for the record of
Massachusetts and her smaller neighbours, the English colonies in
North America before the year 1763 would in manhood and public spirit
compare poorly with Canada. With equal truth it may be said that, in
the matter of having a clear and consistent policy in North America,
Great Britain compared very poorly with France; and the apathy of the
colonies may fairly be attributed in large measure to their
uncertainty as to what on any particular occasion might be the
attitude of the King and the ministers in England; whether support
would be forthcoming or withheld, and whether, if forthcoming, it
would involve some sacrifice in return. It is very noticeable how
often a promised force from home either was never sent or sent too
late; it is noticeable too how difficult it was for Governors who
opposed French claims and pretensions, such as Dongan of New York, in
the seventeenth century, and William Shirley {346} of Massachusetts,
in the eighteenth, to persuade the home Government of the justice of
their views. Like her colonies, England was as a rule averse to war;
and as her colonies were inclined to keep her at arm's length, so she
was inclined to leave them, within limits, to take care of
themselves.

[Sidenote: _English compromise._]

In the case of North America, while French and English were competing
there, the English through their Government acted as they always have
acted, during the whole course of their foreign and colonial history.
They did, they undid, they compromised, until at length in Pitt there
came a man who gripped the nettle, and the end was reached which
might with infinitely greater ease have been attained many years
before. When Quebec was in its infancy, the English under Kirke
conquered it; the English King gave it back, and then the French
dominion in North America took root. After Marlborough's wars the
Peace of Utrecht gave Acadia to England, but gave it in terms so
vague that the French continued to claim much or most of it; at the
same time it left Cape Breton Island to France, and sowed the seeds
of an apparently perennial controversy between Great Britain and
France with regard to fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland.
There was more war, and the colonists took Cape Breton Island. Under
the terms of the next treaty the English Government restored it to
France. Then came the final war and the final peace; England gained
all Canada, but, with that strange liking which Englishmen seem to
have for leaving a frayed end in their treaty arrangements, the
British Government confirmed the fishing rights of France on the
Newfoundland coast, and added thereto possession of the two small
islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

It was not policy, it was not system, which gave North America to the
English rather than to the French, and yet there was a certain gain
even from the utter absence of both policy and system. Natural forces
had more play on the English side than on the French, and in a sense
it might {347} be said of the English colonies that their strength
was to sit still.

[Sidenote: _Was the contest between Great Britain and France in North
America inevitable and beneficial?_]

The last question to be asked, and if possible to be answered, is:
Was the contest between France and Great Britain in North America,
and the victory of one of the two powers, inevitable, and was it
beneficial? From the English point of view, the answer to part of
this question is a foregone conclusion. If there was to be a contest,
it seems evident, if we look back on the past, that the English must
have in the end prevailed. It is impossible to imagine that the
French colony of Canada, with a population at the time of the
conquest of considerably under 100,000, could dominate the English
colonies with a million and a quarter inhabitants. Equally certain
does it appear that to Canada the British conquest was a blessing in
disguise, and the Canadians in a very short time realized what they
had gained by the change of administration. In Mr. Parkman's words,
'a happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada
by the British arms.'[12]

[Footnote 12: _The Old Régime in Canada_ (end).]

But the question, whether a decisive war between the two races in
North America was inevitable, is one which may well be asked and
answered, inasmuch as a similar question has in our own day troubled
many minds in regard to other parts of the world where colonizing
races have been side by side. Surely, it might be said, and probably
was said, there was room enough in the great continent of North
America for both French and English to work out their national
destinies, without trying to supplant each other. In a sense this was
no doubt true; and the truth is not vitiated by the fact that the
French scheme of policy was not compatible with the presence of the
English race in North America, on the supposition that the latter
race would be allowed to extend its bounds by natural increase and
progressive settlement _pari passu_ with the French.

{348} [Sidenote: _No natural frontier between New France and the
English colonies._]

The interesting point, however, to notice is that there was no
natural frontier between Canada and the English colonies, at the time
when they came into serious competition; for the line of the
Alleghanies, even if recognized, could fully delimit only the more
southerly colonies. To use a modern term, two separate spheres of
influence in North America had not been marked out by nature. But in
new countries, unless there is some strongly defined natural line of
division, it is true to say, however paradoxical it may appear, that
there is not room for two incoming white races to colonize as equals
side by side. It is precisely when the land is thinly populated, and
when therefore the population is in a fluid condition, that
collisions will and must occur. Given a continent like Europe at the
present day, the geography of which is accurately known, the
resources of whose soil in every part have been fully gauged, and
whose surface has been for many generations parcelled out in
effective occupation, one province to one race, another to another;
then, when the peoples are crystallized in their respective moulds,
war is not inevitable; and when war arises, it is the artificial
result of political naughtiness and ambition, unless indeed it be the
effect of some inaccuracy in the map, which needs to be adjusted. In
new fields of colonization, on the other hand, wars are not
artificial; they are natural, and not only natural but sometimes
absolutely necessary to future happiness and welfare. Just as Europe
was herself once in the melting-pot, so the lands which Europeans
have settled and are settling, if they are to be the homes of strong
peoples in days to come, must, when rival races are planted there, be
the scenes of armed strife.

Colonial wars which end where they began, with indecisive treaties
tending to further bloodshed, may well be the subject of national
sorrow and regret; but it is otherwise when a great issue has been
achieved, and when it has been decided once for all what lines shall
be laid down for the {349} future of a great country, not yet peopled
as it will be in the coming time. Then the millions of money, which
seem to have been wasted, are found to have been invested for the
good of men; and the mourners for the lost sorrow not as without
hope, inasmuch as those who have gone have died that others may live.
The foundations of peoples are the nameless dead, who have been laid
amid North American forests or under the bare veldt of South Africa.




{350}

APPENDIX I

LIST OF FRENCH GOVERNORS OF CANADA

                                         PERIOD
  Samuel de Champlain  . . . . . . . .  1632-1635
  Chevalier de Montmagny . . . . . . .  1636-1648
  Chevalier d'Ailleboust . . . . . . .  1648-1651
  Jean de Lauzon . . . . . . . . . . .  1651-1657
  Vicomte d'Argenson . . . . . . . . .  1658-1661
  Baron d'Avaugour . . . . . . . . . .  1661-1663
  Sieur de Mésy  . . . . . . . . . . .  1663-1665
  Marquis de Tracy . . . . . . . . . .  1665-1667
  Chevalier de Courcelles[1] . . . . .  1665-1672
  Comte de Frontenac . . . . . . . . .  1672-1682
  Sieur de la Barre  . . . . . . . . .  1682-1685
  Marquis de Denonville  . . . . . . .  1685-1689
  Comte de Frontenac . . . . . . . . .  1689-1698
  Chevalier de Callières . . . . . . .  1699-1703
  Marquis de Vaudreuil . . . . . . . .  1703-1725
  Marquis de Beauharnois . . . . . . .  1726-1747
  Comte de la Galissonière . . . . . .  1747-1749
  Marquis de la Jonquière  . . . . . .  1749-1752
  Marquis Duquesne . . . . . . . . . .  1752-1755
  Marquis de Vaudreuil[2]  . . . . . .  1755-1760

[Footnote 1: While Tracy was in Canada he was Governor-General, and
Courcelles was Governor.]

[Footnote 2: Son of the previous Governor of that name.]




{351}

APPENDIX II

DATES OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF CANADA DOWN TO 1763

                                                                 YEAR

North America discovered by Cabot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1497

Cartier's first voyage  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1534

Cartier's second voyage and discovery of the St. Lawrence . . .  1535

Champlain's first voyage to North America . . . . . . . . . . .  1603

Founding of Port Royal  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1605

Quebec founded by Champlain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1608

Hudson discovers the Hudson River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1609

Hudson discovers Hudson Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1610

Port Royal destroyed by Argall  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1613

Grant of Acadia to Sir W. Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1621

Company of the One Hundred Associates incorporated  . . . . . .  1627

Quebec taken from the French by Kirke . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1629

Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye. Canada restored to France  . . .  1632

Death of Champlain  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1635

Founding of Montreal  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1642

Acadia taken by the English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1645

Destruction of the Huron Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1648-50

Company of One Hundred Associates dissolved and Canada taken
  over by the French Crown  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1663

New York taken by Great Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1664

Expedition of Tracy and Courcelles against the Five Nations . .  1666

La Salle comes to Canada  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1666

Treaty of Breda. Acadia restored to the French  . . . . . . . .  1667

La Salle supposed to have discovered the Ohio . . . . . . . . 1669-71

Incorporation of the Hudson Bay Company . . . . . . . . . . . .  1670

Count Frontenac's first government  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1672-82

Founding of Fort Frontenac  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1673

Joliet and Marquette reach the Mississippi from Lake Michigan .  1673

Treaty of Westminster. New York finally ceded to Great Britain   1674

La Salle descends the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico . . . .  1682

La Salle's expedition to Texas  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1684-5

Treaty of Whitehall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1686

Forts in Hudson Bay raided by Iberville . . . . . . . . . . . .  1686

Death of La Salle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1687

Massacre of Lachine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1689

Count Frontenac's second government . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1689-98

Port Royal taken by Phipps  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1690

Phipps' expedition against Quebec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1690

Peace of Ryswick  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1697

First colonization of Louisiana by Iberville  . . . . . . . . .  1699

Founding of Detroit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1701

Callières' Treaty with the Five Nation Indians  . . . . . . . .  1701

Five Nation Indians acknowledge supremacy of Great Britain  . .  1701

Port Royal taken by Nicholson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1710

Expedition of Walker and Hill against Quebec  . . . . . . . . .  1711

Peace of Utrecht. Hudson Bay and Acadia ceded to Great Britain   1713

English fort built at Oswego  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1727

Western discoveries by the Verendryes . . . . . . . . . . . . 1731-43

First siege and capture of Louisbourg . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1745

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1748

Halifax founded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1749

Fort Duquesne built by the French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1754

Expulsion of the Acadians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1755

The _Alcide_ and the _Lys_ taken by Boscawen  . . . . . . . . .  1755

Braddock defeated on the Monongahela  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1755

Johnson's victory over Dieskau at Lake George . . . . . . . . .  1755

Oswego taken by Montcalm  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1756

William Shirley recalled  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1756

Abortive attempt against Louisbourg by Loudoun and Holborne . .  1757

Fort William Henry taken by Montcalm  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1757

Pitt comes into power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1757

Louisbourg taken by Amherst and Wolfe . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1758

Abercromby defeated at Ticonderoga and Lord Howe killed . . . .  1758

Fort Frontenac taken by Bradstreet  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1758

Fort Duquesne taken by Forbes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1758

Fort Niagara taken by Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1759

Ticonderoga and Crown Point taken by Amherst  . . . . . . . . .  1759

Battle of Quebec. Deaths of Wolfe and Montcalm. Quebec
  surrendered to the English  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1759

Surrender of Montreal and final conquest of Canada  . . . . . .  1760

Resignation of Pitt. Bute comes into power  . . . . . . . . . .  1761

War between Great Britain and Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1762

Peace of Paris. Canada ceded to Great Britain . . . . . . . . .  1763




INDEX


Abbitibbi River, the, p. 188.

Abenakis, the, 54, 127, 129, 135, 136, 138, 182, 194, 195, 266.

Abercromby, General, 260, 271, 276, 277, 279, 280, 282, 283, 287,
   296.

Acadia, meaning of name, 36 _n_.

-- and Acadians, 42, 43, 45, 52, 123, 131, 142, 146, 170-90, 192-4,
   221-8, 235, 250, 337, 345, 346.

Adirondack Mountains, 49, 241, 242.

Adventurers to Canada, Company of, 74, 76.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 192, 205, 209, 211, 216, 217, 219, 221.

Albanel, 186.

Albany, 56 _n._, 63, 64, 91, 109, 110, 116, 121, 125-7, 130, 208,
   234, 241, 246, 258, 267, 278, 321.

-- River, the, 187.

Albemarle, 186.

Albert de Prado, 25.

_Alcide_, the, 234 and _n._, 272.

Alexander, Sir William, 74, 173-6.

Alexandria, 236.

Algonquins, the, 54, 61, 62, 66, 87.

Alleghany Mountains, 49, 53, 217, 230-3, 285, 340.

-- River, the, 150, 151, 217-9, 229, 286, 293, 331.

Amazon, the, 2.

Amherst, Lord, 259 _n._, 267, 271, 272, 275, 277, 283, 287, 290, 291,
   296, 297, 303, 304, 311, 314, 319-24, 339.

Amidas, 32.

Andastes, the, 90.

Andros, 183.

Annapolis and Harbour, 41, 142, 143, 171, 176, 177, 193, 197, 202,
   207-9, 219, 225, 226.

Anne of Brittany, 20.

-- Queen, 122, 144, 205.

Anse au Foulon, 306, 317.

Anson, Admiral, 206, 208, 292.

Argall, Samuel, 42, 43, 172.

Arkansas River, the, 153, 161, 162, 167, 211.

Arlington, 186.

Arthur, Port, 212.

Artillery Cove, 265.

Ashley, 186.

Assiniboine, the, 213.

Aubert of Dieppe, 20.


Baccalaos, 15 _n._, 16 and _n._, 23 _n_.

Bacon, 4, 12.

Baffin, 27, 44, 184.

-- Bay, 7 _n_.

Baie des Puans. _See_ Green Bay.

-- Françoise. _See_ Bay of Fundy.

-- Verte, 224.

Barlow, 32.

Basques, the, 5, 11, 14-17, 65.

Beaubassin, 183, 222, 225.

Beauharnois, Fort, 211.

Beaujeu, Admiral, 165, 166.

-- de, 238.

Beauport River and Shore, 132, 133 _n._, 298, 301, 305, 306, 308,
   310.

Beauséjour, 222-4, 307.

Bedford, 284.

-- Duke of, 326.

Belêtre, 267, 268.

Belle Île, 326.

-- -- Straits of, 1, 21, 22.

Biencourt, 172, 173.

Bienville, 169.

Bighorn Mountains, 213.

Bigot, 224, 251, 252, 325.

Biloxi, 169.

Bjarni Herjulfson, 6.

Bolingbroke, 142, 144.

Bonavista, Cape, 19.

Boscawen, Admiral, 234, 272-5.

Boston, 6, 123, 126, 131, 133, 134, 137, 141, 142, 145, 178, 180,
   181, 198, 199, 204 and _n._, 206, 210.

'Bostonnais,' the, 131, 198, 345.

Bougainville, 260, 287, 302, 305, 308-10, 313, 321.

Bouquet, 284, 285, 294.

Bourbon, Fort, 189.

Bourgeoys, Marguerite, 84.

Bourlamaque, 260, 288, 296, 318, 320, 321.

Braddock, General, 225, 234-41, 245, 257, 284, 285, 339.

Bradstreet, Colonel, 255, 279, 282 and _n._, 286.

Breboeuf, 84, 86, 88.

Breda, Peace of, 63, 180, 182.

Bristol, 4, 18, 19, 184.

Brittany and Bretons, 11, 12, 15, 16, 22, 38.

Buckingham, Duke of, 74, 289.

Bull, Fort, 247, 254.

Burke, 236, 250, 312, 315, 339.

Burnet, Governor, 196.

Burton, Colonel, 306, 307, 324.

Bute, Lord, 325, 326.

Button, 183, 184.

Button's Bay, 184.

Bylot, 184.


Cabots, the, 4, 5, 9, 12-19, 337.

Caens, the De, 70, 73, 77 and _n_.

Callières, 112, 118, 119, 128.

Canada and Canadians, 12-14, 21, 244, 245, 269.

-- meaning of name, 24 _n_.

Canso, Cape, 177 _n._, 179 _n._, 197-9.

-- Gut of, 171.

Cap Rouge River, 297, 298, 305, 310, 315, 316.

Cape Breton Island, 16, 19, 45, 77 _n._, 144-6, 170-4, 179 _n._, 191,
   192, 197, 199, 204 and _n._, 209, 221, 270, 276, 277, 326, 346.

Carignan, Prince of, 101.

Carignan-Salières Regiment, 101, 181, 212.

Carillon. _See_ Ticonderoga.

Carleton, Guy, 292, 301.

Cartier, 12, 14, 21-4, 37, 38, 43, 54, 337.

Casco Bay, 129-31, 138.

Castine, 181.

Cataraqui, 108, 121, 149.

Cathay, 12, 13, 19, 26-8.

Cats, Nation of the. _See_ Eries.

Caughnawaga, 116 _n_.

Cavelier, Abbé, 167.

Cavendish, Thomas, 32.

Cayuga Creek, 158.

Cayugas, the, 56 and _n_.

Celeron, 217, 218, 229.

Chabot, Brian, 21.

Chaleurs Bay, 21, 324.

Chambly, 104, 114, 141, 181, 321.

Champlain, 24, 34, 40-3, 52-4, 61, 65-70, 75, 76, 78, 81, 92, 106,
   260, 298.

-- Lake, 3, 49, 55, 66, 104, 128, 131, 141, 197, 207, 216, 229, 235,
   242, 243, 246, 264, 278, 292, 293, 296, 297, 319, 321, 331.

Chancellor, Richard, 26.

Charles I, 74, 76, 174, 289.

-- II, 63, 180, 182, 186.

-- V, 25.

-- VIII, 20.

-- Fort, 185.

Charlevoix, 56, 106, 211, 334, 335, 339 _n._, 341, 342.

Chastes, de, 40, 41.

Chaudière Falls, 52, 123.

-- River, 195, 235, 298.

Chautauqua Lake, 150, 218, 229.

Chauvin, 39.

Chebucto, 171, 207, 210, 220. _See also_ Halifax.

Chedabucto, 176, 179.

Chesapeake Bay, 20, 42, 236.

Chesterfield, Lord, 271, 276, 327.

Chignecto Bay, 171, 181, 183.

-- Isthmus of, 171, 208, 209, 222.

Chouaguen. _See_ Oswego.

Chubb, 136, 137.

Chudleigh, Cape, 1.

Church, Major, 139.

Churchills, the, 272.

Cincinnati, City of, 218.

Clarke, 214.

Colbert, 94, 98, 101, 156, 343.

Coligny, Admiral, 38.

Columbus, 4, 5 and _n._, 8, 9, 13, 14, 54, 329.

Comanches, the, 211.

Compagnie du Nord, 187.

Company of the West, 93.

Condé, 67, 70.

Connecticut, River, 138, 208, 297.

-- State of, 129, 199.

Convers, 135.

Cook, 260, 275.

Corlaer. _See_ Cuyler.

Cornwallis, Colonel E., 220.

-- Lord, 220, 222.

Corte Reals, the, 14, 17 and _n._, 19, 20.

Cotton, Rev. N., 311.

Courcelles, De, 104, 105, 109, 127, 152.

Cousin of Dieppe, 5 _n_.

Crèvecoeur, Fort, 159-63.

Cromwell, 179 and _n._, 180.

Crown Point, 197, 207, 208, 235, 245-7, 293, 296, 297, 303, 320.

Crowne, William, 180.

Cumberland, Duke of, 235, 236, 272.

-- Fort, 224, 230, 237, 238, 284.

Cuyler, 65.


D'Ailleboust, 82.

Dakota, 213.

D'Anville, 207, 208, 218 _n_.

D'Argenson, 82.

Darien, Isthmus of, 2, 8, 140.

D'Aunay, 176-80.

D'Avaugour, 82.

Davies, Sylvanus, 129, 130.

Davis, 27.

-- Strait, 27.

Deerfield, 138, 139.

Delawares, the, 54, 218.

_Delight_, the, 31.

Denonville, Marquis de, 110-4, 118, 121, 128, 188.

Denys, Nicholas, 176, 179 and _n._, 180.

-- of Honfleur, 20.

Des Groseilliers, 185, 187.

Des Plaines, the, 150, 153, 161.

D'Estournel, Admiral, 207.

Detroit, 51, 89, 111, 121, 122, 149, 151, 158, 159, 294, 295, 324,
   336.

Dettingen, Battle of, 192, 272, 289.

Diamond, Cape, 298.

_Diana_, the, 318.

Dieppe, 20, 38, 74, 75.

Dieskau, Baron, 234, 243-5, 252.

Dinwiddie, Robert, 230, 231, 234.

_Discovery_, the, 183, 184.

Dongan, Governor, 61, 111 and _n._, 120, 127, 128, 345.

Donnaconna, 22.

Drake, Sir Francis, 32, 33, 76.

'Drowned Lands,' the, 242.

Drucour, Chevalier de, 273 and _n._, 276 and _n_.

Duchambon, Governor, 200, 202, 203, 224.

Duchesnau, 107.

Dudley, Governor, 140.

Du Luth, 106, 113, 121, 161.

Dummer, Jeremiah, 142.

Dunbar, Colonel, 237, 238.

Dunkirk, 145.

-- the, 234 _n_.

Duquesne, Fort, 150, 231, 232, 234, 236, 237, 270, 271, 283-7,
   291 _n._, 293.

-- Governor, 219, 228.

Duquesnel, 200.

Durell, Admiral, 292, 299, 305.

Dutch, the, 46, 47, 53, 62-4, 77, 79, 128, 329, 330, 341.

Duvivier, 197.


Edward, Fort, 242, 245, 264-7.

-- VI, 25, 26.

Egg Islands, 145.

Elizabeth, Queen, 28, 30, 32, 76.

Emmanuel, King, 14.

Eric the Red, 6.

Erie, Lake, 48, 51, 55, 56, 61, 90, 111, 121, 149, 151, 154, 158,
   217, 218, 295.

-- Town of, 151, 229.

Eries, the, 61, 90.

Eyre, Major, 262.


Falmouth, 129.

Fernando Gorges, 174.

Finisterre, Cape, 206, 208, 218 _n_.

Five Nations. _See_ Iroquois.

Flat Point, 201, 274.

Florida, 14, 38, 39, 80, 168, 327.

Fontenoy, 272.

Forbes, 271, 283-6, 291 _n._, 293.

Fort Albany, 187, 188, 190.

-- Hayes, 187, 188.

-- le Boeuf, 229, 230.

-- Orange, 63.

Fox Channel, 185.

-- River, 150, 153.

Foxe, Luke, 184.

France and the French, 12 and _n._, 14-24, 35-7, 42, 43, 45, 77, 78,
   113-9, 250, 251, 329.

Francis I, 12, 20.

Franciscans, the, 71.

Franklin, 28, 233-6, 261 _n_.

Frederick the Great, 216, 250, 260.

French and English, 123-46, 216-24, 329.

-- Creek, 151, 229, 231, 286, 293.

Freshwater Cove, 201, 274.

Frobisher, Martin, 13, 26-8, 30.

-- Bay, 26.

Frontenac, Count, 96 and _n._, 105-10, 112-21, 127-33, 146, 152, 155,
   156, 158.

-- Fort, 108, 109, 114, 117, 118, 121, 136, 149, 156, 157, 159, 161,
   163, 165, 246, 254-5, 258, 270, 282, 286, 287.

Fundy, Bay of, 41, 42, 171, 221.


Gabarus Bay, 200, 201, 272, 274.

Gage, General, 295, 324.

Galissonière, Marquis de la, 217, 218.

Galveston Bay, 166.

Garnier, 84.

Gaspé Bay, 144, 177, 277.

-- Peninsula, 21, 50, 75.

Genoa and Genoese, 7, 13, 18.

George Lake, 49, 104, 216, 229, 242, 243, 245, 261, 262, 264, 265,
   271, 277, 278, 282, 296, 331.

-- II, 194, 205, 210, 225, 325.

-- III, 325.

Georgian Bay, 51, 52, 55, 86, 87, 151.

'German Flats,' the, 267.

Germans, the, 231, 267.

Gibbons, Captain, 184.

Gibraltar, 206, 236.

Gilbert, Sir H., 13, 15, 16 _n._, 28-32.

Gillam, Captain Zachariah, 185, 186.

Giraudière, 179 _n_.

_Golden Hind_, the, 29.

Gomez, 14.

Gordon, Sir R., 174.

Gourgues, Domenic de, 39.

Grand Battery, the, 200-2, 205, 273.

Grand Pré, 139, 171, 209, 226.

Grande Baie. _See_ Green Bay.

Grandfontaine, 181.

Grant, Major, 285, 314.

Great Meadows, 231, 238.

Green Bay, 150, 152-4, 158, 160.

-- Mountains, 49, 242.

Greenland, 6, 7, 27.

Grenville, Sir R., 32, 33.

Gunnbiorn, 6.

Guyard, Marie, 84.


Haldimand, Colonel, 294.

Halifax City and Harbour, 171, 210, 219-21, 263 and _n._, 270, 272,
   275, 292.

Halkett, Sir Peter, 237.

Hampton, 236.

Harley, 142, 144.

Haverhill, 139.

Haviland, 319-21.

Hawke, Admiral, 310, 311, 339.

Hawkridge, Captain, 184.

Hay, Lord C., 263 _n_.

Hayes, E., 15, 16 and _n._, 28, 29.

-- River, 189.

Helluland, 6.

Hennepin, Father, 157, 161.

Henry, IV, 38, 42, 66, 67, 72.

-- VII, 4, 14, 17, 18.

-- Prince of Wales, 173, 184.

Hill, Abigail, 144.

-- General, 144-6.

Hispaniola, 32.

Hochelaga, 13, 22 and _n._, 24 and _n_.

Holborne, Admiral, 299, 302-5.

Hopson, Colonel, 223.

Hore, 25.

Howard of Effingham, Lord, 127.

Howe, Captain, 223.

-- Colonel, 292, 306-7.

-- Lord, 268, 271, 278, 280, 281, 287, 289.

Hudson, the, 3, 23 _n._, 49, 50 and _n._, 53, 62-5, 104, 124, 125,
   130, 208, 229, 241.

-- Bay, 52, 106, 128, 138, 146, 153, 170-90, 213, 214, 331.

-- Bay Company, 186-9.

-- Henry, 27, 44, 53 and _n._, 63, 183, 184.

-- Straits, 26, 183, 184.

Huguenots, the, 37, 38, 41, 70, 72-4, 77, 80, 81, 168, 226, 338, 343.

Hundred Associates, 70, 72, 80-2, 93, 173.

Huron, Lake, 51, 55, 68, 69, 87, 111, 114, 121, 149, 151, 196.

Hurons, the, 54, 55, 61, 62, 66, 68, 86-92, 151, 152.


Iberville, 106, 128, 136, 137, 169, 188, 189.

Iceland, 6.

Île aux Noix, 296, 319, 321.

Île des Allumettes, 67.

Île de St. Jean. _See_ Prince Edward Island.

Île Madame, 311.

Île Perrot, 322.

Île Royale, 322. _See_ Cape Breton Island.

Illinois, the, 110, 148, 150, 153, 154, 156, 159, 162, 163, 217.

Independence, War of, 65, 280, 282, 339.

Indians, the, 54, 342, &c.

Indies, the, 10, 12, 13, 26.

Irondequoit Bay, 111.

Iroquois, the, 54-62, 64-6, 75, 81, 82, 108-23, 134, 216, 233, 258
   and _n._, 267.

Island Battery, the, 200-2, 274.


Jacques Cartier, 310, 324.

James, Captain T., 184.

-- I, 74, 173, 174.

-- II, 127, 138, 189.

-- Bay, 183, 185, 187-9.

Jamestown, 42, 43, 65.

Jemseg, 180, 181.

Jesuits, the, 34, 42, 70-2, 82-91, 151, 152, 155.

Jogues, Isaac, 84.

Johnson, Fort, 240.

-- Sir William, 240-6, 258, 261, 264, 267, 294-6, 321, 323, 324, 342.

Joliet, Louis, 152-4, 162.

Joncaire, 141, 241.

Joutel, 167.

Jumonville, 232.


Kankakee, the, 159.

Kansas River, the, 211.

Kennebec, the, 123, 136, 171, 182, 195, 235, 298.

Kingston, 51, 108.

Kirkes, the, 74-7, 81, 86, 131, 173-5, 179, 298, 346.

Kittery Point, 199.

Knowles, Commodore, 206.

Knox, 301, 307 _n._, 315, 317, 318, 321, 323, 324 _n_.


La Barre, 110, 111, 113, 163, 165.

Labrador, 1, 6, 9, 19, 153.

La Cadie. _See_ Acadia.

Lac des Assiniboines. _See_ Lake Winnipeg.

Lac des Illinois. _See_ Lake Michigan.

Lachine, 53, 112, 114, 116 _n._, 128, 153, 154, 322.

La Corne, 197, 265, 294, 322.

'La Demoiselle,' 219.

La Famine, 110.

Laffeldt, Battle of, 289.

La Héve, 176, 177 and _n_.

La Hogue, Battle of, 189.

La Jonquière, Marquis de, 207, 218 and _n._, 222.

Lake of the Woods, 211, 213.

Lalemant, 84.

La Mothe Cadillac, 121.

La Motte, Admiral, 263.

Lane, Ralph, 32, 33.

Langlade, 219.

La Peltrie, Madame de, 84.

La Plata, the, 2.

La Pointe, 151.

La Prairie, 131, 134.

La Reine, Fort, 213.

La Roche, Marquis de, 39.

La Rochelle, 69, 72, 74, 78, 157, 165, 207, 289.

La Salle, 53, 106, 152, 154-69.

Latour, Fort, 173.

-- -- 175, 178.

La Tours, the, 173, 175, 177-80.

Laudonnière, René de, 38.

Laurel Hills, 231, 232, 285.

Lauzon, De, 82, 84.

Laval, Bishop, 84, 97.

La Vallière, 182.

La Verendrye, 212-4.

Lawrence, Fort, 223, 224.

-- Governor, 222-5, 228, 271.

Leboeuf, Fort, 294.

Le Borgne, 179, 180.

Le Caron, 68, 86.

Legardeur de St. Pierre, 245.

Leif, 6, 7.

Leisler, Jacob, 126, 128.

Le Loutre, 222-4, 266.

Le Moyne, 91, 92.

Léry, 254.

-- Baron de, 16 _n._, 20.

Levis, 260, 265, 270, 279, 288, 300, 303, 310, 315-7, 319, 323.

-- Point, 297, 300, 301, 304-6, 315.

Lewis, 214.

Lighthouse Point, 202, 273, 274.

Ligneris, 286, 295.

Lok, Michael, 27.

L'Omeroy, Fort. _See_ Fort Latour.

Longueuil, 321.

Lorette, 89, 315, 316.

Loudoun, Earl of, 252, 260-4, 271, 276, 277.

Louis XIII, 72, 76.

-- XIV, 98, 107, 138, 162, 164, 192, 343.

-- Fort. _See_ Fort Latour.

Louisbourg, 146, 172, 191-214, 216, 219, 220, 223-5, 247, 253,
   259 _n._, 262-4, 270-7, 289-92, 299, 317, 320, 337, 340, 344.

Louisiana, 36, 106, 162 and _n._, 169, 211, 217, 226, 250, 252, 295,
   340.

_Lowestoft_, the, 318.

Loyal, Fort, 129, 130.

Loyalhannon, 285.

Lunenburg, 221.

Lutherans, 221.

Lyman, Fort, 241-5.

-- Phineas, 241.

_Lys_, the, 234, 272.


Machault. _See_ Venango.

Machias, 176.

Mackenzie, Sir A., 214.

Maine, State of, 23, 41, 42, 123, 129, 130, 170-2, 182, 198, 298.

Maisonneuve, 84.

Mance, Jeanne, 84.

Manhattan Island, 63, 64, 124, 125, 179, 206.

March, Colonel, 139.

Marin, 229.

Markland, 6.

Marlborough, Duke of, 122, 138, 140, 142, 144, 146, 345, 346.

Marquette, Jacques, 152-4, 162.

Martha's or Martin's Vineyard, 6.

Maryland, 45, 73, 110, 142, 230, 233, 237.

Mascarene, Major, 197, 219.

Massachusetts, 131-3, 136, 138-43, 146, 147, 180, 195, 197-9, 208,
   226, 230, 233, 241, 281, 340, 345.

-- Fort, 208.

Matagorda Bay, 166.

_Mathew_, the, 18.

Mattawa River, the, 52, 68.

Maumee River, 218.

May, River of, 39.

Mazarin, 179.

Menendez, 39.

Meneval, Governor, 182.

Mercer, Colonel, 256.

Merchants Discoverers' Company, 184.

_Merrimac_, the, 139.

_Meta Incognita_, the, 27.

Mexico, 17, 155, 157, 164, 165, 168.

-- Gulf of, 2, 153, 155, 159, 164-6, 169, 332.

Miami Fort, 159-61.

-- River, 218.

Miamis, the, 218, 219.

Michigan, Lake, 51, 54, 89, 149, 153, 154, 157-61, 217.

Michillimackinac, 51, 117, 121, 149, 153, 154, 158-62, 324, 336.

Micmacs, the, 54.

Minden, Battle of, 315.

Mines, Basin of, 171, 181, 183, 209, 225.

Miquelon, 327, 346.

Mississippi, the, 2-4, 36, 48, 49, 53, 148, 153, 156, 159-62, 166,
   168, 169, 217, 327, 340.

Missouri, the, 153, 161, 211, 213, 214.

Mobile Bay, 169.

Mohawk River, the, 49, 55 and _n._, 56 and _n._, 63, 206, 240, 246-7,
   254, 257, 267, 270, 282, 293.

Mohawks, the, 55, 64, 65, 91, 92, 104, 105, 108, 109, 114, 115, 127,
   142, 241, 244, 245, 258.

Mohicans, the, 64.

Monckton, Colonel, 224, 277, 291, 301, 305, 307.

Monongahela River, 218, 219, 225, 229-32, 237, 239.

Monro, Colonel, 264, 265.

Montagnais, the, 54.

Montcalm, 106, 216, 252-5, 259-62, 264-7, 270, 276 _n._, 279, 280,
   282, 287, 293, 298, 300-3, 305-10, 313-5, 333, 339.

Montmagny, De, 81, 82.

Montmorency, Duc de, 70.

-- River, 297, 298, 300-5, 308.

Montreal, 22-4, 41, 50, 51, 54, 66, 67, 69, 81, 82, 92, 95, 102,
   108-15, 131, 134, 145, 154, 157, 161, 217, 251, 255, 262, 267,
   296, 303, 310, 319-25, 336, 339.

Monts, de, 40-3, 65, 66, 73.

Moody, Chaplain, 204.

Moose Fort. _See_ Fort Hayes.

-- River, 187, 188.

Moravians, the, 285, 341.

Murray, 291, 301, 302, 304, 305, 307, 310, 316-20, 323-5.

Muscovy Company, the, 26.


Nantucket, 132.

Narragansetts, the, 54.

Naxouat, Fort, 137.

Necessity, Fort, 232.

Nelson, Fort, 187, 189.

-- River, 187, 213.

Nesmond, Marquis de, 137.

Netherlands East India Company, 46, 79.

-- West India Company, 63, 79, 181 _n_.

Neutral Nation, 55, 90.

New Amsterdam, 3, 63.

-- Biscay, 164.

-- Brunswick, 23 _n._, 41, 170-2.

Newcastle, Duke of, 207, 268 and _n._, 290, 319, 326.

New England, 3, 6, 11, 23 _n._, 45, 54, 124, 139, 147, 172, 197-9,
   210, 241, 248, 335-7, 341, 344, 345.

Newfoundland, 1, 6, 9, 11, 13-25, 30, 34, 37, 45, 52, 69, 76, 106,
   123, 146, 171, 172, 178, 179 _n._, 234, 334, 337, 346.

New France, 22-4, 35, 66 _n._, 67, 70, 80, 81, 97, 148, 251, 314,
   329, 335, 341.

-- Hampshire, 129, 135, 208, 233.

-- Jersey, 6 _n._, 141, 233.

-- Mexico, 211.

-- Netherlands, 63, 104.

-- Orleans, 169, 327.

-- Scotland, 174, 176.

-- York, Town and State of, 3, 6, 9, 49, 63, 65 _n._, 124, 128, 134,
   141, 147, 183, 199, 208, 233, 237, 241, 242, 248, 263, 265, 267,
   295, 314, 336.

Niagara, Falls of, 157, 158, 294, 295, 331.

-- Fort, 111 and _n._, 149, 158, 159, 196, 235, 246, 254, 258, 293-6,
   303, 336.

-- River, 51, 90, 151, 157, 196, 294.

Nicholson, Colonel, 141-3, 145, 183.

Nicollet, Jean, 151.

Nicolls, Colonel, 127.

Nipigon, Fort and River, 212.

Nipissing Indians, 151.

-- Lake, 52, 54, 68, 87.

Noble, Colonel, 208, 209.

_Nonsuch_, the, 185.

Norridgewocks, the, 195.

Norsemen, 5, 6.

North-West Passage, 183-6.

Norumbega, 23 and _n_.

Nova Scotia, 6, 9, 23 _n._, 36, 39, 41, 170-6, 264, 271, 277, 326.


Ogdensburg, 322 and _n_.

Ohio, the, 4, 48, 53, 148, 150, 151, 154, 156, 161, 162 _n._, 169,
   217-9, 232, 257, 283-6, 294, 345.

Oneida, Lake, 56, 246, 254, 282.

Oneidas, the, 56 and _n._, 61, 118.

Oneigra, 111 _n_.

Onondaga, 116, 118.

-- River, 196 _n_.

Onondagas, the, 56 and _n._, 59, 61, 91, 92.

Ontario, Fort, 256.

-- Lake, 48, 51-6, 61, 87, 91, 108-11, 118, 149, 151, 154, 158, 196,
   235, 243, 246, 247, 254-8, 267, 270, 283, 293, 294, 319, 322.

Orleans, Island of, 85, 89, 92, 297, 299, 300.

-- Point of, 300, 305.

Oswegatchie River, 322 and _n_.

Oswego, 196 and _n._, 235, 243, 246, 254-8, 260, 262, 264, 265, 267,
   269 _n._, 270, 280, 293, 294, 319, 321.

Ottawa, City of, 52.

-- River, 51, 66-9, 87, 92, 108, 114, 149, 151, 188, 295.

Oyster River, 135.


Paris, Peace of, 15, 93, 326, 327, 345.

Péan, 251.

Pemaquid, Fort, 136, 137, 182, 189.

Penalossa, Count, 164.

Pennsylvania, 141, 199, 217, 219, 230, 231, 233, 236, 239, 248, 283,
   284.

Penobscot, the, 23 _n._, 42, 136, 137, 171, 176, 179, 181 and _n._,
   195, 240, 266.

Pentegoet, 137, 176, 181, 182.

Pepin, Lake, 211.

Pepperell, W., 199, 202, 203, 205, 252 _n_.

Pequods, the, 54.

Perrot, Governor, 108, 113, 182, 211.

Philadelphia, 41, 284, 286.

Philip's War, 182.

Philipps, Governor, 194.

Phipps, William, 131-4, 139, 140, 145, 183, 198.

Pickawillany, 218, 219.

Pigeon River, 213.

Pique Town. _See_ Pickawillany.

Piquet, Abbé, 322 and _n_.

Pitt, 15 _n._, 216, 268 and _n._, 269, 271, 284, 286, 291 _n._, 296,
   304, 314, 325-7, 346.

Pittsburg, 150, 286.

Placentia, 145, 189.

Plains of Abraham, 224, 297, 307, 314.

Points de Monts, 50, 145.

Pontgravé, 39-41, 65, 66.

Pontiac, 324.

Portland, 129, 150.

Port Royal, 41-3, 77 _n._, 131, 135, 139, 142, 146, 171-3, 175-7,
   179, 183, 197, 198.

Portsmouth, 145, 207.

Portugal and Portuguese, 3, 8-10, 14-9, 29 _n._, 39, 79, 329, 330.

Potomac, the, 230, 236.

Pouchot, 294, 295, 322.

Poutrincourt, 42, 172.

Presque Île, 151, 229, 294.

Prideaux, General, 293-6.

Prima Terra Vista, 16.

Prince Edward Island, 170, 179 _n._, 221, 277.

-- Rev. T., 204.

-- Rupert, 185.

Prudhomme, Fort, 162.

Puans, the. _See_ Winnebagos.

Puritans, the, 34, 85, 204, 338, 341.


Quakers, the, 73, 231, 240, 341, 344.

Quebec, 22-4, 35-78, 95, 97, 102, 123, 146, 172, 179, 186, 207, 224,
   226, 251, 260, 262, 269 _n._, 271, 276 and _n._, 289, 291-3,
   297-320, 336, 339, 340, 346.

Quiberon Bay, 311, 315, 339.


Radisson, 185, 187.

Raestown, 284, 291 _n_.

Raleigh, Sir W., 3, 28, 29, 33, 43.

-- City of, 33.

Ramesay, 141.

-- 208, 209.

-- 310.

Rasle, Sebastian, 195.

Razilly, de, 176, 177 and _n_.

Recollet Friars, the, 68, 69, 160.

Red River, the, 211.

-- -- -- 213.

Rensselaer and Rensselaerswyck, 63.

Restigouche, 324.

Rhode Island, 233.

Ribault, Jean, 38, 39.

Richelieu, 70, 72, 75, 76, 80, 94, 173, 174, 176.

-- Fort, 81.

-- River, the, 49, 50, 53, 82, 101, 102, 104, 108, 114, 128, 131,
   229, 242, 243, 296, 320, 321, 331.

Rideau Canal, 52.

Rio Janeiro, 38.

Rivière aux Boeufs, 151, 229. _See also_ French Creek.

Roanoke, 32, 33.

Roberval, 14, 23.

Rochefort, 289.

Rocky Mountains, 46, 213, 214.

Rogers, Robert, 247, 261-4, 296, 320, 324, 339.

Rogers' Rock, 261.

Rollo, Lord, 277.

Roman Catholics, 41, 48, 73, 83, 88, 221.

Rome, 247.

Roquemaure, 321.

Rouen, 69, 154.

-- and St. Malo Company, 69, 70.

Rouillé, Fort, 196.

Royal Americans, 252 and _n._, 302.

-- Mount. _See_ Montreal.

Rupert, Fort or House, 185, 187, 188.

-- Land, 187.

-- River, 185, 186.

Ryswick, Peace of, 118, 137, 140, 190.


Sable Cape, 171, 173, 208.

-- Island, 16 and _n._, 31, 39.

Sackett's Harbour, 255.

Saguenay River, 13, 24 _n._, 40, 50.

St. Anne, Fort, 188.

-- Anthony, Falls of, 161.

-- Augustine, Town of, 39.

-- Castin, Baron de, 137, 181, 183, 240.

-- Charles, River, 89, 132, 298, 307-9.

-- Clair, Lake and River, 51, 158.

-- Croix, River, 41, 171, 173.

-- -- -- 153, 161.

-- Esprit, Mission of, 151, 153.

-- Francis, River of, 296.

-- Frederick, Fort, 197.

-- Germain-en-Laye, Treaty of, 76, 77 and _n._, 81, 175.

-- Ignace, Mission of, 150, 153, 158.

-- John's, 321.

-- -- (New Brunswick), 137, 171, 176, 177 _n._, 180, 181, 277.

-- -- (Newfoundland), 29-31, 326.

-- -- Lake, 186.

-- -- River (Florida), 39.

-- Joseph, River of, 159-61.

-- Lawrence, Gulf of, 20, 24 _n._, 171, 334.

-- -- River of, 2-4, 6, 9, 12 and _n._, 35-8, 43, 46, 48-55, 65-71,
   108, 109, 149, 168, 173, 191, 212, 241, 255, 267, 289, 292,
   298-301, 321, 331-4, 339.

-- Louis, Fort of (Illinois), 163, 169.

-- -- -- (Quebec), 71.

-- -- -- (Texas), 166.

-- Malo, 37, 39.

-- Marie, Station of, 87, 88.

-- Mary's Straits. _See_ Sault St. Marie.

-- Maurice, River of, 50.

-- Peter, Lake, 50.

-- Pierre, Island of, 327, 346.

Sainte Foy, 315, 316.

Salières, Colonel de, 101.

Salmon Falls, 129.

Sandy Creek, 254.

-- Hill, 242.

Santa Fé, 211.

Saratoga, Fort, 208.

Saskatchewan, the, 213, 214.

Sault St. Louis, 116.

-- -- Marie, 51, 149, 151.

Saunders, Admiral, 292, 299, 304-6, 308, 310, 311.

Saurel, Monsieur de, 81 _n_.

Schenectady, 63, 104, 125, 128, 134, 246, 267-8, 294, 321.

Schuyler, 126, 142.

Scots Fort, 176.

Sedgewick, Major-General, 179.

Seignelay, 164.

Seigniors, the, 100, 101.

Senecas, the, 55 _n._, 56 and _n._, 91, 109-11, 118, 141, 158, 216,
   241.

Seven Years' War, 216, 250-2, 327, 338.

Shirley, William, 198, 206-8, 219, 221, 224, 230, 235, 236, 241, 246,
   252 _n._, 254-6, 260, 345.

Sillery, 297, 298.

Simcoe, Lake, 52, 55, 68, 87, 196 and _n_.

Sioux, the, 153, 161, 211.

Smith, John, 34.

Soissons, Count de, 67.

Sorel, 50, 81, 104, 320.

South Africa, 46, 47.

-- Bay, 242.

-- Carolina, 145, 226.

Spain and Spaniards, 8-21, 34, 39, 79, 153, 162, 211, 326, 329, 330.

Spanish America, 211.

-- Succession, War of, 138.

_Squirrel_, the, 31.

Stadaconé, 22 and _n_.

Stanwix, Fort, 257 _n_.

-- General, 282, 293.

Stirling, Earl of. _See_ Alexander.

Stoughton, 136.

Stuarts, the, 76, 125, 176.

Sulpicians, the, 108.

Superior, Lake, 48, 51, 88, 122, 148, 149, 151-3, 161, 212, 213.

Susa, Convention of, 76 and _n._, 81.

Susquehanna River, 55, 90.

Sweden and Swedes, 124, 250.

Swift, 145 and _n_.

Sydney Harbour, 145.


Tadoussac, 40, 50, 65, 69, 75, 93.

Talon, 101, 104-6, 152, 343.

Temiscaming, Lake, 188.

Temple, Lord, 319, 326.

-- Sir T., 180, 181.

Terra de Corte Reall. _See_ Corte Real.

Texas, 165, 166, 168.

Thorne, Robert, 13.

Thousand Islands, the, 51, 322.

Three Rivers, 50, 69, 81, 82, 92, 95, 112, 129, 131, 331.

Thunder Bay, 212.

Ticonderoga, 66, 242, 243, 246, 255, 257, 262, 264, 270, 278-80, 282,
   283, 287, 293, 296, 303.

Tonty, Henri de, 155, 157, 159-63, 167-9.

Toronto, 196 and _n._, 254.

Tourmente, Cape, 75.

Townshend, 291, 301, 304, 305, 307, 309-12.

Trent River, the, 68.

Trinity River, 167.

_Troupes de la Marine_, 253.

Troy, 49.

Troyes, de, 188.

Turtle Creek, 237.

Tuscaroras, the, 61.


Utrecht, Treaty of, 122 and _n._, 123, 126, 138, 145 _n._, 146, 170,
   172, 183, 190-2, 205, 219, 221, 228, 277, 327, 339, 340, 345, 346.


Valois, House of, 24, 38.

_Vanguard_, the, 318.

Varin, 251.

Vasco de Gama, 8.

Vaudreuil, Governor (father), 118, 140, 195.

-- (son), 234, 251, 252, 254, 255, 267, 270, 287, 299, 309, 310, 320,
   323, 324, 333.

-- Rigaud de, 262.

Vaughan, William, 198, 201.

Vauquelin, 318.

Venango, 231, 294.

Venice and Venetians, 13 and _n._, 18.

Ventadour, Duc de, 70, 71.

Verchères, Madeleine de, 115.

-- Seignory of, 114.

Vergor, de, 224, 306.

Vermont, 49, 242.

Verrazano, 7 _n._, 12, 14, 20, 337.

Vetch, Samuel, 140, 143.

_Vigilant_, the, 201.

Vignau, Nicholas de, 67.

Villebon, 135, 137, 139.

Villegagnon, 38.

Ville Marie, 85. _See_ Montreal.

Villiers, Coulon de, 209, 254, 255.

Vinland, 6.

Virginia, 11, 25, 31-4, 42, 43, 45, 53 _n._, 110, 123, 127, 172, 219,
   230, 231, 234, 236, 239, 248, 283, 284, 337.

-- Company, 42.

Virginians, the, 217, 219, 231, 239.


Walker, Admiral, 144-6.

Walley, Major, 132.

Walpole, Horace, 235, 236, 250, 257, 263, 269 _n._, 275, 276, 290,
   291, 309, 315, 319.

Warren, Commodore, 199-203, 205, 206, 208, 240.

Washington, George, 217, 230-2, 236, 237, 239, 247, 285.

Webb, Colonel D., 257, 258, 260, 262, 264, 265, 267.

Wells, 135, 138.

Westerham, 289.

West Indies, the, 1, 8-10, 32, 103, 134, 180, 199, 326.

Westminster, Treaty of, 179.

-- -- -- 63.

Wheeler, Admiral, 134.

White, John, 33.

Whitehall, Town of, 242.

-- Treaty of, 189.

Whitfield, George, 199.

William III, 122, 140.

-- Henry, Fort, 245, 246, 261, 262, 264, 266, 269, 295.

Williams, Fort, 247, 257 _n._, 282.

-- Rev. J., 138.

Willoughby, Sir Hugh, 26.

Wills Creek, 230, 231, 237.

Winnebago, Lake, 150, 153.

Winnebagos, the, 152.

Winnipeg, Lake, 211-3.

Winslow, J., 224, 261.

Winthrop, Governor, 123.

Wisconsin, River, 148, 150, 153, 161, 217.

Wolfe, General, 216, 235, 236, 239, 248, 253 _n._, 259 _n._, 260,
   271, 272, 274-7, 281, 283, 287, 289-93, 296-317, 337, 339.

-- Island, 255.

Wolfe's Cove, 306.

Wood Creek (Lake Champlain), 141, 144, 242, 243, 282.

-- -- (Lake Oneida), 56, 246, 247, 254, 257, 258, 267.

Wyandots, the, 54, 89.

Wye, the, 87.

Wyoming, 213.


Yellowstone Park and River, 213.

York, Duke of, 63, 104, 125, 182. _See also_ James II.

-- Fort, 189.

-- Settlement of, 135.

Yorktown, 220.

Youghiogany, the, 230.


Zeni, the brothers, 5, 13 _n_.