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Quebec

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

After having spent the greater part of my life in writing of imaginary characters it has been a novel experience to write an account of historical events, a strange experience to keep my very active imagination in leash. I have found great fascination in these characters of the past, even with their weight of cold dates, treaties, and acts.

I have been guided chiefly by two great historians: Francis Parkman, of Boston, and Professor George Wrong, of Toronto. I was already acquainted with the genius of Parkman, but Professor Wrong’s beautifully written and commanding Rise and Fall of New France and The Canadians were new to me. By these strong guides my halting footsteps have been mercifully directed.

Immediately before the war I lived for a short while in Boston. Two nieces of Francis Parkman were my near neighbors in Chestnut Street. One was an invalid, but the other wrote to me inviting me to take tea with her because she had enjoyed my novels. I shall not forget that meeting or the distinguished and charming picture made by Miss Parkman in the somber setting of the old house where her uncle had lived and worked. She told me of past days in Boston, I little dreaming that Francis Parkman’s works would one day have such a special interest for me.

When I was a young girl I was for a time a neighbor of Professor Wrong. It was then that my first short story was written and published in an American magazine. I was much too shy to speak to Professor Wrong, little dreaming that I too should become a historian, though only for a year!

I must not forget the long list of those writers from whose books I gathered, here a telling fact, there a picturesque detail. A stream of these books has flowed steadily into my hands from the reference library of Toronto and the North York Library. Miss Helen Dean, chief librarian of the latter, has so intelligently, cheerfully, and patiently directed this stream that I cannot thank her warmly enough.

So, with mingled audacity and apprehension, I deposit this cuckoo’s egg in the austere nest of the historians.

There may be errors in this book. If there are, I shall comfort myself with the thought that greater historians than I have flatly contradicted each other. In truth, it has been one of my difficulties to choose between entirely opposite versions of the same event.

I have never liked to talk about my novels while at work on them but, while writing the story of Quebec, I was in danger of becoming a bore, for on the slightest provocation I would hold forth on the subject of wars, explorations, persecutions, or tortures, till, becoming conscious of the plaintive looks on the faces of my family, I would desist.

I hope I have written an interesting history of the Port of Quebec. But if my readers decide that I have not, I can promise them this—nothing of the sort will ever happen again!

Mazo de la Roche

The Rock

I once read a novel by a young American. I am ashamed to say I have forgotten both the name of the writer and the title of the book, because it was a striking story, but I well remember how one of the characters remarked that, given his choice of a place to live in and of work to do, he would choose to keep a linen shop in Quebec. His reasons were that linen is the most beautiful material in the world and Quebec is the most romantic city. Now I also recall that this person was a Filipino who never had been to Canada. His heart may have been drawn to the Northern land because of its contrast to his own islands. Yet what traveler can name a city with a more romantic past or a more noble situation? It is a walled city. Even though some of the walls are gone, there still remain the massive gates to mark where they stood. The dignity, the character, the aloofness of the walled city, remain. It stands on its mighty rock above the moving tides of the St. Lawrence, fortified, the dark Laurentians rising behind it, and, as though one great river were not enough to guard it, there flows on its eastern side the St. Charles. Today it stands in its calm and its recollections, yet filled with active toil, a town of Medieval France in the New World.

This towering Rock can look back on aeons of solitude before Quebec was founded on it, before the French explorers sailed in their wonder up the river. The land was a forest, not just a vast forest but an unbelievedly vast forest with here and there a band of Indians such as Jacques Cartier found at Hochelaga. This was their world, beyond which their imagination never ranged. They had no conception of its size nor wished to know. It went on and on and so forever would!

The bear, the wolf, the deer, the elk, came and went in their generations, perhaps developing new characteristics, performing marvels of strength and sagacity—with no one there to see. The Indians, cast into this wilderness from God knew where, did likewise. They added to it their human alloy of hate and torture. They made themselves coats of magnificent fur, headdresses of shining feathers. They were lords of the forest, yet so few that they made no impression on the land. No one was there to see! But in 1535 the Frenchmen were on their way, to sail their little ships across the Atlantic, to change all. The slumber of the Rock was to be woken to the activity of the white man. Quebec might well have been claimed for England from the first, as the West Indies were claimed by Columbus for Spain, if John Cabot had had the initiative to do so. He was a Venetian, born Giovanni Caboto, and a man of daring and insatiable curiosity about the world he lived in. He was adventurous. He was poor. His own country offered him little in the way of a career. Already he had sailed the Red Sea and visited Mecca, the holy city of the Moslems. He had gazed fascinated at the precious stones and almost equally prized spices in the market place. If they were brought from the Far East on camels’ backs, as was said, why could he not sail westward, beyond Ireland, and himself exploit the riches of that land?

Cabot made up his mind to go to London, Anglicize his name, and find support for his enterprise there. But it was in Bristol, where the merchants carried on a lively trade with Ireland, that he was given ships and men and sailed out to find a short route to the East. He had his three sons with him, yet though all had stout hearts they discovered nothing. They returned to Bristol disappointed. But what great tidings arrived almost as soon as they did?

Columbus had discovered America!

This news created great excitement and speculation. King Henry VII was as interested as any of his subjects. He was intelligent. He had studied geography. The spherical chart made by Cabot was convincing. Why should not the banner of England be raised above these rich and distant lands? Why should not the Crown itself have profit in the enterprise?

In 1496 Henry gave Cabot and his sons permission to sail, the promise that he might bring in merchandise free of duty. The king stipulated that realms belonging to any other Christian monarch were not to be touched. Henry was religious. It was he who built, in Westminster Abbey, the chapel which bears his name. It stands today, rich in dignity, conceived by souls incapable of lapse. In May 1497 Cabot sailed westward from Bristol.

Columbus had had three ships under his command. Cabot had but one, and she was very small. With wind and weather he struggled in this tiny ship—a Venetian with a crew of eighteen Englishmen—till he reached Newfoundland and Cape Breton. There on the lonely land he set up the royal standard of England and, side by side with it, the banner of Venice. He found no land rich in fruits and spices, as Columbus had. He was welcomed by no wondering natives. This land seemed empty—empty. But was it empty?

His sailors found a snare for catching game. They found a needle made of bone. Some slim, dark fingers must have dropped it when the sewing was gathered up in hasty departure. Cabot took the snare and the needle back to Bristol with him, and he took, too, tales of the great fish that fairly shouldered each other out of the water, that pressed to the sides of the ship in their eagerness to be caught.

Englishmen were deeply moved by these discoveries. It was said, in a spirit of common sense, that if a ship followed this shore she would in little more than a fortnight reach Asia. The king gave Cabot a present of money. He gave him a small pension. Cabot and his sons, in new silk doublets, swaggered about Bristol, their tongues glib with the wonders of the East that soon were to be open for England’s commerce. Lack of food had forced them home from this last voyage, but for the next the king had promised ten good ships, well-manned, with plenty of supplies. You were lucky if you were on the right side of Cabot, for as likely as not he would promise you an island or, if you were a poor monk, a bishopric.

But King Henry had trouble on his hands. Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne, must be disposed of. With Warbeck storming Exeter, six thousand men at his back, Henry could not give as much help to Cabot as he would have liked to do. At last Cabot sailed with two ships under his command in May 1498. In June he had reached Greenland, where winter still reigned. He turned south along the coast of Labrador. Rocks and sea gulls, icy water alive with fish, were his only discoveries. Bears stared from the shore, then dived into the water to catch the fish in their claws and return to the rocks to devour them. And this, thought the mariners, was ASIA!

Even when they came upon some natives who did in truth look like Asiatics, all they had to trade in were furs and fish. So farther south sailed the disgruntled crew and the desperate “Great Admiral,” to search for spices and jewels and shining gold. It is said that they sailed as far as Virginia, but when they returned to Bristol in the autumn the only tales they had to tell were of desolation and failure.

As time passed, visions of the conquest of the newly discovered lands fired Spain and Portugal and France. One brave adventurer after another tried his luck. Each added something to Europe’s knowledge of the New World. With bitter jealousy monarchs eyed the acquisition of new territory by others. It was the clever and enterprising Francis I of France who sponsored the voyage of Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Quebec.

Cartier was a Breton, middle-aged, hardy, an experienced voyager. He came from a land of wild hills and valleys, of stormy seacoast. He was not intimidated by the stern aspect of the shores of Canada. He sailed from rock to rock, for St. Malo stands high on an eminence of granite. Its winding streets lead upward to the gray cathedral. The sturdiness, the sober way of living, the love of tradition, and the devotion to the Church seen today in the Province of Quebec reach backward to these same qualities in Brittany.

There must have been few Canadian children of my day who did not know by heart D’Arcy McGee’s poem about Cartier.

Picture the ancient cathedral rising above the winding streets, crowded with worshipers whose religion was as real to them as the sea from which came their sustenance and in whose depths they so often met their end. The men, with bronzed faces and flowing locks, wear the picturesque costume of the early sixteenth century, the women that Breton headdress which lends an expression of purity and dignity to the face. The children are there, the little girls like miniature women, their heads filled with what strange speculations. Jacques Cartier was gone across the mysterious sea; his sails had melted into the mists, leaving no more trace than the incense that rose to the roof of the cathedral. The incense soared Godward. Cartier might have sailed into the habitation of very devils. And he was a good man, the like of whom St. Malo could ill afford to lose. Twenty-seven times he had been chosen as godfather to children of the town. Yet, for all their fears, the townsfolk had confidence in him as a navigator. He sailed with the king’s good will and by his bounty, and he had two worthy ships and sixty staunch men.

In April 1534 he left spring behind in St. Malo. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers and quick with bird song. But when in May he sailed along the coast of Labrador he found its shores piled high with broken ice. Sea gulls swarmed about the ships. The sailors went out in boats and caught hundreds of them with little effort. They killed a polar bear, swimming in the icy water. What long white fur he had and how tender they found the meat! But they did not linger. Cartier turned southward, skirted the shores of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, and at last, on a day of blazing sun, sailed into a great bay which he named the Bay of Chaleur. The cape that guarded its entrance he named the Cap d’Espoir.

Now the Frenchmen came into contact with native Indians for the first time. They were of the Micmac tribe. They came, the dark half-naked men, as though to offer, in their ignorance, their great land to the French. They touched their fresh-colored faces in amazement, caressed their curling beards and mustaches, the shining metal of their halberds, helmets, and cuirasses. Here surely were gods, not men! They swarmed about the Frenchmen, as the gulls had done, with cries of delight for the necklaces of colored beads, the pretty toys which Cartier had brought them. They laughed, they sang, their canoes rocking like gulls on the breast of the river. One may well meditate on these first stirrings of power, on what it led to, and to what it will lead.

The Indians hung the bead necklets around their necks; they combed their inky locks with the little combs; they leaped in joy at the ringing of the tiny bells. A new world opened before them, as their poverty was so great that they had no possessions beyond the essentials—their canoes under which they crept to sleep, the piece of fur about their loins, their bows and arrows.

On their part, the Frenchmen were filled with wonder and delight at the beauty of this land. It was midsummer, and the low green shore at the gulf’s edge was gay with flowers. Beyond this rose dark hills dense with the growth of noble trees. What masts for ships tapered there in the solitude! What fruits grew wild! What blue lakes, seething with fish, were hidden among the hills! Bright-winged birds chased butterflies among the flowers. The sun blazed hot. Surely this country was semi-tropical! Surely there was no harsh winter here!

As Cabot had raised the flag of England on the shore of Newfoundland, so Cartier now set the seal of France on the shore of Quebec. He had made a cross thirty feet high, and on this he nailed a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis and the carven inscription “Vive le Roy de France.” Now, in late July, the cross was erected. Cartier and his men held a solemn ceremony. The Indians saw them kneel and raise their hands to Heaven.

Some foreboding, some instinct, made this a troubling sight to the old Indian chief. Poor though he was, he was an impressive figure when, clad in a black bearskin, he appeared before Cartier. On either side of him stood his brother and his three slim sons. Like bronze statues they stood beside him while he poured out a torrent of words in the Micmac tongue. This land, he said, belonged to him. No white face had the right to set on it the sign of any other chief. Cartier spoke reassuring words. He suggested that the chief should allow his sons to return with him to France that they might see its wonders for themselves, see how friendly were the white men to the Indians. The boys were eager to go, and the chief consented to part with two of them. Cartier gave them breeches, shirts, and scarlet caps.

Cartier was anxious to get back to France. He had heard that in the autumn terrible storms swept this region. He did not escape the storms, and it seemed that he might never again see St. Malo. But both ships survived and early in September sailed into the home port. Great was the rejoicing. The townsfolk gathered to see the collection of furs he had brought, to stare in wonder at the two young savages. Possibly he even brought souvenirs of the voyage to his twenty-seven godchildren.

To King Francis he told his tale of the promise of the new land. Now he needed more ships, greater supplies for the venturing deep into it. The king was keenly interested. He gave Cartier three ships: the Grande Hermine, of one hundred and twenty tons, the Petite Hermine, of sixty, and the Emerillon of forty.

On his former voyage Cartier had only sailors with him. Now he was joined by men of rank. One of these was Claude du Pontbriand, son of the seigneur of Montreal, in France, who gave Montreal its name.

At this time Europe was torn by the struggle between the Catholic and Protestant faiths. Cartier was a staunch Catholic and took only Catholics with him. There must be no dissension on the voyage. On May 16, 1535, the mariners marched to the cathedral, confessed their sins, and received the sacrament. The bishop gave them his blessing in their great venture.

As on the first voyage, they took a solemn oath to serve their king well. One can imagine how, after the service, many of Cartier’s godchildren were pushed forward or carried to him for a parting embrace. Without doubt the two young Micmacs, long ago received into the Catholic Church, were present. What had been their impressions, their adventures in the past year? What had they stored in their shaven heads, with the one long “scalp lock,” to narrate to their kin?

Two months it took them, battling against the tempestuous sea, to reach Newfoundland. As they sailed along the coast of Labrador the two young savages told Cartier of the great fresh-water river that swept inland from the gulf. He was bitterly disappointed, for he had hoped to sail the salt sea straight to Asia. But on he sailed, wonder of island and forest unrolling before him. The somber rocks of the Saguenay rose naked against the sky. Surely no foot had ever trod their summits. Between these mountainous rocks a river rushed down to meet the St. Lawrence. Where they met, great fish disported themselves and little whales no bigger than a porpoise. Birchbark canoes appeared, paddled by Indians who spoke the same language as Cartier’s two. As brother to brother they spoke, and these new Indians, perhaps not to be outdone by tales of Paris, told of a mysterious land of great wealth beyond the naked rocks.

However, Cartier’s plan was to push westward up the main river to the land the Indians called Canada, for, they said, a fine city was there, and Cartier hoped that it might be a city of the Grand Khan. So the three ships left the mouth of the Saguenay, and with spreading sails, through dreamlike autumn weather, they moved with favorable breeze past a land of great beauty. Silver birch stood pale against dark spruce; the wild grapevine draped itself wherever it found a place for its tendrils. The golden clusters of little grapes hung thick. Nut trees bore their sweet burden. Berries clustered thick in the bushes. Fireweed and the blood-red sumach tapestried the shore.

The river that had been eight miles wide narrowed to one. Cartier cast anchor off an island over which ran such a nest of grapevines that he named it the Isle of Bacchus. Later it became the Island of Orleans. It turned out that this was the very home of Cartier’s two Indians, and soon there was wild rejoicing over the reunion. Cartier had heard much of the great chief Donnacona, Lord of Canada. Now this chief came to visit Cartier, accompanied by a retinue of canoes. But he was a savage like the rest, thunderstruck to see the ships with their towering sails, delighted by the gift of a few trinkets. The Indians were given biscuits, and red wine which they took to be blood.

They talked boastfully of the great city Stadacona, which stood as no other city stood, fortified by the mightiest of rocks. Full of hope, tense with anticipation, the Frenchmen pressed on, their sails reflected in the tranquil river. The mighty Rock loomed before them. Beyond it the Laurentian hills hung out their banner of autumn glory. The St. Charles River rushed down to meet the St. Lawrence. The settlement of Indians could not bear to wait to receive the white men on the shore but came in their canoes, even waded into the river to welcome them, holding their children up to see.

But where was the noble city of the Khan? Surely China must still be a long way off! All the Frenchmen saw in the way of habitation was an Indian village of huts. Still Cartier did not give up hope. The Indians told him of the wonders of the land far up the river. Beyond and beyond! His heart leaped toward the glory of Cathay.

But it was autumn. Winter was coming, though of how great severity he little knew. Still he would not be reckless. He would not risk the lives of his men. He made up his mind to leave the two larger of his ships at the mouth of the St. Charles and, with the Emerillon, sail on. Before that there was much to be done in the way of preparations.

Never had the Indians known such an occasion, and they made the most of it. They came from far and wide, bringing their children to see the white faces who moved on floating islands that were provided with great white wings. Feasts were given. Fish was more than plentiful. Game so abounded that an Indian had scarcely need to do more than raise his bow and let fly the arrow to find a feathered breast. The trouble was that they only half cooked their food. After the feast the chief would make long, grandiloquent speeches, telling of the brave deeds of his tribe and of the Great Spirit who watched over them. On and on they talked, till the flaming colors of the forest had faded and the flames of the bonfires were reflected in the river. And, after the speeches, the dancing!

Picture the Frenchmen sitting close together, not huddling but with something wary in their attitudes, and with a chill of foreboding for what these dances might become if hate were roused. Picture them in their costumes of the middle sixteenth century, their bearded faces, their intelligent, watchful French eyes.

In the full glare of the bonfire picture the young Indians, their limbs straining in savage energy, leaping, bounding, springing upward from the earth as though with the fury of flames. Now and again they uttered loud cries. Cartier had seen much that was strange in his exploring, but this was a scene he would carry with him to the end—the starry arch of the sky, the river far below reflecting the stars, the noble Rock looming as though attentive to what passed, the leaping figures about the fire, and in his heart the knowledge that he was the discoverer, that he held all in his hands.

But on a Sunday morning there was enacted a very different scene, the first gathering of its kind in this Canada. Cartier summoned the Indians and, standing encircled by them, he read, in a feeling voice, of the Passion of Christ. Their deep, quiet eyes were fixed on his lips. The sacred words fell on their ears for the first time. They raised their dark hands, in imitation of the white men, and made the sign of the cross. Perhaps never again in their relations was there another moment of such promise.

The Indians of Stadacona, as this settlement was called, did not want Cartier to go up the river to Hochelaga (now Montreal), which was peopled by their enemies. They told him that he and his men would perish of cold and hunger when winter came. Three of them, dressed as devils in horns and tails, came at night in a canoe, shrieking their warnings. But Cartier was unmoved. He put his larger ships in order and sailed up the St. Lawrence in mid-September. They passed a shore brilliant in its wild harvest, untouched in its virgin splendor.

Friendly natives lived at the river’s edge. The women were pretty when they were young, but hard work and childbearing made them early old. The men had muscles of steel. One would pick up a Frenchman and carry him like a child. One thus carried a laughing Cartier ashore. A chief, in the exuberance of his welcome, offered Cartier his two small children as a present. Cartier may well have been somewhat embarrassed by this offer, but it would not be politic to refuse. One can imagine him eying the two, speculating as to which would be the least trouble on the voyage to France.

The little girl was the more attractive and would doubtless be the more biddable in the ways of civilization. So her he accepted and took with him.

On and on he sailed, always possessed by the idea of finding a glittering city of the East. At Hochelaga he met a turbulent welcome. Word had spread of his power. He was looked on as a healer, one in whose hand was magic. The Indians carried their crippled, their blind, for him to touch. They were awed by his splendor, his soldierly guard in shining helmets and arquebuses. All that Cartier could do for the sick was to say a prayer over them, let their yearning hands reach out and touch his crucifix. He found no fine city, nothing but a settlement, more powerful than that at Stadacona and tolerably well fortified. Still he did not give up hope of discovering a land where gold and silver could be found. The Indians gently touched his silver whistle, the copper shaft of a poniard that gleamed like gold, and made alluring gestures westward. There lay the land of gold and silver. There lay news of power to carry back to France! There men were dressed in doublet and hose and wore armor. What else could the Indians’ smiles and gestures mean? And they were so kind! When the weary Frenchmen who had climbed the mountain that rose above Hochelaga stumbled in their tracks on the return journey, there was an Indian ready to bend his back before each and carry him down to the very shore. When the Frenchmen departed, the Indians waded out into the river, loath to see them go.

But Cartier was determined to return to Stadacona for the winter. There were his ships; there he had left many of his men who, in his absence, were building a fort in which all could spend the winter. They were to take the cannon from the ships and mount them on the four sides of the fort. They did not trust Chief Donnacona, in spite of his smiles. They had heard whoops from the throats of the Indians that had curdled their blood with a strange menace.

Donnacona begged Cartier, on his return, to visit Stadacona as he had visited Hochelaga. So, with forty armed men, Cartier inspected the village. He showed what admiration he could for the squalid collection of huts, hid his disgust for the human scalps he saw drying in the sun.

Before long the snowflakes had begun to sparkle on the air. A skein of ice glistened at the edge of a pool. The air was crisp and exhilarating. The Frenchmen made themselves snug in the fort, looking forward with confidence to the impending winter.

They had had no experience comparable to what was now to befall them. Winter descended, grim and inexorable. An iron world formed about them, the earth frozen like metal, the ships ironbound in the river. No winter gale that had raged about St. Malo could pierce the vitals as did this icy wind. The snow fell, at first in thick, soft flakes that heaped themselves deeper and deeper, till the earth lay four feet beneath; then, as the cold increased, the snow was no longer in flakes but driven like a silver dust on the cruel air. The Frenchmen drowsed about the fire in the fort, playing games, singing songs of Brittany, to while away the time.

When they went to the river’s edge they looked down on their ships half buried in snow. The Indians moved about, dark against its whiteness, often half naked, seeming not to mind the cold. Little half-naked children wrestled and leaped in the snow. But the papoose, wrapped in fur, was carried snugly on his mother’s back. Now the Indians were no longer friendly but greedy and aggressive. When they brought fish to the fort they demanded an exorbitant price in knives and hatchets. Would the supply of these last? Cartier doled them out with misgivings. He had had his men dig a moat round the fort. No Indian was allowed inside. At night the drawbridge was lifted and fifty men remained on guard till dawn. At changing of the guard the sound of the trumpet reached the native village.

By midwinter scurvy was raging among the French. They tottered about in the chill, foul air inside the fort, waiting on the dying; dragging them out under cover of dusk, when they were dead, to hide their bodies in the snow. No Indians must know how their numbers were depleted. Cartier was spared the disease and boldly told the Indians that his men were busy caulking the ships. They, almost too weak to raise their hands, would hammer with stones on the sides of the ships. The Indians were not allowed to approach them. Cartier almost despaired of seeing his ships manned once again, of seeing them sail down the river to the sea. Twenty-five of his best sailors had died.

But always he kept up the show of strength before the Indians. Once he had three of his men loiter after him into the open, as though in idleness. He turned on them, struck them with pretended fierceness, and ordered them back to their work. He would have no loafers about with a thousand things to be done before spring! So they tottered back and fell onto their pallets.

One day, in dreadful curiosity, they opened the body of a youth who had died. A stream of black blood spurted from his heart. This told them nothing of how to treat the distemper, but on this same day Cartier had an image of the Virgin raised not far from the fort. A poignant ceremony followed. Those who could walk marched in procession to the spot, singing psalms and repeating the Litany. Gaunt, ragged, ghastly pale, their voices hoarse, they stumbled across the snow. They raised their haggard eyes to that pitying, gentle face of the Virgin. They prayed to be cleansed from the terrible disease. One can imagine the Indians, grouped at a distance, absorbing every detail of the ritual, well guessing that the white men prayed in desperation for help.

Their prayer was answered. A cleansing stream entered their blood. By degrees strength tautened their failing limbs. Hope freshened in their hearts. Cartier learned, from one of the Indians he had had with him in France, of a brew made from the branches of the white pine which, he declared, had cured him of the scurvy. Cartier had some of this prepared, and its efficacy completed the cure. The plague was over. Spring was on the way. The river, so long silent, began to stir, the ice to break, and the sound of gurgling water to freshen beneath the sun.

If only Cartier had had the provisions, his men the strength to push onward for another season! But there was nothing for it but to return to France and prepare another expedition. He must be ready for treachery on the part of the Indians. Wherever he looked he saw dark warriors stalking. Yet the chief, Donnacona, was friendly on the surface. He had been absent from the village for a long while, perhaps hunting, perhaps, as he grandiloquently told Cartier, on a visit to that longed-for land where gold, silver, and rubies were plentiful and where other white men lived in princely fashion.

Cartier wished he might take the old chief back to France with him. The king might well be stirred by his persuasive voice, his impressive figure. But Donnacona would never consent. The only way would be to capture him.

In the first week in May all was ready. The river flowed open to the sea. Two of the ships were ready for the voyage. One must be left where it lay, for Cartier had not enough sailors to man the three. It must rot in the river, spoil for Indian boys who would clamber over it, pulling out the nails for their own use.

Before he sailed Cartier had a massive cross set up to mark the place as belonging to the king of France. It stood thirty-five feet tall and bore the inscription: Franciscus primus Dei gratia Francorum rex regnat. This cross and the ship abandoned in the river were the only marks left by the Frenchmen in the wilderness.

As a last gesture, Cartier gave a banquet in the fort to which he invited the chief Donnacona. Fear and curiosity struggled in the mind of the old Indian. He wanted to go to the banquet but he was sorely afraid to enter the fort. He had courage, however, and, dressed in his best ornaments and with a score of warriors to guard him, he presented himself at the appointed time. The Indians trembled and cast wary eyes toward the woods as they crossed the drawbridge and entered the fort.

Instantly Donnacona and ten of his warriors were seized. The others, with yells of terror, escaped to the forest. Those captured were carried to the ships, while on the shore the remaining Indians of the settlement raged, howled, worked themselves into a frenzy of hate during all that night and far into the next day. Their chief was gone, taken to be the victim of an unknown fate! He was a husband, too, several times over, and a father!

But before long Cartier had the chief pacified. In his frank and genial way he talked soothingly to Donnacona. He told him how he would be treated as an honored guest in France, how he would return after a few months laden with presents. Donnacona was well pleased. He stood on the deck of the ship and talked to his tribe, gathered in canoes below. Now they were as pleased as he. It was fitting that their chief should be entertained by that distant chief in the white man’s country. Cartier gave Donnacona eight sharp hatchets and two shining brass saucepans on the spot, as presents for his wives. Picture the poor ladies hugging these to their breasts while the figure of their lord grew smaller and smaller, as the sails filled, and the ship bearing him moved down the river! Would they ever see him again?

And what were the feelings of the tiny girl who had been given to Cartier the autumn before? How had she spent the winter? What fears had she when the solid deck beneath her swayed and the thunder of the sea wind shook the sails? Perhaps Cartier raised her to his shoulder to comfort her. Perhaps she found comfort in her new, cherished possession of a rosary.

Cartier’s Last Voyages

So Cartier returned to St. Malo. When his sails were seen on the horizon all the bells were set ringing for joy at his home-coming. The shops, the houses were emptied, and the people poured in an excited stream to welcome the voyagers. The men in hose and doublet, the women in their dignified Breton dress, the dancing children, the infants in arms, stared spellbound at the approaching sails.

But—there should have been three ships! Where was the Petite Hermine? Forebodings of disaster troubled the breasts of the watchers. Well might they dread to hear the news brought by the survivors. Twenty-five men had been left dead at Stadacona. In their place half a score of swarthy savages stalked off the ship—and one brown little girl!

Sorrow, joy, and wonder surged through the throng. We can imagine that even stout Cartier wept at the tale he had to tell. Again the cathedral was filled in a service of thanksgiving for those who had survived.

Cartier had little to show the king as the result of the expedition, but he made the most of what he had. The Indians were taken to court, and Francis was impressed by their lithe bodies, their independent bearing. Chief Donnacona, now given the title of King of Canada, stood up straight as a pine tree and conversed in tolerable French with Francis. He talked, not without boastfulness, of the wonders of his land. Cartier glowingly implored the king’s favor for another expedition. More ships, more men better armed, he begged for, and more adequate supplies.

Francis was not only ambitious for a realm beyond the sea but, when he looked at these well-formed savages, he longed to make Christians of all their kind. Religious fervor was at this time strong in France. Henry VIII had become a Protestant and had forbidden the exercise of the Catholic religion in England. He had condemned Sir Thomas More, a man noble and intellectual, to be beheaded. He had seized the property of the monasteries. Not only Francis but all Catholic Europe was shaken. It was at this time that Ignatius Loyola formed the Society of Jesuits, with the sanction of the Pope. It was priests of this order who sacrificed their lives to teach the Catholic faith in Canada, many of them suffering the extreme of martyrdom.

Donnacona and his warriors were baptized and took Christian names. Donnacona, in compliment to the king, became Francis. Francis the First of Canada!

These Indians were objects of the greatest interest in St. Malo for a time. But the interest faded and turned to disgust. For one thing, their habits were revolting to the French. For another, they were of no earthly use to anyone. They were simply a burden. One after another they sickened in the atmosphere of civilization. Their lungs were affected; their stalwart bodies became slack and then emaciated. One after another they died. Cartier could not keep his promise to Donnacona to take him back to Canada after a few months. France was at war with Spain. Four years had passed before King Francis could turn his attention to the search for Cathay.

By that time Donnacona, with his boasting and his craft, was long buried. Only the little Indian girl survived. With the persistence of her sex she lived on, and one can picture her wild little head bent over some task of church embroidery, her brown fingers smoothly counting her beads. Perhaps she forgot all she had known in her native land. Perhaps some scene of torture she had witnessed came back to trouble her.

In October 1541, Francis signed a commission for Cartier, who at once set about preparations on a far greater scale than he had before attempted. This time he was to establish a real colony. The difficulty was that so few wanted to leave France. To solve this, Cartier was given permission to take whom he would from the prisons. Many of those under sentence of death were thankful to go. It required no great effort to get sentenced to death in those days. Small thefts, rumored heresy or treason, circulating false coin—a poor man needed to be wary.

These, added to those who volunteered, were to be the workers. But there was another class to go on this voyage, the adventurous young gentlemen. One of these was the Viscount de Beaupré, a friend of Cartier’s. These young men took with them the newest in weapons and fair supplies of fine wine to ease the inevitable privations.

Pigs, poultry, and sheep were driven onto the ships. St. Malo became a bustling port. There was a group of women, too, with their small belongings collected about them, ready to sail for New France, as the colony was to be called. There were priests eager to begin their work of Christianizing the Indians. Jacques Cartier had been given the titles of Captain General and Master Pilot.

But something happened which, in a degree, lowered his prestige. Francis, influenced by certain of his nobles, appointed as viceroy of the new colony the Sieur de Roberval, well known at court. He gave Roberval the power to deal out justice, carry on wars, grant fiefs. Francis doubtless felt that he needed someone experienced in state-craft to rival the pretensions of Spain in the New World. But it must have been a blow to Cartier’s pride. He went doggedly on with his work of preparation, and when, in May, Roberval came to St. Malo and, inspecting the result, declared that there was a scarcity of artillery and ammunition, Cartier refused to delay his voyage in order to procure a greater supply. He would have little enough time for all he had to do. He convinced Roberval of this, and on May 23 he sailed. Not just three ships spread their sails this time but five, with several hundred people aboard and supplies for two years. Life in St. Malo was marked by partings, long, anxious waitings, prayers in the cathedral for the safe return of ships.

It was August 23 before Cartier reached Stadacona, after a rough voyage. As the massive Rock rose before him and Indians in their canoes swarmed out to meet the ships, one can picture him standing warily on the deck, uncertain of the welcome he would receive. He had bad news to tell. He had not brought back one of the Indians he had taken to France, not even the child.

But when he gravely informed the Indians of this none showed any sorrow. The new chief, Agohanna, was in truth relieved. He wanted no resurrection of a former chief. What he wanted were weapons—hatchets, daggers, and, above all, the terrifying and deadly firearms. What the squaws wanted were saucepans, bead necklaces, mirrors in which to view their dusky looks. Even when Cartier told them the tale he had invented of how the Indians he had carried to France were now great lords, married to great ladies and living in courtly surroundings, nobody cared. They wanted axes, saucepans, guns, and necklaces—not fairy tales.

Cartier had no wish to build his fort in such close proximity to the savages as he had done before, so he chose a spot seven miles up the river. Here, where a small river joins the St. Lawrence, the French threw themselves with enthusiasm into the work. Those who were newcomers to the land found it far more beautiful than they had been led to expect. The trees of the forest were magnificent, the air was bracing, and everything that grew from the soil sprang up in energy and as though in haste. The very vegetable seeds that were now sown in the freshly cleared soil showed their leaves in little over a week. Women tucked up their long skirts and worked side by side with the men. After the rigors of the interminable voyage what joy it was to swing their axes and see the great trees crash to the ground—to lay log upon log and see the walls of the fort rise—to drag cannon up to where the fort stood and so make it impregnable! They did miracles of labor, clearing as much as an acre and a half of land in one day. They built a byre for the animals, and they, poor wretches, found tender grass and shoots to munch in place of the starvation fare they had suffered for three months. The convicts, taken from the prisons in France, must have felt free indeed in this paradise. Cartier’s hopes ran high. He sent two of the ships back to France with letters to the king, telling how well all was going and that Roberval had not yet arrived.

Now good fortune was crowned by a fresh discovery. The French found veins of gold and silver in the rocks. They found small glittering stones which they knew to be diamonds, though they did not know how inferior their quality was. Precious metal, precious stones; surely this was the sort of colony France needed!

In the long winter that followed, Cartier thought more and more often of returning to France. More and more Indian warriors prowled the forest. There was still no sign of Roberval with the needed munitions. Cartier’s desire to display the specimens of silver, gold, and diamonds to the king mounted. When spring came and the river was open he could no longer wait.

The fort was dismantled and abandoned. The three ships set sail for the sea. All these people, who in the hilarity of their early enterprise must have pictured themselves as the nucleus of a prosperous settlement, now turned their faces, some pensively, some with thankfulness, toward their native land. In the harbor of St. Johns, Newfoundland, they came upon Roberval with three tall ships. They signaled and weighed anchor. The two leaders conferred.

Cartier, with pride, exhibited his precious findings. Roberval had the gold tested by fire. It was true gold. He listened with eager attention to all Cartier had to tell of the fertility of the country. He had brought plenty of munitions with him. He was accompanied by two hundred men and women, many of them of high birth, ready for adventure. He arrogantly gave Cartier orders to turn back with him into the heart of the country.

Now Jacques Cartier was not accustomed to taking orders but to giving them. He did not like Roberval. Above all, he wanted the glory of displaying the treasure to the king. He made no objection to Roberval’s commands, but in the night he secretly sailed away, and when morning came only his distant sails could be sighted on the horizon. There was nothing for Roberval to do but to continue the journey without Cartier.

One might have more sympathy for him if a story of his cruelty had not survived. He had brought with him a niece, Marguerite, whom he discovered to be intimate with one of the gentlemen on board. It is remarkable that Roberval, accustomed to the laxity of the French court, should have been outraged by this. But outraged he was. He marooned the pair, with a nurse for comfort, on a lonely island near the Straits of Belle Isle, to found another Eden if they could, or perish in the attempt. Man and nurse perished. Only the gently bred young lady survived the hardships and the loneliness. Two years later a fishing boat discovered the ragged, weather-beaten girl and took her home to France.

Roberval and his company made themselves secure for the winter in Cartier’s fort. He sent two of his ships back to the king with specimens of diamonds he had discovered. He would not let Cartier outdo him.

But Cartier had learned how to deal with the plague of scurvy. Roberval encountered it in ignorance. That winter fifty of the company died. Food was terribly scarce. Cruel punishment was dealt out to those who were insubordinate, dishonest, or who offended Roberval’s principles of morality. Even women were flogged and survived the flogging. It was a sorry winter, and though Roberval made an expedition westward when spring came, he was a disappointed man. In July he too sailed for France.

For the next half century Canada’s magnificent furs and abounding fish still drew men to her shores. England and France both claimed her, but she seemed to each not worth the fighting for.

Samuel de Champlain

These various advances to and retreats from Canada by the French left the great Rock unmarked. Through the decades of heat and cold, of storm and calm, of Indian feast and fighting, it waited soberly for the man who was to lay the first stones of Quebec on its fastness. He was Samuel de Champlain, and his first voyage to Canada was in 1603. Altogether he made thirteen voyages out, but from the thirteenth he did not return. He died in Quebec, after more than thirty years of courageous effort for the colony.

Champlain was from Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay, and the sea was in his blood. He had sailed it from boyhood, and there was possibly no better pilot in his day. He had been to Spain with his uncle, who had a commission from the Spanish king. He had sailed in his uncle’s ship to the West Indies. From there he had gone to Mexico. He had learned a great deal about the Spanish system of colonizing. He absorbed the good in this but had an abhorrence for the cruelty which came so naturally to the Spaniards. They cared nothing for the sufferings or the lives of the natives, who retaliated, when they could, by killing and devouring any stray Spaniards they might overcome in the mountains.

Yet in 1584 the Marquis de la Roche had been given ships by Henry III with permission to establish a French colony in Canada. The venture turned out disastrously when his finest ship was wrecked, and he was forced to turn back. Then, as today, there was no political unity in France. A rival nobleman captured De la Roche on his return and kept him prisoner in the castle of Nantes for seven long years. But his was a hardy spirit. When he at last was freed he persisted till he was able to persuade Henry IV to grant him power to make a second attempt.

He had but one ship, and it so heavily laden that it is said those on board could lean over the side and wash their hands in the sea. He landed sixty colonists on desolate Sable Island and then sailed on to find a more promising region. All went ill with him, and at last he was caught in a great storm and again driven helpless back to France.

Henry IV was so touched by the story De la Roche told him, when the marquis was able once more to appear at court, that he sent a fishing vessel to rescue the colonists who had been left behind. But things moved slowly in those days. Five long years had passed. Of the sixty left on Sable Island only a dozen now survived. They had lived on fish and seals and sea birds; they had dressed in furs. They had fought the elements and each other. Frequent murders had helped to diminish their numbers. They must have been a tough dozen who survived. As though they had not been through enough, the fishermen who rescued them tried to steal the collection of furs they took back to France.

When Champlain returned to France he made a full report to the king of all he had seen. He poured out his cherished hope of making France all-powerful in the Northern regions of America. A thousand vessels crossed the sea every year to the shores of Canada, but these traders were not French alone. They came from many countries. What Champlain wanted to do was to establish a strong French colony in Canada, to convert the natives to Christianity without coercion or cruelty.

To his great satisfaction he was able to convince the king of the desirability of a full report on conditions in Canada and on the geography of the country. The king appointed him Geographer Royal. Champlain set out in high hope, his forceful nature bent on physical and spiritual conquest. In his years in Canada, Champlain did indeed gain an extraordinary acquaintance with the features of the country. He voyaged to the Georgian Bay, to Lake Ontario, to Lake Simcoe, and to Lake Champlain. He even had word of Hudson’s Bay and Niagara Falls.

Champlain first landed at Tadoussac, which was a fur-trading center. He met a great gathering of Indians there who were friendly to him. They told him they were engaged in a war on the Iroquois. Champlain promised to help them, and so he entangled himself, and those who succeeded him, in disastrous tribal warfare. But how could he foretell this? It seemed so expedient, so necessary to make friends with those at hand.

They were a barbarous lot. When they feasted Champlain his stomach was revolted by the filthy way they prepared the meat they offered him. After eating they wiped their greasy hands on their long hair. This habit may well have been the forerunner of the horrid custom of flattening the hair with hair “cream.”

The Indians did their best to entertain him. After the feast there was a great bonfire, and round its blaze they leaped and danced. Not only the warriors but the women danced, their bronze bodies stark naked, with wild gestures in the fiery glow. But when they were tired and the women had drifted away to where they slept, the warriors came and lay down beside Champlain and he drew them on to talk of this vast, mysterious land. They were friendly, for they needed his help, as he needed theirs.

He sailed on up the river to where it narrowed at Kebec, a name the Indians gave to any narrows. The settlement of Stadacona was gone. Cartier’s fort had disappeared. Champlain sailed on, past the Rock, to the island of Montreal, where Cartier had been sixty-eight years before. The weather was lovely. Champlain and his companions were enchanted by the scenery. Noble woods swept upward to the mountainous land, and water birds quickened wood and shore with their life. Open meadows were graced by flowers and fruit. He sailed on to the Lachine Rapids, whose fury was such that, he wrote, they made his hair stand on end. He dared not go beyond the rapids, but he made the Indians describe those regions to the north and west. From his own observations and their simple drawings he made maps and wrote descriptions of surprising accuracy. Beyond the rapids he told of a lake one hundred and ninety-two miles long. This was certainly Lake Ontario, which is one hundred and ninety-seven miles long. He learned of Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Hudson’s Bay, and Niagara, but these first explorings took him no farther than Lachine. However, he had stirring news to carry back to France. Hearing that Hudson’s Bay was salt water, he thought it might possibly be the South Sea, but he did not build too greatly on that.

The next year Champlain came again to Canada. His company included a number of young nobles eager for adventure and for the shooting of the variety of wild fowl offered by its virgin shores. On this voyage he discovered the Bay of Fundy and the Annapolis Basin. An attempt was made to establish a settlement at St. Croix, but though summer and autumn overflowed with happy augurs, winter, as in the past, proved disastrous. Even the gay young noblemen found it hard to keep up their hearts against the relentless cold, the devastations of scurvy. So these various attempts passed, with little left to mark their passage but human bones beneath the ground.

In 1607 the English made a permanent settlement in Virginia, and a year later Champlain founded Quebec. Men of culture, men of religious fervor in France, had brave visions of a proud colony where the traditions of their land would forever be cherished, where the natives would be led from their savage ways by gentleness, not ill-treated and tortured in the manner of Spain. Champlain had spent three seasons in the region of the Bay of Fundy and in what was later to be New England. He reached the conclusion that far up the great river was the place for establishing his settlement. There he might better control the fur trade than on the open coast. There he would be nearer to the mysterious lands to the west, where untold wealth might be waiting for the explorer.

At Tadoussac there were a number of Basque fur traders. They resented the coming of Champlain, and when the two French ships stopped there they made an attack. Champlain’s companion, Dupont-Grave, was wounded and another man killed. This encounter did not forecast an untroubled possession of Stadacona, but Champlain was not accustomed to peace. He had a bold, enthusiastic, and dominating nature. He stepped from his ship and raised his eyes to the Rock, looming steadfast against the sky. There the banner of France should be planted anew. There should his fortress of Quebec rise. Its guns would command the river, which narrowed here to the width of a mile. And in time the fortress would become a city, a walled city whose walls would guard the traditions of France. It was July. What a scene of bustle took place! The sun blazed on the river. Men carrying loads from the ships must throw off outer garments in the heat. The land in its midsummer beauty was enchanting. What space! What oaks and pines and shining silver birches! The very birds were friendly and flew unafraid to watch the newcomers. It seemed that in such a land there could be no poverty. There would be plenty for all. It was said that the Basques at Tadoussac had got six thousand beaverskins in one deal with the Indians! The forests were teeming with game.

The young nobles worked side by side with the peasants. Champlain gave a hand. It was arduous work hauling supplies and implements up the steep, felling great timbers, cutting steps in the rock. They were as happy as children, singing French songs, chaffing each other. The sheep they had brought with them bundled themselves feebly to where the grass showed green. The pigs trotted, grunting with joy, to root in the moist earth. The dogs were beside themselves to smell the scents of the land. The cock sent out his challenge to the wilds.

Men were set to hew the timbers for substantial buildings. But the cheerful preparations were interrupted by treachery. A man named Jean Duval, who had already been a troublemaker, hatched a scheme to murder Champlain and then secure a high price from the Basques for possession of Quebec. There were few of the workmen who did not join in the treachery. They had no qualms about strangling their leader, if they could gain by it. But Champlain was ever on the alert. His suspicions were roused. Duval was arrested, tried, hanged, beheaded. Now, on a pike, his bloodstained head stared at the St. Lawrence. In that ghastly stare treachery in the camp was at an end.

All the rest of the summer the workmen were kept busy. Three buildings were erected on the river’s edge, with the somber Rock towering above. These had wide galleries round the second stories and were surrounded by a moat. Cannon guarded this fastness. From the outer world, at least, Champlain felt reasonably secure by September, when Dupont-Grave returned to France with a ship laden with furs. The finest of these were to trim the cloaks and tunics of gentlemen of the court as well as for the adornment of ladies.

Of all the seasons, autumn is best in Canada. The twenty-eight Frenchmen could now relax from their labors and enjoy the lovely air, the tapestry of foliage that made the shores of the river gorgeous, the abounding wild life. A stroll through the woods with a gun was pleasant. The native grouse, partridge, and deer made delicious meals. As Champlain wandered alone his head must have been filled with spacious plannings such as are given to few men. Here he was, in sole command of this noble land—this land of future power and wealth for France. His spirit may well have been filled with hope and pride.

But the specter of winter approached. The stark landscape, the frozen river, the snow mounting up and up in drifts, whirling in blizzards, the wind that pierced the very soul. And scurvy came with little to alleviate it, for Cartier’s cure had not been handed down. By spring only thirteen gaunt men faced each other about the board. Yet they were by no means in despair. They had planted this outpost for France and they would hold to it.

All through the winter they were watched with savage curiosity by the Indians. These were of the Montagnais tribe, bitter enemies of the Iroquois but far weaker. They saw in Champlain a powerful ally. With his help they might fight a revengeful war on the Iroquois, whom they were now too feeble to engage. Champlain, on his part, knew he must have the help of a friendly tribe in his explorations. He could not, with the paltry few at his command, hold his own in this wilderness. If he had been sent but one regiment from France, which would not have been missed from the army, he might have been independent of the Indians. The long years of hatred felt by the Iroquois for the French might have been avoided. Champlain could not know that he had chosen the weaker and less intelligent tribes as his allies. He could not know that the Dutch and the English in turn would benefit by the friendship of the Iroquois.

In June came the joyful sight of sails from France. We can picture the thirteen men who had survived the winter, running down the steep to the river’s edge, standing with outstretched arms, half laughing, half weeping, in their relief and joy to see faces from home. How eagerly they would drink in every word of news and, in their turn, tell the sorry tale of the past winter! How welcome the supplies, the letters brought by the ships! Fresh vigor entered into the spirits of the thirteen.

Now Champlain set out to explore the regions of the St. Lawrence. He still cherished the belief that if he pursued the search westward he would come upon populous cities of Oriental wealth. He had twenty men with him in a shallop. Indians, too, came in their canoes, friendly, eager to help him with their knowledge of the country, but with one thought only in their heads—revenge on the Iroquois.

The summer scene was delightful. The noble river, stirred by a light wind, flowed between the wooded shores. Smaller streams added their volume to the river. The new leaves of the woods were the shelter of myriad songbirds. Myriad fish thronged the streams.

Champlain was impatient to press on, but when he had gone only thirty miles he met several hundred Indian warriors, Algonquins and Hurons, on their way to Quebec. News had traveled to their distant land that the white men had promised to help them fight the Iroquois. Now in these days of early summer they were gathered to hold him to his promise. But before going into battle they wanted to see the wonders at Quebec of which they had heard so much—those fine houses with galleries running round the upper story where, on spring days, the Frenchmen had been observed to take the air, those cannon and muskets which spat forth death with a frightening roar. The warriors had brought furs which they hoped to barter for hatchets, knives, copper pots, and those fascinating trinkets which so added to the appearance. The fighting could wait.

So Champlain turned back with them. He displayed the wonders at his command and had vast meals prepared. The Indians had their wives with them, and one can imagine the odd impression made on these by the manners of the French gentlemen. What the women and many of the warriors now wanted was to hasten home with their treasures and meet the Iroquois later on when there was nothing better to do.

But Champlain must go forward with his explorings, and he needed their help. He persuaded them to go with him up the river, but they went halfheartedly. When the Richelieu River near Montreal was reached the greater number of the Indians became nervous at the thought of venturing up it into the land of the Iroquois. Secretly they conferred together, then early one morning they glided away in their canoes, no doubt laughing among themselves at the fate that would befall Champlain.

Champlain found that he could not navigate the Richelieu in his shallop because of the dangerous rapids. He was in a terrible predicament. He solved it by sending the ship back to Quebec with all but two of his men, who stoutly remained with him. So, in a canoe, with sixty Indians in canoes, he paddled up the river, with the vast wilderness all about him and a savage foe somewhere concealed.

The Indians had told him of a beautiful lake with many islands, and he now set his heart on finding it. This was Lake Champlain, now owned by the Americans. Cautiously he advanced, stealing along the river at night, resting in the forest by day, till at last the lake lay before him. He was the first European to see it, but less than a month later Henry Hudson sailed up the river named for him and himself beheld the lake. On its western shore Champlain’s party came upon about one hundred Iroquois. Now for the battle!

All night long the opposing sides worked furiously, building barricades of felled trees. All night long the air was split by the howls and whoops of the braves, their promises of torture to the defeated. At dawn the opposing forces marched out to meet each other.

Picture the scene—the Indians ferocious in war paint, the three Iroquois chiefs wearing tall, plumed headdresses, Champlain and his men in polished breastplates that gleamed in the sun! Champlain advanced, surrounded by his Indian allies, but when they neared the Iroquois he stepped forward alone and fired three shots from his musket. The three Iroquois chiefs bit the dust. Lucky for them it was so and they were not taken prisoner. The Iroquois, after fierce fighting, were routed. Champlain pursued them with his victorious Indians. Many were killed by bow and arrow and musket. A dozen were made prisoner and preserved for torture. Hurons, Algonquins, and Montagnais had had enough of fighting. Champlain could not persuade them to go on. They hungered for the fruits of victory—the torture of the captured foe.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Champlain Monument on Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, overlooking the St. Lawrence River.

Champlain had seen something of native warfare. He had heard of tortures inflicted on criminals and assassins in Europe, but his soul was sickened by what he now was forced to witness. One of the prisoners, a tall young man, was placed in the center of a derisive circle of the victors. If he was no coward, let him sing his death song! So, from his quaking lungs, he brought forth a hollow, mournful song. He would have prolonged it to stave off the dreadful moment, but his tormentors were impatient, and when his voice wavered they sprang on him with yells of delight. They tore off his nails and pressed hot coals to the mutilated ends of his fingers. They held burning brands to other parts of his body, poured boiling resin on his head, and then tore off the scalp. Still he lived! In horror Champlain implored them to put an end to him. But they did not want him to die, they said. The longer they could keep him alive, the more pleasure for them. Champlain could not endure the sight and flung away in loathing. The chiefs valued him as an ally and had no wish to anger him. “Do as you like!” they called after him. He strode back and fired a shot from his arquebus into the tortured body. This the Indians pounced on and tore to pieces. They forced gobbets of the bloody flesh into the mouths of the other prisoners.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Champlain Market in the Lower Town.

At long last quiet descended on the woods. The lapping of the lake against its shore was heard again, and the faint calling of birds. The Indians prepared to return to their own lands. A dozen prisoners were taken back with them for future torture.

Triumph lent speed to the return journey. In a few days they reached the mouth of the Richelieu. The Hurons and Algonquins headed for the Ottawa River with their portion of prisoners. They begged Champlain to come and visit them. He promised that he would and kept the promise. But now he went eastward with the Montagnais as far as Tadoussac, where the feast of victory was to be held. The party made great speed, for the Indians were in a panic. One had dreamed that the revengeful Iroquois were upon them. In a deluge of rain they paddled frantically down the St. Lawrence, scarcely able to see where they were going. But by degrees courage returned and they arrived at Tadoussac triumphant. Their women, in a frenzy of eagerness to receive them, swam stark naked out to meet the canoes. Grinning in delight, the warriors put the heads of the dead Iroquois into their outstretched arms. The squaws swam back to shore and there played with the heads, held them aloft in a mad dance. A head was presented to Champlain, also a pair of arms, to take as an offering to his king. This he promised to do, though he was still sick with disgust at what he had witnessed.

Champlain had great hopes of civilizing these savages, as he had great hopes for the future of this mysterious land. He sailed again for France in the autumn of 1609. He had much to tell the lively and eager Henry IV. He did not take the head of the Iroquois to Henry, but instead a belt worked in a design of dyed porcupine quills, two scarlet birds, probably cardinals, and the skull of a garfish.

It was not long after this that King Henry was assassinated. With him a great era in French history passed. War and decline followed. France had neither strength nor wealth to give to New France. Those whose hopes were there must get on as best they could. Henry IV had had plans for a peaceful Europe. In truth he had conceived a league of nations which should guard peace for all time. But a red-bearded religious fanatic with a long knife hidden beneath his cloak changed all that. Following the king’s gilded coach with its emblazoned fleur-de-lis, he waited till two carts slackened the movement of the coach, then he sprang forward and thrust the knife twice into Henry’s heart. Henry’s vigorous and buoyant spirit left his body, and the loss to France was great.

With him, to France, Champlain had taken an Indian boy and in his stead had left a French boy with the Indians. This was in contrast to Cartier’s unscrupulous plan for the visit of Donnacona and his warriors to France. This Indian youth, named Saingnon, was bold as brass. He was a nuisance to Champlain, who was responsible for his behavior and his safe return. He would wander alone in the Paris streets, delighting when a fight took place. “Kill him! Kill him!” he would shout to the combatants, and sneer at them and call them cowards and women. No one was willing to start a fight with him, for he was tall, with muscles of steel and the eyes of a tiger.

Champlain—Ruler of Canada

With Henry IV gone and a child, Louis XIII, on the throne, Champlain had a difficult road ahead of him. In place of Henry’s sympathetic and tolerant mind to deal with, he had the narrow, cruel, and devious mind of the Italian Regent, Marie de Médicis. The court seethed with intrigue. Throughout the land Catholics and Protestants were at daggers drawn. The Catholics looked with abhorrence on the teachings of the Protestants. The Protestants insisted on their right to keep an armed force to protect them from another Massacre of St. Bartholomew. So religious fervor goes hand in hand with intolerance. It is only in the twilight of religion that a man does not care how his fellow man worships.

Champlain was of tough fiber and great resilience. He needed to be, for his life abounded in difficulties. Even his loyalty and devotion could not procure the ear of the Regent. He must reach her through an intriguing courtier. This was Charles de Bourbon, Count de Soissons. Champlain convinced him that ruin of the great fur trade was at hand if it were not properly controlled. The count easily persuaded the Regent to make him protector of New France at a fair salary, and he appointed Champlain Lieutenant General, with power to control all trade and to make wars as he saw fit.

He was pledged to help his Indian allies in their war against the Iroquois. In return the Montagnais were to guide him to Hudson’s Bay, where Henry Hudson had lately perished, bound with seven others by his mutinous crew and cast adrift on its bitterly cold waters. The Hurons promised Champlain to show him the treasures of the Great Lakes, the mines of copper on their shores. So he found himself embroiled in one fierce fight after another. His ears grew used to the bloodcurdling screeches of the savages, the sight of them naked in their war paint, their agile boundings through tangled undergrowth and over wild, rough land, leaving the Frenchmen encumbered by heavy armor in the rear. But he could not accustom himself to the torture fires after the battle, when the victors danced in frenzy of delight about their prisoners. He could not accustom himself to the cries of the victims as their lives were drawn out to a fine thread of anguish. Some of the prisoners were handed over to the women for torture. Burning by degrees, quartering, and devouring were not enough to satisfy the women. Fat old squaws, slim young squaws, those who were expectant mothers, gathered together to devise more excruciating torments.

How gladly must Champlain have returned from such scenes of horror to his garden! There, into the strong virgin soil, he thrust his spade till, in the sweat of exertion, he cleansed his spirit. His carrots, his beetroot, his peas and beans flourished. His herbs made savory the soup. He grew grains of many sorts. He even planted a vineyard, but the grapes never attained the flavor of those grown in France. And he had a tender love of flowers. Now the marigold, the violet, and the stock grew in Quebec. His flowering ambitions for Quebec were such that he planted rosebushes all about.

The news of the king’s assassination came as a heavy blow. For the very life of his feeble colony, Champlain was obliged to return to France for the following winter. He left an officer named Du Parc in command, with sixteen men. Off the coast of Newfoundland his ship ran onto the vast back of a whale fast asleep, which, rolling over in dismay, cast the ship from it, fortunately right side up. He reached France without further mishap. There the difficulties that met him were enough to make him despair. Always he had the feeling that he should be in two places at once—in Paris to advance the interests of his cherished colony, in Quebec to guard the fur trade, preserve friendly intercourse with the Indians, and control the horde of adventurers who had swarmed to New France in his wake. With no knowledge of the country, with no understanding of the fur trade, with hatred and fear of the Indians, they obstructed his path. Champlain never hated the Indians. He never regarded them as unteachable or wholly lost in savagery. He had admiration for their courage and an endless curiosity about their habits. It surprised him to see how spoilt were their children. To be sure, French children were indulged, but he saw these little savages turn in rage on their parents if they corrected them. He saw them strike their mothers in the face. Even a warrior’s war-bitten visage might meekly suffer a blow from a furious little fist.

Higher up the St. Lawrence, where Montreal now stands, Champlain established a trading post which he called Place Royale. The greedy traders were all about him. Every day a half dozen of their boats or vessels appeared on the scene. The traders were wild with enthusiasm when they saw a fleet of birch canoes dancing down the foaming St. Louis River to where it joins the St. Lawrence. They fired a volley from all their guns to welcome the approaching Hurons. The result was that the Indians were frightened almost out of their wits. It took a deal of persuasion to induce them to land with their furs. Their naked feet were scarcely on the shore when the traders, each determined to get the best of the beaverskins, fairly mobbed them. The dignified Indians pressed close together, full of distrust and fear.

Late at night they sought out Champlain and begged him to go to their camp. There, by the light of the fire, they told him of their trust in him. “Come to our country,” they said, “buy our beaver, build a fort, teach us the true faith, do what you will, but do not bring this crowd with you.”

With the death of the king Champlain had lost the monopoly of the fur trade, but he had a monopoly of the faith of the Indians. All night long he talked with them, sturdy and reassuring. The next morning they left and stayed not their paddles till the rapids of the St. Louis lay between them and the dreaded fur traders.

Champlain, as he had promised, followed them to their camp, traded with them to their satisfaction, and in their canoes they paddled him back through the rapids. Like them, he was stripped so that he might have a better chance of surviving if overturned. But though he felt great trepidation, he was exhilarated by the wild passage. He was full of admiration for the skill of the Indians in guiding the fragile craft through the foaming, treacherous waters.

As the fur trade increased and the beaver grounds became less fruitful, it was necessary to go farther and farther afield. Champlain was no trader. He was above all an explorer. The great aim of his life was to find a way to China, and now, added to that, was the almost equal object of converting the Indians to Christianity. To see the ships of France returning by way of Canada, laden with the riches of the East, to see the Indians give up their savage ways and accept Christ as their Lord—if he could bring about these glorious ends, life would have granted him all he could ask.

He desired no monopoly of the fur trade, but he established a system of trading, in which the merchants of St. Malo and Rouen joined, by which they aided in the support of the colony as well as sharing in its resources. But the traders of Rochelle stood apart, continuing an illegal commerce and causing annoyance and confusion.

In 1612 a young man named Nicolas de Vignau, who had spent a year with the Algonquins, returned to Paris with a thrilling tale. He declared that at the source of the Ottawa he had discovered a great lake, into which a river flowed from the north, that he had followed this river and found that it descended into the sea. There, he said, he had found the wreck of an English ship and had heard from the Indians of eighty men from her who, in the desperation of starvation, had made a raid for food on the Indians and been killed. Champlain had heard of the loss of Hudson’s ship in that region, which seemed to prove the authenticity of the story.

Vignau declared that this sea was a journey of only seventeen days from Montreal. How near might be China, Japan, the treasures of the East! Champlain was in Paris on one of his periodic visits. (Thirteen times he returned during the years of his governorship of Canada.) He was inclined to believe Vignau, who was so young, so candid, so fresh-faced! Persons of influence in the court were fired by the tale. They urged Champlain to lose no time in returning to Canada with Vignau and exploring the possibilities of his discovery.

Champlain, with his zest for life and action, did indeed lose no time. In early spring he crossed the Atlantic, and toward the end of May he, four Frenchmen (including Vignau), and one Indian set out for the Ottawa River. They progressed without great trouble till they reached the rapids of Long Sout. Then the forest pressed so close to the river and there was such a riot of undergrowth that to carry the canoes was impossible. They had to walk among the rocks, pushing the canoes before them. It was exhausting work. Champlain fell between two boulders. The force of the rapids so tautened the rope he clutched that his hand was almost torn off.

Later, in more tranquil water, they encountered some friendly Indians. Champlain exchanged one of his Frenchmen for one of them who knew that country well. Then he traveled on. Through giant forests of pine and hemlock, over massive fallen trunks that barred the way, under blazing sun, devoured by mosquitoes, beneath torrents of rain and electric storm, he struggled on. At night the explorers sank exhausted by the campfire, almost too weary to speak. Champlain suffered much from the pain of his hand. When the sunrise burnished the dark pines the little party rose and pushed on, carrying the canoes or dragging them by ropes along the river’s shore, at times paddling in peaceful waters through the wilderness.

Like a white veil they saw the Rideau Falls and the stormy cataracts of the Chaudière. They saw the teeming wild life, the fish thronging the river, the herd of deer drinking from the pool, the moose pushing his antlers through the boughs to stare at them, the flocks of wild duck and geese, the minks at play, the beavers at work, and, all about, the ancient forest. There were mysterious islands, enfolded in tangled greenery. At last, on the banks of Muskrat Lake, they came upon an Indian settlement. From their huts made of poles, with slabs of bark for roof, the Indians ran in wonder to greet the Frenchmen. Champlain’s achievement in reaching them placed him on a pedestal in their eyes. He was capable of anything, they thought. They prepared a feast for him. They showed him the sights of their settlement—the field of maize, the cemetery where each grave was protected by a roof of pine.

When the feast they had prepared for him had been disposed of, all smoked their pipes in ponderous silence for a long while. Then Champlain told them how he wanted to explore their country and asked them to lend him four canoes and eight men to carry him to the land of the Nipissings. In return for this he promised to help them fight their wars. They agreed, but reluctantly, for they disliked the Nipissings and were jealous of them. Hardly an hour had passed when they withdrew their consent. Bitterly Champlain exclaimed:

“I thought you were men. I thought you would hold fast to your word, but I find you children, without truth and without purpose.”

“We love you. We trust you,” the Indians declared. “You are our best friend among the Frenchmen.”

“You call yourselves my friends,” said Champlain in sonorous tones, “yet you break faith with me. If you cannot give me four canoes, two will serve. Give me two.”

The country was impassable, the Indians declared, because of cataracts and rapids. “The Nipissings will kill you,” they added with conviction in their tones. “They will poison you or kill you with charms. We will not give you the canoes because we are afraid of losing you.”

Champlain pointed to Vignau. “This young man,” he said, “has been to that country and was well treated.”

The chief flung a long bare arm at Vignau. “You say you have been to the Nipissings’ country?” he demanded.

Vignau hesitated, then said truculently, “Yes, I have been there.”

A dramatic scene followed. The Indians shouted their scorn of Vignau. “He is a liar,” said the chief. “He spent every night of that winter safe here among my children. If he went to the Nipissings, he went in his sleep. He risks your life bringing you into terrible dangers. You ought to kill him with the worst possible tortures.”

“Speak,” urged Champlain, his stern eyes on Vignau. “Tell the truth. Where did you spend the winter?”

Vignau sat silent.

Then Champlain took him out of the cabin and again urged him to tell if he had found that northern sea. “Every word of what I said is true,” said the young man, and he swore by the most sacred oaths.

Champlain led Vignau back to the council and repeated the details of his story. An uproar broke out. The Indians glared at Vignau.

“Liar!” they shouted. “Who went with you? Show us how you went!”

Vignau then drew a map, but when the warriors questioned him he could find no answers. Finally he fell on his knees before Champlain and confessed his guilt. Hope of reward had led him to the base fabrication. He had not intended to come on the journey himself. Wretchedly he begged Champlain’s forgiveness.

“Leave him to us,” said the Indians grimly, “and he’ll tell no more lies.”

Champlain showed his magnanimity by giving no punishment to Vignau. But he was bitterly disappointed, and his pride was hurt to think that he had been the dupe of an unscrupulous rascal. There was now nothing to do but to return to Quebec, to pass again through the hardships of the journey, having accomplished nothing.

He arrived at Quebec worn out, half starved, looking but a shadow of his robust self. In heavy mood he embarked in a trading vessel for France.

In France he was not without solace. Several years before he had married a young girl of only twelve years of age who was now completing her education in a convent. He planned to bring her to Quebec when she was twenty. He would then be forty-eight. She was Hélène Boulle, the daughter of a wealthy Huguenot. They had been married in the Church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, and after the ceremony she had returned to her father’s house. She was a lovely child, gay and adventurous, yet with a touching dignity and often silent, lost in thought. Imagine her thoughts, brought up as she was in the superstitions, the strange traditions of France in the seventeenth century! Picture her musing on Champlain’s letters, yearning toward the time when he would take her to Quebec and she would see, with her own eyes, the wonders he described! We can imagine their reunions, when the weather-beaten explorer would bend to kiss her child’s hand and she, in her elaborate dress, the replica of a grown woman’s, would stand on tiptoe to smile into his eyes. What tales he would tell her, keeping always to the adventurous, the picturesque, leaving out the horrors he had witnessed! And he would tell her of his garden and of how she would one day gather roses in Quebec.

There was already a home on the slope of the Rock. It belonged to Louis Hébert, the first settler who brought his wife and family with him to Canada. He had been an apothecary in France, but he had a longing for the New World, the simplicity and freedom of primitive life. Now he grew vegetables for the governor’s table and could prescribe a medicine when required. Here there was no formality, but an unaffected friendship between the governor’s residence and the little farm. We can picture Champlain strolling along the cliff with the Hébert children clinging to his fingers and his dog Matelot, for whom a street in the town was and still is named, bounding about them.

Champlain had a threefold ambition: the establishing of a strong colony with its trade for France, the further exploration of the wilds, and the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. He did all in his power to strengthen his friendship with them, and they are inextricably woven into the pattern of the development of Quebec. England, on the contrary, took the Indians little into account in her colonizing of the New World.

The merchants and traders showed no interest in Champlain’s plans for Christianizing the savages, though later the Catholic missions turned out to be their strong ally. There were few in France of the merchant class who cared what became of the soul of an Indian. But the king’s secretary, Houëll, was not only sympathetic, he was aflame to do all he could to help Champlain in his crusade. Near Brouage, where he lived, there was a monastery, and to the friars he poured out Champlain’s story of the need for missionaries. Their spirits took fire. Houëll hastened to Paris, and from the nobles, the wealthy clergy, he raised fifteen hundred livres for the mission. The king gave letters patent in its favor. The Pope sanctioned it. Finally four Fathers of the Récollet Order set out for Quebec. They brought with them vestments, candles, silver candlesticks, all that was required for the Mass and the Eucharist.

The Récollet Order was a branch of the Franciscans, founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. He had been no more than a youth when visions and voices summoned him to a life of the most extreme self-abnegation and poverty. He had the gift of eloquence, and he set out to preach wherever he could find a handful of listeners. Disciples were drawn to him, men eager like himself to lead a Christlike life, to be poorer than the peasants, to work like the peasants but with no more shelter than a hedge when night fell, with scanty food, with rough robes, only sandals on their bare feet. Such was their fervor that their influence became felt all over Europe. They nursed the sick. No leper was too repulsive for their solicitous care, no one too sunk in villainy for them to lose hope of saving his soul.

Four of these Récollet Friars now came to Quebec. They were Denis Jamay, Jean Dolbeau, Joseph le Caron, and Pacifique du Plessis. The Indians gathered in a curious throng to watch them disembark, to see them kneel beneath the towering Rock, giving thanks to God for safe arrival and offering their bodies in the spiritual campaign to come.

They chose a place for their monastery. They built an altar in eager haste. The first Mass ever said in Canada was celebrated by Dolbeau. The sacred words rang out clear and strong above the murmur of the river. Faith and ardor were pure within him. At the end of the Mass the cannon on the ramparts and the cannon on the ship gave solemn salute to the sacred rite.

Each of the four chose a special field for his efforts. Jean Dolbeau took his place among the Montagnais. He studied their language, their way of living. He made friends with the children. Singlehanded he set out to convert a barbarous and wretched tribe, the least admirable of all the Indians. When the cruel winter came he went with them to their hunting grounds at Tadoussac. He was delicate, but in a temperature far below zero he lived in a hut made of birch bark, crowded with Indians, dogs, lice, and fleas, reeking with horrid smells. He could scarcely see across the hut for the smoke of the fire. His eyes became affected. Sitting with the inflamed lids closed over the smarting eyeballs, he sang hymns or told stories of the saints. When he went out for a breath of pure air he was met by the blinding glare of sun on snow. His misery finally forced him to return to Quebec. But in the spring he was off again with his chosen tribe and with them traveled northward to the land of the Eskimos.

Champlain counseled the other three to remain in Quebec for the winter to study the language of the Indians, to get accustomed to the climate, and to establish headquarters for their work. Two of them agreed, but Joseph le Caron would not endure delay. He set out for Montreal and there made himself known to the Hurons. As an escort he had a dozen Frenchmen, and with them he undertook the exhausting journey to the northern lands. He was the center of a vast horde of naked savages. For long days he paddled in unison with those whose muscles were iron from a life of such exertion. He who had lived in the seclusion of a monastery cell, the quiet garden visible from its window, now waded rivers bent beneath the weight of a canoe, tormented by mosquitoes, his feet cut by the sharp rocks. He had food enough to keep him alive but little more. Sometimes, on bleeding hands and knees, the party forced their way through thickets where there was no path. Some of his letters are preserved and, though he describes his sufferings, they bear witness to his never once faltering in his great desire to carry the message of God’s love to the Indians.

Champlain had been delayed in Quebec by the building of a chapel for the Récollet Fathers and the arrangements necessary for joining the Hurons in their war on the Iroquois. The Indians quite convinced him that no secure trade would be possible till the menace of the Iroquois was removed. They promised two thousand five hundred warriors for attacking the Iroquois villages. But when Champlain reached the appointed meeting place he found that the Indians had left. Restless and impatient, they could not endure waiting.

Now, in two large canoes with three Frenchmen and ten Indians, he again turned in the direction he had taken with Vignau. It took more than a month to reach the village where Vignau had confessed his treachery. From there they journeyed more than as far again. From the Ottawa into the Mattawan, to Lake Nipissing, down the French River till they came upon a great sea. Far away it stretched, to the sharp line of the horizon. Champlain hastened to taste its waters, but no brine touched his lips. He had reached the shore of Lake Huron. He was not the first white man to see it. The Récollet Father, Joseph le Caron, worn to little more than a skeleton, had already stood on its shore. Now, though their meeting was drawing near, neither had any idea of where the other was. Each had made almost superhuman efforts, one in the zeal of exploring, the other in the ardor of carrying the message of Christianity. Only such ardor could have sustained Le Caron, unused to exposure and exhausting toil as he was. Champlain was well schooled in endurance. He had in him the power of wonder and he recorded all he saw.

He told of the Nipissings and how they lived their lives in a twilight of demons, enchanters, and sorcerers, so that every tree in the forest seemed haunted, the very beasts and birds possessed. He told of the extravagant hairdressings of the warriors, the grotesque tattooing and painting of their bodies, the decorations on shield and spear, yet all naked of clothing. Now, after passing through barren country, he was in a land of beauty, with fields of maize, fields of great yellow pumpkins and tall sunflowers, the oil of which made possible the extravagant hairdressing. He told of feasting on game and fish, as long as it lasted, and then of the days of eating nought but blueberries. Nothing could teach the Indians to be provident.

At last, quite unexpectedly, he came upon Father le Caron. One can imagine the joy of that meeting and how the two sat up late into the night to tell of their adventures. The Indians had built a lodge of bark for the priest, and in it he had made an altar. All through his terrible journey he had carried the extra burden of eucharistic silver and altar cloths. Leading Champlain by the hand, he showed him what he had done and the two knelt before the altar together.

On a beautiful August day Father le Caron recited the Mass. No longer in his torn friar’s robe but in embroidered vestment, he stood in priestly dignity. The twelve Frenchmen who had come with him, Champlain and his two, knelt in thanksgiving. The Host was raised. Incense mingled with the sweet scent of the bark. They sang the “Te Deum,” Champlain’s strong voice dominating. Then the roar of their guns saluted the priest’s triumph, and he, with joy in his heart, felt his great work well begun.

Champlain had a genius for getting on with the Indians. His courage, his tolerance, his friendliness, his ready laughter drew them to him; his reliability, his power, his real affection held them. His attitude toward them, as compared with the attitude of the conquering Spaniards in southern lands, was as sunshine to bleak night.

Now he passed from village to village, accompanied by Father le Caron. His welcome was always hearty, for his fame preceded him. He was the explorer, he was the writer, always alert for pungent material. He found much in the Indians to admire. They were of fine physique. Some of the women were as tall and lithe as the men. Their senses were amazingly acute. They bore extreme hardships without complaint. They honored their parents and loved their children.

From village to village the Frenchmen passed, the priest preaching, the soldier preparing the way for future trade, pushing on to find the pathway to the East, questioning, hoping, filled with the zest for living. Champlain bore the discomforts of the long wooden lodges, where twenty families might be housed, with tolerable equanimity. To Father le Caron they were insupportable, and he would endure the cold of the flimsiest shelter rather than live under such conditions. In the long tunnel-like lodge there was a passage about twelve feet wide, running from end to end, with compartments on either side for the different families. Down the length of this corridor a dozen fires might blaze of a winter’s night, throwing grotesque shadows or, when the blaze sank, filling the air with smoke. Naked bodies swarmed about the fire, men, women, and children, the sick or dying crouched in some corner; dogs swarming with fleas, children swarming with lice, rolled and romped together, licking the same wooden plates. Eyes were inflamed and streaming from the smoke. There was no privacy. Ribald jokes and obscene language flew about. A warrior would stretch out a lean brown arm to fill his pipe with the skin from the arm of an enemy hung up to dry. As the Indians tortured their enemies, so they devoured the vermin they found on their own bodies, taking what they considered just retribution on them. Sometimes the chief of the tribe had a lodge of his own, and when this was the case Champlain was thankful to accept its shelter.

It is remarkable that the squalor of their indoor life affected their health not at all. In truth the weaklings died off and only the fittest survived. They had perfect health, often handsome faces of the Roman type, really beautiful teeth, and the agility and strength of wild animals. In contrast, the Indian of today has greatly degenerated. Having lived for years on a fruit farm where we employed Indians as pickers, I had the opportunity to know them at close quarters. A fine body or perfect health was unusual. Many, in fact, were ailing, and those who were in fair health looked soft. Yet these Indians of our day are infinitely cleaner and better fed than those of Champlain’s. Some vital spring of well-being has been broken within them.

The life of the Indian had much in it to charm the wayward white man. By degrees many a Frenchman deserted his own settlement and lived with the savages. He could build his own cabin and keep it as clean as he chose. He could hunt the wild deer and, when it was shot, could leave it where it lay for his Indian wife to seek out, dismember, skin, and drag home. She would till the land, harvest the crop, cut the wood, while he lay beside the fire listening to the stories told by the old chiefs, to the strange music of the flutes and pipes, or watching the naked young men, painted bright vermilion, playing at lacrosse. From these unions issued the half-breed. Once I knew a fine old Indian—obviously with French blood. He had a head of curly iron-gray hair and ruled his tribe of berrypickers like a chief. He could pick seven hundred quarts of strawberries in a day and play the violin like a wizard. In my novel Possession I drew a picture of him and of his funeral.

The Father of New France

Recuperated from his many hardships, Champlain soon became restive, weary of being feasted by his Indian hosts, who always were glad of any opportunity for celebration. With a few of his hardiest Frenchmen he journeyed by Indian trail till they reached the great Indian center, Cahiagué, now Orillia. The country, in its midsummer beauty, was a joy to explore. The season of insect pests was past. Lake Simcoe lay, in its clear blueness, surrounded by groves of pines, maples, and sweet-smelling cedar. There was no lack of food. Fish and game were there in full variety. Welcome and feasting by the Indians awaited Champlain, as ever.

The Hurons and the Carantouans were at this time preparing to attack the Iroquois. They were delighted by Champlain’s offer of assistance. In early September they set out, the five hundred painted warriors, the handful of Frenchmen in glittering breastplates, and passed, a strange pageant, across the glassy lake, with the tapestry of autumn foliage for background. They made a portage to Balsam Lake, then down through the lovely little lakes to the River Trent. The land was empty of human life, yet so ordered in its beauty, so bedecked with grapevines, crabapple trees, and walnut groves that it appeared as though cultivated. They followed the river to Lake Ontario. On its shore they came upon a herd of deer. The wild things made for water. Frenchmen joined Indians in enthusiastic chase, but one of Champlain’s men unluckily shot an Indian. Many soothing speeches had to be made and many gifts offered before the disgruntled tribe would consent to go on.

After feasting on venison they set out boldly in their canoes across Lake Ontario and landed in New York State. There, by Lake Oneida, they came upon a fortified Iroquois settlement. Young Hurons took prisoner eleven men, women, and children whom they found fishing in the lake. Grinning with delight, they carried these back to their camp for torture. One of the chiefs cut a finger from the hand of a woman, but Champlain intervened so fiercely that torture was put aside for the time when he might be out of earshot. It was more than he could do to control the young Hurons. As they advanced and saw the Iroquois peacefully gathering in their harvest, they broke from all restraint and rushed upon them. But the Iroquois more than held their own. Their village was well fortified. Champlain gathered the routed Hurons about him and in fiery tones lectured them on the art of war. Next morning they were all enthusiasm. Under his direction they built a wooden tower taller than the Iroquois palisade and also built movable mantelets for shields. By noon they were ready. Two hundred warriors dragged forward the tower, which reared itself menacingly above the palisade. Three Frenchmen, armed with arquebuses, scrambled to the top and began to rake the Iroquois with gunfire. The Hurons, in an ecstasy of lust for battle, rushed out into the open from behind the mantelets. They screamed their war cries, and the Iroquois screamed theirs in return. The Hurons set fire to the palisade. The Iroquois poured water on the fire and put it out. For three hours they screamed, shrieked with throats that seemed made of iron, while they danced forward and back and shot off their arrows. Champlain could not make his voice heard. His head, he said, felt ready to burst from the noise of yelling. He had got an arrow in the knee and one in the thigh. The Hurons fell back. For days they waited for allied tribes to come to their aid, but none came. Then there was nothing for it but to retreat. Champlain was sick at heart with the behavior of the Indians and suffering greatly from his wounds.

The pain from his wounds was not comparable to the excruciating pain he suffered when, bound to the back of an Indian so tightly as to be helpless, he was carried over rough ground, day in, day out, with unexpected joltings and jerkings, with heat and the plague of insects. As soon as he could endure to bear his weight on his leg he escaped from this bondage.

Though the failure of the expedition was their own fault, the Indians blamed Champlain for it. They had thought him invulnerable but discovered he was but human. The chief could not persuade his warriors to escort Champlain to Quebec, so he offered Champlain winter quarters in his own lodge. The warriors disbanded, each party setting out for their own hunting grounds. During thirty-eight days of hunting the party to which Champlain was attached killed one hundred and twenty deer. The hunters of today may well regret that the wild life of Canada has been so depleted.

When early December came and hard frosts had turned the marshes and countless lakes to iron, the Hurons set their faces northward toward their villages. Their canoes and the heavy carcasses of the deer were shouldered, and on snowshoes they set forth. It took all of Champlain’s fortitude to endure his burden, but how dare he complain when there were Indians who carried five times that weight!

Bent almost double, they traversed the ice, facing the bitter north wind. Then the wind changed and a thaw turned the ice to slush. Through slush to the thighs they waded. Over ice they staggered and slipped, and in less than three weeks they came to Cahiagué. Women and children poured out of the smoky lodges to welcome them. In wonder, children stroked the velvet carcass of a fawn. A young squaw ran forward to display an infant son to a father who had not yet beheld him. Logs were piled on the fire and the stew prepared for the pots.

Replete after the feast, the warriors lounged by the fire and related, with a good deal of embroidering, their feats and ferocities. Champlain did not linger there for long. His colony was on his mind. What might not have happened in his absence! Before he returned to Quebec he went to Carhagouha, where he had left Father le Caron. He found him engrossed in his work and spent three weeks with him. Then together they set out on the return journey. They visited a number of Indian towns, always welcomed with feastings. They met the Nation of Tobacco, who were great growers of the weed. They met the tribe Champlain named Les Cheveux Relvés, who dressed their hair with the fastidiousness of courtiers but wore no stitch of clothing once the warm weather came. They were clever, too, and made themselves necklaces of wampum which was fashioned from colored shells, and wove gay mats. Champlain and Le Caron visited the Nipissings. Everywhere they went Champlain urged the Indians to come to Quebec for the fur trading. Everywhere he made inquiries about that mystic northern sea, of finding which he never gave up hope.

He was delayed by having to mediate in a dangerous quarrel between the Algonquins and the inhabitants of Cahiagué. A band of Algonquins had encamped near that town for the winter, and its people had given them a young Iroquois prisoner that they might while away dull hours by his torture. But the Algonquins so liked his looks and his haughty bearing that, instead of putting him to a hideous death, they adopted him into their tribe. When the Cahiagués heard of this they were in a frenzy of rage. They sent out one of their warriors (on what a suicidal errand!) into the camp of the Algonquins, and before the very eyes of their chief he slew the Iroquois. He was then himself butchered. Here was cause enough for a devastating war!

Champlain appeared before the assembled chiefs as a mediator. He told them what fools they would be to weaken each other by warfare while the Iroquois waited like a pack of wolves to extinguish them all. He pictured their prosperous future if they would but conserve their strength for trade with the French, and he was able by his eloquence to convince them. In great gravity the pipe of peace was smoked. The chiefs turned their dark, immobile faces toward Champlain for guidance. Now, at long last, he was able to return to Quebec. With him went the chief Durantal, whose roof had sheltered him that winter.

In Quebec, Champlain had been mourned as dead. Now he was received with joy. The bells rang out. A Mass of gratitude to God was sung. Champlain, in great peace, strolled through his garden, observing how the succulent lettuces flourished, bending his weather-beaten face to sniff the roses. That night he slept in his own bed.

He made sure that Durantal had an enjoyable visit. In truth the chief never had dreamed of such wonders as he now beheld. The ships with their great sails in the harbor, the cannon that exploded with a roar to shake the universe, the substantial houses and barracks, the rich wonder of the chapel, its silver candlesticks and silken embroideries, its pale figure on the Cross! When at last he paddled homeward in his canoe his head was ready to burst with the marvels he had seen and would relate beside the campfire.

Champlain, on his part, could not be anything but disappointed in the condition of his colony. His own house, which he had built under the shadow of the cliff eight years before, was now sadly out of repair. The few French families were in poor plight. The company of merchants who controlled the fur trade cared for nothing but their own profits and were bitterly jealous of any show of authority by Champlain. He had been away too long. His difficulty in governing was increased by the fact that nearly everyone in the little colony, with the exception of the Récollet Fathers, was in the pay of the unscrupulous traders. These quarreled among themselves. Some were Catholics, some Huguenots. The Huguenots, whose religious exercises were forbidden on shore, vociferously sang their hymns on their ships, in a far from religious spirit.

The fur traders and merchants did not bring their families to the colony. Their one thought was to make money in Canada to better their living in France. Champlain did what he could to control their monopoly of the trade. As he had thrown himself heart and soul into explorings, so now he bent his generous spirit to the labor of strengthening New France. The young Duc de Montmorency was Lieutenant of the colony, and Champlain journeyed across the ocean each year to consult with him, to do everything in his power to bring out new colonists and to better their condition when established.

In 1620 he began the building of a strong fort on the verge of the Rock. A mile away the Récollet Fathers built themselves a stone monastery, with a farm stocked with a pair of asses, hogs, geese, ducks, and hens. There they labored, a pure and saintly element in the midst of what was so often disreputable and sordid.

With some hardihood, Champlain now brought his young wife to Quebec. Perhaps he thought such an example would induce other ladies of rank to follow her; perhaps he thought, as he was going to settle down more permanently in Quebec, it was high time that they lived under the one roof. We can be almost certain that she begged him to let her join him.

So up the river she sailed, four maids attendant on her, and created such a diversion, such excitement of a pleasurable nature as had not been before in the settlement on the Rock. Crowds thronged to see the five young women arrive. Madame Champlain’s beautiful clothes, her lovely young face and figure, were a wonder to the rough traders, a heavenly marvel to the Indians. They were ready to worship her. Cannons roundly roared their welcome.

Champlain’s house, L’Abitation, was far from being a suitable abode for a bride. The roof leaked; windows were broken; gusts of wind shook the doors on their rusty hinges. But the young women flew from room to room, exploring all with gay laughter, with eager French talk and gestures. They unpacked the heavy chests they had brought with them. Fine household linen was arranged on cupboard shelves, silken embroideries hung on the walls and curtains at the windows. Silver candlesticks were placed on the table in the dining salon. But when all the exhilaration of settling in was over, what was there to do in Quebec? How endless, how icebound seemed the winters! How lagging the springs, after the lovely spring of France! How exhausting the summer heat, with the sun glaring on the river, the mosquitoes making tranquil sleep impossible! Only the autumns were perfection. Then the air made the blood dance and the heart sing. Then the shores and mountains blazed in gorgeous tapestry.

Hélène de Champlain had Huguenot sympathies which were not discovered by Champlain till she came to Quebec. He was astonished and much troubled, for he was an ardent Catholic. In their long hours together he set himself to turn her to his faith and succeeded too well for his own happiness. After four years in Quebec she returned to France. She besought Champlain to let her enter a convent there. He refused, but he agreed to a separation. Possibly he hoped that she would change her mind and return to L’Abitation. The Indians had looked up to her as to a being almost supernaturally lovely. She had done what she could to lessen the ignorance of the women, had taught the children. But the longing for the spiritual life was irresistible, and after Champlain’s death she became an Ursuline nun. She founded the convent at Meaux.

So Champlain’s hopes for married happiness were an illusion, as was his search for the sea that led to China. With singleness of mind and the fortitude that never failed him, he devoted all his powers to his colony.

The colony was indeed in desperate plight. There was little in the way of work for the handful of emigrants who gambled and drank when they had anything with which to gamble or drink. They hunted, hobnobbed, or quarreled with the Indians, who, after a fight, murdered two of the Frenchmen on the Island of Orleans. These were the Montagnais Indians. Filled with terror of the retribution that would follow, they gathered nearly a thousand strong, determined to wipe out the French settlement. Champlain discovered the plot and was ready for them. It was midwinter. Both sides were feeling the pinch of hunger. Soon the multitude of Montagnais were starving and came begging for food. Champlain gave them what he could, which was little enough. Both sides were drawn together when, the next summer, a party of Iroquois warriors made their appearance. They were afraid to attack the fort but assaulted the Récollet monastery. But the dauntless Fathers, aided by their Indian converts, drove them off. Before they left they burned two Indians they had captured outside the walls.

Harassed by such events and by continual disorders among the traders, Champlain sent one of the Récollet Fathers to France to lay their troubles before the king, to ask for the hand of authority to quell the rival traders.

A fresh wave of interest in Canada now arose. Its source was a young nobleman, Henri de Lévis, Duc de Ventadour, who had become Viceroy. He was in Holy Orders, and no worldly ambition prompted his acts. In truth he cared little for colonization. His heart was set on the conversion of the savages. He now sent three Jesuit Fathers to Quebec—Gabriel Lalemant, Ennemond Massé, and Jean de Brébeuf. These were men of great energy and inspired loyalty to their charge. Their heroism was to be proved later.

The ship bearing them sailed up the river, the three standing in the bow looking eagerly for the first glimpse of the Rock. There it towered, the fort surmounting it, and, gathered on the shore, a far from friendly group of traders and Indians to see them land. Unfortunately Champlain was away. The chief trader, Caen, a Huguenot, would not admit them to the fort. He had bound himself to support the Récollets, and doubtless he had heard of the fearless energy of the Jesuits and anticipated interference from them. The lesser traders, following his example, refused them shelter. Polite, calm, inflexible in their purpose, the Jesuits waited for what succor might come. It came from the Récollets, who offered them their hospitality. So the two orders dwelt together till the Jesuits were joined by two more of their order, who came with twenty laborers and at once set about building a mission. The Jesuits preached, heard confessions, studied the Indian languages, and tilled the soil. The state of the colony at this time would have daunted a heart less stout than Champlain’s. He was hampered at every turn by the indifference or hostility of Caen. It was with the greatest difficulty that he got workmen to complete his fort. He was sick at heart because of the drunkenness of the Indians, to whom the traders sold spirits. Even young girls were turned to fiends by drink. The savage heart needed no stimulant. Caen may well have been pleased by his own position, for in one year he shipped twenty-two thousand beaverskins from Canada.

While affairs were in this state in Quebec, Cardinal Richelieu came into supreme power in France. Louis XIII was forced to bend to his will, for it was Richelieu who had quelled the ambitious nobles, curbed the Huguenots, and ruthlessly crushed the elements of anarchy. His austere face was ever set toward one object—the glory of France. Now he looked across the sea and informed himself of the condition of the colonies. Caen and his brother were thrust aside. A company of one hundred, called the Company of New France, was formed. Richelieu was its head, and its membership included nobles, merchants, and officers. The company had truly regal power over the whole of new France, from Florida to the Arctic, from Newfoundland to the sources of the St. Lawrence.

Champlain was, of course, a very active member of the company. They had three hundred thousand livres at their command. They had responsibility as well as power. They bound themselves to bring out four thousand colonists, both men and women, during the next fifteen years (that is, by 1643), support them as wards for three years, and then place them on the land which was to be cleared for them. The almost insurmountable difficulty was that the French Catholics did not want to leave France. They clung to the life and tradition of France, and it was hard to convince them that they could better themselves in the colony.

Meanwhile English colonies on the New England coast were growing fast. Formerly Virginia had claimed the immigrants from England. But in 1620 about one hundred English, mostly of the peasant class, arrived on the New England coast from Plymouth. Many of them had been living in Holland because they had freedom for their Puritan religion in that country. But they wanted to remain English, so they acquired a little ship and set sail. Their sufferings in the first winter were terrible. Fully half their number died, and the remainder would gladly have returned whence they came, but they had cast means of livelihood behind them. They remained, the beginnings of a hardy colony. In 1630 two thousand colonists arrived in Massachusetts. They had but miserable huts to live in, and they were half starved. Again many died in the first winter. Many would have liked to return to England, but civil war was brewing there and, with all the hardships they must endure in New England, they felt it would be more peaceful. Soon a great movement of immigration began. Sixty thousand colonists had come to America from England. They were allowed to make their own laws. They had no financial aid from England. Thus an independent spirit was fostered in them.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Little Champlain Street, showing stairs at far end.

Now what of Quebec? Champlain might describe the noble rivers, the rich soil, the lakes abounding in fish and the land in game. But he could not, with all his powers of description, induce large numbers to leave France. There was no reason for their leaving France. French Catholics had no need to seek religious freedom, as had the Puritans of New England or the Catholics of Maryland. They enjoyed a climate infinitely more benign than the climate of New France. In family life the French are close knit. The breaking of these ties was cruel to contemplate, and to take one’s entire family to the wilds—what a risk!

Therefore those who settled in Quebec were few as compared to those who poured in full tide to New England. But, though few, they were inspired by a religious fervor unequaled in the establishing of any other colony. Champlain and the Jesuits were the very backbone of New France. On its bloodstained soil the Jesuit Fathers endured terrible hardships, but the holy zeal which inspired them never failed. They taught the children, preached to the parents, nursed the sick. Père Brébeuf tells how they almost breathlessly watched their one hen that her egg might be cooked for an invalid. Unhappily they were hampered in their work by certain Protestants who sold liquor to the Indians and told them that the teachings of the priests were false.

In 1628 the new company sent four armed vessels with a number of transports, laden with colonists and supplies, to Quebec. In France the trouble with the Huguenots had reached the point of battle. They were in arms against the king. Charles I of England came out boldly on their side and sent a fleet to their aid. It was necessary for the company’s vessels, therefore, to set sail prepared for interference.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Little Champlain Street, looking down from the stairs.

Their coming was eagerly watched for in Quebec by the half-starved inhabitants. The month was April; the winter had been unusually severe. The supplies from France had been lost through shipwreck.

But succor was not forthcoming. An Englishman named Jarvis Kirke, who had married a French wife and who lived in Dieppe, had learned of the sailing of the ships. He had letters of marque from Charles I agreeing that he should, if he could, drive the French from Nova Scotia and Quebec. With the help of powerful associates he fitted out ships, under command of his sons. Three of these ships, under young David Kirke, now lay at Tadoussac with two hundred men, waiting to attack the French. When they arrived an engagement took place which lasted fourteen hours. David Kirke captured the French ships with their colonists and supplies.

April drew into May, May to June, and still Champlain’s anxious eyes scanned the river in vain. It was July when two men arrived at the fort from thirty miles down the river to bring the joyful news that six ships had been sighted. The long watch was over. But why, Champlain wondered, were there six ships? He had expected but three.

Now, paddled frantically up the river by Indians, came a canoe in which lay a wounded Frenchman who gasped out the news of an attack by the English on Cap Tourmente, in which houses had been burned and five Frenchmen killed. Instantly all was alarm at the fort.

The next day a small ship arrived manned by six Basques from Tadoussac. They brought a letter from young Kirke demanding the surrender of Quebec. He signed himself Champlain’s “affectionate servant”!

Champlain sent back a bold but equally courteous reply, declaring that under no pressure would he surrender. But his heart sank. He had only fifty pounds of gunpowder in the magazine. The fort was badly in need of repair. His men were already half starved. With dire apprehension they awaited attack. They would have been in no such pitiable plight had it not been for the unscrupulous Caen brothers, heads of the former company. They had wanted no strong colony which might oppose their methods in the fur trade. During Champlain’s absences in France and in exploration they had allowed the fort to fall into this state of dilapidation.

Now the Caens were gone, and shiploads of supplies, thronging with expectant colonists, were at the very door; but the ships were in foreign hands—the colonists prisoners! Still the expected attack did not come. The truth was that young Kirke, half English, half French, had more on his hands than he could cope with. He had six hundred prisoners—they were three to one as compared to his crew. So he turned back to the Gulf of St. Lawrence to cruise in search of French fishing boats. On the way he put ashore his prisoners and at last sailed for England. Among his crew were many French Huguenots who, driven from France, were now her enemies.

In the fort suspense wore down the hundred gathered there. Each morning they strained their eyes for the appearance of Kirke. It was long before Indians brought the news of Kirke’s departure. But now the unrelenting enemy Winter was on the way! There was no ammunition or food with which to defy him. These Frenchmen seem to have been poor fishermen, and when the Indians brought eels for sale they demanded so high a price that the French were fairly stripped of their clothes in payment. When Champlain sent some of the men into the woods to hunt, they devoured what they shot and came back with nothing in their hands. Perhaps they were so weakened by starvation that they could not carry a load. Indeed, it took all their strength to cut enough wood to keep them from freezing. By spring the suffering was great. The hardest trial to Champlain was the hunger of the children. We can picture them clinging to his fingers with their thin little hands, crying, “We are so hungry! Please, please, give us bread!”

By May the past year’s vegetables were gone. Seven ounces of pounded peas for each person had been their ration, but now this too was finished. From the fort, in the pale spring sunshine, emaciated men, women, and children emerged and went into the woods to dig up roots and acorns—anything, anything that would sustain life! They mixed the root of Solomon’s-Seal with fish or maize, and it was their best dish. Twenty miles they would go in search of these roots!

Champlain’s courage never failed. In early spring he ordered the repair of an old barque, that he might send to Gaspé for succor. Some of his people he had placed with friendly Indians during the winter. He even contemplated joining one of the Indian war parties and raiding an Iroquois village for food. But his men were too weak for fighting. It seemed that Quebec was to sink once more into primeval loneliness, for even with his courage he could not hold out much longer. At this time only sixteen men were left in the fort. In mid-July word came that three English ships were approaching Quebec. Champlain was alone in the fort. Soon the ships appeared. A boat bearing a white flag approached the shore, and from it alighted a young English officer who could speak no word of French. A Jesuit Father came and talked to him in Latin. He said that the ships were commanded by two of the Kirkes, Captain Louis and Captain Thomas. In their name he demanded surrender of the fort.

Champlain was not certain that England and France were at war and asked for fifteen days’ delay. Louis Kirke himself then came ashore, and Champlain, knowing there was no hope in such an unequal conflict, surrendered. He made the condition that the French were to be taken back to their own country and that each soldier should be allowed to take with him a coat of beaverskin. Some of Kirke’s men, French Huguenots, forced their way into the house of the Jesuit priests in search of hidden furs.

On July 20 Louis Kirke landed at the head of one hundred and fifty soldiers and planted the Cross of St. George on the Rock. He then inspected the dilapidated fort and from there visited the houses of the Récollet and Jesuit Fathers. To the Récollets he showed every consideration but broke into violent anger in the house of the Jesuits. He would like, he said, to bring it down about their ears. He then went to the farm of the widow of Louis Hébert, the first settler. He urged her and her family to remain in Quebec, under English rule, to which she agreed, for here was her home, here were her roots! Here her daughter had been the first bride of Quebec!

Admiral David Kirke lay with his squadron at Tadoussac, and there Champlain asked to be taken. To remain in Quebec was a bitterness not to be borne. Thomas Kirke agreed to this and took him, along with the Jesuits, down the river. Off Mal Bay a French ship was sighted. In a fog she had slipped by the Admiral’s squadron unseen. She was on her way to Quebec with supplies! Well might Champlain think that all good fortune was against him. If only the ship had arrived earlier, he need not have surrendered. But now Thomas Kirke opened fire on her. There was a hot exchange of cannonade. Kirke was victorious, and he sailed with his captive into Tadoussac.

The Admiral, David Kirke, treated Champlain with great civility but he was bitter toward the Jesuits who accompanied him. What was Champlain’s astonishment to see Étienne Brûlé, his own trusted servant and interpreter, with the English conquerors! In round terms he told Brûlé what he thought of him. If Brûlé deserved punishment for his treachery, certainly he got it, for it was not long after that he was taken prisoner by the Hurons and devoured.

Second in command to David Kirke was Vice-Admiral Michel, a skillful navigator. He was highly strung and acutely sensitive. The bitterness of the French prisoners against him for being on the side of the English roused him to fury. Neither was he happy in the company of David Kirke. He accused Kirke of being overbearing and arrogant with him. He bitterly hated the Jesuits. He was present when Kirke said to Father Brébeuf:

“You came to Canada but to acquire what belonged to Monsieur de Caen!”

Jean de Brébeuf was a stalwart young man of thirty-two. He was of aristocratic birth and was related to the noble family of Howard, of England. Controlling himself, he answered calmly:

“We came for no reason but the glory of God. We endure every hardship and face every sort of danger to convert the Indians.”

Michel could not endure this in silence. He shouted:

“Ay, convert the Indians! What you mean is convert the beaver!”

“That is false,” returned Brébeuf, still calmly.

Michel shook his fist at him. “If we were not in the presence of the Admiral, I would strike you for giving me the lie!”

Brébeuf was strong and his nature was passionate. Still he controlled himself and answered:

“I should be sorry to give you the lie. I only used the words which we use in the school when a wrong statement is made. If I have offended you I ask your forgiveness.”

Michel continued to walk up and down in a fury. Crimson with rage, he poured out insults.

“Bon Dieu,” exclaimed Champlain, “you swear mighty well for a reformer!”

“If only I had struck the Jesuit!” raved Michel. “If only I had struck the Jesuit!”

His anger did not leave him. Again and again he was overcome by it, till at last he fell in a kind of fit from which he did not regain consciousness. With all pomp he was buried at Tadoussac. Unmoved stood the stalwart Brébeuf, but Champlain exclaimed:

“I do not doubt that his soul is in perdition!” Yet it was Champlain who had tried to soothe him.

Life brought some pleasures in Tadoussac. The Kirkes, with Champlain and others of the company, went shooting in the forest many times in late summer and early autumn. Twenty thousand larks, snipe, and plovers paid the toll.

So down the decades this barbarous slaughter of bird life continued till, in our day, who has ever seen a cloud of bluebirds or a flock of wood pigeons to darken the sun! Teachers use every device in their power to prevent the children from stealing a bird’s egg from the nest. The flight of a single oriole makes one turn one’s head in pleasure! And we were given so much!

At last, in September, Kirke sailed to England with his prisoners. Champlain was landed in Plymouth but the others were taken to France. It was now late October. The voyage had been very rough. Tired but indomitable, Champlain went to London to see the French ambassador, Monsieur Châteauneuf. He remained there five weeks, pouring out his eloquence, his hopes and plans for New France into ears that were little interested in its fate. With him he had brought the maps he had made, and as they bent over these he pictured the power, the vast territory which would add to the glory of France, if only her claim were urged. After all, Quebec had been seized after the fighting between England and France was over.

There was little peace in England. Civil war was at hand. King Charles was, before many years, to lay his handsome, melancholy head upon the block. Now, in his difficulties, he badly needed the dowry of his French wife.

Champlain, after five weeks in London, journeyed to France. He saw the king and Cardinal Richelieu. He writes: “I made them listen and hear all about my voyages, and about what they should do in respect of England and to further the well-being of New France.” He saw the Company of New France and was able, by picturing a great empire of the future, to revive their interest.

Finally Richelieu and King Charles came to terms. The dowry was to be paid. New France was to be restored to the French king. However, the treaty was not signed till March 1632, at St.-Germain-en-Laye.

The charter for the Company of One Hundred Associates had been drawn up by Richelieu. Although three centuries have passed since then, it is still regarded as masterly. The Associates were chosen with great care and were given vast powers. The occupied territory in Canada, from Labrador to Florida, was theirs. The territory from the Atlantic to Lake Huron was theirs and their heirs, forever. They had royal power to bestow titles and estates.

In the Charter special consideration was given to the Indians. Their conversion to Christianity was one of the chief aims of the company. Through all the French Regime a humanitarian attitude toward them was preserved.

Richelieu has been accused of bigotry because he prohibited French Protestants from entering Canada and so lost many fine settlers to New England and Virginia. But Richelieu had seen his own country racked by religious conflict. His desire was to spare the new country such embittering strife.

Now that Canada was restored to France, Richelieu decided that the whole of the missionary effort should be given into the hands of the Jesuits, as they were a wealthy organization and able to continue the work at their own cost. This was a sad disappointment to the Récollet Fathers, who had been first to labor in the field. In the spring of 1632 three Jesuit priests arrived in Quebec, headed by Father Le Jeune. They found the Jesuit mission almost in ruins. The roof was falling, the doors and windows gone, and of the furniture only two tables left. But they worked hard to restore it, and by the next spring they had the place in fair order.

Very early one morning in May they were waked by the roar of cannon from the river. They thought the English were again attacking Quebec. Father Le Jeune sprang up and hastily prepared to walk to the fort. But before he was on his way Jean de Brébeuf arrived at the door of the mission. The cannon had been Champlain’s happy salute on his return to Quebec. There he was, with three ships and two hundred colonists! Brébeuf had run all the way to the mission to greet his brethren! With joy they clasped each other to their breasts. They laughed and wept with joy, to the grim surprise of the Indians standing about.

Champlain brought back with him to Canada all his old ardor for the building of the colony. But now he remained more steadily within the confines of Quebec. His spiritual life meant more to him than ever. A monastic austerity governed the life of the fort. Religious history and the Lives of the Saints were read aloud at breakfast and in the evening. Champlain built a chapel, Notre Dame de la Récouvrance, on the cliff. Thrice a day the Angelus sounded. The atmosphere of religion dominated the settlement. Once more the Indians thronged to Quebec to trade. A chief told Champlain that with his return the sun had shone again for them. They looked on Champlain as a father.

On his part he had a real affection for them, but he did not mince his words in rebuking them for their abominable habits. He never gave up hope of enlightening them. With all the tenacity of his strong spirit he clung to his hope of making Quebec a stronghold of French tradition.

For two years more he labored. The Jesuits established their mission among the Hurons. There, gladly and without complaint, they endured exhausting toil and miseries and dangers that might well have turned their hopes to despair. In October 1935 Champlain suffered a paralytic stroke. He lingered till Christmas Day, when he died. It was a black day in New France. How could the colonists believe that his indomitable spirit had left them? He was one of those men who had seemed able to endure anything in the way of hardship. When the colonists of Virginia were clustered together for protection, Champlain was pressing, amid dire difficulties, through the wilderness to Lake Huron. For long months he would share the life of the savages. His stalwart figure, his protective yet commanding attitude toward them, drew their admiration. His moral character was a wonder to them. When he spent long periods among them, they were astonished at his continence. He thought of himself as a sailor and explorer, but he had the social graces to make him acceptable to a king. He had a sincerity which could convince great prelates. He could confer with Indian chiefs in their own manner. He never looked for gain for himself. He was endlessly patient and tolerant as a leader.

He left a number of books behind him, but wrote them only because he felt the value of their records. He was not literary. In his writings he never once mentioned his wife, so we cannot know how great a place she held in his heart or how deeply he was affected by her return to France. Neither have we an authentic portrait of him, but who can doubt that the nobility of his character was reflected in his face? A French historian has remarked how strange it was that Voltaire, who expressed such admiration for William Penn, had nothing to say in praise of Champlain, a far greater man.

Now that great man was borne at the head of a solemn procession across the snow to the chapel. On his returning to Canada he had been given the title of Governor of New France. He was buried with befitting pomp. Father Le Jeune preached the funeral sermon. Priests, colonists, soldiers, and Indians crowded the chapel.

Another chapel was later erected above his grave but was destroyed by fire, so that it is not known where his bones lie. It is certain that had it not been for him New France would soon have passed out of the hands of France.

Pomp and Piety

The alliance of the French with the Hurons and Algonquins, which had made the Iroquois their implacable enemies, now worked bitterly against the strength of the colony. Like a pack of wolves the Iroquois tore at its vitals. Their aim was to wipe out the Huron and Algonquin nations and lay waste the country. With the weakening of the fur trade the Company of New France, whose financial position had never been strong, now tottered toward ruin.

Yet into the colony itself Champlain seems to have instilled something of his own vitality. Physically the people flourished. The peasants grew taller and stronger than those in France. As seamen they were bold and hardy. The Jesuit missions were carried forward with vigor. At their head was Father Paul Le Jeune, a man both intellectual and staunch. It was largely due to his reports from Canada, which were widely circulated, that the life of the Indians became known in Europe. Their strange and barbarous life became not only known but a subject of the most passionate interest. Not only prelates, but statesmen, courtiers, the king and queen themselves, were fired with the zeal to save those savage souls. Fortunes and lives alike were offered for the cause. There are religious foundations of our time which date from this period.

As the minds of the king and nobility of France were turned toward Canada, it was natural that Champlain’s successor should be a man of aristocratic birth. It was natural that he should be a man of strong religious feeling. Such a man was Montmagny, the new governor.

He was a Knight of Malta, of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. This order had originated in the early days of the Crusades. They had fortified Malta so that it was impregnable by any heathen force. With such a record it is not to be wondered at that, in our day, the Huns have been unable to subdue it with all their blastings. Montmagny was a soldier as well as a courtier. He had fought both Turks and Moors with great valor.

It would have taken a good deal to move such a man to surprise. Yet he must surely have felt no little wonder as he and his suite mounted the precipitous road up the Rock to where the fort stood and saw the wild loneliness of this new world and the throng of naked savages gathered to meet him. Great was the wonder of the entire populace to see the dazzling procession. With Montmagny walked his lieutenant, Bréhaut de l’Isle, both wearing the black robe of the Order of Knights of Malta, with a white cross of eight points on the breast. The June sunlight shone on scarlet uniforms, on shining breastplates and swords.

Montmagny’s first act was to join in a “Te Deum” in the chapel. The religious atmosphere of Champlain’s later days was preserved by Montmagny, but with less austerity. New stateliness and ceremony were introduced into the life of the little court on the Rock. Amateur plays were given to edify and amuse the inhabitants. The Jesuits were, as a rule, men of cultivation and breeding. Thus at Quebec a tradition of old-world culture was established, in contrast to the crude life in most colonies. When the Dauphin was born in 1639 the event was saluted by fireworks and the roar of artillery. At night every window was bright with lighted candles. Yet, with all the pomp, the Indians never were treated with contempt. In the Fête-Dieu, Montmagny walked in the procession with an Indian convert, each carrying a pole of the canopy.

So, with pomp and piety, Quebec sent her roots deeper into the Rock. The governor’s residence, the Château of St. Louis, was completed. Montmagny began to plan the city of the future. In 1635 a young Jesuit, René Rohault, son of the Marquis de Gamaches, had endowed a college at Quebec. France’s war with England put an end to the project for a time, but in the year of Champlain’s death building was begun. In this college Indian boys were received with the French. But it was found impossible to civilize them. Endless patience, seeming success, deplorable failure was the repeated tale. Father Le Jeune had one of the most intelligent of the Indian youths sent to France, where he might be under the influence of French culture. With him he hoped to be able to converse with profit, for the learning of the Indian language was the ever-present difficulty. There were endless words for concrete objects but so few for expressing the things of the spirit.

The Indian youth came back to Quebec, more clever, more sleek, more knowing, more full of malice. With this drunken, vicious boy, Le Jeune studied the Indian tongue, but when he felt that he had acquired sufficient facility for a religious talk a shock awaited him. The gathering broke into howls of derisive laughter. Instead of the sacred words Le Jeune had believed he was learning, he had acquired, after diligent effort, the most obscene words of the language.

Le Jeune determined to spend the winter among the Indians. Brébeuf lived among them. He would do the same. Unhappily he chose a tribe of the improvident Montagnais. He spent a winter of the most appalling hardship, but he remained undaunted. The party crossed the St. Lawrence and entered the wilderness which is now the state of Maine. The Indians had learned to sail a boat, something which, in all the centuries of living by the water, they had never learned till taught by the French. They wandered from place to place, gorging when the hunting was good, starving when it was poor, traveling on snowshoes, bent double under their burdens. Often Le Jeune fell beneath his load, and his efforts to rise were greeted with jeers. The Indians did not lack a sense of humor, but it was not of the sort to be tolerable to a priest. Sometimes Le Jeune, rather than lie in the hut where men, women, children, and dogs crowded about the fierce heat of the fire, would go out into the bitter cold and lie on the snow rather than remain and listen to the obscene jokes and see the obscene acts. He was hated by the sorcerer or medicine man because he preached of a new God who was not to be propitiated by howls or charms. When Le Jeune preached, the sorcerer would drown his voice with a drum or fall in a fit so devilish that Le Jeune sometimes feared the frenzied men would kill him. Not that he gave way to earthly fear. He knew none but the fear of God.

He returned to Quebec in the spring, a shadow of himself. He spent the summer writing of his experiences, sent by ship to France in August. The following year he had a longer manuscript to send. The next year a still longer. Le Jeune’s Paris publisher was keen for all he could send him. No books were so much sought after. They were read as the Lives of the Saints. When devout French people read of the tall, athletic savages with noses painted blue, eyes and cheeks black, what was left of the face bright red, and with the naked body painted in stripes of all colors; when they read of their poverty, their ignorance, their barbarous customs, they were filled with the desire to convert and civilize them. Le Jeune was not a dreamer. He was a practical man. He urged with all eloquence that a great French realm should be built up in Canada. Here the starving French peasants and artisans could be brought. Canada would become a land of plenty. Frenchmen would marry Indian girls, and the offspring would be amenable to culture. This was in contrast to English colonizers, who frowned on marriage with natives.

The books of Le Jeune were read in the convents of France with almost feverish interest. No account of danger or of horror intimidated the nuns in their desire to work for the salvation of the Indian women. In truth their hearts overflowed in their longing to sacrifice themselves. In one convent thirteen nuns took a vow to go to Canada, if they were permitted. But there was no residence for them, and Le Jeune wrote asking for help in preparing their way.

The Duchesse d’Aiguillon, Richelieu’s niece who lived in the house with him, sent out six skilled workmen to build a suitable house. Other women of wealth followed her example, and from their bounty massive and beautiful buildings rose on the Rock.

Quebec continued to be of absorbing interest to the nobility of France. Noël Brulart de Sillery, a Knight of Malta who had been Ambassador to both Rome and Madrid and also a Minister of State under Marie de Médicis, turned his back on the glories of this world and became a priest. At his own expense he sent workmen from France to build a village for the Indians. It was surrounded by a palisade and had, as well as substantial houses, a chapel, a house for a priest, and a hospital. The plentiful stone of the country made such fine buildings possible. By 1639 fifteen Algonquin families were living in this village.

Today in Quebec stands the Ursuline Convent, founded by Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny, daughter of the Seigneur de Vaubougon. At only twenty-two she was left a widow with a large fortune, and so deeply was she moved by Le Jeune’s writings that she made up her mind to devote herself and her wealth to founding a school for Indian girls.

A remarkable nun, La Mère Marie de l’Incarnation, became Mother Superior of this Ursuline Convent. She too was a widow. Her age was forty. She was a woman of commanding presence and great vigor, mental and physical. For many years she had been the subject of great spiritual suffering, torn between her devotion to her son and her desire to reach the highest plane of religious exaltation through fastings, scourgings, the doing of menial work, the complete obliteration of self. Combined with these qualities was a power of organizing, of guiding an enterprise with skill and common sense.

In the ship with her sailed two other nuns, one a brilliant young girl of twenty-two, of the noble family of de la Troche, whose wit and gaiety enlivened the life of the convent till her early death. Also there were three young hospital nuns who brought with them beds for their wards and herbs and medicines.

And so they put to sea in their little ship! The delicately nurtured women were tossed about in storms, under conditions which no common sailor of today endures, with food and drink which no laborer of today would tolerate. Week in, week out, with the sails hanging like specters in fog or straining in the gale, the ship struggled on. The nuns heard Mass in the cabin, for there were three Jesuit Fathers on board. When the weather was fair they sat on deck and sang in a choir. Once they barely escaped collision with an iceberg.

After many perils they arrived at Tadoussac in mid-July. They left the ship and re-embarked in a small craft. It was laden with salted codfish, and this was their principal food till they reached Quebec on the first of August. When they, in their black habits, were observed to be nearing the Rock, Montmagny ordered all the cannon to be fired in welcome. All work ceased. Governor, soldiers, priests, and populace gathered to greet the nuns.

Once more the nuns felt solid earth beneath their feet. Their first act was to kneel and kiss the sacred soil of Canada, to breathe a prayer of thanksgiving that they had arrived, that their labors on this soil were at last begun.

Many Indians were collected to watch the happy ceremony. Whatever were the activities of the French in Quebec, we can picture them being carried out in front of this dark background of watchful savages. All Father Le Jeune’s efforts had not succeeded in making the convent ready for the nuns. The hospital nuns were lodged in a new storehouse built by the Company of New France on the cliff. The Ursulines found shelter in a small house on the quay. But before they went thither they heard Mass in the chapel and dined at the fort.

This happy beginning was soon shadowed by the evil cloud of an epidemic. Smallpox had been brought from Europe, and now the Indians were attacked by it. The beds brought by the hospital nuns were set up in the storehouse. Soon they were filled. Soon every available space, even the kitchen, was filled. The Ursulines took the sufferers into their own small house, giving up their beds to them, clothing their naked loins with their own garments. The stench of the smallpox-ridden Indians was revolting. Many of them died. Many fled in terror to the forests, taking the disease with them to the Indian villages. Some of the nuns fell ill but, mercifully, none died. Still they did not flinch or lose spirit. The youngest, Marie de St. Bernard, her convent name Sister St. Joseph, had a gay and happy nature, and her sense of humor brightened all their lives. Later, when the epidemic was over and they had settled down to learn the Algonquin tongue under the tuition of Father Le Jeune, one of the Ursulines wrote of Sister Marie: “Her disposition is charming. In our times of relaxation she often makes us cry with laughing. It is hard to be melancholy when she is near.”

It was three years before their massive convent was completed and they were able to move into its austere shelter.

I am not writing the story of the work of the Jesuit Fathers, which swept forward with all the impassioned force that a small group of unprotected men could gather. Out into the wilderness they went to preach, sometimes meeting the martyrdom which they regarded as their highest award. There were those who escaped after torture and returned to the settlement, scarcely recognizable. The Jesuits shrank from nothing. One baptized a dying Indian who, the moment before, in a last frenzy, had sprung up and torn off the ear of a prisoner with his teeth. The priest was there to save his savage soul, and baptize him he did.

If the government of France had shown a quarter of the enterprise shown by the religious orders, the colony would have had a less tragic story. If one regiment of five hundred soldiers had been sent from France, the colonists might have tilled their soil in safety. But safety was unknown to them. At any hour a band of Iroquois might steal out of the forest to kill and burn. A man must plow with his musket beside him. If at evening he did not return, there in the field his body would be found with the scalp torn off!

The Company of New France was incompetent. The aristocratic governors, no matter how gallant or how sincere, could not wring sufficient aid from France. From 1641 to 1665 there were six of them: Montmagny, D’Ailleboust, Lauzon, D’Argenson, D’Avaugour, and De Mézy. With pomp and clash of swords they passed, striving, without hope, to strengthen the colony, yearning for the return to France. Where was the worthy successor to Champlain? Where was the man who could prevent Canada’s return to the wilderness?

The Iroquois had made up their savage minds to destroy the French and their Indian allies. The tale of the ravages they inflicted is a long and complicated one. Its most tragic scene took place in the fort of Ste. Marie, in the region between the Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe, where Fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were martyred and where today a shrine to them stands. Brébeuf had come to Canada with Champlain and was of a noble Norman family. Lalemant was the nephew of two missionaries of the same name; his brother was a monk, his three sisters and his widowed mother, nuns. He was a gentle student of fragile physique, in contrast to the tall and vigorous Brébeuf. A thousand well-armed Iroquois had spent the winter in Huronia, and in March they descended on the villages which were under the care of the priests. The two were taken prisoner and, in a dreadful procession, were marched to St. Ignace. Much has been written of their tortures, which were conceived with unbelievable ingenuity. The noble Brébeuf stood, naked and straight, absorbed in prayer, while Lalemant, who had already had the nails torn from both hands and feet, was forced to watch at close quarters for the three hours that Brébeuf survived. Lalemant himself was then hideously tortured throughout the night but lived till nine the next morning.

The account of this, told in Quebec by eyewitnesses, with other accounts of great savagery, cast a gloomy shadow of foreboding.

Recently an important work of excavation of the old moats, bastions, and palisades of the fort has been carried out by two young Canadian archaeologists, Kenneth Kidd and Joseph Classey. Relics of the past have once more seen the light, among them a sixteenth-century medallion, in perfect condition, and also a French hatchet of the period, one of the only two in existence.

Near the scene of the torture of Brébeuf and Lalemant a church has been built as a shrine to their sainted memory, and in it a number of pilgrimages assemble each year.

Village by village, the Iroquois laid waste the great region where the Jesuits had labored. At last they were forced to abandon it and return to Quebec. They had built up glorious hopes for a region which was now desolate. But the French did not give up hope. The remote tribes of the distant North still came to Quebec with their furs. The nuns did not despair. Their greatest fear was that they might be sent back to France with their work undone.

If only the Hurons and Algonquins, instead of striving to destroy each other, had banded together against the Iroquois, they might have driven them out of Canada! If only the French and English and Dutch had united their forces! But there was nought except strife among them. In 1650 Father Gabriel Druillettes was sent by the Jesuits from Quebec to Boston, to see if he could come to some sort of agreement with the Puritans. He was a man who had gone through frightful hardships among the Indians, so probably did not shrink from venturing into a colony where there was a law that if a priest were discovered there he should at once be expelled and, if he returned, should be put to death. There he went in his black Jesuit robes, without fear, and it would have been interesting to have been present at his conference with the cold, hard Puritans. It all came to nothing. Neither could the French get any help from the Dutch, who enjoyed too much their alliance with the Iroquois.

The only thing to do with the Hurons, exiled from their ruined villages, was to settle them on the Island of Orleans near Quebec. The French gave them land there and built them a stone fort. It was only within the walls of the fort that they were safe. Everywhere prowled the Iroquois. And so throughout the blood-soaked land the tale of surprise attack, miraculous escape or torture, burning and death, went on. The nerves of those in Quebec were so shaken that they would have returned to France, but they could not get leave from the company to go in its ships. Sixteen men did indeed set out to reach the seacoast and there find some French fishing vessel which might rescue them. But they all were starved and lost.

It was now decided that Canada should have a bishop of its own. François de Laval-Montmorency, Abbot of Montigny, was selected, with Canada to be a mission directly under the Pope. The bishop had jurisdiction from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. As in all appointments in New France, high birth was counted necessary. Laval belonged to one of the most aristocratic families in France. Lavals were cardinals, marshals, and admirals of France. They were related to the royal house. In his bearing Laval showed his high breeding. His figure was commanding, his face ascetic. His life was devoted to the church. As a little boy of nine he took the tonsure of a priest. When he was twelve he became Canon of Evreux. In his family no sacrifice was too great to be made for Church or State. Laval wanted nothing for himself and renounced his inheritance to a brother. In France he had made long pilgrimages on foot, concealing his rank and begging his bread. During a pestilence he nursed the humblest sick, shrinking from nothing.

Bishop Laval was thirty-seven years of age when he arrived in Quebec on a lovely June day, to the ringing of church bells and booming of cannon. The year was 1659. Hundreds were collected to welcome him. In Latin, in French, in Huron and Algonquin, prayers of thanksgiving went up to God. A Huron woman had, a few hours before, given birth to a child who was brought to Laval for baptism. The slender patrician hands held the dark little savage and sprinkled him with holy water and blessed him. That same day he went to a dying Indian—an object of horror from a dreadful disease—and prepared him with his own hands for extreme unction.

Canada was now becoming something more than a mission and a trading station. It was becoming, in the real sense, a colony. Though the governors were still men who were strongly religious, they asserted the civil side of government even when at variance with the ecclesiastical. It was a day when rank and its privileges were of paramount importance. Formerly Quebec had had no great prelate to claim precedence over the governor.

Argenson had been governor for a year when Laval arrived in Quebec. Both were young and of strong character. Clashes soon arose between them. The governor appealed to the king, who spoke soothingly to both sides. When Argenson retired a few years later he was succeeded by the Baron Dubois d’Avaugour, an elderly man, brusque but kindly. With him there was no friction about ceremony, for he detested it. But a more bitter issue soon appeared. With all his strength Laval was struggling against the sale of brandy to the Indians. Its effect on them was devastating. They drank with but one object—to get madly drunk. When a debauch began the women, with the exception of those who remained to drink, ran to the woods to hide. They took with them their children and also every weapon, from musket to knife, with which the men could injure each other. But the dreadful orgy always ended in death for half a dozen. A crazed husband might throttle a wife, a delirious woman throw her child into the fire. D’Avaugour was willing to make laws against the traffic, but he leaned toward merciful ones. But Laval felt compelled to excommunicate those who carried on the trade. Riots broke out. The tension was great between governor and bishop. Then the governor declared that the Indians might have what brandy they could buy. Laval was forced to revoke his act. Quebec was in such a state of disorder that Mère Marie de l’Incarnation wrote, “I see the majesty of God dishonored, the Church brought into contempt and souls in danger of perdition.”

Finally Bishop Laval sailed for France to lay his case before the king. By his influence he succeeded in having D’Avaugour recalled. D’Avaugour was in truth not loath to return to France. On the voyage home he wrote a report for the young king. The St. Lawrence, he said, was the entrance to what might be made the greatest state in the world. Three thousand soldiers, he declared, should be sent to the colony, to be discharged and turned into settlers after three years of service. This would make Quebec an impregnable fortress and completely subdue the Iroquois. If the king would put under his command four thousand men and ten large vessels of war, he would pledge himself in two months to capture Boston and Manhattan. He would sail up the Hudson and capture Fort Orange and sail back to Quebec by way of Lake Champlain. France would then be mistress of North America. He ended his report by speaking of his forty years of faithful service. Of Laval and the Jesuits he wrote, “By reason of the respect I owe their cloth, I will rest content, Monseigneur, with assuring you that I have not only served the king with fidelity, but also, by the grace of God, with very good success, considering the means at my disposal.”

Two years later he was killed while defending the fortress of Zorin, in Croatia, against the Turks.

Though a mystic, Laval had amazing executive power. Prayer and meditation and a rigorously ascetic life had set him in an unbreakable mold. In his strife with succeeding governors to maintain the power and glory of the Church he always emerged victorious. By his influence the Company of New France, which for years had been tottering on the verge of ruin, was dissolved. He had much influence with the young king, Louis XIV, who, in the flush and stateliness of his propitious reign, was moved to take the welfare of Canada to his heart. At the king’s desire the Marquis de Tracy, Lieutenant General over all the French dominions in the west, sailed up the St. Lawrence in June 1665 and anchored off Quebec.

The little town now numbered seventy houses. During that summer there arrived a succession of ships from France bearing soldiers, settlers with their families, and girls of a marriageable age. This age was indeed very young. Some of them were scarcely past twelve. They were not married offhand but lived under protection for some months while they made the acquaintance of suitable men. These girls were of good character. During a year in Quebec only one illegitimate child was born.

All these varied people, flanked as usual by Hurons and Algonquins, gathered on the ramparts and the landing place to see the arrival of the representative of royalty. The royal standard of France floated above the two ships. From them now landed the marquis and his suite. He was surrounded by young nobles, in velvet, satin, and lace, wearing curled wigs on their young heads. They were preceded by twenty-four guards in the king’s livery, followed by pages and valets and two hundred soldiers. Never in its strange history had Quebec seen such a sight. The procession passed through the narrow streets of the Lower Town, then mounted the steep to the cliff above. It passed Champlain’s old fort, which now was called the Castle of St. Louis. It passed Laval’s new seminary and entered the square before the cathedral. All the bells rang. Laval, in pontifical robes, greeted the marquis and offered him holy water. A priest placed a prie-dieu before him. The marquis was ill after a year’s sojourn in the West Indies, but he refused the prie-dieu and knelt on the bare pavement. A joyful “Te Deum” rose from the throng.

Well might they rejoice! A new era had set in. No longer were they abandoned on the lonely Rock. No longer were they almost defenseless against the ravages of the Iroquois. Their king had a mind to them. Before the summer was past, ships laden with horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs put into the port and were driven up the steep. Two thousand soldiers landed and marched into the square. They were of the famous regiment of Carignan-Salières, which had just come from fighting the Turks in Hungary. With bands playing and banners waving they brought promise of the strength and glory of France to this new land. What would not Champlain have given for such a sight!

In September a new governor, Daniel de Rémy, Sieur de Courcelle, arrived. With him came Jean Talon, the Intendant. This was the first time that an official had been placed in charge of the civil side of the government. Now Quebec was under a threefold control—governor, bishop, and Intendant. De Courcelle and Tracy brought with them a train of young nobles, guards, and valets. Mother Jucherau, of the Ursulines, wrote in her journal, “Our joy was complete.”

As for the Indians, they could scarcely wait for the promised war on the Iroquois. And the new governor, De Courcelle, was almost equally ardent for the attack.

Talon

Courcelle waited for the St. Lawrence to freeze solid. Then, on January 9, in bitter cold, he set out up the river. At Montreal he picked up volunteers. He now had five hundred men, each one, including himself, carrying a pack weighing twenty-five pounds or more. With them went dogs, bearing their share of the load. The band of thirty Algonquins who were to have guided them was helpless, after a drunken debauch, but Courcelle marched impetuously forward without them.

To the Canadians, wearing fur coats and caps and inured to the climate, the cold was bearable. To men fresh from France, who never before had walked on snowshoes, it was appalling. Hands, feet, knees, and arms were frozen. By way of Lake Champlain they stumbled on, through trackless forests, into the shadow of the Adirondacks. At last, through a blinding snowstorm, they made out the village of Schenectady. There they were told that the Mohawks (a tribe of the Iroquois) were away, making war on another tribe. Half frozen and nearly starved, they remained to rest for a few days in the woods. To their astonishment, three English officers arrived from Albany to demand why they appeared in such warlike fashion on land belonging to His Royal Highness, the Duke of York. So the French heard for the first time that the New Netherlands had become British territory. Their explanations were not only amiably received by the English officers, but they were given wine and provisions and allowed to buy other supplies from the Dutch at Schenectady.

Now on the retreating French a heavy rain began to fall. In misery and harassed by Iroquois, they made the return journey, sixty men dying on the way. On March 17 Courcelle reached Quebec, bitterly disappointed, angry with the Jesuits, whom he accused of willfully detaining the Algonquins who were to have guided him. But Tracy and the Superior of the Jesuits soothed him, praising his courage and fortitude.

Courcelle’s expedition had done one good thing: it had shown the Iroquois that the French were primed for assault on them. However, this formidable assault did not take place till the next autumn, when one of the most famous regiments in Europe embarked, with great pomp, in a flotilla and sailed majestically up the St. Lawrence. A few days later thirteen hundred men—regulars, Canadians, and Indians—were pushing up the Richelieu to Lake Champlain, from where there was a march of one hundred miles to the Mohawk village.

Over steep hills, down into deep valleys, over forest trails, across unbridged rivers they pressed their arduous way. The Marquis de Tracy, past sixty and heavy, suffered an attack of gout. Courcelle was seized with cramps. Both were carried for a time by stalwart Hurons. Food gave out; men and officers were weak from hunger. Only a wood, full of sweet chestnuts, succored them. One cannot help but think of the strain this sudden diet of nuts must have put on their digestion. No wonder many of them died!

Their Indian guides now warned them that they were approaching the Mohawk strongholds. All night, through rain and gale, they pressed on, through dripping woods and undergrowth. The Mohawks had got word of their coming and, at the sound of drums, fled panic-stricken to the nearest village.

Neither did they show fight at the second village, nor at the third, nor fourth, nor fifth! The French did not dare to rest but advanced, weary as they were, till the last fort was theirs. They found two old squaws left behind of all that savage throng. And these, when they saw their dwellings and their fortifications going up in flames, leaped shrieking into the conflagration and were consumed.

The French found great stores of Indian corn and other food, as well as tools and furs.

Mass was said and the arms of France raised. The country was claimed for the French king. Then the march homeward began. On November 5 the victorious army was back in Quebec. So was accomplished what, if Champlain’s entreaties had been regarded, would have saved New France years of terror and agony.

Now in Quebec the rejoicing was great. The prayers which had been ceaselessly offered for the success of the troops turned to joyous “Te Deums.” A new era of security lightened all hearts. In February the Sieur Cartier gave the first ball in Canada. We can well imagine the excitement of the townsfolk, the crowds gathered to watch the arrival of the guests, the strains of music, the glimpses of graceful couples moving in a stately dance. The Journal of the Jesuits somberly remarked, “May God avert evil consequences.”

To Quebec had been brought a number of Iroquois prisoners. These were kept in chains, with the exception of a stalwart chief, half Iroquois, half Dutch, whom the French called the Flemish Bastard. He was treated as a guest by the Marquis de Tracy and given a place at his own table. But he was made very conscious of the power of the French. Those captives in chains were forced to make snowshoes for the soldiers, and as their dark fingers wove seasoned gut they wept to see preparations being made to rout their tribes. Possibly they wept too at the thought that there might be no more torturing of Frenchmen.

When spring came Tracy sent the Dutch-Iroquois chief back to his people, that he might inform them of the strength and deadly determination of Quebec. So the Iroquois were effectively brought to heel. In July they sent delegates asking for peace. They asked not only for peace but for Christian teachers, surgeons, and blacksmiths to live among them. At once six Jesuits volunteered for this dangerous work and departed with the Iroquois into the wilds. For nearly twenty years this beneficent peace held.

The day came when a man-of-war appeared to take the Marquis de Tracy and his retinue back to France. He had well completed his mission. At last Laval, the bishop, and Talon, the Intendant, could go about their work in comparative security.

Laval dwelt in the seminary, and near that spot, in the Episcopal palace, the Archbishop of Quebec still lives. Laval gave his entire income to the seminary, and to it he added the income of three abbeys in France. He secured for it lands which in our day bring in solid revenues. The poorest parish priest who visited Quebec was welcomed to the seminary and made it his home while there. It was his hospital when he was ill, his shelter when he grew old and infirm.

Jean Talon, the Intendant, was a man of enterprise and imagination. He was descended from an Irish colonel, exiled in France, and he well combined the characteristics of both races. His personal beauty somewhat belied his tireless executive ability, for he had long, indolent eyes, a pleasure-loving mouth, and a charming, almost feminine chin. He left an important post in France to live in a remote colony where hardships were many. He was a courtier and considered that to do honor to his king stately pomp must reign in Quebec. He was witty, passionate, and masterful, and soon overrode the governor. He made stern laws, but he was well liked.

A man convicted of serious theft was branded on the cheek with the fleur-de-lis, stood in the pillory for four hours, then spent three years in the galleys.

Talon dealt out justice to those in high position as well as low. The young Sieur de Frédéric, a captain in Carignan-Salières’ regiment, forced a habitant who had angrily protested against injury to his crops by the hunting over his land to ride a wooden horse with a two-hundred-pound weight tied to each foot. Talon’s anger was so roused by this that he sent the officer back to France to be tried and punished there.

Jean Talon, after the painting in the Hôtel Dieu, Quebec.

Talon bent his admirable powers to the development of art and industry. Two ships were built at the expense of the king, that the colonists might learn the manner of their construction. Three hundred and fifty men were thus employed. He sent out engineers to search for minerals. He established a tannery and a hat and boot factory. It would be interesting to see some of those boots and hats! Nuns taught the girls to spin and weave. The people were encouraged to grow hemp. They were encouraged even more to grow children. It was remarkable how the French girls flourished in the cold climate of Quebec. Coming from a land of small families, they would produce a dozen or more healthy children.

Talon had new roads opened and old roads improved. He sent out explorers to take possession of the land of the Great Lakes, in the name of the king. He urged the king to buy New York or take it by storm. If this had been accomplished, what a different New York today!

There was no phase of Canadian life in which Talon did not interest himself. He built a model farm and imported horses and cattle for it. The sturdy horses on Quebec farms of the present day are descended from these.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Shrine, Island of Orleans. Such shrines, many smaller, are characteristic of the countryside.

Now the Port of Quebec began, for the first time, to be a port of active commerce. The vessels Talon had had built sailed away to the West Indies, laden with salted cod and salmon, with peas, fish oil, and planks, returning laden with sugar and spice. These were in turn sent to France in trade.

In 1668 Talon returned to France to press the interests of the colony at court. He had two points to urge—free trade and a lessening of the unique power of the Jesuits. He accomplished both ends. The Récollet Fathers were eager to take up their work in Canada, and now the king ordered that three of them should return with Talon. They set sail in May 1669, but it was August 1670 when they reached Quebec. Picture a prime minister of today being obliged to spend thirteen months in crossing the ocean! For three months the ship struggled against frightful storms and at last, with those on board almost starving and one of the Récollets dead, was driven back to the port of Lisbon. With fresh supplies it set out again, but was scarcely in the open sea when it was wrecked.

Somehow Talon and those in company with him made their way back to France. Early in 1670 they arrived there and in May again embarked. The voyage to Canada took three months. When near Tadoussac the ship struck a rock and was stranded! In late summer Talon at last reached Quebec. We can well imagine the excitement of his reception—the pouring out, with many gesticulations, of all that had happened during his absence.

He remained for two years more in Quebec. Now his principal concern was in developing the agricultural life of the colony by placing the right sort of settlers on the land. Four fifths of these were of hardy Norman stock. Substantial bounties were given to soldiers, according to rank, when they married and settled down. Peasant girls were brought out from France for the lower orders, young demoiselles for the higher. A young man who married before he was twenty was allowed to go free of tax till he was twenty-five.

Talon wrote in 1667: “They have sent us eighty-five girls from Dieppe, and twenty-five from La Rochelle; among them about twenty of good birth, some of them really demoiselles and tolerably well brought up.”

And so, across the stormy Atlantic, there was a race for husbands. Many girls died on the way, but those who arrived had a wide choice. Thousands came, and on the whole these “King’s Girls” were a great success.

Talon did more for Canada in a short time than any other man. Out of a few weak villages he made strong settlements. He wrote to Louis XIV before he left: “I have caused, this year, to be manufactured out of the wool shorn from the sheep sent by Your Majesty several kinds of cloth. I have Canadian fabrics to dress myself from head to foot.”

It is remarkable that, with so much done for New France, she did not flourish as did the English colonies. Perhaps there was too much done for her. She was like a pampered but too strictly brought up child. England did little for her colonies but give them plenty of liberty. There were no bounties, no support of colonists by the government. The French rule was paternal and interfered with every aspect of Canadian life. None but Catholics might settle in the country—none but Frenchmen. England left the door open, and a diverse and self-reliant people resulted.

As to population: In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the population of the United Kingdom was only six millions, yet by 1750 the population of the English colonies reached a million, while France, with more than twelve million people, had sent less than one hundred thousand to Canada. However, we must remember that the rigorous climate played its part in this.

Frontenac

A distinctive people, racy of the soil, began to emerge out of danger and tribulation and to take a firm hold in Quebec. They began to be different from the people of France. Their life was so full of hardship, so beset by peril, that they became tougher in fiber, bolder and fiercer. Yet they retained their dominant French characteristics, their cheerfulness, their gaiety, their pleasure in congenial company. So hospitable were the colonists that a man might travel from Montreal to Quebec and spend not a sou for meals, lodging, or transportation. They retained, too, the French propensity to disagree among themselves, and Talon rebuked them for their incessant lawsuits. The youths were taught Latin and French in the seminaries, but the young of all ages were less amenable to discipline than the children of France and, while they were quick to memorize, had no wish to excel in learning and chafed against application to books.

All the efforts of their teachers could not civilize the Indian boys. Two of them, students in that part of the seminary given over to them, found where the supplies of food were kept and ate till they killed themselves.

On the whole the working class was better off than the peasants of France. A young French officer wrote of them:

Now this little town, perched on the Rock like a sea gull, began to preen itself, to the distress of the clergy and nuns. Father La Tour sorrowfully said that all the fashions of Paris, with the one exception of rouge, were brought over in the ships. The resilience of the human heart is remarkable. One can picture the long, cruel months of the voyage, the impossible food, the seasickness, the evil smells. One can picture the all-too-frequent burial service, the bodies let down solemnly into the sea, the melancholy mourners speculating on whose turn it would be next. Yet, once on shore, the mourners blossom into dashing waistcoats, daring bodices, and the latest hair-dos, to astonish the natives.

Even some of the officers of Quebec united with the priests in wishing there might be a law to stem the tide of brocades, laces, rich ribbons, and jewelry that poured into the town.

There were some curious laws. All dogs were ordered home by nine o’clock, and we can picture some gay French poodle, having discovered a particularly juicy bone in the gutter and, unwilling to leave it, being harried through the street by master or mistress till he was safe under the roof. Smoking in the streets was forbidden because of the danger of fire.

Late summer and autumn were the times when the port fairly hummed with activity. Then the ships from France sailed up from the sea, laden with goods. From all the countryside the habitants thronged into the town to buy their supplies. They rode their sturdy little horses; they crowded into carts; they trudged on foot, carrying baskets and sacks to be filled. All, all, were eager for a sight of the ships, for news from France. But when winter came and the river was frozen, when the cellars of the town were packed with vegetables and frozen fish and game, a great stillness descended. Now the time of indoor pleasures began.

The governor’s château was the center of social life. There, with elegance and ceremony, dinner parties were given. Writers of the time agree that there was a very pleasant, though small, circle of society and that conversation was lively and interesting. The Canadians were a great contrast to the New England colonies, for the Canadians spent money lavishly when they had it—in truth, often concealed poverty under an air of ease.

While Talon was in office Louis XIV began the creation of a Canadian noblesse. The medieval French system of feudalism was now made a ruling influence in Canadian life. Large grants of land were given to the seigneur, who, on his part, maintained law and order on his estate. The king hoped that many French noblemen would be induced by such a prospect to remove to the New World. Not a large number could be induced to forego their occasional glimpses of court life or to leave their loved France. Still there were those who did, and certain army officers of rank also became seigneurs. Some fine manor houses were built, and the feudal system, with its ceremonious manners, left an imprint on Quebec which still is felt. On Michaelmas Day the habitants gathered to pay their rents to the seigneur. It was a gala occasion at the manor house. The habitant and his wife, dressed in their best, were received in a large room by the seigneur, who provided wine and other refreshment. If they could not pay in money, they paid in grain or fat capons. They gave him their homage. He gave them his protection, and if time of danger came, there was his great stone mill, strong as a fort! The machinery for this mill had to be brought from France and cost the seigneur so much that one fourteenth of his tenants’ grain was paid to him as a necessary toll.

When the tenant took up land on the seigneur’s estate he was required to kneel and swear fealty to him. The seigneur, on his part, when he was given an estate, must appear at the Château St. Louis and take his oath of allegiance to the king. With sword and spurs removed, he knelt before the governor and swore to be a loyal subject and, if need be, fight for his sovereign.

On New Year’s Day the villagers again visited the manor house, coming across the glittering snow, well wrapped in homespun tunics against the cold, wearing bright-colored sashes about the waist and a cowl drawn over the head. The children gazed in wonder at the thick stone walls that sometimes had loopholes for gunfire. Indoors their eyes were like stars when they saw the pictures on the walls, the carved furniture, and the square of tapestry above the mantelpiece. There was a blazing fire on the hearth, and its light shone on the bottles of wine and plates of little sugared cakes. The younger children of the seigneur and his grandchildren ran to greet the visitors. He had grandchildren, though he was only in the forties. His tenants knelt before him for his blessing. Then he moved among them, inquiring for their well-being with mingled familiarity and stateliness.

Again on May Day the habitants came in a body to the manor house. Now spring was here, the leaf buds were swelling, bloodroot showed its fragile flower at the edge of the woods. This was a gala day. In front of the house the painted Maypole was set up, and in their bravest attire the young people danced about it, weaving the colored strands expertly in the prescribed pattern, to the music of a violin. Possibly the seigneur might join in the dance, but never was his rank forgotten.

Even in the church his arms were exhibited, carved in wood above his pew. He was first to receive the Holy Sacrament. After the service no vehicle took its way along the road till he and his family were in their carriage, leading the way.

This was the New France, to which now came its most remarkable and probably greatest governor, Louis de Buade, Compte de Frontenac. Champlain had been a soldier, a pioneer, and an explorer. His heart had been fixed on the exploring of the vast interior of the country, in search of a route to the East. Frontenac was a soldier and a courtier. He came to New France full of plans to strengthen and develop it as a great colony. He was ready to face, in his own person, the conflict in the savage forests. He had a vivid imagination, a fiery and courageous nature.

In my school days Frontenac was an object of hero worship to me. This feeling has so remained with me that I find it hard to write of him impartially. In truth I once went so far as to begin a play with him as the central figure. The first act went well. The second degenerated into a long conversation between Louis XV and Frontenac. The third developed into such scenes of warfare as no stage could produce. At the same time it dawned on me that a historical figure should be very familiar to the public before he is put into a play. I reluctantly concluded that the general public knew little of Frontenac, that they were far more interested in Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, and Jeanne d’Arc. So I gave up the idea.

In 1672, when Frontenac arrived in Quebec, there was a very different state of affairs as compared to the time of Talon. At that time the king had been fired by enthusiasm for this distant part of his realm. He had been ready to spend large sums on it. Now he was fired by one ambition alone—to dominate Europe! He was keeping up an army of two hundred thousand men on land and a hundred vessels of war on the sea. His last war had been successful. He was now beginning another. He turned his power in the wrong direction. He more than met his match in William, Prince of Orange.

But though Louis could not be persuaded to grant sufficient financial support to New France, he saw to it that a strong governor was chosen and one who he himself well knew. Frontenac came of an ancient and noble family. His father was a close friend of the king.

At fifteen, when a boy of today is considered a child, this fiery lad gave his parents no peace till he was allowed to go to fight in the war in Holland. By the time he was twenty-three he was a colonel of the regiment of Normandy, after being through many sieges. He then went through an Italian campaign and at twenty-six became a maréchal de camp. With his honors fresh upon him he returned to his father’s house in Paris. There he met a high-spirited young girl of sixteen, daughter of the Sieur de Neuville. The two fell in love and, as her father opposed the match, eloped and were married.

They lived in the most brilliant circle at court, daring, extravagant, high-tempered. She was a cousin of Madame de Maintenon, whom the king married. Frontenac was the king’s godson. Neither one was by nature suited to the other, yet through the stormy years of their connection a peculiar bond held them. She bore his son and named him François Louis. The little fellow was sent to the country with a nurse, for the countess had no time to give to children.

So, with a far from large income, they lived like rich nobles, entertaining with careless extravagance, holding, as it were, a court of their own. As the years passed, the intrigues of the royal circle claimed her more and more.

In 1669 Frontenac was chosen to command the forces of the Venetians against the Turks, who had been sending overwhelming forces against them for two years. Desperately they had come to France for aid. France sent them Frontenac.

As well as being a great military leader he possessed an audacious eloquence. He addressed the Senate of Venice and held them by his forceful presence, as well as by his fiery words.

Three years later he was again in Paris. He was nearly bankrupt and badly in need of a permanent post. Saint-Simon wrote of him at this time: “He was a man of excellent parts, living much in society and completely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of his wife. He was given the government of Canada to deliver him from her and to afford him some means of living.”

But there was another story about the appointment. This was that the king was jealous of Frontenac. He had been the lover of Madame de Montespan, who now captivated the king. It was embarrassing to Louis to have Frontenac about the court. Canada was a long way off. What better solution of the difficult situation could be found!

So Frontenac, for one or both reasons, was made governor and Lieutenant General for the king in all New France. His past, as courtier and leader in European wars, seemed not to fit him especially for this undertaking in the New World, but he brought to it the imperious vitality so characteristic of him, and no detail was too small for his observance. He was mindful of the pomp that should attend him and asked the king for twenty mounted soldiers as a bodyguard. Louis agreed to this and granted him a sum for equipping them with uniforms and fine mounts.

Champlain had been a man of middle age when he came to Canada. He had left behind him a child wife, for whom he planned a happy home in Quebec. Frontenac, at fifty, had no illusions about marital happiness. He had married when very young, and he and his wife had never got on. Their son had been killed in battle. It might be said that all was over between them. Yet all was not over. Each continued to interest the other to the time of Frontenac’s death. It was not boredom that kept them apart. He was handsome and eloquent. She was beautiful, witty, and gay. Yet they were well pleased to have the Atlantic between them.

Frontenac was delighted by the impressive situation of Quebec but he thought the Château St. Louis quite inadequate as the residence of the governor. His first undertaking was to survey the vast field of his future labors. He summoned the seigneurs to meet him at Montreal and to bring with them a certain number of armed men. Already he had sent the heroic explorer La Salle on ahead to the country of the Iroquois to urge them to come to a great meeting at Cataraqui (now Kingston), on the shore of Lake Ontario.

Frontenac had a wagon road made to Lachine, where the expedition was to embark. There, on flat-bottomed boats, he loaded his supplies and arms. Cannon were also dragged onto the boats. He was a superb organizer, and all was carried out as he planned. A number of Huron Indians were included in the expedition, and Frontenac had no mercy on the Frenchman who would debauch them with brandy.

So, at the end of June, the picturesque company set out. Four hundred men in one hundred and twenty canoes and flatboats made their arduous way past the rapids. To wade through water to the neck, dragging the heavily laden boats, was hard enough, but when the feet were cut and bleeding from jagged rocks it was painful indeed. For two weeks they struggled on, buoyed up by Frontenac’s high spirits and confidence in himself and them. On July 12 they arrived at the place of meeting.

The Iroquois chiefs were already there, wary, suspicious, watchful. Certainly Frontenac gave them a sight worth looking at, an awesome, moving picture of the majesty of France. The canoes approached, in military formation, bearing officers and men in impressive uniforms. Next came the flatboats, painted scarlet and blue and green and armed with shining cannon. Last the governor himself, with his bodyguard, followed by more canoes. In aloof dignity he disembarked and was escorted to where his tent was to be set up. One can well imagine the inward chuckle with which the old courtier took his part in this forest ceremony, even while he realized the importance of impressing the Iroquois. One can picture the quick, appraising glance he cast at the stalwart chiefs.

Frontenac was a born leader of men, and from his first encounter to the last he showed his skill in dominating the savages. On that first morning he received, with great ceremony, sixty Iroquois chiefs. Through a Jesuit interpreter he welcomed them eloquently but with a tone of authority. In short, he told them that if they behaved themselves they would be his good children, protected by him from all enemies, but that they must obey his commands.

On the succeeding days he invited each of the chiefs in turn to be his guest at table. During those repasts he must have seen some curious table manners and have needed a strong stomach to enjoy his own meal. But that was all in the day’s work to Count Frontenac.

As the chiefs were impressed by his magnificence, so were their wives charmed by the ornaments he gave them, the children delighted by his way of romping with them. All the while he was making friends with the Iroquois his men were erecting a strong fort under the supervision of a French engineer, Raudin. In a fortnight it was completed, invulnerable to attack from Indians.

Before parting, Frontenac urged the chiefs to accept the Christian religion, to live at peace with the neighboring tribes, to allow their children to learn the French language. This fort, he told them, was to become a great trading post to which they could bring the beaverskins and so save themselves the long hard journey to Montreal. We may be sure the Montreal traders resented this.

What about prices? asked the chiefs. Would the French pay as much as the English and the Dutch? Frontenac assured them that they would. As they conferred the French flag was floating from the fort; the fort was guarding the entrance to the Great Lakes.

Frontenac was learning much of this vast continent. He was primed by the French ambition to take possession of all the country, from the North down to Mexico. In November he wrote to King Louis that he had sent the explorer, Jolliet, to discover a route to the South Sea. Later he wrote that, if it were not for Niagara Falls, a vessel might pass from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico.

Frontenac placed La Salle in charge of Fort Frontenac and in 1674 sent him to France to urge support for their vast enterprises. King Louis created La Salle an untitled nobleman and gave him Fort Frontenac with a large tract of land. In return La Salle’s wealthy family supplied him with sufficient means to make Fort Frontenac an important place. This did not at all please the English in New York. This young La Salle was too ambitious, too aggressive.

La Salle rebuilt the fort, mounted cannon on the massive walls. He built four ships that sailed the waters of Ontario, where before only canoes had ruffled its surface. This was but the beginning of his almost incredible labors of the next twelve years, during which he sought to build for France an empire reaching to Louisiana. But it is in Frontenac and Quebec that we are interested.

A thorn in Frontenac’s flesh was the coureur de bois, the fur trader of the forest. Ever since the founding of the colony it had been the aim of the government to make it an agricultural country. But conditions for farming were difficult because of the shortness of the summer. The climate was a contrast to the merciful climate of France. All about stretched the forests, teeming with fur-bearing animals. Hard as the life of the hunter might be, it was more attractive to the strong young man than farming. And so the most vigorous of the settlers were lost from the land. Sometimes they would stay away for a year, sometimes for even two years. When they returned to Quebec or Montreal, such was their exhilaration at being home again that they all too often would spend their entire savings in a few days of drinking and gambling and so be forced to the woods again. Edict after edict came from Versailles, forbidding colonists to go into the woods without permit, but nothing stopped them. If they feared punishment they simply stayed away and did their trading through an accomplice in the settlement. In their own way they did much good for the French, for everywhere they went they made friends with the Indians, and it was that friendship that drew the Indian tribes to ally themselves with Quebec.

Sometimes these coureurs de bois were men of good family who would have scorned a marriage among the habitants but would have a family by an Indian woman. Mère Marie de l’Incarnation once wrote: “It is easier to make an Indian of a Frenchman than a Frenchman of an Indian.”

But, whatever the rough life they lived, they retained the good manners, the gaiety and lightheartedness of their French forebears. They were vigorous and skillful boatmen, singing as they paddled, ready at the end of a hard day to dance. “Brother” and “cousin” they called each other, though there was no relationship.

A few years ago I spent a summer in a farmhouse in New Hampshire. Something went wrong with the water system, and a young French Canadian came to put it right. What a pleasure it was to see him about his work—tall, slender, fair, gentle and eager to do all he could to help. And there was courage in his bearing, an adventurous light in his eyes. It would have been interesting, I thought, to have traced his ancestry back to the early days of Canada. Well might it have led to some adventurous gentleman of France who had turned coureur de bois.

The fur trade, so important to New France, could not be controlled unless the coureur de bois could be controlled. Frontenac soon found out that the man who had most influence in the country, next to himself, was hand in glove with these unlicensed hunters. This was the governor of Montreal, François Perrot. He had got the post through the influence of Talon, whose nephew he was.

Perrot was getting rich and would have no interference from Frontenac. When commands were issued for the punishment of the coureurs de bois Perrot protected them. He even encouraged his own soldiers to desert and join the bushrangers to increase his profits. When some ruffians among them became disorderly and the mayor of Montreal protested, Perrot sent him to prison. He became more and more of a tyrant.

Frontenac was in a difficult position. He had had vigorous orders from the king to suppress the coureur de bois, yet here was Perrot defying him, flouting the authority of the Crown. Frontenac had not enough soldiers at his command to march to Montreal and arrest Perrot, who would have had all the ruffians of Montreal at his back. Instead he wrote to the Abbé Salignac de Fénelon, who was a priest of St. Sulpice at Montreal and a friend. Frontenac urged him to reason with Perrot and advise him to come to Quebec and make a peaceful settlement of the question. At the same time Frontenac wrote to Perrot commanding him to appear before him.

Perrot found Frontenac’s letter so much more moderate than he would have expected (also he was somewhat afraid of incurring the king’s displeasure) that he decided to go. The Abbé Fénelon decided to go with him.

Winter was now at its height. The distance from Montreal to Quebec was one hundred and eighty miles. Down the icebound St. Lawrence the two made their way on snowshoes. The weather was bitterly cold, but Perrot’s temper was hot. Probably throughout the hardships of the journey he brooded on being forced to make it. Frontenac and he had scarcely exchanged a dozen words when rage overtook them. At the end Perrot was a prisoner in the Château St. Louis and Frontenac had dispatched a new governor to Montreal.

Now Perrot saw a ghastly sight from the window of his prison. It was the hanging of a certain coureur de bois who had been a bone of contention between him and the governor. Hanging was indeed the punishment for unlicensed fur trading, but the hanging of this man at this moment in this particular place must have struck Perrot as a threat. It is interesting to speculate as to whether he stared in anger at the horrid sight or covered his eyes with his hands.

The Abbé Fénelon was no longer on Frontenac’s side in the quarrel. He felt that he had been used as a tool to bring Perrot into Frontenac’s power. He told him so and they quarreled bitterly. When Fénelon was again in Montreal he attacked Frontenac with violence in a sermon. All the priests of St. Sulpice now were veering toward Perrot, because Frontenac had appointed a new governor to Montreal and the right to do this had so far been theirs.

Fénelon’s influence against Frontenac did not end in the pulpit. He went among the colonists, urging them to attest in Perrot’s favor. Perrot was becoming something of a hero. This could not go on without a countermove from Frontenac. He ordered the Abbé Fénelon to appear before him in Quebec on a charge of stirring up trouble against the government.

Fénelon’s partner in the mission, the Abbé d’Urfé, made the journey to Quebec to see if he could not smooth things over. But when he and Frontenac met both lost their tempers and Frontenac grasped the abbé roughly by the arm, led him to the top of the stairs and, as he descended, poured after him a stream of fierce eloquence. These proceedings remind us all too vividly of scenes in the French Chamber of Deputies before the Fall of France.

Finally Perrot and Fénelon both were arraigned before the Council of Quebec. Perrot, far from subdued, objected to Frontenac’s presence on the board on the grounds that he was a personal enemy. He objected to several other members of the board, and when substitutes were appointed in their place he objected to them also. In short he did nothing but object. Haltingly the trial proceeded.

The trial of the Abbé Fénelon was held in a separate session. With a truculent air he entered the chamber where Frontenac and the councilors were seated at a table. Fénelon was about to seat himself also when Frontenac desired him to remain standing.

Still more truculently Fénelon replied that, as a priest, he would seat himself if he chose and would keep his hat on. He did so.

“You are not here as a witness,” returned the count, “but to answer to charges of crime.”

“My crimes exist nowhere but in your head,” Fénelon spoke defiantly. He pulled his hat down till only his angry eyes looked from beneath the brim. Then, with an air both haughty and sneering, he drew his cassock about him and strode up and down the room.

“This is very disrespectful, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Frontenac, controlling himself, “both to the Council and to me, as its head.”

“What about your lack of respect to me, as a priest?” demanded Fénelon.

He continued to walk up and down, and as though it were not enough to keep his hat on, he kept taking it off and clapping it on again, each time more fiercely than the last.

It ended by Frontenac’s sending the abbé to an antechamber to cool off. There he remained fuming, with a constable.

But when he was brought back the undignified and rather comic scene was repeated. Frontenac told him that his conduct was unworthy of his birth and his sacred office. Fénelon declared that only the bishop had the right to judge him. Bishop Laval was in France, but in the ecclesiastical circle a tempest rose. The councilors were daunted, and Frontenac felt compelled at last to send both Perrot and Fénelon back to France. Perrot had now been imprisoned for ten months.

Frontenac sent a full report of their behavior with them. He wrote of the pretensions of the ecclesiastics and the evilspeaking against himself which he had endured, “and which no man but me would have endured so patiently.”

In truth his calm and patience throughout the storm surprised everyone. “I must expect,” his report to the king continued, “that everything will be said against me that the most artful slander can devise. A governor in this country would greatly deserve pity, if he were left without support. Even if he should make mistakes, it is surely very pardonable, seeing that there is no snare that is not spread for him, and that, after avoiding a hundred of them, he will hardly escape without being caught at last.”

A prime minister or president of today might well subscribe to this, in his own case.

The king’s reply to this letter was of an excellent nature. Perrot’s punishment, in spending ten months in confinement, was sufficient for his bad behavior. However, he was to be imprisoned in the Bastille for a few days as a public reparation. He would then be sent back to his post in Montreal, with instructions to go first to Quebec and make a suitable apology to Frontenac. The king cautioned Frontenac to harbor no resentment against Perrot.

The Abbé Fénelon was not allowed to return to Canada. He had ruined his own prospects by his irascible ardor.

Frontenac’s Recall

There had been no Intendant and no bishop in Quebec for some time, and this concentration of power in his own person suited Frontenac’s imperious temper perfectly. But now the government at Versailles appointed a new Intendant, Duchesneau, who was sent out to manage the details of administration and to report on Frontenac’s doings. Also, Bishop Laval, who never had got on well with any governor, returned to Quebec. As surely as thunderclouds produce lightning, a storm was gathering on the Rock.

Duchesneau allied himself with the bishop and clergy. Laval curtailed the honor done the governor in the church service. Duchesneau claimed that he was president of the Superior Council, which position Frontenac also claimed. There were furious quarrels. Hands were laid threateningly on swords.

Again the question of selling brandy to the Indians loomed large. Laval wished to end the traffic absolutely and, by his influence at Court, almost succeeded. Frontenac declared that this would ruin the fur trade. Already three hundred Iroquois, on their way to Montreal with a valuable collection of furs, had turned back, when it was rumored that the French would sell them no brandy, to trade instead with the Dutch, who would sell them all they wanted.

The friction between Frontenac and Duchesneau seemed always at the point of creating a blaze; their reports on each other’s interference and arrogance arrived in France on every ship, till the harassed king wrote to Frontenac: “Through all my kingdom I do not hear of so many difficulties as from Quebec.”

On a fine March day one of Duchesneau’s sons, a boy of sixteen, with a servant in attendance, was loitering at the edge of the cliff. He sang a song which may have had something insulting in it, for one of Frontenac’s friends, Boisseau, and a guardsman came to him and threatened to thrash him. The boy and his servant became abusive and Boisseau reported him to Frontenac. The governor complained to the Intendant who sent his son and his servant to tell their side of the story.

We can imagine the spoilt, arrogant boy and the fiery governor facing each other with little that was conciliatory in their attitudes. Not more than a few moments had passed when Frontenac caught the boy by the arm, shook him, and struck him. A secretary opened the door and the boy fled. Meanwhile the servant, left in the guardroom, had been caned by Boisseau.

The affair reached such a pitch that Duchesneau barricaded himself and his family in his residence, as though for a siege, and armed his entire household. Bishop Laval now came forward to mediate, and after many conferences the boy was handed over to Frontenac, who locked him in a room in the château for a month. Meanwhile Perrot, having been re-established as governor of Montreal, was once more making a tidy profit in illicit fur trading with his coureurs de bois, just as though he had never been punished for so doing. Duchesneau now decided to have a hand in disciplining him, and he ordered Migeon, bailiff of Montreal, to arrest those of the coureurs de bois he could lay hands on.

This was scarcely done when Perrot arrested the bailiff and sent a sergeant and two soldiers to occupy his house. He told them to make themselves thoroughly disagreeable, which they did. One of them walked up and down the bedroom of the bailiff’s wife all night long.

Decidedly Perrot was a vivacious fellow. One evening when the bailiff was giving a dinner party Perrot appeared at a window and, hearing talk against himself, entered, struck the offending guest on the head with his cane, then drew his sword and chased him through the house, over the garden wall into a seminary, where a kindly priest lent him a hat and cassock, and so he escaped.

This sort of brawling could not be allowed to continue. Perrot, because of the influence of his friends at court, was not recalled. Frontenac and Duchesneau were.

If this were the end of Frontenac in Canada, the reader might well wonder what I found in him to excite hero worship. But it was not the end. Years afterward he again became governor of New France, and it was then that his great qualities shone. Even now it was a great detriment to the colony to lose him. If he were fiery and short-tempered, if it were impossible for him to give up an idea once it had got into his head, he also was peculiarly fitted to govern such a turbulent colony. There were times when all went smoothly under his rule, as well as times of strife. He never tired in his efforts to strengthen New France. In his treatment of the Indians, none equaled him. They admired his air of distinction. They admired his eloquence. When he found that they rejoiced in flowery speech, his addresses to them blossomed into imagery as florid as their own. One may well pause here to wonder how these savage people were born with such a love of rhetoric. From where did they come, into the wilds of Canada? How did they lose all traces of civilization?

Frontenac could rebuke the Indians without angering them, as later governors angered them. His vivacity, the way he romped with their children, won their hearts. To the poor he was lenient and kindly. He might impose a fine on a poor man, but the money would later be returned to his children. When he left Canada the people felt that their bulwark in times of danger had been taken away.

When his successor, Le Febvre de la Barre, arrived in Quebec he found a melancholy state of affairs. A devastating fire had destroyed the whole of the Lower Town, including storehouses filled with the most valuable goods in Canada. The people were sadly downcast.

Frontenac had not yet sailed for France. In the Château St. Louis he had long talks with De la Barre, trying to impress on him the policy that might save the country from ruin by the Iroquois, ruin which now stared it in the face. It was the aim of the Iroquois to obliterate the Hurons and Algonquins, to drive out the French and so have complete control of the fur trade with the English and Dutch. They were delighted when they heard that Frontenac was leaving, for they greatly feared him. Canada had never needed him more than at the hour of his recall.

Frontenac’s good counsel was soon counteracted by the tales poured into De la Barre’s ears by his enemies. Still De la Barre was very conscious of danger. He wrote to the king begging him for troops. If Louis had put a very small part of the effort he made to conquer Europe into the saving of his Western Empire, the map of North America might have had a very different face today.

De la Barre allied himself with certain merchants of Quebec and Montreal for personal profit from the fur trade. He informed the Iroquois that they might forcibly take the furs from any French trader who had not a passport signed by himself. As the Iroquois could not read, they took every opportunity of pillaging the canoes of the traders.

The Senecas were the strongest of all the Iroquois tribes. They held the French in scorn. De la Barre made up his mind to destroy them and wrote to the king begging his help. Louis sent him three companies of regulars. In 1684 one hundred and fifty regulars, seven hundred Canadian militia, and four hundred Indians set out on the long and arduous trip to Niagara. They had by this time been joined by another strong force from the west, made up of coureurs de bois and Indians. Some of these had traveled a thousand miles to join in the campaign which was to end the Iroquois peril forever.

But De la Barre now was seized by panic. He was afraid, not only of the Iroquois but of the English, and he made a miserable peace with the arrogant chiefs who visited him at his headquarters. He had gained little by all this effort, and he had lost his prestige. When the king was informed of what had happened he wrote a pleasant letter to De la Barre to say that he was to be replaced by a new governor, the Marquis de Denonville.

The Marquise de Denonville and some of his children accompanied the governor. Like Frontenac, he was a soldier and a courtier, but he was a man of harder polish, a more fastidious nature, and he lacked Frontenac’s sympathy with the wild, the rough, and the poverty-stricken. He abhorred the thought of any personal part in the fur trade or gain from it. Madame la Marquise was less fastidious, for she had a room in the château where she did a little trading on her own account. She must have had strong fiber or she never would have survived the miseries of the voyage out. On one ship alone the captain and sixty men died and eighty others were desperately ill. What must have been the lady’s thoughts as France and the court receded and the strange New World loomed beyond the icebergs of the Western sea, and the ship wallowed in the waves and a trail of dead bodies sank in her wake?

Denonville came to Canada with one thought supreme in his mind, to overcome the power of the English and to establish the French government and the Roman Catholic religion on the North American continent. Louis XIV of France and James II of England were on friendly terms. Denonville’s plan was that Louis should buy New York from James! Boston would be easily overcome. France would then possess the untold riches of the continent and Roman Catholicism would be the only religion.

The governor of New York at this time was Thomas Dongan, an Irishman of aristocratic birth and a Catholic. But he was as fiercely opposed to the aims of Catholic France as any Puritan New Englander.

Denonville made up his mind to crush the powerful Senecas by one stupendous blow, and he sent word to all the Western tribes and to the coureurs de bois to meet at a given place on the shore of Lake Ontario, in full force. Also he had troops fresh from France.

When he, with his army, met the army from the Niagara district, they numbered in all about three thousand. A camp was formed and temporary fortifications built. Four hundred men were left to guard this while the rest were formed into marching order. Denonville must have been astonished by the looks of his Indian allies, painted grotesquely as they were, and some wearing buffalo horns and tails to make them more frightening. There were coureurs de bois in equally fantastic battle array. They had taken to Indian life and liked it. Doubtless many a man of today would prefer it to the life he leads.

In contrast were immaculate French officers in fine uniforms. The time was July, the heat sweltering. One can well imagine the joyous welcome given by the hordes of mosquitoes to newly arrived, tender French flesh.

On the second day’s march the advancing army was surprised by attack both in front and rear. There was almost a panic, but the Canadians quickly recovered themselves, the regulars not so quickly, and the Senecas were put to flight. After the victory Denonville saw with horror the scenes of torture and cannibalism that followed.

There were other encounters in which the French were victorious and they marched on, burning villages and stores of grain as well as the standing crops. The Senecas kept herds of pigs, and, between eating pork and green corn, the French troops were soon in a bad way. The Indians, having had their fill of gorging and torturing, were deserting. The victorious army turned back toward Quebec.

But no cheers that greeted Denonville compensated for the rage aroused in the hearts of the Iroquois by the attack on the Senecas. Now they were more firmly than ever the allies of the British. Now, more hotly than ever, they thirsted for revenge.

Even before this a tragic blunder had been made by Denonville. King Louis had expressed a wish for some stalwart Indians to row in the galleys. Strength was indeed desirable, for the life was horrible. Chained together, half naked, tortured by flies and vermin, the galley slaves labored for ten hours without respite, at a rate which well might have exhausted a man in one hour. In times of stress they rowed for twenty-four hours. Their food was a biscuit thrust into the mouth, so that they need not stop rowing. If they weakened beneath the fierce Mediterranean sun, the petty officers’ lash roused them to fresh effort. As a rule they did not live long.

As a child will cheerfully lie to his teacher but would be outraged if the teacher lied to him, so were the Iroquois outraged by the treachery practiced on them by Denonville. A number of Iroquois, knowing nothing of the impending attack on the Senecas, had been invited by the French to Fort Frontenac for a friendly conference. They came, bringing their wives and children. In all they numbered about two hundred. There was to be a great banquet, it was said. But instead all the men were seized and, after torture by the Indian allies of the French, thirty-five of the strongest were shipped to France for the galleys. The tears of the wives and children availed nothing. The young Baron La Hontan became beside himself with anger when he saw the mission Indians burning off in their pipes the finger tips of the remaining captives. He created a scene and was put under arrest.

Tied to posts, the Indians, through the long days and nights, had chanted their mournful “Death Song,” for they expected to die. Of the one hundred and fifty women and children, those who had not died from terror and shock were baptized and divided among the tribes of the Indian allies. Reprisals from the Iroquois were bound to come. These culminated when, in the summer of 1689, fifteen hundred Iroquois warriors descended on the village of Lachine, near Montreal, and a horrible massacre took place. When night came and the campfires of torture were lighted, the people of Montreal, seeing their lurid flames against the sky, knew that their own friends and relatives were being tortured to death there. Panic seized Quebec when it was learned that the Iroquois intended an attack there. French brandy saved the situation. The captured stores demoralized the Iroquois. Their half-crazed brains suddenly were filled with fear and they retreated to their own forests.

Denonville had been a tragic failure. King Louis now recalled him. He left a Canada shocked to numb despair by the calamity of Lachine and the prospect of further horrors. Word came of revolution in Europe. James II, who had been friendly to France, was deposed. William of Orange, who had opened the dykes of Holland and brought disaster to the invading French army there, had ascended the British throne. The British colonies in America, rich and vigorous, now loomed as a greater menace than ever before to New France.

So the Marquis de Denonville, who had lived in serene harmony with priests and bishop, departed, and in his place Count Frontenac, the fiery old soldier who never could get on with the Jesuits, returned as governor.

When Denonville arrived at the French court powerful friends in the Church had got for him the post of governor of the royal children, the youthful Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berri.

Bitter Strife

What must have been the expectations of Frontenac as he sailed up the St. Lawrence in the autumn of 1672? Certainly he must have felt triumph to think that he had been chosen as the one man who might repair the tragic mistakes made by La Barre and Denonville, who might awe the Iroquois and defeat the British. Probably he felt some bitterness when he considered the wasted years at Versailles when he might have been using his powers to make Canada strong. He had been fifty-two when first he arrived in Quebec. Now he was sixty-nine, yet in his age he brought with him the same zest for living, the same vitality as in his middle years.

If we were to seek someone of our own time to compare with him, we might choose Mr. Winston Churchill, and it is interesting to speculate as to whether he could have brought himself to conduct the ruthless warfare to which Frontenac was now committed. His orders were to take New York at any cost and by any means!

It was night when he sailed up the St. Lawrence. When his ship was sighted the gunners, waiting by the cannon, ignited the fuse. Majestic thunders of welcome vibrated among the hills. Then along the steep, winding streets a torchlight procession moved toward the landing place. A rocket sped skyward, casting a shower of stars into the river. All was joyful confusion. Other rockets followed and fireworks in many designs. When the sturdy figure of the old governor appeared, a cheer burst from the throats that so lately had been constricted in fear.

“Long live Count Frontenac!” shouted the people.

They pressed forward to kiss his hand.

At Frontenac’s side walked a famous Iroquois chief, one of the captives who had been sent to France by Denonville to row in the galleys. Only thirteen of these had survived, and at Frontenac’s earnest request they were now returned to Canada. On the voyage out Frontenac had exerted himself to make a friend of the chief. He had succeeded. The chief had sat with him at his table. Now, richly dressed in the garments of a courtier, with plumed hat and sword, he walked at the governor’s side—he whose shoulders had bled under the lash of the officer of the galley!

Quebec was a strange town, with dirty gutters and sordid houses of the poor. The streets teemed with beggars, yet in the center of the town rose massive stone buildings in the best traditions of French architecture. The habits of nuns and priests gave an air of religious gravity to the scene. Officers in fine uniforms, gentlemen in the costume of the court of King Louis, lent their brilliance. But beneath all was stark fear of the Iroquois. The flesh of the victims of Lachine was still warm in the bowels of these savages.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Le Comte de Frontenac, from a painting which hangs in the Château Frontenac.

Quebec must have seemed very small, very bizarre to Frontenac after the studied elegancies of the court, where he had mingled with the most brilliant society in Europe. He had stood in the king’s private room on their last interview, and Louis had said:

“I send you back to Canada, where I am sure you will serve me as well as you did before. I ask nothing more of you.”

Louis was growing tired of Canada. He had given so much time and thought to it. He had spent a good deal in money and troops. He had had little in return but harassment. But, if Frontenac could capture New York for him, drive the British and Dutch from all New England, his hopes for a great empire in the New World might still be realized. In truth, a menacing shadow lay across all his realm. It was the shadow of his enemy and the enemy of his faith, William of Orange, now King of England.

Frontenac was barely arrived in Quebec when he heard the bitter news that his predecessor, Denonville, had weakly consented to the demand of an Iroquois envoy that Fort Frontenac should be blown up and its stores cast into the river. Frontenac had labored for the fort. It was named for him. As soon as was humanly possible he organized a party of three hundred men to relieve the fort and prevent Denonville’s orders being carried out. It had taken all his force to collect the men and arm them, for the people were in terror of the Iroquois, and their spirit was almost broken. The party had been gone for only an hour when the garrison from Fort Frontenac appeared with the news that they had blown up the fort and thrown the cannon into the river.

How Frontenac must have cursed Denonville! It was he who had treacherously captured the Iroquois at Fort Frontenac and sent them to the galleys! It was he who had destroyed the fort!

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

An aerial view of Quebec. In the lower foreground is the Château Frontenac, with Dufferin Terrace fronting the river before it. On the promontory above is the old Citadel, and to its right the Plains of Abraham.

His tempest of wrath over, Frontenac set himself to the task of pacifying the Iroquois. The chief he had brought back with him was now living in state in the château. His friendship for Frontenac never failed. His name was Ourehaové. Now he sent a message to his people, the Iroquois, asking them to come to meet the governor in council. From eighty chiefs the reply was brought to Frontenac:

“Send us back our thirteen countrymen. Then we will talk to you of peace.”

But with this curt reply they sent a quantity of wampum, which signified that they were giving their minds to the question. Ourehaové decided to send the chiefs a second message saying that he was astonished that a deputation had not come to welcome him and escort him to his own land. With the Indian messengers Frontenac decided to send a French officer to take stock of the situation and, in conversation with the Iroquois chiefs, to convince them of his great power and the danger of provoking his anger. The officer he sent was the Chevalier d’Aux, with several attendants. The effect of the message was the reverse of what was expected. The Iroquois burned two of the chevalier’s attendants. They forced the chevalier to run the gauntlet and then sent him, bruised and bleeding, as prisoner to Albany.

Through the winter snows a Jesuit, Father Carheil, sent a messenger to Frontenac to say that the tribes about Michilimackinac were ready to revolt and join the Iroquois and English. They sneered at the French as warriors, declared they did nothing but beg for peace, leaving their Indian allies to bear the brunt of war, that in cowardice they had returned the prisoners which they had captured in treachery. In short it was a bitter indictment of Denonville’s methods.

Now was the time for Frontenac to make a stand, which he did with all his old-time vigor. As soon as spring opened he sent one hundred and fifty Canadian soldiers and officers to Michilimackinac. It was Nicolas Perrot who bore the message. It was long and characteristically haughty. Did his rebellious children think that he was no longer alive? he asked. He had protected them from the ravenous Iroquois dog. He had tied up the dog, but in his absence it was loosed. The English had encouraged the dog, but he (Frontenac) would kill all who encouraged him. He had returned the Indian captives not through fear but through pity. Do to the Iroquois, he counseled them, as they have done to you. Killed you in time of peace! Do to the English as they would like to do to you. Hold fast to your true father, who will never abandon you. Will you let the English brandy that has killed you in your wigwams lure you into the kettles of the Iroquois? Is not mine better, which has always made you strong?

Perrot and his party met a band of Iroquois on their way to Michilimackinac and won a bloody victory over them. This victory, though far from decisive, revived the fading prestige of the French. The disaffected Indians consented to meet them in council. For a time the people of Quebec breathed freer. New courage made them hold up their heads. The old leader was in the saddle again. His bold hand was on the rein. Seigneurs and habitants rallied round him, ready to follow where he led.

In January 1690 a party of about three hundred French and Indians marched on snowshoes, in terrible weather of alternate freezing and thawing, to the village of Schenectady, in New York State, and though they arrived almost exhausted, they had the strength to massacre sixty people. It was black night, but soon the sky was red with the flames of the burning homesteads. In early spring a raid was made on Salmon Falls in New Hampshire. Another massacre took place.

The French were unfortunate in being forced to make use of a large number of Indian allies. When these were roused in the fury of battle no man could restrain them and horrible deeds were done. The English, with a far greater population, made fewer Indian allies and had more power of controlling them. Another reason for the ruthlessness of the Canadians was that a large number of their fighters were the lawless coureurs de bois, many of whom had lived the life of the forest so long that they were almost as wild as the Indians.

There had been raids and counterraids along the border, but the raid on Schenectady roused a tide of the bitterest feeling in New England. The effect on the western tribes was to renew their respect for the French and especially for Frontenac. Five hundred of them came in a body in canoes laden with beaverskins, the very next summer, to trade them with the French for guns and ammunition and pots and pans. A thrill of hope for new prosperity ran through the country. Frontenac was magnificent. The courtier of Versailles greeted the Indians with genial warmth. He strolled about their camp. He received them at his own table. When at night a banquet was held he rose in the firelight and danced a war dance with the best of them though he was past seventy. Out of his French lungs came war whoops to curdle the blood. He brandished a hatchet as though he were ready at that moment to scalp either an Iroquois or an Englishman. In fact he was in his element.

With the slenderest means at his command Frontenac saved New France from destruction. But, though the danger from Indians was overcome, the danger from New England was rising hour by hour. Massachusetts was seething with hate, for it had suffered most from privateers who sheltered in the harbors of Acadia. The New England colonies resolved to conquer Canada and to drive the French, man, woman, and child, out of that country. Yet it was a New England poet who, later on, wrote a highly sentimental poem on the ejection of the Acadians from Nova Scotia!

The government of Massachusetts made this extraordinary announcement: “God Almighty has determined the fall of Anti-Christ in our days.”

So, with the Almighty on their side, they sent forth Sir William Phipps to do the deed. He was New England born, a former ship’s carpenter whose mother had given birth to twenty-one sons and five daughters. He had got rich by raising a sunken treasure-laden Spanish ship in the West Indies and marrying a wealthy widow. James II had created him a knight.

His first action in the Anti-Christ campaign was to capture Port Royal in Nova Scotia. Its garrison was less than a hundred, while Phipps commanded seven hundred men. The governor surrendered on condition that private property and the church should be respected. Phipps agreed to this but broke his promise. Everything of value was taken from the poor place—even to the governor’s wig and fine linen. As for the church, Phipps’s men, like the good Puritans they were, tore down the Cross and overthrew the altar and sacred images. The governor gave Phipps all his money for safekeeping, as he was afraid of Phipps’s men. He never got it back!

The booty that had been captured at Port Royal encouraged the Bostonians to hope for even better luck at Quebec. Only lack of funds stood in the way. To raise money the public credit was pledged and thirty vessels were requisitioned for the expedition. These were manned by twenty-two hundred sailors and soldiers. They sailed on August 9, 1690. The winds were unfavorable, and it was the middle of October when the hostile fleet sailed into the harbor of Quebec. Frontenac was in Montreal, where an Indian brought the news that a fleet had sailed from Boston to capture Quebec. At once he set out in a canoe and by great effort arrived at Quebec two days before Phipps appeared. He found the place in a frenzy of planting batteries, digging trenches, and strengthening the fortifications. Two batteries had been established in the Upper Town, one to the right of the Château St. Louis and one on the walled Sault au Matelot. There were two batteries on the riverbank. Frontenac was well pleased with what had been accomplished. However, he found panic among the civilians. Women and children had crowded into the convent. People were burying their silver in their gardens. The steadying effect of his presence soon was felt. The people now showed defiance rather than fear. Old Bishop Laval hung a picture of the Holy Trinity on the clock tower of the cathedral. Processions carrying sacred banners moved through the streets. The church bells rang. Before daybreak on Monday morning the lights of the hostile fleet were sighted down the river. At daybreak they were in the harbor. The fleet lay silent for a time. Then a boat was lowered from the Admiral’s ship. It bore a flag of truce and an envoy from Phipps. Four canoes met the boat, and the young officer was transferred to one of them and taken to the town. He was blindfolded, and it was arranged that he should be impressed by the crowd and by their military and menacing mood. The sound of drums beat on the air, trumpets blared, and the envoy was jostled by shouting crowds. At last the bandage was taken from his eyes and he beheld a grand reception room in the Château St. Louis. Frontenac was there in gorgeous uniform. Behind him were grouped his staff and the principal military officers, also in gorgeous uniforms, as well as the aristocracy of New France. It was a brilliant display such as New England eyes had never seen. But the young envoy pulled himself together and handed Frontenac a letter from Phipps, demanding, in the name of King William, the surrender of Quebec.

Frontenac could read no English. He handed the letter to one of his officers who could. He listened to the translation with disdainful attention. It was pompously worded and demanded complete surrender within the hour. The envoy took out his watch and held it toward Frontenac. The governor refused to look at it. He recognized no King of England, he said, but King James II. The Prince of Orange was a usurper whom the King of France would before long depose and restore the rightful sovereign to his throne.

At the peremptory demand for surrender, a shout of anger had come from Frontenac’s staff. One of them called out:

“Phipps is nothing but a pirate! His man ought to be hanged.”

Frontenac smiled at the envoy. “Ma défense,” he said, “se fera par la bouche de mes cannons.”

He refused to put his answer in writing. The envoy was led blindfolded back to his boat.

Soon after the appearance of the New England fleet, eight hundred regulars and militiamen arrived from Montreal. These men were skilled in irregular warfare. Phipps was able to land thirteen hundred men in deep mud on the Beaufort Flats, but in a skirmish lost a considerable number of them. They were not able to get sufficient supplies from their ships. The weather was extraordinarily cold for the time of year. The invaders were wet and chilled through. Harassed beyond endurance by the Canadians, they rushed for their boats and left five cannon behind them.

On Wednesday afternoon Phipps moved his four principal ships nearer to the town and began a bombardment. This was answered with vigor from the cliffs. The Canadian guns were fewer but better served. Little damage was done. Phipps and his officers deliberated gloomily together. There seemed nothing to do but to sail ignominiously away, disappointed and disgruntled.

Off the Island of Orleans, Phipps sent a messenger ashore to ask if he might buy provisions from the farmers there. This was granted by the officer in command and squadron and farmers profited alike. Next an exchange of prisoners took place. Phipps had captured some on the way up the river, including two priests. On their part the French had possession of the commandant of Fort Loyal, now the city of Portland, upon which a massacre by combined Indians and Frenchmen had been inflicted. The commandant had been brought to Quebec, and also two young daughters of a Captain Clark who had been killed, and a little girl named Sarah Gerrish. All had been well treated, and the nuns who had been caring for the children had become so attached to them they were loath to give them up. We can picture the little Puritan girls, brought up with severity, knowing little of laughter or gaiety, being encircled by the tenderness and Gallic animation of the nuns, clinging to them at parting, dreading the voyage ahead of them.

And well they may have dreaded it! The voyage back to Boston was terrible. Phipps had no pilot. There was dense fog. One of the ships was lost, without leaving a sign. A second was wrecked, though most of the crew were saved. A third struck the rocks of the coast, and those who were not drowned were killed by the Indians. A fourth was stranded on the Island of Anticosti. The rest limped pitifully back to Boston. It is interesting to picture Phipps’s greeting from his twenty-five brothers and sisters.

Certainly there was black gloom in Boston. The God of the Puritans plainly had shown his displeasure with them. Governor Bradstreet of Massachusetts wrote: “Shall our Father spit in our face and we be not ashamed?” Which seems to credit the Almighty with rather bad manners, to say the least of it.

But in Quebec there was rejoicing. A great gathering offered thanks in the cathedral. The bishop chanted a “Te Deum.” An annual fete on that day of deliverance was established. A church, still in use, called Our Lady of Victory, was built. In France a medal was struck, bearing the words, “Kebecca Liberatta MDCXC.”

For all of the rejoicing, Quebec was greatly exhausted after the siege and in a state of tense anxiety. Three ships carrying supplies from France were now due. If they encountered Phipps’s fleet they would never arrive at Quebec, and the thought of what winter would be without the munitions and goods they carried was frightening. Frontenac sent boats down the river with all possible speed to warn the ships to slip into the Saguenay till Phipps had passed. Frontenac was anxious above all to receive the seed grain for next year’s crops. The past season had been particularly disappointing. Also there was a desperate shortage of wine. The servants at the château had had nothing better than water to drink for some time, and if relief came not soon, Frontenac himself would be brought to this pass.

When the ships did arrive the supplies of all goods were less than had been hoped for. It was a lean winter on the Rock. But at least there was freedom from the scourge of the Iroquois. No menacing prints of their snowshoes appeared on the pure snow. They waited till the new foliage of spring made a shield for them. Then a man might go whistling into his fields to plow or sow the precious seed and not return. His wife would find his body scalpless, sunk into the freshly turned soil. Frontenac was driven to furnishing guards for those at work in the fields.

Stories of great heroism are handed down to our day. The most touching is the story of Madeleine de Verchères, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Seigneur de Verchères. While her parents were away from home and she was left in charge, with two younger brothers and a handful of servants, old men, women, and children, they were attacked by the Iroquois. Madeleine was on the pier, attended by a manservant, when there came the sound of firing and fifty savages rushed out of the wood, howling like madmen. She and the servant were able to reach the palisade and shut the gate. The Iroquois had been attracted by two men working in the fields and had paused to kill them and drink of their warm blood for the gaining of greater courage.

As Madeleine ran the bullets whistled about her ears, making, as she said afterward, the way seem very long. Inside the blockhouse she found two of her father’s men hiding. One held a lighted match in his shaking hand.

“What are you doing with that match?” she demanded.

“Lighting the powder to blow us all up,” he answered.

“You are a miserable coward!” she cried. “Go out of this place!” They obeyed.

“We must never surrender,” she told the others. “If I am taken and cut to pieces or burned before your eyes, you must never surrender!”

The two women whose husbands had just been killed screamed ceaselessly. Their children cried without ceasing. Madeleine fiercely ordered them to be quiet, so that no sounds of panic should reach the Iroquois who could be seen stealing in and out of the woods.

A canoe now appeared on the river nearing the landing place. In it was a settler with his family, trying to reach the fortified house. Madeleine went to meet them and help them land in full sight of the bewildered savages, who imagined this was a ruse to draw them into the open. She got the family safe inside the palisade. It was snowing and an icy wind began to blow. Night was falling.

Madeleine threw off her little bonnet, put on a soldier’s hat, and mounted one of the three bastions. She placed her brothers on the other two. She begged them to remember their gentle birth and to act like men. The three gallant children took their positions at loopholes with muskets which they fired at intervals. They and the servants shouted loudly to each other, as from a full garrison. Madeleine allowed no slackening, no giving in from hunger or fatigue. When she saw the few cattle not killed by the Iroquois standing at the gate of the palisade in the middle of the night, she went out into the open and boldly flung wide the gate and let them in.

Her boldness staggered the Iroquois. They imagined a strong, fearless guard. The guard was feeble but it was fearless. A week passed before they were relieved and Madeleine handed over her command to a French officer, which she did with a fine military salute.

I have been looking at a picture of Madeleine, showing her with neat golden curls and a dainty pink and white dress. I prefer to think of her as the thin weary child with dark circles about her eyes, with her dress, which she had not had time to change in that dreadful week, crumpled and torn, with her powder-stained child’s hand rigid in salute as she gave over her command to the officer.

In the July following Phipps’s siege of Quebec a heartening spectacle appeared in the harbor. It was fourteen vessels laden with soldiers and supplies. Coinciding with this there came a deputation of Indians from the Ottawa tribe, to talk of trade with the French. It was salutary for them to observe the seething activity of the town, the soldiers and sailors drilling in the square, the festive crowds, the illuminations and fireworks at night, the booming of cannon, the martial music of bands. They were invited to an entertainment at the Château St. Louis, where thirty beautiful French ladies assisted Count Frontenac in making them welcome. When they left they carried with them many gifts, as well as a fresh impression of the governor’s power.

During the next few years there was a good deal of gaiety in Quebec. Frontenac held a small but quite elaborate court, in imitation of the one he so well knew at Versailles. The prospect of peace and prosperity made the people glad. A thrill of enthusiasm stirred their hearts when one winter two theatrical performances were given at the château. Officers and ladies, in striking costumes, took part in Nicomede and Mithridate. But the clergy were alarmed, and a sermon denouncing such dangerous frivolity was preached in the cathedral.

Now it was said that the comedy Tartuffe was to be produced. The bishop was aghast. Meeting Frontenac in the street, he offered him a thousand francs if he would call off the performance. Frontenac urbanely agreed, accepted the bribe, and next day handed over the money to the hospitals.

Two years later, at the age of seventy-six, Frontenac led an expedition westward to punish the Iroquois for some recent depredations. The fiery, the indomitable old soldier made the hard journey to Fort Frontenac with four hundred canoes and flatboats which carried eighteen hundred French regulars and militia. A great throng of Indian allies met them on Lake Ontario. Up the Oswego River they struggled to Onondaga, dragging their stores and even cannon. Frontenac wished to march with the rest, but his Indians carried him in his canoe as on a throne, howling with joy about him. He was the Great Father, the leader who never failed!

The Iroquois did not wait to be punished but scattered themselves to the winds, leaving their burning villages behind them. Again the French took formal possession of New York State!

So, holding his own against enemies abroad and enemies in Quebec, he passed his last years. Never a mail went to France that it did not carry complaints of him. He and the bishop, St. Valier, were at daggers drawn. But no bishop could quell him. He and the Intendant, M. de Champigny, were ever at cross-purposes. But no Intendant could thwart him. He went on his impetuous, fiery way to the last.

In November of his seventy-ninth year he fell ill. Soon he realized that he was to die. As he had met life with eagerness he faced death with calm. In his bedroom in the Château St. Louis he sat propped in a chair with his notary at his side, making his will. He desired to be buried in the church of the Récollet Fathers, whose theology, less austere than that of the Jesuits, had been more congenial to him. He arranged for a daily Mass on his behalf for a year, and, after that period, one yearly. Madame de Frontenac was to share this Mass when her time came. He desired that his heart should be sent to her in a silver casket. He also left her what small property remained to him. In spite of the accusations of his enemies that he had made illegal profits from the fur trade, he was a poor man.

In these last days a gentleness of temper came to him. He was visited several times by the bishop and the Intendant with whom he had had so many differences. To Champigny he left a crucifix of aloe wood, and he left a reliquary to Mme. Champigny. But if the bishop or clergy hoped for contrition from him for what they considered his laxness in religious matters, they were disappointed. As one of them remarked, “He behaved in his last days like one who had led an irreproachable life and had nothing to fear.”

In truth he had as many faults as virtues, so that his critics had a fruitful field for their enmity. But his virtues were of the warm-hearted, generous sort, so his friends, among whom were the poor, really had the best of the controversy.

As his funeral procession moved across the early snow there was deep and heartfelt mourning in Quebec.

Who Will Own Canada?

After the death of Frontenac the warfare between the French and the English colonies flared, subsided, flared again, following with dreadful regularity the relations of the two mother countries. Louis XIV had given serious thought and anxious endeavor to the building of a French domain in Canada, but it had been of far less importance to him than the domination of Europe, which he so nearly accomplished. The elegance and stately ceremonial of his court was reflected in the life of Quebec, where noble birth was an essential of high position and where the manners of the French court flourished in their transplanting. But combined with these manners there was a wildness in the Canadians. When the governor called on the seigneurs to rally their men for an attack the seigneurs gladly gave the word, the habitant loyally joined the militia, and forest warfare was brought to New England homes. There the very name Canadian was anathema. The hate for Canadians was furious, and the longing to obliterate them grew year by year. The Marquis de Vaudreuil, the governor in 1701, made terrible raids on the New England frontier, even going to the outskirts of Boston to burn, pillage, and massacre. The thousand ships that sailed yearly to and from its harbor were often the victims of Canadian privateers. With far greater numbers and far greater wealth, the New Englanders were at a disadvantage with the Canadians. Their villages were scattered and straggling, while every village of New France was a potential fortress. They themselves had little military skill, whereas the Canadians were born soldiers.

Queen Anne, who succeeded William of Orange in England, had, in a bloodless victory, taken Acadia. Now her heart was set on acquiring Canada. The New England colonies were enthusiastic in their agreement, though they got on badly with the commanders of the fleet sent out from England to do the deed. The British Quartermaster General expressed himself as disgusted by their sour temper and incompetence.

But the day came when the warships sailed out from Boston harbor to take Quebec, their great square sails swelling proudly in the breeze. There were seventy ships, carrying twelve thousand men, a vast force as compared to Phipps’s expedition. No such fleet had ever before entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

And this was not the only danger! An army of two thousand English and Iroquois were gathered on the shore of Lake Champlain, from where they were to march on Montreal. Quebec sat on her rock, waiting between the two. Nothing, it seemed, could save her. Twelve thousand men in their ships to the east, two thousand to the west—surely her hour had struck!

Vaudreuil, the governor, collected what forces he could lay hands on. He drew in the near-by Indians from their settlements and persuaded them, by feasting and flattery, to promise their help. He appealed to the people of Quebec to show the courage of their religion, to fight to the death to save it, for there were those on the way who would destroy it utterly. Religious processions passed through the cobbled streets. Women and girls took up guns and swore to die defending their faith.

Then strangely, almost mysteriously, as though the hand of God had intervened, the menacing armies were dispersed. Their threats came to nothing but chagrin for themselves in the west, disaster for themselves in the east. It was whispered at Lake Champlain that there had been treachery somewhere. However it was, Colonel Nicholson and his two thousand men retired to Albany to await a more auspicious time for attack.

Something terrible had happened in the St. Lawrence. The Sieur de la Valtrie had gone to the mouth of the river to watch for the enemy fleet. As he landed from his canoe on one of the seven islands, he saw men hastening away with plunder from a wreck. He saw the hulls of sunken ships and hundreds upon hundreds of swollen corpses lying on the shore. They were lying where they had lain for six weeks, beaten by rain, blistered by sun. The swords of many lay rusting at their sides. De la Valtrie found papers, among them a proclamation to the Canadians that all of North America belonged by historic right to the British, and that now they had come to take possession of Quebec.

And this was as far as they had got—a thousand soldiers and sailors rotting on the shores and the rest on their way back to England! So slow was travel by canoe that they were back in England before the Sieur de la Valtrie had reached Quebec to tell of their tragedy.

Picture his coming! It was October, and the brilliant autumn foliage hung on either side of the river like banners of rejoicing. The glow of Indian summer gilds the towering mass of the Rock. River and sky are hyacinth blue. When Valtrie appears in his canoe a crowd of anxious watchers gather to hear what news he brings. He waves his hand to them. He is smiling. He shouts something reassuring. They jostle each other, struggling to be the first to hear the almost unbelievable words. The English ships are wrecked! The bodies of the English strew the shores!

Now all the bells are ringing! People laugh and cry and embrace each other. Wild rumors as to the magnitude of the disaster fly about the town. But one fact stands out clear and strong. Preparations for the approaching winter can be made in peace. It may be possible that the flag of France will float unchallenged upon the Rock forever. After what was to them a pleasant holiday the Indians drifted back to their villages.

What had happened to the British ships was that after three weeks of fair sailing from Boston they had run into fog and tempest near Anticosti. Admiral Hovenden Walker lost his bearings, and in the darkness of night the waves drove eight transports and two supply ships on the rocks. A thousand men were drowned.

Still there were eleven thousand troops left, many of whom had fought under Marlborough. If they had sailed on to Quebec, it could have been taken without doubt. What prevented them was fear of the Canadian winter. Admiral Walker had heard that the St. Lawrence froze to the very bottom, and he pictured his ships crushed like matchwood in the ice. So he sailed back to Spithead, and soon after anchoring there his flagship blew up and all on board were killed. The Admiral was on shore.

At Utrecht, in Holland, a treaty of peace was signed by England and France. They remained the two most powerful nations in the world. England had fought with Spain and fought with Holland, leaving them weak and ready for peace with her at almost any price. England had fought with France and left her weakened but a powerful rival still. In North America she now was England’s only rival.

The English colonies held a strange mixture of religious faiths—strange, that is, for so intolerant an age. There were Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, French Huguenots, Dutch, Swedes, and Germans, each with their own religious bias. But they had, of necessity, learned to tolerate each other, or they would have perished.

In England the people had hammered out the fine ore of tolerance in the fire of civil war. They learned to compromise with each other in mild contempt. They learned to laugh instead of rage at beliefs uncongenial to them. In France there was no tolerance. The Huguenots had been driven out. In religion and in civil life, laws like iron bands clasped the nation. Certainly the iron was rusty. Before the century was out the people, with a mighty wrench, would free themselves, but now the laws still held.

There was no need for tolerance in Canada, for all were of the same faith, the same traditions were the background of all. No more sturdy and indomitable pioneers had ever broken ground in a strange land. But the stimulus of variety and initiative was lacking. The Canadians lived under meticulous supervision, mounting up and up to the glittering peak where was the king.

But the truth was that the king was tired of Canada. When the Treaty of Utrecht was signed he handed over Acadia to the British with scarcely a pang. In 1715 he died, leaving his little great-grandson, a beautiful child of five, as Louis XV. But though peace was signed in Europe, there was little peace in North America. France still held her great colony of Canada. Border warfare flared in cruel raids and massacres from time to time. Men, women, and children were killed. Farms were left in ruins.

Through the stricken ebb and bloody flow of these years of frontier fighting, Quebec sat on her rock as on a throne. Through the brilliant heat of her summers and the white isolation of her winters her people developed a strong individuality, a robust physique, and a high, prideful temper. The Jesuit Father, Charlevoix, who came from France to travel through all the French dominions and report on their value to the Regent, found Quebec delightful. He found in the cultivated circle a lively and spontaneous society headed by the governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who was of France’s ancient nobility. He admired the massive stone buildings. He declared that Quebec might well become another Paris, with hundreds of ships in her quays and a world-wide commerce. As for the common people, those in France would envy their freedom from taxes and their unhampered enjoyment of hunting and shooting, which only the upper classes of France might indulge in. The worst he had to say of them was that they gambled and drank too much, that they disliked any criticism of their ways, loved flattery, and were far from amenable to reproof. They resented interference, even from the clergy. They would quarrel in the very vestibule of the church.

But it was the priest who shaped the minds of the people and, in the country communities especially, guarded their morals. On their long, narrow farms, where the houses were built as close as possible to each other for the sake of companionship and of safety, it was the priest who came in all weathers to join in their good fortune or comfort them when ill fortune came. It was the priest who cherished the invigorating flame of religion in their lives, who soothed them when they died, who, if the need came, tucked up his long cassock and helped to save the harvest or directed the defense of a hamlet against the Iroquois.

Father Charlevoix remarked the number of strong, erect old men he met in Quebec, and he declared that in no province of France was there finer blood, more well-proportioned bodies, or better carriage.

The Swedish botanist Kalm, after traveling in Canada and New England, declared he found more pleasure in meeting the Canadians. He admired the girls of Quebec, the way they dressed and the care they took of their hair. Their manners, he thought, were freer than those of Swedish girls. Frenchmen newly arrived in Quebec got on badly with the native Quebecers, who disliked their airs of superiority. On the other hand, Frenchmen charged them with being vain and vindictive and of being far too fond of their children and spoiling them.

The rivalry between England and France for the possession of North America did not decrease as time went on but grew in bitterness. Along the frontiers of New England barbarous warfare scarcely ceased. The New Englanders looked on the Canadians with abhorrence as the very children of the devil. The feudal society of Canada, with its seigneurs and its religious and court ceremonial, regarded the New Englanders with contempt, as ferocious barbarians and heretics. The officers of Quebec, in their fine uniforms, drinking their wine about the dinner table in the Château St. Louis, sneered at the farmers of New England and said there was no fight in them. France should and would have the continent!

With boastings and the rumble of threats the storm clouds gathered. The final struggle for supremacy between England and France broke out on the Ohio River. The Virginians considered that they were free to push their trade to the Ohio and, if they chose, right on to the Pacific. In 1749 they organized the Ohio Company and secured five hundred thousand acres from King George II for a new settlement. They were preparing for a great commerce in that region. The company promised to place five hundred families on this land and to build a fort to guard them.

To the French this seemed a direct threat to Canadian interests. Such a settlement and such a commerce would break the connection between Canada and Louisiana. What the French were determined to do was to keep the English pressed back against the Atlantic seaboard. The governor of Canada, the Marquis de la Galissonière, took determined action. Twenty-three large canoes set out from Lachine carrying a party adequately equipped for the long journey. There were officers, soldiers, one hundred and eighty voyageurs, and these were joined by a troop of Indians. Up the St. Lawrence they sped in the fine June weather, along the southern shore of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls. Then came the arduous portage. The canoes were set down in the waters of Lake Erie, and from there entered the Ohio River. Now they were in the very territory granted by King George II to the Virginians. In every village they came upon, the Canadian leader, Céleron de Blainville, stopped and informed the wondering natives that the King of France was the ruler of all this land and would tolerate no English in it. The awed natives uttered no word of dissent.

At certain strategic points Céleron de Blainville buried leaden plates bearing inscriptions to the effect that France had taken formal possession of the country. And to make certainty more certain, the arms of France were nailed to a near-by tree. In the autumn the party returned, after completing their task. But when startled traders bore the news to Virginia, it created astonishment and fury.

The anger was such that even London was stirred to annoyance on behalf of the English colonists. In whichever direction they looked they found evidence of aggression by the French. By 1753 there were fifteen hundred French in the Ohio Valley. The governor of Canada had built Fort Le Boeuf on the shore of the Ohio River. A pack of Indians, friendly to the French, had attacked a settlement of Indians who were friendly to the English, burned their houses, massacred the tribe, and boiled and eaten the chief.

The next thing to happen was that George Washington, a surveyor, two of whose brothers were members of the Ohio Company, spent a long and arduous month traveling to Fort Le Boeuf to express to its governor the astonishment of the Virginians that the Canadians should build a fort on British territory, and to request that they should immediately withdraw.

Washington and the courteous elderly governor of the fort discussed the matter through an interpreter. The governor said that he had his orders from the Marquis de Duquesne and intended to remain where he was. Washington said afterward that at supper in the fort the French officers took a good deal of wine and, exhilarated by it, swore, with round oaths, that the whole Ohio country was theirs. He retraced his way, disappointed.

Feeling ran high in Virginia. A company of three hundred volunteers, commanded by Washington, set out to march to the Ohio country. But already the French had sent five hundred men in canoes who began to build Fort Duquesne in the place where Pittsburgh now is. A sharp encounter took place between the two parties. The French leader and nine of his men were killed, but Washington was forced to surrender. Later he was permitted to return to Virginia, taking with him a peremptory demand from the French that the British should give up all claim to the Ohio Valley.

If feeling against the French had run high before, it now rose to fever point. There were nearly two million British in America and about sixty thousand French. The arrogance and defiance of the French could not be endured. Though Virginia seemed to be in the position of greatest danger, the clarified opinion was that the only way to subdue the French was by taking the fortress of Quebec, the very heart of New France. It was from Quebec that the devastating expeditions set out. It was through Quebec that French supplies reached the interior. The fortress on the Rock was the key to French power!

In France it was realized that strong action was imperative. The French Navy had been terribly weakened, in order that the army might be strong for the wars in Europe. However, a great effort was made, and in the spring of 1755 a large squadron set sail for Quebec. The British Admiral, Boscawen, was waiting for it at Newfoundland. There was a fog, but he succeeded in capturing two ships after a hard fight for them. Twelve hundred prisoners, many stores, and a large supply of wine were taken into Halifax harbor, but the rest of the squadron reached Quebec.

The Inevitable Hour

Two men were now marching across the years, sailing across the seas, gaining the experience of war, to meet each other at Quebec and, after deciding her destiny, to die. The two were Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, born at the Château de Candiac near Nîmes, and the young James Wolfe, son of Lieutenant-Colonel Wolfe, of Westerham, Kent. The little fortified city, the heart of New France, the key to France’s power in America, sat on her rock as though waiting.

Montcalm had fought in Austria and in the Italian campaign. After a battle in which he had been taken prisoner he wrote to his mother:

His mother was of equally Spartan fiber, and when Montcalm was chosen by the king for the command of the troops in North America, she advised him to accept. Montcalm’s wife never forgave her for this, and when he was killed she did not forget to reproach her mother-in-law with his death.

Montcalm was an ardent, fiery-tempered Southerner, whose portrait shows an oval face with aristocratic aquiline features, strongly marked eyebrows, and a small, smiling mouth. It was not fashionable in those days to be faithful to one’s wife, but Montcalm deeply loved his marquise and wrote her letters full of longing to be with her and his children in his loved province.

In the spring of 1756 he sailed for Quebec, taking with him two famous regiments and a notable staff, among them the Chevalier de Lévis, who was calm, cool, and taciturn, and who was to succeed him in command. Both were ambitious. Canada meant nothing to them but a distant colony which was to be the scene of a military campaign where military honors might be gained. Yet when Montcalm saw the walled town on its promontory, the surrounding country, he wrote home that it was the most beautiful place in the world.

If he was pleased with Quebec, the people of Quebec were doubly happy to welcome him. They were experts in giving a joyous welcome. The Intendant, Bigot, gave a dinner of forty covers for him. So magnificent was the display that Montcalm wrote that a Parisian would have been astonished by it. He also noted that the peasants of the country lived as well as many of the French gentry.

Bigot escorted Montcalm about the city, to inspect the ramparts and the buildings of greatest interest. All eyes followed them, Montcalm elegantly proportioned, in his dazzling white uniform with gold lace; Bigot small, ugly, foppishly dressed, and reeking of perfume. He had the vices of his century, was extravagant and an inveterate gambler. It was his ambition to make a little Versailles of Quebec, with himself as king. Everybody knew that he misused the power of his office, that he was lining his own pockets at the expense of the country, everybody, that is, but the governor, who never appeared to suspect him.

Montcalm did not like him but he recognized his ability. He was an interesting companion. All within the walls of Quebec was so new to Montcalm, so intimately known to Bigot. The town swarmed with soldiers and Indians, the Indians repulsive to Montcalm in their bedizened nakedness. He distrusted them as allies but was told that they were necessary to the campaign.

Along the narrow, twisted streets they passed, streets that were dominated by the Château St. Louis. Three palaces there were, those of the governor, the bishop, and the Intendant. There were five churches, three monasteries, and a seminary. In truth the little city seemed rather top-heavy with palaces and ecclesiastical buildings. Yet underneath was the Rock, well typifying the power which radiated from this spot to the farthest point of the continent.

Montcalm distrusted Bigot, and before long it was evident that he and the governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, were not going to get on well together. In truth, in reading history, one is led to wonder if two Frenchmen ever existed who did get on well together. Vaudreuil was the first governor born in Canada, a son of a former governor. The officers about him were Canadians, and all of them resented any criticism or airs of superiority from the French. Even Vaudreuil’s wife was a Canadian who was constantly seeking advantages for her relatives.

Montcalm’s first point of attack was Oswego, a British fort on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, across from Fort Frontenac. It was a constant threat to French connections with the West. Montcalm was unsparing of himself in his preparations. The exhausting journey, the transporting of twenty cannon and supplies, was accomplished. After three days of heavy bombardment Oswego fell. Two British regiments surrendered. Their commander had been cut in half by a cannon ball. The yells of the Indian allies of the French were appalling.

With sixteen hundred prisoners packed into his boats, with three chests full of money, with one hundred and twenty pieces of ordnance, a year’s provisions for three thousand men, six decked boats carrying guns, Montcalm returned victorious in time for the Canadians to harvest their crops. Many of these had come forward at the call of their seigneurs without arms and with no military training. Montcalm had been very sharp with them. He had stormed at them and they had not forgotten it. But the people were wild with joy over the victory. In Europe his fame as a general spread. Great things were expected of him. In the following year he had another striking success.

This was the taking of Fort William Henry, on Lake George, after six days of bombardment. The fort was almost shattered. Eight thousand men surrounded it; cannon had torn its walls almost to pieces. The French promised safe escort to a British fort on the Hudson to the more than two thousand people who now surrendered.

Two hundred French regulars marched at the head of the sad procession.

Montcalm’s elation over the victory was clouded by his dread of a massacre. In anticipation he had summoned the chiefs of the tribes in council and they had sworn to restrain their young men. When the British began to march out of the fort the Indians pressed forward to watch them. The Indians began to dance about them, making hideous grimaces. Some darted into the line and snatched muskets or bags from the captives. Those possessing such prizes gave yells of delight. They crowded in upon the British.

Their commander, Colonel Munro, believing that the Indians would be satisfied if they had all his men’s effects, ordered them to throw them to the savages. Gaining these, the Indians fell in fury on the British and dragged off six hundred captives, including women and children. A child would be torn from its mother’s arms, a woman dragged by her hair into the woods. The French soldiers could not stop the massacre. Montcalm and his aides were summoned. They were horrified at the sight they saw. Montcalm gave orders that the whole force should come to the aid of the British. Many of the Indians killed their prisoners on the spot rather than give them up. Montcalm, beside himself, tore his tunic from his breast and shouted to the Indians:

“You have broken your promises! If you will kill—kill me first!”

But it was some time before the butchery could be stopped. Only fourteen hundred of the English reached Fort Edward. For days the Indians gorged human flesh. Squatting by their campfires, they toasted it on long forks. Their youths achieved their ambition of drinking human blood. Montcalm was forced to be friendly to these monsters who had brought disgrace to the French Army. Once again Montcalm returned victorious.

In Quebec the people were on the verge of famine. Montcalm wrote to his mother, “The soldiers’ rations may be still further reduced. Little powder and no shoes!”

But Bigot, the Intendant, had stores of corn which he sold at a high price. Montcalm wrote, “In spite of the distress, there are expensive balls and frightful gambling. Monsieur Bigot alone lost more than two thousand crowns.”

The next spring he received a small amount of foodstuffs and seventy-five recruits from France! And this was while forces which surpassed anything imagined in Quebec were being gathered by the British! In spite of this he won a third great victory against superior forces that same year at Carillon, which the British called Ticonderoga. He was now the most famous of French generals. Once more he had saved Canada.

In England, William Pitt was Prime Minister, and now this brilliant man bent his powers to the invigorating of the British nation and the control of North America. He increased the navy from one hundred and thirty-four ships to four hundred and twelve. He built up the army from thirty thousand troops to one hundred thousand. He chose Geoffrey Amherst to be in chief command in America. He chose James Wolfe to attack Quebec.

Wolfe was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Wolfe, who had fought under Marlborough. The boy was excitable, delicate, and very studious. He seemed designed for a sheltered life and the pursuits of peace. But his young imagination was fired by his father’s tales of war, and his father was willing to let him behold it at first hand. When the boy was only thirteen Colonel Wolfe was preparing to take him on the expedition to Carthage, where the force was decimated. Perhaps fortunately for young James, he went down with some ailment before sailing and had to return to his mother. When he was barely sixteen he fought at Dettingen and in the succeeding years was always in the front where there was military adventure.

Picture the contrast to the life of a delicate boy of today! The visits to specialists; the taking out of his adenoids and probably his tonsils; his mother’s agonizing worry for fear he is not getting enough calories and vitamins!

At twenty-three Wolfe was a lieutenant-colonel and thought of himself as a stern and mature man. He knew every soldier in his regiment and spent himself in ceaseless effort to better their hard life. He was afraid of what military life would do to him and, as he said, was afraid of becoming “a mere ruffian.” In his leisure he studied mathematics, Latin, and French. When he stayed in Paris he divided his time between society and study under several tutors. Life in Paris charmed him, and he learned to dance the minuet with elegance. He was graceful, being tall, slim, and well-proportioned. His features were rather ugly, but he had azure-blue eyes, which were set off by his fair skin and red hair.

Wolfe hated dirt, drunkenness, slack discipline, and what he called “the abominable vices” of many soldiers and sailors. He was austere in his discipline of himself, but on occasion his highly strung, excitable nature got the better of him.

A plan of the city of Quebec as it was about 1760.

He dreaded the voyage to Canada, which he was afraid might be the end of him, for he was a wretched sailor. He was anxious about the health of his parents. His heart ached at the thought of parting from them and from his fiancée, a Miss Lowther. Perhaps these emotions were to blame for an outburst to which he gave way on the evening before he left for Quebec. He had dinner with Pitt and one other guest, Lord Temple. The talk was of the tremendous interests at stake. At the end Wolfe sprang to his feet, drew his sword, and strode about the room, flourishing it. In no measured terms he told the two older men what he would accomplish by it. They were astonished and embarrassed. When he was gone Pitt exclaimed, “Great God, to think that I have committed the fate of my country into such hands!”

Possibly it was some such outburst as this which made the Duke of Newcastle say to George III that Pitt’s new general was mad. Wolfe was sane enough, but he had a strain of Irish in him.

Now the two generals, both men of learning, were drawing near the hour when they were to fight their great duel. In May 1759 an impressive fleet of British ships lay in Halifax harbor. Before their pilots lay the task of navigating the dread river. Admiral Charles Saunders was in command of the ships. Two hundred and fifty of them there were, and when they cast anchor and moved out of the harbor, when their massive sails caught the breeze, they must have been a magnificent sight. Thirty thousand men were aboard. No comparable force had ever been seen in American waters.

Like a vast pleasure excursion the white-winged fleet glided up the St. Lawrence. The soldiers, eating their meals on deck, saw the white Canadian villages, a tapering spire the center of each, the tilled land hopeful of the harvest. As on a pleasure excursion, the soldiers fished over the sides of the ships and sang snatches of song.

The awful news of their coming was flashed by signal fires to the very walls of Quebec. Women thronged into the churches to pray for deliverance. Continuous prayer rose from monastery and convent. Armed habitants thronged into the capital from the countryside. For the first time Montcalm and Governor Vaudreuil took their places shoulder to shoulder in command. Vaudreuil watched every move of Montcalm’s with jealousy. From all sides the people kept on pouring in, men of eighty and little boys of twelve carrying what weapons they could lay their hands on. At last the great fleet hove in sight. A portion of it anchored near the Island of Orleans.

Meanwhile the fortifying of Quebec moved swiftly under the direction of a French engineer. Bridges were fortified. The Intendant’s palace was surrounded by palisades. All streets leading to the Upper Town were barricaded. Batteries were furnished with new guns. But food was scarce. The common people had only two ounces of bread a day. But though they realized their momentous danger, the people were not panic-stricken. Quebec seemed impregnable, its Rock rising like the prow of a noble ship against its enemies.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

A calèche waits in Rue du Parloir, one of the older Quebec streets.

Wolfe formed three camps, one on the Island of Orleans, one at Levy, across the river from Quebec, one on the shore of the Montmorency River, beside the magnificent falls. From these points the English harassed the town with cannon and fireballs.

The left wing of the French Army was encamped on the shore of the Montmorency, opposite where the English had entrenched themselves. Near by the falls poured over their precipice of two hundred and fifty feet. Above swirling clouds of mist a bright rainbow curved. The armies were within hailing distance of each other, but their voices were drowned in the roar of the falls. Shots from their sharpshooters cut through the roaring, and every day men were killed or wounded.

The English camp on the Island of Orleans was attacked by four hundred Indians, led by a few Canadians. Their savage howls filled the English soldiers with terror, and they fell back in disorder, having lost about a hundred men. Then, reinforced, they threw themselves on the Indians, who instantly killed all prisoners in their hands. Panting, gasping, the dark horde returned, waving thirty-six British scalps.

The third English entrenchment, the one at Pointe Lévis across the St. Lawrence, was the object of such constant firing from the Quebec batteries that Montcalm feared a powder shortage and ordered the firing to cease. Now the townspeople, picturing the ruin of their city, broke into wild denunciation of the generals and begged to be allowed to cross the river themselves and destroy the Lévis batteries. Permission was given.

In feverish haste the expedition was organized. Citizens of every age and all ranks took part in it, even thirty pupils from the seminary. There were also one hundred volunteers from the militia and a handful of Indians. Fifteen hundred strong, but without discipline, they marched to Sillery and embarked on a fleet of boats in black darkness. They landed on the east side of the Etekemin River. But, having been divided into two parties, each party, in the darkness, mistook the other for the enemy. The students fired a volley. There was panic. All rushed for the boats. Two more volleys were fired and several men killed. About eight in the morning they returned to the town, covered with humiliation.

Now building after building was being shattered or was in flames. Families began to pour out to the country or suburbs. The streets were blocked with vehicles and rubble. The Palace Gate could not afford passage to the wide stream of fugitives, so the St. John and St. Louis gates had to be opened. The Ursuline nuns left their convent and took refuge in the hospital. The cathedral was ablaze!

So, night and day, the siege went on. Summer was passing. Sometimes there was an armistice and prisoners were exchanged. Courtesies were exchanged between the officers. One of the envoys said to Wolfe:

“You may destroy Quebec, but we are determined you will never set foot in it.”

Wolfe exclaimed, “I will be master of Quebec if I have to stay here till December!”

The Canadian militiamen were getting restive. There was their hay waiting to be taken in, their crops to be garnered! Now and again they deserted. The countryside took on a neglected air. Both French and English longed for the decisive day to come. Montcalm noted in his journal Wolfe’s measures to keep his sailors fit. “Fifteen hundred of them,” he wrote, “land every day at Pointe Lévis, where they are trained in military movements and shooting. They return to their ships in the evening.”

Montcalm longed bitterly for the end of the campaign, so that he might be at home again. He had, some time before this, written to his wife: “When shall I be at the Château of Candiac with my plantations, my grove of oaks, my oil mill, my mulberry trees! Oh, good God——”

The summer wore on in heat and terrible electrical storms. In spite of his efforts, Wolfe had a thousand men ill. He himself was suffering from a fever. He could not make up his mind for the supreme attack. “His generalship,” exclaimed one of his officers, “is as bad as his health!”

When the tempests died away the storm of bombs still continued, lighting the night sky and finding their mark on the battered Rock. In the town gangs of thieves appeared like vultures, each time a building was made vulnerable, to search for loot. At last the crime was made punishable by hanging, and two gallows rose to add their grimness to the scene. The countryside was desolate. Wolfe’s soldiers told the habitants that their farms would be burned if they remained loyal to France. Many farms were destroyed.

On July 31, while the batteries from Pointe Lévis thundered against Quebec, Wolfe made an attempt to land thousands of soldiers on the Beauport shore. When the tide was out two thousand men waded across the Montmorency and were joined by the troops encamped there. Montcalm’s army was waiting for them, massed solidly by the earthworks. The fire from the French guns blasted them. Their leaders were mowed down by the accurate aim of the coureurs de bois. Wolfe’s grenadiers flung themselves forward and began to clamber up the steep. A hail of bullets struck the foremost, who fell back upon those behind. A dark cloud that had been threatening now was torn by lightning and thunder. A deluge of rain swept the heights. The ground became slippery and offered no foothold. The storming troops had to retreat in disorder, trampling the fallen. Courageously they reformed for another attempt, but Wolfe saw that it was hopeless and ordered the bugles to sound the retreat.

From the ramparts the French saw them carrying wounded and dead to the beaches. Montcalm, triumphant, could be seen in his white and gold uniform.

“Vive notre général!” shouted his soldiers.

Now, when the British lay dying, the Indians came down from the heights and began their deadly pastime of scalping dead and wounded. Wolfe lost nearly five hundred men. This defeat and the despondency which followed it made him more wretchedly ill than before. He was no longer able to go about among his men, and without his animating presence they became discouraged. Tossing restlessly on his bed, he exclaimed to one of his aides, “I would give a leg to take Quebec!” It was not limb but life that fate demanded of him.

The French began to hope that the British would withdraw without another attempt to take the heights. But what would be left of the town? In its richest quarter one hundred and sixty-seven homes were burned in one day and valuable belongings buried under the debris. More and more Canadians were deserting to garner their crops. In spite of the cannonading from the town, British ships succeeded in passing up the river and anchoring in advantageous positions. It was with great hazard that supply boats from Montreal reached the beleaguered fortress. Soldiers and citizens were half famished. Hospitals, stables, sheds were crowded with the wounded. The nuns had no respite from nursing.

By September, Wolfe felt somewhat better but was still a sick man. His spirits, however, had risen. His plans were made. He said to his physician: “I know you cannot cure me, but if you can fix me up so that I shan’t suffer too much pain for a few days and so can do my duty, I’ll ask no more.”

He wrote to his mother (his father had died since his leaving England):

Possibly one would have to be a mother to understand the anxiety this letter would bring.

About the same time Montcalm wrote to a friend:

Now there were movements in the English Army that seemed to portend the lifting of the siege. The camp at Montmorency was broken up. The entrenchments were set afire. A great feeling of relief leaped in the hearts of the people of the beleaguered city, but the generals were not deceived. The activity on the river filled them with apprehension.

So, with maneuvers and countermaneuvers, the campaign gathered momentum for the final conflict. Autumn mists rose from the river. Through them might be glimpsed the spars of ships, the scarlet tunics of grenadiers. Over the lovely countryside bands of English and Highland soldiers moved like messengers of wrath, setting fire to hayricks, burning houses and barns. The smoke mingled with the mist from the river; the flames outshone the blazing autumn foliage. Lamentations rose from the wives and children of the habitants as they stood on the hillsides and looked at their burning homes.

Wolfe had seen women washing clothes by the river’s edge and hanging them up to dry on the cliff. There was certainly a path, he thought, by which the women came and went. In a rowboat he moved up and down before the cliff, his fever-bright eyes scanning its wooded height. He was in a mood of mingled melancholy and exaltation. The words of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard were going through his mind, and he repeated aloud, to those with him:

He repeated once more, in a low voice, “The inevitable hour,” and added, “I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec.”

In the darkness of that same night fifteen hundred men marched from the camp at Pointe Lévis to a spot opposite the cove where Wolfe had seen the women washing clothes. Toward midnight a lantern hoisted in a British ship gave the signal. The army moved silently into the waiting boats. Gently rocking with the movement of the river, the heavily laden boats awaited the order to advance. At two o’clock the general in the foremost boat gave the order. Gently, noiselessly the army moved out on the breast of the river. The oars were used only to steer with. The tide and the southwesterly breeze carried the boats shoreward. The stealthy procession crept along the shore unseen. For an hour there was breathless silence, then a sentry’s voice came, sharp as a pistol shot:

“Qui vive?” he called.

A captain of Fraser’s Highlanders who spoke French called back:

“La France.”

“What regiment?”

“La Reine.”

“Speak louder!”

“Be careful or the English will hear you,” answered the Highlander.

A convoy of provisions was expected that night, and the sentinel let the dark line of boats pass. As they neared the path they heard someone descending.

“Qui vive?” shouted the sentry.

“La France,” returned the Highlander. He added angrily, “Be quiet! This is the provision convoy. We MUST not be overheard.”

“Pass,” said the sentry.

Wolfe, in a fever of excitement, was the first to leap ashore. When he looked up the grim height which he could just make out in the approaching dawn he doubted if his men could scale it. It loomed, one hundred and eighty feet high, and so steep that only shrubs and a few trees grew on it. But try they must!

Twenty-four volunteers, with their weapons strapped to their backs, began the ascent, pulling themselves up by shrubs and tough boughs. Wolfe waited below, not knowing what would befall them if they did reach the top. Then from above came the sound of shots and cries and then the cheers of his men. They had overcome the guard!

Wolfe hid his elation and, with an air of cold command, gave the order for the army to ascend the heights. The sappers came first, clearing the way of fallen trees. Then sixteen hundred men scaled the cliff. All traces of Wolfe’s malady were swept away by excitement. Agile and strong, he was soon at the top, placing his men in position for battle. Troops kept pouring from the boats, climbing the cliff, and forming on the plain above. It was a lovely spot, gently rising and falling, beneath fields of golden grain and green pastures, right to the walls of the town. Groves of trees in their autumn foliage caught the radiance of the rising sun. More men were being brought across the river. The scene was set.

Vaudreuil, the governor, had been notified of the landing of the British. He told Montcalm to hasten to the scene with a hundred men and discover what the situation was. Montcalm had had a sleepless night. He was terribly anxious about the expected convoy of provisions. While Wolfe was silently landing his men Montcalm was walking up and down before his house at Beauport with one of his aides, an exiled Scottish Jacobite, Chevalier Johnstone. When he heard of the fighting at the cove he was convinced that the convoy had been attacked, possibly captured. But when, a few moments later, a messenger came with the news that the British had gained the heights, he could not bring himself to believe it. He thought the man’s head was turned by fear. He set out with Johnstone.

Now, from the bridge over the St. Charles, he saw the British redcoats in a skirmish with Canadians on the heights. He could scarcely credit his senses, considering the extraordinary difficulty of climbing the cliff and that a guard had been stationed there.

“This is a serious affair!” he exclaimed to Johnstone. “Go back as fast as you possibly can to Beauport and order the whole of our left to march to the plains.”

He spurred his own horse and crossed the bridge at a gallop toward the scene of battle. The French right was already moving in that direction.

Vaudreuil would not believe that the British were in force on the heights, and now he sent an order countermanding Montcalm’s order to the left army. He himself remained in his house. In the town the people were wild with excitement. The women, the children, the old men, ran to the ramparts to watch the movements of the troops. The Guyenne battalion marched through the streets in their white uniforms with flags flying in the morning breeze. There was the sonorous beat of drums. The militia passed in their various costumes. Indians passed, ferocious in war paint, scalps dangling from their belts.

People broke into the ranks to embrace a son, a husband, or children a father. All felt that the inevitable hour had struck.

Montcalm had expected to see a detachment of Wolfe’s army, but he saw, stretched in a red line across the plain, three thousand and five hundred men, the Highlanders in the center, their kilts swinging to the music of the bagpipes. Sometimes above the sound of the pipes there rose the challenge of trumpet and fife. A light rain began to fall.

Montcalm summoned what officers were on the spot.

“We cannot avoid a battle,” he said. “The enemy is entrenched. Already he has two cannon. If we give him time we shall not dare attack them with our few troops.”

There were twenty-five field guns in the palace battery in Quebec. Montcalm ordered these to be sent to him, but the officer in command refused to send more than three, saying he needed the rest for defending the town. He then placed three or four hundred Canadian sharpshooters in a field of corn and a small wood. These harried the British so greatly that Wolfe commanded them to lie on the ground till they had further orders. Three times the Canadians rushed out of the wood and attacked newly arriving British troops and drove them back. The fiery courage of these men gave Montcalm a confidence in them which their poor equipment denied. Some carried only hunting guns. Some had bound knives to their guns to form bayonets. The best of his army were stationed at Beauport. If his second in command, the Chevalier de Lévis, had been present he might have dissuaded Montcalm from a premature attack. But Montcalm was in a state of great excitement and believed delay would be disastrous.

Mounted on a black horse, he rode along the line of his four thousand men, holding his sword high and urging them to do their duty. He was an imposing figure, and they rallied to him with cheers and shouts, but they were tired after a long march and those who were now arriving were out of breath.

It was now ten o’clock. Bright sunlight shone on the sabers and bayonets of the British. They lay on the ground awaiting the order to rise. Their faces were set. Only their eyes moved as they kept them on Wolfe. The French could recognize him by his unusual height, the black band on his arm in mourning for his father. He kept pointing out the positions of the French to his men, inciting them to the perilous adventure.

“This is victory or death!” he shouted.

Montcalm sounded the charge. Uttering their battle cry, as in the days of chivalry, the French advanced.

The British rose to their feet like one man.

When the French were so near that the British could see the blue-and-white facings on their coats the order to fire was given. The roar of guns was like the discharge of a cannon. Sheltered by the cloud of smoke, they reloaded their guns and then moved sharply forward. A terrible void was in the French lines. Their dead and dying strewed the ground.

The Highlanders leaped forward with their claymores, striking off heads in one deadly slash. The commanders of the La Sarre and Guyenne regiments were mortally wounded. Horses fell, throwing their officers to the ground, to be trampled. The French were retreating in panic, but their sharpshooters saw Wolfe and marked him for death. He had a bullet wound in the wrist, but he bound his handkerchief about it and charged forward at the head of the Twenty-eighth Regiment.

Now he suffered a second wound. This time it was in the groin. Still he encouraged his men and pressed on. A third bullet pierced his lungs. His hand pressed to his breast, he struggled to keep upright. Darkness was closing in on him. He said to an officer near him:

“Hold me up! My men must not see me fall.”

Two soldiers ran forward and carried him to the rear. He was still conscious and told them to lay him in a hollow on the ground. The officer said that he would at once go in search of a surgeon.

“There’s no use,” exclaimed Wolfe. “I’m done for!”

The clash of the two armies was so precipitous that at the last volleys the muzzles of their muskets were almost touching. The French center was shattered. The regulars were in panic and began to rush toward the bridge across the St. Charles. But the Canadians in the wood rallied and checked the swift advance of some English regiments.

Seeing the stampede toward the bridge, one of the officers supporting Wolfe exclaimed:

“They’re running!”

Wolfe, with a great effort, roused himself.

“Who are running?” he asked.

“The French, sir. They give way everywhere.”

Wolfe gathered his remaining strength and said:

“One of you run quickly to Colonel Burton and tell him to bring his regiment as quickly as possible to the river. Tell him to seize the bridge and cut off their retreat.”

The officer wiped away the blood that ran from Wolfe’s mouth. Wolfe turned over on the grass so that he lay on his side. His voice was just audible.

“Thank God!” he said. “I can die in peace.”

Montcalm, on his black horse, was frantically trying to stem the torrent of the French retreat. The Indians had fled as soon as the fighting began and now were crouching in the woods till the time should come when they might return to the battlefield on their business of scalping and plundering.

Montcalm was massing a company in front of the St. Louis Gate when he received two wounds, one in the groin, the other in the thigh. The gate was crowded with people who had rushed from the town to see the outcome of the battle. What they saw was Montcalm supported by three soldiers. His face was ghastly; he seemed covered with blood. The mettlesome black horse hung its head. Bloody foam flecked its heaving sides.

The women cried out, “Oh, my God, my God, the marquis is killed!”

“It is nothing,” Montcalm called out to them. “Don’t trouble yourselves about me, my good friends.”

He was taken to the house of the king’s surgeon, Arnoux.

Now there was no one left who could rally the army from panic. Vaudreuil, the harassed governor, now at the Beaufort camp, was at his wits’ end. He and Bigot held a council of war and talked boldly of a counterattack on the British the next day. But who was to lead? Everyone talked at once but did nothing.

In truth the rout was complete.

The five or six hundred men within the walls of Quebec might have marched out to oppose the entry of the British, but the defeated army was already pushing back in great confusion. The panic in the town was terrible. It was said in the counsel chamber that the British would cut the army to pieces without quarter. It was said that complete surrender was all that could save them. Seldom has the loss of a leader brought such disintegration in its train.

Vaudreuil dispatched a courier to the surgeon’s house to ask Montcalm’s advice. Montcalm answered that they must choose between an attack on the British, a retreat to Jacques Cartier, or surrender. He would not make the decision for them.

Vaudreuil would have attacked but, as he afterward wrote, his officers were ill-disposed for battle. The retreat was decided on. That evening Vaudreuil wrote to Montcalm telling him of the decision, begging him to take care of himself and think only of recovery.

Montcalm showed no sign of improvement, though his pulse was a little stronger. Meanwhile Townshend, Wolfe’s successor, was making his position on the Heights secure. By nine that night the blind retreat began, without provisions, without any pretense of order. Yet Vaudreuil knew that the English were too exhausted to make an immediate attack on the town. So many of the best French officers had been killed that his confidence was mortally shaken. The officers who were left felt the shame of it. “Posterity will not believe it!” one exclaimed, in his bitterness.

Silence hung over city and plain in the chill autumn night. The British had lost six hundred and fifty-five men, the French between seven and eight hundred. Now and again a projectile was hurled into the town from across the river at Lévis. Otherwise there was silence. Two days later the retreating army reached Jacques Cartier, depressed, worn by fatigue, rain-soaked.

Montcalm now lay dying. A second surgeon had been brought to examine his wounds. Over the most severe one he shook his head.

“Is it a mortal wound?” asked Montcalm sharply.

“Yes.”

“How much longer have I to live?”

“Not twenty-four hours.”

“So much the better,” returned Montcalm bitterly. “I shall not live to see the English masters of Quebec.”

To his aide-de-camp, Marcel, he entrusted his last tender message to his family. As he lay there in the surgeon’s house we can imagine how his spirit was far away in his château of Candiac, how it lingered in his grove of oaks, heard the turning of the mill wheel, saw the almond trees in bloom, inhaled the sweet fragrance of mimosa. In his last letter to his wife he had written, “The moment when I shall see you again will be the most beautiful in my life. Adieu, my heart, I believe that I love you more than ever before.” . . . Well, she would have their eldest son, a youth of twenty, to lean on. Three years ago, shortly before he left France, Montcalm had gone with this son to the palace to thank the king for appointing the young soldier as a colonel in a regiment of cavalry, and it seemed so short a while ago when he was born! The turmoil of life passed so quickly. The years of peace he had looked forward to had been denied him.

When the commandant of the garrison, De Ramezay, came to ask him what he should do about the defense of Quebec, Montcalm looked at him in silence for a space, then said:

“I have no advice or orders to give you. My time is short and I have more important things to attend to.”

The bishop of Quebec now entered to give Montcalm, who was in great pain, the last sacraments. At daybreak he died.

The dislocation in Quebec was so complete that no workman could be found to make a coffin for Montcalm. Finally an old Frenchman who worked for the Ursuline nuns collected some planks and made them into a rough box, crying bitterly as he drove the nails. The body was laid in this, and a melancholy funeral procession set forth through the ruined streets to the Ursuline chapel. De Ramezay and his officers marched behind, followed by a dejected procession of townspeople. The funeral salvos came from the guns of the English at Lévis.

By the pale light of candles the coffin was lowered into the deep cavity made by a shell in the floor of the chapel. The curé of Quebec and two canons chanted the “Libera.” Eight nuns, their faces wan from lack of food, from long vigil and prayer, from the strain and grief of the disaster that now had befallen them, made the responses. Montcalm had once exclaimed that he would save this troubled country or die in the attempt, and he had died. He was forty-seven.

Across the river ships lay with flags at half-mast, and in a cabin of one rested the body of the tall, thin, red-haired young man who also had yielded up his life. In the cold comradeship of death their strivings, their antagonism, had ebbed like the river’s tide. But the strange thing was that the vanquished was the victor, for the city on the Rock was always to remain French, and no shedding of blood or treaties between nations would change it.

Lévis’ Fruitless Victory

Brigadier Townshend, left victorious on the plain, put his men to the work of dragging cannon up the steep. They had no horses to help them but did the hard task with the strength of their own muscles. More than a hundred guns were put in position to batter the walls of the town.

The commandant of the garrison made up his mind that to resist was hopeless, though he had letters from the governor and from Rochebeaucour, commander of the cavalry, that provisions and troops would be sent to his aid. Townshend made generous terms with the garrison and on September 17, in a downpour of rain, entered the city with military pomp and took possession. He went to the convent of the Ursulines himself and knocked on the door. It was opened by a young nun carrying a basin of broth. She all but dropped it in her terror when she saw the soldiers.

Townshend reassured her and asked for the Mother Superior. Pale and dignified, she confronted him. He begged her not to be distressed and told her that his only wish was to protect all the sisters. Soon a guard of two hundred men was drawn up in front of the convent. The tramp of British soldiers echoed through the stricken town. Although so many had fled, there still were six thousand people within the walls. Two thousand seven hundred of these were women and children. There were one thousand sick in the hospital. There were six hundred of the regular troops and fifteen hundred sailors and militiamen. A large part of the store of provisions had been stolen by the Indians. It is scarcely to be wondered at that Ramezay surrendered.

In the midst of all this disintegration of the French forces the Chevalier de Lévis arrived at Jacques Cartier from Montreal. He was the one man capable of taking Montcalm’s place. He had courage, he had brilliance, he had initiative. Anger rose in him at the disorder of the retreat; above all, that the retreat should have taken place. Montcalm would have been in a grand rage, but Lévis’ anger was cold and restrained. He was young, yet had had martial experience since he was fourteen. He was ambitious. He was determined to save Quebec. With his return a tide of confidence swept through the army. He went straight to Vaudreuil and persuaded him to order the march back to the town. Some of his energy was transmitted to the wavering governor.

At four o’clock in the morning, five days after the disastrous thirteenth, the army set out on the return march. The weather was fine. Lévis’ confidence and resolve gave the men courage. They marched for two days, and on the evening of the second they were in St. Augustin. Here they received the dreadful news of the capitulation. A shout of anger rose from them. The disappointment of Lévis may well be imagined.

Now the terms of the surrender were agreed on. The garrison of Quebec was given the honors of war. They were permitted to march from the town with arms and baggage, with lighted torches, to the beat of drums. Land forces and marines were to be transported to France. The citizens were to remain in possession of all their “goods, effects, and privileges.” They were to worship freely in the Roman Catholic faith.

Where were the lovely ladies of Quebec, in their French dresses, their powdered hair and patches? Once they had lent color and gaiety to the capital. They had made music, danced the minuet, engaged in theatricals and in affairs of the heart. Where was the mistress of the Intendant, Bigot, whom he had loaded with jewels and expensive gifts?

Now, in front of the Château St. Louis, as the flaming sunset reddened the ruins, the French Army, in their white uniforms, lined up in somber silence. The commandant relinquished the keys to General Townshend. The flag of England was flown from the citadel. The roar of cannon gave it salute. The gates were open. The French were going. The habitants were given permission to take up their old way of life if, among the ruins, they could find it! Their houses were burned, their land wasted, their children naked to the wind. But they were not without hope. Surely succor would come to them! Surely they would get back their city! With filial piety they still had faith in France.

When the shores of the St. Lawrence were tapestried with Indian summer foliage, the Royal William sailed for England with the embalmed body of Wolfe on board. In England the news of his victory changed depression to joy. A few days before his death he had written an almost hopeless letter to Pitt. Now the whole scene was transformed. In the House of Commons, Pitt, in his moving voice, paid a noble tribute to the young general. A memorial to him was raised in Westminster Abbey.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Monument to Murray and Lévis in Battlefield Park, Quebec, more commonly called the Plains of Abraham.

In November there came another victory over the French. During the past summer they had been building a fleet of boats which were to carry troops for an attack on London. It was inconceivable that they could capture London, yet there was great apprehension there. The French Admiral, Conflans, was preparing for the embarkation of the army in Quiberon Bay, but Admiral Hawke swooped in on them and ruined them. France’s strength was failing.

In Quebec supplies for the winter had been brought by ship. Townshend had left for England with his fleet and Brigadier Murray had been left to hold the city. He was a proud and aristocratic Scot, yet a man of kindly nature. His manners were as fine as those of the French officers, and to them he was sympathetic. He had to prepare for a hard winter, with the probability of attack from the Chevalier de Lévis. He was surrounded by ruin and half-starved people and soldiery. When the cruel cold swept down on the gale from the North, and his two sloops and three small vessels were gripped by fourteen feet of ice in the river, it was a problem to keep some warmth in the bodies of his men. The timbers of bombed houses made roaring fires, while they lasted. Then the men must go into the forest for fuel. So deep was the snow that in snowshoes they might walk over the city walls, as an enemy might have walked in. The Highlanders, in their kilts and wearing snowshoes, must have been a strange sight for the Indians. These, always at hand in the forest, descended on many a poor soldier cutting wood, and a scalp, decorated with curling chestnut or flaxen locks, was the prize.

By the fire in the Intendant’s palace, where Bigot had given so many gambling parties, British soldiers were clustered. They were decent fellows and had given a hand in the bringing in of the poor harvest. When food became more and more scarce they gave up, of their own free will, one day of their weekly rations to feed the French of Quebec.

In the chill convent the Ursuline nuns carried on their work, certain of only one thing—the certainty of their religion. There was much for them to do, for the suffering that winter was great. Their hearts were moved by the suffering of the kilted Highlanders, and they spent their evenings in knitting woolen stockings for them. But warm stockings and scarves did not make up the terrible lack in the soldiers’ diet. Salted food brought scurvy, of which hundreds died, and as no spade could break the ground that was frozen like iron, their rigid bodies lay covered with no more than snow. When spring came there were less than one half of the original number. In truth it seemed that this Rock was an altar on which men were to be offered up in suffering sacrifice, and would so remain for both victor and vanquished.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Fabrique Street, Quebec. The building with the clock tower is the City Hall; the church spire at center right is that of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.

Reports of the Chevalier de Lévis’ mounting power were now and again brought to Quebec. It was said that he had twenty-five thousand men prepared to attack. He had indeed made up his brilliant and ambitious mind to retake the city. He had written to France demanding an army of ten thousand men to be sent to him, with equipment for two years. We can imagine the cold skepticism with which this demand was received. One frigate was indeed dispatched, and a few ships with supplies, but never reached him. Dauntless, he continued to build up his army and billeted them on the helpless private citizens. He seized cattle, poultry, and grain to feed them. By bitter degrees the Canadians were learning that military ambition, the hope of glittering rewards in France, were what these French officers craved—that Canada was no more to them than a military post. It had not been so with Champlain and Frontenac!

In Montreal, Lévis and the governor, Vaudreuil, were getting on well together. Both Vaudreuil and his wife liked Lévis where they had hated Montcalm. Even though he was dead, Vaudreuil continued to blacken his memory in reports sent to France. In Montreal, too, were Bigot and Cadet, the commissary of stores. It was Cadet who, when the people had been reduced to two ounces or less of bread a day during the siege, had kept thousands of well-fed fowls for the tables of such as he. It was he who had paid Canadian farmers for their cattle and grain, in almost worthless paper money. The ugly, fascinating little Bigot still entertained in the manner of Versailles, winning and losing large sums in gambling. Though dismal suffering enshrouded Quebec, Montreal retained the appearance of gaiety and ease. In the salon of the beautiful Château de Vaudreuil, the governor’s residence, silks, velvets, laced coats, and powdered wigs were a fit setting for his handsome and distinguished looks, for the last brave showing of a vanishing regime. In the candlelight, with the tapestried walls rising between them and the wintry world outside, they conversed with eloquent gestures, danced the minuet, or bent over the gaming table. It was taken for granted that all would yet be retrieved, that in the spring Lévis and his army would retake Quebec, that plentiful aid would come from France.

Yet their situation was desperate. Over the countryside to the west of them General Amherst’s army was spread in its might. Across the river Captain Haviland’s army was encamped. When the April sun and the warm rains broke the ice and it mounded itself in great blocks along the shore, transports loaded with English troops moved up the river to join them. The river was in the hands of the English. Quebec was in the hands of the English. Well might the French officers have despaired.

But Lévis was primed by daring. When the waters of the St. Lawrence were unleashed he took his opportunity. He was ready. His troops were as eager as the unleashed river. All the winter, workmen in Montreal had been making equipment for them. Gun carriages and tools were ready and waiting. The militiamen, as usual, were badly provided for. They had no proper bayonets, but carried their guns with hunting knives fixed on the muzzles. But they were as keen as the regulars. Lévis was frank with them and warned them to expect a hard campaign, without certainty of a sufficient supply of any food but bread. Lévis had the power of putting zest into any undertaking. His men were ready to face any hardship with him at their head. He was as brave as Montcalm, and cooler. It has been said that if he had been in command at Quebec it would not have fallen to Wolfe.

On April 23 four hundred boats loaded with troops set out from Montreal toward Quebec. For three days they progressed down the river, at night stopping for shelter in the villages. Each night the half-frozen men had to drag the boats across ice and snow to the shore. They were heartened by the news that Murray’s force was in a weak state, that seven hundred of them lay frozen under the snow. But Murray still had four thousand eight hundred soldiers in Quebec. As the boats moved down the river two hundred cavalry on good horses traveled in the same direction by land. The habitants were exhorted by their priests to join the expedition as in a holy crusade. The bishop of Quebec rose from his deathbed to urge the people to fight for their traditions and their religion, and at each halt their numbers swelled the troops.

On April 27, all through a night of lashing rain mixed with snow, Lévis marched his troops ashore five miles above Quebec. For fifty leagues they had shivered in their boats, with only icy water to drink and a miserable ration of salt meat to stay their hunger. Next morning the watery sunlight saw them assembled in the churchyard of St. Foy. They believed their plan was still secret.

Murray, however, had got wind of their approach through an accident. On a cold, foggy afternoon a sentinel on the sloop Race Horse, anchored off Quebec, heard cries and moans from an ice floe which was being swept down the river. Presently the cries faded, but when the next tide swept the ice floe back again they were again heard and a dying man was rescued and brought to the Lower Town. He had just strength to say that he was a sergeant of artillery from the army which Lévis was leading to attack Quebec. An iceberg had overturned a floating battery, and he and six others had been thrown into the river. The others had been drowned, but he had scrambled onto the floe.

It was now three in the morning. The sergeant was put into a ship’s hammock and carried to headquarters. He gasped out his story to Murray. Twelve or fifteen thousand men, he said, were on the way. One may well wonder why he should, with his dying breath, disclose the secret plans of his countrymen.

Impetuous, as Montcalm had been impetuous, Murray made up his mind that he would not remain inside the walls of the city, to be attacked. He called his garrison to arms, and at six that morning three thousand men marched westward out of Quebec. There were twenty fieldpieces and two howitzers. Wet snow lay on the ground, and men, many of whom were just out of hospital, dragged the cannon along the rutty road. Murray observed the French Army marching to the field but not yet ready to attack. He was young. He was proud. He looked on the French Army as a beaten one, a large part of it made up of contemptible militia.

The British advanced through the ravine that crosses the plain and spread themselves upon the tableland. Murray, with his staff, was ahead of his lines. The two armies faced each other. Now the sun was out, and the trees sheathed in ice glittered as though in bright armor. Yet the grass was pushing up on the hillsides. Murray ordered the attack.

At a hundred paces his artillery opened fire with destructive effect. Lévis ordered his army to retire to the edge of the wood. Murray took this for a retreat and ordered his troops to charge. But some of his cannon had stuck in the snow and could not be brought up. A furious battle now took place. The Marquis de Lévis galloped along his lines, his hat carried aloft on the tip of his sword. This was the signal for a general charge. The five companies of grenadiers which had reached the wood now wheeled, supported by Canadian sharpshooters, and rushed to the attack. Each time the sharpshooters fired they brought down their man. They lay down to avoid the volleys from the cannon, then reloaded and fired again. For hours the slaughter went on, soldiers, horses, in dreadful turmoil. The frozen ground did not absorb the blood which lay in pools in the hollows. On the edge of the battle there was many a savage skirmish. The Highlanders, in one instance, had taken possession of a mill, when the French grenadiers rushed in with their bayonets and drove them out through the windows. The Highlanders, in their turn, stormed through the door, their dirks in their hands, and forced the French through the windows. And so the bloody game continued, till both sides were decimated, and would have continued till none were left had not the generals recalled their men.

It was the intention of Lévis to execute a flank movement and cut off the British from Quebec. He gave the order to the Royal-Roussillon brigade which, passing through a shallow ravine, suddenly appeared on the edge of the cliff. The British saw their bayonets gleam between them and the river. Desperately Murray threw his reserves into the struggle, but too late. The order to fall back was given. A soldier exclaimed, “Damn it, what is falling back but retreating?”

In truth the retreat was precipitous. Murray’s army ran toward the town in wild confusion, abandoning their artillery, ammunition, dead and wounded. About one third of Murray’s force was killed or left dying on the field. But their death was not of their wounds. The Indian allies of Lévis had refused to fight, but now they came slinking out of the wood to scalp those left on the field. It mattered not whether the victim were British or French, so long as that gory token was gained.

For twenty-four hours the wounded who had reached the city poured into the hospital. The nuns had five hundred cots but needed as many more. The stables were crowded with wounded. Floors were strewn with amputated legs and arms. There was such a scarcity of linen for bandages that the nuns tore up their own clothing. Of the sixty-two officers in the infirmary, more than half died.

From village to village the joyful news of Lévis’ victory flew. If help came from France, Canada might still be saved! Lévis solidified his position outside the city walls. He set his men to digging entrenchments in the frozen ground. He had cannon dragged into position for attack. But, inside the walls, Murray had rallied his troops. They were drinking and rioting in their anger and shame at their defeat, but he pulled them up sharply, and in a few days they were shouting to the French to come on for another attack! Painfully, up from the Lower Town, cannon were dragged by officers and men alike, harnessed like beasts of burden.

From the river might come help for either side. Eyes of generals, of Highlanders, of grenadiers, of militiamen, of nuns, scanned its bright enigmatic surface, day after day. On a May morning a frigate showed its sails off Pointe Lévis. There was a shout of “Vive le Roi” from the French Army. The ramparts in Quebec were crowded by expectant watchers. The frigate ran up the British colors, and her cannon saluted the garrison.

The crowds on the ramparts cheered themselves hoarse. Their guns returned the salute. A few days later three more British ships arrived which were but the advance ships of two British squadrons. One of these sailed up the river and demolished the French fleet that was to have aided Lévis in the recapture of the city. The remaining British warships moved into position for attacking the French Army. Lévis was aghast. In scarcely audible tones he gave the order for retreat. He fell back upon Montreal, only to be overwhelmed by British forces attacking from three sides. Now Murray himself was there with eighty fine ships of war. The end had come!

The Tumult Dies and—Rises Again!

When the Marquis de Vaudreuil agreed to complete capitulation, he made the best terms within his power for the people of Canada. They were to be protected from the barbarities of the Indians, who had already turned from their alliance with the French to join the victorious British. General Amherst declared that the British Army never had incited and never would incite the Indians to commit acts of savagery as the French had. He declined to grant the French Army at Montreal the honors of war which Murray had granted them in Quebec. They must never again serve during the war. This meant the wrecking of their military careers. It meant humiliation and ruin. Though they were forced to agree, they did so in great bitterness of spirit and burned the flags of their regiments rather than surrender them. The battalions marched in somber silence to the Place d’Armes and laid down their weapons. There was no marching out with colors flying and regimental bands playing, as there had been in Quebec.

De Vaudreuil asked that the Canadians should be allowed the full exercise of their religion, that they should never be made to fight against France, that they should have a bishop appointed by the King of France, and that all religious orders should continue in their full privileges. Amherst’s reply was that all must await the pleasure of King George. But he did promise freedom of worship and that the Canadians would not be deported. Those who wished to go to France would be given free passage.

Now autumn was come, and soon the St. Lawrence would freeze. Before that iron door closed on Canada the French Army must be put afloat. In ship after ship the defeated soldiers embarked and returned, through the storms of the equinox, to France. The brilliant and handsome Lévis departed, Governor Vaudreuil, the unscrupulous Bigot. The last left the country flooded with paper money, for which the holders were sometimes driven, later on, to accept one per cent. The Canadians could scarcely feel less secure under their new rulers than they had under their old. What the English bought from them was paid for in solid gold. Their property was unthreatened. Their religion had weathered the storm. Too long had Canada been considered as no more than a military post. Now, though their old loyalties were still with France, a newborn faint hope raised its eyes toward England.

Vaudreuil, Lévis, Bigot departed, like actors in a drama upon which the curtain has fallen. But in France there was the epilogue to follow. Vaudreuil was sternly reprimanded for the surrender of the French Army. There was no doubt however of his having spent his energies in the service of his country, even though with vanity and ill-balance. The Grand Cross of St. Louis was given him and a pension which did not permit of extravagance. Lévis served in further wars and became a marshal of France. He was fortunate enough to die before the Revolution, but the mob tore his body from the tomb and beheaded his wife and two daughters. A dreadful punishment was handed out to Bigot, though fiercely and admirably he defended himself. Naked except for a shirt, with a rope round his neck, he was to kneel at the gate of the Tuileries and, in a loud voice, proclaim his crimes. After that his head was to be struck off. But luck was still with the little scoundrel. The sentence never was carried out. Instead his property, all the beautiful things he had bought with his evil gains, was confiscated and he was banished. Yet stay away he did not. He ended his days in comfort in his native land.

Of the seigneurs of Canada, fewer than half returned to France. One hundred and thirty remained, one hundred families of gentry, one hundred and twenty-five traders of importance, twenty-five lawyers, the same number of doctors, and nearly all of the notaries. Many of the vacated seigneuries were bought by British officers and officials. General Murray granted several—the seigneury of Murray Bay to Captain John Nairn and Mount Murray to Captain Fraser. So new, strange surnames were introduced into the country.

This new colony of Britain’s presented a very different front from the diverse colonies to the south. The Canadians were of one mind, one religion. They were set in the mold of old Normandy. They were tenacious. They were extraordinarily virile. There might have been a bitter struggle before readjustment with their conquerors was brought about. But the clergy and the seigneurs used their strong influence for concord. The people were exhausted by war, in great extremity from the loss of their crops, in sorrow for the death in battle of their loved ones. The farmers were occupied in rebuilding their houses and barns. Churches rose again from the ruins. Children began to forget scenes of terror and to laugh and play once more. Trouble between neighbors was settled by the curé. In the country communities things were not very different under the new rule, but in the cities the change was painful.

Into Quebec there now came from the New England colonies and England a disreputable horde of camp followers, greedy traders and adventurers who felt themselves to be superior to the conquered Canadians. They clamored for an election by which only Protestants could win a seat in the Assembly. They cared nothing, and it was not in them ever to care anything, about the welfare of the country. But they were rapacious in their greed to make their fortunes out of it. In truth Canada seemed fated to be held as of little account. France showed no grief at giving it up. Colonies, it was felt, were more often detrimental than helpful to the mother country.

In England doubt was mingled with triumph in the taking of Canada. With the power of France eliminated from America, the English colonies would no longer need England’s power to defend them against their northern neighbor. Murray himself said: “If we are wise we will not keep Canada. New England must have something to rub up against, and our best way of supplying it is by not retaining this country.”

Time has shown that he was right. The New England colonists soon became aggressive toward the motherland. Twenty years after the Treaty of Paris, which ceded Canada to England, the Treaty of Versailles confirmed the independence of the English colonies. In that treaty the New Englanders wrote their own doom, for in their ungoverned exuberance they opened the gates to all countries of Europe, which in time so overwhelmed them that they have become only a dim remnant of the Anglo-Saxon colonists.

But whatever Murray thought of the wisdom of retaining Canada, he bent his fine powers to the establishment of good will and justice for King George’s new subjects. With generous anger he put down the suggestion of the traders that the Canadians should be deported, as the Acadians had been. Of this suggestion he wrote:

In contrast to the predatory hangers-on of the victorious army, the officers and soldiers got on well with the Canadians, and many reputable merchants from England and Scotland established themselves in Quebec and Montreal, bringing with them better business methods and the beginning of prosperity. The British officers, with their antipathy for trade, were much more inclined to mingle socially with the seigneurs than with the merchants, who spoke their own tongue. Those soldiers who had not been withdrawn from the country might be seen at harvest time helping the habitant to bring in his crops. But no association with the English had any effect on speech or religion of the Canadians. Rather were the British drawn to accept the ways of the conquered. Now that the civil government of France was a thing of the past, the influence of the curé was greater than ever. He bowed his head to the change of rulers, but he was adamant in the defense of the old faith. He was the friend, the director, the anchor of the Canadians. He helped them in the rebuilding of their churches and villages.

Montreal had been spared the destruction of a siege, but much of Quebec had been destroyed. Now, by degrees, her massive buildings rose again and she stood firmly on the Rock as the lofty capital of the country. By the Quebec Act of 1774 the French civil law was restored, and this, combined with the free practice of their religion, the right of Roman Catholics to sit on juries, to hold public office, to have commissions in the army, counteracted the influence of American agents who soon were active in urging the Canadians to rebellion.

The French Revolution fatally damaged the sentimental ties which had bound the hearts of the habitants to France. When they heard that Louis XVI had been beheaded, when they heard of the execution of many priests and nuns, they recoiled from a people who could commit such outrages against loyalty and religion. When Nelson, after a frightful struggle, destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir Bay there was rejoicing in Quebec and a “Te Deum” was sung in the cathedral. In a sermon the Abbé Plessir solemnly said: “Let us rejoice at this felicitous event. All that weakens France contributes to separate her more and more from us. All that contributes to that end tends to make more secure our lives, liberty, tranquillity, prosperity, and happiness.” This anti-revolutionary principle was so vigorous that voluntary subscriptions were made in 1799 toward the cost of England’s war against Napoleon. Many of these subscriptions were given annually throughout the war.

A very tolerable state now set in for the Canadian habitant. He and his family were as happy a people as one might have found anywhere. Those days are still spoken of as the bon vieux temps. The country people had almost no contacts with their new rulers. In truth they, in their happy isolation, ruled themselves. They had no part in governing. They had no interest in politics, which they could not understand. When the farmer had paid his rent to his seigneur and his dues to the church he had little more in the way of taxes. Gone was the oppressive control by France and, in its place, the wholesome neglect of England.

The linen for the household, the homespun for clothing was woven by the women. The men made their own carts and sleighs. Each village was a close and independent community which got on admirably with little handling of money. But when silver did find its way into the habitant’s purse it seldom got away again. All the summer he labored in his fields, and the summer was so short that he must work from dawn to dark. But the soil was fertile, the crops of wheat and oats abundant. The corn hung heavy on the ear. All the family, even the young children, gave a hand to the harvest. No longer were the harvest fields darkened with blood. No longer did the farmer work with gun at side or his seeking wife find his mutilated body scalpless on the furrows.

With harvest in the barn the days of sociability set in with the autumn rain. Neighbors who in the busy season had seen little of each other now drew together over a glass of rum, told stories, sang the songs of Old France, gossiped of the events of the year. The little boy who could recite was stood in the middle of the gathering and, with telling gestures, said his piece. With the snow deep outside, stories of haunted châteaux in Normandy were told with such realism that departing guests walked close together and shivered at the shrieks of the wind and the bizarre shadows of bare branches on the snow.

At a wedding or christening feast the table was well supplied with good food and drink—turkey, pork, and chicken pies. With the end of winter and the discipline of Lent there came the spring, bringing new energy, the moving of sap in the maple trees, the making of maple sugar in the snowy woods where, in the sheltered hollow, the first bloodroot showed its flower.

The city on the Rock was little affected by the trouble brewing in the American colonies. Its struggle was between the Canadians, who were determined to retain the laws of France, and the traders, who were disappointed in the profits they were making and sought to establish British civil law, even the law whereby a man might be imprisoned for debt. Murray was always on the side of the Canadians and hated by the traders, on whom he heaped the scorn of a fiery and eloquent tongue. Perhaps he was too fiery, too free with his tongue. At any rate his place as governor was taken in 1766 by an Irishman, Guy Carleton. He had served with Wolfe in the siege of Quebec and was a seasoned and despotic soldier. He was an Ulsterman and as taciturn as Murray was high-wrought and rash.

Carleton agreed with Murray that the Canadians should have French law. He had seen enough, on his journey from New York to Quebec, to convince him that serious trouble lay ahead. Quebec, he believed, was the talisman of British power in North America. It would be well to pacify the Canadians in case the Americans revolted.

In the Detroit area the Indians had resented the rule of the British. They had been able, in their savage way, to get on with the French, but the British they feared and hated. There were terrible massacres, in one of which, at Michilimackinac, two thousand British men, women, and children were massacred. Clearly, with the savagery of the Indians added to the enmity of France and Spain, it was going to be a costly affair to defend the colonies. The Stamp Act was imposed for the raising of necessary revenue, but could not be enforced without too great a struggle. So it was dropped, and a tax on paper, paint, and tea was imposed in its stead. The tax on tea in America was only a few pence, while in England the tax was a shilling. But the New Englanders were roused to fury, and a Boston mob sank a valuable cargo of tea rather than let it be landed.

In 1774 the Quebec Act was passed in the House of Lords. It granted the continuance of French civil law in Canada but replaced French criminal law by the English law, as the latter was less harsh. All the privileges of the Catholic Church were to be continued, as under the rule of France. The bishop could exact the tithe from Catholics and impose taxes for the carrying on of church work. The governor was to have despotic powers over the whole vast province which stretched as far west as the Mississippi and as far south as to include parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Much of this territory was almost unknown.

A transport of rage and dismay surged through the American colonies. They saw themselves as cast under feudal law and in the power of the Pope. It was declared in Boston that before long Protestants would be burned on the Common. So, though the Canadians were soothed, the Americans were brought to the point where nothing but war could result. New England farmers fired on the king’s soldiers. There was a bloody clash in which the farmers, entrenched in barns and dwellings, had the best of it. It is charged that the farmers had learned something of Indian warfare and that they cut off the noses and dug out the eyes of the soldiers who fell into their hands.

George Washington had been chosen as leader by the revolutionists. Both he and Sir Guy Carleton realized that Quebec was the vital stronghold of British power on the continent. Washington resolved that it must be taken, Carleton that it must be held at all costs. Equipment for six thousand men was sent out from England. Carleton’s problem was to find the men. They were extraordinarily difficult to find. The recruiting officers had little or no success. The Canadians had been too recently conquered to have a desire to turn round and fight for their conquerors. On the other hand, the harangues of New England delegates who promised them liberty left them unmoved. The news of the attack by Congress on the Roman Catholic religion had reached Canada. What the habitant wanted was to be left in peace. The clergy and the seigneurs were definitely on the side of the British.

An American force under General Montgomery now invaded Canada by way of Lake Champlain. Montgomery was an Ulster Irishman, like Carleton, and once they had been neighbors and friends. Now they were bitter enemies. Carleton, in his stronghold of Quebec, where he and his young wife, sister to the Earl of Effingham, held viceregal court, was the symbol of tyranny to Montgomery. To Carleton, Montgomery had become an unspeakable traitor.

In September 1775, Montgomery advanced in triumph. St. Johns, defended by six hundred regulars, fell to him. In November he reached Montreal. Its defenses were so weak that Carleton saw no wisdom in opposing him there. Carleton could expect little support from the Canadian militia or from the English-speaking merchants. He concluded that there was nothing for him to do but escape with the pitifully few soldiers in his command and make a stand at Quebec.

A dozen little ships sailed down the river, therefore, struggling all the way against a November gale from the east. They never reached Quebec, for American forces, lying in wait, captured all. Carleton, however, and two others were able to evade them. They lay, dressed as habitants, in the bottom of a canoe that wallowed unnoticed in the darkness, and finally reached Quebec, which was already besieged by an American force. It was led by Colonel Benedict Arnold, who had made the journey up the Kennebec River from Maine, into the Chaudière, which enters the St. Lawrence almost opposite Quebec. Surprisingly different accounts are given of this journey. Some writers declare that it was an epic struggle of heroic endurance; others say that Arnold’s force met no enemies, had no casualties, were succored by friendly settlers and Indians, and endured no more than men might endure on a camping holiday. However it may have been, fully half the men turned back, and it was a bedraggled little army that crossed the St. Lawrence on a cold November night and stood on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe had ranged his men.

In the darkness Carleton stole past Arnold’s forces and reached the Citadel. He decided to remain there rather than risk an attack on the invaders. He had witnessed the defeat of Montcalm and was uncertain as to how much he could depend on the militia and the civil population.

Arnold awaited the coming of Montgomery, who before long appeared from the west. He had sworn to eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec or in hell. He called upon Carleton to surrender, promising him safe conduct to England. If he did not surrender, no mercy would be shown to the “wretched garrison defending wretched works,” and he promised to have the city in “flames, carnage, and plunder, all caused by a general courting ruin to avoid shame.” Carleton and his officers jeered at such bluster. They jeered at officers who had been butchers and innkeepers. The bitterness of friendship turned to hatred, inflamed both leaders.

Congress complacently awaited news of the fall of Quebec. It would fall like a ripe plum, as Montreal had fallen. But Montgomery’s attack, made in the dawn of New Year’s Eve, was a ghastly failure. Arnold and his men marched by the river road into the Lower Town, while Montgomery approached from the west. Arnold was wounded in fierce fighting and his force repulsed. A volley of cannon fire met Montgomery, and he and a dozen others died in the snow outside the walls. By morning their bodies were covered, but the garrison dug them out and gave them burial beneath the bastions. What were Carleton’s feelings as he looked on the dead body of Montgomery, once his friend?

Washington still was determined to take Quebec. If only he could discover the real sentiments of the Canadians and whether they might be won over to the American side! He wrote to one of his generals, “I must caution you to receive with a proper degree of caution the professions the Canadians may make. They have the character of an ingenious, artful people and very capable of finesse and cunning. Therefore my advice is that you put not too much in their power, but seem to trust them rather than do it too far.” He sent large reinforcements to Arnold.

As usual, the soldiers suffered much during the winter. Disease lessened their strength and their numbers. The habitants grew daily more hostile. Insults by the invaders to the Catholic religion were more than enough to bring this about. The priests and seigneurs urged the people to be loyal to Britain. To add injury to insult, some of the Americans sacked farmhouses and helped themselves to farm produce. Arnold paid for what he bought with paper money, which the habitant looked on with suspicion. It was a depressing winter for Arnold.

But good news came to him in the spring. Washington had captured Dorchester Heights, commanding Boston. Sir William Howe had evacuated it to avoid further bloodshed. He had taken his troops and over a thousand Loyalists to Halifax, and Boston fell to Washington. New hope invigorated the army, now numbering four thousand, outside Quebec.

The sun came out hotly, and in May the river was flowing free. Then a glorious sight appeared to the besieged. Three British warships, with their great sails spread, appeared before the Rock. The sight was enough for Carleton. With nine hundred men he marched out to the Plains of Abraham to attack the Americans. All the bells rang out.

But the Americans had fled!

The disorder of their camp was evidence of their panic. Weapons, supplies of bread and meat, clothes, and papers had been left behind. Dead men and men dying lay in the tents, abandoned. Arnold made his way to Montreal with Carleton in pursuit. Arnold arrived there in May and took up his headquarters in the Château de Ramezay.

So once again Quebec, the desired, stood aloof on her cliff while armies fought, died, were defeated or victorious outside her walls. She had risen on a stronghold, and now stood out in relief, as the symbol and key of power.

Congress had made an attempt to win over the Canadians by the power of persuasion. Three delegates were sent to Montreal as the likeliest spot for the attempt. The three were Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll, and Samuel Chase. Though English traders and French ladies received them warmly, the clergy were openly antagonistic. The people were unmoved by the persuasions of the delegation, and it was, from the start, a failure. When news came of Arnold’s flight from Quebec, the three lost no time in leaving Canada.

Arnold and his army left Montreal in June, carrying with them a large amount of loot which he disposed of very profitably in Albany. Carleton was still in pursuit but greatly delayed through lack of boats. Summer was gone before he had collected and had built a small fleet. He embarked on Lake Champlain, and his ships swept bravely out across the narrow sheet of water, so supremely important as a depot for supplies in the campaign. There was the Inflexible, carrying thirty guns, the Lady Maria, carrying fourteen, as well as the flagship, named after himself. There were twenty gunboats, four longboats, and a swarm of smaller boats, laden with troops and their supplies. Six hundred seamen from the men-of-war at Quebec manned the ships. Detachments of artillery handled the guns.

The following day Arnold’s fleet was sighted, and a brisk fight took place. It lasted two hours, with damage to both sides. The next morning it was discovered that Arnold had slipped through the chain of British gunboats and had got his fleet out of sight. But Carleton caught him the following day and decisively defeated him. Arnold ran his flagship and ten others ashore and set fire to them—it is said with the wounded still aboard. He managed to reach Ticonderoga with his remaining force.

Carleton was now forced to decide whether or not he should lay siege to this stronghold, with winter at hand and supplies and reinforcements far away. He decided against it, and this decision cost him his post as governor. The British colonial secretary, Lord George Germain, hearing that Ticonderoga had been left in rebel hands, arrogantly rebuked Carleton and appointed General Burgoyne to command the forces to be sent from England to hold Canada. Carleton resigned but consented to remain in Quebec till his successor as governor should arrive.

So Carleton placed his army in winter quarters about Quebec, in preparation for a campaign which was to be conducted by generals much less capable than he. He had little faith in the Canadians and wrote of them to Germain: “There is nothing to fear from the Canadians so long as things are in a state of prosperity; nothing to hope from them when in distress, though there are some of them who are guided by sentiments of honor.”

In the months that followed there was a feeling of exhilaration in Quebec. Money was more plentiful than ever before. Rumors of great events stirred through all the country. Word came of the arrival, in Halifax harbor, of Admiral Lord Howe with a large fleet. His brother, Sir William Howe, was awaiting him there. Their combined force of thirty thousand men expelled Washington from New York, and the British took up headquarters there. Warship after warship sailed up the St. Lawrence, and many splendid regiments, with their bands gaily playing, marched through the streets of Quebec, which were decorated with flags and bunting. Among them were seven Hessian regiments, supplied to King George by his relatives in Brunswick and Hesse, at great cost. Their appearance was striking; their guttural speech mingled with French and English, lending a cosmopolitan air to the little capital on the Rock.

The Church, which had been gravely threatened by the American invasion, now was secure once more. The seigneurs felt that their rights under the old regime were no longer endangered. The peasants were not concerned with politics but with sowing, reaping, and the rearing of children. The entertaining and gaiety at the Château St. Louis cast a glow of well-being through all the town, even to the little houses at the river’s edge, below the cliff.

Lady Maria Carleton was a charming young woman, the mother of three lovely children. On New Year’s Eve 1776, the anniversary of Montgomery’s attack, she and the governor gave an elaborate dinner of sixty covers to celebrate the victory. This was followed by a public fete and a brilliant ball. When morning came there was a grand Mass in the cathedral. Citizens who had shown sympathy with the New England rebels were obliged to do penance in public before taking part in this.

So winter passed, and in the spring General Burgoyne arrived with more troops. He was a handsome and engaging young man who had eloped with a daughter of the Earl of Derby, been forgiven by her father and aided by him in his career. At thirty-three he had achieved brilliant military success. He entered the House of Commons and made his mark there. His talents were diverse, for he was also a poet, and his plays had been produced in London theaters. He was in no way eager to command His Majesty’s forces in North America, for though his heart was in soldiering, this backwoods campaign was not of the sort he was used to. Neither were the fine regiments who marched under him used to such. The ponderous equipment of the Hessians, their heavy sabers, their weighty hats, and boots that covered the thigh, was little better suited to this warfare than a crinoline would suit a modern land girl.

Many hundred Indians set out with Burgoyne. When fighting began they deserted but committed occasional barbarities on the way. The news of their barbarities was spread in America as though Indians had never before been employed in warfare by white men, while the truth was that they had been employed in every war and both Montgomery and Arnold had enlisted their help.

Burgoyne was to join on the Hudson a British army from New York, and the two were to cut off New England from the other colonies. Burgoyne took his force through remote forests by way of Lake Champlain to the Hudson, but the army he expected to join him did not arrive. It had gone instead to attack Philadelphia. Burgoyne’s position was hopeless. He surrendered at Saratoga with six thousand men.

The news of this defeat brought France into co-operation with the Americans against the British. A French fleet and French army joined the revolutionary forces and during four years fought side by side with them. There were Canadians who hoped to see Canada once again a French country, yearning toward the sight of the fleur-de-lis once again rising above the Citadel. But the majority had little desire to return to the oppressive rule of France. Appeals were made by the French leaders, Lafayette and Rochambeau; appeals to the ancient loyalties of Canadians, by which their hearts were inevitably stirred.

Four years after Burgoyne’s surrender Washington, with his French allies, surrounded Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, in Virginia. The French fleet cut off his retreat by sea. He was forced to surrender with his whole army.

In 1778 Sir Guy Carleton returned to England. The Château St. Louis lost its charming mistress, the nursery its three lively occupants. In his last letter to Lord Germain he wrote, “I have long and impatiently looked out for the arrival of a successor. Happy at last to learn his near approach, that into hands less obnoxious to your Lordship I may resign the important commands with which I have been honored. Thus, for the king’s service, as willingly I lay them down as for his service I took them up.”

His successor was Sir Frederick Haldimand, a native of Switzerland, who, because of the lack of opportunities in his own country, had gone to Germany and served under Frederick the Great. Without attaining distinction there he came to England and joined the British Army. He became Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal American Regiment, Military Governor of Three Rivers, and at last Governor General of Canada. He was a French Swiss, which gave him the advantage of speaking the language of the country he was to rule. For four years he ruled justly, with military precision but without harshness.

He was energetic in the improvement of the country. He ordered that “le grand chemin du Roy,” between Montreal and Quebec, should be widened to thirty feet and properly drained. This road was almost a continuous street, for there were closely knit villages on either side, pleasantly broken here and there by a river, a mountain, or a wood. This road, in the winter, and the St. Lawrence, in the summer, kept up a lively communication between the two towns. It was delightful to make the journey by boat, landing each night to dine and dance in the houses of the seigneurs or, if it were autumn, to go in a dashing carriage to the races at Quebec, though a heavy rain might well form a lake across the highway.

This road the habitants traversed on snowshoes or in sleighs behind their sturdy little horses. They wore their bright-colored waistcoats, their long white woolen coats caught in at the waist by scarlet sashes, and scarlet caps on their heads. Writers of the time agree that they were animated and well-mannered, loved music and gaiety.

General Haldimand was formally welcomed in the Château St. Louis and an appropriate address read. It opened with these words:

This was all very well from the English of Quebec, but what of the Canadians? They had not forgotten the glories of Montcalm and Lévis; they heard tales from their fathers of the magnificence of the regime of King Louis. After all, they were French; love for France and loyalty to France was in their blood. Seditious leaflets, urging them to rebellion against British rule, were being circulated. Notices inciting them to treason were discovered on church doors. One of these was signed by Admiral d’Éstaing, and in part it read:

Haldimand had need to be watchful. The air was full of rumors. It was said that a French fleet was preparing to sail up the St. Lawrence to attack Quebec. It was said that Spain had bound herself to restore Canada to France.

Haldimand was sternly repressive but never cruel. Few were arrested in Quebec, while in the new American republic loyalists were being crowded into jails and many executed. He feared a winter campaign for his small army, for the troops sent from England had no experience of such warfare. He sent them out in detachments to learn to walk on snowshoes, and it is interesting to speculate as to whether the Hessians snowshoed in their own uniforms of which they were so proud.

The governor attached some Canadians to each British regiment. He favored their distinctions of rank and traditions of noblesse, but he suspected that, if French soldiers should appear in a rebel army, the Canadians might join them or, at any rate, aid them. He approved of the establishment of the Catholic religion and continuance of French laws, but he wrote, “No people in the world are more bigoted in their laws and usages.”

Disliking the Canadians, he yet labored well for their good. He strengthened the fortifications of Quebec; he improved the roads, began a system of canals, and established the first public library. He aroused the interest of the bishop and the head of the seminary in this, and the subscription list was signed by many priests as well as the more educated of the people. The price of subscription was five pounds at entrance and two pounds a year thereafter. The first consignment of books cost three hundred pounds and was selected by Richard Cumberland, the playwright, a friend of Haldimand’s. The governor rightly felt that he was doing well by the country and its people. What was his chagrin when Lord Shelborne wrote in April 1782, warning him that a large French fleet was at Brest and might soon appear in the gulf, adding that, so great was the determination to keep Quebec, Carleton himself would be sent back there, if necessary!

Haldimand wrote at once to Carleton, saying he was ready to go, and began making arrangements for leaving. Carleton wrote in reply that he had no intention of returning to Canada. Haldimand’s hurt would not be salved. He was urged to stay on, but he insisted on returning when the next spring should come. He observed with bitterness that the Canadians were pleased when they heard of French victories. He reported: “The seigneurs render fealty and homage to His Majesty, according to the Ancient Laws, Customs and Usages of this Province but it is with much Concern I acquaint Your Lordship that I have myself perceived Secret Pleasure from the hope Strongly marked in the countenances of many who make their Bows to me.”

How easy for one in Haldimand’s position to imagine that “Secret Pleasure”!

The Loyalists

When terms of peace were agreed on in Paris, Britain was able to retain the northern half of the continent from Atlantic to Pacific. The British fleet, under Admiral Rodney, had defeated the French Admiral de Grasse in the West Indies and taken him prisoner. The French and Spanish fleets, which for four years had been battering Gibraltar, had been crippled and driven off. British prestige had risen. Also the French did not want a too powerful United States who conceivably might become an overbearing ally.

Benjamin Franklin, with three other important Americans, had been sent to Paris to negotiate the terms. England had sent, on her side, a Scot, Richard Oswald. He was seventy-seven, an experienced and successful merchant, and was better able, the Earl of Shelborne, British Prime Minister, thought, to cope with these shrewd Americans than a diplomat of aristocratic birth. The truth was that Oswald had no chance against them and would have handed over Nova Scotia and Canada, with scarcely a murmur, had not Shelborne himself refused.

While these talks were going on, the Loyalists in America were in a terrible position. They were hated as the English had never been hated. The governor of New York said he would rather roast in hell than show mercy to a Loyalist. They, on their part, were far from humble. Their vocabularies were strained to express their contempt for the revolutionists. “Vulgar nobodies—vile insects—depraved, low-born knaves” were some of the epithets by which they insulted them. In the state of New York the feeling against the Loyalists was most bitter, for it was here that the Loyalists were most forward in expressing their views. Also they and the Crown together owned two thirds of the property. To the last the Loyalists believed in the ultimate victory. They believed that their property, which had been confiscated, would be restored to them.

With the peace their position became unbearable. Washington himself had said they were not fit to live. So began their great exodus into Canada. By ship, by oxen-drawn wagon, on foot they came, in tens of thousands, impoverished, homeless, to establish themselves afresh. They overflowed from the Province of Quebec and laid the foundations of Ontario. The English element in Canada had been negligible, impermanent, but now sixty thousand English-speaking Loyalists swarmed across the face of the country to strike their roots deep into its soil.

Courtesy of Phelps Stokes Collection in the New York Public Library

An old print showing the City on the Rock as it appeared from Point Lévis on the other side of the river in 1784.

Sir Guy Carleton had never expected to return to Canada, but now he came once more as governor, bearing the title of Lord Dorchester. The effect of the American Revolution was that the governor’s power in Canada was increased. Final decisions in all matters were to rest with him. But his first duty was to direct the flow of the unhappy Loyalists into Canada and to settle them in the new environment. The British Government was sympathetic to them, and a Royal Commission was formed to meet their claims. Thirty million dollars was paid out for these. But not all the Loyalists were poverty-stricken. To New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in particular there came some who had salvaged a portion of their property. I saw in Nova Scotia a fine Colonial house which its owner had taken down, brought in a ship from New England, and erected again. Many of them were people of culture who were fired by the ambition to make a new and worthy colony in Canada. They looked on the leaders of the Revolution as demagogues and their followers as a ruffianly and deluded mob which, because of unfortunate circumstances, had been successful in their revolt. The Americans looked on the Loyalists as traitors and villains.

Dorchester’s welcome in Quebec was wholehearted. When once more he settled down in the Château St. Louis, with his now still larger family, it was felt that the affairs of the country were in the hands of one who was capable and courageous. Indeed, he was so popular that all the virtues were said to be his. More than ever he had his hands full.

The population had increased enormously and variously. English, Scottish, and Irish brought their accents of speech and accents of living to the land that had been almost wholly French. English and French laws were constantly at odds. The French Canadians accepted the English criminal laws but clung to the old French laws in matters of litigation. English justices followed the English civil code, French justices the French, so that a lawsuit between the two might well lead to chaos. No other British province was ever in such a state of legal confusion. Education, too, was a subject of controversy. But, because of the division of the country into Upper and Lower Canada in 1791, it was difficult, even impossible, to settle the question of a higher education for the people. But, whatever problem was uppermost, whether legal, educational, or religious, there was friction. Everyone was struggling to recover from the maiming effects of war. Almost everyone was poor. The new settlers felt that they were hampered at every turn by French customs. The inherited seigneuries stood in the way of the free purchase of land. The Loyalists were pushed back into remote regions. But the seigneurs were attached to their seigneuries. The land system had been long established. The French did not want to see it changed. Life had been good in Quebec. Why change?

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

The calèche, still in use, gives an air of earlier days. These wait on Place d’Armes to pick up fares.

Dorchester was opposed to establishing a hereditary rank in the colony, but he approved of a certain form of aristocracy and proposed that the Loyalists and their children after them should have the privilege of placing the letters U.E. after their names. The province was now divided into counties with such English names as Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, and Surrey, which may have made the Loyalists feel more at home but must have seemed unhomelike indeed to the French.

All these difficulties, the necessity for explaining Canada to the House of Commons, took Dorchester to England in August 1791, leaving the Lieutenant Governor in charge. The following summer Canada endured her first political campaign. Habitant, as well as landowner, had the right to vote. In Lower Canada thirty-four French and sixteen English candidates were elected. In December 1792 the new parliament opened its first session. It opened with pomp, as was fitting for the stately little capital. Prayers were offered in both English and French, as neither side understood the language of the other and the Almighty was conversant with both.

Now was established the government of Upper Canada, with Colonel John Graves Simcoe as Lieutenant Governor. He was an Eton and Oxford man and had seen service in America. He had sailed with the Loyalists who immigrated from Boston to Halifax. He had seen their tribulations, which had filled him with loathing for the revolutionists. He bent all his powers to make Ontario as English as England, in customs and in religion. But he reckoned without the Irish and the Scotch, without the Roman Catholic, the Methodist, and Presbyterian. He so hated the Americans that the thought of fifty thousand Indians who had sworn they would not leave the scalp on the head of any American they should meet gave him grim pleasure.

This hate was quite equaled by the hate of Americans for the English and, above all, the Loyalists. The French Revolution, the fall of the monarchy, and the declaration of war between France and England, which they were sure would spell England’s ruin, filled them with hysterical joy. In their exuberance Southern planters, who themselves were little tyrants over their slaves, danced deliriously, wearing caps of liberty. Americans everywhere declared that it was an insult to the republic that the British flag should float over Canada. Canadians, on their part, were horrified at the murder of the French king and queen. Few of them responded to the intrigues of revolutionary French agents who circulated seditious pamphlets among them. The most violent of these was entitled Les Français Libres à leur Frères Canadiens, which proposed a free Canada in which all hereditary rights, including the rights of the Catholic Church, should be forever abolished. The Canadians were entreated to “follow the example of France and the United States, and to upset a throne so long the seat of hypocrisy and imposture, despotism, greed, and cruelty. Their assembly is a mockery, and secret machinations are employed everywhere to upset its efforts at better laws. Canadians, arm yourselves, call your friends, the Indians, to your assistance, count on the sympathy of your neighbors and of the French.”

This treacherous activity was such that Dorchester felt it was necessary to strengthen the defenses of Quebec and to pass a militia bill. But the habitants had been persuaded by French intriguers that to enter the militia was to enter military service for life, and they shied at the prospect.

At this time Queen Victoria’s father, the burly young Duke of Kent, was stationed in Quebec, in command of the 7th Fusiliers. He lived in the seventeenth-century house at 23 St. Louis Street, where the capitulation of Quebec was signed on September 18, 1759. The house still stands, as does his country seat at Montmorency Falls. Here he lived with his faithful Madame St. Laurent, whom he was forced to discard when Princess Charlotte, heir to the throne of England, died. It was necessary for him to marry and beget an heir to that throne. Life was very pleasant at Kent House, with its lovely garden where the muffled roaring of the snow-white falls was always heard. There was, too, the song of artificial singing birds in cages, the tinkling of musical clocks. The duke was popular, but he was, as were all army officers of the day, a disciplinarian. He was more merciful than many, as the story of Private Draper bears witness. But mercy was so delayed that one cannot help wondering what were the aftereffects on the nerves of Private Draper. The young man had been sentenced to death by the duke for the crime of desertion and mutiny. The grim gallows had been prepared, the yearning grave dug two miles outside the ramparts of Quebec. In the early dawn the funeral procession had set out—first the duke and his officers, then a detachment of Fusiliers, followed by a coffin in a cart, and, behind the coffin, marching white-faced in his grave clothes, Private Draper. Last came the military band, playing a solemn funeral dirge. When the grave was reached the duke stepped forward and told the doomed man that the awful moment when he must meet his Maker had arrived. There was a profound silence, though surely the beating of Private Draper’s heart must have been loud, then the duke, in a fine speech, completely pardoned him.

This was a time of most brutal floggings for slight breaches of discipline, so we can think of Private Draper as a fortunate young man to have got off so well; but what was the state of his nerves when the grave clothes were taken off him and he was told to go back to duty?

Britain and France were at war, and France confidently expected that the United States would join in the war as her ally. The Ambassador sent by France to the American republic was Edmond Gênet, who was responsible for much of the anti-British agitation in Canada. In the United States his coming was the signal for wild demonstrations. In Philadelphia he was given an official banquet where a roast pig which they called Louis XVI was beheaded. After the beheading the guests, wearing “liberty caps,” thrust their knives into the head with the exclamation “Tyrant!” Gênet declared that the “beautiful star of Canada must be added to the Stars and Stripes.” But he went too far in his patronage of the Americans. Those of the northern states wanted to trade with Britain rather than war against her. They preferred a British country, rather than a French, as neighbor. Washington was cold toward Gênet, and finally so irritated by him that he demanded his recall. Yet, before he left, Gênet had done much harm in fostering hate that needed no fostering, in inflaming feelings that already were sore.

Dorchester and Simcoe were soldiers and lived in expectancy of war. The clamoring of American mobs for the extinction of Britain made them certain that war was to come. The Kentuckians, in particular, swore that they would drive Britain out of the north. Dorchester ordered Simcoe to build a fort for the defense of Detroit, which the British still held. Simcoe moved troops into what is now the state of Ohio and built a fort on the Maumee River. This was considered permissible, as the territory was still Indian.

The Vermonters always had been troublemakers. From there Ethan Allen had marched in 1775, to capture Montreal, and failed. He had been taken prisoner and had spent two years in confinement in a medieval English fortress. After his return to America he had founded the independent Republic of Vermont, feeling no affinity with the other states. In fact, hating the new federal government. He had on his side a large majority of Vermonters. He had gone so far as to hold a correspondence with Dorchester regarding the free shipment of goods from Vermont to the St. Lawrence. In his letters Allen showed a distinct inclination to return Vermont to British allegiance. The motive for this was the fear of losing the advantages of trade, without which Vermont would be insolvent. Allen begged Dorchester to believe that there were fifteen thousand able-bodied Vermonters who were more than equal to the same number of United States troops.

The people of Vermont had had no wish to fight the British, said Allen. “If the latter,” he wrote, “would have afforded them protection at that time, the Vermonters would readily have yielded up their independence and have become a province of Great Britain. Should the United States now attempt to coerce them they would doubtless do the same if British policy harmonized with the idea. The leading men of Vermont are not sentimentally attached to a republican form of government, yet from political principles are determined to maintain their present mode of it till they can have a better or until they can, on principles of mutual interest and advantage, return to the British Government without war or annoyance from the United States.” What he said was true: the Vermonters were the best fighters in the United States. They had learned how to be fierce in the border raids between themselves and the Canadians.

In the next twenty years their yearnings toward British rule had turned to hostility. As Allen had declared that they would willingly become a British province, so the Vermonters now told Congress that, given permission, they would conquer Canada without assistance. It needed restraint on the part of leaders of both countries to keep out of war. Britain was not only restrained but wise. She returned Detroit and a half dozen other posts to the United States, and so eased the tension. Washington sent John Jay, a tolerant and moderate man, to negotiate a new treaty in London. There he was received with great cordiality, and by the terms agreed on the dark threat of war was, for a time, pushed aside.

Lord Dorchester’s health had never been very good in Canada, and in 1796 he gave up his post as governor and retired to his estate in England. He was getting on in years and longed for the tranquillity of English country life. There was regret at his leaving Quebec. He and his wife had been the center of a dignified and courtly circle. The Château St. Louis had been the scene of charming entertainments in their time. Their many children had filled the château with gaiety. He was even kinder and more tolerant to French than to English Canadians, and was more than once accused of being so.

He and his family sailed from Quebec on the frigate Active. As many before him, he stood on the deck of the ship looking back at the city on the Rock that rose dark and changeless from the river. He may well have felt that he had saved Quebec for Britain. He felt both sadness and relief at parting. He was seventy-two. He had lived long enough in the midst of threats and distractions. Now he was looking on the Rock for the last time. The sails of the frigate caught the breeze and she moved freely between the wooded shores. It was early July then, but it was September before he saw the last of Canada. A storm came up and his ship was wrecked off the Island of Anticosti. All were saved and taken in small vessels to Gaspé. There they waited for a ship from Halifax, which took them at last to England, but then it was late September.

Dorchester lived the life he had craved on his estate near Basingstoke, tranquil but by no means dull, for he entertained many interesting people. Who will say that the Prince Regent was the least interesting?

Heartache came to him and Lady Dorchester in the deaths of six of their sons on active service. Six sons were killed—one of them carrying the same sword his father had carried when he had been wounded at the siege of Bergen op Zoom. Lady Dorchester, small and intrepid, had lived the life of a queen at the Château St. Louis, and in her retirement she retained the royal manner. She lived to be very old, a queenly little figure, her white hair elaborately dressed with lace and scarlet ribbon. Her shoes had very high heels to give her stature, and sometimes they were scarlet with buttons of gold. She never lost interest in her appearance and the impression she made on others, which was one not to be forgotten.

One Alarm after Another

Between war and war, life in Quebec was less troubled than might have been expected. The French are a lively folk, and the influx of English had not been so great as to sadden their merriment, or of Scotch as to make the town a little dour, as was the case in Montreal. True, there had been a good many Irish, but they were lively too, and as they were Catholics they intermarried with the French, and some even forgot their mother tongue, so you might meet Sullivans who could not speak a word of English.

On a summer evening an animated throng would saunter on the battery overlooking the river. There was much to talk about. Perhaps it was the assembly given by the governor on the king’s birthday, which had been even more brilliant than usual. There had been no lack of finery, for milliners and goldsmiths advertised the most elegant articles of toilet and dress: silk gloves and perfumery, satins, sarsenets, and Persians, laces, gilt shoes, stays, of all kinds in the most fashionable tastes, elegant paste knee buckles, pearl and garnet lockets, snuffboxes, rings, brooches, gilt canes, and best rowel spurs.

Then there was the latest play to discuss. The price of a ticket to the theater was one dollar. The curtain rose at five in summer and six in winter. No amount of speculation can give us any clear idea of what those productions were like. These were some of the plays: Miss in Her Teens, High Life Below Stairs, Love à la Mode, The Upholsterers, The Fashionable Lovers. Shakespeare also was represented. And surely to have watched those audiences, to have heard their comments, would have been as good as a play!

The people were strong and active, and many lived to be very old. Quebecers endured the extremes of the climate with fortitude and elasticity. They did not go South in the winter and go to Northern resorts in the summer. They did not spend their evenings in air-conditioned cinemas, but they were capable of dancing the whole night through. A description of the celebration of the queen’s birthday reads:

A schoolmaster of the town not only taught languages but three nights a week held a dancing class, which seems a combination that might with profit be imitated today.

The servant problem caused considerable anxiety. Mr. Gray, of New Gardens, Quebec, advertised:

The population of all Canada was now about five hundred thousand people. The United States had eight million, of whom one in every four was a slave. Many thousands of these six million whites thought of the Canadians as bondsmen under British rule and longed to free them, as well as to acquire the immense territory of Canada. Upper Canada was almost defenseless. Britain was at war with Napoleon, who was attaining his ambition to be dictator of Europe. Now seemed the perfect time for the freeing of Canada. Yet there were many in the United States who felt great reluctance to go to war with Britain. They saw her fighting alone, with her eighteen million people, against Napoleon, who had a hundred million in his control. They saw her as making, unaided, the last stand for freedom in Europe. To place themselves on the side of the tyrant Napoleon was distasteful to them, even while they resented Britain’s arrogance at sea and the fact that, now they had become a foreign nation, their profitable trade with the British West Indies was cut off. They were not much reassured when those who hankered for war declared that Canada could be taken with almost no fighting. It was said that the conquest could be completed in six short weeks. The Secretary for War assured them that the rebellious Canadians would flock to aid an invading army. Henry Clay declared that there would be no rest for him till Britain was driven finally from the continent. None seemed to consider the fact that the population of Upper Canada was mainly of United Empire Loyalists or that the people of Lower Canada might hesitate to risk their religious freedom under new, untried rulers.

Britain’s supremacy at sea made the taking by way of the St. Lawrence impossible, so it was decided to approach it from the West. An army under General Hull was to come through Ohio to Detroit and from there march victoriously to Quebec. On July 12 he entered Canada and proclaimed to its people that he had come not as an enemy but as a deliverer from the yoke of Britain.

Major General Sir Isaac Brock, who was in command of the British forces in Upper Canada, now hastened along the shore of Lake Erie to attack Hull. He marshaled his troops across the river from Detroit and, with his Indian allies who filled the air with their yells, presented such an intimidating spectacle that Hull surrendered. Brock marched into Detroit and made Hull and twenty-five hundred soldiers prisoners. Hull was sent to Montreal and some other officers and men as far as Quebec. They were later exchanged for British prisoners, and that is the nearest that the War of 1812 came to the capital. In the following October, Brock was killed at Queenston Heights, where he defeated an invading American force of greatly superior numbers.

But the war dragged on for two years, causing suffering and bitterness on both sides. To most Americans it became increasingly distasteful. The New Englanders held it in such loathing that they threatened to secede from the Union. To Britain it was a cruel addition to the burden of the war with Napoleon. When peace was made at Ghent neither side had gained anything but bitter experience. To the Canadians alone it brought something of supreme value, a national spirit which remains unchanged.

Quebec, one might say, had now nothing to do but to grow and prosper. New industries sprang up. New buildings added stature to the little capital. The press was free and active. Taxes were light. While the United States was torn by war with Mexico, and, still worse, by civil war, Canada was at peace.

But, though there were no battles, there was conflict. It was the painful conflict of race. The French of Quebec were a conquered people; the English were the power in the land. Politically and socially they chafed against the bond that held them inexorably together. Their traditions were opposed; their religions were opposed. It needed only a passionate and eloquent leader to rouse the French Canadians to active resentment. A brilliant firebrand of a man, Louis Papineau, editor of Le Canadien, set agitation aflame. Officials were mainly English. In 1834 French-speaking officials were getting no more than one fifth of the civil-service salaries. English-speaking judges were far in the ascendant. The Legislative Assembly, which was elected, had a large French majority. The Legislative Council, which was appointed, had an equally large English majority and could foil any law put forward by the Assembly.

There was, however, complete religious freedom in the province. The parish priest had as many privileges as ever he had enjoyed under the French monarchy. There were many convents and monasteries. There was religious freedom, but religion had its part in the conflict.

Early in the century a serious attempt was made to Anglicize the province. The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning was founded. The object of the Royal Institution was to build Protestant schools and colleges wherever possible in the province and, through their teaching, draw the new generation of French Canadians from the faith of their fathers. This foundation was the beginning of McGill University, for which James McGill, an early British settler, left his fortune and estate.

The attempt to convert the Canadians to Protestantism failed. In Montreal there was bitter opposition. When trustees were appointed to receive McGill’s bequest, Catholics refused to serve. Papineau and his associates continued to agitate against the government for many years. The agitation rose to the point of armed conflict at St. Eustache. But in the city on the Rock there was no conflict. It stood aloof, almost unconcerned, immutably Catholic, invincibly French.

In the legislature Papineau raged against the government, at one time demanding that Canada should become a French republic, at another that she should become a state in the American Union. He had not the support of the clergy, for he was not in sympathy with them. He had support from a number of English and Irish agitators who were opposed to the government and determined to overthrow it. The Bishop of Montreal, Mgr. Lartigue, wrote a letter to the king saying that his people had been perniciously deceived and led astray by the rebels. But Papineau remained the leader of the Liberals, and no man to whom he was opposed could be elected.

In November 1837 there was a fierce riot in Montreal. Warrants were issued for the arrest of Papineau, an Irish agitator, Dr. O’Callaghan, and others. There was a clash between the rebels and the military. A young officer, Lieutenant Weir, carrying dispatches, was captured, horribly mutilated, and shot. When his body was found near the village of St. Denis, the village was burned in retribution. The next day there was another clash in which the rebels used a church as a stronghold, from which they fired on the troops. The troops set fire to the church, in which many were burned or were shot when trying to escape. The leaders escaped to the United States.

There it was easy to find sympathizers who bitterly hated England and desired above all things to uproot her from North America. The President refused help to any such attempt. A year later, however, a rebel refugee named Robert Nelson headed an uprising at Napierville and proclaimed Lower Canada a republic, with himself as president. It took only a week to subdue the uprising, but again there were cruel sufferings. About a dozen men were executed and nearly one hundred transported to Australia. As has been said before, the majority of French Canadians were opposed to rebellion. A list of militia commissions published directly after the rebellion showed fifty-six French names out of eighty-seven. In 1843 an act was passed forgiving the escaped rebels and permitting them to return to their callings in Canada. Nelson, like Papineau, escaped to the United States. Their followers were left to suffer the cruel consequences.

In England the reports of treason, of slaughter, and execution came as a shock. A young queen had just ascended the throne. The nation was filled with new hope for the future. Emigrants were pouring in a great flow to Upper Canada. In some years there were fifty thousand or more. The bond between Canada and England was strengthening year by year. Canada was the most populous and greatest of the colonies. Yet England knew comparatively little of Canada. Now was the time to send out a governor of great intelligence and power. The Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, chose the Earl of Durham, who had lately been Ambassador to Russia.

The change from the court of the czars to the little capital on the Rock must have been a great one. Probably a depressing one for Lady Durham, who came with her husband, bringing the children and a large retinue. Quebec was accustomed to stately arrivals, but the arrival of Lord Durham surpassed all in magnificence. He was escorted by a fleet of warships that sailed in majesty up the St. Lawrence while the crowds gathered to watch his landing, to cheer, as so often they had cheered, the arrival of the new governor, who was to study all their problems and perhaps solve them. The crowds pressed close to watch the disembarking of the viceregal family, the six secretaries, the eight aides-de-camp, the beautiful horses with their grooms, the cases containing furniture, elaborate silver, and china. The month was May. The trees were in their fresh greenness and blossom. When, two days later, Durham rode through the city, he was wildly cheered. The people of Quebec loved pomp, and the new governor, in his glittering uniform, riding a pure white charger, was a striking figure. His cheeks wore the hectic flush and his eyes the strange brightness of one in a fever. He was, although he still appeared well, dying of consumption.

Durham was scarcely established, with his family and suite, in the Château St. Louis when his mind was besieged by bombardment from both French and English Canadians. He was made to realize, with great clarity, the almost hopeless differences between them. Their traditions, their approach to any subject, were opposed, as from their very roots.

With the help of his staff he set about the making of an exhaustive report on every phase of Canadian life. He traveled through the country, often under most wearisome conditions, gaining intimate knowledge of the racial strife. The report he sent back to England was immense; indeed, it became a classic of colonial politics. Writing of the Province of Quebec, he said: “Without effecting the change so rapidly or so roughly as to shock the feelings or to trample on the welfare of the existing generation, it must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population, with English laws and language, in this Province and to trust its government to none but an English legislature.” He recommended the union of Upper and Lower Canada, with but one capital city. He also recommended the establishment of a cabinet responsible to the majority in the Parliament.

But now Durham did something that brought about his fall. Rather than have a public trial of eight leaders of the revolt, and so cause a possible flare of racial hatred, he banished the eight to Bermuda. They were willing enough to go, for they had expected to be hanged. They were ordered to remain there and the Bermuda Government to retain them so that they might not go to the United States and rouse the ready sympathy of England-haters.

The result of this act must have been astonishing to Durham. The British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, refused to sanction the order. It was a terrible blow to Durham’s pride. Ill and bitterly disappointed by such a rebuke, he at once resigned his office. He had been scarcely six months in the country. He had spent the last flare of his energy in an immense task. He had started the rolling of the ball that was to end in the self-government of the colonies. But he had failed in his mission. Of the French Canadians he had learned only what the English Canadians had imparted to him, and that was a distrust of and a contempt for the French. He had planned to Anglicize the French children through education and the throwing together of the children of both races, in study and in play, never taking into account, never understanding how much the French Canadians valued their ancient traditions. They had little love for France, but they had an invincible pride in their French ancestors, who had been the heroic pioneers of this mighty country, and in the French, both men and women, who had battled for it, physically and spiritually, had died for it.

The housetops, the ramparts, were thronged by people who gathered to see Durham’s departure. His military escort marched silently through the crowded streets. There was no music. There were no cheers. The ship waited with drooping sails. It might have been a funeral procession. Surely the river was a river of doom! Surely there was a spell on the Rock and on the fortified city that rose from it! Many had sailed up the river to conquer it, to defend it, to govern it, only to die or to sail away defeated. Lord Durham did both. By July 1840 he was no more.

Disunity in Unity

By the Act of Union in 1841 the two Canadas were united. Many officials in England, if they thought about Canada at all, thought that the day would come when her connection with the mother country would end. Many looked forward to the separation not as a loss but as a gain. Canada had been an immense expense and little else. The fortifications of Quebec had been made almost impregnable, at great cost. Many other forts had been built. The costly Rideau Canal had been built. Halifax was protected by a British fleet. Quebec was garrisoned by British soldiers. Many millions of pounds had been spent by Great Britain. And the cost had been not only in money but in men. English Canadians accepted all this with complacence. The people of Upper Canada were engrossed by political factions, the opposing parties seething with hate for each other. Upper Canada was close to bankruptcy.

There was a new governor, Lord Sydenham. He was forty, shrewd, tactful, and had been with Lord Durham in Russia. He had not expected to find Canada tranquil, but it was far more disturbed than he could have imagined. Upper Canada was torn by religious dissension. John Strachan, who later became a bishop, was making a fiery stand against democracy, which he believed was the root of lawlessness in the United States. He sought with all his might, which was great, to keep higher education under the control of the Church of England. Strachan was the founder of the University of Toronto, where society had the name of being as formal as that of a European capital. It was distinguished, too, by intense antipathy toward the United States.

So stormy Upper Canada was united to stormy Lower Canada by the Act of Union, February 1841. French Canada was fiercely opposed to the union. It had nothing to gain by it and much to lose. The population was greater than that of Upper Canada, but there were the same number of members in the House. Upper Canada was deeply in debt. Lower Canada had no debt. The French-Canadian leader, Hippolyte Lafontaine, spoke for all when he bitterly denounced the Act.

Now the seat of government was removed from Quebec. Quebec was too French. Toronto was too English. Kingston, which had been Fort Frontenac, was chosen as midway between the two. Quebec, with its tradition as the key of power in Canada, with its situation which has no equal on the continent and few in the world, was set aside. But, if it lost the prestige of being the capital of Canada, it escaped becoming the seat of political squabbles.

Sydenham exhausted himself in creating a government in which he strove to put talent above party. His ideal for Canada was a powerful governor, alive to the peculiar interest of the people, sympathetic and dominating. While he was filled with mental exhilaration in his work he was physically worn out, and when he was thrown from his horse and suffered a broken leg the strain he had lived under was manifested. He did not recover from the shock. So another ship lay at half-mast in the port, waiting for the body that had been full of vitality and enterprise and now too had given up the struggle.

Lord Sydenham’s successor as governor was Sir Charles Bagot, an elderly, courtly, and honorable statesman. When British Minister to the United States, after the War of 1812, he had been the moving spirit of a treaty by which it was agreed that neither country should keep armaments or warships on the Great Lakes.

Bagot set about getting acquainted with the French of Quebec. He soon reached the conclusion that they must have a part in the government. He had conceived a real admiration for them. He now asked Lafontaine, their leader, to join his council with two other French Canadians. Lafontaine rejected the proposal. He could command a majority in the Assembly and preferred to keep out of the Council. Then Bagot, well knowing he would anger Stanley, Prime Minister of England, as well as the Tories of Canada, felt that in justice he must ask Lafontaine to form a ministry in conjunction with the Upper Canadian Liberal, Baldwin. The result was that Canada had its first French-Canadian Prime Minister, and a tempest raged about the head of Sir Charles Bagot. It was worse than ever he had dreamed of. He was berated and rebuked. He was called a traitor by the Canadian Tories. In England the Duke of Wellington, his uncle by marriage, exclaimed, “What a fool the man is, rolling himself and his country in the mire!”

Bagot’s health broke under the strain. He wrote to Lord Stanley that he felt he was going to die. He lingered for a time, but die he did, in May 1843, another man sacrificed to the struggle in Canada.

His successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, was even more ill-fated. He had made a distinguished name for himself as a ruler in India. He had been out of England for nearly forty years and had become so Oriental as to have three sons by an Indian lady of rank. To come from Eastern grandeur, from Eastern despotism, to Canadian simplicity, to a wild young country clamoring for self-rule, was a severe test of adaptability. Canadian leaders were determined to have a government in Canada based on the liberal lines of government in Britain. They were loyal to the British monarchy. They wanted Canada to be like Britain, free under a constitutional system. Strife and recrimination racked the opposing factions in Canada. Loyalty to the queen was as strong in the Liberal leaders, who opposed Metcalfe, as in him.

Metcalfe had been little more than two years in the country when he was forced to retire because of cancer. Soon after he died, leaving the troubled scene of Canada even more troubled because of his ministrations.

During this first half of the nineteenth century a vital stream of immigration flowed from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Port of Quebec was a busy scene. Each year there was an amazing increase in tonnage. In addition to the sailing vessels, ships combining sail and steam appeared on the river. Now it was possible for a letter from Canada to reach the homeland in three weeks or less. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother came in a sailing vessel and had a rough passage. With their little daughter, my grandmother, they lived for a time in Quebec. My great-grandmother, daughter of a captain in the Dublin Fusiliers, was a handsome, spirited, and sometimes fiery woman who, doubtless in order to set a precedent for Adeline Whiteoak, brought with her a large portrait of herself in oils which now hangs in my dining room.

Twenty years after their arrival, immigration from Ireland reached the point of a flood. Now the peasants were being driven out by famine. There was almost no food in the island. They left, after heart-breaking farewells, in ill-equipped ships, to arrive in Quebec more dead than alive. Cholera and typhus broke out among them. Thousands died at sea or on reaching port. The remainder were a somber sight as they walked through the town, tragic, wild-eyed, destitute. They came to a country of depression and unemployment.

The Earl of Elgin and Kincardine had followed Metcalfe as governor of Canada. The hatred between the United States and Canada at times subsided but was always ready to flare up again. The question of boundary was an active fan for the flame. The frontier between New Brunswick and Maine had long been a bone of contention. In 1842 there arrived in Washington the head of a great banking house, Baron Ashburton, to try to settle the dispute. His wife, who accompanied him, was an American, and between them they did much to smooth away friction in the capital. In fact they smoothed it quite away, in regard to this particular boundary, by conceding a large slice of New Brunswick to Maine. The Canadians remained dissatisfied.

There was a much fiercer dispute over the frontier on the Pacific. On the American side there was determination to drive the British from the Pacific coast. So President Polk declared in his inaugural address. The British Foreign Minister, Lord Aberdeen, held firmly to the British claim to British Columbia. The Prime Minister did not flinch from war. The British claim was agreed to by the Senate in 1846. So the vast country of Canada had a free spread from ocean to ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Arctic.

Industry and prosperity received a blow when, in 1849, the preference for Canadian wheat in England ended. Britain had turned to Free Trade. Now American grain, which formerly had been ground into flour in Canada and then sent to England in Canadian ships, was carried to England by American ships. Now the great Canadian mills stood idle. Now the ships rusted at anchor. There was nothing for them to do. Nothing for men to do!

But another door was opening—the door of foreign trade. In the time of Oliver Cromwell, Navigation Acts had been passed which prohibited trade between the colonies and foreign countries. With the coming of Free Trade the Navigation Acts were repealed. A foreign flag was seen in the Port of Quebec! A score of foreign flags! A hundred told their tale of distant lands. Talon’s dream of Quebec as a great world port seemed to be coming true.

About this time Montreal was getting into serious disgrace. The little town of Kingston had been found inadequate for the meeting of Parliament. So Montreal was chosen as capital and the Château de Ramezay as Government House. Dickens drew a charming picture of Montreal and of the Province of Quebec: “The well-cultivated country, perfectly French in every respect . . . The Virgin’s shrines and crosses, by the wayside. Every common labourer or boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, wore round his waist a sash of some bright colour.”

In the rebellion under Papineau considerable damage had been done to property in quelling riots. Now the owners demanded compensation for this. A bill was introduced to expend £100,000 in such compensation. The curious point was that some of these claimants had themselves been rebels and had helped in the destruction.

The bill passed through both Houses amid scenes of furious anger. Members all but came to blows. Lord Elgin came to the House of Parliament to give the royal assent. When he left there was a mob waiting for him. They were filled with hate that the bill had been passed. As he was about to step into his carriage an ancient egg struck him in the face. He sprang inside and shut the door after him. The carriage was driven away in haste by the coachman, but not before it was disfigured by filthy missiles.

That night the mob—and a well-dressed one!—broke into the House of Parliament, wrecked it, and burned it. It had been a fine building, equipped at great expense. The official mace had cost six hundred pounds. The next day the house of the Prime Minister, Lafontaine, was burned. Lord Elgin was again attacked in the street. Heavy stones were flung into his carriage, one of them striking him on the head. Newspapers, antagonistic to the French, warned him to leave the country within a week. However, he stood resolutely to his post but remained in seclusion till the storm blew over.

Montreal had disgraced herself. She could no longer be the capital of Canada or the seat of Parliament. So, in the later days of Lord Elgin’s governorship, Parliament sat again in Quebec. Elgin was the last of the governors to take an active part in politics. The Cabinet was now responsible to the people, and the governor’s influence was rather in the nature of private counsel.

Progress and Ghosts

The American Civil War brought acute tension in England. It was feared that the army of the North might attack Quebec. General Grant had declared that Canada could be conquered in a month. Twelve thousand British troops were sent out to defend the city. The danger passed, but one result was that, in 1865, the seat of government was moved to Ottawa, far from the border. Quebec, however, remained the capital of the Province of Quebec and the seat of a legislature. In 1867 the provinces of Canada were united in Confederation. Sir John Macdonald, Scottish-born, shrewd, humorous, with a wide and sympathetic knowledge of men, became the Prime Minister of the new Dominion. He was the first man to shoulder the burden of building a nation out of the diverse and sometimes antagonistic material of the widely scattered provinces. For many years he devoted his life to this task with a staunchness and cheerfulness equaled by no other.

Cartier, the leader of the Quebec legislature, was a man of strong will and haughty nature. To no central government would he sacrifice a jot of French or Catholic culture. Where education, religion, and French civil law were concerned, there should be no weakening of the ancient rights of the province. It was the far-distant but bright ideal of the first parliament of a united Canada to create a vast nation, stretching from sea to sea, which might someday stand firmly among the powerful nations of the world. It was Macdonald’s belief that the stronger Canada was, the stronger would be the tie with Britain.

When Quebec had her secure place in the scheme of government, her people had no longer wanted the old feudal system. In the days when they had dreaded absorption by the English they had clung to the protection of the seigneur. Now it was irksome to bend to his authority. The habitant resented giving free labor to the seigneur for a certain number of days each year; he resented, when he sold his land, the handing over of a part of the price to the seigneur, the necessity of bringing his grain to be ground in the seigneur’s mill. He was, however, willing to pay him a small rent. With the exception of this last, the seigneur’s rights were abolished in 1854, but he was compensated for their loss by the state.

Now the wars were over and there came the time for growth. Railway lines, like metal veins, carried the lifeblood of commerce from one end of the country to the other. It was due to the heroic efforts of Sir John Macdonald that the railway to the Pacific was built, and, as railways opened up the wild and remote interior, so commerce with the outer world was carried on by great numbers of ships. From the Port of Quebec the timber ships sailed to England, laden with pine for masts, with elm, with oak for the Royal Navy. Most of this timber was cut on the shores of Lake Ontario and floated in enormous rafts down the river to Quebec. Every sort of ship which was at all seaworthy—barques and brigantines, even East Indiamen and rusty old men-of-war, found their place in the crowded harbor. Above this vivacious scene the embattled city of the Rock rose, steadfast and gray, as she had risen when the harbor was filled by foreign ships gathered to besiege her. Out of the discipline of conflict was born her strength and her loyalty. Out of the barbarisms of the past rose her culture.

More than seven decades have passed since Confederation. The Great War came and passed; now another war, still greater, is in progress. Transports, laden with troops, have sailed and are sailing from Quebec. In the space between wars luxury liners moved majestically up and down the river.

The Empress of Britain lay in the port and now lies sunk at the bottom of the sea. Quebec, for most of the nineteenth century, was the greatest timber port the world has known and might, but for her winter, have become one of the greatest ports for ocean liners. The long, cold winter descends inexorably, freezing the river to a great depth, piling snowdrifts on the Rock. It is the same inexorable winter that killed Cartier’s men, that killed Champlain’s men, that froze the bodies of those who stormed the fortress.

But if Quebec has not become one of the greatest ports of the world, a cosmopolitan city, she has preserved her integrity when so many cities have lost theirs. She stands unique in the Western Hemisphere, unchanging and unchangeable. Though motorcars crowd her steep streets, though tourists fill the Château Frontenac, though radio and moving picture do their utmost to flatten individuality, Quebec still retains her integrity.

It has been to the disadvantage of the Province of Quebec that English Canadians, and more especially Americans, have determinedly found her picturesque. Her inhabitants are generally supposed to spend their days in wood carving or weaving and their evenings gathered about a quaint fireplace, singing interminable chansons. Consequently her achievements in industry are often overlooked. In the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century one of the great centers of the building of wooden ships was the Port of Quebec. The situation was propitious. There were the forests to be cleared. There was the magnificent timber from the clearing, at hand for the building of ships. There was England needing ships, England needing timber. Therefore every ship on her maiden voyage had, as cargo, all the timber she could carry.

Vast numbers of logs were floated down the St. Lawrence. The water front of the city took on the aspect of a logging camp. The water was black with logs. In 1811 fifty-four vessels with a tonnage of 13,691, were registered. But bad times came when the duty on timber, imported into Britain from the Baltic countries, was much reduced. Also the duty on American flour imported into the West Indies was reduced, so that the Canadian trade in those islands was ruined.

But a new and furious demand for fast sailing vessels was opened up by the discovery of gold in California and Australia. As far back as 1825, Quebec had built the largest vessel the world had ever seen—the Baron of Renfrew, 5,888 tons. In 1852 there were twenty-five shipbuilding establishments in the city of Quebec and eight floating docks. In the one summer of 1855 fifty large ships were launched.

Canadian shipbuilders had great trouble in getting a rating at Lloyd’s equal to that of English ships. Canadian ships were looked on with disfavor because they were built of tamarack instead of oak. But when Canadian oak was tried it was found that, after only a few years, it was attacked by dry rot, while English oak had great endurance. Tamarack ships were strong, much lighter than oak, and, being so buoyant, could carry heavier cargoes than those built of oak. But their life was usually only about twenty years. However, it was found that if hardwood bolts were used in the building of the ship, an additional year was added.

Thomas Menzies, a special surveyor, was sent out by Lloyd’s, and under his supervision the reputation of Quebec-built ships was greatly elevated. As for beauty and speed, they were nowhere excelled. Shipbuilders now developed the fast clipper ship to compete with the steamship. Pierre Brunelle, of Quebec, was famous for the graceful lines and the speed of the clippers built by him. Streamlined, and with their great sails harnessing the wind, they sped down the St. Lawrence like sea gulls, and out into the seven seas.

Between 1855 and 1866 there was reciprocity between Canada and the United States. Timber could enter the States free of duty. The result was that the tamarack trees were ruthlessly cut down and sold, till none but those of inferior quality were left. It became necessary to build ships of spruce, and as the best spruce grew on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, where the sea fogs nurtured it, there was a decline in the industry at Quebec.

The forests were being depleted. Before many years there would be no material for the building of wooden ships. The first iron-hulled vessel for ocean service was the Rainbow, launched in England in 1838. Every year the advantage of iron hulls over wood was demonstrated. They lasted longer and were eventually cheaper.

The first ship to cross the Atlantic by power of steam alone was a Canadian ship, manned by a Canadian crew. It was the Royal William, built in Quebec in 1831. A subsidy of three thousand pounds was offered by the government of Lower Canada to “the first person or company that shall cause a steam vessel of not less than 500 tons burthen, to be built and regularly navigated between the ports of Quebec and Halifax, during four years.” The outcome of this was the Royal William.

Her keel was laid in the very cove below the monument which marks the spot where Wolfe died of his wounds. Seven months later she was launched, with great ceremony, to the music of bands, the booming of cannon, the cheering of crowds, as Lady Aylmer, wife of the governor, broke a bottle of champagne on her prow.

In her first season the Royal William made three round trips from Quebec to Halifax. All went well that year, but in the next all went ill. Asiatic cholera, which was raging in Europe, was carried in a ship to Canada. It caused the death of thousands, and it was worst of all in Quebec. The Royal William, the stately and admired, became the feared and the outcast. No port was open to her. At Pictou, in Nova Scotia, she was met by an armed vessel and ordered out of the harbor. At Halifax she was put into quarantine. That season was a failure, and the following spring she was sold to the mortgagees. She sank to the business of towing and carrying excursionists. She went to Boston, where she had an extravagant welcome as the first British steamship to call in that port.

The company who now owned her decided to sell her in England. After many preparations she sailed out of Pictou Harbor on her great experiment. There were fifty berths in her cabin and a handsome salon, but only seven passengers undertook the voyage. She carried two hundred and fifty-four chaldrons of coal, six spars, a case of stuffed birds, and a harp. Her cargo therefore equipped her for either heaven or hell. Off the Banks of Newfoundland she battled against a frightful tempest which left her for some days with only one engine working. The passengers believed their hour had come, but on she went and safely reached London. There she was sold for ten thousand pounds.

Now the Royal William was chartered by the Portuguese Government. Her Canadian captain sailed her to Lisbon. She carried troops for the service of Dom Pedro for a time. A year later she was bought by the Spanish Government, turned into a vessel of war, and her good name of Royal William changed to Ysabel Segunda. Now she was against Dom Pedro. In an action in the Bay of San Sebastian the first shot ever fired from a steam warship was fired from her decks.

For some years she was used in coast-guard service in the Mediterranean and, needing repairs in 1840, was sent to Bordeaux. The workmen found that her timbers were quite rotten but her engines still reliable. So the engines were taken from her and put into a new ship which was given her name and which was wrecked off the Algerian coast in 1860. So, for thirty years after her launching at Quebec, she led a strange and adventurous life, beginning with buoyant hope in the cold waters of the St. Lawrence and ending in dismemberment and decay in the distant Mediterranean.

The Cunards were of Quaker stock who emigrated from Wales to Philadelphia in the seventeenth century. In the American War of Independence they became United Empire Loyalists and left, with what goods they could salvage, for Halifax. There young Samuel Cunard was born and became a well-to-do merchant. By degrees he acquired a number of whaling ships. He became agent for the East India Company. He ran a line of sailing ships that carried the mails between Halifax, Newfoundland, Boston, and the West Indies. Eventually he founded the Cunard Company, which ran the first steamship mail service from Britain to America.

The first of the Cunard steamships of the Atlantic service sailed from Liverpool to Halifax and Boston in the summer of 1840. She was the Britannia, and her proportions were these: 207 feet long, 34 feet wide, with a tonnage of 1154 and 740 horsepower. She arrived in Boston in fourteen days and eight hours, with Samuel Cunard on board. So delighted were the hospitable Bostonians that he received eighteen hundred invitations to dinner on his first day there. Surely no film star of our time could do better!

Not by hospitality alone did the Bostonians show their approval of the Cunard service. Four years later, when the Britannia became stuck in the ice in Boston harbor, the people had a channel seven miles long and one hundred feet wide cut for her release.

The great Allan Line and other lines followed. In 1911 a fortnightly service to Havre, France, from Quebec, was instituted by the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique.

So shipbuilding, which was begun in Quebec by the Intendant, Jean Talon, in 1670, dominated its industries for generations. Champlain Street, for generations, was crowded by the premises of shipsmiths, spar and block makers, riggers, ship chandlers, and towboat owners. Half the population of the city worked in the shipyards. Now, in the World War of today, shipbuilding is once more forging ahead.

The Quebec Bridge is one of the greatest suspension bridges in the world. The Prince of Wales (now the Duke of Windsor) was present at its inauguration ceremony in 1919, when his popularity in Canada had never been equaled by any other human being. The young prince stood on the platform of his railway carriage looking down at the splendor of the river, at the wonder of the bridge which had had two tragic failures in the earlier attempts to raise it. In the first attempt sixty people had perished; in the second, seven lost their lives. In both instances colossal steelworks, costing millions of dollars, had collapsed into the channel.

Throughout the Province of Quebec modern progress has brought change and often prosperity. In the region of the Upper Saguenay, where the wild river cast itself in stormy solitude through rocky gorge and over precipice and there were only farmlands and a few towns, there now are plants that take advantage of its power. So powerful are the rivers of the province that in hydroelectric production it stands high among the countries of the world.

One of the most impressive works of the province has been the building of good roads. In 1923 there were only three thousand miles of highways, many of these medieval. By 1931 there were over thirteen thousand miles. Americans, suffering under Prohibition, were enabled to motor in comfort through the fine scenery while enjoying the wine, the beer, and the whisky controlled by the Quebec government. Most of the money thus acquired was spent on making good roads. St. Côme de Kennebec, St. Laurent de Matapedia, Rivière de Tonnerre, St. Stanislas de la Rivière des Envies, and many other names to charm lovers of the picturesque, were among the municipalities that were given grants for better roads. On either side of these roads are well-tilled farms run on modern methods but not overmechanized and weighed down by debt, as is often the case in less thrifty provinces. The villages resemble the villages of Normandy, but that high, steeply sloping roof was conceived in Quebec, so that it might cast off the weight of snow. All roads in the province lead to Quebec, the Rome of Canada. And all the way are churches, churches! The tools of the wood carver fit well into the hand of the Canadian. In Quebec there is the beautiful high altar of the Hôpital Général, carved by Noël Levasseur in 1721. He also carved the reredos of the Ursuline Chapel. The wood carving and sculpture of Quebec are subjects for guidebooks, of which there are a great many. The guidebooks will admirably link the present with the past for the stranger.

But if you are one of those who do not care for guidance in your exploring, you will wander through the old city in summer twilight, surrounded by the strange company of the past, those who lived, suffered, and felt the fire of life in their veins in this place centuries ago. Nobles of France, priests, nuns, coureurs de bois, the slinking Indians, many children. Are the children, the little nameless children, to be forgotten? They who suffered cold and hunger under the sieges, heard the shock of battle, saw terror in their mothers’ eyes? Or in times of peace filled the streets with their laughter?

Here comes Champlain, rugged and noble in his bearing, his dog Matelot trotting at his side. Champlain has taken off his hat to feel the cool breeze on his head. Louis Hébert’s children are clinging to his fingers. He has given each of them a flower from his garden. Is there perhaps, surviving in Quebec, a rosebush or a carnation descended from Champlain’s garden?

At the base of the monument to him an angel, with wings upraised, trumpets the joyful news of his coming. Well might angelic trumpets blow for such a man—a man who feared no one but God, who explored the unknown, savage-ridden forests with a courage never surpassed, who asked so little from France and received so much less. In his small ship Don de Dieu he made a record that held for more than a hundred years, by crossing from France to Tadoussac in eighteen days.

Champlain was the first man to love Canada. Thirteen crossings he made and always returned to her. He recorded her beauties, listed the names of her trees: the lovely maple, the birch, the beech, the cedar, the cherry, and how many more! Her wild fruits, her hazelnuts were noticed by him. He was the first to decorate her with a garden. His lovely young wife Hélène is but a dim figure, for her eyes were turned always toward France. Quebec was her place of banishment.

Now out of the summer dusk comes Count Frontenac, his walk that of a courtier, his eye that of an intrepid soldier. If he could speak to us, what would he say of the Canada of today? Surely it would not fulfill the magnificence of his visions of a New France! He dreamed of controlling Hudson’s Bay, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, the Hudson, the Ohio, and all the Great Lakes. He too had but little help from France and gave all his strength to the strengthening of Canada. “He was a sure breeder of storms in time of peace,” wrote Parkman, “but in time of calamity and danger a tower of strength.”

He has left his mark on the city; his unique dominance stands without question. With those Indian hordes he made friends and was the first white man to claim their fearful respect. In the dusk, toward the heights, the spirits of the Indians now stir like an uneasy cloud! The lightning of this cloud is the cry of torture, the rain from it, the rain of tears.

Now, if you can bear it, you may see the terrible procession of the tortured. You can see the naked, burned and bleeding bodies, the anguished faces, or what once were faces, before the Indians gouged out their eyes, cut off their lips. You cover your own eyes, and no wonder! You are thankful when the dim procession descends to the Lower Town and disappears into the mist rising from the river. In this company are the Récollet and Jesuit Fathers. A pale radiance touches their heads, which are bent as though in prayer, for they died for the Faith. Radiance clothes the procession of nuns now approaching. Their faces are raised, their eyes lit by the ecstasy of their hope and faith and noble charity. It was they who knelt to kiss the sacred soil of Quebec when they stepped from the ships. No other city has sprung from such beginnings. Commerce had nothing to do with it. Conquest and ambition were not its roots, but the will to set the Cross on this Rock, the will to save the savages from their savagery. Some of the nuns are no more than girls. Some are women, majestic in maturity. Their faces show the mark of breeding, but their hands are roughened by hard work. Children cling to their hands, little French girls and brown little Indians. There is nothing sad about the nuns, indeed many of them are smiling and the young ones move with lightness and even gaiety. They pass the monument to the faith that stands in the Place d’Armes, and disappear.

Why, here is another dog! He does not bound along like Champlain’s dog Matelot. No, he moves solidly, stiffly. He is The Golden Dog, Le Chien d’Or, whose master placed him above the door of his place of business, as a challenge to the unscrupulous Intendant Bigot. Below on the tablet was this verse:

But what did Bigot care for the threats of underlings? See him coming down the street, his ugly little face alive with mirth and malice. He is richly dressed; the hilt of his sword glitters with jewels. From his lace ruffles there comes the scent from an expensive Paris parfumier. On either side of him there is a lovely lady.

Here comes another ghost, this one as pretty as a picture. She is Mary Simpson, the most beautiful girl in Quebec. Young Horatio Nelson fell in love with her when he was captain of H.M.S. Albermarle. If she had accepted his offer of marriage, what of Lady Hamilton? Nelson was so bent on having Mary that he would have sold his commission and settled down in Quebec had not a brother officer persuaded him to sail for the West Indies, where he was already past due. Davidson, the friend, had said to him, “If you persist in this love affair, utter ruin will follow.”

“Then let it follow!” Nelson had exclaimed. “I am resolved to marry Miss Simpson.”

Fortunately Davidson was able to convince him of his duty.

Is there today on the face of the earth a man of aristocratic birth, an inheritor of great social position and wealth, who has given up all to lead a life of poverty and self-abnegation? Bishop Laval was such a man. His colossal monument stands before the Palace of the Cardinal, but his spirit moves tonight through the dark streets. The night is passing. It is two o’clock in the morning. Can you see him, a lighted lantern in his hand, going slowly toward the church to pray? He has risen from his mattress that is laid on boards and is going to the altar to pray, as he has done, night in, night out, for many years. In time of pestilence he nursed the poverty-stricken sufferers. His food was coarse and without seasoning. His life was one of hardship; he knelt for hours each night in prayer; in winter the church was bitterly cold—yet he lived to be eighty-five and died then only because his feet had been frozen!

Two striking figures now pass, the man who conquered Quebec and the man who lost it—Wolfe, with his sword upraised as he urged on his men, the black mourning band on the sleeve of his scarlet coat making him a mark for French muskets—Montcalm, on his black horse, his white uniform stained with blood, his somber gaze fixed on the ground.

Montcalm’s skull may be seen at the Ursuline Convent today. All the somber thoughts are gone from it. It is an empty seashell, washed up on the shore of time.

Here, coming toward the Hotel Frontenac, which he evidently takes to be still the Château St. Louis, comes a quite different figure. It is George III’s big burly son, the Duke of Kent, on his way to dine with the governor. He is a fine figure, only twenty-five but in command of the 7th Fusiliers. Little does he guess that his reluctant parenthood will produce one of the greatest of English sovereigns.

Now there is no movement anywhere except the solemn movement of the river as it passes the city, half fortress, half shrine, upon its rock. A few stars are reflected in the river, bright for a space, then lost in its ripples.

Fortifications—Material and Spiritual

Dickens wrote of Quebec: “The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of America; its giddy heights; its citadel suspended, as it were, in the air; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways; and the splendid views which burst upon the eye at every turn: is at once unique and lasting. It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the mind with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there are associations clustering about it which would make a desert rich in interest. . . . The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches and charities but it is mainly in the prospect from the site of the Old Government House and from the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of country, rich in field and forest, mountain height and water, which lies stretched out before the view, with miles of Canadian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the landscape; the motley crowd of gables, roofs and chimney tops, in the old hilly town immediately at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight, and the tiny ships from below the Rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders’ webs against the light . . . forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures the eye can rest upon.”

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

Le Chien d’Or, the Golden Dog, over the door of the Post Office, expresses the defiance toward François Bigot, corrupt Intendant. The inscription reads:
I am a dog that gnaws his bone,
I crouch and gnaw it all alone:
The time will come, which is not yet,
When I’ll bite him by whom I’m bit.

Of the “frowning gateways,” mentioned by Dickens, the St. Louis Gate is the most impressive. It has an air of fine command. But the first gate here was a single arch with blockhouse and portcullis and was built by Frontenac. So were St. John’s Gate and Palace Gate. Later were built the Hope Gate, in 1786, under the direction of Brigadier Hope, the Prescott Gate, built eleven years later, and last the Kent Gate, named for Queen Victoria’s father. There are also the Citadel Gates, one of which was built to protect the road called Citadel Hill and the other forming the entrance to the Citadel itself.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

St. Louis Gate, in front of which Montcalm massed a company of his men just before he was mortally wounded.

St. Louis Street goes back to the time of Governor Montmagny, who succeeded Frontenac two hundred and fifty years ago. From it the Citadel is reached. It is a massive fortification which was begun in 1703. Twenty thousand livres were spent on it by the government every year, and those who could not pay taxes were bound to contribute work. In the time of Bigot much of the work was badly done, so that when the siege came it found the walls vulnerable where they should have been adamant.

The British Government set about making the Citadel impregnable in 1803. The work was planned by the Duke of Wellington, and thirty-five million dollars was spent on it. There were few fortifications in the Empire to equal it. Across the river, on the Lévis shore, the British Government, sixty years later, built three forts and gave them to the Canadian Government as a present, but they have never been supplied with arms or men.

Beneath the armory, the guardroom, and barracks of the Citadel there is a network of dark passages and some melancholy dungeons. The Royal 22nd, of which General Foch was honorary colonel, makes its headquarters in the Citadel, and in summer a part of it is occupied by the Governor General. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth spent a short time there in 1939.

So stands the moated fortress, the thousands of tons of stone, carried there by great labor for its impregnability. So stand the massive city gates and its wall, all seeming, as they rise from the precipitous Rock, to be made for eternal defense. Yet Quebec has fallen more than once in the days before bombing from the air. Now the young enemy airman might well be lured, by her challenge, to the dropping of a high explosive that would shatter the forbidding walls to rubble.

Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Railway

A widely known section of Quebec, showing, from left to right, the Citadel, the Château Frontenac, and the Post Office.

At the same time when the British Government set about strengthening the Citadel, four circular Martello towers were begun and took twenty years to complete. Three stand today. One is above the valley of the St. Charles, the second is on the Plains of Abraham, and the third a few hundred feet west, toward the city. Between these two last, Montcalm’s fatal wound was inflicted. The walls of the towers were thirteen feet thick on the outer side and but seven next the town. With cannon at the top, portholes for guns at the second story, a powder magazine below, they stood as powerful guardians before the walls. If they fell, the walls and gates must bear the brunt of the attack. If the walls were pierced, there still was the Citadel, with the keep for protection! Can we wonder if the people of Quebec felt very safe and secure in their position as guardians of the key of the Empire’s power on the continent?

With all these preparations against American invasion, what did one American do but present a beautiful sunken garden to Quebec! Many unusual plants flourish there, and if an olive tree, as the symbol of peace, could be persuaded to grow, it would be fitting. A bronze statue of Jeanne d’Arc, mounted on a splendid horse and holding aloft her sword, stands in the garden. It is an appropriate statue for this meeting place of French and English. The French may look at it and think of the cruelty of the English, who burned Jeanne as a witch in 1431. On the other hand, the English may remember that the chairman of the court who sentenced her to death was a Frenchman, and that it was the French who sold her to the English.

Quebec is a city of churches, convents, monasteries, and memorials to a past of both religious endeavor and continuous warfare. Nothing dies in Quebec! There is no feeling of a moldy past, but of a continuance, a persistence of the past into the future.

Here on Palace Hill is the Hôtel Dieu de Quebec, the hospital founded in 1637 by the Duchesse d’ Aiguillon, a niece of Cardinal Richelieu, who himself gave a large sum to it. Here are not only rich relics of the past but modern equipment. Here is a large library with many ancient volumes; here the skull of Father Jean de Brébeuf and the delicate bones of Father Gabriel Lalemant. But here also operations are performed skillfully and with up-to-date methods.

For more than three hundred years the Ursulines of New France have carried on their work in Quebec. “Amazons of God in Canada,” they set their feet on the new land in triumphant zeal. The first Mother Superior was Mère Marie de l’Incarnation, who was widowed at nineteen. Soon after its establishment the convent had to be used as a fort, and to the militant nuns were added the strength of eighty men and twelve watchdogs. Think of the icy-cold cloisters where the nuns slept, the bare chill of the soldiers’ quarters, and, in the night, all being roused by the barking, the hoarse, uncontrolled barking, of the twelve watchdogs! Mère Marie de l’Incarnation kept powder and shot in her own care and, when attack came, was there to dispense them. One may well be proud to remember what a large part women have played in the history of the Province of Quebec—the heroic vigilance, the selfless labors of the nuns, the farm work in all weathers, the spinning and beautiful weaving of the habitant women, the courage in danger, and the fortitude under siege of many others.

The Basilica, the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Quebec, the Cardinal’s Palace, and Laval University, founded by Bishop Laval, and the colossal memorial to him rise magnificent from the land that bore the first imprint of the European plow on these heights.

In the crypts of the Basilica and the university more than nine hundred people have been buried. Bishop Laval himself lies here, and Count Frontenac and Governor Vaudreuil. Dry bones lie in the crypt, but live youth flows through the university. A charming young man, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, visited here in 1860, and the great elm which was planted to mark that visit still spreads its shade in the courtyard, where boys in long blue coats play games or stroll about.

When Quebec was ceded to the British, there were no Protestant churches in the city. The chaplain of the Frazer Highlanders looked about him for a place of worship for his men. The Jesuits’ chapel was lent to them, and there they went on a Sunday in their kilts and held the Scottish service. It was not till 1810 that King George III assisted them in building a Presbyterian kirk, St. Andrews.

Garden Street, which bounds the Anglican Cathedral on one side, was once the garden of the Jesuit Fathers; the ground on which the cathedral stands was once occupied by the chapel of the Récollet Fathers. After the cession of Quebec the Anglicans, like the Presbyterians, had no spiritual home. In their case it was the Récollets who came to the rescue and, when their own service was over, lent their chapel to the newcomers. It would be well for Presbyterians and Anglicans of today to remember these magnanimous acts.

It was at the expense of King George III that the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity was built, and it cost him £18,000. The king’s parish church was St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and it pleased him to picture its counterpart rising in this distant land. So the new cathedral, the first of the Church of England faith to be built outside the British Isles, was established upon the Rock, and from its tower a chime of English bells cast their strange cadence through the old Catholic town. Today it is the only church in the New World that has a Royal Pew emblazoned with the King’s Arms.

Edward VII and Edward VIII, George V and George VI have attended service in the cathedral while they were still heirs to the throne. In their pews, which have doors and locks, the congregation has heard a royal voice read the lessons. The communion silver was given by George III and bears the Royal Arms. An altar cloth of gold and crimson velvet was from the hangings in Westminster Abbey at his coronation. Another, of blue and gold, was used at the coronation of George VI.

The Duke of Richmond, once governor of Canada, lies buried just outside the chancel. It was he and his duchess who gave, in Brussels, the great ball of Byron’s poem on the night before Waterloo. It was a long way, physically and spiritually, from Brussels to Quebec, but the noble pair made the journey and brought with them six of their fourteen children to liven the viceregal court. Those were spacious days, and nothing was done by halves.

One of the duke’s daughters, Lady Sarah, had fallen in love with young Sir Peregrine Maitland, who was as poor as he was attractive. The marriage was forbidden, but the froward girl went to Sir Peregrine’s apartment, and to save her reputation her father agreed to the marriage and set about to further the interests of his son-in-law.

It would be well to keep Canada in the family, or to keep the family in Canada. So, by influence, the duke was able to have Sir Peregrine appointed Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. Three Ontario townships mark his governorship to this day, for they were named for Lady Sarah’s three pet dogs—Tiny, Tay, and Floss.

The Duke of Richmond met a tragic end in Upper Canada. It was during one of his tours there that he bought a young fox for a pet. They were a family who loved pets. One day the half-wild little creature bit the duke’s hand. This happened near Niagara. The duke made light of the bite and some weeks later, on the return journey, set out to walk thirty miles through the woods to Richmond. There he suffered a strange constriction in the throat. But the next day he struggled on by canoe toward Ottawa.

They had not gone far when the duke became strangely agitated. He became wildly excited. The men paddling the canoe turned in frantic haste toward the shore. The instant they reached it the duke leaped from the canoe and ran shouting into the forest. There they found him, greatly spent, and that night he died. So death continued to pursue the governors of Canada.

If one will wander about in Quebec or in the country surrounding it, not in the time of tourists and conventions but in spring or autumn, he will feel the pull of two lives within him: on the one hand the familiar life of his own breathing body, on the other the life that has been lived here long ago, which will not depart but stretches out a haunting hand to touch him.

Fifteen miles beyond the great Falls of Montmorency the road leads to Ste. Anne de Beaupré. A chapel was built here by Breton sailors in gratitude to Ste. Anne, by whose intervention they believed they had been saved from shipwreck in a terrible storm. Louis Gaumont was the first to be healed at this shrine. In 1658, after having made his devotions, he was healed, and since then the fame of its miracles has been carried to distant parts of the world. Notable pilgrimages have traversed the twenty-one miles from Quebec, led by governors, bishops, and intendants, all on foot. It is no rare thing for pilgrims to walk there barefoot and, having arrived, mount the long stone flight of the Scala Sancta on their knees. So religious zeal, to the point of humiliation of the flesh, still endures.

Quebec persists in being Catholic, in being French. Fifteen million people, it is said, have visited the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré. The use of the French language in Canada is not decreasing but increasing. The people of England are far from the England of a few generations ago. The people of the United States are still farther away from the United States of a few generations ago. A gulf lies between the France of today and the France of yesterday. The new generation in each of these would be strangers in the house of the past. It is not so in Quebec. In Quebec the stream of the past flows steadily, with little deviation, into the present, mingles with it and enriches it.

Religion in the province is a living force. It is probably a more vital force in this province than in any other community in the world. In Quebec the clergy have lived the lives of the people, worked with them, suffered with them, guided them, as in no other community in the world.

Language is a living force to bind the people of French Canada together. The fact that the English Canadians do not learn to speak French raises the barrier of language between these two strong limbs of the Canadian people. They do not tend to become alike, as might have been expected. Foreign immigration influences the English-speaking provinces to become less and less homogeneous. The flood of American magazines, the torrent of American radio adds to their confusion. But Quebec is steady as a rock in the resolve to preserve the tradition of her ancient religion and language.

It was the intention of those who made Confederation of the Provinces that there should be no question of French-Canadian rights in this respect. Sir John Macdonald said, “It was assented to by the deputation from each province that the use of the French language should form one of the principles upon which Confederation should be established and that its use as at present should be guaranteed by the Imperial Act.” Twenty-five years later Sir John said, “We have a Constitution now under which all British subjects are in a position of absolute equality, having equal rights of every kind, of language, of religion, of property, and of person.”

To quote the words of President Elie Lescot of Haiti, spoken in Montreal, “The imperishable culture and religion of Old France may have been mutilated in Europe but is carried on proudly in Canada.”

In Quebec, not many months ago, the Prime Minister of England, the Honorable Winston Churchill, and the President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt, met in the most portentous conference between nations yet held on this continent. They met in the Château Frontenac, where once stood the Château St. Louis. An army of diplomats, secretaries, newspaper reporters, and soldiers gathered in the city. The eyes of the world were attendant on it. So Quebec, which so long was the key to Britain’s power in North America, became, as it were, the keystone of Allied power.

Quebec was a fitting place for such a meeting, for there is a feeling of permanence about it, partly because of its position of rocky eminence above the river, partly because of a certitude of immortality in its composition. The great figures of its past were concerned not only with the duty of living but with the business of the soul and with the duty and dignity of its passing into another life.

Changes were made to punctuation and spelling to achieve consistency. The diacritic marks on some names were added where missing.

[The end of Quebec, Historic Seaport by Mazo de la Roche]