Old Quebec, the city of Champlain

Old Quebec, the city of Champlain
Emily Poynton Weaver

Emily Weaver

Old Quebec, the city of Champlain

FOREWORD

THIS little book aspires, neither to the utility of a guide-book, nor to the dignity of a history. It is designed rather as a reminder of the great events which have given to the old city of Quebec a world-wide fame; and with this object in view, many of the illustrations have been copied from old prints and drawings. With the exception of a photograph of his painting of Wolfe, kindly lent by J. W. L. Forster, Esq., and the two photographs on page 57, taken by James Ritchie, Esq., of Quebec, the remainder of the illustrations are largely the result of a pleasant summer in that quaintest part of the Dominion—once the heart of “New France”—where picturesque old-world customs still linger amongst the modern fashions of this practical century.

I. The Founder of Quebec

THE figure of the founder of Quebec rises in history, strong and effective, above an ever-changing environment of turmoil and unrest and strife, as to-day his great statue stands in motionless dignity above the shifting crowds of pleasure-seekers and tourists who flit about “the Terrace” at Quebec.

Take him when you will; tossing in a cockleshell on the mountainous rollers of the Atlantic; testing the soil of some newly discovered region with his grain and garden-seeds; taking careful inventory of the products of woods and earth and waters; training his refractory red allies to some method in their military madness; fighting the loathsome death-dealing scurvy; surrounded by disheartened or treacherous followers; even cheated and befooled by a frivolous notoriety-hunter—Samuel de Champlain shows himself ever calm, cheerful, heroic—a man of rare sincerity and singleness of purpose.

Not much is known of the ancestry of this truly noble Frenchman, beyond the names of his father and mother—Antoine Champlain and Marguerite Le Roy. Yet we can guess that from his paternal ancestry at least he inherited a good portion of courage and simplicity, for Antoine and his brother, the more notable “Provençal Captain,” belonged to the race of sea-faring men, who always and everywhere seem to be plain, bold, simple folk. The circumstances of his early life, moreover, tended to form the character of the future founder of New France on firm, strong lines.

Samuel de Champlain was born in 1570, or possibly a year or two earlier, at Brouage, then a busy little seaport on the Bay of Biscay—now a mouldering hamlet, nearly two miles inland, for the ocean has retreated, and the business of the place has ebbed away with the receding tides. A monument, neither very ancient nor very imposing, has been erected near the little church, to keep green in his birth-place the memory of the founder of Quebec; but, according to the account of a recent visitor, the tumble-down cottages, sleepy street, and crumbling old walls can give no idea of what Brouage was in its palmy days. “The best seaport in France,” wrote one enthusiast, about the time Champlain was born. “Here you hear every known language spoken!” said another, thirty years later; and the lad drank in from the talk of these sailors of many tongues and nations that love of “navigation,” which, he says, “has powerfully attracted me ever since my boyhood, and has led me on to expose myself almost all my life to the impetuous buffetings of the sea.”

In spite of this love of things nautical, in spite of the example of the sea-captains who frequented his home, Samuel de Champlain was to gain experience of the ways both of camps and courts before he took up his real life-work as explorer and colonist. He was born in a time of conflict. In his youth Spain and England were at death-grips for the dominion of the seas; and his own country was torn by religious wars. During his boyhood, indeed, his own little town was twice taken in the struggle between Huguenots and Catholics; and, when he reached manhood, Champlain (though a Catholic) enlisted under the banner of the (then) Protestant king, Henry of Navarre. It is probable that he fought in the battles of Arques and Ivry; it is certain, at any rate, that he served his king well, and won the favor of his superiors, perhaps even of the monarch himself.

After the young man had led a soldier’s life for some nine years, the war ended with the triumph of Henry, and Champlain turned once more to the sea. But he did not follow in his father’s footsteps and take command of a fishing-boat or a coasting vessel. The “Provençal Captain” had been engaged to act as pilot-general for the transports bearing home some Spanish troops from France, and his nephew went with him to Cadiz, thus, for the first time, visiting a foreign city. Things so fell out, however, that he saw many other strange places before returning to his native land. The “St. Julian,” on which he had embarked, being “a strong vessel and a good sailer,” of no less than five hundred tons’ burden, was chosen to make one of a flotilla destined for the West Indies, but the “Provençal Captain” was engaged with other matters, and Samuel de Champlain was therefore invited to take command of the ship.

Thus it happened that in January, 1599, Champlain set forth into that wonderful New World, of which he had heard so much, upon which he was to set so deep a mark. On this first voyage, however, he did not reach the scene of his labors in the forest-covered north. He sailed amongst the West Indian Islands; he visited Mexico; he made friends with savage chiefs; he wrote vivid descriptions of people, places and customs; he drew pictures of beasts, birds and reptiles in a fashion which (witness his “two-legged chameleon”) must have been the wonder and despair of many a succeeding naturalist.

Returning home at length with this richly illustrated journal in his hand, Champlain went to court, became a pensioner of the king, and probably “a lion” in the brilliant society of the French capital. The life was not to his taste, but from the court a way opened for his return to his beloved wildernesses. An old general of his, De Chastes, dreaming of the founding of a New France in North America, turned to the enthusiastic explorer to translate dreams into facts; and early in 1603 Champlain was sent with Pont Gravé, a rugged old sea-captain of Jacques Cartier’s home-port, St. Malo, to take up again Cartier’s task and explore the St. Lawrence. The pair went as far as Hochelaga, or “Mont Royale,” and tried in vain to force a way up the rapids. Champlain then sailed for home full of enthusiasm for the planting of a colony on the great river. But—“l’homme propose et Dieu dispose.” Aymar de Chastes was dead, and though the enterprise soon found a new patron in the Sieur de Monts, that nobleman desired to make the experimental settlement, not on the “Great River of Hochelaga,” but on the Acadian coast.

Champlain and his comrades loyally did their utmost to make a success of each of the unfortunate Acadian settlements in turn, but the leaders’ lack of experience and the intrigues of their enemies in France brought the colony to ruin. In this hard school, however, Champlain was learning invaluable lessons in the art of colonization. At times, perhaps, he thought his added wisdom dearly bought by the miseries of desolate St. Croix, but surely his memory of Port Royal must have been shot through with many a bright thread; and often, in after years, his eyes must have danced with laughter when he recalled the oddities of the sagamore, Membertou, the gay whimsicalities of some of his associate gentlemen-pioneers, and the joyous feasts and good fellowship of his own famous “Ordre de Bon Temps.”

II. The Founding of the City

NEARLY five years had passed since Champlain’s former visit to the St. Lawrence, when, on the third day of July, 1608, he again landed beneath the Rock of Quebec. He was now in the prime of life: strong, resourceful, energetic; and this was the great moment in his history, to which all his previous experiences had been a lead up to, from which his future life would date itself.

He had come simply, unostentatiously (half-unconscious of the significance of what he was doing, yet full of a steadfast purpose which lent dignity to the trivial details and humble beginnings of that day) to lay the foundation of Quebec, of New France, of the Dominion of Canada! He was inspired by patriotism, loyalty, devotion to the Cross, and an eager thirst for knowledge; and in his heart there was no room for that cursed love of gain which has sullied the glory of so many daring explorers of this western continent.

This time Champlain had come to Quebec to stay, and though his first “habitation” has long vanished from sight, the city then begun has had the quality of permanence. The Rock seemed a fortress ready made; but Champlain set up his log dwellings and store-houses nearly on the spot which is now the Market-place of the Lower Town. The ground covered to-day with tortuous streets of quaint-roofed houses was then thick with “nut-trees,” and the little company of thirty men (there were others left trading at Tadousac) had much ado to clear the soil. Some wearied of their toil, and planned to end it by the treacherous murder of their leader; but the plot was betrayed, and Champlain and his little colony were saved from the destruction threatening both alike.

That busy summer ended, Pont Gravé sailed away, leaving Champlain and twenty-eight men to make good during the winter their bold invasion of the wilderness. They stood on the defensive; but the neighboring Indians proved friendly, and no human enemy came near their “habitation.” Yet the foundations of New France (as it seems of every colony) were laid in woe and anguish. The winter had hardly begun in earnest when the horrible scurvy appeared amongst them, and before spring twenty of the company lay cold and silent beneath the snow. Of the remaining eight, four had been at death’s door, but Champlain himself was still full of health and life and courage.

Once, when on an excursion up the St. Charles, he had chanced upon a tumble-down stone chimney, a few rusted cannon-balls, and some other relics which convinced him that he stood upon the spot where Jacques Cartier had wintered seventy-three years before. A less resolute man might have found the discovery disheartening; but Champlain had no thought of retreat.

Often during that melancholy winter he questioned the Algonquins, who had camped beside the little fort, as to what lay in the unknown regions beyond; and, listening to their talk of rivers, lakes and boundless forests, he grew more and more eager to plunge into the wilderness. But always the Indians added tragic stories of a foe infesting the woodland paths and lying ambushed beside the streams; and so Champlain, moved partly perhaps by chivalrous pity for their terror, and trusting in the superior military skill and excellent weapons of his own people, promised to take the field during the coming spring against the ubiquitous and blood-thirsty Iroquois.

Some writers regard this promise as the grand mistake of Champlain’s policy. Possibly, however, the struggle was inevitable. At any rate, the first anniversary of the founding of Quebec had hardly passed, when was inaugurated the fearful blood-feud between the French and the Iroquois that for the greater part of a century brought out the best and the worst of New France—courage, steadfastness, unselfish heroism on the one hand, and, on the other, dare-devil recklessness and pitiless brutality.

Blamable or unblamable, Champlain and two of his followers, clad in “helmet, breastplate, and greaves,” and carrying ponderous arquebuses, joined a host of painted warriors, and caused for once a horrible panic in the ranks of the Iroquois. What brave could stand against an adversary who had the thunder and lightning at his command? But the Iroquois were no cowards. Their panic passed with the novelty of the French mode of fighting; but their thirst for vengeance long outlived him who had awakened it, and again and again it threatened the very existence of New France.

Clearly, however, it was not the fault of Champlain that the colony remained so perilously feeble. He was as truly the servant as the governor of his settlement, and for nearly thirty years his voyages and journeys and battles, his struggles with mercenary traders and heedless officials, had little intermission. He was, moreover, a homeless man; for, though he married in 1610, his wife was a child of twelve, and he did not bring her out to his ruinous “habitation” for ten long years.

Immediately after his return with her, he began to build on the edge of the cliff, where now stands the Chateau Frontenac, a fort which, altered or rebuilt by his successors, was afterwards known as the Chateau St. Louis. Beneath the planks of Dufferin Terrace its cellars still remain. The main building was destroyed by fire in 1834; but a wing added by General Haldimand in 1784 was only demolished in 1891 to make way for the luxurious Chateau Frontenac hotel. This often shelters ten times the number of people which made up the population of New France when Champlain began the building of his “chateau.”

At that date six white children represented young Canada, and Madame de Champlain had scarcely any companions of her own sex save her three serving-women. She had no lack of occupation, however, for she devoted much of her time to teaching the Indians.

In this charitable pursuit she enjoyed the entire approbation of her soldier-husband, who was reported to have said that “the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire, and that kings should extend their domains in heathen countries only to subject them to Christ.” In 1615 he had brought from France several Recollet missionaries, who, in their efforts to win the Indian tribes for Christ and for the Church, showed a sublime contempt for discomfort, hardship and danger. They were followed, ten years later, by a little party of Jesuits, eager for martyrdom; but while Champlain lived they did not attain that painful eminence of devotion.

It seemed, however, that, as the shadows of eventide deepened about the gallant old Governor of Quebec, his task grew ever harder. The twentieth year of his settlement was just completed when a crushing blow fell. War broke out between France and England, and a hostile fleet bore down upon neglected Quebec, capturing on the way a fleet from France, and destroying the stock and buildings of a little farm at Cap Tourmente from which Champlain had hoped great things. For weeks before this the little garrison had been on short rations, but Champlain from his rock flung defiance at the invaders, and the English admiral retreated, leaving his proud opponent to the mercy of a grimmer foe. The Frenchmen fought off starvation during the long winter by digging up roots and casting themselves on the charity of the Indians, but when Kirke returned with the warm weather, even Champlain was fain to surrender.

In that hour his life must have seemed a very tragedy of failure—himself a prisoner, Quebec in the hands of the enemy, his life-work crumbling to ruins! But in Champlain’s vocabulary there was no such word as despair. Immediately he set himself to obtain the restoration of Quebec, and his enthusiasm prevailed over all obstacles. By the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye Quebec was given back to France, and in 1633, after nearly four years’ absence, Champlain returned to his adopted country.

He received a joyous welcome from the few French families who had remained in the colony. The Indians, who came down the river by hundreds in their canoes, gave him a still more enthusiastic greeting. Never before had there been at Quebec such feasting, such speech-making, such a smoking of peace-pipes; and Champlain, knowing that the very life of the colony was bound up with the fur-trade, cherished high hopes for the prosperity of Quebec.

What matter that the original settlement below the cliff lay in ruins? The Governor immediately set about its rebuilding, and on the Rock he erected the first parish church of Quebec, “Notre Dame de Recouvrance.” Authorities differ as to whether it stood on the site of the Basilica, or on that of the English Cathedral, for on a windy day in June, 1640, it was burnt to the ground, with all it contained. Before that catastrophe occurred the heroic founder of Quebec had gone to his rest.

During his last busy years Champlain found much time for devotional exercises, and already in his life-time Quebec had taken on that markedly religious character which it bears to-day. Then, as now, black-gowned priests pervaded the streets, and the clear sound of the church-bells broke in at oft-recurring intervals on the harsher clangor of secular life. “Fort St. Louis,” wrote the Governor’s Jesuit confessor, “seemed like a well-managed school; in the morning at table M. de Champlain heard read aloud some good history, and at night the lives of the saints; in the evening there was private meditation, and then prayers were said kneeling.”

Yet to the end Champlain bore the temporal welfare of his colony upon his heart. In the last of his letters, he gave to Cardinal Richelieu a glowing account of the possibilities of Canada, and begged for one hundred and twenty men to subdue the Iroquois, “Then worship and trade would increase beyond belief.”

Two months later the Father of New France was stricken with paralysis, and on Christmas Day, 1635, he died. Amidst the mourning of his people, he was buried in a “sepulchre particulier,” and the “Chapelle de Champlain” was built over his tomb. It stood, it is believed, close beside “Fort St. Louis,” and was therefore very near the site of the monument erected a few years ago to commemorate the name and deeds of the brave, simple-hearted founder of Quebec.

III. Notre Dame des Victoires

AFTER Champlain the story of Quebec takes a more sombre hue. Its pages tell of long-continued warfare with the savages; of a fierce though intermittent struggle with the “heretic” English, the papist-hating “Bostonnais.” The tale has no lack of heroes and of heroines, courageous, saintly, inspired by visions of the invisible, or driven to the supreme heights of self-sacrifice by the most awful sights ever shown to mortal eyes.

To this period belong the valiant Governor, Montmagny; brave Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal; gentle Jeanne Mance; the ecstatic Mother Marie de l’Incarnation; the Jesuit devotees, Jogues, Bréboeuf, and Lalemant; those other martyrs, Dollard and his sixteen defenders of the Long Sault; daring, ruthless D’Iberville; luckless, dauntless La Salle; and a host of others who in that dark period bravely played their parts on the blood-stained stage. But above them all, by force of circumstances and force of character, towers the stern military figure of Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac.

Arrogant, imperious, fearless, defiant of danger, from his “Chateau” on the height he lorded it over the straggling settlements along the river that then made up New France. He imposed his will on restless traders, on his savage “children” of the forest, and he made a brave fight to impose it also on the spiritual leaders of New France, and on the Intendant, sent out specially to check and thwart him. His very faults served New France well in that time of agony, when the savages were ever at her throat, sucking away her life-blood and mangling her all but to dissolution.

In contrast to timorous La Barre and vacillating Denonville, there is something fascinating about the stalwart Frontenac, who was as surely the saviour of New France as the nobler, gentler Champlain was its founder and father. A soldier and a courtier, Frontenac had left his youth far behind him, when, in 1672, he landed for the first time at Quebec; but he could adapt himself to circumstances, at least to any circumstances in which his imperious will could have free play. He was quickly at home in the little town on the St. Lawrence, “the future capital,” as he saw it, “of a great empire.” He was at home also in the camps and councils of the redmen, stooping, as a smaller man would not have dared to do, to the level of forest manners and forest eloquence.

During ten unquiet years he learned better and better how to deal with the savages, and was then called back to France, just as the Iroquois were preparing to make a fresh attack on Canada. The Iroquois had no lack of prey, for by this time pioneers and traders had scattered themselves far and wide through the wilderness. They did not, however, fall unresisting.

The dangers of the time had bred stern, relentless men, and women and children, too, ready, like the little heroine of Verchères, to fight to the death for home and dear ones. Each village had its loop-holed blockhouse or strong stone mill, but the log-cabins frequently stood far from these places of refuge, and the Iroquois dealt in night-attacks and sudden surprises. Whilst Denonville was governor there was a veritable reign of terror in New France, culminating, in August, 1689, in the frightful massacre of Lachine.

Frontenac, already on his way back to Quebec, was not the man to let the outrage pass unavenged. Unable to deal a telling blow at the shifting Iroquois, he struck savagely at the white foe, whom he suspected of encouraging the red braves in their barbarous warfare. From Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal, he sent out parties of bush-rangers and “Christian Indians” to carry fire and sword through the border settlements of New England. In the depth of winter the cruel task was duly accomplished, and loud were the plaudits of the savage allies of the French, whose friendship had wavered in the hour of their discomfiture. Speedily hundreds of canoes, deep-laden with furs, came down to Montreal, but the English colonists, thirsting for revenge, seized Port Royal, in Acadia, and then sent an expedition to attack Quebec.

At its head was Sir William Phips, a bold, rough seaman, who had won knighthood by the recovery of the cargo of a long-sunk Spanish treasure-ship; but he soon proved himself no match for the old lion Frontenac.

The great French war-chief was at Montreal, feasting his Indian admirers on dog’s flesh and prunes, and leading them in the war-dance, when news reached him that Phips was in the river. Hastening down-stream in a birch-bark canoe, he reached his little capital long before the foe appeared. As he landed and strode up Mountain Hill, the people cheered him madly. Their delight was scarcely less when the Bishop, who had been visiting some outlying parishes, entered the city one night by torchlight. Whilst Frontenac looked to his defences, gathered fighting men into the fortress, and called out the “habitants” of Beauport and Beaupré to defend the shores, the Bishop urged his followers to do their part, and day and night prayers went up to all the saints in heaven to keep watch and ward over Quebec.

At last, early on an October morning, the English fleet sailed into the Basin, and Phips sent a messenger to demand the surrender of the city. But his envoy was treated with scant courtesy. Dragged blindfold over obstructions and up the steep streets, while jeering women mocked him with cries of “Colin Maillard!” he was guided at last into a spacious hall of the Chateau St. Louis. Here were assembled Frontenac and his officers in all the glory of plumes and ribbons, gold lace and powdered curls; and when the bandage was snatched from his eyes the Englishman might well have been dazzled by their glittering finery. But he confronted the stern old Governor calmly, and, laying his watch on the table, demanded an answer to Phips’ summons within an hour.

Frontenac was enraged by the effrontery of the demand. “I will answer your general only by the mouths of my cannon,” he replied, and the messenger, blindfolded again, was led off to make sport once more, on his roundabout way to his boat, for the shrill-voiced, laughing French women.

That same night there was another burst of merry-making in the city. The sound of drums, trumpets and joyous huzzas was loud enough to reach the ears of the English on the river. “You have lost the game,” declared a prisoner, with malicious delight. “It is the Governor of Montreal with the people from the country above. There is nothing for you now but to pack up and go home.” But Phips was not yet ready to take this advice.

Landing a portion of his force at Beauport, he moved his ships into position to bombard the town. Then Frontenac from the rock sent him his promised answer, and for hours the cannon roared and the smoke and din were horrible. Phips ploughed up the gardens of the Ursulines, shot away a corner of a nun’s apron, and wasted his ammunition against the rock, but made no impression whatever on the strong stone walls of Quebec. His enemies, laughing to scorn his futile efforts, riddled his vessels with their balls and shot away from his masthead the proud banner of St. George, which was brought ashore in triumph in a birch-bark canoe. At last Phips drew off from the contest, and patching up his sorely misused ships as best he could, dropped down the river. He was still pursued by ill-luck and misfortune. The annual supply ships for New France escaped him by hiding in the fogs that overhung the mouth of the grim Saguenay, while fever and smallpox, hurricane and shipwreck seemed to mark out his own fleet as under the wrath of heaven.

But in Quebec all was joy and thanksgiving. The captured flag was carried in triumph to the Cathedral. “The Bishop sang a Te Deum, and amid the firing of cannon the image of the Virgin was carried to each church and chapel in the place by a procession in which priests, people and troops all took part.” At night there was a great bonfire in honor of the redoubtable old Governor, but the defeat of the English was generally regarded as miraculous, and it was therefore ordained that the fête of “Notre Dame de la Victoires” should be celebrated annually in the little church of the Lower Town.