France and England in N America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV

Discussions now ensued which lasted for days, and now and then became tempestuous. The governor, who had declared that the council had nothing to do with the matter, and that he could not waste time in talking about it, was not always present at the meetings, and it sometimes became necessary to depute one or more of the members to visit him. Auteuil, the attorney-general, having been employed on this unenviable errand, begged the council to dispense him from such duty in future, "by reason," as he says, "of the abuse, ill treatment, and threats which he received from Monsieur the governor, when he last had the honor of being deputed to confer with him, the particulars whereof he begs to be excused from reporting, lest the anger of Monsieur the governor should be kindled against him still more." [45 - Registre du Conseil Supérieur, 4 Nov., 1681.] Frontenac, hearing of this charge, angrily denied it, saying that the attorney-general had slandered and insulted him, and that it was his custom to do so. Auteuil rejoined that the governor had accused him of habitual lying, and told him that he would have his hand cut off. All these charges and countercharges may still be found entered in due form on the old records of the council at Quebec.

It was as usual upon the intendant that the wrath of Frontenac fell most fiercely. He accuses him of creating cabals and intrigues, and causing not only the council, but all the country, to forget the respect due to the representative of his Majesty. Once, when Frontenac was present at the session, a dispute arose about an entry on the record. A draft of it had been made in terms agreeable to the governor, who insisted that the intendant should sign it. Duchesneau replied that he and the clerk would go into the adjoining room, where they could examine it in peace, and put it into a proper form. Frontenac rejoined that he would then have no security that what he had said in the council would be accurately reported. Duchesneau persisted, and was going out with the draft in his hand, when Frontenac planted himself before the door, and told him that he should not leave the council chamber till he had signed the paper. "Then I will get out of the window, or else stay here all day," returned Duchesneau. A lively debate ensued, and the governor at length yielded the point. [46 - Registre de Conseil Supérieur, 1681.]

The imprisonment of Amours was short, but strife did not cease. The disputes in the council were accompanied throughout with other quarrels which were complicated with them, and which were worse than all the rest, since they involved more important matters and covered a wider field. They related to the fur trade, on which hung the very life of the colony. Merchants, traders, and even habitants, were ranged in two contending factions. Of one of these Frontenac was the chief. With him were La Salle and his lieutenant, La Forêt; Du Lhut, the famous leader of coureurs de bois; Boisseau, agent of the farmers of the revenue; Barrois, the governor's secretary; Bizard, lieutenant of his guard; and various others of greater or less influence. On the other side were the members of the council, with Aubert de la Chesnaye, Le Moyne and all his sons, Louis Joliet, Jacques Le Ber, Sorel, Boucher, Varennes, and many more, all supported by the intendant Duchesneau, and also by his fast allies, the ecclesiastics. The faction under the lead of the governor had every advantage, for it was sustained by all the power of his office. Duchesneau was beside himself with rage. He wrote to the court letters full of bitterness, accused Frontenac of illicit trade, denounced his followers, and sent huge bundles of procès-verbaux and attestations to prove his charges.

But if Duchesneau wrote letters, so too did Frontenac; and if the intendant sent proofs, so too did the governor. Upon the unfortunate king and the still more unfortunate minister fell the difficult task of composing the quarrels of their servants, three thousand miles away. They treated Duchesneau without ceremony. Colbert wrote to him: "I have examined all the letters, papers, and memorials that you sent me by the return of the vessels last November, and, though it appears by the letters of M. de Frontenac that his conduct leaves something to be desired, there is assuredly far more to blame in yours than in his. As to what you say concerning his violence, his trade with the Indians, and in general all that you allege against him, the king has written to him his intentions; but since, in the midst of all your complaints, you say many things which are without foundation, or which are no concern of yours, it is difficult to believe that you act in the spirit which the service of the king demands; that is to say, without interest and without passion. If a change does not appear in your conduct before next year, his Majesty will not keep you in your office." [47 - Colbert à Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678.]

At the same time, the king wrote to Frontenac, alluding to the complaints of Duchesneau, and exhorting the governor to live on good terms with him. The general tone of the letter is moderate, but the following significant warning occurs in it: "Although no gentleman in the position in which I have placed you ought to take part in any trade, directly or indirectly, either by himself or any of his servants, I nevertheless now prohibit you absolutely from doing so. Not only abstain from trade, but act in such a manner that nobody can even suspect you of it; and this will be easy, since the truth will readily come to light." [48 - Le Roy à Frontenac, 12 Mai, 1678.]

Exhortation and warning were vain alike. The first ships which returned that year from Canada brought a series of despatches from the intendant, renewing all his charges more bitterly than before. The minister, out of patience, replied by berating him without mercy. "You may rest assured," he concludes, "that, did it not appear by your later despatches that the letters you have received have begun to make you understand that you have forgotten yourself, it would not have been possible to prevent the king from recalling you." [49 - Colbert à Duchesneau, 25 Avril, 1679.]

Duchesneau, in return, protests all manner of deference to the governor, but still insists that he sets the royal edicts at naught; protects a host of coureurs de bois who are in league with him; corresponds with Du Lhut, their chief; shares his illegal profits, and causes all the disorders which afflict the colony. "As for me, Monseigneur, I have done every thing within the scope of my office to prevent these evils; but all the pains I have taken have only served to increase the aversion of Monsieur the governor against me, and to bring my ordinances into contempt. This, Monseigneur, is a true account of the disobedience of the coureurs de bois, of which I twice had the honor to speak to Monsieur the governor; and I could not help telling him, with all possible deference, that it was shameful to the colony and to us that the king, our master, of whom the whole world stands in awe, who has just given law to all Europe, and whom all his subjects adore, should have the pain of knowing that, in a country which has received so many marks of his paternal tenderness, his orders are violated and scorned; and a governor and an intendant stand by, with folded arms, content with saying that the evil is past remedy. For having made these representations to him, I drew on myself words so full of contempt and insult that I was forced to leave his room to appease his anger. The next morning I went to him again, and did all I could to have my ordinances executed; but, as Monsieur the governor is interested with many of the coureurs de bois, it is useless to attempt to do any thing. He has gradually made himself master of the trade of Montreal; and, as soon as the Indians arrive, he sets guards in their camp, which would be very well, if these soldiers did their duty and protected the savages from being annoyed and plundered by the French, instead of being employed to discover how many furs they have brought, with a view to future operations. Monsieur the governor then compels the Indians to pay his guards for protecting them; and he has never allowed them to trade with the inhabitants till they had first given him a certain number of packs of beaver skins, which he calls his presents. His guards trade with them openly at the fair, with their bandoleers on their shoulders."

He says, farther, that Frontenac sends up goods to Montreal, and employs persons to trade in his behalf; and that, what with the beaver skins exacted by him and his guards under the name of presents, and those which he and his favorites obtain in trade, only the smaller part of what the Indians bring to market ever reaches the people of the colony. [50 - Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.]

This despatch, and the proofs accompanying it, drew from the king a sharp reproof to Frontenac.

"What has passed in regard to the coureurs de bois is entirely contrary to my orders; and I cannot receive in excuse for it your allegation that it is the intendant who countenances them by the trade he carries on, for I perceive clearly that the fault is your own. As I see that you often turn the orders that I give you against the very object for which they are given, beware not to do so on this occasion. I shall hold you answerable for bringing the disorder of the coureurs de bois to an end throughout Canada; and this you will easily succeed in doing, if you make a proper use of my authority. Take care not to persuade yourself that what I write to you comes from the ill offices of the intendant. It results from what I fully know from every thing which reaches me from Canada, proving but too well what you are doing there. The bishop, the ecclesiastics, the Jesuit fathers, the Supreme Council, and, in a word, everybody, complain of you; but I am willing to believe that you will change your conduct, and act with the moderation necessary for the good of the colony." [51 - Le Roy à Frontenac, 29 Avril, 1680.]

Colbert wrote in a similar strain; and Frontenac saw that his position was becoming critical. He showed, it is true, no sign of that change of conduct which the king had demanded; but he appealed to his allies at court to use fresh efforts to sustain him. Among the rest, he had a strong friend in the Maréchal de Bellefonds, to whom he wrote, in the character of an abused and much-suffering man: "You exhort me to have patience, and I agree with you that those placed in a position of command cannot have too much. For this reason, I have given examples of it here such as perhaps no governor ever gave before; and I have found no great difficulty in doing so, because I felt myself to be the master. Had I been in a private station, I could not have endured such outrageous insults without dishonor. I have always passed over in silence those directed against me personally; and have never given way to anger, except when attacks were made on the authority of which I have the honor to be the guardian. You could not believe all the annoyances which the intendant tries to put upon me every day, and which, as you advise me, I scorn or disregard. It would require a virtue like yours to turn them to all the good use of which they are capable; yet, great as the virtue is which has enabled you to possess your soul in tranquillity amid all the troubles of the court, I doubt if you could preserve such complete equanimity among the miserable tumults of Canada." [52 - Frontenac au Maréchal de Bellefonds, 14 Nov., 1680.]

Having given the principal charges of Duchesneau against Frontenac, it is time to give those of Frontenac against Duchesneau. The governor says that all the coureurs de bois would be brought to submission but for the intendant and his allies, who protect them, and carry on trade by their means; that the seigniorial house of Duchesneau's partner, La Chesnaye, is the constant resort of these outlaws; and that he and his associates have large storehouses at Montreal, Isle St. Paul, and Rivière du Loup, whence they send goods into the Indian country, in contempt of the king's orders. [53 - Mémoire et Preuves du Désordre des Coureurs de Bois.] Frontenac also complains of numberless provocations from the intendant. "It is no fault of mine that I am not on good terms with M. Duchesneau; for I have done every thing I could to that end, being too submissive to your Majesty's commands not to suppress my sharpest indignation the moment your will is known to me. But, Sire, it is not so with him; and his desire to excite new disputes, in the hope of making me appear their principal author, has been so great that the last ships were hardly gone, when, forgetting what your Majesty had enjoined upon us both, he began these dissensions afresh, in spite of all my precautions. If I depart from my usual reserve in regard to him, and make bold to ask justice at the hands of your Majesty for the wrongs and insults I have undergone, it is because nothing but your authority can keep them within bounds. I have never suffered more in my life than when I have been made to appear as a man of violence and a disturber of the officers of justice: for I have always confined myself to what your Majesty has prescribed; that is, to exhorting them to do their duty when I saw that they failed in it. This has drawn upon me, both from them and from M. Duchesneau, such cutting affronts that your Majesty would hardly credit them." [54 - Frontenac au Roy, 2 Nov., 1681.]

In 1681, Seignelay, the son of Colbert, entered upon the charge of the colonies; and both Frontenac and Duchesneau hastened to congratulate him, protest their devotion, and overwhelm him with mutual accusations. The intendant declares that, out of pure zeal for the king's service, he shall tell him every thing. "Disorder," he says, "reigns everywhere; universal confusion prevails throughout every department of business; the pleasure of the king, the orders of the Supreme Council, and my ordinances remain unexecuted; justice is openly violated, and trade is destroyed; violence, upheld by authority, decides every thing; and nothing consoles the people, who groan without daring to complain, but the hope, Monseigneur, that you will have the goodness to condescend to be moved by their misfortunes. No position could be more distressing than mine, since, if I conceal the truth from you, I fail in the obedience I owe the king, and in the fidelity that I vowed so long since to Monseigneur, your father, and which I swear anew at your hands; and if I obey, as I must, his Majesty's orders and yours, I cannot avoid giving offence, since I cannot render you an account of these disorders without informing you that M. de Frontenac's conduct is the sole cause of them." [55 - Duchesneau au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1681.]

Frontenac had written to Seignelay a few days before: "I have no doubt whatever that M. Duchesneau will, as usual, overwhelm me with fabrications and falsehoods, to cover his own ill conduct. I send proofs to justify myself, so strong and convincing that I do not see that they can leave any doubt; but, since I fear that their great number might fatigue you, I have thought it better to send them to my wife, with a full and exact journal of all that has passed here day by day, in order that she may extract and lay before you the principal portions.

"I send you in person merely the proofs of the conduct of M. Duchesneau, in barricading his house and arming all his servants, and in coming three weeks ago to insult me in my room. You will see thereby to what a pitch of temerity and lawlessness he has transported himself, in order to compel me to use violence against him, with the hope of justifying what he has asserted about my pretended outbreaks of anger." [56 - Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1681.]

The mutual charges of the two functionaries were much the same; and, so far at least as concerns trade, there can be little doubt that they were well founded on both sides. The strife of the rival factions grew more and more bitter: canes and sticks played an active part in it, and now and then we hear of drawn swords. One is reminded at times of the intestine feuds of some mediæval city, as, for example, in the following incident, which will explain the charge of Frontenac against the intendant of barricading his house and arming his servants:—

On the afternoon of the twentieth of March, a son of Duchesneau, sixteen years old, followed by a servant named Vautier, was strolling along the picket fence which bordered the descent from the Upper to the Lower Town of Quebec. The boy was amusing himself by singing a song, when Frontenac's partisan, Boisseau, with one of the guardsmen, approached, and, as young Duchesneau declares, called him foul names, and said that he would give him and his father a thrashing. The boy replied that he would have nothing to say to a fellow like him, and would beat him if he did not keep quiet; while the servant, Vautier, retorted Boisseau's abuse, and taunted him with low birth and disreputable employments. Boisseau made report to Frontenac, and Frontenac complained to Duchesneau, who sent his son, with Vautier, to give the governor his version of the affair. The bishop, an ally of the intendant, thus relates what followed. On arriving with a party of friends at the château, young Duchesneau was shown into a room in which were the governor and his two secretaries, Barrois and Chasseur. He had no sooner entered than Frontenac seized him by the arm, shook him, struck him, called him abusive names, and tore the sleeve of his jacket. The secretaries interposed, and, failing to quiet the governor, opened the door and let the boy escape. Vautier, meanwhile, had remained in the guard-room, where Boisseau struck at him with his cane; and one of the guardsmen went for a halberd to run him through the body. After this warm reception, young Duchesneau and his servant took refuge in the house of his father. Frontenac demanded their surrender. The intendant, fearing that he would take them by force, for which he is said to have made preparation, barricaded himself and armed his household. The bishop tried to mediate, and after protracted negotiations young Duchesneau was given up, whereupon Frontenac locked him in a chamber of the château, and kept him there a month. [57 - Mémoire de l'Evesque de Quebec, Mars, 1681 (printed in Revue Canadienne, 1873). The bishop is silent about the barricades of which Frontenac and his friends complain in several letters.]

The story of Frontenac's violence to the boy is flatly denied by his friends, who charge Duchesneau and his partisans with circulating libels against him, and who say, like Frontenac himself, that the intendant used every means to exasperate him, in order to make material for accusations. [58 - See, among other instances, the Défense de M. de Frontenac par un de ses Amis, published by Abbé Verreau in the Revue Canadienne, 1873.]

The disputes of the rival factions spread through all Canada. The most heinous offence in the eyes of the court with which each charged the other was the carrying of furs to the English settlements; thus defrauding the revenue, and, as the king believed, preparing the ruin of the colony. The intendant farther declared that the governor's party spread among the Indians the report of a pestilence at Montreal, in order to deter them from their yearly visit to the fair, and thus by means of coureurs de bois obtain all their beaver skins at a low price. The report, according to Duchesneau, had no other foundation than the fate of eighteen or twenty Indians, who had lately drunk themselves to death at La Chine. [59 - Plumitif du Conseil Souverain, 1681.]

Montreal, in the mean time, was the scene of a sort of by-play, in which the chief actor was the local governor, Perrot. He and Frontenac appear to have found it for their common interest to come to a mutual understanding; and this was perhaps easier on the part of the count, since his quarrel with Duchesneau gave sufficient employment to his natural pugnacity. Perrot was now left to make a reasonable profit from the illicit trade which had once kindled the wrath of his superior; and, the danger of Frontenac's anger being removed, he completely forgot the lessons of his imprisonment.

The intendant ordered Migeon, bailiff of Montreal, to arrest some of Perrot's coureurs de bois. Perrot at once arrested the bailiff, and sent a sergeant and two soldiers to occupy his house, with orders to annoy the family as much as possible. One of them, accordingly, walked to and fro all night in the bed-chamber of Migeon's wife. On another occasion, the bailiff invited two friends to supper: Le Moyne d'Iberville and one Bouthier, agent of a commercial house at Rochelle. The conversation turned on the trade carried on by Perrot. It was overheard and reported to him, upon which he suddenly appeared at the window, struck Bouthier over the head with his cane, then drew his sword, and chased him while he fled for his life. The seminary was near at hand, and the fugitive clambered over the wall. Dollier de Casson dressed him in the hat and cassock of a priest, and in this disguise he escaped. [60 - Conduite du Sieur Perrot, Gouverneur de Montréal en la Nouvelle France, 1681; Plainte du Sieur Bouthier, 10 Oct., 1680; Procès-verbal des huissiers de Montréal.] Perrot's avidity sometimes carried him to singular extremities. "He has been seen," says one of his accusers, "filling barrels of brandy with his own hands, and mixing it with water to sell to the Indians. He bartered with one of them his hat, sword, coat, ribbons, shoes, and stockings, and boasted that he had made thirty pistoles by the bargain, while the Indian walked about town equipped as governor." [61 - Conduite du Sieur Perrot. La Barre, Frontenac's successor, declares that the charges against Perrot were false, including the attestations of Migeon and his friends; that Dollier de Casson had been imposed upon, and that various persons had been induced to sign unfounded statements without reading them. La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683.]

Every ship from Canada brought to the king fresh complaints of Duchesneau against Frontenac, and of Frontenac against Duchesneau; and the king replied with rebukes, exhortations, and threats to both. At first he had shown a disposition to extenuate and excuse the faults of Frontenac, but every year his letters grew sharper. In 1681 he wrote: "Again I urge you to banish from your mind the difficulties which you have yourself devised against the execution of my orders; to act with mildness and moderation towards all the colonists, and divest yourself entirely of the personal animosities which have thus far been almost your sole motive of action. In conclusion, I exhort you once more to profit well by the directions which this letter contains; since, unless you succeed better herein than formerly, I cannot help recalling you from the command which I have intrusted to you." [62 - Le Roy à Frontenac, 30 Avril, 1681.]

The dispute still went on. The autumn ships from Quebec brought back the usual complaints, and the long-suffering king at length made good his threat. Both Frontenac and Duchesneau received their recall, and they both deserved it. [63 - La Barre says that Duchesneau was far more to blame than Frontenac. La Barre au Ministre, 1683. This testimony has weight, since Frontenac's friends were La Barre's enemies.]

The last official act of the governor, recorded in the register of the council of Quebec, is the formal declaration that his rank in that body is superior to that of the intendant. [64 - Registre du Conseil-Supérieur, 16 Fév., 1682.]

The key to nearly all these disputes lies in the relations between Frontenac and the Church. The fundamental quarrel was generally covered by superficial issues, and it was rarely that the governor fell out with anybody who was not in league with the bishop and the Jesuits. "Nearly all the disorders in New France," he writes, "spring from the ambition of the ecclesiastics, who want to join to their spiritual authority an absolute power over things temporal, and who persecute all who do not submit entirely to them." He says that the intendant and the councillors are completely under their control, and dare not decide any question against them; that they have spies everywhere, even in his house; that the bishop told him that he could excommunicate even a governor, if he chose; that the missionaries in Indian villages say that they are equals of Onontio, and tell their converts that all will go wrong till the priests have the government of Canada; that directly or indirectly they meddle in all civil affairs; that they trade even with the English of New York; that, what with Jesuits, Sulpitians, the bishop, and the seminary of Quebec, they hold two-thirds of the good lands of Canada; that, in view of the poverty of the country, their revenues are enormous; that, in short, their object is mastery, and that they use all means to compass it. [65 - Frontenac, Mémoire adressé à Colbert, 1677. This remarkable paper will be found in the Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans l'Amérique Septentrionale; Mémoires et Documents Originaux, edited by M. Margry. The paper is very long, and contains references to attestations and other proofs which accompanied it, especially in regard to the trade of the Jesuits.] The recall of the governor was a triumph to the ecclesiastics, offset but slightly by the recall of their instrument, the intendant, who had done his work, and whom they needed no longer.

Thus far, we have seen Frontenac on his worst side. We shall see him again under an aspect very different. Nor must it be supposed that the years which had passed since his government began, tempestuous as they appear on the record, were wholly given over to quarrelling. They had their periods of uneventful calm, when the wheels of administration ran as smoothly as could be expected in view of the condition of the colony. In one respect at least, Frontenac had shown a remarkable fitness for his office. Few white men have ever equalled or approached him in the art of dealing with Indians. There seems to have been a sympathetic relation between him and them. He conformed to their ways, borrowed their rhetoric, flattered them on occasion with great address, and yet constantly maintained towards them an attitude of paternal superiority. When they were concerned, his native haughtiness always took a form which commanded respect without exciting anger. He would not address them as brothers, but only as children; and even the Iroquois, arrogant as they were, accepted the new relation. In their eyes Frontenac was by far the greatest of all the "Onontios," or governors of Canada. They admired the prompt and fiery soldier who played with their children, and gave beads and trinkets to their wives; who read their secret thoughts and never feared them, but smiled on them when their hearts were true, or frowned and threatened them when they did amiss. The other tribes, allies of the French, were of the same mind; and their respect for their Great Father seems not to have been permanently impaired by his occasional practice of bullying them for purposes of extortion.

Frontenac appears to have had a liking not only for Indians, but also for that roving and lawless class of the Canadian population, the coureurs de bois, provided always that they were not in the service of his rivals. Indeed, as regards the Canadians generally, he refrained from the strictures with which succeeding governors and intendants freely interlarded their despatches. It was not his instinct to clash with the humbler classes, and he generally reserved his anger for those who could retort it.

He had the air of distinction natural to a man familiar all his life with the society of courts, and he was as gracious and winning on some occasions as he was unbearable on others. When in good humor, his ready wit and a certain sympathetic vivacity made him very agreeable. At times he was all sunshine, and his outrageous temper slumbered peacefully till some new offence wakened it again; nor is there much doubt that many of his worst outbreaks were the work of his enemies, who knew his foible, and studied to exasperate him. He was full of contradictions; and, intolerant and implacable as he often was, there were intervals, even in his bitterest quarrels, in which he displayed a surprising moderation and patience. By fits he could be magnanimous. A woman once brought him a petition in burlesque verse. Frontenac wrote a jocose answer. The woman, to ridicule him, contrived to have both petition and answer slipped among the papers of a suit pending before the council. Frontenac had her fined a few francs, and then caused the money to be given to her children. [66 - Note by Abbé Verreau, in Journal de l'Instruction Publique (Canada), VIII. 127.]

When he sailed for France, it was a day of rejoicing to more than half the merchants of Canada, and, excepting the Récollets, to all the priests; but he left behind him an impression, very general among the people, that, if danger threatened the colony, Count Frontenac was the man for the hour.

CHAPTER V

1682-1684

LeFebvre de la Barre

His Arrival at Quebec • The Great Fire • A Coming Storm • Iroquois Policy • The Danger imminent • Indian Allies of France • Frontenac and the Iroquois • Boasts of La Barre • His Past Life • His Speculations • He takes Alarm • His Dealings with the Iroquois • His Illegal Trade • His Colleague denounces him • Fruits of his Schemes • His Anger and his Fears.

When the new governor, La Barre, and the new intendant, Meules, arrived at Quebec, a dismal greeting waited them. All the Lower Town was in ashes, except the house of the merchant Aubert de la Chesnaye, standing alone amid the wreck. On a Tuesday, the fourth of August, at ten o'clock in the evening, the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu were roused from their early slumbers by shouts, outcries, and the ringing of bells; "and," writes one of them, "what was our terror to find it as light as noonday, the flames burned so fiercely and rose so high." Half an hour before, Chartier de Lotbinière, judge of the king's court, heard the first alarm, ran down the descent now called Mountain Street, and found every thing in confusion in the town below. The house of Etienne Planchon was in a blaze; the fire was spreading to those of his neighbors, and had just leaped the narrow street to the storehouse of the Jesuits. The season was excessively dry; there were no means of throwing water except kettles and buckets, and the crowd was bewildered with excitement and fright. Men were ordered to tear off roofs and pull down houses; but the flames drove them from their work, and at four o'clock in the morning fifty-five buildings were burnt to the ground. They were all of wood, but many of them were storehouses filled with goods; and the property consumed was more in value than all that remained in Canada. [67 - Chartier de Lotbinière, Procès-verbal sur l'Incendie de la Basse Ville; Meules au Ministre, 6 Oct., 1682; Juchereau, Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 256.]

Under these gloomy auspices, Le Febvre de la Barre began his reign. He was an old officer who had achieved notable exploits against the English in the West Indies, but who was now to be put to a test far more severe. He made his lodging in the château; while his colleague, Meules, could hardly find a shelter. The buildings of the Upper Town were filled with those whom the fire had made roofless, and the intendant was obliged to content himself with a house in the neighboring woods. Here he was ill at ease, for he dreaded an Indian war and the scalping-knives of the Iroquois. [68 - Meules au Ministre, 6 Oct., 1682.]

So far as his own safety was concerned, his alarm was needless; but not so as regarded the colony with whose affairs he was charged. For those who had eyes to see it, a terror and a woe lowered in the future of Canada. In an evil hour for her, the Iroquois had conquered their southern neighbors, the Andastes, who had long held their ground against them, and at one time threatened them with ruin. The hands of the confederates were now free; their arrogance was redoubled by victory, and, having long before destroyed all the adjacent tribes on the north and west, [69 - Jesuits in North America.] they looked for fresh victims in the wilderness beyond. Their most easterly tribe, the Mohawks, had not forgotten the chastisement they had received from Tracy and Courcelle. They had learned to fear the French, and were cautious in offending them; but it was not so with the remoter Iroquois. Of these, the Senecas at the western end of the "Long House," as they called their fivefold league, were by far the most powerful, for they could muster as many warriors as all the four remaining tribes together; and they now sought to draw the confederacy into a series of wars, which, though not directed against the French, threatened soon to involve them. Their first movement westward was against the tribes of the Illinois. I have already described their bloody inroad in the summer of 1680. [70 - Discovery of the Great West.] They made the valley of the Illinois a desert, and returned with several hundred prisoners, of whom they burned those that were useless, and incorporated the young and strong into their own tribe.

This movement of the western Iroquois had a double incentive, their love of fighting and their love of gain. It was a war of conquest and of trade. All the five tribes of the league had become dependent on the English and Dutch of Albany for guns, powder, lead, brandy, and many other things that they had learned to regard as necessities. Beaver skins alone could buy them, but to the Iroquois the supply of beaver skins was limited. The regions of the west and north-west, the upper Mississippi with its tributaries, and, above all, the forests of the upper lakes, were occupied by tribes in the interest of the French, whose missionaries and explorers had been the first to visit them, and whose traders controlled their immense annual product of furs. La Salle, by his newly built fort of St. Louis, engrossed the trade of the Illinois and Miami tribes; while the Hurons and Ottawas, gathered about the old mission of Michillimackinac, acted as factors for the Sioux, the Winnebagoes, and many other remote hordes. Every summer they brought down their accumulated beaver skins to the fair at Montreal; while French bush-rangers roving through the wilderness, with or without licenses, collected many more. [71 - Duchesneau, Memoir on Western Indians in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 160.]

It was the purpose of the Iroquois to master all this traffic, conquer the tribes who had possession of it, and divert the entire supply of furs to themselves, and through themselves to the English and Dutch. That English and Dutch traders urged them on is affirmed by the French, and is very likely. The accomplishment of the scheme would have ruined Canada. Moreover, the Illinois, the Hurons, the Ottawas, and all the other tribes threatened by the Iroquois, were the allies and "children" of the French, who in honor as in interest were bound to protect them. Hence, when the Seneca invasion of the Illinois became known, there was deep anxiety in the colony, except only among those in whom hatred of the monopolist La Salle had overborne every consideration of the public good. La Salle's new establishment of St. Louis was in the path of the invaders; and, if he could be crushed, there was wherewith to console his enemies for all else that might ensue.

Bad as was the posture of affairs, it was made far worse by an incident that took place soon after the invasion of the Illinois. A Seneca chief engaged in it, who had left the main body of his countrymen, was captured by a party of Winnebagoes to serve as a hostage for some of their tribe whom the Senecas had lately seized. They carried him to Michillimackinac, where there chanced to be a number of Illinois, married to Indian women of that neighborhood. A quarrel ensued between them and the Seneca, whom they stabbed to death in a lodge of the Kiskakons, one of the tribes of the Ottawas. Here was a casus belli likely to precipitate a war fatal to all the tribes about Michillimackinac, and equally fatal to the trade of Canada. Frontenac set himself to conjure the rising storm, and sent a messenger to the Iroquois to invite them to a conference.

He found them unusually arrogant. Instead of coming to him, they demanded that he should come to them, and many of the French wished him to comply; but Frontenac refused, on the ground that such a concession would add to their insolence, and he declined to go farther than Montreal, or at the utmost Fort Frontenac, the usual place of meeting with them. Early in August he was at Montreal, expecting the arrival of the Ottawas and Hurons on their yearly descent from the lakes. They soon appeared, and he called them to a solemn council. Terror had seized them all. "Father, take pity on us," said the Ottawa orator, "for we are like dead men." A Huron chief, named the Rat, declared that the world was turned upside down, and implored the protection of Onontio, "who is master of the whole earth." These tribes were far from harmony among themselves. Each was jealous of the other, and the Ottawas charged the Hurons with trying to make favor with the common enemy at their expense. Frontenac told them that they were all his children alike, and advised them to live together as brothers, and make treaties of alliance with all the tribes of the lakes. At the same time, he urged them to make full atonement for the death of the Seneca murdered in their country, and carefully to refrain from any new offence.

Soon after there was another arrival. La Forêt, the officer in command at Fort Frontenac, appeared, bringing with him a famous Iroquois chief called Decanisora or Tegannisorens, attended by a number of warriors. They came to invite Frontenac to meet the deputies of the five tribes at Oswego, within their own limits. Frontenac's reply was characteristic. "It is for the father to tell the children where to hold council, not for the children to tell the father. Fort Frontenac is the proper place, and you should thank me for going so far every summer to meet you." The Iroquois had expressed pacific intentions towards the Hurons and Ottawas. For this Frontenac commended him, but added: "The Illinois also are children of Onontio, and hence brethren of the Iroquois. Therefore they, too, should be left in peace; for Onontio wishes that all his family should live together in union." He confirmed his words with a huge belt of wampum. Then, addressing the flattered deputy as a great chief, he desired him to use his influence in behalf of peace, and gave him a jacket and a silk cravat, both trimmed with gold, a hat, a scarlet ribbon, and a gun, with beads for his wife, and red cloth for his daughter. The Iroquois went home delighted. [72 - For the papers on this affair, see N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX.]

Perhaps on this occasion Frontenac was too confident of his influence over the savage confederates. Such at least was the opinion of Lamberville, Jesuit missionary at Onondaga, the Iroquois capital. From what he daily saw around him, he thought the peril so imminent that concession on the part of the French was absolutely necessary, since not only the Illinois, but some of the tribes of the lakes, were in danger of speedy and complete destruction. "Tegannisorens loves the French," he wrote to Frontenac, "but neither he nor any other of the upper Iroquois fear them in the least. They annihilate our allies, whom by adoption of prisoners they convert into Iroquois; and they do not hesitate to avow that after enriching themselves by our plunder, and strengthening themselves by those who might have aided us, they will pounce all at once upon Canada, and overwhelm it in a single campaign." He adds that within the past two years they have reinforced themselves by more than nine hundred warriors, adopted into their tribes. [73 - P. Jean de Lamberville à Frontenac, 20 Sept., 1682.]

Such was the crisis when Frontenac left Canada at the moment when he was needed most, and Le Febvre de la Barre came to supplant him. The new governor introduces himself with a burst of rhodomontade. "The Iroquois," he writes to the king, "have twenty-six hundred warriors. I will attack them with twelve hundred men. They know me before seeing me, for they have been told by the English how roughly I handled them in the West Indies." This bold note closes rather tamely; for the governor adds, "I think that if the Iroquois believe that your Majesty would have the goodness to give me some help, they will make peace, and let our allies alone, which would save the trouble and expense of an arduous war." [74 - La Barre au Roy, (4 Oct.?) 1682.] He then begs hard for troops, and in fact there was great need of them, for there were none in Canada; and even Frontenac had been compelled in the last year of his government to leave unpunished various acts of violence and plunder committed by the Iroquois. La Barre painted the situation in its blackest colors, declared that war was imminent, and wrote to the minister, "We shall lose half our trade and all our reputation, if we do not oppose these haughty conquerors." [75 - La Barre à Seignelay, 1682.]

A vein of gasconade appears in most of his letters, not however accompanied with any conclusive evidence of a real wish to fight. His best fighting days were past, for he was sixty years old; nor had he always been a man of the sword. His early life was spent in the law; he had held a judicial post, and had been intendant of several French provinces. Even the military and naval employments, in which he afterwards acquitted himself with credit, were due to the part he took in forming a joint-stock company for colonizing Cayenne. [76 - He was made governor of Cayenne, and went thither with Tracy in 1664. Two years later, he gained several victories over the English, and recaptured Cayenne, which they had taken in his absence. He wrote a book concerning this colony, called Description de la France Équinoctiale. Another volume, called Journal du Voyage du Sieur de la Barre en la Terre Ferme et Isle de Cayenne, was printed at Paris in 1671.] In fact, he was but half a soldier; and it was perhaps for this reason that he insisted on being called, not Monsieur le Gouverneur, but Monsieur le Général. He was equal to Frontenac neither in vigor nor in rank, but he far surpassed him in avidity. Soon after his arrival, he wrote to the minister that he should not follow the example of his predecessors in making money out of his government by trade; and in consideration of these good intentions he asked for an addition to his pay. [77 - La Barre à Seignelay, 1682.] He then immediately made alliances with certain merchants of Quebec for carrying on an extensive illicit trade, backed by all the power of his office. Now ensued a strange and miserable complication. Questions of war mingled with questions of personal gain. There was a commercial revolution in the colony. The merchants whom Frontenac excluded from his ring now had their turn. It was they who, jointly with the intendant and the ecclesiastics, had procured the removal of the old governor; and it was they who gained the ear of the new one. Aubert de la Chesnaye, Jacques Le Ber, and the rest of their faction, now basked in official favor; and La Salle, La Forêt, and the other friends of Frontenac, were cast out. There was one exception. Greysolon Du Lhut, leader of coureurs de bois, was too important to be thus set aside. He was now as usual in the wilderness of the north, the roving chief of a half savage crew, trading, exploring, fighting, and laboring with persistent hardihood to foil the rival English traders of Hudson's Bay. Inducements to gain his adhesion were probably held out to him by La Barre and his allies: be this as it may, it is certain that he acted in harmony with the faction of the new governor. With La Forêt it was widely different. He commanded Fort Frontenac, which belonged to La Salle, when La Barre's associates, La Chesnaye and Le Ber, armed with an order from the governor, came up from Montreal, and seized upon the place with all that it contained. The pretext for this outrage was the false one that La Salle had not fulfilled the conditions under which the fort had been granted to him. La Forêt was told that he might retain his command, if he would join the faction of La Barre; but he refused, stood true to his chief, and soon after sailed for France.

La Barre summoned the most able and experienced persons in the colony to discuss the state of affairs. Their conclusion was that the Iroquois would attack and destroy the Illinois, and, this accomplished, turn upon the tribes of the lakes, conquer or destroy them also, and ruin the trade of Canada. [78 - Conference on the State of Affairs with the Iroquois, Oct., 1682, in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 194.] Dark as was the prospect, La Barre and his fellow-speculators flattered themselves that the war could be averted for a year at least. The Iroquois owed their triumphs as much to their sagacity and craft as to their extraordinary boldness and ferocity. It had always been their policy to attack their enemies in detail, and while destroying one to cajole the rest. There seemed little doubt that they would leave the tribes of the lakes in peace till they had finished the ruin of the Illinois; so that if these, the allies of the colony, were abandoned to their fate, there would be time for a profitable trade in the direction of Michillimackinac.

But hopes seemed vain and prognostics illusory, when, early in spring, a report came that the Seneca Iroquois were preparing to attack, in force, not only the Illinois, but the Hurons and Ottawas of the lakes. La Barre and his confederates were in dismay. They already had large quantities of goods at Michillimackinac, the point immediately threatened; and an officer was hastily despatched, with men and munitions, to strengthen the defences of the place. [79 - La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683.] A small vessel was sent to France with letters begging for troops. "I will perish at their head," wrote La Barre to the king, "or destroy your enemies;" [80 - La Barre au Roy, 30 Mai, 1683.] and he assures the minister that the Senecas must be attacked or the country abandoned. [81 - La Barre au Ministre, 30 Mai, 1683.] The intendant, Meules, shared something of his alarm, and informed the king that "the Iroquois are the only people on earth who do not know the grandeur of your Majesty." [82 - Meules au Roy, 2 Juin, 1683.]

While thus appealing to the king, La Barre sent Charles le Moyne as envoy to Onondaga. Through his influence, a deputation of forty-three Iroquois chiefs was sent to meet the governor at Montreal. Here a grand council was held in the newly built church. Presents were given the deputies to the value of more than two thousand crowns. Soothing speeches were made them; and they were urged not to attack the tribes of the lakes, nor to plunder French traders, without permission. [83 - Soon after La Barre's arrival, La Chesnaye is said to have induced him to urge the Iroquois to plunder all traders who were not provided with passports from the governor. The Iroquois complied so promptly, that they stopped and pillaged, at Niagara, two canoes belonging to La Chesnaye himself, which had gone up the lakes in Frontenac's time, and therefore were without passports. Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, etc., depuis l'année 1682. (Published by the Historical Society of Quebec.) This was not the only case in which the weapons of La Barre and his partisans recoiled against themselves.] They assented; and La Barre then asked, timidly, why they made war on the Illinois. "Because they deserve to die," haughtily returned the Iroquois orator. La Barre dared not answer. They complained that La Salle had given guns, powder, and lead to the Illinois; or, in other words, that he had helped the allies of the colony to defend themselves. La Barre, who hated La Salle and his monopolies, assured them that he should be punished. [84 - Belmont, Histoire du Canada (a contemporary chronicle).] It is affirmed, on good authority, that he said more than this, and told them they were welcome to plunder and kill him. [85 - See Discovery of the Great West. La Barre denies the assertion, and says that he merely told the Iroquois that La Salle should be sent home.] The rapacious old man was playing with a two-edged sword.

Thus the Illinois, with the few Frenchmen who had tried to defend them, were left to perish; and, in return, a brief and doubtful respite was gained for the tribes of the lakes. La Barre and his confederates took heart again. Merchandise, in abundance, was sent to Michillimackinac, and thence to the remoter tribes of the north and west. The governor and his partner, La Chesnaye, sent up a fleet of thirty canoes; [86 - Mémoire adressé a MM. les Intéressés en la Société de la Ferme et Commerce du Canada, 1683.] and, a little later, they are reported to have sent more than a hundred. This forest trade robbed the colonists, by forestalling the annual market of Montreal; while a considerable part of the furs acquired by it were secretly sent to the English and Dutch of New York. Thus the heavy duties of the custom-house at Quebec were evaded; and silver coin was received in payment, instead of questionable bills of exchange. [87 - These statements are made in a memorial of the agents of the custom-house, in letters of Meules, and in several other quarters. La Barre is accused of sending furs to Albany under pretext of official communication with the governor of New York.] Frontenac had not been faithful to his trust; but, compared to his successor, he was a model of official virtue.

La Barre busied himself with ostentatious preparation for war; built vessels at Fort Frontenac, and sent up fleets of canoes, laden or partly laden with munitions. But his accusers say that the king's canoes were used to transport the governor's goods, and that the men sent to garrison Fort Frontenac were destined, not to fight the Iroquois, but to sell them brandy. "Last year," writes the intendant, "Monsieur de la Barre had a vessel built, for which he made his Majesty pay heavily;" and he proceeds to say that it was built for trade, and was used for no other purpose. "If," he continues, "the two (king's) vessels now at Fort Frontenac had not been used for trading, they would have saved us half the expense we have been forced to incur in transporting munitions and supplies. The pretended necessity of having vessels at this fort, and the consequent employing of carpenters, and sending up of iron, cordage, sails, and many other things, at his Majesty's charge, was simply in the view of carrying on trade." He says, farther, that in May last, the vessels, canoes, and men being nearly all absent on this errand, the fort was left in so defenceless a state that a party of Senecas, returning from their winter hunt, took from it a quantity of goods, and drank as much brandy as they wanted. "In short," he concludes, "it is plain that Monsieur de la Barre uses this fort only as a depot for the trade of Lake Ontario." [88 - Meules à Seignelay, 8 July, 1684. This accords perfectly with statements made in several memorials of La Salle and his friends.]

In the spring of 1683, La Barre had taken a step as rash as it was lawless and unjust. He sent the Chevalier de Baugis, lieutenant of his guard, with a considerable number of canoes and men, to seize La Salle's fort of St. Louis on the river Illinois; a measure which, while gratifying the passions and the greed of himself and his allies, would greatly increase he danger of rupture with the Iroquois. Late in the season, he despatched seven canoes and fourteen men, with goods to the value of fifteen or sixteen thousand livres, to trade with the tribes of the Mississippi. As he had sown, so he reaped. The seven canoes passed through the country of the Illinois. A large war party of Senecas and Cayugas invaded it in February. La Barre had told their chiefs that they were welcome to plunder the canoes of La Salle. The Iroquois were not discriminating. They fell upon the governor's canoes, seized all the goods, and captured the men. [89 - There appears no doubt that La Barre brought this upon himself. His successor, Denonville, writes that the Iroquois declared that, in plundering the canoes, they thought they were executing the orders they had received to plunder La Salle's people. Denonville, Mémoire adressé ou Ministre sur les Affaires de la Nouvelle France, 10 Août, 1688. The Iroquois told Dongan, in 1684, "that they had not don any thing to the French but what Monsr. delaBarr Ordered them, which was that if they mett with any French hunting without his passe to take what they had from them." Dongan to Denonville, 9 Sept., 1687.] Then they attacked Baugis at Fort St. Louis. The place, perched on a rock, was strong, and they were beaten off; but the act was one of open war.