1613-1615.
RUIN OF FRENCH ACADIA.
"Praised be God, behold two thirds of our company safe in France,
telling their strange adventures to their relatives and friends. And now
you will wish to know what befell the rest of us." Thus writes Father
Biard, who with his companions in misfortune, fourteen in all, prisoners
on board Argall's ship and the prize, were borne captive to Virginia.
Old Point Comfort was reached at length, the site of Fortress Monroe;
Hampton Roads, renowned in our day for the sea-fight of the Titans;
Sewell's Point; the Rip Raps; Newport News,--all household words in the
ears of this generation. Now, far on their right, buried in the damp
shade of immemorial verdure, lay, untrodden and voiceless, the fields
where stretched the leaguering lines of Washington where the lilies of
France floated beside the banners of the new-born republic, and where
in later years embattled treason confronted the manhood of an outraged
nation. And now before them they could descry the mast of small craft
at anchor, a cluster of rude dwellings fresh from the axe, scattered
tenements, and fields green with tobacco.
Throughout the voyage the prisoners had been soothed with flattering
tales of the benignity of the Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale;
of his love of the French, and his respect for the memory of Henry the
Fourth, to whom, they were told, he was much beholden for countenance
and favor. On their landing at Jamestown, this consoling picture
was reversed. The Governor fumed and blustered, talked of halter and
gallows, and declared that he would hang them all. In vain Argall
remonstrated, urging that he had pledged his word for their lives.
Dale, outraged by their invasion of British territory, was deaf to
all appeals; till Argall, driven to extremity, displayed the stolen
commissions, and proclaimed his stratagem, of which the French
themselves had to that moment been ignorant. As they were accredited by
their government, their lives at least were safe. Yet the wrath of
Sir Thomas Dale still burned high. He summoned his council, and they
resolved promptly to wipe off all stain of French intrusion from shores
which King James claimed as his own.
Their action was utterly unauthorized. The two kingdoms were at peace.
James the First, by the patents of 1606, had granted all North America,
from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degree of latitude, to the
two companies of London and Plymouth,--Virginia being assigned to the
former, while to the latter were given Maine and Acadia, with adjacent
regions. Over these, though as yet the claimants had not taken
possession of them, the authorities of Virginia had no color of
jurisdiction. England claimed all North America, in virtue of the
discovery of Cabot; and Sir Thomas Dale became the self-constituted
champion of British rights, not the less zealous that his championship
promised a harvest of booty.
Argall's ship, the captured ship of La Saussaye, and another smaller
vessel, were at once equipped and despatched on their errand of havoc.
Argall commanded; and Biard, with Quentin and several others of the
prisoners, were embarked with him. They shaped their course first
for Mount Desert. Here they landed, levelled La Saussaye's unfinished
defences, cut down the French cross, and planted one of their own in its
place. Next they sought out the island of St. Croix, seized a quantity
of salt, and razed to the ground all that remained of the dilapidated
buildings of De Monts. They crossed the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal,
guided, says Biard, by an Indian chief,--an improbable assertion, since
the natives of these coasts hated the English as much as they loved the
French, and now well knew the designs of the former. The unfortunate
settlement was tenantless. Biencourt, with some of his men, was on a
visit to neighboring bands of Indians, while the rest were reaping
in the fields on the river, two leagues above the fort. Succor from
Poutrincourt had arrived during the summer. The magazines were by no
means empty, and there were cattle, horses, and hogs in adjacent fields
and enclosures. Exulting at their good fortune, Argall's men butchered
or carried off the animals, ransacked the buildings, plundered them even
to the locks and bolts of the doors, and then laid the whole in ashes;
"and may it please the Lord," adds the pious Biard, "that the sins
therein committed may likewise have been consumed in that burning."
Having demolished Port Royal, the marauders went in boats up the river
to the fields where the reapers were at work. These fled, and took
refuge behind the ridge of a hill, whence they gazed helplessly on the
destruction of their harvest. Biard approached them, and, according to
the declaration of Poutrincourt made and attested before the Admiralty
of Guienne, tried to persuade them to desert his son, Biencourt, and
take service with Argall. The reply of one of the men gave little
encouragement for further parley:--
"Begone, or I will split your head with this hatchet."
There is flat contradiction here between the narrative of the Jesuit and
the accounts of Poutrincourt and contemporary English writers, who
agree in affirming that Biard, "out of indigestible malice that he had
conceived against Biencourt," encouraged the attack on the settlements
of St. Croix and Port Royal, and guided the English thither. The priest
himself admits that both French and English regarded him as a traitor,
and that his life was in danger. While Argall's ship was at anchor, a
Frenchman shouted to the English from a distance that they would do well
to kill him. The master of the ship, a Puritan, in his abomination
of priests, and above all of Jesuits, was at the same time urging
his commander to set Biard ashore and leave him to the mercy of his
countrymen. In this pass he was saved, to adopt his own account, by what
he calls his simplicity; for he tells us, that, while--instigated, like
the rest of his enemies, by the Devil--the robber and the robbed were
joining hands to ruin him, he was on his knees before Argall, begging
him to take pity on the French, and leave them a boat, together with
provisions to sustain their miserable lives through the winter. This
spectacle of charity, he further says, so moved the noble heart of the
commander, that he closed his ears to all the promptings of foreign and
domestic malice.
The English had scarcely re-embarked, when Biencourt arrived with his
followers, and beheld the scene of destruction. Hopelessly outnumbered,
he tried to lure Argall and some of his officers into an ambuscade, but
they would not be entrapped. Biencourt now asked for an interview. The
word of honor was mutually given, and the two chiefs met in a meadow not
far from the demolished dwellings. An anonymous English writer says that
Biencourt offered to transfer his allegiance to King James, on condition
of being permitted to remain at Port Royal and carry on the fur-trade
under a guaranty of English protection, but that Argall would not listen
to his overtures. The interview proved a stormy one. Biard says that the
Frenchmen vomited against him every species of malignant abuse. "In the
mean time," he adds, "you will considerately observe to what madness the
evil spirit exciteth those who sell themselves to him."
According to Pontrincourt, Argall admitted that the priest had urged
him to attack Port Royal. Certain it is that Biencourt demanded his
surrender, frankly declaring that he meant to hang him. "Whilest they
were discoursing together," says the old English writer above mentioned,
"one of the savages, rushing suddenly forth from the Woods, and
licentiated to come neere, did after his manner, with such broken French
as he had, earnestly mediate a peace, wondring why they that seemed to
be of one Country should vse others with such hostilitie, and that with
such a forme of habit and gesture as made them both to laugh."
His work done, and, as he thought, the French settlements of Acadia
effectually blotted out, Argall set sail for Virginia on the thirteenth
of November. Scarcely was he at sea when a storm scattered the vessels.
Of the smallest of the three nothing was ever heard. Argall, severely
buffeted, reached his port in safety, having first, it is said,
compelled the Dutch at Manhattan to acknowledge for a time the
sovereignty of King James. The captured ship of La Saussaye, with Biard
and his colleague Quentin on board, was forced to yield to the fury of
the western gales and bear away for the Azores. To Biard the change
of destination was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the truculent
Governor of Virginia, and his tempest-rocked slumbers were haunted with
unpleasant visions of a rope's end. It seems that some of the French at
Port Royal, disappointed in their hope of hanging him, had commended
him to Sir Thomas Dale as a proper subject for the gallows drawing up
a paper, signed by six of them, and containing allegations of a nature
well fitted to kindle the wrath of that vehement official. The vessel
was commanded by Turnel, Argall's lieutenant, apparently an officer of
merit, a scholar and linguist. He had treated his prisoner with great
kindness, because, says the latter, "he esteemed and loved him for
his naive simplicity and ingenuous candor." But of late, thinking
his kindness misplaced, he had changed it for an extreme coldness,
preferring, in the words of Biard himself, "to think that the Jesuit had
lied, rather than so many who accused him."
Water ran low, provisions began to fail, and they eked out their meagre
supply by butchering the horses taken at Port Royal. At length they came
within sight of Fayal, when a new terror seized the minds of the two
Jesuits. Might not the Englishmen fear that their prisoners would
denounce them to the fervent Catholics of that island as pirates and
sacrilegious kidnappers of priests? From such hazard the escape was
obvious. What more simple than to drop the priests into the sea? In
truth, the English had no little dread of the results of conference
between the Jesuits and the Portuguese authorities of Fayal; but
the conscience or humanity of Turnel revolted at the expedient which
awakened such apprehension in the troubled mind of Biard. He contented
himself with requiring that the two priests should remain hidden while
the ship lay off the port: Biard does not say that he enforced the
demand either by threats or by the imposition of oaths. He and his
companion, however, rigidly complied with it, lying close in the hold or
under the boats, while suspicious officials searched the ship, a proof,
he triumphantly declares, of the audacious malice which has asserted it
as a tenet of Rome that no faith need be kept with heretics.
Once more at sea, Turnel shaped his course for home, having, with some
difficulty, gained a supply of water and provisions at Fayal. All was
now harmony between him and his prisoners. When he reached Pembroke,
in Wales, the appearance of the vessel--a French craft in English
hands--again drew upon him the suspicion of piracy. The Jesuits,
dangerous witnesses among the Catholics of Fayal, could at the worst do
little harm with the Vice-Admiral at Pembroke. To him, therefore, he led
the prisoners, in the sable garb of their order, now much the worse for
wear, and commended them as persons without reproach, "wherein," adds
the modest father, "he spoke the truth." The result of their evidence
was, we are told, that Turnel was henceforth treated, not as a pirate,
but, according to his deserts, as an honorable gentleman. This interview
led to a meeting with certain dignitaries of the Anglican Church,
who, much interested in an encounter with Jesuits in their robes, were
filled, says Biard, with wonder and admiration at what they were told
of their conduct. He explains that these churchmen differ widely in
form and doctrine from the English Calvinists, who, he says, are called
Puritans; and he adds that they are superior in every respect to these,
whom they detest as an execrable pest.
Biard was sent to Dover and thence to Calais, returning, perhaps, to
the tranquil honors of his chair of theology at Lyons. La Saussaye,
La Motte, Fleury, and other prisoners were at various times sent from
Virginia to England, and ultimately to France. Madame de Guercheville,
her pious designs crushed in the bud, seems to have gained no further
satisfaction than the restoration of the vessel. The French ambassador
complained of the outrage, but answer was postponed; and, in the
troubled state of France, the matter appears to have been dropped.
Argall, whose violent and crafty character was offset by a gallant
bearing and various traits of martial virtue, became Deputy-Governor
of Virginia, and, under a military code, ruled the colony with a rod of
iron. He enforced the observance of Sunday with an edifying rigor.
Those who absented themselves from church were, for the first offence,
imprisoned for the night, and reduced to slavery for a week; for the
second offence, enslaved a month and for the third, a year. Nor was
he less strenuous in his devotion to mammon. He enriched himself by
extortion and wholesale peculation; and his audacious dexterity, aided
by the countenance of the Earl of Warwick, who is said to have had a
trading connection with him, thwarted all the efforts of the company
to bring him to account. In 1623, he was knighted by the hand of King
James.
Early in the spring following the English attack, Pontrincourt came to
Port Royal. He found the place in ashes, and his unfortunate son, with
the men under his command, wandering houseless in the forests. They had
passed a winter of extreme misery, sustaining their wretched existence
with roots, the buds of trees, and lichens peeled from the rocks.
Despairing of his enterprise, Poutrincourt returned to France. In
the next year, 1615, during the civil disturbances which followed the
marriage of the King, command was given him of the royal forces destined
for the attack on Mery; and here, happier in his death than in his life,
he fell, sword in hand.
In spite of their reverses, the French kept hold on Acadia. Biencourt,
partially at least, rebuilt Port Royal; while winter after winter the
smoke of fur traders' huts curled into the still, sharp air of these
frosty wilds, till at length, with happier auspices, plans of settlement
were resumed.
Rude hands strangled the "Northern Paraguay" in its birth. Its
beginnings had been feeble, but behind were the forces of a mighty
organization, at once devoted and ambitious, enthusiastic and
calculating. Seven years later the "Mayflower" landed her emigrants at
Plymouth. What would have been the issues had the zeal of the pious lady
of honor preoccupied New England with a Jesuit colony?
In an obscure stroke of lawless violence began the strife of France and
England, Protestantism and Rome, which for a century and a half shook
the struggling communities of North America, and closed at last in the
memorable triumph on the Plains of Abraham.