MGR. DE LAVAL COMES FOR THE LAST TIME
TO CANADA
Mgr. de Saint-Vallier received the most kindly welcome from the king: he
availed himself of it to request some aid on behalf of the priests of
the seminary whom age and infirmity condemned to retirement. He obtained
it, and received, besides, fifteen thousand francs for the building of
an episcopal palace. He decided, in fact, to withdraw from the seminary,
in order to preserve complete independence in the exercise of his high
duties. Laval learned with sorrow of this decision; he, who had always
clung to the idea of union with his seminary and of having but one
common fund with this house, beheld his successor adopt an opposite line
of conduct. Another cause of division rose between the two prelates; the
too great generosity of Mgr. de Saint-Vallier had brought the seminary
into financial embarrassment. The Marquis de Seignelay, then minister,
thought it wiser under such circumstances to postpone till later the
return of Mgr. de Laval to Canada. The venerable bishop, whatever it
must have cost him, adhered to this decision with a wholly Christian
resignation. "You will know by the enclosed letters," he writes to the
priests of the Seminary of Quebec, "what compels me to stay in France. I
had no sooner received my sentence than our Lord granted me the favour
of inspiring me to go before the most Holy Sacrament and make a
sacrifice of all my desires and of that which is the dearest to me in
the world. I began by making the _amende honorable_ to the justice of
God, who deigned to extend to me the mercy of recognizing that it was in
just punishment of my sins and lack of faith that His providence
deprived me of the blessing of returning to a place where I had so
greatly offended; and I told Him, I think with a cheerful heart and a
spirit of humility, what the high priest Eli said when Samuel declared
to him from God what was to happen to him: '_Dominus est: quod bonum est
in oculis suis faciat_.' But since the will of our Lord does not reject
a contrite and humble heart, and since He both abases and exalts, He
gave me to know that the greatest favour He could grant me was to give
me a share in the trials which He deigned to bear in His life and death
for love of us; in thanksgiving for which I said a Te Deum with a heart
filled with joy and consolation in my soul: for, as to the lower nature,
it is left in the bitterness which it must bear. It is a hurt and a
wound which will be difficult to heal and which apparently will last
until my death, unless it please Divine Providence, which disposes of
men's hearts as it pleases, to bring about some change in the condition
of affairs. This will be when it pleases God, and as it may please Him,
without His creatures being able to oppose it."
In Canada the return of the revered Mgr. de Laval was impatiently
expected, and the governor, M. de Denonville, himself wrote that "in the
present state of public affairs it was necessary that the former bishop
should return, in order to influence men's minds, over which he had a
great ascendency by reason of his character and his reputation for
sanctity." Some persons wrongfully attributed to the influence of
Saint-Vallier the order which detained the worthy bishop in France; on
the contrary, Saint-Vallier had said one day to the minister, "It would
be very hard for a bishop who has founded this church and who desires to
go and die in its midst, to see himself detained in France. If Mgr. de
Laval should stay here the blame would be cast upon his successor,
against whom for this reason many people would be ill disposed."
M. de Denonville desired the more eagerly the return of this prelate so
beloved in New France, since difficulties were arising on every hand.
Convinced that peace with the Iroquois could not last, he began by
amassing provisions and ammunition at Fort Cataraqui, without heeding
the protests of Colonel Dongan, the most vigilant and most experienced
enemy of French domination in America; then he busied himself with
fortifying Montreal. He visited the place, appointed as its governor
the Chevalier de Callières, a former captain in the regiment of
Navarre, and in the spring of 1687 employed six hundred men under the
direction of M. du Luth, royal engineer, in the erection of a palisade.
These wooden defences, as was to be expected, were not durable and
demanded repairs every year. The year 1686, which had begun with the
conquest of the southern portion of Hudson Bay, was spent almost
entirely in preparations for war and negotiations for peace; the
Iroquois, nevertheless, continued their inroads. Finally M. de
Denonville, having received during the following spring eight hundred
poor recruits under the command of Vaudreuil, was ready for his
expedition. Part of these reinforcements were at once sent to Montreal,
where M. de Callières was gathering a body of troops on St. Helen's
Island: eight hundred and thirty-two regulars, one thousand Canadians,
and three hundred Indian allies, all burning with the desire of
distinguishing themselves, awaited now only the signal for departure.
"With this superiority of forces," says one author, "Denonville
conceived, however, the unfortunate idea of beginning hostilities by an
act which dishonoured the French name among the savages, that name
which, in spite of their great irritation, they had always feared and
respected." With the purpose of striking terror into the Iroquois he
caused to be seized the chiefs whom the Five Nations had sent as
delegates to Cataraqui at the request of Father de Lamberville, and
sent them to France to serve on board the royal galleys. This violation
of the law of nations aroused the fury of the Iroquois, and two
missionaries, Father Lamberville and Millet, though entirely innocent of
this crime, escaped torture only with difficulty. The king disapproved
wholly of this treason, and returned the prisoners to Canada; others
who, at Fort Frontenac, had been taken by M. de Champigny in as
treacherous a manner, were likewise restored to liberty.
The army, divided into four bodies, set out on June 11th, 1687, in four
hundred boats. It was joined at Sand River, on the shore of Lake
Ontario, by six hundred men from Detroit, and advanced inland. After
having passed through two very dangerous defiles, the French were
suddenly attacked by eight hundred of the enemy ambushed in the bed of a
stream. At first surprised, they promptly recovered from their
confusion, and put the savages to flight. Some sixty Iroquois were
wounded in this encounter, and forty-five whom they left dead on the
field of battle were eaten by the Ottawas, according to the horrible
custom of these cannibals. They entered then into the territory of the
Tsonnontouans, which was found deserted; everything had been reduced to
ashes, except an immense quantity of maize, to which they set fire; they
killed also a prodigious number of swine, but they did not meet with a
single Indian.
Instead of pursuing the execution of these reprisals by marching
against the other nations, M. de Denonville proceeded to Niagara, where
he built a fort. The garrison of a hundred men which he left there
succumbed in its entirety to a mysterious epidemic, probably caused by
the poor quality of the provisions. Thus the campaign did not produce
results proportionate to the preparations which had been made; it
humbled the Iroquois, but by this very fact it excited their rage and
desire for vengeance; so true is it that half-measures are more
dangerous than complete inaction. They were, besides, cleverly goaded on
by Governor Dongan. Towards the end of the summer they ravaged the whole
western part of the colony, and carried their audacity to the point of
burning houses and killing several persons on the Island of Montreal.
M. de Denonville understood that he could not carry out a second
expedition; disease had caused great havoc among the population and the
soldiers, and he could no longer count on the Hurons of Michilimackinac,
who kept up secret relations with the Iroquois. He was willing to
conclude peace, and consented to demolish Fort Niagara and to bring back
the Iroquois chiefs who had been sent to France to row in the galleys.
The conditions were already accepted on both sides, when the
negotiations were suddenly interrupted by the duplicity of Kondiaronk,
surnamed the Rat, chief of the Michilimackinac Hurons. This man, the
most cunning and crafty of Indians, a race which has nothing to learn
in point of astuteness from the shrewdest diplomat, had offered his
services against the Iroquois to the governor, who had accepted them.
Enkindled with the desire of distinguishing himself by some brilliant
deed, he arrives with a troop of Hurons at Fort Frontenac, where he
learns that a treaty is about to be concluded between the French and the
Iroquois. Enraged at not having even been consulted in this matter,
fearing to see the interests of his nation sacrificed, he lies in wait
with his troop at Famine Creek, falls upon the delegates, and, killing a
number of them, makes the rest prisoners. On the statement of the latter
that they were going on an embassy to Ville-Marie, he feigns surprise,
and is astonished that the French governor-general should have sent him
to attack men who were going to treat with him. He then sets them at
liberty, keeping a single one of them, whom he hastens to deliver to M.
de Durantaye, governor of Michilimackinac; the latter, ignorant of the
negotiations with the Iroquois, has the prisoner shot in spite of the
protestations of the wretched man, who the Rat pretends is mad. The plan
of the Huron chief has succeeded; it remains now only to reap the fruits
of it. He frees an old Iroquois who has long been detained in captivity
and sends him to announce to his compatriots that the French are seeking
in the negotiations a cowardly means of ridding themselves of their
foes. This news exasperated the Five Nations; henceforth peace was
impossible, and the Iroquois went to join the English, with whom, on the
pretext of the dethronement of James II, war was again about to break
out. M. de Callières, governor of Montreal, set out for France to lay
before the king a plan for the conquest of New York; the monarch adopted
it, but, not daring to trust its execution to M. de Denonville, he
recalled him in order to entrust it to Count de Frontenac, now again
appointed governor.
We can easily conceive that in the danger thus threatening the colony M.
de Denonville should have taken pains to surround himself with all the
men whose aid might be valuable to him. "You will have this year," wrote
M. de Brisacier to M. Glandelet, "the joy of seeing again our two
prelates. You will find the first more holy and more than ever dead to
himself; and the second will appear to you all that you can desire him
to be for the particular consolation of the seminary and the good of New
France." On the request of the governor-general, in fact, Mgr. de Laval
saw the obstacle disappear which had opposed his departure, and he
hastened to take advantage of it. He set out in the spring of 1688, at
that period of the year when vegetation begins to display on all sides
its festoons of verdure and flowers, and transforms Normandy and
Touraine, that garden of France, into genuine groves; the calm of the
air, the perfumed breezes of the south, the arrival of the southern
birds with their rich and varied plumage, all contribute to make these
days the fairest and sweetest of the year; but, in his desire to reach
as soon as possible the country where his presence was deemed necessary,
the venerable prelate did not wait for the spring sun to dry the roads
soaked by the rains of winter; accordingly, in spite of his infirmities,
he was obliged to travel to La Rochelle on horseback. However, he could
not embark on the ship _Le Soleil d'Afrique_ until about the middle of
April.
His duties as Bishop of Quebec had ended on January 25th preceding, the
day of the episcopal consecration of M. de Saint-Vallier. It would seem
that Providence desired that the priestly career of the prelate and his
last co-workers should end at the same time. Three priests of the
Seminary of Quebec went to receive in heaven almost at the same period
the reward of their apostolic labours. M. Thomas Morel died on September
23rd, 1687; M. Jean Guyon on January 10th, 1688; and M. Dudouyt on the
fifteenth of the same month. This last loss, especially, caused deep
grief to Mgr. de Laval. He desired that the heart of the devoted
missionary should rest in that soil of New France for which it had
always beat, and he brought it with him. The ceremony of the burial at
Quebec of the heart of M. Dudouyt was extremely touching; the whole
population was present. Up to his latest day this priest had taken the
greatest interest in Canada, and the letter which he wrote to the
seminary a few days before his death breathes the most ardent charity;
it particularly enjoined upon all patience and submission to authority.
The last official document signed by Mgr. de Laval as titulary bishop
was an addition to the statutes and rules which he had previously drawn
up for the Chapter of the city of Champlain. He wrote at the same time:
"It remains for me now, sirs and dearly beloved brethren, only to thank
you for the good affection that you preserve towards me, and to assure
you that it will not be my fault if I do not go at the earliest moment
to rejoin you in the growing Church which I have ever cherished as the
portion and heritage which it has pleased our Lord to preserve for me
during nearly thirty years. I supplicate His infinite goodness that he
into whose hands He has caused it to pass by my resignation may repair
all my faults."
The prelate landed on June 3rd. "The whole population," says the Abbé
Ferland, "was heartened and rejoiced by the return of Mgr. de Laval, who
came back to Canada to end his days among his former flock. His virtues,
his long and arduous labours in New France, his sincere love for the
children of the country, had endeared him to the Canadians; they felt
their trust in Providence renewed on beholding again him who, with them,
at their head, had passed through many years of trial and suffering." He
hardly took time to rest, but set out at once for Montreal, where he was
anxious to deliver in person to the Sulpicians the document of
spiritual and devotional union which had been quite recently signed at
Paris by the Seminary of St. Sulpice and by that of the Foreign
Missions. Returning to Quebec, he had the pleasure of receiving his
successor on the arrival of the latter, who disembarked on July 31st,
1688.
The reception of Mgr. de Saint-Vallier was as cordial as that offered
two months before to his predecessor. "As early as four o'clock in the
morning," we read in the annals of the Ursulines, "the whole population
was alert to hasten preparations. Some arranged the avenue along which
the new bishop was to pass, others raised here and there the standard of
the lilies of France. In the course of the morning Mgr. de Laval,
accompanied by several priests, betook himself to the vessel to salute
his successor whom the laws of the old French etiquette kept on board
his ship until he had replied to all the compliments prepared for him.
Finally, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole clergy, the civil
and military authorities, and the people having assembled on the quay,
Mgr. de Saint-Vallier made his appearance, addressed first by M. de
Bernières in the name of the clergy. He was next greeted by the mayor,
in the name of the whole town, then the procession began to move, with
military music at its head, and the new bishop was conducted to the
cathedral between two files of musketeers, who did not fail to salute
him and to fire volleys along the route." "The thanksgiving hymn which
re-echoed under the vaults of the holy temple found an echo in all
hearts," we read in another account; "and the least happy was not that
of the worthy prelate who thus inaugurated his long and laborious
episcopal career."