MASSACRE OF LACHINE
The virtue of Mgr. de Laval lacked the supreme consecration of
misfortune. A wearied but triumphant soldier, the venerable shepherd of
souls, coming back to dwell in the bishopric of Quebec, the witness of
his first apostolic labours, gave himself into the hands of his Master
to disappear and die. "Lord," he said with Simeon, "now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word." But many griefs still
remained to test his resignation to the Divine Will, and the most
shocking disaster mentioned in our annals was to sadden his last days.
The year 1688 had passed peacefully enough for the colony, but it was
only the calm which is the forerunner of the storm. The Five Nations
employed their time in secret organization; the French, lulled in this
deceptive security, particularly by news which had come from M. de
Valrennes, in command of Fort Frontenac, to whom the Iroquois had
declared that they were coming down to Montreal to make peace, had left
the forts to return to their dwellings and to busy themselves with the
work of the fields. Moreover, the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, who commanded
at Montreal in the absence of M. de Callières, who had gone to France,
carried his lack of foresight to the extent of permitting the officers
stationed in the country to leave their posts. It is astonishing to note
such imprudent neglect on the part of men who must have known the savage
nature. Rancour is the most deeply-rooted defect in the Indian, and it
was madness to think that the Iroquois could have forgotten so soon the
insult inflicted on their arms by the expedition of M. de Denonville, or
the breach made in their independence by the abduction of their chiefs
sent to France as convicts. The warning of their approaching incursion
had meanwhile reached Quebec through a savage named Ataviata;
unfortunately, the Jesuit Fathers had no confidence in this Indian; they
assured the governor-general that Ataviata was a worthless fellow, and
M. de Denonville made the mistake of listening too readily to these
prejudices and of not at least redoubling his precautions.
It was on the night between August 4th and 5th, 1689; all was quiet on
the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that
necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their
pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the
ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a
corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek
in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the
elements were unchained, the rain and hail were raging. As daring as
the Normans when they braved on frail vessels the fury of the seas, the
Iroquois, to the number of fifteen hundred, profited by the storm to
traverse Lake St. Louis in their bark canoes, and landed silently on the
shore at Lachine. They took care not to approach the forts; the darkness
was so thick that the soldiers discovered nothing unusual and did not
fire the cannon as was the custom on the approach of the enemy. Long
before daybreak the savages, divided into a number of squads, had
surrounded the houses within a radius of several miles. Suddenly a
piercing signal is given by the chiefs, and at once a horrible clamour
rends the air; the terrifying war-cry of the Iroquois has roused the
sleepers and raised the hair on the heads of the bravest. The colonists
leap from their couches, but they have no time to seize their weapons;
demons who seem to be vomited forth by hell have already broken in the
doors and windows. The dwellings which the Iroquois cannot penetrate are
delivered over to the flames, but the unhappy ones who issue from them
in confusion to escape the tortures of the fire are about to be
abandoned to still more horrible torments. The pen refuses to describe
the horrors of this night, and the imagination of Dante can hardly in
his "Inferno" give us an idea of it. The butchers killed the cattle,
burned the houses, impaled women, compelled fathers to cast their
children into the flames, spitted other little ones still alive and
compelled their mothers to roast them. Everything was burned and
pillaged except the forts, which were not attacked; two hundred persons
of all ages and of both sexes perished under torture, and about fifty,
carried away to the villages, were bound to the stake and burned by a
slow fire. Nevertheless the great majority of the inhabitants were able
to escape, thanks to the strong liquors kept in some of the houses, with
which the savages made ample acquaintance. Some of the colonists took
refuge in the forts, others were pursued into the woods.
Meanwhile the alarm had spread in Ville-Marie. M. de Denonville, who was
there, gives to the Chevalier de Vaudreuil the order to occupy Fort
Roland with his troops and a hundred volunteers. De Vaudreuil hastens
thither, accompanied by de Subercase and other officers; they are all
eager to measure their strength with the enemy, but the order of
Denonville is strict, they must remain on the defensive and run no risk.
By dint of insistence, Subercase obtained permission to make a sortie
with a hundred volunteers; at the moment when he was about to set out he
had to yield the command to M. de Saint-Jean, who was higher in rank.
The little troop went and entrenched itself among the débris of a burned
house and exchanged an ineffectual fire with the savages ambushed in a
clump of trees. They soon perceived a party of French and friendly
Indians who, coming from Fort Rémy, were proceeding towards them in
great danger of being surrounded by the Iroquois, who were already
sobered. The volunteers wished to rush out to meet this reinforcement,
but their commander, adhering to his instructions, which forbade him to
push on farther, restrained them. What might have been foreseen
happened: the detachment from Fort Rémy was exterminated. Five of its
officers were taken and carried off towards the Iroquois villages, but
succeeded in escaping on the way, except M. de la Rabeyre, who was bound
to the stake and perished in torture.
On reading these details one cannot understand the inactivity of the
French: it would seem that the authorities had lost their heads. We
cannot otherwise explain the lack of foresight of the officers absent
from their posts, the pusillanimous orders of the governor to M. de
Vaudreuil, his imprudence in sending too weak a troop through the
dangerous places, the lack of initiative on the part of M. de
Saint-Jean, finally, the absolute lack of energy and audacity, the
complete absence of that ardour which is inherent in the French
character.
After this disaster the troops returned to the forts, and the
surrounding district, abandoned thus to the fury of the barbarians, was
ravaged in all directions. The Iroquois, proud of the terror which they
inspired, threatened the city itself; we note by the records of Montreal
that on August 25th there were buried two soldiers killed by the
savages, and that on September 7th following, Jean Beaudry suffered the
same fate. Finding nothing more to pillage or to burn, they passed to
the opposite shore, and plundered the village of Lachesnaie. They
massacred a portion of the population, which was composed of seventy-two
persons, and carried off the rest. They did not withdraw until the
autumn, dragging after them two hundred captives, including fifty
prisoners taken at Lachine.
This terrible event, which had taken place at no great distance from
them, and the news of which re-echoed in their midst, struck the
inhabitants of Quebec with grief and terror. Mgr. de Laval was cruelly
affected by it, but, accustomed to adore in everything the designs of
God, he seized the occasion to invoke Him with more fervour; he
immediately ordered in his seminary public prayers to implore the mercy
of the Most High. M. de Frontenac, who was about to begin his second
administration, learned the sinister news on his arrival at Quebec on
October 15th. He set out immediately for Montreal, which he reached on
the twenty-seventh of the same month. He visited the environments, and
found only ruins and ashes where formerly rose luxurious dwellings.
War had just been rekindled between France and Great Britain. The
governor had not men enough for vast operations, accordingly he prepared
to organize a guerilla warfare. While the Abenaquis, those faithful
allies, destroyed the settlements of the English in Acadia and killed
nearly two hundred persons there, Count de Frontenac sent in the winter
of 1689-90, three detachments against New England; all three were
composed of only a handful of men, but these warriors were well
seasoned. In the rigorous cold of winter, traversing innumerable miles
on their snowshoes, sinking sometimes into the icy water, sleeping in
the snow, carrying their supplies on their backs, they surprised the
forts which they went to attack, where one would never have believed
that men could execute so rash an enterprise. Thus the three detachments
were alike successful, and the forts of Corlaer in the state of New
York, of Salmon Falls in New Hampshire, and of Casco on the seaboard,
were razed.
The English avenged these reverses by capturing Port Royal. Encouraged
by this success, they sent Phipps at the head of a large troop to seize
Quebec, while Winthrop attacked Montreal with three thousand men, a
large number of whom were Indians. Frontenac hastened to Quebec with M.
de Callières, governor of Montreal, the militia and the regular troops.
Already the fortifications had been protected against surprise by new
and well-arranged entrenchments. The hostile fleet appeared on October
16th, 1690, and Phipps sent an officer to summon the governor to
surrender the place. The envoy, drawing out his watch, declared with
arrogance to the Count de Frontenac that he would give him an hour to
decide. "I will answer you by the mouth of my cannon," replied the
representative of Louis XIV. The cannon replied so well that at the
first shot the admiral's flag fell into the water; the Canadians,
braving the balls and bullets which rained about them, swam out to get
it, and this trophy remained hanging in the cathedral of Quebec until
the conquest. The _Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec_ depicts for us
very simply the courage and piety of the inhabitants during this siege.
"The most admirable thing, and one which surely drew the blessing of
Heaven upon Quebec was that during the whole siege no public devotion
was interrupted. The city is arranged so that the roads which lead to
the churches are seen from the harbour; thus several times a day were
beheld processions of men and women going to answer the summons of the
bells. The English noticed them; they called M. de Grandeville (a brave
Canadian, and clerk of the farm of Tadousac, whom they had made
prisoner) and asked him what it was. He answered them simply: 'It is
mass, vespers, and the benediction.' By this assurance the citizens of
Quebec disconcerted them; they were astonished that women dared to go
out; they judged by this that we were very easy in our minds, though
this was far from being the case."
It is not surprising that the colonists should have fought valiantly
when their bishops and clergy set the example of devotion, when the
Jesuits remained constantly among the defenders to encourage and assist
on occasion the militia and the soldiers, when Mgr. de Laval, though
withdrawn from the conduct of religious affairs, without even the right
of sitting in the Sovereign Council, animated the population by his
patriotic exhortations. To prove to the inhabitants that the cause which
they defended by struggling for their homes was just and holy, at the
same time as to place the cathedral under the protection of Heaven, he
suggested the idea of hanging on the spire of the cathedral a picture of
the Holy Family. This picture was not touched by the balls and bullets,
and was restored after the siege to the Ursulines, to whom it belonged.
All the attempts of the English failed; in a fierce combat at Beauport
they were repulsed. There perished the brave Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène;
there, too, forty pupils of the seminary established at St. Joachim by
Mgr. de Laval distinguished themselves by their bravery and contributed
to the victory. Already Phipps had lost six hundred men. He decided to
retreat. To cap the climax of misfortune, his fleet met in the lower
part of the river with a horrible storm; several of his ships were
driven by the winds as far as the Antilles, and the rest arrived only
with great difficulty at Boston. Winthrop's army, disorganized by
disease and discord, had already scattered.
A famine which followed the siege tried the whole colony, and Laval had
to suffer by it as well as the seminary, for neither had hesitated
before the sacrifices necessary for the general weal. "All the furs and
furniture of the Lower Town were in the seminary," wrote the prelate; "a
number of families had taken refuge there, even that of the intendant.
This house could not refuse in such need all the sacrifices of charity
which were possible, at the expense of a great portion of the provisions
which were kept there. The soldiers and others have taken and consumed
at least one hundred cords of wood and more than fifteen hundred planks.
In brief, in cattle and other damages the loss to the seminary will
amount to a round thousand crowns. But we must on occasions of this sort
be patient, and do all the good we can without regard to future need."
The English were about to suffer still other reverses. In 1691 Major
Schuyler, with a small army composed in part of savages, came and
surprised below the fort of the Prairie de la Madeleine a camp of
between seven and eight hundred soldiers, whose leader, M. de
Saint-Cirque, was slain; but the French, recovering, forced the major to
retreat, and M. de Valrennes, who hastened up from Chambly with a body
of inhabitants and Indians, put the enemy to flight after a fierce
struggle. The English failed also in Newfoundland; they were unable to
carry Fort Plaisance, which was defended by M. de Brouillan; but he who
was to do them most harm was the famous Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, son
of Charles Le Moyne. Born in Montreal in 1661, he subsequently entered
the French navy. In the year 1696 he was ordered to drive the enemy out
of Newfoundland; he seized the capital, St. John's, which he burned,
and, marvellous to relate, with only a hundred and twenty-five men he
subdued the whole island, slew nearly two hundred of the English, and
took six or seven hundred prisoners. The following year he set out with
five ships to take possession of Hudson Bay. One day his vessel found
itself alone before Fort Nelson, facing three large ships of the enemy;
to the amazement of the English, instead of surrendering, d'Iberville
rushes upon them. In a fierce fight lasting four hours, he sinks the
strongest, compels the second to surrender, while the third flees under
full sail. Fort Bourbon surrendered almost at once, and Hudson Bay was
captured.
After the peace d'Iberville explored the mouths of the Mississippi,
erected several forts, founded the city of Mobile, and became the first
governor of Louisiana. When the war began again, the king gave him a
fleet of sixteen vessels to oppose the English in the Indies. He died of
an attack of fever in 1706.
During this time, the Iroquois were as dangerous to the French by their
inroads and devastations as the Abenaquis were to the English colonies;
accordingly Frontenac wished to subdue them. In the summer of 1696,
braving the fatigue and privations so hard to bear for a man of his age,
Frontenac set out from Ile Perrot with more than two thousand men, and
landed at the mouth of the Oswego River. He found at Onondaga only the
smoking remains of the village to which the savages had themselves set
fire, and the corpses of two Frenchmen who had died in torture. He
marched next against the Oneidas; all had fled at his approach, and he
had to be satisfied with laying waste their country. There remained
three of the Five Nations to punish, but winter was coming on and
Frontenac did not wish to proceed further into the midst of invisible
enemies, so he returned to Quebec.
The following year it was learned that the Treaty of Ryswick had just
been concluded between France and England. France kept Hudson Bay, but
Louis XIV pledged himself to recognize William III as King of England.
The Count de Frontenac had not the good fortune of crowning his
brilliant career by a treaty with the savages; he died on November 28th,
1698, at the age of seventy-eight years. In reaching this age without
exceeding it, he presented a new point of resemblance to his model,
Louis the Great, according to whom he always endeavoured to shape his
conduct, and who was destined to die at the age of seventy-seven.
[Note.--The incident of the flag mentioned above on page 230 is
treated at greater length in Dr. Le Sueur's _Frontenac_, pp. 295-8,
in the "Makers of Canada" series. He takes a somewhat different
view of the event.--Ed.]