1642-1661.
THE HOLY WARS OF MONTREAL.
_Dauversière.--Mance and Bourgeoys.--Miracle.--A Pious Defaulter.--
Jesuit and Sulpitian.--Montreal in 1659.--The Hospital Nuns.--The Nuns
and the Iroquois.--More Miracles.--The Murdered Priests.--Brigeac and
Closse.--Soldiers of the Holy Family._
|On the 2d of July, 1659, the ship “St. André” lay in the harbor of
Rochelle, crowded with passengers for Canada. She had served two years
as a hospital for marines, and was infected with a contagious fever.
Including the crew, some two hundred persons were on board, more
than half of whom were bound for Montreal. Most of these were sturdy
laborers, artisans, peasants, and soldiers, together with a troop of
young women, their present or future partners; a portion of the company
set down on the old record as “sixty virtuous men and thirty-two
pious girls.” There were two priests also, Vignal and Le Maître, both
destined to a speedy death at the hands of the Iroquois. But the most
conspicuous among these passengers for Montreal were two groups of women
in the habit of nuns, under the direction of Marguerite Bourgeoys and
Jeanne Mance. Marguerite Bourgeoys, whose kind, womanly face bespoke her
fitness for the task, was foundress of the school for female children at
Montreal; her companion, a tall, austere figure, worn with suffering and
care, was directress of the hospital. Both had returned to France for
aid, and were now on their way back, each with three recruits, three
being the mystic number, as a type of the Holy Family, to whose worship
they were especially devoted.
Amid the bustle of departure, the shouts of sailors, the rattling of
cordage, the flapping of sails, the tears and the embracings, an elderly
man, with heavy plebeian features, sallow with disease, and in a sober,
half-clerical dress, approached Mademoiselle Mance and her three
nuns, and, turning his eyes to heaven, spread his hands over them
in benediction. It was Le Boyer de la Dauversière, founder of the
sisterhood of St. Joseph, to which the three nuns belonged. “Now, O
Lord,” he exclaimed, with the look of one whose mission on earth is
fulfilled, “permit thou thy servant to depart in peace!”
Sister Maillet, who had charge of the meagre treasury of the community,
thought that something more than a blessing was due from him; and
asked where she should apply for payment of the interest of the twenty
thousand livres which Mademoiselle Mance had placed in his hands for
investment. Dauversière changed countenance, and replied, with a
troubled voice: “My daughter, God will provide for you. Place your
trust in
Him.” * He was bankrupt, and had used the money of the sisterhood to
pay a debt of his own, leaving the nuns penniless.
I have related in another place ** how an association of devotees,
inspired, as they supposed, from heaven, had undertaken to found a
religious colony at Montreal in honor of the Holy Family. The essentials
of the proposed establishment were to be a seminary of priests dedicated
to the Virgin, a hospital to Saint Joseph, and a school to the Infant
Jesus; while a settlement was to be formed around them simply for
their defence and maintenance. This pious purpose had in part been
accomplished.
It was seventeen years since Mademoiselle Mance had begun her labors in
honor of Saint Joseph. Marguerite Bourgeoys had entered upon hers more
recently; yet even then the attempt was premature, for she found no
white children to teach. In time, however, this want was supplied,
and she opened her school in a stable, which answered to the stable of
Bethlehem, lodging with her pupils in the loft, and instructing them in
Roman Catholic Christianity, with such rudiments of mundane knowledge as
she and her advisers thought fit to impart.
Mademoiselle Mance found no lack of hospital work, for blood and blows
were rife at Montreal, where the woods were full of Iroquois, and not a
moment was without its peril. Though years
* Faillon, Vie de M’lle Mance, I. 172. This volume is
illustrated with a portrait of Dauversière.
** The Jesuits in North America.
began to tell upon her, she toiled patiently at her dreary task, till,
in the winter of 1657, she fell on the ice of the St. Lawrence, broke
her right arm, and dislocated the wrist. Bouchard, the surgeon of
Montreal, set the broken bones, but did not discover the dislocation.
The arm in consequence became totally useless, and her health wasted
away under incessant and violent pain. Maisonneuve, the civil and
military chief of the settlement, advised her to go to France for
assistance in the work to which she was no longer equal; and Marguerite
Bourgeoys, whose pupils, white and red, had greatly multiplied, resolved
to go with her for a similar object. They set out in September, 1658,
landed at Rochelle, and went thence to Paris. Here they repaired to the
seminary of St. Sulpice; for the priests of this community were joined
with them in the work at Montreal, of which they were afterwards to
become the feudal proprietors.
Now ensued a wonderful event, if we may trust the evidence of sundry
devout persons. Olier, the founder of St. Sulpice, had lately died, and
the two pilgrims would fain pay their homage to his heart, which the
priests of his community kept as a precious relic, enclosed in a leaden
box. The box was brought, when the thought inspired Mademoiselle Mance
to try its miraculous efficacy and invoke the intercession of the
departed founder. She did so, touching her disabled arm gently with the
leaden casket. Instantly a grateful warmth pervaded the shrivelled limb,
and from that hour its use was restored. It is true that the Jesuits
ventured to doubt the Sulpitian miracle, and even to ridicule it; but
the Sulpitians will show to this day the attestation of Mademoiselle
Mance herself, written with the fingers once paralyzed and powerless.
* Nevertheless, the cure was not so thorough as to permit her again to
take charge of her patients.
Her next care was to visit Madame de Bullion, a devout lady of great
wealth, who was usually designated at Montreal as “the unknown
benefactress,” because, though her charities were the mainstay of the
feeble colony, and though the source from which they proceeded was well
known, she affected, in the interest of humility, the greatest secrecy,
and required those who profited by her gifts to pretend ignorance whence
they came. Overflowing with zeal for the pious enterprise, she received
her visitor with enthusiasm, lent an open ear to her recital, responded
graciously to her appeal for aid, and paid over to her the sum,
munificent at that day, of twenty-two thousand francs. Thus far
successful, Mademoiselle Mance repaired to the town of La Flèche to
visit Le Royer de la Dauversière.
It was this wretched fanatic who, through visions and revelations,
had first conceived the plan of a hospital in honor of Saint Joseph at
Montreal. ** He had found in Mademoiselle Mance a zealous and efficient
pioneer; but the execution of his scheme required a community of
hospital nuns, and
* For an account of this miracle, written in perfect good
faith and supported by various attestations, see Faillon,
Vie de M’lle Mance, chap. iv.
** See The Jesuits in North America.
therefore he had labored for the last eighteen years to form one at La
Flèche, meaning to despatch its members in due time to Canada. The time
at length was come. Three of the nuns were chosen, Sisters Brésoles,
Mace, and Maillet, and sent under the escort of certain pious
gentlemen to Rochelle, Their exit from La Flèche was not without
its difficulties. Dauversière was in ill odor, not only from the
multiplicity of his debts, but because, in his character of agent of the
association of Montreal, he had at various times sent thither those whom
his biographer describes as "the most virtuous girls to be found at La
Flèche,” intoxicating them with religious excitement, and shipping
them for the New World against the will of their parents. It was noised
through the town that he had kidnapped and sold them; and now the report
spread abroad that he was about to crown his iniquity by luring away
three young nuns. A mob gathered at the convent gate, and the escort
were forced to draw their swords to open a way for the terrified
sisters.
Of the twenty-two thousand francs which she had received, Mademoiselle
Mance kept two thousand for immediate needs, and confided the rest to
the hands of Dauversière, who, hard pressed by his creditors, used it
to pay one of his debts; and then, to his horror, found himself unable
to replace it. Racked by the gout and tormented by remorse, he betook
himself to his bed in a state of body and mind truly pitiable. One
of the miracles, so frequent in the early annals of Montreal, was
vouchsafed in answer to his prayer, and he was enabled to journey to
Rochelle and bid farewell to his nuns. It was but a brief respite; he
returned home to become the prey of a host of maladies, and to die at
last a lingering and painful death.
While Mademoiselle Mance was gaining recruits in La Flèche, Marguerite
Bourgeoys was no less successful in her native town of Troyes, and she
rejoined her companions at Rochelle, accompanied by Sisters Châtel,
Crolo, and Raisin, her destined assistants in the school at Montreal.
Meanwhile, the Sulpitians and others interested in the pious enterprise,
had spared no effort to gather men to strengthen the colony, and young
women to serve as their wives; and all were now mustered at Rochelle,
waiting for embarkation. Their waiting was a long one. Laval, bishop
at Quebec, was allied to the Jesuits, and looked on the colonists of
Montreal with more than coldness. Sulpitian writers say that his agents
used every effort to discourage them, and that certain persons at
Rochelle told the master of the ship in which the emigrants were to sail
that they were not to be trusted to pay their passage-money. Hereupon
ensued a delay of more than two months before means could be found to
quiet the scruples of the prudent commander. At length the anchor was
weighed, and the dreary voyage begun.
The woe-begone company, crowded in the filthy and infected ship, were
tossed for two months more on the relentless sea, buffeted by repeated
storms, and wasted by a contagious fever, which attacked nearly all of
them and reduced Mademoiselle Mance to extremity. Eight or ten died and
were dropped overboard, after a prayer from the two priests. At length
land hove in sight; the piny odors of the forest regaled their languid
senses as they sailed up the broad estuary of the St. Lawrence and
anchored under the rock of Quebec.
High aloft, on the brink of the cliff, they saw the _fleur-de-lis_
waving above the fort of St. Louis, and, beyond, the cross on the tower
of the cathedral traced against the sky; the houses of the merchants
on the strand below, and boats and canoes drawn up along the bank. The
bishop and the Jesuits greeted them as coworkers in a holy cause, with
an unction not wholly sincere. Though a unit against heresy, the pious
founders of New France were far from unity among themselves. To the
thinking of the Jesuits, Montreal was a government within a government,
a wheel within a wheel. This rival Sulpitian settlement was, in their
eyes, an element of disorganization adverse to the disciplined harmony
of the Canadian Church, which they would fain have seen, with its focus
at Quebec, radiating light unrefracted to the uttermost parts of the
colony. That is to say, they wished to control it unchecked, through
their ally, the bishop.
The emigrants, then, were received with a studious courtesy, which
veiled but thinly a stiff and persistent opposition. The bishop and
the Jesuits were especially anxious to prevent the La Flèche nuns from
establishing themselves at Montreal, where they would form a separate
community, under Sulpitian influence; and, in place of the newly arrived
sisters, they wished to substitute nuns from the Hôtel Dieu of Quebec,
who would be under their own control. That which most strikes the
non-Catholic reader throughout this affair is the constant reticence and
dissimulation practised, not only between Jesuits and Montrealists, but
among the Montrealists themselves. Their self-devotion, great as it was,
was fairly matched by their disingenuousness. *
All difficulties being overcome, the Montrealists embarked in boats and
ascended the St. Lawrence, leaving Quebec infected with the contagion
they had brought. The journey now made in a single night cost them
fifteen days of hardship and danger. At length they reached their new
home. The little settlement lay before them, still gasping betwixt life
and death, in a puny, precarious infancy. Some forty small, compact
houses were ranged parallel to the river, chiefly along the fine of
what is now St. Paul’s Street. On the left there was a fort, and on a
rising ground at the right a massive windmill of stone, enclosed with
a wall or palisade pierced for musketry, and answering the purpose of
a redoubt or block-house. ** Fields, studded with charred and blackened
stumps,
* See, for example, chapter iv. of Faillon’s Life of
Mademoiselle Mance. The evidence is unanswerable, the writer
being the partisan and admirer of most of those whose pieuse
tromperie, to use the expression of Dollier de Casson, he
describes in apparent unconsciousness that any body will see
reason to cavil at it.
** Lettre du Vicomte d’Argenson, Gouverneur du Canada, 4
Août, 1659, MS
between which crops were growing, stretched away to the edges of the
bordering forest; and the green, shaggy back of the mountain towered
over all.
There were at this time a hundred and sixty men at Montreal, about fifty
of whom had families, or at least wives. They greeted the newcomers
with a welcome which, this time, was as sincere as it was warm, and
bestirred themselves with alacrity to provide them with shelter for the
winter. As for the three nuns from La Flèche, a chamber was hastily
made for them over two low rooms which had served as Mademoiselle
Mance’s hospital. This chamber was twenty-five feet square, with four
cells for the nuns, and a closet for stores and clothing, which for the
present was empty, as they had landed in such destitution that they were
forced to sell all their scanty equipment to gain the bare necessaries
of existence. Little could be hoped from the colonists, who were
scarcely less destitute than they. Such was their poverty,--thanks to
Dauversiere’s breach of trust,--that when their clothes were worn out,
they were unable to replace them, and were forced to patch them with
such material as came to hand. Maisonneuve, the governor, and the pious
Madame d’Aillebout, being once on a visit to the hospital, amused
themselves with trying to guess of what stuff the habits of the nuns had
originally been made, and were unable to agree on the point in
question. *
* Annales des Hospitalières de Villemarie, par la Sœur
Morin, a contemporary record, from which Faillon gives long
extracts.
Their chamber, which they occupied for many years, being hastily built
of illseasoned planks, let in the piercing cold of the Canadian winter
through countless cracks and chinks; and the driving snow sifted through
in such quantities that they were sometimes obliged, the morning after
a storm, to remove it with shovels. Their food would freeze on the table
before them, and their coarse brown bread had to be thawed on the hearth
before they could cut it. These women had been nurtured in ease, if not
in luxury. One of them, Judith de Brésoles, had in her youth, by advice
of her confessor, run away from parents who were devoted to her, and
immured herself in a convent, leaving them in agonies of doubt as to her
fate. She now acted as superior of the little community. One of her nuns
records of her that she had a fervent devotion for the Infant Jesus;
and that, along with many more spiritual graces, he inspired her with so
transcendent a skill in cookery, that “with a small piece of lean pork
and a few herbs she could make soup of a marvellous relish.” * Sister
Macé was charged with the care of the pigs and hens, to whose wants she
attended in person, though she, too, had been delicately bred. In course
of time, the sisterhood was increased by additions from without; though
more than twenty girls who entered the hospital as novices recoiled from
the hardship, and took husbands in the colony. Among
* “C’était par son recours à l’Enfant Jésus qu’elle
trouvait tous ces secrets et d’autres semblables,” writes in
our own day the excellent annalist, Faillon.
a few who took the vows, Sister Jumeau should not pass unnoticed. Such
was her humility, that, though of a good family and unable to divest
herself of the marks of good breeding, she pretended to be the daughter
of a poor peasant, and persisted in repeating the pious falsehood till
the merchant Le Ber told her flatly that he did not believe her.
The sisters had great need of a man to do the heavy work of the house
and garden, but found no means of hiring one, when an incident, in which
they saw a special providence, excellently supplied the want. There was
a poor colonist named Jouaneaux to whom a piece of land had been given
at some distance from the settlement. Had he built a cabin upon it, his
scalp would soon have paid the forfeit; but, being bold and hardy,
he devised a plan by which he might hope to sleep in safety without
abandoning the farm which was his only possession. Among the stumps of
his clearing there was one hollow with age. Under this he dug a sort
of cave, the entrance of which was a small hole carefully hidden by
brushwood. The hollow stump was easily converted into a chimney; and by
creeping into his burrow at night, or when he saw signs of danger, he
escaped for some time the notice of the Iroquois. But, though he could
dispense with a house, he needed a barn for his hay and corn; and
while he was building one, he fell from the ridge of the roof and was
seriously hurt. He was carried to the Hôtel Dieu, where the nuns
showed him every attention, until, after a long confinement, he at last
recovered. Being of a grateful nature and enthusiastically devout, he
was so touched by the kindness of his benefactors, and so moved by the
spectacle of their piety, that he conceived the wish of devoting his
life to their service. To this end a contract was drawn up, by which he
pledged himself to work for them as long as strength remained; and they,
on their part, agreed to maintain him in sickness or old age.
This stout-hearted retainer proved invaluable; though, had a guard of
soldiers been added, it would have been no more than the case demanded.
Montreal was not palisaded, and at first the hospital was as much
exposed as the rest. The Iroquois would skulk at night among the houses,
like wolves in a camp of sleeping travellers on the prairies; though the
human foe was, of the two, incomparably the bolder, fiercer, and more
bloodthirsty. More than once one of these prowling savages was known to
have crouched all night in a rank growth of wild mustard in the garden
of the nuns, vainly hoping that one of them would come out within reach
of his tomahawk. During summer, a month rarely passed without a fight,
sometimes within sight of their windows. A burst of yells from the
ambushed marksmen, followed by a clatter of musketry, would announce the
opening of the fray, and promise the nuns an addition to their list of
patients. On these occasions they bore themselves according to their
several natures. Sister Morin, who had joined their number three years
after their arrival, relates that Sister Brésoles and she used to run
to the belfry and ring the tocsin to call the inhabitants together.
“From our high station,” she writes, “we could sometimes see the
combat, which terrified us extremely, so that we came down again as soon
as we could, trembling with fright, and thinking that our last hour was
come. When the tocsin sounded, my Sister Maillet would become faint with
excess of fear; and my Sister Macé, as long as the alarm continued,
would remain speechless, in a state pitiable to see. They would both get
into a corner of the rood-loft, before the Holy Sacrament, so as to be
prepared for death; or else go into their cells. As soon as I heard that
the Iroquois were gone, I went to tell them, which comforted them and
seemed to restore them to life. My Sister Brésoles was stronger and
more courageous; her terror, which she could not help, did not prevent
her from attending the sick and receiving the dead and wounded who were
brought in.”
The priests of St. Sulpice, who had assumed the entire spiritual charge
of the settlement, and who were soon to assume its entire temporal
charge also, had for some years no other lodging than a room at the
hospital, adjoining those of the patients. They caused the building
to be fortified with palisades, and the houses of some of the chief
inhabitants were placed near it, for mutual defence. They also built
two fortified houses, called Ste. Marie and St. Gabriel, at the two
extremities of the settlement, and lodged in them a considerable
number of armed men, whom they employed in clearing and cultivating the
surrounding lands, the property of their community. All other outlying
houses were also pierced with loopholes, and fortified as well as the
slender means of their owners would permit. The laborers always carried
their guns to the field, and often had need to use them. A few incidents
will show the state of Montreal and the character of its tenants.
In the autumn of 1657 there was a truce with the Iroquois, under cover
of which three or four of them came to the settlement. Nicolas Godé and
Jean Saint-Père were on the roof of their house, laying thatch; when
one of the visitors aimed his arquebuse at Saint-Père, and brought him
to the ground like a wild turkey from a tree. Now ensued a prodigy;
for the assassins, having cut off his head and carried it home to their
village, were amazed to hear it speak to them in good Iroquois, scold
them for their perfidy, and threaten them with the vengeance of Heaven;
and they continued to hear its voice of admonition even after scalping
it and throwing away the skull. * This story, circulated at Montreal on
the alleged authority of the Indians themselves, found believers among
the most intelligent men of the colony.
Another miracle, which occurred several years later, deserves to be
recorded. Le Maître, one of the two priests who had sailed from France
with Mademoiselle Mance and her nuns, being one day at the fortified
house of St. Gabriel, went out with the laborers, in order to watch
while they were at their work. In view of a possible enemy, he had
girded himself with an earthly sword; but seeing no sign of danger, he
presently took out his breviary, and, while reciting his office with
eyes bent on the page, walked into an ambuscade of Iroquois, who rose
before him with a yell.
He shouted to the laborers, and, drawing his sword, faced the whole
savage crew, in order, probably, to give the men time to snatch their
guns. Afraid to approach, the Iroquois fired and killed him; then rushed
upon the working party, who escaped into the house, after losing several
of their number. The victors cut off the head of the heroic priest, and
tied it in a white handkerchief which they took from a pocket of his
cassock. It is said that on reaching their villages they were astonished
to find the handkerchief without the slightest stain of blood, but
stamped indelibly with the features of its late owner, so plainly marked
that none who had known him could fail to recognize them. * This not
very original miracle, though it found eager credence at Montreal, was
received coolly, like other Montreal miracles, at Quebec; and Sulpitian
writers complain that the bishop, in a long letter which he wrote to the
Pope, made no mention of it whatever.
Le Maître, on the voyage to Canada, had been accompanied by another
priest, Guillaume de Vignal, who met a fate more deplorable than that of
his companion, though unattended by any
* This story is told by Sister Morin, Marguerite Bourgeoys,
and Dollier de Casson, on the authority of one Lavigne, then
a prisoner among the Iroquois, who declared that he had seen
the handkerchief the hands of the returning warriors.
recorded miracle. Le Maître had been killed in August. In the October
following, Vignal went with thirteen men, in a flatboat and several
canoes, to Isle à la Pierre, nearly opposite Montreal, to get stone for
the seminary which the priests had recently begun to build. With him was
a pious and valiant gentleman named Claude de Brigeac, who, though but
thirty years of age, had come as a soldier to Montreal, in the hope of
dying in defence of the true church, and thus reaping the reward of a
martyr. Vignal and three or four men had scarcely landed when they were
set upon by a large band of Iroquois who lay among the bushes waiting to
receive them. The rest of the party, who were still in their boats, with
a cowardice rare at Montreal, thought only of saving themselves. Claude
de Brigeac alone leaped ashore and ran to aid his comrades. Vignal was
soon mortally wounded. Brigeac shot the chief dead with his arquebuse,
and then, pistol in hand, held the whole troop for an instant at bay;
but his arm was shattered by a gunshot, and he was seized, along with
Vignal, René Cuillérier, and Jacques Dufresne. Crossing to the main
shore, immediately opposite Montreal, the Iroquois made, after their
custom, a small fort of logs and branches, in which they ensconced
themselves, and then began to dress the wounds of their prisoners.
Seeing that Vignal was unable to make the journey to their villages,
they killed him, divided his flesh, and roasted it for food.
Brigeac and his fellows in misfortune spent a woful night in this den
of wolves; and in the morning their captors, having breakfasted on the
remains of Vignal, took up their homeward march, dragging the Frenchmen
with them. On reaching Oneida, Brigeac was tortured to death with the
customary atrocities. Cuillérier, who was present, declared that they
could wring from him no cry of pain, but that throughout he ceased not
to pray for their conversion. The witness himself expected the same
fate, but an old squaw happily adopted him, and thus saved his life. He
eventually escaped to Albany, and returned to Canada by the circuitous
but comparatively safe route of New York and Boston.
In the following winter, Montreal suffered an irreparable loss in the
death of the brave Major Closse, a man whose intrepid coolness was never
known to fail in the direst emergency. Going to the aid of a party of
laborers attacked by the Iroquois, he was met by a crowd of savages,
eager to kill or capture him. His servant ran off. He snapped a pistol
at the foremost assailant, but it missed fire. His remaining pistol
served him no better, and he was instantly shot down “He died,”
writes Dollier de Casson, “like a brave soldier of Christ and the
king.” Some of his friends once remonstrating with him on the temerity
with which he exposed his life, he replied, “Messieurs, I came here
only to die in the service of God; and if I thought I could not die
here, I would leave this country to fight the Turks, that I might not be
deprived of such a glory.” *
The fortified house of Ste. Marie, belonging to the priests of St.
Sulpice, was the scene of several hot and bloody fights. Here, too,
occurred the following nocturnal adventure. A man named Lavigne, who had
lately returned from captivity among the Iroquois, chancing to rise at
night and look out of the window, saw by the bright moon--fight a number
of naked warriors stealthily gliding round a corner and crouching near
the door, in order to kill the first Frenchman who should go out in
the morning. He silently woke his comrades; and, having the rest of the
night for consultation, they arranged their plan so well, that some of
them, sallying from the rear of the house, came cautiously round upon
the Iroquois, placed them between two fires, and captured them all.
The summer of 1661 was marked by a series of calamities scarcely
paralleled even in the annals of this disastrous epoch. Early in
February, thirteen colonists were surprised and captured; next came
a fight between a large band of laborers and two hundred and sixty
Iroquois; in the following month, ten more Frenchmen were killed or
taken; and thenceforth, till winter closed, the settlement had scarcely
a breathing space. “These hobgoblins,” writes the author of the
_Relation_ of this year, “sometimes appeared at the edge of the woods,
assailing us with abuse; sometimes they glided stealthily into the midst
of the fields, to surprise the men at work; sometimes they approached
the houses, harassing us without ceasing, and, like importunate harpies
or birds of prey, swooping down on us whenever they could take us
unawares.”
Speaking of the disasters of this year, the soldier-priest, Dollier de
Casson, writes: “God, who afflicts the body only for the good of the
soul, made a marvellous use of these calamities and terrors to hold the
people firm in their duty towards Heaven. Vice was then almost unknown
here, and in the midst of war religion flourished on all sides in a
manner very different from what we now see in time of peace.”
The war was, in fact, a war of religion. The small redoubts of logs,
scattered about the skirts of the settlement to serve as points of
defence in case of attack, bore the names of saints, to whose care
they were commended. There was one placed under a higher protection and
called the _Redoubt of the Infant Jesus_. Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the
pious and valiant governor of Montreal, to whom its successful defence
is largely due, resolved, in view of the increasing fury and persistency
of the Iroquois attacks, to form among the inhabitants a military
fraternity, to be called “Soldiers of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary,
and Joseph;” and to this end he issued a proclamation, of which the
following is the characteristic beginning:--
“We, Paul de Chomedey, governor of the island of Montreal and lands
thereon dependent, on information given us from divers quarters that the
Iroquois have formed the design of seizing upon this settlement by
surprise or force, have thought it our duty, seeing that this island is
the property of the Holy Virgin, * to invite and exhort those zealous
for her service to unite together by squads, each of seven persons; and
after choosing a corporal by a plurality of voices, to report themselves
to us for enrolment in our garrison, and, in this capacity, to obey our
orders, to the end that the country may be saved.”
Twenty squads, numbering in all one hundred and forty men, whose names,
appended to the proclamation, may still be seen on the ancient records
of Montreal, answered the appeal and enrolled themselves in the holy
cause.
The whole settlement was in a state of religious exaltation. As the
Iroquois were regarded as actual myrmidons of Satan in his malign
warfare against Mary and her divine Son, those who died in fighting them
were held to merit the reward of martyrs, assured of a seat in paradise.
And now it remains to record one of the most heroic feats of arms ever
achieved on this continent. That it may be rated as it merits, it will
be well to glance for a moment at the condition of Canada, under the
portentous cloud of war which constantly overshadowed it. **
* This is no figure of speech. The Associates of Montreal,
after receiving a grant of the island from Jean de Lauson,
placed it under the protection of the Virgin, and formally
declared her to be the proprietor of it from that day forth
for ever.
** In all that relates to Montreal, I cannot be
sufficiently grateful to the Abbé Faillon, the
indefatigable, patient, conscientious chronicler of its
early history; an ardent and prejudiced Sulpitian, a priest
who three centuries ago would have passed for credulous,
and, withal, a kind-hearted and estimable man. His numerous
books on his favorite theme, with the vast and heterogeneous
mass of facts which they embody, are invaluable, provided
their partisan character be well kept in mind. His recent
death leaves his principal work unfinished. His Histoire de
la Colonie Française en Canada--it might more fitly be
called Histoire du Montréal--is unhappily little more than
half complete.