_Suffering and Terror.--Francois Hertel.--The Captive Wolf--The
threatened Invasion.--Daulac des Ormeaux.--The Adventurers at the Long
Saut.--The Attack.--A Desperate Defence.--A Final Assault.--The Fort
taken._
|Canada had writhed for twenty years, with little respite, under the
scourge of Iroquois war. During a great part of this dark period the
entire French population was less than three thousand. What, then, saved
them from destruction? In the first place, the settlements were grouped
around three fortified posts, Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, which
in time of danger gave asylum to the fugitive inhabitants. Again, their
assailants were continually distracted by other wars, and never, except
at a few spasmodic intervals, were fully in earnest to destroy the
French colony. Canada was indispensable to them. The four upper nations
of the league soon became dependent on her for supplies; and all the
nations alike appear, at a very early period, to have conceived the
policy on which they afterwards distinctly acted, of balancing the rival
settlements of the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, the one against the
other. They would torture, but not kill. It was but rarely that, in fits
of fury, they struck their hatchets at the brain; and thus the bleeding
and gasping colony fingered on in torment.
The seneschal of New France, son of the governor Lauson, was surprised
and killed on the island of Orleans, along with seven companions. About
the same time, the same fate befell the son of Godefroy, one of the
chief inhabitants of Quebec. Outside the fortifications there was no
safety for a moment. A universal terror seized the people. A comet
appeared above Quebec, and they saw in it a herald of destruction.
Their excited imaginations turned natural phenomena into portents and
prodigies. A blazing canoe sailed across the sky; confused cries and
lamentations were heard in the air; and a voice of thunder sounded from
mid-heaven. * The Jesuits despaired for their scattered and persecuted
flocks. “Everywhere,” writes their superior, “we see infants to
be saved for heaven, sick and dying to be baptized, adults to be
instructed, but everywhere we see the Iroquois. They haunt us like
persecuting goblins. They kill our newmade Christians in our arms. If
they meet us on the river, they kill us. If they find us in the huts
of our Indians, they burn us and them together.” ** And he appeals
urgently for troops to destroy them, as a holy work inspired by God, and
needful for his service.
Canada was still a mission, and the influence of
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, Sept., 1661.
** Relation, 1660 (anonymous), 3.
the church was paramount and pervading. At Quebec, as at Montreal, the
war with the Iroquois was regarded as a war with the hosts of Satan.
Of the settlers’ cabins scattered along the shores above and below
Quebec, many were provided with small iron cannon, made probably by
blacksmiths in the colony; but they had also other protectors. In each
was an image of the Virgin or some patron saint, and every morning
the pious settler knelt before the shrine to beg the protection of a
celestial hand in his perilous labors of the forest or the farm.
When, in the summer of 1658, the young Vicomte d’Argenson came to
assume the thankless task of governing the colony, the Iroquois war was
at its height. On the day after his arrival, he was washing his hands
before seating himself at dinner in the hall of the Chateau St. Louis,
when cries of alarm were heard, and he was told that the Iroquois were
close at hand. In fact, they were so near that their war-whoops and
the screams of their victims could plainly be heard. Argenson left his
guests, and, with such a following as he could muster at the moment,
hastened to the rescue; but the assailants were too nimble for him. The
forests, which grew at that time around Quebec, favored them both in
attack and in retreat. After a year or two of experience, he wrote
urgently to the court for troops. He adds that, what with the demands of
the harvest, and the unmilitary character of many of the settlers,
the colony could not furnish more than a hundred men for offensive
operations. A vigorous aggressive war, he insists, is absolutely
necessary, and this not only to save the colony, but to save the only
true faith; “for,” to borrow his own words, “it is this colony
alone which has the honor to be in the communion of the Holy Church.
Everywhere else reigns the doctrine of England or Holland, to which I
can give no other name, because there are as many creeds as there are
subjects who embrace them. They do not care in the least whether the
Iroquois and the other savages of this country have or have not a
knowledge of the true God, or else they are so malicious as to inject
the venom of their errors into souls incapable of distinguishing the
truth of the gospel from the falsehoods of heresy; and hence it is plain
that religion has its sole support in the French colony, and that, if
this colony is in danger, religion is equally in danger.” *
Among the most interesting memorials of the time are two letters,
written by François Hertel, a youth of eighteen, captured at Three
Rivers, and carried to the Mohawk towns in the summer of 1661. He
belonged to one of the best families of Canada, and was the favorite
child of his mother, to whom the second of the two letters is addressed.
The first is to the Jesuit Le Moyne, who had gone to Onondaga, in July
of that year, to effect the release of French prisoners in accordance
with the terms of a truce. ** Both letters were written on birch bark:--
* Papiers d’Argenson; Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre des
Iroquois, 1659 (1660?). MS.
** Journal des Jésuites, 300.
My Reverend Father:--The very day when you left Three Rivers I was
captured, at about three in the afternoon, by four Iroquois of the
Mohawk tribe. I would not have been taken alive, if, to my sorrow, I had
not feared that I was not in a fit state to die. If you came here, my
Father, I could have the happiness of confessing to you; and I do not
think they would do you any harm; and I think that I could return home
with you. I pray you to pity my poor mother, who is in great trouble.
You know, my Father, how fond she is of me. I have heard from a
Frenchman, who was taken at Three Rivers on the 1st of August, that she
is well, and comforts herself with the hope that I shall see you. There
are three of us Frenchmen alive here. I commend myself to your good
prayers, and particularly to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I pray you,
my Father, to say a mass for me. I pray you give my dutiful love to my
poor mother, and console her, if it pleases you.
My Father, I beg your blessing on the hand that writes to you, which has
one of the fingers burned in the bowl of an Indian pipe, to satisfy the
Majesty of God which I have offended. The thumb of the other hand is cut
off; but do not tell my mother of it.
My Father, I pray you to honor me with a word from your hand in reply,
and tell me if you shall come here before winter.
Your most humble and most obedient servant,
François Hertel.
The following is the letter to his mother, sent probably, with the
other, to the charge of Le Moyne:--
My most dear and honored Mother:--I know very well that my capture must
have distressed you very much I ask you to forgive my disobedience.
It is my sins that have placed me where I am. I owe my life to your
prayers, and those of M. de Saint-Quentin, and of my sisters. I hope to
see you again before winter. I pray you to tell the good brethren of
Notre Dame to pray to God and the Holy Virgin for me, my dear mother,
and for you and all my sisters.
Your poor
Fanchon
This, no doubt, was the name by which she had called him familiarly when
a child. And who was this “Fanchon,” this devout and tender son of a
fond mother? New England can answer to her cost. When, twenty-nine years
later, a band of French and Indians issued from the forest and fell upon
the fort and settlement of Salmon Falls, it was François Hertel who
led the attack; and when the retiring victors were hard pressed by an
overwhelming force, it was he who, sword in hand, held the pursuers in
check at the bridge of Wooster River, and covered the retreat of his
men. He was ennobled for his services, and died at the age of eighty,
the founder of one of the most distinguished families of Canada. * To
the New England of old he was the abhorred chief of Popish malignants
and murdering savages. The New England of to-day will be more just to
the brave defender of his country and his faith.
In May, 1660, a party of French Algonquins captured a Wolf, or Mohegan,
Indian, naturalized among the Iroquois, brought him to Quebec, and
burned him there with their usual atrocity of torture. A modern Catholic
writer says that the Jesuits could not save him; but this is not so.
Their influence over the consciences of the colonists
* His letters of nobility, dated 1716, will be found in
Daniel's Histoire des Grandes Familles Françaises du Canada,
404.
was at that time unbounded, and their direct political power was very
great. A protest on their part, and that of the newly arrived bishop,
who was in their interest, could not have failed of effect. The truth
was, they did not care to prevent the torture of prisoners of war, not
solely out of that spirit of compliance with the savage humor of Indian
allies which stains so often the pages of French American history, but
also, and perhaps chiefly, from motives purely religious. Torture, in
their eyes, seems to have been a blessing in disguise. They thought it
good for the soul, and in case of obduracy the surest way of salvation.
“We have very rarely indeed,” writes one of them, “seen the
burning of an Iroquois without feeling sure that he was on the path
to Paradise; and we never knew one of them to be surely on the path to
Paradise without seeing him pass through this fiery punishment.” *
So they let the Wolf burn; but first, having instructed him after their
fashion, they baptized him, and his savage soul flew to heaven out of
the fire. "Is it not,” pursues the same writer, “a marvel to see
a wolf changed at one stroke into a lamb, and enter into the fold of
Christ, which he came to ravage?”
Before he died he requited their spiritual cares with a startling
secret. He told them that eight hundred Iroquois warriors were encamped
below Montreal; that four hundred more, who had wintered on the Ottawa,
were on the point of joining them; and that the united force would swoop
upon
* Relation, 1660, 31.
Quebec, kill the governor, lay waste the town, and then attack Three
Rivers and Montreal. * This time, at least, the Iroquois were in deadly
earnest. Quebec was wild with terror. The Ursulines and the nuns of the
Hôtel Dieu took refuge in the strong and extensive building which the
Jesuits had just finished, opposite the Parish Church. Its walls and
palisades made it easy of defence; and in its yards and court were
lodged the terrified Hurons, as well as the fugitive inhabitants of the
neighboring settlements. Others found asylum in the fort, and others in
the convent of the Ursulines, which, in place of nuns, was occupied by
twenty-four soldiers, who fortified it with redoubts, and barricaded the
doors and windows. Similar measures of defence were taken at the Hôtel
Dieu, and the streets of the Lower Town were strongly barricaded.
Everybody was in arms, and the _Qui vive_ of the sentries and patrols
resounded all night. **
Several days passed, and no Iroquois appeared. The refugees took heart,
and began to return to their deserted farms and dwellings. Among
the rest was a family consisting of an old woman, her daughter, her
son-in-law, and four small children, living near St. Anne, some twenty
miles below Quebec. On reaching home the old woman and the man went to
their work in the fields, while the mother and children remained in the
house.
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, 26 Juin, 1660.
** On this alarm at Quebec compare Marie de l’Incarnation,
25 Juin, 1660; Relation, 1660, 5; Juchereau, Histoire de
l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 126 and Journal des Jésuites 282.
Here they were pounced upon and captured by eight renegade Hurons,
Iroquois by adoption, who placed them in their large canoe, and paddled
up the river with their prize. It was Saturday, a day dedicated to the
Virgin; and the captive mother prayed to her for aid, “feeling,”
writes a Jesuit, “a full conviction that, in passing before Quebec
on a Saturday, she would be delivered by the power of this Queen of
Heaven.” In fact, as the marauders and their captives glided in the
darkness of night by Point Levi, under the shadow of the shore, they
were greeted with a volley of musketry from the bushes, and a band of
French and Algonquins dashed into the water to seize them. Five of the
eight were taken, and the rest shot or drowned. The governor had heard
of the descent at St. Anne, and despatched a party to lie in ambush
for the authors of it. The Jesuits, it is needless to say, saw a
miracle in the result. The Virgin had answered the prayer of her votary.
“Though it is true,” observes the father who records the marvel,
“that, in the volley, she received a mortal wound.” The same shot
struck the infant in her arms. The prisoners were taken to Quebec, where
four of them were tortured with even more ferocity than had been shown
in the case of the unfortunate Wolf. * Being questioned, they confirmed
his story,
* The torturers were Christian Algonquins, converts of the
Jesuits. Chaumonot, who was present to give spiritual aid to
the sufferers, describes the scene with horrible minuteness.
“I could not,” he says, “deliver them from their torments.”
Perhaps not: but it is certain that the Jesuits as a body,
with or without the bishop, could have prevented the
atrocity, had they seen fit. They sometimes taught their
converts to pray for their enemies. It would have been well
had they taught them not to torture them. I can recall but
one instance in which they did so. The prayers for enemies
were always for a spiritual, not a temporal good. The
fathers held the body in slight account and cared little
what happened to it.
and expressed great surprise that the Iroquois had not come, adding that
they must have stopped to attack Montreal or Three Rivers. Again all
was terror, and again days passed and no enemy appeared. Had the dying
converts, so charitably despatched to heaven through fire, sought an
unhallowed consolation in scaring the abettors of their torture with a
lie? Not at all. Bating a slight exaggeration, they had told the truth.
Where, then, were the Iroquois? As one small point of steel disarms the
lightning of its terrors, so did the heroism of a few intrepid youths
divert this storm of war and save Canada from a possible ruin.
In the preceding April, before the designs of the Iroquois were known,
a young officer named Daulac, commandant of the garrison of Montreal,
asked leave of Maisonneuve, the governor, to lead a party of volunteers
against the enemy. His plan was bold to desperation. It was known that
Iroquois warriors in great numbers had wintered among the forests of the
Ottawa. Daulac proposed to waylay them on their descent of the river,
and fight them without regard to disparity of force. The settlers of
Montreal had hitherto acted solely on the defensive, for their numbers
had been too small for aggressive war. Of late their strength had
been somewhat increased, and Maisonneuve, judging that a display of
enterprise and boldness might act as a check on the audacity of the
enemy, at length gave his consent.
Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, was a young man of good
family, who had come to the colony three years before, at the age of
twenty-two. He had held some military command in France, though in what
rank does not appear. It was said that he had been involved in some
affair which made him anxious to wipe out the memory of the past by a
noteworthy exploit; and he had been busy for some time among the
young men of Montreal, inviting them to join him in the enterprise he
meditated. Sixteen of them caught his spirit, struck hands with him, and
pledged their word. They bound themselves by oath to accept no quarter;
and, having gained Maisonneuve’s consent, they made their wills,
confessed, and received the sacraments. As they knelt for the last time
before the altar in the chapel of the Hôtel Dieu, that sturdy little
population of pious Indian-fighters gazed on them with enthusiasm, not
unmixed with an envy which had in it nothing ignoble. Some of the chief
men of Montreal, with the brave Charles Le Moyne at their head, begged
them to wait till the spring sowing was over, that they might join them;
but Daulac refused. He was jealous of the glory and the danger, and
he wished to command, which he could not have done had Le Moyne been
present.
The spirit of the enterprise was purely mediaeval. The enthusiasm of
honor, the enthusiasm of adventure, and the enthusiasm of faith, were
its motive forces. Danlac was a knight of the early crusades among the
forests and savages of the New World. Yet the incidents of this exotic
heroism are definite and clear as a tale of yesterday. The names, ages,
and occupations of the seventeen young men may still be read on the
ancient register of the parish of Montreal; and the notarial acts of
that year, preserved in the records of the city, contain minute accounts
of such property as each of them possessed. The three eldest were of
twenty-eight, thirty, and thirty-one years respectively. The age of
the rest varied from twenty-one to twenty-seven. They were of various
callings,--soldiers, armorers, locksmiths, lime-burners, or settlers
without trades. The greater number had come to the colony as part of the
reinforcement brought by Maisonneuve in 1653.
After a solemn farewell they embarked in several canoes well supplied
with arms and ammunition. They were very indifferent canoe-men; and it
is said that they lost a week in vain attempts to pass the swift current
of St. Anne, at the head of the island of Montreal. At length they were
more successful, and entering the mouth of the Ottawa, crossed the Lake
of Two Mountains, and slowly advanced against the current.
Meanwhile, forty warriors of that remnant of the Hurons who, in spite
of Iroquois persecutions, still lingered at Quebec, had set out on a
war-party, led by the brave and wily Etienne Annahotaha, their most
noted chief. They stopped by the way at Three Rivers, where they found a
band of Christian
Algonquins under a chief named Mituvemeg An'nahotaha challenged him to
a trial of courage, and it was agreed that they should meet at Montreal,
where they were likely to find a speedy opportunity of putting their
mettle to the test. Thither, accordingly, they repaired, the Algonquin
with three followers, and the Huron with thirty-nine.
It was not long before they learned the departure of Daulac and his
companions. “For,” observes the honest Dollier de Casson, “the
principal fault of our Frenchmen is to talk too much.” The wish seized
them to share the adventure, and to that end the Huron chief asked the
governor for a letter to Daulac, to serve as credentials. Maisonneuve
hesitated. His faith in Huron valor was not great, and he feared the
proposed alliance. Nevertheless, he at length yielded so far as to give
Annahotaha a letter in which Daulac was told to accept or reject the
proffered reinforcement as he should see fit. The Hurons and Algonquins
now embarked and paddled in pursuit of the seventeen Frenchmen.
They meanwhile had passed with difficulty the swift current at Carillon,
and about the first of May reached the foot of the more formidable rapid
called the Long Saut, where a tumult of waters, foaming among ledges
and boulders, barred the onward way. It was needless to go farther. The
Iroquois were sure to pass the Saut, and could be fought here as well as
elsewhere. Just below the rapid, where the forests sloped gently to
the shore, among the bushes and stumps of the rough clearing made
in constructing it, stood a palisade fort, the work of an Algonquin
war-party in the past autumn. It was a mere enclosure of trunks of small
trees planted in a circle, and was already ruinous. Such as it was,
the Frenchmen took possession of it. Their first care, one would think,
should have been to repair and strengthen it; but this they seem not to
have done: possibly, in the exaltation of their minds, they scorned
such precaution. They made their fires, and slung their kettles on the
neighboring shore; and here they were soon joined by the Hurons and
Algonquins. Daulac, it seems, made no objection to their company, and
they all bivouacked together. Morning and noon and night they prayed in
three different tongues; and when at sunset the long reach of forests on
the farther shore basked peacefully in the level rays, the rapids joined
their hoarse music to the notes of their evening hymn.
In a day or two their scouts came in with tidings that two Iroquois
canoes were coming down the Saut. Daulac had time to set his men in
ambush among the bushes at a point where he thought the strangers
likely to land. He judged aright. The canoes, bearing five Iroquois,
approached, and were met by a volley fired with such precipitation that
one or more of them escaped the shot, fled into the forest, and told
their mischance to their main body, two hundred in number, on the river
above. A fleet of canoes suddenly appeared, bounding down the rapids,
filled with warriors eager for revenge. The allies had barely time to
escape to their fort, leaving their kettles still slung over the
fires. The Iroquois made a hasty and desultory attack, and were quickly
repulsed. They next opened a parley, hoping, no doubt, to gain some
advantage by surprise. Failing in this, they set themselves, after their
custom on such occasions, to building a rude fort of their own in the
neighboring forest.
This gave the French a breathing-time, and they used it for
strengthening their defences. Being provided with tools, they planted a
row of stakes within their palisade, to form a double fence, and filled
the intervening space with earth and stones to the height of a man,
leaving some twenty loopholes, at each of which three marksmen were
stationed. Their work was still unfinished when the Iroquois were upon
them again. They had broken to pieces the birch canoes of the French
and their allies, and, kindling the bark, rushed up to pile it blazing
against the palisade; but so brisk and steady a fire met them that they
recoiled and at last gave way. They came on again, and again were
driven back, leaving many of their number on the ground, among them
the principal chief of the Senecas. Some of the French dashed out, and,
covered by the fire of their comrades, hacked off his head, and stuck it
on the palisade, while the Iroquois howled in a frenzy of helpless rage.
They tried another attack, and were beaten off a third time.
This dashed their spirits, and they sent a canoe to call to their aid
five hundred of their warriors who were mustered near the mouth of the
Richelieu. These were the allies whom, but for this untoward check,
they were on their way to join for a com bined attack on Quebec, Three
Rivers, and Montreal. It was maddening to see their grand project
thwarted by a few French and Indians ensconced in a paltry redoubt,
scarcely better than a cattlepen; but they were forced to digest the
affront as best they might.
Meanwhile, crouched behind trees and logs, they beset the fort,
harassing its defenders day and night with a spattering fire and a
constant menace of attack. Thus five days passed. Hunger, thirst, and
want of sleep wrought fatally on the strength of the French and their
allies, who, pent up together in their narrow prison, fought and prayed
by turns. Deprived as they were of water, they could not swallow the
crushed Indian corn, or “hominy,” which was their only food. Some of
them, under cover of a brisk fire, ran down to the river and filled
such small vessels as they had; but this pittance only tantalized their
thirst. They dug a hole in the fort, and were rewarded at last by a
little muddy water oozing through the clay.
Among the assailants were a number of Hurons, adopted by the Iroquois
and fighting on their side. These renegades now shouted to their
countrymen in the fort, telling them that a fresh army was close
at hand; that they would soon be attacked by seven or eight hundred
warriors; and that their only hope was in joining the Iroquois, who
would receive them as friends. Annahotaha’s followers, half dead with
thirst and famine, listened to their seducers, took the bait, and, one,
two, or three at a time, climbed the palisade and ran over to the enemy,
amid the hootings and execrations of those whom they deserted. Their
chief stood firm; and when he saw his nephew, La Mouche, join the other
fugitives, he fired his pistol at him in a rage. The four Algonquins,
who had no mercy to hope for, stood fast, with the courage of despair.
On the fifth day an uproar of unearthly yells from seven hundred
savage throats, mingled with a clattering salute of musketry, told the
Frenchmen that the expected reinforcement had come; and soon, in the
forest and on the clearing, a crowd of warriors mustered for the attack.
Knowing from the Huron deserters the weakness of their enemy, they had
no doubt of an easy victory. They advanced cautiously, as was usual with
the Iroquois before their blood was up, screeching, leaping from side
to side, and firing as they came on; but the French were at their posts,
and every loophole darted its tongue of fire. Besides muskets, they had
heavy musketoons of large calibre, which, scattering scraps of lead and
iron among the throng of savages, often maimed several of them at one
discharge. The Iroquois, astonished at the persistent vigor of the
defence, fell back discomfited. The fire of the French, who were
themselves completely under cover, had told upon them with deadly
effect. Three days more wore away in a series of futile attacks, made
with little concert or vigor; and during all this time Daulac and his
men, reeling with exhaustion, fought and prayed as before, sure of a
martyr’s reward.
The uncertain, vacillating temper common to all Indians now began
to declare itself. Some of the Iroquois were for going home. Others
revolted at the thought, and declared that it would be an eternal
disgrace to lose so many men at the hands of so paltry an enemy, and
yet fail to take revenge. It was resolved to make a general assault, and
volunteers were called for to lead the attack. After the custom on such
occasions, bundles of small sticks were thrown upon the ground, and
those picked them up who dared, thus accepting the gage of battle, and
enrolling themselves in the forlorn hope. No precaution was neglected.
Large and heavy shields four or five feet high were made by lashing
together three split logs with the aid of crossbars. Covering
themselves with these mantelets, the chosen band advanced, followed by
the motley throng of warriors. In spite of a brisk fire, they reached
the palisade, and, crouching below the range of shot, hewed furiously
with their hatchets to cut their way through. The rest followed close,
and swarmed like angry hornets around the little fort, hacking and
tearing to get in.
Daulac had crammed a large musketoon with powder, and plugged up the
muzzle. Lighting the fuse inserted in it, he tried to throw it over the
barrier, to burst like a grenade among the crowd of savages without; but
it struck the ragged top of one of the palisades, fell back among the
Frenchmen and exploded, killing and wounding several of them, and
nearly blinding others. In the confusion that followed, the Iroquois
got possession of the loopholes, and, thrusting in their guns, fired on
those within. In a moment more they had torn a breach in the palisade;
but, nerved with the energy of desperation, Daulac and his followers
sprang to defend it. Another breach was made, and then another. Daulac
was struck dead, but the survivors kept up the fight. With a sword or
a hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other, they threw themselves
against the throng of enemies, striking and stabbing with the fury of
madmen; till the Iroquois, despairing of taking them alive, fired volley
after volley and shot them down. All was over, and a burst of triumphant
yells proclaimed the dear-bought victory.
Searching the pile of corpses, the victors found four Frenchmen still
breathing. Three had scarcely a spark of life, and, as no time was to be
lost, they burned them on the spot. The fourth, less fortunate, seemed
likely to survive, and they reserved him for future torments. As for
the Huron deserters, their cowardice profited them little. The Iroquois,
regardless of their promises, fell upon them, burned some at once,
and carried the rest to their villages for a similar fate. Five of the
number had the good fortune to escape, and it was from them, aided by
admissions made long afterwards by the Iroquois themselves, that the
French of Canada derived all their knowledge of this glorious
disaster. *
* When the fugitive Hurons reached Montreal, they were
unwilling to confess their desertion of the French, and
declared that they and some others of their people, to the
number of fourteen, had stood by them to the last. This was
the story told by one of them to the Jesuit Chaumonot, and
by him communicated in a letter to his friends at Quebec The
substance of this letter is given by Marie de l’Incarnation,
in her letter to her son of June 25, 1660. The Jesuit
Relation of this year gives another long account of the
affair, also derived from the Huron deserters, who this time
only pretended that ten of their number remained with the
French. They afterwards admitted that all had deserted but
Annaliotaha, as appears from the account drawn up by Dollier
de Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal. Another
contemporary, Belmont, who heard the story from an Iroquois,
makes the same statement. All these writers, though two of
them were not friendly to Montreal, agree that Daulac and
his followers saved Canada from a disastrous invasion. The
governor, Argenson, in a letter written on the fourth of
July following, and in his Mémoire sur le sujet de la guerre
des Iroquois, expresses the same conviction. Before me is an
extract, copied from the Petit Registre de la Cure de
Montréal, giving the names and ages of Daulac’s men. The
Abbé Faillon took extraordinary pains to collect all the
evidence touching this affair. See his Histoire de la
Colonie Française, II. chap. xv. Charlevoix, very little to
his credit, passes it over in silence, not being partial to
Montreal.
To the colony it proved a salvation. The Iroquois had had fighting
enough. If seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron, behind
a picket fence, could hold seven hundred warriors at bay so long, what
might they expect from many such, fighting behind walls of stone? For
that year they thought no more of capturing Quebec and Montreal, but
went home dejected and amazed, to howl over their losses, and nurse
their dashed courage for a day of vengeance.