_Reception of Argenson.--His Difficulties.--His Recall.--Dubois
d’Avaugour.--The Brandt Quarrel.--Distress of Laval.--Portents.--The
Earthquake._
|When Argenson arrived to assume the government, a curious greeting had
awaited him. The Jesuits asked him to dine; vespers followed the
repast; and then they conducted him into a hall, where the boys of their
school--disguised, one as the Genius of New France, one as the Genius of
the Forest, and others as Indians of various friendly tribes--made him
speeches by turn, in prose and verse. First, Pierre du Quet, who played
the Genius of New France, presented his Indian retinue to the governor,
in a complimentary harangue. Then four other boys, personating French
colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse. Charles
Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people,
and appealing to Argenson for aid. Jean François Bourdon, in the
character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his
courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the Huron. The
Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from
the interior, who, being unable to speak French, addressed the governor
in their native tongues, which the Genius proceeded to interpret.
Two other boys, in the character of prisoners just escaped from the
Iroquois, then came forward, imploring aid in piteous accents; and, in
conclusion, the whole troop of Indians, from far and near, laid their
bows and arrows at the feet of Argenson, and hailed him as their
chief. *
Besides these mock Indians, a crowd of genuine savages had gathered
at Quebec to greet the new “Ononthio.” On the next day--at his own
cost, as he writes to a friend--he gave them a feast, consisting of
“seven large kettles full of Indian corn, peas, prunes, sturgeons,
eels, and fat, which they devoured, having first sung me a song, after
their fashion.” **
These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his
government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one. He could
find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred
warriors of the Iroquois; *** and he begs the proprietary company which
he represented to send him a hundred more, who could serve as soldiers
or laborers, according to the occasion.
* La Reception de Monseigneur le Vicomte d’Argenson par
toutes les nations du pais de Canada a son entrée au
gouvernement de la Nouvelle France; a Quebecq au College de
la Compagnie de Jésus, le 28 de Juillet de l’année 1658. The
speeches, in French and Indian, are here given verbatim,
with the names of all the boys who took part in the
ceremony.
** Papiers d’Argenson. Kebec, 5 Sept., 1658.
*** Mémoire sur le subject (sic) de la Guerre des Iroquois,
1659.
The company turned a deal ear to his appeals. They had lost money in
Canada, and were grievously out of humor with it. In their view, the
first duty of a governor was to collect their debts, which, for more
reasons than one, was no easy task. While they did nothing to aid
the colony in its distress, they beset Argenson with demands for the
thousand pounds of beaver-skins, which the inhabitants had agreed to
send them every year, in return for the privilege of the fur trade, a
privilege which the Iroquois war made for the present worthless.
The perplexed governor vents his feelings in sarcasm. “They (_the
company_) take no pains to learn the truth; and, when they hear of
settlers carried off and burned by the Iroquois, they will think it
a punishment for not settling old debts, and paying over the
beaver-skins.” * “I wish,” he adds, “they would send somebody to
look after their affairs here. I would gladly give him the same lodging
and entertainment as my own.”
Another matter gave him great annoyance. This was the virtual
independence of Montreal; and here, if nowhere else, he and the bishop
were of the same mind. On one occasion he made a visit to the place in
question, where he expected to be received as governor-general; but the
local governor, Maisonneuve, declined, or at least postponed, to take
his orders and give him the keys of the fort. Argenson accordingly
speaks of Montreal as “a place which makes so much noise, but which is
* Papiers d’Argenson, 21 Oct., 1659.
of such small account.” * He adds that, besides wanting to be
independent, the Montrealists want to monopolize the fur trade, which
would cause civil war; and that the king ought to interpose to correct
their obstinacy.
In another letter he complains of Aillebout, who had preceded him in the
government, though himself a Montrealist. Argenson says that, on going
out to fight the Iroquois, he left Aillebout at Quebec, to act as his
lieutenant; that, instead of doing so, he had assumed to govern in
his own right; that he had taken possession of his absent superior’s
furniture, drawn his pay, and in other respects behaved as if he
never expected to see him again. “When I returned,” continues the
governor, “I made him director in the council, without pay, as there
was none to give him. It was this, I think, that made him remove to
Montreal, for which I do not care, provided the glory of our Master
suffer no prejudice thereby.” **
These extracts may, perhaps, give an unjust impression of Argenson, who,
from the general tenor of his letters, appears to have been a temperate
and reasonable person. His patience and his nervous system seem,
however, to have been taxed to the utmost. His pay could not support
him. “The costs of living here are horrible,” he writes. “I have
only two thousand crowns a year for all my expenses, and I have already
been forced to
* Papiers d’Argenson, 4 Août, 1659.
** Ibid. Double de la lettre escripte par le Vaisseau du
Gaigneur, parti la 6 Septembre (1658).
run into debt to the company to an equal amount.” * Part of his scanty
income was derived from a fishery of eels, on which sundry persons had
encroached, to his great detriment. ** “I see no reason,” he adds,
“for staying here any longer. When I came to this country, I hoped to
enjoy a little repose, but I am doubly deprived of it; on one hand by
enemies without, and incessant petty disputes within; and, on the other,
by the difficulty I find in subsisting. The profits of the fur trade
have been so reduced that all the inhabitants are in the greatest
poverty. They are all insolvent, and cannot pay the merchants their
advances.”
His disgust at length reached a crisis. “I am resolved to stay here
no longer, but to go home next year. My horror of dissension, and the
manifest certainty of becoming involved in disputes with certain persons
with whom I am unwilling to quarrel, oblige me to anticipate these
troubles, and seek some way of living in peace. These excessive
fatigues are far too much for my strength. I am writing to Monsieur the
President, and to the gentlemen of the Company of New France, to choose
some other man for this government.” *** And again, “if you take
any interest in this country, see that the person chosen to command here
has, besides the true piety necessary to a Christian in every condition
of life, great firmness of character and strong bodily health. I assure
you that without these
* Ibid. Lettre a M de Morangi, 5 Sept., 1658.
** Délibérations de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle France.
*** Papiers d'Arqenson. Lettre à son Frère, 1659.
qualities he cannot succeed. Besides, it is absolutely necessary that
he should be a man of property and of some rank, so that he will not
be despised for humble birth, or suspected of coming here to make his
fortune; for in that case he can do no good whatever.” *
His constant friction with the head of the church distressed the
pious governor, and made his recall doubly a relief. According to a
contemporary writer, Laval was the means of delivering him from the
burden of government, having written to the President Lamoignon to urge
his removal. ** Be this as it may, it is certain that the bishop was not
sorry to be rid of him.
The Baron Dubois d’Avaugour arrived to take his place. He was an old
soldier of forty years service, *** blunt, imperative, and sometimes
obstinate to perverseness; but full of energy, and of a probity which
even his enemies confessed. “He served a long time in Germany while
you were there,” writes the minister Colbert to the Marquis de Tracy,
“and you must have known his talents, as well as his _bizarre_
and somewhat impracticable temper.” On landing, he would have no
reception, being, as Father Lalemant observes, “an enemy of all
ceremony.” He went, however, to see the Jesuits, and “took a morsel
of food in our refectory.” **** Laval was prepared to receive
* Ibid. Lettre (à son Frère?), 4 Nov., 1660. The originals
of Argenson’s letters were destroyed in the burning of the
library of the Louvre by the Commune.
** Lachenaye, Mémoire sur le Canada.
*** Avaugour, Mémoire, 4 Août, 1663.
**** Lalemant, Journal des Jésuites, Sept., 1661.
him with all solemnity at the church; but the governor would not go.
He soon set out on a tour of observation as far as Montreal, whence he
returned delighted with the country, and immediately wrote to Colbert
in high praise of it, observing that the St. Lawrence was the most
beautiful river he had ever seen. *
It was clear from the first that, while he had a prepossession against
the bishop, he wished to be on good terms with the Jesuits. He began by
placing some of them on the council; but they and Laval were too closely
united; and if Avaugour thought to separate them, he signally failed. A
few months only had elapsed when we find it noted in Father Lalemant’s
private journal that the governor had dissolved the council and
appointed a new one, and that other “changes and troubles” had
befallen The inevitable quarrel had broken out; it was a complex one,
but the chief occasion of dispute was fortunate for the ecclesiastics,
since it placed them, to a certain degree, morally in the right.
The question at issue was not new. It had agitated the colony for years,
and had been the spring of some of Argenson’s many troubles. Nor
did it cease with Avaugour, for we shall trace its course hereafter,
tumultuous as a tornado. It was simply the temperance question; not
as regards the colonists, though here, too, there was great room for
reform, but as regards the Indians.
Their inordinate passion for brandy had long been the source of
excessive disorders. They drank
* Lettre d’Avaugour au Ministre, 1661.
expressly to get drunk, and when drunk they were like wild beasts.
Crime and violence of all sorts ensued; the priests saw their teachings
despised and their flocks ruined. On the other hand, the sale of
brandy was a chief source of profit, direct or indirect, to all those
interested in the fur trade, including the principal persons of the
colony. In Argenson’s time, Laval launched an excommunication against
those engaged in the abhorred traffic; for nothing less than total
prohibition would content the clerical party, and besides the spiritual
penalty, they demanded the punishment of death against the contumacious
offender. Death, in fact, was decreed. Such was the posture of affairs
when Avaugour arrived; and, willing as he was to conciliate the Jesuits,
he permitted the decree to take effect, although, it seems, with great
repugnance. A few weeks after his arrival, two men were shot and one
whipped, for selling brandy to Indians. * An extreme though partially
suppressed excitement shook the entire settlement, for most of the
colonists were, in one degree or another, implicated in the offence thus
punished. An explosion soon followed; and the occasion of it was the
humanity or good-nature of the Jesuit Lalemant.
A woman had been condemned to imprisonment for the same cause, and
Lalemant, moved by compassion, came to the governor to intercede for
her. Avaugour could no longer contain himself, and answered the reverend
petitioner with characteristic
* Journal des Jésuites, Oct., 1661.
bluntness. “You and your brethren were the first to cry out against
the trade, and now you want to save the traders from punishment. I will
no longer be the sport of your contradictions. Since it is not a crime
for this woman, it shall not be a crime for anybody.” * And in this
posture he stood fast, with an inflexible stubbornness.
Henceforth there was full license to liquor dealers. A violent reaction
ensued against the past restriction, and brandy flowed freely among
French and Indians alike. The ungodly drank to spite the priests and
revenge themselves for the “constraint of consciences,” of
which they loudly complained. The utmost confusion followed, and the
principles on which the pious colony was built seemed upheaved from
the foundation. Laval was distracted with grief and anger. He outpoured
himself from the pulpit in threats of divine wrath, and launched fresh
excommunications against the offenders; but such was the popular fury,
that he was forced to yield and revoke them. **
Disorder grew from bad to worse. “Men gave no heed to bishop,
preacher, or confessor,” writes Father Charlevoix. “The French have
despised the remonstrances of our prelate, because they are supported by
the civil power,’ says the superior of the Ursulines. “He is almost
dead with grief, and pines away before our eyes.”
Laval could bear it no longer, but sailed for
* La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. V.
** Journal des Jésuites, Feb., 1662. The sentence of
excommunication is printed in the Appendix to the Esquisse
de la Vie de Laval. It bears date February 24. It was on
this very day that he was forced to revoke it.
France, to lay his complaints before the court, and urge the removal of
Avaugour. He had, besides, two other important objects, as will appear
hereafter. His absence brought no improvement. Summer and autumn passed,
and the commotion did not abate. Winter was drawing to a close, when,
at length, outraged Heaven interposed an awful warning to the guilty
colony.
Scarcely had the bishop left his flock when the skies grew portentous
with signs of the chastisement to come. “We beheld,” gravely writes
Father Lalemant, “blazing serpents which flew through the air, borne
on wings of fire. We beheld above Quebec a great globe of flame, which
lighted up the night, and threw out sparks on all sides. This same
meteor appeared above Montreal, where it seemed to issue from the
bosom of the moon, with a noise as loud as cannon or thunder, and after
sailing three leagues through the air it disappeared behind the mountain
whereof this island bears the name.” *
Still greater marvels followed. First, a Christian Algonquin squaw,
described as “innocent, simple, and sincere,” being seated erect in
bed, wide awake, by the side of her husband, in the night between
the fourth and fifth of February, distinctly heard a voice saying,
“Strange things will happen to-day; the earth will quake!” In great
alarm she whispered the prodigy to her husband, who told her that she
lied. This silenced her for a time; but when, the next morning, she went
into the forest
* Lalemant. Relation, 1663, 2.
with her hatchet to cut a faggot of wood, the same dread voice resounded
through the solitude, and sent her back in terror to her hut. *
These things were as nothing compared with the marvel that befell a nun
of the hospital, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin, who died five years
later, in the odor of sanctity. On the night of the fourth of February,
1663, she beheld in the spirit four furious demons at the four corners
of Quebec, shaking it with a violence which plainly showed their purpose
of reducing it to ruins; “and this they would have done,” says
the story, “if a personage of admirable beauty and ravishing majesty
[_Christ_], whom she saw in the midst of them, and who, from time to
time, gave rein to their fury, had not restrained them when they were
on the point of accomplishing their wicked design.” She also heard the
conversation of these demons, to the effect that people were now well
frightened, and many would be converted; but this would not last
long, and they, the demons, would have them in time, “Let us keep on
shaking,” they cried, encouraging each other, “and do our best to
upset every thing.” **
Now, to pass from visions to facts: “At half-past five o’clock on
the morning of the fifth,” writes Father Lalemant, “a great roaring
sound was heard at the same time through the whole extent
* Lalemant, Relation, 1663, 6.
** Ragueneau, Vie de Catherine de St. Augustin, Liv. IV.
chap. i. The same story is told by Juchereau, Lalemant, and
Marie de l'Incarnation, to whom Charlevoix erroneously
ascribes the vision, as does also the Abbe La Tour.
of Canada. This sound, which produced an effect as if the houses were
on fire, brought everybody out of doors; but instead of seeing smoke and
flame, they were amazed to behold the walls shaking, and all the stones
moving as if they would drop from their places. The houses seemed
to bend first to one side and then to the other. Bells sounded of
themselves; beams, joists, and planks cracked; the ground heaved, making
the pickets of the palisades dance in a way that would have seemed
incredible had we not seen it in divers places.
“Everybody was in the streets; animals ran wildly about; children
cried; men and women, seized with fright, knew not where to take refuge,
expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of the houses, or
swallowed up in some abyss opening under their feet. Some, on their
knees in the snow, cried for mercy, and others passed the night in
prayer; for the earthquake continued without ceasing, with a motion much
like that of a ship at sea, insomuch that sundry persons felt the same
qualms of stomach which they would feel on the water. In the forests the
commotion was far greater. The trees struck one against the other as if
there were a battle between them; and you would have said that not only
their branches, but even their trunks started out of their places and
leaped on each other with such noise and confusion that the Indians
said that the whole forest was drunk.” Mary of the Incarnation gives
a similar account, as does also Frances Juchereau de Saint-Ignace; and
these contemporary records are sustained to some extent by the evidence
of geology. * A remarkable effect was produced on the St. Lawrence,
which was so charged with mud and clay that for many weeks the water was
unfit to drink. Considerable hills and large tracts of forest slid from
their places, some into the river, and some into adjacent valleys. A
number of men in a boat near Tadoussac stared aghast at a large hill
covered with trees, which sank into the water before their eyes; streams
were turned from their courses; waterfalls were levelled; springs
were dried up in some places, while in others new springs appeared.
Nevertheless, the accounts that have come down to us seem a little
exaggerated, and sometimes ludicrously so; as when, for example, Mother
Mary of the Incarnation tells us of a man who ran all night to escape
from a fissure in the earth which opened behind him and chased him as he
fled.
It is perhaps needless to say that “spectres and phantoms of fire,
bearing torches in their hands,” took part in the convulsion. “The
fiery figure of a man vomiting flames” also appeared in the air, with
many other apparitions too numerous to mention. It is recorded that
three young men were on their way through the forest to sell brandy to
the Indians, when one of them, a little in advance of the rest, was met
by a hideous spectre which nearly
* Professor Sterry Hunt, whose intimate knowledge of
Canadian geology is well known, tells me that the shores of
the St. Lawrence are to a great extent formed of beds of
gravel and clay resting on inclined strata of rock, so that
earth-slides would be the necessary result of any convulsion
like that of 1663. He adds that the evidence that such
slides have taken place on a great scale is very distinct at
various points along the river, especially at Les
Eboulemcns. Professor Sterry Hunt, whose intimate knowledge of
Canadian geology is well known, tells me that the shores of
the St. Lawrence are to a great extent formed of beds of
gravel and clay resting on inclined strata of rock, so that
earth-slides would be the necessary result of any convulsion
like that of 1663. He adds that the evidence that such
slides have taken place on a great scale is very distinct at
various points along the river, especially at Les
Eboulemcns on the north shore.
killed him with fright. He had scarcely strength enough to rejoin his
companions, who, seeing his terror, began to laugh at him. One of them,
however, presently came to his senses, and said: “This is no
laughing matter; we are going to sell liquor to the Indians against
the prohibitions of the church, and perhaps God means to punish our
disobedience.” On this they all turned back. That night they had
scarcely lain down to sleep when the earthquake roused them, and they
ran out of their hut just in time to escape being swallowed up along
with it. *
With every allowance, it is clear that the convulsion must have been a
severe one, and it is remarkable that in all Canada not a life was lost.
The writers of the day see in this a proof that God meant to reclaim the
guilty and not destroy them. At Quebec there was for the time an intense
revival of religion. The end of the world was thought to be at hand,
and everybody made ready for the last judgment. Repentant throngs beset
confessionals and altars; enemies were reconciled; fasts, prayers, and
penances filled the whole season of Lent. Yet, as we shall see, the
devil could still find wherewith to console himself.
It was midsummer before the shocks wholly ceased and the earth resumed
her wonted calm. An extreme drought was followed by floods of rain, and
then Nature began her sure work of
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 20 Aout, 1663. It
appears from Morton, Josselyn, and other writers, that the
earthquake extended to New England and New Netherlands,
producing similar effects on the imagination of the people.
reparation. It was about this time that the thorn which had plagued the
church was at length plucked out. Avaugour was summoned home.
He took his recall with magnanimity, and on his way wrote at Gaspé a
memorial to Colbert, in which he commends New France to the attention
of the king. “The St. Lawrence,” he says, “is the entrance to
what may be made the greatest state in the world;” and, in his purely
military way, he recounts the means of realizing this grand possibility.
Three thousand soldiers should be sent to the colony, to be discharged
and turned into settlers after three years of service. During these
three years they may make Quebec an impregnable fortress, subdue the
Iroquois, build a strong fort on the river where the Dutch have a
miserable wooden redoubt, called Fort Orange [_Albany_], and finally
open a way by that river to the sea. Thus the heretics will be driven
out, and the king will be master of America, at a total cost of about
four hundred thousand francs yearly for ten years. He closes his
memorial by a short allusion to the charges against him, and to his
forty years of faithful service; and concludes, speaking of the authors
of his recall, Laval and the Jesuits:
“By reason of the respect I owe their cloth, I will rest content,
monseigneur, with assuring you that I have not only served the king
with fidelity, but also, by the grace of God, with very good success,
considering the means at my disposal.” * He had, in truth, borne
himself as a brave and experienced
* Avaugour, Mémoire, Gaspé 4 Août 1663.
soldier; and he soon after died a soldier’s death, while defending the
fortress of Zrin, in Croatia, against the Turks. *
* Lettre de Colbert au Marquis de Tracy, 1664. Mémoire du
Boy, pout servir d’instruction au Sieur Talon