_Péronne Dumesnil.--The Old Council.--Alleged Murder.--The New
Council.--Bourdon And Villeray.--Strong Measures.--Escape Of
Duhesnil.--Views Of Colbert._
|Though the proposals of Avaugour’s memorial were not adopted, it
seems to have produced a strong impression at court. For this impression
the minds of the king and his minister had already been prepared. Two
years before, the inhabitants of Canada had sent one of their number,
Pierre Boucher, to represent their many grievances and ask for aid.
* Boucher had had an audience of the young king, who listened with
interest to his statements; and when in the following year he returned
to Quebec, he was accompanied by an officer named Dumont, who had under
his command a hundred soldiers for the colony, and was commissioned to
report its condition and resources. The movement
* To promote the objects of his mission, Boucher wrote a
little book, Histoire Véritable et Naturelle des Mœurs et
Productions du Pays de la Nouvelle France. He dedicates it
to Colbert.
** A long journal of Dumont is printed anonymously in the
Relation of 1663.
seemed to betoken that the government was wakening at last from its long
inaction.
Meanwhile the Company of New France, feudal lord of Canada, had also
shown signs of returning life. Its whole history had been one of mishap,
followed by discouragement and apathy; and it is difficult to say
whether its ownership of Canada had been more hurtful to itself or to
the colony. At the eleventh hour it sent out an agent invested with
powers of controller-general, intendant, and supreme judge, to inquire
into the state of its affairs. This agent, Péronne Dumesnil, arrived
early in the autumn of 1660, and set himself with great vigor to
his work. He was an advocate of the Parliament of Paris, an active,
aggressive, and tenacious person, of a temper well fitted to rip up an
old abuse or probe a delinquency to the bottom. His proceedings quickly
raised a storm at Quebec.
It may be remembered that, many years before, the company had ceded
its monopoly of the fur trade to the inhabitants of the colony, in
consideration of that annual payment in beaver-skins which had been so
tardily and so rarely made. The direction of the trade had at that time
been placed in the hands of a council composed of the governor, the
superior of the Jesuits, and several other members. Various changes had
since taken place, and the trade was now controlled by another council,
established without the consent of the company, * and composed of the
principal persons in the colony. The members of this council, with
certain
* Registres du Conseil du Roy; Réponse a la requeste
présentée au Roy.
prominent merchants in league with them, engrossed all the trade, so
that the inhabitants at large profited nothing by the right which the
company had ceded; * and as the councillors controlled not only the
trade but all the financial affairs of Canada, while the remoteness of
their scene of operations made it difficult to supervise them, they were
able, with little risk, to pursue their own profit, to the detriment
both of the company and the colony. They and their allies formed a petty
trading oligarchy, as pernicious to the prosperity of Canada as the
Iroquois war itself.
The company, always anxious for its beaver-skins, made several attempts
to control the proceedings of the councillors and call them to account,
but with little success, till the vigorous Dumesnil undertook the task,
when, to their wrath and consternation, they and their friends found
themselves attacked by wholesale accusations of fraud and embezzlement.
That these charges were exaggerated there can be little doubt; that they
were unfounded is incredible, in view of the effect they produced.
The councillors refused to acknowledge Dumesnil’s powers as
controller, intendant, and judge, and declared his proceedings null. He
retorted by charging them with usurpation. The excitement increased, and
Dumesnil’s life was threatened.
He had two sons in the colony. One of them, Péronne de Mazé, was
secretary to Avaugour, then on his way up the St. Lawrence to assume the
* Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat, 7 Mars, 1657. Also Papiers
d’Argenson, and Extrait des Registres du Conseil d’Etat, 15
Mars, 1656.
government. The other, Péronne des Touches, was with his father at
Quebec. Towards the end of August this young man was attacked in the
street in broad daylight, and received a kick which proved fatal. He
was carried to his father’s house, where he died on the twenty-ninth.
Dumesnil charges four persons, all of whom were among those into whose
affairs he had been prying, with having taken part in the outrage; but
it is very uncertain who was the immediate cause of Des Touches’s
death. Dumesnil, himself the supreme judicial officer of the colony,
made complaint to the judge in ordinary of the company; but he says
that justice was refused, the complaint suppressed by authority, his
allegations torn in pieces, and the whole affair hushed. *
At the time of the murder, Dumesnil was confined to his house by
illness. An attempt was made to rouse the mob against him, by reports
that he had come to the colony for the purpose of laying taxes; but he
sent for some of the excited inhabitants, and succeeded in convincing
them that he was their champion rather than their enemy. Some Indians in
the neighborhood were also instigated to kill him, and he was forced to
conciliate them by presents.
* Dumesnil, Mémoire. Under date August 31 the Journal des
Jésuite makes this brief and guarded mention of the affair:
“Le fils de Mons. du Mesnil... fut enterré le mesme jour,
tué d’un coup de pié par N.” Who is meant by N. it is
difficult to say. The register of the parish church records
the burial as follows:--
L’an 1661. Le 30 Aoust a esté enterré au Cemetiere de
Quebec Michel peronne dit Sr. des Touches fils de Mr. du
Mesnil décédé le Jour precedent a sa Maison.
He soon renewed his attacks, and in his quality of intendant called on
the councillors and their allies to render their accounts, and settle
the long arrears of debt due to the company. They set his demands at
naught. The war continued month after month. It is more than likely
that when in the spring of 1662 Avaugour dissolved and reconstructed
the council, his action had reference to these disputes; and it is clear
that when in the following August Laval sailed for France, one of his
objects was to restore the tranquillity which Dumesnil’s proceedings
had disturbed. There was great need; for, what with these proceedings
and the quarrel about brandy, Quebec was a little hell of discord, the
earthquake not having as yet frightened it into propriety.
The bishop’s success at court was triumphant. Not only did he procure
the removal of Avaugour, but he was invited to choose a new governor
to replace him. * This was not all; for he succeeded in effecting a
complete change in the government of the colony. The Company of New
France was called upon to resign its claims; ** and, by a royal edict of
April, 1663, all power, legislative, judicial, and executive, was vested
in a council composed of the governor whom Laval had chosen, of Laval
himself, and of five councillors, an attorney-general, and a secretary,
to be chosen by Laval and the governor jointly. *** Bearing with them
blank
* La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. V.
** See the deliberations and acts to this end in Edits et
Ordonnances concernant le Canada, 1. 30-32.
*** Edit de Création du Conseil Supérieur de Quebec.
commissions to be filled with the names of the new functionaries, Laval
and his governor sailed for Quebec, where they landed on the fifteenth
of September. With them came one Gaudais-Dupont, a royal commissioner
instructed to inquire into the state of the colony.
No sooner had they arrived than Laval and Mézy, the new governor,
proceeded to construct the new council. Mézy knew nobody in the
colony, and was, at this time, completely under Laval’s influence.
The nominations, therefore, were virtually made by the bishop alone, in
whose hands, and not in those of the governor, the blank commissions
had been placed. * Thus for the moment he had complete control of the
government; that is to say, the church was mistress of the civil power.
Laval formed his council as follows: Jean Bourdon for attorney-general;
Rouer de Villeray, Juchereau de la Berté, Ruette d’Auteuil, Le
Gardeur de Tilly, and Matthieu Damours for councillors; and Peuvret
de Mesnu for secretary. The royal commissioner, Gaudais, also took a
prominent place at the board. ** This functionary was on the point of
marrying his niece to a son of Robert Giffard,
* Commission actroyée au Sieur Gaudais. Mémoire pour servir
d’instruction au Sieur Gaudais. A sequel to these
instructions, marked secret, shows that, notwithstanding
Laval’s extraordinary success in attaining his objects, he
and the Jesuits were somewhat distrusted. Gaudais is
directed to make, with great discretion and caution, careful
inquiry into the bishop’s conduct, and with equal secrecy to
ascertain why the Jesuits had asked for Avaugour’s recall.
** As substitute for the intendant, an officer who had been
appointed but who had not arrived.
who had a strong interest in suppressing Dumesnil’s accusations. *
Dumesnil had laid his statements before the commissioner, who quickly
rejected them, and took part with the accused.
Of those appointed to the new council, their enemy Dumesnil says
that they were "incapable persons,” and their associate Gaudais,
in defending them against worse charges, declares that they were
“unlettered, of little experience, and nearly all unable to deal with
affairs of importance.” This was, perhaps, unavoidable; for, except
among the ecclesiastics, education was then scarcely known in Canada.
But if Laval may be excused for putting incompetent men in office,
nothing can excuse him for making men charged with gross public offences
the prosecutors and judges in their own cause; and his course in doing
so gives color to the assertion of Dumesnil, that he made up the council
expressly to shield the accused and smother the accusation. **
The two persons under the heaviest charges received the two most
important appointments: Bourdon, attorney-general, and Villeray, keeper
of
* Dumesnil here makes one of the few mistakes I have been
able to detect in his long memorials. He says that the name
of the niece of Gaudais was Marie Nau. It was, in fact,
Michelle-Therese Nau, who married Joseph, son of Robert
Giffard, on the 22d of October, 1663. Dumesnil had forgotten
the bride’s first name. The elder Giffard was surety for
Repentigny, whom Dumesnil charged with liabilities to the
company, amounting to 644,700 livres. Giffard was also
father-in-law of Juchereau de la Ferte, one of the accused.
** Dumesnil goes further than this, for he plainly
intimates that the removing from power of the company, to
whom the accused were responsible, and the placing in power
of a council formed of the accused themselves, was a device
contrived from the first by Laval and the Jesuits, to get
their friends out of trouble.
the seals. La Ferté was also one of the accused. * Of Villeray, the
governor Argenson had written in 1059: “Some of his qualities are
good enough, but confidence cannot be placed in him, on account of his
instability.” ** In the same year, he had been ordered to France,
“to purge himself of sundry crimes wherewith he stands charged.”
*** He was not yet free of suspicion, having returned to Canada under
an order to make up and render his accounts, which he had not yet done.
Dumesnil says that he first came to the colony in 1651, as valet of the
governor Lauson, who had taken him from the jail at Rochelle, where he
was imprisoned for a debt of seventy-one francs, “as appears by the
record of the jail of date July eleventh in that year.” From this
modest beginning he became in time the richest man in Canada. **** He
was strong in orthodoxy, and an ardent supporter of the bishop and the
Jesuits. He is alternately praised and blamed, according to the partisan
leanings of the writer.
* Bourdon is charged with not having accounted for an
immense quantity of beaver-skins which had passed through
his hands during twelve years or more, and which are valued
at more than 300,000 livres. Other charges are made against
him in connection with large sums borrowed in Lauson’s time
on account of the colony. In a memorial addressed to the
king in council, Dumesnil says that, in 1662, Bourdon,
according to his own accounts, had in his hands 37,516
livres belonging to the company, which he still retained.
Villeray’s liabilities arose out of the unsettled accounts
of his father-in-law, Charles Sevestre, and are set down at
more than 600,000 livres. La Ferté’s are of a smaller
amount. Others of the council were indirectly involved in
the charges.
** Lettre d’Argenson, 20 Nov., 1659.
*** Edit du Roy, 13 Mai, 1659.
**** Lettre de Colbert a Frontenac, 17 Mai, 1674.
Bourdon, though of humble origin, was, perhaps, the most intelligent
man in the council. He was chiefly known as an engineer, but he had also
been a baker, a painter, a syndic of the inhabitants, chief gunner at
the fort, and collector of customs for the company. Whether guilty of
embezzlement or not, he was a zealous devotee, and would probably have
died for his creed. Like Villeray, he was one of Laval’s stanchest
supporters, while the rest of the council were also sound in doctrine
and sure in allegiance.
In virtue of their new dignity, the accused now claimed exemption from
accountability; but this was not all. The abandonment of Canada by
the company, in leaving Dumesnil without support, and depriving him
of official character, had made his charges far less dangerous.
Nevertheless, it was thought best to suppress them altogether, and the
first act of the new government was to this end.
On the twentieth of September, the second day after the establishment
of the council, Bourdon, in his character of attorney-general, rose and
demanded that the papers of Jean Péronne Dumesnil should be seized
and sequestered. The council consented, and, to Complete the scandal,
Villeray was commissioned to make the seizure in the presence of
Bourdon. To color the proceeding, it was alleged that Dumesnil had
obtained certain papers unlawfully from the _greffe_ or record office.
“As he was thought,” says Gaudais, “to be a violent man."
Bourdon and Villeray took with them ten soldiers, well armed, together
with a locksmith and the secretary of the council. Thus prepared for
every contingency, they set out on their errand, and appeared suddenly
at Dumesnil's house between seven and eight o’clock in the evening.
“The aforesaid Sieur Dumesnil,” further says Gaudais, “did not
refute the opinion entertained of his violence; for he made a great
noise, shouted _robbers!_ and tried to rouse the neighborhood,
outrageously abusing the aforesaid Sieur de Villeray and the
attorney-general, in great contempt of the authority of the council,
which he even refused to recognize.”
They tried to silence him by threats, but without effect; upon which
they seized him and held him fast in a chair; “me,” writes the
wrathful Dumesnil, “who had lately been their judge.” The soldiers
stood over him and stopped his mouth while the others broke open and
ransacked his cabinet, drawers, and chest, from which they took all his
papers, refusing to give him an inventory, or to permit any witness to
enter the house. Some of these papers were private; among the rest were,
he says, the charges and specifications, nearly finished, for the
trial of Bourdon and Villeray, together with the proofs of their
“peculations, extortions, and malversations.” The papers were
enclosed under seal, and deposited in a neighboring house, whence they
were afterwards removed to the council-chamber, and Dumesnil never saw
them again. It may well be believed that this, the inaugural act of the
new council, was not allowed to appear on its records. *
On the twenty-first, Villeray made a formal report of the seizure to
his colleagues; upon which, “by reason of the insults, violences, and
irreverences therein set forth against the aforesaid Sieur de Villeray,
commissioner, as also against the authority of the council,” it was
ordered that the offending Dumesnil should be put under arrest; but
Gaudais, as he declares, prevented the order from being carried into
effect.
Dumesnil, who says that during the scene at his house he had expected to
be murdered like his son, now, though unsupported and alone, returned to
the attack, demanded his papers, and was so loud in threats of complaint
to the king that the council were seriously alarmed. They again decreed
his arrest and imprisonment; but resolved to keep the decree secret till
the morning of the day when the last of the returning ships was to
sail for France. In this ship Dumesnil had taken his passage, and they
proposed to arrest him unexpectedly on the point of embarkation, that he
might have no time to prepare and despatch a memorial to the court. Thus
a full year must elapse before his complaints could reach the minister,
and seven or eight months more before a reply could be returned to
Canada. During this long delay the affair would have time to cool.
Dumesnil received a secret warning of
* The above is drawn from the two memorials of Gaudais and
of Dimesnil. They do not contradict each other as, to the
essential facts.
this plan, and accordingly went on board another vessel, which was to
sail immediately. The council caused the six cannon of the battery in
the Lower Town to be pointed at her, and threatened to sink her if she
left the harbor; but she disregarded them, and proceeded on her way.
On reaching France, Dumesnil contrived to draw the attention of the
minister Colbert to his accusations, and to the treatment they had
brought upon him. On this Colbert demanded of Gaudais, who had also
returned in one of the autumn ships, why he had not reported these
matters to him. Gaudais made a lame attempt to explain his silence, gave
his statement of the seizure of the papers, answered in vague terms some
of Dumesnil’s charges against the Canadian financiers, and said that
he had nothing to do with the rest. In the following spring Colbert
wrote as follows to his relative Terron, intendant of marine:--
“I do not know what report M. Gaudais has made to you, but family
interests and the connections which he has at Quebec should cause him
to be a little distrusted. On his arrival in that country, having
constituted himself chief of the council, he despoiled an agent of
the Company of Canada of all his papers, in a manner very violent and
extraordinary, and this proceeding leaves no doubt whatever that these
papers contained matters the knowledge of which it was wished absolutely
to suppress. I think it will be very proper that you should be informed
of the statements made by this agent, in order that, through him, an
exact knowledge may be acquired of every thing that has taken place in
the management of affairs.” *
Whether Terron pursued the inquiry does not appear. Meanwhile new
quarrels had arisen at Quebec, and the questions of the past were
obscured in the dust of fresh commotions. Nothing is more noticeable in
the whole history of Canada, after it came under the direct control of
the Crown, than the helpless manner in which this absolute government
was forced to overlook and ignore the disobedience and rascality of its
functionaries in this distant transatlantic dependency.
As regards Dumesnil’s charges, the truth seems to be, that the
financial managers of the colony, being ignorant and unpractised, had
kept imperfect and confused accounts, which they themselves could not
always unravel; and that some, if not all of them, had made illicit
profits under cover of this confusion. That their stealings approached
the enormous sum at which Dinesnil places them is not to be believed.
But, even on the grossly improbable assumption of their entire
innocence, there can be no apology for the means, subversive of
all justice, by which Laval enabled his partisans and supporters to
extricate themselves from embarrassment.----
* Lettre de Colbert a Terron, Rochelle, 8 Fev., 1664. “Il a
spolié un agent de la Compagnie de Canada de tous ses
papiers d’une manière fort violente et extraordinaire, et ce
procédé ne laisse point à douter que dans ces papiers il n’y
eût des choses dont on a voulu absolument supprimer la
connaissance.” Colbert seems to have received an exaggerated
impression of the part borne by Gaudais in the seizure of
the papers.
NOTE.--Dumesnil’s principal memorial, preserved in the archives of
the Marine and Colonies, is entitled Mémoire concernant les Affaires du
Canada, qui montre et fait voir que sous prétexte de la Gloire de Dieu,
d’Instruction des Sauvages, de servir le Roy et de faire la nouvelle
Colonie, il a été pris et diverti trois millions de livres ou environ.
It forms in the copy before me thirty-eight pages of manuscript, and
bears no address; but seems meant for Colbert, or the council of state.
There is a second memorial, which is little else than an abridgment of
the first. A third, bearing the address Au Roy et a nos Seigneurs du
Conseil (d’Etat), and signed Peronne Dumesnil, is a petition for the
payment of 10,132 livres due to him by the company for his services in
Canada, “ou il a perdu son fils assassiné par les comptables du dit
pays, qui n’ont voulu rendre compte au dit suppliant, Intendant, et
ont pillé sa maison, ses meubles et papiers le 20 du mois de Septembre
dernier, dont il y a acte.”
Gaudais, in compliance with the demands of Colbert, gives his statement
in a long memorial, Le Sieur Gaudais Dupont à Monseigneur de Colbert,
1664.
Dumesnil, in his principal memorial, gives a list of the alleged
defaulters, with the special charges against each, and the amounts for
which he reckons them liable. The accusations cover a period of ten or
twelve years, and sometimes more. Some of them are curiously suggestive
of more recent “rings.” Thus Jean Gloria makes a charge of
thirty-one hundred livres (francs) for fireworks to celebrate the
king’s marriage, when the actual cost is said to have been about forty
livres. Others are alleged to have embezzled the funds of the company,
under cover of pretended payments to imaginary creditors; and Argenson
himself is said to have eked out his miserable salary by drawing on the
company for the pay of soldiers who did not exist.
The records of the Council preserve a guarded silence about this affair.
I find, however, under date 20 Sept., 1663, “Pouvoir â M. de Villeray
de faire recherche dans la maison d’un nommé du Mesnil des papiers
appartenants au Conseil concernant Sa Majesté;” and under date 18
March, 1664, “Ordre pour l’ouverture du coffre contenant les papiers
de Dumesnil,” and also an “Ordre pour mettre l’Inventaire des
biens du Sr. Dumesnil entre les mains du Sr. Fillion.”