_Transplantation Of Feudalism.--Precautions.--Faith And Hope
--Age.--The Seignior.--The Censitaire.--Royal Intervention.--The
Gentilhomme.--Canadian Noblesse._
|Canadian society was beginning to form itself, and at its base was the
feudal tenure. European feudalism was the indigenous and natural growth
of political and social conditions which preceded it. Canadian feudalism
was an offshoot of the feudalism of France, modified by the lapse of
centuries, and further modified by the royal will.
In France, as in the rest of Europe, the system had lost its vitality.
The warrior-nobles who placed Hugh Capet on the throne, and began the
feudal monarchy, formed an aristocratic republic, and the king was one
of their number, whom they chose to be their chief. But, through the
struggles and vicissitudes of many succeeding reigns, royalty had waxed
and oligarchy had waned. The fact had changed and the theory had changed
with it. The king, once powerless among a host of turbulent nobles, was
now a king indeed. Once a chief, because his equals had made him so, he
was now the anointed of the Lord. This triumph of royalty had culminated
in Louis XIV. The stormy energies and bold individualism of the old
feudal nobles had ceased to exist. They who had held his predecessors in
awe had become his obsequious servants. He no longer feared his nobles;
he prized them as gorgeous decorations of his court, and satellites of
his royal person.
It was Richelieu who first planted feudalism in Canada. * The king would
preserve it there, because with its teeth drawn he was fond of it, and
because, as the feudal tenure prevailed in Old France, it was natural
that it should prevail also in the New. But he continued as Richelieu
had begun, and moulded it to the form that pleased him. Nothing was
left which could threaten his absolute and undivided authority over the
colony. In France, a multitude of privileges and prescriptions still
clung, despite its fall, about the ancient ruling class. Few of these
were allowed to cross the Atlantic, while the old, lingering abuses,
which had made the system odious, were at the same time lopped away.
Thus retrenched, Canadian feudalism was made to serve a double end;
to produce a faint and harmless reflection of French aristocracy, and
simply and practically to supply agencies for distributing land among
the settlers.
The nature of the precautions which it was held to require appear in the
plan of administration which Talon and Tracy laid before the minister.
* By the charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates,
1627.
They urge that, in view of the distance from France, special care
ought to be taken to prevent changes and revolutions, aristocratic or
otherwise, in the colony, whereby in time sovereign jurisdictions might
grow up, as formerly occurred in various parts of France. * And, in
respect to grants already made, an inquiry was ordered, to ascertain
“if seigniors in distributing lands to their vassals have exacted any
conditions injurious to the rights of the Crown and the subjection due
solely to the king.” In the same view the seignior was denied any
voice whatever in the direction of government; and it is scarcely
necessary to say that the essential feature of feudalism in the day of
its vitality, the requirement of military service by the lord from the
vassal, was utterly unknown in Canada. The royal governor called out the
militia whenever he saw fit, and set over it what officers he pleased.
The seignior was usually the immediate vassal of the Crown, from which
he had received his land gratuitously. In a few cases, he made grants
to other seigniors inferior in the feudal scale, and they, his vassals,
granted in turn to their vassals, the _habitants_ or cultivators of the
soil. ** Sometimes
* Projet de Réglement fait par MM. de Tracy et Talon pour
la justice et la distribution des terres du Canada, Jan. 24,
1667.
** Most of the seigniories of Canada were simple fiefs; but
there were some exceptions. In 1671, the king, as a mark of
honor to Talon, erected his seigniory Des Islets into a
barony; and it was soon afterwards made an earldom, comté.
In 1676, the seigniory of St. Laurent, on the island of
Orleans, once the property of Laval, and then belonging to
François Berthelot, councillor of the king, was erected into
an earldom. In 1681, the seigniory of Portneuf, belonging to
Réné Robineau, chevalier, was made a barony. In 1700, three
seigniories on the south side of the St. Lawrence were
united into the barony of Lcngueuil. See Papers on the
Feudal Tenure in Canada, Abstract of Titles.
the _habitant_ held directly of the Crown, in which case there was no
step between the highest and lowest degrees of the feudal scale. The
seignior held by the tenure of faith and homage, the _habitant_ by the
inferior tenure _en censive_. Faith and homage were rendered to the
Crown or other feudal superior whenever the seigniory changed hands,
or, in the case of seigniories held by corporations, after long stated
intervals. The following is an example, drawn from the early days of the
colony, of the performance of this ceremony by the owner of a fief to
the seignior who had granted it to him. It is that of Jean Guion, vassal
of Giffard, seignior of Beauport. The act recounts how, in presence of a
notary, Guion presented himself at the principal door of the manor-house
of Beauport; how, having knocked, one Boullé, farmer of Giffard,
opened the door, and in reply to Guion’s question if the seignior was
at home, replied that he was not, but that he, Boullé, was empowered
to receive acknowledgments of faith and homage from the vassals in his
name. “After the which reply,” proceeds the act, the said Guion,
being at the principal door, placed himself on his knees on the ground,
with head bare, and without sword or spurs, and said three times these
words: “Monsieur de Beauport, Monsieur de Beauport, Monsieur de
Beauport, I bring you the faith and homage which I am bound to bring you
on account of my fief Du Buisson, which I hold as a man of faith of your
seigniory of Beauport, declaring that I offer to pay my seigniorial and
feudal dues in their season, and demanding of you to accept me in faith
and homage as aforesaid.” *
The following instance is the more common one of a seignior holding
directly of the Crown. It is widely separated from the first in point
of time, having occurred a year after the army of Wolfe entered Quebec.
Philippe Noël had lately died, and Jean Noël, his son, inherited his
seigniory of Tilly and Bonsecours. To make the title good, faith and
homage must be renewed. Jean Noël was under the bitter necessity of
rendering this duty to General Murray, governor for the king of Great
Britain. The form is the same as in the case of Guion, more than a
century before. Noël repairs to the Government House at Quebec, and
knocks at the door. A servant opens it. Noël asks if the governor
is there. The servant replies that he is. Murray, informed of the
visitor’s object, comes to the door, and Noël then and there,
“without sword or spurs, with bare head, and one knee on the
ground,” repeats the acknowledgment of faith and homage for his
seigniory. He was compelled, however, to add a detested innovation, the
oath of fidelity to his Britannic Majesty, coupled with a pledge to keep
his vassals in obedience to the new sovereign. **
The seignior was a proprietor holding that relation to the feudal
superior which, in its pristine
* Ferland, Notes sur les Registres de Notre Dame de Québec,
65. This was a fief en roture, as distinguished from a fief
noble, to which judicial powers and other privileges were
attached.
** See the act in Observations de Sir L. H. Lafontaine,
Bart., sur la Tenure Seignetiriale, 217, note.
character, has been truly described as servile in form, proud and
bold in spirit. But in Canada this bold spirit was very far from
being strengthened by the changes which the policy of the Crown had
introduced into the system. The reservation of mines and minerals, oaks
for the royal navy, roadways, and a site, if needed, for royal forts and
magazines, had in it nothing extraordinary. The great difference between
the position of the Canadian seignior and that of the vassal proprietor
of the Middle Ages lay in the extent and nature of the control which the
Crown and its officers held over him. A decree of the king, an edict
of the council, or an ordinance of the intendant, might at any moment
change old conditions, impose new ones, interfere between the lord of
the manor and his grantees, and modify or annul his bargains, past or
present. He was never sure whether or not the government would let him
alone; and against its most arbitrary intervention he had no remedy.
One condition was imposed on him which may be said to form the
distinctive feature of Canadian feudalism; that of clearing his land
within a limited time on pain of forfeiting it. The object was the
excellent one of preventing the lands of the colony from lying waste.
As the seignior was often the penniless owner of a domain three or four
leagues wide and proportionably deep, he could not clear it all himself,
and was therefore under the necessity of placing the greater part in the
hands of those who could. But he was forbidden to sell any part of it
which he had not cleared. He must grant it without price, on condition
of a small perpetual rent; and this brings us to the cultivator of the
soil, the _censitaire_, the broad base of the feudal pyramid. *
The tenure _en censive_ by which the _censitaire_ held of the seignior
consisted in the obligation to make annual payments in money, produce,
or both. In Canada these payments, known as _cens et rente_, were
strangely diverse in amount and kind; but, in all the early period
of the colony, they were almost ludicrously small. A common charge at
Montreal was half a sou and half a pint of wheat for each arpent. The
rate usually fluctuated in the early times between half a sou and two
sous, so that a farm of a hundred and sixty arpents would pay from four
to sixteen francs, of which a part would be in money and the rest
in live capons, wheat, eggs, or all three together, in pursuance of
contracts as amusing in their precision as they are bewildering in their
variety. Live capons,
* The greater part of the grants made by the old Company of
New France were resumed by the Crown for neglect to occupy
and improve the land, which was granted out anew under the
administration of Talon. The most remarkable of these
forfeited grants is that of the vast domain of La Citière,
large enough for a kingdom. Lauson, afterwards governor, had
obtained it from the company, but had failed to improve it.
Two or three sub-grants which he had made from it were held
valid; the rest was reunited to the royal domain. On
repeated occasions at later dates, negligent seigniors were
threatened with the loss of half or the whole of their land,
and various cases are recorded in which the threat took
effect. In 1741, an ordinance of the governor and intendant
reunited to the royal domain seventeen seigniories at one
stroke; but the former owners were told that if within a
year they cleared and settled a reasonable part of the
forfeited estates, the titles should be restored to them.
Edits et Ordonnances, II. 555. In the case of the habitant
or censitaire forfeitures for neglect to improve the land
and live on it are very numerous.
estimated at twenty sous each, though sometimes not worth ten, form
a conspicuous feature in these agreements, so that on payday the
seignior’s barnyard presented an animated scene. Later in the history
of the colony grants were at somewhat higher rates. Payment was commonly
made on St. Martin’s day, when there was a general muster of tenants
at the seigniorial mansion, with a prodigious consumption of tobacco and
a corresponding retail of neighborhood gossip, joined to the outcries
of the captive fowls bundled together for delivery, with legs tied, but
throats at full liberty.
A more considerable but a very uncertain source of income to the
seignior were the _lods et ventes_, or mutation fines. The land of the
_censitaire_ passed freely to his heirs; but if he sold it, a twelfth
part of the purchase-money must be paid to the seignior. The seignior,
on his part, was equally liable to pay a mutation fine to his feudal
superior if he sold his seigniory; and for him the amount was larger,
being a _quint_, or a fifth of the price received, of which, however,
the greater part was deducted for immediate payment. This heavy charge,
constituting, as it did, a tax on all improvements, was a principal
cause of the abolition of the feudal tenure in 1854.
The obligation of clearing his land and living on it was laid on
seignior and _censitaire_ alike; but the latter was under a variety of
other obligations to the former, partly imposed by custom and partly
established by agreement when the grant was made. To grind his grain at
the seignior’s mill, bake his bread in the seignior’s oven, work for
him one or more days in the year, and give him one fish in every eleven,
for the privilege of fishing in the river before his farm; these were
the most annoying of the conditions to which the _censitaire_ was
liable. Few of them were enforced with much regularity. That of
baking in the seignior’s oven was rarely carried into effect, though
occasionally used for purposes of extortion. It is here that the
royal government appears in its true character, so far as concerns its
relations with Canada, that of a well-meaning despotism. It continually
intervened between _censitaire_ and seignior, on the principle
that “as his Majesty gives the land for nothing, he can make what
conditions he pleases, and change them when he pleases.” * These
interventions were usually favorable to the _censitaire_. On one
occasion an intendant reported to the minister, that in his opinion all
rents ought to be reduced to one sou and one live capon for every arpent
of front, equal in most cases to forty superficial arpents. ** Every
thing, he remarks, ought to be brought down to the level of the first
grants “made in days of innocence,” a happy period which he does not
attempt to define. The minister replies that the diversity of the
rent is, in fact, vexatious, and that, for his part, he is disposed
to abolish it altogether. *** Neither he nor the intendant gives the
slightest hint of any compensation
* This doctrine is laid down in a letter of the Marquis de
Beauharnois, governor, to the minister, 1734.
** Lettre de Raudot, père, au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1707.
*** Lettre de Ponchartrain à Raudot, père, 13 Juin, 1708.
to the seignior. Though these radical measures were not executed, many
changes were decreed from time to time in the relations between seignior
and _censitaire_, sometimes as a simple act of sovereign power, and
sometimes on the ground that the grants had been made with conditions
not recognized by the _Coutume de Paris_. This was the code of law
assigned to Canada; but most of the contracts between seignior and
_censitaire_ had been agreed upon in good faith by men who knew as much
of the _Coutume de Paris_ as of the Capitularies of Charlemagne, and
their conditions had remained in force unchallenged for generations.
These interventions of government sometimes contradicted each other,
and often proved a dead letter. They are more or less active through the
whole period of the French rule.
The seignior had judicial powers, which, however, were carefully curbed
and controlled. His jurisdiction, when exercised at all, extended in
most cases only to trivial causes. He very rarely had a prison, and
seems never to have abused it. The dignity of a seigniorial gallows with
_high justice_ or jurisdiction over heinous offences was granted only in
three or four instances. *
Four arpents in front by forty in depth were the ordinary dimensions of
a grant _en censive_. These ribbons of land, nearly a mile and a half
long, with one end on the river and the other on
* Baronies and comtés were empowered to set up gallows and
pillories, to which the arms of the owner were affixed. See,
for example, the edict creating the Barony des Islets.
the uplands behind, usually combined the advantages of meadows for
cultivation, and forests for timber and firewood. So long as the
_censitaire_ brought in on St. Martin’s day his yearly capons and his
yearly handful of copper, his title against the seignior was perfect.
There are farms in Canada which have passed from father to son for two
hundred years. The condition of the cultivator was incomparably better
than that of the French peasant, crushed by taxes, and oppressed by
feudal burdens far heavier than those of Canada. In fact, the Canadian
settler scorned the name of peasant, and then, as now, was always called
the _habitant_. The government held him in wardship, watched over him,
interfered with him, but did not oppress him or allow others to oppress
him. Canada was not governed to the profit of a class, and if the king
wished to create a Canadian _noblesse_ he took care that it should not
bear hard on the country. *
Under a genuine feudalism, the ownership of land conferred nobility; but
all this was changed. The king and not the soil was now the parent
of honor. France swarmed with landless nobles, while _roturier_
land-holders grew daily more numerous. In Canada half the seigniories
were in _roturier_ or plebeian hands, and in course of time some of them
* On the seigniorial tenure, I have examined the whole of
the mass of papers printed at the time when the question of
its abolition was under discussion. A great deal of legal
research and learning was then devoted to the subject. The
argument of Mr. Dunkin in behalf of the seigniors, and the
observations of Judge Lafontaine, are especially
instructive, as is also the collected correspondence of the
governors and intendants with the central government on
matters relating to the seigniorial system.
came into possession of persons on very humble degrees of the social
scale. A seigniory could be bought and sold, and a trader or a thrifty
_habitant_ might, and often did become the buyer. * If the Canadian
noble was always a seignior, it is far from being true that the Canadian
seignior was always a noble.
In France, it will be remembered, nobility did not in itself imply a
title. Besides its titled leaders, it had its rank and file, numerous
enough to form a considerable army. Under the later Bourbons, the
penniless young nobles were, in fact, enrolled into regiments,
turbulent, difficult to control, obeying officers of high rank, but
scorning all others, and conspicuous by a fiery and impetuous valor
which on more than one occasion turned the tide of victory. The
_gentilhomme_, or untitled noble, had a distinctive character of his
own, gallant, punctilious, vain; skilled in social and sometimes in
literary and artistic accomplishments, but usually ignorant of most
things except the handling of his rapier. Yet there were striking
exceptions; and to say of him, as has been said, that “he knew nothing
but how to get himself killed,” is hardly just to a body which has
produced some of the best writers and thinkers of France.
Sometimes the origin of his nobility was lost in
* In 1712, the engineer Catalogne made a very long and
elaborate report on the condition of Canada, with a full
account of all the seigniorial estates. Of ninety-one
seigniories, fiefs, and baronies, described by him, ten
belonged to merchants, twelve to husbandmen, and two to
masters of small river craft. The rest belonged to religious
corporations, members of the council, judges, officials of
the Crown, widows, and discharged officers or their sons.
the mists of time; sometimes he owed it to a patent from the king. In
either case, the line of demarcation between him and the classes below
him was perfectly distinct; and in this lies an essential difference
between the French _noblesse_ and the English gentry, a class not
separated from others by a definite barrier. The French _noblesse_,
unlike the English gentry, constituted a caste.
The _gentilhomme_ had no vocation for emigrating. He liked the army and
he liked the court. If he could not be of it, it was something to live
in its shadow. The life of a backwoods settler had no charm for him.
He was not used to labor; and he could not trade, at least in retail,
without becoming liable to forfeit his nobility. When Talon came to
Canada, there were but four noble families in the colony. * Young nobles
in abundance came out with Tracy; but they went home with him. Where,
then, should be found the material of a Canadian _noblesse?_ First,
in the regiment of Carignan, of which most of the officers were
_gentilshommes_; secondly, in the issue of patents of nobility to a
few of the more prominent colonists. Tracy asked for four such patents;
Talon asked for five more; ** and such requests were repeated at
intervals by succeeding governors and intendants, in behalf of those who
had gained their favor by merit or otherwise. Money smoothed the path.
* Talon, Mémoire sur l'Etat présent du Canada, 1667. The
families of Repentigny, Tilly, Poterie, and Aillebout appear
to be meant.
** Tracy’s request was in behalf of Bourdon, Boucher,
Auteuil, and Juchereau. Talon’s was in behalf of Godefroy,
Le Moyne, Denis, Amiot, and Couillard to advancement, so far
had _noblesse_ already fallen from its old estate.
Thus Jacques Le Ber, the merchant, who had long kept a shop at Montreal,
got himself made a gentleman for six thousand livres. *
All Canada soon became infatuated with _noblesse_; and country and
town, merchant and seignior, vied with each other for the quality of
_gentilhomme_. If they could not get it, they often pretended to have
it, and aped its ways with the zeal of Monsieur Jourdain himself.
“Everybody here,” writes the intendant Meules, “calls himself
_Esquire_, and ends with thinking himself a gentleman.” Successive
intendants repeat this complaint. The case was worst with _roturiers_
who had acquired seigniories. Thus Noel Langlois was a good carpenter
till he became owner of a seigniory, on which he grew lazy and affected
to play the gentleman. The real _gentilshommes_, as well as the
spurious, had their full share of official stricture. The governor
Denonville speaks of them thus: “Several of them have come out this
year with their wives, who are very much cast down; but they play the
fine lady, nevertheless. I had much rather see good peasants; it would
be a pleasure to me to give aid to such, knowing, as I should, that
within two years their families would have the means of living at ease;
for it is certain that a peasant who can and will work is well off in
this country, while our nobles with nothing to do can never be any thing
but beggars. Still they ought not to be
* Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 325.
driven off or abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.” *
The intendant Duchesneau writes to the same effect: “Many of our
_gentilshommes_, officers, and other owners of seigniories, lead what
in France is called the life of a country gentleman, and spend most of
their time in hunting and fishing. As their requirements in food and
clothing are greater than those of the simple _habitants_, and as they
do not devote themselves to improving their land, they mix themselves
up in trade, run in debt on all hands, incite their young _habitants_ to
range the woods, and send their own children there to trade for furs
in the Indian villages and in the depths of the forest, in spite of the
prohibition of his Majesty. Yet, with all this, they are in miserable
poverty.” ** Their condition, indeed, was often deplorable. “It is
pitiful,” says the intendant Champigny, “to see their children, of
which they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on them
but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields.”
*** In another letter he asks aid from the king for Repentigny with his
thirteen children, and for Tilly with his fifteen. “We must give them
some corn at once,” he says, “or they will starve.” **** These
were two of the original four noble families of Canada. The family
of Aillebout, another of the four, is described as equally destitute.
“Pride and sloth,” says the same intendant,
* Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
** Lettre de Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.
*** Lettre de Champigny au Ministre, 26 Août, 1687.
**** Ibid., 6 Nov., 1687.
“are the great faults of the people of Canada, and especially of
the nobles and those who pretend to be such. I pray you grant no more
letters of nobility, unless you want to multiply beggars.” * The
governor Denonville is still more emphatic: “Above all things,
monseigneur, permit me to say that the nobles of this new country are
every thing that is most beggarly, and that to increase their number
is to increase the number of do-nothings. A new country requires
hard workers, who will handle the axe and mattock. The sons of our
councillors are no more industrious than the nobles; and their only
resource is to take to the woods, trade a little with the Indians, and,
for the most part, fall into the disorders of which I have had the honor
to inform you. I shall use all possible means to induce them to engage
in regular commerce; but as our nobles and councillors are all very poor
and weighed down with debt, they could not get credit for a single
crown piece.” ** “Two days ago,” he writes in another letter,
“Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask
leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put
his ten children into the charge of any who will give them a living,
and that he himself will go into the army again. His wife and he are
in despair; and yet they do what they can. I have seen two of his girls
reaping grain and holding the plough. Other families are
* Mémoire instructif sur le Canada, joint a la lettre de M.
de Champigny du 10 May, 1691.
** Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1685.
in the same condition. They come to me with tears in their eyes. All our
married officers are beggars; and I entreat you to send them aid. There
is need that the king should provide support for their children, or else
they will be tempted to go over to the English.” * Again he writes
that the sons of the councillor D’Amours have been arrested as
_coureurs de bois_, or outlaws in the bush; and that if the minister
does not do something to help them, there is danger that all the sons of
the _noblesse_, real or pretended, will turn bandits, since they have no
other means of living.
The king, dispenser of charity for all Canada, came promptly to the
rescue. He granted an alms of a hundred crowns to each family, coupled
with a warning to the recipients of his bounty that “their misery
proceeds from their ambition to live as persons of quality and without
labor.” ** At the same time, the minister announced that no more
letters of nobility would be granted in Canada; adding, “to relieve
the country of some of the children of those who are really noble, I
send you (_the governor_) six commissions of _Gardes de la Marine_, and
recommend you to take care not to give them to any who are not actually
_gentilshommes_." The _Garde de la Marine_ answered to the midshipman
of the English or American service. As the six commissions could bring
little relief to the crowd of needy youths, it was further ordained
* Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
(Condensed in the translation.)
** Abstract of Denonville’s Letters, and of the Minister’s
Answers, in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 317, 318.
that sons of nobles or persons living as such should be enrolled
into companies at eight sous a day for those who should best conduct
themselves, and six sous a day for the others. Nobles in Canada were
also permitted to trade, even at retail, without derogating from their
rank. *
They had already assumed this right, without waiting for the royal
license; but thus far it had profited them little. The _gentilhomme_ was
not a good shopkeeper, nor, as a rule, was the shop-keeper’s vocation
very lucrative in Canada. The domestic trade of the colony was small;
and all trade was exposed to such vicissitudes from the intervention
of intendants, ministers, and councils, that at one time it was almost
banished. At best, it was carried on under conditions auspicious to a
favored few and withering to the rest. Even when most willing to work,
the position of the _gentilhomme_ was a painful one. Unless he could
gain a post under the Crown, which was rarely the case, he was as
complete a political cipher as the meanest _habitant_. His rents were
practically nothing, and he had no capital to improve his seigniorial
estate. By a peasant’s work he could gain a peasant’s living, and
this was all. The prospect was not inspiring. His long initiation of
misery was the natural result of his position and surroundings; and
it is no matter of wonder that he threw himself into the only field of
action which in time of peace was open to him. It was trade, but trade
seasoned by adventure and
* Lettre de Meules au Ministre, 1685.
ennobled by danger; defiant of edict and ordinance, outlawed, conducted
in arms among forests and savages,--in short, it was the Western
fur trade. The tyro was likely to fail in it at first, but time and
experience formed him to the work. On the Great Lakes, in the wastes
of the Northwest, on the Mississippi and the plains beyond, we find
the roving _gentilhomme_, chief of a gang of bushrangers, often his own
_habitants_; sometimes proscribed by the government, sometimes leagued
in contraband traffic with its highest officials, a hardy vidette
of civilization, tracing unknown streams, piercing unknown forests,
trading, fighting, negotiating, and building forts. Again we find him on
the shores of Acadia or Maine, surrounded by Indian retainers, a menace
and a terror to the neighboring English colonist. Saint-Castin, Du Lhut,
La Durantaye, La Salle, La Motte-Cadillac, Iberville, Bienville, La
Vérendrye, are names that stand conspicuous on the page of half-savage
romance that refreshes the hard and practical annals of American
colonization. But a more substantial debt is due to their memory. It
was they, and such as they, who discovered the Ohio, explored the
Mississippi to its mouth, discovered the Rocky Mountains, and founded
Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans.
Even in his earliest day, the _gentilhomme_ was not always in the evil
plight where we have found him. There were a few exceptions to the
general misery, and the chief among them is that of the Le Moynes of
Montreal. Charles Le Moyne, son of an innkeeper of Dieppe and founder
of a family the most truly eminent in Canada, was a man of sterling
qualities who had been long enough in the colony to learn how to
live there. * Others learned the same lesson at a later day, adapted
themselves to soil and situation, took root, grew, and became more
Canadian than French. As population increased, their seigniories began
to yield appreciable returns, and their reserved domains became worth
cultivating. A future dawned upon them; they saw in hope their names,
their seigniorial estates, their manor-houses, their tenantry, passing
to their children and their children’s children. The beggared noble
of the early time became a sturdy country gentleman; poor, but not
wretched; ignorant of books, except possibly a few scraps of rusty Latin
picked up in a Jesuit school; hardy as the hardiest woodsman, yet never
forgetting his quality of _gentilhomme_; scrupulously wearing its badge,
the sword, and copying as well as he could the fashions of the court,
which glowed on his vision across the sea in all the effulgence of
Versailles, and beamed with reflected ray from the chateau of Quebec. He
was at home among his tenants, at home among the Indians, and never more
at home than when, a gun in his hand and a crucifix on his breast, he
took the war-path with a
* Berthelot, proprietor of the comté of St. Laurent, and
Robineau, of the barony of Portneuf, may also be mentioned
as exceptionally prosperous. Of the younger Charles Le
Moyne, afterwards Baron de Longueuil,
Frontenac the governor says, “son fort et sa maison nous
donnent une idée des chateaux de France fortifiez.” His fort
was of Stone and flanked with four towers. It was nearly
opposite Montreal, on the south shore.
crew of painted savages and Frenchmen almost as wild, and pounced like
a lynx from the forest on some lonely farm or outlying hamlet of New
England. How New England hated him, let her records tell. The reddest
blood streaks on her old annals mark the track of the Canadian
_gentil-homme_.