1672-1675.
Frontenac at Quebec.
Arrival • Bright Prospects • The Three Estates of New France • Speech of
the Governor • His Innovations • Royal Displeasure • Signs of Storm •
Frontenac and the Priests • His Attempts to civilize the Indians •
Opposition • Complaints and Heart-burnings
Frontenac was fifty-two years old when he landed at Quebec. If time had
done little to cure his many faults, it had done nothing to weaken the
springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe middle age, he was as
keen, fiery, and perversely headstrong as when he quarrelled with
Préfontaine in the hall at St. Fargeau.
Had nature disposed him to melancholy, there was much in his position to
awaken it. A man of courts and camps, born and bred in the focus of a
most gorgeous civilization, he was banished to the ends of the earth,
among savage hordes and half-reclaimed forests, to exchange the
splendors of St. Germain and the dawning glories of Versailles for a
stern gray rock, haunted by sombre priests, rugged merchants and
traders, blanketed Indians, and wild bush-rangers. But Frontenac was a
man of action. He wasted no time in vain regrets, and set himself to his
work with the elastic vigor of youth. His first impressions had been
very favorable. When, as he sailed up the St. Lawrence, the basin of
Quebec opened before him, his imagination kindled with the grandeur of
the scene. "I never," he wrote, "saw any thing more superb than the
position of this town. It could not be better situated as the future
capital of a great empire." [1]
[1] Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.
That Quebec was to become the capital of a great empire there seemed in
truth good reason to believe. The young king and his minister Colbert
had labored in earnest to build up a new France in the west. For years
past, ship-loads of emigrants had landed every summer on the strand
beneath the rock. All was life and action, and the air was full of
promise. The royal agent Talon had written to his master: "This part of
the French monarchy is destined to a grand future. All that I see around
me points to it; and the colonies of foreign nations, so long settled on
the seaboard, are trembling with fright in view of what his Majesty has
accomplished here within the last seven years. The measures we have
taken to confine them within narrow limits, and the prior claim we have
established against them by formal acts of possession, do not permit
them to extend themselves except at peril of having war declared against
them as usurpers; and this, in fact, is what they seem greatly to fear."
[2]
[2] Talon au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1671.
Frontenac shared the spirit of the hour. His first step was to survey
his government. He talked with traders, colonists, and officials;
visited seigniories, farms, fishing-stations, and all the infant
industries that Talon had galvanized into life; examined the new ship on
the stocks, admired the structure of the new brewery, went to Three
Rivers to see the iron mines, and then, having acquired a tolerably
exact idea of his charge, returned to Quebec. He was well pleased with
what he saw, but not with the ways and means of Canadian travel; for he
thought it strangely unbecoming that a lieutenant-general of the king
should be forced to crouch on a sheet of bark, at the bottom of a birch
canoe, scarcely daring to move his head to the right or left lest he
should disturb the balance of the fragile vessel.
At Quebec he convoked the council, made them a speech, and administered
the oath of allegiance. [3] This did not satisfy him. He resolved that
all Quebec should take the oath together. It was little but a pretext.
Like many of his station, Frontenac was not in full sympathy with the
centralizing movement of the time, which tended to level ancient rights,
privileges, and prescriptions under the ponderous roller of the
monarchical administration. He looked back with regret to the day when
the three orders of the state, clergy, nobles, and commons, had a place
and a power in the direction of national affairs. The three orders still
subsisted, in form, if not in substance, in some of the provinces of
France; and Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing them in Canada.
Not only did he cherish the tradition of faded liberties, but he loved
pomp and circumstance, above all, when he was himself the central figure
in it; and the thought of a royal governor of Languedoc or Brittany,
presiding over the estates of his province, appears to have fired him
with emulation.
[3] Registre du Conseil Souverain.
He had no difficulty in forming his order of the clergy. The Jesuits and
the seminary priests supplied material even more abundant than he
wished. For the order of the nobles, he found three or four
gentilshommes at Quebec, and these he reinforced with a number of
officers. The third estate consisted of the merchants and citizens; and
he formed the members of the council and the magistrates into another
distinct body, though, properly speaking, they belonged to the third
estate, of which by nature and prescription they were the head. The
Jesuits, glad no doubt to lay him under some slight obligation, lent him
their church for the ceremony that he meditated, and aided in decorating
it for the occasion. Here, on the twenty-third of October, 1672, the
three estates of Canada were convoked, with as much pomp and splendor as
circumstances would permit. Then Frontenac, with the ease of a man of
the world and the loftiness of a grand seigneur, delivered himself of
the harangue he had prepared. He wrote exceedingly well; he is said also
to have excelled as an orator; certainly he was never averse to the
tones of his own eloquence. His speech was addressed to a double
audience: the throng that filled the church, and the king and the
minister three thousand miles away. He told his hearers that he had
called the assembly, not because he doubted their loyalty, but in order
to afford them the delight of making public protestation of devotion to
a prince, the terror of whose irresistible arms was matched only by the
charms of his person and the benignity of his rule. "The Holy
Scriptures," he said, "command us to obey our sovereign, and teach us
that no pretext or reason can dispense us from this obedience." And, in
a glowing eulogy on Louis XIV., he went on to show that obedience to him
was not only a duty, but an inestimable privilege. He dwelt with
admiration on the recent victories in Holland, and held forth the hope
that a speedy and glorious peace would leave his Majesty free to turn
his thoughts to the colony which already owed so much to his fostering
care. "The true means," pursued Frontenac, "of gaining his favor and his
support, is for us to unite with one heart in laboring for the progress
of Canada." Then he addressed, in turn, the clergy, the nobles, the
magistrates, and the citizens. He exhorted the priests to continue with
zeal their labors for the conversion of the Indians, and to make them
subjects not only of Christ, but also of the king; in short, to tame and
civilize them, a portion of their duties in which he plainly gave them
to understand that they had not hitherto acquitted themselves to his
satisfaction. Next, he appealed to the nobles, commended their
gallantry, and called upon them to be as assiduous in the culture and
improvement of the colony as they were valiant in its defence. The
magistrates, the merchants, and the colonists in general were each
addressed in an appropriate exhortation. "I can assure you, messieurs,"
he concluded, "that if you faithfully discharge your several duties,
each in his station, his Majesty will extend to us all the help and all
the favor that we can desire. It is needless, then, to urge you to act
as I have counselled, since it is for your own interest to do so. As for
me, it only remains to protest before you that I shall esteem myself
happy in consecrating all my efforts, and, if need be, my life itself,
to extending the empire of Jesus Christ throughout all this land, and
the supremacy of our king over all the nations that dwell in it."
He administered the oath, and the assembly dissolved. He now applied
himself to another work: that of giving a municipal government to
Quebec, after the model of some of the cities of France. In place of the
syndic, an official supposed to represent the interests of the citizens,
he ordered the public election of three aldermen, of whom the senior
should act as mayor. One of the number was to go out of office every
year, his place being filled by a new election; and the governor, as
representing the king, reserved the right of confirmation or rejection.
He then, in concert with the chief inhabitants, proceeded to frame a
body of regulations for the government of a town destined, as he again
and again declares, to become the capital of a mighty empire; and he
farther ordained that the people should hold a meeting every six months
to discuss questions involving the welfare of the colony. The boldness
of these measures will scarcely be appreciated at the present day. The
intendant Talon declined, on pretence of a slight illness, to be present
at the meeting of the estates. He knew too well the temper of the king,
whose constant policy it was to destroy or paralyze every institution or
custom that stood in the way of his autocracy. The despatches in which
Frontenac announced to his masters what he had done received in due time
their answer. The minister Colbert wrote: "Your assembling of the
inhabitants to take the oath of fidelity, and your division of them into
three estates, may have had a good effect for the moment; but it is well
for you to observe that you are always to follow, in the government of
Canada, the forms in use here; and since our kings have long regarded it
as good for their service not to convoke the states-general of the
kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage,
you, on your part, should very rarely, or, to speak more correctly,
never, give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should
even, as the colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the
syndic, who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants; for it is
well that each should speak for himself, and no one for all." [4]
[4] Frontenac au Roi, 2 Nov., 1672; Ibid., 13 Nov., 1673; Harangue du
Comte de Frontenac en l'Assemblée à Quebec; Prestations de Serment, 23
Oct., 1672; Réglement de Police fait par Monsieur le Comte de Frontenac;
Colbert à Frontenac, 13 Juin, 1673.
Here, in brief, is the whole spirit of the French colonial rule in
Canada; a government, as I have elsewhere shown, of excellent
intentions, but of arbitrary methods. Frontenac, filled with the
traditions of the past, and sincerely desirous of the good of the
colony, rashly set himself against the prevailing current. His municipal
government, and his meetings of citizens, were, like his three estates,
abolished by a word from the court, which, bold and obstinate as he was,
he dared not disobey. Had they been allowed to subsist, there can be
little doubt that great good would have resulted to Canada.
Frontenac has been called a mere soldier. He was an excellent soldier,
and more besides. He was a man of vigorous and cultivated mind,
penetrating observation, and ample travel and experience. His zeal for
the colony, however, was often counteracted by the violence of his
prejudices, and by two other influences. First, he was a ruined man, who
meant to mend his fortunes; and his wish that Canada should prosper was
joined with a determination to reap a goodly part of her prosperity for
himself. Again, he could not endure a rival; opposition maddened him,
and, when crossed or thwarted, he forgot every thing but his passion.
Signs of storm quickly showed themselves between him and the intendant
Talon; but the danger was averted by the departure of that official for
France. A cloud then rose in the direction of the clergy.
"Another thing displeases me," writes Frontenac, "and this is the
complete dependence of the grand vicar and the seminary priests on the
Jesuits, for they never do the least thing without their order: so that
they (the Jesuits) are masters in spiritual matters, which, as you know,
is a powerful lever for moving every thing else." [5] And he complains
that they have spies in town and country, that they abuse the
confessional, intermeddle in families, set husbands against wives, and
parents against children, and all, as they say, for the greater glory of
God. "I call to mind every day, Monseigneur, what you did me the honor
to say to me when I took leave of you, and every day I am satisfied more
and more of the great importance to the king's service of opposing the
slightest of the attempts which are daily made against his authority."
He goes on to denounce a certain sermon, preached by a Jesuit, to the
great scandal of loyal subjects, wherein the father declared that the
king had exceeded his powers in licensing the trade in brandy when the
bishop had decided it to be a sin, together with other remarks of a
seditious nature. "I was tempted several times," pursues Frontenac, "to
leave the church with my guards and interrupt the sermon; but I
contented myself with telling the grand vicar and the superior of the
Jesuits, after it was over, that I was very much surprised at what I had
heard, and demanded justice at their hands. They greatly blamed the
preacher, and disavowed him, attributing his language, after their
custom, to an excess of zeal, and making many apologies, with which I
pretended to be satisfied; though I told them, nevertheless, that their
excuses would not pass current with me another time, and, if the thing
happened again, I would put the preacher in a place where he would
learn how to speak. Since then they have been a little more careful,
though not enough to prevent one from always seeing their intention to
persuade the people that, even in secular matters, their authority ought
to be respected above any other. As there are many persons here who have
no more brains than they need, and who are attached to them by ties of
interest or otherwise, it is necessary to have an eye to these matters
in this country more than anywhere else." [6]
[5] Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.
[6] Frontenac au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1673.
The churchmen, on their part, were not idle. The bishop, who was then in
France, contrived by some means to acquaint himself with the contents of
the private despatches sent by Colbert in reply to the letters of
Frontenac. He wrote to another ecclesiastic to communicate what he had
learned, at the same time enjoining great caution; "since, while it is
well to acquire all necessary information, and to act upon it, it is of
the greatest importance to keep secret our possession of such
knowledge." [7]
[7] Laval à------, 1674. The letter is a complete summary of the
contents of Colbert's recent despatch to Frontenac. Then follows the
injunction to secrecy, "estant de très-grande conséquence que l'on ne
sache pas que l'on aye rien appris de tout cela, sur quoi néanmoins il
est bon que l'on agisse et que l'on me donne tous les advis qui seront
nécessaires."
The king and the minister, in their instructions to Frontenac, had dwelt
with great emphasis on the expediency of civilizing the Indians,
teaching them the French language, and amalgamating them with the
colonists. Frontenac, ignorant as yet of Indian nature and unacquainted
with the difficulties of the case, entered into these views with great
heartiness. He exercised from the first an extraordinary influence over
all the Indians with whom he came in contact; and he persuaded the most
savage and refractory of them, the Iroquois, to place eight of their
children in his hands. Four of these were girls and four were boys. He
took two of the boys into his own household, of which they must have
proved most objectionable inmates; and he supported the other two, who
were younger, out of his own slender resources, placed them in
respectable French families, and required them to go daily to school.
The girls were given to the charge of the Ursulines. Frontenac
continually urged the Jesuits to co-operate with him in this work of
civilization, but the results of his urgency disappointed and
exasperated him. He complains that in the village of the Hurons, near
Quebec, and under the control of the Jesuits, the French language was
scarcely known. In fact, the fathers contented themselves with teaching
their converts the doctrines and rites of the Roman Church, while
retaining the food, dress, and habits of their original barbarism.
In defence of the missionaries, it should be said that, when brought in
contact with the French, the Indians usually caught the vices of
civilization without its virtues; but Frontenac made no allowances. "The
Jesuits," he writes, "will not civilize the Indians, because they wish
to keep them in perpetual wardship. They think more of beaver skins than
of souls, and their missions are pure mockeries." At the same time he
assures the minister that, when he is obliged to correct them, he does
so with the utmost gentleness. In spite of this somewhat doubtful
urbanity, it seems clear that a storm was brewing; and it was fortunate
for the peace of the Canadian Church that the attention of the truculent
governor was drawn to other quarters.