FROM 1686 TO 1698
War with the Iroquois--The year of the massacre--Frontenac returns--The
heroine of Verchères--Indian raid and counter-raid--Massacre and
Schenectady--The massacre at Fort Loyal--Boston roused to
action--Quebec besieged--Phips and Frontenac--Retreat of the
English--Iberville's gallant sea fight--Nelson surrenders
For ten years Hudson Bay becomes the theater of northern buccaneers and
bushraiders. A treaty of neutrality in 1686 provides that the bay
shall be held in common by the fur traders of England and France; but
the adventurers of England and the bushrovers of Quebec have no notion
of leaving things so uncertain. Spite of truce, both fit out raiders,
and the King of France, according to the shifting diplomacy of the day,
issues secret orders "to permit not a vestige of English possession on
the northern bay."
Maricourt Le Moyne held the newly captured forts on the south shore of
James Bay till Iberville came back overland in 1687. The fort at
Rupert had been completely abandoned after the French victory of the
previous summer, and the Hudson's Bay Company sloop, the _Young_, had
just sailed into the port to reëstablish the fur post. Iberville
surrounded the sloop by his bushrovers, captured it with all hands, and
dispatched four spies across to Charlton Island, where another sloop,
the _Churchill_, swung at anchor. Here Iberville's run of luck turned.
Three of his four spies were captured, fettered, and thrown into the
hold of the vessel for the winter. In the spring of 1688 one was
brought above decks to help the English sailors. Watching his chance,
the grizzled bushrover waited till six of the English crew were up the
ratlines. Quick as flash the Frenchman tiptoed across decks in his
noiseless moccasins, took one precautionary glance over his shoulder,
brained two Englishmen with an ax, liberated his comrades, and at
pistol point kept the other Englishmen up the masts till he and his
fellows had righted the ship and steered the vessel across to Rupert
River, where the provisions were just in time to save Iberville's party
from starvation.
{162} This episode is typical of what went on at the Hudson's Bay forts
for ten years. Each year, when the English ships came out to Nelson on
the west coast, armed bands were sent south to wrest the forts on James
Bay from the French; and each spring, when Iberville's bushrovers came
gliding down the rivers in their canoes from Canada, there was a fight
to drive out the English. Then the Indians would scatter to their
hunting grounds. No more loot of furs for a year! The English would
sail away in their ships, the French glide away in their canoes; and
for a winter the uneasy quiet of calm between two thunderclaps would
rest over the waters of Hudson Bay.
In the spring of 1688, about the time that the brave bush-rovers had
brought the English ship from Charlton Island across to Rupert River,
two English frigates under Captain Moon, with twenty-four soldiers over
and above the crews, had come south from Nelson to attack the French
fur traders at Albany. As ill luck would have it, the ice floes began
driving inshore. The English ships found themselves locked in the ice
before the besieged fort. Across the jam from Rupert River dashed
Iberville with his Indian bandits, portaging where the ice floes
covered the water, paddling where lanes of clear way parted the
floating drift. Iberville hid his men in the tamarack swamps till
eighty-two Englishmen had landed and all unsuspecting left their ships
unguarded. Iberville only waited till the furs in the fort had been
transferred to the holds of the vessels. The ice cleared. The
Frenchman rushed his bushrovers on board, seized the vessel with the
most valuable cargo, and sailed gayly out of Albany for Quebec. The
astounded English set fire to the other ship and retreated overland.
But the dare-devil bushrovers were not yet clear of trouble. As the
ice drive jammed and held them in Hudson Straits, they were aghast to
see, sailing full tilt with the roaring tide of the straits, a fleet of
English frigates, the Hudson's Bay Company's annual ships; but
Iberville sniffed at danger as a war horse glories in gunpowder. He
laughed his merriest, and as the ice drive locked all the ships within
gunshot, ran up an {163} English flag above his French crew and had
actually signaled the captains of the English frigates to come aboard
and visit him, when the ice cleared. Hoisting sail, he showed swift
heels to the foe. Iberville's ambition now was to sweep _all_ the
English from Hudson Bay, in other words, to capture Nelson on the west
coast, whence came the finest furs; but other raids called him to
Canada.
It will be recalled that La Salle's enemies had secretly encouraged the
Iroquois to attack the tribes of the Illinois; and now the fur traders
of New York were encouraging the Iroquois to pillage the Indians of the
Mississippi valley, in order to divert peltries from the French on the
St. Lawrence to the English at New York. Savages of the north, rallied
by Perrot and Duluth and La Motte Cadillac, came down by the lakes to
Fort Frontenac to aid the French; but they found that La Barre, the new
governor, foolish old man, had been frightened into making peace with
the Iroquois warriors, abandoning the Illinois to Iroquois raid and
utterly forgetful that _a peace which is not a victory is not worth the
paper it is written on_.
For the shame of this disgraceful peace La Barre was recalled to France
and the Marquis de Denonville, a brave soldier, sent out as governor.
Unfortunately Denonville did not understand conditions in the colony.
The Jesuit missionaries were commissioned to summon the Iroquois to a
conference at Fort Frontenac, but when the deputies arrived they were
seized, tortured, and fifty of them shipped to France by the King's
order to serve as slaves on the royal galleys. It was an act of
treachery heinous beyond measure and exposed the Jesuit missionaries
among the Five Nations to terrible vengeance; but the Iroquois code of
honor was higher than the white man's. "Go home," they warned the
Jesuit missionary. "We have now every right to treat thee as our foe;
but we shall not do so! Thy heart has had no share in the wrong done
to us. We shall not punish thee for the crimes of another, tho' thou
didst act as the unconscious tool. But leave us! When our young {164}
men chant the song of war they may take counsel only of their fury and
harm thee! Go to thine own people"; and furnishing him with guides,
they sent him to Quebec.
Though Denonville marched with his soldiers through the Iroquois
cantons, he did little harm and less good; for the wily warriors had
simply withdrawn their families into the woods, and the Iroquois were
only biding their time for fearful vengeance.
This lust of vengeance was now terribly whetted. Dongan, the English
governor of New York, had been ordered by King James of England to
observe the treaty of neutrality between England and France; but this
did not hinder him supplying the Iroquois with arms to raid the French
and secretly advising them "not to bury the war hatchet,--just to hide
it in the grass, and stand on their guard to begin the war anew."
[Illustration: FORT FRONTENAC AND THE ADJACENT COUNTRY]
Nor did the treaty of neutrality prevent the French from raiding Hudson
Bay and ordering shot in cold blood any French bushrover who dared to
guide the English traders to the country of the Upper Lakes.
In addition to English influence egging on the Iroquois, the treachery
of the Huron chief, The Rat, lashed the vengeance {165} of the Five
Nations to a fury. He had come down to Fort Frontenac to aid the
French. He was told that the French had again arranged peace with the
Iroquois, and deputies were even now on their way from the Five Nations.
"Peace!" The old Huron chief was dumbfounded. What were these fool
French doing, trusting to an Iroquois peace? "Ah," he grunted, "that
may be well"; and he withdrew without revealing a sign of his
intentions. Then he lay in ambush on the trail of the deputies, fell
on the Iroquois peace messengers with fury, slaughtered half the band,
then sent the others back with word that he had done this by order of
Denonville, the French governor.
"There," grunted The Rat grimly, "I 've killed the peace for them! We
'll see how Onontio gets out of this mess."
Meanwhile war had been declared between England and France. The
Stuarts had been dethroned. France was supporting the exiled monarch,
and William of Orange had become king of England. Iberville and Duluth
and La Motte Cadillac, the famous fighters of Canada's wildwood, were
laying plans before the French Governor for the invasion and conquest
of New York; and New York was preparing to defend itself by pouring
ammunition and firearms free of cost into the hands of the Iroquois.
Then the Iroquois vengeance fell.
Between the night and morning of August 4 and 5, in 1689, a terrific
thunderstorm had broken over Montreal. Amidst the crack of hail and
crash of falling trees, with the thunder reverberating from the
mountain like cannonading, whilst the frightened people stood gazing at
the play of lightning across their windows, fourteen hundred Iroquois
warriors landed behind Montreal, beached their canoes, and stole upon
the settlement. What next followed beggars description. Nothing else
like it occurs in the history of Canada. For years this summer was to
be known as "the Year of the Massacre."
Before the storm subsided, the Iroquois had stationed themselves in
circles round every house outside the walls of Montreal. At the signal
of a whistle, the warriors fell on the settlement {166} like beasts of
prey. Neither doors nor windows were fastened in that age, and the
people, deep in sleep after the vigil of the storm, were dragged from
their beds before they were well awake. Men, women, and children fell
victims to such ingenuity of cruelty as only savage vengeance could
conceive. Children were dashed to pieces before their parents' eyes;
aged parents tomahawked before struggling sons and daughters; fathers
held powerless that they might witness the tortures wreaked on wives
and daughters. Homes which had heard some alarm and were on guard were
set on fire, and those who perished in the flames {167} died a merciful
death compared to those who fell in the hands of the victors. By
daybreak two hundred people had been wantonly butchered. A hundred and
fifty more had been taken captives. As if their vengeance could not be
glutted, the Iroquois crossed the river opposite Montreal, and, in full
sight of the fort, weakly garrisoned and paralyzed with fright, spent
the rest of the week, day and night, torturing the white captives. By
night victims could be seen tied to the torture stake amid the
wreathing flames, with the tormentors dancing round the camp fire in
maniacal ferocity. Denonville was simply powerless. He lost his head,
and seemed so panic-stricken that he forbade even volunteer bands from
rallying to the rescue. For two months the Iroquois overran Canada
unchecked. Indeed, it was years before the boldness engendered by this
foray became reduced to respect for French authority. Settlement after
settlement, the marauders raided. From Montreal to Three Rivers crops
went up in flame, and the terrified habitants came cowering with their
families to the shelter of the palisades.
[Illustration: WILLIAM OF ORANGE]
In the midst of this universal terror came the country's savior.
Frontenac had been recalled because he quarreled with the intendant and
he quarreled with the Jesuits and he quarreled with the fur traders;
but his bitterest enemies did not deny that he could put the fear of
the Lord and respect for the French into the Iroquois' heart.
Arbitrary he was as a czar, but just always! To be sure he mended his
fortunes by personal fur trade, but in doing so he cheated no man; and
he worked no injustice, and he wrought in all things for the lasting
good of the country. Homage he demanded as to a king, once going so
far as to drive the Sovereign Councilors from his presence with the
flat of a sword; but he firmly believed and he had publicly proved that
he was worthy of homage, and that the men who are forever shouting
"liberty--liberty and the people's rights," are frequently wolves in
sheep's clothing, eating out the vitals of a nation's prosperity.
Here, then, was the haughty, hot-headed, aggressive Frontenac, sent
back in his old age to restore the prestige of New France, {168} where
both La Barre the grafter, and Denonville the courteous Christian
gentleman, had failed.
To this period of Iroquois raids belongs one of the most heroic
episodes in Canadian life. The only settlers who had not fled to the
protection of the palisaded forts were the grand old seigniors, the new
nobility of New France, whose mansions were like forts in themselves,
palisaded, with stone bastions and water supply and yards for stock and
mills inside the walls. Here the seigniors, wildwood knights of a
wilderness age, held little courts that were imitations of the
Governor's pomp at Quebec. Sometimes during war the seignior's wife
and daughters were reduced to plowing in the fields and laboring with
the women servants at the harvest; but ordinarily the life at the
seigniory was a life of petty grandeur, with such style as the
backwoods afforded. In the hall or great room of the manor house was
usually an enormous table used both as court of justice by the seignior
and festive board. On one side was a huge fireplace with its homemade
benches, on the other a clumsily carved chiffonier loaded with solid
silver. In the early days the seignior's bedstead might be in the same
room,--an enormous affair with panoplies of curtains and counterpanes
of fur rugs and feather mattresses, so high that it almost necessitated
a ladder. But in the matter of dress the rude life made up in style
what it lacked in the equipments of a grand mansion.
The bishop's description of the women's dresses I have already given,
though at this period the women had added to the "sins" of bows and
furbelows and frills, which the bishop deplored, the yet more heinous
error of such enormous hoops that it required fine maneuvering on the
part of a grand dame to negotiate the door of the family coach; and
however pompous the seignior's air, it must have suffered temporary
eclipse in that coach from the hoops of his spouse and his spouse's
daughters. As for the seignior, when he was not dressed in buckskin,
leading bushrovers on raids, he appeared magnificent in all the
grandeur that a 20 pounds wig and Spanish laces and French ruffles
{169} and imported satins could lend his portly person; and if the
figure were not portly, one may venture to guess, from the pictures of
stout gentlemen in the quilted brocades of the period, that padding
made up what nature lacked.
Such a seigniory was Verchères, some twenty miles from Montreal, on the
south side of the St. Lawrence. M. de Verchères was an officer in one
of the regiments, and chanced to be absent from home during October of
1696, doing duty at Quebec. Madame de Verchères was visiting in
Montreal. Strange as it may seem, the fort and the family had been
left in charge of the daughter, Madeline, at this time only fourteen
years of age. At eight o'clock on the morning of October 22 she had
gone four hundred paces outside the fort gates when she heard the
report of musket firing. The rest of the story may be told in her own
words:
I at once saw that the Iroquois were firing at our settlers, who lived
near the fort. One of our servants call out: "Fly, Mademoiselle, fly!
The Iroquois are upon us!"
Instantly I saw some forty-five Iroquois running towards me, already
within pistol shot. Determined to die rather than fall in their hands,
I ran for the fort, praying to the Blessed Virgin, "Holy Mother, save
me! Let me perish rather than fall in their hands!" Meanwhile my
pursuers paused to fire their guns. Bullets whistled past my ears.
Once within hearing of the fort, I shouted, "To arms! To arms!"
There were but two soldiers in the fort, and they were so overcome by
fear that they ran to hide in the bastion. At the gates I found two
women wailing for the loss of their husbands. Then I saw several
stakes had fallen from the palisades where enemies could gain entrance;
so I seized the fallen planks and urged the women to give a hand
putting them back in their places. Then I ran to the bastion, where I
found two of the soldiers lighting a fuse.
"What are you going to do?" I demanded.
"Blow up the fort," answered one cowardly wretch.
"Begone, you rascals," I commanded, putting on a soldier's helmet and
seizing a musket. Then to my little brothers: "Let us fight to the
death! Remember what father has always said,--that gentlemen are born
to shed their blood in the service of God and their King."
My brothers and the two soldiers kept up a steady fire from the
loopholes. I ordered the cannon fired to call in our soldiers, who
were hunting; {170} but the grief-stricken women inside kept wailing so
loud that I had to warn them their shrieks would betray our weakness to
the enemy. While I was speaking I caught sight of a canoe on the
river. It was Sieur Pierre Fontaine, with his family, coming to visit
us. I asked the soldiers to go out and protect their landing, but they
refused. Then ordering Laviolette, our servant, to stand sentry at the
gate, I went out myself, wearing a soldier's helmet and carrying a
musket. I left orders if I were killed the gates were to be kept shut
and the fort defended. I hoped the Iroquois would think this a ruse on
my part to draw them within gunshot of our walls. That was just what
happened, and I got Pierre Fontaine and his family safely inside by
putting a bold face on. Our whole garrison consisted of my two little
brothers aged about twelve, one servant, two soldiers, one old habitant
aged eighty, and a few women servants. Strengthened by the Fontaines,
we began firing. When the sun went down the night set in with a
fearful storm of northeast wind and snow. I expected the Iroquois
under cover of the storm. Gathering our people together, I said: "God
has saved us during the day. Now we must be careful for the night. To
show you I am not afraid to take my part, I undertake to defend the
fort with the old man and a soldier, who has never fired a gun. You,
Pierre Fontaine and La Bonte and Galet (the two soldiers), go to the
bastion with the women and children. If I am taken, never surrender
though I am burnt and cut to pieces before your eyes! You have nothing
to fear if you will make some show of fight!"
I posted two of my young brothers on one of the bastions, the old man
of eighty on the third, and myself took the fourth. Despite the
whistling of the wind we kept the cry "All's well," "All's well"
echoing and reëchoing from corner to corner. One would have imagined
the fort was crowded with soldiers, and the Iroquois afterwards
confessed they had been completely deceived; that the vigilance of the
guard kept them from attempting to scale the walls. About midnight the
sentinel at the gate bastion called out, "Mademoiselle! I hear
something!"
I saw it was our cattle.
"Let me open the gates," urged the sentry.
"God forbid," said I; "the savages are likely behind, driving the
animals in."
Nevertheless I _did_ open the gates and let the cattle in, my brothers
standing on each side, ready to shoot if an Indian appeared.
At last came daylight; and we were hopeful for aid from Montreal; but
Marguerite Fontaine, being timorous as all Parisian women are, begged
her husband to try and escape. The poor husband was almost distracted
as she insisted, and he told her he would set her out in the canoe with
her two sons, who could paddle it, but he would not abandon
Mademoiselle in Verchères. I had been twenty-four hours without rest
or food, and had not {171} once gone from the bastion. On the eighth
day of the siege Lieutenant de La Monnerie reached the fort during the
night with forty men.
One of our sentries had called out, "Who goes?"
I was dozing with my head on a table and a musket across my arm. The
sentry said there were voices on the water. I called, "Who are you?"
They answered, "French--come to your aid!"
I went down to the bank, saying: "Sir, but you are welcome! I
surrender my arms to you!"
"Mademoiselle," he answered, "they are in good hands."
I forgot one incident. On the day of the attack I remembered about one
in the afternoon that our linen was outside the fort, but the soldiers
refused to go out for it. Armed with our guns, my brothers made two
trips outside the walls for our linen. The Iroquois must have thought
it a trick to lure them closer, for they did not approach.
It need scarcely be added that brave mothers make brave sons, and it is
not surprising that twenty-five years later, when Madeline Verchères
had become the wife of M. de La Naudière, her own life was saved from
Abenaki Indians by her little son, age twelve.
But to return to Count Frontenac, marching up the steep streets of
Quebec to Château St. Louis that October evening of 1689, amid the
jubilant shouts of friends and enemies, Jesuit and Recollet, fur trader
and councilor,--the haughty Governor set himself to the task of not
only crushing the Iroquois but invading and conquering the land of the
English, whom he believed had furnished arms to the Iroquois. Now that
war had been openly declared between England and France, Frontenac was
determined on a campaign of aggression. He would keep the English so
busy defending their own borders that they would have no time to tamper
with the Indian allies of the French on the Mississippi.
This is one of the darkest pages of Canada's past. War is not a pretty
thing at any time, but war that lets loose the bloodhounds of Indian
ferocity leaves the blackest scar of all.
There were to be three war parties: one from Quebec to attack the
English settlements around what is now Portland, {172} Maine; a second
from Three Rivers to lay waste the border lands of New Hampshire; a
third from Montreal to assault the English and Dutch of the Upper
Hudson.
The Montrealers set out in midwinter of 1690, a few months after
Frontenac's arrival, led by the Le Moyne brothers, Ste. Hélène and
Maricourt and Iberville, with one of the Le Bers, and D'Ailleboust,
nephew of the first D'Ailleboust at Montreal. The raiders consisted of
some two hundred and fifty men, one hundred Indian converts and one
hundred and fifty bushrovers, hardy, supple, inured to the wilderness
as to native air, whites and Indians dressed alike in blanket coat,
hood hanging down the back, buckskin trousers, beaded moccasins,
snowshoes of short length for forest travel, cased musket on shoulder,
knife, hatchet, pistols, bullet pouch hanging from the sashed belt, and
provisions in a blanket, knapsack fashion, carried on the shoulders.
[Illustration: QUEBEC, 1689]
The woods lay snow padded, silent, somber. Up the river bed of the
Richelieu, over the rolling drifts, glided the bushrovers. {173}
Somewhere on the headwaters of the Hudson the Indians demanded what
place they were to attack. Iberville answered, "Albany." "Humph,"
grunted the Indians with a dry smile at the camp fire, "since _when_
have the French become so brave?" A midwinter thaw now turned the
snowy levels to swimming lagoons, where snowshoes were useless, and the
men had to wade knee-deep day after day through swamps of ice water.
Then came one of those sudden changes,--hard frost with a blinding
snowstorm. Where the trail forked for Albany and Schenectady it was
decided to follow the latter, and about four o'clock in the afternoon,
on the 8th of February, the bush-rovers reached a hut where there
chanced to be several Mohawk squaws. Crowding round the chimney place
to dry their clothes now stiff with ice, the bushrangers learned from
the Indian women that Schenectady lay completely unguarded. There had
been some village festival that day among the Dutch settlers. The
gates at both ends of the town lay wide open, and as if in derision of
danger from the far distant French, a snow man had been mockingly
rolled up to the western gate as sentry, with a sham pipe stuck in his
mouth. The Indian rangers harangued their braves, urging them to wash
out all wrongs in the blood of the enemy, and the Le Moyne brothers
moved from man to man, giving orders for utter silence. At eleven that
night, shrouded by the snowfall, the bushrovers reached the palisades
of Schenectady. They had intended to defer the assault till dawn, but
the cold hastened action, and, uncasing their muskets, they filed
silently past the snow man in the middle of the open gate and encircled
the little village of fifty houses. When the lines met at the far
gate, completely investing the town, a wild yell rent the air! Doors
were hacked down. Indians with tomahawks stood guard outside the
windows, and the dastardly work began,--as gratuitous a butchery of
innocent people as ever the Iroquois perpetrated in their worst raids.
Two hours the massacre lasted, and when it was over the French had, to
their everlasting discredit, murdered in cold blood thirty-eight men
(among them the poor inoffensive dominie), ten women, {174} twelve
children; and the victors held ninety captives. To the credit of
Iberville he offered life to one Glenn and his family, who had aided in
ransoming many French from the Iroquois, and he permitted this man to
name so many friends that the bloodthirsty Indians wanted to know if
all Schenectady were related to this white man. One other house in the
town was spared,--that of a widow with five children, under whose roof
a wounded Frenchman lay. For the rest, Schenectady was reduced to
ashes, the victors harnessing the Dutch farmers' horses to carry off
the plunder. Of the captives, twenty-seven men and boys were carried
back to Quebec. The other captives, mainly women and children, were
given to the Indians. Forty livres for every human scalp were paid by
the Sovereign Council of Quebec to the raiders.
[Illustration: FRENCH SOLDIER OF THE PERIOD]
The record of the raiders led from Three Rivers by François Hertel was
almost the same. Setting out in January, he was followed by
twenty-five French and twenty-five Indians to the border lands between
Maine and New Hampshire. The end of March saw the bushrovers outside
the little village of Salmon Falls. Thirty inhabitants were tomahawked
on the spot, the houses burned, and one hundred prisoners carried off;
but news had gone like wildfire to neighboring settlements, and Hertel
was pursued by two hundred Englishmen. He placed his bushrovers on a
small bridge across Wooster River and here held the pursuers at bay
till darkness enabled him to escape.
But the darkest deed of infamy was perpetrated by the third band of
raiders,--a deed that reveals the glories of war as they {175} exist,
stripped of pageantry. Portneuf had led the raiders from Quebec, and
he was joined by that famous leader of the Abenaki Indians, Baron de
Saint-Castin, from the border lands between Acadia and Maine. Later,
when Hertel struck through the woods with some of his followers,
Portneuf's men numbered five hundred. With these he attacked Fort
Loyal, or what is now Portland, Maine, in the month of June. The fort
boasted eight great guns and one hundred soldiers. Under cover of the
guns Lieutenant Clark and thirty men sallied out to reconnoiter the
attacking forces ambushed in woods round a pasturage. At a musket
crack the English were literally cut to pieces, four men only escaping
back to the fort. The French then demanded unconditional surrender.
The English asked six days to consider. In six days English vessels
would have come to the rescue. Secure, under a bluff of the ocean
cliff, from the cannon fire of the fort, the French began to trench an
approach to the palisades. Combustibles had been placed against the
walls, when the English again asked a parley, offering to surrender if
the French would swear by the living God to conduct them in safety to
the nearest English post. To these conditions the French agreed.
Whether they could not control their Indian allies or had not intended
to keep the terms matters little. The English had no sooner marched
from the fort than, with a wild whoop, the Indians fell on men, women,
and children. Some were killed by a single blow, others reserved for
the torture stake. Only four Englishmen survived the onslaught, to be
carried prisoners to Quebec.
The French had been victorious on all three raids; but they were
victories over which posterity will never boast, which no writer dare
describe in all the detail of their horrors, and which leave a black
blot on the escutcheon of Canada.
It was hardly to be expected that the New England colonies would let
such raids pass unpunished. The destruction of Schenectady had been
bad enough. The massacre of Salmon Falls caused the New Englanders to
forget their jealousies for the once and to unite in a common cause.
All the colonies agreed {176} to contribute men, ships, and money to
invade New France by land and sea. The land forces were placed under
Winthrop and Schuyler; but as smallpox disorganized the expedition
before it reached Lake Champlain, the attack by land had little other
effect than to draw Frontenac from Quebec down to Montreal, where
Captain Schuyler, with Dutch bushmen, succeeded in ravaging the
settlements and killing at least twenty French.
The expedition by sea was placed under Sir William Phips of
Massachusetts,--a man who was the very antipodes of Frontenac. One of
a poor family of twenty-six children, Phips had risen from being a
shepherd boy in Maine to the position of ship's carpenter in Boston.
Here, among the harbor folk, he got wind of a Spanish treasure ship
containing a million and a half dollars' worth of gold, which had been
sunk off the West Indies. Going to England, Phips succeeded in
interesting that same clique of courtiers who helped Radisson to
establish the Hudson's Bay Company,--Albemarle and Prince Rupert and
the King; and when, with the funds which they advanced, Phips succeeded
in raising the treasure vessel, he received, in addition to his share
of the booty, a title and the appointment as governor of Massachusetts.
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM PHIPS]
Here, then, was the daring leader chosen to invade New France. Phips
sailed first for Port Royal, which had in late years become infested
with French pirates, preying on Boston commerce. Word had just come of
the fearful massacres of {177} colonists at Portland. Boston was
inflamed with a spirit of vengeance. The people had appointed days of
fasting and prayer to invoke Heaven's blessing on their war. When
Phips sailed into Annapolis Basin with his vessels and seven hundred
men in the month of May, he found the French commander, Meneval, ill of
the gout, with a garrison of about eighty soldiers, but all the cannon
chanced to be dismounted. The odds against the French did not permit
resistance. Meneval stipulated for an honorable surrender,--all
property to be respected and the garrison to be sent to some French
port; but no sooner were the English in possession than, like the
French at Portland, they broke the pledge. There was no massacre as in
Maine, but plunderers ran riot, seizing everything on which hands could
be laid, ransacking houses and desecrating the churches; and sixty of
the leading people, including Meneval and the priests, were carried off
as prisoners. Leaving one English flag flying, Phips sailed home.
Indignation at Boston had been fanned to fury, for now all the details
of the butchery at Portland were known; and Phips found the colony
mustering a monster expedition to attack the very stronghold of French
power,--Quebec itself. England could afford no aid to her colonies,
but thirty-two merchant vessels and frigates had been impressed into
the service, some of them carrying as many as forty-four cannon.
Artisans, sailors, soldiers, clerks, all classes had volunteered as
fighters, to the number of twenty-five hundred men; but there was one
thing lacking,--they had no pilot who knew the St. Lawrence. Full of
confidence born of inexperience, the fleet set sail on the 9th of
August, commanded again by Phips.
Time was wasted ravaging the coasts of Gaspé, holding long-winded
councils of war, arguing in the commander's stateroom instead of
drilling on deck. Three more weeks were wasted poking about the lower
St. Lawrence, picking up chance vessels off Tadoussac and Anticosti.
Among the prize vessels taken near Anticosti was one of Jolliet's,
bearing his wife and mother-in-law. The ladies delighted the hearts of
the Puritans by the {178} news that not more than one hundred men
garrisoned Quebec; but Phips was reckoning without his host, and his
host was Frontenac. Besides, it was late in the season--the middle of
October--before the English fleet rounded the Island of Orleans and
faced the Citadel of Quebec.
[Illustration: COUNT FRONTENAC (From a statue at Quebec)]
Indians had carried word to the city that an Englishwoman, taken
prisoner in their raids, had told them more than thirty vessels had
sailed from Boston to invade New France. Frontenac was absent in
Montreal. Quickly the commander at Quebec sent coureurs with warning
to Frontenac, and then set about casting up barricades in the narrow
streets that led from Lower to Upper Town.
Frontenac could not credit the news. Had he not heard here in Montreal
from Indian coureurs how the English overland expedition lay rotting of
smallpox near Lake Champlain, such pitiable objects that the Iroquois
refused to join them against the French? New France now numbered a
population of twelve thousand and could muster three thousand fighting
men; and though the English colonies numbered twenty {179} thousand
people, how could they, divided by jealousies, send an invading army of
twenty-seven hundred, as the rumor stated? Frontenac, grizzled old
warrior, did not credit the news, but, all the same, he set out amid
pelting rains by boat for Quebec. Half-way to Three Rivers more
messengers brought him word that the English fleet were now advancing
from Tadoussac. He sent back orders for the commander at Montreal to
rush the bush-rovers down to Quebec, and he himself arrived at the
Citadel just as the Le Moyne brothers anchored below Cape Diamond from
a voyage to Hudson Bay. Maricourt Le Moyne reported how he had escaped
past the English fleet by night, and it would certainly be at Quebec by
daybreak.
Scouts rallied the bushrangers on both sides of the St. Lawrence to
Quebec's aid. Frontenac bade them guard the outposts and not desert
their hamlets, while Ste. Hélène and the other Le Moynes took command
of the sharpshooters in Lower Town, scattering them in hiding along the
banks of the St. Charles and among the houses facing the St. Lawrence
below Castle St. Louis.
Sure enough, at daybreak on Monday, October 16, sail after sail,
thirty-four in all, rounded the end of Orleans Island and took up
position directly opposite Quebec City. It was a cold, wet autumn
morning. Fog and rain alternately chased in gray shadows across the
far hills, and above the mist of the river loomed ominous the red-gray
fort which the English had come to capture. Castle St. Louis stood
where Château Frontenac stands to-day; and what is now the promenade of
a magnificent terrace was at that time a breastwork of cannon extending
on down the sloping hill to the left as far as the ramparts. In fact,
the cannon of that period were more dangerous than they are to-day, for
long-range missiles have rendered old-time fortifications adapted for
close-range fighting almost useless; and the cannon of Upper Town,
Quebec, that October morning swept the approach to three sides of the
fort, facing the St. Charles, opposite Point Lévis and the St.
Lawrence, where it curves back on itself; and the fourth side was sheer
wall--invulnerable.
{180} With a rattling of anchor chains and a creaking of masts the
great sails of the English fleet were lowered, and a little boat put
out at ten o'clock under flag of truce to meet a boat half-way from
Lower Town. Phips' messenger was conducted blindfold up the barricaded
streets leading to Castle St. Louis; and the gunners had been
instructed to clang their muskets on the stones to give the impression
of great numbers. Suddenly the bandage was taken from the man's eyes
and he found himself in a great hall, standing before the august
presence of Frontenac, surrounded by a circle of magnificently dressed
officers. The New Englander delivered his message,--Phips' letter
demanding surrender: "_Your prisoners, your persons, your estates . . .
and should you refuse, I am resolved by the help of God, in whom I
trust, to revenge by force of arms all our wrongs_." . . . As the
reading of the letter was finished the man looked up to see an insolent
smile pass round the faces of Frontenac's officers, one of whom
superciliously advised hanging the bearer of such insolence without
waste of time. The New Englander pulled out his watch and signaled
that he must have Frontenac's answer within an hour. The haughty old
Governor pretended not to see the motion, and then, with a smile like
ice, made answer in {181} words that have become renowned: "I shall not
keep you waiting so long! Tell your General I do not recognize King
William! I know no king of England but King James! Does your General
suppose that these brave gentlemen"--pointing to his officers--"would
consent to trust a man who broke his word at Port Royal?"
[Illustration: CASTLE ST. LOUIS]
As the shout of applause died away, the trembling New Englander asked
Frontenac if he would put his answer in writing.
"No," thundered the old Governor, never happier than when fighting, "I
will answer your General with my cannon! I shall teach him that a man
of my rank"--with covert sneer at Phips' origin, "is not to be summoned
in such rude fashion! Let him do his best! I shall do mine!"
It was now the turn of the English to be amazed. This was not the
answer they had expected from a fort weakly garrisoned by a hundred
men. If they had struck and struck quickly, they might yet have won
the day; but all Monday passed in futile arguments and councils of war,
and on Tuesday, the 17th, towards night, was heard wild shouting within
Quebec walls.
[Illustration: ATTACK ON QUEBEC, 1690]
"My faith, Messieurs!" exclaimed one of the French prisoners aboard
Phips' ship; "now you _have_ lost your chance! Those {182} are the
coureurs de bois from Montreal and the bushrovers of the Pays d'en
Haut, eight hundred strong."
The news at last spurred Phips to action. All that night the people of
Quebec could hear the English drilling, and shouting "_God save King
William_!" with beat of drum and trumpet calls that set the echoes
rolling from Cape Diamond; and on the 18th small boats landed fourteen
hundred men to cross the St. Charles River and assault the Lower Town,
while the four largest ships took up a position to cannonade the city.
It was four in the afternoon before the soldiers had been landed amid
peppering bullets from the Le Moyne bushrovers. Only a few cannon
shots were fired, and they did no damage but to kill an urchin of the
Upper Town.
Firing began in earnest on the morning of October 19. The river was
churned to fury and the reverberating echoes set the rocks crashing
from Cape Diamond, but it was almost impossible for the English to
shoot high enough to damage the upper fort. It was easy for the French
to shoot down, and great wounds gaped from the hull of Phips' ship,
while his masts went over decks in flame, flag and all. The tide
drifted the admiral's flag on shore. The French rowed out, secured the
prize, and a jubilant shout roared from Lower Town, to be taken up and
echoed and reëchoed from the Castle! For two more days bombs roared in
midair, plunging through the roofs of houses in Lower Town or
ricochetting back harmless from the rock wall below Castle St. Louis.
At the St. Charles the land forces were fighting blindly to effect a
crossing, but the Le Moyne bushrovers lying in ambush repelled every
advance, though Ste. Hélène had fallen mortally wounded. On the
morning of the 21st the French could hardly believe their senses. The
land forces had vanished during the darkness of a rainy night, and ship
after ship, sail after sail, was drifting downstream--was it
possible?--in retreat. Another week's bombarding would have reduced
Quebec to flame and starvation; but another week would have exposed
Phips' fleet to wreckage from winter weather, and he had drifted down
to Isle Orleans, where the {183} dismantled fleet paused to rig up
fresh masts. It was Madame Jolliet who suggested to the Puritan
commander an exchange of the prisoners captured at Port Royal with the
English from Maine and New Hampshire held in Quebec. She was sent
ashore by Phips and the exchange was arranged. Winter gales assailed
the English fleet as it passed Anticosti, and what with the wrecked and
wounded, Phips' loss totaled not less than a thousand men.
[Illustration: CASTLE ST. LOUIS, QUEBEC]
Frontenac had been back in Canada only a year, and in that time he had
restored the prestige of French power in America. The Iroquois were
glad to sue for peace, and his bitterest enemies, the Jesuits, joined
the merrymakers round the bonfires of acclaim kindled in the old
Governor's honor as the English retreated, and the joy bells pealed
out, and processions surged shouting through the streets of Quebec!
From Hudson Bay to the Mississippi, from the St. Lawrence to Lake
Superior and the land of the Sioux, French power reigned supreme. Only
Port Nelson, high up on the west coast of Hudson Bay, remained
unsubdued, draining the furs of the prairie tribes to England away from
Quebec. Iberville had captured it in the fall of 1694, at the cost of
his brother Châteauguay's life; but when Iberville departed from Hudson
Bay, English men-of-war had come out in 1696 and wrested back this most
valuable of all the fur posts. It was now determined to drive the
English forever from Hudson Bay. Le Moyne d'Iberville was chosen for
the task.
April, 1697, Sérigny Le Moyne was dispatched from France with five
men-of-war to be placed under the command of Iberville at Placentia,
Newfoundland, whence he was "to proceed {184} to Hudson Bay and to
leave not a vestige of the English in the North." The frigates left
Newfoundland July 8. Three weeks later they were crushing through the
ice jam of Hudson Straits. Iberville commanded the _Pelican_ with two
hundred and fifty men. Bienville, a brother, was on the same ship.
Sérigny commanded the _Palmier_, and there were three other frigates,
the _Profound_, the _Violent_, the _Wasp_. Ice locked round the fleet
at the west end of Hudson Straits, and fog lay so thick there was
nothing visible of any ship but the masthead. For eighteen days they
lay, crunched and rammed and separated by the ice drive, till on August
25, early in the morning, the fog suddenly lifted. Iberville saw that
Sérigny's ship had been carried back {185} in the straits. The _Wasp_
and _Violent_ were not to be seen, but straight ahead, locked in the
ice, stood the _Profound_, and beside the French vessel three English
frigates, the _Hampshire_, the _Deering_, the _Hudson's Bay_, on their
annual voyage to Nelson! A lane of water opened before Iberville.
Like a bird the _Pelican_ spread her wings to the wind and fled.
[Illustration: PLAN OF QUEBEC (after Franquelin, 1683)]
September 3 Iberville sighted Port Nelson, and for two days cruised the
offing, scanning the sea for the rest of his fleet. Early on September
5 the sails of three vessels heaved and rose above the watery horizon.
Never doubting these were his own ships, Iberville signaled. There was
no answer. A sailor scrambled to the masthead and shouted down
terrified warning. These were not the French ships! They were the
English frigates bearing straight down on the single French vessel
commanded by Iberville!
On one side was the enemy's fort, on the other the enemy's fleet coming
over the waves before a clipping wind, all sails set. Of Iberville's
crew forty men were ill of scurvy. Twenty-five had gone ashore to
reconnoiter. He had left one hundred and fifty fighting men. Amid a
rush of orders, ropes were stretched across decks for handhold, cannon
were unplugged, and the batterymen below decks stripped themselves for
the hot work ahead. The soldiers assembled on decks, sword in hand,
and the Canadian bushrovers stood to the fore, ready to leap across the
enemy's decks.
By nine in the morning the ships were abreast, and roaring cannonades
from the English cut the decks of the _Pelican_ to kindling wood and
set the masts in flame. At the same instant one fell blast of musketry
mowed down forty French; but Iberville's batterymen below decks had now
ceased to pour a stream of fire into the English hulls. The odds were
three to one, and for four hours the battle raged, the English shifting
and sheering to lock in death grapple, Iberville's sharpshooters
peppering the decks of the foe.
It had turned bitterly cold. The blood on the decks became ice, and
each roll of the sea sent wounded and dead weltering {186} from rail to
rail. Such holes had been torn in the hulls of both English and French
ships that the gunners below decks were literally looking into each
other's smoke-grimmed faces. Suddenly all hands paused. A frantic
scream cleft the air. The vessels were careening in a tempestuous sea,
for the great ship _Hampshire_ had refused to answer to the wheel, had
lurched, had sunk,--sunk swift as lead amid hiss of flames into the
roaring sea! Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men escaped. The
frigate _Hudson's Bay_ surrendered and the _Deering_ fled. Iberville
was victor.
[Illustration: LANDING OF IBERVILLE'S MEN AT PORT NELSON (After La
Potherie)]
But a storm now broke in hurricane gusts over the sea. Iberville
steered for land, but waves drenched the wheel at every wash, and,
driving before the storm, the _Pelican_ floundered in the sands a few
miles from Nelson. All lifeboats had been shot away. In such a sea
the Canadian canoes were useless. The shattered masts were tied in
four-sided racks. To these {187} Iberville had the wounded bound, and
the crew plunged for the shore. Eighteen men perished going ashore in
the darkness. On land were two feet of snow. No sooner did the French
castaways build fires to warm their benumbed limbs than bullets
whistled into camp. Governor Bayly of Port Nelson had sent out his
sharpshooters. Luckily Iberville's other ships now joined him, and,
mustering his forces, the dauntless French leader marched against the
fort. Storm had permitted the French to land their cannon undetected.
Trenches were cast up, and three times Sérigny Le Moyne was sent to
demand surrender.
[Illustration: CAPTURE OF FORT NELSON BY THE FRENCH (After La
Potherie)]
"The French are desperate," he urged. "They must take the fort or
perish of want, and if you continue the fight there will be no mercy
given."
The Hudson's Bay people capitulated and were permitted to march out
with arms, bag and baggage. An English ship carried the refugees home
to the Thames.
The rest of Iberville's career is the story of colonizing the
Mississippi. He was granted a vast seigniory on the Bay of {188}
Chaleur, and in 1699 given a title. On his way from the Louisiana
colony to France his ship had paused at Havana. Here Iberville
contracted yellow fever and died while yet in the prime of his manhood,
July 9, 1706.
After the victory on Hudson Bay the French were supreme in America and
Frontenac supreme in New France. The old white-haired veteran of a
hundred wars became the idol of Quebec. Friends and enemies, Jesuits
and Recollets, paid tribute to his worth. In November of 1698 the
Governor passed from this life in Castle St. Louis at the good old age
of seventy-eight. He had demonstrated--demonstrated in action so that
his enemies acknowledged the fact--that the sterner virtues of the
military chieftain go farther towards the making of great nationhood
than soft sentiments and religious emotionalism.
{189}