heights of Quebec to mourn the death of their great leader, and return
to the shores of Acadia to follow the fortunes of Biencourt and his
companions whom we last saw near the smoking ruins of their homes on
the banks of the Annapolis. We have now come to a strange chapter of
Canadian history, which has its picturesque aspect as well as its
episodes of meanness, cupidity, and inhumanity. As we look back to
those early years of Acadian history, we see rival chiefs with their
bands of retainers engaged in deadly feuds, and storming each other's
fortified posts as though they were the castles of barons living in
mediaeval times. We see savage Micmacs and Etchemins of Acadia, only
too willing to aid in the quarrels and contests of the white men who
hate each with a malignity that even the Indian cannot excel; closely
shorn, ill-clad mendicant friars who see only good in those who {93}
help their missions; grave and cautious Puritans trying to find their
advantage in the rivalry of their French neighbours; a Scotch nobleman
and courtier who would be a king in Acadia as well as a poet in
England; Frenchmen who claim to have noble blood in their veins, and
wish to be lords of a wide American domain; a courageous wife who lays
aside the gentleness of a woman's nature and fights as bravely as any
knight for the protection of her home and what she believes to be her
husband's rights. These are among the figures that we see passing
through the shadowy vista which opens before us as we look into the
depths of the Acadian wilderness two centuries and a half ago.
Among the French adventurers, whose names are intimately associated
with the early history of Acadia, no one occupies a more prominent
position than Charles de St. Etienne, the son of a Huguenot, Claude de
la Tour, who claimed to be of noble birth. The La Tours had become so
poor that they were forced, like so many other nobles of those times,
to seek their fortune in the new world. Claude and his son, then
probably fourteen years of age, came to Port Royal with Poutrincourt in
1610. In the various vicissitudes of the little settlement the father
and his son participated, and after it had been destroyed by Argall,
they remained with Biencourt and his companions. In the course of
time, the elder La Tour established a trading post on the peninsula at
the mouth of the Penobscot--in Acadian history a prominent place, as
often in possession of the English as the French.
{94} Biencourt and his companions appear to have had some accessions to
their number during the years that followed the Virginian's visit.
They built rude cabins on the banks of the Annapolis, and cultivated
patches of ground after a fashion, beside raising a fort of logs and
earth near Cape Sable, called indifferently Fort Louis or Lomeron. It
has been generally believed that Biencourt died in Acadia about 1623,
after making over all his rights to Charles La Tour, who was his
personal friend and follower from his boyhood. Recently, however, the
discovery of some old documents in Paris throws some doubt on the
generally accepted statement of the place of his death.[1]
It is quite certain, however, whether Biencourt died in France or
Acadia, young La Tour assumed after 1623 the control of Fort St. Louis
and all other property previously held by the former. In 1626 the
elder La Tour was driven from the Penobscot by English traders from
Plymouth who took possession of the fort and held it for some years.
He now recognised the urgent necessity of having his position in Acadia
ratified and strengthened by the French king, and consequently went on
a mission to France in 1627.
About this time the attention of prominent men in England was called to
the fact that the French had settlements in Acadia. Sir William
Alexander, afterwards the Earl of Stirling, a favourite of King James
the Fourth of Scotland and First of England, and an author of several
poetical tragedies, wished {95} to follow the example of Sir Frederick
Gorges, one of the promoters of the colonisation of New England. He
had no difficulty in obtaining from James, as great a pedant as
himself, a grant of Acadia, which he named Nova Scotia. When Charles
the First became king, he renewed the patent, and also, at the
persuasion of the ambitious poet, created an order of Nova Scotia
baronets, who were obliged to assist in the settlement of the country,
which was thereafter to be divided into "baronies." Sir William
Alexander, however, did not succeed in making any settlement in Nova
Scotia, and did not take any definite measures to drive the French from
his princely, though savage, domain until about the time Claude de la
Tour was engaged in advocating the claims of his son in Europe, where
we must follow him.
The elder La Tour arrived at an opportune time in France. Cardinal
Richelieu had just formed the Company of the Hundred Associates, and it
was agreed that aid should at once be sent to Charles de la Tour, who
was to be the King's lieutenant in Acadia. Men and supplies for the
Acadian settlement were on board the squadron, commanded by Roquemont,
who was captured by Kirk in the summer of 1628. On board one of the
prizes was Claude de la Tour, who was carried to London as prisoner.
Then to make the position for Charles de la Tour still more hazardous,
Sir William Alexander's son arrived at Port Royal in the same year, and
established on the Granville side a small Scotch colony as the
commencement of a larger settlement in the {96} future. Charles de la
Tour does not appear to have remained in Port Royal, but to have
retired to the protection of his own fort at Cape Sable, which the
English did not attempt to attack at that time.
In the meantime the elder La Tour was in high favour at London. He won
the affections of one of the Queen's maids of honour, and was easily
persuaded by Alexander and others interested in American colonisation,
to pledge his allegiance to the English king. He and his son were made
baronets of Nova Scotia, and received large grants of land or
"baronies" in the new province. As Alexander was sending an expedition
in 1630 with additional colonists and supplies for his colony in Nova
Scotia, Claude de la Tour agreed to go there for the purpose of
persuading his son to accept the honours and advantages which the King
of England had conferred upon him. The ambitious Scotch poet, it was
clear, still hoped that his arguments in favour of retaining Acadia,
despite the treaty of Susa, made on the 24th of April, 1629, would
prevail with the King. It was urged that as Port Royal was on soil
belonging to England by right of Cabot's discovery, and the French had
not formally claimed the sovereignty of Acadia since the destruction of
their settlement by Argall, it did not fall within the actual
provisions of a treaty which referred only to conquests made after its
ratification.
Charles de la Tour would not yield to the appeals of his father to give
up the fort at Cape Sable, and obliged the English vessels belonging to
Alexander to retire to the Scotch settlement by the Annapolis {97}
basin. The elder La Tour went on to the same place, where he remained
until his son persuaded him to join the French at Fort St. Louis, where
the news had come that the King of France was determined on the
restoration of Port Royal as well as Quebec. It was now decided to
build a new fort on the River St. John, which would answer the double
purpose of strengthening the French in Acadia, and driving the British
out of Port Royal. Whilst this work was in course of construction,
another vessel arrived from France with the welcome news that the
loyalty of Charles de la Tour was appreciated by the King, who had
appointed him as his lieutenant-governor over Fort Louis, Port La Tour,
and dependencies.
By the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye the French regained Acadia and
were inclined to pay more attention to the work of colonisation.
Richelieu sent out an expedition to take formal possession of New
France, and Isaac de Launoy de Razilly, a military man of distinction,
a Knight of Malta, and a friend of the great minister, was appointed
governor of all Acadia. He brought with him a select colony, composed
of artisans, farmers, several Capuchin friars, and some gentlemen,
among whom were two whose names occupy a prominent place in the annals
of Acadia and Cape Breton. One of them was Nicholas Denys, who became
in later years the first governor of Cape Breton, where he made
settlements at Saint Anne's and Saint Peter's, and also wrote an
historical and descriptive account of the French Atlantic possessions.
The most prominent {98} Frenchman after Razilly himself, was Charles de
Menou, Chevalier d'Aunay and son of René de Menou, lord of Charnizay,
who was of noble family, and became one of the members of the King's
council of state at the time the disputes between his son and Charles
de la Tour were at their height. Charles de Menou, or d'Aunay, as I
shall generally name him, was made Razilly's deputy, and consequently
at the outset of his career assumed a prominence in the country that
must have deeply irritated young La Tour, who still remained one of the
King's lieutenants and probably expected, until Razilly's arrival, to
be the head of the colony.
Captain Forrester, in command of the Scotch colony at Port Royal, gave
up the post to Razilly in accordance with the orders of the English
king, who had acted with much duplicity throughout the negotiations.
The fort was razed to the ground, and the majority of the Scotch, who
had greatly suffered from disease and death, left Acadia, though
several remained and married among the French colonists. This was the
end of Alexander's experiment in colonising Acadia and founding a
colonial _noblesse_.
Razilly made his settlement at La Hève, on the Atlantic shore of Nova
Scotia, and Denys had a mill and trading establishment in the vicinity.
Port Royal was improved and the post at Penobscot occupied. D'Aunay
was given charge of the division west of the St. Croix, and during the
summer of 1632 he came by sea to the Plymouth House on the Penobscot,
and took forcible possession of the post with all its contents. A year
later La Tour {99} also seized the "trading wigwam" at Machias, in the
present State of Maine, but not before two of the English occupants
were killed. La Tour had by this time removed from Cape Sable to the
mouth of the River St. John, where he had built a strong fort on,
probably, Portland Point, on the east side of the harbour of the
present city of St. John, and was engaged in a lucrative trade in furs
until a quarrel broke out between him and D'Aunay.
Soon after Razilly's death in the autumn of 1635, D'Aunay asserted his
right, as lieutenant-governor of Acadia and his late chief's deputy, to
command in the colony. He obtained from Claude de Razilly, brother of
the governor, all his rights in Acadia, and removed the seat of
government from La Hève to Port Royal, where he built a fort on the
site of the present town of Annapolis. It was not long before he and
La Tour became bitter enemies.
La Tour considered, with much reason, that he had superior rights on
account of his long services in the province that ought to have been
acknowledged, and that D'Aunay was all the while working to injure him
in France. D'Aunay had certainly a great advantage over his opponent,
as he had powerful influence at the French Court, while La Tour was not
personally known and was regarded with some suspicion on account of his
father being a Huguenot, and friendly to England. As a matter of fact,
the younger La Tour was no Protestant, but a luke-warm Catholic, who
considered creed subservient to his personal interests. This fact
explains why the Capuchin friars always had a good word to say for
{100} his rival who was a zealous Catholic and did much to promote
their mission.
The French Government attempted at first to decide between the two
claimants and settle the dispute, but all in vain. La Tour made an
attempt in 1640 to surprise D'Aunay at Port Royal, but the result was
that he as well as his bride, who had just come from France, were
themselves taken prisoners. The Capuchin friars induced D'Aunay to set
them all at liberty on condition that La Tour should keep the peace in
future. The only result was an aggravation of the difficulty and the
reference of the disputes to France, where D'Aunay won the day both in
the courts and with the royal authorities. La Tour's commission was
revoked and D'Aunay eventually received an order to seize the property
and person of his rival, when he proved contumacious and refused to
obey the royal command, on the ground that it had been obtained by
false representations. He retired to his fort on the St. John, where,
with his resolute wife and a number of faithful Frenchmen and Indians,
he set D'Aunay at defiance. In this crisis La Tour resolved to appeal
to the government of Massachusetts for assistance. In 1630, the town
of Boston was commenced on the peninsula of Shawmut, and was already a
place of considerable commercial importance. Harvard College was
already open, schools were established, town meetings were frequent,
and a system of representative government was in existence. Not only
so, the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth
had formed themselves into {101} a confederacy "for preserving and
propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospel, and for their own
mutual safety and welfare."
Much sympathy was felt in Boston for La Tour, who was a man of very
pleasing manners, and was believed to be a Huguenot at heart. He
explained the affair at Machias and his relations with the French
Government to the satisfaction of the Boston people, though apparently
with little regard to truth. The desire to encourage a man, who
promised to be a good customer of their own, finally prevailed over
their caution, and the cunning Puritans considered they got out of
their quandary by the decision that, though the colony could not
directly contribute assistance, yet it was lawful for private citizens
to charter their vessels, and offer their services as volunteers to
help La Tour. The New Englanders had not forgotten D'Aunay's action at
Penobscot some years before, and evidently thought he was a more
dangerous man than his rival.
Some Massachusetts merchants, under these circumstances, provided La
Tour with four staunch armed vessels and seventy men, while he on his
part gave them a lien over all his property. When D'Aunay had tidings
of the expedition in the Bay of Fundy, he raised a blockade of Fort La
Tour and escaped to the westward. La Tour, assisted by some of the New
England volunteers, destroyed his rival's fortified mill, after a few
lives were lost on either side. A pinnace, having on board a large
quantity of D'Aunay's furs, was captured, and the {102} booty divided
between the Massachusetts men and La Tour.
From his wife, then in France, where she had gone to plead his cause,
La Tour received the unwelcome news that his enemy was on his return to
Acadia with an overwhelming force. Thereupon he presented himself
again in Boston, and appealed to the authorities for further
assistance, but they would not do more than send a remonstrance to
D'Aunay and ask explanations of his conduct.
At this critical moment, La Tour's wife appeared on the scene. Unable
to do anything in France for her husband, she had found her way to
London, where she took passage on a vessel bound for Boston; but the
master, instead of carrying her directly to Fort La Tour, as he had
agreed, spent some months trading in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on
the coast of Nova Scotia. D'Aunay was cruising off Cape Sable, in the
hope of intercepting her, and searched the vessel, but Madame La Tour
was safely concealed in the hold, and the vessel was allowed to go on
to Boston. On her arrival there, Madame La Tour brought an action
against the master and consignee for a breach of contract, and
succeeded in obtaining a judgment in her favour for two thousand
pounds. When she found it impossible to come to a settlement, she
seized the goods in the ship, and on this security hired three vessels
and sailed to rejoin her husband. In the meantime an envoy from
D'Aunay, a Monsieur Marie, always supposed to be a Capuchin friar,
presented himself to the Massachusetts authorities, and after making a
strong {103} remonstrance against the course heretofore pursued by the
colony, proffered terms of amity in the future on the condition that no
further aid was given to La Tour. After some consideration the
colonial government, of which Governor Endicott was now the head,
agreed to a treaty of friendship, which was not ratified by D'Aunay for
some time afterwards, when La Tour was a fugitive. Then the terms were
sanctioned by the commissioners of the confederated colonies.
Having succeeded in obtaining the neutrality of the English colonists
through his agent Marie, D'Aunay then determined to attack La Tour's
fort on the St. John, as he had now under his control a sufficient
number of men and ships. In the spring of the same year, however, when
La Tour was absent, D'Aunay mustered all his vessels and men, and laid
siege to the fort, but he met with most determined resistance from the
garrison, nerved and stimulated by the voice and example of the heroic
wife. The besiegers were almost disheartened, when a traitor within
the walls--a "mercenary Swiss," according to a contemporary
writer--gave them information which determined them to renew the
assault with still greater vigour. D'Aunay and his men again attempted
to scale the walls, but were forced to retire with a considerable
force. Then D'Aunay offered fair terms if the fort was immediately
given up. Madame La Tour, anxious to spare the lives of her brave
garrison, which was rapidly thinning, agreed to the proposal, and
surrendered the fort; and then D'Aunay is said to have broken {104} his
solemn pledge, and hanged all the defenders except one, whose life was
spared on the condition of his acting as executioner.
One would fain not believe what the contemporary historian adds, that
D'Aunay forced Madame La Tour to remain with a rope round her own neck,
and witness the execution of the brave men who had so nobly assisted
her in defending the fort. The poor lady did not long survive this
tragedy, as she died a prisoner a few weeks later. All the acts of her
adventurous and tragic career prove her to have been a good woman and a
courageous wife, and may well be an inspiring theme for poetry and
romance.[2]
D'Aunay now reigned supreme in Acadia. He had burdened himself heavily
with debt in his efforts to ruin his rival, but he had some
compensation in {105} the booty he found at St. John. By the capture
of his fort La Tour lost jewels, plate, furniture, and goods valued at
ten thousand pounds, and was for a time a bankrupt. His debts in
Boston were very heavy, and Major Gibbons, who had sent vessels to Fort
La Tour in 1643, was never able to recover the mortgage he had taken on
his estate. Bereft of wife and possessions, La Tour left Acadia and
sought aid from Sir David Kirk, who was then governor of Newfoundland,
but to no purpose. Various stories are told of his career for two
years or longer, and it is even reported that he robbed a Boston vessel
in his necessities, "whereby it appeared, as the Scripture saith,"
mournfully exclaims Governor Winthrop, "that there is no confidence in
any unfaithful or carnal man." Boston merchants and sailors had
suffered a good deal from both D'Aunay and La Tour, and such a story
would naturally obtain credence among men who found they had made a bad
investment in Fort La Tour and its appendages. D'Aunay continued his
work of improving Port Royal and surrounding country, and the colony he
founded was the parent of those large settlements that in the course of
time stretched as far as the isthmus of Chignecto. He was accidentally
drowned in the Annapolis River some time in 1650. French Canadian
writers call him cruel, vindictive, rapacious, and arbitrary, but he
has never been the favourite of historians. His plans of settlement
had a sound basis and might have led to a prosperous and populous
Acadia, had he not wrecked them by the malignity with which he followed
La Tour and his wife.
{106}
La Tour, in the year 1648, visited Quebec, where he was received with
the most gratifying demonstrations of respect by his countrymen, who
admired his conduct in the Acadian struggle. Then D'Aunay died and La
Tour immediately went to France, where the government acknowledged the
injustice with which it had treated him in the past, and appointed him
governor of Acadia, with enlarged privileges and powers. In 1653 he
married D'Aunay's widow, Jeanne de Motin, in the hope--to quote the
contract--"to secure the peace and tranquillity of the country, and
concord and union between the two families." Peace then reigned for
some months in Acadia; many new settlers came into the country, the
forts were strengthened, and the people were hoping for an era of
prosperity. But there was to be no peace or rest for the French in
Acadia.
One of D'Aunay's creditors in France, named Le Borgne, came to America
in 1654 at the head of a large force, with the object of obtaining
possession of D'Aunay's property, and possibly of his position in
Acadia. He made a prisoner of Denys, who was at that time engaged in
trade in Cape Breton, and treated him with great harshness. After a
short imprisonment at Port Royal, which was occupied by Le Borgne,
Denys was allowed to go to France, where he succeeded eventually in
obtaining a redress of his grievances, and an appointment as governor
of Cape Breton.