1666-1672
COLONIZATION AND POPULATION
ENCOURAGEMENT OF MARRIAGE--BACHELORS TAXED--"FILLES DU
ROI"--DOWRIES--PENSIONS FOR LARGE FAMILIES--MONTREAL HEALTHY FOR
WOMEN--NOTE ON IMMIGRATION.
One of the outstanding failures in New France so far had been that
of inadequate attempts to increase the number of colonists. This the
king was now anxious to remedy. To this end, when the war was over,
through the efforts of Colbert and Talon and before Tracy had left with
his glittering train, he offered inducements to the Carignan soldiers
to remain as colonists and to take up land. To each such concessions
of land were granted with a bonus of 100 _livres_, or fifty _livres_
and provisions for one year. The sergeants would receive a year's
provisions and one hundred to one hundred and fifty _livres_. Thus 400
of the Carignan regiment remained to swell the population.
To increase this number six infantry companies of fifty-three men each
were sent back in 1669. To each of the six captains he gave a bonus of
1,000 _livres_, with another 6,000 to be divided among the lieutenants
and ensigns. This military colonization largely influenced the future
of Canada.
To encourage permanent settlement efforts were now redoubled to provide
wives for the men. In 1665, 100 girls were sent over. In 1666, twice as
many; in 1667, and 1668, still more; in 1669, 150 and the same in 1670.
An ordinance published in Montreal November 30, 1670, shows the efforts
of the government to promote match-making--all _volontaires_ and others
not married being forbidden the privilege of hunting, fishing and
trading with the savages[100] and even of entering the bush under any
pretext whatever, the latter prohibition probably being intended to
prevent a bachelor finding a temporary Indian substitute for a French
wife. Bachelors had a hard time. Colbert, writing to Talon on February
20, 1668, says: "It will be appropriate that those, who seem to have
renounced wedlock, shall have to bear additional charges and to be
deprived of all honours and even to have some marks of infamy added to
them."
To press the execution of these commands, all those soldiers and
unattached workers not having taken up land, were ordered to marry
within fifteen days of the arrival of the ships bearing the girls.
Thus, Marie de l'Incarnation tells us, in 1669, that no sooner are the
vessels arrived than the young men go wife hunting, and marriages are
celebrated thirty at a time.
Among the children of those already settled, early marriages were
encouraged. "I pray you," wrote Colbert to Talon on February 20, 1668,
"to command it to the consideration of the whole people that their
property, their subsistence, and all that is dear to them, depend on
a general resolution, never to be departed from, to marry youths at
eighteen or nineteen years, and girls at fourteen or fifteen; since
abundance can never come to them except through the abundance of men."
And for this purpose the "king's present" of twenty _livres_ to each
of the contracting parties was given. Fathers of families, according
to the decrees of the state council of this period, who did not marry
their boys and girls when they had reached the ages of twenty-one and
sixteen were fined, and following this up, they had to appear every six
months after before the clerk of the court to give reason for further
delays under penalty of fines to be made applicable to the hospitals.
We have already given indication of the extreme care that had been
exercised at Montreal in the reception of such prospective mothers of
the colony; how Marguerite Bourgeoys had herself brought over on her
different voyages girls of noted virtue, whom she trained to become
good housewives, and for many she found eligible partners in life.
At Quebec a similar work was carried on, by a Madame Bourdon, with
motherly skill and devotion. If she was not as successful as Marguerite
Bourgeoys this was not surprising, since the latter was singularly
endowed by nature for such a task.
These girls were chaperoned, across the ocean, by the nuns or pious
persons, or by Madame Bourdon herself, and then placed under her charge
until marriage. We find an item of expense for 1671 paid by the king to
a Demoiselle Etienne for the care she had taken in taking girls from
the general hospital to Canada and in looking after them till they were
married. These were received by Madame Bourdon.
Human nature, being very much the same then as now, we can imagine that
some of these girls, drawn from the orphanages of Paris and Lyons, and
carefully trained by the nuns, were rude and difficult to handle, but
on the whole the venture was a great success. There was, of course,
as Marie de l'Incarnation says, in 1668, "mixed goods," and in 1689,
"along with honest people a great deal of 'canaille,' of both sexes who
cause a great deal of scandal."
But such care was taken from the very beginning of colonization,
since New France was viewed in the nature of a mission field, only to
send persons of good repute and to deport undesirables, that French
Canadians have no need to blush at their parentage. The families
descending from the Carignan soldiers may point with pride to their
origins. A caustic writer, La Hontan, writing twenty years after, by
his amusing, witty, and scurrilous descriptions of the matrimonial
market of this period, has done much to slander these early marriages,
but he is discredited, and his version is regarded as a caricature and
maliciously untrue, as Parkman points out.
These girls were called "les filles du roi," since they were maintained
at the charge of the king's bounty in the philanthropic orphanages of
France. At Montreal, under Marguerite Bourgeoys, they were lodged
with her in a house bought by Saint Ange, since the old stable was too
small. There, they were carefully instructed in religion and practical
affairs to become good mothers of families, and they did not leave her
till the day of their marriages. At this time, a pious congregation
of lay women was formed by Marguerite Bourgeoys; these met on Sundays
for the practice of virtue and many of the newly arrived girls were
kept in touch with the gentle and motherly Marguerite, long after
their marriages. It was from this date that her home began to be
affectionately spoken of as "The Congregation."
In addition to girls of a humble class, _demoiselles_ of a more
superior station were also encouraged to come to provide wives for the
officers and others, of whom Colbert wished to form the nucleus of
a Canadian _noblesse_. Several others, who first thought of passing
through the noviceship at the Hôtel-Dieu and joining the Hospitalières
Sisters, found their vocation otherwise, like Perrine de Bélestre,
sister of Picoté, who married Michel Godefroy, Sieur de Linlot, at
Three Rivers.
When the king's daughters married, they were given the king's dowry,
varying in form and value. Sometimes it was a house with provisions for
eight months, more often, fifty _livres_ in household supplies, besides
a barrel or two of salted meat.[101] And when they were married they
were encouraged to rear up a fruitful progeny, for in the "Edits et
Ordonnances" of the Province of Quebec, p. 67, a decree is found that
"in future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada, who shall
have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not
being priests, monks or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys
sent by His Majesty to the said country a _pension_ of 300 _livres_
a year, and those who shall have twelve children a pension of 400
_livres_; and that to this effect they shall be required to declare the
number of their children every year, in the months of June or July,
to the intendant of justice, police and finance, established in the
same country, who having verified the same, shall order the payment of
the said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of
eight years." Furthermore, he ordered that fathers of large families
should have preference over others unless there was strong contrary
reason. The decreasing birth rate in France at that period prompted
such regulations in New France. The king's activity through Colbert in
peopling his colony is seen in numerous letters to his officials. In an
instruction to the Intendant Bouteroue in 1668 Colbert writes: "The end
and rule of all your conduct should be the increase of the colony; and
on this point I should never be satisfied, but labour without ceasing
to find every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants,
attracting new ones and multiplying marriages."
These encouragements bore fruit. Laval, writing in 1668, says: "The
families of our French people in this country are very numerous; for
the most part they consist of eight, ten, twelve, and sometimes as many
as fifteen or sixteen children. The savages, on the contrary, have only
two or three and rarely do they go beyond four."
The Abbé de Queylus, now superior of the seminary at Montreal, wrote
to Colbert on May 15, 1669, that owing to the efforts of the king "the
number of the inhabitants of New France has increased two-thirds."
The population propaganda at Montreal was left largely to the seigneurs
of the seminary. In 1666, there were 582 persons; in 1667, there were
766; in 1672, the population was doubled to 1,500 or 1,600 souls, as
Dollier de Casson relates in his account of this year, which is the
concluding chapter of his "History of Montreal."
We may fitly conclude this chapter by giving two of the worthy
Dollier's reflections:
"First reflection, on the advantage that the women have in this
place (Montreal) over men, which is, that although the cold climate
is very healthy for the one and the other sex, it is incomparably
to the advantage of the feminine, which finds itself here almost
immortal--this is what everyone says since the birth of this settlement
and what I myself have remarked for six years, for although there are
fourteen to fifteen thousand souls here, there has only been the death
of one woman for the last six years."
"The second reflection will be on the facility which people of this
sex have of marrying here, a fact which is apparently clear to all the
world since it is practiced every year, but which is admirably shown by
an example I am going to tell you of one _qui sera assez rare_. It is
of a woman who, having this year lost her husband, has had one of the
bans published, and being dispensed of the two others had her marriage
performed and consummated before her first husband was buried. These
two reflections in my opinion will be sufficiently strong to thin out
the _Hôpital de la Pitié_ and to secure a good party of girls from all
the Paris orphanages if only they are desirous, to live long, or to
cultivate a devotion to the seventh of our sacraments."
NOTE
IMMIGRATION--1665-1670
The Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, which had been granted the domain
of New France from May 16, 1664, one year after the forced retirement
of the Hundred Associates, brought over on the king's account, in
1665,[3] 429 men and 100 women and girls; in 1667,[3] 184 men and 92
women and girls; and in 1668,[102] 244 of both sexes.
In addition, during the above period 422 officers and soldiers of
Carignan regiment were established in the colony. In 1666 the company
sent out on its own account 35 hired men (engagés); in 1669,[4] 200 men
and 150 women; in 1670,[4] 100 men and 100 women; in 1671,[103] 100 men
and 150 women; in 1672, the war in Holland stopped the movement.
In 1670 there came five companies of fifty men each, making with their
officers an effective force of 266. Thus for the first period we have
sent at the king's account about one thousand four hundred persons,
and for the second 1,116 about two thousand five hundred and sixteen
in all. But there was a certain number of others who came to find
a position, or were brought over by the owners of fiefs or by the
seigneurs of Montreal.
Talon encouraged marriages so that with the establishments of the
officers and the soldiers, joined to the activity of the emigration
movement from 1665 to 1668, the families had more than doubled their
numbers, and the population was also almost doubled during this period.
In 1665 the first census under Talon shows, at the commencement of
1666, 3,215 souls and 533 families; at the commencement of 1668, 6,282
souls and 1,132 families.
Yet the official report of Frontenac in 1673 after the departure of
Talon gave only a population of 6,705. This seems incredible and
Colbert expressed surprise. From 1669 to 1672 the king had sent over
820 persons without counting the soldiers arriving in 1670. Add to
this the material increase, the six to seven hundred births of 1671
and those of 1672, estimated in advance by Laval at 1,100, and it
is difficult to admit that the population had only increased by 423
souls from 1668 to 1673. The census of 1675 gives 7,833. This is more
reasonable and leads to the conclusion that the returns of 1673 were
too small.
The population of Montreal, according to Morin "Le Vieux Montreal," was
as follows: 1642, 72; 1650, 196; 1660, 472; 1665, 525; 1667, 760; 1662,
830; 1680, 1,400; 1690, 1,567; 1700, 2,100; 1710, 3,492; 1720, 5,314;
1730, 6,351; 1740, 7,710; 1750, 8,224; 1760, 8,321.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] François Le Noir was summoned before the judge at Montreal in
December, 1670, for breaking this ordinance.
[101] In the manuscript notes by Jacques Viger kept in St. Mary's
College, Montreal, the writer mentions one extract from the
deliberations of the "Conseil Souverain," held at Quebec on October
27, 1663, showing how these marriageable girls were disposed of, and
the dowry given by His Most Christian Majesty. "_Des filles arrivées
cette année par les vaisseaux du roy il en sera envoyé dix à Montréal
et quatre aux Trois Rivières, et leur sera donné à chacune une barrique
de farine, une paire de souliers, une paire de bas, une couverte, un
just'a corps, cinquante livres de lard, dix pots d'eau de vie pour
aider à marier, comme on a fait à celles qui ont été envoyées icy à
Québec._
(_Signé_) _PEUVRET_."
[102] See letters of Marie l'Incarnation, Vol. II.
[103] See letters of Colbert.