Parkman Vol. 4, Chapter 1

Why did the French Empire in North America fail to survive? Part of the fault is the nature of their administration.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Preface

“The physiognomy of a government,” says De Tocqueville, “can best be judged in its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge of the spirit and the faults of the administration of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope.”

The monarchical administration of France, at the height of its power and at the moment of its supreme triumph, stretched an arm across the Atlantic and grasped the North American continent. This volume attempts to show by what methods it strove to make good its hold, why it achieved a certain kind of success, and why it failed at last. The political system which has fallen, and the antagonistic system which has prevailed, seem, at first sight, to offer nothing but contrasts; yet out of the tomb of Canadian absolutism come voices not without suggestion even to us. Extremes meet, and Autocracy and Democracy often touch hands, at least in their vices.

The means of knowing the Canada of the past are ample. The pen was always busy in this outpost of the old monarchy. The king and the minister demanded to know everything; and officials of high and low degree, soldiers and civilians, friends and foes, poured letters, dispatches, and memorials, on both sides of every question, into the lap of government. These masses of paper have in the main survived the perils of revolutions and the incendiary torch of the Commune. Add to them the voluminous records of the Superior Council of Quebec, and numerous other documents preserved in the civil and ecclesiastical depositories of Canada.

The governments of New York and of Canada have caused a large part of the papers in the French archives, relating to their early history, to be copied and brought to America, and valuable contributions of material from the same quarter have been made by the State of Massachusetts and by private Canadian investigators. Nevertheless, a great deal has still remained in France, uncopied and unexplored. In the course of several visits to that country, I have availed myself of these supplementary papers, as well as of those which had before been copied, sparing neither time nor pains to explore every part of the field. With the help of a system of classified notes, I have collated the evidence of the various writers, and set down without reserve all the results of the examination, whether favorable or unfavorable. Some of them are of a character which I regret, since they cannot be agreeable to persons for whom I have a very cordial regard. The conclusions drawn from the facts may be matter of opinion, but it will be remembered that the facts themselves can be overthrown only by overthrowing the evidence on which they rest, or bringing forward counter evidence of equal or greater strength; and neither task will be found an easy one. *

I have received most valuable aid in my inquiries from the great knowledge and experience of M. Pierre Margry, Chief of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris. I beg also warmly to acknowledge the kind offices of Abbé Henri Raymond Casgrain and Grand Vicar Cazeau, of Quebec, together with those of James LeMoine, Esq., M. Eugène Taché, Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, and other eminent Canadians, and Henry Harrisse, Esq.

The few extracts from original documents, which are printed in the appendix, may serve as samples of the material out of which the work has been constructed. In some instances their testimony might be multiplied twenty-fold. When the place of deposit of the documents cited in the margin is not otherwise indicated, they will, in nearly all cases, be found in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.

[Those who wish to see the subject from a point of view opposite to mine cannot do better than consult the work of the Jesuit Charlevoix, with the excellent annotation of Mr. Shea. (History and General Description of New France, by the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J., translated with notes by John Gilmary Shea. 6 vols. New York: 1866-1872.)]

In the present book we examine the political and social machine; in the next volume of the series we shall see this machine in action.

Boston, July 1, 1874.

Chapter 1

In the summer of 1653, all Canada turned to fasting and penance, processions, vows, and supplications. The saints and the Virgin were beset with unceasing prayer. The wretched little colony was like some puny garrison, starving and sick, compassed with inveterate foes, supplies cut off, and succor hopeless.

At Montreal, the advance guard of the settlements, a sort of Castle Dangerous, held by about fifty Frenchmen, and said by a pious writer of the day to exist only by a continuous miracle, some two hundred Iroquois fell upon twenty-six Frenchmen. The Christians were outmatched, eight to one; but, says the chronicle, the Queen of Heaven was on their side, and the Son of Mary refuses nothing to his holy mother. [1] Through her intercession, the Iroquois shot so wildly that at their first fire every bullet missed its mark, and they met with a bloody defeat. The palisaded settlement of Three Rivers, though in a position less exposed than that of Montreal, was in no less jeopardy. A noted war-chief of the Mohawk Iroquois had been captured here the year before, and put to death; and his tribe swarmed out, like a nest of angry hornets, to revenge him. Not content with defeating and killing the commandant, Du Plessis Bochart, they encamped during winter in the neighboring forest, watching for an opportunity to surprise the place. Hunger drove them off, but they returned in spring, infesting every field and pathway; till, at length, some six hundred of their warriors landed in secret and lay hidden in the depths of the woods, silently biding their time. Having failed, however, in an artifice designed to lure the French out of their defenses, they showed themselves on all sides, plundering, burning, and destroying, up to the palisades of the fort. [2]

[1: Le Mercier, Relation, 1653, 3.]

[2: So bent were they on taking the place, that they brought their families, in order to make a permanent settlement. — Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 6 Sept., 1653.]

Of the three settlements which, with their feeble dependencies, then comprised the whole of Canada, Quebec was least exposed to Indian attacks, being partially covered by Montreal and Three Rivers. Nevertheless, there was no safety this year, even under the cannon of Fort St. Louis. At Cap Rouge, a few miles above, the Jesuit Poncet saw a poor woman who had a patch of corn beside her cabin, but could find nobody to harvest it. The father went to seek aid, met one Mathurin. Franchetot, whom he persuaded to undertake the charitable task, and was returning with him, when they both fell into an ambuscade of Iroquois, who seized them and dragged them off. Thirty-two men embarked in canoes at Quebec to follow the retreating savages and rescue the prisoners. Pushing rapidly up the St. Lawrence, they approached Three Rivers, found it beset by the Mohawks, and bravely threw themselves into it, to the great joy of its defenders and discouragement of the assailants.

Meanwhile, the intercession of the Virgin wrought new marvels at Montreal, and a bright ray of hope beamed forth from the darkness and the storm to cheer the hearts of her votaries. It was on the 26th of June that sixty of the Onondaga Iroquois appeared in sight of the fort, shouting from a distance that they came on an errand of peace, and asking safe-conduct for some of their number. Guns, scalping-knives, tomahawks, were all laid aside; and, with a confidence truly astonishing, a deputation of chiefs, naked and defenseless, came into the midst of those whom they had betrayed so often. The French had a mind to seize them, and pay them in kind for past treachery; but they refrained, seeing in this wondrous change of heart the manifest hand of Heaven. Nevertheless, it can be explained without a miracle. The Iroquois, or, at least, the western nations of their league, had just become involved in war with their neighbors the Eries, [3] and “one war at a time” was the sage maxim of their policy.

[3: See Jesuits in North America, 438. The Iroquois, it will be remembered, consisted of five “nations,” or tribes, — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. For an account of them, see the work just cited, Introduction.]

All was smiles and blandishment in the fort at Montreal; presents were exchanged, and the deputies departed, bearing home golden reports of the French. An Oneida deputation soon followed; but the enraged Mohawks still infested Montreal and beleaguered Three Rivers, till one of their principal chiefs and four of their best warriors were captured by a party of Christian Hurons. Then, seeing themselves abandoned by the other nations of the league and left to wage the war alone, they, too, made overtures of peace.

A grand council was held at Quebec. Speeches were made, and wampum-belts exchanged. The Iroquois left some of their chief men as pledges of sincerity, and two young soldiers offered themselves as reciprocal pledges on the part of the French. The war was over; at least Canada had found a moment to take breath for the next struggle. The fur trade was restored again, with promise of plenty; for the beaver, profiting by the quarrels of their human foes, had of late greatly multiplied. It was a change from death to life; for Canada lived on the beaver, and, robbed of this, her only sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began. *

“Yesterday,” writes Father Le Mercier, “all was dejection and gloom; to-day, all is smiles and gayety. On Wednesday, massacre, burning, and pillage; on Thursday, gifts and visits, as among friends. If the Iroquois have their hidden designs, so, too, has God.

On the day of the Visitation of the Holy Virgin, the chief, Aontarisati, [4] so regretted by the Iroquois, was taken prisoner by our Indians, instructed by our fathers, and baptized; and, on the same day, being put to death, he ascended to heaven. I doubt not that he thanked the Virgin for his misfortune and the blessing that followed, and that he prayed to God for his countrymen.

[4: The chief whose death had so enraged the Mohawks.]

The people of Montreal made a solemn vow to celebrate publicly the fête of this mother of all blessings; whereupon the Iroquois came to ask for peace.

It was on the day of the Assumption of this Queen of angels and of men that the Hurons took at Montreal that other famous Iroquois chief, whose capture caused the Mohawks to seek our alliance.

On the day when the Church honors the Nativity of the Holy Virgin, the Iroquois granted Father Poncet his life; and he, or rather the Holy Virgin and the holy angels, labored so well in the work of peace, that on St. Michael’s Day it was resolved in a council of the elders that the father should be conducted to Quebec, and a lasting treaty made with the French.”

[According to Le Mercier, beaver to the value of from 200,000 to 300,000 livres was yearly brought down to the colony before the destruction of the Hurons (1649-50). Three years later, not one beaver skin was brought to Montreal during a twelvemonth, and Three Rivers and Quebec had barely enough to pay for keeping the fortifications in repair.]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 1 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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