Parkman Vol. 4, Chapter 11

This arctic serenity of the elements was varied at times by heavy snow-storms.

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

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada. Continuing chapter 10.

Carignan-Salières was the first regiment of regular troops ever sent to America by the French government. It was raised in Savoy by the Prince of Carignan in 1644, but was soon employed in the service of France; where, in 1652, it took a conspicuous part, on the side of the king, in the battle with Condé and the Fronde at the Porte St. Antoine. After the peace of the Pyrenees, the Prince of Carignan, unable to support the regiment, gave it to the king, and it was, for the first time, incorporated into the French armies. In 1664, it distinguished itself, as part of the allied force of France, in the Austrian war against the Turks. In the next year it was ordered to America, along with the fragment of a regiment formed of Germans, the whole being placed under the command of Colonel de Salières. Hence its double name.

[For a long notice of the regiment of Carignan-Salières (Lorraine), see Susane, Ancienne Infanterie Française V 236. The portion of it which returned to France from Canada formed a nucleus for the reconstruction of the regiment, which, under the name of the regiment of Lorraine, did not cease to exist as a separate organization till 1794. When it came to Canada it consisted, says Susane, of about a thousand men, besides about two hundred of the other regiment incorporated with it. Compare Mémoire du Roy pour servir d’instruction au Sieur Talon, which corresponds very nearly with Susane’s statement.]

Fifteen heretics were discovered in its ranks, and quickly converted. [1] Then the new crusade was preached; the crusade against the Iroquois, enemies of God and tools of the devil. The soldiers and the people were filled with a zeal half warlike and half religious. “They are made to understand,” writes Mother Mary, “that this is a holy war, all for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The fathers are doing wonders in inspiring them with true sentiments of piety and devotion. Fully five hundred soldiers have taken the scapulary of the Holy Virgin. It is we (the Ursulines), who make them; it is a real pleasure to do such work;” and she proceeds to relate a “beau miracle” by which God made known his satisfaction at the fervor of his military servants.

[1: Besides these, there was Berthier, a captain, “Voilà” writes Talon to the king, “le 16me converti; ainsi votre Majesté moissonne déjà à pleines mains de la gloire pour Dieu, et pour elle bien de la renommée dans toute l’étendue de la Chrétienté” Lettre au 7 Oct., 1665.]

The secular motives for the war were in themselves strong enough; for the growth of the colony absolutely demanded the cessation of Iroquois raids, and the French had begun to learn the lesson that, in the case of hostile Indians, no good can come of attempts to conciliate, unless respect is first imposed by a sufficient castigation. It is true that the writers of the time paint Iroquois hostilities in their worst colors. In the innumerable letters which Mother Mary of the Incarnation sent home every autumn, by the returning ships, she spared no means to gain the sympathy and aid of the devout; and, with similar motives, the Jesuits in their printed Relations, took care to extenuate nothing of the miseries which the pious colony endured. Avaugour, too, in urging the sending out of a strong force to fortify and hold the country, had advised that, in order to furnish a pretext and disarm the jealousy of the English and Dutch, exaggerated accounts should be given of danger from the side of the savage confederates. Yet, with every allowance, these dangers and sufferings were sufficiently great.

The three upper nations of the Iroquois were comparatively pacific; but the two lower nations, the Mohawks and Oneidas, were persistently hostile; making inroads into the colony by way of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu, murdering and scalping, and then vanishing like ghosts. Tracy’s first step was to send a strong detachment to the Richelieu to build a picket fort below the rapids of Chambly, which take their name from that of the officer in command. An officer named Sorel soon afterwards built a second fort on the site of the abandoned palisade work built by Montmagny, at the mouth of the river, where the town of Sorel now stands; and Salières, colonel of the regiment, added a third fort, two or three leagues above Chambly. [2] These forts could not wholly bar the passage against the nimble and wily warriors who might pass them in the night, shouldering their canoes through the woods. A blow, direct and hard, was needed, and Tracy prepared to strike it.

[2: See the map in the Relation of 1665. The accompanying text of the Relation is incorrect.]

Late in the season an embassy from the three upper nations — the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas — arrived at Quebec, led by Garacontié, a famous chief whom the Jesuits had won over, and who proved ever after a staunch friend of the French. They brought back the brave Charles Le Moyne of Montreal, whom they had captured some three months before, and now restored as a peace-offering, taking credit to themselves that “not even one of his nails had been torn out, nor any part of his body burnt.” [3] Garacontié made a peace speech, which, as rendered by the Jesuits, was an admirable specimen of Iroquois eloquence; but, while joining hands with him and his companions, the French still urged on their preparations to chastise the contumacious Mohawks.

[3: Explanation of the eleven Presents of the Iroquois Ambassadors. N. Y Colonial Docs.. IX. 37]

Chapter 11

“The governor, Courcelle”, says Father Le Meircier, “breathed nothing but war,” and was bent on immediate action. He was for the present subordinate to Tracy, who, however, forebore to cool his ardor, and allowed him to proceed. The result was an enterprise bold to rashness. Courcelle, with about five hundred men, prepared to march in the depth of a Canadian winter to the Mohawk towns, a distance estimated at three hundred leagues. Those who knew the country, vainly urged the risks and difficulties of the attempt. The adventurous governor held fast to his purpose, and only waited till the St. Lawrence should be well frozen. Early in January, it was a solid floor; and on the ninth the march began. Officers and men stopped at Sillery, and knelt in the little mission chapel before the shrine of Saint Michael, to ask the protection and aid of the warlike archangel; then they resumed their course, and, with their snowshoes tied at their backs, walked with difficulty and toil over the bare and slippery ice. A keen wind swept the river, and the fierce cold gnawed them to the bone. Ears, noses, fingers, hands, and knees were frozen; some fell in torpor, and were dragged on by their comrades to the shivering bivouac. When, after a march of ninety miles, they reached Three Rivers, a considerable number were disabled, and had to be left behind; but others joined them from the garrison, and they set out again. Ascending the Richelieu, and passing the new forts at Sorel and Chambly, they reached at the end of the month the third fort, called Ste. Thérèse. On the thirtieth they left it, and continued their march up the frozen stream. About two hundred of them were Canadians, and of these seventy were old Indian-fighters from Montreal, versed in woodcraft, seasoned to the climate, and trained among dangers and alarms. Courcelle quickly learned their value, and his “Blue Coats,” as he called them, were always placed in the van. [4] Here, wrapped in their coarse blue capotes, with blankets and provisions strapped at their backs, they strode along on snowshoes, which recent storms had made indispensable. The regulars followed as they could. They were not yet the tough and experienced woodsmen that they and their descendants afterwards became; and their snow-shoes embarrassed them, burdened as they were with the heavy loads which all carried alike, from Courcelle to the lowest private.

[4: Doll du Montréal, a.d. 1665, 1666.]

Lake Champlain lay glaring in the winter sun, a sheet of spotless snow; and the wavy ridges of the Adirondack? bordered the dazzling landscape with the cold gray of their denuded forests. The long procession of weary men crept slowly on under the lee of the shore; and when night came they bivouacked by squads among the trees, dug away the snow with their snowshoes, piled it in a bank around them, built their fire in the middle, and crouched about it on beds of spruce or hemlock; [5] while, as they lay close packed for mutual warmth, the winter sky arched them like a vault of burnished steel, sparkling with the cold diamond luster of its myriads of stars. This arctic serenity of the elements was varied at times by heavy snow-storms; and, before they reached their journey’s end, the earth and the ice were buried to the unusual depth of four feet. From Lake Champlain they passed to Lake George, [6] and the frigid glories of its snow-wrapped mountains; thence crossed to the Hudson and groped their way through the woods in search of the Mohawk towns. They soon went astray; for thirty Algonquins, whom they had taken as guides, had found the means of a grand debauch at Fort Ste. Thérèse, drunk themselves into helplessness, and lingered behind. Thus Courcelle and his men mistook the path, and, marching by way of Saratoga Lake and Long Lake, [7] found themselves, on Saturday the twentieth of February, close to the little Dutch hamlet of Corlaer or Schenectady. Here the chief man in authority told them that most of the Mohawks and Oneidas had gone to war with another tribe. They, however, caught a few stragglers, and had a smart skirmish with a party of warriors, losing an officer and several men. Half frozen and half starved, they encamped in the neighboring woods, where, on Sunday, three envoys appeared from Albany, to demand why they had invaded the territories of his Royal Highness the Duke of York. It was now that they learned for the first time that the New Netherlands had passed into English hands, a change which boded no good to Canada. The envoys seemed to take their explanations in good part, made them a present of wine and provisions, and allowed them to buy further supplies from the Dutch of Schenectady. They even invited them to enter the village, but Courcelle declined, partly because the place could not hold them all, and partly because he feared that his men, once seated in a chimney-corner, could never be induced to leave it.

[5: One of the men, telling the story of their sufferings to Daniel Gookin, of Massachusetts, indicated this as their mode of encamping. See Mass. Hist. Coll., first series, I. 161.]

[6: Carte des grands lacs, Ontario et autres… et des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle our aller attaquer les agniés (Mohawks), 1666.]

[7: Carte… des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle, etc.]

Their position was cheerless enough; for the vast beds of snow around them were soaking slowly under a sullen rain, and there was danger that the lakes might thaw and cut off their retreat. “Ye Mohaukes,” says the old English report of the affair, “were all gone to their Castles with resolution to fight it out against the french, who, being refresht and supplyed with the aforesaid provisions, made a shew of marching towards the Mohaukes Castles, but with faces about, and great sylence and dilligence, return’d towards Cannada.” “Surely,” observes the narrator, “so bould and hardy an attempt hath not hapned in any age.” [8] The end hardly answered to the beginning. The retreat, which began on Sunday night, was rather precipitate. The Mohawks hovered about their rear and took a few prisoners; but famine and cold proved more deadly foes, and sixty men perished before they reached the shelter of Fort Ste. Thérèse. On the eighth of March, Courcelle came to the neighboring fort of St. Louis or Chambly. Here he found the Jesuit Albanel acting as chaplain; and, being in great ill humor, he charged him with causing the failure of the expedition by detaining the Algonquin guides. This singular notion took such possession of him, that, when a few days after he met the Jesuit Frémin at Three Rivers, he embraced him ironically, saying, at the same time, “My father, I am the unluckiest gentleman in the world; and you, and the rest of you, are the cause of it.” [9] The pious Tracy, and the prudent Talon, tried to disarm his suspicions, and with such success that he gave up an intention he had entertained of discarding his Jesuit confessor, and forgot or forgave the imagined wrong.

[8: A Relation of the Governr. of Cannada, his March with 600 Volunteire into if Territoryes of His Roy all Highnesse the Duke of Yorke in America. See Doc. Hist. N. Y. I. 71.]

[9: Journal des Jésuites, Mars, 1666.]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 11 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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