The Company of the West

Louis XIV. was resolved that a new France should be added to the old.

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.

Scarcely was the grand machine set in motion, when its directors betrayed a narrowness and blindness of policy which boded the enterprise no good. Canada was a chief sufferer. Once more, bound hand and foot, she was handed over to a selfish league of merchants; monopoly in trade, monopoly in religion, monopoly in government. Nobody but the company had a right to bring her the necessaries of life; and nobody but the company had a right to exercise the traffic which alone could give her the means of paying for these necessaries. Moreover, the supplies which it brought were insufficient, and the prices which it demanded were exorbitant. It was throttling its wretched victim. The Canadian merchants remonstrated. [1] It was clear that, if the colony was to live, the system must be changed; and a change was accordingly ordered. The company gave up its monopoly of the fur trade, but reserved the right to levy a duty of one-fourth of the beaver-skins, and one-tenth of the moose-skins: and it also reserved the entire trade of Tadoussac; that is to say, the trade of all the tribes between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson’s Bay. [2] It retained besides the exclusive right of transporting furs in its own ships, thus controlling the commerce of Canada, and discouraging, or rather extinguishing, the enterprise of Canadian merchants. On its part, it was required to pay governors, judges, and all the colonial officials out of the duties which it levied. [3]

[1: Commission de Lieutenant Général en Canada, etc., pour M. de Courcelle, 23 Mais, 1665; Commission d’intendant de la Justice, Police, et Finances en Canada, etc., pour M. Talon, 23 Mars, 1665.]

[2: Commission de Lieutenant Général de l’Amérique Méridionale et Septentrionale pour M. Prou Conseil du Roy qui accorde a la Compagnie le quart des castors, le dixième des orignaux et la traite de Tadoussac: Instruction a Monseigneur de Tracy et a Messieurs le Gouverneur et L’Intendant.]

This company prospered as little as the rest of Colbert’s trading companies. Within ten years it lost 3,523,000 livres, besides blighting the colonies placed under its control. Recherches sur les Finances, cited by Clement, Histoire de Colbert.]

[3: Commission de Lieutenant Général en Canada, etc., pour M. de Courcelle, 23 Mais, 1665; Commission d’intendant de la Justice, Police, et Finances en Canada, etc., pour M. Talon, 23 Mars, 1665.]

Yet the king had the prosperity of Canada at heart; and he proceeded to show his interest in her after a manner hardly consistent with his late action in handing her over to a mercenary guardian. In fact, he acted as if she had still remained under his paternal care. He had just conferred the right of naming a governor and intendant upon the new company; but he now assumed it himself, the company, with a just sense of its own unfitness, readily consenting to this suspension of one of its most important privileges. Daniel de Rémy, Sieur de Courcelle, was appointed governor, and Jean Baptiste Talon intendant. [4] The nature of this duplicate government will appear hereafter. But, before appointing rulers for Canada, the king had appointed a representative of the Crown for all his American domains. The Maréchal d’Estrades had for some time held the title of viceroy for America; and, as he could not fulfil the duties of that office, being at the time ambassador in Holland, the Marquis de Tracy was sent in his place, with the title of lieutenant-general.

[4: Commission de Lieutenant Général de l’Amérique Méridionale et Septentrionale pour M. Prouville de Tracy, 19 Nov., 1663.]

Canada at this time was an object of very considerable attention at court, and especially in what was known as the parti dévot. The Relations of the Jesuits, appealing equally to the spirit of religion and the spirit of romantic adventure, had, for more than a quarter of a century, been the favorite reading of the devout, and the visit of Laval at court had greatly stimulated the interest they had kindled. The letters of Argenson, and especially of Avaugour, had shown the vast political possibilities of the young colony, and opened a vista of future glories alike for church and for king.

So, when Tracy set sail he found no lack of followers. A throng of young nobles embarked with him, eager to explore the marvels and mysteries of the western world. The king gave him two hundred soldiers of the regiment of Carignan-Salières and promised that a thousand more should follow. After spending more than a year in the West Indies, where, as Mother Mary of the Incarnation expresses it, “he performed marvels and reduced everybody to obedience,” he at length sailed up the St. Lawrence, and, on the thirtieth of June, 1665, anchored in the basin of Quebec. The broad, white standard, blazoned with the arms of France, proclaimed the representative of royalty; and Point Levi and Cape Diamond and the distant Cape Tourmente roared back the sound of the saluting cannon. All Quebec was on the ramparts or at the landing-place, and all eyes were strained at the two vessels as they slowly emptied their crowded decks into the boats alongside. The boats at length drew near, and the lieutenant-general and his suite landed on the quay with a pomp such as Quebec had never seen before.

Tracy was a veteran of sixty-two, portly and tall, “one of the largest men I ever saw,” writes Mother Mary; but he was sallow with disease, for fever had seized him, and it had fared ill with him on the long voyage. The Chevalier de Chaumont walked at his side, and young nobles surrounded him, gorgeous in lace and ribbons and majestic in leonine wigs. Twenty-four guards in the king’s livery led the way, followed by four pages and six valets; [5] and thus, while the Frenchmen shouted and the Indians stared, the august procession threaded the streets of the Lower Town, and climbed the steep pathway that scaled the cliffs above. Breathing hard, they reached the top, passed on the left the dilapidated walls of the fort and the shed of mingled wood and masonry which then bore the name of the Castle of St. Louis; passed on the right the old house of Couillard and the site of Laval’s new seminary, and soon reached the square betwixt the Jesuit college and the cathedral. The bells were ringing in a phrensy of welcome. Laval in pontificals, surrounded by priests and Jesuits, stood waiting to receive the deputy of the king; and, as he greeted Tracy and offered him the holy water, he looked with anxious curiosity to see what manner of man he was. The signs were auspicious. The deportment of the lieutenant-general left nothing to desire. A prie-dieu had been placed for him. He declined it. They offered him a cushion, but he would not have it; and, fevered as he was, he knelt on the bare pavement with a devotion that edified every beholder. Te Deum was sung, and a day of rejoicing followed.

[5: Juchereau says that this was his constant attendance when he went abroad.]

There was good cause. Canada, it was plain, was not to be wholly abandoned to a trading company. Louis XIV. was resolved that a new France should be added to the old. Soldiers, settlers, horses, sheep, cattle, young women for wives, were all sent out in abundance by his paternal benignity. Before the season was over, about two thousand persons had landed at Quebec at the royal charge. “At length,” writes Mother Juchereau, “our joy was completed by the arrival of two vessels with Monsieur de Courcelle, our governor; Monsieur Talon, our intendant, and the last companies of the regiment of Carignan.” More state and splendor more young nobles, more guards and valets: for Courcelle, too, says the same chronicler, “had a superb train; and Monsieur Talon, who naturally loves glory, forgot nothing which could do honor to the king.” Thus a sunbeam from the court fell for a moment on the rock of Quebec. Yet all was not sunshine; for the voyage had been a tedious one, and disease had broken out in the ships. That which bore Talon had been a hundred and seventeen days at sea [6] and others were hardly more fortunate. The hospital was crowded with the sick; so, too, were the church and the neighboring houses;

[6: Talon au ministre, 4 Oct., 1665.]

and the nuns were so spent with their labors that seven of them were brought to the point of death. The priests were busied in converting the Huguenots, a number of whom were detected among the soldiers and emigrants. One of them proved refractory, declaring with oaths that he would never renounce his faith. Falling dangerously ill, he was carried to the hospital, where Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin bethought her of a plan of conversion. She ground to powder a small piece of a bone of Father Brebeuf, the Jesuit martyr, and secretly mixed the sacred dust with the patient’s gruel; whereupon, says Mother Juchereau, “this intractable man forthwith became gentle as an angel, begged to be instructed, embraced the faith, and abjured his errors publicly with an admirable fervor.” [7]

Two or three years before, the church of Quebec had received as a gift from the Pope, the bodies or bones of two saints; Saint Flavian and Saint Félicité. They were enclosed in four large coffers or reliquaries, and a grand procession was now ordered in their honor. Tracy, Courcelle, Talon, and the agent of the company, bore the canopy of the Host. Then came the four coffers on four decorated litters, carried by the principal ecclesiastics. Laval followed in pontificals. Forty-seven priests, and a long file of officers, nobles, soldiers, and inhabitants, followed the precious relics amid the sound of music and the roar of cannon. [8]

[7: Le Mercier tells the same story in the Relation of 1665.]

[8: Compare Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre, 16 Oct., 1660, with La Tour Vie de Laval, chap. x.]

“It is a ravishing thing,” says Mother Mary, “to see how marvelously exact is Monsieur de Tracy, at all these holy ceremonies, where he is always the first to come, for he would not lose a single moment of them. He has been seen in church for six hours together, without once going out.” But while the lieutenant-general thus edified the colony, he betrayed no lack of qualities equally needful in his position. In Canada, as in the West Indies, he showed both vigor and conduct. First of all, he had been ordered to subdue or destroy the Iroquois, and the regiment of Carignan-Salières was the weapon placed in his hands for this end, Four companies of this corps had arrived early in the season, four more came with Tracy, more yet with Salières, their colonel, and now the number was complete. As with slouched hat and plume, bandoleer, and shouldered firelock, these bronzed veterans of the Turkish wars marched at the tap of drum through the narrow street, or mounted the rugged way that led up to the fort, the inhabitants gazed with a sense of profound relief. Tame Indians from the neighboring missions, wild Indians from the woods, stared in silent wonder at their new defenders. Their numbers, their discipline, their uniform, and their martial bearing, filled the savage beholders with admiration.

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 10 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.

MORE INFORMATION