Montreal Sacked

Today’s installment concludes The Lachine Massacre,
our selection from Histoire du Canada by François Xavier Garneau published in 1848.

If you have journeyed through the installments of this series so far, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of three thousand words. Congratulations! For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Lachine Massacre.

Time: 1689
Place: Montreal

The Iroquois wait only for the signal from their leaders to fall on. It is given. In short space the doors and the windows of the dwellings are driven in; the sleepers dragged from their beds; men, women, children all struggling in the hands of their butchers. Such houses as the savages cannot force their way into, they fire; and as the flames reach the persons of those within, intolerable pain drives them forth to meet death beyond the threshold, from beings who know no pity. The more fiendish murderers even forced parents to throw their children into the flames. Two hundred persons were burned alive; others died under prolonged tortures. Many were reserved to perish similarly, at a future time. The fair island upon which the sun shone brightly erewhile, was lighted up by fires of woe; houses, plantations, and crops were reduced to ashes, while the ground reeked with blood up to a line a short league apart from Montreal city. The ravagers crossed to the opposite shore, the desolation behind them being complete, and forthwith the parish of Le Chenaie was wasted by fire and many of its people massacred. The colonists for many leagues around the devoted region seem to have been actually paralyzed by the brain-blow thus dealt their compatriots by the relentless savages, as no one seems to have moved a step to arrest their course; for they were left in undisturbed possession of the country during several weeks. On hearing of the invasion, Denonville lost his self-possession altogether. When numbers of the colonists, recovering from their stupor, came up armed desiring to be led against the murderers of their countrymen, he sent them back or forbade them to stir! Several opportunities presented themselves for disposing of parties of the barbarians, when reckless from drink after their orgies, or when roving about in scattered parties feeble in number; but the Governor-general’s positive orders to refrain from attacking them withheld the uplifted hand from striking.

In face of a prohibition so authoritative, the soldiers and the inhabitants alike could only look on and wait till the savages should find it convenient to retire. Some small skirmishing, indeed, there was at a few distant points between the people and their invaders. Thus a party of men, partly French and partly natives, led by Larobeyre, an ex-lieutenant, on the way to reënforce Fort Roland, where Chevalier de Vaudreuil commanded, were set upon and all killed or dispersed. More than half of the prisoners taken were burned by their conquerors. Larobeyre, being wounded and not able to fire, was led captive by the Iroquois to their country, and roasted at a slow fire in presence of the assembled tribe of his captors. Meantime the resistance to the barbarians being little or none in the regions they overran, they slew most of the inhabitants they met in their passage; while their course was marked, wherever they went, by lines of flame.

Their bands moved rapidly from one devoted tract to another; yet wherever they had to face concerted resistance–which in some cases, at least, put a fitting obstacle in the way of their intended ravagings–they turned aside and sought an easier prey elsewhere. In brief, during ten entire weeks or more, did they wreak their wrath, almost unchecked, upon the fairest region of Canada, and did not retire thence till about mid-October.

The Governor-General having sent a party of observation to assure himself of the enemy having decamped, this detachment observed a canoe on the Lake of the Two Mountains, bearing twenty-two of the retiring Iroquois. The Canadians, who were of about the same number, embarked in two boats and, nearing the savages, coolly received their fire; but in returning the discharge, each singled out his man, when eighteen of the Iroquois were at once laid low.

However difficult it may have been to put the people of a partially cleared country, surrounded with forests, on their guard against such an irruption as the foregoing, it is difficult to account for their total unpreparedness without imputing serious blame to Denonville and his subalterns in office. That he exercised no proper influence, in the first place, was evident, and the small use he made of the means he had at his disposal when the crisis arrived was really something to marvel at. He was plainly unequal to the occasion, and his incapacity in every particular made it quite impossible for his presence, as chief of the colony, to be endured any longer. There is little doubt that had he not been soon recalled by royal order, the colonists themselves would have set him aside. The latter season of his inglorious administration took the lugubrious name “the Year of the Massacre.”

[The Five Nations, being at war with the French, made a sudden descent on Montreal, burned and sacked the town, killed one hundred of the inhabitants, carrying away a number of prisoners whom they burned alive, and then returned to their own country with the loss of only a few of their number. Had the English followed up the success of their allies, all Canada might have been easily conquered.–ED.]

The man appointed through a happy inspiration to supersede M. de Denonville had now reached the Lower Canadian waters. He was no other than the Count de Frontenac. It appears that the King, willing to cover, with a handsome pretext, the recall of Denonville, in a letter dated May 31st, advertised him that, war having been rekindled in Europe, his military talents would be of the greatest use in home service. By this time De Frontenac was called to give counsel regarding the projects of the Chevalier de Callières, and assist in preparing the way for their realization if considered feasible. Meanwhile he undertook to resume his duties as governor-general of New France; but a series of events delayed his arrival in Canada till the autumn of 1689.

He landed at Québec on October 18th, at 8 P.M., accompanied by De Callières, amid the heartiest demonstrations of popular welcome. The public functionaries and armed citizens in waiting, with torch-bearers, escorted him through the city, which was spontaneously illuminated, to his quarters. His return was hailed by all, but by none more than the Jesuits, who had, in fact for years before, labored to obtain his recall. The nobles, the merchants, the business class, gave him so hearty a reception as to convince him that real talent such as his must in the end rise superior to all the conjoined efforts of faction, public prejudices, and the evil passions of inferior minds.

War was declared against Britain in the month of June. M. de Frontenac, on resuming the reins of government, had to contend both against the Anglo-American colonies and the Five Nations. His energy and skill, however, overcame all obstacles; the war was most glorious for the Canadians, so few in number compared with their adversaries; and far from succumbing to their enemies, they carried the war into the adversaries’ camp and struck at the heart of their most remote possessions.

This ends our series of passages on The Lachine Massacre by François Xavier Garneau from his book Histoire du Canada published in 1848. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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