Parkman Vol. 5, Chapter 12

The triumphant success of his three war-parties produced on the Canadian people all the effect that Frontenac had expected.

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

Previously in Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. Continuing Chapter 11.

Fort Loyal was a palisade work with eight cannon, standing on rising ground by the shore of the bay, at what is now the foot of India Street in the city of Portland. Not far distant were four blockhouses and a village which they were designed to protect. These with the fort were occupied by about a hundred men, chiefly settlers of the neighborhood, under Captain Sylvanus Davis, a prominent trader. Around lay rough and broken fields stretching to the skirts of the forest half a mile distant. Some of Portneuf’s scouts met a straggling Scotchman and could not resist the temptation of killing him. Their scalp-yells alarmed the garrison, and thus the advantage of surprise was lost. Davis resolved to keep his men within their defenses, and to stand on his guard; but there was little or no discipline in the yeoman garrison, and thirty young volunteers under Lieutenant Thaddeus Clark sallied out to find the enemy. They were too successful; for, as they approached the top of a hill near the woods, they observed a number of cattle staring with a scared look at some object on the farther side of a fence; and, rightly judging that those they sought were hidden there, they raised a cheer, and ran to the spot. They were met by a fire so close and deadly that half their number were shot down. A crowd of Indians leaped the fence and rushed upon the survivors, who ran for the fort; but only four, all of whom were wounded, succeeded in reaching it.

[Relation de Monseignat; La Potherie, III. 79.]

The men in the blockhouses withdrew under cover of night to Fort Loyal, where the whole force of the English was now gathered along with their frightened families. Portneuf determined to besiege the place in form; and, after burning the village, and collecting tools from the abandoned blockhouses, he opened his trenches in a deep gully within fifty yards of the fort, where his men were completely protected. They worked so well that in three days they had wormed their way close to the palisade; and, covered as they were in their burrows, they lost scarcely a man, while their enemies suffered severely. They now summoned the fort to surrender. Davis asked for a delay of six days, which was refused; and in the morning the fight began again. For a time, the fire was sharp and heavy. The English wasted much powder in vain efforts to dislodge the besiegers from their trenches; till at length, seeing a machine loaded with a tar-barrel and other combustibles shoved against their palisades, they asked for a parley. Up to this time, Davis had supposed that his assailants were all Indians, the French being probably dressed and painted like their red allies. “We demanded,” he says,

if there were any French among them, and if they would give us quarter. They answered that they were Frenchmen, and that they would give us good quarter. Upon this, we sent out to them again to know from whence they came, and if they would give us good quarter for our men, women, and children, both wounded and sound, and (to demand) that we should have liberty to march to the next English town, and have a guard for our defense and safety; then we would surrender; and also that the governour of the French should hold up his hand and swear by the great and ever living God that the several articles should be performed: all which he did solemnly swear.”

The survivors of the garrison now filed through the gate and laid down their arms. They with their women and children were thereupon abandoned to the Indians, who murdered many of them, and carried off the rest. When Davis protested against this breach of faith, he was told that he and his countrymen were rebels against their lawful king, James II. After spiking the cannon, burning the fort, and destroying all the neighboring settlements, the triumphant allies departed for their respective homes, leaving the slain unburied where they had fallen.

[Their remains were buried by Captain Church, three years later.

On the capture of Fort Loyal, compare Monseignat and La Potherie with Mather, Magnalia, II. 603, and the Declaration of Sylvanus Davis, in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 101. Davis makes curious mistakes in regard to French names, his rustic ear not being accustomed to the accents of the Gallic tongue. He calls Courtemanche, Monsieur Corte de March, and Portneuf, Monsieur Burniffe or Burneffe. To these contemporary authorities may be added the account given by Le Clercq, Établissement de la Foy, II. 393, and a letter from Governor Bradstreet of Massachusetts to Jacob Leisler in Doc. Hist. N. Y., II. 259. The French writers of course say nothing of any violation of faith on the part of the victors, but they admit that the Indians kept most of the prisoners. Scarcely was the fort taken, when four English vessels appeared in the harbor, too late to save it. Willis, in his History of Portland (ed. 1865), gives a map of Fort Loyal and the neighboring country. In the Massachusetts archives is a letter from Davis, written a few days before the attack, complaining that his fort is in wretched condition.]

Davis with three or four others, more fortunate than their companions, was kept by the French, and carried to Canada. “They were kind to me,” he says, “on my travels through the country. I arrived at Quebeck the 14th of June, where I was civilly treated by the gentry, and soon carried to the fort before the governour, the Earl of Frontenack.” Frontenac told him that the governor and people of New York were the cause of the war, since they had stirred up the Iroquois against Canada, and prompted them to torture French prisoners. [1] Davis replied that New York and New England were distinct and separate governments, each of which must answer for its own deeds; and that New England would gladly have remained at peace with the French, if they had not set on the Indians to attack her peaceful settlers. Frontenac admitted that the people of New England were not to be regarded in the same light with those who had stirred up the Indians against Canada; but he added that they were all rebels to their king, and that if they had been good subjects there would have been no war. “I do believe,” observes the captive Puritan, “that there was a popish design against the Protestant interest in New England as in other parts of the world.” He told Frontenac of the pledge given by his conqueror, and the violation of it. “We were promised good quarter,” he reports himself to have said, “and a guard to conduct us to our English; but now we are made captives and slaves in the hands of the heathen. I thought I had to do with Christians that would have been careful of their engagements, and not to violate and break their oaths. Whereupon the governour shaked his head, and, as I was told, was very angry with Burniffe (Portneuf).”

[1: I am unable to discover the foundation of this last charge.]

Frontenac was pleased with his prisoner, whom he calls a bonhomme. He told him in broken English to take courage and promised him good treatment; to which Davis replied that his chief concern was not for himself, but for the captives in the hands of the Indians. Some of these were afterwards ransomed by the French, and treated with much kindness, as was also Davis himself, to whom the count gave lodging in the château.

The triumphant success of his three war-parties produced on the Canadian people all the effect that Frontenac had expected. This effect was very apparent, even before the last two victories had become known. “You cannot believe, Monseigneur,” wrote the governor, speaking of the capture of Schenectady, “the joy that this slight success has caused, and how much it contributes to raise the people from their dejection and terror.”

One untoward accident damped the general joy for a moment. A party of Iroquois Christians from the Saut St. Louis had made a raid against the English borders and were returning with prisoners. One evening, as they were praying at their camp near Lake Champlain, they were discovered by a band of Algonquins and Abenakis who were out on a similar errand, and who, mistaking them for enemies, set upon them and killed several of their number, among whom was Kryn, the great Mohawk, chief of the mission of the Saut. This mishap was near causing a rupture between the best Indian allies of the colony; but the difference was at length happily adjusted, and the relatives of the slain propitiated by gifts.

[The attacking party consisted of some of the Abenakis and Algonquins who had been with Hertel, and who had left the main body after the destruction of Salmon Falls. Several of them were killed in the skirmish, and among the rest their chief, Hopehood, or Wohawa, “that memorable tygre,” as Cotton Mather calls him.]

Chapter 12

When Frontenac sent his war-parties against New York and New England, it was in the hope not only of reanimating the Canadians, but also of teaching the Iroquois that they could not safely rely on English aid, and of inciting the Abenakis to renew their attacks on the border settlements. He imagined, too, that the British colonies could be chastised into prudence and taught a policy of conciliation towards their Canadian neighbors, but he mistook the character of these bold and vigorous though not martial communities. The plan of a combined attack on Canada seems to have been first proposed by the Iroquois; and New York and the several governments of New England, smarting under French and Indian attacks, hastened to embrace it. Early in May, a congress of their delegates was held in the city of New York. It was agreed that the colony of that name should furnish four hundred men, and Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut three hundred and fifty-five jointly; while the Iroquois afterwards added their worthless pledge to join the expedition with nearly all their warriors. The colonial militia were to rendezvous at Albany, and thence advance upon Montreal by way of Lake Champlain. Mutual jealousies made it difficult to agree upon a commander; but Winthrop of Connecticut was at length placed at the head of the feeble and discordant band.

While Montreal was thus assailed by land, Massachusetts and the other New England colonies were invited to attack Quebec by sea; a task formidable in difficulty and in cost, and one that imposed on them an inordinate share in the burden of the war. Massachusetts hesitated. She had no money, and she was already engaged in a less remote and less critical enterprise. During the winter, her commerce had suffered from French cruisers, which found convenient harborage at Port Royal, whence also the hostile Indians were believed to draw supplies. Seven vessels, with two hundred and eighty-eight sailors, were impressed, and from four to five hundred militiamen were drafted for the service. [1] That rugged son of New England, Sir William Phips, was appointed to the command. He sailed from Nantasket at the end of April, reached Port Royal on the eleventh of May, landed his militia, and summoned Meneval, the governor, to surrender. The fort, though garrisoned by about seventy soldiers, was scarcely in condition to repel an assault; and Meneval yielded without resistance, first stipulating, according to French accounts, that private property should be respected, the church left untouched, and the troops sent to Quebec or to France. [2] It was found, however, that during the parley a quantity of goods, belonging partly to the king and partly to merchants of the place, had been carried off and hidden in the woods. [3] Phips thought this a sufficient pretext for plundering the merchants, imprisoning the troops, and desecrating the church. “We cut down the cross,” writes one of his followers, “rifled their church, pulled down their high altar, and broke their images.” [4] The houses of the two priests were also pillaged. The people were promised security to life, liberty, and property, on condition of swearing allegiance to King William and Queen Mary; “which,” says the journalist, “they did with great acclamation,” and thereupon they were left unmolested. [5] The lawful portion of the booty included twenty-one pieces of cannon, with a considerable sum of money belonging to the king. The smaller articles, many of which were taken from the merchants and from such of the settlers as refused the oath, were packed in hogsheads and sent on board the ships. Phips took no measures to secure his conquest, though he commissioned a president and six councilors, chosen from the inhabitants, to govern the settlement till farther orders from the crown or from the authorities of Massachusetts. The president was directed to constrain nobody in the matter of religion; and he was assured of protection and support so long as he remained “faithful to our government,” that is, the government of Massachusetts. [6] The little Puritan commonwealth already gave itself airs of sovereignty.

[1: Summary of Muster Roll, appended to A Journal of the Expedition from Boston against Port Royal, among the papers of George Chalmers in the Library of Harvard College.]

[2: Relation de la Prise du Port Royal par les Anglois de Baston, pièce anonyme, 27 Mai, 1690.]

[3: Journal of the Expedition from Boston against Port Royal.]

[4: Ibid.]

[5: Relation de Monseignat. Nevertheless, a considerable number seem to have refused the oath, and to have been pillaged. The Relation de la Prise du Port Royal par les Anglois de Baston, written on the spot immediately after the event, says that, except that nobody was killed, the place was treated as if taken by assault. Meneval also says that the inhabitants were pillaged. Meneval au Ministre, 29 Mai, 1690; also Rapport de Champigny, Oct., 1690. Meneval describes the New England men as excessively irritated at the late slaughter of settlers at Salmon Falls and elsewhere.

[6: Journal of the Expedition, etc.]

From Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, Chapter 12 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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