Quebec Rejoices, Boston in Gloom

Three thousand men, in part regular troops, defending one of the strongest positions on the continent, and commanded by Frontenac beat off the colonial British.

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 13.

Walley, who with his main body had stood in arms all day, now called in the skirmishers, and fell back to the landing-place, where, as soon as it grew dark, the boats arrived from the fleet. The sick men, of whom there were many, were sent on board, and then, amid floods of rain, the whole force embarked in noisy confusion, leaving behind them in the mud five of their cannon. Hasty as was their parting, their conduct on the whole had been creditable; and La Hontan, who was in Quebec at the time, says of them,

They fought vigorously, though as ill-disciplined as men gathered together at random could be; for they did not lack courage, and, if they failed, it was by reason of their entire ignorance of discipline, and because they were exhausted by the fatigues of the voyage.”

Of Phips he speaks with contempt and says that he could not have served the French better if they had bribed him to stand all the while with his arms folded. Some allowance should, nevertheless, be made him for the unmanageable character of the force under his command, the constitution of which was fatal to military subordination.

On Sunday, the morning after the re-embarkation, Phips called a council of officers, and it was resolved that the men should rest for a day or two, that there should be a meeting for prayer, and that, if ammunition enough could be found, another landing should be attempted; but the rough weather prevented the prayer-meeting, and the plan of a new attack was fortunately abandoned.

Quebec remained in agitation and alarm till Tuesday, when Phips weighed anchor and disappeared, with all his fleet, behind the Island of Orleans. He did not go far, as indeed he could not, but stopped four leagues below to mend rigging, fortify wounded masts, and stop shot-holes. Subercase had gone with a detachment to watch the retiring enemy; and Phips was repeatedly seen among his men, on a scaffold at the side of his ship, exercising his old trade of carpenter. This delay was turned to good use by an exchange of prisoners. Chief among those in the hands of the French was Captain Davis, late commander at Casco Bay; and there were also two young daughters of Lieutenant Clark, who had been killed at the same place. Frontenac himself had humanely ransomed these children from the Indians; and Madame de Champigny, wife of the intendant, had, with equal kindness, bought from them a little girl named Sarah Gerrish, and placed her in charge of the nuns at the Hôtel-Dieu, who had become greatly attached to her, while she, on her part, left them with reluctance. The French had the better in these exchanges, receiving able-bodied men, and returning, with the exception of Davis, only women and children.

The heretics were gone, and Quebec breathed freely again. Her escape had been a narrow one; not that three thousand men, in part regular troops, defending one of the strongest positions on the continent, and commanded by Frontenac, could not defy the attacks of two thousand raw fishermen and farmers, led by an ignorant civilian, but the numbers which were a source of strength were at the same time a source of weakness. [1] Nearly all the adult males of Canada were gathered at Quebec, and there was imminent danger of starvation. Cattle from the neighboring parishes had been hastily driven into the town; but there was little other provision, and before Phips retreated the pinch of famine had begun. Had he come a week earlier or stayed a week later, the French themselves believed that Quebec would have fallen, in the one case for want of men, and in the other for want of food.

[1: The smallpox had left probably less than 2,000 effective men in the fleet when it arrived before Quebec. The number of regular troops in Canada by the roll of 1689 was 1,418. Nothing had since occurred to greatly diminish the number. Callières left about fifty in Montreal, and perhaps also a few in the neighboring forts. The rest were in Quebec.]

The Lower Town had been abandoned by its inhabitants, who bestowed their families and their furniture within the solid walls of the seminary. The cellars of the Ursuline convent were filled with women and children, and many more took refuge at the Hôtel-Dieu. The beans and cabbages in the garden of the nuns were all stolen by the soldiers; and their wood-pile was turned into bivouac fires. “We were more dead than alive when we heard the cannon,” writes Mother Juchereau; but the Jesuit Fremin came to console them, and their prayers and their labors never ceased. On the day when the firing was heaviest, twenty-six balls fell into their yard and garden, and were sent to the gunners at the batteries, who returned them to their English owners. At the convent of the Ursulines, the corner of a nun’s apron was carried off by a cannon-shot as she passed through her chamber. The sisterhood began a novena, or nine days’ devotion, to St. Joseph, St. Ann, the angels, and the souls in purgatory; and one of their number remained day and night in prayer before the images of the Holy Family. The bishop came to encourage them; and his prayers and his chants were so fervent that they thought their last hour was come.

[Récit d’une Réligieuse Ursuline, in Les Ursulines de Québec, I. 470.]

The superior of the Jesuits, with some of the elder members of the Order, remained at their college during the attack, ready, should the heretics prevail, to repair to their chapel, and die before the altar. Rumor exaggerated the numbers of the enemy, and a general alarm pervaded the town. It was still greater at Lorette, nine miles distant. The warriors of that mission were in the first skirmish at Beauport; and two of them, running off in a fright, reported at the village that the enemy were carrying everything before them. On this, the villagers fled to the woods, followed by Father Germain, their missionary, to whom this hasty exodus suggested the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. [2] The Jesuits were thought to have special reason to fear the Puritan soldiery, who, it was reported, meant to kill them all, after cutting off their ears to make necklaces. [3]

[2: “Il nous ressouvint alors de la fuite de Nostre Seigneur en Égypte.” Père Germain, Relation.

[3: Ibid.]

When news first came of the approach of Phips, the bishop was absent on a pastoral tour. Hastening back, he entered Quebec at night, by torchlight, to the great joy of its inmates, who felt that his presence brought a benediction. He issued a pastoral address, exhorting his flock to frequent and full confession and constant attendance at mass, as the means of ensuring the success of their arms. [4] Laval, the former bishop, aided his efforts. “We appealed,” he writes, “to God, his Holy Mother, to all the Angels, and to all the Saints.” [5] Nor was the appeal in vain: for each day seemed to bring some new token of celestial favor; and it is not surprising that the headwinds which delayed the approach of the enemy, the cold and the storms which hastened his departure, and, above all, his singularly innocent cannonade, which killed but two or three persons, should have been accepted as proof of divine intervention. It was to the Holy Virgin that Quebec had been most lavish of its vows, and to her the victory was ascribed.

[4: Lettre pastorale pour disposer les Peuples de ce Diocèse à se bien déffendre contre les Anglois (Reg. de l’Évêché de Québec).]

[5: Laval à — — — , Nov. 20, 1690.]

One great anxiety still troubled the minds of the victors. Three ships, bringing large sums of money and the yearly supplies for the colony, were on their way to Quebec; and nothing was more likely than that the retiring fleet would meet and capture them. Messengers had been sent down the river, who passed the English in the dark, found the ships at St. Paul’s Bay, and warned them of the danger. They turned back and hid themselves within the mouth of the Saguenay; but not soon enough to prevent Phips from discovering their retreat. He tried to follow them; but thick fogs arose, with a persistent tempest of snow, which completely baffled him, and, after waiting five days, he gave over the attempt. When he was gone, the three ships emerged from their hiding-place, and sailed again for Quebec, where they were greeted with a universal jubilee. Their deliverance was ascribed to Saint Ann, the mother of the Virgin, and also to St. Francis Xavier, whose name one of them bore.

Quebec was divided between thanksgiving and rejoicing. The captured flag of Phips’s ship was borne to the cathedral in triumph; the bishop sang Te Deum; and, amid the firing of cannon, the image of the Virgin was carried to each church and chapel in the place by a procession, in which priests, people, and troops all took part. The day closed with a grand bonfire in honor of Frontenac.

One of the three ships carried back the news of the victory, which was hailed with joy at Versailles; and a medal was struck to commemorate it. The ship carried also a dispatch from Frontenac. “Now that the king has triumphed by land and sea,” wrote the old soldier,

will he think that a few squadrons of his navy would be ill employed in punishing the insolence of these genuine old parliamentarians of Boston, and crushing them in their den and the English of New York as well? By mastering these two towns, we shall secure the whole seacoast, besides the fisheries of the Grand Bank, which is no slight matter: and this would be the true, and perhaps the only, way of bringing the wars of Canada to an end; for, when the English are conquered, we can easily reduce the Iroquois to complete submission.”

[Frontenac au Ministre, 9 et 12 Nov., 1690.]

Phips returned crestfallen to Boston late in November; and one by one the rest of the fleet came straggling after him, battered and weather-beaten. Some did not appear till February, and three or four never came at all. The autumn and early winter were unusually stormy. Captain Rainsford, with sixty men, was wrecked on the Island of Anticosti, where more than half their number died of cold and misery. [6] In the other vessels, some were drowned, some frost-bitten, and above two hundred killed by small-pox and fever.

[6: Mather, Magnalia, I. 192.]

At Boston, all was dismay and gloom. The Puritan bowed before “this awful frown of God,” and searched his conscience for the sin that had brought upon him so stern a chastisement. [6] Massachusetts, already impoverished, found herself in extremity. The war, instead of paying for itself, had burdened her with an additional debt of fifty thousand pounds. [7] The sailors and soldiers were clamorous for their pay; and, to satisfy them, the colony was forced for the first time in its history to issue a paper currency. It was made receivable at a premium for all public debts and was also fortified by a provision for its early redemption by taxation; a provision which was carried into effect in spite of poverty and distress. [8]

[6: The Governor and Council to the Agents of Massachusetts, in Andros Tracts, III. 53.]

[7: Address of the Gentry, Merchants, and others, Ibid., II. 236.]

[8: The following is a literal copy of a specimen of this paper money, which varied in value from two shillings to ten pounds: — No. (2161) 10s This Indented Bill of Ten Shillings, due from the Massachusetts Colony to the Possessor, shall be in value equal to Money, and shall be accordingly accepted by the Treasurer and Receivers subordinate to him in all Publick Payments, and for any Stock at any time in the Treasury Boston in New England, December the 10th. 1690. By Order of the General Court. Seal of Peter Townsend Masachu- Adam Winthrop } Comtee setts. Tim. Thornton When this paper came into the hands of the treasurer, it was burned. Nevertheless, owing to the temporary character of the provisional government, it fell for a time to the value of from fourteen to sixteen shillings in the pound.

In the Bibliothèque Nationale is the original draft of a remarkable map, by the engineer Villeneuve, of which a fac-simile is before me. It represents in detail the town and fortifications of Quebec, the surrounding country, and the positions of the English fleet and land forces, and is entitled PLAN DE QUÉBEC, et de ses Environs, EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, ASSIÉGÉ PAR LES ANGLOIS, le 16 d’Octobre 1690 jusqu’au 22 dud. mois qu’ils s’en allerent, apprès avoir esté bien battus PAR Mr. LE COMTE DE FRONTENAC, gouverneur general du Pays.]

Massachusetts had made her usual mistake. She had confidently believed that ignorance and inexperience could match the skill of a tried veteran, and that the rude courage of her fishermen and farmers could triumph without discipline or leadership. The conditions of her material prosperity were adverse to efficiency in war. A trading republic, without trained officers, may win victories but it wins them either by accident or by an extravagant outlay in money and life.

From Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, Chapter 13 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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