Rivalry and Strife in Canada

At first, Frontenac showed great moderation, but grew vehement and then violent, as the dispute proceeded.

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 15.

This story needs explanation. Not only had the amateur actors at the château played two pieces inoffensive enough in themselves, but a report had been spread that they meant next to perform the famous “Tartuffe” of Molière, a satire which, while purporting to be levelled against falsehood, lust, greed, and ambition, covered with a mask of religion, was rightly thought by a portion of the clergy to be levelled against themselves. The friends of Frontenac say that the report was a hoax. Be this as it may, the bishop believed it. “This worthy prelate,” continues the irreverent La Motte, “was afraid of ‘Tartuffe,’ and had got it into his head that the count meant to have it played, though he had never thought of such a thing. Monsieur de Saint-Vallier sweated blood and water to stop a torrent which existed only in his imagination.” It was now that he launched his two mandates, both on the same day; one denouncing comedies in general and “Tartuffe” in particular, and the other smiting Mareuil, who, he says, “uses language capable of making Heaven blush,” and whom he elsewhere stigmatizes as “worse than a Protestant.” [1] It was Mareuil who, as reported, was to play the part of Tartuffe; and on him, therefore, the brunt of episcopal indignation fell. He was not a wholly exemplary person. “I mean,” says La Motte, “to show you the truth in all its nakedness. The fact is that, about two years ago, when the Sieur de Mareuil first came to Canada, and was carousing with his friends, he sang some indecent song or other. The count was told of it and gave him a severe reprimand. This is the charge against him. After a two years’ silence, the pastoral zeal has wakened, because a play is to be acted which the clergy mean to stop at any cost.”

[1: Mandement au Sujet des Comédies, 16 Jan., 1694; Mandement au Sujet de certaines Personnes qui tenoient des Discours impies, même date; Registre du Conseil Souverain.]

The bishop found another way of stopping it. He met Frontenac, with the intendant, near the Jesuit chapel, accosted him on the subject which filled his thoughts, and offered him a hundred pistoles if he would prevent the playing of “Tartuffe.” Frontenac laughed and closed the bargain. Saint-Vallier wrote his note on the spot; and the governor took it, apparently well pleased to have made the bishop disburse. “I thought,” writes the intendant, “that Monsieur de Frontenac would have given him back the paper.” He did no such thing but drew the money on the next day and gave it to the hospitals.

[This incident is mentioned by La Motte-Cadillac; by the intendant, who reports it to the minister; by the minister Ponchartrain, who asks Frontenac for an explanation; by Frontenac, who passes it off as a jest; and by several other contemporary writers.]

Mareuil, deprived of the sacraments, and held up to reprobation, went to see the bishop, who refused to receive him; and it is said that he was taken by the shoulders and put out of doors. He now resolved to bring his case before the council; but the bishop was informed of his purpose and anticipated it. La Motte says “he went before the council on the first of February, and denounced the Sieur de Mareuil, whom he declared guilty of impiety towards God, the Virgin, and the Saints, and made a fine speech in the absence of the count, interrupted by the effusions of a heart which seemed filled with a profound and infinite charity, but which, as he said, was pushed to extremity by the rebellion of an indocile child, who had neglected all his warnings. This was, nevertheless, assumed; I will not say entirely false.”

The bishop did, in fact, make a vehement speech against Mareuil before the council on the day in question; Mareuil stoutly defending himself, and entering his appeal against the episcopal mandate. [2] The battle was now fairly joined. Frontenac stood alone for the accused. The intendant tacitly favored his opponents. Auteuil, the attorney-general, and Villeray, the first councillor, owed the governor an old grudge; and they and their colleagues sided with the bishop, with the outside support of all the clergy, except the Récollets, who, as usual, ranged themselves with their patron. At first, Frontenac showed great moderation, but grew vehement, and then violent, as the dispute proceeded; as did also the attorney-general, who seems to have done his best to exasperate him. Frontenac affirmed that, in depriving Mareuil and others of the sacraments, with no proof of guilt and no previous warning, and on allegations which, even if true, could not justify the act, the bishop exceeded his powers, and trenched on those of the king. The point was delicate. The attorney-general avoided the issue, tried to raise others, and revived the old quarrel about Frontenac’s place in the council, which had been settled fourteen years before. Other questions were brought up, and angrily debated. The governor demanded that the debates, along with the papers which introduced them, should be entered on the record, that the king might be informed of everything but the demand was refused. The discords of the council chamber spread into the town. Quebec was divided against itself. Mareuil insulted the bishop; and some of his scapegrace sympathizers broke the prelate’s windows at night and smashed his chamber-door. [3] Mareuil was at last ordered to prison, and the whole affair was referred to the king. [4]

[2: Registre du Conseil Souverain, 1 et 8 Fév., 1694.]

[3: Champigny au Ministre, 27 Oct., 1694.]

[4: Registre du Conseil Souverain; Requeste du Sieur de Mareuil, Nov., 1694.]

These proceedings consumed the spring, the summer, and a part of the autumn. Meanwhile, an access of zeal appeared to seize the bishop; and he launched interdictions to the right and left. Even Champigny was startled when he refused the sacraments to all but four or five of the military officers for alleged tampering with the pay of their soldiers, a matter wholly within the province of the temporal authorities. [5] During a recess of the council, he set out on a pastoral tour, and, arriving at Three Rivers, excommunicated an officer named Desjordis for a reputed intrigue with the wife of another officer. He next repaired to Sorel, and, being there on a Sunday, was told that two officers had neglected to go to mass. He wrote to Frontenac, complaining of the offence. Frontenac sent for the culprits, and rebuked them; but retracted his words when they proved by several witnesses that they had been duly present at the rite. [6] The bishop then went up to Montreal, and discord went with him.

[5: Champigny au Ministre, 24 Oct., 1694. Trouble on this matter had begun some time before. Mémoire du Roy pour Frontenac et Champigny, 1694; Le Ministre à l’Évêque, 8 Mai, 1694.]

[6: La Motte-Cadillac à — — — , 28 Sept., 1694; Champigny au Ministre, 27 Oct., 1694.]

Except Frontenac alone, Callières, the local governor, was the man in all Canada to whom the country owed most; but, like his chief, he was a friend of the Récollets, and this did not commend him to the bishop. The friars were about to receive two novices into their order, and they invited the bishop to officiate at the ceremony. Callières was also present, kneeling at a prie-dieu, or prayer-desk, near the middle of the church. Saint-Vallier, having just said mass, was seating himself in his arm-chair, close to the altar, when he saw Callières at the prie-dieu, with the position of which he had already found fault as being too honorable for a subordinate governor. He now rose, approached the object of his disapproval, and said, “Monsieur, you are taking a place which belongs only to Monsieur de Frontenac.” Callières replied that the place was that which properly belonged to him. The bishop rejoined that, if he did not leave it, he himself would leave the church. “You can do as you please,” said Callières; and the prelate withdrew abruptly through the sacristy, refusing any farther part in the ceremony. [7] When the services were over, he ordered the friars to remove the obnoxious prie-dieu. They obeyed; but an officer of Callières replaced it, and, unwilling to offend him, they allowed it to remain. On this, the bishop laid their church under an interdict; that is, he closed it against the celebration of all the rites of religion. [8] He then issued a pastoral mandate, in which he charged Father Joseph Denys, their superior, with offences which he “dared not name for fear of making the paper blush.” [9] His tongue was less bashful than his pen; and he gave out publicly that the father superior had acted as go-between in an intrigue of his sister with the Chevalier de Callières. [10] It is said that the accusation was groundless, and the character of the woman wholly irreproachable. The Récollets submitted for two months to the bishop’s interdict, then refused to obey longer, and opened their church again.

[7: Procès-verbal du Père Hyacinthe Perrault, Commissaire Provincial des Récollets (Archives Nationales); Mémoire touchant le Démeslé entre M. l’Évesque de Québec et le Chevalier de Callières (Ibid.).]

[8: Mandement ordonnant de fermer l’Église des Récollets, 13 Mai, 1694.]

[9: “Le Supérieur du dit Couvent estant lié avec le Gouverneur de la dite ville par des interests que tout le monde scait et qu’on n’oseroit exprimer de peur de faire rougir le papier.” Extrait du Mandement de l’Évesque de Québec (Archives Nationales). He had before charged Mareuil with language “capable de faire rougir le ciel.”]

[10: “Mr. l’Évesque accuse publiquement le Rev. Père Joseph, supérieur des Récollets de Montréal, d’être l’entremetteur d’une galanterie entre sa sœur et le Gouverneur. Cependant Mr. l’Évesque sait certainement que le Père Joseph est l’un des meilleurs et des plus saints religieux de son ordre. Ce qu’il allègue du prétendu commerce entre le Gouverneur et la Dame de la Naudière (sœur du Père Joseph) est entièrement faux, et il l’a publié avec scandale, sans preuve et contre toute apparence, la ditte Dame ayant toujours eu une conduite irréprochable.” Mémoire touchant le Démeslé, etc. Champigny also says that the bishop has brought this charge, and that Callières declares that he has told a falsehood. Champigny au Ministre, 27 Oct., 1694.]

Quebec, Three Rivers, Sorel, and Montreal had all been ruffled by the breeze of these dissensions, and the farthest outposts of the wilderness were not too remote to feel it. La Motte-Cadillac had been sent to replace Louvigny in the command of Michillimackinac, where he had scarcely arrived, when trouble fell upon him. “Poor Monsieur de la Motte-Cadillac,” says Frontenac, “would have sent you a journal to show you the persecutions he has suffered at the post where I placed him, and where he does wonders, having great influence over the Indians, who both love and fear him, but he has had no time to copy it. Means have been found to excite against him three or four officers of the posts dependent on his, who have put upon him such strange and unheard of affronts, that I was obliged to send them to prison when they came down to the colony. A certain Father Carheil, the Jesuit who wrote me such insolent letters a few years ago, has played an amazing part in this affair. I shall write about it to Father La Chaise, that he may set it right. Some remedy must be found; for, if it continues, none of the officers who were sent to Michillimackinac, the Miamis, the Illinois, and other places, can stay there on account of the persecutions to which they are subjected, and the refusal of absolution as soon as they fail to do what is wanted of them. Joined to all this is a shameful traffic in influence and money. Monsieur de Tonty could have written to you about it, if he had not been obliged to go off to the Assinneboins, to rid himself of all these torments.” [11] In fact, there was a chronic dispute at the forest outposts between the officers and the Jesuits, concerning which matter much might be said on both sides.

[11: Frontenac à M. de Lagny, 2 Nov., 1695.]

From Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, Chapter 15 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