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Title: A Historical Geography of the British Colonies
       Vol. V, Canada--Part I, Historical

Author: Charles Prestwood Lucas

Release Date: October 16, 2010 [EBook #34080]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY--BRITISH COLONIES ***




Produced by Ron Swanson

HISTORY OF CANADA

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

BRITISH COLONIES

CONTENTS

LIST OF MAPS

HISTORY OF CANADA

CHAPTER I

The British possessions in North America consist of Newfoundland and the Dominion of Canada. Under the Government of Newfoundland is a section of the mainland coast which forms part of Labrador, extending from the straits of Belle Isle on the south to Cape Chudleigh on the north.

The area of these possessions, together with the date and mode of their acquisition, is as follows:—

In the Introduction to a previous volume,¹ it was pointed out that all the British possessions in the New World have one common feature; viz. that they have been, in the main, fields of European settlement, and not merely trading stations or conquered dependencies; but that, in other respects—in climate, in geography, and in what may be called the strata of colonization—the West Indian and North American provinces of the Empire stand at opposite poles to each other. It may be added that, in North America, European colonization was later in time and slower in development than in the central and southern parts of the continent; and, in order to understand why this was the case, some reference must be made to the geography of North America, more especially in its relation to Europe, and also to its first explorers, their motives, and their methods.

¹ Vol. ii, West Indies, pp. 3, 4.

The Old World lies west and east. In the New World the line of length is from north to south. The geographical outline of America, as compared with that of Europe and Asia, is very simple. There is a long stretch of continent, with a continuous backbone of mountains, running from the far north to the far south. The mountains line the western coast; on the eastern side are great plains, great rivers, broken shores, and islands. Midway in the line of length, where the Gulf of Mexico runs into the land, and where, further south, the Isthmus of Darien holds together North and South America by a narrow link, the semicircle of West Indian islands stand out as stepping-stones in the ocean for wayfarers from the old continent to the new.

The two divisions of the American continent are curiously alike. They have each two great river-basins on the eastern side. The basin of the St. Lawrence is roughly parallel to that of the Amazon; the basin of the Mississippi to that of La Plata. The North American coast, however, between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and that of the Mississippi, is more varied and broken, more easy of access, than the South American shores between the Amazon and La Plata. On the other hand, South America has an attractive and accessible northern coast, in strong contrast to the icebound Arctic regions; and the Gulf of Venezuela, the delta of the Orinoco, and the rivers of Guiana, have called in traders and settlers from beyond the seas.

The history of colonization in North America has been, in the main, one of movement from east to west. In South America, on the other hand, the western side played almost from the first at least as important a part as the eastern. The story of Peru and its Inca rulers shows that in old times, in South America, there was a civilization to be found upon the western side of the Andes, and the shores of the Pacific Ocean. European explorers penetrated into and crossed the continent rather from the north and west than from the east; and Spanish colonization on the Pacific coast was, outwardly at least, more imposing and effective than Portuguese colonization on the Atlantic seaboard. The great mass of land on the earth's surface is in the northern hemisphere; and in the extreme north the shores of the Old and New Worlds are closest to each other. Here, where the Arctic Sea narrows into the Behring Straits, it is easier to reach America from the west than from the east, from Asia than from Europe; but to pass from the extremity of one continent to the extremity of another is of little avail for making history; and the history of North America has been made from the opposite side, which lies over against Europe, where the shores are indented by plenteous bays and estuaries, and where there are great waterways leading into the heart of the interior.

The main outlets of North America are, as has been said, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi; while, on the long stretch of coast between them, the most important river is the Hudson, whose valley is a direct and comparatively easy highroad from the Atlantic to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence basin; and here it may be noticed that, though a Bristol ship first discovered North America, and though, from the time of Ralegh onwards, North America became the main scene of British colonization, the English allowed other nations to secure the keys of the continent, and ran the risk of being cut off from the interior. The French forestalled them on the St. Lawrence, and later took possession of the mouth of the Mississippi. The Dutch planted themselves on the Hudson between New England and the southern colonies, and New York, the present chief city of English-speaking America, was once New Amsterdam. Of all colonizing nations the English have perhaps been the least scientific in their methods; and in no part of the world were their mistakes greater than in North America, where their success was eventually most complete. There was, however, one principle in colonization to which they instinctively and consistently held. While they often neglected to safeguard the obvious means of access into new-found countries, and, as compared with other nations, made comparatively little use of the great rivers in any part of the world, they laid hold on coasts, peninsulas, and islands, and kept their population more or less concentrated near to the sea. Thus, when the time of struggle came, they could be supported from home, and were stronger at given points than their more scientific rivals. If the French laid their plans to keep in their own hands the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the St. Lawrence, and thereby to shut off the colonies of the Atlantic seaboard from the continent behind, those colonies had the advantage of close contact with the sea, of comparatively continuous settlement, and of yearly growing power to break through the weak and unduly extended line with which the competing race tried to hem them in.

But this contest between French and English, based though it was on geographical position, belongs to the Middle Ages of European colonization in America: let us look a little further back, and see how the Old and the New Worlds first came into touch with each other.

In his history of King Henry VII, Bacon refers to the 'memorable accident' of the Cabots' great discovery, in the following passage:—'There was one Sebastian Gabato, a Venetian living in Bristow, a man seen and expert in cosmography and navigation. This man, seeing the success and emulating perhaps the enterprise of Christopherus Columbus in that fortunate discovery towards the south-west, which had been by him made some six years before, conceited with himself that lands might likewise be discovered towards the north-west. And surely it may be he had more firm and pregnant conjectures of it than Columbus had of his at the first. For the two great islands of the Old and New World, being in the shape and making of them broad towards the north and pointed towards the south, it is likely that the discovery first began where the lands did nearest meet. And there had been before that time a discovery of some lands which they took to be islands, and were indeed the continent of America towards the north-west.'² Bacon goes on to surmise that Columbus had knowledge of this prior discovery, and was guided by it in forming his own conjectures as to the existence of land in the far west; and it is at least not unlikely that, when he visited Iceland in 1477, he would have heard tales of the Norsemen's voyages to America.³

² Spedding's edition of Bacon's works, 1870, vol. vi, p. 196.

³ For this visit, see Washington Irving's Life and Voyages of Columbus, bk. i, ch. vi.

It would be out of place in this book to make more than a passing reference to the much-vexed question, how far the New World was known to Europeans before the days of Columbus and the Cabots. Indeed, if all the stories on the subject were proved, the fact would yet remain that, for all practical purposes, America was first revealed to the nations of Europe, when Columbus took his way across the Atlantic. It was likely that, when his discovery had been made, men would rise up to assert that it was not so great and not so new as had been at first imagined. The French claimed priority for a countryman of their own;⁴ stories of Welsh and Irish settlement in America passed into circulation; the romance of the brothers Zeni was published, a tale of supposed Venetian adventure in the fourteenth century to the islands of the far north; and it was contended, more prosaically and with greater show of reason, that Basque fishermen had frequented the banks of Newfoundland, before that island was discovered for England and thereby earned its present name.

⁴ Cousin of Dieppe, who claimed to have discovered America in 1488, four years before Columbus reached the West Indies.

The story of the Norsemen's voyages has a sounder foundation than any other of these early traditions and tales. Iceland is nearer to Greenland than to Norway: it has been abundantly proved that colonies were established and fully organized in Greenland in the Middle Ages; and it seems on the face of it unlikely that the enterprise and adventure of the seafaring sons of the north would have stopped short at this point, instead of carrying them on to the mainland of America.

The Norse are said to have come to Iceland about 875 A.D., where Christian Irish had already preceded them; and, in the following year, rocks far to the west were sighted by Gunnbiorn. A century later, in 984, Eric the Red came back from a visit to Gunnbiorn's land, calling it by the attractive name of Greenland. About 986, Bjarni Herjulfson, sailing from Iceland to Greenland, sighted land to the south-west; and, a few years later, about the year 1000, Leif, the son of Eric, who had brought the Christian religion to Greenland, sailed in search of the south-western land which Bjarni had seen. The record of his voyage claims to be the record of the discovery of America. He found the rocky barren shores of Labrador and Newfoundland, and called them from their appearance Helluland, or 'slateland.' He passed on to the mouth of the St. Lawrence and to Nova Scotia, calling it Markland, or the 'land of woods.' Then sailing still further south, he came to a land where vines grew wild, and which he called Vinland. This last was, it would seem, the New England coast, between Boston and New York; and here in after times, for a like reason, English settlers gave the name of Martha's or Martin's Vineyard to an island, which lies close to the shore south of Cape Cod.⁵ In Vinland, it is stated, a Norse colony was founded a few years after Leif's visit; and trade—mainly a timber trade—was carried on with Greenland down to the year 1347, after which all is a blank.

⁵ A little further to the south on the coast of New Jersey, or Maryland, Verrazano 'saw in this country many vines growing naturally' (Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 360, 1810 ed.).

No authentic inscriptions or remains, indicating Scandinavian discovery or settlement in America, have, it is said, been found anywhere outside Greenland, except at one point in the very far north;⁶ and in their absence these northern tales cannot be absolutely verified. It can only be said that, in all probability, America was known to the Northmen in the Middle Ages, but that what happened in these dark days in the extreme north of Europe and the extreme north of America has no direct bearing upon the history of European colonization.

⁶ See Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, (vol. i, chap. ii) on 'Pre-Columbian Explorations.' The writer says, 'Nowhere in America, except on an island on the east shore of Baffin's Bay, has any authentic runic inscription been found outside of Greenland.' Reference should be made to the first chapter of Mr. Raymond Beazley's John and Sebastian Cabot ('Builders of Greater Britain' series, 1898), in which the dates and particulars of the Norse discovery of America, as given above, are somewhat modified.

At the time when modern history opens, there were two parts of the world which were—to use the Greek philosopher's phrase—'ends in themselves.' One was Europe or rather Southern Europe, the other was the East Indies; and the great problem was to find the best and shortest way from the one point to the other.

The overland trade routes through Syria and Egypt—by which Genoa, Venice, and the other city states of the Middle Ages had grown rich—had fallen in the main under Moslem control; and, accordingly, the growing nations of Europe began to take to the open sea. On the ocean, India can be reached from Europe either by going east or by going west. In the former case Africa comes in the way, in the latter America; and the position of these two continents in the modern history of the world is, in their earliest stage, that of having been places on the road, not final goals.

The Portuguese tried the way by Africa and succeeded. Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape, sailed up the eastern coast of Africa, and crossed to India. The Spaniards set sail in the opposite direction, and, failing in their original design, found instead a New World.

Let us suppose that the conditions had been reversed, that Southern Africa, when reached, had proved as attractive as the West Indies; that its shores had been fertile and easy of access; that its rivers had been navigable, and that its turning-point had been as distant as Cape Horn; that, on the contrary, Columbus had discovered a channel through America, where he sought for it at the Isthmus of Darien, had found the American coasts and islands as little inviting as Africa, and behind them an expanse of sea no wider than the Indian Ocean. In that case America would have remained the Dark Continent, to be passed by, as Africa was passed by, on the way to the East; and hinging on this one central fact, that the Indies were the goal of discovery, the whole history of colonization would have been changed. As it was, the Spaniards, in the first place, found their way barred by America; and, in the second place, found America too good to be passed by, even if a thoroughfare had been found. Thus they assumed that they had really reached the Indies on their furthest side; and, by the time that the mistake had been finally cleared up, the riches and wonders of the New World had given it a position and standing of its own, over and above all considerations respecting the best way to the East.

America then was discovered by being taken on the way to some other part of the world; it could not be passed by like Africa; and it was more attractive than Africa. Thus it was early colonized, while the great mass of the African continent was left, almost down to our own day, unexplored and unknown.

This statement, however, only holds true of that part of America which the Spaniards made their own; and the further question arises—Why was the discovery and settlement of North America a much slower process than the Spanish conquest and colonization of Central America and the West Indies? The north of Newfoundland is in the same latitude as the south of England; the mouth of the St. Lawrence lies directly over against the ports of Brittany; a line drawn due east from New York would almost pass through Madrid: therefore it seems as though sailors going westward from Europe would naturally make their way in the first instance to the North American coast; and, as a matter of fact, Cabot probably sighted the shores of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, or Labrador before Columbus set foot upon the mainland of South America.

There are, however, ample historical and geographical reasons for the fact that, at the beginning of modern history, the stream of European discovery and colonization took a south-westerly rather than a westerly direction. The main course of European civilization has on the whole been from south-east to north-west. Its centre gradually shifted from Asia Minor and Phoenicia to Greece, from Greece to Rome, and finally from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of the Atlantic. The peninsula of Spain and Portugal stands half-way between the inner and the outer sea, and accordingly geography marked out this country to be the birthplace of the new and wider history of the world. Further, at the time when modern history begins, the Spaniards and Portuguese were better trained, more consolidated, more nearly come to their prime, more full of expansive force than the peoples of Northern Europe; so that their history combined with their geographical position to place them in the front rank among the movers of the world. But Spain and Portugal look south-west: both countries are hot, sunny lands, and, while adventurers to the unknown would in any case be more attracted to regions where they would expect light and heat and tropical growth and colour, than to the bare, bleak stretches of the north, most of all would a southern race set out to find a new world in a southerly or south-westerly direction. Again, as has been seen, the early explorers were seeking for a sea-road to the Indies; and, as the tales of the Indies were glowing tales of glowing lands, men were more likely at first to start in search of them by way of the Equator than by way of the Pole.

And they had guidance in their course. The Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, lying away in the ocean to the south-west, were the half-mythical goals of ancient navigation. The Spaniards would naturally make for them in the first instance, and so far help themselves on their westward way. Wind and tide would prescribe the same line of discovery. The way to the West Indies is made easy by the north-easterly trade winds, whereas the passage to North America is in the teeth of the prevailing wind from the west. Those who take ship from Europe to North America meet the opposing force of the Gulf Stream; voyagers to the south-west, on the contrary, are borne by the Equatorial Current from the African coast to the Caribbean Sea.

Easier to reach than North America, the West Indies and Central America were also more attractive when reached. The Spaniards found riches beyond their hopes, pearls in the sea, gold and silver in the land, and a race of natives who could be forced to fish for the one and to mine for the other. When they had discovered the New World, there was every inducement to make them forthwith conquer and colonize in countries where living promised to be more luxurious than in their own land. Adventurers to North America, on the contrary, found greater cold than they had left behind them in the same latitudes in Europe, desolate shores, little trace of precious metal, and natives whom it was dangerous to offend and impossible to enslave. In the far north the cod fisheries were discovered, and furs were to be obtained by barter from the North American Indians; but such trade was not likely to lead to permanent settlement in the near future. Its natural outcome was not the founding of colonies, the building of cities, and the subjugation of continents, but, at the most, repeated visits in the summer time to the Newfoundland banks, or spasmodic excursions up the course of the St. Lawrence. Thus, for a century after Columbus first sailed to the west, while Central and South America became organized into a collection of Spanish provinces, the extreme north was left to Basque, Breton, and English fishermen; and the coast between the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, where the English race was eventually to make its greatest effort and achieve its greatest success—this, the present territory of the United States, was, with the exception of Florida, little visited and scarcely known.

The discovery of minerals in a district brings about dense population and a hurried settlement. Men come to fisheries or hunting-grounds at stated times, and leave to come again. The progress of agricultural colonization, if steady and continuous, is usually very slow. Thus, where Central America gave gold and silver, there adventurers from Europe hurried in and stayed. The fisheries of Newfoundland saw men come and go; the sea was there the attraction, not the land. The agricultural resources of Virginia and New England were left undeveloped by Europeans, until the time came when business-like companies were formed by men who could afford to wait, and when enthusiasts went over the Atlantic not so much to make money as to live patiently and in the fear of God.

But, though the sixteenth century passed away before men's eyes, which were dazzled with the splendour of the tropics, had given more than passing glances to the sober landscape of North America, discoverers from Cabot onwards were not idle; and from the first, the ever powerful hope of finding a new road to the Indies took adventurers to the north-west in spite of cold and wind and tide. Because North America was unattractive in itself, therefore men seem to have imagined that it must be on the way to something better; and also, because it was unattractive in itself, they did not wait to see what could be made out of it, but kept perpetually pushing on to a further goal. They argued, as Bacon shows in the passage already quoted, and argued rightly, that in the north the Old and New Worlds were nearest together, and that here therefore was the point at which to cross from one to the other. They found sea channels evidently leading towards the west; they saw the great river of Canada⁷ come widening down from the same quarter; and thus, long after the quest of the Indies had in Central America been swallowed up in the riches found on the way, in North America it remained the one great object of the men who went out from Europe, and of the Kings who sent them out.

⁷ The idea that there was a way to the Indies by the St. Lawrence long continued. Thus Lescarbot writes (Nova Francia, Erondelle's translation, 1609, chap. xiii, p. 87) of the great river of Canada as 'taking her beginning from one of the lakes which do meet at the stream of her course (and so I think), so that it hath two courses, the one from the east towards France, the other from the west towards the south sea.'

As the first discoverer, Cabot, set sail to find the passage to Cathay, 'having great desire to traffic for the spices as the Portingals did,'⁸ so all who came after during the century of exploration kept the same end firmly in view. Francis I of France dispatched Verrazano to find the passage to the East; Cartier, the Breton sailor, came back from the St. Lawrence with tales which savoured of the Indies, of 'a river that goeth south-west, from whence there is a whole month's sailing to go to a certain land where there is neither ice nor snow seen'⁹—of a 'country of Saguenay, in which are infinite rubies, gold and other riches'¹⁰—of 'a land where cinnamon and cloves are gathered';¹¹ and his third voyage was, in his King's words, 'to the lands of Canada and Hochelaga, which form the extremity of Asia towards the west.'¹² Frobisher's voyage in 1576 led to the formation of a company of Cathay. As early as 1527, Master Robert Thorne wrote 'an information of the parts of the world' discovered by the Spaniards and Portuguese, and 'of the way to the Moluccas by the north.' Sir Humphrey Gilbert published 'a discourse' 'to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies'; and Richard Hakluyt himself, in the 'epistle dedicatory' to Philip Sydney, which forms the preface to his collection of Divers Voyages touching the discovery of America,¹³ sums up the arguments for the existence of 'that short and easy passage by the north-west which we have hitherto so long desired.' In short, the record of the sixteenth century in North America was, in the main, a record of successive voyagers seeking after a way to the East, supplemented by the fishing trade which was attracted to the shores of Newfoundland.

⁸ Gomara, quoted by Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 30 (1810 ed.).

⁹ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 278.

¹⁰ Ibid. p. 281.

¹¹ Ibid. p. 285.

¹² See Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World (25th ed., 1888), p. 217.

¹³ Published in 1582; edited by the Hakluyt Society in 1850.

The two men who opened America to Europe were of Italian parentage—Columbus the Genoese, and Cabot, born at Genoa, domiciled at Venice.¹⁴ The two great trading republics of the Middle Ages at once crowned their work in the world, and signed their own death warrant, in providing Spain and England with the sailors whose discoveries transferred the centre of life and movement from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The King of France too turned to Italy for a discoverer to rival Columbus and Cabot, and sent Verrazano the Florentine, at the end of 1523, to search out the coasts of North America.

¹⁴ As to Cabot's parentage see below. If the voyages of the Zeni were genuine, the Venetians could have claimed a yet older share in the record of European connexion with America.

At the first dawn of discovery those coasts were not wholly given over to French or English adventurers. Though Florida was the northern limit of Spanish conquest and settlement, Spanish claims extended indefinitely over the whole continent; and the French King's scheme for the colonization of Canada, in 1541, under the leadership of Cartier and Roberval, roused the suspicion of the Spanish court as an attempt to infringe an acknowledged monopoly. The Portuguese at the very first took part in north-western discovery, and with good reason; for it was their own Indies which were the final goal, and they could not afford to leave to other nations to find a shorter way thither than their own route round the Cape. Thus it was that Corte Real set out from Lisbon for the north-west in the year 1500, having 'craved a general license of the King Emmanuel to discover the Newfoundland,' and 'sailed unto that climate which standeth under the north in 50 degrees of latitude.'¹⁵ We find, too, records of Portuguese working in the same direction under foreign flags. In 1501 two patents were granted by Henry VII of England to English and Portuguese conjointly to explore, trade, and settle in America;¹⁶ and, in 1525, Gomez, who had served under Magellan, and who, like Magellan, was a Portuguese in the service of Spain, set out from the Spanish port of Corunna to search for the North-West Passage.¹⁷

¹⁵ See Purchas' Pilgrims, pt. 2, bk. x, chap. i. A brief 'collection of voyages, chiefly of Spaniards and Portugals, taken out of Antoine Galvano's Book of the Discoveries of the World.'

¹⁶ See Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, chap. iv.

¹⁷ See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, p. 10.

Basque fishermen were among the very first visitors to Newfoundland, and, even after the North American continent was becoming a sphere of French and English colonization, to the exclusion of the southern nations of Europe, the Spaniards and Portuguese still held their own in the fisheries. The record of almost every voyage to Newfoundland notices Spanish or Portuguese ships plying their trade on the banks.¹⁸ A writer¹⁹ in the year 1578, on 'the true state and commodities of Newfoundland,' tells us that, according to his information, there were at that date above one hundred Spanish ships engaged in the cod fisheries, in addition to twenty or thirty whalers from Biscay; that the Portuguese ships did not exceed fifty, and that those owned by French and Bretons numbered about one hundred and fifty. Edward Hayes, the chronicler of Gilbert's last voyage in 1583, relates how the Portuguese at Newfoundland provisioned the English admiral's ships for their return voyage, and adds that 'the Portugals and French chiefly have a notable trade of fishing upon this bank.'²⁰

¹⁸ See Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World (25th ed., 1888), pp. 189, 190, and notes.

¹⁹ Anthony Parkhurst. The letter was written to Hakluyt, and published in his collection, vol. iii, p. 171.

²⁰ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 190.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Government still claimed for its subjects the right to fish on the Newfoundland coast, among other grounds on that of prior discovery, a claim which was only finally relinquished under the provisions of the Peace of Paris in 1763;²¹ and, writing about the same date, the author of the European Settlements in America noted that the Spaniards still shared in the fishery.²²

²¹ As to the question whether Basque fishermen had found their way to Newfoundland before Cabot, see the note to p. 189 of Mr. Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World. The reasons for thinking that these fishermen forestalled Cabot seem to be—(1) the argument of probability; (2) assertions of old writers to that effect; (3) the application of the Basque name 'Baccalaos' to Newfoundland, and the statement of Peter Martyr that Cabot found that word in use for codfish among the natives; (4) the claim advanced by the Spanish Government to right of fishing at Newfoundland on the ground of prior discovery by Biscayan fishermen. As to this last point, see Papers relative to the rupture with Spain, 1762. One source of friction at this time between Great Britain and Spain was what Pitt styles in a dispatch (p. 3) 'the stale and inadmissible pretensions of the Biscayans and Guipuscoans to fish at Newfoundland.' As to this claim, the Earl of Bristol, British minister at Madrid, writes (p. 53), 'With regard to the Newfoundland fishery, Mr. Wall urged, what I have also conveyed in some former despatches, that the Spaniards indeed pleaded, in favour of their claim to a share of the Bacallao trade, the first discovery of that island.'

²² European Settlements in America, pt. 6, chap. xxviii, 'Newfoundland.' The author (? Burke) says, 'The French and Spaniards, especially the former, have a large share (in the fishery).'

Hayes, who has just been quoted, tells us that more than thirty years before he wrote, i.e. about 1550, the Portuguese had touched at Sable Island and left there 'both neat and swine to breed.' In the same way they left live stock at Mauritius on their way to and from the East; and in like manner the Spaniards landed pigs at the Bermudas²³ on their early voyages to the West Indies.

²³ See vol. i of this series, p. 163, and vol. ii, p. 6 and note. Lescarbot states that the French Baron de Léry, who attempted to found a colony in North America in 1518, left cattle on Sable Island. See Parkman's Pioneers of France, p. 193, and Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, chap. v, p. 111.

If evidence were wanted that, in the oldest days of movement from Europe to the West, southern sailors did not go only to tropical America, it would be found in the naming of the North American coasts and islands. The first point on the coast of North America, sighted by the first discoverer—the Italian Cabot—was spoken of under the Italian name of Prima Terra Vista. The name Baccalaos²⁴ tells of voyages of the Basques, as Cape Breton of visitors from Brittany; and, after Corte Real's voyages, the east coast of Newfoundland was, as old maps testify, christened for a while Terra de Corte Reall.²⁵ Soon, however, the Spaniards found Mexico, Peru, and Central America enough and more than enough to absorb their whole attention; the Portuguese were over-weighted by their eastern empire and Brazil: and North America was given over, first to be explored and then to be settled, by the peoples of the north of Europe; who gathered strength as their southern rivals declined, and whose work was more lasting because more slow.

²⁴ 'Baccalaos' is the Spanish name for codfish. It is of Basque origin. Cabot, it is stated, gave the name generally to the lands which he found. The name was subsequently applied more especially to Newfoundland. Thus Edward Hayes in his account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's last voyage, under the heading 'a brief relation of the Newfoundland and the commodities thereof' (Hakluyt, iii, 193), speaks of 'that which we do call the Newfoundland and the Frenchmen Bacalaos.' Various small islands, however, in these parts were also given this name by different writers. At the present day, on the maps of Newfoundland, an islet off the east coast, at the extreme north of the peninsula of Avalon, bears the name of Baccalieu. See Parkman, p. 189 note as above, and the chapter on the voyages of the Cabots in Justin Winsor's history, vol. iii.

²⁵ The name 'Labrador' is supposed to have been derived from the fact that some North American natives, brought back in one of the ships which accompanied Corte Real on this second voyage, were said to be 'admirably calculated for labour and the best slaves I have ever seen.' Hence the name 'Laboratoris terra,' or Labrador. On Thorne's map (1527) printed in the Divers Voyages to America, there appears 'Nova terra Laboratorum dicta.' Sir Clements Markham, in his edition of the Journal of Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real (Hakluyt Society, 1893, Int. p. 51, note), says: 'There is no reference to Labrador in any of the authorities for the voyages of Corte Real. The King of Portugal is said to have hoped to derive good slave labour from the lands discovered by Corte Real. That is all. The name Labrador is not Portuguese; and Corte Real was never on the Labrador coast.' Another derivation given is: 'This land was discovered by the English from Bristol, and named Labrador because the one who saw it first was a labourer from the Azores.' One more derivation is that Labrador was the name of the Basque captain of a fishing-vessel. See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, pp. 2, 46, and Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 216, note.

On March 5, 1496, King Henry VII of England granted a patent to 'John Cabot, citizen of Venice,' and to his three sons—Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius—empowering them 'to discover unknown lands under the king's banner.'²⁶ Under this patent—'the earliest surviving document which connects England with the New World'²⁷—North America was discovered.

²⁶ Quoted from the marginal note to the patent. See Hakluyt's Divers Voyages touching the discovery of America, published by the Hakluyt Society, 1850, p. 21.

²⁷ From Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, chap. iv.

Almost every point connected with the voyages of the Cabots is dark and doubtful. What the father did and what the son, whence they came, and whither they went, is all uncertain. The tale of Columbus and his voyages is known to all the world; but readers are left to grope after the Cabots, as the latter groped after the strange wild regions of the north-west.

John Cabot, it would seem, was a Genoese who settled in Venice. There he was admitted to the rights of citizenship. He married a Venetian lady, and in Venice probably his three sons were born and passed their childhood. He travelled on the sea, visiting the coasts of Arabia, and forming, it may be, schemes to discover a new route to the far East. He came to England, having previously attempted to gain support for his projected voyages in Spain and Portugal, and he took up his residence in either London or Bristol. The exact date of his arrival in this country is unknown; but, either shortly before or shortly after he came, Columbus crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1492. The news gave a stimulus to other would-be discoverers, and encouraged the Kings of Europe to further their plans. Hence Cabot and his sons obtained their patent in 1496. It was little that King Henry VII gave to the Italian sailors. Their voyages were to be made 'upon their own proper costs and charges,' and in return for his licence, the King was to receive a fifth of the profits. The enterprise was countenanced but not supported by the state, and the English Government in these early days, as in the times which came after, left the work of discovery and colonization in the hands of private adventurers. Bristol was the port of departure, and a Bristol book contains the following notice of the voyage:—'In the year 1497, the 24th of June, on St. John's day, was Newfoundland found by Bristol men in a ship called the Matthew.'²⁸ John Cabot and Sebastian his son probably both sailed in the Matthew, and they commanded a crew of English sailors. The voyage was a short summer venture, beginning in May and ending with the close of July or the beginning of August. America was seen and touched, the land-fall being either the northern end of Cape Breton island, or the coast of Labrador, or Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland. The English flag was planted on American soil, but no exploration took place; nothing was achieved but the one great fact of discovery. In the following February, new letters patent were issued—on this occasion to John Cabot alone; and a second time, in the summer of 1498, the ships started from Bristol. Again, it is conjectured, both father and son were on board; and this time the North American coast seems to have been skirted from the region of icebergs and the banks of Newfoundland as far south as the Carolinas. In reference to this second voyage, Sebastian Cabot wrote that he sailed 'unto the latitude of sixty-seven degrees and a half under the North Pole,' and 'finding still the open sea without any manner of impediment, he thought verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaio which is in the East.'²⁹ The way to the East, however, was left unopened, to tantalize after-comers, and to be a kind of 'will o' the wisp,' leading men on to barren shores and Arctic seas, though the continent which they had already found was worth all the riches of the Indies.

²⁸ Barrett's History and Antiquities of Bristol (Bristol, 1789), p. 172.

²⁹ From Ramusio, quoted in 'a note of Sebastian Cabot's voyage of discovery' (Hakluyt's Divers Voyages, p. 25). For the much-vexed question of the Cabots and their voyages, reference should be made to John Cabot the Discoverer of North America and Sebastian his son, by Henry Harrisse, London, 1896; to the Journal of Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real, edited for the Hakluyt Society by Sir Clements Markham, 1893; to Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, Appendix B, 'The Cabots and their Voyages'; and to Mr. Raymond Beazley's John and Sebastian Cabot ('Builders of Greater Britain' series, 1898). The result of a great deal of learning is after all little but conjecture.

The next great voyager to North America was Gaspar Corte Real, a Portuguese. Twice he sailed to the north-west, in 1500 and 1501, on the earlier voyage sighting Greenland and the east coast of Newfoundland, and on the later working north from Chesapeake Bay. He was lost on the second voyage; and his brother Miguel, who went in search of him in 1502, after finding 'many entrances of rivers and havens,' was lost also.³⁰

³⁰ The voyages of the Corte Reals are given in Purchas' Pilgrims, pt. 2, bk. x. See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, on Cortereal, Verrazano, &c. See also the volume of the Hakluyt Society referred to in the previous note.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, Frenchmen took their place among the explorers of the world, and the Norman and Breton seaports began to send their ships across the Atlantic. Denys of Honfleur is said to have reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506; in 1508, Aubert of Dieppe brought American Indians back to France; and in 1518 Baron de Léry made the first, a stillborn, attempt to found a French colony in North America.³¹

³¹ See above, note 23.

At the end of the fifteenth century, the consolidation of France had been completed by the marriage of Charles VIII with Anne of Brittany, and from this time France began to compete with Spain. Francis I came to the throne in 1515, and his personal rivalry with Charles V, German Emperor and Spanish King in one, quickened the competition between the French and Spanish peoples. Thus it was that the French court turned its attention to the work of exploration, and Francis sent forth the Italian Verrazano with four ships from Dieppe 'to discover new lands by the ocean.'³² Sailing at the end of 1523, Verrazano was driven back by tempest; but, starting again, he left Madeira to cross the Atlantic on January 17, 1524. He reached the shores of Carolina; then coasted northward, landing at various points; and, having sailed as far north as Newfoundland—'the land that in times past was discovered by the Britons (Bretons), which is in fifty degrees'—he 'concluded to return into France.'

³² From 'The relation of John Verarzanus,' given in Hakluyt's Divers Voyages, p. 55, and there also headed 'The Discovery of Morum Bega' (Norumbega). It is given too in the ordinary collection, vol. iii, p. 357.

He brought home to his King a sober and systematic report of the North American coast—a report which meant business, and was not tricked out with vague surmises and impossible tales; but, within a year from his return, the strength of France was for a while broken at the battle of Pavia. He himself died soon afterwards, hanged, it is said, by the Spaniards as a pirate; and for ten years there is no record of any French explorer following in his steps, though French ships found their way over the ocean to the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland.

The year 1534 is a memorable one in the annals alike of France and of North America. It is the year from which must be dated the first beginnings of New France on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The discoverer of Canada was Jacques Cartier, a Breton sailor of St. Malo. He went out to explore the unknown world, not at his own risk, but as the agent of Brian Chabot, High Admiral of France. Sailing from St. Malo, on April 20, 1534, he came to Newfoundland, passed through the straits of Belle Isle, and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He sailed into Chaleurs Bay under the July sun, describing the country as 'hotter than the country of Spain, and the fairest that can possibly be found';³³ and, having set up a cross on Gaspé Peninsula, he reached St. Malo again on September 5, bringing with him two Indian children as living memorials of his voyage.

³³ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 257.

He had discovered a hot, fair land, widely different from the bleak and rock-bound coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the good report which he brought of his discoveries was more than enough to find him backing for a second venture. Accordingly, in the following year, on May 19, 1535, he sailed again from St. Malo, and, reaching the straits of Belle Isle after storm and tempest, took his way, the first of European explorers, up the great river of Canada. He moored his three ships below the rock of Quebec—then the site of Stadaconé, a native Indian village, and the dwelling-place of a chief Donnaconna, who is styled in the narrative the Lord of Canada. There he left his two larger vessels, and pushed on in his pinnace and boats to the town of Hochelaga. That town, the Indians had told him, was the capital of the land; and he found it, palisaded and fortified in native fashion, where Montreal now stands.³⁴ The Frenchmen were received as gods by the Indians; they were asked, like the Apostles of old, to touch and heal the sick; and, ever mindful of the duty of spreading the Christian religion, they read the gospel to their savage admirers in the strange French tongue, to cure their souls if they could not mend their bodies.

³⁴ As Mr. Parkman points out (Pioneers of France, p. 212), Quebec and Montreal were in old days, as now, the centres of population in Lower Canada. 'Stadaconé and Hochelaga, Quebec and Montreal, in the sixteenth century, as in the nineteenth, were the centres of Canadian population.'

Returning down stream to their ships, they passed the winter underneath Quebec, amid ice and snow, stricken with scurvy, and distrustful of their Indian neighbours; and at length, on the return of summer, they set sail for France, carrying away the Indian chief Donnaconna and some of his companions, to die in a far-off land. They reached St. Malo in the middle of July, 1536, and so ended Cartier's second voyage to 'the New found lands by him named New France.'³⁵

³⁵ End of the narrative of Cartier's second voyage in Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 285.

Between four and five years passed, and then the Breton sailor set out again. This time a definite scheme of settlement was projected, the instructions were more elaborate than before, the preparations were on a larger scale. The money was found by the crown, and the King was to receive one-third of the profits. A French nobleman, De Roberval, was to go out as the King's lieutenant in the New World, and was given the title of Lord of Norumbega,³⁶ while Cartier was appointed Captain-General. The objects of the expedition were to explore, to colonize, and to convert the heathen; and its leaders were, like Columbus, empowered to recruit colonists from the prisons at home. Cartier set out in advance of Roberval, in May, 1541. Again he sailed up the St. Lawrence, reached in his boats a point above Montreal, and, as before, wintered on the river; but this time at the mouth of the Cap Rouge, some way higher up than Quebec. His leader, Roberval, did not start till April, 1542; and, when in June he reached St. John's harbour in Newfoundland, he was met by Cartier, who had broken up his colony in disgust, and was on his way home to France. In spite of Roberval's remonstrances, Cartier left by night on his return voyage, and the Lord of Norumbega went on alone to the St. Lawrence. He planted his settlement at Cap Rouge, where Cartier had last sojourned, but it proved a miserable failure. The supplies were insufficient, the Governor turned out a savage despot, and after about a year the colony came to an end.

³⁶ As to Norumbega, see Parkman's Pioneers of France, pp. 216 and 253, notes, and Justin Winsor, vol. iii, chap. vi, on 'Norumbega and its English explorers.' The writer of this latter chapter (p. 185) says the territory of Norumbega never included Baccalaos, 'though Baccalaos, an old name of Newfoundland, sometimes included New England.' Norumbega, an Indian name, covered the district now included in the state of Maine, and was sometimes extended to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the north, and part of New England on the south. Michael Loki's map (1582) makes Norumbega the whole district between the river and gulf of St. Lawrence and the Hudson. The river of Norumbega was the Penobscot, and on it a city of Norumbega was given a fabulous existence. Lescarbot (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1609, bk. i, chap. i) speaks of 'pais qu'on a appellé d'un nom Alleman Norumbega, lequel est par les quarante cinq degrez.'

With this disappointing and disastrous failure, the curtain fell on the prologue of the great drama of New France, and did not rise again for more than fifty years. For the French, as for the English, the sixteenth century was a time of exploring, of training, of making experiments; and it was not till the seventeenth century dawned that permanent colonization began. Then in the Bourbons the French had rulers who, with all their faults, were abler and stronger than the princes of the house of Valois; and in Champlain they had a leader as daring as, and more statesmanlike than, Cartier. But it was by Cartier that the ground had been broken and the seed first sown. His voyages made Canada³⁷ in some sort familiar to Europeans. He opened the St. Lawrence to be the highway into North America,³⁸ and he gave to the hill above the native town of Hochelaga the name of the Royal Mount, which is still perpetuated in Montreal. He brought the French into Canada, and, though his settlement failed, the French connexion remained. Fishermen and fur-traders followed in his steps, and in fullness of time the New France, which his discoveries conceived, was brought to birth and grew to greatness.

³⁷ For the meaning of the name 'Canada,' see Parkman's Pioneers of France, p. 202, note. It is of Indian origin, probably meaning 'town.' Cartier called the country about Quebec Canada, having Saguenay below and Hochelaga above. Donnaconna, the native chief at Quebec, was called Lord of Canada.

³⁸ On his second voyage Cartier sailed into a bay at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, where he stayed from the eighth to the twelfth of August, and 'named the said gulf St. Lawrence his bay' (Hakluyt, iii, 263), St. Lawrence's Day being the 10th of August. Hence the river, which he called the river of Hochelaga or the great river of Canada, derived its name. See Parkman, p. 202.

A Bristol ship³⁹ having first discovered North America, it might have been expected that the years succeeding Cabot's voyages would have been fruitful in English adventure to the West; but, as far as records show, little was done by Englishmen during the first half of the sixteenth century to open up the New World; and even Cartier's bold exploits roused little or no spirit of rivalry in Great Britain. Indeed, all through this century no English voyager seems to have turned his mind to Canada and its river. The explorers went to the Arctic seas, the would-be colonizers to Newfoundland or Virginia. Between 1500 and 1550 two voyages alone have been actually chronicled, though passing reference is made to others. Of these two, the first was in 1527, when Albert de Prado, a canon of St. Paul's, sailed with two ships in search of the Indies, reaching Newfoundland and the North American coast. The second was in 1536, under a leader named Hore—a voyage of which a graphic account is given in Hakluyt. On the coast of Newfoundland the adventurers suffered the last extremes of starvation, until at length even cannibalism began among them; and the survivors owed their safety to the coming of a French ship, which they seized and in which they returned home. It is clear, however, that before the middle of the century the Newfoundland fisheries had become a recognized branch of English trade, for the traffic was safeguarded by two Acts of Parliament, one passed in 1540, in Henry VIII's reign, the other in 1548, in the reign of King Edward VI. The object of the second Act was to prohibit the exaction of any dues by way of licence from men engaged in the Iceland or Newfoundland fishing trade, and Hakluyt's note upon it is that 'by this Act it appeareth that the trade out of England to Newfoundland was common and frequented about the beginning of the reign of Edward VI, namely, in the year 1548.'⁴⁰

³⁹ For this passage, see Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, chap. iv.

⁴⁰ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 170.

About this date Sebastian Cabot again appears upon the scene. In 1512 he had entered the Spanish service; and, after a visit to England, had returned to Spain, where, from 1518 to 1547, he held the appointment of Pilot-Major to the King and Emperor Charles V.⁴¹ At the end of 1547 or the beginning of 1548, he was induced in his old age to come back to the land, for and from which, more than half a century before, his or his father's great discovery had been made; and King Edward VI rewarded his services by appointing him Grand Pilot in England. His mind was still set on finding a way to the Indies by the Northern Sea. He became governor of 'the mystery and company of the Merchant Adventurers for the discovery of regions, dominions, islands, and places unknown'; and in Hakluyt's pages⁴² may be found his instructions 'for the direction of the intended voyage for Cathay.'

⁴¹ See The Dictionary of National Biography, s. v.

⁴² Vol. i, p. 251.

The company was not finally incorporated by royal charter till 1554-5, but in the preceding year, 1553, they sent out an expedition of three ships to try for a North-East Passage. The leader of the expedition, Sir Hugh Willoughby, was, with the crews of two ships, frozen to death on the coast of Lapland; but Richard Chancellor, the captain of the third ship, reached the port on which the town of Archangel now stands, and made his way overland to Moscow. This was the beginning of British trade with Russia. The Merchant Adventurers became known as the Muscovy Company, and their efforts were directed to the overland traffic between Asia and Europe, which came by Bokhara, Astrakhan, and the Volga, to the meeting of the east and west at Novgorod.

But, important as was this new development of trade, the British explorers, whose names have lived, still took their way for the most part over the Atlantic, making ever for the West. In June, 1576, Martin Frobisher sailed from Blackwall to the north-west 'for the search of the straight or passage to China.'⁴³ He sighted Greenland; and, sailing west, came to the inlet in the American coast, north of the Hudson Straits, which, after him, was called Frobisher Bay. This arm of the sea he took to be a passage between the two continents, the right-hand coast, as he went west, seeming to be Asia, the left-hand coast America. He came back to Harwich in October, bringing with him a sample of black stone supposed to contain gold; and thus, to the vain hope of a short passage to the Indies, he added the more dangerous attraction of possible mineral wealth in the Arctic regions. Men's hopes were raised; a company of Cathay was formed, with Michael Lok for governor; and, as their Captain-General, Frobisher sailed again in May, 1577, 'for the further discovering of the passage to Cathay.'⁴⁴ Again he sighted Greenland. Again he reached the bay which had been the turning-point of his former voyage. He took possession of the barren northern land in his Queen's name; and, when he came back in September, 'Her Majesty named it very properly Meta Incognita, as a mark and bound utterly hitherto unknown.'⁴⁵ The voyage was fruitless, but the stones brought home were still thought to promise gold, and so, in the following May, Frobisher started once more on a third voyage to the north. Fifteen ships went with him from Harwich, bearing 'a strong fort or house of timber'⁴⁶ to be set up on arrival in the Arctic regions, and intended to shelter one hundred men through the coming winter. The hundred men included miners, goldfiners, gentlemen, artisans, 'and all necessary persons'⁴⁶—as though this desolate region were to become the scene of a thriving colony. They set sail, reached the coast of Greenland, and claimed it in the Queen's name. They fell in with the Esquimaux; they crossed the channel now known as Davis Strait to the Meta Incognita; and they came back in the autumn with no result beyond the report of a new imaginary island. This was the end of Frobisher's enterprise, but in the next forty years other English sailors followed where he had gone before, and opened up to geographical knowledge fresh stretches of icebound coast and wintry sea. Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and others, gave their names to straits and bays, but it is impossible here to trace the record of their courage and endurance. No quest has ever been so fruitful of daring, patient seamanship, none has ever been so barren of practical results, as that for the North-West Passage. What Frobisher went to find in the sixteenth century, Franklin still sought in the nineteenth: and through all the ages of British exploration has run the ever receding hope of finding a short way through ice and snow to the sunny lands of the East.

⁴³ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 52.

⁴⁴ Ibid. p. 56.

⁴⁵ Ibid. p. 104.

⁴⁶ Ibid. p. 105.

In Great Britain the sixteenth century was the age of adventurers, casting about for ways to other worlds, or freebooting where Spain and Portugal claimed ownership of land and sea; but in that time two men stand out as having had definite views of settlement, and as having been colonizers in advance of their age. They are Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh. Edward Hayes, the author of a narrative of Gilbert's attempt to found a colony in Newfoundland, speaks of him as 'the first of our nation that carried people to erect an habitation and government in those northerly countries of America,'⁴⁷ and no nobler Englishman could well be found to head the list of English colonizers of the New World. Chivalrous in nature, bold in action, he was at the same time 'famous for his knowledge both by sea and land';⁴⁸ and it was his Discourse to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies, which is said to have determined Frobisher to explore the north.

⁴⁷ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 185.

⁴⁸ From Fuller's Worthies of Devonshire.

In June, 1578, Gilbert obtained from Queen Elizabeth his celebrated patent 'for the inhabiting and planting of our people in America.'⁴⁹ The grant was a wide one. It gave him full liberty to explore and settle in any 'remote heathen and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people'; and it constituted him full owner of the land where he settled, within a radius of two hundred leagues from the place of settlement. It was subject only to a reservation to the Crown of one-fifth of the gold and silver found, and to a condition that advantage should be taken of the grant within six years. For three or four years Gilbert's efforts to colonize under this patent were fruitless; he organized an expedition which came to nothing, and other men, to whom he temporarily resigned his rights, were equally unsuccessful.

⁴⁹ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 174.

At length, on June 11, 1583, he set sail from Cawsand Bay, near Plymouth, to try his luck for the last time in the western world. There were five ships, one of which was fitted out by Ralegh,⁵⁰ and one, the Golden Hind, had for its captain and owner, Edward Hayes, the chronicler of the voyage. The company numbered 260 men all told, including shipwrights, carpenters, and other artisans, 'mineral men and refiners,' 'morris dancers' and other caterers of amusement 'for solace of our people and allurement of the savages.'⁵¹ These last were evidence that more was projected than mere temporary exploration. It was intended, writes Hayes, 'to win' the savages 'by all fair means possible'; and with this end in view the freight of the ships included 'petty haberdashery wares to barter with those simple people.' On the third of August the little fleet entered the harbour of St. John's in Newfoundland, where they found thirty-six ships of all nations. They came expecting resistance, but met with none. When Gilbert made known his intention to proclaim British sovereignty over the island, the sailors and fishermen present seem to have willingly acquiesced; and when he wanted to revictual and refit his ships, the necessary supplies were readily forthcoming.⁵²

⁵⁰ This ship deserted soon after starting.

⁵¹ Hakluyt, vol. iii, pp. 189, 190.

⁵² Hayes says, 'The Portugals (above other nations) did most willingly and liberally contribute' (Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 192). See above.

The want of a settled authority, of some guarantee for law and order, in the harbours and on the coasts of Newfoundland, was no doubt felt by those who came year by year to the fisheries, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert's name and high repute may well have been known to others than his own countrymen. Two days after his arrival he took formal possession of the land, with ceremony of rod and turf, in the name of his sovereign; the arms of England were set up; three simple laws were enacted—providing that the recognized religion should be in accordance with the forms of the Church of England, safeguarding the sovereign rights of the Queen of England, and enjoining due respect for her name; and then Gilbert issued land grants as proprietor of the soil. In the words of one of the accounts which Hakluyt has preserved,⁵³ 'he did let, set, give, and dispose of many things as absolute Governor there, by virtue of Her Majesty's letters patents.'

⁵³ Peckham's account, Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 209.

Thus was Newfoundland declared to be a British possession, and such are its claims to be our oldest colony. The annexation was complete in form and substance; no protest was entered against it by those whom it concerned; land was granted by the recognized proprietor, and nothing was wanting to constitute a claim which should last, and has lasted, to all time. Frobisher proclaimed the sovereignty of England over Arctic lands, but his proclamation was as barren as the shores over which it extended. Gilbert, on the contrary, went to a place where European sailors had long foregathered; he went there as an English Governor; his authority was unquestioned, his grants were accepted, and when he read his commission and set up the arms of England at the harbour of St. John, he took the first step, and a very long step, towards British dominion in the New World.

Gilbert had great hopes of finding precious metal in Newfoundland; and his principal mining expert, a Saxon, promised him a rich yield of silver from the ore which was collected in the island. That ore, however, was lost early on the voyage home, and the miner himself was lost with it in the wreck of the largest ship—the Delight. A far greater loss, however, was in store for the ill-fated expedition. They left St. John's on August 20, making for Sable Island, which had been stocked years before by the Portuguese.⁵⁴ In a few days the Delight foundered on a rock; and the weather became so bad that, at the end of the month, Gilbert consented to make for home. He was in the smallest ship, the Squirrel, a little ten-ton vessel, as being the best suited to explore the creeks and inlets of the American coast; and, in spite of the remonstrances of his companions, he would not leave her on the return voyage. 'We are as near heaven by sea as by land,' were his last words, before the ship went down in the middle of the Atlantic with all on board; and thus, fearless and faithful unto death, he found his resting-place in the sea. The story is one which stands out to all time in the annals of English adventure and English colonization. It was meet and right that the founder of the first English colony should be a Devonshire sailor of high repute, of stainless name, chivalrous, unselfish, strong in the fear of God. It was no less meet that his grave should be in the stormy Atlantic, midway between the Old World and the New. Thus those who came after had a forerunner of the noblest type; and the ships, which from that time to this have carried Englishmen to America, may ever have been passing by where Humphrey Gilbert went to his rest.

⁵⁴ See above.

Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, was cast in the same mould, but the record of his doings lies in the main beyond the range of this book. Virginia and Guiana were the scenes of his attempts at colonization, not Newfoundland or the coasts and rivers of Canada. In 1584, the year after Gilbert had been lost at sea, Ralegh obtained from Queen Elizabeth a patent which was practically the same as Gilbert's grant of 1578; and, at the end of April, he sent out two ships, commanded by two captains named Amidas and Barlow, to explore and report upon a likely place for an English settlement.⁵⁵

⁵⁵ Accounts of this and the following voyages are given in the third volume of Hakluyt. See also the first book of John Smith's general history of Virginia, The English Voyages to the Old Virginia, in Mr. Arber's edition, The English Scholar's Library.

They sailed more towards the south than previous English explorers, and eventually reached the island of Roanoke, which is now within the limits of North Carolina. Everything seemed bright and sweet and healthful, and the natives of the country were friendly and hospitable, 'such as live after the manner of the golden age.'⁵⁶ So they came back in the autumn with a story full of hope for the future, and the virgin Queen christened the land of promise Virginia.

⁵⁶ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 304.

Ralegh lost no time in sending out settlers. In the next year, 1585, seven ships started with 108 colonists on board. The expedition was commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, and among other captains with him was Thomas Cavendish, afterwards celebrated, like Drake, for sailing round the world. Ralph Lane, a soldier of fortune, was chosen to remain in charge of the colony, and with him was Amidas, the explorer of the previous year, who was styled 'Admiral of the country.' They went by the West Indies, touching at the Spanish islands of Porto Rico and Hispaniola, and, at the end of June, they reached Roanoke. Here they formed their settlement, and, when Grenville and his ships left in August and September, they brought back as bright a report as Amidas and Barlow had given the year before.

Already, however, before Grenville's departure, there had been friction between the Indians and the new-comers; and, as months went on, the new-born colony became in constant danger of extermination. Still Lane contrived to hold his own, exploring north and west, gleaning reports of pearls and mines, and a possible passage to the south sea, until the winter and spring were past and the month of June had come again. A fleet of twenty-three ships was then seen out at sea, and, to the joy of the settlers, proved to be an English expedition under Sir Francis Drake, who was returning home laden with spoils from the Spanish main. Drake, at Lane's request, placed one of his ships with seamen and supplies at the disposal of the colony; but a storm arose, and the ship was blown out to sea. Daunted by this fresh trouble, the settlers determined to give up their enterprise and return home. They asked for passages on board Drake's vessels: the request was granted; and they abandoned Roanoke only a fortnight before Grenville arrived with relief, long expected and long delayed. Finding the island deserted, Grenville left fifteen men in possession and himself came home.

So far, Ralegh's scheme had failed; but the failure was due to untoward circumstances, not to the nature of the country, and he still persevered in his efforts. The very next year, in 1587, he sent out a fresh band of settlers, 150 in number; giving them for a leader John White, who had taken part in the former expedition. The arrangements for forming a colony were more fully organized than before; and to White and twelve Assistants Ralegh 'gave a charter and incorporated them by the name of Governor and Assistants of the city of Ralegh in Virginia.'⁵⁷ When the colonists reached Roanoke, they found that the fifteen men left by Grenville had disappeared, driven out, as they learnt, by the Indians. Notwithstanding, they renewed the old settlement; and, in the face of native enmity, began again the work of colonizing America. Before the end of the summer, White sailed for England, to give an account of what had been done; and, on his return home, Ralegh prepared to send relief to the colony. But war with Spain was now on hand, freebooting was more attractive than colonizing, one attempt and another to send ships to Virginia miscarried; and when at length, late in 1589, White reached the scene of his settlement, he found it dismantled and deserted. So ended the first attempt to colonize Virginia. Success was not to come for a few more years, until the sixteenth century had passed and gone.

⁵⁷ Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 341.

Before 1600, Newfoundland had been annexed by Great Britain, but not one single English or French colony had as yet taken root in America. Nevertheless the century was far from barren of results. The way had been made plain, the ground had been cleared, the wild oats of adventure and knight-errantry had been sown, and the peoples were sobering down to steadier and more prudent enterprise. Beaten on the sea, raided and plundered in their own tropical domain, the Spaniards were ceasing to be a terror and a hindrance to the nations of Northern Europe; and, as the latter grew from youth to lusty manhood, the map of the great North American continent unfolded itself before their eyes. Then Champlain went to work in Canada, and John Smith in Virginia; Jesuits on the St. Lawrence, and Puritans in the New England states; and so the grain of mustard-seed, cast into American soil, grew into a great tree, which already, before three centuries have ended, bids fair to overshadow the earth.

N.B.—The references to Hakluyt made in the notes above are to the 1810 edition.

Among modern books most use has been made in this chapter of:—

    PARKMAN'S Pioneers of France in the New World;
    DOYLE'S History of the English in America, vol. i; and
    JUSTIN WINSOR'S Narrative and Critical History of America.

Reference should also be made to Sir J. BOURINOT'S monograph on 'Cape Breton,' first published in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. ix, 1891, and since published separately.

CHAPTER II

The history of Canada has been so often and so well told, that an attempt simply to reproduce the narrative would be worse than superfluous. The scheme of the present series is, in the field of colonization and within the present limits of the British Empire, to trace the connexion between history and geography; and from this point of view more especially the story of New France will be recorded.

Various parts of the world, now British possessions, were once owned by other European nations, notably by the Dutch or French. The last volume of the series dealt with what was in past times a dependency of the Netherlands, the Cape Colony, the mother colony of South Africa. The present volume deals with a land which the French made peculiarly their own; where, as hardly anywhere else, they settled, though not in large numbers; not merely conquering or ruling the conquered, not only leaving a permanent impress of manners, law, and religion, but slowly and partially colonizing a country and forming a nation.

Lower Canada, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was rightly included under the wider name of New France, for here France and the French were reproduced in weakness and in strength. It was a land well suited to the French character and physique. Much depended on tactful dealings with the North American Indians, a species of diplomacy in which Frenchmen excelled. The commercial value of Canada consisted mainly in the fur trade, an adventurous kind of traffic more attractive to the Frenchman of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than plodding agriculture or the life of a counting-house. On the rivers and lakes, coming and going was comparatively easy; the short bright summers and the long winters made the country one of strong contrasts. To a bold, imaginative, somewhat restless people there was much to charm in Canada.

But Canada meant far less in earlier days than now it means. It meant the banks of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, and of the lakes from which it flows. The Maritime Provinces of the present Dominion, or at any rate Nova Scotia, were not in Canada properly so called, but bore the name of La Cadie or Acadia,¹ and the great North-West was an unknown land.

¹ For the derivation of the name 'Acadia,' see Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 243, note. Cadie is an Indian word meaning place or region. 'It is obviously a Micmac or Souriquois affix used in connexion with other words to describe the natural characteristics of a place or locality' (Bourinot's monograph on 'Cape Breton,' Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. ix, sec. 2, p. 185). For the name 'Canada,' see above, note 37.

By the end of the seventeenth century the French had three spheres of influence and colonization in North America—the country of the St. Lawrence, the seaboard between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and the New England colonies, and Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi. To join them and encircle the English colonies was the aim of French statesmanship. It was an impossible aim, inevitably frustrated by geographical conditions and by want of colonists; but the conception was a great one, large as the new continent in which it was framed, and able men tried to work it out, but tried in vain.

Much has been written of French methods of colonization; writers have been at pains to enumerate the shortcomings of the French, and have carefully explained whence those mistakes arose. But there is less to wonder at in the failures than in the great successes to be credited to France. Being part of the continent of Europe, and ever embroiled in continental politics, when she competed with England as a colonizing power, she competed with one hand tied.² Changeable, it is said, were the French and their policy; their kings and courtiers may have been changeable, but the charge does not lie against the French nation.

² This is pointed out in Professor Seeley's Expansion of England, course i, lecture 5.

They were trading up the Senegal early in the seventeenth century, and there they are at the present day. From the dawn of their colonial enterprise they tried to obtain possession of Madagascar; they have their object now. Nearly four centuries ago they fished off the coasts of Newfoundland, and England has good cause to know that they fish there still. To the St. Lawrence went Cartier from St. Malo, and by the same route generations of Frenchmen entered steadily into America, until Quebec had fallen and the St. Lawrence was theirs no more. The French were versatile in their colonial dealings; they were quickly moving and constantly moving; but they saw clearly and they followed tenaciously; they were strong and staunch, and they proved themselves to be a wonderful people.

Yet there must have been some element of weakness in the French character, in that they bred and obeyed bad rulers who did not live for France, but for whom France was sacrificed; who crushed liberty, political and religious, who drove out industry with the Huguenots, and squandered the heritage of the nation. Englishmen, comparatively early in their history, reckoned with priests first and with kings afterwards. They did most of their work at home before they made their colonial empire; they colonized new worlds as a reformed people; the French tried to colonize under absolutism and priestcraft. It might not have been so, it probably would not have been so, if the religious policy of the French Government had been other than it was. The Huguenots, if not persecuted and eventually in great measure driven out, would have given France the one thing wanting to make her colonization successful, the spirit of private enterprise independent of court favour, the child and the parent of freedom, the determined foe of a deadening religious despotism.

In the sixteenth century, after Cartier's voyages to the St. Lawrence, we hear little of the French in North America. The Breton fishermen followed their calling, crossed the Atlantic year after year, and came back with cargoes of fish and with furs procured by barter with the Indians; but no French settlement was founded either in Canada or in Acadia. In France itself the last half of the century was a time of civil war; the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place, the house of Valois came to an end, and in 1589 Henry of Navarre became King of France. Before his accession to the Crown, two attempts at French colonization were made, in Brazil and in Florida. The colonists were mainly Huguenots, and their enterprise was backed by the great Protestant leader Coligny. The earlier attempt, designed to plant a settlement on the harbour of Rio Janeiro, was short-lived, because ill led by a violent tyrannical man, Villegagnon. The first settlers arrived in 1555; by the end of 1558 they had all disappeared. Still more tragical was the outcome of the venture in Florida. In 1562 a band of would-be colonists sailed from Dieppe, under the command of Jean Ribault. They reached Florida in safety, and built a small fort towards the northern end of the peninsula, in which thirty men were left behind while Ribault returned to France. In the following year, the survivors of the thirty came back to Europe, having abandoned the fort and experienced every extremity of thirst and hunger while crossing the Atlantic in a ship of their own making. Again in 1564, a Huguenot expedition, under René de Laudonnière, sailed for Florida, and the settlers planted themselves on the St. John's river, then known as the river of May. In 1565 Ribault joined them with reinforcements and supplies. Well known from its surpassing horror is the story of the French settlement. A Spanish force under Menendez, a fanatic as treacherous and as savage as Philip II himself, took up a position to the south where the town of St. Augustine now stands, and overpowering the Frenchmen in detachments, butchered them with every accompaniment of cruelty and guile. The French fort passed into Spanish hands, but within three years time an avenging freebooter came from France, Domenic de Gourgues; the Spaniards in their turn were shot and hung, and the banks of the St. John's river were left desolate.

Ill managed, badly supported were these French ventures to Brazil and Florida. Had they been well led and given some little encouragement and assistance, the result might have been far different. Protestants might have gained a firm foothold in Central and Southern America. France might have won from Spain and Portugal a great domain. As it was, the attempts resulted in utter failure, and great opportunities were lost never to be regained.

As the sixteenth century drew to a close, a patent was issued by the French King to a Breton nobleman, the Marquis de la Roche, to colonize in North America. The terms of the patent were preposterously wide, conferring sovereignty over Canada, together with a monopoly of trade. The results were proportionately small. La Roche set sail in 1598, in a single ship with a cargo of convicts. He landed them at Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, and sailed back to France, leaving them to their fate. Five years later, in 1603, eleven of the number, who had survived, were rescued and brought home again.

About a year after La Roche's fruitless voyage, in 1599 or 1600, two other Frenchmen, Chauvin, a sea captain, and Pontgravé, a St. Malo merchant, also obtained a patent to colonize in Canada. Their object was to monopolize the fur trade, and they attempted a settlement at Tadoussac, where the Saguenay river flows into the St. Lawrence. During a whole winter a small party was left at the station, but no permanent colony was formed; and a second and third voyage had no lasting results. Chauvin died, and in 1602 or 1603 a new patent was granted to De Chastes, a man of rank and station, who associated with himself Pontgravé, and secured the services of Samuel Champlain.

In order of time, Champlain's name stands second in the list of the men to whom New France in America was due. It stands second in time to the name of Cartier; in order of merit it heads the list. Cartier was a great explorer, but his work ended with discovery; Champlain founded a colony. The history of Canada as a French possession has gained in attractiveness, in that it began and ended with a high-minded, chivalrous leader. It began with Champlain, it ended with Montcalm. Born on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, the adventurous son of a seafaring father, Champlain fought for the King in Brittany, and was given by him a retainer in the shape of a small pension. The war over, he travelled for two years in the Spanish Indies, and, visiting Panama, conceived the idea of a ship canal across the isthmus. After his return home, he took service under De Chastes' company, and in 1603 sailed with Pontgravé for the St. Lawrence. The voyage was one of exploration only. Champlain ascended the river as far as Montreal, gathering geographical information from the Indians, but attempting no settlement; and when he returned to France in a few months' time, he found that his employer, De Chastes, was dead.

Yet another royal patent was granted, in 1603, to De Monts, a Huguenot gentleman of the French court, its object being the colonization of Acadia, and Acadia being defined as extending from the fortieth degree of north latitude, which runs through³ Philadelphia, to the forty-sixth degree, which is north of Montreal. De Monts took into partnership the members of De Chastes' company, and in 1604 two vessels sailed for America. They carried a mixed freight, Huguenots and Roman Catholics, gentlemen of fortune, and vagrants impressed under the King's commission. De Monts and Champlain were on board the first ship, Pontgravé followed in the second, with supplies for the future colony. They steered not for the St. Lawrence, but for the coast of Nova Scotia; and entering the Bay of Fundy they discovered Annapolis harbour, which was given the name of Port Royal. The first settlement, however, was made on an islet off the mouth of the St. Croix river, which now forms the boundary between New Brunswick and the state of Maine; and there through the winter De Monts and Champlain stayed with a scurvy-stricken company, numbering seventy-nine in all, of whom nearly half died. On the return of spring and the advent of relief from France, the leaders coasted south along the shores of Maine, and of what were in after years the New England states; and coming back to their station in August, they moved the settlement across the Bay of Fundy, and established themselves on the inlet of Annapolis harbour. De Monts then returned to France, leaving Pontgravé and Champlain to hold the post through the winter of 1605.

³ For De Monts' patent see the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 4, entry 10, Nov. 8, 1603. It was a patent 'for inhabiting Acadia, Canada, and other places in New France,' and De Monts was appointed the French King's Lieutenant-General 'for to represent our person in the countries, territories, coasts, and confines of La Cadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree.'

In the following summer, ships came back from France just in time to prevent the settlement at Port Royal from being broken up in despair. They brought with them the advocate Lescarbot, the historian of New France. Again there was exploring down the American coast, and again Champlain and his associates held their own through the winter. The outlook of the little colony was promising. The season was mild, the natives were friendly, supplies were plentiful, gardens were laid out and corn was sown. But in the late spring of 1607 news came from home that the patent had been cancelled, and before the summer ended Port Royal was abandoned.

For nearly three years the place was left desolate, and then, in 1610, one of De Monts' associates came back again. It was the Baron de Poutrincourt, to whom the harbour, when first discovered, had been granted by De Monts. The Jesuits were at the time strong at the French court, stronger still after the assassination of King Henry IV in this same year. They, or the ladies of the court, who were their tools, bought shares in the venture, and Jesuit priests went out to Acadia, thwarting and quarrelling with Poutrincourt and his son. Both the two great dangers which always threatened and finally ruined the French power in North America came into being at this date, the exclusive influence of the Jesuits and English competition.

In 1606 the Virginia company was incorporated, and in the following year British colonization on the mainland of North America began with the founding of Jamestown. There are many miles of coast between Acadia and Virginia, between the Bay of Fundy and Chesapeake Bay, but French and English soon crossed each other's paths. In 1613 a ship sailed from France, sent out under Jesuit influence, with a view to founding a settlement on the North American coast. After touching at Port Royal, the party sailed southwards to the coast of Maine, and landed in the region of the Penobscot river. Hardly had their tents been set up on the shore, when an English ship came in sight, captured the French vessel, which was lying at anchor, uprooted the would-be colony, and took all the Frenchmen prisoners. The invaders hailed from Jamestown; they were commanded by Samuel Argall, an unscrupulous freebooter. His pretext was that the Frenchmen were taking up ground within the limits of the patents granted by the English King to his subjects, but his act was little more than piracy. Some of the Frenchmen were set adrift in an open boat, and eventually reached France in safety; the rest were carried prisoners to Jamestown, whence Argall set sail again, commissioned by the governor of Virginia to attack Port Royal. He reached, plundered, and burnt the fort, its commander, Biencourt, with the rest of the settlers, being absent in the fields, for it was harvest time; but the colony was not finally blotted out, and the French still kept a foothold in Acadia.

Champlain's first voyage to North America in 1603 had taken him to the St. Lawrence. From 1604-7 Acadia had been the scene of his labours, until De Monts' patent had been revoked. In 1608 he returned to the river of Canada. On the line of the St. Lawrence he carried out the work of his life, and by its banks he died. In the course which French colonization in America and its first great leader took, may be traced the influence on history of geography and race.

In English colonial history, as writers on the subject have pointed out,⁴ the age of adventure was distinct from the age of settlement. Ralegh was the latest product of the times of romance, an his attempts at colonization were premature and unsuccessful. To some extent a similar distinction may be made in French colonial history: Cartier may be taken as a representative of the earlier age, Champlain of the later; but the line of demarcation is much fainter, much less real, in the case of the French than in that of the English. To English and French alike adventure had meant private enterprise, usually but not always countenanced by kings, generally carried out under cover of royal licences or patents, so vague as to be almost meaningless, granted one day, liable to be cancelled the next. When the age of romance passed away in England with the passing of the sixteenth century, adventurers in the ordinary sense in great measure disappeared, with the exception of the Arctic explorers, who, like Hudson and Baffin, still sailed to the desolate North. Private enterprise, on the other hand, not only survived, but it grew stronger, more business-like, more independent of court favour. It was private enterprise still, but under new forms, the enterprise not of individual freebooters, or of knights errant, but of associations of citizens, some of the associations being chartered commercial companies, while others were bands of colonizers and colonists united by a common antagonism and a common creed. Their objects were not in the air, they did not live in dreamland, they went out or sent out others, not so much to discover new lands, as to occupy and appropriate lands which had already been found, to make new English homes on the other side of the Atlantic.

⁴ See e.g. Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, chap. vi.

In theory the commercial companies were, like the individual patentees of the former generation, working under the authority of the Crown. Indeed that authority was far more strongly proclaimed than before, and for vague generalities were substituted very definite restrictions; but this was only a sign of a new time. It indicated that a stage had been reached when more was known, when practical business was being taken in hand, and when, therefore, the slipshod patents, which had hitherto sufficed, would no longer avail. Because private enterprise really meant more, therefore the Government said more, and the very defining of the work and circumscribing of its sphere made the results sounder, more lasting, and more substantial. It was not the lust of conquest, it was not the glamour of adventure, it was not a wish to proselytize in religion or to add new provinces to the domain of a European kingdom which made the English colonize North America. There were two main motives at work. One was the desire to find or to do something which would pay, the other was a longing to live under more independent conditions than existed in the mother country. The settlers went to lands where natives dwelt, and, therefore, dealings with the North American Indians in war and peace ensued; but the English did not go to the New World in the main to conquer or to convert the Indians, they went to live and to make their living pay. Instinct was at work in English colonization, the instinct of self-preservation, of extension, of always moving a little further and winning a little more; but there was no high scheme of universal dominion for the English King or the English creed. Against any such views the New England colonies were a living protest, and in Virginia, Maryland, or Carolina they found no place. All of these colonies were prosaic, unromantic communities: they were groups of Englishmen, living, grumbling, working and squabbling, with varieties of opinions and differences of outward forms, half protected, half worried by the home Government, building up unconsciously, illogically, amid much that was mean and small, what was to be in the end a mighty nation. Instinct, too, kept the colonists for the most part near to the sea. They fringed the Atlantic over which they had come, and ever renewed their strength as more emigrants came in; they strayed no doubt to some extent as years went on, taking up farms inland and clearing the backwoods; but, on the whole, there was continuity of colonization, a gradual widening of the belt of settlement, expansion on the part of the settlers themselves, as opposed to planting in the heart of the continent military outposts, or isolated mission stations.

With the French in Canada the case was different. Except in Acadia and Cape Breton Island, and to a limited extent in Newfoundland, they had no hold on the sea coast: and Acadia had for many years little connexion with the land of the St. Lawrence. Canada, as a sphere of colonization, began when the open sea had been left far behind. It was an inland territory with a great river and great lakes. No two parts of the world are more unlike than Canada and South Africa. Canada has a river highway into it, excellent water communication by lake and stream, and, until the Rocky mountains are reached, no mountain barriers are interposed to cut off the interior from the coast regions or one district from another. South Africa is almost devoid of natural harbours, its rivers are valueless for purposes of navigation. Its ranges of hills or mountains rise one behind the other, barring the way from the coast to the interior, severing one section of the territory from another. Yet, curiously enough, somewhat similar results followed from diametrically opposite geographical conditions. No two races in the world were and are more unlike each other than the Dutch and the French, unlike in character, in tradition, in political and religious training. But the Dutch in South Africa and the French in Canada resembled each other in this, that they were and remained very few in number, planted in an unlimited area, and that men lived in either case under a rigid system. The restrictive rule of the Netherlands East India Company in South Africa led to trekking, to wandering in the wilderness, and the difficulties of communication increased the wandering tendency, because the wanderers, who wished no longer to be controlled by the government at Cape Town, could not easily be followed up. The French rule in Canada was restrictive too, restrictive in matters of politics, of commerce, and of religion. It was a despotism which allowed no vestige of freedom or self-government; but it was a far stronger and more active despotism than that of the Netherlands Company. The Dutch sought a trade monopoly, the French a territorial dominion. The Dutch were at pains to minimize their responsibilities. The French policy was one of conquest and conversion; they looked to holding in subjection the lands and the peoples of the New World. They worked under a government which was absolute, but whose absolutism, in the main, encouraged perpetual moving forward, and they worked in a land where moving forward was comparatively easy. Thus dispersion ensued on a greater scale than in South Africa. The negative force which promoted trekking in the Cape Colony was present also in Canada—antipathy to a rigid system, to hard and fast rules; and the counterpart of the Dutch voortrekkers, though under very different conditions, was to be found in the Canadian fur-traders and coureurs de bois. But in South Africa the positive force was wanting which shaped Canadian history, the forward policy of an ambitious state. The agents of the French Government in Canada, military and religious, went far afield—adventurous and enterprising, intriguing with savage races, establishing outposts in the interior, strong to carry out a preconceived plan of a great French dominion. The malcontent Dutchmen in South Africa moved slowly and sleepily away in their wagons to be out of reach; the country aided their intent by being difficult of access. Along the rivers and the lakes of Canada the Frenchmen lightly passed, those who worked the will of the Government as well as those who were impatient of control.

The rivalry then between the two European nations who colonized North America, the English and the French, was rivalry at every point. It was a conflict of race, of religion, of geographical conditions, of new and old, of European government and American colonists. On the one side were seaboard settlements, comparatively continuous, in which there was much instinct and little policy, much freedom and little system; where the population steadily grew by natural causes and by immigration, democratic communities in which the real work was done from below, the products of a wholly different era from that which preceded it, and in which picturesque adventurers had failed to colonize. On the other side were the beginnings of continental colonization along the natural lines of communication. The dispersion was great, the settlers were few, the settlements were weak. All was done from above, except where unlicensed adventurers roamed the woods. The elements of an older day were preserved and stereotyped, attractive but unprogressive. Old forms transplanted to a New World did not lose their life, but renewed it. Feudal customs took root in the soil. Despotism, supported by the Roman Catholic Church, did not survive merely, but grew stronger. The adventurer remained an adventurer, and did not turn into a businesslike colonist. There was much that was great, there was more that was uniform, but there was little or no growth.

The ultimate outcome of such a contest must necessarily have been, in the course of generations, the triumph of the side on which were the forces and the views of the coming time. But, while the struggle lasted, the French gained not a little from being less vulnerable than the English, as being more dispersed; from being better situated for purposes of attack; from being organized, so far as there was organization, under one government and one system instead of many; from the extraordinary energy and quickness of some of the French leaders in Canada; from the strong military element in the population; from the fanatical devotion of the French missionaries; and last, but not least, from the Frenchmen's better handling of the natives.

The sources of the Mississippi are close to the western end of Lake Superior, and the eastern half of North America is therefore nearly an island, created by the Mississippi, the great lakes, the St. Lawrence, and the sea. An inner circle is formed by the Mississippi, the Ohio, Lakes Erie, Ontario, and the St. Lawrence, the head waters of the Ohio river being within easy distance of Lake Erie. The course of the Ohio is from north-east to north-west. It flows, very roughly, parallel to the Alleghany mountains, and drains their western sides. The Alleghanies in their turn are parallel to the Atlantic, and between them and the sea is a coast belt from north to south. Here was the scene of the English settlements. Here, cut off by mountain ranges from the Mississippi valley and from the inland plains, the Virginians and the New Englanders made their home. 'The New England man,' writes Parkman, 'had very little forest experience. His geographical position cut him off completely from the great wilderness of the interior. The sea was his field of action.'⁵

⁵ The Old Régime in Canada, chap. xxi, p. 399 (14th ed., 1885).

But there is one direct route, with nearly continuous waterways, from the Atlantic seaboard to the St. Lawrence. It runs due north up the Hudson river, is continued by Lakes George and Champlain between the Adirondack mountains on the west, and on the east the Green mountains of Vermont; and from the northern end of Lake Champlain it follows the outlet of that lake, the Richelieu river, for seventy to eighty miles into the St. Lawrence. The head waters of the Hudson are hard by Lake George, but at the present day navigation ceases at Troy, 151 miles from the sea, where is the confluence of the Mohawk river, and from whence the Champlain canal runs direct to Lake Champlain. The distance from Troy to Lake George is in straight line about fifty miles. This route was all-important for attack and defence in the wars between England and France, and it was well for Great Britain that, at a comparatively early stage in the colonization of America, she took over the Dutch settlements in the valley of the Hudson, gaining control of that river and linking New England to the southern colonies.

From the mouth of the Hudson at New York to where the Richelieu joins the St. Lawrence, a straight line drawn on the map from south to north measures rather under 400 miles. It is much the same distance, on a very rough estimate, from the confluence of the Richelieu and the St. Lawrence to the point where the St. Lawrence opens into the sea. This point is generally taken to be the Point de Monts, which is on the northern bank of the river, in north latitude 49° 15', and west longitude 67° 30', though the Gaspé peninsula, on the southern side of the estuary, extends much further to the east. Thus the centre of the St. Lawrence basin is equidistant from the mouth of that river and from the mouth of the Hudson,⁶ and between these two points, before the days of railways, there was no easily accessible route from the sea to Montreal.

⁶ Hennepin in A New Discovery of a vast Country in America (English ed., London, 1698, pt. 2, p. 129), speaking of the St. Lawrence, says: 'The middle of the river is nearer to New York than to Quebec, the capital town of Canada.' This is of course incorrect, but it shows appreciation of the directness of the route to the St. Lawrence by the Hudson river.

Following up the St. Lawrence from the Point de Monts, at about a distance of 140 miles, the mouth of the Saguenay is reached on the northern side. There stood and stands Tadoussac, in old days a great centre of the fur trade, and the earliest foothold of the French in Canada. From the mouth of the Saguenay to Quebec is about 120 miles, and from Quebec to Montreal is rather over 160. Nearly halfway between Quebec and Montreal, over seventy miles from the former and over ninety from the latter, is the town of Three Rivers, situated on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, at its confluence with the St. Maurice river, one of the oldest and one of the most important French settlements in Canada. Here is the limit of the tideway, and above this point the St. Lawrence expands for some thirty miles into Lake St. Peter. At the upper end of this lake or expanse of river, on the southern side, the Richelieu joins the St. Lawrence, with the town of Sorel at its mouth, and forty-five miles higher up is Montreal. From Montreal to Kingston, where the St. Lawrence issues from Lake Ontario, is a distance of 180 to 190 miles by river, past rapids well known to readers and to tourists, and past the Thousand islands. Thus the total length of the St. Lawrence, from the lakes to the opening into the gulf, is rather over 600 miles.

The great lakes of the St. Lawrence basin cover a surface of nearly 100,000 square miles—an area larger than that of Great Britain. Lakes Ontario and Erie, connected by the Niagara river, continue the direct line of the St. Lawrence, Lake Erie more especially lying due south-west and north-east; but from the extreme end of this last-named lake the channel of communication takes a sharp curve to the north in the Detroit river, Lake St. Clair, and the St. Clair river, which link together Lakes Erie and Huron. Lake Huron, the centre of the whole group, stretches back towards the east and south-east in Georgian Bay, while on the north-west it is connected with Lake Michigan by the straits of Michillimackinac or Mackinac, and with Lake Superior by St. Mary's straits and rapids, the Sault St. Marie. The rivers which feed Lake Superior are the head waters of the St. Lawrence, and one of them, the St. Louis, which enters the lake at its extreme western end, has its source hard by the source of the Mississippi. The total length of lake and river on the line of the St. Lawrence is over 2,000 miles.

It has been said that Lakes Ontario and Erie continue the main course of the St. Lawrence in its south-westerly and north-easterly direction, that the channel which feeds Lake Erie at its western end comes down from the north, and that the central lake which is then reached—Lake Huron—breaks back towards the east. Thus the direct line from Montreal to the centre of the lake system is not up the St. Lawrence, but along one of its largest tributaries, which enters the main river at Montreal. This tributary is the Ottawa, flowing from the north-west in a course broken by falls and rapids. One hundred and thirty miles from its confluence with the St. Lawrence, just below the Chaudière falls, now stands the city of Ottawa, the capital of the Canadian Dominion, connected with Lake Ontario by the Rideau canal; and rather under 200 miles above Ottawa, where the Mattawa river enters from the west, there is nearly continuous water communication in a due westerly direction with Lake Nipissing, which lake is in turn connected by the French river with the great inlet of Lake Huron known as Georgian Bay. Champlain early explored this route—the direct route to the west, and along it as far as Lake Nipissing now runs the Canadian Pacific Railway. French river flows into the northern end of Georgian Bay. At its south-easternmost end, that bay runs into the land in the direction of Lake Ontario; and in the middle of the broad isthmus between the two lakes lies Lake Simcoe.

Such in rough outline is the basin of the St. Lawrence. It is a network of lakes and rivers which finds no parallel, unless it be in Central Africa. The present Dominion of Canada is not merely a political federation; it is a federation of regions which are geographically separate from each other. There is the eastern seaboard, the old Acadia; there is the basin of the St. Lawrence; there are the plains of the North-West and the regions of the Hudson Bay; and there are the lands of the Pacific coast. Only one of these four regions, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was the main scene of early Canadian history. Acadia comes into the story, it is true, but until the eighteenth century only indirectly, in connexion with the English colonies on the Atlantic coast rather than with the French in Canada. English and French collided on the shores of Hudson Bay; they collided also in Newfoundland; but Hudson Bay and Newfoundland alike were outside the sphere of Canada. The great prairies of the North-West were a possibility of the distant future; but not till the days of railways did the western half of the present Dominion come within the range of practical politics. Along the St. Lawrence and its tributaries the drama of Canadian history was played; the furthest horizon was the Mississippi and the whole line of the lakes; a nearer view was bounded by the Ohio valley; while the immediate foreground was formed by the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Lake Ontario, the centremost point being the confluence of the Richelieu with the main river.

Movement, constant movement, these waterways suggested; exploration, adventure, and ultimately conquest; pressing onward by strength or skill through a boundless area, with something unknown always beyond; making portages round impossible rapids, forcing paths through interminable forests, dealing with half-hidden foes. The land was one for the traveller, the explorer, the missionary, the soldier, the hunter, the fur-trader, but not so much for the settler and the agriculturist. Thus it was that the age of adventurers was perpetuated along the St. Lawrence, while the English colonists between the Alleghanies and the sea were living steady lives attached to the soil.

The great motive force of modern adventure was, as has been seen, the search for a direct route to the East. Engaged in this search Henry Hudson, in 1609, piloted the Dutch into the Hudson river.⁷ Champlain's first expedition up the Ottawa was due to a lying tale that along that river had been found a way to the sea. La Salle, the explorer of the Mississippi, had his mind ever set on the East, and his Seigniory above Montreal was named La Chine; for, 'like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a passage to the south sea, and a new road for commerce to the riches of China and Japan.'⁸ Many long years passed before the geography of North America was known with any accuracy, and in the meantime the recesses of the continent, from which the rivers flowed, seemed to hide the secret of a thoroughfare by the West to the East. Similarly, from the time when Columbus sought for and thought he had found the Indies in the New World, down to our own day, the natives of America have been known as Indians.

⁷ Hudson in 1609 sought for a North-West Passage about the fortieth degree of latitude. 'This idea had been suggested to Hudson by some letters and maps which his friend Captain Smith had sent him from Virginia, and by which he informed him that there was a sea leading into the western ocean by the north of Virginia.' See A Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to New Netherland, by G. M. Asher, LL.D. (Amsterdam, Frederick Müller, 1868), Introd. pp. xxv, xxvi.

⁸ Parkman's La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1885 ed.), p. 8.

The two native races, with which the history of Canada is mainly concerned, are the Algonquins and the Huron Iroquois. The former were far the more numerous of the two, and were spread over a much larger area. They included under different names the Indians of the lower St. Lawrence, of Acadia, New England, and the Atlantic states as far as the Carolinas—the Montagnais, the Abenakis, the Micmacs, the Narragansetts, the Pequods, and others. The Delawares, too, were members of the race, and Algonquin tribes were to be found on the Ottawa, at Lake Nipissing, on the further shores of the great lakes, in Michigan and Illinois. From the day when Champlain joined forces with them against their hereditary foes the Iroquois, they ranged themselves for the most part on the side of the French.

The Hurons or Wyandots and the Iroquois were distinct from the Algonquins and akin to each other. When Cartier visited the St. Lawrence, the native towns which he found on the sites of Quebec and Montreal seem to have been inhabited by Indians of this race; but by Champlain's time the towns had disappeared, and those who dwelt in them had sought other strongholds. Though related in blood and speech, these two groups of tribes were deadly foes of each other. The Hurons, like the Algonquins, were allied to the French; the Iroquois, guided partly by policy and partly by antipathy to the European intruders into Canada and their Indian friends, were as a rule to be found in amity with the English. The region of the upper St. Lawrence and of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, was the home of the Huron Iroquois race. The Huron country lay between Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe. South of the Hurons, the northern shore of Lake Erie and both sides of the Niagara river were held by the Neutral Nation, neutral as between the Iroquois and the Hurons, and akin to both. The Eries on the southern side of Lake Erie, and the Andastes on the lower Susquehanna, were also of Huron Iroquois stock; but the foremost group of the race, the strongest by far, though not the most numerous, of all the North American Indians, were the Iroquois themselves, the celebrated Five Nations of Canadian story.

The Erie canal, which, in its 352 miles of length, connects Lake Erie at Buffalo with the Hudson river at West Troy and Albany, runs through the country of the Five Nations. That country extended along the southern side of Lake Ontario from the Genesee river on the west to the Hudson on the east, while due north of the Hudson, the outlet of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, was in old days known as the river of the Iroquois. The Mohawk river, along which the Erie canal is now carried, was, on the Atlantic side, the highway to the land of the Iroquois, and it bore the name of the best known of the Five Nations, the whole confederacy being sometimes spoken or written of as Mohawks.⁹ The route up the river provided nearly continuous communication by water between the Hudson and Lake Ontario. From its confluence with the Hudson the Mohawk was followed to the head of its navigation, whence there was a short portage of about four miles to Wood Creek, a stream running into the Oneida lake, and the Oneida lake was linked to Lake Ontario by the Oswego river. All this line was under Iroquois control; and the westernmost of the Five Nations, the Senecas, commanded also the trade route to Lake Erie.

⁹ The Mohawks, however, were not the strongest of the five in number. They were outnumbered by the Senecas.

The name 'Iroquois' is said to be of French origin: the true title of the Five Nations was an Indian word,¹⁰ signifying 'people of the long house.' Their dwellings were oblong in form, often of great length; and, as were their dwellings, so also was their dwelling-place. Side by side the Five Nations stretched in line from west to east, as may be told by lakes and rivers in New York State, which to this day bear their names. Farthest to the west were the Senecas; next came the Cayugas, the people of the marsh. The third in line, the central people of the league, within whose borders was the federal Council house, were the Onondagas, the mountaineers; the Oneidas followed; and easternmost of all were the Mohawks.¹¹

¹⁰ Hodenosaunee.

¹¹ In a report of a committee of the Council held at New York, Nov. 6, 1724, on the subject of a petition of the London merchants against the Act of 1720, given in Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (3rd ed., London, 1755), p. 226, the Five Nations are placed as follows: the Mohawks but 40 miles due west of Albany, and within the English settlements; the Oneidas about 100 miles west of Albany, and near the head of the Mohawk river; the Onondagas about 130 miles west of Albany; the Cayugas 160; and the Senecas 240.

In all the history of European colonization no group of savages, perhaps, ever played so prominent a part as the Iroquois; none were so courted and feared; none made themselves felt so heavily for a long period of years together. This fact was not due to their numbers, for they were comparatively few, and Parkman estimates that 'In the days of their greatest triumphs their united cantons could not have mustered four thousand warriors.'¹² Yet they attacked and blotted out other Indian races equal to or outnumbering themselves. They nearly destroyed the French settlements in Canada; and all through the contest between Great Britain and France in America, they were a force to be reckoned with by either side. Their alliance was sought, their enmity was dreaded. Their strength was due to the geographical position which they held, and to their national characteristics; while their policy was influenced by the differing conditions of the white people with whom they had to deal. Their home has been described. It was the southern frontier of central Canada, the borderland between the French and English spheres of trade and settlement. Here they lived, in a position where a weak race would have been ground in pieces between opposing forces, but where a strong race, conscious of its advantages and able to use them, could more than hold its own. 'Nothing,' wrote Charlevoix, 'has contributed more to render them formidable than the advantage of their situation, which they soon discovered, and know very well how to take advantage of it. Placed between us and the English, they soon conceived that both nations would be obliged to court them; and it is certain that the principal attention of both colonies, since their settlement, has been to gain them or at least to engage them to remain neuter.'¹³

¹² Conspiracy of Pontiac (1885 ed.), vol. i, chap. i, p. 21. Charlevoix says: 'All their forces joined together have never amounted to more than 5,000 or 6,000 fighting men' (Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières, Engl. tr., London, 1763, p. 185). On the other hand, in A Concise Account of North America, by Major Robert Rogers (London, 1765), p. 206, it is stated that 'when the English first settled in America they (the Iroquois) could raise 15,000 fighting men.'

¹³ Charlevoix, as above, pp. 184-5.

A strong race the Iroquois were. In cruelty and endurance, in bold conception and swift execution, they had few, if any, rivals among the natives of North America, and in their grasp of something like state policy they had no equals. As savages, pure and simple, they reached the highest level; they might indeed have had a greater and more lasting future, if their level had not been so high. The Kaffir races of South Africa in our own time have produced good fighting material; some of their leaders have shown skilful generalship and no small statecraft; but they have been loosely knit together, little bound as a whole by the ties of country or of kin; and from this very weakness has come their salvation, in that they could and can be recast in a new mould. It was not so with the North American Indians, least of all with the Iroquois. They were stereotyped in savagery, and, when the white men came among them, it was too late for them to change; but, as savages of the most ferocious type, as ruthless murdering hunters of men, they developed an organization which was evidence at once of intellectual and physical strength, and of a wild kind of moral discipline.

It is rare to find among savages a confederacy which will outlive a single expedition or one season's war. When there is cohesion, it is usually under savage despots like the Zulu Kings, who habituate their followers to military discipline, and keep them attached partly by fear and partly by the memory or hope of successful bloodshed; but among the Five Nations the rule of one man had no place, and, though warring was their normal condition, the federation lasted in peace as well. They were doubly federated. Not only were there five nations or tribes, but there were also eight clans which included the whole of the Five Nations, members of each clan being found in each nation. The five nations had in fact originally been one, composed of eight clans. Each clan was named after some beast or bird, which formed its totem or coat of arms, the three leading clans bearing those of the tortoise, the bear, and the wolf.¹⁴ The clan tie was a family tie; the members of each clan, to whichever nation they belonged, were as brothers and sisters, and there was no intermarrying between them. Inheritance ran in the female line, and the children belonged to the mother's clan. The clans gave the chieftains to the separate nations and to the confederacy. The highest chiefs were known as sachems, a civil rather than a military title, and the Council of fifty sachems formed the principal governing body of the league, the place of honour being given to the head sachem of the Onondagas. There was also a Council of subordinate chiefs, and a wider body, a Senate—in whose deliberations men of age and experience took part, irrespective of hereditary rank. The form of government was the same for each of the five nations as for the whole confederacy. There was no law but much custom, despotism was unknown, and so was anarchy. There was something Homeric about the Iroquois. Like the Greeks of the legendary age, they were perpetually fighting in spasmodic fashion, with great cruelty, with every form of guile as well as force; and when not fighting they held innumerable councils, making many and long-winded speeches. Apart from personal bravery, the one sound element in their system and character was, strange as it may appear, some measure of what the early Greeks valued under the term [Greek: aidos] or reverence. The Iroquois reverenced long-standing customs, social position, and the voice of age. War was their trade, but the highest dignities attached to the civil chieftain more than to the successful warrior. They dealt out shameless violence to all beyond their pale, but within the ranks of their own people they recognized much more than mere physical strength or skill in butchery.

¹⁴ These three leading clans so put into the shade all the others that in some old writers these alone are recognized. Thus Colden says (vol. i, p. 1): 'Each of these nations is again divided into three tribes or families, who distinguish themselves by three different arms or ensigns, the tortoise, the bear, and the wolf.' A full account of the Iroquois organization is given by Parkman in the first chapter of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, and in the introduction to The Jesuits in North America. See also the chapter on Canadian and Iroquois Indians in Sir J. G. Bourinot's Canada, in the 'Story of the Nations' series. It will be seen from the note to the Introduction, p. lv, of The Jesuits in North America (1885 ed.), that the number of the clans as given above, and their presence in each tribe, is not absolutely certain.

In their organization they had advanced beyond the stage which is outlined in the Iliad. They were far more democratic than the Greeks of Homeric time. In savage sort they framed and kept a polity of the kind which Aristotle tells us is the most perfect type of constitution, being a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. The hereditary principle was strong, but chieftainship did not pass from father to son owing to the rule of female succession. The councils of the nation found place for all whose qualifications were for the public good. High standing, age, experience, eloquence, strength of arm, all were recognized in this strange community. To Sparta Colden likens the confederacy of the Five Nations, in that, in either case, the national customs trained the minds and the bodies of the people for war;¹⁵ but the likeness extends to other points as well. As far as a Greek state and a band of North American savages can be compared, in their social and political training, in their inflexible rules, in their recognition of merit combined with unswerving adherence to the principle of priority of families and clans, no less than in their heartless indifference to pain whether inflicted on themselves or others, the Iroquois Indians resembled the citizens of the famous Greek state. But whatever comparison may be made with either ancient or modern communities, the story of the Five Nations presents the curious problem of a group of savages of the very worst type, who yet in some sort solved the difficulties which the most civilized peoples find so great—those of reconciling democracy with hereditary privileges, and federal union with local independence.

¹⁵ P. 14., 'On these occasions the state of Lacedaemon ever occurs to my mind, which that of the Five Nations in many respects resembles, their laws and customs being in both framed to render the minds and bodies of the people fit for war.' Parkman, too, says of them, 'Never since the days of Sparta were individual life and national life more completely fused into one'; see The Jesuits in North America (1885 ed.), Introduction, p. lx.

Constantly weakened by the strain of war, to some extent they renewed their strength by the principle of adoption.¹⁶ Of the prisoners whom they took, most were put to death with nameless tortures, but many were admitted to their tribes; and in one instance they incorporated a whole people. This was the Tuscaroras, a kindred tribe from the Carolinas, driven north by war with the colonists early in the eighteenth century. About 1715, they were admitted into the league as a sixth nation, though not on equal terms, and were assigned a dwelling-place among the Oneidas and Onondagas.

¹⁶ 'They strictly follow one maxim, formerly used by the Romans to increase their strength, that they encourage the people of other nations to incorporate with them' (Colden, p. 5).

The tribes of the Huron Iroquois stock were agriculturists to a greater extent than the Algonquins. In other words, they had passed out of the nomad stage and made permanent homes. Still, they lived in great measure by the chase; they were born hunters as they were born warriors, and furs and beaver skins were the products which they bartered for the white man's goods. The Five Nations hunted and raided far beyond the limits of their cantons. In 1687, Dongan, Governor of New York, wrote of them: 'The Five Nations are the most warlike people in America, and are a bulwark between us and other tribes. They go as far as the South Sea, the North-West Passage, and Florida to war.'¹⁷ Their interests as well as their pride demanded that on the upper St. Lawrence, as well as on Lakes Erie and Ontario, their power should be paramount. As far as other groups of Indians were concerned, they ensured their object, conquering and in great measure exterminating the Hurons, the Neutral Nation, and the Eries; but they knew well that the few Frenchmen in Canada were more dangerous to their ascendency, and possibly to their existence, than any native tribe or race, however numerous. The French began by making the Iroquois their foes. Champlain had hardly settled at Quebec, when he joined the Hurons and Algonquins in an expedition against them. Thenceforward the Five Nations were the enemies of France. This result would probably have followed in any case, and it is difficult to suppose that one early action determined all succeeding history. It was rather the beginning of an inevitable struggle for the control of the upper St. Lawrence and of the Canadian fur trade. On all sides of their own country the Iroquois, like other masterful peoples, extended their sphere of influence; but their real outlet was to the north, towards the lakes and the great river. On this side the white men were most active and restless, ever sending their emissaries a little further on, ever putting themselves in evidence in some new tribe or village.¹⁸ The French were not content to live outside the Indians; nor were they content, having found a resting-place, to stay there. To be in and among the natives, to control and to convert them, to be the recognized protectors of the land and its peoples, to be the ultimate recipients of the produce of the country, and the guardians of the channels by which the produce was conveyed—no smaller aims sufficed for the French in Canada. In the pursuit of these objects they directly competed with the Iroquois Indians. Great was the territory, few in number were the Frenchmen and Iroquois alike; but they were rivals for ascendency on the same river, and there was not room for both.

¹⁷ Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1685-8, No. 1160, pp. 328-9, Dongan to the Lords of Trade, March, 1687.

¹⁸ 'But this justice must be done to the French, that they far exceeded the English in the daring attempts of some of their inhabitants, in travelling very far among unknown Indians, discovering new countries, and everywhere spreading the fame of the French name and grandeur' (Colden, p. 35).

Because they were enemies of the French, the Iroquois naturally became the allies of the English; but before they had much, if any experience of the latter, they had come into contact with a third European people, the Dutch on the Hudson river.

In 1609, the year after the founding of Quebec, Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the Netherlands service, sailed at the beginning of September into the river which still bears his name, seeking, as he sought till his death, a North-West Passage to Asia. The name of New Netherland was formally given to the scene of his discovery in 1614, and in 1615 a small fort was built on Manhattan Island—the first little seed of the city of New York. In 1621, the Netherlands West India Company came into being; and in the following year New Netherland, with the beaver trade, which was its chief attraction, was placed in the hands of the company. In settling on the Hudson the Dutch conflicted with English claims, and the Government of the Netherlands seem to have recognized that there was a flaw in their title. However, the existence of New Netherland as a Dutch possession continued till the year 1664, when it was surrendered to an English force sent out by the Duke of York, who had obtained from his brother, Charles II, a grant of the territory. The English occupation was confirmed by the Peace of Breda in 1667; and though a Dutch fleet recovered the colony in 1673, in the following year, by the Treaty of Westminster, it was finally given up to the English.

New Amsterdam, afterwards New York, was the chief settlement of New Netherland; but Dutch trade and colonization extended up the valley of the Hudson, where tracts of land were obtained by patroons or large landowners, who were granted exclusive privileges by the company on condition of planting families of settlers upon their holdings. The chief inland colony was Rensselaerswyck, called after an Amsterdam merchant of the name of Rensselaer, and its centre was Fort Orange, now Albany; while on the Mohawk river, about twenty miles above its confluence with the Hudson, and rather less in a direct line from Albany, was the settlement of Schenectady.¹⁹

¹⁹ For an account of the Dutch on the Hudson see A Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to New Netherland, by G. M. Asher, LL.D. (Amsterdam, Frederick Müller, 1868), referred to above. See also Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. iv, chap. viii.

Traders wherever they went, all the world over, the Dutchmen were at pains to keep peace with the Iroquois. Their dealings with them were on the same lines as the dealings of their countrymen with the Hottentots in the early days of the Cape Colony.²⁰ They bought and sold, and got good value for their money, paying, for instance, no more than forty florins for Manhattan Island. But the mere fact of paying for what they took was in their favour, for it was a recognition that the natives were the rightful owners of the land. In course of time they came into conflict with the Mohican Indians along the banks of the Hudson; but with the Five Nations, the nearest of whom were the Mohawks, they were ever in friendship. They were not actually in the Mohawk country, but on its borders; they were neighbours, not intruders; they took the furs which the Indians had to barter, giving in exchange European goods, and notably firearms. Thus Albany became a friendly meeting-place between the Iroquois Indians and the white men of the Hudson colony. The two peoples did not clash with one another in any way, but met as friends and equals, and supplied each others' wants.

²⁰ See vol. iv of this series, chap. ii, p. 43.

The one object of the Dutch being to trade, and the whole people being traders, a twofold result followed, promoting friendly relations between them and the Mohawks. Not only did the Indians realize that they had nothing to fear, and much to gain, from having for their neighbours Europeans who had no views of war or conquest, and through whose agency they could arm themselves against the more aggressive Europeans on the Canadian side; but also, as we may well suppose, the Dutch traders included the best of the Dutchmen, which was not the case with either the French or the English. At any rate, we read that the Dutch in the Hudson valley 'gained the hearts of the Five Nations by their kind usage',²¹ and in memory of a Dutchman named Cuyler, whom the Indians held in special honour, the Iroquois in after years always gave to the British Governor of New York the title of 'Corlaer'.²²

²¹ Colden, vol. i, p. 34.

²² Parkman's Count Frontenac (1885 ed.), p. 93, note.

Into this kindly heritage the English entered;²³ and, though their treatment of the Indians left much to be desired, the alliance, if often strained, was, in the case of the Mohawks at any rate, never sundered; and finally, at the close of the War of Independence, many of the Five Nation Indians, after fighting for England, migrated into Canada, and were assigned lands in the province of Ontario, where their descendants are still to be found. In the words of the Indian orators, a chain of friendship held together the English and the Iroquois. 'Our chain,' they said, 'is a strong chain, it is a silver chain, it can neither rust nor be broken';²⁴ and it would be difficult to overrate the advantage which accrued to the English colonies from their traditional alliance with the strongest natives of North America.

²³ Colden, as above, 'In 1664, New York being taken by the English, they likewise entered into a friendship with the Five Nations.'

²⁴ Colden, p. 125.

In the summer of 1608, Champlain founded the first French settlement at Quebec. A year before, the English had settled at Jamestown in Virginia. A year later, the Dutch found their way to the Hudson. Till his death, at the end of 1635, the story of Champlain is the story of Canada. His colleagues in the new enterprise were men with whom he had already worked in Acadia—De Monts and Pontgravé. De Monts had obtained from the King one year's monopoly of the Canadian fur trade, and two ships which he sent to the St. Lawrence were in charge of Pontgravé and Champlain respectively. Pontgravé, the merchant, stayed at Tadoussac through the summer, bartering with the Indians and coming to blows with Basque traders, who held the French King's patent of little account. Champlain, the explorer, went higher up the river, and erected wooden buildings by the water-side, on the site of the lower town of Quebec. There he stayed through the winter, while his friend went home, and, when Pontgravé returned in the following summer, travels and adventures began which made Champlain's name great among the Indian tribes of Canada.

His first expedition, in 1609, was to the lake which is still called after him. He went as an ally of the Huron and the Algonquin Indians against their enemies the Iroquois. Up the St. Lawrence, up the Richelieu, and on to Lake Champlain he took his way, and at the head of the lake, somewhere near the site where Fort Ticonderoga afterwards stood, the white men's firearms dispersed the warriors of the Five Nations and won a victory. The summer of 1609 ended, and Champlain went back to France, returning to Canada in the following spring.²⁵

²⁵ Canada was first known as New France after Champlain's return to Europe, in 1609 (Charlevoix's Histoire Générale de la Nouvelle France, 1744 ed., vol. i, bk. iv, p. 149).

De Monts' monopoly had expired and had not been renewed, but none the less he and his associates persevered in their enterprise, opening up the trade of the St. Lawrence, while others shared the profits. Again Champlain joined forces with the friendly Indians against the Iroquois, and a second victory was the result. Before the summer of 1610 ended, he was back in Europe, having learnt in the meantime that his friend and patron, King Henry IV, had been stabbed to death in the streets of Paris. On his next visit to Canada, in 1611, he cleared the ground for a future settlement at Montreal, having noted its advantages as a meeting-place for the Indian tribes from the Ottawa and the great lakes. The late months of that year and the whole of 1612 he spent in France, trying to devise some organization under which the work of building up the French power in Canada might be successfully carried on. There was now no company in existence, there was no royal mandate; personal favour and protection had passed away with the death of Henry of Navarre. The French court was a scene of growing priestly influence and of numberless intrigues; while New France on the St. Lawrence was a 'no man's land,' infested in summer time by crowds of fur-traders, who owned no rule and knew no law, in winter deserted by white men, except the few struggling settlers at Quebec. To form some kind of trade's union under an acknowledged authority was the one thing needful, and with a view to this end Champlain sought for and obtained the patronage of a member of the royal house. The Count de Soissons, a Bourbon prince, was appointed Lieutenant-General of the King for New France, and when he died, shortly after his appointment, the place was taken by another Bourbon, the Prince of Condé. The deputy of these princes was Champlain himself; he was given control over the Canadian fur trade, and he endeavoured to reconcile the rival interests of the western ports of France by forming a combination of traders, to which all could be admitted who had an interest in Canada. The scheme was partially carried out, but unfortunately jealousies, commercial and religious, precluded the establishment of a single united company.

To make money by trade for himself or others was not the first object of Champlain's life. Exploration, with the Indies as its final goal, was in his mind, and the formation of a colony which should indeed be New France. While he still sojourned in Europe, a Frenchman, Nicolas de Vignau, came back from Canada, telling a tale that up the Ottawa river and beyond its sources he had found an outlet to the sea. Early in 1613 Champlain recrossed the Atlantic, went up the St. Lawrence to Montreal Island, and thence, taking De Vignau with him, followed the course of the Ottawa as far as the Île des Allumettes. He went no further. The story of a way to the sea was exposed, as a cunningly devised fable, by the Indians of the upper Ottawa, among whom the impostor had sojourned when he concocted his lies; and, but for Champlain's interposition, he would then and there have paid for his falsehood with his life. Champlain, however, spared him, retraced his steps, and went back again to France, where he spent a year and more before he again visited Canada.

Towards the end of May, 1615, he reached Quebec. He brought with him this time a small band of missionaries, four friars of the Recollet branch of the Franciscan order; and now mission work began in Canada. One of the friars, Le Caron, with twelve other Frenchmen in the company, visited for the first time the Huron country, and Champlain followed close upon his steps. Ascending the Ottawa for the second time, he passed the point which he had reached two years before, and by the Mattawa river and Lake Nipissing came to the shores of Lake Huron. Coasting southward along Georgian Bay, he found himself at length among the Huron towns, where Le Caron was already busy preaching a new faith to the heathen. An expedition against the Iroquois had been determined on, and with the Huron warriors and their allies, Champlain set out for the enemy's land. His route took him across Lake Simcoe, down the series of small lakes which feed the river Trent, and by that river to Lake Ontario, then seen by him for the first time. Crossing the lake, he landed at the site of Oswego, and marched into the midst of the Five Nations' cantons. From the military point of view the expedition was a disastrous failure, for an attack on a palisaded Iroquois town miscarried, Champlain himself was wounded, and the invaders retreated beaten and disheartened. Among the Hurons Champlain spent the winter; next year, returning down the Ottawa, he came back to Quebec, in the midsummer of 1616, and subsequently he sailed for France.

Eight years had now passed since the founding of Quebec. Lakes Huron and Ontario had been reached, the Ottawa route had been explored, the friendship of the Hurons had been secured at the price of enmity with the Iroquois, missionaries were converting or trying to convert the Indians, and fur trading was briskly carried on; but colonization had made as yet little or no way. There were a few permanent residents at Quebec; but lower down at Tadoussac, and higher up at Three Rivers and Montreal, where in the summer white men and coloured foregathered to exchange their wares, in the winter no Frenchmen were to be found, unless it were one or other of the much enduring Recollet missionaries. In France it was the trade of Canada, not its settlement, that was matter of concern. As in the case of Newfoundland, the merchants of the western seaports of England set themselves to keep the island from being permanently colonized, anxious that the fishing traffic should remain in their own hands: so in the case of Canada, the merchants of the western seaboard of France regarded colonization as at best a useless expense, at worst a measure by which they might lose command of the fur trade. The climate of Newfoundland and of the St. Lawrence region was not such as to induce Englishmen or Frenchmen to make these lands their homes. Rather they seemed places for summer trips alone, to be left in winter icebound and desolate. Trade interests and nature combined to check the colonization of Canada; that anything was done in the way of settlement in the early years of the seventeenth century was due to missionary enthusiasm and to the foresight and tenacity of Champlain.

He had formed a company of merchants, chiefly connected with Rouen and St. Malo, who nominally controlled the trade of the St. Lawrence; but they were not at one amongst themselves, some were Catholics, others were Huguenots, while the merchants of La Rochelle refused to join the combination, and traded in defiance of the monopoly which the rival towns claimed to possess. Various changes followed. About the beginning of 1620, Condé was succeeded as Viceroy of New France by the Duc de Montmorency, and in 1625 the latter sold his office to his nephew the Duc de Ventadour. In 1621, the privileges enjoyed by the Rouen and St. Malo company were transferred to two Huguenot merchants, the brothers De Caen: the result was ill feeling, and on the St. Lawrence open feuds between the old and the new monopolists, until in 1623 some kind of union was formed. Eventually, in 1627, all former privileges were annulled, and the control of Canada passed into the hands of a new strong company, known as the One Hundred Associates, at the head of which was Richelieu.

During these troubled years, amid the squabbles of conflicting interests, the one source of strength and steadfastness for the Frenchmen on the St. Lawrence was Champlain's own personality, while the two principal events were the building of the fort at Quebec, and the coming of the Jesuit missionaries. As Lieutenant of the King and representative of the Viceroys of New France, Champlain's difficult task was to hold the balance even between the rival traders and to maintain some semblance of law and order along the water highway of Canada. In former years, as an explorer he had obtained unrivalled influence among the Indians; now, as Governor, he brought the same qualities of tact and firmness into play in keeping the peace among his turbulent countrymen. From 1620 to 1624, he was continuously in Canada, and on the rock of Quebec he built a fort stronger and more substantial than the wooden buildings which abutted on the river below. Well situated, able to withstand ten thousand men,²⁶ such was an English account a few years later of this fort, when enlarged and completed—the fort St. Louis at Quebec. The merchants grudged the money and the men for the work, but the building of a substantial fortress on the St. Lawrence was a step forward towards the French dominion of Canada.

²⁶ Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 139, under the year 1632.

The year 1625 was the year in which the first Jesuit missionaries came into Canada. In that year the Duc de Ventadour became Viceroy of New France: he was closely connected with the Jesuit order, and began his régime by sending out priests at his own expense. Their coming marked an epoch in Canadian history. The Franciscan brethren, who were already in the field, and who welcomed the new-comers on their arrival, were men of a different stamp. Devoted missionaries, they kept to their work; they claimed, outwardly at least, no religious monopoly; they had no wish to control the temporal power; and they lived at peace with all men. The Jesuits, on the other hand, imported religious despotism. The Jesuit emissaries were brave men, none more so; they were self-sacrificing to an extreme, venturesome and tenacious, indifferent to danger, and fearless of death. They were tactful in their dealings with the Indians, and were trained in a school of diplomacy which has never been excelled. But they were the champions of exclusiveness, and the enemies of freedom. Their coming meant that one form of religion was to supplant all others—that the spiritual power was, as far as in them lay, to dominate all things and all men; and that while much was to be done, it was to be done for instead of by the colonists and the natives, from above instead of from below, on a rigid system—strong in itself but inimical to healthy growth, to that variety of life, of thought, and of outward form which helps on the expansion of a young community. From their training and their organization, the Jesuits would in any case have had great influence on the fortunes of the land to which they came; but their influence was greater in that their despotic views harmonized for the time being with the policy of the Bourbon Kings and their ministers. For absolute monarchy had taken root in France; and in the French dependencies, as in the mother country, there was to be henceforth political and religious despotism. That the spiritual power might grow too strong was a distant danger, and in France hardly a practical possibility. In the meantime Kings and priests went hand in hand, co-operating against liberty in church and state alike. Protestantism meant liberty. The Jesuits abhorred the Huguenots because they deemed them heretics: the French Kings and their ministers oppressed them rather on political than on religious grounds, but were glad to use the religious argument in support of political aims.

On the death of Henry IV in 1610, his young son, Louis XIII, became King of France. In 1624 Richelieu became his minister. In 1627 the discontent of the Huguenots culminated in the open revolt of the town of La Rochelle; and its fall, after a ten months' siege, gave the King and the cardinal mastery over the Protestants of France. The effect on Canada of this unsuccessful rising was twofold. It involved the exclusion of Huguenot settlers, and it involved also the hostility of England. The patent granted in 1627 to the company of New France, known as the One Hundred Associates, provided that every colonist who went out to Canada must be a Catholic, and when in the following year Richelieu received the submission of the Rochellois, he was well able to enforce this arbitrary provision. It is difficult at the present day to comprehend a policy, initiated and approved by a statesman of consummate ability, which could not but result in blighting the infancy of the greatest French colony. The English colonies were in the main pre-eminently homes of freedom, dwelling-places for men whose political and religious opinions found scant favour in the United Kingdom. For the English race the New World redressed the balance of the Old; and though the colonists who went out from Europe to America, were in their turn prejudiced and narrow-minded, their want of tolerance was not forced upon them from without, and members of one or other unpopular sect, when persecuted in one province, could find refuge in another. Maryland was a British colony, founded under Roman Catholic auspices; its neighbour, Pennsylvania, was founded and dominated by Quaker influence; throughout British North America there were examples of all opinions and of all creeds. The men on the spot quarrelled with and persecuted each other; but persecution and exclusion were not ordained from home. It would have been bad for the British Empire if from all settlements, which the English formed and maintained, Roman Catholics had been rigidly kept out; but it was far worse for France when her Kings and ministers closed the French colonies to the Huguenots.

The Huguenots were the best of the French traders; they were men of substance; they were capable, enterprising, and resolute. They were beyond others of their countrymen, the pioneers of trade and colonization, and had led the way in the New World. De Monts was a Huguenot, the De Caens were Huguenots, Champlain himself is said to have been of Huguenot parentage. The exclusion of the French Protestants from Canada meant depriving Canada of the class of Frenchmen who were most capable of colonizing the country and developing its trade. Their fault, in the eyes of the French Government, was their independence; that they did not conform to the state religion, and that by not conforming they were politically an element of danger. But what was deemed a fault in France would, in colonizing America, have been a virtue; inasmuch as in the field of adventure, trade, and settlement in new lands, the men who are least bound by old-world systems and traditional views are of most value. If fair play had been given to the French Protestants, Canada would have been far stronger than it ever was while it belonged to France, and probably it would have continued to belong to France down to the present day. For the closing of Canada to the Huguenots, followed as it was afterwards by their ejection from France, not only weakened France and her colonies, but strengthened the rival nations and their colonies. The French citizens who had begun to build up the French colonial empire, helped to build up instead the colonial empires of other European nations; and the oppressions which they suffered brought them the sympathy, at times the armed sympathy, of the Protestant nations of Europe. The rising of the citizens of La Rochelle was accompanied by war between England and France. Buckingham's expedition for the relief of the city, ill planned and ill led, was a fiasco, completing the ruin of the Rochellois instead of bringing them relief; but on the other side of the Atlantic, where English adventurers could take advantage of a time of war without being hampered by court favourites, there was a different tale to tell.

Sir William Alexander,²⁷ a Scotch favourite of James I, had in the year 1621 obtained from the King a grant of Acadia, or, as it was styled in the patent, Nova Scotia. The patent was renewed by Charles I. When war broke out between Great Britain and France, Alexander combined with certain London merchants, styled 'Adventurers to Canada,' or 'Adventurers in the Company of Canada,' to strike a blow at the French in North America. Prominent among these merchants was George Kirke, a Derbyshire man, who had married the daughter of a merchant of Dieppe. Three ships were fitted out under the command of Kirke's three sons, David, Lewis, and Thomas, David Kirke being in charge of the expedition. The Kirkes were furnished with letters of marque from the King, authorizing them to attack French ships and French settlements in America; and, well armed and equipped, they sailed over the Atlantic, entering the St. Lawrence at the beginning of July, 1628.

²⁷ A further account of Sir William Alexander is given below.

Below Quebec was the trading station at Tadoussac, and higher up than Tadoussac, less than thirty miles below Quebec, there was a small farming establishment—a 'petite ferme'—at Cape Tourmente, whence the garrison at Quebec drew supplies. Kirke took up his position at Tadoussac, and sent a small party up the river, who burnt and rifled the buildings at Cape Tourmente and killed the cattle. He then dispatched some of his prisoners to Quebec and called upon Champlain to surrender. The summons was rejected, though the garrison was in sore straits. The Iroquois had been of late on the warpath, and the inroads of Indians on the one hand and of English on the other, meant starvation to the handful of men on the rock of Quebec. Yet Richelieu had not been unmindful of Canada. While these events were happening, a French fleet of eighteen vessels had sailed from Dieppe, laden with arms and supplies, and bringing also some settlers with their families, and the inevitable accompaniment of priests. It was the first effort made by the newly formed French company, an earnest of their intention to give strength and permanence to New France. The expedition reached Gaspé Point, at the entrance of the St. Lawrence; but between them and Quebec were the Kirkes and their ships. Instead of moving up the river to attack Quebec, the English admiral went down the river to intercept the new-comers. The English ships were but three to eighteen; but the three ships were fitted and manned for war. The French vessels were transports only, freighted with stores and non-combatants, unable either to fight or to escape. On July 18, Kirke attacked them, and seventeen out of the eighteen ships fell into his hands. Ten vessels he emptied and burnt, the rest of his prizes, with all the cargo and prisoners, he carried off in triumph to Newfoundland.

There was bitterness in France when the news came of this great disaster; there was distress and hopelessness at Quebec, where Champlain still held out through the following winter. Kirke had gone back to England; but when July came round again in 1629, he reappeared in the St. Lawrence, with a stronger fleet than before. The Frenchmen at Quebec were by this time starved out, they had no alternative but to surrender; and on July 22, 1629, the English flag was for the first time hoisted on the rocky citadel of Canada. There was little booty for the conquerors, nothing but beaver skins, which were subsequently sequestrated, and Canadian pines were cut down to freight the English ships. Kirke's ships carried back to England Champlain and his companions, who thence returned to their homes in France; and Quebec was left in charge of an English garrison.

The Merchant Adventurers had done their work well. With little or no loss, unaided by the Government, they had driven the French from Canada and annexed New France. Had Queen Elizabeth been on the throne of England, she would have scolded and then approved; and would have kept for her country the fruits of English daring and English success. The bold freebooter, Kirke, would have found favour in her eyes; she would have honoured and rewarded him, as she honoured and rewarded Drake. But the Stuarts were cast in a different mould, and no English minister at the time was a match for Richelieu. Before Quebec had fallen, Charles of England and Louis of France had concluded the Convention of Susa, on April 24, 1629; and the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, signed nearly three years later, on March 29, 1632, definitely restored to France her possessions in North America.²⁸ No consideration was embodied in the treaty for the surrender of Canada, but State Papers have made clear that the price was the unpaid half of Queen Henrietta Maria's marriage dowry. For this sum, already due and wrongly outstanding, Canada was sold. It was a pitiful proceeding, unworthy of an English King, but typical of a Stuart. It is noteworthy that early in the seventeenth century both the Cape and Canada might have become and remained British colonies. In 1620 two sea captains formally annexed the Cape, before any settlement had as yet been founded at Table Bay; but their action was never ratified by the Government at home.²⁹ Nine years later Kirke took Quebec, and again the work was undone. So the Dutch in the one case, and the French in the other, made colonies where the English might have run their course; and generations afterwards, Great Britain took again, with toil and trouble, what her adventurers, with truer instinct than her rulers possessed, had claimed and would have kept in earlier days. It is noteworthy, too, that state policy was in great measure responsible for the earlier French loss of Canada, as it was mainly responsible for the later. It is true that Quebec was taken while the French Protestants were still to some extent tolerated, and that a Protestant, De Caen, was selected to receive it back again, when the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was carried into effect. But there were Huguenots on board Kirke's ships, serving under a commander whose mother was of Huguenot blood; and the schism which had broken out in France and culminated for the time in the siege and fall of La Rochelle, left the best of the French traders and colonizers half-hearted servants of France. Canada was given back, but it was given back to the French Government rather than to the French people; and, as years went on, the St. Lawrence saw no more of the stubborn, strong heretics who had sung their Protestant hymns on its banks. Frenchmen, as gallant as they were, had afterwards the keeping of Canada; but, state-ridden and priest-ridden, they lacked initiative and commercial enterprise. Freedom was to be found in the backwoods among the coureurs de bois, but it was the freedom of lawlessness, unleavened by the steadfast sobriety which marked the Calvinists of France.

²⁸ The Convention of Susa provided that all acts of hostility should cease, and that the articles and contracts as to the marriage of the English Queen should be confirmed. The Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, or rather one of two treaties signed on the same day, provided for the restitution to France of all places occupied by the English in New France, Acadia, and Canada. Instructions to make restitution were to be given to the commanders at Port Royal, Fort Quebec, and Cape Breton. General de Caen was named in the treaty as the French representative to arrange for the evacuation of the English. The places were to be restored in the same condition as they had been in at the time of capture, all arms taken were to be made good, and a sum was to be paid for the furs, &c., which had been carried off.

²⁹ See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 19.

In July, 1632, the French regained Quebec. In May, 1633, Champlain came back to Canada. For two and a half years he governed it under the French company, and on Christmas Day, 1635, he died at Quebec in the sixty-ninth year of his age. New France owed all to him. Amid every form of difficulty and intrigue, in Europe and in America, among white men and among red, he had held resolutely to his purpose. His life was pure, his aims were high, his judgment sound, and his foresight great. He lived for the country in which he was born and for that in which he died; but 'the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men',³⁰ and not in France or Canada alone is lasting honour paid to his name.

³⁰ Thuc., bk. ii, chap. xliii (Jowett's translation).

NOTE.—For Canadian history down to the death of Champlain, see, among modern books, more especially

    PARKMAN'S Pioneers of France in the New World, and
    KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. i.

CHAPTER III

To trade and to colonize through the medium of Chartered Companies has been characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe. Chartered Companies have not been peculiar to England. The Dutch worked entirely through two great companies; the Danes adopted the same system; and various companies played their part in the early history of French colonization. Herein lay the main difference, in the field of colonial enterprise, between the northern peoples and the southerners who had preceded them. In the case of Spain and Portugal all was done under the immediate control of the Crown. These two nations were concerned with conquest rather than with settlement; and, if the Portuguese were traders, their commerce was not the result of private venture, but was created and supported by the Government. The Spaniards and Portuguese were first in the field. East and West lay before them, and they divided the world in secure monopoly. The northerners came in—they came in tentatively; policy kept the Governments in the background for fear of incurring war, and freedom of individual action was more ingrained in these races than in the Latin peoples of the south. So freebooters sailed here and there, at one time honoured, at another in disgrace; merchants took shares in this or that venture, and Chartered Companies came into being.

In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the Netherlands West India Company practically included the whole nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England, the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main, working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in England, the companies were private associations, but Court favour was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them, until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone.

Trade jealousies hampered the beginnings of Canadian settlement; there was neither free trade in Canada nor unquestioned monopoly. To cure this evil Richelieu, in 1627, brought into being the company of the One Hundred Associates, nominally a private association, really the offspring of the Government. Its sphere extended from Florida to the North Sea, and from east to west as far as discovery should extend along the rivers of Canada. It controlled all trade except the fisheries, and it enjoyed sovereign rights in so far that it was entitled to confer titles and tenures, subject to the approval of the Crown. The chief officers were to be nominated by the King, but under the Sovereign the company was feudal lord of New France; of its soil and its inland waters, with all that they produced. A statesman projected the company, and, with keen insight into the wants of New France, Richelieu laid down as one of the terms of its charter that settlers were to be introduced in specified numbers, especially and immediately settlers of the artisan class; but these provisions were made to a large extent barren by excluding the Huguenots. At the outset the new French company, with all its backing, was foiled in its efforts by the English Merchant Adventurers. The first transports sent out, bearing settlers and supplies, were captured by Kirke. Quebec fell and New France was lost. The Convention of Susa and the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye were signed and executed, and the One Hundred Associates resumed their charge of Canada. Under them Champlain held the government of New France till he died, being succeeded by a soldier, M. de Montmagny, who reached Quebec in June, 1636.

In 1634, while Champlain was still alive, a fort was begun at Three Rivers. The first permanent settlement at Montreal dates from the spring of 1642, and in the same year Fort Richelieu was founded on the site of the present town of Sorel,¹ where the Richelieu—the river of the Iroquois—joins the St. Lawrence. For many years Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal practically comprised New France. Outside them were fur-traders and Jesuit missionaries, carrying their lives in their hands. A few farms were taken up along the river above and below Quebec, but colonization was almost non-existent, and small groups of priests and soldiers at two or three points on the St. Lawrence feebly upheld the power of France in North America.

¹ 'So called from M. de Saurel, who reconstructed the fort in 1665' (Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. i, p. 185).

The company of the One Hundred Associates lasted till 1663, and little they did for the land or for themselves. At the end of their tenure, the whole French population of Canada hardly reached 2,500 souls. It had been an integral part of the company's programme to people Canada with French men and French women, but, inasmuch as Huguenots were rigidly excluded, the motive for emigration was wanting. The Catholic citizens of France were comfortable at home. They might wish to trade with Canada, but they did not wish to spend their lives there. The soldiers of France went out only under orders; they looked for brighter battlefields than the North American backwoods. Priests and nuns alone felt a call to cross the Atlantic, to face the most rigorous winters and the most savage foes. The French religion was firmly planted in North America during these early years, but the French people were left behind.

De Montmagny was Governor for twelve years, till 1648. His successors under the company's régime were D'Ailleboust, De Lauzon, the Vicomte d'Argenson, and Baron d'Avaugour. Under the Governors there were commandants of the garrisons at Three Rivers and Montreal; and from 1636 onwards there was some kind of Council for framing ordinances and regulating the administration of justice, the Governor and the leading ecclesiastics being always members, and representatives of the settlers being from time to time admitted. In 1645, moreover, the company was reorganized, and the fur trade, which had been vested in the Associates, was handed over to the colonists. Notwithstanding, there was little increase of strength and little growth of population till the year 1663, and up to that date the history of Canada is no more than a record of savage warfare and missionary enterprise.

Religious enthusiasts founded Montreal, and the foundation of Montreal was a challenge to the Iroquois. Always the enemies of the French, the Five Nations saw in the settlement a new menace to their power. Above the Richelieu river, they looked on the St. Lawrence as more especially within their own domain; and when Frenchmen took up ground on the island of Montreal, the Indians resented the intrusion with savage bitterness and with more than savage foresight. On the part of the French, state policy had nothing to say to the new undertaking, nor was it a commercial venture. It was simply and solely the outcome of religious zeal untempered by discretion.

The Jesuits had abundantly advertised in France the spiritual needs of Canada. They had much to tell, and they told it well, skilful in narrative as they were bold in action. They attracted money to the missionary cause, they enlisted brave men, and, still more, brave and beautiful women. Convents were founded in America, and hospitals; priests and nuns led and lost heroic lives, to widen the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, and to convert the heathen. The deeds done, and the sufferings endured, commanded, and still command admiration, yet withal there was an element of barrenness in the work; it was magnificent, but it was not colonization. It was unsound in two main essentials. First and foremost, liberty was wanting. The white men and the red were to be dominated alike: North America and its peoples were to be in perpetual leading strings, prepared for freedom in the world to come by unquestioning obedience on this side the grave. The Protestant, however narrow and prejudiced in his dealings and mode of life, in theory held and preached a religion which set free, a gospel of glorious liberty. The Roman Catholic missionary preached and acted self-sacrifice so complete, that all freedom of action was eliminated. There was a second and a very practical defect in the system. What Canada wanted was a white population, married settlers, men with wives and children. What the Jesuits asked for, and what they secured, was a following of celibates, men and women sworn to childlessness. The Protestant pastor in New England lived among his flock as one of themselves; he made a human home, and gave hostages to fortune; a line of children perpetuated his name, and family ties gave the land where he settled another aspect than that of a mission field. The Roman Catholic priest was tied to his church, but to nothing else. At her call he was here to-day, and, it might be, gone to-morrow. He more than shared the sufferings and the sorrows of those to whom he ministered, but his life was apart from theirs, and he left no children behind him. Martyrs and virgins the Roman Catholic Church sent out to Canada, but it did not send out men and women. In comparing English and French colonization in America, two points of contrast stand out above all others—the much larger numbers of English settlers, and the much greater activity of French missionaries. Both facts were in great measure due to the influence of the Roman Catholic religion, and notably to the celibacy of its ministers.

Histories of Canada give full space to the names, the characters, and the careers of the bishops, priests, and nuns who moulded the childhood of New France, and to the struggle for supremacy between the Jesuits and rival sects. We have portraits of the Jesuit heroes Breboeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, Isaac Jogues, and many others; of the ladies whose wealth or whose personal efforts founded the Hôtel Dieu at Quebec and at Montreal; of Madame de la Peltrie, Marie Guyard the Mère de l'Incarnation, Jeanne Mance, and Marguerite Bourgeoys; of Laval the first of Canadian bishops; but the record of their devoted lives has only an indirect bearing on the history of colonization. It will be enough to notice very shortly the founding of Montreal, and the episode of the Huron missions, as being landmarks in Canadian story.

Montreal, it will be remembered, had been in Cartier's time the site of an Indian town, which afterwards disappeared. Champlain had marked it out as a place for a future settlement, and the keen eyes of the Jesuits looked to the island as a mission centre. It had become the property of De Lauzon, one of the One Hundred Associates and afterwards Governor of Canada, and he transferred his grant to a company, the Company of Montreal, formed exclusively for the service of religion, and especially connected with the priests of St. Sulpice. The first settlers numbered about sixty in all, in charge of a chivalrous soldier, De Maisonneuve, and including one of the religious heroines of the time, Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, who was entrusted with funds by a rich French lady to found a hospital. They arrived in Canada in 1641, and in spite of the warnings of the Governor, who urged that they should settle within reach of Quebec on the Island of Orleans, they chose their site at Montreal in the same autumn, and in the following spring began to build a settlement. Ville Marie was the name given to it at the time, the enterprise being dedicated to the Virgin. At the first ceremony, on landing, a Jesuit priest bade the little band of worshippers be of good courage, for they were as the grain of mustard seed; and now the distant, dangerous outpost of France in North America, which a few whole-hearted zealots founded, has become the great city of Montreal.

Religion has been a potent force in colonial history. On the one hand it has promoted emigration. It carried the Huguenots from France to other lands. It peopled New England with Puritans. On the other hand, it has sent forerunners of the coming white men among the coloured races, bearers of a message of peace, but too often bringing in their train the sword. As explorers and as pioneers, missionaries have done much for colonization; but from another point of view they have endangered the cause by going too fast and too far. In South Africa, a hundred years ago, the work, the speeches, and the writings of Protestant missionaries led indirectly to the dispersion of colonists, to race feuds, and to political complications which, but for this agency, would certainly have been postponed, and might possibly never have arisen. Similarly in Canada, Jesuit activity and forwardness added to the difficulties and dangers with which the French settlers and their rulers had to contend.

The Governor, who vainly attempted to dissuade the founders of Montreal from going so far afield, was right in his warnings. Very few were the French in North America, their struggle for existence was hard, their enemies were watchful and unrelenting. Safety lay in concentration, in making Quebec a strong and comparatively populous centre, in keeping aloof from the Iroquois, instead of straying within their range. To form a weak settlement 160 miles higher up the river than Quebec, within striking distance of the Five Nations, was to provoke the Indians and to offer them a prey. This was the immediate result of the foundation of Montreal. Year after year went by, and there was the same tale to tell: a tale of a hand to mouth existence, of settlers cooped up within their palisades, ploughing the fields at the risk of their lives, cut off by twos and threes, murdered or carried into captivity. Moreover, between Montreal in its weakness and the older and stronger settlement at Quebec, there was an element of jealousy. What with rival commandants and rival ecclesiastics, controversy within and ravening Iroquois without, the early days of the French in Canada were days of sorrow.

Far away from civilization in the seventeenth century was Montreal, but further still was the Huron country. The first white man to visit the Hurons was the Recollet friar, Le Caron, in the year 1615, and from that date onward, till Kirke took Quebec, a very few Franciscan and Jesuit priests preached their faith by the shores of Georgian Bay. Suspended for a short time, while the English held Canada, the missions were resumed by the Jesuits in 1634, foremost among the missionaries being Father de Breboeuf, who had already worked among the Hurons, and came back to work and die.

Few stories are so dramatic, few have been so well told² as the tale of the Huron missions. No element of tragedy is wanting. The background of the scene gives a sense of distance and immensity. The action is comprised in very few years, years of bright promise, speedily followed by absolute desolation. The contrast between the actors on either side is as great as can be found in the range of human life, between savages almost superhuman in savagery, and Christian preachers almost superhuman in endurance and self-sacrifice; and all through there runs the pity of it, the pathos of a religion of love bearing as its first-fruits barren martyrdom and wholesale extermination.

² By Francis Parkman in The Jesuits in North America.

Between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay the Hurons dwelt, accessible to the Frenchmen only by the Ottawa river and Lake Nipissing, for the Iroquois barred the alternative route up the St. Lawrence and by Lake Ontario. Montreal was left far behind, and many miles of a toilsome, dangerous route were traversed, until by the shores of the great freshwater sea were found the homes of a savage but a settled people. To men inspired by religion and by Imperial views of religion, who looked to be the ministers of a world-wide power, including and dominating all the kingdoms of the earth, the greatness of the distances, the remoteness of the land, the unbounded area of unknown waters stretching far off to the west, were but calls to the imagination and incentives to redoubled effort.

But, ambitious as they were, the Jesuits were not mere enthusiasts: they were practical and politic men, diplomatists in the American backwoods as at the Court of France. Not wandering outcasts, like the Algonquins of the lower St. Lawrence; not, like the Iroquois, wholly given to perpetual murder; with some peaceful impulses, traders to a small extent, and tillers of the ground, and above all, since Champlain first came among them, sworn allies of the French—the Hurons seemed such a people as might be moulded to a new faith, and become a beacon attracting other North American natives to the light of Christianity. So the Jesuit fathers went among them in 1634, and in 1640 built and fortified a central mission station—St. Marie—a mile from where a little river—the Wye—flows into an inlet of Lake Huron.

To convert a race of suspicious savages is no easy task. The priests carried their lives in their hands. They were pitted against native sorcerers, they were called upon to give rain, they were held responsible for small-pox. Yet year by year, by genuine goodness and by pious fraud, they made headway, until some eleven mission posts were in existence among the Hurons and the neighbouring tribes, the most remote station being at the outlet of Lake Superior. The promise was good. Money was forthcoming from France. There were eighteen priests at work, there were lay assistants, there was a handful of French soldiers. Earthly as well as spiritual wants were supplied at St. Marie, and far off in safety at Quebec was a seminary for Huron children. It seemed as though on the far western horizon of discovery and colonization, the Roman Catholic Church was achieving a signal triumph, its agents being Frenchmen, and its political work being credited to France. Yet after fifteen years all was over, and the land was left desolate without inhabitants. The heathen learnt from their Christian teachers to obey and to suffer, but in learning they lost the spirit of resistance and of savage manhood. As in Paraguay, a more submissive race, under Jesuit influence, dwindled in numbers, so even the Hurons, after the French priests came among them, seem to have become an easier prey than before to their hereditary foes.

In July, 1648, the mission station of St. Joseph, fifteen miles from St. Marie, was utterly destroyed, the priest in charge was shot dead, and 700 prisoners were carried off. In the following year 1,200 warriors of the Five Nations swept like a torrent through the Huron cantons, fifteen native towns were attacked, ravaged, and burnt, and the brave priest, De Breboeuf, was tortured and slain. Other devoted missionaries shared his fate; the shepherds were slaughtered, and the survivors of the flock were scattered abroad. For the Hurons made little or no attempt to defend themselves; fear came upon them and trouble; they fell down, and there was none to help them. The fort at St. Marie stood, for even the Iroquois hesitated to attack armed walls; but its purpose was gone with the slaughter and dispersion of the Huron clans. The priests who still lived abandoned it, and spent a miserable winter with a crowd of Indian fugitives on a neighbouring island in Lake Huron. There too they built a fort; but famine and the Iroquois followed them, and in 1650 they left the country, taking with them to Quebec some 300 Huron converts. The refugees were settled on the Isle of Orleans; yet even there, five or six years later, they were attacked by the Iroquois, and at length they found a secure abiding-place at Lorette, near the banks of the river St. Charles. The rest of their kinsfolk were scattered abroad. Some were incorporated in the Five Nations. Others, driven from point to point, were found in after years at the northern end of Lake Michigan or at Detroit, and, under the new name of Wyandots, played some part in later Canadian history; but the Huron nation was blotted out, the Huron country became a desert, and the light which had shone brightly for a few years in the far-off land was put out for ever.

Most readers of the story of the Huron missions will study it mainly as an episode in religious enterprise. They will note the heroism of the Jesuit priests—their faithfulness unto death, their constancy under torture and suffering not surpassed by the stoicism of the North American Indians themselves. They will mourn the failure of their efforts, the butchery, the martyrdom, but will record that all was not absolutely thrown away; for even in the lodges of the Five Nations we read that some of the nameless Hurons held to the faith which their French teachers loved and served so well. But this is not the true moral of the story. The significance of the events lay in proving the French to be weak and the Iroquois to be strong, in demonstrating with horrible thoroughness that the white men in Canada were powerless to protect their friends, in thus making more difficult what was difficult enough already, in retarding the progress of European colonization in Canada. The want of concentration, the attempt to do too much, the somewhat paralysing influence of the particular form of the Christian religion which the French brought with them—all these elements of weakness came out in connexion with the Huron missions; and meanwhile precious years were lost to France which could not be afterwards made good; for in these same years the English, not producing martyrs and heroes, so much as fathers of families, were taking firm root in North American soil, plodding slowly but surely along the road to colonization.

The Iroquois were like man-eating tigers. The taste of human blood whetted their appetite for more. Fresh from the slaughter of the Hurons, in 1650-1 they fell upon the Neutral Nation, whose home was on the northern shore of Lake Erie, stretching to the east across the Niagara river. The Neutrals had held aloof from Iroquois and Huron alike, whence their name; but their neutrality did not protect them from utter extermination at the hands of the Five Nations. Over against them on the southern side of the lake were the Eries, second to none as ferocious savages, and known to the French as the 'Nation of the Cats.' Their turn came next, in 1654-5. They fought hard, behind palisades and with poisoned arrows; but they too were blotted out, and only on the south were left native warriors to cope with the conquering Iroquois. These were the Andastes, on the line of the Susquehanna river, who year after year gave blow for blow, until they too succumbed to superior numbers.

Nothing withstood the Five Nations; yet their fighting men were few, and their losses great. For the time they nearly ruined the French cause in Canada, but in the end their work of destruction rendered the triumph of the white man more inevitable and more complete. They broke up and killed out tribes, whose forces, if united to their own, might have overwhelmed the Europeans; and in doing so they sapped their own strength. They kept up their numbers only by the incorporation of natives who had learned to look to Europeans for guidance and support; and in course of time, fallen from their high estate, they found salvation not as leaders of red men but as allies of white.

It seems marvellous that the confederation held together, and there were, it is true, occasional outbursts of inter-tribal jealousy and suspicion. Difference of geographical position tended to difference of policy. The most determined foes of the French were the Mohawks—the easternmost nation, supplied with firearms by the Dutchmen at Albany, and having easy access to the St. Lawrence. At the other end of the line the Senecas had their hands full in the Erie war, and were little disposed, while it lasted, to molest the Europeans. In the centre, the Onondagas, always few in numbers and already recruited by captive Hurons, were minded to attract to their ranks the Huron refugees at Quebec. So about the autumn of 1653, overtures of peace were made to the French, even the Mohawks for the moment dissembling their enmity; and in the following year a Jesuit priest, Le Moyne, was sent as an envoy to the Iroquois country.

The mission was notable in more ways than one. Le Moyne was the first white man to follow up the St. Lawrence from Montreal to Lake Ontario, and his journey marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between the French and the Iroquois. Thenceforward there was always the nucleus of a French party among the Five Nations, the elements of a divided policy in lieu of solid hostility to the French. Here was an illustration too of the value of the Jesuit priests to the French cause, as well as of the danger of employing them. None equalled these priests in the statecraft necessary for dealing with savages, but none were at the time in question so ready in season or out of season to promote a forward policy, involving future complications and dispersion of strength.

Le Moyne's mission was to the Onondagas, and its result was an application from that tribe that a French settlement should be established among them. The invitation was accepted; and in the summer of 1656 between forty and fifty Frenchmen established themselves on Lake Onondaga, in the very heart of the Iroquois country. It was a desperate enterprise. The men could ill be spared from Quebec, and they were but hostages among the Five Nations. The Indians pretended peace, but even while the Onondagas were escorting the Frenchmen up the river, the Mohawks attacked the expedition, and subsequently under the very guns of Quebec carried off Huron captives from the Isle of Orleans. For a little less than two years, the small band of French colonists remained amid the Onondagas, in hourly peril of their lives; and finally, towards the end of 1658, at dead of night, while the Indians were overcome by gluttony and debauch, they launched their boats and canoes on the Oswego river, reached Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, and found themselves once more at Montreal.

It was a fit ending to the first stage of Canadian history—a hopeless venture, a confession of weakness, a hairsbreadth escape. So far there had been no colonization of Canada. There had been one wise, far-seeing man—Champlain. Brave soldiers had come from France, and still braver priests. There had been going in and out among the natives, toil and hardship, adventure and loss of life. But the French had as yet no real hold on Canada. Between Quebec and the Three Rivers—between the Three Rivers and Montreal, not they but the Iroquois were masters of the St. Lawrence. A trading company claimed to rule: its rule was nothingness. Within Quebec bishops and Governors quarrelled for precedence: under its walls the Mohawks yelled defiance. Montreal, the story goes, was only saved by a band of Frenchmen, who, in a log hut on the Ottawa, sold their lives as dearly as the heroes of Greek or Roman legend; and to crown it all, at the beginning of 1663, the shock of a mighty earthquake was felt throughout the land, making the forts and convents tremble, sending, as it were, a shiver through the feeble frame of New France.

It was the prelude of a better time. In March, 1663, the One Hundred Associates surrendered their charter to the Crown. A century later, by the Peace of Paris in 1763, France lost Canada. In those hundred years a fair trial was given to French colonization. How much was done to leave the impress of a great nation on Canada, the province of Quebec to-day will testify. Wherein the work was found wanting is told in history.

In 1663, we read, Canada became a Royal Province. It passed out of the keeping of a company and came under the direct control of the French King and his ministers. The statement requires some modification, for in 1664 Colbert created a new Chartered Company, the Company of the West, whose sphere, like that of the Netherlands West India Company, included the whole of the western half of the world, so far as it was or might be French—America North and South, the West Indies, and West Africa. Canada was within the terms of its charter, which included a monopoly of trade for forty years and, on paper, sovereign rights within the wide limits to which the charter extended. Thus the members of the company claimed to be feudal Seigniors of the soil of New France and to nominate the Council of Government, with the exception of the Governor and Intendant; while from the dues which they levied the cost of government was to be defrayed.

Such was the outline and the intention of the scheme: the actual result was that the carrying trade was monopolized by the company, together with one-fourth of the beaver skins of all Canada, and the whole of the traffic of the lower St. Lawrence, which centred at Tadoussac. Out of their monopoly they paid all or part of the expenses of government, but the administration practically remained in the hands of the Crown. Like its predecessor, this company was a miserable failure. It lasted for ten years only, and during those years it was an incubus on Canada.

The truth was that Chartered Companies were alien to the genius of France, or at any rate of Roman Catholic France—the France of the Bourbons. Her greatest ministers, Richelieu and Colbert, were, it is true, loth to discard the system. They wished to give French merchants a direct interest in building up a colonial empire. They saw the English working by means of companies. They saw the Dutch giving to the state the outward semblance of private enterprise. Companies, they argued, would promote French trade and colonization, as they had promoted the trade and colonization of rival nations. But Richelieu and Colbert were despotic ministers of arbitrary Kings; the companies which they created were as lifeless and as helpless as their titles were high-sounding and pretentious. They lasted as long, and only as long, as they were backed by the Crown. They were swept away as easily as they were formed; and they left no lasting impress on French colonial history.

We may take it then that, in 1663, Canada in effect passed to the French King and became what would now be styled a Crown Colony. Strong hands ministered to it, and it grew in strength. New France was fostered, was ruled and organized, was supplied, though sometimes sparingly, with means of defence and offence. It was developed on rigidly prescribed lines. It was given a social and political system. Capable and enterprising men were concerned in making its history, and its history was made on a distinct type imported from the Old World, and little modified by the New. What this system was, and how far under it the colonists were able to cope with their coloured foes, will be told in the remaining pages of this chapter.

The Government of Canada was a despotism. Under the King of France, whose word was law, the whole power was centred in the Governor, the Intendant, and the Council, known at first as the Supreme Council, afterwards as the Superior or the Sovereign Council. This Council was created by royal edict in April, 1663. It was at once a legislative body, and a High Court of Justice. It consisted of the Governor, the Intendant, the bishop, and five other councillors, afterwards increased to seven, and again to twelve. The councillors were appointed by the King, and held office usually for life. They deliberated, they legislated, they judged, they wrangled among themselves; they followed the lead of Governor, Intendant, or bishop, according as one or the other was strongest for the time being, and the strongest for the time being was the man who had the ear of the King and his minister.

The law of the land was the Customary Law of Paris, supplemented by three kinds of ordinances. There were the royal edicts sent out from France and registered by the Council in Canada; there were the decrees made by the Council; and in the third place, there were the ordinances of the Intendant, who was invested with legislative authority by the King. The Council, as has been stated, was a judicial as well as a legislative body. It was the court of appeal for the colony, and in early days it was also a court of first instance. There were minor courts of justice, too, established by the Council, and three judges of the three districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal respectively, appointed by the King. In addition, the feudal Seigniors³ of Canada exercised a petty, and usually little more than nominal, jurisdiction among their vassals, while the Intendant enjoyed extensive judicial powers, emanating from and subordinate to the King alone.

³ The judicial powers of the Seignior varied. In a very few cases the Seignior could administer haute justice, i.e. try crimes on the Seigniory which were punishable with death. For all important cases there was right of appeal. See Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. i, p. 365, and Parkman's Old Régime in Canada (14th ed.), pp. 252, 269.

The highest executive officer was the Governor. He had control of the armed forces, and was responsible for the peace and safety of New France. He called out the militia when he thought fit; foreign policy and native policy were in his charge. In old and troubled times distance gave to the Governors of colonies and provinces actual power far exceeding the terms or the intent of their commission. They were the men on the spot. They held the sword; and, when a serious crisis arose, their word was obeyed. Especially was this the case in Canada, cut off for half the year from communication with France, and girt with foreign and with savage foes. Few years passed without wars or rumours of wars. Each Canadian settlement was a garrison; and strength, if not full authority, tended to centre in the hands of the commander of the forces, the trained soldier who held for the time the Governorship of Canada.

Yet, unless he had, like Count Frontenac, great force of character, or was in favour at the Court of Versailles, and when war was not imminent, his influence was hardly more, it was often less, than that of the Intendant. The Governor was the representative of the Crown. The Intendant was the King's agent, the steward of his province, his own man. He was a civilian, usually a lawyer, and therefore, in most cases, of greater business capacity, and more skilled in penmanship, than the Governor with his military training. His intimate relations with King and minister, coupled with experience of legal advocacy, tended to give more weight to his representations than to those of the Governor at the Court of France. The Intendant, not the Governor, presided at the Council; and as legislator or judge, he was responsible to the King alone. In time of peace, and in matters of internal administration, he had perhaps more real power than the Governor, and even when fighting times called the soldier to the front, the Intendant, dealing with supplies and accounts, controlled in great measure the sinews of war.

By the side of the Governor and the Intendant at the council sat the bishop, spiritually supreme, and with power by no means confined to spiritual matters. How strong, politically, was the Church in France before the Revolution, the cardinal prime ministers bear witness, and the priest-ridden wives and mistresses of the Bourbon Kings. It was stronger still in Canada. Priests formed no small part of the scanty population of New France; they made a large part of its history. The schools and hospitals were built by the Church, and the Church owned much of the land. Well organized and disciplined, with clear and definite aims, the ministers of the Church made their power felt in council chamber and in palace; too often they ruled the rulers; and the first and greatest bishop of Canada, Bishop Laval, made or unmade the Governors of New France.

Such was the political system of Canada, while Canada was a province of France. Power was centralized, and the ordinary safeguards of freedom were wholly wanting. Executive, legislative, and judicial functions were placed in the same hands. There was not a shred of popular representation, there was not even a vestige of municipal rights.⁴ Canada was good for priests and, to some extent, for soldiers; there was room in it and a living for an agricultural peasantry, and for the trapper and backwoodsman, who was a law to himself. Where the St. Lawrence flowed by the island of Montreal, or under the rock of Quebec, there were the beginnings of cities with dwellers in them, but there were no citizens in Canada.

⁴ Count Frontenac on first arriving in Canada attempted to give the Canadians some voice in the government by calling together the three estates, and by allowing the citizens of Quebec to elect three aldermen. He incurred the royal displeasure by his proceedings, and his measures came to nothing. See Parkman's Count Frontenac and New France (14th ed.), pp. 16, &c., and see below.

Though power was centralized, it was not entrusted locally to one man alone. The maxim of despotism is Divide et impera; and on this principle the Kings of France ruled Canada. The Governor and the Intendant each corresponded directly with the King and his minister. Each was wholly independent of the other, and yet their respective functions were not clearly enough defined to prevent friction and deadlock. The other members of the Council were subordinate neither to the Governor nor to the Intendant, in so far that they were appointed, and could be removed, by the King alone. For this division of authority there was some excuse. On the assumption that both the Governor and the Intendant might be thieves, it was prudent to set a thief to catch a thief. The system minimized the possibility of tyranny in a distant dependency, where the colonists had no voice in making the laws, and no control over the administration. One all-powerful officer might have become a tyrant; but two or more, if evilly disposed, might be trusted to expose each other's misdoings with a view to securing favour at home. Chartered Companies took the same line in this respect as the French Kings. The British East India Company held their Governor-General in check through his Council; the Dutch East India Company created in their dependencies the office of Independent Fiscal, which corresponded in great measure to that of Intendant.⁵ But the plan devised by Louis XIV and Colbert for the government of Canada had grave defects. Division of authority meant weakness, where strength was urgently needed; it led to personal jealousy, to party feeling, to corruption, and to intrigue; it lessened the sense of responsibility, for each officer could throw the blame on another; and it left the fortunes of Canada in the hands of the man who, for the time being, had, irrespective of any office he held, the strongest character, or the least scruple, or the largest share of Court favour.

⁵ See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 75 and notes.

The King of France created the government of Canada. He created also the people. In less than ten years from the date when he took the colony in hand the population was more than doubled. Shiploads of male emigrants were sent out from France, and cargoes of future wives and mothers. Wedlock was prescribed, celibacy was proscribed, bounties were, in Roman fashion, given to early marriages and to large families. The privilege of remaining single was reserved for priests and nuns; the lay members of the community were bidden to be fruitful and multiply, and they obeyed the King's commands with much success. They were honest folk, the Canadian settlers, not convicted felons sent out from French prisons. No doubt there were among the emigrants men and women who were glad to leave France, and of whom France was glad to be rid; but there was no convict strain in the population, and the coureurs de bois, unlicensed though they were, were not mere outlaws, like the Australian bushrangers.

When an emigrant came to Canada, he could not return to France without a passport, but he might possibly drift into the backwoods or to the Dutch or English colonies. Efforts were therefore made to attach him to the soil. For this purpose a kind of Feudal System was introduced, somewhat diluted to suit the place and the time. The essence of feudalism in bygone days had been military tenure and oligarchy. Time had been in France when the nobles were stronger than the King, but in the reign of Louis XIV they were little more than courtiers. They had become ornamental rather than useful; yet even under a Bourbon despotism, tradition, long descent, ownership of wide and well-cultivated lands, and rights over a considerable number of serfs or peasants, gave the French noblesse considerable social influence. In Canada feudalism had no military aspect. There was, it is true, a Canadian militia, but it had no connexion with the feudal tenure of land. Very few of the Canadian Seigniors were of noble birth, all were poor, their honours were brand new, their domains were backwoods with occasional clearings, their vassals were nearly as good men as themselves. The Feudal System in Canada was not born of the soil, it was simply a device of a benevolent despot for allotting and settling land, for artificially grading and classifying an artificially-formed people, and for giving to a new country some element of old-world respectability.

The Seignior held his land, in most cases, directly from the Crown. He held it as a free gift from the King by title of faith and homage. He held it on condition of bringing it into cultivation; and, if he sold his Seigniory, one-fifth of the price as a rule was paid to the Crown. There was no immemorial title to the land. The title was given by an arbitrary overlord, and by the same could be revoked. The condition of cultivation was annexed in order to promote settlement, and inasmuch as most Seigniors, owing to poverty and the size of the holdings, could not themselves fulfil the condition, they granted lands in turn to other settlers, who held of them as they held of the King. These other settlers were the Habitans, the cultivators of the soil, and their tenancy was the tenure of cens et rente, whence they were known in legal phrase as Censitaires. In other words, they paid a small rent in money, or in kind, or in both. If they sold their holdings, the Seignior received one-twelfth of the purchase-money. They were required to grind their corn at the Seignior's mill, to pay for the privilege of fishing one fish in every eleven caught, and to comply with sundry other small demands, in addition to having justice meted out occasionally at the Seignior's hands.

These conditions may have been found in some instances petty and annoying, but to Frenchmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth century they can hardly have been onerous. They were limited and safeguarded, as they had been created, by the royal will; and it was not till the year 1854, after Canada had known British rule for nearly a hundred years, that they were swept away. That a purely artificial system should have lasted so long and caused apparently so little friction and discontent, argues no little skill in those who invented it, and proves that it was not ill suited to the wants, and harmonized with the traditions, of the colonists of Canada. It is impossible to imagine the Puritan settler in New England submitting to such minute regulations, taking his corn to a Seignior's mill, baking his bread at a Seignior's oven, paying homage to another settler set over him by a distant King. But Frenchmen could be drilled and organized. They understood being planted out in rows, like so many trees. Their religion and their training tended to unquestioning obedience, and they throve in quiet sort under restrictions which the grim and stubborn New Englander would have trodden under foot.

Though feudalism on the St. Lawrence had no military basis, military colonization played a great part in the early settlement of Canada. The Intendant, Talon, Colbert's right-hand man in his Canadian schemes, took in this matter the Romans for his model. As the Romans planted military colonies along the frontiers of their provinces, including Gaul itself, so Colbert and Talon determined to ensure the security of Canada by placing a barrier of soldier-colonists on the border. There was a famous French regiment known as the Carignan-Salières Regiment. It had been raised in Savoy by a Prince of Carignan. It had lately fought with distinction side by side with the Austrians against the Turks, and in 1665, under Colonel de Salières, was sent out to Canada, the first regiment of the line which had ever landed in New France. The main outlet for Iroquois incursions was the line of the Richelieu river. On that river forts were built and garrisoned, and along its banks and also along the St. Lawrence, between the mouth of the Richelieu and the island of Montreal, time-expired soldiers were planted out as settlers. Officers and men alike were given grants of land and bounties in money, and the soldiers were kept for a year by the King, while building their houses and clearing their land. The theory was that the officers should be Seigniors, and that the soldiers who had served under them should become tenants of their old commanders. Where the lands were most exposed, the houses were grouped together within palisades. Elsewhere they were detached from one another, forming a line of dwellings along the river-side, whence the settlements were known as côtés.

The usual size of a Seigniory, whether granted to a soldier or to a civilian, was four arpents in front by forty in depth. In other words, an arpent⁶ being rather less than an acre, the frontage of a Seigniory was about 260 yards long, while the depth was about 2,600, or a mile and a half. This long hinterland contained the corn land, the timber, and the hunting-grounds, but the most valuable and distinctive feature in the Seigniories was the river frontage. In a word, Canadian colonization consisted of a series of river-side settlements, forming a long, narrow, military frontier, with a wilderness behind.

⁶ The arpent de Paris was .845 of an acre or 36801.7 English square feet; therefore one side of the arpent was about 64 yards.

Such was the colony, its land, and its people. There is no exact parallel to be found in the story of other European colonies. None of them, perhaps, started with such very strong contrasts. Canada was not a seaboard colony, it was a purely inland colony; yet its settlements were so many little ports, and its active life was mainly by, and on, the water. It was pre-eminently not a colony of towns or of townsfolk, yet Quebec was as much the heart of Canada as Paris was of France, and the conquest of Canada consisted in the taking of Quebec and Montreal. It was not a plantation colony, it was not a mining colony, it was not a pastoral colony; it was a colony of agriculturists and hunters, and its trade, such as it was, came not so much from agriculture as from the chase. No colonists were ever more carefully drilled and organized than the Canadian agriculturists; none ever lived a life of more unbounded freedom than the Canadian coureurs de bois. The drilling and organization of the one element, and the roving enterprise of the other, combined to produce a good fighting population; but the extremes in either case were too great to result in forming a community, which should be at once stable and progressive. What was natural in Canada was not colonization. What was colonization, that is to say permanent European settlement in the land, was purely artificial. The system of settlement was cleverly conceived, and skilfully as well as humanely carried into effect; but it depended not on law so much as on the personal will of an absolute master. It was wanting in safeguards, it was wanting in elasticity, it stunted individual effort, and it contained no element of growth. A full-blown colony was called into being under regulations which implied childhood, and the result was to leave the Canadians contented so long as they knew no other rules of life, but to leave them standing still, while their English rivals, neither too lawless nor too conservative, grew out of infancy into clumsy manhood, and proved their strength when the fullness of the time was come.

On June 30, 1665, the Marquis de Tracy arrived at Quebec. He had been appointed by the King of France Lieutenant-General for the time being of all his American possessions, including the West Indies; and, before coming to Canada, he had visited Cayenne and the French West India Islands. His mission was temporary, to put the colony in a proper state of defence, and to inaugurate the system of administration devised by the King. The new Governor of Canada, De Courcelles, and the Intendant, Talon, landed in September of the same year. They were good men for their respective posts—the one a keen soldier, the other, Talon, a born administrator, whose power of organization and creative genius left a lasting mark on New France.

The most pressing need of the colony was security against Iroquois raids. Before the year 1665 ended, three forts had been built on the Richelieu; one, Sorel, at its mouth, a second below the rapids at Chambly, a third at some little distance above the rapids. The line of communication was strengthened by the construction of sixteen or seventeen miles of road from Chambly to the bank of the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal, and in the following year a fourth fort was built near the northern end of Lake Champlain.

The Frenchmen determined to strike soon and hard at the Five Nations. In January, 1666, in dead of winter, Courcelles led an expedition against them up the Richelieu, by Lakes Champlain and George, on to the head waters of the Hudson river. The route, well known in after years, was unfamiliar then, and instead of turning to the west into the country of the Mohawks, the Frenchmen found themselves in the middle of February near the small Dutch settlement of Schenectady, where they were challenged as invaders of an English province, for in 1664 the Duke of York had become proprietor of New Netherland. It was news to the French commander that the valley of the Hudson had passed into British hands—unwelcome news, and would have been more unwelcome, had he foreseen the results of the change on after history. Of all events which strengthened the English cause in America against the French, the most important perhaps was the substitution of English for Dutch ownership of the present State of New York. At the time, no rupture took place between French and English, and, after an interchange of courtesies, Courcelles led his troops back to Canada, losing men through cold and privation, and by the hands of the Mohawks, who dogged his retreat. He had achieved nothing, yet the daring of his venture seems to have impressed the Indians, and he had gained knowledge which was soon to tell.

In September of the same year he set out again with 1,300 men, the whole commanded by Tracy in person. This time no mistake was made as to the route. The hearts of the Mohawks failed them. They fled before the invaders, leaving their strongholds empty and undefended. Each village in turn was burnt to the ground, the stores were destroyed or carried off, and, homeless and starving, the Indians were glad to make peace with the French, leaving Canada unmolested for some years to come. During those years the colony grew stronger, the administration was recast, the settlements were organized, and, beyond the line of colonization, explorers carried French influence further to the west.

In 1667, Tracy returned to France. In 1671, Courcelles and Talon followed him. In 1672, Count Frontenac came out as Governor to Canada.

It has been noted above how great are the contrasts in the story of Canada, and, so far as it was colonized, how much in the system was artificial, how little was the result of natural growth. The record of Canada, as compared with that of the English colonies in America, is much more a series of biographies, much less a chronicle of a community. Of the great men, whose lives and doings make up Canadian history in French times, it may be said that some created Canada, while others were Canada's own creations. In other words, some were in but not of Canada; they came out from France to make, to rule, to save, or to try to save, the French colony on the St. Lawrence; while others, though many of them also came out from home, and all of them were in their way builders of New France, yet were the outcome of Canada itself, the result of the unbounded freedom of its backwoods, their deeds being done and their lives spent mainly beyond the limits of the Canadian settlements. To the first class belong, among others, Champlain (though Champlain's name might in truth appear in either list), Talon, Frontenac, and Montcalm. The second class comprises the names of explorers such as La Salle, of Du Luth, the noted coureur de bois, and of Iberville, the bold guerilla chief, who raided the English in Newfoundland and on Hudson Bay, who carried out La Salle's unfinished work in Louisiana, and of whom, when dead, Charlevoix wrote: 'The late M. d'Iberville, who had all the good qualities of his country without any of its defects, would have led them (his countrymen) to the end of the world.'⁷

⁷ Charlevoix's Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières, Eng. tr., 1763, p. 104.

Of these last there will be more to tell. Of the former class it may be said that, while not children of Canada, their influence on the history of the colony and their distinction in Canadian annals was in proportion to the extent to which New France was the land of their adoption. If we except discoverers, the three greatest names in Canadian history are Champlain, Frontenac, and Montcalm, all three of whom died at Quebec.

The strongly marked contrasts characteristic of Canada and its story are illustrated in the case of Count Frontenac. Like other Governors, before and after him, he came out from the very centre of civilization, the Court of France: from serving in the finest army in the world, he came to rule a barbarous borderland, and to command troops, the majority of whom were backwoodsmen or native Indians, or at best a half-disciplined militia. He did not come young to the work. He was fifty-two on his arrival. When he was appointed Governor for the second time, in 1689, he was in his seventieth year. He had great merits and great defects. He was pretentious, arrogant, violent and overbearing, insubordinate to his employers, somewhat unscrupulous in his policy, and not cleanhanded in repairing his broken fortunes. On the other hand, he was resourceful, fearless, and determined; he stood by his friends, he was not unkindly, he had in many respects broad views, and above all he believed in Canada, its fortunes, and its peoples. He had in a high degree the admirable French quality of adapting himself to places and to men. He was trusted and revered by the Indians beyond any other French or English Governor, for, while he refused to treat them as equals, he humoured their customs and to some extent walked in their ways. His force of character impressed native and colonist alike. He took Canada in hand at a time of danger and disorganization. When he died, he left her on the lines of prosperity and possible greatness.

The term of his first government lasted for ten years, from 1672 to 1682. They were years of constant wrangling and worry. He was at daggers drawn with the Jesuits, and his quarrels with his colleagues on the Council, notably the Intendant, Duchesnau, were similar to the disputes between Warren Hastings and Francis at another time and place. The end of it was that both Frontenac and Duchesnau were recalled; but Frontenac had left his mark, and after seven years' interval, during which two governors failed, he was sent back at a critical time to Canada.

Two incidents in his first administration may be picked out as illustrating the boldness of his character, and implying foresight and breadth of view unusual in a French Governor under Louis XIV. The first was his crude attempt, already noticed,⁸ to form a kind of Canadian parliament on the old French model, with the three estates of clergy, nobles, and people. It was a rash step to take immediately after his arrival, when he could not have known the conditions of the colony, and must have known well the wishes of the King. It brought upon him a severe reprimand from home, and his scheme came to nothing. But the step, if ill timed, was in the right direction. Some semblance of popular assembly would have done much for Canada, if only as tending to create a national sentiment and to allay local jealousies. For among the many elements of weakness in the colony in its early days was the semi-independence of Montreal. Montreal was the commercial dépôt for the upper St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the great lakes. It was the meeting-place of French and native fur-traders. In it centred the natural wealth of Canada, and to it resorted the most enterprising and the least settled part of the population. It was jealous of the older settlement of Quebec, which was the seat of government, the centre of law and order, and which, being nearer the sea, commanded the import and export trade with Europe. Under its feudal Seigniors, the Sulpician monks, Montreal claimed to have some voice in the appointment of the local Governor; and Perrot its Governor, in the early days of Frontenac's first administration, defied within the limits of his district the authority of the Governor-General, and imprisoned his officers.

⁸ See above note.

The second event to be specially noted was the building of a fort on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, at the point where it flows out of Lake Ontario. The place was known to the Indians as Cataraqui. It is now the site of the town of Kingston. The new fort, built in 1673, the year after Frontenac came to Canada, was named after him, Fort Frontenac. Its building marked the onward movement of the French. Hitherto their main concern had been to secure mastery of the central St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal, together with the command of the Richelieu river. Among the Iroquois, they had fought chiefly with the Mohawks, the easternmost and nearest of the Five Nations. But before Frontenac came, and long before the central St. Lawrence was wholly safe, traders and missionaries had gained knowledge of the western lakes, and Fort Frontenac was built to be at once a new outpost of the colony, guarding the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence, and a starting-point for further exploiting the trade routes of the west. By building it, the Frenchmen made good their claim to the river of Canada for its whole length from the lakes to the sea, and planted themselves at the entrance of a new and vast system of waterways.

As the St. Lawrence on its upward course broadens into Lake Ontario, so, as the French went further west, the story of Canada widens out. From the tale of two or three river settlements it slowly grows into the history of a continent. The struggle becomes more and more a struggle not so much for bare existence as for supremacy. The Iroquois were a deadly danger still, but the danger largely consisted in the fact that behind them was a strong and, as a rule to them, a friendly European colony—the English State of New York. Every year intensified the rivalry between French and English. Every year showed that both sought to control the trade of the west. The main practical issue, for the time being, was whether the furs from the lake region should come down the St. Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec, or be diverted to Albany through the country of the Five Nations. The Iroquois held the key of the position, and they knew it. Unless they could be taught either to fear or to love the French, there was little hope for Canada.

As the French moved up the St. Lawrence, and along Lake Ontario, they passed along the line of the Five Nations, and came directly into conflict with the furthermost and the strongest of the five, the Senecas. After Tracy's successful expedition against the Mohawks in 1666, the Iroquois gave comparatively little trouble for some years. They knew well the difference between a strong and a weak Onontio, as they styled the Governor of Canada, and for Courcelles, and his successor Frontenac, they had a wholesome respect. When Frontenac was recalled, in 1682, there was a different tale to tell.

His successor in that year was La Barre, an old soldier of some distinction, who had been Governor of Cayenne, which he recaptured from the English. In Canada he proved to be an irresolute commander and an incapable administrator, notable even among Canadian officials for greed of gain. The Iroquois became more and more menacing. The Senecas especially, at the western end of the line, who had never yet felt in any measure the weight of the French arm, raided the Indians of the Illinois, who were nominally under French protection, threatened the tribes of the lakes, and were in a fair way to master the trade on which Canada depended. There had been some prospect of a rupture between the Five Nations and the English, owing to border forays on Virginia and Maryland; but in 1684, at a great council held at Albany, the old alliance was solemnly renewed. There was no hope from this quarter for the French.

La Barre, whatever may have been his faults, was in a most difficult position, but made up his mind to take the offensive, hoping by a demonstration of force to bring the Iroquois to terms. Having collected troops and native allies, he moved up the St. Lawrence in the summer of 1684, from Montreal to Fort Frontenac. There he waited while his force sickened with malarial fever. After delay he moved his men across to the southern side of Lake Ontario, and encamped at a place called La Famine, where more men went down with fever. There, at length, deputies of the Iroquois came to meet him. He talked swelling words, but the state of his camp gave them the lie. He made a kind of truce, in which the Indians practically dictated the terms, and he retreated down the river again, having encouraged his enemies, disgusted his allies, brought embarrassment on the colony, and procured his own recall. He was succeeded in the following year by the Marquis de Denonville.

Denonville was at once more capable and more honest than La Barre, but he had still greater difficulties to contend with. The Iroquois were now quite out of hand, and Dongan, the able Governor of New York, was taking a stronger line than was the wont of most Governors in the English colonies, making a bold bid for the control of the lake region. However, ample reinforcements were sent from France with orders to attack the Five Nations, and in the summer of 1687 the French Governor set out with an overwhelming force against the Senecas. His troops, nearly 3,000 in all, mustered at Irondequoit Bay, halfway along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. From thence a route led southwards to the chief town of the Senecas. Many of the Seneca warriors were out of the country at the time, and the French, advancing in strength, dispersed the savages who remained, reached the town, already burnt and deserted, and after destroying corn and devastating the neighbouring land, returned to the lake. A fort was then built at the further end of the lake, below Niagara,⁹ to command the junction of Lakes Erie and Ontario, as in the previous year a stockade had been constructed on the strait of Detroit, to control the passage from Lake Huron to Lake Erie; after which the Governor returned to Montreal.

⁹ In March of this same year Dongan was urging on the Lords of Trade the building of an English fort at Niagara, or as he called it, Oneigra, 'near the great lake on the way whereby our people go hunting and trading. It is very necessary for our trade and correspondence with the Indians, and for securing our right to the country' (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1685-8, p. 328).

The French, to quote Colden's words,¹⁰ had 'got nothing but dry blows by this expedition.' Denonville had not done enough. He had enraged the confederate Indians without crippling them. A few months before, with odious treachery, he had ordered some friendly Iroquois to be kidnapped and sent to France to serve in the galleys. The tribesmen of the prisoners neither forgave nor forgot, and in less than two years' time they paid the debt. On the island of Montreal, some eight miles above the town to the south-west, at the head of rapids now cut by a canal, and at the lower end of the broad reach of the St. Lawrence—which bears the name of Lake St. Louis—was the settlement of Lachine. At the beginning of August, 1689, at dead of night and under cover of a storm, many hundred Iroquois warriors broke in upon the settlers. Two hundred of the French were butchered there and then. One hundred and twenty were carried off, some to be tortured and burnt almost within sight of their countrymen, others to be gradually done to death in the lodges of the Five Nations. A detachment of eighty French soldiers was also cut to pieces, and outside forts and palisades the country was a scene of death and desolation.

¹⁰ History of the Five Nations (3rd ed.), vol. i, chap. v, p. 82.

The horrors of Lachine stand out in Canadian history as a kind of Sicilian Vespers or Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The upper part of the colony, Montreal and its neighbourhood, was paralysed with terror, and once more, for a moment, the Iroquois seemed to threaten the very existence of New France. It was not so in fact. Below Three Rivers Canada was safe, and the savages did not, as in old days, parade their triumph beneath the cliffs of Quebec. Meanwhile Denonville had already been recalled, his last act being to order in his panic the evacuation and destruction of Fort Frontenac; and the old Frenchman, after whom that fort had been named, came back in his seventieth year to save and to rule Canada.

Another competent man returned with Frontenac, after a short visit to France—Callières, the Governor of Montreal. He was a strong second in command, and, when Frontenac died, was appointed to succeed him, and carried on his work. The two commanders arrived in the autumn of 1689, to find all in confusion and distress; but Frontenac was not forgotten. His presence gave confidence, and even among the Iroquois his name secured respect. It was his habit to see with his own eyes, to take his own line, to act with promptitude and decision. These qualities, when coupled with ten years' previous experience of the colony, were invaluable at a crisis. He might quarrel with Intendants, browbeat Councillors, and denounce Jesuit priests; but to the settlers he gave security, to the adventurous backwoodsmen of the West he was a congenial leader, and to the Indians he was the great Onontio, whose actions matched his words.

For the time he was not in a position to carry war into the Iroquois country, and the Iroquois would not listen to friendly overtures. He contented himself, therefore, with strengthening the forts and defences of the colony and with issuing proclamations to the wavering tribes of the lakes. It was one thing when La Barre or Denonville spoke, it was another when the words were those of Frontenac. His next step was to intimidate the English allies of the Five Nations, and to send three raiding parties into New England and New York. This was the kind of irregular warfare for which the Canadians were best suited. All three expeditions were successful; and their success, coupled with two defeats of parties of Iroquois on the Ottawa, by Du Luth in 1689 and Nicolas Perrot in 1690, both noted leaders of coureurs de bois, gave new heart to Canada. Before the summer of 1690 ended, the Indians of the upper lakes came down in force to trade at Montreal, and the grey-headed Governor-General of New France led the war dance, hatchet in hand, appealing to savages in savage fashion, as only a versatile Frenchman could.

It was a typical proceeding. French priests turned heathens into Christians, but left them on their savage lines. French hunters lived among Indians, adopting Indian garb and Indian methods; and the great Governor of Canada, who of all others was a ruler of men, led a yelling crowd in their native prelude for war, as sure in self-esteem, as sure in the esteem of his company, as if he were treading a minuet in stately fashion at the Court of Versailles. The English had no such address; but not having it they ran less risk for the future of their kind. They kept the heathen, for the most part, outside their pale. They did little to convert them. They did little to befriend or protect them. But the English race remained stronger and purer in its dour isolation than the assimilated and assimilating Frenchmen of what was then Upper Canada.

Raids and counter raids went on. Of the part which the English took in the fighting, something will be said presently. So far as the struggle was between the French and the Five Nations, the scene of action was either the Ottawa river, or the angle between the Richelieu and the St. Lawrence. Always important, as being the direct trade route from Lake Huron, the Ottawa was more important now, seeing that there was a larger population in Canada than in bygone days dependent on the fur trade, and that since Denonville's abortive expedition against the Senecas, the massacre of Lachine, and the evacuation of Fort Frontenac, the French had lost command of the upper St. Lawrence.

The corner of land lying between Chambly on the Richelieu and Montreal was the old battlefield of French and Iroquois. By this line, before Tracy's expedition of 1666, the Mohawks had raided Canada; by this line, once more, their war-parties came. Below the Three Rivers, at Quebec and in its neighbourhood, there was no fear of the Indians, though there was both apprehension and reality of English invasion, and distress from English blockade of Canadian trade. But in the upper half of the colony, of which Montreal was the centre, there was no security for life or property outside fortifications and stockades.

Some twenty miles below Montreal, on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence, in the troubled belt of land between that river and the Richelieu, was the Seigniory of Verchères. There was on it a fort and a blockhouse, which, in the last week of October, 1692, was the scene of one of the most picturesque episodes in all the annals of border warfare. The Seignior, a military man, was absent, the fort was nearly empty, for the able-bodied men were working in the fields, when the Iroquois came down on the place. The Seignior's daughter, Madeleine de Verchères, a girl of fourteen, took charge of the fort, having for a garrison, over and above women and children, two terrified soldiers, one hired man-servant, one refugee settler, an old man of eighty, and two small boys, her brothers. She gave the command, she placed each at his post, she misled the savages by a show of imaginary force, and watching day and night she held them at bay, until, at the end of a week, a party of soldiers came to her relief from Montreal. Years afterwards the tale of the siege was taken down from her own lips; and her name lives, and deserves to live, in the history of Canada. The girl's heroism is the chief, but not the only, point of the story. That the Mohawks should have prowled round the fort for a week without seriously attempting to take it, and without finding out that it was nearly defenceless, shows how helpless and stupid these noted warriors were when face to face with a fortification. On the other hand, that a post, only twenty miles distant from Montreal, was left for a week without relief, proves how paralysed, or at least how weakened, were the French by a long series of Indian incursions. This was in Frontenac's time; but Frontenac had the English on his hands, and was short of men. Had it been otherwise, there would have been no beleaguering of girls in forts, and Canada would have lost a pretty story.

As it was, the scale soon turned in favour of the French. In dead of winter, at the beginning of 1693, a mixed body of Canadians and Indians broke in upon the Mohawk towns, and, in spite of a somewhat disastrous retreat, inflicted considerable loss on their persistent enemies; while later in the year, at the bidding of the sturdy old Governor, a strong party of coureurs de bois came down the Ottawa, convoying a long pent-up and most welcome cargo of furs. This 'gave as universal joy to Canada as the arrival of the galleons give in Spain';¹¹ and Frontenac was hailed as the father of the people.

¹¹ Colden's History of the Five Nations (3rd ed.), vol. i, chap. ix, p. 159.

More soldiers came out from France, and the Iroquois began to lose heart. Many of their warriors had fallen, and not a few, converted by the Jesuits, had settled in Canada, being known to their heathen countrymen as the 'praying Indians.'¹² From the English colonies little or no help had come, beyond supplies of arms and ammunition. The councils at Albany produced on the English side pretentious speeches, criticism, encouragement, and promises which were never fulfilled; but the words of the Indians were more to the point, 'the whole burden of the war lies on us alone ... we alone cannot continue the war against the French by reason of the recruits they daily receive from the other side the Great Lake.'¹³ They had been faithful to the English alliance, more faithful than the English deserved, and more faithful than any civilized nation would have been under like circumstances; but they tired of fighting singlehanded, and the chain of the covenant began to rust.

¹² The converted Iroquois were settled at Caughnawaga, which was on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, at the Sault St. Louis, and directly opposite Lachine. They were often called Caughnawagas.

¹³ Colden, vol. i, chap. x, p. 176.

In default of active aid from the English, there were two policies open to them—to make terms with the French, and to detach from the French cause the Indian tribes of the lakes. They pursued both policies at once: they invited Frontenac to meet them and the English at Albany; he refused. He refused also to come to a meeting at Onondaga. They then sent a deputation to Quebec in 1694; and Frontenac offered a peace which should include the Indian allies of the French and exclude the English. Two nations of the confederacy were ready to accept these terms; the other three rejected them, and there was no peace. In the meantime the Iroquois intrigued with the Lake Indians, and, attracted by the prospect of English goods, the latter came near exchanging the French alliance for combination with the Five Nations and the English. To prevent this result, Frontenac and his officers had resort to infamous methods. Not only at the forest post of Michillimackinac, but at Montreal itself, the French compelled the wavering Indians to burn Iroquois prisoners to death, in order to make peace impossible, and joined themselves in the torture and butchery. Few worse instances of barbarous policy are recorded in history.

Such means alone would not attain the desired end. Nothing, the Governor knew, would avail except acknowledged mastery over the Five Nations. The most obvious confession of weakness on the French side in Denonville's disastrous time had been the evacuation of Fort Frontenac; and never had Denonville's successor slackened his determination to reoccupy the post, which, if he had arrived in Canada a day or two earlier, would not have been abandoned. The time came in the summer of 1695. A force, secretly and quickly gathered, was sent up from Montreal; the walls of the fort still standing were repaired; and the Iroquois were startled by the news that the post, which they most dreaded, and which most menaced their confederacy, was again manned by a French garrison. Frontenac was just in time. The day after the expedition started, orders came from France that the fort should not be reoccupied; but he refused to recall his troops, and set himself to justify, by further measures, his disobedience to the home Government.

In July, 1696, he set out from Montreal at the head of over 2,000 men. The military strength of Canada was well represented; there were French soldiers of the line, Canadian militia, and friendly Indians. With the old Governor went his best officers—Callières leading the van of the march, Vaudreuil bringing up the rear. The force reached Fort Frontenac, crossed Lake Ontario, and, landing at the mouth of the Oswego river, worked their way up, by stream and lake and portage, towards the goal of the expedition—Onondaga, the central town and meeting-place of the Five Nations. What had happened before happened again. The Indians retreated into the forest before superior numbers, leaving the French a barren conquest over the smouldering ashes of the native town and the standing corn. The Oneidas' village and maize fields were also laid waste, and then the invaders retraced their steps.

Though the expedition was recorded by the French as a success, Frontenac had done no more than Denonville in his march against the Senecas, and a writer on the English side contemptuously refers to it as 'a kind of heroic dotage'.¹⁴ The show of force, however, seems to have had the effect of inclining the Iroquois to peace, of proving once more that the French were more active than the English, and that the arm of Onontio was longer than that of the Governor of New York. Early in 1698 came news of the Peace of Ryswick. The Five Nations were subjects neither of England nor of France, but both Canada and New York claimed them. Sturdily to the last, Frontenac repelled English pretensions and half-hearted Indian advances; but the hand of death was upon him, and on November 28, 1698, he died at Quebec, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

¹⁴ Colden, vol. i, chap. xii, p. 202.

He had rid Canada in a great measure from the scourge of murdering savages. He had humbled the Iroquois to some extent; he had certainly won their respect. How he withstood the English in open warfare, and how he encouraged Frenchmen of his own bold type to explore and to claim the far West, remains to be told. He was a great man for the time and place, great in fearlessness, in self-reliance, in foresight, and in unflinching tenacity of purpose. The element of bombast and arrogance in his character helped him, as it helped other Frenchmen, whose names have lived, in handling native races. As a ruler of wild men, whether coloured or white, he was unsurpassed. The ruthlessness of his policy has left a stain upon his memory; but he gave life and confidence to Canada in time of trouble, and but for him there would have been no future for New France.

His deeds and his character bore fruit immediately after his death. At the invitation of his successor, Callières, a general meeting of all the Indian tribes was held at Montreal, in 1701, to which the Iroquois condescended to send representatives. Peace was made; and the French, whom the Five Nations had brought to the brink of ruin, emerged from the contest as acknowledged arbitrators between the native races of North America.

Thus, with the close of the seventeenth century, came in effect the close of the life-and-death struggle between the Five Nation Indians and the Canadian settlers. What were the causes which brought the Iroquois to terms? The first and most potent was loss of numbers. Continual bloodshed had reduced the male population of the confederates by half;¹⁵ and mixture by adoption, it may well be supposed, had brought some alloy into the old fighting breed. When white men meet coloured men in war, there is always the same tale to tell. The white men suffer reverses, as long as they are a handful, and until the native race has lost a certain proportion of its warriors. Then strength, and knowledge, and discipline prevail; and the issue is no longer in doubt. But no other coloured race in the history of colonization fought with Europeans, man for man, like the Iroquois, and never submitting, treated sullenly as equals only when the white race were absolutely superior in numbers. Big battalions in the end usually determine the course of history. They certainly decided the fate of North America. Numerical strength turned the scale in favour of the French, as against the Iroquois. It subsequently turned the scale in favour of the English, as against the French.

¹⁵ See Parkman's Count Frontenac, last page, note.

The second cause which influenced the Iroquois was Frontenac's personality. In dealing with him the Indians dealt, and knew that they dealt, with a man who in the greatest straits would never give way an inch. There was no compromise in his policy. He meant to be master; the savages knew it, and respected him accordingly. He did not live to complete his work, and it was not thoroughly completed; but he lived long enough to cripple the Five Nations, and after his time their strength declined.

A third cause was the failure of the English. They missed their opportunities. The path of English colonization has been strewn with lost opportunities. The end has been achieved in most cases, and in most parts of the world; but it has been achieved only after long years of toil, expense, and loss of life, which a little foresight might well have avoided. There was no Frontenac on the English side, no man who went in advance of his Government, who framed and forced a strong policy. One Governor of New York, the Irishman Dongan, was active and determined, but those who came after did little. The element of compromise in the English character, and in the policy of the English Government, made itself felt. Colony was jealous of colony, petty legislatures wrangled, and farmers resented being called to fight instead of sowing or harvesting their crops. Over and above all, whether as friends or as foes, the Frenchmen stretched out their right hands to the native races of North America; the English lived their lives apart, and for the time they paid the penalty.

Thus the Five Nations made peace with the French at Montreal. At the very same time, at Albany,¹⁶ they gave the English a title to the lake regions. In the year 1686, by Denonville's orders, Du Luth, with a party of coureurs de bois, established a French outpost on the strait (Detroit) between Lakes Huron and Erie,¹⁷ his object being to prevent the fur trade of the upper lakes passing down that way to the Iroquois country, and thence to the English market at Albany. The post was not maintained; but some years afterwards a more permanent occupation took place. Frontenac had died; but he left behind him men trained in his school, keen on a forward policy, on holding in the interests of France and in their own the passes of the West. Such a man was La Mothe Cadillac, who in 1694 had been sent to take command at Michillimackinac. He urged upon the French Government the importance of controlling the outlet from Lake Huron to Lake Erie, and, having obtained their consent, was the founder of the city of Detroit. He began the work in July, 1701, but before his expedition actually reached the place, the Five Nations took alarm, recognizing that Detroit, like Fort Frontenac, would limit their range and endanger their power.

¹⁶ The great meeting at Montreal was held on Aug. 4, 1701. The deed of cession referred to in the text was dated July 19, 1701.

¹⁷ See above.

They sent representatives of all their nations to Albany, and there, on July 19, 1701, ceded to the King of England their 'beaver hunting-ground,' retaining for themselves the right of free hunting. The deed was of the most formal character, attested by the totem marks of all the Five Nations.¹⁸ It is an interesting document, setting forth that the Iroquois had already subjected themselves and their lands 'on this side of Cataraqui (Ontario) lake wholly to the Crown of England,' and conveying to the King a wide area to the north of the lake, which the Five Nations claimed as their hunting-ground in right of conquest. The tract was estimated at 800 miles in length by 400 in breadth, extending on the north to Lake Superior, on the west to Chicago, and it specifically included Detroit,¹⁹ the French designs on which were stated as the reason for making the cession. A white man's hand must have drawn the deed. It gave away the Iroquois entirely. Hitherto they had stubbornly rejected any English claim to sovereignty. Brother the Governor of New York had been, but not father, and no allegiance had been offered to the King of England; but in the conveyance William III figured as 'the great lord and master' of the Five Nations, and on paper the acknowledgement of British sovereignty was complete.

¹⁸ A certified copy in manuscript sent home at the time may be seen at the Record Office, and a printed copy is included in the New York documents.

¹⁹ Spoken of in the deed in one place as 'Tiengsachrondio alias Fort de Tret.'

It was a piece of parchment only, and as such and no more the Iroquois probably regarded it; but it embodied a small element of fact. These hardheaded, hardhanded Indians were gradually being worn down by the white men on either side, owing such measure of independence as they still retained not so much to their own fighting strength as to the constant enmity between Great Britain and France. When war broke out again, after Queen Anne's accession, they remained for the most part neutral; what they had claimed and conveyed as their hunting-ground passed more and more under French control, while, as the result of Marlborough's victories on the other side of the Atlantic, their own land and its cantons was awarded to Great Britain in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht.²⁰

²⁰ Clause xv of the Treaty of Utrecht ran as follows: 'The subjects of France inhabiting Canada, and others, shall hereafter give no hinderance or molestation to the Five Nations or Cantons of Indians subject to the dominion of Great Britain nor to the other natives of America who are friends to the same.'

CHAPTER IV

Down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht, the Iroquois formed the first line of the foes of Canada. Behind them were the English.

After Quebec had been in 1632 given back to France, the English on the Atlantic coast, and the French on the St. Lawrence, for many years came little into contact with each other. In Acadia the two nations overlapped, with results which are told elsewhere, and it was the same in Newfoundland; but the French colonists at Quebec and the English colonists at Boston or in Virginia were far apart. We read of an English traveller finding his way, in 1640, from the coast of Maine, up the Kennebec river and by the Chaudière, to Quebec, his journey being noted as an explorer's feat with an ultimate design of reaching the North Sea; while a few years later, in 1647-51, the same route became better known, and was taken by French emissaries of peace to the New England states.

Negotiations were then on foot, at the instance of Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, for a treaty of commerce between the English and French colonies in North America, and it was suggested that they should keep peace with each other even in the event of war in Europe between the respective mother countries.¹ Such a treaty might have been made and kept, if there had been no native question; but each side had Indian friends and Indian foes, and could not afford to alienate the one or add to the number of the other. The French wanted New England support against the Iroquois, and with the Iroquois the New Englanders had no quarrel. Thus the friendly overtures between the two parties came to nothing; but Frenchmen on the river of Canada and Englishmen by the open sea went their own ways, having no direct dealings with each other in war or peace.

¹ A like sensible policy was pursued in the little island of St. Kitts, when first colonized by French and English. They agreed to keep the peace whether or not France and Great Britain were at war. See vol. ii of this series, chap. iv, p. 135. See also Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. ii, p. 426.

A change came when the English, in 1664, took possession of New York. They too had now a river—the Hudson—which carried them inland; they became neighbours and friends of the Five Nations; and their natural line of expansion was in the direction of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. From this time onward collision between French and English was inevitable, and it was equally inevitable that the colony of New York should be the central point of the contest.

Before the Dutchmen on Manhattan Island and in the valley of the Hudson became subjects of the British Crown, they had themselves absorbed the Swedish colonists on the Delaware. The result, therefore, of New York becoming a British province was to link together the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. It has been said above that English colonization in North America was more compact and more continuous than French. In other words, though the English colonists many times outnumbered the French, they were less dispersed through the wilderness. But the compactness and continuity was comparative only. Continuity of English colonization meant little more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could plant a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without committing a trespass and fighting for its place. There was no continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood. Separately they were planted. Their surroundings, their traditions, their interests were all distinct. Sprung in the main from one stock, and speaking one language, they had little else in common. They had not even the bond of a common religious creed.

Within each single colony there was division still. Settlements and homesteads were often far from one another, and political or religious dissensions supplemented geographical separation. New York was an instance in point. Alone among the colonies, it had a good waterway for any distance inland; but there was little community of interest between the settlers at Albany or Schenectady, and the seaport at Manhattan Island, except so far as the latter commanded the import and export trade of the Hudson valley. The settlers at the mouth of the Hudson were merchants and seafaring men. The settlers inland were farmers, landholders, and traders with the Indians. The former were exposed to attack by sea, but recked little of the French in Canada or their Indian allies. The latter had nothing to fear from a hostile fleet, but were constantly in danger from an inroad from Canada. Then there were feuds of race and religion. The English overpowered the Dutch, and with the English came in the rule of the Duke of York, Roman Catholic influence, and a policy too often dictated by France.

The Revolution, which turned out the Stuarts in England, was followed by a rising in New York. There was a cleavage, not so much on lines of race, as on those of politics and religion. The extreme Protestants and Republicans, whose stronghold was in and about the town of New York, rose against the existing system, which was upheld by the more moderate and aristocratic section of the population, who were stronger up country, and were supported by such men as Schuyler, the chief magistrate of Albany. Jacob Leisler, a German, led the revolutionary party, and in 1689, backed by the militia, he deposed the Lieutenant-Governor and took the government into his own hands. He played the part of Cromwell for two years until, in 1691, regular troops were sent out from England, when he was deserted by his followers, imprisoned, and hanged; and the ordinary methods of colonial government were resumed.

Colony being thus divided from colony, and the one colony which directly abutted on Canada being divided against itself, it was long before the English made any headway against the French on the St. Lawrence. At almost any given date the French had a larger number of regular troops available, supported by Canadian rangers, whose life was spent in border warfare—the whole being under one Governor, who was, as has been seen, invariably a man of considerable military experience. On the sea the English could more than hold their own, but the sea-route from New York or Boston to Quebec was long and troublesome. If such an expedition was taken in hand, there could be no secrecy and no speed in the matter. There was gathering of ships and transports; discussions as to the quota of each colony; selection of a leader because he was a good neighbour or a popular citizen, rather than for any naval or military capacity. There was sailing round the coast, taking Acadia on the way, and finally arrival before Quebec after men and ships had dropped off and the French had been forewarned and forearmed. Thus down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht English efforts against the French in Canada amounted to little more than giving arms and supplies to the Five Nations, making occasional counter raids by land, and still more occasional demonstrations by sea.

It will be remembered² that in February, 1666, the French commander, Courcelles, on his bold midwinter expedition against the Mohawks, strayed from his route, and found himself near Corlaer or Schenectady, where he learnt that the English had become masters of New York, and that there was an English garrison at Albany. This was the first intrusion of the French into the Hudson valley. Tracy's expedition against the Mohawk towns later in the same year gave Colonel Nicolls, the first English Governor of New York, occasion to invite the New England colonies to join him in attacking the French. They refused, fearing that, if they sided with the Iroquois, they would be exposed to attack from the Abenakis, who were on their borders, and who were friends of the French, foes of the Five Nations. Some twenty years then passed without open rupture. New York was retaken by the Dutch and regained by the English. The colonization of Canada went on. The Iroquois remained comparatively quiet, and in Frontenac's first term of administration western exploration and western trade began to determine French policy in Canada and English policy in New York.

² See above.

In 1683, after Frontenac had come to Canada for the first time and gone again, New York was given in the Irish Catholic, Thomas Dongan, a Governor of strength and foresight. In the following year, at a conference held at Albany, at which Lord Howard of Effingham, the Governor of Virginia, was present, the alliance between the English and the Five Nations was formally confirmed; and, assured of English aid and protection, the Iroquois turned their strength against Canada. Though there was peace between Great Britain and France in James II's time, the relations between New York and Canada were the reverse of friendly. The French knew that the Five Nations were backed by the English. Dongan on his part was resolved that the trade of the West should not be left exclusively in French hands. Angry letters passed between him and Denonville, English and Dutch traders on the lakes were intercepted by the Canadians, and a party from Montreal captured and looted three English trading posts on Hudson Bay. In 1688 Dongan was recalled, and in the following year news reached the American colonies of the Revolution in England.

The expulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of William III to the throne of Great Britain meant war with France; and at this critical moment Frontenac came back to Canada. He came back with a plan, devised by Callières and approved by the King, for attacking New York by land and sea. A stillborn scheme it proved, through untoward delays, but its conception indicated that New York was recognized by the French Government and its advisers as the key of the position in North America. While plans were being laid by the French for the invasion of New York the Iroquois invaded Canada, and the massacre of Lachine faced Frontenac on his return in 1689. Next year he sent out against the English colonies the three expeditions which have been already mentioned.³

³ See above.

The first started from Montreal in depth of winter, following the familiar route of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, and intending to strike a blow at Albany. The men were picked for the work, Frenchmen and Indians, about 250 in all, led by the best of Canadian rangers, such as Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brothers. They toiled through ice and snow, and, turning off from the path to Albany, in the darkness of a winter's night they fell upon the Dutch settlement of Schenectady. It was the time of Leisler's movement, when New York was in the throes of revolution. The village was unguarded, its gates were open, its inmates were asleep. A blockhouse manned by eight or nine militiamen from Connecticut was stormed, and the scene was one of helpless massacre.

The second party, smaller in number, consisting of some fifty French and Abenaki Indians, left Three Rivers towards the end of January, and near the end of March made a night attack on the settlement of Salmon Falls, on the borders of New Hampshire and Maine. Again the English, sleeping and unprepared, were murdered in their beds, and the murderers, making good their retreat, joined forces with the third and strongest party, which had set out from Quebec to attack the settlement of Falmouth at Casco Bay. Falmouth stood where the town of Portland in Maine now stands. There was a fort at the place—Fort Loyal—into which the outlying settlers gathered with their families when the attacking force of four or five hundred men appeared. After a short defence the commander, Sylvanus Davies by name, surrendered on solemn promise, according to his own circumstantial account, of quarter and freedom for the whole company. The terms were immediately broken, and all the English were massacred or carried into captivity.

Thus three separate raids on the English colonies, sent out under Frontenac's orders in the year 1690, were all successful. They were well devised, and carried out with skill, courage, and determination. The English and Dutch settlers, on their side, showed the greatest negligence and little stubbornness or competence in self-defence. The immediate result was to invigorate the French and their Indian allies; but the causes of their momentary success were the causes of their ultimate failure; and even at the moment these marauding exploits threatened new danger to Canada. The French succeeded because, leagued with savages, they in all things likened themselves to their companions, they habited themselves in Indian dress, their warriors were ferocious as Indian warriors, their priests hounded on to blood. They succeeded because their trade was war not peace, because they were roving adventurers who had only their lives to lose, ravening among quiet men of substance who had homes and wives and children to be plundered and slain. It was as certain that in course of time the cause of the English colonists would prevail, as that the Highland clans, who in Scotland marauded their southern neighbours, would eventually be broken, or that the Five Nations themselves, if left to fight alone, would eventually go down before the settled life of Canada.

On this occasion three blows were struck, nearly at the same time, at three separate points in a long undefended line. The adoption of this policy by the French, and still more the fact of its success, in reality tended to remove the one great obstacle to British supremacy in North America. When Sylvanus Davies, taken at Fort Loyal and carried prisoner to Quebec, asked Frontenac the reason for the savage raid on the Casco Bay settlement, he was told that it was reprisal for the support given to the Iroquois by New York. His rejoinder, which was to the effect that New England should not be called upon to answer for the doings of New York, showed how little community of sentiment or interest existed in the English colonies. The one great source of weakness to the English cause, the greatest source of strength to the French, was the disunion of the English colonies and their indifference to each other. Consolidation could come only through partnership in suffering, and pressure from a common foe. This was the lesson which Frontenac taught, when his border ruffians carried havoc from the head waters of the Hudson to the sea-coast of Maine.

The lesson was never fully learnt as long as the Atlantic colonies were British possessions and Canada was French; but for a time the French outrages produced some semblance of common action on the other side; and at a conference held at Albany, in 1690, it was resolved to attack Canada by land and sea. The land expedition, taking the route of Lake Champlain, was a failure, ending in a small raid on the French settlement of La Prairie; and the main effort was made by sea. On sea the New Englanders showed the way, led by the men of Massachusetts.

The 'Bostonnais,' as the French called them, were dangerous foes of Canada. Puritans, Republicans, sea-fighters, sea-traders, they were all that the Canadians were not. They were strong in numbers too. At the end of the seventeenth century, Boston was a town of some 7,000 inhabitants, and the population of the whole colony was estimated at not far short of 50,000, against less than 15,000 French in Canada. At the very time that the French and Indian raid on Casco Bay took place, a fleet of seven or eight ships with 700 men on board sailed from Boston for Acadia, took possession of Port Royal with other French settlements on the Acadian coast, and returned in little more than a month's time with prisoners, booty, and renown.

The commander of the expedition was William Phipps, a typical product of the seaboard colonies. Starting as a New England ship-carpenter, he had turned rover and buccaneer; and finding a sunken Spanish treasure-ship, had won himself riches and a knighthood. He was brave, not too scrupulous or cleanhanded, a good seaman, and a patriotic man. He was well fitted for irregular warfare on a small scale, but his capacity was limited, and he did not rise to the level of greatness. After his success in Acadia, Phipps seemed obviously the man to achieve the conquest of Canada.

Sixty years had passed since David Kirke took Quebec. A better leader than Phipps, he had had an easy task in starving out an infant settlement. The interval had been for Quebec a time of comparative peace. Sheltered on the land side by Three Rivers, Montreal, and the military outposts of the Richelieu, the town was practically safe from the Iroquois, while civil wars and Stuart Kings in England prevented invasion from the sea. One year and another the furs which came down the river, or the supplies which were brought from France, were intercepted; but in the main the capital of New France enjoyed security and peace. It had grown, but was a very small town still, ill fortified, except by nature, and, if fortune and skill had combined, might well have been taken. But in 1690 there was no luck and little skill on the attacking side. The land campaign, which was to have kept Frontenac and his best troops at Montreal, failed just in time to enable all the available French forces to concentrate at Quebec. England, when asked by Massachusetts to help the expedition by arms and ammunition, sent nothing; and, while the appeal was being made, valuable time was lost. Phipps was at first too leisurely and afterwards too impatient to succeed, and wind and weather befriended the Frenchmen in Quebec.

It was the ninth of August when the New England commander sailed from Nantucket with thirty-four ships, and soldiers and sailors to the number of 2,200 men. It was the sixteenth of October when he anchored before Quebec. He sent a pompous summons to surrender, which provoked an insulting reply, and then prepared to land his troops below the town, to attack it in rear, while his ships opened fire in front. It was a hopeless enterprise. The night after the English fleet appeared, strong reinforcements came in from Montreal, and Frontenac had at his disposal not far short of 3,000 fighting men. On the eighteenth, the New England levies were landed on the Beauport shore, having the river St. Charles between them and Quebec. They were between 1,200 and 1,300 in number, commanded by Major Walley. Short of food and supplies, sickening in the wet weather, out-numbered by disciplined troops and Canadian rangers, who fought under cover and with the advantage of the ground, they could do nothing but prove themselves brave and stubborn men. Phipps on shipboard gave them no support, wasting his ammunition in a wild and useless cannonade against the face of the cliff and the walls of the upper town; and in ten days time all the men were re-embarked and the ships set sail for home.

So ended in complete failure the attempt of Massachusetts to take Quebec. Yet it was a bold and masterful effort on the part of one undeveloped English colony. It had in it the elements of strength, and under different conditions might have earned success. As it was, the citizen soldiers and sailors of Boston, led by an ex-ship-carpenter, faced Count Frontenac and all the trained strength of New France, their retreat was unmolested, and their failure was hailed as a miraculous deliverance for Quebec.⁴

⁴ Phipps, before he made his attack, was told by French prisoners of the path up the cliff above the town, by which Wolfe subsequently took Quebec; but he preferred to attack from Beauport.

Phipps had not proved himself to be a great commander. He failed too as Governor of Massachusetts, to which post he was appointed in the following year; but he had the merit of dogged determination to fight the French in Canada; and, had he lived longer, he might again have tried his hand at besieging Quebec. A few weeks after his repulse and return to Boston, he sailed to England to urge upon the home Government an active policy against New France, and that policy he continued to advocate until he died, in 1695, at the early age of forty-four.

On either side, the true line of defence was to carry war into the enemy's country. It was thus that Frontenac defended Canada. It was by constant raids that the Iroquois maintained their position; and the counsel which those astute savages gave to their English friends was to combine and attack Quebec. 'Strike at Quebec,' urged Phipps on the English Government; 'strike at Boston and New York' was the advice which the leaders of Canada one after another tendered to King Louis. No help had been sent from England to the late expedition against Quebec, but Phipps' subsequent representations led to an English fleet being dispatched to the West Indies in the winter of 1692, under command of Admiral Wheeler. The ships were intended to take Martinique, then to go on to Boston, and embarking a force of New Englanders under Phipps to sail for Quebec. Again there was a failure. Wheeler lost more than half his soldiers and sailors in the West Indies from yellow fever; and, when he reached Boston in midsummer of 1693, bringing the sickness with him, the Massachusetts Government decided that it was hopeless to attempt to carry out the scheme.

In spite of the massacre at Schenectady, New York suffered less than New England from border war. In 1691, in a second attack on the French settlement of La Prairie over against Montreal, the English and Dutch colonists achieved some success, carrying out the raid which they had planned, and cutting their way back hand to hand through a party of French troops who tried to bar their retreat. The Iroquois were the salvation of New York. Their raids into Canada safeguarded the rival colony, and when the Five Nations were not on the warpath, the French hesitated to attack their English allies, for fear of provoking a fresh incursion of savages. It has been seen that the Iroquois tended more and more to a policy of neutrality, worn by constant fighting, tired of English inaction, and discerning that their true interest lay in siding with neither French nor English. Still, with the exception of their converted countrymen settled in Canada, they were not likely to band with the French against the English. To do so would have been to break with old ties and traditions, to close their best market, to combine with their deadliest foes against friends of long standing, whose faults had been after all but faults of omission. This the French knew well: they were content to leave New York alone, provided they themselves were left alone by the Iroquois, and so long as the traders of New York did not seriously threaten their command of the West.

It was otherwise in the case of New England. The Abenaki Indians on the borders of the New England colonies had always been in the French interest. Jesuit influence was strong among them: they had been taught that Christianity could go hand in hand with ferocity, and that murder of white heretics might be not only a pleasure but a duty. Here the object of the French was not to keep the Indians quiet, but to spur them on. As they dreaded lest their Indian allies on the upper lakes should come to terms with the Iroquois,⁵ and enforced barbarities to make peace impossible, so in the closing years of the seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth, they incited the Abenaki warriors against the border settlements of Maine and New Hampshire, butchering, looting, carrying into captivity, their one object being to keep alive the taste of blood, lest, lured by the prospect of peaceful and profitable trade with the neighbouring English, the Abenakis should drift apart from New France.

⁵ See above.

A Canadian officer, Villebon, was specially deputed to take charge of Acadia, and organize war-parties against the English settlers. He reoccupied Port Royal, and at the beginning of 1692 the work of massacre was taken seriously in hand. The first point of attack was the border settlement of York on the sea-coast of Maine: it was laid waste early in February, with all the usual horrors of Indian warfare. In June, another seaside settlement—Wells, about twenty miles to the north of York—was attacked by a large party; but some thirty militiamen, headed by a determined officer, Convers by name, made a stubborn defence, and beat off the assailants. Two years later the settlement at Oyster River was surprised, and its inhabitants killed or carried off.

There was one way, and one only, to put a stop to this destructive warfare; to build strong forts in advanced positions; to give them adequate garrisons under competent officers; to patrol the frontier constantly with bodies of armed border police, and to harry the Indian marauders by land and sea. New England—and New England meant Massachusetts—was perfectly able to adopt and to maintain such a policy. The New Englanders were many against comparatively few; they had as a rule command of the sea; but the colonists did not like the expense or the personal service which was involved; the Boston citizens did not feel the full force of the blows which struck the outlying farms and homesteads; and the petifogging Government too often employed men to command who knew little or nothing of soldiering.

There was one point, in particular, which should have been strongly fortified and strongly garrisoned. This was Fort Pemaquid, on the sea-coast between the mouths of the Kennebec and the Penobscot. It was to New England, and to the Abenakis, what Fort Frontenac was to Canada and to the Iroquois, an advanced post covering the English colonies and menacing the Indians. In 1689, most of the English garrison having been withdrawn, it had been surprised and taken by the Abenakis. In 1692, Phipps, then Governor of Massachusetts, acting under orders from the King, rebuilt and regarrisoned it. Iberville, sent by Frontenac in the following year, with two ships of war, reconnoitred the fort but did not venture to attack it. In 1696, it was in charge of an incompetent commander, Chubb, who made himself odious to the Indians by a gross act of treachery. Some Abenaki chiefs had been invited to the fort under pledge of personal safety, to exchange prisoners; and, acting under instructions from Stoughton, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, Chubb laid an ambush for them, killed some and kidnapped others.

It was a proceeding as impolitic as it was immoral, and quickly brought retribution. Early in 1696, two ships of war came out from France, and, taking on board troops from Quebec, coasted round the Acadian peninsula, capturing on the way some English vessels, including an armed frigate. Off the mouth of the St. John the French received reinforcements, sent down by Villebon from his Fort Naxouat, which stood higher up the river; and a further band of Indians joined them at Pentegoet, the fort of the French adventurer St. Castin, at the mouth of the river Penobscot. The expedition led by Iberville, St. Castin, and others sailed on to Pemaquid, and on August 14 demanded its surrender. Chubb returned a contemptuous reply, and backed his words by promptly surrendering next day, on condition of safe conduct for himself and his men. He went back to Boston in safety and disgrace, and a year later was murdered by Indians.

The loss of Fort Pemaquid was a serious blow to the English, and in the next year, 1697, the French Government determined to follow up their success by attacking Boston. A strong fleet was sent out to Newfoundland under the Marquis de Nesmond. Its orders were to defeat any English vessels off that coast, and sailing south to the mouth of the Penobscot to take up Canadian troops and Indian allies. The expedition was then to proceed to take Boston, and, having accomplished this object, to overrun the whole of New England to the north of that city. Frontenac had the land forces in readiness, proposing to take command himself; but on this occasion the French took a leaf out of the English book; the fleet was detained by contrary winds till the summer was past, the combination failed, and all the grand scheme came to nothing at all. For Boston read Quebec, and the record of this failure might be the record of one of the stillborn enterprises, by which the English from time to time hoped to reduce Canada.

The Treaty of Ryswick signed in 1697, and formally proclaimed in America in 1698, settled nothing. It gave breathing-space to Louis XIV and his enemies, and, while it lasted, there was a respite from border forays for the English colonies in North America. But no attempt was made to adjust boundaries, or to remove causes of past and future disputes, and the only specific provision, which the treaty contained with regard to America, referred to Hudson Bay. Both sides knew that the truce was not likely to be long-lived, and its end came when, in 1701, the King of France promised the exiled James II on his deathbed to acknowledge his son as rightful King of England. In the following year war broke out again, the War of the Spanish Succession, the war which, after Marlborough's victories, ended with the Peace of Utrecht.

It was in Europe that the battle of the American colonies was fought, in Flanders and at Blenheim, rather than on the St. Lawrence or on the coasts of Acadia and New England. There was fighting in America, but it was in the main fighting of the same indecisive kind as had gone before—murder, pillage, and the like; and history repeated itself with singular fidelity. On May 4, 1702, war was declared: in August, 1703, the old work of raiding the New England frontier was resumed. The settlement at Wells, which had suffered before, was the first to suffer again; the neighbouring settlements, as far as Casco Bay, were marauded by the Abenaki Indians; and the fort at Casco was hard beset, until relieved by an armed vessel from Massachusetts. In the following year, at the end of February, 1704, the village of Deerfield was attacked by night by some 250 French and Indians. It stood on the Connecticut river, on the north-western frontier of Massachusetts, and at the date of the attack contained in all nearly 300 human beings. Of them about fifty were killed, and over 100 were carried off, among the latter being the minister of the place, John Williams, who survived to tell a tale of almost incredible loss and suffering in a narrative entitled The Redeemed Captive returning to Sion. A similar attack was made, in 1708, on the village of Haverhill on the Merrimac river, which cost the lives of about fifty villagers; and one after another the border settlements, during these troubled years, were infested by savages appearing from and disappearing in the backwoods under cover of night. The authors of the outrages were the French rulers of Canada; their agents were in the main converted Indians; the series of raids was not so much the spontaneous movement of natives against white men, as a crusade against heretics, prompted and led by Europeans, and carried out by Indian warriors on the lines of Indian warfare. There was much vicarious suffering. The past inroads of the Iroquois into Canada led to years of retaliation on New England: retaliation on New England induced the New Englanders in their turn to attack Acadia.

In 1691, the year after Phipps had taken Port Royal, a new charter was granted by the Crown to Massachusetts, which included Acadia within the limits of the colony. But in the same year, and in the very month of September in which the charter was given, the Frenchman Villebon reoccupied Port Royal, and four years later, Massachusetts, unwilling or unable to make good its claim, petitioned the British Government to take over its rights and responsibilities in regard to the Acadian peninsula. Whether in English or in French hands, Port Royal remained a small, ill-fortified, and poorly defended post, constantly open to, and constantly threatened with attack. In 1704, after and in consequence of the French raid on Deerfield, a buccaneering force from New England, under Major Benjamin Church, appeared before it, having previously burnt the Acadian settlement of Grand Pré, but sailed away without venturing to attack the fort. In 1707, a stronger expedition was sent from Massachusetts and the neighbouring colonies under Colonel John March; but again, though the troops landed, skirmished, and began a siege, the enterprise came to nothing.

In 1709 preparations were made for more vigorous and more effective action. In the previous year the colony of Massachusetts resolved to appeal to the British Government for help from home to attack Canada. Their emissary to England was Samuel Vetch, a notable man of the time in North American history. He was a Scotchman, the son of a Presbyterian minister, born and bred in Puritan surroundings; he had served in the Cameronian regiment, and had fought on the continent in William III's armies. After the Peace of Ryswick he went out with other would-be colonists to the Isthmus of Darien, and, on the failure of the scheme, came over to New York. There he married and engaged in trade with Canada, gaining a knowledge of New France, its river, and its people, which subsequently stood him in good stead. Like Phipps, he was a shrewd, self-made man, whose enemies accused him, apparently with reason, of illicit dealings; like Phipps, he had seen the world outside New England and New York; and, having seen it and having taken stock of Canada as well as of the English colonies, he was a warm advocate, as Phipps had been before him, of united and aggressive action against the French.

Quite recently, in 1705, he had been in Canada, to negotiate exchange of prisoners and a treaty of peace between Massachusetts and the French. Both Dudley, the Governor of Massachusetts, and Vaudreuil, the Canadian Governor, were inclined to peace, but the negotiations broke down in consequence of Vaudreuil's demand that the other English colonies in North America should also be included in the treaty—a condition which Dudley was not in a position to guarantee. Vetch was for some little time on this occasion both at Quebec and at Montreal. When, therefore he visited England in 1708, he brought with him accurate first-hand knowledge of the enemy's land and people. He was well received. Marlborough's victories supported his plea for a decisive campaign in America, and early in 1709 he was sent back over the Atlantic with the promise of a fleet and five regiments of British troops amounting to 3,000 men. The colonists on their part were to raise contingents of specified strength, and attack by sea was to be combined with a land expedition by way of Lake Champlain.

Even now some of the colonies hung back. Pennsylvania, out of reach of French attack and dominated by Quakers, sent no help in men or money. New Jersey sent money but no men. New York however abandoned its neutrality, threw in its lot with New England, and persuaded some of the Five Nations to take up arms again against the French, the Senecas only, under the influence of a skilful French agent, Joncaire, holding aloof. Fifteen hundred men were gathered for the land march, and, under the command of Colonel Francis Nicholson, advanced to Wood Creek, which is connected with Lake Champlain. He entrenched himself there, and his outposts came into collision with the advance guard of a French force sent to surprise him under Ramesay, Governor of Montreal. The French fell back to Chambly, and Nicholson waited week after week for news of the English fleet, until pestilence broke out among his troops, and he was compelled to retreat.

Meanwhile at Boston every preparation had been made, according to the orders of the English Government. Men, stores, transports were gathered, but all to no purpose, for no fleet came. It was due in May, and not till October came the news that the ships and men intended for America had been sent instead to Portugal. Once more there was a respite for Canada, once more the hearts of the English colonists were made sick by hope deferred. They had done their part, and all the trouble and expense and, in Nicholson's army, loss of life had been for nought.

Yet the representatives of Massachusetts still pressed the home Government to take action against New France. Nicholson went to England at the end of the year, and pleaded the cause of the colonies, pleading it with authority, as having been Lieutenant-Governor of New York and Governor of Maryland. One of the Schuylers too followed him to England from New York, bringing a party of Mohawk chiefs to see and be seen.

If Canada were not to be invaded, at least Port Royal might be taken, and Imperial aid was promised to attain the latter object. An English force, timed to reach Boston in March, 1710, arrived there in July; and in September Nicholson sailed for Port Royal at the head of a strong expedition. He reached it on September 24. For a week there was some fighting, but the French were hopelessly outnumbered; and on October 1, the fort surrendered. Port Royal, henceforth known as Annapolis, now passed in permanence into English hands, and with it the English became masters of all Acadia.

After taking Port Royal Nicholson returned to London, again to urge an attack on Canada. Before he arrived, there had been in August, 1710, a change of ministry. Godolphin had been dismissed, and Marlborough's enemies, Harley and Bolingbroke, were in power. Bolingbroke had in his service a New Englander, trained at Harvard University—Jeremiah Dummer—who had become agent of Massachusetts in England, and who set forth in pamphlets the colonists' case, and urged the vital importance of conquering Canada. His writings, combined with the personal representations of Nicholson, persuaded ministers, who were anxious to father an enterprise which might weigh in the balance of public opinion against Marlborough's victories; and in April, 1711, fifteen men of war, with forty-six transports, sailed for America, carrying seven regiments of the line, five of which were from the army in Flanders. The regulars numbered 5,000 men, exclusive of sailors and marines, and they were to be supplemented on arrival by colonial levies. They reached Boston, after a fair passage, towards the end of June.

The force was fully strong enough to take Quebec, provided that two requisites were forthcoming—the hearty co-operation of the colonists and capable leaders. The colonists did their part, but not with a whole heart and not without misgivings. They had asked for British troops, but, notwithstanding, there was a suspicion in the minds of many that a strong force landed in America might be used to subvert colonial liberties, and to reduce the communities of New England to the position of Crown Colonies. The French knew that such a spirit was abroad, and did their best to foster it. It was fostered too by other causes. There was something new in the action of the British Government. The American settlers were accustomed to refusal of aid from home, to promises of aid made but not fulfilled, to tardy and inadequate assistance. But on the present occasion an unusually large force of veteran troops arrived at Boston at a fortnight's notice.

Nicholson landed with the news of the coming fleet on June 8, on the twenty-fourth the fleet appeared. Its destination had been kept secret, and it was provisioned only for the voyage to America. On its arrival, therefore, it was necessary to impress men and supplies: pilots too were wanted and were not forthcoming: the King's officers found the colonists difficult to deal with: the colonists resented peremptory orders, and sheltered deserters from the army and the fleet. Still the authorities of Massachusetts loyally backed the expedition; preparations went forward; and on July 30 the ships set sail for the St. Lawrence, carrying, in addition to the English forces, two Massachusetts regiments, which numbered about 1,500 men, and were commanded by Vetch, now Governor of Annapolis.

The orthodox plan of invading Canada involved a twofold attack, by land on Montreal, by sea on Quebec. Accordingly, while the fleet was sailing round the North American coast, Nicholson collected troops at Albany, and advanced as far as Wood Creek at the head of 2,300 men, 800 of whom were Iroquois. Thence he intended to push his way down Lake Champlain. He was a competent commander, but the leaders of the main expedition were not. Little is known of the admiral, Sir Hovenden Walker, and it does not appear why he was chosen for so important a post. The general, Hill, familiar enough to London society as Jack Hill, had hitherto shown no military capacity. Marlborough had set his face against his promotion, and he owed his rise entirely to Court favour, for he was brother of Abigail Hill (Lady Masham), now the ruling favourite of Queen Anne. Sister and brother alike had been befriended by the Duchess of Marlborough; by intrigue, Abigail Hill had supplanted her benefactress in the Queen's favour; and with her aid Harley and Bolingbroke, themselves arch-intriguers, turned out Godolphin and procured Marlborough's disgrace. The price of her assistance was the appointment of her incompetent brother to command seasoned troops well fitted to conquer Canada.

Rounding Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, the fleet, on August 18, put into Gaspé Bay. By the evening of the twenty-second it was at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and in foggy weather the unskilful admiral, many miles out of his course, headed straight for the northern shore of the river, under the impression that he was too close to land on the southern side. At dead of night he was roused from his berth with the unwelcome news that the ship was among breakers; and turned her head just in time to avoid running upon rocks. The ships which followed his disastrous lead were not so fortunate, and eight of the transports were dashed to pieces on the reefs with a loss of about 1,000 lives.⁶ The place where the catastrophe occurred was one of the rocky islets, known as the Egg Islands, about twenty miles to the north of the Point de Monts.

⁶ According to one English account 884 soldiers were lost, according to another 740 soldiers and women. The number of sailors lost is not given.

For two days the ships were busied in picking up survivors from the wrecks. On the twenty-fifth a council of war was held, and it was resolved to abandon the expedition. A message was sent to recall Nicholson and his troops from their advance on Montreal; the fleet sailed back to Sydney harbour in Cape Breton Island. A suggestion to attack Placentia in Newfoundland was rejected. The New England transports returned to Boston, and the English fleet went home to Portsmouth,⁷ where—to complete the fiasco—the admiral's ship blew up, costing the lives of some 400 seamen.

⁷ Swift, in the Journal to Stella, says that the ship blew up in the Thames, but the accident seems to have taken place at Spithead; see Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. ii, pp. 468-9. There are various references to this expedition and to Hill in the Journal to Stella. Hill was subsequently placed in command at Dunkirk, while that port was being held as security for the execution of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.

Of the two commanders, Hill escaped formal censure. Luckily for him, Swift's bitter pen was at the service of the political clique with which he was connected. Walker, more culpable, was also less fortunate: deprived of his command he emigrated first to South Carolina and afterwards to Barbados, where he died, having written his own version of the expedition,⁸ which in no way tended to redeem his reputation.

⁸ A full account of the late Expedition to Canada, by Sir Hovenden Walker (London, 1720).

Such was the end of the enterprise, intended to eclipse the great deeds of Marlborough. There have been many shortcomings and many disasters in the military annals of England, but few instances are on record of so much incompetence, verging almost on cowardice. Phipps' expedition against Quebec was a complete failure, but at least he led his band of untrained farmers and fishermen safely up and down the St. Lawrence, and gave Count Frontenac a taste of powder and shot. Walker and Hill, with the best of ships and the best of men, blundered and turned back at the mouth of the river; at the first mishap they abandoned everything. No wonder the Frenchmen deemed that the saints watched over Canada.

The result can hardly have confirmed the American colonies in their allegiance to England. As a matter of fact, England had been fighting their battle against France, but her successes had been on the other side of the Atlantic; whereas in America, under the eyes of the colonists, there had been little but failure. One substantial gain there was—the capture of Port Royal; but this easy feat had been previously achieved by Massachusetts alone without any aid from home. The conquest of Canada, which had been well within reach, now seemed as far off as ever; and the Treaty of Utrecht—which, if Marlborough had been left to follow up his career of victory, and if a commander of his choosing had been sent with his troops across the seas, might have forestalled the famous treaty of fifty years later—did not even secure the whole seaboard to England, or confine the French to the river of Canada. Acadia, according to its ancient limits, was ceded to the British Crown, the French gave up their possessions in Newfoundland, and their hold on Hudson Bay: but on a section of the Newfoundland coast they were granted fishing rights, to be a fruitful source of future trouble; and, keeping Cape Breton Island, they reared in it the fortress of Louisbourg, to be a stronghold second only to that of Quebec. Once more England lost her opportunity, and the settlement, which should have been made in 1713, was postponed till 1763.

NOTE.—For the substance of chaps. iii, iv, and v, see among modern books,

    KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vols. i and ii,

and the following works of PARKMAN:

    The Jesuits in North America;
    The Old Régime in Canada;
    Count Frontenac and New France;
    La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.

CHAPTER V

What were the French and English fighting for in North America? The answer seems obvious, for North America itself. But what did North America mean? It had a different meaning to different interests. The New Englander cared for little but the New England colonies, and the immediately adjacent lands and seas. To the Acadian settlers the Acadian peninsula, to the Canadian habitant the banks of the St. Lawrence, were all in all. The inland colonists of New York had in their minds not merely the safety of their colony, within its ill-defined boundaries, but also paramount influence over the Five Nations, and unrestricted trade with the western Indians. Longheaded governors of New York and Massachusetts took a still wider view; but the widest of all was held by the French Governors of Canada, and by the roving Canadians, who, with restless spirit and undaunted enterprise, claimed seas and rivers before they were reached or known, magnifying tales of far-off lands and peoples, building in the air and bringing down to earth a fabric of continental dominion. As a rule, the English view was too circumscribed, the French view was too diffuse. The strength of the English lay in effective occupation within narrow limits; the French committed the blunder of perpetually forcing competition upon rivals who had larger resources; but to them belonged the great merit of grasping in some sort the true meaning of North America, and never letting slip the problems of the future.

The explorers' aim was always to reach the further sea. That it must be somewhere to the west, in the opposite direction to the homes from whence they came, they knew or conjectured; but of the immense distance at which it lay, and of the Rocky Mountain barrier which must be surmounted to find it, they were wholly ignorant. They followed the water, and, when they had gained some knowledge of the great lakes, they reached the closely adjoining sources of the tributaries of the Mississippi, the Wisconsin, the Ohio, and the Illinois; and, borne with the stream, they came in due course not to the west but to the south, not to the Pacific but to the Gulf of Mexico.

There was the usual mixture of motives—love of adventure, love of gain, political ambition, religious fervour. There was rivalry and competition. One trader or band of traders was jealous of another. One man or set of men was backed by the Governor for the time being, another secured the favour of the Intendant. Missionaries played a great part in exploration. At first they led the van of discovery; they were always in or near the front rank; but, as years went on, and as the simple desire of adding to geographical knowledge, of opening new fields for France and for Christianity, became more and more alloyed with commercial greed, the ministers of religion, when heart-whole themselves, realized that the multiplication of trading posts in the backwoods meant lawlessness of white men, deterioration of natives; and they no longer gave hearty support to the bold French adventurers whose enterprise opened up the West.

It will be noticed, on reference to a map of Canada—or rather of that part of the Dominion which was comprised in New France—not only that there is water communication from end to end, from the extreme west of Lake Superior to the Atlantic, but also that there are very distinct points along the way, which are, so to speak, natural toll-bars, where the waters narrow, where the rivers or lakes meet. Here the explorer must pass to reach a goal beyond; here the trader could intercept traffic; here the missionary was sure to find Indians to be converted, and coureurs de bois to be reclaimed; these were the places which must be occupied by the would-be sovereigns of North America. Consequently, at these points of vantage along the route, at one time and another, mission stations, trading posts, and forts were planted.

Montreal itself, at the head of the colony, at the beginning of its hinterland, commanded the junction of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence. At Cataraqui, where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake Ontario, Fort Frontenac was built. A little above the outlet of the Niagara river into Lake Ontario and below the falls, another French fort was reared, Fort Niagara; while on the channel between Lakes Erie and Huron was the fort of Detroit. The Iroquois, as we have seen, knew as well as the French the value of these positions: they feared and resented the building of the forts, as limiting the range of their power, and taking from them the control of the fur trade. On the upper lakes there were at least two posts of prime importance: one was the Sault St. Marie at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake Superior, the other was Michillimackinac at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. It must not be supposed that the points mentioned were occupied in chronological order, as they have been enumerated above; or that there was any regular series of occupants, that the explorer came first, followed by the missionary, the trader, and so forth: but the net result was that French enterprise and French statesmanship took and kept the gateways on the highroad of Upper Canada.

Lake Michigan was known to the French as the 'Lac des Illinois.' The narrows where it joins Lake Huron were the straits of Michillimackinac, now Mackinac or Mackinaw; and on their northern side stood the trading station of the same name, and the mission of St. Ignace. Within the straits on the western side, is a large indentation, forming a sheet of water which runs south-west, nearly parallel to the main lake. This was at first called, after certain Indians who lived on its shores, the Baie des Puans; but it was subsequently named the Grande Baie, and this title was corrupted into Green Bay, its present name. The Fox river flows into the head of Green Bay, and, if the upward course of this river is followed through Lake Winnebago and beyond, a point is reached at which the waters of the Wisconsin river are not more than a mile and a half distant. The Wisconsin is a tributary of the Mississippi.

A slightly longer portage was needed to reach the Mississippi basin from the end of Lake Michigan. Still it was a matter of very few miles to leave the lake, where the city of Chicago now stands, and to strike one or other of the branches of the Illinois river, the nearest being the stream known as Des Plaines. Canoes launched on that stream were carried down into the Illinois, and so to the Mississippi at a point far south of its confluence with the Wisconsin.

For adventurers bold enough to diverge from the line of lakes, and to pass overland within reach of the dreaded Five Nations, there was yet a third route, more direct than the other two, to the great river. It was a route well known in after years, and followed the course of the Ohio. The Ohio, the 'beautiful river,' for such is the meaning of its name,¹ is formed by the junction of two rivers, the Alleghany and the Monongahela. At their junction, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the French founded Fort Duquesne, and where Fort Duquesne stood is now the city of Pittsburg. The northern branch, the Alleghany, takes its rise near the southern shore of Lake Erie. One of its affluents flows out of Lake Chautauqua, about eight miles south of Lake Erie, at the point where there is now the small town of Portland; another, the Rivière aux Boeufs, now called French Creek, is very little further from the lake, over against Presque Île and the present town of Erie. A day's march through the forest would therefore bring a traveller from Lake Erie to a stream which, when in full volume, would carry his canoe into the Alleghany, the Ohio, and so to the Mississippi far down its course. No wonder the line of the Ohio became, when geographical knowledge had made some way, a central feature in French politics and French strategy in North America.

¹ The name was given it by the Iroquois.

From the above it will be seen how closely the head waters of the Mississippi adjoin the St. Lawrence basin, how short the land journey was from the one to the other. The natives of North America made exploration difficult, but from a geographical point of view, the discoverer's path was comparatively easy.

The upper lakes, Lakes Huron and Superior, were visited and explored before there was any adequate knowledge of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and there is no record of white men passing from Lake Erie to Lake Huron by the strait of Detroit before the year 1670. The Five Nations barred the upper St. Lawrence, and the Niagara river and portage; but they did not control to the same extent the alternative route from Montreal to Lake Huron by the Ottawa river. Thus it was that the Jesuits found their way to the Hurons, on Georgian Bay, long before any mission enterprise was attempted on the lower lakes, and as early as 1640 there were Jesuit missionaries at the outlet of Lake Superior, the Sault St. Marie. Later, after the dispersion of the Hurons, there was for a while a mission at the western end of Lake Superior, the place being known as La Pointe, and the mission as the mission of St. Esprit.

The first white man to reach Lake Michigan was Jean Nicollet. He was a native of Cherbourg, and had come to Canada as early as 1618. Sojourning among the Nipissing Indians, he heard from them of the western tribes; and, listening to Indian tales, seems to have conjectured that a people might be reached in the far West who could be none other than Chinese. With these pictures in his mind, he went, about 1635, as an ambassador of peace to the Puans or Winnebagos, who dwelt on the Green Bay of Michigan, and arrived among them, so the story goes, in an embroidered dress of Chinese damask, as being appropriate to the people whom he hoped to find. He did not find Chinamen, but came near finding the Mississippi; and a claim was made in after years on his behalf that he actually was the first discoverer of that river. The claim however must be disallowed, and the honour of discovering the great river belongs to the two Frenchmen, Joliet and Marquette, who did not reach it till 1673.

After the destruction of the Huron missions, it was difficult enough for some years to keep life in the struggling colony of New France; and it was not until the King had taken Canada in hand, had sent out soldiers and settlers, had commissioned Tracy and Courcelles to curb the Iroquois, and the Intendant, Talon, to introduce order and system, that progress was made in exploring and opening up the West. The promoters of exploration were Talon himself, before he returned to France; and subsequently the Governor, Frontenac; the Sulpician and Jesuit missionaries, especially the latter; and laymen adventurers, the foremost of whom was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. La Salle's name is for all time connected with the Mississippi, but Joliet and Marquette were before him in reaching the main river.

Of these two companions in travel, Louis Joliet was a layman, though connected with the Jesuits by early training. Born in Canada, he had been sent by Talon to look for copper by Lake Superior, and was subsequently picked out to discover the mysterious river. Jacques Marquette was a Jesuit priest, of the earlier and purer type—a saintly man, humble and single in mind, who early wore his life away in labouring for his faith. He had come out from France in 1666, and about the year 1668 was sent as a missionary to the upper lakes. On the shores of Lake Superior he ministered to Huron and Ottawa refugees at the mission of St. Esprit, where he heard from Illinois visitors of the great river, and from which point, though he knew it not, one feeder of the Mississippi, the St. Croix river, is at no great distance. A Sioux raid broke up the mission, and with the retreating Hurons he established himself at Michillimackinac, where, about 1670, he founded the mission of St. Ignace. About the same time, a mission was also established at the head of Green Bay, and from this point the two travellers, at the end of May, 1673, went forward to the Mississippi.

The course up the Fox river and across Lake Winnebago had already been taken by other missionaries, who had not, however, gone as far as the Wisconsin. That river was now reached, and on June 17 it carried the explorers' canoes out into the Mississippi. Down stream they went, past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio, until they came to the confluence of the Arkansas river. There they turned, assured in their own minds that the outlet of the Mississippi was in the Gulf of Mexico—not, as had been supposed, in the Gulf of California—and fearing lest, if they lost their lives at the hands of Indians or of Spaniards,² the tale of their discovery might be lost also. They came back by way of the Illinois and Des Plaines rivers, made the portage to Lake Michigan, and reached Green Bay at the end of September, having made known to white men the great river of the West.

² The lower Mississippi had long been known to the Spaniards.

Joliet went back to Quebec to report to the Governor, losing all his papers by the way in the rapids of Lachine. He lived to visit Hudson Bay and the coasts of Labrador. Marquette, in broken health, stayed rather more than a year at the Green Bay mission. Then, in the winter of 1674-5, accompanied by two French voyageurs, he revisited the Illinois river, carrying for the last time his message of Christianity to savages, who heard him gladly, and followed him back, a dying man, as far as Lake Michigan. In the month of May he embarked on the lake, making for Michillimackinac; but, as he went, the end came, and he was put on shore to die. His companions buried him at the lonely spot where he died, but at a later date his bones were brought to Michillimackinac by Indians who had loved him well, and were laid to rest with all reverence in the chapel of his own mission.

Marquette, like David Livingstone at a later date, was a missionary explorer. He was carried forward by a faith which could remove mountains. La Salle was cast in another mould. His gift was not religious enthusiasm, but the set purpose of a resolute, masterful man, who made a life-study of his subject. He was born at Rouen, the birthplace of much western enterprise, and went to Canada in the same year as Marquette, the year 1666. An elder brother, who was a Sulpician priest, had gone out before him; and from the Sulpicians, as feudal lords of the island of Montreal, La Salle obtained a grant of the Seigniory of Lachine, eight miles higher up the river than Montreal itself. Here he laid out a settlement, but, as the name 'La Chine' testifies,³ his mind was set on finding a route to China and the East, and in 1669 he gave up his grant, receiving compensation for improvements, and spent what little money he had in beginning his work of discovery.

³ See above.

His early wanderings have not been clearly traced, but there is no reason to doubt that, in the years 1669-71, he found his way from Lakes Ontario and Erie through the Iroquois country to the Ohio. It was perhaps a more difficult feat to accomplish than the subsequent discovery of the Mississippi by way of the lakes. The land journey was longer, and took the explorer well within range of the Five Nations. His success proved his capacity for treating with natives—a quality in which he resembled his staunch friend and supporter Count Frontenac.

Among white men he had, like Frontenac, many enemies, suspicious priests and jealous merchants. The Jesuits had little love for a man who had no love for them; and the Canadian merchants regarded him as a dangerous rival, recognizing no doubt the element of tenacity in his character. It was the character of one who could hold as well as find, and who was not likely to rest content with the barren honours of discovery. There were in him contradictory elements, and his strength was balanced by failings, which became more conspicuous in the later stages of his adventurous career. He was not in all points a typical Frenchman. He had, it is true, address in dealing with North American Indians; he could lay his case well before the Court and the ministers of France. He enjoyed the friendship and countenance of Count Frontenac, and from more than one of his companions in travel, notably Henri de Tonty, he won unbounded devotion. But he was wanting, as a leader, in tact and sympathy. Solitary and self-contained, facing all dangers, enduring all privations, he spared neither himself nor others. Mutiny and desertion were in consequence rife amongst those who served him, and in the end he lost his life at the hands of his own followers. He had statesmanlike conceptions. He mapped out New France, in his own mind, as extending from sea to sea, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to that of Mexico. Like other Frenchmen, he went too far and tried to do too much; but, if he made mistakes, he was at least no visionary. Until the last stage of his career, his ends were clearly kept in view, and he measured the means to attain them, though he did not always measure aright.

He gave up one Seigniory to find the Ohio. It was not long before he obtained another. Count Frontenac came out to govern Canada, for the first time, in 1672; and determined, as has been told,⁴ to build a fort at the outlet of Lake Ontario. Guided, it would seem, by La Salle's advice, he built it in 1673, at the mouth of the Cataraqui river. In 1675, La Salle, who had paid a visit to France in the autumn of the previous year, became by royal grant Seignior of the new fort and settlement, to which he gave the name of Fort Frontenac. It was a strong position to hold, whether for making money by trade or for prosecuting westward discovery; and bitter was the jealousy against the young Frenchman, who, at thirty-two years of age, and after no more than nine years' residence in Canada, had in spite of strong opposition achieved so much.

⁴ See above.

Two years he remained at Cataraqui, rebuilding and strengthening the fort, clearing the ground and constructing small vessels for trading purposes on Lake Ontario: then, ready to move forward again, he went back to France in 1677, and laid before the King and Colbert a further memorial for permission to discover and colonize the countries of the West. He asked to be confirmed in his Seigniory at Fort Frontenac, to be allowed to establish two other stations, and to be given rights as Seignior and Governor over whatever lands he might discover and colonize within twenty years. He promised, if his request were granted, to plant a colony at the outlet of Lake Erie, and to waive all claim to any share in the trade between the Indians of the western lakes and Canada.

These conditions are worth special note. La Salle was prepared to assure to France one more link in the chain of rivers and lakes: he was prepared too to disarm trading jealousy by renouncing any plans for intercepting the existing fur trade. He asked in return for a free hand to the south-west, in the lands of the Ohio, the Illinois, and the Mississippi. The answer of the King, given in May, 1678, was permission 'to labour at the discovery of the western parts of New France ... through which to all appearance a way may be found to Mexico,'⁵ and for that purpose to build forts and enjoy possession of them as at Fort Frontenac. The concession was limited to five years; and, while a monopoly in buffalo skins was granted to the petitioner, he was prohibited, as he had contemplated, from trading with the tribes whose furs came down to Montreal.

⁵ Quoted by Parkman in his La Salle (11th ed.), p. 112.

Having secured this patent, La Salle raised funds in France for the furtherance of his enterprise; and in July, 1678, set sail from La Rochelle to Canada, taking with him an Italian officer, Tonty, who had been recommended to him by the Prince de Conti, and whose subsequent faithfulness to his leader became almost proverbial. A companion of a different kind joined him on his return to Canada, Father Hennepin, a Flemish friar, a brave and sturdy traveller, but a man of great personal vanity and convicted of telling more than travellers' tales. He published an account of his travels in La Salle's lifetime, and, after his death, put forth a new edition,⁶ claiming to have anticipated La Salle in descending the Mississippi to the sea. The story has been proved to be an absolute imposture, the more discreditable that it was an attempt to rob a dead man of honour dearly bought.

⁶ The first book, published at Paris in 1683, was entitled Description de la Louisiane nouvellement découverte. The second, published at Utrecht in 1697, was headed Nouvelle découverte d'un très grand pays situé dans l'Amérique.

On his return from France, La Salle dispatched a party of men in advance to Lake Michigan, to trade and to collect stores against his own arrival. He then set himself, taking Fort Frontenac as his basis, to plant a post at the mouth of the Niagara river below the falls; and, above the falls, to build a ship of some appreciable size for the navigation of the upper lakes. The plan was well thought out. He would hold both ends of Lake Ontario; and, the continuity of advance being broken by the falls of Niagara, he would have, above the falls, an armed vessel plying for merchandise between Niagara and the end of Lake Michigan, where again there should be another fort or factory to safeguard the portage to the waters of the Mississippi.

It was specially necessary to hold both ends of Lake Ontario, for here was the land of the Senecas. Jealously and sullenly they watched the Frenchmen's work, through the winter of 1678-9, not wholly reassured by a visit from La Salle himself to the chief town of the tribe; but they attempted no armed opposition. Thus the beginning was made of the first Fort Niagara,⁷ on the eastern bank of the river, in the angle formed by its junction with Lake Ontario; while on the same side of the water, five miles above the falls, where a stream called the Cayuga creek enters the main river, a ship was built bearing the name and the emblem of the Griffin, the appropriate arms of truculent Count Frontenac.

⁷ Denonville's fort, referred to above, was a later structure.

On August 7, 1679, the Griffin started on her voyage up Lake Erie. On the tenth—the feast of Sainte Claire—she had passed up the Detroit river and was in Lake St. Clair. Against the strong current of the St. Clair river, she found her way into Lake Huron, and, buffeted by storm and wind, reached in the course of the same month the mission of St. Ignace at Michillimackinac. Of the advanced party of traders sent there in the previous year, some had deserted; others, who remained true, were found at Green Bay with a rich store of furs; and on the eighteenth of September La Salle parted with his vessel, sending her to carry back the furs to the portage at Niagara. He never saw the ship again, and her fate was never known. Foundering, it would seem, in Lake Michigan, she left her owner to wait in vain for her return, in want of food, in want of stores for his onward march, with followers whom he could not trust, with Indian tribes to master or appease, with winter making the way harder and the wilderness more drear.

After dispatching the Griffin homeward, La Salle pushed on in canoes to the south-eastern end of Lake Michigan. There, at the mouth of the St. Joseph river, which he called the Miami, he built a fort. December came on, but forward he went, up the St. Joseph, across to the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, and down that stream and the Illinois river to where the Illinois Indians were encamped for the time near the present town of Peoria. His plan had been to build another ship on the Illinois, and sail down that river and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

The new year, 1680, opened badly for his enterprise. The Indians were suspicious, his men were deserting, no news had come of the ill-fated Griffin. Yet he held staunchly to his purpose. Again he reared a fort—Fort Crèvecoeur—a little lower down the Illinois than the Indian camp, and again in the far-off wilds, in dead of winter, he turned his men to shipbuilding. Without fittings and supplies it was impossible to proceed, and, accordingly, he determined to go back himself and bring the needed stores. Leaving Tonty in charge of the fort, he retraced his steps to Lake Michigan. At Fort Miami he learnt beyond question the loss of the Griffin. Across the then unknown peninsula of Michigan he took his way, reached the Detroit river, struck Lake Erie, and, passing by way of Niagara, arrived at Fort Frontenac in sixty-five days from leaving the Illinois, having in March and April achieved a feat of travel almost unparalleled even in the early history of Canada. Going down to Montreal, he obtained supplies, and again set his face undaunted to the West.

As he came and went, he heard of nothing but disaster. The men left at Fort Crèvecoeur under Tonty's command broke out in open mutiny, and some of them were intercepted on their way back to Fort Frontenac, having destroyed the forts on the Illinois and St. Joseph, looted their employer's property at Michillimackinac and Niagara, and being minded to crown their villainy by killing La Salle himself. They met their fate—were shot or imprisoned—and La Salle pushed on to Tonty's succour. Towards the close of the year he was back on the Illinois river, only to find a scene of utter desolation. In his absence, the Iroquois had invaded the land and swept all before them. Skeletons of men and women, empty huts, an abandoned fort, the hull of a half-built ship, all told a tale of brutish warfare and a ruined enterprise. Tonty was not to be found; and, after following the Illinois down to its confluence with the Mississippi, La Salle returned to Lake Michigan, and wintered on the St. Joseph river at Fort Miami, which had been destroyed by the mutineers but was again rebuilt.

With the spring of 1681 there came a gleam of hope. The western Indians, terror-stricken by the Iroquois—and Indian immigrants from the east, driven out by the English colonists—gathered for protection to the brave, enduring Frenchman, took him for their leader, and hearkened to his word. News came that Tonty was in safety at Green Bay; and at length, about the end of May, La Salle and he joined hands again at Michillimackinac. Tonty had a tale of heroism to tell. Left in charge of the garrison at Fort Crèvecoeur, he had gone, according to his leader's instructions, to prospect a site for a fort a little higher up the river. When his back was turned, his followers destroyed the fort, carried off the stores, and left him with five other Frenchmen, two of whom were Recollet friars, among the Illinois Indians. True to his trust, he stayed among them, when the hordes of the Five Nations broke in, bent on destruction. Between the contending forces he held his life in the balance, vainly striving to stem the tide of massacre; and, having done all that man could do, found his way back to the lakes, saved by his own fearless honesty and by respect for the French name.

Of the expedition which started in the ill-fated Griffin, there was still another prominent member to be accounted for. This was Father Hennepin. Before La Salle turned home from Fort Crèvecoeur in the spring of 1680, he sent two Frenchmen of his company, and with them Father Hennepin, to explore and to trade on the upper Mississippi. Hennepin and his companions went down the Illinois; and, ascending the Mississippi, fell among the Sioux or Dakota Indians. Carried off to the Sioux lodges, in the present State of Minnesota, the Frenchmen sojourned among them for some months, half captives and half guests, until they were found by Du Luth, fur-trader and coureur de bois, who had already explored these regions, and had crossed from Lake Superior to the Mississippi by the line of the St. Croix river. In his company, Hennepin returned up the Wisconsin; and, before the year 1680 ended, was safe at Michillimackinac. In the following year he went back to Montreal; and soon afterwards, returning to Europe, published the book to which reference has already been made. He was the first European to describe the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, and the Falls of St. Anthony preserve the name of his patron saint—St. Anthony of Padua.

The descent to the sea, which in after years he falsely claimed to have made, was soon afterwards achieved by La Salle. After rejoining Tonty at Michillimackinac, he went back with him to Fort Frontenac and Montreal, and once more procured men and money to renew his enterprise. Again turning west, he reached Fort Miami late in the autumn of 1681, and on the shortest day his expedition left Lake Michigan. Crossing from the St. Joseph to the Chicago creek, and from the latter to the Des Plaines river, the northern tributary of the Illinois, they embarked—fifty-four Frenchmen and Indians, including thirteen women and children—in six canoes, and took their way steadily down stream. They joined the Mississippi, they passed the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Halfway between the Ohio and the Arkansas, on the east bank of the Mississippi, they built and manned a small wooden fort, naming it Fort Prudhomme after one of their number who for a while lost himself in the woods. Again holding on their course, under softer skies than those of Canada, they reached the mouth of the Arkansas river, whence Joliet and Marquette had turned back; and there, among friendly and wondering Indians, they proclaimed the French King lord of the land. Below the Arkansas they came to other Indian tribes, such as the Spaniards had known, who, under dome-shaped roofs, worshipped the sun. At length the river parted into three channels, as it neared the sea; and, dividing into three parties, the bold voyagers soon met again on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

It was April 9, 1682, when, on the southernmost edge of the new domain, a column was reared inscribed with the arms of France and with the name of Louis le Grand. The secret of the great river was won at last, from its source to its mouth; and, claiming all the lands which it watered for the Crown of France,⁸ La Salle called them by the name 'Louisiana.'

⁸ In La Salle's proclamation the basin of the Ohio was excluded from Louisiana, as the words are 'from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio' (Parkman's La Salle, 12th ed., p. 286).

His canoes could not face the open sea, so the explorers retraced their course up stream. They suffered from want of food, the natives attacked them, and La Salle himself was sorely stricken by fever, which kept him many weeks at Fort Prudhomme. It was not till September that he reached Michillimackinac, and rejoined Tonty, who had gone on before him. The winter of 1682-3 was spent in establishing a colony of French and Indians on the Illinois. The place selected for the purpose was on the southern bank of the river, some distance above the site of Fort Crèvecoeur, where a high precipitous cliff towered over wood and stream. The rock had been marked by La Salle in his former sojourn on the river, and it was during Tonty's visit to the spot⁹ that Fort Crèvecoeur was looted and left. Had the Illinois river been the Rhine, the rock would in mediaeval times have been crowned by the castle of a border noble; and on its summit was now built a wooden fort, Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Round the fort the Indians gathered for protection and for trade, the peasantry as it were of the western wilderness, clustering under the shelter of a feudal stronghold; for in virtue of the royal patent, La Salle was the Seignior of the place. It promised to be a strong outpost of French dominion, if its connexion with Canada was kept intact.

⁹ See above. A full description of the rock, known afterwards as 'Starved Rock,' is given in Parkman's La Salle (12th ed.), pp. 293-4, and note.

New France was made by a few individual men, of whom La Salle was one. Their work was perpetually undone by want of efficient co-operation, or rather by efficient antagonism, on the part of their fellow countrymen. Fort Frontenac, Niagara, armed and trading vessels on the upper lakes, Fort Miami, where the lakes end, a fort on the Illinois—constituted the basis of a scheme worthy of support, but support was wanting. Frontenac had been recalled in 1682; and his successor, La Barre, leagued with the enemies of La Salle, cut off his supplies, detained his men, maligned him to the King, seized his Seigniory at Fort Frontenac, and sent an officer to take possession of the fort on the Illinois. La Salle had but one remedy left, to appeal to the King in person; and with that object he sailed for France in 1683, never to see Canada again. His troubled fighting life was soon to end, and its closing scenes were crowded with disaster. He seems to some extent to have lost his balance, to have acted with insufficient knowledge, and to have changed hardihood into recklessness. Yet in all that he attempted there was continuity of aim from first to last, and his final wild adventure, as it seemed to be, had its bearing on the story of the Canadian Dominion.

The patent, which had been given to him in 1678, authorized discovery, trade, and the building of forts, but said nothing of founding colonies. The policy of the French Government was always in the main a forward policy; but the French King and his ministers had the good sense to discourage proposals for colonizing the backwoods, because they saw the obvious danger of dispersing through a large area the scanty population of New France. It was therefore easy for La Salle's enemies to denounce his schemes as opposed to the royal will, as drawing off colonists from the St. Lawrence, where they were sorely needed, and teaching the able-bodied men of Canada to become not habitans but coureurs de bois. These were the charges which La Salle had to rebut. He met them by propounding a still bolder plan than his former ventures, and he induced the King to give his sanction to an enterprise for French colonization on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

It happened that, at the date when he arrived in Paris, there was bad blood between France and Spain, resulting for a short space in open war. The Spaniards claimed to exclude French ships from the Gulf of Mexico, and King Louis, with his minister Seignelay, Colbert's son, contemplated meeting these claims by taking and holding a post on the Gulf. Some scheme of the kind had already been submitted to them by a Spanish refugee from Peru, Count Penalossa by name; and when La Salle advanced similar proposals, suggesting the establishment of a French colony on or near the mouth of the Mississippi, to be connected with Canada, and to be the basis for attacking and conquering the northern province of Mexico, New Biscay, his words fell on willing ears. He spoke with authority. Alone among Frenchmen at the Court of France, he had reached the mouth of the great river, and could tell to a King, with lust of conquest, a story of lands to be won for France, and of peoples ready to follow her lead.

The result was that La Salle's rivals in Canada were discomfited, and peremptory orders were sent to La Barre to restore his Seigniory at Fort Frontenac and his station on the Illinois; while an expedition, destined for the Gulf of Mexico, was fitted out at La Rochelle, and eventually sailed on July 24, 1684.

What was in La Salle's mind in suggesting this southern adventure can only be conjectured. Was it the last desperate stake of a ruined gambler? Or was it an over-sanguine attempt to realize the great object of his life, to master the far West by moving up instead of down its waterways, by entering not through Canada, where every step would be dogged by jealousy and intrigue, but through the mouths of the Mississippi, where climate and natives would be less formidable foes than the Governor of Canada and his unscrupulous clique of confederates? If, as it is reasonable to suppose, he still clung with the determination of his character to the western enterprise, in which he had already achieved so much, he added to it a highly-coloured picture of conquest in Mexico; and he drew his map of Mexico as adjoining the lands on the Mississippi, omitting in ignorance most of the wide area of intervening territory, now included in the State of Texas.

Four vessels set sail, freighted with all things necessary to found a colony, carrying soldiers, artisans, married women, and young girls. They were a doomed company; from first to last all went wrong. There was divided command, and Beaujeu, the admiral of the ships, a Norman like La Salle, had with some reason little confidence in the expedition or its leader. They made in the first instance for St. Domingo, but one of the four ships which was carrying the stores was cut off by Spanish buccaneers before reaching the island. At St. Domingo, La Salle was laid low with fever; and, while he was between life and death, his followers rioted and sickened on shore. After a delay of two months, the expedition started again, weakened by desertion and disease. The ships entered the Gulf of Mexico, passed—without knowing it—the mouths of the Mississippi, and on New Year's Day, 1685, anchored off the coast of Texas. Somewhere on this coast, in the vicinity either of Matagorda Bay or of Galveston Bay, La Salle effected a landing, where a series of lagoons that lined the shore concealed, as he thought, the main outlet of the Mississippi. Disaster still attended the enterprise: one of the ships was wrecked on the reefs, the natives of the land proved unfriendly; and when Beaujeu, the admiral, having given what help he could, sailed away in the middle of March, he left behind on desolate shores a despondent band of French men and women groping for a river which could not be found, in present trouble and without clear guidance for the future.

Skirting the sea-line, the would-be colonists had reached a large bay, into the head of which a river ran; and on the banks of this stream La Salle formed a settlement, to which, as to his colony on the Illinois, he gave the name of Fort St. Louis. Gathered within palisades, the settlers worked and waited, dwindling in numbers, while their leader explored, but explored in vain. Setting out at the end of October, 1685, La Salle returned in the following March, having accomplished nothing and having lost his last vessel, a small frigate, the Belle. Again in a month's time, towards the end of April, 1686, he set out to make his way to Canada; once more, in October, he returned to the fort, baffled and disappointed. His followers were sadly reduced in numbers: of some 180, no more than forty-five were left; and of them he could trust but few. Return to France was cut off, and from France time had shown that no help was forthcoming. There was no alternative but to make one more attempt to reach Canada, and thence to bring rescue to the fort in Texas.

It was a forlorn hope at best, but the attempt was made. Half of the company remained at the fort. The others, including La Salle's brother, the Abbé Cavelier, and two young nephews, followed La Salle himself on his northward journey. It was on January 7, 1687, that the party set out to make their way painfully over prairies, across rivers, through forest, thicket, and scrub. On March 19, near the Trinity river, La Salle fell dead, ambushed and shot by his own men. No career ever had a more squalid or pitiable ending. It ended in commonplace mutiny and murder. Three or four scoundrels, discontented and badly handled, nursed their personal grudges against a severe and domineering leader, until, in an outbreak of irritation, they killed three of his immediate following and the leader himself.

The brother escaped; so did one of the nephews, and Joutel, a gardener's son from Rouen—the most honest and capable of the band—who afterwards told the unvarnished tale. They companied for a while with the murderers, roaming among the Indians of the west, until one and another of the guilty men fell by each other's hands or strayed into savagery. In the end seven Frenchmen, with the help of Indian guides, reached the Arkansas river, found an outpost established there by Tonty, made their way thence to the Illinois, and so to Canada and France. On the Illinois and in Canada they concealed, from policy or fear, the fact of La Salle's death. In the dead man's name his brother, the coward priest, obtained from Tonty advances for his home journey; and it was not till after he was safe in Europe, in the autumn of 1688, that the tragedy came to light.

Few seemed to care. A man had gone, who by the age of forty-three had achieved great deeds, had dared and suffered much; but he was a man who had few friends and many enemies, and he served a Government in whose eyes failure was a crime, and to which gratitude was unknown. An order was given that, if the murderers reappeared in Canada, they should be arrested, and with that order the name of La Salle passed out of official ken.

The Government made no attempt to relieve the hapless exiles in Texas. They were left to perish, just as, many years before, the Huguenot settlers in Florida had been abandoned and betrayed. Tonty alone was mindful of his friend. Already, in 1686, before La Salle had started on his last march, he had descended the Mississippi to its mouth, and had searched the coast in vain, hoping to bring succour and relief; and when, in the autumn of 1688, he knew the full truth, again he started, to save if possible the remnant of the expedition. He penetrated to the Red river and beyond, but could not reach the fort in Texas; and it was from Spanish sources that the fate of the last settlers was afterwards known. An expedition from Mexico, sent to root out the intruders, found the fort a desolate ruin. The Indians had been beforehand in the work of destruction, and had butchered or carried off the inmates, two or three of whom exchanged captivity among savages for Spanish prisons.

Such was the end of La Salle's last venture—misery, ruin, death, and, for the time, comparative oblivion. Yet his name lives in history and deserves to live, and his work was not all undone. We look back not merely on his hardihood and his sufferings. We see in him not only an explorer of the boldest type; but he stands out pre-eminently as the man, who, above all others, grasped the conception of a North American dominion, which should be from sea to sea—based on the great geographical factor in North America, its nearly continuous water communication—and in which the natives of North America should be banded together in war and peace, under the leadership of France. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, by river and lake, his vision was that Frenchmen and their native subjects should come and go, carrying from fort to fort, from settlement to settlement, the produce of forest and prairie, the wealth of the West.

It was a great conception, too great to be realized; but it harmonized with the genius of the French people. Their gift was to be ever moving, their strength was not to sit still. What success they won was on the lines that La Salle marked out. With all his failures, he knew the land and he knew his race.

The eighteenth century had not ended before the colonization of Louisiana became more than a dream. Tonty continued to urge it. The English threatened to take it in hand; Spain was reasserting her claim to the ownership of the Gulf of Mexico; and, lest the French should be excluded altogether, Le Moyne d'Iberville, best of Canadian leaders, obtained permission to sail for the Mississippi. More skilful than La Salle, or better informed, he reached its mouth in March, 1699; but the first settlements were made to the east of the river, at Biloxi in the present State of Mississippi, and on Mobile Bay. It was not till the year 1718 that the city of New Orleans was first founded by Bienville, Iberville's brother, who at intervals governed Louisiana for many years. Bandied about from Crown to company, and from company to Crown, the prey of speculators, the scene, like Canada itself, of artificial settlement and regulated colonization, Louisiana made but slow progress. Yet in time it became a factor to be reckoned with in North American history, and to connect it with Canada was in the eighteenth century the aim of the rulers of New France.

In 1702, Tonty left Fort St. Louis on the Illinois to join Iberville in the south, and, except for a few years at a little later date, that fort was abandoned. The Indians, too, who had gathered round it, dispersed; some of them moved down to the Mississippi; and connexion between Canada and Louisiana was afterwards sought not so much by the Illinois river, as by the line of the Ohio, the earliest scene of La Salle's discoveries.

CHAPTER VI

In the last chapter the main stream of Canadian history has been followed down to the Treaty of Utrecht. New France was essentially the colony on the St. Lawrence; but with the story of Canada proper the story of Acadia is interwoven, and Acadia under another name now forms part of the Canadian Dominion. To complete the tale to 1713, it is necessary to go back to the early days of settlement in the present Maritime Provinces of the Dominion. Some notice must also be made of English commercial enterprise on the northern side of Canada, the shores of Hudson Bay.

Acadia, Acadie—a name which the French took from the Indians¹—included an ill-defined region. Whoever held it, at any given time, naturally claimed as large an area as possible, and, after it was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, the question of the boundary was a fruitful source of trouble. Under the French, Acadia was roughly coterminous with the present provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine; but Acadia proper was the peninsula of Nova Scotia. There, and on the immediately adjoining coast of the mainland, the fighting and the raids took place. It was not until after the Peace of Utrecht was signed that Cape Breton Island, whose name recalls the nationality of early voyagers to North America, became, under the new title of Île Royale, a renowned stronghold of France; while Prince Edward Island, the Île de St. Jean, played little part in the early history of North America.

¹ See above, note.

Linked to the continent by the isthmus of Chignecto, sixteen miles in breadth, the peninsula of Nova Scotia runs for some 300 miles north-east and south-west, parallel to the North American coast. From that coast it is separated on the southern side of the isthmus by the Bay of Fundy—the Baie Françoise as it was called in old days—a bay into which the sea runs strong and which divides at the head, forming on the left, the mainland side, Chignecto Bay, on the right the Basin of Mines. The shores of this latter land-locked basin were in the eighteenth century a well-known scene of Acadian settlement, and here stood the village of Grand Pré. On the same side of Nova Scotia, lower down than the Basin of Mines, is Annapolis harbour, better known in old days as Port Royal. The opposite sides of New Brunswick and Maine are deeply indented by the estuaries of various rivers—the St. John, the St. Croix, now the border stream between Canada and the United States, and, further south, the Penobscot and the Kennebec, names that constantly occur in the story of Acadian and New England warfare. Cape Sable—the sand cape—is the southernmost point of Nova Scotia: midway on the Atlantic side of the peninsula is Halifax harbour, formerly known as Chebucto; and on the north the narrow strait known as the Gut of Canso divides Nova Scotia proper from Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton Island on the south, Newfoundland on the north, mark the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They are the buttresses of the main gateway of Canada.

Sea-girt and sea-beaten was and is Acadia, with broken shores and many bays, where fishermen and freebooters came and went: a land to nurse a hardy race in small and scattered settlements, nestling in nooks and corners by inlets of the sea. Its importance did not lie in natural riches, but in its geographical position. It was the borderland of French and English colonization. Whoever held in strength Acadia and Cape Breton on the one side, and Newfoundland on the other, could command the river of Canada.

Taking the two spheres of colonization, the seaboard settlements of the English on the one hand, the inland river settlements of the French on the other, it is clear that Acadia naturally belonged to the former; it was within the sphere of which Boston was the centre, not within that which was ruled by Quebec. The coasts of Maine, of New Brunswick, and of Nova Scotia prolong the shores of New England: any dividing line has been made by man not by nature. The Boston fishermen went faring north, not into strange waters or by foreign coasts, for land and sea were as their own. Between Quebec and Port Royal, on the other hand, there was no natural connexion, yet the possession of Acadia was of more vital importance to France than to England. With Acadia in French hands the New England colonies could still grow in strength; but English occupation of Acadia, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland meant the beginning of the end for New France, the closing of the St. Lawrence, if England kept command of the sea. Thus it was that in the negotiations which ended in the Treaty of Utrecht the French King fought hard to keep Acadia, and, thwarted in this endeavour, made the most of Cape Breton Island, rearing in it the strong fortress of Louisbourg.

Acadia then was a borderland, and its history resembled that of other borderlands. Its first settlers were French, and the majority of the scanty population remained French in language, in tradition, in religion, in sympathy; but for years rival adventurers squabbled and fought, with doubtful allegiance to England or France.

We have seen how in 1613 the freebooter Argall,² sailing up from Virginia, destroyed Poutrincourt's settlement at Port Royal. In spite of this disaster, Biencourt, Poutrincourt's son, with a handful of Frenchmen, few but sturdy, still held fast to the shores of Acadia. Among them was a French Huguenot, Claude Étienne de la Tour, who with his son, Charles de la Tour, had come out from France in or about the year 1609. When the Port Royal settlement was broken up, he crossed over to the mouth of the Penobscot, and held a station there until the year 1626, when he was driven out by an expedition from New England. Biencourt appears to have died either in Acadia or in France about the year 1623, and the younger La Tour became the foremost man among the French settlers, holding a small fort near Cape Sable, which seems to have been known by various names—Fort Louis, Fort l'Omeroy or Lomeron, and Fort or Port Latour. In 1627, according to the ordinary account, the father went to France to interest the French Government in the fortunes of Acadia, and to secure the position and title of Governor for his son. It was the year in which Richelieu founded the company of the One Hundred Associates, and in 1628 a French squadron was sent out to America. The ships were intercepted by David Kirke, and Claude de la Tour, who was on board, was carried a prisoner to England.

² See above.

Acadia had by this time acquired a second name, its present name of Nova Scotia. A Scotch scholar of some repute, William Alexander, born near Stirling, became tutor to Prince Henry, son of James VI of Scotland and I of England, and rose to high favour at Court. He was a prolific writer, composed tragedies and sonnets, and after the King's death completed a metrical version of the Psalms which James had begun. In 1621 Sir William Alexander, as he then was, obtained from the King a grant of the Acadian peninsula, Cape Breton Island, and all the mainland from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence, the whole territory within these wide limits being given the name of New Scotland or Nova Scotia.

The terms of the charter were of the most liberal kind, and Alexander was constituted Lieutenant-General for the King, with practically sovereign powers. The grant was made as an appanage of the kingdom of Scotland; and, in seeking for and obtaining it, Alexander seems to have been stimulated by the fact that an English charter had lately been given to Fernando Gorges in the region of New England. In other words, the patent represented the effort of an energetic Scotchman to bring his country and his people into line with the English in the field of western adventure.

Cape Breton Island he made over to another Scotchman, Sir Robert Gordon, of Lochinvar, and went to work to find settlers for the rest of his domain. His scheme was not taken up warmly; two ships were sent out in 1622 and 1623, but no settlement was formed, and he found himself involved in a debt of £6,000. He tried to rouse enthusiasm for the colonization of New Scotland by publishing a pamphlet entitled An Encouragement to Colonies; and, finding that it met with little response, he hit upon the device of inducing the King, who a few years before had created baronets of Ulster, to establish also an order of baronets of New Scotland. The recipients of the honour were to have grants of land on the other side of the Atlantic, and the fees which they paid would, it was hoped, recoup past losses and provide funds for future colonization.

King James having died, his successor Charles I, in 1625, renewed Alexander's patent, and formally ratified the creation of the Nova Scotian order, the honours being to a certain extent taken up under pressure from the King. A new expedition was now set on foot, but in the meantime news came that Richelieu had formed a rival company, and that the French were preparing to make good their old title to Acadia. The prospect of foreign competition gave fresh vigour to the enterprise; Kirke offered his services to Alexander, and in 1628 captured Richelieu's squadron; while earlier in the same year four ships in charge of Alexander's son landed a party of settlers safely at Port Royal, who established themselves on the site of the old French settlement. In the following year Kirke took Quebec.

The elder La Tour, we have seen, was brought a prisoner to England. There he seems to have transferred his allegiance to Great Britain, in the words of an old record to have 'turned tenant'³ to the English King. According to one account, he married a maid of honour to the Queen. At any rate, he threw in his lot with Alexander, was created a baronet of Nova Scotia, and in 1630 received for himself and his son—also created a baronet—two baronies in the Nova Scotian peninsula. In the same year he seems to have returned to Acadia with some more Scotch colonists, and vainly attempted to induce his son, who was still holding the fort near Cape Sable, to come over to the British cause, and take up the grant and honours which had been conferred upon him. The son, we read, would yield neither to persuasion nor to force, and the elder La Tour apparently went on to the Scotch settlement at Port Royal.

³ Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, pp. 119-20.

Already, in 1629, the Convention of Susa had been signed between the Kings of England and France. Charles La Tour received a message of encouragement from France; and, coming to terms with his father, crossed over to the mainland, where he built Fort Latour at the mouth of the river St. John.⁴ In 1631 he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor by the French King; and in 1632 the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye restored to France 'all the places occupied in New France, Acadia, and Canada' by British subjects.

⁴ The exact date at which the La Tours founded the fort is very uncertain.

This treaty put an end to Scotch colonization of Acadia, and nothing is now left to tell of Alexander's enterprise beyond the name of Nova Scotia. The Scotch emigrants returned home, or were lost among the outnumbering French, and the old station of Port Royal was either at the time or a few years afterwards entirely deserted. The site on the northern or western side of Annapolis Basin was subsequently known as Scots Fort; but the later Port Royal, which Phipps and Nicholson took, was situated five miles away, on the other side of the estuary, and is now the town of Annapolis.

Alexander never made good his losses. He died in 1640, in high honour and position, having been Secretary of State for Scotland and ennobled as Earl of Stirling and Viscount Canada; but he must have learnt, as all who had dealings with the Stuarts learnt, not to put his trust in princes; for his well-meant scheme to make a New Scotland, which should rival New France, ended, through the tortuous policy of the King whom he served, in utter failure.

Isaac de Razilly was sent by Richelieu to receive Acadia back from Alexander's representatives, upon the conclusion of the Treaty of 1632, and to be Governor of the country. With him went out, among other settlers, Nicholas Denys, a native of Tours, and Charles de Menou de Charnizay, known also as the Chevalier d'Aunay. Acadia now became the scene of intestine feuds between Frenchmen with rival claims and interests.

It is exceedingly difficult to trace the relations between the various adventurers, where they went and what they did. Razilly, who was Governor-in-chief, settled at La Héve on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. D'Aunay seems to have driven out the New Englanders from the Penobscot, and taken possession of Pentegoet at its mouth. Charles La Tour held his fort on the estuary of the St. John, his father having died or disappeared from the story, and raided, in or about 1633, an outpost established by the Plymouth settlers at Machias, north of the Penobscot. Denys formed trading stations at Chedabucto, now Guysboro, at the eastern end of the Nova Scotian peninsula, and in Cape Breton Island, leaving to posterity an account of Acadia and Cape Breton, in his book entitled Description des Costes de l'Amérique Septentrionale.⁵

⁵ Charlevoix's account is that Acadia was divided into three provinces, both for government and for ownership. Razilly had the superior command over all, and was given Port Royal and the mainland south to New England; Charles La Tour had the Acadian peninsula, excluding Port Royal; and Denys had the northern district from Canso to Gaspé, including Cape Breton Island. This leaves out D'Aunay, and the arrangement, if it existed, was modified, inasmuch as Razilly settled at La Héve, and Charles La Tour was on the river of St. John.

Razilly died in 1635 or 1636; his brother, Claude de Razilly, assigned his rights in Acadia to D'Aunay, and between the latter and Charles La Tour a deadly quarrel ensued. D'Aunay, it would seem, re-established Port Royal on the present site of Annapolis, making it the principal settlement of Acadia instead of La Héve. His rival, La Tour, had strong claims both on France and on Acadia. He had been far longer in the country than D'Aunay, he had in trying circumstances retained his allegiance to the Crown of France, he had been given a commission by the King, and moreover something was owing to him in virtue of the grants which Alexander had made in 1630 to his father and himself, which grants appear to have been subsequently construed into a transfer of the whole of Alexander's patent. However, D'Aunay had the ear of the French Court.

It is stated⁶ that, in 1638, the King prescribed certain boundaries between the two rivals, but the delimitation had no effect; for in 1640 La Tour seems to have attacked Port Royal, with the result that he was taken prisoner with his wife, both being released at the intercession of French priests. In the next year, 1641, D'Aunay obtained an order from home which revoked La Tour's commission and empowered his enemy to seize him, if he refused to submit, and send him prisoner to France. La Tour now turned for help to New England, and, in 1643, after long and scriptural debates by the Puritans as to the lawfulness of aiding 'idolaters,'⁷ succeeded in hiring four ships at Boston to join him in raiding D'Aunay's property. In the following year, however, an emissary from D'Aunay came to Boston to protest against English interference; and in October, 1644, a convention was concluded between the New Englanders and D'Aunay, providing for mutual peace and free trade.

⁶ By Haliburton in his History of Nova Scotia, vol. i, p. 53.

⁷ The younger La Tour was not, like his father, a Huguenot.

D'Aunay had now the upper hand, and Madame La Tour becomes the heroine of the story. She had followed her husband's fortunes with undaunted courage, and had been to France to plead his cause. Going on to London, she took passage on board ship, the master contracting to take her to Fort Latour. Instead of carrying out his contract, he wasted time in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and finally landed her at Boston, where she brought an action against him and was awarded damages of £2,000. Reaching Fort Latour, she was attacked there by D'Aunay in 1645,⁸ while her husband was absent, and the garrison reduced to a very few men. She held the fort, notwithstanding, with so much determination, and in spite of treachery within the walls, that D'Aunay agreed to a capitulation, by which all the lives of the defenders were to be spared. The terms were broken as soon as he obtained possession of the fort, and the whole of the garrison was put to death, with the exception of Madame La Tour and one man who was spared to act as hangman to the rest. Madame La Tour herself was compelled to witness the execution with a rope round her neck, and three weeks afterwards she died.

⁸ According to Haliburton, D'Aunay besieged Madame La Tour in the fort twice, being beaten off the first time. Kingsford gives the date of the siege as 1647.

Ruined and an outlaw, La Tour found his way to Newfoundland, where he tried in vain to enlist the aid of the English governor, Sir David Kirke. He is said also to have visited Quebec and Hudson Bay, and in his distress to have made an ill return for the kindness which had been shown to him at Boston, by raiding a ship from that port and ejecting her crew on to the Nova Scotian coast in the middle of winter. Ultimately, in 1650, D'Aunay died, and La Tour, who must have had a keen eye to business, some little time after married the widow. New complications now arose. A creditor of D'Aunay, Le Borgne by name, came out from France to enforce his claims against D'Aunay's property, and in virtue of those claims to take possession of Acadia. He first attacked Denys⁹ at Chedabucto, and took him prisoner. He was next preparing to attack La Tour, when events took a wholly different turn, and the English again became masters of Acadia.

⁹ Denys went to France and secured, in 1654, the restitution of his property, together with a commission as Governor from Cape Canso to Cape Rosiers or Race, i.e. of Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. He was then raided by another Frenchman, Giraudière. He seems to have eventually given up his stations in Cape Breton, and in 1679 was at Quebec, old and blind.

Cromwell, in 1654, sent out an expedition to take Manhattan Island from the Dutch, Major-General Sedgwick being in command. Peace being made with the Netherlands, the force intended to drive the Dutch out of Manhattan was turned against the French in Acadia; and in quick succession, Sedgwick reduced the fort at Penobscot, La Tour's station on the St. John, and Port Royal, where Le Borgne was at the time.¹⁰ Mazarin attempted to recover these posts under the twenty-fifth article of the Treaty of Westminster of November 3, 1655; but, less complaisant than the Kings who preceded or who followed him, Cromwell refused to entertain the proposals for a transfer.

¹⁰ Sedgwick was shortly afterwards sent to Jamaica, where he died in June, 1656. In Appendix xxviii to Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell, reference is made to the taking of the French forts in Acadia, with the following characteristic but not very accurate note: 'Oliver kept his forts and his Acadie through all French treaties for behoof of his New Englanders. Not till after the Restoration did the country become French again, and continue such for a century or so.'

La Tour now turned to account the fact that he had been created a Nova Scotian baronet and received a grant from Alexander; he became a British subject; and on August 10, 1656, letters patent were issued by which he became, under the name of Sir Charles La Tour, joint owner of Acadia with Sir Thomas Temple and William Crowne. Very shortly afterwards he sold his interest to Temple, but appears to have remained in Acadia, where he died in 1666.

Temple, who received a commission from Cromwell as Governor of Acadia, and went out there in 1657, laid out money in the country and carried on trade with energy and success. He maintained the existing stations, planted a new settlement at Jemseg on the St. John river, higher up than Fort Latour, and drove out a son of Le Borgne, who attempted to reoccupy La Héve; but, like Alexander before him, he suffered at the hands of the Stuarts, for Charles II, after renewing his commission as Governor and creating him a baronet of Nova Scotia, subsequently, in spite of remonstrances from Massachusetts, restored Acadia to France by the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, in return for French concessions in the West Indies. Temple attempted to dispute the extent covered by the treaty, but with no effect; and, in 1670, the whole area became again a French possession. Temple retired to Boston with a promise of £16,200 which he never received, and finally died in London in 1674.

The above is a bare recital of early days in Acadia, when it was, in effect, no man's land. The story might be made picturesque, with La Tour and his first wife for hero and heroine, with some embellishment of Alexander's scheme, and a little dressing of D'Aunay, Denys, and the other adventurers who come on the scene; but in truth it is a very slender record of two or three Frenchmen and Englishmen, who did a little trade or a little fishing on desolate shores, and who plundered each other in rather squalid fashion—left to themselves by their rulers, except when their acts or their claims had a bearing on international questions.

When Temple retired in 1670 in favour of a new French commander, De Grandfontaine, the total number of settlers in Acadia did not exceed 400. Some new French colonists now came in: the beginning of settlement was made at Chignecto and the Basin of Mines, and communication was for a time opened by land between Acadia and Quebec. The great majority of the French inhabitants were at Port Royal; but Pentegoet on the Penobscot was the seat of government, until, in 1674, it was taken and plundered by a Dutch privateering vessel, the same fate befalling the fort of Jemseg on the St. John river. Chambly, who had succeeded Grandfontaine as Commander in Acadia, was carried off a prisoner to Boston, and Pentegoet was for the time abandoned by the French. Two years later, in 1676, it was occupied by the Dutch; but the latter were in their turn driven out by the New Englanders,¹¹ and the place passed into the hands of a Frenchman notable in Acadian border warfare, the Baron de St. Castin.

¹¹ In the Government records at The Hague, under date Oct. 27, 1678, there is a claim of the Netherlands West India Company against Great Britain to the forts of Penobscot and St. John in Acadie and Nova Scotia, and a request that they may be allowed to remain in quiet and peaceable possession thereof.

He was a Béarnese, and had come out to Canada as an officer in the Carignan Regiment. Finding, like other Frenchmen, a charm in forest life, he drifted off to Acadia and lived as an Indian among Indians, a devout Roman Catholic, but in other respects a native chief, with his squaws and following of savage warriors. He established himself at Pentegoet, on or near the site of the old fort, where Castine now stands; he raided and was raided; in time of peace making money by trade, in time of war joining in the border forays. For Pentegoet was the southernmost station of the French, standing on soil claimed by the English, and granted by Charles II to the Duke of York. Similarly, Pemaquid, near the Kennebec, established in 1677, was the northernmost post of the English; and, if there was a line between the two nations, it was between Pentegoet and Pemaquid. But French influence extended to the Kennebec river, and Indian converts of French priests were to be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Pemaquid.

In 1676, the war between the New Englanders and the neighbouring Indians, known as Philip's war, came to an end, leaving bitterness between the conquered natives and victorious colonists. Hatred of the English meant love of the French; and the Abenaki Indians of Acadia and Maine, under the tutelage of fanatical and unscrupulous French priests, became trained to enmity with the heretics; many of them migrated to mission stations in Canada; while those who remained behind were ever ready to obey the call to murder and pillage. In Acadia, even more than in Canada proper, the Indian as a convert became the tool of the Frenchman, and the Frenchman lent himself to the barbarism of the Indian. The full effects of the unnatural blend were seen and felt a little later on; but for twenty years after the Treaty of Breda and the restoration of Acadia to France, there was more often peace than war between the English and the French; and the Boston fishermen were, about 1678, licensed for the time being by the French Commandant, La Vallière, to ply their trade on the Acadian coasts.

With some trading of this kind and with a good deal of privateering, the years passed by. Perrot, who had been Governor of Montreal and had distinguished himself even among French officials of the time for corrupt practices, succeeded La Vallière in 1684, with a commission as Governor of Acadia. Still intent on enriching himself by illicit trade, he was recalled in 1687, and his place was taken by Meneval. The latter, like Perrot, was subordinate to the Governor-General of Canada, and the number of colonists whom he ruled was, according to a census held in 1686, 858, 600 of whom lived at or near Port Royal, and the remainder chiefly at Beaubassin at the head of Chignecto Bay, and on the Basin of Mines.

In 1688, Andros, then Governor of the New England colonies, plundered St. Castin's station at Pentegoet; the French and Indians retaliated, taking the fort of Pemaquid in the following year; and there followed a long series of butcheries and reprisals, of which an account has already been given in a preceding chapter, the taking of Fort Royal by Phipps in 1690, and, in 1710, its final surrender to Nicholson. In the end, the Treaty of Utrecht provided in its twelfth article that 'all Nova Scotia or Accadie with its ancient boundaries' should be 'yielded and made over to the Queen of Great Britain and to her Crown for ever.'

We have seen¹² that, in 1609, Henry Hudson led Dutchmen into the present State of New York, and left his name to the river on which the city of New York stands. In the following year, he took service under an English syndicate, to make a further attempt to find a North-West Passage to the Indies. In April, 1610, he started in a small ship, the Discovery, found his way through Hudson Straits into Hudson Bay, wintered at the extreme south-eastern end of James' Bay, and, cast adrift by his mutinous followers in the following summer, never saw home again, 'dearly purchasing the honour of having this large Strait and Bay called after his name.'¹³ The Arctic seas, where he met his death, and where his name has lived through the centuries, were visited again and again by English explorers, still seeking for the North-West Passage. One voyager after another went out, hoping to return by China and the East. In April, 1612, Captain Button set forth with two ships, one of which was Hudson's old vessel, the Discovery, reached the western coast of Hudson Bay—which was long called after him, Button's Bay—wintered at Port Nelson, at the mouth of the Nelson river, and returned in the autumn of 1613.

¹² See above.

¹³ Oldmixon's British Empire in America (1741 ed.), vol. i, p. 543.

His instructions had been drawn up by the young Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, who died not long afterwards; and three months after Button started, the merchants at whose expense both his expedition and Hudson's had been fitted out, were incorporated under royal charter as the 'Company of the Merchants of London Discoverers of the North-West Passage,' having the Prince of Wales as governor or 'Supreme Protector,' and including among many well-known names that of Richard Hakluyt.

In 1614, the Discovery was sent out again under the command of Captain Gibbons, but returned in the same year, having penetrated no further than Hudson Strait. In 1615, Bylot and Baffin set sail for the North, again taking with them the Discovery; they too returned in the same year, concluding that the North-West Passage was not to be found by the way of Hudson Straits. Once more, in the next year, 1616, the same men went out, and once more the stout old ship, the Discovery, carried them, the voyage resulting in the exploration of Baffin Bay. For two years after their return there was a respite from Arctic voyages, but in 1619 Captain Hawkridge led a fresh expedition, which proved a failure.

Much money had now been spent in the attempt to find a North-West Passage, and little had been achieved; but after an interval of twelve years, in 1631, two more Arctic voyages took place. One expedition was commanded by a Yorkshireman, Luke Foxe, the other by Captain Thomas James, who was connected with Bristol. The former was backed by London merchants, the latter was a Bristol venture; but both received sanction and encouragement from the King. James' voyage was unfortunate and barren of result; but Foxe, though he did not find the Passage, which was the one aim and object of all these early attempts, completed the exploration of Hudson Bay, and penetrated further north than previous sailors by the way of what is still known as Fox Channel.

With these two voyages the first chapter in Arctic discovery comes to an end. As in the record of English colonization we have a distinct break between the time of discovery and adventure on the one hand, and the time of trade and settlement on the other, so even in the far North there was a time of exploration, followed after an interval by a time of trade. All the early voyages, which have been recounted above, were voyages of discovery, and, though they were fitted out for the most part by syndicates of merchants, their object was not to bring back furs, or to establish trading stations, but to search for a new route to the East.¹⁴

¹⁴ A most excellent account of the early voyages in search of a North-West Passage is given in Mr. Miller Christy's Introduction to the Voyages of Foxe and James to the North-West (Hakluyt Society, 1894).

Forty years passed away and, in the year 1668, an English ship once more found its way into Hudson Bay. The ship was named the Nonsuch, her commander was Captain Zachariah Gillam, and Prince Rupert seems to have had a hand in sending her out. The expedition was designed to establish trade with the Indians, and Gillam wintered in James Bay, near where Hudson had wintered in 1610, building a fort called Charles Fort at the mouth of a river which was named Rupert river. The fort was subsequently known as Fort Rupert or Rupert House. It is stated that this new enterprise was undertaken in consequence of information received from two French settlers in Canada named Radisson and Des Groseilliers, and that the latter was on board Gillam's ship, while Radisson had embarked on another vessel which started from England with Gillam, but put back on account of stress of weather.

How far these two Frenchmen contributed to the beginning of trade in Hudson Bay, and to the founding of the Hudson Bay Company, has been a matter of much controversy. The question was originally of some importance, for French claims to priority of occupation in the Arctic regions rested in large measure on the real or the alleged doings of the two adventurers. Like the rest of the world, they must have heard of the existence of Hudson Bay, for the voyages to discover the North-West Passage, though not made by Frenchmen, were not made in secret; and they had gathered information from the Indians of Canada as to the possibilities of fur trading in these northern regions. They had more than once attempted, between 1658 and 1663, to make their way by land to the bay, but never seem to have reached its shores; and the first recorded overland visit from Canada, is that of a French priest, Albanel, who, in 1671-2, journeyed from Quebec to Lake St. John, and thence, by the line of the Rupert river, came to the sea, to find an English factory already established at the mouth of the river.

Gillam returned to England in 1669, and on May 2, 1670, the Hudson Bay Company came into existence. On that day Charles II issued a royal charter, creating a corporate body under the title of 'The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.' Prince Rupert was the first Governor; Albemarle, Ashley, and Arlington were among the original grantees. The preamble of the charter recited that the persons named had 'at their own great cost and charges, undertaken an expedition for Hudson's Bay, in the North-West part of America, for the discovery of a new passage into the South Sea, and for the finding some trade for furs, minerals, and other considerable commodities'; and in their corporate capacity the Company were constituted absolute lords and proprietors, with a complete monopoly of trade of all the lands and seas 'that lie within the entrance of the straits, commonly called Hudson's Straits,' so far as they were not already actually granted to or possessed by British subjects, or the subjects of any other Christian Prince or State. The charter enacted that 'the said land' should be 'from henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of our plantations or colonies in America, called Rupert's Land.'

Armed with practically unlimited powers over an unlimited area, the company lost little time in sending out ships and establishing factories. In addition to Fort Rupert at the south-eastern end of James Bay, Fort Hayes, or Moose Fort, was constructed at the south-western end of the bay, at the mouth of the Moose river; and some distance to the north of the latter fort, Fort Albany was placed at the outlet of the Albany river. Voyages were also made to the mouth of the Nelson river, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, but no attempt was made to plant a factory there till the year 1682.

It was in that year and at Fort Nelson, as it was called, that French and English first came into collision in the far North. Radisson and Des Groseilliers, who had taken service with the English in consequence of being fined by the Governor of Canada for making their early journeys without his licence, subsequently returned to Canada, and piloted their countrymen by sea into Hudson Bay. A company was formed in Canada in 1682, the Compagnie du Nord, and sent out an expedition from Quebec with these two men on board. They reached the Nelson river; a few days before they arrived a Boston vessel appeared on the scene, and a few days subsequently a vessel came from England, sent by the Hudson Bay Company to build a fort. After a short interval the French overpowered the English; but two years later, in 1684, Radisson and Des Groseilliers having in the meantime again come back to the Hudson Bay Company, that company recovered its fort, and the French lost their footing on Hudson Bay.

In the following year two Frenchmen passed overland from the bay to Canada by the Abbitibbi river, Lake Temiscaming, and the Ottawa; and it was determined to send a Canadian expedition by that route to attack the factories of the Hudson Bay Company. The rulers of Canada viewed with distrust English settlements to the north of New France, as they feared and distrusted the English colonies on the southern side, and they determined if possible to strangle them in infancy. Denonville was now Governor of Canada; and early in the year 1686 he dispatched a party of soldiers and Canadians to attack the forts on Hudson Bay. It was the kind of expedition in which French Canadians excelled, indifferent to privation and hardship, trained to toil through ice and snow, through unknown forests, making the rivers the highways for sleigh or canoe. Their leader was De Troyes, and with him went three sons of the celebrated Le Moyne family, including the most noted of them, Iberville. The Frenchmen followed the line of the Ottawa and the Abbitibbi, and in June, 1686, surprised and took Fort Hayes on the outlet of the Moose river. Crossing the eastern end of James Bay on the floating ice, they next reached Fort Rupert, seized a ship which was moored in front of the fort, and overpowered the fort itself. The sea was by this time open to navigation, and in canoes and the captured vessel the victorious Frenchmen turned west to attack Fort Albany. There was here some semblance of siege, but the little English garrison was forced to capitulate, and leaving Iberville in charge of the fort, which was renamed Fort St. Anne, De Troyes returned in November to Canada.

This successful raid was organized and carried out in a time of peace between the English and French Crowns; and, when the Englishmen who had been taken prisoners at the forts found their way home, the Hudson Bay Company laid the case before the Government, demanding satisfaction for the wrong done and restitution of their property. There was little likelihood of redress while James II was King of England. On November 16, 1686, he concluded a treaty of neutrality with the French King, the Treaty of Whitehall; and a mixed commission of French and English was appointed to inquire into the claims of the company. No settlement was arrived at: in 1688 came the Revolution in England; in 1692 the battle of La Hogue crippled the French at sea; and at length, in 1693, an English expedition was sent to Hudson Bay which recovered all the forts in James Bay.

The northernmost post of the Hudson Bay Company, the post on the Nelson river, or rather on the Hayes river, which flows into the same estuary, had not been taken by the French in their buccaneering expedition of 1686. It was known indifferently as Port Nelson or Fort York. It was at some distance from the forts in James Bay, and promised to be an outlet for trade from the regions west of the great lakes. It had been threatened by the French in 1690, and in October, 1694, the bold and restless Iberville, who had returned to Canada in 1687, appeared before it with two ships. After a short siege it capitulated, and was renamed Fort Bourbon; and Iberville followed up his success by recapturing the forts in James Bay. Thus, by the middle of 1695, the French held every post in Hudson Bay. In the next year came English ships, and all the positions were regained for England.

Once more, in 1697, Iberville appeared on the scene. He had in the meantime taken Fort Pemaquid on the Acadian frontier, and overrun Newfoundland; and starting from Placentia, with four ships of war sent out from France, he made sail for Hudson Bay. The destination was Port Nelson; but the vessels became separated, and with a single ship, Iberville, when nearing the fort, came into collision with three armed English merchantmen. The bold Frenchman closed with them, one to three, sank one of the vessels, took a second, while the third made its escape. A heavy gale came on, his own ship was driven ashore and broken up; but landing with his men, he was rejoined shortly afterwards by the rest of the French squadron, and laying siege to the fort compelled it to capitulate. This feat of arms took place early in September, 1697; on the twentieth of the same month the Peace of Ryswick was signed, and under its terms the French were placed in possession of all the Hudson Bay forts, with the exception of Fort Albany.¹⁵ They held them down to the year 1713, when the Peace of Utrecht in no uncertain words gave back to Great Britain 'to be possessed in full right for ever, the Bay and Straits of Hudson, together with all lands, seas, seacoasts, rivers and places situate in the same Bay and Straits and which belong thereunto, no tracts of land or of sea being excepted, which are at present possessed by the subjects of France.' Boundaries, which by the treaty were to be defined, were never fixed; but no French ship appeared again with hostile intent in Hudson Bay until the year 1782.

¹⁵ The manner in which the Treaty of Ryswick worked out in favour of the French in Hudson Bay is explained, as far as it can be explained, in Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. iii, pp. 39-41.

NOTE.—For the first part of the above chapter, see

    KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. ii.
    Sir J. BOURINOT'S Cape Breton (referred to above, note).
    The same author's Canada, in the 'Story of the Nations' Series, chap. vii, and
    Dr. PATTERSON'S Paper on Sir William Alexander and the Scottish Attempt to Colonize Acadia, published in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. x, 1892.

For the second part, see KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. iii.

Two books have recently been published on the Hudson Bay Company, viz: The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company, by GEORGE BRYCE, M.A., LL.D., and The Great Company (1667-1871), by BECKLES WILSON.

CHAPTER VII

The Treaty of Utrecht provided that 'the island called Cape Breton, as also all others both in the mouth of the river of St. Lawrence and in the gulf of the same name, shall hereafter belong of right to the French, and the Most Christian King shall have all manner of liberty to fortify any place or places there.' It was an important provision. Driven from Acadia and Newfoundland, with the reservation of certain fishing rights along a specified part of the Newfoundland coast, the French would have lost the seaboard altogether but for the possession of these islands at the entrance of the river of Canada.

A French eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745 described, in a contemporary pamphlet, the value of Cape Breton Island to France. It was used, he says, to provide a place for the French settlers who were leaving Newfoundland after the cession of that island to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, but 'this was not all. It was necessary that we should retain a position that would make us at all times masters of the entrance to the River which leads to New France.'¹ Similar testimony to its value is given by an English writer. 'Cape Breton Island is a subject no good Englishman can write or read with pleasure. The giving of it to the French by the Treaty of Utrecht may prove as great a loss to the Kingdom, as the Sinking Fund amounts to or even the charge of the last war.'² Cape Breton, in short, kept open for France the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and the story of New France became more than ever the story of that river, and of the waterways which connected it with the far West, and with the newborn French colony in Louisiana.

¹ Louisbourg in 1745, the anonymous Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg, translated and edited by Professor Wrong (Toronto, 1897), p. 26.

² Oldmixon's British Empire in America (1741 ed.), vol. i, p. 37.

From 1713, for thirty years, there was nominally peace between Great Britain and France. In 1743, English troops assisted the Austrians and defeated the French at the battle of Dettingen; but war was not formally proclaimed between the two powers until the following year, 1744, when it lasted for four years, being terminated by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. During the years of so-called peace, French Governors, French priests, French explorers and border leaders lost no opportunity of strengthening the French position in North America.

Intrigue and covert force were notably at work in Acadia. By the Treaty of Utrecht, King Louis ceded to Great Britain 'all Nova Scotia or Accadie with its ancient boundaries.' What were the ancient boundaries? They were left to be demarcated by commissioners of the two nations; but no demarcation ever took place, and meanwhile French on the one hand, and English on the other, construed the term 'Acadia' according to their respective interests. While Acadia was French, the French widened, the English narrowed, the area to which the name might apply. When Acadia became English, the contention was reversed; and the French, who had included in Acadia a large extent of mainland, claimed that the peninsula of Nova Scotia alone was covered by the terms of the treaty.

Within that peninsula there were, at the time when the treaty was signed, some two thousand French settlers—a simple peasantry, uneducated, priest-ridden, of the same type as the habitans of the St. Lawrence; but more primitive, more old-fashioned, clinging to their homes, to their national traditions, to their faith. Under the fourteenth article of the treaty, French subjects were given liberty to remove themselves within one year; if they preferred to remain and become subjects of the British Crown, they were to enjoy the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion 'as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same.' The Acadians themselves did not wish to leave their farms and homesteads, nor did the English, when they took over Acadia, wish to lose the white settlers of the peninsula, who might reasonably be expected to become loyal and valuable citizens. The French authorities, on the other hand, desired to remove them in order to populate their own territories and deplete the ceded lands. Thus from the outset the intention of the treaty was frustrated, and the unfortunate Acadians suffered between two masters. As years went on, English and French views alike changed. The French, having by priestly influence rendered the Acadians thoroughly disaffected to English rule, and having year by year stronger hope of recovering Acadia, wished the Acadians to remain where they were, a growing hostile population around a weak English garrison. The English, on the other hand, seeing the impossibility of securing the loyalty of the peasantry, wished to be rid of them, and in the end deported large numbers of them to other lands.

The main agents of mischief were on the one side French priests, political and religious fanatics, who threatened and cajoled their flocks; on the other the British Government, which left Acadia to take care of itself. It is deplorable to read the accounts given of Annapolis, as Port Royal was now called, and of the state of its garrison. What should have been the strong and thriving capital of a British province, remained for years nothing more than practically a very weak outpost in the enemy's country.

A long time passed in vainly attempting to make the Acadians swear allegiance to the King of England. At length, in 1730, Governor Philipps reported that he had succeeded in persuading each adult member of the population to 'promise and solemnly swear on the faith of a Christian that I will be thoroughly faithful and will truly obey his Majesty George II'; but the adoption of this form of words had little effect on the minds or the conduct of the French settlers. Strength to insist on loyalty and to punish traitorous dealing was not supplied from home; the Governors were unable to enforce their proclamations, and the governed were irritated by orders which were not carried into effect. Meanwhile, from 1720 onwards, Louisbourg grew up in artificial strength, the Dunkirk of America, the most powerful fortress on the Atlantic coast. Money and soldiers came out from France, while the British possession almost under the guns of the fortress was starved and neglected. To reconquer Acadia for the French, writes the eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745, 'it was only necessary to appear before this English colony ... and to land a few men'; and yet in 1745 Acadia had been in British keeping for thirty-five years.

On the mainland, French policy was the same as in the Acadian peninsula, nominally to keep the peace, secretly to incite the natives to war. For generations the Abenaki Indians had raided at frequent intervals the New England frontier; yet fear and the necessities of trade might at length have kept them quiet, had it not been for the instigation of the Canadian Government and its priestly agents. In 1713, and again in 1717, Abenaki chiefs had come to terms with Massachusetts; but there could be no peace as long as the savages were carefully instructed that the English were the enemies of their religion and the robbers of their lands. The savages were in truth in a hard case. Peace meant the aggressive growth of the white men's settlements, inevitable encroachment on the red men's heritage. War meant cutting off the New England trade, and inadequate support from France. They sent to Quebec to ask what aid they might expect from Canada. 'I will send you in secret,' said the Governor Vaudreuil, 'tomahawks, powder, and shot.' It was such a reply as the English Governors of New York had been wont to give to the Iroquois; and the Abenakis, like the Iroquois, were little satisfied with it. To fight the battles of France while the French looked on, was not what the Indians wished or understood. Yet their priests taught them to do it, and the Canadian Government stiffened their resolution by sending in mission Indians from Canada.

The foremost French emissary among the Abenaki Indians at this time was a Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rasle, keen in controversy, uncompromising in zeal, a bitter foe of the English, but not so utterly inhuman as were some of his colleagues. His mission was among the Norridgewocks, high up on the Kennebec river, where the head waters of that river flowing down to the Atlantic are at no very great distance from the Chaudière river which runs into the St. Lawrence. Against this place, in August, 1724, a strong body of men was sent from Massachusetts. They rowed up the Kennebec in whaleboats, and, landing at some distance below the Indian village, marched on it, and took it by surprise. Rasle was shot dead, the Indians were killed or dispersed, their homes were burnt to the ground; and the expedition returned in safety, having struck a strong and relentless blow at a centre of French and Indian hostility to the English colonists. War went on for some little time longer, and the English raided the tribes of the Penobscot. At length, in 1726, the Indians came to terms; and a peace was concluded which lasted for many years, dépôts being established at various points, where the natives could to their advantage barter furs with the traders of New England.

The principal point to notice in the dreary record of murder and pillage is the attitude of the Canadian Government and their superiors in France. Letters were intercepted, proving beyond dispute that the Indians were acting under the direct encouragement of the French authorities. In time of peace and nominal friendship the old struggle was ever going on. North America was a chessboard. On the French side the Indians were in front, pawns in the game. Behind them was the King temporarily in check, bishops or their representatives, half-breed knights of tortuous movement, and the castles of Louisbourg and Quebec.

The mouth of the Niagara river had long been held in intermittent fashion by the French, and by 1720, in spite of jealous opposition on the part of the Five Nation Indians, a permanent fort was built there. The English in their turn, in the year 1727, established and garrisoned a trading fort at Oswego, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario,³ Burnet, the Governor of New York, finding the necessary funds, as the colonial Legislature would not vote the money. The establishment of this station was a serious blow to French trade, nullifying to a large extent the advantage of holding Niagara. In vain the Canadians tried to incite the Five Nations to destroy it; and in vain, in 1749, they planted a rival post, Fort Rouillé, at Toronto,⁴ on the other side of the lake, to command the direct route to Lake Huron by Lake Simcoe. To Oswego the Indians brought their furs, and the traffic enriched the Iroquois and their English neighbours in New York.

³ See the letter from Governor Burnet to the Board of Trade, dated New York, May 9, 1727: 'I have this spring sent up workmen to build a stone house of strength at a place called Oswego, at the mouth of the Onnondage river, where our principal trade with the far Nations is carried on. I have obtained the consent of the Six Nations to build it.' Papers relating to Oswego in O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. i, p. 447.

⁴ The name of Toronto appears before the founding of this fort. On the old maps, i.e. on Delisle's map of Canada, published in 1703, Lake Simcoe appears as Lake Toronto.

But, menacing as was this outpost on the lake to the commercial interests of Canada, greater danger threatened both New England and New York from another move made by the French. Far up on Lake Champlain, at the point where the lake narrows into a wide river, stretching many miles to the south, there is a small isthmus on the western side standing out boldly in the lake. It was known to the English as Crown Point; and here in 1731, at the instance of a well-known French officer, the Chevalier Saint Luc de la Corne, the French built a fort commanding the strait, and named it Fort St. Frederic. The English colonies protested, but did not use united force to back their protests; and the position remained, fortified in time of peace, an evidence of French claims and a base for future attack.

War began again in March, 1744, and in May the French commander at Louisbourg took action. There was a small fishing village at Canso, on the narrow arm of the sea which divides Nova Scotia from Cape Breton Island. It was guarded by a blockhouse, garrisoned by about eighty English soldiers. A far stronger force from Louisbourg came against it, the garrison surrendered, and the place was burnt. The Frenchman who commanded the expedition, Duvivier, a descendant of La Tour, was then sent to attack Annapolis, and appeared before it in August. Ill fortified, ill garrisoned, the little town had at least a good English officer in charge—Major Mascarene, of Huguenot descent. The French offered terms of capitulation, threatening the arrival of more troops from Louisbourg; but these reinforcements did not arrive, the Acadians did not rise in mass, and in September the besiegers disappeared, having effected nothing.

Neglected by the British Government, Acadia was valued by New England. Massachusetts had in past years taken and held Port Royal, and knew well that English interests in America were not compatible with the French regaining the Acadian peninsula. The taking of Canso, the attempt to take Port Royal or Annapolis, roused the 'Bostonnais,' and led to an enterprise second to none in colonial history.

The Governor of Massachusetts at the time was William Shirley. A Sussex man, son of a merchant in the City of London, bred to the law, he had gone out to Boston in 1731, and in ten years' time, by judicious pushing, became Governor of the colony. He was a layman with military instincts, and, taking up the rôle of Cato, never ceased to preach to the ministers at home and to his fellow colonists on the spot, that Canada must be conquered, and the French driven from North America. His policy was good and clearsighted, his military ability was of no large order; but, like William Phipps, while he loved himself, he loved his country also; and eventually, after falling under a cloud, and being relegated to the government of the Bahamas, he came back to end his days in Massachusetts as a private citizen, and was buried at Boston in 1771.

To this enterprising man, it is said, the idea of attacking Louisbourg with colonial forces was suggested by William Vaughan, a New Englander, interested in the fishing trade on the coast of Maine. The scheme seemed a wild one. A fortress strong, as far as the newest military skill and unlimited money could strengthen it, was to be attacked and taken by untrained colonists. Yet there were solid hopes of success, and the dream came true. The English prisoners, carried from Canso to Louisbourg, had been sent on to Boston, and told of the actual condition of the French. The garrison at Louisbourg was not very numerous: they were ill commanded and mutinous. If the fortifications were formidable, within them were the elements of weakness.

Shirley called the Massachusetts Assembly together in secret session, and propounded his scheme for an expedition against Louisbourg. The scheme was rejected. Soon afterwards a petition in its favour was presented from Boston and other coast towns: the question came again before the Assembly, and the proposals were carried by one vote. All the English colonies down to and including Pennsylvania were invited to help; but, though New York sent a little money and a few guns, the enterprise was practically left to New England alone. Massachusetts contributed about 3,000 men, Connecticut, 500; and William Pepperell, shipbuilder and merchant of Kittery Point, Maine, was named as commander. He was of Devonshire descent, a colonel of militia, and, though he had little military experience, he was a man of good judgement and common sense.

A request had been sent to England for ships of war, and Warren, the English commodore at Antigua in the West Indies, was asked to bring his squadron. When the message reached him, he was without orders from home, and refused to sail; but almost immediately afterwards permission came, and he left at once for the North American coast, joining the expedition, which had already started, at their rendezvous at Canso.

It was on March 24, 1745 that the New Englanders left Boston; on or about April 4 the transports began to arrive at Canso. They carried men who knew little or nothing of scientific warfare, and for whom amateur strategists had drawn up fantastic plans of campaign; but they were colonists of tough English breed, their Puritan proclivities had been strengthened by the Methodist revival, and the great preacher, George Whitfield, had given to Pepperell for the motto of the expedition 'Nil desperandum Christo duce.'

'Louisbourg is built upon a tongue of land which stretches out into the sea and gives the town an oblong shape. It is about half a league in circumference.'⁵ The tongue of land in question is part of a larger peninsula running out to the south and east from the coast of Cape Breton Island. The little promontory, which was covered by the town and fortifications of Louisbourg, has an almost due easterly direction, and it is prolonged to the east by reefs ending in a small rocky island, on which the French erected a battery to command the mouth of the harbour, the channel being about half a mile wide. The harbour lay to the north and north-east of the town; on the other side was the ocean. To the west of the whole peninsula, of which the Louisbourg promontory was but a small part, is a large semicircular bay, known as Gabarus Bay. Surrounded by the sea on all sides but one, on that one side—the western side—the town was strongly protected by a ditch and rampart, outside which was marshy ground. Moreover, almost due north of the town, on the edge of the harbour, was a battery, known as the Grand Battery, over against the Island Battery which has been already mentioned. Nature, French money, and French engineers had combined to make a stronghold, which seemed almost impregnable.

⁵ From the anonymous Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg, translated by Professor Wrong, pp. 27, 28.

The garrison consisted of between 500 and 600 regular troops, with 1,300 to 1,400 militia.⁶ Among the regulars were Swiss soldiers, who had mutinied at the preceding Christmas time and infected their French comrades with the spirit of insubordination. They mutinied, it was said, about their rations, as to the 'butter and bacon' which the King supplied. In Louisbourg, as elsewhere in Canada, peculation was rife, and officers and commissaries made profit at the privates' expense. The Governor, Duquesnel, had died in the previous October. His successor, Duchambon, was not the man for a crisis. The walls were there and brave men behind them, but confidence in a determined and prescient leader was wanting; and, as the consequence of maladministration, we read that 'the regular soldiers were distrusted, so that it was necessary to charge the inhabitants with the most dangerous duties.'

⁶ It is difficult to make out from the Lettre d'un habitant whether or not the 1,300 to 1,400 men included the regulars, but probably not.

Having waited for about three weeks at Canso, and rebuilt and garrisoned the blockhouse, the New Englanders went on to their destination. On April 30 the transports sailed into Gabarus Bay, making for Flat Point, three miles due west of Louisbourg. A small French force was detached to oppose them; but the boats made good their landing, two miles further to the west, at a little inlet called Freshwater Cove. Here the whole force of 4,000 men was disembarked; and, two days later, a party under Vaughan, having marched behind the town, found the Grand Battery deserted and occupied it, turning its guns in due course upon their rightful owners. The precipitate abandonment of this battery by the French, on the ground that its defences were inadequate, proved a fatal blunder, giving the besiegers a firm position in the rear of the town, whereas the direct attack was over swamp and marsh.

The siege now began in earnest. Warren's squadron, which was at a later stage reinforced from England, blockaded the harbour, and on May 19 achieved an important success in capturing the Vigilant, a large French ship of war, whose supplies of food and ammunition, destined for the garrison, passed instead into the hands of the besiegers. Warren could not however enter the harbour, as long as the Island Battery commanded the entrance.

The bulk of the work fell on the land force, and well they did it. Ill clothed, ill housed, suffering so much from exposure and privations, that at one time out of 4,000 men little more than one-half were fit for duty, without transport, dragging the guns themselves across the morasses, without skilled engineers, and with hardly any trained gunners, they none the less pushed the siege with boisterous audacity, mingling religious fervour with schoolboy recklessness. They fought better in this way—their own way—than by adhering to strict military rule, and their commander, William Pepperell, knew his men. His was a difficult task. There was some little friction between the King's man and the colonist, but, on the whole, Warren on the sea and Pepperell on the land worked in harmony, due in no small measure to the tact and good sense of the New England commander.

There was a further danger to the besiegers, of attack from the mainland side. Canadians and Indians were reported to be marching to the relief of the garrison. They were a party sent from Canada to besiege Annapolis, who drew off and marched for Louisbourg on receiving an urgent message for help from Duchambon, but arrived only in time to hear that the town had surrendered and to retreat again in safety into Acadia.

As long as the Island Battery remained intact, it was or seemed impossible to attack from the sea. Accordingly an attempt was made to take it. At midnight, on May 26, a storming party put out in boats from the Grand Battery, and rowed to the strongly fortified rock on which the Island Battery stood. The result was an entire failure. Firing under cover, the French wrecked many of the boats, and shot down the soldiers who landed. The English lost 189 men, being nearly half the attacking force, 119 of whom were taken prisoners. It was clear that the battery could not be taken by assault, and the besiegers proceeded gradually to cripple it by mounting guns on Lighthouse Point, being the opposite side of the narrow entrance to the harbour. These guns did good execution, and, while the Island Battery lost its sting, the defences of the town on the land side were steadily weakened by the besiegers' fire.

At length Warren and Pepperell decided that the time had come to assault the town simultaneously by land and sea. The French saw what was intended; they were worn with fatigue and anxiety; their houses were riddled with shot and shell; and the townspeople urged the Governor to capitulate. Fair terms were granted by the English commanders, who knew that their own position was none too secure. The garrison was allowed to march out with the honours of war, and safe transport to France was guaranteed to the officers and men, as well as to the inhabitants of Louisbourg, on the promise that none should bear arms against England for the space of a year. On these conditions Duchambon surrendered, and on June 17, after a siege of forty-seven days, the English became masters of Louisbourg.

The capitulation was made jointly to Pepperell and Warren. The French eye-witness of the siege is at pains to distinguish between them; for Warren he has nothing but praise, for Pepperell the reverse. 'Mr. Warren,' he writes, 'is a young man about thirty-five years old, very handsome, and full of the noblest sentiments.' Against Pepperell he brings charges of bad faith in carrying out the terms of the capitulation, adding, 'What could we expect from a man who, it is said, is the son of a shoemaker at Boston?' As a matter of fact, Pepperell, on occupying Louisbourg, kept his undisciplined men well in hand, much to their disgust, and little loot rewarded their weeks of toil and suffering. To Warren's sailors, on the other hand, there accrued a large amount of prize-money; for, by the device of keeping the French flag flying after the surrender of the town had taken place, various French vessels were decoyed and captured.

In after years, when the American colonies had taken arms against the mother country, men argued as to whether the taking of Louisbourg was due to the English sailors and their commander, or to the colonists. As a matter of fact, neither without the other could have achieved success, but the enterprise was conceived by the colonists, on the colonists fell the brunt of the fighting, and to them, not to England, the chief credit was due. 'The enterprise,' says the French writer already quoted, 'was less that of the nation or of the King than of the inhabitants of New England alone.' It was in truth a wonderful feat, and till our own times it was never sufficiently appreciated.

There was rejoicing in England; but England in the year 1745, the year of the Jacobite rebellion, had other sights before her eyes, and other sounds in the ears of her people. It may well have been, too, that joy at success over the enemy of the nation was alloyed by uneasy and unworthy consciousness of the growing strength and self-confidence of the New England beyond the sea. But to Boston the tidings were tidings of unmixed joy and pride. The Lord had risen to fight for His chosen people, the dour and stubborn Puritan, and the stronghold of the idolaters was laid low.

'Good Lord,' said the old and usually long-winded Chaplain Moody, in his grace before dinner at the end of the siege, 'we have so much to thank Thee for that time will be too short, and we must leave it for eternity.'⁷

⁷ Quoted in Parkman's A Half Century of Conflict (1892 ed.), vol. ii, p. 153.

A General Thanksgiving was held at Boston on Thursday July 18, 1745. At the South Church in that city the Rev. Thomas Prince, one of the pastors, preached on the great New England victory. He took for his text 'This is the Lord's doing: it is marvellous in our eyes'; and his sermon, which has been preserved to us,⁸ well illustrates the view which the Puritans of Massachusetts took of their success. The hand of the Lord was visible to them in every detail of the 'most adventurous enterprise against the French settlements at Cape Breton and their exceeding strong city of Louisbourg, for warlike power the pride and terror of these northern seas.' The preacher recounted the advantages which the island gave to France, its abundance of pit coal, its commodious harbours, 'its happy situation in the centre of our fishery at the entrance of the Bay and River of Canada.' He noted the natural and artificial strength of the walled city, added to for thirty years, until Louisbourg became 'the Dunkirk of North America, and in some respects of greater importance.' He traced the finger of God in the circumstances preliminary to and attending its capture; how the British prisoners, carried to Louisbourg, on their return to Boston brought information 'whereby we came to be more acquainted with their situation and the proper places of landing and attacking'; how the New Englander had accounts 'of the uneasiness of the Switzers there for want of pay and provision'; how the weather was fair, the men were willing, supplies were plentiful; how God guided the decision of the Court of Representatives, and timed the arrival of 'the brave and active Commodore Warren, a great friend to these Plantations.' The landing, the taking of the Grand Battery, the 'happy harmony between our various officers,' even disease, reverse, toil and labour, all were signs of a particular Providence working out His great design and leading His people into a place of shelter. Thus was Louisbourg taken 'by means of so small a number, less than 4,000 land men, unused to war, undisciplined, and that had never seen a siege in their lives.' 'As it was,' said the preacher, referring to the Treaty of Utrecht, 'one of the chief disgraces of Queen Anne's reign to resign this island to the French, it is happily one of the glories of King George II's to restore it to the British empire.' The measure of joy at the taking of Louisbourg must also have been the measure of disappointment at its subsequent retrocession by the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

⁸ Extraordinary events, the doings of God, and marvellous in pious eyes. Illustrated in a sermon at the South Church in Boston (New England), on the General Thanksgiving, Thursday, July 18, 1745. Occasioned by taking the city of Louisbourg, on the isle of Cape Breton, by New England soldiers, assisted by a British squadron. By Thomas Prince, M.A. Pamphlet, Boston and London, 5th ed. 1746. Dedicated to H. E. William Shirley.

Of the two men who led the English to victory on this memorable occasion, Pepperell was made a baronet—the first colonist to receive that honour: he lived to help his countrymen still further in their struggle with France. Through his exertions a royal regiment was raised in America, and the New England shipping yards added a fine frigate to the British navy. He died in 1759, holding the commission of Lieutenant-General in the British army.

Warren, in 1747, took part, as second in command, in Anson's naval victory over the French off Cape Finisterre, and in the same year he was elected member of Parliament for Westminster. He died in 1752, at the age of forty-nine, one of the richest commoners in England; and a monument to him stands in the north transept of Westminster Abbey. It tells that he was a 'Knight of the Bath, a Vice Admiral of the Red Squadron of the fleet, and member of the City and Liberty of Westminster'; but it does not tell how close was his sympathy with the English in America, married, as he was, to an American lady, and owner of estates in Manhattan Island and on the Mohawk river; nor, amid the verbiage of eighteenth-century adulation, is there any mention of the part which he took in helping the New England colonists to conquer Louisbourg.

The New Englanders garrisoned Louisbourg for the better part of a year. The soldiers were discontented, with some reason. Their success had brought them little or no profit: they wanted to be back on their farms: the town which they occupied was dismantled and insanitary; pestilence broke out, and 'the people died like rotten sheep.'⁹ Shirley came up from Boston to keep the soldiers quiet, but not till April, 1746, were the colonists relieved by regular troops, sent from Gibraltar. Warren then took sole command for a short time, being succeeded by another sailor, Commodore Knowles.

⁹ Quoted in Parkman's A Half Century of Conflict, vol. ii, p. 166.

Shirley intended the capture of Louisbourg to be but the beginning of the end, the end being the conquest of Canada. The French Government, on the other hand, were determined to recover their fortress. Each was for the time disappointed. In the early months of 1746, the colonies, elated by their recent and great success, cheerfully answered to the call for soldiers to invade Canada. The home Government promised eight battalions, and had them ready for embarkation at Portsmouth; the plan of campaign—the usual plan of dual invasion by the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain—was duly outlined; Quebec was thrown into a state of alarm and hurried preparation, when, as so often before, all came to nothing, owing to the shuffling and delays of the ministers of the Crown, in this instance the incompetent Duke of Newcastle. The troops destined for America were diverted to Europe; one more opportunity was lost; one more nail was driven into the coffin of colonial loyalty. Realizing, as the autumn of 1746 drew on, that an invasion of Canada was now out of the question, Shirley determined to attack the French advanced position at Crown Point with the New York and Massachusetts levies; but this plan, too, was frustrated by news of a coming fleet from France, and the fears of Quebec were transferred to Boston.

The fleet in question left La Rochelle at midsummer in the year 1746. It consisted of twenty-one ships of war and a number of transports, carrying 3,000 troops. The whole was under the command of the Duc d'Anville. Disaster in the form of tempest and pestilence attended the expedition from first to last. The ships were scattered on the ocean, and it was not until the end of September that the admiral, with three ships, reached Chebucto (now Halifax) harbour. Here, while waiting for the rest of the fleet, he died; and the vice-admiral, D'Estournel, arriving immediately afterwards, saw no hope for the shattered expedition but to return to France. His officers, on the other hand, urged an attack on Annapolis, and D'Estournel, in a fit of mortification and mental distress, put an end to his life. The command now devolved on the Marquis de la Jonquière, a naval officer, who had gone out on board the fleet to take over the government of Canada. He waited into October at Chebucto, the Acadians brought him provisions, but his men still died of disease day by day. He sailed for Annapolis, but encountered fresh storms off Cape Sable; and at length the miserable remains of the fleet made their way back to France, the loss of life having been, it was said, 2,500 men. In the following year, 1747, La Jonquière again set out from France in another fleet, but again he failed to reach Canada; the ships were encountered and defeated off Cape Finisterre by Anson and Warren, and the outgoing Governor of Canada was carried a prisoner to England.

The main operations of the war were supplemented by the usual series of raids from Canada. In the winter of 1745, Fort Saratoga, thirty-six miles from Albany, was attacked and taken by French and Indians from Crown Point; the place was burnt, and its inhabitants were carried into captivity. It was again reoccupied by the English, but in 1747 was evacuated and burnt as indefensible, to the disgust of the Five Nation Indians, who looked upon the proceeding as evidence of weakness and cowardice. Another successful French attack was made, in August, 1746, on Fort Massachusetts, standing on an eastern tributary of the Hudson, on the line of communication between Albany and the Connecticut river. In short, for three years, the borders of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were harried by Canadians and Indians, using the French fort at Crown Point as their base.

But the most notable success in this petty warfare was achieved on the Acadian frontier. The isthmus of Chignecto, which connects the Nova Scotian peninsula with the mainland, was, at the time of D'Anville's expedition, held by a comparatively strong force of Canadians under De Ramesay. Fearing for the safety of Annapolis and the rest of Acadia, Shirley sent reinforcements from Massachusetts, consisting of some 500 men under Colonel Noble, who in December, 1746, reached the Basin of Mines, and occupied the village of Grand Pré. They were quartered throughout the village, taking no sufficient precautions against surprise; Ramesay therefore, on hearing of the position, determined towards the latter end of January to attack them. He had with him the best of the Canadian partisan leaders; and unable, owing to an accident, to take personal charge of the expedition, he placed the command in the hands of Coulon de Villiers.

In the depth of winter, with sledges and snow-shoes, the French set out; they started from the isthmus on January 23, on February 10 they were on the outskirts of Grand Pré. Under cover of night, one party and another attacked the detached houses in which the English were lodged; Colonel Noble and over seventy of his followers were killed; sixty were wounded, fifty-four were taken prisoners. The rest capitulated, on condition of safe return to Annapolis; and on February 14 they marched out, leaving Grand Pré in the hands of the French, who in their turn shortly afterwards retired to their old position at Chignecto. It was a brilliant feat of arms, but, like most of these border attacks, had no lasting effect. Grand Pré was in a few weeks' time reoccupied by the English; and not long afterwards the French retired from the Acadian frontier into Canada.

The war, known in history as the War of the Austrian Succession, had brought to none of the combatants much honour or profit. On the continent the Austrians and their English allies met with little success, on the sea the French were equally unsuccessful. The end was a peace, as between England and France, based on the principle of mutual restitution, such a peace as left the seeds of future war. England gave back Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island, France gave back Madras, which had surrendered in 1746 to Labourdonnais. The treaty contained the somewhat humiliating provision, that English hostages should be given to France until the restitution of Louisbourg had actually taken place.

In July, 1749, the French re-entered their fortress; and in the same year a large body of settlers was sent out by the British Government to Chebucto harbour, where the city of Halifax was founded. The settlement was designed to be a rival to Louisbourg. Its foundation was evidence that the Imperial Government was at length not wholly indifferent to the value of Acadia; and Halifax is almost unique, among English cities in America, in having owed its origin to the direct action of the State. But no founding of new townships, we may well imagine, could compensate the New Englanders for losing the fruits of their victory. It is said that the first answer of King George II, when pressed to give back Louisbourg to France was that it belonged not to him but to the people of Boston. If these were his words, he spoke truly; the Massachusetts men had won the town, and England gave it away. Yet on no other terms could peace be secured; and it is not easy to pass a fair criticism on the transaction. Then, as now, England had to reckon with conflicting interests within her Empire. Then, as now, she had self-governing colonies which necessarily did not see eye to eye on all points with the mother country. The horizon of New England was bounded by the Atlantic, and the fate of a factory in the East Indies, or even international arrangements on the continent of Europe, were beyond the colonists' ken. They saw only that their blood and their money had been given in vain, and that the fortress, which they had wrested from France, was hers again. English statesmen, on the other hand, looked east as well as west; and near home, across the Channel, was the spectacle of campaigns that brought more loss than gain. As successful war in Europe had given Acadia to the English, so want of success in the same quarter reacted on America. The account was made up, the balance was struck, and the retrocession of Louisbourg was the price of peace. But it was a heavy price to pay, for it seemed to have been paid by the American colonists alone; and, had not another war soon followed, and Louisbourg been again taken by a general whom the Americans loved, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle might have passed into history as not merely a disappointment but an irretrievable disaster.

French exploration in North America followed, as has been seen, the line of the lakes and the rivers. From Louisiana, in the first half of the eighteenth century, various expeditions were made in a westerly direction—up the Red River, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and its tributary the Kansas river—the object of the French explorers being to enter into friendly relations with the Comanches and other Indians of the western plains, and gradually to open up trade with New Mexico and the city of Santa Fé; in other words, to reach Spanish America, an object which did not commend itself to Spain.

Before the year 1700, the course of the upper Mississippi was known. Nicolas Perrot, in or about 1685, is said to have established posts where the river widens out into Lake Pepin; and further north, French coureurs de bois, or voyageurs, as they began to be called, gained information of the Lake of the Woods, and of the Lac des Assiniboines, now Lake Winnipeg. The principal Indian tribes in the regions of the upper Mississippi were Sioux; and, with a view to making them friends to France, and penetrating through their country to the western sea, the Jesuit traveller Charlevoix recommended, in 1723, that a mission should be established among them. A few years later, in 1727, a company was formed for trading in the Sioux country, and built a new fort on Lake Pepin called, after the then Governor of Canada, Fort Beauharnois. The Sioux, however, proved intractable neighbours, and ten years later the fort was abandoned.

In 1728, there was a small French outpost at Nipigon, at the western end of Lake Superior, on its northern side—where the river Nipigon flows from the lake of the same name into Lake Superior. The commander was Pierre de Varennes de la Verendrye, son of a lieutenant of the Carignan Regiment, who had settled at and been Governor of Three Rivers. As a young man, La Verendrye had crossed the sea to fight in the armies of France, and had been badly wounded on the field of Malplaquet. He lived to leave his name high in the list of western explorers. At his distant station on Lake Superior, he heard the stories that Indians brought, mixture of fact and fable, of waters to the west that led to the long-sought-for sea; he offered to follow up the clue, and, with the usual opposition from jealous Canadian merchants, and the usual barren authority from the French Government to explore at his own expense, in return for the grant of a monopoly of the fur trade to the west and north of Lake Superior, he gave the rest of his life to western discovery.

As the water-parting between the basin of the St. Lawrence and that of the Mississippi is hardly marked by any height of land, so the divide between the chain of lakes which feed the St. Lawrence and the more westerly waters, of which Lake Winnipeg is the centre, is a slight rise of ground which it is difficult to distinguish on the maps. A low range of hills runs round the western end of Lake Superior, at the highest point not more than 1,000 feet above the level of the lake. These uplands separate the tributaries of Lake Superior and the St. Lawrence from the feeders of Lake Winnipeg. There were two routes across the divide, one leaving Lake Superior at Thunder Bay, near the point where Port Arthur now stands, and following for a short distance the present line of the Canadian Pacific Railway; the other a little further south, leaving the lake at or near Pigeon river, and going westward along the present boundary line between Canada and the United States. On this latter route was the Grand Portage, by which the voyageurs crossed the water-parting at about sixty miles distance from Lake Superior, and reached Rainy Lake. Rainy Lake drains into the Lake of the Woods, and the Lake of the Woods drains into Lake Winnipeg. This last great lake, fed by the Saskatchewan, the Assiniboine, the Red River, and many other rivers and lakes, finds its outlet by the Nelson river to Hudson Bay, and a chain of posts carried from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg would tend to divert the western fur trade from Hudson Bay to the St. Lawrence.

In the summer of 1731, La Verendrye started west by the Grand Portage; and in the next eight or nine years established posts along the water line, from Rainy Lake to where the Saskatchewan river enters Lake Winnipeg from the north-west. One of these forts or stations was Fort La Reine on the Assiniboine river, which formed the starting-point for an advance over the western plains through what is now the State of Dakota. In 1742, two of his sons made their way from the Assiniboine to the Missouri, crossed the latter river, and, traversing the prairies in a westerly and south-westerly direction, reached the country drained by the tributaries of the Yellowstone river. How far they went is matter of conjecture, and doubt is thrown on their claim to have been the first discoverers of the Rocky mountains. It is stated that, on January 1, 1743, they came in sight of high mountains, which are supposed to have been the Bighorn range in Wyoming and Montana, an eastern buttress of the Rocky mountains, lying in front of the Yellowstone National Park; but no mention is made in the story of snowy peaks, such as would indicate discovery of the great mountain barrier of America. The explorers came back in fifteen months' time. Their father died in 1749, and, like other pioneers, they reaped but little fruit, in honour or in profit, from all their labours. They did not find the western sea, they possibly did not descry the Rocky mountains; but to La Verendrye and his sons it must be credited that a new water area in the far west was fully made known to the world, and that trade routes were opened beyond the basin of the St. Lawrence and the basin of the Mississippi, reaching to the great Saskatchewan river and to the waters which flow into Hudson Bay.

The Rocky mountains, as we know them, were not known in the eighteenth century.¹⁰ In 1793 Sir Alexander Mackenzie crossed them far in the North, by the line of the Peace river, and reached the Pacific Ocean on the coast of British Columbia; but the full revelation of the main range dates from the year 1805, when Lewis and Clarke followed the Missouri to its source, and thence made their way over the mountain barrier to the western sea. In short, as long as Canada was New France, and for years afterwards, it was for trading and for colonizing purposes a region of inland waters; it was not also, as it now is, a land of plains, with a background of giant mountains, and behind them the further ocean. Yet it was to reach the further ocean that Europeans first came into Canada, and the earnest expectation of the earliest explorers has in our own time found more than fulfilment in a Dominion from sea to sea.

¹⁰ In Jeffreys' American Atlas, 1775, the Assiniboils (sic) or St. Charles river is prolonged to the Pacific by a dotted line, entitled the 'River of the West.' Below it a range of mountains is traced from north to south, with the note, 'Hereabouts are supposed to be the mountains of bright stones mentioned in the map of the Indian Ochagach.' In Carver's Travels through North America in 1766-8, published in 1778, p. 121, the Rocky mountains 'are called the Shining Mountains from an infinite number of chrystal stones of amazing size with which they are covered, and which, when the sun shines full upon them, sparkle so as to be seen at a very great distance.' Morse's American Geography, 1794, shows the Rocky mountains on the map of America. In the text they are called 'Shining Mountains.' In Arrowsmith's Map of North America, dated 1795-6, they are called Stony Mountains. In a later edition of 1811 the name 'Rocky Mountains' appears.

NOTE.—For the substance of the above chapter, see

    KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. iii;
    PARKMAN'S A Half Century of Conflict;
    Sir J. BOURINOT'S Cape Breton (referred to above, note); and
    Louisbourg in 1745, the anonymous Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg, edited and translated by Professor WRONG, (Toronto, 1897).

CHAPTER VIII

The fifteen years from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 to the Peace of Paris in 1763 include the most stirring and picturesque times in the history of Canada. They were masculine years, when, in all parts of the world, great men did great things. They were the years when Montcalm and Wolfe fought and died on the St. Lawrence; when Robert Clive mastered India; when Chatham redeemed England from littleness; and when Frederick of Prussia became known for all time as Frederick the Great, by standing grimly foursquare against the continent of Europe in the Seven Years' War.

The Seven Years' War only began in 1756; but before that date, before war between France and England had formally been proclaimed, French and English were fighting hard in North America. We have the same sphere of war as before, and in large measure the same plans of campaign, trouble and conflict in and on the borders of Acadia, siege and capture of Louisbourg, attack up the St. Lawrence against Quebec—at last a successful attack, and prolonged fighting along the line of Lakes George and Champlain. The Five Nation Indians played their part in the war, though a more subordinate part than in earlier times; the cantons most within range of the English remaining under English influence and being more adroitly managed than in earlier days, while the westernmost tribes, the Senecas, inclined to the French side. But a new feature came into the struggle, the result of the inevitable advance of white men on either side in the course of years. The English colonies to the south of New York began to take a more active part than formerly in the conflict with France. The Virginians appeared on the scene, and among the Virginians was prominent the name of George Washington. The great French scheme of holding the rivers of North America and their basins implied that the English colonies should not cross the Alleghany mountains. Great schemes never allow for the ordinary every day work of nature and man. It was certain that, as the English multiplied, they would go further and further afield; and in due time, from Pennsylvania and from Virginia, English traders and backwoodsmen made their way into the valley of the Ohio.

The Ohio, which La Salle first made known to the world, is, as has been pointed out, the connecting link on the inner line of the North American waterways—starting from the confines of the St. Lawrence basin near the shores of Lake Erie, and reaching the Mississippi comparatively low down in its course. The outer line is much more extensive, continuing along the great lakes until from Lake Michigan the Mississippi is reached by the Wisconsin or the Illinois. Along this outer line the French had hitherto worked. It took them more directly to the far West; and, passing along it, they only skirted instead of traversing the region where the Iroquois were in strength; but, had they allowed the English to lay firm hold of the Ohio valley, Canada and Louisiana would have been severed, and down the Ohio would have come a challenge to French sovereignty over the West. Thus it was that, in the year 1749, the year after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de la Galissonière, sent one of his officers, Celeron de Bienville, to register the claims of France to the Ohio river and the lands which it watered and drained.

Starting up the St. Lawrence from the island of Montreal, Celeron landed on the shores of Lake Erie; and, making a portage to Lake Chautauqua, reached the head waters of the Ohio. Down stream he went, into the Alleghany, down the Alleghany to where, meeting the Monongahela, it becomes the Ohio, and down the Ohio to the confluence of the Miami river, not far from the site of Cincinnati city. Here he left the Ohio, and, ascending the Miami, crossed overland to the Maumee river, on which there was a small French post. The Maumee flows into the south-western end of Lake Erie, and down its stream he returned to Canada.

At various points along the route he buried leaden plates, with inscriptions asserting the title of the King of France to the lands of the Ohio and its tributaries; and he affixed to trees the arms of France on sheets of tin, to tell all comers that the French were lords of the country. It was time that some assertion of French claims was made in these regions. He found parties of English traders, as he went, and the Indians showed no love for France. There had been for some time past a migration of Indians into the Ohio valley. Many of the Iroquois had settled there: and if among the various races, notably among the Delawares, there were those whose traditional sympathies were with the owners of Canada, there were more who appreciated the present benefit of English trade. Prominent among the friends of the English were the Indians of the Miami confederacy, whose centre was at Pique Town or Pickawillany on the Miami river.

Celeron came and went. He had made a demonstration on behalf of France, but not a demonstration in force. His expedition was memorable as the prelude to coming events; but no definite action was taken for about three years. La Galissonière was succeeded as Governor of Canada by the Marquis de la Jonquière,¹ who died in 1752, and was followed by the Marquis Duquesne. Meantime, an Ohio company was formed on the English side, consisting mainly of Virginians, and English traders and emissaries were active among the Indians of the Ohio. Yet the English, like the French, achieved no tangible results. Pennsylvania and Virginia were jealous of each other, and the Legislature in each state opposed the Governor. Both Assemblies were invited to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, which formed the key of the position; but both refused.

¹ De la Jonquière had been named Governor of Canada in 1746, and made two unsuccessful attempts to reach Quebec, one in that year on board D'Anville's fleet, and a second in 1747, when he was taken prisoner in the fight off Cape Finisterre (see above). He finally arrived in 1749.

Thus matters drifted on until, in June, 1752, a Frenchman, Langlade, came down from the lakes with a band of Indian warriors, attacked the Miamis at Pickawillany, took the town, and killed its chief—who was known to the French as La Demoiselle, and who was feared by them as a warm friend of their English rivals. The place was a centre of English trade, there were English traders in it when the attack was made, and this French success was the beginning of action, on a larger scale than had hitherto been attempted, for the conquest and control of the Ohio valley.

Founded in 1749, Halifax, on the coast of Nova Scotia, was, in 1752, a town of 4,000 inhabitants. Had the settlement been made thirty years earlier, immediately after the Peace of Utrecht instead of after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the story of Acadia would have been a different and probably a happier one. Mascarene at Annapolis, and Shirley at Boston, saw the necessity of introducing English settlers into the peninsula in order to balance the French malcontents, and the British Government, when giving back Louisbourg to France, recognized at length that steps must be taken to strengthen the English hold on Nova Scotia. It was determined to recruit the English, or at any rate the Protestant, element in the population from Europe, from the North American colonies, and from the ranks of the men who were withdrawn from Louisbourg; and Chebucto harbour on the Atlantic coast of the Nova Scotian peninsula was selected as the scene of a new township to be well fortified and strongly garrisoned.

Here was created the city of Halifax, called after the Earl of Halifax, at the time 'First Lord of Trade and Plantations.' In founding it, the English had regard to the methods by which the French had established their colonies on the St. Lawrence. Halifax was in its origin a military colony. The first settlers consisted largely of officers and privates of the army and navy, who, when peace was concluded, received their discharge and who were supplemented by a certain number of labourers and artizans. Parliament voted £40,000 in aid of the initial expenses. Free passages, free grants of land, and the cost of subsistence for a year after landing were provided, privileges which secured a considerable number of colonists; 1,400 immigrants were landed from the first batch of transports at Chebucto harbour,² and others followed. A good Governor was appointed, Colonel Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis who surrendered at Yorktown and ruled India.

² It is difficult to make out the numbers. The above figure is given by Cornwallis in a letter to the Lords of Trade, July 24, 1749 (see Mr. Brymer's Catalogue of Canadian Archives, 'Nova Scotia,' p. 142). On the other hand passages were taken for over 2,500 (p. 138). Haliburton says, 'in a short time 3,760 adventurers with their families were entered for embarkation.' Parkman puts the number at about 2,500, including women and children, Kingsford at 1,176 settlers with their families. Parliament for some years continued to make annual grants for the colonization of Nova Scotia, 'which collected sums,' says Haliburton, 'amounted to the enormous sum of £415,584 14s. 11d.'

Old soldiers do not always make good colonists, and Cornwallis wrote home complaining of their want of industry, contrasting the English unfavourably with a few Swiss who were among the newcomers, and suggesting that an effort should be made to introduce Protestant emigrants from Germany. Accordingly, German Lutherans were brought over through an agent at Rotterdam, the majority of whom were, in 1753, planted out at Lunenburg, a little to the south-west of Halifax, on the same side of the peninsula. Thus the outer margin of Nova Scotia was being sparsely colonized with English, Swiss, and German Protestants, while on the side towards the mainland, along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Roman Catholic Acadians remained French in heart and sympathies.

For three years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French and English commissioners, appointed to determine the limits of the French and English possessions in North America, wrangled at Paris, William Shirley being one of the English delegates; but they never came to any conclusion. The French now refused even to concede that the whole of the Acadian peninsula belonged to England, and wished to confine English sovereignty to its southern coasts. They were in fact resolved by bluff or by force either to regain Acadia, or, in default of attaining that object, to make its condition one of permanent insecurity and unrest. As related in the last chapter,³ immediately after the Peace of Utrecht the intention of the French Government had been to transplant the Acadians to French soil, to Cape Breton Island and to Prince Edward Island, then known as Île St. Jean. For this policy they subsequently substituted the more dangerous plan of not removing the Acadians, but encouraging them to consider themselves still as French subjects while remaining under the British flag. After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, however, they reverted to their project of transplantation, finding that the British Government were resolved no longer to treat their subjects in Acadia as neutrals, and realizing that the Governor had now force at his back.

³ See above.

The Acadians claimed to be exempt from bearing arms in defence of their country and their country's rulers, in other words against the French and the Indian allies of the French. They were not free agents; they were terrorized by the French Government and the French priests, notorious among whom was a ruffian named Le Loutre, Vicar-General of Acadia. Spiritual excommunication and Indian hostility threatened them, if they acted with loyalty to the British King, whose subjects they had been for nearly forty years. How faithless and unscrupulous was the policy of the French is abundantly shown by official dispatches, proving that the Canadian Governor, La Jonquière, with the sanction of the French Government at home, accepted and endorsed Le Loutre's villainous schemes for preventing the Acadians from taking the full oath of allegiance, and for instigating the Indians of the peninsula to murder the English settlers. Cornwallis treated the Acadians with kindly firmness. Some of them asked to be allowed to leave the country, and he promised permission to those who should obtain passports, when peace and tranquillity were restored. For the moment he declined to allow them to cross the frontier, as it would mean sending them among French and Indians, who would compel them to bear arms against the English Government.

The frontier, as far as any line was provisionally recognized, was a little stream on the isthmus of Chignecto. On the mainland side the French had occupied a hill called Beauséjour, on the Nova Scotian side was the village of Beaubassin. In April, 1750, Cornwallis sent a force of some 400 men under Major Lawrence to occupy a position at or near Beaubassin, and to guard the isthmus. On his arrival, Lawrence found Beaubassin in flames. Le Loutre and his Indians had set fire to the place, and compelled the hapless residents to cross over to the French lines. The English left, but returned in September in stronger force; their landing was disputed by Le Loutre's savages, who were driven off, and a fort was built and garrisoned, called after the name of the commander, Fort Lawrence.

French and English now faced each other across a narrow stream, the French completed their fort at Beauséjour, and the temper of Le Loutre's Indians was shown by a horrible incident, the murder of an English officer, Captain Howe. Howe had gone out in answer to a flag of truce, which appeared from the French lines; but the bearer of the white flag was an Indian disguised in French uniform, who lured the Englishman into an ambush, where he was mortally wounded. The French themselves attributed this act of wanton wickedness to Le Loutre.

In 1752 Cornwallis returned to England, and was succeeded as Governor of Acadia by Colonel Hopson, who had been in command at Louisbourg, when that town was given back to France; the latter was, in the autumn of 1753, succeeded by Colonel Lawrence. The Acadian population, which in 1749 numbered between 12,000 and 13,000 souls, five years later was reduced to little more than 9,000. The emigration which caused the reduction in numbers was largely the result of a French terror, and on the mainland, or in the Île St. Jean, the unfortunate emigrants endured misery unknown in their old homes in Acadia. Those who find in the subsequent rooting up of Acadian settlement an instance of English cruelty with little parallel in history, would do well to remember that the process had already been going on at the hands of the French; and the lot of the Acadians under the French flag was in no wise preferable to the fortunes of those who were carried, as it were, into captivity in the English colonies.

The catastrophe, of which so much has been made in prose and verse, happened in the year 1755. It was not an isolated incident, but part of a general plan—which for the time miscarried—of breaking the French power in North America. The commandant of the French fort at Beauséjour was De Vergor, son of Duchambon who surrendered Louisbourg in 1745. He owed his position to Bigot, the notorious Intendant of Canada. By his side, and with as much or more authority, was Le Loutre, the evil genius of Acadia. The French contemplated attack on the English: Lawrence, in communication with Shirley, determined to forestall them. Some two thousand men came up from Massachusetts, enlisted under John Winslow—a name which New Englanders honoured—and, landing at the isthmus early in June, joined the English garrison at Fort Lawrence, the whole force being under Colonel Monckton. In a few days' time the bombardment of the French fort began; but, before there had been any serious fighting, De Vergor surrendered. The garrison marched out with the honours of war, and Fort Beauséjour was renamed Fort Cumberland.

This success was speedily followed by the capitulation of another French fort at Baie Verte, at the northern end of the isthmus, and by the evacuation of a post on the mainland, at the mouth of the river St. John. The whole of Acadia on both sides of the isthmus thus passed into English hands. De Vergor some time afterwards was put on trial at Quebec for his feeble and incapable conduct, but influential friends procured his acquittal; and he remained in Canada to earn further obloquy, as commandant of the French outpost which was surprised by Wolfe in his memorable climb by night up to the Plains of Abraham.⁴ Le Loutre disappeared from the scene of his wickedness in North America. He fled in disguise to Quebec, and, sailing for France, was taken prisoner and spent eight years in captivity in the island of Jersey. He seems to have died in his bed in France—a better fate than he deserved.

⁴ See below.

The victory of the English arms was followed by the removal of the bulk of the Acadian population from Acadia. This policy had been determined upon as the only practicable alternative to unqualified obedience. Such obedience, until it was too late and the die had already been cast, the Acadians refused to give. They would not swear heart-whole allegiance to King George; they had abetted his enemies year after year; many of them had actually borne arms against the English; and with Louisbourg in threatening strength in the immediate neighbourhood, with manifold other difficulties to face—for before the actual expulsion Braddock's defeat and death on the Monongahela river had occurred—it was absolutely necessary for the English authorities to make the Nova Scotian peninsula permanently safe. The time to strike was while there was an adequate force on the spot, and before the Massachusetts contingent returned to Boston.

Sternly and relentlessly Governor Lawrence took his measures; at Beaubassin, at Annapolis, round the shores of the Basin of Mines, where the most pleasing features of Acadian settlement were to be found, the majority of able-bodied men were secured; and, as the transports came up, groups of peasants were carried off to other lands. In the actual work of expulsion, no unnecessary harshness appears to have been used; families were as a rule kept together, and went out hand in hand into exile; but they were taken, an ignorant and bewildered crowd, from the homes of their childhood, and were transported, helpless and hopeless, to distant countries, where there was another religion and another race. The pity of it was that, after forty years of so-called English government, the Acadians never believed that that Government, when it threatened or decreed, would be as good as its word. When therefore the blow came, it stunned a people who had been bred in the belief that much would be said and nothing would be done.

Some 6,000 in all were removed, out of a total population of a little over 9,000. Of these, over 3,000 had had their homes round the Basin of Mines, the majority of whom were dwellers in the village and district of Grand Pré. The others came from the isthmus, or from Annapolis. They were dispersed abroad among the English colonies in North America, from Massachusetts southwards; but the colonies were not all willing to receive them, and from Virginia and South Carolina many were sent on to England. Some, it is said, found their way to Louisiana, while of those who had escaped transportation a certain number took refuge at Quebec. A considerable remnant was left behind in Acadia, and some of the exiles 'wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom';⁵ but those who were left behind in Acadia, and those who returned, were not enough to leaven to any great extent the future history of the peninsula.

⁵ From Longfellow's Evangeline.

What judgment may fairly be passed upon this measure of expulsion? The traditional view has been that the removal of the Acadians from Acadia was an injustice and a crime—an arbitrary and cruel act, parallel on a smaller scale to the earlier expulsion of the Huguenots from France. According to this view the English were oppressors, rooting out and carrying captive a harmless and innocent peasantry—

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of heaven.

Longfellow has given us this picture in Evangeline, and it has been drawn in similar outlines by various hands. In the foreground are bands of terror-stricken peasants, driven on board ship amid mourning and lamentation. In the background are burning homesteads, emptiness where there had been plenty, desolation where yesterday the children played.

A different view is given by later writers who have more closely tested the facts. Their conclusion is that the expulsion of the Acadians, stern and even cruel as it was, was more or less a political necessity; that the Acadians themselves were sinners as well as sinned against; and that they were sinned against more by men of their own race and religion than by the English.

This latter view is probably nearer the truth. There is always, especially in England, a tendency to sympathize unreasonably with the weak against the strong, and, when severe measures are taken, to condemn those measures almost unheard. The Acadians, in their primitive agricultural life, in their farms gathered round the village church, were picturesque objects of sympathy; and, whenever a fine or a punishment is inflicted on a whole district or on a whole community, the innocent no doubt suffer with the guilty. But there are conditions under which no lasting effect can be produced without collective dealing, and the Acadians were not transported beyond the sea until for many years half-measures had been tried, and tried in vain. These farmers had been gently treated under English rule; many of them had been born and brought up under it; a large proportion of their number had requited the treatment by actively abetting or tacitly conniving at the unceasing petty warfare, by which French borderers and Indian savages year after year took English lives and pillaged English homes. Was it unreasonable that, if they would not be loyal subjects in Acadia, they should be moved elsewhere, and that, instead of being sent to increase the hostile population of Canada, they should be dispersed among the British colonies on the North American coast?

It must be remembered that the tale of their sufferings has probably not been minimized. French writers would naturally exaggerate what actually occurred, and American accounts, until recent years, would not be likely to be unduly friendly to England. It must be remembered, too, that half as many as were transported by the English had already been induced or forced by the French to emigrate to their possessions; and we have it on French evidence that those who, when the sentence of expatriation was passed, took refuge in Canada, suffered as much as or more than their compatriots suffered in the English colonies.

It is difficult to blame Colonel Lawrence for the step which he took under the conditions of the time and place. On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that the Acadians fully deserved their doom. The responsibility for the wholesale misery, in which a small community was involved, must be shared between the French Government and its agents on the one hand, notably the priests, and on the other the British Government in earlier years. Had the French been loyal to the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, had they ceased to instil the spirit of disaffection into the minds of men who were no longer their subjects, had they discountenanced instead of encouraging acts of barbarity, had they not made religion a cloak for maliciousness, and used the ministers of religion as political agitators of the worst and most unscrupulous type, Acadia and the Acadians would have prospered under the British Government as Canada and the Canadians prospered in after years. Again if, when Acadia was ceded by the treaty, Great Britain had recognized her responsibilities, had given adequate protection and enforced the law, loyalty and obedience would have brought happiness in its train, and a generation would have grown up not attempting the impossible task of serving two masters. The true verdict of history on the melancholy episode is this. The misery which befell the Acadians was the result of not using force at the right time, and of the evil potency of priestcraft.

Before Acadia had been depopulated, much had happened in the west. Always unready, the English colonies let slip the opportunity of occupying the upper valley of the Ohio, and the French seized the opening which their rivals might have closed. Early in 1753, the Canadian Governor, Duquesne, sent a force of considerable strength under an old and tried officer, Marin, to establish communication between the great lakes and the Ohio, and to hold the route by a chain of forts. Launched upon Lake Erie, Marin and his men held their way past the point where Celeron had landed; and, instead of taking the portage to Chautauqua, disembarked further along the southern shore of the lake at Presque Île, where the town of Erie now stands. Here a fort was built, and a road cut southwards through the woods for about 21 miles to the Rivière aux Boeufs. This stream, now known as French Creek, flows into the Alleghany river, and is navigable for canoes when the water is high. Where the road struck the river a second fort was built, called Fort Le Boeuf. Thus the way was cleared from the lakes to the sources of the Ohio, and either end of the portage was guarded by a blockhouse.

So far the enterprise had succeeded, and success had produced the usual effect upon the wavering Indian mind, inclining the tribes of the Ohio to the side which took the initiative and gave outward and visible signs of strength. But the French were only at the outset of their enterprise. As the year wore on, their ranks were thinned by disease; their commander, Marin, died; and, when winter came, but three hundred men were left to hold the forts on Lake Erie and French Creek. The intention had been to push down the latter river, and, where it joined the Alleghany, to build a third fort. This fort in turn was to be a starting-point for a further advance to the main objective, the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers.

All through early Canadian history, we find the clue to the various movements on either side is studying the waterways. As in the centre of the two conflicting lines of advance, the English moved up the Hudson and the French up the Richelieu, to find their battleground on Lakes George and Champlain, so further to the west, in the region of the Ohio, the Alleghany and its feeders brought the French down from Canada, while the English moved north along the line of the Monongahela and its tributary the Youghiogany. These streams take their rise amid the parallel ranges of the Alleghanies, in that border country of the three States of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, which was the scene of the hardest fighting between North and South in the American Civil War. Near where the Monongahela starts on its northern course to the Ohio, but divided by mountains, is the source of the northern branch of the Potomac, which runs into the Atlantic. This latter river flows at first north-east between two mountain ranges; and, where it turns to the east, cutting its way through the hills, a small stream, known as Wills Creek, joins it from the north. At this point was a station of the Ohio Company, shortly afterwards called Fort Cumberland, after the English duke. This was the base of the British advance; but mountains had to be crossed to reach the Monongahela valley; it was easier to come down from Canada to the Ohio than to march upon it from the Atlantic side.

The Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, in the year 1753, the titular Governor being in England, was Robert Dinwiddie, a cross-grained Scotchman. He had none of the arts of popularity, but none the less was a watchful guardian of his country's interests. Like William Shirley in Massachusetts, he was a determined opponent of French pretensions; but he was less tactful than Shirley in managing a colonial Legislature, and less happily placed, in that the Legislatures of the southern provinces were far behind the New Englanders in public spirit. Hearing of the French advance from Lake Erie, he lost no time in making a counter claim, and sent a messenger to Fort Le Boeuf to warn off foreign trespassers from what he conceived to be the domain of the King of England. The messenger was George Washington, just come to man's estate.

In November, 1753, Washington left Wills Creek. In January, 1754, he returned to Virginia, having in the depth of winter traversed the frost-bound backwoods, and risked his life in crossing the Alleghany river. His journey in either direction took him by the old Indian town of Venango, at the confluence of the French Creek with the Alleghany, where there had been an English trading house: this was now occupied by a French outpost. There could be no doubt that the Governor of Canada intended to be master of the Ohio. Still the British colonies remained apathetic or half-hearted. Virginia voted £10,000; North Carolina gave some money; a handful of troops in Imperial pay was placed at Dinwiddie's disposal; but the money and the men were utterly inadequate to the occasion, and Pennsylvania, the state which, with Virginia, was most concerned, did nothing at all. For Pennsylvania was the home of Quakers and Germans, the former averse to war on principle, the latter indifferent to the conflicting claims of alien races.

The crisis came on apace. In February, 1754, a month after Washington's return, Dinwiddie sent a small detachment over the mountains to build a fort at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany. While the work was in hand, a strong Canadian force came down in April from the north and overpowered the Virginians. A fort was built, but it was a French fort, and became memorable in history under the name of Fort Duquesne. Dinwiddie determined to drive the French back, if possible, from this new position, and he set Washington to the task—impossible to perform with the only available troops, amounting to 300 or 400 men.

From Wills Creek to Fort Duquesne was a distance of 120 to 140 miles, with two ranges of mountains to be crossed, before half the journey was accomplished, and the Monongahela reached. Making a road over the first range, the main range of the Alleghanies, Washington, about the end of May, reached open ground known as the Great Meadows, having still in front of him the Laurel hills, through which the two branches of the Monongahela find their way to the Ohio. A few miles further on, guided by Indian scouts, he surprised an advance party sent out from Fort Duquesne, and killed their commander, Jumonville. Assassination was the term which the French applied to the death of this officer, claiming that he was the peaceful bearer of a summons to the English to retire from the land; but there is no reason to doubt that Washington was justified in using force, and that the Frenchman was killed in fair fight. Returning to his camp, and entrenching it under the suitable name of Fort Necessity, the English commander awaited a counter attack. Small reinforcements reached him, and he pushed on over the Laurel ridge; but, hearing that the French were advancing in force, fell back again to Fort Necessity. Stronger in numbers, the French, from their base at Fort Duquesne, marched forward under Jumonville's brother, Coulon de Villiers; and, after a nine hours' fight, Fort Necessity surrendered; the English, under the terms of the surrender, retreated across the Alleghanies, and the French returned in triumph to Fort Duquesne. For the time, they were beyond dispute masters of the Ohio valley, and the young Virginian, whose name now stands first in the great history of the United States of America, crawled back over the mountains, defeated and undone.

American history is great as a whole, but the back records of its component parts are full of what is mean and contemptible. We are accustomed, in the chronicles of the English race, to trace the errors of its rulers, and to find them put right by the good sense and strong character of the people; but, if we turn to the provincial annals of the American States, when the fate of the continent seemed to be trembling in the balance, the rulers sent out from home must be credited with patriotism and some measure of foresight, while the peoples were or appeared to be selfish and blind. New England alone stands out in a brighter light, ready to sacrifice money and men in the national cause. With the enemy on their borders, the New Englanders knew what the danger was; further south the Alleghany mountains bounded the horizon of the colonists. State Assemblies squabbled with their Governors, each little province was passively indifferent to or actively jealous of its neighbour, all alike were with good reason suspicious of the mother country; while on the other side the fighting strength of Canada, centralized under a despotic Government, one in aim and sympathy, was menacing and dangerous out of all proportion to the resources of the country or the numbers of its people.

Yet some attempt had been made at concerted action on the part of the English colonies. It emanated from the Government at home. In September, 1753, the Lords of Trade wrote round to the Governors of the various North American provinces, directing them to invite their respective Legislatures to adopt a uniform policy towards the Indians. In consequence, a conference was held at Albany, at which seven of the colonies were represented—Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The Commissioners met representatives of the Five Nation Indians, whose hereditary friendship for the English cause was fast turning into hatred and contempt. They pacified the angry Indians to some extent, and renewed the old covenant of friendship, then turned to constitution-making, at the instance of Franklin, one of the Commissioners from Pennsylvania.

Franklin had a scheme for North American union, comprising a President appointed by the Crown, and a general Council elected by the taxpayers of the colonies, the number of representatives of each colony to be determined by the amount of taxes paid. Plenary powers were to be given to the President and Council, including even power to make war and peace. Had the scheme been carried out, North America would have become one great self-governing colony, in some respects more independent, in others more restricted than the self-governing colonies of Great Britain at the present day. Franklin's proposals, though his fellow commissioners were inclined to approve them, pleased neither the colonies nor the mother country. They were premature. The colonies were too jealous of their local liberties to accept the scheme. The mother country still distrusted the colonies, and dreaded the strength which union would bring. Moreover, the immediate necessity was united action, not constitutional change. The French must first be driven back; and with this object Dinwiddie made an earnest appeal to the ministry in England.

The appeal was not made in vain; two regiments of infantry, the 44th and 48th, now the Essex and Northampton regiments, were ordered to embark for Virginia, and sailed from Cork in January, 1755, with Major-General Braddock in command. The French Government, taking alarm, ordered out 3,000 men under Baron Dieskau, a German serving in the French army; and at the beginning of May, 1755, eighteen French ships sailed from Brest carrying to Canada the troops and their commander, and taking out at the same time a new Governor-General, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Most of the vessels reached their destination in safety; but two, the Alcide and Lys, were intercepted by the English Admiral Boscawen, off the coast of Newfoundland, were fired into, and compelled to surrender.⁶ There was still supposed to be peace between Great Britain and France, but the backwoods of America and the waters of the Atlantic echoed to the sounds of war.

⁶ The Alcide was overpowered by the Dunkirk, commanded by the afterwards famous Admiral Lord Howe.

At four points, according to the English plan of campaign Canada was to be threatened and the French advance was to be checked. Braddock, with his two English regiments, was to march on Fort Duquesne. From Albany the second and the third expeditions were to start. One, marching due north, was to master Crown Point on Lake Champlain; the other, taking the route of the Five Nation cantons, and having for its advanced base Oswego on Lake Ontario, was to reduce the French fort at Niagara. The fourth effort was to be made in Acadia. This last enterprise proved successful, as has already been seen, Shirley having previously prepared the way by building a fort on the mainland behind the peninsula, at the portage between the Kennebec and the Chaudière rivers. What fate befell the other expeditions must now be told.

History has been unkind to General Braddock. His name is associated for ever with a great disaster in North America, as the name of Wolfe is linked to a crowning victory. Like Wolfe, Braddock was mortally wounded on the field of battle; he was defeated, and obloquy was heaped on his name. Wolfe triumphed, and all men spoke well of him. The accounts of Braddock are largely derived from the spiteful gossip collected by Horace Walpole, and from the writings of Franklin—never a lover of the mother country, and, after the War of Independence, glad, like others of his countrymen, to throw the blame of an English defeat upon a commander sent out from England. We have a portrait given us of a brutal, blustering, and incompetent soldier, a man of coarse habits and broken fortunes, with little to recommend him but personal honesty and courage. 'Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition,'⁷ writes Horace Walpole. Before the fatal battle the same writer tells us in the same letter, 'the duke (of Cumberland) is much dissatisfied at the slowness of General Braddock, who does not march as if he was at all impatient to be scalped.' After the disaster he writes, 'Braddock's defeat still remains in the situation of the longest battle that ever was fought with nobody.'⁸ The Braddocks of England, with all their failings, have deserved better of their country than the Horace Walpoles.

⁷ Letters of Horace Walpole (Bohn's ed., 1861), vol. ii, p. 459 (Letter of Aug. 25, 1755).

⁸ Ibid. p. 473 (Letter of Sept. 30, 1755).

Born in 1695, the son of an officer in the Coldstream Guards, and an officer of the Guards himself, he was sixty years old when sent out to America by the Duke of Cumberland. He had the reputation of being a very severe disciplinarian, and yet we have Walpole's own admission that while serving at Gibraltar, 'he made himself adored.'⁹ He was criticized by Franklin as being too self-confident, and as having too high an opinion of European as compared with colonial troops; but, on the other hand, the scanty colonial levies which reached him had not shown high fighting qualities, and his care for transport and supplies, together with his anxiety to conciliate and use the Indians on the line of march, were evidence of prudence and military forethought. Burke wrote of him as 'abounding too much in his own sense for the degree of military knowledge he possessed';¹⁰ but probably Wolfe's judgement upon him was sound, that 'though not a master of the difficult art of war, he was yet a man of sense and courage,'¹¹ and we may reasonably infer that the shortcomings of the colonists were unjustly visited on his head.

⁹ Letters of Horace Walpole, p. 461 (Letter of Aug. 28, 1755).

¹⁰ Annual Register, 1758, p. 4.

¹¹ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 324.

Late in February, 1755, the English troops and their commander reached Hampton in Virginia, at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. In due course they were sent up the Potomac to Alexandria, where in April Braddock met the Governors of the various colonies, including Shirley, and settled with them the plan of campaign. He himself prepared to march on Fort Duquesne by the route which Washington had taken, but found endless difficulty in obtaining horses, wagons, and supplies. Virginia and Pennsylvania were still half-hearted, and inclined to think that the danger of French invasion was a scare created in the interests of the Ohio Company. It was not the first time, and not the last, that a real crisis has been interpreted as the work of a designing few. However, a base was established, as before, at Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, and early in June the march began.

The force consisted of about 2,000 men, 1,350 of whom belonged to the two regiments of the line. There were some 250 Virginia rangers, and the rest were detachments from New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas. The troops were formed in two brigades, under Sir Peter Halkett and Colonel Dunbar. Washington, ill with fever, was attached to Braddock's staff, by the General's own request. Steadily and well the advance on Fort Duquesne was made; a road was cleared through forests and over mountains; and every precaution was taken against surprise. But progress was inevitably slow; and, at a distance of forty miles from Fort Cumberland, Braddock, on Washington's advice, resolved to push forward with the larger half of his troops, leaving the remainder with the heavy baggage to follow under charge of Colonel Dunbar. The object was to reach Fort Duquesne before reinforcements could arrive from Canada.

At the end of the first week in July, Braddock was eight miles distant from the French fort, at a point where a little stream, called Turtle Creek, flows into the Monongahela. He was on the same side of the latter river as the fort, which stood on the right bank of the Monongahela, in the angle which it forms with the Alleghany; but the direct route passed through country suitable for ambuscade; and he therefore resolved to make a short détour, crossing the Monongahela, and recrossing it lower down the stream. On July 9, the movement was successfully carried out; no opposition at either ford being offered by the enemy. The troops moved on; and, early in the afternoon, at a little distance from the river, as the line of march crossed a shallow forest-clad ravine, there was a sudden check; a French officer sprang out in front of the advancing column, and forthwith, in a moment, at his signal, the thickets were alive with foes.

The scene which followed was one not uncommon in the story of colonial warfare. The first attack was answered by artillery fire; the French commander, De Beaujeu, was killed, and many of the Canadians fled. But the majority of the enemy, with whom the English had to deal, were Indians, who dispersed on this side and on that, hiding behind trees, and attacking either flank of the column, active and noisy out of all proportion to their numbers. The English vanguard fell back, the supports crowded up, the redcoated soldiers stood in close formation, an easy mark for the invisible foe. They fired at nothing, for nothing could be seen; all around was a hideous din, from every side came bullets dealing death. The men were bewildered, the ammunition began to fail, confusion turned into panic, and, when at length the order for retreat was given, there was a headlong flight.

The survivors rushed across the river, taking with them the General mortally wounded; no stand was made at the first crossing or at the second; and when, in about two days' time, the fugitives reached Dunbar's camp, many miles distant, they found panic prevailing there also. The retreat was continued to Fort Cumberland, stores, guns, and wagons being abandoned; and not many days after Fort Cumberland had been reached, Dunbar marched off with the remains of the regular troops to Philadelphia.

Braddock had shown conspicuous bravery, if not conspicuous judgment, on the battlefield. He was shot through the lungs as the retreat began, and bade his men leave him where he fell. They carried him, however, from the fight; and for four days he lingered, reaching Dunbar's camp, and dying at Great Meadows on July 13. Of 1,460 British and colonial officers and men who took part in the battle, nearly 900 were killed or wounded. Those who escaped, escaped with their lives alone. On the French side the numbers engaged appear not to have exceeded 900, three-fourths of whom were Indians. The English force included over 1,200 regulars; the battle therefore resulted in a crushing defeat of troops of the line by a smaller number of Indians, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen and Canadians, led by French officers.

The disaster was attributed to the incompetence of the General, and the bad quality of the regular troops; it was said that the few Virginians who were present fought well, in contrast to their English comrades; that, knowing bush fighting, and taking cover, they were driven into the open by Braddock, only to be shot down like the rest. These accounts must be taken with reserve; the testimony of Washington and others was prejudiced in favour of the colonial and against the British soldier; Braddock did not live to give his own version of the matter; and the two regular regiments, having been brought up to strength since their arrival in America, included many colonists in their ranks. Yet it must be supposed that, as the column neared its destination unopposed, there was some slackening of precaution, for which the General must be held to blame; while Wolfe set down the defeat to the bad conduct of the infantry, writing in strong terms of the want of military training in the English army, as compared with the armies of the continent.¹²

¹² Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 324.

But, even if the defeat and rout on the Monongahela was due to the shortcomings of the English troops and their commander, we may well ask why troops from the mother country were needed to protect the frontiers of the two strong colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The whole story shows these colonies in the worst possible light. They had ample warning of the importance of securing Fort Duquesne; they allowed it to fall into the hands of the French; they threw on the mother country the onus of recovering it: they hindered Braddock rather than helped him; and, when he failed, they debited him and his men with the whole blame of failure. It was not wonderful that soldiers fresh from England should be stampeded at their first venture in forest warfare, but it was wonderful that the men on the spot should be so utterly indifferent to the calls, both of patriotism and of self-interest, as to contribute to the disaster.

Bad as was the failure, it was a blessing in disguise. The colonies concerned were for a time left to bear their own burdens; French and Indians harried their frontiers; homesteads and villages were burnt; women and children were butchered or carried into captivity. While sleek Quakers and garrulous Assembly men prated of peace and local liberties, the outlying settlements were given over to fire and sword; until the southern colonists began to learn the lesson, which New England had long since learnt, that the first duty of any community is self-defence.

On the Mohawk river, about thirty miles to the north-west of Albany, there lived a nephew of Sir Peter Warren, named William Johnson. He had come out to America in 1738, when he was twenty-three years old, to manage estates which his uncle had bought on the confines of the Five Nation Indians. He lived a semi-savage life, in a house constructed as a fort and named Fort Johnson or Mount Johnson, taking to wife first a German woman, and then an Iroquois. His position among the Indians was not unlike that which the Baron de Castin had held in bygone years on the Penobscot. He knew and understood the natives and their ways, he spoke their language, and his honest dealings contrasted favourably with the rascalities of the border traders. He was a type of man, more common on the French side than on the English, who lived within, not outside, the circle of native life; and, having these versatile attributes, it is almost superfluous to add that he was an Irishman. For the rest, Johnson was a man of force and energy, whose tact and talents were by no means confined to the backwoods. He did good service to his King and country, and was not at all inclined to hide his light under a bushel. His value to the English cause in North America cannot be overestimated. His personal influence among the Mohawks counterbalanced the influence of the Frenchman Joncaire among the Senecas at the other end of the confederacy; and, being appointed Superintendent of, or Commissioner for, Indian affairs, he, and he alone, kept alive the old covenant of friendship between the English and the Five Nation Indians.

When it was decided to send an expedition against Crown Point, Shirley gave him the command, and Braddock confirmed the appointment. He had no military experience, though he was a colonel of militia; but the whole force under him consisted of colonists, preferring to be led by a man who knew the country and its people than by a trained soldier. Preparations were made for raising 6,000 to 7,000 men. Massachusetts, as usual, contributed the largest levy; the other New England colonies and New York sent or promised smaller forces, and some 300 Mohawk Indians joined the expedition, finding that it was commanded by the white man, whom of all others they trusted and loved. The actual numbers engaged, however, did not much exceed 3,000 fighting men. In July they met at Albany and moved up the Hudson, for about forty-five miles, to the 'Carrying Place,' the spot where the portage begins to the waters which run to the St. Lawrence. Here, on the eastern side of the Hudson, a beginning was made of a fort, called for the time Fort Lyman, after Phineas Lyman, second in command of the expedition, but a little later rechristened Fort Edward.

The Hudson river rises in the Adirondack mountains, to the west of Lake George, and flows in a south-easterly direction, until it reaches a point south-west by south of the southern end of the lake. Here for some miles it takes a due easterly course, at right angles to the line of the lake, until, at Sandy Hill, near where Fort Edward was founded, it turns due south, and flows due south into the Atlantic. It appears to prolong to southward the line of Lake George and Lake Champlain; but the watersheds are distinct, the two lakes in question drain to the north, and eventually discharge through the Richelieu river into the St. Lawrence.

They form a long narrow basin running north and south between the Adirondacks on the west and the Green mountains of Vermont on the east. No stream of any size feeds Lake George; it stretches for between thirty and forty miles from south-west to north-east, overshadowed by the Adirondacks; and, narrowing at the northern end, finds an outlet into Lake Champlain by a semicircular channel, which enters the larger lake from west to east. This channel is broken by rapids, and in the angle which it forms with Lake Champlain stands Ticonderoga.

Lake Champlain is here a broad river rather than a lake, having narrowed into the similitude of a river from where, fifteen miles further north, the isthmus of Crown Point juts out on the western side of the lake. But it does not end at Ticonderoga, where it meets the waters of Lake George. It continues southwards in a direct line, very roughly parallel to Lake George, still narrowing in its upward course, through the marshes known as the Drowned Lands, past a little subsidiary lake on the western side known as South Bay, over against which now stands the small town of Whitehall, and ending in a stream known as Wood Creek. The sources of Wood Creek are but a few miles distant from the point, already noted, where the Hudson turns south to form the central valley of New York State, and where Johnson, in the summer of 1755, was busy constructing Fort Lyman.

Johnson's objective was Crown Point; and to reach it he had a choice of two parallel routes, either of which involved a portage from the Hudson watershed to that of Lake Champlain. He could take either the western line by Lake George, or the eastern line by Wood Creek. He chose the former, and making a road for fourteen miles from Fort Lyman to the head—the southern end—of Lake George, encamped there at the end of August with over 2,000 men, leaving 500 men behind to garrison Fort Lyman.

The French in the meantime had not been idle. When Dieskau arrived in Canada with his troops, it was intended that he should operate on Lake Ontario, and reduce the English outpost at Oswego; but, as soon as news came of Johnson's expedition, the plan was changed, and he hurried up the Richelieu with reinforcements to protect Crown Point. By the time that Johnson reached Lake George, there were assembled at Crown Point over 3,500 men—French soldiers, Canadians, and Indians.

The two alternative routes from Fort Lyman to Crown Point converged at Ticonderoga, or, as the French called it, Carillon. Dieskau therefore moved forward to that place, to block the English advance. He had not yet learnt that Johnson was encamped at Lake George, but was under the impression that the advanced guard of the English, instead of the rearguard, was at Fort Lyman. Accordingly, he laid his plans to push rapidly up the southern arm of Lake Champlain, and to take Fort Lyman before reinforcements could arrive; or, if Johnson had already marched to Lake George, to cut the line of his communications. French and English were in fact advancing, or preparing to advance, south and north respectively, on parallel lines.

A flying column of 1,500 men set out from Ticonderoga; the water carried them as far as South Bay, where they left their boats, and marching thence through the forest between Lake George and Wood Creek, they struck the road which Johnson had made from Fort Lyman to the lake, at a point three miles from the fort, eleven from the lake. They had thus intercepted Johnson's communications and cut him off from his base of supplies. From prisoners Dieskau learnt the disposition of Johnson's forces, and he took counsel whether to attack the fort or the encampment by the lake. Capture of the fort had been the original object of the march; but in deference to the Indians, who little loved assault on fortified positions, it was decided to take the second alternative and advance on the lake.

Meanwhile, warned of what had happened, Johnson prepared a counter-stroke. What Dieskau had done, he could do also; if the Frenchman had cut his communications, he in his turn could intercept Dieskau's line of retreat; and, with this object, on the morning of the eighth of September, a force of 1,000 men was sent out from the camp to strike the French in the rear. The whole formed a pretty picture of backwood manoeuvres; but, like the Boers in South Africa, the Canadians proved themselves more mobile than the English, and more skilful in ambuscade. At three miles distance from the camp, after an hour's march, the English fell into a carefully-laid trap. On the road in front were the French regulars; in the forest on either flank Canadians and Indians lay in wait for their prey. Advancing without due precaution, though they had a band of Mohawks with them, the English were completely surprised; the head of the column was driven in on the rear, the whole force became (in Dieskau's words) like a pack of cards, and fell back with heavy loss in rout to the camp, the retreat being partially covered by a detachment sent out by Johnson on hearing of the engagement.

At the camp hasty preparations were made for defence, behind wagons and fallen trees, and in a short time the enemy appeared. The French regulars attacked boldly and well, but the Canadians and Indians were out of hand, the commander of the Canadians, Legardeur de Saint Pierre, having already been killed. For three or four hours there was furious firing; but the English had artillery, the French had not, and this advantage, coupled with the lines of defence, decided the issue. Dieskau was disabled by a wound; the attack slackened; at length the defenders left their entrenchments and charged their foes, and late in the afternoon the whole French force was routed and fled, leaving their wounded General in the hands of the enemy. Some of the Canadians and Indians had already fallen back to the scene of the morning's fight, intent on scalps and plunder. Here a scouting party from Fort Lyman fell upon them, and, after a hard struggle, drove them into further retreat.

Both sides lost heavily, but the balance of the day's fighting was unquestionably in favour of the English. On the French side the regulars showed to more advantage than their colonial and Indian allies, and Dieskau deserved a better fate than wounds and captivity. While lying wounded, we read, he was again shot by a French deserter, and, when he was brought into the English camp, the Mohawks, whose chief had been killed, threatened his life. Johnson, however, who had himself been wounded, took every care of his prisoner; in due course he was sent over to England; and eventually, disabled for further service, he returned to France, where he died in 1767.

The most was made of this repulse of the French. It came as a set-off to the defeat of Braddock. Johnson was made a baronet and received £5,000. The Lac du Sacrement he had already renamed Lake George, the encampment at the head of the lake blossomed out into Fort William Henry, and another of the King's sons provided the name of Fort Edward for the fort at the Carrying Place. Yet the object of the expedition was not achieved; no attempt was made at a further advance; the French were unmolested in their retreat, and retained their hold on Crown Point and Ticonderoga also. Johnson remained encamped by the lake, with a force raised to a total of 3,600 men, until November was drawing to a close, when, a garrison being left to hold Fort William Henry through the winter, the rest of the army disbanded to their homes.

While Johnson was moving north from Albany to attack Crown Point, William Shirley went west, with the intention of reducing the French fort at Niagara and cutting off Canada from the upper lakes. He started from Albany in July with some 1,500 men, mainly colonial troops in Imperial pay, and took his way along the line of the Five Nation cantons. He moved up the Mohawk river, past Schenectady and past Johnson's home, made the portage from the Mohawk to the stream called, like the feeder of Lake Champlain, Wood or Wood's Creek, which runs into Lake Oneida, and by the outlet of that lake, now the Oswego river, to Lake Ontario.

Where the river joined Lake Ontario stood the small English fort of Oswego, founded in 1727, and regarded with the utmost jealousy by the French.¹³ The French fort at Niagara was 130 to 140 miles to the west of Oswego, while due north of the latter place, at a distance of over fifty miles across Lake Ontario, was Fort Frontenac. The garrisons of both the French forts had been reinforced on hearing of Shirley's advance, and an attack on Fort Niagara involved the danger of a counter attack on Oswego from Fort Frontenac. On the other hand, Fort Frontenac was fully strong enough to repel any direct attempt to take it. The English, moreover, experienced great difficulty in collecting provisions or an adequate fleet of boats, and after some weeks' delay it was resolved to abandon the expedition. Before October ended, Shirley returned to Albany by the way he went, leaving 700 men to garrison Oswego and strengthen its defences, communications with Albany being maintained by two blockhouses which had been built at either end of the four miles' portage between the Mohawk river and Wood Creek—Fort Williams on the Mohawk river, where the town of Rome now stands, and Fort Bull on Wood Creek.

¹³ See above.

Thus the campaigning of the busy year 1755 came to an end. The main forces on either side disbanded, or went into garrison for the winter; Washington and a few hundred Virginians tried to safeguard the harried frontiers of the southern colonies; Robert Rogers, boldest of New England rangers, went scouting up the line of Lake George. The forts stood isolated in the wintry backwoods, waiting for the stirring times which were coming on forthwith.

Neither French nor English had much cause to boast of the results of the year's fighting. On either side a General had been sent out from Europe; the English General had been killed, the French General had been wounded and taken prisoner. But, on the whole, the French had undoubtedly gained and the English had lost. The English had taken the offensive, they had planned attack all along the line, and in the main their schemes had conspicuously failed. Only in the extreme east had they achieved substantial success. Acadia had been permanently secured, if there could be security as long as the fortress of Louisbourg remained in French hands. In the extreme west they had been badly beaten, and the French had acquired full control of the Ohio valley. On Lake Ontario they had done nothing at all. On the main central line of advance they had set out to take Crown Point, and had to be content with repelling a counter attack by the French. The more New England had been concerned in the war, the better the English had fared; the further west or south they operated, the greater was their want of success.

The most striking feature to notice in the events of the year is the effect of distance, when not counteracted by steam and telegraphy. It will be noted how far removed in every sense was America from Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century, and how far removed in every sense were the American colonies from one another. Here was fighting going on at all points on the border line of French and English America, and yet France and England were nominally at peace. New England was raising her levies with patriotism and spirit, meeting a common foe with common feeling, and, it may be added, with common sense. New York and Virginia could, on the other hand, scarcely be prevailed upon to move; while Pennsylvania was as indifferent as though the fighting had been on another continent. We may and must put down much to political causes, to social and religious prejudices; and Canada proved that, even in the eighteenth century, long distances did not necessarily preclude concerted action; but, where settlement had begun and continued for generations at widely different points on the American continent, and on absolutely separate and independent lines, war and peace were alike localized, and there was little or no cohesion between the colonies and the mother country, or between one colony and another. The history of the English North American colonies had been the history not of one but of many communities. No uniform system held them together, no sentiment of the distant past was strong enough to counteract geography. Only, as colonization spread in the long course of years, the dwellers in one province came into contact with the dwellers in another, and both the one and the other came face to face with the French advance. Then the pressure of common danger made for union, and the race instinct gathered strength. The mother country sent out soldiers; colonists were enlisted in royal regiments to supplement the provincial militias; and in clumsy, most imperfect fashion, the English in North America began to shape themselves into a nation.

One keen English observer, at any rate—General Wolfe—saw at once the present defects of the English colonies in North America, and the great future which lay before them. 'These colonies,' he wrote in 1758, 'are deeply tinged with the vices and bad qualities of the mother country.' But he added, 'This will, some time hence, be a vast empire, the seat of power and learning. Nature has refused them nothing, and there will grow a people out of our little spot, England, that will fill this vast space, and divide this great portion of the globe with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the other half.'¹⁴

¹⁴ Wolfe to his mother, Louisbourg, Aug. 11, 1758 (Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 454).

NOTE.—For the above see

    KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vol. iii, and
    PARKMAN'S Montcalm and Wolfe.

The period dealt with in this and the two succeeding chapters is covered by

    A. G. BRADLEY'S recent work, The Fight with France for North America (1900).

CHAPTER IX

In May, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France. In June, France declared war against Great Britain. The war between these two nations formed part of the Seven Years' War, one of the most widely extended and, in its results, one of the most decisive in history. In the first number of the Annual Register, for the year 1758,¹ Edmund Burke wrote: 'The war, into which all parties and interests seem now to be so perfectly blended, arose from causes which originally had not the least connexion, the uncertain limits of the English and French territories in America, and the mutual claims of the houses of Austria and Brandenburg on the Duchy of Silesia.' After three years of the war, in September, 1759, Horace Walpole wrote in his laughing style, 'I believe the world will come to be fought for somewhere between the north of Germany and the back of Canada.'²

¹ p. 2.

² Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 249 (Letter of Sept. 13, 1759).

On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia, and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better peopled with white colonists than Canada.

Nor was want of numbers the only disadvantage under which Canada laboured. The currency, principally paper money, was depreciated. Provisions were scarce, seeing that the farmers were constantly called away to fight, and that supplies from beyond the sea were liable to be intercepted. The government was corrupt, and the high officials cheated the King on the one hand and the habitans on the other with the greatest impartiality. Canadian history, all through its course, as long as Canada was a province of France, was tainted by official corruption. The officials were traders also, and the public service was largely in the hands of commercial rings. What happened in the mother country happened also in her greatest colony. One official's wife became another official's mistress, and the husband who gave up the wife was rewarded with pickings at the expense of the public and of the Crown. The evil was at its worst in the last days of New France. The Intendant was then Bigot, a clever Frenchman who had come out in 1748, and round him gathered a gang of unscrupulous adventurers, whose misdeeds were fully brought to light after the crisis was over and the colony was lost. Among them were Cadet, butcher and contractor, who was made Commissary-General; Péan, Varin, and others, who, one at Quebec and another at Montreal, formed stores and created monopolies, buying and selling at artificial prices, sucking the life-blood of an extravagant Government in France and of a poor community in America.

In past years, supreme authority in Canada had been shared between the Governor and the Intendant, and quarrels in abundance had arisen between the holders of the two offices; but, at the time when the Seven Years' War began, the Governor and the Intendant were at one. The Intendant Bigot, and the Governor De Vaudreuil, were on excellent terms. Vaudreuil, son of a previous Governor-General of Canada, received his appointment in 1755, having already been Governor of Louisiana. He was a vain man, of some but not great capacity, called to high office in a difficult time, and not equal to the task which was imposed upon him. Surrounded by cleverer and more unscrupulous men of Bigot's type, he did nothing to check the evils which were ruining Canada.

The principal point to note about him is that he was a Canadian by birth. This fact was the source of mischief. In lieu of the old feud between the Governor and the Intendant, there came into being a new line of cleavage, which tended to divide the mother country from the colony. The Governor had always been supreme in military matters; but, when war in North America grew to be more than a series of border forays, it became necessary to send out skilled generals from France. Dieskau was sent, and after him came a greater man, Montcalm. Friction then arose between the Governor and the General, accentuated in consequence of the Governor being a Canadian. All the Governors of Canada, including Vaudreuil, had seen service, or had at any rate been trained to war, but they were usually either sailors or connected with the forces which were attached to the navy and under the Minister of Marine. On both the English and the French side in North America there were, at the time of the Seven Years' War, three classes of troops engaged. On the English side there were the regular regiments sent out from home, and brought up to strength by recruiting in the colonies. There were also regiments entirely raised in the colonies, but still royal regiments in the pay of the Crown, such for instance as the four battalions of Royal Americans, first raised by Loudoun's orders, and famous in after times as the 60th or the King's Royal Rifle Corps.³ Lastly, there were the purely colonial levies. On the French side there were in the first place regiments of the line from France. In the second place there were the troupes de la Marine, regiments or companies mainly raised in France, but permanently stationed in Canada, to form a standing garrison and to develop into military colonists. In the third place there was the Canadian militia, including all the adult males between the years of fifteen and sixty. Only the first of these three classes of troops was under the direct command of the General from France. After Montcalm's arrival they numbered rather over 4,000 men, about one-fourth of whom were in garrison at Louisbourg. The troupes de la Marine amounted at most to about 2,500 men. The Canadian militia on paper numbered 15,000, but very few of them were to be found in the field at any given time or place. The General corresponded with the Minister for War; when in action he took command of all the forces present, but the nominal Commander-in-Chief was the Governor, who was by way of directing the campaign, and who reported to the Minister of Marine. Thus, both at home and in Canada, there was divided responsibility at a time when all depended on the most complete co-operation and single control.

³ They were originally the 62nd or Royal American Regiment of foot. The men were chiefly German and Swiss Protestants, and about one-third of the officers were of the same nationalities. On the disbanding of Shirley's and Pepperell's Regiments, which were numbered 50th and 51st, the Royal Americans became the 60th Regiment. Their motto, 'Celer et audax,' is said, without much authority, to have been first given them by Wolfe.

The strength of Canada, on the other hand, consisted in the divisions of her adversaries, the separate grumbling English colonies; in the incompetence of the English Government at home; in the fact that the routes for attack from Canada favoured quick movement from the base; and most of all in the support which the Frenchmen received from the red men, notably from the mission Indians. The Indians went hand in hand with the Canadians; the one and the other loved irregular warfare; the one and the other answered to the call of the Governor of Canada, rather than of the General who looked on war as he had known it in Europe—more scientific, more continuous, better controlled, and more humane than the savage outbursts of killing and plundering which were the product of American backwoods.

As winter turned into spring, in 1756, before war had been proclaimed in Europe, and before Montcalm had come out, the Canadians made a move. The most distant and isolated English outpost was Oswego on Lake Ontario. Its communication with Albany depended on the two little forts which, as told in the last chapter,⁴ had been constructed to guard the four miles' portage between the Mohawk river and Wood Creek, the stream which feeds Lake Oneida. Towards the end of March, a party of Canadians and Indians, sent by Vaudreuil and commanded by an officer named De Léry, surprised the fort on the latter river, Fort Bull, killed or captured the small garrison, and destroyed the building with all its contents. The damage was repaired by Shirley, in whose eyes Oswego was of supreme importance, and who, in the winter of 1755, had formulated new schemes for a comprehensive campaign against Canada, including as before the reduction of the French forts on Lake Ontario.

⁴ See above.

If this last object was to be achieved, it was absolutely necessary that Oswego should be made so strong in men and munitions, as not merely to hold its own, but to dominate the rival forts at Frontenac, Toronto, and Niagara. These conditions were very far from being fulfilled, and Shirley can hardly be acquitted of blame in the matter. The garrison of Oswego was weakened by winter sickness, the fortifications were hopelessly incomplete, the supplies were scanty and uncertain. The French raid in March was followed by a strengthening of the French positions on Lake Ontario, and Coulon de Villiers, a well-known Canadian leader, took up new ground at Sandy Creek to eastward of, and at no great distance from, the English fort. From Albany, early in the summer, Shirley sent up supplies to Oswego in charge of a strong body of colonists under Colonel John Bradstreet, a New Englander who did other good service later in the war. Bradstreet reached his destination in safety, but on his return up the Oswego river, at the beginning of July, was attacked by Villiers, whom he beat off after heavy fighting and considerable loss on either side.

Vaudreuil was as determined to drive the English from Lake Ontario, as Shirley was to secure for his countrymen control over the navigation of the lake; and at the time that Bradstreet's fight took place, Montcalm had already been some weeks in Canada. The French knew from the reports of their scouts the weakness of Oswego, they knew too that the English were concentrating in another direction for an attack on Ticonderoga: an advance in force on Oswego was likely to succeed: if not successful, it would at least draw off some of the English troops from the main campaign. Accordingly, an expedition was taken in hand, commanded by Montcalm in person.

In July, Montcalm was at Ticonderoga. Returning rapidly to Montreal, he pushed up the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac; and early in August, moving his troops by night, crossed Lake Ontario, at the outlet of the St. Lawrence, passing to Wolfe Island, and thence to Sackett's Harbour in the south-eastern corner of the lake. Here a force of Canadians, including the remains of Villiers' troops, was awaiting him; and he advanced with about 3,000 men, including three regiments of the line, and an adequate supply of artillery, some of the guns having been taken from General Braddock's force. Undiscovered by the English, the expedition moved westward, the main body coasting the shore, the Canadians marching on land, until at night time, on August 10, they took up a position at little more than a mile's distance from Oswego.

There were at this time, in consequence of Shirley's efforts, three forts at Oswego or Chouaguen, as the French called it. The old fort and trading house stood on the western bank of the Onondaga or Oswego river, where it enters the lake. On the same side of the river, about 600 yards to the westward, was a 'small unfinished redoubt, badly enough entrenched with earth on two sides.'⁵ It was called a fort, and pompously named Fort George, but, as a matter of fact, it was used as, and was little better than, a cattle-pen. On the eastern side of the river, over against the old fort, at a distance of 470 yards, was a newly-built, square-shaped blockhouse, known as Fort Ontario. It was built wholly of timber; and, while strong enough to resist such firearms as Indians could bring, it was of no avail against artillery.

⁵ See 'Papers relating to Oswego,' in O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. i, pp. 488-503.

The French prepared to bombard this eastern fort, but, before their trenches were complete, it was evacuated, and the garrison was withdrawn across the river. The abandonment was inevitable, but it sealed the fate of the main fort, which, for protection on the lake and river side, depended on Fort Ontario. One day's fighting saw the conclusion of the matter. The French brought their guns into position by the side of the abandoned fort; and, firing across the river, riddled Fort Oswego. At the same time, Canadians and Indians forded the river higher up, and attacked on the southern side. The English commander, Colonel Mercer, was killed: the troops, consisting mainly of convalescents and recruits, were not in condition for a stubborn defence; women and children found no shelter from the enemy's fire; the position was hopeless, and the garrison surrendered. The prisoners, who were carried off, numbered about 1,600; guns, boats, and supplies fell into the hands of the French, the forts were burnt to the ground, and every vestige of British occupation was for the time obliterated.

The news of the fall of Oswego, after so many years of British occupation, caused consternation in England. Colonel Daniel Webb, who at the time was bringing up reinforcements along the line of the Mohawk and Wood Creek rivers, beat a hurried and discreditable retreat, burning the forts at the Carrying Place⁶ and blocking the waterway with fallen timber. In England the blow followed on that of the capture of Minorca, for which Byng was made a scapegoat. 'Minorca is gone, Oswego gone, the nation is in a ferment,' wrote Horace Walpole; and again, 'Oswego, of ten times more importance even than Minorca, is so annihilated that we cannot learn the particulars.'⁷ It was in truth a great success for France, the result of a plan boldly conceived and brilliantly executed. The garrison had been taken completely by surprise; in four days from the date when Montcalm landed within reach of the forts, he had achieved his object, and left the English no foothold on Lake Ontario. The defeat of Braddock had given to France command of the Ohio; the fall of Oswego gave her undisputed mastery of the lakes. All the west, and all the ways to the west, were now in her hands, and her forces could be concentrated on the central line of advance to the south up Lake Champlain. There already some way had been made, for, in addition to holding Crown Point, the French were now firmly planted at Ticonderoga.

⁶ Fort Williams was rebuilt in 1758, and named Fort Stanwix. See below.

⁷ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, pp. 41, 42 (Letter of Nov. 4, 1756).

Great as were the immediate material results of Montcalm's success, the indirect moral advantage which the French derived from it was greater still. Oswego, Burke reminds us in the Annual Register for 1758,⁸ was 'designed to cover the country of the Five Nations, to secure the Indian trade, to interrupt the communication between the French northern and southern establishments, and to open a way to our arms to attack the forts of Frontenac and Niagara.' A few pages later, he describes the effect of the disaster in the following words: 'Since Oswego had been taken, the French remained entirely masters of all the lakes, and we could do nothing to obstruct their collecting the Indians from all parts, and obliging them to act in their favour. But our apprehensions (or what shall they be called?) did more in favour of the French than their conquests. Not satisfied with the loss of that important fortress, we ourselves abandoned to the mercy of the enemy all the country of the Five Nations, the only body of Indians who preserved even the appearance of friendship to us. The forts we had at the Great Carrying Place were demolished, Wood Creek was industriously stopped up and filled with logs, by which it became evident to all those who knew that country that our communication with our allied Indians was totally cut off, and, what was worse, our whole frontier left perfectly uncovered to the irruption of the enemy's savages.'

⁸ pp. 13, 29.

The effect of what had happened on the minds of the Five Nation Indians was disastrous. Oswego had covered their cantons, it had been the entrepôt of trade between them and the west. They saw it swept away with little or no resistance. They saw Webb hurry back towards Albany, only anxious, as it seemed, to quit the country unmolested. Hesitating constantly between the French and English alliance, they had now every reason to prefer the former; and, had it not been for Johnson's influence with the Mohawks, the Iroquois would, for the time at any rate, have abandoned the English cause in disgust and contempt.⁹

⁹ Sir William Johnson, writing to the Lords of Trade on Sept. 10, 1756, says: 'Oswego in our hands, fortified and secured by us, and our having a navigation on Lake Ontario, was not only a curb to the power of the French that way, but esteemed by the Six Nations, whenever they joined our arms, as a secure cover to them and their habitations against the resentment of the French.' Later in the same letter he speaks of the fort as 'the barrier of the Six Nations,' and says that, in consequence of its capture, 'the spirit they had recently shown in our favour was sunk and overawed by the success of the French' (O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. ii, pp. 733, 734).

Moreover, the achievement differed in kind from the ordinary Canadian raid. Troops had been moved, artillery brought up, transport organized in rapid, skilful fashion, which betokened leadership of no ordinary kind; the new General from France had at once made himself felt, and friend and foe alike recognized that Canada was being defended and the English colonies attacked by a soldier of high order in the Marquis de Montcalm.

Few characters in colonial history are so interesting and attractive as that of Montcalm. Interest attaches to him not only on account of his own personality, but also because he illustrates the better side of the soldier-aristocrats of France. Born in 1712, near Nîmes in the south of France, he came out in middle life to North America, having seen hard fighting in various parts of the continent, and owing the Canadian command to his own merits, not to Court influence. He was the head of his family, owner of the ancestral estate, straitened in means, and with ten children to provide for; loving his home, loving his mother, his wife and children, following arms as his profession for honour and for a livelihood. He was well educated, and in every sense a gentleman of France, with a quick, impetuous Southern spirit, but the heart of an affectionate and chivalrous man. His coming lifted the war on the Canadian side to a higher plane; he used the savage tools which he found to hand, but he did not love them,¹⁰ nor did he love the corruption and chicanery which made the Government of New France a squalid reproduction of the Government at home. A great man—Champlain—brought New France to birth; her end was ennobled by the death of Montcalm. Of his military talent it would be difficult even for an expert to judge, for it must always be a matter of doubt how far Montcalm, like Wolfe, may have been 'felix opportunitate mortis.' Neither the one nor the other was tried in the command of big battalions on European battlefields; but in quick aggressive movement, such as resulted in the capture of Oswego, as well as in the patient defensive tactics which he displayed at Quebec, Montcalm proved himself to be a skilful commander.

¹⁰ This is contrary to what Wolfe wrote, when before Louisbourg, to Amherst. 'Montcalm has changed the very nature of war, and has forced us, in some measure, to a deterring and dreadful vengeance' (Wright's Life of Wolfe, pp. 440, 441). But none the less it was the case that, with Montcalm's arrival, war on the French side became what it never had been before, something more than a series of semi-savage raids.

He was ably supported by his second in command, De Levis, who lived to be a duke and a marshal of France, and a third good officer, Bourlamaque, came out at the same time. Montcalm's own aide de camp was De Bougainville, more famed in after years on sea than land. His name stands first in the list of French navigators; he was the rival and contemporary of Captain Cook. Good leaders France sent out to America in the spring of 1756, but she sent few troops with them. The campaign on the continent absorbed her strength, and New France was lost in consequence.

Montcalm and his officers arrived in May; in June and July three English commanders appeared on the scene—Colonel Daniel Webb, General Abercromby, and Lord Loudoun. Of these three, Webb in a subordinate command and Loudoun as Commander-in-Chief were failures. Abercromby, possibly the best of the three, was not a success; he was in Wolfe's opinion 'a heavy man.'¹¹ The trio were a type of the soldiers that the English Government chose, while England, to quote the Prussian King Frederick's words, was in labour, and before she brought forth a man. While sending out inadequate officers from home, the Government recalled William Shirley, who, whatever his faults may have been, embodied more than any one man in America enterprising and heart-whole resistance to the national foe. He left on the arrival of Loudoun, having to the last used all his influence to prepare manfully for the coming campaign. Thus the summer of 1756 found the two sides ill matched in point of commanders; if the chances of war were at all even, the forces led by Montcalm could not fail to outwit and surprise the troops which were guided by the slow-moving Scotch laird, the Earl of Loudoun.¹²

¹¹ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 451.

¹² John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun, had served in the Highland campaign of 1745. In America he appears to have shown himself wanting in quickness, in tact, and in strategical ability. Franklin accused him of indecision. The colonial saying about him was that he was like the sign of St. George over an inn, always on horseback but never moving on. There is a pleasant notice of him in Boswell's Life of Johnson, when Boswell and Johnson dined at his house on the tour to the Hebrides.

Yet the English had some useful men among them, though not in the first rank. William Johnson has already been noticed. John Winslow, who had adequately commanded the New England contingent in Acadia, was now in charge of the provincial troops at Fort William Henry, near Johnson's old camping-ground at the southern end of Lake George. In the same force was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire, whose name is still borne by a cliff on Lake George, known as 'Rogers' Rock.' Rogers raised and commanded companies of New England scouts, known as the Rangers, which were multiplied as the war went on, and as the value of the men and their leader became more apparent. His journal is a model of clear, concise military writing, recounting in straightforward fashion feats of extraordinary daring and hardihood. As Johnson in his mastery over the Indians rivalled and perhaps excelled the French, so no Canadian partizan understood border warfare better than Robert Rogers. We read that on one occasion, when he had been reported as killed and the report proved false, the Indians in the French interest, who had been committing atrocities, repented from fear when they learnt that Rogers was still alive, and blamed the French for encouraging them, as they said, to do the actions for which vengeance awaited them. It was something to have on the English side men who, in the Canadian style of fighting, were as good as or better than the Canadians themselves; and, in the absence of competent generals, fighting backwoodsmen, like Robert Rogers, at least served to remind Canada that the English colonies had a nasty sting.

The programme for 1756—Shirley's programme—had included an advance to and from Oswego, and an advance from Fort William Henry against Ticonderoga. When Loudoun arrived, he countermanded the first movement, though he subsequently sent Webb too late up the Mohawk river in order to reinforce Oswego. Montcalm's swift action then disconcerted all English plans, Oswego was lost, the forward move down Lake George was countermanded, and the summer ended with nothing for the English to record but one crushing defeat.

In November, the main body of the troops on either side went back into winter quarters, and Fort William Henry was left in charge of a small garrison of between 400 and 500 men, belonging to the 44th Regiment and the Rangers, commanded by Major Eyre. In the early spring of 1757, an attempt was made to surprise them by an expedition sent up from Montreal under the command of Rigaud de Vaudreuil, brother of the Governor of Canada. The attacking force started towards the end of February, and on March 19 appeared before the fort. The next day they offered terms of surrender, which were refused; and, after vainly attempting to reduce the fort till the twenty-fourth, they retreated down Lake George, having burnt some boats and outbuildings, but otherwise inflicted little loss.

The spring came on, and the early summer, and Loudoun matured a plan, which he had formed for attacking Louisbourg in force, as a preliminary to a further attack on Quebec. His plan was accepted in London, and the Government determined to send out a strong fleet to co-operate with him, the rendezvous to be the harbour of Halifax. Like previous schemes of the same kind, the enterprise failed through untoward delays. The fleet under Admiral Holborne, consisting of fifteen ships of the line, and conveying transports with from 5,000 to 6,000 men on board, did not sail till May 5, and did not reach Halifax till early in July. Loudoun, meanwhile, had drawn off the bulk of his troops, including Rogers and his Rangers, from the New York frontier; and, after vainly waiting at New York for news of the English Admiral, set sail for Halifax on June 20, reaching his destination on the last day of that month.

The combined forces were nearly 12,000 strong, but the time for attack had gone by. Hearing of the English preparations, the French Government had sent a fleet at least as strong as Holborne's across the Atlantic, under Admiral La Motte; and the English commanders learnt that Louisbourg was being defended by ships as numerous as their own, and by a garrison in which the troops of the line alone were said to number 6,000 men. The enterprise was accordingly abandoned. In the middle of August Loudoun re-embarked the majority of his troops for New York. Holborne twice reconnoitred Louisbourg in the hope of bringing on a sea-fight. The second time, in the middle of September, a storm shattered his vessels, and the whole expedition utterly collapsed.¹³ 'It is time,' wrote Horace Walpole¹⁴ in despondent terms, 'for England to slip her own cables and float away into some unknown ocean.' On his way back to New York, Loudoun was met with bad news—that Fort William Henry had fallen.

¹³ While Loudoun's troops were waiting at Halifax, he employed them in raising vegetables. In consequence, Lord Charles Hay, who was third in command, charged him with expending the nation's wealth 'in making sham fights and planting cabbages.' Lord Charles Hay was sent back to England, and a court-martial was held upon him, but the incident served to bring ridicule on the expedition.

¹⁴ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 103 (Letter of Sept. 3, 1757, written before the final break-up of the fleet).

When he started for Louisbourg, he left Webb in command of the small forces which remained to cover the New York frontier. He seems to have thought that the troops were sufficient not only to hold the French in check, but also to threaten Ticonderoga. Montcalm, on the other hand, saw his opportunity and determined, while he had superior numbers, to strike a blow which should rival his former achievement at Oswego. Throughout July the French troops concentrated at Ticonderoga, provisions were brought up, and a road was made past the rapids, by which Lake George discharges into Lake Champlain. A number of Indians were gathered from all quarters to join in the expedition, mission Indians taught to kill the heretic English, and savages from the wild and barbarous west. Scouting parties went forth, some along Lake George, others up the parallel southern arm of Lake Champlain; and, with Robert Rogers far away in Nova Scotia, they did much damage, on one occasion killing or taking prisoners two out of three hundred New Englanders. At the end of the month the main advance began.

Fort William Henry was about thirty miles distant from the French lines. It was a strong square fort, built near the southern edge of Lake George, a little to the west of the spot where Sir William Johnson two years before had formed his camp. The road from the fort to Fort Edward ran for a short distance due east, skirting the shore of the lake, and then turned inland to the south and south-east. On rising ground to the east of the road, beyond the point where it took the southward turn, the English had an entrenched camp, separated from the fort by swampy ground. After the attack on the fort in the preceding spring, Major Eyre and his troops had been replaced by others under the command of Colonel Monro, the main body consisting of 600 men of the 35th, now the Sussex Regiment. When news came that the French were on the point of advancing, Webb sent up 1,000 colonial troops from Fort Edward; and, when the attack began, Monro had with him about 2,400 men, while Webb, who had only 1,600 men left at Fort Edward, sent urgent messages to New York for reinforcements.

On July 30, Levis moved forward with the French vanguard, marching along the western shore of Lake George; the main body of troops under Montcalm followed in boats on August 1, the whole force amounting to between 7,000 and 8,000 men. Two detachments, one commanded by La Corne, the other by Levis, marched round the fort, and took up positions on its southern side, to cut off communication with Webb; La Corne occupied the road to Fort Edward, while Levis encamped a little further to the west. Montcalm landed his big guns at a little inlet, still called Artillery Cove, about half a mile in a direct line from the fort, and, after a summons to surrender on August 3, began his trenches on the night of the fourth.

A far better defence was made than at Oswego. For four days the garrison held out bravely, hoping for relief from the south. Their guns were heard at Fort Edward; the urgency of their case was known; but Webb, though some 2,000 militia had reached him, felt himself too weak to make any advance. At length the situation became hopeless, and on August 9 Monro surrendered. The terms of capitulation were that the garrison should be escorted to Fort Edward, on condition that they would not serve again for eighteen months, and that all French prisoners taken in the war should be restored. The fort with all that it contained was handed over to the French. The surrender included the entrenched camp as well as the fort: the fort was evacuated; and the whole garrison, with the exception of a few sick and wounded, were gathered into the camp, retaining their arms, but without ammunition.

Before night fell, the French Indians plundered the fort, and butchered some of the sick. Early on the following morning, the English troops began their march to Fort Edward; the Indians broke in among them, seizing and stripping men, women, and children; and, at a signal given by the Christian Abenakis from the Penobscot—Indians who had known the teaching and training of men like Le Loutre—a wholesale massacre began. Montcalm and his officers, however, used every effort to protect the English, with the result that not more than fifty were murdered, and 600 carried off, 400 of whom were promptly recovered; and the broken band of fugitives in due course found their way to Fort Edward.

This was the episode well known in colonial annals as the massacre of Fort William Henry, told of in history and in romance.¹⁵ The horrors have no doubt been exaggerated, if, as appears to have been the case, the death-roll did not exceed the number given above. Still it was a horrible incident, and brought righteous discredit on the French cause. Though Montcalm, when the mischief had begun, acted with promptitude and vigour, it was well within his power to have prevented the possibility of any such outrage. His Indians numbered but 1,800, and he had 3,000 regular troops from France to hold them in check. The Canadian militia, too, numbered 2,500 men; but probably the seed of the evil lay in the disinclination of the colonial French and their officers to interfere with their Indian allies. It had become the tradition in Canada to live down to the Indians in matters of war, to attach them and to hold them by humouring their savage instincts; and it may well be believed that, if Canadian soldiers or Canadian officers were concerned in seeing the terms of capitulation carried out, they would prefer injuring the English to offending the Indians. Three years later, in the advance on Montreal, we read of Sir William Johnson, under Amherst's orders, strongly repressing the Iroquois' lust for French blood, and Amherst reporting that not a peasant woman or child had been hurt, nor a house burnt, since he entered the enemy's country. Better control of the savages in their employ gave the English fewer friends among them, but in the end it was one, and not the least, of the causes of their gaining the supremacy in North America.

¹⁵ e.g. in Fennimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans.

It was disputed at the time, and is still matter of dispute, whether Webb from Fort Edward might have saved the fort by the lake. The view generally taken of his conduct was probably coloured by the memory of his frightened retreat down the Mohawk river in the preceding year. He could muster but 4,000 men all told; and, had he advanced and met with disaster, no force would have been left to keep Montcalm from marching on Albany, and possibly on New York itself. He risked nothing, and possibly he was wise; but the catastrophe which happened within his reach was in part, rightly or wrongly, debited to his account, and the feeling deepened in England and in America that on the English side leaders of men were sadly wanting.

One more success was scored by the French before the winter came on. In October, Vaudreuil sent out from Montreal a raiding party of the old type, consisting of about 300 Canadians and Indians under an officer named Belêtre. They went up the St. Lawrence into Lake Ontario, landed on its southern shore, at some distance east of the ruins of Oswego, crossed to the portage between the Mohawk and Wood Creek, where the forts were no longer standing, and moved down the Mohawk to raid the outlying settlements. Between the head waters of the Mohawk and Schenectady, on the northern side of the river, was the district known as the German Flats, where German colonists had been planted about the year 1720. They came from the Palatinate, and their group of houses bore the name of the settlement or village of the Palatines. In the second week of November, Belêtre's party broke in among them, burnt houses and barns, killed cattle, horses, and some of the inhabitants, carried off over a hundred prisoners, and retired in safety in face of a weak detachment from a little English fort on the other side of the river, and of a stronger body of troops whom Lord Howe brought up from Schenectady too late to retrieve the disaster.

This was the end of the campaign, the high-water mark of French successes in North America. At the end of 1757, the English had been beaten at all points. They had failed to attack Louisbourg, they had been driven from Lake George, the country of the Five Nation Indians was nearly cut off, all hold on the rivers and the lakes was gone. The outlook was dark in the extreme: it is always darkest before dawn, and as a matter of fact dawn had already begun; for William Pitt, who had been dismissed from office in April, was recalled by the unanimous voice of the people of England before the end of June, and, leaving to the incompetent Duke of Newcastle the name of Prime Minister, controlled, as Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons, the soldiers, the sailors, the subsidies and the foreign policy of his country.¹⁶

¹⁶ Lord Chesterfield in a letter to his son dated May 18, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 137, Letter 298), wrote as follows of the Newcastle-Pitt combination: 'The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt jog on like man and wife, that is, seldom agreeing, often quarrelling, but by mutual interest upon the whole not parting.'

The wars of England have usually run the same course. They have begun with blunders and reverses, but ended in success. The English do not love war, and are rarely prepared for it. They begin fighting in half-hearted fashion, before the nation makes up its mind that the cause is worth a real effort and serious expenditure of money and life. There is groping about for a leader, for some one who will say distinctly what is to be done, and will prove as good as his word. If such a man is found, the people will follow; they forgive a man who makes mistakes provided, as the saying is, that he makes something. Then the resources of the country are concentrated and utilized, and under articulate and sympathetic leadership the cause of the nation prospers. If England in the year 1757 needed some one controlling will, much more was the want felt in her North American colonies. The demoralization caused by feeble ministries in England had its baleful effect in America; nerveless government at home strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of the colonies. Nothing but common danger gave them any common life; and, though Pitt's advent to power partially corrected the evil, Pitt was in England not in America. To the end the uniting force came from without rather than from within: the colonies followed the lead of Pitt and his generals, but to the mother country not to the colonies was due the conquest of Canada.

That Canada must be conquered, when England made her effort, was inevitable. The French appeared triumphant; they had moved forward; they had struck heavy blows; but behind the fighting line, even on the surface, they were in straits. The garrison of Fort William Henry had not been taken prisoners to Canada, because Canada could hardly feed them;¹⁷ and the winter of 1757, which followed the brilliant campaign, was a winter of distress. Bread was wanting; horses were eaten for meat; the troops were mutinous and only kept in order by Levis' firmness and tact; the finances were in a ruinous condition; there were winter gaieties and winter gambling, but Canada before its conquest was in much the same condition as the mother country on the brink of the Revolution.

¹⁷ Similarly, after the fall of Oswego, Horace Walpole wrote, 'The massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of the two regiments that were made prisoners there are actually arrived at Plymouth, the provisions at Quebec being too scanty to admit additional numbers.' Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, pp. 44, 45 (Letter of Nov. 13, 1756).

Both sides laid their plans for the coming year. The French scheme included a movement by Levis from Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, across to the site of Oswego, and thence, after securing the alliance or the allegiance of the Iroquois, down the Mohawk valley, so as to co-operate with the main army under Montcalm advancing from Ticonderoga. The success of this project of Vaudreuil's, which was never carried into effect, presupposed that the bulk of the English troops would again be drawn off to attack Louisbourg, for it was known or suspected in Canada that another attempt on Louisbourg was in contemplation.

Pitt's plan of campaign was not new or original. The experience of long years had painfully taught what were the points where Canada must be attacked, if any permanent success was to be achieved. First and foremost was Louisbourg. With Louisbourg in English hands, the St. Lawrence could be blocked and Canada starved out. But the English minister had no intention of denuding the inland frontier of the British colonies, in order to take the French fortress in Cape Breton. On the contrary, he laid his plans also for an advance on Ticonderoga, and for the recovery of Fort Duquesne. He conceived no new scheme, but into old schemes he put new life. The novelties which he introduced were abundance of English troops, prompt instead of dilatory movement, and above all capable leaders—inspired with his own spirit, and in their turn inspiring the men whom they led. There was to be an end of the 'delays, misfortunes, disappointments and disgraces,'¹⁸ which had so long been associated in the English mind with war in America.

¹⁸ Annual Register for 1758, p. 70.

On December 30, 1757, he addressed a circular letter to the Governors of the North American colonies, asking for levies of 20,000 men. On February 19, 1758, a strong fleet set sail for Halifax, to be directed against Louisbourg, while other English squadrons blocked the French ports in Europe, and kept the enemy's ships from crossing the Atlantic. It was a rare thing for an English expedition for America to start betimes, instead of waiting for orders and counter orders, until the season for active work was far spent. It was unheard of, too, for so many English troops to be sent into the New World. Twelve thousand soldiers, nearly all regulars, took part in the Louisbourg expedition. Abercromby on Lake George commanded, when summer came on, 15,000 men, of whom fully 6,000 were regulars. Six thousand men took part in the march against Fort Duquesne, of whom 1,600 were Imperial troops. Thus in the year 1758 England had more than 20,000 regular soldiers employed in North America, enough force, as Lord Chesterfield thought, when coupled with the colonial troops, 'to eat up the French alive in Canada, Quebec, and Louisbourg, if we have but skill and spirit enough to exert it properly.'¹⁹

¹⁹ Lord Chesterfield to his son, Feb. 8, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 124; Letter 293).

The skill and the spirit were forthcoming also, though not at once in full measure, and not at all points. Loudoun was recalled. Abercromby was left to take his place, but with him was placed as brigadier a young officer of rare promise, Lord Howe. Jeffrey Amherst was picked out to command the troops against Louisbourg, and of his three brigadiers one was Lawrence, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and another was Wolfe. In the further west, the command of the expedition against Fort Duquesne was given to a resolute Scotch soldier, Forbes. Gradually in his choice of officers Pitt sifted the chaff from the grain, young men were brought to the front, merit was preferred to seniority. Amherst was forty-one years of age, Wolfe was thirty-one, Howe was thirty-three. Lord Chesterfield wrote of them in February, 1758, 'Abercromby is to be the sedentary and not the acting commander. Amherst, Lord Howe, and Wolfe are to be the acting and I hope the active officers. I wish they may agree.'²⁰

²⁰ Ibid.

The fleet which sailed for North America, carrying the hopes and the fortunes of England, was commanded by Admiral Boscawen. He had seen service in the East and West, off Cartagena and Pondicherry; and it was he who in the year 1755, before France and England were at war, had, as has already been told, attacked and taken the two French ships, the Alcide and the Lys, off the North American coast.²¹ He had Churchill blood in his veins, for Arabella Churchill was his grandmother; and he was known as 'Old Dreadnought,' after a ship of that name which he had commanded. He was a determined, hard-fighting sailor, with little respect for neutrality in time or place if there was a chance of striking a blow for England.

²¹ See above.

His colleague, General Amherst, like Wolfe, was born in Kent. Joining the Guards in 1731, he made his name on the Continent. He was present at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and served on the Duke of Cumberland's staff. Unlike most of the commanders of the time, he lived to be an old man, and was Commander-in-Chief of the English army before he died; but his good work was all done in America in the years 1758-60, while he was still in early middle age, and when he conquered Canada. He was a good soldier of the cautious type, not wanting either in vigour or determination, but making sure of each point before he moved further. What Carlyle says of the Parliamentary general, Lord Essex, might be said of Amherst—he was a 'somewhat elephantine' man.

The ships took time to go over the sea, and did not reach Halifax until well into May. On the second of June they sailed into Gabarus Bay and came in sight of Louisbourg. The second siege and capture of Louisbourg was very similar to the first, except that in 1758 much larger forces were engaged on either side, and more military skill was shown than in 1745. The earlier siege was, on the English side, as far as the land forces were concerned, purely a colonial venture. On the later occasion very few colonial troops were employed. The French had in garrison 3,000 regulars, and the residents of the town who bore arms made up nearly another thousand, the besiegers on land outnumbering the besieged in the proportion of three to one. In harbour there were twelve French ships of war, with a complement of 3,000 men—no match for Boscawen's overpowering fleet. The fortifications of Louisbourg were strong, but not so strong as they were reputed. It was stated that prior to 1755 nothing had been done to repair the damage done in the first siege.²² The French had a good commander, the Chevalier de Drucour; and his wife, according to the accounts of the time, was as brave as himself. In 1758 the English landed in the same place as in 1745; the siege took almost exactly the same number of days; the Grand Battery on the north shore of the harbour was, as before, evacuated by the French; once more the English mounted guns on Lighthouse Point, from which the French had retired, and battered to pieces the Island Battery, which guarded the mouth of the harbour. Again, as in 1745, a small force of Canadians and Indians tried to make a diversion from inland, and again the attempt was quite ineffectual. The seas and the skies, however, in spite of the time of year, were far less kind to the besiegers on the later than on the earlier occasion.

²² In the Annual Register for 1758, pp. 179-81, is given a translation of a letter from Drucour, the French Governor of Louisbourg, after he had been taken prisoner to England. It is dated Andover, Oct. 1, 1758. Referring to the defences of Louisbourg, he speaks of 'a fortification (if it could deserve the name) crumbling down in every flank, face, and courtine, except the right flank of the King's bastion, which was remounted the first year after my arrival.'

The real difficulty was the initial difficulty, that of landing on an awkward coast in bad weather, with an enemy lining the shore. The French had made full preparations, and had their men, guns, and batteries ready along the fringe of Gabarus Bay; while, for nearly a week, surf and fog made any attempt at landing impracticable. At length, at daybreak on June 8, three strong parties under the three brigadiers put out in boats from the transports, and rowed for the shore at three separate points. The main effort was intended to be made on the extreme left, at Freshwater Cove, by the party commanded by Wolfe. As the boats neared the land, the French opened a heavy fire, and Wolfe signalled a retreat; but, by happy accident or by design, one or more of the boats misinterpreted the sign, and made good their landing a little to the right of the cove, where the cliff gave some slight shelter from the enemy's fire. The rest then followed in support, and, with no slight loss of men and boats, the English carried the French position, and drove their opponents back within range of the Louisbourg guns.

The disembarkation now went on under difficulties. On June 18 the siege guns were landed, and gradually the English formed their encampment, drew their lines, and opened their trenches, beleaguering the fortress on the western side, where the peninsula on which the town of Louisbourg stood joined the mainland. The lines started from the sea at Flat Point cove, and extended in a semicircle for about two miles inland. Meanwhile, on the twelfth of June, Wolfe had marched round the harbour, and subsequently mounted his guns at Lighthouse Point on the opposite side. By the twenty-fifth he had silenced the Island Battery, and thus commanded the mouth of the harbour, where the French in consequence sunk several of their ships to bar any attack by Boscawen.

The town was now fully invested by land and sea; such French ships as still remained were cooped up in the harbour, and the fall of Louisbourg was merely a question of time. But the operations took time. The besiegers had the same difficulty as had been experienced in 1745, in advancing across a belt of swamp. Day and night passed in incessant work, under fire of the enemy's guns, and interrupted by sorties of the garrison; but slowly and surely the trenches were drawn nearer to the town. On the twenty-first of July three out of the five remaining French ships took fire from a shell and were destroyed, and on the twenty-fifth the two last were successfully attacked by a detachment of English sailors, who rowed into the harbour at night time, and among whom was James Cook, not yet known to fame. One ship was grounded and burnt, the other was towed off by its captors.

This bold feat brought matters to a climax. The land defences were in ruins, the garrison was worn out, there was nothing to stop a general assault by land and sea. On the twenty-sixth the French Governor asked for terms. Unconditional surrender was demanded and refused; but before the message of refusal reached the English camp, it was withdrawn, at the instance, it was said, of the Intendant or Commissary-General, who represented the civilian element in the town. The articles of capitulation were signed, between 5,000 and 6,000 French soldiers and sailors became prisoners of war, and on July 27 the English forces entered Louisbourg. Two years later, in 1760, all the fortifications were demolished, and the town was practically blotted out. No chance was left of again handing back to France a fortress which had so long threatened English interests in America. Halifax was henceforth to be unrivalled on the coast; and at the present day the once famous harbour of Louisbourg is in the keeping of Cape Breton fishermen.

The English Parliament voted thanks to Amherst and Boscawen; but to Wolfe, who as a subordinate was not mentioned, the thanks of the nation were mainly due. He 'shone extremely at Louisbourg,'²³ wrote Horace Walpole, and Walpole owns that he did not love him. Had he been in supreme command, the siege would probably have ended earlier, and greater results would have been achieved. His own view, at any rate, as expressed in a private letter written after his return to England, was that both during the siege and after it valuable time was lost.²⁴ It is certain that when the expedition was sent out, more was hoped from it than the capture of Louisbourg alone. On May 18, 1758, Lord Chesterfield wrote: 'By this time I believe the French are entertained in America with the loss of Cape Breton, and, in consequence of that, Quebec; for we have a force there equal to both those undertakings, and officers there now that will execute what Lord L—— (Loudoun) never would so much as attempt.'²⁵ The French on their side, as we learn from a subsequent letter from Drucour, were aware of the importance of prolonging the siege, in order to prevent Abercromby being reinforced, or an attack being made on Quebec;²⁶ and all honour is due to the memory of the brave French commander for the determined stand which he made. Before the siege ended, Abercromby had been beaten back from Ticonderoga, and breathing time had been given to the defenders of Canada.

²³ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 207 (Letter of Feb. 9, 1759).

²⁴ 'We lost time at the siege, still more after the siege, and blundered from the beginning to the end of the campaign' (from a letter written Dec. 1, 1758; Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 465). Similarly, Wolfe wrote from the camp before Louisbourg, on July 27, 1758, the day after the capitulation: 'If this force had been properly managed, there was an end of the French colony in North America in one campaign' (Wright, p. 449).

²⁵ Lord Chesterfield to his son, May 18, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 136; Letter 298).

²⁶ See the letter already quoted above, p. 273, note. Drucour is explaining why he would not allow the French ships to leave Louisbourg harbour, 'It was our business to defer the determination of our fate as long as possible. My accounts from Canada assured me that M. de Montcalm was marching to the enemy and would come up with them between July 15 and 20. I said then "if the ships leave the harbour on June 10 (as they desire), the English admiral will enter it immediately after," and we should have been lost before the end of the month, which would have put it in the power of the generals of the besiegers to have employed the months of July and August in sending succours to the troops marching against Canada, and to have entered the river St. Lawrence at the proper season.' In a 'Scheme for taking Louisbourg,' which was submitted to Pitt by Brigadier Waldo (who had been on Pepperell's expedition) on Nov. 7, 1757, fourteen days were given to Louisbourg to hold out when once duly invested, and an attack on Quebec was contemplated as the immediate result of its fall (Brymer's Report on Canadian Archives, 1886, pp. 151-3).

Yet it was but the end of July when Louisbourg fell, and, if Wolfe had had his way, the ships would have gone on to Quebec. Even Amherst might have gone on but for the bad news from Abercromby, which confirmed his habitual caution, and retarded instead of quickening his movements. One officer, Lord Rollo, was sent to reduce the Île St. Jean; another, Monckton, cleared the valley of the St. John river on the mainland. Wolfe was dispatched to Gaspé Bay and the mouth of the St. Lawrence, to harry the settlers and the fishermen; and when he had accomplished his task, which was little to his taste, he sailed for home angry and disappointed that more had not been done, and that his advice had not been taken. Amherst, in the meantime, had gone with six regiments to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George.

The capture of Louisbourg secured to England all that should have been hers when the Treaty of Utrecht was being negotiated. The English were now in full occupation of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. More than half of the comparatively small French population of Cape Breton was, at the people's own wish, shipped to France; and of the residents in the Île St. Jean, mainly Acadian refugees, a large proportion was similarly transported, while others found their way to Canada. Cape Breton was attached to Nova Scotia, to be subsequently separated from that province and again rejoined. The Île St. Jean was placed under the same Government, and before the century ended, in the year 1799, its name was changed to Prince Edward Island in honour of the Duke of Kent, the father of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria.

By Loudoun's recall, Abercromby was left in chief command of the British forces in North America. He had with him, as one of his brigadiers, Lord Howe, who commanded the 55th Regiment. In May, 1758, he was at Albany preparing for the summer's work. In June he moved up to the end of Lake George, where his force, amounting to 15,000 men, gathered to drive the French back on Canada. The colonies had answered well to Pitt's appeal, and contributed 9,000 men to the total. On July 5 the army embarked in boats; on the sixth they landed without opposition at the northern end of the lake, on the western side of the water, and began their march on Ticonderoga through the forest, having on their right the semicircular stream which connects Lake George and Lake Champlain.

The right centre column was led by Lord Howe, and, as the soldiers groped their way through the dense thickets, they stumbled across a party of French, who had been sent out to reconnoitre, had also lost their way, and found their retreat cut off. A confused skirmish followed, with more numerical loss to the French than to the English; but Howe was shot dead, and his life by common consent meant the life of the expedition. All night the army remained under arms in the forest, and on the morning of the seventh marched back to the landing-place.

It was a matter of very few miles to the French position. The river, which carries the waters of Lake George into Lake Champlain, and enters the latter lake at Ticonderoga, has a course of about eight miles; but they are eight miles of a semicircle, and the distance in a straight line from Lake George to Ticonderoga is much shorter. The English had landed at the head of the river; about two miles lower down rapids begin, and here was the portage leading from the head to the bottom of the rapids, and forming the chord of an arc, the arc being between three and four miles of broken water. The lower bridge of the portage, where there was a sawmill, was well within two miles of the French Fort Carillon. At the head of the rapids the French had held an advanced post, which was withdrawn on the approach of Abercromby's army, and, when the main force of that army landed to wander in the forest, a detachment was sent on down the river and occupied the deserted position. On the seventh, while the main body again was resting at the landing-place, Bradstreet was sent forward to the post at the bottom of the rapids, which was also found to be deserted, and here on the evening of the seventh the main body encamped, the bridge being repaired, and the encampment being on the same side of the river as Ticonderoga.

Montcalm, who was joined by Levis on the night of the seventh, had with him rather under 4,000 men, the majority of whom were regulars. Outnumbered as he was by three or four to one, his position was perilous in the extreme, for his retreat could easily be cut off. He determined, however, to make a stand, and on rising ground on the inland—the western—side of the little peninsula on which Fort Carillon or Ticonderoga²⁷ was built, at a distance of rather over half a mile from the fort, he formed at the eleventh hour entrenchments of timber, fringed on the outside by a network of 'felled trees, the branches pointed outwards,'²⁸ and carefully laid so as to entangle and annoy the enemy.

²⁷ Ticonderoga, according to Rogers' Journals (p. 22, note), is an 'Indian name signifying the meeting or confluence of three waters.'

²⁸ Abercromby's dispatch to Pitt, July 12, 1758.

Against this position Abercromby ordered an attack on July 8. He had been told by French prisoners that Montcalm's force was stronger than it actually was, and that further reinforcements were shortly to arrive. In consequence he hurried his movements, and without bringing up any guns, which apparently he had left behind him, he determined, thinking that the entrenchment had not been completed, to trust entirely to the bayonet. The result was the inevitable result of a frontal attack, delivered in the open, against an enemy fighting under cover and undisturbed by artillery fire. For four hours charge after charge was made, and at the close of the day the English had achieved nothing and had lost nearly 2,000 men. The casualties in the Black Watch alone amounted to 500. Abercromby had still 13,000 men left, but he had no stomach for further fighting. On the following day he ordered a retreat, and the whole force went back to the southern end of Lake George.

At Oswego and at Fort William Henry, Montcalm had shown how to concentrate superior forces at a given point rapidly and effectively, and how to use them when concentrated to the best possible advantage. At Ticonderoga, he showed how to make the most of very inferior numbers, by utilizing every natural and artificial advantage, and every mistake of the foe. It was a great triumph for him; it produced joy in Canada, and discouragement in England; but, as Mr. Parkman points out, it is difficult to see how he could possibly have succeeded, if Abercromby had taken any other course than the one which he actually took. Wolfe summed up the matter aright, when, in the following December, he referred in a private letter to 'the famous post at Ticonderoga, where Mr. Abercromby by a little soldiership and a little patience might, I think, have put an end to the war in America.'²⁹

²⁹ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 469.

Almost as disastrous as the repulse itself was the death of Lord Howe, which preceded it. The eldest of three distinguished brothers, the second of whom was the famous admiral, and the third the not so successful general in the American War of Independence, he was not thirty-four years old when he was killed, and had only landed in America in the previous year. Yet he had lived long enough for all men to speak well of him, and all to love him. In his dispatch giving an account of the operations, Abercromby wrote: 'He was very deservedly universally beloved and respected through the whole army.'³⁰ Pitt testified in more stilted phrases that 'he was by the universal voice of army and people a character of ancient times, a complete model of military virtue in all its branches.'³¹ Wolfe loved him dearly, and his letters show how highly he valued 'his abilities, spirit and address.'³² He writes of him as 'the very best officer in the King's service,' as 'the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time,' as 'truly a great man.' 'This country has produced nothing like him in my time; his death cannot be enough lamented.' Similar testimony is given by Robert Rogers, the Ranger, who was with the force when he fell: 'This noble and brave officer being universally beloved by both officers and soldiers of the army, his fall was not only most sincerely lamented, but seemed to produce an almost universal consternation and langour through the whole.'³³ But the most striking honour to his name and memory was paid by the province of Massachusetts. In 1759 the Court of Assembly ordered a monument to him to be placed in Westminster Abbey, which still records 'the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command.' Burke, in the Annual Register for 1758,³⁴ gives the clue to the affection with which the colonists regarded Lord Howe: 'From the moment he landed in America he had wisely conformed, and made his regiment conform, to the kind of service which the country required.' Howe's life, he adds, was 'long enough for his honour, but not for his country.' In truth, had he lived, and had Wolfe lived, the history of the English in America might have been widely different. Two men who in youth had so inspired their time, and so impressed American colonists with the sense of leadership, might well have averted the War of Independence, or by military genius have given it another issue.

³⁰ Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.

³¹ Grenville Correspondence, vol. i, p. 262.

³² Wright, pp. 426, 448, 450, 465, 469.

³³ Rogers' Journals, p. 114, note.

³⁴ pp. 72, 73.

From July to October Abercromby remained at one end of Lake George, and Montcalm, who had received heavy reinforcements, at the other. Parties of Rangers and Canadians attacked each other on the Wood Creek line, but the main bodies were inactive. The presence of the English force had the advantage, however, of holding in their front so large a number of the enemy that the latter were unable adequately to protect other positions, and in consequence they lost Fort Frontenac. That competent officer, Colonel Bradstreet, had already proposed an expedition against this point, and when he renewed his proposal after the battle of Ticonderoga, Abercromby gave his consent, and spared him 3,600 men for the purpose, noting that 'he is not only very active, but has great knowledge of the country.'³⁵

³⁵ Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.

In August he moved up the Mohawk, took his troops past the Carrying Place from that river, where, on the site of Fort Williams, General Stanwix was busy building a new fort, reached the ruins of Oswego, put out across the lake, and on August 25 landed close to Fort Frontenac. By the twenty-seventh he had the fort at the mercy of his guns, and the small garrison of a little over a hundred men surrendered. The prisoners were sent on parole to Montreal, to be exchanged for a corresponding number of English; the fort was burnt, and guns, ships, and supplies were carried off or destroyed. It was an excellent piece of work for the English side; 'a great stroke,' as Wolfe wrote on hearing of it.³⁶ Great material damage was caused to the French by, temporarily at any rate, cutting their communications with the west, and intercepting supplies which had been intended for the forts on the Ohio and on the upper lakes. The moral effect was greater still. The time-honoured French fort on Lake Ontario, the earliest French post on the lakes, had been with little effort taken and blotted out, reminding the waverers among the Five Nation Indians that, in spite of reverses, the English arm was strong and far-reaching, and the English alliance was for them a valuable asset.

³⁶ Letter of Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 457). In another letter (p. 465) he writes: 'Bradstreet's coup was masterly. He is a very extraordinary man.'

Early in October Amherst came up to Abercromby's camp, and the two generals decided not to make a further attempt on Ticonderoga until the following year. 'General Amherst,' wrote Wolfe, 'thought the entrenchments so improved as to require more ceremony in the second attack than the season would allow of.'³⁷ The troops were accordingly sent into winter quarters, and in November Abercromby received a letter of recall. Amherst became in his stead Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America.

³⁷ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 469.

By the end of October campaigning was over for the year in the east, and in the centre; but it was not so in the west, where Brigadier-General Forbes was marching on Fort Duquesne.

Forbes was an older man than the other English commanders, who achieved success in the war; and he seems to have been over sixty in the year 1758.³⁸ He proved himself to be a man of great fortitude and resolution, tactful in dealing with colonists or Indians, a brave, sure, and careful soldier. His task was to give security to the harried frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and to clear the French out of the Ohio valley. With this end he had to collect and equip a force, the large majority of whom were provincials; to get money and men out of two colonies, which were very jealous alike of the mother country and of each other; to make choice between two conflicting routes, and to detach the Ohio Indians as far as possible from the French cause.

³⁸ For his age see Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. iv, p. 192, note. He has been generally put down as a younger man.

A long time was taken over the preliminaries, and over the expedition itself, the object of which was not attained until the end of November; but the delays were not only the consequence of want of transport, and of Forbes' own ill health, they were also the result of design. The longer the English kept their enemies waiting to be attacked, the fewer those enemies were likely to be; for the Indians, and the militia of New France, did not love to keep the field for any long time together. Moreover, as Forbes wrote to Pitt,³⁹ October and November were the best hunting months for the Indians, which they were therefore not willing to devote to war; while, on the other hand, they were months when the leaves fell and left the backwoods easier to reconnoitre and less easy for ambuscade.

³⁹ Letter of Forbes to Pitt, Oct. 20, 1758.

Forbes came to Philadelphia in April; and through the early summer months his force gradually assembled, and moved to the front. When the numbers were complete, they amounted to over 6,000 men, in the main southern colonists, but including a strong regiment of Highlanders. The second in command was a good man for the work, Bouquet, one of the Swiss officers of the Royal Americans. The advanced base was formed at Raestown, now Bedford, in Pennsylvania, distant about ninety miles from Fort Duquesne. It was some thirty miles north-east of Fort Cumberland, from which Braddock had started on his disastrous march; and a keen controversy arose as to whether the old route should be followed, or a new road taken. Opening a road to the Ohio meant, when the fighting was over, giving to the State, within or near whose boundaries the road ran, control of the trade. Virginia accordingly pressed for the old and more southerly route, Pennsylvania for the northern line. In spite of Washington's arguments, the latter was chosen; it was shorter and more direct, and on the whole presented fewer natural difficulties than the other. The first forty miles led due west over the main Alleghany range and the Laurel hills, to a place called Loyalhannon; and by the end of August Bouquet had a road cut to this place, a dépôt established, and preparations made for carrying on the track through fifty miles of less difficult country to Fort Duquesne.

Every care was being taken by the commanders; but notwithstanding, before the end came, there was in a smaller measure a repetition of Braddock's reverse. In the middle of September, Major Grant, an officer of the Highlanders, obtained permission from Bouquet to march out from Loyalhannon with between 700 and 800 men,⁴⁰ for the purpose of reconnoitring Fort Duquesne. He arrived at night time close to the fort; intended a night attack, which miscarried; repeated the attempt to attack on the following day, and having broken up his force into small parties, was badly beaten and himself taken prisoner. The total British casualties numbered about 280, the survivors finding their way back to Bouquet at Loyalhannon. 'This was a most terrible check to my small army,' wrote Forbes,⁴¹ but the reverse was more than counterbalanced shortly afterwards by a success of a different kind. From the first Forbes had spared no pains to secure the friendship of the Indians; and in October, in large measure through the good offices of a Moravian missionary, a general council was held, at which the tribes of the Ohio made their peace with the English, deserting the French cause as rats leave a sinking ship.

⁴⁰ Forbes' own dispatch mentions 900.

⁴¹ Forbes to Pitt, Raestown, Oct. 20, 1758.

It was November before Forbes joined Bouquet at Loyalhannon. He was broken in body, but resolute to carry through the expedition, in spite of the lateness of the season. The road had been cut to within easy reach of the French fort; and, on November 18, 2,500 men, picked out of the force, advanced in three columns, carrying with them only what was absolutely necessary in the way of supplies, and their brave commander on a litter. At a day's march from Fort Duquesne, it was reported that the fort had been evacuated and burnt; and when the English reached it on the twenty-fifth, they found that the news was true. Weakened by the desertion of the Indians, and by having disbanded some of the militia, whom he could not feed, in want of the provisions which Bradstreet had intercepted at Fort Frontenac, the French commander, De Ligneris, saw no alternative but to blow up the fort, and retreat more than a hundred miles up the Alleghany to the junction of that river with French Creek, leaving the valley of the Ohio in English hands, as events proved, for ever.

For the moment Forbes' chief care was to build at once on the site of Fort Duquesne a temporary stockade, which could be held by a small garrison through the winter. In the following year a permanent fort was built. The name of Fort Duquesne was exchanged for that of Fort Pitt, and the city of Pittsburg still recalls the statesman who recovered for the British colonies the rich western lands which are watered by the Ohio. 'I have used the freedom of giving your name to Fort Duquesne,' wrote Forbes to Pitt two days after he had reached the fort, 'as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by your spirit that now makes us masters of the place.'⁴² The honest soldier, whom the English minister sent to do the work, and who did it when the colonies concerned should have done it for themselves, did not long survive his success. Patient and suffering, John Forbes was carried back to Philadelphia, where he died in the following March, having shown a steadfast, single-minded devotion to duty, rare even in the rich record of British soldiers.

⁴² Forbes to Pitt, Pittsburg, Nov. 27, 1758.

With the English occupation of Fort Duquesne, the campaigning of 1758 in North America came to an end. It been a long season, and for England distinctly a successful though also to a certain extent a disappointing one. 'I do not reckon that we have been fortunate this year in America,' wrote Wolfe on December 1; 'our force was so superior to the enemy's that we might hope for greater success.'⁴³ He wrote in ignorance that Fort Duquesne had been taken, but, notwithstanding, his view of the situation was the true one. At Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, Fort Duquesne, there had been great and substantial successes. At Ticonderoga there had been a bad check; but the French had made nothing of it afterwards. They were now on the defensive and playing a losing game. Yet that more might and should have been done by the English commanders with their great superiority of numbers cannot be doubted. Had Wolfe been in Amherst's place, and Lord Howe in Abercromby's, the year 1758 might well have been the last year of French rule in North America. But the end was only postponed for a short time, the resources of Canada in men and in supplies were becoming insufficient to sustain the war: the country was practically in a state of blockade; and Bougainville, who was sent at the beginning of winter to France to plead the cause of Canada, met with little success. A very few soldiers, some supplies, and honours for the generals, were the result of his mission. France was engrossed in the war in Europe, and not as many hundreds were sent to North America as England sent thousands. Vaudreuil, in the meantime, was intriguing against Montcalm, whose genius and determination had prolonged the unequal fight, and on whom, with Levis and Bourlamaque, lay the heavy burden of defending a ruined State, and checking, at this point and at that, the flowing tide of English invasion.

⁴³ Wright, p. 464.

NOTE.—For the above see, among modern books,

    KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vols. iii and iv;
    PARKMAN'S Montcalm and Wolfe; and
    WRIGHT'S Life of Wolfe.

CHAPTER X

When Wolfe reached England from Louisbourg in November, 1758, he wrote to Pitt offering himself for further service in America, 'and particularly in the river St. Lawrence, if any operations are to be carried on there.'¹ Before Christmas, Pitt had appointed him to command an expedition in the coming year against Quebec.

¹ Wolfe to Pitt, Nov. 22, 1758 (Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 464). There was some misunderstanding as to his return to England. See the correspondence quoted by Mr. Kingsford in the note to vol. iv, p. 155, of his History.

Wolfe was born at Westerham, in Kent, on January 2, 1727, and was therefore not thirty-three years old when he was killed at Quebec in September, 1759. He was the son of a soldier, and received his first commission before he was fifteen. He was present at Dettingen, and at Culloden; and, subsequently to the latter battle, after an interval of fighting in the Netherlands, where he distinguished himself at the battle of Laffeldt, he was stationed for a considerable time in Scotland. Service in the Highlands, it may be noted, in Jacobite times, was not bad training for service in North America. In September, 1757, after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, he took part in the expedition against Rochefort, to the south of La Rochelle, on the west coast of France—an enterprise as utterly barren of results as was the Duke of Buckingham's venture against the same area of coast when Charles I was King. Lord Howe and Wolfe were among the few who gained any credit from the expedition. In the following year, Wolfe served at Louisbourg.

Horace Walpole writes of him: 'Ambition, activity, industry, passion for the service, were conspicuous in Wolfe. He seemed to breathe for nothing but fame, and lost no moments in qualifying himself to compass his object.'² These words are partly true, but do not tell the whole truth. Wolfe was ambitious, active, and industrious, but he cared for more than fame alone. His dramatic death in the hour of victory, while he was still very young, makes it impossible to form an adequate estimate of his real worth as a soldier; but all that is known of him points to his having been, in spite of persistent ill health, a great military genius, and a rare leader of men. He seems to have resembled Nelson in his fighting qualities, and to have had the same lovable nature, coupled with a higher standard of life. Like Nelson, in warfare he always took the offensive if possible—took it, as at Quebec, in spite of smaller numbers and a less favourable position. 'An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the Indians and ruin the French,' were his words to Amherst in a letter written after the taking of Louisbourg.³

² Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of King George II (1847 ed.), vol. iii, p. 171.

³ Louisbourg, Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright, p. 457).

Like Nelson, he loved his men, and his men loved him. According to the old story, when the Duke of Newcastle told the King that Wolfe was mad, the King expressed a wish that he would bite his other generals. This was precisely what Wolfe did. He infected to some extent those above him, to a great extent those under his command. He was a man after Pitt's own heart; wherever he was, he made himself felt, giving a living fire and force to the army. Coupled with this vitality was a thorough knowledge of his profession, gained not only on actual battlefields and training-grounds, but also from voluminous reading.⁴ Nature gave him a hot temper and fearless independence of spirit; he was in consequence impatient, and perhaps unduly critical, of the mistakes of those above him; but he was the soul of honour and chivalry, and his private life was marked by tender love for his mother, stanch attachment to his friends, and kindness to all dependent upon him, including dumb animals. In his lifetime he enjoyed 'a large share of the friendship and almost the universal goodwill of mankind.'⁵ In a word, English history has produced no truer type of hero than James Wolfe.

⁴ In Wright's Life of Wolfe, pp. 342-5, is given a letter of Wolfe's, dated July, 1756, recommending a long list of books for a young soldier to read. Reference is made at the beginning of the letter to a French book recently published (Turpin's Essai sur l'art de la guerre), and it is interesting to find that Forbes, in a letter to Pitt from Raestown, dated Oct. 20, 1758, stated that in his march on Fort Duquesne he was acting on the principles laid down in that book.

⁵ From the 'Character of General Wolfe' in the Annual Register for 1759, p. 282.

At the siege of Louisbourg, Wolfe was one of three brigadiers under General Amherst. When he was given the command of the expedition against Quebec, three brigadiers were placed under him—Monckton, Townshend, and Murray. They were all of noble birth, and two of them at any rate were good soldiers. Monckton, the senior of the three, had shown his efficiency in Acadia, and at the siege of Louisbourg. Murray proved his worth both before and after the capture of Quebec, in a civil as well as in a military capacity. The least satisfactory of the three was George Townshend, elder brother of the better known Charles Townshend, not wanting in capacity, but deficient in loyalty to his commander; a somewhat jealous and bitter-natured man, who had the backing of political and aristocratic connexion. Horace Walpole writes of him as a man 'whose proud and sullen and contemptuous temper never suffered him to wait for thwarting his superiors till risen to a level with them. He saw everything in an ill-natured and ridiculous light—a sure prevention of ever being seen himself in a great or favourable one.'⁶ The Quartermaster-General of the force was Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, well known in Canadian history, a great personal friend of Wolfe's, though out of favour with the King. Howe, younger brother of the man whose untimely death Wolfe so deeply lamented, commanded the light infantry, and led them in the van of the force up the cliffs of Quebec. Lastly, an admirable officer was in charge of the fleet, Saunders, who nineteen years before had sailed round the world with Lord Anson in the Centurion.

⁶ Memoirs of the Reign of King George II (1847 ed.), vol. iii, pp. 171, 172.

The troops, whom Wolfe and his officers commanded, were too few for the difficult task with which they were entrusted. They were to have numbered 12,000; as a matter of fact their total did not reach 9,000. Some were in America already, but the large majority sailed from England with Wolfe and Saunders, leaving England in the middle of February, anchoring at Halifax at the end of April, moving on to Louisbourg in May, when the ice was disappearing, and arriving in front of Quebec towards the end of June—a small squadron, under Admiral Durell, having already ascended the St. Lawrence in advance of the main fleet. As they went up the river, 'the prevailing sentimental toast amongst the officers' was 'British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America.'⁷

⁷ From Knox's Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America (London, 1769), vol. i, p. 279.

The expedition against Quebec was only part of a general plan of campaign. While Wolfe was operating in the St. Lawrence, it was intended that Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, with a larger army, should move northward by way of Lake Champlain; and, reducing the French forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, make his way to the St. Lawrence, in time to co-operate with Wolfe's force, or to draw off a number of the defenders of Quebec for the protection of Montreal. As events turned out, Amherst gave little support to Wolfe. On the contrary, the main French army under Montcalm went to and remained at Quebec; and Wolfe, with the smaller force and far the more difficult enterprise to undertake, had to rely on his own resources alone. Montcalm had probably gauged the respective merits of Amherst and Wolfe. Had Amherst been in command of the Quebec expedition, and Wolfe leading the central advance, it is reasonable to suppose that the French general would have entrusted the defence of Quebec to a smaller force, and with the bulk of his army would have confronted the more dangerous English leader on the line of Lake Champlain.

Amherst, however, it is fair to note, had, as Commander-in-Chief, to direct his attention to other points as well as the direct northern line of advance. When the spring opened, the forts on the Mohawk river had been re-established, and Fort Duquesne was held by the small garrison which Forbes had placed there. But Oswego was still desolate, and the English had no post on Lake Ontario. The French held a strong position at Niagara; they commanded the routes from the lakes to Fort Duquesne; they could bring reinforcements of Canadians and Indians from the west as well as up the St. Lawrence—if any could be spared from this quarter. Forbes, the leader in the west, was dead. Under these circumstances a cautious commander, though not perhaps a brilliant one, might hesitate to invade central Canada until some further security was attained on the western side.

General Stanwix was accordingly sent to reinforce Fort Duquesne, and, having made that position secure, to press forward, if possible, up the Alleghany and French Creek rivers, in order to co-operate with another force which, under General Prideaux, was ordered to ascend the Mohawk river, reoccupy Oswego, and from Oswego as the base to attack Niagara. Prideaux concentrated his troops at Schenectady towards the end of May, about 5,000 in number, including two regiments of regulars. Sir William Johnson joined him with Indian warriors from the Five Nations; and with him too, as second in command, was Colonel Haldimand, like Bouquet a Swiss by birth, and twenty years later Governor-General of Canada. Strengthening the outposts on the line of communication as he advanced, Prideaux made his way to Oswego, and, leaving Haldimand there to rebuild the fort, started westwards on July 1 for Niagara, carrying his men in boats along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Soon after he left, Haldimand's force at Oswego was attacked by 1,000 Canadians and Indians, who came up the St. Lawrence under the command of St. Luc de la Corne; but, though taken by surprise, the garrison beat off their assailants with little loss.

The French fort at Niagara was in good condition for defence. It stood in the angle between the Niagara river and the lake, on what is now the American side of the river; a road had been made past the falls, and there were two outposts, one above and the other below the falls. A competent French officer, Pouchot, was in command; his garrison, when the English appeared, numbered 500 men more or less, and he sent messages to bring up reinforcements from the forts on the Ohio route—Presque Île, Fort Leboeuf, and Machault or Venango—in addition to Indians and Rangers from Detroit and the west, who were already coming down to the aid of Canada.

On July 8 Prideaux summoned the fort to surrender, and, his summons being rejected, began to invest the place. No great skill was shown in the investment, and on July 20 the English general was accidentally killed by the bursting of a shell from one of his own guns. The command devolved on Johnson, who heard that a relief force was coming down Lake Erie—a force which numbered at least 1,200 men all told, and was led by some of the best border fighters in Canada, including Ligneris, who had in the preceding year been in charge of Fort Duquesne. Johnson marched out to intercept them on the road between the fort and the falls, attacked them at once in front and on the flank, and gained a complete victory. The French officers were taken prisoners, their troops were utterly routed and broken up, and the survivors retreated westward to Detroit, abandoning Lake Erie and the whole of the Ohio country. It was on July 24 that the fight took place, and on the following day Pouchot, having verified the news of the French defeat, surrendered Niagara. One of the terms of the surrender was that the prisoners should be protected from the Indians by an English escort, the massacre at Fort William Henry being evidently borne in mind; and on this condition six hundred Frenchmen were sent to New York.

Thus, for the second time, Sir William Johnson had rendered signal service to the English cause; and with the fall of Niagara the French lost all command of the lower lakes. Their only communication now with Detroit and the far West was by the old route of the Ottawa river, and their scheme of conquest in the lands of the Ohio was wholly and for ever undone. 'The taking of Niagara broke off effectually that communication, so much talked of and so much dreaded, between Canada and Louisiana; and by this stroke one of the capital political designs of the French, which gave occasion to the present war, was defeated in its direct and immediate object.'⁸ On hearing of the success, Amherst sent up General Gage to replace Prideaux, with orders to come down the St. Lawrence and join in the combination against central Canada; but the force was small, Gage, like Amherst, was cautious, and the summer passed away without any further success by the troops on Lake Ontario.

⁸ Annual Register for 1759, p. 34.

While Prideaux and Johnson were operating against Niagara, Amherst had begun his northward movement. He had carefully secured his communications by fortified posts, and, before June ended, had gathered a force of 11,000 men at the southern end of Lake George, the scene of so many encampments and so much fighting. On July 21 he embarked his troops, followed the line of Abercromby's advance in the previous year, found the famous entrenchment, which had foiled Abercromby's troops, deserted, but the fort itself still held. On the evening of the twenty-sixth, however, deserters brought news that the garrison was in retreat, and shortly afterwards a loud explosion told its own tale. Ticonderoga had been abandoned and blown up. The French commander opposed to Amherst was Bourlamaque, and his orders were to fall back before the English to the outlet of Lake Champlain, where a small island in the Richelieu river, the Île aux Noix, could easily be defended, blocking the enemy's advance on Montreal. He had a force of over 3,000 men, the rearguard of which, consisting of 400 men, had held Ticonderoga for two or three days, to cover the retreat of the main force. On August 1, Crown Point was found to be abandoned also, and the way north, down Lake Champlain, lay open to the invaders of Canada. Amherst entered Crown Point on August 4, and on the following day wrote to Pitt: 'I shall take fast hold of it, and not neglect at the same time to forward every measure I can to enable me to pass Lake Champlain.'

Now was the time for the quick aggressive movement which Wolfe practised and preached, but the Commander-in-Chief fell miserably short of the occasion. August went by, and September, but Robert Rogers and his Rangers, who harried the French Indians on the river St. Francis north-east of Lake Champlain, were the only fighting members of Amherst's army. Time was spent in constructing a new fort at Crown Point; in making a road eastward from Lake Champlain, opposite Crown Point, to the Connecticut river; in building vessels to overpower four little armed sloops, which represented French naval enterprise on the lake. In the middle of October Amherst embarked his troops to go north, met with wind and storm, returned to Crown Point, and made all snug for the winter. This was not the way to conquer Canada: the real work was done by another man at another place. While the main English army loitered on the shores of Lake Champlain, Wolfe had laid down his life in victory on the Plains of Abraham.

By a Canadian Act of 1858, the harbour of Quebec, for the purposes of the Act, is defined as extending from the Cap Rouge river, about eight miles above Quebec, to the Montmorency, about the same distance below the city. At Quebec, and for many miles above, the St. Lawrence is a tidal river. Below Quebec the river flows due north-east, and is divided into two channels by the island of Orleans, which also lies due north-east and south-west, being twenty miles long with a maximum breadth of six miles. The inland—the south-western—end of the island points directly at the rock of Quebec, which runs out from the northern shore of the St. Lawrence, facing straight down the river, at four miles distance from the island. The two channels, looking up stream, unite at the end of the island, and form a semicircular basin just below Quebec, where the northern shore recedes. Immediately above this basin the rock of Quebec on the north of the river, and Point Levis on the southern mainland, jut out towards each other, narrowing the St. Lawrence to a breadth of considerably less than a mile. Above Quebec the upward course of the river is still south-west by west. The northern bank is continuously steep, and at five to six miles' distance from Quebec on this side is Sillery Cove. Between two and three miles further on, nearly due west, is Cap Rouge. Over against Sillery the Chaudière river flows in from the south, forming in old days a possible route to the St. Lawrence for those who followed up the course of the Kennebec from the coast of Maine.⁹

⁹ See above.

Miles of river-side cliff culminate in the promontory on which Quebec stands, and the south-western end of which is known as Cape Diamond. From the river above the town, Quebec, if man combined with nature, was almost inaccessible. Below, the eastern side of the city is girt by the winding River St. Charles, beyond which are the meadows of Beauport, with shoals in front and high ground behind; and, past the little Beauport river, which is very roughly equidistant from the St. Charles and the Montmorency, the northern bank of the St. Lawrence is again more or less fringed with steep ground as far as, and beyond, the falls, over which the Montmorency takes its way into the great river.

Nature had given Quebec a position of unique strength; man had added fortifications; and, when Wolfe came before it, 16,000 soldiers, including French, Canadians, and Indians, were mustered for its defence, under one of the most skilful generals of his day. There was a garrison in Quebec itself; but the main army was encamped below the city, and lined entrenchments from the St. Charles to the Montmorency, Montcalm's head quarters being on the further side of the Beauport river. To defeat an army nearly double the strength of his own, and to take the citadel which, since the days of Kirke and Champlain, had proved impregnable, was the hopeless task assigned to Wolfe. It was a task which he accomplished.

Over and above his own leadership, he had two points in his favour. His troops were better than those commanded by Montcalm. The majority of Montcalm's men were Canadian militia, disinclined for long continuous service, which kept them away from their farms, and, while excellent for raiding purposes or for fighting under cover, not to be relied on if ever they should be brought face to face with English regiments in the open field. Wolfe, moreover, gained complete command of the river. Such ships as the French possessed had been sent high up the St. Lawrence out of harm's way; and, though the guns of Quebec commanded the river strait immediately below the rock, as the siege went on some of the English vessels, and many boats, were taken past the promontory, so that the St. Lawrence was securely held both below and above the city. In war and in peace English sailors and soldiers have known how to support each other. At the sieges of Louisbourg the admirals co-operated in every possible way with the leaders of the land forces, and equally hearty was the co-operation of the two arms of the service before Quebec. Admiral Saunders, with Durell and Holmes, did all that men could do to second Wolfe in his difficult enterprise.

Piloted by Canadian prisoners or by their own determined seamen, the British ships had threaded their way up the St. Lawrence, and on June 26 anchored on the southern side of the Isle of Orleans. That night a party of Rangers landed on the island, meeting with some slight opposition, and the next day the whole force disembarked and marched across the island towards its westernmost point, the Point of Orleans. There the city of Quebec came in full view, 'at once a tempting and a discouraging sight.'¹⁰ Hardly had the troops landed when, on the same day, a heavy storm broke upon the English ships, and drove some of the transports ashore; while, little more than twenty-four hours later, a new danger threatened the fleet in the form of fireships sent down from Quebec. This was a pet scheme of Vaudreuil, but, like the author of the scheme, the ships did nothing more than splutter and make a noise, scaring the English outpost at the Point of Orleans. Some stranded, others were towed ashore by the English sailors—none of them reached the fleet which they were intended to destroy. On the evening of the next day, the twenty-ninth, part of Monckton's brigade was carried across the mile and a half of water which separates the island of Orleans at its westernmost point from the mainland on the southern shore; on the thirtieth the rest of the brigade was landed, and occupied Point Levis. Here batteries were erected under fire from Quebec; and, after a futile, half-hearted attempt had been made to dislodge the English by a party of Canadians, who crossed the river higher up on the night of July 12, the guns opened fire on the city opposite, and began the work—which went on for weeks—of knocking its buildings to pieces.

¹⁰ Annual Register for 1759, p. 35.

Before the batteries at Point Levis were complete, Wolfe had sent troops across to the northern shore of the St. Lawrence, lower down the river, and occupied the heights on the eastern side of the Montmorency river, which more or less commanded the extreme left of the French line, where Levis was stationed. The movement was not effected without some loss to the Rangers, who were ambushed by a party of Indians. The latter had crossed the Montmorency by a ford above the falls, but the ford was too securely guarded on the French side to justify any attempt on the part of Wolfe's small force to attack in this direction. It was the English general's plan to reconnoitre and threaten every point in turn of the French position, to divide the enemy's forces if possible, and if possible to induce Montcalm to take the offensive. With this object, Wolfe ran great risks. One part of his army was at Point Levis, another below the Montmorency, a third small detachment held the Point of Orleans. On July 18 his ships began to run the gauntlet of the Quebec batteries and reach the upper river, while boats were dragged overland by Point Levis to co-operate above the city. A still further division of the attacking force was then made, and Carleton was sent some eighteen miles up stream to land and raid on the northern shore. But though the movement drew off a certain number of French troops from the Beauport lines to watch the enemy above Quebec, Montcalm persisted in playing a waiting game, in making no attack, and running no risk. His policy was no doubt a sound one. It is true that Quebec was being riddled with shot and shell, that the farmers and villagers in the country round were suffering, that the Canadians and Indians were losing heart at the apparent inaction of their leaders, but time and place were on the side of the French, and as the weeks went on the wisdom of patient defence became more and more apparent.

At the end of July, Wolfe determined to try to force the French entrenchments where they abutted on the Montmorency river. The plan involved a frontal attack on a very strong position, and it was only possible to make the attempt when the tide was out. At low tide the Montmorency could be forded below the falls, and the General proposed to land Monckton's brigade on the shore of the St. Lawrence, above the Montmorency, in face of the French lines, and to support it by marching Townshend's and Murray's troops, who held the heights below the Montmorency, across the ford at the mouth of the latter river. The two forces converging were to carry an advanced French redoubt which stood on the flat a little beyond high-water mark, and, if the French still refused battle, to assault the heights beyond.

Monckton's men, embarked mainly at Point Levis, were moved up and down the river through the day, keeping the French in doubt as to where the attack would be made. A ship of war was anchored in a position to cover the ford of the Montmorency, while two large flat-bottomed boats carrying guns, or, as Knox called them, 'two armed transport cats (catamarans) drawing little water,'¹¹ were taken in close to shore, and left to be stranded as the tide went out. Towards evening the water was low, the guns opened fire, and, after some delay in finding a landing-place, the men began to disembark on the muddy edge of the river. The Grenadiers, with some of the Royal Americans, who were first landed, rushed forward and seized the redoubt, which the French abandoned. They then hurried on, without waiting for the main body of troops, to attack the higher ground behind. This premature movement ruined the enterprise. Advancing without order or formation up slippery slopes, in a storm of rain, under heavy fire, the Grenadiers were hurled back to the redoubt with a loss of over 400 men, and were brought off by Wolfe, who saw the uselessness of repeating the attack in the deepening shades of evening. Some of the troops were re-embarked, the others retreated in good order across the ford, and the day ended in failure, though the bulk of the English army had taken no part in the fight. In his General Order on the following day Wolfe commented severely, and with reason, upon the 'impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike proceedings' of the Grenadiers, reminding them that 'the Grenadiers could not suppose that they alone could beat the French army.'¹² The blame for the disaster rested solely with the soldiers of the advanced party, who, in eagerness to attack, lost all order and discipline; but the effect was much the same as though the leaders had blundered. The small English army had lost a number of men, who could ill be spared; the defenders of Quebec gained heart, their enemies were correspondingly dispirited.

¹¹ Knox, vol. i, p. 354.

¹² Knox, vol. ii, p. 1.

Wolfe still held his ground below the Montmorency, but moved more of his men than before above Quebec. Here Murray was placed in command, with Admiral Holmes in charge of the ships and boats. Bougainville, with 1,500 men, was detached by Montcalm to watch the enemy's movements and to guard the northern shore; but, on both sides of the river, both above and below the town, the English spread havoc and destroyed supplies. The waterway being blocked by Holmes' vessels and the country round Quebec being desolated, Montcalm's army could only be fed by a toilsome overland transport of many miles, until the means of transport failed, when provisions were again sent down the river, running the blockade usually under cover of night. Meanwhile, early in August, the French had learnt of the fall of Niagara and the abandonment of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and to meet Amherst's expected advance Levis was sent up to Montreal with 800 men. In this respect, and in no other, Amherst's operations helped Wolfe. As events turned out, it was of incalculable importance to the English that, when the battle of Quebec took place, Montcalm's able lieutenant was not on the field.

The position of the French was critical, but that of the English was more critical still. The summer was waning. The English troops were dwindling in numbers from casualties and disease. Worst of all, when the middle of August was past, worn in mind and body, Wolfe was laid low with fever in the camp at Montmorency. On his life, as the soldiers who loved him knew, hung all the hopes of the expedition. While recovering, but still unable to move, he submitted to his brigadiers three alternative plans for attacking Montcalm's lines. They met on August 29, and, rejecting all three proposals, counselled an attempt above the city. 'We are of opinion,' they wrote, 'that the most probable method of striking an effectual blow is to bring the troops to the south shore, and to carry the operations above the town. If we can establish ourselves on the north shore, the Marquis de Montcalm must fight us on our own terms. We are between him and his provisions, and between him and the army opposing General Amherst.'¹³ Their advice, which was unanimous, was taken without demur, and Wolfe proceeded with the desperate task of putting it into execution.

¹³ Wright, p. 545.

That he had little hope of success is shown by the tone of his correspondence. In his last dispatch to Pitt, dated September 2, he wrote, 'there is such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at a loss how to determine.'¹⁴ To Admiral Saunders, two or three days before, he had written of himself as 'a man that must necessarily be ruined';¹⁴ and in his last letter to his mother, written on August 31, he spoke of being determined to leave the service at the earliest opportunity.¹⁴ Townshend, meanwhile, in private, criticized him much as Wolfe himself had criticized his superior officers the year before. 'General Wolfe's health,' he wrote to his wife, 'is but very bad: his generalship, in my poor opinion, is not a bit better.'¹⁵ Yet, sick and despondent as he was, Wolfe did not lie down in the furrow. For past failures he blamed no one but himself; manfully he faced the future in all its gloom; and, if Townshend felt little confidence in his leading, the soldiers knew better; and he led them to victory.

¹⁴ Wright, pp. 548, 549, 553.

¹⁵ From the Townshend Papers. The letter is quoted in full by Kingsford in his History of Canada, vol. iv, p. 226, note.

At the end of August, the following was the disposition of the English forces. Murray, with Admiral Holmes, was operating above the city; Monckton was at Point Levis, and near him Admiral Saunders, with the main English fleet, was anchored in the basin of Quebec. Wolfe himself, with Townshend, was still encamped on the northern shore below the Montmorency; and Admiral Durell, with the rearguard of the fleet, was watching the river below. Amherst's successes were known to Wolfe and his colleagues, but they soon learnt also that no help could be expected from him. September was on them, and at the end of September, or at latest by the middle of October, the campaign would close. Whatever had to be done must be done quickly.

On September 3 the English camp by the Montmorency was broken up, and the troops were moved to the Point of Orleans and Point Levis. On the fifth, Murray's troops, which had returned to Point Levis, were marched up the southern shore and embarked on Holmes' vessels; they were followed by battalions of Monckton's and Townshend's brigades; and by September 7 nearly 4,000 troops, with the necessary supplies, were moving up and down the river above Quebec, menacing a landing at this point or at that, wearying Bougainville's force, now raised to 3,000 men, which, with its head quarters at Cap Rouge, was required to keep pace with the enemy's fleet, and to guard the heights on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence. Montcalm knew that the English force above Quebec had been strengthened; but he seems not to have known the full extent of Wolfe's preparations. English forces at Point Levis and on the island of Orleans still faced the Beauport lines, while Saunders' fleet lay directly off Quebec. The French general regarded Wolfe's movements on the upper river as feints; the main attack, if attack there should be, he expected below the town.

There was bad weather on September 7 and 8, and Wolfe landed a large proportion of his men from the crowded transports high up on the southern shore. Early on the twelfth they were put on board again, and orders were issued for the coming night. Two days' provisions each soldier took with him; and in the General Order, the last which Wolfe issued, officers and men alike were bid to 'remember what their country expects from them.' It was a signal such as Nelson gave at the battle of Trafalgar.

On September 10, looking through his telescope from the southern shore across the river, Wolfe had noted a path running up the opposite bank from a little cove rather more than a mile and a half higher up the river than the citadel of Quebec. The place was known as the Anse au Foulon, and now bears the name of Wolfe's Cove. The bank is between 200 and 300 feet high, and at the top were to be seen the tents of a French outpost. Here he determined to attempt a landing. On the night of the twelfth the troops, whom he had on board, were to drop down the river with the ebbing tide, half going on in boats, the rest following in the transports, while another smaller force, left under Colonel Burton at Point Levis, was to move up the southern shore, to be ferried across in support of the attack. Saunders, meanwhile, as night came on, was to threaten the Beauport lines.

Fortune had hitherto been unkind to Wolfe; now all went well. The many chances which a night attack involves, when the crisis came, all favoured the English. Their boats, as they came down stream, were taken by the sentries for French provision boats, which had been expected. Bougainville, who, before night fell and before the tide turned, had seen the ships drift up stream instead of down, was completely misled. Montcalm looked for danger from the fleet in front of him, and knew not what the tide was bringing down.

It was about two o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth when the boats cast off from the ships, and took their way down stream. Howe led with twenty-four men of the light infantry, who had volunteered for the first ascent. Close behind was Wolfe himself; and it has been told in many books, how, as the stream bore him on in darkness to glory and the grave, he repeated the well-known lines of Gray's Elegy.¹⁶ The leading boat was carried a little below the spot where the path runs down to the shore. About four o'clock in the morning, an hour before daybreak, the men scrambled up the side of the wooded cliff, and surprised the French picket at the top. Its commander, Vergor, who had surrendered Fort Beauséjour in Acadia, was wounded when trying to escape, and taken prisoner. The way being clear, the rest of the troops followed. The boats, having discharged their first cargo, brought off the remainder of the force from the transports, and carried over Burton's men from the opposite bank. About six o'clock, the daylight of a cloudy morning showed the whole army at the top of the cliffs; and, moving forward towards Quebec, Wolfe formed his line of battle within a mile of the city, on the part of the plateau known as the Plains of Abraham.

¹⁶ Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard was first published in 1751.

Between four and five thousand men had been landed; but some were kept in reserve, or left to guard the landing, and less than 4,000 men formed the fighting line. Monckton's brigade on the right abutted on the edge of the cliffs. Murray held the centre with three regiments, the 47th, the 58th, and the 78th Highlanders.¹⁷ Townshend was posted on the left. The left could be turned, for the force was too small to extend across the plain; and therefore, while the rest of the troops faced Quebec, Townshend's men, drawn up at right angles to their comrades, fronted the high ground known as the Côte St. Geneviève, which overlooks the river St. Charles above the city. Howe's light infantry covered the rear. One gun¹⁸ had been dragged up the cliff; but, when the fight began, the English had no other artillery. The French in this respect were in not much better case, for they hurried to the battlefield with few big guns to back them. The fight was one of infantry alone.

¹⁷ The 78th Highlanders, who fought with Wolfe, were not the ancestors of the present regiment of that number. The regiments of the present day who carry Quebec on their colours are the 15th (1st battalion East Yorkshire Regiment), the 28th (1st battalion Gloucestershire Regiment), the 35th (1st battalion Royal Sussex), the 43rd (1st battalion Oxfordshire Light Infantry), the 47th (1st battalion Loyal North Lancashire), the 48th (1st battalion Northamptonshire Regiment), the 58th (2nd battalion Northamptonshire Regiment), and the 60th Rifles (two battalions).

¹⁸ Townshend's dispatch of Sept. 20 says distinctly 'we had been able to bring up but one gun.' Knox, on the other hand, says, 'About eight o'clock we had two pieces of short brass six-pounders playing on the enemy' (Knox, vol. ii, pp. 70, 128).

Saunders' pretence at landing on the Beauport shore had kept Montcalm's army on the alert all the night. At six in the morning, riding towards Quebec, the French general learnt that the English had landed, and saw in the distance the enemy's lines. He brought his troops from Beauport with what speed he could; crossed the St. Charles; passed by or through the city; and marshalled his force beyond for instant fight. He had with him, it would seem, not more than 5,000 men. The garrison of Quebec remained within the walls, and a large proportion of the army did not leave their encampment, for the further lines by the Montmorency were some miles distant, and the shore had still to be protected. He might have waited to bring up more troops, and to give time to Bougainville to operate in the enemy's rear; but his communications were threatened, his supplies were short, Wolfe, if given breathing space, could throw up entrenchments, and with his command of the river, make his position absolutely safe. The one hope was to hurl him back over the cliffs, while yet his foothold was insecure; and to strike before the ardour of the Canadians and Indians had time to cool.

Between nine and ten o'clock the French were in battle array, and advanced over a little ridge which lay between Wolfe's army and Quebec. Wolfe's soldiers had had two hours' rest, and steadily moved forward, reserving their fire by the General's orders. At forty yards' distance the word of command was given; and two volleys of musketry decided the battle. The fire came from the whole English line, the French fell like corn under the reaper's scythe, a charge with bayonets and claymores followed, 'the Highlanders chased them vigorously towards Charles river, and the 58th to the suburb close to John's Gate.'¹⁹ Montcalm's army became a routed rabble. Stricken already earlier in the fight, Wolfe on the right, while preparing to lead the final charge, received his death wound. He was carried to the rear; heard, while still conscious, that the enemy were in flight; turned on his side, thanked God, and died in peace.

¹⁹ Knox, vol. ii, p. 71.

It was all over before noon. The English casualties numbered between six and seven hundred, the French lost double that number, and they too were bereft of their leader. As Montcalm retreated towards Quebec with his flying troops, he was shot through the body. He reached a house in the city, lingered for some hours, and, before the following day broke, like Wolfe he had gone to his rest. 'It was a very singular affair,' was Horace Walpole's cold-blooded comment; 'the generals on both sides slain, the second in command wounded; in short, very near what battles should be, in which only the principals ought to suffer.'²⁰ The French lost not only Montcalm, but also the officer next in rank on the field. On the English side, Monckton, who would have succeeded Wolfe, was severely wounded, though he was able, on the fifteenth, to sign a short and simple dispatch, reporting the 'very signal victory'; and the command devolved on Townshend. Threatened by Bougainville, who came up too late from behind with 2,000 men, and retreated again, Townshend recalled his troops and entrenched them; cannon and supplies were brought up from the river, and communication with the ships was made safe.

²⁰ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 258 (Letter of Oct. 19, 1759).

Behind the St. Charles the French were all in confusion. Vaudreuil called a council of war, and determined on an immediate retreat, abandoning all the lines which Montcalm had held so long and so well, and leaving the garrison of Quebec to surrender, as soon as provisions failed. The retreat began that same night with no semblance of order; and, circling inland past the English lines, the fugitives made their way towards Montreal, hurrying in panic far beyond Cap Rouge, where Bougainville was still stationed, to Jacques Cartier, thirty miles distant from Quebec.

With Wolfe and Montcalm expired the genius of either army. It was characteristic of Wolfe that, while dying, he sent an order to cut off the French retreat; but in the interval between the battle on the thirteenth and the capitulation of Quebec on the eighteenth, we do not read that any attempt was made to intercept the French, nor did Saunders land men to occupy the deserted Beauport lines. Townshend steadily made his trenches and besieged in form; while the French commandant of Quebec, Ramesay, with a weak garrison, and little or no food, was urged by his own people to capitulate. He had orders from Vaudreuil to surrender in due time, and, though counter messages came, they came too late. Too late Levis at Montreal had heard of the disaster; hurrying back, he turned the beaten troops at Jacques Cartier; he started with them on the eighteenth to save Quebec; but on that very morning Quebec was given up. The afternoon before, an assault on the town was threatened above, while a landing from the river was threatened below. Distrusting the promises of relief, Ramesay yielded to the pressure put on him by soldiers and civilians alike; at eight o'clock, on the morning of the eighteenth, the terms of surrender were signed; and that same day advanced parties of the English army held the gates of Quebec.

The English commanders debated whether or not they could hold the city through the coming winter, and determined at all hazards to do so. Murray was placed in command with a garrison of about 7,000 men; a month passed in repairing the fortifications, in landing and storing supplies; and on October 18, Admiral Saunders, with the first portion of the fleet, set sail for England. As he neared home, at the entrance of the Channel, he learnt that Hawke was about to engage a French fleet from Brest. He sailed off to join him 'without landing his glory,'²¹ but came too late, for Hawke had already fought his fight and won his victory in Quiberon Bay. Saunders had deserved well of his country, for without his active, untiring support the land forces would never have taken Quebec. He outlived Wolfe for sixteen years, and was privately buried in Westminster Abbey in December, 1775.

²¹ Letter from Horace Walpole dated 'November 30th, of the great year' (1759), vol. iii, p. 268.

Townshend, too, went home, his enemies said, to exaggerate his own merits and belittle Wolfe's memory. An anonymous letter to 'an honourable brigadier-general,' attributed to Junius among others,²² appeared in the following year, and attacked him with bitterness, some of which he probably deserved. He passed into political life, and as Viceroy of Ireland achieved a doubtful repute.

²² See the Grenville Papers, 1852, 3rd ed. Introductory notes relating to Lord Temple and the authorship of Junius at the beginning of vol. iii, pp. lxxxviii-xc.

Wolfe's body was brought to England, and buried where his father had been laid earlier in the year, in the vaults of Greenwich parish church. A monument to him, voted by Parliament, stands in Westminster Abbey, and his name lives, and will for ever live, in the hearts of men.

The news of his victory and death, and of the fall of Quebec, reached England on October 17. It came but two or three days after his latest dispatches, which gave little hope of success. There are two interesting letters among the Grenville Papers, written to Grenville by the Rev. Nathaniel Cotton, from on board the Princess Amelia at Île Madame in the St. Lawrence. The first is dated August 27 to September 6; the second bears the date of September 20. The first, repeating former letters, is not hopeful. It points out the insufficiency of Wolfe's force, the necessity of co-operation on the part of Amherst; and it refers to 'unrevealed causes' militating against the enterprise, which may be taken to mean want of harmony between Wolfe and Townshend. The later letter begins with the following words: 'I have the satisfaction to acquaint you that through the smiles of Providence we are in safe and quiet possession of Quebec.'²³

²³ Grenville Papers, vol. i, pp. 318-26.

Very dramatic was the revulsion of feeling in England, when all was known. No submarine cables then told the story of the war from day to day. Only a few dispatches and letters at long intervals were brought over the Atlantic, recording at first slow progress, then reverse, disappointment, and the General's sickness and despondency. The rock of Quebec seemed still impregnable; and, as the bright summer waned into autumn, public confidence gave place to gloom. Then in mid-October, when to North American lands the Indian summer gives a second brightness, tidings came from over the sea that the victory was won, and that the price paid for it was the life of Wolfe. There followed, as Burke well said, a 'mourning triumph.'²⁴ Joy was sobered by the sense of loss, and the picture of a desolate home appealed, as it always appeals, to Englishmen's minds. They thought of the mother, lately widowed, now childless, whose sickly son had been her joy and pride; and many, we may not doubt, thought also of the French home, whose master had gone out and came not again.

²⁴ Annual Register for 1759, p. 43.

The question naturally suggests itself, whether Wolfe's landing and attack was a desperate venture, justified only by success, the last throw of the dice by a man who had described himself as one who must necessarily be ruined; or whether it was the supreme effort of a military genius? It is impossible to study the story without coming to the conclusion that the second is the true view. No doubt fortune favoured him; no doubt the enterprise was full of risk; but from first to last as little as possible was left to chance, and from first to last a master mind made itself felt. The main point to remember is that he had secured absolute command of the river; wherever therefore he landed, on high ground not commanded by the enemy's guns, if for a few hours only he could make good his landing, his way of retreat was absolutely safe. Montcalm knew this, and hence his immediate attack. Then we have the movements which baffled Montcalm and Bougainville alike; we have time and place calculated to a nicety, every commander and every man told what to do and doing it, the landing effected by break of day, the battlefield carefully selected, the men duly rested, the battle line cautiously and safely formed, the respective merits of the two forces accurately gauged—the one, in Wolfe's own words, a small number of good soldiers, the other 'a numerous body of armed men (I cannot call it an army).'²⁵ There was no rush or hurry about the landing, the advance, or the fight. The soldiers kept their fire till told to use it: they charged when and not until their leader bade them. The whole was a thought-out feat of steady daring.

²⁵ Wolfe to his mother, Aug. 31, and to Lord Holderness, Sept. 9 (Wright's Life of Wolfe, pp. 553, 563).

Another question which is worth considering is: What would have been the result if Wolfe had not succeeded, if Quebec had not been taken, and the English fleet had sailed off down the St. Lawrence, either carrying the army home, or leaving it, as at one time during the siege had been contemplated, to go into winter quarters at the Île aux Coudres lower down the river? A failure would have been recorded, and Wolfe above all others would have so regarded it; but, notwithstanding, the expedition would not have been in vain. Quebec would have been left in ruins, the banks of the St. Lawrence, with emptied farms and homesteads, would have been a scene of desolation; though Montcalm would have lived to fight again, Canada in all human probability must have fallen. For Canada was being starved out; and, if the French Government a year before could spare but few troops and supplies for New France, much less were the necessary troops and supplies likely to be forthcoming after another year of exhausting war on the Continent. On December 16, Amherst wrote to Pitt from New York: 'From the present posts His Majesty's army is now in possession of, if no stroke was to be made, Canada must fall or the inhabitants starve.' He wrote with information given him by one of his officers, Major Grant, who had been a prisoner in Canada. Grant's words were: ''Tis believed that the colony, though in great distress, may subsist for a year, without receiving supplies from France'; but it could only subsist by using up all the live stock in the land. The English command of the water was killing Canada, the farmers and peasantry were sickening of the war; though Amherst wrote after the fall of Quebec, the saving of Quebec would in no way have fed Canada.

Unless, then, some great reversal of existing conditions had taken place, or unless peace had been declared, Canada would have been conquered, even if Wolfe had not triumphed and Quebec had not fallen in September, 1759. But widely different would have been the result on after history, and herein lies the true lesson to be drawn from the record of the siege and capture of Quebec, and of the death of Wolfe and Montcalm. It is the most conclusive answer, if answer were needed, to those—fifty years ago they were many—who ignore or minimize the effect of sentiment on the making and the preserving of nations. The noble picturesqueness of the story, its accompaniments of heroism and death, were of untold value in the work of reconciliation; and of untold value was the legacy to a yet unformed people of one of the great landmarks in history. In a sense, which it is easier to feel than to express, two rival races, under two rival leaders, unconsciously joined hands on the Plains of Abraham. The noise of war seemed to be stilled, the bitterness of competing races and creeds to be allayed, by sharing in an episode which appealed to all time and to all mankind. The dramatic ending of the old order blessed the birth of the new; the instinct of human pathos brought men together; and out of divergent elements made a nation. Born far away in different lands, in death Wolfe and Montcalm were not divided; and the soil on which they died has become the sacred heritage of a people, whose union is stronger than the divisions of religion, language, and race.