Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  The Spanish garrison was still there, preparing to return home under the terms of the Treaty of Vervins. During the war, Champlain had been sent with a detachment of French troops to keep an eye on them. From the waterfront, he looked across a broad estuary with two passages to the sea. The passe du sud pointed south across the Bay of Biscay toward Spain. The passe de l’ouest opened to the west toward America. Behind him was a dark and ruined countryside, ravaged by decades of religious strife. Before him stretched the open sea and a bright new world of boundless opportunity.4

  In that setting, this restless young man made a plan for himself. It centered on a vision of America. Champlain had heard much about the new world. In Brouage and Brittany he had met men who had been there, and they must have spun many a yarn for an eager listener. He was aware of the king’s expanding interest in America. Champlain wanted to know more. The question was where to begin.

  As he studied the problem on the waterfront at Blavet, one possibility was to take the passe de l’ouest, and follow Jacques Cartier and Martin Frobisher to the higher latitudes of North America. Many people had searched there for a northwest passage to China, but nobody had been able to find it. After a century of heavy traffic by fishermen and fur traders, much of that vast area remained to be explored.

  Another option was the passe du sud. Champlain could go that way, toward the American regions where Spaniards and Portuguese had built their empires. The kings of France and Spain had agreed to a comprehensive peace in 1598, the first in many years. It was a moment when a well-connected Frenchman might visit the Spanish dominions in America in hope of learning from their imperial experience.

  Champlain weighed those choices, and decided to take the passe du sud. He wrote, “I resolved, so as not to remain idle, to find means to make a voyage to Spain, and being there to acquire and cultivate acquaintances, so that by their favor and intervention I could find a way to get aboard one of the ships in the fleet that the King of Spain sends to the West Indies every year.”5 He was very clear about his goal, which was “to make inquiries into particulars of which no Frenchmen had been able to gain knowledge, because they had no free access there, in order to make a true report of them to His Majesty on my return.” One wonders if Henri IV himself might have had a hand in this plan. Champlain had already been employed on at least one secret mission on His Majesty’s service. Perhaps the king gave him this new assignment, but Champlain tells us that it was his own idea.6

  The fortress of Blavet (now Port-Louis) on the south coast of Brittany was built in part by Spanish troops during the wars of religion. After the war in 1598, Champlain was there without employment. Looking outward to the sea he formed a plan for himself in the New World—a Frenchman’s American dream.

  In 1598, the brooding fortress at Blavet and its setting on the sea symbolized a dramatic contrast in Champlain’s thinking. Behind him was an old world ravaged by forty years of religious war. Before him was a bright new world of boundless opportunity.

  Whatever the origin, it was a bold plan and very dangerous. Even after the crowned heads of France and Spain had made peace, old enmities were slow to fade. The hard men who ran the Spanish empire in America were far from Madrid, and some were farther from God. The penalty for entering New Spain without permission was death. Champlain himself wrote that interlopers were executed there. Others were sent to the galleys and chained to an oar, or locked away in tropical dungeons, which was a death sentence by another name. And all that was merely for trespassing. The punishment for espionage was worse than death. But Champlain was not deterred by danger. He found it a positive attraction.

  The only question in his mind was about how to get started. How could he obtain an open invitation to visit a closed empire? Champlain knew that Spanish leaders were chronically short of ships and seamen, and were compelled to employ foreigners from other Catholic countries. Sometimes these arrangements were made with official sanction. More often they were private deals that were not reported to the imperial bureaucracy in Seville.7

  In the summer of 1598, such an opportunity suddenly presented itself. The Treaty of Vervins called for the return of all Spanish troops from French soil, and one of the largest garrisons was at Blavet. Both sides agreed that these soldiers should be repatriated by sea, but the Spanish rulers lacked the ships to carry them. To bring the troops home, they proposed to charter several French vessels. One available ship was the Saint-Julien, a big navire of 500 tons. Her commander happened to be Champlain’s uncle.8

  He was a fabulous character, with a life so complex that more than one historian has wondered if several men shared the same name. In the sixteenth century, his name was written many ways, a common practice in that era. In French records he appears as Guillaume Allène, or Guillaume Helaine, or Guillaume Elene. In Spanish archives he turns up as Guillermón Elena, or Guillermo Elena. On the waterfronts of many countries, he was known as “le capitaine Provençal,” from his reputed birthplace in Marseilles. Captain Provençal moved frequently from port to port and made a prosperous living from the sea. He sailed under many flags, and some were flags of convenience. At one stage in his career, he won notoriety as a corsair, ranging the sea and raiding the coast of England. At other times he served as a commissioned officer in France’s armées de mer and received marks of royal favor from Henri IV. He also won an appointment as a Pilot-General in the Spanish Marine. On another venture he gained entry to Portuguese Brazil in a ship hopefully named L’Espérance, and he also traded on the coast of Africa. His religious affiliations were variable. At one time he appeared as a Huguenot; at another, as a Catholic. Through it all, he became a man of wealth, with commercial property in Spain and a country estate in France near La Rochelle.9

  For a time Captain Provençal lived in Brouage, where he married the sister of Samuel Champlain’s mother. Young Samuel wrote with family pride that his uncle was “considered one of France’s first-rate seamen.” Captain Provençal, for his part, responded with feelings of affection for his nephew and took an active interest in his career.10

  On one of his many adventures, Captain Provençal had acquired a one-eighth share of a large French vessel called the Saint-Julien (San Julian to the Spanish). She was old and not in the best repair. Probably her hold still stank of fish, for she had long been in the Newfoundland trade. For several years she had been out of service and even out of the water, sitting high and dry on stocks in a French port. Some doubted that she was seaworthy, but Champlain described her as a “strongly-built ship and a good sailor.”11

  Her principal owner was Julien de Montigny de la Hottière, a French nobleman of flexible politics, who had been a leader of the Catholic Party in Brittany and later a supporter of the new Bourbon regime in France. He was well connected, and had access to both Phillip II of Spain and Henri IV in France. Governor de la Hottière moved easily across national and religious lines, and held offices of trust in both countries—which made him an ideal candidate for the Blavet mission.12

  In 1598, he and Captain Provençal received a lucrative offer to carry Spanish troops home from France, with the blessing of both governments. Young Champlain may have helped to make the arrangement. In the last days of the Breton campaign he was working on the staff of Maréchal Brissac, who had been commissioned to supervise the return of the Spanish troops.13

  Captain Provençal outfitted the ship Saint-Julien and brought her to Blavet, where a Franco-Spanish fleet was assembling. In overall command was a Captain General of Spain, Pedro de Zubiaur, a rough character renowned for his exploits as a corsair against the English.14 Along the way, Captain General Zubiaur had been an associate of Champlain’s uncle Captain Provençal. In Blavet, the two men became partners in side-investments of dubious legality, loading aboard their ships private cargoes of valuable commodities such as wine and silk.15

  Saint-Julien was duly chartered to join Zubiaur’s Spanish squadron for the voyage from Brittany to Spain. Captain Provençal was in a position to help his
nephew and he invited Champlain to come along. The young man leaped at the chance. Champlain’s status aboard the ship was not clear. He held no formal rank, except that of gentleman. Perhaps he went along as his uncle’s assistant, or companion. Champlain tells us only, “je m’embarquay avec luy; I embarked with him,” a phrase that hints at his own agency and a personal connection.16

  At Blavet, Saint-Julien took aboard a large number of Spanish soldiers with their artillery. She was one of eighteen ships in the squadron, all crowded with men. On August 23, 1598, they sailed from Brittany, outward bound through the passage du sud for Cadiz on the southwest coast of Spain.17

  The journey began with a fair wind, and promised to be an easy passage in pleasant summer weather. But in the sixteenth century, any voyage could turn dangerous in unexpected ways. As they sailed south across the Bay of Biscay, a pestilence began to spread through the crowded ships. Zubiaur reported to his superiors, “With my own hands, I threw into the sea the corpse of an Irish gentleman who died aboard my flagship.” So many others fell ill that the Spanish commander converted one vessel into a hospital ship, and the victims were quarantined aboard her.18

  As they struggled with this ordeal, the fleet approached Cape Finisterre on the northwest tip of Spain. Here the waters of the Bay of Biscay met the currents of the Atlantic Ocean, with abrupt changes in sea-temperature. Suddenly they found themselves in thick fog on a lee shore, with rocky shoals around them. Champlain recalled: “All our vessels scattered, and our flagship was nearly lost, having touched upon a rock and taken aboard much water.”19

  At last the fog lifted and the ships began to find each other. They steered for Vigo Bay and anchored for ten days while repairs were made to the flagship. Zubiaur ruthlessly ordered the hospital ship to be burned and sunk (brûlé et coulé) to stop the contagion. One wonders what happened to the sick and dying. When that brutal work was done, the fleet got underway. They sailed south along the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal, doubled Cape Saint Vincent at the southwest corner of Iberia, and turned east toward their destination. On September 14, 1598, Saint-Julien dropped anchor in the clear waters of Cadiz Bay.20

  Saint-Julien remained there for about a month, and Champlain seized the opportunity to explore the town of Cadiz, a vital center of Spain’s American trade. Cadiz was then an island at the end of a long peninsula. It had been attacked by Sir Francis Drake in 1587, and was heavily fortified with massive walls and towers.21

  Champlain went ashore, and described his visit in the language of espionage, as “reconnoitering” Cadiz. He later made a careful sketch of the town, with particular attention to its fortifications. As he walked its streets, Champlain found a very mixed population. One street, still called the Calle de Bretonnes, was a gathering place for seamen and merchants from Brittany. He would have met many people who could tell him about the Spanish empire. Throughout his career, Champlain gathered knowledge in every way he could—working from his observations and information that others gave him.22

  After a month at Cadiz, Saint-Julien was ordered to shift her mooring across Cadiz Bay to the sprawling river town of Sanlucar de Barrameda. This was the place where Spain’s American treasure fleets assembled for their annual voyage to America. It was also where they returned, in armadas of as many as a hundred ships or more, laden with wealth from the new world.23

  Once again, while his ship was in the harbor, Champlain made the best of his time by “reconnoitering” another strategic Spanish town and studying its defenses. He found much of interest in Sanlucar. It was vital to imperial communications with America, as a port of entry for the fabulous city of Seville, fifty miles upstream on the Guadalquivir River. From Sanlucar to Seville, the banks of that busy waterway were lined with shipyards, chandleries, warehouses, taverns, brothels, and all the industries of maritime trade.

  Seville itself was a great city in 1599, one of the largest and fastest-growing urban places in Iberia, with a population of perhaps 150,000 souls. It was also the commercial center of the Spanish empire. While Champlain was there in 1598, construction began on a new home for the Casa de Contratación, a powerful institution that regulated Spain’s imperial trade. The city was also known for the strength of its medieval towers and walls, and for the majesty of its Alcàzar, which had been the home of King Ferdinand and his queen, Isabella. It was renowned for the beauty of its Moorish palaces and gardens, and the creativity of its culture. The painter Velasquez was born there in 1599, and Murillo a few years later.

  Champlain went ashore and studied the city. He was no casual tourist who went wandering through its ancient streets. Later he made small bird’s-eye sketches from the same oblique perspective that would be favored by intelligence analysts from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. His drawings showed the location of city walls, the construction of towers, the placement of gates, and the height of crenellated battlements. Champlain appears to have done all these things in a discreet way, without arousing the suspicion of Spanish authorities, who were constantly on the qui vive for inquisitive strangers.24

  While Champlain studied the fortified cities that controlled the commerce of the Spanish empire, Saint-Julien lay restlessly at her mooring in the Guadalquivir River. She remained there for three months, longer than Champlain had anticipated. He and his uncle were looking for another job, and hoped that their ship might be chartered yet again for the annual treasure fleet to America. That arrangement would have given Champlain a chance to visit a large part of the Spanish empire.

  But the treasure fleet was delayed that year. In the summer of 1598, a dispatch vessel arrived at Cadiz with a report that the English Earl of Cumberland had attacked the island of Puerto Rico. This was no small raid. The Earl of Cumberland led a force of 600 freebooters in twenty privately armed ships. They had sacked the capital of San Juan, spread out through the big island, and gathered up anything of value that they could carry away.25

  This assault was a major threat to the Spanish empire. Puerto Rico lay athwart the main lines of trade from Spain to America, and the fall of San Juan threatened major arteries of communication. Spanish leaders acted quickly. They postponed the sailing of the treasure fleet, and mobilized the resources of the empire to recover Puerto Rico. As part of that great effort, Captain-General Zubiaur was instructed to extend the charters of the French ships from Blavet, and to prepare his squadron for a voyage to Puerto Rico. It was to be a large operation. Zubiaur’s ships were to be joined by a second squadron from the Azores and a third from Lisbon, with more ships from Cadiz, Seville, and San-lucar.26

  Saint-Julien and her French crew were hired for that task, with Captain Provençal as master. Both General Zubiaur and Captain Provençal were thought to be especially well qualified for the mission by their experience of fighting English corsairs. Young Champlain welcomed this unexpected opportunity, which promised to give him another way of reaching the Spanish colonies in America.27

  As these plans were maturing in the late fall, another dispatch boat arrived in Sanlucar with yet more news. The English at Puerto Rico had been defeated, not by Spanish forces but by tropical disease. In the summer and early fall, the Earl of Cumberland and most English survivors had abandoned Puerto Rico and sailed away.28 In Spain, plans changed yet again. The special expedition to recover Puerto Rico was cancelled. General Zubiaur was given a new assignment in the Mediterranean, and he invited his friend Captain Provençal to join him. Champlain heard the news with a sinking heart. He despaired of seeing New Spain and wrote of his “great regret at seeing myself frustrated of my hope.”29

  Meanwhile, Spanish authorities also decided that the treasure fleet could safely sail to America, and they put it under the command of an able officer with much experience of the new world, Don Francisco Coloma. It would be his third treasure fleet, more than any other officer in Spain. Once again the Spanish leaders were short of large ships with trained crews. Don Francisco proposed to charter Saint-Julien with her French seamen. As Captain Proven�
�al himself would not be able to make the voyage, he wanted to put the ship under experienced Spanish officers and assigned a Spanish master, Captain Jeronomino de Vallebrera.30

  Champlain tells us that he and Captain Provençal had a meeting with Don Francisco. One might imagine the scene: an austere Spanish chamber with stark white walls. In the center would have been a massive oak table, covered with maps of the new world, charts of the open sea, and dispatches from America. Don Francisco himself was a leader of great dignity and courtesy. He would have been dressed in black with a pristine white ruff. He liked to wear a single decoration suspended by a gold chain from his neck: an eight-pointed Maltese cross that identified him as a Chevalier in the Order of the Knights of Malta. The eight points symbolized the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. It was a proud emblem of honor, courage, and Catholic faith.31

  Enter two Frenchmen: weatherbeaten old Captain Provençal, brightly dressed in the colorful clothing called bizarria that were much loved by seamen of every nation, and a step behind was, his young nephew Samuel de Champlain.32 After an elaborate exchange of courtesies, Don Francisco offered terms for the charter of the Saint-Julien, which now became San Julian. Captain Provençal agreed on one condition. He explained that he was “engaged by General Zubiaur to serve elsewhere and unable to make the voyage,” and asked if his young kinsman might remain aboard the ship “to keep an eye on her, pour esgard à iceluy.”33

  Don Francisco agreed, and an arrangement was made to the benefit of all parties. By its terms, the Spanish leader added a large vessel to his fleet. The owners received 500 crowns a month for the charter of their ship. Captain Provençal put aboard a trusted young kinsman who could look after his interests. And Champlain was able to visit Spanish America with the protection of the fleet commander. The young Frenchman wrote that Don Francisco “freely granted me” permission to make the voyage, “with evidence of being well pleased, promising me his favor and assistance, which he has not denied me upon occasions.”34