This principle of humanism was not an idea of liberty or equality. Those words rarely appeared in Champlain’s writings, and never with an ideological meaning. Like most Europeans of his age, he believed in a hierarchy of orders and estates. But he also believed that, by God’s will, people of all nations should be treated with respect.
Many of Champlain’s French associates shared this way of thinking: Protestants such as the sieur de Mons, and Catholics such as Lescarbot. Here again, as in many other ways, these men were profoundly influenced by the example of Henri IV. This circle of French humanists were pivotal figures in more ways than one. In the history of Europe they transformed the purpose of the Renaissance into the program of the Enlightenment. In America they also played a vital role. After many failures of French colonization in the sixteenth century, they were the first to succeed. They planted the seed of New France, and bent the sapling to the pattern of its growth. Their history bears witness to the importance of small beginnings in the history of great nations.
Michel Montaigne (1533–92) was a generation older than Champlain and in the same humanist tradition. A moderate Catholic who supported Henri IV and shared a spirit of tolerance, he wrote, “Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.” These French humanists played a vital role in modern history. They inherited the Renaissance and inspired the Enlightenment.
8.
SAINTE-CROIX
Champlain’s Worst Mistake, 1604–05
It was not easy to know this place without having wintered here…. There are six months of winter in this country.
—Samuel de Champlain, 16051
WHEN CHAMPLAIN AND HIS FRIENDS got back to France in the late summer of 1603, they were shocked to learn that their leader, Aymar de Chaste, was dead. His sudden loss was a shattering blow. Champlain wrote, “It grieved me greatly, as I realized that anyone else would have difficulty in undertaking this enterprise, and not being thwarted, unless it was a nobleman whose authority could overcome the envy of others.”2
Champlain went directly to court and once again he had no trouble getting direct access to Henri IV. He met several times with the king, gave him a manuscript map of New France, and delivered a “very special account which I drew up for him.”3 The two men talked about a grand dessein for America. “He was very pleased,” Champlain wrote, “promising not to give up this dessein, but to have it pursued and supported.”4
Perhaps they also talked about a new leader. No one could replace Aymar de Chaste, but someone had to succeed him—and quickly. The North American initiative had been without a driver in France for five months. To find a person with the necessary qualifications was not an easy task. He had to be a nobleman who could command respect, a gentleman who could attract support, a friend of the king with full access at court, a man of wealth who could work with investors, a man trained to arms and the sea, a leader of experience and maturity, a competent administrator, and most of all, a man of vision for New France.
That long list of qualities meant a short list of candidates. The search came down to one man: Pierre Dugua sieur de Mons, who was qualified in every important way. He was a nobleman of ancient family, a soldier who had fought bravely for the king, an officeholder with much administrative experience, and a man of wealth who could work with investors. He was a Protestant with a Catholic wife, and he had a spirit of tolerance. His Saintonge manners helped him get on with others. He had been to America on Chauvin’s ill-fated voyage, and knew the problems and opportunities in New France. Most important, as the king observed, the sieur de Mons was a man of “great prudence,” with much “knowledge and experience.”5
An imagined image of Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons. He was yet another leader in this circle of soldiers who supported Henri IV, fought for peace and toleration in France, and shared a vision of a New France in North America.
He was very close to Henri IV. Since 1594, he had been a “Gentleman of the King’s Chamber,” one of about twenty noblemen who were authorized to enter even the most private rooms, where they functioned as chamberlains. De Mons was often at court, and went with the king as he shuttled between his palaces at the Louvre in Paris, Fontainebleau in its great forest to the south, and Saint-Germain-en-Laye to the west.6
At court in the fall of 1603, de Mons and Champlain used their access to Henri IV to promote the American project. De Mons made a report to the king on the fertility of the soil in New France. Champlain did a presentation on “the means of discovering the passage to China.” He argued that the waterways of New France might make a convenient middle route to Asia, “without the inconvenience of the northern icebergs, or the heat of the torrid zone, through which our seamen pass twice in going and twice in returning, with incredible labors and perils.”7
De Mons and Champlain also worked with what might be called an American circle at Court. Three men were at its center. All were a generation older than Champlain. Pierre Jeannin was Intendant of Finances and president of the Parlement of Burgundy. Nicolas Brûlart, marquis de Sillery, was a great jurist, soon to be chancellor of France. Champlain’s former commander, Charles II de Cossé-Brissac was a marshal of France and governor of Brittany. These men were trusted members of the king’s inner council. They held many offices in his government, and wielded great influence at court. All were men of learning, with a global outlook and a particular interest in the new world. These French humanists were caught up in the intellectual currents of their age. They shared the spirit of Champlain’s dream, and supported his project for New France.8
While Champlain and the sieur de Mons worked with these men in France, they also discussed sites for settlement in North America. On this question they were not of one mind. Champlain was drawn to the St. Lawrence Valley by the magnitude of the great river and the abundance of its fur trade. He observed that to advance up the river was to move south to a warmer climate and more fertile ground. Reports from the Indians about big bodies of water to the west also held the promise of a route to China.
The sieur de Mons saw the strength of these arguments, but he favored another place. His painful experience of Chauvin’s voyage to Tadoussac had, in Champlain’s words, “taken away any desire to enter the great river St. Lawrence, having on that voyage seen only a forbidding country.”9 De Mons wanted to find a site further south along the American coast, “to enjoy a softer and more agreeable climate.” He was drawn to a coastal region that had the same latitude as Saintonge, warmer winters than Tadoussac, more fertile soil than the St. Lawrence Valley, and a very beautiful name. It was called La Cadie, l’Acadie—or in English, Acadia.10
The name had first appeared on American maps early in the sixteenth century. Historians are of two minds about its origin. One story links it to the Greek Arkadia through Giovanni da Verrazzano, the Florentine navigator who sailed the coast of North America, and gave the name of Arcadia or Acadia to what is now North Carolina, for its handsome trees. Samuel Eliot Morison made a study of the name. He found that it first referred to the Carolinas, and was slowly moved northeast, “by the whims of successive cartographers.”11
Another story holds that l’Acadie was an Indian word. In Algonquian languages, “cadie” is a suffix that means place, in combinations such as Tracadie, or Shubenacadie. Many “cadies” and “quoddys” are to be found in the place names of northern New England and eastern Canada.12 Both ideas are correct, but the first had priority. By the start of the seventeenth century, Acadia or l’Acadie referred to land on both sides of what we call the Bay of Fundy, which Champlain named the Baie Françoise. It included the coasts of today’s Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and part of downeast Maine. An example was the Lavasseur map in 1601, which labelled that area as the “coste de Cadie.”13
In October 1603 the sieur de Mons went to the king and proposed a settlement in Acadia. He also suggested a way to pay for it without cost to the Royal Treasury. De Mons believed that private investors could assume the costs of colonization, in return for a monopoly o
f the fur trade in New France. The very profitable voyage to Tadoussac earlier that year showed that such a venture could even yield a surplus for the Crown. That idea removed a major obstacle at court. Sully would not have to pay a sou from the treasury, and the king was very pleased. On October 31, 1603, de Mons received a commission as vice admiral for “all the seas, coasts, islands, harbors, and maritime countries which are found in the said province and region of Acadia.”14
A period of hard bargaining followed between de Mons and the king. On November 6, 1603, de Mons submitted “Seven Articles for the Discovery and Settlement of the Coast and Lands of Acadia,” and proposed changes in the terms of his appointment. He asked “very humbly” to be made viceroy rather than vice admiral of New France. Henri IV refused, on the ground that de Mons was not a “prince of the blood.” But he agreed to raise de Mons to the rank of lieutenant general, with quasi-regal powers that allowed him to act as if he were viceroy in North America.15
De Mons also wanted to report directly to the King’s Council, where the American circle was strong. Henri agreed but added one exception, perhaps at the request of lobbyists for merchants. He required that legal questions should go first to officials in the financial center of Rouen. That decision would make trouble in the years to come. It gave investors an advantage, as de Mons and Champlain were aware; but they could not resist the king.16
There were other issues. De Mons, thinking of Sully’s opposition, requested permission to take artisans to New France and also to recruit vagabonds and convicts. He wanted authority to impose fines on illegal traders, and asked for a direct order to build fortresses in America—probably to strengthen his hand with investors. The king approved, and added a request of his own. Reports had reached him that copper had been found in Acadia. He asked for a careful search of mines and minerals, and that was agreed. On November 8, 1603, the king signed a commission to his “dear and well beloved sieur de Mons, as lieutenant general for the country of Acadia.”17
* * *
For the sieur de Mons, Champlain, and their friends, Acadia was not merely a place. It was an idea, and even an emotion. They thought of it as a place of natural abundance, with many resources in fish, fur, timber, and soil—a place where people could live comfortably. More than that, they also envisioned Acadia as a place where Catholics and Protestants could live in harmony—a vision that came from the king himself. Henri IV ordered de Mons in no uncertain terms to “colonize the country on condition of establishing there the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, permitting each person to practice his own religion.” This policy for America followed Henri IV’s solution for France.18
De Mons and Champlain also thought of Acadia as a region where European settlers and American Indians could live side by side in a manner very different from what Champlain had observed in New Spain. These French humanists did not wish to make the Indians into a servile work force, or drive them from their land. They respected the humanity of the Indians even in their “savage state,” without “faith or law or authority,” ni foi, ni loi, ni roi, as Champlain put it. They hoped to convert the Indians to Christianity, and to coexist with them.
Henri IV’s grant of absolute powers and a trading monopoly to the sieur de Mons, Dec. 18, 1603. After the fiasco at Sable Island, the king insisted that French colonization in North America must pay its own way. It never succeeded in doing so.
These men were not utopians. They had no hope of a heavenly city on this earth. Forty years of civil war and religious strife had made them realists. But the horrors they had seen also gave them a sense of urgency about higher ideas of humanity and toleration. It was a generational phenomenon. Like later generations of American founders who witnessed the atrocities in eighteenth-century warfare, and also like the “wise men” of the mid-twentieth century who had survived two world wars, the earlier generation of de Mons and Champlain combined realism and idealism in their vision of a better world.19
Before these men could erect a colony in Acadia, they had to build a base in France. They knew that the king would give them strong moral support, little material assistance, and no money. The sieur de Mons faced a major problem that way. The king’s grant of a trading monopoly did not sit well with other French merchants. In Brittany the provincial Estates continued to demand full “liberté de trafic du Canada.” In Normandy the Parlement at Rouen refused even to register the Royal grant.
Henri IV was quick to intervene. He made very clear to the men of Rouen that the project for New France was vital to the “advancement of Our Power and Authority,” and a monopoly of the fur trade was its necessary instrument. The king informed the merchants who claimed liberty of trade that they had full liberty to join the company of monsieur de Mons.20 Many did so. De Mons succeeded in raising a capital of 90,000 livres from investors in four commercial centers: Rouen, Saint-Malo, La Rochelle and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. All contributed to the company and were encouraged to send their ships to New France. At the end of the first year, profits were to be reinvested in colonization. Thereafter, dividends would be paid to the investors. A large sum of capital was paid into the venture, and the future of the De Mons Company looked very bright.21
In the early months of 1604, the sieur de Mons began to organize an expedition. One of the first people he invited was Champlain, who wrote, “The sieur de Mons asked if I would agree to make this voyage with him.” Champlain was quick to accept, but as the king’s servant and pensioner, once again he could do so only by royal leave. “I agreed to his request,” he said, “provided that I had the approval of His Majesty.” Champlain went to see the king again and wrote, “He gave me permission” on one condition, “that I should always make him a faithful report of everything I saw and discovered.”22
As often in his life, Champlain’s status was not clearly defined, which appears to have been the way he liked it, as it gave him larger possibilities. As before, he was not an officer in the chain of command, but he had the rank of a gentleman, with a pension from the Crown and orders to report directly to Henri IV on all that he saw and discovered. Champlain always acknowledged the authority of the sieur de Mons as commander of the expedition and was completely loyal to him. At the same time he served his own purposes, with the sanction of the king himself.
The next step was to recruit colonists. No roster has survived, but many individuals can be identified by name, rank, or occupation. They made a model of diversity in early modern France. The leaders were “several noblemen,” and “a large number of gentlemen, of whom not a few were of noble birth,” in Champlain’s phrase. Nine of these gentleman-adventurers can be identified by name, all with the honorary title of “sieur.” Among them were the sieur de Mons, commander of the expedition, traveling with his able secretary Jean Ralluau, his servant Artus Daniel, and his bodyguard François Addenin, who may have been selected by Henri IV and was described “carrying arms under his charge for the service of his Majesty.”23
Another nobleman was Jean de Biencourt, sieur de Poutrincourt. He came from Picardy and he liked to say that he was going “for pleasure,” but he was also in search of a site in America “to which he might retire with his household, his wife and children.” Poutrincourt was a nobleman and a gentleman, “well-educated in the classics, a competent musician, and a brave soldier.” His companions took pleasure in his company.24
Others of high rank were identified as the sieurs d’Orville, de Genestou, de Sourin, de Beaumont, La Motte Bourgjoli, Fougeray de Vitré, and Pierre du Bosc-Douyn, called du Boullay, a senior captain in the Régiment de Poutrin-court. Little is known of these men beyond their garbled names and titles. None were mentioned for any special skill. Most were men of independent means who came as volunteers for what promised to be a great adventure. They were given special accommodations, as suited their station.25
Below these gentlemen were men of middling rank, recruited for their skills. At least seven were mariners with long experience at sea. The commander afloat, and first lie
utenant of the sieur de Mons ashore, was François Gravé, sieur du Pont, as he was recorded in the port records of Honfleur. We have already met him as Champlain’s shipmate Pont-Gravé. He was greatly respected for his knowledge of the North Atlantic. Under him were Captain Timothée le Barbier of Le Havre, Captain Nicolas Morel of Dieppe, Captain Guillaume Foulques, and also Master Guillaume Duglas and Master Cramolet. These men appeared in the records of many voyages to America.26 Others with professional expertise included Pierre Angibault, sieur de Champdoré, a skilled shipwright and amateur pilot. Henri, sieur de Beaufort, was an affluent young apothecary, the son of a prominent Paris merchant. None of these men were nobles, but they were addressed as sieur.27
Champlain tells us that the sieur de Mons also recruited “about 120 workers,” men who worked with their hands. There were several surgeons, who labored with their hands and were not quite gentlemen, as apothecaries and physicians were thought to be. Others included housewrights, master carpenters, sawyers, masons, blacksmiths, gunners, armorers, and locksmiths (serruriers) who were expert in the repair of gunlocks. At the king’s request, the sieur de Mons employed two master miners named Maître Simon and Maître Jacques, who were identified as coming from Slavonia in southeastern Europe. Perhaps they were Croatian Catholics. Their task was to search for mineral deposits.28
There were also a large number of semiskilled artisans, unskilled laborers, and possibly the usual ships boys. Only a few appeared by name in the notarial records of Le Havre and Honfleur. One of them was Anthoine Lemaire, aged nineteen, a plasterer of houses.29 Some may have been convicts and paupers whom de Mons had permission to recruit, perhaps from prison-cells where they were offered the choice of a ship or a scaffold.30 Several groups tended to live and eat apart from the others. A detachment of Swiss soldiers came along. They were the leading mercenaries of their era, highly respected for discipline and widely used to protect princes from their own people. They were probably recruited to keep order among artisans and workers. The soldiers lived in special quarters between the officers and “other ranks.” Their commander may have been the veteran Captain du Boullay.31
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