BUILDER OF NEW FRANCE
16.
THE COURT OF LOUIS XIII
Another New Master, 1616–19
When the head is sick, the members cannot be in good health.
—Samuel Champlain, ca. 16161
ON AUGUST 3, 1616, Champlain and Pont-Gravé sailed down the St. Lawrence River, homeward bound for France. They were blessed with fine weather and made a happy crossing in thirty days from Tadoussac to Honfleur. On arrival, their mood suddenly changed. They were astonished to hear that the viceroy of New France was a prisoner in the Bastille.2 The prince de Condé had been arrested on the orders of the queen regent herself, for the capital crimes of treason, rebellion, and lèse majesté. Champlain was deeply alarmed for the viceroy, and also for the fate of New France. He wrote, “The detention of My Lord the Prince led me to think that our rivals (nos envieux) would not be slow in spewing out their poison, for when the head is sick, the members cannot be in good health.”3
Champlain recalled that “from this moment, affairs changed their complexion.” The man who arrested Condé replaced him as viceroy of New France. He was Pons de Lauzière, marquis de Thémines de Cardillac, marshal of France. His appointment as viceroy was confirmed by the queen regent on October 25. Events were moving rapidly at court, and they were deeply threatening to Champlain’s design. One of his rivals approached Thémines and asked to be the viceroy’s lieutenant for New France. We do not know his name. Champlain contemptuously referred to him only as a “certain personage,” and tells us that he offered a bribe to Thémines, promising to treble the viceroy’s annual income by extorting large sums from merchants who wished to trade in New France. Whoever this “certain personage” may have been, he was successful, and the queen appointed him lieutenant for New France. Suddenly Champlain was unemployed.4
He responded as he always did when the grand design was in danger. Champlain fought back with every resource at his command, and recruited others to help. Condé, from his luxurious cell in the Bastille, brought a series of lawsuits against the new viceroy. The duc de Montmorency also filed a suit for his own outstanding claims. Maréchal de Thémines found himself in a tangle of litigation, with two princes of the blood against him.5
These contending parties were soon caught up in a larger and more dangerous game. Champlain began to discover what had been happening in France during his absence. In 1615, while he had been in Huronia, Marie de Medici had grown deeply unpopular in France. She sought a Spanish alliance by proposing to marry her son and daughter to the children of Philip III in Spain. Many people in France disliked these policies, and they detested the queen’s close circle of Italian friends at court. Especially hated were her Italian intimates, Concino and Leonora Concini, whose corruption had become an open scandal. It was one thing for the wealth of the kingdom to flow into French pockets, but quite another when it passed to foreigners.
Anger grew rapidly throughout the country in 1615 and 1616. Marie de Medici felt that power was slipping away, and she specially feared the prince de Condé. After the death of her younger son, Condé stood second in line to inherit the throne. He despised the corrupt circle around the queen. Others rallied to him, and he raised an army in the countryside. Once again the kingdom of France teetered on the brink of civil war. Fighting actually began in 1615 when Condé’s supporters took possession of the town of Méry in Champagne. In a battle that followed, allies of Champlain’s viceroy killed Champlain’s friend the sieur de Poutrincourt, proprietor of Port-Royal in Acadia. He was mourned by many Frenchmen, who blamed their hated Italian queen regent for provoking the trouble.6
In the summer of 1616, Condé rode into Paris to attend the Royal Council and was received with rejoicing by the people of the city. Nobles left the court and flocked to his mansion. In Richelieu’s words, the Louvre became a solitude, and “Condé’s house became what the Louvre had been.”7 Marie de Medici gave way to panic. On September 1, 1616, she ordered that Condé be arrested and confined in the Bastille. The princesse de Condé, an appealing figure, insisted on joining her husband in prison and gave birth to a stillborn child—further outraging the country.8
Marie de Medici chose the path of repression. At the urging of her French adviser Armand Jean de Plessis Richelieu, Bishop of Luçon, she assumed more powers and gave greater favors to her Italian circle, the Concinis in particular. She banished from court the most respected French ministers of Henri IV. Among the victims of her wrath were Champlain’s strong supporters Chancellor Brûlart-Sillery and President Jeannin, who had been very close to Henri IV and had supported Champlain and his design for New France. Sillery’s office was of such a nature that the queen regent could not remove him. She could only order him from her presence, but he was still around. Her ill-considered action increased her isolation.9
Then, writes historian Victor Tapié, “a new character appeared on the stage—the King.” Louis XIII was nearly sixteen years old, no longer a child. He was very frail, often in ill health, and suffered from many ailments, including the tuberculosis that would kill him at the age of forty-three. He had a dark, restless spirit and an explosive temper. His mother had left his upbringing in the hands of a governess, Madame de Monglat. His father, Henri IV, regarded him with profound disappointment and instructed his caregiver to “beat the Dauphin as often as possible,” to make a man of him.10
In his childhood Louis XIII had been kept on the fringe of power, but after the death of his father he had been anointed king, and in 1616 he was coming of age. He hated his mother’s Italian friends, and strongly sympathized with his father’s faithful servants, in particular Chancellor Sillery, a man of exceptional character and intellect. After the queen banished Sillery from court, he visited the young king to say farewell. It was an emotional scene. Many others observed that the young king wept. The queen appeared not to notice her son’s distress.
Louis XIII by Philippe de Champaigne is an image of a young, sickly, and deeply troubled king who looked old beyond his years. He aspired to the title of Louis Le Juste, but also to absolute dominion. He tried to help Champlain, but they had different ideas about New France.
The king’s adviser, Charles d’Albert de Luynes, urged him to assert himself and save the country from the Concini. Suddenly the king began to act. He recalled his father’s old ministers and ordered the arrest of the queen’s favorite, Concino Concini, on a charge of embezzlement. The king’s guards were instructed to seize Concini at court and kill him if he fought back. Concini was apprehended on the bridge of the Louvre. He resisted, and was instantly put to the sword. His wife, Leonora Galigaï Concini, was imprisoned, accused of witchcraft and executed. The queen regent feared for her life, but her son the young king showed her more pity than she had shown to him. He allowed her to retreat to a château at Blois, where she raged against the ingratitude of children. With her in this domestic exile went her French adviser Richelieu. His career was thought to be over. The event was nothing less than a coup d’état. It ended the regency of Marie de Medici, removed her closest advisers, and installed the young king in her place.
With young Louis XIII now in power, France took a long step on the road to royal absolutism. He would have a turbulent reign. The king himself was a deeply troubled young man and his private life was in disorder. He was thought to be bisexual in a strongly heterosexual world, and he surrounded himself with beautiful young creatures of doubtful gender who came and went in rapid succession. Some of these royal favorites tried to turn their intimacy into power. There were reports of a homosexual affair between the king and François de Barradat, who would be banished from the court for political intrigue and perhaps other things. He was replaced by Claude de Saint-Simon and then fifteen-year-old Henri d’Effiat, the marquis de Cinq Mars, a bold young man who dared to challenge the greatest ministers in the kingdom. The king also had mistresses and a very complicated platonic triangle involving the beautiful Marie de Hautefort. Young Louis XIII was unstable in these relationships
. He trusted few people and was withdrawn, silent, and dangerously “secretive.” He turned on people who thought they were his friends. It was said that he sometimes ordered the arrest of former associates “without warning or outward emotion, and a touch of cruelty.”11
Through it all, the king tried to steer a middle course for France. In his religious policy, Louis XIII continued his father’s Edict of Nantes and supported toleration of Protestant worship, but he also formed a closer connection with Catholic leaders. Protestant churches were ordered to return lands and buildings to the Catholic Church, which increased its wealth and power. The young king also changed his mother’s foreign policy. He sought to expand the power of France through the world—an opportunity for Champlain.
• • •
In the midst of all this turmoil, Champlain regained his job. He never explained how it happened. Suddenly his rival appears to have resigned the office of lieutenant for Quebec, perhaps in fear of his life. The viceroy, Thémines, appointed Champlain to his old position as lieutenant in New France. Confirmation by the king followed speedily on January 17, 1617.12
For Champlain one problem was solved, but many others remained. He was deeply worried about conditions in Canada, and even more concerned about support for his project at court. To judge from his writings, he was most troubled by his financial backers. The monied men of Rouen were growing restless. They had invested in Champlain’s company in the hope of gaining a monopoly of the fur trade in New France, and had done well in 1615 and 1616.13
Most of these investors had never shared Champlain’s dream for North America. They supported exploration, which promised to enlarge the fur trade, but they were not enthusiastic about colonization, which entailed heavy costs and threatened to disrupt their business. Champlain insisted that settlements were vital to the success of commerce in the long run, but business leaders were more concerned about the short run. He complained to the investors about “the small results they had shown in forwarding the growth of the settlement,” and warned that “nothing was more likely to break up the company,” unless more families were sent out “to put the land in cultivation.”14
The investors also worried about the strife at court, which created a climate of uncertainty that was not good for business. They were not happy to learn that they might be liable for large sums to three viceroys at once: Condé under their old contract, and Thémines under the new arrangement, with other claims for compensation still outstanding from the duc de Montmorency. The investors were also supporting the Récollet fathers as well as the habitants at Quebec. The cost of Champlain’s design kept rising. And if all that were not enough, merchant capitalists in La Rochelle, Saint-Malo, and other towns were renewing their appeals for liberty of commerce.15
Champlain was losing patience with court intrigues and litigation, and wrote, “Let us leave them to their pleading, and go and make ready our ships.”16 In the early winter months of 1617, he found an opportunity for a quick voyage to New France. He traveled from Paris to Honfleur, where a ship was waiting. Even before he could sail, yet another attempt was made to remove him from his office as the king’s lieutenant in New France. This time it came from Daniel Boyer, a merchant associated with the Rouen Company. Champlain described him as a malicious enemy and grand chicaneur.17
Just as Champlain was about to sail, Boyer appeared in Honfleur. Claiming to represent the entire company, he reported that the parlement had issued an order that required that “their lordships the Prince de Condé, Montmorency, and Thémines, without prejudice to their rights, should be debarred from receiving any part of the money to which they could lay claim.” Therefore, said Boyer, the associates of the company could not pay Champlain as their deputy on pain of a heavy fine for violating a court order. As they could not pay him, Champlain could “no longer claim the honor of functioning as lieutenant of my Lord the Prince.”18
Champlain was infuriated. He had been appointed by three viceroys and confirmed by the king. His title to the job was clear, and debt litigation had nothing to do with it. Further, Boyer claimed to act in the name of a company that Champlain had founded. “Here was my reward from these gentlemen,” he said. They had done very well by their investments, and now they were trying to eliminate him in hope of squeezing a few more livres out of the fur trade. The more Champlain thought about it, the more angry he became. He turned the full force of his rage against Boyer. “All this was no concern of mine,” he said, and he sent Boyer on his way, maybe at the point of a sword. When the other partners heard about it, they “shifted the responsibility to Boyer, saying that what he had done was without authorization.” Once again, Champlain had survived.19
Champlain sailed from Honfleur on March 11, 1617, aboard the Saint-Étienne, commanded by his friend Captain Morel, a good seaman and an old hand in the North American trade.20 It would be a very short stay in New France. Champlain reached Tadoussac on June 14, and he was back in Paris by July 22, when he signed a legal document. He must have left Quebec no later than the first week in July, which means that he was in New France for a few weeks at most.21
Short as it was, Champlain turned his visit to a constructive purpose. He took with him Pont-Gravé as “conducteur en chef” of trading operations, plus three Récollet fathers, Joseph Le Caron, Denis Jamet, and Paul Huet.22 Most important, he brought out the first French family to settle permanently in Quebec and support themselves by farming. The head of the family was an old friend, Louis Hébert, the young Parisian apothecary who had sailed with Champlain on exploring voyages and helped start the first settlements in Acadia. The Hébert family lived near the Louvre and were part of the American circle there. They were connected by marriage to Jean de Biencourt de Poutrin-court, and by friendship to the sieur de Mons and Champlain.23
Young Hébert had experienced New France first hand. In 1616, Champlain convinced him to settle at Quebec, with a contract from the company and a large grant of land. Hébert decided to emigrate with his entire family: his wife, Marie Rollet, and three children—Anne, a teenager; Guillemette, about eleven years old; and Guillaume, still very small. Also with him were his brother-in-law Claude Rollet and a servant named Henri Choppard.24
When the Héberts arrived at Honfleur to begin their journey, they were shocked to learn that the company would not honor its contract. One suspects the grand chicaneur Daniel Boyer was at work again, with a faction in the company that strongly opposed colonization. The Hébert family had sold their property in Paris and could not return. A bitter compromise was forced upon them. Hébert would receive only half the land and money that he had been promised, and the company would continue to charge interest of 20 percent even on what he had not been given! They also required that Hébert, his wife, and servant would have to work for the company in the fur trade. Altogether the conduct of the company to the Héberts was even more cruel and faithless than it had been to Champlain.25
But Louis Hébert was another man with a dream—a true believer in the idea of New France. He agreed to emigrate even on very unfavorable terms, confident that he could improve his condition in America. In Quebec, Champlain did all in his power to help the Héberts. He ordered employees of the company to work for the Hébert family and build them a sturdy stone house. For many years the Hébert home was the only private family residence in Quebec. With great labor the Héberts established a working farm, tilled it without a plough, and raised food enough to feed themselves and others at Quebec. Hébert also contributed his skill as an apothecary, treating Europeans and Indians equally. Like Champlain, he respected the Indians, welcomed them to his home, and treated them fairly. They in turn regarded him and his family with great affection.
Champlain also helped the family acquire more land along the St. Charles River. They became major landowners, and Louis Hébert began to appear in the records as the sieur de Hébert. Two daughters married Frenchmen in Quebec, and the family began to multiply. The family became an important presence in New France; the Récoll
et fathers wrote much about them, as did the Jesuits and Champlain. They played a major role in the survival of Quebec through its early years and brought an urgently needed element of stability and order to the new settlement.
Their example was also important to Champlain in another way. The success of their farm demonstrated that his dream of a self-supporting French population was practicable in America. But the Héberts were unique: the only firmly established farming family for many years. They demonstrated that it was possible, but also very difficult.26 In 1617, between fifty and sixty French were reported to be living in Quebec, mostly traders and seamen. Nearly all were men and boys who had no intention of settling permanently. Quebec was more like a military post or transitory work camp than an established community.
But there were some elements of stability. The Récollet fathers became an important presence in New France. These devoted friars came to carry the gospel to the Indians. They also worked among French seamen and traders, and built a small chapel at Tadoussac, where large ships anchored for the season. There were also three Récollets in Quebec and one in Huronia. They went to work with a will, and appear to have made themselves useful and well liked by the French and the Indians.27
For the coming winter in Quebec, Champlain once again chose as commander Jean Godet du Parc, the young nobleman from Perche. He had wintered at Quebec in 1609–10 and had been put in command during the following winter. By all accounts he was able, experienced, and trustworthy. The settlement was in very good hands.28
On this quick trip in 1617, Champlain did not have time to go up the river. When he wrote about this short visit, he said that “nothing happened worthy of note.” He meant that he was unable to go exploring, or meet with the Indians—things he loved to do. But he was deeply worried about events in France, and felt an urgency to get back.29
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