Three months later, a Montagnais peace mission went to the Iroquois, who “gave them a hearty welcome.” But Simon tagged along, and Champlain wrote that on the way home “this perfidious, treacherous and evil man murdered an Iroquois in cold blood.” The Montagnais delegation “had much difficulty in making amends for the crime.” Champlain commented, “One rogue (coquin) can wreck all sorts of good enterprises.”58 But both sides genuinely wanted peace, and the Iroquois judged that the man who had killed their companion had “acted from his own malice,” without the support of his nation. They sent six people to confirm a peace with “all the Indians.” Champlain helped with this difficult peacemaking, and it succeeded in a limited way. A peace began to operate in 1624, more as a modus vivendi than a formal agreement. But it held for nearly a decade.59
It was a constant struggle to keep the peace in the St. Lawrence Valley. Small skirmishes between Indian nations sometimes threatened to explode into full-scale war. One such incident occurred when the Huron complained that some of the Algonquin had treated them badly, closing some routes to them, levying tolls on their goods, “and not content with that, robbed them into the bargain.” With Champlain’s encouragement, the nations came together near Quebec, “held an assembly of their own,” and “on all these matters … were brought into agreement.” With much trial and many errors, Champlain and Indian leaders created conditions for a peace among the Indian nations in the St. Lawrence Valley for many years.60
At the same time Champlain pursued his vision for the French settlement at Quebec. The project closest to his heart was the development of agriculture, in the hope of making Quebec self-supporting, as he was confident it could be. He encouraged the planting of fields and gardens and orchards, and gave close attention to their progress. He imported plants and seeds from Europe and studied the native flora with close attention. Every spring, as soon as the fields thawed, he began sowing. Champlain delighted in the natural world and kept a botanical calendar of spring events.61 In the fall he experimented with winter crops of grain. He wrote in 1622, “I spent the time in preparing the gardens for autumn sowing, so as to see what would come of it in the spring, and took a singular pleasure in the work.”62
Champlain sought to bring more land into cultivation. In 1624, he and Guillaume de Caén visited the Île d’Orléans just below Quebec, and planned to begin farming there. Farther downstream Champlain saw another opportunity at Cap Tourmente, where natural meadows produced large crops of hay. The critical limit on animal husbandry in North America was the quantity of fodder that was needed to sustain animals through the winter. Champlain and de Caén studied the meadows at Cap Tourmente, and concluded that it was “a good place for pasturing cattle.” They began to harvest hay for the colony and planned a settlement there to raise livestock.63 Champlain built roads and paths around Quebec, including “a small road to Fort St. Louis,” completed by November 29, 1623. Another road, “both for men and beasts,” ran along the St. Charles River. “I employed all hands,” he wrote, “and so well did they do their work that it was soon finished.”64
In Quebec itself Champlain started his most ambitious project. The habitation was falling apart again, as it did every year. Champlain wrote, “The opinion was that it would take less time to build a new one than annually to be repairing the old one.” He drew up plans for a new structure “thirty-six yards in length, with two wings of twenty yards in each side and four small towers at the four corners of the structure, a ravine in front, commanding the river, the whole encircled by ditches and a drawbridge.”65
Champlain’s second habitation was begun in 1624, severely damaged by British invaders, and rebuilt in 1633. Th ese solid stone foundations supported handsome round towers. The evidence of archaeology confirms Champlain’s written accounts in this and many other details.
During the fall of 1623 he began to gather materials: “a quantity of lime made, trees cut down, stone brought in, and materials generally prepared for the mason work, carpentry and heating.” He put eighteen men to work, and wrote that, “with this small number we managed to accomplish a great deal.” Carpenters made windows and doors, and cut thirty-five beams and fifteen hundred boards for the buildings, with framing timbers for the roof.66 In the spring of 1624, the heavy work of construction began. On May 6, 1624, the masons began to lay stone for the foundation. Champlain wrote, “I placed a stone on which were engraved the arms of the King and those of my lord de Montmorency, with the date and my name in writing as Lieutenant.”67
There were many setbacks. On May 20, a violent gale blew the roof off Fort St. Louis and destroyed a gable of Hébert’s stone farmhouse. Champlain ordered his workmen to repair the damage, which delayed his other projects. But by the end of May, the first story of the new habitation was rising, with doors and windows in place and joists laid for the second floor. Work continued through the summer, and by early August construction was “well advanced.” Most of this work was done under the orders of Champlain himself; very little was undertaken by private enterprise.68
As the month of September approached, Champlain had a hard choice to make. Should he stay for another winter, or return to France? After four years in Quebec, his wife was growing restless and wanted to go home. Champlain tells us only that he decided to go back to France with his family, “having now wintered in the country nearly five years, during which time we were ill-supplied with fresh provisions and with other things very sparingly.”69 He left with many projects underway, and some very near completion. The handsome new habitation was almost done. Champlain tells us that he “left the new buildings in a forward state, built up to fourteen feet in height, with fifty-two yards of wall made, with some joists on the first floor, and with all the other beams ready to put in place; with boards sawn for the roof; most of the wood dressed and piled up for the framework of the roof of the dwelling, and all the windows made, as well as most of the doors, so that all that was needed was to put them in.” He added, “I left two kilns full of quicklime, with stone drawn on the spot, and all that was left to do in order to have the whole wall erected, as to build up seven or eight feet, a thing that could be done in a fortnight, the materials being at hand.”
Champlain also ordered the work to continue on the fort. “I requested them to collect fascines and other things for finishing the fort,” he wrote, “although in my own mind I felt pretty sure that they would do nothing of the sort, since they had the greatest dislike of the work, notwithstanding that the safety and preservation of the country depended on it, a thing they either could not or would not comprehend.” Champlain left behind Émery de Caën, Catholic nephew of Guillaume de Caën, to continue the work and “to command in my absence at Quebec.” The resident population had risen to sixty people.70
On August 21, 1624, Champlain sailed from Tadoussac to Miscou Island on the fishing coast. With his family aboard, he decided to wait for Pont-Gravé and other fishermen to finish their work, so that they could all sail in company. Pont-Gravé finally completed his catch on September 6. That night they sailed in a fleet of four ships: one with Champlain, Hélène, and Guillaume de Caën on board, another commanded by La Ralde, a third by Pont-Gravé, and a fourth small patache d’avis of 45 to 50 tons, commanded by one of the Cananée family, which sent several captains into the American trade.71
It was well that they sought safety in numbers. The Peace of Vervins was wearing thin, and the French government was unable to protect even its coastal waters. Champlain’s four ships sailed in convoy across the Atlantic and crossed soundings near Britain on September 27, 1624. That day Captain Cananée’s small patache parted company, under orders to sail to Bordeaux with dispatches. Later Champlain learned that she was captured on the coast of Brittany by Islamic pirates, “who carried off the men they found on board and made slaves of them.” Captain Cananée died in captivity, the fate of many Christian seamen in that era.72 Champlain himself had a bad moment when he sighted a strange vessel. His fleet of armed merchantmen
gave chase but could not catch her. On October 1, they entered the port of Dieppe, “praising God for having brought us to a safe harbor.”73
18.
THE CARDINAL’S RING
Richelieu’s Hundred Associates, 1625–27
The Sieur de Champlain shall … bring into subjection, submission and obedience, all the peoples of the said country.
—Orders from the duc de Ventadour and Cardinal Richelieu, 16251
The Sieur de Champlain … was one of the few men capable of living among the Savages as he had done…. In all the years he had dwelled among these native people, he had never been suspected of any dishonesty.
—Gabriel Sagard on Champlain, 16362
CHAMPLAIN remained at Dieppe for a few days and then went to Paris with his wife and servants, and tout mon train, as he put it. He traveled in high state, as suited a man of consequence. In the city, Champlain moved again to a house on the rue Saintonge in the fashionable Marais-Temple district near the Place Royale, not far from the Louvre. His new home was close to his wife’s family and suggests a concern for her feelings. He also sold his uncle’s country estate near La Rochelle, perhaps to pay for it.3
While his family settled in, he went to the palace at Saint-Germain “to see the King and my Lord of Montmorency, the Viceroy of New France.” The meetings were a success. Champlain wrote: the viceroy “presented me to His Majesty, to whom I gave an account of my voyage, as I did to several gentlemen of the Council, to whom I had the honor of being known.”4
Champlain discovered a major change among the councillors who were closest to the king. For many years, some of the strongest men around the throne had been supporters of the design for New France. A leader of this American circle was Nicolas Brûlart, marquis de Sillery, the long-serving chancellor of France. With him was his son Brûlart Puysieulx, secretary of state for foreign affairs. Both men had encouraged Champlain in the reign of Henri IV. They helped him again during the regency of Marie de Medici and in the early years of Louis XIII. But after 1620, the Brûlarts were called “the greybeards” by the younger generation who hoped to succeed them. In 1621 they lost their offices and were replaced by ambitious but undistinguished placeholders.5
The king searched for a statesman of higher ability and at last he found his man. Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu was thirty-six years old at the time. He was born in Paris, the youngest son of a mid-ranking noble family from Poitou. At his christening, his parents raised a banner above his crib: “Regi Armandus, Armand for the king.” His grandmother taught him to calculate the worth of people by counting the number of quarterings in their coat of arms. Those attitudes shaped his character in a fundamental way.6
Richelieu’s father was a soldier and a holder of high office who had died in the wars of religion with his affairs in disorder. One of the family’s most valuable assets was the bishopric of Luçon. Their claim was challenged by the clergy. To serve the urgent needs of the family, Richelieu was sent into the Catholic Church and nominated Bishop of Luçon at the age of twenty-one.7 Richelieu took his vows without enthusiasm. Though he wrote on religious subjects, he was worldly in his outlook. All his life he was close to his beautiful niece Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot du Pont Courlay, madame de Combalet, the future duchesse d’Aiguillon. She was his companion for many years, and her likeness was carved into Richelieu’s tombstone. Some historians have suspected that Richelieu “indulged in relations that were not only amorous but incestuous,” but he was always discreet. It was said that “he loved women, and feared scandal.”8
He became a dutiful son of the church, but Richelieu was passionately drawn to the pursuit of politics. He sat in the Estates General in 1614, joined the circle around Marie de Medici, rose and fell with her, was banished from court by the king, and then brought back to restore relations with his mother. In 1620, Richelieu’s star began to rise again. Louis XIII asked the Pope to make him a cardinal, which was done in 1622. He joined the Royal Council on April 29, 1624, and within a year, Cardinal Richelieu became the king’s “first minister.” He served in that capacity until his death in 1642.
Richelieu had a genius for power and influence. “Listen well, and speak little,” he liked to say.9 Rivals were ruthlessly pushed aside; one of his strongest challengers found himself arrested on the king’s orders. At the same time, he was very corrupt and used his public offices to build one of the largest fortunes in France.10 Everyone at court feared this extraordinary man, with his piercing brown eyes that seemed to see everything and reveal nothing. Dressed in brilliant red robes with pristine white collars, adorned with a blue silk ribbon and a Maltese Cross of diamonds and gold, he became one of the most striking figures at court. Often in his company was his mentor and friend Père Joseph, a Capuchin monk in sandals and gray robe—the original éminence grise behind Richelieu’s éminence rouge.11
Cardinal Richelieu, after Philippe de Champaigne’s portrait in 1636. This much-hated man believed that leaders are not bound by ordinary rules. He was intelligent, watchful, silent, cruel, and relentless in his service of raison d’état. Richelieu tried to turn New France away from the purposes of Henri IV and Champlain, with mixed results.
Richelieu was a man of intelligence and complexity, a bundle of paradoxes. He became a man of great wealth but lived a very frugal life. He insisted that “all things must be done according to reason,” but he was swayed by intense emotions, and in moments of high tension he “gave way to tears” that embarrassed him. He studied humanity with a clinical eye, but was more comfortable in the company of cats. This saturnine figure was said to prefer the feline to the human species.12
Always he acted on an ethical imperative that was distant from the ways of Champlain and his humanist circle. On the great question of means and ends, the heritage of Christianity is divided. On one side is Christ’s golden rule of always treating others as one would wish to be treated. On the other is the idea of a higher law that releases privileged people from lower ones. It is akin to St. Paul’s ethical rule that “unto the just, all things are just.” Champlain and the sieur de Mons came down on one side of this great question; Richelieu on the other. The cardinal believed that higher ends sanctified any means. More than that, he worked out a code of conduct for public office which was in many ways the inversion of private morality. He believed that for kings and great ministers, deception was a duty and cruelty a virtue. On the subject of deception he wrote, “To know how to deceive is the knowledge of kings.” He added in one of his many maximes d’état, “One may employ any means against one’s enemies.”13
In regard to cruelty he went further and declared: “Harshness towards individuals who flout the laws and commands of state is for the public good; no greater crime against the public interest is possible than to show leniency to those who violate it.” Rarely was Richelieu accused of leniency. In his hubris, he was alleged to have said, “Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him.”14
Richelieu not only practiced this inverted code but also preached it to others in high places. Many European rulers were persuaded by his thinking, which became one of the defining features of Europe’s ancien régime. This philosophy of ruthlessness appeared to get results. It could be brutally effective in the short run, but the idea that the end justified any means had an ironic way of failing at the very end. Richelieu used it to build an absolute monarchy in France, but it fatally injured the legitimacy of that regime. In the fullness of his power, he was feared and obeyed; but by the end he was hated and despised. One historian has written that Richelieu’s death in 1642 was “greeted throughout France with scarcely controlled feelings of relief and joy, sentiments which, according to observers were shared by his employer, Louis XIII himself.”15
The king accused Richelieu of believing in nothing, which was not the case. The cardinal believed in kingship—in the absolute authority of a strong monarch, the hierarchy of an established church, the force of
an omnipotent state, and the superiority of an ancient nobility over other mortals. He believed in the state and lived by his rule of raison d’état, which descended from Cicero’s ratio res publicae. Richelieu replaced the public interest with the power of the state, another raw imperative that he served all his life. He believed in order and thought of it as hierarchy and hegemony. In his writings, Victor Tapié found that “one particular word occurs over and over again—disorder, dérèglement,” as representing everything he was against.16
Richelieu hedged those purposes with one constraint. Unlike many leaders who lived for power and dominion, Richelieu had no love of war. Like Champlain, he had witnessed the horror of war, and had counted its cost in blood, treasure, and most of all disorder. He knew what war could do, but most of all he hated its uncertainties. As he expressed it, “war is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men.”17
For all these qualities, historians have celebrated and condemned Richelieu in equal measure. He succeeded in building a strong monarchical state and he worked to integrate a nation, but he did so by methods that separated the state from the nation and turned one against the other. In a letter to Louis XIII he wrote: “I promised Your Majesty to employ all my industry and all the authority which it pleased you to grant me to ruin the Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the great nobles, to reduce all your subjects to the obedience that they owe you, and to restore your name among foreign nations to the position it should rightly hold.” Even within his beloved France, he made entire orders and denominations of humanity into his bitter enemies.18
In his effort to strengthen the state and the monarchy, Richelieu was deeply hostile to the high nobility, and especially to princes of the blood who regarded the state with suspicion and the monarch as their equal. These free spirits also had an idea of their own liberties and fiercely defended the rights of provincial assemblies. One of the most able and outspoken of them was the viceroy of New France, Henri II, duc de Montmorency, who placed the law above the king and sometimes put regional parlements above the monarchical state. Richelieu regarded him with suspicion—and more than a little jealousy. The cardinal came from the lesser nobility; Montmorency had the rank, manners, and bearing that Richelieu could never hope to match, and was also a close companion of the king.19
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