Champlain's Dream
Page 46
As Richelieu moved to the center of power, Montmorency withdrew. He gave more attention to his role as governor of Languedoc, in defense of its ancient liberties. In the fall and winter of 1624–25, Montmorency decided to give up his job as viceroy of New France. He was sick of strife and litigation with investors. Champlain tells us that “the troubles that sprang from this source were in part the cause of my lord Montmorency’s resignation.” But only in part. Another factor was the rise of Richelieu.20 Even as Montmorency gave up the office he was careful to keep it in the family, and sold it for 100,000 livres to his nephew.21 The new viceroy was Henri de Lévis, duc de Ventadour, prince de Maubuisson, and comte de la Voulte. He also came from the high nobility, but had a different character and did not pose a threat to Richelieu. Ventadour, as we shall call him, was twenty-eight years old in 1625 and he had just come into his inheritance on the death of his father in December, 1624. He had been trained as a soldier and had fought in campaigns against the Huguenots, but his great passion was religion. Ventadour was devoted to the Roman Catholic Church.22
The quality of Ventadour’s faith appeared in the condition of his marriage. A few months before his father’s death, he took the hand of Marie Liesse de Luxembourg, heiress to one of the largest fortunes in France. They knew each other very well, having grown up in the same household where Marie Liesse had been raised by Ventadour’s mother. They were engaged to be married when she was eight years old and he was twenty-three. On their wedding day four years later she was a child bride, less than half her husband’s age.
Their marriage was similar in some ways to that of Samuel Champlain and Hélène Boullé. The duke and duchess of Ventadour had no children. Their marriage appears never to have been consummated. Both husband and wife were very devout, so much so that in 1629 they mutually agreed to separate and lead lives of chastity and Christian devotion. Marie Liesse entered a convent, Carmel d’Avignon. Ventadour founded a holy society called the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrament. He summarized its purposes in half a sentence: “to cover the land of France with a flowering of good works.” In 1643, he would be ordained a priest.23
Ventadour agreed to become viceroy of New France for a religious purpose. His central goal was to spread “the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Faith and Religion” among the American Indians and Europeans in the new world.24 He strongly supported the Récollet fathers, and at the urging of his spiritual adviser, Father Philibert Noyrot, he also encouraged the Jesuits to work in New France. In January, 1625, three more Jesuit fathers and two brothers went to Quebec.25
One of Ventadour’s first acts as viceroy was to confirm Champlain as his chief lieutenant in New France, with a commission dated February 15, 1625. In doing so he followed every previous viceroy and general of New France since 1604. The sieur de Mons, the comte de Soissons, the prince of Condé, the marquis de Thémines, and the duc de Montmorency all had chosen Champlain as their lieutenant and had come to think of him as their indispensable man in New France.26
Ventadour went further. He avowed his “entire confidence” in Champlain, and praised him for his “intelligence and judgment, capacity, practical skill and experience,” as well as for his “good diligence, and the knowledge that he possesses of the country, arising from the various navigations, voyages and visits that he has made there.”27 He gave Champlain more authority than before, with full power to appoint and replace military officers in the ranks of captain and ensign, “on our behalf, as may be required.” Champlain acted quickly and awarded a captain’s commission to his able young brother-in-law, Eustache de Boullé, who had much experience of New France and had worked closely with Champlain. He also selected an ensign named Destouches, of a naval family prominent in the Old Regime.28
When the viceroy gave Champlain his commission, he added a personal request. In Champlain’s words, Ventadour asked that “for this year [1625] I should remain near to him, in order to instruct him in the affairs of the said country, and to give order to some of my own affairs in Paris.” Champlain was happy to agree, and the center of his activity shifted to the Hôtel de Ventadour, the duke’s mansion in Paris.29
The most urgent problem was that of the commercial companies. There were now two of them.30 One was the old Company of Rouen and Saint-Malo. The other was the new Company de Caën, based in Dieppe, Paris, and Orleans. Only a few men (Ézechiel de Caën for one) belonged to both. The two groups differed in their origins but shared the same interest in extracting quick profits from a monopoly of the fur trade. Neither was happy with Champlain’s relentless effort to expand permanent settlements at their expense. Some leaders complained that the colonizing effort was doomed to fail. Others feared that it might succeed and that colonists would become competitors.
Several leading investors continued to be very hostile to Champlain in a personal way. Chief among them was a faction within the old company led by his enemy Daniel Boyer, together with Boyer’s Dutch kinsman Corneille de Bellois, a Flemish merchant named Louis Vermuelen, and another investor named Mathieu Duisterlo, who was identified as German. These merchants came from other countries and had no loyalty to France. They cared nothing for the founding of French colonies in North America. Their only purpose was to buy beaver pelts and sell them at a profit. They thought that Champlain’s grand design was bad for business and resented his victories even more than his defeats.31 While Champlain was in New France between 1620 and 1624, these conflicts had grown more intense. Boyer’s friends were highly litigious. Both companies and the viceroy were caught in a tangle of lawsuits. It seemed that the only people in France who consistently made money out of America were the lawyers.
In 1625, the duc de Ventadour summoned the leaders of both companies to the Hôtel de Ventadour in the hope of achieving “a friendly understanding between the two parties.” His gesture was in vain. Champlain wrote that the meetings were marked by a “good deal of contention.” Champlain and Venta-dour tried to buy out the old company, and offered its shareholders a payment of 37 percent on their capital of 60,000 livres if they would withdraw from the fur trade and surrender all other claims. They refused, and rejected every effort by Champlain and the viceroy to intervene.32
Ventadour and Champlain referred the dispute to the court of Admiralty. The old shareholders tried to block the proceedings, and the viceroy took the matter directly to the Royal Council. With the leadership of Richelieu, the council acted decisively. In the name of the king, it ordered the old shareholders to accept a payment of 40 percent on their capital, and withdraw forthwith from trade in the St. Lawrence Valley. In 1626 the Company of Rouen and Saint-Malo ceased to take an active role in New France.33
The Company de Caën was offered a monopoly of the fur trade on condition that it appoint Catholics to command its ships. This was agreed. The fisheries remained open to all comers. Fishermen were also allowed to take up to twelve beaver pelts for each vessel, but they had to sell them to agents of the Company de Caën at a fixed price. On these terms, it was hoped that trade and colonization could revive.34
No sooner had the problem of the quarreling companies been resolved than more trouble landed on the viceroy’s desk. In the late summer and fall of 1625, letters began to arrive from Jesuits and Récollets in New France. They testified that conditions in the colony had sadly declined in the year since Champlain had left. These accounts had a broad reach. Jesuit father Philibert Noyrot returned to France and made similar reports to many people at court, where his judgment carried great weight. Jesuit Charles Lalemant also sent letters to Champlain and the heads of both religious orders. Récollet father Joseph Le Caron wrote an address directly to the king and had it printed in Paris.35
These writers all agreed that many things were going wrong in Quebec. Some of it was the eternal complaint about the winters in New France. Lalemant wrote, “Our Frenchmen have even told me that they dragged their maypole over the snow on the first day of May.” The fathers warned that the settlers were desperately short of food, and
that “nothing is to be hoped” from the Indians in the way of provisions. The colony was shrinking. Champlain had left sixty habitants in the late summer of 1624–25. In his absence, that number fell to fifty-two over the winter of 1624–25, and forty-three in 1625–26.36
The fathers also described growing tensions between the French and the Indians. The missionaries were having trouble reaching the natives, and some Indian interpreters were reluctant to help them. Letters from both the Jesuits and Récollets showed increasing hostility to the Indians. The fathers complained that they were not treated with respect, and that the Indians “consider the French to be less intelligent than they.” One wrote of their missions that “the promise of success is not yet very great, so crude and almost bestial are the natives.”37
Father Lalemant was very negative about the people he had come to convert. He wrote that they “commit all kinds of shameless acts, without disgrace or attempts at concealment” and “as to cleanliness among them, that never enters into the question; they are very dirty.” Most of all he complained that they were violent and cruel, and could not be trusted. They even “kill their fathers and mothers when they are so old that they can walk no longer.”38 These letters expressed growing fear of the Indians. “There is no security for our lives among these savages,” Lalemant wrote. “If a Frenchman has in some way offended them, they take revenge by killing the first one they meet…. If during the night they dream they must kill a Frenchman, woe to the first one whom they meet alone.”39
This fear and hatred of the Indians never appeared in Champlain’s writings, nor was it widely evident when he was present in New France and running the colony. Sometimes he was very displeased with particular acts by individual Indians, and with some of the Montagnais in particular, but he had nothing like this general attitude of terror, hysteria, and loathing toward the native people. The letters that came from Quebec in Champlain’s absence were graphic evidence of his impact when he was present in the colony.
The bulk of these letters also complained about something else—the misconduct of the French merchants. Missionaries of both orders were very angry with the de Caën company, especially with Émery de Caën, who had briefly replaced Champlain as commander in Quebec, and his cousin Guillaume de Caën, who commanded the company’s ships in the St. Lawrence. Jesuits and Récollets reported that Protestant leaders of the company refused to accommodate them. According to an account by Father Lalemant, when the Jesuits arrived, Émery de Caën told them “it was impossible to give us lodging in the settlement or at the fort, and we must either return to France or withdraw to the Récollet fathers.” The Récollets took them in and they survived, but in a state of fury against the merchants.40
The Récollets added another complaint that de Caën was not providing for the security of the colony. Le Caron wrote that Champlain’s fort had been grossly neglected. He reported that it was guarded by two poor women and its only sentinels were two chickens. On top of everything else, trade was not flourishing under the de Caëns. Lalemant wrote, “An old man told me that he had seen as many as twenty ships in the port of Tadoussac, but now since this business has been granted to the [de Caën] association, which today has a monopoly over all others, we see here not more than two ships which belong to it, and that only once a year.”41
Récollet father Joseph Le Caron agreed with his Jesuit colleagues and urged sweeping reforms. His memorial was a broad indictment of the Company de Caën and its leaders in Quebec. Le Caron wrote that it was “impossible to establish the Catholic faith when the colony is run by Protestants.” He urged that the viceroy should live in Quebec, and that only Catholics should be allowed to come to Canada, or venture into the interior. Further, Le Caron thought that the de Caën company had failed to meet its responsibilities and should forfeit its monopoly. He urged that markets should be as open as in France, and that a system of “free” trade be established—for everyone but Huguenots.42 There was an air of desperation in these letters. Lalemant begged Champlain to come quickly. He wrote, “We are awaiting your arrival, to determine what will be well to do.”43
This chorus of complaint from Quebec was clearly heard in Paris. In the spring of 1626, Vendatour asked Champlain to return quickly to New France and “take up his residence at Quebec.”44 The viceroy’s instructions repeated the imperial phrases of Louis XIII, and echoed the state-building purposes of Cardinal Richelieu. Further, at Quebec, “and other places which the said sieur de Champlain shall consider suitable,” he was “to order the construction and building of such forts and fortresses as he shall judge useful and necessary.”45 Champlain hurried to the port of Dieppe and went to work with the leaders of the Company de Caën. Together they outfitted five vessels for New France. Champlain went aboard the ship Catherine with Récollet father Le Caron and Captain Raymond de La Ralde, a Catholic who was commissioned as admiral of the fleet. A second vessel, La Flèque, was commanded by Émery de Caën. The Jesuits chartered a small vessel of 80 tons called Alouette to bring their strength to seven members of their order in the colony, with twenty workmen. Two other unnamed vessels of 200 and 120 tons completed the expedition.46
Champlain’s ship weighed anchor on April 15, 1626, and tacked to and fro in the roadstead of Dieppe waiting for the other ships. On April 24, they finally departed together for New France. Increasingly ships were sailing in convoy, and with good reason. International tensions were rising, and conditions were growing more dangerous on the Atlantic. On April 27, they sighted a strange sail that Champlain took to be a corsair or a smuggler. As a captain in the king’s marine, he ordered the entire convoy to give chase. Champlain wrote that they “pursued it for some three hours; but as it sailed better than we did, we gave up the chase and came about” and steadied on a course for America.47
It was a slow passage. Large convoys meant longer voyages, as the ships were forced to keep company with the slowest sailor, and time was lost when they separated in the night. On May 23 they ran into a great storm that lasted two days. Little Alouette disappeared with the Jesuits aboard, and Champlain feared the worst. But she miraculously survived and made her own way to America. The ships were at sea for more than two months and six days, “delayed as we were by bad weather.”48
At last, on July 5, Champlain reached Quebec. He was happy to find the habitants in good health, but was shocked to discover that “not a thing had been done” to finish the buildings since he left two years before.49 With the new arrivals aboard his ships, Champlain counted fifty-five people in the settlement, of whom twenty-four were laborers on the company’s payroll. He set them to work on the fort and the dwellings. The Company de Caën resisted and once again refused to keep its contractual promise. Champlain wrote: “They should have given me ten men to work at His Majesty’s fort. Even though the Sieur de Caën and all of his associates signed an agreement to do so, and although his Majesty and the Viceroy desired it, still they oppose it, and hinder it to the utmost of their power … as long as trading goes on, that is enough for them.”50
But this time Champlain prevailed, and the laborers went to work for him. Once the buildings were on their way to improvement, he turned to another purpose. An important goal was to make the settlement self-sustaining, at least for its own food. The Île d’Orléans near Quebec looked to be a good site, with fertile soil and ample water. It offered an abundance of good farmland, but Champlain had a shortage of farmers at Quebec in 1626. The settlement of the Île d’Orléans would have to await a larger flow of migration.
In the meantime he gave his attention once again to Cap Tourmente on the north side of the St. Lawrence River, thirty miles downstream from Quebec. Here was a perfect place to raise cattle, with open grassland that did not require the enormous labor of land clearing.51 In 1623, Champlain had visited Cap Tourmente with the sieur de Caën, and both men thought it was “a very fine place” for farming, with “everything that one might desire for that purpose.” Later that year, the meadow grass began to be harvest
ed and large quantities of hay were carried to Quebec. When Champlain returned to Canada in 1626, one of his first acts was to go to the meadows near Cap Tourmente and choose a site for a settlement. He picked a place on a small creek where pinnaces and shallops could land at high tide, with the meadows nearby, a great growth of trees, and an abundance of snow geese.52
Champlain moved decisively with all his resources. “I resolved to build as soon as possible,” he wrote. “Although we were then in July, I nevertheless decided to employ the greater part of all the workers in Quebec.” The farm at Cap Tourmente was called into being by Champlain and the leaders of the colony. No major decision was left to the will of any individual except himself. Like much of the culture of Quebec—and unlike Acadia, the fishing coast and the western frontier—the building of the settlement was highly ordered and controlled from the top down. But Champlain tried to run its daily operations by private enterprise as he had done many times before.53
Champlain ordered his workers to build “a dwelling, a stable sixty feet long, and more than 20 feet wide, and two other cottages each eighteen by fifteen feet, constructed of wood and clay after the fashion of those in the villages of Normandy.” The evidence of modern archaeology confirms the accuracy of Champlain’s description and adds depth to his brief passage. Excavations by Canadian archaeologists have discovered that the farm buildings at Cap Tourmente were indeed built on the model of Norman peasant architecture, in an old tradition of half-timbered clay construction, just as Champlain wrote. Wooden posts were set in clay, about a yard apart. Between the posts, walls were made of densely packed, or “puddled,” clay. This ancient method was neolithic in its origin, widely used in Belgium and Normandy but uncommon in the south of France. Here again, in the years of Champlain’s lieutenancy, we find a strong connection between the culture of Quebec and that of northwestern France.54