Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  Henrietta Maria with her “pet dwarf” Sir Jeffrey Hudson, 1633. This beautiful sister of Louis XIII became the wife of Charles I. he wedding was meant to cement an alliance, but she hated Protestant England, the dowry was not paid, and war followed between two infuriated brothers-in-law. Quebec was seized and Champlain captured.

  In 1627 yet another set of mercenaries appeared on this crowded stage. They were a family of entrepreneurs with a Scottish name, English origins, and a French residence. The family patriarch was Gervase (or Jarvis) Kirke, a merchant who was born in Derbyshire, traded in London, and lived in Dieppe among a colony of Scottish adventurers on the rue Écosse. There he married Elizabeth Gowding (or Goudon), daughter of another merchant in that busy town. They had five sons: David, Louis, Thomas, John, and James (or Jarvis), all born and raised in Dieppe. Together the family ran a flourishing international business with one base in England, another in France, and a web of partnerships on both sides of the law.6

  The Kirkes received a commission from Charles I to seize French shipping in the St. Lawrence River. In 1628 they sent out an expedition and began to intercept French vessels bound for Quebec. The commander was David Kirke. Champlain called him the General, but he was not a soldier or seaman. David Kirke was a businessman. A Huguenot who knew him well said that he was “a wine merchant in Bordeaux and Cognac, ignorant of the sea, knowing nothing of navigation, having made only two voyages.” Serving under him were his brothers, “Vice Admiral” Thomas Kirke and “Captain” Louis Kirke. Their pilot was a fugitive French Huguenot, Captain Jacques Michel, who knew the coast of New France and had scores to settle with Catholic leaders after the siege of La Rochelle.7

  When war began, Richelieu’s Company of the Hundred Associates was preparing to dispatch a very large convoy to New France. Its directors asked for a delay until their ships could be protected. Richelieu refused. With little knowledge of the danger but much confidence in his own judgment, he rejected the warnings of informed advisers and insisted that the ships must sail. On January 28, 1628, a royal proclamation ordered them to depart for Quebec forthwith.8

  The company directors obeyed, much against their better judgment. Everything went wrong, as they feared. In the uncertainty of war, the Hundred Associates were unable to raise capital. The best they could do was 56,000 livres, not nearly enough. Richelieu insisted again, and their only recourse was to borrow 164,720 livres at ruinous rates of interest. Without the money in hand, they outfitted the largest expedition that had been sent to New France. At the Cardinal’s demand, the company gambled everything on this enterprise.

  It began by sending a single ship with food and supplies that were urgently needed in Quebec. Then it dispatched four large merchant vessels: Estourneau, Magdaleine, Suzanne, and another of unknown name. A small barque was separately chartered by Jesuit father Philibert Noyrot. On board these vessels were two other Jesuits, Charles Lalemant and François Ragueneau, with two Récollets, Daniel Doursier and François Girard de Binville. Altogether the ships carried four hundred people, mostly colonists. The company made a major effort to recruit families, with some success. It was the largest group of French settlers that had been sent to America.

  In command was Admiral Claude Roquemont de Brison, a founding member of the Company of the Hundred Associates. He had been selected by Richelieu and was the very model of the cardinal’s idea of a leader. Roquement was a highborn nobleman, a devout Catholic churchman, a strong supporter of Royal absolutism, and an obedient servant of the cardinal. He was an officer of proven courage, but man of little intellect and less judgment. He knew nothing of New France and was unfamiliar with its waters.9

  After many delays, the convoy sailed from Dieppe on April 28, 1628. It was a troubled voyage from the start. The fleet ran into a major storm. Then it was menaced by two ships with crews from La Rochelle who were eager to attack Richelieu’s fleet with the same ruthless determination that he had brought against their city. The convoy escaped. After seven weeks at sea, it reached the uninhabited waste of Anticosti Island at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, where Roquement erected a cross among the seals and polar bears. They sailed south to the Gaspé coast, and Roquemont learned from fishermen that a squadron of powerful British ships had taken possession of Tadoussac and were seizing French vessels in the river.

  These Britons were the Kirke brothers and they were out in force. While the French ships had been preparing to sail, the Kirkes had arrived on the coast of North America with a formidable fleet of three or four big ships, all heavily armed and filled with large crews of men at arms. They began by seizing French fishing vessels at Miscou Island in the Bay of Chaleur, south of the Gaspé Peninsula. The Kirkes also captured a large Basque trading ship and intercepted the first provision ship that the Hundred Associates sent out that year, with supplies for the settlers of Quebec. Now with six ships, the Kirkes sailed up the St. Lawrence River and anchored in Tadoussac harbor.10

  In Quebec, Champlain and the French settlers were desperately short of food. Dry rations always ran low in the late spring, and by June they were nearly gone. Champlain wrote: “All our provisions were exhausted, excepting some four or five barrels of quite bad biscuit, which was not much, and some peas and beans, to which we were now reduced without any other commodities.” Their supply ships were overdue, and they did not know why. Was it trouble in Europe? Politics at home? Weather on the North Atlantic? Every morning they looked anxiously down the great river in hope of sighting a sail, but there was nothing. Champlain remembered, “We were waiting for news from day to day, not knowing what to think.”11

  The settlers had left their river barques at Tadoussac, as was the custom. Champlain retained only a small shallop at Quebec. It was not caulked or seaworthy, and he wrote that Quebec “was without a single sailor, or any man with knowledge enough to fit out and navigate a vessel.”12 He asked a Montagnais, whom the French called La Fourière, to go down the river in search of news. On June 18, La Fourière returned and said that “he had not heard of any vessels having arrived off the coast.”13

  On July 9, two men arrived on foot from Tadoussac. They brought news that lifted hearts in Quebec. Six vessels had anchored there together, “an extraordinary thing for a trading voyage,” Champlain wrote. Who were they? Several parties of Indians came with contradictory stories. They recognized one man aboard the ships. He was Jacques Michel, a Frenchman and a Huguenot. But whose side was he on? Champlain ordered a young interpreter “of the Greek nation” to disguise himself as an Indian, go down the river by canoe, and discover who these visitors might be.14

  The Greek interpreter set off with two Indians. An hour later he was back with another canoe carrying a wounded Frenchman named Foucher, who had been taking supplies to the farm at Cap Tourmente. Close behind was Father Joseph, who came running to Quebec along the riverbank. They had a grim story to tell.15

  Father Joseph had gone from Quebec on a routine mission to administer the sacraments to the French workers at the farm on Cap Tourmente, thirty miles down the river. He had gone only a short distance when two canoes of Montagnais came paddling upstream at “incredible speed.” The Montagnais shouted, “A terre! A terre! Sauvez-vous! Get ashore! Save yourselves!” They explained, “The English have arrived at Tadoussac, and went this morning to ravage and burn Cap Tourmente.”16

  Then Father Joseph came upon a drifting canoe with Foucher “stretched out full-length in the bottom, half dead from the bad treatment by the English,” his mustaches severely singed by fire. In a panic Father Joseph left him there, afloat in the river. He and his paddlers hurried ashore, hid their canoe in the woods, and ran overland to Quebec.17

  Champlain began to piece together the story. The big ships at Tadoussac were British. Their commander David Kirke had sent fifty men, heavily armed, upstream to Cap Tourmente, where they attacked the defenseless French settlement and captured the workers who lived there: four men, a woman and a little girl. In a carnival of sadistic violence, the rai
ders killed some of the animals in the pasture, locked others in their stables, and set the buildings on fire. One can imagine the screams of the terrified animals, the shock of the French farmers, and the terror of the child.

  The raiders then burned two houses into which Foucher had retreated, laid waste to the fields, and “destroyed everything they could, even to the caps worn by the little girl.” Somehow Foucher got away, severely injured, and he did not know what had happened to the other French people at the farm. The English raiders failed in their primary task; six cattle escaped. The Montagnais caught five and ate them. Champlain sent a boat to the cape to see if anything had been left. The French found one lonely cow wandering in the woods.18

  Champlain was saddened by the destruction of the farm and deeply shocked by something worse. Foucher reported that several Montagnais warriors had joined the British, guiding them to the farm and “helping them to kill our cattle and pillage the houses of our people, just as if they had been our enemies.” Only a few Montagnais actually assisted the raiders, but many knew what was happening and said nothing to Champlain. This was an ominous development. If he lost the support of his Indian allies, the future of New France was bleak and his vision was merely a chimera.19

  Early in the morning of July 9, a strange pinnace silently approached Quebec. Fifteen or sixteen armed men came ashore and marched on the settlement, “thinking to surprise our men in their beds.” By pretending to be friends, they were able to capture four Québécois. The alarm was sounded, and the habitants mustered at the fort. Champlain wrote: “Being now only too sure that the enemy was at hand, I set all hands to work making entrenchments around the habitation, and barricades on the ramparts of the fort which were not completed…. I assigned the men to the places.” The garrison went on high alert.20

  The next day the French saw a small shallop on the river, moving toward the houses of the Jesuit fathers at St. Charles, near Quebec. Champlain sent men with arquebuses into the woods to stop them and discovered that they were “our own people.” In the boat were the forlorn French prisoners who had been taken at Cap Tourmente: farmer Privert, with his wife and his little niece. Also with them were six Basque captives who had been seized by the British. They carried a letter from David Kirke, addressed to Samuel de Champlain.21

  Kirke announced that he had a commission from the king of England to take possession of New France, and that eighteen ships of war had been sent from England on that errand. His claim was roughly correct, counting the vessels of Alexander and Stewart that had been sent to Acadia. Kirke informed Champlain that he had seized the post at Miscou Island and had taken all the French pinnaces and shallops on that coast, as well as those at Tadoussac. He announced that he had captured a vessel of the French company with supplies for Quebec and had destroyed the farm at Cap Tourmente, “for I know that when you are short of food and supplies, I will gain more easily what I desire, which is to have your settlement.” The rest of the letter offered easy terms and menacing threats.22

  Champlain responded in his accustomed way. First, he ordered the letter to be read aloud “in the presence of the sieur du Pont and myself, and several other principals of our habitation, whom I had ordered to assemble for the reading, and to advise on how we should respond.” They talked together. Champlain listened carefully, then spoke. He urged that they should call the British bluff and if necessary they must fight. They agreed, and stood by him. Champlain said, “We concluded that … if he wanted to see us closer at hand he ought to come here and not menace us at such a distance.”

  Champlain sent a reply of elaborate courtesy and complete defiance. It began by praising the king of England and his officers as gentlemen of courage and generosity, and explained that “were we to surrender a fort and settlement, conditioned as we now are, we should not be worthy of the name of men in the presence of our King.” He told Kirke that the French had lost little at Cap Tourmente and had “grain, Indian corn, peas and beans, not to mention what this country produces.” Champlain warned, “honor demands that we fight to the death.” He invited the British commander to visit Quebec, and added, “I am confident” that on seeing and reconnoitering it, you will judge it not so easy of access as perhaps someone has led you to believe, nor its defenders to be persons destitute of courage to defend it.” He concluded, “We are now waiting from hour to hour to receive you, and to resist if we can, the claims that you have on these places, from which I remain, Sir, your affectionate servant, CHAMPLAIN.”23

  The Basques carried Champlain’s letter down the river to David Kirke. According to Champlain, Kirke “made enquiries of the Basques,” then decided to “assemble all the men in his vessels, and notably his officers, to whom he read the letter.” These British leaders were businessmen, not soldiers. They met in council and decided not to attack. Champlain’s bluff had worked. He wrote that the Kirkes believed “we were better supplied with provisions and ammunition than we were.”24

  In fact, Champlain had only about fifty pounds of gunpowder and “very little in the way of fuse or other supplies.” Even if the British did not attack, he could barely hold Quebec, for his garrison had very little to eat, only seven ounces of peas a day. “If they had pushed on,” he recalled, “it would have been very hard for us to resist them because of the wretched condition that we were in.” Champlain later commented, “All of this shows that on such occasions it is a good thing to put on a bold appearance.”25

  David Kirke knew much about Champlain’s condition, but he was an entrepreneur, more interested in profit than glory. Champlain’s Fort St. Louis on the heights above Quebec was a formidable position. Further, this determined Frenchman believed deeply in a cause, and he did not make his choices by a calculation of profit and loss, which to a businessman made him dangerously unpredictable. The Kirkes had already realized a large return by the plunder of ships and supplies, and they had seized many valuable cargoes of furs and fish. He ordered his men to burn the French barques that were too small to sail across the ocean. Then the Kirkes weighed anchor and sailed down the river, with the intention of returning the next year.26

  While these events were happening up the river, the newly arrived convoy of French ships lay at anchor downstream. The company’s admiral, Roquemont de Brison, appears to have called a council. He knew that a strong British force was upstream at Tadoussac, but he was also aware that the French settlers at Quebec were in urgent need of supplies.

  Roquement and his officers made a brave but brainless decision. They decided to sail upriver to Quebec under cover of fog, hoping that the British ships would not see them. If need be, they would fight their way through, a foolish choice for a commodore in command of four armed merchantmen with women and children on board. He did not know the river, and a much more powerful British force was blocking the way. It was a desperate decision, but they made it with courage, advancing, as Sagard wrote, “entre la crainte et l’espérance; between fear and hope.” They also sent a small shallop ahead, with ten men under the command of junior officer Thierry Desdames. His orders were to discover if Quebec was still in French hands.27

  The French and British vessels got underway at about the same time, the French sailing upstream from Gaspé with the four large merchantmen, and the English coming down from Tadoussac with their five or six large ships, plus the smaller French pinnace that they had captured. The British vessels were armed as men-of-war, with larger crews, bigger batteries, and heavier weight of metal. The two fleets sighted each other on July 17, in the St. Lawrence River, downstream from the present site of Rimouski. With much luck and more fog on the river, the French might have succeeded in getting through, for the great river was more than thirty miles wide at that point. But the English were alert and they discovered the French with great “diligence,” as their enemies observed.28

  The English ships were upstream and had the advantage of the current, the riverine equivalent of the weather gage, which in the days of sail brought an important advantage in co
ntrol. The prevailing wind was in their favor as well, blowing from the west behind their backs, and the French were unable to maneuver and slow to close the distance.29 Aboard the English flagship, David Kirke and the French Huguenot pilot, Captain Michel, decided to remain at extreme range, beyond the reach of the French guns, and “batter them with the cannon,” in which they had the advantage.30

  The English ships anchored fore and aft to maintain their position in the current, brought their broadsides to bear on the French fleet, and opened fire. Richelieu’s admiral put his ships in a position where they were within reach of the enemy’s guns, but the English were out of range. The French commander remained in that position for fourteen or fifteen hours. By one count more than twelve hundred shots were fired by both sides, and the heavier English guns began to strike home. The French took casualties, including Admiral Roquemont himself. There were no reports of British losses—evidence that the battle was indeed fought beyond the range of most French guns.31

  The French resisted stubbornly in this very one-sided engagement, but after fifteen hours they ran low on ammunition. In desperation they fired whatever they could find, even the weights on their lead lines. Then, one by one, their guns fell silent. Unable to continue the fight against an enemy who had the advantage of strength, numbers and position, the French surrendered. All major ships of the Hundred Associates and their long-awaited cargo were lost, and the four hundred souls aboard were taken prisoner.

  The British acted with humanity. They promised to protect the virtue of the women and girls, agreed to treat the priests with respect, and received the officers with honor. Also, they provided shipping to carry the passengers and crew home to France—all but the leaders, who were held for ransom by the Kirkes, always looking for a chance to turn a profit.32