Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  Ways of Working with Others

  Also important was the way one treated others. Champlain wrote that a good leader should be “pleasant and affable in his conversation, absolute in his orders, and he should not talk too familiarly with his companions, except those who share in command. Otherwise a feeling of contempt for him might arise over time.” He works alongside his men but remains clearly in command. “Sometimes he must not be above lending a hand to work himself, in order to make the sailors more prompt in their vigilance and to prevent confusion.”

  Always he should be strict, but kind: “A good leader should severely chastise malefactors, and make much of good men, being kind to them and gratifying them with some gesture, praising them and not neglecting others, so as not to give occasion for envy, which is often the source of bad feeling, much like a gangrene that little by little corrupts and destroys the body. Want of early attention to this sometimes leads to conspiracies, divisions and factions, which often cause the most promising enterprises to fail.”14

  Champlain believed that a good leader must seek to learn from others: “A wise and vigilant captain should take into consideration everything that makes for his advantage and get the opinion of the most experienced men, so as to carry it out with the means he judges to be necessary and advantageous.”15 He added: “A sage and cautious mariner ought not to trust too much in his own judgment when in an urgent need to take some important step, or deviate from a position, or change a dangerous course. He should take counsel of those who he knows to be the most wise, notably ancient navigators who have had most experience with the fortunes of the sea, and have escaped dangers and perils.” Champlain advised a commander: “Let him weigh well the reasons that they advance, for it is not often that one head holds everything.” But he added that after a leader consults with others, he must make the major decisions, and once a decision is made, “he should be the only one to speak, lest differing orders in doubtful situations cause the execution of one maneuver instead of another.”16

  Prudence and Prévoyance, Especially in Bold Enterprises

  A good leader is prudent, Champlain said, especially in bold enterprises. He “should be wary, and hold back rather than run too many risks, whether in sighting land, particularly in foggy weather when he will bring his vessel to, or stand off [as] in the fog or darkness nobody is a pilot.” He “must not carry too much sail with the idea of driving ahead; this often dismasts the ship…. The prudent seaman ought to be just as apprehensive of other difficulties that may occur as [of mistakes] in respect to his reckoning.”17

  A good leader must always be alert, he wrote, and must insist on alertness in others. He needs to be especially alert “if he is finding himself in ordinary perils, be it by accident, or sometimes through ignorance or rashness, as when you run before a wind inshore, or doggedly try to double a cape, or steer a dangerous course at night among sandbanks, shoals, reefs, islands, rocks, or ice.”18 At sea, Champlain recommended, a leader “should make the day his night, and be awake the greater part of the night, always sleep in his clothes, so as to be promptly on hand.” He should get his sleep “more in the daytime than the night.”

  Champlain wrote that a good leader must be prévoyant. This quality was not a power to know the future in advance, but a determination to prepare for the unexpected in the future by remembering the past. A prévoyant leader plans ahead, and takes precautions. He should “be careful to take soundings off all coasts, roadsteads.” He should have a good memory for recognizing landfalls, capes, mountains and coastlines, tidal currents and their bearings, wherever he has been.”19

  A prévoyant commander “should not be slow in striking sail, when he sees a great wind gathering on the horizon.” He “should take care when a storm arrives, that the ship is lying to, to take down the small spars, to lower yards and have them made fast, as well as all the other rigging, to have the guns run in, so that in a rough sea they would not be under strain and break their tackle.”20

  Courage and Resolve

  Champlain’s good leader was a man of courage, ready to fight if attacked, and he should be an example to his men in battle. Champlain detested war, but he believed that some evils were worse than war, and a man of peace must be ready to fight. He wrote: “When ill-fortune brings you to such a pass it is necessary to display manly courage, to make light of death even as it confronts you, and with a steady voice and a cheerful resolution urge everyone to take heart and do what must be done to escape danger, and thus to dispel fear from the most cowardly bosoms, for when they find themselves in a hazardous situation, everyone looks to the man who is thought to have experience…. If he is seen to blanch and give orders in a shaky and uncertain voice, all the others lose courage and it is often that ships are lost in places from which they might have escaped, if they had seen their captain brave and resolute, issuing his commands boldly with authority.” In battle, “the commander must always be on the alert, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, so as to encourage every man in doing his duty.”21

  Champlain learned early in life that courage was required of a leader. The French had many words for this quality, and each of them had a different meaning. Courage, from coeur, was a quality of the heart. It meant an inner depth of physical or moral courage. Bravoure, bravery, was an outer display: a crying child is told to be brave, and is taught to act bravely. But that posture could be carried to excess and become bravade, or bravado. Galanterie, gallantry, was the ability to show manners and courtesy and grace under pressure. To do something with élan was to do it with dash and flair. To be intrépide was to act as if one had no fear. To show effronterie was to put up a bold front. Défiance was being on one’s guard. In all these ways, Champlain wrote, a leader should show courage in the face of danger, resolve in adversity, and magnanimity in victory.

  Humanity, Honesty, and Honor

  Champlain insisted that a good leader must treat enemies, friends, and strangers with humanity. He wrote that a principled leader “should be liberal according to his opportunities, and courteous to defeated enemies, granting them all the rights of belligerents. Moreover, he should not practice cruelty or vengeance, like those who are accustomed to inhumane acts, and show themselves to be savages (barbares) rather than Christians, but if on the contrary he makes use of his victory with courtesy and moderation, he will be esteemed by all, even his enemies who will pay him all honor and respect.”22

  Most of all, a good leader is honest and honorable. Champlain’s long career of exploration and discovery may be thought of as a moral navigation. He always steered his course by a constellation of values that would shine more brightly against the darkness, violence, and cruelty that surrounded him in an age of religious war and political strife.

  At the center of this constellation was one very bright star, which Champlain called by a single old-fashioned word. It was absolutely fundamental to Champlain’s sense of himself. In his last years, he wrote simply, “Ie suis honneste homme; I am an honest man.”23 He spelled it in the old-fashioned way that was close to its simple Latin root, honestas, but there was nothing simple about its meaning. In French it inspired a vocabulary of related words: honneste, honnête, honnêteté. As in English it meant speaking truthfully, not only in a sense of telling no lies, but also with a broader sense of speaking candidly. Honesty was also a form of conduct. It meant acting fairly and reasonably, and not taking advantage of another person. “Honnête” also had another meaning in Champlain’s French. “Honnête homme” is defined in Le Grand Robert as an homme du monde, agréable et distingué par les manières comme par l’esprit; a man of the world, agreeable and distinguished by his manners as well as by his spirit.24

  This quality had a special prominence in the thinking of Champlain’s younger French contemporaries. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) wrote of another in his Pensées, “He is an honnête homme; only this universal quality pleases me.” Another French writer explained, “L’honnête homme est à sa place partout; the
honest man is at home everywhere.” He acquits himself in everything with a superiority that has no technique or artifice about it, but is always natural and easy.

  An honnête homme was also a man of honneur, an even more complex idea. On one level, “honneur” meant a pride of reputation for doing the right thing in the right way. But more than that, it spoke of a person of any rank or gender who always tried to act in such a way as to deserve a reputation for doing the right thing. Most of all, it was an idea of integrity of such strength that one always tried to act in an upright way, even though one often fell short. To study Champlain’s Voyages with this treatise in mind is to discover the integrity of this ethical ideal, and the strength of his determination to serve it.

  APPENDIX F

  ANOTHER SELF-PORTRAIT?

  In addition to the small self-portrait in Champlain’s “Defeat of the Iroquois” from 1609, a few other sketches also appear in engravings for his books. One such image appears in his drawing of the attack on the Iroquois forest fort at Sorel in 1610. It is a figure, very similar to eight other French arquebusiers and is labeled as Champlain, but it is so small and crude that it reveals nothing beyond what can be seen in the “Defeat of the Iroquois.” A third engraving, an illustration of the attack on the Onondaga town in 1615, shows twelve small French figures. One of them presumably is Champlain, but which? All are equally indistinct.

  Other images appear on Champlain’s maps. Two in particular have been discussed by Marcel Trudel. These are round faces, set within a compass rose on Champlain’s maps of 1612 and 1632. Trudel suggests that they may reveal to us the face of Champlain in his maturity. Other scholars disagree. François Marc Gagnon and Denis Martin note that many cartographers decorated their maps with round “sun-faces,” which were highly conventional on seventeenth-century maps.1

  One other full-face sketch has passed unnoticed by his biographers. It appears on the only manuscript map that survives from Champlain’s hand and with a signature: his “Descr[i]psion des costs p[or]ts, rades, Illes de la novvele france …” It is dated 1606 and corrected to 1607 by a heavier hand, and is in the map division of the Library of Congress, where it is cherished as one of the great treasures of that collection. It is very handsome in the original manuscript. Most reproductions distort its color and do not bring out the fine detail of the drawings.

  In an elaborate border around the map’s cartouche, Champlain added two good-humored sketches of a beardless young man, and a wild-haired and bearded older man. They are very small cartoons, and their purpose is not clear. Perhaps they are merely meant to be abstract images of youth and age. They might also be something more and other than that. One wonders if the younger figure is a self-portrait of the artist in his youth. The other face might perhaps represent an older man of some importance in his life. It could possibly represent the sieur de Mons. If so, this would be our only representation of him.

  The hypothesis that the young man is a self-portrait of Champlain meets two difficulties. The figures are stylized in bizarre ways; and in 1609, Champlain wore a beard and represented himself as a man of mature years. The youthful, beardless face in the map cartouche was drawn only one or two years earlier. But these are not conventional images, like the sun-faces that appear on his other maps. They have very distinct features, and appear to be representative images. But who do they represent? Here is a question for further study.2

  APPENDIX G

  CHAMPLAIN’S SUPERIORS

  Viceroys and Generals of New France

  From 1604 to 1635, New France was under the authority of a vice-regal ruler who reported directly to the king. With one exception (the sieur de Mons), all these men were absentee rulers who remained in France and governed through a “lieutenant.” To fill that office, all of them sooner or later chose Champlain.

  Historians have regarded the post of viceroy as a sinecure of small importance in the history of New France. One scholar borrowed the language of Merovingian France, and called them vice-rois fainéants, “do-nothing” viceroys. Champlain took another view. He believed that they could be very useful in promoting the colony at home, and he encouraged them to take an active role. Every one of them did so except Soissons, who was viceroy for only a few weeks. All the others made a contribution in one way or another.

  Here was yet another role that Champlain played behind the scenes. It required tact, wisdom, and a highly developed political intelligence. The viceroys came mostly from a narrow circle, but they were very diverse in their character, purposes and principles. Champlain got along with nearly all of them, adjusting his tactics in many ways but always preserving his large purpose. If he worked for all these viceroys, they also worked for him and aided his grand design.

  Most of the viceroys have been omitted from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. A brief survey might bring out another narrative line in Champlain’s career. He was able to find his footing again and again. He established a working relationship with all except Richelieu. In the midst of many changes, here was an important continuity in the early history of New France.

  DE MONS (var. Monts, Montz), Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons (1558?-1628), born to an aristocratic family in Saintonge, raised a Protestant, a soldier for Henri IV, he became a gentleman of the king’s chamber with a large pension, and governor of Pons. De Mons visited New France with Chauvin in 1600. In 1603 the king granted him a monopoly of the fur trade and authority to found a permanent settlement. He was given the rank of lieutenant general for New France. He requested the title of viceroy and was refused, but received vice-regal powers with direct access to the king and his council.

  De Mons was the first successful colonizer of New France. He came to America in 1604–05, the only vice-regal figure to do so, and founded settlements at Sainte-Croix and Port-Royal, invited Champlain as geographer, and gave him more responsibility. De Mons had trouble establishing a rapport with the Indians, but he set an example for humane and principled leadership. In France he also founded a commercial company in 1603 but lost his monopoly in 1606, and ordered his settlers to return to France in 1607. In 1607 he raised money for the founding of Quebec and chose Champlain to be his lieutenant there.

  After the death of Henri IV in 1610, de Mons was banished from the presence of the queen regent, and he asked Champlain to take the lead at court. De Mons continued to support New France behind the scenes, aided Champlain against his rivals, contributed to the colony, and sent out commercial voyages for many years. Champlain and Lescarbot and all who knew him held de Mons in the highest respect. He was a major figure in the founding of New France.1

  SOISSONS, Charles de Bourbon, comte de Soissons (1566–1612), was a prince of the blood, the son of Louis de Bourbon, first prince de Condé, and Françoise d’Orléans, cousin-german of Henri IV and cousin of Louis XIII, not his uncle as others have written. Champlain and his advisers at court recruited Soissons through intermediaries, as a way of finding a protector for New France. In consequence, Soissons succeeded the sieur de Mons with the title of Lieutenant General and Viceroy on October 8, 1612. He was granted a monopoly of trade in the St. Lawrence Valley for a term of twelve years. One of his first acts was to appoint Champlain as his lieutenant on October 25, 1612, and he began to help Champlain at court. They were just beginning to work well together when Soissons fell ill and died very suddenly, after serving only three weeks. Champlain, whose commission lasted merely fifteen days, wrote that his death was “greatly regretted.”2

  CONDÉ, Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé (1588–1646) was also a prince of the blood, the son of Henri, first prince de Condé and Charlotte-Catherine de La Trémouille. He was baptized a Protestant and raised a Roman Catholic. In 1609 he married Marguerite de Montmorency and became the father of the “Grand Condé,” with whom he is sometimes confused. He was described by a writer in the Mercure François as having a “vivacity of spirit” and an extraordinary “knowledge of languages and many sciences.” Champlain had a connection with him through marriag
e. Hélène Boullé, Champlain’s wife, was a sister-in-law of Charles Deslandes, secretary to the prince de Condé, after Deslandes married Marguerite Boullé. In 1612, following the death of his cousin Soissons, Condé bought the office of lieutenant general, admiral, and now viceroy of New France, and acquired a monopoly of trade in the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries for twelve years. His pay included a fine horse worth 1,000 écus, or 3,000 livres. Condé immediately appointed Champlain as his lieutenant on November 22, 1612. The two men worked well together. From 1612 to 1615, Condé played an active role in granting passports for trade in New France, brought a flow of income to the colony, helped the Récollet missionaries to establish themselves, and gave strong support and protection to Champlain. But in 1615, Condé led a party in opposition to the queen regent, Marie de Medici, and her Catholic circle. The following year, he was arrested on her orders, and imprisoned in the Bastille and then at Vincennes.3

  THÉMINES, Pons de Lauzières, Marquis de Thémines de Cardillac (1552–1627), a courtier who served the queen regent, Marie de Medici, and was made by her a maréchal of France at the age of sixty-four (1616). On the queen regent’s order, he arrested Condé in the Louvre and took him to the Bastille in 1616. In the same year (on October 25) Thémines received another reward from the queen regent, who made him viceroy of New France while Condé was in the Bastille. The appointment was rapidly confirmed on November 24, 1616, with the same pay of 1,000 écus or 3,000 livres. The queen also appointed a friend of Thémines to replace Champlain as lieutenant for New France. Champlain fought back. Thémines soon fell out with his lieutenant over the spoils of their offices. Thémines removed him and on January 15, 1617, made Champlain his lieutenant for New France. The two men worked effectively together. Their relations were complex. In a document of the Royal Council dated July 18, 1619, when Condé was still in prison, Champlain was described as serving simultaneously as lieutenant to both Thémines and Condé. He was able to work with two bitter enemies at the same time. Thémines helped Champlain to submit the program of 1618 and worked until the following year when Condé was released from prison at Vincennes. Thémines was dismissed as viceroy, and Condé recovered the office, held it briefly from 1619 to 1620, worked with Champlain on mounting the expedition to New France in 1620, then sold the office of viceroy to his brother-in-law the duc de Montmorency for 30,000 livres.4