Pied du roi, the royal foot, was twelve pouces, a little larger than an English foot, just as a pouce was larger than an inch: 1.06575 English feet, or 12.789 English inches.
Pas, or pace, was the length of a footstep, three pieds du roi in most parts of New France but 3.5 pieds du roi in Martinique.
Aune (ell) equaled 3 pieds du roi and 8 pouces.
Toise was six pieds du roi, or 6.3945 English feet, or 1.949 meters. This was the mason’s toise. The carpenter’s toise was 5.5 pieds du roi.
Perche was three toises, 18 pieds du roi, or 19.1835 English feet, or 5.847 meters, or 1.162 English rods. This was the perche de Paris. A perche royale et forestière was 22 pieds du roi. A perche moyenne was 20 pieds du roi.
Arpent, was 10 perches, or 58.47 meters, variously reckoned at 191.8 or 192 English feet. This was the linear arpent, as distinct from the arpent superficiel, a measure of area, below.
Measures of Distance
Lieues, or leagues, were Champlain’s most common measure of distance, and also the most variable.
Nautical lieues were 3 nautical miles, or three minutes of latitude, or 18,228 English feet, or 3.452 English statute miles. It is the origin of the “three-mile limit.” An English statute mile is 5,280 English feet; a nautical mile is 6,076.11549 English feet or 1,852 meters, or exactly 1 minute, which is 1/60 of a degree of latitude. Each degree of latitude is equal to 60 nautical miles, or twenty nautical leagues.
Spanish lieues or leagues were 3.428 nautical miles. A degree of latitude was roughly equal to 17.5 Spanish leagues.2 This was Champlain’s conventional measure of maritime distances.
Common lieues or leagues in French usage were of two types. A common land league was 84 linear arpents, or 16,128 English feet, or 3.05 English statute miles, or 2.654 English nautical miles. C. E. Heidenreich makes it 2.43 statute miles.3
Lieue de poste was 2.13 statute miles, commonly used by Champlain for overland distances. His inland leagues averaged 2.1 statute miles.
Petites lieues were 2.03 statute miles.
In practice, leagues tended to be elastic in Champlain’s usage. Scholars have attempted to measure their actual length in particular instances, with various results. W. F. Ganong reckoned Champlain’s leagues at “about two and a half of our geographical miles.” S. E. Morison measured Champlain’s leagues on his charts and found that they varied by about 10 percent, mostly between 2.2 and 2.7 nautical miles.4
Heidenreich found that Champlain’s leagues differed on land and water. He observed that Champlain’s maps contain bar scales reckoning 17.5 leagues as equal to one degree of latitude. The only league that matches this measure is the Spanish league. Heidenreich found that most of Champlain’s estimates of distance in open water were consistent with this number, about 3.5 statute miles. But on land and interior waterways Champlain’s leagues were approximately 2.1–2.3 English miles per league in 62 measurements compiled by Heidenreich. In overland journeys he also used the postal league. In coastal waters, Champlain’s leagues were highly variable.5 Heidenreich’s estimates are based on the largest samples.
Measures of Area
pouce carré, comparable to a square inch.
pied carré, equals 144 pouces carrés, comparable to a square foot.
toise carrée, equals 36 pieds carrés.
perche carrée, equals 9 toises carrées.
arpent, equals 100 perches carrées, or 5/6 of an English acre.
lieue carrée equals 7,056 arpents.
By comparison:
An English acre equals 120 perches carrees. Arpents and acres are not the same. A hectare equals 2.47 English acres.
Measures of Depth
Brasse was Champlain’s most common way of reckoning depth. It was similar to an English fathom, but not the same. To be precise, a French brasse was six pieds du roi, or 1.06575 English fathoms, which equaled six English feet. Champlain’s brasse was 6.6 percent larger than an English fathom.
Measures of Weight
once, comparable to an English ounce, avoirdupois.
livre equals 16 onces, comparable to an English pound.
quintal equals 100 livres, comparable to an English hundredweight.
short ton equals 2,000 livres; not to be confused with nautical tonnage in its various meanings, for which see Appendix M, Champlain’s ships and small craft.
Measures of Wet Volume
roquille equals an English gill, 4 ounces liquid measure, or one half of an English cup.
demiard equals two roquilles or half a chopine, 8 ounces.
chopine, about the same as an English pint, equals two demiards or half a French pinte.
pinte, about the same as an English quart, equals two chopines, or half a pot.
pot, a basic unit, 2.2648 litres, or approximately half (49.8164%) of an English exchequer gallon of 1601.
barrique, usually 110 pots, but sometimes 120 pots, or even as many as 180 pots. pipe, 220 pots.
tonneau de Bordeaux (tonneaux de mer), 440 pots, or two pipes, or four barriques. tonneau de vin, about 440 pots.
French merchants used many specialized cask-measures, for particular purposes:
velte, 4 pots.
ancre, 32 pots, was a cask used only for brandy, 7.45 or 7.61 litres.
baril or barril, variously given as 35 to 40 pots, or 55 pots.
quart about 80 pots, a quart français has nothing to do with an English quart.
poinçon, 93 pots, similar to an English puncheon.
muid, about 140 pots, similar to an English hogshead.
tonneau d’Orléans, about 280 pots.
Measures of Dry Volume
litron half a quart.
quart equals to 2 litrons.
boisseau (bushel) equals 4 quarts.
minot equals three boisseaux.
setier equals 4 minots, or 12 boisseaux.
muid equals 12 setiers.
pipe equals 1.5 muids.
These measures varied from one commodity to another. They tended to be gross weight. The net weight equaled the gross weight minus the tare which was the weight of the container.
Measures of Bulk in Commercial Transactions
These units varied by commodity.
Beaver pelts were measured by the ballot or bale, which normally weighed 120 livres.
Bois de brûler, or firewood was reckoned by the corde, which was a stack of wood, four feet wide, four feet deep and four feet high and eight feet long, similar to the English cord, but reckoned in French pieds du roi, which made a corde française, 6.575 percent larger in each of its three linear dimensions; thus 21.05034 percent larger in cubic volume than an English cord.
Bacon was sold in ancres du lard, of 70 livres and up.
Cereals: a minot of grain could be 37 litres or 1.05 bushels.
Salt (sel) was sold by the barrique de sel, which was equal to 6 minots.
Peas (pois) and small beans (but not fèves) were sold by the poinçon de pois, equal to 9 minots.
Flour (farine) was sold in barils de farine, 180 livres and up.
Sugar (sucre) was sold in barriques de sucre, up to 1000 livres.
Cod and other fish were sold à la poignée, or by the handful. Larger quantities were sold au cent, but this “hundred of cod” was 132 codfish; a quarteron of that unit was 33 cod.
APPENDIX O
CHAMPLAIN’S MONEY
Monetary systems in Champlain’s era were in some ways more complex than those of our own time. Most national economies had two sets of monetary units: money of account, and money of exchange. Money of account did not commonly exist in the form of hard coin. In early modern England, for example, pounds sterling did not exist as actual coins. They were accounting terms, used to reckon values in sterling accounts. English money of exchange included actual golden guineas, silver shillings, copper pennies and other coins. In our own time, ironically, pounds sterling (20 shillings) are now a money of exchange, and guineas (21 shillings) have become a pretentious money of ac
count, used for calculating the cost of Rolls Royce automobiles, tickets to Oxford Commemoration Balls, and bills from Harley Street physicians. They were actually paid in pounds.1
The French monetary system was similar, but not the same. In 1602, French money of account was fixed thus:
Twelve deniers equaled one sou.
Twenty sous equaled one livre tournois.
Three livres tournois (comparable to English pounds) equalled one écu.
Deniers were roughly comparable to English pennies (twelve to a shilling); sous to English shillings (twenty to a pound), livres to English pounds, and écus to three English pounds. The value of these monetary units varied by region. For example, one livre parisis equaled twenty-five sous. But livres tournois (twenty sous) were increasingly standard in Champlain’s world. French money of exchange (hard coins that actually circulated) included billon, copper, silver, and later gold, coins. Billon was a base alloy of tin, copper and silver, meant to resemble silver. Denominations of hard coin circulating in New France included:
billon douzain = 12 deniers
copper double tournois = 2 deniers (4 deniers in New France)
liard = 3 deniers
demi-sou = 6 deniers
SOU = 12 deniers
douzain = 12 deniers (revalued to 15 in 1640)
deux sols = 24 deniers
silver mousquetaire = 20 deniers
quatre sols = 32 deniers
six sols = 48 deniers, 1/20 écu
douze sols = 96 deniers; 1/10 écu
VINGT-QUATRE SOLS =192 deniers; 1/5 écu
petit écu or half écu blanc = 1/2 crown, 2.5 shillings
écu or trois livres = 1 crown, 5 shillings
gold demi-Louis d’or = approximately 3 écus
Louis d’or = a little more than 6 écus
The coins most commonly found at archaeological sites in Quebec have been the copper double tournois, the copper douzain, the billon douzain, the copper liard, and the silver quatre sols.
What were these monetary units worth in the values of our own time? This question is impossible to answer in any meaningful way by a single estimate, because the value of many commodities changed in different ways, and monetary units have fluctuated in relation to one another. Market-basket price-indicator series have been constructed with limited success. A better answer might be given in terms of wages. On the voyage that founded Quebec in 1608, “Gentlemen” were paid 500 livres tournois for two years. Skilled locksmiths received 120 livres tournois for two years’ service. Gardener Martin Beguin was paid 90 livres tournois for the same two-year period, and laborers Clément Morel and Guillaume Morel got 75 livres tournois. All these salaries were for two years’ service in addition to food and lodging.2
APPENDIX P
CHAMPLAIN’S CALENDARS
During Champlain’s lifetime two different calendars were in active use. Champlain used the newer and more accurate Gregorian calendar, which was adopted by Catholic France in 1582 in place of the older Julian calendar. Protestant countries continued to use the Julian calendar, mainly because the newer one was associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Dutch Calvinists did not shift until 1700. England and its American colonies continued to use the Julian calendar until 1752.1
In Champlain’s era, Julian dates were ten days behind, and the new year began on March 25. The Gregorian calendar corrected that accumulated error, and began the year on January 1. Gregorian dates were marked as New Style (N.S.) in England and stille nouveau (S.N.) in French. Julian dates were identified as Old Style (O.S.) or stille vieux (S.V.).
These different usages caused discrepancies in the dating of documents during Champlain’s lifetime. French Catholic writers used the Gregorian calendar; English writers employed the Julian calendar. Documents that passed across these national and religious lines were double-dated. An example is David Kirke’s letter to Champlain demanding the surrender of Quebec. Kirke’s dateline was “18. Juillet 1628. Stille vieux, ce 8. de Juillet stille nouveau.” He had it backward.2
A further complication arose from the old French custom of numbering the months by their place in the old Julian calendar, which began the year in March. The last four months of the year were referred to by the numbers in their original Latin: September was 7bre; October became 8bre; November was 9bre; and December was Xbre. To add another element of complexity, this Julian custom continued in France and New France long after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which shifted the first month from March to January and made September the 9th month, October the 10th month, November the 11th month, and December the 12th month. The names of the months remained the same and still do, a relic of the Julian calendar in our own time.
Customary units of time coexisted with these calendars in New France. In Quebec a short unit of time was called the pipe, which was the time it took to smoke a pipe full of tobacco. It also became a measure of distance. The eminent historian Marcel Trudel remembers hearing of a village that it was “three pipes away.”
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Raymonde Litalien, “Historiography of Samuel Champlain,” in Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, eds., Champlain: The Birth of French America (Montreal, 2004), 12. This volume is an English translation of Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, eds., Champlain: la naissance de l’Amérique française (Sillery, Québec, 2004).
2. Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages faits au Grand Fleuve Sainct Laurens par le sieur de Champlain Capitaine ordinaire pour le Roy en al marine, depuis, l’année 1608 iusques en 1612 (Paris, 1613): translated and republished in Henry Percival Biggar, ed., The Works of Samuel de Champlain, 6 vols. and a portfolio of maps and drawings (CWB) (Toronto, 1922–36, reprinted 1971) 2: 1–236; the self-portrait appears on plate V, “Deffaite des Yroquois au Lac de Champlain,” CWB 2:100–01.
3. The naked warriors are an inaccuracy. Champlain tells us in the accompanying text that the Indians wore hardwood armor tied together with hemp or cotton. Probably this error was introduced by engraver who might have followed conventional images of American Indians by Theodor de Bry and other European artists. Several scholars have written that the trees which appear to be palms may be an error of the same sort. But historians at Fort Ticonderoga believe that they may have been an attempt to represent clumps of willow trees, which still stand at that place on the shore of Lake Champlain.
4. E. Ewart Oakeshott, The Sword in the Age of Chivalry (New York, 1964); Harold Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526–1783 (New York, 1956).
5. Stephen Bull, An Historical Guide to Armes and Armour (New York, 1991); Charles ffoulkes, The Armourer and his Craft (London, 1912), a great classic.
6. The white panache that Henri IV wore at the head of his army appears in an engraving of his entry into Paris, March 1594, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. His elaborately curled court panache is in a formal portrait, “Henri IV, école française, ca. 1595,” Château de Versailles. For an essay on the word itself see Alain Rey et al., eds., Dictionnaire historique de la langue française 3 vols. (Paris, 2006) 2: 2542–43; s.v. “panache.”
7. On the arquebus, a leading work is M. A. O. Paulin-Desormeaux, Nouveau manuel complet de l’armurier du fourbisseur et de l’arquebusier, nouvelle édition, 2 vols. (Paris, 1852, rpt. Paris, 1977) 1:11–14; copy in the author’s collection. On Champlain’s use of the arquebuse à rouet see Russel Bouchard, Les armes à feu en Nouvelle France (Sillery, Québec, 1999), 102–06. Champlain appears to be carrying a light arquebus that Paulin-Desormeaux calls a fusil de chasse, a hunting weapon; ibid., 1:184–93; for a more extended discussion, see below, chapter 12, and Appendix L.
8. CWB 2: 1–236; The self-portrait appears on plate V, “Deffaite des Yroquois au Lac de Champlain,” 101.
9. Ibid.
10. François-Marc Gagnon, “Champlain: Painter?” in Litalien and Vaugeois, eds. Champlain, 302–11.
11. For discussion, see “Memories of Champlain,” below, and Appendix F.
&n
bsp; 12. Morris Bishop, Champlain: The Life of Fortitude (New York, 1948), 7.
13. Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel de Champlain; Father of New France (New York, 1972), 22.
14. Heather Hudak, Samuel de Champlain (Discovering Canada) (Calgary, 2005), cover.
15. [Michael Hollingsworth], “The History of the Village of the Small Huts (n.p., 1985), 24; www.videocas/com/pdfs/nfchamplain.
16. Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel de Champlain, Father of New France (New York, 1972), xiii.
17. C. E. Heidenreich, Explorations and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain (Toronto, 1976).
18. Allan Forbes and Paul Cadman, France and New England, 3 vols. (Boston, 1925–29).
19. For a positive judgment of Champlain, see Carl O. Sauer, Seventeenth Century America (Berkeley: Turtle Island Foundation, 1980); for a more negative interpretation, see Bruce Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Montreal, 1976, 1987); and Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (Montreal, Kingston, 1985). Sauer was a geographer at Berkeley; Trigger was for many years an anthropologist and archaeologist at McGill University.
20. Chandra Mukarjee, “Champlain as Gardener,” unpublished lecture, College of the Atlantic, 2005.
21. For the historiography of Champlain see “Memories of Champlain,” below.
22. Peter E. Pope, The Many Landfalls of John Cabot (Toronto, 1997), 165, 225n.
23. W. J. Eccles, “Samuel de Champlain,” American National Biography (New York, 1999), s.v., “Champlain.”
24. Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, eds., Champlain: la naissance de l’Amérique française (Sillery, Québec, 2004); it was followed by an English translation as Champlain: The Birth of French America (Montreal, 2004); Mickaël Augeron and Dominique Guillemet, Champlain, ou les portes du nouveau monde: cinq siècles d’échanges entre le Centre-Ouest français et l’Amérique du Nord, XVIe—XXe siècles (Geste, 2004); Annie Blondel-Loisel and Raymonde Litalien, in collaboration with Jean Paul Barbiche and Claude Briot, De la Seine au Saint Laurent avec Champlain (Paris, 2005); Bertrand Guillet and Louise Pothier, eds., France/ Nouvelle France: naissance d’un peuple français en Amérique (Montreal and Paris, 2005); James Kelly and Barbara Clarke Smith eds., Jamestown-Quebec-Santa Fe; Three North American Beginnings (Washington and New York, 2007).
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