37. Jean Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, fondateur de Québec (Paris, 1999), 35.
38. William Inglis Morse, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons; Records: Colonial and ‘Saintongeois’ (London, 1939).
39. Jean Glénisson, La France d’Amérique (Paris, 1994); quoted in Jean-Yves Grenon, Pierre Dugua de Mons: Founder of Acadie, 1; Jean Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, fondateur de Québec (Paris, 1999); Guy Binot, Pierre Dugua de Mons, Gentilhomme Royannais, Premier Colonisateur du Canada, Lieutenant Général de la Nouvelle-France de 1603 à 1612 (Royan, 2004); Marie Claude Bouchet, Pierre Dugua de Mons (Royan, 2000); for other interpretations see Bruce G. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (Montreal and Kingston, 1985), 172–77, 306–12, which describes and dismisses de Mons as merely a “trader.”
40. Morse, ed., Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons; Grenon, Pierre Dugua de Mons, Founder of Acadie; Liebel, Pierre Dugua sieur de Mons, fondateur de Québec; Binot, Pierre Dugua de Mons, Gentilhomme Royannais, 1.
41. Lescarbot, History of New France, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1907) 2:250, 277.
42. Quoted in Grenon, Pierre Dugua de Mons, Founder of Acadie, 13–14.
43. Grenon, Pierre Dugua de Mons, Founder of Acadie, 1–3; Morse, ed., Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons; Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons; M. G. Rodrigues, Le père du Canada: Pierre Dugua (1994), not seen. Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, vol. 1: Les vaines tentatives 1524–1603 (Montreal, 1963).
44. Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 37.
45. CWB 2: 215; 3:319.
46. Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 8; also helpful in correcting much confusion about the origins of his family.
47. Ibid., 8, 61; Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents 1: xxv; these are the court documents, which are most likely to survive. For monetary units, see Appendix O, below.
48. Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 327, 336.
49. Ibid., 325, 329, 342, 336.
50. Ibid., 93.
3. HENRI IV AND CHAMPLAIN
1. “Majesté, à laquelle i’estois obligé tant de naissance, que d’vne pension de laquelle elle m’honoroit.” 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) in Works ed. Biggar (CWB) 3:315.
2. “Le Roy [et] patrie … Dieu et le monde,” ibid., 6:99.
3. Ibid., 3:315. For the meaning of obligé in the era of Samuel de Champlain, see Le Grand Robert de la langue française, 6:2050–52, s.v., “obliger.” The first example is “la loi naturelle, la loi divine nous oblige à honorer père et mere; natural and divine law obliges us to honor our father and mother.” The second meaning is “assujettir par une obligation d’ordre moral; to subject oneself by an obligation of a moral order.” Third, fourth and fifth meanings of “obliger” are: “assujettir par une obligation d’ordre juridique; to subject oneself by an obligation of a judicial order;” “mettre quelqu’un dans la nécessité de (faire quelque chose); to put someone under a necessity of doing something;” and “attacher quelqu’un par une obligation; to attach someone by an obligation.”
4. “Bail de Jacques Hersan et Marie Camaret,” March 15, 1619, Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents sur Champlain et son époque (Ottawa, 1967), 165.
5. CWB 3:315; Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, eds., Champlain: The Birth of French America (Montreal, 2004), 364.
6. Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France: Les Vaines Tentatives, 1524–1603 (Montreal and Paris, 1963), 1:255; Hubert Deschamps, Les Voyages de Samuel Champlain, saintongeais, père du Canada (Paris, 1951), 4n5.
7. Life of Mà-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kià-Kiàk or Black Hawk … dictated by himself, ed. J. B. Patterson (Cincinnati, 1834), new edition, ed. Milo M. Quaife (Chicago, 1916), 24; the best scholarly edition is Black Hawk, An Autobiography, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana, Ill., 1955, 1964, 1990), 41–45, 45n; Gordon M. Sayre, Les sauvages Américaines (Chapel Hill, 1997), 64; see conclusion above.
8. David Buisseret, Henry IV (London, 1984), 6–7; Pierre de Vaissière, Henri IV (Paris, 1925); Irene Mahoney, Royal Cousin: The Life of Henry IV of France (New York, 1970); Pierre-Victor Palma-Cuyet, Chronologie novenaire [1589–98] and Chronologie septenaire [1598–1604], ed. J. A. Buchon (Paris, 1836).
9. For Henri’s presence in Saintonge, 1568–72, see Janine Garrison, Henry IV (Paris, 1984), “Le Prince de La Rochelle,” 46–52; Jean-Pierre Babelon, Henri IV (Paris, 1982), 138–58.
10. The particule de noblesse and the title “sieur de Champlain” appeared as early as 1595 in pay records of the royal army in Brittany. These documents are in the Archives d’Ille-et-Vilaine C2914 (fonds des États de Bretagne). They were discovered by Arthur de la Borderie, archivist in Rennes, and noted by Jouon de Longrais in Bulletin et mémoires de la Societé archéologique du département d’Ille-et-Vilaine 42 (1913), xlvi—xlviii. A modern transcription appears in Le Blant et Baudry, Nouveaux documents, 17–19.
11. The particule de preceding a patronymic name is often called the particule de noblesse, or particule nobiliare. It was never explicitly a sign of authentic nobility, but an emblem of rank, status, distinction, or merit that was awarded to others in common usage. In Champlain’s era the particule de noblesse commonly referred to someone who was thought worthy of respect, usually by rank and status—though not exclusively to people with authentic titles of nobility. In the nineteenth century it was assumed by the bourgeoisie as an instrument of social striving. As Victor Hugo complained in Les Misérables, “Le particule, on le sait, n’a aucune significance; it is well known that the particle means nothing at all” (III. iv. 1). See Le Grand Robert de la langue française 5: 279, s.v. “particule,” II. 2.
Robert Le Blant observed that Champlain signed himself Champlain, without the “de” word. An exception was his manuscript map of 1607. See Le Blant’s “La condition sociale de Samuel Champlain,” Actes du 87e congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Poitiers, 1962, (n.p., 1963), 669–77. It might be noted that Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, signed himself either Pierredugua, or Dugua, or Monts, or Mons, but not de Mons or de Monts. Photographs of his signatures appear in William Inglis Morse, Pierre Dugua sieur de Mons (London, 1939), 93ff.
The title “sieur” was commonly defined as a “titre honorifique pour un homme; an honorific title for a man.” In Champlain’s world it was given on the same criteria as the particule de noblesse. It did not refer exclusively to the nobility, but to men of honor who were thought to be worthy of respect. Only a very small proportion of the men mentioned in Champlain’s writings were called “sieur.” See Le Grand Robert de la langue française 6:436, s.v. “sieur,” I—III.
12. CWB 3:315.
13. Babelon, Henri IV, 7.
14. See, for example, René de La Croix de Castries, Henri IV, roi de coeur, roi de France (Paris, 1970); André Castelot, Henri IV le passionné (Paris, 1986); Marcelle Vioux, Le vert-galant: vie héroique at amoureuse de Henri IV (Paris, 1935); Francis Bayrou, Henri IV: le roi libre (Paris, 1994).
15. Christian Desplat, Cultures en Béarn (Librairie des Pyrénées et de Gascogne, 2001), excellent on the persistence of ancient and medieval folkways in the modern world, and the interplay of French and Bearnaise language and culture; Nicolas de Bordenave, Histoire de Béarn et de Navarre (Paris, 1873), a fine work of scholarship.
16. Buisseret, Henri IV, 1, from Pierre-Victor Palma-Cayet, Chronologie novenaire contenant l’histoire de la guerre (Paris, 1608) 1:175.
17. Nancy Lyman Roelker, Queen of Navarre: Jeanne d’Albret (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), a classic and charming work; Marquis de Rochambeau, Lettres d’Antoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne d’Albret (Paris, 1878); Jeanne d’Albret, Memoires et poésies de Jeanne d’Albret (Paris, 1893).
18. Roelker, Queen of Navarre, trans. as Jeanne d’Albret, reine de Navarre (Paris, 1979).
19. Frederic J. Baumgartner, Henri II: King of France, 1547–155
9 (Durham, N.C., 1988).
20. David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (New York, 1996), 65–102.
21. Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford, 1991) 50–56; Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France,” Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Palo Alto, 1976), 152–87; Denis Richet, “Aspects socio-culturels des conflits religieux à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle,” Annules ESC 32 (1977), 764–89.
22. Sylvia Shannon, “The Political Activity of François de Lorraine, duc de Guise, 1559–1563,” (thesis, Boston University, 1988), 344–82 compares four primary sources, two Protestant and two Catholic; Arlette Jouanna et al., Histoire et dictionnaire des guerres de religion (Paris, 1998), 106–10.
23. Denis Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1520—vers 1610, 2 vols. (Paris, 1990), a major work; on Sens and Tours, see Jouanna et al., Guerres de religion, 117; and on Montbrison, see Robert Knecht, French Religious Wars 1562–1598 (Botley, 2002), 73–75.
24. Knecht, The French Religious Wars, 29–37; a great classic is Pierre de Ronsard, Discours des misères de ce temps and its sequel, published in his Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1552).
25. Jouanna et al., Guerres de religion, 163–85.
26. Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henri IV: The Struggle for Stability (New York, 1995), 11.
27. Eliane Vigé and Jimmy Vigé, Brouage: capitale du sel et patrie de Champlain (Bordessoules, 1990),42, 44, 49.
28. Mémoires et autres écrits de Marguerite de Valois, la Reine Margot, ed. Yves Cazeau (Paris, 1971, 1986), 11–12, 58–59.
29. Another factor was the war in the Netherlands, where the Protestant Dutch were fighting for their freedom from a Spanish Catholic ruler. In August 1572, the French king, Charles IX, gave Admiral de Coligny permission to take a French army into the Netherlands in support of the Dutch. The attempted assassination of de Coligny was an effort by the Catholic party to stop that intervention. A papal envoy reported that “if the Admiral had died from the shot, no others would have been killed.” But the admiral survived and the St. Bartholemew Massacre followed. See Lisa Jardine, The Awful End of Prince William the Silent (New York, 2006), 36.
30. Arlette Jouanna, La Saint-Barthélemy: les mystères d’un crime d’État, 24 août 1572 (Paris, 2007), 160–200.
31. Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York, 1991); Philip Benedict, “The Saint Bartholemew’s Massacres in the Provinces,” Historical Journal 21 (1978) 205–25; Greengrass, France in the Age of Henry IV, 9.
32. Buisseret, Henri IV, 10.
33. Ibid.; Henri IV, Lettres missives de Henri IV, 9 vols. (Paris, 1843–76) 1:122.
34. Jean H. Mariéjol, Henri IV et Louis XIII (Paris, 1905), 252–53.
35. Michael Wolfe, The Conversion of Henry IV: Politics, Power, and Religious Belief in Early Modern Times (Cambridge, 1993), 22.
36. Marcel Trudel, a great historian of New France, raised a Roman Catholic, concluded that Champlain was born Protestant and converted to Catholicism. See Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 1:235–36; Deschamps, Les Voyages de Samuel Champlain, 4–5. A Protestant historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, thought that Champlain was “probably born and certainly brought up a Catholic,” but he did not appear to know the evidence. Samuel de Champlain, 17. Other scholars, such as Bishop, Champlain, 4, and Armstrong, Champlain, 4, remained agnostic on these questions.
37. Buisseret, Henri IV, 122.
38. Champlain’s religious books appear in Robert le Blant, “Inventaire des meubles faisant partie de la communauté entre Samuel Champlain et Hélène Boullé, Nov. 21, 1636,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 18 (1965) 595, 603, 599; for Henri’s Christian piety see Buisseret, Henri IV, 50.
39. Buisseret, Henri IV, 50–51, 54.
40. Ibid., 178.
41. Ibid., 12.
42. Knecht, The French Religious Wars, 91.
43. Variant estimates of these payments appear in Claude Groulart, Mémoires ou Voyages par lui faits en Cour (Paris, 1857); Sully, Les Oeconomies royales de Sully ed., David Buisseret and Bernard Barbiche, (Paris, 1970), and an earlier edition, Les Économies Royales ed. Michaud and Poujoulat, 2 vols. (Paris, 1837), and manuscript materials in Buisseret, Henri IV, 48; Greengrass, France in the Age of Henri IV, 87, 393.
44. Buisseret, Henri IV, 48–49.
45. Eliane Vigé and Jimmy Vigé, Brouage, ville d’histoire et place forte (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1989), 34–69.
46. S. Annette Finley-Croswhite, Henri IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589–1610 (Cambridge, 1999), 20–22.
47. Henri IV was quoted as saying, “Si Dieu me donne encore de la vie, je feray qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon Royaume, qui n’ait moyen d’avoir une poule dans son pot.” The earliest source I have found for this much quoted saying is Bishop Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, Histoire du Roy Henry Le Grand (1661, revised corrected and expanded by the author, Paris, 1681), annexe, “Recueil de quelques belles actions et paroles mémorables du Roy Henri Le Grand,” 528. Péréfixe was a tutor of Louis XIV.
48. Jean-Pierre Babelon, Demeures parisiens sous Henri IV et Louis XIII (Paris, 1965); Buisseret, Henri IV, 196.
49. Buisseret, Henri IV, 139–40.
50. Péréfixe, Histoire du Roy Henry Le Grand, annexe, “Recueil de quelques belles actions,” 529.
51. Jean-François Labourdette, “L’importance du Traité de Vervins,” 15–26.
4. A SOLDIER IN BRITTANY
1. Champlain’s Army Pay Records, 1595, Archives de l’Ille-et-Vilaine, Fonds des États de Bretagne, C. 1924, ff. 229, 523–27; Robert Le Blant and René Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents sur Champlain et son époque (Ottawa, 1967), 17–19.
2. For an overview, and a great work of scholarship see Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: la violence au temps des troubles de religion (vers 1525—vers 1610), 2 vols. (Seyssel, 1990); also James B. Collins, “La Guerre de la Ligue et le bien public,” in Jean-François Labourdette, Jean-Pierre Poussou, and Marie-Catherine Vignal, eds., Le Traité de Vervins (Paris, 2000), 81–96.
3. Louis Grégoire, La Ligue en Bretagne (Paris and Nantes, 1856). Major documents are in the second volume of Pierre-Victor Palma-Cayet, Chronologie novenaire and Chronologie septenaire (Paris 1836); and Henri IV, Recueil des lettres missives, 9 vols. (Paris, 1843–76), vols. 4–5.
4. Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henry IV (2d edition 1984, London, 1995) 86; H. Wacquet, Mémoires du chanoine Jean Moreau sur les guerres de la ligue en Bretagne (Quimper, 1960).
5. Champlain’s army records are reproduced in Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents sur 1:9–11.
6. For monetary units see Frank C. Spooner, The International Economy and Monetary Movements in France, 1493–1725 (Cambridge, 1972); John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1978), 9–13, 87–97, 280–90, passim; David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Movements in World History (1996, 2d edition, Oxford, 2000). In general 1 silver écu equalled 3 livres tournois (a money of account), or about 6 English silver shillings in 1619; for monetary values, see Frank C. Spooner. On Champlain’s monetary units, see Appendix O below.
7. “Paiement de diverses sommes à Jean Hardy et Samuel Champlain, pour leurs gages dans l’armée royale de Bretagne,” March—Dec. 1595, Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents 1:17–19.
8. “A Samuel de Champlain, ayde du Sieur Hardy … pour certain voiage secret qu’il a faict important le service du Roy,” March—Dec. 1595, in Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents 1:18.
9. This title appeared in pay records for the period from March to December 1595. Before the reference in folio 195 to the secret voyage and service to the king, he appears to have been called Champlain. The
reafter, he was sieur de Champlain. Cf. Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents, 1:17–19.
10. “Au sieur de Champlain la somme de trois escuz pour aller trouver Monsieur le marechal et luy representer quelques chose important le service du Roy,” Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents, 1:19. For Saint-Luc see Éliane Vigé and Jimmy Vigé, Brouage: ville d’histoire et place forte (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1989), 34–55.
11. Claude de Chastillon, “The Royal Camp of Henri IV at the Siege of La Fère,” January 1596, British Library; David Buisseret, Henri IV (London, 1984) plates 8, 9. This engraving gives a good sense of the role of the Logis du Roy in active campaigns.
12. Full accounts of the campaign are written by English participants and historians: R. B. Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe (Oxford, 1984); J. S. Nolan, “English Operations around Brest, 1594,” Mariner’s Mirror 81 (1995), 259–74; James McDermott, “The Crozon Peninsula, El Leon, 1594,” Martin Fro-bisher, Elizabethan Privateer (New Haven, 2003), 407–23.
13. For Champlain’s presence at Crozon see Arthur le Moyne de la Borderie and Barthélemy Pocquet, Histoire de Bretagne, 6 vols., (Rennes, 1905–14), 5:260; Samuel E. Morison, Champlain: Father of New France (New York, 1972), 17; Morris Bishop, Champlain: The Life of Fortitude (New York, 1948, 1963), 10; Joe C. W. Armstrong, Champlain (Toronto, 1987), 22; cf, Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne, Champlain: fondateur de Québec et père de la Nouvelle France (Quebec 1981, 1926) 1:8, who has him on the wrong side, fighting for the Catholic League; cf. Champlain himself 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) 1:3.
14. After-action report by English officers, 8 Nov. 1594, Cotton MSS, Caligula E IX, 1, f 211, British Library, as cited in McDermott, Frobisher, 480n.
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