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IT
is difficult in the present advanced condition of all the arts and
sciences which converge on the perfecting of our means of transport
and communication to form an adequate idea of the toils,
inconveniences, and perils encountered by those who in the
seventeenth century attempted the task of colonizing this continent.
To say nothing of the difficulties of land travel, the colonist, by
the mere fact of crossing the ocean, placed a barrier of two or
three months of perilous navigation between himself and the land
that had been his home. To the dangers of the sea were added the yet
more serious danger of infection on ill-ventilated and pest-breeding
vessels. A ship coming to the St. Lawrence could in those days make
but one trip to and fro in the year. It is easy to see, therefore,
in how critical a position a colony would be that depended in any
large measure on supplies brought from the other side. The wreck or
capture of one or two vessels might bring it to the verge of
starvation. Success in agriculture, again, can only be looked for
where there is peaceable and secure possession of the land. If all
the results of laborious tillage are liable to be carried off or
destroyed at any moment by marauding foes, there is little
encouragement to engage in that kind of industry. The population
will, by preference, turn to the search for metals, or seek to trade
in articles easily marketed. Thus it was that, in the early days,
the Canadian settlers gave themselves up almost wholly to hunting
and fur-trading. Later, when the French government began to interest
itself directly in the settlement of the country, strong efforts
were made to induce the colonists to apply themselves to
agriculture. Lands were conceded on condition that they should be
cleared and cultivated within a specified time, failing which, they
should revert to the Crown. The same condition applied to any
portion
of a grant remaining unimproved after the stipulated period. Under
these inducements agriculture began to make a little headway,
particularly, as we have seen, after the lesson given to the
Iroquois by Tracy.
Still, there was too much hunting and too much
trading with the Indians in the woods, as distinguished from
legitimate trading in the settlements. Mention has already been made
of the
coureurs de bois. These were men who,
instead of awaiting the arrival of the Indians at the posts of
Montreal, Three Rivers, or Quebec, went out to meet them, in order
that they might get the pick of the skins they possessed, and
perhaps also get the better of them in a trade by first making them
drunk. Two classes of
coureurs de bois have been distinguished
: on the one hand, the men who merely
traded in the woods in the way described,
and, on the other, those who attached themselves to different Indian
bands, and lived the common life of their savage companions. This
reversion to savagery had a great fascination for many of the
Canadian youths ; and, as it led to great moral disorder, the clergy
were quite as much opposed to it as the civil governors'. As a
convert is generally more zealous than one born in the faith, so
these converts from civilization to barbarism seemed bent on
outdoing the original sons of the forest in all that was wild and
unseemly. Like their bronzed associates they would sometimes spurn
clothing altogether, even when visiting settlements, and would make
both day and night hideous with their carousing and yelling.
Frontenac had received from the king strict
instructions to repress the
coureurs de bois by all means in his
power. The law against them was severe, for the punishment was
death. One of the first things Frontenac learnt on arriving in the
colony was that Montreal was the headquarters of these lawless men,
and that not only did the local governor, Perrot, make no effort to
reduce them to order, but that he was commonly understood to be a
sharer in their illicit gains. It was further stated that he had an
establishment of his own on an island, which still bears his name,
at the confluence of the Ottawa and St Lawrence, where his agents
regularly intercepted the Indians on the way to Montreal, and took
the cream of the trade. The king's instructions, it was well known,
forbade any trading on the part of officials; but Perrot, whose
family, as already mentioned, was influential, and whose wife was a
niece of the late Intendant Talon, did not think that such a
regulation was made for him. In passing through Montreal at the time
of his expedition to Cataraqui, Frontenac had requested Perrot to
see that the king's instructions respecting the
coureurs de bois were obeyed. The latter
promised compliance, but the promise was not redeemed. Frontenac at
first thought he could get round the difficulty by appointing M. de
Chambly as local governor for the district surrounding the Island of
Montreal—Perrot's jurisdiction being limited strictly to the
island—and thus establishing a kind of cordon by which the comings
and goings of the
coureurs de bois might be controlled.
This arrangement was never put into operation, for the reason that,
just about the same time, M. de Chambly received from the king 90
the appointment of governor of Acadia. Perrot, however, accompanied
him as far as Quebec, and this gave Frontenac the opportunity of
placing under the eyes of the Montreal governor the orders he had
received from the court, and urging him to co-operate in giving them
effect. Again Perrot promised to do his duty in the matter, but with
what degree of sincerity events quickly showed. He had hardly
returned to Montreal when the local judge, Ailleboust, who had
received personal instructions from Frontenac in regard to carrying
out the law, tried to effect the arrest of two offenders who were
lodging in the house of one Carion, an officer. Carion refused to
permit the arrest, and was upheld therein by Perrot, whereupon the
judge took the only course open to him, namely, to notify the
governor-general. It was now mid-winter; but, without a moment's
hesitation, Frontenac deputed one Bizard, a lieutenant of his guard,
to go to Montreal with three men, effect the arrest of Carion, and
bring him to Quebec. He gave Bizard at the same time a letter to
Perrot, but instructed him not to deliver it till he had first made
sure of his prisoner. The lieutenant carried out his instructions,
so far as the arrest of Carion was concerned; but, before he could
leave Montreal, Perrot pounced down upon him and made him prisoner
in turn, asking him how he dared to make an arrest in the limits of
the government of Montreal without first notifying him. The scene
was witnessed by two prominent residents of Montreal, Lebert, the
merchant, and La Salle, of whom we have already heard; and a report
of the matter, attested by them, was despatched to Quebec. The
choleric Perrot, hearing of this piece of officiousness, as he
regarded it, put Lebert also into prison. La Salle, thinking the
same treatment might be meted out to him, lost no time in taking the
road to Quebec.
The rage of Frontenac at this open defiance of
his authority may be imagined. Was it for this that he had come to
Canada, to be flouted and set at nought by a subordinate officer ?
The worst of it was that there was no immediate remedy. The only
thing to do at the moment was to summon the culprit to appear before
the Sovereign Council at Quebec. But would he come ? If he refused,
Frontenac had no force to compel him. The force was all on the other
side; the governor-general had but his body guard, whereas Montreal
was full of men accustomed to Indian warfare, who would probably
obey Perrot's orders, especially as there was a standing jealousy
between Montreal and Quebec. At this point in his reflections, the
count bethought him of writing a letter to the Abbd deF^nelon,
Sulpician, of Montreal, who had accompanied him to Cataraqui, and
with whom he was on very friendly terms, asking him to represent to
Perrot what a serious thing it would be if he aggravated his former
misconduct by refusing to go to Quebec. Rightly or wrongly, M de F&ielon
understood this letter as signifying that the governor, while
desirous of vindicating his authority, was prepared to compromise
the difficulty to some extent, and consequently gave Perrot to
understand that, if he would obey the order to go to Quebec, the
matter would in all probability be amicably adjusted. He offered to
accompany him; and the two set out towards the close of January on a
snowshoe tramp to Quebec over the frozen St. Lawrence. They arrived
at the capital on the 29th of the month. Perrot at once sought an
interview with the governor; but the discussion, far from taking a
friendly turn, soon became extremely violent; and the result was
that Perrot found himself in an hour's time placed under arrest.
The surprise and chagrin of the Montreal
official may be imagined. As for the abbe, his indignation at what
he regarded as a breach of faith knew no bounds.1 Sharp
words passed between him and the governor, and he returned to
Montreal in a most agitated and rebellious state of mind. A few
weeks later, having to preach on Easter Sunday in the parish church,
he slipped into his sermon some observations which could only be
construed as an attack on the king's representative. Speaking of
those who are invested with temporal authority, he said—according to
a summary of his discourse given by the Abbé Faillon—that the
magistrate who was animated by the spirit of the risen Christ would
be strict, on the one hand, to punish offences against the service
of his Prince, and prompt, on the other, to overlook those against
his own dignity; would be full of respect for the ministers of the
altar, and would not treat them harshly when, in the discharge of
their duty, they strove to reconcile enemies and establish general
good-will; would not surround himself with servile creatures to fill
his ears with adulation, nor oppress under specious pretexts persons
also invested with authority who happened to oppose his projects;
further that such a ruler would use his power to maintain the
authority of the monarch, and not to promote his own advantage, and
would content himself with the salary allowed him without disturbing
the commerce of the country or ill-using those who would not give
him a share of their gains ; finally, that he would not vex the
people by unjustly exacting forced labour for ends of his own, nor
falsely invoke the name of the monarch in support of such
proceedings.
In every sentence there was a sting. The last
words referred to the expedition to Lake Ontario, and the unpaid
labour of the men by whom the fort at Cataraqui had been
constructed. The preacher, in fact, may be said to have summed up
the charges which certain Montrealers were at the time making
against the governor, and which the Abbé Faillon, swayed perhaps in
some measure by sympathy with a fellow Sulpician, does not hesitate
to say were well founded.
The church on that Easter Sunday was filled to
its utmost capacity, over six hundred persons being present. Amongst
these was the watchful La Salle, who, not only took it all in
himself, but by his gestures and movements called the attention of
as many persons as possible to what was being said, and its obvious
import. It was not only the friends of Frontenac, however, who
recognized the drift of the sermon, for the curd of the parish, the
Rev. M. Perrot, said to M. de Fénelon as he came down from the
pulpit: "Really, sir, you have entered into details which have
caused me a great deal of trouble." Other ecclesiastics were
affected in the same manner, amongst them La Salle's own brother, an
ecclesiastic of the Seminary, who went at once to the Superior, the
excellent M. Dollier de Casson, to tell him what had happened. The
latter, in turn, foreseeing trouble, sent to tell La Salle that the
Seminary had no responsibility whatever for M. de Fenelon's sermon,
as it had not been submitted beforehand for approval, and no one had
the least notion what he intended to say. The same communication was
made in the most earnest terms' to M. de la Nauguere, who was
temporarily filling the place of governor of Montreal by Frontenac's
nomination, with a request that he would convey the assurance to the
governor-general.
The extraordinary thing is that the reverend
gentleman who had caused all this trouble, when spoken to on the
subject by the Superior, gave his word as a man of honour and a
priest, that he had no intention whatever of alluding to the
governor-general, adding that those who so applied his remarks were
doing much dishonour to that high officer. The Abbé Faillon does not
like to call M. de Fdnelon's word in question, but he says that he
manifestly lacked " one quality very important in a missionary, the
prudence which directs the exercise of zeal, and keeps it within the
bounds that circumstances require."
It was not only by this sermon that the Abb£
Fdnelon showed his lack of prudence. Madame Perrot had come out from
France with her husband when he was appointed to the governorship of
Montreal in 1669, and now that he was in trouble, and his case was
likely to come before the king, she was anxious to get some
testimonial from the people of Montreal in his favour. As to the
kind of a governor Perrot had really been, we may safely rely on the
judgment pronounced by the industrious author of the
Histoire de la Colonie Franpaise en Canada,
who says1: "This governor contributed more than any one
else to that fatal revolution which changed entirely the moral
aspect of this colony [Montreal]. . . . The whole course of his
conduct in Canada justifies us in thinking that when, in 1669, he
decided to come here, it was in the hope
of making a great fortune through the influence of M. de Talon,
whose niece, Madeleine Laguide, he had married." The abbd goes on to
explain that the Seminary (as seigneurs of the Island of Montreal)
would never have nominated Perrot had they known his true character,
and would certainly not have retained him in office after his
character became known, if they had been free to act in the matter.
What stood in the way was that, through Talon's influence, his
commission as governor had been confirmed by the king, and that he
had thus, in a manner, been rendered independent of the Seminary
authorities. " From that moment," the writer continues, " he
considered himself free from all control in the matter of the
traffic in drink which he was already carrying on with the savages
to the great scandal of all the respectable inhabitants. ... It is
certain that he himself gave open protection to the
coureurs de bois, not only in his own
island through M. Bruey, his agent, but also throughout the whole
extent of the Island of Montreal. ... In order to have, without much
expense,
coureurs de bois under his orders, he
allowed nearly all the soldiers in the island to desert and take to
the woods, without either pursuing them, or notifying the
governor-general of their desertion." It may be added that, when
some of the most respectable inhabitants of Montreal ventured on a
timid remonstrance respecting the irregularities that were taking
place, he assailed them in the lowest and most ruffianly language,
and put their principal spokesman, who at the time was the acting
judge of Montreal, into prison.
This was the man, then, in whose interest, when
Madame Perrot could not get any one else to do it, M. de Fénelon
undertook to go round the Island of Montreal, and get the
inhabitants to sign a petition. The petition, it is true, only
stated that the signers had no complaints to make against M. Perrot;
but its object was to throw dust in the eyes of the court, and it is
impossible to think highly of the candour of the man—elder brother,
though he was, of the great Archbishop of Cambrai—who was the chief
agent in procuring it.
It is not surprising, in view of these
proceedings, that M. de Fénelon received an order to repair to
Quebec. Before summoning him, Frontenac had carried on a prolonged
correspondence with the Seminary at Montreal. He first of all
required them to banish Fénelon from their house as being a factious
and rebellious person. To save his brethren trouble, Fénelon retired
of his own accord, and took up parish work at Lachine. Frontenac
then asked for signed declarations as to what had been said in the
sermon. These the Sulpicians declined to give, saying they could not
be called upon to testify against a brother. "Then send down a copy
of the sermon," the governor said. The reply to this was that they
had no copy of it. For form's sake they consented to ask the
vicar-general at Quebec, the highest ecclesiastical authority in the
absence of the bishop, to request M. de Fenelon to furnish the
original. The vicar-general did so, and the abbé promptly replied
that he would do nothing of the kind; he did not acknowledge himself
to be guilty of any misdemeanour, but, if he were, he could not be
required to furnish evidence against himself.
These
pourparlers consumed considerable time,
as letters were not exchanged in those days with modern rapidity
between Quebec and Montreal. Moreover, Frontenac took a slice out of
the summer in order to pay a visit to Montreal at the height of the
trading season, not impossibly with some thrifty design, though it
is known that he attended to the king's business to the extent of
capturing, through his officer M. de Verch&res, no less than twelve
coureurs de bois. It was not till some
time in the month of August that M. de Fénelon appeared to answer
for himself at Quebec.
To follow in detail the incidents of the
abortive inquiry into Perrot's insubordination, and the equally
unsatisfactory proceedings in the case of the refractory abbé, would
be tedious and unprofitable. Two of the councillors, Tilly and
Dupont, were appointed a commission to examine Perrot. The latter
made no objection at first to answering their questions, but a few
days later he took it into his head to protest the competency of the
council to try the charges against him. The governor, he said, was
his personal enemy, and the members of the council, holding office
during his good pleasure, could only be considered as his creatures.
The council disregarded the protest, and continued the inquiry; but
on each subsequent occasion Perrot refused to answer any question
till his protest had been duly entered in the minutes. One of his
answers almost betrays a sense of humour. He was asked why he had
not arrested the
coureurs de bois who made his private
island their headquarters. "Because," he said, " I had no
jurisdiction; my government does not extend beyond the Island of
Montreal." In other words, he had chosen a spot for his illegal
operations where, in his private capacity, he could, so to speak,
snap his fingers in his own face in his official capacity. Possibly
it was an attempt on Frontenac's part to repay humour with humour,
when he caused one of these very
coureurs de bois, a man whom Perrot
probably knew very well, to be hanged directly in front of his
prison window.
During the summer a despatch was received from
the minister for the colonies which somewhat disquieted Frontenac,
and doubtless had some effect also on the minds of the councillors.
In order to lay an account of Perrot's rebellious conduct at the
earliest possible moment before the king, Frontenac had taken the
unusual course of sending a letter by way of Boston in February,
hoping that it might reach the minister's hands in time to be
answered by the ship leaving in the
spring or early summer. Colbert wrote under date the 17th May 1674,
evidently without having received the letter, for he terminated his
despatch with these words: "His Majesty instructs me to recommend to
you particularly the person and interests of M. Perrot, governor of
Montreal, and nephew of M. Talon, his principal
valet de chambre." Nothing could well
have been more awkward, considering that the person so warmly
recommended was at that moment, and had been for months, in durance
vile, as a rebel against the governor's authority, and indirectly
against his Majesty's.
The Abbé Fenelon, when he appeared before the
council, was more defiant by far than Perrot He was told to stand
up. He said, No, he would sit down, as he was not a criminal; and,
if he were, he could only be tried by an ecclesiastical court. He
was asked to remove his hat; to which he replied by jamming it
harder on his head, saying that ecclesiastics had a right to keep
their heads covered. In the end the council began to fear that the
governor was getting them into trouble; and they consequently
determined, in both cases, that they would confine themselves to
taking evidence, and leave the court to pronounce judgment. This
conclusion was not pleasing to Frontenac, who wished to have a
distinct decision of the council in his favour. He, too, was
"weakening," however, as we may see by his letter to-the minister,
dated 14th November 1674, and despatched by the same vessel by which
the governor of Montreal—released at last after ten months'
confinement—and the fiery abbé sailed for France. " I am sending,"
he says, " M. Perrot and M. de Fdnelon to France, in order that you
may judge their conduct. For myself, if I have failed in any point
of duty, I am ready to submit to his Majesty's corrections. A
governor in this country would be much to be pitied if he were not
sustained, seeing there is no one here on whom he can depend ; and
should he commit any fault he might assuredly be excused, seeing
that all kinds of nets are spread for him, and that, after avoiding
a hundred, he is liable to be caught in the end. So, My Lord, I hope
that, should I have had the misfortune to take any false step, his
Majesty will be kind enough to sympathize with me, and to believe
that the error was due to an excess of zeal for his service, and not
to any other motive."
The tone of this communication, it must be
confessed, is not quite what one would expect from a man of
Frontenac's character and antecedents. It shows what influence at
court counted for in that day. The letter was accompanied by a
docket of enormous proportions containing the charges against Perrot
and the abbé, and all the evidence taken in the course of the
prolonged investigation at Quebec. He received replies both from the
king and the minister. In regard to Perrot the king wrote: "I have
seen and examined all you have sent me concerning M. Perrot; and,
after having seen all that he has put forward in his defence, I have
condemned his action in imprisoning the officer you sent to
Montreal. To punish him I have sent him for some time to the
Bastille, in order that this discipline may not only render him more
circumspect for the future, but may serve as an example to others.
But, in order that you may thoroughly understand my views, I must
tell you that, except in a case of absolute necessity, you should
not execute any order within the sphere of a local government
without having first notified the governor of the locality. The
punishment of ten months' imprisonment you inflicted on him seems to
me sufficient; and that is why I am sending him to the Bastille for
a short term only, in order to vindicate in a public manner my
violated authority." His Majesty added that he was sending Perrot
back to his government, but that he would instruct him to call on
the governor-general at Quebec and apologize for all his past
offences ; after which Frontenac was to dismiss all resentment, and
treat him with the consideration due to his office.
As regards Fénelon, he was not allowed to return
to Canada; and he was censured by the Superior of his order for
having busied himself with things with which he had no concern. At
the same time Frontenac was informed that he was wrong in
instituting a criminal process against that ecclesiastic, as well as
in calling upon his brethren of the Seminary to give evidence
against him. The king made it clear that he thought Frontenac had
been unduly harsh and autocratic in his proceedings generally. It
would have been well for that dignitary if he could have taken the
admonition more deeply to heart. |
