Part 6 (1/2)
Rooseboom again set out for the lakes with twenty or more canoes. He was to winter among the Senecas, and wait the arrival of Major McGregory, a Scotch officer, who was to leave Albany in the spring with fifty men, take command of the united parties, and advance to Lake Huron, accompanied by a band of Iroquois, to form a general treaty of trade and alliance with the tribes claimed by France as her subjects. [Footnote: Brodhead, _Hist. of New York_, II. 443; _Commission of McGregory_, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 318.]
Denonville was beside himself at the news. He had already urged upon Louis XIV. the policy of buying the colony of New York, which he thought might easily be done, and which, as he said, ”would make us masters of the Iroquois without a war.” This time he wrote in a less pacific mood: ”I have a mind to go straight to Albany, storm their fort, and burn every thing.” [Footnote: _Denonville au Ministre_, 16 _Nov_., 1686.] And he begged for soldiers more earnestly than ever.
”Things grow worse and worse. The English stir up the Iroquois against us, and send parties to Michillimackinac to rob us of our trade. It would be better to declare war against them than to perish by their intrigues.” [Footnote: _Ibid_., 15 _Oct_., 1686.]
He complained bitterly to Dongan, and Dongan replied: ”I beleeve it is as lawfull for the English as the French to trade amongst the remotest Indians. I desire you to send me word who it was that pretended to have my orders for the Indians to plunder and fight you. That is as false as 'tis true that G.o.d is in heaven. I have desired you to send for the deserters. I know not who they are but had rather such Rascalls and Bankrouts, as you call them, were amongst their own countrymen.” [Footnote: _Dongan to Denonville_, 1 _Dec_., 1686; _Ibid_., 20 _June_, 1687, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III. 462, 465.]
He had, nevertheless, turned them to good account; for, as the English knew nothing of western geography, they employed these French bush-rangers to guide their trading parties. Denonville sent orders to Du Lhut to shoot as many of them as he could catch.
Dongan presently received despatches from the English court, which showed him the necessity of caution; and, when next he wrote to his rival, it was with a chastened pen: ”I hope your Excellency will be so kinde as not desire or seeke any correspondence with our Indians of this side of the Great lake (_Ontario_): if they doe amisse to any of your Governmt. and you make it known to me, you shall have all justice done.” He complained mildly that the Jesuits were luring their Iroquois converts to Canada; ”and you must pardon me if I tell you that is not the right way to keepe fair correspondence. I am daily expecting Religious men from England, which I intend to put amongst those five nations. I desire you would order Monsr. de Lamberville that soe long as he stayes amongst those people he would meddle only with the affairs belonging to his function. Sir, I send you some Oranges, hearing that they are a rarity in your partes.” [Footnote: _Dongan to Denonville_, 20 _Juin_, 1687, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III.
465.]
”Monsieur,” replies Denonville, ”I thank you for your oranges. It is a great pity that they were all rotten.”
The French governor, unlike his rival, felt strong in the support of his king, who had responded amply to his appeals for aid; and the temper of his letters answered to his improved position. ”I was led, Monsieur, to believe, by your civil language in the letter you took the trouble to write me on my arrival, that we should live in the greatest harmony in the world; but the result has plainly shown that your intentions did not at all answer to your fine words.” And he upbraids him without measure for his various misdeeds: ”Take my word for it. Let us devote ourselves to the accomplishment of our masters'
will; let us seek, as they do, to serve and promote religion; let us live together in harmony, as they desire. I repeat and protest, Monsieur, that it rests with you alone; but do not imagine that I am a man to suffer others to play tricks on me. I willingly believe that you have not ordered the Iroquois to plunder our Frenchmen; but, whilst I have the honor to write to you, you know that Salvaye, Gedeon Pet.i.t, and many other rogues and bankrupts like them, are with you, and boast of sharing your table. I should not be surprised that you tolerate them in your country; but I am astonished that you should promise me not to tolerate them, that you so promise me again, and that you perform nothing of what you promise. Trust me, Monsieur, make no promise that you are not willing to keep.” [Footnote: _Denonville a Dongan_, 21 _Aug_., 1687; _Ibid., no date_ (1687).]
Denonville, vexed and perturbed by his long strife with Dongan and the Iroquois, presently found a moment of comfort in tidings that reached him from the north. Here, as in the west, there was violent rivalry between the subjects of the two crowns. With the help of two French renegades, named Radisson and Groseilliers, the English Company of Hudson's Bay, then in its infancy, had established a post near the mouth of Nelson River, on the western sh.o.r.e of that dreary inland sea.
The company had also three other posts, called Fort Albany, Fort Hayes, and Fort Rupert, at the southern end of the bay. A rival French company had been formed in Canada, under the name of the Company of the North; and it resolved on an effort to expel its English compet.i.tors. Though it was a time of profound peace between the two kings, Denonville warmly espoused the plan; and, in the early spring of 1686, he sent the Chevalier de Troyes from Montreal, with eighty or more Canadians, to execute it. [Footnote: The Compagnie du Nord had a grant of the trade of Hudson's Bay from Louis XIV. The bay was discovered by the English, under Hudson; but the French had carried on some trade there before the establishment of Fort Nelson. Denonville's commission to Troyes merely directs him to build forts, and ”se saisir des voleurs coureurs de bois et autres que nous savons avoir pris et arrete plusieurs de nos Francois commercants avec les sauvages.”] With Troyes went Iberville, Sainte-Helene, and Maricourt, three of the sons of Charles Le Moyne; and the Jesuit Silvy joined the party as chaplain.
They ascended the Ottawa, and thence, from stream to stream and lake to lake, toiled painfully towards their goal. At length, they neared Fort Hayes. It was a stockade with four bastions, mounted with cannon.
There was a strong blockhouse within, in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged, unsuspicious of danger. Troyes approached at night. Iberville and Sainte-Helene with a few followers climbed the palisade on one side, while the rest of the party burst the main gate with a sort of battering ram, and rushed in, yelling the war-whoop. In a moment, the door of the blockhouse was dashed open, and its astonished inmates captured in their s.h.i.+rts.
The victors now embarked for Fort Rupert, distant forty leagues along the sh.o.r.e. In construction, it resembled Fort Hayes. The fifteen traders who held the place were all asleep at night in their blockhouse, when the Canadians burst the gate of the stockade and swarmed into the area. One of them mounted by a ladder to the roof of the building, and dropped lighted hand-grenades down the chimney, which, exploding among the occupants, told them unmistakably that something was wrong. At the same time, the a.s.sailants fired briskly on them through the loopholes, and, placing a petard under the walls, threatened to blow them into the air. Five, including a woman, were killed or wounded; and the rest cried for quarter. Meanwhile, Iberville with another party attacked a vessel anch.o.r.ed near the fort, and, climbing silently over her side, found the man on the watch asleep in his blanket. He sprang up and made fight, but they killed him, then stamped on the deck to rouse those below, sabred two of them as they came up the hatchway, and captured the rest. Among them was Bridger, governor for the company of all its stations on the bay.
They next turned their attention to Fort Albany, thirty leagues from Fort Hayes, in a direction opposite to that of Fort Rupert. Here there were about thirty men, under Henry Sargent, an agent of the company.
Surprise was this time impossible; for news of their proceedings had gone before them, and Sargent, though no soldier, stood on his defence. The Canadians arrived, some in canoes, some in the captured vessel, bringing ten captured pieces of cannon, which they planted in battery on a neighboring hill, well covered by intrenchments from the English shot. Here they presently opened fire; and, in an hour, the stockade with the houses that it enclosed was completely riddled. The English took shelter in a cellar, nor was it till the fire slackened that they ventured out to show a white flag and ask for a parley.
Troyes and Sargent had an interview. The Englishman regaled his conqueror with a bottle of Spanish wine; and, after drinking the health of King Louis and King James, they settled the terms of capitulation. The prisoners were sent home in an English vessel which soon after arrived; and Maricourt remained to command at the bay, while Troyes returned to report his success to Denonville. [1]
This buccaneer exploit exasperated the English public, and it became doubly apparent that the state of affairs in America could not be allowed to continue. A conference had been arranged between the two powers, even before the news came from Hudson's Bay; and Count d'Avaux appeared at London as special envoy of Louis XIV. to settle the questions at issue. A treaty of neutrality was signed at Whitehall, and commissioners were appointed on both sides. [Footnote: _Traite de Neutralite pour l'Amerique, conclu a Londres le_ 16 _Nov., 1686_, in _Memoires des Commissaires_, II. 86.] Pending the discussion, each party was to refrain from acts of hostility or encroachment; and, said the declaration of the commissioners, ”to the end the said agreement may have the better effect, we do likewise agree that the said serene kings shall immediately send necessary orders in that behalf to their respective governors in America.” [Footnote: _Instrument for preventing Acts of Hostility in America_ in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III.
505.] Dongan accordingly was directed to keep a friendly correspondence with his rival, and take good care to give him no cause of complaint. [Footnote: _Order to Gov. Dongan_, 22 _Jan., 1687_, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III. 504.]
It was this missive which had dashed the ardor of the English governor, and softened his epistolary style. More than four months after, Louis XIV. sent corresponding instructions to Denonville; [Footnote: _Louis XIV. a Denonville_, 17 _Juin_, 1687. At the end of March, the king had written that ”he did not think it expedient to make any attack on the English.”] but, meantime, he had sent him troops, money, and munitions in abundance, and ordered him to attack the Iroquois towns. Whether such a step was consistent with the recent treaty of neutrality may well be doubted; for, though James II. had not yet formally claimed the Iroquois as British subjects, his representative had done so for years with his tacit approval, and out of this claim had risen the princ.i.p.al differences which it was the object of the treaty to settle.
Eight hundred regulars were already in the colony, and eight hundred more were sent in the spring, with a hundred and sixty-eight thousand livres in money and supplies. [Footnote: _Abstract of Letters_, in _N.
Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 314. This answers exactly to the statement of the _Memoire adresse au Regent_, which places the number of troops in Canada at this time at thirty-two companies of fifty men each.]
Denonville was prepared to strike. He had pushed his preparations actively, yet with extreme secrecy; for he meant to fall on the Senecas unawares, and shatter at a blow the mainspring of English intrigue. Harmony reigned among the chiefs of the colony, military, civil, and religious. The intendant Meules had been recalled on the complaints of the governor, who had quarrelled with him; and a new intendant, Champigny, had been sent in his place. He was as pious as Denonville himself, and, like him, was in perfect accord with the bishop and the Jesuits. All wrought together to promote the new crusade.
It was not yet time to preach it, or at least Denonville thought so.
He dissembled his purpose to the last moment, even with his best friends. Of all the Jesuits among the Iroquois, the two brothers Lamberville had alone held their post. Denonville, in order to deceive the enemy, had directed these priests to urge the Iroquois chiefs to meet him in council at Fort Frontenac, whither, as he pretended, he was about to go with an escort of troops, for the purpose of conferring with them. The two brothers received no hint whatever of his real intention, and tried in good faith to accomplish his wishes; but the Iroquois were distrustful, and hesitated to comply. On this, the elder Lamberville sent the younger with letters to Denonville to explain the position of affairs, saying at the same time that he himself would not leave Onondaga except to accompany the chiefs to the proposed council. ”The poor father,” wrote the governor, ”knows nothing of our designs. I am sorry to see him exposed to danger; but, should I recall him, his withdrawal would certainly betray our plans to the Iroquois.” This unpardonable reticence placed the Jesuit in extreme peril; for the moment the Iroquois discovered the intended treachery they would probably burn him as its instrument. No man in Canada had done so much as the elder Lamberville to counteract the influence of England and serve the interests of France, and in return the governor exposed him recklessly to the most terrible of deaths.
[Footnote: _Denonville au Ministre_, 9 _Nov_., 1686; _Ibid_., 8 _Juin_, 1687. Denonville at last seems to have been seized with some compunction, and writes: ”Tout cela me fait craindre que le pauvre pere n'ayt de la peine a se retirer d'entre les mains de ces barbares ce qui m'inquiete fort.” Dongan, though regarding the Jesuit as an insidious enemy, had treated him much better, and protected him on several occasions, for which he received the emphatic thanks of Dablon, superior of the missions. _Dablon to Dongan_ (1685?), in _N.
Y. Col. Docs_., III. 454.]
In spite of all his pains, it was whispered abroad that there was to be war; and the rumor was brought to the ears of Dongan by some of the Canadian deserters. He lost no time in warning the Iroquois, and their deputies came to beg his help. Danger humbled them for the moment; and they not only recognized King James as their sovereign, but consented at last to call his representative _Father_ Corlaer instead of _Brother_. Their father, however, dared not promise them soldiers; though, in spite of the recent treaty, he caused gunpowder and lead to be given them, and urged them to recall the powerful war-parties which they had lately sent against the Illinois. [Footnote: Colden, 97 (1727), _Denonville au Ministre_, 8 _Juin_, 1687.]
Denonville at length broke silence, and ordered the militia to muster.
They grumbled and hesitated, for they remembered the failures of La Barre. The governor issued a proclamation, and the bishop a pastoral mandate. There were sermons, prayers, and exhortations in all the churches. A revulsion of popular feeling followed; and the people, says Denonville, ”made ready for the march with extraordinary animation.” The church showered blessings on them as they went, and daily ma.s.ses were ordained for the downfall of the foes of Heaven and of France. [Footnote: Saint-Vallier, _Etat Present_. Even to the moment of marching, Denonville pretended that he meant only to hold a peace council at Fort Frontenac. ”J'ai toujours publie que je n'allois qu'a l'a.s.semblee generale projetee a Cataracouy (_Fort Frontenac_), J'ai toujours tenu ce discours jusqu'au temps de la marche.”