Part 8 (2/2)
CHAPTER X.
1689, 1690.
RETURN OF FRONTENAC. VERSAILLES.--FRONTENAC AND THE KING.--FRONTENAC SAILS FOR QUEBEC.--PROJECTED CONQUEST OF NEW YORK.--DESIGNS OF THE KING.--FAILURE.--ENERGY OF FRONTENAC.--FORT FRONTENAC.--PANIC.-- NEGOTIATIONS.--THE IROQUOIS IN COUNCIL.--CHEVALIER D'AUX.--TAUNTS OF THE INDIAN ALLIES.--BOLDNESS OF FRONTENAC.--AN IROQUOIS DEFEAT.-- CRUEL POLICY.--THE STROKE PARRIED.
The sun of Louis XIV had reached its zenith. From a morning of unexampled brilliancy it had mounted to the glare of a cloudless noon; but the hour of its decline was near. The mortal enemy of France was on the throne of England, turning against her from that new point of vantage all the energies of his unconquerable genius. An invalid built the Bourbon monarchy, and another invalid battered and defaced the imposing structure: two potent and daring spirits in two frail bodies, Richelieu and William of Orange.
Versailles gave no sign of waning glories. On three evenings of the week, it was the pleasure of the king that the whole court should a.s.semble in the vast suite of apartments now known as the Halls of Abundance, of Venus, of Diana, of Mars, of Mercury, and of Apollo. The magnificence of their decorations, pictures of the great Italian masters, sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, tapestries, vases and statues of silver and gold; the vista of light and splendor that opened through the wide portals; the courtly throngs, feasting, dancing, gaming, promenading, conversing, formed a scene which no palace of Europe could rival or approach. Here were all the great historic names of France, princes, warriors, statesmen, and all that was highest in rank and place; the flower, in short, of that brilliant society, so dazzling, captivating, and illusory. In former years, the king was usually present, affable and gracious, mingling with his courtiers and sharing their amus.e.m.e.nts; but he had grown graver of late, and was more often in his cabinet, laboring with his ministers on the task of administration, which his extravagance and ambition made every day more burdensome. [Footnote: Saint-Simon speaks of these a.s.semblies.
The halls in question were finished in 1682; and a minute account of them, and of the particular use to which each was destined, was printed in the _Mercure Francais_ of that year. See also Soulie, _Notice du Musee imperial de Versailles_, where copious extracts from the _Mercure_ are given. The _grands appartements_ are now entirely changed in appearance, and turned into an historic picture gallery.]
There was one corner of the world where his emblem, the sun, would not s.h.i.+ne on him. He had done his best for Canada, and had got nothing for his pains but news of mishaps and troubles. He was growing tired of the colony which he had nursed with paternal fondness, and he was more than half angry with it because it did not prosper. Denonville's letters had grown worse and worse; and, though he had not heard as yet of the last great calamity, he was sated with ill tidings already.
Count Frontenac stood before him. Since his recall, he had lived at court, needy and no longer in favor; but he had influential friends, and an intriguing wife, always ready to serve him. The king knew his merits as well as his faults; and, in the desperate state of his Canadian affairs, he had been led to the resolution of restoring him to the command from which, for excellent reasons, he had removed him seven years before. He now told him that, in his belief, the charges brought against him were without foundation. [Footnote: _Journal de Dangeau_, II. 390. Frontenac, since his recall, had not been wholly without marks of royal favor. In 1685, the king gave him a ”gratification” of 3,500 francs. _Ibid_., I. 205.] ”I send you back to Canada,” he is reported to have said, ”where I am sure that you will serve me as well as you did before; and I ask nothing more of you.”
[Footnote: Goyer, _Oraison Funebre du Comte de Frontenac_.] The post was not a tempting one to a man in his seventieth year. Alone and unsupported,--for the king, with Europe rising against him, would give him no more troops,--he was to restore the prostrate colony to hope and courage, and fight two enemies with a force that had proved no match for one of them alone. The audacious count trusted himself, and undertook the task; received the royal instructions, and took his last leave of the master whom even he after a fas.h.i.+on honored and admired.
He repaired to Roch.e.l.le, where two s.h.i.+ps of the royal navy were waiting his arrival, embarked in one of them, and sailed for the New World. An heroic remedy had been prepared for the sickness of Canada, and Frontenac was to be the surgeon. The cure, however, was not of his contriving. Denonville had sent Callieres, his second in command, to represent the state of the colony to the court, and beg for help.
Callieres saw that there was little hope of more troops or any considerable supply of money; and he laid before the king a plan, which had at least the recommendations of boldness and cheapness. This was to conquer New York with the forces already in Canada, aided only by two s.h.i.+ps of war. The blow, he argued, should be struck at once, and the English taken by surprise. A thousand regulars and six hundred Canadian militia should pa.s.s Lake Champlain and Lake George in canoes and bateaux, cross to the Hudson and capture Albany, where they would seize all the river craft and descend the Hudson to the town of New York, which, as Callieres stated, had then about two hundred houses and four hundred fighting men. The two s.h.i.+ps were to cruise at the mouth of the harbor, and wait the arrival of the troops, which was to be made known to them by concerted signals, whereupon they were to enter and aid in the attack. The whole expedition, he thought, might be accomplished in a month; so that by the end of October the king would be master of all the country. The advantages were manifold. The Iroquois, deprived of English arms and ammunition, would be at the mercy of the French; the question of English rivalry in the west would be settled for ever; the king would acquire a means of access to his colony incomparably better than the St. Lawrence, and one that remained open all the year; and, finally, New England would be isolated, and prepared for a possible conquest in the future.
The king accepted the plan with modifications, which complicated and did not improve it. Extreme precautions were taken to insure secrecy; but the vast distances, the difficult navigation, and the accidents of weather appear to have been forgotten in this amended scheme of operation. There was, moreover, a long delay in fitting the two s.h.i.+ps for sea. The wind was ahead, and they were fifty-two days in reaching Chedabucto, at the eastern end of Nova Scotia. Thence Frontenac and Callieres had orders to proceed in a merchant s.h.i.+p to Quebec, which might require a month more; and, on arriving, they were to prepare for the expedition, while at the same time Frontenac was to send back a letter to the naval commander at Chedabucto, revealing the plan to him, and ordering him to sail to New York to co-operate in it. It was the twelfth of September when Chedabucto was reached, and the enterprise was ruined by the delay. Frontenac's first step in his new government was a failure, though one for which he was in no way answerable. [1]
It will be well to observe what were the intentions of the king towards the colony which he proposed to conquer. They were as follows: If any Catholics were found in New York, they might be left undisturbed, provided that they took an oath of allegiance to the king. Officers, and other persons who had the means of paying ransoms, were to be thrown into prison. All lands in the colony, except those of Catholics swearing allegiance, were to be taken from their owners, and granted under a feudal tenure to the French officers and soldiers.
All property, public or private, was to be seized, a portion of it given to the grantees of the land, and the rest sold on account of the king. Mechanics and other workmen might, at the discretion of the commanding officer, be kept as prisoners to work at fortifications and do other labor. The rest of the English and Dutch inhabitants, men, women, and children, were to be carried out of the colony and dispersed in New England, Pennsylvania, or other places, in such a manner that they could not combine in any attempt to recover their property and their country. And, that the conquest might be perfectly secure, the nearest settlements of New England were to be destroyed, and those more remote laid under contribution. [2]
In the next century, some of the people of Acadia were torn from their homes by order of a British commander. The act was harsh and violent, and the innocent were involved with the guilty; but many of the sufferers had provoked their fate, and deserved it.
Louis XIV. commanded that eighteen thousand unoffending persons should be stripped of all that they possessed, and cast out to the mercy of the wilderness. The atrocity of the plan is matched by its folly. The king gave explicit orders, but he gave neither s.h.i.+ps nor men enough to accomplish them; and the Dutch farmers, goaded to desperation, would have cut his sixteen hundred soldiers to pieces. It was the scheme of a man blinded by a long course of success. Though perverted by flattery and hardened by unbridled power, he was not cruel by nature; and here, as in the burning of the Palatinate and the persecution of the Huguenots, he would have stood aghast, if his dull imagination could have pictured to him the miseries he was preparing to inflict.
[Footnote: On the details of the projected attack of New York, _Le Roy a Denonville_, 7 _Juin_, 1689; _Le Ministre a Denonville, meme date_; _Le Ministre a Frontenac, meme date_; _Ordre du Roy a Vaudreuil, meme date_; _Le Roy au Sieur de la Caffiniere, meme date_; _Champigny au Ministre_, 16 _Nov._, 1689.]
With little hope left that the grand enterprise against New York could succeed, Frontenac made sail for Quebec, and, stopping by the way at Isle Percee, learned from Recollet missionaries the irruption of the Iroquois at Montreal. He hastened on; but the wind was still against him, and the autumn woods were turning brown before he reached his destination. It was evening when he landed, amid fireworks, illuminations, and the firing of cannon. All Quebec came to meet him by torchlight; the members of the council offered their respects, and the Jesuits made him an harangue of welcome. [Footnote: La Hontan, I.
199.] It was but a welcome of words. They and the councillors had done their best to have him recalled, and hoped that they were rid of him for ever; but now he was among them again, rasped by the memory of real or fancied wrongs. The count, however, had no time for quarrelling. The king had told him to bury old animosities and forget the past, and for the present he was too busy to break the royal injunction. [Footnote: _Instruction pour le Sieur Comte de Frontenac_, 7 _Juin_, 1689.] He caused boats to be made ready, and in spite of incessant rains pushed up the river to Montreal. Here he found Denonville and his frightened wife. Every thing was in confusion. The Iroquois were gone, leaving dejection and terror behind them.
Frontenac reviewed the troops. There were seven or eight hundred of them in the town, the rest being in garrison at the various forts.
Then he repaired to what was once La Chine, and surveyed the miserable waste of ashes and desolation that spread for miles around.
To his extreme disgust, he learned that Denonville had sent a Canadian officer by secret paths to Fort Frontenac, with orders to Valrenne, the commandant, to blow it up, and return with his garrison to Montreal. Frontenac had built the fort, had given it his own name, and had cherished it with a paternal fondness, reinforced by strong hopes of making money out of it. For its sake he had become the b.u.t.t of scandal and opprobrium; but not the less had he always stood its strenuous and pa.s.sionate champion. An Iroquois envoy had lately with great insolence demanded its destruction of Denonville; and this alone, in the eyes of Frontenac, was ample reason for maintaining it at any cost. [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Nov._, 1689.] He still had hope that it might be saved, and with all the energy of youth he proceeded to collect canoes, men, provisions, and arms; battled against dejection, insubordination, and fear, and in a few days despatched a convoy of three hundred men to relieve the place, and stop the execution of Denonville's orders. His orders had been but too promptly obeyed. The convoy was scarcely gone an hour, when, to Frontenac's unutterable wrath, Valrenne appeared with his garrison. He reported that he had set fire to every thing in the fort that would burn, sunk the three vessels belonging to it, thrown the cannon into the lake, mined the walls and bastions, and left matches burning in the powder magazine; and, further, that when he and his men were five leagues on their way to Montreal a dull and distant explosion told them that the mines had sprung. It proved afterwards that the destruction was not complete; and the Iroquois took possession of the abandoned fort, with a large quant.i.ty of stores and munitions left by the garrison in their too hasty retreat. [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Nov._, 1689; _Recueil de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada depuis l'annee_ 1682.]
There was one ray of light through the clouds. The unwonted news of a victory came to Montreal. It was small, but decisive, and might be an earnest of greater things to come. Before Frontenac's arrival, Denonville had sent a reconnoitring party up the Ottawa. They had gone no farther than the Lake of Two Mountains, when they met twenty-two Iroquois in two large canoes, who immediately bore down upon them, yelling furiously. The French party consisted of twenty-eight _coureurs de bois_ under Du Lhut and Mantet, excellent partisan chiefs, who manoeuvred so well that the rising sun blazed full in the eyes of the advancing enemy, and spoiled their aim. The French received their fire, which wounded one man; then, closing with them while their guns were empty, gave them a volley, which killed and wounded eighteen of their number. One swam ash.o.r.e. The remaining three were captured, and given to the Indian allies to be burned. [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Nov._, 1689; _Champigny au Ministre_, 16 _Nov._, 1689. Compare Belmont, whose account is a little different; also _N.Y. Col. Docs._, IX. 435.]
This gleam of suns.h.i.+ne pa.s.sed, and all grew black again. On a snowy November day, a troop of Iroquois fell on the settlement of La Chesnaye, burned the houses, and vanished with a troop of prisoners, leaving twenty mangled corpses on the snow. [Footnote: Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_; _Frontenac a--_, 17 _Nov._, 1689; _Champigny au Ministre_, 16 _Nov._, 1689. This letter is not the one just cited.
Champigny wrote twice on the same day.] ”The terror,” wrote the bishop, ”is indescribable.” The appearance of a few savages would put a whole neighborhood to flight. [Footnote: _N. Y. Col. Docs._, IX.
435.] So desperate, wrote Frontenac, were the needs of the colony, and so great the contempt with which the Iroquois regarded it, that it almost needed a miracle either to carry on war or make peace. What he most earnestly wished was to keep the Iroquois quiet, and so leave his hands free to deal with the English. This was not easy, to such a pitch of audacity had late events raised them. Neither his temper nor his convictions would allow him to beg peace of them, like his predecessor; but he had inordinate trust in the influence of his name, and he now took a course which he hoped might answer his purpose without increasing their insolence. The perfidious folly of Denonville in seizing their countrymen at Fort Frontenac had been a prime cause of their hostility; and, at the request of the late governor, the surviving captives, thirteen in all, had been taken from the galleys, gorgeously clad in French attire, and sent back to Canada in the s.h.i.+p which carried Frontenac. Among them was a famous Cayuga war-chief called Ourehaoue, whose loss had infuriated the Iroquois. [Footnote: Ourehaoue was not one of the neutrals entrapped at Fort Frontenac, but was seized about the same time by the troops on their way up the St.
Lawrence.] Frontenac gained his good-will on the voyage; and, when they reached Quebec, he lodged him in the chateau, and treated him with such kindness that the chief became his devoted admirer and friend. As his influence was great among his people, Frontenac hoped that he might use him with success to bring about an accommodation. He placed three of the captives at the disposal of the Cayuga, who forthwith sent them to Onondaga with a message which the governor had dictated, and which was to the following effect: ”The great Onontio, whom you all know, has come back again. He does not blame you for what you have done; for he looks upon you as foolish children, and blames only the English, who are the cause of your folly, and have made you forget your obedience to a father who has always loved and never deceived you. He will permit me, Ourehaoue, to return to you as soon as you will come to ask for me, not as you have spoken of late, but like children speaking to a father.” [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre_, 30 _Avril_, 1690.] Frontenac hoped that they would send an emba.s.sy to reclaim their chief, and thus give him an opportunity to use his personal influence over them. With the three released captives, he sent an Iroquois convert named Cut Nose with a wampum belt to announce his return.
When the deputation arrived at Onondaga and made known their errand, the Iroquois magnates, with their usual deliberation, deferred answering till a general council of the confederacy should have time to a.s.semble; and, meanwhile, they sent messengers to ask the mayor of Albany, and others of their Dutch and English friends, to come to the meeting. They did not comply, merely sending the government interpreter, with a few Mohawk Indians, to represent their interests.
On the other hand, the Jesuit Milet, who had been captured a few months before, adopted, and made an Oneida chief, used every effort to second the designs of Frontenac. The authorities of Albany tried in vain to induce the Iroquois to place him in their hands. They understood their interests too well, and held fast to the Jesuit.
[Footnote: Milet was taken in 1689, not, as has been supposed, in 1690. _Lettre du Pere Milet_, 1691, printed by Shea.]
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