Delphi complete works of.., p.744
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 744
The foundation of Quebec was followed by Champlain’s participation with his Indian associates, Algonquins and Hurons, in their war against the Iroquois, now spreading their ravages far and wide. As has been said, this ill-chosen policy was to bring evil results for Montreal and for French Canada. For the moment it meant the temporary discomfiture of the Iroquois by a handful of Frenchmen using firearms.
Champlain had never lost from his mind the Great Sault (Lachine) and the lake and river route these opened to the South Sea. But it was not till 1611 that he was able to attempt a definite establishment at what we now call Montreal. He left France (Honfleur) early in the season (March 1611) but merely learned thereby the full meaning of the St. Lawrence ice. It took two months and a half to reach Tadoussac. From there in a shallop (longboat) he made his way up the river to Montreal Island, to the little harbor behind the island disclosed in his first visit. At that point a little river, rising in a pond or small lake near Lachine, ran down the sunken hollow that later was to hold the Lachine Canal. It fell into the main river just opposite the little island already mentioned (Ilot Normandin — Market Gate Island). Close to its mouth it was joined by little streams that then ran down what is now Craig Street, and from the mountainside flow streams, such as the Burnside of James McGill, that now sparkle and murmur but a brief moment to fall to the dark pollution of the city sewers.
Round this pleasant meeting place of forgotten waters was a stretch of smooth and fertile meadowland where once the Indians of Hochelaga had grown their winter corn. The inroads of war had long since returned it to desolation. Here Champlain laid out his settlement, Place Royale, as he named it. Champlain was fascinated with the place. “There are fine meadows,” he said, “which would feed as many cattle as one could wish; all the varieties of wood which we have in our forest of France with vines and butternuts, plums, cherries and strawberries . . . and an abundance of fish . . . and game birds.” Champlain ordered trees cut, a building to be erected on the little island, and fields prepared. He tested the clay of the ground for brickmaking and built a wall (an embankment or levee) ten yards long, four feet high, and thus twelve feet above the summer water, to see how it would be effective against the flood season. This scientific and experimental attitude appears in Champlain throughout. Especially he took note of the possibility of a walled town on a larger lower island, still called, as he christened it, by his wife’s name, St. Helens Island.
Dupont joined him from Tadoussac with a large company of free traders attracted at once by the rumor of a new center of trade. Champlain sent out Indian messengers to summon their companions to the place. On the thirteenth of June (1611) a large concourse of Hurons came down from the Ottawa country. There was the usual tumultuous welcome, shouting and noise of firearms and the inevitable Indian oratory. These Indians gave Champlain a hundred beaver skins and eagerly asked for his friendship.
The Iroquois had now become an ever-present menace. Many savages were afraid to come down to the Sault for fear of them. A rumor had been treacherously spread that Champlain was going to go over to the Iroquois. As for the French traders, the Indians trusted them not at all; they rightly saw in them reckless, adventurous men, looking for gain, with no common purpose. Champlain reassured the Indians; he would ask the King for fifty men equipped with firearms; he would protect them if they were willing to show him their country. He hoped to find, with their help, the way to the South Sea. “I had much conversation with them,” he said, “regarding the source of the Great River” (the St. Lawrence), “. . . the rivers, falls, lakes and lands.” Some of the Indians claimed to have seen a great sea to the west, far away, difficult to reach. Champlain remained at and around Place Royale from the twenty-eighth of May till the eighteenth of July. It was during this sojourn that Champlain’s companion, a servant of De Monts called Louis (we have no other name for him), was drowned in the Lachine Rapids, frequently henceforth called the Sault St. Louis, either in his memory or in honor of King Louis XIII. Bands of Indians kept coming down, but the distrust and the fear of the Iroquois hindered trade. Champlain, promising to return, left on July 18; his shallop flew with the wind and current in a single day from Place Royale harbor to Three Rivers, seventy-seven miles below. Such were the varying fortunes of travel, for a week’s voyage perhaps a day’s return, or for a day a week. Champlain reached La Rochelle September 11, 1611.
This was to all intents and purposes Champlain’s last connection with Place Royale. In his journeys of 1613 and 1615 he came and went to Montreal Island but never found time to prosecute the development of the fort and settlement he had planned. Had he done so the history of Canada might have received a forward development of far-reaching consequences. But Champlain’s mind was set on exploration. While in France in 1612 he heard the news of the discovery of the great inland sea, since called the Hudson Bay. This, we must remember, was a one-sided discovery, not of a closed sea locked in with rugged shores, as it turned out to be, but apparently of a great sea all open to the west. Hudson’s men who marooned him and came home had seen only the eastern side. Not till the voyages of Captains Fox and James (1631) was the sea known to be closed.
Champlain, therefore, on his next voyage went past Montreal Island up the Ottawa on a fruitless search for this great sea. After that there came the most famous voyage of all, which took him up the Ottawa, hence to the Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe, and central Ontario and brought the discovery of Lake Ontario itself. On this journey again Champlain pursued his fatal policy of attempting to lead his insignificant forces and his doubtful allies against the Iroquois. He abandoned exploration for war, crossed Lake Ontario, and, in the Iroquois country itself (New York State), led an attack against the stockade at Onondaga, near Oneida Lake. The attack failed. Champlain was successfully carried away, wounded. He wintered in the lodges of the Hurons, in the Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron country. He meant to strike out west to the great sea in 1616. Indian war prevented this. He came down past Montreal and so to Quebec July 11, 1616.
It is said in defense of Champlain’s war on the Iroquois that he found this policy all set on his first arrival at Tadoussac in 1603; also that he would have succeeded and driven out the Iroquois forever if the King would only have given the soldiers for the work; one regiment would have been enough — nothing as beside the army of France. This plea Champlain continued all his life.
When the English took Quebec in the war of 1629 — it was held by only a starving garrison of sixteen men — Champlain became a prisoner, was taken to England, released at the peace of 1632, to return to Quebec in 1633, and there to die on Christmas Day, 1635.
FOOTNOTES:
To and from America — 1599-1601, 1603, 1604-07, 1608-09, 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613-14, 1615-16, 1617-18, 1620-24, 1625-29, 1635.
CHAPTER III. Ville Marie de Montreal
Foundation of Montreal by Maisonneuve in 1642. The Missions in the Wilderness. The Association of Montreal. The Mission Settlement of Ville Marie. The Fort. The Hotel Dieu. The Attacks of the Iroquois.
DURING THE THIRTY-ONE years that elapsed between Champlain’s survey and preparation of his Place Royale (1611) and the foundation of the mission city of Ville Marie de Montreal by Maisonneuve in 1642, there was no definite settlement, no all-the-year-round establishment at the place. But the locality was henceforth a well-known rendezvous for traders who came up the river and Indians who came down from the inland waters. The name Montreal, taken from that of the mountain and used by Champlain only in its original sense, was presently widely used both in Canada and in France to indicate not a mountain or a city but a locality in general.
Meantime New France was expanding not in numbers, but in the extent of its reach. When Champlain died there were, as said, only about a hundred white inhabitants. Even when Maisonneuve came from Quebec to Montreal, New France only contained about three hundred French. But meantime the arrival of priests and nuns from France led to the establishment of those missions in the wilderness that were to become the spiritual glory of New France. If there was in the end no crown of empire there abides the crown of martyrdom. Priests, as said, may have come with Cartier. They certainly came over with Champlain, at first certain Recollet friars, a branch of the Franciscans, and in 1625 the Jesuits, whose record and whose suffering are graven on the monuments of our history. The Jesuits, as part of their mission, prepared reports and wrote letters home to their order, and in these half-hundred volumes of the Jesuit Relations we have a principal original source of Canadian history. At the time of which we speak Jesuit fathers were making their way up to and beyond Montreal, up the Ottawa to the Huron country (Lake Simcoe), later to be the scene of the great massacre and of the martyrdom of Father Brébeuf and Father Lalemant. This they did in spite of the ever-present danger of the Iroquois raids. No trail in the woods was safe from ambush; no still lake or murmuring river but might echo to their sudden war cry. These dangers of New France were braved by a small band of devoted women who came thither in response to this higher call. We cannot understand the full meaning, the sacred meaning of the founding of Montreal without appreciating the terrible danger — never seen but ever present — which surrounded its foundation.
Along with the coming of the priests and nuns the government of New France had been changed from a basis of random adventure, a privileged trade, to a definite organization. The master hand of Cardinal Richelieu had been turned to the task. A Company of One Hundred Associates had been formed to take over New France and colonize it. A feudal system of land grants was established, the famous seignorial tenure which lasted till 1854, with certain incidents only terminated in 1940. Henceforth there was a regular governor at Quebec and a Father Superior (presently a bishop). A convent of Ursuline sisters was established at Quebec in 1642. The whole population was still a mere handful with outposts at Three Rivers above and Tadoussac below.
Few if any people think of Montreal today as a sacred city. Yet such it was in its foundation. We think of it now as a great commercial metropolis: McGill University is one of the great schools of the world; St. James Street, like Wall Street, carries in its name all the awe and the obloquy of high finance. But the Ville Marie de Montreal, founded under Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve in 1642, belonged to the Kingdom of the Spirit.
The quarrels of the Reformation and the wars that followed had set up in France a new ferment of religion. This shows its dark side in Europe in the cruel fury of persecution but in America its bright side, as the propagation of the light of the Gospel. The pages of early Christianity were rewritten in Canada, and nowhere more than in the foundation of Montreal.
The new movement of faith in France had inspired many ladies of the French court and of the French châteaux with a desire to aid in the conversion of the savages. Many nobles and soldiers were inspired also to take part in it. To such people the name Montreal, still inexact, indefinite, came to mean a place in the wilderness where there was dire need of Christ. There began what we might call in our current language a “Montreal movement.” This presently took on all the aspects of the miraculous. As we read of it in the devout contemporary pages of Dollier de Casson and in the later work of the Abbé Faillonn it breathes the atmosphere of Scripture. Visions were sent to people who had never heard of Montreal, calling them to the work. Such a vision came to Jean de la Dauversière, a burgher of Laflèche, a good citizen, a man of family, but an ascetic who scourged and beat himself that grace might be granted to him. Such a vision came also to the Abbé Olier, a priest from Paris, whose name is inscribed on one of the humblest of our Montreal streets. He had just founded (1640) in Paris the Séminaire of St. Sulpice and the order which later established the Séminaire at Montreal and became in 1663 the feudal holders of Montreal Island. Olier and Dauversière had never heard of one another. But coming together by chance, their eyes met; their countenances were lighted up with recognition. They clasped hands and talked of Montreal. Yet neither, we are assured, had ever heard of it except in a vision.
Others joined. An Association of Montreal was founded. Money was supplied by pious ladies eager to save the distant souls of the Algonquins and the Iroquois. There were to be three religious orders — one of priests, one of nuns for a hospital, the third of nuns for a teaching order.
Neither Olier nor Dauversière was in a position to lead forth the mission. But the hour brought the man. The noble figure of Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve appears on the scene of history. His monument stands in our Place d’Armes at Montreal, and no name in our history better deserved one. Nor must one confuse it with the random mention of a Sieur de Maisonneuve, a trader of Saint-Malo, casually mentioned as meeting with Champlain at Place Royale on June 17, 1613, thirty years before. Maisonneuve was a soldier but also a man of the inner light, inspired. “I would go there,” he said when they spoke of the Indian terror, “if every tree were an Iroquois.”
The ship’s company were marshaled at Rochelle. With Maisonneuve were forty soldiers to serve as a garrison and a working body of farmers and servants, all in one. The chief of the hospital was Jeanne Mance, of Nogent-le-Roi, a woman not in religious orders but who had, since her childhood, devoted herself to religious discipline. She too had received a divine call to Montreal. She journeyed to Paris, thence to La Rochelle to join the Montreal expedition. On meeting Olier and Dauversière she knew “their most hidden thoughts” by miraculous intervention. Pious friends supplied her with ample funds. Henceforth her lifework was at Ville Marie de Montreal. This name was selected by the Associates in a ceremony of consecration after the departure of the ship.
They sailed in 1641 but reached Quebec too late to make a further ascent of the river. They therefore spent the winter at Quebec, now fortified and secure, but still a population of only a handful. In the spring they made the ascent of the river. The craft used by the traders from Quebec to Montreal at that date were not ocean-going ships but very large open boats, flat-bottomed, of little draft, carrying mast and sails, but capable of being rowed. These are the barques and the chaloupes — the longboats and shallops — of the narratives. Larger still were pinnaces which could have more than one mast. Small boats called skiffs (esquifs), propelled with oars and poles, were brought along to go in water too shallow for the bigger boats. But skiffs could be bigger than the little rowboats now so called. They might hold half a dozen men.
Maisonneuve’s river boats were built beside Quebec in the winter and early spring. Here was a pinnace with three masts, two shallops, and also a big barge with sails, a gabare — probably much like what is called a scow, with sails added. They sailed from Quebec on May 8, 1642. The ship’s company included Maisonneuve; M. de Montmagny, whose duty it was to hand over the island of Montreal as from the Company of One Hundred Associates to the Associates of Montreal; Father Vimont, the superior of the mission at Quebec; Father Poncet, who was to remain at Montreal, and several Jesuit priests. There was also M. de Puiseaux of Quebec, together with soldiers, the sailors of the boats, and other artisans — in all some fifty people. The women present were Jeanne Mance and Madame de la Peltrie who, with her maid, Charlotte Barré, left the Ursuline convent at Quebec to share in the foundation of Ville Marie.
A week was spent in the ascent of the river. At length on May 17 they came in sight of Montreal Island, glorious with the sunrise of a May morning that bathed its meadows and its mountainside with light and touched the soft colors of the budding leaves. They landed on Champlain’s ground, just under the shelter of the tongue of land beside the little river (the Pointe à Callières). Maisonneuve no sooner landed than he fell on his knees, and all the company as they came ashore kneeled in prayer and joined in hymns of thanksgiving. They had no sooner landed their first stores than they raised an altar, decorated by the women with spring flowers, and here was celebrated the first Mass of Ville Marie. Then Father Vimont spoke. “What you see,” he said, “is only a grain of mustard seed . . . but it is so animated by faith and religion that it must be that God has great designs for it.”
All day they labored, landed stores, and arranged their camp for the night. When darkness fell there was no oil for a lamp, so the women caught fireflies and put them in a glass and therewith illuminated the altar. Then night fell. Beside them, as they went to rest, was the murmur of many waters, whispering of unseen danger. Only faith and courage could find sleep beside it.
The next day the Governor and his attendants left downstream for Quebec. The colonists set busily to work, their first task to protect themselves. Round their camp they made a ditch and some sort of palisade with stakes; with this began the building of a chapel of bark — prayer and defense, the signs of their allotted task.
Their situation indeed afforded little safety from attack. Montreal offers but little natural facility for defense. In Roman times the flat mountaintop would have made an admirable castra, but these were other days and other arms. Down below the mountainside there is little protection. Such as there was lay in the watercourses. The St. Lawrence covers one side, and for the Ville Marie and the Montreal of the French Regime till the conquest the sunken hollow that is now Craig Street was a marsh and river, offering a certain cover from behind. This stream, presently called Ruisseau St. Martin (St. Martin’s Brook), ran parallel to the St. Lawrence but in the other direction. It made a turn and emptied into the little river already mentioned (the St. Pierre). The first camp and the first fort were on the downstream side of the St. Pierre. But when the colonists presently built their hospital and houses they moved across the St. Pierre to the higher ground a little farther upstream and thus had water on three sides of them.
