_ CHAPTER IX. THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY
The great strength of its natural position had enabled the city to withstand the late siege; but Frontenac saw clearly that the defences would not be sufficient to meet a resolute assault, and it was resolved to reconstruct the fortifications on a larger scale. The great engineer Vauban furnished plans which were carried out under Frontenac's personal direction. For twenty leagues around the _habitants_ were pressed into this service, and such was the general anxiety to make the city impregnable, that even the _gentilhommes_ gave themselves to pick and spade. A line of solid earthworks soon extended on the flank of the city from Cape Diamond to the St. Charles; and at the summit of the Cape, now for the first time embraced within the fortifications, a strong redoubt with sixteen cannon was constructed to command both the river and the Upper Town.
A copper plate[17] bearing the following inscription in Latin was deposited in the stone foundation:--
"In the year of Grace, 1693, under the reign
of the Most August, Most Invincible, and Most
Christian King, Louis the Great, Fourteenth of that
name, the Most Excellent and Most Illustrious
Lord, Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac, twice
Viceroy of all New France, after having three years
before repulsed, routed, and completely conquered
the rebellious inhabitants of New England, who
besieged this town of Quebec, and who threatened to
renew the attack this year, constructed, at the charge
of the King, this citadel, with the fortifications
therewith connected, for the defence of the country
and the safety of the people, and for confounding
yet again a people perfidious towards God and
towards its lawful king. And he has laid this first
stone."
[Footnote 17: Discovered at the demolition of the old wall in 1854.] The repulse of Phipps, while postponing indefinitely any further undertakings of the New England government against Quebec, had conveyed no lesson to the implacable Iroquois. These fatal hornets of the woods continued to harass the settlements, roving through the forest in small marauding bands. A large force also established a camp on the Ottawa to intercept the furs destined for Quebec, and their blockade was so effective that the city soon felt the pinch of want, and the trading ships sailed empty back to France. So bold were the assaults that many settlers fled from their farms to Montreal, Three Rivers, or Quebec; while those who had the hardihood to remain went about in armed groups to reap their harvests. The massacre of La Chesnaye was a typical incident; but perhaps the most characteristic story of these troublous years is the _Recit de Mlle. Magdelaine de Vercheres_, well known through a renowned historical narrative.
The seigneury of Vercheres lay upon the south shore of the St. Lawrence, seven leagues below Montreal, and from its exposed position as well as from its former tribulation, had earned the name of Castle Dangerous. Its history dated back to the disbandment of the Carignan-Salieres regiment, when M. de Vercheres, a dashing officer of Savoy, took possession of the fief, building there a fort and blockhouse.
It was already late October, 1692. The seigneur had gone down to Quebec for duty, and the lady of the manor was in Montreal. Their three children, Madeleine aged fourteen, and the two boys aged twelve and ten, had been left behind protected by the feeble garrison of the fort, consisting of two soldiers and an old man of eighty, the servants and _censitaires_ being busy with the autumn work of the fields.
One morning as Madeleine was playing near the water's edge, she was startled by the sound of firing. A band of Iroquois had fallen upon the field-workers. Commending herself to the Holy Virgin, the girl ran towards the fort. Bullets whistled past her as she flew towards the palisade crying "To arms! To arms!" The two soldiers had already fled in terror to the blockhouse, but by her resolute words she shamed them into a defence of the fort; and picking up a gun, she said to her two young brothers:--
"Let us fight to the death. We are fighting for
our country and our religion; remember that our
father has taught you that gentlemen are born to
shed their blood for God and the King."[18]
Taking their positions at the loopholes, the little company maintained such a vigilant defence that the Iroquois were completely deceived as to the strength of the garrison.
[
Footnote 18: The narrative has been preserved in the heroine's own words, through the care of the Marquis de Beauharnois, sometime Governor of Canada.]
"After sunset," continues the narrative, "a violent north-east wind began to blow, accompanied by snow and hail, which told us that we should have a terrible night. The Iroquois were all this time lurking about us; and I judged by their movements that, instead of being deterred by the storm, they would climb into the fort under cover of the darkness. I assembled all my troops, that is to say, six persons, and spoke to them thus: 'God has saved us to-day from the hands of our enemies, but we must take care not to fall into their snares to-night. As for me, I want you to see that I am not afraid. I will take charge of the fort with an old man of eighty, and another who never fired a gun; and you, Pierre Fontaine, with La Bonte and Gachet, will go to the blockhouse with the women and children, because that is the strongest place; and if I am taken do not surrender, even if I am cut to pieces and burned before your eyes. The enemy cannot hurt you in the blockhouse if you make the least show of fight.' I placed my young brothers on two of the bastions, the old man on the third, and I took the fourth; and all night, in spite of wind, snow, and hail, the cries of 'All's well' were kept up from the blockhouse to the fort, and from the fort to the blockhouse. One would have thought the place was full of soldiers. The Iroquois thought so, and were completely deceived, as they confessed afterwards to Monsieur de Callieres, whom they told that they had held a council to make a plan for capturing the fort in the night, but had done nothing because such a constant watch was kept....
"At last the daylight came again; and as the darkness disappeared our anxieties seemed to disappear with it. Everybody took courage except Mademoiselle Marguerite, the wife of the Sieur Fontaine, who, being extremely timid, as all Parisian women are, asked her husband to carry her to another fort.... He said, 'I shall never abandon this fort while Mademoiselle Madeleine is here.' I answered him that I would never abandon it; that I would rather die than give it up to the enemy; and that it was of the greatest importance that they should never get possession of any French fort.... I may say with truth that I did not eat or sleep for twice twenty-four hours. I did not go once into my father's house, but kept always on the bastion, or went to the blockhouse to see how the people there were behaving. I always kept a cheerful and smiling face, and encouraged my little company with the hope of speedy succour.
"We were a week in constant alarm, with the enemy always about us. At last Monsieur de la Monnerie, a lieutenant sent by Monsieur de Callieres, arrived in the night with forty men. As he did not know whether the fort was taken or not, he approached as silently as possible. One of our sentinels hearing a slight sound, cried 'Qui vive?' I was dozing at the time, with my head on the table and my gun lying across my arms. The sentinel told me that he heard a voice from the river. I went up at once to the bastion to see whether it was Indians or Frenchmen. I asked, 'Who are you?' One of them answered, 'We are Frenchmen; it is La Monnerie, who comes to bring you help.'
"I caused the gate to be opened, placed a sentinel there, and went down to the river to meet them. As soon as I saw Monsieur de la Monnerie, I saluted him, and said, 'Monsieur, I surrender my arms to you.' He answered gallantly, 'Mademoiselle, they are in good hands.' 'Better than you think,' I returned.
"La Monnerie inspected the fort and found everything in good order, and a sentinel on each bastion. 'It is time to relieve them, Monsieur,' I said; 'we have not been off our bastions for a week.'"[19] The inner politics of Quebec shared fully the unrest of this critical time. The place had all the intrigue of an Italian republic; and with its political, religious, and social cleavages, the wonder is that a city so divided against itself was able to stand in the hour of outward adversity. To make clear the underlying causes of such civil strife, it is necessary to go back to the year 1659, when the most notable ecclesiastic in the history of New France arrived in Quebec.
[Footnote 19: Parkman's _Frontenac_ c.14 (quoting from _Collection de l'Abbe Ferland_).] Francois-Xavier Laval was born in 1622 at Montigny-sur-Avre. Brought up at the College of the Jesuits at Lafleche, a prolonged sojourn in the famous Hermitage of Caen set the seal of a militant mysticism upon his life. While still young the death of an elder brother had made him heir to the title and wealth of one of the most distinguished families in France; but the ardent student renounced these feudal glories that he might devote himself entirely to the service of God. To him this service consisted of a perpetual mortification of the flesh, practised chiefly in the hovels of the poor, or by beds of loathsome disease.
Of a mind and temper so austere, he seemed to the Jesuits the heaven-called head for the Canadian Church; and it was doubtless through their influence, acting upon the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, that Laval was appointed titular Bishop of Petraea, _in partibus infidelium_, and Vicar-Apostolic of all New France.
The first bishop of Canada was welcomed by pealing bells and general applause; but the excitement of his advent had scarcely subsided before a sharp ecclesiastical quarrel occurred. M. l'Abbe de Queylus, a Sulpitian priest, had lately been appointed spiritual head of Quebec by the Archbishop of Rouen, who had been wont to regard Canada as a part of his own diocese; and the Sulpitian so vigorously refused to be superseded by the new bishop, that Governor D'Argenson, acting upon the King's orders, had him arrested and sent back to France. The quarrel, however, was not so soon decided, and supremacy was not finally conceded to Laval until both contestants had referred the matter to the Pope and the Grand Monarch.
Success in this churchman's conflict, however, had not softened the autocratic temper of the new bishop. In France he had already supported the contention of the Jesuits against the Jansenists that the power of the Pope was above that of the King, and that the Church was superior to the State. Laval insisted that his acolytes should precede the Governor in receiving the consecrated bread, in the distribution of boughs on Palm Sunday, in the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, and in the presentation of holy water. For a time the gallant old soldier D'Argenson did his best to live in harmony with the Vicar-Apostolic, even under the annoying conditions created by the churchman's imperious temper. But the forbearance of the Governor was not sufficient to save him from his opponent's powerful friends at Court, who finally compassed his recall. His successors, the Baron D'Avaugour and M. de Mezy, however, soon took up the intermitted quarrel on behalf of the State, until the new order of government in 1663.
The institution of royal government in that year had a visible effect upon the ecclesiastical power. Louis XIV. had declared himself to be the State, and thus acquired a personal and selfish interest in the controversy. Moreover, Talon, the skilled agent of Colbert, wishing to readjust and balance the disproportionate elements of the body politic, had written in 1670 advising the re-introduction of the Recollet priests, who arrived eight years later to counterbalance the Jesuit forces.
The advent of Frontenac, likewise, had been a severe blow to the priestly autocracy, his strong and reckless character stamping him as a man who required careful handling. In fact, Laval and the Jesuits preferred a vicarious warfare, and confined themselves to supporting the Intendant Duchesneau in his quarrels with the Governor.
Notwithstanding these rebuffs, however, the great prelate accomplished a lasting work. To this day a daily procession of schoolboys walks through the streets of Upper Town arresting attention by their singular dress--a battalion similar to that which, two hundred years ago, appeared in the like quaint costume. These are the boys of the _Seminaire de Laval_. This seminary of Quebec was Laval's most notable foundation; and though many generations have slipped away since it began, the classic school above the Sault-au-Matelot still remains to recruit and train the ranks of a priesthood whose attainments, piety, and character are honoured throughout the Catholic world.
Late in the afternoon fourscore of these youthful devotees swing out along the Rue St. Jean to the Ste. Foye road for recreation. They go in orderly rows, from the youngest and smallest back to the two priests, in black _soutanes_ and broad-brimmed hats, who bring up the rear. _Regimes_ have come and gone, but this perennial column still marches out of the past incongruously garbed in peaked caps, black frockcoats faced with green braid, and girt at the waist with a green woollen scarf. This is the daily memorial of the eccentric, despotic, but beneficent bishop, who lived a life of almost abject poverty, devoting the revenues of the most wealthy seigneury in New France[20] to the maintenance of his beloved _Seminaire_. He has left his name also to the splendid university which completes the work so well begun by the _Seminaire_.
[Footnote 20: Laval was the owner of the Seigneury of Beauport and the Isle d'Orleans, which by royal edict had been freed from feudal burdens. By the census of 1667 it was found to contain more than one-fourth of the entire population of Canada.] For almost forty years Laval had dominated the Church of New France, the whole period of his supremacy being disturbed by the never-ending quarrel between Church and State. The Bishop proposing to alter the ecclesiastical system of the colony by the institution of movable priests, both the King and Colbert objected strongly to a scheme which would have centralized all spiritual power in the hands of one man, and he a spiritual despot, however sincere and high-souled. But the inflexible Laval contrived for a time to evade or disobey the royal instructions that were sent to him, until at length, in 1688, he asked to be relieved of his office, and the King freely granted his request. Thereupon, he handed over the episcopal office to Saint-Vallier, and retired to the seclusion of his cherished school.
The destruction of the college by fire in 1701 almost broke the heart of the venerable prelate; but with invincible energy and spirit he began at once the work of restoration. In four years the new building was completed, and in it he passed the evening of his days, until, at the age of eighty-six, he closed his eyes for ever on the scene of a strenuous, stormy, and holy life.
Time and events meanwhile had been treating Frontenac with equal sternness. The danger from New England had for a time relieved him of domestic troubles; but with the failure of Sir William Phipps, his clerical enemies at Quebec once more began their machinations, in spite of which the versatile old Governor still contrived to hold his way and course. Politically, the city was divided on the question of keeping control of the far west; for while some saw danger in dissipating the strength of the colony, and therefore advised the maintenance of a smaller but more compact territory, Frontenac, the fur traders, and the _coureurs de bois_, on the other hand, were determined to hold the West and to maintain the allegiance of the Indian allies.
Such, up to the last, was the attitude of the martial Governor, who, at the age of seventy-six, was ready once more to undertake the punishment of the Iroquois. He would fain have walked and toiled like the rest of the twenty-two hundred men who composed his column; but the Indian allies, unable to see him endure the hardships of the march, bore him triumphantly on their shoulders. Their faith in the great Onontio was without measure, and French prestige among them was now at its highest point. The Onondagas fled before their advance; the Oneidas begged for peace. The villages of the enemy were given to the flames, and the savages, thus rendered homeless, became a charge upon the friendly English settlements, only to increase the enmity which already marked the relations of the latter with the French colony.
Frontenac returned once more in triumph to Quebec, and a semblance of peace reigned in North America--the ominous calm before a storm which was soon to shake the Continent. The Castle of St. Louis now became a centre of gaiety, despite the grey hairs of its distinguished occupant, whose spirits and buoyancy were still unquenched. Quebec was giving unmistakable signs of a social revolt against the rigorous subjection in which the Church had held her. Exiled from Fontainebleau, the officers of the Governor's suite did their best to improvise a counterpart, and the ladies of the ambitious _noblesse_ were not loth to join in the crude but brilliant revels of the castle. The winter carnival, then, as now, afforded merriment to a gay company, the King's representative being as keen a pleasure-seeker as the rest. On Frontenac's suggestion, private theatricals were added to the polite diversions of Quebec. The Marquis de Tracy's ball far back in 1667 had given grievous offence to the Jesuits, and the unholy acting of plays was now declared an open profanity. _Nicomede_ and _Mithridate_ were condemned as immoral; but when _Tartuffe_, Moliere's mordant satire upon religious hypocrisy, was put upon the boards, the limits of endurance were reached and overpassed.
La Motte Cadillac, a staff officer, thus describes the excitement raised by these performances: "The clergy beat their alarm drums, armed _cap-a-pie_, and snatched their bows and arrows. The Sieur Glandelet was the first to begin, and preached two sermons in which he tried to prove that nobody could go to a play without mortal sin. The Bishop issued a mandate, and had it read from the pulpits, in which he speaks of certain impious, impure, and noxious comedies, insinuating that those which had been acted were such. The credulous and infatuated people, seduced by the sermons and the mandate, began already to regard the count as a corrupter of morals and a destroyer of religion. The numerous party of the pretended devotees mustered in the streets and public places, and presently...persuaded the Bishop to publish a mandate in the church whereby the Sieur de Mareuil, a half-pay lieutenant, was interdicted the use of the sacraments."
In the midst of it all, death was slowly creeping upon the central figure of so many stormy scenes. The treaty concluded at Ryswick in 1697, and proclaimed in Canada, improved the position of the French in America, encouraging them to new aspirations of conquest. Already on the brink of the grave, the indomitable Frontenac cast his challenge in the teeth of New England, claiming the Iroquois as the recalcitrant subjects of Louis XIV. The gage was duly taken, and although the challenger could not await the issue, his visor remained closed till the end. Even in death Count Frontenac set his face against the Jesuits, for he was buried in the Recollet Chapel. When he was laid to rest the province was stricken with genuine grief, for all men felt that the best bulwark of New France had been laid in mortal ruin. _