A. Leblond de Brumath - The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval

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In Canada the return of the revered Mgr. de Laval was impatiently
expected, and the governor, M. de Denonville, himself wrote that "in the
present state of public affairs it was necessary that the former bishop
should return, in order to influence men's minds, over which he had a
great ascendency by reason of his character and his reputation for
sanctity." Some persons wrongfully attributed to the influence of
Saint-Vallier the order which detained the worthy bishop in France; on
the contrary, Saint-Vallier had said one day to the minister, "It would
be very hard for a bishop who has founded this church and who desires to
go and die in its midst, to see himself detained in France. If Mgr. de
Laval should stay here the blame would be cast upon his successor,
against whom for this reason many people would be ill disposed."

M. de Denonville desired the more eagerly the return of this prelate so
beloved in New France, since difficulties were arising on every hand.
Convinced that peace with the Iroquois could not last, he began by
amassing provisions and ammunition at Fort Cataraqui, without heeding
the protests of Colonel Dongan, the most vigilant and most experienced
enemy of French domination in America; then he busied himself with
fortifying Montreal. He visited the place, appointed as its governor
the Chevalier de Callieres, a former captain in the regiment of
Navarre, and in the spring of 1687 employed six hundred men under the
direction of M. du Luth, royal engineer, in the erection of a palisade.
These wooden defences, as was to be expected, were not durable and
demanded repairs every year. The year 1686, which had begun with the
conquest of the southern portion of Hudson Bay, was spent almost
entirely in preparations for war and negotiations for peace; the
Iroquois, nevertheless, continued their inroads. Finally M. de
Denonville, having received during the following spring eight hundred
poor recruits under the command of Vaudreuil, was ready for his
expedition. Part of these reinforcements were at once sent to Montreal,
where M. de Callieres was gathering a body of troops on St. Helen's
Island: eight hundred and thirty-two regulars, one thousand Canadians,
and three hundred Indian allies, all burning with the desire of
distinguishing themselves, awaited now only the signal for departure.

"With this superiority of forces," says one author, "Denonville
conceived, however, the unfortunate idea of beginning hostilities by an
act which dishonoured the French name among the savages, that name
which, in spite of their great irritation, they had always feared and
respected." With the purpose of striking terror into the Iroquois he
caused to be seized the chiefs whom the Five Nations had sent as
delegates to Cataraqui at the request of Father de Lamberville, and
sent them to France to serve on board the royal galleys. This violation
of the law of nations aroused the fury of the Iroquois, and two
missionaries, Father Lamberville and Millet, though entirely innocent of
this crime, escaped torture only with difficulty. The king disapproved
wholly of this treason, and returned the prisoners to Canada; others
who, at Fort Frontenac, had been taken by M. de Champigny in as
treacherous a manner, were likewise restored to liberty.

The army, divided into four bodies, set out on June 11th, 1687, in four
hundred boats. It was joined at Sand River, on the shore of Lake
Ontario, by six hundred men from Detroit, and advanced inland. After
having passed through two very dangerous defiles, the French were
suddenly attacked by eight hundred of the enemy ambushed in the bed of a
stream. At first surprised, they promptly recovered from their
confusion, and put the savages to flight. Some sixty Iroquois were
wounded in this encounter, and forty-five whom they left dead on the
field of battle were eaten by the Ottawas, according to the horrible
custom of these cannibals. They entered then into the territory of the
Tsonnontouans, which was found deserted; everything had been reduced to
ashes, except an immense quantity of maize, to which they set fire; they
killed also a prodigious number of swine, but they did not meet with a
single Indian.

Instead of pursuing the execution of these reprisals by marching
against the other nations, M. de Denonville proceeded to Niagara, where
he built a fort. The garrison of a hundred men which he left there
succumbed in its entirety to a mysterious epidemic, probably caused by
the poor quality of the provisions. Thus the campaign did not produce
results proportionate to the preparations which had been made; it
humbled the Iroquois, but by this very fact it excited their rage and
desire for vengeance; so true is it that half-measures are more
dangerous than complete inaction. They were, besides, cleverly goaded on
by Governor Dongan. Towards the end of the summer they ravaged the whole
western part of the colony, and carried their audacity to the point of
burning houses and killing several persons on the Island of Montreal.

M. de Denonville understood that he could not carry out a second
expedition; disease had caused great havoc among the population and the
soldiers, and he could no longer count on the Hurons of Michilimackinac,
who kept up secret relations with the Iroquois. He was willing to
conclude peace, and consented to demolish Fort Niagara and to bring back
the Iroquois chiefs who had been sent to France to row in the galleys.
The conditions were already accepted on both sides, when the
negotiations were suddenly interrupted by the duplicity of Kondiaronk,
surnamed the Rat, chief of the Michilimackinac Hurons. This man, the
most cunning and crafty of Indians, a race which has nothing to learn
in point of astuteness from the shrewdest diplomat, had offered his
services against the Iroquois to the governor, who had accepted them.
Enkindled with the desire of distinguishing himself by some brilliant
deed, he arrives with a troop of Hurons at Fort Frontenac, where he
learns that a treaty is about to be concluded between the French and the
Iroquois. Enraged at not having even been consulted in this matter,
fearing to see the interests of his nation sacrificed, he lies in wait
with his troop at Famine Creek, falls upon the delegates, and, killing a
number of them, makes the rest prisoners. On the statement of the latter
that they were going on an embassy to Ville-Marie, he feigns surprise,
and is astonished that the French governor-general should have sent him
to attack men who were going to treat with him. He then sets them at
liberty, keeping a single one of them, whom he hastens to deliver to M.
de Durantaye, governor of Michilimackinac; the latter, ignorant of the
negotiations with the Iroquois, has the prisoner shot in spite of the
protestations of the wretched man, who the Rat pretends is mad. The plan
of the Huron chief has succeeded; it remains now only to reap the fruits
of it. He frees an old Iroquois who has long been detained in captivity
and sends him to announce to his compatriots that the French are seeking
in the negotiations a cowardly means of ridding themselves of their
foes. This news exasperated the Five Nations; henceforth peace was
impossible, and the Iroquois went to join the English, with whom, on the
pretext of the dethronement of James II, war was again about to break
out. M. de Callieres, governor of Montreal, set out for France to lay
before the king a plan for the conquest of New York; the monarch adopted
it, but, not daring to trust its execution to M. de Denonville, he
recalled him in order to entrust it to Count de Frontenac, now again
appointed governor.

We can easily conceive that in the danger thus threatening the colony M.
de Denonville should have taken pains to surround himself with all the
men whose aid might be valuable to him. "You will have this year," wrote
M. de Brisacier to M. Glandelet, "the joy of seeing again our two
prelates. You will find the first more holy and more than ever dead to
himself; and the second will appear to you all that you can desire him
to be for the particular consolation of the seminary and the good of New
France." On the request of the governor-general, in fact, Mgr. de Laval
saw the obstacle disappear which had opposed his departure, and he
hastened to take advantage of it. He set out in the spring of 1688, at
that period of the year when vegetation begins to display on all sides
its festoons of verdure and flowers, and transforms Normandy and
Touraine, that garden of France, into genuine groves; the calm of the
air, the perfumed breezes of the south, the arrival of the southern
birds with their rich and varied plumage, all contribute to make these
days the fairest and sweetest of the year; but, in his desire to reach
as soon as possible the country where his presence was deemed necessary,
the venerable prelate did not wait for the spring sun to dry the roads
soaked by the rains of winter; accordingly, in spite of his infirmities,
he was obliged to travel to La Rochelle on horseback. However, he could
not embark on the ship _Le Soleil d'Afrique_ until about the middle of
April.

His duties as Bishop of Quebec had ended on January 25th preceding, the
day of the episcopal consecration of M. de Saint-Vallier. It would seem
that Providence desired that the priestly career of the prelate and his
last co-workers should end at the same time. Three priests of the
Seminary of Quebec went to receive in heaven almost at the same period
the reward of their apostolic labours. M. Thomas Morel died on September
23rd, 1687; M. Jean Guyon on January 10th, 1688; and M. Dudouyt on the
fifteenth of the same month. This last loss, especially, caused deep
grief to Mgr. de Laval. He desired that the heart of the devoted
missionary should rest in that soil of New France for which it had
always beat, and he brought it with him. The ceremony of the burial at
Quebec of the heart of M. Dudouyt was extremely touching; the whole
population was present. Up to his latest day this priest had taken the
greatest interest in Canada, and the letter which he wrote to the
seminary a few days before his death breathes the most ardent charity;
it particularly enjoined upon all patience and submission to authority.

The last official document signed by Mgr. de Laval as titulary bishop
was an addition to the statutes and rules which he had previously drawn
up for the Chapter of the city of Champlain. He wrote at the same time:
"It remains for me now, sirs and dearly beloved brethren, only to thank
you for the good affection that you preserve towards me, and to assure
you that it will not be my fault if I do not go at the earliest moment
to rejoin you in the growing Church which I have ever cherished as the
portion and heritage which it has pleased our Lord to preserve for me
during nearly thirty years. I supplicate His infinite goodness that he
into whose hands He has caused it to pass by my resignation may repair
all my faults."

The prelate landed on June 3rd. "The whole population," says the Abbe
Ferland, "was heartened and rejoiced by the return of Mgr. de Laval, who
came back to Canada to end his days among his former flock. His virtues,
his long and arduous labours in New France, his sincere love for the
children of the country, had endeared him to the Canadians; they felt
their trust in Providence renewed on beholding again him who, with them,
at their head, had passed through many years of trial and suffering." He
hardly took time to rest, but set out at once for Montreal, where he was
anxious to deliver in person to the Sulpicians the document of
spiritual and devotional union which had been quite recently signed at
Paris by the Seminary of St. Sulpice and by that of the Foreign
Missions. Returning to Quebec, he had the pleasure of receiving his
successor on the arrival of the latter, who disembarked on July 31st,
1688.

The reception of Mgr. de Saint-Vallier was as cordial as that offered
two months before to his predecessor. "As early as four o'clock in the
morning," we read in the annals of the Ursulines, "the whole population
was alert to hasten preparations. Some arranged the avenue along which
the new bishop was to pass, others raised here and there the standard of
the lilies of France. In the course of the morning Mgr. de Laval,
accompanied by several priests, betook himself to the vessel to salute
his successor whom the laws of the old French etiquette kept on board
his ship until he had replied to all the compliments prepared for him.
Finally, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole clergy, the civil
and military authorities, and the people having assembled on the quay,
Mgr. de Saint-Vallier made his appearance, addressed first by M. de
Bernieres in the name of the clergy. He was next greeted by the mayor,
in the name of the whole town, then the procession began to move, with
military music at its head, and the new bishop was conducted to the
cathedral between two files of musketeers, who did not fail to salute
him and to fire volleys along the route." "The thanksgiving hymn which
re-echoed under the vaults of the holy temple found an echo in all
hearts," we read in another account; "and the least happy was not that
of the worthy prelate who thus inaugurated his long and laborious
episcopal career."

CHAPTER XVI

MASSACRE OF LACHINE

The virtue of Mgr. de Laval lacked the supreme consecration of
misfortune. A wearied but triumphant soldier, the venerable shepherd of
souls, coming back to dwell in the bishopric of Quebec, the witness of
his first apostolic labours, gave himself into the hands of his Master
to disappear and die. "Lord," he said with Simeon, "now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word." But many griefs still
remained to test his resignation to the Divine Will, and the most
shocking disaster mentioned in our annals was to sadden his last days.
The year 1688 had passed peacefully enough for the colony, but it was
only the calm which is the forerunner of the storm. The Five Nations
employed their time in secret organization; the French, lulled in this
deceptive security, particularly by news which had come from M. de
Valrennes, in command of Fort Frontenac, to whom the Iroquois had
declared that they were coming down to Montreal to make peace, had left
the forts to return to their dwellings and to busy themselves with the
work of the fields. Moreover, the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, who commanded
at Montreal in the absence of M. de Callieres, who had gone to France,
carried his lack of foresight to the extent of permitting the officers
stationed in the country to leave their posts. It is astonishing to note
such imprudent neglect on the part of men who must have known the savage
nature. Rancour is the most deeply-rooted defect in the Indian, and it
was madness to think that the Iroquois could have forgotten so soon the
insult inflicted on their arms by the expedition of M. de Denonville, or
the breach made in their independence by the abduction of their chiefs
sent to France as convicts. The warning of their approaching incursion
had meanwhile reached Quebec through a savage named Ataviata;
unfortunately, the Jesuit Fathers had no confidence in this Indian; they
assured the governor-general that Ataviata was a worthless fellow, and
M. de Denonville made the mistake of listening too readily to these
prejudices and of not at least redoubling his precautions.

It was on the night between August 4th and 5th, 1689; all was quiet on
the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that
necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their
pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the
ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a
corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek
in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the
elements were unchained, the rain and hail were raging. As daring as
the Normans when they braved on frail vessels the fury of the seas, the
Iroquois, to the number of fifteen hundred, profited by the storm to
traverse Lake St. Louis in their bark canoes, and landed silently on the
shore at Lachine. They took care not to approach the forts; the darkness
was so thick that the soldiers discovered nothing unusual and did not
fire the cannon as was the custom on the approach of the enemy. Long
before daybreak the savages, divided into a number of squads, had
surrounded the houses within a radius of several miles. Suddenly a
piercing signal is given by the chiefs, and at once a horrible clamour
rends the air; the terrifying war-cry of the Iroquois has roused the
sleepers and raised the hair on the heads of the bravest. The colonists
leap from their couches, but they have no time to seize their weapons;
demons who seem to be vomited forth by hell have already broken in the
doors and windows. The dwellings which the Iroquois cannot penetrate are
delivered over to the flames, but the unhappy ones who issue from them
in confusion to escape the tortures of the fire are about to be
abandoned to still more horrible torments. The pen refuses to describe
the horrors of this night, and the imagination of Dante can hardly in
his "Inferno" give us an idea of it. The butchers killed the cattle,
burned the houses, impaled women, compelled fathers to cast their
children into the flames, spitted other little ones still alive and
compelled their mothers to roast them. Everything was burned and
pillaged except the forts, which were not attacked; two hundred persons
of all ages and of both sexes perished under torture, and about fifty,
carried away to the villages, were bound to the stake and burned by a
slow fire. Nevertheless the great majority of the inhabitants were able
to escape, thanks to the strong liquors kept in some of the houses, with
which the savages made ample acquaintance. Some of the colonists took
refuge in the forts, others were pursued into the woods.

Meanwhile the alarm had spread in Ville-Marie. M. de Denonville, who was
there, gives to the Chevalier de Vaudreuil the order to occupy Fort
Roland with his troops and a hundred volunteers. De Vaudreuil hastens
thither, accompanied by de Subercase and other officers; they are all
eager to measure their strength with the enemy, but the order of
Denonville is strict, they must remain on the defensive and run no risk.
By dint of insistence, Subercase obtained permission to make a sortie
with a hundred volunteers; at the moment when he was about to set out he
had to yield the command to M. de Saint-Jean, who was higher in rank.
The little troop went and entrenched itself among the debris of a burned
house and exchanged an ineffectual fire with the savages ambushed in a
clump of trees. They soon perceived a party of French and friendly
Indians who, coming from Fort Remy, were proceeding towards them in
great danger of being surrounded by the Iroquois, who were already
sobered. The volunteers wished to rush out to meet this reinforcement,
but their commander, adhering to his instructions, which forbade him to
push on farther, restrained them. What might have been foreseen
happened: the detachment from Fort Remy was exterminated. Five of its
officers were taken and carried off towards the Iroquois villages, but
succeeded in escaping on the way, except M. de la Rabeyre, who was bound
to the stake and perished in torture.

On reading these details one cannot understand the inactivity of the
French: it would seem that the authorities had lost their heads. We
cannot otherwise explain the lack of foresight of the officers absent
from their posts, the pusillanimous orders of the governor to M. de
Vaudreuil, his imprudence in sending too weak a troop through the
dangerous places, the lack of initiative on the part of M. de
Saint-Jean, finally, the absolute lack of energy and audacity, the
complete absence of that ardour which is inherent in the French
character.

After this disaster the troops returned to the forts, and the
surrounding district, abandoned thus to the fury of the barbarians, was
ravaged in all directions. The Iroquois, proud of the terror which they
inspired, threatened the city itself; we note by the records of Montreal
that on August 25th there were buried two soldiers killed by the
savages, and that on September 7th following, Jean Beaudry suffered the
same fate. Finding nothing more to pillage or to burn, they passed to
the opposite shore, and plundered the village of Lachesnaie. They
massacred a portion of the population, which was composed of seventy-two
persons, and carried off the rest. They did not withdraw until the
autumn, dragging after them two hundred captives, including fifty
prisoners taken at Lachine.

This terrible event, which had taken place at no great distance from
them, and the news of which re-echoed in their midst, struck the
inhabitants of Quebec with grief and terror. Mgr. de Laval was cruelly
affected by it, but, accustomed to adore in everything the designs of
God, he seized the occasion to invoke Him with more fervour; he
immediately ordered in his seminary public prayers to implore the mercy
of the Most High. M. de Frontenac, who was about to begin his second
administration, learned the sinister news on his arrival at Quebec on
October 15th. He set out immediately for Montreal, which he reached on
the twenty-seventh of the same month. He visited the environments, and
found only ruins and ashes where formerly rose luxurious dwellings.

War had just been rekindled between France and Great Britain. The
governor had not men enough for vast operations, accordingly he prepared
to organize a guerilla warfare. While the Abenaquis, those faithful
allies, destroyed the settlements of the English in Acadia and killed
nearly two hundred persons there, Count de Frontenac sent in the winter
of 1689-90, three detachments against New England; all three were
composed of only a handful of men, but these warriors were well
seasoned. In the rigorous cold of winter, traversing innumerable miles
on their snowshoes, sinking sometimes into the icy water, sleeping in
the snow, carrying their supplies on their backs, they surprised the
forts which they went to attack, where one would never have believed
that men could execute so rash an enterprise. Thus the three detachments
were alike successful, and the forts of Corlaer in the state of New
York, of Salmon Falls in New Hampshire, and of Casco on the seaboard,
were razed.

The English avenged these reverses by capturing Port Royal. Encouraged
by this success, they sent Phipps at the head of a large troop to seize
Quebec, while Winthrop attacked Montreal with three thousand men, a
large number of whom were Indians. Frontenac hastened to Quebec with M.
de Callieres, governor of Montreal, the militia and the regular troops.
Already the fortifications had been protected against surprise by new
and well-arranged entrenchments. The hostile fleet appeared on October
16th, 1690, and Phipps sent an officer to summon the governor to
surrender the place. The envoy, drawing out his watch, declared with
arrogance to the Count de Frontenac that he would give him an hour to
decide. "I will answer you by the mouth of my cannon," replied the
representative of Louis XIV. The cannon replied so well that at the
first shot the admiral's flag fell into the water; the Canadians,
braving the balls and bullets which rained about them, swam out to get
it, and this trophy remained hanging in the cathedral of Quebec until
the conquest. The _Histoire de l'Hotel-Dieu de Quebec_ depicts for us
very simply the courage and piety of the inhabitants during this siege.
"The most admirable thing, and one which surely drew the blessing of
Heaven upon Quebec was that during the whole siege no public devotion
was interrupted. The city is arranged so that the roads which lead to
the churches are seen from the harbour; thus several times a day were
beheld processions of men and women going to answer the summons of the
bells. The English noticed them; they called M. de Grandeville (a brave
Canadian, and clerk of the farm of Tadousac, whom they had made
prisoner) and asked him what it was. He answered them simply: 'It is
mass, vespers, and the benediction.' By this assurance the citizens of
Quebec disconcerted them; they were astonished that women dared to go
out; they judged by this that we were very easy in our minds, though
this was far from being the case."

It is not surprising that the colonists should have fought valiantly
when their bishops and clergy set the example of devotion, when the
Jesuits remained constantly among the defenders to encourage and assist
on occasion the militia and the soldiers, when Mgr. de Laval, though
withdrawn from the conduct of religious affairs, without even the right
of sitting in the Sovereign Council, animated the population by his
patriotic exhortations. To prove to the inhabitants that the cause which
they defended by struggling for their homes was just and holy, at the
same time as to place the cathedral under the protection of Heaven, he
suggested the idea of hanging on the spire of the cathedral a picture of
the Holy Family. This picture was not touched by the balls and bullets,
and was restored after the siege to the Ursulines, to whom it belonged.

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