1697-1713

FROM THE TREATY OF RYSWICK TO THE TREATY OF UTRECHT QUEEN ANNE'S WAR

MONTREAL SAVED BY LAND AND WATER

"THE FRENCH HAVE ALWAYS COMMENCED HOSTILITIES IN CANADA"—SAMUEL VECHT IN MONTREAL—MONTREAL TO BE INVADED BY WOOD CREEK—NICHOLSON'S ARMY ROUTED BY DYSENTERY—THE "BOSTONNAIS" PLAN A SECOND DESCENT ON MONTREAL—JEANNE LEBER'S STANDARD—THE EXPEDITION OF SIR HOVENDER WALKER AGAINST QUEBEC—THE VOW OF THE MONTREAL LADIES—"OUR LADY OF VICTORIES" BUILT IN COMMEMORATION—PEACE OF UTRECHT—COMPARISON BETWEEN NEW ENGLAND AND NEW FRANCE. NOTE: THE CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY.

The peace of Ryswick, signed September 20, 1697, was only a temporary lull. Queen Anne began to reign in England on March 8, 1702, and another war with France, that known as Queen Anne's war or the war of the Spanish succession, was declared on the 4th of May, 1702. But it can be said that in Canada the English were not always the guilty causes. The Canadians, even before the declaration, were not adverse to war, as they considered themselves more warlike, better disciplined and could rely on their Indian allies since the peace of 1701. They held the "New Englanders"—a term often applied by them to the British colonists in general—as an easy mark. In their mind's eye they already saw themselves in possession of Boston and New York. Even Le Moyne d'Iberville had such visions and drew up a memoir on the project. On their side the greater number of the English colonists were not anxious for hostilities. Certainly not the New York and Albany Dutchmen, who feared for their trade. Meanwhile the borders of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were the theatre of war. An interesting light is thrown on the subject in the abstract of a dispatch, sent by M. de Vaudreuil, now governor, and M. Beauharnois, November 15, 1703, to be found in the state documents of New York (Doc. Col. Hist. N. Y., IX, p. 755). The minister, Pontchartrain, after the French attack on Wells and other places under Beaubassin, in 1703, has annotated the abstract thus: "It would have been desirable that this expedition had not taken place. M. de Vaudreuil was wishing for it in M. de CalliÈres' time, who would never consent to it. I have a perfect knowledge that the English only want peace, aware that war is contrary to the interests of all the colonies; the French have always commenced hostilities in Canada." Yet Pontchartrain later, when the suffering English retaliated by planning the invasion of Canada, naturally enough was ready to counsel war parties against them.

In 1705 we find Samuel Vetch in Montreal. He had come on a diplomatic mission on the part of Massachusetts. He remained at Quebec from August to the middle of October, having ascended the St. Lawrence to reach the city and returning the same way. He kept his eyes open, and having been educated at Utrecht, he probably knew French, so that he likely discussed Canadian affairs. He boasted afterwards of the completeness of his knowledge of Canada and he made use of it. "Vetch visited Montreal and its governor, de Ramezay, wrote to the minister on the subject, complaining that in Quebec he had been left at liberty to obtain all the information desired; whereas in Montreal, de Ramezay himself had taken care that he should always be accompanied by an officer and an interpreter. There had been old dealings between Vetch and de Ramezay. Vetch, when engaged in his commercial operations for years previously, had advanced de Ramezay the amount of his appointments, paying him in card currency, and had received authority to draw his money in France. The war broke out and the power to obtain the money had been given by de Ramezay to another person in France. It was the object of Vetch in visiting Montreal to be repaid this advance, but de Ramezay professed himself not in the condition to give it back, without the approval of the minister."—Kingsford ("History of Canada"), II, p. 429.

About 1708 the conquest of Canada was designed as a means of bringing the struggles of the English colonists of North America in their desire for supremacy to a close. To the charge of this bold venture Samuel Vetch was appointed, an energetic, astute and ambitious agent for his party, who boasted he knew the St. Lawrence and its shores better than the Canadians themselves. His visit to Montreal had not been in vain. On March 11, 1709, he sailed from England, whither he had gone from the general court of Massachusetts to ask for aid from Queen Anne's government. A squadron bearing five regiments of regular troops was promised. The colonies, too, had to muster their forces, and the plan was to attack Montreal, advancing by way of Wood Creek, Lake Champlain and Chambly on the Richelieu, and to take Quebec by way of the St. Lawrence. The command of the advance on Montreal was entrusted to Col. Francis Nicholson, late lieutenant governor of New York, who had sailed from Portsmouth with Vetch. Nicholson was to proceed to Montreal and wait there until the promised British squadron should arrive at Boston about May.

News of his approach to Wood Creek reaching de Vaudreuil, he sent de Ramezay, the governor of Montreal, with 1,500 Canadians and Indians to surprise his camp. Montreal and Quebec were meanwhile in the greatest consternation, brought on by most exaggerated reports. Nothing less than the total conquest of the colony was feared. The result of the expedition led by the governor of Montreal may be told by Parkman ("A Half Century of Conflict," Chapter VII), relying on state documents of this year, 1709:

"Ramezay's fleet of canoes had reached Lake Champlain and was half way to the mouth of Wood Creek, when his advance party was discovered by English scouts, and the French commander began to fear that he should be surprised in turn; in fact some of his Indians were fired upon from an ambuscade. All was now doubt, perplexity and confusion. Ramezay landed at the narrows of the lake, a little south of the place now called Crown Point. Here in the dense woods, his Indians fired on some Canadians whom they took for English. This was near producing a panic. 'Every tree seemed an enemy,' writes an officer present. Ramezay lost himself in the woods and could not find his army. One Deruisseau, who had gone out as a scout, came back with the report that 900 Englishmen were close at hand. Seven English canoes did in fact appear, supported, as the French in their excitement imagined, by a numerous though invisible army in the forest; but being fired upon, and seeing they were entering a hornet's nest, the English sheered off, Ramezay having at last found his army, and order being gradually restored, a council of war was held, after which the whole force fell back to Chambly, having accomplished nothing."

Yet the advance on Montreal never went beyond Wood Creek. While waiting months and weeks for the order from Boston to proceed to Montreal, Nicholson's little army succumbed to the attacks of pestilence, probably a malignant dysentery, caused by being long penned up in an insanitary palisaded camp during the midsummer heat. It is said on the authority of Charlevoix, that the Iroquois had poisoned the waters of the creek, by throwing into it, above the camp, the skins and offal of the animals they had killed in their hunting. Whatever the cause, when a party of French came later upon the scene they found innumerable graves. The remnant of Nicholson's army turned back, as the British squadron was countermanded for Portugal, where British interests needed it. Thus was Montreal saved and with it Quebec.

In 1711, however, Nicholson was again attempting to move against Montreal. Again great consternation prevailed in the town, for the news had reached Canada early in August, when Vaudreuil had been informed by de Cortebelle, the French commandant at Placentia in Newfoundland, that English prisoners had reported mighty preparations being made by the "Bostonnais" against Quebec by water and Montreal by land. Dismay and confusion seized both towns. Montreal, fortified only by its palisade of stakes and incapable of resisting the artillery of the English invaders, believed that it was on the eve of its death throes, seeing that an army was setting out from New York with 3,000 men with cannons. In these straits the people turned to God, and the priests of St. Sulpice preached penitence to them. The chronicles of the time tell how hearts were moved, how there were penitential processions, in which all the Montrealers joined barefooted and with cords around their necks; it was a time of general communions, voluntary fasting and like mortifications.

Mother Juchereau in the annals of the HÔtel-Dieu of Quebec confesses that "the ladies of Montreal outbid those of Quebec, for the former obliged themselves not to wear ribbons or laces for a year,"—no small sacrifice, doubtlessly. Finally, the young "externe" ladies of the Congregation and others, made a vow that if they were saved from the evils apprehended, seemingly inevitable, they would build in honour of the Mother of God a chapel under the name of Our Lady of Victory. Meanwhile in her self-imposed retirement Jeanne LeBer, the recluse, was acquainted of the disasters impending, and her prayers were besought on all hands. Even the Baron de Longueuil, then governor of the town, and surnamed the "Macchabbeus of Montreal" prevailed on her to compose a prayer which should be inscribed on his standard, which he would take with a handful of men, to prepare, in their desperation, an ambuscade near Chambly, by which Nicholson's men were expected to pass. The recluse, thus prevailed on by her cousin, wrote this inscription: "Our enemies place all their confidence in their arms, but we place ours under the name of the Queen of Angels, whom we invoke. She is terrible as an army in battle array; under her protection we hope to conquer our enemies." The standard was solemnly blessed and put into the hands of M. de Longueuil by M. de Belmont, in the parish church of Notre Dame, whither all the people had gathered for this edifying spectacle.

Bearing this ensign himself, M. de Longueuil set out to encounter General Nicholson's land force, but the latter now retreated, on hearing of the disastrous termination of the expedition of the fleet making for the capture of Quebec. Not finding Nicholson's forces, and ignorant as yet of the cause of his retreat, the Montrealers journeyed down to Quebec to assist that town against the attack by water. There they waited till in the middle of October, when on the 19th the Sieur de la Valterie, who had come from Labrador in September and had been sent down the river again by de Vaudreuil to watch for the English fleet, appeared at Quebec with tidings of joy.

The deposition of FranÇois de Marganne, Sieur de la Valterie, before Paul Dupuy, Esquire, king's councillor, on October 19th, relates that, "he had descended the St. Lawrence in a canoe, with two Frenchmen and an Indian, till landing at the Ile aux Oeufs on the 1st of October, they met two French sailors or fishermen loaded with plunder and presently discovered the wrecks of seven English ships, with, as they declared, fifteen or sixteen hundred dead bodies, on the strand hard by, besides dead horses, sheep, dogs and hens, three or four hundred large iron-hooped casks, a barrel of wine and a barrel and keg of brandy, cables, anchors, chains, planks, boards, shovels, picks, mattocks and piles of old iron three feet high." (Parkman, "A Half Century of Conflict.") Later visits to the wrecks brought back news that, though the autumn tides had swept away many corpses, more than two thousand lay on the rocks, naked and in attitudes of despair. Denys de la Ronde, writing to the minister on December 30, 1711, says that nearly one thousand men were drowned, and about two thousand died of injuries. Whatever there is of exaggeration in this, still Colonel Lee of the Rhode Island contingent, writing to Governor Cranston, September 12, 1711, says that a day or two after the wreck, he saw "the bodies of twelve or thirteen hundred brave men, with women and children, lying in heaps."

So perished the ill-fated expedition under Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker, that was to have subjugated Canada. The fleet, which set sail from Boston on July 30th "consisted of nine ships of war and two bomb ketches with about sixty transports, store ships, hospital ships and other vessels, British and Provincial. They carried the seven British regiments, numbering with the artillery train about five thousand five hundred men, besides 600 marines and 1,500 provincials; counting with the sailors nearly twelve thousand in all." Samuel Vetch commanded the provincials—the same who had boasted of his knowledge of the Canadian coasts; but he was no sailor, and the pilots with the fleet had little serious knowledge of the St. Lawrence after all.

How this mighty expedition met disaster at the mercy of the elements leads us too far from Montreal to tell. Suffice it to say that Quebec and Montreal were saved. [163]

The dramatic routing of their enemies was regarded by Canadians as a manifest effect of Divine Providence watching over them. M. de Vaudreuil, writing to the minister on October 22, and November 6, 1712, says: "We are going to give thanks to God for the visible protection which he benignantly granted to this country. All our people, though well determined to defend themselves, agree that God has granted them great favours in the destruction of the English fleet, without it costing a single drop of blood to this colony." In his "Life of Sieur LeBer," M. de Belmont claimed that the Mother of God obtained for the Canadians this greatest miracle, "which has happened since the time of Moses when the Egyptians were swallowed up in the waters of the Red Sea." At Montreal, in thanksgiving, the ladies set about to procure the necessary funds to redeem their vows. The Sisters of the Congregation gave a plot of ground within their enclosure, near to their church, and in 1718 the foundation stone of the little shrine of "Our Lady of Victories" was ceremoniously laid. [164]

Peace for the two great rival nations was obtained by the treaty of Utrecht on April 13, 1713. But it was not without a pang for the old King Louis XIV, who lost fair jewels from his crown, in then ceding to the English, Acadia, Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay and the Iroquois country. To France was reserved only Prince Edward Island and the adjoining islands, and Cape Breton. "The treaty of Utrecht," says Ganneau, "was followed by a period of peace almost without example in the annals of Canada." The whole colony increased in population, the Island of Montreal growing from 3,492 souls in 1710 to 7,710 in 1740.

Montreal profited by the peace less advantageously than Quebec and Three Rivers. Formerly this town was the principal headquarters of the fur trade, as we have seen. But after the treaty of Utrecht, by the loss to the French of the Hudson's Bay trade, New York at last gained considerably over Montreal. Yet none the less, prosperity ruled there.

An interesting comparison of the two great races contending at this time for the mastery of the north of this continent may be here quoted from the "Journal d'un voyage en AmÉrique," Vol. V, published in 1744, and written by the Jesuit historian of Canada, Charlevoix. He is describing the condition prevailing about this period. "There reigns in New England and in the other provinces of the Continent of America, belonging to the British Empire, an opulence which, it seems, they do not know how to profit by; while in New France there is poverty hidden by an appearance of easy circumstances, which appears unstudied; commerce and cultivation of the plantations strengthen the first, the industry of the inhabitants sustain the second, and the taste of the people spreads around infinite comfort. The English colonist amasses wealth and makes no superfluous expenditure; the Frenchman enjoys what he has and often makes a parade of what he has not. The former labours for his heirs, while the latter leaves his in the same necessity in which he finds himself, allowing them to get out of the situation as well as they can. The English Americans do not desire war, because they have much to lose; they do not humour the savages, because they do not believe they have any need of them. The French youths for contrary reasons detest peace and live on good terms with the aborigines of the country, whose esteem they easily secure during periods of war, as well as their friendship at all times."

NOTE

THE CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY

Claude de Ramezay, eleventh governor of Montreal, appointed 1703, was born in France, 1657, and came to Canada in 1685, with a number of other young officers, in the suite of Governor de Denonville. He was then a lieutenant in de Troye's company of marine troops, which later took part in the expedition to Hudson's Bay. His promotion was rapid, being captain in 1687, later colonel, then commandant of troops, and finally governor of the town and its district.

In 1687 he took part in the expedition against the Iroquois and in 1690, when Phipps appeared before Quebec, he brought over 800 men from Montreal for the defense of the former town.

History tells of the spirited defense made by Frontenac and his gallant officers, the latter, no doubt, being encouraged by the bright smiles of some of Quebec's fair daughters who, it seems, lost no time in rewarding their brave defenders with their heart and hand. Scarcely had the last of Phipp's fleet disappeared around Point Levi, than de Ramezay led to the altar Melle Marie-Charlotte Denys, a daughter of Denys de la Ronde, one of the wealthiest families of Canada. His companion in arms, de Vaudreuil, at the same time married Louise, daughter of Pierre de Joybert de Soulanges. Could they have seen into the future their happiness would have been clouded by sorrow, for it was destined that a son of de Ramezay should be the one to open the gates of Quebec to the English in 1759, and a son of de Vaudreuil should do likewise, at Montreal, the following year.

De Ramezay was one of the most prominent men of this time, occupying an official position in Canada for a term exceeding forty years. He was Seigneur de la Gesse, de Montigny, et Boisfleurent in France, and in Canada was Seigneur de Monnoir and de Ramezay, Knight of the Military Order of St. Louis, governor of Montreal, and commandant of all the militia in the country, and was administrator of the governor-generalship during the two years' absence of de Vaudreuil in France.

The chÂteau was built in 1705. It is a long, low, cottage-built building, standing quaintly out of date before the city hall. The neighborhood was then the fashionable part of the town, and was occupied by the Baron de Longueuil, the Contrecoeurs, d'Eschambaults, d'Aillebousts and Madame de Portneuf, the widow of Baron Becancourt. Situated on a hill, and opposite to the magnificent garden of the Jesuits, this plain unembellished house had an open view to the river front. The vaults were of ancient castle construction. Even the attic floors were of stone slabs.

Under de Ramezay's rÉgime, 1703 to 1724, this venerable edifice was the hall of entertainment of the illustrious of the country. The many expeditions to the distant fur fields, the voyages of discovery of new lands, the councils of war, the military expeditions, the conferences with the Indians, the annual fairs and fur trading market, attracted to the shores of Montreal not only the governor general, the intendant, and their suites, but a considerable number of the most important people of the country, including all classes of society. To one and all the portals of this hospitable mansion were ever open. To the lowly Indian and his squaw, and to the exalted nobleman and his consort, the noble and beneficent Ramezay and his family showed equal attention. Fearless to the Indian or enemy, his bravery and charity were equally exemplified in the personal care and attention he and his family gave to the suffering citizens of Montreal during the pest which devastated the town in 1721.

De Ramezay died in 1724, and his family sold the chÂteau to the Compagnie des Indes in 1745. The latter retained possession until the cession in 1763, when it was bought by William Grant, who, in turn, disposed of it to the English government for the sum of 2,000 guineas. It thus became again the residence of the governors, and remained such up to 1849.

In 1775-6 the chÂteau was the headquarters for the Continental Army under Montgomery, and in the spring of 1776 there came Benjamin Franklin, Carroll of Carrollton, and Samuel Chase, envoys sent by Congress to influence the French Canadians to join the colonies in the revolt against British rule. Then came Benedict Arnold, who occupied the chÂteau for several weeks. The mark of the old reception dias is still seen on the salon walls.

Lord Metcalfe was the last resident governor, but for some years after his establishment in a new government house the chÂteau was used for departmental offices. When the government was withdrawn from Montreal, the chÂteau served several purposes. For some years courts were held here, and later the normal school, then courts again.

In 1894 the chÂteau was sold by the Provincial government and purchased by the Corporation of the City of Montreal for the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society, which in 1895 obtained the building for the purpose of founding their historical portrait gallery and museum.

Next to the ChÂteau de Ramezay on the west stood the house of the Baron de Becancourt, built at the beginning of the 18th century. It also passed into the hands of the Compagnie des Indes, and became their commissariat. In 1800 this building came into the possession of the McGill family and was long known as the "Old McGill House."