Feigned Anger of Lewis—He writes to La Barre—Importance Attached to Indian Treaties—Duluth's zeal—Gauthier de Comportier—Denonville made Governor—Capture of the Merchant of Perpetuana—Expedition of Troyes against the Company's Posts in the Bay—Moose Fort Surrendered.

When the news of the expedition of 1684 reached the Court of Versailles, Lewis professed anger that the peace between the two crowns should be broken even in that remote corner of the world. He related the discussion which had taken place between the English ambassador and himself with regard to Radisson's treachery. He had been happy, he said, to inform King Charles's representative that he was unwilling to afford his "brother of England" any cause of complaint. Nevertheless, as he thought it important to prevent the English from establishing themselves in that river, it would be well to make a proposal to the commandant at Hudson's Bay that neither French nor English should have power to make any new establishments.

Long before that he had written to Governor La Barre, in no measured terms, demanding of him what he meant by releasing the Boston vessel, the Susan, without calling on the Intendant, or consulting the sovereign council.

"You have herein done," said he, "just what the English would be able to make a handle of, since in virtue of your ordinance you caused a vessel to be surrendered which ought strictly to be considered a pirate, as it had no commission; and the English will not fail to say that you so fully recognized the regularity of the ship's papers as to surrender it."

Duluth in the West.

Simultaneously with the receipt of this letter from his monarch, there came to the perplexed Governor a letter from the Sieur Duluth, stating that at great expense of presents he had prevented the western tribes from further carrying their beaver trade to the English. He had, it appeared, met the Sieur de la Croix with his two comrades, who had presented the despatches in which the Governor had urged him to use every endeavour in forwarding letters to Chouart, at Nelson River.

"To carry out your instructions," wrote Duluth, "there was only Monsieur PÉrÉ, who would have to go himself, the savages having all at that time withdrawn into the interior." He added that PÉrÉ had left during the previous month, and doubtless at that time had accomplished his mission. Duluth invariably expressed himself with great confidence on the subject of the implicit trust which the savages reposed in him. More than once in his letters, as well as in verbal messages forwarded to his superiors, he boasted that before a couple of years were out not a single savage would visit the English at Hudson's Bay. To this end they had bound themselves by the numerous presents they had received at his hands; and he was assured that they would not go back on their word.

As with Duluth so with the other officials, pioneers and emissaries amongst the French, great importance was attached to treaties and compacts with the aborigines. Every endeavour was made to obtain the good-will and amity of the Indians.

French and English relations with the Indians.

Perhaps nothing exhibits so powerfully the totally differing attitude and motives of the Company, compared with the French traders, than the manner in which, in those early times, the Red man was trusted and believed by the one and distrusted and contemned by the other. One may peruse neither the narratives of the Jesuits nor of the traders without an emotion of awe at the simple faith of those pioneers in the honesty and probity of the Red men. To the very end, when disaster succeeding disaster overwhelmed the propaganda of Loyola amongst the northern tribes and exterminated its disciples, we read of the Frenchman trusting to the word and deferring to the prejudices of his Indian brother. It was as if the latter were indeed of a common steadfastness and moral nature with his own. Contrast that trait in the English character which is exhibited in his early dealings with inferior and black peoples in India and Africa, to that he has retained to the present day. Never was the contrast greater than during the acute conflict of English and French interests in Hudson's Bay at this time. The early governors and traders almost without exception openly despised the Indian and secretly derided his most solemn counsels. August treaties were set aside on the most flimsy pretexts, and if the virtues of the savages were too highly esteemed by the French, they were on the other hand perhaps much too cheaply held by their rivals.

But to whatever extent they may have held themselves bound by compacts of this kind, the Company's officials were not so foolish as to doubt their potency amongst savages. Thus we find that from the years 1682 to 1688 the Company regularly instructed its servants to enact the strongest treaties with the "captains and kings of the rivers and territories where they had settlements." "These compacts," observes one of the Company's servants, "were rendered as firm and binding as the Indians themselves could make them. Ceremonies of the most solemn and sacred character accompanied them."

Duluth had already built a fort near the River À la Maune, at the bottom of Lake Nepigon, and thither he expected at least six of the northern nations to resort in the spring. Lest this should not be sufficient for the purpose he designed building another in the Christineaux River, which would offer an effectual barrier to the expansion of the English trade. With characteristic zeal Duluth, in a letter written at this time, concluded with these words:

"Finally, sir, I wish to lose my life if I do not absolutely prevent the savages from visiting the English."

But with every good will to serve his monarch and stifle in infancy the growing trade of the Hudson's Bay Company in the northern regions, Duluth vastly undervalued the forces of circumstance as well of enterprise at the command of the enemy. The plans of the French were destined to be confounded by the unforeseen and treacherous action of Radisson and Chouart in the following year.

"What am I to do?" now became the burden of La Barre's appeals to the King. The young priest who acted as his secretary at Quebec was kept perpetually writing to Versailles for instructions. His letters are long, and filled with explanations of the situation, which only served to confuse his superiors. Fearful of offending the English on one hand and thereby precipitating New France in a war with New England, and on the other of arousing the resentment of the colonists by a supine behaviour, the unhappy Denonville was in an unpleasant dilemma.

"Am I to oppose force to force?" he asks in one letter. "Am I to venture against those who have committed these outrages against your Majesty's subjects at sea? It is a matter in which your Majesty will please to furnish me with some precise and decisive orders whereunto I shall conform my conduct and actions."

Lewis unwilling to oppose the English.

But the Most Christian King was by no means anxious to quarrel with his cousin Charles either for the dominion of, or the fur-trade monopoly in, the north. Charles was in possession of a handsome subsidy paid out of the exchequer of Lewis. Europe was spectator of the most cordial relations between these two monarchs, relations which are described by more than one candid historian as those commonly subsisting between master and vassal. That tempest of indignation which was to break over England in the reign of Charles's successor would have not so long been deferred had but a real knowledge of the "good understanding and national concord" been known to Englishmen at large.

Under the circumstances it is not surprising that Lewis concluded to do nothing. It was not that opportunities to regain what was lost were lacking. An old soldier, Gauthier de Comportier, who with a number of other patriots had learned of the jeopardy in which French interests lay in the north, presented a memoir to the King offering, if a grant were made him, to win all back from the English and to establish three posts on the Bourbon River. The grant was refused.

A change then came which altered the aspect of affairs.

In February, 1685, Charles II. died, and the Duke of York, second Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, ascended the throne of England. Lewis was not the last to perceive that the accession of James would cause but little real difference, as the latter and himself were bound together by ties as strong as had bound Charles, yet saw at the same time that full advantage might safely be reaped from the change of monarchs. Proceedings were instantly therefore set on foot to retrieve the fortunes of the French in the fur countries.

The conduct of Groseilliers and Radisson had deeply offended the inhabitants of Quebec. An excited populace burnt the pair in effigy, and a decree was issued for their arrest should they at any time be apprehended, and for their delivery to those whom they had betrayed. But it was the anger of La Chesnaye and his associates of the Company which was especially strong. An expedition which they had sent out to Port Nelson, with the intention of collecting the wealth in peltries, returned to the St. Lawrence without so much as a single beaver.

The success of the English made some decided action on the part of the French inevitable. La Barre was recalled and his successor, the Marquis de Denonville, determined to take matters into his own hands, rather than see the interests of New France in the Bay suffer. He relied upon the success of the expedition to atone for the boldness of the initiative, but his action was not taken without repeated warnings addressed to the Minister. "All the best of our furs, both as to quality and quantity, we must expect to see shortly in the hands of the English." If the English were not expelled they would secure all the fat beaver from an infinite number of tribes in the north who were being discovered every day; besides abstracting the greater portion of the peltries that ordinarily reached them at Montreal through the Ottawas, Assiniboines and other tribes.[21]

The French capture a Company's ship.

In the month of July, 1685, two ships belonging to the French Company, returning in disappointment to Canada from Port Nelson, met, at the mouth of the Straits, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's vessels named the Merchant of Perpetuana, commanded by one Edward Humes. She was bound for York Fort with a cargo of merchandise and provisions. No time was lost on the part of the French in intercepting her. Captain Humes not surrendering with sufficient alacrity to please the enemy, the Merchant of Perpetuana was boarded and forcibly possessed in the name of King Lewis. Several English sailors lost their lives. The vessel having been seized in this manner, her prow was headed for Quebec, where her master and crew were summarily cast into gaol.

After a miserable confinement, lasting eleven months, the sufferings of Captain Humes ended with his death, and the other prisoners, exposed to the insults and indignities of the Quebec populace, were ultimately sent away to Martinique on board their own ship, and there sold as slaves. The mate, Richard Smithsend by name, managed to escape. Upon reaching London the tale he unfolded to his employers excited general indignation. A memorial of the outrage, couched in vigorous language, was presented to the King, but James, resolved not to give offence to his friend and ally the Most Christian King, took no notice of the matter.

Amongst the French in Canada there were not wanting bold spirits to follow up this daring stroke. Chief amongst them, not merely for the character of his achievements, but for his uncommon and romantic personality, was the Chevalier de Troyes. This Canadian nobleman, who was of advanced years, was a retired captain in the army. He believed he now saw an opportunity to win a lasting distinction, and to rival, and perhaps surpass, the exploits of Champlain, Lusson, Frontenac and the other hero-pioneers of New France. Scholarly in his tastes, and frail of body, though by profession a soldier, he emerged from privacy on Christmas Eve, 1685, and asked of the Governor a commission to drive the English utterly from the Northern Bay.

The authority the old soldier sought for was granted. He was empowered to "search for, seize and occupy the most advantageous posts, to seize the robbers, bushrangers and others whom we know to have taken and arrested several of our French engaged in the Indian trade, whom we order him to arrest, especially the said Radisson and his adherents wherever they may be found, and bring them to be punished as deserters, according to the rigour of the ordinances." The rigour of the ordinances was death.

Fourscore Canadians were selected to form part of the expedition against the Hudson's Bay Company's posts by the Chevalier de Troyes. For his lieutenants, the leader chose the three sons of a nobleman of New France named Charles Le Moine. One, the eldest, a young man of only twenty-five, was to bear an enduring distinction in the annals of France as one of her most able and intrepid naval commanders. This was the Sieur d'Iberville. His brothers, taking their names, as he had done, from places in their native land, were called the Sieurs de Sainte HÈlÈne and de Marincourt. Thirty soldiers were directly attached to the Chevalier's command, veterans who had, almost to a man, seen service in one or other of the great European wars. That they might not be without the ministrations of religion, Father Sylvie, a Jesuit priest, accompanied the expedition.

Expedition of de Troyes.

"The rivers," writes a chronicler of the Troyes expedition, "were frozen and the earth covered with snow when that small party of vigorous men left Montreal in order to ascend the Ottawa River as far as the height of land and thence to go down to James' Bay." At the beginning of April they arrived at the Long Sault, where they prepared some canoes in order to ascend the Ottawa River. From Lake Temiscamingue they passed many portages until they reached Lake Abbitibi, at the entrance or most southern extremity of which they built a small fort of stockades. After a short halt they continued their course towards James' Bay.

The establishment first doomed to conquest by Troyes and his companions was Moose Factory, a stockade fort having four bastions covered with earth. In the centre was a house forty feet square and as many high, terminating in a platform. The fort was escaladed by the French late at night and the palisades made short work of by the hatchets of their bushrangers.

Amongst the garrison none appears to have attempted a decent defence save the chief gunner, who perished bravely at his post of duty.[22] A cry for quarter went up and the English were made prisoners on the spot. They were sixteen in number, and as the attack was made at night they were in a state of almost complete undress. Troyes found in the fort twelve cannon, chiefly six and eight-pounders, three thousand pounds of powder and ten pounds of lead.

Capture of Moose Factory.

It is worthy of record that the capture was effected with an amount of pomp and ceremony calculated to strike the deepest awe into the hearts of those fifteen unhappy and not too intelligent Company's apprentices, who knew nothing of fighting nor had bargained for anything so perilous. For so small a conquest it was both preceded and followed by almost as much circumstance as would have sufficed for the Grand Monarque himself in one of his theatrical sieges. The Chevalier announced in a loud voice that he took possession of the fort and island "in the name of his Most Christian Majesty the Most High, Most Mighty, Most Redoubtable Monarch Lewis XIV. of the Most Christian Name, King of France and Navarre." In obvious imitation of Lusson, a sod of earth was thrice raised in the air, whilst a cry of "Vive le Roi" rang out over those waters wherein were sepultured the bodies of Henry Hudson and his men.

Note.—The career of the Chevalier de Troyes ended abruptly and tragically in 1687, when he and all his men, to the number of ninety, were massacred at Niagara.