Immediately on his return from the second expedition, while still anticipating that he would be left in full charge, Cartier had estimated that he would need six ships of 100 tons burden and two barques of half that size. He had reported that provisions should be provided for at least two years and that he should be accompanied by 120 sailors and 150 others, including soldiers and mechanics such as carpenters, masons, lime makers, tilemakers, blacksmiths, miners, and goldsmiths. He had requisitioned in addition six priests, three bakers, and two apothecaries. It was now found necessary, however, to cut down in all directions. Artisans were showing an emphatic unwillingness to take part in the venture; and so, instead of the corps of skilled men Cartier had demanded, he was forced to be content with whatever Roberval was able to recruit by royal mandate.
Early in May 1541, Cartier was ready to sail as soon as the reinforcements promised him arrived. They came at last, and a sorry lot they were, made up almost exclusively of convicts from the prisons, men who had been under sentence of death and had agreed to go in order to save their lives. They arrived in gangs, chained together and under armed guard, a fine assortment of social misfits and dishonest rabble from the stews of the great cities. There were fear and hate and cunning in the eyes of these human culls who were to be the first settlers of the new land. Cartier’s heart must have sunk as he watched them come clanking aboard and muttering among themselves. It is recorded that among the lot was a girl of eighteen who was innocent of any crime but had asked to share the chains of one of the criminals. Perhaps she was in love with him; perhaps she had a nobler purpose, the desire to save his soul. The point cannot be elucidated, nor is there anything in the records to indicate what became of the unfortunate girl.
The Sieur de Roberval, it developed, was not yet ready to start. He had supplies of cannon and gunpowder and other goods piled up in all the ports of the Norman coast but was showing himself dilatory in getting them aboard. It was being rumored around that the worthy gentleman had no intention of starting for Canada that year. There was a story, moreover, that he had taken into his employ one Pierre de Bidoux, a notorious pirate, which indicated that the new viceroy of Canada planned to do a little buccaneering before carrying out the King’s orders. The ministers of the English King were complaining bitterly of his activities.
Cartier decided finally not to wait for his superior and on May 23 he unfurled his standard and set sail from St. Malo. He reached Stadacona on August 23 after a hard and stormy crossing.
Cartier faced a difficulty at the start. All of the hostages, with the exception of one young girl, had died in France. They had lacked the capacity, seemingly, to face new conditions of living and their lungs had given out. To the eager natives who swarmed out on the waters to greet the ships he explained that their chief was dead but that all the others were in good health and prosperity and had prefered to remain in France. To make his story more realistic, he said that the men had married French wives and were living in great ease and comfort in stone houses. Fortunately for the French, the Indian who had been selected to act as chief in Donnacona’s absence was well pleased with the news. It meant that he could remain permanently in his post. He professed to believe everything Cartier said, and his glum followers had no chance to express their feelings.
Despite the friendliness of the new chief, it was clear from the start that the experiment in colonization would be carried out in the face of bitter opposition from the natives. Carter realized that a secure base of operations must be established at once and set his men to work at a point where the Cap Rouge River empties into the St. Lawrence. They built two forts and named the settlement Charlesbourg Royal. The upper of the two forts had a high tower, two courts, a hall, a kitchen, pantries and cellars, and an oven. There were springs close at hand which promised a plentiful supply of water and a well was dug inside the roughhewn walls. Feeling that the high walls of the outer stockade provided security, the leader now put his men to work at tilling the soil outside. They had no difficulty in clearing the land for a garden of an acre and a half. In a time which seemed magically short there were vegetables ready for use.
While these first necessary steps were being taken some discoveries were made which sent ripples of excitement through the rank and file. They found iron deposits and flakes of gold in the sand along the riverbanks. They even found stones which had a sparkle to them and which they optimistically assumed to be diamonds. The spelicans from Paris who had always been willing to slit a throat for a few whites, the codsheads from the provincial jails whose willingness to come with Cartier had won them a reprieve from the gallows were roused now to a greedy interest. There was so much excitement, in fact, that Cartier found it necessary to pack the specimens in barrels of sand and to keep a guard mounted over them.
Before winter set in the commander took a small company of his men, including some of the gentlemen who had accompanied the expedition, and set off on a second visit to Hochelaga. The Viscount de Beaupré was left in charge at Charlesbourg Royal. In his narrative Cartier makes no mention of visiting the large community he had described in such detail earlier, but he tells of the multitude of natives who converged suddenly on the shores of Montreal Island to greet him. It was apparent at once, however, that they were not friendly. His first visit had aroused wonder and curiosity; his second made it clear that he and his men intended to settle down, that they had designs on the land.
Cartier was convinced that the Indians would have attacked at once if he and his men had not been so well armed. He decided it would be advisable to return without delay to the security of the forts, but although he put this decision into effect immediately he was preceded by a party of the Indians under the new chief at Hochelaga. They also were going to Stadacona, and the Frenchmen were thoroughly well aware that their purpose was to plan with the Indian bands at Stadacona for the destruction of the white men.
As they progressed down the river Cartier had one thought continuously in his mind, the hope that Roberval had arrived at Cap Rouge. In this he was to be disappointed. There were no new sails on the river when they drew within sight of the forts; the dilatory nobleman had not held to his promise. It was clear now that a winter of anxious waiting lay ahead of them.
The mariner from St. Malo seems to have lost some of his faith in the purpose of the expedition at this point. His pen was laid aside and the narrative which he had continued faithfully came to an abrupt end with a final entry, in which a note of desperation can be detected, to the effect that the Indians were keeping sullenly aloof. That he did not continue his narrative over the winter, however, is no particular loss. There was probably little new to record. They were anxious days, of course, with scurvy claiming its victims and the malefactors whiling away the hours with gaming and dicing. Perhaps the men who had started for the New World in chains were speculating as to whether death on the gallows might not have been preferable after all to the bitter cold, the privations, the constant state of fear in which they existed.
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The Sieur de Roberval in the meantime was getting ready for a delayed but quite spectacular start. He had gathered together a company exceeding two hundred in number. Some of them were gentlemen eager for adventure and fame, some were artisans, some of course were reprieved malefactors. There were a number of women and a few children. With three ships of relatively large tonnage Roberval set sail on April 16, 1542, from the port of La Rochelle. The pirate Bidoux does not appear to have been of the company.
It took them a long time to cross the Atlantic, and it was June 8 before the fleet pulled into the harbor of St. John’s in Newfoundland. None of the party had been in the New World before and great was their amazement to find no fewer than seventeen fishing vessels thereabouts, some French, some English, some Portuguese. They were still more amazed a few days later when Jacques Cartier came sailing into the harbor with his three ships intact but his company very much depleted.
The absence of notes from Cartier’s pen become
s now a signal loss. Nothing is known of what happened when the two leaders came face to face save a brief reference in a chronicle set down by one of Roberval’s men. According to this narrator, the brusque and haughty viceroy charged Cartier with deserting his post. The man from St. Malo, equally angry, accused Roberval of negligence in leaving him, Cartier, to winter alone with insufficient men and supplies, surrounded by hostile natives. Undoubtedly there was a long and bitter debate between them, the viceroy attempting to carry things off with a high hand, the sea captain standing up to him and refusing to accept any blame. This much is known, that at the end Roberval ordered Cartier to return with him to Stadacona and that the captain refused to do so. His men were so reduced in number and in such poor physical condition as a result of the hardships they had endured that he did not intend to subject them to more suffering. From the course he took, it seems clear that Cartier now doubted the possibility of establishing a permanent colony.
The outcome of the dispute was that Cartier stole away during the night. There was no trace of his sails the next morning when the sun came up over the horizon. He was on his way back to France. Refusing to be daunted by this desertion, Roberval took his three large ships on to Stadacona.
A story must be told at this point which gives some insight into the character of the man who had been appointed viceroy of Canada. His niece was among the women in the party, a handsome and high-spirited girl named Marguerite. A young gentleman had enlisted with the expedition who was either in love with her to begin with and went along to be near her or who fell into an infatuated state during the voyage. The affair reached a stage where there was much talk about them, and Roberval decided on a drastic form of punishment for his niece. Off the eastern coast of Newfoundland lay the Isle of Demons, which, according to report, was inhabited solely by evil spirits and which all ships avoided. Roberval gave the girl four muskets and a supply of gunpowder and marooned her on this evil island with no one for company save an old nurse who went by the name of Bastienne. Her lover, who apparently was not being punished for his share in the amour, cast himself overboard and swam ashore to join her. The frightened crew saw the devoted couple meet on the shore while all about them could be heard the howling of the expectant demons.
The three victims of this harsh retribution watched the sails vanish over the horizon and then set to work with sinking hearts to build a crude cabin. It is not clear whether the demons possessed any actual physical form or were mere phantoms of the spirit. It is said, however, that they hovered over the unhappy trio, flapping their foul wings and filling the air with their incantations. The hut was finished finally and there in due course a child was born to the lovers. The faithful Bastienne died soon after. The child died also, then the lover, and the unfortunate Marguerite was left alone. It becomes clear at this point that the niece of the granite viceroy had high qualities of courage and resolution. She continued on alone. One day she went out hunting and shot three polar bears, which alone is sufficient evidence of the spirit she possessed. Through everything she refused to be disturbed by the demons, although they gibbered at her through the hole in the roof which served as a chimney.
The denouement of the grim story came two years later, when a fishing vessel, seeing a column of smoke rising from the beach, had the courage to sail in closer. Seeing a woman, clad in the most groesque garb, signaling frantically to them, they decided to risk the hostility of the evil spirits and went in to rescue her. Marguerite, gaunt and ill but still filled with firm resolution, was taken off the island and sent back to France. She told there the story of her experience, and it seems to have been believed generally. There is one detail which lends some slight degree of authority to this incredible tale. Roberval’s pilot, one Jean Alphonse, calls the scene Les Isles de la Demoiselle, a reference, no doubt, to the brave Marguerite.
In the meantime the viceroy and his party reached Charlesbourg Royal and took possession of what was left of Cartier’s two forts. Roberval’s first thought apparently was to establish suitable quarters for the ladies and gentlemen of his party. He decided to elaborate the upper fort, and the result was a fair imitation of a feudal castle. It had an additional tower, two great halls (one for the gentry, no doubt, and one for the men of low degree), a huge kitchen, a series of storerooms and bedrooms and workshops. The effect of all this magnificence on the watching savages seems to have been a salutary one, for the redskins did nothing to interfere with the white men. It would have been much more sensible, however, if the commander had taken steps to provide something to fill the storerooms. Ground should have been prepared for summer planting in order to supplement the supplies of food. He sent back two of the ships in the fall with a report of Cartier’s desertion and of his own intention to winter at Cap Rouge.
The winter proved almost as hard to withstand as the experiences of the probably mythical Marguerite. The stores of food proved inadequate. Scurvy made its appearance early, and the newcomers were at a loss as to what to do to check it. Before the arrival of spring one third of the whole company had died of it.
The Sieur de Roberval quickly demonstrated that he possessed in full degree a stern sense of discipline but no gifts as an administrator. He sat over his people with a grimness of judgment which lends some small credibility to the story of the marooning of his niece. A man named Gailler, one of the malefactors, was detected in theft and promptly hanged. One Jean de Nantes was placed in irons for an infringement of the laws of decency. Women as well as men were sentenced to the whipping post for minor offenses. One member of the party, who later wrote an account of what had happened, asserts that six men were shot in one day and that the situation became bad enough to win the sympathy of the savages at Stadacona.
The balance of the story is largely a matter of conjecture. Spring came and the ice broke on the St. Lawrence and began to grind its way out to sea. Green showed under the fast-melting snow. A land of magic beauty was awakening; but there was no capacity left for joy at the prospect in the hearts of the men and women who had survived that dreadful winter. The Sieur de Roberval reached the same conclusion that Cartier had come to the preceding spring: that the odds were too heavy to overcome and that their mission was doomed to failure. He decided to take what was left of his company back to France.
One version has it that King Francis sent Cartier to assist in bringing them home and that the man from St. Malo performed this duty. The only definite evidence bearing on the winding up of this ill-fated adventure was the holding of a court of inquiry before which both Cartier and Roberval appeared to settle their accounts. The King seems to have been in a forgiving mood and willing to wash his hands of all such expensive ambitions. His strength exhausted by the excesses in which he had indulged all his life, he had only a few more years to live, and this may have been responsible for the apathy with which he passed over the obvious faults and mistakes of the two commanders.
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Perhaps also the aging sophisticate had become convinced that he had nothing to gain in the New World. The metals and precious stones which Cartier had carried back in his carefully packed and sealed casks had proved to be of little value. The gold was genuine enough, but the captain’s report made it clear that the metal existed in such minute quantities that there could be little profit in it. The diamonds were found to be rock crystal. This was a great disappointment and also the cause of much wry joking. For a long period thereafter anything which proved to be valueless was popularly referred to as “a Canadian diamond.” The legend of the Kingdom of Saguenay had been dispelled. The dream of finding fabulous wealth in America had been found lacking in substance; the bubble of easy wealth had been pricked.
The Sieur de Roberval was killed in a street affray in Paris near the Church of the Holy Innocents. Cartier spent the rest of his life in a small stone manor house at Limoilou near St. Malo, enjoying the company of his beloved Catherine and the respect of all citizens of the ancient seaport. It was recorded on September 1, 1557, “this sai
d Wednesday about five in the morning died Jacques Cartier.”
Fishermen continued to sail every spring to the banks off Newfoundland. In the anterooms of kings and sometimes in the secrecy of royal council meetings there was still talk of conquering and colonizing America. The interest, however, seems to have been largely academic. Spain continued to prosper from the gold which came out of Mexico and Peru, but the northern half of the continent held out no such inducements. Men shuddered at the story of the lovely and unfortunate Marguerite living alone on the Isle of Demons and of men swinging on improvised gallows outside Roberval’s feudal castle. The appetite for this kind of adventure ran thin for three quarters of a century thereafter in the veins of Frenchmen and Englishmen alike.
CHAPTER VI
Samuel de Champlain, the Founder of New France
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SAINTONGE lies on the Bay of Biscay and stretches down along the northern shore of the broad Gironde. Farther south, where the Gironde becomes the Garonne and Gascony begins, lies the fair city of Bordeaux, and below that again the magic triangle where the vineyards produce the great Bordeaux wines. Saintonge does not share to any extent in the profitable wine trade with England, but it has had historic connections of long standing with the English people, being part of the inheritance which Eleanor of Aquitaine took with her when she married Henry II in the twelfth century. It was always in view of the marshy shores of Saintonge that the northern fleets passed in their progress down the Gironde to the city which the first Edwards and the Black Prince loved so much, not to mention the unfortunate Richard II, who was called Richard of Bordeaux.
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