The four more pacifically inclined of the confederacy were prompt to send delegates, who arrived in subdued mood and did not indulge in any bluster or swagger. It was not until April that the Mohawks followed suit. The inevitable Flemish Bastard had been selected for the task, and he proved himself as persistently eloquent as before, addressing himself to the French with high-flown turns of speech and impressive gestures. When the toplofty oratory of the Chief of the Bend-sinister failed to accomplish the desired end, a full delegation of Mohawk chiefs was sent to Quebec to get matters settled. An agreement was reached and, after the usual preliminaries, a treaty of peace was ratified. It was maintained for twenty years.
One indication that the Mohawks were at last inclined in all honesty to bury the hatchet was the settlement of some of their number near Montreal. Even the Flemish Bastard brought his family up to take land near the junction of the great rivers.
Colbert had fallen into the habit of addressing most of his communications to Talon. On April 5, 1666, he wrote to that hardworking official: “The King is satisfied at seeing that most of the soldiers … want to establish themselves in that country with the aid of some supplementary help which will be given them.” It was intimated that His Majesty would be even happier if all of them decided to stay. This, however, was asking too much. The bulk of the Carignan veterans wanted to get back to France where, if they decided to remain at the trade of soldiering, they would know what to expect. The number who finally elected to remain was nevertheless surprisingly large, a total of 403, including officers. The spell of the land—this wild and beautiful land, this land of biting winds and of great rivers and forests—was upon them. They wanted to have land of their own, to marry and raise families. In addition, four companies of seventy-five men each were organized to remain in the country and act as garrisons.
Tracy returned to France in 1667, taking with him his two picked companies known as the colonelles. Most of the soldiers who went back enlisted again and were used as the nucleus of a new regiment which was given the name of Lorraine.
The officers who remained were given seigneuries, mostly along the banks of the Richelieu, where they formed a belt of settlements connecting the forts along the river. Some, however, were granted land on the St. Lawrence in close proximity to Montreal. The officers in turn portioned out tracts of land to the men who had served under them. There are few records of these transactions left, and such as exist are confused by the fact that many of the men were registered under the nicknames they had acquired during their years of military service. Thus it is known that La Bonté (Goodness), La Doceur (Sweetness), La Malice (The Wicked One), La Joie (Blythe Spirit), and Pretaboire (The Drunk) were among those who decided to become permanent citizens of the colony.
Little is known of their ultimate fate. Some, of course, were killed, for the trouble with the Indians continued in spite of pacific powwows and all the pipe-smoking which had gone on. It was the recognized right of any single Iroquois brave to go out on the warpath at any time he saw fit. When the urge to collect scalps rose to boiling point in a suppressed warrior, all he had to do was to sink his tomahawk in a post in the village clearing, and all who desired to go with him would follow suit. Where they went was completely a matter of individual preference. Peace or no peace, these little buccaneering parties were generally on the prowl around the outposts of French settlement.
Some of the soldiers, after giving farming and matrimony a trial, returned to France. A few heard of the milder climate of Acadia and removed themselves there. An occasional one vanished into the woods and presumably went native. A very few rose to posts of prominence in the colony.
A few of the seigneuries of the regimental officers became prosperous and were held by descendants of the original grantees through many generations. Descendants of at least six of them are to be found in French Canada today: Raby de Ranville, Tardieu de la Naudière, Dugué de Boisbriant, Olivier Morel de la Durantaye, Gautier de Varennes, Monet de Moras.
CHAPTER XXIII
A Great Man Comes to Canada Who Is Neither Soldier, Missionary, nor Explorer—Jean Talon, the Able Intendant, Who Introduces the Elements of Normality
1
THE office of intendant was an important cog in the Grand Plan, that grandiose conception which had lighted such a fire of enthusiasm behind the eyes of Louis the Invincible and which had been inaugurated so successfully by the humbling of the Iroquois. Perhaps the best indication of the magnitude of the Grand Plan was the cost of it. In 1664 Colbert had begun a new policy by creating the Company of the West, which was to have control of all French dominions beyond the seas—New France, western Africa, South America or the parts of it which Spain had not pre-empted, Cayenne, the Antilles. It was the same old idea on a much larger scale, a company richer and more powerful than the Hundred Associates which would have a monopoly of trade and would in return supply settlers, build forts, appoint and pay administrators, and provide priests. Colbert was filled with visions of a huge trade empire such as the world had never seen before. It became necessary almost at once, however, to adjust the vision as far as New France was concerned. The new company showed immediate signs of operating in the old ways which had been so disastrous. The directors wanted to collect all the revenue and forget the obligations. A compromise was soon made so far as Canada was concerned: the company would pay the cost of administration, with no control over the conduct of the main officers, and find reimbursement out of taxes levied on beaver skins, le droit du quart, and on moose skins, le droit du dixième. The figures made available by the discussions over this arrangement show that the sums expended each year in the direction and control of the colony amounted to something just under 50,000 livres. To carry the cost of the Grand Plan, the King had created what was called an Extraordinary Fund, the inroads on which were to prove quite as extraordinary as the fund itself. In the year 1665 alone the sum of 358,000 livres had been expended. This, of course, had been the year of greatest effort which had seen the arrival of the Carignan regiment and of one thousand other people. This would never have to be repeated (or so they hoped), but the carrying out of the royal designs would continue to cost the ambitious monarch staggering sums year after year.
An operation on this scale demanded careful supervision at both ends of the horn of plenty. No longer could the control of the colony be left to the proud and generally futile aristocrats who had been serving as governors, nor to zealous churchmen whose concern was the saving of souls. France now had in Colbert a remarkable administrator. New France must have the same, and so the post of intendant was created. The first man selected for the office was one Sieur Robert, about whom nothing much is known save that for some reason he never assumed the duties of his office. Colbert looked about him for a replacement and he recognized in the brilliant controller of Hainault a kindred spirit. He dismissed all other possibilities from his mind; Talon, obviously, was the man.
Jean Talon was not a soldier, a missionary, or an explorer. He did none of the spectacular things which remain on the pages of history while services of much greater importance are overlooked or dismissed with a dry paragraph. He was, instead, an administrator, a man of far vision who realized that the mere act of sending settlers out to New France would not bring growth and prosperity to the colony. It was Talon’s great contribution that he saw the need of making the colony a small replica of the mother country, a place where employment could be found and opportunities for useful and gainful small businesses. There had to be prosperous little shops and small but busy factories and inns where the food was good. Talon provided the colony with what it had always lacked, a solid background of sound money and honest barter, where a man and his wife and his children could strive together for a secure future.
Jean Talon was born at Châlons-sur-Marne about the year 1625 and as a young man secured employment in the commissariat of the French Army. His ability was so remarkable that he soared rapidly in the service and soon became chief commissary und
er the great Turenne. In less than a year a promotion came his way and he was made intendant of the province of Hainault, a post of major importance.
His looks, if he can be judged by the one portrait which is granted authenticity, belied his character. He is shown as a stocky man, with a full and rather round face peering out with amiability from the background of an elaborately curled wig; a hook nose, lips which curled up at the corners with a promise of joviality (which on occasions proved highly misleading), a pleasant enough eye under an arched brow. There was more than a hint of the dandy in him. He might have been a minor aristocrat, the owner of a small estate in the provinces, an opulent attorney. There was nothing of the ruffler about him; he wore a sword, of course, but it did not clank against his plump calves as though conscious of pride and privilege.
Jean Talon was a businessman, a fair imitation of the resourceful Colbert—cool, able, hard-working, and blessed with that greatest of gifts which is known as sound judgment. He was absolutely honest and fearless and he had a sense of vision which the soldier governors of New France had lacked. His coming was to prove the turning of an important leaf in the history of New France.
2
Talon’s first activities were in connection with the need for a steady increase in the population. He was full of schemes, some of them as bold as anything which had ever entered the soaring brain of Richelieu. He conceived a plan to have the holdings of the Dutch, which had been taken over by the British, transferred to France instead. It was a decidedly Machiavellian idea which he outlined in letters to Colbert. When the time came for the three nations to make permanent peace settlements France should insist on the return of the New Netherland colonies to Holland. In the meantime a secret understanding would be reached with the Dutch Government by which the colonies would then be ceded to France. Once this had been accomplished, the intendant pointed out in his communications with Colbert on the subject, the English would be hopelessly hemmed in and France would have a strangle hold on the Atlantic seaboard. As a corollary of this devious plan he suggested that five hundred settlers be sent out each year without fail, an addition which would soon assure Canada of a thriving population.
Colbert reached the conclusion that this appointee of his was going a little too fast. He cautioned the new intendant not to expect too much, to be content with less ambitious strides. Sending out five hundred settlers a year would in time “unpeople France.” Colbert, it may be taken for granted, was too shrewd to believe anything as untenable as this. Obviously he was using the argument as a means of meeting the importunings of the overbrisk Talon.
Failure in this direction did not quench the enthusiasm of the intendant. He began to work out plans himself, the most ambitious being the establishment of new settlements around Quebec, selecting the neighborhood of Charlesbourg for the purpose. Forty houses were erected in three separate communities called Bourg-Royal, Bourg-Ia-Reine, and Bourg-Talon. With Quebec still hopelessly crowded, there was an immediate demand for all of the houses. To show his faith in the plan, Talon bought a tract of the land himself. He had it cleared and erected thereon a large house, a barn, and other farm structures.
A shrewd plan to make these new villages easy of defense had suggested itself to Talon. The tracts of land for individual use were cut in triangular shape like wedges of cheese. The houses were built at the narrow angle where the tips of all the tracts came together, which provided a solid core of settlement at the center, with the shares of land widening as they progressed outward. Security was what prospective settlers demanded first of all, and so this unique idea took hold at once. This was putting in concrete form a plan which was being tried out elsewhere; and it established a pattern which persists to the present day, the very long and thin type of farm, with the farmhouse itself in close proximity to neighbors.
The settlers who swarmed to the Charlesbourg developments, to borrow a modern term, were given a supply of food to keep them going while clearing the stipulated two acres of land. They were paid something for their time as well and the necessary tools were supplied to them. In other words, a man could start with nothing save the will to make himself a landholder. The money to pay for all this came out of the King’s Extraordinary Fund. One obligation was assumed by the new settlers: each must clear two acres of land on other tracts, to ease the strain on those who came later. On these terms the Talon villages began to fill up rapidly.
The King viewed these steps with paternal approval. As Colbert phrased it in one of his letters, “The King regards his Canadian subjects, from the highest to the lowest, as his own children.” He wanted them to enjoy “the mildness and happiness of his reign.” The intendant was directed, in order to make sure that this beneficent design was being observed, to visit the people in all parts of the colony, “to perform the duties of a good head of the family” and so put the people in the way of “making some profit.” It was a generous thought, and the young monarch was to be commended for his intentions. Carried to an extreme later, however, the paternalistic design was to prove the basis of a cramping and irksome tyranny.
The resourceful Talon proceeded then to attack a problem created by the increase in population. An industrial background was needed to supply some of the necessities of life and at the same time to provide employment. He started the farmers to growing hemp and then created demands for the crop. This was done by an arbitrary method which, fortunately for all concerned, worked out very well. The hemp seed was distributed to landholders with the understanding that they must plant it at once and replace the seed next year from their own crops. In the meantime Talon went to all the shops and seized the supplies of thread. It was given out that thread could be secured only in exchange for hemp. As the mothers of growing families had to make clothes for their children, they either saw to it that their husbands raised hemp or went into the market and bought it. This highhanded procedure was maintained for a brief period only, as it resulted in starting a steady crop of hemp and provided the demand for it at the same time.
It was very clear in the practical mind of the intendant that the colony should reap some of the profits that fishermen from European ports were still sharing evey season. Cod-fishing stations were established along the lower St. Lawrence, and the “take” was good from the very beginning. Settlers were encouraged to go out to the sea where the seal and the white porpoise could be caught. The oil extracted was a valuable commodity and could be sold readily on home markets, thus creating a balance for the purchase of needed goods in France.
One of his most ambitious moves was the creation of a shipbuilding plant at Quebec. New France, he contended, must no longer be entirely dependent for supplies on the ships which plied to and fro from French ports. The men of the colony must be in a position to venture out under their own sails and to establish trading connections with the French colonies in the West Indies. The first ship completed was at Talon’s own expense. The cost of the second, a much more ambitious attempt, was borne by the King. The latter does not seem to have complained at the size of the withdrawals for the purpose, which reached a total finally of forty thousand livres. The venture had provided the colony with an excellent vessel and had at the same time given employment to three hundred and fifty men. It is recorded that in 1667 six vessels of various sizes and kinds were finished and put into use.
Having thus provided the colony with a thriving industry, the creative mind of the intendant turned in another direction. The brandy trade was still a bitter bone of contention in the colony. There seemed no way of preventing independent traders from using it as their main item of barter, and the colonists themselves liked it almost as well as the Indians. Talon conceived the idea that there would be less demand for brandy if fresh beer were available. He decided to build a brewery and, having every confidence that the plan would prove profitable, supplied the funds from his own purse. The idea found instant favor. In commenting on it, a correspondent in the Relations spoke of the beer as “this other drink which is ver
y wholesome and not injurious.” The brewery had been erected in the St. Charles section of the town. This was in 1668, and three years later the output had reached substantial proportions. The intendant reported the plant capable of producing four thousand hogsheads of beer annually, although there is no indication that this high level had been reached.
In many of his letters to Colbert the intendant stressed the need for livestock as a means of putting agriculture on a broader base. His demands fell on attentive ears. The supplies of cattle, sheep, and hogs which were sent out kept mounting. A few horses were supplied also. This led to the establishment of tanneries. To make use of the wool, the housewives were given looms, and this was the beginning of the carpet weaving which has been a characteristic activity in Quebec ever since. Potash was extracted from wood ash. Tar from the trees was collected and sent to France for sale.
3
There is behind every colonizing venture a hope that easy wealth will be discovered. The world still watched enviously as Spain grew ever richer on the easy gold of Mexico and Peru. North America had beaver skins and an abundance of sea fish, but there was no easy profit in either field; hard work and not luck was the key to financial returns there. The hope was never abandoned in France that ultimately Canada would provide natural resources from which wealth would flow eastward. This had always been behind the formation of the commercial companies to whom colonization had been entrusted.
The White and the Gold Page 33