1000 Years of Annoying the French

by Stephen Clarke

  Argall had discovered a new, fast transatlantic route. Instead of heading south towards the Canaries and then west with the trade winds, he sailed due west from the Azores to Bermuda and thence to the new English colony of Virginia. There, Argall had been instrumental in the kidnap of Pocahontas, who would of course go on to become a Disney film star. This was clearly a man at the heart of American history, and it was a very unlucky day for the colonists at Saint-Sauveur when he was ordered to explore the coast north of Virginia and eradicate any French settlements he found.

  In July 1613, he interrupted the French debate on La Méthode de colonisation idéale, burned the Fleur de Mai, set one group of settlers adrift in a boat, and made prisoners of the rest, half of whom were presumably saying, ‘See, I told you we should have built a fort first.’

  Amongst Argall’s captives was a priest called Father Biard, and it is alleged that Biard now betrayed his own countrymen by telling the Brits that they might like to stop off and destroy the settlement at Port Royal. Luckily for the colonists there, almost everyone was away working in the fields or hunting when Argall sailed up. So the English contented themselves with burning the houses and stealing anything of value or use, and were just about to sail out of the bay when the horrified settlers returned and recognized Biard on deck.

  The rivalry between French Protestants and Catholics had dealt an almost fatal blow to Acadie, and it was going to take the intervention of a famous Frenchman to resuscitate it …

  Beaverskin handbags at ten paces

  Cardinal Richelieu is remembered today as one of the most ruthless and ambitious politicians France has ever had (which is really saying something). Before he became the fictional anti-hero in Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Three Musketeers, he was the all too non-fictional prime minister of King Louis XIII, and an avowed enemy of the English.

  Born into a poor but noble family in 1585, Richelieu (full name: Armand-Jean du Plessis cardinal-duc de Richelieu et duc de Fronsac) had become a bishop aged only twenty-one and a cardinal at thirty-seven. He quickly made a reputation for himself as a clear-thinking administrator who took the most logical and efficient action as soon as it was needed, even if this meant having an innocent person executed to dissuade others from opposing him. He also had a superstitious streak, and used to consult soothsayers. And one of the things he was most anxious to know was when he would defeat the English.

  So when Richelieu received a letter from Acadie begging for assistance against the English, he thought it was a divine message. The letter came from a settler called Charles de Latour, who was theoretically Governor of Acadie but in reality little more than the leader of a gang of stranded fur trappers. Latour was married to a Native American, but apparently even this close co-operation with the locals was no guarantee that his ailing colony was going to survive the onslaught of the elements and the English.

  It was 1627, and the British and French were enjoying one of their frequent minor wars. The Protestant port of La Rochelle on the west coast of France was under siege by Richelieu and Louis XIII’s Catholic army, and England was meddling in France’s religious strife by sending ships to the Protestants’ aid. For once, fate seemed to be on France’s side, because the man leading the British mission was the Duke of Buckingham, who, it was alleged, had been selected not because of his military prowess but because he was a close friend of the royal family – it was widely accepted that he had been the lover of the previous King of England, James I.* Under orders of a new king, Charles I, Buckingham tried to capture the Ile de Ré, the long island that lies like a sea wall guarding the access to La Rochelle harbour, but failed miserably, losing several thousand men in the process, mainly from starvation and sickness because of his bad preparations. When La Rochelle capitulated, Richelieu saw Buckingham’s absurd defeat as proof that heaven had decided it was time to stick it to the English once and for all.

  Richelieu and Louis XIII therefore decided to answer Charles de Latour’s cry for help with four ships, all laden with men and supplies destined to relaunch France’s colonization of Acadie. But in a tragi-comic anti-climax, the miniature rescue fleet was intercepted by British ships, and the short-lived excitement was over. If it was a sign from heaven, it was two fingers to France.

  To make matters worse, these British ships had been on their way to Nova Scotia with seventy Scottish colonists. They arrived safely, no doubt pleased to have the extra French provisions on board, and set up camp at Port Royal, the place that the French had so kindly prepared for settlement. The houses had been burnt, but overall it was, they found, an excellent site for a colony, near a good fresh-water supply, and the land around it had been cleared for planting. There was even a well-built French mill nearby. The Scots decided (unanimously) to start off by building a fort, and when that was done they set about consolidating their settlement.

  Worse was to follow for Charles de Latour. His begging letter to Louis XIII and Richelieu had been delivered by his father, Claude, who had been returning to Acadie on one of the ships that were captured by the Scots. Perhaps they had plied him with whisky, because Latour Senior seems to have become convinced during the Atlantic crossing that in the long run France was totally incapable of maintaining its foothold in Canada.

  He therefore offered to go and persuade his son to give up his French governorship of Acadie and accept a more concrete land grant from the Brits. And when Charles refused to bow to British rule, Claude even led an Anglo-Scottish force to attack his son’s fort.

  Charles, though, had learned from his countrymen’s past mistakes, and had built himself a decent stronghold. The French held on, and an abashed Claude de Latour had to march his men back to Port Royal, where he was promptly thrown out by his disgruntled hosts, leaving him with no option but to return and beg forgiveness from his son. Today, at Fort St Louis in Nova Scotia, there is a small stone pyramid with a plaque immortalizing the family argument in both English and French. It says that ‘In 1630 Claude de Latour arrived here with an Anglo-Scottish expedition and strove in vain to induce his son Charles to surrender the last foothold of France in Acadia. From the consequent displeasure of the Scots at Port Royal, Charles later offered him refuge near this fort.’ Which sounds as though the father was forgiven but had to stay out in the woodshed.

  Soon afterwards, political events in Europe interceded to save the de Latour family from further embarrassment: the short war with England had ended with the Duke of Buckingham’s La Rochelle debacle, and Richelieu demanded reparations. These he received in 1632, when Nova Scotia was restored to France as Acadie. The Scottish colonists at Port Royal were ordered to destroy their settlement and ship everything moveable back to Britain. Incredibly, the Acadien dream had risen from the ashes.

  But it didn’t take the French long to flatten it again.

  France’s main problem: nuns don’t have many babies

  Richelieu was now convinced more than ever that Acadie was part of a divine mission, and hatched a plan to make Canada one enormous evangelical playground. New settlements were to be basically missionary outposts with enough peasant helpers to feed the priests and nuns. A less devout man might have suspected that communities in which lay people were merely expected to produce food for missionaries were not going to be as dynamic as settlements where everyone concentrated on massacring the local wildlife and selling the meat, fish and fur for maximum profit, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to Richelieu.

  Nevertheless, one man took up Richelieu’s challenge: Samuel de Champlain, a veteran campaigner who had founded a short-lived colony on the site of Quebec in 1609. In 1633, Champlain was given the title of ‘the King’s lieutenant for the St Lawrence River’ and sent to Canada with 200 French peasants, carefully chosen for their ‘good morals’ – that is, they were all devout Catholics. Champlain took them up the St Lawrence to Quebec, where he built a new stronghold (diplomatically named Fort Richelieu), a Jesuit college, a convent, a home for newly converted Native Americans and a la
rge brothel. No, that last one was a joke.

  As we all know, Catholic priests and nuns (even French ones) do not usually produce many offspring. Which explains why, by the end of the 1600s, the population of the whole of Nouvelle-France (French Canada), including a new settlement in Montreal, was only around 20,000. By contrast, the English colonies stretching from Virginia up to Maine were already home to some 200,000 people, and it was this basic mathematics that was going to put an end to French rule in Acadie.

  Throughout the late 1600s and early 1700s, the French army kept launching raids into British-held territory, but instead of driving the foreigners away, this merely seems to have persuaded London that life in its northeast American colonies would be much more relaxing in the long run if they kicked the French out of Canada once and for all.

  Call Mr Darcy!

  In 1713, France ceded possession of coastal Canada to Britain by signing the Treaty of Utrecht, in which, amongst other things, King Louis XIV revoked his claims on Newfoundland and Acadie in return for a reduction in taxes on French imports into Britain, as well as possession of Alsace. In short, coastal Canada was bargained away for more valuable interests closer to home. It’s the kind of thing that makes the Quebeckers hate France even today.

  Ever since 1713, waves of English-speaking colonists had been arriving in Acadie, as well as large numbers of soldiers. In 1749, the Brits founded the new town of Halifax, to give themselves a separate, non-French-speaking capital. Nervous Acadiens were not reassured when in 1754 a man called Charles Lawrence was appointed Governor of Nova Scotia. Here was a type familiar to anyone who has read Jane Austen or seen one of the adaptations: an arrogant English bigot who was convinced that the law was on his side and that he was therefore free to act as odiously as possible. Jane Austen would have sent in Mr Darcy to take him down a peg, but all this was taking place a long way from the rustic tranquillity of the English countryside, on a wild peninsula perched on the edge of the known world, where death was a storm away and whole communities had been wiped out or displaced countless times within living memory.

  Lawrence, a military man, was a sadist with almost unlimited powers. Added to this, he was highly suspicious of the Acadiens, and one of his first acts was to demand that they take the oath of allegiance to Britain and agree to do active military service against any invading force – France, for example. The Acadiens naturally refused, not only because they were loath to shoot their former countrymen, but also because they didn’t want to be called away from their fields and traps every time some snooty Parisian commander decided to come and cause trouble.

  Lawrence responded by imposing absurdly harsh penalties for any signs of disloyalty. For instance, if an Acadien was told to supply a British settlement with firewood and did not obey quickly enough, his house was to be demolished for fuel. Lawrence also had Acadiens’ guns and canoes confiscated – both essential tools in hunting and fishing communities – and made plans to convert all the French settlers to the Church of England. Not surprisingly, the Acadiens began to seek refuge away from the English madman, which wasn’t hard, Nova Scotia being a vast and mostly undeveloped peninsula with plenty of rivers and streams where a resourceful trapper could make a living.

  No doubt furious that the wily Frenchmen kept defying his authority, on 28 July 1755 Governor Lawrence gave the order to begin deportation.

  He sent an order down to New England for a fleet of two dozen cargo ships, which were to be refitted to turn their holds into prison cells without windows or sanitary arrangements (the New Englanders were pretty familiar with this kind of transport, because they were avid slave traders). Meanwhile, soldiers – also New Englanders – were encamped near the village of Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, but instructed not to act yet, as it was harvest time and the Governor wanted the Acadiens to leave behind a good supply of fresh food.

  Wondering what the soldiers were up to, the peaceful settlers got on with their lives, but began to suspect that something not too pleasant was going on when five empty cargo ships arrived offshore, and Charles Lawrence issued a summons, commanding all males over the age of ten to attend a meeting at 3 p.m. on 5 September at the village of Grand-Pré, in St Charles Church. (It’s not clear whether the choice of venue was a joke. Probably not. Charles Lawrence does not seem to have had much levity about him.) It was announced that attendance at the meeting was obligatory ‘on pain of forfeiting goods and chattels’.

  On that afternoon, over 400 men and boys assembled, to be told by one Colonel Winslow that they were to hear ‘His Majesty’s final resolution to the French inhabitants of this, his province of Nova Scotia, who for almost half a century have had more indulgence granted them then any of his subjects in any part of his Dominions’. Colonel Winslow said that what he was about to do was ‘very disagreeable’ to him, ‘as I know it must be grievous to you who are of the same species’. (So at least he conceded that the Acadiens were human.) He went on to announce that ‘your land and tenements, cattle of all kinds and livestocks of all sorts are forfeited to the Crown with all your other effects, savings, your money and household goods, and you yourselves to be removed from this Province’.

  This was a shocking announcement to say the least, but Winslow showed that the Brits believe in fair play by adding: ‘I am through His Majesty’s goodness directed to allow you liberty to carry of your money and household goods as many as you can without discommoding the vessels you go in’, which, given that the cargo ships had been given strict targets of numbers of people to be packed on board, was a cleverly phrased lie.

  He also promised that ‘whole families shall go in the same vessel’ – another lie, as is proved by an order that Lawrence sent to one of the other soldiers organizing the expulsion, a certain Colonel Robert Monckton: ‘I would have you not wait for the wives and the children coming in, but ship off the men without them.’

  Initially, the announcement in the church must have been greeted by bewilderment, because almost the only English words the Acadiens knew were ‘cod’ and ‘beaver’. Apparently, the sole linguist in the room was an Acadien called Pierre Landry, who translated the British declaration as soon as he’d got over his shock.

  Immediately, the pleas for more lenient treatment began. Some Acadiens offered to pay for their release and move to French-settled territories inland, but this was refused. Others begged to be allowed to go and tell the women what was happening, so that they could make arrangements to leave. Eventually, a small delegation was freed to go and inform the waiting families, while Winslow held the others as hostages, sending 250 young men to be imprisoned on the waiting ships.

  It wasn’t until 8 October that the rest of the cargo fleet arrived and the mass deportation could begin in earnest. In the interim, twenty-four men had jumped ship, and two had been shot while trying to escape. Women and children arrived to join the men, bringing as many belongings as they could carry, but despite British promises these were left behind on the shore, and stayed there until they were found by English settlers arriving in the area five years later.

  On 27 October, fourteen vessels set sail with almost 3,000 people on board, packed in as tightly as slaves and with barely enough food to survive. If the Acadiens had had portholes, they would have seen the smoke and flames rising from their settlements as the soldiers burned houses and barns to ensure that the departure was final.

  At other places in Nova Scotia, the deportations were equally brutal but less efficient. Men escaped from captivity and many families hid out in the woods, evading search parties as best they could but suffering the hardships of the climate and lack of food. In some cases, whole villages upped sticks and migrated inland to set up new settlements where the Brits couldn’t find them.

  To make sure that the Acadiens would receive no help from the friendly Native Americans, Lawrence put a bounty on Micmac heads, offering £30 (a small fortune) for every male and £25 for a woman or child captured alive, and, chillingly, £25 for every male scalp – though how y
ou tell between an adult male scalp and that of a woman or child is not very clear.

  This was ethnic cleansing on a scale that hadn’t been practised by the Brits since the Hundred Years War, the only difference being that the victims were killed by overcrowding and starvation or while ‘trying to escape’ and ‘helping the enemy’, rather than being randomly put to the sword.

  In all, an estimated 12,600 Acadiens, of a total of around 18,000, were deported between 1755 and 1763. It is thought that 8,000 died, including many of those who fled or hid.

  Not that France was very sympathetic to the plight of its colonists. It is generally accepted that the acid-tongued writer Voltaire was only saying what pretty much everyone in Paris felt about Canada when he wrote a letter after the disastrous 1755 earthquake in Lisbon saying: ‘I wish that the earthquake had swallowed up that miserable Acadie instead.’ He is also famous (in Quebec at least) for having complained in 1757 that Britain and France were at war for ‘a few acres* of snow near Canada’. And French Canadians, who have a whole list of similar quotes, are equally pleased with Voltaire’s declaration in 1762 that ‘I’d rather have peace than Canada.’

  Even so, the deportation of the Acadiens was not exactly Britain’s, or New England’s, finest hour, which is probably why these events appear in Anglo history books a little less often than the heroic goings-on inland …

  A wolf in Wolfe’s clothing

  In 1756, a year after the deportation of Acadiens began, the Seven Years War broke out, and rather than engaging in skirmishes, France and Britain were now officially embroiled in a full-scale battle for military possession of their colonies in North America and elsewhere.