“Yes, I do. I want to be just like her. I only hope I feel well enough to go to France when the time comes.”
“You will. You are looking so much better than yesterday even. Your cheeks have some color to them.” He would never admit it to her but in his heart Phillippe believed that she would not get to France. Maybe, too, part of it was hope that she would not go.
Marguerite put her arm through his and leaned against him. Phillippe realized he liked the feel of her arm in his. Something tugged at his heart. He was not sure what it was but there was a feeling of warmth having her beside him.
As much as he was excited about going west in the spring, he was concerned about leaving her. It was only for the summer and there was her family to look after her, but still he worried. What if she got worse while he was gone?
* * *
Pierre sat staring at his tankard of beer. He absently rubbed his right leg.
“What is wrong with your leg?” Francois asked.
Pierre stopped. “Nothing.”
“Did you talk to William about hiring us?”
“I did yesterday and he agreed.”
Francoise and Bernard laughed and slapped each other on the back. “The three of us are still paddling together,” Francois said.
When they settled, they looked at Pierre. “You are quiet tonight,” Bernard said.
“We should set out on our own this spring,” Pierre said. He deeply wished that they could but he knew it would not happen. He just felt the need to maintain his bravado. He could not let anyone see that he was getting old and weak. “Like the old days. We make the deals, we get the money.”
Francois looked over at Bernard. “We do not have the money to buy the trade goods,” Bernard said. “And no one will advance them to us on credit anymore.”
“Plus, we are already signed on with William,” Francois said.
Pierre slammed his fist on the table. “I hate what the English have done to us. We used to be able to go on our own and bring back the furs and sell them to the merchants who in turn sent them to France. Now we have to hire on with an English or Scottish company and work for them.”
“Ah, but they need us,” Francois said. “Without us they would have no one to paddle the canoes and trade with the Indians.”
“And we Frenchmen are the only ones who know the routes to the best furs,” Bernard added. “The English and Scotts would be lost in the forests and twisting rivers.”
“But we are not men anymore,” Pierre said. “We are hired help. We should quit working for them.”
“But we know nothing else,” Francois said sadly. “We were raised in the fur trade. Besides,” he said brightening. “It is what we love.”
“You are right,” Pierre said, looking into the tankard which was almost empty. “There is nothing I love more than paddling and trading. But I still hate the English.”
“You seem to forget that France gave New France to the English in the Treaty of Paris,” a voice said behind them.
Pierre turned and looked at William who was sitting at a table behind him. He had not seen him come in.
“France gave up its holdings in Canada because it wanted to keep its West Indies sugar farms,” William said. “Your homeland sold you people out.”
Pierre scowled at William. He knew it was true and he hated France for it, but he could not say so. He could not admit that his fatherland could so easily let New France fall into British hands, enemy hands.
“We could have beaten you,” Pierre said. “Old Vaudreuil did not give us a chance to try.”
“Your stone wall was no match for our cannons. We had you outnumbered. It was a good thing Vaudreuil surrendered. We would have killed many of you.” William took a drink from his mug of beer.
Pierre swallowed the desire to punch William, to vent all his frustrations on this man, this symbol of the British takeover not only of Montreal, but of the fur trade and his livelihood.
“And we did not make you Montrealers return to France as we did the residents of Louisbourg and other places. You were given your religious freedom, property rights, and equality in trade. When the Treaty of Paris was signed you became subjects of the British Crown.”
“We do not want to owe allegiance to your English king,” Pierre spat.
William shrugged. “What difference does it make? Look at history where in one century people of one country could owe allegiance to three or four different kings. It does not matter so long as a man can work and earn a living.”
“I did that for many years,” Pierre boasted. “I proved myself on the rivers and over the portages. I paddled longer and harder than anyone else and carried a heavier load. The merchants were happy to have a voyageur such as me”.
“Well, I hope that I will be happy to have a voyageur like you.” William finished his drink and stood. He headed to the door.
Pierre glared at William’s back. If he was not in so much pain he would attack him for what he had insinuated. He was tempted to try it anyway. William sat behind a counter all day. He was soft. Pierre willed himself to calm down. He needed the money William had offered him.
“I am the best voyageur in all of Montreal,” he yelled.
Chapter Ten
After spending hours at the tavern with Francois and Bernard, Pierre wove his way to the stables behind his brother’s place. His back was so sore he could not straighten up. The pain had been unbearable most of the evening and his drinking was as much to lessen the pain in his body as it was to have fun with his pals.
He stumbled up the stairs to his room. It was not very big, just containing a single bed, a table, and a small fireplace for cooking and heat. When he had renovated the former storage area years ago he had only needed it for the winter, being gone west for most of the summer. But during the years that the English had shut down the fur trade, he lived in it year round. He was charged a small pittance, which he paid from the wages he earned for work in his brother’s blacksmith shop.
It was cold inside. He moaned as he bent over to stuff some kindling in the fireplace and light it with his striker. Once it was burning, he threw in some larger pieces of wood then dropped onto his bed. He had thought he had drank enough beer to fall asleep immediately, but nothing happened. The pain was counteracting the effects of the beer. He had to do something or he would start screaming.
Pierre forced his mind to wander back to the best years of his life, the years before the English took over New France. He, Francois, and Bernard had been free coureurs de bois, rovers of the woods. They had formed a partnership and using money borrowed from Etienne, bought goods from an outfitter who was a former paddler. He had retired from the fur trade with enough money to set up a business of supplying his previous companions. He imported the goods from France or bought from Quebec importers. Then he advanced rifles, shot and powder, pots and pans, beads, knives and brandy to the three men on credit.
The goods that came from France for trade had a price. The importer bought the goods and would mark up the price from twenty-six to thirty percent before selling them to the outfitter. The outfitter in turn would increase the price by twenty-five to thirty-three percent when he financed them to Francois, Bernard and him. Their mark-up to the Indians was 100 percent. Therefore, a 100 livre item from France would cost the equivalent, in beaver pelts, of 315 to 360 livres by the time it reached Indian country.
The three coureurs de bois, in turn, hired extra paddlers to help them transport the goods inland to the post at Grande Portage, named for the almost nine mile portage they had to make from the west side of Lake Superior to Pigeon River. There they traded for their choice of furs. The natives liked paddling the shorter distances from the west to the French posts to trade instead of making the longer trip to the Hudson’s Bay Company posts to the north on Hudson’s Bay.
The one drawback was that the independent traders from Montreal could not haul enough goods in their canoes to satisfy all the native’s desires. Some of those native
s took the remaining lesser quality furs to the bay posts to be traded for their superior tobacco and some larger items that the French could not transport.
Once they had their canoes full, the three men returned to Montreal in the fall before the snows. They handed the furs over to the outfitter and received their pay.
After settling with Etienne, they were happy to have realized a profit. They headed to the tavern to celebrate. There they agreed they should save their money so they could purchase the goods themselves and not have to deal with only one merchant at the end of their trip. They could approach all the merchants and get the best deal.
However, in a matter of weeks they had drank away most of their money and by spring, they had little left. They had gone west the next year, again with Etienne’s backing. Instead of trading at Grande Portage, though, they decided to paddle further. They went northwest as far as Lake Winnipeg. There they stayed at one of the posts set up by a fur trader named La Verendrye in the 1740s.
When they returned to Montreal the next year they were able to sell their furs to the highest bidder. They paid Etienne and pocketed hefty profits. They were the bosses. And they could now call themselves Northmen. But again they wasted away most of their money. When Etienne refused to back them the third year they hired on with a merchant but that was the year that the final great battle for New France began.
Pierre groaned as he rolled over in his bed. He lay there staring at the ceiling. What was he going to do? He knew he could not paddle this year. He should have told William no but the money had been so tempting. A jolt of pain shot across his back. He wished he had a drink now to deaden the pain, but he could not get off the bed. He lay there reliving the build up to the loss of New France to the British.
Since the fur trade started in the 1600s, the English and the French had fought to take control of the total trade. When the Hudson Bay Company from England set up posts on Hudson Bay those posts changed hands between the British and French a number of times before the Treaty of Utrech in 1713. The British and French also had trading posts south of Montreal and the Great Lakes and skirmishes continually erupted between them.
The matter began to come to a head in 1755 when both countries increased their troops, the British in America, the French in New France. In January of 1756, the Marquis de Montcalm set sail for New France with 1200 more men.
The Seven Years War had begun.
Montcalm arrived in Montreal to assist the governor general with an attack on British owned Fort Oswego. This fort was on the south side of Lake Ontario across from the French post of Fort Frontenac. Fort Oswego’s capture gave the French total control of Lake Ontario.
In the summer of 1757, the French also took over Fort George, which was on the shore of Lake George to the south. But English military far outnumbered the French troops in the country. A request was sent back to France for more reinforcements but the King refused to send any. Pierre and the rest of the people of New France had felt betrayed by their home country. They realized that their new country was expendable to France.
Louisbourg, in Acadia, was also part of New France. A battle there the summer of 1758 was won by the British. The 5000 residents of Acadia and almost as many French militia were shipped back to France or sent south to New Orleans, Louisiana. There, they became known as Cajuns.
A month later the French successfully defended Fort Carillon on the southern end of Lake Champlain in New York against their rivals. However, Fort Carillon fell to the British in the early summer of 1759 as did forts along Lake Ontario. Soon the British controlled the lakeshore and British troops were marching to Quebec.
At the beginning of the war, Pierre, along with many other fur traders and most farmers had abandoned their regular work and joined the militia. In Quebec, Montcalm had 2,200 regular troops, 1,500 marines and 10,000 civilian soldiers, all waiting for the British troops to arrive. The youngest of these was aged thirteen, while the oldest were in their eighties. Pierre was one civilian soldiers.
The British, under Brigadier General James Wolfe, had 8,000 regular troops and a naval fleet when they attacked Quebec. Montcalm and his defenders were able to hold onto Quebec all summer of 1759 thanks to the terrain around Quebec. They were situated high above the St Lawrence River. The British, however, kept up an artillery barrage of the town from the river and reduced much of it to rubble. Also, the soldiers went along the shore and burned the houses and crops of the farmers for miles east of Quebec.
The memory of this still irritated Pierre. Those farmers had no crop to sustain them for the coming winter. But the people he was most angry with were the idiots who had been guarding a steep footpath west of Quebec. That path led from the river up to the unfortified Plains of Abraham, named after its original owner, Abraham Martin, who was a ship’s pilot in 1645.
It was the night of September 12, 1759, and Pierre and his fellow defenders were sleeping in their tents in the town. According to the story he heard later, British troops climbed that path and when they reached the top they were stopped by three French militiamen.
“Who goes there?” one asked.
“We are a group of French relief soldiers,” an Englishmen answered in French.
“Pass on by,” the militiaman said.
And they stood back to let the British troops walk in pairs past them.
By morning four thousand British troops and their field artillery were assembled on the plains waiting for the French.
“How stupid could someone be?” Pierre said out loud, his words filling his room. Pierre struggled to sit up. He could not do it so he slid to the floor. He crawled to the table where a jug of wine sat. Using his arms he pulled himself up and into the chair. He poured a glass and drank it. This had better help with the pain because concentrating on his thoughts was not.
When the English were discovered Montcalm sent out a combination of four thousand regular militiamen and civilians. Though the armies facing each other were of equal strength, the British were at an advantage because their troops were all trained.
Pierre was one of the French civilians. He clearly remembered the drizzly morning and the wet, slippery grass. Like the rest of the habitants turned soldiers, Pierre loved his country and would fight to keep it. However, none of them knew anything about military tactics.
Montcalm gave the order and the French militia and civilians rushed towards the British troops. The ground was uneven. Pierre was in the middle of the mass. The man in front of him slipped and fell. Pierre jumped over him and continued running with the rest of the men. The French in the lead yelled and fired haphazardly, with little results. Pierre saw some civilians who, when they went to reload, threw themselves on the ground and rolled to the right. The regular troops behind tripped over them and fell to the ground.
Sitting in his room Pierre could still picture himself in the middle of the scene on the plains. He saw the rushing troops and civilians, he heard the noise of the yelling and the gunfire, and his nose wrinkled at the memory of the acrid smell of the gunpowder.
The British did not start shooting until the French were about forty feet away. When Wolfe ordered his men to fire, the field was engulfed in a fog of smoke. Pierre could barely see in front of him and his eyes teared from the burning haze. He could still hear gunfire around him but he could not see anyone to fire at. What bothered him the most, were the disembodied screams for help floating in the air.
When the smudge began to clear, Pierre saw hundreds of Frenchmen laying on the ground, some still, some thrashing in pain. While Pierre was taking it all in Brigadier General Wolfe ordered another volley. This time when the smoke cleared the battle was over. He could not believe the hundreds of bodies that lay dead on the ground.
Pierre hated to admit it but when the French troops and regular civilians around him dashed off the field, he was in their midst. The battle had lasted about thirty minutes with Brigadier General James Wolfe being killed and the French leader, the Marquis de Montcalm, wounded. Montca
lm died the next day, September 14.
Pierre’s back and leg pain was unrelenting. Remembering was not blocking it out, it was only bringing back terrible memories.
He shakily poured himself another drink. He remembered his retreat with the French troops and other civilians to Montreal. They left the people of the town of Quebec to surrender to the British on September 18.
During the winter in order to gather more defenders for Montreal the men of the town and surrounding farms were forced to join the militia. Some of the farmers who refused had their farms burned. Both Louis and Etienne joined the fight.
The three were in Montreal the next summer when 20,000 British troops with artillery surround the town. Pierre knew they were in trouble. There were only 2,132 regular soldiers in Montreal along with the militia. But he wanted to run the English out of New France. He was bitterly disappointed when the governor general of the colony, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, surrendered Montreal without a shot being fired. In a show of defiance he and many of his fellow compatriots burned the French flag.
When Montreal was turned over to the British on September 8, 1760, it was a black day in Pierre’s life. On the 9th, the British troops entered the town. The British army held a parade in the Place d’Armes on September 11. Pierre had to fight the bile that rose in his throat at the sight of the red coats marching in his town.
A military government was set up by the British and many of the French government officials, including Vaudreuil, returned to France. The British told the French under their rule that anyone who wanted to leave the colony could. Pierre was mad enough to think about moving away. He even considered going to New Orleans where some of the French from Louisbourg had gone. But this was his country and he had no idea how he would live if he left. Many of the other residents must have felt the same because very few people went to France.
The British set up three districts — Montreal, Trois Riveries, and Quebec and each had a Governor. In 1763, when the Treaty of Paris made the takeover of New France official, all three districts were united into one province and called Quebec.
West to Grande Portage Page 7