The White and the Gold (44 page)

Three more villages were captured with the same ease. The Indian garrisons lost heart as soon as they saw the French filing out through the trees. Not a shot was fired, not a blow struck. “It is done,” said Tracy reverently after the exodus of the Indians had been completed from the fourth village. But it developed that there was one village left, the largest and reputedly the strongest of the lot. This information was conveyed to Courcelle by an Algonquin woman who had been a prisoner of the Mohawks for years and who knew the country well and the habits of her masters. She led the way at once through the forest to this last stronghold.

Andaraqué was the name of the last village. It had quite clearly been fortified with the advice of the Dutch, for there was a hint of European methods in the quadrangular shape and the triple palisades nearly twenty feet high. There were four strong bastions at the corners which made it possible to enfilade the whole line of the walls with gunfire, an idea which had not been hatched in a native skull. It would have been a tough nut to crack if the resolution to defend it to the bitter end had not deserted the garrison.

Panic swept over the crowded platforms when the uniforms of the French came in sight. The chief in command, who had been exhorting his men to fight, was the first to yield to it. “The whole world is coming against us!” he cried. He was the first to run and the first to make his way through the rear gate.

Andaraqué had been well stocked for the winter. The houses inside the palisades were unusually large, some of them being one hundred and twenty feet long. These had underground cellars filled with dried meat and smoked fish and huge stores of corn meal, enough to provide the tribe with food for the long season ahead. The presence of these necessary stores had provided the reason for the determination of the “Annies” to defend the town; but when the first of the Frenchmen forced their way in through the ponderous oak gates, they found only a very old Indian, two ancient crones, and a small boy hiding together under an upturned canoe.

After reserving as much of the food as would be necessary for the return trip, Tracy had the place set on fire. The bark on the roofs was as dry as tinder, and the trickle of fire which ran along the walls grew almost instantaneously into a devastating blaze. It lighted up the sky for many miles around. The somber Mohawks, watching it from afar, drew the anticipated conclusions from it. The power of the French King, that great white chief whose home was dragged behind the mighty hornless buffalo, was too great to be withstood. Here he had reached no more than a hand across the water and the woods were filled with demons in blue coats. The country of his enemies was being reduced to ashes. War against the French had become unprofitable.

The Five Nations had no will left for war. The Mohawks, after the burning of Andaraqué, managėed to survive the winter but were now as much disposed to smoke the pipe of peace as the rest. No move was made to send delegations to Quebec, however, until Tracy sent word that, unless something was done quickly, he would hang all the chiefs he had been holding as hostages. The men of the Five Nations took this threat seriously, having acquired a proper respect for this massive old man. Had he not hanged Agariata the boastful in the presence of the other members of the peace party which had gone to Quebec the year before? Clearly he meant what he said.

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.

T
HE 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 under 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.