The White and the Gold (69 page)

There were sixteen men in the four-bastioned stockade of Fort Hayes and they were sleeping snugly in their beds when the eighty Frenchmen materialized out of darkness in the night attack. Troyes led his main force against the gate, which he proceeded to belabor with a battering-ram made from the trunk of a tree. What made the victory easy, however, was the fact that Iberville and his two brothers and a squad of the boldest French Canadians had climbed over one of the side walls and were already in possession of the compound when the first crash of the ram split the air. The English came rushing out to see what convulsion of nature had thus disturbed their slumbers, to find Iberville and his men scowling at them over leveled muskets.

Before news of this bloodless triumph could circulate along the swampy and dismal shores of the Great Bay by that form of forest telepathy which has never been fully explained, the jubilant French force had covered the forty leagues eastward to Fort Rupert. The same tactics were employed: a night attack, a party scaling the walls and exploding a grenade down the chimney of the blockhouse where the garrison slept, a break through the main gate at the same time. Iberville had been assigned a still more daring part of the operation. A vessel lay at anchor near the fort, and it was seen to be highly essential that it should not get away to carry the alarm to the remaining English post. The daring Pierre led a small party over the side of the ship. They found the sentry asleep and killed him, then gave short shrift to such other members of the crew as came up through the hatch to investigate. The rest of the crew, imprisoned in the hold, finally surrendered. A big fish was caught in this casting of the net, none other than Governor Bridgar, who commanded on the bay for the Gentlemen Adventurers.

The capture of Fort Albany, which lay to the west where the river of that name flowed into the ice-clogged waters of the bay, was a different matter. Somehow the garrison, which consisted of thirty men under the command of a resolute agent named Sargent, had heard what was afoot. Lacking the advantage of surprise which had made their successes relatively easy, the Frenchmen had to adopt more conventional methods. From the two forts already in their hands they brought ten cannon in the vessel which Iberville had captured and which he now commanded. The guns were mounted
on a hill overlooking the fort. The fusillade directed at the fort from this protected position was so deadly that in the matter of an hour the stockade was in flames and the garrison had taken refuge in a cellar. The white flag was hoisted and terms of surrender were arranged between Troyes and the crestfallen Sargent.

The part the Le Moyne brothers had played in this remarkably successful raid was recognized in the appointment of Maricourt to remain in command of the captured forts while the rest of the party returned to Montreal in triumph.

The news of the raid shook London, and there was such clamor for reprisal that the submissive attitude of King James could not hold things in check. King Louis had to send a special envoy to London to assist Barillon, his Ambassador, in countering the angry demands made for the restitution of the forts and recompense for the losses sustained. A neutrality pact was signed finally at Whitehall. Whether the English had any intention of keeping it cannot be judged by what followed, but the French King soon made it clear that such was not his purpose.

Denonville had made Irondequoit Bay on the south shore of Lake Ontario the rendezvous for the forces he now intended to lead against the Senecas. He arrived there himself with four hundred canoes and two thousand men. By the greatest of good luck he reached the bay on the same day as his Indian allies from the north and west. They came four hundred strong, accompanied by a band of
coureurs de bois
led by three of the bravest Frenchmen in the West, Du Lhut, La Durantaye, and Henri Tonty.

The Senecas had been marked down as the victims of this great drive because they were the most numerous and powerful of the Five Nations and, at the moment, the most belligerent; more obdurate even than the Mohawks, who had once opposed the French with the greatest determination. There was another reason, however, which focused hostility on this single nation. Dark rumors had spread about the Senecas. Not only had more Frenchmen and their allies been burned to death in the main village of the tribe, but the place was reputed to be the scene of strange orgies. Men whispered about the dark magic practiced there, calling the village Babylon, Sodom, or Gomorrah. Witchcraft of the most foul and devilish description
was carried out in dark temples of infamy. The Senecas must therefore be wiped out first. Perhaps their fate would teach the rest of the Iroquois tribes to bury the hatchet for good and consent to live on terms of friendship with the rest of the world.

The strength of the invaders was so great that the Senecas, after one unsuccessful attempt to ambush the advancing Frenchmen, retreated in panic toward the east, taking their families with them and such food supplies as they could hastily gather. Before running away, however, they burned the main village about which such unsavory stories had been told. Even if it had been left standing, it would have disappointed the least avid of the invaders. It had occupied the crest of a hill and it was neither very large nor very strong; a tawdry affair of tanbark and logs. Where were the temples in which the medicine men had performed their dreadful rites? Was this the scene of the orgies in which the strange and fierce tribesmen indulged?

All the French found were the blackened remnants of small lodgings and the mask of a medicine man attached to a bearskin. One recorder, not to be robbed of his chance for an effect, speaks of the many snakes slithering about the ruins and over the graves of dead Senecas, believing them to be evidence of the evil which had existed there.

One thing was certain: the valleys and hills of the Seneca country were bright with warm sunshine and covered with great fields of maize. About the stalks of the corn there crept, not snakes and rodents, but the thick vines of the yellow pumpkin. There would have been a bountiful harvest if the green fields had been left to the ripening sun, but the French spent ten days of backbreaking labor in cutting down the corn and burning the fields. Three other villages were located and burned. Convinced then that the Senecas had been taught a lesson they would never forget, the invaders turned and marched to Niagara, where a fort of considerable size and strength was built.

The Senecas did not forget. The other four nations shared in the hatred inspired by the French attack. Nor had the Iroquois forgotten the seizure of the harmless fishermen on the Bay of Quinte, some of whom were still tugging at their oars under the lash of slave masters. They had never forgotten, it might be added, the first sight of a white man vouchsafed their fathers: Champlain stepping out from the ranks of the Hurons in his glistening breastplate and
bobbing plumes with his strange new weapon, the terrible musket. While Denonville set his men to work at Niagara, the gloomy interior of the council house at Onondaga echoed with the talk of the chiefs assembled there to decide upon measures of reprisal.

The demolition of the Seneca villages was followed by a period of indecision. Denonville was realizing that his problem had not been solved by the partial victory he had scored. Canada was faced with a famine. There had been no furs delivered for two years, and the revenues of the colony were at a low ebb. Finally it was obvious to the blindest of observers that the Iroquois were hatching schemes of revenge. Even the fact that the wary and active Dongan had been recalled by the British Government and that a new governor, Sir Edmund Andros, had been sent out to take charge of all the Anglo-Saxon possessions in the New World did not bring Denonville any sense of security or relief. He began to write the King in a state of panic, begging for more troops.

The Iroquois, deep in their plans for retaliation, played a waiting game and even dispatched some envoys to Fort Frontenac to discuss the patching up of the broken peace. Even if they had been sincere in these advances (and it soon became clear that they were not), there was no possibility of a satisfactory outcome. A remarkable Indian chief makes his appearance on the scene at this juncture for the purpose of defeating any peace moves.

He was a Huron from Michilimackinac and his name was Kondiaronk, which meant the Rat. There was nothing of the rodent in his nature, however. He was a good leader in war or peace, as wise as any white statesman and as crafty as the most Machiavellian diplomat trained in the wiles and guiles of European chancellories. Kondiaronk had one fixed purpose, to preserve the lives of the scattered remnants of the Huron people who existed, humbly and miserably, about the trading posts and missions at the junction of the Great Lakes. He knew, this wily old chief, that peace between the French and the Iroquois might mean his people would then be exposed to the full fury of Iroquois designs. He recalled, as did all the tribal leaders in the West, the silence of La Barre when the Five Nations, speaking with the tongue of Big Mouth, had declared their intention of making war on the French allies.

It is to the pages of La Hontan, that busy but useful gossip, that one must turn for the details of what the Rat proceeded to do in his determination to prevent a truce. He went promptly into action when the news reached him that the envoys from the Five Nations were on their way to Fort Frontenac. Waylaying them near La Famine, he killed one of the chiefs with the first volley and took the rest prisoners. The Iroquois, stunned by the unexpectedness of the attack, protested that they were on their way to propose terms of peace.

The Rat then staged a scene in which he professed chagrin and anger at the French for deceiving him. Denonville, he declared, had informed him, Kondiaronk, that a war party was approaching and had sent him out to attack them.

Kondiaronk released all of the party but one, who was to be held as a hostage. “Go back!” he said to the rest in effect. “Go back to your people and tell them of the treachery of Onontio.”

The Iroquois, nearly all of whom had suffered wounds from the fire which the Rat’s men had poured into them, turned their canoes about and set off for home. It was clear they believed what the wily chief had told them.

The Rat watched them go with an expression of triumph on his bronzed and wrinkled face. “I have killed the peace!” he declared.

The remaining prisoner was taken back to Michilimackinac and handed over to the French commandant there. The latter, acting on the advice of Kondriaronk, who believed in being thorough, had the captive executed publicly by a firing squad. To make sure that the Five Nations learned of this further example of French perfidy, the Rat secretly released an Iroquois prisoner in the camp and turned him loose with enough food and a supply of powder and shot to take him back to his own land.

Kondiaronk sat himself down in the shade of his wigwam, from which he could look out across the waters of Lake Huron toward that fair country where once his people had lived in ease and happiness. He was well content with what he had done. The war would go on and the brunt of it would be borne by the French. For the time being the few remaining Hurons could exist in peace.

An event occurred later in the year which was to prove highly disastrous, in the long run, to the French cause. Two days before Christmas, having seen his kingdom invaded by troops under William
of Orange who were received as deliverers by the English people, James II stole down the river from London in the darkness of night. Dropping the Great Seal in the water in a fit of spleen, the unpopular King left the country forever. Britain made William and his English consort Mary (a daughter of James) joint rulers of the kingdom. It was inevitable that William, being the architect of the European coalition against France, would involve Great Britain in his foreign policy; and so it followed very soon that active warring for supremacy in America began in full earnest.

Denonville realized what this meant, and his importunings for further assistance took on a frantic note. In one letter he begged the King to send him four thousand troops, believing that with such strength he could settle the issue with a single stroke. Louis was in no mood, however, to grant such demands as this.

The King, in fact, had lost faith in Denonville. As a governor he had been on the best of terms with Saint-Vallier and with Champigny, the intendant. The love feast which had succeeded the bitter bickerings of Frontenac and Duchesneau had been grateful to the harassed monarch but it had not compensated for the conviction now generally held that Denonville was not the man to deal with an emergency such as this. His intentions were good, but he lacked the will and insight for command. Designed by nature for subordinate roles, his judgment had faltered at critical moments.

On May 31 of the following year, 1689, his recall was decided upon and a letter was dispatched to Canada, summoning him home. It did not arrive soon enough to spare Denonville from sharing in the great catastrophe which descended upon the colony as a result, partially, of the mistakes he had made.