 Chapter 5 of France and England in North America Part 5 Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV, by Francis Parkman, Jr. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 1682-1684 Le Fèvre de la barre When the new Governor Labar and the new Intendant Meul arrived at Québec, a dismal greeting awaited them. All the lower town was in ashes except the house of the merchant Aubert de la Chénée, standing alone amid the wreck. On a Tuesday, the 4th of August, at ten o'clock in the evening, the nuns of the Hotel Dieu were roused from their early slumbers by shouts, outcries, and the ringing of the bells, and writes one of them. What was our terror to find it as light as noonday, the flames burned so fiercely and rose so high. Half an hour before, Charcy de l'Aubinière, Judge of the King's Court, heard the first alarm, ran down the descent, now called Mountain Street, and found everything in confusion in the town below. The house of Etienne Planchon was in a blaze. The fire was spreading to those of his neighbors and had just leaped the narrow street to the storehouse of the Jesuits. The season was excessively dry. There were no means of throwing water except kettles and buckets, and the crowd was bewildered with excitement and fright. Men were ordered to tear off roofs and pull down houses, but the flames drove them from their work, and at four o'clock in the morning fifty-five buildings were burnt to the ground. They were all of wood, but many of them were storehouses filled with goods, and the property consumed was more in value than all that remained in Canada. Under these gloomy auspices, le fèvre de la barre began his reign. He was an old officer who had achieved notable exploits against the English and the West Indies, but who was now to be put to a test far more severe. He made his lodging in the chateau, while his colleague Mele could hardly find a shelter. The buildings of the upper town were filled with those whom the fire had made ruthless, and the intendant was obliged to content himself with the house in the neighboring woods. Here he was ill at ease, for he dreaded an Indian war and the scalping knives of the Iroquois. So far as his own safety was concerned, his alarm was needless, but not so as regarded the colony with whose affairs he was charged. For those who had eyes to see it, a terror and a woe lowered in the future of Canada. In an evil hour for her, the Iroquois had conquered their southern neighbors, the Undastes, who had long held their ground against them, and at one time threatened them with ruin. The hands of the Confederates were now free. Their arrogance was redoubled by victory, and having long before destroyed all the adjacent tribes on the north and west, they looked for fresh victims in the wilderness beyond. Their most easterly tribe, the Mohawks, had not forgotten the chastisement they had received from Tressie and Coursel. They had learned to fear the French and were cautious in offending them, but it was not so with the remote Iroquois. Of these, the Seneca's at the western end of the Longhouse, as they called their five-fold league, were by far the most powerful, for they could muster as many warriors as all the four remaining tribes together, and they now sought to draw the Confederacy into a series of wars which, though not directed against the French, threatened soon to involve them. Their first movement westward was against the tribes of the Illinois. I have already described their bloody enroad in the summer of 1680. They made the valley of the Illinois a desert, and returned with several hundred prisoners, of whom they burned those that were useless, and incorporated the young and strong into their own tribe. This movement of the western Iroquois had a double incentive, their love of fighting, and their love of gain. It was a war of conquest and of trade. All the five tribes of the league had become dependent on the English and Dutch of Albany for guns, powder, lead, brandy, and many other things that they had learned to regard as necessities. Beaver skins alone could buy them, but to the Iroquois the supply of beaver skins was limited. The regions of the west and northwest, the Upper Mississippi with its tributaries, and above all the forests of the Upper Lakes, were occupied by tribes in the interest of the French, whose missionaries and explorers had been the first to visit them, and whose traders controlled their immense annual product of furs. Les Salles, by his newly built fort of St. Louis, engrossed the trade of the Illinois and Miami tribes. While the Hurons and Ottawa's gathered about the old mission of Michelin Mackenac, acted as factors for the Sioux, the Winnebago's, and many other remote hordes. Every summer they brought down their accumulated beaver skins to the Fair of Montreal, while French bush rangers roving through the wilderness with or without licenses collected many more. It was the purpose of the Iroquois to master all this traffic, conquer the tribes who had possession of it, and divert the entire supply of furs to themselves and through themselves to the English and Dutch. That English and Dutch traders urged them on is affirmed by the French and is very likely. The accomplishment of the scheme would have ruined Canada. Moreover, the Illinois, the Hurons, the Ottawa's, and all the other tribes threatened by the Iroquois were the allies and children of the French, who in honor as an interest were bound to protect them. Hence, when the Seneca invasion of the Illinois became known, there was deep anxiety in the colony, except only among those in whom the hatred of the monopolist Les Salles had overborn every consideration of the public good. Les Salles' new establishment of St. Louis was in the path of the invaders, and if he could be crushed, there was wherewith to console his enemies for all else that might ensue. Bad as was the posture of affairs, it was made far worse by an incident that took place soon after the invasion of the Illinois. A Seneca chief engaged in it, who had left the main body of his countrymen, was captured by a party of Winnebagoes to serve as a hostage for some of their tribe, whom the Seneca's had lately seized. They carried him to Michelamacanac, where there chanced to be a number of Illinois married to Indian women of that neighborhood. A quarrel ensued between them and the Seneca, whom they stabbed to death in the Lodge of the Kiskakon, one of the tribes of the Ottawa's. Here was a Casus belly likely to precipitate a war fatal to all the tribes about Michelamacanac and equally fatal to the trade of Canada. Frantanac set himself to conjure the rising storm and sent a messenger to the Iroquois to invite them to a conference. He found them unusually arrogant. Instead of coming to him, they demanded that he should come to them and many of the French wished him to comply. But Frantanac refused on the ground that such a concession would add to their insolence and he declined to go farther than Montreal or at the utmost Fort Frantanac, the usual place of meeting with them. Early in August he was at Montreal expecting the arrival of the Ottawa's and Hurons on their yearly descent from the lakes. They soon appeared and he called them to a solemn council. Terror had seized them all. Father, take pity on us, said the Ottawa orator, for we are like dead men. A Huron chief named the Rat declared that the world was turned upside down and implored the protection of a nuncio, who is master of the whole earth. These tribes were far from harmony among themselves. Each was jealous of the other and the Ottawa's charged the Hurons with trying to make favour with a common enemy at their expense. Frantanac told them that they were all his children alike and advised them to live together as brothers and make treaties of alliance with all the tribes of the lakes. At the same time he urged them to make full atonement for the death of the Seneca murdered in their country and carefully to refrain from any new offence. Soon after there was another arrival. La Forêt, the officer-in-command of Fort Frantanac appeared bringing with him a famous airroquois chief called de Canissora or de Canissorans, attended by a number of warriors. They came to invite Frantanac to meet the deputies of the five tribes at Osweco within their own limits. Frantanac's reply was characteristic. It is for the father to tell the children were to hold council, not for the children to tell the father. Fort Frantanac is the proper place and you should thank me for going so far every summer to meet you. The airroquois had expressed pacific intentions towards the Hurons and Ottawa's. For this Frantanac commended him but added, the Illinois are also children of Onantio and hence brethren of the airroquois. Therefore they too should be left in peace, for Onantio wishes that all his family should live together in union. He confirmed his words with a huge belt of wampum. Then addressing the flatter deputy as a great chief he desired him to use his influence in behalf of peace and gave him a jacket and a silk cravat both trimmed with gold, a hat, a scarred ribbon and a gun, with beads for his wife and red cloth for his daughter. The airroquois went home delighted. Perhaps on this occasion Fort Frantanac was too confident of his influence over the savage Confederates. Such at least was the opinion of Lambert Ville, Jesuit missionary at Onondaga, the airroquois capital. From what he daily saw around him he thought the peril so imminent that concession on the part of the French was absolutely necessary since not only the Illinois but some of the tribes of the lakes were in danger of speedy and complete destruction. Taganisorans loves the French, he wrote to Frantanac, but neither he nor any other of the upper airroquois fear them in the least. They annihilate our allies whom by adoption of prisoners they convert into airroquois and they do not hesitate to avow that after enriching themselves by our plunder and strengthening themselves by those who might have aided us they will pounce all at once upon Canada and overwhelming in a single campaign. He adds that within the past two years they have reinforced themselves by more than 900 warriors adopted into their tribes. Such was the crisis when Frantanac left Canada at the moment when he was needed most and La Fèvre de la Bar came to supplant him. The new governor introduces himself with a burst of rotor-montade. The airroquois, he writes to the king, have 2600 warriors. I will attack them with 1200 men. They know me before seeing me for they have been told by the English how roughly I handled them in the West Indies. This bold note closes rather tamely, for the governor adds, I think that if the airroquois believed that your majesty would have the goodness to give me some help they will make peace and let our allies alone which would save the trouble and expense of an arduous war. He then begs hard for troops and in fact there was great need of them for there were none in Canada and even Frantanac had been compelled in the last year of his government to leave unpunished various acts of violence and plunder committed by the airroquois. La Bar painted the situation in its blackest colors, declared that the war was imminent and wrote to the minister, we shall lose half our trade and all our reputation if we do not oppose these haughty conquerors. A vein of gas canade appears in most of his letters, not however accompanied with any conclusive evidence of a real wish to fight. His best fighting days were past, for he was sixty years old, nor had he always been a man of the sword. His early life was spent in the law, he had held a judicial post and had been intendant of several French provinces. Even the military and naval employments in which he afterwards acquitted himself with credit were due to the part he took in forming a joint stock company for colonizing Cayenne. In fact, he was but half a soldier and it was perhaps for this reason that he insisted on being called not Monsieur le Gouvernaire, but Monsieur le Général. He was equal to Frantanac neither in vigor nor in rank, but he far surpassed him in avidity. Soon after his arrival he wrote to the minister that he should not follow the example of his predecessors in making money out of his government by trade, and in consideration of these good intentions he asked for an addition to his pay. He then immediately made alliances with certain merchants of Quebec for carrying on an extensive illicit trade back by all the power of his office. Now ensued a strange and miserable complication. Questions of war mingled with questions of personal gain. There was a commercial revolution in the colony. The merchants whom Frantanac excluded from his ring now had their turn. It was they who jointly with the Intendant and the Ecclesiastics had procured the removal of the old governor, and it was they who gained the ear of the new one. Aubert de le Chénet, Jacques Lebert and the rest of their faction now passed an official favor, and La Salle, La Forêt and the other friends of Frantanac were cast out. There was one exception. Gré Salon du Lut, leader of Courreur de Bois, was too important to be thus set aside. He was now, as usual, in the wilderness of the north, the roving chief of a half-savage crew, trading, exploring, fighting and laboring with persistent hardyhood to foil the rival English traders of Hudson's Bay. Inducements to gain his adhesion were probably held out to him by La Barre and his allies. Be this as it may, it is certain that he acted in harmony with the faction of the new governor. With La Forêt it was widely different. He commanded Fort Frantanac, which belonged to La Salle, when La Barres Associates, La Chénet and Lebert, armed with an order from the governor, came up from Montreal and seized upon the place with all that it contained. The pretext for this outrage was the false one that La Salle had not fulfilled the conditions under which the fort had been granted to him. La Forêt was told that he might retain his command if he would join the faction of La Barre, but he refused, stood true to his chief, and soon after sailed for France. La Barres summoned the most stable and experienced persons in the colony to discuss the state of affairs. Their conclusion was that the Iroquois would attack and destroy the Illinois, and this accomplished turned upon the tribes of the lakes, conquer or destroy them also, and ruined the trade of Canada. Dark as was the prospect, La Barre and his fellow speculators flattered themselves that the war could be averted for a year at least. The Iroquois owed their triumphs as much to their sagacity and craft as to their extraordinary boldness and ferocity. It had always been their policy to attack their enemies in detail and, while destroying one, to cajole the rest. There seemed little doubt that they would leave the tribes of the lakes in peace till they had finished the ruin of the Illinois, so that, if these, the allies of the colony were abandoned to their fate, there would be time for a profitable trade in the direction of the Michelin Mackenac. But hope seemed vain and prognostics illusory when early in spring a report came that the Seneca Iroquois were preparing to attack in force, not only the Illinois, but the Hurons and Ottawa's of the lakes. La Barre and his confederates were in dismay. They already had large quantities of goods at Michelin Mackenac, the point immediately threatened, and an officer was hastily dispatched with men and munitions to strengthen the defenses of the place. A small vessel was sent to France with letters begging for troops. I will perish at their head, wrote La Barre to the king, or destroy your enemies. And he assures the minister that the Seneca's must be attacked or the country abandoned. The intendant Möhl shared something of his alarm and informed the king that the Iroquois are the only people on earth who do not know the grandeur of your majesty. While thus appealing to the king, La Barre sent Charles Lemoine as envoy to Onandaga. Through his influence a deputation of forty-three Iroquois chiefs was sent to meet the governor at Montreal. Here a grand council was held in the newly built church. Presents were given the deputies to the value of more than two thousand crowns. Soothing speeches were made them, and they were urged not to attack the tribes of the lakes nor to plunder French traders without permission. They assented. And La Barre then asked, timidly, why they made war on the Illinois. Because they deserved to die, heartily returned the Iroquois orator. La Barre did not answer. They complained that La Sal had given guns, powder, and lead to the Illinois, or in other words that he had helped the allies of the colony to defend themselves. La Barre, who hated La Sal and his monopolies, assured them that he should be punished. It is affirmed on good authority that he said more than this and told them they were welcome to plunder and kill him. The rapacious old man was playing with a two-edged sword. Thus the Illinois, with a few Frenchmen who had tried to defend them, were left to perish, and in return a brief and doubtful respite was gained for the tribes of the lakes. La Barre and his confederates took heart again. Merchandise in abundance was sent to Michel Macanac and thence to the remote tribes of the north and west. The governor and his partner Leshene sent up a fleet of thirty canoes, and a little later they are reported to have sent more than a hundred. This forest trade robbed the colonists by forestalling the annual market of Montreal, while a considerable part of the furs acquired by it were secretly sent to the English and Dutch of New York. Thus the heavy duties of the Custom House at Québec were evaded, and a silver coin was received in payment instead of questionable bills of exchange. Frantonec had not been faithful to his trust, but compared to his successor he was a model of official virtue. La Barre busied himself with ostentatious preparation for war, built vessels at Port Frantonec and sent up fleets of canoes laden or partly laden with munitions. But his accusers say that the king's canoes were used to transport the governor's goods and that the men sent to garrison Port Frantonec were destined not to fight the Iroquois, but to sell them brandy. Last year, writes the intendant, Monsieur de la Barre had a vessel built for which he made his majesty pay heavily, and he proceeds to say that it was built for trade and was used for no other purpose. If, he continues, the two king's vessels now at Port Frantonec had not been used for trading, they would have saved us half the expense we have been forced to incur in transporting munitions and supplies. The pretended necessity of having vessels at this fort and the consequent employing of carpenters and sending up of iron, cordage, sails and many other things at his majesty's charge was simply in the view of carrying on trade. He says farther that in May last the vessels, canoes and men being nearly all absent on this errand, the fort was left in so defenseless a state that a party of Seneca's, returning from their winter hunt, took from it a quantity of goods and drank as much brandy as they wanted. In short, he concludes, it is plain that Monsieur de la Barre uses this fort only as a depot for the trade of Lake Ontario. In the spring of 1683, La Barre had taken a step as rash as it was lawless and unjust. He sent the Chevalier de Beaujus, lieutenant of his guard, with a considerable number of canoes and men, to seize La Salle's fort of Saint-Louis on the river Illinois, a measure which, while gratifying the passions and the greed of himself and his allies, would greatly increase the danger of rupture with the Iroquois. Late in the season he dispatched seven canoes and fourteen men with goods to the value of fifteen or sixteen thousand lever to trade with the tribes of the Mississippi. As he had sown, so he reaped. The seven canoes passed through the country of the Illinois. A large war-party of Seneca's and Cayuga's invaded it in February. La Barre had told their chiefs that they were welcome to plunder the canoes of La Salle. The Iroquois were not discriminating. They fell upon the governor's canoes, seized all the goods, and captured the men. Then they attacked Beaujus at Fort Saint-Louis. The place, perched on a rock, was strong and they were beaten off, but the act was one of open war. When La Barre heard the news he was furious. He trembled for the vast amount of goods which he and his fellow speculators had sent to Michelin Mackenac and the lakes. There was but one resource. To call out the militia, muster the Indian allies advanced to Lake Ontario and dictate peace to the Seneca's at the head of an imposing force, or failing in this to attack and crush them. A small vessel lying at Quebec was dispatched to France with urgent appeals for immediate aid, though there was little hope that it could arrive in time. She bore a long letter, half piteous, half bombastic from La Barre to the king. He declared that extreme necessity and the despair of the people had forced him into war and protested that he should always think it a privilege to lay down life for his majesty. I cannot refuse to your country of Canada and your faithful subjects to throw myself with unequal forces against the foe, while at the same time begging your aid for a poor unhappy people on the point of falling victims to a nation of barbarians. He says that the total number of men in Canada capable of bearing arms is about 2,000, that he received last year 150 raw recruits and that he wants, in addition, 7 or 800 good soldiers. Recall me, he concludes, if you will not help me, for I cannot bear to see the country perish in my hands. At the same time he declares his intention to attack the Seneca's with or without help about the middle of August. Here we leave him for a while, scared, excited and blustering. Chapter 6 1684 La Barre and the Iroquois The Dutch colony of New Netherland had now become the English colony of New York. Its proprietor, the Duke of York, afterwards James II of England, had appointed Colonel Thomas Dungan its governor. He was a Catholic Irish gentleman of high rank, nephew of the famous Earl of Tirkanal and presumptive heir to the Earldom of Limerick. He had served in France, was familiar with its language and partial to its king and its nobility, but he nevertheless gave himself with vigor to the duties of his new trust. The Dutch and English colonists aimed at a share in the Western fur trade hitherto a monopoly of Canada, and it is said that Dutch traders had already ventured among the tribes of the Great Lakes boldly poaching on the French preserves. Dungan did his utmost to promote their interests so far at least as was consistent with his instructions from the Duke of York in joining him to give the French governor no just cause of offence. For several years past the Iroquois had made forays against the borders of Maryland and Virginia, plundering and killing the settlers, and a declared rupture between those colonies and the savage Confederates had more than once been eminent. The English believed that these hostilities were instigated by the Jesuits in the Iroquois villages. There is no proof whatever of the accusation, but it is certain that it was the interest of Canada to provoke a war which might sooner or later involve New York. In consequence of a renewal of such attacks, Lord Howard of Effingham, Governor of Virginia, came to Albany in the summer of 1684 to hold a council with the Iroquois. The Oneidas, Onandagas and Cayugas were the offending tribes. They all promised friendship for the future. A whole was dug in the courtyard of the council house, each of the three threw a hatchet into it, and Lord Howard and the representative of Maryland added two others. Then the whole was filled, the song of peace was sung, and the high contracting parties stood pledged to mutual accord. The Mohawks were also at the council, and the Seneca's soon after arrived, so that all the Confederacy was present by its deputies. Not long before, Labal, then in the heat of his marshal preparations, had sent a messenger to Dongan with a letter informing him that, as the Seneca's and Cayugas had plundered French canoes and assaulted a French fort, he was compelled to attack them, and begging that the Dutch and English colonists should be forbidden to supply them with arms. This letter produced two results, neither of them agreeable to the writer. First, the Iroquois were fully warned of the designs of the French, and secondly, Dongan gained the opportunity he wanted of asserting the claim of his king to sovereignty over the Confederacy and possession of the whole country south of the Great Lakes. He added that if the Iroquois had done wrong he would require them as British subjects to make reparation, and he urged Labal for the sake of peace between the two colonies to refrain from his intended invasion of British territory. Dongan next laid before the assembled Satchams the complaints made against them in the letter of Labal. They replied by accusing the French of carrying arms to their enemies, the Illinois and the Miami's. Oh, Nuncio, said their orator, calls us his children and then helps our enemies to knock us in the head. They were somewhat disturbed at the prospect of Labal's threatened attack, and Dongan seized the occasion to draw from them an acknowledgment of subjection to the Duke of York, promising in return that they should be protected from the French. They did not hesitate. We put ourselves, said the Iroquois speaker, under the great Satcham Charles who lives over the Great Lake and under the protection of the great Duke of York, brother of your great Satcham. But he added a moment later, Let your friend King Charles who lives over the Great Lake know that we are a free people, though united to the English. They consented that the arms of the Duke of York should be planted in their villages, being told that this would prevent the French from destroying them. Dongan now insisted that they should make no treaty with Nuncio without his consent, and he promised that, if their country should be invaded, he would send 400 horsemen and as many foot soldiers to their aid. As for the acknowledgment of subjection to the King and the Duke of York, the Iroquois neither understood its full meaning nor meant to abide by it. What they did clearly understand was that, while they recognized Nuncio, the governor of Canada as their father, they recognized Corleire, the governor of New York, only as their brother. Dungan, it seems, could not or dared not change this mark of equality. He did his best, however, to make good his claims and sent Arnold Viel, a Dutch interpreter, as his envoy to Onondaga. Viel set out for the Iroquois capital in Thither, we will follow him. He mounted his horse and in the heats of August rode westward along the valley of the Mohawk. On a hill, a bow-shot from the river, he saw the first Mohawk town, Cagnawaga, encircled by a strong palisade. Next he stopped for a time at Gandagato on a meadow near the bank, and next at Canajora, on a plain two miles away. To Onondaga, the last and strongest of these fortified villages, stood like the first on a hill that overlooked the river, and all the rich meadows around were covered with Indian corn. The largest of the four contained but thirty houses, and altogether could furnish scarcely more than three hundred warriors. When the last Mohawk town was passed, arrived a four or five days till they before the envoy. He held his way along the old Indian trail, now traced through the grass of sunny meadows, and now tunneled through the dense green of shady forests, till it led them to the town of the Unidas, containing about a hundred bark houses with twice as many fighting men, the entire forest of the tribe. Here, as in the four Mohawk villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and still advancing came at length to a vast open space where the rugged fields, patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a broad, low hill, crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga. There were from one to two hundred of these large bark dwellings most of them holding several families. The capital of the Confederacy was not fortified at this time, and its only defense was the valor of some four hundred warriors. In this focus of trained and organized savagery, where ferocity was cultivated as a virtue and every emotion of pity stifled as unworthy of a man, where ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held with the tenacity of a people who joined the extreme of wildness with the extreme of conservatism, here burned the council fire of the five Confederate tribes, and here, in time of need, were gathered their bravest and their wisest to debate high questions of policy and war. The object of veal was to confirm the Iroquois and their very questionable attitude of subjection to the British crown, and persuade them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through the intervention of Dongon, or at least with his consent. The envoy found two Frenchmen in the town whose presence bowed a deal to his errand. The first was the veteran colonist of Montreal, Charles Le Moine, sent by la barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference. They had known him in peace or war for a quarter of a century, and they greatly respected him. The other was the Jesuit Jean de Lambertville, who had long lived among them and knew them better than they knew themselves. Here, too, was another personage who cannot pass unnoticed. He was a famous Onondaga orator named Utriouati and called also Big Mouth, whether by reason of the dimensions of that feature or the greatness of the wisdom that issued from it. His contemporary Baron L'Hontane, thinking perhaps that his French name of La Grande-Gueule was wanting indignity, Latinized it into Grangoula, and the Scotchman-Colden afterwards improved it into Grangoula, under which high-sounding appellation Big Mouth has descended to posterity. He was an astute old savage well-trained in the arts of Iroquois rhetoric and gifted with the power of strong and caustic sarcasm, which has marked more than one of the chief orators of the Confederacy. He shared with most of his countrymen the conviction that the earth had nothing so great as the League of the Iroquois. But if he could be proud and patriotic so too he could be selfish and mean. He valued gifts, attentions, and a good meal and would pay for them abundantly in promises which he kept or not, as his own interests or those of his people might require. He could use bold and loud words in public and then secretly make his peace with those he had denounced. He was so given to rough jokes that the Intendant Mueule called him a buffoon, but his buffoonry seems to have been often a cover to his craft. He had taken a prominent part in the council of the preceding summer at Montreal, and doubtless as he stood in full dress before the governor and the officers, his head plumed, his face painted, his figure draped in a colored blanket, and his feet decked with embroidered moccasins, he was a picturesque and striking object. He was less so as he squatted almost naked by his large fire with a piece of board laid across his lap, chopping rank tobacco with a scalping knife to fill his pipe, and entertaining the grinning circle with grotesque stories and obscene jests. Though not one of the hereditary chiefs, his influence was great. He has the strongest head and the loudest voice among the Iroquois, wrote Lambertville to la barre. He calls himself your best friend. He is a venal creature whom you do well to keep in pay. I assured him I would send him the jerk and you promised. Well, as the Jesuit knew the Iroquois, he was deceived if he thought that Bigmouth was securely won. Lambertville's constant effort was to prevent a rupture. He wrote with every opportunity to the governor painting the calamities that war would bring, and warning him that it was vain to hope that the league could be divided and its three eastern tribes kept neutral while the Seneca's were attacked. He assured him on the contrary that they would all unite to fall upon Canada, ravaging, burning, and butchering along the whole range of defenseless settlements. You cannot believe, monsieur, with what joy the Seneca's learned that you might possibly resolve on more. When they heard of the preparations at Falle-Frontenac, they said that the French had a great mind to be stripped, roasted, and eaten, and that they will see if their flesh, which they supposed to have a salt taste by reason of the salt which we use with our food, be as good as that of their other enemies. Lambertville also informs the governor that the Seneca's have made ready for any emergency, buried their last year's corn, prepared a hiding place in the depth of the forest for their old men, women, and children, and stripped their towns of everything that they value, and that their fifteen hundred warriors will not shut themselves up in forts but fight under cover among trees and in the tall grass with little risk to themselves and extreme danger to the invader. There is no profit, he says, in fighting with this sort of benditty whom you cannot catch but who will catch many of your people. The Onondagas wish to bring about an agreement. Must the father and the children, they ask, cut each other's throats? The Onondagas, moved by the influence of the Jesuit and the gifts of Labar, did in fact wish to act as mediators between their Seneca confederates and the French, and to this end they invited the Seneca elders to a council. The meeting took place before the arrival of Bill and lasted two days. The Seneca's were at first refactory and hot for war, but at length consented that the Onondagas might make peace for them if they could, a conclusion which was largely due to the eloquence of Bigmouth. The first act of Vale was a plunder. He told the Onondagas that the English governor was master of their country and that as they were subjects of the King of England, they must hold no council with the French without permission. The pride of Bigmouth was touched. You say, he exclaimed to the envoy, that we are subjects of the King of England and the Duke of York, but we say that we are brothers, we must take care of ourselves. The coat of arms which you have fastened to that post cannot defend us against Anoncio. We tell you that we shall bind a covenant chain to our arm and to his. We shall take the Seneca's by one hand and Anoncio by the other and their hatchet and his sword shall be thrown into deep water. Thus well and manfully did Bigmouth assert the independence of his tribe and proclaim it the arbiter of peace. He told the warriors moreover to close their ears to the words of the Dutchman who spoke as if he were drunk and it was resolved at last that he, Bigmouth, with an embassy of chiefs and elders should go with Lemoine to meet the French governor. While these things were passing at Onondaga, Labar had finished his preparations and was now in full campaign. Before setting out, he had written to the minister that he was about to advance on the enemy with 700 Canadians, 130 regulars, and 200 mission Indians. That more Indians were to join him on the way. That Julute and the Durante were to meet him at Niagara with the body of Couraire de Bois and Indians from the interior. And that when we are all united we will perish or destroy the enemy. On the same day he wrote to the king, my purpose is to exterminate the Seneca's, for otherwise your majesty need take no farther account of this country since there is no hope of peace with them except when they are driven to it by force. I pray you do not abandon me and be assured that I shall do my duty at the head of your faithful colonists. A few days after writing these curiously incoherent epistles, Labar received a letter from his colleague Meul who had no belief that he meant to fight and was determined to compel him to do so if possible. There is a report, wrote the attendant, that you mean to make peace. It is doing great harm. Our Indian allies will despise us. I trust the story is untrue and that you will listen to no overtures. The expense has been enormous. The whole population is roused. Not satisfied with this, Meul sent the general the second letter, meant like the first as a tonic and a stimulant. If we come to terms with the Iroquois, without first making them feel the strength of our arms, we may expect that in future they will do everything they can to humiliate us because we drew the sword against them and showed them our teeth. I do not think that any course is now left for us but to carry the war to their very doors and do our utmost to reduce them to such a point that they shall never again be heard of as a nation but only as our subjects and slaves. If after having gone so far we do not fight them, we may lose all our trade and bring this country to the brink of ruin. The Iroquois and especially the Seneca's pass for great cowards. The Reverend Father Jesuit who is at Prairie de la Madeleine told me as much yesterday and though he has never been among them, he assured me that he has heard everybody say so. But even if they were brave, we ought to be very glad of it. Since then we could hope that they would wait our attack and give us a chance to beat them. If we do not destroy them, they will destroy us. I think you see but too well that your honour and the safety of the country are involved in the results of this war. While Meul thus wrote to the governor, he wrote also to the minister Sangilé and expressed his views with great distinctness. I feel bound and conscious to tell you that nothing was ever heard of so extraordinary as what we see done in this country every day. One would think that there was a divided empire here between the king and the governor and if things should go on long in this way the governor would have a far greater share than his majesty. The persons who Monsieur Dabard has sent this year to trade at Fort Frontenac have already shared with him from ten to twelve thousand crowns. He then recounts numerous abuses and malversations on the part of the governor. In a word, Monseigneur, this war has been decided upon in the cabinet of Monsieur the General along with six of the chief merchants of the country. If it had not served their plans, he would have found means to settle everything but the merchants made him understand that they were in danger of being plundered and that having an immense amount of merchandise in the woods in nearly two hundred canoes fitted out last year it was better to make use of the people of the country to carry on war against the Seneca's. This being done he hopes to make extraordinary profits without any risk because one of two things will happen. Either we shall gain some considerable advantage as there is reason to hope if Monsieur the General will but attack them in their villages or else we shall make peace which will keep everything safe for a time. These are assuredly the sole motives of this war which as for principle and end nothing but mere interest. He says himself that there is good fishing in troubled waters. With all our preparations for war and all the expense in which Monsieur the General is involving his majesty I will take the liberty to tell you Monseigneur though I am no prophet that I discover no disposition on the part of Monsieur the General to make war against the aforesaid savages. In my belief he will content himself with going in a canoe as far as Fort Frotonac and then send for the Seneca's to treat a peace with them and deceive the people, the intendant and if I may be allowed with all possible respect to say so his majesty himself. P.S. I will finish this letter Monseigneur by telling you that he set out yesterday July 10th with the detachment of 200 men. All Quebec was filled with grief to see him embark on an expedition of war taita-tait with a man named La Chene. Everybody says that the war is a sham that these two will arrange everything between them and in a word do whatever will help their trade. The whole country is in despair to see how matters are managed. After a long stay at Montreal La Bar embarked his little army at La Chine, crossed Lake Saint-Louis and began the ascent of the Upper St. Lawrence. In one of the three companies of regulars which formed a part of the force was a young subaltern, the Baron La Hantane who has left a lively account of the expedition. Some of the men were in flat boats and some were in birch canoes. Of the latter was La Hantane whose craft was paddled by three Canadians. Several times they shouldered it through the forest to escape the turmoil of the rapids. The flat boats could not be so handled and were dragged or pushed up in the shallow water close to the bank by gangs of militiamen toiling and struggling among the rocks and foam. The regulars, unskilled in such matters were spared these fatigues though tormented night and day by swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, objects of La Hantane's bitterest invective. At length the last rapid was past and they moved serenely on their way, threaded the mazes of the Thousand Islands entered what is now the Harbour of Kingston and landed under the palisades of Fort Frontenac. Here the whole forest was soon assembled, the regulars in their tents, the Canadian militia and the Indians in huts and under sheds of bark. Of these red allies there were several hundred, Abinakis and Algonquins from Silerie, Hurons from Lorette and converted Iroquois from the Jesuit mission of Sault Ste. Louis near Montreal. The camp of the French was on a low, and here a malaria fever presently attacked them, killing many and disabling many more. La Hantane says that the bar himself was brought by it to the brink of the grave. If he had ever entertained any other purpose than that of inducing the Seneca's to agree to a temporary peace he now completely abandoned it. He dared not even insist that the offending tribe should meet him in council but hastened to ask the mediation of the Onondagas, and the Delville had assured him that they were disposed to offer. He sent Lemoine to persuade them to meet him on their own side of the lake and with such of his men as were able to move crossed to the mouth of Salmon River then called La Famine. The name proved prophetic. Provisions fell short from bad management and transportation and the men grew hungry and discontented. September had begun. The place was unwholesome and the malaria fever of Fort Frontenac had infected the new encampment. The soldiers sickened rapidly. Labar, wracked with suspense, waited impatiently the return of Leouan. We have seen already the result of his mission and how he and Lombelville in spite of the envoy of the English governor gained from the Onondaga chiefs the promise to meet Ononcio in council. Lemoine appeared at La Famine on the third of the month bringing with him big mouth and 13 other deputies. Labar gave them a feast of bread, wine and salmon trout and on the morning of the fourth the council began. Before the deputies arrived the governor had sent the sick men homeward in order to conceal his helpless condition and he now told the Iroquois that he had left his army at Fort Frontenac and had come to meet them attended only by an escort. The Onondaga politician was not to be so deceived. He or one of his party spoke a little French he contrived to learn the true state of the case from the soldiers. The council was held on an open spot near the French encampment. Labar was seated in an armchair the Jesuit bourgeois stood by him as interpreter and the officers were ranged on his right and left. The Indians sat on the ground in a row opposite the governor and two lines of soldiers forming two sides of a square closed the intervening space. Among the officers he may be called a man in advance of his time for he had the caustic, skeptical and mocking spirit which a century later marked the approach of the great revolution but which was not a characteristic of the reign of Louis XIV. He usually told the truth when he had no motive to do otherwise and yet was capable at times of prodigious mendacity. There is no reason to believe that he indulged it on the present occasion and his account of what he now saw would probably be taken as substantially correct. According to him Labar opened the council as follows The king, my master, being informed that the five nations of the Iroquois have long acted in a manner adverse to peace has ordered me to come with an escort to this place and to send Le Mouin to Onondaga to invite the principal chiefs to meet me. It is the wish of this great king the name of the Mohawks, Onidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Seneca's to give entire satisfaction and indemnity to his subjects and do nothing in future which may occasion rupture. Then he recounted the offenses of the Iroquois. First they had maltreated and robbed French traders in the country of the Illinois where for, said the governor, I am ordered to demand reparation and in case of refusal the five nations have introduced the English into the lakes which belong to the king, my master and among the tribes who are his children in order to destroy the trade of his subjects and seduce these people from the obedience they owe him. I am willing to forget this but should it happen again I am expressly ordered to declare war against you. Thirdly, the warriors of the five nations have made sundry barbarous inroads into the country of the Illinois and Miami's seizing, binding the labor of these savages in time of peace. They are the children of my king and are not to remain your slaves. They must at once be set free and sent home. If you refuse to do this I am expressly ordered to declare war against you. Le Bar concluded by assuring Big Mouth as representing the five nations of the Iroquois that the French would leave them in peace if they made atonement for the past and promised good words their villages should be burned and they themselves destroyed. He added, though he knew the contrary, that the governor of New York would join him in war against them. During the delivery of this Marshall harangue, Big Mouth sat silent and attentive, his eyes fixed on the bowl of his pipe. When the interpreter had ceased he rose, walked gravely two or three times around the lines of the assembly, then stopped before the governor, looked at him as he was and uttered himself as follows. Oh, Nuncio, I honor you and all the warriors who are with me honor you. Your interpreter has ended his speech and now I begin mine. Listen to my words. Oh, Nuncio, when you left Quebec you must have thought that the heat of the sun had burned the forest that make our country inaccessible to the French or that the lake had overflowed them so that we could not see. And curiosity to see such a fire or such a flood must have brought you to this place. Now your eyes are opened for I and my warriors have come to tell you that the Seneca's, Cayugas, Onondagas, Onidas and Mohawks are all alive. I thank you in their name for bringing back the Calumet of Peace which they gave to your predecessors and I give you joy that you have not dug up the hatchet of the countrymen. Listen, Nuncio, I am not asleep. My eyes are open and by the sun that gives me light I see a great captain at the head of a band of soldiers who talks like a man in a dream. He says that he has come to smoke the pipe of peace with the Onondagas but I see that he came to knock them in the head if so many of his Frenchmen were not too weak to fight. I see, Nuncio, raving in a time with disease. Our women had snatched war clubs and our children and old men seized bows and arrows to attack your camp if our warriors had not restrained them when your messenger Akua-san appeared in our village. He next justified the pillage of French traitors on the ground very doubtful in this case that they were carrying arms to the Illinois enemies of the Confederacy and he flatly refused to make reparation on the ground. He also avowed boldly that the Iroquois had conducted English traitors to the lakes. We are born free, he exclaimed. We depended neither on Nuncio nor on Corlyard. We have the right to go with or so ever we please to take with us whomever we please and buy and sell of whomever we please. If your allies are your slaves or your children, treat them like slaves or children and kill them dead because they cut down the tree of peace and hunted the beaver on our lands. We have done less than the English and the French who have seized upon the lands of many tribes, driven them away in built towns, villages and forts in their country. Listen, Nuncio. My voice is the voice of the five tribes of the Iroquois. When they buried the hatchet at Kataraki, Fort Frontenac, in presence of your predecessor and not of soldiers. Take care that all the soldiers you have brought with you shut up in so small a fort. Do not choke this tree of peace. I assure you in the name of the five tribes that our warriors will dance the dance of the Calumet under its branches and that they will sit quiet on their mats and never dig up the hatchet till their brothers, Nuncio and Corlyard, separately or together, make ready to attack the country . The session presently closed and Labar withdrew to his tent where according to Lahontan he vented his feelings in invective till reminded that good manners were not to be expected from an Iroquois. Bigmouth on his part entertained some of the French at a feast which he opened in person by a dance. There was another session in the afternoon and the terms of peace were settled and Labar promised not to attack the Seneca's and Bigmouth in spite of his former declaration consented that they should make amends for the pillage of the traders. On the other hand he declared that the Iroquois would fight the Illinois to the death and Labar dared not utter a word on behalf of his allies. The Onondaga next demanded that the council fire should be removed from Fort Frontenac to La Famine in the Iroquois to decap and set out for home on the following morning. Such was the futile and miserable end of the grand expedition. Even the promise to pay for the plundered goods was contemptuously broken. The honour rested with the Iroquois. They had spurned the French, repelled the claims of the English and by act and word asserted their independence of both. Labar embarked in hastened home in advance of his men. This camp was again full of the sick. Their comrades placed them shivering with ague-fits on board the flat boats and canoes and the whole force scattered and disordered floated down the current to Montreal. Nothing had been gained but a thin and flimsy truce with new troubles and dangers plainly visible behind it. The better to understand their nature let us look for a moment at an episode of the campaign. When Labar sent messengers to the upper lakes to join in the war his appeal found a cold response. La Durantée and Delut, French commanders in that region vainly urged the surrounding tribes to lift the hatchet. None but the Hurons would consent when fortunately Nicolas Perrault arrived at Michelie Mackenac on an errand of trade. This famous coureur de bois, a very different person from Perrault, Governor of Montreal was well skilled in dealing with Indians. Through his influence, their scruples were overcome and some 500 warriors, Hurons, Ottawa's, Ojibwa's, Potawatami's and Fox's were persuaded to embark for the rendezvous at Niagara along with a hundred or more Frenchmen. The fleet of canoes, numerous as a flock of blackbirds in autumn began the long and weary voyage. The two commanders had a heavy task. Discipline was impossible. The French were scarcely less wild and many of them were painted and feathered like their red companions whose ways they imitated with perfect success. The Indians on their part were but half-hearted for the work in hand for they had already discovered that the English would pay twice as much for a beaver skin as the French and they asked nothing better than the appearance of English traders on the lakes and a safe peace with the Iroquois which should open to them the market of New York. But they were like children with the passions of men, inconsequent, fickle and wayward. There was a hunt on the shore of Michigan where a Frenchman accidentally shot himself with his own gun. Here was an evil omen. But for the efforts of Perot half the party would have given up the enterprise and paddled home. In the Strait of Detroit there was another hunt and another accident. In firing at a deer an Indian wounded his own brother. On this the tribesmen of the wounded man proposed to kill the French as being the occasion of the miss chance. Once more the skill of Perot prevailed. But when they reached the long point of Lake Erie the foxes about a hundred in number were on the point of deserting in a body. As persuasion failed Perot tried the effect of taunts. You are cowards, he said to the naked crew as they crowded about him with their wild eyes and long, blank hair. You do not know what war is. You never killed a man and you never ate one except those that were given a storm of abuse. You shall see whether we are men, we are going to fight the Eroquois and unless you do your part we will knock you in the head. You will never have to give yourselves the trouble, retorted Perot, for at the first war whoop you will all run off. He gained his point, their pride was roused and for the moment they were full of fight. Immediately after there was trouble with the autobaws and they were threatening and refused to proceed. With much ado they were persuaded to go as far as Niagara being lured by the rash assurance of La Durante that three vessels were there loaded with the present of guns for them. They carried their canoes by the cataract, launched them again, paddled to the mouth of the river and looked for the vessels in vain. At length a solitary sail appeared on the lake. She brought no guns but instead a letter from Labar to all go home. Some of them had paddled already a thousand miles in the hope of seeing the Seneca's humbled. They turned back in disgust filled with wrath and scorn against the governor and all the French. Canada had incurred the contempt not only of enemies but of allies. There was danger that these tribes would repudiate the French alliance, welcome the English traders, make peace at any price with the Iroquois and carry their beaver skins The treaty made at La Famine was greeted with, continually, through all the colony. The governor found, however, a comforter in the Jesuit Lambertville who stood fast in the position which he had held from the beginning. He wrote to Labar, You deserve the title of saviour of the country for making peace at so critical a time. In the condition in which your army was, you could not have advanced into the Seneca country without utter defeat. The Seneca's had double palaces in the country. Their plan was to keep 300 men inside and to perpetually harass you with 1200 others. All the Iroquois were to collect together and fire only at the legs of your people so as to master them and burn them at their leisure and then after having thinned their numbers by a hundred ambuscades in the woods and grass to pursue you in your retreat even to Montreal and spread desolation around it. Labar was greatly pleased with this and his colleague Meul on the other hand declared that Lambertville anxious to make favour with the governor had written only what Labar wished to hear. The intendant also informs the minister that Labar's excuses are a mere pretense that everybody is astonished and disgusted with him that the sickness of the troops was his own fault because he kept them encamped on wet ground for an unconscionable length of time. That big mouth shamefully left his wits and went off in a fright that since the return of the troops the officers have openly expressed their contempt for him and that the people would have risen against him if he, Meul, had not taken measures to quiet them. These with many other charges flew across the sea from the pen of the intendant. The next ship from France brought the following letter from the king Monsieur de Labar having been informed that your years do not permit you to support the interests of Governor and Lieutenant General in Canada I send you this letter to acquaint you that I have selected Monsieur de Denonville to serve in your place and my intention is that on his arrival after resigning to him the command with all instructions concerning it you embark for your return to France. Louis Labar sailed for Homme and the Marquis de Denonville a pious colonel of Dragoons assumed the vacant office. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of France and England and North America Part 5 Count Fontenac, New France Louis XIV by Francis Parkman Jr. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 1685-1687 Denonville and Dongun Denonville embarked at Rochelle in June with his wife Saint-Valier the Destined Bishop was in the same vessel and the squadron carried 500 soldiers of whom 150 died of fever and scurvy on the way. Saint-Valier speaks in glowing terms of the new Governor. He spent nearly all his time in prayer and the reading of good books. The Psalms of David were always in his hands. In all the voyage I never saw him do anything wrong and there was nothing in his words or acts which did not show a solid virtue as well in the duties of the wisdom of this world. When they landed the nuns of the Hotel Dieu were overwhelmed with the sick. Not only our halls but our church, our granary, our henyard and every corner of the hospital where we could make room were filled with them. Much was expected of Denonville. He was to repair the mischief wrought by his predecessor and restore the colony to peace, strength and security. The king had stigmatized the nation at his abandonment of the Illinois allies. All this was now to be changed but it was easier to give the order at Versailles than to execute it in Canada. Denonville's difficulties were great and his means of overcoming them were small. What he most needed was more troops and more money. The Seneca's, insolent and defiant were still attacking the Illinois. The tribes of the Northwest were angry, contemptuous and disaffected. The New York were urging claims to the whole country south of the Great Lakes and to a controlling share in all the Western fur trade. While the English of Hudson's Bay were competing for the traffic of the northern tribes and the English of New England were seizing upon the fisheries of Acadia and now and then making piratical dissents upon its coast. The great question lay between New York and Canada. Which of these two should gain mastery in the West? In short, as a soldier he had the experience of 30 years of service and he was in high repute not only for piety but for probity and honor. He was devoted to the Jesuits an ardent servant of the king a lover of authority filled with the instinct of subordination and order and in short a type of the ideas religious, political and social then dominant in France. He was greatly distressed at the disturbed condition of the colony while the state of the settlements over two or three hundred miles along the St. Lawrence seemed to him an invitation to destruction. If we have a war he wrote nothing can save the country but a miracle of God. Nothing was more likely than more. Intrigues were on foot between the Seneca's and the tribes of the lakes which threatened to render the appeal to arms a necessity to the French. Some of the Hurons of Michel Makinac were bent on allying themselves with the English. He wrote de N'enville but they liked the cheap goods of the English better. The Seneca's in collusion with several Huron chiefs had captured a considerable number of the tribe and of the Ottawa's. The scheme was that these prisoners should be released on condition that the lake tribes should join the Seneca's and repudiate their alliance with the French. The governor of New York favored this intrigue to the utmost. de N'enville was quick to see that the colony rose not from the Iroquois alone but from the English of New York who prompted them. Dungan understood the situation. He saw that the French aimed at mastering the whole interior of the continent. They had established themselves in the valley of the Illinois had built a fort on the lower Mississippi and were striving to entrench themselves at its mouth. They occupied the Great Lakes and it was already evident that the French would be the last. In short, the grand scheme of French colonization had begun to declare itself. Dungan entered the lists against them. If his policy should prevail New France would dwindle to a feeble province on the St. Lawrence. If the French policy should prevail the English colonies would remain a narrow strip along the sea. Dungan's cause was that of all these colonies but they all stood aloof and left him to wage the strife alone. Canada was matched against New York or rather against the governor of New York. The population of the English colony was larger than that of its rival but except the fur traders few of the settlers scared much for the questions at issue. Dungan's chief difficulty however arose from the relations of the French and English kings. Louis XIV gave Denonville an unhesitating support. James II on the other hand was for a time cautious to timidity. The two monarchs were closely united. Both hated constitutional liberty and both held the same principles of supremacy in church and state but Louis was triumphant and powerful while James in conflict with his subjects was in constant need of his great ally and dared not offend him. The royal instructions to Denonville enjoined him to humble the Iroquois sustain the allies of the colony oppose the schemes of Dungan and treat him as an enemy if he encroached on French territory. At the same time the French ambassador at the English court was directed to demand from James II precise orders to the governor of New York for a complete change of contact in regard to Canada and the Iroquois but Dungan, like the French governors was not easily controlled. In the absence of money and troops he intrigued busily with his Indian neighbors. The artifices of the English wrote Denonville have reached such a point that it would be better if they attacked us openly and burned our settlements instead of instigating the Iroquois against us for our destruction. I know beyond a particle of doubt that Monsieur Dungan caused all the five Iroquois nations to be assembled last spring at Orange, Albany in order to excite them against us by telling them publicly that I meant to declare war against them. He says further that Dungan supplies them with arms and ammunitions incites them to attack the colony into his hands. He has sent people at the same time to our Montreal Indians to entice them over to him promising them missionaries to instruct them and assuring them that he would prevent the introduction of Brandy into their villages. All these intrigues have given me not a little trouble throughout the summer. Monsieur Dungan has written to me and I have answered him as a man may do who wishes to dissimulate and does not feel strong enough to get angry. He says that Dungan, who was fighting his time, made use of counter-intrigues and by means of the use of Lambertville, freely distributed secret or underground presence among the Iroquois chiefs while the Jesuit Angelran was busy at Michelin Mackenac in adroit and vigorous efforts to prevent the alienation of the Hurons, Ottawa's and other lake tribes. The task was difficult and failed with anxiety with our allies whom we can no longer trust owing to the discredit into which we have fallen among them and from which we cannot recover except by gaining some considerable advantage over the Iroquois. Who, as I have had the honour to inform you, have laboured incessantly since last autumn to rob us of all our allies by using every means to make treaties with them independently of us. You may be assured, Monseigneur, that the English are the chief cause of the arrogance and insolence of the Iroquois, the Minions, and uniting with them as one nation in so much that the English claims include no less than the lakes Ontario and Erie, the region of Saginaw, Michigan, the country of the Hurons and all the country in the direction of the Mississippi. The most pressing danger was the defection of the lake tribes. In spite of the King's edicts, pursues de Nonville, the Courreurs de Bois have carried a hundred barrels of brandy to Michelin Mackenac in a single year and is a wonder that Indians have not massacred them all to save themselves from their violence and recover their wives and daughters from them. This, Monseigneur, joined to our failure in the last war has drawn upon us such contempt among all the tribes that there is but one way to regain our credit which is to humble the Iroquois by our unaided strength without asking the help of our Indian allies and he begs hard for a strong reinforcement of troops. Without doubt, it is surprising that the chastising of the Iroquois or at least the Seneca's, the head and front of Mischief was a matter of the last necessity. A crashing blow dealt against them would restore French prestige, paralyze English intrigue, save the Illinois from destruction and confirm the wavering allies of Canada. Meanwhile, matters grew from bad to worse. In the North and in the West there was scarcely a tribe in the French interest which was not either attacked by the Seneca's or the colony. We may set down Canada as lost, again writes Donanville, if we do not make war next year and yet in our present disordered state war is the most dangerous thing in the world. Nothing can save us but the sending out of troops and the building of forts and blockhouses. Yet I dare not begin to build them for if I do it will bring down all the Iroquois upon us before we are in a condition to fight them. Nevertheless, he made what preparations he could, begging all the while and carrying on at the same time a correspondence with his rival, Dongan. At first it was courteous on both sides but it soon grew pungent and at last acrid. Donanville wrote to announce his arrival and Dongan replied in French, Sir, I have had the honour of receiving your letter and greatly rejoice at having so good a neighbour whose reputation is so widely spread that it has anticipated your arrival. I have a very high respect for the King of France whose bread I have eaten so much that I feel under an obligation to prevent whatever can give the least umbridge to our masters. Monsieur de la barre is a very worthy gentleman but he has not written to me in a civil and befitting style. Donanville replied with many compliments, I know not what reason you may have had to be dissatisfied with Monsieur de la barre but I know very well that I should reproach myself all my life if I could fail to render to you the reputation of so great rank and merit. In regard to the affair in which Monsieur de la barre interfered as you write me I presume you refer to his quarrel with the Seneca's. As to that Monsieur I believe that you understand the character of that nation well enough to perceive that it is not easy to live in friendship with the people who have neither religion nor honour nor subordination. The King, my master, entertains affection and friendship for this country solely through zeal and missionaries whose ardour in preaching the faith leads them to expose themselves to the brutalities and persecutions of the most ferocious of tribes. You know better than I what fatigues and torments they have suffered for the sake of Jesus Christ. I know your heart is penetrated with the glory of that name which makes hell tremble and at the mention of which all the powers of heaven fall prostrate shall we be so unhappy as to refuse them our master's protection. I am afraid that we will have our holy religion. Can we not then come to an understanding to sustain our missionaries by keeping those fierce tribes in respect and fear? This special appeal for maintaining French Jesuits on English territory or what was claimed as such was lost on Duncan Catholic as he was. He regarded them as dangerous political enemies and did his best to expel them de Noville entertained the same purpose in order to exclude the English and he watched eagerly the moment to execute it. A rumor of the scheme was brought to Duncan by one of the French who often deserted to Albany where they were welcomed and encouraged. The English governor was exceedingly wroth. He had written before in French out of complacence. He now dispensed with ceremony and wrote in his own peculiar English I am informed that you intend to leave the country on this side of the lake within my master's territories without question. I cannot believe that a person that has your reputation in the world would follow the steps of Monsieur Labar and be ill-advised by some interested persons in your government to make disturbance between our master's subjects in those parts of the world for a little peltry. I hear one of the fathers over him though it's a thousand pities that those that have made such progress in the service of God should be disturbed and that by the fault of those that laid the foundation of Christianity amongst these barbarous people setting apart the station I am in I am as much Monsieur de Noville a humble servant as any friend he has and will emit no opportunity of manifesting the same. Sir, your humble servant Thomas Duncan who was a very good beggar and warned Duncan not to believe the stories told him by French desertors. In order, he wrote that we may live on a good understanding it would be well that a gentleman of your character should not give protection to all the rogues, vagabonds and thieves who desert us and seek refuge with you and who to gain your favor think they cannot do better than tell nonsensical stories about us which they will continue to do so as long as you listen to them. Believe me, it is much joy to have so good a neighbor of so excellent qualifications and temper and of a humor altogether differing from Monsieur de la Bale, your predecessor who was so furious and hasty and very much addicted to great words as if I had been to have been frightened by them. For my part I shall take all imaginable care that the fathers who preached the Holy Gospel to those Indians over whom I have power be not in the least ill treated and upon that very account those beastly crimes you reprove shall be checked severely and all my endeavors used to suppress their filthy drunkenness, disorders, debauches, warring and quarrels and whatsoever doth obstruct the growth and enlargement of the Christian faith amongst those people. He then in reply to an application of Denisville promised to give up runaways. Promise was not followed by performance and he still favored to the utmost the true and Frenchman who made Albany their resort for the salvation. This drew an angry letter from Denisville. You were so good, Monsieur, as to tell me that you would give up all the deserters who have fled to you to escape chastisement for their navy. As most of them are bank rups and thieves, I hope that they will give you reason to repent having harbored them and that your merchants who employ them will be punished for trusting such rascals. To the great wrath of the French Governor, Duncan persisted in mourning you. You proposed, Monsieur, writes Denisville to submit everything to the decision of our masters. Nevertheless, your emissary to the Onondagas told all the five nations in your name to pillage and make war on us. Next, he berates his rival for furnishing the Indians with rum. Think you that religion will make any progress while your traders supply the savages in abundance with the liquor which, as you ought to know, converts them into wine. Certainly, retorts Duncan, our rum doth as little hurt as your brandy and in the opinion of Christians is much more wholesome. Each tried incessantly to out general the other. Denisville steadfast in his plan of controlling the passes of the Western country had projected forts not only at Niagara but also at Toronto, on Lake Erie and on the Strait of Detroit. He thought that a time had come when he could, without rashness, want an order to dilute who was then at Michelin Macanac to occupy it with 50 couriers de bois. That enterprising chief accordingly repaired to Detroit and built a stockade at the outlet of Lake Huron on the Western side of the Strait. It was not a moment too soon. The year before, Duncan had sent a party of armed traders in 11 canoes commanded by Johannes Roseboom, a Dutchman of Albany to carry English goods to the upper lakes. They returned from the Indians who begged them to come every year and though Denisville sent an officer to stop them at Niagara they returned in triumph after an absence of three months. A larger expedition was organized in the autumn of 1686. Roseboom again set out for the lakes with 20 or more canoes. He was to enter among the Seneca's and wait the arrival of Major McGregory as scotch officer who was to leave Albany in the spring with 50 men, led by a band of Iroquois to form a general treaty of trade and alliance with the tribes claimed by France as her subjects. Denisville was beside himself at the news. He had already urged upon Louis XIV the policy of buying the colony of New York which he thought might easily be done and which as he said would make us masters of the Iroquois without a war. This time he wrote in a less specific mood. And he begged for soldiers more earnestly than ever. Things grow worse and worse. The English stir up the Iroquois against us and sent parties to Michelin Mackenac to rob us of our trade. It would be better to declare war against them than to perish by their intrigues. He complained bitterly to Dungen and Dungen replied. I believe it is as lawful for the English as the French to trade amongst the remotest and the indians to plunder and fight you. That is as false as this true that God is in heaven. I have desired you to send for the deserters. I know not who they are but had rather such rascals and bank routes as you call them were amongst their own countrymen. He had nevertheless turned them to good account. For as the English knew nothing of western geography could catch. Dungen presently received dispatches from the English court which showed him the necessity of caution and one next he wrote to his rival it was with a chastened pen. I hope your excellency will be so kind as not desire or seek any correspondence with our Indians of this side of the Great Lake, Ontario. If they do amese to any of your government and you make it known to me you shall have all justice done. He complained mildly that the countrymen would not be able to send any of our converts to Canada and you must pardon me if I tell you that it is not the right way to keep an affair correspondence. I am daily expecting religious men from England which I intend to put amongst those five nations. I desire you would order Monsieur de l'Ambierville that so long as he stays amongst those people he would metal only with the affairs belonging to his function. Sir I send you some oranges and I thank you for your oranges. It is a great pity that they were all rotten. The French governor unlike his rival felt strong in the support of his king who had responded amply to his appeals for aid and the temper of his letters answered to his improved position. I was led, Monsieur, to believe by your civil language in the letter you took the trouble to write to me on my arrival that we should live in the greatest harmony in the world. And he abbrades him without measure for his various misdeeds. Take my word for it. Let us devote ourselves to the accomplishment of our master's will. Let us seek as they do to serve and promote religion. Let us live together in harmony as they desire. I repeat and protest, Monsieur, that it rests with you alone, but do not imagine that I am a man to suffer others to play tricks on me. I willingly believe that you have the honor to write to me, but whilst I have the honor to write to you, you know that Salvaillet, Gédéon Petit, and many other rogues and bankrupts like them are with you in boast of sharing your table. I should not be surprised that you tolerate them in your country, but I am astonished that you should promise me not to tolerate them that you so promise me again and that you perform nothing of what you promise. The British leader Broquois presently found a moment of comfort in tidings that reached him from the north. Here as in the West there was violent rivalry between the subjects of the two crowns. With the help of two French renegades named Rédisso and Gozellet the English company of Hudson's Bay then in its infancy had established a post near the mouth of Nelson River on the western shore of that Fort Rupert at the southern end of the bay. A rival French company had been formed in Canada under the name of the Company of the North, and it resolved on an effort to expel its English competitors. Though it was a time of profound peace between the two kings, Denis Ville warmly espoused the plan, and in the early spring of 1686 he sent the Chevalier de Troyes from Montreal with eighty or more Canadians to execute it. With Troyes went Iberville, St. Helene, and Marie-Cour, three of the sons of Charlemagne, and the Jesuit Sylvie joined the party as chaplain. They ascended the Ottawa and thence from stream to stream and lake to lake toiled painfully towards their goal. At length they neared Fort Hayes. It was a stockade with four bastions mounted with cannon. There was a strong black house within in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged and suspicious of danger. Troyes approached at night. Iberville and St. Helene with a few followers climbed the palisade on one side while the rest of the party burst the main gate with a sort of battering ram and rushed in yelling the war-woop. In a moment the door to the blockhouse was dashed open and its astonished inmates captured in their shirts. The victors now embarked for Fort Rupert disted forty leagues along the shore. In construction it resembled Fort Hayes. The fifteen traitors who held the place were all asleep at night in their blockhouse when the Canadians burst the gate of the stockade and swarmed into the area. One of them mounted by a ladder to the roof of the building and dropped lighted hand grenades down the chimney which exploding among the occupants told them unmistakably that something was wrong. At the same time the assailants fired briskly on them through the loopholes and placing a pitard under the walls threatened to blow them into the air. Five, including a woman, were killed or wounded and the rest cried for quarter. Meanwhile Iberville with another party attacked a vessel anchored near the fort and climbing silently over her side found the man on the watch asleep in his blanket. He sprang up and made fight but they killed him then stamped on the deck to rouse those below, sabred two of them as they came up the hatchway and captured the rest. Among them was Bridger, governor for the company of all its stations on the bay. They next turned their attention to Fort Albany, thirty leaks from Fort Hayes in a direction opposite to that of Fort Rupert. Here there were about thirty men under Henry Sargent and agents of the company. Surprise was this time impossible for news of their proceedings had gone before them and Sargent, though no soldier, stood on his defense. The Canadians arrived, summoned canoes, summoned the captured vessel bringing ten captured pieces of cannon which they planted in battery on a neighboring hill well covered by entrenchments from the English shot. Here they presently opened fire and in an hour the stockade with the houses that it enclosed was completely riddled. The English took shelter in a cellar nor was it till the fire slackened that they ventured out to show a white flag and ask for a parley. Tois and Sargent had an interview. The Englishman regaled his conqueror with a bottle of Spanish wine and after drinking the health of King Louis and King James they settled the terms of capitulation. The prisoners were sent home in an English vessel which soon after arrived and Marie-Court remained to command at the bay while Tois returned to report his success to Dononville. This buccaneer exploit exasperated the English public and it became doubly apparent that the state of affairs in America could not be allowed to continue. A conference had been arranged between the two powers even before the news came from Hudson's Bay and Count Davaux appeared at London as a special envoy of Louis XIV to settle the questions at issue. A treaty of neutrality was signed at Whitehall and commissioners were appointed on both sides. Pending the discussion each party was to refrain from acts of hostility or encroachment and said the declaration of the commissioners, to the end the said agreement may have the better effect. We do likewise agree that the said Serene Kings shall immediately send necessary orders on that behalf to their respective governors in America. Duncan accordingly was directed to keep a friendly correspondence with his rival and take good care to give him no cause of complaint. It was this missive which adashed the order of the English governor and the French government had to soften his epistolary style. More than four months after Louis XIV sent corresponding instructions to Donanville but meantime he had sent him troops, money and munitions in abundance and ordered him to attack the Iroquois towns. Whether such a step was consistent with the recent treaty of neutrality may well be doubted. For though James II had not yet formally claimed the Iroquois's British subjects, his representative had done so for years with his approval and out of this claim had risen the principal differences which it was the object of the treaty to settle. Eight hundred regulars were already in the colony and eight hundred more were sent in the spring with a hundred and sixty-eight thousand lever in money and supplies. Donanville was prepared to strike. He had pushed his preparations actively yet with extreme secrecy for he meant to fall on the Seneca's unawares and shatter out a blow the main spring of English intrigue. Harmony reigned among the chiefs of the colony, military, civil and religious. The intended mull had been recalled on the complaints of the governor who had quarrelled with him and a new intended champigny had been sent in his place. He was as pious as Donanville himself and like him was in perfect accord with the bishop and the Jesuits. All wrought together to promote the new crusade. It was not yet time to preach it or at least Donanville thought so. He dissembled his purpose to the last moment even with his best friends. Of all the Jesuits among the Iroquois, the two brothers L'Amberville had alone held their post. Donanville in order to deceive the enemy had directed these priests towards the Iroquois chiefs to meet him in council at Fort Frontenac, with her as he pretended he was about to go with an escort of troops for the purpose of conferring with them. The two brothers received no hint whatever of his real intention and tried in good faith to accomplish his wishes, but the Iroquois were distrustful and hesitated to comply. On this the elder L'Amberville sent the younger with letters to Donanville to explain the position of affairs saying at the same time that he himself would not leave on Andaga except to accompany the chiefs to the proposed council. The poor father, wrought the governor, knows nothing of our designs. I am sorry to see him exposed to danger, but should I recall him his withdrawal would certainly betray our plans to the Iroquois. This unpardonable reticence placed the Jesuit in extreme peril, for the moment the Iroquois discovered the intended treachery they would probably burn him as its instrument. No man in Canada had done so much as the elder L'Amberville to counteract the influence of England and serve the interests of France and in return the governor exposed him recklessly to the most terrible of deaths. In spite of all his pains it was whispered abroad that there was to be war and the rumour was brought to the ears of Duncan by some of the Canadian deserters. He lost no time in warning the Iroquois and their deputies came to beg his help and they not only recognized King James as their sovereign but consented at last to call his representative Father Corlier instead of Brother. Their father, however, dared not promise them soldiers. Though in spite of the recent treaty he caused gunpowder and led to be given them and urged them to recall the powerful war parties which they had lately sent against the Illinois. De Noville at length broke silence and ordered the militia to muster. They grumbled and hesitated for they remembered the failures of L'Aba. The governor issued a proclamation and the bishop a pastoral mandate. There were sermons, prayers and exhortations in all the churches. A revulsion of popular feeling followed and the people, says De Noville, made ready for the march with extraordinary animation. The church showered blessings on them as they went and daily masses were ordained for the downfall of the foes of heaven and of France. A host of flat boats failed with soldiers and a host of engine canoes struggled against the rapids of the St. Lawrence and slowly made their way to Fort Frontenac. Among the troops was La Hontanne. When on his arrival he entered the gate of the fort he saw a strange sight. A row of posts was splattered across the area within and to each post an Iroquois was tied by the neck, hands and feet, in such a way, says the indignant witness, that he could neither sleep nor drive off the mosquitoes. A number of Indians attached to the expedition, all of whom were Christian converts from the mission villages, were amusing themselves by burning the fingers of these unfortunate in the bowls of their pipes while the sufferers sang their death songs. La Hontanne recognized one of them who, during his campaign with La Baa, had often feasted him in his wigwam, and the sights so exasperated the young officer that he could scarcely refrain from thrashing the tormentors with his walking stick. Though the prisoners were Iroquois, they were not those against whom the expedition was directed, nor had they so far as appears ever given the French any cause of complaint. They belonged to two neutral villages, called Conte and Ganius on the north shore of Lake Ontario, forming a sort of colony where the Salpicians of Montreal had established a mission. They hunted and fished for the garrison of the fort and had been on excellent terms with it. De Nonville, however, feared that they would report his movements to their relations across the lake, but this was not his chief motive for seizing them. Like La Baa before him, he had received orders from the court that, as the Iroquois were robust and strong, he should capture as many of them as possible and send them to France as galley slaves. The order, without doubt, referred to prisoners taken in war, but De Nonville, aware that the hostile Iroquois were not easily caught, resolved to entrap their unsuspecting relatives. The Intendant Champigny accordingly proceeded to the fort in advance of the troops and invited the neighbouring Iroquois to a feast. They came to the number of thirty men and about ninety women and children were upon they were surrounded and captured by the Intendant's escort and two hundred men of the garrison. The inhabitants of the village of Ganias were not present, and one paire with a strong party of Canadians and Christian Indians went to secure them. He acquitted himself of his errand with great address and returned with eighteen warriors and about sixty women and children. Champigny's exertions did not end here. Learning that a party of Iroquois were peaceably fishing on an island in the St Lawrence, he offered them also the hospitalities of Fort Fontenac, but they were too wary to be entrapped. Four or five Iroquois were however caught by the troops on their way up the river. They were in two or more parties and they had all with them their women and children, which was never the case with Iroquois on the warpath. Hence the assertion of De Nonville that they came with hostile designs is very improbable. As for the last six months he had constantly urged them by the lips of Lambert to visit him and smoke the pipe of peace, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these Indian families were on their way to the colony in consequence of his invitations. Among them were the son and brother of Bigmouth, who of late had been an advocate of peace, and in order not to alienate him these two were eventually set free. The other warriors were tied like the rest to stakes at the fort. The whole number of prisoners thus secured was fifty-one sustained by such food as their wives were able to get for them. Of more than a hundred and fifty women and children captured with them, many died at the fort, partly from excitement and distress and partly from a pastillential disease. The survivors were all baptized and then distributed among the mission villages in the colony. The men were sent to Québec, where some of them were given up to their Christian relatives in the missions who had claimed them and whom it was not expedient to offend, and the rest after being baptized were sent to France to share with convicts and Huguenots the horrible slavery of the royal galleys. Before reaching Fort Frontenac, Denisville to his great relief was joined by Lambertville, delivered from the peril to which the governor had exposed him. He owed his life to an act of magnanimity on the part of the Iroquois which does them signal honor. One of the prisoners at Fort Frontenac had contrived to escape and a leaping sixteen feet to the ground from the window of a blockhouse crossed the lake and gave the alarm to his countrymen. Apparently it was from him that the Onadangas learned that the invitations of Onancio were a snare, that he had entrapped their relatives and was about to fall on their Seneca brethren with all the force of Canada. The Jesuit whom they trusted and esteemed, but who had been used as an instrument to beguile them, was summoned before a council of the chiefs. They were in a fury at the news and Lambertville as much astonished by it as they expected instant death when one of them is said to have addressed him to the following effect. We know you too well to believe that you meant to betray us. We think that you have been deceived as well as we. And we are not unjust enough to punish you for the crime of others. But you are not safe here. When once our young men have sung the war song they will listen to nothing but their fury and we shall not be able to save you. They gave him guides and sent him by secret paths to meet the advancing army. Again the fields about Fort Frontenac were covered with tents, camp sheds and wickwams. Regulars, militia and Indians, there were about two thousand men. And besides these, eight hundred regulars just arrived from France had been left at Montreal to protect the settlers. Fortune thus far had smiled on the enterprise and she now gave Denonville a fresh proof of her favor. On the very day of his arrival a canoe came from Niagara with news that a large body of allies from the west had reached that place three days before and were waiting his commands. It was more than he had dared to hope. In the preceding autumn he had ordered Taunty commanding at the Illinois and La Durantée commanding at Michelin Mackenac to muster as many Coréole de Bois and Indians as possible and join him early in July at Niagara. The distances were vast and the difficulties incalculable. In the eyes of the pious governor their timely arrival was a manifest sign of the favor of heaven. At Fort Saint-Louis of the Illinois Taunty had mustered sixteen Frenchmen and about two hundred Indians whom he led across the country to Detroit and here he found Duluth, La Forêt and La Durantée with a large body of French and Indians from the upper lakes. It had been the work of the whole winter to induce these savages to move. Presence, persuasion and promises had not been spared and while La Durantée aided by the Jesuit Angélérans labored to gain over the tribes of Michelin Mackenac the indefatigable Nicolas Perrault was at work among those of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. They were of a race unsteady as aspens and fierce as wild cats full of mutual jealousies without rulers and without laws for each was a law to himself. It was difficult to persuade them and when persuaded scarcely possible to keep them so. Perrault however induced some of them to follow him to Michelin Mackenac where many hundreds of Algonquin savages were presently gathered a perilous crew who changed their minds every day and who's dancing, singing and yelping might turn at any moment into war whoops against each other or against their hosts the French. The Hurons showed more stability and La Durantée was reasonably sure that some of them would follow him to the war though it was clear that others were bent on allying themselves with the Seneca's and the English. As for the Potawatomies, Sax, Ojibwas, Ottawa's and other Algonquin hordes no man could foresee what they would do. Suddenly a canoe arrived with news that a party of English traders was approaching. It will be remembered that two bands of Dutch and English under Roosboom and McGregory had prepared to set out together for Michelin Mackenac armed with commissions from Dongon. They had rashly changed their plan and parted company. Roosboom took the lead and McGregory followed some time after. Their hope was that on reaching Michelin Mackenac the Indians of the place attracted by their cheap goods in their abundant supplies of rum would declare for them and drive off the French and this would probably have happened but for the prompt action of La Durantée. The canoes of Roosboom bearing 29 whites and 5 Mohawks and Mohicans were not far distant when amid a prodigious hubbub the French commander embarked to meet him with a 120 courier de bois. Behind them followed a swarm of Indian canoes whose occupants scarcely knew which side to take but for the most part inclined to the English. Roosboom and his men however naturally thought that they came to support the French and when La Durantée bore down upon them with threats of instant death if they made the least resistance they surrendered at once. The captors carried them in triumph to Michelin Mackenac and gave their goods to the delighted Indians. It is certain, wrote Denis Ville, that if the English had not stopped and pillaged the Hurons and Ottawa's would have revolted and cut the throats of all our Frenchmen. As it was La Durantée's exploit produced a revulsion of feeling and many of the Indians consented to follow him. He lost no time in leading them down the lake to join Joliot at Detroit and when Taunty arrived they all paddled for Niagara. On the way they met McGregory with a party about equal to that of Roosboom. He had with him a considerable number of Ottawa and Huron prisoners whom the Iroquois had captured and whom he meant to return to their countrymen as a means of concluding the long projected triple alliance between the English, the Iroquois and the tribes of the lakes. This bold scheme was now completely crushed. All the English were captured and carried to Niagara once they and their luckless precursors were sent prisoners to Quebec. La Durantée and his companions with 180 couriers de bois and 400 Indians waited impatiently at Niagara for orders from the governor. A canoe dispatched in haste from Fort Frontenac soon appeared and they were directed to repair at once to the rendezvous at Iroquois Bay on the borders of the Seneca country. De Nauville was already on his way thither. On the 4th of July he had embarked at Fort Frontenac with 400 bateaux and canoes crossed the foot of Lake Ontario and moved westward along the southern shore. The weather was rough and six days passed before he described the low headlands of Iroquois Bay. Far off on the glimmering water he saw a multitude of canoes advancing to meet him. It was the flotilla of La Durantée. Good management and good luck had so disposed it that the Allied bands, concentrating from points more than a thousand miles distant, reached the rendezvous on the same day. This was not all. The Ottawa's of Machile Mackenac, who refused to follow La Durantée, had changed their minds the next morning, embarked in a body, paddled up the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, crossed to Toronto and joined the Allies at Niagara. White and red De Nauville now had nearly three thousand men under his command. All were gathered on the low point of land that separates Iroquois Bay from Lake Ontario. Never, says an eye witness, had Canada seen such a sight, and never perhaps will she see such a sight again. Here was the camp of the regulars from France with the General's headquarters, the camp of the four battalions of the Canadian militia commanded by the no bless of the country, the camp of the Christian Indians, and farther on a swarm of savages of every nation. Their features were different, and so were their manners, their weapons, their decorations, and their dances. They sang and whooped and harangued in every accent and tongue. Most of them wore nothing but horns on their heads and the tails of beasts behind their backs. Their faces were painted red or green with black or white spots, their ears and noses were hung with ornaments of iron, and their naked bodies were dobbed with figures of various sorts of animals. These were the allies from the upper lakes. The enemy, meanwhile, had taken alarm. Just after the army arrived, three Seneca scouts called from the edge of the woods and demanded what they meant to do. To fight you, you blockheads, answered a Mohawk Christian attached to the French. A volley of bullets was fired at the scouts, but they escaped and carried the news to their villages. Many of the best warriors were absent. Those that remained four hundred or four hundred and fifty by their own accounts and eight hundred by that of the French mustered in haste, and though many of them were mere boys, they sent off the women and children, hid their most valued possessions, burned their chief town, and prepared to meet the invaders. On the twelfth, at three o'clock in the afternoon, De Noville began his march, leaving four hundred men in a hastily built fort to guard the bateau and canoes. Troops, officers and Indians all carry their provisions at their backs. Some of the Christian Mohawks guided them, but guides were scarcely needed, for a broad Indian trail led from the bay to the great Seneca town, twenty-two miles southward. They marched three leagues through the open forests of oak and encamped for the night. In the morning the heat was intense. The men gasped in the dead and sultry air of the woods, or grew faint in the pitiless sun as they waited waist deep through the ranc grass of the narrow intervails. They passed safely through two dangerous defiles, and about two in the afternoon began to enter a third. Dense forests covered the hills on either hand. La Durantée with Taunty and his cousin Jolute led the advance, nor could all Canada have supplied three men better for the work. Each led his band of Correurs de Bois, white Indians without discipline and scarcely capable of it, but brave and accustomed to the woods. On their left were the Iroquois converts from the missions of Saus-Saint-Louis and the mountain of Montreal, fighting under the influence of their ghostly prompters against their own countrymen. On the right were the pagan Indians from the west. The woods were full of these painted specters, grotesquely horrible in horns and tail, and among them flitted the black robe of Father Angéléran, the Jesuit of Michelin Macanac. Nicolas Perrault and two other bush-ranging Frenchmen were assigned to command them, but in fact they obeyed no man. These formed the vanguard, eight or nine hundred and all, under an excellent officer Caglière, governor of Montreal. Behind came the main body under De Noville, each of the four battalions of regulars alternating with the battalion of Canadians. Some of the regulars wore light armor while the Canadians were in plain attire of coarse cloth or buckskin. De Noville, oppressed by the heat, marched in his shirt. It is a rough life, wrote the Marquis, to tramp a foot through the woods, carrying one's own provisions in a haversack, devoured by mosquitoes, and faring no better than a mere soldier. With him was the Chevalier de Vaudré, who had just arrived from France in command of the eight hundred men left to guard the colony, and who, eager to take part in the campaign, had pushed forward alone to join the army. Here, too, were the Canadian seniors at the head of their vassals, Berthier, Lavaltrie, Grandville, Longueuil, and many more. A guard of rangers and Indians brought up the rear. Scouts thrown out in front ran back with the report that they had reached the Seneca clearings and had seen no more dangerous enemy than three or four women in the cornfields. This was a device of the Seneca to cheat the French into belief that the inhabitants were still in the town. It had the desired effect. The vanguard pushed rapidly forward, hoping to surprise the place, and ignorant that, behind the ridge of thick forests on their right, among a tangled growth of beech trees in the gorge of a brook, three hundred ambushed warriors lay biding their time. Hurrying forward through the forest, they left the main body behind and soon reached the end of the defile. The woods were still dense on their left and front, but on their right lay a great marsh, covered with alder thickets and rank grass. Suddenly the air was failed with yells and a rapid though distant fire was opened from the thickets and the forest. Scores of painted savages, stark naked, some armed with swords and some with hatchets, leaped screeching from their ambuscade and rushed against the van. Almost at the same moment, a burst of whoops and firing sounded in the defile behind. It was the ambush three hundred supporting the onset of their countrymen in front, but they had made a fatal mistake. Deceived by the numbers of the vanguard, they supposed it to be the whole army, never suspecting that De Noville was close behind with sixteen hundred men. It was a surprise on both sides. So dense was the forest that the advancing battalions could see neither the enemy nor each other. Appalled by the din of whoops and firing redoubled by the echoes of the narrow valley, the whole army was seized with something like a panic. Some of the officers, it is said, threw themselves on the ground in their fright. There were a few moments of intense bewilderment. The various corps became broken and confused and moved hither and thither without knowing why. De Noville behaved with great courage. He ran, sword in hand, to where the uproar was greatest, ordered the drums to beat the charge, turned back the militia of Berthsee who were trying to escape, and commanded them and all others whom he met to fire on whatever looked like an enemy. He was bravely seconded by Calière, Lavalterie, and several other officers. The Christian Iroquois fought well from the first, leaping from tree to tree, and exchanging shots and defiance with their heathen countrymen. Till the Seneca's, seeing themselves confronted by numbers that seemed endless, abandoned the field after heavy loss, carrying with them many of their dead and all of their wounded. De Noville made no attempt to pursue. He had learned the dangers of this blind warfare of the woods, and he feared that the Seneca's would wailay him again in the labyrinth of bushes that lay between him and the town. Our troops, he says, were all so overcome by the extreme heat and the long march that we were forced to remain where we were till morning. We had the pain of witnessing the usual cruelties of the Indians who cut the dead bodies into quarters, like butchers meat to put into their kettles, and opened most of them while still warm to drink the blood. Our rascally Autowas particularly distinguished themselves by these barbarities as well as by cowardice, for they made off in the fight. We had five or six men killed on the spot, and about twenty wounded among whom was Father Angel Ran, who was badly hurt by a gunshot. Some prisoners who escaped from the Seneca's tell us that they lost forty men killed outright, twenty-five of whom we saw butchered. One of the escaped prisoners saw the rest buried, and he saw also more than sixty very dangerously wounded. In the morning the troops advanced in order of battle through a march covered with alders and tall grass. Once they had no sooner emerge then, says Abi Belmont. We began to see the famous Babylon of the Seneca's where so many crimes have been committed, so much blood spilled and so many men burned. It was a village or town of bark on the top of a hill. They had burned it a week before. We found nothing in it but the graveyard and the graves full of snakes and other creatures. A great mask with teeth and eyes of brass and a bearskin drawn over it with which they performed their conjurations. The fire had also spared a number of huge receptacles of bark still filled with the last season's corn, while the fields around were covered with a growing crop ripening in the July sun. There were hogs too in great number, for the Iroquois did not share the antipathy with which Indians are apt to regard that unsavory animal and from which certain philosophers have argued their dissent from the Jews. The soldiers killed the hogs, burned the old corn and hacked down the new with their swords. Next they advanced to an abandoned Seneca Fort on a hill half a league distant and burned it with all that it contained. Ten days were passed in the work of Havoc. Three neighboring villages were leveled and all their fields laid waste. The amount of corn destroyed was prodigious. De Norville reckons it at the absurdly exaggerated amount of twelve hundred thousand bushels. The Seneca's laden with such of their possessions as they could carry off had fled to their confederates in the east and De Norville did not venture to pursue them. His men, feasting without stint on green corn and fresh pork, were sickening rapidly and his Indian allies were deserting him. It is a miserable business, he wrote, to command savages who as soon as they have knocked an enemy in the head ask for nothing but to go home and carry with them the scalp which they take off like a skull cap. You cannot believe what trouble I had to keep them till the corn was cut. On the twenty-fourth he withdrew with all his army to the fortified post at Irondecois Bay whence he proceeded to Niagara in order to accomplish his favorite purpose of building a fort there. The troops were set at work and a stockade was planted on the point of land at the eastern angle between the River Niagara and Lake Ontario, the site of the ruined fort built by La Salle nine years before. Here he left a hundred men under the Chevalier de Trois and a barking with the rest of the army descended to Montreal. The campaign was but half a success. Joined to the capture of the English traders on the lakes it had indeed prevented the defection of the western Indians and in some slight measure restored their respect for the French of whom nevertheless one of them was heard to say that they were good for nothing but to make war on hogs and corn. As for the Seneca's they were more enraged than hurt. They could rebuild their bark villages in a few weeks and though they had lost their harvest their Confederates would not let them starve. A converted Iroquois had told the governor before his departure that if he overset a wasp nest he must crush the wasps or they would sting him. De Noville left the wasps alive. End of chapter 7