 CHAPTER I. What would world history be without the picturesque anals of the Gaelic race? This is a question which the serious student may well ask himself as he works his way through the chronicles of a dozen centuries. From the age of Charlemagne to the last of the Bonaparts is a long stride down the ages. But there was never a time in all these years when men might make reckonings in the arithmetic of European politics without taking into account the prestige, the power, and even the primacy of France. There were times without number when France among her neighbours made herself hated with an undying hate. There were times again when she rallied them to her side in friendship and admiration. There were epics in which her hegemony passed unquestioned among the men of other lands, and there were times when a sudden shift in fortune seemed to lay the nation prostrate, with none so poor to do her reverence. It was France that first brought an orderly nationalism out of feudal chaos. It was a royal house of Capay that rallied Europe to the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher, and led the greatest of the Crusades to Palestine. Yet the France of the last Crusades was within a century the France of Cressy. Just as the France of Australitz was more speedily the France of Waterloo, and men who followed the tricolor at Solferino lived to see it furled in humiliation at Sedan. No other country has had a history as prolific in triumph and reverse, in epics of peaceful progress and periods of civil commotion, in pageant and tragedy, in all that gives fascination to historical narrative. Happy the land whose anals are chiresome! Not such has been the fortune of poor old France. The sage Tocqueville has somewhere remarked that whether France was loved or hated by the outside world she could not be ignored. That is very true. The Gaul has at all stages of his national history defied an attitude of indifference in others. His country has been at many times the head and at all times the heart of Europe. His hysteria has made Europe hysterical, while his sober national sense at critical moments has held the whole continent to good behavior. For a half-dozen centuries there was never a squabble at any remote part of Europe in which France did not stand ready and willing to take a hand on the slightest opportunity. That policy, as pursued particularly by Louis XIV, and the Bonaparte's, made a heavy drain in brawn and brain on the vitality of the race. But despite it all, the peaceful achievements of France within her own borders continued to astonish mankind. It is this astonishing vigor, this inexhaustible stamina, this unexampled recuperative power that has at all times made France a nation which, whether men admire or condemn her policy, can never be treated with indifference. It was these qualities which enabled her, throughout exhausting foreign troubles, to retain her leadership in European scholarship, in philosophy, art, and architecture. This is what has enabled France to be the grim warrior of Europe without ceasing ever to be the idealist of the nations. It was during one of her proud and prosperous eras that France began her task of creating an empire beyond the Atlantic. At no time indeed was she better equipped for the work. No power of Western Europe, since the days of Roman glory, had possessed such facilities for conquering and governing new lands. If ever there was a land able and ready to take up the white man's burden, it was the France of the seventeenth century. The nation had become the first military power of Europe. Spain and Italy had ceased to be serious rivals. In England, under the Stuart dynasty, tacitly admitted the military primacy of France. Nor was this superiority of the French confined to the science of war. It passed unquestioned in the arts of peace. Even Rome, at the height of her power, could not dominate every field of human activity. She could rule the people with authority and overcome the proud, but even her own poets rendered homage to Greece in the realms of art, sculpture, and eloquence. But France was the aesthetic as well as the military dictator of the seventeenth century Europe. Her authority was supreme, as Macaulay says, on all matters from orthodoxy and architecture to the proper cut of a courtier's clothes. Her monarchs were the first gentlemen of Europe. Her nobility set the social standards of the day. The rank and file of her people, and there were at least twenty million of them in the days of Louis Quatoros, were making a fertile land yield its full increase. The country was powerful, rich, prosperous, and, for the time being, outwardly contented. So far as her form and spirit of government went, France, by the middle of the seventeenth century, was a despotism both in theory and in fact. Women were still living who could recall the day when France had a real parliament, the estate's general as it was called. This body had, at one time, all the essentials of a representative assembly. It might have become, as the English House of Commons became, the grand inquest of the nation. But it did not do so. The waxing personal strength of the monarchy curbed its influence, its authority weakened, and throughout the great century of France, colonial expansion from sixteen-fifty to seventeen-fifty, the estate's general was never convoked. The centralization of political power was complete. The State, I, and the State. These famous words imputed to Louis XIV expressed no vain boast of royal power. Speaking politically, France was a pyramid. At the apex was the Bourbon Sovereign. In him all lines of authority converged, subordinate to him in authority and dominated by him, as he willed it, were various appointive councils. Among them the Council of State, and the so-called Parliament of Paris, which was not a parliament at all, but a semi-judicial body entrusted with the function of registering the royal decrees. Below these, in the hierarchy of officialdom, came the intendance of the various provinces forty or more of them. Loyal agents of the crown were these intendance. They saw to it that no royal mandate ever went unheeded in any part of the king's domain. These forty intendance were the men who really bridged the great administrative gulf which lay between the royal court and the people. They were the most conspicuous, the most important, and the most characteristic officials of the old regime. Without them the royal authority would have tumbled over by its own sheer top-heaviness. They were the eyes and ears of the monarchy. They provided the monarch with forescore, eager hands to work his sovereign will. The intendance, in turn, had their underlings, known as the sub-delegates, who held the peasantry in leash. Notice it was that the administration, like a pyramid, broadened towards its base, and the whole structure rested upon the Third Estate, or rank and file of the people. Such was the position, the power, and the administrative framework of France when her kings and people turned their eyes westward across the seas. From the rugged old Norman and Breton seaports courageous mariners had been for a long time lengthening their voyages to new coasts. As early as 1534 Jacques Carché of St. Malo had made the first of his pilgrimages to the St. Lawrence, and in 1542 his associate, Robert Val, had attempted to plant a colony there. They had found the shores of the Great River to be inhospitable. The winters were rigorous. No stores of mineral wealth had appeared, nor did the land seem to possess great agricultural possibilities. From Mexico the Spanish galleons were bearing home their rich cargos of silver bullion. In Virginia the English navigators had found a land of fair skies and fertile soil. But the hills and valleys of the Northland had shouted no such greeting to the voyagers of Brittany. Carché had failed to make his landfall at Chutopia, and the balance sheet of his achievements, when cast up in 1544, had offered a princely dividend of disappointment. For a half-century following the abortive efforts of Carché and Robert Val, the French authorities had made no serious or successful attempts to plant a colony in the new world. That is not surprising, for there were troubles in plenty at home. Cuchonauts and Catholics were at each other's throats. The wars of the frond convulsed the land, and it was not till the very end of the sixteenth century that the country settled down to peace within its own borders. Some facetious chronicler has remarked that the three chief causes of early warfare were Christianity, herrings, and cloves. There is much golden truth in that nugget. However if one could take from human history all the strife that had been due either to bigotry or to commercial avarice, a fair portion of the bloodstreaks would be washed from its pages. For the time being, at any rate, France had so much fighting at home that she was unable, like her Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English neighbours, to gain strategic points for future fighting abroad. Those were days when, if a people would possess the gates of their enemies, it behooved them to begin early. France made a late start, and she was forced to take in consequence what other nations had shown no eagerness to seize. It was Samuel Champlain, a seaman of Brug, who first secured for France and for Frenchman a sure foothold in North America, and thus became the herald of Borbren imperialism. After a youth spent at sea, Champlain engaged for some years in the armed conflicts with the Huguenots, then he returned to his old marine life once more. He sailed to the Spanish Main and elsewhere, thereby gaining skill as a navigator and ambition to be an explorer of new coasts. In 1603 came an opportunity to join an expedition to the St. Lawrence, and from this time to the end of his days the Bourg mariner gave his whole interest and energies to the work of planting an outpost of empire in the New World. Champlain was scarcely thirty-six when he made his first voyage to Canada. He died at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635. His services to the king and nation extended over three decades. With the crew of his little vessel, the Don de Dieu, Champlain cast anchor on July 9, 1608, beneath the frowning natural ramparts of Cape Diamond, and became the founder of a city built upon a rock. The felling of trees and the hewing of wood began. In a few weeks Champlain raised his rude fort, brought his provisions ashore, established relations with the Indians, and made ready, with his twenty-eight followers, to spend the winter in the new settlement. It was a painful experience. The winter was long and bitter, scurvy raided the Frenchman's cramped quarters, and in the spring only eight followers were alive to greet the ship which came with new colonists and supplies. It took a soul of iron to continue the project of nation-planting after such a tragic beginning. But Champlain was not the man to recoil from the task. More settlers were landed, women and children were brought along. Land was broken for cultivation, and in due course a little village grew up about the fort. This was Quebec, the center and soul of French hopes beyond the Atlantic. For the first twenty years of its existence the little colony had a stormy time. Some of the settlers were unruly, and gave Champlain, who was both maker and enforcer of the laws, a hard task to hold them in control. During these years the king took little interest in his new domains. The settlers came slowly, and those who came seemed to be far more interested in trading with the Indians than in carving out permanent homes for themselves. Few there were among them, who thought of anything but a quick competence from the profits of the fur trade, and a return to France at the earliest opportunity thereafter. Now it was the royal idea, insofar as the busy monarch of France had any fixed purpose in the matter, that the colony should be placed upon a feudal basis that land should be granted and sub-granted on feudal terms. In other words the king or his representative stood ready to give large tracts or fiefs in New France to all immigrants whose situation in life warranted the belief that they would maintain the dignity of seniors. These in turn would to sub-grant the land to ordinary settlers, who came without financial resources, sent across usually at the expense of his majesty. In this way the French authorities hoped to create a powerful military colony with a feudal hierarchy as its outstanding feature. Feudalism is a much abused term. To the minds of most laymen it has a rather hazy association with things despotic, oppressive, and medieval. The mere mention of the term conjures up those days of the dark ages when armor-clad knights found their chief recreation in running lances through one another when the overworked, underfed laborers of the field cringed and cowered before every lordly whim. Most readers seem to get their notions of chivalry from Scots talisman and their ideas on feudalism from the same author's immortal Ivan-hull. Federal scholars keep up a merry disputation. As to the historical origin of the feudal system the public imagination goes steadily on with its own curious picture of how that system lived and moved and had its being. A prolix tale of origins would be out of place in this chronicle, but even the mind of the man in the street ought to be set right as regards what feudalism was designed to do, and in what in fact it did for mankind, while civilization battled its way down the ages. Feudalism was a system of social relations based upon land. It grew out of the chaos which came upon Europe in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The fall of Roman power flattened the whole political structure of Western Europe, and nothing arose to take its place. Every lord or princeling was left to depend for defense upon the strength of his own arm, so he gathered around him as many vassals as he could. He gave them land. They gave him what he most wanted, a promise to serve and aid in time of war. The lord gave and promised to guard, the vassal took and promised to serve. Thus there was created a personal relation, a bond of mutual loyalty, wardship and service, which bound liegemen to lords with hoops of steel. No one can read Carlisle's trenchant past and present without bearing away some vivid and altogether wholesome impressions concerning the essential humanity of this great medieval institution. It shares with the Christian Church the honor of having made life worth living in days when all else combined to make it intolerable. It brought at least a semblance of social, economic and political order out of helpless and hopeless disorganization. It helped Europe slowly to recover from the greatest catastrophe in all her history. But our little systems have their day, as the poet assures us. They have their day and cease to be. Feudalism had its day, from dawn to twilight a day of picturesque memory, but it did not cease to exist when its day of service was done. Long after the necessity for mutual service and protection had passed away, long after the growth of firm monarchies with powerful standing armies had established the reign of law, the feudal system kept its hold upon the social order in France and elsewhere. The obligation of military service, when no longer needed, was replaced by dues and payments. The modern cash nexus replaced the old personal bond between vassal and lord. The feudal system became the senoral system. The lord became the senor. The vassal became the sassature, or peasant cultivator whose chief function was to yield revenue for his seniors' purse. These were great changes which sapped the spirit of the ancient institution. No longer bound to their dependence by any personal tie, the seniors usually turned affairs over to their bailiffs, men with hearts of adamant, who squeezed for the seniors every sue the hapless peasantry could yield. These publicans of the old regime have much to answer for. They and their work were not least among the causes which brought upon the crown and upon the privileged orders that terrible retribution of the red terror. Not with the medieval institution of feudalism but with its emanciated descendant, the senoral system of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, ought men to associate, if they must, their notions of grinding oppression and class hatred. Out to his new colony on the St. Lawrence the king sent this senoral system a gross and gratuitous outrage, a characteristic manifestation of bourbon's stupidity that is a common verdict upon the royal action. But it may well be asked, what else was there to do? The senoral system was still the basis of land tenure in France. The nobility and even the throne rested upon it. The church sanctioned and supported it. The people in general, whatever their attitude towards senoralism, were familiar with no other system of land-holding. It was not like the ecomedia system which Spain planted in Mexico, an arrangement cut out of new cloth for the more ruthless exploitations of a fruitful domain. The Puritan who went to Massachusetts Bay took his system of soakage tenure along with him. The common law went with the flag of England. It was quite as natural that the custom of Paris should follow the Fleur-de-Lis. There was every reason to expect, moreover, that in the new world the senoral system would soon free itself from those barnacles of privilege and oppression which were encrusted on its sides at home. Here was a small settlement of pioneers surrounded by hostile aborigines. The royal arm, strong as it was at home, could not well afford protection a thousand leagues away. The colony must organize and learn to protect itself. In other words, the colonial environment was very much like that in which the yeomen of the Dark Ages had found themselves, and might not its dangers be faced in the old feudal way. They were faced in this way. In the history of French Canada we find the senoral system forced back towards its old feudal plain. We see it gain in vitality. We see the old personal bond between lord and vassal restored to some of its pristine strength. We see the military aspects of the system revived, and its more sordid phases thrust aside. It turned New France into a huge armed camp. It gave the colony a closely knit military organization. And in a day when Canada needed every ounce of her strength to ward off encircling enemies, both white and red, it did for her what no other system could be expected to do. But to return to the little cradle of empire at the foot of Cape Diamond, Champlain for a score of years worked himself to premature old age in overcoming those many obstacles which always meet the pioneer. More settlers were brought, a few seniors were granted, priests were summoned from France, a new fort was built, and by sheer perseverance a settlement of about three hundred souls had been established by sixteen twenty-seven. But no single individual, however untiring in his efforts, could do all that needed to be done. It was consequently arranged, with the entire approval of Champlain, that the task of building up the colony should be entrusted to a great colonizing company formed for the purpose under royal auspices. In this project the moving spirit was no less a personage than Cardinal Richelieu, the great minister of Louis XIII. Official France was now really interested. Hitherto its interests, while profusely enough expressed, had been little more than perfunctory, with Richelieu as its sponsor a company was easily organized. Although, by royal decree, it was chartered as the Company of New France, it became more commonly known as the Company of One Hundred Associates, for it was a cooperative organization with one hundred members, some of them traders and merchants, but more of them courtiers. Colonizing companies were the fashion of Richelieu's day. Holland and England were exploiting new lands by the use of companies. There was no good reason why France should not do likewise. The system of company exploitation was particularly popular with the monarchs of all these European countries. It made no demands on the royal purse. If failure attended the company's ventures, the king bore no financial loss. But if the company succeeded, if its profits were large and its achievements great, the king might easily step in and claim his share of it all, as the price of royal protection and patronage. In both England and Holland the scheme worked out in that way. An English stock company began and developed the work which finally placed India in the possession of the British Crown. A similar Dutch organization, in due course, handed over Java as a rich patrimony to the king of the Netherlands. France, however, was not so fortunate. True enough, the Company of One Hundred Associates made a brave start. Its charter gave great privileges, and placed on the company large obligations. It seemed as though a new era in French colonization had begun. Having in view the establishment of a powerful military colony, as this charter recites, the king gave to the associates the entire territory claimed by France in the Western Hemisphere, with power to govern, create trade, grant lands, and bestow titles of nobility. For its part the Company was to send out settlers. At least two hundred of them a year. It was to provide them with free transportation, give them free lands, and initial subsistence. It was to support priests and teachers, in fact, to do all things necessary for the creation of that powerful military colony, which His Majesty had in expectation. It happened, however, that the first fleet the Company dispatched in 1628 did not reach Canada. The ships were attacked and captured, and in the following year Quebec itself fell into English hands. After its restoration in 1632 the Company greatly crippled resumed operations, but did very little for the upbuilding of the colony. Few settlers were sent out at all, and of these still fewer went at the Company's expense. In only two ways did the Company, after the first few years of its existence, show any interest in its new territories. In the first place its officers readily grasped the opportunity to make some profits out of the fur trade. Each year ships were sent to Quebec, merchant dice was landed there, and a cargo of furs taken in exchange. If the vessel ever reached home, despite the risks of wreck and capture, a handsome dividend for those interested was the outcome. But the risks were great, and after a time when the profits declined the Company showed scant interest in even the trading part of its business. The other matter in which the directors of the Company showed some interest was in the giving of seniores chiefly to themselves. About sixty of these seniores were granted, large tracts all of them. One director of the Company secured the whole island of Orleans as his senioral estate. Others took generous slices on both shores of the St. Lawrence. But not one of these men lifted a finger in the way of redeeming his huge fife from the wilderness. Everyone seems to have had great zeal in getting hold of these vast tracts with the hope that they would some day rise in value. As for the development of the lands, however, neither the Company nor its officers showed any such fervor in servicing the royal cause. Thirty years after the Company had taken its charter there were only about two thousand inhabitants in the colony. Not more than four thousand are pall of land were under cultivation. Trade had failed to increase, and the colonists were openly demanding a change of policy. When Louis XIV came to the throne and chose Colbert as his chief minister it was deemed wise to look into the colonial situation. FUTCH NOTE. See in this series the great Intendant, CHAPTER I. END FUTT NOTE. Both were surprised and angered by the showing. It appeared that not only had the Company neglected its obligations, but that its officers had shrewdly concealed their shortcomings from the royal notice. The great Bourbon therefore acted promptly and with firmness. In a couple of notable royal decrees he read the directors a severe lecture upon their avarice and inaction. Took away all the Company's powers, confiscated to the crown all the seniores which the directors had granted to themselves, and ordered that the colony should thenceforth be administered as a royal province. By his latter actions the King showed that he meant what his edicts implied. The colony passed under direct royal government in 1663, and virtually remained there until its surrender into English hands, and even century later. Louis XIV was greatly interested in Canada. From beginning to end of his long administration he showed this interest at every turn. His officials sent from Quebec their long dispatches. The patient monarch read them all, and sent by the next ship his budget of orders, advice, reprimand, and praise. As a royal province, New France had for a chief official a governor who represented the royal dignity and power. The governor was the chief military officer, and it was to him that the King looked for the proper care of all matters relating to the defense and peace of New France. Then there was the sovereign council, a body made up of the bishop, the intendant, and certain prominent citizens of the colony named by the King on the advice of his colonial representatives. This council was both a law-making and a judicial body. It registered and published the royal decrees, made local regulations, and acted as the Supreme Court of the colony. But the official who loomed largest in the purely civil affairs of New France was the intendant. He was the overseas apostle of Bourbon paternalism, and his commission authorized him to order all things as he may think just and proper. The intendant never found much opportunity for idleness. Choucavel, shrewdest among historians of pre-revolutionary France, has somewhere pointed out that under the old regime the administration took the place of providence. It sought to be as omniscient and as omnipotent. Its ways were quite as inscrutable. In this policy the intendant was the royal man of all work. The King spoke, and the intendant transformed his words into action. As the sovereign's great interest in the colony moved him to speak often, the intendant's activity was prodigious. Ordinances, edicts, judgments, and decrees fairly flew from his pen like sparks from an anvil. Nothing that needed setting a right was too inconsequential for a paternal order. In ordinance establishing a system of weights and measures for the colony rub shoulders with another inhibiting the youngsters of Quebec from slay-writing down its hilly thoroughfares in icy weather. Printed in small type these decrees of the intendants make up a bulky volume, the present day interest of which is only to show how often the hand of authority thrust itself into the daily walk and conversation of old Canada. From the first to the last there were a dozen intendants of New France. Jean Talant, whose prudence and energy did much to set the colony on its feet, was the first. Francois Bijaud, the arch-plunderer of public funds, who did so much to bring the land to disaster, was the last. Between them came a line of sensible, hard-working, and loyal men who gave the best that was in them to the uphill task of making the colony what their royal master wanted it to be. Unfortunate it is that Bijaud's astounding depravity has led too many readers and writers of Canadian history to look upon the intendancy of New France as opposed held chiefly by rascals. As a class no men served the French crown more steadfastly or to better purpose. Now it was to the intendant, in Talant's time, that the king committed the duty of granting seniores and of supervising the senioral system in operation. But later, when Count Frontenac, the iron governor of the colony, came into conflict with the intendant on various other matters, he made complaint to the court at Versailles that the intendant was assuming too much authority. A royal decree therefore ordered that for the future these grants should be made by the governor and intendant jointly. Thenceforth they were usually so made, although in some cases the intendant disregarded the royal instructions and signed the title deeds alone, and it appears that in all cases he was the main factor in determining who should get seniores and who should not. The intendant, moreover, made himself chief guardian of the relations between the seniores and the senioral tenants. When the seniores tried to exact in the way of honors, dues, and services any more than the law and customs of the land allowed, the wantful intendant promptly checkmated them with a restrictive decree. Or when some senioral claim, even though warranted by law or custom, seemed to be detrimental to the general well-being of the people, he regularly brought the matter to the attention of the home government and invoked its intervention. In all such matters he was prater and tribune combined. Without the intendancy the senioral system would soon have become an agent of oppression. For some Canadian seniors were quite as avaricious as their friends at home. The heyday of Canadian feudalism was the period from 1663 to about 1750. During this interval nearly three hundred fiefs were granted. Most of them went to officials of the civil administration, many to retired military officers, many others to the church and its affiliated institutions, and some to merchants and other lay inhabitants of the colony. Certain seniors set to work with real zeal, bringing out settlers from France and steadily getting larger portions of their fiefs under cultivation. Others showed far less enterprise, and some no enterprise at all. From time to time the king and his ministers would make inquiry as to the progress being made. The intendant would reply with a memoir often of pitiless length setting forth the facts and figures. Then his majesty would respond with an edict ordering that all seniors who did not forthwith help the colony by putting settlers on their lands should have their grants revoked. But the seniors, who were most at fault in this regard, were usually the ones who had most influence in the little administrative circle at Quebec. Hence the king's orders were never enforced to the letter, and sometimes not enforced at all. Unlike the Parliament of Paris, the Sovereign Council at Quebec never refused to register a royal edict. What would have happened in the event of its doing so is a query that legal antiquarians might find difficult to answer. Even a sovereign decree bearing the Bourbon sign-manual could not gain the force of law in Canada except by being spread upon the council's records. In France the king could come claddering with his escort to the council-hall, and there by his so-termed bed of justice compel the registration of his decrees. But the chateau of St. Louis at Quebec was too far away for any such violent procedure. The Colonial Council never sought to find out what would follow an open defiance of the royal wishes. It had a safer plan. Decrees were always promptly registered, but when they did not suit the councillors they were just as promptly pigeon-holed, and the people of the colony were thus left in complete ignorance of the new regulations. On one occasion the Intendant Radu, in looking over the council records for legal light on a case before him, found a royal decree which had been registered by the council some twenty years before, but not an inkling of which had ever reached the people to whom it had conveyed new rights against their seniors. It was the interest of the Attorney-General as senior, as it was also the interest of other councillors who are seniors, that the provisions of this decree should never be made public. Is the frank way in which the Intendant explained the matter in one of his dispatches to the king? The fact is that the royal arm, supremely powerful at home, lost a good deal of its strength when stretched across a thousand leagues of ocean. If anything happened amiss after the ships left Quebec in late summer, there is no regular means of making report to the king for a full twelve-month. The royal reply could not be had at the earliest until the ensuing spring. If the king's advisers desired to look into the matter fully it sometimes happened that another year passed before the royal decision reached Quebec. By that time matters had often righted themselves, or the issue had been forgotten. At any rate the direct influence of the crown was much less effective than it would have had the colony been within easy reach. The Governor and Intendant were accordingly endowed by the force of circumstances with large discretionary powers. When they agreed it was possible to order things as they chose. When they disagreed on any project the matter went off to the king for decision which often meant that it was shelved indefinitely. The administration of New France was not efficient. There were too many officials for the size and needs of the colony. Their respectous spheres of authority were too loosely defined, nor did the crown desire to have everyone working in harmony. A moderate amount of friction provided it did not wholly clog the wheels of administration was not deemed an unmixed evil. It served to make each official a tail-bearer against his colleague so that the home authorities might count on getting all sides to every story. The financial situation, moreover, was always precarious. At no time could New France pay its own way. Every second dispatch from the Governor and Intendant asked the king for money, or for things that cost money. Louis XIV was astonishingly generous in the face of so many of these demands upon his ex-checker. But the more he gave the more he was asked to give. When the stress of European wars curtailed the king's bounty the colonial authorities began to issue paper money. The issues were gradually increased. The paper soon depreciated, and in its closing years the colony fairly wallowed in the slough of almost worthless fiat currency. In addition to meeting the annual deficit of the colony the royal authorities encouraged and assisted emigration to New France. Whole shiploads of settlers were at times gathered and sent to Quebec. The seniors, by terms of their grants, should have been active in this work, but very few of them took any share in it. Eventually the entire task of applying a stimulus to emigration was thrust on the king and his officials at home. Year after year the Governor and Intendant grew increasingly urgent in repeated requests for more settlers, until a rebuke arrived in a suggestion that the king was not minded to depopulate France in order to people his colonies. The influx of settlers was relatively large during the years 1663 to 72. Then it dwindled precipitously, although immigrants kept coming year by year so long as war did not completely cut off communication with France. The colony gained bravely moreover through its own natural increase, for the colonial birth rate was high, large families being everywhere the royal. In 1673 the population of New France was figured at about seven thousand. In 1760 it had reached nearly fifty thousand. The development of agriculture on the senior lands did not, however, keep pace with growth in population. It was hard to keep settlers to the prosaic task of tilling the soil. There were too many distractions, chief among them the lure of the Indian trade. The traffic in furs offered large profits and equally large risks, but it always yielded a full dividend of adventure and hair-raising experience. The fascination of the forest life gripped the young men of the colony, and they left for the wilderness by the hundred. There is a roving strain in Norman blood. It brought the Norsemen to France and Sicily. It took his descendants from the plough and sent them over the waters of the New World. From the St. Lawrence to the lakes, and from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Church and state joined hands in attempt to keep them at home. Royal decrees of outlawry and ecclesiastical edicts of excommunication were issued against them. Seniors stipulated that their lands would be forfeited, unless so many are-paw were put under crop each year. But all to little avail. So far as developing the permanent resources of the colony were concerned these couriers de Bois might just as well have remained in France. Once in a while a horde of them descended to Quebec or Montreal, disposed of their furs to merchants, filled themselves with brandy, and turned bedlam loose in the town. Then before the authorities could unwind the red tape of legal procedure they were off again to the wilds. This Indian trade, despite the large and valuable cargos of beaver-peltes which it enabled New France to send home, was a curse to the colony. It drew from husbandry the best blood of the land, the young men of strength, initiative, and perseverance. It wrecked the health and character of thousands. It drew the church and civil government into profitless quarrels. The bishop flayed the governor for letting this trade go on. The governor could not, dared not, and sometimes did not want to stop it. At any rate it was great obstacle to agricultural progress. With it and other distractions in existence the clearing of the signerees proceeded very slowly. At the close of French dominion in 1760 the amount of cultivated land was only about three hundred thousand arpailles, or about five acres for every head of population, not a very satisfactory showing for a century of Bourbon imperialism in the St. Lawrence Valley. Yet the colony, when the English conquerors came upon it in 1759, was far from being on its last legs. It had overcome the worst of its obstacles, and had created a foundation upon which solid building might be done. Its people had reached the stage of rude but tolerable comfort. Its highways of trade and intercourse had been freed from the danger of Indian raids. It had some small industries and was able to raise almost the whole of its own food supply. The traveller who passed along the Great River from Quebec to Montreal in the early autumn might see as Peter Calme in his travels tells us he saw, field upon field of waving grain extending from the shores inward as far as the eye could reach, broken only here and there by tracks of meadow and woodland. The outposts of an empire at least had been established. CHAPTER II A CHRONICAL OF NEW WORLD FUTILISM GENTLEMAN OF THE WILDERNESS A good many people, as Robert Louis Stevenson once assured us, have a taste for, quote, heroic forms of excitement. And it is well for the element of interest in history that this has been so at all ages and among all races of men. The most picturesque and fascinating figures in the recorded annals of nations have been the pioneers, the men who have not been content to do what other men of their day were doing. Without them and their achievements history might still be read for information, but not for pleasure. It might still instruct, but it would hardly inspire. In the narratives of colonization there is ample evidence that Frenchmen of the 17th century were not lacking in their thirst for excitement, whether heroic or otherwise. Their race furnished the new world with explorers and forest merchants by the hundred. The most venturesome voyageurs, the most intrepid traders, and the most untiring missionaries were Frenchmen. No European stock showed such versatility in its relations with the Aborigines. None proved so ready to bear all manner of hardship and discomfort for the sake of the thrills which came from setting foot where no white men had ever trod. The Frenchmen of those days was no weakling, either in body or in spirit. He did not shrink from privation or danger, in tasks requiring courage and fortitude he was ready to lead the way. When he came to the new world he wanted the sort of life that would keep him always on his metal, and that could not be found within the cultivated borders of sinuary and parish. Hence it was that Canada in her earliest years found plenty of pioneers, but not always of the right type. The colony needed Yeoman who could put their hands to the plow who would become pioneers of agriculture. Such however were altogether too few, and the yearly harvest of grain made a poor showing when compared with the colony's annual crop of beaver skins. Yet the Yeoman did more for the permanent upbuilding of the land than the trader, and his efforts sought to have their recognition in any chronicle of colonial achievement. It was in the mind of the king that, quote, persons of quality as well as peasants should be induced to make their homes in New France. There were enough landless gentlemen in France. Why should they not be used as the basis of a senorial nobility in the colony? It was with this idea in view that the company of 100 associates was empowered not only to grant large tracts of land in the wilderness, but to give the rank of a gentillon to those who received such fives. Frenchmen of good birth however showed no disposition to become resident seniors of New France during the first half century of its history. The role of, quote, a gentleman of the wilderness did not appeal very strongly even to those who had no tangible asset but the family name. Hence it was that not a half dozen seniors were an actual occupancy of their lands on the St. Lawrence when the king took the colony out of the company's hands in 1663. But when Thalon came to the colony as attendant in 1665, this situation was quickly changed. Uncleared senuaries were declared forfeited. Actual occupancy was made a condition of all future grants. The colony must be built up, if at all, by its own people. The king was urged to send out settlers and he responded handsomely. They came by hundreds. The colony's entire population, including officials, priests, traders, seniors, and habitants together with women and children, was about 3,000, according to a census taken a year after Thalon arrived. Two years later, owing largely to the intendant's unceasing efforts, it had practically doubled. Nothing was left undone to coax immigrants from France. Money grants and free transportation were given with unwanted generosity, although even in the early years of his reign the coffers of Louis Catois were leaking with extravagance at every point. At least a million lives, footnote, the livre was practically the modern franc, about 20 cents. In these five years, at least a million lires is a sober estimate of what the royal treasury must have spent in the work of colonizing Canada. No campaign for immigrants in modern days has been more assiduously carried on. Officials from Paris searched the provinces, gathering together all who could be induced to go. The intendant particularly asked that women be sent to the colony, strong and vigorous peasant girls, who would make suitable wives for the habitants. The king gratified him by sending whole shiploads of them in charge of nuns. As to who they were and where they came from, one cannot be altogether sure. The English agent at Paris wrote that they were, quote, lewd strumpets gathered up by the officers of the city. And even the saintly mayor, Marie de l'Inquarnation, confessed that there was beaucoup de canaille among them. La hontein has left us a racy picture of their arrival and their distribution among the rustic swains of the colony, who scrimmaged for points of vantage when boatloads of women came ashore from the ships. Footnote, another view will be found in the great intendant in this series, chapter four. The male settlers, on the other hand, came from all classes and from all parts of France. But Normandy, Brittany, Picardie, and Pèche afforded the best recruiting grounds. From all of them came artisans and sturdy peasants. Normandy furnished more than all the others put together. So much so that Canada in the 17th century was more properly a Norman than a French colony. The colonial church registers, which have been kept with scrupulous care, show that more than half the settlers who came to Canada during the decade after 1664 were of Norman origin, while in 1680 it was estimated that at least four-fifths of the entire population of New France had some Norman blood in their veins. Officials and merchants came chiefly from Paris and they colored the life of the little settlement at Québec with a Parisian gaiety. But though Norman dominated the fields, his race formed the backbone of the rural population. Arriving at Québec, the incoming settlers were met by officials and friends, proper arrangements for quartering them until they could get settled were always made beforehand. If the newcomer were a man of quality, that is to say, if he had been anything better than a peasant at home, and especially if he brought any funds with him, he applied to the intendant for a scenery. Toulon was liberal in such matters. He stood ready to give a seniorial grant to any one who would promise to spend money in clearing his land. This liberality, however, was often ill-requited. Ibegrance came to him and gave great assurances, took their title deeds as seniors and never upturned a single foot of sod. In other cases, the new seniors set zealously to work and soon had good results to show. In size, these seniories varied greatly. The social rank and the reputed ability of the senior were the determining factors. Men who had been members of the noblesse in France received the tracks as large as a teutonic principality, comprising a hundred square miles or more. Those of less pretentious birth and limited means had to be content with a few thousand arpents. In general, however, a scenery comprised at least a dozen square miles, almost always with a frontage on the Great River and rear limits extending up into the foothills behind. The meats and bounds of the granted lands were always set forth in the letter's patent or title deeds, but almost invariably with utter vagueness and ambiguity. The territory was not surveyed. Each applicant inviling his petition for a scenery was asked to describe the tract he desired. This description, usually inadequate and inaccurate, was copied in the deed and in due course, hopeless confusion resulted. It was well that most seniors had more land than they could use, and had it not been for this, their lawsuits over disputed boundaries would have been unending. Liberal in the area of land granted to the new seniors, the crown was also liberal in the conditions exacted. The senior was asked for no initial money payment and no annual land dues. When his scenery changed owners by sale or by inheritance other than in direct descent, a mutation fine known as the Quint was payable to the public treasury. This, as the name implies, amounted to one-fifth of the senior's value, but it rarely accrued, and even when it did, the generous monarch usually rebated a parter all of it. Not a single sue was ever exacted by the crown from the great majority of the seniors. If agriculture made slow headway in New France, it was not because officialdom exploited the land to its own profit, never were the landowners of a new country treated more generously or given greater incentive to diligence. But if the king did not ask the seniors for money, he asked for other things. He required in the first place that he should render fealty and homage with due feudal ceremony to his official representative at Quebec. Accordingly, the first deputy of the senior, after taking possession of his new domain, was to repair without sword or spur to the chateau of St. Louis at Quebec, a gloomy stone structure that frowned on the settlement from the heights behind. Here on bended knee before the governor, the new liegeman swore fealty to his Lord the King and promised to render due obedience in all lawful matters. This was one of the things which gave a tinge of chivalry to Canadian feudalism and helped to make the social life of a distant colony echo faintly the pomp and ceremony of Versailles. The senior, whether at home or beyond the seas, was never allowed to forget the obligation of personal fidelity imposed upon him by his king. A more arduous undertaking next confronted the new senior. It was not the royal intention that he should fold his talent in a napkin. On the contrary, the senior was endowed with his rank in estate to the sole end that he should become an active agent in making the colony grow. He was expected to live on his land to level the forest, to clear the fields and to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. He was expected to have his senior surveyed into farms or on sensive holdings and to procure as quickly as might be settlers for these farms. It was highly desirable, of course, that the senior should lend a hand in encouraging the immigration of people from their old homes in France. And some of them did this. Robert Guifard, who held the senior of Beauport just below Quebec, was a notable example. The great majority of the seniors, however, made only half-hearted attempts in this direction and their efforts went for little or nothing. What they did was to meet, on arrival at Quebec, the shiploads of settlers sent out by the royal officers. There they gathered about the incoming vessel like so many land agents, each explaining what advantages in the way of a good location in fertile soil he had to offer. Those seniors who had obtained tracks near the settlement at Quebec had, of course, a great advantage in all this but the newcomers naturally preferred to set up their homes where a church would be near at hand and where they could be in touch with other families during the long winters. Consequently, the best locations in all the seniories near Quebec were soon taken and then settlers had to take lands more remote from the little metropolis of the colony. They went to the seniories near Montreal and Three Rivers. When the best lands in these areas were taken up, they dispersed themselves along the whole north shore of the St. Lawrence from below the Mont Blanc-Alcy to its junction with the Ottawa. The north shore having been well dotted with the whitewashed homes, the south shore came in for its due share of attention and in the last half century of the French regime, a good many settlers were provided for in that region. For a time, the immigrants found little or no difficulty in obtaining farms on easy terms. Seniors were glad to give them land without any initial payment and frequently promised exemption from the usual senorial duties for the first few years. In any case, these dues and services which will be explained more fully later on, were not burdensome. Any settler of reasonable industry and intelligence could satisfy these ordinary demands without difficulty. Translated into an annual money rental they would have amounted to but a few sews per acre. But this happy situation did not long endure as the settlers continued to come and as children born in the colony grew to manhood, the demand for well situated farms grew more brisk and some of the seniors found that they need no longer seek tenants for their lands. On the contrary, they found that men desiring land would come to them and offer to pay not only the regular senorial dues, but an entry fee or bonus in addition. The best situated lands in other words had acquired a margin of value over lands not so well situated and the favored seniors turned this to their own profit. During the early years of the 18th century, therefore the practice of exacting a prix d'entrée became common. Indeed, it was difficult for a settler to get the lands he most desired except by making such payment. As most of the newcomers could not afford to do this, they were often forced to make their homes in unfavorable, out of the way places while better situations remained untouched by acts or plow. The watchful attention of the intendant Rado, however, was in due course drawn to this difficulty. It was a development not at all to his liking. He thought it would be frowned upon by the king and his ministers if properly brought to their notice. And in 1707, he wrote frankly to his superiors concerning it. First of all, he complained that, quote, a spirit of business speculation which has always more of cunning and chicane than of truth and righteousness in it, end quote, was finding its way into the hearts of the people. The seniors in particular he alleged were becoming mercenary. They were taking advantage of technicalities to make the habitants pay more than their just dues. In many cases, settlers had taken up lands on the merely oral assurances of the seniors. And then when they got their deeds in writing, these deeds contained various provisions which they had not counted upon and which were not fair. Hence, declared the intendant. A great abuse has arisen, which is that the habitants who have worked their farms without written titles have been subjected to heavy rents and dues. The seniors refusing to grant them regular deeds except on onerous conditions. And these conditions, they find themselves obliged to accept because otherwise they will have their labor for nothing. The royal authorities paid due heed to these complaints. And although they did not accept all of Verdeau's suggestions, they proceeded to provide corrective measures, measures in the usual way. This way, of course, was by the issue of royal edicts. Two of these decrees reached the colony in the due course of events. They are commonly known as the Arete of Marley and bear date July 11th, 1711. Both were carefully prepared and their provisions show that the royal authorities understood just where the entire trouble lay. The first Arete went direct to the point, quote, the king has been informed, it recites, that there are some seniors who refuse under various pretexts to grant lands to settlers who apply for them, offering rather the hope that they may later sell these lands, end quote. Such attitude, the decree went on to declare, was absolutely repugnant to His Majesty's intentions and especially, quote, unfair to incoming settlers who thus find land less open to free settlement in situations best adapted for agriculture, end quote. It was therefore ordered that if any applicant for lands should be by any senior denied a reasonable grant on the customary terms, the intendant should, fourth width, step in and issue a deed on his own authority. In this case, the annual payments were to go to the colonial treasury and not to the senior. Well, this decree simplified matters considerably. After it became law of the colony, no one desiring land from a senior's ungranted domain was expected to offer anything above the customary annual dues and services. The senior had no legal right to demand more. By one stroke of the royal pen, the Canadian senior had lost all right of ownership in his senior. He became, from this time on, a trustee holding lands in trust for the future immigrant and for the sons of the people. However, his lands might grow in value, the senior, according to the letter of the law, could exact no more from new tenants than from those who had first settled upon his estate. This was a revolutionary change. It put the seniorial system in Canada on a basis wholly different from that in France. It proved that the king regarded the system as useful only insofar as it actively contributed to the progress of the colony. Where it stood in the way of progress, he was prepared to apply the knife, even at its very vitals. Unfortunately for most concerned however, the royal orders were not allowed to become common knowledge in the colony. Decree was registered and duly promulgated and then quickly forgotten. Few of the habitants seemed to have ever heard of it. Newcomers, of course, knew nothing of their rights under its provisions. Seniors continued to get special terms for advantageous locations, the applicants for lands being usually quite willing to pay a bonus whenever they could afford to do so. Now and then someone having heard of the royal arrette would appeal to the intendant where upon the senior made haste to straighten out things satisfactorily. Then as now, the presumption was that the people knew the law and were in a position to take advantage of its protecting features. But the agencies of information were so few that the provisions of a new decree rarely became common property. The second of the two arretts of Marley was designed to uphold the hands of those seniors who were trying to do right. The king and his ministers were convinced from the information which had come to them that not all the quote cutting and chicane and quote in land dealings came from the seniors. The habitants were themselves in part to blame. In many cases, settlers had taken good lands, had cut down a few trees thinking thereby to make a technical compliance with requirements and were spending their energies in the fur trade. It was the royal opinion that real homesteading should be insisted upon and he decreed accordingly that wherever an habitant did not make a substantial starting clearing his farm, the land should be forfeited in a year to the senior. This arrette, unlike its companion decree, was rigidly enforced. The council of Quebec was made up of seniors and to the seniors as a whole, its provisions were soon made known. During the 20 years following the issue of the decree of 1711, the intendant was called upon to declare the forfeiture of over 200 farms, the owners of which had not fulfilled the obligation to establish a hearth and home. Tenefue est lieu upon the lands. As a spur to the slothful, this degree appears to have had a wholesome effect. Although in spite of all that could be done, the agricultural development of the colony proceeded with exasperating slowness. Each year, the governor and intendant tried in their dispatches to put the colony's best foot forward. Every autumn, the ships took home expressions of achievement and hope, but between the lines the patient king must have read much that was discouraging. It may be well at this point to take a general survey of the colonial senuaries noting what progress had been made. The senuarial system had been a half century in full flourish, what had it accomplished? Well, that is evidently just what the home authorities wanted to know when they arranged for a topographical and general report on the senuaries in 1712. This investigation on the intendant's advice was entrusted to an engineer, Gideon de Catalogne. Catalogne, who was a native of Barron, born in 1662, came to Canada about the year 1685. He was engaged on the improvement of the colonial fortifications until the intendant set him to work on a survey of the senuaries. The work occupied two or three years in the course of which he prepared three excellent maps showing the situation and extent of all the senuaries in the districts of Quebec, three rivers, and Montreal. The first two maps have been preserved. That of the district of Montreal was probably lost at sea on its way to France. With the two maps, Catalogne presented a long report on the ownership, resources, and general progress of all the senuaries. 93 of them are dealt with in all, the report giving in each case the situation and extent of the track, the nature of the soil, and its adaptability to different products, the mineral deposits in timber, the opportunities for industry and trade, the name and rank of the senior, the way in which he had come into possession of the scenery, the provisions made for religious worship, and various other matters. Catalogne's report shows that in 1712, practically all the lands bordering on both sides of the St. Lawrence from Montreal to some distance below Quebec had been made into senuaries. Likewise, the islands in the river and the lands on both sides of the Richelieu had been apportioned either to the church orders or to lay seniors. All these tracks were for administrative purposes grouped into the three districts of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. The intendant himself took direct charge of affairs at Quebec, but in the other two settlements he was represented by a subordinate. Each district likewise had its own royal court and from the decisions of these tribunals, appeals might be carried before the Superior Council, which held its weekly sessions at the colonial capital. On the island of Montreal was the most important of the senuaries in the district bearing its name. It was held by the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, and its six parishes contained in 1712 a population of over 2,000. The soil of the island was fertile and the situation was excellent for trading purposes, where it commanded the routes usually taken by the fur flotellers, both from the Great Lakes and from the regions of Georgian Bay. The lands were steadily rising in value and this senuary soon became one of the most prosperous areas of the colony. The Seminary also owned the senuary of Saint-Sulpice on the north shore of the river, some little distance below the island. Stretching farther along this northern shore were various large senuaries given chiefly to officers or former officers of the civil government and now held by their heirs. La Vertaurie, Lénorie, and Berthier-en-O were the most conspicuous among these riparian fives. Across the stream, Les Chateauquets and L'Angouille, the patrimony of the Lémons, likewise the senuaries of Verrain, Verchère, Contrecue, Saint-Hue, and Sorrel. All of these were among the so-term military senuaries having been originally given to retired officers of the Carignan Regiment. A dozen other senuarial properties bearing names of less conspicuous interest scattered themselves along both sides of the Great Waterway. Along the Richelieu, from its junction with the St. Lawrence to the outer limits of safe settlement in the direction of Lake Champlain, a number of senuarial grants had been affected. The historic fife of Sorrel commanded the confluence of the rivers. Behind it, Les Chamblis, and the other properties of the adventurous retails. These were settled chiefly by the disbanded Carignan soldiers, and it was their task to guard the southern gateway. The coming of this regiment, its work in the colony, and its ultimate settlement is an interesting story illustrating as it does the deep personal interest which the Grand Monarch displayed in the development of his new dominions. For a long time, prior to 1665, the land had been scourged at frequent intervals by Iroquois raids. Bands of marauding Redskins would creep stealthily upon some outlying scenery, butcher its people, burn everything in sight, and then de-camp swiftly to their forced lairs. The colonial authorities, helpless to guard their entire frontiers and unable to foretell where the next blow would fall, endeared the terrors of this situation for many years. In utter desperation, they at length called on the king for a regiment of trained troops as the nucleus of a punitive expedition. The Iroquois would be tracked to their own villages and they're given a memorable lesson in letters of blood and iron. The king, as usual, complied, and on a bright June day in 1665, a glittering cavalcade disembarked at Quebec. The Marquis de Tracey, with 200 gaily, comparisoned officers and men of the regiment of Carignan-Selliers, formed this first detachment. The other companies followed a little later. Quebec was like a city relieved from a long siege. Its people were in a frenzy of joy. The work which the regiment had been sent out to do was soon begun. The undertaking was more difficult than had been anticipated and two expeditions were needed to accomplish it. But the Iroquois were thoroughly chastened and by the close of 1666, the colony once more breathed easily. How long, however, would it be permitted to do so? Would not the departure of the regiment be a signal to the Mohawks that they might once again raid the colony's borders with impunity? Thalon thought that it would, hence he hastened to devise a plan whereby the Carignans might be kept permanently in Canada. To hold them there as a regular garrison was out of the question. It would cost too much to maintain 600 men in the idleness. So the intendant proposed to the king that the regiment should be disbanded at Quebec and that all its members should be given inducements to make their homes in the colony. Once more, the king assented. He agreed that the officers of the regiment should be offered seniors and provided with funds to make a start in improving them. For the rank and file who should prove willing to take lands within the seniors of the officers, the king consented to provide a year's subsistence and a liberal grant in money. The terms proved attractive to some of the officers and to most of the men. Accordingly, arrangements were at once made for getting them established on their new estates. Just how many permanent settlers were added to the colonial population this way is not easy to ascertain. But about 25 officers, chiefly captains and lieutenants, together with nearly 400 men volunteered to stay. Most of the non-commissioned officers and men showed themselves to be made of good stuff. Their days were long in the land and their descendants by the thousands still possessed the Valley of the Richelieu. But the officers, good soldiers, though they were, proved to be rather faint-hearted pioneers. The task of beating swords into plowshares was not altogether to their tastes. And hence it was that many of them got into debt, mortgaged their seniors to Quebec or Montreal merchants, soon lost their lands and finally drifted back to France. When Telona arranged to have the Kyrgynyns disbanded in Canada, he decided that they should be given lands in that section of the colony where they would be most useful in guarding New France at its most vulnerable point. This weakest point was the region along the Richelieu between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence. By way of this route would surely come any English expedition sent against New France. And this likewise was the portal through which the Mohawks had already come on their errands of massacre. If Canada was to be safe, this region must become the colony's mailed fist ready to strike in repulse at the instance notice. All this the intendant saw very plainly and he was wise in his generation. Later events amply proved his foresight. The Richelieu highway was actually used by the men of New England on various subsequent expeditions against Canada and it was the line of Mohawk incursion so long as the power of this proud red skin clan remained unbroken. At no time during the French period was this region made entirely secure. But Telona's plan made the Richelieu route much more difficult for the colony's foes both white and red than it otherwise would have been. Here was an interesting experiment in Roman imperial colonization repeated in the New World. When the Empire of the Caesars was beginning to give way before the oncoming barbarians of Northern Europe, the practice of disbanding legions on the frontier and having them settle on the lands was adopted as a means of securing defense without the necessity of spending large sums on permanent outpost garrisons. The retired soldier was a soldier still but practically self-supporting in times of peace. These Predia militaria of the Romans gave Telon his idea of a military cantal mount along the Richelieu and in broaching his plans to the king he suggested that the quote practice of the politic and warlike Romans might be advantageously used in a land which being so far away from its monarch must trust for existence to the strength of its own arms and quote. All who took lands in this region whether seniors or habitants were bound to serve in arms at the call of the king although this obligation was not expressly provided in the deeds of the land, never was a call to arms without response. These military settlers and their sons after them were only too ready to gird on the sword at every opportunity. It was from this region that expeditions quietly set forth from time to time towards the borders of New England and leaped like a lynx from the forest upon some isolated hamlet of Massachusetts or New York. The annals of Deerfield, Haverhill and Schenectady bear to this day their tales of the Frenchman's ferocity and all New England hated him with an unyielding hate. In guarding the southern portal, he did his work with too much zeal and his stinging blows finally goaded the English colonies to a policy of retaliation which cost the French very dearly. But to return to the Senuaries along the river, the district of three rivers extending on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence from Berthier-Arnaud to Grondin and on the South from Saint-Jean-de-Chayant East to Yamaska was but sparsely populated when Catalon prepared to report in 1712. Prominent Senuaries in this region were Pointe-du-Lac or Tonancourt, the estate of the Godfraues de Conantourt or rather, de Tonancourt. Cap de la Magdalene and Batiscan, the patrimony of the Jesuits, the Fife of Champlain owned by Desjardins de Cabanac, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, Nicolette and Becancourt. Nicolette had passed into the hands of the Courals, a trading family of three rivers, and Becancourt was held by Pierre Robineau, the son of his famous father, René Robineau de Becancourt. On all of these Senuaries, some progress had been made but often it amounted to very little. Better results had been obtained both eastward and westward of the region. The district of Québec was the first to be allotted in Senuaries, and here of course agriculture had made better headway. Grandine, La Chevre-Rotière, Port Nuffe, Pointe-au-Tremble, Silerie and Notre-Dame-des-Anges were all thriving properties, ranging along the riverbank eastward to the settlement at Québec. Just beyond the town lay the flourishing fife of Beauport, originally owned by Robert Jaffard, but now held by his heirs, the family of Gichérot du Quesnet. This Senuary was destined to loom up prominently in later days when Montcalme held Wolf at Bay for weeks along the Beauport shore. Fronting Beauport was the spacious island of Orleans, with its several thriving parishes, all included within the Senuary of François Bethelot, on whom the king for his zeal enterprise had conferred the title of Comte de Saint Laurent. A score of other Senurial tracks, including L'Aubinière, L'Azant, La Durantaye, Belchasse, Rivière-Oeil, and others well known to every student of Canadian genealogy, were included within the huge district around the ancient capital. The king's representatives had been much too free-handed in granting land. Nossignor had a tent of his tract under cultivation, yet all the best located in most fertile soil of the colony had been given out. Those who came later had to take lands in out-of-the-way places, unless by good fortune they could secure the re-grant of something that had been abandoned. The royal generosity did not, in the long run, conduce to the upbuilding of the colony, and the home authorities in time recognized the imprudence of their policy. Hence it was that Edict after Edict sought to make these gentlemen of the wilderness give up whatever land they could not handle properly, and if these decrees of retrangements had been strictly enforced, most of the senorial estates would have been mercilessly reduced in area. But the seniors who were the most remiss happened to be the ones who sat at the council board in Quebec, and what they had they usually managed to hold, despite the king's command. End of chapter two. Chapter one of a Chronicle of New World Feudalism. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Caitlin Sticko, 2007. Chapter three. Three seniors of old Canada, Hebert, La Durantée, Le Moyne. It was to the seniors that the king looked for active aid in promoting the agricultural interests of New France. Many of them disappointed him, but not all. There were seniors who, in their own way, gave the king's interests a great deal of loyal service, and showed what the colony was capable of doing if all its people worked with sufficient diligence and zeal. Three of these pioneers of the seniors have been singled out for special attention in this chapter, because each prefigures a type of senior who did what was expected of him, although not always in the prescribed way. Their work was far from being showy, and offers a writer no opportunity to make his pages glow. The priest and the trader afford better themes, but even the short and simple annals of the poor, if fruitful in achievement, are worth the recounting. The honour of being the colony's first senior belongs to Louis Hebert, and it was a curious chain of events that brought him to the role of a yeoman in the St. Lawrence Valley. Like most of these pilgrim fathers of Canada, Hebert had left to posterity little or no information concerning his early life and his experience as a tiller of virgin soil. That is a pity, for he had an interesting and varied career from first to last. What he did, and what he saw others do during those troublous years, would make a readable chronicle of adventure, perseverance, and ultimate achievement. As it is, we must merely glean what we can from stray illusions to him in the general narratives of early colonial life. These tell us not a tithe of what we should like to know, but even such shreds of information are precious, for Hebert was Canada's first patron of husbandry. He connected his name with no brilliant exploit either of war or of peace. He had his share of adventure, but no more than a hundred others in his day. The greater portion of his adult years were passed with his spade in his hands, but he embodies a type, and a worthy type it is. Most of Canada's early settlers came from Normandy, but Louis Hebert was a native of Paris, born in about 1575. He had an apothecaries shop there, but apparently it was not making a very marked success of his business when in 1604 he fell in with Biancor de Putrancor and was enlisted as a member of that voyager's first expedition to Acadia. It was, in these days, the custom of ships to carry an apothecary or dispenser of health-giving herbs. His functions ran the whole gamut of medical practice from copious bloodletting to the dosing of sailors with concoctions of mysterious make. Not improbably, Hebert set out with no intention to remain in America, but he found port royal to his liking, and there the historian, Lescarbeau, soon found him not only, quote, sowing corn and planting vines, end quote, but apparently, quote, taking great pleasure in the cultivation of the soil, end quote. All this in a colony which comprised five persons, namely two Jesuit fathers and their servant, Hebert and one other. With serious dangers all about and lack of support at home, port royal could make no headway, and in 1613 Hebert was on his way back to France. The apothecary's shop was reopened, and the daily customers were no doubt regaled with stories of life among the wild aborigines of the West, but not for long. There was a trait of restlessness that would not down, and in 1616 the little shop again put up its shutters. Hebert had joined Champlain in the Bruges navigator's first voyage to the St. Lawrence. This time the apothecary burned his bridges behind him, for he took his family along, and with them all his wordledly effects. The family consisted of his wife, two daughters, and a young son. The trading company, which was backing Champlain's enterprise, promised that Hebert and his family should be paid a cash bonus, and should receive, in addition to attractive land, provisions and stores sufficient for their first two years in the colony. For his part Hebert agreed to serve without pay as general medical officer of the settlement, to give his other services to the company when needed, and to keep his hands out of the fur trade. Nothing was said about his serving as legal officer of the colony as well, but that task became part of his varied experience. Not long after his arrival at Quebec, Hebert's name appears with the title of procurer de Roy at the foot of a petition sent home by the colonists to the king. All this looked fair enough on its face, but as matters turned out Hebert made a poor bargain. The company gave him only half the promise bonus, granted him no title to any land, and for three years insisted upon having all his time at its own service. A man of ordinary tenacity would have made his way back to France at the earliest opportunity, but Hebert was loyal to Champlain, whom he in no way blamed for his bad treatment. At Champlain's suggestion, he simply took a piece of land above the settlement at Quebec, and without waiting for any formal title deed, began devoting all his spare hours to the task of getting it cleared and cultivated. His small tract comprised only about a dozen arpents on the heights above the village, and as he had no one to help him, the work of clearing it moved slowly. Trees had to be felled and cut up, the stumps burned and removed, stones gathered into piles, and every foot of soil upturned with a spade. There were no plows in the colony at this time. To have brought plows from France or to have made them in the colony would have availed nothing, for there were no horses at Quebec. It was not until after the sturdy pioneer had finished his life work that plows and horses came to lessen the labour of breaking new land. Nevertheless, Hebert was able by unremitting industry to get the entire twelve-arpents into cultivatable shape within four or five years. With his labours he mingled intelligence. Part of the land was sown with maize, part sown with peas, beans, and other vegetables, a part set off as an orchard, and a part reserved as pasture. The land was fertile and produced abundantly. A few head of cattle were easily provided for in all seasons by the wild hay which grew in plenty on the flats by the river. Here was an indication of what the colony could hope to do if all its settlers were men of Hebert's persistence and stability. But the other prominent men of the little settlement, although they may have turned their hands to gardening in a desultory way, let him remain for the time being the only real colonist in the land. On his farm, moreover, a house had been built during these same years with the aid of two artisans, but chiefly by the labour of the owner himself. It was a stone house, about twenty feet by forty in size, a one-story affair, unpretentious and unadorned, but regarded as one of the most comfortable abodes in the colony. The attractions of this home, and especially the hospitality of Madame Hebert and her daughters, are more than once alluded to in the meager annals of the settlement. It was the first dwelling to be erected on the plateau above the village. It passed to Hebert's daughter and was long known in local history as the House of the Widow Coolyard. Its exact situation was near the gate of the garden, which now encircles the seminary, and the remains of its foundation walls were found there in 1866 by some workmen in the course of their excavations. That striving so worthy should have in the end one due recognition from official circles is not surprising. The only wonder is that this recognition was so long delayed. An explanation can be found, however, in the fact that the trading company, which controlled the destinies of the colony during its precarious infancy, was not a bit interested in the agricultural progress of New France. It had but two aims—in the first place, to get profits from the fur trade, and in the second place, to make sure that no interlopers got any share in this lucrative business. Its officers placed little value upon such work as Hebert was doing. But in 1623 the authorities were moved to accord him the honour of rank as a signor, and the first title deed conveying a grant of land en signurie was issued to him on February 4th of that year. The deed bore the signature of the Duc de Montmorency, titular viceroy of New France. Three years later a further deed, affirming Hebert's rights and title, and conveying to him an additional tract of land on the St. Charles River, was issued to him by the succeeding viceroy, Henri de Levis, Duc de Ventadour. The preamble of this document recounts the services of the new signur. Having left his relatives and friends to help establish a colony of Christian people in the lands which are deprived of the knowledge of God, not being enlightened by his holy light, the document proceeds, he has by his painful labours and industry cleared lands, fenced them, and erected buildings for himself, his family, and his cattle. In order, accordingly, to encourage those who may, hereafter, desire to inhabit and develop the said country of Canada, the land held by Hebert, together with an additional square league on the shore of the St. Charles, is given to him, to have and to hold in thief noble forever, subject to such charges and conditions as might later be imposed by official decree. By this indenture, feudalism cast its first anchor in the new world. Some historians have attributed to the influence of Richelieu, this policy of creating a senioral class in the trans-marine dominions of France. The cardinal minister, it is said, had an idea that the landless aristocrats of France might be persuaded to emigrate to the colonies by promises of lavish senioral estates rested from the wilderness. It will be noted, however, that Hebert received his title deed before Richelieu assumed the reins of power, so that whatever influence the latter may have had on the extension of the senioral system in the colonies, he could not have prompted its first appearance there. Hebert died in 1627. Little as we know about his life, the clerical chroniclers tell us a good deal about his death, which proves that he must have had all the externals of piety. He was extolled as the Abraham of a new Israel. His immediate descendants were numerous, and it was predicted that his seed would replenish the earth. Assuredly, this portion of the earth needed replenishing. For at the time of Hebert's death, Quebec was still a struggling hamlet of 65 souls, two-thirds of whom were women and children unable to till the fields. Hebert certainly did his share. His daughters married in the colony and had large families. By these marriages, a close alliance was formed with the Culliards and other prominent families of the colonies' earliest days. From these and later alliances, some of the best-known families in the history of French Canada have come down. The Joliets, Deleurés, de Ramseys, Fournieres, and Tassuraux, and the entire category of Hebert's descendants must run well into the thousands. All but unknown by a busy world outside, the memory of this Paris apothecary has nonetheless been cherished for nearly 300 years in many a Canadian home. Had all the seniors of the old regime served their king with half his zeal, the colony would not have been left in later days so naked to its enemies. But not all the seniors of old Canada were of Hebert's type. Too many of them, whether owing to inherited Norman traits, to their previous environment in France, or to the opportunities which they found in the colony, developed an incurable love of the forest life. In the slightest pretext, they were off on a military or trading expedition, leaving their lands, tenants, and often their own families to shift as best they might. Fields grew wild while the seniors and often their habitants with them spent the entire spring, summer, and autumn in any enterprise that promised to be more exciting than sowing and reaping grain. Among the military seniors of the upper St. Lawrence and Richelieu regions, not a few were of this type. They were good soldiers and quickly adapted themselves to the circumstances of combat in the new world, meeting the Iroquois with his own arts and often combining a good deal of the red man's craftiness with a white man's superior intelligence. Insatiable in their thirst for adventure, they were willing to assume all manner of risks or privations. Spring might find them at Lake Champlain, autumn at the headwaters of the Mississippi, a trusty birchbark having carried them the thousand miles between. Their work did not figure very heavily in the colony's annual balance sheet of progress with its statistics of acreage newly cleared, homes built and harvest stowed safely away. But according to their own ideals of service, they valiantly served the king and they furnished the historian of the old regime with an interesting and unusual group of men. Neither New England nor the New Netherlands possessed this type within their borders and this is one reason why the pages of their history lack the contrast of light and shade which marks from start to finish the annals of New France. When the Keridenans stepped ashore at Quebec in 1665, one of their officers was Olivier Morale de la Durante, a captain in the regiment of Campel, but attached to the Keridenans' salaries for its Canadian expedition. In the first expedition against the Mohawks, he commanded the Advanced Guard and he was one of the small band who spent the terrible winter of 1666-67 at Fort St. Anne near the head of Lake Champlain, subsisting on salt, pork, and a scant supply of moldy flour. Several casques of reputedly good brandy, as Dolier de Cassant records, have been sent to the fort, but to the chagrin of the Dominate of Garrison, they turned out to contain saltwater, the sailors having drunk the contents and refilled the casques on their way out from France. War-like operations continued to engross Durante's attentions for a year or two longer, but when this work was finished, he returned with some of his brother officers to France, while others remained in the colony, having taken up lands in accordance with Talon's plans. In 1670, however, he was back at Quebec again, and having married a daughter of the colony, applied at once for the grant of a scenery. This was given to him in the form of a large tract, two leagues square, on the south shore of the Lower St. Lawrence, between the scenery of Beaumont de Islay and the Belchasse Channel. To this thief of La Durante, the joining lands were subsequently added by new grants, and in 1674 the senior also obtained the thief of Cameroasca. His entire estate comprised about 70,000 art-pents, making him one of the largest landowners in the colony. Durante began his work in a leisurely way, and the census of 1681 gives us the outcome of his 10 years of effort. He himself had not taken up his abode on the land, nor, so far as can be ascertained, had he spent any time or money in clearing its acreage. With his wife and four children he resided at Quebec, but from time to time he made visits to his holding and brought new settlers with him. Twelve families had built their homes within the spacious borders of his scenery. Their whitewashed cottages were strung along a short stretch of the riverbank side by side, separated by a few art-pents. Men, women, and children, the population of La Durante numbered only fifty-eight. Sixty-four art-pents had been cleared and twenty-eight horned cattle were reported among the possessions of the habitants. Rather significantly, this colonial domes-day of 1681 mentions that the sixteen able-bodied men of the scenery possessed, quote, seven muskets among them. From its situation, however, the settlement was not badly exposed to Indian assault. In the way of cleared lands and population, the fife of La Durante had made very modest progress. Its nearest neighbour, Belchars, contained two hundred and twenty-seven persons, living upon three hundred and twenty art-pents of cultivatable land. With an arsenal of sixty-two muskets it was better equipped for self-defense. The census everywhere took more careful count of the muskets than of plows. This is not surprising, for it was the design of the authorities to build up a, quote, powerful military colony, end quote, which would stand on its own feet without support from home. This did not seem to realise that in the long run even military prowess must rest with that land which most assiduously devotes itself to the arts of peace. Ten years later the fife of Durante made a somewhat better showing. The census of 1692 gave it a marked increase in population, in lands made arable and in the herds of domestic cattle. A house had been built for the senior, whose family occupied it at times, but showed a preference for the more attractive life at Quebec. Durante was not one of the most prosperous seniories. Neither was it among those making the slowest progress. As Catalon phrased the situation in 1712 its lands were, quote, yielding moderate harvests of grain and vegetables, end quote. Fruit trees had been brought to maturity in various parts of the scenery and were bearing well. Much of the land was well wooded with oak and pine, a good deal of which had been already in 1712 cut down and marketed at Quebec. Morel de la Durante could not resign himself to the prosaic life of a cultivator. He did not become a courier de bois like many of his friends and associates, but like them he had a taste for the wild woods and he pursued a career not far removed from theirs. In 1684 he was in command of the fortified trading post at Michelin McKinnock and he had a share in Denonville's expedition against the Onondagas three years later. On that occasion he mustered a band of traders who with a contingent of friendly Indians followed him down to the lakes to join the punitive force. In 1690 he was at Montreal, lending his aid in the defense of that part of the colony against raiding bands of Iroquois which were once again proving a menace. At Boucherville in 1694, one historian tells us with characteristic hyperbole, Durante killed 10 Iroquois with his own hand. Mohawks were not, as a rule, so easy to catch or kill. Two years later he commanded a detachment of troops and militiamen in operations against his old-time foes and in 1698 he was given a royal pension of 600 leavers per year in recognition of his services. Having been so largely engaged in these military affrays, little time had been available for the development of his signurie. His income from the annual dues of its habitants was accordingly small and the royal gratuity was no doubt a welcome addition. The royal bounty never went begging in New France. No one was too proud to dip his hand into the king's purse when the chance presented itself. In June 1703, Durante received the signal honour of an appointment to the Superior Council at Quebec and this post gave him additional remuneration. For the remaining 24 years of his life, this soldier-signor lived partly at Quebec and partly at the manor house of his signoral estate. At the time of his death in 1727, these landed holdings had greatly increased in population in cleared acreage and in value, although it cannot be said that this progress had been in any direct way due to the senior's active interest or efforts. He had a family of six sons and three daughters, quite enough to provide for with his limited income, but not a large family as households went in those days. Durante was not among the most effective of the seniors, but little is to be gained by placing various leaders among the landed men of New France in sharp contrast, comparing their respective contributions one with another. The colony had work for all to do, each in his own way. Among those who came to Montreal in 1641, when the foundations of the city were being laid, was the son of a Dieppe innkeeper, Charles Lemoine by name. Born in 1624, he was only 17 when he set out to seek his fortune in the New World. The lure of the fur trade promptly overcame him, as it did so many others, and the first few years of his life in Canada were spent among the Hurons in the regions round Georgian Bay. On becoming of age, however, he obtained grant of lands on the south shore of the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal, and at once began the work of clearing it. This area of 50 lineal arpents in frontage by 100 in depth was granted to Lemoine by Monsieur de Lausanne. Footnote, Jean de Lausanne, at this time president of the Company of 100 Associates, which, as we have seen, had the feudal suzerainty of Canada. Lausanne was afterwards governor of New France, 1651 to 56. And footnote. This area of 50 lineal arpents in frontage by 100 in depth was granted to Lemoine by Monsieur de Lausanne as a seniorice on September 24th, 1647. Despite the fact that his holding was directly in the path of Indian attacks, Lemoine made steady progress in clearing it. He built himself a house, and in 1654, at the age of 28, married mademoiselle Catherine Primo, formerly of Rouen. The governor of Montreal, Monsieur de Metson Nouve, showed his goodwill by a wedding gift of 90 additional arpents. But Lemoine's ambition to provide for a rapidly growing family led him to petition the intendant for an enlargement of his holdings. And in 1672, the intendant Talon gave him the land which lay between the seniories of Varens and La Prairie de la Magdalene. This, with his other tract, was united to form the seniorie of Longueuil. Already, the king had recognized Lemoine's progressive spirit by giving him rank in the noblesse, the letter's patent having been issued in 1668. On this seniorie, the first of the Lemoine's de Longueuil lived and worked until his death in 1685. Charles Lemoine had a family of eleven sons, of whom ten grew to manhood and became figures of prominence in the later history of New France. From Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, their exploits covered every field of activity on land and sea. Footnote, these sons were one, Charles Lemoine de Longueuil, born in 1656, who succeeded his father as senior and became the first baron de Longueuil, later served as lieutenant governor of Montreal and was killed in action at Saratoga on June 8, 1729. Two, Jacques Lemoine de St. Helene, born 1659, who fell at the Siege of Quebec in 1690. Three, Pierre Lemoine de Iberville, born in 1661, voyageur to Hudson Bay and Spanish Maine, died at Havana in 1706. Four, Paul Lemoine de Mericourt, born in 1663, captain in the Marine, died in 1707 from hardships during an expedition against the Iroquois. Five, François Lemoine de Bienville, born 1666, intrepid young border warrior killed by the Iroquois 1691. Six, Joseph Lemoine de Serringier, born 1668, served as a youth in the expeditions of his brother to Hudson Bay, died in 1687. Seven, Louis de Moine de Chateau-Gouay, born 1676, his young life ended in action at Fort Bourbon, Nelson or York factory, on Hudson Bay in 1694. Eight, Jean-Baptiste Lemoine de Bienville, born 1680, founder of New Orleans, governor of Louisiana, died in Paris, 1767. Nine, Gabrielle Lemoine de Assigny, born 1681, died of yellow fever at San Domingo in 1701. Ten, Antoine Lemoine de Chateau-Gouay, born 1683, governor of French Guyana. What scions of a stout race they were, the strain of the old Norse rover was in them all. Each one a soldier, they built forts, founded cities, governed colonies, and gave their king full measure of valiant service. The eldest, who bore his father's name and possessed many of his traits, inherited the scenery. Soon he made it one of the most valuable properties in the whole colony. The old manor house gave way to a pretentious chateau, flanked by four imposing towers of solid masonry. Its dimensions were, as such things went in the colony, stupendously large, the structure being about 200 feet in length by 170 in breadth. The great towers, or bastions, were loop-hold in such way as to permit a flanking fire in the event of an armed assault, and the whole building, when viewed from the river, presented an impressive façade. The grim frontenac, who was not over-given to eulogy, praised it in one of his dispatchers, and said that it reminded him of the embattled chateau of old Normandy. Speaking from the point of view of the other seniors, the cost of this menoral abode of the Longalls must have represented a fortune. The structure was so well built that it remained fit for occupancy during nearly a full century, or until 1782, when it was badly damaged by fire. A century later still, in 1882, the walls remained, but a few years afterwards, they were removed to make room for the new parish church of Longall. Lemoine did more than build an imposing house. He had the stones gathered from the lands and used in building houses for his people. The seniors mill was one of the best. A fine church raised its cross-crowned spire nearby. A brewery, built of stone, was in full operation. The land was fertile and produced abundant harvests. When Catalon visited Longall in 1712, he noted that the habitants were living in comfortable circumstances by reason of the large expenditures which the senior had made to improve the land and the means of communication. Whatever Charles Lemoine could gather together was not spent in riotous living, as was the case with so many of his contemporaries, but was invested in productive improvements. This is the way in which he became the owner of a model senior. A senior so progressive and successful could not escape the attention of the king. In 1698, the governor and the intendant joined in bringing Lemoine's services to the favorable notice of the minister with the suggestion that it should receive suitable acknowledgement. Two years later, this recognition came in the form of a royal decree which elevated the scenery of Longall to the dignity of a barony and made its owner the baron de Longall. In recounting the services rendered to the colony by the new baron, the patent mentioned that, quote, he has already erected at his own cost a fort supported by four strong towers of stone and masonry, with a guard house, several large dwellings, a fine church bearing all the insignia of nobility, a spacious farm yard in which there is a barn, a stable, a sheep pen, a dove coat, and other buildings, all of which stand within the area of said fort, next to which stands a banal mill, a fine brewery of masonry, together with a large retinue of servants, horses, and equipages, the cost of which buildings amount to 60,000 levers, so much so that this scenery is one of the most valuable in the whole country. End quote. The population of Longall in the census of 1698 is placed at 223. The new honor spurred its recipient to even greater efforts. He became one of the first gentlemen of the colony, who served a term as Lieutenant Governor at Montreal, and going into battle once more was killed in action near Saratoga in the expedition of 1729. The barony thereupon passed to his son, the third Charles Lemoine, born in 1687, who lived until 1755, and was for a time administrator of the colony. His son, the third baron, was killed during the Seven Years' War in the operations round Lake George, and the title passed in the absence of direct male heirs to his only daughter, Marie Lemoine de Longall, who in 1781 married Captain David Alexander Grant of the 94th British Regiment. Thus the old dispensation linked itself with the new. The eldest son of this marriage became the fifth baron de Longall in 1841. Since that date, the title has been borne by successive generations in the same family. Of all the titles of honor, great, and small, which the French crown granted to the seniors of old Canada, that of the baron de Longall is the only one now legally recognized in the Dominion. After the conquest, the descendants of Charles Lemoine maintained that having promised to respect the ancient land-tenures, the new British Sousarens were under obligation to recognize Longall as a barony. It was not, however, until 1880 that a formal request for recognition was made to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The matter was, of course, submitted to the law officers of the crown, and their decision ruled the claim to be well-grounded. By royal proclamation, accordingly, the rank and title of Charles Colmore Grant, seventh baron de Longall, was formally recognized. Footnote, the royal recognition was officially promulgated as follows. The queen has been graciously pleased to recognize the right of Charles Colmore Grant Esquire to the title of baron de Longall, of Longall, in the province of Quebec, Canada. This title was conferred on his ancestor, Charles Lemoine, by letters patent of nobility signed by King Louis XIV in the year 1700, the London Gazette, December 7th, 1880. The barony of Longall at that time included an area of about 150 square miles, much of it heavily timbered, and almost all fit for cultivation. The thriving towns of Longall and St. John's grew up within its limits in the century following the conquest. As population increased, much of the land was sold into freehold, and when the senioral system was abolished in 1854, what had not been sold was entailed, and entailed a state, though not now of exceeding great value, it still remains. No family of New France maintained more steadily its favourable place in the public view than the House of Longall. The sons, grandsons, and great grandsons of the Dieppe Innkeeper's boy were leaders of action in their respective generations. Soldiers, administrators, and captains of industry, they contributed their full share to the sum of French achievement, alike in war and peace. My intermarriage also, the Lemoines of Longall connected themselves with other prominent families of French Canada, notably those of Bejeux, Lanodière, and Gasp. Unlike most of the colonial noblesse, they were well-to-do from the start, and the barony of Longall may be rightly regarded as a good illustration of what the senioral system could accomplish at its best. These three seniors, Hibère, La Durantée, and Lemoine, represent three different, yet not so very dissimilar types of landed pioneer. Hibère, the man of humble birth and limited attainments, made his way to success by unremitting personal labour through great discouragements. He lived and died a plain citizen. He had less to show for his life work than the others, perhaps, but in those swaddling days of the colony's history, his task was greater. Morel de La Durantée, the man at arms, well-born and bred, took his senioral rank as a matter of course, and his duties without much seriousness. His seniority had his attention only when opportunities for some more exciting field of action failed to present themselves. Interesting figure though he was, an excellent type of a hundred others, it was well for the colony that not all its seniors were like him in temperament and ways. Lemoine, the nearest Canadian approach to the senior of old France and the days before the Revolution, combined the best qualities of the other two. There was plenty of red blood in his veins, and to some of his progeny went more of it than was good for them. He was ready with his sword when the occasion called. An arm shot off by an Iroquois flintlock in 1787 gave him through life a grim reminder of his combative habits in early days. But warfare was only an avocation. The first fruits of the land absorbed his main interest throughout the larger part of his days. Each of these men had others like him, and the peculiar circumstances of the colony found places for them all. The seniors of old Canada did not form a homogenous class. Men of widely differing tastes and attainments were included among them. There were workers and drones, there were men who made a signal success as seniors, and other who made an utter failure. But taken as a group, there was nothing very common place about them. And it is to her 200 seniors or thereabouts that New France owes much of the glamour that marks her tragic history. End of chapter three.