 CHAPTER IX When Dungeon heard that the French had invaded the Seneca's seized English traders on the lakes and built a fort of Niagara, his wrath was kindled anew. He sent to the Iroquois and summoned them to meet him at Albany. Told the assembled chiefs that the late Calamity had fallen upon them because they had held councils with the French without asking his leave. Forbade them to do so again and informed them that, as subjects of King James, they must make no treaty except by the consent of his representative, the governor of New York. He declared that the Ottawa's and other remote tribes were also British subjects, that the Iroquois should unite with them to expel the French from the west, and that all alike should bring down their beaver skins to the English at Albany. Moreover, he enjoined them to receive no more French Jesuits into their towns and to call home their countrymen whom these fathers had converted and enticed to Canada. Obey my commands, added the governor, for that is the only way to eat well and sleep well without fear or disturbance. The Iroquois, who wanted his help, seemed to assent to all he said. We will fight the French, exclaimed their orator, as long as we have a man left. At the same time, Dungan wrote to Denonville, demanding the immediate surrender of the Dutch and English captured on the lakes. Denonville angrily replied that he would keep the prisoners since Dungan had broken the treaty of neutrality by giving aid and comfort to the savages. The English governor, in return, abraded his correspondent for invading British territory. I will endeavour to protect his majesty's subjects here from your unjust invasions till I hear from the king my master, who is the greatest and most glorious monarch that ever sat on a throne, and would do as much to propagate the Christian faith as any prince that lives. He did not send me here to suffer you to give laws to his subjects. I hope, not withstanding all your trained soldiers and great officers come from Europe, that our masters at home will suffer us to do ourselves justice on you for the injuries and spoil you have committed on us, and I assure you, sir, if my master gives leave, I will be as soon at Quebec as you shall be at Albany. What you allege concerning my assisting the Seneca's with arms and ammunitions to war against you was never given by me until the 6th of August last, when understanding of your unjust proceedings and invading the king my master's territories in a hostile manner, I then gave them powder, lead, and arms, and united the five nations together to defend that part of our king's dominions from your injurious invasion. And as for offering them men, in that you do me wrong, our men being all busy then at their harvest, and I leave it to your judgment whether there was any occasion when only four hundred of them engaged with your whole army, I advise you to send home all the Christian and Indian prisoners the king of England's subjects you unjustly do detain. This is what I have thought fit to answer to your reflecting and provoking letter. As for the French claims to the Iroquois country and the upper lakes, he turned them to ridicule. They were founded in part on the missions established there by the Jesuits. The king of China, observed Dungen, never goes anywhere without two Jesuits with him. I wonder you make not the like pretense to that kingdom. He speaks with equal irony of the claim based on discovery. Pardon me if I say it is a mistake, except you will affirm that a few loose fellows rambling amongst Indians to keep themselves from starving gives the French a right to the country, and of the claim based on geographical divisions. Your reason is that some rivers or rivulets of this country run out into the great river of Canada. Oh, just God! What new far-fetched and unheard-of pretense is this for a title to a country? The French king may have as good a pretense to all those countries that drink claret and brandy. In spite of his sarcasm it is clear that the claim of prior discovery and occupation was on the side of the French. The dispute now assumed a new phase. James II at length consented to own the Iroquois as his subjects, ordering Donigan to protect them and repel the French by force of arms should they attack them again. At the same time conferences were opened at London between the French ambassador and the English commissioners appointed to settle the questions at issue. Both disputants claimed the Iroquois' subjects in the contest war in aspect more serious than before. The royal declaration was a great relief to Duncan. Thus far he had acted at his own risk, now he was sustained by the orders of his king. He instantly assumed a war-like attitude, and in the next spring wrote to the Earl of Sunderland that he had been at Albany all winter with 400 infantry, 50 horsemen, and 800 Indians. This was not without cause, for a report had come from Canada that the French were about to march on Albany to destroy it. And now, my lord, continues Duncan. We must build forts in ye country upon ye great lakes as ye French do, otherwise we lose ye country, ye beaver trade, and our Indians. De Nonville, meanwhile, had begun to yield and promised to send back McGregory and the men captured with him. Duncan, not satisfied, insisted on payment for all the captured merchandise and on the immediate demolition of Fort Niagara. He added another demand which must have been singularly galling to his rival. It was to the effect that the Iroquois prisoners seized at Fort Frotonac and sent to the galleys in France should be surrendered as British subjects to the English ambassador at Paris or the Secretary of State in London. De Nonville was sorely perplexed. He was hard-pressed and eager for peace with the Iroquois at any price, but Duncan was using every means to prevent their treating of peace with the French governor until he had complied with all the English demands. In this extremity, De Nonville sent Father Vaillant to Albany in the hope of bringing his intractable rival to conditions less humiliating. The Jesuit played his part with ability and proved more than a match for his adversarian dialectics. But Duncan held fast to all his demands. Vaillant tried to temporize and asked for a truce with a view to a final settlement by reference to the two kings. Duncan referred the question to a meeting of Iroquois chiefs who declared in reply that they would make neither peace nor truce till Fort Niagara was demolished and all the prisoners restored. Duncan, well pleased, commended their spirit and assured them that King James, who is the greatest man the sun shines upon and never told a lie in his life, has given you his royal word to protect you. Vaillant returned from his bootless errand, and a stormy correspondence followed between the two governors. Duncan renewed his demands, then protested his wish for peace, extolled King James for his pious zeal, and declared that he was sending over missionaries of his own to convert the Iroquois. What De Noville wanted was not their conversion by Englishmen, but their conversion by Frenchmen, and the presence in their towns of those most useful political agents, the Jesuits. He replied angrily, charging Duncan with preventing the conversion of the Iroquois by driving off the French missionaries and accusing him farther of instigating the tribes of New York to attack Canada. Suddenly there was a change in the temper of his letters. He wrote to his rival in terms of studied civility, declared that he wished he could meet him and consult with him on the best means of advancing the cause of true religion, begged that he would not refuse him his friendship, and thanked him in warm terms for befriending some French prisoners whom he had saved from the Iroquois and treated with great kindness. This change was due to dispatches from Versailles in which De Noville was informed that the matters in dispute would soon be amicably settled by the commissioners, that he was to keep on good terms with the English commanders and what pleased him still more that the King of England was about to recall Duncan. In fact James II had resolved on remodeling his American colonies. New York, New Jersey, and New England had been formed into one government under Sir Edman Andos, and Duncan was summoned home where a regiment was given him with the rank of Major General of Artillery. De Noville says that in his efforts to extend English trade to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, his late rival had been influenced by motives of personal gain. Be this as it may, he was a bold and vigorous defender of the claims of the British Crown. Sir Edman Andos now reigned over New York, and by the terms of his commission his rule stretched westward to the Pacific. The usual official courtesies passed between him and De Noville, but Andos renewed all the demands of his predecessor, claimed the irrequise subjects, and forbade the French to attack them. The new governor was worse than the old. De Noville wrote to the minister, I send you copies of his letters by which you will see that the spirit of Duncan has entered into the heart of his successor, who may be less passionate and less interested, but who is, to say the least, quite as much opposed to us, and perhaps more dangerous by his suppleness and smoothness than the other was by his violence. What he has just done among the Uruguay, whom he pretends to be under his government, and whom he prevents from coming to meet me, is a certain proof that neither he nor the English governors nor their people will refrain from doing this colony all the harm they can. While these things were passing, the state of Canada was deplorable, and the position of its governor as mortifying as it was painful. He thought, with good reason, that the maintenance of the new fort at Niagara was of great importance to the colony, and he had repeatedly refused the demands of Duncan and the Iroquois for its demolition. But a power greater than Sachems and governors presently intervened. The provisions left at Niagara, though abundant, were atrociously bad. Scurvy and other malignant diseases soon broke out among the soldiers. The Seneca sprawled about the place, and no man dared venture out for hunting, fishing, or firewood. The fort was first a prison, then a hospital, then a charnel house, till before spring the garrison of a hundred men was reduced to ten or twelve. In this condition they were found towards the end of April by a large war-party of friendly Mayamis, who entered the place and held it till a French detachment at length arrived for its relief. The garrison of Fort Frontenac had suffered from the same causes, though not to the same degree. The Anvil feared that he should be forced to abandon them both. The way was so long and so dangerous, and the governor had grown of late so cautious that he dreaded the risk of maintaining such remote communications. On second thought, he resolved to keep Frontenac and sacrifice Niagara. He promised Duncan that he would demolish it and he kept his word. He was forced to another and a deeper humiliation. At the imperious demand of Duncan and the Iroquois, he begged the king to send back the prisoners and trapped at Fort Frontenac and he wrote to the minister, Be pleased, Moussagnar, to remember that I had the honor to tell you that, in order to attain the peace necessary to the country, I was obliged to promise that I would beg you to send back to us the prisoners I sent you last year. I know you gave orders that they should be well treated, but I am informed that though they were well enough treated at first, your orders were not afterwards executed with the same fidelity. But ill treatment has caused them all to die, for they are people who easily fall into dejection and who die of it, and if none of them come back, I do not know at all whether we could persuade these barbarians not to attack us again. What had brought the maquis to this pass? Famine, destitution, disease, and the Iroquois were making Canada their prey. The fur trade had been stopped for two years, and the people bereft of their only means of subsistence could contribute nothing to their own defense. Above three rivers, the whole population was imprisoned in stockade forts hastily built in every scenery. Here they were safe, provided that they never ventured out, but their fields were left untilled, and the governor was already compelled to feed many of them at the expense of the king. The Iroquois roamed among the deserted settlements are proud like lynxes about the forts, waylaying convoys and killing or capturing stragglers. Their war-parties were usually small, but their movements were so mysterious and their attacks so sudden that they spread a universal panic through the upper half of the colony. They were the wasps which Denisville had failed to kill. We should succumb, wrote the distressed governor, if our cause were not the cause of God. Your Majesty's zeal for religion and the great things you have done for the destruction of heresy encouraged me to hope that you will be the bulwark of the faith in the new world as you are in the old. I cannot give you a truer idea of the war we have to wage with the Iroquois than by comparing them to a great number of wolves or other ferocious beasts issuing out of a vast forest to ravage the neighboring settlements. The people gathered to hunt them down, but nobody can find their lair, for they are always in motion. An abler man than I would be greatly at a loss to manage the affairs of this country. It is for the interest of the colony to have peace at any cost, whatever. For the glory of the king and the good of religion we should be glad to have it an advantageous one. And so it would have been, but for the malice of the English and the protection they have given our enemies. And yet he had, one would think, a reasonable force at his disposal. His thirty-two companies of regulars were reduced by this time to about fourteen hundred men, but he had also three or four hundred Indian converts, besides the militia of the colony, of whom he had stationed a large body under Vaudré at the head of the island of Montreal. All told, they were several times more numerous than the agile warriors who held the colony in terror. He asked for eight hundred more regulars. The king sent him three hundred. Affairs grew worse and he grew desperate. Rightly judging that the best means of defense was to take the offensive, he conceived the plan of a double attack on the Iroquois, one army to assail the Anand Dagas and Cayugas, another the Mohawks and Onaitas. Since to reach the Mohawks as he proposed by the way of Lake Champlain, he must pass through territory indisputably British, the attempt would be a flagrant violation of the Treaty of Neutrality. Nevertheless, he implored the king to send him four thousand soldiers to accomplish it. His fast friend, the bishop, warmly seconded his appeal. The glory of God is involved, wrote the head of the church, for the Iroquois are the only tribe who oppose the progress of the gospel. The glory of the king is involved, for they are the only tribe who refuse to recognize his grandeur and his might. They hold the French in the deepest contempt, and unless they are completely humbled within two years, his majesty will have no colony left in Canada. And the prelate proceeds to tell the minister how in his opinion the war ought to be conducted. The appeal was vain. His majesty agrees with you, wrote Seignele, that three or four thousand men would be the best means of making peace, but he cannot spare them now. If the enemy breaks out again, raise the inhabitants and fight as well as you can till his majesty is prepared to send you troops. A hope had dawned on the governor. He had been more active of late in negotiating than in fighting, and his diplomacy had prospered more than his arms. It may be remembered that some of the Iroquois entrapped at Fort Frontenac had been given to their Christian relatives in the Mission villages. Here they had since remained. De Noville thought that he might use them as messengers to their heathen countrymen, and he sent one or more of them to Onondaga with gifts and overtures of peace. That shrewd old politician Bigmouth was still strong in influence at the Iroquois capital, and his name was great to the farthest bounds of the Confederacy. He knew by personal experience the advantages of a neutral position between the rival European powers, from both of whom he received gifts and attentions, and he saw that what was good for him was good for the Confederacy since, if it gave itself to neither party, both would court its alliance. In his opinion it had now leaned long enough towards the English, and a change of attitude had become expedient. Therefore, as De Noville promised the return of the prisoners and was plainly ready to make other concessions, Bigmouth setting at naught the prohibition of Andras consented to a conference with the French. He set out at his leisure for Montreal with six Onondaga, Cayuga, and Oneida chiefs, and as no diplomatist ever understood better the advantage of negotiating at the head of an imposing force, a body of Iroquois warriors to the number it is said of 1200 set out before him and silently took path to Canada. The ambassadors paddled across the lake and presented themselves before the commandant of Fort Frontenac, who received them with distinction, and ordered Lieutenant Perel to escort them to Montreal. Scarcely had the officer conducted his August charge five leagues on their way, when, to his amazement, he found himself in the midst of 600 Iroquois warriors who amused themselves for a time with his terror, and then accompanied him as far as Lake St. Francis, where he found another body of savages nearly equal in number. Here the warriors halted, and the ambassadors with their escort gravely pursued their way to meet Donanville at Montreal. Bigmouth spoke hotly like a man who knew his power. He told the governor that he and his people were subjects neither of the French nor of the English, that they wished to be friends of both, that they held their country of the Great Spirit, and that they had never been conquered in more. He declared that the Iroquois knew the weakness of the French and could easily exterminate them, that they had formed a plan of burning all the houses and barns of Canada, killing the cattle, setting fire to the ripe grain, and then when the people were starving attacking the forts, but that he, Bigmouth, had prevented its execution. He concluded by saying that he was allowed but four days to bring back the governor's reply, and that, if he were kept waiting longer, he would not answer for what might happen. Though it appeared by some expressions in his speech that he was ready to make peace only with the French, leaving the Iroquois free to attack the Indian allies of the colony and though, while the ambassadors were at Montreal, their warriors on the river above actually killed several of the Indian converts, Donanville felt himself compelled to pretend ignorance of the outrage. A declaration of neutrality was drawn up, and Bigmouth affixed to it the figures of sundry birds and beasts as the signatures of himself and his fellow chiefs. He promised, too, that within a certain time deputies from the whole confederacy should come to Montreal and conclude a general peace. The time arrived and they did not appear. It became known, however, that a number of chiefs were coming from onondaga to explain the delay and to promise that the deputies should soon follow. The chiefs, in fact, were on their way. They reached Lafamine, the scene of Labar's meeting with Bigmouth, but here an unexpected incident arrested them and completely changed the aspect of affairs. Among the Hurons of Michelin Mackenac there was a chief of high renown named Conde Yaronque, or the Rat. He was in the prime of life, a redoubted warrior and a sage-counselor. The French seemed to have admired him greatly. He is a gallant man, says La Hontaine, if ever there was one, while Charlevoix declares that he was the ablest Indian the French ever knew in America and that he had nothing of the savage but the name and the dress. In spite of the father's eulogy, the moral condition of the Rat savored strongly of the wigwam. He had given Donneville great trouble by his constant intrigues with the Iroquois, with whom he had once made a plot for the massacre of his neighbors the Ottawa's undercover ever pretended treaty. The French had spared no pains to gain him, and he had at length been induced to declare for them under a pledge from the governor that the war should never cease till the Iroquois were destroyed. During the summer, he raised a party of 40 warriors and came down the lakes in quest of Iroquois scalps. On the way he stopped at Fort Frontenac to hear the news when, to his amazement, the commandant told him that the deputies from Monondaga were coming in a few days to conclude peace and that he had better go home at once. It is well, replied the Rat. He knew that for the Hurons it was not well. He and his tribes stood fully committed to the war and for them peace between the French and the Iroquois would be a signal of destruction, since Donneville could not or would not protect his allies. The Rat paddled off with his warriors. He had secretly learned the route of the expected deputies, and he shaped his course not as he had pretended for a Michelin macanac, but for Lafamine, where he knew that they would land. Having reached his destination, he watched and waited four or five days till canoes at length appeared, approaching from the direction of Monondaga. On this the Rat and his friends hid themselves in the bushes. The newcomers were the messengers sent as precursors of the embassy. At their head was a famous personage named Decanessora or Tecanessorans, with whom were three other chiefs, and it seems a number of warriors. They had scarcely landed when the ambushed Hurons gave them a volley of bullets, killed one of their chiefs, wounded all the rest, and then rushing upon them seized the whole party except a warrior who escaped with a broken arm. Having secured his prisoners, the Rat told them that he had acted on the suggestion of Donneville, who had informed him that an Iroquois War Party was to pass that way. The astonished captives protested that they were envoys of peace. The Rat put on a look of amazement, then of horror and fury, and presently burst into invectives against Donneville for having made him the instrument of such atrocious perfidy. Go, my brothers, he exclaimed, go home to your people. Though there is war between us, I give you your liberty. Oh, none so has made me do so black a deed that I shall never be happy again till your five tribes take a just vengeance upon him. After giving them guns, powder, and ball, he sent them on their way, well pleased with him, and filled with rage against the governor. In accordance with Indian usage, he, however, kept one of them to be adopted, as he declared in place of one of his followers whom he had lost in the skirmish. Then, recrossing the lake, he went alone to Fort Frantanac, and as he left the gate to rejoin his party, he said coolly, I have killed the peace. We shall see how the governor will get out of this business. Then, without loss of time, he repaired to Michel Makinac, and gave his Iroquois prisoner to the officer-in-command. No news of the intended peace had yet reached that distant outpost, and though the unfortunate Iroquois told the story of his mission and his capture, the rat declared that it was a crazy invention inspired by the fear of death, and the prisoner was immediately shot by a file of soldiers. The rat now sent for an old Iroquois who had long been a prisoner at the Huron village, telling him with a mournful air that he was free to return to his people, and recount the cruelty of the French who had put their countrymen to death. The liberated Iroquois faithfully acquitted himself of his mission. One incident seemed for a moment likely to rob the intrigue of the fruits of his ingenuity. The Iroquois who had escaped in the skirmish contrived to reach Fort Frantanac some time after the last visit of the rat. He told what had happened, and after being treated with the utmost attention he was sent to Onondaga, charged with explanations and regrets. The Iroquois dignitaries seemed satisfied, and Donoville wrote to the minister that there was still good hope of peace. He little knew his enemy. They could dissemble and wait, but they neither believed the governor nor forgave him. His supposed treachery at Lefamin and his real treachery at Fort Frantanac filled them with a patient but unextinguishable rage. They sent him word that they were ready to renew the negotiation. Then they sent again to say that Andros forbade them. Without doubt they used his prohibition as a pretext. Months passed, and Donoville remained in suspense. He did not trust his Indian allies, nor did they trust him. Like the rat and his Hurons, they dreaded the conclusion of peace and wished the war to continue that the French might bear the brunt of it and stand between them and the wrath of the Iroquois. In the direction of the Iroquois there was a long and ominous silence. It was broken at last by the crash of a thunderbolt. On the night between the 4th and 5th of August a violent hailstorm burst over Lake Saint-Louis and expansion of the Saint Lawrence a little above Montreal. Concealed by the Tempest and the Darkness, 1500 warriors landed at La Chine and silently posted themselves about the houses of the sleeping settlers, then screeched the war-woop and began the most frightful massacre in Canadian history. The houses were burned, and men, women and children indiscriminately butchered. In the neighborhood were three stockade forts called Rémy, Roland and La Présentation, and they all had garrisons. There was also an encampment of two hundred regulars about three miles distant under an officer named Subercas, then absent at Montreal on a visit to Donoville who had lately arrived with his wife and family. At four o'clock in the morning the troops in this encampment heard a cannon shot from one of the forts. They were at once ordered under arms. Soon after they saw a man running towards them just escaped from the butchery. He told his story and passed on with the news to Montreal six miles distant. Then several fugitives appeared chased by a band of Iroquois who gave over the pursuit at sight of the soldiers but pillaged several houses before their eyes. The day was well advanced before Subercas arrived. He ordered the troops to march. About a hundred armed inhabitants had joined them and they moved together towards Leshine. Here they found the houses still burning and the bodies of their inmates strewn among them were hanging from the stakes where they had been tortured. They learned from a French surgeon escape from the enemy that the Iroquois were all encamped a mile and a half farther on behind a tract of forest. Subercas, whose force had been strengthened by troops from the forts, resolved to attack them. And had he been allowed to do so, he would probably have punished them severely for most of them were helplessly drunk with brandy taken from the houses of the traitors. Sword in hand at the head of his men, the daring officer entered the forest but at that moment a voice from the rear commanded a halt. It was that of the Chevalier de Vaudré just come from Montreal with positive orders from Donauville to run no risks and stand solely on the defensive. Subercas was furious. High words passed between him and Vaudré but he was forced to obey. The troops were led back to Fort Roland where about 500 regitors and militia were now collected under the command of Vaudré. On the next day, 80 men from Fort Remy attempted to join them but the Iroquois had slept off the effect of their orgies and were again on the alert. The unfortunate detachment was set upon by a host of savages and cut to pieces in full sight of Fort Roland. All were killed or captured except Le Moin de Longueuil and a few others who escaped within the gate of Fort Remy. Montreal was wild with terror. It had been fortified with phallosade since the war began but though there were troops in the town under the governor himself, the people were in mortal dread. No attack was made either on the town or on any of the forts and such of the inhabitants as could reach them were safe. While the Iroquois held undisputed possession of the open country, burned all the houses and barns over an extent of nine miles and roamed in small parties pillaging and scalping over more than 20 miles. There is no mention of their having encountered opposition nor do they seem to have met with any loss but that of some warriors killed in the attack on their detachment from Fort Remy and that of three drunken stragglers who were caught and thrown into a cellar in Fort La Présentation. When they came to their senses, they defied their captors and fought with such ferocity that it was necessary to shoot them. Chalevois says that the invaders remained in the neighborhood of Montreal till the middle of October or more than two months but this seems incredible since troops and militia enough to drive them all into the St. Lawrence might easily have been collected in less than a week. It is certain however that their stay was strangely long. Troops and inhabitants seemed to have been paralyzed with fear. At length most of them took to their canoes and recross Lake Saint-Houi in a body giving 90 yells to show that they had 90 prisoners in their clutches. This was not all, for the whole number carried off was more than 120, besides about 200 who had the good fortune to be killed on the spot. As the Aroquois passed the force, they shouted, "'Onancio, you deceived us "'and now we have deceived you.'" Towards evening they encamped on the farther side of the lake and began to torture and devour their prisoners. On that miserable night stupefied and speechless groups stood gazing from the strand of Lachine and the lights that gleamed along the distant shore of Chateau-Gaye were their friends, wives, parents or children agonized in the fires of the Aroquois and scenes were enacted of indescribable and nameless horror. The greater part of the prisoners were however reserved to be distributed among the towns of the Confederacy and there tortured for the diversion of the inhabitants. While some of the invaders went home to celebrate their triumph others roamed in small parties through all the upper parts of the colony spreading universal terror. Canada lay bewildered and benumbed under the shock of this calamity but the cup of her misery was not full. There was revolution in England. James II, the friend and ally of France had been driven from his kingdom and William of Orange had seized his vacant throne. Soon there came news of war between the two crowns. The Aroquois alone had brought the colony to the brink of ruin and now they would be supported by the neighbouring British colonies rich, strong and populace compared to impoverished and depleted Canada. A letter of recall for Denonville was already on its way. His successor arrived in October and the Marquis sailed for France. He was a good soldier in a regular war and a subordinate command and he had some of the qualities of a good governor while lacking others quite as essential. He had more activity than vigor, more personal bravery than firmness and more clearness of perception than executive power. He filled his dispatches with excellent recommendations but was not the man to carry them into effect. He was sensitive, fastidious, critical and conventional and plumbed himself on his honour which was not always able to bear a strain. Though as regards illegal trade the besetting sin of Canadian governors his hands were undoubtedly clean. It is said that he had an instinctive antipathy for Indians such as some persons have for certain animals and the Courailles de Bois and other lawless classes of the Canadian population appeared to please him no better. Their licence and in subordination distressed him and he constantly complained of them to the king. For the church and its hierarchy his devotion was unbounded and his government was a season of unwanted sunshine for the ecclesiastics like the balmy days of an Indian summer amid the gusts of November. They exhausted themselves the neologies of his piety and in proof of its depth and solidity Mother Jusreau tells us that he did not regard station and rank as very useful aids to salvation. While other governors complained of too many priests De Noville begged for more. All was harmony between him and Bishop Saint-Valier and the prelate was constantly his friend even to the point of justifying his worst act the treacherous seizure of the Iroquois neutrals. When he left Canada the only mourner besides the churchmen was his colleague the intendant Champigny. For the two chiefs of the colony joined in a common union with the Jesuits lived together in unexampled concord. On his arrival at court the good offices of his clerical allies gained for him the highly honourable post of Governor of the Royal Children the young dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berrie. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of France and England in North America Part 5 Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV by Francis Parkman, Jr. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 1689-1690 Return of Frontenac The son of Louis XIV had reached its zenith. From a morning of unexampled brilliancy it had mounted to the glare of a cloudless noon but the hour of its decline was near. The mortal enemy of France was on the throne of England turning against her from that new point of vantage all the energies of his unconquerable genius. An invillid built the bourbon monarchy and another invillid battered and effaced the imposing structure. Two potent and daring spirits in two frail bodies Richelieu and William of Orange. Versailles gave no sign of waning glories. On three evenings of the week it was the pleasure of the king that the whole court should assemble in the vast suite of apartments now known as the halls of abundance, of Venus, of Diana, of Mars, of Mercury and of Apollo. The magnificence of their decorations pictures of the great Italian masters, sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, tapestries, vases and statues of silver and gold. The vista of light and splendor that opened through the wide portals. The courtly throngs, feasting, dancing, gaming, promenading, conversing formed a scene which no palace of Europe could rival or approach. Here were all the great historic names of France, princes, warriors, statesmen and all that was highest in rank and place. The flower, in short, of that brilliant society so dazzling, captivating and illusory. In former years the king was usually present, affable and gracious, mingling with his own courtiers and sharing their amusements. But he had grown graver of late and was more often in his cabinet laboring with his ministers on the task of administration which his extravagance and ambition made every day more burdensome. There was one corner of the world where his emblem, the sun, would not shine on him. He had done his best for Canada and had got nothing for his pains but news of mishaps and troubles. He was growing tired of the colony which he had nursed with paternal fondness and he was more than half angry with it because it did not prosper. De Noville's letters had grown worse and worse and though he had not yet heard of the last great calamity he was sated with ill tidings already. Count Frotonec stood before him. Since his recall he had lived at court needy and no longer in favour but he had influential friends and an intriguing wife always ready to serve him. The king knew his merits as well as his faults and in the desperate state of his Canadian affairs he had been led to the resolution of restoring him to the command from which for excellent reasons he had removed him seven years before. He now told him that in his belief the charges brought against him were without foundation. I send you back to Canada, he has reported to have said where I am sure that he will serve me as well as you did before and I ask nothing more of you. The post was not attempting one to a man in his 70th year. Alone and unsupported for the king with Europe rising against him would give him no more troops. He was to restore the prostrate colony to hope and courage and fight two enemies with a force that had proved no match for one of them alone. The audacious Count trusted himself and undertook the task, received the royal instructions and took his last leave of the master whom he after a fashion honoured and admired. He repaired to Rochelle where two ships of the Royal Navy were waiting his arrival embarked in one of them and sailed for the New World. An heroic remedy had been prepared for the sickness of Canada and Frotonac was to be the surgeon. The cure, however, was not of his contriving. Le Noville had sent Calière his second in command to represent the state of the colony to the court and beg for help. Calière saw that there was little hope of more troops or any considerable supply of money and he laid before the king a plan which had at least the recommendations of boldness and cheapness. This was to conquer New York with the forces already in Canada aided only by two ships of war. The blow, he argued, should be struck at once and the English taken by surprise. A thousand regulars and 600 Canadian militia should pass Lake Champlain and Lake George in canoes and bateaux crossed to the Hudson and capture Albany where they would seize all the rivercraft and descend the Hudson to the town of New York which, as Calière stated, had then about 200 houses and 400 fighting men. The two ships were to cruise at the mouth of the harbor and wait the arrival of the troops which was to be made known to them by concerted signals whereupon they were to enter and aid in the attack. The whole expedition, he thought, might be accomplished in a month so that by the end of October the king would be master of all the country. The advantages were manifold. The Urquois, deprived of English arms and ammunition would be at the mercy of the French. The question of English rivalry in the West would be settled forever. The king would acquire a means of access to his colony incomparably better than the St. Lawrence and one that remained open all the year and, finally, New England would be isolated and prepared for a possible conquest in the future. The king accepted the plan with modifications which complicated and did not improve it. Extreme precautions were taken to ensure secrecy, but the vast distances, the difficult navigation and the accidents of weather appear to have been forgotten in this amended scheme of operation. There was, moreover, a long delay in fitting the two ships for sea. The wind was ahead and they were 52 days in reaching Chattabucto at the eastern end of Nova Scotia. Thence, Fultonac and Calière had orders to proceed in a merchant ship to Quebec which might require a month more. And on arriving, they were to prepare for the expedition while, at the same time, Fultonac was to send back a letter to the naval commander at Chattabucto, revealing the plan to him and ordering him to sail to New York to cooperate in it. It was the 12th of September when Chattabucto was reached and the enterprise was ruined by the delay. Fultonac's first step in his new government was a failure, though one for which he was in no way answerable. It will be well to observe what were the intentions of the king towards the colony which he proposed to conquer. They were as follows. If any Catholics were found in New York, they might be left undisturbed, provided that they took an oath of allegiance to the king. Officers and other persons who had the means of paying ransoms were to be thrown into prison. All lands in the colony except those of Catholics swearing allegiance were to be taken from their owners and granted under a feudal tenure to the French officers and soldiers. All property, public or private, was to be seized, a portion of it given to the grantees of the land and the rest sold on account of the king. Mechanics and other workmen might, at the discretion of the commanding officer, be kept as prisoners to work at fortifications and do other labor. The rest of the English and Dutch inhabitants, men, women and children were to be carried out of the colony and dispersed in New England, Pennsylvania or other places in such a manner that they could not combine in any attempt to recover their property and their country. And that the conquest might be perfectly secure, the nearest settlements of New England were to be destroyed and those more remote laid under contribution. In the next century, some of the people of Acadia were torn from their homes by order of a British commander. The act was harsh and violent and the innocent were involved with the guilty, but many of the sufferers had provoked their fate and deserved it. Louis XIV commanded that 18,000 unoffending persons should be stripped of all they had possessed and cast out to the mercy of the wilderness. The atrocity of the plan is matched by its folly. The king gave explicit orders, but he gave neither ships nor men enough to accomplish them and the Dutch farmers goaded to desperation would have cut his 1,600 soldiers to pieces. It was the scheme of a man blinded by a long course of success, though perverted by flattery and hardened by unbridled power, he was not cruel by nature. And here, as in the burning of the palatenate and the persecution of the Huguenots, he would have stood aghast if his dull imagination could have pictured to him the miseries he was preparing to inflict. With little hope left that the grand enterprise against New York could succeed, Frontenac made sail for Quebec and stopping by the way at Île-Percis learned from Récollet missionaries the eruption of the Iroquois at Montreal. He hastened on, but the wind was still against him and the autumn woods were turning brown before he reached his destination. It was evening when he landed amid fireworks, illuminations, and the firing of cannon. All Quebec came to meet him by torchlight. The members of the council offered their respects and the Jesuits made him an harangue of welcome. It was but a welcome of words. They and the counselors had done their best to have him recalled and hoped that they were rid of him forever, but now he was among them again rassed by the memory of real horror fancied wrongs. The Count, however, had no time for quarrelling. The King had told him to bury old animosities and forget the past and for the present he was too busy to break the royal injunction. He caused boats to be made ready and in spite of incessant rains pushed up the river to Montreal. Here he found Danonville and his frightened wife. Everything was in confusion. The Iroquois were gone, leaving dejection and terror behind them. Frontenac reviewed the troops. There were seven or 800 of them in the town, the rest being in garrison at the various forts. Then he repaired to what was once la Chine and surveyed the miserable waste of ashes and desolation that spread for miles around. To his extreme disgust, he learned that Danonville had sent a Canadian officer by secret pass to Fort Frontenac with orders to Valrenne the commandant to blow it up and return with his garrison to Montreal. Frontenac had built the fort, had given it his own name and had cherished it with a paternal fondness reinforced by strong hopes of making money out of it. For its sake, he had become the butt of scandal and opprobrium. But not the less had he always stood its strenuous and passionate champion. An Iroquois envoy had lately with great insolence demanded its destruction of Danonville and this alone in the eyes of Frontenac was ample reason for maintaining it at any cost. He still had hope that it might be saved and with all the energy of youth he proceeded to collect canoes, men, provisions and arms, battled against dejection and subordination and fear and in a few days dispatched a convoy of 300 men to relieve the place and stop the execution of Danonville's orders. His orders had been but too promptly obeyed. The convoy was scarcely gone an hour when, to Frontenac's unutterable wrath, Valreyn appeared with his garrison. He reported that he had set fire to everything in the fort that would burn, sunk the three vessels belonging to it, thrown the cannon into the lake, mined the walls and bastions and left matches burning in the powder magazine and further that when he and his men were five leagues on their way to Montreal, a dull and distant explosion told them that the mines had sprung. It proved afterwards that the destruction was not complete. And the Iroquois took possession of the abandoned fort with a large quantity of stores and munitions left by the garrison in their too hasty retreat. There was one ray of light through the clouds. The unwanted news of a victory came to Montreal. It was small but decisive and might be an earnest of greater things to come. Before Frontenac's arrival, Danonville had sent a reconnoitering party up the Ottawa. They had gone no farther than the lake of two mountains when they met 22 Iroquois and two large canoes who immediately bore down upon them yelling furiously. The French party consisted of 28 coureurs de bois under Duluth and Monter, excellent partisan chiefs, who maneuvered so well that the rising sun blazed full in the eyes of the advancing enemy and spoiled their aim. The French received their fire, which wounded one man, then closing with them while their guns were empty gave them a volley which killed and wounded 18 of their number. One swam ashore. The remaining three were captured and given to the Indian allies to be burned. This gleam of sunshine passed and all grew black again. On a snowy November day, a troop of Iroquois fell on the settlement of Lechene, burned the houses and vanished with a troop of prisoners leaving 20 mangled corpses on the snow. The terror, wrote the bishop, is indescribable. The appearance of a few savages would put a whole neighborhood to flight. So desperate, wrote Frontenac, were the needs of the colony and so great the contempt with which the Iroquois regarded it that it almost needed a miracle to carry on more or make peace. What he most earnestly wished was to keep the Iroquois quiet and so leave his hands free to deal with the English. This was not easy to such a pitch of audacity had late events raised them. Neither his temper nor his convictions would allow him to beg peace of them like his predecessor. But he had inordinate trust in the influence of his name and he now took a course which he hoped might answer his purpose without increasing their insolence. The perfidious folly of De Noville in seizing their countrymen at Fort Frontenac had been a prime cause of their hostility and at the request of the late governor the surviving captives 13 and all had been taken from the galleys gorgeously clad in French attire and sent back to Canada in the ship which carried Frontenac. Among them was a famous Cayuga war chief called Ur-au-ouai whose loss had infuriated the Iroquois. Frontenac gained his goodwill on the voyage and when they reached Quebec he lodged him in the château and treated him with such kindness that the chief became his devoted admirer and friend. As his influence was great among his people Frontenac hoped that he might use him with success to bring about an accommodation. He placed three of the captives at the disposal of the Cayuga who forthwith sent them to Onondaga with the message which the governor had dictated and which was to the following effect. The great Anuncio whom you all know has come back again. He does not blame you for what you have done for he looks upon you as foolish children and blames only the English who are the cause of your folly and have made you forget your obedience to a father who has always loved and never deceived you. He will permit me Ur-au-ouai to return to you as soon as you will come to ask for me not as you have spoken of late but like children speaking to a father. Frontenac hoped that they would send an embassy to reclaim their chief and thus give him an opportunity to use his personal influence over them. With the three released captives he sent an Iroquois convert named Kutnose with a wampum belt to announce his return. When the deputation arrived at Onondaga and made known their errand, the Iroquois magnates with their usual deliberation deferred answering till a general counsel the Confederacy should have time to assemble and meanwhile they sent messengers to ask the mayor of Albany and others of their Dutch and English friends to come to the meeting. They did not comply, merely sending the government interpreter with a few Mohawk Indians to represent their interests. On the other hand, the Jesuit Millet who had been captured a few months before adopted and made an Onida chief used every effort to second the designs of Frontenac. The authorities of Albany tried in vain to induce the Iroquois to place him in their hands. They understood their interests too well and held fast to the Jesuit. The Grand Council took place at Onondaga on the 22nd of January. 80 chiefs and satchims seated gravely on mats around the council fire smoked their pipes in silence for a while. Till at length an Onondaga orator rose and announced that Frontenac, the old annuncio, had returned with Uraoe and 12 more of their captive friends that he meant to rekindle the council fire at Fort Frontenac and that he invited them to meet him there. Ho, ho, ho! Returned the 80 senators from the bottom of their throats. It was the unfailing Iroquois response to a speech. Then, cut nose, the governor's messenger addressed the council. I advise you to meet Ununcio as he desires. Do so if you wish to live. He presented a wampum belt to confirm his words and the conclave again returned the same guttural ejaculation. Uraoe sends you this, continued cut nose, presenting another belt of wampum. By it he advises you to listen to Ununcio if you wish to live. When the messenger from Canada had ceased, the messenger from Albany, a Mohawk Indian, rose and repeated word for word a speech confided to him by the mayor of that town, urging the Iroquois to close their ears against the invitations of Ununcio. Next, rose one canhoute, a sachem of the Seneca's, charged with matters of grave import, for they involved no less than a revival of that scheme so perilous to the French of the union of the tribes of the Great Lakes in a triple alliance with the Iroquois and the English. These lake tribes, disgusted with the French who, under Danoneville, had left them to the mercy of the Iroquois, had been impelled both by their fears and their interest to make new advances to the Confederacy and had first addressed themselves to the Seneca's whom they had most caused to dread. They had given up some of the Iroquois prisoners in their hands and promised soon to give up the rest. A treaty had been made, and it was this event which the Seneca sachem now announced to the council. Having told the story to his assembled colleagues, he exhibited and explained the Wampum belts and other tokens brought by the envoys from the lakes who represented nine distinct tribes or bands from the region of Michelin Macanac. By these tokens, the nine tribes declared that they came to learn wisdom of the Iroquois and the English to wash off the war paint, throw down the tomahawk, smoke the pipe of peace, and unite with them as one body. Onancio is drunk. Such was the interpretation of the fourth Wampum belt, but we, the tribes of Michelin Macanac, wash our hands of all his actions. Neither we nor you must defile ourselves by listening to him. When the Seneca sachem had ended and when the ejaculations that echoed his words had ceased, the belts were hung up before all the assembly, then taken down again, and distributed among the sachems of the five Iroquois tribes, accepting one which was given to the messengers from Albany. Thus was concluded the triple alliance which to Canada meant no less than ruin. Brethren, said Anonandaga sachem, we must hold fast to our brother Queeter, Peter Schuyler, mayor of Albany, and look on Onancio as our enemy for he is a cheat. Then they invited the interpreter from Albany to address the council, which he did, advising them not to listen to the envoys from Canada. When he had ended, they spent some time in consultation among themselves, and at length agreed on the following message addressed to Corleire, or New York, and to Kinshin, the fish by which they meant New England, the authorities of which had sent them the image of a fish as a token of alliance. Brethren, our council fire burns at Albany. We will not go to meet Onancio at Fort Frontenac. We will hold fast to the old chain of peace with Corleire, and we will fight with Anoncio. Brethren, we are glad to hear from you that you are preparing to make war on Canada, but tell us no lies. Brethren Kinshin, we hear that you mean to send soldiers against the Indians to the eastward, but we advise you now that we are all united against the French to fall upon them at once. Strike at the root. When the trunk is cut down, all the branches fall with it. Courage, Corleire, Courage, Kinshin, go to Quebec in the spring. Take it, and you will have your feet on the necks of the French and all their friends. Then they consulted again, and agreed on the following answer to Araue and Frontenac. Araue, the whole council is glad to hear that you have come back. Anoncio, you have told us that you have come back again and brought with you 13 of our people who were carried prisoners to France. We are glad of it. You wish to speak with us at Kateraki, Fort Frontenac. Don't you know that your council fire there is put out? It is quenched in blood. You must first send home the prisoners. When our brother Araue is returned to us, then we will talk with you of peace. You must send him and the others home this very winter. We now let you know that we have made peace with the tribes of Mishinimakinac. You are not to think because we return you an answer that we have laid down the tomahawk. Our warriors will continue the war till you send our countrymen back to us. The messengers from Canada returned with this reply. Unsatisfactory as it was, such a quantity of wampum was sent with it as showed plainly the importance attached by the Yerequah to the matters in question. Encouraged by a recent success against the English and still possessed with an overweening confidence in his own influence over the Confederates, Frontenac resolved that Araue should send them another message. The chief, whose devotion to the count never wavered, accordingly dispatched four envoys with a load of wampum belts, expressing his astonishment that his countrymen had not seen fit to send a deputation of chiefs to receive him from the hands of Anuncio and calling upon them to do so without delay, less he should think that they had forgotten him. Along with the messengers, Frontenac ventured to send the Chevalier d'eau, a half-pay officer, with orders to observe the disposition of the Yerequah and impress them in private talk with a sense of the count's power of his goodwill to them and of the wisdom of coming to terms with him lest like an angry father he should be forced at last to use the rod. The Chevalier's reception was a warm one. They burned two of his attendants, forced him to run the gauntlet and, after a vigorous thrashing, sent him prisoner to Albany. The last failure was worse than the first. The count's name was great among the Yerequah, but he had trusted its power too far. The worst of news had come from Michelin Macanac. La Durante, the commander of the post, and Carrelle, the Jesuit, had sent a messenger to Montreal in the depth of winter to say that the tribes around them were on the point of revolt. Carrelle wrote that they threatened openly to throw themselves into the arms of the Yerequah and the English. That they declared that the protection of Anantio was an illusion and a snare. That they once mistook the French for warriors, but saw now that there were no match for the Yerequah, whom they had tamely allowed to butcher them at Montreal without even daring to defend themselves. That when the French invaded the Seneca's, they did nothing but cut down corn and break canoes, and since that time they had done nothing but beg peace for themselves, forgetful of their allies, whom they expected to bear the brunt of the war and then left to their fate. That they had surrendered through cowardice the prisoners they had caught by treachery, and this too, at a time when the Yerequah were burning French captives in all their towns. And finally that, as the French would not, or could not make peace for them, they would make peace for themselves. These, pursued Carrelle, are the reasons they give us to prove the necessity of their late embassy to the Seneca's. And by this one can see that our Indians are a great deal more clear-sighted than they are thought to be, and that it is hard to conceal from their penetration anything that can help or harm their interests. What is certain is that if the Yerequah are not stopped, they will not fail to come and make themselves masters here. Chalevoir thinks that Frantonaque was not displeased at this bitter arraignment of his predecessor's administration. At the same time his position was very embarrassing. He had no men to spare, but such was the necessity of saving Michel Amacanac and breaking off the treaty with the Seneca's that when spring opened, he sent Captain Louvigny with 143 Canadians and six Indians to reinforce the post and replace its commander, La Durante. Two other officers with an additional force were ordered to accompany him through the most dangerous part of the journey. With them went Nicolas Perrault bearing a message from the Count to his rebellious children of Michel Amacanac. The following was the pith of this characteristic document. I am astonished to learn that you have forgotten the protection that I always gave you. Do you think that I am no longer alive or that I have a mind to stand idle like those who have been here in my place? Or do you think that if eight or 10 hairs have been torn from my children's heads when I was absent, I cannot put 10 handfuls of hair in the place of everyone that was pulled out? You know that before I protected you, the ravenous Iroquois dog was biting everybody. I tamed him and tied him up, but when he no longer saw me, he behaved worse than ever. If he persists, he shall feel my power. The English have tried to win him with flatteries, but I will kill all who encourage him. The English have deceived and devoured their children, but I am a good father who loves you. I loved the Iroquois once because they obeyed me. When I knew that they had been treacherously captured and carried to France, I set them free. And when I restore them to their country, it will not be through fear but through pity, for I hate treachery. I am strong enough to kill the English, destroy the Iroquois and whip you if you fail in your duty to me. The Iroquois have killed and captured you in time of peace due to them as they have done to you, and due to the English as they would like to do to you, but hold fast to your true father who will never abandon you. Will you let the English brandy that has killed you in your wigwams lure you into the kettles of the Iroquois? Is not mine better, which has never killed you, but always made you strong? Charged with this hearty missive, Perot set out for Michelin Mackenac along with Louvigny and his men. On their way up the Ottawa, they met a large band of Iroquois hunters whom they routed with heavy loss. Nothing could have been more auspicious for Perot's errand. When towards Midsummer they reached their destination, they ranged their canoes in a triumphal procession placed in the foremost an Iroquois captured in the fight, forced him to dance and sing, hung out the fleur de l'île, shouted vive le roi, whooped, yelled and fired their guns. As they neared the village of the Ottawa's, all the naked population ran down to the shore, leaping, yelping and firing in return. Louvigny and his men passed on and landed at the neighboring village of the French settlers who drawn up in a battle array on the shore, added more yells and firing to the general uproar. Though amid this joyous fusillade of harmless gunpowder, they all kept their bullets ready for instant use, for they distrusted the savage multitude. The story of the late victory, however, confirmed as it was by an imposing display of scalps, produced an effect which averted the danger of an immediate outbreak. The fate of the Iroquois prisoner now became the point at issue. The French hoped that the Indians in their excitement could be induced to put him to death and thus break their late treaty with his countrymen. Besides the Ottawa's, there was at Michelin Mackenac, a village of Hurons under their crafty chief, the Rat. They had pretended to stand fast for the French who nevertheless believed them to be at the bottom of all the mischief. They now begged for the prisoner promising to burn him. On the faith of this pledge he was given to them, but they broke their word and kept him alive in order to curry favor with the Iroquois. The Ottawa's intensely jealous of the preference shown to the Hurons declared in their anger that the prisoner ought to be killed and eaten. This was precisely what the interests of the French demanded, but the Hurons still persisted in protecting him. Their Jesuit missionary now interposed and told them that unless they put the Iroquois into the kettle the French would take him from them. After much discussion this argument prevailed. They planted a stake, tied him to it and began to torture him, but as he did not show the usual fortitude of his countrymen they declared him unworthy to die the death of a warrior and accordingly shot him. Here was a point gained for the French but the danger was not passed. The Ottawa's could disavow the killing of the Iroquois and in fact, though there was a great division of opinion among them, they were preparing at this very time to send a secret embassy to the Seneca country to ratify the fatal treaty. The French commanders called a council of all the tribes. It met at the house of the Jesuits. Presence in abundance were distributed. The message of Frontenac was reinforced by persuasion and threats and the assembly was told that the five tribes of the Iroquois were like five nests of muskrats in a march, which the French would drain dry and then burn with all its inhabitants. Perrault took the disaffected chiefs aside and with his usual bold adroitness diverted them for the moment from their purpose. The projected embassy was stopped but any day might revive it. There was no safety for the French and the ground of Michelin Mackenac was hollow under their feet. Everything depended on the success of their arms. A few victories would confirm their wavering allies but the breath of another defeat would blow the fickle crew over to the enemy like a drift of dry leaves. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of France and England in North America Part 5. Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV by Francis Parkman, Jr. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11, 1690. The Three War Parties. While striving to reclaim his allies, Frontenac had not forgotten his enemies. It was of the last necessity to revive the dashed spirits of the Canadians and the troops and action prompt and bold was the only means of doing so. He resolved therefore to take the offensive not against the Uruguay who seemed invulnerable as ghosts but against the English and by striking a few sharp and rapid blows to teach both friends and foes that Onantio was still alive. The effect of his return had already begun to appear and the energy and fire of the undaunted veteran had shot new life into the dejected population. He formed three war parties of picked men, one at Montreal, one at Three Rivers and one at Quebec. The first to strike at Albany, the second at the border of settlements of New Hampshire and the third at those of Maine. That of Montreal was ready first. It consisted of 210 men of whom 96 were Indian converts, chiefly from the two mission villages of Sao Saint-Louis and the mountain of Montreal. They were Christian Iroquois whom the priests had persuaded to leave their homes and settle in Canada to the great indignation of their heathen countrymen and the great annoyance of the English colonists to whom they were a constant menace. When de Noville attacked the Seneca's they had joined him but of late they had shown reluctance to fight their heathen kinsmen with whom the French even suspected them of collusion. Against the English, however, they willingly took up the hatchet. The French of the party were for the most part Courroix-de-Bois. As the sea is the sailor's element so the forest was theirs. Their merits were hardyhood and skill in woodcraft. Their chief faults were in subordination and lawlessness. They had shared the general demoralization that followed the inroad of the Iroquois and under de Noville had proved mutinous and unmanageable. In the best times it was a very hard task to command them and one that needed not bravery alone but tact, address, and experience. Under a chief of such a stamp they were admirable bushfighters and such were those now chosen to lead them. Daye Boudementet and Lemoine de Saint-Helene the brave son of Charles Lemoine had the chief command supported by the brothers Lemoine d'Iberville and Lemoine de Bienville with Repentigne de Montesson, Lebert Duchenne, and others of the sturdy Canadian noblesse nerved by adventure and trained in Indian warfare. It was in the depth of winter when they began their march striding on snowshoes over the vast white field of the frozen St. Lawrence each with the hood of his blanket coat drawn over his head, a gun in his mitten hand, a knife, a hatchet, a tobacco pouch, and a bullet pouch at his belt, a pack on his shoulders and his inseparable pipe hung at his neck in a leather case. They dragged their blankets and provisions over the snow on Indian sludges. Crossing the forest to Chambley the advance four or five days up the frozen Richelieu and the frozen Lake Champlain and then stopped to hold a council. Frontenac had left the precise point of attack at the discretion of the leaders and thus far the men had been ignorant of their destination. The Indians demanded to know it. Montet and St. Helene replied that they were going to Albany. The Indians demurred. How long is it, asked one of them, since the French grew so bold. The commanders answered that to regain the honor of which their late misfortunes had robbed them the French would take Albany or die in the attempt. The Indians listened sullenly. The decision was postponed and the party moved forward again. When after eight days they reached the Hudson and found the place where two paths diverged, the one for Albany and the other for Schenectady, they all without farther words took the latter. Indeed, to attempt Albany would have been an act of desperation. The march was horrible. There was a partial thaw and they waited knee-deep through the half-melted snow and the mingled ice, mud and water of the gloomy swamps. So painful and so slow was their progress that it was nine days more before they reached a point two leagues from Schenectady. The weather had changed again and a cold gusty snowstorm pelted them. It was one of those days when the trees stand white as specters in the sheltered hollows of the forest and bear and gray on the windswept ridges. The men were half dead with cold, fatigue and hunger. It was four in the afternoon of the 8th of February. The scouts found an Indian hunt and in it were four Iroquois-scrois whom they captured. There was a fire in the wigwam and the shivering Canadians crowded about it, stamping their chilled feet and warming their benumpt hands over the blaze. The Christian chief of the Sault-Saint-Louis known as Le Grand Agnès or the Great Mohawk by the French and by the Dutch called Kirin, harangued his followers and exhorted them to wash out their wrongs in blood. Then they all advanced again and about dark reached the river Mohawk a little above the village. A Canadian named Gignac who had gone with nine Indians to reconnoiter now returned to say that he had been within sight of Schenectady and had seen nobody. Their purpose had been to postpone the attack till two o'clock in the morning but the situation was intolerable and the limit of human endurance was reached. They could not make fires and they must move on or perish. Guided by the frightened squaws they crossed the Mohawk on the ice, toiling through the drifts amid the whirling snow that swept down the valley of the darkened stream till about 11 o'clock they described through the storm the snow-be-plastered palisades of the devoted village. Such was their plight that some of them afterwards declared that it would all have surrendered if an enemy had appeared to summon them. Schenectady was the farthest outpost of the colony of New York. Westward lay the Mohawk forests and Orange or Albany was 15 miles or more towards the southeast. The village was all long in form and enclosed by a palisade which had two gates, one towards Albany and the other towards the Mohawks. There was a blockhouse near the eastern gate occupied by eight or nine Connecticut militiamen under Lieutenant Talmadge. There were also about 30 friendly Mohawks in the place on a visit. The inhabitants who were all Dutch were in a state of discord and confusion. The revolution in England had produced a revolution in New York. The demagogue Jacob Lesler had got possession of Fort William and was endeavoring to master the whole colony. Albany was in the hands of the anti-Lesler or conservative party represented by a convention of which Peter Schuyler was the chief. The Dutch of Schenectady for the most part favored Lesler whose emissaries had been busily at work among them but their chief magistrate John Sander Glenn, a man of courage and worth, stood fast for the Albany convention and in consequence the villagers had threatened to kill him. Talmadge and his Connecticut militia were under orders from Albany and therefore like Glenn they were under the popular ban. In vain the magistrate and the officer entreated the people to stand on their guard. They turned the advice to ridicule, laughed at the idea of danger, left both their gates wide open and placed there it is said two snow images as mock sentinels. A French account declares that the village contained 80 houses which is certainly an exaggeration. There had been some festivity during the evening but it was now over and the primitive villagers, fathers, mothers, children and infants lay buried in unconscious sleep. They were simple peasants and rude woodsmen but with human affections and capable of human woe. The French and Indians stood before the open gate with its blind and dumb mortar the mock sentinel of snow. Iberville went with a detachment to find the Albany gate and borrowed against the escape of fugitives but he missed it in the gloom and hastened back. The assailants were now formed into two bands, Saint-Hélène leading the one and Monte the other. They passed through the gate together in dead silence. One turned to the right and the other to the left and they filed around the village between the palisades and the houses till the two leaders met at the farther end. Thus the place was completely surrounded. The signal was then given. They all screeched the war-roop together burst in the doors with hatchets and fell to their work. Roused by the infernal din the villagers leaped from their beds. For some time it was but a momentary nightmare of fright and horror ended by the blow of the tomahawk. Others were less fortunate. Neither women nor children were spared. No pen can write and no tongue express, wrote Skyler, the cruelties that were committed. There was little resistance except at the blockhouse where Talmadge and his men made a stubborn fight but the doors were at length forced open, the defenders killed or taken and the building set on fire. Adam Brumann, one of the villagers saw his wife shot and his child brained against the doorpost but he fought so desperately that the assailants promised him his life. Orders had been given to spare Peter Tasmaker, the domineer or minister from whom it was thought that valuable information might be obtained but he was hacked to pieces and his house burned. Some more agile or more fortunate than the rest escaped at the eastern gate and fled through the storm to seek shelter at Albany or at houses along the way. 60 persons were killed outright of whom 38 were men and boys, 10 were women and 12 were children. The number captured appears to have been between 80 and 90. The 30 Mohawks in the town were treated with studied kindness by the victors who declared that they had no quarrel with them but only with the Dutch and English. The massacre and pillage continued two hours. Then the prisoners were secured, Sentinels posted and the men told to rest and refresh themselves. In the morning a small party crossed the river to the house of Glen which stood on a rising ground half a mile distance. It was loophold and palisaded and Glen had mustered his servants and tenants, closed his gates and prepared to defend himself. The French told him to fear nothing for they had orders not to hurt a chicken of his were upon after requiring them to lay down their arms he allowed them to enter. They urged him to go with them to the village and he complied. They on their part leaving one of their number as a hostage in the hands of his followers. Ibelville appeared at the gate with the great Mohawk and drawing his commission from the breast of his coat told Glen that he was specially charged to pay a debt which the French owed him. On several occasions he had saved the lives of French prisoners in the hands of the Mohawks and he with his family and above all his wife had shown them the greatest kindness. He was now led before the crowd of wretched prisoners and told that not only were his own life and property safe but that all his kindred should be spared. Glen stretched his privilege to the utmost until the French Indians disgusted at his multiplied demands for clemency observed that everybody seemed to be his relation. Some of the houses had already been burned. Fire was now set to the rest excepting one in which a French officer lay wounded and other belonging to Glen and three or four more which he begged the victors to spare. At noon Schenectady was in ashes. Then the French and Indians withdrew laden with booty. 30 or 40 captured horses dragged their sludges and a troop of 27 men and boys were driven prisoners into the forest. About 60 old men, women and children were left behind without further injury in order it is said to conciliate the Mohawks in the place who had joined with Glen in begging that they might be spared. Of the victors only two had been killed. At the outset of the attack Simon Skirmarhorn threw himself on a horse and galloped through the eastern gate. The French shot at and wounded him but he escaped, reached Albany at daybreak and gave the alarm. The soldiers and inhabitants were called to arms. Cannon were fired to rouse the country and a party of horsemen followed by some friendly Mohawks set out for Schenectady. The Mohawks had promised to carry the news to their three towns on the river above but when they reached the ruined village they were so frightened at the scene of Havoc that they would not go farther. Two days passed before the alarm reached the Mohawk towns. Then troops of warriors came down on snowshoes equipped with tomahawk and gun to chase the retiring French. 50 young men from Albany joined them and they followed the trail of the enemy who with the help of their horses made such speed over the ice of Lake Champlain that it seemed impossible to overtake them. They thought the pursuit abandoned and having killed and eaten most of their horses and being spent with fatigue they moved more slowly as they neared home when a band of Mohawks who had followed stanchly on their track fell upon a party of stragglers and killed or captured 15 or more almost within sight of Montreal. Three of these prisoners examined by Skyler declared that Fontenac was preparing for a grand attack on Albany in the spring. In the political confusion of the time the place was not in fighting condition and Skyler appealed for help to the authorities of Massachusetts. Dear neighbors and friends we must equate you that never poor people in the world was in a worse condition than we are at present no governor nor command no money to forward any expedition and scarce men enough to maintain the city. We have here plainly laid the case before you and doubt not but you will so much take it to heart and make all readiness in the spring to invade Canada by water. The Mohawks were of the same mind their elders came down to Albany to condole with their Dutch and English friends on the late disaster. We are come, said the orator with tears in our eyes to lament the murders committed at Schenectady by the perfidious French. Onancio comes to our country to speak of peace but war is at his heart. He has broken into our house at both ends once among the Seneca's and once here but we hope to be revenged. Brethren, our covenant with you is a silver chain that cannot rust or break. We are of the race of the bear and the bear does not yield so long as there is a drop of blood in his body. Let us all be bears. We will go together with an army to ruin the country of the French. Therefore send in all haste to New England. Let them be ready with ships and great guns to attack by water while we attack by land. Skyler did not trust his bad allies who however seem on this occasion to have meant what they said. He lost no time in sending commissioners to urge the several governments of New England to a combined attack on the French. New England needed no prompting to take up arms for she presently learned to her cost that though feeble and prostrate, Canada could sting. The war party which attacks Schenectady was as we have seen but one of three which Frontenac had sent against the English borders. The second aimed at New Hampshire left three rivers on the 28th of January commanded by François Ertel. It consisted of 24 Frenchmen, 20 Abinacches of the Sokoke Band and five Algonquans. After three months of excessive hardship in the vast and rugged wilderness that intervened they approached the little settlement of Salmon Falls on the stream which separates New Hampshire from Maine and here for a moment we leave them to observe the state of this unhappy frontier. It was 12 years and more since the great Indian outbreak called King Philip's War had carried havoc through all the borders of New England. After months of stubborn fighting the fire was quenched in Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut but in New Hampshire and Maine it continued to burn fiercely till the Treaty of Costco in 1678. The principal Indians of this region were the tribes known collectively as the Abinacches. The French had established relations with them through the missionaries and now seizing the opportunity they persuaded many of these distressed and exasperated savages to leave the neighborhood of the English, migrate to Canada and settle first at Sillerie near Quebec and then at the falls of the Chaudière. Here the two Jesuits Jacques and Vincent Bigot prime agents in their removal took them in charge and the missions of St. Francis became villages of Abinacchi Christians like the village of Iroquois Christians at So Saint-Louis. In both cases the immigrants were sheltered under the wing of Canada and they and their tomahawks were always at her service. The two Begos spared no pains to induce more of the Abinacches to join these mission colonies. They were in good measure successful though the great body of the tribes still clung to their ancient homes on the Sacco, the Kennebec and the Penebscott. There were 10 years of critical and dubious peace along the English border and then the war broke out again. The occasion of this new uprising is not very clear and it is hardly worthwhile to look for it. Between the harsh and reckless border on the one side and the fierce savage on the other, a single spark might at any moment set the frontier in a blaze. The English however believed firmly that their French rivals had a hand in the new outbreak and in fact the Abinacches told some of their English captives that Saint Castain, a French adventurer on the Penebscott gave every Indian who would go to the war a pound of gunpowder, two pounds of lead and a supply of tobacco. The trading house of Saint Castain which stood on ground claimed by England had lately been plundered by Sir Edmund Andross and some of the English had foretold that an Indian war would be the consequence but none of them seem at this time to have suspected that the governor of Canada and his Jesuit friends had any part in their woes. Yet there is proof that this was the case for De Norville himself wrote to the minister at Versailles that the successes of the Abinacches on this occasion were due to the good understanding which he had with them by means of the two brothers Bigot and other Jesuits. Whatever were the influences that kindled and maintained the war it spread dismay and havoc through the English settlements. Andross at first made light of it and complained of the authorities at Boston because in his absence they had sent troops to protect the settlers but he soon changed his mind and in the winter went himself to the scene of action with 700 men. Not an Indian did he find. They had all withdrawn into the depths of the frozen forest. Andross did what he could and left more than 500 men in garrison on the Kennebec and the Sacco at Casco Bay, Pemequid and various other exposed points. He then returned to Boston where surprising events awaited him. Early in April news came that the Prince of Orange had landed in England. There was great excitement. The people of the town rose against Andross whom they detested as the agent of the despotic policy of James II. They captured his two forts with their garrisons of regulars seized his frigate in the harbor, placed him and his chief adherents in custody, elected a council of safety and set at its head their former governor, Bradstreet, an old man of 87. The change was disastrous to the eastern frontier. Of the garrisons left for its protection the winter before, some were partially withdrawn by the new council while others at the first news of the revolution, mutinied, seized their officers and returned home. These garrisons were withdrawn or reduced, partly perhaps because the hated governor had established them, partly through distrust of his officers, some of whom were taken from the regulars and partly because the men were wanted at Boston. The order of withdrawal cannot be too strongly condemned. It was a part of the bungling inefficiency which marked the military management of the New England governments from the close of Philip's War to the peace of Utrecht. When spring opened, the Indians turned with redoubled fury against the defenceless frontier, seized the abandoned stockades and butchered the helpless settlers. Now occurred the memorable catastrophe at Cocheco or Dover. Two squaws came at evening and begged lodging in the palisaded house of Major Waldron. At night when all was still they opened the gates and led in their savage countrymen. Waldron was 80 years old. He leaped from his bed, seized his sword and drove back the assailants through two rooms but as he turned to snatch his pistols they stunned him by the blow of a hatchet, bound him in an armchair and placed him on a table where after torturing him they killed him with his own sword. The crowning event of the war was the capture of Pemequid, a stockade work mounted with seven or eight cannon. Andross had placed it in a garrison of 156 men under an officer devoted to him. Most of them had been withdrawn by the Council of Safety and the entire force of the defenders consisted of Lieutenant James Weems and 30 soldiers, nearly half of whom appeared to have been absent at the time of the attack. The Indian assailants were about 100 in number all Christian converts from mission villages. By a sudden rush they got possession of a number of houses behind the fort occupied only by women and children, the men being at their work. Some misconst themselves in the cellars and others behind a rock on the seashore once they kept up a close and galling fire. On the next day Weems surrendered under a promise of life and as the English say, of liberty to himself and all his followers. The 14 men who had survived the fire along with a number of women and children issued from the gate upon which some were butchered on the spot and the rest, accepting Weems and a few others were made prisoners. In other respects the behavior of the victors is said to have been creditable. They tortured nobody and their chiefs broke the rumbarels in the fort to prevent disorder. Father Turi, a priest of the seminary of Quebec was present at the attack and the assailants were a part of his Abonacchi flock. Religion was one of the impelling forces of the war. In the eyes of the Indian converts it was a crusade against the enemies of God. They made their vows to the virgin before the fight and the squads in their distant villages on the pen up scot told unceasing beat and offered unceasing prayers for victory. The war now ran like wildfire through the settlements of Maine and New Hampshire. Sixteen fortified houses with or without defenders are said to have fallen into the hands of the enemy and the extensive district then called the county of Cornwall was turned to desolation. Massachusetts and Plymouth sent hasty levies of raw men ill-armed and ill-officered to the scene of action. At Casco Bay they met a large body of Indians whom they routed after a desultory fight of six hours and then as the approaching winter seemed to promise a respite from attack most of them were withdrawn and disbanded. It was a false and fatal security. Through snow and ice and storm Ertel and his band were moving on their prey. On the night of the 27th of March they lay hidden in the forest that boarded the farms in clearings of salmon falls. Their scouts reconnoitred the place and found a fortified house with two stockade forts built as a refuge for the settlers in case of alarm. Towards daybreak Ertel dividing his followers into three parties made a sudden and simultaneous attack. The settlers unconscious of danger were in their beds. No watch was kept even in the so-called forts and when the French and Indians burst in there was no time for their few tenants to gather for defense. The surprise was complete and after a short struggle the assailants were successful at every point. They next turned upon the scattered farms of the neighborhood burned houses, barns, and cattle and lay the entire settlement in ashes. About 30 persons of both sexes and all ages were tomahawked or shot and 54 chiefly women and children were made prisoners. Two Indian scouts now brought word that a party of English was advancing to the scene of Havoc from Piscataqua or Portsmouth not many miles distant. Ertel called his men together and began his retreat. The pursuers, 140 in number overtook him about sunset at Wooster River where the swollen stream was crossed by a narrow bridge. Ertel and his followers made a stand on the farther bank, killed and wounded a number of the English as they attempted to cross, kept up a brisk fire on the rest, held them back in check till night and then continued their retreat. The prisoners or some of them were given to the Indians who tortured one or more of the men and killed and tormented children and infants with a cruelty not always equaled by their heathen countrymen. Ertel continued his retreat to one of the Abinaki villages on the Kennebec. Here he learned that a band of French and Indians had lately passed southward on their way to attack the English port at Casco Bay on the side of Portland, leaving at the village his eldest son who had been badly wounded at Wooster River, he set out to join them with 36 of his followers. The band in question was Fontenac's third war party. It consisted of 50 French and 60 Abinakis from the mission of St. Francis and it had left Quebec in January under a Canadian officer named Paul Neuf and his lieutenant, Kurt Demange. They advanced at their leisure, often stopping to hunt till in May they were joined on the Kennebec by a large body of Indian warriors. On the 25th, Paul Neuf encamped in the forest near the English forts with a forest which including Ertes's party, the Indians of the Kennebec and another band led by Saint Castain from the Penalpscott, amounted to between four and 500 men. Fort Loyal was a palisade work with eight cannon standing on rising ground by the shore of the bay at what is now the foot of India street in the city of Portland. Not far distant were four blockhouses and a village which they were designed to protect. These with the fort were occupied by about 100 men, chiefly settlers of the neighborhood under Captain Sylvannus Davis, a prominent trader. Around lay rough and broken fields stretching to the skirts of the forest half a mile distant. Some of Port Neuf's scouts met a straggling scotchman and could not resist the temptation of killing him. Their scalp, he also alarmed the garrison and thus the advantage of surprise was lost. Davis resolved to keep his men within their defenses and to stand on his guard. But there was little or no discipline in the yeoman garrison and 30 young volunteers under Lieutenant Thaddeus Clark sailed out to find the enemy. They were too successful, for as they approached the top of a hill near the woods they observed a number of cattle staring with a scared look at some object on the farther side of a fence. And rightly judging that those they sought were hidden there, they raised a cheer and ran to the spot. They were met by a fire so close and deadly that half their number were shot down. A crowd of Indians leaped the fence and rushed upon the survivors who ran for the fort. But only four, all of whom were wounded, succeeded in reaching it. The men in the blockhouses withdrew under cover of night to Fort Loyal where the whole force of the English was now gathered along with their frightened families. Paul Neuf determined to besiege the place in form and after burning the village and collecting tools from the abandoned blockhouses he opened his trenches in a deep gully within 50 yards of the fort where his men were completely protected. They worked so well that in three days they had warmed their way close to the palisade and covered as they were in their burrows they lost scarcely a man while their enemies suffered severely. They now summoned the fort to surrender. Davis asked for a delay of six days which was refused and in the morning the fight began again. For a time the fire was sharp and heavy. The English wasted much powder in vain efforts to dislodge the besiegers from their trenches till at length seeing a machine loaded with a tar barrel and other combustibles shoved against their palisades they asked for a parley. Up to this time Davis had supposed that his assailants were all Indians the French being probably dressed and painted like their bad allies. We demanded, he says, if there were any French among them and if they would give us quarter they answered that they were Frenchmen and that they would give us good quarter. Upon this we sent out to them again to know from whence they came and if they would give us good quarter for our men, women and children both wounded and sound and to demand that we should have liberty to march to the next English town and have a guard for our defense and safety. Then we would surrender and also that the governor of the French should hold up his hand and swear by the great and ever-living God that the several articles should be performed all which he did solemnly swear. The survivors of the garrison now filed through the gate and laid down their arms. They, with their women and children, were there upon abandoned to the Indians who murdered many of them and carried off the rest. When Davis protested against this breach of faith he was told that he and his countrymen were rebels against their lawful king James II. After spiking the cannon, burning the fort and destroying all the neighboring settlements the triumphant allies departed for their respected homes leaving the slain unburied where they had fallen. Davis, with three or four others more fortunate than their companions was kept by the French and carried to Canada. They were kind to me, he says, on my travels through the country. I arrived at Quebec the 14th of June where I was civilly treated by the gentry and soon carried to the fort before the governor, the Earl of Frotonac. Frotonac told him that the governor and people of New York were the cause of the war since they had stirred up the Iroquois against Canada and prompted them to torture French prisoners. Davis replied that New York and New England were distinct and separate governments each of which must answer for its own deeds and that New England would gladly have remained at peace with the French if they had not set on the Indians to attack her peaceful settlers. Frotonac admitted that the people of New England were not to be regarded in the same light with those who had stirred up the Indians against Canada but he added that they were all rebels to their king and that if they had been good subjects there would have been no war. I do believe, observes the captive Puritan, that there was a purpose design against the Protestant interest in New England as in other parts of the world. He told Frotonac of the pledge given by his conqueror and the violation of it. We were promised good quarter, he reports himself to have said, and a guard to conduct us to our English but now we are made captors and slaves in the hands of the heathen. I thought I had to do with Christians that would have been careful of their engagements and not to violate and break their oaths. Whereupon the governor shaked his head and, as I was told, was very angry with Bernif, Paul Neuf. Frotonac was pleased with his prisoner whom he calls Aebonum. He told him in broken English to take courage and promised him good treatment to which Davis replied that his chief concern was not for himself but for the captives in the hands of the Indians. Some of these were afterwards ransomed by the French and treated with much kindness as was also Davis himself to whom the count gave lodging in the chateau. The triumphant success of his three war parties produced on the Canadian people all the effect that Frotonac had expected. This effect was very apparent even before the last two victories had become known. You cannot believe, Monseigneur, wrote the governor, speaking of the capture of Schenectady, the joy that this slight success has caused and how much it contributes to raise the people from their dejection and terror. One untoward accident damped the general joy for a moment. A party of Iroquois Christians from the So Saint-Louis had made a raid against the English borders and were returning with prisoners. One evening as they were praying at their camp near Lake Champlain, they were discovered by a band of Algonquins and Abonakis who were out on a similar errand and who, mistaking them for enemies, set upon them and killed several of their number, among whom was Crinn, the great Mohawk, chief of the mission of the Sioux. This mishap was near causing a rupture between the best Indian allies of the colony but the difference was at length happily adjusted and the relatives of the slain propitiated by gifts. End of chapter 11.