For most of us, the history of Canada, especially that of New France (French Canada), is a chapter of world history that was covered so superficially, if at all, during our school years that it has been all but erased from our memories. Therefore, a brief review of the major individuals and events that influenced the early years of the new world may help to put into perspective the coming to Canada of our family's ancestors. Most of the material for this review is taken from an interesting history of Canada published by Macmillan in 1938, The Canadians, The Story of a People, by George M. Wrong, and adapted from the fine personal website at http://gapellet.brinkster.net/history.htm.
When the news of Christopher Columbus' early trip and discoveries in the new world in 1492 spread through the courts of Europe, England and France see the opportunity to claim for themselves some of the potential vast wealth that these new lands have to offer.
England is the first to respond to the challenge when, on May 2, 1497, with some help from Henry VII, John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), an Italian at Bristol, sails out on his tiny ship, the Mathew, and a crew of eighteen. He returns to Bristol on August 6th of the same year, having planted a huge cross and raised the flag of England on what is now Cape Breton. He sails away again the following May, this time with two ships. On his return he brings back stories of rugged shores, with plenty of fish in the sea, and of furs from wild animals on land.
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Jacques Cartier
France's earliest thrust to claim some of the new world for itself is in the Spring of 1534, when Francis I sends a French sailor, Jacques Cartier, from St-Malo in Brittany on April 20, with sixty-one men. Arriving in less than three weeks to the Baie des Chaleurs off the Gaspé peninsula, Cartier disembarks and plants a 30 foot wooden cross to which he has attached a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis and on which he has carved the words Vive le Roy de France (Long Live the King of France). He does not linger long in the new land, leaving quickly for France, bringing back with him two young Indian braves, sons of the local chief.
The following year, on May 19,1535, Cartier leaves France with three ships, the Grande Hermine, the Petite Hermine, and the tiny Émérillon. He leaves with 110 men and the two Indian braves he had brought to France the previous year.
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Sketch of the Grande Hermine as it was reconstructed for the 1967 World Expo in Montréal
Cartier's mission is to spend the winter in the new land. He arrives at the mouth of the St-Lawrence River in July, and begins the journey up the great river in search of new routes to China and India. When he arrives at the Indian village of Stadacona, built on the high promontory of what is now Québec City, Cartier is warned by the local Indian chief of the perils that await him farther up the river. Cartier decides to proceed on the Petite Hermine, leaving the other two ships at Stadacona. Toward the end of September, Cartier nears the important Indian trading center at Hochelaga, now Montréal, and the Lachine Rapids that prevent any farther advance along the St-Lawrence. Cartier and his party go ashore at Hochelaga, visit with the local Indian tribe, exchanging trinkets for safe passage in the area and gaining information about the land beyond the Rapids. By mid-October Cartier is back at Stadacona to prepare for the winter stay. The winter proves disastrous for the French; many die of scurvy and are buried in the drifted snow. In the Spring of 1536, Cartier leaves for France with the Grande Hermine and the Émérillon, abandoning the Petite Hermine at Stadacona because so many of his sailors have been lost during the bitter winter.
Québec City - Lévis - Beauport Area of Québec, Canada,
Today
Cartier makes a third trip to the new world in 1541, with the hope of establishing a permanent French colony. He returns to the area of Stadacona and establishes a settlement, Charlesbourg Royal. The attempt at colonization at Charlesbourg is a failure due to the discord among the settlers, many of whom are misfits, and to the disagreements between Cartier and the Lord of Roberval, who had been named to head the settlement by the King. Cartier returns to France the same year, and the settlement is finally abandoned the following year.
No other serious attempt at colonization is made by France in the 16th century, although fishing and fur trading expeditions continue.
Samuel de Champlain is born Samuel Champlain near La Rochelle and spends his
early years in the army. After the death of Philip II of Spain and peace between
Spain and France, Champlain finds employment on a French ship in the service of
Spain. In 1599, he sails to the Spanish colonies, visits Mexico City, makes his
way to the Pacific Ocean, all the time keeping copious notes and plotting
numerous charts.
In 1601, Champlain returns to France where he seeks an/d receives an audience
with the king, Henry IV. Champlain describes to the king the greatness and the
wealth that he has seen in the Spanish colonies. Henry IV is so impressed that
he keeps Champlain at court as the royal geographer, gives him a pension, and
ennobles him. It is then that Champlain adds the de to his name, a sign of
nobility, and becomes Samuel de Champlain.
In 1603, Champlain is sent by Henry IV to chart the territories that France
claims in the northern part of the new world. Champlain executes his mandate
faithfully, bringing back to the court and to the commercial sponsors detailed
charts of the territories from the mouth of the St-Lawrence River to Hochelaga
(Montréal).
The following year, in March of 1604, Champlain leaves Le Havre with two ships and
120 workmen to establish a permanent colony for France. The expedition is
sponsored financially by Henry IV and the Sieur de Monts, the governor of Pons
in the Saintonge region of France. The ships make their way to the coast of Nova
Scotia where Champlain begins to look for the best site on which to establish
the settlement. The convoy finally enters the Bay of Fundy where Champlain
finds a spacious and landlocked harbor he calls Port Royal. In June, at the end
of the bay, at the mouth of the St-Croix River, Champlain founds the colony on a
small island that provides security from any sudden attack. The colony endures
until it is destroyed in May 1613, by Samuel Argall who sails up the eastern
coast from the English Protestant colony at Jamestown, Virginia
seeking out French Catholic settlements. Argall captures some settlers and sails
away with them after destroying Port Royal. Other settlers scatter into the
woods. They will be the ancestors of later Acadians.
Earlier, in the Spring of 1608, the Sieur de Monts sends out three ships from
France to the new world. One is destined to revitalize the then thriving colony
at St-Croix in Port Royal, while the other two, under the command of Champlain,
head up the St-Lawrence River. On July 2, 1608, a historic date in the evolution
of French Canada, Champlain lands under the towering cliffs of what is now Québec City. It is here,
in the shadow of the cliff, Cap-aux-Diamants, that he builds the habitation, a
permanent settlement. Champlain and his men build three buildings, each of two
stories in height, with a deck around the second story. Ditches are dug around
these buildings, fifteen feet wide and six feet deep (see illustration).Samuel de Champlain
The Founding of Québec City
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Drawing, apparently done by Chanplain himself, of the
"Abitation de Quebecq", built in 1608 at the foot of the Cap-aux-Diamants
The ships that brought the founding colonists sails away to France on
September 18, leaving Champlain and a company of twenty-eight men, fifteen of
whom die of scurvy during the winter. The little settlement struggles through
its first winter with the help of the friendly local Indian tribes. The
following Spring, help arrives from France with added supplies and the colony's
future becomes more secure. The first settler to build his own independent house
at Québec is
Louis Hébert, pharmacist, who, in 1617, builds a house on the
cliffs overlooking the original habitation and begins to cultivate the land.
Champlain loses one of his major financial supporters when Henry IV is
assassinated by a religious fanatic in 1610. This event, coupled with the fall
of the Sieur de Monts from favor in the royal court, places a strain on
Champlain's ability to keep the budding colony at Québec growing. From 1610,
until the ascent to power of Cardinal Richelieu and the formation of the Company
of New France in 1627, Champlain makes numerous trips across the Atlantic to
seek financial support for Québec. It is also during this period, in 1611, that
Champlain establishes a trading post on the frontier site of the Indian village
of Hochelaga, now Montréal.
Many missionaries come to the new world in those early days. Both Jesuit and
Recollet missionaries come to the territories claimed by France with the
"mission" of converting the "savages" to Christianity. Missions are scattered
from the shores of the St-Lawrence River to those of the Great Lakes.
The Company owns all the land and has the right to grant estates to "Seigneurs" under the feudal laws of France. Many such grants are made,
some to religious orders of priests and nuns, mostly to lay Seigneurs
who, it is hoped, will settle on their estates and gather about them a community
under feudal rule. One such grant is made to Robert Giffard, a pharmacist from
the Perche region. Giffard originally comes to Québec in 1621 on his own,
returning to France in 1628. Later that year, after getting married, he signs on
with the Company as Navy Surgeon and begins a voyage back to Québec. The
English, however, seize the ships, capture the passengers and bring them to
England. After the 1632 Treaty of St-Germain-en-Laye, France formalizes its
peace with England which guarantees France's rights in New France, and all
prisoners are exchanged. Giffard returns to France. In 1634, Giffard is named Seigneur of Beauport, just northeast of Québec City on the St-Lawrence
River, across from the Ile d'Orléans. Giffard recruits settlers from his own
French Province of Perche. Among his associates and principal recruiters are the
Juchereau brothers, Noël, Jean, and Pierre, from the town of Tourouvre in
Perche. They are very active in their work for the Seigneur Giffard. Up to
eighty families are recruited for New France from the Tourouvre area, among them the
families of Gagnon, Giguère, Tremblay, Cloutier, and
Pelletier.
In the Spring of 1628, La Compagnie des Cent-Associés sends out its first
group of two hundred settlers from Dieppe. Over a dozen ships make the voyage,
with Giffard as Navy Surgeon, as noted previously. Two English sailors, David
and Lewis Kirke, with three armed ships and two hundred men, are poised at the
mouth of the St-Lawrence River searching for French vessels, meet the French
convoy between Gaspé and Tadoussac. After a fierce battle, won by the Kirkes,
the French ships and their contents become spoils of war. Prisoners are returned
to England. The Kirkes continue to raid French fishing and trading ships during
the summer, depriving Champlain at Québec City of much needed supplies for the
ensuing winter.
For more details see also La
Compagnie des Cents Associés, part of the Virtual Museum of New
France, a wonderful site developped by Canadian Museum of Civilization
Corporation (CMCC), a Crown Corporation established by the Museums Act. No supplies reach Québec the following winter due to the persistent raids by
the Kirke brothers. Finally, in July 1629, the Kirkes land at Québec with a
hundred and fifty men. The English capture the capital of New France on July
20th. They drive out the settlers and the missionaries, burn the habitation, and
build a fort on the cliffs of the Cap-aux-Diamants overlooking the St-Lawrence
River. Champlain is carried off as a prisoner of war and lands in Plymouth,
England on October 24, 1629. It is then that learns that England and France had
signed a peace accord on April 24, 1629, before the capture of Québec, a fact
the Kirkes were well aware of at the time of their attack. Champlain crosses
over to France and convinces both Richelieu and the King that France has lost a
vast and rich empire. France demands from England the return of New France and
Acadia, a demand that is finally acknowledged by the Treaty of
St-Germain-en-Laye in 1632. Champlain returns to Québec City on May 23, 1633, as
Governor of New France. With him come two hundred new colonists recruited by the
reactivated Company of New France, Jesuit missionaries, and soldiers to defend
the renewed French colony. Champlain himself never returns to France, dying at
Québec on Christmas Day, 1635. He is replaced as Governor of New France by the
Sieur de Montmagny who arrives at Québec on June 6, 1636.
A Deadly Blow
The Company of New France - La Compagnie des Cent-Associés
Cardinal Richelieu begins his rise to power in 1616. Politics at home in
France keep him from looking across the Atlantic to France's colonies until much
later. Finally, in 1627, Richelieu organizes La Compagnie des
Cent-Associés, the Company of New France, with one hundred associates or
partners, made up mainly of trade leaders. As organized, the Company is to own
and exploit the vast regions of New France. It is to have perpetual monopoly of
the fur trade and monopoly of all other trades for fifteen years. Two or three
hundred settlers are to be sent yearly from France to the new colony. The
Company is to support each new colonist for three years in return for his labor,
and each settlement is to have three priests.
The First Fall of Québec City
The Western Frontiers - The Spread of Catholicism and the Fur Trade
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Jesuit missionaries Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel
Lalemant being tortured and martyred by the Iroquois during the systematic
destruction of Huronia in 1648-1649. From "Historiae Canadensis", by François du Creux, Paris, 1664. Forgetting for the moment the desire for empire and land, the other
motivating force for opening up the frontiers of the new world is the lure of
profits from the fur trade and from providing supplies and services to the
French colonial regime and its military. In particular, trading furs offers the
opportunity for enterprising individuals to obtain wealth not otherwise
available from the trades or in farming. The quest for this wealth and perhaps
the quest for the greater individual freedom to be enjoyed on the frontiers lead
to the establishment of a vast empire on the "western frontiers" of New France.
Voyageurs and fur traders from the St Lawrence settlements, principally Québec
City, Trois Rivières and Montréal, first open up much of the continent by
following the northern water routes through much of Québec, Ontario and into the
northern great lakes of Superior, Huron and Michigan. By the late 1600's they
establish a trading network which extended westward to the prairies of Canada
and the United States, some say as far as the Rocky Mountains, and northward to
James Bay and to Hudson's Bay.
Following military campaigns against the Iroquois
in 166/67 by de Tracy and his regular French troops, principally the Carignan
Salières regiment, a period of peace ensues between the French and the Iroquois
nation. As a result, the southern trade route along the St Lawrence River, Lake
Ontario and Lake Erie, hitherto too dangerous, now becomes available to the
French voyageurs and traders. By the mid 1700's primary trade routes are firmly
established linking the French settlements on the St Lawrence River to a string
of forts and trading posts located on the western plains, the northern lakes and
south along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. Troops from
the colonial regulars, les troupes de la marine, militia and at various
times French regulars are needed to protect the forts and these trade routes.
The principal forts and trading posts along the east west route are at Kingston,
Ontario (Fort Frontenac), Fort Niagara, Pontchartrain (present day Detroit,
Michigan and Windsor, Ontario). It is envisioned at one time that Detroit, which
is officially founded in 1701, would form the hub for French commerce and
influence in the west. From here, there was ready access for traders and the
military to the principal eastern routes, the northern lakes, the western plains
and the southern territories extending to Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico.
French areas of influence, circa 1750, encompass all of known North America east
of the Rocky Mountains excluding only the British settlements on the Atlantic
coast and inland in the area of the Hudson River and Spanish presence in
Florida.
The commercial history of New France is inextricably linked to the
western frontiers. Similarly much of its military history is written in "la
petite guerre" of countless skirmishes along its trade routes during the
extended French and Indian Wars and the Seven Years War which result in the fall
of New France. The frontier legacy of the voyagers, fur traders, missionaries,
soldiers and latterly farmers and bourgeoisie exists to this day in the person
of the many descendants of these early French Americans, in the pockets of the
French language, and in the names of places, rivers, lakes, etc.
Throughout most of New France's history, France and England are at war. This
is the case once again in 1689, when Protestant William III ascends to the
throne of England. At that time the Governor of New France is Louis de Buade,
Comte de Frontenac, an able governor and soldier, who has previously served as
governor from 1672 to 1682. He had been recalled to France by the King because
of open and violent quarrels with the then Intendant, Duchesneau and replaced as
governor in 1682 by a blustering weakling, Lefebvre de la Barre, who in turn is
recalled and replaced in 1685 by the Marquis de Denonville.
Denonville proves ineffective, unable to vanquish or achieve peace with the
Iroquois and unable to take any of the land in the New England area claimed by
France. Now, in 1689, with war one again declared, Louis XIV of France returns
the old warrior Frontenac to New France with orders to seize New York City, then
Boston, thereby driving the English out of America. Arriving too late in 1689 to
mount an offensive against New York City, Frontenac does however successfully
raid Schenectady in upper New York State, and Salmon Falls, near Portsmouth, New
Hampshire.
Not to be outdone, the English begin to mount a counteroffensive designed to
drive the French out of the New World. Sir William Phips, an English colonist
from Boston, on orders from the Massachusetts General Court, sets out in the
Spring of 1690 to capture Québec City. He sails up the Bay of Fundy and forces
Port Royal to surrender without firing a shot. He then plunders the conquered
fort and sets fire to the church before sailing back to Boston with his
impressive booty. He then recruits more men for the trip back up to Québec. As
he sails up the St-Lawrence River toward Québec, Phips sends small raiding
parties ashore to terrorize and plunder. One such raiding party lands at
Rivière-Ouelle, where it is successfully repulsed by the local settlers under
the leadership of the local priest.
On October 16, 1690, Phips anchors off Québec City with a fleet of
thirty-four ships and over two thousand men. He tries to send some of his troops
ashore at Beauport but they are driven back. Phips then sends an envoy to
Frontenac demanding his immediate surrender. Frontenac responds that his rank is
above answering to a lowly envoy, and sends him away with the phrase that is
committed to every French Canadian schoolboy's memory: "Je n'ai point de
réponse à faire à votre général que par la bouche de mes canons...", "My
answer to your general will be given by the mouths of my cannons...".
After a week of battle by sea and by land, Phips makes an exchange of
prisoners and sails away to Boston. On the return voyage, Phips encounters
several storms and he loses four ships. Peace is signed between the two warring
countries in 1697, and all captured territories are returned.
A Second Assault on Québec City
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Medal struck in 1690 commemorating Frontenac's victory over Phips at
Québec.
The inscription (in Latin) on the face, where one sees Louis XIV in
profile, reads:
"Louis, the great Christian king"
On the reverse, where
one sees an allegorical figure trampling the British flag:
"France victorious
in the New World" and "Québec, liberated in 1690 "
Immigration from Old France to New France
Overall, France under the Old Régime did not supply a great number of emigrants to its colonies across the Atlantic. In fact, just 15,000 Frenchmen and Frenchwomen sailed for Canada in the seventeenth century, and two-thirds of them stayed in the colony for a short period and either returned to France or died in Canada without getting married. This was a very low number: the British Isles, with a population just over one-third of France’s, sent almost 380,000 immigrants to the New World over the same period.
The French Policy
toward Native Peoples Differed from England's
In fact, France was at the time showing various symptoms of social discontent that should have justified a larger number of refugees fleeing to Canada, whose abundance of resources contrasted with the famine and unemployment among the poorest classes. Although France wasn’t really overpopulated, conditions there were favorable to emigration; these conditions, had they coincided with a real attraction of Canada, would have encouraged the departure of large contingents of settlers for the New World. But few French people migrated, as Canada, a distant, wild, and dangerous country, had a poor reputation. On top of this, the authorities believed that the French population was not as growing quickly as it should be – and, in fact, that it was shrinking due to wars, plagues, and general misery. In response to Intendant Talon, who had asked him to find the means to form a "grand and powerful state" in Canada, which would involve a massive wave of immigrants, Colbert said, in a sentence that was to mark the future of the country, "It would not be prudent [of the king] to depopulate his kingdom as he would have to do to populate Canada." And yet, even had departures been multiplied tenfold, the effects of emigration on the most populous country in Europe would have been imperceptible – and the fate of North America would probably have been quite different.
In any case, the result of this small founding population was that the French-Canadian stock grew from a relatively small number of people, about 10,000 immigrants. If we consider the male immigrants, from whom family names were transmitted through the generations, the number is reduced to about 4,500 – the total of immigrants who had at least one son who married.
War is declared in 1702, and once again French and English colonists raid each others territories. In 1710, English troops capture Port Royal for the second time. Acadia is renamed Nova Scotia and Port Royal to Annapolis, for the then Queen Anne of England. Peace returns briefly in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, wherein France cedes Acadia and Newfoundland to England. Despite the peace in Europe, the two countries' colonists continue to harass each other with the help of the Indian tribes: the Iroquois allied with the English, and most of the other tribes with the French.
France and England are formally at war again in 1744. In 1745, a force of three thousand men and one hundred ships sets sail from Boston, under the leadership of William Pepperell, to attack and subsequently capture Louisbourg, the French fortress on Cape Breton. Peace is restored with the Treaty of Aix-laChapelle in 1748, and Louisbourg is returned to the French. As a result, the English are quick to build a fortress of their own in the same area at Halifax.
Despite the 1748 peace accord, England and France each plot and prepare for the other's defeat in North America. War is finally declared in 1756, although the colonists from both sides have been at each other for over a year.
It is also in 1755 that the English scatter nearly six thousand Acadians to destinations so widely dispersed as to make their return to Acadia impossible. Some are sent to England, some to the French West Indies, but most to the other English colonies along the eastern coast of North America. Many make their way to the French settlements in Louisiana to become the ancestors of today's Cajuns. The sad plight of the Acadians is depicted poignantly in Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline.
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From the Public Archives of Canada: "Exile of the Acadians from Grand Pré". In 1755, over 6,000 Acadians were exiled by the English. Among them was Longfellow's Evangeline.
Once war officially declared, French troops under the Marquis de Montcalm
earn early victories in New York State at Oswego and Lake George in 1757 and
1758. Later in 1758 William Pitt, the English secretary for war, sends two
generals , Amherst and Wolfe, to capture Louisbourg and Québec City.
The siege of Louisbourg begins on June 2, 1758, and the fortress surrenders
on July 27. Amherst and Wolfe disagree on when best to attack Québec City. Wolfe
wants to follow the victory at Louisbourg with a quick attack on Québec. The
older Amherst feels that a prolonged siege at Québec could leave the English
troops stranded in a frozen St-Lawrence River. Wolfe returns to England while
Amherst remains in America as commander-in-chief.
The next year, in May and June 1759, Wolfe returns to the New World, sailing
up the St-Lawrence River toward Québec City with an armada of two hundred and
fifty ships, forty-nine of which are men-of-war. He has with him nearly thirty
thousand men, a third of them from the regular army, the rest marines and
sailors.
The two opponents at Québec in 1759:
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The Marquis de Montcalm, France |
Major-General James Wolfe, England |
On June 26, Wolfe makes camp on the Ile d'Orléans, five miles across from Québec City. He also establishes a battery at Lévis, directly across the River from the city, and a third camp near the Montmorency River. Throughout the summer, Montcalm is able to repulse Wolfe's attacks from his high position on the cliffs of Québec City. The engraving below provides a view of the eastern side of the city as seen across the St. Lawrence River. The British were able to hold this bank of the river (Point Levis) to the east of the city and to dominate the river itself, but through August 1759 the high bluff, with the public buildings and citadel atop it, protected the French from attack.
Finally, in September, Wolfe is made aware of a path
that leads from the River to an area behind the city heights at l'Anse-au-Foulon. Quietly, during the night of September 12-13, Wolfe and two
thousand men climb the path to the Plains of Abraham behind the fortress at
Québec.
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The disposition of the French and English troops on the
Plains of Abraham, September 13, 1759.
Foulon, where Wolfe and his men
climbed the secret path is at the lower left of the
illustration.
The ensuing battle on the morning of September 13 lasts less than thirty
minutes. Both generals are mortally wounded, Wolfe dies on the field of battle,
Montcalm a few hours later. Québec City formally surrenders on September 18,
1759.
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The Marquis de Montcalm, France |
Major-General James Wolfe, England |
Artists' renditions of the deaths of the generals at
Québec City, September 13, 1759
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The surrender of New France to the English, Montréal, 1760
