Jeanne Dugas of Acadia (15 page)

Chapter 28

L
ife at La Petite Rochelle was a welcome respite for Jeanne. She soon responded to her sister-in-law Anne's attentions, good food and rest. Jeanne had her family and they had a home. As soon as they were settled, she asked Pierre to bring her special bundle from the ship.

Joseph's family too had settled into their own house. Michel Benoist went to stay with them until Joseph's return and then decided to stay on. Even Marie Braud looked better, with a bit of colour in her cheeks. Little Nono was slowly turning into a normal child. But if, heaven forbid, he took his cues from Pierrot he would get to be a handful too! Jeanne was grateful, but there was always a strong current of worry and fear. How long would they be safe in this new refuge?

The two families gratefully slipped into the rhythm of village life. It was good for the children to be able to run and play in the fields with their cousins. They interacted with other refugee families and the Mi'kmaw families who came regularly to the Fort.

One day Anne asked Jeanne to accompany her to a neighbour's house where an Acadian woman, Marie Landry, was due to give birth. When they arrived, Anne quickly realized that it was a breach birth and that the woman's life was in danger. She asked the husband to try to get Maman Mimikej, the Mi'kmaw midwife, to come and help. Luckily, she was at the fort with her husband and she arrived quickly.

She came in and rushed to Marie's side, speaking a little French. “You'll be all right. All right now, Maman,” she said. She brought with her an aura of calmness and serenity to replace the fear and anxiety that had filled the little room. She very gently and patiently manipulated and massaged the frightened woman and the baby, while Anne and Jeanne each held one of the mother's hands, until the baby entered the world head first as he was meant to. Tears were running down Jeanne's cheeks.

“Why do you cry?” asked Maman Mimikej.

“Ah, it's because my first child was brought into the world by a wonderful woman like you,” she said. “In Port Toulouse – Potlotok.”

“You have feeling for people who suffer. You would make a good sage-femme.
I will teach you.”

“Yes, please. Please.” Jeanne was grateful. This was a way she could help. It was the beginning of a close friendship between her and Maman Mimikej.

Whenever a refugee woman asked for the midwife, Jeanne went along to assist. Soon Jeanne found that if Maman Mimikej did not arrive in time, she was able to cope on her own. After her first delivery, when Maman arrived late and saw the baby and the ecstatic look on Jeanne's face, she laughed happily.

“You are ready now,” she said.

Jeanne already knew something about the use of herbs and plants as medicine, but Maman Mimikej taught her how to use many more, such as sweet grass, white spruce, alder, cherry tree, flagroot and golden thread. Eventually, Jeanne dared to ask her if she knew any Mi'kmaq from the Potlotok area, such as Jean Sauvage and his nephew Martin.

Maman Mimikej said that she did know Jean Sauvage and his nephew, who sometimes came to the area as scouts. “I will tell them that you asked about them,” she said.

—

In the spring of 1759, Jeanne and Pierre, like most of the other refugees, planted a small kitchen garden beside their house. The children helped, if you could consider Pierrot and Nono's running around as help, and Jeanne thought that it was among their happiest times since they had first left Port Toulouse in 1756. In June they celebrated a marriage.

A romance had blossomed between Marie Braud and Michel Benoist. This must explain why Marie looked less peaked and timid, thought Jeanne. Jeanne was so happy for her she cried when she heard the news. And how wonderful for Michel, who looked like a new man. The Dugas families decided to make it the most wonderful wedding celebration they could manage in the circumstances. Marie Braud insisted she did not want a fuss made, but Jeanne, Anne and Marguerite told her she was going to have as much fuss as they could muster.

When Marie told Jeanne that she did not have a decent dress to get married in, Jeanne thought of the blue silk gown in her bundle of treasures. She would never wear it again. When she brought it out and showed it to her sisters-in-law and Marie, they gasped. Marie Braud was overwhelmed. Jeanne insisted she try it on. There was no hoop underskirt, but that would have been too much under the circumstances anyway.

On a beautiful day in June, with Abbé Manach officiating, Marie Braud and Michel Benoist were joined in matrimony in a field near Jeanne's house. The shy bride was beautiful, the groom overwhelmed. The families feasted on meagre rations and made music and danced as if they were back in the Acadia of their youth. For a few brief stolen hours their fears and worries were pushed aside. The celebration lasted until darkness fell. It was as if no one wanted to go back to the real world.

Chapter 29

T
he Dugas brothers and Pierre Bois were now officially members of Boishébert's militia. Charles and Joseph were majors, Abraham was a captain and Pierre was a lieutenant.

In the spring of 1759 Boishébert and a small force of Acadian volunteers sailed for Québec to help in its defence. Boishébert's force fought in the battle of the Plains of Abraham in which Québec was defeated. He was back at Ristigouche Poste in September, with orders from the French commandant to return in the spring with a larger force of Acadian volunteers for the defence of Montréal. But Boishébert realized that the defeat of Québec had sapped the spirit of the Acadian resistance.

Only two French controlled settlements remained: Montréal and La Petite Rochelle.

The Dugas brothers and Pierre Bois had not accompanied Boishébert to Québec, but they and their fellow privateers had kept up their activities. In the summer they captured thirty British prisoners during their raids and held them at the poste. Du Calvet, the storekeeper, wanted to return them to the British at Halifax, a step strongly opposed by the leaders of the Acadian resistance and by the Mi'kmaq, who knew very well that this would mean revealing the location of La Petite Rochelle to the British. But du Calvet insisted and eventually had his way.

Jeanne had never seen Joseph so angry. “This is madness. What is du Calvet trying to do to us?” he cried. Joseph had resumed his habit of confiding in Jeanne and she was grateful. It was much less worrying to know what was happening and to have some idea of the possible consequences. But Joseph had no encouraging or comforting words to offer her.

The fall of Québec was ominous for the refugees. They understood very well that there was very little chance that Montréal could successfully resist the British. And, even if the refugees managed to remain where they were, how long could they survive their vagabond life without any support from the French? Even the hardened leaders of the Acadian resistance acknowledged that their situation was hopeless. Many of the refugees in the camps scattered along the North Shore were already facing starvation, and the meagre food supplies at La Petite Rochelle were drying up. Privateering could not go on indefinitely.

Chapter 30

I
n the fall of 1759, the British became preoccupied with the fate of the ragtag but determined Acadian resisters in the Miramichi and on the Baie des Chaleurs. In October, General Edward Whitmore, the British governor at Louisbourg, issued a proclamation offering the Acadian refugees an olive branch. He advised them that if they surrendered peaceably, he was “ordered by His Majesty to assure you that you will continue in the enjoyment of all your goods, the freedom of your property, with the full exercise of your religion.” Should they refuse the offer, they would face “a war without mercy: no quarter, no prisoners, no ransom.”

Although the refugees tended to mistrust the offer, many felt they had no choice if they were to survive. The three missionaries in the area, the Abbés Maillard, Manach and Charles Germain, encouraged them to submit. Abbé Maillard was also trying to arrange a truce with the British for the Mi'kmaq.

In November, several delegations of Acadians went to surrender to the British at Fort Cumberland, taken there by resistance leaders such as Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil and his brother Alexandre, and by Jean Basque and Simon Martin. Several hundred Acadians living in camps along the north shore of the Baie des Chaleurs also surrendered at Fort Cumberland, and at the British fort at the mouth of the rivière Saint-Jean.

A number of Acadian leaders remained opposed to accepting the offer from the British, among them Joseph Dugas, his brothers and Joseph Leblanc dit Le Maigre. Boishébert, still at his base at La Petite Rochelle, was furious when he heard of the surrenders. Boishébert, Joseph Dugas and Bourdon, the commandant at the Ristigouche Poste, all wrote angry letters of protest to Abbé Manach, questioning his patriotism. The Abbé at first argued that the refugees should accommodate themselves to the situation in which they found themselves, but later he too would have doubts about the word of the British.

Whether or not General Whitmore had acted in good faith, Charles Lawrence and his council made the decision that the Acadians who surrendered would be deported to England. The deportations began in late winter and the news soon reached the remaining refugees on the North Shore. The Acadian leaders vowed to continue their resistance and made their way to La Petite Rochelle to join Boishébert.

Chapter 31

T
he winter of 1759-1760 at La Petite Rochelle held feelings of dread and worry and helplessness Jeanne knew so well. It seemed to her a repeat of their winter in Grand-Pré waiting for the first fall of Louisbourg in 1745, of their last winter in Port Toulouse after the deportation of 1755, and of the two winters they spent in hiding, in fear of the second fall of Louisbourg in 1758. Once again, they were waiting to see what news spring would bring. Her respite in La Petite Rochelle had been brief.

Early in the spring, Pierre du Calvet, the fort's storekeeper, quietly boarded a ship bound for Montréal. He commented to one of the militiamen that there were almost no provisions to allocate anyway. Boishébert sailed for Montréal soon after.

—

In mid-May, three French merchant ships, the
Machault
, the
Bienfaisant
and the
Marquis de Malauze
, sailed into the Baie des Chaleurs, armed with supplies and munitions destined for Québec and Montréal. The leader of the expedition, François-Gabriel d'Angeac, aware that British naval ships had out-sailed them and lay in wait ahead, led the French ships to shelter at the mouth of the rivière Ristigouche. They landed at Pointe-à-la-Batterie and made camp. When d'Angeac saw that the Acadians in La Petite Rochelle and the surrounding area were near starvation, he agreed to give them some of his provisions.

This brought some badly needed relief, but the leaders of the Acadian resistance knew that the presence of the French ships would draw the attention of the British. The Dugas brothers, other resistance leaders and the Mi'kmaq held many discussions. Jeanne was reminded of the heated arguments at the de la Tour home in Louisbourg and at the Dugas homes in Grand-Pré, but now she had a greater worry. She knew that if fighting broke out in the Baie des Chaleurs, her three brothers and Pierre would be in the thick of it because they were now in the militia. This would not be a war fought somewhere else.

The Mi'kmaq soon heard rumours that a British fleet was on its way. Indeed, Captain John “Mad Jack” Byron had left Louisbourg at the head of three large British warships with orders to destroy the French force in the Baie des Chaleurs.

There were roughly 1,500 people in the La Petite Rochelle area at this time, including the militia, Acadian refugees and their families, and the Mi'kmaq and their families. There was general agreement that in the event of a battle the women and children should flee to the forest, taking with them as much sustenance as they could.

“Mon Dieu, Joseph,” asked Jeanne, “how are we to survive?”

He looked back at her, blankly. She felt herself flushing in embarrassment. How could she ask him such a question. She wasn't a child anymore. “I'm sorry, Joseph,” she said.

He just shook his head sadly.

—

The British warships arrived in late June and the naval confrontation began on July 3, when the British made their way toward the main channel of the Ristigouche. The battle saw several changes in fortune, but only lasted five days. On July 8, the French commandant scuttled two of his ships, the
Machault
and the
Bienfaisant
, to prevent the British from taking their valuable cargos. The third ship, the
Marquis-de-Malauze
, held British prisoners and was spared. The British later destroyed it, along with about twenty other vessels, mainly Acadian schooners, shallops and small privateers. The French manpower under d'Angeac, which consisted of 200 Troupes de la marine, 300 Acadians, and 250 Mi'kmaq, were helpless against the much larger British force.

—

The arrival of the British warships had spread fear in the hearts of the Acadian women in La Petite Rochelle. Some fled immediately, others waited to see what would happen. A few were too sick or weak to move, and simply resigned themselves to wait for death. Jeanne thought something must be done to help those who could not help themselves. Charles's wife Anne told her kindly but firmly that they could only hope to save themselves. “This may seem hardhearted to you,” she said, “but please listen to me.”

Anne and Marguerite gathered together the Dugas and Bois women and children and they quietly slipped into the woods the day after the naval battle started. At the last minute, Anne and Jeanne went looking for Marie Braud, who refused to leave. Her husband Michel was on duty at the fort and she would not leave him. Anne tried to reason with her. “We are all leaving our husbands here,” she said. “You must come with us, Marie.” But Marie refused. Jeanne wanted to stay with Marie, but Anne grabbed her by the arm and said firmly, “No.”

They left, each adult clutching a bundle. The older children carried younger siblings.

Anne had obviously thought this through, perhaps with her husband Charles. “We will follow a southeast path,” she said, “and do our best to stay hidden. We will try to reach the settlement of Nipisiguit. Our husbands will come to look for us there.”

Jeanne could only look at her, stunned by her sister-in-law's strength. She followed.