The White and the Gold (30 page)

At night it would be necessary to find accommodations for the dying statesman and his huge mobile establishment. The castle or inn selected for the honor would be adorned with hangings of rose and velvet damask and with the costly furniture which was brought for the purpose. Then the apartment would be taken off its wheels or removed from the barge, carried by a special corps of trained servants. It was usually too wide to go through doors, and a hole would be torn in a wall to admit the cardinal on his wide bed.

Affairs of state were conducted in this way as thoroughly, if not quite as expeditiously, as though the great man had remained in his ostentatious Paris headquarters, the Palais-Cardinal. Couriers rode up on smoking horses, carrying dispatches, and others rode away with the answers. Secretaries took down the whispered instructions of the sick man; clerks scribbled and copied letters. Spies waited in the anteroom to make their reports (the cardinal was one of the ablest spy masters of history); the nobility came with haughty and withdrawn faces, but carrying their plumed hats in their hands, to pay their respects to this man they both hated and feared.

Late in the year 1642 it became apparent that the cardinal would have to yield to his inevitable conqueror, although the star of his power was as high overhead as ever. The latest conspiracy, the famous Cinq Mars affair, had been scotched and his enemies had scuttled into their uneasy mouseholes. The main conspirators were going to the block, where so many top-ranking nobles had already been sent. The power of the nobility had been broken. The citadel at Perpignan had fallen on September 9, thus bringing the Spanish campaign to a most satisfactory conclusion. Returning home to die, the cardinal took the route of the Rhone River with all his circus-like trappings and came at last to Paris with so little life left in his emaciated body that even the light in his terrible eyes seemed to be failing. His devoted niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon, who will
be remembered as the sponsor of the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec, remained faithfully and affectionately by his side, disregarding his orders to spare herself by leaving.

When the last rites were administered, he was asked the usual question:

“Do you forgive your enemies?”

There was a pause, and then the dying churchman answered, “I have no enemies but those of the state.”

These few words summed up the guiding policy of the renowned statesman. The state, absolute in its authority, above challenge in its operations, had been his creation. The supreme power he had vested in the Crown would be maintained throughout the long reign which followed, the outwardly splendid period of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Those who opposed him were in the mind of Richelieu enemies of the state, dissenters from his dream of a triumphant France.

When the news reached them that the cardinal had breathed his last on December 4 of that year, it seemed to the settlers of New France that they had lost their best friend. Viewing the question with the easy perspective of three centuries, it is clear that the opposite was the truth. His interest had been aggressively addressed to the growth and prosperity of the colony, but he had established the policy of control by the Crown, and the ministers thereof, so firmly that nothing thereafter could change it. He had been the architect of ultimate failure.

Having said this, it must be granted that New France under his successor, whose attitude was one almost of indifference, came to a very bad pass indeed.

It had been understood that the cardinal’s successor would be Father Joseph of Paris. That very able man, however, had preceded his master to the grave by a narrow margin of years. The matter of a successor had become at once of paramount importance, because Louis XIII was also marked for an early translation to a realm where kings are not supposed to enjoy any privilege above their personal deserts. The fevered orbs of the determined little minister had fixed themselves, therefore, on another churchman, a Sicilian named Giulio Mazarin, who had been drafted into the French service
three years before and had so distinguished himself on several diplomatic errands that his reward had been a red hat from Rome; thus becoming the famous Cardinal Mazarin of romance and history. He was a man of quite enormous ability and the equal, or nearly so, of Richelieu in diplomacy and administrative skill but not possessing the same full measure of genius.

Mazarin was a personable man, forty years of age, with curling chestnut hair and beard, a fresh complexion and fine eyes, and a pair of hands remarkable for their whiteness and delicacy. Women were partial to him, as will become apparent later.

Mazarin was at the bedside when the great cardinal died, and the next day King Louis XIII sent instructions to all the departmental officials to make their reports thereafter to the new chief minister. The King himself had only a few more months to live and so his acknowledgment of the succession was of the greatest importance.

But how would the new incumbent impress the Queen, Anne of Austria? It was understood that on the King’s death she would be made Queen Regent for the minority of her young son. As things turned out, there was no need for worry on that score. That lady of gentle spirit and quiet beauty (who was becoming, alas, a little plump now) had already met the new cardinal. Authorities disagree as to where or when the meeting occurred, although it is generally believed that it took place at a court function and that Mazarin was looking resplendent in purple vestments. It was generally believed also that the warm and romantic heart of the Queen, which had been only slightly stirred by the handsome, long-legged Buckingham, began to flutter as soon as she saw the cardinal. At any rate, when the King died on May 14 of the following year, the promptly appointed Regent overlooked her own special supporters, who had expected to bound into office, and confirmed Mazarin in his post.

New France was to suffer for many years thereafter as a result of ministerial lack of interest. Not until the new King had grown up and attained his majority and had surrounded himself with able ministers, Colbert in particular, would the handling of New France be placed on a stronger basis.

It was not surprising that Mazarin failed to take the same interest in the colony as his illustrious predecessor. He was new to the complications and vexations of colonization, the politics within the ranks of the Hundred Associates, the greed, the fears, the continuous pressure of free traders who still rebelled against monopoly. The company
had been bankrupt almost from the start. With a grandiose gesture, dictated no doubt by Richelieu, they had invested their total capital in the fleet under De Roquement and had seen it lost when the Kirkes captured all their ships. Several plans had been followed since to provide new funds, but the company had continued in a condition best described as moribund. In 1641 the directors had found it necessary to place an assessment on the members and in this way raised 103,500 livres; a measure which had caused a great deal of grumbling. The situation had become temporarily more satisfactory, however. The beaver population of North America was estimated by various authorities at ten million. The Hurons and Algonquins, released from fear by the spurious peace treaty offered by the Iroquois, began to bring beaver skins to the French trading posts in enormous quantities. In Europe every ruffling gallant and every stout burgher wanted a beaver hat. The value of the trade at this point rose to 300,000 livres a year.

Then the Iroquois struck again, and the first result was that the Hurons as a separate race passed out of existence. The officials appointed for the colony might have been capable of providing a reasonable peacetime administration, but they were completely unfitted for the situaton which now developed.

The men of the Five Nations were actuated by more than hate for the northern tribes. The war they waged was, in a broad sense, a beaver war; colloquially, a “castor” war, that being the name applied to the beaver skin. The heads of the Iroquois realized that, having cast their lot with the Dutch and the English, they must divert the fur trade from the French. With their usual sagacity they saw that the Ottawa River was the key to the situation and so their largest war parties patrolled the Ottawa country, making it impossible for the northern Indians to form their giant flotillas and convey the year’s take of furs to the St. Lawrence.

For two years after the great blow which wiped out St. Ignace and St. Louis and led to the dispersal of the Hurons the beaver trade came temporarily to an end. Not one pelt arrived at Montreal. It was then that the French began to meet the situation by going out in small parties to the source of supply. The
coureurs de bois
, picturesque and gallant, came into existence. The Iroquois could prevent the running of the great fleets, but they could not control all the northern rivers where these French traders, filled with a love of adventure as well as a desire for profit, began to appear. It was
in recognition of this new development that the Associates relinquished their exclusive hold on the fur trade to the more powerful inhabitants of New France, the seigneurs of the St. Lawrence—Giffard, Repentigny, Godefroy, Des Chatelets. It was estimated that the profits which accrued to these traders who had the advantage of operating at close range amounted annually to 325,000 livres, laying the foundation for the wealth of the seigneurial class.

It was not plain sailing, however, for the new fur princes of New France. The men who braved the dangers of the northern trails, who were to venture as far north as Hudson’s Bay and westward beyond the Great Lakes, these men quite properly thought themselves entitled to a large personal share of the profits. They began to find ways of smuggling furs out of the country. It became the practice for even the lesser employees, the men who tended the warehouses and posted the books, to desert to the fishing fleets, taking large supplies of pelts with them.

The affronted Associates came to realize that monopoly was a losing proposition. They closed their books finally, and their doors, in 1663.

This was a hornets’ nest which Mazarin found above his door. He was not successful in handling the situation, the chief reason being the caliber of the men who were sent out as governors at this trying period. Montmagny was recalled, and out came Jean de Lauson, the one-time intendant of the Company of One Hundred Associates and the first owner of the island of Montreal. A civilian filling a post which called for soldierly qualities, Lauson was seated in the Quebec citadel at a particularly dangerous stage and proved himself a complete failure, as will be told later.

No attention has been paid to Acadia while these events were transpiring along the St. Lawrence, but it must not be assumed that there is any lack of interest in the events occurring in the wooded inlets around the Bay of Fundy. A quite extraordinary situation had developed there.

A son of the Sieur de Poutrincourt had been left behind when the settlers at Port Royal were carried off in the Argall raid. With a handful of followers he roamed in the woods. They lived like Indians, subsisting on game and fish and dressing themselves in animal
skins. The young leader, who is referred to in the records as Biencourt, finally succeeded in constructing a small fort among the rocks and fogs of Cape Sable, to which he gave the name of Fort Loméron. Here the band remained for a number of years, waiting impatiently for sails on the horizon.

It came about that this resolute young man died before the pennons of France came into view. He left all his lands and possessions and rights to one of his followers, a highly ambitious Norman named Charles St. Etienne de la Tour; at least La Tour declared that the cession had been made in his favor. There was, however, a strong suspicion in French governmental circles that La Tour was playing a double game by negotiating with the English, who still held to their claim that they owned all this part of the world. It is doubtful if La Tour, who adhered to what he considered his own with a grip of iron, had ever been prepared to hand over his lands to the English, but it was established that he had been made a baronet of Nova Scotia by Charles I of England, a most suspicious circumstance. It was not strange, therefore, that the French Government was very cautious in the matter of recognizing any of his claims.

Under favorable conditions La Tour might have become one of the great colonizers and trail breakers. Certainly he possessed many of the qualities required, the determination, the resourcefulness, the unbridled ambition. Shrugging off the coldness of the administration, he proceeded to widen the scope of his operations by building himself another fort. This time he selected as the site a highly strategic point, the mouth of the St. John River on the other side of the Bay of Fundy.

The government finally decided to take action and in 1632 sent out Charles de Razilly to take formal possession of Acadia after the country had been ceded to France by the Treaty of St.-Germainen-Laye. Razilly died three years later and nominated his chief associate, one Charles de Menou d’Aunay Charnisey, to take over his duties. D’Aunay, as he is called in the records, seems to have been a man of the best character. He was both courageous and devout, courteous in his dealings, a loyal servant of the government. That he developed aggressive and even arrogant traits in the course of his long duel with La Tour cannot be denied, but it must be taken into account that he was dealing with an opponent who would go to any lengths. D’Aunay had, it must also be said, a touch of the grandiose in him, a willingness to dramatize his importance. At any
rate, he set himself up at Port Royal like a great suzerain. He brought out a wife, with countless barrels and bales of possessions, and a great many settlers to resume cultivation of the fertile land. Port Royal became a feudal stronghold; a fort with a garrison, a seminary with no fewer than twelve Capuchin friars, a harbor dotted with the sails of ships, a settlement with a constant coming and going of Indians with furs to trade.

La Tour and the men about him considered all this an infringement of their rights. They had upheld the sovereignty of France through the long bleak years (said La Tour), living lives of hardship, with no support from home and little hope to bring them comfort. They refused to acknowledge the authority of D’Aunay, and so began one of the most curious struggles in history.