The White and the Gold (63 page)

In the meantime the Abbé Fénelon, who undoubtedly lacked discretion but had plenty of courage and zeal, was stirring things up in Montreal. A month after the execution—on Easter Day, in fact—he preached a sermon in the Hôtel-Dieu chapel in Montreal before a congregation which filled it to overflowing and included the Sieur de la Salle. It was an incendiary address and directed so clearly at Frontenac that La Salle is said to have flushed with anger and to have called the attention of those about him to the significance of the abbé’s remarks. The first result of the incident was that Dollier de Casson left a sickbed to call the abbé sharply to account. The bit had been taken firmly in the ecclesiastical teeth, however. Fénelon proceeded to circulate a petition in Perrot’s behalf and secured many signatures from among the citizens of the town. When word of
the abbé’s activities reached the ears of the château autocrat, the churchman was summoned to Quebec and put on trial there with Perrot.

It might have been expected that the recalcitrant Perrot, led out for the first time from his solitary cell, would be the center of interest when the trial opened. Fénelon proceeded; however, to upset any such calculation. If a modern expression be permissible, the doughty churchman “stole the show” from his fellow defendant. He entered the courtroom with his clerical hat pulled down determinedly over his brows and proceeded at once to take possession of an unused chair. On both counts he was breaking the rules of court procedure. Five members of the Sovereign Council sat at the board as judges, with Frontenac himself presiding. The governor, according to custom, wore his plumed hat and his sword buckled at his side. He stared for a moment in complete silence at the seated defendant and then, in a voice which he strove to keep calm, informed the abbé that he must stand up and remove his hat. Fénelon stared back with equal composure and stated that priests appearing in a lay court had the right to do as he was doing.

“Not,” declared Frontenac, “when they are cited to answer criminal charges.”

The abbé continued to regard the presiding judge with eyes that did not flinch.

“My crimes,” he asserted, “exist only in your head.”

He went on to say that the governor was acting not as his judge but as his opponent and that an impartial trial of the case would be impossible under such circumstances.

Through the stormy scene that followed the governor seems to have behaved with unwonted restraint. It was the abbé who allowed himself to display an excitable temper. Rising from the chair which he had been so determined to claim, he paced up and down the space in front of the board where the Sovereign Council sat, removing and replacing his hat continuously in the course of his heated harangues. The outcome was that the defendant was instructed to leave the court, an order which he reluctantly obeyed. While he remained in an anteroom with a guard at his elbow, the Sovereign Council debated the points at issue, ignoring the presence all the while of the sardonically scowling Perrot, who had been forced to stand and to doff his hat, and who no doubt was regretting that he had no such rights as the Sulpician to fall back upon in
defying the court. The decision of the Council favored Frontenac, and the abbé was removed accordingly to close custody in the brewery until further action could be taken.

After several hearings had resulted in similar altercations, it was decided to refer the case to the decision of the King. The two prisoners, therefore, were put on the last ship for France that fall, and all the records and the evidence were sent along for the royal guidance in the matter.

It looked at first as though the pressure of opinion hostile to Frontenac in the French capital would affect the opinion of the monarch. Talon was at court and openly antagonistic to the governor, and it was well known that Louis allowed himself to be guided in many things by the advice of the ex-intendant. The Abbé d’Urfe, a close adherent of Fénelon’s, was connected with Colbert through the marriage of his cousin-germain, the wealthy young Marquise Marie Marguerite d’Allegre, to the Marquis de Seignelay, the minister’s son. The court seethed with excitement. For a time nothing else was talked about, and the supporters of the two points of view fought among themselves for opportunities to reach the royal ear. There were comparatively few to speak for the bitter old soldier sitting in his cabinet atop the rock at Quebec and cut off from all further participation in the dispute; and it appeared certain for a time that the anti-Frontenac faction would prevail.

But Colbert’s head was incapable of entertaining anything but a common-sense view of such matters, and the King himself showed an admirable resolve to consider only the main issues. There were faults on both sides, but the defendants in the case had erred more openly and more often. There could be no denial that they had defied the man who represented the monarch himself. Louis decided that he must give his support, even though it might seem little more than a token affirmation, to the viceroy he had selected and appointed. It was decided that the Abbé Fénelon should not be allowed to return to Canada, although the charges against him were dropped. Perrot was sentenced to the Bastille for the brief period of three weeks.

It was a victory for Frontenac. Later developments made it clear, however, that it was a partial vindication only. A letter from the King reached the governor by the first ship in the spring which made it clear that Louis had not been above straddling the issue. “To punish him,” wrote the King, referring to Perrot, “I have put
him for some time in the Bastille.… After having left M. Perrot some days in the Bastille, I will send him back to his government and I will order him to call on you and to offer you his apologies for all that has passed. After which I desire that you will not retain any resentment against him but that you will treat him in accordance with the power I have given him.”

It was clear that the patience of the monarch had been strained almost to the breaking point by the incident.

Part of the troubles in which Frontenac was involved in his first term was the result of a conspiracy of his own contriving. Colbert was afraid of the power which the Jesuits had acquired in Canada. The King also was wary of the order and prepared to have them curbed in any reasonable way, but he did not feel as strongly on the point as his minister. Colbert, therefore, had a talk with the brusque nobleman before the latter first set sail for Canada. It is clear that he gave the new governor verbal instructions which exceeded the official mandates. It was agreed between them that a close eye must be kept on Jesuit activities. The conspiratorial attitude developed when they arranged between them for a code in which they could exchange news and views with the most complete frankness.

That such an understanding had been reached between them is proven by one of the passages which Frontenac used in the course of a letter to the minister. “Indeed, my lord,” he wrote in the personal system of shorthand they had devised for their protection, “I recall every day to my mind the last words you spoke when I took leave of you, and I realize more and more that it is very expedient for the service of the King to oppose the least encroachments made on his authority, which are daily occurrences here. And if I were not firm in this respect this authority would be altogether lost, as there is nothing here at which they aim more eagerly than to lessen that authority. Nevertheless, to thwart such schemes I make use only of the most skillful and gentle means I can devise, according to what you prescribed I should do.”

The haughty Gascon needed no further authority than this understanding with Colbert to proceed at once in checking the Jesuits. Almost immediately after his arrival, certainly before he could have
acquainted himself thoroughly with the facts and before he had mastered the situation which existed, he wrote to Colbert that the Jesuits were as much interested in the conversion of beaver as in the conversion of the Indians. This was a libel which he must have regretted later.

The clashes that resulted between the volatile and choleric governor and the stern, single-minded priests arose from several causes. One of the first was the exclusive concern of the Jesuits with the souls of the Indians. There had been always a school of thought in France that claimed this attitude to be basically wrong. These theorists pointed out that the English and the Dutch, who were heretics and so must be considered children of the darkness, had succeeded in such a thorough conversion of the savages among whom they had settled that the red men lived with them amicably. The natives had fallen into European ways of living and had even taken up trades with some success. On the other hand, the French, in spite of the heroic efforts of the missionaries, had failed to civilize the natives in any degree. Mother Marie de l’Incarnation had written in one of her letters on this point: “We have not been able to Frenchify more than seven or eight girls. Others return to their homes where, however, they are leading very Christian lives.”

One of the first visits Frontenac made on arriving in the colony was to the settlement of Ste. Foye, where the Indian converts congregated. He found to his astonishment that none of them spoke French. This discovery prompted a letter in which he expressed the belief that in making the savages subjects of Jesus Christ they should also be made subjects of the King; a clever approach in angling for the support of the monarch. “The way to make them Christians,” continued the governor, “is to make them men first.”

The Jesuit thinking was in direct opposition to this. They were interested only in the souls of the red men and they strove to keep the races apart, believing with a passionate conviction that if the Indians were brought into close contact with the French they would soon unlearn the lessons of morality they had been taught. This attitude was repugnant to Frontenac and to the active supporters in France of the policy he desired to inaugurate. To them it was a defeatist policy, a confession of lack of faith in the French way of living, even in the French people.

Frontenac was so eager to demonstrate the method he advocated that he at once gained a promise from the Indian leaders that they
would send a number of children to him to be taught the French language and be raised in the French way. When the Jesuits offered to carry out the experiment for him, he said emphatically, no, he preferred to keep his Indians under his own eye. If the Jesuits desired to participate, let them find another set of children and educate them
their
way. Not content with this, the energetic governor issued orders that in all new settlements of converts an effort must be made to have French methods introduced. He insisted that the huts built for the converts have French chimneys instead of the customary hole in the ceiling to let the smoke out. It is not on record that the comfort the converts enjoyed from this change had any civilizing effect on them.

The chief source of disagreement was, of course, the traffic in brandy. Frontenac was convinced that it was necessary to use brandy for barter because the English, who were proving themselves shrewd and successful traders, supplied firewater to the natives. The fur supplies would inevitably go to the English, he believed, if the French refused to slake the native thirst. In this he had the backing of most of the citizens of the colony, who knew that their prosperity depended entirely on the fur trade. It was an opinion, moreover, which Colbert had consistently shared and in which the farseeing Talon had believed. The Church was against the sale of brandy, and on this issue the Sulpicians were as firm and outspoken as the Jesuits. “If brandy were forbidden among the Indians,” wrote Dollier de Casson from Montreal, “we would have thousands of conversions to report.”

The previous heads of state had dealt warily with this question, realizing the strength of the clerical position. Frontenac came right out into the open, refusing to mask his real opinion. Why, he demanded to know, was it more sinful to give brandy to Indians in trade than for a Bordeaux merchant to sell wine to the Dutch and English? The Dutch and English, he averred, got just as drunk as the Indians.

Being a fiery protagonist in all things and at all times, Frontenac went much farther. He declared that the Indians did not get as drunk as the Jesuits avowed. There was only the word of the missionaries for the orgies which they said resulted when firewater was supplied the natives, the roistering and fighting, the cruelty and the killings.

It was strange that Frontenac, who was a skillful swordsman and
adept in the light thrust of the blade and the quick riposte, did not employ the finesse of the fencer in his controversies. He used instead the mace or the battle-ax, attacking his antagonists with an unabating fury. Carrying the struggle over the use of brandy to an extreme which almost defeated his own purpose, he asserted that the stand of the Jesuits was due to their desire to get the fur trade into their own hands. He charged them with bartering, and on the surface there was some basis for the statement. By no other means could the missionaries secure the bare necessities of living. Money was of no value to the Indians; they wanted trade goods and were prepared to offer food and pelts in exchange. The Jesuits accepted pelts from their red-skinned charges on this basis. Frontenac used this to charge them with a selfish design. In 1676 he openly accused the order of acquiring great wealth as a result of the trading facilities they enjoyed. They owned vast stretches of territory and valuable seigneuries, he declared.

Frontenac never knew when to stop. Having gone thus far, he threw caution to the winds and attacked the hold the Jesuits had acquired over the consciences of the people. They tormented their charges in the confessional, he asserted, demanding to know the names of accomplices in sin, informing husbands about the misdeeds of their wives and telling parents the faults of their children.

The order struck back. A complaint was lodged against the governor that he insisted the missionaries and the priests secure passports from him before setting out on their labors. It was even charged that he was intercepting the mail and reading the clerical letters in an effort to get evidence against them. They charged Frontenac with being in the fur trade himself, using the belief generally held in the colony that he and La Salle were conspiring to get a monopoly on the trade of the West and South. The result was that Colbert wrote to the governor a note of warning. “His Majesty,” said the minister, “further orders me to tell you in secret that, although he did not believe what was said here that some trade and pelt traffic was being carried on in your name, you must beware lest any of your servants or any person who is near you carry on such a trade. It would be impossible for the colonists to be persuaded that you will protect them and render them the impartial justice which you owe them as long as they see a few persons who have private access to trade.” This shaft was launched at La Salle, who was popularly believed to have Frontenac’s support and co-operation in all his great schemes.