The record of the raiders led from Three Rivers by François Hertel was almost the same. Setting out in January, he was followed by twenty-five French and twenty-five Indians to the border lands between Maine and New Hampshire. The end of March saw the bushrovers outside the little village of Salmon Falls. Thirty inhabitants were tomahawked on the spot, the houses burned, and one hundred prisoners carried off; but news had gone like wildfire to neighboring settlements, and Hertel was pursued by two hundred Englishmen. He placed his bushrovers on a small bridge across Wooster River and here held the pursuers at bay till darkness enabled him to escape.
But the darkest deed of infamy was perpetrated by the third band of raiders,—a deed that reveals the glories of war as they exist, stripped of pageantry. Portneuf had led the raiders from Quebec, and he was joined by that famous leader of the Abenaki Indians, Baron de Saint-Castin, from the border lands between Acadia and Maine. Later, when Hertel struck through the woods with some of his followers, Portneuf's men numbered five hundred. With these he attacked Fort Loyal, or what is now Portland, Maine, in the month of June. The fort boasted eight great guns and one hundred soldiers. Under cover of the guns Lieutenant Clark and thirty men sallied out to reconnoiter the attacking forces ambushed in woods round a pasturage. At a musket crack the English were literally cut to pieces, four men only escaping back to the fort. The French then demanded unconditional surrender. The English asked six days to consider. In six days English vessels would have come to the rescue. Secure, under a bluff of the ocean cliff, from the cannon fire of the fort, the French began to trench an approach to the palisades. Combustibles had been placed against the walls, when the English again asked a parley, offering to surrender if the French would swear by the living God to conduct them in safety to the nearest English post. To these conditions the French agreed. Whether they could not control their Indian allies or had not intended to keep the terms matters little. The English had no sooner marched from the fort than, with a wild whoop, the Indians fell on men, women, and children. Some were killed by a single blow, others reserved for the torture stake. Only four Englishmen survived the onslaught, to be carried prisoners to Quebec.
The French had been victorious on all three raids; but they were victories over which posterity will never boast, which no writer dare describe in all the detail of their horrors, and which leave a black blot on the escutcheon of Canada.
It was hardly to be expected that the New England colonies would let such raids pass unpunished. The destruction of Schenectady had been bad enough. The massacre of Salmon Falls caused the New Englanders to forget their jealousies for the once and to unite in a common cause. All the colonies agreed to contribute men, ships, and money to invade New France by land and sea. The land forces were placed under Winthrop and Schuyler; but as smallpox disorganized the expedition before it reached Lake Champlain, the attack by land had little other effect than to draw Frontenac from Quebec down to Montreal, where Captain Schuyler, with Dutch bushmen, succeeded in ravaging the settlements and killing at least twenty French.
The expedition by sea was placed under Sir William Phips of Massachusetts,—a man who was the very antipodes of Frontenac. One of a poor family of twenty-six children, Phips had risen from being a shepherd boy in Maine to the position of ship's carpenter in Boston. Here, among the harbor folk, he got wind of a Spanish treasure ship containing a million and a half dollars' worth of gold, which had been sunk off the West Indies. Going to England, Phips succeeded in interesting that same clique of courtiers who helped Radisson to establish the Hudson's Bay Company,—Albemarle and Prince Rupert and the King; and when, with the funds which they advanced, Phips succeeded in raising the treasure vessel, he received, in addition to his share of the booty, a title and the appointment as governor of Massachusetts.
Here, then, was the daring leader chosen to invade New France. Phips sailed first for Port Royal, which had in late years become infested with French pirates, preying on Boston commerce. Word had just come of the fearful massacres of colonists at Portland. Boston was inflamed with a spirit of vengeance. The people had appointed days of fasting and prayer to invoke Heaven's blessing on their war. When Phips sailed into Annapolis Basin with his vessels and seven hundred men in the month of May, he found the French commander, Meneval, ill of the gout, with a garrison of about eighty soldiers, but all the cannon chanced to be dismounted. The odds against the French did not permit resistance. Meneval stipulated for an honorable surrender,—all property to be respected and the garrison to be sent to some French port; but no sooner were the English in possession than, like the French at Portland, they broke the pledge. There was no massacre as in Maine, but plunderers ran riot, seizing everything on which hands could be laid, ransacking houses and desecrating the churches; and sixty of the leading people, including Meneval and the priests, were carried off as prisoners. Leaving one English flag flying, Phips sailed home.
Indignation at Boston had been fanned to fury, for now all the details of the butchery at Portland were known; and Phips found the colony mustering a monster expedition to attack the very stronghold of French power,—Quebec itself. England could afford no aid to her colonies, but thirty-two merchant vessels and frigates had been impressed into the service, some of them carrying as many as forty-four cannon. Artisans, sailors, soldiers, clerks, all classes had volunteered as fighters, to the number of twenty-five hundred men; but there was one thing lacking,—they had no pilot who knew the St. Lawrence. Full of confidence born of inexperience, the fleet set sail on the 9th of August, commanded again by Phips.
Time was wasted ravaging the coasts of Gaspé, holding long-winded councils of war, arguing in the commander's stateroom instead of drilling on deck. Three more weeks were wasted poking about the lower St. Lawrence, picking up chance vessels off Tadoussac and Anticosti. Among the prize vessels taken near Anticosti was one of Jolliet's, bearing his wife and mother-in-law. The ladies delighted the hearts of the Puritans by the news that not more than one hundred men garrisoned Quebec; but Phips was reckoning without his host, and his host was Frontenac. Besides, it was late in the season—the middle of October—before the English fleet rounded the Island of Orleans and faced the Citadel of Quebec.
Indians had carried word to the city that an Englishwoman, taken prisoner in their raids, had told them more than thirty vessels had sailed from Boston to invade New France. Frontenac was absent in Montreal. Quickly the commander at Quebec sent coureurs with warning to Frontenac, and then set about casting up barricades in the narrow streets that led from Lower to Upper Town.
Frontenac could not credit the news. Had he not heard here in Montreal from Indian coureurs how the English overland expedition lay rotting of smallpox near Lake Champlain, such pitiable objects that the Iroquois refused to join them against the French? New France now numbered a population of twelve thousand and could muster three thousand fighting men; and though the English colonies numbered twenty thousand people, how could they, divided by jealousies, send an invading army of twenty-seven hundred, as the rumor stated? Frontenac, grizzled old warrior, did not credit the news, but, all the same, he set out amid pelting rains by boat for Quebec. Half-way to Three Rivers more messengers brought him word that the English fleet were now advancing from Tadoussac. He sent back orders for the commander at Montreal to rush the bush-rovers down to Quebec, and he himself arrived at the Citadel just as the Le Moyne brothers anchored below Cape Diamond from a voyage to Hudson Bay. Maricourt Le Moyne reported how he had escaped past the English fleet by night, and it would certainly be at Quebec by daybreak.
Scouts rallied the bushrangers on both sides of the St. Lawrence to Quebec's aid. Frontenac bade them guard the outposts and not desert their hamlets, while Ste. Hélène and the other Le Moynes took command of the sharpshooters in Lower Town, scattering them in hiding along the banks of the St. Charles and among the houses facing the St. Lawrence below Castle St. Louis.
Sure enough, at daybreak on Monday, October 16, sail after sail, thirty-four in all, rounded the end of Orleans Island and took up position directly opposite Quebec City. It was a cold, wet autumn morning. Fog and rain alternately chased in gray shadows across the far hills, and above the mist of the river loomed ominous the red-gray fort which the English had come to capture. Castle St. Louis stood where Château Frontenac stands to-day; and what is now the promenade of a magnificent terrace was at that time a breastwork of cannon extending on down the sloping hill to the left as far as the ramparts. In fact, the cannon of that period were more dangerous than they are to-day, for long-range missiles have rendered old-time fortifications adapted for close-range fighting almost useless; and the cannon of Upper Town, Quebec, that October morning swept the approach to three sides of the fort, facing the St. Charles, opposite Point Lévis and the St. Lawrence, where it curves back on itself; and the fourth side was sheer wall—invulnerable.
With a rattling of anchor chains and a creaking of masts the great sails of the English fleet were lowered, and a little boat put out at ten o'clock under flag of truce to meet a boat half-way from Lower Town. Phips' messenger was conducted blindfold up the barricaded streets leading to Castle St. Louis; and the gunners had been instructed to clang their muskets on the stones to give the impression of great numbers. Suddenly the bandage was taken from the man's eyes and he found himself in a great hall, standing before the august presence of Frontenac, surrounded by a circle of magnificently dressed officers. The New Englander delivered his message,—Phips' letter demanding surrender: "Your prisoners, your persons, your estates … and should you refuse, I am resolved by the help of God, in whom I trust, to revenge by force of arms all our wrongs." … As the reading of the letter was finished the man looked up to see an insolent smile pass round the faces of Frontenac's officers, one of whom superciliously advised hanging the bearer of such insolence without waste of time. The New Englander pulled out his watch and signaled that he must have Frontenac's answer within an hour. The haughty old Governor pretended not to see the motion, and then, with a smile like ice, made answer in words that have become renowned: "I shall not keep you waiting so long! Tell your General I do not recognize King William! I know no king of England but King James! Does your General suppose that these brave gentlemen"—pointing to his officers—"would consent to trust a man who broke his word at Port Royal?"
As the shout of applause died away, the trembling New Englander asked Frontenac if he would put his answer in writing.
"No," thundered the old Governor, never happier than when fighting, "I will answer your General with my cannon! I shall teach him that a man of my rank"—with covert sneer at Phips' origin, "is not to be summoned in such rude fashion! Let him do his best! I shall do mine!"
It was now the turn of the English to be amazed. This was not the answer they had expected from a fort weakly garrisoned by a hundred men. If they had struck and struck quickly, they might yet have won the day; but all Monday passed in futile arguments and councils of war, and on Tuesday, the 17th, towards night, was heard wild shouting within Quebec walls.
"My faith, Messieurs!" exclaimed one of the French prisoners aboard Phips' ship; "now you have lost your chance! Those are the coureurs de bois from Montreal and the bushrovers of the Pays d'en Haut, eight hundred strong."
The news at last spurred Phips to action. All that night the people of Quebec could hear the English drilling, and shouting "God save King William!" with beat of drum and trumpet calls that set the echoes rolling from Cape Diamond; and on the 18th small boats landed fourteen hundred men to cross the St. Charles River and assault the Lower Town, while the four largest ships took up a position to cannonade the city. It was four in the afternoon before the soldiers had been landed amid peppering bullets from the Le Moyne bushrovers. Only a few cannon shots were fired, and they did no damage but to kill an urchin of the Upper Town.
Firing began in earnest on the morning of October 19. The river was churned to fury and the reverberating echoes set the rocks crashing from Cape Diamond, but it was almost impossible for the English to shoot high enough to damage the upper fort. It was easy for the French to shoot down, and great wounds gaped from the hull of Phips' ship, while his masts went over decks in flame, flag and all. The tide drifted the admiral's flag on shore. The French rowed out, secured the prize, and a jubilant shout roared from Lower Town, to be taken up and echoed and reëchoed from the Castle! For two more days bombs roared in midair, plunging through the roofs of houses in Lower Town or ricochetting back harmless from the rock wall below Castle St. Louis. At the St. Charles the land forces were fighting blindly to effect a crossing, but the Le Moyne bushrovers lying in ambush repelled every advance, though Ste. Hélène had fallen mortally wounded. On the morning of the 21st the French could hardly believe their senses. The land forces had vanished during the darkness of a rainy night, and ship after ship, sail after sail, was drifting downstream—was it possible?—in retreat. Another week's bombarding would have reduced Quebec to flame and starvation; but another week would have exposed Phips' fleet to wreckage from winter weather, and he had drifted down to Isle Orleans, where the dismantled fleet paused to rig up fresh masts. It was Madame Jolliet who suggested to the Puritan commander an exchange of the prisoners captured at Port Royal with the English from Maine and New Hampshire held in Quebec. She was sent ashore by Phips and the exchange was arranged. Winter gales assailed the English fleet as it passed Anticosti, and what with the wrecked and wounded, Phips' loss totaled not less than a thousand men.
Frontenac had been back in Canada only a year, and in that time he had restored the prestige of French power in America. The Iroquois were glad to sue for peace, and his bitterest enemies, the Jesuits, joined the merrymakers round the bonfires of acclaim kindled in the old Governor's honor as the English retreated, and the joy bells pealed out, and processions surged shouting through the streets of Quebec! From Hudson Bay to the Mississippi, from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the land of the Sioux, French power reigned supreme. Only Port Nelson, high up on the west coast of Hudson Bay, remained unsubdued, draining the furs of the prairie tribes to England away from Quebec. Iberville had captured it in the fall of 1694, at the cost of his brother Châteauguay's life; but when Iberville departed from Hudson Bay, English men-of-war had come out in 1696 and wrested back this most valuable of all the fur posts. It was now determined to drive the English forever from Hudson Bay. Le Moyne d'Iberville was chosen for the task.
April, 1697, Sérigny Le Moyne was dispatched from France with five men-of-war to be placed under the command of Iberville at Placentia, Newfoundland, whence he was "to proceed to Hudson Bay and to leave not a vestige of the English in the North." The frigates left Newfoundland July 8. Three weeks later they were crushing through the ice jam of Hudson Straits. Iberville commanded the Pelican with two hundred and fifty men. Bienville, a brother, was on the same ship. Sérigny commanded the Palmier, and there were three other frigates, the Profound, the Violent, the Wasp. Ice locked round the fleet at the west end of Hudson Straits, and fog lay so thick there was nothing visible of any ship but the masthead. For eighteen days they lay, crunched and rammed and separated by the ice drive, till on August 25, early in the morning, the fog suddenly lifted. Iberville saw that Sérigny's ship had been carried back in the straits. The Wasp and Violent were not to be seen, but straight ahead, locked in the ice, stood the Profound, and beside the French vessel three English frigates, the Hampshire, the Deering, the Hudson's Bay, on their annual voyage to Nelson! A lane of water opened before Iberville. Like a bird the Pelican spread her wings to the wind and fled.
September 3 Iberville sighted Port Nelson, and for two days cruised the offing, scanning the sea for the rest of his fleet. Early on September 5 the sails of three vessels heaved and rose above the watery horizon. Never doubting these were his own ships, Iberville signaled. There was no answer. A sailor scrambled to the masthead and shouted down terrified warning. These were not the French ships! They were the English frigates bearing straight down on the single French vessel commanded by Iberville!
On one side was the enemy's fort, on the other the enemy's fleet coming over the waves before a clipping wind, all sails set. Of Iberville's crew forty men were ill of scurvy. Twenty-five had gone ashore to reconnoiter. He had left one hundred and fifty fighting men. Amid a rush of orders, ropes were stretched across decks for handhold, cannon were unplugged, and the batterymen below decks stripped themselves for the hot work ahead. The soldiers assembled on decks, sword in hand, and the Canadian bushrovers stood to the fore, ready to leap across the enemy's decks.
By nine in the morning the ships were abreast, and roaring cannonades from the English cut the decks of the Pelican to kindling wood and set the masts in flame. At the same instant one fell blast of musketry mowed down forty French; but Iberville's batterymen below decks had now ceased to pour a stream of fire into the English hulls. The odds were three to one, and for four hours the battle raged, the English shifting and sheering to lock in death grapple, Iberville's sharpshooters peppering the decks of the foe.
It had turned bitterly cold. The blood on the decks became ice, and each roll of the sea sent wounded and dead weltering from rail to rail. Such holes had been torn in the hulls of both English and French ships that the gunners below decks were literally looking into each other's smoke-grimmed faces. Suddenly all hands paused. A frantic scream cleft the air. The vessels were careening in a tempestuous sea, for the great ship Hampshire had refused to answer to the wheel, had lurched, had sunk,—sunk swift as lead amid hiss of flames into the roaring sea! Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men escaped. The frigate Hudson's Bay surrendered and the Deering fled. Iberville was victor.
But a storm now broke in hurricane gusts over the sea. Iberville steered for land, but waves drenched the wheel at every wash, and, driving before the storm, the Pelican floundered in the sands a few miles from Nelson. All lifeboats had been shot away. In such a sea the Canadian canoes were useless. The shattered masts were tied in four-sided racks. To these Iberville had the wounded bound, and the crew plunged for the shore. Eighteen men perished going ashore in the darkness. On land were two feet of snow. No sooner did the French castaways build fires to warm their benumbed limbs than bullets whistled into camp. Governor Bayly of Port Nelson had sent out his sharpshooters. Luckily Iberville's other ships now joined him, and, mustering his forces, the dauntless French leader marched against the fort. Storm had permitted the French to land their cannon undetected. Trenches were cast up, and three times Sérigny Le Moyne was sent to demand surrender.
"The French are desperate," he urged. "They must take the fort or perish of want, and if you continue the fight there will be no mercy given."
The Hudson's Bay people capitulated and were permitted to march out with arms, bag and baggage. An English ship carried the refugees home to the Thames.
The rest of Iberville's career is the story of colonizing the Mississippi. He was granted a vast seigniory on the Bay of Chaleur, and in 1699 given a title. On his way from the Louisiana colony to France his ship had paused at Havana. Here Iberville contracted yellow fever and died while yet in the prime of his manhood, July 9, 1706.
After the victory on Hudson Bay the French were supreme in America and Frontenac supreme in New France. The old white-haired veteran of a hundred wars became the idol of Quebec. Friends and enemies, Jesuits and Recollets, paid tribute to his worth. In November of 1698 the Governor passed from this life in Castle St. Louis at the good old age of seventy-eight. He had demonstrated—demonstrated in action so that his enemies acknowledged the fact—that the sterner virtues of the military chieftain go farther towards the making of great nationhood than soft sentiments and religious emotionalism.
Petty regulations and blue laws—Massacre of Deerfield—Madame Freneuse, the painter lady—"Old Wooden Sword"—Subercase at Port Royal—Paul Mascarene's plight—Court dandies cause naval disaster
While Frontenac was striking terror into the heart of New England with his French Canadian bushrovers, the life of the people went on in the same grooves. Spite of a dozen raids on the Iroquois cantons, there was still danger from the warriors of the Mohawk, but the Iroquois braves had found a new stamping ground. Instead of attacking Canada they now crossed westward to war on the allies of the French, the tribes of the Illinois and the Mississippi; and with them traveled their liege friends, English traders from New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The government of Canada continued to be a despotism, pure and simple. The Supreme Council, consisting of the governor, the intendant, the bishop, and at different times from three to twelve councilors, stood between the people and the King of France, transmitting the King's will to the people, the people's wants to the King; and the laws enacted by the council ranged all the way from criminal decrees to such petty regulations as a modern city wardman might pass. Laws enacted to meet local needs, but subject to the veto of an absent ruler, who knew absolutely nothing of local needs, exhibited all the absurdities to be expected. The King of France desires the Sovereign Council to discourage the people from using horses, which are supposed to cause laziness, as "it is needful the inhabitants keep up their snowshoe travel so necessary in their wars." "If in two years the numbers of horses do not decrease, they are to be killed for meat." Then comes a law that reflects the presence of the bishop at the governing board. Horses have become the pride of the country beaux, and the gay be-ribboned carrioles are the distraction of the village curé. "Men are forbidden to gallop their horses within a third of a mile from the church on Sundays." New laws, regulations, arrests, are promulgated by the public crier, "crying up and down the highway to sound of trumpet and drum," chest puffed out with self-importance, gold braid enough on the red-coated regalia to overawe the simple habitants. Though the companies holding monopoly over trade yearly change, monopoly is still all-powerful in New France,—so all pervasive that in 1741, in order to prevent smuggling to defraud the Company of the Indies, it is enacted that "people using chintz-covered furniture" must upholster their chairs so that the stamp "La Cie des Indes" will be visible to the inspector. The matter of money is a great trouble to New France. Beaver is coin of the realm on the St. Lawrence, and though this beaver is paid for in French gold, the precious metal almost at once finds its way back to France for goods; so that the colony is without coin. Government cards are issued as coin, but as Europe will not accept card money, the result is that gold still flows from New France, and the colony is flooded with paper money worthless away from Quebec.
As of old, the people may still plead their own cases in lawsuits before the Sovereign Council, but now the privileges of caste and class and feudalism begin to be felt, and it is enacted that gentlemen may plead their own cases before the council only "when wearing their swords." Young men are urged to qualify as notaries. In addition to the title of "Sieur," baronies are created in Canada, foremost among them that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. The feudal seignior now has his coat of arms emblazoned on the church pew where he worships, on his coach door, and on the stone entrance to his mansion. The habitants are compelled to grind their wheat at his mill, to use his great bake oven, to patronize his tannery. The seigniorial mansion itself is taking on more of pomp. Cherry and mahogany furniture have replaced homemade, and the rough-cast walls are now covered with imported tapestries.
Not gently does the Sovereign Council deal with delinquents. In 1735 it is enacted of a man who suicided, "that the corpse be tied to a cart, dragged on a hurdle, head down, face to ground, through the streets of the town, to be hung up by the feet, an object of derision, then cast into the river in default of a cesspool." Criminals who evade punishment by flight are to be hanged in effigy. Montreal citizens are ordered to have their chimneys cleaned every month and their houses provided with ladders. Also "the inhabitants of Montreal must not allow their pigs to run in the street," and they "are forbidden to throw snowballs at each other," and—a regulation which people who know Montreal winters will appreciate—"they are ordered to make paths through the snow before their houses,"—to all of which petty regulations did royalty subscribe sign manual.
The Treaty of Ryswick closed the war between France and England the year before Frontenac died, but it was not known in Canada till 1698. As far as Canada was concerned it was no peace, barely a truce. Each side was to remain in possession of what it held at the time of the treaty, which meant that France retained all Hudson Bay but one small fort. Though the English of Boston had captured Port Royal, they had left no sign of possession but their flag flying over the tenantless barracks. The French returned from the woods, tore the flag down, and again took possession; so that, by the Treaty of Ryswick, Acadia too went back under French rule.
Indeed, matters were worse than before the treaty, for there could be no open war; but when English settlers spreading up from Maine met French traders wandering down from Acadia, there was the inevitable collision, and it was an easy trick for the rivals to stir up the Indians to raid and massacre and indiscriminate butchery. For Indian raids neither country would be responsible to the other. The story belongs to the history of the New England frontier rather than to the record of Canada. It is a part of Canada's past which few French writers tell and all Canadians would fain blot out, but which the government records prove beyond dispute. Indian warfare is not a thing of grandeur at its best, but when it degenerates into the braining of children, the bayoneting of women, the mutilation of old men, it is a horror without parallel; and the amazing thing is that the white men, who painted themselves as Indians and helped to wage this war, were so sure they were doing God's work that they used to kneel and pray before beginning the butchery. To understand it one has to go back to the Middle Ages in imagination. New France was violently Catholic, New England violently Protestant. Bigotry ever looks out through eyes of jaundiced hatred, and in destroying what they thought was a false faith, each side thought itself instrument of God. As for the French governors behind the scenes, who pulled the strings that let loose the helldogs of Indian war, they were but obeying the kingcraft of a royal master, who would use Indian warfare to add to his domain.
"The English have sent us presents to drive the Black Gowns away," declared the Iroquois in 1702 regarding the French Jesuits. "You did well," writes the King of France to his Viceroy in Quebec, "to urge the Abenakis of Acadia to raid the English of Boston." The Treaty of Ryswick became known at Quebec towards the end of 1698. The border warfare of ravage and butchery had begun by 1701, the English giving presents to the Iroquois to attack the French of the Illinois, the French giving presents to the Abenakis to raid the New England borders. Quebec offers a reward of twenty crowns for the scalp of every white man brought from the English settlements. New England retaliates by offering 20 pounds for every Indian prisoner under ten years of age, 40 pounds for every scalp of full-grown Indian. Presently the young noblesse of New France are off to the woods, painted like Indians, leading crews of wild bushrovers on ambuscade and midnight raid and border foray.
"We must keep things stirring towards Boston," declared Vaudreuil, the French governor. Midwinter of 1704 Hertel de Rouville and his four brothers set out on snowshoes with fifty-one bushrovers and two hundred Indians for Massachusetts. Dressed in buckskin, with musket over shoulder and dagger in belt, the forest rangers course up the frozen river beds southward of the St. Lawrence, and on over the height of land towards the Hudson, two hundred and fifty miles through pine woods snow padded and silent as death. Two miles from Deerfield the marchers run short of food. It is the last day of February, and the sun goes down over rolling snowdrifts high as the slab stockades of the little frontier town whose hearth-fire smoke hangs low in the frosty air, curling and clouding and lighting to rainbow colors as the ambushed raiders watch from their forest lairs. Snowshoes are laid aside, packs unstrapped, muskets uncased and primed, belts reefed tighter. Twilight gives place to starlight. Candles on the supper tables of the settlement send long gleams across the snow. Then the villagers hold their family prayers, all unconscious that out there in the woods are the bushrovers on bended knees, uttering prayers of another sort. Lights are put out. The village lies wrapped in sleep. Still Rouville's raiders lie waiting, shivering in the snow, till starlight fades to the gray darkness that precedes dawn. Then the bushrovers rise, and at moccasin pace, noiseless as tigers, skim across the snow, over the drifts, over the tops of the palisades, and have dropped into the town before a soul has awakened. There is no need to tell the rest. It was not war. It was butchery. Children were torn from their mother's breast to be brained on the hearthstone. Women were hacked to pieces. Houses were set on fire, and before the sun had risen thirty-eight persons had been slaughtered, and the French rovers were back on the forest trail, homeward bound with one hundred and six prisoners. Old and young, women of frail health and children barely able to toddle, were hurried along the trail at bayonet point. Those whose strength was unequal to the pace were summarily knocked on the head as they fagged, or failed to ford the ice streams. Twenty-four perished by the way. Of the one hundred and six prisoners scattered as captives among the Indians, not half were ever heard of again. The others were either bought from the Indians by Quebec people, whose pity was touched, or placed round in the convents to be converted to the Catholic faith. These were ultimately redeemed by the government of Massachusetts.
New England's fury over such a raid in time of peace knew no bounds. Yet how were the English to retaliate? To pursue an ambushed Indian along a forest trail was to follow a vanishing phantom.
From earliest times Boston had kept up trade with Port Royal, and of late years Port Royal had been infested with French pirates, who raided Boston shipping. Colonel Ben Church of Long Island, a noted bushfighter, of gunpowder temper and form so stout that his men had always to hoist him over logs in their forest marches, went storming from New York to Boston with a plan to be revenged by raiding Acadia.
Rouville's bushrovers had burned Deerfield the first of March. By May, Church had sailed from Boston with six hundred men on two frigates and half a hundred whaleboats, on vengeance bent. First he stopped at Baron St. Castin's fort in Maine. St. Castin it was who led the Indians against the English of Maine. The baron was absent, but his daughter was captured, with all the servants, and the fort was burned to the ground. Then up Fundy Bay sailed Church, pausing at Passamaquoddy to knock four Frenchmen on the head; pausing at Port Royal to take eight men prisoners, kill cattle, ravage fields; pausing at Basin of Mines to capture forty habitants, burn the church, and cut the dikes, letting the sea in on the crops; pausing at Beaubassin, the head of Fundy Bay, in August, to set the yellow wheat fields in flames! Then he sailed back to Boston with French prisoners enough to insure an exchange for the English held at Quebec.
No sooner had English sails disappeared over the sea than the French came out of the woods. St. Castin rebuilt his fort in Maine. The local Governor, who had held on with his gates shut and cannon pointed while Church ravaged Port Royal village, now strengthened his walls. Acadia took a breath and went on as before,—a little world in itself, with the pirate ships slipping in and out, loaded to the water line with Boston booty; with the buccaneer Basset throwing his gold round like dust; with the brave soldier Bonaventure losing his head and losing his heart to the painted lady, Widow Freneuse, who came from nobody knew where and lived nobody knew how, and plied her mischief of winning the hearts of other women's husbands. "She must be sent away," thundered the priest from the pulpit, straight at the garrison officer whose heart she dangled as her trophy. "She must be sent away," thundered the King's mandate; but the King was in France, and Madame Freneuse wound her charms the tighter round the hearts of the garrison officers, and bided her time, to the scandal of the parish and impotent rage of the priest. Was she vixen or fool, this fair snake woman with the beautiful face, for whose smile the officers risked death and disgrace? Was she spy or adventuress? She signed herself as "Widow Freneuse," and had applied to the King for a pension as having grown sons fighting in the Indian wars. She will come into this story again, snakelike and soft-spoken, and appealing for pity, and fair to look upon, but leaving a trail of blood and treachery and disgrace where she goes.
The fur trade of Port Royal at this time was controlled by a family ring of La Tours and Charnisays, descendants of the ancient foes; and they lived a life of reckless gayety, spiced with all the excitement of war and privateering and matrimonial intrigue. Such was life inside Port Royal. Outside was the quiet peace of a home-loving, home-staying peasantry. Few of the farmers could read or write. The houses were little square Norman cottages,—"wooden boxes" the commandant called them,—with the inevitable porch shaded by the fruit trees now grown into splendid orchards. By diking out the sea the peasants farmed the marsh lands and saved themselves the trouble of clearing the forests. Trade was carried on with Boston and the West Indies. No card money here! The farmers of Acadia demanded coin in gold from the privateers who called for cargo, and it is said that in time of such raids as Colonel Church's, great quantities of this gold were carried out by night and buried in huge pots,—as much as 5000 louis d'ors (pounds) in one pot,—to be dug up after the raiders had departed. Naturally, as raids grew frequent, men sometimes made the mistake of digging up other men's pots, and one officer lost his reputation over it. All his knowledge of the outside world, of politics, of religion, the Acadian farmer obtained from his parish priest; and the word of the curé was law.
Encouraged by Church's success and stung by the raids of French corsairs from Port Royal, New England set herself seriously to the task of conquering Acadia. Colonel March sailed from Boston with one thousand men and twenty-three transports, and on June 6, 1707, came into Port Royal. Misfortunes began from the first. March's men were the rawest of recruits,—fishermen, farmers, carpenters, turned into soldiers. Unused to military discipline, they resisted command. A French guardhouse stood at the entrance to Port Royal Basin, and fifteen men at once fled to the fort with warning of the English invasion. Consequently, when Colonel March and Colonel Appleton attempted to land their men, they were serenaded by the shots of an ambushed foe. Also French soldiers deserted to the English camp with fabulous stories about the strength of the French under Subercase. These yarns ought to have discredited themselves, but they struck terror to the hearts of March's green fighters. Then came St. Castin from St. John River with bushrovers to help Subercase. To the amazement of the French the English hoisted sail and returned, on June 16, without having fired more than a round of shot. The truth is, March's carpenters and fishermen refused to fight, though reënforcements joined them halfway home and they made a second attempt on Port Royal in August. March returned to Boston heartbroken, for his name had become a byword to the mob, and he was greeted in the streets with shouts of "Old Wooden Sword!"
While Boston was attempting to wreak vengeance on Acadia for the raiders of Quebec, the bushrovers from the St. Lawrence continued to scourge the outlying settlements of New England. To post soldiers on the frontier was useless. Wherever there were guards the raiders simply passed on to some unprotected village, and to have kept soldiers along the line of the whole frontier would have required a standing army. Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, northern New York,—on the frontier of each reigned perpetual terror. And the fiendish work was a paying business to the pagan Indian; for the Christian white men paid well for all scalps, and ransom money could always be extorted for captives. Barely had the Boston raid on Port Royal failed, when Governor de Vaudreuil of Quebec retaliated by turning his raiders loose on Haverhill. The English fleet failed at Port Royal in June. By dawn of Sunday, August 29, Hertel de Rouville had swooped on the English village of Haverhill with one hundred Canadian bushrovers and one hundred and fifty Indians. The story of one raid is the story of all; so this one need not be told. As the raiders were discovered at daylight, the people had a chance to defend themselves, and some of the villagers escaped, the family of one being hidden by a negro nurse under tubs in the cellar. Alarm had been carried to the surrounding settlements, and men rode hot haste in pursuit of the forty prisoners. Hertel de Rouville coolly sent back word, if the pursuers did not desist, all the prisoners would be scalped and left on the roadside. Some fifty English had fallen in the fight, but the French lost fifteen, among them young Jared of Verchéres, brother of the heroine.
The only peace for Massachusetts was the peace that would be a victory, and again New England girded herself to the task of capturing Acadia. It was open war now, for the crowns of England and France were at odds. The troops were commanded by General Francis Nicholson, an English officer who brought out four war ships and four hundred trained marines. There were, besides, thirty-six transports and three thousand provincial troops, clothed and outfitted by Queen Anne of England. Sunday, September 24, 1710, the fleet glides majestically into Port Royal Basin. That night the wind blew a hurricane and the transport Caesar went aground with a crash that smashed her timbers to kindling wood and sent twenty-four men to a watery grave; but General Nicholson gave the raw provincials no time for panic fright. Day dawn, Monday, drums rolling a martial tread, trumpets blowing, bugles setting the echoes flying, flags blowing to the wind in the morning sun, he commanded Colonel Vetch to lead the men ashore. Inside Port Royal's palisades Subercase, the French commander, had less than three hundred men, half that number absolutely naked of clothing, and all short of powder. There were not provisions to last a month; but, game to his soul's marrow, as all the warriors of those early days, Subercase put up a brave fight, sending his bombs singing over the heads of the English troops in a vain attempt to baffle the landing. Nicholson retaliated by moving his bomb ship, light of draught, close to the French fort and pouring a shower of bombs through the roofs of the French fort. Spite of the wreck the night before, by four o'clock Monday afternoon all the English had landed in perfect order and high spirits. Slowly the English forces swung in a circle completely round the fort. Again and again, by daylight and dark, Subercase's naked soldiers rushed, screeching the war whoop, to ambush and stampede the English line; but Nicholson's regulars stood the fire like rocks, and the desperate sortie of the French ended in fifty of Subercase's soldiers deserting en masse to the English. By Friday Nicholson's guns were all mounted in place to bombard the little wooden fort. Subercase was desperate. Women and children from the settlement had crowded into the fort for protection, and were now crazed with fear by the bursting bombs, while the naked soldiers could be kept on the walls only at the sword point of their commanding officers. For two hundred French to have held out longer against three thousand five hundred English would have been madness. Subercase made the presence of the women in Port Royal an excuse to send a messenger with flag of truce across to Nicholson, asking the English to take the women under their protection. Nicholson might well have asked what protection the French raiders had accorded the women of the New England frontiers; but he sent back polite answer that "as he was not warring on women and children" he would receive them in the English camp, meanwhile holding Subercase's messenger prisoner, as he had entered the English camp without warning, eyes unbound. Sunday, October 1, the English bombs again began singing overhead. Subercase sends word he will capitulate if given honorable terms. For a month the parleying continues. Then November 13 the terms are signed on both sides, the English promising to furnish ships to carry the garrison to some French port and pledging protection to the people of the settlement. November 14 the French officers and their ladies come across to the English camp and breakfast in pomp with the English commanders. Seventeen New England captives are hailed forth from Port Royal dungeons, "all in rags, without shirts, shoes, or stockings." On the 16th Nicholson draws his men up in two lines, one on each side of Port Royal gates, and the two hundred French soldiers marched out, saluting Nicholson as they passed to the transports. On the bridge, halfway out, French officers meet the English officers, doff helmets, and present the keys to the fort. For the last time Port Royal changes hands. Henceforth it is English, and in gratitude for the Queen's help Nicholson renamed the place as it is known to-day,—Annapolis. Among the raiders capitulating is the famous bushrover Baron St. Castin of Maine.