Quebec had passed through her last ordeal of fire and sword, and for many years the 31st of December was celebrated with enthusiasm as the anniversary of the victory. But although the effort to detach the French Canadians from their allegiance to Great Britain resulted miserably in the defeat of Montgomery and Arnold, the Thirteen Colonies did not quite relinquish the hope of accomplishing their end. Instead of an army, Congress now despatched commissioners to Canada, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton being of the number. The mission, however, was without success; for the ancient capital, although the most foreign in speech and custom of all places in British North America, remained steadfast under the temptation to swerve from her allegiance. Franklin, indeed, added nothing to his reputation by his general relations with the settlements on the St. Lawrence. For twenty-four years he had held the position of Deputy-PostmasterGeneral for the English colonies, Quebec being regarded as in some sense within his jurisdiction; and the unsatisfactory monthly service between Quebec and Montreal as well as the absence of intermediate post-offices, had made him unpopular along the Canadian river. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the French, especially for a cause which their strong monarchical principles failed to approve.
It is estimated that more than twenty-five thousand United Empire Loyalists crossed the border at the end of the American Revolutionary War to live under the British flag. These, for the most part, went to Upper Canada, the settlements along Lake Ontario and the Bay of Quinte, being centres of vigorous life and progress; while not a few settled in Quebec, adding to the sound character of its sturdy population.
A further accession, moreover, was made by the arrival of two regiments of Hessians and Brunswickers, who came out to garrison the citadel. Many of these presently obtained their discharge in order to marry and settle down in Quebec. The current directory discloses many names of German origin, names now high up in the roll of citizenship, but once in the books of the Hanoverian regiments of George III.
A memorable figure passes across the stage of Quebec history just at this time. In 1782 the frigate Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, lay in the harbour, and her brilliant, handsome commander was Horatio Nelson. This paragon of fortune had entered His Majesty's Navy as a child of twelve; at fourteen he was captain's coxswain on the expedition of the Carcass to the North Pole; and now, with an astonishing experience crowded into a life of twenty-four years, he dropped anchor before the rock of Quebec.
The sober Haldimand was Governor, and the Sturm und Drang of the American Revolution had cast a cloud upon the social life of Canada. For if Quebec was not what it had been in the days of Sir Guy and Lady Carleton, the sterner régime of Haldimand had deeper influences behind it than the militarism of a rigid soldier. Nevertheless, Nelson and his gay company helped to lighten the heavy cloud, and for the space of a few weeks dinners and dances, on shore and on board the Albemarle, enlivened the autumn season in the capital. Southey's Life of Nelson contains rather a quaint picture of the commander of the Albemarle about this time. Prince William Henry, then known as the Duke of Clarence, regarded him as the merest boy of a captain he had ever seen. Dressed in a full-laced uniform, an old-fashioned waistcoat with long flaps, and his lank, unpowdered hair tied in a stiff Hessian tail of extraordinary length, he made altogether so remarkable a figure that, to use the Prince's own words, "I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was nor what he came about. But his address and conversation were irresistibly pleasing; and when he spoke on professional subjects, it was with an enthusiasm which showed he was no common being."
Freemasons' Hall, at the top of Mountain Hill, was the fashionable rendezvous ashore, and not since the days of Murray's garrison had the old stone hostel been so merrily possessed. One Miss Mary Simpson appears to have been a belle of the period; and Sir James Le Moine, the antiquary, has identified her as the lady whose charms might have changed the course of history. "At Quebec," writes his biographer, "Nelson became acquainted with Alexander Davison, by whose interference he was prevented from making what would have been called an imprudent marriage. The Albemarle was about to leave the station, her captain had taken leave of his friends, and was gone down the river to the place of anchorage, when, the next morning, as Davison was walking on the beach, to his surprise he saw Nelson coming back in his boat. Upon inquiring the cause of his reappearance, Nelson took his arm to walk towards the town, and told him he found it utterly impossible to leave Quebec without again seeing the woman whose society contributed so much to his happiness, and then and there offering her his hand. 'If you do,' said his friend, 'your utter ruin must inevitably follow.' 'Then let it follow,' cried Nelson; 'for I am resolved to do it.' 'And I,' replied Davison, 'am resolved you shall not.' Nelson, however, on this occasion was less resolved than his friend, and suffered himself to be led back to the boat." [37]
It is not clear why Nelson's utter ruin should "inevitably follow" his marriage with Mary Simpson. Was it on account of his youth? Or was the statement due to Davison's distrust of marriage in general? If this was the reason, it is evident that Nelson was not greatly moved by his friend's pessimism; for not much more than a year later we find him making an unsuccessful proposal of marriage to Miss Andrews, the daughter of an English clergy-man at St. Omer, France, a rebuff for which, in the following year, he found consolation in an alliance with Mrs. Nesbit.
The settlement of the United Empire Loyalists in Canada greatly altered the political complexion of the conquered country. The terms of the Quebec Act of 1774, though necessary in the circumstances, were distinctly opposed to the views of the English minority, who strongly resented the employment of French civil law. And now these newcomers greatly increased the strength of this English faction, the peculiar conditions under which they chose to throw in their lot with Canada giving them a claim upon the Home government which could not be disregarded. The continuous agitation for parliamentary government which marked the years from 1783 to 1790, was not confined to the English section of the population. With the English, however, it took the special form of a demand for a separate province west of the river Beaudette, the capital of which should be Cataraqui,[38] "with the blessings of British laws, and of British Government, and an exemption from French tenures."
In the midst of this political turmoil, Sir Guy Carleton, who, for his distinguished services, had been raised to the peerage with the title of Lord Dorchester, returned to Canada as Governor-General; and on the 23rd of October, 1786, Quebec welcomed her former deliverer at the landing-stage, the whole population, French and English, uniting to give him an honourable and joyous reception. Every one felt indeed that Dorchester was the man to solve the political difficulty of the period; and with these omens of success he set to work forthwith, dividing the province into four administrative districts on an English pattern, and preparing for the English government a careful report on the social, political, and judicial conditions of his province, to facilitate remedial legislation.
In the spring of 1791 the younger Pitt introduced into the British House of Commons a Bill providing for the political needs of Canada. It proposed the division of the country into two provinces, the special character of each being preserved through the medium of an elective assembly. This naturally raised strenuous opposition among the English minority whom this division would still leave in the province of Lower Canada. It was all very well, they declared, for the English of Upper Canada to be accorded representative government, but for themselves this measure would mean a further decrease of influence in Quebec. On behalf of the English section of the population, Adam Lymburner, an influential merchant of the city, proceeded to England, and was heard at the bar of the House of Commons. The debate was keen and fierce. Pitt supported the Bill in its original form, contending that the territorial separation would put an end to the strife between the old French inhabitants and the new settlers from Britain and the New England colonies. Edmund Burke, whose speech related mainly to the French Revolution, was of opinion that "to attempt to amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws, and customs, was a complete absurdity." Fox, opposing the division of the province, accused Burke of irrelevancy in his address, and made a speech which provoked a memorable quarrel and brought to an end the friendship of the two greatest Parliamentary orators of the century.
At last, however, the Bill became law under the title of the Constitutional Act; and on the 17th of December, 1792, the first legislature of Lower Canada assembled in the chapel of the Bishop's Palace, which had been fitted up as a council chamber. From the seventeenth century this hoary structure of stone had overlooked the Grand Battery from the top of Mountain Hill, commanding a view of the basin and the attenuated Côte de Beaupré, of which from the time of Laval it had been the seigneurial manor-house. In appropriating the episcopal palace for legislative purposes, the Imperial government recompensed the Catholic see of Quebec by an annuity. The old French building was demolished in 1834, and the new House of Parliament, soon afterwards erected on the same site, served to indicate the wonderful political development of the French province as an integral part of the British Empire.
The proclamation of the Constitutional Act, on the 26th of December, 1791, was the signal for great public rejoicings in Quebec. During the day the regimental bands played to the trooping of the colours on the Esplanade, and in the evening the streets were ablaze with lights and torches, while fountains of fireworks broke from the high bastions of the citadel. A public dinner, attended by one hundred and sixty gentlemen, brought the fête to a close.
An unusual feature of these celebrations was the presence of His Royal Highness Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, son of George III., who had come to Quebec in the preceding summer as colonel of the Seventh Fusiliers. The transfer of this gay regiment from the Gibraltar of the Old World to the Gibraltar of the New did more than merely decorate the social annals of Quebec; for the visible presence of a prince of the blood contributed not a little to crystallise the loyalty of a French province not quite beyond the influence of the great revolutionary fires of Europe. Although he was but twenty-five, Prince Edward had the tact and savoir faire of riper years; and during his three years' residence in the garrison, exerted a great and far-reaching influence on the fidelity of French Canada. The reception of the gallant Prince when he landed at the head of his regiment in August 1791 was marked by all that enthusiasm which the Gallic city had learned of old. Long since, in 1665, the Marquis de Tracy had schooled her in these august pageants, and now when Commodore Sawyer's squadron, consisting of the Leander, the Resource, the Ariadne, the Thisbe, the Ulysses, and the Resistance, dropped anchor in the basin, Quebec was streaming with flags and bunting and resounding with music. Next day his Royal Highness held a levée at Château St. Louis, where the civic authorities assembled to do him honour.
Prince Edward established himself at Kent House, the sombre mansion in St. Louis Street, which Bigot had built for the fascinating Angélique des Meloises almost half a century before. Here he held his court; but his heart was in the country, and except upon public occasions, he preferred the stately retirement of Haldimand House, a rustic retreat still standing near the brink of Montmorency Falls. Gaily he made his promenade along the Beauport Road, or shot over the marshes of La Carnardière; and at his own or the neighbouring homestead of M. de Salaberry, the genial company whiled away many an evening with whist. Frequent balls and receptions in the old Château recalled the days of Frontenac's merry court; or, still further back, that night of Canada's first ball, the 4th of February, 1667, when the courtly soldiers of the Carignan-Salières regiment led the grand dames of New France through the mazes of a Versailles quadrille. From a child, indeed, Quebec had conned the worldly wisdom of Fontainebleau. Her wholesome reputation for the social graces is reflected in the compliment paid by George III. to the first Canadian lady who had the honour to be presented at the Court of St. James's: "Madame, if the ladies of Canada are at all like you, I have indeed made a conquest!"
It was among these gracious spirits that Prince Edward's lines were fallen; and within the space of three years the large-hearted Duke had bound the hearts of French Canada more firmly to the throne upon which his own daughter was to sit as Queen Victoria.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the feudalism which had lost Canada to France was in its mortal throes. The shock of the French Revolution was quivering through the hemisphere, and the convulsion was felt heavily in the New World. In the United States, Washington was President, Hamilton was at the Treasury, and Jefferson was Secretary of State, with Madison as a colleague in the Cabinet. In the early stages of the Revolution the United States had given enthusiastic sympathy to the movement; but as it grew in violence, all but the mob and Jefferson and Madison were alienated. No degree of tyranny appeared to offend the sensibilities of these latter statesmen; and when the French Convention declared war against England, their approval of that measure all but committed the United States to the principles of red republicanism. Genet, the French Ambassador to the United States, with an insolence that defeated itself, carried on unblushing intrigues until his recall was requested. For a time, moreover, the populace cried out for war with England, and only the calm resolution of Washington averted such a catastrophe. John Jay was presently despatched to England to negotiate the "Treaty of Amity and Commerce," but it required all the weight of the sober-minded portion of the population to secure its final ratification.
This, however, did not prevent M. Adet, the new French Ambassador to the United States, from sending an address to the French Canadians, informing them of the success of the arms of France against the allied powers of Europe, and calling upon them to rally round the standard of the Republic. The response to this appeal in the Province of Lower Canada was absurdly feeble. The greatest power in all Canada—the Church—shrank in horror from the blood-stained banner of regicide France; and zealous always for the monarchy, the Catholic hierarchy indignantly spurned the overtures of a republic whose most cherished principle was atheism—which had abandoned the worship of God for the cult of Reason. "For God and the King" had been the priestly motto from time immemorial, and the new Republic repudiated obligation not to one only but to both. Accordingly, the vast influence of the Church was exerted on the side of loyalty to Great Britain.
It must not be assumed, however, that the intrigues which the French Republic carried on by way of the United States, found no response whatever in Lower Canada; for naturally enough there were some whose habitual discontent made them ready for treasonable enterprise. Yet the promoters of disaffection miscalculated the numbers and strength of their party, and the resulting demonstration was factitious and puerile.
Lord Dorchester was withdrawn from Canada in the midst of this small and abortive mutiny. For sixteen years, all told, this gallant soldier of Wolfe's army had administered the country he helped to conquer, and no Governor before or since has earned a more deserving fame. Quebec and Montreal strove to outdo each other in the protestations of loyalty and regret marking their valedictory addresses. On the 9th of July, 1796, the frigate Active embarked the veteran Governor, and sailed for England. The vessel was wrecked, however, off the island of Anticosti, fortunately without loss of life; and in small boats Lord Dorchester and his companions reached Isle Percée, where they were afterwards picked up by a ship from Halifax and conveyed to England.
General Prescott, who succeeded to the governorship, was a man of harsher temperament. But although his anxiety for the loyalty of the French province was much increased by the intrigues of revolutionary agents, he soon perceived their plans to be fatuous and their enterprise devoid of importance. While the forward spirits in Quebec were leavening the mass of the habitants with specious reports of a French fleet ready to co-operate with them, a force composed for the most part of ill-disposed Americans was to percolate into Canada from Vermont. This so-called fleet consisted of a ship, ironically called the Olive Branch, which had sailed from Ostend bound for Vermont with twenty thousand stand of arms, several pieces of artillery, and a quantity of ammunition. She had not got far on her way, however, before a British cruiser seized her and bore her into Portsmouth harbour.
Meanwhile, Du Millière, an alleged French General, was scattering money about on the borders of Vermont, while a plausible American was intriguing at Quebec. With timber cutters and the simplest of artisans as his confederates, this misguided revolutionist hatched his theatrical conspiracy in the neighbouring woods. He proposed to overcome the city-guard with laudanum; and fifteen thousand men were only awaiting the uplifting of his hand! These and similar illusions possessed a poor dupe named M'Lane, until the Government having decided upon the apprehension of the leading conspirators, M'Lane was arrested and charged with high treason. Chief Justice Osgoode presided at the trial, and a jury condemned him to death.
On the 21st of July, 1797, above two thousand troops were drawn up in the streets of Quebec as the chief conspirator was led forth to his execution on the glacis just outside St. John's Gate. "I saw M'Lane conducted to the place of execution," writes De Gaspé excitedly. "He was seated with his back to the horse on a wood-sleigh whose runners grated on the bare ground and stones. An axe and a block were on the front part of the conveyance. He looked at the spectators in a calm, confident manner, but without the least effrontery. He was a tall and remarkably handsome man. I heard some women of the lower class exclaim, whilst deploring his sad fate, 'Ah, if it were only as in old times, that handsome man would not have to die! There would be plenty of girls ready to marry him in order to save his life!' And even several days after the execution I heard the same thing repeated. This belief, then universal among the lower class, must, I suppose, have arisen from the fact that many French prisoners, condemned to the stake by the savages, had owed their lives to the Indian women who had married them. The sentence on M'Lane, however, was executed in all its barbarity. I saw all with my own eyes, a big student named Boudrault lifting me up from time to time in his arms so that I might lose nothing of the horrible butchery. Old Dr. Duvert was near us, and he drew out his watch as soon as Ward the hangman threw down the ladder upon which M'Lane was stretched on his back, with the cord round his neck made fast to the beam of the gallows....'He is quite dead,' said Dr. Duvert, when the hangman cut down the body at the end of about twenty-five minutes....The spectators who were nearest to the scaffold say that the hangman then refused to proceed further with the execution...and it was only after a good supply of guineas that the sheriff succeeded in making him execute all the sentence, and that after each act of the fearful drama his demands became more and more exorbitant. Certain it is that after that time Mr. Ward became quite a personage, never walking in the streets except with silk stockings, a three-cornered hat, and a sword at his side. Two watches, one in his breeches pocket and the other hanging from his neck by a silver chain, completed his toilet."
With Black, the ship-carpenter who turned king's evidence against M'Lane, the reward was far different. Blood-money failed to solace him for the contumely heaped upon him; and, according to the historian Garneau, he was so overcome by public contempt that after some years he was reduced to begging his bread in the streets of Quebec.
Since the enactment of this gruesome tragedy more than a century ago, the steep declivity which joins the Lower to the Upper Town, just outside St. John's Gate, has retained the name of Gallows Hill. No other executions appear to have taken place upon the spot, a well-known hillock upon the Plains of Abraham having been for many years the Golgotha of Quebec, while Gallows Hill only served this purpose during a transition period. By 1814 we find an execution taking place from the gaol erected four years before in St. Stanislaus Street within the walls. On the 20th of May in this year, Patrick Murphy paid the extreme penalty of the law for the wilful murder of Marie Anne Dussault of the Parish of Les Escuriels. Four years later Charles Alarie and Thomas Thomas were executed at the same place, "for stealing to the value of forty shillings in a vessel on a navigable river." The same register chronicles the dire fate of John Hart, a Nova Scotian who, for larceny, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and to be publicly "whipt between ten and twelve in the market-place." Hart had no stomach for this ignominy, and escaped from gaol on the 14th of February, 1826. Having been recaptured three days later, in November of that year he stood with the noose about his neck upon the fatal door.
It is doubtful, indeed, whether the unfortunate creatures behind those stout walls on the Côte St. Stanislaus ever breathed the prayer contained in a quaint inscription which till lately survived upon the lintel of their prison-house: "Carcer iste bonos a pravis vindicare possit." [39] To-day the building itself serves a more kindly purpose, though the pious legend over the doorway might need but slight revision. Morrin College occupies one wing, and the other contains the well-stocked library of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Valuable manuscripts have taken the place of useless malefactors in the donjon keep, and the vaults are full of the gold and myrrh of history.
The punishment of crime undoubtedly underwent more change in the last half of the nineteenth century than during several of the preceding centuries. There is, for instance, a striking resemblance between the public whipping of John Hart and the chastisement of offenders so long before as the time of Frontenac. In the year 1681, one Jean Rattier was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted on condition of accepting the post of public executioner. Fourteen years afterwards Rattier's own wife was apprehended for theft, and according to her sentence, she was publicly whipped in the Lower Town Market-place by the dutiful husband.
But now to leave the fortress city for a little space, and see its influence working in the wilds which it had commanded by the valour of its adventurers and traders. While England and France had been contending on the St. Lawrence for mastery, and the struggle to gain or to retain the Gibraltar of America had dragged its length through generations, far off in the white north another strife between the civil energies of both nations was being waged. The English explorers—Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and Baffin—had been the first to reach the northern coast from the sea, giving their names to water and territory which have since become familiar to the civilised world. Theirs was the old dream—a north-western route to India and China. No such vision, however, had presented itself to the French explorers who, about the same time as the English, planted their flag upon those barren shores, and pushed up from the south, partly to explore, but more certainly to develop the trade in furs which the Compagnie des cents Associés, founded by Richelieu in 1627, had already worked to advantage. The charter of this Company, indeed, did not include the regions of Hudson's Bay, but was confined to the province of Canada alone. To-day, Canada comprises all the vast territory north of the 49th parallel of latitude, even to the pole; then its sphere of influence stretched westward to the Missouri and the Mississippi, and southward to Louisiana; while those regions now called Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Assiniboine, and the Klondike were as yet unknown. When Hearne, the Hudson's Bay Company explorer, pushed his way northward and westward to the copper mine on the Copper River, it seemed as if the ultimate ends of the world had been reached, and that the vast region of ice and snow, inhabited by wandering tribes of Indians, would be for ever the property of a trading company.
So far back as 1630 an agency of commerce and exploration was founded in Quebec, under the name of the Beaver Company. This was forty years before the Hudson's Bay Company received its charter from the second Charles. The French went so far in their eagerness for territory that they even claim to have discovered Hudson's Bay, through one Jean Bourdon, in 1656. This claim is not admitted, however, in the Jesuit Relations, where, in 1672, Father Albanel writes: "Hitherto this voyage had been considered impossible to Frenchmen, who, after having undertaken it three times, and not having been able to surmount the obstacles, had seen themselves to abandon it in despair of success." The claims of England to the territory were undoubted; but there can be no question that Frenchmen were the first traders in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay.
The names of two stand out clearly, first as agents of French enterprise, and afterwards of successful English adventure, in this early commercial history of the far north; where, for nearly two centuries and a half, British energy and justice, and the honesty of English rule has, through the Hudson's Bay Company, worked southward to meet the ever increasing territory owned by the French until 1759. The Frenchmen whose names are so identified with the early history of Hudson's Bay were Medard Chouart, called also Groseilliers, and Pierre Radisson. They had emigrated from France as young men in the middle years of the century, and settled at first in Three Rivers. After a somewhat intricate matrimonial experience, Radisson had established relations which afterwards stood them both in good stead, at the same time typifying the ambiguous nature of international relations in the far north. On the French side he was son-in-law to Abraham Martin, whose name was given to the Heights of Abraham; he was also son-in-law to Sir John Kirke, a brother of the English admiral to whom Champlain surrendered Quebec; while to bind him closer to the companion of his adventurous life, he was brother-in-law to Groseilliers.
Thus allied by disposition and relationship the two enterprising Frenchmen, allured by visions of fortune and adventure in the unknown regions of the north, soon abandoned the safe comforts of town life; and having served a probation in several short expeditions, they at last applied to the reigning powers in Quebec for leave to operate on a larger scale. The existing Company, however, jealous for its monopoly, hedged them round with such difficult conditions that the young men broke impatiently from all control and plunged into the wilds of the West, penetrating at least as far as Lake Winnipeg. But Quebec was a stern step-mother, and when they returned, instead of meeting congratulation, they were arrested and fined for illicit trading. After a vain appeal to Paris, finding themselves rejected and discredited among their own countrymen, the two adventurers performed the first of those political somersaults which made them a nine days' wonder alternately in London and Paris, and finally brought to one, at least, an inglorious competency of £10 a month. Fifty eventful years were, however, to roll past before that anti-climax to the drama of their lives. To begin with, when they had shaken off the dust of New France, they repaired to Boston, propounding to the New England traders the novel scheme for furnishing an expedition to be sent round to Hudson's Bay by way of the sea; at the same time offering their own experience for service in the undertaking. Although disposed to favour the proposal, the Boston merchants had no available ships of their own, but advised an application to the English Court. Arriving in England in 1667, the two friends were introduced by Lord Arlington, then ambassador in Paris, to Prince Rupert, the natural patron of all adventurers at the time, and who, moreover, was then expecting a grant of territory in America as a reward for his services to the royal cause. Already the merchants of London had been roused to the possibilities of this trade by the recent arrival of the first cargo of furs from New Amsterdam; and now when the two impartial Frenchmen pointed out to them that the trade was being choked in Quebec, and that England had a golden opportunity of profitable enterprise, two vessels, the Nonsuch and the Eagle, were fitted out without delay, and one Captain Gillam received instructions to investigate and report.
Such was the beginning of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having spent a winter at Fort Charles,the first fort on the Bay, so named after the royal patron, the adventurers returned to England in 1670 with such solid proofs of the soundness of the speculation, that the new Company received a charter from the King under the title of "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, Trading into Hudson's Bay." The Company were constituted lords and proprietors of the territories round Hudson's Bay, now called Rupert's Land, having powers like those of the feudal lords of an earlier time—"to employ ships of war, to erect forts, to make reprisals, to send home English traders who neglected their licenses, and to declare war or make peace with any people not Christian." Although the Declaration of Rights in 1689 limited the rights granted by exclusive charters, and allowed British subjects to trade freely to any quarter, yet the Hudson's Bay Company had in the twenty years previous to that date obtained such a hold upon the new territory, especially by the erection of forts, that they easily left all competitors behind.
The spirit of discovery was never so alive among the French as during those years following the expulsion of Radisson and Groseilliers; yet the Government in Quebec was slow to realise the serious nature of the menace in the north; and from the official papers afterwards prepared for the British delegates at Utrecht, their easy confidence is thus described:—
"Mr. Bailey, the Company's first Governor of their factories and settlements in that Bay, entertained a friendly correspondence by letters and otherwise with Monsieur Frontenac, then Governor of Canada, not in the least complaining, in several years, of any pretended injury done to France by the said Company's settling a trade and building a fort at the bottom of Hudson's Bay, nor making pretensions to any right of France on that Bay, or to the countries bordering on it, till long after this time."
Trouble, however, came in due course. With a natural distrust of renegade Frenchmen, Governor Bailey suspected the two friends of being concerned in a plot set on foot by certain Jesuit agents of the Intendant Talon in 1673, by which the loyalty of the Indians was to be alienated from the English traders. After scenes of personal violence, the alleged traitors justified the suspicions of the Governor by severing once more the slender tie of their allegiance and returning to the service of France. Nor was it long before new fruits of their restless energy appeared. In 1681 the Compagnie du Nord was organised as a rival to the "Adventurers of England"; and in the same year the Intendant Duchesneau complained to his Government of the aggressions of the English traders.
"They" (the English), he wrote, "are still in Hudson's Bay on the north and do great damage to our fur trade....The sole means to prevent them succeeding in what is prejudicial to us would be to drive them by main force from that Bay, which belongs to us. Or, if there would be an objection in coming to that extremity, to construct forts on the rivers falling into the lakes, in order to stop the Indians at these points."
From this time to the peace of Utrecht there was war between the Hudson's Bay Company and the French. A veiled expedition set out from Quebec in 1682, under the guidance of Groseilliers and Radisson, to attack the forts on the Bay; and by their effrontery and good generalship they at last became possessed of the newly built Fort Nelson, with Bridgar its Governor, and returned next year with their prisoners and spoils to Quebec. But this triumph was soon converted by their lawless temper into disgrace and condemnation; and to escape penalty for misappropriating large quantities of fur, the two leaders were compelled to fly from New France for the second time, and once more take refuge in Paris.
But now the English Company decided to make another bid for the services of these versatile bush-rangers, who once more proved their graceful facility for playing a double game. Radisson was sent by the English ambassador to London, where he became a lion of society, and was presented to Charles II. John Selwyn thus describes his appearance: [40]—
"To the Duke's Playhouse, where Radisson, the American fur-trader, was in the royal box. Never was such a combination of French, English, and Indian savage as Sir John Kirke's son-in-law....He was not wont to dress so when he was last here, but he has got him a new coat with much lace upon it, which he wears with his leather breeches and shoes. His hair is a perfect tangle. It is said he has made an excellent fortune for himself."