The Defense of Canada Under Louis XIV, 1643-1701
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70- 26,298 HARDCASTLE, David Paul, 1937- THE DEFENSE OF CANADA UNDER LOUIS XIV, 1643- 1701. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1970 History, modem University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan 4 I THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE DEFENSE OF CANADA UNDER LOUIS XIV, 1643-1701 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By David Paul Hardcastle, B.A., B.D., M.A. The Ohio State University 1970 Approved by Adviser Department of History ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writer wishes to thank his parents, family, teachers, and friends--all of whom contributed in their way toward making this work possible. VITA September 18, 1937 .... Born - Little Rock, Arkansas 1959 ..................... B.A., Texas Christian Univer sity, Ft. Worth, Texas 1965 ...................... B.D., Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 1966 ......................M.A , The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1966-1970................. Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State Univer sity, Columbus, Ohio PUBLICATIONS "Some Causes of the Indian Massacre at Jamestown, 1622," Argo (Phi Alpha Theta Publication), 1968. FIELDS OF STUDY Early Modern Europe (Major Field): Professor John C. Rule Renaissance and Reformation: Professor Harold J. Grimm Medieval Europe: Professor Frank C. Pegues iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i i VITA .................................................. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. i ..................... v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.............................. vi INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND........................ 1 Chapter I. THE DEFENSE OF CANADA UNDER THE COMPANY OF NEW FRANCE, 1643-1663............. 36 Local Defense ........................ 44 Colonial Defense...................... 71 II. THE ROYAL INTERVENTION, 1663-1667. 112 III. THE PAX GALLICA AND ITS DECAY, 1667-1684 173 IV. THE GREAT IROQUOIS-BNGLISH WAR ON CANADA, 1684-1701 ................... 255 V. CONCLUSION................................. 388 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................... 411 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BRH Bulletin de R^cherches Historique CMNF Collection des y:,an user its contenant Lettres, Mdmoires, et aunr'es Documents faistoriques relitifs 1 la Ncuvelle-France DHNY Documentary History of the State of New York Edits et Ord Edits, Ordonnances royaux, declarations et arrets du Conseil d'Btat du Roi concernant le Canada JR Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents NYCD Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the Etate of New York PAC Public Archives of Canada RAPg Rapport d'archiviste de la province de Quebec v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Champlain’s Map of 1632.................... 6 2. Indian Tribes in Canada in 1600............ 9 3. Settlements and Trade Routes .............. 21 4. Indian Tribes in Canada after 1660 .... 31 5. Ruins of Ste. Marie-on-the-Wye............ 70 6. Iroquoia and the Richelieu Forts ............ 135 7. The Great Lakes................................202 8. La Barre's Camp at La Famine ................ 264 9. Troyes' Expedition .....................281 10. Early Map of Iroquoia......................... 287 11. Denonville's Expedition....................... 299 12. The Defenses of Quebec........................ 340 13. The Siege of Quebec........................... 351 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Two items should be dealt with at the outset. One concerns the geographical limits of Canada. Writers of the seventeenth century frequently used the terms Canada and New France interchangeably when referring to French possessions on the mainland of North America. By the close of the century this confusion of terminology was near an end and the word, Canada, had acquired a rather definite meaning. It meant the lands of the St. Lawrence- Great Lakes water basin, thus distinguishing Canada from its sister colonies of Acadia, Hudson's Bay, and later, Louisiana. It is in this way that the word will be used throughout the dissertation. Another item concerns the main thrust of the disser tation. What follows is not intended to be a military history of Canada. Discussions of affairs purely military will be kept to a minimum. It is intended to be a study of defensive strategy and how that strategy was put into operation to protect Canada from its enemies, which were, for most of the seventeenth century, the five Indian tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. The study is also intended to show why some defensive proposals were 1 2 accepted and others rejected. The findings of this study indicate that Canada during the seventeenth century suf fered considerably from poor defensive planning. There was always the tendency on the part of the French government to accept expedients in the place of carefully thought-out programs, to content itself with half-measures rather than thoroughgoing solutions. There were few examples during this period of broadly-conceived plans for the defense of Canada, few examples of strategy on the grand scale, few over-arching designs contrived to throw the enemies of the colony into confusion. The conclusion is that France, where Canada was concerned, lacked the determina tion to place the colony beyond the threat of injury. There were a number of reasons for this, it is important, first of all, to remember that the empire of France in America was a commercial, not a military empire. Canada for most of the seventeenth century was not looked upon as a bastion of French power across the Atlantic, but as a counter upon which to trade for beaver pelts. Canadian beaver pelts were to France what Mexican silver was to Spain. The fur-trade, given the mercantilistic assumptions of the age, was the most important feature of the Canadian enterprise in the minds of French governing officials, and everything else, with the possible exception of the Catholic missionary effort, was in one way or 3 another an appendage of that most important feature. As a results the feeling tended to prevail at court that so long as the machinery of Canadian trade operated smoothly and continued to supply France with beaver pelts, then the relationship between parent and offspring was a good one and little else in the way of assistance to Canada was necessary. A second reason for Canada's predicament was the pre occupation of French officialdom with European) problems. The seventeenth century was a turbulent period in the history of Europe, and particularly of France. Louis XIV came to the throne in 1643 as a child of five when his kingdom was heavily engaged in the Thirty Years' Mar against the Hapsburgs of Germany and Spain. For the first twenty years of the reign, France was far too involved with the European war and with war-related domestic strife to give much thought to Canada. Later, wars and preparations for war with the United Provinces, England, and other European states kept France embroiled on the continent and diverted the attention and resources of the government away from distant possessions like Canada. The colony was consequently bereft of material and cere bral aid from France during its formative years, and resembled nothing so much as an orphan abandoned to its own devices. As orphans somehow do, Canada managed to 4 survive in the wilderness of North America by relying on its own very limited resources, but the colony was hardly better for having done so. A third reason for the neglected condition of Canada was its geographic remoteness from France. The colony was thousands of miles from France across the seasonally storm raked North Atlantic and up the treacherous St. Lawrence River that for six months of the year was frozen and impenetrable to traffic. From the end of October until April no ship could enter or leave Quebec, and it was by ship that Canada received most of its supplies and all of its directives from the home government. This remoteness produced special problems of commerce and communication with the mother country. Canada was never as self-sufficient in the necessities of life as the European colonies to the south. It produced little beyond wheat and pork for its own consumption. If the annual supply ships, through war or mishap at sea, failed to arrive in the colony on time, Canadians could quickly be driven to the edge of disaster in matters of food, clothing, munitions, and tools, almost all of which had to be imported. What was true of supplies was also true of communi cations between Paris and Quebec. A round-trip ocean voyage between France and the colony might extend close to ten months, making it quite difficult, when one adds a 5 few delays common in the seventeenth century, for officials in either capitol to communicate with one another in the span of less than a year. Dispatches written by Canadian officials to the home government in the fall could, if the officials in France were prompt, receive reply the following spring; but it was not uncommon for Canadian officials to wait more than a year for directives from the court. Unfortunately for the colony, events in North America never seemed to conform to this schedule. The special problems of communication and supply meant that Canada was continually being thrown back upon its often limited wits and resources to cope with problems of defense that would not wait for a royal solution, assuming one were available for the asking. How the colony coped with its problems of defense is the sub ject of this dissertation. Before embarking upon the subject, it will be instructive to investigate briefly the early history of the fur trade and show how that trade awakened the hostility of the Iroquois toward the French. The trade in beaver pelts developed rapidly in the sixteenth century from its small beginnings as a subsidiary of the Fig. 1.--Part of the 1632 map of New France by Champlain (Trudel. Atlas Historiquet p. 32). 7 French fishing industry.1 The Green Banks off Cape Breton Island early attracted French fishermen to the teeming schools of fish in the area, and these seamen quickly learned that for a few trinkets they could obtain valuable furs from the aborigines around the Gulf of St.