Canada as a French Colony

CANADA AS A FRENCH COLONY At the beginning of the 17th century we find the first great name in Canadian history. Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who had seen service under Henry IV. of France, was employed in the interests of successive fur-trading monopolies and sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1603. In the next year he was on the Bay of Fundy and had a share in founding the first permanent French colony in North America—that of Port Royal, now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. In 16o8 he began the settlement which was named Quebec. From 16o8 to his death in 1635 Champlain worked un ceasingly to develop Canada as a Colony, to promote the fur trade, and to explore the interior. He passed southward from the St. Lawrence to the beautiful lake which still bears his name and also westward, up the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, in the dim hope of reaching the shores of China. He reached Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, but not the great lakes stretching still farther west.

The Chartered Companies.

The era was that of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), and during that great upheaval England was sometimes fighting France. Already, in 1613, in time of peace, the English from Virginia had almost completely wiped out the French settlement at Port Royal, and when, in 1629, a small English fleet appeared at Quebec, Champlain was forced to surrender. But in 1632 Canada was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye. Just at this time was formed under the aegis of Cardinal Richelieu the "Company of New France" known popularly as "The Company of One Hundred Associates." With 120 members it was granted the whole St. Lawrence valley and for 15 years from 1629 it was to have a complete monopoly of trade, while products from its territory were to enter France free of duty. In return, the company was to take to New France 30o colonists a year ; only French Catho lics might go ; and for each settlement the company was to pro vide three priests. Until 1663 this company controlled New France.

It was an era of missionary zeal in the Roman Catholic Church, and Canada became the favourite mission. The Society of Jesus was only one of several orders—Franciscans (Recollets), Sulpi cians, Ursulines, etc.—who worked in New France. The Jesuits have attracted chief attention, not merely on account of their zeal and numbers, but also because of the tragic fate of some of their missionaries in Canada. Among the Huron Indians, whose settlements bordered on the lake of that name, they se cured a great influence. But there was relentless war between the Hurons and the Iroquois, occupying the southern shore of Lake Ontario, and when in 1649 the Iroquois almost completely destroyed the Hurons, the Jesuit missionaries fell victims to the conquerors' rage. Some missionaries to the Iroquois themselves met with a similar fate. Commercial life also languished. The company planned by Richelieu was not a success. It did little to colonize New France, and in 166o, after more than 3o years of its monopoly, there were not more than 2,000 French in the whole country. In 1663 the charter of the company was revoked. No longer was a trading company to discharge the duties of a sovereign. New France now became a royal province, with gover nor, intendant, etc., on the model of the provinces of France.

In 1664 a new "company of the West Indies" (Compagnie des Indes Occidentales) was organized to control French trade and colonization not only in Canada but also in West Africa, South America, and the West Indies. At first it promised well. In 1665 some 2,000 emigrants were sent to Canada; the Euro pean population was soon doubled, and Louis XIV. began to take a personal interest in the colony. But once more, in con trast with English experience, the great trading company proved a failure in French hands as a colonizing agent, and in 16i4 its charter was summarily revoked by Louis XIV.

Exploration.

By 1659 two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseil lers, had penetrated beyond the great lakes to the prairies of the far West, and were probably the first Europeans to see the upper Mississippi. By 1666 a French mission was established on the shores of Lake Superior, and in 1673 Joliet and Marquette, ex plorers from Canada, reached and for some distance descended the Mississippi. Five years later Cavelier de la Salle was making his way westward from Quebec to discover the true character of the great river and to perform the feat, perilous in view of the probable hostility of the natives, of descending it to the sea. In 1682 he accomplished his task, took possession of the valley of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico in the name of Louis XIV., and called it Louisiana.

There was keen rivalry between Church and State for domi nance in this new empire. In 1659 there arrived at Quebec a young prelate of noble birth, Francois Xavier de Laval-Mont morency, who had come to rule the Church in Canada. An as cetic, who practised the whole cycle of mediaeval austerities, he was determined that Canada should be ruled by the Church, and he desired for New France a Puritanism as strict as that of New England. His special zeal was directed towards the welfare of the Indians. He insisted that the traders should not supply them with brandy, declared he would excommunicate any one who did so and, for a time, triumphed. In 1663 he was actually invited to choose a governor after his own mind and did so, but with no cessation of the old disputes. In 1672 Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac (q.v.), was named governor of New France, and in him the Church found her match. After a bitter struggle, he was recalled in 1682; but Canada needed him. He knew how to control the ferocious Iroquois, who had cut off France from access to Lake Ontario ; to check them he had built a fort where now stands the city of Kingston. With Frontenac gone, these savages almost strangled the colony. On a stormy August night of 1689 Iroquois burst in on the village of Lachine near Montreal, killed four or five score of its people, and carried off more than to be tortured to death at their leisure. Then the strong man Frontenac was sent back to face the crisis.

War with England.

It was a critical era. James II. had fallen in England, and `'William III. was organizing Europe against French aggression. France's plan for a great empire in America was now taking shape, and there, as in Europe, a deadly struggle with England was inevitable. Frontenac planned attacks upon New England and encouraged a ruthless border warfare. The English retaliated. Sir William Phips sailed from Boston in 1690, conquered Acadia, now Nova Scotia, and then hazarded the greater task of leading a fleet up the St. Lawrence against Quebec. On Oct. 16, 1690, 34 English ships, some of them only fishing craft, demanded the surrender of the town. When Frontenac answered defiantly, Phips attacked the place; but he was repulsed and in the end sailed away unsuccessful.

Each side had now begun to see that the vital point was con trol of the interior, which time was to prove the most extensive fertile area in the world. La Salle's expedition had aroused the French to the importance of the Mississippi, and they boldly determined to occupy it, to close in from the rear on the English on the Atlantic coast, seize their colonies, and even deport the colonists. The plan was audacious, for the English in America outnumbered the French by 20 to one. But their colonies were democracies, disunited because each was pursuing its own special interests, while the French were united under despotic leadership. Frontenac attacked the Iroquois mercilessly in 1696. In the next year the treaty of Ryswick was signed, and conquests were re stored. In 1698 Frontenac died.

The peace of Ryswick proved but a truce. In Europe, renewed war in 1702 saw the brilliant victories of Marlborough, and in America France lost heavily. Though the English, led by Sir Hovenden Walker, failed in 1711 to take Quebec, they again seized Nova Scotia; and when the treaty of Utrecht was made in 1713, France admitted defeat in America by yielding to Britain her claims to Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia.

The British Conquest of Canada.

France still held the shores of the St. Lawrence, and she retained, too, the island of Cape Breton to command its mouth. There she built speedily the fortress of Louisburg and prepared once more to challenge British supremacy in America. With a sound instinct that looked to future greatness, France still aimed, more and more, at the control of the interior of the continent. The danger from the Iroquois on Lake Ontario had long cut her off from the most direct access to the West, and from the occupation of the Ohio valley leading to the Mississippi, but now, free from this savage scourge, she could go where she would. In 1701 she founded Detroit, commanding the route from Lake Erie to Lake Huron. Her missionaries and leaders were already at Sault Ste. Marie commanding the approach to Lake Superior, and at Michili mackinac commanding that to Lake Michigan. They penetrated to what is now the Canadian Nest, and it was a French Canadian, La Verendrye, who pressed on into the far West until, in first recorded of white men, he came in sight of mountains which barred the way to the Pacific coast. France also crowned La Salle's work by founding, early in the 18th century, New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. It was a far cry from New Orleans to Quebec. If France could link them by a chain of settlements and shut in the English to their narrow strip of Atlantic seaboard there was good promise that North America would be hers.

The project was far-reaching, but France could do little to make it effective. Louis XV. allowed her navy to decline and her people showed little inclination for emigration to the colonies. In 1744, when the war of the Austrian Succession broke out, the New England colonies planned and in effected the capture of Louisburg (q.v.), the stronghold of France in Cape Breton Island, which menaced their commerce. But, to their dis gust, when the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made in 1748, this conquest was handed back to France. She continued her work of building a line of forts on the great lakes—on the river Ni agara, on the Ohio, on the Mississippi ; and the English colonies, with the enemy thus in their rear, grew ever more restive. In Virginia warned the French on the Ohio that they were en croaching on British territory. The next year, George Washing ton, a young Virginian officer, was sent to drive the French from their Fort Duquesne on the Ohio river, where now stands Pitts burgh, but was defeated, as was also the British general Braddock in 1755. In that year the British took the stern step of deporting the Acadian French from Nova Scotia (see NOVA SCOTIA : His tory) . In 1756 the Seven Years War began. France had no re sources to cope with those of Britain in America, and the British command of the sea proved decisive. On Sept. 13, 1759, Wolfe won his great victory before Quebec, and a year later at Montreal the French army in Canada surrendered. By the peace of Paris, 1763, Canada was finally ceded to Great Britain.