Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1679 to 1713, part 2

The next part of Radisson's career has always been the great blot upon his memory, a blot that seemed incomprehensible except on the ground that his English wife had induced him to {151} return to the Hudson's Bay Company; but in the memorials left by Radisson himself, in Hudson's Bay House, London, I found the true explanation of his conduct.

France and England were, as yet, at peace; but it was a pact of treacherous kind,--secret treaty by which the King of England drew pay from the King of France.

The King of France dared not offend England by giving public approval to Radisson's capture of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory; therefore he ordered Radisson to go back to Hudson's Bay Company service and restore what he had captured.

But the King of France had no notion of relinquishing claim to the vast territory of Hudson Bay; therefore he commanded Radisson to go unofficially.

Groseillers, the brother, seems to have dropped from all engagements from this time, and to have returned to Three Rivers.

A

copy of the French minister's instructions is to be found in the Radisson records of the Hudson's Bay Company to-day.

Not a sou of compensation was Radisson to receive for the money that he and his friends had invested in the venture of 1682-1683. Not a penny of reparation was he to obtain for the furs at Nelson, which he was to turn over to the Hudson's Bay Company.

In France, preparation went forward as if for a second voyage to Nelson; but Radisson secretly left Paris for London, where he was welcomed by the courtiers of England in May, 1684, and given presents by King Charles and the Duke of York, who were shareholders in the Hudson's Bay Company.

May 17 he sailed with the Hudson's Bay Company vessels for Port Nelson, and there took over from young Chouart the French forts with 20,000 pounds worth of furs for the English company.

Young Chouart Groseillers and his five comrades were furious.

They had borne the brunt of attack from both English and Indian enemies during Radisson's absence, and they were to receive not a penny for the furs collected.

And their fury knew no bounds when they were forcibly carried back to England.

The English had invited them on board one of the vessels for last instructions.

Quickly the anchor was slipped, sails run {152} out, and the kidnapped Frenchmen carried from the bay.

In a second, young Chouart's hand was on his sword, and he would have fought on the spot, but Radisson begged him to conceal his anger;

"for," urged Radisson, "some of these English ruffians would like nothing better than to stab you in a scuffle."

In London, Radisson was lionized, publicly thanked by the company, presented to the court, and given a present of silver plate.

As for the young French captives, they were treated royally, voted salaries of 100 pounds a year, and all their expenses of lodgings paid; but when they spoke of returning to France, unexpected obstructions were created.

Their money was held back; they were dogged by spies.

Finally they took the oath of allegiance to England, and accepted engagements to go back as servants of the Hudson's Bay Company to Nelson at salaries ranging from 100 pounds to 40 pounds, good pay as money was estimated in those days, equal to at least five times as much money of the present day.

It was even urged on young Chouart that he should take an English wife, as Radisson had; but the young Frenchmen smiled quietly to themselves.

Secret offers of a title had been conveyed to Chouart by the French ambassador; and to his mother in Three Rivers he wrote: I could not go to Paris; I was not at liberty; but I shall be at the rendezvous or perish trying.

I cannot say more in a letter.

I would have left this kingdom, but they hold back my pay, and orders have been given to arrest me if I try to leave.

Assure Mr. Duluth of my humble services.

I shall see him as soon as I can.

Pray tell my good friend, Jan Peré.

Peré, it will be remembered, was a bushranger of Duluth's band, who had been with Jolliet on Lake Superior.

As for Radisson, the English kept faith with him as long as the Stuarts and his personal friends ruled the English court.

He spent the summers on Hudson Bay as superintendent of trade, the winters in England supervising cargoes and sales.

His home was on Seething Lane near the great Tower, where one of his friends was commander.

Near him dwelt the merchant princes of London like the Kirkes and the Robinsons and the Youngs.

His next-door neighbor was the man of fashion, {153} Samuel Pepys, in whose hands Radisson's Journals of his voyages finally fell.

His income at this time was 100 pounds in dividends, 100 pounds in salary, equal to about five times that amount in modern money.

Then came a change in Radisson's fortunes.

The Stuarts were dethroned and their friends dispersed.

The shareholders of the fur company bore names of men who knew naught of Radisson's services.

War destroyed the fur company's dividends.

Radisson's income fell off to 50 pounds a year.

His family had increased; so had his debts; and he had long since been compelled to move from fashionable quarters.

A petition filed in a lawsuit avers that he was in great mental anxiety lest his children should come to want; but he won his lawsuits against the company for arrears of salary.

Peace brought about a resumption of dividends, and the old pathfinder seems to have passed his last years in comparative comfort.

Some time between March and July, 1710, Radisson set out on the Last Long Voyage of all men, dying near London.

His burial place is unknown.

As far as Canada is concerned, Radisson stands foremost as pathfinder of the Great Northwest.

But to return to "good friend, Jan Peré," whom the Frenchmen, forced into English service, were to meet somewhere on Hudson Bay.

It is like a story from borderland forays.

Seven large ships set sail from England for Hudson Bay in 1685, carrying Radisson and young Chouart and the five unwilling Frenchmen.

The company's forts on the bay now numbered four: Nelson, highest up on the west; Albany, southward on an island at the mouth of Albany River;

Moose, just where James Bay turns westward; and Rupert at the southeast corner.

But French ships under La Martinière of the Sovereign Council had also set sail from Quebec in 1685, commissioned by the indignant fur traders to take Radisson dead or alive; for Quebec did not know the secret orders of the French court, which had occasioned Radisson's last defection.

July saw the seven Hudson's Bay ships worming their way laboriously through the ice floes of the straits.

Small sails only {154} were used.

With grappling hooks thrown out on the ice pans and crews toiling to their armpits in ice slush, the boats pulled themselves forward, resting on the lee side of some ice floe during ebb tide, all hands out to fight the roaring ice pans when the tide began to come in.

At length on the night of July 27, with crews exhausted and the timbers badly rammed, the ships steered to rest in a harbor off Digge's Island, sheltered from the ice drive.

The nights of that northern sea are light almost as day; but clouds had shrouded the sky and a white mist was rising from the water when there glided like ghosts from gloom two strange vessels.

Before the exhausted crews of the English ships were well awake, the waters were churned to foam by a roar of cannonading.

The strange ships had bumped keels with the little _Merchant Perpetuana_ of the Hudson's Bay.

Radisson, on whose head lay a price, was first to realize that they were attacked by French raiders; and his ship was out with sails and off like a bird, followed by the other English vessels, all except the little _Perpetuana_, now in death grapple between her foes.

Captain Hume, Mates Smithsend and Grimmington fought like demons to keep the French from boarding her;

but they were knocked down, fettered and clapped below hatches while the victors plundered the cargo.

Fourteen men were put to the sword.

August witnessed ship, cargo, and captives brought into Quebec amid noisy acclaim and roar of cannon.

The French had not captured Radisson nor ransomed Chouart, but there was booty to the raiders.

New France had proved her right to trade on Hudson Bay spite of peace between France and England, or secret commands to Radisson.

Thrown in a dungeon below Château St. Louis, Quebec, the English captives hear wild rumors of another raid on the bay, overland in winter; and Smithsend, by secret messenger, sends warning to England, and for his pains is sold with his fellow-captives into slavery in Martinique, whence he escapes to England before the summer of 1686. But what is Jan Peré of Duluth's bushrovers doing?

All unconscious of the raid on the ships, the governors of the four {155} English forts awaited the coming of the annual supplies.

At Albany was a sort of harbor beacon as well as lookout, built high on scaffolding above a hill.

One morning, in August of 1685, the sentry on the lookout was amazed to see three men, white men, in a canoe, steering swiftly down the rain-swollen river from the Up-Country.

Such a thing was impossible.

"White men from the interior!

Whence did they come?"

Governor Sargeant came striding to the fort gate, ordering his cannon manned.

Behold nothing more dangerous than three French forest rangers dressed in buckskins, but with manners a trifle too smooth for such rough garb, as one doffs his cap to Governor Sargeant and introduces himself as Jan Peré, a woodsman out hunting.

[Illustration: CONTEMPORARY FRENCH MAP OF HUDSON BAY AND VICINITY] England and France were at peace; so Governor Sargeant invited the three mysterious gentlemen inside to a breakfast of sparkling wines and good game, hoping no doubt that the wines would unlock the gay fellows' tongues to tell what game _they_ were playing.

As the wine passed freely, there were stories of {156} the hunt and the voyage and the annual ships.

When might the ships be coming?

"Humph," mutters Sargeant through his beard; and he does n't urge these knights of the wild woods to tarry longer.

Their canoe glides gayly down coast to the salt marshes, where the shooting is good; but by chance that night, _purely by chance_, the French leave their canoe so that the tide will carry it away.

Then they come back crestfallen to the English fort.

Meanwhile a ship has arrived with the story of the raid on the _Perpetuana_.

Sargeant is so enraged that he sends two of the French spies across to Charlton Island, where they can hunt or die; Monsieur Jan Peré he casts into the cellar of Albany with irons on his wrists and balls on his feet.

When the ships sail for England, Peré is sent back as prisoner without having had one word with Chouart Groseillers.

As for the two Frenchmen placed on Charlton Island, did Sargeant think they were bush-rovers and would stay on an island?

By October they have laid up store of moose meat, built themselves a canoe, paddled across to the mainland, and are speeding like wildfire overland to Michilimackinac with word that Jan Peré is held prisoner at Albany.

As Jan Peré drops out of history here, it may be said that he was kept prisoner in England as guarantee for the safety of the English crew held prisoners at Quebec.

When he escaped to France he was given money and a minor title for his services.

The news that Peré lay in a dungeon on Hudson Bay supplied the very excuse that the Quebec fur traders needed for an overland raid in time of peace.

These were the wild rumors of which the captive English crew sent warning to England; but the northern straits would not be open to the company ships before June of 1686, and already a hundred wild French bushrovers were rallying to ascend the Ottawa to raid the English on Hudson Bay.

And now a change comes in Canadian annals.

For half a century its story is a record of lawless raids, bloody foray, dare-devil courage combined with the most fiendish cruelty and sublime heroism.

Only a few of these raids can be narrated here.

{157} June 18, 1686, when the long twilight of the northern night merged with dawn, there came out from the thicket of underbrush round Moose Factory, Hudson Bay, one hundred bush-rovers, led by Chevalier de Troyes of Niagara, accompanied by Le Chesnaye of the fur trade, Quebec, and the Jesuit, Sylvie.

Of the raiders, sixty-six were Indians under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brothers, Maricourt and Ste.

Hélène, aged about twenty-four, sons of Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal interpreter.

Moose Factory at this time boasted fourteen cannon, log-slab palisades, commodious warehouses, and four stone bastions,--one with three thousand pounds of powder, another used as barracks for twelve soldiers, another housing beaver pelts, and a fourth serving as kitchen.

Iberville and his brothers, scouting round on different sides of the fort, soon learned that not a sentinel was on duty.

The great gate opposite the river, studded with brass nails, was securely bolted, but not a cannon {158} had been loaded.

The bushrangers then cast aside all clothing that would hamper, and, pistol in hand, advanced silent and stealthy as wild-cats.

Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasin tread.

The water lay like glass, and the fort slept silent as death.

Hastily each raider had knelt for the blessing of the priest.

Pistols had been recharged.

Iberville bade his wild Indians not to forget that the Sovereign Council of Quebec offered ten crowns reward for every enemy slain, twenty for every enemy captured.

In fact, there could be no turning back.

Two thousand miles of juniper swamps and forests lay between the bush-rovers and home.

They must conquer or perish.

De Troyes led his white soldiers round to make a pretense of attack from the water front.

Iberville posted his sixty-six Indians along the walls with muskets rammed through the loopholes.

Then, with an unearthly yell, the Le Moyne brothers were over the tops of the pickets, swords in hand, before the English soldiers had awakened.

The English gunner reeled from his cannon at the main gate with head split to the collar bone.

The gates were thrown wide, trees rammed the doors open, and Iberville had dashed halfway up the stairs of the main house before the inmates, rushing out in their nightshirts, realized what had happened.

Two men only were killed, one on each side.

The French were masters of Moose Fort in less than five minutes, with sixteen captives and rich supply of ammunition.

[Illustration: LE MOYNE D'IBERVILLE] Eastward of Moose was Rupert Fort, where the company's ship anchored.

Hither the raiders plied their canoes by sea.

Look at the map!

Across the bottom of James Bay projects a long tongue of swamp land.

To save time, Iberville portaged across this, and by July 1 was opposite Prince Rupert's bastions.

At the dock lay the English ship.

That day Iberville's men kept in hiding, but at night he had ambushed his men along shore and paddled across to the ship.

Just as Iberville stepped on the deck a man on guard sprang at his throat.

One blow of Iberville's sword killed the Englishman on the spot.

Stamping to call the crew aloft, Iberville sabered the men as they scrambled up the hatches, till the Governor himself threw {159} up hands in unconditional surrender.

The din had alarmed the fort, and hot shot snapping fire from the loopholes kept the raiders off till the Le Moyne brothers succeeded in scrambling to the roofs of the bastions, hacking holes through the rough thatch and firing inside.

This drove the English gunners from their cannon.

A moment later, and the raiders were on the walls.

It was a repetition of the fight at Moose Factory.

The English, taken by surprise, surrendered at once; and the French now had thirty prisoners, a good ship, two forts, but no provisions.

Northwestward three hundred miles lay Albany Fort.

Iberville led off in canoes with his bushrovers.

De Troyes followed on the English boat with French soldiers and English prisoners.

To save time, as the bay seemed shallow, Iberville struck out from the shore across seas.

All at once a north wind began whipping the waters, sweeping down a maelstrom of churning ice.

Worse still, fog fell thick as wool.

Any one who knows canoe travel knows the danger.

Iberville avoided swamping by ordering his men to camp for the night on the shifting ice pans, canoes held above heads where the ice crush was wildest, the voyageurs clinging hand to hand, making a life line if one chanced to slither through the ice slush.

When daylight came with worse fog, Iberville kept his pistol firing to guide his followers, and so pushed on.

Four days the dangerous traverse lasted, but August 1 the bushrovers were in camp below the cliffs of Albany.

Indians had forewarned Governor Sargeant.

The loopholes of his palisades bristled with muskets and heavy guns that set the bullets flying soon as De Troyes arrived and tried to land the cannon captured from the other forts for assault on Albany.

Drums beating, flags flying, soldiers in line, a French messenger goes halfway forward and demands of an English messenger come halfway out the surrender of Sieur Jan Peré, languishing in the dungeons of Albany.

The English Governor sends curt word back that Peré has been sent home to France long ago, and demands what in thunder the French mean by these raids in time of peace.

The French retire that night to consider.

{160} Cannon they have, but they have used up nearly all their ammunition.

They have thirty prisoners, but they have no provisions.

The prisoners have told them there are 50,000 pounds worth of furs stored at Albany.

Inside the fort the English were in almost as bad way.

The larder was lean, powder was scarce, and the men were wildly mutinous, threatening to desert _en masse_ for the French on the excuse they had not hired to fight, and "_if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make it good_."

At the end of two days' desultory firing, the company Governor captured down at Rupert came to Sargeant and told him frankly that the bloodthirsty bushrovers were desperate; they had either to conquer or starve, and if they were compelled to fight, there would be no quarter.

Men and women alike would be butchered in hand-to-hand fight.

Still Sargeant hung on, hoping for the annual frigate of the company.

Then powder failed utterly.

Still Sargeant would not show the white flag;

so an underfactor flourished a white sheet from an upper window.

Chevalier De Troyes came forward and seated himself on one of the cannon.

Governor Sargeant went out and seated himself on the same cannon with two bottles of wine.

The English of Albany were allowed to withdraw to Charlton Island to await the company ship.

As for the other prisoners, those who were not compelled to carry the plundered furs back to Quebec, were turned adrift in the woods to find their way overland north to Nelson.

Iberville's bushrovers were back in Montreal by October.

{161} CHAPTER IX FROM 1686 TO 1698

War with the Iroquois--The year of the massacre--Frontenac returns--The heroine of Verchères--Indian raid and counter-raid--Massacre and Schenectady--The massacre at Fort Loyal--Boston roused to action--Quebec besieged--Phips and Frontenac--Retreat of the English--Iberville's gallant sea fight--Nelson surrenders