Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 17, Part 1

Bigot At this stormy epoch of Canadian history the sinister figure of the Intendant Bigot moves conspicuous on the scene.

Not that he was answerable for all the manifold corruption that infected the colony, for much of it was rife before his time, and had a vitality of its own; but his office and character made him the centre of it, and, more than any other man, he marshalled and organized the forces of knavery.

In the dual government of Canada the Governor represented the King and commanded the troops; while the Intendant was charged with trade, finance, justice, and all other departments of civil administration.

In former times the two functionaries usually quarrelled; but between Vaudreuil and Bigot there was perfect harmony.

François Bigot, in the words of his biographer, was "born in the bosom of the magistracy," both his father and his grandfather having held honorable positions in the parliament of Bordeaux.

[544] In appearance he was not prepossessing, though his ugly, pimpled face was joined with easy and agreeable manners.

In spite of indifferent health, he was untiring both in pleasure and in work, a skilful man of business, of great official experience, energetic, good-natured, free-handed, ready to oblige his friends and aid them in their needs at the expense of the King, his master; fond of social enjoyments, lavish in hospitality.

[Footnote 544: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot, accusé, contre Monsieur le Procureur-Général du Roi, accusateur.

_] A year or two before the war began, the engineer Franquet was sent from France to strengthen Louisbourg and inspect the defences of Canada.

He kept a copious journal, full of curious observation, and affording bright glimpses not only of the social life of the Intendant, but of Canadian society in the upper or official class.

Thus, among various matters of the kind, he gives us the following.

Bigot, who was in Quebec, had occasion to go to Montreal to meet the Governor; and this official journey was turned into a pleasure excursion, of which the King paid all the costs.

Those favored with invitations, a privilege highly prized, were Franquet, with seven or eight military officers and a corresponding number of ladies, including the wife of Major Pean, of whom Bigot was enamoured.

A chief steward, cooks, servants, and other attendants, followed the party.

The guests had been requested to send their portmanteaus to the Intendant's Palace six days before, that they might be sent forward on sledges along with bedding, table, service, cooking utensils, and numberless articles of comfort and luxury.

Orders were given to the inhabitants along the way, on pain of imprisonment, to level the snowdrifts and beat the road smooth with ox-teams, as also to provide relays of horses.

It is true that they were well paid for this last service; so well that the hire of a horse to Montreal and back again would cost the King the entire value of the animal.

On the eighth of February the party met at the palace; and after a grand dinner set out upon their journey in twenty or more sleighs, some with two guests and a driver, and the rest with servants and attendants.

The procession passed at full trot along St. Vallier street amid the shouts of an admiring crowd, stopped towards night at Pointe-aux-Trembles, where each looked for lodging; and then they all met and supped with the Intendant.

The militia captain of the place was ordered to have fresh horses ready at seven in the morning, when Bigot regaled his friends with tea, coffee, and chocolate, after which they set out again, drove to Cap-Santé, and stopped two hours at the house of the militia captain to breakfast and warm themselves.

In the afternoon they reached Ste.

Anne-de-la-Pérade, when Bigot gave them a supper at the house in which he lodged, and they spent the evening at cards.

The next morning brought them to Three Rivers, where Madame Marin, Franquet's travelling companion, wanted to stop to see her sister, the wife of Rigaud, who was then governor of the place.

Madame de Rigaud, being ill, received her visitors in bed, and ordered an ample dinner to be provided for them; after which they returned to her chamber for coffee and conversation.

Then they all set out again, saluted by the cannon of the fort.

Their next stopping-place was Isle-au-Castor, where, being seated at cards before supper, they were agreeably surprised by the appearance of the Governor, who had come down from Montreal to meet them with four officers, Duchesnaye, Marin, Le Mercier, and Péan.

Many were the embraces and compliments; and in the morning they all journeyed on together, stopping towards night at the largest house they could find, where their servants took away the partitions to make room, and they sat down to a supper, followed by the inevitable game of cards.

On the next night they reached Montreal and were lodged at the intendency, the official residence of the hospitable Bigot.

The succeeding day was spent in visiting persons of eminence and consideration, among whom are to be noted the names, soon to become notorious, of Varin, naval commissary, Martel, King's storekeeper, Antoine Penisseault, and François Maurin.

A

succession of festivities followed, including the benediction of three flags for a band of militia on their way to the Ohio.

All persons of quality in Montreal were invited on this occasion, and the Governor gave them a dinner and a supper.

Bigot, however, outdid him in the plenitude of his hospitality, since, in the week before Lent, forty guests supped every evening at his table, and dances, masquerades, and cards consumed the night.

[545] [Footnote 545: Franquet, _Journal_.

] His chief abode was at Quebec, in the capacious but somewhat ugly building known as the Intendant's Palace.

Here it was his custom during the war to entertain twenty persons at dinner every day; and there was also a hall for dancing, with a gallery to which the citizens were admitted as spectators.

[546] The bounteous Intendant provided a separate dancing-hall for the populace; and, though at the same time he plundered and ruined them, his gracious demeanor long kept him a place in their hearts.

Gambling was the chief feature of his entertainments, and the stakes grew deeper as the war went on.

He played desperately himself, and early in 1758 lost two hundred and four thousand francs,--a loss which he will knew how to repair.

Besides his official residence on the banks of the St. Charles, he had a country house about five miles distant, a massive old stone building in the woods at the foot of the mountain of Charlebourg; its ruins are now known as Chateau Bigot.

In its day it was called the Hermitage; though the uses to which it was applied savored nothing of asceticism.

Tradition connects it and its owner with a romantic, but more than doubtful, story of love, jealousy, and murder.

[Footnote 546: De Gaspé, _Mémoires_, 119. ] The chief Canadian families were so social in their habits and so connected by intermarriage that, along with the French civil and military officers of the colonial establishment, they formed a society whose members all knew each other, like the corresponding class in Virginia.

There was among them a social facility and ease rare in democratic communities; and in the ladies of Quebec and Montreal were often seen graces which visitors from France were astonished to find at the edge of a wilderness.

Yet this small though lively society had anomalies which grew more obtrusive towards the close of the war.

Knavery makes strange companions; and at the tables of high civil officials and colony officers of rank sat guests as boorish in manners as they were worthless in character.

Foremost among these was Joseph Cadet, son of a butcher at Quebec, who at thirteen went to sea as a pilot's boy, then kept the cows of an inhabitant of Charlebourg, and at last took up his father's trade and prospered in it.

[547] In 1756 Bigot got him appointed commissary-general, and made a contract with him which flung wide open the doors of peculation.

In the next two years Cadet and his associates,Péan, Maurin, Corpron, and Penisseault, sold to the King, for about twenty-three million francs, provisions which cost them eleven millions, leaving a net profit of about twelve millions.

It was not legally proved that the Intendant shared Cadet's gains; but there is no reasonable doubt that he did so.

Bigot's chief profits rose, however, from other sources.

It was his business to see that the King's storehouses for the supply of troops, militia, and Indians were kept well stocked.

To this end he and Bréard, naval comptroller at Quebec, made a partnership with the commercial house of Gradis and Son at Bordeaux.

He next told the Colonial Minister that there were stores enough already in Canada to last three years, and that it would be more to the advantage of the King to buy them in the colony than to take the risk of sending them from France.

[548] Gradis and Son then shipped them to Canada in large quantities, while Bréard or his agent declared at the custom-house that they belonged to the King, and so escaped the payment of duties.

Theywere then, as occasion rose, sold to the King at a huge profit, always under fictitious names.

Often they were sold to some favored merchant or speculator, who sold them in turn to Bigot's confederate, the King's storekeeper; and sometimes they passed through several successive hands, till the price rose to double or triple the first cost, the Intendant and his partners sharing the gains with friends and allies.

They would let nobody else sell to the King; and thus a grinding monopoly was established, to the great profit of those who held it.

[549] [Footnote 547: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot_.

Compare _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760. ] [Footnote 548: _Bigot au Ministre, 8 Oct.

1749. _] [Footnote 549: _Procés de Bigot, Cadet, et autres.

Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie.

_ Compare _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.

] Under the name of a trader named Claverie, Bigot, some time before the war, set up a warehouse on land belonging to the King and not far from his own palace.

Here the goods shipped from Bordeaux were collected, to be sold in retail to the citizens, and in wholesale to favored merchants and the King.

This establishment was popularly known as La Friponne, at Montreal, which was leagued with that of Quebec, and received goods from it.

Bigot and his accomplices invented many other profitable frauds.

Thus he was charged with the disposal of the large quantity of furs belonging to his master, which it was his duty to sell at public auction, after due notice, to the highest bidder.

Instead of this, he sold them privately at a low price to his own confederates.

It was also his duty to provide transportation for troops, artillery, provisions, and stores, in which he made good profit by letting to the King, at high prices, boats or vessels which he had himself bought or hired for the purpose.

[550] [Footnote 550: _Jugement rendu souverainement dans l'Affaire du Canada.

_] Yet these and other illicit gains still left him but the second place as public plunderer.

Cadet, the commissary-general, reaped an ampler harvest, and became the richest man in the colony.

One of the operations of this scoundrel, accomplished with the help of Bigot, consisted in buying for six hundred thousand francs a quantity of stores belonging to the King, and then selling them back to him for one million four hundred thousand.

[551] It was further shown on his trial that in 1759 he received 1,614,354 francs for stores furnished at the post of Miramichi, while the value of those actually furnished was but 889,544 francs; thus giving him a fraudulent profit of more than seven hundred and twenty-four thousand.

[552] Cadet's chief resource was the falsification of accounts.

The service of the King in Canada was fenced about by rigid formalities.

When supplies were wanted at any of the military posts, the commandant made a requisition specifying their nature and quantity, while, before pay could be drawn for them, the King's storekeeper, the local commissary, and the inspector must set their names as vouchers to the list, and finally Bigot must sign it.

[553] But precautions were useless where all were leagued to rob the King.

It appeared on Cadet's trial that by gifts of wine, brandy, or money he had bribed the officers, both civil and military, at all the principal forts to attest the truth of accounts in which the supplies furnished by him were set at more than twice their true amount.

Of the many frauds charged against him there was one peculiarly odious.

Large numbers of refugee Acadians were to be supplied with rations to keep them alive.

Instead of wholesome food, mouldered and unsalable salt cod was sent them, and paid for by the King at inordinate prices.

[554] It was but one of many heartless outrages practised by Canadian officials on this unhappy people.

[Footnote 551: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Requête du Procureur-Général, 19 Dec_.

1761. ] [Footnote 552: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot_.

] [Footnote 553: _Mémoire sur le Canada_ (Archives Nationales).

] [Footnote 554: _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760. ] Cadet told the Intendant that the inhabitants were hoarding their grain, and got an order from him requiring them to sell it at a low fixed price, on pain of having it seized.

Thus nearly the whole fell into his hands.

Famine ensued; and he then sold it at a great profit, partly to the King, and partly to its first owners.

Another of his devices was to sell provisions to the King which, being sent to the outlying forts, were falsely reported as consumed; on which he sold them to the King a second time.

Not without reason does a writer of the time exclaim: "This is the land of abuses, ignorance, prejudice, and all that is monstrous in government.

Peculation, monopoly, and plunder have become a bottomless abyss."

[555] [Footnote 555: _Considérations sur l'État présent du Canada_.

] The command of a fort brought such opportunities of making money that, according to Bougainville, the mere prospect of appointment to it for the usual term of three years was thought enough for a young man to marry upon.

It was a favor in the gift of the Governor, who was accused of sharing the profits.

These came partly from the fur-trade, and still more from frauds of various kinds.

For example, a requisition was made for supplies as gifts to the Indians in order to keep them friendly or send them on the war-path; and their number was put many times above the truth in order to get more goods, which the commandant and his confederates then bartered for furs on their own account, instead of giving them as presents.

"And," says a contemporary, addressing the Colonial Minister, "those who treat the savages so basely are officers of the King, depositaries of his authority, ministers of that Great Onontio whom they call their father."

[556] At the post of Green Bay, the partisan officer Marin, and Rigaud, the Governor's brother, made in a short time a profit of three hundred and twelve thousand francs.

[557] "Why is it," asks Bougainville, "that of all which the King sends to the Indians two thirds are stolen, and the rest sold to them instead of being given?"

[558] [Footnote 556: _Considérations sur l'État présent du Canada_.

] [Footnote 557: _Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie_.

Bougainville, _Mémoire sur l'État de la Nouvelle France_.

]