Old Quebec, the city of Champlain
TextIII. Notre Dame des Victoires
AFTER Champlain the story of Quebec takes a more sombre hue. Its pages tell of long-continued warfare with the savages; of a fierce though intermittent struggle with the “heretic” English, the papist-hating “Bostonnais.” The tale has no lack of heroes and of heroines, courageous, saintly, inspired by visions of the invisible, or driven to the supreme heights of self-sacrifice by the most awful sights ever shown to mortal eyes.
To this period belong the valiant Governor, Montmagny; brave Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal; gentle Jeanne Mance; the ecstatic Mother Marie de l’Incarnation; the Jesuit devotees, Jogues, Bréboeuf, and Lalemant; those other martyrs, Dollard and his sixteen defenders of the Long Sault; daring, ruthless D’Iberville; luckless, dauntless La Salle; and a host of others who in that dark period bravely played their parts on the blood-stained stage. But above them all, by force of circumstances and force of character, towers the stern military figure of Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac.
Arrogant, imperious, fearless, defiant of danger, from his “Chateau” on the height he lorded it over the straggling settlements along the river that then made up New France. He imposed his will on restless traders, on his savage “children” of the forest, and he made a brave fight to impose it also on the spiritual leaders of New France, and on the Intendant, sent out specially to check and thwart him. His very faults served New France well in that time of agony, when the savages were ever at her throat, sucking away her life-blood and mangling her all but to dissolution.
In contrast to timorous La Barre and vacillating Denonville, there is something fascinating about the stalwart Frontenac, who was as surely the saviour of New France as the nobler, gentler Champlain was its founder and father. A soldier and a courtier, Frontenac had left his youth far behind him, when, in 1672, he landed for the first time at Quebec; but he could adapt himself to circumstances, at least to any circumstances in which his imperious will could have free play. He was quickly at home in the little town on the St. Lawrence, “the future capital,” as he saw it, “of a great empire.” He was at home also in the camps and councils of the redmen, stooping, as a smaller man would not have dared to do, to the level of forest manners and forest eloquence.
During ten unquiet years he learned better and better how to deal with the savages, and was then called back to France, just as the Iroquois were preparing to make a fresh attack on Canada. The Iroquois had no lack of prey, for by this time pioneers and traders had scattered themselves far and wide through the wilderness. They did not, however, fall unresisting.
The dangers of the time had bred stern, relentless men, and women and children, too, ready, like the little heroine of Verchères, to fight to the death for home and dear ones. Each village had its loop-holed blockhouse or strong stone mill, but the log-cabins frequently stood far from these places of refuge, and the Iroquois dealt in night-attacks and sudden surprises. Whilst Denonville was governor there was a veritable reign of terror in New France, culminating, in August, 1689, in the frightful massacre of Lachine.
Frontenac, already on his way back to Quebec, was not the man to let the outrage pass unavenged. Unable to deal a telling blow at the shifting Iroquois, he struck savagely at the white foe, whom he suspected of encouraging the red braves in their barbarous warfare. From Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal, he sent out parties of bush-rangers and “Christian Indians” to carry fire and sword through the border settlements of New England. In the depth of winter the cruel task was duly accomplished, and loud were the plaudits of the savage allies of the French, whose friendship had wavered in the hour of their discomfiture. Speedily hundreds of canoes, deep-laden with furs, came down to Montreal, but the English colonists, thirsting for revenge, seized Port Royal, in Acadia, and then sent an expedition to attack Quebec.
At its head was Sir William Phips, a bold, rough seaman, who had won knighthood by the recovery of the cargo of a long-sunk Spanish treasure-ship; but he soon proved himself no match for the old lion Frontenac.
The great French war-chief was at Montreal, feasting his Indian admirers on dog’s flesh and prunes, and leading them in the war-dance, when news reached him that Phips was in the river. Hastening down-stream in a birch-bark canoe, he reached his little capital long before the foe appeared. As he landed and strode up Mountain Hill, the people cheered him madly. Their delight was scarcely less when the Bishop, who had been visiting some outlying parishes, entered the city one night by torchlight. Whilst Frontenac looked to his defences, gathered fighting men into the fortress, and called out the “habitants” of Beauport and Beaupré to defend the shores, the Bishop urged his followers to do their part, and day and night prayers went up to all the saints in heaven to keep watch and ward over Quebec.
At last, early on an October morning, the English fleet sailed into the Basin, and Phips sent a messenger to demand the surrender of the city. But his envoy was treated with scant courtesy. Dragged blindfold over obstructions and up the steep streets, while jeering women mocked him with cries of “Colin Maillard!” he was guided at last into a spacious hall of the Chateau St. Louis. Here were assembled Frontenac and his officers in all the glory of plumes and ribbons, gold lace and powdered curls; and when the bandage was snatched from his eyes the Englishman might well have been dazzled by their glittering finery. But he confronted the stern old Governor calmly, and, laying his watch on the table, demanded an answer to Phips’ summons within an hour.
Frontenac was enraged by the effrontery of the demand. “I will answer your general only by the mouths of my cannon,” he replied, and the messenger, blindfolded again, was led off to make sport once more, on his roundabout way to his boat, for the shrill-voiced, laughing French women.
That same night there was another burst of merry-making in the city. The sound of drums, trumpets and joyous huzzas was loud enough to reach the ears of the English on the river. “You have lost the game,” declared a prisoner, with malicious delight. “It is the Governor of Montreal with the people from the country above. There is nothing for you now but to pack up and go home.” But Phips was not yet ready to take this advice.
Landing a portion of his force at Beauport, he moved his ships into position to bombard the town. Then Frontenac from the rock sent him his promised answer, and for hours the cannon roared and the smoke and din were horrible. Phips ploughed up the gardens of the Ursulines, shot away a corner of a nun’s apron, and wasted his ammunition against the rock, but made no impression whatever on the strong stone walls of Quebec. His enemies, laughing to scorn his futile efforts, riddled his vessels with their balls and shot away from his masthead the proud banner of St. George, which was brought ashore in triumph in a birch-bark canoe. At last Phips drew off from the contest, and patching up his sorely misused ships as best he could, dropped down the river. He was still pursued by ill-luck and misfortune. The annual supply ships for New France escaped him by hiding in the fogs that overhung the mouth of the grim Saguenay, while fever and smallpox, hurricane and shipwreck seemed to mark out his own fleet as under the wrath of heaven.
But in Quebec all was joy and thanksgiving. The captured flag was carried in triumph to the Cathedral. “The Bishop sang a Te Deum, and amid the firing of cannon the image of the Virgin was carried to each church and chapel in the place by a procession in which priests, people and troops all took part.” At night there was a great bonfire in honor of the redoubtable old Governor, but the defeat of the English was generally regarded as miraculous, and it was therefore ordained that the fête of “Notre Dame de la Victoires” should be celebrated annually in the little church of the Lower Town.
Some twenty years later, in the summer of 1711, the people of Quebec again had cause to rejoice in a great deliverance. A mighty English armament, out-numbering by more than three times those who could be gathered to defend the city, was in the St. Lawrence, when a great storm arose, dashing to pieces eight or ten vessels on the rocks of the Egg Islands and drowning nine hundred men. Upon this the incompetent leaders of the expedition, Hill and Walker, turned homeward in dismay. Again Te Deums resounded in Quebec, and in memory of this second notable deliverance the little church was called “Notre Dame des Victoires.”
Nearly half a century later, the building was sorely damaged by the English guns, but its upper portions were afterwards rebuilt “on the old walls,” and to-day in its quiet little nook, just aside from the bustle of Champlain Market, it still stands a quaint memorial of those ancient victories and of a world now passed away.