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Chapter XXI
France Contends for the fisheries and the Great West
such were the events which gave to the
French not only New France and
Acadia, Hudson's Bay and
Newfoundland, but a claim to a moiety of
Maine, of
Vermont, and to more than a moiety of New York, to the whole valley of the Mississippi, and to
Texas even, as far as the
Rio Bravo del Norte.
Throughout that wide region, it sought to introduce its authority, under the severest forms of the colonial system.
That system was enforced, with equal eagerness, by
England upon the sea-coast.
Could
France, and
England, and
Spain, have amicably divided the
American continent; could they have been partners, and not rivals, in op pression; I know not whence hope could have beamed upon the colonies.
But the aristocratic revolution of
England was the signal for a war with
France, growing out of ‘a root of enmity,’ which
Marlborough described as ‘irreconcilable to the government and the religion’ of
Great Britain.
Louis XIV.
took up arms in defence of legitimacy; and
England had the glorious office of asserting the right of a nation to reform its government.
But, though the progress of the revolutionary principle was the root of the enmity,
France could not, at once, obtain the alliance of every
European power which was
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unfriendly to change.
She had encroached on every
neighbor; and fear, and a sense of wrong, made all of them her enemies.
From regard to the integrity of its territory, the German empire, with
Austria, joined with
England; and, as the
Spanish Netherlands, which constituted the barrier of
Holland and
Germany against
France, and the path of
England into the heart of the continent, could be saved from conquest by
France only through the interposition of
England and
Holland, an alliance followed between the Protestant revolutionary republic and monarchy, on the one side, and the bigoted defender of the
Roman Catholic church and legitimacy, on the other.
Hence, also, in the first war of King William, the frontiers of
Carolina, bordering on the possessions of
Spain, were safe against invasion:
Spain and
England were allies.
Thus the war of 1689, in
Europe, roused Louis XIV.
in behalf of legitimacy, and, at the same time, rallied against him, not
England only, but every power which dreaded his lawless ambition.
William III.
was not only the defender of the nationality of
England, but of the territorial freedom of
Europe.
In the colonies, the strife was, on behalf of their respective mother countries, for the fisheries, and for territory at the north and west.
The idea of weakening an adversary, by encouraging its colonies to assert independence, did not, at that time, exist; the universal maxim of
European statesmen assumed the fact, that colonies have a master.
In the contests that followed, the religious faith, and the roving enterprise of the
French Canadians, secured to Louis XIV.
their active support.
The English colonists, on the contrary, sided heartily with
England: the
English revolution was to them the pledge for freedom of mind, as
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marked by Protestantism; for national freedom, as il-
lustrated in the exile of a tyrant, and in the election of constitutional king.
Thus the strife in
America was
between
England and
France for the possession of colonial monopolies; and, in that strife,
England rallied her forces under the standard of advancing freedom.
If the issue had depended on the condition of the colonies, it could hardly have seemed doubtful.
The French census for the
North American continent, in 1688, showed but eleven thousand two hundred and forty-nine persons—scarcely a tenth part of the
English population on its frontiers; about a twentieth part of
English North America.
West of
Montreal, the principal French posts, and
those but inconsiderable ones, were at
Frontenac, at
Mackinaw, and on the
Illinois.
At
Niagara, there was a wavering purpose of maintaining a post, but no permanent occupation.
So weak were the garrisons, that English traders, with an escort of
Indians, had ventured even to
Mackinaw, and, by means of the Senecas, obtained a large share of the commerce of the lakes.
French diplomacy had attempted to pervade
the west, and concert an alliance with all the tribes from
Lake Ontario to the
Mississippi.
The traders were summoned even from the plains of the
Sioux; and
Tonti and the
Illinois were, by way of the
Ohio and the
Alleghany, to precipitate themselves on the Senecas, while the
French should come from
Montreal, and the Ottawas and other Algonquins, under Durantaye, the vigilant commander at
Mackinaw, should descend from
Michigan.
But the power of the
Illinois was broken; the Hurons and Ottawas were almost ready to become the allies of the Senecas.
The savages still held the keys of the great west; no inter-
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course existed but by means of the forest rangers, who
penetrated the barren heaths round Hudson's Bay, the
morasses of the north-west, the homes of the
Sioux and
Miamis, the recesses of every forest where there was an Indian with skins to sell.
‘God alone could have saved
Canada this year,’ wrote Denonville, in 1688.
But for the missions at the west,
Illinois would have been abandoned, the fort at
Mackinaw lost, and a general rising of the natives would have completed the ruin of New France.
Personal enterprise took the direction of the fur-
trade:
Port Nelson, in Hudson's Bay, and
Fort Albany, were originally possessed by the
French.
The attention of the court of France was directed to the fisheries; and
Acadia had been represented by De Meules as the most important settlement of
France.
To protect it, the
Jesuits Vincent and James Bigot collected a village of Abenakis on the
Penobscot; and a flourishing town now marks the spot where the baron
de St. Castin, a veteran officer of the regiment of
Carignan, established a trading fort.
Would
France, it was said, strengthen its post on the
Penobscot, occupy the islands that command the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, and send supplies to
Newfoundland, she would be sole mistress of the fisheries for cod. Hence the strife with
Massachusetts, in which the popular mind was so deeply interested, that, to this day, the figure of a cod-fish is suspended in the hall of its representatives.
Thus
France, bounding its territory next
New England by the
Kennebec, claimed the whole eastern coast,
Nova Scotia, Cape Breton,
Newfoundland,
Labrador, and Hudson's Bay; and, to assert and defend this boundless region,
Acadia and its dependencies counted but nine hundred French inhabitants.
The missionaies,
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swaying the mind of the Abenakis, were the sole
source of hope.
On the declaration of war by
France against Eng-
