Chapter 17
1753-1760

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.   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.  

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.  

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.   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.  

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.   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.   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.  

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.  

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

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.  ”

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.  ” 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.   "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?”

The transportation of military stores gave another opportunity of plunder.   The contractor would procure from the Governor or the local commandant an order requiring the inhabitants to serve him as boatmen, drivers, or porters, under a promise of exemption that year from duty as soldiers.   This saved him his chief item of expense, and the profits of his contract rose in proportion.  

A contagion of knavery ran through the official life of the colony; and to resist it demanded no common share of moral robustness.   The officers of the troops of the line were not much within its influence; but those of the militia and colony regulars, whether of French or Canadian birth, shared the corruption of the civil service.   Seventeen of them, including six chevaliers of St.   Louis and eight commandants of forts, were afterwards arraigned for fraud and malversation, though some of the number were acquitted.   Bougainville gives the names of four other Canadian officers as honorable exceptions to the general demoralization, Benoît, Repentigny, Lainé, and Le Borgne; "not enough," he observes, "to save Sodom.  "

Conspicuous among these military thieves was Major Péan, whose qualities as a soldier have been questioned, but who nevertheless had shown almost as much vigor in serving the King during the Ohio campaign of 1753 as he afterwards displayed effrontery in cheating him.   "Le petit Péan" had married a young wife, Mademoiselle Desméloizes, Canadian like himself, well born, and famed for beauty, vivacity, and wit.   Bigot, who was near sixty, became her accepted lover; and the fortune of Péan was made.   His first success seems to have taken him by surprise.   He had bought as a speculation a large quantity of grain, with money of the King lent him by the Intendant.   Bigot, officially omnipotent, then issued an order raising the commodity to a price far above that paid by Péan, who thus made a profit of fifty thousand crowns.   A few years later his wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs.   Madame Péan became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favors and offices; and all who sought opportunity to rob the King hastened to pay her their court.   Péan, jilted by his own wife, made prosperous love to the wife of his partner, Penisseault; who, though the daughter of a Montreal tradesman, had the air of a woman of rank, and presided with dignity and grace at a hospitable board where were gathered the clerks of Cadet and other lesser lights of the administrative hierarchy.   It was often honored by the presence of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, captivated by the charms of the hostess, condescended to a society which his friends condemned as unworthy of his station.   He succeeded Péan in the graces of Madame Penisseault, and after the war took her with him to France; while the aggrieved husband found consolation in the wives of the small functionaries under his orders.  

Another prominent name on the roll of knavery was that of Varin, commissary of marine, and Bigot's deputy at Montreal, a Frenchman of low degree, small in stature, sharp witted, indefatigable, conceited, arrogant, headstrong, capricious, and dissolute.   Worthless as he was, he found a place in the Court circle of the Governor, and aspired to supplant Bigot in the intendancy.   To this end, as well as to save himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray his own.   Among his comrades and allies may be mentioned Deschenaux, son of a shoemaker at Quebec, and secretary to the Intendant; Martel, King's storekeeper at Montreal; the humpback Maurin, who is not to be confounded with the partisan officer Marin; and Corpron, a clerk whom several tradesmen had dismissed for rascality, but who was now in the confidence of Cadet, to whom he made himself useful, and in whose service he grew rich.  

Canada was the prey of official jackals, true lion's providers, since they helped to prepare a way for the imperial beast, who, roused at last from his lethargy, was gathering his strength to seize her for his own.   Honesty could not be expected from a body of men clothed with arbitrary and ill-defined powers, ruling with absolute sway an unfortunate people who had no voice in their own destinies, and answerable only to an apathetic master three thousand miles away.   Nor did the Canadian Church, though supreme, check the corruptions that sprang up and flourished under its eye.   The Governor himself was charged with sharing the plunder; and though he was acquitted on his trial, it is certain that Bigot had him well in hand, that he was intimate with the chief robbers, and that they found help in his weak compliances and wilful blindness.   He put his stepson, Le Verrier, in command at Michillimackinac, where, by fraud and the connivance of his stepfather, the young man made a fortune.   When the Colonial Minister berated the Intendant for maladministration, Vaudreuil became his advocate, and wrote thus in his defence: "I cannot conceal from you, Monseigneur, how deeply M.   Bigot feels the suspicions expressed in your letters to him.   He does not deserve them, I am sure.   He is full of zeal for the service of the King; but as he is rich, or passes as such, and as he has merit, the ill-disposed are jealous, and insinuate that he has prospered at the expense of His Majesty.   I am certain that it is not true, and that nobody is a better citizen than he, or has the King's interest more at heart.  ” For Cadet, the butcher's son, the Governor asked a patent of nobility as a reward for his services.   When Péan went to France in 1758, Vaudreuil wrote to the Colonial Minister: "I have great confidence in him.   He knows the colony and its needs.   You can trust all he says.   He will explain everything in the best manner.   I shall be extremely sensible to any kindness you may show him, and hope that when you know him you will like him as much as I do.  ”

Administrative corruption was not the only bane of Canada.   Her financial condition was desperate.   The ordinary circulating medium consisted of what was known as card money, and amounted to only a million of francs.   This being insufficient, Bigot, like his predecessor Hocquart, issued promissory notes on his own authority, and made them legal tender.   They were for sums from one franc to a hundred, and were called ordonnances.   Their issue was blamed at Versailles as an encroachment on the royal prerogative, though they were recognized by the Ministry in view of the necessity of the case.   Every autumn those who held them to any considerable amount might bring them to the colonial treasurer, who gave in return bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France.   At first these bills were promptly paid; then delays took place, and the notes depreciated; till in 1759 the Ministry, aghast at the amount, refused payment, and the utmost dismay and confusion followed.  

The vast jarring, discordant mechanism of corruption grew incontrollable; it seized upon Bigot, and dragged him, despite himself, into perils which his prudence would have shunned.   He was becoming a victim to the rapacity of his own confederates, whom he dared not offend by refusing his connivance and his signature of frauds which became more and more recklessly audacious.   He asked leave to retire from office, in the hope that his successor would bear the brunt of the ministerial displeasure.   Péan had withdrawn already, and with the fruits of his plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe.   But though the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been warned to mend his ways, yet such was his energy, his executive power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it was hard to dispense with him.   Neither his abilities, however, nor his strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer; and the letters from Versailles became appalling in rebuke and menace.  

"The ship 'Britannia,'" wrote the Minister, Berryer, "laden with goods such as are wanted in the colony, was captured by a privateer from St.   Malo, and brought into Quebec.   You sold the whole cargo for eight hundred thousand francs.   The purchasers made a profit of two millions.   You bought back a part for the King at one million, or two hundred thousand more than the price which you sold the whole.   With conduct like this it is no wonder that the expenses of the colony become insupportable.   The amount of your drafts on the treasury is frightful.   The fortunes of your subordinates throw suspicion on your administration.  " And in another letter on the same day: "How could it happen that the small-pox among the Indians cost the King a million francs? What does this expense mean? Who is answerable for it? Is it the officers who command the posts, or is it the storekeepers? You give me no particulars.   What has become of the immense quantity of provisions sent to Canada last year? I am forced to conclude that the King's stores are set down as consumed from the moment they arrive, and then sold to His Majesty at exorbitant prices.   Thus the King buys stores in France, and then buys them again in Canada.   I no longer wonder at the immense fortunes made in the colony.  ” Some months later the Minister writes: "You pay bills without examination, and then find an error in your accounts of three million six hundred thousand francs.   In the letters from Canada I see nothing but incessant speculation in provisions and goods, which are sold to the King for ten times more than they cost in France.   For the last time, I exhort you to give these things your serious attention, for they will not escape from mine.  ”

"I write, Monsieur, to answer your last two letters, in which you tell me that instead of sixteen millions, your drafts on the treasury for 1758 will reach twenty-four millions, and that this year they will rise to from thirty-one to thirty-three millions.   It seems, then, that there are no bounds to the expenses of Canada.   They double almost every year, while you seem to give yourself no concern except to get them paid.   Do you suppose that I can advise the King to approve such an administration? or do you think that you can take the immense sum of thirty-three millions out of the royal treasury by merely assuring me that you have signed drafts for it? This, too, for expenses incurred irregularly, often needlessly, always wastefully; which make the fortune of everybody who has the least hand in them, and about which you know so little that after reporting them at sixteen millions, you find two months after that they will reach twenty-four.   You are accused of having given the furnishing of provisions to one man, who under the name of commissary-general, has set what prices he pleased; of buying for the King at second or third hand what you might have got from the producer at half the price; of having in this and other ways made the fortunes of persons connected with you; and of living in splendor in the midst of a public misery, which all the letters from the colony agree in ascribing to bad administration, and in charging M.   de Vaudreuil with weakness in not preventing.  ”

These drastic utterances seem to have been partly due to a letter written by Montcalm in cipher to the Maréchal de Belleisle, then minister of war.   It painted the deplorable condition of Canada, and exposed without reserve the peculations and robberies of those intrusted with its interests.   "It seems," said the General, "as if they were all hastening to make their fortunes before the loss of the colony; which many of them perhaps desire as a veil to their conduct.  " He gives among other cases that of Le Mercier, chief of Canadian artillery, who had come to Canada as a private soldier twenty years before, and had so prospered on fraudulent contracts that he would soon be worth nearly a million.   "I have often," continues Montcalm, "spoken of these expenditures to M.   de Vaudreuil and M.   Bigot; and each throws the blame on the other.  ” And yet at the same time Vaudreuil was assuring the Minister that Bigot was without blame.  

Some two months before Montcalm wrote this letter, the Minister, Berryer, sent a despatch to the Governor and Intendant which filled them with ire and mortification.   It ordered them to do nothing without consulting the general of the French regulars, not only in matters of war, but in all matters of administration touching the defence and preservation of the colony.   A plainer proof of confidence on one hand and distrust on the other could not have been given.  

One Querdisien-Tremais was sent from Bordeaux as an agent of Government to make investigation.   He played the part of detective, wormed himself into the secrets of the confederates, and after six months of patient inquisition traced out four distinct combinations for public plunder.   Explicit orders were now given to Bigot, who, seeing no other escape, broke with Cadet, and made him disgorge two millions of stolen money.   The Commissary-General and his partners became so terrified that they afterwards gave up nearly seven millions more.   Stormy events followed, and the culprits found shelter for a time amid the tumults of war.   Peculation did not cease, but a day of reckoning was at hand.  

NOTE: The printed documents of the trial of Bigot and the other peculators include the defence of Bigot, of which the first part occupies 303 quarto pages, and the second part 764.   Among the other papers are the arguments for Péan, Varin, Saint-Blin, Boishébert, Martel, Joncaire-Chabert and several more, along with the elaborate Jugement rendue, the Requêtes du Procureur-Général, the Réponse aux Mémoires de M.   Bigot et du Sieur Péan, etc.  , forming together five quarto volumes, all of which I have carefully examined.   These are in the Library of Harvard University.   There is another set, also of five volumes, in the Library of the Historical Society of Quebec, containing most of the papers just mentioned, and, bound with them, various others in manuscript, among which are documents in defence of Vaudreuil (printed in part); Estèbe, Corpron, Penisseault, Maurin, and Bréard.   I have examined this collection also.   The manuscript Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1757-1760, as well as the letters of Vaudreuil, Bougainville, Daine, Doreil, and Montcalm throw much light on the maladministration of the time; as do many contemporary documents, notably those entitled Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie, État présent du Canada, and Mémoire sur le Canada (Archives Nationales).   The remarkable anonymous work printed by the Historical Society of Quebec under the title _Mémoires sur le Canada depuis 1749 jusqu'àé 1760, is full of curious matter concerning Bigot and his associates which squares well with other evidence.   This is the source from which Smith, in his History of Canada (Quebec, 1815), drew most of his information on the subject.   A manuscript which seems to be the original draft of this valuable document was preserved at the Bastile, and, with other papers, was thrown into the street when that castle was destroyed.   They were gathered up, and afterwards bought by a Russian named Dubrowski, who carried them to St.   Petersburg.   Lord Dufferin, when minister there, procured a copy of the manuscript in question, which is now in the keeping of Abbé H.   Verreau at Montreal, to whose kindness I owe the opportunity of examining it.   In substance it differs little from the printed work, though the language and the arrangement often vary from it.   The author, whoever he may have been, was deeply versed in Canadian affairs of the time, and though often caustic, is generally trustworthy.