CHAPTER 3
1645-1710.  

THE VICTOR VANQUISHED.

HAVING triumphed over his rival, D'Aunay was left free to settle his accounts with the Massachusetts Puritans, who had offended him anew by sending provisions to Fort Saint Jean, having always insisted that they were free to trade with either party.  They, on their side, were no less indignant with him for his seizure of Grafton's vessel and harsh treatment of him and his men.

After some preliminary negotiation and some rather sharp correspondence, D'Aunay, in September, 1646, sent a pinnace to Boston, bearing his former envoy, Marie, accompanied by his own secretary and by one Monsieur Louis.

It was Sunday, the Puritan Sabbath, when the three envoys arrived; and the pious inhabitants were preparing for the afternoon sermon.  Marie and his two colleagues were met at the wharf by two militia officers, and conducted through the silent and dreary streets to the house of Captain, now Major, Gibbons, who seems to have taken upon himself in an especial manner the office of entertaining strangers of consequence.

All was done with much civility, but no ceremony; for the Lord's Day must be kept inviolate.  Winthrop, who had again been chosen governor, now sent an officer, with a guard of musketeers, to invite the envoys to his own house.  Here he regaled them with wine and sweetmeats, and then informed them of "our manner that all men either come to our publick meetings, or keep themselves quiet in their houses." He then laid before them such books in Latin and French as he had, and told them that they were free to walk in his garden.  Though the diversion offered was no doubt of the dullest,  since the literary resources of the colony then included little besides arid theology, and the walk in the garden promised but moderate delights among the bitter pot herbs provided against days of fasting, —• the victims resigned themselves with good grace, and, as the governor tells us, "gave no offence." Sunset came at last, and set the captives free.

On Monday both sides fell to business.  The envoys showed their credentials; but, as the commissioners of the United Colonies were not yet in session, nothing conclusive could be done till Tuesday.  Then, all being assembled, each party made its complaints of the conduct of the other, and a long discussion followed.  Meals were provided for the three visitors at the "ordinary," or inn, where the magistrates dined during the sessions of the General Court.  The governor, as their host, always sat with them at the board, and strained his Latin to do honor to his guests.  They, on their part, that courtesies should be evenly divided, went every morning at eight o'clock to the governor's house, whence he accompanied them to the place of meeting; and at night he, or some of the commissioners in his stead, attended them to their lodging at the house of Major Gibbons.

Serious questions were raised on both sides; but as both wanted peace, explanations were mutually made and accepted.  The chief difficulty lay in the undeniable fact, that, in escorting La Tour to his fort in 1643, the Massachusetts volunteers had chased D'Aunay to Port Royal, killed some of his men, burned his mill, and robbed his pinnace, for which wrongs the envoys demanded heavy damages.  It was true that the governor and magistrates had forbidden acts of aggression on the part of the volunteers ; but on the other hand they had had reason to believe that their prohibition would be disregarded, and had taken no measures to enforce it.  The envoys clearly had good ground of complaint; and here, says Winthrop, "they did stick two days." At last they yielded so far as to declare that what D'Aunay wanted was not so much compensation in money as satisfaction to his honor by an acknowledgment of their fault on the part of the Massachusetts authorities; and they further declared that he would accept a moderate present in token of such acknowledgment.  The difficulty now was to find such a present.  The representatives of Massachusetts presently bethought themselves of a "very fair new sedan " which the Viceroy of Mexico had sent to his sister, and which had been captured in the West Indies by one Captain Cromwell, a corsair, who gave it to "our governor." Winthrop, to whom it was entirely useless, gladly parted with it in such a cause; and the sedan, being graciously accepted, ended the discussion.  The treaty was signed in duplicate by the commissioners of the United Colonies and the envoys of D'Aunay, and peace was at last concluded.

The conference had been conducted with much courtesy on both sides.  One small cloud appeared, but soon passed away.  The French envoys displayed the fleur-de-lys at the masthead of their pinnace as she lay in the harbor.  The townsmen were incensed; and Monsieur Marie was told that to fly foreign colors in Boston harbor was not according to custom.  He insisted for a time, but at length ordered the offending flag to be lowered.

On the twenty-eighth of September the envoys bade farewell to Winthrop, who had accompanied them to their pinnace with a guard of honor.  Five cannon saluted them from Boston, five from "the Castle," and three from Charlestown.  A supply of mutton and a keg of sherry were sent on board their vessel; and then, after firing an answering salute from their swivels, they stood down the bay till their sails disappeared among the islands.

La Tour had now no more to hope from his late supporters.  He had lost his fort, and, what was worse, he had lost his indomitable wife.  Throughout the winter that followed his disaster he had been entertained by Samuel Maverick, at his house on Noddle's Island.  In the spring he begged hard for further help; and, as he begged in vain, he sailed for Newfoundland to make the same petition to Sir David Kirke, who then governed that island.  Kirke refused, but lent him a pinnace and sent him back to Boston.  Here some merchants had the good nature or folly to intrust him with goods for the Indian trade, to the amount of four hundred pounds.  Thus equipped, he sailed for Acadia in Kirke's pinnace, manned with his own followers and five New England men.  On reaching Cape Sable, he conspired with the master of the pinnace and his own men to seize the vessel and set the New England sailors ashore,  which was done, La Tour, it is said, shooting one of them in the face with a pistol.  It was winter, and the outcasts roamed along the shore for a fortnight, half frozen and half starved, till they were met by Micmac Indians, who gave them food and a boat,  in which, by rare good fortune, they reached Boston, where their story convinced the most infatuated that they had harbored a knave.  "Whereby," solemnly observes the pious but much mortified Winthrop, who had been La Tour's best friend, "it appeared (as the Scripture saith) that there is no confidence in an unfaithful or carnal man."

When the capture of Fort Saint Jean was known at court the young King was well pleased, and promised to send D'Aunay the gift of a ship; but he forgot to keep his word, and requited his faithful subject with the less costly reward of praises and honors.  After a preamble reciting his merits, and especially his "care, courage, and valor" in "taking, by our express order, and reducing again under our authority the fort on the Saint John which La Tour had rebelliously occupied with the aid of foreign sectaries," the King confirms D'Aunay's authority in Acadia, and extends it on paper from the Saint Lawrence to Virginia,  empowering him to keep for himself such parts of this broad domain as he might want, and grant out the rest to others, who were to hold of him as vassals.  He could build forts and cities, at his own expense; command by land and sea; make war or peace within the limits of his grant; appoint officers of government, justice, and police; and, in short, exercise sovereign power, with the simple reservation of homage to the King, and a tenth part of all gold, silver, and copper to the royal treasury.  A full monopoly of the fur trade throughout his dominion was conferred on him; and any infringement of it was to be punished by confiscation of ships and goods, and thirty thousand livres of damages.  On his part he was enjoined to " establish the name, power, and authority of the King; subject the nations to his rule, and teach them the knowledge of the true God and the light of the Christian faith." Acadia, in short, was made an hereditary fief; and D'Aunay and his heirs became lords of a domain as large as a European kingdom.

D'Aunay had spent his substance in the task of civilizing a wilderness.  The King had not helped him; and though he belonged to a caste which held commerce in contempt, he must be a fur trader or a bankrupt.  La Tour's Fort Saint Jean was a better trading station than Port Royal, and it had wofully abridged D'Aunay's profits.  Hence an ignoble competition in beaver skins had greatly embittered their quarrel.  All this was over; Fort Saint Jean, the best trading stand in Acadia, was now in its conqueror's hands; and his monopoly was no longer a mere name, but a reality.  

Everything promised a thriving trade and a growing colony, when the scene was suddenly changed.  On the twenty-fourth of May, 1650, a dark and stormy day, D'Aunay and his valet were in a birch canoe in the basin of Port Royal, not far from the mouth of the Annapolis.  Perhaps neither master nor man was skilled in the management of the treacherous craft that bore them.  The canoe overset.  D'Aunay and the valet clung to it and got astride of it, one at each end.  There they sat, sunk to the shoulders, the canoe though under water having buoyancy enough to keep them from sinking farther.  So they remained an hour and a half; and at the end of that time D'Aunay was dead, not from drowning but from cold, for the water still retained the chill of winter.  The valet remained alive; and in this condition they were found by Indians and brought to the north shore of the Annapolis, whither Father Ignace, the Superior of the Capuchins, went to find the body of his patron, brought it to the fort, and buried it in the chapel, in presence of his wife and all the soldiers and inhabitants.

The Father Superior highly praises the dead chief, and is astonished that the earth does not gape and devour the slanderers who say that he died in desperation, as one abandoned of God.  He admits that in former times cavillers might have found wherewith to accuse him, but declares that before his death he had amended all his faults.  This is the testimony of a Capuchin, whose fraternity he had always favored.  The Rdcollets, on the other hand, whose patron was La Tour, complained that D'Aunay had ill used them, and demanded redress.  He seems to have been a favorable example of his class; loyal to his faith and his King, tempering pride with courtesy, and generally true to his cherished ideal of the gentilhomme Frangais.  In his qualities, as in his birth, he was far above his rival; and his death was the ruin of the only French colony in Acadia that deserved the name.

At the news of his enemy's fate a new hope possessed La Tour.  He still had agents in France interested to serve him; while the father of D'Aunay, who acted as his attorney, was feeble with age, and his children were too young to defend their interests.

There is an extraordinary document bearing date February, 1651, or less than a year after D'Aunay's death.  It is a complete reversal of the decree of 1647 in his favor.  La Tour suddenly appears as the favorite of royalty, and all the graces before lavished on his enemy are now heaped upon him.  The lately proscribed " rebel and traitor " is confirmed as governor and lieutenant-general in New France.  His services to God and the King are rehearsed "as ot our certain knowledge," and he is praised with the same emphasis used towards D'Aunay in the decree of 1647, and almost in the same words.  The paper goes on to say that he, La Tour, would have converted the Indians and conquered Acadia for the King if D'Aunay had not prevented him.

Unless this document is a fabrication in the interest of La Tour, as there is some reason to believe, it suggests strange reflections on colonial administration during the minority of Louis XIV.  Genuine or not, La Tour profited by it, and after a visit to France, which proved a successful and fruitful one, he returned to Acadia with revived hopes.  The widow of D'Aunay had eight children, all minors; and their grandfather, the octogenarian Rene" de Menou, had been appointed their guardian.  He sent an incompetent and faithless person to Port Royal to fulfil the wardship of which he was no longer capable.

The unfortunate widow and her children needed better help.  D'Aunay had employed as his agent one Le Borgne, a merchant of Rochelle, who now succeeded in getting the old man under his influence, and induced him to sign an acknowledgment, said to be false, that D'Aunay's heirs owed him 260,000 livres.  Le Borgne next came to Port Royal to push his schemes; and here he inveigled or frightened the widow into signing a paper to the effect that she and her children owed him 205,286 livres.  It was fortunate for his unscrupulous plans that he had to do with the soft and tractable Madame d'Aunay, and not with the high spirited and intelligent Amazon Madame La Tour.  Le Borgne now seized on Port Royal as security for the alleged debts; while La Tour on his return from his visit to France induced the perplexed and helpless widow to restore to him Fort Saint Jean, conquered by her late husband.  Madame d'Aunay, beset with insidious enemies, saw herself and her children in danger of total ruin.  She applied to the Due de Vendome, grandmaster, chief, and superintendent of navigation, and offered to share all her Acadian claims with him if he would help her in her distress; but, from the first, Vendome looked more to his own interests than to hers.  La Tour was not satisfied with her concessions to him, and perplexing questions rose between them touching land claims and the fur trade.  To end these troubles she took a desperate step, and on the twenty-fourth of February, 1653, married her tormentor, the foe of her late husband, who had now been dead not quite three years.  Her chief thought seems to have been for her children, whose rights are guarded, though to little purpose, in the marriage contract.  She and La Tour took up their abode at Fort Saint Jean.  Of the children of her first marriage four were boys and four were girls.  They were ruined at last by the harpies leagued to plunder them, and sought refuge in France, where the boys were all killed in the wars of Louis XIV., and at least three of the girls became nuns.

Now follow complicated disputes, without dignity or interest, and turning chiefly on the fur trade.  Le Borgne and his son, in virtue of their claims on the estate of D'Aunay, which were sustained by the French courts, got a lion's share of Acadia; a part fell also to La Tour and his children by his new wife, while Nicolas Denys kept a feeble hold on the shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence as far north as Cape Hosiers.

War again broke out between France and England, and in 1654 Major Robert Sedgwick of Charlestown, Massachusetts, who had served in the civil war as a major-general of Cromwell, led a small New England force to Acadia under a commission from the Protector, captured Fort Saint Jean, Port Royal, and all the other French stations, and conquered the colony for England.  It was restored to France by the treaty of Breda, and captured again in 1690 by Sir William Phips.  The treaty of Ryswick again restored it to France, till, in 1710, it was finally seized for England by General Nicholson.

When, after Sedgwick's expedition, the English were in possession of Acadia, La Tour, not for the first time, tried to fortify his claims by a British title, and, jointly with Thomas Temple and William Crown, obtained a grant of the colony from Cromwell,  though he soon after sold his share to his copartner, Temple.  He seems to have died in 1666.  Descendants of his were living in Acadia in 1830, and some may probably still be found there.  As for D'Aunay, no trace of his blood is left in the land where he gave wealth and life for France and the Church.