CHAPTER 5
1642-1661.  

THE HOLY WARS OF MONTREAL.

ON the second of July, 1659, the ship " Saint Andre" " lay in the harbor of Rochelle, crowded with passengers for Canada.  She had served two years as a hospital for marines, and was infected with a contagious fever.  Including the crew, some two hundred persons were on board, more than half of whom were bound for Montreal.  Most of these were sturdy laborers, artisans, peasants, and soldiers, together with a troop of young women, their present or future partners; a portion of the company set down on the old record as "sixty virtuous men and thirty-two pious girls." There were two priests also, Vignal and Le Maitre, both destined to a speedy death at the hands of the Iroquois.  But the most conspicuous among these passengers for Montreal were two groups of women in the habit of nuns, under the direction of Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance.  Marguerite Bourgeoys, whose kind, womanly face bespoke her fitness for the task, was foundress of the school for female children at Montreal; her companion, a tall, austere figure, worn with suffering and care, was directress of the hospital.  Both had returned to France for aid, and were now on their way back, each with three recruits,  three being the mystic number, as a type of the Holy Family, to whose worship they were especially devoted.

Amid the bustle of departure, the shouts of sailors.  the rattling of cordage, the napping of sails, the tears and the embracings, an elderly man, with heavy plebeian features, sallow with disease, and in a sober, half-clerical dress, approached Mademoiselle Mance and her three nuns, and, turning his eyes to heaven, spread his hands over them in benediction.  It was Le Royer de la Dauversiere, founder of the sisterhood of Saint Joseph, to which the three nuns belonged.  "Now, O Lord," he exclaimed, with the look of one whose mission on earth is fulfilled, " permit thou thy servant to depart in peace! "

Sister Maillet, who had charge of the meagre treasury of the community, thought that something more than a blessing was due from him, and asked where she should apply for payment of the interest of the twenty thousand livres which Mademoiselle Mance had placed in his hands for investment.  Dauversiere changed countenance, and replied with troubled voice: "My daughter, God will provide for you.  Place your trust in Him." He was bankrupt, and had used the money of the sisterhood to pay a debt of his own, leaving the nuns penniless.

I have related in another place how an association of devotees, inspired, as they supposed, from heaven, had undertaken to found a religious colony at Montreal in honor of the Holy Family.  The essentials of the proposed establishment were to be a seminary of priests dedicated to the Virgin, a hospital to Saint Joseph, and a school to the Infant Jesus; while a settlement was to be formed around them simply for their defence and maintenance.  This pious purpose had in part been accomplished.  It was seventeen years since Mademoiselle Mance had begun her labors in honor of Saint Joseph.  Marguerite Bourgeoys had entered upon hers more recently; yet even then the attempt was premature, for she found no white children to teach.  In time, however, this want was supplied, and she opened her school in a stable, which answered to the stable of Bethlehem, lodging with her pupils in the loft, and instructing them in Roman Catholic Christianity, with such rudiments of mundane knowledge as she and her advisers thought fit to impart.

Mademoiselle Mance found no lack of hospital work, for blood and blows were rife at Montreal, where the woods were full of Iroquois, and not a moment was without its peril.  Though years began to tell upon her, she toiled patiently at her dreary-task, till, in the winter of 1657, she fell on the ice of the Saint Lawrence, broke her right arm, and dislocated the wrist.  Bonchard, the surgeon of Montreal, set the broken bones, but did not discover the dis-location.  The arm in consequence became totally useless, and her health wasted away under incessant and violent pain.  Maisonneuve, the civil and military chief of the settlement, advised her to go to France for assistance in the work to which she was no longer equal; and Marguerite Bourgeoys, whose pupils, white and red, had greatly multiplied, resolved to go with her for a similar object.  They set out in September, 1658, landed at Rochelle, and went thence to Paris.  Here they repaired to the seminary of Saint Sulpice; for the priests of this community were joined with them in the work at Montreal, of which they were afterwards to become the feudal proprietors.

Now ensued a wonderful event, if we may trust the evidence of sundry devout persons.  Olier, the founder of Saint Sulpice, had lately died, and the two pilgrims would fain pay their homage to his heart, which the priests of his community kept as a precious relic, enclosed in a leaden box.  The box was brought, when the thought inspired Mademoiselle Mance to try its miraculous efficacy and invoke the intercession of the departed founder.  She did so, touching her disabled arm gently with the leaden casket.  Instantly a grateful warmth pervaded the shrivelled limb, and from that hour its use was restored.  It is true that the Jesuits ventured to doubt the Sulpitian miracle, and even to ridicule it; but the Sulpitians will show to this day the attestation of Mademoiselle Maiice herself, written with the fingers once paralyzed and powerless.1 Nevertheless, the cure was not so thorough as to permit her again to take charge of her patients.

Her next care was to visit Madame de Bullion, a devout lady of great wealth, who was usually desig-nated at Montreal as "the unknown benefactress," because, though her charities were the mainstay of the feeble colony, and though the source from which they proceeded was well known, she affected, in the interest of humility, the greatest secrecy, and required those who profited by her gifts to pretend ignorance whence they came.  Overflowing with zeal for the pious enterprise, she received her visitor with enthusiasm, lent an open ear to her recital, responded graciously to her appeal for aid, and paid over to her the sum, munificent at that day, of twenty-two thousand francs.  Thus far successful, Mademoiselle Mance repaired to the town of La Fleche to visit Le Royer de la Dauversiere.

It was this wretched fanatic who, through visions and revelations, had first conceived the plan of a hospital in honor of Saint Joseph at Montreal.1 H had found in Mademoiselle Mance a zealous and efficient pioneer; but the execution of his scheme required a community of hospital nuns, and therefore he had labored for the last eighteen years to form one at La Fle'che, meaning to despatch its members in due time to Canada.  The time at length was come.  Three of the nuns were chosen,  Sisters Brdsoles, Mace", and Maillet,  and sent under the escort of certain pious gentlemen to Rochelle.  Their exit from La Fle’che was not without its difficulties.  Dauversie’re was in ill odor, not only from the multiplicity of his debts, but because, in his character of agent of the association of Montreal, he had at various times sent thither those whom his biographer describes as " the most virtuous girls to be found at La Fle'che," intoxicating them with religious excitement, and shipping them for the New World against the will of their parents.  It was noised through the town that he had kidnapped and sold them.; and now the report spread abroad that he was about to crown his iniquity by luring away three young nuns.  A mob gathered at the convent gate, and the escort were forced to draw their swords to open a way for the terrified sisters.

Of the twenty-two thousand francs which she had received, Mademoiselle Mance kept two thousand immediate needs, and confided the rest to the hands of Dauversie’re, who, hard pressed by his creditors used it to pay one of his debts; and then, to his horror, found himself unable to replace it.  Racked by the gout and tormented by remorse, he betook himself to his bed in a state of body and mind truly pitiable.  One of the miracles, so frequent in the early annals of Montreal, was vouchsafed in answer to his prayer, and he was enabled to journey to Rochelle and bid farewell to his nuns.  It was but a brief respite; he returned home to become the prey of a host of maladies, and to die at last a lingering and painful death.

While Mademoiselle Mance was gaining recruits in La Fle’che, Marguerite Bourgeoys was no less successful in her native town of Troyes; and she rejoined her companions at Rochelle, accompanied by Sisters Chatel, Crolo, and Raisin, her destined assistants in the school at Montreal.  Meanwhile, the Sulpitians and others interested in the pious enterprise, had spared no effort to gather men to strengthen the colony, and young women to serve as their wives; and all were now mustered at Rochelle, waiting for embarkation.  Their waiting was a long one.  Laval, bishop at Quebec, was allied to the Jesuits, and looked on the colonists of Montreal with more than coldness.  Sulpitian writers say that his agents used every effort to discourage them, and that certain persons at Rochelle told the master of the ship in which the emigrants were to sail that they were not to be trusted to pay their passage-money.  Hereupon ensued a delay of more than two months before means could be found to quiet the scruples of the prudent commander.  At length the anchor was weighed, and the dreary voyage begun.

The woe-begone company, crowded in the filthy and infected ship, were tossed for two months more on the relentless sea, buffeted by repeated storms and wasted by a contagious fever, which attacked nearly all of them and reduced Mademoiselle Mance to extremity.  Eight or ten died and were dropped overboard, after a prayer from the two priests.  At length land hove in sight; the piny odors of the forest regaled their languid senses as they sailed up the broad estuary of the Saint Lawrence and anchored under the rock of Quebec.

High aloft, on the brink of the cliff, they saw the fleur-de-lis waving above the fort of Saint Louis, and, beyond, the cross on the tower of the cathedral traced against the sky, the houses of the merchants on the strand below, and boats and canoes drawn up along the bank.  The bishop and the Jesuits greeted them as co-workers in a holy cause, with an unction not wholly sincere.  Though a unit against heresy, the pious founders of New France were far from unity among themselves.  To the thinking of the Jesuits, Montreal was a government within a government, a wheel within a wheel.  This rival Sulpitian settlement was in their eyes an element of disorganization adverse to the disciplined harmony of the Canadian Church, which they would fain have seen, with its focus at Quebec, radiating light unrefracted to the uttermost parts of the colony.  That is to say, they wished to control it unchecked, through their ally the bishop.

The emigrants, then, were received with a studious courtesy, which veiled but thinly a stiff and persistent opposition.  The bishop and the Jesuits were especially anxious to prevent the La Fle'che nuns from establishing themselves at Montreal, where they would form a separate community under Sulpitian influence ; and in place of the newly arrived sisters they wished to substitute nuns from the Hotel Dieu of Quebec, who would be under their own control.  That which most strikes the non-Catholic reader throughout this affair is the constant reticence and dissimulation practised, not only between Jesuits and Montrealists, but among the Montrealists themselves.  Their self-devotion, great as it was, was fairly matched by their disingenuousness.

All difficulties being overcome, the Montrealists embarked in boats and ascended the Saint Lawrence, leaving Quebec infected with the contagion they had brought.  The journey now made in a single night cost them fifteen days of hardship and danger.  At length they reached their new home.  The little settlement lay before them, still gasping betwixt life and death, in a puny, precarious infancy.  Some forty small, compact houses were ranged parallel to the river, chiefly along the line of what is now Saint Paul's Street.  On the left there was a fort, and on a rising ground at the right a massive windmill of stone, enclosed with a wall or palisade pierced for .musketry, and answering the purpose of a redoubt or block-house.1 Fields studded with charred and blackened stumps, between which crops were growing, stretched away to the edges of the bordering forest; and the green, shaggy back of the mountain towered over all.

There were at this time a hundred and sixty men at Montreal, about fifty of whom had families, or at least wives.  They greeted the new-comers with a welcome which, this time, was as sincere as it was warm, and bestirred themselves with alacrity to provide them with shelter for the winter.  As for the three nuns from La Fleche, a chamber was hastily made for them over two low rooms which had served as Mademoiselle Mance's hospital.  This chamber was twenty-five feet square, with four cells for the nuns, and a closet for stores and clothing, which for the present was empty, as they had landed in such destitution that they were forced to sell all their scanty equipment to gain the bare necessaries of existence.  Little could be hoped from the colonists, who were scarcely less destitute than they.  Such was their poverty, —thanks to Dauversiere's breach of trust,  that when their clothes were worn out, they were unable to replace them, and were forced to patch them with such material as came to hand.  Maisonneuve the governor, and the pious Madame d'Ailleboust, being once on a visit to the hospital, amused themselves with trying to guess of what stuff the habits of the nuns had originally been made, and were unable to agree on the point in question.

Their chamber, which they occupied for many years, being hastily built of ill-seasoned planks, let in the piercing cold of the Canadian winter through countless cracks and chinks; and the driving snow sifted through in such quantities that they were sometimes obliged, the morning after a storm, to remove it with shovels.  Their food would freeze on the table before them, and their coarse brown bread had to be thawed on the hearth before they could cut it.  These women had been nurtured in ease, if not in luxury.  One of them, Judith de Bresoles, had in her youth, by advice of her confessor, run away from parents who were devoted to her, and immured herself in a convent, leaving them in agonies of doubt as to her fate.  She now acted as superior of the little community.  One of her nuns records of her that she had a fervent devotion for the Infant Jesus; and that, along with many more spiritual graces, he inspired her with so transcendent a skill in cookery, that " with a small piece of lean pork and a few herbs she could make soup of a marvellous relish." Sister Mace" was charged with the care of the pigs and hens, to whose wants she attended in person, though she too had been delicately bred.  In course of time, the sisterhood was increased by additions from without,  though more than twenty girls who entered the hospital as novices recoiled from the hardship, and took husbands in the colony.  Among a few who took the vows, Sister Jumeau should not pass unnoticed.  Such was her humility that, though of a good family and unable to divest herself of the marks of good breeding, she pretended to be the daughter of a poor peasant, and persisted in repeating the pious falsehood till the merchant Le Ber told her flatly that he did not believe her.

The sisters had great need of a man to do the heavy work of the house and garden, but found no means of hiring one, when an incident, in which they saw a special providence, excellently supplied the want.  There was a poor colonist named Jouaneaux, to whom a piece of land had been given at some distance from the settlement.  Had he built a cabin upon it, his scalp would soon have paid the forfeit; but, being bold and hardy, he devised a plan by which he might hope to sleep in safety without abandoning the farm which was his only possession.  Among the stumps of his clearing there was one hollow with age.  Under this he dug &, sort of cave, the entrance of which was a small hole carefully hidden by brushwood.  The hollow stump was easily converted into a chimney; and by creeping into his burrow at night, or when he saw signs of danger, he escaped for some time the notice of the Iroquois.  But though he could dispense with a house, he needed a barn for his hay and corn; and while he was building one, he fell from the ridge of the roof and was seriously hurt.  He was carried to the Hotel Dieu, where the nuns showed him every attention, until, after a long confinement, he at last recovered.  Being of a grateful nature and enthusiastically devout, he was so touched by the kindness of his benefactors, and so moved by the spectacle of their piety, that he conceived the wish of devoting his life to their service.  To this end a contract was drawn up, by which he pledged himself to work for them as long as strength remained; and they, on their part, agreed to maintain him in sickness or old age.

This stout-hearted retainer proved invaluable; though had a guard of soldiers been added, it would have been no more than the case demanded.  Montreal was not palisaded, and at first the hospital was as much exposed as the rest.  The Iroquois would skulk at night among the houses, like wolves in a camp of sleeping travellers on the prairies; though the human foe was, of the two, incomparably the bolder, fiercer, and more bloodthirsty.  More than once one of these prowling savages was known to have crouched all night in a rank growth of wild mustard in the garden of the nuns, vainly hoping that one of them would come out within reach of his tomahawk.  During summer, a month rarely passed without a fight, sometimes within sight of their windows.  A burst of yells from the ambushed marksmen, followed by a clatter of musketry, would announce the opening of the fray, and promise the nuns an addition to their list of patients.  On these occasions they bore themselves according to their several natures.  Sister Morin, who had joined their number three years after their arrival, relates that Sister Bre'soles and she used to run to the belfry and ring the tocsin to call the inhabitants together.  "From our high station," she writes, "we could sometimes see the combat, which terrified us extremely, so that we came down again as soon as we could, trembling with fright, and thinking that our last hour was come.  When the tocsin sounded, my Sister Maillet would become faint with excess of fear; and my Sister Mace", as long as the alarm continued, would remain speechless, in a state pitiable to see.  They would both get into a corner of the rood-loft, before the Holy Sacrament, so as to be prepared for death, or else go into their cells.  As soon as I heard that the Iroquois were gone, I went to tell them, which comforted them and seemed to restore them to life.  My Sister Bre'soles was stronger and more courageous; her terror, which she could not help, did not prevent her from attending the sick and receiving the dead and wounded who were brought in."

The priests of Saint Sulpice, who had assumed the entire spiritual charge of the settlement, and who were soon to assume its entire temporal charge also, had for some years no other lodging than a room at the hospital, adjoining those of the patients.  They caused the building to be fortified with palisades, and the houses of some of the chief inhabitants were placed near it, for mutual defence.  They also built two fortified houses, called Ste.  Marie and Saint Gabriel, at the two extremities of the settlement, and lodged in them a considerable number of armed men, whom they employed in clearing and cultivating the surrounding lands, the property of their community.  All other outlying houses were also pierced with loopholes, and fortified as well as the slender means of their owners would permit.  The laborers always carried their guns to the field, and often had need to use them.  A few incidents will show the state of Montreal and the character of its tenants.

In the autumn of 1657 there was a truce with the Iroquois, under cover of which three or four of them came to the settlement.  Nicolas Gode’ and Jean Saint-Pere were on the roof of their house, laying thatch, when one of the visitors aimed his arquebuse at Saint-Pere, and brought him to the ground like a wild turkey from a tree.  Now ensued a prodigy; for the assassins, having cut off his head and carried it home to their village, were amazed to hear it speak to them in good Iroquois, scold them for their perfidy, and threaten them with the vengeance of Heaven; and they continued to hear its voice of admonition even after scalping it and throwing away the skull.1 This story, circulated at Montreal on the alleged authority of the Indians themselves, found believers among the most intelligent men of the colony.

Another miracle, which occurred several years later, deserves to be recorded.  Le Maitre, one of the two priests who had sailed from France with Mademoiselle Mance and her nuns, being one day at the fortified house of Saint Gabriel, went out with the laborers in order to watch while they were at their work.  In view of a possible enemy, he had girded himself with an earthly sword; but seeing no sign of danger, he presently took out his breviary, and, while reciting his office with eyes bent on the page, walked into an ambuscade of Iroquois, who rose before him with a yell.

He shouted to the laborers, and, drawing his sword, faced the whole savage crew, in order, probably, to give the men time to snatch their guns.  Afraid to approach, the Iroquois fired and killed him; then rushed upon the working party, who escaped into the house, after losing several of their number.  The victors cut off the head of the heroic priest, and tied it in a white handkerchief which they took from a pocket of his cassock.  It is said that on reaching their villages they were astonished to find the handkerchief without the slightest stain of blood, but stamped indelibly with the features of its late owner, so plainly marked that none who had known him could fail to recognize them.1 This not very original miracle, though it found eager credence at Montreal, was received coolly, like other Montreal miracles, at Quebec; and Sulpitian writers complain that the bishop, in a long letter which he wrote to the Pope, made no mention of it whatever.

Le Maitre, on the voyage to Canada, had been accompanied by another priest, Guillaume de Vignal, who met a fate more deplorable than that of his companion, though unattended by any recorded miracle.  Le Maitre had been killed in August.  In the October following, Vignal went with thirteen men, in a flat-boat and several canoes, to Isle a la Pierre, nearly opposite Montreal, to get stone for the seminary which the priests had recently begun to build.  With him was a pious and valiant gentleman named Claude de Brigeac, who, though but thirty years of age, had come as a soldier to Montreal, in the hope of dying in defence of the true Church, and thus reaping the reward of a martyr.  Vignal and three or four men had scarcely landed when they were set upon by a large band of Iroquois who lay among the bushes waiting to receive them.  The rest of the party, who were still in their boats, with a cowardice rare at Montreal, thought only of saving themselves.  Claude de Brigeac alone leaped ashore and ran to aid his comrades.  Vignal was soon mortally wounded.  Brigeac shot the chief dead with his arquebuse, and then, pistol in hand, held the whole troop for an instant at bay; but his arm was shattered by a gunshot, and he was seized, along with Vignal, Rene1 Cuille'rier, and Jacques Dufresne.  Crossing to the main shore, immediately opposite Montreal, the Iroquois made, after their custom, a small fort of logs and branches, in which they ensconced themselves, and then began to dress the wounds of their prisoners.  Seeing that Vignal was unable to make the journey to their villages, they killed him, divided his flesh, and roasted it for food.

Brigeac and his fellows in misfortune spent a wo-ful night in this den of wolves; and in the morning their captors, having breakfasted on the remains of Vignal, took up their homeward march, dragging the Frenchmen with them.  On reaching Oneida, Brigeac was tortured to death with the customary atrocities.  Cuille'rier, who was present, declared that they could wring from him no cry of pain, but that throughout he ceased not to pray for their conversion.  The witness himself expected the same fate, but an old squaw happily adopted him, and thus saved his life.  He eventually escaped to Albany, and returned to Canada by the circuitous but comparatively safe route of New York and Boston.

 In the following winter, Montreal suffered an irreparable loss in the death of the brave Major Closse, a man whose intrepid coolness was never known to fail in the direst emergency.  Going to the aid of a party of laborers attacked by the Iroquois, he was met by a crowd of savages, eager to kill or capture him.  His servant ran off.  He snapped a pistol at the foremost assailant, but it missed fire.  His remaining pistol served him no better, and he was instantly shot down.  "He died," writes Dollier de Casson, "like a brave soldier of Christ and the King." Some of his friends once remonstrating with him on the temerity with which he exposed his life, he replied: "Messieurs, I came here only to die in the service of God; and if I thought I could not die here, I would leave this country to fight the Turks, that I might not be deprived of such a glory."1

The fortified house of Ste.  Marie, belonging to the priests of Saint Sulpice, was the scene of several hot and bloody fights.  Here, too, occurred the following nocturnal adventure.  A man named Lavigne, who had lately returned from captivity among the Iroquois, chancing to rise at night and look out of the window, saw by the bright moonlight a number of naked warriors stealthily gliding round a corner and crouching near the door, in order to kill the first Frenchman who should go out in the morning.  He silently woke his comrades; and, having the rest of the night for consultation, they arranged their plan so well that some of them, sallying from the rear of the house, came cautiously round upon the Iroquois, placed them between two fires, and captured them all.

The summer of 1661 was marked by a series of calamities scarcely paralleled even in the annals of this disastrous epoch.  Early in February, thirteen colonists were surprised and captured; next came a fight between a large band of laborers and two hundred and sixty Iroquois; in the following month, ten more Frenchmen were killed or taken; and thenceforth, till winter closed, the settlement had scarcely a breathing space.  "These hobgoblins," writes the author of the Relation of this year, "sometimes appeared at the edge of the woods, assailing us with abuse; sometimes they glided stealthily into the midst of the fields, to surprise the men at work; sometimes they approached the houses, harassing us without ceasing, and, like importunate harpies or birds of prey, swooping down on us whenever they could take us unawares."

Speaking of the disasters of this year, the soldier-priest, Dollier de Casson, writes: " God, who afflicts the body only for the good of the soul, made a marvellous use of these calamities and terrors to hold the people firm in their duty towards Heaven.  Vice was then almost unknown here, and in the midst of war religion flourished on all sides in a manner very different from what we now see in time of peace." 

The war was, in fact, a war of religion.  The small redoubts of logs, scattered about the skirts of the settlement to serve as points of defence in case of attack, bore the names of saints, to whose care they were commended.  There was one placed under a higher protection, and called the "Redoubt of the Infant Jesus." Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the pious and valiant governor of Montreal, to whom its successful defence is largely due, resolved, in view of the increasing fury and persistency of the Iroquois attacks, to form among the inhabitants a military fraternity, to be called " Soldiers of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph;" and to this end he issued a proclamation, of which the following is the characteristic beginning: 

"We, Paul de Chomedey, governor of the island of Montreal and lands thereon dependent, on infor-mation given us from divers quarters that the Iroquois have formed the design of seizing upon this settlement by surprise or force, have thought it our duty, seeing that this island is the property of the Holy Virgin,1 to invite and exhort those zealous for her service to unite together by squads, each of seven persons; and after choosing a corporal by a plurality of voices, to report themselves to us for enrolment in our garrison, and, in this capacity, to obey our orders, to the end that the country may be saved."

Twenty squads, numbering in all one hundred and forty men, whose names, appended to the proclamation, may still be seen on the ancient records of Montreal, answered the appeal and enrolled themselves in the holy cause.

The whole settlement was in a state of religious exaltation.  As the Iroquois were regarded as actual myrmidons of Satan in his malign warfare against Mary and her divine Son, those who died in fighting them were held to merit the reward of martyrs, assured of a seat in paradise.

And now it remains to record one of the most heroic feats of arms ever achieved on this continent.  That it may be rated as it merits, it will be well to glance for a moment at the condition of Canada, under the portentous cloud of war which constantly overshadowed it.