A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs | Page 6

ships, under
Lewis Kirke, had passed up the river and to him, Champlain, with a
half-starved force of only sixteen men, had been obliged to surrender
Quebec. Kirke was taking his captives down to Tadousac when,
opposite Malbaie, he met a French ship coming to the rescue. A
tremendous cannonade followed, the first those ancient hills had heard.
It ended in disaster to France, and Kirke sailed on to Tadousac with the
French ship as a prize.
When peace came France began more seriously the task of settling
Canada. Though inevitably Malbaie would soon be colonized, it was
still very difficult of access. A wide stretch of mountain and forest
separated it from Quebec; not for nearly two hundred years after
Champlain's time was a road built across this barrier. Moreover
France's first years of rule in Canada are marked by conspicuous failure
in colonizing work. The trading Company--the Company of New
France or of "One Hundred Associates"--to which the country was
handed over in 1633, thought of the fur trade, of fisheries, of profits--of
anything rather than settlement, and never lived up to its promises to

bring in colonists. It made huge grants of land with a very light heart.
In 1653 a grant was made of the seigniory of Malbaie to Jean Bourdon,
Surveyor-General of the Colony. But Bourdon seems not to have
thought it worth while to make any attempt to settle his seigniory and,
apparently for lack of settlement, the grant lapsed. Even the Company
of New France treasured some idea that would-be land owners in a
colony had duties to perform.
After thirty years France at length grew tired of the incompetence of
the Company and in 1663 made a radical change. The great Colbert
was already the guiding spirit in France and colonial plans he made his
special care. Louis XIV too was already dreaming of a great over-sea
Empire. The first step was to take over from the trading Company the
direct government of the colony. The next was to get the right men to
do the work in New France. An excellent start was made when, in 1665,
Jean Talon was sent out to Canada as Intendant. He had a genius for
organization. Though in rank below the Governor he, with the title of
Intendant, did the real work of ruling; the Governor discharged its
ceremonial functions. Talon had a policy. He wished to colonize, to
develop industry, to promote agriculture. In his capacious brain new
and progressive ideas were working. He brought in soldiers who
became settlers, among them the first real seigneur of Malbaie. An
adequate military force, the Carignan regiment, came out from France
to awe into submission the aggressive Iroquois, who long had made
Montreal, and even Quebec itself, unsafe by their sudden and
blood-thirsty attacks. Travelling by canoe and batteau the regiment
went from Quebec up the whole length of the St. Lawrence, landed on
the south shore of Lake Ontario, and marched into the Iroquois country.
With amazement and terror, those arrogant savages saw winding along
their forest paths the glittering array of France. Some of their villages
were laid low by fire. The French regiment had accomplished its task;
with no spirit left the Iroquois made peace.
A good many officers of the Carignan regiment, with but slender
prospects in France, decided to stay in Canada and to this day their
names--Chambly, Verchères, Longueuil, Sorel, Berthier and others are
conspicuous in the geography of the Province of Quebec. Malbaie was

granted to a soldier of fortune, the Sieur de Comporté, who came to
Canada at this time, but apparently was not an officer of the Carignan
Regiment. His outlook at Malbaie cannot have been considered
promising, for Pierre Boucher, who in 1664 published an interesting
account of New France, declared the whole region between Baie St.
Paul and the Saguenay to be so rugged and mountainous as to make it
unfit for civilized habitation. But Philippe Gaultier, Sieur de Comporté,
was of the right material to be a good colonist. Born in 1641 he was
twenty-four years of age when he came to Canada. Already he had had
some stirring adventures, one of which might well have proved grimly
fatal had he not found a refuge across the sea. Comporté, then serving
as a volunteer in a Company of Infantry led by his uncle, La Fouille,
was involved in one of the bloody brawls of the time that Richelieu had
made such stern efforts to suppress. The Company was in garrison at
La Motte-Saint-Heray in Poitou. On July 9th, 1665, one of its members,
Lanoraye, came in with the tale of an insult offered to the company by
a civilian in the town. Lanoraye had been marching through the streets
with a drum beating, in order to