The Conquest of New France | Page 9

The
unhappy man, who understood French, heard the Governor give orders
that a gibbet should be erected on which he was to be hanged. When
the Bishop and the Intendant pleaded for mercy, Frontenac seemed to
yield. He would not take, he said, an hour to reply, but would answer at
once. He knew no such person as King William. James, though in exile,
was the true King of England and the good friend of the King of France.
There would be no surrender to a pirate. After this outburst, the envoy

asked if he might have the answer in writing. "No!" thundered
Frontenac. "I will answer only from the mouths of my cannon and with
my musketry!"
Phips could not take Quebec. In carrying out his plans, he was slow and
dilatory. Nature aided his foe. The weather was bad, the waters before
Quebec were difficult, and boats grounded unexpectedly in a falling
tide. Phips landed a force on the north side of the basin at Beauport but
was held in check by French and Indian skirmishing parties. He sailed
his ships up close to Quebec and bombarded the stronghold, but then,
as now, ships were impotent against well-served land defenses. Soon
Phips was short of ammunition. A second time he made a landing in
order to attack Quebec from the valley of the St. Charles but French
regulars fought with militia and Indians to drive off his forces. Phips
held a meeting with his officers for prayer. Heaven, however, denied
success to his arms. If he could not take Quebec, it was time to be gone,
for in the late autumn the dangers of the St. Lawrence are great. He lay
before Quebec for just a week and on the 23d of October sailed away. It
was late in November when his battered fleet began to straggle into
Boston. The ways of God had not proved as simple as they had seemed
to the Puritan faith, for the stronghold of Satan had not fallen before the
attacks of the Lord's people. There were searchings of heart,
recriminations, and financial distress in Boston.
For seven years more the war endured. Frontenac's victory over Phips
at Quebec was not victory over the Iroquois or victory over the colony
of New York. In 1691 this colony sent Peter Schuyler with a force
against Canada by way of Lake Champlain. Schuyler penetrated almost
to Montreal, gained some indecisive success, and caused much
suffering to the unhappy Canadian settlers. Frontenac made his last
great stroke in duly, 1696, when he led more than two thousand men
through the primeval forest to destroy the villages of the Onondaga and
the Oneida tribes of the Iroquois. On the journey from the south shore
of Lake Ontario, the old man of seventy-five was unable to walk over
the rough portages and fifty Indians shouting songs of joy carried his
great canoe on their shoulders. When the soldiers left the canoes and
marched forward to the fight, they bore Frontenac in an easy chair. He
did not destroy his enemy, for many of the Indians fled, but he burned
their chief village and taught them a new respect for the power of the

French. It was the last great effort of the old warrior. In the next year,
1697, was concluded the Peace of Ryswick; and in 1698 Frontenac died
in his seventy-ninth year, a hoary champion of France's imperial
designs.
The Peace of Ryswick was an indecisive ending of an indecisive war. It
was indeed one of those bad treaties which invite renewed war. The
struggle had achieved little but to deepen the conviction of each side
that it must make itself stronger for the next fight. Each gave back most
of what it had gained. The peace, however, did not leave matters quite
as they had been. The position of William was stronger than before, for
France had treated with him and now recognized him as King of
England. Moreover France, hitherto always victorious, with generals
who had not known defeat, was really defeated when she could not
longer advance.


CHAPTER II
. Quebec And Boston
At the end of the seventeenth century it must have seemed a far cry
from Versailles to Quebec. The ocean was crossed only by small
sailing vessels haunted by both tempest and pestilence, the one likely to
prolong the voyage by many weeks, the other to involve the sacrifice of
scores of lives through scurvy and other maladies. Yet, remote as the
colony seemed, Quebec was the child of Versailles, protected and
nourished by Louis XIV and directed by him in its minutest affairs. The
King spent laborious hours over papers relating to the cherished colony
across the sea. He sent wise counsel to his officials in Canada and