The Founder of New France : A chronicle of Champlain | Page 5

of fishermen. The most important facts would seem
to be these. In Champlain's own marriage contract his father is styled
'Antoine de Champlain, Capitaine de la Marine.' The same document
styles Champlain himself 'Samuel de Champlain.' A petition in which

he asks for a continuation of his pension (circ. 1630) styles him in its
opening words 'Le Sieur de Champlain' and afterwards 'le dit sieur
Champlain' in two places, while in six places it styles him 'le dit sieur
de Champlain.' Le Jeune calls him 'Monsieur de Champlain.' It is clear
that he was not a noble. It is also clear that he possessed sufficient
social standing to warrant the use of de. On the title-page of all his
books after 1604 he is styled the 'Sieur de Champlain.'] Dionne, in a
biography of nearly three hundred pages, does indeed mention the
names of his father and mother, but dismisses his first twenty years in
twenty lines, which say little more than that he learned letters and
religion from the parish priest and a love of the sea from his father. Nor
is it easy to enlarge these statements unless one chooses to make
guesses as to whether or not Champlain's parents were Huguenots
because he was called Samuel, a favourite name with French
Protestants. And this question is not worth discussion, since no one has,
or can, cast a doubt upon the sincerity of his own devotion to the
Catholic faith.
In short, Champlain by birth was neither a peasant nor a noble, but
issued from a middle-class family; and his eyes turned towards the sea
because his father was a mariner dwelling in the small seaport of
Brouage.
Thus when a boy Champlain doubtless had lessons in navigation, but
he did not become a sailor in the larger sense until he had first been a
soldier. His youth fell in the midst of the Catholic Revival, when the
Church of Rome, having for fifty years been sore beset by Lutherans
and Calvinists, began to display a reserve strength which enabled her to
reclaim from them a large part of the ground she had lost. But this
result was not gained without the bitterest and most envenomed
struggle. If doctrinal divergence had quickened human hatreds before
the Council of Trent, it drove them to fury during the thirty years that
followed. At the time of the Massacre of St Bartholomew Champlain
was five years old. He was seventeen when William the Silent was
assassinated; twenty when Mary Stuart was executed at Fotheringay;
twenty-one when the Spanish Armada sailed against England and when
the Guises were murdered at Blois by order of Henry III; twenty-two

when Henry III himself fell under the dagger of Jacques Clement. The
bare enumeration of these events shows that Champlain was nurtured in
an age of blood and iron rather than amid those humanitarian
sentiments which prevail in an age of religious toleration.
Finding his country a camp, or rather two camps, he became a soldier,
and fought for ten years in the wretched strife to which both Leaguers
and Huguenots so often sacrificed their love of country. With Henry of
Valois, Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise as personal foes and
political rivals, it was hard to know where the right line of faith and
loyalty lay; but Champlain was both a Catholic and a king's man, for
whom all things issued well when Henry of Navarre ceased to be a
heretic, giving France peace and a throne. It is unfortunate that the
details of these adventurous years in Champlain's early manhood
should be lost. Unassisted by wealth or rank, he served so well as to
win recognition from the king himself, but beyond the names of his
commanders (D'Aumont, St Luc, and Brissac) there is little to show the
nature of his exploits. [Footnote: He served chiefly in Brittany against
the Spanish allies of the League, and reached the rank of quartermaster.]
In any case, these ten years of campaigning were a good school for one
who afterwards was to look death in the face a thousand times amidst
the icebergs of the North Atlantic, and off the rocky coast of Acadia,
and in the forests of the Iroquois.
With such parentage and early experiences as have been indicated
Champlain entered upon his career in the New World. It is
characteristic that he did not leave the army until his services were no
longer needed. At the age of thirty-one he was fortunate enough to be
freed from fighting against his own countrymen. In 1598 was signed
the Peace of Vervins by which the enemies of Henry IV, both Leaguers
and Spaniards, acknowledged their defeat. To France the close of
fratricidal strife came as a happy release. To Champlain it meant also
the dawn