Tag Archives: Filles du Roy

Filles du Roy, encore…

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Canada, France

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Filles du Roy

Jean Talon, Bishop François de Laval and several settlers welcome the King’s Daughters upon their arrival.  Painting by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale.

Filles du Roy

My colleague tkmorin has written about the Filles du Roy, the King’s Daughters, women who were sometimes considered filles de joy.  Between 1663 and 1763, some 500 to 900 women were sent to New France (Nouvelle-France) so men did not have to marry Amerindian women.  Doubt lingers about these women.  Some are considered filles de joy: filles du roy, filles de joie.  However, my colleague is right, these women came from convents and, once they arrived in New France, they were trained to be “good wives” to settlers by Ursuline sisters, in Quebec City, and sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, a Montreal religious order founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys.

Fille du Roy and Congrégation de Notre-Dame sisters

Fille du Roy

Allow me to add a note on this subject.

In seventeenth-century France, it was of the utmost importance for the nobility to be in Paris.  France was ruled not by Dukes, the highest rank among the nobility, and other aristocrats, but by chief ministers: Richelieu (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642) and Mazarin (July 14, 1602 – March 9, 1661).  Aristocrats therefore feared losing power.  Consequently, they lived close to court and they rebelled.  La Fronde (des nobles and des parlements) was a series of civil wars that took place in France between 1648 and 1653.

To be seen by the king

When Louis XIV ascended the throne, in 1661, after Mazarin death, aristocrats were further humiliated.  Louis refused to have a chief minister:  “L’État, c’est moy.” As for members of his Conseil d’en haut (FR), en haut meaning upstairs at Versailles, they were not members of the aristocracy.  Louis’ closest advisors, le Conseil d’en haut, were members of the bourgeoisie.

Aristocrats therefore made sure they had a home in Paris as well as a carriage and fine horses.  They wore clothes that had been purchased from the “bonne faiseuse,” (designer clothes or the right brand of clothes [faiseur; faiseuse: maker]) so they would be allowed at court.  The term “bonne faiseuse” is used in Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1659).  Louis XIV lived publicly and according to a protocol.  It was a privilege for courtiers to be present when Louis got up in the morning, le petit lever et le grand lever, and when he went to bed: the petit coucher, le grand coucher.

Impoverishment of France’s aristocracy

Therefore, as mentioned in an earlier article, the seventeenth century saw a gradual impoverishment of France’s aristocracy, which made it increasingly difficult for the nobility to provide dowries for several daughters.  Moreover, there were affluent bourgeois who wanted a daughter to marry an aristocrat so they would leave the bourgeoisie, but could not afford to endow more than one daughter.  Impoverished aristocrats marrying middle-class women did so in order to live in a style befitting their rank.  In fact, marrying the right bourgeois could also be very expensive.  Many were rich and some, very rich.

Social Climbing

Molière’s Bourgeois gentilhomme, The Middle-Class Aristocrat (10 October 1670), provides a fine example of a bourgeois, monsieur Jourdain, who wants his daughter to marry an aristocrat so he will be an aristocrat.  In order to marry Lucille, Jourdain’s daughter who loves him, Cléonte has to stage a turquerie, a play-within-a-play designed to fool monsieur Jourdain into believing his daughter is marrying the son of the Sultan of Turkey.  We already know about turqueries.

For many of these young women, relegated to a cul de couvent, the hellhole of a convent,[i] going to New France was their chance to live a normal life.  So far from being filles de joie, some filles du roy were almost literally filles du roy.  Others were the daughters of a bourgeois who had paid so dearly for marrying a daughter to an aristocrat or an affluent bourgeois that other daughters had to enter a convent or marry “sans dot,” without a dowry, a husband who may not have been of their choosing.  Moreover, there were poor bourgeois and orphaned or illegimate daughters who also had to be given an inexpensive roof: a convent.

Conclusion

So the Filles du Roy were not filles de joie.  They came from convents.  What they did not know is that they would live a difficult life in New France as would, two hundred years later, English-Canadian Susannah Moodie (6 December 1803 – 8 April 1885).  When I first read Margaret Atwood‘s Journals of Susannah Moodie, I thought of the filles du roy.

Sources

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[i] The term is used in Molière’s L’École des femmes (1662).

Fille Du Roy by Heather Dale & French-Language video

 
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV of France
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Madeleine Jarret de Verchères: a Canadian Heroine

15 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in Aboriginals, Canada

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Madeleine de Verchères

Photo credit: Wikipedia

My next post is a continuation of the Noble Savage, but I will pause briefly and deal with not-so-noble Amerindians by telling the story of Madeleine de Verchères[i] (March 3, 1678 – August 8, 1747).  Given the discrepancies between versions of this story, it is somewhat difficult, but not impossible, to tell.

Madeleine de Verchères

In 1691, the Iroquois, the most ferocious among Amerindians and allies to the English, grew particularly aggressive.  On 22 October 1692, at eight o’clock in the morning, the Iroquois captured about twenty settlers who were working in the fields, as was Madeleine.  One caught up with Madeleine who was wearing a scarf around her neck.  Madeleine lost her kerchief but she got away.

Madeleine was the fourteen-year old daughter of a seigneur.  According to one account, she lived in a castle, but it appears she lived in a fort with other settlers, soldiers and cattle.  Her father, François Jarret de Verchères[ii] had been a soldier with the Régiment de Carignan-Salières and would have built a fort, not a castle.  On the day of the attack, 22 October 1692, only one soldier was at the fort.

Madeleine’s mother is described as a 33-year old widow in one account, but according to another account, she and her husband were not at the fort on the infamous day.  They had gone to purchase supplies.

Having entered the fort, Madeleine went to the bastions where there was a cannon.  Madeleine fired the cannon to warn others and to call for reinforcement.  (Madeleine de Verchères, Wikipedia)

She then asked the settlers and the soldier to make a huge noise so the Iroquois would be fooled into thinking the fort was well protected and she started firing.  She drove the Iroquois away, but they took with them the men they had captured.

According to Wikipedia, at one point, Madeleine noticed that settlers, the Fontaine family, were in a canoe returning to the fort.  The soldier was too afraid to run to the landing dock and lead the Fontaine inside the fort, so Madeleine ran out and took them in.

In the Wikipedia entry, it is also reported that, when evening came, the cattle returned.  Fearing that Iroquois were behind the cattle, Madeleine and her two brothers went out of the fort, under cover of darkness, to make sure there were no Iroquois dressed as cattle.  The cattle had returned on their own and walked into the fort.

As for the captured settlers, they were subjected to torture à la Iroquois, which means that they were burned.  It appears that these unfortunates were saved by a party of friendly Amerindians who found them in the region of Lake Champlain.  It was possible to survive torture, depending on the severity of the wounds, the length of time the victim was tortured and resistance on the part of the victim.  Pierre-Esprit Radisson was captured and tortured by Amerindians and survived.[iii] 

However, an alternate and merciful account has a different ending.  The day after the attack, reinforcement arrived and the settlers were released.  Madeleine reported that there were two deaths.

* * *

Despite differences, the accounts of Madeleine de Verchères tell of a young woman who saved a fort.  Madeleine Jarret de Verchères is a Canadian heroine. Madeleine’s story was recorded by historian Claude Charles Le Roy de la Potherie.[iv] 

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[i] André Vachon, “Jarret de Verchères, Madeleine,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=1418
 
[ii] Céline Dupré, “Jarret de Verchères, Pierre,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=858
 
[iii] Grace Lee Nute, “Pierre-Esprit Radisson,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=1052
 
[iv] Léon Pouliot, “Le Roy de la Potherie, Claude Charles,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=947  
 
 
© Micheline Walker
15 November 2012
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Richelieu & Nouvelle-France

01 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Canada, History

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Tapis de Savonnerie, Grand Galerie du LouvreCharles Le Brun

Tapis de Savonnerie, Grande Galerie du Louvre
Charles Le Brun

Nouvelle-France under Henri IV and Richelieu

Seldom acknowledged is the attention given New France by Henri IV and Richelieu.  Samuel de Champlain (c. 1567 – 25 December 1635), a father of Nouvelle-France, was able to obtain, from Henri IV (13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610), the support he required to create a settlement for the French in Port-Royal, Acadie, now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.  Acadie was settled in 1604.

Quebec City

But Du Gas de Monts, the largely unrecognized father of Acadie, and an indefatigable explorer, quickly realized that he had to create a French settlement in what is now Quebec City.  Sailing up the St Lawrence River to Quebec City was a relativity safe endeavour.  Champlain argued that the inhabitants of the new settlement in Quebec City would convert Amerindians and, second, he emphasized the economic benefits of this “établissement.”  Once more the king obliged.

Quebec City: l’habitation

There was kinship between Henri IV, a former or less visible Huguenot, and Champlain, still a Huguenot or French Calvinist Protestant.  More importantly, however, Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Du Gua de Monts, (Du Gua de Monts; c. 1558 – 1628), were dealing with a king, Henri IV, who had business acumen, as did his chief advisor, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1560–1641).

Pierre Du Gua de Monts and Samuel de Champlain could smell the fur and had caught a glimpse of the natural resources that could be tapped in Nouvelle-France and relayed the message in what must have been an eloquent form of French.

For France’s North-American colonies, the death of Henri IV was tragic and so was the dismissal of Sully, one of Marie de’ Medici’s worst mistakes.  But Champlain found advocacy “for the retention of Quebec” under Richelieu who, contrary to Marie, was a man of vision.  Richelieu founded the “Compagnie des Cent-Associés and saw the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye return Quebec City  to French rule under Champlain, after the settlement had been captured by the Kirkes in 1629. This in part allowed the colony to develop eventually into the heartland of Francophone culture in North America.”[i]

Les Filles du Roy

In other words, under the leadership of Henri IV and Richelieu / Louis XIII, Nouvelle-France grew.  As for its situation after the death of both Richelieu (1642) and Louis XIII, one could say that Nouvelle-France remained in the field of vision of the motherland.  For instance, under Louis XIV, between 1663 and 1673, 500 to 900 Frenchwomen, the King’s daughters (les filles du Roy), were given a dowry by king Louis XIV and sent to Nouvelle-France, if they were deemed sufficiently healthy to survive the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

Upon their arrival, the brave women were housed in a convent and taught what they needed to know about their domestic duties and the rigours of Nouvelle-France.  It was only then that courting began.  They were a precious asset to Nouvelle-France because most could read and write and had also studied arithmetic.

Nouvelle-France and Acadie under Louis XV

However, under Louis XV, France’s North-American colonies were no longer a priority.  Absolutism has its drawbacks.  Voltaire’s Candide contains the famous “a few acres of snow” (quelques arpents de neige), the words he used to describe Nouvelle-France.  But I have often wondered whether or not this comment should be read literally.  As a writer, Voltaire had mastered oblique writing, what I call “indirection.”  His master had been Pascal whose Provinciales he greatly admired.  In some of the Lettres provinciales, a candid character asks questions to a Jesuit who then tells the wonders of casuistry. All sins could be absolved under the art of the rather Machiavellian casuistry.

In short, those few words could have been a “candid” indictment of France’s poor administration of its colonies, so poor that in 1763, when given a choice between keeping Nouvelle-France or a few balmy islands to the south, the French let Nouvelle-France go, keeping however Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, small islands off the coast of Newfoundland as a pied-à-terre for its fishermen.

The impoverishment of French Aristocrats

But allow me to return to our “filles du Roy” turned farmers.  In the seventeenth century, French aristocrats were expected to be present at the petit lever and grand lever, as well as the petit coucher and grand coucher of Louis XIV.  It therefore became very difficult to find a husband for a daughter.  How were they to raise the necessary dowry?

© Micheline Walker
March 1st, 2012
WordPress
updated: April 8th, 2013
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[i]  Wikipedia, “Cardinal de Richelieu”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu

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