Tag Archives: Jacques Cartier

La Henriade

10 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in Acadia, Age of Enlightenment, France, French Literature

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Voltaire (portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c. 1724)

The ostensible subject [of La Henriade] is the siege of Paris in 1589 by Henry III in concert with Henry of Navarre, soon to be Henry IV, but its themes are the twin evils of religious fanaticism and civil discord.

La Henriade, wiki2.org

I think the above captures the spirit of Voltaire’s La Henriade. But it also describes Voltaire who spent a lifetime combating fanaticism, injustice and superstitions. Our subject is New France in its earliest days. We wish to know what happened during the half century separating Cartier’s attempt to found a settlement and Dugua de Mons’ similar endeavour. This period has not been chronicled, but Huguenots had been involved in the fur trade. Our King is no longer François Ier, but Henri IV.

The contents of this post may seem repetitive, but they sum up Cartier’s era and Henri IV’s brief reign. More importantly, although New France has Huguenot roots, I am portraying a good king who was attempting to put away a divided Kingdom. He was assassinated in 1610.

Jacques Cartier

Many Huguenots (French Protestants) or former Huguenots, were the founders of what became Canada. Dugua de Mons converted to Catholicism in 1593, at approximately the same time Henri IV became a Catholic. As King of Navarre, he had been a Huguenot.

Charlesbourg-Royal

Nothing suggests that Jacques Cartier was a Huguenot, but he settled Charlesbourg-Royal in 1541, a settlement that ended in 1543. François Ier (Francis Ist), had commissioned Pierre de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, known as Roberval, a nobleman, to build the first French settlement in North America, but Roberval did not set sail until 1542. Although sources differ, Charlesbourg-Royal was settled, almost undoubtedly, by Jacques Cartier, rather than Roberval.

Jacques Cartier left France in 1541, a year before Roberval sailed for the New World. Jacques Cartier met Roberval, near Newfoundland, but refused to turn around to assist Roberval, as the King had requested. Jacques Cartier was not a nobleman, but he is the explorer who discovered Canada and named it Canada, after Kanata, its Amerindian name.

Francis 1st, King of France, did not ask Jacques Cartier to build a settlement. As we know, the person he commissioned was Pierre de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, a nobleman. This may have been an affront to Jacques Cartier who had discovered “Canada.” Jacques Cartier lost 35 men during the first winter he spent at Charlesbourg-Royal, pictured above. By 1543, the settlement was abandoned. Then came a seemingly inactive period spanning nearly a half-century, but was it?

Henri IV

The settlements that survive are Dugua de Mons’ Port-Royal and Quebec City. As a noted, Champlain founded Quebec City, as Dugua’s employee. In fact, he and Mathieu da Costa were Dugua’s employees. So, Mathieu da Costa, the first Black in Canada, may have co-founded Quebec City, as an employee of Dugua de Mons. Mathieu de Coste is also Canada’s first linguist and he died in the settlement he co-founded. He was a free Black.

Had he not been a fur-trader, it is very unlikely that Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit could have built a trading-post. The Huguenots had been fleeing the Wars of Religion. Henri IV reigned from 1589 to 14 May 1610, when he was assassinated, and events do not suggest that during his reign Henri IV encouraged the growth of Protestantism. As we know, he signed the Édit de Nantes promoting religions toleration.

at the end of the Wars of Religion, [Henri IV] abjured Protestantism and converted to Roman Catholicism (1593) in order to win Paris and reunify France. With the aid of such ministers as the Duc de Sully, he brought new prosperity to France.

Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-IV-king-of-France

When Henri IV died he had yet to finish unifying France and, given Richelieu’s concept of absolutism, Huguenots would have to convert. Richelieu’s notion of absolutism required that all French citizens practice the same religion. As conceived by Richelieu, absolutism consisted of one religion, one language, and one King. When the Siege of Larochelle began, so did the Anglo-French War of 1627-1629. England was defeated and the Edict of Nantes, revoked in 1685, unleashing a reign of terror a Voltaire could not accept.

Acadie had just begun, when Marc Lescarbot wrote and published his Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. He had been in Acadia for one year, 1607-1608. He also produced a play, le Théâtre de Neptune, in Port-Royal. His History of Nouvelle-France is not a bad history. On the contrary. It is a good story. But Nouvelle-France consisted of one settlement, or habitation: Port-Royal that was about to crumble to be reborn again. The picture above features Lescarbot reading his play. The artist is William Jefferys (photo-credit: wiki2.org).

Would there ever be a King of France so loved that a young Voltaire would praise him in long cantos, or “fictions” “drawn from the regions of the marvelous” (Voltaire, 1859)? There wouldn’t, except in “fictions.”

Sources and Resources


Musing on Champlain & New France (9 May 2012)
Wikipedia
The Encyclopædia Britannica
La Henriade is an Internet Archive publication
La Henriade is a Wikisource publication

Love to everyone 💕

© Micheline Walker
9 September 2020
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Jacques Cartier, the Mariner

17 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Canada, History

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Jacques Cartier made three trips to Canada.

1. 1534
2. 1535-1536
3. 1541 
   
These are his official trips.  European fishermen had long fished off the banks of Labrador and Newfoundland, so it is possible and even probable that Cartier had sailed across the Atlantic before 1534.
 

Jacques Cartier and Amerindians

France claims Nouvelle-France in 1534

However, his 1534 trip was an official trip.  He had sailed to the North-American continent on behalf of King Francis I.  His mission was a twofold endeavour.  The King of France wanted him, first, to bring back gold and, second, to find a route to China.  Cartier travelled accompanied by France’s Vice-Admiral, Charles de Mouy, Chevallier, seigneur de La Milleraye.  A cross was planted on North-American soil in the Gaspé area.  This is how France claimed Nouvelle-France.

Cartier did not find gold and although, upon his return to France, he felt he had reached an Asian land, he hadn’t.  In fact, when he attempted to enter the St Lawrence River, Amerindians blocked his way.  Yet, for the French, the trip was not a failure.  The land they had discovered was immense and it held riches.

the area Cartier explored in 1534

In 1534, Cartier entered the Golf of St Lawrence just north of Newfoundland and south of Labrador, saw Anticosti, an island, as well the Magdalen Islands, which he may have named “le jour de la Magdelaine” and part of the coast, from Gaspé to New Brunswick.  He then followed the Northwest coast of Newfoundland and re-entered the Atlantic Ocean travelling through the Strait of Belle-Isle.

(please click on the maps to enlarge them)

Cartier's First Voyage: 1534

In other words, in 1534, Cartier explored the Golf of the St Lawrence River and the above-mentioned cross was planted indicating ownership of Nouvelle-France by France.  As well, he captured Amerindian chief Donnacona’s two sons:  Taignoagny and Dom Agaya.

Jacques Cartier’s three ships were named the Grande Hermine, la Petite Hermine and l’Émérillon.

Cartier's Second Voyage: 1535-1536

Cartier’s second voyage: the St Lawrence River

In 1635-1636, Cartier returned his sons to Amerindian chief Donnacona and he was able to travel up the St Lawrence River, but the river became narrower and his ships could not go further west because of the Lachine Rapids.  So the China he discovered was not the China he had hoped to reach.

Hochelaga, and Iroquoian word, would not be settled until 1642, when it was renamed Ville-Marie, by Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière who succeeded in founding the Société de Mont-Royal. The island belonged to Jean de Lauson (1583 – 16 February 1666), the fourth Governor of New France, from 1651 to 1657, who hesitated parting with his property.

Ville-Marie: Jeanne Mance & Marguerite Bourgeois

At first, Ville-Marie was mostly a mission.  In Quebec City Ursuline Nuns had opened a hospital, but Jérome Lallemant secured the services of Jeanne Mance who founded a hospital in Montreal.  Later, in 1653, Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the new governor of Ville-Marie, would return from a trip to France with Marguerite Bourgeois and one hundred men.  Marguerite Bourgeois (17 April 1620 – 12 January 1700) founded the Congrégation de Notre-Dame.  She was already a nun and had entered a cloistered convent of the French Congrégation de Notre-Dame.  In Nouvelle-France, the sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame would not be cloistered.  They would be teachers and still are.

Scurvy: The Amerindians Help Cartier

Let’s go back to 1535-1536.  That year, Cartier spent the winter in Nouvelle-France.  Many of his men fell ill because of a lack of Vitamin C.  Amerindians were not happy to see their land invaded, but despite a degree of resentment, Dom Agaya made an infusion with the leaves of a white cedar tree, the Thuja occidentalis.  It was the appropriate remedy.

Cartier’s third voyage to Canada

Although most people believe Cartier did not attempt to bring settlers to New France, he did.  He founded Charlesbourg-Royal, but hostility on the part of the Iroquois forced him away from the settlement.  On his way back to France, Cartier encountered Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval (c. 1500–1560) who had been named Lieutenant General of New France and was the first to hold this rank.  Roberval ordered Cartier to return to the Saguenay settlement.  Cartier fled under cover of darkness.

(please click on the picture to enlarge it)

~ Jacques Cartier, issue of 1934 ~

Roberval, who had come with 200 colonists, renamed the settlement France-Roy, but was forced to abandon it because of the rigours of winter, scurvy and attacks by hostile Amerindians.

So, Cartier discovered Canada, named it Canada (from Kanata) and named other places, but he alienated Amerindians by kidnapping Donnacona’s sons.  He did take diamonds back to the King, but they were not diamonds.  He therefore returned to Saint-Malo and lived in his nearby estate.  He died during an epidemics of what may have been typhus.  On August 18, 2006, Canadian archaeologists discovered “the precise location of Cartier’s lost first colony of Charlesbourg-Royal.” (Wikipedia)

As for Roberval, a Huguenot, in 1560, he and companions were murdered by a group of Catholics leaving a Calvinist meeting, in Paris.

 
À Saint-Malo (please click on the title to hear the music)
 
 

March 17, 2012

Cartier, Champlain & Missionaries: a Chronology

16 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Canada, History

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800px-Jacques_Cartier_by_Hamel

Jacques Cartier
by Théophile-Abraham Hamel (1817–1870) 

I have developed a passion for the material I am putting online. So here I am re-examining the history of Canada, finding links with what is happening in France, and giving dates that allow me to follow the settlers and the missionaries in a systematic manner. One detail I omitted to provede is that Père Marquette and Louis Jolliet entered the Mississippi River at Prairie-du-Chien or Dog’s Prairie, which means that our coureurs de bois and voyageurs had already travelled that far. After Marquette and Jolliet mapped out the Mississippi, the Jesuits sent missionaries to these newly discovered areas.

The Jesuit Relations: on the internet

I have just discovered that the Jesuit Relations or Relations des Jésuites can be read online. For me, this is a Godsend. It is now possible to include a link to these sites: Jesuit Relations or Les Relations des Jésuites. Would that I were still teaching!

As for information about the authors of the Relations, I have provided links with Wikipedia, The Catholic Encyclopedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica.

The Standard Anthology

The excerpts my students had access to were published in the following anthology: Gilles Marcotte, rédacteur, Anthologie de la littérature québécoise (L’Hexagone, 1994). The Relations my students read were included in book 1 (tome 1) of the Anthologie entitled Écrits de la Nouvelle-France and edited by Léopold LeBlanc. My students read several complete texts, but the Anthologie was our organizer and browser. Two “tomes” have since been added to the original four. This Anthologie is considered the standard reference anthology on Quebec or French-Canadian literature.

Although the Anthologie is entitled Anthologie de la littérature québécoise, it includes texts written by other French-speaking authors and notably Gabrielle Roy (from Manitoba) and Marguerite Maillet, an Acadian writer and winner of the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary award for works written in French.

Jacques Cartier

I will search the internet for texts by Jacques Cartier, who claimed Nouvelle-France for France in 1534 and made a second trip in 1534-1536 (mentioned below), and Samuel de Champlain who is considered the father of Nouvelle-France. Champlain established a settlement first in Acadie (1604) and second in what the Amerindians called Canada. Québec city (1608) was in Canada and located near an Iroquoian village called Stadacona.

Jacques Cartier sailed up to Montreal or Hochelaga

Jacques Cartier (31 December  1491 – 1st September 1557) went up the Saint-Lawrence River, in search of China (la Chine), but could not proceed further than the Lachine Rapids. So Montreal (Hochelaga) was settled by Maisonneuve, in 1642.

Chronology

  • Jacques Cartier discovers what will be Canada in 1534;
  • Acadie is settled by Du Gua de Monts & Samuel de Champlain in 1604;
  • Quebec city is settled by Champlain  in 1608;
  • The Jesuits start arriving in 1609, when Quebec city was settled;
  • The Jesuits arrived at Port Royal, in Acadie, the current Nova Scotia, on 22 May 1611;
  • Récollets (Recollect) missionaries sail with Champlain from Rouen to Quebec City, arriving on 2 June 1615;
  • The Jesuit missions “would gain a strong foothold in North America in 1632, with the arrival of the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune. Between 1632 and 1650, 46 French Jesuits arrived to preach among the Indians” (Wikipedia);
  • Montréal is founded by Maisonneuve in 1642;
  • Eight Jesuits, killed between 1642 and 1649, became known as the North American Martyrs.

The First three settlements: Port-Royal; Québec (city) and Montréal

Port-Royal, established in 1604 in Acadie, by Champlain, is the first French settlement in North America. The Second is Quebec City, settled in 1608, by Champlain,  The Third was Montréal, settled by Maisonneuve in 1642.

 

Postage stamp 1908

© Micheline Walker

16  March 2012
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