FROM 1635 TO 1666

When Port Royal fell before Argall, it will be remembered, young Biencourt took to the woods with his French bush lopers and Indian followers of Nova Scotia. The farms and fort of Annapolis Basin granted to his father by special patents lay in ruins. Familiar with the woods as the English buccaneer, who had destroyed the fort, was with his ship’s cabin, Biencourt withdrew to the southwest corner of Nova Scotia, where he built a rude stronghold of logs and slabs near the modern Cape Sable. Here he could keep in touch with the French fishermen off Cape Breton, and also traffic with the Indians of the mainland.

With Biencourt was a young man of his own age, boon comrade, kindred spirit, who had come to Port Royal a boy of fourteen, in 1606, in the gay days of Marc L’Escarbot Charles de La Tour. Sea rovers, bush lopers, these two could bid defiance to English raiders. Whether Biencourt died in 1623 or went home to France is unknown; but he deeded over to his friend, Charles de La Tour, all possessions in Acadia.

And now England again comes on the scene. By virtue of Cabot’s discovery and Argall’s conquest, the King of England, in 1621, grants to Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, all of Acadia, renamed Nova Scotia New Scotland. By way of encouraging emigration, the order of Nova Scotia Baronets is created, a title being granted to those who subscribe to the colonization company.

Sir William Alexander’s colonists shun the French bush lopers under Charles de La Tour down at Fort St. Louis on Cape Sable. The seventy Scotch colonists go on up the Annapolis Basin and build their fort four miles from old Port Royal. How did they pass the pioneer years these Scotch retainers of the Nova Scotia Baronets? Report among the French fishing fleet says thirty died of scurvy; but of definite information not a vestige remains. The annals of these colonists are as completely lost to history as the annals of the lost Roanoke colony in Virginia.

Under the same English patent Lord Ochiltree lands English colonists in Cape Breton, the grand summer rendezvous of the French fishermen; but two can play at Argall’s game of raids. French seamen swoop down on Ochiltree’s colony, capture fifty, destroy the settlement, and run up the white flag of France in place of the red standard of England.

Charles de La Tour with his Huguenots hides safely ensconced behind his slab palisades with the swarthy faces of half a hundred Indian retainers lighted up by the huge logs at blaze on the hearth. Charles de La Tour takes counsel with himself. English at Port Royal, English at Cape Breton, English on the mainland at Boston, English ships passing and repassing his lone lodge in the wilderness, he will be safer, will Charles de La Tour, with wider distance between himself and the foe; and he will take more peltries where there are fewer traders. Still keeping his fort in Nova Scotia, La Tour goes across Fundy Bay and builds him a second, stronger fort on St. John River, New Brunswick, near where Carleton town stands to-day.

Then two things happened that upset all plans.

Then the Englishmen, under the Kirke brothers, capture Quebec. As luck or ill luck will have it, among the French captured from the French ships of the Hundred Associates down at Tadoussac, is Claude de La Tour, the father of Charles. Claude de La Tour was a Protestant. This and his courtly manner and his noble birth commended him to the English court. What had France done for Claude de La Tour? Placed him under the ban on account of his religion.

Claude de La Tour promptly became a British subject, received the title Baronet of Nova Scotia with enormous grants of land on St. John River, New Brunswick, married an English lady in waiting to the Queen, and sailed with three men-of-war for Nova Scotia to win over his son Charles. No writer like Marc Lescarbot was present to describe the meeting between father and son; but one can guess the stormy scene, the war between love of country and love of father, the guns of the father’s vessels pointing at the son’s fort, the guns of the son’s fort pointing at the father’s vessels. The father’s arguments were strong. What had France done for the La Tours? By siding with England they would receive safe asylum in case of persecution and enormous grants of land on St. John River. But the son’s arguments were stronger. The father must know from his English bride maid in waiting to the English Queen that England had no intentions of keeping her newly captured possessions in Canada, but had already decided to trade them back to France for a dowry to the English Queen. If Canada were given back to France, what were English grants in New Brunswick worth? “If those who sent you think me capable of betraying my country even at the prayer of my father, they are mightily mistaken,” thundered the young man, ordering his gunners to their places. “I don’t purchase honors by crime! I don’t undervalue the offer of England’s King; but the King of France is just as able to reward me! The King of France has confided the defense of Acadia to me; and I’ll defend it to my last breath.”

Stung by his son’s rebuke, the elder La Tour retired to his ship, wrote one more unavailing appeal, then landed his mariners to rush the fort. But the rough bush lopers inside the palisades were expert marksmen. Their raking cross fire kept the English at a distance, and the father could neither drive nor coax his men to the sticking point of courage to scale palisades in such an unnatural war. Claude de La Tour was now in an unenviable plight. He dare not go back to France a traitor. He could not go back to England, having failed to win the day. The son built him a dwelling outside the fort; and there this famous courtier of two great nations, with his noble wife, retired to pass the end of his days in a wildwood wilderness far enough from the gaudy tinsel of courts. The fate of both husband and wife is unknown.

Charles de La Tour’s predictions were soon verified. The Treaty of St.-Germain-en-Laye, in 1632, gave back all Canada to France; and the young man’s loyalty was rewarded by the French King confirming the father’s English patent to the lands of St. John River, New Brunswick. Perhaps he expected more. He certainly wanted to be governor of Acadia, and may have looked for fresh title to Port Royal, which Biencourt had deeded to him. His ambition was embittered. Cardinal Richelieu of the Hundred Associates had his own favorites to look after. Acadia is divided into three provinces. Over all as governor is Isaac Razilli, chief of the Hundred Associates. La Tour holds St. John. One St. Denys is given Cape Breton; and Port Royal, the best province of all, falls to Sieur d’Aulnay de Charnisay, friend and relative of Richelieu; and when Razilli dies in 1635, Charnisay, with his strong influence at court, easily secures the dead man’s patents with all land grants attached. Charnisay becomes governor of Acadia.

For a second time La Tour is thwarted. Things are turning out as his father had foretold. Who began the border warfare matters little. Whether Charnisay as lord of all Acadia first ordered La Tour to surrender St. John, or La Tour, holding his grant from Biencourt to Port Royal, ordered Charnisay to give up Annapolis Basin, war had begun, such border warfare as has its parallel only in the raids of rival barons in the Middle Ages. Did La Tour’s vessels laden with furs slip out from St. John River across Fundy Bay bound for France? There lay at Cape Sable and Sable Island Charnisay’s freebooters, Charnisay’s wreckers, ready to board the ship or lure her a wreck on Sable Island reefs by false lights. It is unsafe to accept as facts the charges and countercharges made by these two enemies; but from independent sources it seems fairly certain that Charnisay, unknown to Cardinal Richelieu, was a bit of a freebooter and wrecker; for his men made a regular business of waylaying English ships from Boston, Dutch ships from New York, as they passed Sable Island; and Charnisay’s name became cordially hated by the Protestant colonies of New England. La Tour, being Huguenot, could count on firm friends in Boston.

Countless legends cling to Fundy Bay of the forays between these two. In 1640 La Tour and his wife, cruising past Annapolis Basin in their fur ships, rashly entered and attacked Port Royal. Their ship was run aground by Charnisay’s vessels and captured; but the friars persuaded the victor to set La Tour and his wife free, pending an appeal to France. France, of course, decided in favor of Charnisay, who was of royal blood, a relative of Richelieu’s, in high favor with the court. La Tour’s patent was revoked and he was ordered to surrender his fort on the St. John.

In answer, La Tour loaded his cannon, locked the fort gates, and bade defiance to Charnisay. Charnisay sails across Fundy Bay in June, 1643, with a fleet of four vessels and five hundred men to bombard the fort. La Tour was without provisions, though his store ship from France lay in hiding outside, blocked from entering by Charnisay’s fleet. Days passed. Resistance was hopeless. On one side lay the impenetrable forest; on the other, Charnisay’s fleet. On the night of June 12th, La Tour and his wife slipped from a little sally port in the dark, ran along the shore, and, evading spies, succeeded in rowing out to the store ship. Ebb tide carried them far from the four men-of-war anchored fast in front of the abandoned fort. Then sails out, the store ship fled for Boston, where La Tour and his wife appealed for aid.

The Puritans of Boston had qualms of conscience about interfering in this French quarrel; but they did not forget that Charnisay’s wreckers had stripped their merchant ships come to grief on the reefs of Sable Island. La Tour gave the Boston merchants a mortgage on all his belongings at St. John, and in return obtained four vessels, fifty mariners, ninety-two soldiers, thirty-eight cannon. With this fleet he swooped down on Fundy Bay in July. Charnisay’s vessels lay before Fort St. John, where the stubborn little garrison still held out, when La Tour came down on him like an enraged eagle. Charnisay’s fur ships were boarded, scuttled, and sunk, while the commander himself fled in terror for Port Royal. All sails pressed, La Tour pursued right into Annapolis Basin, wounding seven of the enemy, killing three, taking one prisoner. Charnisay’s one remaining vessel grounded in the river. A fight took place near the site of the mill which Poutrincourt had built long ago, but Charnisay succeeded in gaining the shelter of Port Royal, where his cannon soon compelled La Tour to fly from Annapolis Basin. Charnisay found it safer to pass that winter in France, and La Tour gathered in all the peltry traffic of the bay.

Early in 1644 Charnisay returned and sent a friar to secure the neutrality of the New Englanders. All summer negotiations dragged on between Boston and Port Royal, La Tour meanwhile scouring land and sea unchecked, packing his fort with peltries. Finally, Charnisay promised to desist from all fur trade along the coast if the New England colonies would remain neutral; and the colonies promised not to aid La Tour. La Tour was now outlawed by the French government, and Charnisay had actually induced New England to promise not to convey either La Tour or his wife to or from Bay of Fundy in English boats.

La Tour chanced to be absent from his fort in 1645. Like a bird of prey Charnisay swooped on St. John River; but he had not reckoned on Madame La Tour Frances Marie Jacqueline. With the courage and agility of a trained soldier, she commanded her little garrison of fifty and returned the raider’s cannonade with a fury that sent Charnisay limping back to Port Royal with splintered decks, twenty mangled corpses jumbled aft, and a dozen men wounded to the death lying in the hold.

With all the power of France at his back Charnisay had been defeated by a woman, the Huguenot wife of an outlaw! He must reduce La Tour or stand discredited before the world. Furious beyond words, he hastened to France to prepare an overwhelming armament.

But Madame La Tour was not idle. She, too, hastened across the Atlantic to solicit aid in London. One can imagine how Charnisay gnashed his teeth. Here, at last, was his chance. The Boston vessels were not to convey the La Tours back to Acadia. Like a hawk Charnisay cruised the sea for the outcoming ship with its fair passenger; but Madame La Tour had made a cast-iron agreement with the master of the sailing vessel to bring her direct to Boston. Instead of this, the vessel cruised the St. Lawrence, trading with the Indians, and so delayed the aid coming to La Tour; but when Charnisay’s searchers came on board off Sable Island, Madame La Tour was hidden among the freight in the hold. For the delay she sued the sailing master in Boston and obtained a judgment of 2000 pounds; and when he failed to pay, had his cargo seized and sold, and with the proceeds equipped three vessels to aid her outlawed husband. So the whole of 1646 passed, each side girding itself for the final fray.

April, 1647, spies brought word to Charnisay that La Tour was absent from his fort. Waiting not a moment, Charnisay hurried ships, soldiers, cannon across the bay. Inside La Tour’s fort was no confusion. Madame La Tour had ordered every man to his place. Day and night for three days the siege lasted, Charnisay’s men closing in on the palisades so near they could bandy words with the fighters on the galleries inside the walls. Among La Tour’s fighters were Swiss mercenaries men who fight for the highest pay. Did Charnisay in the language of the day “grease the fist” of the Swiss sentry, or was it a case of a boorish fellow refusing to fight under a woman’s command? Legend gives both explanations; but on Easter Sunday morning Charnisay’s men gained entrance by scaling the walls where the Swiss sentry stood. Madame La Tour rushed her men to an inner fort loopholed with guns. Afraid of a final defeat that would disgrace him before all the world, Charnisay called up generous terms if she would surrender. To save the lives of the men Madame La Tour agreed to honorable surrender, and the doors were opened. In rushed Charnisay! To his amazement the woman had only a handful of men. Disgusted with himself and boiling over with revenge for all these years of enmity, Charnisay forgot his promise and hanged every soul of the garrison but the traitor who acted as executioner, compelling Madame La Tour to watch the execution with a halter round her neck amid the jeers of the soldiery. Legend says that the experience drove her insane and caused her death within three weeks. Charnisay was now lord of all Acadia, with 10,000 pounds worth of Madame La Tour’s jewelry transferred to Port Royal and all La Tour’s furs safe in the warehouses of Annapolis Basin; but he did not long enjoy his triumph. He had the reputation of treating his Indian servants with great brutality. On the 24th of May, 1650, an Indian was rowing him up the narrows near Port Royal. Charnisay could not swim. Without apparent cause the boat upset. The Indian swam ashore. The commander perished. Legend again avers that the Indian upset the boat to be revenged on Charnisay for some brutality.

La Tour had been wandering from Newfoundland to Boston and Quebec seeking aid, but a lost cause has few friends, and if La Tour turned pirate on Boston boats, he probably thought he was justified in paying off the score of Boston’s bargain with Charnisay. Later he turned trader with the Indians from Hudson Bay, and found friends in Quebec. Word of his wrongs reached the French court. When Charnisay perished, La Tour was at last appointed lieutenant governor of Acadia. Widow Charnisay, left with eight children, all minors, made what reparation she could to La Tour by giving back the fort on the St. John, and La Tour, to wipe out the bitter enmity, married the widow of his enemy in February of 1653.

But this was not the seal of peace on his troubled life. Cromwell was now ascendant in England, and Major Sedgwick of Boston, in 1654, with a powerful fleet, captured Port Royal and St. John. Weary of fighting what seemed to be destiny, La Tour became a British subject, and with two other Englishmen was granted the whole of Acadia. Ten years later his English partners bought out his rights, and La Tour died in the land of his many trials about 1666. A year later the Treaty of Breda restored Acadia to France.