Chapter 1

THE MODERN PERIOD 443

APPENDICES 473

INDEX 479

LIST OF PLATES

Major-General James Wolfe _Frontispiece_

FACE PAGE

François-Xavier de Laval 16

Cardinal de Richelieu 48

The Earl of Chatham 187

General the Marquis Montcalm 271

General Sir Jeffrey Amherst 282

Admiral Earl St. Vincent 294

General Gage 301

The Hon. Robert Monckton 307

[1]General Sir A. P. Irving 317

General Townshend 327

Sir James Henry Craig 342

Sir John Cope Sherbrooke 355

The Fourth Duke of Richmond 368

Admiral Viscount Nelson 374

Lord Dalhousie 376

General Lord Aylmer 395

The Earl of Durham 407

Sir John Colborne 417

Lord Sydenham 424

Sir Charles Bagot 434

General Earl Cathcart 443

The Earl of Elgin 452

Lord Lisgar 458

The Marquis of Dufferin and Ava 466

[Footnote 1: Inscription on plate for 2nd Governor of Canada 1766, _read_ Lieutenant-Governor of Canada 1766.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Jacques Cartier 7

Manoir de Jacques Cartier à Limoulon 11

Arrival of Jacques Cartier at Quebec, 1535 13

Cap Rouge 17

Champlain 21

Montmorency Falls 25

Bonne Ste. Anne (Old Church) 31

Marie de l'Incarnation 51

Ursuline Nuns of Quebec (Salle d'Étude, noviciat) 55

Jesuits' College and Church 56

Château Saint Louis, 1694 57

The Ursulines' Convent 61

Monument to the First Canadian Missionary 71

Brébeuf 74

Lalement 75

Colbert 87

Old Bishop's Palace 103

New Palace Gate 105

Intendant's Palace 107

Frontenac 113

Old St. Louis Gate 117

Robert Cavelier de la Salle 123

Sir William Phipps 147

Plan of Fort St. Louis, 1683 151

The Citadel To-day (from Dufferin Terrace) 153

Notre Dame de la Victoire 157

The Citadel in Winter 173

Lieut.-General Sir William Pepperell, Bart. 189

Bienville 193

De Bougainville 197

Ruins of Château Bigot 201

Le Chien d'Or 202

Plan of the City of Quebec, 1759 207

Major-General Sir Isaac Barre 209

Sir Hugh Palliser, Bart. 213

The City of Quebec in 1759 219

Baron Grant 221

Baroness de Longueil 223

Upper Town Market To-day 225

New St. John's Gate 227

Petit Champlain Street To-day 229

Old Prescott Gate 231

A Carriole 234

Village of Beauport 235

The Basilica 239

Jesuits' Barracks 241

Calèches 243

Quebec (from Lévi) 245

De Lévis 251

Sir George Bridges Rodney, Bart. (Governor of Newfoundland, 1759) 263

Entrance to the Citadel To-day 270

Hope Gate 272

Admiral Sir Charles Saunders 274

The Manor-House at Beauport, Montcalm's Headquarters 277

General Hospital 284

Captain James Cook 290

New Kent Gate 301

Church of the Récollets and La Grande Place 309

Old French House, St. John Street 315

Manor House, Sillery 319

Montreal in 1760 329

General Richard Montgomery 345

Cape Diamond 357

Benjamin Franklin 365

Charles Carroll of Carrollton 367

Samuel Chase 369

Breakneck Steps To-day 371

Old Parliament House, Quebec 377

H.R.H. the Duke of Kent, K.B 379

St. Lawrence River from the Citadel 381

Percée Rock 387

Hon. William Osgoode 389

New St. Louis Gate 390

Old Market Square, Upper Town 391

Frontenac Terrace To-day 392

Mr. Samuel Hearne 397

Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudson's Bay, 1777 401

Prince Rupert 403

Sir Alexander Mackenzie 415

Simon McTavish 419

Earl of Selkirk 420

Ferry-Boat on the St. Lawrence 423

Sir Gordon Drummond 427

Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, K.B. 430

General de Salaberry 435

A Beggar of Côte Beaupré 437

St. Louis Street, Place d'Armes, and New Court House 440

City Hall, Quebec 444

Lieut.-Colonel John By, R.E. 445

Sir Peregrine Maitland 448

Trappists at Mistassini 449

The Hon. Louis Joseph Papineau 451

English Cathedral 455

The Marquis of Lorne (Duke of Argyll) 461

Sir George Cartier 465

Sir John A. Macdonald 467

Sir Wilfrid Laurier 469

MAPS

1. Canada and the North American Colonies, 1680-1782 _Face page_ 110

The Environs of Quebec, 1759. Louisbourg, to show the Sieges of 1744 and 1758.

2. Plan of Quebec, 1759. From a Map published in London in 1760 _Page_ 207

3. Plan of the River St. Lawrence _Face page_ 268

4. Map of Upper and Lower Canada, illustrating events until the Campaign of 1814 _Face page_ 378

5. The Territory of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870 _Face page_ 399

NOTE

The student of the history of the ancient capital of Canada is embarrassed, not by the dearth but by the abundance of material at his disposal. The present volume, therefore, makes no claim to originality. It is but an assimilation of this generous data, and a simple comment upon the changing scenes which were recorded by such ancient authorities as the Jesuit priests and pioneers in their _Relations_, and by the monumental works of Francis Parkman, whose researches occupied more than forty years, and whose picturesque pen has done for Canada what Prescott's did for Mexico. Admiring tribute and gratitude must also be expressed for the years of careful study and the unfaltering energy by which the late Mr. Kingsford produced his valuable _History of Canada_. Nor can any one, writing of Quebec, proceed successfully without constant reference to the historical gleanings of Sir James Le Moine, who has spent a lifetime in the romantic atmosphere of old-time manuscripts, and who, with Monsieur l'Abbé Casgrain, represents, in its most attractive form, that composite citizenship which has the wit and grace of the old _régime_ with the useful ardour of the new.

THE AUTHORS.

PRELUDE

About the walled city of Quebec cling more vivid and enduring memories than belong to any other city of the modern world. Her foundation marked a renaissance of religious zeal in France, and to the people from whom came the pioneers who suffered or were slain for her, she had the glamour of new-born empire, of a conquest renewing the glories of the days of Charlemagne. Visions of a hemisphere controlled from Versailles haunted the days of Francis the First, of the Grand Monarch, of Colbert and of Richelieu, and in the sky of national hope and over all was the Cross whose passion led the Church into the wilderness. The first emblem of sovereignty in the vast domain which Jacques Cartier claimed for Francis his royal master, was a cross whereon was inscribed--

_Franciscus Primus, Dei Gratiâ Francorum Rex, Regnat._

In spite of cruel neglect due to internal troubles and that European strife in which the motherland was engaged for so many generations, the eyes of Frenchmen turned to their over-sea dominions with imaginative hope, with conviction that the great continent of promise would renew in France the glories that were Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. How hard the patriotic colonists strove to retain those territories which Champlain, La Salle, Maisonneuve, Joliet, and so many others won through nameless toil and martyrdom, and how at last the broad lands passed to another race and another flag, not by fault or folly or lack of courage of the people, but by the criminal corruption of the ruling few, is the narrative which runs through these pages.

For at least the first hundred years of its existence, Quebec was New France; and the story of Quebec in that period is the story of all Canada. The fortress was the heart and soul of French enterprise in the New World. From the Castle of St. Louis, on the summit of Cape Diamond, went forth mandates, heard and obeyed in distant Louisiana. The monastic city on the St. Lawrence was the centre of the web of missions, which slowly spread from the dark Saguenay to Lake Superior. The fearful tragedies of Indian warfare had their birth in the early policy of Quebec. The fearless voyageurs, whose canoes glided into unknown waters, ever westward--towards Cathay, as they believed--made Quebec their base for exploration. And as time went on, the rock-built stronghold of the north became the nerve-centre of that half-century of conflict which left the flag of Britain waving in victory on the Plains of Abraham.

When Montcalm in his last hours consigned to the care of the British conquerors the colonists he had loved and for whom he had fought, he proclaimed a momentous epoch in the world's history--the loss of an Empire to a great nation of Europe and the gain of an Empire to another. Within a generation the Saxon Conquistador was to suffer the same humiliation, and to yield up that colonial territory from which Quebec had been assailed; but the fortress city was always to both nations the keystone of the arch of power on the American continent. When she was lost to France, Louisiana, that vast territory along the Mississippi--a kingdom in itself--still remained, but no high memory cherished it, no national hope hung over it, and a hundred years ago Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the new Western power--the United States. As a nation the labours of France were finished in America on the day that De Ramézay yielded up the keys of the city, and Wolfe's war-worn legions marched through St. Louis Gate from the Plains of Abraham.

Yet scores of thousands of the people of France remained in the city and the province to be ruled henceforth by the intrepid race, with which it had competed in a death-struggle for dominion through so many adventurous and uncertain years. Victory, like a wayward imp of Fate, had settled first upon one and then upon the other, and once before 1759 England had held the keys of the great fortress only to yield them up again in a weak bargain; but the die was thrown for the last time when Amherst securely quartered himself at Montreal, and Murray at the Château St. Louis, where Frontenac and Vaudreuil had had their day of virile governance. Never again was the banner of the golden lilies to wave in sovereignty over the St. Lawrence, though the people who had fought and toiled under its protection were to hold to their birthright and sustain their language through the passing generations, faithful to tradition and origin, but no less faithful to the Canadian soil which their fame, their labour, and their history had made sacred to them. Frenchmen of a vanished day they were to cherish their past with an apprehensive devotion, and yet to keep the pact they made with the conqueror in 1759, and later in 1774 when the Quebec Act secured to them their religious liberty, their civic code, and their political status. This pact, further developed in the first Union of the English and French provinces in 1840, and afterwards in the Confederation of 1867, has never suffered injury or real suspicion, but was first made certain by loyalty to the British flag, in the War of the American Revolution, and piously sealed by victorious duty and valour in the war of 1812. The record of fidelity has been enriched since that day in the north-west rebellion fomented by a French half-breed in 1885, and in the late war in South Africa, where French Canadians fought side by side with English comrades for the preservation of the Empire.

These later acts of imperial duty are not performed by Anglicised Frenchmen, for the pioneer race of Quebec are still a people apart in the great Dominion so far as their civic and social, their literary and domestic life are concerned. They share faithfully in the national development, and honourably serve the welfare of the whole Dominion--sometimes with a too careful and unsympathetic reserve--but within their own beloved province they retain as zealously and more jealously than the most devoted Highland men their language and their customs, and faithfully conserve the civil laws which mark them off as clearly from the English provinces as Jersey and Guernsey are distinguished from the United Kingdom. They have changed little with the passing years, and their city has changed less. In many respects the Quebec of to-day is the Quebec of yesterday. Time and science have altered its detail, but viewed from afar it seems to have altered as little as Heidelberg and Coblenz. Lower Town huddles in artistic chaos at the foot of the sheltering cliff, and, as aforetime, the overhanging fort protrudes its protecting muzzles. Spires and antique minarets which looked down upon a French settlement struggling with foes in feathers and war-paint, still gleam from the towering rock on which their stable foundations are laid; and after five sieges and the passing of two and a half centuries the mother city of the continent remains a faithful survivor of an heroic age, on historic ground sacred to the valour of two great races.

OLD QUEBEC