The Seigneurs of Old Canada : A Chronicle of New World Feudalism
139 pages
English

The Seigneurs of Old Canada : A Chronicle of New World Feudalism

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139 pages
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Project Gutenberg's The Seigneurs of Old Canada, by William Bennett Munro #5 in our series Chronicles of CanadaCopyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloadingor redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg file.We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for futurereaders.Please do not remove this.This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to view the etext. Do not change or edit it without writtenpermission. The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they need to understand what they mayand may not do with the etext. To encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end, rather than having itall here at the beginning.**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts****Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971*******These Etexts Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and further information, is included below. We need yourdonations.The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number]64-6221541 Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.Title: The Seigneurs of Old Canada: A Chronicle of New-World FeudalismAuthor: William Bennett MunroEdition: 10Language: ...

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Publié le 08 décembre 2010
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Project Gutenberg's The Seigneurs of Old Canada,by William Bennett Munro #5 in our seriesChronicles of CanadaCopyright laws are changing all over the world. Besure to check the copyright laws for your countrybefore downloading or redistributing this or anyother Project Gutenberg file.We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is,on your own disk, thereby keeping an electronicpath open for future readers.Please do not remove this.This header should be the first thing seen whenanyone starts to view the etext. Do not change oredit it without written permission. The words arecarefully chosen to provide users with theinformation they need to understand what theymay and may not do with the etext. To encouragethis, we have moved most of the information to theend, rather than having it all here at the beginning.**Welcome To The World of Free Plain VanillaElectronic Texts****Etexts Readable By Both Humans and ByComputers, Since 1971*******These Etexts Were Prepared By Thousands ofVolunteers!*****
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to getetexts, and further information, is included below.We need your donations.The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundationis a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [EmployeeIdentification Number] 64-6221541 Find out abouthow to make a donation at the bottom of this file.Title: The Seigneurs of Old Canada: A Chronicle ofNew-World FeudalismAuthor: William Bennett MunroEdition: 10Language: EnglishRelease Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4655][Yes, we are more than one year ahead ofschedule][This file was first posted on February 21, 2002]Project Gutenberg's The Seigneurs of Old Canada,by William Bennett Munro**********This file should be named cca0510.txt orcca0510.zip**********Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a newNUMBER, cca0511.txtVERSIONS based on separate sources get newLETTER, cca0510a.txt
This etext was produced by Gardner BuchananProject Gutenberg Etexts are often created fromseveral printed editions, all of which are confirmedas Public Domain in the US unless a copyrightnotice is included. Thus, we usually do not keepetexts in compliance with any particular paperedition.The "legal small print" and other information aboutthis book may now be found at the end of this file.Please read this important information, as it givesyou specific rights and tells you about restrictionsin how the file may be used.CHRONICLES OF CANADAEdited by George M. Wrong and H. H. LangtonIn thirty-two volumesVolume 5THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADAA Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
By WILLIAMTORONTO,  BENNETT 1915MUNRO
CHAPTER IAN OUTPOST OF EMPIREWhat would history be without the picturesqueannals of the Gallic race? This is a question whichthe serious student may well ask himself as heworks his way through the chronicles of a dozencenturies. From the age of Charlemagne to the lastof the Bonapartes is a long stride down the ages;but there was never a time in all these years whenmen might make reckonings in the arithmetic ofEuropean politics without taking into account theprestige, the power, and even the primacy ofFrance. There were times without number whenFrance among her neighbours made herself hatedwith an undying hate; there were times, again,when she rallied them to her side in friendship andadmiration. There were epochs in which herhegemony passed unquestioned among men ofother lands, and there were times when a suddenshift in fortune seemed to lay the nation prostrate,with none so poor to do her reverence.It was France that first brought an orderlynationalism out of feudal chaos; it was her royalhouse of Capet that rallied Europe to the rescue ofthe Holy Sepulchre and led the greatest of thecrusades to Palestine. Yet the France of the lastcrusades was within a century the France of Crecy,just as the France of Austerlitz was more speedily
the France of Waterloo; and men who followed thetricolour at Solferino lived to see it furled inhumiliation at Sedan. No other country has had ahistory as prolific in triumph and reverse, in epochsof peaceful progress and periods of civilcommotion, in pageant and tragedy, in all thatgives fascination to historical narrative. Happy theland whose annals are tiresome! Not such hasbeen the fortune of poor old France.The sage Tocqueville has somewhere remarkedthat whether France was loved or hated by theoutside world she could not be ignored. That isvery true. The Gaul has at all stages of his nationalhistory defied an attitude of indifference in others.His country has been at many times the head andat all times the heart of Europe. His hysteria hasmade Europe hysterical, while his sober nationalsense at critical moments has held the wholecontinent to good behaviour. For a half-dozencenturies there was never a squabble at anyremote part of Europe in which France did notstand ready and willing to take a hand on theslightest opportunity. That policy, as pursuedparticularly by Louis XIV and the Bonapartes,made a heavy drain in brawn and brain on thevitality of the race; but despite it all, the peacefulachievements of France within her own borderscontinued to astonish mankind. It is this astoundingvigour, this inexhaustible stamina, this unexampledrecuperative power that has at all times madeFrance a nation which, whether men admire orcondemn her policy, can never be treated withindifference. It was these qualities which enabled
her, throughout exhausting foreign troubles, toretain her leadership in European scholarship, inphilosophy, art, and architecture; this is what hasenabled France to be the grim warrior of Europewithout ceasing ever to be the idealist of thenations.It was during one of her proud and prosperouseras that France began her task of creating anempire beyond the Atlantic. At no time, indeed,was she better equipped for the work. No power ofWestern Europe since the days of Roman gloryhad possessed such facilities for conquering andgoverning new lands. If ever there was a land ableand ready to take up the white man's burden it wasthe France of the seventeenth century. The nationhad become the first military power of Europe.Spain and Italy had ceased to be serious rivals.Even England, under the Stuart dynasty, tacitlyadmitted the military primacy of France. Nor wasthis superiority of the French confined to thescience of war. It passed unquestioned in the artsof peace. Even Rome at the height of her powercould not dominate every field of human activity.She could rule the people with authority andovercome the proud; but even her own poetsrendered homage to Greece in the realms of art,sculpture, and eloquence. But France was theaesthetic as well as the military dictator ofseventeenth- century Europe. Her authority wassupreme, as Macaulay says, on all matters fromorthodoxy in architecture to the proper cut of acourtier's clothes. Her monarchs were the firstgentlemen of Europe. Her nobility set the social
standards of the day. The rank and file of herpeople—and there were at least twenty million ofthem in the days of Louis Quatorze—were makinga fertile land yield its full increase. The country waspowerful, rich, prosperous, and, for the time being,outwardly contented.So far as her form and spirit of government went,France by the middle of the seventeenth centurywas a despotism both in theory and in fact. Menwere still living who could recall the day whenFrance had a real parliament, the Estates-Generalas it was called. This body had at one time all theessentials of a representative assembly. It mighthave become, as the English House of Commonsbecame, the grand inquest of the nation. But it didnot do so. The waxing personal strength of themonarchy curbed its influence, its authorityweakened, and throughout the great century ofFrench colonial expansion from 1650 to 1750 theEstates-General was never convoked. Thecentralization of political power was complete. 'TheState! I am the State.' These famous wordsimputed to Louis XIV expressed no vain boast ofroyal power. Speaking politically, France was apyramid. At the apex was the Bourbon sovereign.In him all lines of authority converged. Subordinateto him in authority, and dominated by him when hewilled it, were various appointive councils, amongthem the Council of State and the so-calledParliament of Paris, which was not a parliament atall, but a semi- judicial body entrusted with thefunction of registering the royal decrees. Belowthese in the hierarchy of officialdom came the
intendants of the various provinces —forty or moreof them. Loyal agents of the crown were theseintendants. They saw to it that no royal mandateever went unheeded in any part of the king'sdomain. These forty intendants were the men whoreally bridged the great administrative gulf whichlay between the royal court and the people. Theywere the most conspicuous, the most important,and the most characteristic officials of the oldregime. Without them the royal authority wouldhave tumbled over by its own sheer top-heaviness.They were the eyes and ears of the monarchy;they provided the monarch with fourscore eagerhands to work his sovereign will. The intendants, inturn, had their underlings, known as the sub-delegates, who held the peasantry in leash. Thus itwas that the administration, like a pyramid,broadened towards its base, and the wholestructure rested upon the third estate, or rank andfile of the people. Such was the position, thepower, and administrative framework of Francewhen her kings and people turned their eyeswestward across the seas. From the rugged oldNorman and Breton seaports courageous marinershad been for a long time lengthening their voyagesto new coasts. As early as 1534 Jacques Cartier ofSt Malo had made the first of his pilgrimages to theSt Lawrence, and in 1542 his associate Robervalhad attempted to plant a colony there. They hadfound the shores of the great river to beinhospitable; the winters were rigorous; no storesof mineral wealth had appeared; nor did the landseem to possess great agricultural possibilities.From Mexico the Spanish galleons were bearing
home their rich cargoes of silver bullion. In Virginiathe English navigators had found a land of fairskies and fertile soil. But the hills and valleys of thenorthland had shouted no such greeting to thevoyageurs of Brittany. Cartier had failed to makehis landfall at Utopia, and the balance-sheet of hisachievements, when cast up in 1544, had offered aprincely dividend of disappointment.For a half-century following the abortive efforts ofCartier and Roberval, the French authorities hadmade no serious or successful attempt to plant acolony in the New World. That is not surprising, forthere were troubles in plenty at home. Huguenotsand Catholics were at each other's throats; thewars of the Fronde convulsed the land; and it wasnot till the very end of the sixteenth century thatthe country settled down to peace within its ownborders. Some facetious chronicler has remarkedthat the three chief causes of early warfare wereChristianity, herrings, and cloves. There is muchgolden truth in that nugget. For if one could takefrom human history all the strife that has been dueeither to bigotry or to commercial avarice, a fairportion of the bloodstreaks would be washed fromits pages. For the time being, at any rate, Francehad so much fighting at home that she was unable,like her Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Englishneighbours, to gain strategic points for futurefighting abroad. Those were days when, if a peoplewould possess the gates of their enemies, itbehoved them to begin early. France made a latestart, and she was forced to take, in consequence,what other nations had shown no eagerness to
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