The King's Warrant A Story of Old and New France

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

t last England and France had formally drawn the sword which they had sheathed only eight years before at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the great struggle known in history as the Seven Years' War had begun in earnest. Yet although the old countries had until now managed to abstain from a declared and open rupture in the Old World, it had for well-nigh two years past been far otherwise with their great dependencies beyond the Atlantic. There, during the years 1754 and 1755, New France and New England had already been carrying on a deadly conflict, which seemed to increase in intensity and fierceness as the months rolled on, and in which for some time the royal troops of both kingdoms had taken a prominent part, notwithstanding the nominal state of peace between the mother countries. Some short-sighted men, indeed, tried to persuade themselves of the possibility that the colonists might carry on the war on the soil of the New World, without necessarily compromising the peace of Europe; but the European powers had their own apples of discord, and the ambitious designs of the Great Frederick had now set Europe once more in a blaze.

But what was to be the issue of the struggle in America? With the history of the last hundred years open before us—with such names as those of Wolfe, Abercrombie, and Wellington; Rodney, Howe, and Nelson ever ringing now like household words in our ears—with such achievements as those of the plains of Abraham, the sand-hills of Aboukir, Waterloo, the Nile and Trafalgar ever present to our minds, we are apt enough to ignore the uncertainty which, humanly speaking, in those days hung about the result of a collision between New England and New France, backed by the power of their respective sovereign states. From the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers might, indeed, be expected an amount of vigour, energy, and self-reliance, that must needs contribute greatly to success in such a contest; but these very qualities, so far from finding much favour with their rulers in the Old Country, were like enough to be met with jealousy and distrust, to produce coldness and estrangement, and perhaps even to weaken the support of the government in England. In addition to this, the rivalries and dissensions that were always springing up amongst the several colonies themselves could hardly fail to interfere materially, as they had done for years past, with their cordial combination in any effort, however needful, for their common good. Canada, on the other hand, was essentially the creation of the parent State, its favoured offspring; it was unceasingly cherished and fostered as a nursery of commerce, and as the means of planting the Christian faith amongst the heathens, over which France would spread her protecting wings with the jealousy of an eagle defending its young even at the cost of its life. Yet so far as the colony was concerned that protection had been dearly bought at a cost of patronage and favouritism that had checked all healthy exertion amongst the colonists....