A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861Wrong, George McKinnon
History
A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861
Wrong, George McKinnon
La Malbaie (Québec); Nairne family; Nairne, John, -1802
A good many officers of the Carignan regiment, with but slender
prospects in France, decided to stay in Canada and to this day their
names--Chambly, Vercheres, Longueuil, Sorel, Berthier and others are
conspicuous in the geography of the Province of Quebec. Malbaie was
granted to a soldier of fortune, the Sieur de Comporte, who came to
Canada at this time, but apparently was not an officer of the Carignan
Regiment. His outlook at Malbaie cannot have been considered promising,
for Pierre Boucher, who in 1664 published an interesting account of New
France, declared the whole region between Baie St. Paul and the Saguenay
to be so rugged and mountainous as to make it unfit for civilized
habitation. But Philippe Gaultier, Sieur de Comporte, was of the right
material to be a good colonist. Born in 1641 he was twenty-four years of
age when he came to Canada. Already he had had some stirring adventures,
one of which might well have proved grimly fatal had he not found a
refuge across the sea. Comporte, then serving as a volunteer in a
Company of Infantry led by his uncle, La Fouille, was involved in one of
the bloody brawls of the time that Richelieu had made such stern efforts
to suppress. The Company was in garrison at La Motte-Saint-Heray in
Poitou. On July 9th, 1665, one of its members, Lanoraye, came in with
the tale of an insult offered to the company by a civilian in the town.
Lanoraye had been marching through the streets with a drum beating, in
order to secure recruits, when one Bonneau, the local judge, attacked
him, and took away the drum. Lanoraye rushed to arouse his fellow
soldiers. When Comporte and half a dozen other hot-heads had listened to
his tale, they cried with one voice, "Let us go and demand the drum. He
must give it up." So at eight or nine o'clock at night they set out to
look for Bonneau. They came upon him unexpectedly in the streets of the
town. He was accompanied by seven or eight persons with whom he had
supped and all were armed with swords, pistols or other weapons. When
Lanoraye demanded the drum, Bonneau was defiant and told him to go away
or he should chastise him. The inevitable fight followed. Comporte,
whose own account we have, says that it lasted some time and the results
were fatal. Comporte declares that he himself struck no blows but the
fact remains that two of Bonneau's party were so severely wounded that
they died. Comporte and the rest of the Company soon went to Canada. In
their absence he and others were sentenced to death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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