France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIVParkman, Francis
History
France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV
Parkman, Francis
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); Frontenac, Louis de Buade, comte de, 1620-1698
One Pascho Chubb, of Andover, commanded the post, with a garrison of
ninety-five militia-men. Stoughton, governor of Massachusetts, had
written to the Abenakis, upbraiding them for breaking the peace, and
ordering them to bring in their prisoners without delay. The Indians of
Bigot's mission, that is to say, Bigot in their name, retorted by a
letter to the last degree haughty and abusive. Those of Thury's mission,
however, were so anxious to recover their friends held in prison at
Boston that they came to Pemaquid, and opened a conference with Chubb.
The French say that they meant only to deceive him. [8] This does not
justify the Massachusetts officer, who, by an act of odious treachery,
killed several of them, and captured the chief, Egeremet. Nor was this
the only occasion on which the English had acted in bad faith. It was but
playing into the hands of the French, who saw with delight that the folly
of their enemies had aided their own intrigues. [9]
[8] Villebon, Journal, 1694-1696.
[9] N. Y. Col Docs., IX. 613, 616, 642, 643; La Potherie, III. 258;
Calières au Ministre, 25 Oct., 1695; Rev. John Pike to Governor and
Council, 7 Jan., 1694 (1695), in Johnston, Hist. of Bristol and Bremen;
Hutchinson, Hist. Mass., II. 81, 90.
Early in 1696, two ships of war, the "Envieux" and the "Profond," one
commanded by Iberville and the other by Bonaventure, sailed from
Rochefort to Quebec, where they took on board eighty troops and
Canadians; then proceeded to Cape Breton, embarked thirty Micmac Indians,
and steered for the St. John. Here they met two British frigates and a
provincial tender belonging to Massachusetts. A fight ensued. The forces
were very unequal. The "Newport," of twenty-four guns, was dismasted and
taken; but her companion frigate along with the tender escaped in the
fog. The French then anchored at the mouth of the St. John, where
Villebon and the priest Simon were waiting for them, with fifty more
Micmacs. Simon and the Indians went on board; and they all sailed for
Pentegoet, where Villieu, with twenty-five soldiers, and Thury and
Saint-Castin, with some three hundred Abenakis, were ready to join them.
After the usual feasting, these new allies paddled for Pemaquid; the
ships followed; and on the next day, the fourteenth of August, they all
reached their destination.
The fort of Pemaquid stood at the west side of the promontory of the same
name, on a rocky point at the mouth of Pemaquid River. It was a
quadrangle, with ramparts of rough stone, built at great pains and cost,
but exposed to artillery, and incapable of resisting heavy shot. The
government of Massachusetts, with its usual military fatuity, had placed
it in the keeping of an unfit commander, and permitted some of the yeoman
garrison to bring their wives and children to this dangerous and
important post.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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