We cannot pursue the story of the war, as it takes us too far from
Montreal. Suffice it to say that there was a complete victory, the
greatest that had ever been won against the Iroquois. After the capture
of the last stronghold of the Mohawk Iroquois, the warrior priest
chanted a Te Deum and said mass. After that, the cross was planted with
the arms of France and possession was taken of the country in the name
of Louis XIV. "Vive le roi!"
At Quebec, when the news arrived, on November 2d, there were great
rejoicings, and when de Tracy returned on the 5th the Te Deum boomed
out anew. But the army was sorely depleted; many had died from cold,
hunger and the chances of war, as also by accidents on the road,
whereas the Iroquois had lost little else than their birch bark cabins.
After the termination of the expedition, some of the soldiers were
picketed in the new forts. A chaplain was needed for Fort Ste. Anne,
and Dollier de Casson, now returned to Montreal, volunteered, although
he suffered from a swelling on the knee, to cure which he underwent a
severe bleeding at the hands of one of the local medicos of Montreal,
who did it so effectually that the big man fainted. However, he started
out in two days, accompanied by Jacques Leber, Charles Le Moyne and
Migeon de Branssat. At Ste. Anne's, he had busy work, with young
Forestier, a surgeon from Montreal, in attending the sick men who
suffered from famine and scurvy, while eleven died. Though himself sick
the cheery chaplain did good, self-sacrificing service, none the less
excellent, because it was seasoned with a plenteous fund of raillery
and bantering. Among the officers there was La Durantaye, famous
hereafter in Canadian annals. So the winter wore away at Ste. Anne's,
relieved by provisions sent by the good folks of Montreal.
That winter the Hôtel-Dieu of Montreal was filled to overflowing with
the sick and wounded, which it had received from the army under de
Courcelles after the terrible war of the early winter. During the next
year it continued its good work, for which Dollier de Casson says it
deserved unspeakable praise, receiving the sick from the forts of Ste.
Anne, St. Louis and St. Jean.
Before closing the narration of the events of this year we must not
forget the joy at Montreal caused by the news spread in September that
the king had settled all doubts of the rights of the Seigneurs of
Montreal by confirming the letters patent of 1644. This confirmation M.
Talon put into practice on September 17th when he received the fealty
and homage of the Seminary for the Seigneurs of Montreal "with high,
low and middle justice," and two days afterwards, in virtue of the
extraordinary powers granted him by the king, ordered the seigneurs to
be maintained in the possession of the administration of justice, thus
supplanting the royal court of the sénéchal already established, as
before mentioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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