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Authors: Peter Stark
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young Charles Biencourt’s father, Poutrincourt, took over the venture. He sank deep into debt trying to keep supplies flowing from France. When an assassin killed King Henri, his widow, Marie de Médicis, complicated life for the Acadian colonists by demanding they bring along Jesuit priests to make devout Catholic converts among those known as the
sauvages
.
Upon the Jesuits’ arrival, they and Poutrincourt butted heads, with the Jesuits demanding half the fur-trading profits and a managing hand in the business.
“I pray to you leave me to do my duty, which I know very well,” Poutrincourt told off the arrogant Father Biard, as related by Lescarbot. “Show me the path to heaven—I will give you guidance on earth.”
When Poutrincourt returned to France to hustle up more funding, his son Charles Biencourt, now turning twenty, temporarily took over the Acadian colony’s leadership, and relations between Jesuits and colonists finally snapped. The Jesuits removed themselves to start a separate colony on Mount Desert Island (on today’s Maine coast), taking much of Port-Royal’s remaining supplies and tools. Lacking supplies, Charles Biencourt and his group of colonists took to the woods to livewith the Micmac in their hunting camps that winter of 1612–13. Back in France, Marie de Médicis, hearing the Jesuits’ version of the dispute at Port-Royal, threw Charles Biencourt’s father into debtors’ prison.
The death blow to the early French Acadian colony arrived in November 1613, when a Welsh privateer dropped anchor by moonlight off the fort—or “manor house”—at Port-Royal. The privateer, Samuel Argall, had been sent by the governor of the new British colony down at Jamestown in Virginia to wipe the French out of what Britain considered its New World holdings. Argall had first attacked the Jesuit outpost at Mount Desert Island and captured Father Biard, who now guided the enemy privateer—willingly or unwillingly is not clear—into the harbor at Port-Royal and to the fortified manor house, which stood on a promontory.
It was deserted. Charles Biencourt and his men were out hunting with the Micmac and working their crop fields in natural meadows two leagues off from the manor. The British raiders stripped the manor of everything of value, including its iron hinges and the pigs that roamed about, bashed into oblivion the fleur-de-lis the French had carved into a rock at the entrance, and burned it to the ground. Argall then sailed upriver to the meadows, hailed the French from his deck, and offered them a deal—one year’s servitude helping to start Jamestown, followed by free passage back to France.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” 30 shouted back a Frenchman, according to one French version of the incident.
The British sailed off. When Poutrincourt, released from prison and leaving France early the following spring with a supply ship, arrived at his colony in Acadia, he was shocked to discover only rubble remaining. The colonists, with little else to eat but lichen and seaweed, had spent another winter living with the Micmac. Most of them boarded the ship and, with the shattered Pountrincourt, returned to France for good.
“Poutrincourt,” writes the historian Faragher, “was a broken man. The project had cost him his reputation, his fortune, his marriage, and perhaps his mental balance.”
Soon after his return, civil wars erupted again in France and the queen summoned Poutrincourt to retake a town near his former feudal holdings in Champagne. Leading a confused charge against a town thatapparently had already surrendered, hoping to regain his lost glory, he took a cannon shot straight to the chest, dying on the spot at age fifty-eight.
His death left the two young men, Charles Biencourt, with Charles de La Tour as his right-hand man, in charge of whatever remained of the Acadian enterprise—now consisting of the two of them, the ruins of the manor house at Port-Royal, and a handful of
sauvages
.
Upon the Jesuits’ arrival, they and Poutrincourt butted heads, with the Jesuits demanding half the fur-trading profits and a managing hand in the business.
“I pray to you leave me to do my duty, which I know very well,” Poutrincourt told off the arrogant Father Biard, as related by Lescarbot. “Show me the path to heaven—I will give you guidance on earth.”
When Poutrincourt returned to France to hustle up more funding, his son Charles Biencourt, now turning twenty, temporarily took over the Acadian colony’s leadership, and relations between Jesuits and colonists finally snapped. The Jesuits removed themselves to start a separate colony on Mount Desert Island (on today’s Maine coast), taking much of Port-Royal’s remaining supplies and tools. Lacking supplies, Charles Biencourt and his group of colonists took to the woods to livewith the Micmac in their hunting camps that winter of 1612–13. Back in France, Marie de Médicis, hearing the Jesuits’ version of the dispute at Port-Royal, threw Charles Biencourt’s father into debtors’ prison.
The death blow to the early French Acadian colony arrived in November 1613, when a Welsh privateer dropped anchor by moonlight off the fort—or “manor house”—at Port-Royal. The privateer, Samuel Argall, had been sent by the governor of the new British colony down at Jamestown in Virginia to wipe the French out of what Britain considered its New World holdings. Argall had first attacked the Jesuit outpost at Mount Desert Island and captured Father Biard, who now guided the enemy privateer—willingly or unwillingly is not clear—into the harbor at Port-Royal and to the fortified manor house, which stood on a promontory.
It was deserted. Charles Biencourt and his men were out hunting with the Micmac and working their crop fields in natural meadows two leagues off from the manor. The British raiders stripped the manor of everything of value, including its iron hinges and the pigs that roamed about, bashed into oblivion the fleur-de-lis the French had carved into a rock at the entrance, and burned it to the ground. Argall then sailed upriver to the meadows, hailed the French from his deck, and offered them a deal—one year’s servitude helping to start Jamestown, followed by free passage back to France.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” 30 shouted back a Frenchman, according to one French version of the incident.
The British sailed off. When Poutrincourt, released from prison and leaving France early the following spring with a supply ship, arrived at his colony in Acadia, he was shocked to discover only rubble remaining. The colonists, with little else to eat but lichen and seaweed, had spent another winter living with the Micmac. Most of them boarded the ship and, with the shattered Pountrincourt, returned to France for good.
“Poutrincourt,” writes the historian Faragher, “was a broken man. The project had cost him his reputation, his fortune, his marriage, and perhaps his mental balance.”
Soon after his return, civil wars erupted again in France and the queen summoned Poutrincourt to retake a town near his former feudal holdings in Champagne. Leading a confused charge against a town thatapparently had already surrendered, hoping to regain his lost glory, he took a cannon shot straight to the chest, dying on the spot at age fifty-eight.
His death left the two young men, Charles Biencourt, with Charles de La Tour as his right-hand man, in charge of whatever remained of the Acadian enterprise—now consisting of the two of them, the ruins of the manor house at Port-Royal, and a handful of
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