Pierre du Gua, Sieur de Monts, and the company that he formed to
settle Acadia needed a
fur monopoly. He and his partners financed the settlement
on credit, and without funds from furs there was no way that
they could pay their debts.
De Monts received the news on
May 24, 1607, Ascension Day, that his trade monopoly in
Acadia had been revoked by the
king. He knew then that he was in big trouble. He
had no option but to give up the colony. He left what
rights and properties he still held to Jean de Biencourt, Sieur
de Poutrincourt, one of the principal investors in the
settlement. Poutrincourt sailed for France in August 1607
to find new financial backers.
It
would take two years, after which he returned with his two sons,
Charles de Biencourt, and Jacques de Salazar, as well as Father
Jesse Fleche, Claude de La Tour de Saint Etienne and his
17-year-old son, Charles de La Tour; also with Thomas Robin, son
of the governor of Dieppe, and 23 colonists. To his
delight, Poutrincourt found that the Indians had preserved Port
Royal just as De Monts had left it. His colonists did not
have to spend time rebuilding. They could begin
immediately to sow crops and gather furs.
On July 28,
1610, Poutrincourt sent his son, Charles de Biencourt, back to
France to find more supplies for the expanding colony. It
turned out to be a mission that became more difficult by the
day.
Religious rivalries that divided Europe had begun to
spill over into North America. When Biencourt got to
France, he found that the Jesuits had gained the king's ear, and
that they wanted a piece of the action in Acadia.
The king decided to send two
missionaries back with Biencourt. They were Fathers
Enemond Masse and Pierre Biard. But Poutrincourt, like De
Monts before him, was financed mostly by Protestant merchants.
They didn't want Jesuits involved in their business. When
the king insisted, the merchants not only refused to provide new
credit and supplies to Poutrincourt, they called in the loans
they had already made.
This was the first injection of
the religious rivalries in France directly into the affairs of
Acadia Neither De
Monts nor Poutrincourt had demanded a particular religious
belief from the people they dealt with. The Edict of
Nantes, which King Henry IV proclaimed in 1598, had established
religious tolerance, or at least the appearance of tolerance, in
France. But the tolerance was more fiction than fact.
There was still a major division between Protestants and
Catholics. It was a division that tangled politics as well
as worship, and Poutrincourt's Acadian colony was caught in the
middle. In attempting to raise funds for it, Biencourt had
to deal with Protestant merchants who were his father's primary
backers and a Catholic king who was being influenced by the
Jesuits.
Kink Henry was assassinated by a lunatic in
1610, but that made things even worse for Poutrincourt.
The Jesuits had even more influence over the king's widow, Marie
de Medicis. Biencourt was caught in the tug of war while
his family waited for more supplies.
In desperation, he
turned to Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville, who had
money and who had influence with Marie de Medicis. She
paid off the loans that were called by Poutrincourt's first
backers and bought their Acadian rights. That was the good
news. The bad news was that she then turned over those
rights to the two Jesuits, Masse and Briand. Now they not only
had religious say-so in the colony, there were Poutrincourt's
business partners.
On January 26, 1611, Biencourt finally
raised anchor aboard the Grace de Dieu
to head back to Acadia.
His mother, Jeanne de Salazar, was also aboard ship, becoming
one of the first women to travel from Europe to North America.
The two Jesuits were also aboard, along with 36 other men.
It took four months of stormy sailing to reach North America.
And then things got even stormier.
Almost as soon as the
Jesuits set foot on land, they began to argue with Poutrincourt,
who was a good Catholic, but a better businessman. He
didn't want the Jesuits in his colony either. The order
was Spanish in origin and policy, and he suspected the priests
had more on their minds than saving Micmac souls. He
almost immediately sailed back to France, hoping to make a new
deal with Madame de Guercheville. She would not be swayed.
While Poutrincourt continued to argue with her, Biencourt
continued to argue with the Jesuits in Acadia.
One of the principal targets
of the Jesuits was Father Fleche, the secular priest who had
originally come to the settlement with Poutrincourt. The
Jesuits accused him of baptizing the Indians without providing
enough religious instruction. The end result of the
fighting was that Madame de Guercheville decided to withdraw her
support entirely and start a new colony of her own.
For
the entire year of 1612, Port Royal was without assistance of
any kind from France. The colony barely survived.
The colonists thought things could hardly get worse. Then,
on May 12, 1613, La Fleur de Mai,
a ship equipped by Madame de Guerchevile, sailed into Port Royal
harbor. The captain had instructions to carry away
everything the ship could carry, "even the church ornaments
given by the queen." The good news was that the ship also
carried away the Jesuits.
Port Royal was left to fend for
itself. The Jesuits and La Fleur de
Mai headed for a place then called
Monts-Deserts de Pentagoet.
They founded a colony that they called Saint
Sauveur. Today it is called
Penobscot, Maine.
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