France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
had given a warrant to arrest them. But, to show the falsity of these
charges, Martin Chartier, who was one of those who excited the rest to
do as they did, was never with me at all; and the rest had made their
plot before seeing me." And he proceeds to relate, in great detail, a
variety of circumstances to prove that his men had been instigated first
to desert, and then to slander him; adding, "Those who remain with me
are the first I had, and they have not left me for six years."
"I have a hundred other proofs of the bad counsel given to these
deserters, and will produce them when wanted; but as they themselves are
the only witnesses of the severity they complain of, while the witnesses
of their crimes are unimpeachable, why am I refused the justice I
demand, and why is their secret escape connived at?
"I do not know what you mean by having popular manners. There is nothing
special in my food, clothing, or lodging, which are all the same for me
as for my men. How can it be that I do not talk with them? I have no
other company. M. de Tonty has often found fault with me because I
stopped too often to talk with them. You do not know the men one must
employ here, when you exhort me to make merry with them. They are
incapable of that; for they are never pleased, unless one gives free
rein to their drunkenness and other vices. If that is what you call
having popular manners, neither honor nor inclination would let me stoop
to gain their favor in a way so disreputable: and, besides, the
consequences would be dangerous, and they would have the same contempt
for me that they have for all who treat them in this fashion.
"You write me that even my friends say that I am not a man of popular
manners. I do not know what friends they are. I know of none in this
country. To all appearance they are enemies, more subtle and secret than
the rest. I make no exceptions; for I know that those who seem to give
me support do not do it out of love for me, but because they are in some
sort bound in honor, and that in their hearts they think I have dealt
ill with them. M. Plet will tell you what he has heard about it himself,
and the reasons they have to give.[260] I have seen it for a long time;
and these secret stabs they give me show it very plainly. After that, it
is not surprising that I open my mind to nobody, and distrust everybody.
I have reasons that I cannot write.
"For the rest, Monsieur, pray be well assured that the information you
are so good as to give me is received with a gratitude equal to the
genuine friendship from which it proceeds; and, however unjust are the
charges made against me, I should be much more unjust myself if I did
not feel that I have as much reason to thank you for telling me of them
as I have to complain of others for inventing them.
[Sidenote: HIS MANNERS.]
"As for what you say about my look and manner, I myself confess that you
are not far from right. But _naturam expellas_; and if I am wanting in
expansiveness and show of feeling towards those with whom I associate,
_it is only through a timidity which is natural to me, and which has
made me leave various employments, where without it I could have
succeeded_. But as I judged myself ill-fitted for them on account of
this defect, I have chosen a life more suited to my solitary
disposition; which, nevertheless, does not make me harsh to my people,
though, joined to a life among savages, it makes me, perhaps, less
polished and complaisant than the atmosphere of Paris requires. I well
believe that there is self-love in this; and that, knowing how little I
am accustomed to a more polite life, the fear of making mistakes makes
me more reserved than I like to be. So I rarely expose myself to
conversation with those in whose company I am afraid of making blunders,
and can hardly help making them. Abbé Renaudot knows with what
repugnance I had the honor to appear before Monseigneur de Conti; and
sometimes it took me a week to make up my mind to go to the
audience,--that is, when I had time to think about myself, and was not
driven by pressing business. It is much the same with letters, which I
never write except when pushed to it, and for the same reason. It is a
defect of which I shall never rid myself as long as I live, often as it
spites me against myself, and often as I quarrel with myself about it."
[Sidenote: HIS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.]
Here is a strange confession for a man like La Salle. Without doubt, the
timidity of which he accuses himself had some of its roots in pride; but
not the less was his pride vexed and humbled by it. It is surprising
that, being what he was, he could have brought himself to such an avowal
under any circumstances or any pressure of distress. Shyness; a morbid
fear of committing himself; and incapacity to express, and much more to
simulate, feeling,--a trait sometimes seen in those with whom feeling is
most deep,--are strange ingredients in the character of a man who had
grappled so dauntlessly with life on its harshest and rudest side. They
were deplorable defects for one in his position. He lacked that
sympathetic power, the inestimable gift of the true leader of men, in
which lies the difference between a willing and a constrained obedience.
This solitary being, hiding his shyness under a cold reserve, could
rouse no enthusiasm in his followers. He lived in the purpose which he
had made a part of himself, nursed his plans in secret, and seldom asked
or accepted advice. He trusted himself, and learned more and more to
trust no others. One may fairly infer that distrust was natural to him;
but the inference may possibly be wrong. Bitter experience had schooled
him to it; for he lived among snares, pitfalls, and intriguing enemies.
He began to doubt even the associates who, under representations he had
made them in perfect good faith, had staked their money on his
enterprise, and lost it, or were likely to lose it. They pursued him
with advice and complaint, and half believed that he was what his
maligners called him,--a visionary or a madman. It galled him that they
had suffered for their trust in him, and that they had repented their
trust. His lonely and shadowed nature needed the mellowing sunshine of
success, and his whole life was a fight with adversity.
All that appears to the eye is his intrepid conflict with obstacles
without; but this, perhaps, was no more arduous than the invisible and
silent strife of a nature at war with itself,--the pride, aspiration,
and bold energy that lay at the base of his character battling against
the superficial weakness that mortified and angered him. In such a man,
the effect of such an infirmity is to concentrate and intensify the
force within. In one form or another, discordant natures are common
enough; but very rarely is the antagonism so irreconcilable as it was in
him. And the greater the antagonism, the greater the pain. There are
those in whom the sort of timidity from which he suffered is matched
with no quality that strongly revolts against it. These gentle natures
may at least have peace, but for him there was no peace.
Cavelier de La Salle stands in history like a statue cast in iron; but
his own unwilling pen betrays the man, and reveals in the stern, sad
figure an object of human interest and pity.[261]
FOOTNOTES:
[260] His cousin, François Plet, was in Canada in 1680, where, with La
Salle's approval, he carried on the trade of Fort Frontenac, in order to
indemnify himself for money advanced. La Salle always speaks of him with
esteem and gratitude.
[261] The following is the character of La Salle, as drawn by his
friend, Abbé Bernou, in a memorial to the minister Seignelay: "Il est
irréprochable dans ses moeurs, réglé dans sa conduite, et qui veut de
l'ordre parmy ses gens. Il est savant, judicieux, politique, vigilant,
infatigable, sobre, et intrépide. Il entend suffisament l'architecture
civile, militaire, et navale ainsy que l'agriculture; il parle ou entend
quatre ou cinq langues des Sauvages, et a beaucoup de facilité pour
apprendre les autres. Il sçait toutes leurs manières et obtient d'eux
tout ce qu'il veut par son adresse, par son éloquence, et parce qu'il
est beaucoup estimé d'eux. Dans ses voyages il ne fait pas meilleure
chère que le moindre de ses gens et se donne plus de peine que pas un
pour les encourager, et il y a lieu de croire qu'avec la protection de
Monseigneur il fondera des colonies plus considérables que toutes celles
que les François ont établies jusqu'à présent."--_Mémoire pour
Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelay_, 1682 (Margry, ii. 277).
The extracts given in the foregoing chapter are from La Salle's long
letters of 29 Sept., 1680, and 22 Aug., 1682 (1681?). Both are printed
in the second volume of the Margry collection, and the originals of both
are in the Bibliothèque Nationale. The latter seems to have been written
to La Salle's friend, Abbé Bernou; and the former, to a certain M.
Thouret.
CHAPTER XXIII.
1684.
A NEW ENTERPRISE.
La Salle at Court: his Proposals.--Occupation of
Louisiana.--Invasion of Mexico.--Royal Favor.--Preparation.--A
Divided Command.--Beaujeu and La Salle.--Mental Condition of La
Salle: his Farewell to his Mother.
When La Salle reached Paris, he went to his old lodgings in Rue de la
Truanderie, and, it is likely enough, thought for an instant of the
adventures and vicissitudes he had passed since he occupied them before.
Another ordeal awaited him. He must confront, not painted savages with
tomahawk and knife, but--what he shrank from more--the courtly throngs
that still live and move in the pages of Sévigné and Saint-Simon.
The news of his discovery and the rumor of his schemes were the talk of
a moment among the courtiers, and then were forgotten. It was not so
with their master. La Salle's friends and patrons did not fail him. A
student and a recluse in his youth, and a backwoodsman in his manhood,
he had what was to him the formidable honor of an interview with royalty
itself, and stood with such philosophy as he could command before the
gilded arm-chair, where, majestic and awful, the power of France sat
embodied. The King listened to all he said; but the results of the
interview were kept so secret that it was rumored in the ante-chambers
that his proposals had been rejected.[262]
On the contrary, they had met with more than favor. The moment was
opportune for La Salle. The King had long been irritated against the
Spaniards, because they not only excluded his subjects from their
American ports, but forbade them to enter the Gulf of Mexico. Certain
Frenchmen who had sailed on this forbidden sea had been seized and
imprisoned; and more recently a small vessel of the royal navy had been
captured for the same offence. This had drawn from the King a
declaration that every sea should be free to all his subjects; and Count
d'Estrées was sent with a squadron to the Gulf, to exact satisfaction of
the Spaniards, or fight them if they refused it.[263] This was in time
of peace. War had since arisen between the two crowns, and brought with
it the opportunity of settling the question forever. In order to do so,
the minister Seignelay, like his father Colbert, proposed to establish a
French port on the Gulf, as a permanent menace to the Spaniards and a
basis of future conquest. It was in view of this plan that La Salle's
past enterprises had been favored; and the proposals he now made were in
perfect accord with it.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S PROPOSALS.]
These proposals were set forth in two memorials. The first of them
states that the late Monseigneur Colbert deemed it important for the
service of his Majesty to discover a port in the Gulf of Mexico; that to
this end the memorialist, La Salle, made five journeys of upwards of