France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
rank, while I have been captain of a ship thirteen years, and have
served thirty by sea and land. Besides, Monseigneur, he has told me that
in case of his death you have directed that the Sieur de Tonty shall
succeed him. This, indeed, is very hard; for, though I am not acquainted
with that country, I should be very dull, if, being on the spot, I did
not know at the end of a month as much of it as they do. I beg,
Monseigneur, that I may at least share the command with them; and that,
as regards war, nothing may be done without my knowledge and
concurrence,--for, as to their commerce, I neither intend nor desire to
know anything about it."
Seignelay answered by a rebuff, and told him to make no trouble about
the command. This increased his irritation, and he wrote: "In my last
letter, Monseigneur, I represented to you the hardship of compelling me
to obey M. de la Salle, who has no rank, and _never commanded anybody
but school-boys_; and I begged you at least to divide the command
between us. I now, Monseigneur, take the liberty to say that I will obey
without repugnance, if you order me to do so, having reflected that
there can be no competition between the said Sieur de la Salle and me.
"Thus far, he has not told me his plan; and he changes his mind every
moment. He is a man so suspicious, and so afraid that one will penetrate
his secrets, that I dare not ask him anything. He says that M. de
Parassy, commissary's clerk, with whom he has often quarrelled, is paid
by his enemies to defeat his undertaking; and many other things with
which I will not trouble you....
"He pretends that I am only to command the sailors, and have no
authority over the volunteer officers and the hundred soldiers who are
to take passage in the 'Joly;' and that they are not to recognize or
obey me in any way during the voyage....
"He has covered the decks with boxes and chests of such prodigious size
that neither the cannon nor the capstan can be worked."
La Salle drew up a long list of articles, defining the respective rights
and functions of himself and Beaujeu, to whom he presented it for
signature. Beaujeu demurred at certain military honors demanded by La
Salle, saying that if a marshal of France should come on board his ship,
he would have none left to offer him. The point was referred to the
naval intendant; and the articles of the treaty having been slightly
modified, Beaujeu set his name to it. "By this," he says, "you can judge
better of the character of M. de la Salle than by all I can say. He is a
man who wants smoke [form and ceremony]. I will give him his fill of it,
and, perhaps, more than he likes.
"I am bound to an unknown country, to seek what is about as hard to find
as the philosopher's stone. It vexes me, Monseigneur, that you should
have been involved in a business the success of which is very uncertain.
M. de la Salle begins to doubt it himself."
While Beaujeu wrote thus to the minister, he was also writing to Cabart
de Villermont, one of his friends at Paris, with whom La Salle was also
on friendly terms. These letters are lively and entertaining, and by no
means suggestive of any secret conspiracy. He might, it is true, have
been more reserved in his communications; but he betrays no confidence,
for none was placed in him. It is the familiar correspondence of an
irritable but not ill-natured veteran, who is placed in an annoying
position, and thinks he is making the best of it.
La Salle thought that the minister had been too free in communicating
the secrets of the expedition to the naval intendant at Rochefort, and
through him to Beaujeu. It is hard to see how Beaujeu was to blame for
this; but La Salle nevertheless fell into a dispute with him. "He could
hardly keep his temper, and used expressions which obliged me to tell
him that I cared very little about his affairs, and that the King
himself would not speak as he did. He retracted, made excuses, and we
parted good friends....
"I do not like his suspiciousness. I think him a good, honest Norman;
but Normans are out of fashion. It is one thing to-day, another
to-morrow. It seems to me that he is not so sure about his undertaking
as he was at Paris. This morning he came to see me, and told me he had
changed his mind, and meant to give a new turn to the business, and go
to another coast. He gave very poor reasons, to which I assented, to
avoid a quarrel. I thought, by what he said, that he wanted to find a
scapegoat to bear the blame, in case his plan does not succeed as he
hopes. For the rest, I think him a brave man and a true; and I am
persuaded that if this business fails, it will be because he does not
know enough, and will not trust us of the profession. As for me, I shall
do my best to help him, as I have told you before; and I am delighted to
have him keep his secret, so that I shall not have to answer for the
result. Pray do not show my letters, for fear of committing me with him.
He is too suspicious already; and never was Norman so Norman as he,
which is a great hinderance to business."
Beaujeu came from the same province and calls himself jocularly _un bon
gros Normand_. His good-nature, however, rapidly gave way as time went
on. "Yesterday," he writes, "this Monsieur told me that he meant to go
to the Gulf of Mexico. A little while ago, as I said before, he talked
about going to Canada. I see nothing certain in it. It is not that I do
not believe that all he says is true; but not being of the profession,
and not liking to betray his ignorance, he is puzzled what to do.
"I shall go straight forward, without regarding a thousand whims and
_bagatelles_. His continual suspicion would drive anybody mad except a
Norman like me; but I shall humor him, as I have always done, even to
sailing my ship on dry land, if he likes."
[Sidenote: AN OPEN QUARREL.]
A few days later, there was an open quarrel. "M. de la Salle came to me,
and said, rather haughtily and in a tone of command, that I must put
provisions for three months more on board my vessel. I told him it was
impossible, as she had more lading already than anybody ever dared to
put in her before. He would not hear reason, but got angry and abused me
in good French, and found fault with me because the vessel would not
hold his three months' provisions. He said I ought to have told him of
it before. 'And how would you have me tell you,' said I, 'when you never
tell me what you mean to do?' We had still another quarrel. He asked me
where his officers should take their meals. I told him that they might
take them where he pleased; for I gave myself no trouble in the matter,
having no orders. He answered that they should not mess on bacon, while
the rest ate fowls and mutton. I said that if he would send fowls and
mutton on board, his people should eat them; but, as for bacon, I had
often ate it myself. At this, he went off and complained to M. Dugué
that I refused to embark his provisions, and told him that he must live
on bacon. I excused him as not knowing how to behave himself, having
spent his life among school-boy brats and savages. Nevertheless, I
offered to him, his brother, and two of his friends, seats at my table
and the same fare as myself. He answered my civility by an
impertinence, saying that he distrusted people who offered so much and
seemed so obliging. I could not help telling him that I saw he was
brought up in the provinces."
This was touching La Salle on a sensitive point. Beaujeu continues: "In
fact, you knew him better than I; for I always took him for a gentleman
(_honnête homme_). I see now that he is anything but that. Pray set Abbé
Renaudot and M. Morel right about this man, and tell them he is not what
they take him for. Adieu. It has struck twelve: the postman is just
going."
Bad as was the state of things, it soon grew worse. Renaudot wrote to La
Salle that Beaujeu was writing to Villermont everything that happened,
and that Villermont showed the letters to all his acquaintance.
Villermont was a relative of the Jesuit Beschefer; and this was
sufficient to suggest some secret machination to the mind of La Salle.
Villermont's fault, however, seems to have been simple indiscretion, for
which Beaujeu took him sharply to task. "I asked you to burn my letters;
and I cannot help saying that I am angry with you, not because you make
known my secrets, but because you show letters scrawled in haste, and
sent off without being even read over. M. de la Salle not having told me
his secret, though M. de Seignelay ordered him to tell me, I am not
obliged to keep it, and have as good a right as anybody to make my
conjectures on what I read about it in the _Gazette de Hollande_. Let
Abbé Renaudot glorify M. de la Salle as much as he likes, and make him a
Cortez, a Pizarro, or an Almagro,--that is nothing to me; but do not let
him speak of me as an obstacle in his hero's way. Let him understand
that I know how to execute the orders of the court as well as he....
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S INDISCRETION.]
"You ask how I get on with M. de la Salle. Don't you know that this man
is impenetrable, and that there is no knowing what he thinks of one? He
told a person of note whom I will not name that he had suspicions about
our correspondence, as well as about Madame de Beaujeu's devotion to the
Jesuits. His distrust is incredible. If he sees one of his people speak
to the rest, he suspects something, and is gruff with them. He told me
himself that he wanted to get rid of M. de Tonty, who is in America."
La Salle's claim to exclusive command of the soldiers on board the
"Joly" was a source of endless trouble. Beaujeu declared that he would
not set sail till officers, soldiers, and volunteers had all sworn to
obey him when at sea; at which La Salle had the indiscretion to say, "If
I am not master of my soldiers, how can I make him [Beaujeu] do his duty
in case he does not want to do it?"
Beaujeu says that this affair made a great noise among the officers at
Rochefort, and adds: "_There are very few people who do not think that
his brain is touched._ I have spoken to some who have known him twenty
years. They all say that he was always rather visionary."
It is difficult not to suspect that the current belief at Rochefort had
some foundation; and that the deadly strain of extreme hardship,
prolonged anxiety, and alternation of disaster and success, joined to
the fever which nearly killed him, had unsettled his judgment and given
a morbid development to his natural defects. His universal suspicion,
which included even the stanch and faithful Henri de Tonty; his needless
provocation of persons whose good-will was necessary to him; his doubts
whether he should sail for the Gulf or for Canada, when to sail to
Canada would have been to renounce, or expose to almost certain defeat,
an enterprise long cherished and definitely planned,--all point to one
conclusion. It may be thought that his doubts were feigned, in order to
hide his destination to the last moment; but if so, he attempted to
blind not only his ill wishers, but his mother, whom he also left in
uncertainty as to his route.
[Sidenote: AN OVERWROUGHT BRAIN.]
Unless we assume that his scheme of invading Mexico was thrown out as a
bait to the King, it is hard to reconcile it with the supposition of
mental soundness. To base so critical an attempt on a geographical
conjecture, which rested on the slightest possible information, and was
in fact a total error; to postpone the perfectly sound plan of securing
the mouth of the Mississippi, to a wild project of leading fifteen
thousand savages for an unknown distance through an unknown country to
attack an unknown enemy,--was something more than Quixotic daring. The
King and the minister saw nothing impracticable in it, for they did not