Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France. Claude Glennon Bryan

Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France - Claude Glennon Bryan


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Major-General James Wolfe Frontispiece
face page
François-Xavier de Laval 16
Cardinal de Richelieu 48
The Earl of Chatham 187
General the Marquis Montcalm 271
General Sir Jeffrey Amherst 282
Admiral Earl St. Vincent 294
General Gage 301
The Hon. Robert Monckton 307
[1]General Sir A. P. Irving 317
General Townshend 327
Sir James Henry Craig 342
Sir John Cope Sherbrooke 355
The Fourth Duke of Richmond 368
Admiral Viscount Nelson 374
Lord Dalhousie 376
General Lord Aylmer 395
The Earl of Durham 407
Sir John Colborne 417
Lord Sydenham 424
Sir Charles Bagot 434
General Earl Cathcart 443
The Earl of Elgin 452
Lord Lisgar 458
The Marquis of Dufferin and Ava 466

       Table of Contents

1. Canada and the North American Colonies, 1680-1782 Face page 110
The Environs of Quebec, 1759.
Louisbourg, to show the Sieges of 1744 and 1758.
2. Plan of Quebec, 1759. From a Map published in London in 1760 Page 207
3. Plan of the River St. Lawrence Face page 268
4. Map of Upper and Lower Canada, illustrating events until the Campaign of 1814 Face page 378
5. The Territory of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870 Face page 399

      Footnote

       Table of Contents

      The student of the history of the ancient capital of Canada is embarrassed, not by the dearth but by the abundance of material at his disposal. The present volume, therefore, makes no claim to originality. It is but an assimilation of this generous data, and a simple comment upon the changing scenes which were recorded by such ancient authorities as the Jesuit priests and pioneers in their Relations, and by the monumental works of Francis Parkman, whose researches occupied more than forty years, and whose picturesque pen has done for Canada what Prescott's did for Mexico. Admiring tribute and gratitude must also be expressed for the years of careful study and the unfaltering energy by which the late Mr. Kingsford produced his valuable History of Canada. Nor can any one, writing of Quebec, proceed successfully without constant reference to the historical gleanings of Sir James Le Moine, who has spent a lifetime in the romantic atmosphere of old-time manuscripts, and who, with Monsieur l'Abbé Casgrain, represents, in its most attractive form, that composite citizenship which has the wit and grace of the old régime with the useful ardour of the new.

      THE AUTHORS.

       Table of Contents

      About the walled city of Quebec cling more vivid and enduring memories than belong to any other city of the modern world. Her foundation marked a renaissance of religious zeal in France, and to the people from whom came the pioneers who suffered or were slain for her, she had the glamour of new-born empire, of a conquest renewing the glories of the days of Charlemagne. Visions of a hemisphere controlled from Versailles haunted the days of Francis the First, of the Grand Monarch, of Colbert and of Richelieu, and in the sky of national hope and over all was the Cross whose passion led the Church into the wilderness. The first emblem of sovereignty in the vast domain which Jacques Cartier claimed for Francis his royal master, was a cross whereon was inscribed—

      Franciscus Primus, Dei Gratiâ Francorum Rex, Regnat.

      In spite of cruel neglect due to internal troubles and that European strife in which the mother-land was engaged for so many generations, the eyes of Frenchmen turned to their over-sea dominions with imaginative hope, with conviction that the great continent of promise would renew in France the glories that were Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. How hard the patriotic colonists strove to retain those territories which Champlain, La Salle, Maisonneuve, Joliet, and so many others won through nameless toil and martyrdom, and how at last the broad lands passed to another race and another flag, not by fault or folly or lack of courage of the people, but by the criminal corruption of the ruling few, is the narrative which runs through these pages.

      For at least the first hundred years of its existence, Quebec was New France; and the story of Quebec in that period is the story of all Canada. The fortress was the heart and soul of French enterprise in the New World. From the Castle of St. Louis, on the summit of Cape Diamond, went forth mandates, heard and obeyed in distant Louisiana. The monastic city on the St. Lawrence was the centre of the web of missions, which slowly spread from the dark Saguenay to Lake Superior. The fearful tragedies of Indian warfare had their birth in the early policy of Quebec. The fearless voyageurs, whose canoes glided into unknown waters, ever westward—towards Cathay, as they believed—made Quebec


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