Читать книгу The White and the Gold - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 31

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SAINTONGE lies on the Bay of Biscay and stretches down along the northern shore of the broad Gironde. Farther south, where the Gironde becomes the Garonne and Gascony begins, lies the fair city of Bordeaux, and below that again the magic triangle where the vineyards produce the great Bordeaux wines. Saintonge does not share to any extent in the profitable wine trade with England, but it has had historic connections of long standing with the English people, being part of the inheritance which Eleanor of Aquitaine took with her when she married Henry II in the twelfth century. It was always in view of the marshy shores of Saintonge that the northern fleets passed in their progress down the Gironde to the city which the first Edwards and the Black Prince loved so much, not to mention the unfortunate Richard II, who was called Richard of Bordeaux.

Saintonge’s part in this narrative is confined to what might have been a very inconspicuous occurrence. At the small seaport of Brouage in that department was born one Samuel de Champlain in the year 1567. His father was a sea captain and so his biographers have been much concerned about the use of the “de,” which is a prerogative of the nobility in personal names. The decision reached has been that the family belonged to the lesser nobility; a matter of small consequence, actually, because Samuel de Champlain had in himself qualities of heart and mind which far transcend any question of the social standing of his father.

Very little is known of his youth except that he was trained for the sea by his father and that he fought through the religious wars which were shaking and impoverishing France. One of the weakest and worst of French kings, Henry III, a son of the Catherine de’ Medici who caused the tocsin to ring on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s, was on the throne. He was being driven to repressive measures against the Huguenots, the Protestants of France, by his fanatical kinsmen, the Guises. In Navarre, which lay between France and Spain, was a young ruler who would become in time France’s great monarch, Henry IV. This youth, who was possessed of great ability and great natural charm as well, was the acknowledged leader and hope of the Huguenots. The three Henrys, for the head of the Catholic League which the Guises organized also bore that name, waged a three-sided and bloody series of wars for over twenty years. When both of the other Henrys had been removed from the struggle by the daggers of assassins and the Protestant Henry had reached the conclusion that Paris was worth a Mass and had recanted, the fighting came to an end. Henry of Navarre became King of France.

It is stated that young Samuel de Champlain was an ardent Catholic but at the same time a loyal follower of Henry of Navarre, leaving the impression that he fought under the Protestant banner. This is decidedly confusing. It has been established that he served under three generals, D’Aumont, St. Luc, and Brissac. All three were Catholic generals who went into service with Henry after he became legally the King of France, and so it may be that Champlain did not enter service until after the Huguenot leader had purchased Paris with a Mass. It seems more likely, however, that he would be drawn into enlistment at an earlier age. He was twenty years old when St. Luc fought against Henry at Coutras, and it seems more than probable that the young soldier-sailor was in the ranks there. Coutras was the first great victory for the Protestant cause, and St. Luc had the misfortune to be captured there. Huguenot Henry, who was jovial and easy of temperament and had a great admiration for the fair sex (an understatement of understatements), gave the seventy-eight banners captured in the victory to one of his mistresses, the Comtesse de Grammont, to be used as hangings for her bed. It is probable also that Champlain was with Brissac when he was made governor of Paris; a most important development, for Brissac proceeded to sell possession of Paris to the Navarrese for a million and a half crowns, thereby paving the way for Henry’s ultimate success.

In 1598 the Treaty of Vervins brought the fighting to an end and the still youthful Samuel de Champlain had to look about him for some form of employment. He decided to go to sea and found a chance to sail to Cádiz with a fleet taking back the Spanish mercenaries who had been fighting in France on the Catholic side and had been made prisoners. This resulted in his being given command of a Spanish vessel in an expedition to the West Indies, a journey which he described in his first book, called Bref Discours. It was an excellent book, although illustrated by the author’s own rather ludicrous drawings, and brought him to the attention of the French court, where the new broom of the Navarrese monarch was being busily employed. Perhaps it would have been more profitable for Champlain if the sagacious Henry had decided to use him in an engineering project in Saintonge. Settlers from the Netherlands were being imported to reclaim the salt marshes around Brouage. Champlain would have had a chance here to learn valuable lessons in colonization and also to impress himself on the attention of the King. Wealth and preferment are won in this way; but, as circumstances fell out, the youth from the salt marshes came into close touch instead with certain men who were dreaming again of a successful conquest of the New World. This project fired the enthusiasm and touched the idealistic side of Champlain, and the rest of his life was to be devoted to it.

He failed thereby to attain wealth and ease, but he became the Founder of New France and so achieved lasting fame instead.