Читать книгу The White and the Gold - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 46

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It must not be assumed that while Champlain conducted his bold explorations all was plain sailing in France. It is true that the company began to make money, paying profits of 40 per cent one year. The new viceroy received his thousand crowns annually and a share of the profits without lifting one of his delicately white hands to earn such a reward. In fact, this rather stupid scion of an illustrious line proceeded to destroy whatever value he had for the syndicate by getting at odds with the administration.

Condé had married Alice de Montmorenci, one of the great beauties of France, and in the last years of the life of the amorous Henry IV he had found it expedient to live in exile with his lovely mate. Only on Henry’s death did he venture back to pick up the threads of a normal life, and it might be thought that even an ordinary degree of caution would have prevented him from getting embroiled in the political feuds of the day. Unfortunately he had no political sagacity and became involved almost immediately in intrigues against the ministers of the young King. Soon after his appointment as viceroy of Canada he became deeply committed in these conspiracies. In 1616, at a time when his wife had decided to seek a divorce from him, he was placed under arrest and packed off to the Bastille. The fair Alice then decided it was her duty to stand by her spouse and she went to the great prison which held turbulent Paris in awe to share his rigorous confinement—with several body servants and footmen, a cook, a barber, and a confessor! Here they remained for three years, and the boy who became the great Condé was born as a result of this reconciliation.

Despite the prosperity of the company, Condé decided as soon as he regained his liberty to rid himself of this connection. He sold his post as viceroy to Montmorenci, the admiral of France, for eleven thousand crowns. This, as it turned out, was a good thing, the admiral proving himself a man of parts and decision.

At no time did Champlain have any peace. The investors in the company, having no concern for anything but the profits they could make, refused to assume the expense of sending out settlers as provided by the charter. Champlain complained so bitterly about this that he was subjected to continuous attacks from a cabal in the ranks of the company who wanted to oust him from his post at Quebec. There was one troublesome gadfly in particular, a merchant named Boyer who had made himself a pest through all the years of control by the Sieur de Monts. Boyer now established himself as the active leader of the opposition. He even went to the length of having Champlain barred from a ship sailing for Canada when he wanted to return in the spring of 1619.

The founder of Canada was not the kind of man to accept rebuffs of this nature in silence and allow his great project to be ruined by the greed of grasping individuals. He laid all the facts before Montmorenci. The admiral reached the conclusion that the time had come to cut away from the greedy shipowners, the niggling money lenders, and the noisy faultfinders. Obtaining the necessary support in the King’s council, he transferred the monopoly to two brothers in Rouen, Guillaume and Emery de C[.a][.e]n.

This drastic move stirred up in the maritime world of France a most bitter controversy. To attack what had been done, the ousted merchants seized on the fact that the C[.a][.e]n brothers were Huguenots. All the great ports rang with the dispute. It became so bitter that finally a compromise had to be reached. There was a reorganization, and the former partners were given five twelfths of the stock in the new syndicate, an arrangement grudgingly accepted because it left them in a minority position. Champlain, standing between the two parties because his innate sense of fairness would not allow him to see either side robbed by the other, had to exercise all his diplomatic skill to keep things on an even keel. That he succeeded is proof that he possessed in rare degree the qualifications of a peacemaker.