Something of a Peasant Paradise?: Comparing Rural Societies in Acadie and the Loudunais, 1604-1755 9780773590540

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Tables and Figures
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Natural Environment
Chapter 2 The Political and Military Environment
Chapter 3 The Rural Economy
Chapter 4 The Seigneury
Chapter 5 Institutions of Local Governance
Conclusion
Notes
Index
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B
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D
F
G
H
I
J
L
M
O
P
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Citation preview

Something of a Peasant Paradise?

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Something of a Pe a s a n t   Pa ra d i s e ? comparing rur al societie s in aca die and the loudun ais ,

1604–1755

Gregory M.W. Kennedy

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2014 ISBN 978-0-7735-4342-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-4343-0 (paper) ISBN 978-0-7735-9054-0 (ePDF) ISBN 978-0-7735-9055-7 (ePUB) Legal deposit first quarter 2014 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% postconsumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Faculté des études supérieures et de la recherche at the Université de Moncton. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Kennedy, Gregory M. W. (Gregory Michael William), 1978-, author Something of a peasant paradise? : comparing rural societies in Acadie and the Loudunais, 1604-1755 / Gregory M.W. Kennedy. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-7735-4342-3 (bound). – ISBN 978-0-7735-4343-0 (pbk.). – ISBN 978-0-7735-9054-0 (ePDF). – ISBN 978-0-7735-9055-7 (ePUB) 1. Peasants – Acadia – History.  2. Peasants – France – Loudun – History.  3. Acadians – History.  4. Acadia – History.  5. Loudun (France) – History.  I. Title. FC2041.K46 2014

971.5›017

Book designed by Pata Macedo Set in Minion Pro 11/14

C2013-907854-1

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contents

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Tables and Figures vii Abbreviations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 3 Chapter 1 The Natural Environment 18 Chapter 2 The Political and Military Environment 48 Chapter 3 The Rural Economy 93 Chapter 4 The Seigneury 128 Chapter 5 Institutions of Local Governance 168 Conclusion 206 Notes 213 Index 269

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— ta ble s and f igure s

Tables Adverse weather reported in Acadie and the Loudunais 30 Population growth in Acadie 31 State machinery in Acadie and the Loudunais in 1700 65 Taille assessments and population of the élection of Loudun, 1698–1788 75 2.3 Taille assessments and population within the élection of Loudun, 1788 75 2.4 Rate of the taille tarifée on rural property and income 78 3.1 Budget of François Giroire 112 3.2 Budget of François de la Mothe 113 3.3 Budget of François Boudrot 115 3.4 Budget of Germain Landry 116 4.1 Seigneuries of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ca. 1750 131 4.2 List of lords in Acadie, ca. 1690 143 4.3 Estimate of revenue from the cens et rentes in Acadie, 1707 149 4.4 Accounts of Annapolis Royal rent collectors Duon and Robichaud, 1739 149 5.1 Delay between birth and baptism among selected centre families of Minas 179 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2

Tables and Figures

Figures 1.1 “Carte de l’Accadie,” 1744 20 1.2 “Loudunais et Mirebalais,” 1635 21 1.3 Belleisle Creek, near Annapolis Royal 45 1.4 View of Loudunais countryside 46 2.1 Taille assessment for the élection of Loudun, 1744 76 2.2 Square tower of Loudun 90 2.3 View of the harbour at Annapolis Royal 91 3.1 Socio-economic hierarchy in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ca. 1750 105 3.2 Artisans in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ca. 1750 106 3.3 Land and livestock value by household in Acadie, 1707 107 3.4 Land and livestock value by household in Acadie, 1707 108 3.5 Land cultivated by household in Acadie, 1707 109 3.6 Income of four farmers 117 3.7 Expenses of four farmers 118 3.8 Field “La Gravelle” in the parish of Martaizé, Cadastre, 1828 126 3.9 Métairie “La Cabane brulée” in the parish of Martaizé, Cadastre, 1828 127 3.10 Map of dyked marshland around Port Royal, 1708 127 4.1 Seigneurial estate of La Bonnetière, La Chaussée 165 4.2 Seigneurial estate of Sautonne, Martaizé, Cadastre, 1828 166 5.1 Delay between birth and baptism in Annapolis Royal, Minas, and Beaubassin, 1712–41 177 5.2 Births and baptisms by month at Saint-Charles-de-Mines, 1712–40 178 5.3 Estimated annual vestry expenses in Saint Clair, 1672–91 184 5.4 Parish church, Aulnay 204 5.5 Grand Pré memorial church 204

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— a bbrevi ations

AD V Archives départementales de la Vienne, Poitiers AD I-L Archives départementales d’Indre-et-Loire, Tours AN Archives nationales de France, Paris BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris b boisselée, unit of land surface area, equivalent to 528 square metres in the Loudunais bx boisseau, plural boisseaux, unit of volume, equivalent to 10.9 litres in the Loudunais. Source: Pierre Charbonnier et Abel Poitrineau, Les anciennes mesures locales du Centre-Ouest d’après les tables de conversion (Paris: Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal 2001), 223. CEAAC Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson, Université de Moncton DCB Dictionary of Canadian Biography online hl hectoliter LAC Library and Archives Canada lc livre colonial, roughly equivalent to three-quarters of a livre tournois lt livre tournois, principal currency of account in old regime France s sol, plural sous, there were twenty sous in 1 livre tournois d denier, there were twelve deniers in 1 sol

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acknowledgments

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This book has evolved over almost twelve years and many people have made contributions along the way. Their expertise, support, and generosity have been instrumental to its completion, and words alone cannot express my gratitude. I will nevertheless give it a try! I am often asked how a Winnipegger ended up working on Acadian history, and the answer is that a number of professors led the way. Donald Bailey and Robert Young inspired a love for French history during my undergraduate years at the University of Winnipeg. It was Ian Steele at the University of Western Ontario who first suggested that I study the Acadians as part of an MA research project. The comparative angle with the Loudunais had its genesis with my doctoral supervisor, T.J.A. Le Goff, at York University. He helped me apply the methods of rural and socio-economic history to a transatlantic study featuring the Acadians and the inhabitants of the Loudunais. He also invested a considerable amount of time into making me a better writer. Richard Hoffmann and Colin Coates, the other two members of my thesis committee, pushed me to integrate environmental and New France perspectives respectively, which helped widen both the analysis and the potential audience for the final product. Finally, my external examiner, D.M.G. Sutherland, challenged me to more boldly express my conclusions and to push the comparison even further. In addition to these instructors and supervisors, several experts have provided critical support at key times. Maurice Basque of the Université de Moncton suggested many sources and lines of inquiry

Acknowledgments

during my visits to the archives of the Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson (CEAAC). John Reid of Saint Mary’s University and Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, formerly of Parks Canada, were generous with their thoughts and ideas. They also were (and are) models of how to be a gentleman-scholar in a world too often riven by cutthroat competition and petty one-upmanship. All three of these scholars, as well as T.J.A. Le Goff, Jeremy Hayhoe, Thomas Peace, and Nicolas Landry, read chapters of an earlier version of this book, and their comments and suggestions made it significantly better. The anonymous reviewers of the original manuscript also provided many useful comments. Of course, any errors that remain are my responsibility. I would be remiss if I did not also thank Douglas McCalla, Kris Inwood, and Peter Goddard from the University of Guelph. Their support during my postdoctoral fellowship at that institution enabled me to further my research and refine my quantitative analysis. I would also like to thank the archivists of the Archives Départementales de la Vienne (Poitiers). While all of the archivists I met, from Ottawa and Moncton to Paris and Tours, were remarkably professional, those in Poitiers deserve particular mention for their helpfulness, positive attitude, and dedicated service. Finally, I would also like to thank the editorial team at McGill-Queen’s University Press, and, in particular, Kyla Madden, who provided excellent professional guidance and supported this book project with enthusiasm and dedication from the proposal to the finished product. It would be impossible to mention all of the scholars and graduate students who have provided support and feedback throughout the early stages of my career. Their ideas and simple encouragement made a big difference in the long run. There was nevertheless a special bond formed between the fourteen students who all undertook the Canadian History field course at York University in the same year as I. Tarah Brookfield, Kristine Alexander, and Sean Kheraj deserve special mention for their enduring friendship and the way that their accomplishments and professionalism have inspired me to be better. This research project has also received generous financial support over the years. An Ontario Graduate Scholarship supported its early stages during my MA at the University of Western Ontario. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) provided

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Acknowledgments

a three-year doctoral fellowship that made much of my doctoral research possible. The John Bosher Award in French History and Empire from the Department of History at York University enabled further research in France. I also gratefully acknowledge the help of smaller research grants from the University of Guelph and the Université de Moncton that enabled me to refine and further the research for the final version of the book. Finally, the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program provided funds that helped publish this book, and the Faculté des études supérieures et de la recherche of the Université de Moncton awarded an additional publication grant that made the paperback edition possible. Thank you for ensuring that this book will reach a large audience. I would lastly like to thank my family for their love, patience, and wise counsel over the years. My parents, Michael and Evelyn, and my siblings, Patrick, Sarah, and Peter, have been an endless source of encouragement. My wife, Jennifer, has been the one most affected by the doldrums of researching and writing this book, yet her support has been unflagging. She has been, in many ways, the biggest inspiration of all. To my daughters, Avery and Branwyn, I hope that one day you will look at this book and be proud of what your daddy accomplished, even if right now it all seems frightfully boring.

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Something of a Peasant Paradise?

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introduction

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Alexandre Bourg was in many ways typical of the colonists of Acadie1 at the end of the seventeenth century.2 A scion of one of the founding families of Port Royal, he married young, at the age of twentythree, and had a large family that ultimately included sixteen children. Like many other young couples, Alexandre and his wife, Marguerite Melanson, chose to move to the Minas Basin soon after the New England expedition of William Phips captured and looted Port Royal in 1690. Settling at Grand Pré, they worked on their own marshland farm, cultivating wheat and peas as well as raising pigs, sheep, and cattle. However, they were unable to avoid the conflict between the English and French for long. In 1704, they fled to the woods as a New England raiding party burned the village, killing livestock and wrecking dykes along their way. Facing famine, Alexandre may have joined the many other Acadian men who looked to the French government for aid, becoming part of the militia. In 1707, they helped the governor, Daniel d’Auger de Subercase, defend Port Royal from two different invasion forces. Despite these victories, the French did not provide supplies, food, or reinforcements, and the fort fell to a much larger expedition led by Samuel Vetch and Francis Nicholson in 1710. A prominent head of household, Alexandre Bourg was one of six deputies chosen by the parish of Grand Pré to negotiate with the conquerors. The first order of business was to deal with Paul Mascarene, a British army officer sent by the Council at newly renamed Annapolis Royal, who was demanding contributions of food, furs, and money. The deputies convinced him to accept half of the original sum,

S o m e t h i n g   o f   a   Pe a s a n t   Pa r a d i s e ?

dividing this amount among the inhabitants. They also forestalled Mascarene’s request for help in rebuilding the fort’s defences. Soon after, they refused a call from their parish priest to aid a French blockade. It seems that the colonists had resolved to stay out of the conflict as much as possible. In subsequent years, they continued to adopt this approach; their refusal to swear oaths of allegiance or actively join either side led to the British dubbing them “French Neutrals.” Alexandre Bourg was rare in that he was fully literate at a time when only a minority of Acadian men and women could even sign their names.3 In addition to representing his neighbours on numerous occasions, he seems to have gained the trust of the British, who appointed him notary and, later, king’s attorney for the Minas Basin. As such, he maintained property records and lists of rents owed to the Crown. He also helped resolve minor civil disputes and passed on information from the government. Between 1710 and 1740, the inhabitants of the Minas Basin, including Alexandre Bourg and his family, prospered thanks to a general peace, favourable weather, and high demand for their produce and livestock. Bourg continued to serve into his seventies. For example, in 1742, he helped negotiate the return of items stolen by the Mi’kmaq from an English merchant vessel. Imperial war returned to Acadie/Nova Scotia a few years later. In 1744, the French sent an expedition from their fortress at Louisbourg on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). Their commander, François Du Pont Duvivier, arrived at Grand Pré and requested troops, provisions, and other goods and services. Alexandre Bourg was once again one of the community’s deputies and attempted to negotiate these demands. While few Acadians actively joined the French, other help was provided. After the expedition’s failure to capture Annapolis Royal, Alexandre was interrogated by the British Council and was deemed to have done too much to support the French attack. He was relieved of his offices. The resumption of conflict was a signal for thousands of Acadians to leave the colony, and Alexandre Bourg was among this group. In 1752, he was living at Port Toulouse on Île Royale and was thus able to avoid the Deportation of 1755. After the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, he fled over land and water, joining other Acadian and Aboriginal refugees at Richibouctou. He died there in 1760, cold and starving, at the advanced age of eighty-nine.

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Introduction

An outpost for the fisheries and the fur trade, and strategically positioned along the routes to Boston and Quebec, Acadie/Nova Scotia was a crucial intersection where English and French Atlantics met, overlapped, and battled for control. Alexandre Bourg’s life exemplifies the hardships and difficult choices thrust upon the inhabitants by this political and military situation. Twice he tried to move away from conflict, only to find that it eventually caught up with him. A respected and prosperous patriarch and civic official for most of his life, Alexandre worked closely with his community at Grand Pré and did his best to manage the demands of British and French leaders. His last years were nevertheless spent as an octogenarian refugee far from his home, on the rocky coast of Île Royale and in the forests of modern-day New Brunswick. His former friends and neighbours at Grand Pré were deported and scattered across the Thirteen Colonies in 1755. Many died of disease and starvation or were lost at sea. Years of isolation and deprivation as unwanted refugees in English Protestant communities awaited the survivors. Ultimately, some returned to create a new Acadie, while others settled in Louisiana and Quebec. A few established themselves in France, other French colonies, or New England. The tragic story of the Great Upheaval (le Grand Dérangement) is well known and is not the subject of this book. The political and military history leading up to the Deportation has also been told in detail elsewhere. My aim here is to examine Acadian society during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, its particular natural and political conditions, and especially the manner in which the colonists lived, worked, and organized themselves. In short, this book is a history of Acadie’s inhabitants, the families who, like the Bourgs, were enticed to this new French colony by the promise of a better life, sought to establish themselves and their families on drained marshland farms, traded with French, English, and Aboriginal partners, and did their best to stay out of the imperial conflicts of their day. This subject has received some attention, particularly from previous generations of scholars who tended to highlight Acadian exceptionality. During the nineteenth century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline described the Acadians as simple, peace-loving peasants, while the first professional historian of Acadie,

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Edmé Rameau de Saint-Père, emphasized the piety, fidelity, and fecundity of the colonists.4 These descriptions are little changed in many modern accounts. For example:

• Acadia was “a republic of subsistence farmers” with neither

parishes nor tithes. The seigneurial system did not function after 1670 and it was not “a rank-ordered society.” In general, it is “fair to regard the colony as something of a peasant paradise.”5 • The Acadians “around what is now called the Bay of Fundy, created a unique society, an independent blend of European and aboriginal cultures,” a “democratic society” in which they could “master their own destiny.”6 • Acadia “was virtually free from ‘positive checks’ to the natural increase of the population.”7 • Acadia was “an agrarian world of household production.”8 Yet these conclusions do not seem to match the political and military reality in Acadie; they certainly do not describe the experience of Alexandre Bourg, a prominent head of household. Can this colony, ravaged and ultimately destroyed by imperial war, really be likened to a “paradise” in which the inhabitants could “master their own destiny”? This seems like a cruel joke. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence for the existence of parishes, lords (seigneurs), and socio-economic hierarchy, while relatively little to suggest that the Acadians borrowed much from Mi’kmaq traditions. Famine and disease made appearances in the colony as well. Some of these scholars have clearly been influenced by ethnocentrism, seeking to celebrate an idealized Acadian distinctiveness as part of an ongoing and understandable effort to preserve their minority identity within Canadian society. Others seem to have simply neglected to look beyond the colony’s borders or, worse, accepted and repeated the assertions of nineteenth-century historians without holding them up to sufficient scrutiny. More positively, all of these authors seized upon the fact that there was something distinct about Acadian history, but they struggled to define that distinctiveness beyond the calamitous events of 1755 because of conflicting historical accounts and public memories. Indeed, all of these scholars seem to have fallen into the trap of seeing the Deportation as the tragic and brutal end of an Acadian “golden age.” While not diminishing the .:.

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Introduction

hardship and suffering caused by le Grand Dérangement, one objective of this book is to evaluate to what degree the Acadians really were wealthier, freer, and, in general, better off than rural dwellers elsewhere in France and its colonies. Such a question is intrinsically comparative, situating the Acadians alongside other residents of the Atlantic World. In fact, this project started as an MA paper under the direction of Ian K. Steele, who was one of the first historians to advance the concept of an English Atlantic. He argued that the ocean was less a barrier and more a highway for communication – that shipping, newspapers, and correspondence gradually integrated colonies from Hudson’s Bay to the Caribbean with the metropolis and with each other.9 He wondered if a French Atlantic could also be discerned. The resulting research did not find much evidence of French shipping or newspapers going to Acadie; nor did it uncover many indications of ongoing French migration or correspondence from or to the colonies. The turbulent political and military situation inhibited such exchanges. In addition to the British Conquest described above, Acadie was also under nominal English control from 1613 to 1632, 1654 to 1670, and 1690 to 1699. The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which ceded Acadie to the British, did not settle the issue, as the French continued to nurture their aspirations in the region. They constructed the supposedly impregnable fortress of Louisbourg and tried to entice the Acadians to move there beginning in 1714. In the 1740s, they sent military expeditions, including Duvivier’s, and, later, a fleet to reconquer Acadie. When these efforts failed, they drew a line in the sand at the Missaguash River (the border of present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) and declared their side a new Acadie, provoking a standoff which would lead to renewed war and ultimately to the Deportation. Where then did the Acadians fit into the French Atlantic? The only transoceanic connections to and from the colony seemed to be officials, troops, and priests. Not surprisingly, in this atmosphere of imperial war and political brinkmanship, the Acadians were less integrated into a French Atlantic world and more imposed upon as pawns and potential resources. Scholars have long noted that Acadie/Nova Scotia was a contested borderland featuring important political and commercial ties between the colonists and New Englanders.10 Thus, to a certain extent before .:.

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1710, and more generally after 1713, the Acadians were also part of the English Atlantic. Once again, however, this is a story of imposition rather than integration. Before 1749, hardly any Englishman moved to Nova Scotia or married an Acadian.11 Annapolis Royal was a garrison town led by military governors well aware of their precarious position outside the fort. Although a few officials suggested deportation from the beginning, most did not wish for the colonists to leave because this would both weaken Nova Scotia and presumably strengthen the French. These men saw their primary mission as bringing the Acadians to a proper obedience until English colonists could arrive; they employed a combination of conciliation and coercion and insisted that the inhabitants swear an oath of allegiance. To this must be added the influence of local Aboriginal peoples, especially the Mi’kmaq, who lived throughout the Maritime region, from Gaspé to Cape Sable. Long allied to the French, they pursued their own objectives, trading and raiding as they saw fit and going to war with the British along with the Abenaki during the 1720s. British officials always assumed that the Acadians and the Mi’kmaq were working together, but by the eighteenth century there were clear signs of tensions between the two populations. Many Natives moved away, establishing new communities further inland. Others used intimidation to prevent the Acadians from trading with the British. Aboriginals may not have had an “Atlantic,” but their networks of alliances and trade as well as their military power made them at least as influential as European “worlds” in Acadie/Nova Scotia.12 While the colony was certainly part of the French and English Atlantics, it did not conform to the integrationist model developed by Steele. Where other colonies had transatlantic links and exchanges to support them, Acadie/Nova Scotia had only ruptures and conflicts. Bernard Bailyn has noted that the “formal designs” of empire rarely “reflect reality.”13 James Pritchard further emphasizes that Acadia’s relative isolation from France and New France was not unique; in fact, he questions whether the French can be said to have achieved an empire at all before 1730 because of the lack of coordination, exchange, and interactions between the colonies and with the metropolis. Colonization, in his view, was largely shaped by local initiatives and circumstances.14 I came to a similar conclusion with regards to

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Introduction

marshland colonization projects in France during the seventeenth century. The state’s attempts to impose grand schemes came to nothing because of insufficient capital and coordination as well as local opposition. However, regional initiatives led by local elites were successful in creating sustainable, profitable enterprises over the long term in such places as the Poitevin Marsh.15 The next step, then, was to study in detail the principal Acadian communities – namely, Port Royal, Grand Pré, and Beaubassin – at the local level. Led by my doctoral supervisor, T.J.A. Le Goff, I adopted an approach inspired by the Annales school, privileging a detailed examination of socio-economic and demographic history.16 An important element of this approach was to determine the culture and traditions brought over by the original migrants. For this, I needed to know where the founding colonists came from. This proved to be a thorny question. Some readers may be familiar with the town of Loudun from the infamous case of “the Devils of Loudun” in which the priest Urbain Grandier was burned to death for supposedly practising witchcraft. Others may know it as a Huguenot centre in western France until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.17 In the 1960s, Geneviève Massignon suggested that many of the founding Acadian families originated in the Loudunais, especially from the seigneurial lands of Charles de Menou, an early colonial governor.18 Experts have debated this hypothesis ever since. Some historians, such as Gabriel Debien, insist that we cannot prove this theory because of the lack of conclusive records and the commonness of the names involved. Naomi Griffiths and Leslie Choquette believe that those who came to Acadie “were more broadly representative of the various regions of France” and were not part of a concerted migration.19 But along with a few colonists positively identified in Loudunais parish registers, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to support Massignon’s claim. Jacques Vanderlinden’s study of Acadian marriage patterns demonstrates that a “centre” group of families with a common origin, which he believes was the Loudunais, dominated social relationships in the colony. Henri Wittmann has shown that the Acadian dialect conforms to that used in the Loudunais and was distinct from the Québécois dialect that originated in Normandy and the Île-de-France. Nicole Bujold and Maurice Cailleteau identify one of Menou’s recruiting

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agents, an estate manager living in La Chaussée, while Gervais Carpin argues that Menou was the principal recruiter at the time and had few options but to draw from his estates.20 Perhaps the definitive word belongs to Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, who in a recent study summed up what we know about Acadian origins. Less than a third of the families who came to Acadie before 1714 can be linked to a specific place of origin, but several families already shared relationships. For example, we can identify a group of five colonists from La Chaussée including the Brun family, the Martin and Trahan families from Bourgeuil, as well as prior marriage links among the Lejeune, Hébert, Landry, and Aucoin families. Although Acadie eventually included people from at least nineteen different provinces of France, these more tightly knit family clusters from western France arrived first and worked closely together.21 My archival research confirmed the difficulties highlighted by LeBlanc in determining the origins of the first Acadian colonists. The seventeenth-century parish registers are incomplete or missing for most parishes of the Loudunais. I certainly found similar patronyms in the eighteenth-century records, but like Massignon’s research, this is hardly conclusive. I chose the parishes of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé because the seigneurial lands of Charles de Menou were found there; however, I quickly realized that the seigneury (seigneurie) also extended into other neighbouring parishes and, further, that its peasants (censitaires) did not all necessarily reside there. In short, even if the right records did exist, a much wider regional research would be necessary. Griffiths and Choquette are also correct in that some early Acadian colonists were not from the Loudunais. Guillaume Trahan, for example, was a holdover from Rasilly’s expedition in the 1630s and originated in Bourgeuil, Touraine. Of course, this is not very far from the Loudunais. Also, many contracted workers, fishermen, and sailors were hired in the Atlantic seaports and possessed diverse origins. Historians agree that the first peasant families were recruited in the early 1640s by Charles de Menou. Charles himself claimed in a 1644 mémoire that he had brought over twenty families and a total of over two hundred men including soldiers, artisans, and workers on contracts (engagés).22 Fortunately, we can trace his career and movements during that time. Charles de Menou was in Paris in late 1641 and early

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Introduction

1642, where he finally secured definitive royal support against his principal rival, Charles de la Tour, and also obtained powerful financial backing. This was the first time that he was in a position strong enough to recruit permanent colonists. He then visited his mother, Nicole de Jousserand, in the seigneury of Aulnay, for several months. This was the only part of France he visited other than Paris, and, as Bujold and Cailleteau related, he recruited both peasant families and additional funding there with his mother’s support. In fact, Nicole rewrote her testament during this visit, agreeing to let her estranged husband manage her properties if Charles died in order to preserve her grandchildren’s inheritance in Acadie and France.23 We may never know exactly what proportion of the initial colonists of Acadie originated in the Loudunais – the genealogical sources that would answer the question conclusively have not been found. However, other historical documents that trace Charles de Menou’s career, as well as the circumstantial evidence explained by other historians, make it clear to me that most of those twenty families were recruited in the Loudunais. This should hopefully settle the debate over the origins of the Acadian colonists, and, while individual cases remain to be confirmed, the justification for a general comparison with the Loudunais should be clear. This founding generation of peasant families established the first marshland farms around Port Royal in a settlement pattern that would come to define Acadian rural society. They formed (or continued) strong kin networks that placed them in the centre of that society for generations to come. There is no doubt that the larger temporary (contracted) colonial population possessed diverse origins, but these men had little influence on this burgeoning rural community. Later permanent colonists, especially beginning in the 1670s, came from all over France, and this certainly diversified Acadian society. Nevertheless, the original “centre” families identified by Vanderlinden retained their predominant standing in the socioeconomic hierarchy right up to the Deportation. In fact, there was an ongoing trend throughout the seventeenth century for permanent colonists to come from the larger region of Poitou-Touraine, a distinct part of France’s Centre-West that retains an important provincial identity today. The Loudunais was a small frontier area between Poitou and Touraine – that is, right in the middle of this region – and so we

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can safely assume that these later immigrants joined a colonial society that shared some familiar characteristics and outlooks. What else do we know about the Loudunais? While the history of the town has attracted scholars, the surrounding countryside has seemingly aroused less interest. The Loudunais was an important military frontier during the Hundred Years War and was also an outpost of Protestantism during the French Wars of Religion. The Huguenots were concentrated in the towns, and there is little evidence that the colonists who came to Acadie in the 1640s were Protestants. Like Acadie, the Loudunais was repeatedly subjected to battles and occupation by troops with the inhabitants frequently caught in the middle. Also like Acadie, there was nevertheless evidence of prosperity, and the region had a reputation as being relatively well off in comparison with other parts of Poitou and Touraine. In a detailed family reconstitution study of the first half of the eighteenth century in the Loudunais, I discovered that only one-quarter to one-third of the children born there died before the age of twenty, a child mortality rate which still seems high to modern readers but was much lower than the contemporary rate (50 per cent or more) found elsewhere in rural France. Furthermore, there is considerable evidence for geographic and social mobility, especially among young couples. Thus, as we will see in Acadie, many people moved in order to take advantage of new opportunities or to better establish their families.24 This, then, adds to the interest in a direct comparison – two places that were well-suited for agriculture but situated on political frontiers with a history of conflict; two places where the inhabitants persevered and even thrived despite difficult circumstances; two places characterized by considerable mobility within a larger zone defined by the natural environment and family networks. One of the central questions of this book, then, is how did the experience and choices of the rural inhabitants of the Loudunais compare with those of the Acadians? While I was working on this comparison, a number of new publications have advanced our knowledge of Acadian history. In 2005, Naomi Griffiths and John Mack Faragher provided important narratives of the political and military history of this colony. Griffiths places much emphasis on Acadie’s borderland situation, while Faragher sees the Deportation as an early example of ethnic cleansing.25 There have

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Introduction

also been detailed studies of particular episodes in Acadian history including its foundation in the early seventeenth century, the British Conquest in 1710, and the Great Upheaval of the 1750s.26 The successes of these works have nevertheless led to the realization that more comparative work is needed. John Reid, for example, argues that a central challenge remains, namely, how to integrate Acadian history into the larger contexts of North America and the Atlantic World beyond a narrow political or imperial interpretation.27 This is not an easy challenge to answer; indeed, Atlantic history in general and studies of French colonization in particular have been criticized for simply repackaging “old colonial history,” focusing mainly on the broader bureaucratization of the early modern state and the expansion of metropolitan commercial elites.28 My hope was to escape this trap by focusing on the communities themselves. Indeed, although all of these recent studies make major contributions in their particular approaches to Acadian history, none of them focuses strictly on Acadian society, and none makes an explicit comparison to the sending society, ancien régime France. This book, then, provides a new, focused, comparative analysis that privileges an innovative, bottom-up approach. In this respect, the book echoes recent trends in the larger historiography of New France that feature larger comparisons and revised interpretations of rural society. For example, Allan Greer calls for more continental and global approaches that will provide an “international context,” using missionary work as an example. He also underlines the importance of institutions like the parish vestry in the rural communities of the Richelieu valley.29 Both the vestry and the seigneury (a subject that has long divided New France historians) will feature prominently in this book. Meanwhile, Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal emphasize how immigrants to New France brought with them a “social model” and “cultural baggage” that profoundly influenced their point of view and behaviour. Far from a homogeneous group of subsistence farmers, New France rural communities had important, diverse socio-economic hierarchies characterized by elites positioned to profit from new commercial opportunities as well as poor families barely able to get by.30 These themes are also central to this book’s examination of local governance and socio-economic hierarchy in the Loudunais and Acadie.

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The latest scholarship on the Acadian diaspora supports the notion that the colony simply did not fit the standard model of an Atlantic World, that is, the gradual integration of colonies and metropolis into an “emerging system.”31 Christopher Hodson and Jean-François Mouhot have tracked deportees on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Falkland Islands to South Carolina, from Louisiana to Belle-îleen-Mer, from Châtellerault to Kourou.32 Both historians emphasize how officials and entrepreneurs continued to see them as resources and pawns in their quest for empire and profit. This is Atlantic history in the sense that it occurs in places around the Atlantic, but the results also echo Pritchard in emphasizing the inability of the French to create a functioning empire and the continuing importance of local circumstances and individual decisions. While some Acadians chose to remain in their various places of refuge, many others preferred to return to the Maritimes or create new communities in Louisiana. In many ways, Acadian history demonstrates the limits of the Atlantic World, both as an entity of its time and as a scholarly approach. Yet if Acadie did not conform to the integrationist vision of the Atlantic World, this does not mean that there is no value in looking beyond its borders. For example, some Acadians clearly benefited from the trade and employment opportunities created by the new Atlantic trade, especially after the foundation of Louisbourg in 1713.33 The proponents of Atlantic history maintain that it “encourages broad perspectives, transnational orientations, and expanded horizons at the same time that it offers a chance for overcoming national and other parochialisms.”34 This corresponds with the objectives of this book. The Acadians were not the only ones to colonize marshlands, live in borderlands, suffer in imperial wars, or develop a distinct identity. For example, works comparing Acadian drainage and farming techniques with other marshland societies in Europe and North America have shown how knowledge was transmitted and adapted to fit local environmental and economic conditions.35 To what extent did the Acadians continue and/or adapt other traditions and practices from France, such as institutions of local governance? That they did so should not be surprising, as all settler societies felt “the urge to escape a disorienting world by clinging to what could be recalled of the familiar, civilized past.”36 Some Atlantic scholars also emphasize the need

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to understand the “complex variables and interactions that converged to produce a particular set of local conditions.”37 This is certainly what this book aims to do. Above all, this book is a “Cis-Atlantic” history, as defined by David Armitage, in that it studies Acadie and the Loudunais as unique locations within an Atlantic World, seeking “to define that uniqueness as the result of the interaction between local particularity and a wider web of connections.”38 The main goal of this book is thus to bring together almost ten years of graduate and postgraduate research into one volume by comparing the conditions, experiences, and decisions of ordinary people in the rural societies of Acadie and the Loudunais, with a particular emphasis on the distinctiveness and success of Acadian society before the Deportation. I employ a thematic approach. Chapter 1 examines the natural environment and its influence on the development of rural societies. The inhabitants often could not control political events around them, but they could and did adapt their settlement patterns and farming methods to make best use of local terrain and climate. This was particularly true in Acadie, where the colonists were starting from scratch. To what degree were the fertile marshlands of Acadie more productive than the flat plains of the Loudunais? How difficult was it to get started? How did wild places and predators impact agriculture and community life? By the eighteenth century, had the Acadians created a new or familiar rural landscape? Chapter 2 explores the political and military situation of each place. The colonists departing the Loudunais in the early seventeenth century carried with them a long experience of living on a military frontier. How had they negotiated with state officials and enemy commanders in the past? By the end of the seventeenth century, the state had definitively secured the area and its wars were fought elsewhere. What fiscal and military demands did it continue to make on the Loudunais? How heavy were these burdens and did the inhabitants fulfill them? In contrast, Acadie was a contested military frontier throughout its history, and significant state demands were placed upon the colonists for military service and resources. The Acadians did not pay taxes, but was this really an advantage, when other state demands were so onerous? In the end, this chapter aims to define the relationship between rulers and ruled. How involved was the state in rural life?

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How powerful was the state and how much did the interests of local communities and the state coincide? The natural and political environments having been taken into account, chapter 3 conducts a detailed analysis of the rural economies of Acadie and the Loudunais. What kind of agriculture was practised, how much trade was there and with whom, and to what degree were the inhabitants prosperous? Using primary sources on harvests, prices, and household goods for richer and poorer farmers enables a comparison of differences in wealth and living conditions in Acadie and the Loudunais. Socio-economic hierarchy was a fundamental part of most early modern rural communities. How divided were rich and poor in Acadie and the Loudunais? Was the colony really a “republic of subsistence farmers?” Chapter 4 considers the complex institution of the seigneury. All land in France and its colonies was at least officially subject to a lord, yet most scholars have asserted that, particularly after 1654, the seigneurial regime was not an important factor in Acadie.39 This chapter makes the case that the lords of Acadie were often important political and economic leaders. Some actively managed their lands and worked closely with the rural population. There were problems as well, but these should not lead us to discount an institution which, by all indications from the surviving documents, was alive and well, at least in the larger Acadian communities like Port Royal, Grand Pré, and Beaubassin. How then did the lords of Acadie compare with those of the Loudunais? What kind of power and privileges did they hold over the local population? Were these rights exercised in similar or different ways in the two places? Was seigneurial power oppressive, and to what degree did local inhabitants resist or oppose it? The final chapter describes institutions of local governance including the parish vestry and assembly. Both French and British officials complained of the Acadians’ “republican” attitude, and historians have tended to accept these statements at face value.40 The colonists discussed political matters in an assembly and elected delegates to represent them. This political activity may have been “a crucial step in the continued evolution of a distinct Acadian identity,” 41 but this chapter will demonstrate that the colonists were using the same institutions of local self-government that had been employed

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Introduction

by the rural inhabitants of western France for centuries. In light of this comparison, can we discern significant differences in the use and importance of these institutions in Acadie? Did the Acadians enjoy greater autonomy and were they more democratic in their practices than their counterparts in the Loudunais? The conclusion will take the results of each chapter and return to the general questions that motivated this study. Were the Acadians “better off ” for having “escaped” from old regime France? To what degree did a distinct Acadian identity emerge before the Deportation? How did Acadian economic prospects and community life compare with those of their French counterparts? The Acadians of the preDeportation era left so few historical documents of their own making that it is impossible to definitively state how they would have responded to these questions. However, a comparative approach enables some answers to be discerned. In general, the similarities of Acadian rural society and traditional rural life in western France have been greatly underestimated or ignored. Acadian distinctiveness lies not in the invention of new farming practices and community institutions but in the adaptation of traditional methods and ideas to a new natural and political environment. The book also makes an important contribution to French rural history in its detailed examination of a little-known frontier region of western France, the Loudunais, as well as in its reconsideration of fundamental aspects of rural society including the role of the seigneury. A final intriguing and challenging question to be dealt with in the conclusion is to what degree the concept of the Atlantic World is relevant to the history of these rural communities. On the one hand, there was clearly a transmission of knowledge, resources, and people as well as new trade opportunities within what might be called an oceanic system that included the metropolis and other French (and English) colonies. On the other hand, Acadie remained isolated right up to 1755, and its inhabitants had to find local solutions to the many challenges created by their natural and political environments. In sum, I aim to follow the lead of other recent historians and leave ethnocentrism and golden ages behind, integrating the Acadians of the pre-Deportation period into the larger themes and discussions of the increasingly revitalized fields of rural, social, and Atlantic history.

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c h apter

1

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The Natural Environment

Introduction The natural environments of Acadie and the Loudunais were very different from each other. The Loudunais was dominated by flat plains that had been transformed for agriculture and settlement over generations, while Acadie was a mix of rocky, forested uplands and marshy lowlands that had been little changed by the native hunter-gatherer population. This leads to a number of questions. How difficult was it for the colonists to get started? Did the fertile marshlands, once drained, give them an edge in agricultural productivity over their Loudunais counterparts? What impact did wild places and predators have on both societies? What other aspects of the natural environment, such as climate and natural resources, influenced rural societies? The natural environment is fundamental to agriculture, but it also shaped the settlement patterns of the inhabitants and had a direct impact on their health and state of mind. At the same time, people transformed the environment around them, clearing and cultivating the land, pasturing livestock, and adjusting water courses. The Acadians’ decision to drain marshlands may appear exceptional, but, in fact, these methods were widely known and employed in Europe and North America.1 There were even new marshland farms being created in the Loudunais during the same period. In both Acadie and the Loudunais, there was a marked preference for a dispersed settlement style. In addition, the inhabitants faced similar environmental

T h e N a t u ra l E n vi r o n m e n t

challenges, such as maintaining soil fertility and dealing with adverse climate conditions. Natural resources like forests, fish, and furs could be important supplements to the rural economy but also attracted competition and efforts of control from elites and the state. In the end, both rural societies aimed to create a stable, familiar, and productive landscape. What is most surprising is how similar these landscapes ultimately were, despite the considerable differences in the terrain, climate, wildlife, and natural resources.

Terrain The Loudunais was a region with an alternating landscape of limestone and clay plains and rolling chalk hills, bordered on the north by the Vienne river valley.2 The soil was fertile and the land was mostly flat, making it ideal for intensive wheat production. As a result, arable land in the Loudunais was considerably more valuable than elsewhere in Poitou and supported several prominent lay and clerical seigneuries. By 1600, all the best land was under the plough.3 Surpluses were taken north along the many small rivers to Saumur, where the grain joined the larger Loire trading network. These rivers and the few roads in the region tended to orient the Loudunais north to Touraine rather than south to Poitou.4 Of course, wheat was not the only agricultural product. Secondary grains like rye and barley were also cultivated, chiefly for local use. Some parishes also produced wine for export. There was not much commercial husbandry, however, as only a small percentage of the terrain was suitable for pasture: by one estimate only 700 arpents (240 hectares [ha]) of meadow in the entire pays. The cadastre, a detailed land survey completed from 1828 to 1830, indicates that about 7 per cent of the land in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé was used for pasture.5 Ploughmen owned oxen and most peasants owned or leased some goats, chickens, and perhaps a cow to provide eggs, meat, and milk for their own subsistence. Only a few elites possessed veritable herds. For example, François Henry de Lomeron, the lord (seigneur) of Aulnay, leased 775 livres tournois (lt) of livestock between 1735 and 1744, mostly to a single ploughman, Louis Bourdier of Aulnay. The royal notary at Moncontour, Henry Bigot, leased 1,100 lt of livestock between 1752 and 1756, chiefly to François Esselin of Martaizé.6

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Fig. 1.1 Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, “Carte de l’Accadie,” 1744. Published in Pierre-François Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle-France (Paris: Chez Rolin fils, librairie 1744).

The Loudunais also had few wooded areas and, as a result, wood for fuel or construction was very expensive.7 The peasants of Aulnay and La Chaussée may have had better access to wood than some, as they were positioned just to the west of the Bois de Guesnes. As late as 1830, over 16 per cent of the terrain in Aulnay and over 22 per cent of that of La Chaussée, a total of 150 ha, was still covered by woods, although only one-third of these woods had been well maintained. The vast majority of these trees were still controlled by three seigneurial estates (Sautonne, Aulnay, and La Bonnetière), suggesting that peasant rights would have been limited, probably to collecting deadfall. The larger commune of Martaizé was more typical of the rest of the Loudunais, having just 5 ha of woods.8 The only other significant wooded areas in the region were east of Loudun (the Bois Rogue) and in the relatively large forest controlled by the Abbey of Fontrevault in the north of the pays. In addition, several areas of rougher terrain .:.

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Fig. 1.2 A. Guiljelmum and I. Blaeu, “Loudunais et Mirebalais,” 1635. Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé are in the bottom right corner of the map, east of Moncontour and south of Loudun. Notice the clearly indicated marshland nearby. Source: Série FI L 192, Archives Départementales de la Vienne, Poitiers (AD V).

and poorer soil remained uncultivated. At the end of the seventeenth century, the intendant of Tours complained that the peasants were unwilling to put in the work needed to cultivate these areas because “ils aiment trop les plaisirs de la Vie et ne sont past assez laborieux.”9 The limited potential of this land for crops or pasture, however, seems a more likely explanation. .:.

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With so little variation in terrain, it should be no surprise that human settlement and agriculture also tended to present a continuous landscape. The inhabitants of the Loudunais lived in small villages and hamlets (hameaux), working in the surrounding fields. Hamlets were small clusters of homes that formed distinct communities, like Vâtre, Triou, and Renové, although they were still part of the parishes of the main villages. The hamlets often belonged to specific seigneuries or prieurés and were usually inhabited by people with close kin relationships. In general, small communities were spread out fairly evenly across the fertile plains of the region. The population density was just 28 inhabitants for each square kilometre, about half the national average.10 This favoured the inhabitants, who tended to have larger farms than their counterparts elsewhere. The arable was divided into numerous small strips that might be marked by hedges, ditches, or lines of stones. Most peasants owned or leased many strips in different fields, reflecting a long-standing tradition of partible inheritance but also serving a practical purpose – guarding against disaster should a particular field suffer a poor crop yield. Typically, peasants rotated crops in these strips, planting the more demanding fine wheat one year, a secondary grain the next, and letting it lie fallow in the third. The only consolidated farms were modest metairies in Martaizé that were owned by the lords and leased to wealthier ploughmen. These establishments, such as Mouslandrault, Long-Champ, and Château-Gannes, had their own residences, tools, and livestock on-site and afforded centralized, fertile fields to the tenant. Interestingly for our comparison with Acadie, in the seventeenth century, additional métairies called cabanes were created in the parish of Martaizé out of drained marshlands around the Brandt and Dive rivers. These developments were certainly modest in relation to the scale of projects of marshland colonization in Acadie or the much larger Poitevin Marsh, but they demonstrate that the potential of marshes for agriculture was widely recognized and that similar drainage techniques were employed. Farms like La Cabane brulée became prestigious properties leased to prominent farmers.11 Most experts agree that the early modern inhabitants of the Loudunais were a “prosperous peasantry” who were significantly better off than their counterparts in other parts of Poitou and western France.12

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Peninsular Acadie (modern Nova Scotia) had an irregular surface of hills and valleys, rock, and granite shores made extremely treacherous by the tides of the Bay of Fundy. It was almost entirely covered by woods, mostly conifers but also birch, maple, and oak. The soils were generally thin and marginal, with the exception of the tidal meadows in the area around the bays. These marshlands occupied over 30,000 ha, over half of which was located on the isthmus of Chignecto (about 16,200 ha).13 The first European visitors to Acadie differed in the ways they described its terrain. The Jesuit priest Biard recounted in 1616 that “for verily all this region … through Satan’s malevolence, which reigns there, is only a horrible wilderness.”14 Those hoping to recruit settlers and promote investment were more enthusiastic. For Marc Lescarbot, it was “like the land which God did promise to his people.”15 The region’s potential for agriculture was not obvious. It was already inhabited by an Aboriginal nation, the Mi’kmaq, who pursued a lifestyle based on fishing, gathering, and hunting. At first, French colonization efforts also focused on natural resources like fish and furs. Yet as early as 1605, Samuel de Champlain planted gardens outside of Port Royal, experimenting with a “little sluiceway” to drain excess water.16 Thirty years later, Claude de Rasilly contracted specialized indentured servants or engagés to work in the colony. These “saulniers et bastisseurs de maraix sallans” were given free passage, had all of their living expenses covered, and were even given fishing rights.17 At first, Champlain, Rasilly, and others may have had the notion of making salt in the marshlands, a valuable commodity with an obvious link to the nearby fishery. Of course, Champlain was originally from Brouage, a salt-making centre in Saintonge. However, they must have realized before long that there was not enough sun or heat in Acadie for this to be successful. When the expedition moved back to Port Royal in 1636 under the leadership of Charles de Menou, they built dykes and recruited peasant families for agriculture.18 Marshlands were a logical choice at first because they provided immediate wild food resources for people and livestock. They further provided thatch, peat, and other supplies. In fact, colonists in many parts of New France, the New Netherlands, and New England used marshlands in these ways as they were getting established.19 The colonists’ decision to drain the marshlands for crops was an additional

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step that was less common in the New World. Colonists in seventeenth-century Concord, for example, drained a large meadow for pasture, but preferred to clear and cultivate uplands. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marshland drainage projects for agriculture became more common. Some notable examples include Kamouraska and east-central Illinois.20 This does not mean that Acadian marshland colonization was unique at the time; much larger drainage schemes to produce farmland were also being undertaken in France, notably in the Poitevin marsh during the 1640s. However, the colonists’ nearly exclusive reliance on marshlands for both immediate and long-term needs was distinctive.21 Draining marshlands was a long-term proposition. Dykes and canals were needed both to move existing water out and to protect the area from regular tides that could be as much as 12 metres in height. Once drained, the soil needed years to desalinate adequately for cultivation while there was ongoing repair and maintenance required. But the work and patience led to considerable reward, as the soils proved to be extremely fertile. As in the Loudunais, the inhabitants’ decision not to cultivate the poorer land was interpreted as a sign of laziness by officials, who would have preferred a more centralized colony that would have been easier to defend and control.22 Yet, many visitors and governors noted the Acadians’ successful farming. Villebon reported in the 1690s that the peasants produced enough wheat, rye, peas, and oats to feed everyone comfortably, provide for other parts of the colony, and also export for profit. Dièreville wrote in 1699 that the colonists produced “all kinds of Vegetables, enough Fruit, & a sufficient amount of Wheat” in the marshes, though the rest of the land was simply a “vast extent of wood.” Most Acadians grew wheat and peas, and some planted orchards. Saint-Vallier, visiting in 1685, noted the “excellent, vast pastures” upon which they could keep many cows.23 This was a key point of differentiation with the Loudunais, as the natural grasses and waterways of the marshlands supported large numbers of livestock and promoted mixed agriculture. The area had the added benefit of being rich in fish and molluscs, which could supplement Acadian diets, especially in the early years of settlement. In general, the Acadians enjoyed a balanced diet of protein, fat, grain, and vegetables.24

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The decision to adopt marshland farming had significant consequences for the development of rural society in Acadie. In the Loudunais, hamlets had been constructed as extensions of the main parishes. In Acadie, this trend was heightened as families settled throughout the best and most easily accessible marshlands in closeknit kin groups. At Port Royal, most of the colonists abandoned the fort after the death of Menou in 1650 and the arrival of the English in 1654, dispersing up and down the Dauphin River. Only a few families still lived in the town when French officials returned in the 1670s.25 There were no strips shared across multiple fields; instead, groups of families working together drained enough land for their immediate needs and expanded only when their children had grown to set up households of their own. The richness of the marshland soils meant that the Acadians did not have to hedge their bets by cultivating different fields; nor did they have to employ fertilizer or crop rotation techniques. This was a distinct advantage over most other colonies.26 By 1707, about five hundred people were spread out over 20 kilometres in the area of Port Royal, while new communities at Grand Pré and Beaubassin were well established on the larger marshland areas further up the Bay of Fundy. A 1733 surveyor map shows that the hamlets around Port/Annapolis Royal had expanded even further.27 There were exceptions: small groups of colonists at Pobomcoup and La Hève adopted a way of living much like that of Aboriginal people based on fishing, hunting, and trade. In general, however, the settlers created a uniform landscape of family farms established in or next to dyked marshland. This is not to say that every community was identical; the wide open meadow in Beaubassin was best suited for cattle raising, the more centralized marshland at Grand Pré prompted the growth of a larger village, while orchards flourished in the narrower areas upriver from Port Royal.28 J.B. Brebner once asserted that “there were in effect, two Acadies, each important in its own way. The one was the Acadie of the international conflict, the other the land settled and developed by the Acadians.”29 This remains a useful way of distinguishing between imperial claims to the colony and the actual colonial society that emerged. States might argue and fight over the whole of the northeastern borderlands, but the interest of the Acadians lay in the

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relatively small and dispersed areas of the marshlands. That settled zone was the area that the English governor of Nova Scotia, Thomas Temple, was describing when he wrote to the Lords of Council in 1668 that “Acadia is but a small part of the country of Nova Scotia.”30 Of course, Temple’s assertion was self-interested – he did not want the English King, who had signed the Treaty of Breda in 1667, to give the whole peninsula back to the French. Yet he was right in that the rest of the wooded lands and rocky shores remained relatively untouched by Europeans, though certainly well travelled by the Mi’kmaq. This relative isolation needs to be emphasized as it contributed to the Acadians’ self-reliance but also their vulnerability. There was little space between parishes in the Loudunais, and the small city of Loudun was centrally located with its markets, shops, courts, and offices. Larger cities like Saumur, Poitiers, and Tours were not much farther away. Getting to Acadie required a gruelling sixteen-day, 600-kilometre overland and canoe trek from Quebec or a dangerous voyage of several weeks from France.31 Travel within the colony was essentially only possible via the Bay of Fundy. This could be hazardous because of the rocks, tides, winds, and frequent fogs. Indeed, Charles de Menou, an early colonial governor, died from exposure after his canoe capsized in Port Royal’s harbour.32 The colonists no doubt emulated the Mi’kmaq in their use of rivers that cut across the peninsula to connect the colony to the Atlantic.33 In the Loudunais, the plains were large, expansive, and well settled, with little variation in the landscape. The inhabitants lived in small, centralized communities, but most cultivated numerous, scattered strips of land. The land was quite productive in comparison with other parts of western France but had to be carefully managed with crop rotation. In Acadie, the landscape was extremely diverse but the Acadians chose to settle in only one part of it, the marshlands, because it was uniquely suited to agriculture thanks to its remarkable soil fertility. The distribution of these marshlands influenced the Acadians to adopt a more dispersed settlement pattern which gave them greater autonomy but also greater isolation. These centralized farms were efficient and productive, supporting a variety of crops and also large herds. This was necessary for their success because there were few opportunities to borrow or trade.

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Climate Peasants could control how they farmed the land but they could not control the weather. Climate was a key factor in the rural economy, influencing what crops could be grown and causing serious hardship when conditions were bad. In 1698, Intendant Thomas Hue de Miromesnil described the climate of the Loudunais as “temperate.”34 During the early modern period, the average annual temperature was 11 degrees, ranging from 3 in January to 19 in July. Summers tended to be warm and dry, while there was plenty of rainfall in the winter and spring to nourish developing crops. Annual precipitation was 640 millimetres per year, greater than nearby Anjou and further east, such as at Richelieu, but not too wet. Westerly winds prevailed and temperature extremes were moderated by the Atlantic Ocean, though not as much as in coastal areas. An average of fewer than fifty days of frost provided a lengthy growing cycle in which peasants could cultivate both spring and summer crops.35 These were ideal conditions for wheat, which the inhabitants produced for export, as well as secondary grains like rye, barley, and mixed-wheat, which they grew for themselves. Voltaire famously dismissed Canada36 as “a few acres of snow” upon learning that France had given up this territory to Great Britain in exchange for the return of Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1763. One of the few things French people probably knew about New France in the seventeenth century was that it was very cold. In Acadie, there was initially considerable confusion because early explorers made conflicting and sometimes fabulous claims about the climate. This stemmed in part from honest mistakes based on the assumption that places occupying similar latitude would have similar climates, and in part from deliberate exaggeration aimed at garnering royal investment. Jacques Cartier went so far as to call the northern coast of presentday New Brunswick the Baie de Chaleurs, because it was as warm as Spain.37 Writing about peninsular Acadie, Nicolas Denys indicated that the climate was much like that of Nantes or Bayonne for snowfall, going so far as to claim that “there is very little snow in this country, and very little winter.” Lescarbot conceded that the Acadian winter could be tedious, but argued that the snow cover helped “shelter the

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fruits of the earth from frost.” Biard found its weather reminiscent of Paris or Picardy, except for more fog and drizzling rain, and while he admitted that the Acadian winter was colder and the snow lasted longer than in France, he thought that this was because the land was uncultivated, and so the earth, unploughed and covered by trees, could not be warmed by the sun. He further pointed out that proximity to the ocean reduced the “intolerable” summer heat often experienced in France. As late as the 1680s, a fishing company trying to drum up royal support reported that the climate was just like La Rochelle.38 These unconvincing claims soon gave way to more frank assessments. Dièreville found summer to be more pleasant in Acadie than in France, but “winter is colder; it snows almost continuously at this season, & the winds are so cold that they freeze one’s face.” The snow, he complained, lasted seven or eight months on the ground, especially in the woods, giving the air a “glacial” feel, and imposing idleness on the inhabitants, which he felt should be remedied by increasing commerce.39 In 1720, British official Paul Mascarene noted to his superiors that “the climate is cold and very variable even in the southernmost part of this Country, and is subject to long and severe winters.”40 The Acadian climate, or the perception of it, appears to have been a considerable obstacle to attracting new colonists from either France or New England. In general, the Bay of Fundy region experienced a cool, rainy summer, a warm and sunny autumn, colder interior air currents in the winter, and a late spring. In fact, Acadie’s annual mean temperature of 7 degrees was well below that of the Loudunais. Summers were somewhat cooler, with a mean July temperature of about 16 degrees, but winters were much colder, with a mean January temperature of minus 6 degrees. France benefited from generally warm oceanic currents, but in Acadie, the warm waters of the Gulf Stream mixed offshore with the much colder Labrador Sea Water. As a result, the growing season was significantly shorter than in the Loudunais, with only four or five months frost-free, and there was double the amount of precipitation, 1,000 millimetres on average annually.41 Another characteristic of the region’s climate was frequent fog, with over one hundred days of it a year, lasting several hours each day. Lescarbot thought that these mists “will serve as a rampart to the country,” assisting the French

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in hiding their fortifications from enemies. Biard credited the clean air and water, regularly refreshed by mists and rains, with reducing the incidence of disease among the early colonists.42 These apparent benefits notwithstanding, the shorter growing season, the serious and unpredictable risk of early or late frosts, and the limited sunshine all imposed significant restrictions on Acadian farming. There was no time for two grain crops; wheat, which required considerable sunlight and was intolerant to excessive moisture, could be unreliable. Planting too early or too late could result in partial or total crop failure. Even if isolation had not been a motivation for the Acadians to diversify their crops, the less favourable climate made it necessary. Hardier grains, peas, and root crops were essential elements of Acadian farming along with livestock, since the beasts better tolerated adverse weather conditions. To this general description of weather in the Loudunais and Acadie, we must add a consideration of climate fluctuations, which could have serious consequences for agriculture and, indeed, human survival. Between 1350 and 1800, the Little Ice Age (LIA) affected much of the world, including Western Europe and North America. The LIA was a period of cooling after the medieval warm period which lowered annual mean temperatures between one and two degrees. This is why the averages presented above may seem lower than modern results. Perhaps more importantly, the LIA also increased climatic variability.43 The period from 1675 to 1715 has been described as the nadir of the LIA and coincides with two of the coldest winters in French history, those of 1693–94 and 1709–10. One theory is that a reduced frequency of sunspots called the Late Maunder Minimum (LMM) lowered the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth, causing this reduction in temperature. However, historians have emphasized that even the period during the LMM was not universally cold, with the decade after 1700 much warmer than average until the killing cold of 1709. The increase in the dust volume index (DVI) caused by the volcanic eruptions of Vesuvius, Santorin, and Fujiyama in 1707–08 seems the more likely cause.44 Treering evidence for North America indicates that the climate was considerably colder in the Atlantic region including Acadie between 1690 and 1710.45 Whatever the causes, the LMM corresponded to a period of greater climatic variability and especially cold winters in both places.

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Table 1.1 Adverse weather reported in Acadie and the Loudunais Year

The Loudunais

Acadie

1684 1686

long, cold winter extreme temperature variability (summer) 1688 1692 1693 flooding (spring), very cold winter 1697 1698 1699 1705 1709 grand hiver 1711 severe flooding 1712 flooding

flooding cold winter, spring flooding

early, very cold winter drought flooding, “hurricane” flooding

Sources: Compilation of observations from the correspondence of the intendants for the Loudunais and the reports of officials and visitors for Acadie.

The Loudunais, like much of rural France, lost nearly 20 per cent of its population between 1690 and 1715. Historians point out that climate conditions were not solely to blame, as France was also at war for most of that period (1690–97, 1702–13).46 However, we know that climate affected the food supply and also the spread of disease: protracted cold periods contributed to the risk of louse-borne and respiratory diseases, partly by forcing people to stay indoors longer in cramped, unsanitary conditions, while drought favoured the spread of the bacteria for dysentery and typhoid fever.47 In 1693, 1711, and 1712, the intendant reported that floods had damaged crops and also ruined meadows so that there was nowhere to put livestock. A particularly long winter in 1684 froze most grain crops in the ground in both Touraine and Poitou, leaving only some of the rye and oats.48 In some summers it rained too much, in others not enough, and even

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Table 1.2 Population growth in Acadie Year

Population estimate

Annual rate of growth (%)

1671 500 1686 900 1693 1,150 1701 1,400 1707 1,800 1720 3,000

5.33 3.97 2.71 4.77 5.12

Sources: Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 121–31, and Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 284

the slightest variation caused worries and prices to rise. Officials were very aware of the impact that climate variations could have on the rural economy. The intendant’s principal task was to ensure the regular collection of state taxes, and reduced harvests and rising grain prices were often cited as reasons why receipts were slow or incomplete. The intendant did his best to maintain confidence in the local food supply and keep prices steady, often by having grain brought in from other provinces, or preventing its export.49 Sometimes, however, there was little that officials could do. There were two serious mortality crises in France during the LMM, 1693–94 and 1709–10. In and around the year 1709 there was a general food shortage across western France, and during the winter of 1709–10 (le grand hiver), ice destroyed new crops in what should have been late spring. Indeed, the peasants of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé might be excused for wondering if the end of the world was near when an earthquake shook the Loudunais in 1711.50 We lack the documentation for such a complete picture of the links between climate and mortality or hardship in Acadie. As in France, war was also a contributing factor to the misery, with numerous attacks on the colony between 1690 and 1710. Using population estimates generated from the colonial censuses, we can determine that the annual population growth rate in Acadie was halved during the

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1690s and recovered to its original high rate of over 5 per cent in the following decades.51 Clearly, the consequences of the LMM were not as severe in the colony as in the Loudunais; we might speculate that the dispersion of the Acadians prevented the spread of disease and that their general health was maintained thanks to the diversity of their crops and the availability of alternate wild food sources. The overall population was not reduced, but we should not ignore that this was a difficult period. Villebon wrote in 1692, “I never remember such a hard winter,” and later noted that he had had to abandon his fort at Nashwaak temporarily because of flooding when the ice melted at the end of March. The freezing of the rivers early in November made travel not only more difficult, but more dangerous as well; the fort chaplain fell through the ice and drowned in 1697. The following January and February were even worse: “These two months have been very severe; it is a long time since a winter like this, with so much snow, has been known; the garrison has suffered greatly in consequence.” 52 Dièreville described a windstorm in 1699 as “the unmatched Hurricane,” adding that the oldest inhabitants vowed “there had never been such a gale in that Region before.”53 The Maritime region frequently receives the tail end of dissipating tropical storms from the Caribbean called Nor’easters, which bring rain and high winds. Once in a while these storms are particularly strong, even reaching hurricane status, as did Hurricane Juan in 2003, Beth in 1971 and the “Great Nova Scotia Cyclone” of 1873. When storms with strong winds combined with tides at the height of their amplitude, this could cause serious flooding, as in 1688, 1699, and 1705, when some of the Acadian dykes were overwhelmed.54 The resulting loss of crops and the damage to the dykes would have forced a family to find other sources of food while their farm recovered. Fortunately, from 1710 through 1740, the climate in Western Europe and North America was warmer and less variable.55 The population of the Loudunais experienced a rapid recovery from the mortality crises and the Acadian population regained its high rate of growth. In fact, it was a period of growth and stability almost everywhere in the Atlantic World. Significantly, it was also a time of relative peace. Although we can trace the demographic effects of climatic variability, it is harder to determine the degree to which rural dwellers

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considered the climate when they made decisions such as when to invest in more land, sell or buy produce, get married, or have children. It is likely, however, that their interest in weather conditions bordered on the obsessive. Even small variations in temperature or precipitation could increase fears of bad harvests and lead to intense price speculation. Poor weather was also linked to other scourges such as famine, war, and endemic disease. In many ways, the climate of the Loudunais was superior to that of Acadie for agriculture; a long growing season, more sunshine, timely precipitation, and moderate winters created nearly ideal conditions for wheat and other grain production. In Acadie, although the marshland soil was more fertile, the climate afforded only a limited growing season, and the colonists had to endure long, tedious winters in relative isolation. Acadian farmers no doubt worried every year about when the frost would arrive or when to begin seeding in the spring. Wheat remained an important crop but was not as reliable due to the shorter growing season and more limited sunlight. As a result, most Acadian farmers diversified. The risk of flooding from storms and tides forced constant surveillance and maintenance on the dykes. Given these conditions, it is not surprising that most Acadians cultivated only a few acres at a time and invested heavily in livestock, far more than their counterparts in the Loudunais or colonists elsewhere in New France. The beasts were more resilient than crops and could be moved if necessary.

Wildlife So far, we have considered how farmers adapted to the local terrain and climate. Another aspect of the natural environment was its wildlife; after all, these places were not empty. In the Loudunais, wolves posed a serious threat to the local population and contributed to fears of the few remaining wild places. The colonists who arrived in Acadie must have brought this unfamiliarity and these fears of wild places with them. The first settlers stayed close to the fort and fishing posts, and, later on, farmers stayed in the relatively open marshlands around the coast of the peninsula. The old, dense, and dark woods of the interior, inhabited by unknown Aboriginals and predators, must have seemed imposing, even threatening.

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Wolves (Canis lupus lupus) and the French population had a long history of antagonism. Wolves and the wild places they inhabited (woods, marshes, and fens) were a “symbole de la peur, de toutes les peurs, peur panique, peur collective, peur solitaire, peur obsidionale, peur métaphysique.”56 Wolves were broadly associated with evil and witchcraft; werewolves (loup-garous) were common figures in local folklore. It was also common to refer to raiders and brigands as wolflike. But perceptions of wolves could be more complicated. The wolf of Romulus and Remus was a symbol of imperial legacy and of martial strength. Some local healing remedies called for wolf fat or organs.57 In general, however, stories and sightings of wolves inflamed the fears of early modern people. Few inhabitants knew anything about wolves other than that they tended to appear in greater numbers and attacked with greater frequency during difficult winters or times of war and dearth.58 Certainly nothing good came from them. At best, they were pests that threatened livestock. At worst, wolves were fiends waiting for the chance to devour children. In the early modern period, tens of thousands of adult wolves roamed across France, eating hundreds of thousands of sheep. It seems that most wolves preferred wild prey when it was available, but the reduction of their habitat (in a word, hunger) drove them to approach human habitations and kill livestock, bringing wolves directly into contact with peasants. Several dozen people were killed by wolves every year, usually children watching herds or otherwise separated from their families. A surprising number were also attacked in or around their homes. Rabies became a considerable problem in the seventeenth century, probably as a result of more frequent encounters with domestic dogs and humans. A rabid wolf would attack indiscriminately until killed.59 Although contemporary records give us some indication of the number of people killed, the quantity of injured and the psychological effects of these attacks are more difficult to quantify. When the wolves were rabid, victims often lingered for days or even months before dying from the infection. A few unfortunates had to be killed by their loved ones as they succumbed to the worst stages of the disease.60 The province of Touraine, and the wider Loire valley southwest of Paris, was the most dangerous region in France for wolf attacks.

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This was because of its wooded areas surrounded by scattered rural communities that afforded wolves both habitat and potential livestock prey. The animals’ territories might extend from 100 to 500 square kilometres, and, of course, rumours travelled still farther. In the midst of the 1693–94 mortality crisis, the “beast” of Touraine (actually several wolves) killed two hundred people from nineteen different parishes in and around the Bourgeuil forest.61 Wolf packs returned to the area in 1711 and 1714, roaming into the major cities of Angers and Tours. The intendant prevailed upon the king to increase royal bounties to 50 lt for each adult wolf and 20 lt for each pup, and he hired local men to beat the woods and kill the animals.62 Wolves were a recurring problem throughout the eighteenth century, and not just during times of crisis. Touraine was particularly struck between 1742 and 1767. The situation had gotten so bad in 1748 that the king sent 2,000 lt to help pay for wolf hunts and the intendant ordered the delegates (syndics) of several parishes to gather the best shooters from their communities to help.63 There is plenty of evidence that the depredations of wolves extended into the Loudunais. In 1722, eighteen-year-old René Bourdier of La Chaussée died after being bitten by a rabid wolf in the woods. The priest noted that another eighteen to twenty people of the canton had been attacked and that many livestock had been killed before the wolf was finally tracked down by the inhabitants. The following year, fifteen-year-old Charles Robineau was killed by another rabid wolf. Ten years later, rabid wolves injured several peasants and killed many livestock (valued at 2,000 lt) around the forest of Guesnes, presumably the same woods as it lies just to the east of the villages of Aulnay and La Chaussée. We also know that five wolf bounties were claimed in Loudun in 1751, and that more wolves were killed in the forest of Guesnes in the 1770s.64 Fear of wolves created “un climat de peur continu” for many peasants, especially in Touraine. These predators were “un des fléaux des plus redoutables dans les campagnes.”65 Rumours undoubtedly added to the perceived number of attacks and their grisliness. On the one hand, the response to wolf attacks was a good example of the way in which communities, lords, and officials could work in concert to protect rural society. On the other, the failure of these efforts to

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eradicate the problem probably frustrated peasants greatly. Given this experience, it is reasonable to conclude that the Acadians brought a fear of wild places to the New World. The Eastern Wolf (Canis lupus) was found throughout much of the northeastern region of North America. Colonists in New England were committed to destroying wolf populations and sometimes engaged in wanton cruelty. Jon Coleman argues that terrorizing wolves and mounting their skulls on buildings was an expression of the anger and frustration that settlers felt with their environment. He also points out that most Englishmen would never have actually seen a wolf before, making the animals even scarier and/or more detestable.66 The confrontation between humans and wolves appeared inevitable. European settlement and hunting reduced deer and moose populations, while their poorly controlled livestock and dogs wandered into the woods. The results were predictable; wolves had been extirpated in the Boston area as early as 1657.67 In contrast to New England, we know little about wolves in New France. One contemporary observer described them as neither as large nor as mean as wolves in France. It seems that few approached the settlements in the St Lawrence valley, though voyageurs were fearful of wolves when they travelled into the interior (pays d’en haut). In addition, oral traditions concerning werewolves brought over from France combined readily with Aboriginal beliefs in windigos and other monsters. Aboriginals hunted wolves for their skins or to protect local deer populations.68 Despite a similar habitat to that of the mainland and the presence of plentiful moose and deer, the wolf appears to have been very rare in peninsular Acadie. It has been suggested that a few travelled across the isthmus of Chignecto to hunt, but there is no evidence that they lived anywhere near the Acadian communities. They no doubt had adequate wild prey to occupy themselves with. Bounties were offered during the early nineteenth century but few were paid out, and wolves seem to have disappeared entirely soon after. The reasons for the absence of a local wolf population are not known.69 A more common predator was the black bear (Ursus americanus); there are 7,000 black bears in Nova Scotia today. Unlike wolves, black bears do not eat large prey or livestock; they subsist on vegetation, insects, and small animals. They also hibernate during the winter, the time

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when wolf attacks were most feared. There is no record of a bear attack in Acadie; they seem even more inclined to avoid humans. Perhaps most importantly, Acadian settlements did not destroy their habitat or food. There was no reason for the bears to come down into the marshlands. Similarly, in New France, black bears generally left the inhabitants alone.70 There were plenty of other kinds of wildlife in Acadie. Peasants in France rarely consumed meat from wild sources, while venison and wild fowl were occasional treats for lords. Exceptions were the coastal and marshland areas of Poitou where plentiful fish, crustaceans, and game birds supplemented rural diets.71 Similar species were common throughout the rich shores of the Bay of Fundy, and recent archaeological evidence shows that clams were regularly consumed by at least some Acadian households.72 Lescarbot described many deer, elk, and fowl, as well as flocks of seabirds so thick that he killed twenty-eight with a single cannon shot. Denys commented on the abundance of hares, partridges, and pigeons. Others were apt to complain about the bugs.73 Nevertheless, there is little indication that the Acadians regularly engaged in hunting expeditions into the forested uplands, even in the winter when they had little work to do on their farms. By the end of the seventeenth century, they showed a marked preference for meat from cattle and pigs rather than game, though they continued to use some elk and seal skin for clothing.74 This suggests both that there was a ready supply of home-grown meat and that most Acadians preferred to remain in the marshlands. In the Loudunais, the woods remained dangerous, mysterious preserves outside of their control and the wolf was a figure to inspire terror. Nobody, except for the occasional hunting enthusiast among the seigneurs, would have had any experience camping or tracking and shooting prey. In Acadie, as time passed without their encountering large predators, the colonists probably felt more confident venturing into the woods. They did not hesitate to cut trees for firewood and construction. In 1701 and 1706, royal officials noted that some Acadians had even begun to clear sections of forest for arable land.75 In addition, tracks between communities were gradually established, most notably between Port Royal and Grand Pré. The woods could even be a refuge in the event of an attack, such as at Beaubassin in 1696 or Grand Pré

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in 1704. In 1755, many Acadians successfully hid out in the woods for years to avoid deportation.76 Still, the general trend was for the Acadians to stay out of the woods and to travel by water in canoes and chaloupes. Some historians suggest that this was part of a deliberate accommodation with the Mi’kmaq. The latter permitted the Acadians to settle the marshlands in return for recognition of the forest as their domain.77 This seems logical, but it must also be said that there was little in the woods for the Acadians anyway. The soils were poor and they normally had enough to eat. Even in times of famine, it was probably easier to fish or trade than to find and shoot a deer. Wood for heating or construction could be gathered along the edge without much risk. The colonists’ priority of draining marshlands and their preference for domestic meat and produce reflected their desire to transform wild places into familiar landscapes, to turn the New World into the best parts of the Old.

Natural Resources The Loudunais had few natural resources beyond the quality of the soil for agriculture and a few stands of woods. One of the most important differences in the natural environment of Acadie was the presence of fish and fur-bearing animals. It was these natural resources and their value on European markets that first attracted explorers to the region. The early history of Acadie is dominated by conflicts over control of these resources. While some Acadians sought to profit as well, most stayed far away and dedicated themselves to agriculture. Unfortunately, this did not mean that the parties involved were willing to leave them alone. States commonly attempted to exercise control over natural resources. Royal foresters in France had existed in some form for centuries. Francis I created a department of Waters and Forests (Eaux et Forêts) in the early 1500s. An edict of 1669 increased its size and span of control, placing the organization directly under the supervision of the controller general, the chief royal financial minister. The primary motivation may have been Louis XIV’s ambitions to challenge his enemy at sea by building up his navy. Though the idea soured

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for him after the 1692 defeat at La Hogue, French rulers periodically returned to the issue of supplying the navy with timber.78 New laws dealing specifically with this concern were issued in 1700 and 1748. The department of Waters and Forests was headed by a grand master and masters for each region, who appointed local lieutenants, who in turn employed a variety of minor officials and watchmen or guards.79 At first, their main task seemed to be to prevent clerical and lay seigneurs from arbitrarily cutting their forests to make a quick profit or pay off debts. Similarly, they ensured rural communities did not cut their common woods to pay their taxes. All significant cutting of wood had to be applied for and approved. However, most requests to cut were granted and department officials often helped enforce seigneurial rights by issuing fines to peasants caught poaching or cutting wood illegally. This does not mean that the officials always sided with the lords; when traditional communal rights to woods could be proven they often stood up for the inhabitants.80 Local department officials worked closely with rural communities and were often chosen from the rural elite. Alexandre Goujon, a prominent landowner in Martaizé, was lieutenant particulier des Eaux et Fôrets for the area. His jurisdiction included the forest of Guesnes and the Dive River. In this capacity, he surveyed and inspected these areas to ensure that trees were not cut without permission and that waterways flowed unimpeded by refuse. He marked large trees for the king’s navy and enforced edicts against livestock roaming freely and causing damage. In one case, an estate manager for the abbey of St Jouin was sentenced to a fine and had his cattle seized after an inspection found significant damage to the nearby woods.81 Acadie did not have dedicated waters and forests officers. With regard to woods, most seigneurial concessions were quite generous, permitting the inhabitants to hunt and cut wood for their own individual use. The usual reservation of such rights to the lord made no sense given the sheer abundance of trees and the obvious inability to enforce such a measure of control. A few entrepreneurs tried to make commercial use of the vast forests. In 1699, Villebon reported that several sawmills were either already in operation or planned for construction around Port Royal and Minas. In fact, Acadian masts were shipped to France in 1699 and between 1701 and 1708; they were

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deemed of better quality than those from Quebec. The Conquest in 1710 ended this burgeoning enterprise, but finished wood products like spars and boards were recorded on shipping lists from Acadie to Louisbourg in the 1740s.82 It was fish that first brought Europeans to the Maritime region, and fishing remained its primary attraction. By the end of the sixteenth century, the tonnage and number of men involved in the French fishing fleet rivalled those of the Spanish, who were trading and carrying silver in their much larger empire farther south.83 In the seventeenth century, French and English ships carried back an average of 35,000 metric tons of dried cod and 12,000 tons of wet cod for sale in Europe annually; in addition, increasing amounts of the region’s cod were sold and consumed in North America and the West Indies. Several banks for cod fishing were located east and south of Acadie, including the areas around Sable Island, Canso, and Cape Sable. From early on, New Englanders asserted their rights to the cod there, denying access to both French vessels and the Acadians themselves. By 1675, 440 boats and 1,000 fishermen from New England worked these waters, bringing in 60,000 quintals or 6,250 metric tons of dried fish each year. In fact, the conflict between New England and the French in Acadie can in large part be understood as a dispute over fish.84 The colonists, for their part, fished in local rivers and in the Bay of Fundy for their own subsistence. Dièreville tried to set up a venture in Port Royal in 1699; it brought in 30,000 cod over the first six months but did not last.85 Pierre Landry led a group of nine Acadians in a coastal fishing business in 1701 but also appears to have given up soon after. Fishing rights figured prominently in the seigneurial concessions granted in the seventeenth century, such as Menou’s grant to Martin de Chevery in 1649, and those from Governor Frontenac in Quebec to Pierre de Joybert and Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière in 1676.86 But neither the lords nor the fishing companies from France could protect their claimed rights against English and other foreign fishing vessels. In 1682, the Compagnie de la pêche sédentaire de l’Acadie reported that it had established a habitation at Chedabucto of thirty people and asked the king for a frigate to defend the post against the Bostonnais. In 1687, the king did send a frigate to Acadie, but trusted it to his new governor, Meneval, rather than to the company.87 In his memoir of

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1697, company agent Tibierge admitted they were doing little actual fishing: Chedabucto had been looted in 1688 and then captured in 1690. He added that the colonists were afraid to venture far to trade or fish for fear of English reprisals.88 The company further complained that the French governors, who were unable to stop the English from fishing offshore, instead garnered a tidy profit from selling permits to the English that also allowed them to dry their fish on Acadian shores and even trade within the colony. In a 1682 memorandum, the company claimed that the coasts were “ruined” by the English fishermen, while the governor earned 50 lt for each permit (billet). The company director, Bergier, had to return two confiscated New England fishing vessels in 1684 because their masters held these permits. He noted that the English, who in his view behaved like pirates, were polluting cod spawning grounds by throwing fish entrails and heads into them. The governor in 1685, Perrot, proposed a compromise – if the king sent a warship, cannon, and fifty additional soldiers, he could at least make sure that the English traded the fish they caught for French goods.89 In 1687, Louis XIV issued new instructions: rather than allowing the governors to regulate English fishing and trading, he directed his new governor, Meneval, to eradicate it. This led to a rapid increase in hostilities culminating in an attack on Port Royal.90 Villebon would later argue that issuing fishing permits to English ships would not only raise funds, but also prevent privateering and protect the colonists, as the English fishermen, once established, would not want to lose their privileges.91 Instead, hostilities continued until the final fall of Port Royal in 1710. Even then, the French successfully maintained some fishing rights in the region; the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) confirmed French ownership of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and their right to catch and dry fish on the north and west shores of Newfoundland. The Mi’kmaq also realized the Europeans’ preoccupation with fish. In the 1720s, they focused their attacks against the British on the fishing post of Canso and also captured or robbed several New England fishing vessels. Competition over fish was one of the most important factors in the ongoing conflict in the region. Neither the Acadians nor the trading companies showed any concern for overfishing, and only denounced pollution where it was associated with English fishing vessels. As early as the 1570s, French

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officials were aware that overfishing was diminishing certain stocks off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. By the eighteenth century, many of the banks around Acadie and New England were near exhaustion, yet even larger cargoes were being sent back to Europe. Recent scholarship has shown that the cod were not one huge population but several local ones that could be disrupted individually. Colder waters during the LMM influenced some of the cod to change their territory, while commercial fishing gradually altered their age, size, and weight as large, adult fish were systematically removed from the ecosystem.92 The fur trade began as an adjunct to the fisheries, once Europeans realized that Aboriginal people were willing to trade furs for relatively cheap, ordinary goods such as knives, tools, beads, and linens and to meet the demand for furs in Europe for the production of hats, coats, and other luxury goods. It is likely that both parties thought they were getting a good deal, as furs were similarly cheap and ordinary to Aboriginal people, but European goods improved their standard of living and brought them prestige with their neighbours. Historians are well aware of the importance of the fur trade for New France, but many have overlooked its significance for Acadie.93 As in Quebec, it was the basis of the early alliances with Aboriginal nations, in this case the Mi’kmaq, and also one of the few sources of profit for early colonizers. Thomas Temple noted in 1668 that the colony’s only revenue came from furs and elk skins.94 The letters patent for Menou as governor in 1647 included a fur trade monopoly throughout the colony and the right to confiscate the property of anyone else found trading. This included ordinary colonists who had been explicitly excluded from the trade by the king’s order of 1645.95 Officials often cloaked their opposition to Acadian participation in the fur trade in moral tones, expressing fears that the colonists would be hopelessly corrupted. Perrot stated in 1685 that the reason the inhabitants dispersed themselves throughout the marshland was to freely trade and engage in sexual relationships with Aboriginals; a year later, Intendant de Meulles ordered any “vagabond” living “a completely savage life” to abandon the woods and their Aboriginal mistresses by next autumn or face fines and corporal punishment.96 Such concerns certainly suggest that at least some Acadians were active in the fur trade, but it is unlikely that this involvement was widespread.

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In the later seventeenth century, the fur trade was largely controlled by John Nelson, a New England merchant, along with the Baron de Saint-Castin, who lived with the Abenaki in Maine. Nelson maintained a ship and warehouse at Port Royal to assist his operation. Louis XIV, recognizing the importance of the fur trade and the alliance with the Abenaki, offered Saint-Castin a pardon for his economic treason if he would henceforth bring his furs and his Native allies to support France.97 By 1700, the fur-bearing animals in peninsular Acadie had been significantly reduced – Dièreville noted that hunting brought “much less profit than hardship.”98 The Mi’kmaq increasingly travelled to the mainland or traded with their neighbours there to maintain their supply. In the eighteenth century, some furs continued to be traded between the French and the Mi’kmaq at Louisbourg, and sometimes the goods passed through Beaubassin.99 By this time, and unlike the fishery, which continued to grow and generate considerable profit, the exploitation of furs in Acadie was more about political relationships with Aboriginal peoples than about commercial activity. In contrast, the inhabitants of the Loudunais had little opportunity to benefit from natural resources. What woods and wildlife remained were strictly controlled by the state and the lords. In Acadie, fish and fur-bearing animals were plentiful at first, but these natural resources were the subjects of unending competition among various officials, companies, and states. The colonists rarely took part in the commercial fishing and fur-trading enterprises of Aboriginals, English, and French operating in the colony.100 To a certain extent they were constrained, but it also seems that they were not very interested, given their aversion for wild spaces and their focus on immediate family needs. This is not to say that some colonists did not occasionally shoot a deer, cast a net, or trap a rodent. A few individuals went further, setting up local fishing or sawmill enterprises. In general, however, the colonists’ focus was on building and maintaining a traditional rural society.

Conclusion The regions of early modern France were profoundly shaped by their environment, such as the Loire valley with its characteristic levées, the marshlands of Bas-Poitou, or the bocage of parts of western France.

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There was an essential unity between the physical and economic aspects of a region that provided the basis for a common identity. The “visceral” attachment to the land so often attributed to peasants was not just the development and preservation of a patrimony, but a connection with the physical features and the agricultural methods that defined their lives and ensured their livelihood.101 This was certainly true of the marshlands of Acadie and the cereal plains of the Loudunais. Once established, peasants were reluctant to move outside of these zones, and there was rarely much incentive for them to do so. This is not to say that the inhabitants never moved; there was considerable mobility within these zones. As we will see in chapter 3, many peasants in the Loudunais actively bought, sold, and traded small pieces of land in order to position themselves as well as possible. Many young couples moved to a neighbouring parish in order to get started with a lease or employment. There is also considerable evidence that many families relied on short-term loans and their inheritances to get through difficult years or to invest in new opportunities.102 In Acadie, population pressure and the search for drainable marshland led many young couples to move elsewhere around the Bay of Fundy. In both places, small, dispersed communities were established that took best advantage of the natural terrain, reinforced kin relationships, and featured considerable mobility. The particular terrain and climate features shaped the development of rural societies. In the Loudunais, the fertile land had been cultivated for generations. The temperate climate and the lack of pasture or woods led most peasants to focus on wheat production for the lucrative export market while cultivating secondary crops for local use. This concentration on wheat could make the rural economy vulnerable to crop failure. Peasants managed this risk by farming small strips of land in a number of different fields and carefully employing fertilizing and crop-rotation techniques. Only the wealthier peasants were able to lease the larger, centralized farms on the best lands. In Acadie, trees, hills, and rocks dominated the natural environment except in the marshlands where remarkably fertile land had been built up by centuries of sedimentation brought by tides and seasonal flooding. The colonists took on the task of draining the marshlands and were able to create centralized and efficient farms that resembled the

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Fig. 1.3 Belleisle Creek, near Annapolis Royal. Author’s photo, 2005.

best in the Loudunais. In this sense, the abundance and fertility of the marshlands in Acadie clearly created new opportunities. But we should not too quickly conclude that the settlers were thus “better off” than peasants in the Loudunais. The work was hard and time-consuming; until the eighteenth century, only a small percentage of the dyked lands were actually cultivated. The short growing season and the constant menace of inundation, particularly during the period of the Late Maunder Minimum, led the colonists to diversify their crops and invest in livestock to protect themselves from a total loss. Marshland farming was also introduced during the seventeenth century in the Loudunais, but the degree to which the Acadian colonists relied on marshland colonization was distinctive, even in comparison with other colonies of the Northeast. We should remember that there was an ecological cost to colonization, just as there was in

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Fig. 1.4 View of Loudunais countryside. Author’s photo, 2005.

other parts of the French empire.103 Dyking and draining destroyed the habitat of waterfowl, fish, amphibians, and other marsh-dwelling creatures. Wild spaces were lost as human landscapes were created. Acadian use of the land and its resources also had to be negotiated with local Aboriginal communities. This was probably not difficult during the seventeenth century, when the colonists numbered only a few hundred. However, as the Acadian population expanded to 14,000 by 1750, there would inevitably have been tensions.104 Of course, the Acadians did not share the modern impulse to conserve wetlands and woods. Wild spaces were outside their familiar landscapes, dangerous and strange places to be avoided or transformed. In Acadie, the life of the inhabitants was considerably complicated by the presence of lucrative natural resources. As we shall see in the next chapter, the colony was the scene of numerous conflicts

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throughout its existence, and one of the main causes was the competition over the exploitation of fishing grounds. The fur trade was also important, particularly in the seventeenth century, although the rapid depletion of local fur-bearing animals soon pushed this activity towards the interior of the Northeast. It has been suggested that “it is difficult to exaggerate the physical and psychological distance that separated the Old World from the New.”105 There is no doubt that geography isolated Acadie from the rest of France and its colonies. The arrival of ships bearing news, provisions, trade goods, and new colonists was an unusual and widely celebrated event. Some found the isolation too much, like the lonely priest in Port Royal who begged to be replaced in 1686.106 The effect of this isolation on the colonists was no doubt a heightened sense of insecurity, but also autonomy and community. They were largely on their own, and they knew it.

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c h apter

2

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The Political and Military Environment

Introduction As mentioned in the general introduction, the political history of Acadie has been written on numerous occasions. My intent is not to produce yet another narrative of events; rather, in this chapter I focus specifically on how the political and military environment influenced the development of rural society. First and foremost, both the Loudunais and Acadie were military frontiers and experienced more than their fair share of war and violence. Between 1605 and 1763, whenever war was declared between England and France, Acadie was one of the theatres of operation, changing hands no less than ten times. Of course, the situation in Acadie was complicated by its distance from France and the presence of the Mi’kmaq, who had their own aims and interests. It has become commonplace to espouse the view that the Acadians were better off than peasants in France because they did not have to pay taxes. Yet state directives in the colony for loyalty, labour, provisions, and even military service went far beyond what was asked of the inhabitants of the Loudunais. We should also remember that the early modern state was not all bad. In France, it provided security, administrative and legal services like notaries and courts, and key infrastructure like roads and bridges that benefited everyone. The weakness of the state in Acadie meant that the inhabitants were more “free” than their counterparts in the Loudunais, but it also left them isolated and vulnerable. In the end, the Acadians may have been better

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off having someone to pay taxes to or, in other words, having a state– subject relationship similar to that of the inhabitants of the Loudunais.

Frontiers and Borderlands Frontiers and borderlands have long intrigued historians as sites of military campaigns, crossroads of exchange and migration, and regions with their own distinct identities. The Loudunais and Acadie were no exceptions. In the short term, wars and raids could seriously disrupt and devastate rural societies. Over the long term, peasants had to accommodate and negotiate with military commanders and political authorities, as well as adapt to an often-changing situation. The choices they made could determine the well-being of their communities and sometimes their very survival. In chapter 1, I emphasized that the early colonists of Acadie would have brought with them a fear of wild spaces. They also would have carried an extensive experience of war and violence. In fact, one of the probable motivations that led some families to leave for Acadie was the hope to escape such conflict. Unfortunately, such hopes were soon dashed while, ironically, peace finally did arrive in the Loudunais. The open plains of the Loudunais proved as well suited for military operations as for agriculture. The town of Loudun was built by the Celts, who called it Lugdunum, as a military fortress on top of a hill that dominated these plains. Local legend has it that Charlemagne gave Loudun to Roland before the latter’s heroic death in Spain.1 In 986, the Loudunais was won by the Counts of Anjou, who further fortified the area. The square tower of Loudun and the keep at Moncontour were built in 1040 by Foulques Nerra, also known as the first Plantagenet. Throughout this period, peasants provided labour and food in return for protection – the quintessential feudal relationship.2 The Loudunais became an even more important frontier in the twelfth century. In 1154, the king of England held dynastic rights to all of western France from Normandy to Gascony, and the Loudunais formed part of the eastern boundary of this Angevin empire. Though the Capetian kings of France were nominally sovereigns of these territories, they directly controlled only a comparatively smaller area around Paris.3 The French king Philip Augustus conquered the Loudunais in 1206, and it was

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formally ceded to France in 1214. This was not the end of the fighting, however, as several regional nobles refused to accept Capetian rule. The most serious revolt was crushed in 1242, and Loudun emerged as one of a group of fortified cities that formed the base of the expanding French state in the west.4 A century of settlement and expansion was abruptly ended by the Black Death, which arrived sometime after 1348. The epidemic killed about one-third of the population over several years. At the same time, the region once again became a major battlefield between England and France during the Hundred Years War. Heavily defeated at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, France ceded Poitou, including the Loudunais, to England at the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360. Hostilities flared up again around 1370 with a number of vicious back-and-forth battles. Moncontour was the site of two bloody sieges in 1371 and 1372. The advantage gradually went to the French, and by 1373, the English had been driven from the Loudunais and the rest of Poitou. The region then became the base for additional French campaigns to defeat the English throughout western France. Jeanne d’Arc famously met the dauphin at Chinon. Poitiers became one of two capitals of the monarchy of Bourges from 1418 to 1436 and was granted a parlement (1418), a Cour des Aides (1425), and a university (1431). Nevertheless, the war dragged on until 1453. Worse than the battles, which the inhabitants could usually avoid, was the constant brigandage and plundering. As a contested frontier that went back and forth, the Loudunais was particularly damaged by such depredations, and much of the countryside was completely ruined.5 From about 1450 until 1550, the Loudunais once again enjoyed a long period of general growth and stability during which it recovered its population and restored its prosperous agriculture.6 With the English pushed completely from western France, it might have been hoped that the region’s experience as a military frontier was over. Unfortunately, the protracted series of civil wars known as the Wars of Religion eventually brought conflict back to the area. The first Calvinist church of Loudun opened in 1555, and a man from Loudun was one of the first in France to be burned as a heretic for Protestant beliefs. In fact, Poitou became the veritable “citadel of Calvinism” and, as a result, the inhabitants of the Loudunais found themselves on the

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frontier of a Protestant movement that spread like a crescent across much of Poitou down through southwestern France into Languedoc.7 When civil war broke out in 1562, the various small fortresses of the Loudunais were treated like “les pièces d’une gigantesque partie d’échecs.” Troops moved frequently through the region, living off the land and inadvertently spreading disease.8 By 1568, large armies had been assembled under the Huguenot leader Condé and the Catholic Duc de Anjou, the future Henry III. Condé advanced into the Loudunais from the south and Anjou crossed the Loire from the north to meet them. The armies skirmished outside Loudun itself, though lack of provisions, an epidemic among the soldiers of both sides, and the onset of winter prevented a major confrontation. The Catholic army took shelter at Chinon while the Protestants wintered in Thouars and Loudun. The presence of the bored soldiers exacerbated confessional differences in the town, and a number of churches and convents were pillaged and burned.9 When the battle finally took place in 1569 outside of Moncontour, it was the largest and bloodiest of the Wars of Religion. Over 50,000 soldiers were involved, about 19,000 of whom became casualties. Anjou held the field but was unable to follow up his victory because of his own losses.10 Loudun was later subjected to protracted sieges and occupations by Catholic armies in 1574 and 1587 while brigands prowled the countryside. In 1589, Loudun officially surrendered to Henry IV; after almost thirty years of fighting, peace was finally restored.11 Yet the peace was fragile, and the Loudunais remained part of a fortified frontier with a permanent garrison. Loudun was one of several Protestant strongholds (places de sûreté) guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes. That Loudun remained an important frontier area can be attested to by its selection for important meetings. A large synod of Protestant representatives met there in 1610 and a royal conference was held in 1616 to settle the differences between the Queen Regent, Marie de Medici, and the Prince de Condé, who had rebelled after the assassination of Henry IV.12 In the 1620s, after conquering Béarn and forbidding Protestantism there, the young king Louis XIII found himself again at war with his Huguenot subjects. This conflict culminated in the dreadful siege of La Rochelle and the Peace of Alès (1628–29). Under the terms of that treaty, all Protestant garrisons and

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fortifications, including those of Loudun, would be dismantled under the supervision of Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s chief minister, though the king “magnanimously” permitted the continuation of the Protestant religion.13 When the fortifications came down in the 1630s, the inhabitants must have wondered what this meant for the future. How did all of this fighting influence the development of rural society in the Loudunais? The first point to note is that the rural population had little invested in the conflict. They did not fight for France or for anybody else; nor was there much difference in how the two sides treated the local inhabitants. These were arbitrary borders based on dynastic claims and people on either side of the boundary were not very different from one another.14 For the most part, the wars were fought by noble factions and professional soldiers who treated peasants with casual indifference and even brutality. The troops needed food and shelter – sometimes they paid for them, sometimes they simply took them. It was also accepted strategy to lead raids targeting the countryside to deny such help to the enemy. At the very least, warfare was a serious disruption to the rural economy and promoted fear and uncertainty. At worst, it threatened people’s very lives, either from violence itself or the diseases that inevitably dogged soldiers on campaign. The settlement pattern in the Loudunais reflected a population trying to avoid attention or involvement. The large, open spaces and lack of woods made refuge difficult to find, but the uniformity of the landscape was itself a kind of defence. The forty-two rural parishes of the Loudunais were of similar size, wealth, and layout; nothing stood out as a particularly inviting target for pillage. Rural communities were too small to support a military force of any size. Many seigneurial manors had extensive walls, suggesting that one option was to rely on the local lord for protection. In general, military forces usually concentrated their efforts on the fortifications at Loudun and Moncontour, and the inhabitants did their best to stay out of the way. With incessant conflict predominating from the medieval period on, it is no surprise that the rural population of the Loudunais remained relatively small and dispersed. Given this bleak evaluation, we might wonder why anyone stayed in the region. There were, of course, times of peace during which the inhabitants could take advantage of the fertile lands. The period of growth and prosperity from 1450 to

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1550, which we might call the Loudunais “golden age,” saw both the population and cultivation expand throughout the plains and the integration of the area into the larger Loire trading network.15 Thus, the concentration on wheat for export was a relatively late development that reflected political conditions of peace, growth, and high demand for foodstuffs throughout the kingdom. After the Wars of Religion, the Loudunais gradually returned to its previous prosperity. It is, of course, at this moment in the 1630s and 1640s that several families from the Loudunais agreed to migrate to Acadie. It is interesting to speculate whether part of the appeal was a new start in a colony far from the wars and rebellions which had afflicted their home for so long – the promise of a new golden age. They could not have known that the defeat of the Protestants at La Rochelle had been a definitive turning point in the civil conflict, and they might have worried that the ongoing Thirty Years War would soon affect them directly. In fact, while France would continue to fight many wars, none of them would be fought near Loudunais soil. The emigrants could not have known that they were leaving a countryside that had ceased to be a military frontier for a colony that was becoming a new borderland in the struggle between France and England. How they must have felt once they realized their mistake! The leaders who recruited these colonists could not have claimed ignorance of Acadie’s situation as an imperial borderland. Eight years after its foundation in 1605, Port Royal was pillaged and burned to the ground by the English captain Samuel Argall. The area was dubbed New Scotland (later Nova Scotia) by the Scottish Calvinists who set up their own establishment there during the 1620s.16 Acadie was returned to France in 1632, and an expedition of three hundred was sent to reclaim the colony under the leadership of Isaac de Rasilly, a cousin of Cardinal Richelieu as well as a celebrated war hero and knight of Malta.17 Rather than return to Port Royal, he chose to establish a new headquarters at La Hève, near present-day Halifax, where he was closer to the fishery and to resupply from France. La Hève quickly developed into a thriving trading post and stopover for fishing vessels, and Rasilly actively recruited workers and tradesmen to support the colony.18 But Rasilly’s untimely death in 1635 plunged Acadie into a period of uncertainty and, eventually, civil war.

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Charles de Menou was Rasilly’s lieutenant, the third son of a celebrated cavalier from Touraine. He saw in Acadie the opportunity to create a new seigneury that would combine traditional agriculture with the revenue from the fisheries and fur trade. Menou moved the settlement back to Port Royal, recruited peasant families from France, and began dyking the marshlands. In his attempts to control trade, Menou soon found himself in dispute with two other colonial entrepreneurs. Charles de la Tour had remained in Acadie during the Scottish period and forged close relations with the Mi’kmaq, setting himself up as a fur trader in the St John River valley, while Nicolas Denys was a former agent of Rasilly’s who had been granted land along the northern coast of Acadie, from Canso to Gaspé. Rasilly had worked closely with Denys and left La Tour alone, but Menou was bent on establishing himself as the sole authority in the colony. His vision of a feudal Acadie has been called “a fool’s dream,” but he spent fourteen years fighting for it.19 The royal government was a long way off, so rather than rely on legal proceedings to establish their claims, both Menou and La Tour resorted to armed force. Louis XIII attempted to mediate the dispute, but his letter of 1638 was a flawed effort to divide the territory between the rivals, assigning regions under La Tour’s control to Menou and vice versa.20 Not surprisingly, the two men refused to compromise. La Tour enlisted English help to raid Port Royal in 1643; the failure of this expedition was a turning point in the conflict.21 Menou captured La Tour’s main residence at Fort Sainte-Marie in 1645, hanging all but two members of the garrison and imprisoning La Tour’s wife, who died three weeks later in custody. La Tour, who was in Boston at the time, fled to Quebec. Recognizing Menou’s victory, in 1647 the king declared him governor over all Acadie. Menou moved quickly to secure the St John River and also attacked Denys’s posts in Miscou and Nipisguit.22 But his struggles were far from over as he now faced a wide array of legal challenges and was under increasing pressure from his creditors. Chief among these was Emmanuel Le Borgne, who claimed debts owed amounting to 260,000 livres. Menou’s death in 1650 in a canoeing accident only further complicated the situation. La Tour went to France and successfully appealed to the king to be renamed governor in 1651. Upon his return to the colony, he solidified his position by marrying

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Menou’s widow, Jeanne Motin. Meanwhile, Le Borgne arrived himself with a well-supplied ship and one hundred men to back up his claim to Menou’s property. He captured Nicolas Denys and moved to confront La Tour in 1653.23 In the midst of this conflict, the Englishman Robert Sedgwick descended, capturing both the posts on the St John River and Port Royal itself in 1654.24 Once again, the English asserted a loose ascendancy over the colony that would last until 1670. Upon their arrival, Menou’s colonists immediately found themselves in the middle of a civil war. Just when it appeared that their lord had the upper hand, he died, and fighting broke out again. This kind of factional fighting was all too familiar to them; they would have seen plenty of it during the Wars of Religion and again after Henry IV’s assassination. The colonists would have helped build fortifications and produced food for Menou’s forces but most would have had little to do with the actual fighting. At first, Sedgwick’s attack would not have greatly changed the situation; he was just one more military leader seizing the initiative. Yet this turned out to be a key moment in Acadie’s development as a borderland. Le Borgne managed to keep his ship and quit the colony, and Sedgwick neither stayed himself nor left a garrison. Instead, he left in charge the inhabitants’ representative, the blacksmith Guillaume Trahan. He further left the colonists a choice; they could leave, selling or keeping their possessions as they wished, or they could remain, if they promised not to bear arms against the English.25 For the first time, the colonists were on their own; their lord was dead and there was no one else to supervise or coerce them. With no English colonists forthcoming, the future was squarely in their hands. English interest in Nova Scotia was limited to securing uncontested access to the fisheries and the fur trade.26 Most of the Acadian colonists chose to stay, but rather than remain at Port Royal, they moved to the fertile marshlands upriver. In so doing, they applied the same logic as the inhabitants of the Loudunais. The fort at Port Royal was the main military objective in the colony as well as the principal residence of garrisons and governors. These strong points, like the towers at Loudun and Moncontour, were targets in a contested borderland. Dispersal would help the inhabitants avoid future fighting. This relative isolation, and the prevention of further French migration until

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1670, contributed to the close bonds that developed among many of the founding families.27 The colony was returned to France officially in 1667, but in reality only in 1670, when a new governor, lord, priests, and soldiers arrived. Grandfontaine, the governor, was to give those inhabitants who wanted to remain under English rule the opportunity to leave unmolested within a year with their belongings. In addition, any English who wished to could remain in Acadie, so long as they swore an oath of allegiance “like good subjects.” This was in many ways a remarkable choice given to ordinary people. No such opportunity had been afforded to the inhabitants of the Loudunais during the medieval wars between England and France. Louis XIV wanted foreigners to be excluded from settling and trading in the colony, so perhaps this was simply a mechanism to ensure that anyone favourable towards the English would leave. But it was also at least an implicit acknowledgment that the state lacked the power to coerce the inhabitants’ loyalty. It is also important to emphasize that the number of colonists remained very small; the combined military and settler population of Acadie was a little over five hundred in 1671, while the population of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was already 35,000.28 The French were well aware that they were behind their rivals in the Northeast and needed their colonists to be committed to their cause. It must have soon become apparent to the settlers that Acadie was not really a priority for the French. After a ship of sixty colonists arrived in 1671, immigration slowed to a trickle. The small garrisons at Port Royal and Pentagouet remained woefully inadequate to the task of protecting the colony. In 1672, Governor Jacques de Chambly lost Pentagouet and was captured by a Dutch naval captain named Jurriaen Aernoutsz. Later governors like Michel LeNeuf de la Vallière and François-Marie Perrot knew they could not enforce the restrictions on foreigners in Acadie and so were happy to turn a tidy profit by smuggling and issuing permits to English fishermen. The colonists continued to move away from Port Royal, spreading out farther along the river. Upon his arrival in 1685, Perrot noted that only ten families lived in the town of Port Royal, while a census two years later found about sixty Acadians living there, compared to 450 in the wider area.29 New communities founded at Beaubassin in 1679 and at Grand Pré in

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1682 attracted many younger families. These locations had larger, more centralized marshlands and were far from official control. At least part of the motivation was to continue trading with the English without interference; both Jacques Bourgeois, the founder of Beaubassin, and Pierre Melanson, the founder of Grand Pré, had prominent commercial ties to merchants in Boston. Perhaps the Acadians suspected that another round of conflict with the English was inevitable. Certainly, Louis XIV seemed determined to force a confrontation over the fishery, as we saw in chapter 1. He fired the venal Perrot in 1687 and sent a new governor, LouisAlexandre des Friches de Meneval, with explicit instructions to prevent any fishing or commerce by foreigners in Acadie.30 This policy soon caused hardship in the colony, since French trade could not supply the inhabitants’ needs. For example, Meneval’s expulsion of four English vessels from Port Royal provoked angry opposition from the colonists because they had lost an opportunity to trade. Merchants like John Nelson of Boston regularly visited Acadian communities, buying their surplus produce in exchange for manufactured items. Archaeological evidence indicates that most Acadian household goods, such as ceramics, earthenware, and wine glasses, came from Boston.31 Not surprisingly, the English did not meekly accept Louis XIV’s orders; they seized French trading ships and continued to fish and visit the Acadians. War broke out between England and France in 1689 and Meneval was well aware that he was in no position to defend Port Royal. With fewer than one hundred soldiers and crumbling fortifications, he had no choice but to surrender upon the arrival of a New England force of several hundred under the command of William Phips in 1690. Interestingly, upon arriving at Port Royal, Phips first took aboard an Acadian informant, Charles Melanson. Meneval signed terms of capitulation that were supposed to protect the garrison, the inhabitants, and their property. Phips, however, had no intention of keeping his word. Meneval, two priests, and thirty soldiers were taken prisoner while the church and several homes were destroyed, livestock were slain, and dykes were cut.32 After this, however, Phips made similar arrangements to those of Sedgwick in 1654 since he, too, did not intend to stay. He had the inhabitants swear an oath of allegiance to England

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and he set up a Council to look after matters until an English governor should arrive. Its members included a French sergeant Charles La Tourasse, the king’s attorney (procureur du roi) Pierre Du Breuil, the lieutenant civil et criminel Mathieu de Goutins, the local lord Alexandre Le Borgne, and two Acadian delegates – René Landry and Daniel Leblanc.33 Events unfolded in a way that returned the Acadians to an effective isolation without direct supervision. Phips’s follow-on expedition to Quebec was a spectacular failure and he returned directly to Massachusetts. Meneval’s successor, Joseph Robinau de Villebon, judged that he could not defend Port Royal and so moved to the St John River, eventually settling well back from the coast at Nashwaak, where he would be closer to Abenaki assistance but far from the Acadian settlements. Villebon was a rare French official who considered the situation of the inhabitants. Before leaving Port Royal, he approved the Acadians’ oath to Phips and the continuing existence of the Council, advising them to work with the English as necessary. For their part, the English did not send a governor to Port Royal until 1693, and when he was captured en route by Villebon, they did not send another. Unlike the period from 1654 to 1670, however, this should not be seen as a period of “benevolent” isolation. The war continued, raids and skirmishes were common, and privateers took advantage of the situation. Sometimes the Acadians were able to protect themselves, such as when the inhabitants of Beaubassin drove off an English crew that had landed under the auspices of trade but then tried to seize their property in 1693. More often, however, they were powerless to stop the perpetrators. In 1694, an English frigate arrived at Port Royal and its crew burned a dozen houses along with several barns full of grain. They also killed some cattle.34 In 1696, New Englander Benjamin Church led a raid of four hundred men to Beaubassin, leaving most of the village in ruin. Two pirate ships raided Port Royal in the same year, setting buildings on fire and killing several people. It is little wonder that the arrival in 1699 of the Sieur de Dièreville, a visitor from France, prompted the Acadians to flee into the woods and that he found them too scared to “do any business.” 35 In this political environment, the colonists had few options. The oaths they had sworn did little good since neither England nor France

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seemed able or willing to protect them. Many people continued to migrate. Grand Pré had been largely untouched by the conflict and grew dramatically in the 1690s, while new communities even farther away were formed at Pisiquid and Cobequid, as well as at Chipoudie and Petitcoudiac on the western side of the isthmus of Chignecto.36 A few were able to profit from the situation. Abraham Boudrot was an Acadian merchant whom Villebon routinely dispatched to Boston to gain intelligence, while the English mistakenly believed he was working for them. Charles Melanson regularly provided information to Boston on French ships moving in the Bay of Fundy. Pierre Du Breuil organized shipments of Acadian grain to Boston at great profit, while other Acadians served as navigators or crew on French privateers, who brought their captured goods back to the colony.37 For the majority of the inhabitants, however, this must have been a period of fear and deprivation. The 1697 Treaty of Ryswick ended the war, and once again Acadie was recognized as a French colony. This respite was short-lived as war broke out again in 1702 over the question of the Spanish Succession. In North America, the conflict became ugly, with both sides targeting non-combatants. For example, a combined French and Algonquin force attacked the settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1704, setting fire to the homes, killing forty settlers, and carrying off another one hundred people as captives to Quebec. The New Englanders responded by launching a new raid against Acadie. Benjamin Church returned at the head of 1,300 marauders and attacked Beaubassin, Grand Pré, Pisiquid, and Cobequid. One officer proudly reported that “we left nothing standing.”38 The French engineer Jean Labat confirmed that almost all of the homes at Minas and Beaubassin had been burnt, several dykes broken, and many livestock and barrels of wheat lost. He also noted that forty-five prisoners had been taken from Minas and at least one settler killed.39 It did not matter that the Acadians were not responsible for the attack on Deerfield; these raids were motivated by revenge and the desire to create terror – the colonists were easy targets. All that remained was to conquer Port Royal yet again. Two successive attacks in 1707 involved a wide assortment of people: New England sailors, Acadian militia, French regulars, Canadian marine troops, pirates, and Aboriginal warriors. Remarkably, though greatly

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outnumbered, the French governor Daniel d’Auger de Subercase managed to thwart both expeditions. I will address the Acadian involvement in these battles below, as this was the one time when the Acadians in large numbers rallied to the French flag. These victories brought no help from France, which had entered a more desperate phase of the war in Europe.40 They did serve to increase New England’s worries, especially after Subercase began rebuilding fortifications in 1708 and launched successful privateering raids in 1709. A larger expedition under Colonel Francis Nicholson and Samuel Vetch, supported by Royal Navy ships and marines, seized Port Royal once and for all in 1710. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 formally ceded Acadie, “in its former boundaries,” to Great Britain. It was “an important but ambiguous conquest.”41 Nicholson claimed to have conquered Acadie “by virtue of an undoubted right of her [the Queen’s] Royall Predecessors,” although those predecessors had seldom hesitated to hand it back to France when it suited them. A governing council and a garrison remained at the newly named Annapolis Royal, but it was unclear how long they would stay. New Englanders showed no interest in moving there.42 The Acadians might be forgiven for believing that the occupation would be short-lived. They probably assumed, after twenty years of fighting, that conflict could resume at any time.43 In effect, a small French government had been replaced by an equally unimpressive English one at Port/Annapolis Royal, and most of the Acadian communities remained effectively beyond their jurisdiction. Just like the inhabitants of the Loudunais, the Acadians had little loyalty to a particular political master. They probably would have preferred a French regime that would share their language and religion, but governors and soldiers behaved the same way no matter what their background. After decades of warfare in a contested frontier, the inhabitants had learned to move away from trouble spots, to spread themselves out, to negotiate when they could, and to run away when they could not. As devastating as the raids were in Acadie, consider how difficult it would have been for the colonists to survive if they had remained in centralized communities at and around Port Royal. They did not lose everything because of their dispersed settlement pattern. This experience could only have reinforced the existing kinship ties and close relations between neighbours.

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Political Structures We might assume that France failed to hold onto Acadie because its control over the colony was weak. However, while it is obvious that the military force available to the French governors was never sufficient in comparison with the sheer numbers of the New Englanders, political structures in the colony developed considerably and quite reasonably in relation to its size. In fact, in both the Loudunais and Acadie, the king took measures to impose direct royal control and ensure the loyalty of the inhabitants. Both were seen as important strategic areas that had to be more centrally managed. In the Loudunais, this meant the loss of its independence as a separate province. Henry IV attached it to Poitou in 1604, assigning the combined province to the governorship of his most trusted minister, the Duc de Sully.44 The city of Loudun, with its large Protestant population, also received particular attention from the court. A royal favourite of Louis XIII, the staunchly Catholic Jean d’Armagnac was appointed governor of the city in 1627. This actually backfired on Cardinal Richelieu because Armagnac used his influence with the king to delay the minister’s plans to destroy the city’s fortifications until 1632. Richelieu further targeted the city’s Protestant elite by transferring many of its lucrative fiscal offices in 1637. In fact, he created an entirely new “ideal” city nearby, named after himself and based around some of his family’s estates, aiming to transfer all of Loudun’s state offices there. In this he was frustrated, demonstrating that he did not always get his way with Louis XIII. In 1660, Louis XIV transferred the Loudunais again, attaching it to Touraine. This time royal motives appear more punitive, as this separated the Protestants in Loudun from their compatriots in Poitou and it also forced all of the inhabitants to pay the much higher rate of salt tax in Touraine. Further, like most other parts of France, the Loudunais came under the administration of new royal intendants who had wide jurisdiction in fiscal, judicial, and civil matters. The intendants owed their position to the king’s commission, which could be revoked at any time, as opposed to most state offices which were venal – that is, they were purchased and considered private property. Thus, this was a way for Louis XIV to rule more directly and be assured of the loyalty of his

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subordinates. Since most généralités (the area of jurisdiction of an intendant) were quite large, the intendants appointed their own subordinates called subdélégués to help. For example, the subdelegate at Loudun reported to the intendant at Tours. Increased state control was also obvious in the government’s attempts to repress and then eliminate Protestantism. Henri IV had issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which was a compromise that permitted Protestant worship in some parts of France but emphasized the primacy of Catholicism; the desire for peace led both sides to coexist for a time.45 The Loudunais was one of these areas. The population of Loudun was split approximately in half between Protestants and Catholics. But unlike other areas of Poitou, Calvinism did not spread across the surrounding countryside. A few rural areas had Protestant temples, such as Chouppes, but these were built by lords for their own private worship. Over the course of the seventeenth century, these personal enclaves gradually disappeared.46 Protestants were not present in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, or in neighbouring parishes, so it seems that they would not have numbered among the early colonists recruited for Acadie.47 Beginning in the 1630s, Louis XIII encouraged new missions of Capuchins, Carmelites, Cordeliers, and Ursulines to preach against Protestantism; they held public debates, devotions, and vigils that heightened confessional antagonisms.48 He also issued edicts which prevented Protestants from occupying certain official posts like notaries and attorneys. Louis XIV went much further. By 1681, all government posts were closed to Protestants, academies and temples were closed, marriages between Catholics and Protestants were outlawed, and further conversions to Protestantism were declared illegal. The few permitted places of worship that remained were placed under strict surveillance.49 The intendant of Poitou suggested that dragonnades be employed to convince the holdouts to abjure and return to Catholicism. 50 These began in 1681. The dragonnades got their name from the dragoons who were quartered on Protestant households, “hard-hearted villains, expert to do Mischief to good Men” who basically intimidated and disrupted the lives of Protestant families until they gave in. The expense of putting up the soldiers was also considerable; unlike the usual arrangements for winter quarters, the state did not provide reimbursement.

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Yet this did not have the intended effect. Instead of abjuring, many Protestant families, from all classes and regions, began to emigrate.51 In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. He then sent additional soldiers with wider discretion to punish those who remained firm.52 The intendant of Poitou proudly reported that his whole province was “converted” in a month, while the presence of “ces singuliers Apôtres” in Loudun led to the demolition of the temple, the conversion of 1,500 Protestants in one night, and the subsequent emigration of over 200 families. Across France, about 200,000 people chose to emigrate, while Loudun lost one-third of its population. Only a few nouveaux convertis, the state’s euphemistic designation for forcibly converted families, remained in the city by 1698.53 Thus, the inhabitants of the Loudunais had an ample demonstration of the new state’s commitment to enforcing its directives. Such an overt display would have been unthinkable in early Acadie. At first, France had relied on commercial companies like the Company of New France and individual lords like Menou and La Tour to govern their colonies. When Acadie was returned to France in 1667, Louis XIV appointed another individual as the new governor, Emmanuel Le Borgne’s son Alexandre. However, Alexandre returned to France empty-handed, as the English at Port Royal had refused to give up the fort. This seems to have been a turning point because in 1670 Louis XIV dispatched the military officer Grandfontaine to govern the colony. From that moment on, every governor of Acadie was also a military officer; like the intendants, they were more directly under the state’s control as their posts were temporary and advancement depended on a favourable evaluation. Further, as in the Loudunais, Acadie’s independence was revoked; the colony was made subordinate to the government, intendancy, and bishopric of Quebec. This was less a punishment than an attempt to centralize all of New France under a single administration that, in theory, would be more efficient, secure, and better accountable to the metropolis. We can discern this intention from the 30,000 lt sent with Grandfontaine for the construction of land routes between Acadie and Quebec.54 The claim of one historian that the Acadians had “little recourse to the transients sent to govern or garrison their lands”55 would have been just as true for residents of the Loudunais. It should be no surprise that top

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officials like governors, intendants, and garrison commanders were political appointees who usually were not from the local area and were replaced periodically. Continuity in both places was provided by the subordinate officials who often came from prominent local families and served for long periods of time. In Acadie, these included Michel Boudrot, a delegate of the colonists at Port Royal from at least 1639 and still serving as lieutenant general in 1686. In fact, the French state in Acadie was not necessarily weak or incapable of leadership.56 Louis XIV ensured that a basic complement of officials was in place and attempted to establish a clear chain of command through Quebec and the Ministry of the Navy. Military officers directed the garrisons and served as governors but they were aided by a variety of civil and religious officials who worked on justice, finance, administration, and religious supervision. By 1700, the administration was effectively set up, with similar officials to that of the Loudunais. The most obvious difference was the lack of fiscal officials in the colony, but this was because there were no taxes to administer. In both places, the intendant, bishop, and court of appeal were located in larger centres far away and had little direct connection with rural society. But there was a nucleus of state officials in the locality’s main town (Loudun or Port Royal) composed of a governor, a subdelegate, many subordinate officials (clerks and notaries), and a royal court. This group could deal with the vast majority of local concerns. Certain kinds of state officials were more numerous in the Loudunais. For example, Loudun had a much larger royal court and several notaries distributed across the countryside. Yet the difference in population between the Loudunais and Acadie should be considered. In 1698, the Loudunais had 4,834 households or just shy of 20,000 inhabitants, while there were perhaps 1,200 people of European descent in all of Acadie. Taking this into account, one could argue that Acadie actually had proportionally more state officials than the Loudunais. Indeed, Port Royal was a veritable oasis of officialdom – a community no larger than Martaizé with state institutions that, on paper at least, were comparable to Loudun! It might then be argued that geography defeated the state’s efforts in Acadie. Saint-Vallier described the difficult overland trip from Quebec to Port Royal, which took him about twenty-five days

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Table 2.1 State machinery in Acadie and the Loudunais in 1700 Government and justice

Loudunais

Acadie

Governor Loudun Royal court Loudun (bailliage) Judge (lieutenant civil yes et criminel) King’s attorney yes (procureur du roi) Clerks (greffiers) yes (several) and bailliffs (huissiers) Court of appeal Tours (présidial) Maréchaussée Loudun

Port Royal Port Royal (siège ordinaire) yes

Quebec (cour supérieur) no (but could use garrison)

Administration and finance

Loudunais

Acadie

Intendant Subdelegate Élection Grenier à sel Notary

Tours Loudun Loudun Richelieu Loudun & rural (several)

Quebec Port Royal no (no ordinary taxes) no (no salt-tax) Port Royal

Church

Loudunais Acadie

Bishop Archpriest / Vicar-general

Poitiers Loudun

yes yes (one each)

Quebec Port Royal

to complete by canoe and portage.57 It was 600 kilometres from Port Royal to Quebec, but only 80 from Loudun to Tours and 55 to Poitiers (along established roads). The Loudunais was approximately 300 square kilometres in area, while peninsular Acadie was over 40,000.

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There is no doubt that simple distance was an obstacle to the political structures ordered by Louis XIV functioning in practice; for example, most governors of Acadie continued to report directly to France. But at the local level, these geographic challenges can be overstated. If the Acadians rarely made use of the court of appeal at Quebec, neither did their counterparts in the Loudunais have much cause to appeal to Tours.58 The intendant of Tours periodically visited the Loudunais, just as the intendant of Quebec travelled to Acadie in 1686. In Acadie and the Loudunais, ordinary people had no difficulty securing dispensations from the church hierarchy for consanguineous marriages. The area actually occupied by the Acadians – the marshlands of the Bay of Fundy – was much smaller, only about 300 square kilometres, an area equivalent to that of the Loudunais. Both Grand Pré and Beaubassin could be reached in a day by sailing on the Bay of Fundy, and a road was established between Port Royal and Grand Pré. That geography could be overcome is perhaps best shown by the Acadians themselves. For example, Jacques Bourgeois, the founder of Beaubassin, maintained residences there and at Port Royal until his death in 1701.59 Many families frequently travelled back and forth between communities to visit relatives or to trade. State officials also increasingly visited, conducting censuses and organizing militia companies. By 1710, notaries were resident at Grand Pré and Beaubassin. If not for the Conquest, it is likely that the colony’s political structures would have continued to evolve and that state officials would have eventually been established everywhere. We should remember that the French had limited opportunity to develop these structures, due to the wars and periods of English occupation. From Port Royal’s foundation in 1605 to its fall in 1710, Acadie was under French control and at peace only from 1605 to 1612, from 1632 to 1636, from 1647 to 1650, from 1670 to 1689, and from 1699 to 1704. This was a total of just thirty-eight years over more than a century. In this light, the development of political structures in the colony can be considered quite remarkable.

The Influence of the Mi’kmaq One way in which Acadie’s political environment was obviously different from that of the Loudunais was the presence of the Mi’kmaq

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and other First Nations. Aboriginals outnumbered Europeans until well into the eighteenth century and continued to claim their own sovereignty over the region. Their friendship, trade, and willingness to permit settlement were crucial to the early years of the colony. A particularly important figure was Membertou, a Mi’kmaw sagamo in the Port Royal region. He welcomed the French in 1605 and ultimately allowed himself to be baptized, setting an example that many of his people would follow. The Mi’kmaq lived in a territory they called Mi’kma’ki, which extended from peninsular Acadie to the Gaspésie. Their neighbours, the Malecite and Passemequody, lived in the St John River valley and along the western side of the Bay of Fundy. Further west, in present-day Maine and New Brunswick, was the territory of the powerful Abenaki. From the beginning, the French sought to gain influence among these Aboriginal peoples. The royal patent of the Sieur de Monts in 1603 directed him to “cause the people which do inhabit the country, men (at this present time) barbarous, atheists, without faith or religion, to be converted to Christianity.” He was also expected to bring them under the king’s authority.60 Similar sentiments were expressed in all of the later governors’ instructions. The French, lacking the power to coerce the Natives, used missionary work, alliances, and the fur trade to create relationships of friendship. Some of the French leaders married Aboriginal women and several early colonists followed suit. One recent study suggests that the resulting Métis families played an important role as intermediaries between the two peoples, while accounting for over 10 per cent of the pre-Deportation Acadian population.61 Although many Mi’kmaq were baptized and regularly attended services, their adoption of the Christian faith was limited and often integrated into their own concept of spirituality. The Jesuit priest Biard explained in 1612 that even those who learned the Mi’kmaq language struggled to explain abstract concepts and words which had no equivalent in their vocabulary. As for the Aboriginals themselves, Biard wrote that “the nation is savage, wandering and full of bad habits” and that “it is self-love that blinds them, and the evil one who leads them on.” Interestingly, he compares the Mi’kmaq view of their own superiority with his perception of French Protestants – “holding themselves higher and boasting of being better than the Catholics.”

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Nevertheless, he told his superiors of the close bond he had established with Membertou’s community.62 The future bishop of Quebec, JeanBaptiste de Saint-Vallier, visited Acadie in 1685 and was impressed by the Mi’kmaq, writing that they were well-suited for Christianity because of their “gentle and peaceful nature,” their hospitality, and the strength of their families. He cited in particular their dedication to prayer and to their priests.63 The missionaries were often the only link between French authorities and the Mi’kmaq. Each sagamo administered a territory, assigning winter hunting grounds to groups of families and settling disputes. The lands in each area tended to remain with the same families, and there were prohibitions against trespass by other Aboriginals; in fact, when groups of Mi’kmaq seized British vessels or held up European travellers, this was often an expression of family territorial rights rather than collective political action. The Acadians appear to have understood this system; some settlers requested approval and even paid for the right to move onto new land.64 At first, they were a small population of farmers causing little interference to the Mi’kmaq way of life. The Mi’kmaq lived in coastal villages during the summer, fishing (especially salmon and eels), gathering shellfish, and planting gardens. This was also a time to trade. In the winter, the Mi’kmaq dispersed into smaller groups of extended families that inhabited large hunting grounds, killing moose and caribou for food and also trapping fur-bearing animals to trade. In general, the woods remained an Aboriginal frontier.65 We might wonder to what degree the colonists had contact with Aboriginal peoples at all. Most of the trade was centred on Port Royal or farther away at the posts near the St John River. The missionaries went to live with the Mi’kmaq; there were no shared religious services or community events. Intermarriage was not common outside of a small group of leaders and traders and did not continue once the colonists had achieved a reasonable proportion of women. While Native goodwill was a necessary support for the colony, it also seems likely that few Acadians knew Aboriginals well, and many may have been afraid of them.66 Although the Mi’kmaq formed alliances with the French, they were not particularly involved in the conflicts of the seventeenth

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century. Like the Acadians, most of them lived far from Port Royal, and it made little difference to them who was in charge so long as missionaries continued to visit and they could continue trading furs. Given the small numbers of soldiers and the focus of the Europeans on each other, the Mi’kmaq likely never felt that their interests or sovereignty were threatened. They had the largest population and the strongest military force in Acadie. Thus, the fall of Port Royal in 1710 did not appear particularly significant to them at first. Most Mi’kmaq were more concerned with harvesting eels for the winter than driving out the latest conquerors.67 Looking back, however, we can see that 1710 was actually a turning point in Mi’kmaq relations with both the French and the Acadian colonists. Beginning in the 1690s, French authorities actively courted Mi’kmaq participation in their wars through the missionaries. For example, Villebon recruited several canoes of warriors for an attack on Maine with the help of Jean Baudoin, a missionary from the Beaubassin and Grand Pré area. Although little came of this attack, Villebon advised the Acadians at Port Royal, who cited fear of Aboriginal reprisals as the reason they would not help the English establish a garrison.68 For the Mi’kmaq, they were likely most interested in helping their neighbours and allies, the Abenaki, against the New Englanders – they were largely absent from the defence of Port Royal in 1707 or 1710. Yet in 1711, several Mi’kmaq answered the call of their missionary Antoine Gaulin to join the Baron de Saint-Castin, a Métis himself, and his largely Abenaki force in a siege of Annapolis Royal. Saint-Castin threatened to treat as enemies any colonists providing food, wood, or other services to the British. The garrison commander, Samuel Vetch, reported that the Aboriginals had “pillaged and robbed several of the French inhabitants.”69 Although one ambush resulted in the death or capture of seventy English soldiers, Saint-Castin lacked the numbers and the artillery to capture the fort and was forced to retreat when reinforcements arrived from Boston. Although the Treaty of Utrecht settled the war between France and Great Britain, Aboriginal peoples continued to resist British expansion. Abenaki raids on frontier settlements in what they considered to be their territory (present-day Maine) motivated Massachusetts to declare war on them in 1722. The Mi’kmaq had already been raiding

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English fishing ships, and a council of their leaders decided to declare war in support of their allies. The French were unwilling to get actively involved, though they were happy to supply guns and powder. The Mi’kmaq attacked Canso, captured more fishing vessels, and again laid siege to Annapolis Royal, essentially restricting the British to the fort. But once again, they lacked the numbers and equipment needed to break in and had to withdraw. During the fall of 1725, delegates from all of the parties met in Boston to negotiate a peace. The resulting treaty remains a source of controversy. The Mi’kmaq believed that they had secured recognition of their traditional rights to their territory, while the British believed they had gained Aboriginal acceptance of their suzerainty.70 This war demonstrated Mi’kmaq willingness to defend their territory but also revealed the weakening of their political position. There was little coordination between Mi’kmaq groups, and only small numbers of warriors actually carried out the fighting. Their population had been diminishing since their first contacts with Europeans as a result of disease. Precise statistics are impossible to determine from the existing record, but most historians accept that a population that had once numbered several or perhaps even tens of thousands had been reduced to two thousand by 1700.71 In addition to mortality caused by disease, many Mi’kmaq struggled with economic deprivation, sometimes aggravated by addiction to alcohol. Trade had dwindled with the diminishing supply of fur-bearing animals, while the expansion of commercial fishing and marshland agriculture cut them off from their traditional summer diet. The Mi’kmaq “were excluded from ever greater spaces in the landscape” and their distance from the Acadians increased as economic and political differences had “driven a wedge” between them.72 This had important consequences for the Acadians, who made it clear that they would not take up arms to help the Mi’kmaq in their struggles against the British. Although British officials never believed them, Acadian claims that some Mi’kmaq threatened them with violence are more than credible. This conflict came to a head in 1750, when Mi’kmaq under the leadership of the missionary Jean-Louis Le Loutre burned Beaubassin after the inhabitants refused to join the French. Such an action would have been inconceivable before 1700. Not all Mi’kmaq behaved in this way; some groups continued to trade with the Acadians, while others simply moved away. .:.

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Acadie/Nova Scotia as a Borderland after 1713 After the Treaty of Utrecht, both France and Great Britain were financially exhausted, tired of war, and mired in succession crises. The fortunate result was a suspension of their conflict, a thirty-year period of peace which proved to be a time of growth and stability in Europe and in their North American colonies. This did not mean that the French abandoned their hopes to recapture Acadie. They had retained Île Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island) in the settlement and proceeded to build a large fortress and city dubbed Louisbourg. They further argued that the “former boundaries” of Acadie ceded in the treaty only included the peninsula, and not the interior of presentday New Brunswick. The French continued to trade with and send missionaries to Aboriginal peoples in the St John River valley and in northeastern New Brunswick (e.g., Restigouche and the Miramichi). The British, for their part, were limited to the areas around the fort at Annapolis Royal and the fishing post at Canso. Their administration was essentially a form of military government not unlike that of the French under Louis XIV; the top military officers formed a ruling council led by the governor, who was also the commanding officer. Unlike the French regime, this governor, Richard Phillipps, was frequently absent from the colony, leaving matters to his lieutenantgovernor. The British were essentially an occupying force, since no colonization of their own was forthcoming. As before, New Englanders were chiefly interested in the fishery and in trade, while Great Britain was absorbed with other matters. The main task of the ruling council was thus to keep the peace. Unfortunately, they were usually divided by rivalry and personal antagonisms. As in 1654 and 1670, the inhabitants were offered the choice to leave the colony with their possessions unmolested or to stay and become subjects of the new government. Of course, the only viable alternative during the earlier era had been to abandon their homes and return to France, so this was not much of a choice. But in 1714, the situation had become much more complex. The French were pressuring the Acadians to move to Île Royale, and the inhabitants had duly sent a number of representatives to survey the area. Meanwhile, the British had realized that the departure of the Acadians en masse was counter to their interests and were pressuring them to stay, promising that .:.

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their property and their religious practices would be respected. Most ultimately chose to stay. After as much as seventy years in the colony, families had spent generations building their farms and their livelihoods. They were also used to their relative autonomy, which the weak British regime seemed in no position to threaten. Some probably hoped that the peace would be lasting, while others reasoned that it would not be long before the French were back in power. In either case, staying put seemed preferable to starting all over again on an unknown rocky island. The Acadians’ decision to remain and the ongoing peace led to a rapid expansion of their rural communities; this period is often considered their “golden age.” The population grew from about 2,500 in 1714 to over 14,000 in 1752, and there were similar increases in the amount of land cultivated and the numbers of livestock.73 They reached, at least temporarily, an understanding with the British regime, in which they accepted the government’s authority and elected representatives to work with it in exchange for an acceptance of Acadian neutrality in future conflicts. All was not idyllic, however. I have already mentioned the war between the Mi’kmaq and the British during the 1720s. Most of all, the entirely colony remained a borderland in which both the British and the French continued to place demands on the Acadians. When war resumed between the imperial powers during the 1740s, these demands increased and, when the colonists could not or refused to fulfill them, culminated in the Deportation.

The Demands of the State What the state required of its subjects was an essential feature of the political environment. The most prominent demand imposed on the Acadians was the British requirement for an oath of allegiance. Famously, they refused to swear without conditions that exempted them from bearing arms, clinging stubbornly to the neutrality that they had learned was essential in a contested borderland. In the Loudunais, the goals and needs of rural society were generally consistent with those of the state, but in Acadie/Nova Scotia, rural and imperial interests were in conflict, and an effective state–subject relationship

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never developed. Rare officials like Villebon understood the tenuous situation of the colonists, but for most governors and especially for the British, who perceived themselves as being surrounded by enemies, the lack of commitment shown by the Acadians fed their paranoia and distrust. Neutrality made sense for the colonists given the backand-forth nature of the imperial conflict, but both France and Great Britain saw them as pawns in their larger struggle and would not leave them alone. From a rural perspective, loyalty was first and foremost to family and the immediate community or parish. The heads of household belonged to a parish assembly that met regularly to discuss current issues and annually elected a delegate or representative called a syndic (I will examine these institutions of local governance in more detail in chapter 5). Rural inhabitants tended to look long-term, since most families lived in the same region over generations. Thus, their primary concern was maintaining order, which would ensure the transmission of their inheritance and protect both their harvests and their way of life.74 The state was essential for this, providing security forces, justice, and aid during times of crisis, such as a particularly bad harvest or epidemic. It was, at least in theory, an ideal partnership. The state needed money and supplies for its wars abroad, and peace and stability at home. This required the co-operation of rural society. Rural society needed peace and security, but also access to larger structures such as markets and courts.75 This required the leadership and resources of the state. Of course, most peasants probably did not think in these terms, and many likely resented taxes, especially when they were increased to pay for the king’s latest dynastic wars. But they still grudgingly paid them. Perhaps most of all, peasants valued their autonomy and, by giving the state its due, they gave its officials every reason to leave them alone.76

Fiscal Demands By far the most significant state demand on the rural communities of the Loudunais was the consistent and timely submission of tax revenue. This was the backbone of the state’s finances; it was no exaggeration that “without money, there would be no king,” and that the

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paying of taxes was central to early modern concepts of allegiance and the obligations of subjects. The taille was the oldest and most important direct tax, originating in a medieval levy on non-combatants that became permanent in the fifteenth century. Nobles, clergy, and many officials were exempt. Parish assemblies selected collectors from among the habitants, who drew up the rolls and gathered the funds on a quarterly basis, turning them in to the official receivers. The intendants and their subdelegates supervised this process, reporting to the contrôleur-général des finances.77 The amount of the assessment was quite modest and stable. When we take population growth and especially inflation into account, its relative weight actually decreased by the end of the eighteenth century. In the words of one historian, it represented a “somewhat derisory sum” that was regularly paid on time.78 The taille assessment was not closely related to the actual wealth or income of the inhabitants, and so its actual burden varied considerably between communities. For example, the residents of Loudun paid less than the average, while the parish of Martaizé paid somewhat more. By the eighteenth century, a variety of other direct taxes were added to the principal of the taille. These were tied directly to specific state expenses like the army and public works. The main military taxes were the ustencile (literally “implements,” collected in principle to support officers on campaign) and the quartier d’hiver (“winter quarters,” supposedly levied to feed and shelter soldiers when not on campaign). These military and accessory taxes as much as doubled the assessment of the taille itself.79 Salt was an important preservative for rural society but was not widely available, giving the state an opportunity to control its production and tax its use. While in one sense a tax on consumption, the gabelle was really another direct tax because every household was levied the amount of 1 minot of salt (36–9 litres). Only the poorest families, those who paid less than 30 sous (s)80 of taille, were exempted. It was administered like the taille as well, with parishes assessed an overall amount and responsible for its collection.81 The salt tax was widely hated because it was applied so unevenly across France. In jurisdictions like Tours labelled grandes gabelles, a minot cost as much as 62 livres tournois (lt).82 Poitou was considered a province rédimée, paying

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Table 2.2 Taille assessments and population of the élection of Loudun, 1698–1788 Year

Taille assessed lt

No. of households

1698 1744 1760 1778 1788

32,807 28,142 31,295 32,807 35,580

4,834 4,000 4,200 5,685 5,574



Average tax rate lt 6.79 7.04 7.45 5.77 6.38

Sources: “Estat des finances de la généralité de Tours,” 1744, série C512, AD I-L; “État des finances de la généralité de Tours,” 1760 série P5818, AN; “Tableau de l’élection de Loudun,” 1789, série C849, AD V; Dumoustier de la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire de Loudun, 69–71; C. Chevalier, Tableau de la Province de Touraine, 1762–1766: administration, agriculture, industrie, commerce, impôts (Tours: Imprimerie Ledevèze, 1863).

Table 2.3 Taille assessments and population within the élection of Loudun, 1788 Parish Loudun Aulnay La Chaussée Martaizé élection

Taille assessed lt

No. of households

4,919 266 420 1,272 35,580

1,025 50 106 161 5,574

Average tax rate lt 4.80 5.32 3.96 7.90 6.38

Sources: “Tableau de l’élection de Loudun,” 1789, série C849, AD V.

6–9 lt a minot. The price in Brittany, which was exempted from the salt tax, was 2–3 lt. Territories on a fiscal frontier often had their own rates – a 1667 edict set the price of a minot in the Loudunais at 14 lt 2 s 6 deniers (d). This was still double the amount paid in Poitou but far less than that paid in the rest of Touraine. The Loudunais rate was equal to nineteen days’ work at good wages (15 s/day), the market value

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Étapes 1% Taillon 1%

Maréchaussée 3% Public Works 4%

Quartier d'hiver 13% Principal 55% Ustencile 23%

Fig. 2.1 Taille assessment for the élection of Loudun, 1744. Source: “Estat des finances de la généralité de Tours,” 1744, série C512, AD I-L.

of about 11 boisseaux of wheat (1.2 hectolitres) or double to triple the principal of the taille. Not surprisingly, salt smuggling was a virtual cottage industry in this border region.83 From the later reign of Louis XIV onwards, the monarchy increasingly levied so-called extraordinary (temporary) taxes on all of its subjects. The first of these innovations was the capitation of 1695. This was assessed by fitting everybody into a system of twenty-two classes that ran from the high nobility and clergy down to ordinary workers. As with the gabelle, the poorest subjects were spared altogether. The twenty-second class paid 1 lt, while the most prestigious members of the Loudunais, such as the officers of the élection, law court, and municipal council, were assessed in the sixteenth class at 30 lt. Ploughmen and wine producers fell between the sixteenth and twenty-second classes. Not surprisingly, there was much opposition to this new tax, particularly among the privileged orders.84 Extraordinary taxes more precisely tied to wealth were developed in subsequent years. First came the dixième (one-tenth), assessed between 1710 and 1717, 1734 and 1737, and 1741 and 1749. There was still a lot of guesswork involved. Royal officials estimated the wealth in a particular community to calculate

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an assessment and then left it to the parish assembly to divide it up. In 1749, the state added a permanent “extraordinary” tax, the vingtième (one-twentieth), which functioned in a similar way and was justified on the grounds that it was needed to pay down the national debt. The Seven Years War placed further strain on the state’s finances, leading to two additional vingtièmes in 1756 and in 1759.85 How significant were these fiscal demands for the typical rural inhabitant? Fortunately, the old regime administrators made it possible for us to answer this question with some accuracy, thanks to the taille tarifée. This was an attempt to rationalize the traditional taille by explicitly linking its assessment to a household’s property, livestock, and income.86 Attempted and abandoned first under the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans, the taille tarifée was later instituted in several jurisdictions including Tours in 1737. One study of Haut-Poitou found that the resulting assessments were somewhat higher, between 8 and 13 lt per household.87 Still, a detailed examination of the levy demonstrates that the relative burden remained small, with the land and livestock of peasants taxed at the marginal rate of 1 to 3 per cent, while wealthier millers had to contribute 10 per cent of their income.88 When all of the various taxes are taken together, the inhabitants of the Loudunais paid on average about 30 lt each year during the seventeenth century and perhaps as much as double that during the height of the Seven Years War in the mid-eighteenth century. In the next chapter, I will analyze the rural economy in detail. The results indicate that even in the mid-eighteenth century, state fiscal demands took up only about 10 to 15 per cent of peasant income. Compare this with the 15 to 26 per cent of their income that most Canadians pay today as well as the hefty property assessments, sales taxes, and hidden impositions like tariffs and fuel surcharges that are simply part of the price of consumer goods. It is certainly true that when crop yields were poor or wheat prices low, taxes took a larger slice of rural revenue, narrowing profit margins and increasing deficits. But the state’s fiscal demands, even under war finance conditions, were not unbearable provided the harvest did not fail. Year after year, rural society in the Loudunais met its obligations. In Acadie, France taxed the rural population neither indirectly nor directly. There were no tax rolls, though various censuses were

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Table 2.4 Rate of the taille tarifée on rural property and income Possession Value Tax % Good land Average land Poor land Oxen Dairy cows Pigs Sheep Millers Artisans

10–12 lt 5–6 lt 2 lt 100 lt 30 lt 30 lt 3 lt 1 s 10 d Income Income

2 s, 6 d 1 s, 8 d 10 d 10 s 8 s 5 s 1 s 2 s/lt 1 s/lt

1.5 2 3 0.5 1.3 0.8 1.5 10 5

Sources: Dominique Guillemet, Nicole Pellegrin, and Jacques Peret, Le Haut-poitou au XVIIIe siècle: la société d’une paroisse rurale: la Villedieu-du-clain (Poitiers: Geste, 1981), 111–12.

compiled between 1671 and 1707 so the authorities had a reasonable knowledge of the wealth of the inhabitants. It seems that the French never had the continuity, expertise, or clout to get a tax system started. The Acadians did pay rents, which were small, token amounts acknowledging the lord’s eminent ownership of the land. The peasants of the Loudunais also paid such rents on the land they owned or leased. In 1733, the British government purchased the seigneurial rights of Agathe La Tour for £2,000 and began collecting these rents as government revenue. This was not really a tax, but the continued collection of seigneurial rights now possessed by King George II. After the first year, Governor Phillipps reported derisively that the whole revenue of the province was just thirty pounds sterling.89 Yet the levy was continued, and collectors from among the Acadians were authorized to be paid three shillings for each pound. Rent rolls were developed and payments were made regularly, just like the administration of taxes by the parish assembly in the Loudunais. For example, the residents of Annapolis Royal paid 1,492 lt annually in the years 1739 through 1741, a not inconsiderable sum that represented approximately the equivalent of the 6 lt the average household of the Loudunais paid in taille.90

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These rents were potentially the beginning of an ordinary tax system in Acadie, which would have gone a long way to pay for the administration and the garrison, and ultimately the establishment of official institutions and public services. Why, then, did the British not expand their fiscal demands? The obvious answer is that they would have been too weak to enforce it or, worse, this would have pushed the Acadians to abandon the colony and join the French. This decision probably also reflects the British tradition of taxation through parliamentary representation, which the military government of Acadie was in no position to provide. Interestingly, at least one lieutenantgovernor suggested that the creation of a political assembly for the Acadians would help to make them good British subjects.91 It is probable that the Acadians would have been quite willing to pay a basic tax in exchange for increased security and services in their colony. The inhabitants of Annapolis Royal, at least, would have been able to claim that it was forced on them, should the French or Mi’kmaq question them. In reality, the British Council had little real interest in protecting Acadian communities or providing civil services. First, they were military officers focused on the conflicts with their enemies. Second, they hoped to eventually settle an English-Protestant population that would assimilate or displace the French-Catholic Acadians entirely. In sum, the British did not create a tax regime in Acadie because it would have created a state–subject relationship the British were not interested in having and would not have helped achieve their imperial goals.

Military Demands During the reign of Louis XIV, when France’s army was greatly increased and many wars were fought, new military demands were placed on the inhabitants of the Loudunais. As we have seen, several taxes were levied which helped pay for the provisioning, equipping, and billeting of the king’s soldiers. Since there were not enough barracks, some people had to actually take the soldiers into their homes, particularly during the winter. The state tried to ensure that this burden was shared evenly, and we know that troops were occasionally billeted in the Loudunais. The intendant of Tours reported in 1711 that the soldiers quartered at Loudun lived “with too much license,”

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stealing from merchants and harassing the civilian population. He also complained that the cost to feed the soldiers was much higher than the money sent by the state to reimburse the local population.92 This was a recurring theme. In 1749, a large force of twenty-four companies was lodged throughout the généralité of Tours, including in Loudun, but the controller general rather bluntly denied the intendant’s request for additional funding.93 Billeting soldiers was disruptive, but Louis XIV’s decision in 1688 to create a state militia resulted in widespread opposition.94 From then on, every parish would be expected to provide and equip one soldier. The term of service was three to six years and parishes were expected to replace men whose time was up, had deserted, or been killed or wounded. The wage of a militia soldier was just 2–4 s a day, less than half the general wage for workers in the Loudunais, though he was also fed. The initial equipping of a militiaman was supposed to cost the parish about 44 lt, though the intendant of Poitiers estimated the actual cost at 71 lt each. He further advised his superior that he had been obliged to spend an additional 35,000 lt transporting the first group of 750 militia to Poitiers, guarding them so that they did not desert, and searching for those who managed to escape. Parishes were also required to provide an additional 18 lt and 10 s each January for further equipping and provisioning of their militia soldier.95 In short, the idea quickly became expensive. The unfortunate recruit was supposed to be chosen from all unmarried men in the parish by a lottery presided over by the delegate (syndic). Often, peasants searched for ways to beat the system. Some parishes paid regiments directly to recruit their own man from somewhere else. Members of the rural elite paid other young men as much as 90 lt to take the place of their own children, giving a cut to the officer involved to avoid any fuss. Most commonly, those in the recruitment pool rushed to get married. In 1692, the intendant directed that lotteries were to be fair and that the soldier chosen had to be an inhabitant of the parish. Those who had married within the last three years would still be eligible. Corporal punishment was threatened for violations.96 The impact of the militia system was certainly wide-ranging across the countryside. One thousand peasants marched off “under arms” in 1691 from Tours, another 1,500 in 1706. At the height of the War of the

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Spanish Succession (1702–13), 200,000 militia were under arms across France. Intendant Turgot noted that of the 300 militia dispatched from Tours in 1702 to join the Regiment of Béarn, those from the Loudunais were “very fine.”97 In the eighteenth century, the state attempted to reform the militia. First, an ordinance of 1726 set the eligible age range at sixteen to forty.98 The term of service was set at six years, after which the intendant would provide an unconditional discharge. In an attempt to make service more appealing, the government exempted militia soldiers from all taxes during their service and for three years afterward. When not required for active duty, they were to drill together just once a year to keep up their skills. At the same time, the state also increased the penalties for disobedience. Simply not showing up to the annual training assembly carried a two-year prison term and a loss of taxexempt status for one year. On a second offence, the derelict soldier would be sent to the galleys for three years and subsequently would still have to complete his service. Desertion during active service was considered particularly heinous. Urbain Cochard from the Loudunais was sentenced to the galleys for life when he deserted the Battalion of Saumur in 1761, at that time stationed in Montpellier.99 During the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War, the militia from western France served far from home, on the eastern and southern frontiers of the state, or even farther away. Unsurprisingly, most peasants viewed this service with dread. The Duc de Choiseul reported that a few recruits had gone to the extreme of cutting off their trigger finger to avoid service. Far from showing sympathy, he recommended the culprits be sent to the galleys, since they could still row.100 The rural parishes of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé provided their share of recruits.101 In all, perhaps 3,000 peasants from Poitou served in the militia up to 1789. We know little about their experiences with the army. In general, the militia formed a sort of replacement pool for regular units, and an unknown number later enlisted with the army. Most militia soldiers ended up performing less dangerous tasks than those of regular troops, such as trench digging and watch duty. During the Seven Years War, militia battalions were used to garrison fortifications on the state’s frontiers, freeing more professional soldiers for campaign elsewhere. Militia soldiers might also augment the forces conducting a prolonged siege. The militia’s inherent

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problems were perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that the state did not try to ask for more than a single soldier from each parish and often let the requirement lapse entirely. The system was controversial and subject to manipulation, which usually placed the burden more heavily on the poorest households.102 We should not forget the physical, emotional, and psychological toll of this service for those few unfortunates deployed for extended periods during major wars, not to mention the consequences for their families. As with taxes, however, the weight of the state’s military demands should not be exaggerated. Mustering a single person in a parish every six years, and providing money to equip him once a year, was hardly a major undertaking. In Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, about 1 in 110 men might be chosen. Most of the time, the designated militia soldier was only required to show up once a year for training. Military demands in Acadie were far more extensive. First and foremost, the French and British governors needed provisions for their isolated garrisons. Neither New France nor New England was much help; in the eighteenth century the imperial centres of Louisbourg and Boston had to constantly import food just to feed their populations. Billeting soldiers with the Acadians was not really an option since rural settlement was dispersed throughout the marshland, not concentrated in towns or near the fort.103 In addition to making it difficult to conduct operations, this would have aggravated the high risk of desertion. The British also worried about the Mi’kmaq, who were proficient in ambushes against small groups and were much more familiar with the terrain. The best solution was to get the Acadians to bring their produce to them. Villebon routinely ordered provisions from Grand Pré and Port Royal while he maintained his headquarters at Nashwaak in the 1690s. After the British took Port Royal in 1710, they threatened the nearby community of Grand Pré with plundering and even executions if they did not provide immediate “contributions” including furs and produce. The Acadians claimed that they lived in relative poverty but did come up with half the amount ordered, to a value of 3,000 lt. Five receivers were commissioned from among the colonists to forward further “voluntary” contributions.104 In 1731, LieutenantGovernor Armstrong ordered 200 quintals of biscuit (9,072 kg) and 60 hogsheads of peas (132 hl), as well as sheep and cattle, while in the

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1740s, the French commander Duvivier directed the Acadian deputies to provide livestock and bread for his expeditionary force on a weekly basis. He also demanded fishing lines, oxen teams, horses, and workers to support his campaign.105 Requisitions were direct, and reflected the assumption of military officials that the population owed obedience as well as their ability to coerce that obedience with the troops on hand. However, most of the time, governors were not in a position to force the Acadians to do anything, and so they had to rely on trade. French authorities complained during the seventeenth century that the colonists were all too willing to help their enemies by supplying grain to Boston. Such smuggling was condemned by Louis XIV, but Villebon understood that until the French were able to create a secure environment and a well-supplied market, the Acadians had little choice but to trade with the English. When visiting Beaubassin in the winter of 1692–93, he pragmatically made himself scarce when an English trading vessel arrived. After 1710, the British found themselves largely dependent on Acadian produce. When the trade was slow, the Council was quick to send out messengers to find out “the Reasons why they do not as usuall come into these parts and vend their commodities.”106 Later, British officials decried Acadian smuggling to Louisbourg. Governor Phillipps built a grain warehouse at Annapolis Royal in 1720 and declared it the only official trading centre for the colony. At the same time, he confided to his superiors in London that the Acadians outside the town “know very well that they are out of my power” and would continue to trade with the French. Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong later estimated that the inhabitants took four hundred cattle and at least as many sheep to Louisbourg every year, while cargo lists from Louisbourg in 1740 indicate that they were trading livestock and supplies of oats for feed, as well as smaller amounts of peas, wheat, and fish.107 The borderland nature of Acadie/Nova Scotia meant that trade was hard to control or restrict. Certain individuals hoped to profit by supporting one side or the other, such as the Robichauds, who carried out work and provisions contracts for the British garrison. Nicolas Gautier assembled a large herd of livestock for the French expeditionary force in 1746, provided information on the British fort’s defences, and even lent his home to serve as the French headquarters.108 Most Acadians,

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however, connected their political neutrality with the concept of free trade and would have agreed with the deputies of Beaubassin who advised a British emissary in 1727 that “they thought themselves at liberty to dispose of their goods to the first that would pay them for them whether French or English.”109 Military demands on the Acadians did not stop at requisitions and trade. Like the inhabitants of the Loudunais, the colonists were expected to provide occasional labour for infrastructure like roads, bridges, and mills. However, since Menou’s conflict with La Tour, they also found themselves required to construct and repair military fortifications. Often this work was paid, such as for the building of Fort Nashwaak in the 1690s or the expansion of Fort Anne after 1713.110 Labour was not all that the governors required. The Acadians could go places that they and their garrisons could not. Villebon enlisted several Acadians as letter carriers and emissaries, communicating his orders to the colonists and carrying messages to the Mi’kmaq communities, sending some as far as Île Royale. The British also used the Acadians as an intermediary with Aboriginal peoples, requiring them to negotiate the release of hostages or the return of merchandise captured by Mi’kmaq raids.111 Acadian knowledge of languages and the terrain was invaluable. Both the French and the British employed the Acadians as interpreters and compelled others to pilot ships or guide patrols. Information was also at a premium; Acadians like Abraham Boudrot and the Melanson brothers, who had contacts in Boston, were pressed by both sides to spy on the other, and the British expected the Acadians to keep them informed of Mi’kmaq movements.112 These obligations placed individual Acadians in potential danger, but before long, state officials sought to involve the colonists en masse in colonial defence. We often think of Quebec and the successful creation of a habitant militia there. Some young canadiens actively participated in raids against the New England frontiers, while lords from New France served as officers in colonial regiments.113 We need to remember that this was a very exceptional case and that the political environment of New France was quite different from that of Acadie. Iroquois attacks had threatened the colony from the beginning, forcing the settlers to protect themselves. Most of the settlers were not peasants; they came from urban backgrounds and many of them were

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former soldiers. The fur trade employed many young men, who gained experience hunting and foraging in the woods and learned from their Aboriginal allies. The government also organized a centralized militia system, with captains appointed in every community. Quebec was not a contested borderland and had little contact with Acadie. As we have already seen, France did not organize its peasants into militias in the same way. Louis XIV’s demand for a single man from each parish caused widespread opposition and mixed results. The inhabitants of the Loudunais had certainly not been compelled to serve during the medieval wars with England or the Wars of Religion. In France, battles were for professional soldiers and mercenaries. Thus, it should not be surprising that the French governors had great difficulty organizing a militia in Acadie. In addition to the simple pragmatism that resulted from numerous successful English attacks on the colony, the inhabitants had no experience of military service. The state appointed captains in the 1680s, including Pierre Melanson at Grand Pré, hoping that the involvement of prominent Acadians would encourage the others. In 1692, Villebon organized shooting contests at Beaubassin and ordered the inhabitants to build watchposts. In 1701, Brouillan ordered all Acadian men to serve in the militia, creating six companies and appointing commanders from those he thought the most suitable. He launched a new census in 1703 to register all those capable of bearing arms.114 When he attempted to call this militia out in 1704, he received a blunt refusal. The year 1707 stands out because it was the first and only time that the Acadians willingly answered a call to mobilize. Their participation helped Subercase defeat two successive English attacks. Why the change of heart? First, English raids had inflicted serious damage on all of the Acadian communities and there must have been great anger and even desperation among the colonists. The targeting of non-combatants discussed above made them realize that their survival was at stake. Second, Subercase was by all accounts a much more reasonable governor than Brouillan. He treated Acadian leaders with respect and appreciated their efforts. He did not expect the militia to fight like regular troops or man the walls. Rather, he effectively employed them outside the fort in small groups, as screens and diversions which could fire on English troops from relative safety and then retreat. This was a key moment in the development of the

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colony. If France had responded to this remarkable victory by sending more troops and supplies to help, it is likely that the Acadians would have continued their efforts. Instead, most of the colonists stayed at home when a larger British invasion force arrived in 1710.115 Perhaps the British remembered that the Acadians had fought with the French in 1707. The Council at Annapolis Royal after 1713 was obsessed with the potential but very unlikely threat that the Acadians would assemble and help the French and Mi’kmaq drive the British out. They saw Acadian claims of neutrality and fears of Aboriginal reprisals as deceptions. A disbelieving Lieutenant-Governor Doucett wrote “they turn their disobedience to his Majesty to a dread of the Indians which is impossible,” reflecting a continued association of French, Acadian, and Mi’kmaq alike as enemy.116 These fears were strengthened by the continued presence of French priests and missionaries in the colony, which the Treaty of Utrecht had permitted so that the inhabitants could continue to worship. Some of these clerics really were French partisans, though others encouraged the Acadians to maintain the peace. Both France and Great Britain were convinced that Acadian resources would be decisive in the next round of imperial conflict. Perhaps the idea of several hundred, even thousands, of armed men emerging to turn the tide of battle was just too compelling a dream (or nightmare) for state officials perennially insecure and short of soldiers and resources. This was why the oath of allegiance became such a concern, because it implied loyalty that included military service. When Sedgwick or Phips extracted oaths from the colonists at the point of a sword and then departed, there was little expectation that this meant very much. But after the Treaty of Utrecht, the Acadians were either to leave and remain French subjects, or stay and become British subjects. Their decision to stay but not swear the oath of allegiance perplexed the Council greatly. The Acadians, for their part, were quite willing to swear a conditional oath that acknowledged British sovereignty over their colony, so long as they were not required to bear arms. When the British finally accepted this condition in the 1720s, the inhabitants believed that they had reached a permanent understanding. The negotiation of the oath of allegiance was central to the relationship between the British government and the Acadians and reveals much about the

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colonists’ organization and sense of identity. I will return to this theme in chapter 5, which examines institutions of local governance. When the French launched a campaign to reconquer Acadie in 1744, they assumed that the Acadians would jump at the chance to support them. The French commander Duvivier arrived with less than one hundred soldiers and no artillery and was surprised when just a handful of colonists agreed to join him in a campaign of liberation.117 No doubt, the Acadians were reluctant to overtly help such a pitiful force and violate their accommodation with the British. They had enjoyed a rare and prosperous period of peace. Why endanger that, and risk a return to the raids and attacks of the turn of the century to help a deluded commander with no hope of victory? But we also need to consider that most of the inhabitants were peasants with large families who had little experience of military service. Acadian involvement in the February 1747 Battle of Grand Pré is difficult to define with the available records. They provided food to both sides on demand. One French officer wrote that several Acadians had joined the troops as guides. Others delivered warnings of an imminent attack to the British commander, who seems to have ignored them. After the battle, the deputies asked the French troops to withdraw because they lacked the resources to provision them for the rest of the winter. When peace was declared in 1748, both the British governor Mascarene and Duvivier acknowledged that the majority of the colonists had remained neutral. It is likely that the bloody fighting around their homes and the work of caring for the wounded and burying the dead afterward reinforced the conviction of most colonists to stay out of the war.118 Unfortunately for them, the colonists’ stance of neutrality would not be tolerated much longer. In 1749, the British established Halifax on the other side of Nova Scotia, complete with a group of Protestant settlers and a strong military contingent. The new governor, Cornwallis, insisted that the Acadians swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British king and actively support their imperial efforts by having no contact with the French. Denying Acadian claims about past agreements, Cornwallis answered “you deceive yourselves if you think that you are at liberty to choose whether you will be subject to the King or no.”119 The French also built up forces, demanded oaths, and

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expected the Acadians to serve as militia. The intendant of Quebec directed in 1751 that all male Acadians had to swear oaths and report to militia companies or else be treated as rebels and deported.120 When the Acadians at Beaubassin proved reluctant, Mi’kmaq allied to the French burned their community so that they would have no choice but to move into French territory. Three hundred Acadians were found under arms at Fort Beauséjour when it fell in 1755. This was used as evidence by Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence to justify his own deportation of the inhabitants.121

Conclusion The Loudunais had a long history as a military frontier reaching back to the medieval period. Major battles were fought there during the Hundred Years War between English and French, and during the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants. It remained a military/ religious frontier for much of the seventeenth century, the periphery of a larger Protestant movement in western France that was eventually dismantled and driven underground between 1629 and 1685. Not surprisingly, rural communities in the Loudunais were shaped by these conditions. They remained small and dispersed, and the residents did their best to accommodate whoever threatened them, without becoming actively involved. After generations of frontier living, the inhabitants of the Loudunais recognized that peace, co-operation, and stable government not only were necessary for their physical well-being but also supported a successful rural economy. In the eighteenth century, their interests and identity were increasingly subsumed into those of the state that had secured their frontier. The people who left there for Acadie, however, embarked in the mid-seventeenth century, and so had both long-standing and immediate experience of living in a militarized frontier. It was perhaps reasonable for them to assume that similar tactics would see them through in the New World as well. Religious differences, back-and-forth conflicts, raiders: they had seen all this before. The colonists moved out into dispersed communities increasingly far away from Port Royal. They traded freely with the New England, Aboriginal, and French merchants who visited them and tried to stay out of the violence. For

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much of the seventeenth century, this was effective, and the colonists were able to live in a kind of benevolent isolation, cultivating the land and building close relationships with neighbours and kin. But Acadie proved to be a different and more complex kind of frontier. W.J. Eccles described it as a border march of Canada, a base for the French and Anglo-American fishing industries, a French agricultural settlement, a base for missionary and fur-trading activities, and also a hinterland of rival metropolises.122 First, the various interests and visions for Acadie meant that the colonists could not be left alone. Their loyalty and their resources were important considerations in the struggle between empires. Further, the term “march” captures the fact that, like marches between Christians and Muslims in medieval Spain or the early modern possessions of the Austrian Hapsburgs, like the Anglo-Welsh border and mountain valleys in the Pyrenees, Acadie was a militarized and oftentimes dangerous frontier between rival and very different populations. As a result, the inhabitants developed their own “marcher” customs and identity.123 This was a significant difference from the Loudunais, whose inhabitants differed little from those of neighbouring Poitou and Touraine. The Acadian march was further complicated by the presence of the Mi’kmaq, another population with a distinct culture and way of life competing to control the region. The deterioration of their economic and demographic position, and their active involvement in the imperial rivalry on the side of France, gradually drove them apart from the colonists. The march conditions of Acadie were partly a function of the distance between centre and periphery. In general, historians have found that early modern monarchs “lacked the financial resources and coercive power to create overseas empires.”124 Scholars have dubbed the entire Maritime region as the “northeastern borderlands” because no European power could secure it militarily, populate it extensively, or draw economic benefits from it consistently. This could lead to collaboration across supposed boundaries, especially for trade. Villebon put it best in 1692 when he wrote that “without these compromises it would be impossible to exist in this country.” The inhabitants of Acadie certainly “knew on which side they belonged and, equally importantly, who belonged on the other side.”125 Yet they understood that imperial designs rarely took their well-being into account.

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Fig. 2.2 Square tower of Loudun. Author’s photo, 2005.

On the one hand, Acadie’s perceived strategic importance ensured that it would almost invariably be an area of contention during imperial war.126 On the other, Acadie’s tactical weakness made it vulnerable to the raids and invasions of poorly organized forces that would otherwise and elsewhere have failed. It was, in effect, an easy target. The only permanent feature of the colony was the lack of consistent sovereignty.127 The close relationship between prosperity and peace was obvious in the Loudunais; the century after the Hundred Years War and before the Wars of Religion witnessed remarkable growth, while the eighteenth century was an important time of recovery and renewal.

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Fig. 2.3 View of the harbour at Annapolis Royal.

Similarly, the population and agriculture of Acadie took off during times of peace, notably from 1654 to 1689 and especially after 1713. But the political environment was such that the return of war was virtually guaranteed. The Treaty of Utrecht did not fundamentally change this. The Acadians’ status moved from that “of a people on the periphery of French power to those of a border people of the English empire.”128 For a time, the colonists tried to recapture the benevolent isolation they had enjoyed in the seventeenth century, declaring themselves neutral and trading freely. But those who predicted that the Conquest of 1710 would lead to still more fighting were proven all too right when imperial war resumed in the 1740s.

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The distinctiveness of the political and military environment of Acadie was perhaps most evident in the nature of the state’s demands on the inhabitants. In the Loudunais, the goals and needs of rural society and the state coincided comfortably. Even the creation of a minimal militia or increased taxation during wartime did not break this relationship, though it certainly caused grumbling and upset. The state’s primary demands were fiscal, and it took care that rural society was normally able to pay. But in Acadie, the state was not able and not really interested in helping the colonists; instead, officials demanded a variety of services that involved the inhabitants directly in their conflicts, including their mass mobilization as militia. In this, the colonists were clearly not better off than their French counterparts. The Acadians quite logically pursued their own interests by trying to stay neutral, leaving war to the imperial powers. But the new British governors and French commanders who arrived in Acadie during the 1740s were not interested in compromise, and did not care about the agreements that previous officials had made. They demanded nothing less than full military support from the Acadians. When they refused to obey, the French burned their communities and the British deported them.

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3

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The Rural Economy

Introduction In the first two chapters, we saw how the natural and political environments influenced the development of rural societies in the Loudunais and Acadie. Many of these aspects, such as soil fertility and natural resources, trade opportunities and taxation, affected the economy. This chapter examines the rural economy in greater detail. What did the inhabitants’ farms look like? What did they trade and with whom? How much wealth did they generate and how was it divided among richer and poorer members of the community? It has long been assumed that the Acadians enjoyed a much higher standard of living than that of their counterparts in France. But until 1713, the evidence suggests that Acadian farms were relatively few and small, and that many families struggled to get by. After 1713, new trade opportunities and peace in the colony created the conditions for economic expansion, but some families were better positioned than others to take advantage of them. In the Loudunais, productive land and established markets also created a favourable situation. Many ploughmen (laboureurs) lived comfortably, while even the poorer day workers (journaliers) seemed to manage. But if some Acadians were prosperous, they were no more so than the better-off peasants of the Loudunais. In both places, the general impression is that people worked hard, but also that they gained something, even if they did not all share equally in the rewards of their labour. The experience of people in both places

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also demonstrates that the old notion of self-sufficiency was far from the reality of early modern farmers.1 The obvious example in Acadie is the way in which neighbours had to work together to build and maintain the dykes. More generally, all rural households needed a dwelling, food, labour, supplies, tools, equipment, livestock, and a host of other smaller goods and services to function, and no one could provide all of these things for themselves. Markets and credit, artisans and hired hands, exchange and co-operation were all essential.

Farming Land was, of course, central to the rural economy. According to the medieval legal notion of feudal tenure, which underpinned property law in the ancien régime, a complex and long chain of lords and vassals, stretching down from the king and the mightiest peers and churchmen to the merest peasant, held this land each from a superior, in return for loyalty and some combination of service and token payments (I will examine the seigneury and the importance of the lords in more detail in chapter 4). At some point towards the bottom of this hierarchy, however, the land was actually used by someone to produce crops, woods, or some other tangible produce. Whoever could make the effective decisions at that point about the permanent disposition of the land as a real asset was, for most purposes, its owner in our modern sense of the term. In the Loudunais, peasants held land in one of two ways. In the first, they could own a “concession,” originally from a lord, a transaction made at some point in time and valid in perpetuity. In return for the concession, the person who obtained the land contracted to pay a lord a symbolic, annual, and perpetual quitrent, called cens et rentes, and agreed that a fine (lods et ventes) would be paid if the land was sold or when it was passed on to heirs. As long as the obligations were paid, the land was effectively the property of the concession holder.2 The second form of landholding was precarious tenancy for a term of years, sometimes on a tacit basis, but usually regulated by a written lease. The “owner” of the land (in the sense described above) provided land on a temporary basis to a tenant, often with start-up materials like seed and tools. Tenants brought their own labour and other resources,

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such as draught animals, household fittings, and the like, that they might have. Sometimes such leases were a form of sharecropping agreement in kind (bail à moitié), with the tenant paying roughly half of the produce. Others were granted in return for cash (bail à ferme) and required the tenant to pay a set annual amount of money. The tenant was also supposed to pay any dues owing to a lord or to the Church and was expected to maintain the farm in good condition, like a “bon père de famille,” to use the stock expression often employed by notaries. Most leases were granted for terms of five to nine years, but they could be renewed with or without formal contracts. Indeed, some farms were leased to the same family over generations. Subletting was also possible, though many lords and landholders tried to restrict or regulate this practice. Anything from tiny plots of land to large estates could be leased. Our modern fixation on private, freehold forms of property sometimes colours our evaluation of past landholding arrangements. We might assume that concessions were inherently better and that leases went to the poor and the exploited. In fact, the opposite was often true in the Loudunais and elsewhere in early modern France.3 Land was expensive to buy because both it and its produce were greatly in demand. In the mid-eighteenth-century Loudunais, it cost on average about 185 livres tournois (lt) for each hectare, while the best arable could cost as much as 462 lt.4 A concession had to be purchased outright. Leases, by contrast, cost much less, and were paid on a yearly rate, the payments often split into instalments handed over during the course of a year. For sharecropping agreements, the cost was proportional to the harvest return, which could protect tenants during bad years. By leasing, a family, particularly a young couple just starting out, could acquire enough land and income to subsist and to save towards later expansion, without becoming tied down to a particular holding. Leasing could also provide access to more productive, larger farms called métairies. For example, a marshland farm called La Cabane brûlée in the parish of Martaizé consisted of over eight hectares of good arable, a house, and a small garden and meadow. The arable alone was valued at about 2,000 lt in 1762, yet the entire property was leased to the ploughman Jacques Renouard by a notary in Loudun for just

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45 lt each year.5 Using this farm as a benchmark, we can get an idea of the size of some of the estates leased out, such as that of ChâteauGannes, which included a large amount of pasture, leased by a Loudun merchant to the ploughman Antoine Giroire of Martaizé for 360 lt each year in 1758. In fact, about thirty different ploughmen families secured leases that cost more than 100 lt annually and thus presumably involved farms of fifteen hectares or more. The landlords of such farms, who usually lived elsewhere, enjoyed a consistent income while the tenants benefited from a consolidated and well-equipped holding that was easy to manage and provided a considerable return.6 In total, the vast majority of leases, over 80 per cent of those recorded by the notaries, were acquired by the wealthier peasants of the Loudunais, the ploughmen. They were not only those able to afford such leases, but also those trusted by the landlords with their properties.7 Most peasants also owned at least some land by concession. Such holdings were almost universally small because of the effects of generations of partible inheritance, which was customary in the Loudunais, and high contemporary land prices, which made further purchases difficult. We can see this in the land sales conducted during the same thirty-year period from 1735 to 1764. There were 1,200 such transactions (compared to only about 150 leases), but they concerned only an estimated 255 hectares or an average of one-fifth of a hectare for each sale. It was simply impossible for the inhabitants to amass the capital needed to create their own centralized farms from such concessions, and, given the bargain rates at which land could be leased, probably not even a good idea to do so. But they frequently bought, sold, and exchanged what land they did own to improve their situation as best they could.8 In short, the land was either not available or too expensive to make ownership, even the conditional ownership of conceded land, an effective option for most peasants. Instead, rural households had to combine management of their own small plots with leases of further land or wage work to get by. We have already seen how the flat, fertile plains and the climate of the Loudunais supported intensive wheat cultivation. Unlike the marshlands of Acadie, however, these plains had not benefited from centuries of sedimentation deposited by the tides and had been farmed since the medieval period. Therefore, the inhabitants could not simply

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plant wheat every year or they would quickly exhaust the soil. Instead, they followed a triennial rotation of wheat, secondary grains, and fallow, which not only gave the soil a chance to rest but also produced mixed wheat, rye, and barley, which the peasants could eat themselves as well as use as livestock feed. A few peasants supplemented their incomes by caring for the livestock of the better-off. A livestock lease (bail à croît) was similar to a lease in kind – the tenant managed the animals and paid half of the net produce, such as offspring, meat, wool, and eggs. This was a very old practice in many parts of France.9 The largest example involved 2,027 lt worth of livestock let by a merchant of Moncontour to the ploughman Jean Gautier of La Chaussée in 1746. This was an exceptional case; most livestock leases were for a handful of cows or sheep. In general, few peasants in the Loudunais possessed large, centralized farms. The wealthiest could lease a métairie, but most had to manage a variety of strips, plots, and pieces that were scattered across multiple parishes and seigneuries. Landholding was not a static arrangement. The many sales, purchases, leases, and exchanges of land between peasants demonstrate that they actively sought to improve their holdings, consolidating in a particular area or expanding into a new one. Many families moved to take best advantage of an inheritance or a new opportunity. The ploughmen, who possessed enough land as well as the tools and equipment to run their own enterprise, benefited from a degree of independence and comfort. The day workers, who did not, spent at least some of their time working for the ploughmen. In a later section, I will consider the proportions of these groups in the Loudunais and the degree to which their wealth and prospects differed. Landholding in Acadie was, in theory, subject to the same customs and laws as in France. The king conceded land to lords, who, in turn, conceded land to tenants in exchange for annual dues. The principal difference was that land was available and cheap but needed to be cleared and improved for agriculture. Furthermore, because of the periods of English rule from 1613 to 1632 and from 1654 to 1670, not to mention their sometimes violent disputes with each other, the lords in Acadie were not able to exercise the same degree of control or to invest in the development of their estates as generations of feudal lords

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had done in France. Most preferred to focus on the quicker profits that could be made from the fur trade or fishing. As we will see in chapter 4, we cannot discount the seigneury in Acadie, as most colonists still paid annual dues, but for our purposes here, the main point is that the colonists, especially after the death of Menou in 1650, were effectively free to settle wherever they wanted. As has already been noted, they seized this opportunity, creating family farms in the marshlands along the river near Port Royal, and later around Beaubassin and Grand Pré. These farms grew gradually, as the families themselves expanded, and over years of difficult labour. Dykes and canals had to be constructed and wild plants had to be cleared. Two to five years was needed for the soil to desalinate, all before the usual work of ploughing, planting, and the rest could begin. Leasing was rare, appearing only at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the practice was restricted to a few developed properties in Port Royal.10 There simply were no established farms to lease until much later. Although the colonists set up centralized holdings, they had to co-operate with their neighbours to construct and maintain the dykes. Dyke building and maintenance have received much attention from historians, who have speculated that this led to a unique collective spirit and sense of community.11 Others have tempered these arguments by emphasizing that, once learned, dyke building was “a relatively easy undertaking.” Six men with a team of oxen could raise about five metres of dyke in a day and a little less than 100 metres in a month, even when taking into account the time lost to periodic flooding by the tides. The team methodically cut sods, dug trenches, drove in posts, and built and compacted the walls, their routine broken only by the occasional insertion of a sluice box, clapet, and valve chamber (aboiteau).12 These “sod masons” probably preferred working in small groups, “drinking lots of cider while dyking, and singing ribald songs to combat the boredom of it all.”13 Around Port Royal, early eighteenth-century maps clearly show most households dispersed widely along the river, indicating that while neighbours would have worked together, this was not a community or large-scale effort. At Grand Pré, where there was a larger, more centralized cleared meadow, the work may very well have been organized more collectively since the same system of dykes, canals, and aboiteaux protected many farms. Further

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inland in the Minas Basin, seventy-five households were dispersed along eight different rivers – again, an image of co-operation, though very small-scale.14 In sum, although they did work together on these projects, we should be careful not to exaggerate the importance of such collaboration. Once cleared, the fertile marshlands provided an exceptional return, as much as double that of the best arable in the Loudunais.15 The Acadians planted a variety of crops including wheat, oats, peas, flax, and hay. Orchards and gardens provided other fruits and vegetables. However, the colonial censuses amply demonstrate that farming remained limited throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.16 In 1671, the inhabitants numbered only five hundred and had 150 hectares under cultivation. We can estimate the grain crop at 1,125 hectolitres, much less than needed to feed everyone. In fact, only in 1713, the date of the last census in Acadie, did the estimated production surpass the needs of the population.17 The limited farming of the seventeenth century no doubt reflected the long-term work required to drain and develop marshlands as well as the political and climatic instability near the end of that period. After years of war, storms, and breached dykes, it is not surprising that the census results do not portray a booming rural economy. Unfortunately, we lack documentation for the British period after 1713, but it is generally assumed that Acadian farming would have greatly expanded, thanks to a long period of peace. There is evidence for the 1730s that some Acadians leased out properties to others, a clear sign that part of the community had moved beyond subsistence agriculture. For example, the habitation of Beaux Soleil on the Annapolis River included marshland, upland, woods, pasture, and a house, which were leased for an annual payment in fine wheat (froment).18 Partial statistics available for 1750 suggest that farming had grown significantly, with over 4,000 hectares under cultivation, but interestingly, this increase was only proportional with population growth over the same period. Crop production was robust and met the needs of the colony, but it does not appear that large amounts of grain were produced for export.19 Where Acadian farmers surpassed most of their contemporaries was in the size of their herds. Already by 1671, there were more cattle than people in the colony, and almost as many sheep. The colonists

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continued to invest in livestock during the difficult period at the end of the seventeenth century and, by 1707, the population of 1,800 possessed 2,239 cattle, 2,445 sheep, and 1,832 pigs. Some Acadians had larger herds than others, but almost every family had a significant number of animals. This was an interesting choice. Certainly the meat (and milk) was part of a varied diet rich in proteins, fats, grains, fruits, and vegetables, which must have contributed to the general health of the colonists.20 However, it is also clear that these levels of production surpluses were for export. British officials at Annapolis Royal soon began to worry about the large numbers of cattle and sheep being transported to French-held Louisbourg.21 Livestock were easier to transport than grain and could be moved if the dykes were breached by storms or raiders. Most of all, they seem to have been in demand by the rival military forces of both French and English, as a ready supply of meat was hard to come by in their isolated circumstances and prohibitively expensive to import from abroad. The picture of Acadian farming that emerges is one of productive family farms dispersed in the marshlands, employing a strategy of mixed agriculture, growing crops mainly for their own food, and breeding livestock for export. Success was gradual and very limited until 1713, but the marshlands were fertile and big enough to support rapid population growth and ongoing trade thereafter. Young couples did not hesitate to move in order to start new farms, first from Port Royal to Beaubassin and Grand Pré, and later to Chipoudie, Cobequid, and many other settlements. Population growth drove a proportional agricultural expansion in land cleared and herds; by 1755, the limits of marshland exploitation had not yet been reached. The censuses also reveal considerable differences in wealth in Acadie, a subject to which I will return. Comparing the two regions provides an interesting perspective. Both the Acadians and their Loudunais counterparts had a clear strategy for farming that comprised a commercial and a subsistence focus. In the former, grain and vegetables were produced for home and livestock for export, while in the latter, wheat was sold to market while secondary cereals provided for domestic needs. These were not simple subsistence farmers crushed by poverty, but entrepreneurs who seized opportunities to expand or improve their lot. The biggest difference

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between the two was the landholding arrangements; in the Loudunais, land was expensive, already settled, and closely controlled by elites, who derived considerable income from their properties, while in Acadie, it was essentially open to those willing to clear (or drain) it. As a result, the better-off farmers of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé leased large plots of land while the rest made do with a combination of strips. Farming was already well established and so little start-up work was required, but soil fertility had to be carefully managed if it was to last. The Acadians had to undertake considerable work and time to set up their farms, draining the marshlands and waiting for desalination. Once established, however, they could gradually expand as their families grew and did not have to concern themselves with exhausting the soil or negotiating landholding conditions.

Markets Producing a surplus for export was all very well, but without a market it was a wasted effort. The inhabitants of both the Loudunais and Acadie were very market-oriented, organizing their farming to take best account of the trading opportunities available. The grain trade expanded in the Loudunais during the fifteenth century after the end of the Hundred Years War and the ravages of the Black Death, and its growth accelerated again during the seventeenth century. The growing population in both the cities and countryside of France created increasing demand, and the Loire River provided an accessible transportation network connecting Paris with Nantes. External demand for foodstuffs was also rising, particularly in England and the Dutch Republic. Although during times of war the government tried to restrict trade with these powers, the commerce paid well when it could be carried on. The Loudunais was a small but important part of this network. Grain flowed in two distinct circuits. For regional consumption, small, itinerant merchants (blâtiers) bought up peasant surpluses and took them to market towns like Loudun and the smaller centre of Moncontour. There was at least one of these small merchants in each of the parishes of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé. The lords’ estate managers and people who collected tithes, after collecting the dues and their share of the produce from any leases, probably bypassed these

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men and sold directly to the town.22 For the larger export market, a network of large and small urban merchants reached back from the major river port of Saumur on the Loire (north of Loudun) into the countryside to draw in surpluses from peasants. Grain would often pass through the hands of several merchants before making its way to Saumur. When competition was fierce, some merchants dispatched their own commission agents directly to rural areas, buying grain from peasants at high prices in order to secure larger shares of the crop.23 From Saumur, wholesale merchants supplied major cities up and down the Loire including Orléans, Tours, and Nantes, up a system of canals and waterways to Paris, and outward from the Loire estuary into the Atlantic, to Spain, Portugal, and southern France.24 In the mid-eighteenth century, the province of Touraine alone (including the Loudunais) exported just over one million hl to England annually, reaching a peak of nearly two million hl in 1764.25 In Acadie, the colonists were far from any urban centre and so they relied on trade for the metal, manufactured, and consumer goods they needed. In the seventeenth century, trade was supposedly under the control of the various French trading companies established in New France. These charged high prices, were unable to consistently meet Acadian needs, and had little interest in Acadian produce, as their primary goal was to collect furs and fish for France. An average of only eight ships a year came from France to visit Quebec between 1670 and 1730, and few of these ships stopped in Acadie along the way. The SaintLouis made three voyages in the 1680s, but its primary purpose was to drop off indentured servants (engagés). Governor Meneval noted that the colony was almost 6,000 kilograms short of supplies, leaving the inhabitants little choice but to trade with the New England colonies.26 Boston merchants like John Nelson were in search of food for their city, and more than happy to purchase Acadian grain and livestock, as well as furs, in exchange for general merchandise. They soon made a regular circuit to the major communities and even set up warehouses in Port Royal. Some of the French officials, such as the king’s attorney Pierre Du Breuil, cashed in on this demand, buying from the colonists and selling the produce in Boston. A few Acadians even traded there themselves, at least until war and privateering made the seas too dangerous.27 Already by the end of the seventeenth century, regional

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economic specialization was developing in Acadie. For example, Port Royal became known for its orchards and gardens, while Beaubassin excelled in livestock production.28 After the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ceded Acadie to Great Britain, British governors sought to funnel Acadian trade through Annapolis Royal, building warehouses and issuing permits to licensed merchants. They wanted to ensure they had enough food for their garrison – a demand that some colonists, like the Robichauds, were happy to meet. 29 But the officials’ hopes to gain revenue for the colony (and undoubtedly, garner a little personal profit on the side) were soon frustrated. Members of the Council openly competed with each other for their cuts, and official merchants were little better able or willing to bring regular shipments of goods to the colony than the French. Some New Englanders simply bypassed Annapolis Royal and visited the Acadians directly. In addition, the inhabitants of the more distant communities, such as Beaubassin and Grand Pré, increasingly traded with Louisbourg, meeting French merchants in the Baie Verte. Because this trade was clandestine, few documents have survived that allow us to quantify it, but there are a few clues: for example, we know that Joseph Leblanc established himself as a cattle broker during the 1730s, organizing the transport of cattle north where his brother-in-law, Pierre Allain, coordinated shipments to Île Royale. A 1740 document summarizing Acadian trade with Louisbourg in that year indicates that livestock was still by far the most important export, although smaller quantities of produce, timber, and furs were also involved.30 The colonists of Acadie were certainly advantaged by the available fertile land. However, they had difficulty finding reliable trading partners. Such trade as did exist was inevitably tied up in the political disputes of the region and was frequently interrupted by war. Symptomatically, the French governor of Acadie remarked in 1699 that Grand Pré “will become important as soon as these people find a market for their produce.”31 The growth of Boston and, later, Louisbourg, did create new commercial opportunities, since both these cities lacked adequate provisions. Some Acadians responded to this demand and became involved in the cattle trade, while others bought or carried goods for sale between the settlements.32 Many continued to focus on their family farms, content to be visited by the occasional trader and to

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exchange among themselves as needed. Meanwhile, in the Loudunais, land was expensive precisely because it produced a crop, wheat, which was greatly in demand and whose price continued to rise. The inhabitants benefited from an established, lucrative market for their grain and a widespread network of merchants and shops to coordinate the trade. This was the greatest strength of the rural economy, enabling even poorer peasants to sell wheat in exchange for the less fine foodstuffs and merchandise that they needed to get by.

Socio-economic Hierarchy While both Acadie and the Loudunais were well suited to supporting a strong rural economy, success was not shared equally. Early modern society was deeply hierarchical, and rural communities were no exception. The cattle trade in Acadie was led by a small group of prominent families, just as the wealthiest ploughmen in the Loudunais farmed the best land and produced the most wheat. Historians often have difficulty distinguishing the contours of this hierarchy. Socio-professional categories are often ambiguous, arbitrary, and inconsistent both in the language of the period and in the works of subsequent historians trying to analyze and understand societies and times no longer their own. For example, the term “ploughman” (laboureur) is misleading because it is not always applied, as is often thought, only to a wealthy or well-off peasant, but simply to those who owned a plough team, and not always even that.33 Historians have therefore tried to differentiate among the group by refining these labels; most agree that there was a wide range of wealth among them.34 The term day worker (journalier) is also confusing because many day workers owned and/or leased at least some land. The documents themselves provide limited and fragmentary information. French colonial censuses tell us the size of Acadian families, the amount of land under cultivation, and the number of livestock, but only down to 1713 and not everyone is counted. In the Loudunais, neither censuses nor tax rolls are available, so we must attempt to piece together a complete picture from parish registers and notary records. Although we continue to employ terms like ploughman and day worker, few communities were so simple as to consist of two distinct groups of prosperous and poor. Most studies of other regions have

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Other 2% Merchants 7%

Ploughmen 42% Day workers 49%

Fig. 3.1 Socio-economic hierarchy in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ca. 1750

found a large middle group, and the same was true in the Loudunais.35 Still, the distinction mattered to the inhabitants. In a 1727 notarial document detailing contributions to the parish vestry, everyone in Martaizé was listed as either a ploughman or day worker, even though there were several artisans and millers among them. This document further indicates that there was a significant economic difference between the groups. The ploughmen paid according to their relative wealth, while the day workers were assessed a flat, reduced rate.36 Using this and other records, we can identify the economic standing of 308 of the approximately 325 households in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé. In total, there were 124 ploughman and 147 day-worker households, with a higher proportion of the former in Aulnay (25 of 50 households) and a higher proportion of the latter in Martaizé (92 of 170 households). This virtually even split differed significantly from the balance in other rural areas in France, suggesting a more even division of the land and a close relationship between large farmers and the additional labour they would have needed.37 Furthermore, the 21 merchant households underline the importance of the market to the local economy. Even these small villages had enough grain and trade to support several businessmen.

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Other 7% Blacksmith 7%

Miller 9%

Weaving 44% Shoemaker 11%

Baker/Butcher 11% Construction 11%

Fig. 3.2 Artisans in Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ca. 1750

A closer look at the artisans provides further insights. Almost half of the artisans in these three parishes were weavers. There were also a number of masons and shoemakers. Some masons benefited from lucrative contracts to work for the local elite, while the weavers and shoemakers appear to have produced cloth and shoes for local use. 38 There were also several millers, bakers, and butchers, who obviously provided essential services for the inhabitants. These parishes were also served by a carpenter, a coppersmith, and a few tailors. The appearance at Martaizé of a hatter from Loudun suggests that more specialized urban artisans occasionally toured the countryside.39 These artisans also had a clear hierarchy. Only shoemakers and weavers exclusively numbered among day-worker households. A few professions, including those of miller, baker, and especially blacksmith (maréchal), carried higher status and were only held by members of ploughman families. Millers leased their mills just as other ploughmen leased farms, generally for set amounts of grain. Blacksmiths appear disproportionately among parish delegates (syndics) and as witnesses to official documents, indicating significant prestige and social status.40 How do these proportions compare to the socio-economic hierarchy in Acadie? This is sometimes hard to discern because the term

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35 30 25

Port Royal

20

Grand Pré

15

Beaubassin

10 5 0

less than 400

401 to 700

701 to 1,000

1,001 to 1,500

1,501 to 2,000

2,000+

Fig. 3.3 Land and livestock value by household in Acadie, 1707 (in lc). The livre colonial (lc) was worth three-quarters of a livre tournois (lt). Source: “Recensement de l’Acadie,” 1707, Census Returns on Microfilm, 1666–1901, LAC.

“ploughman” was rarely used and only for some of the original settlers, while other designations like “day worker” were not used at all. In fact, the Acadians almost universally described themselves as “habitants,” like their counterparts in New France. The word “habitant” was also used in the Loudunais; there, it seemed to simply denote those who lived in the community.41 Did the lack of “class” terms, which the inhabitants of the Loudunais assigned so rigourously but the Acadians seemed to have abandoned, mean that rural society was more egalitarian? Some historians have certainly thought so.42 The census records tell a different story. The 1707 census details 209 households in Port Royal, Minas, and Beaubassin, which can be grouped based on the value of their land and livestock.43 Significant differences of wealth can be discerned among the colonists. The richest had at least five times more land and livestock than the poorest. There was also considerable variation in the shape of the socio-economic hierarchy among the three major communities. Port Royal, the oldest, had more big farmers, but also a large underclass of small farmers and workers. The top ten families owned over a quarter of the cultivated land and livestock of the community. In the newer communities of Grand Pré and Beaubassin, we have to take into account that there had been less time for families to drain land and expand herds, explaining why only a couple of individuals possessed

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1,400+

less than 600

600 to 1,399

Fig. 3.4 Land and livestock value by household in Acadie, 1707 (in lc)

large farms there. In Grand Pré, however, there was still a clear group of leaders and a larger group of those with comparatively little. Only in Beaubassin did the hierarchy seem less apparent, with most families in the middle. We can use 600 lc as a benchmark for families possessing the minimum to meet their subsistence needs, as this was the estimated value of about a hectare of land and several livestock. Anything less than this is an indication that the colonist probably also worked for wages or at a trade to get by. Those with over 1,400 lc can be classified as clear surplus producers living in relative prosperity. Eighty-eight households (38 per cent) lived below this estimated subsistence line of 600 lc. This did not mean that they were povertystricken; rather, they were the equivalent of the day workers in the Loudunais. Forty-three households (18 per cent) appear to have been truly wealthy; the richest Acadian, Guillaume Blanchard of Port Royal, had more than eight hectares under cultivation and over eighty head of livestock. His farm compares favourably with all but the largest métairies of the Loudunais. A study of the Grand Pré censuses from 1686 to 1707 also shows distinctly unequal land distribution there, with only a few families involved in exporting for a profit.44 The largest group was in the middle – farmers who seemed to have enough resources to get by, assuming a decent harvest and good husbandry.

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60 50 40

less than 1.5 hectares

30

1.5 to 5 hectares

20

5+ hectares

10 0

Port Royal

Minas

Beaubassin

Fig. 3.5 Land cultivated by household in Acadie, 1707

We can be more precise about the size of Acadian farms. The census only recorded cultivated land, so it is probable that most households had additional land in the process of being drained or cleared, as well as land reserved for pasture. Still, the gap between the richest and poorest is obvious, with nearly 60 per cent farming less than 1.5 hectares. Only a handful of households cultivated more than 5 hectares. A careful study of livestock shows that only a few Acadian households raised large herds.45 What is perhaps most striking is how small the farms were. Of course, it took time to establish a family farm, and it would be reasonable to assume that newer arrivals added to the smallest category. Yet, the biggest differences in wealth were in Port Royal, a community that had been in existence for well over sixty years. In Acadie, where the population was small and dispersed, labour was expensive and in short supply.46 Most households only had recourse to their own kin for help, making it logical that farms would be small for young couples with no older children and fewer mouths to feed, and larger for older couples with many children including adolescents who could pitch in. This “demographic differential” was clearly slanted towards younger households.47 Still, the vast majority of the farms listed in the 1707 census were well within the ability of a new peasant couple to manage on their own. One historian estimates that an experienced farmer could work more than 10 hectares by himself.48 Even if we reduce this

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figure substantially to account for time spent maintaining dykes, clearing additional land, and taking care of livestock, it is clear that family size alone does not explain why Acadian farms remained relatively small. Instead, a number of factors that I have already mentioned were in play. The exceptional marshland soil fertility meant that less land needed to be cultivated for the same return, while the uncertain and sometimes violent political frontier, the difficult climate conditions, and the lack of market demand would have limited expansion. Writing of New France, Jean Hamelin noted that few habitants consistently produced large grain surpluses and suggested a tripartite division for rural society: consumers, producer-consumers, and surplus-producers.49 This structure applies well to the Loudunais and Acadie. In both places, a relatively small group of established families were truly prosperous, controlling the best and most land and also serving as millers, traders, and blacksmiths. They were at the head of a larger middling group of farmers who lived comfortably but without luxury. Finally, nearly half of the population consisted of poorer day-worker households that owned some land, but not enough to meet their needs, and so had to work for others or otherwise supplement their income with a trade. Such families were not necessarily impoverished. Wage work provided a decent return; indeed, the wealthier families could not manage their larger farms and herds without it. Weaving, masonry, or carpentry were important trades providing essential services, particularly in a place as isolated as Acadie where you could not simply visit a town for what you needed. Rural society was not egalitarian and resources were not distributed evenly, but there was a place and a role for almost everyone in the community. The notion that Acadie was a colony of abundance needs to be tempered by an understanding of the factors that limited the size of Acadian farms and contributed to the uneven distribution of wealth.

Measuring Prosperity and Differences in Wealth It is one thing to describe socio-economic groupings or classes within rural society in general terms; it is another to evaluate the economic prospects and living conditions of both richer and poorer inhabitants in detail, thereby quantifying the differences in wealth. To do this, I

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present budgets for actual families using documentary evidence for prices, costs, taxes, and harvest returns; I also examine marriage contracts, inventories, and even archaeological evidence of household goods.50 To sharpen the comparison, I have chosen to reconstruct the “budget” and living circumstances of four individuals who were at similar points in their life course – married with several young children. Of course there is a degree of artificiality in this exercise, as neither Loudunais nor Acadian households actually set out budgets in this manner, and we have to estimate items not quantified in the records like household and livestock consumption. Further, official figures provide a snapshot of prices at the principal markets, but the rate at which grains, vegetables, meat, and livestock were sold or bought undoubtedly varied throughout the year and in different locations. In short, these budgets are approximations.

François Giroire: Wealthy Ploughman of Martaizé The Giroires were the wealthiest and most extensive ploughman family in the area around Martaizé. François was not the richest, but he married at the relatively young age of twenty-four and quickly established himself with several purchases in the fields north of the village. Ten years later, he secured the lease of a large, consolidated farm from a merchant of Loudun, and by the time he turned forty he either leased or owned almost 11 hectares of arable. He further stood out as an exception among his contemporaries in that he issued loans to some of his peers and relatives. His life was not without disappointments, as two of his sons died as small children. He had two teenage daughters and a third infant son to look after.51 We can assume that Giroire followed a similar crop rotation as his peers, cultivating wheat to sell and for export, and mixed wheat for his family, and leaving about a third of his land fallow to recoup its fertility and perhaps to nourish a few livestock. His plough team was an important asset, and he likely lent it to poorer peasants for a modest fee or in return for their labour. From his harvest, he needed to reserve a percentage for seed, to pay the tithe, seigneurial dues, and taxes, as well as pay the annual charge for his leased farm. Additional fees to the miller and to grain merchants would also have subtracted from the total.

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Table 3.1 Budget of François Giroire Revenue

lt Expenses

34.3 hl wheat 337 Seed 34.3 hl mixed wheat (méteil) 272 Taxes Plough-team rental 30 Dues (tithe and seigneury) Total 639 Miller Merchant Lease Household grain consumption Total Net income 200

lt 76 66 70 7 35 50 135 439

At age forty, Giroire produced much more grain than his household needed for its subsistence; the sale of his surplus was the principal source of his income and generated a considerable profit. This explains how he was able to loan money to others and to purchase additional land. Taxes and the various other dues and fees were quite bearable. Of course, this budget does not include all items of Giroire’s revenues and expenses. We can imagine that François also had a garden and a few cattle, and that he may have bought some meat and sundries from the market as well. He may have had to spend some money on the upkeep of his tools and equipment, to replace a worn-out shirt, or to buy clothes for his growing children. He likely visited the local tavern from time to time, and may have occasionally purchased consumer goods like tea or spices. We can see that he made more than enough in a typical year to support a comfortable lifestyle. Giroire continued to purchase small pieces of land later in life and, at fifty, gained part of a rich inheritance which seems to have elevated him further.

François de la Mothe, Day Worker and Weaver of Aulnay The de la Mothes were a well-established but poorer family in the region. François married comparatively late, at thirty, and by the time

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Table 3.2 Budget of François de la Mothe Revenue

lt Expenses

2.2 hl wheat 22 Seed 2.2 hl rye 13 Taxes Wages 180 Dues (tithe and seigneury) Total 215 Miller Merchant Household grain consumption Total Net income 14

lt 5 34 4 1 2 155 201

he reached forty-five he had five surviving children – three girls of twelve, ten, and five, and two boys of seven and one. His economic transactions were a mix of land purchases and sales; he bought part of a house and a few plots of land near Aulnay but also sold several more distant plots scattered around the region.52 His holdings were meagre, two-thirds of a hectare, and so it is clear that de la Mothe spent most of his time working on other farms and weaving for local markets, using his wages to purchase the bread his family needed. These wages were not inconsiderable, ranging from 10 to 15 s per day. If he could count on steady employment, either on larger farms or as an artisan (or most likely, a combination of both) François de la Mothe broke even most years. His taxes were half those of his ploughman counterpart but also weighed more heavily upon him. By far his greatest expense was feeding his family. His wife died in the year for which we have drawn up this budget, and while this would have reduced the amount of food required in the future, it also placed further strain on the household since the eldest child was only twelve and the youngest still an infant. While still a young man, de la Mothe had supported his widowed mother, and he probably turned to another female relative for help. Like François Giroire, he had a variety of other expenses required to maintain his family. He would not, however, have been able to afford the same lifestyle as Giroire and probably made do with old furniture and clothes and a simple diet of rye bread and

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vegetables. The lease of a large farm or the purchase of a plough team, would have been beyond his resources.

François Boudrot, Prosperous Farmer of Port Royal François Boudrot was a scion of one of the oldest and most respected families of Acadie. His father, Michel, had come over with Charles de Menou and represented the colonists as their delegate in 1639, later serving as lieutenant général civil et criminel until 1688. In 1707, François was forty-one years old, married for fifteen years, and had five children, including two sons aged thirteen and ten. Boudrot actively cultivated almost five hectares of drained marshland, and we can assume that the greater part of this was in wheat and peas, the two principal crops of the colony at the time. Unlike the peasants of the Loudunais, he did not have to leave any of the land fallow, and he could also count on higher soil productivity. He would have possessed additional drained or cleared land, where he kept his large herds of twentyfour cattle, thirty-five sheep, and thirteen pigs. Although he did not have to worry about taxes, he still had to reserve some of his produce for seed, as well as pay other dues and fees. In a typical year, several of the livestock would become old or weak and be slaughtered for the table. In addition, he probably contributed to the costs of maintaining the dykes and canals in his area and may have hired some additional help during the planting and harvest seasons. This was an extremely productive farm. Boudrot could provide his family a rich diet of wheat bread, vegetables, and meat, while he still had both surplus produce and animals to sell. It is likely that secondary products like eggs and wool were also used by the household and that the family also nurtured a large garden. Although 1707 itself may have been a difficult year because of English attacks on the fort, Boudrot would normally have been able to trade for a variety of consumer and manufactured goods to improve the quality of life of his family. In fact, he seemed most interested in commerce, moving his family to Frenchheld Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1717 and starting a fishing and trading business there. By 1724, he employed a dozen workers and coordinated trade between prominent Acadians still in British Nova Scotia and the French at Louisbourg.53

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Table 3.3 Budget of François Boudrot Revenue lt Expenses

lt

36 hl wheat 380 Seed 48 14.4 hl peas 132 Dykes/labour 60 8 calves 200 Dues (tithe and seigneury) 36 10 piglets 200 Miller 12 15 lambs 105 Merchant 20 Household grain and peas consumption 286 Meat consumption/livestock attrition 240 TOTAL 1,017 TOTAL 702 Net income 315

Germain Landry, Small Landholder of Grand Pré Germain Landry was the middle son of another important Acadian family. His father, René the younger (an elder René had arrived during the 1640s and may have been a distant cousin), seems to have migrated to Port Royal after the English takeover in 1654. René died in 1693, but not before establishing one of the largest farms in Acadie, including ten hectares of cultivated arable and more than sixty animals. As one of fifteen children, Germain could not count on a large inheritance and seems to have continued to work with his mother on the family farm, even after he was married in 1694. Around 1700, he moved his family to the Ascension River near Grand Pré and set out to establish his own farm. By 1707, he had six children but had only cultivated a little over one hectare. He also had land set aside for his growing herd of twelve cattle, fourteen sheep, and fifteen pigs.54 Landry likely did most of the work in clearing this small holding himself. At thirty-three, Germain Landry was the youngest of the farmers in this set of four portraits. However, he was at a similar point in his life course, having been married for thirteen years and providing for several small children. He did not produce enough grain for his

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Table 3.4 Budget of Germain Landry Revenue lt Expenses

lt

12 hl wheat 127 Seed 14 2.96 hl peas 27 Dues (tithe and seigneury) 11 4 calves 100 Miller 5 8 piglets 160 Merchant 10 6 lambs 42 Household grain and peas consumption 253 Meat consumption/livestock attrition 150 TOTAL 456 TOTAL 443 Net income 16

family’s subsistence needs, yet his surplus livestock provided meat for the table and could be traded for additional bread and vegetables. He may have relied on his family still in Port Royal or new neighbours in the vicinity of Grand Pré. It is also possible that he foraged or fished along the river. Still, it seems that this farm was ultimately a failure, since he had moved by 1714 to Pisiquid along with several relatives to establish a new settlement which would ultimately become the Village des Landry.55 This budget clearly shows that the work of establishing a new farm in Acadie was difficult and not always successful. Many colonists produced only enough to get by, especially at first. Prolific families could be signs of health and prosperity but also generated their own hardships, splitting inheritances, and creating more mouths to feed. Landry certainly did not have the same opportunities as Boudrot to trade, expand, and live comfortably. In the Loudunais, the wheat export trade was paramount. Ploughmen like François Giroire, who owned or leased enough land to consistently generate surpluses, focused almost entirely on this market and it rewarded them well. Day workers like François de la Mothe experienced a trickle-down effect; they could sell their own small crops, and, more importantly, there was usually employment for them from the ploughmen. De la Mothe’s trade as a weaver was humble but would have kept him going during the seasons in which wage

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1200 1000

Other

800

Wages

600

Livestock

400

Crops

200 0 Giroire

De la Mothe

Boudrot

Landry

Fig. 3.6 Income of four farmers

work was harder to find. Clothes and blankets were constantly needed and there was no significant local industry to provide them. The focus on wheat was lucrative but also made the region vulnerable to poor climate conditions; a bad harvest would greatly reduce the ploughmen’s income and would also diminish the employment opportunities for day workers. In Acadie, the colonists benefited from exceptionally productive soils. François Boudrot had half the land of François Giroire, and yet generated almost as large a return on his crops. He also employed the style of mixed agriculture discussed above, tending troops of livestock. Boudrot’s wealth derived from his ability to produce enough grain for his family while selling surplus livestock. Landry’s newer and smaller farm invested heavily in livestock, seemingly to the detriment of further cultivation. In a colony where even the largest farms rarely surpassed five hectares, there was not the same demand for labour; wage work would not have been an option for Landry. He must have depended on selling his livestock to purchase the other food he needed. By far the greatest expense of any farmer was that of feeding his family, a burden particularly heavy on the poorest, where it could account for over 90 per cent of their income. This expense appears much higher in Acadie because the families were larger and their diet was richer and more varied, including wheat bread, regular meat, and

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800 700 600

Other

500

Taxes

400

Dues and fees

300

Seed

200

Consumption

100 0

Giroire

De la Mothe

Boudrot

Landry

Fig. 3.7 Expenses of four farmers

a variety of vegetables and sundries. Indeed, it seems not too great a speculation to link the fact that more children survived in the colony with their seemingly superior nutrition. In contrast, the household of François de la Mothe got by on rye bread and a variety of simple gruels, soups, and stews. François Giroire would have enjoyed a less crude staple of maslin or mixed wheat (méteil). He also would have eaten meat occasionally but, unlike his Acadian counterparts, he could not rely on his own livestock to supply it. Meat was four times more expensive than wheaten bread in Loudun, so such purchases would have been luxuries.56 Not surprisingly, bigger farmers like Giroire and Boudrot had to conserve larger supplies of seed and, since they produced more and had higher surpluses to sell, they also paid more dues and fees. They also had other expenses, such as lease payments and contributions to dyke maintenance. Taxes were an additional expense for the inhabitants of the Loudunais. I discuss them in more detail in chapter 2. While the Acadians were exempt from taxes, they certainly paid their portion of dues and fees. At first glance, these budgets reveal that the Acadians did possess considerable advantages over their counterparts in the Loudunais. Excellent land was abundant and livestock flourished. The wealthiest farmers in the colony, like Boudrot, generated half as much income again as prosperous ploughmen like Giroire (leaving aside the exchange rate on colonial currency). Meanwhile, among those on

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the poorer end of the socio-economic hierarchy, small landholders in Acadie gained twice as much revenue as day workers in the Loudunais. Yet, they had expenses to match. Neither Landry nor de la Mothe did more than break even, and both were exposed to climate and market fluctuations. In both places, the richer inhabitants enjoyed comfortable profit margins but not without putting much work into managing their various assets. They were not smarter or better than other farmers, but their families had the resources, the reputation, and the opportunity to set them up for success. In Acadie, the original core group of families tended to be in the best economic situation. Further clues about the nature of the socio-economic hierarchies in the Loudunais and Acadie can be gleaned from documentary and archaeological records about household fortunes and possessions. Marriage contracts indicate the value of the personal property (less real estate) of the new marriage community (communauté de biens), based on the dowry and dower given by the families of the bride and groom. Men might bring farm equipment such as seed, ploughs, or tools, while women typically brought money, household goods, and livestock.57 The marriage community was a legally protected construction; it lasted as long as the marriage, and wives could take their husbands to court if they squandered its assets. When one spouse died, the property of the marriage community was divided into equal parts – half for the surviving spouse and half for any heirs (which was in turn divided equally among them).58 In Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ploughmen communities were worth on average well over twice (558.8 lt) those of day workers (237.3 lt).59 This is an important benchmark because this assessment was made at a key point in the life course, when new couples were just starting out. This disparity increased with time. Contracts for second marriages show that day-worker communities were worth about the same (200 lt), while those of ploughmen had gained in value (669 lt). These results reinforce the conclusion from the study of the budgets that day workers tended to break even year to year, while ploughmen were able to gradually expand their farms. Sometimes the marriage contracts listed the personal property involved. A comparison of two such contracts in 1695 again illustrates the differences between ploughman and day-worker households. René Brissault and Marie Giroire, children of ploughmen from Martaizé,

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received a bed with pillows, sheets and quilts, a trunk, kitchen pots and pans, twelve goats, a team of oxen, four setiers of seed, and a small house. René Queniot and Marie Rutiault, children of day workers of Martaizé, received five setiers of seed, nine goats, a bed with quilt and pillow, a used trunk, and a cauldron.60 The marks of a wealthy ploughman family – a plough team, a house, plenty of household goods – were the starting foundation for Brissault and Giroire. The team of oxen alone, worth up to 300 lt,61 was more valuable than all of Queniot and Rutiault’s possessions combined. The latter received only some essentials and would need to either live with their parents or lease their own accommodations. Occasionally, complete inventories of movable personal property also appear in the notarial record, usually when a parent died while his or her children were still minors. Once again, we can compare the inventories of a ploughman, Jean Giroire, and a day worker, François Moreau.62 At first glance, the gap between rich and poor was wide indeed. Giroire’s property was valued at 1,120 lt, while that of Moreau was estimated at only 95 lt. However, Giroire also had considerable obligations and debts from his larger enterprise totalling 920 lt. He owed money to his estate manager for both a loan and a large lease of land, as well as over 400 lt to a merchant. He further had outstanding wages to pay to three domestic servants and farmhands, as well as outstanding payments on his salt tax and tithe. He was certainly not over-extended, but we should not exaggerate his margin of prosperity. In household goods, for example, the difference between Giroire and Moreau was not huge. Both had a number of beds, chests, and linens. Many of these items were handed down to subsequent generations – a stock or “capital” of personal effects that remained much the same over time.63 Giroire had some additional furniture, including a recently purchased lockable cabinet with front windows and a large table, and he also had somewhat more pots and pans, plates, and serving utensils in the kitchen. There were few other signs of luxury, however. By far the greatest differences in the inventories were in livestock, stores, and farm equipment. Over half of the value of Giroire’s possessions came from his livestock, particularly his goats, horses, and pigs. This was somewhat unusual for a ploughman of the Loudunais; his lease must have included pasture for the animals. Giroire also had two complete

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plough teams (though his widow sold one pair of oxen after his death), one hundred feet of wood planks and a stock of firewood, six setiers (785 litres) of seed, as well as some hay and sixty pounds of cloth. In comparison, Moreau had some firewood, five goats, and one cow and her calf. Thus, while the difference in the size of their farms was considerable, the contrast in their living conditions was far less dramatic. Though lacking the continuous notarial record of the Loudunais, enough clues about material life in Acadie have survived to make general conclusions possible about differences in fortune and living conditions. Ten marriage contracts remain from the years 1700–9, nine of which involved farmers.64 As in the Loudunais, these contracts recorded the value of the marriage community to be formed. This ranged from 50 to 180 lc, and averaged 119 lc. This was quite low, about half the average value of day-worker marriage communities in the Loudunais and even less if we take the exchange rate for colonial currency into account. One reason for the disparity was that land and houses were less expensive in the colony. But the contracts also show that most Acadian households had very few possessions. For example, the widower Charles Robichaud and the widow Marie owned just two cows, four sheep, and a few household goods (a bed and quilt, two pots, two plates, a few pieces of cloth, and a basin) when they married in 1703. The groom also brought some money, while the bride was given half of a house. Furniture, effects, and other material goods were particularly sparse. These were not rich farmers, to say the least. By 1707, Charles had just one hectare under cultivation, although like Germain Landry he had invested in livestock that now numbered fourteen cattle, eleven pigs, and nine sheep. In general, there was a discernible gap between smaller farmers who formed marriage communities worth 50 lc and larger farmers who formed ones of 150 lc or more. Like the ploughmen and day workers of the Loudunais, the difference in wealth was less in household goods and more in the value of livestock and equipment. Even the traditional elite sometimes only had modest fortunes and opportunities. In 1703, Jacques David, a military doctor from Quebec who was posted to Port Royal, brought 500 lc to his marriage with Jeanne La Tour. La Tour was one of seven heirs to the seigneury of Port Royal and Minas after the death of Alexandre Le Borgne in 1693.

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Ten years later, all she brought to her marriage were her seigneurial rights, which provided her with a modest revenue. This wedding was nevertheless a big event in the colony, witnessed by the governor, the lieutenant general, and several military officers. Significantly, when David died nine years later, La Tour apparently gave up her rights in Acadie and returned with her two children to France.65 In 1734, another former heir of this seigneury (a different Alexandre Le Borgne) was found penniless at Annapolis Royal and petitioned the British government for help. He was granted the right to cut hay on part of the king’s land near the fort and presumably spent his last days in that pursuit.66 The resources of the colony and lordly status clearly did not guarantee wealth and comfort in Acadie. Archaeological work on several Acadian houses has provided more information on how Acadian farmers lived. Unfortunately, we do not have similar data with which to compare Acadian houses with those of the Loudunais, though in the larger area of Poitou we know that peasant houses tended to have one or two large rooms and a cellar, and they were often shared by one or more extended families.67 In Acadie, the size and type of house were significant indicators of wealth. The foundations of nine houses, eight of them in Annapolis Royal and Minas, had an average area of 59 square metres (m2). There is a significant gap between the smallest houses (areas of 45 and 48 m2) and the two largest (86 and 100 m2).68 House size, of course, also had something to do with the size of the household. The building materials could be more indicative of wealth. Many homes were en colombage, which meant they had a wooden frame with the hollow spaces filled with stone, rubble, and/or mortar and then covered with a clay whitewash. The floor was packed soil or boards. The poorest houses consisted simply of posts planted in the ground with a cheap fill of stone, mud, and clay.69 As time went on, some families built new houses en charpente, which included a stone foundation and squared timber laid horizontally between the posts of the frame, and a wooden floor. At the home of Charles Melanson and Marie Dugas near Port Royal, the original house of simple posts burned down and was replaced by one en colombage. As the family became more established, they rebuilt the house twice en charpente, adding two stone chimneys, a bake oven, and a proper cellar. They may also have built a small windmill

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and a dovecote (colombier).70 The Blanchet house at Belleisle was en charpente and included a rock hearth, a bake oven, a clay chimney, a thatched roof, and a loft. The sleeping areas and some of the storage spaces (under the floor) were situated around the hearth to benefit from the heat. Poorer houses in Grand Pré had timber walls but no stone foundation, no chimney, and no bake oven.71 Pottery and other artifacts also hold clues to differences in rural wealth. Most of the dishes found in Acadian houses were durable and utilitarian. A few houses had small amounts of expensive porcelain. In Annapolis Royal and Grand Pré, most ceramics were of English origin, or Rhenish items commonly traded by Englishmen. In Beaubassin, most were of French make, and the results matched closely those found in archaeological excavations in Louisbourg.72 This is an important clue to the trading patterns of each Acadian community: most Acadians chose their items because they were affordable and available, not because they came from a particular country. True, a few homes had more expensive items. Charles Melanson was a prominent merchant at Port Royal. His home had two kinds of decorative porcelain, some shell-edged pearlware, glassware, and more expensive English stoneware for the table. Melanson also had leaded glass windows at a time when most colonists in Acadie and New France relied on oiled paper if they had windows at all. Other notable artifacts found at the site include mirror glass, brass buttons, iron scissors, glass pearls, amphorae, shingles, a sword point, an iron hatchet, and sewing needles. The hundreds of animal bones and mussel/clam shells indicate that there was plenty of meat in their diet.73 The less wealthy but still prominent Blanchet family at Belleisle owned mixing bowls, a colander, several mugs and tankards, glass bottles and storage jars, a pitcher, seven eating plates, five bowls, four cups, and at least one stemmed wine glass. They also had window glass and a couple of precious heirlooms including a brass cross, an icon representing the Holy Spirit, and a dove of white opal glass.74 Blanchet was a gunsmith, so it is no surprise that many musket parts were also discovered. Poorer homes excavated at Grand Pré and Beaubassin had far fewer artifacts, though fire and pillage may have claimed some items. Fragments of glass and porcelain were occasionally found, but the majority of artifacts were common stoneware.75

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The clues remaining to us about material life indicate that some Acadians were far wealthier and more comfortable than others. There were large differences in the size and type of houses, their sturdiness, and warmth. It seems that over the course of the eighteenth century, the gap between small and large farmers widened. Wealthier families built larger and better-constructed houses, and regularly traded produce in exchange for both practical and decorative manufactured goods. A similar increasing distinction was seen in New France, where richer farmers eventually built large houses completely of stone with shingled roofs. Most Acadians made do with wooden houses and a small collection of household goods, while some of the poorest families settled for a few essentials, a single room, and a floor of packed earth.76

Conclusion The rural economy of Acadie was very different from that of the Loudunais. In the colony, rich marshland soil provided exceptional yields but was also more difficult to prepare and protect. Furthermore, the lack of established markets and political insecurity provided little incentive to generate large surpluses. There was a demand for meat, however, particularly in the garrisons and towns of New England and, later, Louisbourg. Most farmers, including the smaller landholders, invested heavily in livestock and relied on selling surplus animals. Many Acadians did not cultivate enough grain to meet their large families’ subsistence needs, indicating that trade was essential to everyday life. Despite the apparent abundance of the land, many families struggled to get established, particularly in the period up to 1713. The work was hard and the drained land on the isolated homesteads was vulnerable to poor climate conditions, not to mention enemy raids. The Conquest of Acadie brought peace for a time, and we can trace a rapid expansion in the population and in agriculture, both cultivated land and livestock. But only a few families were able to create large, profit-oriented farms. They traded extensively and were able to construct stronger and more comfortable houses for themselves. This rural elite emerged largely from the core of original colonists who had arrived in the mid-seventeenth century. Their control of the best lands, the greater time they had had to get established, their extensive kin

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networks, and numerous contacts with merchants and political figures combined to give them a greater opportunity to prosper. This was not a static world; both rich and poor were willing to migrate in order to seize an opportunity. François Boudrot moved to Île Royale to better concentrate on commerce, while Germain Landry moved to the Minas Basin and then to Pisiguit in search of the best place to establish his family farm. Although the economy, centred on the export wheat trade and with few livestock, was so different in the Loudunais, this socioeconomic hierarchy and these differences in living conditions would have been entirely familiar to its inhabitants. Ploughmen like François Giroire were large farmers who owned and especially leased enough land to consistently generate surpluses of fine wheat to sell. Day workers, such as François de la Mothe, managed their own small holdings, but relied mostly on wage work for the ploughmen or artisanal trades like weaving to get by. Ploughmen tended to have their own houses and certainly had more household goods and a few newer items to enjoy. Day workers tended to rent part of a house and relied on the goods that were passed down to them by a previous generation. The principal difference between the groups was the opportunity ploughmen enjoyed because they owned all the equipment and stores they needed to get started; this was ensured when they got married and began a new household. A day worker simply could not save enough money or secure enough credit to buy (or lease) the land and the plough team, seed, and other equipment needed to become a large farmer. Indeed, the day workers could generally only hope to get by, remaining dependent on their more prosperous neighbours for work and credit. Ploughmen and day workers were tied together, but it was certainly an unequal relationship. This comparative analysis of the rural economy of Acadie indicates that the colonists were not better off than their counterparts in the Loudunais. The marshland soils were more fertile and general health appears to have been better, but local markets were limited and many households moved at least once in search of better opportunities. This was not a peasant paradise but a place that required hard work and co-operation. In both places, achieving true wealth, comfort, and independence was simply beyond the means of the majority.

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Fig. 3.8 Field “La Gravelle” in the parish of Martaizé, Cadastre, 1828. Source: Cadastre, 1828–9, série 4P 999-1005 (Martaizé), AD V.

In the Loudunais, only wealthy ploughmen possessed the equipment, livestock, and credit necessary to take on larger and more lucrative leases. Similarly, in Acadie an established group, linked by kinship and experience, controlled more land and livestock and lived in more comfortable and better-furnished homes. These structures emerged over time but, once formed, proved difficult to change.

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Fig. 3.9 Métairie “La Cabane brulée” in the parish of Martaizé, Cadastre, 1828

Fig. 3.10 Map of dyked marshland around Port Royal, 1708. Source: George Mitchell, “Survey Map of Annapolis River,” 1753, nos. 195 and 196, Department of Manuscripts, British Museum, London.

c h apter

4

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The Seigneury

Introduction “No land without a lord.” All land in France belonged to the king, who conceded it to the lords (seigneurs) in return for fealty and service. The same principle extended to France’s colonies. The first seigneurial concession in Acadie was in 1606, when Henry IV confirmed the grant of the territory of Port Royal to Jean de Poutrincourt. Yet it has become commonplace to dismiss the importance of the seigneury in Acadie, especially after the death of Charles de Menou in 1650 and the subsequent English capture of Port Royal in 1654.1 This gives the general impression that the inhabitants were more independent and less oppressed than their rural counterparts in France, where the seigneury was well-ensconced. This conclusion is misguided on a number of levels. First, we should not exaggerate the power of the lords of the Loudunais. Seigneurial dues were not heavy burdens and the lords had little local political power and less control over the lives of their censitaires. In fact, many were entirely absent. Second, we should not ignore the seigneury in Acadie. Like colonization in general, the seigneury in Acadie was certainly a work in progress, suffering setbacks due to political instability and wars. But the institution endured right up to the Deportation, with the colonists receiving land grants and paying dues. Many of the lords held significant prestige and economic clout, particularly in the seventeenth century. In fact, what was distinctive about Acadie was the political importance of the lords, who were often

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resident leaders. Some also served a military role, hearkening back to the medieval days of the institution when the lords provided security in exchange for their title to the land. Far from dismantling it, the British Council, themselves a group of military officers charged with colonial defence, later took over the seigneury as a way of generating revenue and increasing their power over their new subjects.

The Lords and Their Influence The origins of the seigneury in France extend back to the beginning of the medieval period. At that time, it was primarily a military institution, with the king granting territory to warrior lords in return for their allegiance and service. There was no centralized state to provide security, justice, or administration, so the feudal lords were the law in their lands. In the Loudunais, a frontier region during the wars between the English and the French, most seigneuries were awarded to military castellans and commanders charged with local defence. For example, the seigneury of La Bonnetière, in La Chaussée, was centred on a small walled fortress constructed in the fifteenth century and awarded to a long-serving sword noble family, the Vaucelles. The first lords of Aulnay were another such family, the Vigerons. Once conceded, most seigneuries remained with a particular family; they were required to pay certain dues and renew their fealty to the monarch whenever the property passed to an heir. Of course, marriages between families could result in seigneuries changing hands, and, like any other assets, they could be divided among multiple heirs. In 1579, Aulnay passed to the Jousserands, another prestigious warrior family from Angoumois. Nicole de Jousserand seems to have received the seigneury as part of her dowry in 1599 for her marriage to René de Menou. Her son Charles, who contributed so much to the early history of Acadie, inherited the seigneury upon her death in 1645.2 By the mid-seventeenth century, the seigneury had lost most of its military functions. A stronger, centralized state had emerged with its own professional army, a state that no longer wanted the lords to have their own private armies and thereby contribute to civil wars and rebellions. Sword nobles still served, but now on a permanent, professional basis as officers in the royal army. Meanwhile, those who

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served in the civil administration, such as royal bureaucrats, judges, and advisers – the so-called “robe” nobles – grew in influence, acquiring or purchasing seigneuries of their own. Many government offices could now be purchased, including some that conferred nobility, making advancement possible for wealthy bourgeois and financier families. In addition, clerical lords, especially monasteries, controlled many of the appointments of parish priests along with the lands around their churches. By the eighteenth century, the lords of the Loudunais reflected a cross-section of these three groups. There were, in fact, a lot of lords; the parishes of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé contained at least some of the territory of fourteen different seigneuries. The seigneuries varied greatly in size. The baronies of SaintCassien and Moncontour included wide swaths of land in the Loudunais, while the estates of Château-Gannes and Mouslandrault comprised only a small manor and its surrounding fields. Sword nobles like the Dreux and the Marreaux held seigneuries beside robe nobles like the Eynauds, while monasteries continued to exercise their rights over concessions attached to parish churches. Some of the lords were powerful men with national prominence, such as the Marquis de Villeroy and especially the Duc de Richelieu, a close friend of Louis XV. These men held important government offices and owned extensive territories across France. They relied on appointed representatives to administer their lands in the Loudunais. In fact, most of the lords would rarely have visited their seigneuries in these three parishes, living instead where they worked as governors, magistrates, and officials, or on larger estates elsewhere. Only nobles of very modest fortune, like the Richelots, who depended on their one small estate, would have regularly been resident. Since the Loudunais depended largely on the grain trade, and the lords owned all of the land, they obviously held considerable influence over the rural economy. This is easily exaggerated, however. Much of the land had been sold to local inhabitants, from wealthy merchants to the poorest peasants. The seigneur maintained a kind of eminent ownership of these concessions, but for practical purposes, as we saw in chapter 3, these were permanent grants that the tenant controlled and passed on to his heirs, so long as they paid small annual dues. Most lords reserved at least part of their estate for their own use, called

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Table 4.1 Seigneuries of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, ca. 1750 Seigneury Lord

Remarks

Saint-Cassien (barony)

Louis François Armand de Plessis, Duc de Richelieu

Marshal of France

Moncontour (barony)

Gabriel Louis de Neufville, Marquis de Villeroy

Governor of Lyon, also Baron de Cursay in the Loudunais

Doismon Michel de Dreux, Marquis de Brezé

Chevalier, governor of Loudun, maréchal de camp, grand maître des cérémonies de France

Sautonne André Lyon Eynaud

Conseiller du roi, président et grand commissaire, Cour de Monnayes de Paris

Aulnay

Louis Marie Modeste de Lomeron

Chevalier

La Bonnetière

Louis Marreau

Chevalier

Angliers

Charles Francois Henry de Reval

Chevalier, Parlement de Paris

Bourg

Claude François des Breuilles

Conseiller du roi, Chinon

Château-Gannes Jean Ferrand (sub-fief of Angliers)

Conseiller du roi, contrôleur au grenier à sel de Loudun

Epinay

Widow of Seigneur de St Clair

Florimont Nicole de la Grange

La Roussellerie Daniel Richelot (sub-fief of Sautonne)

Écuyer

La Chaussée René de Mauvat (sub-fief of Doismon)

Écuyer

Mouslandrault

Abbey is in Poitiers

Abbey of Pin

Prieuré de La Abbey of St Jouin Chaussée

Abbey holds other property farther west

Prieuré de Renové Abbey of Fontevrault

Abbey holds many territories all over the Loudunais

Sources: Compilation of information drawn from parish registers and notary documents for Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, Series 4E and 9E, AD V.

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a demesne (domaine). This often was composed of a manor house, choicer parcels of the best farmland, as well as woods, gardens, and outbuildings. If the lord was not resident, he typically rented this out to a member of the local elite, who in turn would lease it out in whole or in part to respectable ploughmen. We can get an idea of the importance of these demesnes thanks to the cadastre, a complete survey of the land taken beginning in 1828. The seigneuries of Sautonne, Aulnay, and La Bonnetière were the largest seigneuries completely contained within the three parishes and seem to have survived the revolutionary period with their demesnes relatively intact, although we should not assume that the results represent exactly what they looked like during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.3 Sautonne was the largest of the three, which serves as an important reminder that even if Charles de Menou was lord of Aulnay, this does not mean that he was the only or even the most powerful lord of that part of the Loudunais. The demesne of Sautonne comprised over 420 hectares of land with extensive fields, woods, and pasture that generated an estimated annual revenue of almost 8,000 francs. The manor house was large and sprawling, with sixty doors and windows. The property was not all located in one place; we can see eleven métairies – consolidated farms with their own houses and fields that the lord would have leased out – scattered among all three parishes. The lord also owned four houses in the villages, a water mill, a windmill, a communal oven, and small parcels of garden and vines. This was certainly an impressive estate, and we know that its mid-eighteenth-century lord, Eynaud, visited because one of his children was born there and he himself died and was buried in the parish.4 The prize possession of the seigneury of Aulnay was its château, worth over four times the manor of Sautonne. However, its demesne was not as rich in land. It comprised about 120 hectares, mostly arable but also woods, and was centred on the château and the nearby village. Although less than a third of the total size of Sautonne, the estate generated a little over half as much revenue, 4,200 francs, indicating that the lord had maintained control over particularly fertile arable and wellmaintained trees. After the death of Menou in 1650, this seigneury was seized by his creditors and ended up being sold in 1679 to the Lomeron family, who remained its owners until the Revolution. The demesne

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had included a few métairies; these must have been sold off by 1830. The Lomerons owned several seigneuries in Poitou-Touraine and seem to have divided their time between them. They served as godparents in the parish from time to time but were not continually resident. The manor of La Bonnetière is still inhabited by the descendants of its ancien régime lords and can be visited by tourists during the summer. Its demesne was the smallest of the three, just over 60 hectares of arable and woods located near the manor and in the surrounding fields of La Chaussée; it generated about 1,100 francs of revenue each year. They also owned three small houses in the parish of La Chaussée which were undoubtedly leased out. The Marreau family seems to have been resident throughout the early modern period; some of its members also appear as priests and officials in the local area, such as Jean Marreau, curé of Martaizé. Together, these three demesnes constituted about 30 per cent of the land and revenue of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé. To this we need to add the modest but regular income the lords would have received from the land they had conceded to others. If these dues did not constitute a heavy burden on the censitaires, they could still add up to considerable funds in larger seigneuries. We know that the lords took them seriously because they did not hesitate to take their censitaires to court should they be delinquent. For example, the Lomerons went to the royal court of Loudun for over 850 lt between 1750 and 1763.5 This helps us to understand how Charles de Menou was able to borrow almost 300,000 lt for his projects in Acadie. In addition to the profits from the fur trade, he had consistent income from his seigneury to borrow against. The lords would have been important figures in the rural economy, whether they were themselves resident or acted through agents and representatives. They were effectively landlords, leasing out portions of their demesnes, collecting dues, and enforcing their rights when necessary. The lord of Sautonne, for example, leased two large métairies (one included a mill) in January of 1764. The Lomeron family recorded no less than twenty leases between 1735 and 1764, some of which were for livestock, perhaps reflecting the lack of pasture in their demesne. Even though they were resident, the Marreau also appear to have leased out the majority of their arable to local ploughmen on

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long-term contracts, presumably living off of the rental income.6 The notary records also reveal another way in which the lords contributed to the rural economy, as lenders. François Henry de Lomeron loaned over 2,500 lt to twenty different local ploughmen, while Louis Marreau loaned an additional 800 lt to five others. These credit agreements indicate that the lords supported the economic activities of the parish, at least with trusted households. Their patronage could make the difference for wealthier ploughmen. Still, we should remember that the greater part of the land in the three parishes of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé had been conceded in perpetuity to peasants and other ordinary people. Merchants and officials, particularly in Loudun and Moncontour, were more prominent lenders and looked after the commerce. Even though the lords were symbolically at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy and lived comfortably, their practical influence on rural society was limited and often distant. The institution of the seigneury was deliberately extended to France’s colonies, but there the lords faced very different challenges. None of the land had been cleared or prepared for agriculture; they were starting from scratch. The situation in many ways resembled that which had predominated during the medieval period. The king lacked the ability to settle or protect his claims himself, and thus he conceded many of his powers to military figures whom he trusted to work on his behalf. For example, the royal commission given to Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, in 1603 included the title of lieutenant general, which carried the power to “divide the land and attribute titles and seigneuries there” as well as “all authority to make war and peace, to conquer and to distribute the rewards and responsibilities.”7 De Mons, of Saintonge, was a Huguenot and favourite of Henry IV. He had fought for the future king during the Wars of Religion, distinguishing himself particularly in Normandy, where he became a captain. Jean de Poutrincourt was from Picardy and had fought on the other side during the Wars of Religion but had proven to be an able commander. Desiring to return to royal service and intrigued by the potential of starting over in the New World, he seized on the opportunity to join the expedition to Acadie, bringing fifty colonists with the intent of founding a new “feudal utopia.” Although scurvy, financial difficulties, opposition at court and with the Jesuits, and, ultimately, an English

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attack led to the failure of their project, De Mons and Poutrincourt nevertheless laid the foundation for the future colony. Poutrincourt also brought his son, Charles, and his cousins, Claude and Charles de Saint-Étienne de la Tour, who became important leaders in the colony in their own right. Throughout, De Mons and Poutrincourt retained the outlook of a feudal elite. The former retired to a fortified estate in a large seigneury in his home region of Saintonge, while the latter returned to military service, dying during a battle against the rebel Prince de Condé in 1615.8 Acadie was more than a military frontier in need of security. It was also a region of rich natural resources. As we saw in chapter 1, demand for fish and furs in Europe drove merchant investment into the New World. With the king unable or unwilling to finance colonization directly9 and individual lords unable to raise the vast sums necessary for ships, supplies, and workers on their own, it was inevitable that the seigneury in Acadie became far more tied up in commerce than was the case in France. De Mons borrowed heavily and received a ten-year trade monopoly to finance his project. After Port Royal was burned, Poutrincourt’s son, Charles de Biencourt, led a small group trading and fishing in the region until his death in 1624, while the La Tours set up new trading posts at Pentagouet and Cap de Sable. Cardinal Richelieu went so far as to propose a plan that would make a commercial company the lord of all of New France. The Company of New France (also known as the Company of the Hundred Associates) was established in 1627 and received all French-claimed territory from Florida to the Arctic Ocean as a seigneurial concession. Although the scale of this scheme was impressive, it still rested on the feudal principle upon which the seigneury was based, namely, that the king granted the rights to certain lands in exchange for fealty and service. The rights were extended to include a perpetual fur trade monopoly and a complete monopoly on all trade for fifteen years. The services required were also considerable; the company was to recruit and transport four thousand Catholic colonists over the span of twenty years, as well as support a number of priests and missionaries undertaking the conversion of the First Nations.10 There was certainly the potential for conflict between the desire of commercial investors for profit and the objective of the state to

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implant permanent settlements. But the Company remained strictly under the control of Louis XIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu; indeed, many of its associates were his clients. Further, this commercial lord by and large met its obligations to the king, transporting a total of 7,300 migrants between 1628 and 1662 and promoting the alliance and conversion of many Aboriginal people throughout the Great Lakes and the Maritimes. The Company also continued to employ the seigneury as its main vehicle for recruitment, reserving Quebec and its surroundings as its own demesne and issuing twenty-two seigneurial concessions beginning in 1633 to those with the will and the resources to recruit settlers.11 Isaac de Rasilly, who was selected to reassert French control in Acadie in 1632, epitomized the link between the traditional seigneury and New World commercial interests. Scion of an ancient noble family of Touraine and a cousin to Cardinal Richelieu, Rasilly was a celebrated naval commander with experience fighting against the Huguenots at La Rochelle and Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean Sea. He wrote a memorandum in 1626 to Richelieu that emphasized the importance of developing trade and promoting settlement in the New World. Like De Mons, he was appointed lieutenant general for the colony. He was further granted seigneurial rights that included the Island of Sainte-Croix and, later, the forts and their environs at Port Royal and La Hève. In short, he was lord of all of the principal settlements in Acadie. Rasilly was also an investor, forming a private trading association with the approval of the Company of New France that forwarded significant sums in exchange for fishing and commercial rights. This became something of a family business, as his brother Claude de Launay-Rasilly was also an active partner. Rasilly recognized the profits to be made from the fur trade, but he also took his obligations as lieutenant general and lord seriously. First and foremost was the establishment of security. His choice to establish his headquarters at La Hève, on the Atlantic coast of Acadie, had obvious advantages for the fishery but was also the “decision of a soldier” who did not yet know English strength in the region and wanted to maintain communication with France.12 He received the surrender of Port Royal but did not rest easy, continuing to build fortifications and stockpile military supplies in the event of an attack. In early 1635, he sent a force under his second, Charles de Menou, to

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seize Fort Pentagouet, restoring French control on the far side of the Bay of Fundy. Meanwhile, he also quelled a rebellion at the post of Canso. Second, Rasilly was dedicated to developing his concession. He recruited three hundred men to accompany his expedition in 1632. We do not know a lot about these individuals, but we can assume that sailors, soldiers, and workmen constituted the majority.13 La Hève became a thriving trade post and a secure base for the fishery. It did not, however, become an agricultural centre with families. Rasilly did assign some men to farm the good soil along the Petite-Rivière, but most of the colony’s food continued to come from France. Rasilly recognized that permanent settlement required families. He, his brother, and his agent, Nicolas Denys, recruited a group of seventy-eight migrants who departed La Rochelle in April 1636; for the first time, this group also included women and children.14 Finally, Rasilly focused on his own territory and avoided interfering with other French lords. For example, Charles Daniel, another member of the Company of New France, had established a post on Cape Breton in 1629 and was trading along the coast of present-day New Brunswick.15 Most importantly, Charles de la Tour had previously been given the title of lieutenant general by the Company as well as grants of land at Cap Sable and at the mouth of the St John River.16 Rasilly’s premature death in December 1635 led to internal conflict between his would-be successor, Charles de Menou, and Charles de la Tour. La Tour had grown up in the colony and become a successful fur trader. Menou was cut from the same cloth as Rasilly, if not as well known – the younger son of an old sword noble family who went into the navy. He declared himself to be Rasilly’s legitimate heir. Of course, the title of lieutenant-governor was a royal office and could not be passed on, while the seigneurial grant should have passed to Rasilly’s family. But it seems that Claude de Launay-Rasilly supported Menou’s claims and later sold his shares in the Company to him. Menou acted quickly, moving most of the settlers, including the recently arrived passengers from La Rochelle, to Port Royal.17 From there, he attempted to assert his authority over the territory that had been granted to La Tour and also blocked Rasilly’s former associate, Nicolas Denys, from establishing himself in the fishery. In 1638, Louis XIII recognized Menou as Rasilly’s successor but demanded he maintain good relations with

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La Tour. This proved impossible, and both sides resorted to armed conflict, hiring soldiers and outfitting ships.18 I have already described the events of their civil war in chapter 2. What is crucial here is the importance of Menou and the institution of the seigneury at this critical juncture. Simply put, Menou was a warrior noble living in a frontier where might made right. He aimed to create a feudal empire, funded by the fur trade and enforced by soldiers and sailors loyal to himself. In this, he was reminiscent of the local warlords who dominated parts of medieval France. The Capetian monarchy relied upon them for the military forces it needed to fight its wars. Similarly, Louis XIII relied on Menou to secure Acadie from the English. However, such men served their own interests above all others. Menou was not satisfied with Rasilly’s concessions and titles, and demanded control over all Acadie. In 1647, Louis XIII recognized his military victory and named him lord and governor of the whole colony. Next, Menou broke with the Company of New France and bought out the remaining partners of Rasilly’s private association. Once again, the king accommodated his warlord, recognizing that Menou was no longer a vassal of the Company but lord in his own right.19 In this aggressive outlook, he followed the example of his parents; René de Menou was a celebrated cavalier and Nicole de Jousserand rigourously protected her seigneurial rights through several lawsuits against local rivals and, indeed, her own husband’s family.20 Menou was more than a bully, however, and his commitment to colonial development was clear. He was an active recruiter who aimed to develop a significant settler population. Rasilly had begun to recruit families, largely from his family’s estates in Touraine, to complement the indentured servants (engagés) hired by the Company. Menou took this strategy further, visiting France himself and using representatives to entice at least twenty peasant families to come to Port Royal. This was in many ways an exceptional achievement that few lords elsewhere in New France would match.21 Meanwhile, by the mid-seventeenth century, most of the lords of the Loudunais were effectively landlords, collecting revenue from their properties. The land was already settled and secured, and royal officials, courts, and tax collectors had no trouble administering and keeping the peace. Minor lords might live on their estates, but most

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resided and worked elsewhere, in the army, the courts, or the bureaucracy. This contrasted sharply with the lords of Acadie, who received not only grants of land but also trading privileges and wide powers as lieutenants general, commanders, and governors. While the land in the Loudunais was split among many seigneuries, virtually the entire colony was held by a single man. The official power of men such as De Mons, Rasilly, and Menou was near absolute and was backed by their presence, leadership, and military forces on site. They negotiated with Aboriginal leaders and rival colonies. They also mobilized colonial development, hiring workers, artisans, and soldiers, and later recruiting families to cultivate the land. Although labourers, sailors, and fishermen on short-term contracts tended to come from port cities like La Rochelle, these lords, not surprisingly, preferred to choose companions, advisers, and colonists from people they knew, or from people of their families’ estates in France. Men like the military captain Germain Doucet, the doctor Jacques Bourgeois, the blacksmith Guillaume Trahan, and the ploughman Michel Boudrot had been hand-picked and became prominent members of the community.22 With Menou’s death, power in Acadie was once again disputed. Three claimants emerged. Menou’s widow, Jeanne Motin, attempted to preserve the estate for their eight children, who were all under the age of twelve. Although she received nearly everything in the inheritance, she also got the debts, which totalled over 300,000 livres tournois. René de Menou, her father-in-law, whom Charles had enjoined to help protect his family, died in 1651.23 That same year, Motin negotiated an agreement with the Duc de Vendôme to split the debts and the property. Meanwhile, La Tour had been residing in Quebec and now returned to France, appealing successfully to have his commission as governor and his grant on the St John River restored. When he returned to Port Royal in 1653, he and Motin decided to marry in the hopes of solidifying their position against the third claimant, Emmanuel Le Borgne. Le Borgne had been Menou’s chief creditor and argued that over 200,000 livres was owed to him. The courts agreed, granting him rights to the seigneury of Aulnay in the Loudunais as well as Acadie. A wealthy merchant and magistrate, Le Borgne outfitted a warship, the Châteaufort, hired soldiers, and took ship himself for Port Royal in 1653. Like Menou, he aimed to settle the matter with

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force, capturing the post at Pentagouet, as well as Saint-Pierre on Cape Breton, and burning La Hève and Nipisiguit. A New Englander named Robert Sedgwick led a military expedition in 1654 that captured both La Tour’s establishment on the St John River and Port Royal, obliging both men to retire. Significantly, Le Borgne negotiated and signed the terms of the capitulation, which freed him to depart unmolested. The commandant of the fort, Germain Doucet, and the inhabitants’ delegate, Guillaume Trahan, were also parties to the agreement.24 Le Borgne returned to France and continued to press his claims. La Tour, however, travelled to London and ultimately reached a deal with the English that permitted him to retire in Acadie. We have already seen that after Sedgwick’s attack, the colonists gradually moved out along the Dauphin River. This does not mean that the institution of the seigneury vanished, however. The terms of capitulation stated that the inhabitants should fulfill their seigneurial dues as obliged by their grants. The Motin-La Tour family continued to reside at Port Royal, D’Entremont continued to live at Pobomcoup, and Nicolas Denys, who had received grants to Cape Breton and the northern coast of Acadie to Gaspé, continued to pursue trade and fishing there. In fact, Jeanne Motin appointed a manager to look after her business affairs, including leasing out her properties and collecting her rents.25 Meanwhile, the king and the Company of New France continued to employ the same strategy, making Le Borgne lord and governor of Acadie in 1657 and encouraging him to send an expedition to recapture La Hève. When France regained all of Acadie by treaty in 1667, his son Alexandre was sent with a commission, much like Rasilly had been, to reassert French control. The English at Port Royal refused to surrender, however, and Alexandre returned empty-handed and with expenses totalling 20,000 lt.26 Louis XIV’s decision to exercise direct rule over his colonies was a turning point for the institution of the seigneury in Acadie because it separated lordship from governorship. Hector d’Andigné de Grandfontaine, a military officer, was appointed royal governor. He received no grants of land or trading privileges; his job was to represent the king, administering the colony and commanding its forts and soldiers, who were now professional royal troops instead of the mercenaries hired by previous governors.27 To emphasize this role, he

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moved his headquarters to Pentagouet, on the land bordering New England. Meanwhile, Alexandre Le Borgne returned to Port Royal, anxious to take up his perceived rights. There, he undoubtedly ran into disputes with the Motin-La Tour heirs. This was resolved in 1675 when he married one of them, Marie La Tour. For a time, this consolidated the entire seigneury once again under a single lord.28 By this time, Acadie was far from a single seigneury. The king directed his governor and intendant in New France to create new seigneuries that would develop the land and augment the colonial population. In 1672, five grants of land in the St John River valley were made to merchants and military officers with the express obligation of bringing settlers from France. Over thirty seigneurial concessions followed in the years up to 1700. Previous fiefs were respected; these concessions all referred to new and undeveloped territories elsewhere on the peninsula and especially in the interior (present-day New Brunswick). From Madawaska to Canso and from Nipisiguit to Pentagouet, the lands of Acadie were distributed via the seigneury to elites from Canada who were presumed to have the knowledge and experience to succeed.29 The strategic region of the isthmus of Chignecto, which connected the peninsula with the mainland, was granted to Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière in 1676. La Vallière was the third son of the governor of Trois-Rivières, educated in France and destined for a military career. For example, he served with an expedition against the Iroquois in 1670. Although La Vallière was from Canada, he was no stranger to Acadie, having spent time on Cape Breton and having married the daughter of Nicolas Denys. He may have already been active trading along the isthmus of Chignecto as early as 1672, also visiting Miscou and Nipisiguit.30 He must have been well aware that some of the Port Royal colonists, led by Jacques Bourgeois, had begun draining some of the marshland at Beaubassin as early as 1671. These settlers refused to accept his lordship, even taking him to court in Quebec over contracts he had attempted to impose.31 La Vallière had brought his own settlers, and we know from the records of another court case, the witchcraft trial of Jean Campagna, that he was actively involved in clearing the land, including his own demesne, for which he hired workers and artisans. He also took his role as protector seriously, appointing watchmen and arresting

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those causing trouble to his censitaires.32 Over time, Bourgeois’s and La Vallière’s colonists formed a single community, albeit one dispersed through the marshes, much like Port Royal. For a time, it appeared that La Vallière would be able to build up a power base similar to that of Charles de Menou. In addition to his large seigneury and trading enterprise, he was appointed commandant, then later governor of Acadie in 1683. Unfortunately for La Vallière, his patron, Governor Frontenac, fell out of favour, and La Vallière himself was replaced after only one year as governor. He returned to Beaubassin until 1687, when he departed for Canada to continue his military profession. Serving at Quebec, Fort Frontenac, and Montreal, he nevertheless continued to take an interest in his seigneury. In 1705, the king confirmed that his grant included Beaubassin and Chipoudie, site of another group of Acadian colonists. It seems that La Vallière was on his way back to Acadie when his ship sunk. Around 1690, there were many lords in Acadie, although most of the colonists lived in the seigneury of Port Royal and Minas, held by Alexandre Le Borgne de Belle-Isle. Agricultural communities had also been formed at Beaubassin, Cobequid, and Pigiguit, while the seigneuries along the St John River had smaller settlements and were largely used as a base for fur trading. In 1690, then, the lords of Acadie seemed well on their way to establishing themselves in the colony. Many of them came from military backgrounds, and a few, such as the Damours and the SaintCastins, traced their lineages back to medieval noble families. Like Menou and La Tour, however, these lords recognized that natural resources, like fish and especially furs, were the principal source of wealth in the New World. A group of prominent merchants formed a new company to exploit the potential for inshore fisheries, while leading businessmen and officials from Quebec and Port Royal sought to expand their commercial enterprises in mainland Acadie. Agriculture was a secondary pursuit, conducted in order to meet the subsistence needs of workers, soldiers, and sailors. An exceptional case is that of Mathieu Martin. The first child born in Acadie, he was awarded the seigneury of Cobequid in 1689 but died, without heirs, in 1724. In fact, the institution of the seigneury had evolved considerably from its feudal origins during the first half of the seventeenth century.

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Table 4.2 List of lords in Acadie, ca. 1690 Seigneury Seigneur

Remarks

Port Royal and Minas Alexandre Le Borgne de Belle-Isle

Son of merchant and magistrate

Beaubassin

Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière

Military officer, former governor of Acadie

Pobomcoup (barony)

Philippe Mius d’Entremont

Écuyer, military officer, former king’s attorney

Left bank of the mouth Martin d’Aprendestiguy of the St John River

Shipowner, Sieur de Martignon

Chedabouctou and coasts of Acadie

Merchants from France

La Compagnie de la pêche sedentaire

Madawaska Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye

Businessman and financier, agent of the West Indies Company, member of Sovereign Council of Quebec.

Along St John River

Member of Sovereign Council of Quebec, soldier, and fur trader

Mathieu Damours de Freneuse

Richibouctou, Jemseg Louis Damours Military officer and fur trader and Nashwaak de Chauffours Longues-Vues (near Nashwaak)

François Genaple, Sieur de Bellefonds

Royal notary, bailiff at Quebec

Magos (Maine) Jean Martel

Former soldier, merchant at Port Royal

Kennebecasis

Pierre Chênet Du Breuil

King’s attorney at Port Royal, merchant

Along St John River

Jean-Vincent de Saint-Castin

Baron, military officer, sagamo abénaquis

Cobequid Mathieu Martin

weaver, fur trader, first child born in the colony

Sources: Jacques Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 106–7; Joan Bourque Campbell, “The Seigneurs of Acadie: History and Genealogy,” SHA 26, nos. 3 and 4 (1995): 136–80; DCB.

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In the Loudunais, the lords occupied an influential position in the rural economy, which was based on grain production. Most lived intermittently, if at all, on their estates, leasing them out or managing them through appointed representatives. A few were resident and worked closely with the local population. In Acadie, the lords also occupied an important position in the economy, which was based instead on the exploitation of natural resources. Again, most did not reside for long periods of time, but they established posts and settlements as the centre of their enterprise and appointed agents. A few, such as Le Borgne and La Vallière, regularly lived on their estates and encouraged the agricultural expansion and development of their concessions. Of course, the lords most focused on commerce also worked closely with another local population, the Aboriginal peoples, who supplied the furs. Saint-Castin famously married the daughter of an Abenaki sagamo and lived among his wife’s people, while members of the D’Entremont family, lords of Pobomcoup, intermarried with the Mi’kmaq.33 In short, in both places, the lords were well placed to profit from the regional economy as they controlled most of the resources. Another similarity is the backgrounds of the lords. They were a mix of sword and robe nobility with military and official service to the state, as well as merchants able to buy a title and a grant. At this point in the colony’s history, there is little evidence that the seigneury was a weak or unimportant institution. Once again, colonial development was interrupted by an English attack, this time led by William Phips in 1690 and followed by a sevenyear period in which neither England nor France effectively governed. Joseph Robineau de Villebon moved a small force of soldiers and officials to Nashwaak and was aided in its defence by local lords like the Damours and Saint-Castins. Phips had appointed a council at Port Royal that included a French sergeant, the local lord, Alexandre Le Borgne, the magistrate, the king’s attorney (Du Breuil, also a seigneur), and two representatives of the inhabitants.34 At first glance, then, there was little practical change to the administration other than the absence of a governor and garrison. Raiders, however, took advantage of the situation, attacking Acadian communities and preying on shipping. At this critical juncture, there were no effective security forces to help and the lords were unable to provide leadership. La Vallière was away,

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fighting in New France and, as we have seen, never returned. The fishing company had lost everything during the English attack. Villebon’s attempts to control trade and direct the various lords of the St John River led to disputes and complaints.35 Alexandre Le Borgne died in 1693, leaving his widow, several children, and other relatives as potential heirs. When French government was restored to Port Royal in 1699, confirmation of seigneurial rights was a priority for Louis XIV. He ordered all of those holding concessions to submit their titles and he set up a commission to examine them. In 1703, the Council of State ruled on the various claims, awarding the seigneury of Port Royal and Minas to the heirs of Le Borgne and adding the fief of Pentagouet for his only son, another Alexandre. However, following customary law, the seigneury was to be divided among the heirs, ultimately into seven pieces. The associated correspondence provides some further indications that the seigneury continued to function during this period. For example, La Tour’s widow successfully appealed against the division of a large farm and water mill in the Port Royal area which was one of her most lucrative holdings. Governor Subercase reported in 1708 that he was obliged to sort out numerous disputes among the inhabitants over the boundaries of land grants in the wooded uplands they had received from the lords. At one point he was so fed up that he suggested reneging on the previous agreements and starting from scratch.36 Elsewhere, most of the St John River concessions were also confirmed by the king, though some were reduced. Two years later, as we have seen, La Vallière was also confirmed as lord of Beaubassin and Chipoudy. The king cleared any outstanding debts but also placed some restrictions on the lords. They could not raise the customary dues, nor prevent the inhabitants from fishing and trading. They were also required to continue developing their concessions.37 The king’s orders notwithstanding, it proved difficult to re-implant the seigneury. Continued attacks culminated in the conquest of Acadie just a few years later. When Port Royal fell to the British in 1710, there was no seigneur present at the negotiations, as there had been in 1654 and 1690. Yet although the remaining lords appear to have had little influence, as we will see in the next section, seigneurial dues continued to be collected and the notaries continued to register old and

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new concessions.38 Far from eliminating the institution, the British duly registered land transactions involving seigneurial dues and, later, claimed these payments for themselves.39 In 1724, the seigneury of Cobequid reverted to the Crown after the death of Martin. In 1730, Governor Richard Phillipps declared that the king of Great Britain was the only lord of Nova Scotia. To solidify this, three years later the British government paid Agathe de la Tour, who had successively married two English officers, £2,000 for the remaining seigneurial rights of her family. Though it was unlikely that she actually possessed all these rights, other claims were simply ignored. Acadians were appointed as notaries and as collectors of the dues. In many ways, this was a return to the situation of Charles de Menou – the powers of lord and governor were combined in a single person, or in this case, Council. We could also look at this as an example of the king reasserting his eminent ownership of all territory in his dominion, choosing to control it directly through appointed representatives rather than concede it to lords. Unfortunately for the British, they were unable to exert the same economic influence that the French lords had enjoyed. The small garrison at Annapolis Royal was unable to enforce edicts controlling trade that were deliberately flouted by French, Acadians, and New Englanders alike. None of the king’s representatives lived outside of Annapolis Royal, so they had little relationship with the colonists. In this way, the seigneury was altered under the British regime. Yet the continued payment of dues and requests for new land grants indicate that the inhabitants themselves thought the institution was important as a way of regulating and confirming their property rights. For the British, it was not the amount of the dues that mattered but the importance of reinforcing their position as lord and civil authority.40 In this form, the institution of the seigneury endured until the Deportation.

The Exercise of Seigneurial Rights Now that we have compared the identity and influence of the lords of the Loudunais and Acadie, it remains to consider the actual rights they exercised. These included the collection of dues, privileges like fishing, wood-cutting, and trade, and the administration of local justice. These rights were not free or automatic; they were rewards for fulfilling

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the obligations set out in the concession. While some appear mostly symbolic, others were central to rural life. Some rights were applied more diligently than others, reflecting their relative importance. For example, in the Loudunais, banal mills and ovens were common, and the lords maintained strict control of the few woods and waterways. In Acadie, the colonists could make their own bread and freely cut trees for their own use, but the lords were more assertive with regard to their trade and fishing privileges. In both places, seigneurs diligently collected their dues but rarely used their traditional powers of justice, preferring to use royal courts. Not surprisingly, most lords exercised their rights in ways that reflected the local situation and reinforced their influence, particularly their role in the local economy. Like the institution itself, the relationship between seigneur and censitaire had its roots in the feudal past. In return for a concession of land, a peasant swore fealty to his lord. This involved a simple expression of allegiance invoking God performed at the lord’s manor. Such “feudal declarations” were required upon acquiring a concession through purchase or inheritance, or when a new seigneur took over, and were often notarized with witnesses.41 Censitaires were not serfs. They could sell or exchange their land and move at any time. They did not need the lord’s permission to marry, and the lord did not interfere in their inheritance, so long as the successors performed the act of fealty and paid the required dues. In the early modern period, there was no expectation that fealty implied military service; the army had become centralized, and, besides, most peasants held land from multiple seigneuries. Fealty was more narrowly construed as the recognition and upholding of the lord’s rights within his concession. This relationship was affirmed annually in the collection of the cens et rentes. In the Loudunais, this was a small payment indeed, often two deniers for each boisselée (0.054 hectares). To put this in perspective, the cost to buy one boisselée of land was on average about 10 livres tournois. Thus the due constituted about 1 per cent of the value of the land. For those who held a larger concession and/or a lease, there was usually an additional payment in kind – a capon, a dozen eggs, or, most typically, a wheaten cake garnished with butter.42 These were still token amounts. In chapter 3, we saw that the wealthy ploughman François Giroire paid the equivalent of about 20 lt in cens et rentes

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each year, a sum equivalent to less than 5 per cent of his total expenses. Nevertheless, these payments were important symbols of luxury and subservience, delivered on important feast days to the lord’s manor. Since the date was usually the same for most censitaires, the delivery of these items became a sort of village procession, reinforcing common social relations among peasants, and emphasizing a hierarchy headed by the lord, his receivers, and senior heads of household down to the poorest day workers and widows. We know from a few surviving notarized documents that colonists in Acadie paid the cens et rentes to their lords as well, and at similar rates. For example, Menou granted about one hectare to Martin de Chevery in 1649, at the charge of 8 deniers and one capon. In 1679, one of the few surviving concessions made by Alexandre Le Borgne in the Minas Basin relates that Pierre Martin and his son Mathieu received a piece of land and meadow which they had already begun to clear in exchange for “un denier Turnois de Cens – un Chappon & un boisseau de Bled fromant de rente foncière annuelle perpetuelle” due every first of January at the lord’s manor in Port Royal. Together, these items were valued at about 40 sous. We also know that at least eleven heads of household from Beaubassin were paying cens et rentes to La Vallière in 1682. Land sales between Acadians from 1691 and 1701 mention similar dues.43 Using the 1707 census, we can estimate the total revenue the lords would have generated from the cens et rentes by assuming one concession for each household and a standard annual rate of 40 s or 2 lc. Some households may have held more than one concession, but table 4.3 nevertheless confirms the general impression that this was neither a heavy burden on farmers nor a major source of revenue for the lords. The 200 lc raised at Port Royal was the equivalent of the salary of the royal clerk or half of that of the king’s attorney. The wages of the small garrison of 60 men cost over 6,000 lc/year.44 Concessions in the St John River valley, Pobomcoup, or elsewhere in Acadie had much smaller populations, diminishing the importance of the cens et rentes even further. Under the British regime, the cens et rentes was referred to as a “quit-rent.” The population had certainly expanded; one estimate suggests that the quit-rents generated almost 1,500 lc between 1739 and 1741. This was still a modest fund, however, and clearly not enough to support a military garrison; it would not even

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Table 4.3 Estimate of revenue from the cens et rentes in Acadie, 1707 Community

Population

Households

Potential revenue lc

Port Royal 458 102 Minas 488 88 Beaubassin 226 45 Total

204 176 90 470

Source: “Recensement de l’Acadie,” 1707, Census Returns on Microfilm, 1666–1901, LAC.

Table 4.4 Accounts of Annapolis Royal rent collectors Duon and Robichaud, 1739 Item Grain Capons Money Lods et ventes Value

Duon Robichaud 40 bx 42 birds 8s 7s 81 lc, 15s

21 bx 30 birds 2 lc, 5s 62 lc 110 lc, 15s

Total 91 lc, 10s 36 lc 2 lc, 13s 62 lc, 7s 192 lc, 10s

Source: Jacques Vanderlinden, Histoire du droit en Acadie et en Nouvelle-Écosse aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes, 1996), 240.

have paid the wages of the officers.45 The accounts of two Annapolis Royal rent gatherers further show that most of the payments were made in kind, and while produce would certainly have been useful, such small quantities would not have gone very far. Once again, the symbolic nature of these payments is obvious. Clearly, the main appeal of the seigneury was not in the derisory annual dues it provided to its lords. There were, however, other privileges which could be more attractive. The lods et ventes was a payment equivalent to one-twelfth of the value of the land, whenever a censitaire sold or exchanged his concession. We know that the lods et ventes

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was widely applied in Acadie because all of the surviving concessions mentioned above specifically state so; meanwhile, land sales in the Loudunais always designate who was responsible to pay it. Still, as we have seen, only a small percentage of the land was affected by such transactions in any given year. Nor was the Loudunais atypical in this regard, as other historians of France have uncovered similar results.46 This was just as true in Acadie; from the above table we can estimate that a few hectares had changed hands in the part of Annapolis Royal visited by Prudent Robichaud in 1739, and virtually nothing in that of Jean Duon. The lods et ventes would have provided an irregular but modest revenue. The lords also enjoyed banal rights to the use of communal mills and bake ovens, which remained part of their demesne. In essence, this meant that farmers had to use the lord’s equipment to refine their grain and make their bread. In the Loudunais, they could expect to be charged a premium of 5 to 7 per cent. Several notary documents indicate that most lords leased out these rights, just as they leased out arable to reliable clients. For example, the communal oven in the métairie of Château-Gannes was leased to the widow Magdelaine Martel in 1762 for an annual payment of 35 lt. Mills were much more lucrative, reflecting their central role in preparing harvested wheat for sale; Jean Meunier leased the mill at Grétard for 228 lt, and Jean Chatry leased the mill belonging to the lord of Sautonne for 240 lt.47 Several hundred hectolitres of grain must have been refined at these mills alone, and there were several others scattered around the three parishes. The lords were able to enjoy the regular income without having to worry about the work of clearing the land or building the mill. They nevertheless inspected their properties to ensure that they were well maintained. Such visits could sometimes work in the leaseholder’s favour as well; in 1741, experts ordered a decrease in the cost of the lease because they deemed the mill’s revenue to have been overestimated.48 In the Loudunais, the lords could essentially sit back and enjoy the modest but regular landed income that came from their dues and banal rights. In the colonies, however, they had to develop concessions of woodland and marsh. The settler population remained small, and the economy was largely based on the exploitation of natural resources

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for commerce. It is not surprising, then, that many lords were slow to build mills and bake ovens in their seigneuries. The royal government ordered them to get on with it in 1686, warning that after a year’s time anyone of any background could construct a mill and earn the banal rights to it. Even when such an investment was made, as in the seigneury of La Prairie in New France, it could be hard to find a skilled and trustworthy miller.49 In Acadie, the situation was complicated by the political instability and the dispersion of the inhabitants. There was at least one seigneurial mill at Port Royal, as the rights of the widow of Le Borgne de Belle-Isle were confirmed by a king’s order in 1705. Still, the utility of a centralized mill and the ability to enforce its use were less obvious than in the Loudunais.50 Instead, smaller versions followed the settlement pattern. Members of a few families, like the Tibaudeaux and the Allains, became professional millers, but larger hamlets, like the Melanson site, had their own mills. Similarly, it seems that most of the colonists constructed their own bake ovens. Menou’s 1649 concession to Chevery included the right to use such an oven for twelve years, while archaeological excavations have found them attached to many homes. The 1679 concession in the Port Royal area makes no mention of banal rights at all.51 But if mills and ovens do not appear to have been a significant source of revenue for the lords of Acadie, their rights to the natural resources of their concessions could be very lucrative indeed. This was not the case in the Loudunais, where there were few woods and waterways. As we have seen, lords like those of Sautonne, Aulnay, and La Bonnetière kept them as part of their demesne, reserving hunting and fishing privileges to themselves. Still, the meagre wildlife populations and the frequent absences of the lords rendered these rights mostly symbolic. Woodcutting was strictly controlled; as we saw in chapter 1, even the lords could not cut their trees without the consent of the royal bureaucracy. In Acadie, trees were everywhere, although oak trees were reserved for use by the Navy, and the lords held their concessions “en toute propriété.” In 1687, Le Borgne conceded the land around a projected sawmill to Louis Allain for an annual payment of 100 twelvefoot planks.52 Philippe Mius d’Entremont, the baron of Pobomcoup, used his hunting privileges to pursue the fur trade and paid his dues to Charles de la Tour in beaver pelts.53 Hunting and fishing privileges

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were specifically identified in virtually all of the seigneurial concessions in the colony, including those along the St John River and the Gaspé. Indeed, these interior grants were much more focused on the fur trade than those in peninsular Acadie, where fur-bearing animals soon became rare. Lords like the Saint-Castins, the D’Entremonts, and the Damours profited from their strong links with local Aboriginal communities and in Quebec to control commerce. La Vallière applied his rights by selling permits to fishing vessels at a tidy profit. He did not, however, distinguish between English and French and was later reprimanded for disobeying the king’s command to prevent English fishing in Acadie. This needs to be understood in the context of his disputes with the Compagnie de la pêche sédentaire, a new royal project to develop Acadie. Several merchants of Paris and La Rochelle were given a seigneurial concession to the coasts of Acadie in 1682 for the establishment of an inshore fishery, and they were further expected to contribute to the settlement, administration, and defence of the colony. The king also hoped that the company would lead an expansion of trade between France, Acadie, and its other colonies, awarding them numerous exemptions and privileges. Bergier, who was later named lieutenant-général du roi, chose the site of Chédabouctou. Most of the fishing and trading, however, took place along the north coast of Acadie, which La Vallière claimed as part of his seigneury at Beaubassin. He tried to enforce his rights by seizing company vessels and confiscating their merchandise, especially furs. The company also ran afoul of English privateers and struggled to survive, eventually folding after William Phips destroyed Chedabouctou and captured their ships as part of his 1690 attack on the colony.54 Alexandre Le Borgne was also actively fishing and trading in his concession of Port Royal and the Minas Basin. In 1683, he complained to the intendant at Quebec about La Vallière’s encroachments on his fishing rights. However, he also stole from his rival’s playbook, selling permits to New England merchants to trade with the colonists.55 Because woods and fish were so abundant in Acadie, the lords did not enjoy the same exclusive control that they possessed in the Loudunais. Rather than attempt the impossible task of enforcing their rights to every tree, fish, and animal, most permitted individual

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use by their censitaires of the natural resources on their grants. Governor Brouillan reported in 1703 that he was obliged to honour prior permissions given by the lords to the inhabitants to cut wood.56 Marshland grants typically included an area of wooded upland which could be used for building houses and dykes or for firewood. Hunting on Sundays and throughout the summer was accepted practice, as was setting up fish traps along local streams and creeks. The 1701 Port Royal census even indicates that Pierre Landry had a small fishing enterprise employing nine young men.57 As in New France, there were few settlers and the lords were no doubt careful not to alienate those willing to take on concessions. Land was cheap and needed to be cleared, and labour was expensive and hard to come by. Besides, the colonists needed construction materials and alternative sources of food, especially during their first critical years of getting established. The real money, as the lords recognized, was in commercial fishing and the fur trade. The British Council was no different in its attempts to control fishing and trade in Acadie after 1713. In 1720, Governor Phillipps constructed a warehouse and general store at Annapolis Royal and decreed that all colonial trade was to pass through his appointed merchants. He also established a garrison and fort at Canso, where most of the New England fishing vessels stopped to dry their catch or to resupply. Much like the French officials before them, however, the members of the Council were also privately involved in the trade and disputed with each other. Unlike the lords under the French regime, the Council’s control did not extend beyond its garrisons, and the British did not enjoy good relations with Aboriginal peoples. Further, neither the Acadians nor the New Englanders respected the Council’s decisions. They were thus unable to exercise their perceived rights to the natural resources of the colony and complained to London that they could generate little revenue.58 In both the Loudunais and Acadie, seigneurial rights were used to reinforce the strong position of the lords in the local economy. While dues provided a modest income, the exercise of banal rights in the former and rights to natural resources and trade in the latter were much more important in the long run.

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Resistance to the Exercise of Seigneurial Rights As mentioned previously, not all of the colonists accepted La Vallière as their lord. Jacques Bourgeois argued that his group had arrived first and constituted a distinct settlement, while Pierre Tibaudeau later claimed that his hamlet at Chipoudie, founded during the 1690s on the other side of the isthmus of Chignecto, was outside the boundaries of La Vallière’s seigneury. La Vallière’s 1676 grant instructed him not to disturb the inhabitants already living there, which would have affected Bourgeois, though not Tibaudeau. How should we interpret this resistance? Were the Acadians arguing that they did not have a lord? This seems unlikely. N.E.S. Griffiths suggests that the dispute was at least partly about property rights and that the colonists were understandably concerned new officials and lords might not recognize their rights to the land. La Vallière had also sought to impose work contracts on the inhabitants, which the royal court at Quebec agreed exceeded his powers.59 The royal decree upholding La Vallière’s concession also specifically confirmed the property rights of the colonists, suggesting that both sides got what they wanted. In 1705, some Port Royal heads of household complained to the royal notary that their lord was unjustly attempting to increase seigneurial dues,60 while we have already seen that in 1708 some of the colonists appealed to the royal governor to sort out the boundaries of grants in the wooded uplands. It seems clear that while the Acadians were prepared to contest what they viewed as an abuse of seigneurial rights, this did not necessarily constitute a challenge to the institution itself. The inhabitants of the Loudunais launched similar opposition to perceived seigneurial excesses. François Giroire, the ploughman discussed in chapter 3 on the rural economy, successfully appealed to the royal court at Loudun in 1759 about the outstanding dues claimed by the lord of Doismon. Several other appeals by censitaires against seigneurial dues, including a later one by Giroire, seem to have failed.61 In 1757, the inhabitants of Martaizé won a case against the appointed estate manager of the seigneur of Sautonne. The court deemed that Rolland, a non-noble, was subject to the king’s taxes despite his position.62 A long-standing dispute between the inhabitants of Angliers, a parish neighbouring Martaizé to the north, and their lord, Charles

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François Henry de Reval, a member of the Parlement de Paris, concerned the use of a piece of marshland for pasture. The inhabitants claimed it belonged to them in common, while the lord wanted to drain it and create a new métairie for his own profit. The royal court ordered a survey completed and nominated experts to assess the value of the land in question. The matter appears to have dragged on; eighteen months later the court directed the delegate to hold an assembly and present the results of the experts’ assessment. Since there are no further records at the court, it appears that the assembly and Reval came to some sort of agreement.63 In both places, then, individuals and communities were prepared to contest the exercise of seigneurial rights where they contravened established practice or threatened their interests. These exceptional cases demonstrate how important the relationship with the lords could be. The inhabitants expected competent and consistent lords who respected their property rights and did not overtly interfere with community practices.

Justice The lords of the Loudunais and Acadie, at least in theory, possessed considerable powers to administer justice in their concessions. These privileges exalted the seigneur’s traditional roles as protector and arbiter. As arbiter, he dealt with a wide scope of civil matters including property disputes, debts, inheritances, and family law. As protector, he had the right to try criminal cases, including those carrying the death penalty, excepting murder and rape. The lord’s powers of punishment also included banishment.64 In practice, both groups rarely exercised these powers, relying instead on royal courts. The effectiveness of seigneurial justice in other regions of France has been widely debated, and no consensus exists.65 In the Loudunais, among the lords identified in the areas of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, only the baronies (Moncontour and Saint Cassien) operated a seigneurial court. These institutions were run by appointed representatives of the lords, since the Duc de Richelieu and the Marquis de Villeroy were rarely if ever in residence. Furthermore, these courts appear to have only been concerned with matters of low

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justice, that is, enforcing the payment of seigneurial dues and minor civil disputes. In general, local justice was carried out by the royal court (bailliage) at Loudun.66 The most obvious reason for this is that the other seigneuries were not large enough, and their lords not rich enough, to support the expense of maintaining a court, especially the payment of the judge, lawyers, and clerks. Even grander lords found it more convenient to use the royal court. Thus we find the lord of Aulnay (Louis Marie Modeste de Lomeron), the lord of Doismon (the Marquis de Dreux), and the lord of the demesne of Loudun (René-Charles de Maupeou) using the royal court to prosecute those who defaulted on their dues or neglected to pay the lods et ventes when selling or exchanging land.67 The royal court was staffed by a president, civil and criminal lieutenant generals, attorneys (procureurs), lawyers (avocats), clerks (greffiers), and bailiffs (huissiers).68 Significantly, some of these officials also served in seigneurial courts. For example, Louis de Villiers, a lawyer at the royal court of Loudun, was the senior attorney at the seigneurial court of the Baron of Moncontour. Given the overlap, it is not surprising that judicial institutions generally supported the lords, or that the lords were confident in referring their concerns to the royal court. Perhaps most striking is the large number of cases at the royal court involving ordinary peasants as both plaintiffs and defendants. The vast majority appear to have dealt with financial matters and property disputes, sometimes involving truly paltry sums.69 From this it is clear that peasants were just as willing as the lords to use the royal court to defend their interests. Charges or claims could be made locally, registered in the local office of the Contrôle des actes (in the case of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, the bureau of Moncontour), and then referred to the royal court for action. Many peasants, however, appear to have submitted their complaints directly to one of the court’s bailiffs at Loudun. Since the court held its sessions in a city that many inhabitants traded in or visited regularly, and since the court routinely cleared cases in a matter of weeks or, at worst, months, the only obstacle to dissuade peasants from using royal justice was the potential court fees. Fees could be considerable and rose according to the gravity of the matter or size of the claim. The potential for court

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action was often sufficient to convince someone to settle. In 1762, the ploughman Jean Prinet and several associates threatened another ploughman, Jean Bizard, with a court action “qui pouroit estre coûteux et dont l’évènement est douteux” if he did not settle a debt of 30 lt and 18 boisseaux of wheat by the following Christmas.70 The cost of justice could also empower the wealthy to take advantage of the poor. For example, Anne Cailleteau of Martaizé, a domestic servant, settled a complaint with her employer, estate manager Pierre Henry Jamin, when the expense of pursuing it at the royal court proved beyond her means. Jamin agreed to pay 20 lt of wages and an additional 80 lt in return for her agreement to renounce any further action against him on behalf of the bastard child he had fathered upon her.71 The willingness of some peasants to use the royal courts despite the fees suggests that they believed real justice was possible. In Acadie, the sources provide only a few clues that suggest the exercise of seigneurial justice. In 1671, Governor Grandfontaine reported that Alexandre Le Borgne had ordered the hanging of a slave, the killing of an Aboriginal, and the banishment of three censitaires.72 In 1685, La Vallière took action against a reputed sorcerer, Jean Campagna.73 La Vallière decided to send Campagna to Quebec for trial, both because the charge of sorcery exceeded his jurisdiction and because the community was united in its desire to be rid of the man. The motivation for this arrest may have had as much to do with Campagna’s claim for unpaid wages against La Vallière as with concern for community safety, but it was consistent with the lord’s responsibility to protect his censitaires.74 The following year, the intendant of New France, Jacques de Meulles, issued an ordinance prohibiting the liquor trade with Aboriginals and specifically assigned La Vallière as lord of Beaubassin the task of adjudicating these cases and fining the guilty parties.75 Although no other records of justice in Beaubassin have survived, it seems reasonable to conclude that La Vallière had established at least a rudimentary court as well as officials to keep the peace and enforce his seigneurial rights. Like the king he represented, one of the governor’s fundamental obligations was to administer justice. As in the Loudunais, this was done through a royal court. The roots of this institution went back to the 1640s when Menou appointed a lieutenant civil et criminel (Michel

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Boudrot). Although Menou’s letters patent in 1647 confirmed his seigneurial justice rights, there is no evidence that he set up his own court. Boudrot continued in this function until 1688. In the 1650s, he was joined by Philippe Mius d’Entremont, king’s attorney, and Claude Petitpas, a clerk and royal notary. No records of judicial appointments or decisions have survived the first period of English rule (1654–70). It is likely that these men, along with the community delegate (syndic) Guillaume Trahan, resolved any disputes on an informal basis. It is also likely that at this early stage of colonial development, there was ample land available and most households were too busy getting established to desire to sue their neighbours. This benevolent situation was not to last, however. When the intendant visited in 1686, he noted that “la justice y est fort mal rendue,” remarking that the three officials named above were unpaid and neglected their offices. They were also old; Boudrot was an octogenarian. Interestingly, de Meulles states that the inhabitants were unscrupulous, living too freely, and committing crimes with impunity. For him, the solution was the appointment of trusted, well-paid officials from Quebec who would report directly to the government and who understood colonial life. Obviously, we must take these comments with a grain of salt; de Meulles seemed most concerned with the lack of political supervision and the opportunity to put his own men in place.76 A year later, a new governor, Louis Alexandre des Friches de Meneval, arrived with a new king’s attorney (Pierre Du Breuil) and lieutenant general (Mathieu de Goutins). The appointments refer to the siège ordinaire de l’Acadie – a royal court was now formally in existence. Meneval’s orders clearly included the establishment of royal justice. He appointed judges for Port Royal and Grand Pré and also intervened in seigneurial affairs. First, he arrested Le Borgne in 1687 and placed him in prison for several days because of complaints of his drunkenness and incompetence. The next year, he took over responsibility for Louis Morin, a twenty-six-year-old Acadian accused of having an affair with La Vallière’s daughter, and effectively sentenced him to exile, making him a sailor in the king’s service in France. Meneval wrote that he made this decision because he could not follow the normal forms (it was only a year after his arrival), it was impractical to send Morin to Quebec, and it was dangerous to leave him in the colony.

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Meneval then arranged for the now-pregnant daughter of La Vallière to receive her own seigneurial grant in the St John River valley.77 While Meneval was certainly assisting La Vallière by these actions, he was also asserting royal over seigneurial authority and sparing Morin from a worse fate. Although the French abandoned Port Royal during the 1690s, Du Breuil and De Goutins continued to live there, served on the provisory Council, and presumably continued to administer justice. Some surviving correspondence from De Goutins refers to the activity of judges in Grand Pré and Port Royal in 1694.78 In 1699, they were joined by another royal notary and clerk, Jean-Chrysostôme de Loppinot. They were clearly busy; in 1701, Governor Brouillan wrote to the king about the numerous disputes between the inhabitants over the borders of their concessions and the use of common fields around Port Royal for livestock pasture. He opined that “il n’est guère possible que cette province se puisse passer d’une justice réglée.”79 Loppinot appealed to the Minister of the Marine in 1703 for a proper courthouse and clerk’s office to conserve the paperwork. He also painted a bleak picture of the lack of order in Port Royal, noting that he and the other officials faced insults from the inhabitants and that the soldiers of the garrison stole and caused more disturbance than peace. He later noted that the governor himself had intervened in one case, clapping a colonist in irons who refused to sign a deposition against the parish priest of Port Royal.80 This kind of rough and arbitrary justice was not accepted passively by the local population. For example, Pierre Commeau wrote directly to France in 1704, complaining against the ruling of De Goutins in a property dispute by which he stood to lose most of his wealth including a number of rare fruit trees. The following year, Jean Labat appealed a decision of Loppinot that forbade him from pasturing his livestock near the fortifications of Port Royal.81 Perhaps most revealing of the tense situation was the minister’s decision to assign a soldier to accompany Loppinot in the performance of his duties and his intention to build a prison.82 Unlike the Loudunais, it seems that ordinary people could not trust in impartial and fair justice from their royal court in the early 1700s. It appears that Governor Subercase inspired more confidence and was willing to intervene directly in sorting out property disputes. At the end of 1708, he expressed thanks that

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the number of complaints had finally begun to diminish, but he was later chastened by his superior for administering justice arbitrarily.83 After the British Conquest, the administration of justice assumed an even stronger military flavour. The Council at Annapolis Royal was composed of military officers and the governor was also their regimental commander. The first concern of these men was security and the obedience of the local inhabitants. As we have seen, however, they lacked the power to enforce their decisions outside the boundaries of Annapolis Royal town. At least some of the Council members realized that they had a better chance of winning over the Acadians if they also provided civil justice and respected French customary laws. The Council Minutes that have survived indicate that several Acadians brought property disputes and other complaints to the British administration during the 1720s and 1730s, in some cases before they had even sworn the oath of allegiance.84 The Council got more than it bargained for, complaining that they were “daily employed and harassed with their [Acadian] affairs” and that the Acadians were “a litigious sort of people, and so ill natured to one another as daily to encroach upon their neighbour’s properties.”85 If this seemed to echo Brouillan’s criticisms from the 1700s, Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong’s solution seems more effective. He asked Acadian elected representatives, called delegates (which I will examine in more detail in the next chapter), to provide expert counsel. He also appointed constables and justices of the peace from among the Acadians to help.86 Ultimately, the British understood the importance of having ordinary Acadians come to the Council to resolve civil matters. By involving the Acadians themselves in the administration of justice, they were more likely to feel that they had a stake in the process and that rulings would be fair. Although the lords possessed significant powers to administer justice, they did not exercise these rights. Instead, they looked to royal courts to enforce their other privileges and maintain order. Ordinary people also took their disputes and their complaints directly to royal courts, using these institutions to pursue their own interests. People did not look to the lord to be their arbiter, but to their parish, community, and state. This did not change after the British Conquest in 1710. If anything, British engagement of the local population increased the latter’s trust, at least for those living close to Annapolis Royal.

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Ordinary people genuinely desired reliable and fair justice to help maintain order and sort out the inevitable disputes that arose between neighbours. In both the Loudunais and Acadie, the lords were not the source of this justice.

Social Prestige In addition to the rights and dues which I have already discussed, the lords enjoyed a host of symbolic privileges which reinforced their social prestige and the idea of a society of orders. For example, during Sunday mass, they sat in the front pew of the parish church, received communion first, and were named in prayers of intercession.87 They also were entitled to display their crest or coat of arms at the church and on their manor. Such matters may seem secondary, but the lords were not shy about defending their perceived rights. Menou’s mother, Nicole de Jousserand, fought a lengthy court battle with the rival lord of Sautonne during the 1640s over who was entitled to display their arms and be named as the patron of the parish church of Aulnay.88 Another lord, the seigneur of Bourg, donated a new bell to the parish church of La Chaussée in 1707. He and his wife stood as the bell’s “godparents,” and the priest baptized the bell, which was dubbed “Marguerite,” in the presence of all of the inhabitants.89 Prestige was important in early modern society, and earning a title through a seigneury was a considerable accomplishment. For example, the shipowner Martin d’Aprendestiguy became the sieur de Martignon, while the minor noble Philippe Mius d’Entremont was raised to the title of baron of Pobomcoup. Sometimes peasants sought to tap into this social prestige by asking their lord to serve as godparent to one of their children. The potential advantage for the family was to have patrons who would want their godchildren to do well and help create opportunities for them later in life. This was also good for the lord, symbolizing his authority and connection with his censitaires. About one in twenty baptisms in the Loudunais involved a lord (or lord’s wife) as godparent. Louis Marie Modeste de Lomeron, lord of Aulnay, seems to have taken this duty particularly seriously, serving as godfather to several children from 1706 until his death around 1740. Minor lords like the Richelots who

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resided regularly on their small estates were also occasional godparents. A closer look reveals that many of these baptisms involved wealthier ploughman households that held significant concessions and/or leases from the lords. Thus, the baptisms served to reinforce economic relationships as well. For example, in 1762, Eynaud, the lord of Sautonne, served as godfather to Andrée, the daughter of Jean Giroire, while Louis Marreau, the lord of La Bonnetière, was godfather to Louis, a son of the prominent and numerous Baudu family. Interestingly, Rasillys and Menous also make appearances in the mid-eighteenth century, indicating an ongoing attachment between these seigneurial families and the region one hundred years after Isaac de Rasilly and Charles de Menou were recruiting colonists for Acadie. George de Menou, an officer in the Saint-Maixent Regiment, stood as godfather for the daughter of Noel Turquois in 1744, while Louis Gabriel de Rasilly did the same for the son of Sebastien Lambert in 1737. Another Rasilly, Louis François, was invited to be godfather for the daughter of the lord of La Bonnetière, suggesting close links between these two families.90 The lords were at least theoretically at the apex of their communities. However, we should not make too much of their occasional presence; 95 per cent of baptisms proceeded without the presence of a lord. Since almost none of the seventeenth-century parish registers of Acadie have survived, we are restricted to looking at the last years of the French regime and the period after the British Conquest for evidence of lords as godparents. By this time, the original lords had died, leaving in some cases multiple heirs. However, La Vallière’s sons never returned to Beaubassin, d’Entremont’s family remained at Pobomcoup, and the lords of the St John River valley were obliged to return to Quebec.91 Only the heirs of the Le Borgne-La Tour family, lords of Port Royal and Minas, lived near the main Acadian communities, and their rights were officially taken over by the British in the 1730s. None of them served frequently as godparents. Jacques, the new baron of Pobomcoup, stood as godfather twice during a June 1712 visit to Port Royal. The son of Alexandre Le Borgne, another Alexandre, was a godfather once, as a teenager, in 1724. Given the dispersed nature of the Acadian communities and the focus of the lords on trade rather than agriculture, it is not surprising that there was little to bring together prominent rural households and the seigneurs. The advantages of a

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noble sponsor would also have been less evident. Of course, British officers did not serve as godparents to Catholic families, nor did they display their arms in Catholic churches. If some aspects of the seigneury, such as annual dues and property rights, were maintained during this period, whatever remained of the social prestige of lordship was gradually lost.

Conclusion The seigneury was a complex institution. It is difficult to generalize about lords, their influence, the importance of their dues and rights, and their relationship with the censitaires because of the great diversity of situations. In Acadie, some lords lived among the colonists and actively worked to develop the land for agriculture, while others lived closer to Aboriginal communities and were more interested in trade. In the Loudunais, some lords were great nobles or clerics who never visited their estates, while others were minor but proud military officers and civic officials who resided in rural manor houses that had belonged to their families for generations. Some lords built large estates, some focused on developing métairies – consolidated farms that could be leased out to wealthier peasants – while others simply conceded most of their land to rural people of all kinds. Much depended on the particular situation of the lord and the degree to which this particular seigneury fit into his larger ambitions and possessions. For example, Charles de Menou mortgaged all of his property in France and invested most of his time in pursuit of his dream of lordship and governorship in Acadie. For Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, in contrast, his seigneury in Madawaska was a minor part of his business ventures in New France and the West Indies. Yet I can present some general conclusions. The institution of the seigneury was important in both the Loudunais and Acadie. Allan Greer, referring to New France as a whole, has called it “the basic framework within which seigneurs and habitants, sometimes collaborating and sometimes contending, shaped their emerging communities.”92 Similarly, every landholder in both Acadie and the Loudunais had a lord, and their relationship was based on established rights, dues, and reciprocal obligations backed by customary law and tradition.

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The administration of the institution was similar in both regions: the concession of land to censitaires, the collection of seigneurial dues, the appointment of agents in the absence of the lord, even the nonexercise of powers of justice in favour of royal courts. Some privileges, like banal rights, were more important in the Loudunais, while others, such as hunting and fishing, were more important in Acadie, but the same terms and conditions were common to both. Most of the lords even came from similar backgrounds. They were either scions of oldsword noble houses or officials and merchants who earned or purchased their titles. We can also see that the lords in both places were not dominant figures in the community. They had little direct influence on the lives of most people, and the inhabitants were prepared to contest perceived abuses or excesses in royal courts. This chapter has also noted differences in how the seigneury operated. In the Loudunais, the lords were above all landlords. They collected annual dues and banal rights, leased out their demesnes and livestock, and spent most of their time serving the king in the royal army or bureaucracy, or perhaps on larger estates elsewhere. With peace and agriculture well established, they merely had to sit back and collect the revenue from their estates. In Acadie, the lords were colonizers whose fortunes were invested in the development of their concessions. Their success depended on their presence and actions. Some established new communities; many focused on exploiting natural resources. They were also often the king’s representatives in the colony, serving as governors, commanders, judges, and officials. But the king and his courts were also far away, and the lords did not hesitate to use armed force to protect their perceived rights. Menou hanged the men of his rival, La Tour, while La Vallière captured the ships of those who traded and fished in his territory without his leave. The lords of the St John River rallied to beat back an English invasion, and one tried to recapture Port Royal after it fell in 1710. In many ways, life in the colony was a throwback to the feudal origins of the seigneury, when the lords were warriors who defended their estates against foreign and domestic rivals, swearing fealty in exchange for titles and privileges. We should remember that unlike the lords of the Loudunais, the lords in Acadie were starting from scratch. They were important

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Fig. 4.1 Seigneurial estate of La Bonnetière, La Chaussée. Author’s photo, 2005.

figures throughout the seventeenth century, in part because the king was committed to the seigneury as the vehicle for colonial development. Men like Menou, La Vallière, and D’Entremont invested heavily in their concessions, recruited settlers and tradesmen, encouraged commerce, and provided security. Even the smaller lords along the St John River provided important links between New France and Acadie, and fostered ties with Aboriginal allies like the Abenaki and Mi’kmaq. Their efforts helped preserve the French presence in the region after Port Royal’s capture in 1690 and 1710 and built the strength of the commercial fishery and fur trade. At the same time, the lords were not central to the rural economy in the same way they were in the Loudunais because they did not possess large demesnes, mills, or livestock to be leased out. Farming developed chiefly through the efforts of the colonists themselves, and this is what made the Acadian situation distinct. Unlike their Loudunais counterparts, Acadian farmers were not dependent on leases or concessions from the lords for access to the best lands. They still, however, needed recognition of their

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Fig.4.2 Seigneurial estate of Sautonne, Martaizé, Cadastre, 1828

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property rights and accomplished this through the paying of traditional dues. In the end, neither France nor its lords had sufficient military power in the colony to prevent English encroachments, which culminated in its conquest in 1710. There is no doubt that the seigneury in Acadie was transformed and, in some ways, diminished by the political instability and the eventual British takeover. It nevertheless endured. In the eighteenth century, the British Council recognized the advantages of taking over the seigneury instead of abolishing it. The administration of local justice and property relations formed a framework within which they could communicate with the Acadians and, to a limited extent, rule the colony. The fact that they also gained a small amount of money and provisions was a bonus. The Acadians seemed willing to continue paying the rents. This could be seen as part of their larger strategy to swear limited oaths and maintain neutrality: acknowledging that the British were the current lords and giving them their due as such did not imply that the Acadians were required to provide them with military support. An added advantage was that, should the French retake the colony, there was not likely to be any difficulty in maintaining the system. After all, it was not uncommon in the Loudunais, or anywhere else in France, to buy or exchange seigneuries. Further, by accepting the payments, appointing Acadians to collect them, and resolving disputes in their “court,” the British were in effect recognizing Acadian rights to the land. This was a critical issue for the Acadians as their communities continued to grow and expand. It seems that both governments and colonists used the institution of the seigneury to relate to each other and to protect their interests.

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5

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Institutions of Local Governance

Introduction When we think of the political structures of the early modern period in Europe, we tend to emphasize the increasing centralization and bureaucracy of the state, the absolutism of Louis XIV, and the power of the institutional Church. In contrast, historians of Acadie highlight the relative freedom of the colonists and the system of local governance that they employed. They elected their own representatives and negotiated directly with French and British governors, compromising on and often refusing state demands such as militia service or an unconditional oath of allegiance. Not surprisingly, some of these governors complained about their attitude. A frustrated Brouillan, for example, remarked in 1701 that they lived like “true republicans.” A superficial reading of historical documents has led to numerous claims that Acadie was becoming a “republic,” a “democratic society” developing its own “distinct identity.”1 As with the seigneury, these claims are overstated, because they create a contrast between an idealized Acadian experience and a caricaturized vision of conditions in France that simply cannot be sustained. The inhabitants of the Loudunais, for example, also annually elected representatives who negotiated state demands. In fact, the community exercised considerable autonomy in the management of its own affairs; the residents collected taxes themselves, ran the temporal affairs of their church, and hired officials and guards for local needs and security. All of these initiatives were blessed

Institutions of Local Governance

and encouraged by the royal government. In both the Loudunais and Acadie, the vestry (fabrique) and the parish assembly (communauté d’habitants) were prominent institutions of local governance, largely controlled by wealthier heads of household, which protected community interests and maintained order. What made the Acadians distinct was not the existence of these institutions, but how they adapted them to respond to the particular challenges and political questions they faced. The state, as we saw in chapter 2, made more serious demands on the Acadians than was typical in the Loudunais. At the same time, priests were often absent from Acadian parishes. Thus, institutions of local governance took on greater importance. Did the Acadians develop more democratic practices in comparison with their counterparts in the Loudunais?

The Church and the Community The Church occupied a central position in rural life in France. Attending service and receiving the sacraments were spiritual events required for salvation and social events that brought families together. Regular mass and special worship services on religious holidays were opportunities for games, fairs, and festivals.2 There was also a close relationship between church and state. Catholicism was the state religion; after 1685 it was illegal to be Protestant. Parents were expected to baptize their children within two days after birth, while marriages and burials also had to be recorded in parish registers, which were written on stamped paper provided by the government. This served as a form of registration for the population that was essential for the enforcement of inheritance, property, custody, and other civil laws. Taxes and vital statistics were collected by the parish. Royal orders and announcements were posted on the church door and priests were expected to give sermons emphasizing moral standards like obedience and chastity. The church hierarchy was also important. Bishops, or their vicars-general, granted dispensations for consanguineous marriages and other infractions of canon law and visited parishes in their episcopacy every few years.3 Many historians have emphasized the influence of the parish priest, the local face of this powerful institution. As administrator of the sacraments, he was “the essential

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link between man and the supernatural, man and his salvation.”4 He was also educated and relatively wealthy, a person of respect. He could serve as an adviser to help resolve local disputes or write letters on behalf of his parishioners. He sent reports to state officials and also solicited aid from them when famine or disease struck. He was, in short, a potential community leader. How can we measure the importance of priests in the Loudunais? At the very least we can count them. La Chaussée and Martaizé each had a parish priest (curé) and a vicar (vicaire), that is, an assistant priest, while the smaller parish of Aulnay had a single member of a religious order (prieur) fulfilling the functions of a priest. This gave a ratio of 1 cleric to 300 people (about 75 households), normally ensuring that there was no interruption in the provision of the sacraments or the holding of services. It was, in fact, slightly higher than the average ratio elsewhere in the Loudunais (1 cleric to 320 people) and considerably higher than that of many rural parishes across France. In neighbouring Poitou, only one in three or four rural parishes had both a priest and a vicar, while in the Vannetais, the ratio of clerics to people was only 1 to 370.5 Priests tended to come from elite backgrounds, served for a long time, and usually held rights to the tithe. Vicars, on the other hand, were more often of humbler origin, were paid a small stipend, and were frequently moved from one parish to the next.6 For example, Henry Guillaume de la Brosse served as priest of La Chaussée from 1735 to 1768. During that time, no fewer than seven different vicars assisted him. Similarly, Jean Marreau de Boisguerin served as priest of Martaizé from 1718 through 1759 and was aided by at least six different vicars.7 Although Marreau was a scion from a local seigneurial family, most of these clerics, both the priests and the vicars, would have been strangers to their parishioners when they arrived. This suggests, particularly in the case of the vicars, who changed so frequently, that we cannot assume that they had a close relationship with the inhabitants. An apparent exception appears to have been Claude Babaud, prieur of the parish of Aulnay. His female relatives, Geneviève and Anne, served as godmothers for twenty-two babies from twenty different families between 1708 and 1736. This constituted about 10 per cent of the total baptisms in the parish, suggesting that they were widely respected in the community.8

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Priests were more than religious officials; they were also important economic figures. First and foremost, they controlled the tithe, a levy of one-twelfth on harvested grain. This was routinely leased out to wealthy inhabitants. For example, in 1699, the tithe of the parish of Martaizé was leased for five years to a group of bakers and butchers from Loudun, who agreed to pay 400 lt/year. In 1707, the same tithe was leased for three years to a pair of senior ploughmen from the parish, Marc Brissault and Jean Buard. The ploughmen agreed to pay 325 lt/year.9 The reduced value probably corresponds to reduced returns during this period of war and poor harvests. The advantages to leasing for the priest were obvious. He did not have to try to collect individual payments from everyone, which could lead to awkward and emotional encounters, and he received steady cash instead of having to sell different amounts of wheat, rye, barley, and oats. The leasers, on the other hand, no doubt made a tidy profit in exchange for doing all of that work. Priests could also charge surplice fees (essentially, service fees) for baptisms, marriages, and burials. Typically less than 1 livre tournois (lt), these payments would have provided only a modest income and might be lowered or waived for poorer members of the parish.10 Some priests were also landlords. In Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Renové (a smaller village in the parish of La Chaussée), certain estates (prieurés) were owned by religious orders who collected dues from their tenants like any other lord. The Abbey of Fontevrault, north of Loudun, controlled the prieuré of Renové as well as several other local properties, while the Abbey of Saint-Jouin (west of Moncontour) held land in the parish of La Chaussée.11 These clerics were distant for the most part, relying on local agents to collect the dues. Some priests bought land in lay seigneuries and subsequently leased it out to peasants. For example, the aforementioned Claude Babaud, prieur of Aulnay, purchased twelve small plots of land collectively worth 240 lt, mostly in the seigneury of Aulnay. In 1727, he leased a consolidated farm (métairie) with an annual revenue of 90 lt to René Brissault for seven years in exchange for the considerable sum of 5 lt, 20 boisseaux (bx) of wheat, 30 bx of rye, and 20 days of work each year. Jean Marreau, curé of Martaizé, purchased nine pieces of land valued at 319 lt in the seigneuries of Saint-Jouin, La Bonnetière, and Aulnay.12 The priests were also creditors of their parishioners, especially established

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ploughmen. For example, René Baudu borrowed 205 lt from Babaud in three different instalments between 1738 and 1742. De la Brosse, curé of La Chaussée, loaned 230 lt in a single transaction to Joseph Messier in 1739. In contrast, the vicars appear rarely in the notarial documents. They would have had little or no economic influence in the community. The Church was just as important in the New World as in the Old for rural communities. It reinforced “the most basic concepts of the era, loyalty to the king, respect for order, acceptance of a hierarchical social structure, and feelings of a sense of community.”13 However, the number of priests in Acadie was never large, and few stayed for long. Jesuits arrived with Poutrincourt in 1610, but soon left Port Royal to found their own post at Saint-Sauveur and three years later were driven out by Samuel Argall. Menou forged close bonds with the Capuchin order, fostering several missionaries and bequeathing them part of his inheritance in his testament.14 They too were obliged to leave after an English attack. There were no churchmen at all during the English administration of the colony between 1654 and 1670. Suffice it to say that the early colonists were often without the services of a priest. After the French resumed control, there was an effort, on paper at least, to establish a permanent religious administration in the colony. Acadie was deemed part of the new diocese of Quebec, but the bishops seldom exercised direct supervision over the colony, probably because it was too far away and they had their hands full in the St Lawrence valley. For example, the bishop or his vicar-general visited the parish of La Prairie in New France fourteen times between 1698 and 1749, but the only similar visit to Acadie occurred in 1686, when Saint-Vallier toured the entire colony.15 This was an important but brief period of investment in the church in Acadie. The sole priest at Port Royal asked for a companion as well as additional clergy to serve the newer settlements at Minas and Beaubassin, and Saint-Vallier appears to have come through because, by 1693, there were four priests working in the colony including a rudimentary catechism school at Port Royal. This brought the ratio of clerics to colonists to about 1 to 285.16 This figure can be somewhat misleading, however, because it does not take into account the missionary work that was the primary effort of many of the priests in Acadie. In the same year of 1693, Villebon noted that

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the priests paid little attention to his direction or the regulations of the Bishop of Quebec, and spent most of their time with the Mi’kmaq. The inhabitants of Beaubassin complained so much about the frequent absences and overbearing attitude of their priest, Jean Baudoin, that he was removed. By 1699 they had been without a priest for several years.17 Religious service to the colonists was further disrupted by the British Conquest of 1710. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) protected the Acadians’ right to practise the Catholic religion “so far as the Laws of Great Britain permit the same.” This was an important qualification, given the limited extent to which the observance of the Catholic faith was tolerated in the metropolis. The British agreed to permit French clerics to serve the colonists and to minister to the Mi’kmaq but required them to take oaths of allegiance to the British Crown for the period they were in Acadie. In France, only bishops had to take oaths to the king, and, obviously, swearing fidelity to a Protestant monarch was not an easy matter. The Bishop of Quebec and his vicar-general in Paris, the Abbé de l’Isle Dieu, were able to recruit a few clerics willing to serve, but it was never enough, particularly as the Acadian population expanded rapidly to over ten thousand.18 By 1750, Acadie had seven parishes – Annapolis Royal, Grand Pré (Minas), Rivière des Canards, Beaubassin, Pisiquid, and Cobequid.19 There were also missions at Pobomcoup, Chedabucto, Shubenacadie. These positions were never fully staffed; even if a priest and vicar had been in place in each of the seven parishes, the ratio of clerics to colonists would have been only 1 to 715. Furthermore, Acadians living in more distant locations like Chipoudie and Tantremarre would have had little opportunity to attend service or receive the sacraments. In addition, the distances between parishes meant that priests in different communities would have few opportunities to meet or support each other. They were further divided by professional rivalries, especially between Sulpicians, Recollets, Prêtres des Missions Étrangères (P.M.E.), and secular priests.20 New France, it should be emphasized, also had a shortage of priests. As late as 1730, only one in five parishes had a permanent priest in residence. The total number of clergy there fell from over 300 in 1698 to only 200 in 1759, while the population grew to nearly 60,000. Again, some priests were absorbed in missionary duties, while, as in France, many clergy lived entirely in the principal towns. As a result,

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the eighteenth-century ratio of priests to people in the rural parishes of New France was as low as 1 to 500.21 From the British perspective, every French Catholic priest was a potential spy and fomenter of rebellion among the colonists. It was certainly reasonable for them to be suspicious. The French government sent instructions to Gaulin in 1711 to incite the Mi’kmaq to attack Port Royal, and to Durand and Pain in 1718 to convince the Acadians to emigrate to Île Royale. Lieutenant-Governor Doucett complained in 1717 that the colonists’ reluctance to help the British with provisions was entirely due to the priests preaching against them.22 In Annapolis Royal, an ongoing feud in the 1720s between the priest Breslay and Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong culminated in the British attempt to arrest the priest, and the latter’s escape and eventual retirement back to France in 1730.23 When his replacement, De Poncy, along with another priest named Chevereaux, were banished in 1736 for their perceived opposition to the British regime, 107 heads of household from Annapolis Royal signed a petition to the Council requesting a priest because being deprived of the sacraments exposed them “to most evident dangers.” They also wrote to the king of France, complaining of their “sad situation.”24 De Poncy continued to cause problems, appearing in Beaubassin in 1740 with “a scheme to the prejudice of this government.” The Council ordered the inhabitants to “send him immediately away.” The representatives of Beaubassin sent a petition asking for him to stay until another cleric could be found, but the British upheld their decision, emphasizing that the inhabitants “might have a Priest” if he first came to Annapolis Royal to swear the oath.25 A petition from the Minas area in 1753, signed by forty-five Acadian men, affirmed that the priests should not be required to swear an oath and that the British were obliged to allow them to serve in the colony by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.26 Governor Mascarene noted that several colonists in public (i.e., British) employ had been excommunicated by French priests and he condemned any further use of this power.27 Most infamously, some French missionaries, such as JeanLouis Le Loutre, saw the interests of the Church and the French state as the same and promoted them with zealotry and violence. Le Loutre led an attack that burned the Acadian community of Beaubassin in 1751 when the inhabitants refused to move to French territory.28 Not every

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cleric was a partisan of rebellion, however. Charles de la Goudalie, a Sulpician who served at Grand Pré for the better part of twenty years between 1729 and 1749, was also vicar-general of Acadie. He preached moderation and peace, while encouraging the Acadians to negotiate with the British Council on matters like the oath of allegiance.29 In both the Loudunais and Acadie, clerics were important figures who administered the sacraments and could also fulfill a variety of roles in the community. However, we should not exaggerate their influence. Vicars in the Loudunais were relatively poor, transferred regularly, and formed few bonds with their parishioners. The parish priest might stay longer and could also be a player in the local economy, leasing out the tithe, farmland, and livestock as well as lending money. Some appear to have forged close relations with the inhabitants, but others were more distant figures, leaving the majority of the religious work to the vicars and behaving like any other distant landlord in their dealings within the community. Parish priests in Acadie were not as numerous or well established as those of the Loudunais and few had vicars or other assistants. They were typically present for short periods of time and often split their duties between parish and mission work, resulting in long absences. Although they collected a reduced tithe to cover their living expenses, there are no indications that the clerics were significantly involved in the local economy, either as landlords or creditors. They could be important political figures, helping the inhabitants draft petitions or letters and, in some cases, pressuring them to move or rebel. Yet most Acadians made their own decisions on these matters. Only a few moved to Île Royale and even fewer actively took up arms to support France. Rather than powerful elites, most priests in Acadie appear to have been men isolated from the larger Church, facing enormous challenges in the administration of their large and dispersed parishes and caught between the demands of the French and the suspicions of the British.

Baptism All parents were required to present their babies for baptism, normally within forty-eight hours of birth.30 The cleansing of original sin was considered essential for salvation, especially at a time when as many

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as half the children of France did not reach the age of adulthood. Meanwhile, the state wanted to ensure that all births were registered. In the Loudunais, baptism followed birth so closely that the birth date is not even recorded in the majority of cases. However, in Acadie, the vast majority of baptismal records from the available parish registers (over 90 per cent) give both the birth and the baptism date, enabling us to measure how accessible priests were to families. We have little information on the seventeenth century, but given the situation described in the preceding section, it is not surprising that even in the eighteenth century there were often considerable delays for many children. The baptismal registers of both places also indicate how often “emergency” baptisms (ondoiements) were carried out by laypeople; traditionally, this occurred when the baby was at risk of imminent death and the priest was not immediately available.31 This gives us a second method of evaluating the presence of priests, but also demonstrates how the inhabitants filled the void when necessary. They obviously thought baptism was important, and performed it themselves when needed. The calculation of the delay between birth and baptism shows significant disparity. Over half of Acadian babies were, in fact, baptized within forty-eight hours. About a quarter of them, however, were not baptized for at least a month and in some cases not for over a year. For example, longer delays occurred in the late 1720s and throughout the 1730s at Annapolis Royal, the same time that the priests Breslay and Poncy were chased out by the British Council. In Beaubassin, the only parish of the three where more than half of the children were not baptized within forty-eight hours, the absences seemed even more frequent. The parish registers attest to a flurry of “catch-up” baptisms whenever a priest arrived, such as in June 1717, April and May 1723, and June 1741. Indeed, the majority of baptisms were performed in the fall and especially the spring, suggesting that the priest was only there on a seasonal basis. Perhaps he spent his summers with the Mi’kmaq. The shortest average delay was at Minas. The median was just one, but the mean was twenty-five, suggesting that even here, where a priest was generally resident year-round, not everyone brought their baby immediately to the church. In order to consider why that might have been, we need to take into account the seasonal cycle of births as well as the dispersed nature of settlement. In general, Acadian families in

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6 to 12 months 4% 3 to 6 months 6%

1 year + 1%

1 to 3 months 14% 2 days or less 58%

11 to 30 days 9%

3 to 10 days 8%



Fig. 5.1 Delay between birth and baptism in Annapolis Royal, Minas, and Beaubassin, 1712–41

Minas had babies all year around, but there was a marked preference for March and April as well as September and October. With regard to baptisms, there were many more baptisms than births in May and June, suggesting that at least some families waited for better weather and perhaps easier travelling conditions before presenting their baby for baptism. There were also significantly fewer baptisms than births in September, likely as a result of families being too busy with the harvest to travel with their kin and neighbours to the church. These baptisms were made up in October and November, presumably when farming activity began to slow down. When we look at the practices of particular families, it seems clear that geography was the most important factor. Families like the Melansons and the Babins, who lived in the village of Grand Pré, experienced much shorter delays than those living farther out along the rivers that flowed into the Minas Basin, notably the Héberts and the Landrys. This is an important reminder that there was more to baptismal practices than the availability of the priest; Acadian families made their own decisions about when to travel to the church, taking into account the time of year and, presumably, the health of the baby and mother.

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150

100

50

Births Baptisms

0

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Fig. 5.2 Births and baptisms by month at Saint-Charles-de-Mines, 1712–40

The health of the baby was also a direct factor in the practice of lay baptism (ondoiement). In the Loudunais, despite the seeming availability of priests, sometimes parents had to resort to a quick baptism at home in order to ensure the spiritual health of a sickly infant. Two different cases of twins who died within twenty-four hours of being born provide a case in point. This was an era of high infant mortality; about one-quarter of the babies baptized in the three parishes died before reaching the age of two.32 Given this situation, we might expect to see many ondoiements, but this is not the case. The largest number was in La Chaussée, and then only for a limited period. Five baptisms were performed by other clerics due to the absence of the regular parish priest, while eighteen ondoiements were conducted by laypersons between 1706 and 1727. Together, these constituted a little less than 5 per cent of the total baptisms performed; thus they constitute a small minority. It seems that almost all of the time, a priest or vicar was available to perform an emergency baptism. These were small communities in which most of the inhabitants lived close to the church. We can nevertheless learn something from who in the parish performed the ondoiement when there was a need. About half were done by women and several by Jeanne Guillon, the wife of the local blacksmith, suggesting that she may have been a midwife. Others were conducted by the parish sacristan, a local landowner, and senior ploughmen.33 In short, it seems that families made individual decisions based on who was available and whom they trusted.

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Table 5.1 Delay between birth and baptism among selected centre families of Minas Family Babin Hébert Landry Leblanc Melanson

Number of births 36 61 77 165 29

Mean delay (days) 1.33 31 23 5.5 4.8

Source: Registres paroissiaux de Saint-Charles-des-Mines, in Una F. Daigre, Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records: The Registers of St. Charles aux Mines in Acadia, 1707–1748 (Baton Rouge, LA: Diocese of Baton Rouge, 1999).

The extremely incomplete nature of the burial registers makes precision impossible, but in general we can say that a smaller percentage of infants died in Acadie, because about three-quarters of them appear later as adults in the registers, censuses, and other documents.34 But if the peril of imminent death was not as large a factor in the performance of ondoiements, most inhabitants of the colony no doubt wished to leave nothing to chance, especially if they were unsure when they would next see a priest. In the parish of Annapolis Royal, for example, almost one-third of children born between 1712 and 1730 were first baptized by a layperson. We can state with conviction that this was directly related to the absence of the priest because once one was more consistently available, ondoiements virtually disappear. Similarly, in Beaubassin, twenty-seven were performed in 1722–23 at a time when the priest was away fulfilling his missionary responsibilities to the Mi’kmaq. Meanwhile in Minas, where a priest was almost always resident, only a single ondoiement was recorded: for a Métis child living on the periphery of the parish. The notion that lay baptism was a permanent feature of Acadian culture does not hold up to the evidence.35 Instead, it was a pragmatic response to the priest’s absence that ensured that the baby’s soul and legitimacy were protected.

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Studies of nineteenth-century Louisiana have determined that lay baptisms were routinely performed by women in Cajun communities.36 But in pre-Deportation Acadie, men conducted most of them. In Annapolis Royal, for example, the doctor Denis Petitot accounted for fifty or almost one in five of the ondoiements, while five other Acadian men shared the duties for another ninety-two babies. Similarly, in Beaubassin, prominent men like the notary, Jean Véco, and senior heads of households Jean Cyr and Michel Poirier carried out this duty. Just 32 of 263 cases in Annapolis Royal concerned a midwife, female attendant, or relative, and these, along with some of those performed by Petitot, are most likely to be the cases where there was a concern for the health of the baby. It seems that, in those cases that did not involve an immediate threat to the infant, the family took its time selecting a prominent male relative or notable. It is clear that baptism was an important tradition for Acadian society, but we need to exercise caution in interpreting the limited data available about the devotion and lived experience of Catholic faith.37 For example, less than one-third of the infants whose formal baptism was delayed received an ondoiement. In Minas, virtually no one received one. Perhaps priests did not always record the lay baptism, believing that the formal sacrament was the one that counted. We have no way of knowing whether Charles de la Goudalie of Saint-Charles-de-Mines, for example, recorded no lay baptisms for his parish because there were none, or because he did not bother or disapproved of the practice. But even in Annapolis Royal and Beaubassin, where lay baptisms were frequently recorded, not everyone conducted them. Perhaps the relatively good health of the population made ondoiements less urgent, or perhaps the frequent disruptions to Acadian religious life led some families to place less emphasis on the sacraments. The timing of baptism, and the conduct of a lay baptism, like the choice of godparents, was an individual family decision. We might also wonder if lay marriages and lay burials were performed by some of the colonists. During certain periods, especially between 1654 and 1670 and in the years immediately following the last fall of Port Royal in 1710, there would have been no other option.

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The Vestry There is no doubt that the Church, its sacraments, and its priests were an important part of rural life in the Loudunais and Acadie. However, as several scholars have already pointed out, it is easy to exaggerate the power of the institutional Church and “priestly influence.”38 One thing we often ignore is the active role that the inhabitants played in the dayto-day running of their parish. The vestry (fabrique) was a permanent institution that managed all of the temporal matters relating to the Church. These included keeping up the building and its grounds, as well as maintaining the vestments, ornaments, and sacred vessels required for religious services.39 These items were normally stored in the sacristy (or annex). An edict of 1695 clarified that the priest holding the tithe (normally the curé) was responsible for the expenses of the choir, bell tower, and altar, while all other costs fell on the community.40 Between paying tithes and fees to the priests and maintaining the vestry, peasants paid a lot for the services provided by the Church. To meet these responsibilities, the community made contributions and/or dedicated certain revenues to the vestry. The parish assembly annually elected a churchwarden (fabriquer or marguillier) to manage the accounts, which were reviewed and approved much like the tax rolls. Churchwardens usually had discretion to make small purchases or order minor repairs, but had to get authorization from the assembly for bigger projects. Larger parishes, especially in towns, might have a committee of churchwardens. These were time-consuming positions normally held by wealthier parishioners. In Loudun, the churchwardens actively pursued those who did not pay their annual contributions.41 They in turn appointed a sacristan, who was responsible for the items in the sacristy and for maintaining the church grounds. The sacristan might also do duty as a clerk, schoolmaster, or gravedigger, but he was not responsible for maintaining the priest’s living quarters or other belongings. Priests normally hired domestic servants at their own expense to meet these personal needs.42 The differences between the parish assembly and vestry can be confusing. It is important to remember that the parish was both an ecclesiastical and a political unit in ancien régime France.

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In short, the assembly was the institution of local administration and tax collection, while the vestry focused on the secular matters of the church. The overlap occurs in that the assembly selected the leaders of the vestry and the same heads of household met to decide assembly and vestry matters, as well as possible tax implications involving donations to the vestry. Vestries were not always well established in rural parishes. In many parts of France, there were no churchwardens at all and management of the church’s temporal affairs fell on the curé.43 In the diocese of Poitiers, only some rural parishes had vestries and the church’s property could become confused with that of the priest. In the Loudunais, just six of thirty-seven parishes were specifically mentioned as having a separate, functioning vestry in the later eighteenth century, although the parish assembly still had to approve any accounts since it was the parishioners who paid.44 In Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, although no specific minutes of meetings have survived, several documents indicate that a vestry was operational, possessed a certain amount of annual revenue, and was managed by an appointed official called a sacristan, who apparently combined the roles of clerk, manager, and groundskeeper.45 These sacristans, such as Charles Senegon in Martaizé, Gabriel Proust in Aulnay, and François Massereau in La Chaussée, served for long periods of time, and in many cases their offices stayed within the family. For example, Gabriel took over when Claude Proust died in 1740, while François continued the work of Antoine Massereau in 1720. Their functions would have taken up a considerable amount of time. For example, sacristans witnessed all baptisms, marriages, and burials and also maintained the vestry accounts. Yet the position apparently did not preclude the pursuit of farming. Proust held over 300 lt worth of land in the seigneury of Aulnay alone, though he may have sublet much of it. It is not clear what compensation the sacristans received, whether as salary or exemption from certain taxes and the tithe, but it must have been considerable to capture the interest of established families. The essential point is that the inhabitants thought it was important to have one of their own, a senior head of household, as a permanent official managing their parish and as a formal witness to the administration of the sacraments.

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How much did the inhabitants contribute to the vestry in the Loudunais? In Martaizé, the largest of the three parishes studied, the arrival of a new vicar in 1727 prompted the parish assembly to renegotiate the contributions (which covered the vestry’s expenses, the vicar’s salary and accommodation, as well as possibly the wages for the sacristan). A total of 224 bx of fine and mixed wheat (froment and méteil) was agreed upon, along with several poultry. The assembly assigned each ploughman a particular contribution, from half a boisseau for a few widows, to eight for the wealthiest. Most paid two to three bx. Day workers were assigned the amount of 1.25 bx (worth a little over 1 lt). In addition to the grain, ploughmen paid 2s, 2d and day workers provided 1s, 9d in money.46 In total, this was an annual contribution of about 270 lt – a significant but hardly crippling expense equivalent to about one-quarter of the parish taille assessment. In 1740, the contributions were again updated. Although the total amount of grain was reduced slightly to 216 bx, it had a higher value because it was all in fine wheat.47 Using Martaizé as a standard, we can estimate the vestry contributions for Aulnay and La Chaussée based on the size of their population. Aulnay’s fifty households may have paid 85 lt each year (although they may have paid less because they did not have a vicar), while the inhabitants of La Chaussée probably provided about 180 lt. The vestries in these parishes possessed at least some revenue. In 1666, the inhabitants of Martaizé agreed to provide a family burial plot in their cemetery to the lord of Château-Gannes in exchange for donating 4 b (about 0.25 hectares) of land to the vestry.48 The inhabitants of La Chaussée agreed to display a banner of the lord of Verrue in their church in return for an annual payment of 2 bx of rye.49 The vestry also benefited from one-time donations of funds. For example, the 1617 testament of a local lord provided 150 lt for the most urgent repairs needed to the church of La Chaussée.50 It is likely that smaller donations were routinely made by faithful parishioners before they died. In sum, these were not richly endowed vestries. A small amount of annual revenue and occasional donations would have supplemented the annual contributions made by each household. A 1691 document from the nearby parish of Saint-Clair, in which the parish assembly sat down to validate the books, indicates that its vestry’s annual

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Dues and fees 9%

Ornaments 17%

Consumables 27%

Repairs and improvements 47%

Fig. 5.3 Estimated annual vestry expenses in Saint Clair, 1672–91

revenue was just 42 lt and that it had accumulated over 500 lt in debts over a period of twenty years. The document goes on to outline vestry expenses, a rare look for historians at what services the institution actually performed in a small rural parish.51 The greatest costs were repair and improvements to the church building and its furniture, especially upkeep of pews and walls. This included stonework on the altar, church entrance, and fountain, carpentry on the confessional, and repair to the roof. It is likely that church maintenance created work for a variety of local artisans.52 The vestry also purchased consumable items used for services and administration, such as bread for the Eucharist, oil for church lighting, incense, and paper for the parish register. Ornamentation such as cloths, vases, and bottles for the altar; paintings and banners; and restoration of the cross was another regular expense. Fees to the arch-priest and the vicar were a relatively negligible sum.53 The vestry had limited revenue, but was nevertheless a crucial institution in the small parishes of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé. Peasants were directly involved and responsible for the running and appearance of their church and its services. A representative (sacristan) was chosen to manage these affairs and any endowed property. The parish assembly regularly reviewed the accounts and made the most significant decisions, such as how much to spend on the

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ornamentation and improvement of their edifice, and who would contribute what to cover the expenses. Of course the senior heads of household predominated in these discussions, and the sacristan, a position of prestige, was chosen from among them to guard their interests. The vestry in Acadie is also difficult to evaluate because it left relatively few records. However, there are several indications in the documents that there was a vestry and that the colonists regularly appointed a churchwarden, normally referred to as a marguillier. For example, the French commandant Villebon received accounts from the churchwarden of Port Royal in 1693, while Pierre Bugeaud was named the churchwarden of Minas sometime after 1692.54 It is unlikely that there was much property assigned to the vestry, as the inhabitants had their hands full clearing or draining enough land for their own needs. In New France, most of the vestry’s revenue came from donations and pew rentals.55 The building and outfitting of new churches would have been a significant community undertaking involving all of the inhabitants. It was certainly a major investment; a wooden church could be built for around 200 lc, but was unlikely to last long, while a stone church could cost several thousand lc. In 1673, the churchwarden Abraham Dugas presided over a meeting of the parish assembly to organize funding for the building of a new church at Port Royal.56 Given the insecurity of the colony and the relative poverty of the early colonists, it is not surprising that the early churches in Acadie were humble buildings. Most of the churches were small wooden structures. When Saint-Vallier toured the colony in 1686, he noted that all of the churches were severely lacking in ornamentation and sacred vessels, and in much need of repairs.57 During his visit in 1699, Dièreville wrote of the church at Port Royal, “I should have been more inclined to take it for a Barn than for the Temple of the True God.”58 Churches tended to be targeted during English raids, such as at Port Royal in 1690 and 1704. The church at Minas was burned in 1704, while that of Beaubassin was looted in 1696. In 1701, a visiting nun remarked that the church at Port Royal was in a frightful state, resembling the “stable of Bethlehem” because all of its items had been stolen by the English.59 It was only after the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) that a period of relative peace and population expansion led to major investments in churches. For example, in 1755, Winslow reported that the small stone

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church at Rivière des Canards was beautiful and well stocked with an “abundance of ye Goods of the world.” At Grand Pré, he permitted the Acadians to remove the sacred vessels from the church before his soldiers occupied it “so as not to be defiled by heretics.”60 Acadie expanded from one to seven parishes by 1755, and several of the churches were transformed from wood to stone buildings. Unfortunately, no records of any deliberations or contributions concerning their construction have survived. All we can say for certain is that the Acadians did have vestries, did appoint churchwardens, and were responsible for the repair, upkeep, and decoration of their churches, like their counterparts in the Loudunais. One record, an argument over the allocation of pews in Minas, indicates that disputes over the vestry could become serious. Places had been sold to raise money for the vestry in 1701, but the records were lost by the previous churchwarden, Pierre Bugeaud, and the new churchwarden, Jacques Leblanc, had proceeded to sell the first row to somebody else. This pitted one founder of the community, Pierre Melanson, against the nephew of the other, Jean Terriot, both of whom clearly felt that they deserved precedence. Governor Brouillan consulted the intendant in Quebec and ultimately upheld the original sale to Melanson.61 In general, looking after the temporal affairs of the parish was an even bigger job in Acadie because the colonists were building from scratch or rebuilding after an attack. It was obviously important to them. In 1705, the inhabitants of Port Royal were anxious to get started on rebuilding their church after an English raid, pressuring French officials to deliver the 3,000 lt sent to help them with this task.62 It is likely that, as in New France, people sometimes argued over the costs of the vestry, such as how much to spend on building projects and ornamentation.63 It must have been frustrating for the community to invest money and time in their church, only to have it burned or looted by raiders. Lay baptisms, vestries, churchwardens, and sacristans are all examples of the direct involvement of the inhabitants in the religious life and administration of their parish. Priests were transient strangers who rarely had the opportunity to develop long-standing relationships in the community. This was particularly true of Acadie, where war and politics disrupted religious services like everything else. Priests administered the sacraments and helped in other ways, but we should not

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exaggerate their influence. Individual families made decisions about how best to observe the sacraments, while senior heads of household determined the contributions to be made and the projects to be undertaken for the parish church.

The Assembly and the Community Parish assemblies did not meet to discuss only vestry and other church matters. They were veritable and long-standing local governance institutions responsible for a variety of political and fiscal tasks. The state was a “distant arbiter” that preferred not to interfere as long as order was maintained and taxes collected.64 In many areas of southern and eastern France, assemblies elected a variety of representatives and officials, managed communal lands, and worked directly with political and legal organizations at the provincial level. In western France, their function and organization were much simpler, as there was little communal land, the population was dispersed in smaller villages, and provincial institutions were less important.65 This does not mean that they should be discounted, however. In the Loudunais, the assembly’s main responsibilities were tax collection, political representation, and oversight of the vestry. Every year, the assembly gathered to approve the tax rolls and the vestry accounts, and to select its officials, namely tax collectors and the delegate (syndic or délégué).66 Other meetings might be called in response to particular concerns, disputes, or events. For example, in 1614, rural parishes held assemblies to select special representatives to bring their grievances to Loudun and to choose the deputies of the Third Estate for the Estates-General. In 1789, meetings were similarly held in each parish to draw up the cahiers de doléances. Significantly, 18 per cent of the deputies eventually chosen for the Third Estate in 1789 were themselves serving parish delegates. The majority of the others came from the senior ploughmen and millers from whom delegates were normally chosen.67 At first glance, it appears that the parish assembly would have had a reduced role in Acadie. There were no taxes to collect, and little communal property, while the even greater dispersal of the households around the marshlands of the Bay of Fundy might have been assumed to inhibit community political life and association.68 In New France,

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participation in the assembly was infrequent; depending on the importance of the subject under discussion, particularly its financial implications, an assembly might include just 10 to 30 per cent of the heads of household.69 Yet the borderland conditions of Acadie, such as military threats and the weakness of state institutions, reinforced the importance of the parish assembly in both civil affairs and political representation. In the face of raiders, conquerors, and officials with their various and often considerable demands, the community needed to choose effective leaders. The very dispersal of the Acadian farms made a central focus of political life necessary. It is clear that the Acadians, if not unified in their views, generally showed solidarity in the face of their supposed colonial masters.70 They chose to fight as militia against the English invasion of 1707, and not to do so in 1710. They decided to emigrate, and then to stay, in the years following the Treaty of Utrecht. They refused to swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British king, but later agreed to one that guaranteed their right to live in peace. This collective action would not have been possible without an institution like the parish assembly to bring the inhabitants together. All heads of household in a community were potentially members of the assembly, but the assembly was also a forum within which socio-economic hierarchy was expressed. In the Loudunais, poorer peasants often did not attend at all. Official records of meetings usually listed those in attendance as “la plus grande & saine partye d’habitans.” Sometimes it was written that those in attendance represented themselves and also the other habitants. Wealthier ploughmen and artisans exerted more influence, but were also more interested in the proceedings and potentially affected by the matters discussed.71 This suited the state very well. These men had property and ambitions, and had a stake in maintaining order. They were not likely to cause trouble if it put their possessions and position at risk. In Acadie, it is also likely that not all heads of household participated in every assembly meeting, depending on the time of year and the urgency of the matters at hand. However, we have several indications that most did attend when a major issue arose. For example, during the negotiations on the oath of allegiance with the British Council, Acadian communities routinely sent petitions, letters, and conditional oaths signed by the majority of

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the inhabitants. The residents of Minas and Beaubassin assembled to meet British envoys like Erasmus Phillipps and James Wroth.72 In 1755, when John Winslow ordered all of the men to come to the church at Grand Pré, over four hundred showed up, suggesting that this was a normal routine for political discussions. This practice goes back to the French regime; for example, the French official De Goutins noted that the inhabitants had been assembled to hear the orders of Governor Brouillan in 1702.73 This might explain one reason why the Acadians were so surprised by Winslow’s reading of the deportation order and their subsequent incarceration. They had dispatched delegates to Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence to discuss his latest demands for an unconditional oath of allegiance, and it would have been reasonable for the colonists to assume that Winslow had been sent to further negotiate the matter, just as Phillipps and Wroth had during the 1720s. In sum, the stakes were high in these political negotiations and concerned everyone; the parish assembly was the institution through which these matters were discussed and decided.

The Assembly’s Tax Collectors In the Loudunais, the most important and time-consuming duty of the assembly was to ensure the prompt collection and submission of ordinary taxes such as the taille and the salt tax (gabelle). First, the assembly was required to provide a list of all taxable households.74 Collectors were selected in September; their names had to be registered with the clerk of the élection.75 Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé appear to have followed this direction for the most part, though by the mid-eighteenth century the collectors were often not chosen until November or December.76 Each parish was assigned a particular amount of tax; it was up to the collectors to divide it among the inhabitants and to the assembly to approve the list. Because many residents held property in more than one parish, disputes sometimes arose as to who was eligible to be taxed and where. Such matters could be decided by the assembly, though they were subject to appeal before the officials of the élection.77 For example, in 1727, the collectors of Aulnay and Martaizé both included the peasants working on the large farm (métairie) of Brizay on their tax rolls. The confusion had come

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about because Brizay belonged to the lord of Aulnay but was physically located in the parish of Martaizé. The assembly of Aulnay eventually agreed to remove them from their list. In another case, in 1757, the assembly of Martaizé confirmed that Rolland, the estate manager of the lord of Sautonne, was a non-noble who should be included in the tax assessment despite his claims to the contrary.78 The collectors came from a wide cross-section of the local population. Many of the collectors were day workers, artisans, or more modest ploughmen. For example, between 1695 and 1698, collectors selected at Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé included eighteen ploughmen, seventeen day workers, four weavers, three millers, and a coppersmith. One study found that three-quarters of the collectors in the Loudunais could not sign their names. Officials could reject any collector deemed to be too poor to be reliable, but it does not appear that this power was often exercised.79 No doubt they were reluctant to confront an assembly about their choice, so long as taxes were received on time. The number of collectors was based on the size of the population. In the 1690s, Aulnay chose two collectors for the taille and two more for the salt tax, La Chaussée chose three each, and Martaizé, four. Even with a team of collectors, preparing the accounts and receiving payments was a great deal of work. The reward was exemption from the taxes concerned. For an average day worker, this could amount to 10 to 20 lt, while a ploughman could save as much as 40 lt. Collectors were also entitled to a fee of about 2 per cent of the amount collected.80 This worked out to roughly 20 lt in Aulnay and 45 lt in Martaizé, or 10 lt for each collector. The fees and the exemption together did not translate into a vast sum of money, and considering the year-long work involved and the potential for animosity, it was not the easiest way to increase one’s fortune. This is probably why the wealthiest families left collection duties to more modest ploughmen, artisans, and day workers; these individuals stood to benefit more from the tax break and small salary. Of course, the tax rolls were still approved by the assembly, ensuring that the interests of the wealthy would be protected. The collecting of state taxes through the community assemblies generally worked well. In 1687, the intendant reported that parishes in the élection of Loudun were nominating too many collectors, resulting in conflicting assessments and slow results.81 In 1742, the collectors

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were criticized for not providing enough information on the tax rolls. Rural communities were never over-zealous in this regard since they knew that subsequent tax assessments could go up if the intendant believed they had sufficient property to bear it. On the other hand, tax reductions could also be awarded, so it was in the community’s interests to co-operate.82 In cases of outright non-payment, the state might take direct action against the collectors. In 1680, for example, several dozen collectors from across the généralité of Tours were imprisoned. Between 1757 and 1759, the subdelegate at Loudun dispatched the troopers of the maréchaussée to arrest collectors in several of the surrounding rural parishes. One poor fellow, Louis Jourdin of SaintMartin d’Ouzilly (just north of Martaizé), was arrested in both 1757 and 1759; the second time he had to be dragged out of a hiding place in his bedroom.83 Usually, the state was less heavy-handed, and aimed to reward those communities that regularly paid their taxes and obeyed the regulations.84 Lacking local tax officials of their own, the intendants needed the co-operation of the rural communities in order for the fiscal system to work. This suited the assembly; its members preferred to keep the agents of the state out of their business. In effect, the collectors were simultaneously assembly and state officials. They did not simply take care of the practical matters of assessment, receipt, and delivery of payments; the collectors also gave the state and its tax demands legitimacy, and the appearance of fairness. At the same time, the choice of collectors and the yearly accounts were expressions of local interests and social relations.

The Assembly’s Delegate The delegate was someone who represented the parish and defended its interests.85 He was selected, almost always from one of the principal heads of household, for a one-year period. The delegate presided over the assembly, nominated collectors and other local officials, received instructions from state officials, and formally represented the community in court. In theory, the delegate simply communicated the consensus reached at the assembly, bringing back to them any matters requiring a decision. For the state, the delegate was a convenient

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local official through whom information could be drawn and to whom direction could be given. He was also a prominent head of household who could be held accountable if the community failed to deliver on a task, tax, or report.86 In Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé, the delegates came from prominent ploughman families such as the Baussays, Turquois, and Senegons. They might receive a small salary of a few lt, and exemption from taxes, but their obligations were numerous and so they needed to be men of some substance. Their reward was a position of political and social prominence that reinforced their standing in the community. Apparently this was not always enough; in 1696, the community of Martaizé was having difficulty getting anyone to step up as a candidate.87 Since the position was only held for one year, it is likely that many if not most of the principal heads of household took turns serving as the delegate, acclaimed in office by their peers, who would probably have been thankful that someone else was shouldering the burden that year. This gave the position a certain corporate character; there was no reason for the delegate to stray far from the viewpoint and interests of the group of prominent inhabitants who supported him and to which he would soon return. In addition to acting as the community’s political representative and head of the assembly, the delegate also became a sort of village captain responsible for supervising a variety of military and other state-run activities at the local level. These included providing winter quarters for regular soldiers, enlistments in the militia, and unusual matters such as organizing wolf hunts.88 For winter quarters, every year the intendant instructed the delegates of the affected parishes on the number of billets, the supplies required (for example, dragoons needed stables and fodder for horses), and the rates of reimbursement. Originally, peasants applied directly to recover these expenses, but the intendant found that working through the delegates reduced fraud and helped ensure that the soldiers got everything they needed.89 After a new militia system was instituted in 1688, delegates were expected to ensure compliance with its regulations. As we saw in chapter 2, the militia functioned on the principle that each parish should provide a single, well-equipped soldier and would be responsible for maintaining and replacing him as required. The delegates’ responsibilities included

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supervising the lottery, raising money, and purchasing equipment such as a coat, boots, and a gun in accordance with the list provided, as well as ensuring the chosen soldier attended training and showed up when called out. While a deserter from the militia faced imprisonment, the delegate of a perpetrator’s parish could be hit with a 500 lt fine as well.90 The delegate could be called upon to look after a variety of local concerns. For example, in the parish of Arçay (northeast of Martaizé), the assembly hired a guard for the community’s livestock, crops, and vines. The delegate was responsible for supervising him and collecting contributions from every household to pay his salary.91 There was also a guard in Martaizé (Pierre Pinsard), presumably with similar duties. In Moncontour, the delegate supervised the assembly’s choice of experts to estimate the repairs required to the parish church.92 As we saw in the previous chapter, the delegate of Angliers (north of Martaizé) represented his community at the royal court of Loudun in a dispute with their lord, Charles de Reval, a member of the Parlement de Paris.93 The delegate was a key figure in the community, its political representative, and the main official of its assembly. In general, the delegate was more official than leader; his discretion was limited to enforcing the decisions of the assembly. His symbolic importance, however, was considerable. Presiding over assemblies, supervising other local officials like tax collectors, and representing the community in courts and government offices, the delegate was the manifestation of community will and social order. There is also no doubt that the delegates were prominent individuals who would not have been chosen for the position if they did not already wield considerable influence. Given the long history of the parish assembly and the delegate in the Loudunais and elsewhere in western France, it should not be surprising that the colonists of Acadie chose similar representatives. The first record is from 1639, where Claude Petitpas and Michel Boudrot were mentioned as the syndics of Port Royal. These men were prominent, educated colonists with well-established families and a close relationship to the lord and governor, Charles de Menou. When Port Royal surrendered to Robert Sedgwick in 1654, Guillaume Trahan was the delegate, negotiating the terms alongside the lord, Emmanuel Le Borgne, and the community’s priest, a Capuchin friar named Léonard

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de Chartres.94 Trahan was one of the original colonists from 1636, a blacksmith from Bourgeuil who had been recruited by Isaac de Rasilly and had since married Magdelaine Brun, the daughter of a couple from La Chaussée.95 In 1690, during the surrender to William Phips, two other senior heads of household served as delegates: René Landry and Daniel Leblanc. René Landry was in his fifties, had twelve children, and possessed one of the largest farms in Port Royal. Daniel Leblanc was in his sixties but still owned a large farm and livestock herd. He was also one of the few Acadians to have a servant. Before Phips left, he included both men in a council appointed to administer the colony until he could send officials from New England.96 We know about these early delegates because their names were recorded on documents relating to major political events. However, we also have indications that the colonists chose representatives on a regular basis and that they took an increasingly active role in local administration. For example, in 1692, the assembly of Minas wrote to the Commandant Villebon asking him to approve their choice of three people to settle local disputes over property and other civil matters. The community at Beaubassin took advantage of Villebon’s visit in the winter of 1693 to do the same, selecting three “among them to settle such disputes as might arise.”97 This was not unlike the way in which the chosen delegates in the Loudunais were registered each year. But given the increased discretion and powers with which the assembly was endowing these individuals, official approval was even more important since it would add legitimacy to any judgments they made. This could make opposition from within the community more difficult but also, and perhaps more importantly, prevent the government from claiming that these decisions were made without its knowledge or authority. Villebon’s journal and correspondence provide some further clues as to the role and function of these delegates. Like the intendants in France, Villebon found them to be convenient officials to give orders to. The delegates arranged for provisions and timber to be sent to Fort Nashwaak, contracted workers to help build his fortifications and buildings and to get his own crops going, as well as assigned billets in their communities for wounded soldiers or officials passing through. It seems that the low prices and wages offered by the French made

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it difficult for the delegates to fulfill many requests, especially when English privateering made crossing the Bay of Fundy a dangerous undertaking.98 The ongoing hostilities placed the Acadian communities in harm’s way on several occasions and made being a delegate a potentially dangerous job. In 1693, the delegate Germain Bourgeois of Beaubassin assembled the habitants and repelled a pirate attack.99 In 1696, when a far larger force arrived under the command of Benjamin Church, the Acadians retreated into the woods, and Bourgeois was left to negotiate with the raiders. Church, disappointed in his hopes of wreaking vengeance on Aboriginals like those who had helped the French capture Fort Pemaquid, settled instead for killing some Acadian livestock and burning a few homes, but threatened to return if French and Aboriginal attacks on Massachusetts continued.100 Bourgeois’s efforts must be considered a success, since he managed to convince Church not to pursue the other Acadians. Some of the buildings and livestock were also saved, though perhaps only because it was too much trouble to destroy all of the dispersed farms. Another potential duty of the delegate was to negotiate with the Mi’kmaq, either with or without the assistance of a missionary. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about these discussions. If there was an explicit accommodation that kept the Acadians out of the forest hunting grounds, this had to be revised each time a settlement was founded or expanded.101 Even if there was a less formal understanding, many Mi’kmaq groups came to hunt, fish, and gather from the rich marshlands in the Bay of Fundy, a potential source of tension and squabbles with farmers building dykes.102 Perhaps the good relations and occasional intermarriage in the early days of the colony helped avoid conflict, but it is likely that many Mi’kmaq would have increasingly regarded Acadian expansion, cultivation, and cattle raising, especially outside Port Royal, as a threat. Negotiations would have been required to keep the peace. The return of the French government to Port Royal in 1699 led to new requirements for the Acadian communities, such as the creation of militia companies, as well as increased demands for provisions, soldier billets, and labour. It appears that Governor Brouillan adopted a similar approach to Villebon, using the delegate as the gobetween to communicate his orders. However, state demands became

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interwoven with the disputes between the governor, the judge, Mathieu de Goutins, and the notary, Jean-Chrysostôme de Loppinot. There are several indications that the Acadians were becoming exasperated with the French regime. De Goutins had married an Acadian woman, which led Brouillan to complain of his lack of objectivity in resolving the inhabitants’ disputes. At least a few Acadians agreed; Pierre Comeau wrote directly to the minister of the Navy to complain of corruption. Loppinot faced at least some hostility during the function of his duties because he requested a soldier to accompany him for protection. His correspondence of 1706 mentions letters sent by “Dugas et St-Louis habitants” directly to the minister to appeal one of his decisions. The same year, Loppinot travelled to France to argue against Brouillan, bearing a commission from at least some of the colonists. He also wrote that the inhabitants requested that the syndic be changed annually by vote, which suggests that the governor had interfered with the traditional practice, perhaps to keep someone friendly to him in the position.103 Clearly, the community was itself divided by the rivalry and disputes among the French officials. The replacement of Brouillan by Daniel Augur de Subercase seems to have pleased everyone at first. Subercase, as we have already seen, made an effort to sort out the various property disputes and civil suits brought to him by the colonists. Perhaps most importantly, he consulted with them directly. He took the institution of the delegate and expanded it, appointing “councillors” from among the principal heads of household to advise him. Loppinot noted that the new governor made decisions by “accommodating” the inhabitants as much as possible, which reduced their complaints.104 This effort was rewarded by active support in 1707, when the colonists rallied to Subercase as militia and helped him defeat two different English landing forces at Port Royal. What role did the councillors play in getting the men out to fight? Unfortunately, no response is possible to this question. As we have seen, the conflict caused a lot of damage, and Subercase was unable to secure financial aid or supplies from France because of the war in Europe. When a larger attack of over two thousand men arrived in 1710, the Acadians largely stayed home. It would have been interesting to see how the Acadian councillors would have functioned under a continuing French regime. However, the conquest of Port Royal

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provided a different opportunity to see the parish assembly in action. The British required contributions of money, food, and furs from the Acadians there and at Grand Pré. However, the delegates negotiated the demands by arguing that the conflict had left them impoverished; in the case of Grand Pré they successfully reduced the amount by half. The assemblies then chose collectors who assigned and gathered the allotments from each household, much in the same way as tax collectors functioned in the Loudunais.105 The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries proved a challenging time for the fledgling Acadian communities. During the best of times, the expansion of the population and its property would have created a myriad of potential disputes to resolve. But the political instability and conflicts in the colony led to real threats to the colonists and their livelihoods. Fortunately, the institution of the parish assembly and the selection of delegates ensured that a collective response could be organized. Indeed, this traditional model of local governance, brought over from France, proved flexible and effective. There is no doubt that Acadian delegates were called upon to do more and that the parish assemblies debated more serious matters than their counterparts in the Loudunais. It is interesting to note that a similar process was underway in New France, where militia captains took on a wide range of local responsibilities. These men gradually replaced parish delegates beginning in the 1670s. Significantly, militia captains were named by the governor rather than chosen by the inhabitants.106 In this way, at least, Acadie was the more traditional society, following principles of self-governance that extended back centuries. The senior heads of household made the important decisions together and chose delegates to represent them. State officials worked through these delegates and respected local autonomy.

The Assembly and the Deputies after the Treaty of Utrecht The Conquest of Port Royal was a tenuous thing. The British Council at Annapolis Royal was composed of military officers who were not entirely sure what the future held. They hoped that English-speaking Protestant settlers would soon arrive, from New England or Europe, either assimilating or displacing the French colonists altogether.

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Naturally, they expected to benefit from the subsequent growth of trade and settlement in Nova Scotia. In the meantime, however, their hands were full simply keeping their disaffected and frequently disease-ridden garrison together and strong enough to defend against Aboriginal attacks, which occurred regularly during the 1710s and 1720s. Once it became clear that New Englanders would not be flocking to the colony, and also that the Acadians would not all depart for Île Royale, the Council had to decide how to work with the French population.107 The Acadians had already supplied an answer. The parish assemblies of Annapolis Royal and Minas had sent delegates in the aftermath of the fall of the fort, not just to sort out the required tribute but also to hear the terms of capitulation and share them with everyone. Beaubassin was never visited by a British envoy during this period, yet in 1715 the parish assembly took the initiative, sending its delegates to the Council to “introduce” them.108 Not surprisingly, the British ultimately chose to recognize the delegates, formalizing the existing political system. They referred to the delegates as “deputies.” In 1720, the governor ordered that the annual election of deputies occur every autumn and that the results be registered with the Council. The chosen individual would be “their Deputy, to Represent them, and to act and do all things as foresaid.” With the population already expanding rapidly and forming new communities, the British divided the colony into “sections” from which one deputy would be chosen. The number of sections in each parish was based on population size but also on the layout of the community. This was most evident in Minas, where the sections were based on the various river settlements. At first, Annapolis Royal was assigned six deputies, and Minas and Beaubassin, four each. In 1732, this increased to eight for Annapolis Royal, twelve for the villages in Minas, and six for Beaubassin.109 If the sections were not unlike the parish administrative boundaries employed in France, the concept of multiple deputies for each community seems like an innovation. Why expand the number of Acadian representatives? Perhaps it reflected a British parliamentary viewpoint of governance based on the inhabitants being divided into constituencies or a desire to involve more of the wealthier Acadians in the administration or even an attempt to divide the Acadian communities into more manageable districts. Perhaps they wanted to ensure that no

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individual Acadian became too prominent – a political leader around whom opposition could gather. Yet we have already seen that Port Royal, Minas, and Beaubassin had chosen two or three delegates during the French regime and that multiple representatives had also been selected in the years after the Conquest. This could reflect the communities’ recognition that there was a lot of work involved or a kind of “strength in numbers” approach that would better manifest their solidarity in the face of a common threat. It did not result in a fundamental shift in the functioning of the assembly or the role of the delegates. No council or assembly or “chief deputy” was chosen. In practice, the deputies in a particular parish worked together to ensure they spoke and acted from a common perspective and always returned to the assembly when a particular demand or offer was made. Furthermore, the increasing number of deputies reflected simple geography and population size. In the Loudunais, the 1,300 inhabitants of Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé had three syndics, one for each parish. These parishes were small, literally an hour’s walk from one village to the next. In Acadie, by contrast, the population was over 2,000 in 1714, perhaps 5,000 in the 1730s, and over 10,000 by 1750. Furthermore, the inhabitants were dispersed over several hundred square kilometres. Having an individual deputy for each cluster of habitations, each few hundred people (the rough equivalent of a parish size in the Loudunais), seems not only reasonable but essential to ensure that everyone was represented. That said, we do not know that the Acadians actually organized votes along the “section” lines drawn up by the British Council. They certainly discussed the oath of allegiance as one body, as explained above. It is most likely that the entire parish assembly continued to meet, choosing the group of deputies who would represent them. What did the deputies do? Like Subercase before them, the British Council seems to have realized that involving the inhabitants in local administration was more likely to secure their co-operation. When individuals brought their civil disputes to Annapolis Royal, the Council often consulted the deputies of the community concerned, referring minor matters to them and asking for their recommendations on more serious concerns.110 In return, the British, of course,

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expected the deputies to enforce their decisions. Both sides were committed to order and attempted to support each other. During the Mi’kmaq war, the Council issued an arrest warrant for Joseph Broussard on suspicion of conspiracy during the siege of Annapolis Royal in 1724. The deputies of Minas brought in not only Broussard, but two other men who confessed to having concealed the expedition from the British. They petitioned the Council for pardons, and, surprisingly, the British released all three men “solely due to the loyalty of these deputies to the government of Annapolis Royal.”111 By 1730, the British had taken this one step further, appointing a number of justices of the peace and even a king’s attorney from among the inhabitants to deal with minor civil matters.112 This permitted the deputies to concentrate on their role as political representatives. Ongoing hostilities between the British and Mi’kmaq frequently put the deputies in a difficult position. Some Mi’kmaq took action against colonists deemed too friendly with the British. For example, in 1744 several Aboriginals burned the home of René Leblanc, who had recently been appointed notary and rent gatherer in Minas. Of more concern to the British was the fact that their merchants and fishermen were sometimes attacked and plundered. The Council, believing that the Acadians and Mi’kmaq were in fact allies, ordered the deputies to account for these robberies. After one incident in 1737, the deputies of Minas were expected to “assemble the Indians and get restitution.”113 Obviously the deputies were in no position to force the Mi’kmaq to do anything, nor were they likely to catch those involved in the raid. Nevertheless, in 1742, the deputies did meet with local Mi’kmaq and succeeded in getting partial restitution for another robbery. The Council was “well satisfied with the Behaviour of the Inhabitants and also with the Good Intention of these Honest and Well-Minded Indians.”114 This event demonstrates that at least some Mi’kmaq both understood the Acadian situation and had their own reasons to collaborate and preserve peace. The following year, the Council went so far as to empower all deputies to summon the inhabitants to take up arms and protect British traders threatened with Mi’kmaq attack or robbery.115 The deputies appear to have prudently ignored this directive. Much was required of the deputies. They received no official salary and had considerable responsibilities. They had to travel frequently to

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Annapolis Royal, a particular hardship for those from the more outlying communities. The position also required significant status and the ability to work with the other principal heads of household. All of these criteria narrowed the possible choices, and, as a result, deputies were invariably prominent and prosperous Acadians. Indeed, the constant election of deputies from a small group of families – fourteen of the twenty-eight deputies chosen at Annapolis Royal up to 1749 were Prudent Robichaud and his relatives – demonstrated how strong this “small world of influential families and individuals” was, and how willing they were to use local institutions to “promote and protect their own interests.”116 These results also reinforce the notion that however the British might divide the colony into “sections,” the entire community continued to choose their deputies.

The Assembly’s Importance Historians have described the rural community and its assembly in western France as weak, lacking much communal property or other revenue, its own officials, or even a clerk and a register. Further, meetings were irregular and often poorly attended. This explains why little documentation of assembly meetings has survived. If we are to go by the surviving written records, it would appear that few inhabitants were actively interested or involved in their assembly. Certainly many day workers and other poorer peasants would have had little time to give to local affairs.117 In the Loudunais, it was certainly true that the assemblies had little economic importance. The inhabitants did not work collectively, and so there was no need for supervision of communal rights and practices. The assembly was simply not involved in the myriad individual disputes over credit, property, and seigneurial rights that characterized the rural economy. The assemblies also met infrequently and rarely left a formal record. Yet the social and political importance of the assemblies should not be underestimated. They negotiated and executed the demands of the state in the community – especially taxes and military affairs such as the militia and winter quarters. The assembly decided who would pay what, determined who would be assigned soldier billets, and ensured that the chosen militiaman reported for duty on time and properly

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equipped. The timing of these annual events (for example, the fall selection of tax collectors, the quarterly review of the tax rolls, or the annual militia training muster) helped set the seasonal rhythm of community life as much as the items on the religious and agricultural calendars. The state’s tactic of using local assemblies to carry out these unpopular demands gave them legitimacy, as the inhabitants did not have to suffer the interference of state officials and decided themselves how the burden should be shared. The assembly further oversaw the vestry, approving its accounts on a regular basis, as well as any major projects for the parish church. Such decisions shaped the environment within which they regularly gathered for worship and social events. In routine years, the assembly might need to meet only a few times a year, simply approving the work done by its selected officials. Yet if required, the assembly and its delegate were also there to deal with any unforeseen dispute, demand, or danger for the community. The assembly was important to the community as a political structure representing the collective will and also in the way that it reinforced socio-economic hierarchy. It shaped and defined community relations and spaces in ways that maintained the existing order. Perhaps the best indication of the assembly’s importance was the way in which people protested strongly when the Revolution attempted to diminish its role.118 In Acadie, institutions of local governance were repeatedly called upon to protect community interests and negotiate state demands. In time, and with the encouragement of underfunded and understaffed state officials, the deputies took a more active role in local administration and civil justice. But they never wandered far from the collective will embodied by the parish assembly. The delegates and, later, deputies of Acadie were still chosen annually and were ultimately accountable to the entire community. The parish assembly still made the important political decisions, such as what oath to swear to the British king. As early as 1717 the deputies of Annapolis Royal began to request that all Acadian deputies be called together before answering the Council’s latest demand for an unconditional oath.119 The significance of this act should not be exaggerated. It was not, as

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has been proposed by some, a claim for full Acadian independence, but rather a political tactic designed to increase negotiating power. Indeed, the real purpose was to delay a definite response altogether, thus preserving the status quo.120 The deputies were always sure to emphasize that their actions were based on the decisions of the parish assembly they represented. For example, the deputies of Annapolis Royal, Minas, and Beaubassin presented nominal rolls of habitants who had attended the assemblies in 1715 and 1720. The attendance rate was high in the latter year – 178 signatures (or marks) from Minas and 135 from Beaubassin.121 Even if the deputies were chosen from the rural elite, it seems that most heads of households were at least present during the assembly’s deliberations. When the Acadians finally did swear a conditional oath – in all three communities by 1730 – there was no doubt that the majority of the heads of household supported the decision. From one perspective, the Acadians had been surprisingly successful in negotiating the recognition of their property and religious rights in exchange for a limited recognition of their allegiance due to the “sovereign seigneur” of Nova Scotia. They could leave, with their movable possessions, at any time and would not be compelled to bear arms. They had achieved neutrality.122 It would be wrong to conclude that the Acadians naively believed they had heard the end of this; for all they knew, another round of imperial war would again lead to a regime change. They hoped, however, that they had created a foundation that would let them live in peace. The limits of this policy are apparent to us now, especially in the period after the British founded Halifax (1749), bringing larger imperial forces and new Protestant settlers into Acadie. The deputies failed at that point to come to grips with the new determination of the British and unwisely believed they could avoid making a new accommodation with Governor Cornwallis and his successors.123 But we can hardly fault the principal Acadian families for not realizing that this time Britain would achieve total victory over France and its Aboriginal allies. A final assembly at Grand Pré, called by John Winslow, led to the incarceration of over four hundred Acadian men and their subsequent deportation along with their families.

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Fig. 5.4 Parish church, Aulnay. Author’s photo, 2005.



Fig. 5.5 Grand Pré memorial church. Author’s photo, 2005.

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Conclusion The importance of the parish assembly and vestry endured in Acadie and in the Loudunais throughout this period. In both places, the inhabitants were integrally involved in the running of their church, deciding what kind of building to construct, what renovations were required, and how it should be decorated, as well as appointing a manager to look after the building and the accounts. The community’s political interests were served by delegates elected on an annual basis. The state decided to work with and formalize this system, seeing these representatives as convenient local officials who could pass on and execute orders and also provide information. The French and British imperial context in Acadie created significant new demands on rural communities, but it did not change the way in which these communities functioned. As the Acadian population and the number of communities expanded, it made sense that more deputies were required to represent them. The assembly and the delegates were a flexible structure that could meet as little or as often as required to ensure order was maintained. Its purpose was to limit state demands through negotiation and protect collective interests, at least as defined by the senior heads of household. In both Acadie and the Loudunais, these institutions of local governance were remarkably successful in fulfilling this purpose. Thus, the Acadians did not enjoy greater political liberty, nor did they operate more democratically than their counterparts in the Loudunais. However, the institutions of local governance in Acadie were called upon more often and were required to resolve greater challenges to the community.

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At first glance, Acadie and the Loudunais do not seem to resemble each other very much. Their natural environments were profoundly different. In the latter, large, flat plains combined with a warm, moderately wet climate to create ideal conditions for the cultivation of wheat and other cereals. In the former, the rocky and forested uplands and granite shores contrasted with low-lying marshes around the Bay of Fundy. Once drained, these marshlands proved exceptionally fertile but required constant protection from tides and storms and were also subject to long, cold winters and unpredictable frosts in spring and autumn. Further, while the Loudunais had been settled for agriculture for centuries, Acadie’s Aboriginal population was composed of hunter-gatherers and so the colonists, in their efforts to create a rural landscape, were essentially starting from scratch. Complicating this task were lucrative natural resources like cod and furs, which attracted French and English imperial and mercantile interests. In addition, Acadie’s strategic position as a march between New France and New England meant that it was a consistent target during the frequent wars between the two empires. The Mi’kmaq and other Native peoples of the Maritime region fought for their interests as well. The Loudunais also had a long experience as a contested frontier, but by the later seventeenth century it was fully integrated into the French state and no wars were fought on its soil. Thus, the inhabitants of the Loudunais merely paid taxes and provided a few recruits for the militia, while the

Co n clusio n

colonists of Acadie were subject to repeated state demands for provisions, information, labour, and military service en masse. Despite these fundamental natural and political contrasts, the rural societies of the Loudunais and of Acadie were strikingly similar. They featured dispersed settlement patterns based on kin groups that sought to make best use of the land while avoiding wild spaces. Dispersion was a form of collective defence. Similar structures of socio-economic hierarchy also emerged; true comfort and wealth were beyond the means of most, but established groups – ploughmen in the Loudunais and certain founding families in Acadie – had better opportunities, resources, and reputations than others who often struggled to get by. Differences in wealth and in living conditions between richer and poorer farmers were remarkably consistent, as was the influence of life course on individual family situations. In both places, senior and wealthier heads of household were consistently chosen as parish delegates and officials. In fact, they employed the same institutions of local governance – the vestry and the parish assembly – to manage their affairs, to choose leaders, and to negotiate the demands of the state. The objective of staying neutral or, in other words, staying out of external conflicts, was also common to both communities. This is not to say that rural society in Acadie was an exact replica of that of the Loudunais. For example, while the institution of the seigneury was important and relatively powerful in both places, the lords played different roles – as landlords and creditors in the Loudunais and as entrepreneurs and political/military leaders in Acadie. The lords certainly sought economic advantage from their traditional rights to the land, including the collection of dues like the cens et rentes and the lods et ventes. But in the Loudunais, they focused more on land and livestock leases as well as banal rights to mills and ovens, while in Acadie, fishing and trading rights were the most lucrative. With regards to the inhabitants, the relatively small population and the abundant land of Acadie permitted most families to establish centralized family farms instead of the collection of field strips owned and/or leased by most of the inhabitants of the Loudunais. There, only wealthier ploughmen could afford to lease large farms or métairies. While there was some initiative to drain marshlands in the Loudunais, a general reliance on dyking and the ingenious adaptation of the aboiteau to the

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challenge of the tides were particular to the Acadians. Acadian farms practised a form of mixed agriculture that emphasized livestock production, both because the animals were more resilient to the environment and because there was a greater demand for them in colonial markets like Boston and, later, Louisbourg. In addition, because of the ongoing political and military conflict in the colony, Acadian delegates and parish assemblies were called upon more frequently and decided more serious questions than their Loudunais counterparts. While both communities were Catholic, the Acadians were often deprived of the services of priests because of the colony’s relative isolation and, later, because of difficulties between the priests, who came from France, and the colony’s British regime. This resulted in more frequent lay baptisms and other services performed by respected heads of household, doctors, and widows. An older historiography highlighted and in some cases exaggerated all of the differences between Acadie and old regime France. This led to the common assumption that the Acadians were better off for having left – that they lived in relative freedom and enjoyed a bounty of abundant crops and livestock supporting a healthier, wealthier, and more egalitarian society. While it is true that the colonists had greater access to fertile land, did not pay taxes, and lost fewer children to sickness, they also suffered from their vulnerability to a challenging natural environment as well as a difficult and often violent political environment. The Deportation did not end a golden age of peace and prosperity; it was the final stage in a century of enduring conflict, uncertainty, and tension. An in-depth comparison with the Loudunais, a region from which some of the Acadian colonists originated, demonstrates that the Acadians were not, in general, wealthier or more egalitarian than their French counterparts. It further reveals some of the advantages that the Acadians were missing. In the Loudunais, the well-established Loire network meant that local wheat reached big urban markets like Paris, Orléans, and Nantes and was even bought for export by foreign countries like England and Spain. The inhabitants of the Loudunais did pay taxes and had more difficulty acquiring land, but they also benefited from a better climate for wheat, stable markets, and high prices for their produce as well as general peace and security. Priests, courts,

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and notaries were readily available. When disease, drought, or other crises struck, state officials were in place to provide relief, such as tax exemptions, subsidized food, and medicines. In short, the inhabitants of the Loudunais were fully integrated into the regional and national economic and political infrastructure. In focusing too much on the oppressive aspects of the early modern state, we can overlook the services and opportunities that it created. Ultimately, the question of who was “better off ” is so loaded with assumptions and bias that it is impossible to provide a satisfactory answer. However, the similar prospects and fortunes of wealthier and poorer families in Acadie and the Loudunais, the obvious benefits of peace and trade enjoyed by the inhabitants of the latter, and the obvious consequences of imperial war and isolation in the former should lead us to question any notion of Acadie as a “peasant paradise.” How does Acadian history fit the concept of the Atlantic World? First, it highlights the importance of transatlantic comparisons and studies that permit a greater elucidation of the particular characteristics, innovations, and advantages of different societies. Second, it inspires a wide-ranging reflection on the importance of the state. The original proponents of the Atlantic concept, such as Steele for the English Atlantic and Banks for the French Atlantic, emphasized how the state and media integrated communities across the ocean.1 Acadie, where that integration was never successful, thus demonstrates both how France and Great Britain were limited in their ability to integrate all of their colonies and also how important that integration could be to long-term political and economic development. Stable markets, security, and help during inevitable crop failures or other crises were essential for rural societies and also to their identification with a particular state. The Acadians’ quest for neutrality reflected the absence of a meaningful and mutually beneficial subject-state relationship. Third, this comparison of Acadian and Loudunais history underlies the agency of local communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite notions of absolutism and the increasing centralization of states and empires, communities at this time still largely governed themselves, electing their own representatives and officials to look after a variety of tasks – from the upkeep of the parish church to tax collection to local security. If the Atlantic World existed, it did so only because local

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communities accepted and supported the state, media, and trade connections that it extended. Finally, what of the formation of a distinct Acadian identity before the Deportation? In her review of Jean-François Mouhot’s recent work on Acadian refugees in France, Leslie Choquette notes the fundamental divide between those “who believe Atlantic migrants primarily recreated old worlds in the colonies and those who think they created new ones … where [N.E.S.] Griffiths sees Acadians, Mouhot sees Frenchmen.”2 Recent historiography tends to support Mouhot’s view. Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, for example, argue that both Acadian and Canadian identities emerged only with the trauma of the Deportation and the Conquest respectively.3 For his part, Christopher Hodson acknowledges that “togetherness” mattered to the Acadians, but he affirms that this common identity was forged in “the political realities of an imperial age.”4 While all of these authors are right in emphasizing the consequences of these major events as well as the practical obstacles to resettlement in France, this does not preclude the gradual development of an Acadian identity before 1755. We should not forget the rich diversity of identities found within early modern France. The Loudunais was no exception. Its inhabitants possessed a distinct identity based on their particular experience as a frontier society, their specific way of life, and their own customary laws. Their first loyalties were to family and parish. However, they worked and negotiated with state officials and consistently lived up to their political and fiscal obligations. To what degree would the inhabitants of the Loudunais have seen themselves as Frenchmen during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? In my view, they would have emphasized that they were subjects of (to) the French state – a critical distinction. Similarly, the colonists of Acadie did develop a particular culture and political identity based on their way of life in the marshlands and their collective experience of war long before the Deportation. They, too, thought of family and community before state. After a century or more in the colony, they had not “lost” a French identity their ancestors in Poitou-Touraine and elsewhere had never possessed, but rather gained a connection to a new environment and to new French, English, and Aboriginal neighbours. There was, of course, the common affinity of language and religion,

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and, all things being equal, most Acadians probably would have preferred a French government. But the colonists were perfectly willing to identify as French or British subjects, depending on the situation and to whom they were addressing. This was both practical and necessary, given that neither state seriously attempted to integrate them into their larger economic and political structures. Instead, French and British officials wanted the Acadians to take on the military tasks and provide the economic resources that they were unable or unwilling to achieve themselves. The Acadian attempts to negotiate these demands and their pursuit of neutrality were profoundly rural, not a declaration of independence. In short, the Acadians did possess a distinct identity that emphasized community solidarity; it received particular expression in the frequent meetings and discussions of their parish assemblies and delegates. However, this identity must be understood in the context of other French rural societies, who shared similar concerns and objectives. While much has been made of the failed reintegration of refugee Acadians into French society after 1755, it seems to me that neither the inhabitants of Acadie nor those of the Loudunais could have easily been uprooted and transplanted en masse in the midst of another early modern community. A project to resettle Loudunais family groups instead of Acadians in Brittany, Corsica, or Guyana would have been just as difficult to achieve. Like rural people elsewhere, the inhabitants of Acadie and the Loudunais tried to make sense of their world through traditional institutions, beliefs, and practices. They applied them with flexibility, innovation, and collective discussion, not just blindly following the past but responding to the particular needs of their situation and learning along the way. Over generations, they developed characteristics and habits that distinguished them from their neighbours. These frontier peoples were proud of their accomplishments, of their beliefs, and of their ways of life, drawing strength from family and neighbours even in the face of war and destruction. The shared resilience and commitment of these rural societies to their own ideas, goals, and interests was their most remarkable common bond.

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note s

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Introduction 1 After considerable reflection, I have chosen to use the French “Acadie” instead of its English translation “Acadia” throughout this book. This is partly because I am writing about a French community in a French comparative context. More importantly, my decision is based on the fact that the English/British never used the term “Acadia” during this period. They called this territory “Nova Scotia” and claimed it as their own. Official correspondence and treaties referred to the colony as Acadie or Nova Scotia or both. Thus the term “Acadia” is anachronistic, while the choice of “Acadie” more accurately represents the political and frontier contexts of the time. 2 For more on Bourg, see C.J. D’Entremont, “Alexandre Bourg,” DCB, http:// www.utoronto.ca/dcb-dbc/; Stephen White, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes, 1999), 234–6. 3 Gisa I. Hynes, “Some Aspects of the Demography of Port Royal, 1650– 1755,” Acadiensis 3, no. 1 (1973): 7. 4 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (1847); Edme Rameau de SaintPère, Une colonie féodale en Amérique (Paris: Plon, 1877), 148. 5 James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670– 1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 71, 111; Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 97; N.E.S. Griffiths, The Contexts of Acadian History, 1686–1784 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 20–2.

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6 Clive Doucet, Lost and Found in Acadie (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 23, 49, 63. 7 Hynes, “Some Aspects of the Demography of Port Royal,” 8. 8 John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: Norton, 2005), 182. 9 See especially his seminal work, Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675– 1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 10 Jean Daigle, “Nos amis les ennemis: relations commerciales de l’Acadie avec le Massachusetts, 1670–1711” (PhD thesis, University of Maine, 1975); Stephen Hornsby, Victor Konrad, and James Herlan, eds, The Northeastern Borderlands: Four Centuries of Interaction (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1989). 11 Two notable exceptions were William Winniet and Edward Bradstreet, British military officers who married, respectively, Marie-Magdelaine Maisonnat and Agathe Saint-Étienne de la Tour. See Hector J. Hébert, “Marie-Magdeleine Maisonnat,” and Clarence D’Entremont, “Agathe Saint–Étienne de la Tour,” DCB. 12 John G. Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). 13 Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 60–1. 14 Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 420–2. 15 Gregory Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Acadia and Poitou during the Seventeenth Century,” Acadiensis 42, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2013): 37–66. 16 Some important models were provided by: T.J.A. Le Goff, Vannes and Its Region: A Study of Town and Country in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Annie Antoine, Fiefs et Villages du BasMaine au XVIIIe siècle (Mayenne: Éditions régionales de l’Ouest, 1994); Pierre Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730: contribution à l’histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1982 [1960]). 17 Michel Carmona, Les diables de Loudun: sorcellerie et politique sous Richelieu (Paris: Fayard, 1988); Didier Poton, Géographie du protestantisme et réseau urbain dans le centre-ouest à l’époque moderne (XVIe–XVIIe siècles) (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1993); Yves Krumenacker,

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Les Protestants du Poitou au XVIIIe siècle (1681–1789) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998); Robert Rapley, A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998); Michel de Certeau, La possession de Loudun (Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1980); Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (St Albans: Triad/Panther Books, 1977 [1952]). 18 Geneviève Massignon, “La seigneurie de Charles de Menou d’Aulnay, gouverneur de l’Acadie, 1635–1650,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amerique Française 16 (1963): 469–501. 19 Gabriel Debien, “Les Loudunais en Acadie au 17e siècle,” Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest et des Musées de Poitiers, tome VII – 4e série (1963): 153–61; N.E.S. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755 (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2005), 65; Leslie Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 71–84, 263. 20 Nicole T. Bujold and Maurice Caillebeau, Les origines françaises des premières familles acadiennes, le sud loudunais (Poitiers: Imprimerie l’Union, 1979); Jacques Vanderlinden, Se marier en Acadie française, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 1998), 113; Robert Larin, La contribution du Haut-Poitou au peuplement de la Nouvelle-France (Moncton: Éditions d’Acadie, 1994); Henri Wittmann “L’Ouest français dans le Français des Amériques: le jeu des isoglosses morphologiques et la genèse du dialecte acadien” in Georges Cesbron, ed., L’Ouest français et la Francophonie nord-américaine (Angers: Presses universitaires d’Angers, 1996), 127–36; Gervais Carpin, Le réseau du Canada: étude du mode migratoire de la France vers la Nouvelle-France, 1628–1662 (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris–Sorbonne, 2001), 259–60. 21 Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, “Les origines françaises du peuple acadien avant 1714,” in André Magord, directeur, Le fait acadien en France: histoire et temps présent (La Crèche: Geste, 2010), 25–49. 22 Massignon, “La seigneurie de Charles de Menou d’Aulnay,” 476; M.A. Macdonald, Fortune and La Tour: The Civil War in Acadia (Halifax: Nimbus, 2000), 126. 23 Gregory Kennedy, “Charles de Menou, His Family, and a New Interpretation of His Career in Acadia,” Revue de l’histoire de l’Amérique française (forthcoming).

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24 Gregory Kennedy, “Pushing Family Reconstitution Further: Life Course, Socioeconomic Hierarchy, and Migration in the Loudunais, 1705–1765,” Journal of Family History 37 (2012): 303–18. 25 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian; Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme. 26 David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (Toronto: Knopf, 2008); John G. Reid et al., eds, The “Conquest” of Acadie, 1710: Imperial, Colonial, and Aboriginal Constructions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, ed., Du Grand Dérangement à la Déportation: nouvelles perspectives historiques (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2005). 27 John G. Reid, “Écrire l’Acadie en lien avec les mondes atlantique et autochtone,” in Martin Pâquet and Stéphane Savard, eds, Balises et références, Acadies, francophonies (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007), 260–5. 28 Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” The American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 745; Laurent Dubois, “The French Atlantic,” in Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 142. 29 Allan Greer, La Nouvelle-France et le Monde (Montreal: Éditions du Boréal, 2009), 12, 231–40. 30 Gilles Havard et Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française (Paris: Flammarion, 2003), 537, 560. 31 Bailyn, Atlantic History, 83. 32 Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Jean-François Mouhot, Les Réfugiés acadiens en France, 1758–1785: l’impossible réintégration? (Quebec: Septentrion, 2009). 33 Laura Huet, “L’activité économique en Acadie et le contexte colonial atlantique: Un marché lucratif lié au cabotage acadien? (1667–1755)” (Mémoire de Master 2, Université de Poitiers, 2013). 34 Philip D. Morgan and Jack P. Greene, “Introduction: The Present State of Atlantic History,” in Greene and Morgan, eds, Atlantic History, 8. 35 Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Acadia and Poitou,” 37–66; A.J.B. Johnston, Défricheurs d’eau: An introduction to Acadian land reclamation in a comparative context,” Material Culture Review 66 (2007): 32–42; Karl Butzer, “French Wetland Agriculture in Atlantic Canada and Its European

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Roots: Different Avenues to Historical Diffusion,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92, no. 3 (2002): 451–70; Matthew G. Hatvany, “The Origins of the Acadian aboiteau: An Environmental-Historical Geography of the Northeast,” Historical Geography 30 (2002): 121–37; Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 36 Bailyn, Atlantic History, 73. 37 Games, “Atlantic History,” 746; April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 38 David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History” in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 21. 39 Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland, 141; Griffiths, The Contexts of Acadian History, 20; Reid et al., eds, The “Conquest” of Acadie, 38. 40 Pritchard, In Search of Empire, 71; Doucet, Lost and Found in Acadie, 49, 63, 84; J.B. Brebner, New England’s Outpost: Acadia before the Conquest of Canada (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 47; Henri-Dominique Paratte, Peoples of the Maritimes: Acadians (Halifax: Nimbus, 1998), 37. 41 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 308.

Chapter 1 1 Gregory Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Acadia and Poitou during the Seventeenth Century,” Acadiensis 42, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 2013): 37–66. 2 Alphonse Le Touzé de Longuemar, Excursion géologique et archéologique dans le Loudunais (Paris: 1861), 5; Paul Raveau, L’agriculture et les classes paysannes: la transformation de la propriété dans le Haut-Poitou au XVIe siècle (Paris: M. Rivière, 1926), 96. 3 Raveau, Transformation de la propriété, 97; Gabriel Debien, En Haut-Poitou: Défricheurs au travail, XVe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Armand Collin, 1952), 10. 4 Intendant Miromesnil, “Mémoire de la Province de Tours,” 1698, K-1051, Archives Nationales de France, Paris (AN); “Intendant De Nointel au Contrôleur-Général (CG),” Tours, 22 juillet 1687, série G7 519, AN; Yves Krumenacker, “La géographie du Poitou au XVIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest et des Musées de Poitiers, 4e série – tome 16 (1981): 231.

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5 Mélika Louet, “Le pays loudunais et mirebelais au XVIIIième siècle (d’après les rôles de taille)” (D.E.A. mémoire, Université de Poitiers, 2000), 29; Cadastre, 1828–1829, série 4P 1779 (Aulnay), 2123 (La Chaussée), and 2571 (Martaizé), AD V. 6 Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 1705–1765, série 2C 3Q 1929– 1943, AD V. 7 Raveau, Transformation de la propriété, 129, 142; Debien, Défricheurs au travail, 37; Roland Sanfaçon, Défrichements, peuplement et institutions seigneuriales en Haut-Poitou du Xe au XIIIe siècle (Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1967), 3, 112. 8 Cadastre, 1828–1829, série 4P 1779 (Aulnay), 2123 (La Chaussée), and 2571 (Martaizé), AD V; Annie Antoine found that woods, pastures, and other uncultivated lands tended to remain under direct seigneurial control throughout much of western France: “Systèmes agraires de la France de l’Ouest: une rationalité méconnue?” Histoire, économie et société 18, no. 1 (1999): 122. 9 Miromesnil, “Mémoire de la Province de Tours,” 1698. 10 The average population density in eighteenth-century France was 50 inhabitants per square kilometre – it was generally lower in Anjou (44), Maine (42) and Touraine (31) – according to J. Pitié, Exode rural et migrations intérieures en France: l’exemple de la Vienne et du PoitouCharentes (Poitiers: Norois, 1971), 235. 11 These properties can be seen in the cadastre, but we know that they existed in the seventeenth century because they were the subject of a longstanding dispute in which the parish priest of Martaizé claimed that the owners of the cabanes were not paying their tithes. The royal court at Loudun eventually ruled in his favour in 1680. Curé de Martaizé, 21 July 1677 and 1680, série G9 61, AD V. On the clearing of marshlands in Poitou see Yannis Suire, Le Marais poitevin: une écohistoire du XVIe à l’aube du XXe siècle (La Roche-sur-Yon: Centre vendéen de recherches historiques, 2006), and Jean Paul Billaud, Marais Poitevin: rencontres de la terre et de l’eau (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1984). 12 Leslie Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 84; Brigitte Maillard, Les campagnes de Touraine au XVIIIe siècle: structures agraires et économie rurale (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1998), 18, 46; Jacques Péret, Les paysans de Gâtine poitevine au

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XVIIIe siècle (La Crèche: Geste éditions, 1998); Jean-Pierre Poussou, La terre et les paysans en France et en Grande-Bretagne aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Éditions CNED-SEDES, 1999), 49, 119. 13 Andrew Hill Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 13, 54. 14 Pierre Biard, “Relation of New France, of Its Lands, Nature of the Country and of Its Inhabitants,” 1616, in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. 3. (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers 1898), 31. 15 Marc Lescarbot, Nova Francia, 1606, trans. P. Erondelle (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1928 [1609]), 1. 16 David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (Toronto: Knopf, 2008), 205. 17 Claude was the brother of Isaac de Rasilly, leader of the expedition to Acadie in 1632. Isaac died in November 1635 and was replaced by Charles de Menou. Claude continued to act for the Compagnie de la NouvelleFrance and it was as that company’s representative that he contracted these engagés. “Engagements de Jehan Cendre et Pierre Gaborit,” 1 March 1636, and “Rôle d’équipage, le Saint-Jehan,” 1 April 1636, série E, MG A2, Archives Départementales de la Charente-Maritime, France, Library and Archives Canada (LAC); Leopold Lanctôt, L’Acadie des origines (Montreal: Éditions du fleuve, 1994), 48. 18 Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Acadia and Poitou,” 42; Karl Butzer, “French Wetland Agriculture in Atlantic Canada and Its European Roots: Different Avenues to Historical Diffusion,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92, no. 3 (2002): 455, 464–5. 19 Matthew Hatvany, “The Origins of the Acadian Aboiteau: An Environmental-Historical Geography of the Northeast” Historical Geography 30 (2002): 131–5. 20 Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Hatvany, “The Origins of the Acadian Aboiteau,” 127–8; Samuel J. Imlay and Eric D. Carter, “Drainage on the Grand Prairie: The Birth of a Hydraulic Society on the Midwestern Frontier,” Journal of Historical Geography 38 (2012): 109–22. 21 Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Acadia and Poitou,” 65; Matthew G. Hatvany, Marshlands: Four Centuries of Environmental Change on the Shores of the St Lawrence (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003), 44.

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22 Villebon reported that the settlers of Port Royal sent their children to Minas and Beaubassin rather than clear new land from the forests “because the work was too hard”: “Memoir on the Settlements and Harbours from Minas at the Head of the Bay of Fundy to Cape Breton, 1699,” in John Clarence Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century (Saint John: New Brunswick Museum, 1934), 133. 23 Villebon, “Memoir on the Present Condition of Port Royal, 1699,” in ibid., 128; Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, Estat present de l’Eglise et de la Colonie Françoise dans la Nouvelle France (Paris: Robert Pepie, 1688), 95; Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France, trans. Alice Webster (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933 [1708]), 84–6. 24 Andrée Crépeau and Brenda Dunn found considerable evidence of fish and mollusc remains in an Acadian refuse pit: “L’établissement Melanson: un site agricole acadien (vers 1664–1755)” (Ottawa: Parcs Canada Bulletin de Recherche, 1986), 12; John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: Norton, 2005), 182–3; William C. Wicken, “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations, 1635–1755,” in Sylvie Dépatie et al., eds, Habitants et Marchands Twenty Years Later: Reading the History of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Canada (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 99. 25 Brenda Dunn, A History of Port Royal/Annapolis Royal, 1605–1800 (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 31–4. 26 Donahue discusses the challenges of maintaining soil fertility in Concord in The Great Meadow, 56. 27 Maurice Basque, Des hommes de pouvoir: histoire d’Otho Robichaud et de sa famille, notable acadiens de Port Royal et de Néguac (Néguac: Société historique de Néguac, 1996), 50; Edith Tapie, “Les structures socioéconomiques de Grand Pré, communauté acadienne” (thèse de maîtrise, Université de Moncton, 2000), 34; Samantha Rompillon, “Entre mythe et réalité: Beaubassin, miroir d’une communauté acadienne avant 1755,” in Martin Pâquet et Stéphane Savard, eds, Balises et références, Acadies, francophonies (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007), 271–98; Régis Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755, Essai (Moncton: compte d’auteur, 2003), 1–10. For the 1733 map, see A.W. Savary, Supplement to the History of the County of Annapolis (Toronto: William Briggs, 1913).

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28 Naomi Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755 (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 285. 29 J.B. Brebner, New England’s Outpost: Acadia before the Conquest of Canada (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 45. 30 “Thomas Temple to the Lords of Council,” 24 Nov. 1668, Mémoires des commissaires du roi et de ceux de Sa Majesté britannique sur les possessions & les droits respectifs des deux couronnes en Amérique, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1755), 286–8. 31 Among many travel accounts, see P. Biard to C. Baltazar, 10 June 1611, in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791, vol. 1 (Cleveland: Burrows 1896), 175; Saint-Vallier, Estat present de l’Eglise, 6, 73–85; Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal, 32, 80. 32 René Baudry, “Charles de Menou d’Aulnay,” DCB. 33 Villebon, “Memoir on the Present Condition of Port Royal,” 1699, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 129; Lescarbot, Nova Francia, 85; Nicolas Denys, The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America, trans. William F. Ganong (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1908 [1672]), 123. On the location of Mi’kmaq summer villages and their travel by rivers, see Thomas Peace, “Two Conquests: Aboriginal Experiences of the Fall of New France and Acadia” (PhD thesis, York University, 2011), 68. 34 Miromesnil, “Mémoire de la Province de Tours,” 1698. 35 Pitié, Exode rural et migrations intérieures, 235; Debien, Défricheurs au travail, 46; Pierre Leveel, Histoire de Touraine (Chambray: C.L.D., 1988), 501; François Lebrun, Les hommes et le mort et Anjou aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2004 [1971]), 127. 36 In the context of the early modern period and the French colonies, “Canada” refers to New France, specifically the colony of the St Lawrence valley. 37 James Hannay, The History of Acadia: From Its First Discovery to Its Surrender to England by the Treaty of Paris (St John, NB: J. and A. McMillan, 1879), 12. 38 Lescarbot, Nova Francia, 120; Biard, “Relation de la Nouvelle France” in Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations, 49–55; Denys, Description and Natural History, 252; “Mémoire sur l’Acadie [compagnie de la pêche sédentaire de

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l’Acadie], 1682,” Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres documents historiques relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France, vol. 1 (Quebec: A. Côté, 1883), 291. 39 Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal, 100. 40 Thomas B. Akins, ed., Acadia and Nova Scotia: Documents Relating to the Acadian French and the First British Colonization of the Province, 1714–1758 (Cottonport: Polyanthis, 1972), 40. 41 J. Meincke, “Climate Dynamics of the North Atlantic and NW Europe: An Observation-Based Overview” in Gerold Wefer et al., eds, Climate Development and History of the North Atlantic Realm (Berlin: Springer, 2002), 25–40; Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 30; Carl Schott, The Canadian Marshland, trans. J.W. Ryire (Kiel: Geographical Institute of the University of Kiel, 1995), 8–10, 44; Henri-Dominique Paratte, Peoples of the Maritimes: Acadians (Halifax: Nimbus, 1998), 33. 42 Lescarbot, Nova Francia, 85; Biard, “Relation de la Nouvelle France,” 51. 43 There is a large and increasing literature on climate change and its influence on history. Some prominent examples include P.D. Jones and R.S. Bradley, “Climatic Variations over the Last 500 Years” in Raymond S. Bradley and Philip D. Jones, eds, Climate since a.d. 1500 (London: Routledge, 1995), 660; A. Michaelowa, “The Impact of Short-Term Climate Change on British and French Agriculture and Population in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century” in P.D. Jones et al., eds, History and Climate: Memories of the Future? (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001), 201; John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 61; Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850 (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 102; J.M. Grove, “Climatic Change in Northern Europe over the Last Thousand Years and Its Possible Influence on Human Activity,” in Wefer et al., eds, Climate Development and History of the North Atlantic Realm, 313. 44 Neville Brown, History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric Perspective (London: Routledge, 2001), 296; J. Luterbacher et al., “The Late Maunder Minimum (1675–1715): A Key Period for Studying Decadal Scale Climatic Change in Europe,” Climatic Change 49 (2001): 441–62; Christian Pfister and Walter Bareiss found a similar temperature pattern in “The Climate in Paris between 1675 and 1715 according to the Meteorological Journal of Louis Morin,” in Burkhard Frenzel et al., eds, Climatic Trends and Anomalies in

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Europe, 1675–1715 (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1994), 151–72; Michael E. Mann et al. also argue that greenhouse gases may have had an effect: “Global Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing over the Past Six Centuries,” Nature 392 (1998): 779–87; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire humaine et compare du climat: canicules et glaciers XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 473–529. 45 R.D. Arrigo and G.C. Jacoby, Jr, “Dendroclimatic Evidence from Northern North America,” in Bradley and Jones, eds, Climate since a.d. 1500, 302; E.R. Cook et al., “Dendroclimatic Evidence from Eastern North America,” in Bradley and Jones, eds, Climate since a.d. 1500, 345. 46 “État ou nombre des feux de chaque paroisse de l’élection de Loudun depuis 1732,” série C337, Archives Départementales d’Indre-et-Loire, Tours (AD I-L); Marcel Lachiver, Les années de misère: la famine au temps du Grand Roi (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 453; Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire humaine et comparée du climat, 528–9; Brown, History and Climate Change, 289. 47 John D. Post, Food Shortage, Climatic Variability and Epidemic Disease in Preindustrial Europe: The Mortality Peak in the Early 1740s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 24, 263; Michaelowa, “The Impact of ShortTerm Climate Change,” 210. 48 “Intendant De Nointel au Contrôleur-général (CG),” Tours, 23 avril 1684, série G7 450, AN; “Intendant De Nointel au CG,” Tours, 28 mai 1684, série G7 519, AN; “Intendant Miromesnil au CG,” Tours, 30 juin 1693, série G7 521, AN; “Intendant Chauvelin au CG,” Tours, 8 mars 1711 and 23 juin 1712, série G7 529, AN. 49 “Intendant De Nointel au CG,” Tours, 28 mai 1684 and 22 juillet 1686, série G7 450, AN; “Intendant De Nointel au CG,” Tours, 3 juillet 1685, série G7 519, AN; “Intendant de la Tour au CG,” Poitiers, 14 juin 1720, série G7 465–7, AN; Annette Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 247. 50 Jacques Dupâquier, La population rurale du bassin Parisien à l’époque de Louis XIV (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1979), 237; François Lebrun, Histoire des pays de la Loire: Orléanais, Touraine, Anjou, Maine (Toulouse: Privat, 1972), 272; “Sieur Guéniveau, à Loudun, au CG,” 7 octobre 1711, in A.M. Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs-Généraux des Finances avec les intendants des provinces, tome 3 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1874), 406; Auguste-Louis Lerosey, Loudun: Histoire Civile et Religieuse (Loudun: PSR Éditions, 1980 [1908]), 50.

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51 Muriel K. Roy argues for a general annual population growth rate of 4.5 per cent for the period 1671–1714: “Peuplement et croissance démographique en Acadie,” in Jean Daigle, ed., Les Acadiens des Maritimes: études thématiques (Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes, 1980) 144–8. 52 Villebon, Journal, janvier-mars 1692 and janvier-mars 1697, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 35, 110. 53 Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal, 86. 54 Environment Canada, “Climatology of Hurricanes for Eastern Canada,” http://www.ec.gc.ca/ouragans-hurricanes/default.asp?lang=En&n= CC8A7AA0-1; Hatvany, Four Centuries of Environmental Change, 46. 55 Fagan, The Little Ice Age, 157. 56 Frédéric Muyard, Les loups et la loi: du XVIe siècle à nos jours, histoire d’une hantise populaire (Spéracèdes: Éditions TAC Motifs, 1998), 12–13; Jacques Berlioz, Catastrophes naturelles et calamités au Moyen Âge (Sismel: Édizioni del Gallerzzo, 1998), 29; Aleksander Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2006), 102. 57 Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness, 145–90. Jacques Fencant and Maryse Leveel, Le folklore de Touraine: dictionnaire des rites et coutumes (Chambray: C.L.D., 1989), 260–1. 58 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe– XVIIIe siècle, tome 1: Les stuctures du quotidien: le possible et l’impossible (Paris: Armand Collin, 1979), 47. In fact, Jean-Marc Moriceau has found that while rabid wolves were more of a problem during the winter months, wolves acting simply as predators were much more likely to attack in the summer, Histoire du méchant loup: 3,000 attaques sur l’homme en France (XVe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 2007), 281. 59 Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness, 31, 73; Moriceau, Histoire du méchant loup, 257–69; Lachiver, Les années de misère, 57. 60 Moriceau, Histoire du méchant loup, 411–44. 61 Ibid., 128, 262. 62 “Intendant Chauvelin au CG,” Tours, 26 octobre 1711, 1 décembre 1713, 2 juillet 1714, 3 octobre 1714, 6 décembre 1714, série G7 529, AN; Moriceau, Histoire du méchant loup, 137. 63 “Subdélégué à De Magnanville, Intendant de Tours,” 16 avril 1751, and “Extrait registre du Conseil d’État,” 24 décembre 1748, série C412, AD I-L. 64 Registres paroissiaux de La Chaussée, 10 octobre 1722 et 3 août 1723, série 9E 82/2, ADV; Prieuré de Guesnes, Eaux et Fôrets, 1732, série B 232, AD V;

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“État général des sommes payées a ceux qui ont tué des loups,” 1751, and “Mémoire sur la destruction des loups,” 1770, série C66, AD V; Madeleine Renaud, Loups du Poitou (Lussac-les-Chateaux: Les amis du pays de Lussac-les-Chateaux, 1985), 30. 65 Moriceau, Histoire du méchant loup, 153; 66 Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 72. 67 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 101– 4; Coleman, Wolves and Men in America, 54–6. 68 Pierre Boucher, Histoire veritable et naturelle des moeurs et productions du pays de la Nouvelle-France, vulgairement dite le Canada (Boucherville: Société historique de Boucherville, 1964 [1664]), 58; Carolyn Podruchny, “Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in FrenchCanadian Voyageur Oral Tradition,” Ethnohistory 51, no. 4 (2004): 677– 700; Coleman, Wolves and Men in America, 34–60. 69 Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, www.gov.ns.ca/natr/ wildlife/endngrd/specieslist.htm. 70 Jenny Costelo and Ismael Galvez, “Bear Nova Scotia,” www. bearnovascotia.ca/bear_biology.htm; Boucher, Histoire veritable et naturelle, 55–6. 71 Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie, “1660–1789,” in Georges Duby and Armand Wallon, eds, Histoire de la France rurale, vol. 2 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), 348; Benoît Clavel, “L’animal dans l’alimentation médiévale et moderne en France du Nord (XIIe–XVIIe siècles),” Revue archaeologique de Picardie No spécial 19 (2001): 112. 72 Hatvany, Four Centuries of Environmental Change, 12; Stéphane Noël, “Recent Excavations of Pre-Expulsion Acadian Middens (c. 1664–1755) at the Melanson Settlement National Historic Site, Nova Scotia, Canada” (unpublished conference paper, 2011). 73 Lescarbot, Nova Francia, 97, 107; Denys, Description and Natural History, 125; Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 92. 74 Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal, 96–106. 75 Thanks to Thomas Peace for pointing me to these references: SimonPierre Denys de Bonaventure, “Mémoire joint à la lettre de M. de Bonaventure,” 12 October 1701, série C11D-4, f. 83, LAC; “Résumé d’une lettre du sieur Degoutin,” 22 December 1706, série C11D-5, f. 285, LAC.

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76 Geoffrey Plank, An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign against the Peoples of Acadia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 150. 77 Clive Doucet, Lost and Found in Acadie (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 24; Faragher suggests the accommodation was explicit: A Great and Noble Scheme, 48; Wicken, “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations,” 99. 78 Paul Walden Bamford, Forests and French Sea Power, 1660–1789 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), 5–28. On the implications for livestock, see Jean-Marc Moriceau, Histoire et géographie de l’élevage français: Du Moyen Âge à la Révolution (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 225. 79 “Sieur Milon au CG,” Eaux et Fôrets Poitou-Bourbonnais, 15 décembre 1708, série G7 1358, AN. 80 “Correspondance Eaux et Forêts,” Poitou-Bourbonnais, 1707, 13 août 1712, 14 février 1713, série G7 1358, AN; “Correspondance Eaux et Forêts,” Poitiers, 16 décembre 1728, série B 1262, AD V; Bamford, Forests and French Sea Power, 86. 81 Prieuré de La Chaussée, Eaux et Forêts, Maitrîse de Chinon, 3 mars 1740, série B 232, AD V. 82 Villebon, “Memoir on Minas, 1699,” in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 133; Bamford, Forests and French Sea Power, 121; Christopher Moore, “The Other Louisbourg: Trade and Merchant Enterprise in Ile Royale, 1713–1758,” in Eric Krause, Carol Corbin, and William O’Shea, eds, Aspects of Louisbourg (Sydney: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1995), 240. 83 Éric Thierry, La France de Henri IV en Amérique du Nord: de la création de l’Acadie à la fondation de Québec (Paris: Champion, 2008), 16. 84 Richards, Unending Frontier, 557–63; George A. Rawlyk, Nova Scotia’s Massachusetts: A Study of Massachusetts-Nova Scotia Relations, 1630 to 1784 (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973), 18–25. 85 Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal, 98. On Acadian seasonal fishing for salmon and eels, see Wicken, “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations,” 97. 86 “Concession accordée par Aulnay à Martin de Chevery,” 20 mars 1649, and “Concession de seigneurie à Pierre de Joybert,” 16 octobre 1676, in Jacques Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel: Mathieu de Goutin en Acadie française (1688–1710) (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2004), 266–7, 286; “Concession de Chignitou ou Beaubassin au Sieur Le Neuf de la Vallière,” 24 octobre 1676, Mémoires des commissaires, 1: 575.

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87 “Les interessez a la pêche sédentaire a la coste d’Acadie, 1682” and “Instructions du Roy au Sieur de Meneval,” 1687, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 291, 396. 88 Villebon, “Memoir on the Present State of the Province of Acadia, 1697,” in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 204. 89 Vallière’s granting of fishing rights to foreigners and commerce with them were cited directly as the cause of his removal as commandant of Acadia in 1684. “Destitution de La Vallière,” avril 1684, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 298; “Mémoire du Sieur Bergier,” 1684, and “Mémoire du Sieur Perrot,” 1685, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 291, 385. 90 “Instructions du Roy au Meneval,” 1687, and Meneval, “Observations sur l’estat présent de l’Acadie,” 1689, Collection de manuscrits, 396, 472. 91 Villebon, “Memoir on the Settlements and Harbors from Minas at the Head of the Bay of Fundy to Cape Breton, 1699,” in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 133. 92 Thierry, La France de Henri IV, 18; Richards, Unending Frontier, 568; J. Alheit and E. Hagan, “Climate Variability and Historical NW European Fisheries,” in Wefer et al., eds, Climate and History of the North Atlantic, 435–45. 93 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 64. 94 “Thomas Temple to the Lords of Council,” 24 November 1668, Mémoires des commissaires, 1: 286–8. He stated that the revenue was only £900 per annum, and that he was attempting to get reimbursement from the English Crown for his expenses in Acadie, claiming he was “reduced to the lowest poverty and much in debt.” 95 “Lettres patentes en faveur du Sieur de Charnisay,” février 1647, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 121; “Arrêt de 6 Mar 1645,” Mémoires des commissaires, 1: 497. 96 On Perrot, see Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 73; De Meulles, “Ordonnance contre les vagabonds du Port-Royal,” 12 mai 1686, in Vanderlinden, Lieutenant civil et criminel, 302. 97 Meneval, “Mémoire sur l’Acadie,” 1687, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 411. On Nelson, Saint-Castin, and the fur trade, see Rawlyk, Nova Scotia’s Massachusetts, 35. 98 Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal, 101; Leslie Choquette, “Center and Periphery in French North America,” in Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds, Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 195. In fact, fur-bearing

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animals had become scarce throughout the northeastern area of North America by the end of the seventeenth century (Richards, The Unending Frontier, 551). 99 Christopher Moore, “The Other Louisbourg: Trade and Merchant Enterprise in Île Royale, 1713–58,” in Krause et al., Aspects of Louisbourg, 230–40. 100 John G. Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 188. 101 Jean-Marc Moriceau, Les fermiers de l’Île-de-France, XVe–XVIIIe siècle: L’ascension d’un patronat agricole (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 25; Pierre Goubert, The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Ian Patterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 27; Jacques Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, vol. 2 (Paris: Quadridge, 1995), 103. 102 Gregory Kennedy, “Pushing Family Reconstitution Further: Life Course, Socioeconomic Hierarchy, and Migration in the Loudunais, 1705–1765,” Journal of Family History 37 (2012): 303–18. 103 Philip P. Boucher, “The ‘Frontier Era’ of the French Caribbean, 1620s–1690s,” in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires, 207–34. 104 Stephen White, “The True Number of the Acadians,” in Ronnie-Gilles Leblanc, ed., Du Grand Dérangement à la Déportation (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2005), 55; Wicken, “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations,” 100; Richards, Unending Frontier, 6–9. 105 Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 10. 106 Saint-Vallier, Estat present de l’Eglise, 307; Dale Miquelon, New France, 1701– 1744: A Supplement to Europe (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 128.

Chapter 2 1 A. Souché, Loudun et les pays Loudunais et Mirebelais (Loudun: Imprimerie Nouvelle, 1927), 19; Robert Fauvreau, “Les débuts de la ville de Loudun,” Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, tome 3 – 5e série (1989): 163–82; Léo Desaivre, Deux voyageurs en Poitou au XVIIe siècle: Dubuisson-Aubenay & Léon Godefroy (Poitiers: Imprimerie Blais et Roy, 1903), 17. 2 Roland Sanfaçon, Défrichements, peuplement et institutions seigneuriales en Haut-Poitou du Xe au XIIIe siècle (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1967), 16–70.

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3 Daniel Power, “French and Norman Frontiers in the Central Middle Ages,” in Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, eds, Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700 (London: Macmillan, 1999), 111. 4 Fauvreau, “Les débuts de Loudun,” 182. 5 Robert Fauvreau, “De la guerre à une société nouvelle,” in Jean Combes, ed., Histoire du Poitou et des Pays Charentes (Clermont-Ferrand: De Borée, 2001), 195–202; Souché, Loudun et les pays Loudunais, 39; Edmond-René Labande, Histoire du Poitou, du Limousin, et des pays Charentais (Toulouse: Privat, 1976), 204. 6 Souché, Loudun et les pays Loudunais, 40; Labande, Histoire du Poitou, 210. 7 Pierre Boissonnade, Histoire de Poitou (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1977 [1926]), 191; Didier Poton, Géographie du protestantisme et réseau urbain dans le centre-ouest à l’époque moderne (XVIe–XVIIe siècles) (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1993), 218. 8 Labande, Histoire du Poitou, 240; Eugène Pépin, Histoire de Touraine (Paris: Barré & Dayez, 1991 [1935]), 169. 9 Dumoustier de la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire de la ville de Loudun (Poitiers: Michel-Vincent Chevrier, Libraire-Imprimeur de l’Université, 1778), 41; Edwin Bezzina, “After the Wars of Religion: Protestant-Catholic Accommodation in the French Town of Loudun, 1598–1665” (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2004), 142. 10 De la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire, 44; Auguste-Louis Lerosey, Loudun: Histoire civile et religieuse (Loudun: PSR Éditions, 1980 [1908]), 65; Jacques Sergent et Thierry Thomas, Le pays Loudunais (Tours: Éditions Alan Sutton, 2001), 43. 11 Souché, Loudun et les pays Loudunais, 51; De la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire, 65; François Lebrun, Histoire des pays de la Loire: Orléanais, Touraine, Anjou, Maine (Toulouse: Privat, 1972), 236. 12 M. Bouchitté, ed., Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France #44 à la conférence de Loudun (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1862), 62–4. 13 Labande, Histoire du Poitou, 220; Janine Garrisson, L’Édit de Nantes et sa révocation: histoire d’une intolérance (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1985), 79; R.J. Knecht, Richelieu: Profiles in Power (London: Longman, 1991), 64–83. 14 Steven G. Ellis, “The English State and Its Frontiers in the British Isles, 1300– 1600,” in Power and Standen, eds, Eurasian Borderlands, 153–81. 15 Paul Raveau, L’agriculture et les classes paysannes: la transformation de la propriété dans le Haut-Poitou au XVIe siècle (Paris: M. Rivière, 1926).

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16 N.E.S. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 24–32. 17 “Commission of de Razilly,” 10 mai 1632, Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres documents historiques relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France, tome 1 (Quebec: A. Côté, 1883), 5; George MacBeath, “Isaac de Razilly,” DCB. 18 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 51. 19 John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: Norton, 2005), 34. 20 “Lettre du roi au sieur d’Aulnay,” 10 février 1638, Mémoires des commissaires du roi et de ceux de Sa Majesté britannique sur les possessions & les droits respectifs des deux couronnes en Amérique, tome 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1755), 495. 21 “Lettre du roi au sieur d’Aulnay,” 18 février 1641, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 116; M.A. MacDonald, Fortune and La Tour: The Civil War in Acadia (Toronto: Methuen, 1983), 122–3. 22 “Lettres patentes en faveur d’Aulnay,” février 1647, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 121; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 61–2. 23 Nicolas Denys, The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America (Acadia), trans. William F. Ganong (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1908 [1672]), 64, 100. 24 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 62. 25 “Capitulation of Port Royal,” 16 August 1654, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 145; A.J.B. Johnston, “Borderland Worries: Loyalty Oaths in Acadie/ Nova Scotia, 1654–1755,” French Colonial History 4 (2003): 31–48. 26 George A. Rawlyk, Nova Scotia’s Massachusetts: A Study of MassachusettsNova Scotia Relations 1630 to 1784 (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1973), 34. 27 Jean Gaudette, “Le village des Gaudet du haut de la rivière Port Royal,” Les Cahiers de la Société historique acadienne (SHA) 18, no. 1 (1987): 35–45; Clive Doucet, Lost and Found in Acadie (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 30. 28 “Recensement de l’Acadie,” 9 novembre 1671, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 215. 29 Brenda Dunn, A History of Port Royal/Annapolis Royal, 1605–1800 (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 31–4.

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30 “Mémoire de Perrot,” 1685, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 348; “Instructions au Sieur de Meneval,” 1687, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 396. 31 “Meneval à Louis XIV,” 10 septembre 1688, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 433; Richard R. Johnson, John Nelson: Merchant Adventurer: A Life between Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 26, 133; Marc C. Lavoie, “Belleisle Nova Scotia, 1680–1755: Acadian Material Life and Economy” (MA thesis, McMaster University, 1987); Marc Lavoie “Vie quotidienne en Acadie,” Cap-aux-Diamants 57 (1999): 22–7. 32 John Clarence Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century (Saint John: New Brunswick Museum, 1934), 9; Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651–1695 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 93. 33 Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 29. 34 Journal de Villebon, 28 avril 1693, 11 octobre 1694, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 47, 54. 35 Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 17–27; Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France, trans. Alice Lusk Webster (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933), 82, 100. 36 Johnston, “Loyalty Oaths in Acadie,” 37; Régis Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755: Essai (Moncton: compte d’auteur, 2003), 59; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 193. 37 Baker and Reid, The New England Knight, 160; Tibierge, “Rapport de 1695,” in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 148; Robert Sauvageau, Acadie: La Guerre de Cent Ans des Français d’Amérique aux Maritimes et en Louisiane, 1670–1769 (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1987), 74. 38 “Colonel Dudley to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations,” 27 November 1704, CO 217 NS “A” 1667–1709, LAC; Leopold Lanctôt, L’Acadie des Origines (Montreal: Éditions du Fleuve, 1994), 92. 39 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 208–9. 40 Ibid., 217. 41 John G. Reid et al., The “Conquest” of Acadia, 1710: Imperial, Colonial, and Aboriginal Constructions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2004), x. 42 “Nicholson to Subercase,” 1 October 1710, and “Articles of Capitulation of Port Royal,” 2 October 1710, CO 217 NS “A” 1667–1709, LAC; “Nicholson to Inhabitants of Acadie,” 12 October 1710, Collection de manuscrits, 2: 542; Geoffrey Plank, “New England and the Conquest,” in Reid et al., The “Conquest” of Acadia, 85.

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43 Maurice Basque, “Family and Political Culture in Pre-Conquest Acadia,” in Reid et al., The “Conquest” of Acadia, 48. 44 De la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire, 60; Souché, Loudun et les pays Loudunais, 52. 45 Keith P. Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), xvi. 46 Pierre de Chouppes was governor of Loudun between 1590 and 1601. The Protestant temple on his personal domains was taken down soon after the Peace of Alès. See Bezzina, “Protestant-Catholic Accommodation in Loudun,” 69, 128. 47 Some readers will know of the Melanson brothers, Pierre and Charles, who were the sons of a Huguenot exile who emigrated to England, possibly from La Rochelle, and then moved to Boston. Pierre and Charles moved to Port Royal during a period of English administration in the 1650s. They both converted to Catholicism in order to marry into Acadian society. The point here is that the group of families recruited from the Loudunais during the 1640s probably did not include any Protestants. 48 Idelette Ardouin-Weiss, Le protestantisme en Touraine au temps de l’édit de Nantes (Tours: Église Réformée de Tours, 1998), 8; Hervé Lemesle, “‘Pour la grandeur de Dieu’: les mécanismes de la reforme tridentine à Loudun au XVIIe siècle” (mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Poitiers 1986), 81; Poton, Géographie du protestantisme, 216–26; Jean Quéniart, La révocation de l’édit de Nantes: Protestants et Catholiques français de 1598 à 1685 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1985), 79; Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 48, 152. 49 Quéniart, La révocation de l’édit de Nantes, 117–18; Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 236; Walter C. Utt and Brian E. Strayer, The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and Protestant Resistance to Louis XIV, 1647–1698 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2003), 21. 50 Yves Krumenacker, Les Protestants du Poitou au XVIIIe siècle (1681–1789) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998), 59–64. 51 “The horrible persecution of the French Protestants in the Province of Poitou: Truly set forth by a Gentleman of great Quality an Eye Witness of those sad passages in a letter to a Worthy Friend of his at Canterbury, June 26, 1681,” Early English Books Online, vol. 497, no. 27, 2 pages; Michel Richard, La vie quotidienne des Protestants sous l’ancien régime (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1985 [1966]), 157; Krumenacker, Les Protestants du

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Poitou, 69–78; Nicole Vray, Protestants de l’Ouest, 1517–1907 (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1993), 178; Utt and Strayer, The Bellicose Dove, 34. 52 Garrisson, L’Édit de Nantes et sa révocation, 8, 218; Geoffrey Adams, The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685–1787: The Enlightenment Debate on Toleration (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991), 19–24; Brian E. Strayer, Huguenots and Camisards as Aliens in France, 1598–1789: The Struggle for Religious Toleration (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), 151. 53 “Intendant Foucault au CG,” août 1685, Poitiers, série G7 450, AN; Miromesnil, “Mémoire de la Province de Tours,” 1698, K-1051, AN; De la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire, 150; Lerosey, Loudun: Histoire civile et religieuse, 82; Krumenacker, Les Protestants du Poitou, 103. 54 “Instructions au Sieur de Grandfontaine,” 3 avril 1670, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 191–7. 55 Naomi Griffiths, The Acadians, Creation of a People (Toronto: McGrawHill Ryerson, 1973), 21. 56 Elsa Guerry, “L’Acadie au XVIIe siècle, entre la Nouvelle-France et la Nouvelle-Angleterre: quelle identité? Quel territoire?” in Maurice Basque et Jacques Paul Couturier, eds, Les territoires de l’identité: perspectives acadiennes et françaises XVIIe–XXe siècles (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2005), 22. 57 Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, Estat présent de l’Eglise et de la colonie françoise dans la Nouvelle-France (Paris: Robert Pepie, 1688), 73–85. 58 A rare example of a case being referred to Quebec is that of Jean Campagna, accused of witchcraft by the lord and inhabitants of Beaubassin. See Jacques Gagnon, Un sorcier en Acadie (Quebec: Éditions historiques et généalogiques Pepin, 2008). 59 Clément Cormier, “Jacques Bourgeois,” DCB. 60 Marc Lescarbot, Nova Francia, 1606, trans. P. Erondelle (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1928 [1609]), 6. 61 Denis Jean, “Ethnogenèse des premiers Métis, 1603–1760” (MA thesis, Université de Moncton, 2012). 62 Pierre Biard, “Relation of New France, of Its Lands, Nature of the Country and of Its Inhabitants,” 1616, in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. 3 (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1898), 147–9.

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63 Saint-Vallier, Estat présent de l’Eglise, 43–9. 64 Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not the Savages (Halifax: Nimbus, 1993), 5–6; William C. Wicken, “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations, 1635– 1755,” in Sylvie Dépatie et al., eds, Habitants et Marchands Twenty Years Later: Reading the History of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 99; Janet E. Chute, “Frank G. Speck’s Contributions to the Understanding of Mi’kmaq Land Use, Leadership, and Land Management,” Ethnohistory 46, no. 3 (1999): 481–540. 65 William C. Wicken, “Encounters with Tall Sails and Tall Tales: Mi’kmaq Society, 1500–1760” (PhD thesis, McGill University, 1994), 128–37; Geoffrey Plank, An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign against the Peoples of Acadia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 23–5; Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 48. 66 Wicken points out that only one Aboriginal woman appeared as the wife of an Acadian in the seventeenth-century censuses – and she was an Abenaki. “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations,” 101; Rawlyk, Nova Scotia’s Massachusetts, 43; John G. Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 164. 67 Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland, 185; William C. Wicken, “Mi’kmaq Decision: Antoine Tecouenemac, the Conquest, and the Treaty of Utrecht,” in Reid et al., The “Conquest” of Acadia, 86–99. 68 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 160. 69 “Lettre de M. Saint-Castin aux habitants de la banlieue de Port Royal,” 1711, Collection de manuscrits, 2: 543; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 245. 70 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 300–1; Plank, An Unsettled Conquest, 70; William C. Wicken, “26 August 1726: A Case Study in Mi’kmaq-New England Relations in the Early 18th Century,” Acadiensis 23, no. 1 (1993): 5–21; Stephen E. Patterson, “Indian-White Relations in Nova Scotia, 1749– 61: A Study in Political Interaction,” Acadiensis 23, no. 1 (1993): 23–59. 71 For a general discussion of this topic, see John Daniels, “The Indian Population of North America in 1492,” William and Mary Quarterly 49, no. 2 (1992): 298–320; Daniel N. Paul believes that the Mi’kmaq population originally numbered 100,000 persons in We Were Not the Savages, 5; Virginia P. Miller suggests 35,000 in “Aboriginal Micmac Population: A Review of the Evidence,” Ethnohistory 23, no. 2 (1976): 119; and Ralph

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Pastore argues for the much lower figure of 12,000, “Aboriginal Peoples and European Contact,” in Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid, eds, The Atlantic Region to Confederation: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 34–5; P. Biard to C. Baltazar, 10 Jun 1611, in Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations, 1: 175; Plank, An Unsettled Conquest, 23–4; James Pritchard estimates that there were only 2,000 Mi’kmaq left as early as 1670: In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 5; Wicken suggests that a little more than 800 remained in peninsular Acadie by 1722: “Reexamining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations,” 98. 72 Wicken, “Re-examining Mi’kmaq-Acadian Relations,” 93–114; Plank, An Unsettled Conquest, 84. 73 Muriel K. Roy, “Peuplement et croissance démographique en Acadie,” in Jean Daigle, ed., Les Acadiens des Maritimes: études thématiques (Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes, 1980) 144; Andrew Hill Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 236; Stephen White, “The True Numbers of the Acadians,” in Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, ed., Du Grand Dérangement à la Déportation (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2005), 55. 74 Henri Mendras, Les sociétés paysannes (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1995 [1976]), 41; Alain Croix et Jean Quéniart, De la Renaissance à l’aube des Lumières: histoire culturelle de la France, vol. 2 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2005 [1997]), 52–6; Donald Sutherland, The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770–1796 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 168; James B. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 249, 288. 75 Anette Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 247; Judith Miller, Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). The state was also involved with maintaining and updating the currency, and helped keep it stable after 1726, T.J.A. Le Goff, “Monetary Unification under the French Monarchy,” in Patrick M. Crowley, ed., Before and beyond EMU: Historical Lessons and Future Prospects (London: Routledge 2002), 43–63. 76 T.J.A. Le Goff and D.M.G. Sutherland, “The Revolution and the Rural Community in Eighteenth-Century Brittany,” Past and Present 12 (1974): 107.

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77 “Déclaration du Roy concernant la nomination des collecteurs des tailles,” 28 août 1685, Poitiers, série G7 450, AN; Mireille Touzery, L’invention de l’impôt sur le revenu: La taille tarifée, 1715–1789 (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1994), xi; Marcel Marion, Les impôts directs sous l’ancien régime, principalement au XVIIIe siècle (Genève: Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1974), 3; Michael Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth Century France: Liberté, Égalité, Fiscalité (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 52. 78 Mélika Louet, “Le pays loudunais et mirebelais au XVIIIème siècle (d’après les rôles de taille)” (D.E.A. mémoire, Université de Poitiers, 2000), 82; Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV, 160. 79 John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 167–9; Brigitte Maillard, Les campagnes de Touraine au XVIIIe siècle: structures agraires et économie rurale (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1998), 408–9. 80 There were 20 sous in 1 livre tournois. 81 J. Pasquier, L’impôt des gabelles en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1978), 7–16. 82 The livre tournois (lt) was the principal currency of account in France. The livre colonial (lc) was established in the seventeenth century and was worth three-quarters of a lt. 83 Jacques Dupâquier, La population rurale du bassin Parisien à l’époque de Louis XIV (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1979), 87; Rolande Collas, La contrebande du sel entre Touraine et Poitou (Chambray: C.L.D., 2000); Lebrun, Histoire des pays de la Loire, 284. 84 François Bluche and Jean-François Solnon, La veritable hiérarchie sociale de l’ancienne France: le tarif de la première capitation (1695) (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1983), 98; Jean Tarrade, “Le Centre-Ouest à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (d’après la correspondance des intendants,” Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest et des Musées de Poitiers, 4e série – tome 15 (1980): 333–50; Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 320. 85 Almanach de Poitou, 1763 (Poitiers: Jean Faucon, imprimeur du roi, 1762); Marion, Les impôts directs, 81. 86 Marion, Les impôts directs, 33. 87 Jack Pichon, “La taille tarifée dans quatre paroisses du Haut-Poitou: approche statistique d’un essai de répartition équitable de l’impôt au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue Historique du Centre-Ouest 3, no. 1 (2004): 129.

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88 Touzery found the tax on livestock to be somewhat higher in the Paris region – 20 s for oxen, cows, and horses and 2 s for goats and sheep: L’invention de l’impôt sur le revenu, 12. 89 “Phillipps to Lords of Trade,” 24 January 1731, in Adam Shortt, V.K. Johnston, and Gustave Lanctôt, Currency, Exchange, and Finance in Nova Scotia, 1675–1758 (Ottawa: J.A. Patenaude, Acting King’s Printer, 1933), 181. 90 Commissions of Alexandre Bourg and Prudent Robichaud as collectors of the quit-rents, 27 September 1733, in A. Macmechan, ed., A Calendar of Two Letter Books and One Commission Book in the Possession of the Government of Nova Scotia, 1713–1741 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1900), 159; Council Minutes, 16 March 1742, in Charles Bruce Fergusson, ed., Minutes of His Majesty’s Council at Annapolis Royal, 1736– 1749 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1967), 8. 91 Maxwell Sutherland, “Lawrence Armstrong,” DCB. 92 “Chauvelin au CG,” 14 janvier 1711, Tours, in A.M. de Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs-Généraux des Finances avec les intendants des provinces (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale 1874), 344; “Chauvelin au CG,” 19 novembre 1711, Tours, série G7 529, AN. 93 Argenson, “Instruction pour la répartition en Poitiers généralité de 1749,” 12 janvier 1749, série C3, AD V C3. 94 Urban and local militias pre-dated 1688, but this was the first royal provincial militia established for the entire country, Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, 377. 95 “La Bourdonnaye au CG,” 14 juillet 1689, Poitiers, série G7 450, AN; “Ordonnance du Roy concernant la Solde, l’habillement & l’Armement des Soldats de milice,” 5 avril 1690, and “Correspondance de l’intendant de Tours,” 1691–2, série G7 520, AN. 96 “Miromesnil aux paroisses de la généralité de Tours,” 1692, série G7 520, AN. 97 “Correspondance de l’intendant de Tours au CG,” 21 avril 1691, 15 mars 1692, 21 mars 1692, série G7 520, AN, and mars 1706, série G7 527, AN; “Turgot au CG,” 28 février 1702, in Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs-Généraux, 340. 98 André Corvisier, L’armée française de la fin du XVIIe siècle au ministère de Choiseul: le soldat, 2 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1964), 205. 99 “Règles de la milice,” 1737, and Correspondance, 30 août 1761, série 2 MI II-R37 C48, AD I-L.

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100 “Affaires Militaires,” 16 juin 1766, série C20, AD V; Corvisier, L’armée française, 249. 101 “Affaires Militaires,” 30 juillet 1754, série C20, AD V; several militiamen from these parishes appear in the notarial record, including Pierre Cognard, Urbain Terriot, and René Gigon: Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 1705–65, série 2C 3Q 1940–1, AD V. 102 Boissonade, Histoire de Poitou, 232; Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, 386. 103 In New France, billeting was common in the areas near the forts. W.J. Eccles, “The Social, Economic, and Political Significance of the Military Establishment in New France,” in W.J. Eccles, Essays on New France (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), 113. 104 Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 46; Shortt et al., Currency, Exchange, and Finance, xviii; Original Correspondence Colonial Office, 16 November 1710, CO 217 Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, LAC. 105 “Armstrong to the Acadian Deputies,” 30 August 1731, in Thomas B. Akins, ed., Acadia and Nova Scotia: Documents Relating to the Acadian French and the First British Colonization of the Province, 1714–1758 (Cottonport: Polyanthis, 1972), 4, 89; “Du Vivier’s Orders to the Acadian Deputies,” October 1744 and 25 May 1745, in Fergusson, Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 68, 71. 106 “Council instructions to messengers,” Jan. 1714, in Akins, Acadia and Nova Scotia, 3. 107 “Proclamation de General Phillipps,” 28 août 1720, and “Phillipps to Craggs,” July 1720, Nouvelle-France: Correspondance officielle 3e série (1621–1731), 37, LAC; “Armstrong to Lords of Trade,” 5 October 1731, in Akins, Acadia and Nova Scotia, 92; Christopher Moore, “The Other Louisbourg: Trade and Merchant Enterprise in Ile Royale, 1713–1758,” in Eric Krause, Carol Corbin, and William O’Shea, eds, Aspects of Louisbourg (Sydney: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1995), 240. 108 Maurice Basque, Des hommes de pouvoir: histoire d’Otho Robichaud et de sa famille, notable acadiens de Port Royal et de Néguac (Néguac: Société historique de Néguac, 1996), 71; Gautier’s property was seized by order of the Council, 14 November 1746, Fergusson, Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 85. 109 Phillipps to Armstrong, 29 March 1727, CO 217 Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island – Official Correspondence, LAC.

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110 Villebon, “Memoir on the Present Condition of Port Royal, 1699,” in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 129; Edith Tapie, “Les structures socio-économiques de Grand-Pré, communauté acadienne” (MA thesis, Université de Moncton, 2000), 45; Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755, 20; Christopher Hodson, “Refugees: Acadians and the Social History of Empire, 1755–85” (PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 2004), 28–90. 111 Villebon’s Journal, 23 May 1697, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 104; Council Minutes, 20 June 1737 and 10 October 1743, in Fergusson, Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 17, 25. 112 Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 17; Baker and Reid, The New England Knight, 160; the British blamed the Acadians for failing to provide them warning of the Mi’kmaq attack on Port Royal in 1724; Felix Pain, “Estrait des nouvelles de l’accadie,” 1724, série C11D vol. 8, France: Archives des Colonies, LAC. 113 On the militia in New France see Eccles, “The Military Establishment in New France,” 112, and Fernand Ouellet, “Officiers de milice et structure sociale au Québec (1660–1815),” Histoire sociale – Social History 12, no. 23 (1979): 37–65. 114 “Mémoire de Brouillan au roi,” 1701, série C11D vol. 4, 64/88, LAC; “Recensements des habitans de la Province de l’accadie pour 1703,” CO 220 France Archives des Colonies 1703, LAC; Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 45; Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755, 1. 115 René Baudry, “Daniel d’Auger de Subercase” DCB; Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 109; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 183, 220. 116 “Doucett to Secretary of State,” 5 November 1717, in Akins, Acadia and Nova Scotia, 13. 117 Duvivier glosses over his failure to recruit more Acadians as soldiers in his journal de campagne. See Bernard Pothier, Course à l’Accadie: journal de campagne de François Du Pont Duvivier en 1744 (Moncton: Éditions d’Acadie, 1982), 71–2. 118 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 343–65. 119 “Cornwallis to the Acadians,” 14 July 1749 and 6 September 1749, in Akins, Acadia and Nova Scotia, 165, 174. 120 “Ordonnance du Marquis de la Jonquière,” 26 août 1751, série C11A, vol. 97, France: Archives des Colonies, LAC; John B. Brebner, “Canadian Policy towards the Acadians in 1751,” Canadian Historical Review 12, no. 3 (1931): 287.

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121 Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, “Du ‘dérangement des guerres’ au Grand Dérangement: la longue évolution d’un concept,” in LeBlanc, ed., Du Grand Dérangement à la Déportation, 18. “Lawrence to the Governors of the Continent,” 11 August 1755, CO 217 Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island – Original Correspondence, LAC. 122 W.J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534 to 1760 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 3. 123 Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Power and Standen, eds, Eurasian Borderlands, 8; John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 5–6; David R. Jones, “From Frontier to Borderland: The Acadian Community in a Comparative Context, 1605–1710,” Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society Journal 7 (2004): 15. 124 Elizabeth Mancke, “Negotiating an Empire: Britain and Its Overseas Peripheries,” in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires, 236. 125 Villebon’s Journal, 1692, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 41; Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland, 141, 174; John G. Reid, “An International Region of the Northeast: Rise and Decline, 1635–1762,” in Stephen Hornsby et al., The Northeastern Borderlands: Four Centuries of Interaction (Frederiction: Acadiensis Press, 1989), 17; P.A. Buckner, “The Borderlands Concept: A Critical Appraisal,” in Hornsby et al., The Northeastern Borderlands, 157; Leslie Choquette, “Center and Periphery in French North America,” in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires, 194. 126 Pritchard, In Search of Empire, xx; Laurent Marien, “Le régime seigneurial au Canada: territoires, pouvoirs et régulation socio-économique (XVIIe– XVIIIe siècles),” in Frédéric Chauvaud et Jacques Peret, eds, Terres marins: Études en hommage à Dominique Guillemet (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 324. 127 Elsa Guerry, “L’Acadie au XVIIe siècle, entre la Nouvelle-France et la Nouvelle-Angleterre: Quelle identité? Quel territoire?” in Maurice Basque and Jacques Paul Couturier, eds, Les territoires de l’identité: perspectives acadiennes et françaises XVIIe–XXe siècles (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2005), 24. Also see Joshua M. Smith, Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783–1820 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2006). 128 Griffiths, Migrant to Acadian, 184, 254.

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Chapter 3 1 Philip T. Hoffman emphasizes the need to get past this conventional understanding in Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450–1815 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 40. 2 Henri Sée, Economic and Social Conditions in France during the Eighteenth Century, trans. Edwin Zeydel (New York: Cooper Square, 1968 [1927]), 4; Gérard Béaur, Histoire agraire de la France au XVIIIe siècle: inerties et changements dans les campagnes françaises entre 1715 et 1815 (Paris: Éditions Sedes, 2000), 17–18. 3 Similar results were found in Pierre Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730: contribution à l’histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1982 [1960]), 175; Jean Gallet, La seigneurie bretonne, 1450–1680: l’exemple du Vannetais (Paris: Cedex, 1983), 569; Annie Antoine, Fiefs et villages du BasMaine au XVIIIe siècle (Mayenne: Éditions régionales de l’Ouest, 1994), 55; Zoe A. Schneider, “The Village and the State: Justice and the Local Courts in Normandy, 1670–1740” (PhD thesis, Georgetown University, 1997), 49; Béaur, Histoire agraire, 28. 4 Based on 34 land sale transactions from the Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 1763–4, série 2C 3Q 1941, AD V. 5 Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 27 février 1762, série 2C 3Q 1941, AD V. 6 In Bas-Maine, most leases were in kind rather than in money (Antoine, Fiefs et villages du Bas-Maine, 352). Métairies in western France tended to be relatively unified but modest holdings: Annie Antoine, “Systèmes agraires de la France de l’Ouest: une rationalité méconnue?” Histoire, économie et société (HES) 18, no. 1 (1999): 115. This was particularly the case in the Loudunais and Touraine: Brigitte Maillard, Les campagnes de Touraine au XVIIIe siècle: structures agraires et économie rurale (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1998), 125. 7 Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society, 50. 8 I am grateful to T.J.A. LeGoff, who suggested that these small parcels of land were of further importance as collateral in order to secure loans; leased land could not be used for this purpose. 9 Jean-Marc Moriceau, Histoire et géographie de l’élevage français: du Moyen Âge à la Révolution (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 55–69.

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10 A few leases involving the seigneurial families also occurred. For example, the widow of the lord of Port Royal leased a habitation (house and arable land) to Alexandre Girouard with an annual charge of 10 boisseaux (bx) wheat, 8 livres coloniales (lc), and responsibility for 2 cows. Transaction de 31 janvier 1705, série Notaires d’Acadie (Étude Loppinot), 1687–1710, Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson (CEAAC). 11 Yves Cormier, Les aboiteaux en Acadie: hier et aujourd’hui (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 1990), 65–73; N.E.S. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 48. Contemporary observers also made this argument: Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France, trans. Alice Lusk Webster (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933 [1708]), 95. Matthew G. Hatvany discusses dyke building in the marshlands of Poitou and also English and Dutch dyke building in the New World in Marshlands: Four Centuries of Environmental Change on the Shores of the St Lawrence (Laval: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003), 38–44. A further comparison is developed by Gregory Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Seventeenth-Century Acadia and Poitou,” Acadiensis 42, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 2013): 37–66. 12 The term “aboiteau” is a variant of “abotais” or “aboteau,” used in the marshlands of Poitou to describe an obstacle to the passage of water and especially mechanisms used to prevent flooding. The Acadian version was a particular adaptation that functioned with the tides of the Bay of Fundy. Kennedy, “Marshland Colonization in Acadia and Poitou,” 55; Marcel Lachiver, Dictionnaire du monde rural: les mots du passé (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 27. 13 J. Sherman Bleakney, The Acadians at Grand Pré and Their Dykeland Legacy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 45–61. 14 Andrew Hill Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 136. 15 Clark claims that a single acre in Acadie could produce 20 bushels of grain (The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 236–7). 16 The colonial censuses have certain limitations. For example, it seems clear that officials did not consistently report uncultivated land that families may have possessed or been in the process of dyking/draining. In addition, a handful of colonists refused to co-operate – in 1671, Pierre Melanson,

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Étienne Robichaud, and Pierre Lanoue refused to answer the census taker. Nevertheless, I believe that the overall impressions of Acadian farming gleaned from the censuses are trustworthy, as the series of censuses from 1671 through 1714 provide relatively consistent information that is further corroborated by the observations and reports of other officials. 17 For those interested in the math, the estimated production is from Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 163 and 235–6. The amount of 1,125 hectolitres of grain was the equivalent of about 460 lbs of bread per day. Marcel Lachiver estimated that an adult man consumed an average of 2.5 pounds a day, while a woman and older children consumed 1.5 pounds a day (Les années de misère: la famine au temps du Grand Roi [Paris: Fayard, 1991], 39). Thus, even taking into account the fact that many of the colonists were children and would have eaten less, the grain was still insufficient. 18 “Deed of Sale from Jean Bourg et al., to Prudent Robichaud, fils,” 8 October 1732, fonds Placide Gaudet 1.19.3, CEAAC. There are similar transactions registered by the British Council during the 1730s that refer to Acadians redeeming rents for leased properties. 19 Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 236–7. John Mack Faragher dubbed Acadie under the British as “an agrarian world of household production” in A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: Norton, 2005), 182. 20 Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 182. 21 “Armstrong to Lords of Trade,” 5 October 1731, in Thomas B. Akins, ed., Acadia and Nova Scotia: Documents Relating to the Acadian French and the First British Colonization of the Province, 1714–1758 (Cottonport: Polyanthis, 1972), 27. 22 For example, Charles Savary and Pierre Baudu (Martaizé), Charles Pic and Pierre Rousseau (La Chaussée), and Jean Melais (Aulnay) were identified as blâtiers in the parish registers. Estate managers like Alexandre Goujon and Nicolas Jamin had close economic and kin ties to merchants in Moncontour. This regional market was reminiscent of the Vannetais: T.J.A. Le Goff, “An Eighteenth-Century Grain Merchant: Ignace Adrisse Desruisseaux,” in J.F. Bosher, ed., French Government and Society, 1500–1850 (London: Athlene Press, 1973), 98. 23 Judith Miller, Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),

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5–32; Abbott Payson Usher, The History of the Grain Trade in France, 1400– 1710 (New York: Octagon, 1973), 25. 24 “Chauvelin au CG,” 11 février 1720, Tours, série G7 531, AN. Intendant Chauvelin wrote that Saumur was the largest commercial centre in his generality, and trade would be assisted by establishing a bank for foreign merchants and currency exchange. On the grain trade in Paris, see Steven L. Kaplan, Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour trade during the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). 25 C. Chevalier, Tableau de la Province de Touraine, 1762–1766: administration, agriculture, industrie, commerce, impôts (Tours: Imprimerie impériale, 1862), 122. The Loire valley used Parisian weights and measures. A Paris setier was the equivalent of 159 litres; thus Touraine was usually exporting 1,017,600 hectolitres (hl) and in 1764 exported 1,908,000 hl. 26 “Équipage de Saint-Louis,” MG A2 Série E, 170-200, France: Archives Départementales de la Charente-Maritime, La Rochelle, LAC. See James Stewart Pritchard, “Ships, Men, and Commerce: A Study of Maritime Activity in New France” (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1971); Dale Miquelon, New France, 1701–1744: A Supplement to Europe (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 128; Meneval, “Mémoire sur l’Acadie, 1687,” Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres documents historiques relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France, tome 1 (Quebec: A. Côté, 1883), 411. 27 G.B. Warden, Boston, 1689–1776 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 17–19; Richard R. Johnson, John Nelson, Merchant Adventurer: A Life between Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 26; John Clarence Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century (Saint John: New Brunswick Museum, 1934), 142, 148. 28 N.E.S. Griffiths, L’Acadie de 1686 à 1784: Contexte d’une histoire (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 55–7. 29 On the warehouse, see “Proclamation de General Phillipps,” 28 août 1720, Nouvelle-France: Correspondance officielle 3e série (1621–1731) MG 8 A1, 677-78, LAC. On permits, see Adam Shortt, V.K. Johnston, and Gustave Lanctôt, Currency, Exchange, and Finance in Nova Scotia, 1675–1758 (Ottawa: J.O. Patenaude, Acting King’s Printer, 1933), 13; Maurice Basque, Des hommes de pouvoir: histoire d’Otho Robichaud et de sa famille, notable

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acadiens de Port Royal et de Néguac (Néguac: Société historique de Néguac, 1996), 71. 30 Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 186; Christopher Moore, “The Other Louisbourg: Trade and Merchant Enterprise in Ile Royale, 1713–1758,” in Eric Krause, Carol Corbin, and William O’Shea, eds, Aspects of Louisbourg (Sydney: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1995), 240. 31 Villebon, “Memoir on the Settlements and Harbors from Minas to Cape Breton,” 27 October 1699, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 133. Clark also discusses the lack of markets in The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 54. 32 A detailed list of the small boats owned by the Acadians can be found in Regis Brun, Les Acadians avant 1755: essai (Moncton: compte d’auteur, 2003), 96–108. 33 Gérard Béaur, “Les catégories sociales à la campagne: repenser un instrument d’analyse,” Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest: Anjou, Maine, Touraine 106, no. 1 (1999): 161; Antoine, “Systèmes agraires,” 108. 34 Jean Gallet, Seigneurs et paysans en France, 1600–1793 (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1993), 58. For Poitou, Paul Raveau uses the terms laboureurs à bras (workers), laboureurs à bœuf (ploughmen), and laboureursmarchand (merchants) to distinguish among those claiming ploughman status in L’agriculture et les classes paysannes: la transformation de la propriété dans le Haut-Poitou au XVIe siècle (Paris: M. Rivière, 1926), 217– 35. Similar categories are developed in Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis, 170–5. Jean-Marc Moriceau describes how the wealthiest ploughmen took advantage of a weak seigneurial regime to become a veritable rural elite: Les fermiers de l’Île-de-France, XVe–XVIIIe siècle: l’ascension d’un patronat agricole (Paris: Fayard, 1994). 35 T.J.A. Le Goff divided rural society into thirds, with one-third secure, one-third somewhat secure, and one-third living in poverty: Vannes and Its Region: A Study of Town and Country in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 202. Gallet argues that this middle group was characterized by a combination of farming and seasonal work (La seigneurie bretonne, 570). Antoine called this middle group closiers – farmers who owned/leased some land and were generally dependent on the larger ploughmen (Fiefs et villages du Bas-Maine, 73); Mélika Louet estimates that as many as two-thirds of ploughmen fit into this middle group: “Le pays loudunais et mirebelais au XVIIIe siècle (d’après les rôles

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de taille)” (D.E.A. mémoire, Université de Poitiers, 2000), 123; Angéline Rousseau, “Les ‘coqs de villages’ du pays Loudunais dans la dieuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle” (mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Poitiers, 2002), 33. 36 “Accord sur la fabrique,” 22 avril 1727, Martaizé, série 4E 110 15 1727–1729, AD V. 37 Antoine found that day workers composed just 10 per cent of the population in Bas-Maine, while only an additional 4 per cent could be classed as artisans (Fiefs et villages du Bas-Maine, 57). Gallet similarly found that in western France there were fewer day workers (Seigneurs et paysans, 232). But in the Beauvaisis, the day-workers (manoeuvriers) were an even stronger majority (Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis, 180). 38 For example, Claude and Pierre Bruneau completed work for an estate manager at Moncontour and the seigneur of La Roussellerie in 1757; the two projects earned them 143 lt (Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 2C 3Q 1943, AD V). While there was a weak textile industry concentrated in Tours, in the Loudunais what little industry was present was entirely designed for local consumption: Maillard, Les campagnes de Touraine, 260–2; Christelle Montalescot, “Les artisans de Loudun et du Loudunais à la fin du XVIIIe siècle” (mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Poitiers, 2000), 174. 39 Baptême de Jean Chottier, 8 août 1760, Martaizé, série 9E 178/2, AD V. Pierre Rateau of Loudun, the hatter in question, is the godfather. 40 For example, in 1741, the blacksmith Urbain Courtilly was named delegate of Martaizé. Both the mills of Grétard and Moresseault in Martaizé were leased by elites to ploughmen in return for set amounts of grain. Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 13 mars 1763 and 16 avril 1764, 2C 3Q 1943, AD V. 41 Louise Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal, trans. Liana Vardi (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). Allan Greer discusses the issue of habitants versus peasants in Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740–1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 10. The word “habitant” was most often used in the Loudunais in documents involving the parish assembly. 42 Naomi Griffiths wrote that Acadie was “not a rank-ordered society,” more a “collectivity” than a community, in The Contexts of Acadian History, 1686– 1784 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 21–2. Gisa I. Hynes argued that there were no class distinctions seen in marriage

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alliances in “Some Aspects of the Demography of Port Royal, 1650–1755,” Acadiensis 3, no. 1 (1973): 9. This has been solidly refuted by Jacques Vanderlinden in Se marier en Acadie française: XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 1998). James Pritchard referred to Acadie as a “republic of subsistence farmers” in In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 71. 43 I have calculated these values by applying contemporary price data to the lists of cultivable land and livestock given in the census. A similar method was used by Clark, Early Geography of Nova Scotia, 170–5. 44 Edith Tapie, “Les structures socio-économiques de Grand Pré, communauté acadienne” (mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Poitiers, 2000), 50–5. 45 Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 170–5. Moriceau also noted that subsistence and commercial husbandry often existed side by side in France (Histoire et géographie de l’élevage, 386). 46 Dièreville, Relation, 93. Christopher Hodson talks about the Acadians in relation to the Atlantic World and its “series of politicized markets for labour” in “Refugees: Acadians and the Social History of Empire, 1755–85” (PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 2004), 3. Shortages and high costs of labour were an ongoing concern in New France as well. In Montreal, soldiers and poor from the city could be hired, but the standard wages were double that of day workers in the Loudunais – slightly less considering the exchange rate with colonial currency. See Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants, 196 and 213. 47 A.V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy, trans. Daniel Thorner et al. (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1966), 68. 48 Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society, 38. 49 Jean Hamelin, Économie et société en Nouvelle-France (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval), 58–67. 50 “Recensement d’Acadie, 1707,” Census Returns on Microfilm, 1666– 1901, LAC; price series for the Loudunais from C. Chevalier, Tableau de Touraine; price series for Acadie from Edith Tapie, “Les structures socio-économiques de Grand Pré: communauté acadienne” (MA thesis, Université de Moncton, 2000) 55, 92, 114; Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 128; Jean Hamelin, Économie et société en NouvelleFrance, 59–61.

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51 Registres paroissiaux, Martaizé, série 9E 178/2, AD V; Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 1931–1943, 1737–1767, série 2C 3Q, AD V. 52 Registres paroissiaux, Aulnay, série 9E 17/1, AD V; Contrôle des Actes, Bureau de Moncontour, 1931–1943, 1737–1767, série 2C 3Q, AD V. 53 Stephen White, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, 2 vols (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 1999), 197–8. 54 White, Dictionnaire généalogique, 915–18, 930–1. 55 Ibid., 931. 56 Chevalier, Tableau de la Province de Touraine. 57 James B. Collins, “The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 2 (1989): 452. 58 Pierre Le Proust, Commentaires sur les coustumes du pays de Loudunois (Saumur: Thomas Portau, 1612), 488–96. 59 Jacques Péret studied inventories after death and found that the average dayworker community was worth 279 lt throughout Haut and Moyen-Poitou in “Le mobilier rural dans les pays poitevin et charentais au XVIIIe siècle: approche à partir des inventaires après décès,” Revue Historique du CentreOuest 2 (2003): 171–83. That the figure is somewhat higher is not surprising given that the marriage contracts show the value of the community at its formation, and Péret’s sources show the value at their dissolution. 60 Contrat de marriage de René Brissault et Marie Giroire, 13 novembre 1695, and Contrat de mariage de René Queniot et Marie Rutiault, 13 juillet 1695, notaire Voyer à Saint-Cassien, série 4E 53/509, AD V. 61 Maillard, Les campagnes de Touraine, 227. 62 Inventaire après décès de François Moreau, 23 août 1761, notaire Rivereau à Martaizé, série 4E 109/66, AD V; Inventaire après décès de Jean Giroire, 4 avril 1727, notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, série 4E 110/15, AD V. 63 Péret, “Le mobilier rural,” 174. 64 Notaires d’Acadie (Étude Loppinot) 1687–1710, LAC. 65 White, “David dit Pontif,” in Dictionnaire généalogique, 473. 66 Charles Bruce Fergusson, ed., Minutes of His Majesty’s Council at Annapolis Royal, 1736–1749 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1967), 49. 67 Peret, “Le mobilier rurale,” 174. 68 Marcel Lavoie, “Les Acadiens et les ‘Planters’ des Maritimes: une étude de deux ethnies de 1680 à 1820” (PhD thesis, Université de Laval, 2002), 337. 69 Peter N. Moogk, Building a House in New France: An Account of the Perplexities of Client and Craftsmen in Early Canada (Toronto: McClelland

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and Stewart, 1977), 10, 32; Marc Lavoie, “Vie quotidienne en Acadie,” Capaux-Diamants 57 (1999): 22–7. 70 Andrée Crépeau and Brenda Dunn, “L’établissement Melanson: un site agricole acadien (vers 1664–1755),” Parcs Canada, Bulletin de Recherches (1986): 8. 71 Lavoie, “Vie quotidienne,” 24; E. Frank Korvemaker, “Report on the 1972 Excavation of Two Acadian Houses at Grand Pré National Historic Park, Nova Scotia,” Parks Canada Report #27; Marc Lavoie, “Belleisle Nova Scotia, 1680–1755: Acadian Material Life and Economy” (MA thesis, McMaster University, 1987), 246–61. 72 Marcel Moussette, “Analyse du matériel céramique du site acadien de Beaubassin,” Parks Canada 35 (1970): 199–200; Marc Lavoie, “The Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Beaubassin Region in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 1986,” Reports in Archaeology No. 7, Council of Maritime Premiers (1990): 15. 73 Moogk, Building a House, 37; Crépeau and Dunn, “L’établissement Melanson,” 10. 74 Lavoie, “Vie quotidienne,” 26. 75 Lavoie, “Belleisle Nova Scotia,” 175, 209, 214. 76 Moogk, Building a House, 61. Dechêne notes that even in 1731, 90 per cent of the rural houses in the Montreal area were still simple one-room wooden houses, Habitants and Merchants, 182.

Chapter 4 1 For example, John Reid wrote that after 1654 “the seigneurial system became an annoyance rather than a social institution” in Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 141. He and Elizabeth Mancke added that “they had little effective influence on Acadian communities” in The Conquest of Acadie, 1710, Imperial, Colonial and Aboriginal Constructions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 38. N.E.S. Griffiths similarly argued that the English shut down the seigneurial system in The Contexts of Acadian History, 1686–1784 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 20. 2 Geneviève Massignon, “La seigneurie de Charles de Menou d’Aulnay, gouverneur de l’Acadie, 1635–1650,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amerique Française

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16 (1963): 482 and 489. This is one of the reasons I prefer to refer to him as Charles de Menou: he was not technically lord of Aulnay until 1645. 3 Cadastre, 1828–29, série 4P 347-350 (Aulnay), 4P 655-660 (La Chaussée), and 4P 999–1005 (Martaizé), AD V. In addition, after the Revolution, communes instead of parishes were used, although the boundaries seem largely the same for Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé. 4 Registres paroissiaux, Aulnay, série 9E 17/1, AD V. 5 Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, 1750–65, série 5 B 3-6, AD V. 6 Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, 1705–65, série 2C 3Q 1931-1943, AD V; the ploughman Louis Bourdier received several leases of livestock collectively worth several hundred lt from the Lomeron family between 1737 and 1747. 7 “Lettres patentes en faveur de Monsieur de Mons,” 1603, “Commission pour le Sieur de Mons,” 1603, and “Articles proposez au roy par le sieur de Mons,” 1603, Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres documents historiques relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France, tome 1 (Quebec: A. Côté 1883), 40–7. 8 Huia G. Ryder, “Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt,” DCB; David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (Toronto: Knopf, 2008), 38–9, 207–8. 9 Eric Thierry, La France de Henri IV en Amérique du Nord: de la création de l’Acadie à la fondation de Québec (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008), 221, 460–1. 10 “Articles accordez par le Roy à la compagnie de Canada,” 1627, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 64–8. For a discussion of feudalism and its legal application to New France and Acadie, see Jacques Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel: Mathieu de Goutin en Acadie française (1688– 1710) (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2004), 81–5. 11 Gervais Carpin, Le réseau du Canada: étude du mode migratoire de la France vers la Nouvelle-France, 1628–1662 (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2001), 34, 95, 158–61. 12 N.E.S. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 49. 13 There is ongoing speculation about whether there were any families or women in this group. Griffiths thinks it unlikely: From Migrant to Acadian, 48–9; MacBeath, “Isaac de Razilly,” DCB, claims there were twelve to fifteen families.

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14 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 51–5; A. Godbout, “Le rôle du SaintJehan et les origins acadiennes,” Mémoires de la Société généalogique canadienne française, vol. 1 (1944): 22–4. 15 René Baudry, “Charles Daniel,” DCB. 16 This appointment of La Tour had been confirmed by the king in 1631. Thus, as Griffiths points out, there were effectively two lieutenants general in Acadie when Rasilly arrived: Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 52; Carpin, Le réseau du Canada, 128. 17 It is not clear whether Rasilly intended to develop Port Royal or not. His sudden death and the lack of documentation make it difficult to distinguish between his plans and those of Menou. 18 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 57; Carpin, Le réseau du Canada, 244–58. 19 “Lettres patentes en faveur du Sieur d’Aulnay,” 1647, in Collection de manuscrits, 1: 121; Carpin, Le réseau du Canada, 261–2. 20 René de Menou, La pratique du cavalier (Paris: Guillaume Loyson et Jean Baptiste Loyson, 1650); “Factum pour Dame Nicole de Jousserand, demanderesse, contre Jean de Menou … defendeur,” 1620, 4-FM-35507(42), Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF); “Factum pour Dame Nicole de Jousserant, Dame d’Aulnay … contre Pierre Gauvin, Sieur de Sautonne,” 1641, 4-FM-33871, BNF. 21 Leslie Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 263; Massignon, “La seigneurie de Charles de Menou d’Aulnay,” 476. 22 Carpin, Le réseau du Canada, 251–60; Stephen White, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, 2 vols (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 1999), 251, 526, 1536; “Testament pour l’Acadie du Sieur Charles de Menou,” série S3706, fonds des Capucins du Marais, AN. In this document, Charles de Menou assigns a rente of 50 écus (150 livres tournois) to Germain Doucet in recognition of “the love he always showed me.” 23 “Testament du Sieur Charles de Menou.” 24 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 62–4; “Terms of Capitulation to Sedgwick,” 1654, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 145–9. 25 Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 93; “Procuration générale donnée par Jeanne Motin à François Brice de Sainte-Croix,” 31 juillet 1651, Minutier, LIII, 7, AN, CEAAC; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 83–5. Brenda Dunn emphasizes that the seigneury was disrupted but certainly did

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not disappear during the English administration. A History of Port Royal/ Annapolis Royal, 1605–1800 (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 29. 26 “Commission à Emmanuel Le Borgne,” 1657, and “Lettre de Temple à Du Bourg,” 1668, Collection de manuscrits, 1: 151, 187; Clément Cormier, “Alexandre Le Borgne” DCB. 27 “Instructions à Grandfontaine,” Collection de manuscrits, 1: 191–2. 28 J.F. Bosher, “The Lyon and Bordeaux Connections of Emmanuel Le Borgne,” Acadiensis 23, no. 1 (1994): 137. 29 Vanderlin, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 106–7. 30 “Concession of seigneurie of Beaubassin to La Vallière,” 24 octobre 1676, in Mémoires des commissaires du roi et de ceux de Sa Majesté britannique sur les possessions & les droits respectifs des deux couronnes en Amérique, tome 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale 1755), 575; J. Roger Comeau, “Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière,” DCB. 31 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 118–19. 32 Jacques Gagnon, Un sorcier en Acadie (Quebec: Éditions historiques et généalogiques Pepin, 2008), 3. 33 Anne Marie Lane Jonah and Elizabeth Tait found that some women of the D’Entremont family continued to speak the Mi’kmaw language well into the eighteenth century. See their article “Filles d’Acadie, Femmes de Louisbourg: Acadian Women and French Colonial Society in 18thCentury Louisbourg,” French Colonial History 8 (2007): 23–51. 34 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 154–5. 35 Émery Leblanc, “Joseph Robineau de Villebon,” DCB. 36 “Arrêt du Conseil du roi,” 2 juin 1705, and “Subercase au Ministre,” 20 décembre 1708, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 403, 418–19. 37 Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 133–41. 38 See the surviving documents in the series: Notaires d’Acadie (Étude Loppinot) 1687–1710, LAC, also available on microfilm at the CEAAC. Both Loppinot and Mathieu de Goutins reported that the livres terriers had been registered and copies of extracts given to the inhabitants when asked, suggesting that a complete collection of the concessions made in the Port Royal area and the associated seigneurial dues both existed and was regularly consulted. Unfortunately, these documents were lost when Loppinot’s office and residence were ransacked and burned by the English in 1707. Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 405, 408.

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Although the existence of the livres terriers does not prove that seigneurial dues were consistently paid by everyone in all seigneuries, it is likely that the colonists respected their obligations more often than not. Paying their dues guaranteed their property rights, and the later accounts of the rent gatherers in Annapolis Royal show that the Acadians continued to pay dues to the British once they had bought out the surviving lords. 39 For example, “Deed of Sale from Jean Bourg et al, to Prudent Robichaud, fils,” 8 October 1732, and registered by the British Council, 15 February 1737, fonds Placide-Gaudet 1.19.3, CEAAC. 40 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 324–5. 41 Pierre Le Proust, Commentaires sur les coustumes du pays de Loudunois (Saumur: Thomas Portau, 1612), 186, 217; There are many examples in the Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, série 2C 3Q 1931–43, AD V. 42 Numerous examples are available in the notary records, see série 4E of the AD V. For example, 4E 53 509 notaire à St Cassien, 1695–98, and 4E 110 15–26 notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, 1727–1760. 43 “Concession au Sieur Petitot,” 1693, and several transactions mentioning seigneurial rents at Beaubassin and Minas in 1700–1, série Notaires d’Acadie (Étude Loppinot), LAC; see also Régis Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755: essai (Moncton: compte d’auteur, 2003), 22; Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 97, 266, 290, 294, 331. 44 “Mémoire de l’intendant de Meulles,” 1686; “Instructions au Sieur des Goutins,” 10 avril 1688, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 304, 311. 45 Charles Bruce Fergusson, ed., Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 1736–1749 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1967), 24; “Ordonnance of Queen Anne,” 30 July 1712, series MG NS “A,” vol. 4 CO, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island – Original Correspondence, LAC. 46 Gérard Béaur argues that on average about 2 per cent of rural land was sold or exchanged in a given year in Histoire agraire de la France au XVIIIe siècle: inerties et changements dans les campagnes françaises entre 1715 et 1815 (Paris: Éditions Sedes, 2000), 36. 47 Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, 23 octobre 1762, 13 mars 1763, 24 janvier 1764, série 2C 3Q, AD V. 48 Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, 1 avril 1741, série 2C 3Q, AD V. 49 Between 1689 and 1756 there were sixteen different millers for the windmill and a number of recorded complaints by habitants about the inconsistent

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service. Louis Lavallée, La Prairie en Nouvelle-France, 1647–1760 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 88–90. 50 “Arrêt du Conseil du roi,” 2 juin 1705, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 403. In the more dispersed areas of Bas-Maine, Annie Antoine also found that ovens were owned individually or collectively by the inhabitants; only in larger and more densely settled areas were they controlled by the seigneurs. Fiefs et villages du Bas-Maine au XVIIIe siècle (Mayenne: Éditions régionales de l’Ouest, 1994), 231. 51 Édith Tapie, “Les structures socio-économiques de Grand Pré: communauté acadienne” (thèse de maîtrise, Université de Moncton, 2000), 43; Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755, 22; Marc Lavoie, “The Archaelogical Reconnaissance of the Beaubassin Region in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, 1986,” Reports in Archaeology 7 (1990); Andrée Crépeau and Brenda Dunn, “L’établissement Melanson: un site agricole acadien (vers 1664–1755),” Parcs Environnement Canada, Bulletin de Recherches, 1986; Marc Lavoie, “Belleisle Nova Scotia, 1680–1755: Acadian Material Life and Economy” (MA thesis, McMaster University, 1987). 52 “Concession de seigneurie de Beaubassin à La Vallière,” 24 octobre 1676, in Mémoires des commissaires, 2: 575; “Concession de Le Borgne,” 3 juillet 1687, série Notaires d’Acadie (Étude Loppinot), LAC. 53 “Lettres patentes érigeant la baronnie de Pobomcoup,” 17 juillet 1653, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 273–4. 54 Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 291–4, 298–9; “Mémoires de la Compagnie de pêche sédentaire de l’Acadie,” 1683–1689, in Collection de manuscrits, 1: 339–42, 349, 390, 393, 403–5, 437, 444, 473–4. 55 Le Borgne charged 50 lc / trading vessel: John Clarence Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century (Saint John: New Brunswick Museum, 1934), 121; Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 295–8. 56 “Brouillan au ministre,” 25 novembre 1703, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 394. 57 “Recensement d’Acadie, 1701,” Census Returns on Microfilm, 1666–1901, LAC. 58 “Phillipps to Lords of Trade,” 24 January 1731, in Adam Shortt, V.K. Johnston, and Gustave Lanctôt, Currency, Exchange, and Finance in Nova Scotia, 1675–1758 (Ottawa: J.A. Patenaude, Acting King’s Printer, 1933), 181. 59 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 116–19. 60 “Loppinot au ministre,” 15 juillet 1705, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 405.

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61 Records from the royal court exist only from 1750, Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, série 5 B 3-6, AD V. 62 Fonds notarial, 11 décembre 1757, notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, série 4E 110/26, AD V. 63 Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, 27 janvier 1751 and 5 août 1752, série 5 B 3, AD V. 64 These powers were typically divided between low, middle, and high justice, but the majority of the concessions in both the Loudunais and Acadie carried all three. Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 124–5; Pierre Le Proust, Commentaires, 96; Donald Sutherland, The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770–1796 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 183. 65 Nicole Castan, Les criminels de Languedoc: les exigences d’ordre et les voies du ressentiment dans une société pré-révolutionnaire (1750–1790) (Toulouse: Association des publications de l’Université de Toulouse, 1980); Olwen Hufton, “Le paysan et la loi en France au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales: Économie, Société, Civilisations 38, no. 3 (1983): 679–701; Zoe A. Schneider, “The Village and the State: Justice and the Local Courts in Normandy, 1670–1740” (PhD thesis, Georgetown University, 1997); Jeremy Hayhoe, Enlightened Feudalism: Seigneurial Justice and Village Society in Eighteenth-Century Northern Burgundy (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008); Anthony Crubaugh, Balancing the Scales of Justice: Local Courts and Rural Society in Southwest France, 1750–1800 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). 66 There was also a municipal court (prévôté) which was subordinate to the royal court and dealt with general police matters in the city. “Miromesnil au CG,” 25 février 1690, série G7 519, AN; Auguste-Louis Lerosey, Loudun: Histoire Civile et Religieuse (Loudun: PSR Éditions, 1980 [1908]), 51. 67 Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, 21 janvier 1750, 2 septembre 1750, 3 février 1751, 8 mars 1752, 12 juillet 1755, 28 janvier 1758, 20 juin 1759 for examples involving the lord of Aulnay, as well as 19 janvier 1752, 12 février 1752, and 6 février 1754 for the lord of Doismon and 4 mars 1750 for the lord of the demesne of Loudun, série 5 B 3-6, AD V. 68 Lerosey, Loudun, 51. 69 Few cases involved theft, insult, or assault. Financial claims often involved employers and their domestic servants. In January 1750, the merchant Louis Robert took a miller, Jean Gaultier Saloman, to court for just 46 s (a little

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more than 2 lt). Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, 18 février 1750, 15 janvier 1751, and 31 mai 1752, série 5 B 3-6, AD V. 70 Fonds notarial, 8 juillet 1762, notaire Rivereau à Martaizé, série 4E 109/ 66, AD V; for example, the official seal on judgments cost 10 s according to “Tarif des dépens des sièges royaux de Loudun,” 26 mai 1751, série 5 B 3, AD V. 71 “Accord entre Cailleteau et Jamin,” 28 mai 1761, notaire Rivereau à Martaizé, série 4E 109/66, AD V. 72 “Grandfontaine au ministre,” 1671, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 125. 73 For more on Michel Haché, see Samantha Rompillon, “La migration à Beaubassin, village acadien, fruit de la mobilité et de la croissance” (mémoire de Master, Université de Poitiers, 1998), 55. 74 Myriam Marsaud, “L’étranger qui dérange: le procès de sorcellerie de Jean Campagna, miroir d’une communauté acadienne, Beaubassin, 1685” (thèse de maîtrise, Université de Moncton, 1993), 140. 75 “Ordonnance de M. de Meulles,” 1 février 1686, in Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 305–6. 76 “Mémoire de l’intendant de Meulles,” 1686, in ibid., 304. 77 “Mémoire de Meneval,” 10 septembre 1688; on the judges, Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 37, 58. 78 Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 333–4. 79 “Mémoire de Brouillan au roi au sujet de l’Acadie,” 1701, in ibid., 346–7. 80 “Loppinot à Pontchartrain,” 1703, and 22 octobre 1703, in ibid., 355–6, 393. 81 Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel, 396–9. 82 “Ministre à Loppinot,” 3 juin 1705, in ibid., 403. 83 “Subercase au ministre,” 20 décembre 1708, and “Ministre à Subercase,” 20 mai 1710, in ibid., 418–19, 423–4. 84 See for example the case of Pierre Commeau versus Francis Richards, 7 July 1725, and that of René Blanchard versus Antoine Celestin and Claude Babin, 21 April 1735, in Archibald MacMechan, ed., Original Minutes of His Majesty’s Council at Annapolis Royal, 1720–1739 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1908), 104–5 and 320–3. In 1724, Louis Thibault accused Joseph Broussard of assault. The affair quickly became entangled with British concerns that some Acadians were supporting the Mi’kmaq in the latest hostilities. Maurice Basque, “Conflits et solidarités familiales dans l’ancienne Acadie: l’affaire Broussard de 1724,” SHA 20, no. 2 (1989): 60–8; J.B. Brebner,

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New England’s Outpost: Acadia before the Conquest of Canada (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 140. 85 Council Minutes of 5 October 1731 and 16 November 1731, in Thomas B. Akins, Acadia and Nova Scotia: Documents Relating to the Acadian French and the First British Colonization of the Province, 1714–1758 (Cottonport: Polyanthis, 1972), 91–4. 86 Tapie, “Grand Pré,” 97–9. In 1729, Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong appointed two constables, a justice of the peace, and a clerk from among the Acadians (MacMechan, Original Minutes, 171). 87 On the society of orders and seigneuries in western France, see T.J.A. Le Goff, Vannes and Its Region: A Study of Town and Country in EighteenthCentury France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); James B. Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jean Gallet, Seigneurs et paysans en France, 1600– 1793 (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1999). 88 “Factum pour Dame Nicole de Jousserant, Dame d’Aulnay … contre Pierre Gauvin, Sieur de Sautonne,” 1641, 4-FM-33871, BNF. 89 Registres paroissiaux, 6 février 1707, La Chaussée, série 9E 82/2, AD V. 90 Registres paroissiaux, 28 juin 1737, 8 février 1740, and 6 novembre 1744, La Chaussée, série 9E 82/2, AD V. 91 Mathieu Damours de Chaffours was an exception: he moved to Port Royal but died in 1708. George MacBeath, “Mathieu Damours de Chaffours,” DCB. 92 Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740–1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 13.

Chapter 5 1 James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 71; Clive Doucet, Lost and Found in Acadie (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 49, 63, 84; N.E.S. Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 308; J.B. Brebner, New England’s Outpost: Acadia before the Conquest of Canada (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 47; Henri-Dominique Paratte, Peoples of the Maritimes: Acadians (Halifax: Nimbus, 1998), 37. 2 Donald Sutherland goes so far as to say that “the church allowed the community to express itself as a community” in The Chouans: The Social

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Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770–1796 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 217; Alain Collomp, La maison du père: famille et village en Haute-Provence aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1983), 333; John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth Century France, vol. 2: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 101. 3 The visiting cleric used a standard list of 126 questions to be answered in each parish: J. Marcadé, “Les visites pastorales dans le diocèse de Poitiers au XVIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers, 5e série – tome 12 (1998): 201. 4 Timothy Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France: A Social and Political Study of the Curés in a Diocese of Dauphiné, 1750–1791 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 152. 5 Timothy Tackett and Claude Langlois, “Ecclesiastical Structures and Clerical Geography on the Eve of the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 11, no. 3 (1980): 361, 366; T.J.A. Le Goff, Vannes and Its Region: A Study of Town and Country in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 245; Jacques Marcadé, “Le clergé du Loudunais pendant la Révolution,” Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers, 5e série – tome 6 (1992): 60. 6 Jean Quéniart, Les hommes, l’église et Dieu dans la France du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1978), 80; Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 82. 7 Registres paroissiaux, série 9E 82/2 (La Chaussée), 178/2 (Martaizé), and 17/1 (Aulnay), AD V. 8 Registres paroissiaux, série 9E 17/1 (Aulnay), AD V. 9 21 janvier 1699 and 20 septembre 1707, curé de Martaizé, série G9 61, AD V. 10 Tackett, Priest and Parish, 130. 11 Fonds notarial, 23 novembre 1653, notaire Audemont à Martaizé, série 4E 53/475, AD V. This document describes some of the holdings of the Abbey of Fontevrault in the area, including several tenants from Aulnay, Martaizé, and the nearby parish of Angliers. 12 “Bail à Brissault,” 30 janvier 1727, notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, série 4E 110/15 AD V; Transactions, curé de La Chaussée, série G9 29, and curé de Martaizé, série G9 61, AD V; Sales and leases, Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, série 2C 3Q 1931–1942, AD V. Many of these leases were in

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exchange for small rents in kind rather than in money or for a share of the produce. 13 A.J.B. Johnston, Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713–1758 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 13; Louise Dechêne wrote that religion “permeated everyday life” in Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal, trans. Liana Vardi (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 278. 14 “Testament pour l’Acadie du Sieur Charles de Menou,” série S3706, fonds des Capucins du Marais, AN. 15 Louis Lavallée, La Prairie en Nouvelle-France, 1647–1760 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 130. 16 Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, Estat présent de l’Église et de la colonie françoise dans la Nouvelle France (Paris: Robert Pepie 1688), 307; John Clarence Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century (Saint John: New Brunswick Museum, 1934), 50. 17 “Villebon to Pontchartrain,” 1693, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 49; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 184. 18 Micheline Dumont-Johnson, Apôtres ou Agitateurs: La France missionaire en Acadie (Trois-Rivières: Le Boréal Express, 1970), 136. 19 Andrew Hill Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 217. 20 Dumont-Johnson, Apôtres ou Agitateurs, 143. 21 W.J. Eccles, “The Role of the Church in New France,” in W.J. Eccles, Essays on New France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 30; Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants, 262. 22 “Doucett to the Secretary of State,” 5 November 1717, in Thomas B. Akins, Acadia and Nova Scotia: Documents Relating to the Acadian French and the First British Colonization of the Province, 1714–1758 (Cottonport: Polyanthis, 1972), 12–13. 23 E.A. Chard, “René-Charles de Breslay,” DCB. 24 “Pétition des Acadiens au roi,” 1736, série C11D Correspondance générale, ff75, LAC; “Acadian Petition to the British Council,” 10 November 1736, in Charles Bruce Fergusson, ed., Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 1736–1749 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1967), 9–10. 25 Council Minutes, 18 September 1740, 11 April 1741, in Fergusson, Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 32–3, 35. 26 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 411.

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27 “Mascarene to French Deputies,” 4 July 1740, in Akins, Documents Relating to the Acadian French, 105–6; “Report of Mascarene,” 1 July 1740, in Fergusson, ed., Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 29. 28 Dumont-Johnson, Apôtres ou Agitateurs, 90, 111; Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, “Du ‘dérangement des guerres’ au Grand Dérangement: la longue évolution d’un concept,” in Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc, ed., Du Grand Dérangement à la Déportation: nouvelles perspectives historiques (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2005), 11–20. 29 Micheline Dumont-Johnson, “Charles de la Goudalie.” DCB. 30 In 1667, the bishop of Quebec threatened to excommunicate parents who did not bring their babies to church for baptism. Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants, 58. 31 François Lebrun, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2004 [1971]), 422; McManners, Church and Society, 3. 32 Registres paroissiaux, série 9E 82/2 (La Chaussée), 178/2 (Martaizé), and 17/1 (Aulnay), AD V. 33 Registres paroissiaux, série 9E 82/2 (La Chaussée), AD V. 34 Gisa I. Hynes, “Some Aspects of the Demography of Port Royal, 1650–1755,” Acadiensis 3, no. 1 (1973): 11; Stephen White, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 1999). 35 For a discussion of this topic of lay baptisms, particularly in the context of Louisiana, see Michael P. Carroll, “Were the Acadians / Cajuns (Really) ‘devout Catholics,’” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 31, nos. 3–4 (2002): 323–37. 36 Carroll, “Were the Acadians Really Devout,” 331–3. 37 Ibid., 334. 38 Carl Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765–1803 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 150–66; N.E.S. Griffiths, The Acadians: Creation of a People (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1973), 46–7. 39 Jacques Marcadé, “Fabriques et fabriciens dans le diocèse de Poitiers,” Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers, 4e série – tome 13 (1975): 189. 40 Tackett, Priest and Parish, 181. The edict is found in F.A. Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, vol. 20 (Ridgewood: Gregg, 1964–66), 249.

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41 For example, on 15 May 1752 the churchwarden of Saint-Pierre du Martray gained a ruling in the royal court against two people who had not paid. The amounts due were 4 lt and 14 boisseaux of wheat respectively. Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, série 5 B 3, AD V; John McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Régime: A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960), 151–2. 42 For example, the domestic servant of the priest of Martaizé was Vincent Plumé, while Pierre Dubois served the priest of La Chaussée. Registres paroissiaux, série 9E 82/2 (La Chaussée), 178/2 (Martaizé), AD V; McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society, 148. 43 Tackett, Priest and Parish, 184. 44 J. Marcadé, “Fabriques et fabriciens,” 189; J. Marcadé, “La culture paysanne (1750–1830): colloque du Centre d’Histoire culturelle et religieuses,” Université de Rennes 2, Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’Ouest 100, no. 4 (1993): 459, 491. 45 For example, a 24 May 1712 document refers to Pierre Pernault, sacristan and churchwarden of the neighbouring parish of Saint-Aubin, curé de La Chaussée, série G9 29, AD V. 46 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 22 avril 1727, Martaizé, notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, série 4E 110 15, AD V. There were 20 sous in 1 lt, and 12 deniers in 1 sol. 47 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 20 septembre 1740, Martaizé, Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, série 2C 3Q 1932, AD V; “Tableau de l’élection de Loudun,” 1789, série C849 1789, AD V. 48 “Assemblée de la fabrique,” 1666, curé de Martaizé, série G9 61, AD V. 49 “Assemblée de la fabrique,” 15 juin 1741, La Chausée, Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, série 2C 3Q 1932, AD V. 50 “Testament du Sieur du Bourg,” 1617, curé de La Chaussée, série G9 29, AD V. 51 “Assemblée de la fabrique,” 20 mai 1691, Saint Clair, notaire Voyer à Saint Cassien, série 4E 53/503 St Cassien, AD V. 52 McManners also discusses skilled craftsmen like silversmiths, bell founders, and bookbinders in French Ecclesiastical Society, 106. 53 This small amount might represent the rent for the vicar’s house in the parish. In the bishopric of Poitiers, many parishes were grouped into rural deaneries. I found no specific reference to fees, and thus I can only speculate that the arch-priests were authorized to collect small amounts of money from each parish that they supervised.

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54 Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 50; Édith Tapie, “Les structures socio-économiques de Grand Pré: communauté acadienne” (thèse de maîtrise, Université de Moncton, 2000), 98. 55 Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740–1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 117; Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants, 265; Lavallée, La Prairie, 133. 56 Lavallée, La Prairie, 116–19, 140; Brenda Dunn, A History of Port Royal / Annapolis Royal, 1605–1800 (Halifax: Nimbus, 2004), 30–1. 57 Saint-Vallier, Estat présent de l’Église, 55; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 312. 58 Sieur de Dièreville, Relation of the Voyage to Port Royal in Acadia or New France, trans. Alice Lusk Webster (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1933 [1708]), 83. 59 “Lettre de la Soeur Chason,” 27 octobre 1701, Nouvelle-France: correspondence officielle 3e série, vol. 25, p. 13540, LAC. 60 “Winslow’s Journal,” 3 September 1755, Grand Pré, consulted at Archives of Fort Beauséjour, New Brunswick, Parks Canada. 61 “Document établi par Brouillan,” 1702, série C11D, 4-175, LAC. 62 “Loppinot au ministre,” 15 juillet 1705, série C11D, 5-97, LAC. 63 Colin Coates, “The Boundaries of Rural Society in Early Quebec: Batiscan and Sainte-Anne de la Pérade to 1825” (Ph.D. thesis, York University, 1992), 409; Lavallée, La Prairie, 44, 116. 64 T.J.A. Le Goff and D.M.G. Sutherland, “The Revolution and the Rural Community in Eighteenth-Century Brittany,” Past and Present 12 (1974): 105–7; Robert Muchambled, Société, cultures et mentalités dans la France moderne, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Armand Colin, 2001 [1990]), 76. 65 Maurice Bordes, L’administration provinciale et municipale en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur, 1972), 176; Jean Gallet, Seigneurs et paysans en France, 1600–1793 (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1999), 53, 66–8. 66 Annie Antoine found similar results in Fiefs et villages du Bas-Maine au XVIIIe siècle (Mayenne: Éditions régionales de l’Ouest, 1994), 41; Mélika Louet, “Le pays loudunais et mirebelais au XVIIIe siècle (d’après les roles de taille)” (D.E.A. mémoire, Université de Poitiers, 2000), 228. 67 Dumoustier de la Fond, Essais sur l’histoire de la ville de Loudun (Poitiers: Michel-Vincent Chevrier, Libraire-Imprimeur de l’Université, 1778), 101; Louis Trinçant was one of the deputies eventually chosen for the

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Loudunais in 1614; he wrote Abrégé des antiquitéz de Loudun et pais Loudunais (Loudun: Imprimerie M. Finmin, 1994 [1894]), 8; J. Michael Hayden, France and the Estates-General of 1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 74; Jacques Péret, Histoire de la Révolution française en Poitou-Charentes, 1789–99 (Poitiers: Projets Éditions, 1988), 31–53. 68 Clark, The Geography of Early Nova Scotia, 222; Tapie, “Grand Pré,” 34; Régis Brun, Les Acadiens avant 1755: essai (Moncton: compte d’auteur, 2003), 10. 69 A visit by the subdelegate to La Prairie managed to rouse forty households in 1722; see Lavallée, La Prairie, 177. 70 Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 384. 71 Louet, “Le pays loudunais,” 225–8; “Assemblée paroissiale,” 18 septembre 1695, Aulnay, and “Assemblée paroissiale,” 5 avril 1696, Martaizé, notaire Voyer à Saint Cassien, série 4E 53/509, AD V. 72 To cite just a few: “Answer of Annapolis Royal to Lieutenant-Governor Doucett,” 1717; “Governor Philipps to Secretary Craggs,” 26 May 1720, refers to a letter and conditional oath signed by the “body” of Minas; Governor Armstrong forwards to the Secretary of State the conditional oath signed by the inhabitants of Annapolis Royal and the collective refusal of the inhabitants of Minas and Beaubassin to do the same in 1726; all in Akins, Documents Relating to the Acadian French, 15–16, 31–5, 69–72. 73 “De Goutins au ministre,” 20 octobre 1702, in Jacques Vanderlinden, Le lieutenant civil et criminel: Mathieu de Goutin en Acadie française (1688– 1710) (Moncton: Chaire d’études acadiennes, 2004), 352–4. 74 “Déclaration de l’Intendant de Nointel,” 2 juin 1684, Tours, série G7 519, AN. 75 “Déclaration de l’Intendant Foucault,” 28 août 1685, Poitiers, série G7 450, AN. The controller general advised the Intendant of Tours in 1687 that he must fine those habitants who did not register their collectors on time: A.M. de Boislisle, Correspondance des Contrôleurs-Généraux des Finances avec les intendants des provinces (Paris: Imprimerie nationale 1874), 113. On the salt tax and registration see J. Pasquier, L’impôt des gabelles en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1978), 7–17. 76 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 18 septembre 1695, 23 septembre 1696, 29 septembre 1697, (Aulnay); “Assemblée paroissiale,” 5 avril 1696, 9 septembre 1696, 15 septembre 1697, 28 septembre 1698, (Martaizé); “Assemblée paroissiale,” 28 septembre 1698, (La Chaussée); notaire Voyer

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à Saint Cassien, série 4E 53/509, AD V; “Assemblées paroissiales,” 4 janvier 1756 (Aulnay), 4 décembre 1754 (La Chaussée), 15 décembre 1757 (Martaizé), Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, série 2C 3Q 1940-1941, AD V. 77 Intendant de Nointel emphasized that delegates were to ensure disputes were resolved and that the assembly’s ruling would be decisive (2 juin 1684, Tours, série G7 519, AN); Michael Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth Century France: liberté, égalité, fiscalité (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 50. 78 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 9 mars 1727, Aulnay, notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, série 4E 110/15, and “Assemblée paroissiale,” 11 décembre 1757, Martaizé, notaire Lanlaud à Saint Clair, série 4E 110/26, AD V. 79 Louet, “Le pays loudunais,” 86, 100. 80 Ibid., 109. In the case of the taille, this was 6d/lt of the principal amount (2.5 per cent), and an additional 4d/lt of accessory taxes (1.6 per cent). 81 Annette Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 160; “De Nointel au CG,” 22 juillet 1687, Tours, série G7 519, AN. 82 “Édits, déclarations et arrêts du conseil d’état concernant les tailles, la capitation et l’exemption de ces impositions,” 14 octobre 1710, 1741, 15 mai 1742, série C31706-1789, AN. 83 “Registres d’écrous, prison royal de Loudun,” 5 avril 1757, 3 août 1759, série B supplément 272, 1757-59, AD V; also see “De Nointel au CG,” 23 juillet 1680, Tours, série G7 518, AN. 84 Smedley-Weill, Les intendants de Louis XIV, 180. 85 Bordes, L’administration provinciale, 176; Louet, “Le pays Loudunais,” 223. 86 For example, the delegates submitted reports on vital statistics for their parishes to the intendant until 1778, when this duty was taken over by parish priests (Résultats des États de population de la généralité de Poitiers, série C62, AD V). With regard to taxation, the intendants increasingly gave orders directly to the delegates through their own subdelegates, rather than the local office-holders of the élection (Maillard, Les campagnes de Touraine, 24–5). 87 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 15 avril 1696, Martaizé, notaire Voyer à Saint Cassien, série 4E 53/509, AD V. The delegate eventually chosen, Vincent Baussay, was given a near exemption from taxes: he still had to pay 40 sous. The village of Angliers gave their delegate a salary of 10 lt (“Assemblée paroissiale,” 15 juillet 1764, Angliers, notaire Rivereau à Martaizé, série 4E 109/66, AD V). 88 “Extrait registre du Conseil d’état,” 24 décembre 1748, série C412, AD I-L. .:.

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89 “Miromesnil au CG,” 25 octobre 1695, Tours, série G7 522, and “Marillac au CG,” avril 1678, Poitiers, série G7 449 Poitiers, AN. 90 Affaires militaires, 20 octobre 1734, série C20 and Milice, 1737, série C48, AD I-L. 91 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 10 avril 1763, Arçay, notaire Rivereau à Martaizé, série 4E 109/66, AD V; on guards and field watchmen throughout France see Olwen H. Hufton, “Le paysan et la loi en France au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilizations 38, no. 3 (1983): 685. 92 “Assemblée paroissiale,” 8 septembre 1754, Moncontour, Contrôle des Actes, bureau de Moncontour, série 2C 3Q 1940, AD V. 93 Plumitifs d’audience, bailliage de Loudun, 27 janvier 1751, 5 août 1752, série 5 B 3, AD V. 94 “Capitulation de Port Royal,” 1654, in Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres documents historiques relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France, tome 1 (Quebec: A. Côté, 1883), 145; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 77. 95 White, Dictionnaire généalogique, 1536. 96 “Recensements de l’Acadie,” 1686 and 1693, Census Returns on Microfilm, 1666–1901, LAC; Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 29. 97 Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 35. 98 During a veritable famine in 1699 caused by crop failure, urgent letters had to be carried to John Nelson, a Boston merchant who traded in Acadie; Jean Daigle, “La famine de 1699 en Acadie,” SHA 7, no. 3 (1976): 147–9. In 1696 Villebon had three disabled soldiers sent to Minas for winter quarters. He wanted to hire labourers in 1696, but the offered wage of 10s/day and the lengthy contract of three years were hardly incentives and it appears the delegates could not fill the request (Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 19, 129). 99 “Villebon’s journal,” 28 April 1693, in Webster, Acadia at the End of the Seventeenth Century, 47. 100 “Villebon’s journal,” 29 October 1696, in ibid., 97; George Rawlyk, Nova Scotia’s Massachusetts: A Study of Massachusetts-Nova Scotia Relations, 1630 to 1784 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973), 81–3. 101 John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: Norton, 2005), 48. .:.

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102 Geoffrey Plank, An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign against the Peoples of Acadia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 84. 103 René Baudry, “Jean-Chrysostôme Loppinot,” DCB; “Loppinot au ministre,” 15 juillet 1705, “Brouillan au ministre,” 25 novembre 1703, “Pierre Commeau au ministre,” 26 novembre 1704, “Ministre à Loppinot,” 3 juin 1705, “Loppinot au ministre,” 21 décembre 1706, série C11D, 5-97, 4-281, 5-43, 5-85/86, 5-225/228, LAC. 104 “Loppinot au ministre,” 21 décembre 1706, série C11D, 5-259/299, LAC. 105 Council Minutes, 16 November 1710, series CO 217 Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island – Original Correspondence, LAC; Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 241. 106 Fernand Ouellet, “Officiers de milice et structure sociale au Québec (1660–1815),” Histoire sociale / Social History 12, no. 23 (1979): 42; Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants, 200. 107 At one point, almost every Acadian household in Annapolis Royal and Minas had declared they were moving to Île Royale. However, the Acadians had sent representatives to scout the land there and they returned saying the soil was unsuitable for farming. The British, afraid that there would be nobody left in the colony at all, also encouraged them to stay. Felix Pain discusses moving in a 1713 letter to Governor Costabelle, série Nouvelle-France: correspondence officielle 3e série, vol. 5, 139–41, LAC. Samuel Vetch advised the Lords of Trade on 24 November 1714 that if they were allowed to leave it would cause “the greatest danger and damage to all the British colonies,” in Thomas B. Akins, Selections from the Public Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia (Halifax: C. Annand, 1869). Also see Griffiths, From Migrant to Acadian, 261. 108 “Letter from Beaubassin to Council,” 28 March 1715, série CO 217 Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island – Original Correspondence, LAC. 109 Council Minutes, 28 April 1720, 4 May 1720, in Akins, Public Documents, 23–5; N.E.S. Griffiths, The Contexts of Acadian History, 1686–1784 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 42. 110 Several examples published in Jacques Vanderlinden, Histoire du droit en Acadie et en Nouvelle-Écosse aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: cartes, documents et tableaux, 1603–1755 (Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes, 1996), 104– 5, 199, 239–44, 319–23. 111 Maurice Basque, “Conflits et solidarités familiales dans l’ancienne Acadie: l’affaire Broussard de 1724,” SHA 20, no. 2 (1989): 67. .:.

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112 For example, Alexandre Bourg was named king’s attorney for Minas, and Prudent Robichaud and Jean Duon were appointed justices of the peace in Annapolis Royal in 1729. Archibald MacMechan, ed., A Calendar of Two Letter Books and One Commission Book in the Possession of the Government of Nova Scotia, 1713–1741 (Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1900), 171–2. 113 Council Minutes, 20 June 1737, in Fergusson, Minutes of His Majesty’s Council, 18. 114 Council Minutes, 9 April 1742, in ibid., 38. 115 Council Minutes, 10 October 1743, in ibid., 41. 116 Maurice Basque, Des hommes de pouvoir: histoire d’Otho Robichaud et de sa famille, notables acadiens de Port Royal et de Néguac (Néguac: Société historique de Néguac, 1996), 70; Maurice Basque, “The Third Acadia: Political Adaptation and Societal Change,” in John G. Reid et al., The Conquest of Acadie, 1710: Imperial, Colonial, and Aboriginal Constructions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 159. 117 Antoine, Fiefs et villages du Bas-Maine, 41; Gallet, Seigneurs et paysans, 68; Louet, “Le pays loudunais,” 228–32. 118 Le Goff and Sutherland, “The Revolution and the Rural Community,” 109– 14; Péret, Histoire de la Revolution, 16. 119 “Annapolis Royal Acadians to Lieutenant-Governor Doucett,” 1717, in Akins, Public Documents, 16. Griffiths, Creation of a People, 27. 120 Griffiths stresses the development of an Acadian “emergent ethnicity” (From Migrant to Acadian, 310). 121 Letters to the Council from the Acadian communities, 13 and 22 January 1715, 28 March 1715, 1720, series CO 217 Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island – Original Correspondence, LAC. 122 Brebner, New England’s Outpost, 96; Griffiths, Contexts of Acadian History, 43. 123 Griffiths, Contexts of Acadian History, 91.

Conclusion 1 Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2002). .:.

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2 Leslie Choquette, Review of Jean-François Mouhot, Les réfugiés acadiens en France, 1758–1785. L’impossible réintégration? (Quebec: Septentrion, 2009), in H-France Review 10 (2010): 540–2. 3 Gilles Havard et Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française (Paris: Flammarion, 2003), 609–10. 4 Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 205.

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inde x

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Groups such as the Acadians and places including Acadie, the Loudunais/ Loudun, and the communities of Port Royal, Minas/Grand Pré, Beaubassin as well as Aulnay, La Chaussée, and Martaizé have not been indexed because they are the primary subject of this book and occur throughout. In addition, chapters are organized thematically, so readers are invited to consult the table of contents should they wish to focus on a particular area. Abenaki, 8, 43, 58, 67–9, 165, 234n66 aboiteau. See draining marshland agriculture: crop rotation, 22, 25–6, 97, 111; famine, 3, 6, 33, 38, 170, 265n98; growing season, 28–9, 33, 45; harvest results, 31, 33, 73, 77, 95, 108, 117, 171; mixed farming, 24, 100, 117, 208; orchards, 24–5, 99, 103; pasture, 19, 24, 44, 96, 99, 109, 132–3, 155, 159, 218n8; soil fertility, 19, 26, 45, 101, 110–11, 220n26. See also livestock; wheat Armstrong, Lawrence, 82–3, 160, 174 Atlantic World, 7, 13–15, 17, 32, 209, 247n46

baptism. See Church Biard, Pierre, 23, 28–9, 67 Boston, 5, 36, 54, 57–9, 70, 82–4, 102–3, 208 Boudrot, Abraham, 59, 84 Boudrot, François, 114–18, 125 Boudrot, Michel, 64, 139, 157–8, 193 Bourg, Alexandre, 3–6, 267n112 Bourgeois, Jacques, 57, 66, 139, 141–2, 154 Brouillan, Jacques-François de Monbeton de, 85, 153, 159, 168, 186, 189, 195–6 Canso, 40–1, 54, 70–1, 137, 141, 153 Chipoudie, 59, 100, 142, 154

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Church: baptism, 161–2, 170–1, 175– 180, 182, 208, 260n30; godparents, 133, 161–3; missionaries, 13, 67–71, 86, 89, 135, 172–4, 179, 195; priests, 7–9, 47, 56–7, 86, 130, 133, 159, 169–182, 208; tithe, 6, 101, 111–16, 120, 170–1, 175, 181–2, 218n11 climate: Little Ice Age, 29–30; storms, 30–3, 99, 206; weather conditions, 4, 27–9, 33, 177 Cobequid, 59, 100, 142–3, 146, 173 commerce: fur trade, 5, 42–3, 47, 67–70, 85, 89, 102, 206, 227n98; fur trade and the lords, 54–5, 133–8, 142–4, 151–3, 165; Loire valley, 19, 53, 101–2, 208. See also livestock; Louisbourg Compagnie de la pêche sedentaire de l’Acadie, 28, 40–1, 142–3, 152 Company of the Hundred Associates. See Company of New France Company of New France, 135–40, 219n17 credit: individual borrowing, 54, 111–12, 120, 132–5, 139; in the rural economy, 44, 94, 125–6, 134, 171–2, 201, 207, 241n8 delegate: influence in the community, 64, 73, 106, 114, 158, 187, 191–3, 202–8; receiving orders from the state, 35, 80, 155, 160, 194–201, 264n86; role in diplomacy, 16, 58, 70, 140, 189, 195 Denys, Nicolas, 27, 37, 54–5, 137, 140–1 Dièreville, Sieur de, 24, 28, 32, 40, 43, 58, 185

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draining marshlands: aboiteau, 98, 207, 242n12; breaches, 3, 32–3, 57–9, 99–100; dykes, 23–5, 45–6, 94, 98, 110, 153, 195, 207, 242n11 Duvivier, François Du Pont, 4, 7, 83, 87, 239n117 dykes. See draining marshland fishing: Aboriginal, 23, 68, 70, 195; commercial, 5, 43, 53–4, 98, 135–7, 165; competition with English, 40–2, 47, 55–7, 71, 89, 102, 144; as part of rural economy, 19, 24, 37–8, 40, 83, 114, 145, 220n24; seigneurial right of, 146–7, 151–3, 164, 207. See also Compagnie de la pêche sedentaire de l’Acadie fur trade. See commerce Gautier, Joseph Nicolas, 83, 238n108 Goutin, Mathieu de, 58, 158–9, 189, 196 Grandfontaine, Hector d’Andigné de, 56, 63, 140, 157 Halifax, 53, 87, 203 Hundred Years War, 12, 50, 88 identity, 6, 11, 16–17, 44, 87–9, 168, 210–11 Île Royale: settlement of, 4–5, 114, 125, 174–5, 198, 266n107; strategic importance of, 41, 71, 84, 103. See also Louisbourg Jousserand, Nicole de, 11, 129, 138, 161 la Tour, Agathe de, 78, 146, 214n11

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la Tour, Charles de, 11, 54–5, 63, 84, 135–40, 142, 145, 151, 251n16 Leblanc, Daniel, 58, 194 Leblanc, René, 200 Le Borgne, Emmanuel, 54–5, 63, 139–40, 193 Le Borgne de Belleisle, Alexandre, 58, 63, 121, 141–5, 148, 151–52, 157–8, 162 livestock: attacks on, 3, 34–6, 57–9, 193, 195; as investment, 33, 45, 72, 97, 100, 124, 133, 207–8; pasture, 18–19, 23–4, 29–30, 39, 159; trade in, 4, 83, 102–3; value, 77, 94, 104, 107–11, 114–21, 164–5, 175, 194. See also agriculture; commerce Lomeron, Louis Marie Modeste de, 131–3, 156, 161 London, 140, 153 Loppinot, Jean-Chrysostome, 159, 196, 252n38 lords, 128–67; dues and rights of, 37–43, 62, 94–5, 183, 207, 252n38; economic influence, 19, 101, 122, 242n10; land ownership of, 16, 22, 78, 94–7, 171; military role, 52, 55–8, 63, 84, 207 Louis XIII, 51–2, 54, 61–2, 136–8 Louis XIV, 38, 41–3, 56–57, 61–6, 79–80, 83, 85, 140, 145 Louisbourg: as military fortress, 4, 7, 71; and trade, 14, 40–3, 82–3, 100–3, 114, 123, 208

Melanson, Pierre, 57, 84–5, 186, 232n47, 242n16 Meneval, Louis Alexandre des Friches de, 40–1, 57, 102, 158–9 Menou, Charles de: as colonizer, 9–11, 23, 129, 135–7, 172, 250n2; debts of, 132–3, 139, 163; disputes of, 54–5, 84, 164–5; as governor, 26, 63, 138–9, 148, 151, 158, 193 merchants. See commerce Mi’kmaq: military actions, 4, 41, 69–70, 82–8, 165, 174, 200, 206; relationship with Acadians, 8, 38, 68–70, 89, 195; trade, 42–3, 54, 144; way of life, 23, 26, 48, 66–8, 179, 234n71 militia: military action, 3, 59, 84, 181; state demand for, 66, 80–2, 85–7, 92, 168, 192–7, 202, 237n94 oath of allegiance, 4, 8, 56–8, 72, 86–8, 160, 173–5, 188–9, 202–3, 263n72 Paris, 10–11, 49, 101–2, 131, 152, 173, 208 Pentagouet, 56, 135–7, 140–1, 145 Phillipps, Richard, 71, 78, 83, 146, Phips, William, 3, 57–8, 86, 144, 152, 194, Poitou: Poitevin Marsh, 9, 22–4, 37, 43; Poitiers, 50, 65, 80, 182, 261n53; province of, 11–12, 19, 30, 50–1, 61–3, 74–8, 81, 122, 170 privateering, 41, 58–60, 102, 152, 195 Protestants: English, 5, 79, 87, 173, 197, 203; French, 12, 50–3, 61–3, 67, 88, 169, 232n47

Maine, 43, 67–9, 143 Mascarene, Paul, 3–4, 28, 87, 174 Massachusetts Colony, 56–9, 69, 195 Melanson, Charles, 57–9, 84, 122–3, 232n47

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Quebec: colonial authorities, 63–8,

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88, 152–4, 157–8, 172–3, 186, 260n30; colony, 5, 26, 54, 136, 141–3; trade, 40-2, 102, 152; wars, 58–9, 84–5

Touraine: province of, 10–12, 19, 30, 34–35, 54, 61, 75, 102, 136–8; Saumur, 19, 102, 244n24; Tours, 21, 35, 65–6, 74, 77, 80, 102, 191 Trahan, Guillaume, 10, 55, 139–40, 158, 193–4

Rasilly, Isaac de, 53–4, 136–9, 194, 219n17, 251n17 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, de, 52–3, 61, 135–6 Robichaud, Prudent, 149–50, 201, 267n112 Saint-Castin, Bernard-Anselme d’Abbadie de, 69 Saint-Castin, Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de, 43, 142–4, 152 Sedgwick, Robert, 55, 140, 193 seigneurs. See lords Seven Years War, 77, 81 socio-economic hierarchy, 6, 11, 16, 94, 104–25, 134, 148, 188, 207 state: absolutism, 25, 61–4, 129, 135–6, 168–9; administration, 9, 13, 38, 43, 65, 145, 176, 209; demands, 15, 31, 48, 72–88, 92, 168, 190–1, 202; justice, 147, 155–64; relationship with subjects, 48–9, 56, 66, 89–92, 187–8, 209–11. See also delegate; wars St John River, 54–8, 67–8, 71, 137, 140–5, 148, 159, 162–5 Subercase, Daniel d’Auger de, 3, 60, 85, 145, 159, 196 syndic. See delegate

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Vallière, Michel Le Neuf de la, 40, 56, 141–5, 148, 152, 154, 157–8, 164, 227n89 Villebon, Joseph Robineau de: as commandant of Acadie, 41, 58–9, 69, 73, 82–5, 144–45, 194–5, 265n98; as observer, 24, 32, 39, 89, 172, 185, 220n22 War of the Spanish Succession, 30–2, 59–60, 69, 81–2, 196 Wars of Religion, 12, 50–3, 55, 88, 90, 134 wheat: shortage, 59, 77; payment, 76, 147, 157, 183; production, 3, 19, 22–4, 29, 33, 96–99, 111–18, 150, 171; trade, 27, 44, 53, 83, 100, 104 wolves, 33–37, 224n58 woods: control of, 38–44, 68, 132–3, 145–7, 150–4, 218n8; as refuge, 3, 52, 58, 195; terrain, 20, 23–8, 33–7, 46, 85, 99

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