Donnacona's Dream

[telynk]

Post 1 - Donnacona

(Rennes, March 1540)

Donnacona was dying. He was in a strange land, surrounded by strange pale-skinned people, and he was dying. From what he understood of the local language the disease that he had come down with was fairly common in this land, and that usually only children contracted it. The nurses, unaware that Donnacona could understand what they were saying, spoke to each other about Donnacona's case. One of them thought that Donnacona was being punished by God for his refusal to convert to the local religion – Christianity they called it – and that if he would only agree to be “baptised”, Donnacona would soon get better. At least that's what Donnacona had thought she was saying.

When Donnacona had first arrived in this land, he had known very few words of the local language. While he had picked up a few aboard Cartier's ship as they had crossed the great ocean, he had relied mostly on his son Domagaya to translate for him. When Cartier had brought him to see the King in 1537, Domagaya had again acted as his translator to tell the King of the Land of the Saguenay and the riches that lay there. However, even then he had understood a good many of the words that his translator used, and recognized that the tale of the Saguenay that Domagaya told the King was more extravagent than the one that Donnacona had told his son.

And, then, soon after the visit to the King, Donnacona had become sick. He had survived the first illness, and the second, but since he had become sick the third time, he hadn't recovered. His two sons who had accompanied him across the ocean were already dead. For the past six months, he had been interned in this hospital in Rennes, and every time he showed a sign of recovering, he came down with a new, more serious illness. Now, Donnacona was so sick that he couldn't keep down food, and spent most of the day sleeping. And while he was sleeping he dreamed.

There was one dream that haunted him most. He dreamed that Cartier, the man who had brought him across the ocean, returned to Donnacona's home town of Stadacona [1], where he was chief. When Cartier arrived and disembarked in Stadacona, carrying a wooden box that was presumably filled with trade goods, the Stadaconans reacted with hostility. At first, the hostility was just an exchange of strong words between the Stadaconans and the pale-skins, but soon a battle broke out that left dozens dead. At first, Donnacona had no idea what had caused this fight. Certainly, there had been tension between the Stadaconans and the pale-skins when Cartier had visited last, but no blood had been shed then. After repeating this dream a dozen times, Donnacona finally caught a glimpse of the contents of the box that Cartier had unloaded from his ship. Donnacona finally understood the cause of the conflict when he saw, lying below him, his own dead body....

Sometimes the dream would continue past the initial conflict. After some time, the pale-skins would leave and return to their land across their water. And even as the pale-skins were leaving, the Stadaconans were already becoming sick. Donnacona saw his people come down with every single one of the illnesses he'd contracted since crossing the ocean, and saw his people die one by one until only one in ten survived. He saw the crippled remains of his tribe overrun by warriors from the South until every last one of them had either been taken prisoner or fled. He saw the doom and destruction of his people, all stemming from his own death. If only his death could be prevented.....

Today, Donnacona woke to see the hosptial priest – Père Jerome – standing over him. Jerome had come many times before, each time trying to convince Donnacona to convert to Christianity and be baptised. This time, as before, Donnacona refused, but today, Père Jerome wouldn't take no for an answer.

“I have been told by the nurses that you speak French now,” Père Jerome said, “they've heard you crying out in French in your sleep. Well, if you can understand what I'm saying, maybe I can talk with you a little. Will you listen?”

Donnacona was too weak to speak, but nodded his approval. He didn't have the willpower to say no to a conversation.

“The nurses say that you don't have long to live,” Père Jerome went on, “and we're all worried about what will happen to you after you die. We know that you don't believe in heaven, but we here at the hospital do, and we know that to get into heaven, you will need to be baptised. We have tried to convince you of the truth of God's word, and we understand that you're still unconvinced, but really, what do you have to lose? If you're right and we're wrong, a few drops of water can't hurt you. And if we're right and you're wrong, then those same few drops of water can save you from an eternity of suffering.”

And if the nurses are right, those few drops of water could save my life and the lives of my people. “I'll do it,” Donnacona croaked. [2]

* * *

(Rennes, July 1540)

Donnacona returned from his walk around the hospital courtyard. His legs were still weak, and he was still rather light-headed, but he was able to walk again after almost a year of being confined to his bed. He returned to his place in the ward to find Père Jerome waiting for him.

“We think that you're well enough to travel now,” Jerome announced, “we've sent a letter to Cartier in St.-Malo, and he'll be sending someone to bring you back there soon. Are you looking forward to seeing him again?”

Donnacona thought for a moment. “Since I'm a Christian now, and since you're a priest, if I tell you things, you're not allowed to tell anyone else, right?”

“Well, usually we apply that rule of confidentiality specifically to confessions, but if you do want to tell me something, it is about time for you to make your first confession. You have been a Chrsitian for a number of months now.”

“Ever since your God saved me from my illness.”

“He's not just our God, he's yours too now, but, go on, say what you wanted to say.”

“Well, I think Cartier's been taking advantage of me. When he told me he wanted to bring me across the ocean so I could tell his King the legend of the Saguenay, I didn't realize that he was going to profit from my story. Well, you probably know the story that I told the King: that there is a land filled with gold and riches to the North and West of my homeland.”

“Yes, there's a Kingdom of gold and Cartier wants to lead an expedition across the sea to conquer it in the name of France, right?”

“Well, the story the King heard is not entirely true. My son, when translating my story for King Francis, referred to me as a `King'. I'm not a King in the same way that Francis is your King. Francis rules a land so big that this city of Nantes is only one amongst many cities filled with thousands of people. I rule a town of 500 people.”

“But isn't your town just the capital of a much larger realm?”

“Well, Stadacona is the largest town in the region you French call 'Kanata'. It is the place where the people of the surrounding villages come to trade, and we are often in charge of coordinating the defense of the smaller villages against raiders from other nations. However, I do not rule those smaller villages the way that Francis rules this big land. And even so, there is a larger town upriver from Stadacona called Hochelaga which is much more powerful and much more influential. If I am a King than the chief of Hochelaga is an Emperor.”

“Ok, so you're saying that you lied to King Francis.”

“Well, my son was translating for me. I told my son that I was a chief of Stadacona, and he used the word 'King'. I told the my son the story of the Saguenay, where our copper comes from and my son described the Saguenay as a land of gold. I think that Cartier convinced my son to exaggerate the riches of the Saguenay so that the King would finance another voyage, although I'll never know now that Domagaya is dead. I'm worried that if Cartier's been misleading the King that he might be misleading me as well. I'm worried that Cartier's more interested in conquering my own town of Stadacona than he is in conquering the Saguenay.”

“So you're worried that if Cartier receives a commission for another expedition that it will mean destruction for your people”

“Exactly. I think I may have to find some way to tell King Francis that the Kingdom of the Saguenay isn't as rich as he thinks it is so that he'll refuse to support the expedition. That way at least my people will be able to live in peace.”

“But if King Francis cancels the expedition, then you'll have no way of getting home.”

“That may be the price I have to pay.”

A few minutes of silence passed as Pére Jerome thought. After some time, he spoke: “There may be one way to both protect your people from the likes of Cartier while still returning home to them…”

* * *

(Paris, October 1540)

After months of waiting, it was finally time. As Donnacona entered the King's audience chamber, he rehearsed the speech he had prepared with Père Jerome's help. He wasn't as convinced as Jerome was that this plan would be successful, but, then again, he didn't have the same understanding of French culture and politics as Jerome. And, if worst came to worst, he still could probably tell the King the truth about the Saguenay, and make sure to get the expedition called off. But, first he would try the more ambitious plan.

“Jean-Paul, King of Stadacona, that is your new name, correct?”

“Yes, Jean-Paul is the name they gave me when I was baptised,” Donnacona replied.

“Well, what brings you here today?” asked the King.

“Your Most Christian Majesty, it is an honour to be able to speak to you.” Donnacona tried to imitate the courtiers with his flattering manner while still maintaining his own dignity. He wouldn't want the King to think he was a lowly chief of a small town.

“I have never seen a Kingdom as glorious as your Kingdom of France,” Donnacona continued, “The Kingdom of Saguenay, to the Northwest of my home, while it is rich in gold and diamonds, is decadent and corrupt. France on the other hand is a model nation, a Kingdom for all Kingdoms to emulate with a ruler who inspires envy in all his rivals. My own Kingdom of Stadacona, as strong as it is, will never compare to the glories of France. I have come to see the superiority of your religion and have converted to Christianity. I have come to the realization that Stadacona is best served, not by remaining a Kingdom of its own, but by becoming part of the glorious nation that is France. I hereby swear fealty to you my glorious King, and offer to add my lands and my people to your Kingdom. I wish to serve you as your loyal vassal, and wish to have you as my leige.” [3]

“What use will your Kingdom of savages be to France?” the King challenged, “what use is it for me to acquire a vassal who can't provide me with knights or musketeers?”

“It is true that we in Stadacona have never held a musket nor rode a horse, but we can still be of use to France. If Cartier intends to conquer the Kingdom of the Saguenay, they will need our help. They will need guides to show them to that glorious Kingdom. They will need porters to carry their supplies along trails that are too rough for horses. They will need local allies to provide them with food, clothing, and shelter in the distant land of Kanata [4]. I offer my people's services as those allies. We will ensure that your expedition is able to successfully conquer the Saguenay in the name of France if you will defend my own rule over the land of Kanata as your humble and loyal vassal.”

The King was silent, and began whispering to his advisors. After some time, he spoke again. “Jean-Paul Donnacona, Lord of Stadacona, I accept your fealty, and make you my vassal. You and your descendants will bear the title Compte du Canada, and your lands will be protected as long as you remain loyal servants of the French crown. Rise, Compte du Canda.”

“There is one more thing I wish to ask, my leige,” Donnacona continued.

“Yes.”

“I imagine that when they hear the story of Jesus Christ our Saviour, my people will wish to convert to Christianity as I have done. Stadacona will need a priest to perform their basptisms. There is one priest who I feel would be a good fit for the job, as I have already taught him a few words of our language. His name is Pere Jerome, and he works at the hospital in Rennes…” [5]

* * *
(St-Malo, July 1541)

Cartier's third expedition was finally ready to depart. Donnacona and Père Jerome were aboard Cartier's ship waiting for the last of the cargo to be loaded aboard. While Cartier's ship was departing from St-Malo, the main fleet would have already left Rouen the day before under the command of Jean-François de la Rocque de Roberval. In a surprising twist, Roberval had been appointed commander of the expedition instead of Cartier, although Cariter was still the chief navigator. Cartier's ship would rendezvous with Roberval before the fleet would beginning their crossing of the great ocean.

On board the fleet were 300 expedition members, cattle and chickens, grain, dried meat, and beer, muskets and ammunitions, metal tools, bolts of cloth, and much more. Donnacona had never seen so many supplies. “So this is all just enough to supply an initial scouting party?” Donnacona asked Père Jerome.

“Yes, when it comes time for Roberval and Cartier to actual conquer the Kingdom of the Saguenay, they will for sure bring more men,” replied Père Jerome, “the current commission from the King only asks Roberval to establish an outpost in your lands, from which further exploration efforts and attempts at conquest can be based. Cartier knows as well as we do that your tales of the Kingdom of the Saguenay were exaggerated, and I'm pretty sure his plan is to continue exploring in the hopes of finding a route to China, while telling Roberval and the King of the gold and diamonds that are just waiting for them if they continue to support his expedition. I doubt that you'll have to worry about surrendering any more territory to Roberval than you already have in granting him the lands needed to build his outpost.”

“I'm uneasy enough at the prospect of having 300 of Roberval's men walking around my town carrying muskets. I don't think we could handle 1000.”

“Yes, but we both know that you don't have a choice. At least if Roberval and his men see you as a loyal vassal of the French Crown, they will think twice before picking a fight. And being a loyal vassal meant that you had to give Roberval position to set up his outpost. You're not thinking of changing your mind are you.”

“No I'm not,” Donnacona replied, “I know that my people have no hope of survival if we become enemies of the French. I'm just worried that the French won't accept us as equal partners in an alliance.”

“Well, as long as your people remain heathens, then Roberval and his followers will treat them as heathens. But, if they accept the teachings of Christ and the Church, then, and only then, will they be deserving of equal treatment.”

“Are you sure? I've converted to Christianity and I've been baptised, but I still get a lot of strange looks from Frenchmen.”

“That's just because they're not used to seeing people like you. Let them get used to it. Besides, you've noticed a difference in the way people treat you since you've started wearing civilized clothing, right?”

“Right.”

“Once the French get used to seeing civilized Christian Canadians like yourself, they'll treat your better. Our task now is to spread the Word of God and teach your people the ways of civilization and Christendom…”

The conversation was interrupted by shouts up on deck as the crew pulled up the gangplank and made the ship ready to set sail. As the ship pulled away from the dock Donnacona thought more about the future of his people. While he had seen for himself the good that God had done for him, and wanted to share his new religion with his people, he wondered if Père Jerome really had the interests of his people at heart. While it was clear that the French had a lot that his people lacked, Donnacona wondered if the 'civilized' ways that Père Jerome spoke of were really superior to his own people's ways.

When he thought more about it, he didn't really want to become a Frenchman. He didn't want to wear French clothing; he found it uncomfortable and restrictive. While he would be happy to share the stories of Jesus Christ with his people, he didn't want his grandchildren to grow up without knowing the stories that Donnacona had heard in his own childhood. And while he wouldn't mind spending the winter in a nice warm French-style house with solid walls, he wouldn't want Stadacona to become a dirty, noisy city like Paris, Rennes, or even St-Malo.

But at the same time Donnacona recognized that his people had a lot to learn from the French. While he didn't want to blindly adopt French ways, he also didn't want to stubbornly cling to tradition. He hoped to find a third way; a way of adopting the good parts of France without the ills. He hoped to be able to build a society that would take the best parts of France and Kanata, and bring them together. Creating a new way of living for his people, that was Donnacona's dream…

****

Footnotes:
[1] Stadacona is located in the site of OTL Québec City
[2] The POD is NOT the fact that Donnacona converted to Christianity. According to at least one source, Donnacona died a Christian IOTL. The POD is Donnacona's survival. While Donnacona believes that he survived due to intervention of the Christian God, this is an effect of the POD.
[3] The fact that King Francis is falling for the `land of gold and diamonds' story seems doubtful from our current knowledge of what the pre-contact interior of North America was like, but it is OTL. In OTL, even when courtiers tried to suggest that Donnacona's story of the Saguenay might be exaggerated, King Francis continued to believe in it.
[4] While Canada was in OTL and is in TTL the “official” spelling of the name of the OTL St. Lawrence Valley, Donnacona knows that this word is derived from the word `Kanata' meaning village, and so uses the word `Kanata' instead of 'Canada'. Eventually, all Europeans who have learned at least a little of the local language will use `Kanata' to refer to the St. Lawrence Valley, and `Kanatian' to refer to the people we know as the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.
[5] This is part of Père Jerome's plan. He is ambitious and thinks that if he establishes himself as the first priest in New France that he might be made Bishop of New France someday.

 

[telynk]

Post 2 – Père Jerome,

(Stadacona, November 1544)

There was ice on the Stadacona River[1]. While the ice on the small river was still patchy, Père Jerome knew that, within a few weeks, even the big Kanata River[2] would be frozen solid. After that point, there would be no way for the resupply ship from France to reach Stadacona. While Père Jerome still hoped that the ship would come, he knew that at this point, it probably wasn't coming. They wouldn't have sent a ship all the way across the Atlantic just to be stranded in Stadacona over the winter.

Père Jerome turned and walked away from the river towards Fort-St-Francis, the outpost that had been constructed by Roberval and his men, on the site of Cartier's 1535-1536 encampment. The fort stood across the small river from the Kanatian village of Stadacona, but stood twice as tall as Stadacona's palisade, and certainly dwarfed any of the longhouses inside the wall. The fort contained the barracks for Roberval's men, along with store-rooms, a mess hall, and a small forge. While cramped and Spartan by French standards, living in the fort was still definitely better than sleeping in a longhouse. But Jean-Paul [3], despite now carrying the feudal rank of Compte, had chosen to continue to live in a longhouse.

Well, there was probably good reason for that. Jean-Paul had told Père Jerome that he was afraid of losing support amongst his own people. While the French all called him Compte (sometimes in a mocking way), and treated him with at least a little more respect than the other Kanatians, amongst his own people Jean-Paul was not the only one that went by the title of “chief”. His rival Agona had been chief during Jean-Paul's stay in France, and many Stadaconans continued to follow Agona rather than Jean-Paul. While many of Jean-Paul's followers had been willing to convert to Christianity, many others had seen Jean-Paul's support for a 'foreign' religion as a reason to go over to Agona's camp. Jean-Paul had told Père Jerome that he needed all the support he could get if he was to remain influential in Stadacona, and had said that to get that support, he would need to live with his people, not apart from them in Fort-St-Francis.

From where he was standing, Père Jerome could see through the palisade gate to the wooden church under construction inside. It had taken two years for Jerome to convince Roberval to spare the men to direct the Kanatians in the construction of the church. Roberval had wanted the Christian Kanatians to continue to use the small chapel in the fort along with his men. He had only spared the men and supplies to build the church when it became clear that the chapel was now too small to accommodate all the Kanatians who had converted.

As Père Jerome approached Roberval's office in the fort, he could see that Cartier was already inside. Cartier had returned from his latest expedition upriver a few days ago, and was probably discussing his latest findings. From what Père Jerome had heard, Cartier was now certain that the great body of water he had discovered to the West was just a lake (Cartier's initial hope had been that it was a freshwater arm of a great sea leading to China), but that he was now more or less certain that there was an even larger body of water farther to the West [4]. Cartier had heard that this body of water was where the copper-mining Land of the Saguenay was located, and he was hoping that it would turn out to be an arm of the ocean on the other side of this continent and that he would reach China on the other side.

Père Jerome knocked on the door. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

“Come in, come in,” Roberval said, “we're just talking about plans for the winter. I was talking about how we might expand the fort once that new church of yours is finished, but Cartier's telling me that I need to send my men out hunting. Please tell our good friend Cartier here that we have enough meat in the stores already to make it through till spring. And more will be arriving with the supply ship, whenever it comes.”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I don't think it's coming.”

“Not coming!” Roberval interjected “What do you mean? Are you saying that our good King Francis would leave us to starve.”

Cartier spoke up, “I think Père Jerome is right, I think that your good King Francis may have realized that he's spending more gold on us than he's ever going to get out of this expedition. I don't think he wants us to starve, but maybe if we want him to continue sending us supplies we may need to send him more than just furs and a few rocks that may or may not contain gold. We have spent three years in this land with little to show for it, and I think Francis is telling us now that he's no longer willing to supply our expedition.”

Silence fell as Roberval thought things over. “Perhaps the two of you are right,” he said, “maybe His Most Christian Majesty is no longer interested in this expedition. If the King wishes me to return, I must return, and see how I can serve him better.”

“And I must return too,” added Cartier, “while I would love to continue to explore this land, I know I will not be able to provision my expedition without the King's help. What will they eat? There's cabbages and turnips from our vegetable garden of course, and they can hunt for meat, but we still haven't cleared enough land to grow a proper field of grain. My men need bread and beer; if I force them to spend another winter eating that corn that the Kanatians grow, they'll mutiny on me! It looks like this expedition is over until we can convince the King to fund another one. In spring we'll depart on my ships. The supplies in our store will last us till spring, but they won't last the voyage home, so we'll need to spend this winter hunting. I'm a little concerned that there won't be enough space for us and all our supplies on the three ships that remain to us.”

“Well I, for one, will be staying,” replied Pére Jerome. “I have a flock of nearly 100 Christian Kanatians here who will have no priest to show them the Way of the Lord if I leave. It is my mission to spread the Word of God among these people, and I will not give up that mission even if it means giving up bread and beer. And I think there may be others who will want to stay with me…”


* * * * *

(Stadacona, December 1544)

“I know that you all came here for a baptism. The occasion of the birth of the first Christian child in the land of Kanata is a momentous one, and I do not want to diminish its importance. However, I have something more pressing to discuss with you all.” Père Jerome was addressing a crowd of 60 Kanatians and a dozen French, all gathered in the new church. He spoke in the local Kanatian language. While he knew he wasn't as eloquent in Kanatian as he was in French, he needed to make himself understood.

“I need to talk with all of you about the future of our town. As you have probably all heard Cartier and Roberval will be leaving in the spring with their ships and most of their men. As you have probably also heard, I will be staying with you to continue to spread the Christian faith. And I will not be the only Frenchman staying. Little Thèrese, who was baptised today, is too young to survive the voyage across the great ocean, and she and her mother will be permitted to move into Fort-St-Francis with her father once the rest of the expedition has departed. Henri Grignon here will also be staying, as his wife is with child, and he has a few things to say to you.”

Henri Grignon stood up to address the crowd. His Kanatian was much less fluent than Père Jerome's, but he was still better than most of the other Frenchmen. He had been once of the first to join Père Jerome in his trips into the Kanatian town, and had been responsible for establishing a trade of metal tools for corn that had gotten the expedition through the first winter. He had also been one of the first to take a Kanatian wife: he had married Marie-Claire, one of Jean-Paul's daughters. It was hard to imagine that Henri had been a thief back in France and had been recruited to this expedition from King Francis' prison, as he had become quite the pillar of society among the Kanatians.

“Since I've come here, I have fallen in love with your people, have fallen in love with this land, and, of course have fallen in love with my dear wife Yegatetsi.” It annoyed Père Jerome than even Henri still referred to Marie-Claire by her pagan name, but he had learned it was something that would have to be tolerated if Christianity were to spread. “I, along with a dozen of my brothers here will be staying here with you. Most of us have Kanatian wives, or have plans to take one, and we know that if we stay, we'll be staying as part of Stadacona. But, at the same time, we don't want to give up the French life entirely. We know you have come to appreciate the metal tools we've traded with you. My friend Marc here was an apprentice blacksmith back in France, and he will be able to continue to work the forge once Cartier and Roberval leave, but will need metal to make tools out of. Some of you eat the yogurt that comes from our cows and the eggs that our chickens lay, and we hope that we can ensure that the cows and chickens stay rather than being slaughtered for meat. But, if we are to do so, we will need your help.”

“The iron tools along with the cows and chickens here all belong to the King,” Henri continued, “and Roberval is determined to bring them back to France to return them to his King. While he has agreed to allow those of us who are staying to keep our muskets and has agreed to turn over Fort-St-Fancis to us for safekeeping, he wants to slaughter the cows and chickens for food, and wants to take all the iron back with him. If we want the cows and chickens to stay, and if we want to keep the iron, we will need to give Roberval something in return.”

“What I ask of you, my new adopted family, is to go hunting with me. If we spend this winter hunting, we can secure enough meat for Roberval that he will be able to part with his cows and chickens. If we skin the animals and tan their skins, we will have fur that we can give to Roberval too. In France, metal is plentiful and fur is rare, while here fur is plentiful and metal rare. If we trade Roberval enough furs, he will allow us to keep those metal tools as well.”

“But, again, I cannot do this without your help. The dozen of us Frenchmen who will be staying will not be able to hunt enough meat and furs to satisfy Roberval, and you Kanatians know the best hunting grounds much better than we do. Join us in the hunt, and we will share what we get from Roberval with you. We will make any metal tool you desire in our forge, and will give you milk from the cows and meat from the chickens. We will teach you to care for the animals, and will teach you to spread their manure on your fields to make your corn grow taller. We will teach your sons to make metal tools for themselves, and teach your daughters how to use oxen to plow a field. What say you, shall we trade with Roberval to make Stadacona a better place?”

The room was silent. Père Jerome could tell that most of those present had understood Henri's proposal. The general reaction from the crowd seemed positive, which was good. Jean-Paul was the first to speak up. “Henri, you and your Frenchmen bring great wisdom from across the ocean. I have already welcomed you into my family when you married my daughter Yegatetsi, and I would be happy to welcome your fellow Frenchmen into my town of Stadacona. You have a lot to teach us about the importance of iron, cows and chickens, but I recognize already that they will bring us great things in the future. I and all those who follow me will help you with your hunt, and together we will share in the bounties of iron, cows, and chickens.”

Once Jean-Paul had spoken, the outcome was clear. The Christian Stadaconans, and many of those who remained heathen, would likely follow Jean-Paul, and there would be enough of them to make this hunt a success. Roberval would get his meat and furs, and Stadacona would get their iron, cows, and chickens.

* * * * * *

(Stadacona, July 1547)

Père Jerome was teaching Marie-Claire Grignon how to read when he heard news of the arrival of the trade ship. Marie-Claire [5] was one of Père Jerome's most promising students: she had learned to speak almost perfect French within a year of starting lessons with Père Jerome, and now had moved on to learning to read and write. If Père Jerome had met her in France when she was still unmarried, he would have recommended that she become a teacher in the convent school. Well, she was married to Henri, so she couldn't now become a nun. But, Père Jerome thought, she still had potential, and was definitely eager to learn.

And now, in the middle of the summer, was the best time for Jerome to work with Marie-Claire because in spring and fall Marie-Claire was constantly busy working in the fields. Jerome was still confounded by the fact that, in Kanatian culutre, farming was women's work. It's not that there wasn't plenty for the men to do: they took care of the cattle herds, went out on hunting trips, and were in charge of building construction and maintainance. But the fact that Kanatian women wouldn't let men help them work in the fields, even during harvest time, still seemed a little strange.

The fields that Marie-Claire tended were on the Fort-St-Francis side of the Stadacona River. The fields on the far side were tended by the Kanatians who lived in the longhouse village and followed traditional ways, while those on the Fort-St-Francis side were tended by those who had converted to Christianity and now lived in the fort. Marie-Claire's fields still grew the traditional crops of squash, beans, and corn, but she and the other Christian women had learned much from the French. They now used manure to fertilize their fields, and used plows drawn by oxen rather than tilling their fields by hand.

Once his lesson with Marie-Claire was done, Père Jerome went down to the banks of the river to meet the trade ship. He watched as the ship anchored offshore, and the captain got into the longboat to come ashore. Soon we'll build a proper harbour so the ship can pull up right to the dock, Père Jerome thought to himself. This ship was a Breton fishing ship from St-Malo, and was stopping by Stadacona to trade before heading back out to fish the Grand Banks. Once they had learned how much they could get in furs for a copper kettle or a bolt of cloth, the fishing captains had made sure to make a stop in Stadacona.

As the boat pulled up to the shore, Henri Grignon appeared from the direction of Fort-St-Francis, carrying a hide bag. “Pierre says this batch of beer is ready. It thought I might give it to the captain to try,” said Henri as he approached. “It's not as bad as last batch, but I still very much miss beer made from actual barley. Corn beer just doesn't taste as good.”

“Jerome! Henri!” the captain called as he climbed out of the boat. “Good to see you! Trading here is always a pleasure, as I can actually do business in French. Gesturing to those savages up at Tadoussac is always a nightmare! I'm assuming you have furs for me. What do you want for them? I have iron, glass, wool, and other goods with me.”

“A sack of barley seed would be nice. And maybe some rye too.” replied Henri “Pierre has started a brewery, but the corn beer he makes is just dreadful. I think he'd do better if he had some barley to work with. And I sure do miss bread.” He passed the beerskin to the captain.

“Sadly, I don't make a habit of crossing the ocean with sacks of unmilled grain. If you want me to bring something specific for you next year, you have to pay in advance,” jibed the captain. He took a swig from the skin and quickly spat it back out again. “Boy, that is vile stuff!” he said.

“We'll pay in advance, as long as you'll accept payment in corn beer. We have 20 barrels of it!” said Henri. Both him and the captain burst out laughing.

Père Jerome interjected. “Any word from Cartier? Last year you told us that he was trying to petition the King to sponsor another expedition. Is he planning to come back here. Will he need Fort-St-Francis back?”

“I don't think he's coming back. Roberval's turned against Cartier and is blaming him for the failure of the expedition. The King's always listened to Roberval more than Cartier.”

That was good news for Père Jerome. After Roberval and Cartier had left, Jean-Paul and many of the Christian Kanatians had moved into Fort-St-Francis, leaving Agona in charge of the longhouse village inside the palisade. The prospect of being able to spent winter in the fort rather than the drafty longhouses had initially convinced many more Kanatians to convert, but Agona and his followers hadn't made things easy for them. Agona was now accusing those who had left the longhouse village of abandoning their families and clans, and likely would try to prevent the Christians from moving back into the longhouses if Cartier needed the fort back. At least now that Agona and his followers had departed for the summer fishing grounds, there would be less chance of overt conflict.

“There's one other thing,” the captain said to Père Jerome, “I have a letter for you from the Bishop in St-Malo. He didn't seem happy when he gave it to me.”

Père Jerome opened the letter. It was as he had feared. The Bishop had expected him to return when the expedition had returned. After all, he had only originally been sent out as the expedition's chaplain. The Bishop had never intended for him to serve as a Parish Priest in Stadacona. And this letter was an ultimatum. He was to return to St.-Malo with this ship, or he would be defrocked and possibly even excommunicated.

Well, I guess that's the price I will have to pay, Jerome thought to himself. He couldn't abandon the Christians here. Even if he had once dreamed of becoming a Bishop someday, he knew now that his true calling was missionary work. I'll stay.

Footnotes:
[1] OTL this river is known as the Saint-Charles River
[2] The OTL St. Lawrence River. It was known as the River Canada around this time OTL as well.
[3] Remember, Jean-Paul is Donnacona's Christian name. It is the only name Père Jerome refers to him by.
[4] The body of water that Cartier knows to just be a lake is OTL Lake Huron, the one farther to the West is OTL Lake Superior.
[5] Remember that Marie-Claire's Kanatian name is Yegasetsi. She'll come up again later in the story.

 

[telynk]

Post 3 - Yegasetsi

(Stadacona, August 1551)

This past summer, Donnacona had died. A sickness had infected a number of Stadaconans, and, while many had been able to survive the illness, Donnacona had not. Yegasetsi remembered trying to keep her father away from the sick. “You're too old,” she had told him, “if you visit them, you will get sick too, and you will not be able to survive this illness.” But Donnacona hadn't been swayed. He had insisted that God would protect him from sickness this time, as He had done before. But, Donnacona had been wrong and had succumbed to the disease. It was now time for Yegasetsi to mourn her father's death.

As Père Jerome was saying the funeral rites inside the church, Yegasetsi could here a commotion outside of the church doors. It's probably Agona stirring up trouble again, she thought. Agona had become upset when the decision had been made to bury Donnacona in the small Christian cemetary that Père Jerome had established, rather than to bury him along with his ancestors in the traditianal Stadaconan burial ground. Agona had accused Père Jerome of desecrating Donnacona's corpse, and argued that unless Donnacona was buried in the traditional manner, his spirit would not be able to watch over his descendants. The controversy caused by Agona's accusations, and Agona's threat that he would break into the church and take Donnacona's body to be buried in the traditional way had scared many away from attending the funeral. There were fewer than 20 people here in the church today, and almost half were Frenchmen, carrying their arquebuses in case a conflict broke out.

“Henri,” Yegasetsi whispered to her husband, “can you check what's happening outside? I'm a little afraid of what may be going on out there.”

Henri disappeared, and the sound of a shot from his arquebus was heard from outside. He returned in a few minutes. “Things aren't going well out there. A number of those heathens are denouncing Christianity as a corrupting influence, and it sounds like some of them might want to burn the church down. I gave them a warning shot to keep them away, and they did scatter.” Henri paused for a moment. “You know, we really should have had this funeral in the chapel in Fort-St-Francis,” he continued, “but Père Jerome says if we are to have any chance of converting these people, we need to worship amongst them. He says that we need to show them that Christianity means them no harm. But, if they mean us harm, shouldn't we stay away? I don't want to have to actually shoot any of them...”

Yegasetsi realized what this meant. Henri was afraid. The Christians in the church were outnumbered by Agona's followers, and Henri had been afraid enough to warrant using his arquebus. If a fight broke out today, it could result in dozens or even a hundred dead. The Frenchmen, who had little respect for those they called “heathen”, would likely fire indiscriminantly. Yegasetsi couldn't let that happen. She pulled herself together, cemented her grief into resolve. My people need me now, just as they needed my father when he was alive, she thought. “I need to go,” she said, and was out of the chruch before Henri could stop her.

As Yegasetsi stepped outside, she realized that things were worse than Henri had said. There were over 100 of Agona's followers in a pack outside the church doors, chanting anti-Christian slogans. Yegasetsi could see that a number of the men were carrying axes, bows, and other weapons, and others were laying piles of sticks against the walls of the church. While Henri's shot may have dispersed the first crowd, a larger one had been drawn to the seen by the shot, and the people gathered here certainly didn't seem happy. Yegasetsi saw Agona in the middle of the pack.

“Agona,” she called out. “Do you really want this to end in bloodshed? If your people succeed at setting fire to the church or taking my father's body away, you know that my husband and his friends will take out their arquebuses. You've seen what those weapons can do; you remember when they helped defend out own during last year's raids. While you may eventually be able to drive the French away, there will be many dead before that point. Talk to me alone, and we can end this peacefully.”

Agona seemed interested. He beckoned Yegasetsi away, and walked her over to his longhouse. He invited her inside where the two of them could talk in private.

“So what do you have to offer me?” Agona asked.

“Well, what do you want? I know that Donnacona's burial doesn't mean that much to you. You're just making a point around it because Donnacona was a more popular leader than you ever were, and this way you attract some of his supporters to your side. I know that it's not the treatment of Donnacona's burial that you're worried about. What is it?”

“What? You can't see it? Well, I guess you wouldn't because you haven't been living on this side of the river for a few years now. [1] Christianity is tearing this town apart! Your priest is giving the young men of this town bad ideas. A number of them refused to marry my daughter because she is no longer a virgin. And now some of them have stopped supporting their Clan Mother; your priest has been teaching them to favour their birth parents over the head of the clan which they have married into! And, not only our our Clan Mothers being denied the respect of the young men, now women like you are leaving their clans to go live with Frenchmen, and their mothers are left with no one to care for them! The ways we have been doing things since time immemorial have worked because everyone has known their place. Now, with your priest Jerome spreading new ideas every Sunday, our people no longer know what their place is! This church of yours needs to go and Jerome with it!”

“And if I can convince Jerome to no longer preach on this side of the river, what will you be willing to offer in exchange? Will you let those who have already converted to Christianity move across the river and live with us, or will you continue to condemn them for abandoning their families? Will you continue to threaten to burn down our buildings and steal away our dead, or will you agree to let us live in peace?”

“We can let you live in peace as long as you can let us live in peace. We don't want anyone carrying arquebuses on this side of the river. And, yes, I will encourage those who have already converted to Christianity to move to your side of the river, as long as your priest doesn't try to encourage any more people to convert. You Christians can live however you want on your side of the river, as long as we can continue to follow the traditional ways on this side, and as long as no one tries to convince them to abandon their traditional ways. Once those who have already converted have moved, only men will leave their families to marry into another. That is the way it always has been, and the way it always must be.”

“We don't have as extensive fields on our side of the river as you have on yours. If we have a hundred more people moving over the river, we will need some way to feed them. Can we be sure that you will continue to trade us corn for our metal tools?”

“Well, can we be sure that your priest will stop his attempts to convert us? What leverage do you have over him?”

“Oh, I have enough. If I explain to him what it is that you want, and what will likely happen if you don't get it, he will likely agree with me. Besides, many of the Christian Kanatians respect me as Donnacona's daughter more than they will ever respect our foreign priest, and, if he doesn't agree, I will just bring myself and everyone I can get to follow me back here. If we can't make peace, I will renounce Christianity and condemn Père Jerome as a bringer of conflict. If he is unwilling to make peace with you then I fully agree with you that Christianity is nothing more than a source of strife. But, Père Jerome has taught me that there is more to Christianity than that. While many of its ideas are as backward as its views on men and women, there are other parts of Christianity which could free us from the strife that we say today. Christianity is a religion of peace, forgiveness, and compassion. If Père Jerome is as good a Christian as he says that he is, he will agree to make peace with you.”

* * * * *

(Stadacona, October 1564)

Yegasetsi watched as Père Jerome and her husband Henri negotiated with the trader down at the dock. In all the years since the traders had first started coming to Stadacona, she'd never been allowed to participate in the trading herself. Henri had told her that in France, traders looked down on women, and espetially on Kanatian women such as herself. He had told her that her participation in the trade negotiations would only make it harder for Henri to negotiate a fair deal. Henri had explained to her many times how the traders took advantage of the Innu in Tadoussac: [2] giving them worthless trinkets in exchange for great quantities of furs. He told her that the only reason the traders treated him fairly was because he was a Frenchman like most of them were, and that they wouldn't give him as good a deal if they knew he was married to a Kanatian.

At the same time, Yegasetsi had an important part to play in Stadacona's dealings with the traders. As the headwoman of New Stadacona, she was in charge of coordinating the other women to prepare a feast for the sailors of the trade ship. While the traders could get better deals at Tadoussac, the Innu at Tadoussac didn't have cows or chickens, bread or beer. It was the promise of fresh food and drink that resembled the meals they were used to having in Europe that kept the traders coming to Stadacona every year.

And, every year, Stadacona had more furs to give to the traders in exchange for European goods. At first, the Stadaconans had only been trading the furs they were able to trap themselves. Once it became clear to the neighbouring settlements that the traders preferred to stop at Stadacona, the neighbouring villages had started to trade their fur to Stadacona in exchange for European goods. Then, lacking any direct contact with Europeans, the Hochelagans upriver had starting sending their furs to Stadacona as well. Now, the Hochelagans were trading more furs then they could possibly be hunting themselves, so they must in turn be getting them from other people farther inland.

Even Agona's followers in Old Stadacona didn't try to deal with the traders directly. The Old Stadaconans trapped for furs, hunted, fished, and grew most of the crops. The New Stadaconans took care of the livestock, made metal tools, made beer, bread, and cheese, and dealt with the Europeans. This division of the Stadaconan economy had helped make peace between the Christians of New Stadacona and Agona's traditionalists by ensuring mutual dependence between the two halves of the town. Agona's people could carry on as they had before Cartier's arrival, while still benefitting from the French technology of New Stadacona. In particular, it was the manure from New Stadacona's cattle which had kept Old Stadacona's fields fertile, meaning that the town of Stadacona had not had to relocate like most of the neighbouring settlements had done.

By the time the trade negotiations were done, the food and drink were ready to be served. The feast hall where the Stadaconans received their guests was a long building, built in the shape of a longhouse, but made from boards nailed together rather than poles lashed together. Within the hall there were five hearths for cooking and heating with tables and benches between them. There was enough space in the hall to seat 500: the only time it had ever been full was when Hatideso from Old Stadacona had married a New Stadaconan woman, as the populations of both settlements had joined in the wedding feast.

The feast today would serve both the sailors of the trade ship and the residents of New Stadacona. Yegasetsi, along with her husband Henri, the other Stadaconan Frenchmen, and the other Kanatians who spoke French, would be seated closest to the sailors, to provide them with company and entertainment. While Père Jerome prohibited the Stadaconan women from sleeping with the sailors, Yegasetsi knew that many still did sneak away at night. Some of these women would be rewarded with gifts. More rarely, these midnight trysts resulted in an actual marriage, which usually meant that the Stadaconan woman involved returned to Europe on board the trade ship. Twice, there had been sailors who had stayed in Stadacona as a result of a marriage to a local woman. Both times, this was because their captain had marooned them in Stadacona once the captain had found out about the marriage.

Tonight, Yegasetsi was seated next to a sailor named Simon who was originally from Marseille, even though his current ship was based in La Rochelle. While Père Jerome had shown Yegasetsi many maps of Europe and had described a fair bit of geography to her, many European cities were still just names to her. While she was able to listen to Simon's stories about the various ports he'd visited, she became more interested when he started asking her about Stadacona.

“So, what's over there on the other side of the river?” he asked.

“Oh, that's Old Stadacona,” Yegasetsi replied “that's where I grew up. Back before Jacques Cartier came, when you Europeans were just rumours, that's where all of us here lived. Well, all of us except for Père Jerome, Henri and the other Frenchmen among us, of course.”

“And why did you move to this side of the river?”

“Well, do you remember the fort you saw behind this feast hall? That was Fort-St-Francis, the original building on this side of the river. It was built by Roberval back in 1541. Once he left, many of us who had converted to Christianity moved across the river. Over ten years ago, a conflict resulted in the division of the settlement. Père Jerome here only allows those of us who have fully converted to Christianity to live on this side of the river, while Agona, the chief of Old Stadacona allows no Christians on his side. We call this side `New Stadacona', although Père Jerome still refers to the whole settlement as Fort-St-Francis. He also calls me Marie-Claire, and he always called my father Jean-Paul. Even though he's learned our language, he still insists on giving us all French names. He thinks that to be good Christians, we have to be named after Saints.”

“Well, Marie-Claire is certainly an easier name to say than Egaseesee or whatever you told me your name was,” Simon replied as he burst out coughing.

Yegasetsi had noticed Simon wiping his nose periodically during their meal. “Are you ok?” she asked.

“Oh, I'm just a little sick. One of the other sailors was sick most of the voyage over, and I think I may have picked up what he had.”

“Excuse me,” Yegasetsi said, “I need to go talk to Père Jerome.”

* * * * * *

(Stadacona, December 1564)

Père Jerome's hospital was a small building set apart from the rest of New Stadacona. It had been built after the disease outbreak of 1551 that had killed 50 Stadaconans, the same one that had killed Donnacona. Its main purpose was to provide a place for those who were sick to seek care while separating them from their families so that they wouldn't spread the disease. During outbreaks, the Frenchmen, who seemed much less susceptible to disease than the Kanatians, took charge of taking care of those who were sick and no others were permitted to enter or leave the hospital. This policy had succeeded at preventing outbreaks as severe as that of 1551, at least so far.

This outbreak was proving worse than most. Rather than starting with one or two sick individuals, this outbreak had started with all those who had been sitting near Simon at the feast. The hospital was overcrowded, and, now that Yegasetsi herself had recovered, she was helping care for those who were still sick. Père Jerome would not let her leave the hospital yet, as there was a chance she was still contagious. We're lucky that our first priest had experience working at a hospital in France, Yegasetsi thought, we've certainly needed it over the years.

For the past few hours, Père Jerome had been gone assessing the situation outside the hospital. He usually wasn't gone this long. He returned as Yegasetsi was feeding some broth to a patient. “Marie-Claire, I need to talk to you alone,” he said.

“Where can we go to talk?” Yegasetsi asked. The hospital was a one-room building, and was filled with the sick. There was nowhere to go inside the building.

“Outside,” Père Jerome replied, “I think you're well enough to deal with the cold. I have some furs here for you to put on.”

Yegasetsi bundled up and stepped outside. “I thought I wasn't supposed to leave the hospital?”

“You don't have to worry about it too much now, I'm pretty sure you're not contagious anymore. This is one of the reasons I asked you to speak to me. You were one of the first to fall sick and one of the first to recover. You've been well for the past week, and I think that means that you won't spread the disease to anyone else, and that you won't be able to pick it up. At least I'm hoping that's the case. I need someone who's immune to the disease right now.”

“Immune – that means that I've been sick and recovered, so that I can't get this disease again right?”

“Yes, that's the reason that us Frenchmen don't get sick as much as you Kanatians do. It's not because we're any more holy, or that God protects us from disease any more than He protects you, despite what your father might have told everyone. We had all of these illnesses when we were children back in France, so we can't get them again. But none of you Kanatians have had them before.”

“But if you Frenchmen are all immune already, why do you need me?”

“Well, the problem is that I need someone who's not a Frenchman. Look over there, what do you see?”

“Nothing”, replied Yegasetsi. It was dark and snowing, and Yegasetsi couldn't see anything through the snow in the direction Jerome was pointing.

“Well, that's the problem. That's Old Stadacona over there. Usually at this time in the evening, we can see the glow from their fires lighting up the roofs of their longhouses. But, today there's nothing. When I noticed the lack of firelight, I grabbed a torch and crossed the ice on the river to take a look. Everyone was still there, huddled inside the longhouses, but they were all sick, every last one of them. While none of them had the strength to gather firewood, they did have the strength to keep me out of the longhouse, and prevent me from helping them. It seems that some of them think that I've lain a curse on them.”

“And you're worried that if you send another Frenchman over that they'll treat him with the same suspicion.”

“Exactly! I hope that they'll trust you more than they've trusted me. I need you to bring them food and firewood. Keep their fires lit, and feed them and care for them the same way you've cared for the sick here. It's going to get cold tonight, and I don't want any of them to die before morning. When the sun rises, come back and let me know how you're doing. Maybe we'll be able to send over some more people and supplies then.”

Soon Yegasetsi was making her way across the ice to Old Stadacona with a bundle of wood in her arms and a pack filled with food on her back. The snow had gotten thicker on the ground, but she had her snowshoes with her so she wasn't too worried. As she approached the palisade, she tripped over something on the ground. She reached down and realized it was a body. Someone had died out here, and no one had been able to come out and retrieve the body! Things must clearly be bad in Old Stadacona.

Yegasetsi tried to work out how the disease had spread to Old Stadacona. In all outbreaks since the first one in 1551, the interning of the sick in Père Jerome's hospital had prevented the spread of the disease beyond New Stadacona. Something had happened differently this time, and Yegasetsi was determined to figure out what it was.

Thinking back on the course of events since the feast, Yegasetsi suddely realized how the disease must of spread. Hatideso, a young man from Old Stadacona, had married a New Stadaconan woman a few years back, and had since lived with his wife and her family. He had fallen sick, and was currently well on his way to recovering, but was still weak. Yegasetsi had realized that, before he had fallen sick, Hatideso had made a trip to visit his family in Old Stadacona. He must have been sick already at that time, and must have not known it. Hatideso was the one responsible for spreading the disease to Old Stadacona.

Yegasetsi had now reached the first longhouse, and she crawled inside. It was almost as cold inside as it was outside. She needed to get that fire lit. There was a couple huddled together for warmth near the door, and Yegasetsi greeted them and offered them some dried meat. They took it, thanked her, and ate while Yegasetsi lit the fire. Once the fire was lit, Yegasetsi ventured again out into the cold to gather those in the other longhouses. She needed to get them all into the house with the fire if she was to keep them all warm. This is going to be a very long night, she thought to herself.

* * * * * * *

(Stadacona, April 1565)

Today was the day to bury the dead. Winter's snows had mostly melted, and the ground had been thawed for the past week. The grave had been dug, and now it was time for the burial ceremony.

Yegasetsi walked over to the longhouse where the dead had been stored. The bodies had been covered in snow to preserve them through the end of the winter, and the shade from the longhouse roof had kept the snow from melting. Now, the snow was being cleared off so that the bodies could be carried to their grave.

Yegasetsi watched the remaining Old Stadaconans as they worked with the bodies. For every one survivor there were three dead. The sickness, together with winter's cold and a shortage of food had killed off over 200 of Old Stadacona's 300 people. Many of them had already been dead by the time Yegasetsi had crossed the river back in December, but many more had died in the weeks after, as the New Stadaconans had struggled to keep everyone warm and fed. Père Jerome had been strict in only letting those who had already survived the illness cross the river to Old Stadacona to take care of the sick, and thus the New Stadaconans had been much luckier, only counting 30 souls among the dead. Once they were well enough to travel, Yegasetsi had esorted the Old Stadaconan survivors across the ice to New Stadacona's hospital, where they could be warmer and better cared for than they could in their longhouses. Thus, Old Stadacona was now an abandoned settlement, with all the longhouses empty.

The funeral procession had now begun, carrying the dead to their grave. There weren't enough Old Stadaconans left to carry the dead on their own, so many New Stadaconans joined in. A year ago, it would have been unthinkable for Christians to have participated in such a solemn ceremony alongside those who still followed the traditional ways. But now that there were so few Old Stadaconans left, and now that the survivors all knew they had only survived with the help of the Christians, the suspicion was mostly gone.

In fact, many of the Old Stadaconan survivors had decided to permanently join the New Stadaconan settlement, and convert to Christianity. Of those who were still determined not to convert, many had family in other villages, and would be departing soon after the funeral. Once it had become clear that there wouldn't be enough people left to resettle Old Stadacona, most of those who were still undecided had made up their mind to leave. While there were some who wanted to stay in New Stadacona but didn't want to convert, Père Jerome had declared that he wouldn't tolerate “unbaptised heathens” living in New Stadacona.

Once the funeral was over, Yegasetsi gathered those who were departing together in the feast hall. To each of them she gave a loaf of rye bread, a piece of dried meat, and skin filled with beer. To each of them she also gave a clay crucifix that she had made with the word “Remember” in Kanatian written on one side and “Stadacona” on the other. While Père Jerome had refused to teach Yegasetsi how to write Kanatian words or “pagan” names like “Stadacona”, Yegasetsi had figured it out on her own, and was proud of the work she had done.

As she handed out the crucifixes Yegasetsi spoke: “I know that many of you don't believe in the Christian God, and those of you who do don't believe strongly enough to heed His demand to give up worship of all other deities. If you were willing to call yourselves Christian, you likely would have wanted to stay with us here. Even if you don't believe in what these crosses stand for, please take them with you as a reminder of what happened here in Stadacona this winter.”

“While the Frenchmen from across the ocean have brought us many good things, they have also brought us disease,” Yegasetsi continued. “This new era that has dawned is the era of iron, but it is also the era of disease. This winter's plague has been the worst one we have faced so far, but we may face worse in the future. A sailor a few years ago told me stories of the devastation that has been unleashed by disease on nations far to the South of here, and compared to that devastation, we have been lucky. We need to remember what happened this winter, and we must vow to never let it happen again.”

“While the Europeans brought the disease from across their ocean, they also brought their God. Some of the Christians among us say that God will protect us from disease, and that if we truly believe in Him, we will not die. But they are wrong. My father believed more devoutly than any other Kanatian I have known, and while he survived the many plagues he faced in France, he died from the first he faced here. God alone cannot save us: God helps those who help themselves.”

“I do not give you this cross so that you will become Christians and pray to God to save you. While prayers may give us hope, prayers alone will not save us. What will save us is heeding the truths that God has taught Père Jerome, that Père Jerome has taught me, and that I am now teaching you.”

“The fact is that we do have the ability to save ourselves from disease: not through prayer, but through prevention. Those of us in New Stadacona suffered a lot less from disease than those of you in Old Stadacona, and it wasn't because we prayed to a different God. It was because we did things differently. We separated the sick from the well, confined those that were sick to the hospital, and allowed only those who were immune from the disease to care for the sick in the hospital. Thus those who were well didn't get sick, and those who were sick were able to be cared for without spreading the disease to their families. These practices worked for us, and they will work for anyone who follows them.”

“All of you have survived this disease, and thus all of you are now immune. If this disease strikes again, I want all of you to be ready. I want you to build a hospital in your new village, and I want you to do in your new village as we have done here. You must separate the sick from the well, and you yourselves must take care of the sick as you yourselves will be able to avoid getting sick yourselves.”

“When that disease has passed, you must teach the survivors as I have taught you. We must continue to spread the knowledge of how to combat disease and how to prevent ourselves from being devastated by plague from across the ocean. Until every village in Turtle Island [3] has a hospital, we will not be safe. I urge you to take this crucifix as a reminder of what has happened here in Stadacona this winter, and a reminder of what we have to do to stop it from happening in the future. If we work together, we can prevent this from ever happening again.”

I hope this will work, Yegasetsi thought. She wasn't sure if her understanding of how disease spread was entirely correct, but Père Jerome seemed to agree with her thoughts on the matter. Hopefully, these people would heed her words and spread the practices necessary to prevent disease and slow its spread. And even if some of them forgot, and some of them didn't pass her teachings on, at least some of them would. This should at least make a difference...


Footnotes:

[1] Remember that Donnacona, Yegasetsi, and a number of the other Christian converts moved into Fort-St-Francis when Cartier and Roberval left.

[2] In OTL, the vast majority of 16th-century fur trade in the St. Lawrence region took place at Tadoussac, which lies at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers, downstream from Stadacona. It was a good spot for trade because it was reasonably accessible by ship and easily reached by both the Stadaconans coming down the St. Lawrence and the Innu coming down the Saguenay. ITTL, Tadoussac is still used as a trade post, but trade ships are also coming upriver to Stadacona.

[3] The legend of Sky Woman, which has dry land being built upon the back of a Turtle is Iroquoian in origin, and while I'm pretty sure that the term Turtle Island for North America (or for the Americas as a whole) is recent in origin I think it is very conceivable that the Stadaconans ITTL would come up with the term as a way of describing their own continent as opposed to Europe.

 

[telynk]

Post 4 - Ahatatoga/Helene

Post 4 – Ahatatoga,

(Hochelaga, 1558-1565)

Ahatatoga remembered first meeting Hantero when she was six years old. According to her parents, Ahatatoga had already met Hantero the spring before when he had come to Hochelaga to marry into Ahatatoga's Hawk clan. Whatever the reason, Ahatatoga had no memory of that marriage, but did remember the day that Hantero arrived with his herd the next winter..

At first Ahatatoga was unsure what she was seeing as she looked out onto the ice of the Great River [1]. She had heard stories of caribou herds from those who had travelled to the North, and that is what she had initially thought she had seeing coming towards Hochelaga over the ice. There certainly were a lot of animals in that herd, and they were about the right size to be caribou, she thought. But, when they got closer, she realized the animals had small horns instead of antlers, and had wide, stocky bodies. These definitely weren't caribou.

Things got even stranger when she saw that the animals weren't travelling alone, but were being followed by a group of men and dogs who were chasing them over the ice. It was then that Ahatatoga first remembered seeing Hantero. He was the tallest of the four men driving the herd over the ice. He wore clothes that seemed strange to her at the time, but she later learned were typical among Stadaconans, and he carried an air of adventure about him that Ahatatoga hadn't seen much of before. It wouldn't be long before Ahatatoga would use every chance she could get to help Hantero with whatever he was up to.

Hantero and his three friends were the first to bring cattle to Hochelaga. While many Hochelagas who had travelled to Stadacona had seen cattle before, and had eaten their meat, no one had attempted to bring them to Hochealga until Hantero. Hantero, like many Stadaconan men, had been unable to find a bride within Stadacona, but had tried to bring much of his Stadacaonan lifestyle with him when he came to live with his new family. While most Stadaconan men had married into the local villages near Stadacona itself, and had brought their cattle herds with them, Hantero and his friends had more ambitious goals, and wanted to move to the largest town that they knew of: Hochelaga.

The year before, Hantero and his friends had found Hochelagan wives, and had built a barn in which to shelter their herds. They had waited until the ice on the river was solid before they brought their herd across. While each of the four men had married into a different clan, and thus would be living in a different longhouse, they would share the cattle, at least until the herd was large enough to divide it.

Hantero and his cattle brought many changes to Hochelaga. The use of oxen made clearing fields easier, and the availability of meat meant that fewer men went out hunting in the wintertime. The manure helped the crops grow, so fewer new fields needed to be cleared and planted. People began talking about the possibility that Hochelaga wouldn't have to move again as it had when Ahatatoga had been a baby. Stadacona had stayed in the same place for over a generation, people said, and many of the men didn't want to have to go through the work of clearing new fields and building new longhouses.

The winter when Ahatatoga was nine was a cold one, and Hantero spent much of the winter complaining about how the Hawk clan's longhouse was so much colder than the buildings in Stadacona.The next spring, he made a trip to Stadacona, and returned with a saw, hammer and nails. He recruited the help of the whole clan in replacing the bark that covered the outside of the longhouse with wooden planks cut from trees Hantero was felling to clear more land for the grazing of his herd. The planks that Hantero had cut fit together much more snugly than bark did, and the longhouse was much warmer in subsequent winters.

By the time Ahatatoga was twelve, the plank longhouses had become common. Some clans were taking advantage of the new building techniques to experiment with longer and wider house designs, giving each family more space to call their own. Many of the Hochelagan men had started cattle herds of their own, and an extension had been built to Hochelaga's palisade in order to encompass the new barns. One new immigrant from Stadacona had brought the knowledge and tools necessary to work iron, and a forge had been set up. Ahatatoga would tag along behind Hantero when he went to the forge, and would watch the smith pound the hot metal. Sometimes, Ahatatoga would even be allowed to help pump the bellows herself, something she was always happy to do.

On long winter's nights, when the cows were asleep in their barn, Hantero would tell stories around the fire in the Hawk clan longhouse. Many of these were old Stadaconan stories that others who came from downriver also told. Many were those that Hantero had learned from the pale-skinned priest in Stadacona: stories like Noah and the canoe full of animals. Ahatatoga's favourite stories, though, were the ones that Hantero had seen with his own eyes: stories about the pale-skinned people who came from across the ocean.

Ahatatoga had never met any of these pale-skins herself. Her parents had been around when the pale-skins had come up the river and visited Hochelaga, but, at that time, Ahatatoga had not been born yet. Ahatatoga has always thought of the pale-skins as a people of stories, a people of the past. However it seemed that if Hantero was correct, there still were pale-skins living in Stadacona, and more who came to visit from across the ocean every summer.

Hantero told stories about how the pale-skins were able to harness the wind to cross the ocean in canoes the size of longhouses. He told Ahatatoga about the fire-sticks that the pale-skins used for hunting that could kill at a distance. He told her about the ability of the pale-skins to turn their words into markings on a surface, and for others to reproduce words from those marks.

This ability to turn words into markings fascinated Ahatatoga. After further inquiry she discovered that Hantero knew at least some of the basic principles for doing this. He had learned how to make a number of these markings from a woman named Yegasetsi who had in turn learned them from the pale-skin priest. He knew that these markings represented different sounds, and knew a few of the markings and the sounds they represented.

So, in the summer when Ahatatoga was thirteen, Hantero and Ahatatoga would go down to a place on the river known for its flat rocks, and would scratch words into the stone. And, while there were a number of words that Hantero could make easily into markings, there were some that he couldn't. There were some sounds that he just didn't know the markings for.

“So, if you don't know the markings for these sounds, why can't you just make some up?” Ahatatoga asked one day.

“Well, I could make some up, but they wouldn't be the correct markings.”

“What do you mean `correct'?”

“Well, if Yegasetsi came here and tried to read them, she wouldn't understand what was meant by them.”

“But I would understand because you would have told me what they meant.”

“But that's not the point. The point of markings is that they mean the same thing to everyone. That way you can send messages to people far away. If I made up markings and taught them to you, then you could only send messages to me.”

“So if I want to learn the proper markings for these other sounds, what do I have to do?”

“Well, I guess you'd have to go to Stadacona and ask Yegasetsi to teach you.”

* * * * *

(Stadacona, July 1567)

Stadacona was a town of marvels for Ahatatoga. Even when she had first seen it from Hantero's canoe, she had been amazed at the architecture and shape of the buildings. While in recent years, the men of Hochelaga had been experimenting with different designs for their longhouses, the basic shape of the buildings had always been the same: long and round. In Stadacona, however, there was much more variety. There were the square walls and angled roof of Fort-St-Francis, the pointed steeple of the wooden church holding its cross high above the town, and the traditional rounded longhouses where most of the Stadaconans lived. Moreover, the variety of Stadaconan architecture lay not only in the shapes but in the colours and textures. There were still a number of buildings covered with the traditional bark siding, but there were others covered with wooden planks, and others covered with this white material that the Stadaconans called plaster. [2]

Once Ahatatoga got the chance to see Stadacona's longhouses close-up she realized that they weren't as traditional as she had once thought. The shape of the building was as the same, and they were still supported by a frame of poles bent over to form the curved roof. However, the longhouses, rather than having a single door at each end, had multiple doors spaced at equal intervals along the sides of the building. Hantero told her that Stadacona had no more clans: rather than all descendants of the same Clan Mother living together in a single longhouse, each nuclear family of husband, wife and children lived in their own apartment and shared a building with unrelated nuclear families. It seemed that the vast majority of Stadacona's population had no ancestors in Stadacona itself and had either chosen to move to Stadacona in order to convert to Christianity, had married into a Stadaconan family, or had been taken to Stadacona as captives during the many wars that had been fought to replace population lost to disease. [3]

Ahatatoga's first task upon arrival was to visit the Church where she was to be made a Christian through a rite called “Baptism”. Ahatatoga still had little idea of what becoming a Christian entailed, but knew that she would have to become one in order to live in Stadacona long enough to learn something from Yegasetsi. A man called Père Jerome, who seemed to be something between a Chief and a Shaman, made many of the rules in Stadacona, and becoming a Christian was one of those rules. If Ahatatoga were to learn what the Stadaconans had to teach, she would have to live by their rules.

As soon as Ahatatoga stepped inside the church, she forgot any fears she had about becoming a Christian. The walls of the church were covered with images of people who Ahatatoga later learned were Christian Saints, and surrounding the images were the markings that Ahatatoga had come to know as “writing”. She sounded out the markings that she could identify, and realized that the language represented these markings was not Kanatian at all, but a language that had come across the ocean with the pale-skinned people that the Stadaconans called “Frenchmen”. She knew, as soon as she saw the beauty of the pictures and words that Christianity had produced that, whatever Christianity was, she would have to become a part of it.

Ahatatoga remembered little of the Baptism ceremony itself, partly because much of it was said in a language she didn't understand, and partly because she was too distracted by the contents of the church itself. Once the ceremony was finished, Ahatatoga was introduced to a young man, a few years older than herself. “Hèlene,” he said to her, “my name is Charles Grignon. My mother is Marie-Claire, who you've come here to learn from. She's busy at the moment, discussing the upcoming harvest with the other Town Mothers [4], but I'm to take you back to our apartment.”

“What did you just call me? Elen? And who is Marie-Claire?”

“Hèlene is your new name. When you were baptised, Père Jerome gave you a new Christian name. And Marie-Claire is my mother's Christian name. You may know her by her Heathen name: Yegasetsi.”

Getting a good look at Charles, Hèlene forgot all about the beauty of the Church around her. Charles didn't have the pale skin and blue eyes that Père Jerome had, but his hair was something else. It wasn't black like Kanatian hair or yellow-grey like that of Père Jerome but red, almost as bright as a maple tree in fall. It curled into ringlets that bounced on his forehead and fell past his ears. His face also, had a look about it that Hèlene had rarely seen before. While his skin tone was the same as any Kanatian's, he had a band of freckles across his nose and cheeks which gave it an exotic touch. His eyes contained a fire in them, and Hèlene could see the fierce energy that burned within him. Hèlene began to wonder if Charles' hair was just as colourful within his leather breeches, and saw that Charles had noticed her downward gaze. [5]

“Yes, I am here to learn from your mother,” Hèlene burst out. “My clan has sent me to Stadacona to learn how to grow the new crops you are growing here so that I can bring that knowledge back to enrich Hochelaga. And I also am interested in learning more of those markings you called 'writing'. Hantero has taught me a little, but he says that your mother will have to teach me the rest.”

“Well, my mother isn't the only one here who knows how to write,” Charles replied, “many of us here in Stadacona can do so. She taught me when I was a child!”

“Oh, really!” Ahatatoga exclaimed. “I know your mother must be a busy woman being the town Headwoman and all. Could you teach me? I mean unless you're too busy as well. I'm sure all the young women in this town are dying to learn from you!”

“Actually, Hèlene, you're the first to ask,” Charles replied with a smile that showed that he was as excited about spending time with her as she was about spending time with him.

* * * * * * *

(Stadacona, May 1569)

Hèlene was itching to see Stadacona again, and to be again in the arms of Charles Grignon. After spending a year in Stadacona living with Yegasetsi's family, learning plough-based farming techniques from the mother, and learning reading and writing (and lovemaking) from the son, she had returned to Hochelaga at the end of the past summer in time to participate in the harvest and share the knowledge she had learned with her clan. Hèlene had missed the wonders of Stadacona almost as soon as she had left, but knew that her place was with her clan in Hochelaga.

And then, just as Hèlene was settling in to life in Hochelaga, she had realized that she was with child. Her grandmother had initially tried to convince her to take the herbs to end her pregnancy, but Hèlene was stubborn and wanted to keep the baby, especially since she knew it had been Charles who had fathered the child. She had written a note to Charles on a piece of birch bark explaining that she was pregnant. She had sent the note downriver to Stadacona with a trader, and, after a few more exchanges, Charles had agreed that the two of them should marry.

Charles himself had stopped by Hochelaga in October on his way to lead a raiding party up the Copper River [6] against the Omamiwinini [7] people. It was late in the year to conduct warfare, but Charles was an ambitious warrior, and knew that he stood a chance of catching small groups of Omamiwinini out on their fall hunting trips. Charles' visit in Hochelaga was cut short by the need to complete his raids before the rivers froze over, but it had been wonderful for Hèlene to be able to see him again. They had spent several fall nights making love as Charles told Hèlene stories of France that he had learned from his father.

The winter had passed with no word from Charles as there were no traders travelling up and down the river in wintertime to pass messages along. Hèlene had given birth in the first few weeks of spring. The first trading canoe coming up the river from Stadacona had brought a letter from Charles setting a date for their wedding in Stadacona. Now, Hèlene, with her daughter at her breast, was in a canoe paddled by her mother and father. Many other members of her clan followed in other canoes, on their way to Stadacona to attend the wedding.

In Kanatian towns and villages all up and down the Great River [1] it was traditional for a wedding feast to take place at the husband's longhouse, but it's was the job of the wife's family to supply the food for the feast. This way, the wife's family could show the husband's family that their son would be in good hands once he moved into his wife's longhouse. Thus, the ten canoes that travelled downriver to Stadacona were filled to the brim with meat from freshly-killed deer, dried corn from last years' harvest, and various roots, herbs and other ingredients to improve the flavour of the food. There were even a few dozen cobs of “stinky corn” that had spent the winter soaking in a pond. [8]

Soon the canoes arrived at Stadacona's dock, where Charles and his family greeted the Hawk Clan and helped them carry their supplies into the feast hall. The wedding itself would take place in the church, Charles told Hèlene, and the feast would happen afterwards in the hall. Hèlene was excited that Père Jerome would be presiding over the wedding. She loved the stories that he told in church on Sundays, and hoped that he would include some in the wedding service. Hèlene was also relieved to learn that Père Jerome's usual prohibition on non-Christians entering the church wouldn't apply to her family on her wedding day.

The wedding service was everything that Hèlene had dreamed of. Père Jerome shared a number of her favourite Biblical stories with the assembled families. The Christian wedding traditions, while still a little strange to Hèlene, were pleasant enough, and getting married in this beautiful church was definitely a thrill. Hèlene's family seemed to be happy enough, even though they were a little awkward at the unfamiliarity of the whole ceremony.

After the ceremony came the feast, when Hèlene finally got a chance to relax. Her family had cooked up a wonderful meal, and Charles' father Henri had contributed a few barrels of beer to improve the mood. Everyone was feasting and drinking and carrying on conversation, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Hèlene could now finally turn to her husband and talk.

“Hèlene,” Charles said to her, “I was thinking maybe that tomorrow we could go and take a look at the new longhouse that's under construction on the east side of town. My mother has arranged for us to have one of the apartments in that longhouse, and I will have been helping out with the construction myself. I thought you might want to take a look at where we will be living.”

“I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I understand,” Hèlene replied, “are you saying that we will be living here, in Stadacona? I thought you were going to come back to Hochelaga with me after the wedding to live in the Hawk Clan longhouse. You are a member of the Hawk Clan now too.”

“Why would I want to share a longhouse with your family in Hochelaga when we can have an apartment of our own here? I know you well enough to know that you would much rather live here than return to Hochelaga.”

“Well, if it was just me, of course I'd prefer to stay here. But it's not just me. We have a daughter now, and we will need my mother's and my aunt's help taking care of her.”

“My mother can help with that just as well as yours. And I have sisters who are raising children of their own, and would love to share childcare with you. It's not like I didn't think about that.”

“Well, what about when my mother gets old? Who will take care of her then? I have no sisters, only brothers, and once my brothers are married into other clans, she will have no one to take care of her.”

“I've thought of that too. Remember the raids I carried out against the Omamiwinini[7] in the fall? Well, we took a dozen captives, including a couple young girls. If your mother needs someone to take care of her and carry on the Hawk clan, she can adopt either one of the girls. And, if they are both unsatisfactory, I can find her more girls to adopt. I do want to make sure your mother is taken care of and I do want to support your clan. But, you have to remember that you're a Christian now. Your place is here where you can attend church and live as a Christian. My mother gave up her clan when she married my father and converted to Christianity, and you can do the same...”

* * * * *

(Stadacona, June 1575)

Ahatatoga was down at the river gathering water, when she saw the canoe approaching. She could tell by the design of the canoe and by their clothes that the men paddling it were Abenaki. They had likely come down the Swift River [9] to trade furs, meat, and other forest products for metal and other goods the Abenakis themselves couldn't produce. She knew that Henri, her father-in-law, would want to surpervise the trading, so she put down the water she was carrying and ran up the hill to Fort-St-Francis, where the surviving Frenchmen still lived.

Ahatatoga was happy that her children were now old enough she didn't have to carry them. Her daughter was almost as independent-minded as Ahatatoga had been at her age, and was probably off helping in the fields. Her son was with her, but he was 3 now: old enough now that Ahatatoga could leave him to guard the water while she went to fetch Henri.

Henri was working on repairing a plaster wall in Fort-St-Francis when Ahatatoga arrived. The Fort was starting to show its age, and, with the death of two of the Frenchmen last year, the number of Stadaconans who knew how to work with plaster had decreased. Henri had shown Charles how to plaster a wall, but Charles was always more interested in war and hunting than he was in doing any work around the town. In fact, even now Charles was off downriver making war on the L'Nuk people [10] who coveted the fishing grounds near the mouth of the Great River [1].

Henri put down his plaster and trowel, and fetched the cart where he stored his trade goods from the Fort's courtyard. Soon, Ahatatoga and Henri were back at the dock. When they got there they could seen that the Abenaki canoes had already been pulled up on shore, and the traders had laid out their furs and other goods. A number of other Stadaconans had already brought trade goods of their own down to the dock, but, as usual, they deferred to Henri to take charge of the exchange.

Amongst the Stadaconans Henri was considered an expert trader. As someone who had lived in France, he knew the true value of European-made goods, and had been taking charge of trading with the Europeans for years. While Henri often times acted as an agent to negotiate a fair price for goods held by individual families, the vast majority of the goods traded by Henri belonged to the town as a whole. When Stadaconans acquired surplus furs or goods of any type, they usually gave them to Henri to use as trade goods, and, in exchange, Henri distributed many of the products he obtained from the European trade ships amongst the various families in the town. He always acquired more goods from the Europeans than the town needed at any one time, and he kept the surplus in his hand cart to trade with Abenakis from the South, Hochelagans from upriver, and Atikamekw [11] from the North.

But today, something was different. Rather than looking through the Abenaki's furs to determine their number and quality, Henri was looking at a pendant that one of the traders wore around his neck. It was made of metal, and was pounded flat and engraved in the same way as traditional copper jewelry, but it wasn't copper. Ahatatoga could tell by looking at it that it was too yellow to be copper. She recalled that she had seen some metal like it being used for jewelry by traders from the Northwest when she was a child. Her father had called it “yellow copper”. [12]

“Can I take a look at that pendant?” Henri asked the trader. The trader handed it over, and Henri bit it, noticing how soft a metal it was. The trader protested, but Henri promised to offer him something better in exchange. After rooting around in his cart for a bit, Henri produced a larger pendant made of pure copper. This one was regular copper: it had once been the reddish colour of polished copper, but had since turned blue-green from age. “Here have this in exchange,” Henri said as he offered it to the trader.

The trader looked puzzled “Why would you give me red copper for yellow copper?” he asked. “Is this pendant cursed?”

“Of course we all know that red copper is worth more than yellow copper,” Henri replied, “it is harder and stronger and thus more useful for making tools and weapons. But, my people across the ocean, the pale-skins as you call them, they are lazy and idle. They are too lazy to polish their red copper when it gets tarnished so they prefer yellow copper, which doesn't lose its shine. The softness of yellow copper isn't a problem: they use it for ornaments and not for tools, so they don't care how soft it is. They have too much red copper, and, for them, yellow copper is rare. This means that they are willing to give me great quantities of iron and red copper for a small piece of yellow copper such as this one. Can I ask where you got this yellow copper?”

“My mother found it once by the side of a stream when she was gathering water. The stream is in our lands South of here, a few day's travel up the Swift River.” [13]

“Well, if your people want to return to that stream and collect more pieces of yellow copper like this one, I can trade you red copper or iron tools for your yellow copper. I will pay handsomely for any yellow copper you can collect. If you bring more of your people here next summer, I can teach them how to collect yellow copper more effectively, so that your people will have more to trade to us. This yellow copper can make your people rich!”



Footnotes:

[1] The Great River is the OTL St. Lawrence River. The Stadaconans are now referring to it as the River Kanata, but the Hochelagans still call it by its traditional name in their language.
[2] I've looked it up, and making plaster would be very possible for these Stadaconans. They would need pickaxes for breaking up limestone, which they can make in their forge, and then could fire the limestone to make quicklime in the same bonfires they used for firing pottery (I'm not sure if they would have had kilns at this point – if they did then they could also use those). Then, all that's needed is to add water and you have plaster! This is another craft that the French have brought to Stadacona along with blacksmithing, brewing, cheesemaking, and basic carpentry.
[3] In Iroquoian cultures, captives taken during wartime were often adopted into a local family. Here, the Stadaconans have further elaborated on this practice, promising captives not to torture and kill them if they convert to Christianity and settle down in Stadacona. While many of these Stadaconans start out as captives, they generally grow to like the Stadaconan lifestyle enough that they come to see Stadacona as home.
[4] The Stadaconans have done away with the clan system of social organization because such a large percentage of the town is made up of immigrants, but still retain the idea that women elders should be in charge of the distribution of food and other goods along with family affairs such as marriages and adoptions. In many traditional Iroquoain societies, this role was taken on by Clan Mothers. When New Stadacona was just a small settlement of 100-200, Yegasetsi took on this role as sole Headwoman. Now that (New) Stadacona is a town of over 500 there is a council of Town Mothers that serve this function.
[5] Adolescent women in Iroquoain culture were noted to be very sexually forward (at least in comparison to the attitudes of the missionaries who documented much of the culture).
[6] The Copper River is the name the Hochelagans in TTL use for the OTL Ottawa River. The name comes from the fact that it is the main trade route that leads to the copper-mining country around Lake Superior.
[7] Omamiwinini is the Algonquin people's name for themselves. Having very little documentation of the Hochelagan language, I'm not going to try to re-create Hochelagan names for their neighbours.
[8] Corn fermented in a pond was an OTL Huron delicacy. In TTL, the Hochelagans enjoy it too.
[9] This is the OTL Chaudiere River which flows into the *St. Lawrence close to Stadacona and is one of the main trading routes with the Abenaki and other peoples to the South.
[10] This is the Mi'kmaq people's name for themselves. Again, I will be using various nation's names for themselves whenever possible instead of referring to them by the names that OTL were given to them later by European explorers and missionaries. From what we can tell there was an ongoing dispute over the fishing grounds in the Gaspé peninsula at the time of Cartier's arrival, and, in TTL that dispute is ongoing.
[11] The Atikamekw lived in the upper *St.-Maurice River valley, and OTL were trade partners with the Innu. In TTL furs come down the *St-Maurice River from Atikamekw territory to be traded at Stadacona.
[12] “Yellow copper” is gold of course. I have read in at least one source that, before European contact, the natives peoples of Northeastern North America did use gold and silver for ornamentation when it was readily available in the same way they used copper. However, they placed a higher prestige value on copper than they did on gold or silver because it was more useful for making tools, and thus gold and silver weren't traded nearly as extensively as copper was.
[13] The trader's mother found a gold nugget along the *Gilbert River, which was the site of one of Canada's first gold rushes. See http://www.uragold.com/history.php for more information.

 

[telynk]

Update #5 - Charles Grignon

(Stadacona, June 1578)

Charles returned to Stadacona to see a great ship anchored in the middle of the Kanata River [1]. This was no surprise to him. He had waved to the ship as it had passed him by two days ago. He had spent the early summer at the mouth of the Kanata River leading a war party against the L'Nuk [2]. Victory had been achieved, and he returned with twenty captives, while he had only lost two men in battle. He hoped that next year the L'Nuk would give up trying to contest the fishing grounds, and he could lead his warriors off to fight another enemy.

When the ship had passed him on its way upriver, Charles had been surprised by its size and splendour. Until two years ago, the only ships that had come to Stadacona had been small fishing and whaling ships making an extra stop in Stadacona to trade. Then, that had all changed with the discovery of the Abenaki gold fields. Henri, Charles father, had spent the winter of 1575-76 in France making a deal with the merchant Georges Clémenceau. In the summer of 1576, Henri had returned to Stadacona with Monsieur Huot, Clémenceau's agent. Huot was an expert in gold mining, and his job was to train the Abenakis in panning for gold, and to enforce Clémenceau's monopoly on Stadaconan gold exports. Then, last summer, the first of Clémenceau's great ships had arrived bearing the cargo Clémenceau had promised in exchange for the gold.

Clémenceau's ships were larger and better built than the fishing and whaling ships Charles was used to seeing, and carried much more valuable cargo. The first ship had brought more iron tools than Charles had seen in one place before, gunpowder and ammunition for the old arquebuses, and a flock of sheep. The sheep were part of Henri's plan to make Stadacona more self-sufficient. The population had now grown to the point where it was no longer practical to hunt for skins to clothe everyone, and cloth imported from Europe was too expensive for everyday use. Most Stadaconans were now wearing leather from Stadacona's cattle herds, but it was clear that, in the long term, it would be much better for Stadacona to have its own source of cloth. So, Clémenceau had shipped over the sheep last summer, and earlier this year had sent a weaver with his loom to set up shop in Stadacona.

However, the ship that Charles now saw anchored off Stadacona was definitely not a typical merchant ship. It was certainly as big as Clémenceau's ships were, but it was longer and narrower, and had a different set of sails. Also, while Clémenceau's ships carried a cannon or two for defense against Spanish raiders, this ship was bristling with guns. Charles got a feeling that this ship had not come from Clémenceau after all.

Charles soon discovered that this suspicion was correct. As soon as he pulled his canoe up to the dock, Charles was whisked away by his father, who took him back to Fort-St-Francis. Hanging over the door of Henri's room was the suit of clothes he had bought in France: colourful, elaborate garments, which Henri insisted were only the dress of a common trader back in France. “Put these on,” Henri said to his son, “they should fit you fairly well: you're not much larger than I am.”

“Why do I have to wear these?” Charles asked.

“Today, my son, today you are a Comte.”

“A what?”

“A Comte. It's a rank of the French nobility. Your mother's father Donnacona was made Comte du Canada by King Francis back when he was in France. There's someone on that ship asking for an audience with the current Comte, and, well, that's you.”

“Why me? Don't titles in France pass from a father to his sons before his daughters? Doesn't that mean that my uncle should be Comte instead?”

“Your uncle doesn't speak French, and thus wouldn't be able to negotiate with the Frenchman, a Chevalier [3] by the name of Gérard, who is seeking an audience. Your mother and I decided to tell Chevalier Gérard that you, as the grandson of Donnacona, are the current Comte. He didn't ask how you were descended from Donnacona, and just confirmed that you are his grandson. He wanted to speak with you as soon as you returned to Stadacona, and I want to make sure that you are presentable before he arrives. These are not the clothes of an aristocrat but at least they're French clothes. Please put them on, Gérard is probably waiting already.”

Charles got dressed, and let his father lead him into the room that had once been Roberval's office. It had been outfitted as a makeshift audience chamber for the occasion. Chevalier Étienne Gérard was already standing in the room, flanked by two soldiers. “Ah, at last the Comte is here,” he said, “how did your campaign go? Did the enemy run and flee when they saw your overwhelming numbers?”

Charles could detect the sarcasm in Gérard's voice. His father had told him that even the smallest European armies consisted of a thousand men, and he understood how small his war party must seem to Gérard. But, he refused to be fazed by it. “Ahh, you Frenchmen are so inefficient. Why send ten thousand men to win a war when you can do it with a hundred? I can count my dead on one hand. How many soldiers died for you on your last campaign? One thing I can say about us Kanatians is that we don't waste lives.”

“Messieurs,” Henri broke in, “comparison of military tactics can wait. I believe that the Chevalier here has pressing business that he needs to discuss with you.”

“Yes, I do,” replied Gérard, handing a scroll to Charles, “His Most Christian Majesty King Charles IX [4] has sent this to you. It seems that you have learned the location of the Golden Kingdom of the Saguenay which your grandfather spoke of, and which Cartier and Roberval were unable to find. King Charles commands you to abide by the agreement your grandfather made with his grandfather and provide us with guides to lead us to this Golden Kingdom, provisions to feed us through the duration of the expedition, and porters to carry our supplies. We mean to conquer the Saguenay and bring the gold back to France in the name of the King!”

Before Charles could reply, Henri broke in, “The Comte here was not yet born when this agreement was made, but I was. I remember that Comte Jean-Paul Donnacona clearly stated that the Land of the Saguenay lay to the North and West. The gold which our Abenaki allies have discovered lies to the South and East of here. Yes we have found gold, but it is not the golden land that Donnacona agreed to help King Francis conquer. The Compte has no obligation to support the conquest of the gold fields. We have already arranged to have the gold shipped back to France to enrich His Most Christian Majesty the King, and starting a war over these gold fields would do more harm than good.”

“The gold is being shipped back to France to enrich Clémenceau and yourselves!” Gérard sneered, “King Charles has nothing to do with your arrangement!” He turned to Charles, “If you will not support our expedition of conquest, then you are not a loyal vassal of the King and will be stripped of your lands and title! The cannons on board my ship could turn your palisade to splinters and our soldiers could overwhelm your band of warriors within hours. Provide us with the support we've asked for, and we will leave your town intact. Refuse us, and we will spare no one!”

“I'm sorry that Henri here has not been clear about our intentions,” Charles replied. “We have every intention of supporting your expedition of conquest. While we do not have any guides we can provide you with who have been to the gold fields themselves, we can certainly provide you with provisions for your expedition, canoes to take you up the Swift River[5], and men to paddle the canoes. However, we will need something in return. When my grandfather agreed to serve the King of France, the King in return agreed to protect him from his enemies. I do not object to the King's decision to make war on the Abenakis, but I will remind you that the King has an obligation to protect his loyal vassals in the case of such a war. With my army as small and poorly armed as it is, I can't hope to hold out against an Abenaki attack. But, if every one of my soldiers were armed with an arquebus, they could make short work of any Abenaki war party armed with spears. I am sure that on that great ship you have there, you enough arms and ammunition to spare one hundred weapons for a loyal vassal of King Charles. If you can show us that King Charles has every intention to uphold his grandfather's word and defend us against our enemies, then we will support King Charles' war against the Abenakis. But if you choose to attack us instead, then you will get no supplies from us, and will run out of food before you even reach the gold fields. The choice is yours.”

Gérard thought for a moment, “I have one hundred men aboard my ship, and two hundred arquebuses: two for each man. I can provide you with fifty, but no more than that. I need the extras to replace any that get damaged in battle.”

“Well then I can provide you with provisions but no canoes. You will have to find your own way up the river.” Charles remembered something his father had once told him: You have them as soon as they make an offer, he had said. Well, Gérard had made an offer. Clearly, he wanted what Charles was selling.

* * * * * *

(Stadacona, October 1578)

Charles left the feast hall and the shouts of the French soldiers inside. They seemed to be having a good enough time, eating meat and corn bread, and drinking the local Stadaconan beer. They were certainly getting along well enough with the Stadaconan women at the feast. Even those who didn't speak any French had no trouble getting the soldier's attention. It's hard to think that, just a few months ago, they were talking about slaughtering all of us, Charles thought.

Clearly, victory had made a difference. Gérard's army had reached the Abenaki encampment at the gold fields less than a week after departing Stadacona, and had driven the Abenakis off quickly and easily. The soldiers had spent much of the late summer and early fall building a fort up at the gold fields, and gathering as much gold as they could to send back to France. Gérard had arrived back in Stadacona with his men a week ago, and they had spent most the last week preparing the ship for departure. Gérard himself would be spending the winter in the fort by the gold fields with a garrison of 20 men, but the rest of the soldiers would be returning to France to bring the gold they had gathered to the King. Gérard had openly expressed his desire to obtain a governorship over the Abenaki lands in exchange for his service to France. Charles suspected that Gérard's decision to remain in personal command of the troops remaining was designed to make it harder for King Charles to replace him.

The morale of Gérard's men had been low when they had arrived back at Stadacona. They had run out of their supplies of beer and cheese within a month of leaving Stadacona, and had subsisted on dried corn and venison for most of their time in the gold fields. Charles had offered to serve the men a feast of beef, bread and beer in exchange for another fifty arquebuses, and the soldiers had jumped at the opportunity. Gérard himself had been reluctant to part with more of his weapons, but agreed to do so once he realized that the alternative might be mutiny.

As Gérard and his men feasted themselves in the hall, Charles walked up towards Fort-St-Francis, where his father was waiting for him. “Charles,” Henri said to him as he entered, “what word do you have from the soldiers?”

“Well,” Charles replied, “the good news is that none of them are excited about coming back in the spring. None of them particularly enjoyed serving on this expedition. If King Charles sends more troops next year, they probably won't be the same ones.”

“And I think there's a chance that he won't send more troops. When I was in France three years ago there was conflict heating up between the Catholics and Huguenots [6]. Then, Clémenceau's ship this summer brought word that it had broken out into war. I can imagine that King Charles needs all the troops he can get to fight his war at home.”

“Yes, but, he also needs all the gold he can get to pay these troops. He's not going to give up the gold fields easily... What's the word from Clémenceau's agent?”

“Huot is planning on leaving with the soldiers. He is convinced that he has no more work to do here, as Gérard has no desire to use middlemen in his shipments of gold to the King. I think that he wants to spend the voyage making connections with Gérard's soldiers in the hopes that he will be the one Gérard contacts if they need someone to build a full-scale mine. He did mention, though, that if we are able to regain control of the gold trade, he'd be happy to sell us more weapons and ammunition in exchange for the re-establishment of Clémenceau's monopoly.”

“Well, that's at least hopeful. Clémenceau has faith in us.”

“I wouldn't call it faith. He just wants to keep his foot in the door in case Gérard's expedition goes the way Roberval's did. Besides, it's not us that he continues to work with, it's me. He's still upset with you for supporting Gérard's campaign against the Abenakis. I keep having to reassure Huot that I will not let you take charge of negotiations again.”

“Well, I didn't have much of a choice there, did I? It was help him out or have him burn down Stadacona. But as soon as his ship departs, things will be different. Gérard will have only 20 men left with him at the fort, and by the spring the numbers may very well be even fewer. We have enough arquebuses now to outfit 100 men. We can spent the winter training them, and then attack in the spring...”

“Charles, my son, don't be too hasty. Remember, those are soldiers of the King of France we are talking about. If you attack them, you will be making war against France. While King Charles may currently be distracted by domestic affairs, in a few year's time he could send ten thousand men against you. Remember how vulnerable Stadacona felt when Gérard theatened to attack this summer? Well, that's something you'll have to worry about more and more if you get on King Charles' bad side. What we need to look for is not a military solution but a diplomatic solution. Remember, what kept Cartier and Roberval from turning on the Stadaconans thirty years ago was the fact that King Francis had made Donnacona a Comte. Donnacona made himself useful to the King, and it was the fear of King Francis' wrath which kept Cartier and Roberval in line. We need to do the same here. We need to ensure that King Charles needs us more than he needs Gérard. Then, and only then, will we be safe.”

* * * * * *

(Stadacona, May 1579)

As they travelled up the Swift River, Charles listened to the French soldier's story. It seemed that the winter had been harder on the garrison than they had expected: none of the soldiers had seen as much snow as there had been this past winter, and, for lack of snowshoes, they were unable to hunt for food. Five of the twenty soldiers had died of starvation before the snows had begun to melt in spring.

This soldier, Claude was his name, had been returning from a spring hunt with a freshly killed deer when he had heard shouts and war cries from the direction of Gérard's fort. He had immediately dropped the deer and had crept closer to see what was happening. He had caught sight of an Abenaki war party of a few hundred who had surrounded the fort, and were taunting the soldiers within, trying to draw them out to where they would be vulnerable to spears and arrows.

One of the Abenakis had caught sight of Claude, and had chased him and his hunting partner away from the fort. Claude's hunting partner had been shot with an Abenaki arrow, but Claude had made it away, and had run to Stadacona. He had told Charles of the Abenaki attack, and had requested that Charles return upriver with enough men to repel the Abenakis and break the seige. While Claude believed that the remaining garrison could make short work of the Abenakis if they chose to assault the fort, he explained that Gérard was already low on supplies and couldn't withstand a seige if the Abenakis waited it out.

So now, Charles, leading a war party of 100, was traveling up the Swift River with Claude as a guide. He wasn't sure what he would find when he reached the fort. The Abenakis weren't usually the sort of warriors to attempt a prolonged seige, but, then again, this would be a very different sort of war than the ones they usually fought. Usually, the Abenakis, like the other peoples of Turtle Island[7], went to war mostly for prisoners and plunder. They didn't usually fight seiges because the potential gain wasn't worth the effort. But now that they had been driven off their own land, they might have more of a reason to fight. And if they had captured Claude's hunting partner alive, and if they had been able to communicate with him, they may have figured out how close the garrison was to starvation.

Sure enough, when Charles' war party drew closer to the gold fields, they saw the signs of Abenaki presence. They saw trees that had been freshly cut for firewood, and the remains of a deer carcass which had been butchered. Charles sent out scouts to locate the Abenaki encampment, and they returned to Charles without being spotted themselves.

Charles attacked the Abenakis at dawn while many of the warriors were just waking up. The Abenakis handn't been prepared for such an attack, and the Stadaconan arquebuses made short work of the Abenaki warriors. Fifty Abenakis were killed, and another fifty taken prisoner, while the remainder fled. Charles left most of his party to guard the prisoners and keep watch in case the Abenakis returned, and approached the fort with a party of thirty men.

“This is Charles Grignon, Comte du Canada here, I need to speak with the Chevalier!” Charles called out in French.

“Gérard is dead!” came the reply.

That's a relief, thought Charles, whoever's in charge now will have to be easier to work with. “Then I need to speak with whoever currently commands the garrison!”

Soon a soldier emerged from the fort. Charles recognized him from the feast last fall, but couldn't remember his name. “My name is Jean Boulanger,” the solider said, “and I am in command. I must thank you for driving away the Abenakis. There are only six of us left, and if we had to hold out any longer we would have had no choice but to eat our fallen comrades. Gérard doubted your loyalty to the King, and it is good to see that he was wrong.”

“Gérard was wrong about a good many things, and one of them was his ability to hold the gold fields against the Abenakis. I lead the only army in the region capable of defeating the Abenakis, and thus I ask that you turn over defense of this fort to me. You and your men will be able to return on the next ship back to France.”

“Thank you. I'm sure King Charles will be grateful to you for holding this fort for him until he can send a governor to take over.”

“Oh, King Charles won't be sending a governor. Or if he does, the governor will meet the same fate as Gérard. I need you to carry a message from me back to your King. The gold fields are part of the Compté du Canada, and thus they are a part of my lands, not a colony that can be governed by a Frenchman from afar. Tell King Charles that, as his loyal vassal, I will send him tribute each year equal to the amount of gold that departed with your ship in the fall. Tell him that I will forgive Gérard's incursion onto my lands if he refrains from sending any more French soldiers until I specifically request assistance. Tell him that he can have our gold as tribute, but will not see any of it if he tries to take it again by force.”

Footnotes:
[1] again, the Kanata river is TTL's name for the OTL St. Lawrence
[2] l'Nuk is the name the people we know as the Mi'kmaq use for themselves. They inhabit what is now the Canadian Maritimes, and contested the fishing grounds off the *Gaspé penninsula with the Stadaconans.
[3] Chevalier is the French word for Knight, meaning that Gérard has been Knighted by the French King. Calling him “Chevalier” is equivalent to calling an Englishman “Sir”.
[4] This is not the same Charles IX as OTL, as he was born after the POD. This Charles IX will live longer, and have sons of his own to succeed him. I haven't really make any more specific decisions than that about what's going on in France...
[5] Again, this is the OTL Chaudiere, which leads to the gold fields.
[6] This is TTL's incarnation of the French Wars of Religion
[7] This term is starting to gain currency as the Kanatian name for North America.

 

[telynk]

Update 6 - The Tributary Period

an excerpt from The History of Old Kanata 1500-1700 by Georges Hantero (Turtle)


When exactly Stadacona's “Tributary Period” began is a matter of much debate between scholars. Many place its beginning with the discovery of gold in 1575, others with the Gérard's Second Saguenay Expedition of 1578-1579, and still others with the formalization of the agreement between Henri Grignon, Stadacona's unofficial ambassador to France, and King Charles IX later in the year 1579. It is this last agreement that gave the “Tributary Period” its name: the agreement reiterated the relationship of vassalage between Compte Charles Grignon and King Charles of France, and made arrangements for non-interference in Stadaconan affairs by France in exchange for an annual payment of tribute in gold mined from the newly-developed gold fields.


For the purposes of this book, we define the “Tributary Period” to be synonymous with the reign of Charles Grignon from his election as Compte in 1578 to his death in 1591. This time represented a period of relative prosperity for Stadacona, due to Stadacona's control of the Swift River gold fields. This prosperity lead to the introduction of new domesticates, technologies and trades from Europe into Stadacona, which then spread throughout Kanata in subsequent decades. Thus, understanding the Tributary Period is essential for understanding the rapid changes which would take place in Hochelaga in the first half of the 17th century.


The Population of Stadacona


It seems that the population of Stadacona had grown steadily since the plague of 1564. In 1564, the population was at its lowest of probably only a little over 200. By 1580 it seems the population had grown to around 600, and by 1590 the population living in Stadacona, including both French and Kanatians, was approaching 1000.


There were three main forces driving population growth. The first was the availability of European-derived goods in Stadacona that weren't available elsewhere. Many people from neighbouring nations saw the Stadaconan lifestyle as enviable, and chose to move to Stadacona in order to adopt that lifestyle.


The second force driving population growth was actually disease. While Stadacona was always the first town hit by new epidemics coming from Europe, it was also the only one containing a sizable number of people who were resistant to these diseases, and thus tended to suffer less than other towns. Many refugees from other towns devastated by these epidemics moved to Stadacona.


Lastly, Stadacona's population grew greatly due to warfare. The taking of captives had always been a part of Kanatian warfare, and some of those captives (mostly women and children) had always been adopted into the victor's clans and families. However, there had also been a large number of captives (mostly men) who were ritualistically tortured and executed. With the conversion of Stadacona to Christianity, the practice of ritualistic torture was ended, and the proportion of captives who were adopted increased dramatically. With the acquisition of firearms by the Stadaconans in the 1570s, the number of captives taken in war began to exceed the number of Stadaconan warriors killed in combat, meaning that warfare had begun to have a net positive impact on Stadacona's population.


In addition to the arrival of new immigrants, refugees, and adoptees in Stadacona from neighbouring nations, there were also a number of French immigrants who arrived during the Tributary Period. They included Clémenceau's agents as well as artisans and craftspeople who had been recruited by Clémenceau to work their trades in Stadacona in exchange for gold. It seems that many of them were Huguenots from La Rochelle who were happy to leave France in order to escape persecution. These Frenchmen and their families lived in a complex of buildings that Clémenceau had built outside of Stadacona's palisade, which soon became known as Petite Rochelle. The buildings of Petite Rochelle were owned by Clémenceau and managed by his agents. The collection of rent in gold from the artisans resident at Petite Rochelle was one of Clémenceau's most dependable sources of profit.


Gold Mining


The main source of Stadacona's prosperity during the Tributary Period was the mining of gold in the Swift River [1] gold fields. Gold collection had started with the Abenakis who had been taught to pan for gold by Clémenceau's agents. The Abenakis had been displaced by the French soldiers under Gérard, who had constructed a system of hydraulic sluices to collect gold from the river. Then, in 1579, the French soliders were replaced by Stadaconas who took over the mining operation.


The gold deposits in the Gérard River were mined using a series of hydraulic sluices into which sand and gravel from the river bank was fed by shovel. The gold sank to the bottom of the sluice boxes where it could be collected and sent down the Swift River to Stadacona by canoe. Labourers were required to shovel gravel and sand into the sluice boxes, and thus a small village was set up outside Fort Gérard (Charles Grignon had named the fort and the gold fields after the man who had led the Second Saguenay Expedition – likely as a way of reminding others of Gérard's fate) to house the labourers.


The initial labour force settled at the gold fields was a group of fifty Abenaki warriors who had been captured outside Fort Gérard by Charles Grignon when he lifted the seige in 1579. While these captives were formally adopted and made citizens of Stadacona by the Town Mothers, they were allocated housing at the gold fields, and were told that their job would now be to feed sand and gravel into the sluices in exchange for food, clothing, and whatever else they needed.


This arrangement would prove to be problematic when the next Abenaki attack on Fort Gérard came in 1580. During the attack, many of the labourers fought with the Abenakis against the Stadaconans defending the fort. While the attack was ultimately defeated, more than half the labour force had either been killed or had fled with the remaining attackers. At this point, it became clear that any labour force made up of war captives would be less than trustworthy, and other measures would have to be introduced to ensure their loyalty.


The first measure introduced by the Stadaconans to help ensure the loyalty of the labourers was to expand the gold field village into a self-sufficient town by settling a number of Stadaconan families there. The Stadaconan families would tend fields of crops and herds of cattle to feed the labourers, and would be responsible for preventing the labourers from escaping. The labour force itself was supplemented by new war captives, and was settled in a separate longhouse from the Stadaconan families.


While the term “slave” has often been used to refer to these ex-captive labourers, there is significant debate over how much it applies here. While the labourers were definitely a separate class from the rest of Stadaconan society, and while they were kept in their village at least somewhat against their will, they still maintained a number of the rights of other Stadaconans. The labourers had the right to appoint a spokeswoman to represent them at the Town Mothers' council, for example. The only rights the labourers definitatively lacked compared to other Stadaconans were the right to leave the village, the right to choose what work to perform, and the right to carry weapons.


The gold field labourers also had the right to marry Stadaconan women, and their children were raised as ordinary Stadaconans by their mothers. Thus, the class of labourer was not hereditary, and thus doesn't really fit the term “undercaste” any more than it fits the term “slave”. This particular social arrangement seems to have been unique to Stadacona during the Tributary Period, before true slavery was introduced in the 1590s.


Agriculture and Industry


The fields surrounding the town of Stadacona were used for growing a variety of crops. The primary crops were still squash, beans, corn, and sunflowers, but European imports such as barley, rye, cabbage, and turnips were grown as well. They also maintained extensive pasture land, on which they raised cattle and sheep (in the later 1580s horses were introduced as well). To a large extent, farming was seen as women's work and animal husbandry as men's work. The keeping of livestock had largely displaced hunting and fishing as the primary men's activities, although the populations of neighbouring villages still hunted deer and traveled downriver to fish.


The period of experimentation in farming methods that had taken place from the 1540s to 1560s seems to have stabilized by the Tributary Period into a standard Stadaconan practice, containing both Kanatian-derived and European-derived elements. Mound-based farming using hand-held hoes had been replaced by row-based farming using ploughs pulled by oxen, although the practice of growing squash, beans, and corn together as companion plants continued. The Kantian practice of abandoning fields once their fertility had been depleted was continued, although the lifetime of a given field had been increased by the use of manure in addition to indigenous Kanatian fertilizers such as fish [2]. New fields were continually being cleared to keep pace with population growth and replace abandoned fields. Old abandoned fields were largely turned into pasture land rather than forest, meaning that Stadaconans had to travel farther and farther afield to find wood for fuel and construction.


One of the most important uses of cattle in Stadacona was as draft animals. Oxen were used to plough fields, to help fell trees and drag them back to town for use in construction, and to pull carts. The advent of oxcarts (and later horse-drawn wagons) was crucially important to Stadacona as, by the 1580s, fields were located far enough from the town that bringing tools, seed, and manure to the fields, and bringing crops back to town was now difficult to do by hand. While some sources say that crude carts had been built as early as the 1560s, the arrival of a wheelwright in Stadacona in 1582 is generally seen as the beginning of practical oxcart technology.


Sheep, while being used for meat, were mostly used to provide wool to make yarn and cloth. The cloth industry was one of the most important in 1580s Stadacona as it meant that the Stadaconans were no longer dependent upon imported furs for warm clothing (Stadaconans had largely ceased hunting for furs themselves by this time). The cleaning, dying, and spinning of wool into yarn was largely done by the older Stadaconan men who were unable to take sheep out to pasture any more. The weaving of the yarn into cloth, on the other hand, was done by Frenchmen who had brought their looms with them from France.


As can be seen with the preceding description of the cloth industry, industrial activity in Stadacona was largely divided between “cottage” industries undertaken by ordinary Stadaconans and “artisan” industries undertaken by the French craftsmen in Petite Rochelle. The cottage industries included pottery (which was an indigenous craft and was not, contrary to the beliefs of the Jesuits, introduced by the French), basic carpentry, baking and brewing, cheesemaking, blacksmithing, making of lime plaster, sewing of garments from cloth and leather, and beadwork for jewelry and wampum belts. The artisan industries included weaving, wheelmaking, stonemasonry, woodworking, shoemaking, goldsmithing, and bladesmithing.


The division between “cottage” and “artisan” industries was far from fixed. Knife-making for example, began as a cottage industry with knives made of wrought iron being made at Stadacona's forge, but became an artisanal industry once a bladesmith from France arrived with the knowledge of how to make tempered steel blades. Carpentry work was generally divided into “skilled” tasks which were done by artisans and “unskilled” tasks which were done by ordinary Stadaconans, but the dividing line shifted depending on the amount and types of labour available. In addition, many of the French craftsmen took Kanatian apprentices, and thus skills and knowledge that were once restricted to a few artisans began to spread throughout the population.


One important thing to remember about Stadacona's industry was the fact that Stadacona was the industrial centre for the whole region of Lower Kanata. The cottage-industry skills that had been introduced to Kanata at the time of the First Saguenay Expedition in the 1540s had had a chance to spread to neighbouring towns and villages, but were still concentrated in Stadacona. So while, for example, each village made their own leather and cheese, the brewery in Stadacona was still only one of three in Lower Kanata in 1590. However, the real concentration of industry in Stadacona lay in the artisan industries, where the two weavers in Petite Rochelle were the only weavers in Northeastern North America at the time. This meant that Stadacona's industries had great potential for export to neighbouring villages and nations, bringing more wealth to Stadacona than gold would have on its own.


The Organization of Stadacona's Economy


During the 1580s, Stadacona was the point of interface between two very different economic systems. The indigenous Kanatian economic system was a somewhat communalist gift economy, where property was held by clans rather than individuals, and where most trade occurred through exchanges of gifts between traders. The fact that gifts were, in most circumstances, expected to be reciprocated by a gift of roughly equal value in return, has led many to refuse to describe the indigenous Kanatian economy as a “true” gift economy, instead describing it as a variant on the barter system. Some have even described the indigenous Kantian economy as a money economy, describing wampum beads as a form of currency, although others see wampum as simply the most valuable trade good among many.


Whatever its theoretical description might be, the indigenous Kanatian economy was able to sustain thriving trade routes reaching throughout Turtle Island [3]. Stadacona was well connected to these trade routes, and was the centre of a network of trade which brought furs, food, and raw materials to Stadacona in exchange for iron, cloth, glass, and other manufatured goods. A number of these manufactured goods were produced in Stadacona itself by both “cottage” and “artisan” industries. However, it seems that most of the goods that travelled upriver from Stadacona originated in Europe, and had been traded at Stadacona for furs and gold.


But Stadacona of the 1580s was as much a part of the mercantilist French economy as it was a part of the indigenous Kanatian one. Everyday Stadaconans depended on the French merchant Georges Clémenceau for many of the goods that they used. Most notably, large quantities of iron were imported from Europe to be fashioned into tools by Stadaconan smiths. This meant that, when dealing with Clémenceau's agents and other French traders (while Clémenceau had a monopoly on the gold trade, furs continued to be exported by others), Stadaconans had to bargain and haggle in a way that they didn't when dealing with other Kanatians, or with other neighbouring nations.


While most of the population of Stadacona shared resources with the town as a whole through gifts and exchanges, and allowed the Town Mothers' council to redistribute and manage these communal resources, the Frenchmen living in Petite Rochelle maintained their own private property. These Frenchmen demanded to be paid for their services in gold, and in turn used this gold to purchase food, clothing, and other goods from Stadacona. Over the course of the Tributary Period, there were a number of Stadaconans who felt that they had required enough artisanal skill to become independent craftspeople themselves and break from the town's communal system. If these Stadaconans could convince Clémenceau that their skills were valuable enough that they could afford the rent, they would be permitted to move to Petite Rochelle with their families and practice their trade full-time.


The Town Mothers' council was in charge of the management of the economy as a whole. They determined which farmland would be used to produce which crops, how much food and firewood to store for the winter, and other matters concerned with town's economy. While the Town Mothers made economic policy, the person responsible for trade negotiations themselves was known as the Head Trader. Henri Grignon was the original Head Trader, and when he departed to France in 1579 to serve as Stadacona's ambassador, a young Métis by the name of Gregoire Bourget would be appointed by the Town Mothers to succeed him. The Head Trader was responsible for all trade negotiations, whether it was a part of fur trading with nations farther inland, gold trading with Clémenceau, or fees for services with the residents of Petite Rochelle.


Stadacona's Political System


The main difference between the political system of Stadacona during the Tributary Period and most other Kanatian towns is the lack of distinct clans in Stadacona. It seems that, while Stadacona likely had a clan system before the arrival of Cartier, the clan system broke down with the division of the town into Old Stadacona and New Stadacona in the 1550s and 1560s. New Stadacona had a small enough population born into a variety of different clans, and likely organized itself as a single clan with a single Clan Mother (it seems that “Marie-Claire” Yegasetsi Grignon served in this position in the 1560s). [4]


By the 1570s Stadacona had grown enough that the single Clan Mother had been replaced with a council of Town Mothers. The council periodically expanded as Stadacona grew: the Town Mothers made a decision that they needed to expand the council whenever the work of coordinating the town became too much to manage without a larger council. When the council was expanded or when a Town Mother died and needed to be replaced, a meeting of all of Stadacona's women was called to elect a new Town Mother.


While the Town Mothers were Stadacona's women's council, Stadacona, unlike other Kanatian towns, didn't have a men's council as such. While most Kanatian towns had a men's council made up of one (or more than one) male representative from each clan, Stadacona's organization as if it was a single, large clan, meant that it had a council of one. This single male leader was known as the Peace Chief. Peace Chief was the position that had been held by Donnacona during the time of the the First Saguenay Expedition, and by Agona after him (although it appears that during Donnacona's and Agona's time, there were other male council members in addition to the Peace Chief). During the Tributary Period, Stadacona's Peace Chief was a man by the name of Christophe Guaragaya, whom we know little about. It seems that when a Peace Chief died, his successor would be chosen by a meeting of all of Stadacona's men in the same way that Town Mother's were chosen by a meeting of all of Stadacona's women.


In addition to the Peace Chief, Stadacona, had also always had a War Chief. During the Tributary Period, Charles Grignon served as both War Chief and Comte du Canada. While, in most Kanatian towns, the War Chief was seen as subordinate to the Peace Chief and the Clan Mothers, in Tributary Period Stadacona, things were the other way around, and the War Chief carried more power and authority. This was likely partially due to Charles Grignon's position as Compte lending authority to the role of the War Chief, and partially due to the fact that the Tributary Period was a time of constant war for Stadacona.


Regional Politics


The division of the valley of the River Kanata[5] into Upper Kanata and Lower Kanata is not a product of the colonial era. The current political division, following the courses of the St-Pierre and St-Jacques Rivers[6], roughly parallels a political division which was already present long before Cartier's arrival in the 16th century.


The original division between Upper Kanata and Lower Kanata was one between people who were primarily farmers and people who relied on fishing as much as they did on farming. The Lower Kanatians, inhabiting a colder climate and less fertile land, spent much of their summers fishing downriver, while the Upper Kanatians undertook no such long voyages. This led to cultural differences between the Upper and Lower Kanatians, which in turn led to periodic warfare. In order to provide some security in case of war, the Upper and Lower Kanatians each formed clusters of villages to support mutual defence, and these clusters of villages developed into the four Kanatian nations encountered by Europeans in the 16th century.


Each of these four nations had national councils made up of representatives from each clan in each village of the nation. The men's councils, made up of one man from each clan from each village were the most prominent in national politics, and were in charge of most affairs which involved more than one village. While there were sometimes national-level women's councils that met, most Clan Mothers' councils dealt with matters at the village level only. [7]


Stadacona had been the largest town in Lower Kanata since at least the time of Cartier's voyages, and was the traditional meeting place for the national councils of the nation we now refer to as the “Stadaconan Nation” (which occupied most of the territory of Lower Kanata). This patten continued into the Tributary Period, with national councils made up of one representative from each clan within each settlement attending meetings in Stadacona. Even though Stadacona was the largest town in the nation, it only sent a single representative to these meetings, Stadacona's Peace Chief, due to the fact that Stadacona was considered by the other villages in the nation to be a single clan.


However, despite Stadacona's under-representation at national council meetings, Stadacona actually exerted more and more power within the nation as the Tributary Period went on. Charles Grignon's title of Comte du Canada gave him titular authority (based on French law) over all of Lower Kanata and he used his firearm-equipped warriors to enforce that authority. Charles Grignon succeeded (through diplomatic pressure backed by firearms) at having himself named War Chief of the whole nation, and securing guarantees from the other villages in the nation that they wouldn't appoint any War Chiefs of their own to challenge his authority. In times of war, Comte Charles recruited warriors from every village in the nation to join in his war parties, but usually fought the war with Stadacona's interests at heart. When the warriors returned home at the end of a campaign, Charles confiscated their arquebuses, and kept them in Fort-St-Francis so that he could maintain a monopoly on the use of firearms.


The other three Kanatian nations (those of Upper Kanata) were the “Maisounan nation” or “People of the Lake”, centred on the upper end of Lake Maisouna; the “Hochelagan nation” or “People of the Island”, centred on the island of Hochelaga; and the “Tannesagan nation” or “People of the Rapids”, made of the villages located upriver from Hochelaga. [8] By the time of the Tributary Period, these three nations had joined together to form the Kanatian Confederacy [9], although historians are not in consensus as to when this Confederacy had been founded. Some historians claim the Kanatian Confederacy was a direct response to French influence in Stadacona, while others claim it had been around for hundreds or even thousands of years before Cartier's first voyage.


What is clear is that, by the year 1581, war had broken out between all three nations of the Kanatian Confederacy and Stadacona, and the three nations coordinated their war efforts through the Confederacy. Until the Tributary Period, Stadacona had only fought one war at a time: for example the 1570s had seen war between the Stadaconans and the L'Nuk [10] over their fishing grounds. The Tributary Period saw continuing conflict with the L'Nuk, war with the Abenakis who wanted to retake the gold fields, as well as an outbreak of war with the Kanatian Confederacy. With war on three sides, the only neighbours Stadacona had peace with were the Atikamekw and Innu to the North. Stadacona, despite being the only nation with access to firearms, didn't have the population to fight three enemies at once....


Footnotes:


[1] Remember, the Swift River is the name for the OTL Chaudiere River which leads to the gold fields.
[2] I haven't found any sources that say specifically that the St. Lawrence Iroquoains used fish as fertlizers, but other Northeatern agriculturalists did, so I'm assuming that the practice was widespread (and the Stadaconans themselves have a traditional of collecting large numbers of fish on their summer fishing expeditions, so it seems likely)
[3] Turtle Island is the English translation of the Kanatian name for North America.
[4] Yegasetsi's title was “Headwoman” rather than “Clan Mother”, but the author of this work is more or less correct about how the “Town Mothers'” council came about. The modification of the clan system present in Tributary Period Stadacona was more nuanced than the author makes it out to be. To Stadaconans, conversion to Christianity was seen as adoption into a new clan, so that Stadacona, as it was made up of only Christians, consisted of a single clan. However, the rule against marriage within a clan was made more flexible in Stadacona than it was elsewhere. While it was forbidden for two native-born Stadaconans to marry, it was perfectly acceptible for a native-born Stadaconan to marry an immigrant, as the immigrant was born into a different clan even if they became a member of the Stadaconan clan upon conversion to Christianity. Most non-Stadaconans didn't see conversion to Christianity as a form of adoption, and thus had no problem with immigrants born into a non-Christian clan marrying Stadaconans born into the Christian clan. This modification of the clan system allowed Stadacona to organize itself as a single clan during the Tributary Period, but broke down with the spread of Christianity in the 1590s.
[5] Again, this is TTL's name for the OTL St. Lawrence. By the time that this book is written, the term “Kanata” will have a wider scope than just the St. Lawrence Valley, as the term “Canada” has done in OTL.
[6] These are the St. Maurice and St. François Rivers, respectively.
[7] I'm basing this political system on what I understand of the pre-contact political systems of the *Huron and *Iroquois. Again, the “what I understand” part is key because most of the primary sources from the 16th and 17th centuries are Jesuit missionaries who were highly biased.
[8] OTL Archeologists have located five clusters of villages which they all identify as “St. Lawrence Iroquoain” (which is more likely a broad cultural grouping or confederacy of nations than a single nation). Because villages would not have clustered close together unless they had enjoyed peaceful relations, many speculate that each of these village clusters corresponded to a “nation”. The largest towns in three of these clusters: Stadacona, Maisouna, and Hochelaga, were visited by Cartier, so we know their names. The other two I have grouped together as a single nation, and made up the name “Tannesaga” for them. If anyone knows of an indigenous (e.g. Mohawk) name for the part of the St. Lawrence River between *Montreal and *Lake Ontario, and wants to suggest it in place of the purely fictional name “Tannesaga”, I would be obliged. The “People of the Lake”, and other names in quotation marks are supposed to be English translations of each nation's name for itself (which we have no OTL information about). The nation containing Hochelaga certainly wouldn't have called themselves “Hochelagans” any more than the French call themselves “Parisians”.
[9] The name “Kanatian” for the Confederacy post-dates the formation of the Confederacy itself, but stuck as the name the Confederacy used to refer to itself when dealing with Europeans (in much the same way as the name “China” stuck).
[10] Remember the L'Nuk are most commonly known in OTL as the Mi'kmaq.

 

[telynk]

Update 7 – Atsaskwa

(Hochelaga, May 1581)


Atsaskwa loved to take long walks up Hochelaga Mountain[1]. Ostensibly, the purpose of these walks was to pick herbs and berries that only grew on the slopes of the Mountain, but really Atsaskwa was more interested in getting some time to herself than anything else. As Clan Mother of the Turtle Clan, Atsaskwa was constantly involved in Clan business. While she very much appreciated the respect that came with being a Clan Mother, and had every desire to be of service to her clan, sometimes the constant demands on her time were just too much for her, and she needed to be alone with her thoughts. Now was one of those times.


As Atsaskwa walked the trail that lead up the Mountain she looked down on the town of Hochelaga. The town looked very different than it had 30 years ago. When Atsaskwa had been a girl, Hochelaga had been a Kanatian town like any other, a cluster of longhouses surrounded by a palisade, with fields stretching out on all sides. When Atsaskwa had been a young woman, the town of Hochelaga had moved to its present location, but things had still been very much the same. The new longhouses had been built to resemble the old ones; the newly cleared fields had been farmed in much the same way.


But then, everything had changed. Men from Stadacona had come to marry Hochelagan women and bring their new ways with them. They brought their herds and their herder God[2]. They brought ploughs and saws and nails and kettles. The new tools and the new ways had permanently changed the town. The town inside the palisade was still made up of longhouses, and inside Atsaskwa's Turtle Clan longhouses, things were still much as they were. But, there was now a whole new town outside the palisade. There were the cattle pastures of course, and the barns for keeping the cattle warm through the winters. There was the forge and the brewery, the tannery and the kiln. There was the herder God's holy building: the “church” as they called it, where the herders and their wives and children went to pray.


And in that land outside the palisade, that land that the herders[3] claimed for themselves, in that realm the Clan Mother's words no longer carried the authority they once did. While the herders[3] still recognized the clans which they were born into, and their wives' clans into which their children were born, they were living more and more of their lives outside of those clans. Unlike all other forms of property, the herds that the herders[3] kept passed from father to son rather than from mother to daughter, so that the herds left the clans with the men as they married out. Now, some herders were even building their own houses adjacent to their barns where they lived with their families apart from their clans. While men had always governed their own affairs while out on a hunt or on the warpath, they had always surrendered furs and captives to their Clan Mothers upon their return. Now, the herders often refused to surrender the meat from their cattle to their Clan Mothers Since the herders had come, men no longer knew their place in Hochelaga. A town in which men no longer knew their place was a town destined for ruin, Atsaskwa had always told them. But fewer and fewer of them were willing to listen.


Now, even Atsaskwa's own son was unwilling to listen to her. While men his age had always been hot-blooded and overeager to fight, men his age had also always listened when they had been reminded them of the importance of peace. But not today; today, all Dehunot wanted was war against the People of the River Mouth[4]. No matter what Atsaskwa said to him, he was unwilling to budge on his demands for war. Now there were enough that shared his opinion in Hochelaga and other Confederacy[5] villages that Atsaskwa felt that there was little she could do to stop war from breaking out.


There had been peace between the People of the Island[6] and the People of the River Mouth since before Atsaskwa had been born. The People of the River Mouth had always been one of Hochelaga's most important trading partners, as they had access to fish and goods from across the ocean that Hochelaga couldn't obtain without them. But, it was this same access to goods from across the ocean that had convinced Dehunot and many of the other men to push for war. Last fall, a trader from Hochelaga had attempted to give furs to one of the pale-skins in exchange for iron tools, and the Stadaconan's Head Trader had intervened to prevent the trade, saying the he and only he was allowed to trade with the pale-skins. This had, understandably, caused much outrage amongst all the Confederacy people as Stadacona's Head Trader had no jurisdiction over non-Stadaconans.


Dehunot had explained to Atsaskwa earlier how he felt the Confederacy could break Stadacona's trade monopoly through war. Dehunot argued that through war, the Confederacy could drive the Stadaconans out from between the Confederacy and the pale-skins and could establish direct trade with those people from across the ocean. He argued that since the People of the River Mouth were at war with both the L'Nuk [7] and the Abenakis, they were already weak, and could be easily displaced in the same way that the Stadacanonans themselves had displaced the Abenakis. But in all of Dehunot's arguments, he seemed to forget the obvious. Hochelaga, like every other Confederacy town, needed the Stadaconans, as, without them they would have no way whatsoever to trade with the pale-skins. Trade through Stadacona was better than no trade at all, and, in the long run, war could only lead to deprivation.


But, no matter how much Atsaskwa had tried to reason with him, Dehunot had continued to be irrational in that way that only men could be. [8] It was this irrationality and stubbornness which had frustrated Atsaskwa almost to her breaking point. She had gotten to the point where she knew that she needed some space, and now she was here, up on the Mountain, breathing in the cool spring air. It was from up here that she could see the real problem. The real problem was the herders, their new herder God, and their new herder ways. She had always said that the herders would bring ruin to Hochelaga, and she could see that this war would be the beginning of the end....

(Hochelaga, July 1584)


The victory feast was well underway in War Chief Tetreta's longhouse. Atsaskwa was gathered with the other Clan Mothers and Clan Chiefs to celebrate the return of the war party. Tetreta was seated at one end of the longhouse, and was recounting stories of the campaign.


“The People of the River Mouth, cowards that they are, are no longer willing to send hunting parties upriver. Thus, we were able to reach the palisade of the first of their villages, Achelacy[9], without a fight. But, Achelacy itself was a tougher nut to crack. The defenders carried those fire-sticks that the pale-skins bring from across the ocean, and our men couldn't get within a hundred paces of the palisade without being injured by the balls from the fire-sticks. And no matter the taunts we shouted at the defenders, we couldn't convince them to come out beyond the palisade to meet us for a real fight.” [10]


“So, we took some of their canoes from the bank of the river, and crossed the river to the South Bank. We decided that if the People of the River Mouth were unwilling to venture outside their villages to give us a fight, that we would have to strike them elsewhere. We know that the People of the River Mouth have been able to obtain fire-sticks from the pale-skins in exchange for the yellow copper [11] that they mine up the valley of the Swift River. And we know that, at regular intervals, this yellow copper is taken down the Swift River by canoe. Our goal was to reach the banks of the Swift River so that we could take some of the yellow copper for ourselves.”


“Our war party split up into smaller bands. After a few days traveling overland, our band reached the banks of the Swift River. We waited, in hiding until a canoe carrying yellow copper came around the river bend. We then leapt out from our hiding places and overwhelmed the paddlers, taking the yellow copper for ourselves and taking the paddlers captive. We hid the canoe, the yellow copper, and the captives in our camp by the river bank, and began to discuss how to bring our plunder home.”


“We didn't anticipate how heavy the yellow copper would be to carry. It was heavy enough that we couldn't retrace our path overland to the South Bank of the Great River [12], so we had to transport it by canoe. But, the single canoe we had captured wasn't big enough to hold the yellow copper, our warriors, and our captives. So, we went about collecting bark to build more canoes, and soon we were ready to set out. We knew that we would have to paddle our canoes right past the enemy villages in order to make it back upriver, so each of the five canoes we had built travelled separately, and we travelled only by night, and slept during the day. We met up a day's paddle upriver from Achelacy. Four of the five canoes had made it with most of the yellow copper we captured. So, now we return victorious to Hochelaga to present you, our Clan Mothers, with this most wonderous of metals.”


Tetreta opened the bundle of hides at his feet to reveal a pile of yellow copper, shining in the firelight inside the longhouse. It was definitely a more attractive metal than ordinary red copper, and supposedly it never tarnished. But even the youngest child knew that yellow copper, unlike red copper, couldn't be made into blades or tools.


“Tetreta,” Atsaskwa asked, “I am very grateful for this gift of yellow copper, and for the dangers your warriors endured to bring it back to us, but I am confused about one small matter. You speak of yellow copper as the 'most wonderous of metals', but I am unaware of the wonders of yellow copper. What is it good for? How would you have us use it?”


“You could use it in the same way the Stadaconans use their yellow copper,” Tetrata replied, “You could trade it to the pale-skins in exchange for fire-sticks. Then our warriors would have weapons equal to those carried by our enemy, and we could bring this war to an end.”


“But, you forget, we have been unable to trade with the pale-skins since this war began. The pale-skins come in ships from across the ocean, and we are at war with the people who guard the River Mouth between us and the ocean. Of course there are other trade routes to the ocean. The route to the South, following the rivers and lakes [13], is guarded by the Kanienkehaka [14], who have declared war on us as well. We could, of course, reach the sea by sending traders to the Southeast across Abenaki territory, but that would mean months of travel overland, and the Abenakis wouldn't be happy with that.”


“So, War Chief,” Atsaskwa continued, “you bring a victory that rings hollow in my ears. You bring us yellow copper which is useless to us while we remain at war, and you bring us a dozen captives to replace hundreds of dead warriors. Eight hundred warriors left Hochelaga in the spring, and only six hundred have returned. You claim victory, yet all I see is death. My son Dehunot died at the walls of Achelacy. He died to bring our clan a pile of shiny metal which is only useful to our enemies.”


Tetrata was clearly agitated. He looked like he was ready to throw Atsaskwa out of his longhouse, but there was something restraining him. As Atsaskwa looked around at the other Clan Mothers, she could see on their faces that they were thinking the same as she was. They too had lost many sons and brothers to this war, and they too felt like too little had been gained from the fighting. Tetrata could throw Atsaskwa out of his longhouse, but he couldn't silence the feelings she was expressing.


“Since this yellow copper is only of use to our enemies, I am going to give my clan's share of it back to our enemies,” Atsaskwa continued. “Tomorrow I am going to send a messenger back to Stadacona with my clan's share of this yellow copper. I will give it back to the Stadaconans as a gift of peace. I've had enough of this war, and I'm going to do my part to end it....”


(Hochelaga, September 1584)


The peace conference was to meet in the assembly grounds in the centre of Hochelaga – in the same place where meetings of the Confederacy council took place every year. In fact, all of the Confederacy's men's council was here to negotiate peace along with the national men's council of the People of the River Mouth. But, while the men's councils were the ones taking part in the official peace announcement, most of the terms of the agreement had been worked out ahead of time by the Clan Mothers on both sides. Atsaskwa had done her part by offering the gold back to the Stadaconans. Through talks with various Clan Mothers from the People of the River Mouth, she had worked out what the People of the River Mouth wanted from the Confederacy, and had arranged to have it offered to them. [15]


The Peace Chief of Hochelaga was currently speaking. “A few months ago, warriors from my town attacked a shipment of yellow copper coming down the Swift River to Stadacona. They brought the yellow copper back here where we discovered that we had done wrong. It is not our place to collect yellow copper, as we are unable to trade with the pale-skins. It is the Stadaconan's place to trade with the pale-skins on our behalf. Thus I offer the yellow copper we have taken back to you, People of the River Mouth. I hope that this gift will be well received, and that you will find it in your hearts to forgive us from trying to usurp your rightful place as intermediaries between us and the pale-skins.”


The yellow copper was passed to Stadacona's Peace Chief who now replied. “We accept your gift of gold to us, and forgive you for taking it from us. We thank you for recognizing us Stadaconans as your intermediaries with the Europeans [16], and we pledge to continue to trade the goods we have received from the pale-skins with you, so that the technology from across the ocean can improve your towns as much as it has improved Stadacona.”


“In particular,” Stadacona's spokesman continued, “there is one piece of technology that we have been withholding from you that we should have shared all along. We have received many arquebuses – the weapons that you call fire-sticks – from the pale-skins, and we have been using them against you without giving you the opportunity to use them against your other enemies to the West and South. We recognize that part of the cause of this war was our unwillingness to share the boons we had received, and we apologize to you, the three nations of the Confederacy, for keeping them from you.”


“We have here for you more than one hundred arquebuses: one for each council member to share with their clan, and we pledge to continue to trade arquebuses to all Confederacy nations and villages in return for furs, corn, and anything else you can produce. We also pledge to train you in the use of these new weapons so that you can use them properly in your wars against our common enemies.”


It was this offer by the Stadaconans that had finally convinced the Hochelagan warriors to come to the peace table, Atsaskwa recalled. The propsect of having better weapons with which to fight the Wendat[17] to the West and the Kanienkehaka[14] to the South had been very appealing to those men who still saw war as their first priority. But of course, the People of the River Mouth had been unwilling to agree to trade their weapons without a guarantee that they would never again have to fight all three nations of the Confederacy. It was only because of their superior weaponry that the People of the River Mouth had been able to keep the Confederacy warriors out of their villages. They weren't willing to give up the protection of their fire-sticks without receiving another, equally secure, form of protection.


Now, the Hochelagan Peace Chief spoke of just that form of protection. “In order to further cement peace between our nations, and to prevent future wars as devastating as this one has been, we, the three nations of the Confederacy, have agreed to expand our Confederacy in order to bring the People of the River Mouth into our fold. Today, our Confederacy of three nations will become a Confederacy of four, and will encompass all the people of the Great River, from the lakes in the West to the ocean in the East. From now on, the People of the River Mouth will send representatives to all Confederacy council meetings, and will be subject to all Confederacy laws. We hereby welcome you into our Confederacy to participate in it.”


A cheer rose up from the assembled crowd, and formalization of the peace agreement was complete. A feast would soon be held to celebrate the peace, and there were still some ceremonies that needed to be performed, but there was nothing now that could stop the peace. And of course, this wouldn't be the only war. With the joining of the People of the River Mouth into the Confederacy, the Confederacy as a whole had joined in the fight against the Abenakis. And, the recent conflict with the Kanienkehaka in the South would likely continue. But, none of those enemies had fire-sticks, and thus any war with them would not be nearly as devastating as this latest one had been.


(Hochelaga, August 1586)


Atsaskwa had hoped that peace would bring an end to Hochelaga's troubles. She'd seen the new ways of the herders as the source of the ideas that had led to the war, and had hoped that, with the war's end, those ideas would become seen as mistaken. But, now that the war was over the new ideas were more prevalent than ever. Stadacona's membership in the Confederacy had meant that more and more Stadaconan men were arriving in Hochelaga each year. The more Stadaconans came, the more their new ideas spread. The more these new ideas spread, the more difficulty Atsaskwa had in keeping order amongst her clan.


Atsaskwa was now facing the biggest challenge she had so far. This spring, a priest of the herder God [18] had arrived from Stadacona to try to recruit more Hochelagans into the herder way of life. He sprinkled water on people and then told them what to do. More often then not, what this priest told people to do was not what was best for them or for their clans.


Today, Atsaskwa was here to see the priest about Sawastru, a young woman from Atsaskwa's Turtle Clan who had recently become pregnant. Sawastru was too young and not ready to raise a child – she was only now thirteen - and Atsaskwa had given her the herbs necessary to terminate the pregnancy. But, yesterday Sawastru had come back from “church” to tell Atsaskwa that she couldn't take the herbs, because the pale-skin priest had told her it was wrong. So, now Atsaskwa was here to see the priest herself on Sawastru's behalf. Sawastru had agreed that she would take the herbs if the priest gave her permission, and Atsaskwa was here to get that permission.


Atsaskwa knocked on the door of the priest's little house that adjoined the church. “Who is it?” the priest asked.


“I am the Clan Mother of the Turtle Clan,” Atsaskwa replied, “I am here about Sawastru.”


“Sawastru... oh, I remember now. Come in, sit down and let's talk.” The priest's Kanatian was awkward and he spoke with a thick accent, but Atsaskwa could still understand him.


Atsaskwa entered and was motioned towards a bench across the table from where the priest sat. “I admit that I don't understand your God or your ways,” she said, “and I have no desire to learn about your religion. But, could you please explain to me why you won't let Sawastru take her herbs. Do you mean to force her to bring an child she doesn't want into this world?”


“I'm not forcing her to do anything,” the priest replied, “I just explained how much a tragedy it would be for such a child to die before it was even born. Unwanted or not, every child deserves a right to live. I explained to her how taking the herbs that you gave her would be a sin. I don't know how things are in your traditional ways, but in Christianity, killing is considered a sin.”


“Ending a pregnancy is not the same as killing a child. But how would you know that as you have no way of knowing what it's like to be pregnant? You probably have no idea how hard it is to go through childbirth at age fourteen. Maybe where you're from, women can deal with having children early, but in Hochelaga it's customary for a woman to wait until she has matured a little before becoming a mother.”


“Where I'm from, women maintain their virtue and abstain from relations with men until they are mature enough to be married. If Hochelagan girls are preganant at thirteen, it's their own fault for being unable to remain chaste. By going through with childbirth, Sawastru can atone for her sins and can serve as an example of what happens to girls who can't withstand temptation.”


“But do you understand what sort of a life you are creating for her child? Sawastru is still very young and has no husband. Who will hunt for furs and cut firewood to keep the child warm? Who will comfort the child at night when Sawastru is too tired? Without a father, how can the child receive all of the love it needs to grow up healthy and strong?”


“But, the child does have a father. His name is Rehuja. I have already spoken to him and he has agreed to marry Sawastru and help support the child.”


“Rehuja?? He and Sawastru fight constantly! If he marries Sawastru, their marriage will certainly be an unhappy one. Would you really force a child to grow up in that environment?”


“I'm not forcing anyone to do anything. I have just reminded Rehuja and Sawastru of what God thinks about children born out of wedlock, and have convinced them that the best way to atone for their sins is to marry.”


“But there wouldn't be any child born out of wedlock if you would only allow Sawastru to take the herbs I've given her!”


“Two wrongs don't make a right. Every child has a right to be born and to live, even children who were conceived in sin. To be honest, ever since I've arrived here I've wondered why this land was so empty. Your villages are so small and so far apart. I think now I've figured it out. You keep your population small deliberately by killing unborn children. Well, that's something that needs to be changed. If there is one verse of the Bible that you people need to read, it's the verse that says 'go forth and multiply.'”


As the priest uttered that line, Atsaskwa began to see what was going on. The followers of the herder God had been successful in the land across the ocean only because of their ability to breed. Their God taught them to multiply and breed until their population was overwhelming, and that is why they had to live in the huge, cramped cities that Atsaskwa had heard so much about. And now, this priest had come to her land to teach the herders to do the same. The herders would have child after child after child and soon, in a couple generations, they would be the majority in Hochelaga. The population of Hochelaga would grow and grow as more and more of the population would abandon their traditional ways. Atsaskwa had been wrong when she had thought that Hochelaga's ruin would come through war. It wouldn't come through war, it would come through starvation, when Hochelaga's population would grow so big that all the fields on the island couldn't feed everyone. Atsaskwa was glad she likely wouldn't live to see that day. [19]


Footnotes:


[1] Hochelaga Mountain is the hill known in OTL as Mont Royal.
[2] Hochelagans don't have a concept of “shepherd” yet as they don't yet have sheep, so the Christian God is described as a “herder” rather than a “shepherd.” It Hochelagan society at this time “herder” pretty much specifically refers to cattle.
[3] Currently, cattle-herding is the most conspicuous practice that has arrived from Europe via Stadacona. Atsaskwa uses the term “herder” to refer not only to those who actively keep cattle herds, but to all those who live a non-traditional lifestyle. The vast majority of men who live a non-traditional lifestyle work with cattle herds in the same way that the vast majority of Kanatian women farm. Herding will soon surpass hunting, warfare, forest clearing, and longhouse construction as the most important task carried out by men.
[4] “People of the River Mouth” is the English translation of the Kanatian name for the nation which contains Stadacona. I will use the name “Stadaconans” to refer to this nation on maps, although a Kanatian would only call themselves “Stadaconan” if they actually lived in the town of Stadacona.
[5] “The Confederacy” is the English translation of the Kanatian name for the political federation of which Hochelaga is part. Non-Kanatians will refer to it as the “Kanatian Confederacy”, but to Atsaskwa it's just “The Confederacy”.
[6] “People of the Island” is the English translation of the Kanatian name for the nation containing Hochelaga.
[7] Remember, the L'Nuk are the people know mostly commonly in OTL as the Mi'kmaq.
[8] Atsaskwa is a little bit of a misandrist. Atsaskwa is not typical in these attitudes; most Kanatians are strong believers in gender equality. I just thought it would be fun to right a character where I could turn some of OTL's misogynist attitudes on their head.
[9] Achelacy is one of the few Kanatian villages whose location we know of OTL due to Cartier's logs. It is located near the site of OTL's Portneuf.
[10] Kanatians (and other Iroquoains) never had a tradition of fighting pitched battles, and did most of their fighting in ambushes and small skirmishes to try to capture parties out away from the village. Sometimes a sort of seige was carried out where the attacker would attempt to set the defender's palisade on fire, forcing the defenders to sally forth to put it out. The objective, however was only to engage the defenders in battle in order to take captives. Seiges for the purpose of actually capturing a village weren't a part of traditional Kanatian warfare. It is in these sorts of quasi-seige situations that the Stadaconan's firearms give them the strongest advantage, which is why they're hiding behind their palisades.
[11] The Kanatian term for gold translates into English as “yellow copper”.
[12] “Great River” is the English translation of the Kanatian name for the St. Lawrence.
[13] This is the *Richelieu River – *Lake Champlain – *Hudson River trade route.
[14] “Kanienkehaka” is the Mohawk's name for themselves. It is the word that will be used to refer to the *Mohwak in TTL.
[15] This process of working out a peace treaty, where the terms are worked out in private and then peace is concluded with a public ceremony fits with what I know about Iroquoain culture. As most trades between Iroquoain peoples were, at least ceremonially, an exchange of gifts, I figured that the Kantians would want to ceremonialize their peace agreement with an exchange of gifts as well, which is what we're seeing in this seen. The working out of what specific gifts would be sufficient to secure peace has happened ahead of time.
[16] I'm starting to regret my choice of the word “pale-skins” as the English translation of the Hochcelagan term for Europeans. Some of the writing in this update seems like it's come out of a bad Western due to the proliferation of the term “pale-skins”. While I feel it's too late to retcon the term entirely, it's going to soon fall out of fashion as more and more Kanatians meet Europeans in person, and soon a term derived from “Europeans” will become current in Kanata. The delegate from Stadacona is already using that term as the Stadaconans have been living alongside Europeans for decades.
[17] “Wendat” is the *Huron Confederacy's name for themselves. It seems from the acheological record that the Wendat fought periodic wars against the Kanatians.
[18] This “priest of the herder God” is a Jesuit missionary, but Atsaskwa doesn't have a nuanced enough understanding of Christianity to identify him as a Jesuit.
[19] Atsaskwa is correct in her prediction about the demographics of Hochelaga. The Christianized “herder” population will have a much higher birthrate than those who continue to follow traditional ways, and within a generation or two will soon be a majority. The Population of all the Kanatian towns will grow fairly quickly due to Christian-imposed birthrates, but starvation won't be a problem due to new European-derived agricultural techniques. Disease will be a problem, but high birthrates will help mitigate its effects.

 

[telynk]

Map #1 - Nations and Confederacies in 1585

Ok, here's a map detailing the distribution of the various peoples of Northeastern North American in 1585. Nations that are culturally related have similar colours on this map. Note that three of the larger confederacies are outlined in a separate colour: this does not mean that they are the only confederacies. Other names on the map (such as the Wyandot and the Powhatan) are also confederacies, but their individual member nations are located too close together to put their names on the map as well.

The main differences between this map and OTL are:
1) The peoples who make up the Kanatian confederacy haven't been displaced.
2) The territory controlled by the "Stadaconan Nation" (People of the River Mouth) is larger than it ever was OTL due to victories of the Stadaconans over the L'Nuk (securing the Gaspé penninsula as fishing grounds) and over the Abeankia (securing the *Chaudiere valley).
3) The Wabanaki Confederacy has formed earlier than OTL as an alliance between the L'Nuk and Abeankis (and their smaller neighbours) against the Stadaconans/Kanatian Confederacy. It is a much looser confederacy than either the Haudenosaunee or Kanatian Confederacies (and certainly looser than the Wyandot Confederacy), at least for the time being, although it will become more important in the colonial era of the 17th century.

 

[telynk]

Map #2 - Villages, Towns and Place Names 1585

Ok, here's map #2. It depicts the locations of a number of villages and towns in the Kanata Valley together with their names (I've included all the names recorded by Cartier, as well as any others that have been used in the TL so far).

One thing to mention is that the only villages of non-Kanatian nations that I've shown are those which either are semi-permanent due to the practice of agriculture (the Omamiwini villages) or are the site of semi-permanent trade posts (Tadoussac). There are other settlements in the area depicted by this map, they are just seasonal settlements rather than year-round villages.

I haven't named all of the rivers on the map mostly because we don't know what their pre-colonial names were (well, we know what the *Algonquin names were for some of the rivers, but not their *Laurentian names). If I ever name the rivers in a future update, I may include those names on this map.

 

[telynk]

Update 8 - The Stadaconan Mission

Update 8 – The Stadaconan Mission
an excerpt from The History of Old Kanata 1500-1700 by Georges Hantero (Turtle)


1582 was an important year in Stadaconan history because it marked the arrival in Stadacona of the first dozen Jesuit missionaries, led by Père André Touillard. Stadacona had come to the attention of the Church hierarchy a year earlier when, following the death of Père Jerome, a letter had arrived in France. The letter has been often attributed to Hèlene Grignon, and it asked the Pope to send a new priest to Stadacona to replace the one that had died [1]. When the Church hierarchy realized that the priest that had died had been the long-defrocked Père Jerome, they decided that sending a new priest wouldn't be enough. They decided to send a team of Jesuit missionaries charged with both spreading the Word of God as well as correcting any heresies that may have already taken hold amongst the Kanatian Christians.


When André Touillard and his missionaries arrived in 1582, they discovered a number of “irregularities” amongst the practices of Stadaconan Christians. With the death of Père Jerome, his duties had been taken over by an unordained Kanatian (calling himself Père Marc) who had served as Jerome's assistant in his old age. While there were some Stadaconans (including most of the Métis) who were unwilling to receive the sacraments from an unordained layman, the vast majority of the Christians (including the Huguenots in Petit Rochelle) had no problem following Père Marc. The Jesuits were only able to deal with this problem by offering to pay for Marc's passage to France to attend Seminary, while André Touillard took over his duties. [2]


In 1583, when the Jesuits had established themselves enough to venture beyond Stadacona itself, they discovered that, in the neighbouring villages, Christian beliefs were present, but had very much syncretized with the local pre-Christian religious practices. Thus, much of the Jesuits' work involved not spreading Christianity itself, but in encouraging the practice “true Christianity” and rooting out “folk heresy”.


The primary method the Jesuits used to correct the beliefs of “folk heretics” was education. The Jesuits would travel to the various villages and demonstrate the usefulness of written communication. They would then select young men who were particularly interested in learning to read and write, and would bring them back to Stadacona to attend the Jesuit school, where they would learn literacy and Catholic doctrine. These men would then be sent back to their home villages with Kanatian translations of the Bible and other religious publications to spread Christianity.


In order to produce Kanatian translations of the Bible, the Jesuits introduced two key industries to Stadacona. The first was papermaking. While cloth scraps were originally used to make paper, it was soon discovered that corn husks were a much cheaper and more easily obtained raw material. The second industry was printing. The Jesuits imported the first printing press to Stadacona in 1585. While the printing press was mostly used for producing Bibles and other religious texts, it was occasionally used to produce other works as well. All surviving Kanatian-language books from the 1580s were produced on this first printing press.


The Stadaconan mission was housed in a complex of buildings built in a walled compound outside of Stadacona's main palisade. The oldest building was the Jesuits' residence, while the first one-room schoolhouse was built in 1584. The printing house and paper works were built in 1585. In the later 1580s the school was expanded, and a student residence was built adjoining the missionaries' residence. The Jesuits didn't build their own church until 1592, and, until that time, held Mass in the old church inside the palisade.


One of the results of the Jesuit school system was the standardization of the written Kanatian language. While there had be written documents produced in the Kanatian langauge (by Père Jerome and his students) since the 1540s, no standard transliteration of the language into Latin characters had been developed. Those who used one transliteration often times had great difficulty reading documents written by those who used another. It was only with the establishment of the Jesuit schools that a standard transliteration was arrived at which made true literacy in the Kanatian language possible. [3]


The success of the Stadaconan mission led the Jesuits to establish branch missions in other Kanatian towns. The mission in Hochelaga was the first – established in 1586. The missions in Maisouna and Tannesaga were next – established in 1589 and 1590, respectively. These branch missions would often be made up of a single priest together with one or more lay assistants. The priests were French Jesuits who had spent a year or two learning the Kanatian langauge in Stadacona, while the lay assistants were often Kanatian graduates of the Jesuit schools. These branch missions were usually housed in a single small church with an adjoining residence, although the Hochelagan mission would grow throughout the 1590s with the establishment of a second Jesuit school to eventually replace Stadacona as the Jesuits' headquarters.


But, in the long run, the Jesuit schools in Stadacona and Hochelaga would lead to further problems for the missionaries. The graduates who were sent off to “correct” the beliefs of their home villages often ended up spreading a slightly different Christianity than the one they had been taught in the Jesuit school. As the Jesuit school graduates began to teach literacy to those who had not attended the schools, many began to read the Bible for themselves, and many made their own interpretations which didn't always agree with Catholic doctrine. Christianity itself continued to spread faster than the Jesuits could establish new missions, and while the Jesuits succeeded at taking control of the Christian practices of villages adjacent to their missions, there were always villages farther afield which practiced more diverse forms of Christianity.


Another reason the Stadaconan Mission is important to historians is the historiographic importance of the Jesuits as the primary sources for much of the historical information we have about the Tributary Period. While literacy in Stadacona was originally introduced by Père Jerome in the 1540s, very few written documents from before the 1580s survive. This is partially due to the turmoil of the early 1590s, but also has a lot to do with the lack of papermaking and printing industries in Stadacona before the Jesuits. Before the Tributary Period, the paper for producing written documents had to be imported from Europe at great expense, and written documents rarely existed in more than one copy. Thus, when many of those written documents were destroyed, their contents were lost forever to history. Many the surviving 16th century primary sources that were not themselves authored by the Jesuits were printed on the Jesuit presses. Thus, traditional treatments of Stadaconan history often skip straight from Cartier's voyages to the arrival of the Jesuits in 1582, as historical knowledge about the decades in between depends on “unreliable” secondary sources.


Footnotes:
[1] Père Jerome died in 1581 at the age of 73.
[2] “Père Marc” died in France from disease, never completing his studies.
[3] This paragraph shows some of the author's bias in what he considers to be “true literacy”.

 

[telynk]

Update #9 - Père André

Update 9 – Père André

(Stadacona, June 1591)

André Touillard, leader of the Stadaconan Jesuit mission, was teaching a class on the Saints, when the messenger arrived. He had been in the middle of telling the story of St. Patrick, emphasizing the good things that had come to the people of Ireland as a result of their conversion to Christianity. He had found, over the years he had spent spreading the word of God in this continent, that what was most attractive to the Kanatians about Christianity was their stories. The Kanatians seemed to love stories, whether they were Biblical stories or Saint stories. But, Père André's technique was always to tell stories with a lesson. He taught his students about St. Patrick in order to talk about methods of converting Pagan peoples to Christianity and the importance of abandoning Pagan beliefs.

But now, André was interrupted by a messenger from the Comte. It seems that a trade ship had arrived yesterday from France with a letter from King Charles, and the Comte wanted to discuss it with his `closest advisors'. André was surprised that he was included in this list of advisors. While he had been the Comte's priest for years now, and had often discussed religious matters with him, these had always been in the context of the Comte coming to to talk to André at the church rather than André being summoned to Fort-St-Francis.

Usually, when the Comte needed advice he would summon the Town Mothers, Chief Guaragaya, or Head Trader Bourget. But as André approached the gates of Fort-St-Francis he was met by none other than David Boucher, Clémenceau's current chief agent, who ran things over in Petite Rochelle. “Fancy meeting you here, Boucher,” André said coldly. It was widely known in Stadacona that Boucher had been a Huguenot back in France, and only attended Mass in Stadacona's Church because a Calvinist church had not yet been constructed. André strongly suspected that Boucher and his fellow Huguenots were responsible for spreading a number of the nonconformist ideas which André was trying to root out of his students. [1]

As André and Boucher were ushered into the Comte's office they saw Head Trader Bourget already there. But, none of the other faces André expected to see were present. Chief Guaragaya was absent and so were the Town Mothers. For perhaps the first time ever, all of Comte Charles' advisors were men.

“I have summoned you all here as experts on France and French society,” Charles announced. “If my late father was still with us, I would have asked for his advice. While he taught me much about French culture and politics, what he taught me hasn't been enough to make a decision on my own. I have received a letter from King Charles summoning me to attend his court in Paris, and I need your advice on whether or not I should obey the summons.”

“You know that disobeying a summons from the King is a crime in France, right?” Boucher asked. “What reason do you have to disobey?”

“Charles and I have been talking this over already,” Bourget replied, “there have been five Stadaconans who have traveled to France in the past ten years. Two as wives to French traders, two to attend seminary, and one as an apprentice to Henri Grignon who was our representative in France up until his death. [2] Both seminarians, the apprentice, and one of the trader's wives all fell sick and died within their first two years in France. The second wife we have not heard from in years. The only Stadaconan who ever traveled to France and returned was Charles' grandfather Donnacona. Of course, the Frenchmen who have become adopted Stadaconans over the years have no problem traveling to France. Charles and I are both worried that there's something in our Kanatian blood that makes us particularly susceptible to French disease. While God has prevented disease outbreaks like the Red Plague [3] five years ago from spreading beyond our hospital, he has not be able to protect any of us who have chosen to venture beyond the ocean.”

“But the Comte is only half Kanatian. His father was French. Might that not protect him?” André asked.

“Henri's apprentice was also Métis with a Kanatian mother and a French father. And he fell just as sick as everyone else,” Bourget replied.

“But he also has Donnacona's blood running through his veins,” Boucher added, “what protected Donnacona may also protect him. Besides, I don't think Comte Charles here has much of a choice. If he disobeys the summons, the King has every right to revoke his vassalage. King Charles' troops are no longer tied up fighting in France, and could easily be sent here to destroy Stadacona.”

“But I have hundreds of warriors armed with arquebuses,” burst out the Comte, “and my Confederacy allies have thousands more! While we couldn't win against Gérard a decade ago, that was because we didn't have arquebuses or allies then. Now we have both. We could beat ten Gérards in open battle!”

“King Charles has a lot more than ten Gérards,” Boucher added, “while you have a thousand warriors, he has tens of thousands. And he has ships and cannon while you have none. When King Charles sends his ships up the Kanata River and bombards your town, what will you do? Send your canoes out to attack his ships? Retreat inland? If you retreat to Hochelaga, you will be out of reach of his ships, but you will also be cut off from your supplies of iron and gunpowder. Soon your ammunition will run out, and you will be back to using spears and hatchets against arquebuses. If you refuse to travel to France you might start a war that you can't win.”

“Boucher is right,” André interjected. “While I disagree with him on many points he is correct that disobeying this summons could result in the destruction of our whole town. If you put the danger of losing your life to disease above the danger of losing our whole nation to French invaders, you would be a very poor leader. But I think that there is more at stake here than just your life. I have heard from my superiors in France that many are unhappy with the way that Stadacona has been run. Many have accused it of being a haven for Huguenots,” André glared at Boucher as he said this, “and while I know that you are a devout Catholic, many in France suspect that you are a Huguenot yourself, just waiting for the right moment to rebel in support of the King of Navarre [4]. When in France you need to make sure to tread carefully; you need to play by the rules and do everything the King asks of you. One false step could mean the King stripping you of your title and naming someone else as Comte.”

André was genuinely worried. One of the reasons that his missionary work had gone so well was that the Kanatians generally saw the French (and Christians in general) as benevolent overlords who had the best interests of Kanata at heart. If conflict was to break out between France and the Confederacy, it definitely would hurt his missionary effort.

“If you are to fare well in France, you will need good advisors,” André continued. “Augustine, one of my lay brothers here, was planning to travel to France this summer to procure more printing and papermaking supplies. I will send him with you to advise you on religious matters, to make sure that you don't say or do anything that could be interpreted as Huguenot heresy.”

“Well then, I guess it's decided,” Charles replied, “I'm going to France.”

(Stadacona, May 1592)

It had been over a year since Comte Charles Grignon had departed for France. All through the last summer, Stadacona had waited for word of their Comte, but all they had gotten was news that he had arrived safe and sound and that he was waiting for an audience with the King. Brother Augustine had returned in the fall with news that the Comte had performed well in his audience, and that the King seemed satisfied that he was not a rebel. But, in the late summer Comte Charles had fallen sick, and it had become clear that he wouldn't survive a sea voyage, so Augustine had returned without him.

So, throughout the winter, Stadacona had been preparing for the worst. Charles' son Simon had been groomed to serve as Stadacona's new Comte, although it was understood that, for Simon, the title would come with much less real power than it had for Charles. Simon was still only 19 years old, and, while he was a promising marksman, he lacked the courage and leadership ability of his father. Charles had sent instructions home with Augustine to put André in charge of educating Simon in French ways, and André had spent much of the winter doing just that.

But this morning, ships had appeared coming up the river. While usually only one ship arrived at a time, this time there were three. And they bore banners that Augustine identified as those which had been bestowed on Charles as the symbols of the Comte du Canada. The immediate conclusion that André made was that Charles had survived his illness, and had returned from France with this fleet. All of Stadacona was soon down at the shore rejoicing, waiting for Charles to come ashore.

But it wasn't Charles who stepped out of the longboat flanked by a hundred armoured arquebusiers but a strange Frenchman. “My name is Michel duFort, Comte du Canada” the man announced. “Your previous Comte, Charles Grignon, died this past November, leaving no legitimate heirs. When we investigated the records that had been provided to us by Brother Augustine, we discovered that no only was your Comte's marriage invalid, as it was performed without the consent of a bishop or parish priest, but Charles Grignon was not even the legitimate heir of Comte Jean-Paul Donnacona. With no legitimate heirs to the Comté du Canada, His Most Christian Majesty King Charles IX named me as the new Comte du Canada.”

“King Charles IX, in addition to naming me Comte, has requested that I build a new chateau [5] from which to govern and defend the Comté. In my three ships I have brought men to build and occupy this new chateau. I have decided upon the headland across the small river from your village as the site on which I will build Chateau St-Charles in honour of my King.[6]”

“I will need some help in constructing the Chateau. Any young men willing to help us with construction work will earn themselves a place in the Comté's army. We pay in gold. We have also brought iron tools and other trade goods to trade with anyone who is willing to trade us food, lumber, or other supplies. Construction work will begin tomorrow.”

With that, Michel duFort turned and had his men escort him back to the ships. He clearly didn't trust the Kanatians and wanted to spend as little time as possible in Stadacona.

Later that evening, André was observing a meeting of the Town Mothers' council. As a man, he was not permitted to speak at a women's council, but Helène Grignon had offered to be his spokeswoman. Through the time he had spent educating her son Simon, he had gotten to know her a good deal better, and she seemed just as dedicated as he was to maintaining peace between France and Stadacona. He couldn't hope for a better spokeswoman.

“I have learned from Père André here,” Hélène was saying, “that my marriage to Charles was invalid as it was performed by Père Jerome, who had be suspended from the priesthood. However, the invalidity of the marriage doesn't, according to normal Church law, make Simon into an illegitimate child. Thus, according to Père André, Simon is still Charles' heir and the rightful Comte du Canada. But, in France at least, it seems that the King's decree is more important than who is or is not the rightful heir.”

Yegasestsi was the next to speak up. She was now 70 years old, and by far the most respected member of the council. She was the only current member of the council who had been in Stadacona at the time of Cartier's voyages. While there was one other woman who was older than Yegasetsi, she had only lived in Stadacona for the past 20 years. “Thank you Hélène for describing for us the status of your son Simon in French law. It is good to know that Michel duFort has as little right to take our land in French law as he does in our own. However, the real question is whether we can use French law to our advantage. Did Père André make any suggestions as to how we can use French law to make Michel duFort return home?”

“I did ask him,” Hélène replied, “but he said that the only thing we could do is to send Simon to France to beg King Charles to recognize him. He said that likely such an action would result in Simon becoming sick and dying just as his father did, and that would actually make it easier for duFort to claim the title of Comte. Père André says that duFort here may turn out to be a better Comte than Simon would ever be, and that having a hundred French soldiers and three ships armed with cannon to help defend us from the L'Nuk and Abeankis isn't really a bad thing. He says that the only thing duFort is really interested in is the gold mines, and that, with him in control of the gold fields, we will survive just as well as we did when the Abenakis controlled the gold fields. He says that peace is more important than gold, and I am inclined to agree with him.”

“Well, I certainly agree with you that peace is important, and that we can survive without gold perfectly well. Since duFort will be paying some of our warriors in gold, we may still be able to acquire enough of it to pay the tradesmen in Petit Rochelle. However, I have a feeling that this won't end well. I have heard stories of what happened to the Mexica and Inca people far to the South of here at the hands of the Spanish, and I am not convinced that the French are any better. While starting a war at this point would be rash, we must make preparations in case duFort means to subject our people to slavery. We will take the arquebuses from Fort-St-Francis and hide a few in every longhouse. We will train men and women alike in their use. We will not start a war, but we will be prepared to fight back if duFort starts one.”

(Stadacona, August 1593)

André was woken by shots of gunfire. He had known that this day would be coming for months now. Since the spring when duFort had armed Chateau St.-Charles with cannon aimed down into the town of Stadacona, it had been clear that the chateau had not only been built to defend Stadacona from its enemies, but also to secure duFort's rule over this land. Moreover, duFort was now demanding that the people of Stadacona turn over 1/10th of their annual production of corn, beef, and wool to him. He argued that it was his land that the Stadaconas were using to farm their crops and graze their cattle. While this was technically true from the standpoint of French law, it clearly seemed outrageous to the Stadaconans, who were not used to having to pay tax of any sort.

Word had also reached Stadacona of the way that the gold field labourers were being treated. This past spring DuFort sent his troops to take over Fort Gérard and had given them the task of increasing the “efficiency” of the gold mining operation. His soldiers, thinking of the gold field labourers as slaves, had forced them to work longer and harder than they ever had before. Their wives and children, who didn't even belong to the labouring class, were forced to cook the soldiers meals and clean up after them. Some were even forced to serve the soldier's sexual needs. André had heard confessionals from French soldiers who had forced men at gunpoint to shovel and shovel until they died form exhaustion, and others who had raped women until they bled. For months it had been clear that the Stadaconans were disgusted with duFort's treatment of those who they saw as fellow citizens, but no one had yet had the courage to lead an uprising against the chateau. Today appeared to be the day when that had changed.

André looked out of his window and could see that the sounds of gunfire were coming from out on the Kanata River. Today there was only one ship anchored in the Kanata River, and in the dawn light, André could see that the ship was surrounded by canoes. They must have used the cover of darkness to slip out until they were alongside the ship, and had leapt on board with the first light of dawn. André could see struggles on the deck of the ship, and it soon became clear that the sails were being raised and the anchors lifted. The Kanatians must have taken control.

André was surprised that the chateau's cannon had not yet fired on the ship. Clearly they were worried about sinking their only ship, as without the ship, the Frenchmen would have no way to retreat if they were overrun. Going for the ship first was clearly a good move on the part of the Kanatians, as it was the one target that duFort couldn't fire on.

As the ship began to sail toward the Fort, André saw movement from another direction. One hundred arquebusiers were coming out of the forest toward the town. They must have left the chateau as soon as they saw the ship under attack, and snuck across the Stadacona River upstream out of sight of the town. André soon realized that they were not heading for the main part of Stadacona but for the smaller palisade that surrounded the Jesuit compound. The soldiers had positioned themselves so that the town of Stadacona was between them and the ship in the harbour, protecting them from cannon fire.

Soon the French soldiers had entered the Jesuit compound. They rounded up the Kanatian students and forced them into the church. They took position on either side of the compound's gate while others made loopholes in the palisade from which they could fire on any Kanatians who approached the compound.

André and the other Jesuits were confined to their quarters, but André could still watch the movements of the ship out on the river from his window. It was now within firing range of the chateau. A volley was fired from the ship's cannon. Most missed the chateau entirely, but one struck its outer wall, knocking off plaster and stones. The Kanatians on board must have someone with them who knew how to work cannon. Perhaps Boucher or one of the Huguenots is with them, thought André. If duFort was unwilling to fire on the ship, this assault could continue indefinitely until there was a breach in the wall of the chateau.

But then the chateau's guns opened fire. From his vantage point, André could see that they were not aiming for the ship's hull as he would expect but for the masts and rigging. Of course, he thought, they have canvas stores to replace any torn sails, and there are plenty of trees around to make new masts. As long as they keep the ship's hull intact they will still have the potential of retreat. He heard a loud crack as the ship's main mast fall, and saw quick movement on the deck as the Kanatians on board tried to escape the falling mast.

But before André could watch the conclusion of the battle, a group of soldiers marched into his quarters. “We need you,” their leader said, “we have made it inside the town, and have taken control of most of the longhouses, but the rebels have holed themselves up in Fort-St-Francis. [7] A man called Simon is leading them. We need someone to speak to Simon and convince him to surrender the fort. We have heard that he trusts you.”

André followed the soldiers towards the fort. They had made it clear that he didn't really have a choice in the matter. Standing at the gate of the fort was Simon, flanked by five Kanatians carrying arquebuses. Across from them was a squadron of ten soldiers, holding Yegasetsi and Hélène Grignon prisoner.

“Simon, my child,” André said, “the battle has been lost. The ship out on the river has been crippled, your town has fallen, and they hold your mother and your grandmother at their mercy here. If you continue fighting they will not hesitate to kill them both. Please, lay down your weapons and no one else has to be killed.”

“Don't listen to him,” Yegasetsi shouted, “you know as well as I do that the messengers you sent out before dawn will be bringing reinforcements from the Confederacy soon. If you can hold the fort until they arrive, we still may stand a chance of winning this. If you surrender they will condemn us all to a life of slavery at the gold fields! It's better to die in battle than to live as a slave...”

Yegasetsi was interrupted by a shot from one of the soldiers arquebuses. She now lay dead on the ground.

André turned to Hélène. “Hélène,” he whispered, “I know you have more sense in you than Yegasetsi here. This is a battle your people cannot win. War is not the answer to slavery. Death is not the answer to servitude. Remember Moses. He didn't lead his people in an army to overthrow the Pharaoh. No, he led them to freedom across the Red Sea. You must be your people's Moses. Convince your son to stand down, and you can live to lead them to freedom.”

“Simon, my son,” Hélène called, “don't be like your grandmother here. Tell your troops to stand down and surrender and we can all live to tell the tale.”

“I'll surrender, we'll surrender!” Simon called out. “And I'll send out messengers to call off the Confederacy reinforcements. I want to live, I really do want to live...” The young man burst out crying. Clearly, he was not born to be a military leader.

Footnotes:
[1] It turns out that Calvinist ideas are actually very unappealing to the Kanatians, although the Huguenots are responsible for spreading the idea that there is more than one way to be a Christian.
[2] Henri died in France, offstage, in the year 1587.
[3] The “Red Plague” is smallpox. There was an outbreak in 1585-1586 which originated with a child of a Huguenot family that arrived in Petite Rochelle in 1585. This disease outbreak resulted in only 20% mortality in Stadacona due to effective quarantining practices, but struck other villages harder. We'll hear more about the effects of disease a few updates from now.
[4] The current King of Navarre is Henry III. He has much in common with his ATL brother (who was also called Henry, and went on to become Henry IV of France). You'll hear more about him when I get to the Europe update.
[5] I'm using the word chateau here to allude to both the Chateau-St-Louis, which was the governor's residence in OTL Quebec City, as well as to the castle in which a feudal overlord would dwell. DuFort sees himself as a feudal overlord, with the Kanatians as his peasants.
[6] This site is very close to the site of the OTL Chateau-St-Louis in Québec City, although a little further North. For those who know Québec City, it is just above where the Musée de la Civilization sits.
[7] The French won the battle for the town quickly because most of the best Kanatian fighters were out taking control of the ship. Those who remained realized that Fort-St-Francis would be an easier spot to defend.

 

[telynk]

Update 10 – The writings of Sainte Hélène.

Hélene Ahatatoga Grignon (Sheep) is one of the most controversial figures in the history of Kanatian Christianity and probably the most controversial figure who has succeeded at being canonized as a saint. Saint-Hélène-of-the-Exodus (hereafter just referred to as Sainte Hélène) is remembered by the official Catholic hierarchy as the woman who led the people who would become the Sheep Clan [1] in their exodus from Stadacona. The fact that she credited the Christian God with commanding her to lead her people to freedom led to the conversion of a great many Kanatians, and within a generation of her death, she was already being venerated in Kanata as a Saint. However her unorthodox theology, her Biblical revisionism, and her calls to establish a parallel women's Church hierarchy were suppressed by the official Catholic authorities.


Her most-published writing was her account of the Stadaconan exodus, simply titled “Exodus”. She began writing it soon after leading many of the people of Stadacona to her home town of Hochelaga, and it was first published in 1595 by the Jesuit press in Hochelaga. Within a year, it became the second most widely read work written in the Kanatian langauge, second only to the Jesuit translation of the Bible. Her theological views had yet to be fully developed in this work, and it was seen as relatively uncontroversial by the Jesuits, which allowed its ideas to spread uninhibited.


It was only in Sainte Hélène's later works that her unorthodox views became clear. “The Magdalene Church”, “Children of Eve”, and “God the Daughter” were seen as heretical by the Jesuits, and were only printed by the priestesses of the Order of Mary Magdalene [2] years after Sainte Hélène's death. Some have challenged the claim that these later works were written by Hélène herself, and were actually written by priestesses who used her name to give their ideas more credibility. However, other primary sources indicated that manuscripts of these works were being circulated before Hélène's death, and that their contents at least resembled those of the later published versions. While the published versions may have been extensively edited after Hélène's death, the writing style is close enough to that used in “Exodus” that few modern scholars doubt her authorship.


Included in this collection are translated excerpts from “Exodus”, together with summaries of the contents of “The Magdalene Church”, “Children of Eve”, and “God the Daughter”. Many of the concepts in Hélène's later works don't translate particularly well into English, which is one of the reasons that excerpts are not used. The excerpts in this collection are designed to give the reader a quick understanding of Hélène's theology and the impact she has had on Kanatian Chrisianity and Kanatian culture.


Excerpts from “Exodus”


…In the year 1592 a plague descended on the City of Stadacona. Unlike the earlier plagues which had come in the form of disease, this plague came in the form of a man – a man named Michel duFort. At first we welcomed duFort into our town. We provided food to feed his soldiers and labourers to help him build his chateau. We gave him gifts, expecting him to provided us with gifts of iron in return. [3]


But, it soon became clear that duFort was not a messenger from God as we had first thought him to be: he was a creature of Satan. We had treated him as a guest on our land, fed him our food and given him our hospitality. But rather than giving us gifts in return, he enslaved our brothers and sisters. [4] When our sons refused to share their meat with him or when our daughters refused to share their corn, they were enslaved or sometimes even shot. [5]


So we prayed to God for deliverance from this evil; we prayed to have Him grant our warriors the strength to expel duFort from our land. And then we sent out our warriors against duFort, to overwhelm his chateau and capture his warriors. But, our warriors failed. Many of them were killed and many others were overwhelmed and surrendered. God had refused us our request.


So I asked God “Why, why did you forsake us? Why didn't you grant our warriors the ability to vanquish the enemy? Why have you unleashed this plague upon us?”


And in a dream, God came to me in the form of Mary, mother of Jesus, and She said to me “Hélène, this plague has been sent to you to teach you a lesson. Stadacona has erred in its ways; your husband Charles lead your people astray. He thought that war was the answer to all of his problems, and used his warriors to get his way. Stadacona has become a town of warriors rather than a town of cultivators. You have given up the ways of the corn in favour of the way of the gun.”


“If you wish redemption for your people, you will need to leave this land, which has been tainted by your husband's warmongering ways. You must bring your people upriver to the land where you were born. You must bring your cows, your sheep, your squash, corn and beans with you to the new land, and must leave your arquebuses, hatchets, spears, bows, and other weapons behind. As you travel to the new land your souls will be cleansed of your warmongering ways, and your people will be able to start anew.”


“Your journey will begin in Spring, the time of birth and new beginnings. When there is warmth in the air, but ice on the river, that is the time when you must depart. Leave any earlier and your cattle will freeze to death in the cold air. Leave any later and your cattle will be unable to cross the ice to Promised Land. To regain the balance in the ways of your people, you must follow the balance in the ways of the seasons.” …


* * * * *


… We knew when the chosen day had arrived when the sun shone warm on our face and but the snow was still cold on our feet. The balance of the seasons was at hand. We spent the day loading our belongings onto carts, hitching the carts to our oxen, and gathering our sheep, making ready to depart. Once all was ready, we slept, so that we could leave after dark.


As soon as the moon rose above the horizon, we departed. We followed the trail to the village of Tequenonday, leading our cattle and sheep, letting the stars light our way. We reached Tequenonday just before dawn, and I went straight to the longhouse of their Chief.


The Chief greeted me. “Why do you come to our village,” he asked, “why do you bring your people, your cattle and sheep. Has some calamity befallen Stadacona?”


“Yes, a plague by the name of duFort has come over our town. We have been told by God that we must leave to cleanse ourselves of its poison and start life anew. This plague may come over your village too in time. Your people are free to follow with us. They can use our carts and eat our food and join us in the new life we will make upriver. What do you say?”


“I will tell my people of this plague, and will let them know of your generous offer. While some of them may follow with you, others may decide to stay. And as long as some of my people remain here, I will remain to serve as their Chief.”


Within a few hours, we were ready to start again. Of the 900 Stadaconans who had left the town the night before, 100 decided to remain in Taquenonday with family they had, while 100 Taquenondayans joined our exodus upriver. We travelled the rest of that day along the trail that follows the North shore of the Great River, and didn't stop again until the sun set.


As the darkness came on, we could see flames on the horizon behind us. Thinking that duFort's men had come upon Taquenonday, I prayed to God again. “What befell the people of Taquenonday?” I asked. “Have they been punished for our sins?”


And Mary again came to me and replied “They are being punished for their own sins, not for yours. They are being punished for refusing my call to leave this poisoned land. The plague known as duFort has overtaken them. Their stores of food have been taken, their houses burned, their people enslaved. You must continue to lead your people onward. DuFort will always follow close behind, cleansing the land that have you have passed. Anyone who falters will be lost.”… [6]


* * * * *


… We soon came to the crossing place at the lower end of the Blue Lake [7], where the ice was always thickest. This crossing place was used every winter by the People of the Lake to transport cattle between the North and South banks of the Great River. While much of the ice on the Great River had melted farther downstream, the ice at the crossing place still stretched from bank to bank. The ice looked rotten, and we knew that it would break soon. But, if we wanted to cross the river, this was the place to do so.


We had a decision to make. The most direct route to Hochelaga lay along the North bank of the river. But, the people were tired. We had been walking for days and days with little chance of rest. The children and elders with us had taken turns riding on the ox carts, but now even the oxen were starting to tire. We couldn't continue at this pace all the way to Hochelaga.


On the South bank of the River lay the town of Maisouna, the largest town between Stadacona and Hochelaga. We could cross the river and follow the trail on the South bank to Maisouna. We could take refuge there until we were rested and able to travel again. But, we worried that if we took refuge at Maisouna, the plague that was duFort would follow us there and would burn the town as he had Taquenonday. [8]


So, I asked God for guidance again. This time She came to me not in the form of Mary, mother of Jesus, but in the form of Mary Magdalene, disciple of Jesus. “Hélène,” she said, “you have led your people well and have travelled far from your home. You have led your people beyond the land which was poisoned by your husband's warmongering ways. Your people are tired and need rest. Cross the river to Maisouna, take refuge there, and give your people a chance to recuperate. I will prevent the plague called duFort from following you across the river, and give your people the chance to make a new beginning on the other side. The South bank is the promised land, lead your people there and you shall be free.”


So, at dawn the next morning, we set out across the frozen lake. The ice creaked beneath us, but it didn't crack. It bore the weight of all of our people, and all of our oxcarts. We crossed the ice in single file, children first, followed by able-bodied adults, then the ox carts pulling the elders, with the sheep herds and the carts pulling our food taking up the rear. As we neared the far bank one of the rearmost carts got stuck in a crack in the ice. I ran back to see if I could help free the cart, and sent the men who were leading it on to the South bank. I had lost so many that I couldn't bear to see anyone else left behind. [9]


But, as I struggled to free the cart, I saw 20 of duFort's men arrive at the edge of the crossing place on the North bank. They began crossing the ice, following in our footsteps, leading the pack horses that were carrying their supplies. We were lucky that their horses were unaccustomed to walking in snow, as likely it was the slow pace of the animals which had kept duFort's mean from catching up to us earlier. Seeing how close behind they were, I grabbed an axe and began hacking at the ice that had formed around the wheel of the cart, trying to break it free.


But as I hacked and hacked at the ice, I could see that all I was doing was making the crack in the ice bigger. The wheel started to slip deeper and deeper into the crack. Then a gush of water burst out from the crack in the ice, forming a river flowing downstream. The ice began to groan louder, and I realized that it was going to break up soon. But, even then, duFort's men were still getting nearer. I could see them approaching me.


“Please God,” I prayed, “please do something. Break up this ice and wash my pursuers downstream. Wash me downstream too if it pleases you, but I can't have them reach the other bank.”


The torrent of water was now between me and the French soldiers. Seeing that they couldn't reach me, their leader ordered his men to lower their muskets. As the shots of their arquebuses rang out I saw the face of Mary Magdalene flash before my eyes. I felt a pain in my wrist and heard a cry from the oxen.


As I was unconscious, God, in the form of Mary Magdalene, picked me up and placed me in the ox cart. She unstuck the wheel from the ice, and told the oxen to run for the far bank. When I woke up I was safe and sound on the South bank. The ice had dissolved in a torrent of water, and I could see three of duFort's men on the North bank. The others must have been washed away in the breakup. God had washed away the men who pursued us, but had saved me from the icy waters. God had saved me, and had saved my people too… [10]


Summary of “The Magdalene Church”


In “The Magdalene Church”, Hélène Grignon begins with the story of Mary Magdalene, disciple of Jesus, as it is known from Gospels. She describes the importance of Mary Magdalene as the most prominent of Jesus' female disciples, but then notes her absence from Acts of the Apostles, and notes that there are no Biblical sources describing her life after the Resurrection.


Sainte Hélène then goes on to describe a dream that had occurred to her in the year 1596, where Mary Magdalene spoke to her. In the dream, Mary describes to Hélène the ministry she undertook during the Apostolic Age. While the tweleve male apostles went on to found churches by and for men, Mary Magdalene went on to found a women's church led by priestesses with a congregation of mostly women.


Mary Magdalene describes how, over the years, the men's church founded by the male apostles went on to become the Catholic Church, while the women's church (referred to by Hélène as the “Magdalene Church” was destroyed. Mary Magdalene credits the male-dominated nature of European society with the destruction of the female-dominated Magdalene Church, and describes how the survival of only one church has thrown off the balance of Christianity.


Mary Magdalene then calls upon Hélène to restore balance to Christianity by recreating the Magdalene Church. The final chapters of this book describe what a fully restored Magdalene Church would look like. The complete Magdalene hierarchy would include a female Pope to balance out the male Catholic Pope, and a complete set of female Bishops for every diocese, female Parish Priestesses, down to female Deacons. While each man in the hierarchy would have a female counterpart, the men's hierarchy and the women's hierarchy would have complimentary jurisdictions, with the women's hierarchy dealing with “women's” affairs such as marriages, baptism of children, education, and matters related to farming while the men's hierarchy would deal with “men's” affairs such as missionary work and baptism of adults, prayers for the sick and the dead, and matters relating to hunting, herding, or warfare. At the closing of the book Hélène calls for all Christian women to aid her in rebuilding the Church of Mary Magdalene.


Summary of “Children of Eve”


“Children of Eve” is either a Christianization of a Kanatian creation myth or an indigenization of the Book of Genesis, depending on who you ask. “Children of Eve” opens with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, describing their life there. Unlike in Biblical accounts, in Sainte Hélène's version of the story, Adam and Eve have three sons (Cain, Abel and Seth) while they are still living in Eden. Hélène then goes on to describe the eating of the forbidden fruit and the resulting fall from Eden.


Many scholars have compared the Eve in Sainte Hélène's work to the Biblical Eve. Sainte Hélène's Eve is describe as having more agency, more intelligence, and is less sexualized than the Biblical Eve. Sainte Hélène's Eve, unlike the Biblical Eve, is also not made to be subservient to her husband Adam as punishment for eating the forbidden fruit. Instead, Eve and Adam are separated from each other as punishment for their sins.


In Sainte Hélène's version of the story, the fall from Eden is interpreted as a literal fall from Heaven to Earth. It is with this fall that Sainte Hélène has spliced the Adam and Eve story from Genesis to the pre-Christian Kanatian creation myth involving the fall of Sky Woman to Earth from the Sky. The story then continues as angels, in the form of animals, catch Eve/Sky Woman in her fall, and create land on the back of a turtle for her to live on.


Eve/Sky Woman is described as pregnant at the time of her fall, and gives birth to a daughter soon after landing. Eve/Sky Woman and her daughter go on to be the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island while Adam and his sons are the forefathers of the peoples of Europe and the old world.


Sainte Hélène describes in much detail the ways in which the social influence of Eve and Adam have created different social structures on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The peoples of Turtle Island trace their descent from Eve and thus venerate women and organize their families matrilinealy. The peoples of Europe trace their descent from Adam and thus have created male-dominated societies.


Sainte Hélène concludes her book with a discussion of the consequences of contact between the “Children of Eve” in Turtle Island and the “Children of Adam” in Europe. She describes the importance of gender balance in establishing a perfect society, and describes how both Eve's and Adam's influence is necessary to achieve that balance. She calls on all people to work towards constructing a society which combines both European and Kanatian ways in order to restore the balance that was present in the garden of Eden.


Summary of “God the Daughter”


“God the Daughter” opens by recounting a vision that Sainte Hélène had in which she was visited by God in the form of the Virgin Mary. Mary speaks to Hélène and tells her that a great injustice had been done to her by the Catholic Church. Mary speaks of the fact that she is venerated but not worshipped, and that she deserves a place at the altar alongside her son Jesus. She speaks of the fact that, when she had carried the divine baby Jesus, that God had inhabited her body for a time. Mary tells Hélène that the God that had inhabited her body was another, fourth, aspect of God in addition to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [11] Mary explains that knowledge of God the Mother was systematically repressed by the Catholic Church in order to maintain male superiority within the Church.


Mary then goes on to tell Hélène that God does not have three aspects as the Catholic Church professes but actually has five: God the Holy Spirit, God the Father, God the Mother, God the Son, and God the Daughter. [12] She explains that the Catholic Church, because of its imbalance in favour of men, only worships the the three aspects which are male (the Father and the Son) or gender-neutral (the Holy Spirit). The two female aspects were worshipped by the old Magdalene Church, and Mary tells Hélène that the new Magalene Church should resume worshipping these two additional aspects of God.


Mary then goes on to talk about the fifth aspect of God: God the Daughter. She talks about how God came to Earth once as a man to save humanity from its sins. She foretells that, because of the sins of the Catholic Church [13], God will have to come to Earth again, this time as a woman. This new incarnation of God will be God the Daughter.


The remainder of “God the Daughter” is dedicated to Sainte Hélène explaining when and where she thinks that God the Daughter will be born. She theorizes that the cycle of history that will lead up to the birth of God the Daughter will mirror the cycle that led up to the birth of Jesus Christ. She divides history up into three cycles, or epochs. The first epoch, the Epoch of Adam and Eve, began with Adam and Eve living together in Eden, reached its peak with the fall from Eden, and ended with the Great Flood which severed all contact between the Children of Adam in Eurasia and the Children of Eve in Turtle Island. [14]


The second epoch, the Epoch of Jesus, contained all events from immediately after the Great Flood until the present day. In this second epoch the Children of Adam and the Children of Eve were out of contact with each other on separate continents, and events that happened on one continent didn't affect the other. Jesus came to the people of Eurasia, because, argues Hélène, they were more sinful than the Children of Eve on Turtle Island.


Hélène argues that, with a resumption of contact between the Children of Adam and the Children of Eve, the Second Epoch has ended and the Third has begun. She argues that the exodus from Stadacona that she led mirrored Moses' exodus from Egypt. She assumes that further events of the Third Epoch will mirror corresponding events of the Second Epoch, and she composes a list of events that must occur before God the Daughter will come to Earth. She predicts that, because Jesus Christ came to the Children of Adam, God the Daughter will come to the Children of Eve. She concludes her work by calling on all of the Children of Eve to watch for the signs of the coming of God the Daughter.


Footnotes:


[1] Upon their arrival in Hochelaga, the people who participated in the Stadaconan Exodus organized themselves as a single clan – the Sheep Clan. The word sheep was chosen partly due to the fact that they were the most devout followers amongst the Hochelagans of the Christian “shepherd” God, and partly because they were the first ones to bring sheep to Hochelaga.


[2] The “Order of Mary Magdalene” or the “new Magdalene Church” is a group of Kanatian Christian priestesses whose mission is to correct the gender imbalance in the Catholic Church. Their organization was founded following Sainte Hélène's call for the “reconsitution” of the “old Magdalene Church” (which she claims was founded by Mary Magdalene). While it was Sainte Hélène's vision of Mary Magadelene which inspired the creation of the Order of Mary Magdalene, the Order will not strictly follow the path Sainte Hélène has set out for them. The Magdalene priestesses see themselves as good Catholics, and many Kanatians are followers of both the Catholic and new Magdalene Churches. However, the Catholic hierarchy sees the new Magdalene Church as a dangerous form of Protestantism. The Jesuits are stuck in a tough position regarding the Magdalene Chruch, as many of their most pious converts are also pious followers of the Magdalene Church. They will do their best to correct the teachings of the Magdalene Church without trying to actively suppress their activities.


[3] DuFort sees the food that he is demanding from the Stadaconans as a tax that his “peasants” are required to pay to their “feudal lord”. The Stadaconans see it as a gift that they are giving him in exchange for anticipated trade goods (much like the feasts that they used to throw for visiting trade ships). The fact that he doesn't thank them for the gift and the fact that he demands it rather than asking for it are as much of an offence to them as the fact that he hasn't reciprocated with a gift of his own.


[4] DuFort has only enslaved the gold field labourers who he saw as being pretty much slaves alerady (because they had originated as prisoners of war). However, as the gold field labourers had been made adopted citizens of Stadacona, Sainte Hélène refers to them as “our brothers and sisters”.


[5] In exchange for Simon's surrender at the end of the summer uprising, duFort offerred amnesty to all those who handed over their weapons to him. However, he threatened that any participants in future rebellions would be enslaved or shot. Refusing to pay taxes was seen as a form of rebellion by duFort and was punished harshly.

[6] What Mary says to Sainte Hélène in this passage is correct. When DuFort discovered Stadacona had been emptied of most of its population, he feared a new rebellion, and sent many of his soldier to pursue the exodus. His men were welcomed as guests at Taquenonday, but when they discovered the 100 Stadaconans who had chosen to stay, they accused their hosts of harbouring fugitives, and attacked the villagers went they wouldn't hand over the Stadaconans as prisoners. The resulting battle resulted in the burning of the village, and the capture of Taquenonday's grain stores and cattle herds by duFort's men. 20 of duFort's men and 100 villagers were killed, and the remaining villages were taken prisoner. What will happen to those prisoners upon their return to Stadacona will be revealed later.


[7] The Blue Lake is the lake known in OTL as Lac St-Pierre.


[8] Some of duFort's men are still in pursuit, hoping to be able to capture a herd of sheep or ox cart or two full of grain. After the disaster at Taquenonday they are unwilling at this point to pursue the exodus into Maisouna, but are still hoping to catch a few stragglers.


[9] Of the 1000 who left Taquenonday, 20 have already died or been left behind due to fatigue. Most of those left behind have been shot by duFort's men.


[10] Other witness to this event would have said that Sainte Hélène was shot in the wrist, and fell backward onto the cart. They would have said that the oxen, scared by the sound of the gunshots, pulled harder than they had before, breaking the cart free and dragging it to the far bank. But those other witness remained silent when it came time for Sainte Hélène to tell her tale of how she led her people to Hochelaga.


[11] Sainte Hélène's used of the word “aspect” rather than the word “person” to describe the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is already a break from strict Catholic doctrine.


[12] Sainte Hélène rearranges the order of the “aspects” of God to symbolize that, to her, the Holy Spirit is the unifying force that ties the other aspects of God together.


[13] There is a little bit of Huguenot influence showing in Sainte Hélène's theology here. The idea of the Catholic Church being a corrupt, sinful institution comes directly from the interactions she's had with the Protestants in Petite Rochelle.


[14] Sainte Hélène's story of the First Epoch in “God the Daughter” contains many inconsistencies when compared with her story of the same events in “Children of Eve”. It is not clear whether she revised her beliefs between one work and the next, or whether, as someone accustomed to oral history, she just was fine with there being two inconsistent stories of the same events.

 

[telynk]

Update 11 - Guaragaya

Update 11 – Chief Guaragaya


(Stadacona, April 1594)


Guaragaya was woken before dawn by his sister. “There's a French soldier here to see you,” she said, “he says its urgent. He says Comte DuFort wishes to speak to you.”


Finally, Guaragaya thought. It had been last fall that Chief Guaragaya and Head Trader Bourget had first tried to speak to DuFort. After the rebellion last summer, relations between the Stadaconans and the French soldiers had been uneasy at best. The only way DuFort had prevented further uprisings was by enslaving or executing any who refused to turn over their weapons, and the Stadaconans were resentful of the “tax” that DuFort had imposed on them. But even so, Guaragaya and Bourget had both thought that things could end peacefully, and both had done their best to try to convince DuFort to compromise with the Stadaconans.


When the Town Mothers had started calling for an exodus to Hochelaga, Guaragaya and Bourget had tried to warn DuFort that if he didn't ease his policies, he would soon be left ruling over an empty town. But, they had been met with suspicion by the guards at the gates of Chateau-St-Charles, and had been unable to speak to DuFort in person. Even so, both Guaragaya and Bourget had decided to stay behind as most Stadaconans left on their exodus. Bourget chose to stay because his position as Head Trader depended on him remaining in a location in which he could trade with the French. Guaragaya chose to stay because leaving would mean giving up the political influence he had spent many years building. Unlike the Town Mothers, whose authority was over the domestic affairs of the people of Stadacona, Guaragaya's responsibilities were based upon maintaining Stadacona's relationship with the neighbouring villages and towns. He couldn't expect to maintain his position as cheif if he followed the exodus upriver, where he would be attempting to build relationships with strangers from unfamiliar villages. [1]


Now, Guaragaya was just happy that DuFort had finally found reason to talk to him. The night before last, most of Stadacona's population had departed heading upriver, and the morning after DuFort had sent out 80 soldiers to attempt to round up the “fleeing rebels”. Guaragaya hoped that these latest developments had led DuFort to realize that he had to work with the Stadaconans rather than against them. Maybe that was why he was finally willing to grant an audience.


Guaragaya quickly got himself ready, and followed the soldier across the frozen river to Chateau-St-Charles. The chateau was certainly imposing, standing on the top of headland, looking down on Stadacona, but it couldn't be a very practical spot to keep supplied. The trail leading up the chateau was steep and treacherous in the soft snow.


For the first time since its construction, Guaragaya was allowed to enter the chateau. As far as he knew the only Stadaconans who had been allowed to enter up until this point were the warriors who had agreed to fight for DuFort. After they had refused to join the rebellion in the summer, many of these warriors had been shunned by their fellow Stadaconans. But enough of them had come down to the town often enough, that Guaragaya had learned from them what to expect inside the chateau.


Really, the chateau was very much like Fort-St-Francis but built on a larger scale. The main differences were the fact that the walls of the chateau were made of brick and stone rather than wood and plaster, and the presence of the cannon. Guaragaya had never seen anything made of metal as large as the cannon before, and seeing them up close gave him chills. He definitely wouldn't want to see one of them aimed at him...


Guaragaya found DuFort waiting for him in the main audience chamber. “Christophe, is it?” DuFort asked as he entered.


“Well, Christophe is the name under which I was baptised, but my people call me Guaragaya. Christophe is too hard for them to pronounce.”


DuFort got right to business. “So, tell me Christophe, where are these people of yours? Why did they sneak away at night? And why did they leave you, their chief, here?”


“Most of the population of Stadacona left two nights ago because they were unhappy with the way that you, Monsieur Dufort, were treating them. They were unhappy with the way in which you made slaves out of their brothers and sisters at the gold fields, [2] and were unwilling to feed you and your soldiers without getting anything in return. They're on their way to Hochelaga right now to start things anew. I stayed here because I chose to stay and take care of the people who remain here. But, I imagine you know most of this already.”


“Yes, I am aware of your people's complaints. I am just surprised that they are insubordinate enough to desert both their chief and their rightful lord.”


“With all due respect, Monsieur, they do not believe that you are their rightful lord. They see no reason why Simon, Comte Charles' son, is denied his right to serve as Comte.”


“They would rather see that coward in charge! And tell me Guaragaya, what is your opinion?”


“My opinion is that I know Simon well enough to know he would make a poor leader. You, on the other hand, I could see you making a good Comte if you learn to listen to what the people of Stadacona want to tell you.”


“And now we come to the reason I've summoned you here today. You're here because I do want to know what the people of Stadacona will think of a certain subject. Just before dawn, my men returned from the village of Taquenonday. They entered the village as guests, but, when they discovered that fleeing Stadaconans were hiding there, they attacked the villagers. I was disappointed to learn that my men burned the village and killed many of its inhabitants, although they did bring the rest back here as prisoners. While I've been able to keep anyone from talking about this incident until now, I know that word will soon get out.”


Guaragaya was shocked, although not surprised. The French soldiers had never really showed any attention to Kanatian customs, like the codes of hospitality, although DuFort had usually kept them in line. “To be honest, what your soldiers have done is a great crime in the eyes of my people. When they hear of this they may even see it as an act of war, and demand revenge. Where were the Stadaconan warriors who usually fight alongside your soliders? I can't imagine they would just stand by and watch this happen...”


“I kept all the Stadaconan warriors serving under me here to defend the Chateau, and I sent only Frenchmen to pursue the rebels. I was worried that any Stadaconans traveling with them would mutiny if ordered to fire on their own people. That was clearly my biggest mistake.”


“Well, when the Stadaconan warriors hear what has happened, they will likely mutiny. Your best bet is to dismiss them from your service now.”


“If I dismiss them from my service, they will likely take their families and leave with the rest of your people. Tell me, apart from the warriors serving under me and their families, how many Stadaconans still remain?” [3]


“Well, there's myself and my family. And Bourget and his traders. And the artisans who live in Petite Rochelle and their families. Certainly not more than 80 people.”


“So not enough to plant the fields and bring in the harvest to feed us through the next winter. I was worried about that. I will need the warriors and their wives to tend to the fields, and so I can't let them go. That's where you come in. I need you to tell the remaining Stadaconans that the – uh – accident at Taquenonday was not my doing, but was a result of my troops operating without my orders. I need you to tell them that they have nothing to fear from me. I know that if you tell them, they will listen to you as their chief.”


“I'm assuming you're going to be punishing the soldiers responsible for the massacre? And you will be releasing the prisoners they took? Otherwise I feel like I can't tell my people in good faith that you disapproved of the events at Taquenonday.”


“The soldiers responsible will be returning to France as soon as the river thaws completely. And the prisoners will be released as long as they agree to help plant the fields of Stadacona. It will be good to have fewer soldiers' mouths to feed here anyways.”


“And what will I get in return for helping you out here? To be honest, you haven't treated me with the respect a chief deserves.”


“Well, if you prove to be a faithful ally, I will recognize your authority as chief over civil matters in Stadacona, and perhaps throughout the whole Comté. I need someone to take charge of the day-to-day administration of affairs. I have a funny feeling that if I put you in charge of collecting the food tax necessary to support the soldiers in the Chateau, I will be met with less resistance from your people.”


“Then it sounds like we might have a partnership,” Guaragaya replied.


(Tailla, June 1594)


The village of Tailla [4] had always been the largest village downriver from Stadacona. Now, with the destruction of Taquenonday and the departure of most of Stadacona's population, Tailla, with a population of 500, was the largest village of the People of the River Mouth. [5] Guaragaya approached the village by canoe, with 30 Stadaconan warriors and 10 French soldiers all armed with arquebuses in the canoes behind him. As Peace Chief, he had never led a war party like this before, although he had taken part in the wars of his youth. But, DuFort felt that this war party would be met with more hospitality at Tailla if it was led by a Kantian than if it was led by one of his French lieutenants. And Guaragaya seemed to be the only Kanatian leader that DuFort really trusted.


As the canoes approached the village, Guaragaya could see his old friend Karoga, the Peace Chief of Tailla, waiting by the beach. “What brings you here, Guaragaya?” Karoga called out.


“I hear that your people are planning to launch an attack on the L'Nuk. I bring warriors from Stadacona to join in the campaign.”


“Yes, my nephew is leading the war party himself. As you probably know, our fishing party was driven out of the fishing grounds by a L'Nuk war party last season while your people were busy fighting against their own Comte. Without Stadaconan arquebuses, we were unable to hold the L'Nuk off, and had to leave the fishing grounds before we could finish the season's worth of fishing. Our stores of dried fish are now empty, and we need to catch more this summer. Thus, we are planning to premtively strike against the L'Nuk before they can attack us. We need to drive them out of the fishing grounds so that we can fish this summer in peace. We are very grateful you have sent warriors to join us, as we have fewer than 10 arquebuses in the whole village. We could win the war with hatchets and spears, but without Stadaconan arquebuses, we'll lose many more warriors.” [6]


“My warriors will be happy to serve under your nephew, and we also bring arquebuses to lend to your warriors for the duration of the campaign. However, we in Stadacona have our own problems this year which we may need your help with.”


Karoga glanced at the Frenchmen in the canoes behind Guaragaya before leaning over and whispering to him. “Problems called duFort, by any chance?”


“No, duFort is not the problem,” Guaragaya replied, “he was difficult to reason with at first, but he has come around. He is now working with Stadacona rather than against it. But, the only way we were able to secure his cooperation was by having most of the population of Stadacona relocate upriver. We have almost as many warriors as we had a year ago, but many fewer farmers and herders to feed the warriors. We will need some help feeding our warriors through the winter.”


“So you need us to share our food with you?”


“Yes, if you share one-tenth of your harvest with us, and give us one-tenth of your herds for us to slaughter this come winter, then we will be able to make it through until next spring. In return, we are happy to send our warriors out to fight your wars, to lend you arquebuses for your own warriors, and to send Frenchmen to train your warriors in how to use them. We have a surplus of warriors, and with the help of our warriors to help secure the fishing grounds, we hope that you will have a surplus of food.”


“I will have to talk it over with the village council,” Karoga replied, “but I think we can make it work.”


(Hochelaga, August 1594)


The end of summer was the time of the annual Confederacy council meeting. Last year, messages had been sent with traders from Hochelaga to the People of the River Mouth in midsummer to summon them to the annual council meeting. But, this summer, no traders had traveled downriver from Hochelaga. And the few men that Stadacona had been able to spare to send upriver to trade had yet to return. [7] Thus as Guaragaya, Karoga, and the other councillors from the People of the River Mouth approached Hochelaga, they were unsure of what sort of welcome they would receive.


When he had stopped in Maisouna, Guaragaya had been welcomed by many of his Stadaconan friends that he had discovered living there. It appeared that 300 Stadaconans who had left that spring had settled in Maisouna, calling themselves the “Sheep Clan”. Guaragaya and his travelling companions had received a warm welcome from the Sheep Clan, but had received looks of hostility from many of the other Maisounans.


It was in Maisouna that Guaragaya had discovered that many Kanatians now considered Guaragaya and the other People of the River Mouth to be traitors and collaborators who had contributed to the massacre at Taquenonday. Many considered any who cooperated with the French to be no longer members of the Confederacy, but the final decision would have to be made by the Confederacy council in Hochelaga. Guaragaya was hoping that, after he said what he had to say, he would continue to be recognized as a member of the Confederacy Council, but he couldn't yet be sure.


Morisette, one of duFort's Lieutenants, had been travelling with Guaragaya until their arrival in Maisouna. Morisette had been sent to carry a message of peace and cooperation to the Confederacy, but once Guaragaya had discovered that cooperation with the French was the grounds upon wish Stadacona might be ejected from the Confederacy, he had asked that Morisette return to Stadacona. Morisette's presence wasn't helping Guaragaya's case, and both Guaragaya and Morisette had agreed that it would be better for Guaragaya to be welcomed on his own than for both men to be turned away together.


As Guaragaya's canoe approached Hochelaga, he could see a group of longhouses on the South shore that he hadn't seen before. That must be where the rest of my people settled, he thought. The Stadaconans who hadn't stayed in Maisouna had continued to Hochelaga, but when they had reached the village, had been told by Hochelaga's chief that there was no farm or pasture land available on Hochelaga's island. But as there was land available on the South shore of the Great River, the Sheep Clan has established their village there. The Sheep Clan's village was definitely smaller than the main town of Hochelaga on the North bank, but it looked just as prosperous. Guaragaya had heard in Maisouna that the wool from the Sheep Clan's flock of sheep was in much demand in Hochelaga.


Guaragaya put his canoe ashore and walked up the beach to the council circle. Many of the councillors from the three upriver nations were already present, and it seemed that Guaragaya and the other People of the River Mouth were latecomers. This was just as well, as that meant that they wouldn't have to wait to see whether they were welcome or not.


“I am Guaragaya, Peace Chief of the village of Stadacona, and I come along with representatives from the People of the River Mouth. We come in peace, bringing gifts of iron and cloth for our generous hosts. We wish to return to our place in the Confederacy council, and wish to stand beside our sister nations here. Will you welcome us into your council circle?” [8]


A hubub arose as the various councillors present talked amongst their neighbours. It was clear from the heated discussion that there was no consensus amongst the leaders assembled here today. Soon the Peace Chief of Hochelaga, as host of the gathering, spoke up.


“You are free to come and speak at our council, but some of the councillors here feel that your nation has betrayed its sisterhood with us when you let the French invaders onto your land. Some of us feel that the true People of the River Mouth are the ones who fled this past spring, and that you and your companions here are no more than captives of the French who have been sent to treat with us on their behalf.”


Another man now spoke up. “Until a few months ago my uncle was the chief of Taquenonday, the village that is no more. He was killed at the hands of French soldiers this spring, and my village was burned. Those of us Taquenondans amongst the Sheep Clan have desired to make war on the French to avenge our people's murder ever since we heard of the massacre, but our Clan Mother Hélène has convinced us that an attack on Stadacona will just lead to our own deaths. If you truely say that your people are still our brothers and sisters, won't you join in us in making war against the French? I hear that many of your warriors are stationed within the French Chateau. If they rise up against the French soldiers there, surely they will be victorious.”


“Your Clan Mother Hélène told me herself,” Guaragaya replied, “before she left Stadacona, that war with the French would not solve anything. Even if it would, many of our warriors would certainly be unwilling to attack those who they have come to see as their brothers. They deeply respect those who have taught them so much about the ways of making war with arquebuses. They would no more rise up against the French than they would rise up against me.”


“See, Guaragaya here really has been made a Frenchman!” the Taquenondan delegate said to the assembled council. “He is no longer one of us, he is now one of them. He is no longer our friend, he is our enemy.”


“The French are not your enemies!” replied Guaragaya. “We do regret that your father was killed by Frenchmen, but the those particular Frenchmen were not allies of Stadacona but renegades acting without instruction from duFort. The Frenchmen in question have been punished for their crimes, and we have brought condolence presents for all those who lost relatives in the massacre of Taquenonday. If you make war on the French, it will only bring you death and sorrow. You will be unable to penetrate their impregnable chateau and you will cut off your only source of iron and arquebuses. We have learned that we need what the French have to trade with us, which is why we have made peace with them. You must do the same, I beg of you.” [9]


“Thank you for your speech,” said Hochelaga's Peace Chief, “but we need to discuss this matter amongst ourselves. Until we have determined definitively that those of you who dwell with the French in the Land of the River Mouth are not our enemies, we cannot let you listen in on our council meetings. If you will take our leave for the rest of today's council session, we will summon you at the end of the session to let you know of the council's decision. Until then, please give us the space to talk about this matter amongst ourselves.”


Guaragaya was disappointed to be sent away from council so soon , but realistically he knew that if he stayed he would only draw more anger from those who saw his people as enemies. He hoped that those who supported his nation's continued membership in the confederacy would be able to convince the rest of the council. He escorted his companions away from the council circle.


Hours later, Guaragaya and the other People of the River Mouth were summoned again before the council fire. Hochelaga's Peace Chief, host of the council session, spoke. “We have discussed this matter for many hours now, and this council has come to the conclusion that you, the People of the River Mouth are not our enemies. Our enemies are the Frenchmen who live with you and those of your people who serve the French in the armies of Comte duFort. While the French are our enemies, we do not wish to make war against them, and hope that they do not make war against us. We hope that you, the People of the River mouth, as allies of both the Confederacy and the French can help us maintain the peace that exists today. We want you to return to duFort and tell him that neither him, nor any other Frenchman, nor any of your warriors who serve under him will be permitted on our lands. Any French presence on the territory of any of the Confederacy peoples will be treated as an act of war. The People of the River Mouth will be permitted to sent delegates to council meetings, and to send traders to bring us French goods, but the French themselves are not welcome. Can you bring this message to duFort?”


“I will certainly pass on your message, Guaragaya replied,” but duFort won't be happy. If no Frenchman is permitted on Confederacy land, he will be unlikely to welcome any Confederacy people who travel to Stadacona.”


“We do not trust duFort enough to risk sending any of our traders to Stadacona. DuFort may not be happy with this arrangement, but if, as you say, the French are not our enemies, than they should continue to maintain the peace. If it can be shown that they can be trusted to maintain the peace, then, and only then, will it make sense to welcome Frenchmen on our land. Until then, be thankful that you and your people are still welcome at our councils.”


“I am very thankful,” Guaragaya replied.


(Stadacona, September 1595)


Guaragaya entered the audience chamber and took his seat alongside duFort. For the past few months, duFort had insisted that Guaragaya advise him whenever he granted an audience to Stadaonans. Over the past year, Guaragaya had helped duFort resolve many a dispute between the French and the Stadaconans. The arrival of the new French settlers this past spring had only made disputes more common. Guaragaya's cultural knowledge had often helped duFort understand how the actions of his Frenchmen had been seen as offensive, and Guaragaya's authority amongst his own people had helped diffuse any desire to punish the French for what they had done. Working closely with duFort, Guaragaya had become one of his most consulted advisors.


Today, the first order of business was dealing with Pére André Touillard. Relations between the Jesuit leader and the Comte had been tense since the arrivial of the new French settlers this past spring. With the departure of much of Stadacona's population last year, and with the increasing tendency of Stadaconan traders to settle in Maisouna or Hocehlaga rather than returning home, duFort had decided that Stadacona needed to be repopulated with French farmers so that there would always be enough food to feed the French soldiers. DuFort entrusted Clémenceau, who had recruited the tradespeople of Petite Rochelle, to find settlers willing to cross the ocean. The way Clémenceau had been able to convince Frenchmen to come was to promise those known as “Huguenots” religious freedoms that they were denied back in France. Clearly, the Jesuits did not approve of the Huguenot teachings, as Pére André had become very angry when he discovered how many of the new settlers were what he called “heretics”. It had been this matter which had started the current dispute between duFort and Pére André.


André soon entered the room. “You summoned me here duFort,” the priest said. “You have interrupted my work with the students at our school. What do you have to tell me that's more important than spreading the word of God, may I ask?”


“Spreading the word of God, you say!” duFort replied. “Do you call this the way of God.” He held in his hand a small book printed on the corn-husk paper used in almost all books printed on this side of the ocean. [10] Guaragaya had learned that you could tell a book that came from France by the paper it was printed on. On the cover of the book, in small letters, was printed the word “Exodus”.


“This book came into my possession via a trader that returned from Hochelaga last week. He said that the book had been printed by the Jesuits of the Hochelagan Mission. I have read it [11] and discovered that the book's author describes a 'plague called duFort'. Am I a plague in the eyes of God? Is that the message you are spreading amongst these impressionable heathens?”


“Oh, I had no idea you would disapprove,” André replied unconvincingly. “I thought you would be flattered that Hélène Grignon describes you as an act of God. Being a plague sent by God is surely better than being a boon sent by Satan.”


“That is beside the point. By publishing a book which describes me as a 'plague' you are encouraging the heathens to rise up against me again. You are inciting a revolt, for which I should have you executed.”


“Do you really think that would be a good idea? I hear that there is disapproval in France of the sanctuary you have granted to the Huguenot heretics. If you start executing priests, sooner or later you may be accused of being a heretic yourself.”


“You insult my intelligence. Even though you deserve to be executed, I know very well that doing so would not be good politics. But there are other ways to get rid of you. From now on you are banished from the Comté du Canada. Return to France and tell the Church back home to send another Jesuit in your place. Tell them to send someone who knows how to tread his Comte with respect!”


“I treat you with all the respect that someone who harbours heretics deserves. And there will be no need of a replacement. We, the Jesuits of the Stadaconan mission, have been talking for months about the possibility of following the Sheep Clan West to Hochelaga. Every month there are fewer and fewer heathens in Stadacona and more and more in Hochelaga. As missionaries, we need to go to where our ministry is needed. Right now, that place is Hochelaga. While a few Jesuits will be staying behind to keep the school here open, myself and many of my followers will be following me to Hochelaga, where we will establish our new headquarters. I was hoping to stay a few months longer to finish my business here, but it seems that you have given me no choice. I will leave tomorrow.”


“Well begone!” duFort said. After André had left the room, he turned to Guaragaya. “Did I make a mistake there?” he asked. “Should I have been more lenient on him?”


“To be honest,” Guaragaya replied, “you'll probably be better off without him. His presence undermined your authority. My people have known him for longer than they've known you and trust him more than they trust you. If the two of you had come into conflict, it would be all I could do to keep my people from siding with the Jesuits. But, with him out of your hair, your authority, and mine, will be unchallenged. My people will know who leads them, and will stand by our sides.”


Footnotes:
[1] This division of responsibilities between “internal” and “external” affairs seems to have been a part of the division of responsibility between male and female leaders in Iroquoain societies. However, this was certainly only a part of the distinction between what would otherwise be parallel “male” and “female” governments. But it is this part of the distinction which makes Guaragaya's position more dependant on geopolitics than those of the town mothers.
[2] Again, remember that the gold field labourers were adopted Stadaconans, and while they were definitely a sort of underclass, they were considered lower-status citizens rather than slaves. By treating them as slaves, the French have offended many of the Stadaconans.
[3] Between when duFort arrived in Stadacona and the summer rebellion, about 50 Stadaconan warriors were recruited to serve under the new Comte. While many of them felt conflicted, most refused to rise up against duFort during the rebellion and again refused to leave Stadacona during the exodus. Them and their families make up the majority of the Kanatians remaining in Stadacona.
[4] Tailla was one of the villages that was mentioned by Cartier in his logs, so we know it existed OTL. We don't know how large it was, though.
[5] The remaining population of Stadacona is around 400:
50 Kantian warriors serving under DuFort,
50 family members of those warriors,
50 other Kanatians living inside the palisade,
30 living in Petite Rochelle,
20 living in the Jesuit compound,
150 ex-prisoners from Taquenonday (originally 200 prisoners were taken, but 50 have since either escaped or have disobeyed DuFort and Guaragaya and been sent to the gold fields as labourers)
50 Frenchmen living in the Chateau
[6] One of the reasons the L'Nuk are becoming more and more of a problem is that they have made an alliance with Abenaki in what will soon become the Wabanaki Confederacy (in TTL the Wabanaki Confederacy will form much sooner than it did in OTL)
[7] Stadacona, due to the simmering conflict between the French and their former prisoners, is not a very desirable place to live right now, and many who volunteer for trade missions do so specifically to be able to escape to Hochelaga or Maisouna.
[8] I'm trying to be as culturally appropriate as I can when describing the proceedings of the council session. However, most of the sources I've read have been much better at describing the theory of how similar Iroquoain councils worked rather than the nitty gritty of how meetings actually were conducted. So, if there's any experts on Iroquoain culture out there who see something I've thrown in here which totally wouldn't happen, please let me know...
[9] I know that the words I have put in Guaragaya's mouth don't display the diplomatic and rhetorical prowess that Guaragaya is supposed to possess. Please suspend disbelief here and accept that the original Kanatian words were much more persuasive than the English translation.
[10] This is not entirely accurate. There are printing presses in Mexico at this point which use other sorts of paper. But, at this point in history, wood-fibre paper is not yet common, and cloth fibre is still still too scarce in Kanata to be used for paper, so most books printed in Stadacona or Hochelaga are made with fibre from corn husks.
[11] Really, duFort needed much help from a translator to read the book, although he is starting to learn Kanatian.

 

[telynk]

Update 12 - Scotland 1550-1600

The following is an excerpt from the book European Monarchs Vol. VII: 1550-1600

Scotland:
Mary I (b. 1542, m. 1553 Edward VI of England, r. 1542 – 1611)


Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland upon the death of her father while still an infant. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, who was also the next in line to the Scottish throne, was appointed as her regent. Her early years were marked by the “War of the Queen's Marriage” - a dispute over whether Mary should be betrothed to (then Prince of Wales) Edward VI of England.[1] Scotland itself was divided into pro-English and pro-French factions, and both England and France fielded armies in Scotland in support of their allied faction. While, initially, it seemed that Mary would be wed to Edward according to the 1543 Treaty of Greenwich, the pro-French faction soon won out in the Scottish parliament, inciting the English invasion later that year. The pro-French faction enjoyed the support of the Scottish people for much of the early years of the war, while only a few Protestants supported the pro-English faction.


However, things changed in 1547 when English forces began to overrun Scotland. Until then, France, had been supporting the Scottish war effort without sending an army of their own to fight in France. However, with the English occupying much of Scotland, it became clear that sending a French army to Scotland would be necessary to win the war. However, the French needed something in return. Initially, a proposal was made to marry the young Queen Mary to the young Dauphin Francis, thus potentially bringing Scotland under the French crown. However, when the Dauphin died in October of 1547 [2], France began to make further demands of the Scots that, in the words of Regent Arran, would “turn Scotland into nothing more than a French vassal.” While the Queen's Mother Mary of Guise was busy working out an agreement with France, Regent Arran signed a treaty with England, which turned Mary over to the English occupying forces. In exchange for turning over the Queen, the English guaranteed that Mary would never be taken to England proper (she would remain in the occupied territories of Scotland, where Arran would continue to serve as her Regent) until she reached the age of majority. Additionally, the treaty stipulated that if Edward and Mary were to wed, Edward would be King Consort of Scotland but would never have right to hold power as King jure uxoris. [3]


Regent Arran's decision to switch sides and make peace with the English was supported by only a (mostly Protestant) minority of the Scottish Parliament. Parliament quickly voted to remove Arran as regent and replace him with Mary of Guise. Mary of Guise signed agreed to make the concessions to France that Regent Arran had found so distasteful, and soon a French army arrived in Scotland to fight against the English. However, much of the damage had already been done. Most of the Protestant population of Scotland supported Arran's decision, and the fact that the Queen was now in English hands turned the tide of the war. By the time of Edward's coronation in 1548, the English and allied (mostly Protestant Scots serving under Regent Arran) forces were in control of more than half of the country.


The marriage of Mary to Edward in 1553 brought the war to finally to an end. With no chance that Mary could be betrothed to the new Dauphin (born in 1548) Henry II of France withdrew his troops and made peace with the Edward VI of England and Mary I of Scotland. With the war over, Regent Arran turned his attention to restoring order in Scotland. While there were no French troops present in Scotland after the official end of the war in 1553, many of the pro-French Catholic forces continued to fight in a series of armed uprisings. The largest uprising was the “war of 1557” where a number of Catholic nobles briefly occupied Edinburgh. Arran was able to defeat the Catholic forces and put the down the rebellion, but was only able to do so with the support of an English army. The fact that many Catholic Bishops had been involved in the uprising led to the 1558 decision by Mary (as the Arran regency had ended in 1557) to confiscate Catholic Church property all over Scotland. Until this time, various forms of Protestant worship had coexisted with Catholicism in Scotland. 1558 marks a turning point after which Catholic worship was driven more and more underground.


Between the time when she starting ruling in her own right in 1557 and the birth of her son Henry in 1561, the Queen spent time in both London and Edinburgh. Usually, Mary would spent the summers ruling in Scotland and the winters with her husband in England. Her first child, a daughter Anne, was born in London in December of 1559. For the first few years of Anne's life, Mary and Anne would travel together, spending time in both Scotland and England. However, this changed when Mary discovered she was pregnant again in the spring of 1561. This time she was due to give birth in the fall, and she knew she couldn't survive the voyage back to London either just before or just after she was to give birth, so her son Henry was born in Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.


King Edward's first peacetime visit to Scotland was made in 1561 to visit his newborn son. Mary had had a hard pregnancy and birth, so she was unable to return to England when Edward departed in the Spring. However, while Mary stayed in Edinburgh, the infant Henry and his older sister Anne was brought to London along with Edward. Mary had been sick in bed when the decision was made to take Henry to England, and she very much resented the loss of her baby. Mary would not see her son again for many years, and she would never forgive her husband for taking him away from her.


This distrust between Mary and her husband led to tension between England and Scotland throughout the 1560s. While Edward was already approaching Louis XIII of France for an alliance against Spain, Mary herself made a point of making a separate alliance between Scotland and France. She also approached other leaders such as King Frederick of Denmark in the hopes of having other allies in case of war between England and Scotland.


Tensions between England and Scotland also affected the development of the Church of Scotland. “The Kirk” as it is called in Scotland, was originally founded in 1558 to organize Protestant worship in Scotland and to take control of confiscated Catholic Church possessions. Doctrinally, the Church of Scotland followed closely the Calvinist ideals of the Church of England [4]. However, in the 1560s, during the time of tension between Mary and Edward, Mary took measures to prevent the Kirk from being subsumed by the Church of England. She forbid the use of English for liturgical use, permitting only the use of Scots or Gaelic[5]. She also differentiated the Church of Scotland from that of England by removing herself from the position of head of the Church and creating a council of Bishops to govern the Church independently of the monarch. [6]


In the 1570s, the tension between Mary and Edward began to die down. Mary began to travel to London again in the winter, to visit Edward and her children, and she even brought Henry and Anne up to visit Scotland a few times. However, Mary and Edward saw little of each other during these visits, and the two of them had no more children. The warming of relations meant that Mary was able to increase trade with England, which was experiencing its Late Edwardian economic boom at the time. [7]


While the English colonial presence in the New World eventually grew to dwarf that of Scotland, Scotland's colonies actually predate those of England. It was during the 1570s that Scotland established its first trading post in the land of Labrador that would eventually grow into the town we now know of as New Aberdeen [8]. It was Queen Mary's commitment to expanding Scotland's maritime capabilities that we have to thank for Frobisher's expedition [9] and the New Aberdeen colony.


It seems that Mary's interest in expanding Scotland's maritime trade network was originally inspired by conversations she had with sailors during her semiannual voyages between Edinburgh and London. She had heard stories of the wealth that the Spanish had found in the New World and the valuable trade the Portugese had established with India. Mary felt that Scotland was ideally placed to serve as a base for Northern routes to the Orient and she sponsored many expeditions searching for the fabled Northeast and Northwest passages.


Mary sponsored Andrew Keith's 1563 expedition in search of the Northeast Passage, which resulted in the discovery of the Northern sea route to Musocvy, and the establishment of the Scottish Northeastern Trade Company [10]. In 1569, after years of trying in vain to get his expedition in search of a Northwest Passages sponsored by King Edward, the English navigator Martin Frobisher came to Queen Mary asking for her support. Frobisher launched three expeditions on behalf of Scotland, the first two in search of a Northwest passage, and the third in 1574 to establish a colony on the coast of Labrador. [11] While the Labrador winters were too cold for the colony to survive year-round, New Aberdeen quickly became profitable as a summer trading post where Scottish merchants would trade with the natives for furs (which could be bought much more cheaply in Labrador than they could in Muscovy).


During Mary's reign, the port of Glasgow, in addition to being a centre for trade with Labrador, quickly grew into a base for pirates preying on the Spanish gold fleets. While these pirates were mostly English, King Edward, in an attempt to maintain peace with Spain, had decreed that anyone accused by the Spanish of piracy could not sell cargo in an English port. This drove many of these pirates, including the infamous Francis Drake [12], to Glasgow where they could operate with impunity.


Things changed significantly for Mary when her husband Edward was succeeded as King of England by her son Henry in 1581. While Mary got along better with Henry than she had with Edward, Henry was much more of a warmonger. When Henry asked his mother to support his war efforts with Scottish troops, Mary felt that she could not refuse. By 1586, Scottish troops were fighting alongside the English in the Netherlands, France and Ireland. [13] This proved to be quite a drain on Mary's treasury, and war with Spain meant that Scottish ships could no longer freely cross the Atlantic to trade in Labrador. The war years of the 1580s were not good for Scotland.


However, the other consequence of the death of Edward was that Mary was free to remarry in 1583. Her second husband was James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell [14], who had long been a close advisor of the Queen. While Mary was over 40 and Bothwell was almost 50, the union proved to be fertile, and Mary gave birth to a daughter Jane in 1584 and a second son James in 1586. While Mary survived both pregnancies, Bothwell died in 1589.


While she had always been distant from her eldest son Henry, and less than close with Anne, Mary tried to make up for it by caring for Jane and James all the more. She kept both of them close, and saw to a good part of their education herself. While she spent time with her children, Scotland was largely governed by her councillors. Even Henry I of England, as heir apparent to the throne of Scotland, paid more attention to Scottish affairs than Mary did during this time. [15]


As Mary got older, the question of succession began to be raised. The existence of James (now Earl of Bothwell) meant that it was possible for Scotland to avoid personal union with England if James, rather than Henry, could be named as Mary's successor. Henry asked the Scottish Parliament to pass a bill confirming himself as heir to the throne, but they refused on the grounds that the question of succession could only be determined by Mary's will. [16] In the end, in 1597, Mary agreed on a compromise solution whereby Henry would be first in line for the throne, with James next in the line of succession followed by Henry's children. This solution would work for the time being, but would prove to cause problems two decades later.


Footnotes to Scotland:
[1] This is the same war known OTL as “the Rough Wooing”.
[2] Everything up to the death of the Dauphin in 1547 is OTL. The death of the Dauphin is supposed to be the first major butterfly. It made sense to me to have this first major butterfly happen in France since the POD was in France, but as you can see from the rest of this post, this butterfly had very important implications for Scotland.
[3] While in England in OTL, it was necessary for Elizabeth not to marry to prevent her husband from claiming jure uxoris rights, it seems that in OTL Scotland it was more acceptable for a King to simply be a King Consort with no power. For example Queen Mary's second OTL husband Lord Darnley, was only ever allowed to be a King Consort, even though he aspired to claim more power.
[4] Read the upcoming “England” update for details on the Church of England.
[5] I haven't planned far enough ahead to know if this will result in a surviving Scots language.
[6] Really, Mary is mainly interested in preventing any future King of England from exercising power over the Scottish Church even if that King of England is also King of Scotland.
[7] See the “England” update for more on this boom.
[8] New Aberdeen is located near the site of OTL Cartwright, Labrador
[9] Yes, this is the same Frobisher, he was born before the POD and his interested in finding a Northwest Passage dates back before significant butterfly occur in England.
[10] Similar events occurred OTL except for the fact that in OTL it was an English expedition which resulted in the founding of the English Muscovy Company. There is no English Muscovy Company in TTL.
[11] As in OTL, Frobisher fails to discover Hudson's Bay, but in TTL, he discovers Lake Melville leading to the Labrador interior, and recognizes the potential of the area for further trade and exploration.
[12] He will be a lot less important TTL than he was OTL. I just wanted to show where he ended up.
[13] You will discover the nature of these three conflicts that England and Scotland are involved in in future updates.
[14] He was Mary's 3rd husband OTL, and they had been friends for a long time at that point OTL, so I figured they'd get together TTL as well.
[15] Having her children taken away from her by her husband has taken its toll on Mary's mental health. She's not mad by any means, just a little obsessive.
[16] The Scottish Parliament is still anti-English, even in the 1590s.

 

[telynk]

Revised France Update

France:


Henri II (King of France 1545 – 1563) (b. 1519, m. 1533 Catherine de'Medici, d. 1563)


Henri II was the only surviving son of King François I of France. He came to power upon the death of François with France already involved in the Scottish “War of the Queen's Marriage”. [1] Originally, Henri's war objective was to secure a marriage between Mary, Queen of Scots, and his young son François, creating a union between the crowns of Scotland and France. However, when the Dauphin François died in 1547 [2], Henri took a different approach, demanding a treaty which would make Scotland's foreign policy subservient to France. While Henri was correct in his assessment that Scotland needed France's support to win a war against England, he misjudged Scotland's willingness to give in to English demands for a marriage between Mary and Edward, Prince of Wales. Henri's demands of concessions from Scotland in return for his continued commitment to the war against England was responsible for alienating a large portion of the Scottish population, and ultimately losing the war for the pro-French faction. [3]


When an embarrassing peace between England and France was signed in 1553, Henry began to look for other campaigns in which he could fare better. With the death of Emperor Charles V in 1555 [4], and with the division of the Hapsburg lands between Spain and Austria, Henri thought the time was right for a new war against Spain. He pressed his claims in Italy and launched an invasion of the peninsula, with the aid of his Ottoman allies, in 1556. Henri was ultimately unsuccessful in this war, but the expenses incurred by Felipe II of Spain in maintaining his mercenary armies helped contribute to Spain's economic problems. [5]


The religious tension that would mark much of the second half of the 16th century began in earnest during the reign of Henri II. Henri himself was a staunch Catholic and he took strict measure to outlaw Protestantism, but the Calvinist Huguenot movement continued to grow underground throughout the two decades of Henri's reign. Huguenot uprisings against Henri's anti-Protestant policies become more and more common, and Henri was often too distracted by his wars to put down these revolts in a timely manner.


One factor which greatly encouraged the growth of French Protestantism was the Papal Conclave of 1559 which resulted in the election of the first of a long series of explictly pro-Hapsburg popes. While various Popes had frequently formed alliances with the Hapsburgs before this point, the Pope had never explicitly put Hapsburg interests before those of the Papacy and the Church. Starting with the Conclave of 1559, the Hapsburg faction came to dominate the College of Cardinals, and with the Italian War of 1556-1564, the Hapsburg armies came to dominate Italy. A series of weak Popes, elected by the pro-Hapsburg Cardinals, proceeded to put Hapsburg interests above all else.


The fact that the Hapsburgs, especially Spain, were at the time seen as France's arch-enemies meant that many in France came to see Roman Catholicism itself as being opposed to French interests. After the Conclave of 1559, Calvinism began to gain appeal amongst the nobility, while before this time, Protestantism in France had mostly been a protest movement restricted to the lower and middle classes. However, despite the actions of the Pope, King Henri himself remained a traditionalist in his religious views, and refused to question Roman Catholicism. Protestants were dismissed from Henri's court, and even those who advocated taking steps against the Pope within Catholicism (such as appointing an Anti-Pope) were kept out of the King's inner circles.


So, even as the French nobility became more Protestant, Henri's advisors became more Catholic. Protestants who envied Henri's closest advisors (François, the son of Duke Claude of Guise, was one whose position was much coveted) gravitated toward the Dauphin Louis, whose favour they intended to win. The fact that Henri's advisors were at once the most Catholic members of the nobility and the men who had been in charge during Henri's military failures meant that Catholicism itself acquired a tainted reputation. By the time of his death, Henri's military failures had given him a reputation as an ineffective monarch, further disgracing the Catholic cause. [6]


In the last years of Henri's reign, it became more and more difficult for Henri to control the frequent Protestant uprisings. Many nobles sympathetic to Protestantism had begun refusing to put down these revolts, and some members of the lower nobility were even trying to co-opt these uprisings for their own purposes. Henri's own troops were tied up in Italy, making him powerless to deal with the rebels himself. In the end Henri was forced to readmit Protestants to his court in exchange for help putting down the uprisings. Soon there was an open Protestant faction at court which would make its voice heard after the sudden death of King Henri in 1563.


Louis XIII (King of France 1563 – 1574) (b. 1548, m. 1572 Catherine de Bourbon, d. 1574)


Louis XIII was the second son of Henri II, but the oldest one to survive childhood. [7] Louis spent much of his childhood immersed in a court which disapproved of his father's military failures, and became influenced by a group of Huguenots led by Louis de Bourbon, younger brother of Duke Antoine of Bourbon. [8] With the sudden death of Henri II, a conflict arose in the Council of Peers [9] over who would be named regent for the 14-year-old King. The Protestant faction favoured Louis de Bourbon, while Henri's closest advisors favoured François, the new Duke of Guise. Neither candidate was acceptable to the moderate majority as François' reputation proved to be too tarnished by Henri's failures [10], but Louis de Bourbon's Protestantism made him equally unacceptable. François de Guise proposed that the Bourbons be expelled from Council on the grounds of Protestantism, which only made things worse as the Bourbon army was soon raised. Soon, the situation had degenerated into the brief “Regency War”, where armies loyal to the Bourbon and de Guise houses clashed in a number of small engagements. However, by the end of the year, the French army that had been fighting in Italy, led by Henri, Duke of Montmorency, [11] returned home to impose peace between the two factions. In the end it was Henri de Montmorency, a moderate Catholic, who was appointed regent.


Thus, the early years of Louis XIII's reign were marked by a compromise between Catholic and Protestant factions, with policies of tolerance promoted, and with both Catholic and Protestant nobles serving as Louis' advisors. Peace was quickly made in Italy, with Louis giving up all of the French claims South of the Alps in exchange for small gains elsewhere. The alliance that Montmorency, as Regent, forged with King Edward of England supported France's interests abroad. This time was a time of relative stability, and peace at home and abroad led to a period of economic prosperity.


However, this time of peace would be relatively short-lived as it became more and more clear that Louis favoured the Protestant faction over the Catholics. While the policies of tolerance during Louis' reign had been successful and preventing Protestant uprisings, it was now the Catholics who grew more and more discontent. When Louis reached the age of majority, Henri of Montmorency and other moderates were dismissed in favour of Protestants, and the influence of Calvinists such as Louis de Bourbon and his sister-in-law Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, grew. King Louis drifted more and more into the Protestant camp until 1568, when, at the urging of his Protestant advisors, he converted to Calvinism.


Louis' conversion led almost immediately to armed uprisings by peasants and commoners, encouraged by their clergy, calling for the “Heretic King” to fire his Protestant advisors and reconvert to Catholicism. Armies led by Protestant nobles were sent to put down these revolts, while Catholic nobles often used their own troops to defend the rebels.


François de Guise described Louis' conversion as a “fit of madness” and tried to secure for himself the position of Regent for the “mad King”. François became the figurehead for a number of the Catholic armies fighting against Louis' loyalists, although the Duke of Guise himself was soon found guilty of treason and was forced to flee to Spain. Parts of France soon devolved into chaos, as army fought army and mob fought mob.


But, within a few years, both sides were tired enough from fighting that Louis was able to make peace. He made an agreement with the Catholic Clergy where Louis would refrain from reforming the French Church (as had been done with the Church of England) in exchange for a promise from the clergy not to support further uprisings. He also made peace with the Catholic nobles who still supported François of Guise's “Regency” by agreeing to keep a minimum number of Catholics amongst his close advisors.


While the years from 1570 to 1572 were a time of relative peace, there was still much discontent simmering below the surface. Assassination attempts were made in 1569 and 1571 by those wishing to replace Louis with his younger brother Charles, and revolts were still common. But, unlike in 1568, there were no Catholic nobles willing to take the risk of raising an army against their King, so the Protestants, with support from the moderate Catholics, were able to retain control.


However, things changed again in 1572 when King Louis married Catherine de Bourbon, the daughter of Antoine, Duke of Bourbon, and Jeanne of Navarre. It became clear at this point that if Catherine de Bourbon was to give birth to a son, France would be faced with not just one Protestant King, but a whole line of them. The Catholic nobles who had made peace with Louis soon began sending letters to the exiled Duke of Guise promising to support his efforts to establish a Regency.


Soon François of Guise approached Felipe II of Spain to request his support in dethroning Louis. The alliance between the Duke of Guise and Spain had already been sealed with the marriage of Felipe's son Charles to François' daughter Catherine in 1571. [12] Now, François convinced Felipe to lead an army into France in order to “save the people of France from their Heretic King”.


Felipe's army crossed the Pyrenees into France in 1573, starting what is often referred to as the “Révolution de l'an 1574”. Many Catholic nobles raised their own forces and joined them to Felipe's army, and others started inciting revolts amongst the Catholic commoners. The Spanish army defeated Louis' loyalists in a number of decisive battles. Louis' forces suffered much from low morale as the soldiers themselves were still mostly Catholic, and were unwilling to fight to defend a faith which many of them continued to see as heresy. While these same soldiers had won many battles in the smaller conflicts of the late 1560s, they had always been fighting disorganized mobs or armies much smaller than their own. Fighting against a well-led, numerically equal force was too much for Louis' troops, even when they had terrain on their side.


Seeing that he would need a larger force than he had to win this war, at the end of 1573, Louis sent his brother Charles to Paris to recruit more troops while Louis led his army in a controlled retreat, hoping to buy time by forcing Felipe to beseige the Protestant-dominated cities of the Southwest. However, in early 1574, when Louis' army reached the gates of Paris, he discovered his brother had betrayed him. Charles had closed the gates of the city, and would not let any Protestants enter. Charles demanded that Louis convert back to Catholicism and dismiss his Protestant advisors. Louis refused, but many of his own troops deserted to join Charles' army. Louis soon had no choice but to take refuge in Orléans, which was soon under seige by Charles' army.


Luckily for the French, the seige of Orléans did not last long. Catholic loyalists amongst the Orléanais opened the gates to Charles' army. A battle broke out in the streets between Charles' and Louis' troops. Seeing that he was vastly outnumbered, but hoping that Charles' troops would not be willing to fire on their own King, Louis rode out to lead the troops himself wearing his crown upon his head instead of his helmet. While Louis' presence did cause many of Charles' men to cease their attack, it didn't stop all of them. A stray arquebus ball struck Louis in the cheek, and before the day was out Louis XIII was no more. As Louis had a daughter but no sons, the crown soon passed to his brother Charles, who would be crowned as King Charles IX.


Charles IX (King of France 1574 – 1615) (b. 1553, m. 1573 Jeanne de Guise, m. 1583 Marie Perret, d. 1615)


Charles IX was the youngest son of King Henri II [13]. In 1560, as Henri saw his son Louis beginning to succumb to the influence of Protestants, he sent the young Prince Charles away to be educated by François de Guise, one of Henri's most trusted advisors. Charles spent much of his childhood and adolescence under the influence of François and his Catholic faction, and only returned to his brother's court when he reached the age of majority.


Charles was a somewhat more moderate Catholic than his mentor François, and unwilling to support François' allegation that Louis had succumbed to madness. He was certainly unwilling to support François as Regent, instead believing that Louis could be convinced through reason alone to return to the Catholic fold. It was only when it became clear that the French forces were too divided to defeat King Felipe on the battlefield, that Charles decided he couldn't wait for his brother to convert of his own accord. He hoped that, by closing the gates of Paris to his brother, he could force him to convert. He believed that a Catholic Louis XIII could rally the French Catholics behind his banner and could expel the Spanish army from French territory.


The last thing Charles expected to result from his actions was the death of Louis during the battle of Orléans. While Charles did grieve his brother's death, he also was quick to secure the reins of power. With the death of the “Heretic King”, the Catholic uprisings quickly ceased, and with Spanish troops on French soil, Catholics and Protestants united behind Charles and forced the Spanish to withdraw. Charles quickly extended diplomatic relations to the Ottoman Sultan, making sure that the Sultan would stand by him if Spain refused to make peace.


But the peace that Charles built would not last long, as many Huguenots were still unhappy with living under a Catholic King. In Huguenot circles, Catholicism was equated with a Pope who was controlled by Spain, and the fact that it was the Catholic faction that had brought Spanish troops into France further tarnished Catholicism itself. While Charles had made sure that his mentor François of Guise left France along with the Spanish army, Charles had married François' niece Jeanne, and many believed that François, even in exile, still carried much influence behind the scenes. Many even accused Charles of ordering the arquebus shot that had brought him to power, and pamphlets began circulating in Huguenot circles calling for Charles' abdication.


While Charles' later decisions lead us to believe that Charles would have preferred a policy of tolerance to maintain the peace, Charles was greatly constrained by his choice of advisors. Many of the Protestant nobles who had supported Louis had been with Louis at the gates of Paris when Charles' betrayal had become apparent, and many of them would never forgive Charles for what they saw as treason. Even some of the moderate Catholics from Louis' council were unwilling to work with the man they saw as responsible for Louis' death. Thus Charles was often forced to pick advisors from the same Catholic faction who had supported the de Guise “Regency”, thus further tarnishing his own image amongst the Protestants.


Charles soon began to bring in policies to crack down on those who accused him of regicide. Many Catholic nobles saw these policies as license to persecute all Huguenots, which in turn led to more frequent and more violent Protestant uprisings. Things came to a head in 1578 when the capture of a number of minor Catholic nobles by Protestant rebels forced Charles to intervene. Charles raised his own army, and marched on La Rochelle where the Protestants were headquartered. Charles' army forced the Protestants to retreat within the city walls, but was unable to take the city.


At this time, Henri, Duke of Bourbon [14], who had recently been crowned King of Navarre, emerged as the leader of the Protestant faction. As Charles had not yet had a son, Henri of Navarre, as heir to the Bourbon branch of the Capetian Dynasty, was the next in line for the French throne. Thus, those Protestants who called for Charles to step down on charges of treason against Louis XIII supported Henri as their candidate for King. Henri soon raised his own army, and marched to the relief of La Rochelle. With the Battle of La Rochelle, Henri proved to be a competent military commander, and by the end of the year he had numerous nobles and rebel militias fighting under his banner.


It became clear by 1579 this particular conflict was more than just a Protestant rebellion against the King, but had devolved into a full-scale civil war. Charles commanded larger forces than the Protestants during this part of the war, but lost a number of battles due to technical blunders. By the end of 1580, large swaths of the country in the Southwest were occupied by the Protestants and lay outside of the King's control.


Things changed for the worse in 1581 with the death of King Edward of England. King Edward had been careful to maintain a position of neutrality in the French Wars of Religion so far, being unwilling to support either the Catholics or Protestants in favour of maintaining an alliance with France against Spain. However, the new King Henry IX [15] was not so nuanced in his foreign policy. Henry IX threw his support fully behind the Protestant faction.


In 1582 the “Alliance of the Henrys” (King Henry IX of England and King Henri III of Navarre) launched simultaneous attacks in the North and West of France. The Navarrese army soon took Tours and beseiged Orléans, while the English army advanced from Calais to take control of Amiens and much of Picardie, with plans to soon advance South towards Paris. In the early 1580s the situation looked grim for King Charles, as his forces were now outnumbered by the Protestant alliance.


Part of Charles' problem was that his wife, Jeanne had yet to give birth to a son. She had given birth to a daughter in 1576 and had suffered a number of miscarriages since. With Charles being the last surviving son of Henri II, and with no heir to succeed him, Henri of Navarre was the next in line for the throne. This not only united the Protestants behind Henri, but also meant that many French nobles were unwilling to take up arms against the Protestants as they wanted to stay on good terms with the man they saw as potentially the next King of France.


But, in 1582, Jeanne de Guise feel sick; she died in 1583. Charles quickly married Marie Perret, a young courtier whose mother and aunts had been known to be exceptionally fertile, and in early 1585 Marie gave birth to a son. This caused disunity in the Protestant camp, with Henri's supporters split between those that still supported Henri's claim to the throne, and those more legitimist-minded Protestants who would prefer that Henri simply serve as Regent for Charles' young son. Charles was able to take advantage of this disunity in a few key battles, the tide of the war was soon turned, and the Protestant forces began to retreat. In 1586, La Rochelle was taken, cutting off the Navarrese army in Tours from the Protestant stronghold in the Southwest, and by the spring of 1587 the Protestant army was suing for peace.


The Peace of Tours, made in 1587, was the brainchild of Henri of Navarre. Henri knew that he had no more chance of obtaining the French throne, and knew that the best outcome he could hope for was status quo ante bellum. But at the same time, his army was still intact, and he had no intention of being forced to disband it. It was clear that King Charles wouldn't let him keep his army, unless it was actively being used to fight one of France's other enemies. So, Henri proposed that his army be allowed safe passage through France to the Netherlands, where he would offer his support to the Dutch forces fighting against the Spanish. King Charles needed a peace that would show the people of France that Catholicism had won, and needed to ensure the Protestants were stripped of their power to rise up against the French King, so he needed some concessions from the Protestants. Henri, it turned out, was able to offer what was needed in exchange for a few things of his own.


Thus, in the final peace agreement, Henri of Navarre gave up any claim by himself or his heirs to the French throne, and the other Protestant nobles agreed to stand down and agreed never again to raise armies in France. However, to help prevent future conflicts between France and Navarre, Henri traded his French holdings in Bourbon, Vendome and Albret for the small territory of Labourd. Charles agreed to recognize an independent Kingdom of Navarre consisting of Lower Navarre, Béarn, and Labourd. This not only created a buffer between France and Spain in the Western Pyrenees, but it also gave the small Kingdom of Navarre access to the sea through the port of Bayonne. [16] Catholicism was retained as the state Church of France, but Protestant worship was permitted by any who are “sufficiently loyal to their King”. The Peace of Tours set the stage for a new era of tolerance and peace as both sides were utterly exhausted by war.


In the 1590s, Charles began to turn his attention overseas. New France had existed on paper for almost 50 years at this point, but in the year 1590, there were still fewer than 40 Frenchmen living in the Comté du Canada. Charles saw the wealth that Spain's American colonies had brought in, and hoped to establish similar riches for France through colonization. Gold had been discovered in the Comté du Canada in the 1570s, but throughout the 1580s that gold had been mined by the natives, who had sent only a small portion of their gold revenues back to France as tribute. Charles was convinced that, if he put a Frenchman in charge of the mining operations, he would be able to increase the flow of gold from New France to the same levels as that flowing from New Spain. But, until 1590, other priorities had been more important.


Thus, in 1591, Charles replaced the Métis Comte du Canada, Charles Grignon, with a Frenchman by the name of Michel duFort. He sent the new Comte to Stadacona to improve the efficiency of the mining operation, and to extract the maximum possible revenue for France. While these revenues never came close to those that were extracted by Spain in their colonies, duFort did succeed at rising the levels of revenue far beyond that which the Stadaconan natives had been sending as tribute.


Along with increasing French influence in Canada, Charles worked at building a new French fleet that could challenge the Spanish fleet in the sea lanes to the New World. While French pirates were often able to capture lone Spanish ships, and the French had defeated the Spanish Mediterranean fleet in the Italian wars with help from their Ottoman allies, the French fleet was still unable to engage the Spanish in Atlantic naval battles where Ottoman support was unavailable. Charles knew that another war with Spain could easily lead to Spanish naval dominance in the Atlantic, potentially cutting off France from any colonies they would found overseas. Thus, founding new colonies would be a worthless venture until the Spanish fleet could be overcome.


Thus, the 1590s saw the construction of many French ships in the ports of Marseille, La Rochelle, and St-Malo. Most of these ships were galleons built according to an innovative design which is known to this day as the “King Charles Galleon”. While it would be well into the 17th century before the French fleet could truly rival that of Spain, and it would be even longer before the French would win their first Atlantic naval victory against the Spanish, the age of French naval power begins with the rule of King Charles IX.


Another institution which owes its origin to the 1590s effort of King Charles is the Royal Church of France. Originally the initiative of a excommunicated priest by the name of Pierre Charbon, the Église Charbonniste, as it was called at the time, was intended to cater to the interest of those French subjects whose main objection to Catholicism was the fact that the Pope was controlled by the Spanish. The Église Charbonniste adopted worship and sacraments almost identical to those used by the Catholics, but replaced the Pope with a Patriarch residing in Paris. The first Patriarch was of course Pierre Charbon himself.


While Charbonnism dates back to the late 1570s, the real success of this new Church came with the 1596 agreement between Pierre Charbon and King Charles. Pierre Charbon had picked the title “Patriarch” for his position at head of his new Church as an allusion to the autocephalous Churches of the East [17]. He had hoped that his Church could enjoy a “special” relationship with the French monarchy. In 1596, these hopes were realized through a secret agreement between Charbon and the King to turn over a portion of the revenues of the Église Charbonniste to the King in exchange for the adoption of religious policies which favoured Charbonnism over Calvinism and the other Protestant faiths. King Charles, while not interested in converting to Charbonnism himself, could see the value in a Church which did not preach loyalty to the Pope, as the fact that the Popes of the last few decades had all been Spanish puppets had caused Charles many headaches. This secret alliance between Pierre Charbon and King Charles would eventually result in the institution we now know of as the Royal Church of France.


Footnotes to France:
[1] This is the war known OTL as “The Rough Wooing”
[2] The death of the Dauphin François in 1547 is the first major butterfly in Europe.
[3] See the “Scotland” update for the description of how the war was lost.
[4] Another butterfly. In OTL Charles V lived a few years longer: long enough to abdicate.
[5] This end to the Italian Wars favouring Spain is roughly OTL.
[6] Much of this is also OTL, although TTL's Henri II lost a war in Scotland as well as Italy, so the discontent with his reign is greater, and thus the Huguenot movement is growing a little more a little sooner than it did OTL.
[7] In TTL, as in OTL, Henry named his first son François and his second Louis. Strictly speaking, they are different people than their OTL siblings with the same names, as their dates of birth and genetic makeup are different. In OTL, François survived to marry Mary of Scotland and Louis died in infancy. In TTL, François died as a child, and Louis survived to succeed his father.
[8] Louis de Bourbon was a Huguenot leader OTL.
[9] The Council of Peers was originally the French equivalent of the HRE's Electors. It has since lost much of its power, but is still responsible for the coronation of each new King, and in this case has taken charge of appointing a Regent for the young King Louis.
[10] François, Duke of Guise was a Catholic leader OTL and TTL. He lead the French army in Italy both OTL and TTL, hence his reputation tarnished by the French defeat in Italy.
[11] Henri de Montmorency was also a moderate Catholic and a military leader OTL. While François de Guise had been leading the French army at the beginning of this war, he had since turned over control to Henri de Montmorency.
[12] Why a mere daughter of a Duke would be a suitable match for the firstborn son of the most powerful monarch in Europe will be revealed in the “England” update.
[13] OTL's Charles IX had a younger brother named Henry. TTL's Charles IX (not the same man, but an ATL “sibling”) has a younger sister instead.
[14] This Henri is an ATL sibling of the Duke of Bourbon who would OTL become Henri IV of France. His parents were Antoine, Duke of Bourbon, and Jeanne, Queen of Navarre.
[15] Sorry, folks, but Elizabeth Tudor will never become Queen in TTL.
[16] Note that Bayonne is a Basque port and is the base of a number of the whalers who make annual visits to Tadoussac (downriver from Stadacona).
[17] The term “autocephalous” refers to a Church whose head was a Patriarch whose jurisdiction covered a given Kingdom. The Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, etc. Churches were all autocephalous.

 

[telynk]

Update 14 - England

The following is an excerpt from the book European Monarchs Vol. VII: 1550-1600

England

Edward VI (King of England 1548-1581, Prince Consort of Scotland 1553-1581)
(b. 1537, m. 1553 Mary of Scotland, d. 1581)

Edward VI was the only surviving son of Henry VIII. He was betrothed to Mary, the infant Queen of Scotland in the 1543 Treaty of Greenwich, which led war with Scotland in what's known as the “War of the Queen's Marriage”. [1] While much of the War of the Queen's Marriage was prosecuted by Henry VIII in his later years, Henry died in 1548, leaving Edward's Regent to take charge of the war effort. Upon his marriage in 1553, Edward took credit for winning the war in Scotland even though the war efforts had been almost exclusively directed by his generals and his Regent.

Upon reaching his age of majority, Edward set his sights on religious matters. He had been raised a Protestant, and was greatly influenced by Calvinism. Under Henry VIII, the Church of England had been separated from Rome, but had remained largely Catholic in doctrine and liturgy. Under King Edward, however, the Church of England was reorganized according to Calvinist principles. While Edward did much to incorporate Calvinist theology and worship into the Church of England, he refrained from enacting Calvinist principles of Church government, maintaining his own position of head of the Church of England.

Edward's commitment to Protestantism upset many Catholics in England, including his half-sister Mary, who was the heir to the throne as Edward did not have a son until 1561. It was in 1550, while England was still at war with France, that Mary Tudor snuck out of England and married Francis, son of Duke Claude of Guise. [2] Francis of Guise spent much of the next decade trying to convince Henry II of France to give him an army to press Mary's claim to the English throne. Mary herself died in childbirth in 1553, but Francis continued to campaign on behalf of her daughter Catherine, who had inherited her claim. However, with succession of Henry II by his son Louis XIII in 1563, the House of Guise fell out of favour in France, and Francis traveled to Spain to recruit the support of King Philip II.

Spain had long been upset with England over Henry VIII's break with the pope [3], but pragmatic alliances between Spain and England against France had continued during the “Italian Wars” of the 1550s. It was in the 1560s that this began to change. Philip II, the new King of Spain, made it clear that he wouldn't tolerate Protestant monarchs of any sort, and openly supported Catholic dissidents in England. Thus, when King Philip arranged a betrothal between his son Charles and the eleven-year-old Catherine, it was clear that he intended to eventually use Catherine's claim to put his son on the English throne. This led to a change in England's diplomatic position. Rather than pursuing an alliance with Spain against France, Edward approached Louis XIII for an alliance against Spain.

Tensions between England and Spain grew through the 1560s, but Edward was able to use his diplomatic skill and his alliance with France to maintain the peace. Edward was rightly afraid that France would be reluctant to come to his aid in the case of a Spanish invasion, and knew that, even England and Scotland together could not hold back the might of the Hapsburgs. Even so, Edward did turn a blind eye towards English pirates who chose to attack Spanish treasure fleets. In 1569, an ultimatum from Spain meant that Edward had to crack down on piracy operating out of English ports, but many of these pirates just chose to operate out of Glasgow instead.

In the 1570s, the fear of a Spanish invasion subsided as Spain became involved in wars in France and the Netherlands. Edward did covertly support the ongoing Dutch Revolt [4] by sheltering rebels, but was careful not to give any support which could be interpreted by the Spanish as an act of war. Even so, after the 1574 intervention of the Spanish in France, Edward knew that he could count on French support in any war with Spain, and thus was more brazen with his policy toward Spain than he had been in the 1560s.

The 1570s were a time of much prosperity in England, as much trade that had previously been routed through the Netherlands came instead to English ports, including Calais [5]. Arts and culture flourished during the Late Edwardian period, and elaborate architecture was developed to showcase the new wealth. Many of the great Anglican cathedrals were built in the 1570s as Edward tore down the old churches which “reeked of Papism”. However, this era was soon brought to an end with Edward's untimely death in 1581.

Henry IX (King of England 1581 – 1612, King of Scotland 1611-1612) [6] (b. 1561, m. 1584 Sophie of Brandenburg, r. 1581 – 1612)

Henry came to power in 1581 at the young age of 20. He was the only son of Edward VI, and had inherited his father's vehement Calvinism. However, while Edward had chosen to promote Calvinism in England while staying out of the affairs of other Kingdoms, Henry was an interventionist who believed in sending English (and Scottish) troops to protect Protestants everywhere. While Edward's fear of Spanish wrath had prevented him from intervening in the Wars of Religion in France or the Dutch Revolt in the Netherlands, English troops were fighting on the mainland within a year of Henry's succession to the throne.

Henry's first continental commitment was in France, where he decided to support King Henry III of Navarre and the Protestant faction in the Great Huguenot War against King Charles IX of France. The “Alliance of the Henrys” was formed between himself and Henry of Navarre, and soon an English army had entered Northern France from their base at Calais. Many Protestants in Picardy and Normandy were soon recruited to fight under the English banner. The position of Henry of Navarre as heir apparent to the French throne, and extra support the Protestants received from the English troops meant that the Catholic French armies were soon on the retreat. A decisive victory by Henry over the French army trapped a large French force inside the city of Reims. Rather than attempting to take the city by force, Henry decided to starve them out over the 1584-85 winter.

Then, in 1585, Henry's attention began to turn eastward. With ongoing disputes between the Northern and Southern States in the Netherlands, the tide of the Dutch Revolt began to turn in favour of the Spanish. [7] Thinking the war in France was all but won, Henry left a small detachment led by the French Protestants to take and hold Reims, and marched his main army Northward to link up with the Dutch army. While the Spanish forces were soon pushed back, the diversion of troops from France meant that the Protestant advance towards Paris stalled. Henry's army spent most of the next few years fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands, but was forced return to Reims twice each time to relieve a seige attempt by King Charles IX of France.

Henry's intervention in the Netherlands meant that Spain was now at war with England. King Charles II of Spain was married to Catherine of Guise, who had a claim to the English throne through her mother Mary Tudor. While the available Spanish troops were mostly already tied up in wars in the Netherlands and elsewhere [8], Spain had the largest and best equipped navy in Europe. In early 1587, King Charles launched an attack against England, using his fleet to harass English shipping and blockade key ports, while ferrying a number of Catholic English exiles to Ireland to attempt to use Catherine's claim on the English throne to raise a Catholic army to oppose King Henry.

The Spanish fleet succeeded at their mission to ferry the rabble-rousers to Ireland, but later were intercepted off the coast of Cornwall by the combined English, Scottish, and Dutch fleets. While the Spaniards had the advantage of firepower, the combined Protestant fleets outnumbered the Spanish, and the Protestant fleets ultimately won what turned out to be one of the most decisive naval battles of the 16th century. [9]

Having dealt with the Spanish fleet, Henry still had to deal with the Catholic army that had overwhelmed a number of his garrisons in Ireland, and which was calling for his abdication in favour of his cousin Catherine. Henry knew that he couldn't fight France, Spain, and the Irish uprising at the same time, so he quickly worked to make peace with France. In 1587, King Charles IX agreed to abandon the persecution of Protestants in exchange for peace [10], which was good enough for Henry, allowing him to focus more of his efforts in the Netherlands against Spain.

Part of the reason King Charles IX had been so eager to make peace with England was that it was in France's interest for England to be fighting Spain instead. The French Protestant forces who had attached themselves to the English army were encouraged to continue fighting alongside the English in the Netherlands. While the years between 1585 and 1587 had seen a continual retreat by the English and Dutch forces, in 1588, a victory was finally achieved against the Spanish. In the same year, an Anglo-Scottish army was able to put down the Irish revolt. This meant that by 1589 Henry was able to reinforce his army fighting in the Netherlands with the troops that had been in Ireland. A number of quick victories meant that the Protestant army was able to retake Antwerp in 1591. [11]

By this point, it was becoming clear in England that a decade of war had taken its toll. The costs of war had buried Henry in debt, and the English people were becoming less and less willing to fight an ongoing war on the continent. While the initial revolt in Ireland had been unsuccessful, the knowledge of Catherine's claim to the throne had spread throughout the Catholic populace, and every year there was more and more opposition to English rule. Thus, in 1593, Henry withdrew most of the English troops from the Netherlands, leaving the Dutch to fend for themselves.

During the early years of the war in France, Henry had married Sophie of Brandenburg, daughter of the Elector Johann Georg [12]. While he had taken a break from his campaigning for the marriage itself, he had seldom see her during his many years at war. Despite this, Sophie had given Henry a son Edward in 1587 while her second child, a daughter, had died in infancy. With the end of his wars, Henry dedicated much more time to family matters, and he soon had two more sons William (named after the Prince of Orange who Henry had fought alongside in the Netherlands) and John (named at Sophie's request after her own father) and a daughter Charlotte.

With the destruction of much of the Spanish war fleet in 1585, it became feasible for England to attempt to establish colonies overseas. King Henry knew of the gold that had been discovered in New France, and the fur trade that had been become profitable for the Scots in New Aberdeen. Thus he was anxious to establish an English colony Northeastern North America. The logical first spot for a colony was the Island of New Found Land, which had already been claimed for England by John Cabot, and which stood astride of the French sea routes to and from the Comté du Canada. Thus, in 1595, Henry commissioned an expedition to travel to New Found Land to attempt to found a colony.....

Footnotes to England:
[1] Again, it OTL this war was known as the “Rough Wooing”
[2] This is a second important butterfly of the POD. Mary's claim to the English throne will play a much larger role later on in the story. Note that, in OTL, there were many attempts made for Mary to escape to France. In TTL, she succeeds.
[3] The pope during this time was controlled by the Hapsburgs more often than not, and thus the Hapsburgs were the monarchs who had the greatest interest in opposing Protestantism.
[4] Most of the causes of the Dutch Revolt were not changed from OTL, thus the revolt itself is mostly following its OTL course.
[5] Note that OTL, Calais fell to the French in 1558. In TTL this was avoided, and the Franco-English alliance which is now forming will keep Calais English until at least 1600.
[6] Note that there will be a personal union between Scotland and England during Henry's reign for just over a year. However, I have not yet decided if this personal union will survive Henry's death.
[7] Again, up until this point, the Dutch Revolt has been going more or less at is did OTL. There wil be some butterflies though later which I will cover in a future “Netherlands” update.
[8] Where “elsewhere” is will be revealed in the “Spain” update.
[9] This is TTL's version of the “Spanish Armada”.
[10] The Peace of Tours was more complicated than this, as described in the “France” update.
[11] In OTL, Antwerp was never recovered by the Protestants and remained part of the Spanish Netherlands, although the Dutch were able to cut off its access to the sea.
[12] This elector did have a daughter Sophie in OTL as well, but TTL's Sophie is a few years older.

 

[telynk]

Update 15 - William F. Crowley

(South Coast of New Found Land, June 1595)

William F. Crowley looked over the bow of his ship at the shoreline. It all looked the same to him from here. An unending rocky coastline with an impenetrable forest behind, broken by the occasional beach or marsh. There were no fields or villages, almost no sign of human habitation. The only Indians [1] they had met were a small group they had seen fishing down by the shore a week ago, although they had fled as soon as they saw Crowley's ship Princess Charlotte[2] approaching. The shoreline itself was inundated with coves, bays and the sea off the shore was scattered with shoals and small islands. Despite this, every piece of the land seemed equally barren, equally bleak, and equally wild.

It was Crowley's job to find a site on this savage coastline on which to found a settlement. He had been placed in charge of this expedition by King Henry himself. The King had asked Crowley to found a colony on the shores of New Found Land, in the hopes of creating a settlement which could be inhabited year-round. The winters at New Aberdeen [3] were too rough to keep the trading post operating year-round, and King Henry had hoped that a settlement to the south, where the winters should be milder, would be more successful. Looking at the landscape, Crowley began to doubt that a settlement here would have any chance of success at all.

At the same time, though, the land here did look more appealing than that around New Aberdeen. Crowley had travelled to New Aberdeen once when he was younger, and the landscape there had been barren even in the summertime. There had still been patches of snow on the ground in New Aberdeen in early June, and icebergs had regularly been sighted offshore. At least here, on the South coast of New Found Land, the ground was free of snow and the sea was free of ice.

Captain Woodruff, who commanded the Marlin Maiden, the smallest of the three ships in Crowley's expedition, had tried to convince Crowley to build his settlement farther East near where the cod fishermen would come ashore to dry their catch. Woodruff was a fisherman himself and had been sent along on this expedition as a guide who had much experience navigating the waters off New Found Land. He was a man of much character, to say the least.

When Crowley had asked him to rename his ship to something “more fitting of a Royal expedition”, Woodruff had bluntly replied “I've sailed the ocean for twenty years in the Marlin Maiden, and have never once hit a shoal. You ask me to sail to New Found Land in a ship called the King's Mistress and I'll probably sink before we make it past Ireland. You may be the expert on governing here but I am the expert on sailing. My ship may be in service to the King, but it's still my ship.”

That incident had made Crowley uneasy at first, but during the months it took to prepare the expedition for departure, Captain Woodruff had grown on him. On the day the expedition's three ships were scheduled to leave Bristol, Woodruff had refused to leave the harbour claiming that a storm was on its way. Sure enough, the next day the worst storm of the spring season had struck, and Woodruff had greeted Crowley with his best “I told you so” face. After that point, Crowely began to acknowledge that while Woodruff was crass and tactless, he certainly knew the sea better than any man Crowley had met before. Crowely had come to the conclusion that, difficult as he may be to work with, Woodruff would certainly be an asset to the expedition.

So, when Woodruff had showed the expedition the way to the New Found Land fish-drying grounds [4] and had suggested that the settlement be built there, it had been difficult to convince him otherwise. Given the rocky landscape of the fish-drying grounds, it had seemed obvious to Crowley that it was a poor spot for settlement. Crowley had hoped that sailing farther West along the South coast of New Found Land would yield less rocky terrain, although, so far at least, the landscape had changed very little.

The Princess Charlotte was currently anchored offshore at the mouth of a long inlet [5]. Her longboat had been sent up the inlet to look for a potential settlement site, while the Marlin Maiden and the Tudor Rose had been sent ahead to explore more of the coastline. The longboat had already returned with the same news as always: the landscape up the inlet was rocky and barren with little sign of fertile soils. Now Crowley was just waiting for the other two ships. If the Maiden and the Rose returned without finding a suitable settlement site, Crowley was ready to turn around and sail back east towards Woodruff's preferred site.

But then word was sent down from the lookout that the Tudor Rose had been spotted on the horizon. Soon the Rose was alongside the Princess Charlotte, their boat was lowered, and an excited crew came aboard the Crowley's ship. Leading this group was the expedition's cartographer Francis Burton.

“We've found it!” Burton said to Crowley as he came aboard. “At least we've found as good a place as any. As we rounded a group of islands, we caught site of the silver line of a beach. The Marlin Maiden continued up the coast as we went ashore. The beach is the largest I've seen on this side of the ocean, there's a river which drains into the lagoon behind the beach that we can use for fresh water. But, most importantly, there's soil. Real soil. It may be a little bit sandy, but sand is at least more fertile than rock.” [6]

“Sounds like it could be promising,” Crowley replied, “but I can't say for certain if it's suitable until I take a look. If we do choose to settle there, though, I will name the settlement Fort Burton after the man who found the site.”

* * * * *
(Isle of Mniku[7], October 1595)

Crowley had not expected to find himself at a diplomatic meeting with the High Chief of the L'Nuk nation. In fact, when he had left the settlement of Fort Burton he had no idea that the L'Nuk people even had a High Chief. He hadn't even known that these particular Indians called themselves the L'Nuk. [8]

When Crowley had left Fort Burton, the settlement had been struggling. The soil at their chosen site had proven to be less than fertile, and the food they had brought with them from England had almost run out. Woodruff had made a trip out to the fishing grounds in August, but the expedition didn't have enough salt to preserve the fish all winter. Even hunting expeditions had also come back empty-handed; the area around Fort Burton was empty of the deer that were so common elsewhere. [9]

Thus Crowley had set out to make contact with the local natives in the hopes of trading for food. The Indians of New Found Land seemed fearful and unwilling to engage in trade, but Woodruff had told Crowley that he had experience trading with the the Indians of Cape Breton [10] to the South, and even knew a few words of their language.

Thus, Woodruff, Crowley, and a handful of others had set out across the Cabot Strait in the Marlin Maiden, with a cargo of iron tools, cloth, and other trade goods. Making contact with the Indians of this land of Cape Breton was not difficult, and Woodruff seemed to know enough words of their langauge to make his intentions known. However, at one point during the trade negotiations, Woodruff had said the words “King of England” and pointed at Crowley. This had cause a commotion amongst the Indians, who had then demanded that Crowley come with them to this island of Mniku. Woodruff and the crew had stayed behind with the Marlin Maiden.

When they had arrived at Mniku, Crowley was met by a man named Sebastian, who was the son of a local L'Nuk woman and a Bristol fisherman who had been stranded in this land thirty years ago. Sebastian's father had returned home after three years amongst the L'Nuk, but Sebastian had picked up enough of his father's English that he had been able to serve as an interpreter between the L'Nuk and English fishermen and traders. Through Sebastian, Crowley was now able to communicate with the L'Nuk.

“You are lucky to have arrived here so close to the time of the Grand Council,” Sebastian said, “if you had arrived earlier in the summer, they might have kept you here for months before you were needed.”

“What do they need me for?” asked Crowley. “I'm not some sort of hostage, am I?” Crowley felt that he had been treated more like a guest of honor than a hostage, but the local warriors certainly hadn't been willing to let him leave.

“No, nothing like that,” replied Sebastian, “they told me that you are an emissary of the King of England. Have you been sent here to speak to our chiefs?”

“Not really, I do represent the King in that I have been put in charge of his Royal expedition. But, I am no diplomat. I simply came to negotiate a trade.”

“Well then your arrival must be a fortunate coincidence. All this year, the chiefs of the Wabenaki nations have been doing their best to try to enlist the support of your King. But all of the traders we've spoken too have laughed at us when we asked them to carry a message to England for us. We need a messenger who has the King's ear, and we think that that messenger is you.”

“And what do the chiefs want me to say on their behalf?” Crowley asked. “And who are the wabanegi?”

“Wabenaki is the name that is use to refer to the alliance between our people, the L'Nuk, and the Abenaki people farther inland. We have both come under attack by the Kwedech in the river valley beyond Gaspé [11]. We have discovered that these Kwedech are obtaining their terrifying weapons from the French, who we hear are the old enemies of you English. The chiefs want to buy weapons from you the same way that the Kwedech buy weapons from the French, and they are willing to offer you much in return.”

“What are they willing to offer?”

“Well, wait until the council begins. Once the chiefs meet, they will be able to make you an offer.”

This could be promising, thought Crowley. Crowley had a hatred for the French that dated back to his elder brother's death in battle at Amiens more than 10 years earlier. [12] However, King Henry's current treaty with King Charles of France meant that Crowley had no hope of getting his revenge on the battlefield. But, supplying weapons to those who could fight the French for him, that could be a better way to go.

* * * * *

(Fort Burton, April 1596)

It had been over six months since Crowley had last laid eyes on the small settlement at Fort Burton. Crowley had originally planned to return before the seas had begun to ice over, but the Grand Council he had attended had lasted a lot longer than expected. It had been early December before Crowley had returned to the Marlin Maiden. While the sea had still been mostly clear of ice at that time, Captain Woodruff was unwilling to cross the Cabot Strait in the unpredictable winter weather, so the Marlin Maiden had spent the winter in Cape Breton.

Now that the Spring thaw had come, the Marlin Maiden was returning to Fort Burton with a full load of food and furs obtained from the L'Nuk. Crowley was more than a little worried as to how the colonists would be doing. Unless they had succeeded at finding game, they would have run short of food months before. He hoped that he would be returning in time.

As the Marlin Maiden rounded the headland, and Crowley could see up the inlet, he could already see that something was wrong. Rather than two ships waiting at anchor, there was only one: his flagship the Princess Charlotte. And the Charlotte was not in good shape. She was listing to one side, and the sails that had been so neatly furled when Crowley had left were hanging in tatters from her yardarms. And she wasn't in the anchorage where she was supposed to be: once Crowley got closer he could se why. The Charlotte was perched on top of a shoal. She must have been clown free of her anchor, Crowley thought.

The absence of the Tudor Rose and the fact that the Charlotte had been left damaged on a reef filled Crowley with dread. If the colonists were still alive they surely wouldn't have left my ship like that, he thought. As the Marlin Maiden's boat pulled up to the beach, Crowley, Wodruff, and the sailors were greeted only with silence. There was no noise from any of the colony's buildings, and no sign of life anywhere around.

In fact, all that Crowley could see were signs of death. In the field to the North of the buildings, where they had planned to plant cabbage next spring, there were rows and rows of crosses. The crosses closest to the buildings were made of carved wood, while the ones farther away were often no more than two sticks lashed together. And in the farthest corner of the graveyard were four mounds covered in blankets. Crowley didn't need to lift up the blankets to know that they concealed the bodies of the last survivors.

Instead, Crowley walked toward the buildings and took a look inside. The mess hall was empty as was the store room. It was in the barracks that he found the bodies of two men, curled up around what must have been the last fire they had been able to keep lit. On a table next to the bodies was a folded piece of paper with the title “the Last Log of Fort Burton” scrawled on it. Crowley picked it up and read aloud.

“January 22, 1596. Burton is dead. Since Crowley is gone, and Woodruff with him, Burton put me, Gregory Smalls, in command. Rations are running low, but due to Burton's strict rationing, and his selfless policy of always taking the smallest portion for himself, we have enough food to last another month, or maybe 6 weeks. We hope that Crowley and Wodruff return with food soon.”

“February 16, 1596. Today, a scouting party captured a band of 5 Indians, in the hopes that they would have food to trade us. They didn't, and I almost had to shoot one of my men to keep him from killing the Indians. I think he meant to eat them. 'If they live like animals, we can treat them as game' he said. What hunger will drive us to do.”

“February 18, 1596. Fox has worked out a rough sign langauge to use when communicating with the Indians. One of the Indian boys seems to know when deer can be found, although he says that this is the wrong time of year to be hunting them. But Fox and Baker seem to think that he's just telling us that so that he can steal from us once we've all starved to death.” [13]

“February 21, 1596. Fox and Baker are trying to organize a party to go out and find the deer that the Indian boy speaks of. They have gathered a group of the dozen strongest men around them and are demanding half our food stores to feed them through the hunt. I have told them that they can have no more than their share of the food, but they insist that they will need more of it as they need to be strong enough to travel.”

“February 23, 1596. Fox and Baker are getting more restless. I have placed guards at the storeroom door, but many of my men are too hungry to shoot straight. I worry what would happen if it came to blows.”

“February 24, 1596. Today Fox and Baker chose to mutiny against my command. They killed 2 guards at the storeroom door, and ten more men were injured as Fox and Baker's gang made their escape to the Tudor Rose. While the Rose still lies at anchor, the mutineers have taken all of our boats, and I dare not order my men to swim out in the frigid cold water. I only have to hope that the mutineers have a change of heart. Fox and Baker have taken all but the last of our food, and I fear that we have very little time left.”

“March 10, 1596. Today we saw the last of the Tudor Rose. The ice that had been blocking the mouth of the anchorage was blown away by a storm last night, and the Rose slipped out of the anchorage just before sunup this morning. The same storm drove the Charlotte up on the rocks, so we have no hope of pursuing the mutineers. Two more passed away in the cold stormy night, and there are only fourteen of us left. Only five of us are still able to move from out beds.”

“March 15, 1596. Three weeks without food can certainly sap a man's strength. I no longer have the strength to bury the dead, although Davidson and I were able at least to drag the bodies of our last four comrades to the graveyard, and cover them with blankets to protect them from the elements. Even if we wanted to cook up the bodies to give us a little sustenance, neither of us has the strength to do so. I figure this log entry will be our last.”

Crowley put down the book. “Well it seems pretty clear what happened to them. I only wish we'd been able to come earlier.”

“We should be thankful that we've survived,” interjected Woodruff, “if we'd tried to cross the stormy waters any earlier, we may not have made it, and Smalls and Davidson would have still suffered the same fate.”

Crowley couldn't hold himself together. “Damn you Woodruff! Damn your seas and your storms! All you care about is your own ship and your own skin! If you hadn't been so damn selfish we could have been here in time! Why couldn't you....” Crowley broke down into tears. It's time to go home, he thought.

* * * * *

(Kespukwitk[14], July 1599)

Sebastian was standing on the beach as Crowley's boat pulled up to the shore. “Good to see you old friend,” Crowley called out.

“I was travelling in the area, when I heard news that your ship had been sighted off the shore. I figured I should put in an appearance. Besides, while your grasp of our language has gotten better over the past three years, it's still not enough that you couldn't use an interpreter.”

“Yes, your services will be very helpful,” replied Crowley. “I've spent the past year trading arquebuses to you Lennockians [15], but I've never been to this part of Lennockia before, and, I must say, I'm impressed. I'd always thought that Lennockia was all rocks and trees like New Found Land. But this valley here, it looks positively fertile. Who's land is this?”

“The Chief of this district, Kespukwitk, is Chief Membertou. [16] Do you remember him from the Grand Council.”

“The ancient-looking one who claimed to have met Jacques Cartier? Of course I remember him!”

“He did meet Jacques Cartier. He was impressed at first. Although, once he found out the French had befriended the Kwedech, he saw the French for the traitors that they are.”

“Anyways, in addition to the usual business I'll be doing with the local traders, I'd like to speak to Membertou. I have a proposal for him.”

A few hours later, Crowley and Sebastian were seated in Membertou's wigwam. The Chief sat across from them.

“We English have been trading with you Lannockians for a few years now. We've been supplying you with weapons to help fight against your Kwedech enemies, but we want to do more. The Kwedech have Frenchmen living with them, teaching them their ways. The Kwedech don't yet make their own arquebuses, but their blacksmiths are able make their own metal tools, putting you Lannockians at a disadvantage.”

Crowley waited for Sebastian to translate and then continued. “While we might be able to hold our own against the Kwedech for now, we think you will need some more help in order to decisively defeat the Kwedech. We think that to counter the fact that the Kwedech have Frenchmen living among them and providing them with military training, you should have Englishmen living here in Lannockia, teaching you all the things the Frenchmen have taught the Kwedech. We want to help you learn the skills you will need to finally beat the Kwedech.” [17]

Crowley stayed silent as Sebastian translated, and Membertou made his reply. “The Chief wants to know what you want in return,” Sebastian translated.

“Land is what we want,” replied Crowley. “We want land in this valley to build a settlement so that our people can come here. And we want you Lannockians to guarantee that you, and the other members of your Wabenaki confederacy, will never give land to any other European nation. We want you to make a permanent alliance between your nation and ours, so that the interests of Lannockia and England will always be as one. What do you say?”

After the usual pause while Sebastian translated, the Chief made a reply. “Your plan sounds good,” he said, “but I cannot speak for the whole Confederacy, or even for all of the L'Nuk. You will have to present your idea to the Kespukwitk council, and then the Grand Council, and only then may you present it to the other nations of the Confederacy.”

Good, Crowley thought, that will give us time to draw up a treaty.

Footnotes:
[1] Crowley would have used the term “Indians” for the Native Americans at this point, so it's the term I use when I write from his point of view. The Beothuk, who were native to Newfoundland were known OTL to be distrustful of Euorpeans, and to have little interest in trade or diplomacy, hence why they're making themselves so scarce.
[2] King Henry IX's eldest daughter is named Charlotte.
[3] Remember New Aberdeen is the Scottish trading post in Labrador which was originally founded with the hopes of becoming a permanent settlement. Many of the higher-ups in the Scottish Northwestern Trade Company that runs the New Aberdeen trade post are actually Englishmen, so there is much cooperation between Scotland and England in North America already, even though the two Kingdoms are not yet in Personal Union.
[4] The “fish-drying grounds” I write about are near the site of OTL St. John's, which was chose as an settlement site OTL largely because of its proximity to the Grand Banks.
[5] This inlet is OTL's White Bear Bay.
[6] The beach that Burton sighted was OTL's Sandbanks Provincial Park near the OTL town of Burgeo, Newfoundland.
[7] The Isle of Mniku in the salt-water-lake we know in OTL as the Bras d'Or is the traditional site of the L'Nuk Grand Council. My sources have been unclear about what time of year the Grand Council traditionally met, although other L'Nuk councils met in the Spring and/or Fall, so an October council meeting seems reasonable to me. The fact that the Grand Council meets in Cape Breton seemed too good to be true when I realized that the closest natives that these colonists would be able to trade with (again, the Beothuk are likely not really that interested in trade) would be in Cape Breton.
[8] Remember, L'Nuk is the autonym used by the people we know OTL as the Mi'kmaq.
[9] Deer and moose were, OTL, only introduced to Newfoundland in the past 150 years. Before that, the only big game available would have been caribou during certain parts of their migration route. When Crowley thinks of deer as “common elsewhere”, he's thinking of mainland North America. White-tailed deer and mosse do both range through coastal Labrador near the location of New Aberdeen, although that is the Northern limit of their range
[10] The name “Cape Breton” seems to predate the POD. It was named by Basque sailors who named it after the town of Capbreton in the French Basque country. Incidentally, Capbreton is part of the small coastal territory France ceded to Bourbon Navarre.
[11] The term Kwedech is used OTL in L'Nuk/Mi'kmaq oral history/mythology. It refers to a people to the Northwest with whom the L'Nuk fought many wars in pre-contact times. Some sources guess that the Kwedech were the Mohawk and/or other Iroquois nations, although I prefer the hypothesis that they were the St. Lawrence Iroquoians/”Kanatians”. Thus, in TTL the L'Nuk will used the term Kwedech to refer to the people the French refer to as Kanatians.
[12] The English seiged and captured Amiens during the war between King Charles IX of France and King Henry III of Navarre.
[13] The “deer” that the Beothuk boy is referring to are really caribou. The boy is trying to convey the fact that the caribou only visit Newfoundland once a year, and that they are currently around to be hunted.
[14] Kespukwitk is the Mi'kmaw name for what we know in OTL as Southwestern Nova Scotia. This scene is taking place near OTL Annapolis Royal.
[15] Lennockians is the anglicization of L'Nuk. Lennockia is the term that Crowley and the other English now use to refer to the land we know in OTL as the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
[16] This is the same Membertou from OTL. He supposedly was an adult when he met Jacques Cartier, so I decided that his position as District Chief wouldn't have been butterflied by the POD. However, in TTL, he is just a Disctrict Chief, not Grand Chief.
[17] The English are seeing the vassalage relationship between the Stadaconans and the French as the model for their own relationship with the natives. Given that the English didn't explore the region first, they're looking for a vassalage agreement with the natives as a way of establishing a claim to the land. Colonialism in TTL will look different than it did OTL.

 

[telynk]

Update 16 - Sentsitaa

Update 16 – Sentsitaa:


(Achelacy [1], September 1586)


Sentsitaa lay delirious with pain on the hospital sleeping platform. She had been sick before once, three years ago when she was five, but she hadn't remembered it hurting nearly this much. Back then she had had a cough, a sore throat, and a fever, but she had recovered soon enough. But this time it was much worse. When she'd first fallen ill, she'd had the same fever and aches as she'd had before, but then the rash had appeared. The rash had gotten worse, and now the rash had developed into raised painful bumps. The pain was excruciating, and she was glad that Jewa had given her a cup of his pain-relieving tea. The tea wasn't quite as good as tobacco was for the pain, but Jewa had told her that his tobacco supplies were almost gone, and that she'd have to make do with the tea. [2]


She was worried for Jewa. He had been in charge of Achelacy's hospital [3] long before Sentsitaa had been born. Sentsitaa's parents had told her that Jewa, as a survivor of Old Stadacona, was immune to disease, and that's why he had been put in charge of the hospital. Certainly, when Sentsitaa had last been sick, Jewa had spent days caring for her and had never gotten sick himself. But that was definitely changing now; Jewa seemed to be getting sick himself.


A few days ago, Jewa had been fine. He had been running around the hospital with the normal vigor that he displayed in the face of an outbreak of disease. He had been busy brewing his tea, applying tobacco leaves to the rashes of his patients that were still alive, and burying those that had died. As usual, he had permitted no one else to touch the sick or enter the hospital, and for the most part the village had complied. Sentsitaa's parents had told her that Jewa's healing only worked if the village followed his orders – they told her of the fate that had befallen Old Stadacona, and how disease could spread from one person to another if the boundaries of the hospital were violated.


But now, Jewa was clearly sick himself. Whenever Sentsitaa asked him how he was doing, he said he was ok, but watching how he moved now, Sentsitaa could see otherwise. He had now moved a pile of hides over to where the fire was, so he could brew his tea while lying down, and he circulated amongst the patients much less frequently. He had complained of headaches under his breath when he thought no one was listening, and had begun to take lengthy naps. He hadn't had the strength to bury the dead – or even move them from their sleeping platforms – in two days now.


Sentsitaa saw a shadow in the hospital's doorway, and looked up to see a woman enter the hospital. Jewa was taking a nap when she entered, so Sentsitaa sat up on her sleeping platform to greet her.


“Where is Jewa?” the woman asked in a thin voice, “has he gone outside to bury the dead?”


“No, he's just laid himself down for a nap,” Sentsitaa replied, “he should be awake and able to brew you some tea shortly. But don't wake him – he has a headache. If you need to lie down, I think there's a free sleeping platform over there, between those two dead people.”


“Wait... between the dead people??” the woman replied. “Why are there dead people lying here?Does Jewa need help burying them?”


“Jewa's too weak to bury people now. He's sick.”


“Sick...” the woman though for a second. “Jewa's sick.” Sentsitaa saw a look of horror go over her face. “Thank you for letting me know.... I think I need to get out of here....” the woman quickly turned and shuffled towards the door, as fast as she could move in her weakened state.


As soon as the woman left the hospital, she started yelling. “Jewa is sick! Jewa is sick! His medicine will not be able to save us now! This village is cursed, Jewa is sick!”


Over the next few days, Sentsitaa began to recover. She was soon able to move from her bed and walk around the hospital, where she discovered that she was not the only one recovering. There were two men who were also getting better: Keyara, a trader who had recently returned from Stadacona and had been the first to come down with the disease, and Sentsitaa's own uncle Joseph [4].


But as Sentsitaa, Keyara, and Joseph recovered, Jewa got worse. Soon Jewa was not able to move from his sleeping spot near the fire, and he had to send Sentsitaa and Keyara to go and check on the other patients. Keyara and Joseph took on the task of burying the dead (of which there were many), while Jewa taught Sentstiaa how to brew tea for those who were still sick, and how to perform the correct ceremonies to pay respect to the tea's medicine.


The patients recovering inside the hospital had no way of knowing what was going on in the village outside. No new patients had entered the hospital since the woman had left screaming, and Jewa reprimanded Sentsitaa, Keyara and Joseph when they even mentioned leaving the hospital. He told them that their only hope of saving the village was not spreading this disease outside the hospital walls and Sentsitaa was happy to obey.


But, one day, Sentsitaa awoke to see Keyara and Joseph gone. She searched the hospital from end to end, and took a look out into the walled hospital cemetery, but the two men were nowhere to be seen. She tried to wake Jewa to tell him the bad news, but he was unwilling to stir.


It was then that she heard Keyara return. “Things are bad out there,” he said, “it was as I feared. It seems that after the village discovered that Jewa was sick, they were unwilling to set foot in the hospital. Those who were sick started staying with their families in their longhouses, but then the sickness started spreading throughout their clans. It seems that there was a point at which those who were still well realized the only way to remain well was to leave the village. Many of those who are currently sick in the longhouses have had no one to care and feed them in days. We need to go out there and help those people. We need to save as many as we can.”


“But, Jewa said we can't do that. We'll make the village sick if we go outside.”


“The village is already sick. We are the only ones who are well enough to care for them.”


Then Sentsitaa heard a voice from behind her. It was Jewa. “Sentsitaa, my child,” he said, “I think Keyara is right. I thought that maybe we could save the village by containing the disease, but it appears that we are too late. The village is already sick and needs our help. We need to go out there and care for those people.”


Jewa was silent for a few minutes and then continued, “I don't think I will live much longer, and I'm going to have to put someone else in charge. Keyara, you need to gather the other patients who are well enough to get up. Your job is now to take care of those who are still sick. You need to feed them, brew them tea, and make sure to keep their fires burning. You will have to find enough people who are well to organize a hunting party, and make sure to harvest enough food for the village to make it through the winter.”


“Sentsitaa and Joseph,” Jewa continued, “I have a different task for you. I am worried about those who fled the village. Some of them may be carriers of the disease, and I am worried that if they spread the disease to Taquenonday or Stadacona [5] that what happened here will repeat itself. You two have both survived this disease, so you two should both be unable to fall sick with it again. This means that you two are needed in the hospitals in Taquenonday and Stadacona. Joseph, I will send you to Taquenonday to take charge of the hospital there and make sure that this disease is contained. You may need to take over from my counterpart in Taquenonday if she falls sick. [6]”


“Sentsitaa, I need you to go to Stadacona. I know you are just a child, but you must travel with your uncle to Taquenonday, and then find a trader there to escort you to Stadacona. You've done a great job taking care of me here, and I'm sure you can do the same in the hospital there. But I need to know that there is someone there who is able to recognize this Red Plague and will be able to remain well when treating the sick. In case the Stadaconans don't understand the importance of your mission, I give you this – it's something that was given to me years ago that I was told to pass on.”


Jewa handed her a clay cross. One one side was written the word “Remember”, and on the other “Stadacona.” He then lay back on his sleeping pad and didn't move again.


* * * * *


(Hocehlaga, October 1596)


When the Red Plague first appeared in Hochelaga, Sentsitaa was a student at the Jesuit school there. She had been taken in by the Jesuits when she had arrived in Stadacona ten years ago, and had been baptisted under the name Marie-Celeste. She had studied at the Jesuit school in Stadacona until she had chosen to follow Hélène Grignon in the Exodus. Now she lived in Hochelaga as a member of the Sheep Clan and spent most of her time attending the Jesuit School and helping out at Hochelaga's hospital in times of need.


The outbreak of the Red Plague that Sentsitaa had come down with so many years ago had never made it to Hochelaga. That outbreak had struck Stadacona, Tailla, Taquenonday, and Achelacy. Stadacona had lost many people, but the death toll had been kept down by the immunity of many of the Jesuits and most of the residents of Petite Rochelle, and by successful confinement of the sick to Stadacona's hospital. Taquenonday and Tailla had fared worse, but neither had lost more than 100 people. Achelacy, however, had been swept up in the panic, and the village had been abandoned, with most of the survivors fleeing to Taquenonday or Stadacona. But that outbreak had been contained to the villages of the Cadawahronon [People of the River Mouth] and hadn't made it as far as Maisouna or Hochelaga.


This current outbreak in Hochelaga had begun with the arrival of a family of Stadaconans fleeing the rule of DuFort. [7] They had been taken in and welcomed among the Sheep Clan until it came to be known that one of them was sick, and had passed on the disease to a number of other Sheep Clan members. Luckily the Sheep Clan were amongst the most eager to volunteer themselves for confinement in the hospital, but there had still been those who didn't make it to the hospital soon enough, and those who insisted on seeing sick relatives despite the hospital's ban on visitors. This meant that the disease had continued to spread.


At the height of the outbreak, there had been nearly a hundred patients crowded into the single longhouse that was Hochelaga's hospital, and the Jesuits had given up their living quarters to house another two hundred patients. [8] After it became clear that visiting the hospital led to almost certain illness, the attempts by family members to visit their sick loved ones had died down, and any who fell sick but refused to turn themselves in to the hospital voluntarily were dragged to the hospital by their clan. It had become clear that patients couldn't spread the disease until after the rash first appeared on their skin, which meant that as long as feverish patients came to the hospital before the rash appeared, their families would be spared.


The hospital, in addition to being overcrowded, was drastically understaffed. Most of the usual hospital attendants had fallen sick themselves, and it was now largely the Jesuits who were taking care of the sick. Marie-Celeste herself, along with the few other Kanatian Red Plague survivors (most of whom had been interned in Stadacona or Taquenonday during the last outbreak and had come to Hochelaga with the exodus) were crucial in caring for all those who were sick.


Luckily, over the past few days, Marie-Celeste's workload had gradually decreased. Most of the patients in the hospital had now either died or recovered, and there had been no new patients for a number of days. Marie-Celeste no longer had to spend her entire waking life caring for the sick, and had taken some time away from the patients to rest, meditate, and pray.


Marie-Celeste was soon interrupted by one of the lay missionaries – a man named Claude Frenet. “Marie-Celeste,” he said, “Père André wants to see you. He's in the Jesuit chapel.”


“But, I shouldn't leave the hospital, should I? Won't I spread the disease?”


“You're not sick are you?”


“No.”


“Then you don't have anything to worry about. You must only take the same precautions that we use with patients who have recovered. You must burn the clothes you were wearing and put on clean ones. We have a set for you here.”


The missionary handed Marie-Celeste a black robe like the ones the Jesuits wore. It clearly was woven in France, so it likely had originally been intended for one of the lay brothers. [9] However, unlike the plain black or white cords the Jesuits used to tie their robes, this one came with a wide sash of red cloth, which must also have been imported from France. There was no way such bright a colour could have been made in Kanata.


Marie-Celeste quickly dressed, burned her old clothes, and began walking toward the Jesuit compound. It seemed strange to her to be wearing a black robe like the Jesuits. While the men who graduated from the Jesuit schools were often times given similar black robes when they were sent out to spread the Word of God amongst their people, Marie-Celeste had always been told those men were permitted to wear the robes because they had been made lay brothers themselves. Marie-Celeste had never known a Kanatian woman to wear black robes, although she had heard stories of the Sisters back in France who wore black robes, and took vows, and were the most pious of any women. She'd definitely dreamed of being a Sister herself someday, and the Jesuits had promised her that maybe someday she could be sent to France to attend a convent there. Could Père André be intending to make a Sister out of her?


As Marie-Celeste arrived at the Jesuit chapel, she found Père André waiting for her. “Thank you for coming so promptly,” he said.


“It's an honor to be able to serve the Church. What do you ask of me? Do these robes mean I'm to become a Sister?” Marie-Celeste asked.


“Well, if by Sister you mean becoming a nun and joining a convent, then the answer is no. There's no convent here for you to join, and I think you can serve the Church much better by remaining here than by travelling to France. But there is another type of Sisterhood that could be yours if you want it. You know how there are lay brothers as well as those of us Jesuits who are ordained priests?”


“Yes.”


“Well just as there is a distinction to be made between Jesuit priests and Jesuit lay brothers there is a distinction to be made between Nuns who spend their lives in a convent and religious Sisters who do missionary work out in the world. If you are willing to take a few simple vows of chastity and obedience, we can make you a religious Sister. Obviously, as you're not a man, you cannot be made a member of the Society of Jesus, but there are other religious orders you can join.” [10]


“But why now? I have not yet finished my studies.”


“You have been with us for ten years, while most students are only with us for three or four. You have learned much more of Christ at your young age than most of our students ever have. Your studies may have to end today as God has need of you elsewhere.”


“Where does He need me? Surely, I should be here continuing to care for the sick.”


“Hochelaga is not the only town struck by the Red Plague. A trader who arrived yesterday brought word that the Plague had travelled farther upriver. The village of Gananaga has been hit hard, many are sick, and there are no smallpox survivors around to care for the sick. We need to send someone there who has immunity and can run the hospital there, and we have chosen you.”


“Why me?”


“Well, not only are you a plague survivor, and know how to care for the sick, but you know more than many about the ways of God. It is not enough to save the lives of those who are sick; it is also our duty to save the souls of those who succumb to disease. We need someone there to show the light of God to the sick and dying, and to pray for their souls. Of those Kanatians who are immune to smallpox, there is none more pious than you. You are our best hope.”


“And in order to heal the bodies and pray for the souls of the sick you want to make me a … a religious Sister?”


“There are already two lay brothers in Gananaga – both Kanatian graduates of the Jesuit school here. They have fallen sick themselves, but they have taught many of the Gananagans to respect and listen to those who wear black. This is why we've given you the black robes. The red sash, well, that was an idea that one of my colleagues had. We needed a way to signify that you were a smallpox survivor; to make it clear that you had an ability that neither of the lay brothers had. And we couldn't have you wearing the Jesuit cincture as you are not one of us. You'd told us before that you wanted to take vows, but I've come to see now that your vocation is not one that would lead you to be cooped up in a convent. We'll figure out the details of which order you'll belong to later. For now we need you to go to Gananaga.”


“Then I will do it. I can leave as soon as you want me to.”


* * * * * *
(The Village at Matawang, August 1601)


As Marie-Celeste approached the Omamiwinini village, she could see the body of Sister Marguerite tied to a stake at the entrance to the village. Marie-Celeste could see that Marguerite had been tortured before she had been killed, and her clothes were stained with a red to match the sash that was the sole item of clothing that had been left on Maguerite's body. When she was a child, the smell of Marguerite's body might have turned Marie-Celeste's stomach, but after years of working with the sick and dying she had become accustomed to the sights and smells of death.


Marguerite was not the first to be killed for attempting to confine the sick to hospital. While amongst the Cadawahronon [People of the River Mouth], Tarentohronon [People of the Lake] and Wandehronon [People of the Island] [11] the practice of isolating the sick had been common since before Marie-Celeste had been born, it was still a new practice amongst most other nations, and it was often regarded with suspicion. When healers separated the sick from their families and clans, this often caused tension, and when those patients soon began to die behind hospital doors with no one but the healer to witness, families often became suspicious that it was the healer themselves who was causing the disease.


Marie-Celeste had heard word of healers who had been sent to stop the spread of the Red Plague amongst the Haudenosaunee to the South, and who had been killed by their Haudenosaunee hosts. Even when Marie-Celeste had been sent to Gananaga, there had be a Jesuit lay brother travelling with her who had continued upriver to a different Damedahronon [People of the Rapids] village, never to return. However, today was the first time that Marie-Celeste had been forced to deal with the death of a healer herself.


Marie-Celeste had first met Marguerite when she was still going by her Kanatian name in the village of Gananaga. Marguerite had fallen sick with the Red Plague, had been cared for by Marie-Celeste, and had been one of the few to eventually recover. Marie-Celeste had taught her how to pray to the Christian God and Marguerite had attributed her recovery to those prayers. She had attended the Jesuit school in Hochelaga, had soon become a Sister like Marie-Celeste herself. Just this spring, Marguerite had been sent out to set up a hospital amongst the Omamiwinini.


However, Marguerite had clearly not been as fortunate as Marie-Celeste. The Kitchesipirini and Weskarini [12]with whom Marie-Celeste had worked were people who had traditionally spent their winters at Hochelaga and who, in recent years, had adopted practices of Three Sisters farming and cattle herding from the Hochelagans. They were trusting of Kanatians and willing to adapt to new ways, including the confinement of the sick to a hospital. However, the Omamiwinini who spent their summers at Matawangspent their winters with the Wendat to the Southwest. They saw Kanatians like Marie-Celeste and Marguerite as foreigners, and it seemed that they had been unwilling to let Marguerite confine their sick to hospital, and had instead reacted to her out of fear. [13]


Marie-Celeste made a quick prayer for Marguerite's soul and the souls of those who had killed her, regained her composure and entered the village. There would be time to bury Marguerite's body later, she thought, right now there are sick who need me.


The village was almost as empty as it would be in the middle of winter. There were no people to be seen, although it was clear that those who had left had left hastily. They hadn't disassembled their wigwams, and had left stores of food and firewood behind. They must have become caught up in a panic when they realized that killing Marguerite had not stopped the plague. It was one of the fleeing villagers who, arriving at the Kichesipirini village where Marie-Celeste had been stationed, had notified Marie-Celeste of the situation here.


The first few wigwams that Marie-Celeste entered contained nothing but bodies. In the next, she found a man who was still barely alive amongst his dead family. She was only able to find the wigwam containing the survivors by noting the ring of freshly dug graves around it. Inside, she discovered a dozen men, women and children caught in various stages of the Red Plague. Two or three were recovering, and they seemed to be the ones who were now taking care of the others.


“I am here to help,” Marie-Celeste said in the best Anishnaabemowin [14] she could muster. She had picked up a good deal of the language working amongst the Kichesipirini and Weskarini, but still spoke with a thick Kanatian accent.


Marie-Celeste could see the fear in the eyes of the survivors. Clearly, they recognized her robes and sash as the same ones that Marguerite had worn. “You have nothing to fear from me,” she continued. “I am not a witch, nor do I practice bad medicine. I am a travelling healer; I follow the Red Plague and work to keep people safe from the death it brings. Our ways have always been to only let those who are immune see to the sick so that those who are well can stay well. I had this illness myself when I was a child, which is why I wear this red sash today. You who have recovered, you now are also immune: you can tend to the sick without getting sick yourselves. And you who are still sick will be immune once you recover.”


The look of fear continued in the eyes of those in the wigwam. “If you want to continue caring for those who are still sick in the way that you have been doing, go ahead. I will not disturb you. There are those still alive in other wigwams who I need to take care of. I will make them soup to eat and brew them tea for their pain. If any of you wish to try my healing teas or my tobacco medicine, or if you want my help caring for the sick here, you can find me in that wigwam there.” Marie-Celeste pointed to a wigwam a short distance away – one that had contained a minimum of dead bodies.


Shortly, after Marie-Celeste had tended to those who were still alive, she was joined in the wigwam she had claimed by a woman probably five years older than she was. She was one of the ones who was recovering, although she clearly was not well. She still moved shakily, and looked thin and pale. “You say you are a travelling healer,” she said, “so you have visited other villages like this one before.”


“Yes,” Marie-Celeste replied, “this is not the first village at which I was too late in arriving. This spring I had heard of an outbreak of the Red Plague amongst the Weskarini and hadn't been able to make it there until most of the village had either died or fled. The scene there was much as it is here.”


“So, what did they do? The survivors I mean. There were survivors, right?” the woman asked. Marie-Celeste could see the tears forming in her eyes. “I mean what lives do we have ahead of us? I have lost my husband, my children. When my sister died, my brothers fled into the woods. I will probably never have a future here again.”


“Well, most of the survivors amongst the Weskarini went to Hochelaga where I came from. The children were taken in by the Jesuits as I was. Many of the men settled in Hochelaga, some of them have plans to marry into one of the Hochelagan clans and become herders…”


“And what about the women?” she asked.


“The women, well, some were able to be adopted – many into the Sheep Clan which has always been welcoming of newcomers. But others followed after me. All who have recovered from the disease are now immune to the Red Plague, and you are very valuable to our efforts to stop the spread of the disease. Many of the Weskarini women took on the red sash, became Sisters like me, and were sent out to help stop the spread of the plague.” [15]


“So I could become like you?”


“Well, yes you could. However, Sisterhood is not to be taken lightly. You'd have to vow never again to take a husband or bear more children. You'd have to be constantly on the move, following the Red Plague wherever it led. If you became a Sister like myself, you would never again have a permanent home. The only family you'd have would be the other Sisters. But, if you're willing to take on all the responsibilities of Sisterhood, I can see that you've well earned your red sash. You've done a fine job keeping those around you alive; I can see your dedication.”


“Oh, and one other thing,” Marie-Celeste continued. “To be a Sister you have to take on a new name. You must be baptised and born again. You'd have to be called Catherine, or Thérèse, or Adèle. Maybe Mathilde? I think you'd make a good Mathilde.”


* * * * * *


(Ossossane, Wendake, June 1602)


Marie-Celeste approached the longhouse of Chief Annaotaha[16]. Annaotaha was Peace Chief of the town of Ossossane, the largest settlement of the Attinniaoenten [Bear] nation of the Wendat Confederacy. As the Peace Chief of the largest settlement of the largest nation of Wedake [17], Annaotaha had a great deal of influence amongst the Wendat people, and Marie-Celeste was lucky to be able to refer to the man as her friend.


Marie-Celeste's relationship with Chief Annaotaha had begun last autumn when Ossossane had been struck with an outbreak of the Red Plague. Marie-Celeste had arrived after Chief Annaotaha himself had become sick, and had immediately set herself to work caring for the Peace Chief, and confining him to his longhouse so as not to spread the disease. Marie-Celeste had been lucky this time, and Annaotaha had survived, although many of his family members had parished. Annaotaha had credited Marie-Celeste with saving his life, and the two of them had grown close over the past few months.


But now it was time for Marie-Celeste to leave Wendake. While she had made excuses to return to Ossassane after treating outbreaks of the Red Plague in other Wendat and Tionontati [18] villages, the Red Plague had now moved farther West. A trader had arrived last night with the news that people were now falling sick in Odawa villages to the Northwest, and Marie-Celeste was called to go there to help treat the sick. It was her mission to serve God by setting up hospitals wherever the Red Plague would travel, and if the Red Plague moved on, so must she.


“Annaotaha,” she said “you must have heard the news by now.”


“Yes I have,” he replied. “I knew the time would come when you must pass on from our lands, and it seems that that time is now. When will you be leaving?”


“Tomorrow. I will be leaving in a canoe with Sister Mathilde. Mathilde speaks better Anishinaabemowin than I do, so she will be coming with me. But, it's not those of us who are leaving that I need to speak to you about. I need to speak to you about those who are staying.”


“You mean the women who've been working with you in your hospitals throughout Wendake? Those who you've healed with your medicine and thus have joined your Medicine Society – your Red Sisterhood as you call it.”[19]


“Yes, the Sisters. They're the ones I mean to talk to you about. I mean to leave a group of them here, to maintain a hospital in Ossossane, and perhaps to set up a few more throughout Wendake. The Red Plague will be back, and next time I want you to be ready. Too many people died this winter, and I want to make sure that doesn't happen again.”


“I also want to make sure that doesn't happen again. But isn't keeping your Red Sisters here to maintain the hospital enough?”


“Well, I am worried about how they will be able to maintain the hospital. Most of the Sisters joined the Sisterhood because they lost their families to the Plague and had no other family to support them. Some of them even lost entire villages. This means they are outcasts here; many of them have no clan, or are belong to clans which have been severely reduced in number. My worry is that, when the plague is a distant memory, no one will be willing to share their food with the Sisters, and no one will be willing to cut wood for them to help them repair their hospital. While some Sisters are still part of clans which have land to farm here, others have no land of their own, and none of them have much to trade for food.”


Marie-Celeste paused before continuing. “I want you to make me a guarantee. I want you to guarantee that the Sisterhood will be granted fields of their own to farm when they are not busy tending to the sick, and I want you to teach the men of Ossosane to share their game with them as they would with the women of their own clan. I want to leave your village knowing that the Sisters that I leave behind will be taken care of and will be able to take care of themselves just as they have taken care of you and your people when they were sick.” [20]


“I cannot make you any guarantees”, Annaotaha replied, “as I cannot make any decisions without the approval of the council. However, I will do my best to teach my people to take care of the Red Sisters that you leave here. I will teach my people to save a portion of our land for the Red Sisters to farm for themselves, and to never let the Sisters go hungry or cold. As long as the Red Sisters continue to protect our people from the Red Plague, they shall always be taken care of.”


“Then I can depart in peace, knowing that my Sisters are in good hands. I hope to return here someday, but if not, I will always remember the hospitality you and your people have showed the Sisterhoood. For now then, it is goodbye.”


“Goodbye,” Annaotaha replied.


* * * * *


Footnotes:


[1] Achelacy was the Westernmost of the villages of the People of the River Mouth. It was metioned in Cartier's logs so we know it existed OTL. It's located at approximately the same location as present-day Portneuf, Quebec.


[2] If you haven't figured it out by now, the plague that has struck is smallpox. There were a number of herbs that would have grown in the St. Lawrence Valley that were used as anlagesics, and I figured they'd be useful in treating the disease. Tobacco leaves were used as a poultice for bee stings and insect bites. I have no idea if a tobacco poultice would work the same for smallpox, but it would at least work as a placebo, especially given its ceremonial importance.


[3] “Hospital” in this context just refers to a longhouse that's dedicated to the sick. It's a simple building with a firepit and sleeping platforms inside. The only real thing special about it is that Jewa lives there and that he forbids anyone who is not sick from entering and forbids anyone who is sick from leaving.


[4] Joseph goes by a Christian name because he was born in Stadacona. He's an “uncle” in the sense of being Sentsitaa's mother's sister's husband, and he came to Achelacy when he married into Sentsitaa's family.


[5] Taquenonday and Achelacy are the only two villages of the People of the River Mouth located West of Stadacona. The others are all to the East. There is a much longer distance between Achelacy and the villages of the People of the Lake farther to the West, so there is little worry about those who are sick fleeing Westwards.


[6] Remember that Yegasetsi sent the survivors of Old Stadacona to various villages in order to set up hospitals in each one. All of the villages of the People of the River Mouth have their own hospital, as do the larger villages and towns of the three Upper Kanatian nations.


[7] The original cause of this outbreak, and many of the subsequent ones, is the arrival of families of French settlers in Stadacona. Since smallpox is a “childhood disease” in the urban areas where most of the settlers come from, it is the arrival of families with infected children which lead to outbreaks. It has been noted in one of my sources that the OTL outbreak of smallpox among the Wendat [Hurons] coincided with the arrival of some of the first European-born children in OTL New France.


[8] The 300 who are sick still represents less than 10% of Hochelaga's population. Hochelaga had a population of 3000 at the time of Cartier's visit, and, since then, the population has grown to around 5000. Smallpox will still have a high mortality rate amongst TTL's Kanatians, it will just be confined to a small minority of the population.


[9] While today we use the word “Jesuit” to usually mean “Jesuit Priest”, in the past the majority of members of the Society of Jesus were not ordained priests but were 'lay brothers' who did much of the “behind the scenes” work in Jesuit missions and schools. In TTL's Kanata, the term Jesuit is used to refer to all of the missionaries, both the priests and the lay brothers. In TTL's Kanata, a simplified version of the black robes worn by Jesuit priests are given to all male graduates of the Jesuit schools to help identify them as spiritual authorities when they return to their home villages.


[10] Père André intends for Marie-Celeste to become a “Religious Sister” - she will take religious vows but they are considered “simple vows” rather than “solemn vows”, which is shy she will not be considered a Nun and thus won't be confined to a convent. The existence of uncloistered religious women was controversial in OTL's 16th century (it was practiced largely without the Pope's approval), but since TTL has had a succession of non-OTL Popes, I'm assuming that one of these non-OTL Popes has established a Third Order (meaning neither Monks (First Order) nor Nuns (Second Order)) to which someone leading Marie-Celeste's lifestyle can belong.


[11] I've finally tried to translate the names of the various Kanatian nations into something resembling the Kanatian language. I've basically used a Wendat disctionary (supposedly the St. Lawrence Iroquoain langauge was closer to Wendat than anything else) and changed a few phonemes here or there to make it “not quite” Wendat.


[12] I should translate some of these terms. Omamiwinini is the general term for the people we know OTL as the Algonquin people – the Easternmost of the Anishinaabe nations. Weskarini are a sub-group of the Omamiwinini who lived North of the Ottawa River in the OTL Gatineau area, and the Kichesipirini are another subgroup who lived near OTL Pembroke. The Omamiwinini villages shown on the “Villages, Towns and Place Names in the Kanata valley” map are either Kitchesipirini or Weskarini villages settled by those who have adopted farming, herding and other more settled practice from Hochelaga. Matawang is the original Anishinaabemowin place name that in OTL has become Mattawa.


[13] Most of the Anishinaabe were nomadic hunter-gatherers in the summer, but would spend the winters near the villages of Iroquoian farmers where they would trade furs they had spent the summer collecting for corn to feed them through the winter. This meant that various Anishinaabe subgroups were closely tied to the Irqouoians with whom they wintered. For example, the Odawa wintered with the Wendat and thus were allied to them.


[14] Anishinaabemowin is the common language of the Anishinaabe people.


[15] Marie-Celeste's understanding of Sisterhood is not completely in according with Church canon. She understands that the black robes can only be worn by those who have graduated from the Jesuit school, but that the red sash can be given to any who have survived the plague. However, she refers to all those who take on the red sash as Sisters, while only her and a few others (like Sister Marguerite) who actually have graduated from the Jesuit school have actually been officially made Religious Sisters.


[16] There was an OTL historical figure by the name of Annaotaha. This is his grandfather, who bore the same name as names were often passed down in families among the Wendat.


[17] Wedake is the Wendat name for the lands inhabited by the people of the Wendat [Huron] Confederacy. In TTL, the Haudenosaunee Iroquois have been less agressive than OTL due to the continued existence of Hochelaga, which means that Wendake is a little more extensive than it was at this time OTL. In TTL, the Arendarhonons and Tahontaenrats still live East of Lake *Simcoe. (In OTL, they had moved into the area near Georgian Bay that Champlain found them around 1600). Note that in my “Indigenous Nations and Confederacies” map I used the spelling “Wyandot” rather than “Wendat”. I've since switched wholeheartedly to “Wendat” because it fits better with the term “Wendake”.


[18] The Tionontati were the nation “next-door” to the Wendat – they lived just to the West. They were well known for their tobacco and were dubbed “Petun” by the French.


[19] Annaotaha and the other Wendats see the Red Sisterhood as akin to their own Medicine Societies, as do many of the Sisters who are Wendat in origin. When Jesuit missionaries reach Wendake in a generation or two, they will barely recognize the Catholic origins of the Red Sisterhood.


[20] Marie-Celeste had heard about the idea of granting lands to the Church from the Jesuits, and she is now adapting this idea as a way to ensure the sustainability of the Red Sisterhood.

 

[telynk]

Update 17 - Spain

P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } Update 17 - Spain:

The following is an excerpt from the book European Monarchs Vol. VII: 1550-1600


Felipe II (King of Spain 1555 – 1579) (b. 1527, m. 1543 Maria Manuela of Portugal, m. 1548 Catherine of Austria, d. 1579)


Felipe II came to power as King of Spain upon the death of his father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Felipe has already been ruling Spain, Naples, Sicily, and the Duchy of Milan for years before his father's death. This meant that, despite the division of Charles V's empire between Felipe and his uncle Ferdinand (Charles's younger brother) the succession proceeded without major incident. [1]


Felipe's first decade as King was spent occupied with the Italian War of 1556-1564 against France and the Ottoman Empire. Henri II of France had attacked, hoping that Felipe would prove a less capable military leader than his father. However, while losing some territory to France early in the war, Felipe was ultimately able to gain control of the entire Italian peninsula. [2]


However, one of the greatest Spanish victories during the last of the Italian Wars was not a military one. In 1557, Pope Paul IV [3] had entered the war by allying the Papal States with France in the hopes of expanding Papal territory at the expense of Spanish-allied Italian states. However, with a series of French military defeats in 1558, a good deal of Papal territory came to be occupied by the Spanish army. Paul IV himself passed away suddenly in 1559 with a Spanish army threatening to take Rome. The city of Rome was gripped with fear as many still remembered the Sack of Rome by Charles V's army that had taken place 30 years earlier.


As the College of Cardinals met in 1559, hope of appointing a Pope who could stand up to the Spanish army was all but lost. Thus, the priority was on appointing a Pope who could build the best possible relationship with the Spanish, and thus could negotiate a favourable peace for the Papal States. Thus the man who would become Pope Gregory XIII [4] was appointed with a mandate of maintaining good relations with the Hapsburgs, especially with the Spanish King Felipe. Gregory XIII more than lived up to his mandate, often giving in to Spanish demands, and appointing a number of explicitly pro-Spanish cardinals. Moreover, by creating a limit to the size of the College of Cardinals, Gregory XIII was able to ensure that future Popes would be unable to overturn the Spanish domination of the College.


While the Italian War of 1556-1564 proved that Felipe was a competent military leader, Felipe took little interest in the management of the Royal treasury. His employment of expensive mercenaries in Italy and the continual buildup of the Spanish fleet led to a large annual deficit. Felipe was forced to default on a number of his loans in 1559 and again in 1567 and 1572, but he never led this deter further spending on Spain's aggressive wars abroad. [5]


The sudden death of Henri II of France brought an end to the last of the Italian Wars. A peace favouring the Spain was negotiated, and Felipe quickly proclaimed victory and turned his attention to his enemies that were still fighting. The Ottoman Empire, who had been supporting their French allies through raids and naval descents on the Italian coast, were now left alone facing Spain, Austria, and most of Italy. While Spain had been victorious in Italy itself, many Venetian holdings in the Eastern Mediterranean had come to be occupied by the Ottomans. Felipe believed that, with France out of the war, these lands could be recovered, and quickly mustered a large fleet which would be able to defeat the Ottomans at sea.


War continued with the Ottomans until the 1566 Battle of Corfu, where a Spanish-Venetian fleet defeated a large part of the Ottoman navy. Enough of the Ottoman fleet was destroyed that the Sultan soon sued for peace, offering to give up all of the Venetian islands he had occupied. The Battle of Corfu, as the first major defeat of the Ottoman Navy, proved to be the turning point in the Spanish-Ottoman struggle for the Mediterranean. After 1566, Spain was regularly able to launch a fleet larger than any the Ottomans could muster, and Spain would dominate the Mediterranean for the rest of the century.


With Italy secured for Spain and the Ottomans defeated, Felipe began to turn his attention North. With Felipe seeing himself as the defender of Catholicism, Edward VI's reforms of the English Church began to look threatening. Mary Tudor, who had been the closest Catholic claimant to the English throne, had died in 1553, but her claim had been inherited by her daughter Catherine of Guise. Felipe saw this opportunity to add England to the Spanish realm, and thus arranged a betrothal between his eldest son Carlos and the young Catherine. This betrothal also cemented an alliance between Felipe and Catherine's father François of Guise, who was soon exiled from France on charges of conspiracy against the Protestant King Louis XIII of France.


The late 1560's also marked the beginning of the Dutch Revolt in Felipe's Netherlands provinces. While the unrest had begun many years prior, it was in 1569 that the rebellion first erupted into a true war. While initially Felipe had thought the revolt would be quickly and easily crushed, Protestant armies led by figures such as William the Silent, Prince of Orange continued to hold parts of the Netherlands against the Spanish army. The rebels continued to gain ground for many years, and in 1577 the States-General of the Netherlands began to openly support the Dutch rebels. [6]


Besides the revolt in the Netherlands and ongoing conflicts with the American natives in New Spain, the late 1560s and early 1570s were a time of relative peace in Spain. This period was only ended by the 1573 request of François of Guise for Spanish support against the Protestant King Louis XIII of France. The Spanish intervention in France was militarily successful, although it was ended prematurely by the death of Louis XIII and the rise to power of his brother Charles IX.


With the replacement of a Protestant King of France with the Catholic Charles IX, Felipe declared victory and withdrew from France. While Felipe may have considered continuing a war with France in the hopes of gaining Provence, he decided against it, likely because his cousin Emperor Maximillian II, was unwilling to support Felipe, while the Ottoman Sultan and the King of England were willing to support France.


However, as it became clear that the unrest in France was far from over, Felipe began to realize that now may be the perfect time for war against the Ottomans. The destruction of much of the Ottoman fleet 10 years earlier and Felipe's aggressive shipbuilding drive meant that the Spanish fleet currently outnumbered that of the Turks. While Spain certainly couldn't hope to successfully invade Greece or Anatolia and while an assault on the Balkans would need Austrian support, there was a tempting target much closer to home: Algiers.


Algiers had been nominally part of the Ottoman Empire for over 30 years, although it was still primarily ruled by Corsairs with little direct control by the Sultan. Thus, while the Ottoman navy could try to prevent the transport of Spanish troops to their African port in Oran, a force marching from Oran to Algiers would only have to deal with local troops, not the Ottoman Army.


Felipe's opportunity came when his nephew Sebastian, King of Portugal (the future Sebastian the Great [7]) began planning his Moroccan Crusade[8]. While the current Sultan of Morocco was allied with the Ottoman Sultan, there was no corresponding alliance between Morocco and France, meaning that this was the perfect opportunity for Felipe to fight a war against the Ottomans without also having to fight France as well. Felipe quickly made an agreement with Sebastian to partition Morocco between Spain and Portugal, drawing a dividing line just East of Tangier at the Straits of Gibraltar.


In 1577, the Spanish and Portugese crossed the Straits and landed in Tangier. The two armies marched together inland toward the city of Fez, where they were met by the Moroccan Sultan and his army. The resulting battle was a great victory for the Spanish and Portugese, leaving them in control of Fez, although the Sultan himself escaped to Marrakech with the remnants of his army.


After their victory at Fez, the Spanish and Portugese war aims began to draw apart. Sebastian wanted to continue to pursue the Sultan of Morocco to Marrakech, while Felipe was more interested in moving Eastward against Algiers. The Ottoman navy had already engaged the Spanish fleet in a number of skirmishes, and Felipe was anxious to attack Algiers before the Ottoman army could be ferried Westwards.


Thus, in the spring of 1578, the Spanish and Portugese armies parted. Felipe marched eastward towards Algiers, while Sebastian worked on expanding the occupied strip between Tangier and Fez to encompass much of Northern Morocco. Phillip's army arrived at Algiers in the early summer of 1578, and a combined land- and sea-based assault quickly took control of the city. While Spanish flags were soon flying over the city, Felipe himself had been wounded in the assault.


The real test for the Spanish army came later in the fall, when the main Ottoman army arrived at the walls of Algiers. Spanish naval superiority had succeeded at forcing the Ottoman army to land and Tripoli and make a long march West along the coast. By the time the Ottoman army arrived in Tunis, Algiers had already fallen. But instead of accepting defeat, the Ottoman army, which outnumbered the Spanish forces almost 2 to 1, decided to lay seige to Algiers in the hopes of recapturing the city.


The seige of Algiers turned out to be another Spanish victory. The city was able to be resupplied by sea for two months until reinforcements could be sent from Spain. Together with their reinforcements, the Spanish army soon sallied from Algiers and routed the Ottoman army, which was already low on morale due to the unsuccessful seige. With the Ottoman army retreating back to the East, the Spanish were able to take the opportunity to march inland and capture the city of Tlemcen in the final months of 1578.


While the seige of Algiers was a great victory for the Spanish, it did not fare so well for Felipe himself. His wounds from the summer had not had a chance to heal properly, and, rather than being evacuated to Spain, Felipe had demanded to stay in command during the seige. Infection had set in and then spread, and Felipe died in early 1579.


Carlos II (King of Spain 1579 – 1606) (b. 1545, m. 1571 Catherine of Guise, d. 1606)


Carlos II [9] of Spain was the eldest son of Felipe II, and Felipe's only son by his first wife, Maria Manuela of Portugal. While Carlos was deformed from birth (he was only able to walk with difficulty, and was unable to ride a horse) his mind was keen, and he proved capable at governing affairs from his palace. During the 1560's and 1570's Carlos would often serve as Regent for his father when Phillip was away campaigning in his various wars. Carlos' education, and his time spent as Regent led him to pay more attention to domestic policies and fiscal management than Phillip's, who was more interested in fighting extravagant wars abroad.


Carlos almost immediately showed his distaste for foreign wars in the first months of his reign where he pushed to make peace with Morocco and the Ottoman Empire in Africa. Carlos would have been happy to give up the inland cities of Tlemcen and Fez and only keep the Spanish and Portugese gains along the coast, but Sebastian was much less willing to give up his gains, and Carlos was unwilling to face to possible diplomatic costs of making a separate peace.


Thus, it was not until 1580 that peace was made. Carlos kept Algiers and control over the coast between Algiers and Oran (which was already under Spanish control) as the only gain for Spain out of the war, while Sebastian kept the Moroccan port of Salé along with a couple other waystations along the coast that had been captured while the Spanish army had been busy in Algiers. Sebastian agreed in the end to withdraw his occupying army from Fez, but the land around Fez was not returned to the Morroccan Sultan. Instead, one of the Sultan's nephews, who had been cooperative with the occupying Portugese forces, was named Emir of Fez and was made a Portugese vassal, agreeing to pay tribute to Portugal in exchange for protection against his uncle's revanchist claims.


With the conclusion of the Moroccan Crusade, Carlos began to focus on trying to bring the Dutch Revolt to an end. He was able to reach an understanding with the representatives of many of the Southern Netherlands provinces, and in 1582 the Peace of Lille was signed where Hainaut, Artois, and a number of other Southern Netherlands provinces agreed to remain loyal to the King of Spain in exchange for settlement of a number of grievances that had led to the original revolt. [10]


The years between 1582 and 1585 in the Netherlands consisted of a combined military and diplomatic campaign. The Spanish army continued to advance Northward through the Netherlands, slowly capturing each rebel city one after another while Carlos reached out to the representatives of each province, trying to convince them to return to the fold. While Carlos was willing to make political concessions to the rebels in order to secure peace, he was still a strict Catholic, and was not willing to allow religious freedom in the Netherlands. This prevented the peaceful conlcusion to the Dutch Revolt that Carlos had hoped for.


In 1585, everything changed in the Netherlands with the entry of Henry IX's English army into the war. The Spanish-controlled Netherlands sat directly between the English in Calais and the Dutch in Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. While the English and Dutch armies were unable to link up in order to decisively defeat the Spanish forces, the Spanish were forced to divide their forces in order to defend against both the English and Dutch simultaneously.


Carlos soon decided that, to decisively bring an end to the Dutch Revolt, he would have to take the English out of the war. He wished to take advantage of Spain's naval superiority and Queen Catherine's claim to the English throne. Thus, in 1587, a Spanish fleet was sent to the British Isles with a twofold mission. The first was to attack English shipping, blockade key ports, and cut off Henry's army in Calais from possible resupply from England. The second was to test the willingness of Henry's Catholic subjects to rebel against their Calvinist King in favour of Queen Catherine's claim to the throne. A number of Catholic English exiles were ferried to Ireland to raise a revolt against King Henry IX of England.


In the end, this naval campaign against England was unsuccessful. The Spanish navy was defeated and the Irish uprising was put down. With the arrival of the Navarrese army in the Netherlands and peace between England and France, the Spanish began to be pushed back. Antwerp fell to the Dutch in 1591, and in 1592 Carlos decided it was time to sign a 5 year truce. The “truce line” running through Flanders and Brabant was decided upon as the border between areas of Dutch and Spanish control. Carlos still hoped to be able to retake the rest of the rebellious provinces, but figured that a period of peace was necessary to convince the people of the Netherlands that he could govern them more responsibly than his father had.


While war in the Netherlands was ongoing, Carlos was busy pursuing his main project – consolidation of his rule at home. When Carlos came to power, the Spanish crown was little more than a personal union between the Kingdoms of Castille, Aragon, Valencia, Navarre[11], Majorca, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, the Principality of Catalonia, and other territories including the Franche-Comté and the Spanish Netherlands. Carlos dreamed of combining these many entities together to form a single Kingdom in order to more efficiently rule and collect taxes, and spent much of his reign working towards this end.


The Kingdom of Castille, as the largest and richest of Carlos' Kingdoms was the logical entity into which to absorb the others, and soon after he came to power, Carlos began making plans to dissolve the Kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, and Navarre, and the Principality of Catalonia, and incorporate them into Castille to form a Kingdom of Spain containing all of Carlos' Iberian holdings. If the mainland of Iberia could be consolidated in this way, Carlos could then move on to Majorca, Sicily, and his other realms.


However, Carlos faced opposition to his plans from within the Cort(e)s [12] of Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, and the Navarre, as incorporation into the Kingdom of Castille would mean the end to many of the traditional privileges each realm had maintained. While the Cort(e)s had little power in themselves, Carlos felt that their approval was necessary in order to ensure the legality of his centralizing reforms.


Thus, throughout the 1580s, Carlos engaged in a campaign of winning the favour of the various members of the Cort(e)s. He made a number of political appointments to those who supported his plans, and honoured many with lands and titles. However, it was in the colonies that Carlos found the greatest opportunity to win favour amongst the nobles for his plans of Union.


Carlos had long remarked that Spain's South American colonies had been neglected in favour of New Spain[13] and the Caribbean, and he was known to say that some of the reason for that neglect had to do with the fact that Castille on its own was unable to provide the manpower to fully exploit South America as well as the more northerly colonies. In 1589, Carlos had an opportunity to change things when the Viceroy of Peru [14] had to be recalled. Carlos divided the Viceroyalty of Peru in three. The Northern territories, centred around Panama became New Catalonia; the Southern territories, to be ruled from a new town to be founded on the Rio de la Plata [15] were to become New Valencia; and the remainder of Peru proper was to become New Aragon. Carlos appointed viceroys from Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon respectively, and opened up these colonies to settlement by non-Castillians[16]. This served the dual purpose of encouraging greater investment in the colonies while also winning Carlos support amongst Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon.


Thus, in 1594 Carlos finally secured the last support he needed to bring about the Union of Spain, which legally dissolved Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and Navarre, and incorporated them into the Kingdom of Castille, which was renamed the Kingdom of Spain. All members of the Cort(e)s of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and Navarre became members of the Cortes of Spain, and Castillan law was amended to incorporate many of the privileges enjoyed by those in the other Kingdoms.


While the Union of Spain was celebrated throughout most of Carlos' lands, it was not universally praised. In fact the Union resulted in two large revolts along with a number of smaller ones. The first revolt was led by the gentry of Navarre, who had been neglected in Carlos' division of South America, and who hadn't been given the same patronage as the higher nobility had. The second was led by the merchants of Barcelona, who resented the imposition of the higher Castillian tax rates, and furthermore resented the fact that they had been given the right to settle in New Catalonia but not the right to trade with it, as all colonial trade still had to pass through the port of Seville. It was Navarrese and Barcelonan revolts, and the war that they sparked, that would leave a bitter taste in the mouth of all those who had rejoiced at the Union of Spain...


Notes to Spain:
[1] In TTL, Charles V, whose health was already declining OTL by this time, didn't live long enough to abdicate. His plan of dividing his realm between his son and his brother, though, had already been agreed to before his death.
[2] This does not mean that all of Italy was occupied by Spain, but that France was decisively pushed out of Italy, and that the remaining Italian states had no choice but to ally themselves with Spain. This is much the same end to the Italian Wars as happened OTL.
[3] This is not the same Paul IV as OTL, but he took the same regnal name.
[4] I chose this regnal name because it was used OTL for another Spanish-backed Pope although, again, this is not the same man.
[5] This was true OTL as well. However, in TTL the effects of these defaults will be less as Felipe's rule will be shorter.
[6] The Dutch Revolt is supposed to be going roughly the same as it did OTL up to 1580-ish. The big changes will come after 1580, and will be discussed in the Netherlands update.
[7] Born after the POD, this is not the same Sebastian as OTL. He will survive to claim victory in his Moroccan crusade, and go on to do enough good for Portugal to earn him the nickname “the Great”. Sebastian's survival means that Felipe II of Spain will never become King of Portugal, so there will be no Iberian Union in TTL.
[8] The Moroccan Crusade was a campaign by Portugal to recapture a number of ports they had lost along the Moroccan coast. OTL's King Sebastian died while on this crusade, leading to OTL's Iberian Union. TTL's Moroccan Crusade will go a little better than OTL's for Portugal.
[9] This Carlos II is not the same man as OTL's Don Carlos, even though he was born in the same year to the same parents, as he was born after the POD. He is still inbred, but his disabilities are more physical than mental, which has led to his desire to stay at home and focus on domestic affairs rather than campaigning abroad.
[10] The Pecae of Lille is TTL's version of the Union of Arras.
[11] Here by “Navarre”, the author means “Spanish-Controlled Navarre”. The Spanish monarchs claim the title “King of Navarre” at this point by right of conquest, while there is still an independent (but much smaller) Kingdom of Navarre whose crown has been inherited by Henri de Bourbon.
[12] Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia spell their “parliamentary” body 'Corts', while Navarre and Castille spell it 'Cortes'. I'm using the term Cort(e)s to reflect both spellings.
[13] New Spain here is referring to OTL Mexico, and not the entirety of the Spanish colonial empire.
[14] Instead of Francisco Alvarez de Toledo, Felipe II appointed a different viceroy, who succeed in reforming the administration of Peru, but also succeeded in squirrelling away a good deal of the mined silver for his own personal treasury. In the end, this viceroy had to be removed by the Spanish navy.
[15] Carlos is particularly concerned about Portugese expansion in Brazil, which, while not yet reaching as far South as it would by OTL's 17th century, is already starting to push the Tordesillas line. Without the Iberian Union, Spanish/Portugese rivalry in South America will be more important than OTL, which is why Carlos is so anxious to settle the Rio de la Plata area.
[16] Prior to this decision, only the subjects of the Kingdom of Castille, and not those of Aragon, Catalonia, Navarre, etc., were allowed to settle in the colonies.

 

[telynk]

Update 18 - the Netherlands

P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } (Amsterdam, July 1588)


The funeral procession proceeded out of Dam Square along the banks of the Amstel. Gerard Pieterzoon and his wife Johanna watched from the window of their apartment above their shop. From their window, the could see the coffin, above which flew the banner of William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. William, Stadtholder of Holland, hero of the Dutch Revolt was the man whose death was now being mourned. [1]


But the atmosphere in the streets of Amsterdam was not one of mourning, but one of celebration. The same party which had brought William's body back to Amsterdam had brought news of the great victory at Breda, the first offensive victory by Dutch troops in years of war against the Spanish. For years, the Spanish army had been advancing deeper and deeper into the Netherlands. They had controlled almost all of Brabant for years, and the people of Holland had lived in constant fear of a Spanish attack.


But, then word had come of the English army defeating the Spanish in Flanders. Nieuwport had fallen to the English in 1586 and Brugge in 1587, but still the Spanish made incursions into South Holland. Then early this year, word had come that the English army had been joined of that of Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, the man who had almost been King of France. It had been said that the attack on Breda had been the idea of the King of Navarre, although it had been William of Orange who had taken charge of carrying it out. It was said that William had led the assault on Breda's walls himself, and had fallen only as he lead his troops through the breach.


William's son Maurice led the procession. Maurice was not the new Prince of Orange: that honour would fall to his eldest son Philip William, who was held prisoner in Spain. [2] But Maurice seemed to be almost as capable a military leader as his father, and many thought he would become the new Statholder. “Maurice carries himself as a true warrior,” Johanna commented, “I think he will make almost as good a Statholder as his father… And maybe someday we will call him Count of Holland and Prince of the Netherlands, [3] don't you think?”


“I don't know,” Gerard replied, “if the States-General wanted to grant sovereignty to the House of Orange, they would have done it years ago, when they first withdrew their recognition of Spanish sovereignty.”


“But someone has to be granted sovereignty. I mean, the Netherlands isn't Venice. What would hold the Netherlands together if not a shared sovereign?”


“Well, 'Venice of the North' does have a nice ring to it. But you're right. A republic of Holland could work, or even maybe a Republic of Holland and Zeeland. But, if we ever hope to recapture Brabant and Flanders, we'll need a shared sovereign of some sort.” [4]


“But who would that be if not the Prince of Orange?”


“Well, Jan the fishmonger has a brother who used to deliver food to the States-General when they met in Amsterdam. He says that the reason the States-General have not yet appointed a new sovereign is that they want to be able to have something to offer any foreign King who is able to help them expel the Spanish from the Netherlands.”


“Wait, are you saying the States-General are planning to offer sovereignty to the King of England?”


“Well, that's what Jan thinks, but I think he's wrong. They may have made the offer, but I don't think the King of England would have accepted it. King Henry's got too much of his father in him to accept an offer of sovereignty which would put him at perpetual war with Spain. He's now willing to fight our war for the good of the Protestant cause, [5] but he knows that at any minute his Parliament could force him to withdraw from the Netherlands. And, besides, do we really think rule by a foreign English King would be any better than rule by a foreign Spanish one?”


“But what's the alternative.”


“The King of Navarre. He's proved to be almost as good a military leader as William of Orange. By holding the Navarrese crown, he's already made himself an enemy of Spain. Most importantly, however, if he becomes Prince of the Netherlands, he won't put the interests of Navarre above our own. Why would he prioritize a tiny Kingdom that isn't worthy of the name when his richest and most important holdings would be here in the Netherlands? I tell you, if anyone's going to be Prince of the Netherlands, it will be Henri de Bourbon.”


* * * * * * *


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The following is an excerpt from the book European Monarchs Vol. VII: 1550-1600[/FONT]


The Netherlands:


Hendrik I (Duke of Bourbon 1561 - 1587, King of Navarre 1575 - 1622, Lord Protector of the Netherlands 1588 – 1602, Prince of the Netherlands 1602 - 1622) (b. 1554, m. 1582 Princess Anne of England, d. 1622)


The man who would become Prince Hendrik I of the Netherlands was born in 1554 France as the eldest surviving son of Antoine, Duke of Bourbon, and Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. He inherited the Duchy of Bourbon from his father when we was still a child, and inherited the Kingdom of Navarre from his mother in 1575.


With the death of his parents young Henri (as he was known in France), became one of the largest landholders in France. Following in the footsteps of his mother and uncle, Henri converted to Calvinism and became the largest Protestant landholder in France. At the time, King Charles IX had yet to have a son, so Henri was also heir presumptive to the French throne. To a certain extent the Catholic-Protestant conflict which is known as the Franco-Navarrese war was an attempt by Henri to secure the French throne for himself.


When, in 1578, the Protestant-held city of La Rochelle was beseiged by a Catholic army, it was Henri de Bourbon who led the army that marched to the relief of La Rochelle. Henri, like many of the other Protestant nobles of the late 1570s, still professed loyalty to his King and claimed only to be defending his people against King Charles' “misguided advisors”. However, many historians believe that Henri did know that King Charles himself was leading the army outside La Rochelle, and that Henri had attacked specifically with the hope that Charles would perish in battle just as his brother Louis had. [6]


While the resulting Battle of La Rochelle was a Protestant victory, King Charles himself escaped unharmed. Henri proved himself to be an inspiring leader and led his troops to victory, but at the same time severed any hope of ever winning favour with his King. In the aftermath of the battle, it became clear that Henri did intend to secure the throne for himself. Henri formally accused King Charles of regicide against his brother Louis, and produced forged documents disputing the legitimacy of King Charles' birth. With this challenge to Charles' reign, the Franco-Navarrese war began.


The early years of the Franco-Navarrese war were good for the Protestants, partly because King Charles didn't take the threat to his reign seriously enough, and partly because of Henri's talent as a commander. Henri was able to win a number of battles against odds that were clearly in favour of the Catholic armies he fought against. [7] However, none of the battles were decisive enough to win the war once and for all. For now, though, the Protestant-controlled territory in the Southwest continued to grow.


In the early years of the war, Henri had extended diplomatic overtures to other Protestant rulers, hoping to have a ally to help put a Protestant on the French throne. During a diplomatic visit to London in 1579 (which Henri also spent courting Princess Anne of England, whom he would later marry), Henri first met Prince Henry, then heir apparent to the English throne. The two young men got along well, and shared a zeal for Calvinist religious ideas. Thus, when King Edward VI of England died in 1581, the new King Henry was quick to enter the war in France.


The “alliance of the Henrys” made a number of gains over the next few years: Tours was taken by the Navarrese army and Amiens by the English, and plans were made to attack Paris itself. However, these plans were soon broken by King Henry of England, who felt the need to withdraw a good portion of his army from France in order to fight against Spain in the Netherlands.


With the distraction of the English army in the Netherlands, the Protestant advance stalled. While the Alliance of the Henrys continued to debate when and how to attack Paris, King Charles made political efforts to reduce the morale of the Protestant troops. Many of the men fighting under Henri de Bourbon were not professional soldiers but Protestant rebels who had joined Henri in the hopes of overturning Catholic repression of their faith. They fought against their King only as long as the King continued to oppress Protestants. In 1584 King Charles promised freedom of worship to all those who remained loyal to their King, which deprived Henri of the source of much of his army.


The real blow to the cohesion of the Protestant army came at the birth of King Charles' son François in 1585. The existence of an heir to the Valois line meant that Henri de Bourbon was no longer the heir to the throne. This caused division within the Protestant camp. Some of Henri's officers didn't feel that the French people would ever doubt the legitimacy of King Charles' claim to the throne. Many felt it would be better to kill Charles, and have Henri rule as regent for the young François than to continue to fight for a claim to the throne that grew continually weaker. This division amongst the Protestant officers together with the desertion of many of the common solidiers meant that Henri's army was shrinking as King Charles recruited more at more troops. By the end of 1585, it was clear that Henri had missed his chance for a decisive victory.


However, in late 1585, Henri received a letter from the States-General of the Netherlands. In the letter the States-General explained that they needed all the help they could get in expelling the Spanish from their lands, and were willing to consider granting sovereignty to the King of Navarre if he was able to aid them in their fight against Spain. Similar letters had been sent to the Kings of England, Denmark, Sweden, and a number of the German Princes of the Holy Roman Empire. However, to Henri, this was a game-changer.


In 1586, Henri changed strategy. His goal was to achieve peace in France as soon as possible, and to keep his army intact at all costs. However, he couldn't appear too desperate for peace at the negotiating table, so he had to arrange a scenario where he would be forced to come to the table. He withdrew defenders from La Rochelle, allowing King Charles to take it, putting his own army in a position where it was cut off in Tours. This meant that the war was clearly lost and Henri could make peace without losing face. [8]


The peace talks proceeded as planned, and Henri was able to convince Charles to recognize the independence of a Kingdom of Navarre in Lower Navarre, Béarn and Labourd in exchange for Henri giving up his other holdings in France proper. Henri gave up his claim to the French throne in exchange for a guarantee from King Charles to continue his policy of tolerance of “sufficiently loyal” Protestants. The resulting Peace of Tours was almost the best that Henri de Bourbon could have hoped for. He was able to keep his army and his title of King, and his French lands would have been forfeit in any case.


So, when the Navarrese army withdrew from Tours, rather than marching South and West towards Navarre proper, they marched North and East towards the English port of Calais. There they joined up with the English army which was engaged with battle against the Spanish in Flanders. In the fall of 1587, the Navarrese and English armies joined together in an attack on Brugge, which soon fell to their combined forces.


However, a continued campaign in Flanders was not what Henri had in mind. He knew that if he was to become Prince of the Netherlands, he would have to win over the Dutch leaders. Even those amongst the rebels who had originally come from Flanders had left Flanders years ago in fear of the Spanish army. Many had fled to the city of Amsterdam in Holland.


Thus, Henri and a good part of his army travelled by boat from Brugge through Zeeland to Holland to join up with the forces of William, Prince of Orange, which were based out of Amsterdam. In the early summer of 1588 the forces of Henri and William participated in a joint attack on the city of Breda in Northern Brabant. The attack succeed and Henri and William both won renown for their leadership ability. However, William, who had led the attack personally, died in battle.


With the death of William of Orange, Henri de Bourbon became the most celebrated military leader in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and throughout the Free Netherlands. [9] Soon, Henry IX of England made it clear that his war aim was to secure Flanders for England; he was uninterested in sovereignty over the Netherlands as a whole [10]. Thus, by the end of 1588 Henri de Bourbon was the best remaining candidate for sovereignty. He was soon recognized as sovereign by the States-General, and assumed a title which translates into English as “Lord Protector of the Netherlands.”


During the years of War in the Netherlands, Henri was constantly fearful for his lands in Navarre. Navarre [11] was poorly defended, much closer to the Spanish heartland than the Netherlands were, and was claimed by Carlos II of Spain (who also used the title 'King of Navarre'). However, Henri was lucky in at least two ways. Firstly, King Charles of France was unwilling to tolerate a Spanish army North of the Pyrenees, and publicly guaranteed the independence of Navarre. Secondly, Carlos II was generally uninterested in waging war, and still hoped, in the late 1590s, that he could win over the people of the Netherlands through diplomacy and benevolent policies. Thus, in the years between 1587 and 1592, peace was maintained in Navarre.


In the early years of Henri's leadership in the Netherlands, his first priority was the recapture of the city of Antwerp, which had been the most important harbour in the Netherlands before the war. An attack on Antwerp in 1589 was repulsed by the Spanish, but after a year of regrouping, and the arrival of English reinforcements, Antwerp was finally taken in 1591.


After the fall of Antwerp, King Henry of England had hoped to push farther South to Brussels in order to force Spain to cede Flanders. However, Henri de Bourbon was less enthusiastic for further campaigns, as he was deep in debt after almost 15 years of war, but was willing to continue fighting until the Spanish were willing to accept peace. So, when Carlos II came forward with an offer of a truce in the Spring of 1592, this offer was greeted enthusiastically by the Lord Protector of the Netherlands. The Dutch people too were happy to accept a truce offer, and when King Henry of England realized he couldn't fight Spain on his own, England agreed to the truce as well.


The five-year-truce signed in 1592 divided the Netherlands along a line just South of Antwerp. The Southern Netherlands including Artois, Hainaut, Namur, Luxemburg, and the Southern parts of Flanders and Brabant, were to remain under Spanish control, while Ghent and Antwerp and everything to the North would be administered by the States-General of the Free Netherlands. England was left with nothing in the truce, although Henry IX's protests were silenced by an offer of trading privileges in Dutch ports and by a Parliament which wanted an end to a costly war. In 1593, the English withdrew from the Netherlands, and Henri de Bourbon was left in full control of the Free Netherlands. [12]


Henri de Bourbon spent much of the truce years working on improving the economies of both the Netherlands and Navarre. In the Netherlands, the port of Antwerp was repaired and reopened, and trade relations were reestablished with Portugal. Soon spices and other goods from the Asia were again flowing through Antwerp's markets. While some of Antwerp's pre-war trade had been permanently diverted to Amsterdam, Hamburg, or other ports, Antwerp soon returned to prominence as the most important port in the Netherlands. [13]


Henri took advantage of his sovereignty over the prosperous Netherlands to try to increase the flow of trade to the Navarrese port of Bayonne, which was strategically situated almost halfway between Lisbon where Asian goods arrived in Europe and Antwerp where they were distributed to the North and East. Bayonne's harbour had largely silted up over the past century, so a new canal was dug to facilitate access to the city from the sea.


With the improvements made by Henri de Bourbon, the port of Bayonne soon became the most important harbour along the Eastern Basque coast. Bayonne would become the harbour of choice for Basque whalers and fishers returning from voyages to North America as early as 1610. The port of San Sebastian, which had previously been the Basque port of choice, was consumed by instability in the 1590s as the revolt in Spanish-controlled Navarre spread to the city, and would take decades to recover. Both San Sebastian and Bayonne would have battles named after them in the upcoming Navarro-Spanish war, but the Battly of Bayonne would take place outside the city, while the Battle of San Sebastian would devastate the city itself.


As Basque whalers returning from the New World began to frequent the port of Bayonne, word began to spread of the trading post at Tadoussac in Kanata, where these same whalers traded for furs and other commodities. In 1596, Henri de Bourbon claimed sovereignty over Tadoussac, as he was King over the Basque whalers who had established the trade post, and claimed the right to tax the Dutch traders who began to frequent Tadoussac. [14]


A further matter that Henri de Bourbon had to deal with during the truce years was the settlement of the large number of French Protestants who had served in his army, and had followed him to the Netherlands after the Peace of Tours. The commoners among them largely settled as craftspeople or labourers in the cities of Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Bayonne, and those who settled in the Netherlands were welcomed as heroes who had fought for the freedom of the Netherlands rather than foreigners to be ostracized.


However, the nobles in the army were another story. Many of them had had their lands confiscated at the Peace of Tours, and were now demanding that Henri grant them new lands in either Navarre or the Netherlands as compensation. Navarre was a tiny Kingdom with few lands to grant, and
Henri didn't have the authority to grant lands in the Netherlands. The States of the various Netherlands provinces were the de facto authorities, and, de jure, the Netherlands were still Imperial fiefs. Thus, Henri had little ability to satisfy the demands of those who had followed him into war.


While Henri did grant lands in the Kingdom of Navarre to his most loyal followers, he was forced to let many of the other nobles go, to either live the lives of commoners, or to live with relatives in France or elsewhere. However, he was able to convince the States-General of the Free Netherlands to set aside funds to pay a stipend to all those nobles who had proven to be capable military leaders, to keep them on as the officers for what would soon become the standing army of the Free Netherlands. These officers would prove essential when war would break out again in 1597 at the end of the five years' truce...


* * * * * *


The following is an excerpt from the book 17th Century Europe:


The Navarro-Spanish War


The Navarro-Spanish War goes by many different names in many different contexts. Some Navarrese historians have referred to it as a second phase of the Navarrese War of Independence, the first phase having been the Franco-Navarrese War of 1578-1587. However, this author feels that it is inappropriate to refer to the Franco-Navarrese war and the Navarro-Spanish was as two phases of the same conflict, as the two wars were very different in origin and were fought against different opponents.


Similarly, Dutch historians usually refer to the Navarro-Spanish war as the final phase of the Dutch revolt. However, viewing it as a part of the Dutch revolt ignores the Navarrese and in general the Pyrenéean theatre which played such a crucial part in the war. Similarly, using the term “Navarro-Spanish” war to refer only to the Pyrenéean theatre while considering the fighting going on at the same time in the Netherlands as a separate conflict ignores the fact that events in one of these two theatres could greatly influence the outcome of the war in the other theatre.


The Navarro-Spanish War had its origins in the Navarrese Revolt against the Union of Spain that began in 1595. This is not to say that war would not have started at the end of the 5-year-truce without the Navarrese Revolt, but that, if it had not been for the Navarrese Revolt, the war between Carlos II of Spain and Hendrik I of the Navarrese Netherlands [15] would have likely been fought in 1597 in the same way it had been fought in 1592 – it would have solely been a Netherlands-based conflict, as Spain would have feared French intervention if they attacked Navarre proper.


However, with the ongoing revolt in Spanish-controlled Navarre, Carlos II began to blame the existence of Independent Navarre for the tenacity of the Navarrese rebels. To a certain extent, Carlos was correct in his accusation that Independent Navarre was supporting the rebels, as rebels who controlled much of the mountainous region on the border between Spanish and Independent Navarre were able to traverse the mountain passes into Independent Navarre to acquire supplies, and sometimes even to recruit soldiers. There were also a number of printing houses in Independent Navarre which published and distributed pro-rebel literature. However, it is not at all clear that this support for the Navarrese rebels was officially sanctioned by King Hendrik [16] himself, and much of it may only be due to the independent actions of Navarrese individuals.


For whatever the reason, King Carlos II of Spain made a decision in 1596 that he would take the first opportunity to attack King Hendrik not in the Netherlands, where the last war had occurred, but in Navarre proper. King Carlos was forbidden from attacking Independent Navarre by the terms of the 5-year-truce just as the Netherlands were forbidden from attacking Spanish possessions overseas. However, the truce was set to expire in 1597, and Carlos soon made preparations to invade Navarre as soon as the truce expired. He began raising his army as early as the final months of 1596.


However, King Carlos did have reason to fear French intervention in Navarre as King Charles IX had declared that he would declare war if Spain threatened the independence of the Kingdom of Navarre. In the hopes of preventing French involvement, Carlos sent a proposal to King Charles offering to hand over Labourd and Béarn to France if he let Spain keep Lower Navarre. However, King Charles had sent no reply by the time the truce expired in 1597.


Thus, when the Spanish army entered Independent Navarre in 1597, there was hope that the war in Navarre could be a quick victory for King Carlos. Bayonne fell before the end of the year, and by the spring of 1598 almost all of Independent Navarre was occupied. A small group of loyalists held the city of Saint-Jean-Pied-du-Port at the foot of Roncevalles Pass, where they protected the 14-year-old Crown Prince Anton who had stubbornly refused to flee to France. At the same time, the Spanish army in the Netherlands had been ordered to stay put in Brussels. Likely, King Carlos wanted to tempt King Hendrik to lead his army from the Netherlands to try to take back Navarre, leaving the Netherlands defenceless.


However, before the Dutch army could be mobilized, a French army entered Navarre in the summer of 1598. The poor defences which had allowed the Spanish to take Navarre so easily now worked against them as they had little of a defensive advantage against the French onslaught. If anything, the Spanish had a disadvantage as their army occupied lands where the populace was very anti-Spanish in their sentiment.


When King Hendrik heard word of the French intervening in Navarre, he decided it was time to launch an offensive in the Netherlands proper. The Dutch army advanced into Southern Brabant and began calling for the people of Brabant to rise up in revolt against their Spanish “oppressor”. The hope was to draw the Spanish army out from Brussels to meet the Dutch on the field of battle.


1599 was the year of three decisive moments in the Navarro-Spanish war. The first was the Battle of Bayonne (fought just outside the city) where the French army defeated the Spanish, and retook the city. While this battle wasn't a crippling blow to the Spanish army in itself, it forced them to give up Independent Navarre and retreat Westward along the coast, as retreating inland would force their supply lines to pass through the high mountain passes which were still occupied by Navarrese rebels.


The second decisive battle of 1599 was fought between the Spanish and Dutch armies in the Netherlands. The Spanish army had left Brussels to confront the Dutch, but were surprised when they discovered not a rebel militia, but a professional army equal in skill to Spain's own mercenaries. [17] This professional army had been recruited and trained during the 5-year truce, and was financed by the trade that was now again flowing through the port of Antwerp. The Spanish army was soon routed, leaving the Dutch in uncontested control of the Netherlands.


The third decisive development that came in 1599 was the French army that crossed into Catalonia, supposedly in support of the Barcelonan revolt, which was still ongoing. While this army was soon stopped by Spanish defences, it wasn't clear how long these defences could hold while being stuck between a French army to the North and rebels to the South.


Thus in 1600, King Carlos came to terms with the Barcelonan rebels. He agreed to end Seville's monopoly on New World trade, and promised that the port of Barcelona could have the right to trade directly with New Catalonia, provided that they paid the appropriate taxes. This satisfied enough of the rebels, that Carlos could soon send reinforcements to back up his Catalonian defences.


However, while King Carlos was busy on the diplomatic front, so were the French. French delegates met with the rebels from Spanish-controlled Navarre over the winter of 1599-1600 and the two parties agreed to become allies rather than just co-belligerents. The rebels would help a French army pass through the passes to the other side of the Pyrenees, and in exchange, the French would agree to hand any gains they made over to Independent Navarre.


Thus, as the Spanish army in San Sebastian prepared for a counterattack back into Navarre, a portion of the French army stormed down from the Pyrenees to take control of Pamplona, threatening to advance further into the Ebro valley. The Spanish were able to bring a halt to the French army, but were unable to retake Pamplona, and the year 1600 ended with two French armies on Spanish soil in both Iberian Navarre and Northern Catalonia.


Thus in 1601, King Carlos of Spain decided that to win this war, he would need help. He called upon Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, [18] his cousin who ruled Hapsburg Austria. Rudolf did not desire a war with France at the time, as he was worried about a possible attack by the Ottoman Empire, but Rudolf did succeed at using a threat of Imperial involvement in the war to convince France to stop their advance into Spain and come to the peace table.


The peace, as it was agreed to, saw Spain giving up much of the territory occupied by France. Spain lost the Northern half of Iberian Navarre from the Basin of Pamplona northwards, and Roussillon was handed over to France, although Spain kept the rest of Catalonia. The Southern half of Iberian Navarre was integrated into the Kingdom of Spain, and King Carlos agreed to give up the right to use the title “King of Navarre”. In the Netherlands, Spain was able to keep Hainaut, Artois, Namur, Luxemburg and a small piece of Southern Brabant, but was forced to give up the rest of Brabant, Flanders, and Limburg, and all territories Northward. [19]


In order to seal the peace, Emperor Rudolf insisted that France and Spain enter into a pair of royal marriages in order to prevent future conflict [20]. King Carlos' son Felipe (the future Felipe III) had recently lost his first wife, so Felipe took King Charles' daughter Jeanne as his second wife. However, the only daughter of Carlos II to survive childhood had already been married off to Rudolf II, so King Charles' firstborn son François had to settle for Felipe's daughter (by his first wife) Isabella, who was still only 9 years old. [21]


The division of the territories gained between King Charles of France and King Hendrik of Navarre was a further point of controversy. King Charles had committed to handing over the territory taken around Pamplona to the Kingdom of Navarre, but France wanted more out of the peace than just Roussillon, as they had done the bulk of the fighting. In the end King Hendrik agreed to give up Flanders in exchange for the France handing over Navarre, however, at the insistence of Emperor Rudolf, Flanders did not become an part of France, but remained an imperial fief, and was given not to King Charles, but to his second son Henri. [22]


Thus, in September of 1601, at the conclusion of the peace talks, Henri de Bourbon was given the title Prince of the Netherlands by Emperor Rudolf, and assumed de jure sovereignty over all of the Free Netherlands. However, this event was not greeted with universal applause in the Netherlands itself. Hendrik was much criticized for giving up Flanders in order to keep Navarre, and many felt that he had put the interests of Navarre above those of the Netherlands. A few revolts broke out and the States-General made it clear to Hendrik that having been the ones to grant him sovereignty, they could still take it away.


The result of this unrest was the 1602 Antwerp Agreement which would be later recognized by many historians as the first modern constitution. [23] The States-General were made into a permanent institution which could not be dismissed by the Prince, and the States-General were given the power to appoint a new Prince on the death of the previous one. Approval of the States-General were required before the Prince could collect taxes or declare war, and the States-General were required to ratify peace treaties before they would become legally binding.


The most novel thing about the Antwerp Agreement was the fact that it was the States-General of the Netherlands as a whole, and not the individual States of the Provinces of the Free Netherlands which held power. Until the Antwerp Agreement, the States-General had only been a coordinating body which was seen as subservient to the individual States. After the Antwerp Agreement, the States-General assumed some power over and above that of the individual States that it represented. This was meant to ensure that dispute between the various Provinces wouldn't cause the Netherlands to break up, and to ensure that all provinces of the Netherlands would continue to be united in personal union. However, the Antwerp Agreement would prove to be the beginning of a trend towards a Free Netherlands that was united in more than just its sovereign.


The Navarro-Spanish war is often described by many historians as the point of transition between the Spanish-dominated 16th century and the French-dominated 17th century. While it is true that the Navarro-Spanish war was decisively won by France, this does not mean that by 1601 the power of Spain had already been eclipsed by that of France. Certainly one of the factors that led to Spanish defeat in the Navarro-Spanish war was the poor quality of the troops under Carlos II compared to those under Felipe II, which in turn was caused by the unwillingness of King Carlos to spend as much as his father had on mercenaries. As we will see later in this volume, the Navarro-Spanish war was not the end of Spain's power, but just a temporary setback which would be reversed once “Carlos the Frugal” (as he was called by his detractors) was succeeded by his son, Felipe III.


Footnotes:


[1] In OTL, William the Silent was assassinated a few years before this. In TTL, he evaded assassination and died in battle.


[2] Maurice and Philip William are not the same men as OTL as they were born after the POD, but bear the same names, and play the same roles, with Maurice succeeding his father in the Netherlands, while Philip William was held as a semi-prisoner in Spain.


[3] “Prince of the Netherlands” is a translation of the German title “Fürst zu Niederlande”. “Prince” here is not seen as a rank above Duke but as a title that any Duke or Count can assume if they are a direct vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. Any sovereign of the Netherlands would also carry the titles “Count of Holland”, “Duke of Brabant”, etc., but “Prince of the Netherlands” would likely become the primary title so as to not put any of the individual Provinces above any of the others.


[4] The Dutch Republic was always “Plan B” OTL. It only occurred because the King of France and the Queen of England both turned down offers of sovereignty, so the Netherlands was left without a sovereign. Here I'm trying to express how preposterous the idea of a Dutch Republic seems to the people of TTLs Netherlands.


[5] King Henry is not just fighting “for the good of the Protestant cause”; he does have ulterior motives. There's a reason he's focusing his war efforts on occupying Flanders rather than reinforcing Holland.


[6] Remember that one of the stimuli for this round of Catholic-Protestant conflict was the accusation that King Charles was responsible for the death of his brother King Louis XIII.


[7] Butterflies gave Henri de Bourbon the necessary genes to become a talented general although he's no Napoleon or Alexander.


[8] This historian is exaggerating the extent to which Henri “intentionally” lost the Franco-Navarrese war. The withdrawal of troops from La Rochelle was intended to reinforce Henri's army in Tours, not to give up La Rochelle. The author is playing up an caricature of Henri de Bourbon as a leader who “never lost a war he didn't want to lose”. While this caricature is popular amongst the Dutch and the Navarrese, it is not an accurate depiction of Henri de Bourbon's actual attitudes, as Henri would have much preferred to be King of France than King of Navarre and Prince of the Netherlands.


[9] The “Free Netherlands” is TTL's term for what were known OTL as the “United Provinces”. They will eventually be known as the “Navarrese Netherlands” in France, England, and Germany, but “Free Netherlands” is the term the Dutch use for their own federation.


[10] King Henry IX wants to keep his war aims modest enough that Spain would be willing to agree to them. He is gambling that Spain would be willing to give him Flanders if he withdrew his troops from the Netherlands. However, an acceptance of sovereignty over all of the Free Netherlands would commit Henry to fighting till the end, something he knows that Parliament would never agree to.


[11] Historians in TTL usually use the unmodified term “Navarre” or “Kingdom of Navarre” to refer to the independent entity North of the Pyrenees, while the part South of the Pyrenees which is currently occupied by Spain is referred to as “occupied Navarre”, “Spanish Navarre”, or “Iberian Navarre”. This reflects the fact that, over the next century, the centre of what is known as Navarre will shift from Pamplona to Bayonne.


[12] “Full control” is a bit inaccurate here as Henri has only been recognized as sovereign by the States-General, and thus is unable to do much without the approval by the States. But the author's point is that neither Spain nor England has any further control over lands North of the truce line.


[13] In OTL, Amsterdam eclipsed Antwerp because the United Provinces cut off Antwerp from the sea by controlling Zeeland. In TTL, Antwerp and Zeeland are both controlled by the Free Netherlands, so Antwerp will have an opportunity for continued dominance.


[14] The next update will feature interactions between a half-Basque half-Innu Métis man and Dutch traders from Antwerp in Tadoussac.


[15] “Hendrik I of the Navarrese Netherlands” is a anachronism here. The title “King of the Navarrese Netherlands” would only be assumed by Hendrik's son Anton decades after Hendrik's death much later in the 17th century, although future Kings of the Netherlands would count Henri de Bourbon as Hendrik I when enumerating their monarchs.


[16] The fact that this author refers to Henri de Bourbon by his Dutch name Hendrik indicates that the Netherlands are by far the most important of the Bourbon possessions.


[17] Note that the mercenaries in the Navarro-Spanish war are decidedly lower quality than those used by Felipe II because of Carlos II's frugal ways. The Dutch victory here says as much about the decline in Spanish troop quality as it does about the increase in skill of the Dutch army.


[18] Again, not the same Rudolf as OTL, but born around the same time to the same parents.


[19] When I have a chance, I will try to make a map of Western Europe in 1602.


[20] Rudolf very much wants peace between France and Spain because he wants Spain's help against the Ottomans.


[21] At some point, I will post a family tree. What I am trying to do here is to improve the genetic stock of the Hapsburgs by having each Hapsburg ruler have at least one non-Hapsburg wife, and for each of them to have an heir by this non-Hapsburg wife. So the custom of marrying cousins to cousins and uncles to nieces is sill continuing, but it's the non-inbred marriages which are proving more fertile.


[22] Thanks, in part, to the marriage of the future François II to an inbred 9-year-old, Henri, while a second son, will eventually become King Henri III of France.


[23] The idea is that the Antwerp Agreement not only defines the powers of the Prince vs. the States-General, but also describes how many representatives from each province should be included in the States-General, how often the States-General should meet, etc. This is why it is more of a “constitution” then, say, the Magna Carta is.