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Introduction
- University of Ottawa Press
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Introduction Charles [Huault], known asthe chevalier de Montmagny, was received as a Knight of Malta on 3August 1622. He commanded the galleysof the Order, and carried off a signalvictory against the BeyofRhodes on 6August 1627; held the same command in 1630. Wasnamed lieutenant general and commander for the King in Quebec and throughout the Havre Saint Lawrence by the letter of 7 April 1639, was received as lieutenant general of the Order on 1 May 1652 and in this capacity made his entry to the island ofSaint-Christophe, which thenbelonged to the Order of Malta, to replace Commander de Poincy. his biographical notice, the first tobe included in a published work, appears from 1725 on in the celebrated Dictionnaire historique of Louis Moreri.1 It is very brief, since the mention of Charles is part of a genealogy of the Huault line. The essential elements in the life of the first official governor ofNew Franceare indicated, but the historic truth is somewhat mishandled. Asto his becoming a Knight ofMalta in 1622, and the maritime expeditions (inone ofwhich he distinguished himself by a remarkableexploit), this much is true. But he never commanded the Order's galleys; he was indeed named lieutenant general and governor at Quebec, but in 1636, not in 1639; he certainly ended his career in the Antilles, but he did not take the place of Commander de Poincy (who had been named governor in perpetuity), because he predeceased him by three years. In fact, the editors of the dictionary had copied, uncritically and word for word (and what can "Havre Saint Lawrence" possibly mean?), what they found in the genealogy which members of the Huault family had had printed at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for the purpose of gaining both a certain notoriety and specific social advantages - ofmaking sure, among other things, that their right tobe buried in the choir of the church of Saint-Jean-en-Greve in Paris would not be taken from them.2 T XVIII THE CHEVALIER DE MONTMAGNY To this day,no completebiography ofthe chevalier de Montmagny has been written. On the Maltese and Caribbean periods of his life we find only scraps scattered here and there in the historiography. Only the Quebec years have been the object of a fairly in-depth analysis. At the beginning ofthe twentieth century,J.Edmond Roy allowed him a fairly long article in two parts.3 In the first he studied "his administration," and in the second, the "character" of the individual. Since these pages offer an initial attempt to discern the work and the personality of Charles Huault, it is fitting to give them a brief consideration. Taking hisinspiration from the Relations oftheJesuits - practically his only source - Roy, in describing Montmagny's government, concentrates on his action toward the Amerindians: on the one hand, his collaboration in the work of the colony's priests and nuns; on the other, his initiatives to counter the serious menace which the warlike activity ofthe Iroquoistribes was bringing to bear on the veryexistence of New France. According to Roy,the "incomprehensible inaction" of the Compagnie des Cent-Associes made this task exceedingly difficult. He then attempts to say what kind of a man Charles Huault was. For information on his family, he has consulted the Dictionnaire of the chevalier de Courcelles,which has not provided him with an accurate genealogy; thus the social origins are incorrectly presented.4 Todescribe what he calls his "character," he has relied on the portrait that the Jesuits have left us of their one-time pupil: integrity,piety and charity, modesty, a healthy liking for entertainment. This first look at the administration ofthe chevalierde Montmagny allows us to see the value in returning to the study, in order to make it more complete, more profound.5 But the work should be expanded to include all of his life; indeed, this is a wish that has been expressed recently by Quebecois researchers.6 What is more, the 1725 notice, despite its inaccuracies, revealed an existence which can hardly be called ordinary, since this man, Parisianby birth, was called to work in three theatres of action that were all very distant and all very different from each other: the Mediterranean, the Saint Lawrence valley, and the Antilles. It is essentially for two reasons that we have undertaken to fill this lacuna: the first has to do with the political domain - mainly the colonial administration; the second, with the vast field of investigation that constitutes...