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CHAPTER 9 On the Service of the Order of Malta in theAntilles pon his return to the mother country at the end of November 1648, Montmagny would find a France very different from the one he had left twelve years earlier, in 1636, the year that the Spanish occupied the town of Corbie less than a hundred kilometres from Paris. Two points will help to explain the change which his career was to experience: the new political climate, and colonial realities in transformation. The situation of the kingdom, both internally and abroad, had evolved a great deal. There had been a changeover at the uppermost levels. Mazarin and the regent, Anne of Austria (both of them born outside France),had personalities very different from those ofRichelieu and Louis XIII, and their style of government bore little resemblance to that of their predecessors. The difficult task of winning the war had not left them with much leisure to give serious consideration to the country's problems. Certainly, from 1643 (year of the victory at Rocroi) to 1648 (that at Lens)the army had succeeded in regaining the initiative - and this culminated in the Peace ofWestphalia in 1648.But the effort had cost dear in human lives (ithas already been mentioned that it was thus that one of Montmagny's fellow students at La Fleche, Jean-Baptiste de Budes de Guebriant, had seen his brilliant military career end, in November 1643). And it was necessary to find the wherewithal; the expedients to which Mazarin, "the Sicilian," had been forced to resort to finance the operations had not been to everyone's taste. The Marais to which Montmagny returned had been violently shaken by the first manifestations of the Fronde - imprisonment of magistrates, skirmishes, barricades. The court had only returned from its sixweeks' exile a few daysbefore, and he would see it depart, at the beginning of January, for several months more. The sector which, throughout all these years, was most neglected was without a doubt that of the colonies. It is clear what that meant U 258 THE CHEVALIER DE MONTMAGNY for the Saint Lawrence valley. The historian Charles de la Ronciere, speaking of "disarray/' of the "collapse of our colonial empire/' is thinking primarily of the events in the Antilles.1 But it is evident that the system put in place by Richelieu - of private companies under government surveillance - was at an impasse. Ahighly spectacular event illustrates the helplessness of these bodies and the incompetence of their political overseers. When, on 25 November 1645, the new lieutenant general of the islands (whose nomination, suggested by the regent whose protege he was, was accepted by the Company) presented himself at Saint-Christophein the lesser Antilles, Commander Philippe de Lonvilliers de Poincy, a colleague of Montmagny who had already served two three-year terms in this post, refused to recognize his replacement. The latter had to take refuge in Guadeloupe and, after several months of ineffectual palavers and failed coups, was forced manu militari to return to France. Mazarin, who was totally occupied with peace negotiations, and the regent, who was incapable of asserting herself, had to let it be. The Compagnie des lies d'Amerique, discredited, decided shortly afterwards to sell the islands to individuals, who became their seigneurs. Charles Houel2 and his brother-in-law Jean Boisseret, seigneur of Herblay, took over Guadeloupe on 4 September 1649, and JacquesDyel du Parquet,3 Martinique, on 22September 1650. On 24 May 1651 the island of Saint-Christophe was sold to the Order of Malta, and some days later (31 May 1651) Poincy received a royal commission as governor of the American islands. These events would have powerful repercussions on Montmagny's career. Less than a year after his return from Quebec, he found himself entrusted by the Grand Master with a most ungrateful task:to represent him personally in the Antilles, which meant, concretely,to conduct the preliminary inquiry before the purchase of the island, as well as to attempt to bring Poincy entirely in line with the interestsof the Order. After 1652 he became his lieutenant. This, briefly, was how Montmagny's last years (1649-1657) were spent. Thesituations tobestudied arescarcely ordinary - indeed, they deal with individual behaviours that arefar from commonplace - and they also throw some light on a rather dark period of French colonization, as well as on an episode in the history of the Order ofMalta. It is appropriate here to refer briefly to the beginnings of SaintChristophe , the...

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