VII.

The Struggle for Financing

In 1610, while in France, Champlain was married to Hélène Boullé. It appears to have been a marriage of convenience: he was then in his forties, and she was 12 years old. She brought a handsome dowry of 6000 livres, money that he urgently needed to keep the Québec post in operation. Hélène accompanied Champlain to Québec in 1620 and stayed there with him for four years. She then went back to France with him and never returned.

From 1616 to 1620 Champlain spent most of each year in France, with brief summer visits to Québec. In France he had to struggle to keep the Canadian enterprise alive, raise capital, and enlist workers. He also had to fight to keep his command over Québec. In 1618 he presented reports on the future of the French colonies in America to the king and to the French Chamber of Commerce.

In these reports he proposed that 300 settler families and 15 Récollets be established at Québec, with 300 soldiers to protect them. He claimed that this would give France the ability to control the interior of the continent and to convert the pagans to Christianity. Wealth would pour into France from the land’s resources of fish, timber, copper, iron, silver, and precious stones. However, he believed that the major benefit would be the revenue from the short water route to the western ocean and China, once this route was discovered. Then all the maritime nations of Europe would have to use it and pay whatever tolls France chose to levy.

Champlain’s struggles to maintain the infant colony took a turn for the better in 1627 when the king’s first minister, Cardinal Richelieu, took charge of the overseas colonies. He founded the Company of One Hundred Associates and required each associate to invest a large sum of money. Champlain became one of the associates and remained in charge of New France.

But two years later disaster struck. Anglo-Scots privateers, the Kirke brothers, drew up their ships at Québec in 1629 and demanded its surrender. Champlain had to comply because he did not have the manpower to resist: in all of New France—Canada and Acadia together—there were only 107 settlers at that time. The Kirkes also seized the company’s convoy of ships bringing reinforcements and supplies up the St. Lawrence. That loss exhausted the company’s capital, and it never recovered. Champlain was taken prisoner and held in England until 1632. In 1633 he returned to New France and tried to repair the damage done by the Kirkes and reestablish good relations with his old allies. However, his health began to fail, and he died at Québec on December 25, 1635. Toward the end, his mind bewildered, he dictated a new will leaving all his possessions to the Virgin Mary. Two years later his wife succeeded in having the will annulled.