He Had Previously Filled
The Post Of Intendant In Louisiana, And Also At Louisburg.
The
disaffection and revolt caused by his rapacity in that city, were mainly
instrumental in producing its downfall and surrender to the English
commander, Pepperell, in 1745.
Living at a time when tainted morals and
official corruption ruled at court, he seems to have taken his standard of
morality from the mother country; his malversations in office, his
extensive frauds on the treasury, more than L400,000; his colossal
speculations in provisions and commissariat supplies furnished by the
French government to the colonists during a famine; his dissolute conduct
and final downfall, are fruitful themes wherefrom the historian can draw
wholesome lessons for all generations. Whether his Charlesbourg (then
called Bourg Royal) castle was used as the receptacle of some of his most
valuable booty, or whether it was merely a kind of Lilliputian Parc au
Cerfs, such as his royal master had, tradition does not say. It would
appear, however, that it was kept up by the plunder wrung from sorrowing
colonists, and that the large profits he made by paring from the scanty
pittance the French government allowed the starving residents, were here
lavished in gambling, riot and luxury.
In May, 1757, the population of Quebec was reduced to subsist on four
ounces of bread per diem, one lb. of beef, HORSE-FLESH or CODFISH; and in
April of the following year, the miserable allowance was reduced to one
half. "At this time," remarks our historian, Garneau, "famished men were
seen sinking to the earth in the street from exhaustion."
Such were the times during which Louis XV.'s minion would retire to his
Sardanapalian retreat, to gorge himself at leisure on the life blood of
the Canadian people, whose welfare he had sworn to watch over! Such, the
doings in the colony in the days of La Pompadour. The results of this
misrule were soon apparent: the British lion placed his paw on the
coveted morsel. The loss of Canada was viewed, if not by the nation,
at least by the French Court, with indifference, to use the terms of one
of Her Britannic Majesty's ministers, when its fate and possible loss were
canvassed one century later in the British Parliament, "without
apprehension or regret." Voltaire gave his friends a banquet at Ferney, in
commemoration of the event; the court favourite congratulated His Majesty,
that since he had got rid of these "fifteen hundred leagues of frozen
country," he had now a chance of sleeping in peace; the minister Choiseul
urged Louis XV. to sign the final treaty of 1763, saying that Canada would
be un embarras to the English, and that if they were wise they
would have nothing to do with it. In the meantime the red cross of St.
George was waving over the battlements on which the lily-spangled banner
of the Bourbons had proudly sat with but one interruption for one hundred
and fifty years, the infamous Bigot was provisionally consigned to a
dungeon in the Bastille - subsequently tried and exiled to Bordeaux; his
property was confiscated, whilst his confederates and abettors, such as
Varin, Breard, Maurin, Corpron, Martel, Estebe and others, were also tried
and punished by fine, imprisonment and confiscation:
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