Free The White and the Gold by Thomas B. Costain Page B

continued to prosper from the gold which came out of Mexico and Peru, but the northern half of the continent held out no such inducements. Men shuddered at the story of thelovely and unfortunate Marguerite living alone on the Isle of Demons and of men swinging on improvised gallows outside Roberval’s feudal castle. The appetite for this kind of adventure ran thin for three quarters of a century thereafter in the veins of Frenchmen and Englishmen alike.

CHAPTER VI

Samuel de Champlain, the Founder of New France
1
    S AINTONGE lies on the Bay of Biscay and stretches down along the northern shore of the broad Gironde. Farther south, where the Gironde becomes the Garonne and Gascony begins, lies the fair city of Bordeaux, and below that again the magic triangle where the vineyards produce the great Bordeaux wines. Saintonge does not share to any extent in the profitable wine trade with England, but it has had historic connections of long standing with the English people, being part of the inheritance which Eleanor of Aquitaine took with her when she married Henry II in the twelfth century. It was always in view of the marshy shores of Saintonge that the northern fleets passed in their progress down the Gironde to the city which the first Edwards and the Black Prince loved so much, not to mention the unfortunate Richard II, who was called Richard of Bordeaux.
    Saintonge’s part in this narrative is confined to what might have been a very inconspicuous occurrence. At the small seaport of Brouage in that department was born one Samuel de Champlain in the year 1567. His father was a sea captain and so his biographers have been much concerned about the use of the “de,” which is a prerogative of the nobility in personal names. The decision reached has been that the family belonged to the lesser nobility; a matter of small consequence, actually, because Samuel de Champlain had in himself qualities of heart and mind which far transcend any question of the social standing of his father.
    Very little is known of his youth except that he was trained for the sea by his father and that he fought through the religious warswhich were shaking and impoverishing France. One of the weakest and worst of French kings, Henry III, a son of the Catherine de’ Medici who caused the tocsin to ring on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s, was on the throne. He was being driven to repressive measures against the Huguenots, the Protestants of France, by his fanatical kinsmen, the Guises. In Navarre, which lay between France and Spain, was a young ruler who would become in time France’s great monarch, Henry IV. This youth, who was possessed of great ability and great natural charm as well, was the acknowledged leader and hope of the Huguenots. The three Henrys, for the head of the Catholic League which the Guises organized also bore that name, waged a three-sided and bloody series of wars for over twenty years. When both of the other Henrys had been removed from the struggle by the daggers of assassins and the Protestant Henry had reached the conclusion that Paris was worth a Mass and had recanted, the fighting came to an end. Henry of Navarre became King of France.
    It is stated that young Samuel de Champlain was an ardent Catholic but at the same time a loyal follower of Henry of Navarre, leaving the impression that he fought under the Protestant banner. This is decidedly confusing. It has been established that he served under three generals, D’Aumont, St. Luc, and Brissac. All three were Catholic generals who went into service with Henry after he became legally the King of France, and so it may be that Champlain did not enter service until after the Huguenot leader had purchased Paris with a Mass, It seems more likely, however, that he would be drawn into enlistment at an earlier age. He was twenty years old when St. Luc fought against Henry at Coutras, and it seems more than probable that the young soldier-sailor was in the ranks there. Coutras was