Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce

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Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce (born June 9, 1666 in Lahontan , † April 21, 1716 ), also called Baron de Lahontan , was a French officer and traveler in the French colonies of North America .

biography

He was the eldest son of Isaac de Lom d'Arce, Baron von Lahontan, and his second wife, Françoise Le Fascheux de Couttes. His father, born around 1594, had spent 18 years of his life and enormous sums of money straightening the Gave de Pau , a river in the Pyrenees , to make it navigable from Pau to Bayonne . He bought the Esleix estate and the Baronate Lahontan, where he also settled. His first marriage to Jeanne Guérin was childless. When she passed away, the seventies remarried and his second wife had three children. Isaac de Lom d'Arce died impoverished on November 4, 1674.

First crossing

At the age of 17, Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, who had inherited the title from his father, probably set out on August 29, 1683 with three companies of marines on board the frigate Tempête from La Rochelle , around November 7 of the same Year to set foot on North American soil in Québec . After probably spending the winter in Beaupré , Louis-Armand visited the Île d'Orléans and the Indian villages in the area in May 1684 before moving to Montréal , where Governor Joseph-Antoine Le Febvre de La Barre was doing one Set up an expedition against the Iroquois . Louis-Armand left Montreal with the French troops in late June and reached Fort Frontenac in mid-July. He participated in the peace negotiations that took place on September 5, 1684 with chiefs of the Iroquois at Anse de La Famine on the southern bank of Lake Ontario . Joseph-Antoine Le Febvre de La Barre took a small army of militiamen , regulars and allied Indians with him, but they soon suffered from disease and hunger. The Onondaga chief Otreouti , called "Grande Gueule" ( German  Aufschneider ), was the leader of one of the five Iroquois tribes and spoke . He quickly made it clear to the French that the Indians, unimpressed by the small army, saw themselves in the sole position of making a peace or not. Le Febvre de La Barre and with him Louis-Armand and a decimated troop returned to Montreal with almost empty hands. Otreouti promised 1,000 beaver pelts as compensation for recent Iroquois incursions against the French, but he refused to make peace with the Illinois , the French's business partners.

First campaign

Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arces Map of the area around Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario

Louis-Armand spent the following winter in the Montréal garrison , but took every opportunity to go on long hunting trips with the Indians. At the end of March 1685 he crossed the St. Lawrence River in the direction of Fort Chambly to check the canoes for fur sliders. In mid-September he moved into his winter quarters in Boucherville , where he presumably lived until May 1687. In June 1687 Louis-Armand left Montréal with the new governor Jacques-René de Brisay , who wanted to wage war against the Seneca Iroquois tribe . When he arrived at Fort Frontenac, he recognized one of the captured Iroquois as one with whom he had made friends in 1684 at the Anse de La Famine . Louis-Armand protested with indignation over the treatment of prisoners, which resulted in him being detained in his tent for several days. On July 13th, the French troops were ambushed by the Iroquois. Louis-Armand gave a vivid description of the confusion that prevailed on the French side.

Fort Saint-Joseph

Louis-Armand expected a return to France when this campaign was over, but because of his now acquired language skills of the Algonquin , Jacques-René de Brisay ordered him to head an association at Fort Saint-Joseph on the St. Clair River . In mid-September he arrived at this fort, which Daniel Greysolon, sieur du Luth had set up a year earlier, and took over command. After a winter of solitude, he left the fort on April 1, 1688 and went to Fort Michilimackinac under the pretext of getting provisions for his men, but he probably wanted to do something about his boredom. He was arriving in Michilimackinac in early May when Father Jean Cavelier, Father Anastase Douay, Henri Joutel and other survivors of Robert Cavelier de La Salle's tragic expedition to the Mississippi suddenly appeared. All of these people were on their way to Montréal. There he also met Kondiaronk , chief of the Tionontati- Hurons and the Petun , called "The Rat", whom he would later portray in his work Dialogues . Louis-Armand also witnessed an execution of a captured Iroquois that Kondiaronk had handed over to the commandant, Denis-Joseph Jucherau de La Ferté .

Abandonment of the fort

Louis-Armand returned to Fort Joseph on July 1, 1688, not without first taking detours that led him first north towards Sault Ste. Marie , where he recruited 40 young Saulteaux warriors, then headed east to Manitoulin Island . After hastily unloading the sacks of grain he had brought with him at Fort Joseph, he and his allies Saulteaux and Odawa set off two days later. They followed the southern shore of Lake Erie and fought occasional skirmishes with troops from Cayuga , an Iroquois people. Returning to the fort on August 24, Louis-Armand learned that the garrison of Fort Niagara had been decimated by scurvy and that its commander, Raymond Blaise Des Bergères de Rigauville , had been ordered to abandon it and move to Fort Frontenac with the handful of survivors to withdraw. Since the provisions and ammunition in Saint-Joseph would have lasted for a maximum of two months, Louis-Armand decided that his fort could not be held due to the new situation. It was set on fire on August 27th, and Louis-Armand and his people went to Michilimackinac, where they arrived on September 10th. The time of year was too far advanced for a trip to Québec, so Louis-Armand made preparations for an exploration trip south.

Exploration trip to the Mississippi

Map of the Rivière Longue

On September 24, 1688, he started an expedition with a troop of soldiers and five Odawa hunters, for the course of which there is no reliable documentation. He probably crossed the Lake Michigan to attend the Green Bay the Fox River to follow upstream. The squad reached the Wisconsin River and followed it downstream to its confluence with the Mississippi. They traveled upstream to the mouth of a river flowing in from the west, which Louis-Armand called La Rivière longue ( German for  the long river ) and claimed to have explored it over several hundred miles and met various Indian tribes. Her return took her by canoe over the Wabash River and the Illinois River back to Lake Michigan and finally on May 22, 1689 to Michilimackinac. This trip is considered controversial among historians given the distances traveled in winter conditions. It is partly doubted whether the journey in the form even existed.

Battle of Quebec

Defense of Québec 1690
Contemporary representation of the battle

At the beginning of June 1689 Louis-Armand left Michilimackinac and was not supposed to return to the West. He reached Montréal on July 9th after Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil saved him from drowning on the Lachine Rapids . A little later he went to Québec to be present on October 12 at the arrival of Louis de Buade de Frontenac , who had been appointed governor of New France for the second time. Louis-Armand learned that his Baronate of Labatut had in the meantime been confiscated and therefore asked again for permission to return to France. Frontenac, however, asked for his services, but gave him accommodation and his wallet. The following spring, Frontenac asked Louis-Armand to go to the Iroquois to make peace offers. Louis-Armand refused and Pierre d'Aux (Eau) de Jolliet took the job in his place and was greeted with hostility by the Indians, as Louis-Armand had foreseen. He gradually rose in favor of Frontenac and accompanied him to Montréal in June 1690. In October they received news of an English fleet under the command of Sir William Phips , which was sailing up the Saint Lawrence River. Louis-Armand hastily returned to Québec with Frontenac and fought with the French units in the woods against the disembarked English troops.

First return trip to France

At the end of November, after the temperatures had recovered briefly, Frontenac sent Louis-Armand to France on board the Fleur de Mai to deliver the good news of the victory. In mid-January 1691 the ship arrived in La Rochelle . It was there that Louis-Armand learned of the death of State Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Seignelay , for whom he had a letter of recommendation from Frontenac. His successor, Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain , denied him leave and instead ordered his return to Québec at the end of the summer. After all, Louis-Armand was promoted to captain at half pay. In Paris he found his family affairs hopelessly muddled. Disappointed about the lack of progress, Louis-Armand returned to La Rochelle, embarked on the Honoré at the end of July and arrived in Québec on September 18. During the following winter, Frontenac tried to arrange a marriage between Louis-Armand and his 18-year-old goddaughter Geneviève Damours, daughter of Mathieu d'Amours de Chauffours, but Louis-Armand refused.

Battle of Newfoundland

Fort Plaisance (Placentia) 1675

In the summer of 1692, Louis-Armand again submitted to his governor an old project for the defense of the western border, which provided for the establishment of three forts, one at the mouth of the Niagara River , one at Saint-Joseph and one on Georgian Bay . Light troop ships, manned by 50 Basque sailors, were supposed to maintain the connection between the forts. Frontenac liked the project right away and approved Louis-Armand to return to France to present the project to the court. He embarked on July 27, 1692 on the Sainte-Anne . The ship arrived in Placentia , Newfoundland on August 18, and waited for a month for Basque fishermen to escort it to France. On September 14th, however, five English warships were sighted heading for Placentia. The governor of Newfoundland, Jacques-François de Monbeton de Brouillan , made arrangements to defend the port. Louis-Armand was ordered to an advanced post with 60 Basque sailors. On September 17, Louis-Armand and his sailors prevented several attempts by the English to come ashore. The next day, Louis-Armand and Philippe de Pastour de Costebelle were received on board the flagship, the St. Alban’s , to prepare an exchange of prisoners of war. On September 19, the warring factions bombed each other all day, but the English finally withdrew discouraged. On October 6th, Louis-Armand went to France for the second time in two years to bring the news of a French victory, and in both cases he had participated. The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean lasted 17 days before Louis-Armand disembarked in Saint-Nazaire and hurried on to Versailles . His project of fortifying the Great Lakes attracted little attention, but his bravery in the defense of Placentia led to his admission to the Naval Guard on March 1, 1693 and promotion to the Royal Lieutenant in Placentia with command of a company of on March 15 100 soldiers.

Desertion

On May 12, 1693, Louis-Armand embarked again in Saint-Nazaire. During the crossing to Newfoundland, an English ship loaded with tobacco was arrested . On June 20, Louis-Armand reached Placentia. Brouillan, however, was annoyed by the appointment of Louis-Armand, and the disagreement between the men came to a head. Brouillan reported to the minister that Louis-Armand was neglecting his duties as a lieutenant in the distribution of supplies, that he was questioning his authority and the measures he had taken, and that he would deter his soldiers from their duties by cutting his firewood. Louis-Armand accused his superiors of mistreating his men and taking advantage of his position unlawfully, and he composed songs with insulting lyrics to his governor. In order to get rid of his unwelcome officer, Brouillan, without his knowledge, proposed a post as commandant of the island of Saint-Pierre . The climax of the dispute occurred on November 20, 1693, when Brouillan and his servants, masked, appeared at a dinner with invited guests at Louis-Armand's, knocked over tables and benches and smashed bottles and glasses. In the days that followed, Brouillan and Louis-Armand's servants clashed, and Brouillan accused two of Louis-Armand's soldiers who were doing work in the area of desertion . Louis-Armand followed the advice of the Franciscans and sought an amicable settlement. However, he feared the consequences of Brouillan's reports and, in desperation, made a decision. He paid the captain of the only anchored ship the enormous sum of 1,000 Écu to take him with him to Europe .

Travel through Europe

A journey across Europe began. Louis-Armand arrived in Viana do Castelo ( Portugal ) in late January 1694 . He traveled on to Lisbon via Porto and Coimbra . In April he went on board a ship to the Netherlands . He visited Rotterdam and Amsterdam before moving on to Hamburg . There, on June 16, 1694, he wrote a letter he did not publish, in which he describes having met two French people who are said to have taken part in Robert Cavelier de La Salle's last expedition . In the same month Louis-Armand went to Copenhagen , where the French minister introduced him to the Danish court and gave him letters for the courtiers at Versailles. But when he called at the French court in December 1694, Pontchartrain did not want to see him. His trip to the Béarn in 1695 was also disappointing. The castle of Lahontan had been sold and the former baron had become a stranger in the parish of his birth. He was in the process of clarifying legal issues in neighboring communities when he received an announcement that an arrest warrant had been issued against him. He crossed the Pyrenees in disguise and reached Spain . He wrote his last published letter on October 8, 1695 in Saragossa .

His last years

Little is known about its final years. In 1697 he asked in vain for a return to a post in western New France. A letter from François d'Usson de Bonrepaus indicates that Louis-Armand was in The Hague on September 18, 1698 and that he accepted a post as a French diplomat in Spain for a moderate annual income of 400 écu. On September 1 and 7, 1699, he wrote to the Duke of Jovenazo that he was back from Lisbon, where he had handed over documents relating to the Mississippi to the Spanish court. In 1702 he was probably in the Netherlands, where his book Nouveaux Voyages dans l'Amerique Septentrionale ( German  New Travel in North America ) was published in 1703. Shortly before that, he traveled to England, where he presumably wrote certain papers on North America that are attributed to him. His traces are lost until November 1710, when Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz stated that Louis-Armand was staying at the court of the Elector of Hanover , but was in poor health. It is generally assumed that Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce died in 1716, which could only be deduced from the publication of one of his notebooks as a posthumous tribute by Leibniz in 1716.

Review

There are no portraits of Louis-Armand, it is believed that he was tall, slender and pale. During his time in New France he has visited every corner, has probably visited little explored areas around the Mississippi, and has twice been involved in the successful defense of British attacks. On the other hand, he did not leave any major traces in the New World. Except for his last stay in Placentia, he was hardly mentioned in official correspondence. But with his late works based on his diary and notes, he brought North America to Europe and became one of the most widely read authors in the first half of the 18th century. The three books cover a wide variety of subjects. In Nouveaux Voyages dans l'Amerique Septentrionale he tells in letter form, which was en vogue at the time , of his ten years in New France, including his possibly imaginary trip to the Rivière longue . The Mémoires de l'Amérique septentrionale ( German  memories of North America ) provide a picturesque description of the geography of New France, followed by an anthropological study of the natives, a linguistic remark and a glossary of the Algonquin language. The Supplement aux Voyages ou Dialogues avec le sauvage Adario ( German  addendum to the journeys or dialogues with the Wild Adario ) is written in the form of a travel story and deals with European countries that were little known at the time, Portugal, Aragón , the Netherlands , the Hanseatic cities and Denmark. The rest of the book reproduces five fictional conversations with an Indian chief named Adario. Adario is a partial anagram of Kondiaronk. They deal with topics such as Christian faith, society, French law, medicine and marriage. The reproduction of experiences is enriched in the books with critical thoughts on corruption in the colonies, the ban on the entry of Huguenots , the attempt to exterminate the Iroquois or the so-called daughters of the king . In addition, Louis-Armand's works form a summary of philosophical thoughts from the beginning of the 18th century on superstition, the vices of European society, the deficiencies in the logic of Christian dogmas and the virtues of the “good savage”. The same ideas can be found in the later works of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726), Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1754), L'Ingénu - Der Freimütige by Voltaire (1767) and Supplément au voyage de Bougainville by Denis Diderot (published 1796) again. In 1827 the work Les Natchez by François-René de Chateaubriand was published . One of the main characters is called Adario and the names of all the indigenous people appear in the glossary of Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce.

literature

Web links

Commons : Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Library of Congress Authorities ( en ) Library of Congress. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  2. ↑ frequent different spelling: ... la Hontan
  3. ^ Charles Vianney Campeau: Navires venus en Nouvelle-France ( fr ) Charles Vianney CAMPEAU. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  4. ^ Charles Vianney Campeau: Navires venus en Nouvelle-France ( fr ) Charles Vianney CAMPEAU. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  5. ^ Charles Vianney Campeau: Navires venus en Nouvelle-France ( fr ) Charles Vianney CAMPEAU. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Lom d'Arce, Louis-Armand de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baron de Lahontan; Baron de la Hontan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer and traveler
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1666
PLACE OF BIRTH Lahontan
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1716