Jean Talon
Jean Talon, Comte d'Orsainville (* December 1625 in Chalons-en-Champagne , † 23. November 1694 ) was a French colonial official under King Louis XIV. He was from 1655 to 1665 director of Hainaut (Hainault), 1665-1672 of first director of New France .
Life
Jean Talon was the son of Philippe Talon and Anne de Bury. He was baptized on January 8, 1626. His father may have had an Irish ancestor Arthur Talon who came to France in the mid-16th century . While the Parisian branch of the family rose, the one in Champagne to which Jean Talon belonged remained less important.
He studied at the Collège de Clermont , a Jesuit college in Paris . In 1653 he served in Turenne's army, in 1655 he became director of the Hainault province . With this establishment of the directorate, Richelieu in France was able to ensure that the power of the local nobility was reduced and the king had direct access to his subjects. He was also able to monitor nepotism and corruption.
Until 1663, the French territories in North America were under the trading company Compagnie de la Nouvelle France (Society of New France). However, this was not able to provide protection against the Iroquois , who fought the French for a long time. On March 21, 1663, the king appointed a Louis Robert de Fortel as director of the colony of New France, but Fortel never went there.
On March 23, 1665, Talon was sent by the king to the colony of New France as general manager . On March 23, he sailed with the new governor Daniel de Rémy de Courcelle on board the Saint-Sébastien for Gaspé , and on September 12, he reached Québec.
To fight the Iroquois, France sent the Carignan Salières regiment, which comprised more than a thousand men, from 1665 . The commander Remy de Courcelle sent it on a winter campaign in January and February 1666, during which 400 men froze to death without having seen an Iroquois. Still, the smallpox forced the Iroquois to seek peace. Talon urged the annihilation of the five Iroquois nations in a memorandum on September 1. On July 10, 1667, a peace agreement was reached that lasted until the early 1680s.
Talon tried, even when the majority of the regiment withdrew, to resettle as many of the soldiers as possible in the country. In order to support the colony in the long term, Louis XIV had around 800 women, called " daughters of the king " (filles du Roi) , mainly from Paris and Normandy , furnished and brought to the colony. They received 30 livres for clothing and 60 for the crossing. Talon forced the settlers to marry the young women, otherwise threatening to deprive them of their fishing, hunting and trapping rights. In 1671 he reported 600 to 700 births to Colbert .
1500 settlers were also recruited. The descendants of these numerous debt servants - they mostly had to work off the costs of the crossing - were, however, referred to as socially inferior "engagés" - in 1665 they made up a quarter of the male population over 14 years. Marriages between French colonists and Indian women were also encouraged. The Métis emerged from their descendants . In February and March 1666, Talon conducted the first census. The number of settlers was 3,215 in 538 families. Job information is available for 763 people. Most of them were servants, namely 401. There were also 1,000 to 1,200 men in the royal army. 30 clerics were added, with the entire clergy consisting of the bishop, 18 priests and 31 Jesuits. There were also 19 Ursuline nuns, 23 nuns of the Réligieuses Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph and four secular women of the order. By 1673 the population grew by around 9,000 people.
Talon promoted feudalization , i.e. the transfer of the social, property and economic system that prevailed in France to the colony. Pierre de Sorel, Antoine Pécaudy de Contrecoeur and François Jarret de Verchères received huge manors (seigneuries) on the Richelieu River , where the Carignan-Salières regiment had built forts like Saint Jean. On June 5, 1672, Talon tried to prevent the flight from the feudal system by forbidding families to go into the woods, but failed. As early as 1665/66 he had three farming villages set up near Québec, and with Colbert's support he got the Jesuits of Notre-Dame-des-Anges there, who had owned this land since 1626, to surrender the settlement land. Other projects followed. Diversification and independence from France were very important to Talon. So the colony became independent of pigs and horses from France, since they were now bred themselves. He also had a brewery built in Québec from 1668 to 1670. However, after Talon's return, it ceased operations in 1675, and Talon sold it in 1685. In 1667 he exported wood to the West Indies for the first time, but this industry also died down with his progress.
In addition, he promoted the plans of Robert Cavelier de La Salles to find a way to the Pacific and East Asia. In 1663 it was thus possible to trade on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi region , which La Salle finally reached in 1682. This also wanted to escape the English competition, which founded the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670.
Actually, Talon was only supposed to stay for two years, and after being extended he left Québec for the first time on November 10, 1668. He was succeeded by Claude de Bouteroue d'Aubigny . Colbert and the king, who talked with him for an hour, persuaded him to return to New France. Talon pushed through a freer trade for the colony and against the monopoly of the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales , plus 200,000 livres from Colbert as a promise, and also other settlers and young women, as well as soldiers. On July 15th, he sailed westward from La Rochelle . However, a storm threw him on the coast near Lisbon and only on August 18, 1670 did he reach Québec.
In 1672 he returned and received a position at the king's court. He lived in the Château de Mariemont, which he had owned since 1670. His property near Québec, which had been separated from the manor of Notre-Dame-des-Anges, was called Les Islets. It was in today's Montmorency Park was in 1671 elevated to the barony, finally in 1675 the county Orsainville. The king added the places Bourg-Royal, Bourg-la-Reine and Bourg-Talon. He bought the house from Joseph-Denis Ruette d'Auteuil in 1667 for 6,500 livres, and invested another 2,500 livres himself for renovations.
Occasionally Talon stood up for his nephew, François-Marie Perrot , the governor of Montréal . When Talon considered returning to Canada in 1681, the Jesuits refused for fear of promoting alcohol sales to the Indians. He was friends with James II of England, who was in exile in Paris. In the capital he lived on rue du Bac. In 1692 he sold his two positions at court, as the king's valet (premier valet) and as secretary for 253,000 livres.
On April 29, 1694 he wrote his will. Talon died on November 24, 1694 in Châlons-sur-Marne . He was buried in the Sainte-Catherine chapel in Notre-Dame-en-Vaux in Châlons-en-Champagne .
literature
- Roland Lamontagne: Succès d'intendance de Talon , Montréal 1964
Web links
- Biography in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Biography in the Catholic Encyclopedia
- The Great Intendant: A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 , in: Project Gutenberg
See also
Remarks
- ↑ Jack Verney: The Good Regiment. The Carignan-Salières Regiment in Canada, 1665-1668 , Montréal 1991, pp. 71-84.
- ^ Francis Parkman: La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West , France and England in North America, Vol. 3, Williamstown: Corner House Publishers 1980, p. 15.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Talon, Jean |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Talon, Jean Comte d'Orsainville |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French colonial administrator and director of the New France colony |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 1625 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Châlons-en-Champagne |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 23, 1694 |