( Europe's expansion into the New World during the 16th, ...)
Europe's expansion into the New World during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries was a story of power alignment and cultural transmission as well as dramatic individual effort. Spain had her conquistadores, France her coureurs de bois, and England her sea dogs. Isolated from the authority of home governments, tempted by the abundance of gold, fur, and fish in the New World, these adventurers so vital to national policies of expansion developed their own personal creeds of conquest and colonization. Their individual exploits not only represent a humanistic theme essential in Europe's movement westward but heighten the analyses of cultural institutions of the era. It is within such a multidisciplinary light that one can experience the Gulf Coast adventures of Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville.
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administrator explorer military
Pierre was born in July 1661 at Fort Ville-Marie, now Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was the third son of Charles le Moyne, Sieur de Longueuil, and Catherine Tierry, named Primot from an adoptive father, has been called the first great Canadian.
D'Iberville received his formal education at a Sulpician seminary, where his academic knowledge was also embedded with religion.
After a decade of service at sea, where Louis XIV was endeavoring to build up a royal navy, Iberville returned to his native Canada imbued with ideas of expansion and imperialism. His father having died in 1685, he with two of his brothers joined the expedition of Chevalier de Troyes, which early in 1686 left Montreal to drive the British from the James Bay extension of Hudson Bay. The two nations were temporarily at peace, but the Hudson's Bay Company, founded in 1670 by the advice of the French explorer Radisson, was demoralizing the fur trade of the interior on which rested the prosperity of New France.
The expedition left Montreal in March and on snow shoes followed the Ottawa River to its source, six hundred miles distant. There the adventurers built canoes and dropped down Moose River for three hundred miles more - a journey unparalleled even in Canada for hardship and peril. Upon reaching their goal Iberville led the storming parties that carried by impetuous assault three British posts in James Bay and took fifty thousand crowns' worth of furs, the harvest of the Hudson's Bay Company for the year. With this booty the raiders returned in triumph to Quebec. Thus was begun a duel on a vast scale between Iberville with his devoted followers and the British company's officials. When the French officer was absent the British recaptured the posts and the trade. Then Iberville would muster his forces and again raid the Bay posts.
After France declared war on England in 1689 the contest was intensified, Iberville having the support of the navy as well as of the Canadians. In 1689, 1691, 1694, and 1697 he made expeditions to the north, which demanded more and more daring and courage as the struggle progressed. The last raid is especially noteworthy. In one small man-of-war, the Pelican, Iberville encountered three British warships, sank the Hampshire with all its crew, and captured the two others. Then when the Pelican was wrecked by a storm on a hostile coast, Iberville with his starving crew led an assault on the strongest British post, Fort Nelson, captured it, and saved his men. In this raid he lost one of his brothers, and Bienville, his younger brother, was severely wounded. Notwithstanding these exploits and the hardihood and dangers endured in their furtherance, France did not finally control Hudson Bay. Nor were Iberville's other war enterprises more useful to his beloved country.
In 1690 he accompanied as a volunteer the overland expedition which sacked Schenectady and destroyed the settlement with fire and sword. In 1692 he failed in an attack on Fort Pemaquid on the Maine coast, showing in the face of superior force prudence rather than rashness. Four years later he successfully attacked the same post and razed it to the ground. The same year, 1696, he captured the British fort St. John's in Newfoundland. He advocated and nearly succeeded in taking New York City from the English.
His career seemed ended when in 1697 the peace of Ryswick was signed between France and England. It proved, however, to be the opening for a greater success, the one on which his title to fame is based. In 1698 he sailed from France to found a colony in Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi and there succeeded where La Salle, thirteen years earlier, had failed. Under his administration the colony made notable progress. But, France and England were again at war, and Iberville in his old dashing fashion captured two West India islands for his crown. The infant colony of Louisiana, which he had founded, was left to the care of his brother Bienville.
He died in Havana of yellow fever.
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville was perhaps the first great soldier born in Canada. His field of action was the entire North American continent from which he attempted to expel the English in the interest of the French empire. His greatest feats were performed in Hudson Bay; his greatest service was laying the foundations of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. For his courage, his daring, his resource, he was idolized by his men and acclaimed by all Canadians. The statue was set up in his honour at the Parliament Building (Quebec).
( Europe's expansion into the New World during the 16th, ...)
Iberville showed the ability to overcome obstacles, the courage to await events. He also developed administrative ability. "As military as his sword, " "hardened to the water as a fish, " he attracted attention rather for his physical prowess than for his ideals of empire.
His cruelty and ruthlessness in giving no quarter were defects of his age.
Quotes from others about the person
"If the duration of a man's existence, " wrote Gayarré, historian of Louisiana, "is to be measured by the merits of his deeds, then Iberville had lived long, before reaching the meridian of life, and he was old in fame, if not in years when he undertook to establish a colony in Louisiana".
Iberville was married in Quebec on October 8, 1693, to Marie Thérèse Pollet de la Comte Pocatière, who bore him two children.
