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Updated: May 7, 2025
It was the purpose of the savages to destroy Ville Marie and Three Rivers and Quebec, and to wipe out the French on the St Lawrence for good and all. There was at this time in Ville Marie a young soldier named Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, twenty-five years old.
In position it was well adapted for the fur trade, and after the British took possession in 1760 it became the emporium of a great traffic in the fur-fields of the north and west. But its glorious days are those of its infancy, the days of Maisonneuve and Daulac, of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys, of Rene de Galinee and Dollier de Casson.
Of the prisoners, some were put to a cruel death; two of the Hurons escaped as we have noticed, and were the first to bring to Quebec and Montreal the news of the death of Daulac and his brave companions. In 1663, on his return from his first voyage to France, Monseigneur de Laval founded the seminary of Quebec, which he named the Holy Family of the Foreign Missions.
If seventeen Frenchmen, assisted by a few Indians, could keep their hosts at bay for a week, it would be useless to attack strongly fortified posts. And so Daulac and his men at this 'Canadian Thermopylae' had really turned aside the tide of war from New France. The settlements were saved, and for a time traders and missionaries journeyed along the St Lawrence and the Ottawa unmolested.
Daulac hurriedly placed several of his best marksmen in ambush at a spot where the Iroquois were likely to land. The musketeers, however, in their excitement, did not kill all the canoemen. Two of the Iroquois escaped and sped back through the forest to warn their countrymen, and soon a hundred canoes came leaping down the turbulent waters.
The historian says: "It was the enthusiasm of honour, the enthusiasm of adventure and the enthusiasm of faith. Daulac was the Coeur-de-Lion among the forests and savages of the New World." The names and occupations of the young men may still be read in the parish registers, the faded writing illumined by the sanctity of martyrdom.
But Daulac and his men stood to the last, brandishing knife and axe, while with fierce war-cries the Iroquois bounded into the fort; and when the sounds of battle ceased there remained only three Frenchmen, living but mortally wounded, on whom the savages could glut their vengeance. The Iroquois had won, but they had no stomach for raiding the settlements.
When the Iroquois bad advanced sufficiently near the fort to render the attempt practicable, Daulac determined to attach a fuse to a barrel of gunpowder, and fling it into the midst of them. Unfortunately the missile caught in a branch, and was thrown back into the fort, exploding with disastrous consequences to the besieged.
For a moment Daulac and his men watched the advancing savages. Then they dashed into the fort to prepare for the fight. Against their defences rushed the Iroquois. Again and again the defenders drove them back with great loss. And for a week the heroic band, living on short rations of crushed corn and water from a well they had dug within the fort, kept the assailants at bay.
Let the man who was a hero Daulac; Brock; the twelve who sortied at Lacolle Mill; our deathless three hundred of Chateauguay, never to be forgotten. Have them in our books, our school books, our buildings. He held that the office of our literature and art was to express the spirit of our work.
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