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Updated: July 1, 2025
Then, on the tenth of September, appeared the great fleet of the Hurons, sixty canoes, bearing a host of warriors, among whom the French recognized the tattered black cassock of Father Jerome Lalemant. There were twenty French soldiers, too, returning from the Huron country, whither they had been sent the year before, to guard the Fathers and their flock.
They set the town on fire; and the helpless wretches who had remained, unable to fly, were consumed in their burning dwellings. Next they fell upon Brebeuf and Lalemant, stripped them, bound them fast, and led them with the other prisoners back to St. Ignace, where all turned out to wreak their fury on the two priests, beating them savagely with sticks and clubs as they drove them into the town.
Father de Brébeuf entered the college of Rouen, where he had laboured previously, and three other Jesuits whom we find afterwards in Canada, Father Charles Lalemant, Father Jogues and Father Simon Lemoyne, were at that time professors in this college.
It was their Relations that had given the impulse, and the promoters of the colony had the able assistance of Father Charles Lalemant, whom we have already met as the first superior of the Jesuit order in New France.
One day that Father Lalemant visited the school-room, the children gathered round him with an air of mystery and importance, as if burdened with some weighty secret. "Look at our clothes, Father," they said; "you can see that they are faded and worn, and, as our Mothers do not give us new ones, we cannot look as smart as the French girls, which makes us sorrowful."
They withdrew, first to the neighborhood of Lake Erie, then to that of Lake Ontario, their historic seat. Lalemant, Relation, 1647, 68. La Potherie, writing more than half a century after the time in question, represents the Iroquois as habitually in awe of the Algonquins.
Governor d'Avaugour supported energetically the measures taken by Mgr. de Laval; unfortunately a regrettable incident destroyed the harmony between their two authorities. Inspired by his good heart, the superior of the Jesuits, Father Lalemant, interceded with the governor in favour of a woman imprisoned for having infringed the prohibition of the sale of brandy to the Indians.
But the Petuns were presently to share the fate of the Hurons; and Garnier and Chabanel, who were stationed at St Jean, were to perish as had Daniel, Brebeuf, and Lalemant. During the autumn Ragueneau learned that a large body of Iroquois were working their way westward towards St Jean.
On reaching England Lalemant had regained his liberty, and had hastened to France. He found that Father Noyrot had a vessel fitted out with supplies for the Canadian mission, and decided to return to Canada with Noyrot on this vessel. But nature as well as man seemed to be battling against the Jesuits.
But not a sound of pain could they wring from him. At last, after four hours of this torture, a chief cut out his heart, and the noble servant of God quitted the scene of his earthly labours. Lalemant, a man of gentle, refined character, as delicate as Brebeuf was robust, also endured the torture.
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