Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, February 23, 1999

Creditors muddle affairs after d'Aulnay's death

Charles de La Tour returns from exile in Québec to reclaim his fur trading lands

by Jim Bradshaw

D'Aulnay's aged father, René Menou de Charnisy who lived in Paris, made an attempt to settle the estate, but couldn't. In 1651, Le Borgne sent a ship manned by what historian Charles Mahaffie Jr. calls "a gang of mercenaries" to seize the fort at Port Royal and to strip it of everything they could.

Le Borgne thought that his money and his muscle would make him master of Acadie. But he forgot about another old Acadian, Charles de La Tour.

La Tour had been holed up in Québec ever since d'Aulnay destroyed his fort, but now he saw his chance to reclaim leadership in Acadie. He sailed to France in February 1651, and using the La Tour charm that stood him in good stead in the past, somehow managed not only to have himself exonerated of charges of piracy and of "all crimes of rebellion, but to have himself named governor of Acadia by King Louis XIV.

La Tour enlisted the aid of Philippe Mius d'Entremont, a gentleman from the Cherbourg region, hired his own band of mercenaries, and sailed for Acadie. When he reached Port Royal, he presented his credentials to d'Aulnay's widow, Jeanne Motin, and demanded that he be given back his old fort at Jemseg. He sent d'Entremont to Cape Sable, to start rebuilding the old La Tour fiefdom there.

Le Borgne did not give up. He made a second raid on Port Royal to make off with more goods and to establish his claim to the fort.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Denys, whom d'Aulnay forced from Acadie right after coming to power, also made claims on the d'Aulnay estate. He returned to settle at St. Peters at Cape Breton island, claiming that the land was owed him because d'Aulnay had unlawfully taken his earlier claim.

But the smooth-talking La Tour was not yet through with his own bold moves. On Feb. 24,1653, he married Jeanne Motin Madame d'Aulnay, the widow of the man who had ruined him and banished him from the land for piracy. La Tour was 60. Jeanne Motin was in her 30s.

The muddle continued. According to Mahaffie, "Soon after (La Tour's wedding) Le Borgne himself showed up. La Tour, who had an uncanny ability to be elsewhere when misfortune came to his wives, was at ... St. John. Jeanne Motin (at Port Royal) was defenseless, and Le Borgne put her in prison. Then his men raided the settlement at La Have and ... Deny's post at St. Peters.... Indomitable, (Denys) got free and made his way to France, where at the end of 1653, the Company of New France awarded him the coast and islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Canso to the Gaspe.

"Mercifully," Mahaffie continues, "Denys' grant was the last of the inconsistent and ill-considered French concessions of property and government in Acadia. With Le Borgne at Port Royal facing down d'Aulnay's rightful heirs, with Denys at St. Peters claiming ownership of everything above the Strait of Canso, and with La Tour thumbing his nose at everyone from the Saint John, the situation by 1654 was so muddled as to seem beyond repair. Suddenly, however, the Puritans intervened, and the French imbroglio was moot."