1522 – 1530: François’ Ambition – Part 1
I decided to go both ways...two separate posts at once.
I have been blessed, you may have noticed, with a near photographic memory (to use one of your modern day terms). I can remember dates, troop dispositions, conversations and the like as clearly as if it were the very day itself that those events were occurring. You may wonder if this is a side effect of my “condition”, as it were, but I assure that it is not. I have always had this talent.
It is therefore possible for me to relate to you the exact words that the King himself used when describing the Voyages of Discovery as he sent home dispatches on a very regular basis while he was in the New World. There is a complete collection of them that are hidden in the royal archives if you care to go and look them up – you’ll find them in a dusty series of old tomes that bear the false titles: “A Treatise on the Underlying Framework Of Heugen’s Social and Economic Reforms as it Pertains to the Disposition of His Majesty’s Livestock Holdings in the Province of Berri – Vol.s 1 - 12”. They bear this name for the sole reason that not a living man or woman would ever bother to read something so obviously and atrociously dull and boring, particularly as Heugen’s social and economic reforms were proved to be utterly without foundation within five years of their being published.
Ironically, the King’s writing style was hardly better, so I will not subject you to his precise words. Rather I will convey to you the substance of his words, and possibly quote the odd passage where I feel that the king did actual justice to the craft of writing. Before I begin this tale, however, I should give you a little background information as to how it (the voyage) occurred at all. To do this, we need to return our attention to January 1522; or, in fact, somewhat earlier than this. We’ll start with 1522, though.
When we talked a little while ago, I recall quoting the king’s highly inebriated and unsuccessful attempt to make me understand that he had managed to retain the services of the nation’s first “explorer”. Now I suppose one might say that all men are explorers at heart, but it takes a different and very special breed of man to set off into uncharted waters, especially considering the technology of the age – which was not particularly advanced. Though bronze cannons were the armament of the day, this preceded the time of what we later called “galleon” ship classes, so the ships were small, not particularly fast or manoeuvrable, there were only rudimentary navigational instruments, and life on board was essentially hell for all but, perhaps, the captain and his handful of officers.
To even contemplate taking one of these vessels across the Atlantic without stopping was akin to contemplating suicide; and the idea that one would go further and dare to enter into waters where one might easily lose sight of land and drift for days without food or water, or run afoul of a sand bar or reef…the contemporary opinion was that this
was without any doubt tantamount to suicide. The exploits, therefore, of François and his daring captain Giovanne da Verrazano, are of a magnitude that it nigh well impossible to appreciate in these enlightened times. Credit, where credit is due. Had it not been for their efforts, France would not be what it is today.
Giavanni was not the first such intrepid explorer. England, Spain and Portugal – and as we would later discover, China – had already contracted with such men to map out various parts of the world. They were few and far between in those days, though, and the concept of “sharing maps” with other nations was completely out of the question. It was, to put it mildly, every man for himself. Giovanni was merely the first such man who offered his services to France.
Born in about 1485 – or so he said – da Verrazano was of Italian decent, spending his childhood aboard one ship or another in his father’s fishing fleet of vessels off the coast of his native town of Val di Greve near Firenze (what you know in English as Florence). The da Verrazano’s were not wealthy, but they were reasonably well-to-do, and it was fully expected that young Giovanni would grow up to captain his own vessel and eventually take over the reins of his father’s business. It was not to be, though, as Giovanni had his own ideas of how he wished to live his life.
At the age of eighteen he left home and made his way south to Naples, so recently captured and occupied by a joint effort of the French military, and upon his arrival he immediately volunteered to join the French navy as a sailor while the fleet was still stationed there. His expertise from already-long years at sea quickly saw him rise through the ranks – quickly for the French navy at any rate – and by 1510 he was already the first mate of the Bradeur, one of the larger warships in the fleet.
In the following five years, he engaged in a little quiet piracy against the Spanish that was, of course, officially frowned upon by the King, but quietly encouraged among the admiralty. He proved to be highly adept in this activity, and gained a name for himself as a ruthless and fearless leader of men. When, in one particularly bloody skirmish in the Bay of Biscaye, his captain was greviusly wounded, da Verrazano rallied the men and put an end to the Spanish merchant vessel’s resistance. The captain, whose name is lost to history though I recall hearing at one point that he was one of the Cartier boys whose nephew would also (later) make a name for himself…where was I? Oh yes, the captain would never recover from his injury and the admiralty saw fit to put da Verrazano in charge of the ship as he was well-liked by the other officers and respected by his men.
It was this very Giovanni da Verrazano that François had encountered on New Year’s eve, and who had responded with unbridled enthusiasm for the king’s proposed voyages of discovery in the New World. Incidentally, and before I forget to mention it to you, there is a statue that the French king caused to be erected in his honour in 1910 in the city of Manhattan, at the mouth of the Hudson River.
Now you might, at the time, have imagined that François would have supplied Giovanni with a small complement of ships, as many supplies as could be stowed in their holds, and then told him to set off and explore the seas to the west and report back his findings. Had it been anyone other than François, you would have been right. In this case, though, the French ruler decided that he would accompany the voyage as da Verrazano’s First Mate.
Of course he recognized the danger that his absence from France might provoke, and thus he fully supported the ruse that I had contrived to make it appear that he was still ensconced in his palace in Paris. He left the city at a very early hour on the morning of February 3rd, 1522, disguised as a ship’s mate, and proceeded to make his way to the coast where he was picked up by Verrazano in Normandie before he set sail for a quick passage to Munster, where they docked to take on supplies on the 12th of February. Fully provisioned, and knowing that there would be safe harbour and provisioning to be had upon their arrival in Acadie, the King’s Voyage set sail for the New World on the early morning’s tide of February 14th. It was, as I have said before, the last time that the King would set foot upon shore in Europe in his lifetime.
In the New World, events were already beginning to unfold even before da Verrazano’s arrival, for orders had already been sent to a young colonel by the name of Boissieu who commanded a modest regiment of 4,000 infantry stationed in Acadie where the new but as yet unnamed fortress had been built. Boissieu was instructed to take all of his men to Gaspésie where he was to ensure the safety of an expedition that would be sent there shortly to establish a trading post with the natives.
The latter were not particularly aggressive or resentful of the French being in their midst, but it was thought that having a number of armed soldiers in the vicinity might act as a deterrent for anything to get out of hand, and that they might even make it somewhat simpler for the new arrivals to establish their first base. In spite of their best efforts, though, the first attempt at constructing a trade post in February was a failure, as would be the second such venture in June and a third in September. The natives seemed to be opposed to the idea of a permanent establishment in what they considered to be their territory and eventually banded together to attack the French colonel on the 17th of September. Of course they had never seen a display of the ruthless efficiency of France’s armed forces, and the army proceeded to wipe out the natives to a man, suffering almost no losses themselves. Word was sent back to France that the way was now clear to send people to establish a colony, rather than a trade post, in Gaspésie and by early March of 1523 the first 100 or so citizens had cleared a bit of land and begun to settle in to the hardships of such a hand-to-mouth existence.
Verrazano and the king in the warship Bradeur, the head of a small flotilla totalling eight warships, were far from idle during this time. Having set sail from Munster in mid February, they set a course northwards to skirt the isle known as Iceland – a Danish settlement of some 800 unhappy souls – and then angled directly to the west and slightly south where a land mass of some sort was known to extend from the far north – courtesy the maps discovered in the Tower of London all those years ago. These days you know it as Greenland. The first reports would filter back much later in the year, but by late April Verrazono had spent enough time nosing in and out of harbours in the area to draw a rough map of two provinces at the southern tip or Greenland which he named Eiriksfjord and Vestbygden.
Now I just know you’re going to ask me why on earth an Italian sea captain with a French King as a first mate would chose to give those names to the provinces. The answer is simple: there were already a small number of inhabitants in the provinces, believing themselves to be the few survivors of much earlier colonization attempts by the Vikings – which undoubtedly they were – and those are the names that they gave to those lands. During the very brief moments that a few of the crew members put to shore to replenish their water supply, they managed to converse with these friendly and peaceful people and reported the names back to the captain. Seeing no reason to confuse matters, Giovanni and the King determined to leave the names as is – a practice that they would repeat time and time again during their voyages.
(
OOC: there were no troops aboard the ships, so descriptions such as this one are intended to represent the “sail by and discover the land area” type of mapping of provinces rather than the “march in and survey it” militaristic approach. All such territories added to the map during this voyage are of former method of discovery.)
Leaving Greenland behind, they sailed through the so-called Sea of Labrador – also on the captured English maps – and onwards to the settlement in Acadie. On their way, they laid anchor briefly off a peninsular promontory where they made contact with a very small native band who described the territory to them. Seeing as they had no name for their land, and in quiet honour of the King’s participation, this land was thereafter given the name “Ile Royale” – I’ll bet you didn’t know that’s how it came to get its name, did you? As soon as conceivably possible, the king set ward that colonists were to be sent to this province to establish a settlement, which I arranged to depart on the 24th of May at a cost of some 55
francs from the treasury for supplies and means.
Docking in Acadie, François christened the new fortification there with the name “Annapolis Royale”, but would spend only a day there as the ships were resupplied. Verrazono then set a course north-eastwards along the coastline, charting the new waters of the Newfoundland Banks, and then continued further north to follow the shore wherever it went.
In mid July, a small native fishing settlement was encountered in a place they called Anticosti (don’t ask!) along the south shore of what would later be known as Labrador, and by the end of the month the small fleet had an adequate sea-chart of the Straits of Labrador and felt that they could still press on northwards. By mid August the Sea of Bafin was charted and they decided – seeing as no land was visible to the north – to follow the shore westwards to see where it might lead. They would, over the next month, add the Hudson Straits and Hudson Bay to their maps, so-called for their ship’s mascot, a mongrel dog that one of the crew-members had stowed away without them knowing until it was too late.
Weighing anchor there for a short time to slip ashore and replenish their dwindling water supply, they encountered a small but somewhat aggressive tribe called the Winisk. While initial meetings were peaceful and a general idea of the province was obtained, the king felt it unsuitable for colonization due to the disposition of the natives. It would, he decided, require an application of ruthlessness from the military to make this land safe at all for any future French expeditions.
Fearing the onset of winter at such extreme northern latitudes, the Brodeur now set sail to return to Acadie which they did without incident by early November and, as they sailed by in October, discovered that the first group of colonists had indeed successfully established themselves in a tiny settlement on the south shore. The town, when it was later colonized into a full-fledged city and had been enhanced with a modest fortress by November of 1525, would be known as Louisbourg in memory of the king’s long-dead cousin Louis XII who had conquered the English to make this all possible, and had begun the nation’s interest in colonization.
Taking on supplies once again, the expedition now directed their exploration southwards along the coast, though they did halt briefly to make contact with tribes and determine the lay of the land in Nova Scotia and Placentia (the latter being on the southern tip of
Terre Neuve or “Newfoundland” as you might know it. By January of 1523 the waters of Cape Hatteras had been charted and contact been made with the peoples of Carolina, and the ships continued on to discover the waters of Cape Canaveral in February, Tampa Bay in April, and Mobile Bay in early May. Heading westward in once last push before dwindling provisions would force them to make the return voyage to Acadie, they quickly conducted soundings in Mississippi Bay, at the mouth of a great river of the same name.
During the return voyage, the crew seemed willing to make a brief detour via the Bahamas in the hopes that there might be a tribe of natives there who would be willing to pass on their knowledge of the island. By great fortune they were successful in that endeavour, gaining a reasonable understanding of the local geography. By late August, though, it became imperative that the ships return to port and they raced up the coast under favourable currents and winds – though they made an ever-so-brief stop towards the end of the month to take on fresh water and speak with the as-yet unknown peoples of Santee – and arrived back at Annapolis Royale on the 4th of October, 1523.
Realizing that there were large areas of ocean as yet uncharted to the east, and that they might possibly contain islands, Verrazano set of almost due east to explore them. In November and December, at tremendous risk from the possibility of seasonal storms, a thorough search was made of the two North Atlantic sea zones that turned up no suitable territories, nor any hint of any, and the party turned south to warmer waters. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision as only a month later, while charting the Bermuda Sea, land – or what appeared to be a small island - was spotted to the south. Exploring the eastern lee of the island, they added the Central Atlantic Ocean to their impressive list of discoveries, but then were forced to head back to Acadie once more to do some minor refitting of several of the vessels which had begun to suffer from more than two full years at sea. They arrived there on the 25th of March, 1525.
As soon as repairs had been made – which were done quickly as the crews were now just about as eager as the captain and king to continue this grand adventure – they set sail once more for the Mississippi Bay, their intent being to proceed southwest from there. In passing, they mapped the land area of Mobile in June, and through the months of August and September they busily charted Tampico Bay, the Yacatan Sea, and Belize Bay, stopping of in Rio Grande to refill their freshwater barrels as there had been little rain in the summer months.
By late November, after sounding the Florida Straits, the food supply was getting low and they once again headed north towards the colonies, this time deciding to visit the recently formed city of Louisbourg on Ile Royale and to check on the progress being made with its fortifications. On the way back they paused briefly to hunt some wild game in Roanoke in early January, take on fresh water in Penobscot at the end of the month, and finally docked in Louisbourg on the 9th of February, 1525. They would not remain there for long, heading back out to sea almost immediately to explore the area southwest of the Central Atlantic Ocean.
I realise that I have now been speaking with you – or rather at you – for rather a long time now, and perhaps we should take a quick break. Just before we do so, I should mention that the first attempt to colonize
Nouvelle Ecose (Nova Scotia) was sent in November of 1524; a mission which failed, unfortunately, in early April as the king’s expedition was already headed into the unknown. Another was promptly sent.
I would have liked to include a screenie here for you as I know I’d be getting lost with all of these names…unfortunately I didn’t think to take one so you’ll have to bear with me until the end of the next instalment as I’d hate to spoil a couple of the surprises that are in store for you. Sorry.
