Charles Diel - Our First Canadian Ancestor:

Whatever forces played a role - a bad economy, death of his parents, or exile - Charles Diel, thirteen year old son of Philippe and Marie Anquetin, had embarked on a hazardous, life-threatening ocean voyage with a military force to the undeveloped territory of New France that was to become Canada. Just how, where, or why Charles got recruited into the regiment at the age of thirteen had puzzled genealogists for decades. In the absence of computer files and digitized archives, they had many theories about why Charles was in an infantry regiment at his age but none that held up under scrutiny. Considering the hazards of such an expedition beginning with a grueling trans-Atlantic voyage, common sense dictates that motivating factors had to have been extreme. Charles had gained an opportunity, however risky, to escape poverty, hunger, and the dismal future he faced in a class-divided society that in good times offered little chance of upward mobility and was now in a period of economic and social turmoil. Below are some possibilities that were considered along with my reasons for rejecting them.

He had been recruited into La Fouille Company which sailed on La Justice, but Charles is listed on Saint-Sébastien's passenger list. The crossing of 112 days’ duration was not easy. The sea was rough; the food, poor; drinking water, scarce; and quarters, cramped. All of the men had probably already been living on diets deficient in vitamin C and were very likely to suffer from scurvy and anemia at sea. Sickness claimed 20 lives in the crossing. When the ships landed on the 12th and 14th of September, 130 passengers were so weak they had to be carried ashore; thirty- five more died by the end of the month. It's a safe bet that Courcelles and Talon, who emerged from the ship in good health, enjoyed better food and quarters above deck than the enlisted men did below deck.

Recruits were inducted into a company, not into a regiment. Company commanders were responsible for outfitting their men using money alloted by the king for that purpose. As was customary, they also assigned a nom de guerre, a military alias or "dit name", to each of their men. Charles' age and size might have been why he was dubbed Le Petit Breton, but the regiment's line of march toward La Rochelle, the staging area from which it would embark, would not have taken it through Ste. Colombe where we had assumed Charles was born in 1652. So, to be recruited in the customary manner of the day Charles would have to have been somewhere that happened to be in the regiment's line of march. Was Charles a resident of Saint Rémy in Dieppe rather than Ste. Colombe? Was he traveling in search of work; or, if his parents were dead at the time, was he living in a town or orphanage where the recruiter for La Fouille Company convinced him or his guardian of the advantages of military service - food, clothes, and a meager income? These scenarios are probably close to Charles' actual situation.

According to Jack Verney, author of The Good Regiment, each company had one or two drummers who would accompany recruiting officers into towns where they would try to recruit men off the street. Charles might have been considered for that job, but he is listed as a soldier on the only available rolls of the regiment; drummers, or some of them at least, are listed as drummers. La Fouille's drummer at the time of Charles' recruitment, known as La Noiray, would be tried in absentia and found guilty of the murder of a town official who, with a group of protesters, had interfered with recruitment knocking La Noiray to the ground and relieving him of his instrument. Military units often met with civilian resistance and violence, because the units would help themselves to food, supplies, and billeting. To make matters worse, they also tried to recruit the able bodied men who were already in short supply in rural areas because of wars and famine. La Noiray was never punished, because the regiment left the jurisdiction of the court where he was tried. It is not known if he remained in Canada after his tour of duty, but he is on a list of probables. Charles was not a drummer.

The Carignan Regiment was an elite unit with minimum height requirements. It is unlikely that a thirteen year-old would meet the requirement unless he was unusually well developed for his age in which case he would not have been called Le Petit. Furthermore, even at the time of the regiment's departure from Canada three years later, Charles had just reached the age when male residents of New France were required to join the militia. It is doubtful that Charles ever saw combat in the regiment or was in a position to do so.

Neither was he a cadet. There was no connection with the noble Dyels of France, as some have suggested, that would have elevated the son of a ploughman to the rank necessary to become a cadet. There would be records to prove he was a cadet if it were true. Even the ship's passenger list would have listed him as a cadet. It also stands to reason that if he had come as a cadet, he would have continued a military career rather than assuming the arduous task of converting widerness to farmland. He would have been given some rank in the militia which he was obliged to join when the regiment left Canada, but that is not evident. Charles certainly was not a cadet.

In spite of claims that Charles was some kind of apprentice in the regiment, a cadet, a courier, a drummer, or just a plain thirteen-year-old soldier, there is now strong evidence, if not proof, of a more believable reason why he crossed the Atlantic with the regiment. A letter from Jean Talon to the Minister of France (Colbert) explains why supernumeraries are aboard ships of the regiment bound for New France. Talon intended to send people 'whose profession will make them more useful to the public', and to send masters who would take apprentices and help promote the skills the colony needed if it was to flourish. Between 1665 and 1672, he attempted to diversify the colony's economy by encouraging agriculture, fishing, lumbering, and industry as well as the traditional fur trade. It was the concerted effort of King Louis, Jean Baptiste Colbert, and Jean Talon that brought Charles and other habitants, or permanent settlers, to Canada.

It makes sense that Charles could have been earmarked to serve as an apprentice to some artisan or tradesman where he was to live, he could have worked the land as Philippe had as a laboureur and still be subject to military or militia duty at a later time. If Charles' parents were dead at the time and he was under the care of an orphanage, sending him off with the regiment in that capacity would have benefited all concerned. The idea would also be consistent with Jean Talon arranging for many female orphans to be brought from France as filles du roi, daughters of the King, to marry and populate New France. That Charles was a supernumerary is a plausible explanation why a thirteen-year-old happened to be attached to an infantry regiment. It would explain why Charles received his first piece of land from the Jesuit Fathers rather than from a Carignan officer as was the rule for soldiers who remained in Canada when the regiment departed in 1668. And, it would explain why Charles didn't cross the Atlantic aboard the same ship that carried La Fouille Company in which he is said to have been a soldier. Lepetit Breton's value to the King lay not in his fighting ability but in the service he would render in developing the colony. In what capacity remains to be seen.

The word got out by whatever media, printed notices, town criers, the pulpit, or recruiters, that the crown was offering jobs to anyone willing to relocate to New France. Conditions being what they were, people lined up to be recruited. Talon had to acquire additional vessels to handle the surplus. Perhaps as many as one half of the soldiers were supernumeraries who would be removed from their companies and assigned civilian jobs upon arrival in New France. Those without skills were used as défricheurs, or land clearers, to create tillable parcels of land and building sites. Charles probably cleared land for the Jesuits in Laprairie from the time of his arrival.

There was another soldier in the regiment's La Fredière company who was thought by some genealogists to have been Charles' older brother, Guillaume, and who died shortly after arrival in Canada after becoming ill during the crossing. He was known as Le Petit Breton which might have been his real name rather than a dit name. It is spelled on his ship's passenger list without spaces, "Lepetitbreton". No one knows for sure who he was, but he did die in the hospital at Montreal about two months after arriving and is named on the hospital's death list as Guillaume Lepetitbreton³. There was also a Le Breton in that company, but he survived both the crossing and the regiment's expedition in New France.

Church records⁴ in Ste. Colombe show that a Guillaume Diel, son of Philippe Diel and Marie Lesnanier or Lesaunier, not Anquetin, was baptized there in 1644. It is possible, then, that Charles had an older brother, half-brother, or cousin who enlisted in the regiment. However, since there is no record of Guillaume Diel being in the regiment and since Guillaume Lepetitbreton, died shortly after arrival in Quebec and had no offspring, the debate is one of historical accuracy only and has no bearing on Diel genealogy. To emphatically state that Guillaume was Charles' brother is another example of creative genealogy. However, remembering that Charles was referred to as an "exile⁵", it is interesting to note that the Lesaunier name was common among Huguenot refugees who left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

La Justice and Saint-Sébastien were the last two regimental transport ships to reach Quebec. Some of the regiment had already started to build a chain of forts along the Richelieu River, the route the Iroquois used to attack the settlers, but Lafouille Company only built a fort for its own use near Three Rivers. Charles more than likely did not participate in building that fort as it has been said. Other soldiers worked and lived among the "habitants" or residents until they were militarily deployed. La Fouille Company might have been assigned to garrison duty to provide a defensive force for the residents of or near Three Rivers, but in January 1666, twenty men from that company would take part in Courcelles' ill- conceived attack on the Iroquois. Charles was not among them, however. Just as the companies that were assigned to building forts were neither properly trained nor equipped for their task, Courcelles' troops lacked the proper equipment and training for cold-weather warfare and were not familiar with the tactics of the Iroquois.

In spite of Colonel de Salières opposition, Governor Courcelles over-ruled the more experienced regimental commander and pressed his plan to a disastrous conclusion. He set off for Iroquois territory in January from Fort St. Louis, a stockade which the soldiers built in August, with about three hundred Carignan soldiers and another two hundred or so volunteers. It would be mid-February before any contact was made with the Iroquois, and accounts vary as to who inflicted more damage to the other side in that minor skirmish. The French, exhausted, starving, and lost, learned that they had engaged the Indians at the Dutch settlement called Schenectady which was now a British possession. Courcelles thought he had found the Indians' winter quarters but found himself having to apologize to the English for his military intrusion into their territory. The Iroquois settlement was a three-day march away, but Courcelles knew he could not continue and headed home. The reported number of French casualties varies from about sixty to several hundred depending on whose account is taken. The skirmish resulted in only a few casualties, the rest being lost to hunger, exhaustion, and exposure to the elements.

Courcelles' failed attack did nothing to dissuade the Iroquois and probably encouraged them to resume their attacks in the spring, which they did in spite of de Tracy's attempted peace negotiations. Tracy suspected, and probably correctly so, that the English might be inciting the Indians to attack since France and England were at war once again by October 1666.

By the end of September, Tracy would personally take command of 1300 men at Fort Ste. Anne including six-hundred volunteers and one-hundred friendly Indians to attempt a surprise raid on the Iroquois villages to the south and a decisive victory. He was discovered by a hunting party and had to change his plan from one of surprise to one of open assault. After a forced night march, Tracy found only four deserted villages which he completely destroyed, burning lodges and stored grain. The Iroquois were not prepared for the kind of battle that would have taken place and were unable to get help from the English in time. They retreated into the forest giving Tracy his victory without a battle. Tracy was content knowing the Indians would die of hunger, exposure, and sickness in the coming winter. This would be the last major campaign for the Carignan Regiment. Minor skirmishes would continue, and the regiment would remain in Canada until 1668.

King Louis and Jean-Baptiste Colbert planned to expand the colony in order to revive France's economy and to compete with England and Spain in colonizing the New World. Canada would provide natural resources for industries in France while at the same time providing a market for goods manufactured there and reducing the need to import goods and material from other countries. They also intended to promote agriculture in the colony to supply France and her Caribbean colonies with food thereby creating a triangular trade route for France's shipping industry.

To accomplish any of this, the colony first had to be populated. Since there were not many women in the colony, King Louis began in 1663 to financially sponsor women who immigrated to New France to marry and start families. They are known as Les Filles Du Roi, the Daughters of the King. The program was a success, but only brought about 800 over a ten-year period who stayed and married. Previous efforts, like the Grande Recru which brought in skilled people, failed to entice engages or hired workers to become permanent residents or habitants. Life was simply too rigorous and hazardous. The investors and speculators who hired them were only interested in the profit motive and offered little incentive for settlement. The emphasis had been on finding a water route to the Pacific and trade with the Indians. Religious orders attempting to convert the Indians to Christianity comprised a large portion of the permanent population.

In 1668, with the Iroquois threat in check, King Louis offered land grants to officers of the departing regiment if they would stay in Canada and help develop the colony. In addition they would receive reduced military pay. The officer was then to offer tenancy on sub-divisions of his land to the enlisted men of his company. The soldiers who accepted would improve the land and work it for three years before owning it. They would also receive at the beginning of their tenancy a year's supply of food, some cash, and the equipment necessary to work the land. Since it was nearly impossible to become a land owner in France, over four-hundred soldiers chose to remain in Canada as did Charles Diel. The commanding officer of La Fouille company, however, chose not to stay in Canada. One lieutenant and one ensign accepted land grants, but Charles apparently was not a tennant of either. He was still only sixteen in 1668 and might have been too young to legally enter into a land contract. Charles served his time as a supernumerary in the regiment working for the Jesuits, presumably, from whom he obtainedhis first tract of land. King Louis, Colbert, and Talon planned from the beginning to entice the soldiers and supernumeraries to stay in Canada when the regiment departed before they were recruited, but neither those recruited nor the officers knew of the plan.

The King's plan for the regiment only increased the population by that amount of 400 or so, but it also instilled peace of mind among settlers since the veterans of the regiment would provide lasting security in the form of a militia. Six of the officers were granted seigneuries along the Richelieu River to keep watch on the Iroquois' old attack route. In 1669, with the regiment gone, the King decreed that all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty were to serve in the militia. Companies were to assemble once a month to practise handling arms, and the men should always be well armed and supplied with the necessary powder, lead and fuses. As word reached France, more people were willing to go to Canada causing the colony's population to nearly double by 1672 to about 6700.

Meanwhile, the population of New England had expanded to around 120,000 people making it a potential military threat. The empire was not expanding quickly enough, but the business of building the colony could now get under way. In an attempt to force an increase in population, King Louis imposed fines on the fathers of unmarried men who had reached the age of twenty or of unmarried girls sixteen years of age or older. The king also provided funds to pay cash to males and females who married at earlier ages. Married couples were similarly rewarded for child production. Three hundred livres went to a family with ten children; four hundred to those with twelve. Charles Diel would remain in New France and become a landowner, a status he likely would never have attained had he stayed in or returned to France.

NOTES:

3. PRDH www.genealogie.umontreal.ca

1665 -11-02 death records (s) Montréal
Subject male (m) Guillaume Lepetitbreton

le rédacteur à omis de signer
mort a l'hôpital

4. In a letter from Father Aubert of France to Monsignor Emile Yelle of Quebec:

1626 ... Philippe Diel, godfather of Marie May, and the eleventh, thus: Guillaume Diel, son of Philippe and the wife of Marie Lesaunier. (not Marie Anquetin)

______________

5. (translated from French)

We have not found the baptismal record of Charles Diel, the exiled colonist, the son of Philippe and of his wife Anquelil because the records have disappeared. Charles was surely the son of Philippe and the brother of Guillaume, both mentioned in the records in 1644 no. 11.