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The Knights of Malta in the New World
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From the Crusades to Quebec : "The Knights of Malta in the New World"
THOMAS GUERIN, O.B.E., M.A., Ph.D.
Knight of Justice and
Almoner of the Priory in Canada of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem
in the British Realm.
Montreal; 1949
CHAPTER VI
CANADIAN BORN KNIGHTS ENTER THE ORDER
THE last Knight of Malta
resident in Canada under the French Regime was the Abbé Eustache de
Lotbinière. He was a member of an old and illustrious Canadian family,
and the first member of the Order to have been born in Canada.
His father was Eustache-Chartier de Lotbinière who had married Françoise
d ’Avesnes de Meloise and, on her death, he had entered the priesthood
to become the Archdeacon of the Chapter of Quebec.
Following in
the footsteps of his father, the son also entered the church and chose a
rigorous branch of the Franciscan Order, the Recollets, where he was
known as the “Père Eustache”. But he proved to be a restless subject and
left the monastery yet only to return again seeking readmission to
another branch of the Friars Minor, the Cordeliers. The impatience of
his personality unsettled him and leaving the convent of the Gray-Friars
for a second time, he sailed for France. There he was admitted to the
Order of Malta and later returned to Quebec.
Again, in a short
time he became involved in a controversy with Mgr Briand, the Bishop of
Quebec, and with Mgr d ’Esglis, his coadjutor, about both of whom he
complained not only to Rome but also to London. Mgr Briand is very
severe in his condemnation of him and when writing in his own defence to
the Vatican he speaks of him as having been sent from Canada whence he
went to France. There he spent two years, after which he returned to
Quebec much to the annoyance of his superiors and to his relatives whom
Monseignor Briand describes as finding “Me too good to him”.(75)
The Abbé de Lotbinière then disappeared from the scene, but not for
long. He appeared again amid the troops of Benedict Arnold and marched
with them up the Chaudière to meet Montgomery before Quebec. He had
joined the army of the American Colonies in revolt and had become the
first Catholic Chaplain in the rebel forces and with them he advanced
against Canada. Mgr d ’Esglis, whose mother was a de Lotbinière, and who
was his cousin, did his best to counsel him but to no avail.
In
1782, General Livingston (undoubtedly his former Commanding Officer)
petitioned Congress to grant him a pension in recognition for the
services he had rendered to the cause of the United States.(76)
This grant was finally made and the Abbé de Lotbinière ended his days at
Bristol in 1786.
Rebel propaganda had succeeded to a certain
extent in undermining the loyalty of some of the habitants in the Quebec
district. American officers acting under orders from Congress raised two
regiments in the country around the old capital from amongst the
restless Canadians. These were known as the “Congress Own” and were in
reality the first purely American troops. Other batallions (sic) were
all units of the Military Organizations of the various states in
rebellion. One of these two regiments was under the command of Colonel
Moses Hazen and the other under Colonel James Livingston. It was in this
latter regiment that the Abbé became the Chaplain on January 26, 1776.
His regimental pay was $41.30 a month and he complained bitterly at the
trouble he had to collect it.(77)
By the end of the war, he had
become much dissatisfied and in 1785 he sent a lacrimose petition to the
U.S. Congress in which he says that he had not joined the rebels to
perish of cold and hunger and because the agreement entered into by him
with General Arnold in January of that year had not been lived up to. He
says that it is a disgrace that a priest born in 1716, laid low by gout
and rheumatism, who had given up an annual allowance of 750 livres a
year in order to espouse the cause of Congress, should be menaced by
death and famine.
Mgr Gosselin gives a different version of this
loss of pension. For some reason which has not been divulged, the Abbé
de Lotbinière appears to have received previously a pension from the
British authorities. Mgr. Gosselin places this at three hundred francs
rather than 750 livres and claims that due to the Abbé’s attitude and to
the complaints addressed by him to London against his Bishop and
superiors the Government cancelled the grant.
This is likely to
be the true version. It all took place before he joined the American
forces. It was probably the cause of the animosity which he held against
the English and the chief reason of his deserting to the enemy even in
the face of the orders of his ecclesiastical superiors.
An elder
brother, the Marquis Michel-Chartier de Lotbinière who had married a
Mlle Chaussegros de Léry was Montcalm’s engineer officer who built Fort
Carillon, the present Fort Ticonderoga. In return for this great work he
was granted a seigniory on Lake Champlain. After the British Conquest he
went to London to have this grant confirmed but he failed. He then went
to Paris where he joined Benjamin Franklin and returning to Canada he
made a strong effort to raise the French Canadians in the cause of the
American Revolution. Another brother was the Parish Priest of
Pointe-aux-Trembles, near Quebec, who remained loyal to Canada’s new
allegiance. The Abbé’s place in the Order of Malta is exceptional for he
was Canada’s first Knight of the White Cross.
The only other
Canadian-born Knight of Malta in the days of the French Regime was also
a picturesque character, a Canadian who fought at Culloden and the
bearer of the old Scottish name of Douglas.
This Clan appears to
have held ties with France from very early times for we find amongst the
navigators sailing out of Honfleur, in 1582, Guillaume Duglas who was
master of the ship Jehan in 1579 and of the Espérance in 1600. Even in
the Regiment de Carignan one of the family wore the uniform of King
Louis. He was Jean-Louis de Douglas, a Lieutenant and a Chevalier de
Saint-Louis but Suite lists him amongst those who returned to France in
1668, so he played but a small role in the history of Quebec.(78)
The Chevalier François-Prosper-Sholto de Douglas who came to Canada
as a Captain in the Regiment de Languedoc, seems to have been of old
Jacobite stock.
His family possessed an estate and castle at
Montréal-en-Bugey, in France, and it was there that he was born in 1725.
One account of this antecedents is that his branch of the Clan was
descended from George Douglas, Earl of Dunbarton, Knight of the Order of
St. Andrew, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the British King and
Lieutenant-General in the Royal Armies, who appears to have followed
James II into exile. The Gazette de France says that he died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
on the 21st of March, 1692/79) (1)
This François-Prosper de Douglas
joined the French army at the age of nineteen, when he received a
Second-Lieutenancy, a Lieutenant in 1744, he achieved his Captaincy in
1746. He fought the last battles of France in Canada and was wounded at
Carillon in 1758. There he received the Cross of St. Louis. He had
married at Montreal (Canada), Çharlotte-de-la-Corne St-Luc, a true
daughter of New France, and in 1757 their son was born — Louis-Archambault
de Douglas — at Montreal (Canada).(80)
After the British
Conquest, the elder de Douglas returned to the France of his family. His
military career must have been successful, for we find him described in
the registers of his regiment as an efficient officer. The report of
1765 says of him:
“He serves well”— that of 1764 “full of zeal”— and
in 1767, that “he does his duty with zeal and application ”. The
following year, he retired from the army with a pension of five hundred
livres and settled down in his Castle at Montréal-across-the-Seas.(81)
His son, Louis-Archambault de Douglas, attended the College of the
Quatre-Nations and then entered a dragoon regiment where he served till
the death of his uncle, Charles-Joseph de Douglas, Count and Seigneur of
Montréal-en-Bugey, Chevalier of St. Louis and Captain in the Royal
Scottish Regiment in the French service. He appears to have been the
senior member of the family and, having no male issue, designated his
nephew as his heir.
In 1745, together with his brothers, he
accompanied Charles Edward, the Young Pretender to Scotland and
distinguished himself at the capture of the Hazen Sloop. He was wounded
at Culloden and in 1770 died at his chateau from the effects of the
injuries he had received twenty-five years before.
There were
several members of the family serving under the fleur-de-lys and the
list of promotions in the French army of 1740 shows a Comte de Douglas
receiving his Colonelcy in the Regiment of Languedoc. According to Mazas,
he was born at Castlehill, in Scotland, in 1712 and received the title
of Baron of Castlehill. He entered the regiment of Prémont in 1733 —
Captain in 1735, he was wounded at Prague in 1742 and in 1744
transferred to the Royal Écossais.(82)
Louis-Archambault de
Douglas succeeded his uncle not only in his estates but in his title and
became Comte de Montréal. His military career did not equal that of his
father or of his family, but he settled down quietly on his domain where
he was twice married. In the French Revolution, he suffered many
hardships and during the Terror he was imprisoned for some months at
Nantua, but liberated on the death of Robespierre, he was brought
triumphantly home by the inhabitants of Montreal. Later, he was named
President of the Canton, member of the General Council of Ain, elected
to the Chamber of Deputies as a Royalist in 1815, he was Majmr of
Montréal-en-Bugey in 1830.
He died on February 27, 1842, a
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, of the Order of Saints Maurice and
Lazarus of Italy and a Knight of Malta.(83) The Order was not new to
these Scottish émigrés, for as early as 1681, Joseph-Hyacinthe Douglas
of Laon was admitted on January 25th of that year.(84)
Though
perhaps a fairly colourless personality himself, he represented a most
colourful past. His background was replete with romance and with the
family of de Ramezay, his family of Douglas brought into this land of
Canada that strange link between France and Scotland which persisted for
so many years.
Notes:
1. This seems
unlikely as the Douglas family were in possession of Montréal in at
least 1622.
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Source
Sources for this article include:
75. Mgr Auguste Gosselin, Litt. D., de la Société Royale, l'Eglise
du Canada depuis Mgr Laval jusqu'à la Conquête.
Québec, 1924-Part
III, 1760-1765, pp. 99-102 (appendix 16).
76. Information supplied by
a member of the family.
77. Pierre-Georges Roy, Fils de Québec.
Première Série, Lévis 1933, pp. 188, 189, 190 (appendix 17).
78.
Benjamin Suite, Le Régiment de Carignan, Melanges Historiques, publiés
par Gérard Malchelosse, Montréal 1922, G. Ducharme, 133, rue
Saint-Laurent, p. 83.
79. Alexandre Mazas. Histoire de l Ordre Royal
et Militaire de Saint-Louis, depuis son institution en 1693 jusqu ’en
1830.
Paris 1860. Firmin Diot Fils & Cie, rue Jacob 36, 3 Vols., Vol.
I, p. 316.
80. Antoine Roy, Rapport de /’Archiviste de Québec, Québec
1944-1945, page 100.
« Lettres de Dariel, Commissaire de Guerre...
Nous avons eu beaucoup de mariages de soldats et deux d’officiers.
Monsieur de Douglas et de Monsieur de Parfourru, capitaine au Bataillon
de Languedoc. Le premier a épousé une d’elle et l’autre la fille d’un
bourgeois ».
Pierre-Georges Roy, Toutes petites choses du Régime
Français, Québec 1944. Éditions Garneau, 2e Série, p. 63 (304 pp.),
(appendix 18).
81. Mazas, op. cit., p. 414. [ Alexandre Mazas. Histoire de l Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis]
82. Ibid., p. 415.
83. Benjamin Suite, Bulletin des Recherches Historiques.
Organe du
Bureau des Archives. Québec 1901. Pierre-Georges Roy, Éditeur. Vol. VII,
pp. 221, 222, 223.
84. Vertôt, op. cit., Vol. VII, p. 294.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
See also:
•
Montreal Chateau
This article forms part of the French section
of the Douglas Archives.
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