USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 6
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of their agents' in New York. The duke, he said, would undoubtedly blame him if he were
. . . rigorous and scrutinous in small trifles to the discouragement and detriment of the future hopes of trade or of strangers to con- tinue or come to live amongst us. . . .
Settlers in new localities, it was ordered, were to lay out towns and these were to be free from assessments and rates for five years. The Dutch rule that all bargains for lands made with the Indians must be sanctioned by the governor and confirmed in his presence Nicolls wisely revived, to pro- tect the savages and also to prevent them from selling the same lands more than once.
In the year 1666, before Governor Nicolls knew that the king of France had joined with the Dutch in the war against England, the Frenchmen of Canada moved against the Indians of New York.
The so-called mission period of Canadian history had come to an end when, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, Louis XIV took the conduct of public affairs into his own hands and encouraged Colbert, his minister for finan- cial and for naval affairs, to elaborate a policy designed, like the contemporary policy of England, to make the nation com- mercially and politically coherent and strong by building up naval power and regulating trade along protectionist lines. As in England so in France colonial administration formed a feature in this new national policy. The Company of New France, established by Richelieu in 1627, was abolished. Although exclusive trading rights were bestowed upon an- other association, called the Company of the West, the king resumed the power in government and ordered that his colonial representatives should report directly to himself. In 1665 he sent out the Marquis de Tracy as viceroy over the whole of New France and the Sieur de Courcelles as gov- ernor of Canada with numerous bands of settlers and a large
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body of troops, the first the province had received, whose special task was to crush the chief Indian enemies of the French, the Five Nations of the Iroquois.
Alarmed by the quick work of Tracy in setting fortified posts that commanded the St. Lawrence and the approaches to Lake Champlain, sachems of the Oneidas and Onondagas who claimed to speak also for the Senecas and Cayugas con- cluded at Quebec a treaty which the Frenchmen liberally interpreted to mean that the four tribes acknowledged them- selves allies and vassals of France. The haughty Mohawks stood aloof. In January, 1666, Courcelles attempted to chastise them, entering their country through the Grand Pass - the natural route along the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, and Lake George - but missed the Mohawk towns and found himself at last, with his men half frozen and half starved, in the neighborhood of Schenectady. There the Frenchmen learned what they had not known before, that the English had secured the Dutch province. Cared for and provisioned by the Dutchmen of Albany, they re- traced their painful way to Quebec. While Governor Nicolls was astonished, as he wrote to Canada, that his territories should be invaded in a time of peace, he encouraged his deputies at Albany to urge the Mohawks to treat with the French. At Albany formal negotiations were begun but were speedily brought to an end by an attack on a French hunting party in which Tracy's nephew was killed. And in September Courcelles started again for the Mohawk country with a much larger force than before.
Knowing by this time that France had declared war upon England and that Charles had directed his colonials to reduce the French plantations and above all Canada, Nicolls urged the New Englanders to help him to open an easy way to conquest by attacking the invaders of his province. If Massachusetts, he said, would send a hundred and fifty 'horse and dragoons' and Connecticut a 'proportionable num- ber,' in all probability 'few of the French could return to Canada.' Connecticut, Governor Winthrop answered, feared
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that if it should make such a move its Indians, enemies of the Mohawks, would join with the French. Strengthening his little up-river posts Nicolls transformed a third of his own country militia into 'horse and dragoons.' As much as this, he wrote home, the Connecticut authorities had done, but 'the grandees of Boston' were 'too proud to be dealt with.' Moreover, the 'New Englishmen,' he informed Governor Berkeley of Virginia, were saying 'with joy and confidence' that England was likely to fall into civil war.
Tracy he informed that he would keep the peace if the French would not enter the Duke of York's domain which included the country of the Mohawks and Oneidas. Before this letter reached the viceroy, Courcelles was destroying the towns of the Mohawks and their stores of food. He failed again to touch the savages but, dispersing and terrifying them, did more to humble them than any other French invader ever effected. During the spring and summer of 1667 all the Five Nations concluded a peace which remained unbroken for twenty years. Canada had at last a chance to live and to grow. Yet not a fair chance, for the rules about im- migration that Richelieu had laid down remained unaltered : no foreigner and no French Protestant might settle in New France.
When Nicolls's letter reached Tracy he answered it in courteous words, and the correspondence closed with mutual professions of friendship. Both governors praised the Dutch- men of Albany for always treating Christians in distress with Christian helpfulness, and Nicolls consented that the one whom the Indians considered their best friend, Arendt Van Corlaer, should accept Tracy's invitation to assist at Quebec in the conciliation of the Mohawks. While making the journey Van Corlaer was drowned in Lake Champlain. He was not yet fifty years of age. No man who had ever been in the colony, it may safely be said, had done it as good service as he; for the whole story of the dealings of the Five Nations with the Dutch, the English, and the French, from the earliest days of New Netherland to the days of Sir
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William Johnson and the Revolutionary War, shows that personal influence counted for more with them than influence or pressure of any other kind. Lake Champlain was long called Corlaer's Lake by the New Yorkers and Schenectady was called Corlaer by the French. But a better monument than these the savages devised for the friend who, unhelped by official power or prestige, seemed to them the chief of the white men. For generations 'Corlaer' survived in their mouths as a permanent title for the governors of New York; and it has been said that it still survives among some of the Indians of Canada as their term for their sovereign in Eng- land. To quote Cadwallader Colden :
He had a mighty influence over the Indians; and it is from him, and in remembrance of his merit, that all governors of New York are called Corlaer by the Indians to this day, though he himself never was governor.
It was these campaigns of 1666 that opened the century- long struggle between France and England for the possession of the pivot province and the dominion of North America. Although the forces of the rival nations had not actually come into conflict, in intention they had; for, while Nicolls wanted to attack Courcelles, Courcelles hoped that the Dutch would aid him if needful against the English. Moreover, the English were now well aware of the danger to which their long northern frontier exposed them. Both sides understood the strategic value of the Grand Pass, the commercial value of the Mohawk Valley trails. And some at least among the Frenchmen realized that New York would be a priceless possession. Talon, the intendant or personal agent of the French king in Canada, urged Colbert to induce him to secure the restoration of the province to the Dutch and then to acquire it for himself, explaining that this would place the Iroquois 'at his Majesty's discretion' and would give Canada ' all the peltries from the north' as well as 'two entrances from the sea,' easy access to the Delaware country, and the power to keep New England 'confined within its borders.'
1
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This advice, it will be noted, shows that the Canadians under- stood what the Englishmen had not yet learned - that con- trol of the Five Nations was the key to control of the North American colonies. As Nicolls's resources were so small it was good policy to try to keep the French and the Iroquois from war; but it was the worst possible policy to encourage the making of treaties which might lead to permanent friend- liness or serve as a basis for a claim that the Five Nations had acknowledged themselves the vassals or the allies of the French. There is no interest in speculating as to what might have happened had the strong New England colonies vigor- ously assisted Nicolls. Even had they possessed themselves of Canada Charles II would surely have handed it back to France as his father had done before him, as he himself was soon to hand back Acadia.
Still no English ships had appeared at New York, and of course no Dutch ships, for even the validity of that section of the Articles of Surrender which promised free ingress for Dutch ships could not be tested during the continuance of the war. At various times during the year 1666 Nicolls wrote home about the necessities of the province and his own anxiety and destitution. He was 'utterly ruined.' He had spent all his own money, exhausted his credit in New York and Boston, and pledged his small estate in England, draw- ing bills of exchange for more than £2000, yet he feared he might no longer be able to support the garrisons upon which alone he could depend for the safety of his province, New England giving him no aid. Only ignorance, he said, had emboldened him to undertake a task needing a wiser man 'and of a more plentiful fortune.' Although he wished and asked to be recalled he was more troubled about the future of the province than about his own. The king positively must grant New York 'some extraordinary enfranchisement' in the way of trade. Otherwise the inhabitants would be 'absolutely destroyed'; and, 'setting aside their innate love' for their own fatherland 'in this time of war after so
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sudden a change,' they promised to be better subjects than those in 'some of the other colonies.' Certainly they would do better on Manhattan than English 'newcomers' who, as experience had already proved, were 'blown up with large designs' but, not understanding local ways of trade, met with discouragement and would not 'stay to become wiser.' Doubtless he meant that English traders wanted large profits and immediate payments while Dutch traders were content with small gains and gave credit for a year. So it is said in letters which passed at this time between the West Indies and England; and Sir Josiah Child, writing at this period, explains that the reason why, before the passage of the Acts of Navigation, 'there went ten Dutch ships to Barbadoes for one English' could be read in the 'low interest and low customs' in home ports to which the Dutch were accustomed and which insured them the trade wherever foreign ports were free.
The coasting trade, wrote Cornelis Van Ruyven to Stuy- vesant in Holland, was 'at a standstill everywhere about' because of the privateers that were cruising 'in the West Indies, Virginia, and the neighborhood of New England.' All these parts, wrote Nicolls to Clarendon, the Dutch had cheaply supplied with 'all sorts of necessaries,' taking tobacco in exchange; but tobacco would not be a commodity of such value to the English, beaver was 'an uncertain trade at all times,' nothing else remained to New York, and 'the whole Dutch factory must fall.' Therefore people would leave the country because all their hopes of profit were destroyed 'and their correspondencies broken.' Thus far hopes had held up the hearts of many, but they would be 'no better than airy fancies' unless the duke would obtain a general freedom in trade for a term of years so that ships of any nation might bring in and carry away goods of any kind, merely paying to the duke such customs as he might establish. To this arrangement - which would have revived the conditions that existed when the West India Company exacted customs dues in its province but the government of Holland asked for
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none - the House of Commons, Nicolls thought, would more readily accede than the king's commissioners of customs. If it could not be sanctioned, then, seeing that three-fourths of the people in the province were Dutch,
. .. why may not (the wars ended) a permission be given only to four or six Holland ships to trade yearly hither with commodities of their own growth and manufacture, and [from hence to return directly home, paying only duties to his Royal Highness ?
While Massachusetts ought to be bridled, Nicolls thought, New York should be encouraged for other reasons than its commercial possibilities. He had, he believed with a happy optimism, set up there a 'school of better obedience to God and the king' from which a general 'reformation' might with God's blessing proceed.
In the autumn of 1666 the diligent, self-sacrificing governor received by way of Boston, and seemingly through the good offices of Clarendon, some supplies for his soldiers, and for himself a gift of £200 from his grateful king. Because of the war, he was informed, single ships could not be sent across the sea. Thirty sailed together before the end of the year but they gave New York little or no assistance; and the king, it was announced, would let no others depart as he might need them in the spring. 'Every picaroon of the enemy's,' wrote Nicolls, 'is master of all our harbors and rivers from the Capes of Virginia to Pascataway' in New Hampshire. So alarming were the successes of the French and the Dutch in the West Indies that the secretary of state earnestly besought the New Englanders to go to the relief of the English islands, highly important to their own com- merce. In June, 1667, a Dutch fleet swept into the James River, captured a score of merchantmen laden with tobacco, and took them to Holland. Had the booty been less rich probably Manhattan would have been the next place of call. By this time one English merchantman had arrived there, coming under special license from Hamburg. No others followed. In August Dr. La Montagne wrote from Albany
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that the 'excessive dearth of all things' had driven him to such 'need and poverty' as he had never known before. Yet he had lived through Kieft's Indian war. Not without cause did Nicolls write to Arlington that he feared 'some extraordinary disaster' had befallen his Majesty. In the autumn, however, he heard through an unofficial channel that the war was at an end, leaving his province in his mas- ter's hands.
Joining Holland unwillingly and aiding it feebly, in the spring of 1666 Louis XIV had betrayed it, agreeing by a secret treaty with the king of England that he would not assist the Dutch on the sea if Charles would not oppose his cherished design upon the Spanish Netherlands; and in May his troops crossed the Flemish frontier. During the summer the Dutch and English fought two great naval battles - one of which the issue was not decisive, one in which the English triumphed. Harder even for the Hol- landers to bear than this defeat or the prospect that France might seat itself on their borders and acquire the mouth of the Scheldt was the total interruption of their commerce. But English commerce had also suffered greatly, in 1665 London had been devastated by the Great Plague, in 1666 by the Great Fire; and while Charles thus saw his capital in ruins and his treasury exhausted he feared the anger of his people should his intrigues with Louis be known.
Formal negotiations for peace began at Breda in the spring of 1667. Earnestly and repeatedly the West India Company prayed that New Netherland might be preserved to it, point- ing out that its occupation by the English would mean their absolute supremacy in North America as the French would certainly not be able to hold Canada against them. An urgent petition signed by seventy ship-owners of Holland, 'all traders beyond the sea,' supported the Company's prayer. But for the sake of New Netherland, De Witt and the States General now felt, they could not sacrifice everything else; and much, they knew, might be acquired to offset its loss.
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Either, they proposed to Charles, both countries should re- store all that they had recently taken from each other or both should retain all. But Louis XIV, they urged upon him, ought to make good the surrender of New Netherland, which he had been the first to advise, by giving the Republic some of the posts he had taken from the English in the West Indies. On July 21 the Treaty of Breda was signed by England and Holland. Each was to keep all territories of which it had stood possessed on the 10th of May.
Even though it may have been true, as Governor Nicolls believed, that the New Yorkers dreaded the advent of a Dutch fleet which would have brought fire and the sword to their doors, undoubtedly they deplored the outcome of the war in Europe. Yet they may well have felt that, as General Stuyvesant remarked, they had at least escaped a worse fate at the hands of the New Englanders. And on neither side of the ocean had any Hollander the need to feel ashamed. While the negotiations were in progress the war went on, and before they were concluded the Dutch had inflicted upon England the worst disgrace it had suffered since the landing of William the Norman, sending De Ruyter's fleet up the Thames and into the Medway, destroying the king's shipyards and some of his finest vessels, and alarm- ing London itself with the sound of their guns. Thus the war ended, if not with Holland master of the seas, yet with the question of mastery undecided; and the treaty so favored Holland that De Witt could speak of it as 'glorious.' The Navigation Acts remained but at some important points were relaxed in favor of the Dutch; and although the Dutch lost New Netherland they got in the East the rich Spice Island, Pularoon, and in the West the island of Tobago and Surinam in Guiana which was then thought much more valuable than the North American province. Indeed, when the first modern historian of this province, Lambrechtsen, wrote in Holland in the year 1814, he said that it was still ' difficult to decide' whether or not Surinam had compensated Holland for the loss of New Netherland.
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The contemporary verdict of Samuel Pepys upon the war was that
. . . in all things, in wisdom, courage, force, knowledge of our own streams, and success, the Dutch have the best of us and do end the war with victory on their side.
Certainly few Englishmen can then have felt that to gain the province which consolidated the American colonies and gave them a continuous defensible frontier and the key of the west at Albany was in any degree an offset to the com- mercial confusion and heavy taxation left behind by a war that had cost the nation merely in grants to the king five million pounds and in the demoralization of its commerce incalculable sums. One result of the general discontent was the fall, impeachment, and exile of the great minister, Claren- don, who had not wanted the war but by parliament was held responsible for its mischances. To his active, sym- pathetic interest in colonial affairs some words of Governor Nicolls bear grateful witness. In the autumn of 1666, when Nicolls was keenly conscious that the Duke of York was thinking little about him, he wrote to the lord chancellor:
I must ingeniously confess and humbly acknowledge your tran- scendent care of me and of all that are concerned with me in these remote parts; and it is to admiration that your Lordship should not forget such small concernments amidst a million of those great affairs which daily pass your Lordship's hands. Truly, my Lord, I may say (yet with due respect) no correspondent is so punctual as your Lord- ship is pleased to be. . . .
By a treaty with France signed on the same day as the treaty with Holland Charles exchanged Acadia, taken by Cromwell's expedition in 1654, for some of the small West Indian islands. The New Englanders could not be content with this transfer, for they were profiting by the fur trade and the fisheries of the peninsula, and they dreaded the development of a French province so near their own shores.
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The Peace of Breda put an end to a long controversy between the West India Company and General Stuyvesant.
By the ship that took Stuyvesant to Holland Van Ruyven, who was now the Company's 'resident and agent' on Man- hattan, had written to the Amsterdam Chamber that it had been impossible to hold the province; if the directors them- selves had been present they too would have thought it 'better and more Christian-like' to agree to conditions than to look, powerless, upon the ruin of the place and the slaugh- ter of the people. Immediately upon his arrival Stuyvesant himself presented to the States General a justification of his surrender with supporting letters and documents including a very detailed account 'in proof of want of gunpowder.' Several New Netherlanders then in Holland bore witness on his behalf. One of them was Ægidius Luyck, 'late principal of the Latin school in New Amsterdam,' who had returned to the fatherland to study theology. The States General referred the matter to its committee for the affairs of New Netherland. The West India Company scoffed at Stuy- vesant's defence, trying to throw upon the conscientious old soldier all the blame for its own shortcomings. Especially it said that he should not have been so 'rash' in surrender- ing because without a doubt Admiral de Ruyter 'passing New Netherland about eight months later' would have been ordered 'to touch at the place and relieve it.' The States General, it urged, should disapprove of a 'scandalous sur- render' which set an example detrimental to the nation. New Amsterdam knew nothing about De Ruyter, Stuyve- sant replied; even if it had known it could not have waited for him as much as eight weeks; but if he had come even at the end of eight months 'the recapture had followed as easily as the reduction.' In vain he urged that his case be promptly decided so that he might return to New Netherland to bring home to Holland his property and his ‘sorrowful wife and family.' Obliged to send to New York for ad- ditional evidence, some months later he presented another elaborate defence. Again the Company refused to exonerate
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him, declaring that he had let himself be 'ridden over by parsons, women, and cowards.' And the classis of Amsterdam, taking the same view of the matter, refused to ask the Company to pay Domine Megapolensis the arrears of his salary until he should justify his part in the surrender.
The resignation of the province to England showed the futility of further disputing. It also blotted out the reasons why General Stuyvesant had felt that he could not live in New York. Meaning now to remain there, before he set sail he petitioned the Duke of York and the king in council 'for and in behalf of himself and the Dutch nation' now his Majesty's subjects in New York, asking that the Articles of Surrender be confirmed and particularly the one regarded as most important, Article VI which guaranteed free trade with Holland. More heed was paid to his prayer than to those that Nicolls had uttered. The king authorized the duke to permit three Dutch ships to traffic freely with his province for a period of seven years. Beginning his voyage in the autumn of 1667, the old general probably reached New York in time to tell what he had accomplished for its benefit when the terms of the peace that had decided its future were made known to it. On January 1, 1668, this was done by proclamation in front of the 'State House.' So, translating 'Stadt Huis' by sound instead of sense, the Englishmen for a time called the Dutchmen's City Hall.
With the official announcement of the peace Colonel Nicolls had received an order releasing him from his un- grateful task. The Dutchmen as well as the Englishmen of New York, Governor Winthrop wrote to England, deplored the prospect of his departure and so did the people of the neighboring colonies. Samuel Maverick reported that he had lived four years in New York with great reputation and honor and had excellently served the king by keeping 'persons of different judgments and diverse nations in peace and quiet- ness' during a time of widespread war. A petition sent to
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