In September 1805, a certain Jean-Baptiste Noreau, from Saint-Constant, landed in the port of Bordeaux. He has just crossed the Atlantic aboard an American ship from New York. Noreau represents a group of Canadians from the south shore of Montreal and he is carrying a missive for none other than Emperor Napoleon! A look back at this little-known episode in our history.
• Read also – 329 Air India Boeing deaths in 1985: Canadian Sikh terrorists were responsible
In 1805, it was 42 years since New France was ceded to England following the Conquest. Since 1791, Canadians, descendants of the French, have lived under the Constitutional Act within Lower Canada, where they are the strong majority. Despite this, the British minority in the colony held power and quarrels began to emerge between this minority and the Canadian members of the Assembly. These quarrels will gradually lead to the uprisings of 1837-1838.
Montreal, in 1750, 13 years before the Treaty of Paris.
Public domain
In France, many changes have occurred since the Treaty of Paris of 1763. The French Revolution of 1789 shook the country for around ten years before a man emerged to restore order, while retaining the essential revolutionary achievements: Napoleon Bonaparte! After the brief period of the Consulate, the latter established the Empire and then conquered Europe.
It is in this general context that Jean-Baptiste Noreau and eleven acolytes address a letter and a petition to the French Emperor. These documents constitute one of the rare testimonies which clearly demonstrate the attachment and affection that certain Canadian inhabitants felt towards the former motherland at the beginning of the 19th century.e century.
Inhabitants of Lower Canada, in 1837.
Public domain
“Shake off the yoke of the English”
In this letter, preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France and updated a few years ago by researcher Sylvain Pagé, the signatories ask the emperor that France reconquer Canada so that Canadians can “bear again the glorious name of French.” According to them, the Canadian people would be willing to return to the fold of France and all that would be missing was “a good French general” to put the English in check and force them out of Canada. A sign of their determination, the twelve signatories even say they are ready “to meet the costs that this enterprise will require”. They end their letter to Bonaparte by saying that they are “ready to undertake anything, at the first sight of the French whom we always regard as our brothers.”
A vain attempt
We do not know whether this letter and this petition reached the hands of the emperor. Upon his arrival in Bordeaux, Jean-Baptiste Noreau, taken ill, had to stay in a hospice from where he was lost.
However, even if he had read it, it is very unlikely that Napoleon would have responded positively to the request of Noreau and his cronies. At least for the moment. If projects to reconstitute the French colonial empire in North America were hatched during the period of the Consulate, things were different in 1805.
Under Napoleon, France was an empire from 1804 to 1814 and briefly in 1815, with the return of Napoleon during the Hundred Days episode. This painting entitled “Napoleon 1st, Emperor of the French” is the work of the painter François Gérard and is kept at the Château de Versailles.
Public domain
Napoleon had just sold Louisiana to the United States and was too busy in Europe to think about Canada. The Battle of Trafalgar, in October 1805, ended with a defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet, which led the emperor to concentrate on the European continent, where he was preparing to win the Battle of Austerlitz. in December, soon reaching the height of his reign.
Nevertheless, a letter from Talleyrand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed to the French ambassador in London, in 1802, shows that Napoleonic France kept itself informed of the colonial situation of Canadians and their opinion regarding the France. This suggests that the reconquest of Canada could have interested the emperor in a favorable geopolitical situation, but this situation will never come…