Jean-François Roberval
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Jean-François Roberval | |
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Born | Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval c. 1495 near Carcassonne, France |
Died | 1560 Paris, France |
Other names | Roberval, Sieur de Roberval |
Occupation(s) | French nobleman and civil servant |
Known for | First lieutenant general of French Canada |
Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval, also named "l'élu de Poix" or the Sieur de Roberval, (c. 1495 – 1560) was a
Family
The complexity of his origins and his family can be explained by the three known marriages of his father, Bernard de La Rocque, military and former seneschal of Carcassonne.[2] The first marriage (1482–87) having given no descendants, the Sieur de Roberval would be the son of a second wife (between 1487 and 1499), who died in the childhood of J-F de La Rocque. His father's third marriage (c. 1500) to Isabeau de Popincourt (who brought Roberval's possessions to La Rocques) resulted in the birth of three half-sisters and a half-brother: Marquise, Charlotte, Marie and Jean.
Financially speaking, Roberval benefited from favorable patrimonial circumstances. In addition to the land and estate from his father's weddings, he inherited from close relatives who died childless. Its lands and lordships were scattered over three regions of the kingdom of France. The firsts in Languedoc near Carcassonne, the region of origin of the La Rocque family. The second in the Rethélois near Reims, from his father's first marriage. The latest and most famous, in Roberval in the Valois, between Compiègne, Chantilly and Senlis, where the title by which it has made history comes from.[1]
Military career
As a soldier, La Rocque worked under the orders of Robert III de La Marck, Marshal of France and chief of the armies of Francis 1. He thus continued the family tradition of working under the orders of a Marshal of France. His membership in this regiment led him to travel, but above all to reside in the Rethélois where his garrison had its quarters. With La Marck, he joined the ranks of the king's military officers and participated in most of the conflicts of the time. He distinguished himself among others, in Pavia (1525), at the siege of Péronne in 1536 which blocked a Spanish attack towards Paris. At the end of the war of 1536-1538 he returned from Italy as a hero, but without its leader, Robert De La Marck (died in 1536) and half of his comrades who were killed in fighting with the Spaniards in 1537.
Attempt at colonizing Canada
It is probable that the Sieur de Roberval heard of the Canadian colonial project on his return to court in 1538. According to sources, he devoted himself to rebuilding his former regiment with the young son of Robert de La Mark. It remains that until 1540, François I refused all projects that could endanger his political negotiations with
The preparations, already well advanced by Jacques Cartier, must constantly be readjusted, but things are going well. It remains that the military equipment of La Rocque, which is slow to arrive from its garrison in Champagne, gives rise to fears of a postponement of the expedition. To overcome this problem, La Rocque decided to send Cartier immediately to Canada with more than half of the fleet so that the colonial settlement would be ready when he came to join him. But when Cartier is at sea, tension escalates between France and Spain following the assassination of two French ambassadors by the Spaniards in Italy. The threatening war then encouraged La Rocque to stay in France to participate in the looming conflict. François I finally gives up starting hostilities and it is now too late to go to Canada. Roberval then decides to spend the winter on the tip of Brittany to retaliate an economic blockade of Spain by boarding ships and goods coming from Spain. La Rocque de Roberval set sail for Canada from La Rochelle the following spring, unaware that Spanish ships were sailing the Atlantic in search of them.
In
In her Heptaméron, the sister of the King of France, Marguerite of Navarre, reports that on their way to the colony, La Rocque forced a couple to disembark on a small island. Only the woman survived and was recovered the following year. By regaining control of the colony abandoned by Cartier and his team, the Sieur de Roberval renamed several places: the river became France Prime and the colony of Charlesbourg-Royal became France-Roy, etc. The latter restored the facilities at Cap-Rouge and renewed relations with the Stadaconians who supplied the French establishment. During the long winter, about fifty settlers died of scurvy, a clear sign that neither Cartier nor the Stadaconians had explained to them the recipe for Anneda which could cure this disease. In the spring, La Rocque took advantage of the good weather to go up the river to Hochelaga with seventy soldiers and settlers in eight boats to reach the mythical place that the Amerindians call the "Kingdom of Saguenay" hoping to find the mythical Northwest Passage. There he meets the Amerindians and Roberval's men carry boats on their shoulders at the top of the first fall to study the waterways upstream. Going back downstream a little later, a boat capsized and eight people were drowned. Back in the colony, ships arrived from France with fresh supplies, but also letters from François Ist who demanded their return to France because of the war.
Return home and death
On his arrival in the fall of 1543, Roberval learned that the Spaniards and the English were marching on Paris from the east and north of the kingdom. The following spring, the king assigned to La Rocque the city of Senlis, the last stronghold north of the capital, whose fortifications had to be repaired. La Rocque puts all the inhabitants of the region to work with many of the people who returned with him to Canada. In September 1544, Charles V decided to sign peace with François I, but two days later the English seized the stronghold of Boulogne-sur-Mer and continued their advance towards the capital. Francis I finally repelled the attackers by sending an armada of 150 ships, sowing destruction along the English coasts. La Rocque de Roberval and his regiment led the attack under the orders of Admiral d'Annebault. As one of the king's military officers, the Sieur de Roberval was involved in all such conflicts until the
Posterity
Having no children, Roberval had made the necessary arrangements and left the family patrimony in the hands of his sisters. The only possession he had not officially bequeathed (the Château de Roberval) was seized and auctioned for debts incurred some 40 years previously. However, it was his nephew who bought the chateau and so it stayed in the family. From the 17th to the 18th century, the castle of Roberval passed into the hands of great wealthy families in the La Marcks movement to which La Rocque had remained faithful. In 1784, the seigneury with its castle (and its archives) was bought by the Davène family, whose descendants still own it. Despite his military fame and his involvement in the Canadian expedition, La Rocque de Roberval had difficulty entering the Pantheon of 16th-century explorers and colonizers, mainly because of his religious opinions that were anti-clerical and favorable to the Reformation. His reputation was reduced or even blackened at the time of the religious wars in France (1562–1598) and it was not until the nineteenth century that he emerged again in historiography and after the 1960s that he is mentioned in public historical literature.
In literature
References
- ^ a b "Jean-François de La Rocque, Sieur de Roberval". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
- ^ a b "Biography – LA ROCQUE DE ROBERVAL, JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE – Volume I (1000-1700) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography". www.biographi.ca. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
Bibliography
- Shortt, Adam; Doughty, Arthur G., eds. (1914). Canada and Its Provinces. Vol. I. Glasgow, Brook, & Co. p. 39.
- La Roque de Roquebrune, R. (1979) [1966]. "La Rocque de Roberval, Jean-François de". In Brown, George Williams (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. I (1000–1700) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
Notes
- De La Roncière, Charles Germaine Marie Bourel. (1909). Histoire de la Marine Française Plon-Nourrit; p. 477
- Gerassi-Navarro, Nina. (1999). Pirate Novels. Fictions of Nation Building in Spanish America. Duke University Press, Durham, p. 22, discussing real pirates.
- Lane, Kris E. (1998). Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750. ISBN 0-7656-0257-1.
- Thevet, Andréet al. (1986) André Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth-Century View McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston, Ontario, p. 121
- Bernard Allaire, La Rumeur Dorée: Roberval et l'Amérique, Montréal, La Presse, 2013 (ISBN 978-2897051570)
- Bernard Allaire, "Jacques Cartier" et "J-F de La Rocque de Roberval" dans l'encyclopédie Canadienne, 2015 (online) [archive]
- Biggar, H. P., A Collection of Documents relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval, Ottawa, PAC, 1930.
- Braudel, F. (dir.), Le monde de Jacques Cartier : l'aventure au XVIe siècle, Montréal, Libre-Expression, 1984.
- Bibaud, Michel, Histoire du Canada, sous la domination française, imprimerie Lovell et Gibson, Montréal, 1843, pp. 6, 33–35, 39–50, 58
- Morel, Emile, Jean-François de la Roque, Seigneur de Roberval, vice-roi du Canada, Paris, Leroux, 1893 (lire en ligne) [archive]
- Collard, Jean-Claude, Roberval petit roi du Vimeu - Premier vice-roi du Canada, éditions La vague verte, 2008 (ISBN 978-2356370013)
- Laverdière, Camil, Le sieur de Roberval, Chicoutimi, les Éditions JCL. 2005, 160 pages. (ISBN 978-2894313428)
- Thevet, André, Les singularitez de la France Antarctique…, Paris 1558.
- Lestringant, Franck. et Laborie, J-C., Histoire d’André Thevet Angoumoisin de deux voyages par lui faits aux Indes Australes et Occidentales, édition critique par, J-C, Genève, Droz, 2006.
- d'Albret de Navarre, Marguerite, L’Heptaméron, Paris, Boaistuau, (1549), 1558.
- La Roque de Roquebrune, Robert, Roberval et sa colonie canadienne au XVIe siècle, dans Outre-Mers. Revue d'histoire, 1956, no 151, pp. 125–137
- Allaire, (2013), p. 20.