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Justice
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Researching the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of
Canada The Administration Of Justice At The Fortress Of Louisbourg (1713-1758)
Léon Fautoux FAUTOUX, LÉON, merchant; b. in Bayonne, France, date unknown, to Georges Fautoux and Marie Meyracq (Mayrac); m. on 16 Jan. 1738 in Louisbourg, Ile Royale (Cape Breton Island), Marie-Madeleine Lartigue, daughter of Joseph LARTIGUE; three of their children survived infancy; d. 14 Sept. 1748. It was perhaps the long-standing interest of the town of Bayonne in the Atlantic fishery that brought Léon Fautoux to Louisbourg, where he was engaged in commerce as early as 1730. Fautoux was a commission agent, the typical merchant on an entrepôt such as Louisbourg, handling the cargoes of others and even buying and selling ships for them. The commission agent aspired to build up his capital and one day trade on his own account. Fautoux's alliance by marriage with an important local family in 1738 indicates that he had by then become a merchant of some consequence. This indication is confirmed by his establishing relations in November with Robert Dugard et Cie of Rouen, the firm which had placed François HAVY in Quebec in 1732. Although it was not Fautoux's only business, he acted as a commission agent for his Rouen correspondents for the next six years. He received 13 major company cargoes and provided as many returns, their total value being more than 500,000 livres. French and Canadian cargoes supplied the local market; Canadian primary products together with the region's dried cod were exchanged for Caribbean cargoes. The company's trade at Louisbourg ended with the town's capture by New England forces in 1745 [see PEPPERRELL]. In an agreement signed at Rouen on 13 November the company gave a small settlement in money and merchandise to Fautoux, then a refugee in France, and abandoned to him all their debts at Louisbourg. "I would be delighted if he could get something out of it," wrote one member. "This man is worthy of pity." Fautoux returned to Ile Royale where he is said to have been killed by the explosion of a bomb while he was on militia duty. His widow was a merchant at Louisbourg until its second capture by British forces in 1758. The family fortune twice destroyed, she and her daughter retires to France and were given pensions by the crown. [DALE MIQUELON] [[Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 1741-1770 , Volume 3 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1974), p. 216)] ... A much more humiliating incident for administrative Louisbourg occurred in the winter of 1732 when Lambert Degrances, a nephew of commissaire ordonnateur De Mézy and an artillery officer, became involved in a bitter dispute over a game of faro with Léon Fautoux, secretary to the governor for the previous five years. while playing faro, Degrances hit Fautoux in the stomach with a candlestick. Fautoux, who had been waiting for his cards from the bank, retaliated by lunging at Degrances with a cane. other military officers intervened and separated the two combatants ... Unfortunately for Governor St. Ovide and De Mézy, this incident was reported to the Minister of the Marine who demanded an investigation of the dispute. In his explanation St. Ovide did not condemn either man for gambling but he forbade Fautoux to leave his house to prevent any further disputes with Degrances. St. Ovide also ordered Fautoux to leave for France on the next available vessel. Obviously, St. Ovide had been forced to punish Fautoux for in his letter to the minister the governor defended his secretary as being a competent official who had his "entire confidence". Moreover, since his arrival in the colony, he had not been involved in a dispute with anyone. Degrances, on the other hand, had started the dispute, according to St. Ovide and the governor described him as a "very bad head" ... However, since Fautoux was merely a secretary to the governor and occupied a position of lesser social status than Degrances, an officer in the garrison, Fautoux was punished more severely. The dispute between Fautoux and Degrances must have been the talk of the town and it became a test case for the king's laws and rules of conduct for the colony. Were the king's ordinances to be flaunted and defied by a civil servant and an artillery officer? Since the incident had become a matter of public debate and formal discussion between the minister and his governor, remedial action had to be taken. An example had to be set for the ordinary citizen. Léon Fautoux was subsequently dismissed from his position as secretary and the minister chastized the governor, emphasizing that if he had taken measures to prevent the game of faro, that the affair would not have occurred and he reminded St. Ovide to hold a firm hand by punishing offences against the ordinance forbidding games of chance ... [Kenneth Donovan, Debauchery and Libertinage: Games, Pastimes, and Popular Activities in Eighteenth Century Louisbourg: A Manual for Interpretation at the Fortress of Louisbourg, Unpublished Report, H F 76 (Fortress of Louisbourg, June 1983), pp. 26-27] |
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