Jean-François Roberval

Infobox Person
name = Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval


caption = Painting of de La Rocque de Roberval by Jean Clouet, Chateau de Chantilly, France
birth_date = c. 1500
birth_place = near Carcassone, France
death_date = 1560
death_place = Paris, France
other_names = Roberval
known_for = First lieutenant general of French Canada
occupation = French nobleman and pirate

Jean-François de La Roque de Roberval (c. 1500 – 1560) was the first lieutenant general of French Canada and a pirate.

Military career

Roberval was born in in Carcassonne, southern France.

As a young nobleman, Roberval joined the French army in the Italian campaigns. He quickly developed a lifelong friendship with the future King Francis. In addition to soldiering together they hunted together on the Roberval estates. On return from the wars, he led the expensive life of a courtier, and borrowed heavily on his estates. This was a debt that would encourage his adventurism throughout his life. [ [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~louislarocque/roberven.htm "Jean-François de LaRocque de Roberval" by Robert La Roque de Roquebrune] ;]

Canada

On January 15, 1541, King Francis I of France gave Roberval a commission to settle the province of Canada and provide for the spread of the "Holy Catholic faith". The King provided some funds for the expedition of 1541 and provided Roberval with three ships, the "Valentine", the "Anne" and the "Lechefraye". Jacques Cartier, to whom the King had first given this same commission, became hired as no more than a pilot. In fact, Roberval was not ready to go and Cartier was allowed by Roberval to make without him the initial sortie with 500 colonists, in May 1541. During the summer, not asking for authorization from their Indian hosts, Cartier and his many workmen built, upstream from "Stadaconé", two fortified habitations (one at the River level, the other over the hill aside), in the place that Cartier named "Charlesbourg-Royal" (now "Cap-Rouge").

In order to raise additional funds Roberval went pirating with Bidoux de Lartigue taking several English merchant ships. Despite his pleasure at tweaking the English, Francis I diplomatically kept the peace and rebuked de Roberval. ["La Roque de Roberval" "Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Volume I, 1000 - 1700" University of Toronto Press, Toronto, p. 423;] [de La Roncière, Charles Germaine Marie Bourel (1909) "Histoire de la Marine Française" Plon-Nourrit; p. 477;]

Roberval with his three ships and 200 colonists set sail for Newfoundland in April 1542, arriving June 8. Cartier was impatient to show the king the believed "gold and diamonds" he had found (which were nothing more than quartz and some iron pyrites) and, despite Roberval willing, he promptly left for France with his military detachment and some discouraged colonists. Having some good maps from Cartier, the Roberval team sailed easily up the "Grande Rivière de Canada", to the same place where the forts were constructed, and abandoned by Cartier that June, the place which Roberval renamed "France-Roy". En route, he abandoned his near-relative Marguerite de La Rocque with her lover on the "Isle of Demons", off the coast of Quebec, as punishment for their affair. The young man, their servant and baby died, but Marguerite survived to be rescued by fishermen and returned to France.

The Roberval settlement lasted less than one year due to the severe winter, scurvy, and attacks by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, who had been displeased with the French in the recent past (since or before 1534). In 1543 a relief expedition arrived from France and Roberval decided to repatriate his little colony to France.

Pirating

Taking his disappointment at the failed Canadian venture and his ships, Roberval again went a pirating (privateering), this time in the Caribbean against Spanish ships and towns, since France and Spain were at war. Known to the Spanish as Roberto Baal, [Gerassi-Navarro, Nina (1999) "Pirate Novels: Fictions of Nation Building in Spanish America" Duke University Press, Durham, p. 22, discussing real pirates;] in 1543 he sacked Rancherias and Santa Marta, followed by an attack in 1544 on Cartagena de Indias. [cite book|last= Lane|first=Kris E. |year=1998|title=Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|location=Armonk|isbn=0765602571] In 1546 ships under his command attacked Baracoa and Havana. In 1547 he retired from pirating, and subsequently King Henry II appointed Roberval as the Royal Superintendent of Mines. Despite all of these ventures and royal favor he did not manage to reconstitute his fortune. By 1555, his goods were fully mortgaged and the Château de Roberval was threatened with seizure.

Religion

Roberval was an early convert to Calvinism. In 1535 he escaped hanging as a Protestant only by the intervention of the King. In his management of the Canadian expedition he showed a very Calvinistic severity. [Thevet, André et al. (1986) "André Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth-Century View" McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston, Ontario, p. 121] One night in Paris in 1560 as he was coming out of a Calvinist meeting, Roberval, along with his fellow Protestants, was attacked by a Catholic mob and killed. The remains of his fortune passed to his creditors, and the Château de Roberval was repurchased by his nephew Louis de Madaillan.

References and notes

:"This article is based in part on material from the French Wikipedia".

External links

* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=396 Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"] ;
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~louislarocque/roberven.htm "Jean-François de LaRocque de Roberval" by Robert La Roque de Roquebrune] ;
* [http://aguadadepasajeros.bravepages.com/cubahistoria/piratas_corsarios_cuba.htm "Piratas y Corsarios en Cuba" ] in Spanish;
* [http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/fiatheme2a.html Attempts at Colonization in the 16th Century" ] .