François Bigot
François Bigot was a French government official. He served as the Financial Commissary on Île Royale, commissary general of the ill-fated Duc d'Anville expedition and finally as the Intendant of New France. He was the last official ever to hold the last position, losing it on the occasion of the conquest of 1760. He was subsequently accused of corruption and put on trial in France, and upon conviction was thrown into the Bastille for eleven months. Upon his release, Bigot was further sentenced to lifelong banishment. However, shortly after the judgement was made, Bigot escaped to Switzerland where he would live until his dying day.
Early life
Bigot was born in Bordeaux into a family that had attained nobility. He was the son of Louis-Amable Bigot, Conseilleur du Roi, Counsellor to the Parliament at Bordeaux and Receiver General to the King; by his wife, Marguerite de Lombard, daughter of Joseph de Lombard, Baron du Cubzagués, Commissioner of the Marine at Guyenne and a representative of an old and powerful Guyenne family. His paternal grandfather had become rich from his commercial activities; his father had a successful legal career and held several important government positions. Bigot was to receive, as would befit a gentleman's son, "a good education which included legal studies." Nothing is known for certain of Bigot's education, but historians believed he took a few courses in law at the Faculté de Droit in Bordeaux.In 1723, at the age of twenty, when legal studies were normally completed, he used his influence within the French Royal Court to join "the commissary of the marine" as a chief scrivener. He served as a scrivener until 1728, when he was made a commissary. He became chief scrivener in 1729, and resident commissary of the Navy in Rochefort in 1732 at the age of 29. Rochefort was a port that saw many fleets kitted out and made ready for their voyages to the Americas. This would be the last post that Bigot would hold in France for some time.
As a young man in France, Bigot had an inordinate love for the gaming tables. The pressure he experienced from both his superiors and his creditors led him to accept a post as the financial commissary of the promising Acadian stronghold, Louisbourg. Another reason why he decided to accept this position, was because the Secretary of State of the Navy, the Count of Maurepas, had explained to him that "an intendancy in the ports of France cannot be expected if one has not served in the colonies." This appointment, about which he was not too happy, became effective on 1 May 1739. He arrived at Louisbourg on the 9 September having come out on the same ship as the newly appointed governor, Isaac-Louis de Forant.
Louisbourg
Bigot wanted to impress his superiors in France. Thus, he began to attend to every aspect of the commissary's duties. He reorganized the bookkeeping and personally supervised operations in detail. In addition, Bigot avoided the conflicts with the governor that had marked the administrations of his predecessors.After Forant died in May 1740, Bigot befriended François Du Pont Duvivier and Louis Du Pont Duchambon, who were members of the pre-eminent military family in the colony. This friendship was marked by free use of patronage to the Du Pont family, who were beneficiaries of much of it. Payouts, sometimes amounting to thousands of livres, were made to this one family for things such as providing Bigot with boats to carry him about the island, even though the financial commissary had already been granted 1,200 livres annually to defray his transportation costs. This money came at the Crown's expense. Bigot was known for stealing money from the coffers of New France, as well as hiring out the King's workers and pocketing the money.
By 1744, Bigot was an active central figure in the paying business of outfitting and supplying privateers. Preying on the ships of New England was an occupation that involved any number of Frenchmen located at Louisbourg, from the highest in the administration to the lowest of deck hands. In this business, Bigot, as it happened, was a keen supporter of the Du Pont brothers. For example, when Bigot was in partnership with Duvivier and Duquesnel and with Duvivier's brother Michel Du Pont de Gourville, "he held a quarter interest in the Saint-Charles, the total cost of which was 8,850 livres, and Bigot obtained another quarter interest in a larger vessel, the Brador, acquired and fitted out for 34,590 livres."
Also in 1744, Bigot found himself dealing with a mutiny at the Louisbourg garrison. The mutiny was quelled, apparently peacefully, with an amnesty. Bigot was not in charge of dealing with the uprising, and indeed it is unclear how he was involved, but as the official who controlled the finances, it seems likely that his rôle in ending the crisis was a key one.
Maintaining supply links was a problem that Bigot, as financial commissary, had to deal with. However, supply had been a persistent problem for his predecessor, Le Normant. Moreover, between 1741 and 1743, Canada endured three consecutive crop failures. Sometimes supplies were also threatened by various events in Europe and North America. Bigot had no more success in solving the problems than Le Normant. Nevertheless, Intendant Gilles Hocquart asked Bigot for help. Although it was unorthodox, Bigot had no compunction about sending an agent, François du Pont Duvivier, to New England to secure fish, other foodstuffs and other goods from suppliers there when supplies from France or other French possessions seemed unreliable. Bigot was known for keeping the food supply at Louisbourg well stocked, even if he was dealing with France's foes. Indeed, the supply was threatened at one point with the outbreak of hostilities. New England was, of course, still ruled by the British in those days. When the crisis in Québec finally died down, Bigot ended up having enough food and fish to last the colony right through the winter.
As a hedge against the threat of further crop failures, Bigot considered a variety of measures. In 1739, there was a proposal to build a warehouse that would store extra food in case of these crop failures. Bigot brought it up again a few years later. Furthermore, he also wanted to practise agriculture in the areas of Île Royale that were potentially suitable, or on Île Saint-Jean, where the land appeared to him to be fertile. Nevertheless, Bigot never actually did find a permanent solution to this problem. Yet, the population never went hungry.
Before the Siege of Louisbourg, Bigot warned Maurepas that an attack by the British was forthcoming. His warning was quite justifiable, for in April 1745, warships under Commodore Peter Warren instituted a blockade against Louisbourg. On 11 May 1745, American provincial troops commanded by William Pepperrell landed unopposed at Pointe Platte, west of Louisbourg. Unfortunately, on 26 May 1745, a unanimous decision was made at the war council that capitulation was the only option. Bigot returned to France on the Launceston, arriving at Belle-Île on 15 July 1745.
Duc d'Anville expedition
After Louisbourg surrendered to the British, François Bigot returned to France only to find his hopes for a posting there dashed. It had been decided that Louisbourg along with the rest of Acadia was to be recaptured by a large expedition commanded by the duc d'Anville. Bigot was appointed commissary general for what became known as the Duc d'Anville expedition and sent to Rochefort to look after the garrison, and to outfit the invasion force destined, it was hoped, to win back some lost glory. This would be no easy task. He had to prepare around 1,100,000 rations of food for the mission. Bigot sailed with the expedition when it finally departed on 22 June 1746. The expedition was beset by storms and lost ships to British capture before it arrived at Chebucto, later to become Halifax, Nova Scotia. Illness devastated the soldiers and sailors of the fleet at Chebucto. The duc d'Anville died and there were rapid changes in command. Louisbourg could not be retaken and only a meagre and unsuccessful siege of Annapolis Royal was mounted. Bigot watched as the whole undertaking that he had prepared with such effort unravelled. He, unlike many others, escaped from it with his life, if not all his belongings, back to France, but not before the ship that he was sailing on was wrecked on a shoal off Port-Louis.This latest débâcle had its attendant consequences in France, and although Bigot was never actually prosecuted for any perceived failing on his part, he did spend the better part of the next two years endlessly writing reports about the failures. He came through the ordeal with his reputation intact, however.
Intendant of New France
Bigot was eventually sent to New France on 26 August 1748 to become the Intendant, much as it displeased him, for he had no wish to take up such an office. As the Intendant of New France, Bigot's tasks were to direct trade, finance, industry, food supplies, prices, policing, and other matters. His fundamental duty was to assist the Governor in the tasks of imperial expansion. Bigot showed much greater ability at one of the Intendant's traditional tasks, that of maintaining food supplies. Although his record was stained by a greedy attention to personal profit, Bigot fed the forces and the populace better than might have been expected in the hungry winters of 1751–1752, 1756–1757, and 1757–1758.The growing need to control the food supply was reflected in Bigot's many regulations for the distribution and pricing of grain, flour, and bread. History shows that "authorities managing food supplies, however vigorously and successfully, are usually seen as corrupt, arrogant, and ineffectual." Hence, the word "Tyranny" springs to mind when reading the list of Bigot's decrees such as "directing people's movements and behaviour in detail, prescribing severe punishments for offenders, and relying in criminal cases on the stocks, the gibbet, the execution block and the tortures of the boot." Nevertheless, tyranny of this type was standard French practice.
Furthermore, many of Bigot's laws reflected a paternal effort to save the people of an unsettled frontier society from their own foolishness and lack of civic sense. Even more than previous intendants, he tried to prevent people from firing guns in towns, fighting in church doorways, dumping rubbish in streets and harbours and letting their livestock wander about unattended in the streets. He paved and maintained the streets of Québec with the proceeds of a tax of 30 or 40 livres a year on tavern-keepers, and tried to regulate traffic. Indeed, his authoritarian zeal went so far that Rouillé and other ministers advised him "to leave more of the policing work to the courts." But it was not in Bigot's nature to leave things to courts for he was, after all, an 18th-century naval officer attempting to run the colony as he might have run the naval installations at Brest or Rochefort, where he would rather have been.
Amid accusations of fraud and favouritism, Bigot was recalled to France in 1754 to answer the charges. The next year, however, he was sent back to New France. For François Bigot, a posting to Québec was a kind of exile like a posting to any other remote bastion of the empire and he had to endure it for 12 years. Thus, it is surprising how well he performed his job as the Intendant of New France.
In Canada he owned 3 slaves; 2 from First Nations and 1 from Africa.