The Acadian Jacques

In 1708 an orphanage in Paris, France, is visited by a government official seeking male volunteers, 12 years old and up, to join the French army and be sent to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, to help defend the fort against a threatened British invasion. Thirteen-year-old Jacques Maillet, protagonist of this true adventure story, immediately joins up. He and his orphaned friends are given military training, and then sent off on ships for the New World.


At the fort, he is sent to live with a French family, the Heberts, who grow to like him and teach him ways to help with their farm labors. At the fort, Jacques meets Paul, a Native American boy his age. The Micmac Indian boy was named Paul by the Roman Catholic missionaries after evangelizing and baptizing him, keeping with the traditions of naming boys after Roman Catholic saints. Paul and Jacques became best of friends after Jacques interest in the ways of Pauls tribe, the Micmacs, who spend the warm months of the year by the Annapolis River near the fort.


In the fall, when the harvest is in, Jacques is given permission to live with Paul and his family in their winter quarters deep in the woods. He learns their language, beliefs and skills. In the spring, he returns to his duties in the fort and the Hebert home. There, his fondness for one of the Hebert daughters, Magdelaine, begins.


He spends another winter with the Micmacs, learning everything he can about survival in the wilderness. The next summer he is back soldiering in the under-manned fort at Port Royal when the British launch a massive attack. The boy soldiers fight valiantly, but after a week of naval bombardment, the fort surrenders.


Conditions of surrender call for the return of the French soldiers, including the boys, to France. By this time, Jacques has fallen in love with his new life and does not want to leave. Disguised as an Indian, he slips away.


Years pass and Jacques slowly grows toward manhood. On a fishing expedition on the Bay of Fundy, his party of a dozen Micmacs is attacked by Kennebec Indians, and only he and Paul survive. When they return to tell the story, the Micmacs seek revenge. They pillage a Kennebec village and Jacques is rewarded with many animal pelts, which he brings back to Port Royal and trades for British goods that are highly desired by the Micmacs. He prospers, and winds up one of the wealthiest men in the area.


Hanging over everyones head is the uncertain fate of the French settlers in Nova Scotia, which has now become British. The British know the French will never make good English subjects and they would like to expel them and take their lands, but they also need the skills and produce of these hardy and experience settlers in order for their colony to exist. A large problem is the Indians: the Micmac hate the British and do not want the Acadians, their old French friends, to leave. The Acadians are caught in a vice and the pressure mounts.


In spite of this, Jacques courts and marries Magdelaine and builds her a fine house on ten acres of land obtained from her father. She becomes interested in his Indian skills and wants to meet the Micmacs. The following spring, the young couple goes to live with Pauls family in their teepee in the woods, where Jacques learns, from Pauls mother, the reason his wife is feeling ill every morning.


Refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to the Crown of England, the French settlers are hounded and persecuted. In spite of the tensions between the French and English, Jacques and Magdelaine, bring thirteen children into the world. Compounding the problems with the English, the Roman Catholic missionaries goad the Indians into bloody attacks on the British.


The British have had enough and opt to remove the French settlers from Nov