The Heroine of Vercheres


Presumably there wasn't room on the pedestal for all the defenders of the fort*
Presumably there wasn't room on the pedestal for all the defenders of the fort

I'm not sure that getting rid of the upper class was always a good idea, for those born into that privileged group do seem to have the knack of taking command and keeping their heads in a crisis - it has been much complained about. Certainly this was the case with 14-year old Madeleine de Vercheres when an Iroquois raiding party mounted a surprise attack on the fort her father had built. Her parents were away and the two soldiers left to man the fort - which had big holes in its walls - appeared more eager to blow themselves up to avoid torture at the hands of the Red Indians than to stand and fight.

It was at this moment of crisis when breeding told. The soldiers and a couple of women who had seen their husbands murdered got the rough side of her tongue and within moments the gates were shut and barred, the holes in the fort walls were plugged and the single canon was blazing away at the attacking savages, causing them to retreat in some disorder.

As if that wasn't enough, the doughty damsel kept it up for eight days until relief arrived!

The only quibble is that she wasn't alone in the fort, as the French myth-makers try to claim. She had a minimum of eight other people in there with her, even if hers was the will that stirred them all to action.