François Bigot
He was subsequently accused of corruption and put on trial in France, and upon conviction was thrown into the Bastille for eleven months.
He was the son of Louis-Amable Bigot (1663-1743), Conseilleur du Roi, Counsellor to the Parliament at Bordeaux and Receiver General to the King; by his wife, Marguerite de Lombard (1682-1766), 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The expedition was beset by storms and lost ships to British capture before it arrived at Chebucto, later to become Halifax, Nova Scotia.
As the Intendant of New France, Bigot's tasks were to direct trade, finance, industry, food supplies, prices, policing, and other matters.
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.
[2] 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.
"[2] 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.
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.
[3] The fraud of which Bigot was accused was not based upon mere forgery or underhanded ways of misusing funds; it was a system of private enterprise on a grand scale with the collaboration of most of the other colonial officials and many army officers and merchants working under the terms of personal understandings or even formal companies.
[2] This sort of corruption was a part of the political culture in Bourbon France, a way of life inevitably promoted by authoritarian governments and not changed until after the French Revolution, when new standards of honesty and new methods of control to enforce them were gradually imposed.
Furthermore, Bigot's system of corruption was merely part of a viceregal court which he set up at Québec and which was essentially modelled on the royal court at Versailles: the magnificent social life with parties and lovely dinners in the midst of a wretchedly poor populace, as well as the preferment, employments, contracts, and business opportunities shared out among these tightly knit circles.
[2] The main difference between Bigot and the previous Canadian intendants was that his opportunities for enrichment were much greater at a time when more money was being spent in Canada than ever before.
As such, while Bigot and dozens of officials and officers in Canada were making private fortunes, "the Canadian populace was suffering from inflated prices, food shortages, and occasional severe famines.
Governor Vaudreuil only released three; against the single (one) field piece that Wolf's artillerymen had managed to disassemble and drag up the escarpment.
François Bigot the Intendant of New France had made a habit of renting the artillery unit's horses out to harvesting farmers and the like, for his personal profit, and thus they were not available to be harnessed in front of the guns and moved with all speed west of Quebec City, to engage the British.
Nevertheless, France, seeking a scapegoat for its defeat in North America, obliged Bigot and his friends in a trial that became known as the "Canada Affair" to make good the sum of money that they had supposedly stolen.
By showing how the corruption and inflation were cause and effect, the Crown came up with an excuse for suspending payments on the Canadian bills of exchange.
