I. BUILDING A NEW HOME
An de Grāce 1492. In the large Atlantic harbour of La Rochelle, an expedition led by the great explorer Jacques Cartier set sail to the West. Commissionned and blessed by King Charles VIII and with the protection of the port's nobility, the expedition consisted of only one caravel loaded with adventurous pioneers and soldiers, many of them eager to leave and settle for a new life, all of them given mission to explore the seas and find new land to colonise, in the name of God and for the glory of France.
Land had been sighted in the western distances of the Ocean, or so it was said. Time was bringing many changes to the known world : Spain was freed from the Moor's emprise, Portuguese explorers begun mapping the African coasts, Türks were an ever-growing menace for the weakened Byzantium empire, and in France war against England was mostly over. People felt a new era was about to come, and both the King of France and La Rochelle's nobility wanted a better place in it. Thus giving support to such a expedition made sense ; costs were low and even if failure was likely, potential benefits were great.
But in the middle of the Atlantic such political issues seemed distant. Much closer were the storms and the difficulties of the travel, as well as keeping the men calm. For months and months they travelled without seeing land, and more and more they questioned the sanity of such a journey. After all, what they knew about these "new land sightings" was but hearsays and rumors, and as the days passed it seemed these rumors were based on nothing. The sailors were concerned about their lives and felt they were sent to die in an empty sea, and every day it took all the captain's diplomacy skills and intimidation to keep his men away from mutiny.
And after many months spent at sea, it was a relief for everyone to finally find land.
At first what they found was nothing more than small islands. Still, the crew was delighted to land, and that night they feasted with was was left of the wine provisions, as well as fruits and the turtles and the colorful birds they could catch and roast. The ship's officers decided to name that new found land Saint Louis in honor of the saint patron of their motherland.
With everybody's spirits cheered up again, they set sail again and mapped many island's coasts, until they found a bigger, more hospitable part of land, that looked more like a continent. And there they settled, founding the first city of Saint-Louis, which they named Charleroi after their King of the House of Valois. There was lots of woods around, with game and unknown animals in those forests, and an access to the sea. Pionners begun clearing the forests in order to plow fields and soldiers built the houses and the town hall of the nascent city.
Very soon, it appeared the French were not alone in these lands. Along with the strange animals, strange men appeared, speaking in unknown tongues, and waving their arms happily. Fortunately first contact was peaceful - it seemed Charleroi was built between the land of two different tribes. The first ones named themselves "Iroquois", the second "Cherokees". Ties were built with the two people of the new land, and they both introduced to europeans a strange plant that they smoked in long pipes. Tobacco was it's name, and the people of Charleroi soon began crafting tobacco cigars to bring back to La Rochelle. Along with the hides of the strange animals and the natives' offerings, this would create quite an interest back in France !
Charleroi and the natives' villages :
Inside Charleroi :
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Topic: Let's discover the New World - Sid Meier's Colonization (Read 8678 times)