But The Brave Captain Testu, The Saviour Of Champlain And Of Quebec - What
Became Of Him?
Champlain has done him the honour of naming him; here the
matter ended.
Neither monument, nor poem, nor page of history in his
honour; nothing was done in the way of commemorating his devotion. As in
the instance of the illustrious man, whose life he had saved, his grave is
unknown. According to the Abbe Tanguay, none of his posterity exist at
this day.
During the siege of 1759, we notice in Panet's Journal, "that the Lower
Town was a complete mass of smoking ruins; on the 8th August, it was
a burning heap (braisier). Wolfe and Saunders' bombshells had found
their way even to the under-ground vaults. This epoch became disastrous to
many Quebecers." The English threw bombs (pots a feu) on the Lower
Town, of which, says Mr. Panet, "one fell on my house, one on the houses
in the Market place, and the last in Champlain street. The fire burst out
simultaneously, in three different directions; it was in vain to attempt
to cut off or extinguish the fire at my residence; a gale was blowing from
the north-east, and the Lower Town was soon nothing less than a blazing
mass. Beginning at my house, that of M. Desery, that of M. Maillou, Sault-
au-Matelot street, the whole of the Lower Town and all the quarter Cul-
de-Sac up to the property of Sieur Voyer, which was spared, and in
short up to the house of the said Voyer, the whole was devastated by fire.
Seven vaults [96] had been rent to pieces or burned:
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