Colonizing the Saguenay seemed a good idea.
The land was lush. Resources were plentiful. There was abundant wildlife and water.
Naturally, I wasn’t the only person interested in staking a claim to the Saguenay. So, too, did Henry the Navigator and Suleiman the Magnificent.
They mocked my explorer, Sir Henry Sinclair, as he moved across the countryside in search of treasure to help me build my growing colony.
I had an ally in this uncharted wildnerness, too — Queen Isabella of Spain.
My colony was built near the shores of a vast bay. I discovered, though scouting, that Henry’s colony was situated similarly on the opposite shore. Suileman was further south, past a series of lakes.
I decided on a strategy early in dealing with the hostile colonies in this land. Henry first, then Suleiman. If I could take out Henry’s colony, I could build a fort there, and that would place Suleiman’s colony between my fort and Isabella’s colony. Thus, I could crush Suileman as though he were in a vice grip.
Suleiman, surprisingly, was the first to strike. He sent cavalry to raid the outskirts of my colony. They rode hard and fast to the north, skirted the edge of the bay, and then attacked my lumber and mining parties to the northeast of my colony’s center. I lost several colonists, but with the army I was building to attack Henry, there was little difficulty in putting down Suleiman’s attack.
I built a transport vessel — a galleon — to transport my army. I had a force of ten grenadiers and fifteen musketeers. I would land these forces on the shoreline to the northeast of Henry’s colony, and then sweep to the east, catching Henry’s colony from the eastern side.
At the same time, I trained more troops for a column to attack overland, skirting the southern edge of the bay, to catch the western edge of Henry’s colony. The strategy here was simple; catch Henry from the east, pull his forces to the east, leaving his west undefended, making it easy pickings.
This strategy was largely a success.
The landing was effected. The army was put on the move. The reinforcements were put on the move. The first army attacked Henry’s colony exactly as I had planned. But Henry offered surprisingly little resistance. Oh, I incurred heavy casualties before my reinforcements arrived, but Henry didn’t seem to be concerned with a rampaging army loose in his colony. Were the tables turned, I would have thrown everything I had into the fray.
Perhaps, I decided, Henry had nothing to throw into the fray.
Hardly.
Henry had built a fort, roughly between my colony and Isabella’s. And while he put no effort into defending his own colony, he did launch an attack on Isabella’s. It wasn’t a major attack, and Isabella easily put it down. Still, the existence of the fort, I knew, could be problematical. I was going to have to deal with that.
Falconets!
I had control of the native trade route, and it was bringing me a great deal of money. I quickly built ten falconets, and laid siege to Henry’s fort. Henry’s fort crumbled to the ground.
I moved all of my forces to the south — the falconets, the musketeers, the grenadiers, and the Cree riflemen I had acquired from an allied native tribe. I positioned these forces in between Isabella’s village and Suleiman’s, and once reinforcements of Scotch Highlanders and Hessian Jaegers had arrived and joined the army, I marched my forces into Suleiman’s colony — and victory.
In the end, Suleiman offered his surrender. By that point, however, I had already razed his colony to the ground.
The Sageunay was mine!