As “Keeper of the King’s Instruments” for Louis XV, Christophe Chiquelier Jr’s work was endless but no doubt fulfilling. He was a master musical instrument maker, supplier of harpsichords to the Royal Family, and an instrument collector. But for a brief time during his youth, he was a soldier in Louisbourg, the capital of the French colony of Île Royale, known today as Cape Breton Island. 

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1. At 10 o’clock at night on Tuesday April 30th 1799, 85 year old Christophe Chiquelier Jr – the master instrument maker who lived at 57 l’Orangerie Street in Versailles – breathed his last. 

2. Chiquelier died unceremoniously at the city hospice with – we presume – his closest relatives by his side. Under normal circumstances, the town and palace of Versailles would have received the news of his death with great mourning, seeing as Chiquelier had been a servant of the Royal Family. As “Keeper of the King’s Instruments”, Chiquelier had spent over 30 years of his life ensuring that the music performed for King Louis XV was of an excellence befitting a monarch. But now that France was a republic and had done away with their monarchy, no such displays of grief were likely for someone who had been so closely linked to the Royal Family. 

3. For much of his career, Chiquelier moved back and forth between Paris and Versailles – with one small exception. As a boy, no more than 14 years old, Chiquelier boarded a ship and crossed the Atlantic Ocean bound for a port in New France called Louisbourg, the capital of the Colony of Île Royale, known today as Cape Breton Island. 

4. This is The Lost World of Cape Breton Island. It’s the aim of this project to reconstruct the lives of people long gone, walk roads that no longer exist, and retell events from Cape Breton’s history through the documentation left behind by those who saw it for themselves. These primary sources tell the stories of a long forgotten landscape – each one a thread in the tapestries of Cape Breton’s vivid and engrossing history. 

5. Christophe Chiquelier Jr was born in Paris, France on the 24th of March 1715 to Christophe Chiquelier Sr and Erementienne Marguerite Gigot. The Chiqueliers were a musical family – young Chiquelier’s father was a master instrument maker and his mother was the daughter of a renowned organist. When Chiquelier Jr was just 13 years old, he began an apprenticeship with master harpsichord maker Jean Claude Goujon in Paris, but after only a year was recruited as a musician in Louisbourg, where he would spend the next three years of his life. After returning to France in 1732, Chiquelier Jr was also registered as a master musical instrument maker, and in 1737 would enter the service of Louis XV and the royal family as “Keeper of the King’s Instruments”. He served in this capacity for 37 years until his eyesight began to fail, but remained available to assist his replacement if ever the need arose. 

6. Historian Kenneth Donovan explains that Christophe Chiquelier Jr, and I quote“served as keeper of the King’s instruments for the chamber, one of three separate sections for music, according to function, at the royal court…. Chiquelier was charged with transporting, maintaining, tuning and repairing all of the instruments in the king’s chamber…The musicians for the chamber, such as Chiquelier, performed indoors and played for the king at dinner and bedtime. In addition to singing the graces for meals, they also provided music for evening entertainments such as symphonies, ballets, comedies and other events.” end of quote. 

7. Chiquelier’s work must have been similar to that of a modern-day concert sound technician – unpacking, setting up, performing sound checks and then repacking everything at the end of the concert and shipping it off to the next location, where the process would repeat. In preparation for a performance at the Palace of Fontainebleau, the meticulous Chiquelier decided to replace all of the quills in the orchestra’s harpsichord, allowing the strings inside to be plucked harder and thereby increasing the instrument’s overall volume. This was no doubt a very time consuming job, but one that would have quickly become part of the routine. Chiquelier also arranged for these instruments to receive necessary repairs. For example, at one of the royal palaces, a worker tripped and dropped the harpsichord he was helping to move, causing serious damage to the instrument. After assessing the damage, there was no choice but to have it packed up and sent all the way back to Paris where it would undergo the needed repairs. In addition to these duties, sometimes instruments needed to be rented to replace those that were on loan to other departments of the King’s musical entourage. Though his work for the King might seem to us to have been endless and demanding, historical documentation attests to Chiquelier’s unique ability to troubleshoot any logistical problem he encountered – after all, the show must go on.

8. Despite his life being reasonably well documented, Chiquelier’s time in Cape Breton is all but forgotten, and it appears that any letters or journals written by him during this time are either no longer in existence or are buried deep in some archive. Still, it is possible to extrapolate what the boy would have experienced in Louisbourg during the 3 years that he lived there. To do so properly, we will rely heavily on research published by Louisbourg historian Kenneth Donovan in the paper entitled “After Midnight We Danced Until Daylight: Music, Song and Dance in Cape Breton 1713-1758”, as well as information from “Les Derniers Musiciens du roi à l’Ancien Régime” by Youri Carbonnier and the work of historian Éva Guillorel.

9. In the year 1729, Great Britain and Spain signed the Treaty of Seville, ending the Anglo-Spanish War. A new town called Baltimore was founded in the British colony of Maryland. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the French explorer who would one day circumnavigate the globe was born in Paris, and Christophe Chiquelier, the boy who would grow up to serve in the presence of the King, Jr arrived in Louisbourg.

10. We can only imagine what the boy, who would have spent much of his time with his father at the Palace of Versailles or in the family workshop in Paris, was thinking as he set foot on Île Royale. Picture a young Chiquelier as he walks through Louisbourg for the first time. The wind blows fog off the water and into the town; a light drizzle begins to fall. Buildings of stone and rough-hewn timber line the muddy streets. He sees that every one of those streets end at a rocky shoreline, and he slowly realizes that Louisbourg is surrounded on 3 sides by the frigid North Atlantic ocean. As he continues walking, he hears people speaking languages he doesn’t understand – Basque, German and Mi’kmaq, while others that are speaking French are speaking with a bizarre twang. A group of soldiers suddenly round the corner and march past him, on their way to some distant sentry post. Meanwhile, down by the busy harbour, the water gently laps against the piers and the hulls of merchant ships. The young Chiquelier must have asked himself “what in the world am I doing here?”

11. Poor first impressions aside, it wouldn’t have taken long for Chiquelier to realize that Louisbourg was actually a boom-town. The population of the town was now about 1,000 – almost double what it had been 10 years before – and every year more and more people were coming to settle permanently. The port, one of the best in North America, received an ever-increasing influx of merchant ships from places like the Caribbean, Canada and New England. Everywhere he looked, he would have seen some kind of construction project – from the town’s defensive walls to the lighthouse on the north side of the harbour. It must have been a strange experience for Chiquelier, who was born in one of the largest and oldest cities in Europe, to watch a town being built before his very eyes, a town which 20 years prior had not existed at all. In these early days, Louisbourg and the cod fishery must have excited people the same way that moving west did in the 1800s. Although that feeling probably didn’t last long once people realized what the conditions were like, Historian J.S.MacLennan once said that life in Louisbourg quote “might be hopeless, but it could not be permanently dull.” 

12. We now ask ourselves the same question that Chiquelier must have asked himself – What in the world was he doing in Louisbourg? Why would someone with a promising career ahead of him suddenly decide to pack up and leave it all behind? And why did it seem like a good idea to send a 14 year old boy halfway across the world all by himself? According to a letter written in 1732, it was Antoine Sabatier, attorney general of Île Royale’s superior council, who arranged for Chiquelier to come to Louisbourg in 1729. While preparing for this episode, no link between Sabatier and the Chiquelier family was found. Interestingly, it seems that although recruited as a musician, Chiquelier came to Louisbourg as a soldier. Perhaps his father had wanted his son to see a little bit of the world before the boy settled down into a demanding profession, or maybe there was some kind of opportunity in Louisbourg for the young boy’s advancement. Perhaps at some point during Chiquelier’s apprenticeship it became apparent the boy wasn’t taking his training seriously and so was sent off to the military in hopes that he would develop the needed discipline. This is, however, only speculation; at this point we really can’t say why young Chiquelier left his apprenticeship and went to Louisbourg. But it wasn’t uncommon in the 18th century for children even younger than Chiquelier to begin working abroad. For example, it was normal for children to be sent to sea so they could be trained as officers, and so the fact that Chiquelier was 14 years old when he arrived in Louisbourg is not particularly unusual, other than the fact that he was below the minimum age requirement to enlist in the military. 

 13. If Chiquelier had come to Louisbourg to see the world, in all likelihood the town and its weather-beaten environs was not what he had had in mind. If, on the other hand, he was sent to Louisbourg to work on his sense of discipline, then this figurative schooling probably began during his first winter in the colony – the winter of 1729/1730. One writer who had spent several years in Louisbourg during the 18th century described what these winters were truly like:

14. “The winter is very severe at Louisbourg, and subject to violent squalls of wind especially from the south. The sky is generally overcast either with heavy rains or with thick fogs…The town then puts on a melancholy aspect, very different from the appearance it makes in the summer, when crowded with sea-faring people…A circumstance that considerably adds to the horror of this season is a meteor seldom observed in other countries, and which the inhabitants distinguish by the name poudrerie or powdering. It is a species of very fine snow, which insinuates itself into every hole and corner, and even into the minutest crevices.”

15. Once the month of December rolled around, Chiquelier would experience firsthand the drudgery of unforgiving North American winters. Offshore icefields now hindered ships from entering the port of Louisbourg, intermittently cutting the town off from the rest of the world until the spring. There was now little to do except simply exist, and much of his time and energy was likely spent just trying to keep warm. On brutally cold winter nights, when the poudrerie slowly accumulated outside, maybe Chiquelier played a little music to help his fellow soldiers pass the time.

16. Chiquelier’s time in Louisbourg no doubt exposed him to what we’d call today different “musical genres”. Gone were the orchestras, ballets and operas that he was used to back home; on Île Royale, a noble violin quickly became the working man’s fiddle. Every morning, the shrill sound of fife and drum announced the start of the town’s work day. Local fishermen as well as those from France and the Basque country would have had a large repertoire of songs that kept their spirits up while working in the extreme conditions of the cod fishery. The ships anchored in Louisbourg harbour would have also incorporated music into their daily rhythms, like for announcing the officers’ mealtimes, when they were weighing anchor and for the crew’s entertainment. The bosun’s whistle communicated specific commands to the sailors when the officers could not be heard over the din of inclement weather or because of cannonfire. Back on shore, many families would relax at the end of the day by singing together, sometimes from a songbook and sometimes by memory, and probably accompanied by an instrument when someone in the family knew how to play.  It’s even possible that at some point during his time in Louisbourg Chiquelier had the opportunity to hear the music of the Mi’kmaq, the original inhabitants of the island and mainland Nova Scotia.

17. One song from Cape Breton Island that is of particular interest to song collectors and historians alike is the traditional Acadian song called “La Complainte de Louisbourg,” or something along the lines of “Louisbourg’s Lament” in English. This song was first recorded by Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton in St Joseph du Moine, on Cape Breton Island in 1944. La Complainte de Louisbourg tells the story of one of Louisbourg’s sieges from the standpoint of the French and is the subject of episodes 2A, B and C of this podcast. But in the time since these episodes were released, historian Eva Guillorel from the University of Rennes in France has uncovered more about the origins of this mysterious Acadian song. Her research has uncovered that “La Complainte de Louisbourg” is likely based on a much older song about Philippsburg, a fortress located in present day Germany that found itself under siege no less than four times during the 17th and 18th centuries. That original song about Philippsburg has been lost, but “La Complainte de Louisbourg” is very likely a variation on the original. It’s not impossible that the original song about Philippsburg was brought to Louisbourg and the colony of Île Royale during the 18th century – and if that is the case, it has remained in Cape Breton ever since. You can learn about how this song might have ended up in the region of Cheticamp – and hear Helen Creighton’s recording of the song – in episode 2C of this podcast. Mrs Guillorel’s research can be found in the spring 2022 edition of Acadiensis.

18. One autumn day, news arrived that the Queen of France had given birth to a son  – Louis Ferdinand, the Dauphin. It had taken a whole year for the news to reach Louisbourg. In a rare display of celebration, the town, which was typically all business, turned its focus to festivities, and no expense was spared. Donovan explains that the celebrations for the birth of the Dauphin included “special meals, distribution of wine to the citizens, a procession through the town, the lighting of lanterns in homes and numerous musket and cannon volleys” and public bonfires. Colonial officials from the governor to the garrison’s officers hosted banquet after banquet. “All of these festivities”, continues Donovan, “included music and dance just as they did in France.” Although we’ll probably never know for sure, it’s tempting to think that Chiquelier might have been brought in to assist with the musical arrangements for these evenings of song and dance. 

19. On behalf of his father, in 1732 the Secretary of the Navy requested that Chiquelier be discharged from the military, and our story of Christophe Chiquelier’s time in Louisbourg comes to an abrupt end. When looking at his life as a whole, his brief time in Louisbourg sits in stark contrast to the opulent and luxurious locations that he would one day find himself in, like the Palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau. Without further context, it’s difficult to harmonize these two parts of his life. After everything was said and done, and Chiquelier, now 17, was aboard the ship that would take him back to France, did he breathe a sigh of relief? Or did he instead take one last glance at Louisbourg before it disappeared over the horizon? In 1745 and 1758 when news trickled through the corridors of Versailles that Louisbourg had been captured, did Chiquelier wonder about the people he once knew there, and what had happened to them? Many questions remain answered.

20. If the date of his death – mentioned at the beginning of this episode – is correct, then Chiquelier lived long enough to witness the French Revolution almost in its entirety. As a lifelong servant of the royal family, what he saw must have truly shaken his world. From his house in Versailles, he would have likely heard the sound of angry mobs storming the Palace on October 5 1789 as they searched for the King and Queen. After those events, Versailles would never again serve as a residence for the royal family. In 1793, Louis XVI, the grandson of Louis XV and his wife Marie-Antoinette were executed. At the time of Chiquelier’s death, the world he once knew – from Louisbourg in Cape Breton to the Palace of Versailles – lay in a state of utter ruin.

21. Today, Chiquelier’s story can only be told using broad strokes, but maybe one day his actual thoughts about Cape Breton Island will be discovered. This absence of information, however, does something very interesting. It shines the spotlight on a subtle truth – that there is still much to uncover about Cape Breton Island’s past and the people who once lived there. [END]