D’IBERVILLE, PIERRELEMOYNE
d’Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne
(July 20, 1661–July 9, 1706)
French Naval Officer; Explorer
D
’Iberville was an
outstandingly suc-
cessful military
leader of New France
with an impressive re-
cord against numerous
English forts and settle-
ments. He gained even
greater renown for ex-
ploring the Mississippi
River and for founding
the colony of Louisiana.
Pierre Le Moyne
d’Iberville was born in
Ville-Marie (Montreal) on
July 20, 1661, one of 11
brothers and two sisters.
His father, Charles Le
Moyne de Longueuil,
came to Canada as an in-
dentured servant to the
Jesuits, worked hard as a
merchant and Indian
translator, and died in
1685 one of the province’s richest men. Pierre
acquired the title d’Iberville through his fa-
ther’s practice of granting names from regions
surrounding his native Dieppe in France.
D’Iberville joined the French navy in 1675 at
age 14 and acquitted himself well. In 1683,
Governor-General Le Febvre de La Barre
chose him to carry royal dispatches back to
France, a singular honor for such a young
man. His military reputation commenced in
1686, when he was selected to accompany the
Chevalier Pierre de Troyes on an expedition
against English settlements dotting James
Bay. In a series of small but savage encoun-
ters, wherein quarter was neither asked for
nor granted, he helped orchestrate the cap-
tures of Moose Fort and Charles Fort, and he
successfully cut out the trading vessel Craven
with a handful of determined followers.
Troyes was so impressed
by his youthful subordi-
nate that he appointed
d’Iberville commander of
the captured installations.
When promised rein-
forcements failed to ar-
rive the following spring,
d’Iberville sailed directly
to France and appealed
for help. Consequently, he
secured command of the
warship Soleil d’Afrique
and returned for the pro-
tection of French inter-
ests along James Bay. He
was subsequently block-
aded there by three En-
glish warships of greater
size, but d’Iberville suc-
cessfully evaded capture
over the next few months.
Moreover, he constantly
interfered with the En-
glish crews’ ability to hunt for fresh food and
awaited the inevitable onset of scurvy to
occur. Once this dehabilitating malady had
weakened the English crews, d’Iberville at-
tacked and captured all three vessels. He then
returned to Quebec in triumph on October 28,
1688, with prisoners and booty in tow.
In 1688, King William’s War between
Britain and France erupted and the governor-
general of New France, Comte de Fron-
tenac, Louis de Buade, ordered several of-
fensive actions against nearby English
settlements. D’Iberville and several of his
brothers then accompanied the French and
Indian raid against Corlaer (now Schenec-
tady), New York. On the night of February 18,
1689, he participated in the destruction of that
town and the massacre of many inhabitants.
He then returned to Hudson Bay to assumePierre Le Moyne d’Iberville
National Archives of Canada