Article

Joseph-François Hertel de La Fresnière

Published Online January 29, 2008

Last Edited October 27, 2014

Joseph-François Hertel de La Fresnière, soldier (bap at Trois-Rivières, New France 3 July 1642; buried at Boucherville, New France 22 May 1722). As a youth, he was captured and adopted by the Iroquois (1661), escaped, and took part in retaliatory raids, accompanying FRONTENAC to Lake Ontario (1673).

Hertel de La Fresnière, Joseph-François

Joseph-François Hertel de La Fresnière, soldier (bap at Trois-Rivières, New France 3 July 1642; buried at Boucherville, New France 22 May 1722). As a youth, he was captured and adopted by the Iroquois (1661), escaped, and took part in retaliatory raids, accompanying FRONTENAC to Lake Ontario (1673). Though he was fined and briefly jailed for illegal fur-trading activities, his knowledge of Indian languages and warfare was valuable. Under Frontenac's orders, Hertel led numerous expeditions using the native method of rapid movement and ambush, including a devastating raid on the New England town of Salmon Falls in which the French claimed 43 Englishmen were killed. Hertel was called "the Hero," the "terror of the English." He commanded FORT FRONTENAC 1709-12 and, by marriage with Marguerite de Thavenet, inherited the Chambly seigneury. After long delays owing to his humble birth, he was granted letters of nobility in 1716.