The Fighting Governor : A Chronicle of Frontenac

lbert it had assumed the form of an organized province. [Footnote: See The Great Intendant in this Series.] Though its inhabitants numbered less than seven thousand, the institutions under

(1226-70) had turned the scale in favour of the crown. There were still to be many rebellions-the strife of Burgundians and Armagnacs in the fifteenth century, the Wars of the League in the sixteenth century, the cabal of the Fronde in the seventeenth century-but the great issue had been settled in th

ily lost their territorial independence and fell at last to the condition of courtiers. Simultaneously the duchies or counties were changed into provinces, each with a noble for its governor-but a noble who was a courtier, holding his commission from the king and dependent upon the favour of the king. Side by side with the governor stood the intendant, even more a king's man than the governor himself. So jealously did the Bourbons guard their despotism that the crown would not place wide authority in the hands of an

be. Yet by its very nature the monarchy could not exist without the nobles, from whose ranks the sovereign drew his attendants, friends, and lieutenants. Versailles

a system so uncompromisingly despotic was the loss of all local initiative. Nothing in the faintest degree resembling the New England town-meeting ever existed in New France. Louis XIV objected to public gatherings of his people, even for the most innocent purposes. The

t once suggested itself as a fit pattern. Canada, like Normandy, had the governor and the intendant for h

nt for funds, and the intendant might object that the plans of the governor were unduly extravagant. Worse still, the commissions under which both held office were often contradictory. More than three thousand miles separated Quebec from Versailles, and for many months governor and

d his post for thirteen years (1761- 74), and effected improvements which led Louis XVI to appoint him comptroller-general of the Kingdom.] Canada also had her Talon, whose efforts had transformed the colony during the seven years which preceded Frontenac's arrival. The fatal weakness was scanty population. This Talon saw with perfect clearness,

ancois de Laval de Montmorency had been in the colony since 1659. His place in history is due in large part to his strong, intense personality, but this must not be permitted to obscu

ue field of action was the wilderness. Having the red man rather than the settler as their charge, they became immersed, and perhaps preoccupied, in their heroic work. Thus the erection of parishes was delayed. More than one historian has upbraided Laval for thinking so much of the mission that he neglected the spiritual needs of the colonists. However this may be, the colony owed much to the missionaries-particularly to the Jesuits. It is no exaggeration to say that the Society of Jesus had been among the strongest forces which stood between New Fra

ing the heathen. He desired that more attention should be paid to the creation of parishes for the benefit of the col

ant. This was the triumvirate of dignitaries. Primarily each represented a different interest-war, business, religion. But they w

by them. In 1675 the king raised the number of councillors to ten, thus diluting the authority which each possessed, and thenceforth made the appointments himself. Thus during the greater part of Frontenac's regime the governor, the bishop, and the intendant

him fell the task of sifting the petitions and determining which should be presented. Although there were local judges at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, the Council had jurisdiction over all important cases, whether criminal or civil. In the sphere of commerce its powers were equally complete and minute. It told merchants what profits the

ve approved, but which he was powerless to prevent. His theoretical supremacy was thus limited by the unyielding facts of geography. And a better illustration is found in the operation of the seigneurial system upon which Canadian society was based. In France a belated feudalism still held the common man in its grip, and in Canada the forms of feudalism were at least partially established. Yet the Canadian habitant lived in a very different atmosphere from that breathed by the Norman peasant. The Canadian seigneur had an abundance

inged the banks of its tributary, the Richelieu. This was the zone of cultivation, in which log-houses yielded, after a time, to white-washed cottages. But above the Sault St Louis all was wilderness, whether one ascended the St Lawrence or turned at Ile Perrot into the Lake of Two Mountains and the Ottawa. For young and daring souls the fores

iked to know where his subjects were at every hour of the day and night. A Frenchman at Michilimackinac, [Footnote: The most important of the French posts in the western portion of the Great Lakes, situated on the strait which unites Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. It was here that Saint-Lusson and Perrot took possession of the West in the name of France (June 1671). See The Great Intendant, pp. 115-16.] unless he were a missionary

out in relief the ancestral heroism of the French race. The grant of seigneurial rights did not imply that the recipient had been a noble in France. The earliest seigneur, Louis Hebert, was a Parisian apothecary, and many of the Canadian gentry were sprung from the middle class. There was nothing to induce the dukes, the counts, or even the barons of France to settle on the soil of Canada. The governor was a noble, but he lived at the Chateau St

e and tenacity of the French Canadian are attested by what he endured throughout the years when he was fighting for his foothold. And if he suffered,

Cambridge, Mass., in 1638.] At this point the contrast between New France and New England discloses conflicting ideals of faith and duty. In later years the problem of knowledge assumed larger proportions, but during the period of Frontenac the chief need of Canada was hero