The Conquest of New France | Page 4

first
confronted each other in America. The conflict for the New World was
but the continuation of an age-long antagonism in the Old, intensified
now by the savagery of the wilderness and by new dreams of empire.
There was another potent cause of strife which had not existed in the
earlier days. When, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the
antagonists had fought through the interminable Hundred Years' War,
they had been of the same religious faith. Since then, however, England
had become Protestant, while France had remained Catholic. When the
rivals first met on the shores of the New World, colonial America was
still very young. It was in 1607 that the English occupied Virginia. At
the same time the French were securing a foothold in Acadia, now
Nova Scotia. Six years had barely passed when the English Captain
Argall sailed to the north from Virginia and destroyed the rising French

settlements. Sixteen years after this another English force attacked and
captured Quebec. Presently these conquests were restored. France
remained in possession of the St. Lawrence and in virtual possession of
Acadia. The English colonies, holding a great stretch of the Atlantic
seaboard, increased in number and power. New France also grew
stronger. The steady hostility of the rivals never wavered. There was,
indeed, little open warfare as long as the two Crowns remained at peace.
From 1660 to 1688, the Stuart rulers of England remained subservient
to their cousin the Bourbon King of France and at one with him in
religious faith. But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly
denounced the new King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a
usurper, and attacked the English in America with a savage fury
unknown in Europe. From 1690 to 1760 the combatants fought with
little more than pauses for renewed preparation; and the conflict ended
only when France yielded to England the mastery of her empire in
America. It is the story of this struggle, covering a period of seventy
years, which is told in the following pages.
The career of Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, who was Governor
of Canada from 1672 to 1682 and again from 1689 to his death in 1698,
reveals both the merits and the defects of the colonizing genius of
France. Frontenac was a man of noble birth whose life had been spent
in court and camp. The story of his family, so far as it is known, is a
story of attendance upon the royal house of France. His father and
uncles had been playmates of the young Dauphin, afterwards Louis
XIII. The thoughts familiar to Frontenac in his youth remained with
him through life; and, when he went to rule at Quebec, the very spirit
that dominated the court at Versailles crossed the sea with him.
A man is known by the things he loves. The things which Frontenac
most highly cherished were marks of royal favor, the ceremony due to
his own rank, the right to command. He was an egoist, supremely
interested in himself. He was poor, but at his country seat in France,
near Blois, he kept open house in the style of a great noble. Always he
bore himself as one to whom much was due. His guests were expected
to admire his indifferent horses as the finest to be seen, his gardens as
the most beautiful, his clothes as of the most effective cut and finish,
the plate on his table as of the best workmanship, and the food as
having superior flavor. He scolded his equals as if they were naughty

children.
Yet there was genius in this showy court figure. In 1669, when the
Venetian Republic had asked France to lend her an efficient soldier to
lead against the rampant Turk, the great Marshal Turenne had chosen
Frontenac for the task. Crete, which Frontenac was to rescue, the Turk
indeed had taken; but, it is said, at the fearful cost of a hundred and
eighty thousand men. Three years later, Frontenac had been sent to
Canada to war with the savage Iroquois and to hold in check the
aggressive designs of the English. He had been recalled in 1682, after
ten years of service, chiefly on account of his arbitrary temper. He had
quarreled with the Bishop. He had bullied the Intendant until at one
time that harried official had barricaded his house and armed his
servants. He had told the Jesuit missionaries that they thought more of
selling beaver-skins than of saving souls. He had insulted those about
him, sulked, threatened, foamed at the mouth in rage, revealed a
childish vanity in regard to his dignity, and a hunger insatiable for
marks of honor from the King--"more grateful," he once said, "than
anything else to a heart shaped after the right