rst in on the village of Lachine near Montreal,
butchered 200 of its people, and carried off more than 100 to be
tortured to death at their leisure. Then the strong man Frontenac was
recalled to face the crisis.

Struggles with England.

It was a critical era. James II. had fallen in England, and William III.
was organizing Europe against French aggression. France's plan for a
great empire in America was now taking shape and there, as in Europe, a
deadly struggle with England was inevitable. Frontenac planned attacks
upon New England and encouraged a ruthless border warfare that involved
many horrors. Him, in return, the English attacked. Sir William Phips
sailed from Boston in 1690, conquered Acadia, now Nova Scotia, and then
hazarded the greater task of leading a fleet up the St Lawrence against
Quebec. On the 16th of October 1690 thirty-four English ships, some of
them only fishing craft, appeared in its basin and demanded the
surrender of the town. When Frontenac answered defiantly, Phips attacked
the place; but he was repulsed and in the end sailed away unsuccessful.

Each side had now begun to see that the vital point was control of the
interior, which time was to prove the most extensive fertile area in the
world. La Salle's expedition had aroused the French to the importance of
the Mississippi, and they soon had a bold plan to occupy it, to close in
from the rear on the English on the Atlantic coast, seize their colonies
and even deport the colonists. The plan was audacious, for the English
in America outnumbered the French by twenty to one. But their colonies
were democracies, disunited because each was pursuing its own special
interests, while the French were united under despotic leadership.
Frontenac attacked the Iroquois mercilessly in 1696 and forced these
proud savages to sue for peace. But in the next year was made the treaty
of Ryswick, which brought a pause in the conflict, and in 1698 Frontenac
died.

After Frontenac the Iroquois, though still hostile to France, are
formidable no more, and the struggle for the continent is frankly
between the English and the French. The peace of Ryswick proved but a
truce, and when in 1701, on the death of the exiled James II., Louis
XIV. flouted the claims of William III. to the throne of England by
proclaiming as king James's son, renewed war was inevitable. In Europe
it saw the brilliant victories of Marlborough; in America it was less
decisive, but France