in the French campaigns
in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of
Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the
field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with
which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France
seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he
determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of
the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard
from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out
of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a
great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact,
these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of
them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La
Verendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a
route to the Pacific Ocean.[13]

[Footnote 13: The water of Lake Winnipeg--whatever it may be now--was
frequently stated by Amerindians in earlier days to be "stinking
water", or salt, brackish water, disagreeable to drink, and this lake
exhibits a curious phenomenon of a regular rise and fall, reminding
the observer of a tide, a phenomenon by no means confined to Lake
Winnipeg, but occurring on sheets of water of much smaller extent.]

La Verendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans
for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis
de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family
from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Josephine, the
grandfather of Napoleon III.

This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could
obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way
out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Verendrye
the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.[14] This
monopoly enabled La Verendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure
from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started
out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew,
fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary.
For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La
Verendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays,
necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants
of Montreal, La Verendrye and his expedition skated