in the John Ross Robertson
Collection, Toronto Public Library.

{1}

CHAPTER I

CANADA IN 1672

The Canada to which Frontenac came in 1672 was no longer the infant
colony it had been when Richelieu founded the Company of One Hundred
Associates. Through the efforts of Louis XIV and Colbert it had
assumed the form of an organized province.[1] Though its inhabitants
numbered less than seven thousand, the institutions under which they
lived could not have been more elaborate or precise. In short, the
divine right of the king to rule over his people was proclaimed as
loudly in the colony as in the motherland.

It was inevitable that this should be so, for the whole course of
French history since the thirteenth century had led up to the
absolutism of Louis XIV. During the early ages of feudalism France had
been distracted by the wars of her kings against rebellious nobles.
The virtues and firmness of Louis IX {2} (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 the days
of the good St Louis. When Raymond VII of Toulouse accepted the Peace
of Lorris (1243) the government of Canada by Louis XIV already existed
in the germ. That is to say, behind the policy of France in the New
World may be seen an ancient process which had ended in untrammelled
autocracy at Paris.

This process as it affected Canada was not confined to the spirit of
government. It is equally visible in the forms of colonial
administration. During the Middle Ages the dukes and counts of France
had been great territorial lords--levying their own armies, coining
their own money, holding power of life and death over their vassals.
In that period Normandy, Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Toulouse, and many
other districts, were subject to the king in name only. But, with the
growth of royal power, the dukes and counts steadily lost their
territorial {3} 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