stroyed 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