FRONTENAC ANSWERING PHIPS'S MESSENGER, 1690.
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys

THE FIGHTING
GOVERNOR

A Chronicle of Frontenac

BY

CHARLES W. COLBY

TORONTO
GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1915

Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

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 (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