Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/840

780 the fur trade, and with other adventures. On his first arrival he betrayed what seemed to be a democratic sentiment, for he organized a States General, providing for the representation of the nobility, the clergy, and the people. As such a body was contrary to the policy of the King, the Governor-General was amicably warned by Colbert, who told him that he should model his government on the governments of the provinces in France. Frontenac answered, like a true Frenchman of the reign of Louis, that he had no intention of creating a truly representative government, but he wished to display in these wilds the power and splendor of the royal representative. "Ces Etats-Généraux," he wrote Colbert, "ne furent pas qu'une cérémonie."

Although he was constantly in hot water with the ecclesiastical powers, with the Sovereign Council of the colony, and, later, with the Intendant; although he insisted on trying the Abbé Fénelon before a civil tribunal, ignoring the priest's right to a trial before an ecclesiastical court; although he offended both the King and Colbert, who listened to the complaints of Duchesneau, who was appointed Intendant in 1675 because Frontenac had already been accused so often that the confidence of the court was shaken in him,—yet he may be said to have been circumspect in beginning his quarrels. He rarely entered upon a new one until after the last ships of the year had left for France in the autumn, there being only one sailing each year. Thus he was safe from reproof from home for a long time to come, for news of his irascibility and its consequences could not possibly reach Versailles until the arrival of the next year's ships. Thus he gave himself a good year for a quarrel, and was safe from hearing anything from it from home for still another six months. Nevertheless the King and Colbert grew angry with him. They knew that he was hot of temper, that he was arbitrary, and that he was vain and self-assertive, so that they readily believed the stories which were told against him in the letters of complaint that went to France with each year's ships. They not only appointed an Intendant, most of whose time was subsequently devoted to enraging the home authorities against the Governor-General, but they curbed him in a variety of ways. He and the bishop had at first appointed five members of the Sovereign Council. The King now took the power of appointment into his own hands, and in the combats between Frontenac and Duchesneau the court often upheld the latter. The priests, too, through their representatives and fellows in Paris, had the ear of the King daily, while Frontenac was limited in his correspondence with the court to an annual letter. So it was that after ten years of service he was recalled, and for the next seven years he was an idler about Versailles, hardly noticed by the King and his courtiers, while two Governors-General, La Barre and Denonville, demonstrated their inability to continue the work which Frontenac had marked out. Finally, after Canada seemed to be on the point of exhaustion; when the awakened Iroquois, feeling that the French were weak and that they were strong, were devastating the country to the very walls of Montreal; after they had murdered nearly the whole population of Lachine; when the French were apparently about to fall into the hands of their enemies, and when all the Indian tribes of the Five Nations and those of the West seemed about to unite for the purpose of handing over to the English the trade and future of America,—the King sent for his veteran, now seventy years of age, and gave him again the office of Governor-General of Canada. "I send you back to Canada, where I count on your serving me as you served before; I ask nothing more of you," is what Louis is reported to have said to the old soldier whom he had removed from office seven years before because he had manifested some infirmities of temper when he was intrigued against and assailed for insisting upon trying to carry out the only policy which promised success to France.

Frontenac returned to America with the expectation of waging bitter war against the English colonies. The King had decided to take New York and to add it to the French dominions. By the accomplishment of this important task he was not only to secure the addition of a rich territory, but an ice-free port,