In the latter of these years there arrived from France a man who was destined to play a large part in its affairs during the next few decades, Francois-Xavier de Laval, who now came to take charge of ecclesiastical affairs in New France with the powers of a vicar apostolic.  Laval’s arrival did not mark the beginning of friction between the Church and the civil officials in the colony; there were such dissensions already.  But the doughty churchman’s claims and the governor’s policy of resisting them soon brought things to an open breach, particularly upon the question of permitting the sale of liquor to the Indians.  In 1662 the quarrel became bitter.  Laval hastened home to France where he placed before the authorities the list of ecclesiastical grievances.  The governor, a bluff old soldier, was thereupon summoned to Paris to present his side of the whole affair.  In the end a decision was reached to reorganize the whole system of civil and commercial administration in the colony.  Thus, as we shall soon see, the power passed away altogether from the Company of One Hundred Associates.

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF LOUIS QUATORZE

Louis XIV, the greatest of the Bourbon monarchs, had now taken into his own hands the reins of power.  Nominally he had been king of France since 1642, when he was only five years old, but it was not until 1658 that the control of affairs by the regency came to an end.  Moreover, Colbert was now chief minister of state, so that colonial matters were assured of a searching and enlightened inquiry.  Richelieu’s interest in the progress of New France had not endured for many years after the founding of his great Company.  It is true that during the next fifteen years he remained chief minister, but the great effort to crush the remaining strongholds of feudalism and to centralize all political power in the monarchy left him no time for the care of a distant colony.  Colbert, on the other hand, had well-defined and far-reaching plans for the development of French industrial interests at home and of French commercial interests abroad.

As for the colony, it made meager progress under Company control:  few settlers were sent out; and they were not provided with proper means of defense against Indian depredations.  Under the circumstances it did not take Colbert long to see how remiss the Company of One Hundred Associates had been, nor to reach a decision that the colony should be at once withdrawn from its control.  He accordingly persuaded the monarch to demand the surrender of the Company’s charter and to reprimand the Associates for the shameless way in which they had neglected the trust committed to their care.  “Instead of finding,” declared the King in the edict of revocation, “that this country is populated as it ought to be after so long an occupation thereof by our subjects, we have learned with regret not only that the number of its inhabitants is very limited, but that even these are daily exposed to the danger of being wiped out by the Iroquois.”