CHAPTER V

THE IRON GOVERNOR

The ten years following 1663 form a decade of extraordinary progress in the history of New France.  The population of the colony had trebled, and now numbered approximately seven thousand; the red peril, thanks to Tracy’s energetic work, had been lessened; while the fur trade had grown to large and lucrative proportions.  With this increase in population and prosperity, there came a renaissance of enthusiasm for voyages of exploration and for the widening of the colony’s frontiers.  Glowing reports went home to the King concerning the latent possibilities of the New World.  What the colony now needed was a strong and vigorous governor who would not only keep a firm hold upon what had been already achieved, but one who would also push on to greater and more glorious things.

It was in keeping with, this spirit of faith and hope that the King sent to Quebec, in 1672, Louis de Buade, Count Frontenac, naming him governor of all the French domains in North America.  Fifty-two years of age when he came to Canada, Frontenac had been a soldier from his youth; he had fought through hard campaigns in Italy, in the Low Countries, and with the Venetians in their defense of Candia against the Turks.  In fact, he had but shortly returned from this last service when he was chosen to succeed Courcelle as the royal representative in New France.

To Frontenac’s friends the appointment seemed more like a banishment than a promotion.  But there were several reasons why the governor should have accepted gladly.  He had inherited only a modest fortune, and most of this had been spent, for thrift was not one of Frontenac’s virtues.  His domestic life had not been happy, and there were no strong personal ties binding him to life in France.[1] Moreover, the post of governor in the colony was not to be judged by what it had been in the days of D’Avaugour or De Mezy.  The reports sent home by Talon had stirred the national ambitions.  “I am no courtier,” this intendant had written, “and it is not to please the King or without reason that I say this portion of the French monarchy is going to become something great.  What I now see enables me to make such a prediction.”  And indeed the figures of growth in population, of acreage cleared, and of industries rising into existence seemed to justify the intendant’s optimism.  Both the King and his ministers were building high hopes on Canada, as their choice of Frontenac proves, and in their selection of a man to carry out their plans they showed, on the whole, good judgment.  Frontenac proved to be the ablest and most commanding of all the officials who served the Bourbon monarchy in the New World.  In the long line of governors he approached most nearly to what a Viceroy ought to be.

[Footnote 1:  Saint-Simon, in his Memoires, prints the current Parisian gossip that Frontenac was sent to New France to shield him from the imperious temper of his wife and to afford him a means of livelihood.]