During the first three years after his coming to Canada, the governor had ruled alone.  There was no intendant or bishop to hamper him, for both Talon and Laval had gone to France in 1672.  But in 1675 Laval returned to the colony, and in the same year a new intendant, Jacques Duchesneau, was appointed.  With this change in the situation at Quebec the friction began in earnest, for Frontenac’s imperious temper did not make him a cheerful sharer of authority with any one else.  If the intendant and the bishop had been men of conflicting ideas and dispositions, Frontenac might easily have held the balance of power; but they were men of kindred aims, and they readily combined against the governor.  United in their opposition to him, they were together a fair match for Frontenac in ability and astuteness.  It was not long, accordingly, before the whole colony was once more aligned in two factions.  With the governor were the merchants, many of the seigneurs, and all the coureurs-de-bois.  Supporting the intendant and the bishop were many of the subordinate officials, all of the priests, and those of the tradesmen and habitants with whom the clerical influence was paramount.

The story of the quarrels which went on between these two factions during the years 1675-1680 is neither brief nor edifying.  The root of it all lay in the governor’s western policy, his encouragement of the forest traders or coureurs-de-bois, and his connivance at the use of brandy in the Indian trade.  There were unseemly squabbles about precedence at council meetings and at religious festivals, about trivialities of every sort; but the question of the brandy trade was at the bottom of them all.  The bishop flayed the governor for letting this trade go on; the missionaries declared that it was proving the ruin of their efforts; and the intendant declared that Frontenac allowed it to continue because he was making a personal profit from the traffic.  Charges and countercharges went home to France with every ship.  The intendant wrote dispatches of wearisome length, rehearsing the governor’s usurpations, insults, and incompetence.  “Disorder,” he told the minister, “rules everywhere.  Universal confusion prevails; justice is openly perverted, and violence supported by authority determines everything.”  In language quite as unrestrained Frontenac recounted in detail the difficulties with which he had to contend owing to the intendant’s obstinacy, intrigue, and dishonesty.  The minister, appalled by the bewildering contradictions, could only lay the whole matter before the King, who determined to try first a courteous reprimand and to that end sent an autograph letter to each official.  Both letters were alike in admonishing the governor and the intendant to work in harmony for the good of the colony, but each concluded with the significant warning:  “Unless you harmonize better in the future than In the past, my only alternative will be to recall you both.”