This intimation, coming straight from their royal master, was to each a rebuke which could not be misunderstood.  But it did not accomplish, much, for the bitterness and jealousy existing between the two colonial officers was too strong to be overcome.  The very next vessels took to France a new budget of complaints and recriminations from both.  The King, as good as his word, issued prompt orders for their recall and the two officials left for home, but not on the same vessel, in the summer of 1682.

The question as to which of the two was the more at fault is hardly worth determining.  The share of blame to be cast on each by the verdict of history should probably be about equal.  Frontenac was by far the abler man, but he had the defects of his qualities.  He could not brook the opposition of men less competent than he was, and when he was provoked his arrogance became intolerable.  In broader domains of political action he would soon have out-generaled his adversary, but in these petty fields of neighborhood bickering Duchesneau, particularly with the occasional nudgings which he received from Laval, proved no unequal match.  The fact remains that neither was able or willing to sacrifice personal animosities nor to display any spirit of cordial cooperation even at the royal command.  The departure of both was regarded as a blessing by the majority of the colonists to whom the continued squabbles had become wearisome.  Yet there was not lacking, in the minds of many among them, the conviction that if ever again New France should find itself in urgent straits, if ever there were critical need of an iron hand to rule within and to guard without, there would still be one man whom, so long as he lived, they could confidently ask to be sent out to them again.  For the time being, however, Frontenac’s official career seemed to be at an end.  At sixty-two he could hardly hope to regain the royal favor by further service.  He must have left the shores of New France with a heavy heart.

Frontenac’s successor was La Barre, an old naval officer who had proved himself as capable at sea as he was now to show himself incompetent on land.  He was the antithesis of his headstrong predecessor, weak in decision, without personal energy, without imagination, but likewise without any of Frontenac’s skill in the art of making enemies.  With La Barre came Meulles, an abler and more energetic colleague, who was to succeed Duchesneau as intendant.  Both, reached Quebec in the autumn of 1682, and problems in plenty they found awaiting them.  Shortly before their arrival a fire had swept through the settlement at Quebec, leaving scarcely a building on the lands below the cliff.  To make matters worse, the Iroquois had again thrown themselves across the western trade route and had interrupted the coining of the colony’s fur supply.  As every one now recognized that the protection of this route was essential, La Barre decided that the Iroquois must be taught a lesson.