among the shareholders to help in the enlistment of capital.  The company received a monopoly of trade for fifteen years, and promised to take out three hundred colonists annually during the whole period covered by the grant.  It also received the St Lawrence valley in full ownership.  One notable provision of the charter was that only Roman Catholics should be sent to New France, and the company was placed under special obligation to maintain three priests in each settlement until the colony could support its own clergy.

Champlain was now sixty years of age, and he had suffered much.  Suddenly there burst forth this spontaneous enthusiasm of Richelieu the all-powerful.  Was Champlain’s dream of the great city of Ludovica to come true after all?

Alas, like previous visions, it faded before the glare of harsh, uncompromising facts.  The year in which Richelieu founded his Company of New France was also the year of a fierce Huguenot revolt.  Calling on England for aid, La Rochelle defied Paris, the king, and the cardinal.  Richelieu laid siege to the place.  Guiton, the mayor, sat at his council-board with a bare dagger before him to warn the faint-hearted.  The old Duchesse de Rohan starved with the populace.  Salbert, the most eloquent of Huguenot pastors, preached that martyrdom was better than surrender.  Meanwhile, Richelieu built his mole across the harbour, and Buckingham wasted the English troops to which the citizens looked for their salvation.  Then the town yielded.

The fall of La Rochelle was a great personal triumph for Richelieu, but the war with England brought disaster to the Company of New France.  At Dieppe there had lived for many years an Englishman named Jarvis, or Gervase, Kirke, who with his five sons—­David, Lewis, Thomas, John, and Jamesknew much at first hand about the French merchant marine.  Early in the spring of 1628 Kirke (who had shortly before moved to London) secured letters of marque and sent forth his sons to do what damage they could to the French in the St Lawrence.  Champlain had spent the winter at Quebec and was, of course, expecting his usual supplies with the opening of navigation.  Instead came Lewis Kirke, sent from Tadoussac by his brother David, to demand surrender.

Champlain made a reply which, though courteous, was sufficiently bold to convince the Kirkes that Quebec could be best captured by starvation.  They therefore sailed down the St Lawrence to intercept the fleet from France, confident that their better craft would overcome these ‘sardines of the sea.’  The plan proved successful even beyond expectation, for after a long cannonade they captured without material loss the whole fleet which had been sent out by the Company of New France.  Ships, colonists, annual supplies, building materials—­all fell into the hands of the enterprising Kirkes, who then sailed for England with their booty.  Alike to Champlain and to the Hundred Associates it was a crippling blow.