Title:  The Seigneurs of Old Canada:  A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism

Author:  William Bennett Munro

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

Release Date:  November, 2003 [Etext #4655] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 21, 2002]

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Chronicles of Canada
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Volume 5

THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism

By William Bennett Munro
Toronto, 1915

CHAPTER I

AN OUTPOST OF EMPIRE

What would history be without the picturesque annals of the Gallic race?  This is a question which the serious student may well ask himself as he works his way through the chronicles of a dozen centuries.  From the age of Charlemagne to the last of the Bonapartes is a long stride down the ages; but there was never a time in all these years when men might make reckonings in the arithmetic of European politics without taking into account the prestige, the power, and even the primacy of France.  There were times without number when France among her neighbours made herself hated with an undying hate; there were times, again, when she rallied them to her side in friendship and admiration.  There were epochs in which her hegemony passed unquestioned among men of other lands, and there were times when a sudden shift in fortune seemed to lay the nation prostrate, with none so poor to do her reverence.