XIII.  Official France was now really interested.  Hitherto its interest, while profusely enough expressed, had been little more than perfunctory.  With Richelieu as its sponsor a company was easily organized.  Though by royal decree it was chartered as the Company of New France, it became more commonly known as the Company of One Hundred Associates; for it was a co-operative organization with one hundred members, some of them traders and merchants, but more of them courtiers.  Colonizing companies were the fashion of Richelieu’s day.  Holland and England were exploiting new lands by the use of companies; there was no good reason why France should not do likewise.

This system of company exploitation was particularly popular with the monarchs of all these European countries.  It made no demands on the royal purse.  If failure attended the company’s ventures the king bore no financial loss.  But if the company succeeded, if its profits were large and its achievements great, the king might easily step in and claim his share of it all as the price of royal protection and patronage.  In both England and Holland the scheme worked out in that way.  An English stock company began and developed the work which finally placed India in the possession of the British crown; a similar Dutch organization in due course handed over Java as a rich patrimony to the king of the Netherlands.  France, however, was not so fortunate.  True enough, the Company of One Hundred Associates made a brave start; its charter gave great privileges, and placed on the company large obligations; it seemed as though a new era in French colonization had begun.  ’Having in view the establishment of a powerful military colony,’ as this charter recites, the king gave to the associates the entire territory claimed by France in the western hemisphere, with power to govern, create trade, grant lands, and bestow titles of nobility.  For its part the company was to send out settlers, at least two hundred of them a year; it was to provide them with free transportation, give them free lands and initial subsistence; it was to support priests and teachers—­in fact, to do all things necessary for the creation of that ‘powerful military colony’ which His Majesty had in expectation.

It happened, however, that the first fleet the company dispatched in 1628 did not reach Canada.  The ships were attacked and captured, and in the following year Quebec itself fell into English hands.  After its restoration in 1632 the company, greatly crippled, resumed operations, but did very little for the upbuilding of the colony.  Few settlers were sent out at all, and of these still fewer went at the company’s expense.  In only two ways did the company, after the first few years of its existence, show any interest in its new territories.  In the first place, its officers readily grasped the opportunity to make some profits out of the fur trade.  Each year ships were sent to Quebec; merchandise was there landed,