at the king’s expense, and in the following year the colonists received the welcome information that the king was also about to send them a regiment of trained soldiers, a viceroy, a new governor, a new intendant, settlers and labourers, and all kinds of supplies.  This royal pledge was adequately fulfilled.  On June 19, 1665, the Marquis de Tracy, lieutenant-general of all the French dominions in America, arrived from the West Indies, where he had successfully discharged the first part of the mission entrusted to him by his royal master.  With him came four companies of soldiers.  During the whole summer ships were disembarking their passengers and unloading their cargoes of ammunition and provisions at Quebec in quick succession.  It is easy to imagine the rapture of the colonists at such a sight, and the enthusiastic shouts that welcomed the first detachment of the splendid regiment of Carignan-Salieres.  At length, on September 12, the cup of public joy was filled to overflowing by the arrival of the ship Saint Sebastien with two high officials on board, David de Remy, Sieur de Courcelle, the governor appointed to succeed the governor Mezy, who had died earlier in the year, and Jean Talon, the intendant of justice, police, and finance.  The latter had been selected to replace the Sieur Robert, who had been made intendant in 1663, but, for some unknown reason, had never come to Canada to perform the duties of his office.  The triumvirate on whom was imposed the noble task of saving and reviving New France was thus complete.  The Marquis de Tracy was an able and clear-sighted commander, the Sieur de Courcelle a fearless, straightforward official.  But the part of Jean Talon in the common task, though apparently less brilliant, was to be in many respects the most important, and his influence the most far-reaching in the destinies of the colony.

Talon was born at Chalons-sur-Marne, in the province of Champagne, about the year 1625.  His family were kinsfolk of the Parisian Talons, Omer and Denis, the celebrated jurists and lawyers, who held in succession the high office of attorney-general of France.  Several of Jean Talon’s brothers were serving in the administration or the army, and, after a course of study at the Jesuits’ College of Clermont, Jean was employed under one of them in the commissariat.  The young man’s abilities soon became apparent and attracted Mazarin’s attention.  In 1654 he was appointed military commissary at Le Quesnoy in connection with the operations of the army commanded by the great Turenne.  A year later, at the age of thirty, he was promoted to be intendant for the province of Hainault.  For ten years he filled that office and won the reputation of an administrator of the first rank.  Thus it came about that, when an intendant was needed to infuse new blood into the veins of the feeble colony on the St Lawrence, Colbert, always a good judge of men, thought immediately of Jean Talon and recommended to the king his appointment as intendant of New France.  Talon’s commission is dated March 23, 1665.