The events of ‘William and Mary’s War,’ as it was known in New England, show how wide the French zone in North America had come to be.  Frontenac’s province extended from Newfoundland to the Mississippi, from Onondaga to Hudson Bay.  The rarest quality of a ruler is the power to select good subordinates and fill them with his own high spirit.  Judged by this standard Frontenac deserves great praise, for he never lacked capable and loyal lieutenants.  With Callieres at Montreal, Tonty on the Mississippi, Perrot and Du Lhut at Michilimackinac, Villebon and Saint-Castin in Acadia, Sainte-Helene at the siege of Quebec, and Iberville at Hudson Bay, he was well supported by his staff.  At this critical moment the shortcomings of the French in America were certainly not due to lack of purpose or driving power.  The system under which they worked was faulty, and in their extremity they resorted to harsh expedients.  But there were heroes in New France, if courage and self-sacrifice are the essence of heroism.

The Peace of Ryswick, which was signed in the year after Frontenac’s campaign against the Onondagas, came as a happy release to Canada (1697).  For nine years the colony had been hard pressed, and a breathing space was needed.  The Iroquois still remained a peril, but proportionately their losses since 1689 had been far heavier than those of the French and English.  Left to carry on the war by themselves, they soon saw the hopelessness of their project to drive the French from the St Lawrence.  The English were ready to give them defensive assistance, even after word came from Europe that peace had been signed.  In 1698 the Earl of Bellomont, then governor of New York, wrote Frontenac that he would arm every man in his province to aid the Iroquois if the French made good their threat to invade once more the land of the Five Nations.  Frontenac, then almost on his death-bed, sent back the characteristic reply that this kind of language would only encourage him to attack the Iroquois with the more vigour.  The sequel shows that the English at Albany overplayed their part.  The reward of their protection was to be suzerainty, and at this price protection proved unacceptable to the Iroquois, whose safety lay in the equipoise of power between the rival whites.  Three years later the Five Nations renewed peace with Onontio; and, though Frontenac did not live to see the day, he it was who had brought it to pass.  His daring and energy had broken the spirit of the red man.  In 1701 Callieres, then governor of New France, held a great council at Montreal, which was attended by representatives from all the Indian tribes of the West as well as from the Iroquois.  There, amid all the ceremonies of the wilderness, the calumet was smoked and the hatchet was interred.