CHAPTER III

FRONTENAC’S FIRST YEARS IN CANADA

Frontenac received his commission on April 6, 1672, and reached Quebec at the beginning of September.  The king, sympathetic towards his needs, had authorized two special grants of money:  six thousand livres for equipment, and nine thousand to provide a bodyguard of twenty horsemen.  Gratified by these marks of royal favour and conscious that he had been assigned to an important post, Frontenac was in hopeful mood when he first saw the banks of the St Lawrence.  His letters show that he found the country much less barbarous than he had expected; and he threw himself into his new duties with the courage which is born of optimism.  A natural fortress like Quebec could not fail to awaken the enthusiasm of a soldier.  The settlement itself was small, but Frontenac reported that its situation could not be more favourable, even if this spot were to become the capital of a great empire.  It was, indeed, a scene to kindle the imagination.  Sloping down to the river-bank, the farms of Beauport and Beaupre filled the foreground.  Behind them swept the forest, then in its full autumnal glory.

Awaiting Frontenac at Quebec were Courcelles, the late governor, and Talon the intendant.  Both were to return to France by the last ships of that year; but in the meantime Frontenac was enabled to confer with them on the state of the colony and to acquaint himself with their views on many important subjects.  Courcelles had proved a stalwart warrior against the Iroquois, while Talon possessed an unrivalled knowledge of Canada’s wants and possibilities.  Laval, the bishop, was in France, not to return to the colony till 1675.

The new governor’s first acts went to show that with the king’s dignity he associated his own.  The governor and lieutenant-general of a vast oversea dominion could not degrade his office by living like a shopkeeper.  The Chateau St Louis was far below his idea of what a viceregal residence ought to be.  One of his early resolves was to enlarge and improve it.  Meanwhile, his entertainments surpassed in splendour anything Canada had yet seen.  Pomp on a large scale was impossible; but the governor made the best use of his means to display the grace and majesty of his office.

On the 17th of September Frontenac presided for the first time at a meeting of the Sovereign Council; [Footnote:  In the minutes of this first meeting of the Sovereign Council at which Frontenac presided the high-sounding words ‘haut et puissant’ stand prefixed to his name and titles.] and the formal inauguration of his regime was staged for the 23rd of October.  It was to be an impressive ceremony, a pageant at which all eyes should be turned upon him, the great noble who embodied the authority of a puissant monarch.  For this ceremony the governor summoned an assembly that was designed to represent the Three Estates of Canada.