This upset all French plans, since the leaders had hoped to fall upon the Mohawk villages and to destroy them before the tribesmen could either make preparations for defense or withdraw southward.  Foiled in this plan, and afraid that an early thaw might make their route of return impossible, the French gave up their project and started home again.  They had not managed to reach, much less to destroy, the villages of their enemies.

But the undertaking was not an absolute failure.  The Mohawks were astute enough to see that only the inexperience of the French had stood between them and destruction.  Here was an enemy which had proved able to come through the dead of winter right into the regions which had hitherto been regarded as inaccessible from the north.  The French might be depended to come again and, by reason of greater experience, to make a better job of their coming.  The Iroquois reasoning was quite correct, as the sequel soon disclosed.  In September of the same year the French had once again equipped their expedition, more effectively this time.  Traveling overland along nearly the same route, it reached the country of the Mohawks without a mishap.  The Indians saved themselves by a rapid flight to the forests, but their palisaded strongholds were demolished, their houses set afire, their caches of corn dug out and destroyed.  The Mohawks were left to face the oncoming winter with nothing but the woods to shelter them.  Having finished their task of punishment, Tracy and his regiment made their way leisurely back to Quebec.

The Mohawks were now quite ready to make terms, and in 1667 they sent a delegation to Quebec to proffer peace.  Two raids into their territories in successive years had taught them that they could not safely leave their homes to make war against the tribes of the west so long as the French were their enemies.  And the desire to dominate the region of the lakes was a first principle of Iroquois policy at this time.  An armistice was accordingly concluded, which lasted without serious interruption for more than a decade.  One of the provisions of the peace was that Jesuit missions should be established in the Iroquois territory, this being the usual way in which the French assured themselves of diplomatic intercourse with the tribes.

With its trade routes once more securely open, New France now began a period of marked prosperity.  Tracy and his staff went back to France, but most of his soldiers remained and became settlers.  Wives for these soldiers were sent out under royal auspices, and liberal grants of money were provided to get the new households established.  Since 1664, the trade of the colony had been once more in the hands of a commercial organization, the Company of the West Indies, whose financial success was, for the time being, assured by the revival of the fur traffic.  Industries were beginning to spring into being, the population was increasing rapidly, and the King was showing a lively interest in all the colony’s affairs.  It was therefore a prosperous and promising colony to which Governor Frontenac came in 1672.