Having regained Canada, Richelieu was forced to decide what he would do with it.  In certain important respects the situation had changed since 1627, when he founded the Company of New France.  Then Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedes were not a factor in the dire strife which was convulsing Europe. [Footnote:  At this period the largest interest in European politics was the rivalry between France and the House of Hapsburg, which held the thrones of Spain and Austria.  This rivalry led France to take an active part in the Thirty Years’ War, even though her allies in that struggle were Protestants.  Between 1627, when the Company of New France was founded, and 1632, when Canada was restored to France, the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus had won a series of brilliant victories over the Catholic and Hapsburg forces in Germany, After the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, Richelieu attacked the Emperor Ferdinand II in great force, thereby conquering Alsace.] In 1632 the political problems of Western and Central Europe had assumed an aspect quite different from that which they had worn five years earlier.  More and more France was drawn into the actual conflict of the Thirty Years’ War, impelled by a sense of new and unparalleled opportunity to weaken the House of Hapsburg.  This, in turn, meant the preoccupation of Richelieu with European affairs, and a heavy drain upon the resources of France in order to meet the cost of her more ambitious foreign policy.  Thus the duel with Austria, as it progressed during the last decade of the cardinal’s life, meant a fresh check to those colonial prospects which seemed so bright in 1627.

Richelieu’s first step in resuming possession of Canada was to compose matters between the De Caens and the Company of New France.  Emery de Caen and his associates were given the trading rights for 1632 and 79,000 livres as compensation for their losses through the revocation of the monopoly.  Dating from the spring of 1633, the Company of New France was to be placed in full possession of Canada, subject to specific obligations regarding missions and colonists.  Conformably with this programme, Emery de Caen appeared at Quebec on July 5, 1632, with credentials empowering him to receive possession from Lewis and Thomas Kirke, the representatives of England.  With De Caen came Paul Le Jeune and two other Jesuits, a vanguard of the missionary band which was to convert the savages.  ‘We cast anchor,’ says Le Jeune, ’in front of the fort which the English held; we saw at the foot of this fort the poor settlement of Quebec all in ashes.  The English, who came to this country to plunder and not to build up, not only burned a greater part of the detached buildings which Father Charles Lalemant had erected, but also all of that poor settlement of which nothing is now to be seen but the ruins of its stone walls.’