Under the rule of Frontenac occurred the first serious collision of
the rival powers, and the opening of the grand scheme of military
occupation by which France strove to envelop and hold in check the
industrial populations of the English colonies. It was he who made
that scheme possible.
In "The Old Regime in Canada," I tried to show from what inherent
causes this wilderness empire of the Great Monarch fell at last before
a foe, superior indeed in numbers, but lacking all the forces that
belong to a system of civil and military centralization. The present
volume will show how valiantly, and for a time how successfully, New
France battled against a fate which her own organic fault made
inevitable. Her history is a great and significant drama, enacted
among untamed forests, with a distant gleam of courtly splendors and
the regal pomp of Versailles.
The authorities on which the book rests are drawn chiefly from the
manuscript collections of the French government in the Archives
Nationales, the Bibliotheque Nationale, and, above all, the vast
repositories of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies. Others are
from Canadian and American sources. I have, besides, availed myself of
the collection of French, English, and Dutch documents published by
the State of New York, under the excellent editorship of Dr.
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