Count frontenac biography examples

The bishop, supported by the intendant, tried to suppress this trade and sent an ambassador to France to obtain remedial action. The views of the bishop were upheld and authority was divided. The king and his minister had to listen to and adjudicate upon the appeals from the contending parties until one incident tried their patience. During Frontenac's first administration many improvements had been made in the country.

The defenses had been strengthened, a fort was built at Cataraqui now Kingston, Ontario , bearing the governor's name, and conditions of peace had been fairly maintained between the Iroquois on the one hand and the French and their allies, the Ottawas and the Hurons, on the other. Even though Frontenac was disobeying Colbert's policies, he was able to continuously act in such a way because he represented the king.

Throughout his first term, Frontenac was engaging in the fur trade to increase his own fortune and those of his associates. According to La Salle 's personal memoir, Frontenac was also trying to secure a monopoly over a large part of the fur trade. The Iroquois were assuming a threatening attitude towards the inhabitants, and Frontenac's successor, La Barre, was quite incapable of leading an army against such foes.

At the end of a year, La Barre was replaced by the Marquis de Denonville , a man of ability and courage, who, though he showed some vigour in marching against the western Iroquois tribes, angered rather than intimidated them, and the massacre of Lachine on 5 August must be regarded as one of the unhappy results of his administration. The affairs of the colony were now critical.

A man of experience and decision was needed to cope with the difficulties, and Louis XIV, chose Frontenac to represent and uphold the power of France.

Count frontenac biography examples

When on 17 October , Frontenac arrived in Quebec as governor for the second time, he received an enthusiastic welcome, and confidence was at once restored in the public mind. Frontenac's return to New France during the Nine Years' War offered him an opportunity to display his military capabilities against England in North America. The parties raided the towns of Schenectady and Salmon Falls and murdered English colonists, but spared the Iroquois.

The prestige of the governor was increased by this event, and he was prepared to follow up his advantage by an attack on Boston from the sea, but his resources were inadequate. New France now rejoiced in a brief respite from her enemies, and during the interval Frontenac paid some attention to the social life of the colony and encouraged the revival of drama at the Chateau St-Louis.

New France had been under intermittent attack throughout the 17th century. The people, however, were not subdued and for two years after the Phips attack, petty warfare was maintained. The sufferings of the colony, infested by war parties, were extreme. The fur trade, which formed its only resource for subsistence, was completely cut off, and a great accumulation of furs remained in the trading posts of the upper lakes, prevented from descending by the watchful enemy.

The Christian Indians of the neighboring missions rose and joined them, and so did the Hurons and the Algonquins of Lake Nipissing, while Frontenac led the dance, whooping like the rest. His allies promised war to the death, and several years of conflict followed. After three years of destitution and misery, Frontenac broke the blockade of the Ottawa; the coveted treasure came safely to Montreal, and the colonists hailed him as their father and deliverer.

In Frontenac decided to take the field against the Iroquois, although at this time he was 74 years old. On July 6, he left Lachine as the head of a considerable force for the village of the Onondagas, where he arrived a month later. In the meantime, the Iroquois had abandoned their villages, and as pursuit was impracticable, the army commenced its return march on August Frontenac endured the march as well as the youngest soldier, and for his courage and prowess he received the cross of St.

This consisted generally of a capote, a breechcloth, leggings, a blanket, moccasins, a knife and two shirts, The clothing did not constitute a military uniform but was simply Canadian-style civilian wear. Frontenac, however, was extremely reluctant to undertake the campaign. It was only after the Iroquois had brought the Ottawas to terms, then renewed their attacks on the French settlements, and after Frontenac had received direct orders from the minister of Marine, that he undertook a campaign against the Iroquois villages.

In the final march on the Onondaga village Frontenac, now in his seventy-fourth year, but determined not to be excluded from an active part in events, was carried through the forest in an arm-chair. When the Onondaga village was reached, only ashes remained. The enemy had fled into the forest after burning everything to the ground. The army set to work destroying the corn in the fields and all the food supplies they could find cached in and about the village.

Vaudreuil, with over six hundred men, went on to the Oneida village, burned it to the ground and destroyed the crops. This work done the army returned to Montreal. Its total casualties had been three men drowned and one soldier killed by a lurking Iroquois while on the homeward route. Only one Iroquois was killed, an old Onondaga chief, captured because he was too old and feeble to flee.

Frontenac permitted the Mission Indians to burn him slowly to death, a fate that he endured without a whimper. Despite the failure to come to grips with the enemy, this campaign broke the resistance of the Iroquois. During the preceding few years the tide of the petite guerre had turned against them. At the beginning of the war they had been able to attack the French settlements with impunity, but the Canadians had rapidly become skilled in forest warfare tactics.

More and more frequently Iroquois war- and hunting-parties were being ambushed on their own territories by Canadian war-parties; more and more frequently Iroquois warriors failed to return to the long-houses. With their villages and food supplies destroyed, the Onondagas and Oneidas now had to depend on the aid afforded by the three other Iroquois nations and the English colonies.

When they appealed to the officials at Albany they received little help, for New York, the frontiers of which had been constantly harassed by Canadian war parties, had little to spare. In addition, the Ottawas, upon seeing the state to which the Iroquois were now reduced, abrogated their treaty and began attacking them anew. Nine years of war and the ravages of disease had already reduced their fighting strength by half, from an estimated 2, in to 1, in , while the strength of the French, despite heavy losses from war and disease, had increased from a population of 10, in to 12, in Under these circumstances, and fearing that the French would destroy their remaining villages in further campaigns, they had no alternative but to sue for peace.

This time, however, Frontenac was by no means convinced that they were sincere and for another three years the fighting continued intermittently in the forest. In Europe, meanwhile, the War of the League of Augsburg had ended. In February delegates from Albany arrived to inform the French that the Peace of Ryswick had been signed. When Frontenac had arrived in New France in to take up the post of governor-general for the second time, the colony had been reeling under the constant assaults of the Iroquois.

Although, with the exception of the defence of Quebec in , he had played little real part in the tactical direction of the war, the responsibility had still been his. Had the colony been conquered he would have been held accountable; since it was successfully defended he deserves credit. Any assessment of his attitude towards the fur trade is faced with a paradox.

The policy of the government in France was to curb the fur trade to prevent its undermining the establishment of the colony on sound economic and social principles. The government wished the Canadians to be concentrated in the central colony, engaged in agriculture, fishing, and such other industries as shipbuilding, lumbering, and the manufacture of some consumer goods.

In short, they wanted the colony to be self-sufficient in the essential commodities. They did not want a large segment of the Canadian population to be scattered about at posts in the interior of the continent. Frontenac, however, flouted this policy and under his governorship the fur trade expanded more than ever before; new trading-posts were established in the west, the commands given to his associates and military funds employed to further their trading activities.

Yet the fact remains that shortly after his death the government at Versailles, for political and dynastic reasons, abandoned the policy of restraining western expansion and adopted instead an imperialist policy of occupying all of North America west of the Alleghenies, between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The western posts established by Frontenac were vital to this new policy; had he not had them built and manned, the government would have had to begin creating them.

It would be easy to assume prescience here on the part of Frontenac, but much more difficult to find evidence of it. Again, in civil affairs, it is by no means easy to form a judgement of Frontenac. Certainly during his second term the administration was not completely disrupted as it had been during his first term as governor. Nor did he create serious difficulties in the Conseil Souverain; but his relations with the intendant left a good deal to be desired.

When Champigny tried to implement the royal edicts designed to curb abuses in the fur trade Frontenac overrode him and was supported by the officials in the ministry of Marine. By , however, the ministry was brought face to face with the fact that the market for beaver in France was completely glutted. The amount of beaver pelts shipped from Canada had risen astronomically during the preceding ten years and the lease on the beaver monopoly expired in This lease brought , livres a year into the royal exchequer and there was a serious danger, with the market glutted, that no one would be willing to purchase the monopoly when the existing lease expired.

The minister complained that over the preceding few years the excess of expenditures over allotted funds totalled , livres , and that little appeared to have been accomplished. The patience of both Louis XIV and the minister was now exhausted. In the light of these revelations, and the fact that his credit at the court was at a very low ebb, he stood in danger of being once again dismissed from his post.

The minister, however, was spared the necessity for making this decision. For some weeks in the autumn of Frontenac had been in poor health, suffering from asthma. He had to sleep propped up in an armchair and his strength now began slowly to ebb away. By mid-November he realized that his end was near and he calmly prepared for it.

He made his peace with his old antagonists, the intendant and the bishop, and on 28 November the bishop administered extreme unction. Shortly afterwards death came for the old governor and he was buried in the church of the Recollets of Quebec. He was survived, until 20 Jan. One final point remains: the Frontenac legend. The one by the American historian Francis Parkman, entitled Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV , was first published in ; the other, by the French historian Henri Lorin, entitled Le comte de Frontenac — and more a panegyric than a critical historical study — appeared in Their characterizations of Frontenac, and more particularly that of Francis Parkman, were accepted almost without question by all but a very few later historians and writers.

A man of proud and overbearing temper, he quarrelled with successive bishops and intendants; and it was on account of these quarrels that he was recalled in As a civil administrator he was not without decided defects. But as a military governor he was without a rival, among all the governors of New France. His handling of the Indians, among whom he was known as the "Great Onontio", was marked by qualities approaching genius; and his defence of Quebec against the English in afforded a good example of his talent for war.

It was under him that the military organization of New France took shape, an organization that enabled New France, with a comparatively small population, to hold its own against the populous English colonies to the south. In he married Anne de la Grange Trianon, daughter of the Sieur de Neuville; and by her he had one son, who died apparently in youth.

The most recent, and most critical, biography of Frontenac is W. Eccles, Frontenac, the Courtier Governor There are several others, all adulatory and all based on Francis Parkman , Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV , a work which reflects the prejudices of the author and the values of his own society. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

January 10, Retrieved January 10, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. History Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps Comte de Frontenac et Palluau.

Comte de Frontenac et Palluau gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. More From encyclopedia. Comtat Venaissin. Comstockery in America. Comstock, Nanette — Comstock, George Franklin. Comstock, George Cary. Comstock, George —. Comstock, Gary D avid Comstock, Gary D avid. Comstock, Elizabeth Leslie — Comstock, Anna Botsford — Comstock, Anna Botsford.