Royal Takeover and Attempts To Settle
In the 1650s, Montreal still had only a few dozen settlers and a severely underpopulated New France almost fell completely to hostile Iroquois forces. In 1660, settler Adam Dollard des Ormeaux led a Canadian and Huron militia against a much larger Iroquois force; none of the Canadians survived, but they succeeded in turning back the Iroquois invasion. In 1663, New France finally became more secure when Louis XIV made it a royal province.
In 1665, he sent a French garrison, the Carignan-Salières Regiment, to Quebec. The government of the colony was reformed along the lines of the government of France, with the Governor General and Intendant subordinate to the Minister of the Marine in France. In 1665, Jean Talon was sent by Minister of the Marine Jean-Baptiste Colbert to New France as the first Intendant. These reforms limited the power of the Bishop of Quebec, who had held the greatest amount of power after the death of Champlain.
The 1666 census of New France was conducted by France's intendant, Jean Talon, in the winter of 1665–66. It showed a population of 3,215 habitants in New France, many more than there had been only a few decades earlier, but also a great difference in the number of men (2,034) and women (1,181). This was because most of the explorers, soldiers, fur traders and settlers who had come to New France were men.
To strengthen the colony and make it the centre of France's colonial empire, Louis XIV decided to dispatch more than 700 single women, aged between 15 and 30 (known as les filles du roi) to New France. At the same time, marriages with the natives were encouraged and indentured servants, known as engagés, were also sent to New France. One such engagé, Etienne Truteau (La Rochelle, 1641 – Montréal, 1712) was the ancestor of the Trudeaus in North America, such as the Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Talon also tried to reform the seigneurial system, forcing the seigneurs to actually reside on their land, and limiting the size of the seigneuries, in an attempt to make more land available to new settlers. These schemes were ultimately unsuccessful. Very few settlers arrived, and the various industries established by Talon did not surpass the importance of the fur trade.
Read more about this topic: New France
Famous quotes containing the words royal, takeover, attempts and/or settle:
“High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
Hung o’er the deep, such as amazing frowns
On utmost Kilda’s shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
The royal eagle draws his vigorous young”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.”
—Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)
“Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The English were very backward to explore and settle the continent which they had stumbled upon. The French preceded them both in their attempts to colonize the continent of North America ... and in their first permanent settlement ... And the right of possession, naturally enough, was the one which England mainly respected and recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and also of France, from the time of Henry VII.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)