Nor was he left free from European rivals. The English followed the French to the, Saint Lawrence. Quebec they attacked and captured in 1629, and over it the English flag floated for three years. When in 1632 France recovered the place the fortunes of Canada were com mitted to a great commercial company. This company of- *One Hundred Associates* was to be lord of the land and to have in its hands the work both of trade and of settlement. In France it had the powerful support of Cardinal Riche lieu, but when at Quebec in 1635 Champlain died, New France lost its ablest leader, and the company the most effective exponent of its interests. In the end it failed. Both in India and in America in the 17th century the French commercial companies had no success while their English and Dutch rivals succeeded.
After 1635 Canada was the scene of varied activity. It was an age of religious zeal in Europe, and the Jesuit and other missionaries planned to convert and control the savage na tive tribes of the country. In what is now northern New York, in Ontario, and in Quebec the missionaries did heroic work. Since the French missionaries were the friends of the Huron tribe, the relentless Iroquois, bent on destroying the Hurons, pursued too, the French. By 1649 the Huron settlements and the French missions were alike destroyed, and the French were driven back for a time to their base at Quebec. They had founded Montreal in 1642, but it was long only a fortified outpost to check the Iroquois.
But missions represent only one, if the dom inant, phase of French interest. The great in terior exercised all the fascination of the un known upon the chivalrous minds of the French explorers. Radisson, La Salle, Marquette, Joliet are only the best known of the leaders who penetrated to the interior before 1700. On Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, on the Mississippi, even in the far west of Canada and the United States the sur vival of French names to this day bears witness to the activity of these explorers. It was a French Canadian, La Verendrye, who first advanced so far across the prairie as to justify a belief, still held by many, that he came in sight of the Rocky Mountains. But this was not until 1743, and it now appears likely that he did not advance beyond the Black Hills in South Dakota.
Between missions and discovery the slow and laborious work of colonization was in danger of being forgotten, but there grew up gradually on both sides of the Saint Lawrence and near the mouths of its tributaries, colonies of French farmers. The river was their highway. For protection from the Indians they lived as close together as possible and so they divided the land into long narrow strips with the houses stretch ing in a line on the river front. To the present day it is the most conspicuous feature of the French Canadian farms. Colonization was slow
work. Adventurous Frenchmen preferred the wild life of the forest, and it was so difficult to attract settlers that in 1700 there were hardly more than 6,000 Europeans in the whole of New France. They enjoyed no semblance of political liberty. Between an aggressive church and a governor with the of Louis XIV, the subjection of the French habitant is in striking contrast with the liberty of New England. To ward the end of the 17th century New France was committed to a very able Governor, Fron tenac (q.v.). He had a definite program. He would curb the Church, which aimed to exclude settlement from the interior so that the mission aries might be alone with and this continue to control the Indian tribes; he w uld hold back the English, build a chain of torts from the Saint Lawrence by the Great Lakes and the Ohio to the mouth of the Mississippi to shut them out from the West, and finally drive them into the sea. It was a great plan, but it required resources beyond anything that France could command. In Europe she was fighting William III of England and his allies, and needed all the strength she could muster. So Frontenac died in 1698 with his plans unrealized, but he had done a definite work. The mission stage was ended in New France. Entrenched on the Saint Lawrence and soon on the Mississippi, France was ready to engage in the supreme struggle to make the interior French and to build up a great transatlantic empire for the glory of the French nation.
The next epoch in Canada's history covers the prolonged struggle resulting in the British conquest. Probably impossible of realization in any case, the plan of a French empire in America was ended by Louis XIV's misfortunes in Europe. With a great alliance against him, he was obliged to make the Peace of Utrecht (q.v.) in 1713. In this he surrendered his claims to Hudson Bay, to Newfoundland and to Nova Scotia. This was the beginning of the end. Though in Cape Breton, France built a great fortress, Louisbourg, so as to command the Saint Lawrence, and though she still held the country tributary to Quebec, the odds against her were too great. Walpole managed to keep Great Britain at peace until 1744, but when war then broke out France and England engaged in a final struggle for North America. The Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle (q.v.), in 1748, did not really bring peace. Both sides were preparing steadily for renewed conflict. On the Ohio, on the Atlantic Coast, on the Great Lakes, on the Saint Lawrence, a deadly conflict went on after 1755, and when on a September day in 1759 Wolfe (q.v.) defeated Montcalm (q.v.) before Quebec, the issue was at last decided. By the Treaty of Paris (q.v.) in 1763, France sur rendered her dominion of New France to Great Britain.