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I69o] Frwfe'nac and d'Tberville. 89 Frontenac in Canada had already made it clear that the maintenance of a steady hold on the Mississippi would ultimately become part of a wide scheme of political expansion, through the settlement of French colonists, or at all events through French influence upon the natives. The first period of Frontenac's government, 1672-82, had given him no opportunity of showing his real strength ; for the vexatious struggle carried on between him and the intendant, whose rivalry he could not brook, had ended in the governor's recall. But when danger of the most serious kind threatened the colony, Frontenac's masterfulness and his extraordinary influence with the Indians pointed him out as the one man capable of facing the situation. The new danger arose once more from the power of the Iroquois. After the check inflicted by the Marquis de Tracy, Canada had ceased for a while to fear them. But under Frontenac's two successors in office, who failed to appreciate the necessity of caution, the rising began again. Fort Frontenac and Fort Niagara, the two main bulwarks of the colony against the Iroquois, were lost, and the total abandonment of the colony seemed imminent. But on Frontenac's restoration there was an immediate change. The keynote to his policy was struck when he insisted on taking back with him all the Iroquois prisoners who, by Louis' order, had been sent to labour on the galleys. In ten years' time, with little or no military help from France, he had secured not only a long peace from Indian disturbance, but had got the best of the struggle with the English for fisheries in Acadia and New- foundland, and for peltries in Hudson's Bay; had raided, and kept in a constant state of alarm, the great colonies of New England and New York; had met and triumphed over an English invasion. Acadia, which had been restored to France by the Treaty of Breda (1667), was in 1682 almost devoid of organised government and passing gradually under English control. Supported by d'Iberville, and by the half-Indianised Baron de St Castein, formerly an officer in the regiment sent out against the Iroquois, Frontenac recovered Port Royal, which had been taken by Phipps; and made it possible for France in the discussions after the Treaty of Ryswick to claim the Kennebec river as a frontier-line for the Acadians, who numbered less than a thousand souls. D'Iberville's work in Newfoundland was yet bolder, ending in the destruction of almost all the English settlements, and putting an end to the numerous English raids upon the French settlement at Placentia. His expedition, which excited great alarm in New England and even in Virginia, was however not followed up by active settlement or by the establishment of forts. It was d'Iberville again who, by the injuries which he inflicted on the forts of the English Company, secured for the French a possession of Hudson's Bay which remained almost unbroken until by the Treaty of Utrecht the Bay was ceded to England. Still more impressive was Frontenac's general scheme of attack on the English colonies. The Iroquois had been converted by him from most dangerous