CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Volume 5


THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA
A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism

By WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO
TORONTO, 1915




CHAPTER I

AN OUTPOST OF EMPIRE

What would history be without the picturesque annals of
the Gallic race? This is a question which the serious
student may well ask himself as he works his way through
the chronicles of a dozen centuries. From the age of
Charlemagne to the last of the Bonapartes is a long stride
down the ages; but there was never a time in all these
years when men might make reckonings in the arithmetic
of European politics without taking into account the
prestige, the power, and even the primacy of France.
There were times without number when France among her