real interest lay in peaceful relations with the Dutch and the
English; the French were their logical enemies; and when the Iroquois
had finished with the Eries their insolence quickly showed itself once
more.

The next few years therefore found the colony again in desperate
straits. In its entire population there were not more than five
hundred men capable of taking the field, nor were there firearms for
all of these. The Iroquois confederacy could muster at least three
times that number; they were now obtaining firearms in plenty from the
Dutch at Albany; and they could concentrate their whole assault upon
the French settlement at Montreal. Had the Iroquois known the barest
elements of siege operations, the colony must have come to a speedy
and disastrous end. As the outcome proved, however, they were unwise
enough to divide their strength and to dissipate their energies in
isolated raids, so that Montreal came safely through the gloomy years
of 1658 and 1659.

In the latter of these years there arrived from France a man who was
destined to play a large part in its affairs during the next few
decades, François-Xavier de Laval, who now came to take charge of
ecclesiastical affairs in New France with the powers of a vicar
apostolic. Laval's arrival did not mark the beginning of friction
between the Church and the civil officials in the colony; there were
such dissensions already. But the doughty churchman's claims and the
governor's policy of resisting them soon brought things to an open
breach, particularly upon the question of permitting the sale of
liquor to the Indians. In 1662 the quarrel became bitter. Laval
hastened home to France where he placed before the authorities the
list of ecclesiastical grievances. The governor, a bluff old soldier,