islands in the river and the land on both sides of the Richelieu
in the region toward Lake Champlain had been allotted. Many of the
seigneuries in this latter belt had been given to officers of the
Carignan-Salières regiment which had come out with Tracy in 1665
to chastise the Mohawks. After the work of the regiment had been
finished, Talon suggested to the King that it be disbanded in Canada,
that the officers be persuaded to accept seigneuries, and that the
soldiers be given lands within the estates of their officers. The
Grand Monarque not only assented but promised a liberal money bonus to
all who would remain. Accordingly, more than twenty officers, chiefly
captains or lieutenants, and nearly four hundred men, agreed to stay
in New France under these arrangements.

Here was an experiment in the system of imperial Rome repeated in the
New World. When the empire of the Caesars was beginning to give way
before the oncoming Goths and Huns, the practice of disbanding the
legions on the frontier so that they might settle there and form an
iron ring against the invaders was adopted and served its purpose for
a time. It was from these _praedia militaria_ that Talon got the idea
which he now transmitted to the French King with the suggestion
that "the practice of these sagacious and warlike Romans might be
advantageously followed in a land which, being so far away from its
sovereign, must trust for existence to the strength, of its own
arms." In keeping with the same precedent, Talon located the military
seigneuries in that section of the colony where they would be most
useful as a barrier against the enemy; that is to say, he placed them
in the colony's most vulnerable region. This was the area along the
Richelieu from Lake Champlain to its confluence with the St. Lawrence
at Sorel. It was by this route that the Mohawks had already come more
than once on their errands of massacre, and it was by this portal