narrowly saved them from a horrible danger. The worthy prelate obtained
from the king a sufficiently large assignment of troops to deliver the
colony at last from its most dangerous enemies. "We expect next year,"
he wrote to the sovereign pontiff, "twelve hundred soldiers, with whom,
by God's help, we shall try to overcome the fierce Iroquois. The Marquis
de Tracy will come to Canada in order to see for himself the measures
which are necessary to make of New France a strong and prosperous
colony."

M. Dubois d'Avaugour was recalled, and yet he rendered before his
departure a distinguished service to the colony. "The St. Lawrence," he
wrote in a memorial to the monarch, "is the key to a country which may
become the greatest state in the world. There should be sent to this
colony three thousand soldiers, to be discharged after three years of
service; they could make Quebec an impregnable fortress, subdue the
Iroquois, build redoubtable forts on the banks of the Hudson, where the
Dutch have only a wretched wooden hut, and in short, open for New France
a road to the sea by this river." It was mainly this report which
induced the sovereign to take back Canada from the hands of the Company
of the Cent-Associés, who were incapable of colonizing it, and to
reintegrate it in the royal domain.

Must we think with M. de la Colombière,[2] with M. de Latour and with
Cardinal Taschereau, that the Sovereign Council was the work of Mgr. de
Laval? We have some justification in believing it when we remember that
the king arrived at this important decision while the energetic Laval
was present at his court. However it may be, on April 24th, 1663, the
Company of New France abandoned the colony to the royal government,
which immediately created in Canada three courts of justice and above
them the Sovereign Council as a court of appeal.