The colonial authorities, helpless to guard their entire
frontiers and unable to foretell where the next blow
would fall, endured the terrors of this situation for
many years. In utter desperation they at length called
on the king for a regiment of trained troops as the
nucleus of a punitive expedition. The Iroquois would be
tracked to their own villages and there given a memorable
lesson in letters of blood and iron. The king, as usual,
complied, and on a bright June day in 1665 a glittering
cavalcade disembarked at Quebec. The Marquis de Tracy
with two hundred gaily caparisoned officers and men of
the regiment of Carignan-Salieres formed this first
detachment; the other companies followed a little later.
Quebec was like a city relieved from a long siege. Its
people were in a frenzy of joy.

The work which the regiment had been sent out to do was
soon begun. The undertaking was more difficult than had
been anticipated, and two expeditions were needed to
accomplish it; but the Iroquois were thoroughly chastened,
and by the close of 1666 the colony once more breathed
easily. How long, however, would it be permitted to do
so? Would not the departure of the regiment be a signal
to the Mohawks that they might once again raid the colony's
borders with impunity? Talon thought that it would, hence
he hastened to devise a plan whereby the Carignans might
be kept permanently in Canada. To hold them there as a
regular garrison was out of the question; it would cost
too much to maintain six hundred men in idleness. So the
intendant proposed to the king that the regiment should