be disbanded at Quebec, and that all its members should
be given inducements to make their homes in the colony.

Once more the king assented. He agreed that the officers
of the regiment should be offered seigneuries, and provided
with funds to make a start in improving them. For the
rank and file who should prove willing to take lands
within the seigneuries of the officers the king consented
to provide a year's subsistence and a liberal grant in
money. The terms proved attractive to some of the officers
and to most of the men. Accordingly, arrangements were
at once made for getting them established on their new
estates. Just how many permanent settlers were added to
the colonial population in this way is not easy to
ascertain; but about twenty-five officers (chiefly captains
and lieutenants) together with nearly four hundred men
volunteered to stay. Most of the non-commissioned officers
and men showed themselves to be made of good stuff; their
days were long in the land, and their descendants by the
thousand still possess the valley of the Richelieu. But
the officers, good soldiers though they were, proved to
be rather faint-hearted pioneers. The task of beating
swords into ploughshares was not altogether to their
tastes. Hence it was that many of them got into debt,
mortgaged their seigneuries to Quebec or Montreal merchants,
soon lost their lands, and finally drifted back to France.

When Talon arranged to have the Carignans disbanded in
Canada he decided that they should be given lands in that
section of the colony where they would be most useful in