THE FIRST ANGLO-FRENCH DUEL 89 



have been cited, the loneliness and ascendancy of Placentia. 

 St. John's was only first amongst thirty or forty peers, and a net- 

 work of pathways connected it with its peers. Placentia was 

 peerless and isolated from its sub-settlements, which consisted 

 mainly of islands, and which were abandoned more or less as 

 war went on. At the outbreak of war St. John's was anar- 

 chical, or subject to summer rulers who where changed every 

 year, and was without church or chapel, but was the centre of 

 a rich and varied life, like a city that had grown, while 

 Placentia was rigidly Roman Catholic, had three churches, 

 and was divided by clean-cut lines between two classes, the 

 governed and the governors, and, as in most made cities, the 

 latter preceded the former. Placentia was guarded by a fort 

 or two, whose guns were once 18 (I662) 1 , then 3 (i68i) 2 , 

 and then 52 in number 3 , and whose garrison varied from 

 150 paper units (I662) 1 to 25 starvelings (i688) 4 and to 150 

 able-bodied soldiers (1696*, i6gS s ). When at its best 

 Placentia including Grand and Little Placentia and Point 

 Verte was a little larger that St. John's, and only a little 

 less than the entire French colony. 



The Governors of the French colony were very visible and being -very 

 omnipresent, and the history of French Newfoundland 

 was contained in the biography of six or seven persons and 

 three or four functionaries. First there was the Governor of 

 Newfoundland and Placentia, who ruled the hosts of fisher- 

 men, who came and went like birds of passage, as well as the 

 fishing soldiers and settlers, and who was represented by De 

 Brouillan (1691-1702), or during his illness by De Monic 

 (1698-1702), then by De Subercase (1702-6), and then by 

 De Costebelle (1706-14), who had been 'King's Lieutenant' 

 at Placentia (1695-1706) and was succeeded as King's Lieu- 

 tenant by St. Ovide, a nephew of De Brouillan (1706-14). 



1 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, Apr. 15, 1668. 



2 Ibid., Sept. i, 1681. 3 Ibid., Nov. 13, 1698. 



4 Ordres du Roi, Ser. B., vols. xiv to xix, in the copies of the French 

 Records at Ottawa. Ordres, Feb. 21, 1688 ; Apr. 4, 1696. 



