98 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
he was reinstated by the king, and Canada welcomed 
him back as the only man who could save the country. 
No better man could have been chosen for the pur- 
pose. Though seventy years of age, he still retained 
something of the buoyancy of youth; in dauntless 
courage and fertility of resource he was not unlike his 
friend La Salle; and he was quite unrivalled in his 
knowledge of the dark and crooked ways of the Indian 
mind. 
At Frontenac’s arrival the enmities of all the hostile 
parties, both red and white, encamped upon American 
soil, were all at once allowed free play. The tyrant 
James II. had just been driven into exile at Versailles: 
and Louis XIV., unwilling to give up the check upon 
English policy which he had so long exercised through 
his ascendency over the mean-spirited Stuarts, and 
enraged beyond measure at the sudden accession of 
power now acquired by his arch-enemy, William of 
Orange — Louis XIV., who had but lately revoked 
the Edict of Nantes, and committed himself to a 
deadly struggle with all the liberal tendencies of the 
age, now declared war against England. This, of 
course, meant war in the New World as well as the 
Old, and left the doughty Frontenac quite unhampered 
in his plans for striking terror into the hearts of the 
foes of Canada. 
Frontenac’s first proceeding was to send scalping 
parties against the English settlements, not merely to 
annoy the English, but also to retrieve in the minds 
of his Indian allies and enemies the somewhat shaken 
military reputation of the French. In February, 1690, 
a small party of Frenchmen and Algonquins from 
Montreal, after a difficult march of three weeks 
