102 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
pounds, was obliged for a time to issue paper money. 
In the following year, Peter Schuyler, with a force of 
New York militia and Mohawks, descended Lake 
Champlain, and defeated the French in a fierce and 
obstinate battle; but nothing came of the victory, and 
the end of the campaign left Frontenac master of the 
situation. | 
Having thus successfully defied the English and 
won a mighty reputation among his Algonquin allies, 
the veteran governor was now prepared to chastise the 
Iroquois. In 1693 a small French army under Courte- 
manche overran the Mohawk country and destroyed 
several towns, retreating after a drawn battle with Peter 
Schuyler. In 1696 Frontenac himself, at the head of 
two battalions of French regulars, eight hundred Cana- 
dian militia, and a swarm of screeching Hurons and 
Ottawas, crossed Lake Ontario, and battered down, so 
to speak, the centre of the Long House. Carried in 
triumph on the shoulders of the exulting Indians, the 
old general, now in his seventy-seventh year, advanced 
boldly into the sacred precincts of the Onondagas, 
whither white men had never yet set foot save as 
envoys on the most dangerous of missions, or as 
prisoners to be burned at the stake. Most of the 
Onondaga warriors fled in dismay, but their towns 
were utterly destroyed, all their winter stores captured, 
and their whole country laid waste. A similar pun- 
ishment was then inflicted upon the Oneidas, and the 
motley army returned to Canada, taking along with 
them a great number of war chiefs as hostages. In 
the following year the Iroquois, cowed by defeat and 
famine, sent an embassy to: Quebec to see if they 
could make a separate peace with the French, without 
