1688.] DISTRESS OF CANADA. 167 



He was forced to another and a deeper humilia- 

 tion. At the imperious demand of Dongan and 

 the Iroquois, he begged the king to send back the 

 prisoners entrapped at Fort Frontenac, and he 

 wrote to the minister : " Be pleased, Monseigneur, 

 to remember that I had the honor to tell yon 

 that, in order to attain the peace necessary to the 

 country, I was obliged to promise that I would beg 

 you to send back to us the prisoners I sent you 

 last year. I know you gave orders that they should 

 be well treated, but I am informed that, though 

 they were well enough treated at first, your orders 

 were not afterwards executed with the same fidelity. 

 If ill treatment has caused them all to die, — for 

 they are people who easily fall into dejection, and 

 who die of it, — and if none of them come back, 

 I do not know at all whether we can persuade 

 these barbarians not to attack us again." l 



What had brought the marquis to this pass ? 

 Famine, destitution, disease, and the Iroquois were 

 making Canada their prey. The fur trade had 

 been stopped for two years ; and the people, bereft 

 of their only means of subsistence, could contrib- 

 ute nothing to their own defence. Above Three 

 Kivers, the whole population was imprisoned in 

 stockade forts hastily built in every seigniory. 2 



Fort Niagara, 1688 ; N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 386. The palisades were torn 

 down by Denonville's order on the loth of September. The rude dwell- 

 ings and storehouses which they enclosed, together with a large wooden 

 cross, were left standing. The commandant De Troyes had died, and 

 Captain Desbergeres had been sent to succeed him. 



1 Denonville, Memoire du 10 Aoust, 1688. 



2 In the Depot des Cartes de la Marine, there is a contemporary 

 manuscript map, on which all these forts are laid down. 



