But with every good will to serve his monarch and stifle in infancy the growing trade of the Hudson's Bay Company in the northern regions, Duluth vastly undervalued the forces of circumstance as well of enterprise at the command of the enemy. The plans of the French were destined to be confounded by the unforeseen and treacherous action of Radisson and Chouart in the following year.
"What am I to do?" now became the burden of La Barre's appeals to the King. The young priest who acted as his secretary at Quebec was kept perpetually writing to Versailles for instructions. His letters are long, and filled with explanations of the situation, which only served to confuse his superiors. Fearful of offending the English on one hand and thereby precipitating New France in a war with New England, and on the other of arousing the resentment of the colonists by a supine behaviour, the unhappy Denonville was in an unpleasant dilemma.
"Am I to oppose force to force?" he asks in one letter. "Am I to venture against those who have committed these outrages against your Majesty's subjects at sea? It is a matter in which your Majesty will please to furnish me with some precise and decisive orders whereunto I shall conform my conduct and actions."
Lewis unwilling to oppose the English.
But the Most Christian King was by no means anxious to quarrel with his cousin Charles either for the dominion of, or the fur-trade monopoly in, the north. Charles was in possession of a handsome subsidy paid out of the exchequer of Lewis. Europe was spectator of the most cordial relations between these two monarchs, relations which are described by more than one candid historian as those commonly subsisting between master and vassal. That tempest of indignation which was to break over England in the reign of Charles's successor would have not so long been deferred had but a real knowledge of the "good understanding and national concord" been known to Englishmen at large.
Under the circumstances it is not surprising that Lewis concluded to do nothing. It was not that opportunities to regain what was lost were lacking. An old soldier, Gauthier de Comportier, who with a number of other patriots had learned of the jeopardy in which French interests lay in the north, presented a memoir to the King offering, if a grant were made him, to win all back from the English and to establish three posts on the Bourbon River. The grant was refused.
A change then came which altered the aspect of affairs.
In February, 1685, Charles II. died, and the Duke of York, second Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, ascended the throne of England. Lewis was not the last to perceive that the accession of James would cause but little real difference, as the latter and himself were bound together by ties as strong as had bound Charles, yet saw at the same time that full advantage might safely be reaped from the change of monarchs. Proceedings were instantly therefore set on foot to retrieve the fortunes of the French in the fur countries.
The conduct of Groseilliers and Radisson had deeply offended the inhabitants of Quebec. An excited populace burnt the pair in effigy, and a decree was issued for their arrest should they at any time be apprehended, and for their delivery to those whom they had betrayed. But it was the anger of La Chesnaye and his associates of the Company which was especially strong. An expedition which they had sent out to Port Nelson, with the intention of collecting the wealth in peltries, returned to the St. Lawrence without so much as a single beaver.
The success of the English made some decided action on the part of the French inevitable. La Barre was recalled and his successor, the Marquis de Denonville, determined to take matters into his own hands, rather than see the interests of New France in the Bay suffer. He relied upon the success of the expedition to atone for the boldness of the initiative, but his action was not taken without repeated warnings addressed to the Minister. "All the best of our furs, both as to quality and quantity, we must expect to see shortly in the hands of the English." If the English were not expelled they would secure all the fat beaver from an infinite number of tribes in the north who were being discovered every day; besides abstracting the greater portion of the peltries that ordinarily reached them at Montreal through the Ottawas, Assiniboines and other tribes.[21]