[[3]] See The Great Intendant.
[[4]] The most important of the French posts in the western portion of the Great Lakes, situated on the strait which unites Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. It was here that Saint-Lusson and Perrot took possession of the West in the name of France (June 1671). See The Great Intendant, pp. 115-16.
[[5]] For example, Harvard College was founded in 1636, and there was a printing-press at Cambridge, Mass., in 1638.
CHAPTER II
LOUIS DE BUADE, COMTE DE FRONTENAC
Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, was born in 1620. He was the son of Henri de Buade, a noble at the court of Louis XIII. His mother, Anne de Phélippeaux, came from a stock which in the early Bourbon period furnished France with many officials of high rank, notably Louis de Phélippeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain. His father belonged to a family of southern France whose estates lay originally in Guienne. It was a fortunate incident in the annals of this family that when Antoine de Bourbon became governor of Guienne (1555) Geoffrey de Buade entered his service. Thenceforth the Buades were attached by close ties to the kings of Navarre. Frontenac's grandfather, Antoine de Buade, figures frequently in the Memoirs of Agrippa d'Aubigné as aide-de-camp to Henry IV; Henri de Buade, Frontenac's father, was a playmate and close friend of Louis XIII;[[1]] and Frontenac himself was a godson and a namesake of the king.
While fortune thus smiled upon the cradle of Louis de Buade, some important favours were denied. Though nobly born, Frontenac did not spring from a line which had been of national importance for centuries, like that of Montmorency or Châtillon. Nor did he inherit large estates. The chief advantage which the Buades possessed came from their personal relations with the royal family. Their property in Guienne was not great, and neither Geoffrey, Antoine, nor Henri had possessed commanding abilities. Nor was Frontenac the boyhood friend of his king as his father had been, for Louis XIV was not born till 1638. Frontenac's rank was good enough to give him a chance at the French court. For the rest, his worldly prosperity would depend on his own efforts.
Inevitably he became a soldier. He entered the army at fifteen. It was one of the greatest moments in French history. Richelieu was prime minister, and the long strife between France and the House of Hapsburg had just begun to turn definitely in favour of France. Against the Hapsburgs, with their two thrones of Spain and Austria,[[2]] stood the Great Cardinal, ready to use the crisis of the Thirty Years' War for the benefit of his nation—even though this meant a league with heretics. At the moment when Frontenac first drew the sword France (in nominal support of her German allies) was striving to conquer Alsace. The victory which brought the French to the Rhine was won through the capture of Breisach, at the close of 1638. Then in swift succession followed those astounding victories of Condé and Turenne which destroyed the military pre-eminence of Spain, took the French to the gates of Munich, and wrung from the emperor the Peace of Westphalia (1648).