We cannot pursue the story of the war, as it takes us too far from Montreal. Suffice it to say that there was a complete victory, the greatest that had ever been won against the Iroquois. After the capture of the last stronghold of the Mohawk Iroquois, the warrior priest chanted a Te Deum and said mass. After that, the cross was planted with the arms of France and possession was taken of the country in the name of Louis XIV. "Vive le roi!"
At Quebec, when the news arrived, on November 2d, there were great rejoicings, and when de Tracy returned on the 5th the Te Deum boomed out anew. But the army was sorely depleted; many had died from cold, hunger and the chances of war, as also by accidents on the road, whereas the Iroquois had lost little else than their birch bark cabins.
After the termination of the expedition, some of the soldiers were picketed in the new forts. A chaplain was needed for Fort Ste. Anne, and Dollier de Casson, now returned to Montreal, volunteered, although he suffered from a swelling on the knee, to cure which he underwent a severe bleeding at the hands of one of the local medicos of Montreal, who did it so effectually that the big man fainted. However, he started out in two days, accompanied by Jacques Leber, Charles Le Moyne and Migeon de Branssat. At Ste. Anne's, he had busy work, with young Forestier, a surgeon from Montreal, in attending the sick men who suffered from famine and scurvy, while eleven died. Though himself sick the cheery chaplain did good, self-sacrificing service, none the less excellent, because it was seasoned with a plenteous fund of raillery and bantering. Among the officers there was La Durantaye, famous hereafter in Canadian annals. So the winter wore away at Ste. Anne's, relieved by provisions sent by the good folks of Montreal.
That winter the Hôtel-Dieu of Montreal was filled to overflowing with the sick and wounded, which it had received from the army under de Courcelles after the terrible war of the early winter. During the next year it continued its good work, for which Dollier de Casson says it deserved unspeakable praise, receiving the sick from the forts of Ste. Anne, St. Louis and St. Jean.
Before closing the narration of the events of this year we must not forget the joy at Montreal caused by the news spread in September that the king had settled all doubts of the rights of the Seigneurs of Montreal by confirming the letters patent of 1644. This confirmation M. Talon put into practice on September 17th when he received the fealty and homage of the Seminary for the Seigneurs of Montreal "with high, low and middle justice," and two days afterwards, in virtue of the extraordinary powers granted him by the king, ordered the seigneurs to be maintained in the possession of the administration of justice, thus supplanting the royal court of the sénéchal already established, as before mentioned.
The Seminary had right to name its own governor also, but no one was appointed to the vacant post of Maisonneuve till 1669.
Thus the year closed in a peace to last for twenty years. The king's arms had battered Iroquois insolence.
But the heroic age was at an end. [95]
After the successful war, de Tracy engaged himself before departing in May for Montreal, in consolidating the paternal government lately introduced and in conciliating the habitants on behalf of his royal master. He came to Montreal to take cognizance of it as a place which was most commonly resorted to by the savage as the most advanced point on the river.