We cannot follow its progress. For us, it is interesting to record it in connection with Montreal as resulting in the establishment of Fort Frontenac, or Cataracqui, the modern Kingston, the construction and management of which was now entrusted to a Montrealer, Sieur de la Salle to whom, on May 13, 1675, on the occasion of his visit to France, letters of nobility were given with the property and government of the new fort and some adjacent leagues of land. La Salle had gone to France in 1674, well recommended by Frontenac. His family, seeing a fortune in the new trading station, procured the necessary funds for him to pursue his career, and presented a memorial of La Salle's discoveries and his good actions, which secured the above privilege. La Salle named his seigneury Fort Frontenac in honour of his patron. His enemies say that he became Frontenac's agent, as de Brucy was that of Perrot.
On returning from Lake Ontario, Frontenac and Perrot soon began their duel. Towards the end of autumn, 1673, Frontenac, receiving Perrot at Quebec, reprimanded him severely for the continued disturbances already mentioned at Montreal. Perrot respectfully promised better care, in regard to the observances of the king, for the future, and returned to Montreal. But hardly had he been back eight days, when trouble began. Two coureurs de bois had returned and gone to lodge with M. Carion, the officer of whom we have spoken. Charles D'Ailleboust, the judge, sent Sergeant Bailly to arrest him, whereupon Carion obstructed and ill treated the sergeant. Instead of punishing Carion, Perrot sent for D'Ailleboust and reprimanded him for having sent the sergeant to the house of an officer, without warning him, and threatened him with prison himself, if he repeated his conduct, notwithstanding any orders from the governor-general.
The astonished D'Ailleboust acquainted Frontenac with this incident, and he, scenting rebellion, immediately dispatched three of his guards with their lieutenant, Sieur Bizard, to arrest Carion. Bizard did this faithfully, leaving a guard over him. But he had made a grave error in etiquette in so doing. Before leaving Quebec he had received from Frontenac a letter for Perrot, acquainting him of the intended arrest in his jurisdiction, but fearful of the wrath of the local governor, Bizard sought the house of Jacques LeBer, to leave the letter there, so that it might be delivered to Perrot after the departure of the guard from the town. Meanwhile Madame Carion had quickly acquainted Perrot of her husband's arrest and immediately the indignant governor, with a sergeant and a guard from the garrison, angrily confronted Bizard at LeBer's house and threw Frontenac's letter, presented him, back in Bizard's face.
"Take it back," he said, "to your master and warn him to teach you your official duties, better, a second time." He then put him into prison but released him the next day with a letter to M. Frontenac. Bizard, however, had a statement of his arrest made out which was signed by Jacques LeBer, La Salle and a domestic, the witnesses of it. Four or five days later, Perrot, coming to hear of this, sent LeBer to prison without any form of justice; but La Salle he left alone, keeping him under watch during the day. But by night the nimble explorer, with Norman adroitness, leaped the enclosure of the house and hurried secretly to Quebec to tell his patron Frontenac of his flouted authority. Thither also journeyed later the friends of M. LeBer to make their protestation.
If Frontenac's officer had erred in trespassing on the prerogatives of the governor of Montreal, the latter, by imprisoning Bizard, had similarly encroached on those of the governor-general. They could have cried quits, but it is alleged that Frontenac was eager to deprive Montreal of its autonomy, and herein was his excuse. It was Frontenac's policy to appear to smoothen out the situation. He wrote to Perrot inviting him to set LeBer at liberty and to come himself to Quebec to render an account of his conduct, and to M. de Salignac Fénelon, the Sulpician, who had eulogized him in the parish church of Montreal before departing to Fort Frontenac, he wrote another, saying that he wished to terminate amicably the differences between himself and M. Perrot. Both fell into the trap. M. Fénelon, determined to accompany M. Perrot, started with him on the ice of the river in the heart of winter, and they arrived at nightfall in Quebec on the 28th of January, 1674.
The next morning M. Perrot made his call on the governor and hardly had he set his foot across his threshold than he was arrested by Lieutenant Bizard, his sword being taken from him and then led to prison in solitary confinement in the Château St. Louis without any formal process, and there he remained till the following November. The simplicity of M. Fénelon was rudely shocked by this "volte face." He sought the governor to intercede for his friend and when he strove to obtain a pass to see the prisoner he only angered Frontenac, who accused him of wishing to corrupt his guards.
Back went Fénelon on the St. Lawrence on his snowshoes. Hardly had he reached Montreal when Dollier de Casson received several letters from the governor-general, complaining of the conduct of M. Fénelon "as unworthy of a man of his character and birth." There is reason from after-events to believe that Fénelon's zeal was not sufficiently tempered with discretion. Montreal having now need of a governor, Frontenac speedily appointed on the 4th of February, as commandant in his absence, one of his devoted friends, M. de la Nouguère, [122] an ensign in a cavalry regiment. In the act, making this appointment, he explains his superseding of the town major, Sieur Dupuis, as due to the advanced stage of his age, but he bids him to have de la Nouguère recognized by the officers of the garrison. (Vide this document in the City Hall Archives, dated February 10, 1674.) He then ordered the new commandant to arrest Sieur de Brucy and two of his servants, and to send M. Gilles de Boisvinet, the judge of Three Rivers, to conduct the trial and to inform against all coureurs de bois in Montreal—an insult to M. Charles D'Ailleboust, whose faith and sympathy he distrusted. Certainly Frontenac had made himself master of Montreal.
These actions, derogatory to the privileges of the Seigneurs granted in 1644, were borne with wise moderation, though under protest, to avoid undue friction in a difficult position. A document of Dollier de Casson, dated March 22, 1674, on the occasion of a protest against Boisvinet, who had gone beyond the limits of his commission, following a former juridical protestation against the infringement of their right to appointment of a governor, dated March 10, 1674, shows this clearly and explains the neutral policy now adopted.
Meanwhile in his prison at Quebec, the deposed governor of Montreal refused to be judged by Frontenac and the Sovereign Council, and asked to have his case tried by the king. In justification of his firm action at Montreal, Frontenac wrote to Colbert some months later, that he had hanged one of the coureurs de bois, the same that had lodged with Carion, and that the others, to the number of thirty, had been thus intimidated and had submitted to fines and had taken up lands as habitants. "I can assure you," he says, "with certainty, that there are now not more than five coureurs de bois in Canada, of whom three belong to M. Perrot's garrison, whom he allowed to desert; the fourth is a farmer on the island bearing his name. You will gather from this whether I have reason or not, in retaining him as a prisoner."