The rest of the 19,000 livres should be employed in purchasing arms and ammunition. Besides this flying squadron the king allowed a company formed by the settlers at their own expense to act as the necessary escort to the Hurons or the missionaries. For the support of this, trading was allowed on these journeys on the condition of bringing the skins to the government stores at Quebec and sold at the price fixed by the Quebec council.
These changes were not received with favour by the old party and d'Ailleboust was made to realize this on his way back. However, he came to Quebec as governor general on August 20th and was received with "generous magnanimity" by Montmagny, who left on September 23d. Madame d'Ailleboust and her sister, Phillipine de Boulogne, joined the governor at Quebec. There was grief at Montreal in losing them, but this was tempered by its pride in furnishing the governor general from its midst.
A few words are needed in further explanation of the "camp volant" above alluded to.
"In 1642," according to Benjamin Suite, Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 1879, "there were no less than seventy soldiers at Three Rivers whose duty it was, not only to defend that place against the Iroquois, but to patrol Lake St. Peter also. The same year only fifteen soldiers were quartered at Quebec—a much less exposed position than Three Rivers. In the year 1644 some troops were sent to Canada by Anne d'Autriche. Twenty-three of these soldiers accompanied the Hurons, the missionaries and a few Frenchmen, who went to the Georgian Bay that summer. M. Ferland says that the garrison of Montreal numbered thirty men in 1647; but he evidently means the thirty men placed under the orders of Jean Bourdon for reconnaissance purposes on Lake St. Peter." These were "soldiers" from 1642; from 1649 there were volunteers, and from 1651, if not before, a sedentary militia was established.
About 1647 Montmagny had considered a project for forming an active militia to be on the lookout against the Iroquois, but his resources were too slender. In the spring of 1649 the "camp volant" was organized under the command of Charles J. d'Ailleboust de Musseaux, nephew of the new governor general, M. d'Ailleboust. It numbered forty men and its duty consisted in patrolling on the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Three Rivers.
After the slaughter of Sieur Duplessis Kerbodot, nephew of M. Lauson, now governing and the successor of de Musseaux, on August 19th, together with fifteen Frenchmen, the "camp volant" became disorganized for the winter, but it was apparently reformed in the summer of 1653. After that it seems to have been neglected during the government of D'Argenson and D'Avaugour. In fact a body of regular troops was required to check the Iroquois, and not mere militia, whose men could not attend to their farm and other business and at the same time keep beating the country nearly all the year round. Hence the request for troops, of Father Lejeune in 1660, and Pierre Boucher in 1661. In 1663 a body of militia was organized at Montreal.
The next spring, 1640, the "camp volant" of forty men was sent to Montreal under the command of the nephew of the new governor, Charles d'Ailleboust des Musseaux, to help to repulse the Iroquois. About the same time the new governor went to pay his first official visit to Ville Marie.
He communicated the king's order as above, and among other instructions he communicated directions from the Company of Montreal. One, touching the administration of the Hôtel-Dieu, regulated that the surgeon of this house should attend the sick of the island gratuitously, both French and Indians, and that the administration accounts of the hospital should be rendered annually to the governor of Montreal, the ecclesiastical superior and to the syndics of the inhabitants, who should sign an act to be sent to Paris.
During this stay the governor, on May 3rd, put the Jesuits [59] formally in possession of the Seigneurie de Madeleine on the south side of the St. Lawrence, comprising land two leagues in length by four in depth, stretching from St. Helen's island towards the Sault St. Louis. This had been granted by François de Lauson on April 1, 1647.
Sad news had been brought to Jeanne Mance by the governor that many of the Associates were losing their interest in Montreal and were diverting their charities to the missions in the Levant. Anxious to get further news she went to Quebec in the summer and there she found that Père Rapin, the Recollect, her intermediary with Madame de Bullion, was dead; that the Company of Montreal was almost dissolved; that M. de la Dauversière was dangerously ill; that his affairs had become entangled, and he was now a bankrupt. As he had money in trust for Madame de Bullion, this was a blow for the colony.