after heavy
expenditures which had produced very small results, and the colony
became a royal province. With its chequered future must be always
associated the name of the Canadian Bienville, who was for some years
its governor and justly earned the title of "Father of Louisiana."
Insignificant as was its progress, France prized its possession, and
had she been alive to her opportunities she might have colonised it
with Huguenots and made it a power in the conflict between herself and
England in America.

France, busy with her ambitious designs in Europe, gave but a meagre
and too often half-hearted support to the men who had dreams of
founding a mighty empire in America. When France and England met for
the great struggle on that continent, the thirteen colonies had reached
a population of nearly a million and a quarter of souls, exclusive of
the negroes in the South, while the total number of the people in
Canada and Louisiana did not exceed eighty thousand. In wealth and
comfort there was the same disproportion between the French and English
colonies. In fact at the time of the last {226} war, Canadian commerce
was entirely paralysed, farms neglected, and the towns barely able to
live. In 1757 food was so scarce in Quebec and Montreal that the
soldiers and people had to use horse flesh. The combined forces of
Canadian militia and regular troops were always much inferior in number
to the British and colonial armies when united for the invasion of
Canada, with the support of a powerful fleet; but the great strength of
the French colony lay in the natural barriers between the English
colonies and the keys to New France, Quebec, and Montreal, and in the
skill with which the approaches by way of Lake Champlain had been
defended by forts at every important point. If the French force was
insignificant in number, it was, as a rule, skilfully managed, and in
the early part of the struggle the English had no commander to compare
with Montcalm for military genius. In some respects the French
Canadians were more manageable in war than the English colonists. No
legislative bodies existed in Canada to interfere with and thwart the
plans and orders of military commanders, but the whole Canadian people
acted as a unit to be moved and directed at the will of the King's
officers. The Indian tribes from Acadia to the Mississippi, the Ohio,
and the Illinois, were, with the exception of the Five Nations, always
friendly to the