France, particularly with regard to the right of appointment
to ecclesiastical positions with endowed revenues. Bishops, priests,
and religious orders ranged themselves on one side or the other, for
it was a conflict in which there could be no neutrality. As the royal
authorities were heart and soul with the Galileans, it was natural
enough that priests of this group should gain the first religious
foothold in the colony. The earliest priests brought to the colony
were members of the Recollet Order. They came with Champlain in 1615,
and made their headquarters in Quebec at the suggestion of the King's
secretary. For ten years they labored in the colony, striving bravely
to clear the way for a great missionary crusade.

But the day of the Recollets in New France was not long. In 1625 came
the advance guard of another religious order, the militant Jesuits,
bringing with them their traditions of unwavering loyalty to the
Ultramontane cause. The work of the Recollets had, on the whole, been
disappointing, for their numbers and their resources proved too small
for effective progress. During ten years of devoted labor they had
scarcely been able to make any impression upon the great wilderness of
heathenism that lay on all sides. In view of the apparent futility of
their efforts, the coming of the Jesuits--suggested, it may be, by
Champlain--was probably not unwelcome to them. Richelieu, moreover,
had now brought his Ultramontane sympathies close to the seat of royal
power, so that the King no longer was in a position to oppose the
project. At any rate the Jesuits sailed for Canada, and their arrival
forms a notable landmark in the history of the colony. Their dogged
zeal and iron persistence carried them to points which missionaries
of no other religious order would have reached. For the Jesuits were,
above all things else, the harbingers of a militant faith. Their
organization and their methods admirably fitted them to be the
pioneers of the Cross in new lands. They were men of action, seeking
to win their crown of glory and their reward through intense physical
and spiritual exertions, not through long seasons of prayer and
meditation in cloistered seclusion. Loyola, the founder of the Order,
gave to the world the nucleus of a crusading host, disciplined as no
army ever was. If the Jesuits could not achieve the spiritual conquest
of the New World, it was certain that no others could. And this
conquest they did achieve. The