as a cross
whereon was inscribed--

_Franciscus Primus, Dei Gratia Francorum Rex, Regnat._

In spite of cruel neglect due to internal troubles and that European
strife in which the motherland was engaged for so many generations,
the eyes of Frenchmen turned to their over-sea dominions with
imaginative hope, with conviction that the great continent of promise
would renew in France the glories that were Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome. How hard the patriotic colonists strove to retain those
territories which Champlain, La Salle, Maisonneuve, Joliet, and so
many others won through nameless toil and martyrdom, and how at last
the broad lands passed to another race and another flag, not by fault
or folly or lack of courage of the people, but by the criminal
corruption of the ruling few, is the narrative which runs through
these pages.

For at least the first hundred years of its existence, Quebec was New
France; and the story of Quebec in that period is the story of all
Canada. The fortress was the heart and soul of French enterprise in
the New World. From the Castle of St. Louis, on the summit of Cape
Diamond, went forth mandates, heard and obeyed in distant Louisiana.
The monastic city on the St. Lawrence was the centre of the web of
missions, which slowly spread from the dark Saguenay to Lake Superior.
The fearful tragedies of Indian warfare had their birth in the early
policy of Quebec. The fearless voyageurs, whose canoes glided into
unknown waters, ever westward--towards Cathay, as they believed--made
Quebec their base for exploration. And as time went on, the rock-built
stronghold of the north became the nerve-centre of that half-century
of conflict which left the flag of Britain waving in victory on the
Plains of Abraham.

When Montcalm in his last hours consigned to the care of the British
conquerors the colonists he had loved and for whom he had fought, he
proclaimed a momentous epoch in the world's history--the loss of an
Empire to a great nation of Europe and the gain of an Empire to
another. Within a generation the Saxon Conquistador was to suffer the
same humiliation, and to yield up that colonial territory from which
Quebec had been assailed; but the fortress city was always to both
nations the keystone of the arch of power on the American continent.
When she was lost to France, Louisiana, that vast territory along the
Mississippi--a kingdom in itself--still remained, but no high memory
cherishe