It is not our duty to tell the story of Quebec or to recount the noble defence of Champlain till the fall of the city on July 29, 1629, when Louis Kerth, the brother of the admiral, installed himself as the governor general, representing the English. The state of the colony at the end of this siege interests us. Of the French, there only remained at Quebec the families of the widow of Hébert and of their son-in-law, Couillard, and these intended to leave after the harvest, but in the event they were constrained to stay. The rest passed over by way of Tadoussac into France and with them Champlain, who went to England to call upon the French ambassador, urging him to demand the restitution of Quebec on the ground that it had been captured two months after the expiration of the short war between the two nations. Canada as a province _quoad civilia_ was under Normandy, and hence it became to be believed that it was also _quoad sacra_ under Normandy.
[Illustration: THE TAKING OF QUEBEC IN 1629
It is now 1632, the year of the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye when Acadia and Canada were again ceded to the French. For three years Louis Kerth kept Quebec in the name of England and on July 13, he formally handed over a heap of ruins to Emery de Caen, who conducted the first contingent of the returning French. "But for our habitation," says Champlain, "my people have found it utterly consumed along with good beaver skins valued at 40,000 _livres_."
Meanwhile, the Company of the Hundred Associates was again empowered to resume possession and Champlain was commissioned anew as acting governor of all the country along the St. Lawrence, and was appointed commander of the fleet of three vessels bearing new colonists. He arrived at Quebec with a good nucleus for the revived colony on May 23, 1633, and was received by a salute of cannon by Emery de Caen. Among the colonists brought by him there were persons of distinction who, wearied with religious dissensions in their own provinces, sought in New France that tranquility denied them in the old, and many rural labourers and artisans of different trades. As these were mostly from the diocese of Rouen, the clergy now arriving were the Jesuits, Fathers Massé and Brébeuf, sent under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen. The Recollects were no longer allowed to return, on the ground that, theirs being an order which could not own property or revenues, they were unsuitable for a country where means were needed to gather together the Indians in settlements in buildings in which they could band together to be instructed. The chapel of the Recollects destroyed by the English was rebuilt. The work of reconstruction of the settlement now began in earnest. What interests us now is to learn that on July 1st of this year Champlain, at the request of the Indian allies, sent many workmen to Three Rivers to construct a fort and a fur factory there. Although Three Rivers had been used as a trading post, it had only been so temporarily, in the same manner that Montreal, or the post of the Sault St. Louis, had been the meeting place for the natives and traders engaged in the fur traffic.