However, the mischief had been done. All the Iroquois tribes had been angered, and the hives were ominously buzzing. Acts of reprisal became frequent. Even the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Frontenac was not secure, for during the following winter a woman and three soldiers were carried off within gunshot of its walls. The Onondagas who effected these captures stated expressly that they were made in retaliation for those so treacherously made by Champigny. The captives were not put to death, but were held as hostages, which gave them an opportunity of appealing to Dongan. That worthy was not at all sorry that his rival had got himself into trouble; and answered the appeal by saying that he could not do anything for them till Fort Niagara, unjustly planted by their governor on English territory, had been evacuated. On the last day of the year Denonville sent to Albany an able negotiator in the person of Father Vaillant, Jesuit, but with no satisfactory result. The only terms on which Dongan would consent to use his influence in favour of peace were that the prisoners sent to France for the galleys should be restored; that the mission Indians at Laprairie and the Montreal Mountain should be sent back to the Iroquois country to which they originally belonged; that Forts Niagara and Frontenac should be razed; and that the goods captured by the French from English traders on the Upper Lakes should be restored. Scarcely had Vaillant left Albany on his return when Dongan summoned representatives of the tribes, and, acquainting them with the terms he had demanded, asked for their ratification, which was readily granted. He told the chiefs not to bury the hatchet, but simply to lay it in the grass where they could get it if it was wanted, and meantime to post themselves along the lines of communication to the French country.
The advice was promptly taken. Some bands operated along the St. Lawrence, others along the Richelieu. Early in the season of 1688 a convoy had been sent to revictual Forts Frontenac and Niagara. It passed up the river safely, but on its return it was attacked, though greatly superior in force, by a party of twenty-five or thirty Indians, who killed eight men, and took one prisoner. Other raids more or less destructive were made at Chambly, St. Ours, Contrecoeur, and even as far east as Rivière du Loup. In the face of these attacks a sort of lethargy seemed to have seized upon the colonists, making them slow to defend themselves even when the conditions were in their favour. In other respects also the state of affairs was one of great depression. The war had been costly and burdensome; and, owing to the withdrawal of so many men from the work of the fields, agriculture had greatly suffered. The pillaging carried on by scattered bands of Iroquois made matters still worse. Beggars began to be numerous in the streets of Quebec and Montreal. It is interesting to note that mendicity was not looked upon with favour in those days, and that praiseworthy attempts were made to regulate it and restrain it within the narrowest possible limits. Charitable ladies undertook to inquire into cases of ostensible want so as to distinguish those which merited relief from others which might proceed from idleness or misconduct. M. de Saint Vallier, who had returned to France in the autumn of 1687, came back as bishop in August of the following year. He brought with him two hundred copies of his work on _The Present State of the Church in Canada_, written by him after his arrival in France, and published at Paris in March 1688, in which, as already seen, a glowing tribute was paid to the piety of the Canadian people. Instead, however, of distributing this work in the country, as he had doubtless intended, he virtually suppressed it; and, in almost his first episcopal utterances, told the people that the troubles and distresses from which they were suffering were the result of their lukewarmness in religious matters. The statement was not received in the most submissive spirit. There were some who said that the mundane causes of the sad plight in which the country found itself were only too apparent, and that it was not necessary to look further.[30]