Monsieur De la barre th June last, the resolution you have taken to attack the IroI have seen by your letters of the 5 to it, and though it is a grave misfortune for the Colony of moved you which reasons quois, and the

New France which will interrupt the trade of my subjects and divert them from the cultivation of the land and expose them to frequent insults on the part of the Iroquois Savages, who can frequently surprize them in distant settlements, without your being even in a state to succor

them

;

do not

your adoption of that resolution since, by the insult they offered the fifteen Frenchmen whom they pillaged, and the attack on Fort St. Louis, you have had reason to believe that they seriously intended declaring war, and as I wish to place you in a position to sustain it, and

hesitate to approve

bring it to a speedy termination, I have given orders for equipping the Ship L'Emerillon, on board

which I have caused to be embarked three hundred soldiers quartered in the ports of Brest and Rochefort with the number of Officers and Marines contained in the lists which you will find annexed, and this reinforcement with that sent to you by the last vessels from Rochelle, and which you have learned from my preceding letters, will furnish you means to fight advantageously, and to destroy utterly those people, or at least to place them in a state, after having punished them for their insolence, to receive peace on the conditions which you will impose on them. You must observe as regards this war that even though you prosecute it with advantage, if you do not find means to wage it promptly, it will not the less cause the ruin of the colony, the people of