There was
plenty of red blood in his veins, and to some of his
progeny went more of it than was good for them. He was
ready with his sword when the occasion called. An arm
shot off by an Iroquois flintlock in 1687 gave him through
life a grim reminder of his combative habits in early
days. But warfare was only an avocation; the first fruits
of the land absorbed his main interest throughout the
larger part of his days. Each of these men had others
like him, and the peculiar circumstances of the colony
found places for them all. The seigneurs of Old Canada
did not form a homogeneous class; men of widely differing
tastes and attainments were included among them. There
were workers and drones; there were men who made a signal
success as seigneurs, and others who made an utter failure.
But taken as a group there was nothing very commonplace
about them, and it is to her two hundred seigneurs or
thereabouts that New France owes much of the glamour that
marks her tragic history.
CHAPTER IV
SEIGNEUR AND HABITANT
In its attitude toward the seigneurs the crown was always
generous. The seigneuries were large, and from the
seigneurs the king asked no more than that they should
help to colonize their grants with settlers. It was
expected, in turn, that the seigneurs would show a like
spirit in all dealings with their dependants. Many of
them did; but some did not. On the whole, however, the
habitants who took farms within the seigneuries fared
pretty well in the matter of the feudal dues and services
demanded from them.
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