In the following year two Frenchmen passed overland from the bay to Canada by the Abbitibbi river, Lake Temiscaming, and the Ottawa; and it was determined to send a Canadian expedition by that route to attack the factories of the Hudson Bay Company. The rulers of Canada viewed with distrust English settlements to the north of New France, as they feared and distrusted the English colonies on the southern side, and they determined if possible to strangle them in infancy. Denonville was now Governor of Canada; and early in the year 1686 he dispatched a party of soldiers and Canadians to attack the forts on Hudson Bay. It was the kind of expedition in which French Canadians excelled, indifferent to privation and hardship, trained to toil through ice and snow, through unknown forests, making the rivers the highways for sleigh or canoe. Their leader was De Troyes, and with him went three sons of the celebrated Le Moyne family, including the most noted of them, Iberville. The Frenchmen followed the line of the Ottawa and the Abbitibbi, and in June, 1686, surprised and took Fort Hayes on the outlet of the Moose river. Crossing the eastern end of James Bay on the floating ice, they next reached Fort Rupert, seized a ship which was moored in front of the fort, and overpowered the fort itself. The sea was by this time open to navigation, and in canoes and the captured vessel the victorious Frenchmen turned west to attack Fort Albany. There was here some semblance of siege, but the little English garrison was forced to capitulate, and leaving Iberville in charge of the fort, which was renamed Fort St. Anne, De Troyes returned in November to Canada. [Sidenote: _Complaints of the Hudson Bay Company against the seizure of their forts._] [Sidenote: _The English forts recovered._] This successful raid was organized and carried out in a time of peace between the English and French Crowns; and, when the Englishmen who had been taken prisoners at the forts found their way home, the Hudson Bay Company laid the case before the Government, demanding satisfaction for the wrong done and restitution of their property. {189} There was little likelihood of redress while James II was King of England. On November 16, 1686, he concluded a treaty of neutrality with the French King, the Treaty of Whitehall; and a mixed commission of French and English was appointed to inquire into the claims of the company. No settlement was arrived at: in 1688 came the Revolution in England; in 1692 the battle of La Hogue crippled the French at sea; and at length, in 1693, an English expedition was sent to Hudson Bay which recovered all the forts in James Bay. [Sidenote: _Iberville takes Port Nelson and the forts in James Bay._] [Sidenote: _They are recovered by the English._]