New York felt herself no less concerned than Massachusetts and Maine in the contest with the French, with its inevitable accompaniment of trouble with the Indians; and Jacob Leisler, plebeian and self-constituted governor though he was, had made bold to take the initiative in forming plans for the war. Count Louis de Frontenac had been made governor of New France the very year William established himself as king in England (1689), and had come instructed, as every Englishman in America presently heard rumor say, to attack the English settlements at their very heart,—at New York itself. It was this rumor that had made Leisler hasten to seize the government in King William’s name, seeing King James’s governor hesitate, and hearing it cried in the streets that the French were in the very Bay. He had thought it not impossible that James’s officers might prove traitors and friends of King Louis in that last moment of their power. And then, when the government was in his hands, this people’s governor called a conference of the colonies to determine what should be done for the common defence. Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut responded, and sent agents to the conference (1690), the first of its kind since America was settled. It was agreed to attempt the conquest of New France. Sir William Phips should lead an expedition by sea against Quebec; and another force should go by land out of Connecticut and New York to attack Montreal, the only other stronghold, taking their Iroquois allies with them. But the land expedition was every way unfortunate, and got no farther than Lake Champlain. Frontenac was able to devote all his strength to the defence of Quebec; and Sir William Phips came back whipped and empty-handed. The first effort at a common undertaking had utterly miscarried. But that was not the end of the war. Its fires burned hot in the forests. Frontenac prosecuted the ugly business to the end as he had begun it. He had begun, not by sending a fleet to New York, for he had none to send, but by sending his Indian allies to a sudden attack and savage massacre at Schenectady, where sixty persons, men and women, old and young, saw swift and fearful death (1689); and year by year the same hideous acts of barbarous war were repeated,—not always upon the far-away border, but sometimes at the very heart of the teeming colony,—once (1697) at Haverhill, not thirty-five miles out of Boston itself. Such a war was not likely to be forgot in the northern colonies, at any rate, and in New York. Its memories were bitten into the hearts of the colonists there as with the searings of a hot iron; and they knew that the French must be overcome before there could be any lasting peace, or room enough made for English growth in the forests.