In the depths of winter he summoned all his dependants and all whom his eloquence could attract, locked up his library, and set out for Quebec on snow-shoes. From the Governor he procured, on Christmas Eve 1685, official permission to steal upon the English and drive them, at the point of the sword, from the shores of Hudson's Bay. He was empowered to "search for, seize, and occupy the most advantageous posts, to seize the robbers, bushrangers, and others whom we know to have taken and arrested several of our French engaged in the Indian trade, whom we order him to arrest, especially Radisson and his adherents, wherever they may be found, and bring them to be punished as deserters, according to the rigour of the ordinances." The rigour of the ordinances was but another word for death. Fourscore Canadians were selected to make up the expedition against the Hudson's Bay Company's posts by the Chevalier de Troyes. For his lieutenants the leader chose the three sons of a nobleman of New {115} France named Charles le Moine. One, the eldest, a young man of only twenty-five, was to bear an enduring distinction in the annals of France as one of her most able and intrepid naval commanders. This was the Sieur d'Iberville. His brothers, taking their names, as he had done, from places in their native land, were called the Sieurs de Sainte-Hélène and de Marincourt. Thirty soldiers were directly attached to the Chevalier's command, veterans who had, almost to a man, seen service in one or other of the great European wars. That they might not be without the ministrations of religion, Father Sylvie, a Jesuit priest, accompanied the expedition. "The rivers," writes a chronicler of the Troyes expedition, "were frozen and the earth covered with snow when that small party of vigorous men left Montreal in order to ascend the Ottawa River as far as the height of land, and thence to go down to James's Bay." At the beginning of April they arrived at the Long Sault, where they prepared some canoes in order to ascend the Ottawa River. From Lake Temiscamingue they passed many portages until they reached Lake Abbitibi, at the entrance or most southern extremity of which they built a small fort of stockades. After a short halt they continued their course onward to James's Bay. First doomed to conquest by Troyes and his companions was Moose Factory, a stockade fort with four bastions. In the centre stood a house 40 feet square and as many high, terminating in a platform. This fort was escaladed by the French late at night, and of {116} the palisades short work was made by the hatchets of the bushrangers.