In 1664 the English dispossessed the Dutch of their Nova Belgia, and turned it into New York; and began to trade actively with the Indian nations for their furs. The French, who had hoped to monopolise this trade, which they had found very profitable, by exterminating the Iroquois, and throwing the whole hunting business into the hands of tribes in their alliance, now saw the impolicy of having vainly attacked so powerful a race as that of the Iroquois, or Five Nations. They now used every means to reconcile them, and win them over. They sent Jesuit missionaries, who lived in the simplest manner amongst them, and with their powers of insinuation and persuasion laboured to give them favourable ideas of their nation. But the English were as zealous in their endeavours, and, as might naturally be expected, succeeded in engrossing all the fur trade with the Iroquois, who had received so many injuries from the French.[26] Irritated by this circumstance, the French again determined on the ferocious scheme of exterminating the Iroquois. Nursing this horrible resolve, they waited their opportunity, and put upon themselves a desperate restraint, till they should have collected a force in the colony equal to the entire annihilation of the Iroquois people. This time seemed to have arrived in 1687, when, under Denonville, they had a population of 11,249 persons, one third of whom were capable of bearing arms. Having a disposable force of near 4,000 people, they were secure in their own mind of the accomplishment of their object; but, to make assurance doubly sure, they hit upon one of those schemes that have been so much applauded through all Christian Europe, under the name of “happy devices,”—“profound strokes of policy,”—“chefs d’œuvres of statesmanship,”—that is, in plain terms, plans of the most wretched deceit, generally for the compassing of some piece of diabolical butchery or oppression. The “happy device,” in this instance, was to profess a desire for peace and alliance, in order to get the most able Indian chiefs into their power before they struck the decisive blow. There was a Jesuit missionary residing amongst the Iroquois—the worthy Lamberville. This good man, like his brethren in the South, whose glorious labours and melancholy fate we have already traced, had won the confidence of the Iroquois by his unaffected piety, his constant kindness, and his skill in healing their differences and their bodily ailments. They looked upon him as a father and a friend. The French, on their part, regarded this as a fortunate circumstance,—not as one might have imagined, because it gave them a powerful means of reconciliation and alliance with this people, but because it gave them a means of effecting their murderous scheme. They assured Lamberville that they were anxious to effect a _lasting peace_ with the Iroquois, for which purpose they begged him to prevail on them to send their principal chiefs to meet them in conference. He found no difficulty