Settling down to business, as he did, almost immediately on his arrival in the country, La Barre was naturally anxious that the persons to whom he issued hunting and trading permits under the regulations established in Frontenac's time should, as far as possible, be screened from competition, and he therefore most ill-advisedly gave the Iroquois tribes to understand that they might treat as they pleased any persons found trading who were unprovided with permits signed by him. The Iroquois, greatly pleased to have a pretext for such operations, proceeded to plunder some canoes belonging to the governor's own friends, who were still in the woods on the authority of permits issued by Frontenac. This alarmed the governor not a little, and caused him, in the spring of 1683, to send a special vessel to France with an earnest request for military reinforcements. Worse news came to hand very shortly after. La Salle's fort of St. Louis having been seized, the governor wished to stock it with goods, and had despatched thither seven canoe loads to the value of fifteen or sixteen thousand francs. As these canoes were passing through the Illinois country, where the Iroquois were on the war-path, the latter, who were not in a humour for fine discrimination, seized them, explaining afterwards that they supposed them to belong to La Salle, whose property they claimed to have the governor's permission to plunder. La Barre writes to the king, under date 5th June, in still stronger terms, and says that, with or without reinforcements, he will move against the Senecas about the middle of August. This was mere bluster, as no preparations had at that time been made for a campaign. The king sent out one hundred and fifty men in August; but these did not arrive till the 10th October. It was then decided that war should be waged the following year. The intendant appears to have agreed entirely with the governor that war was inevitable; his chief fear seems to have been that the governor, in whose stability of character he had very little confidence, would change his mind on the subject, and fall back on some weak and futile scheme of conciliation.