In the year 1660 the French population of Quebec numbered something over six hundred. The fur company continued to drive a fair trade in peltries, but the prosperity of the city itself was woefully retarded by the constant menace of the Iroquois. The Baron d'Avaugour held the office of Governor, and his strong sense of military authority brought him into conflict with the Church, by this time become the real controller of the State. This revered power was still further to impose its authority and influence through and by the person of François-Xavier Laval, the first Bishop of Canada, a man of as great ability as piety, an ecclesiastical statesman trained in the school of Mazarin. His career gives significance to a later epoch. The fur traders had always found brandy their most attractive commodity in dealing with the thirsty savage; and Père Lalement gives a sad picture of the misery entailed. "They have brought themselves to nakedness," he writes, "and their families to beggary. They have even gone so far as to sell their children to procure the means of satisfying their raging passion. I cannot describe the evils caused by these disorders to the infant Church. My ink is not black enough to paint them in proper colours. It would require the gall of the dragon to express the bitterness we have experienced from them. It may suffice to say that we lose in one month the fruits of the toil and labour of thirty years." Accordingly, the Church now decided to prohibit it entirely, and a law was passed making it a capital offence. Two men paid the extreme penalty; and a woman also was condemned to the scaffold. When, however, the clergy interfered to save her, the rigorous but consistent D'Avaugour declared he would punish no more breaches of this law. Brandy now flowed like water, and the thunder of the pulpit was henceforth disregarded. Exasperated by this treatment, the priests carried their grievance to the Louvre, where they received little satisfaction. [Illustration: COLBERT] In the same year a deputy of another sort journeyed to France. Pierre Boucher's mission was to lay before the King the desperate condition of the colony, particularly in the matter of defence. Louis XIV. had but recently ascended the throne of the Bourbons, and Richelieu and Mazarin had been in turn succeeded by Colbert as the royal adviser. The envoy from Quebec was presently received at the Court, and the tale of suffering and neglect which he unfolded convinced Colbert that the Company of One Hundred Associates was scandalously evading the obligations imposed by its charter. Accordingly, in 1663, a royal edict went forth revoking its powers and privileges. This was a turning-point in the history of New France; for although the company founded by Richelieu was succeeded by an unwieldy corporation of Colbert's design, from this time forward the Crown itself took over the control of the distant colony.