De Nonville had now a clear way to build his fort at Niagara, which he proceeded to do, and then armed it with one hundred men. If triumphant in his bold plans, he had to learn that the viper crushed might rise to sting. The Senecas had their avengers. Maddened by the cowardly onset of De Nonville and his followers, the Iroquois to a man rose against the French. This was not done by any organised raid, but, shod with silence, small, eager war-parties haunted the forests of the St. Lawrence, striking where they were the least expected, and never failing to leave behind them the smoke of burning dwellings and the horrors of desolated lives. From Fort Frontenac to Tadousac there was not a home exempt from this deadly scourge; not a life that was not threatened. Unable to cope with so artful a foe, De Nonville was in despair. He sued for peace, but to obtain this he had to betray his allies, the Indians of the Upper Lakes, who had entered his service under the conditions that the war should continue until the Iroquois were exterminated. The latter sent delegates to confer with the French commander at Montreal. While this conference was under way, a Huron chief showed that he was the equal of even De Nonville in the strategies of war where the code of honour was a dead letter. Anticipating the fate in store for his race did the French carry out their scheme of self-defence, this chief, whose name was Kandironk, "the Rat," lay in ambush for the envoys on their way home from their conference with De Nonville, when the latter had made so many fair promises. These Kandironk captured, claiming he did it under orders from De Nonville, bore them to Michilimackinac, and tortured them as spies. This done, he sent an Iroquois captive to tell his people how fickle the French could be. Scarcely was this accomplished when he gave to the French his exultant declaration, "I have killed the peace!" The words were prophetic. Nothing that De Nonville could say or do cleared him of connection with the affair. His previous conduct was enough to condemn him. To avenge this act of deceit, as the Iroquois considered it, they rallied in great numbers, and on the night of August 4, 1689, dealt the most cruel and deadly blow given during all the years of warfare in the St. Lawrence valley. Fifteen hundred strong, under cover of the darkness, they stole down upon the settlement of La Chine situated at the upper end of the island of Montreal, and surprised the inhabitants while they slept in fancied security. More than two hundred men, women, and children were slain in cold blood, or borne away to fates a hundred times more terrible to meet than swift death. The day already breaking upon the terror-stricken colonists was the darkest Canada ever knew.