After the failure which has been recounted in the preceding chapter, La Barre was recalled to France, and a new governor, Denonville, sent over to take his place. He had not much greater success and was in turn replaced by Count Frontenac, who returned to the scene of his former labors. This was in 1689, when England and France were at war. For the remaining nine years of his life Frontenac devoted all his energies to defending New France against the English and the Iroquois and to holding what the French had already gained on the Great Lakes. In November, 1698, in his seventy-eighth year, he died, and was deeply mourned as a strong governor and beloved leader. He had come out to New France in 1672, and during his long term of service he had used his power and influence not only to build up the settlements on the St. Lawrence, but also to plant on the shores of the Great Lakes and the rivers beyond a line of French forts and trading posts. He had gathered about him a group of young men who shared his enthusiasm for expansion and were eager to carry on his work. Five years before his death, Frontenac had sent one of his men, Cadillac, to the Straits of Mackinac to hold that centre of the fur trade. Cadillac was a rough, forceful soldier who was summary in his methods and short in his speech. He was well suited to the command of a frontier post and did good work in keeping the lake Indians from alliance with the enemies of the French. He did not, however, get on well with the missionaries at Michilimackinac. They resented his presence and his influence with the Indians, for whose conversion to Christianity they were earnestly laboring. Cadillac soon came to see that Detroit and not Mackinac was the key to the interior. Whoever held the narrow channel connecting Lake Erie and Lake Huron would control the fur trade of the whole lake region. He hastened to Quebec to gain support for his scheme of erecting a fort and trading station on the Detroit River. There he was stoutly opposed by the Jesuits, who foresaw that the carrying out of his project would mean the ruin of their mission, which could not compete commercially with the new station, and that the extension of trade would bring the vices of civilization to the natives. Nothing daunted, Cadillac went over the seas to France, gained the favor of the colonial minister, and returned to Canada with permission to found his colony. He reached Detroit with a band of one hundred colonists and soldiers on the 24th of July, 1701.