The Good Regiment: The Carignan-Salires Regiment in Canada, 1665-1668

Martin L. Nicolai is a history lecturer at Queen’s University.

This book represents the first major study of the famous
Carignan-Saliиres Regiment since the 1920s. Basing his arguments on
meticulous primary research—nearly half the book is devoted to
appendixes and notes—Verney systematically demolishes the traditional
French-Canadian nationalist vision of the regiment as an elite corps of
Catholic crusaders. According to pre–1960 nationalist historians, this
band of pious heroes won a glorious victory over the heathen foe, then
exchanged muskets for plowshares and formed a frontier colony of hardy
farmers.

As Verney explains, however, these Frenchmen were not knights errant,
but simply members of a “good regiment” of French infantry, with
their fair share of virtues and vices. Nor did Louis XIV send the unit
overseas in order to defend the Catholic faith; rather, he wished to
crush Iroquois resistance and help deficit-ridden Canada to grow and
prosper, providing taxes to support the king’s gloire. In any event,
the inexperienced and poorly equipped French troops failed to actually
come to grips with the Iroquois, but the latter were impressed that
their blundering opponents could actually reach the Mohawk villages, and
therefore ceased their attacks on Canada. Afterward, the discharged
soldiers declined to become the frontier farmers of legend. Most of
those who remained in Canada built homes along the already-settled St.
Lawrence River and engaged in the fur trade rather than in agriculture.
Verney concludes that while the men of Carignan-Saliиres did not make
Canada a profitable colony, they were instrumental in providing two
decades of peace that were vital for Canada’s development.

One weakness of Verney’s book is that he ignores the revisionist
arguments of historians who have discussed the Carignan-Saliиres
Regiment in more recent decades. Giving these post–1960 historians
their due would not detract from the value of Verney’s contribution.
Indeed, The Good Regiment deserves the attention of historians of New
France as well as members of the general public interested in Canadian
military history.