Histoire Du Chevalier D'iberville (1663-1706)

This is a passionate rehabilitation of one of New France's most daring heroes. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville was a French-Canadian naval officer whose exploits in the late 17th century shaped the fate of North America's eastern seaboard. Born in 1663 in Montreal, he became France's most fearsome privateer in the Caribbean and a crucial military commander during Queen Anne's War, raiding English colonies from Newfoundland to the Chesapeake. Yet his name has faded from the popular imagination. Desmazures, writing in the late 19th century, aims to restore Iberville to his proper place in history, chronicling not just his military victories but the man himself: his ambition, his cunning, his relentless drive that made him indispensable to French colonial ambitions. The book situates Iberville within the fierce competition between European powers for control of the New World, showing how one man tipped the balance of power in France's favor across the fur trade and fisheries of the north Atlantic.