The Good Regiment (The Carignan-Salières Regiment in Canada, 1665-1668)

The Good Regiment provides an intriguing account of the Carignan-Salières Regiment -- the only seventeenth-century French infantry regiment ever to serve in Canada -- and its activities and presents a critical assessment of the regiment's significance. It greatly enriches our knowledge of seventeenth-century North American history.

In 1665 the Carignan-Salières Regiment was sent to Canada by King Louis XIV to quell the Iroquois, whose attacks were strangling the colony's fur-based economy and threatening to destroy its tiny settlements. In the course of its three-year stay in Canada, the regiment established a period of relative peace that allowed the French to consolidate their foothold on the north shore of the St Lawrence, establish new settlements across the river, and rebuild the economy to its former prosperity. Promoted by Abbé Lionel Groulx as a body of chosen men sent to do God's work, the regiment came to be viewed as an elite corps of Catholic crusaders. In The Good Regiment Jack Verney sets the record straight, revealing that the Carignan-Salières Regiment was not a group of saintly knights but caroused, womanized, and gambled in off hours just like any other infantry regiment.