Frontier Soldiers of New France

Volume 1 - Regulation Clothing, Armament, and Equipment of the Colonial Troops in New France (1683-1760)

by René Chartrand and Kevin Gélinas

Illustrated by Michal Pétard

Series: From Reason to Revolution

Imprint: Helion and Company

272 Pages, 8.3 x 11.7 in, 390 b/w illustrations, 141 color illustrations

Paperback
9781804515464
December 2024
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$59.95

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Description
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Explores the official attire, weaponry, and equipment of French colonial troops in North America (1683-1760) through detailed illustrations and rare artifacts.

Frontier Soldiers of New France examines the official and regulation dress, weapons and equipment of the regular colonial troops maintained by the French government in North America from 1683 to 1760, including unpublished information with a focus on new illustrations, line drawings, and photos of rare portraits and surviving artefacts from public and private collections.

This volume is the first of a series of three that will present all the regular forces that served in New France from 1683, when the first permanent garrisons of royal troops arrived, to September 1760. Many North American military campaigns of that era have been, and continue to be, covered in countless history books. The purpose of this work is, however, to be the first to present in detail the organisation and especially the material culture of all military participants, be they generals or private soldiers. There have been some sections of books, usually brief, and articles devoted to organisation, armament, dress, and equipment previously published. The aim of this work is to present a complete record of these aspects.

To achieve this goal, three veteran researchers have consulted primary documents preserved in archives and collections on both sides of the Atlantic during the last half century and have united their efforts to produce a wide-ranging and as accurate as possible record. The result is often intriguing and attractive, both in the regulation uniforms worn by officers and soldiers that might be seen by onlookers at frontier forts as far as the known world (to Europeans) or at fortresses such as Québec and Louisbourg. The weapons and equipment were usually somewhat distinctive. They had weapons, clothing and equipment that became specially adapted to North America’s wilderness, thanks to their First Nations allies, be it in the primaeval forests crisscrossed by great rivers and lakes or at the great central plains, which will be covered in Volume 2.

Frontier Soldiers of New France is lavishly illustrated with period paintings and prints, as well as museum-quality artwork by internationally acclaimed military artists lauded for accuracy combined with fine art. Indeed, some works have already graced academic publications and displays in museums and historic sites.

René Chartrand was born in Montreal and educated in Canada, the United States and the Bahamas. A senior curator with Canada’s National Historic Sites of Parks Canada for nearly three decades and he was also attached to Canada’s Department of National Defence as an historian. He went on as a free lance writer and historical consultant for media productions and historical restorations of military sites in North America and the West Indies. As a curator, he initially specialized in military material culture and later researched organization, tactics, policy and geo-strategy. He has authored some 50 books and hundreds of articles and research notes published in England, France, the United States and Canada. He lives in Gatineau (Quebec).

Born in Montréal, Québec, in 1971, Kevin Gélinas studied at the Université de Montréal, where he graduated in 1995. This was followed by a Bachelor of Education from the University of Ottawa in 1996. Author of The French Trade Gun in North America 1662-1759. A museum consultant specializing in the military material culture of New France, Kevin has also published numerous articles on French-era colonial trade goods and shoulder weapons. He has also contributed to publications such as La Belle: The Archaeology of a Seventeenth-Century Vessel of New World Colonization and has been a guest speaker at numerous events. Kevin currently lives in Trois-Rivières, Québec, where he teaches and is actively continuing his extensive archival research into the history of New France’s material culture, voyageurs and the Trois-Rivières region.

Born in Nantes in 1944, Michel Pétard studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he began a thesis on eighteenth-century Nantes gunsmiths, which led him to meet the historian of arms Christian Ariès for whom he illustrated his famous work Les armes blanches règlementaires francaises between 1966 and 1990. Jean Boudriot, another renowned author on the subject of French weapons and naval history and an amateur designer for his treatise Le vaisseau de 74 canons, hired him for a long collaboration until the publication in 2003 of Marine royale where Boudriot entrusted him with the research, analysis and illustration of uniforms of the marine troops under the ancien regime. In the meantime, Michel Pétard was asked by René Chartrand of Parc Canada to illustrate the uniforms of the French troops in New France; this fruitful association thus continued with the present and innovative work initiated and directed by Kevin Gélinas. During these many years, Michel Pétard has published extensively on French military uniforms and its material culture as an author and editor (Équipements militaires, Des sabres et des épées), then as an author in several magazines with a variety of articles devoted to weapons and uniforms.