There came at last a brief moment on the continent of North America when the occupying great powers came to an understanding. France switched sides. In 1670 Louis XIV and Charles II made a secret personal treaty of alliance, and in 1672 France and England joined in war against the Netherlands. In the same year Canada and New York suppressed the feud between the Mohawks and the Mahicans. When the Mahicans proposed an expedition against the Mohawks, the French rejected it. The Mohawks heard of the proposal and ran to Albany. "We have accepted the peace which has been made by you people," they said. "Speak with the Mahikanders so that they come and do as we do." Albany's magistrates promised to "take care that the peace will remain steadfast" and to "force the Mahikanders to come here," continuing with the promise of explicit sanctions: "if they come to slay one of you, then they will see that they will have to deal with us, and we will revenge it." Peace ensued. It was indeed so reliable a peace that Mohawks could afford to get roaring drunk in Albany and stagger back home along paths formerly overrun by Mahican bushwhackers. On the French side, missionary Father Lamberville thought it was a "baleful peace" that created such opportunities for continued drunkenness, but Governor Frontenac enforced it. Thus the Indian allies of France's colony and England's colony were pacified immediately when the empires leagued.⁶⁴

The alliance between Stuart and Bourbon was not matched by amity between Stuart and Calvert. Intermittent and desultory war continued between James Stuart's Iroquois and Charles Calvert's Susquehannock's, to the apparent disadvantage of the Iroquois. In 1672 a war party of Senecas and Cayugas was routed by equal numbers of Susquehannock adolescents. In 1673 the Iroquois appealed for help from their new friends in Canada; they "earnestly exhorted" Governor Frontenac to assist them against the Susquehannock's because "it would be a shame for him to allow his children to be crushed, as they saw themselves about to be . . . they not having the means of going to attack [the Susquehannock's] in their fort, which was very strong, nor even of defending themselves if the others came to attack them in their villages." Frontenac put them off without a commitment, and the odds are long that he did not arm them covertly: first, because it was no time for the French to be meddling with Indian conflicts deep within English territory; secondly, because Frontenac's government was suffering from an acute shortage of munitions for its own defense, as he reported to France in November, 1674.⁶⁵

This is a significant date. According to the usual sort of comment about the Susquehannock's, they are supposed to have been badly beaten by the Iroquois sometime between 1672 and 1675. We have seen what shape the Iroquois were in until 1672. The French records make it clear that the Iroquois could not possibly have launched a successful attack before July, 1673, when they met with Frontenac; and they could not have obtained any considerable supply of arms from the French thereafter through November, 1674. Even if we suspect Frontenac of wanting to arm the Iroquois clandestinely, we must conclude that he could not have done so through the winter of 1674/1675; because of the winter freeze on the St. Lawrence, it was impossible for Frontenac's appeal for an arms shipment from France to be answered before the spring thaw. The importance of all this arises from the fact that the Susquehannock's abandoned their old village and fort on the Susquehanna River in February, 1675, to retire into Maryland.66 Assuming, only for the sake of argument, that the retirement had been forced by Iroquois pressure the Iroquois would have had to get arms from somewhere besides Canada. Was it Albany, then? There are excellent reasons for rejecting this possibility also, but they must be seen as part of the whole pattern of events at Chesapeake and Delaware bays.⁶⁶