Officers and Soldiers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment who Remained in Canada
Welcome to our revised list of the soldiers and officers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment who remained in Canada. This list replaces the previous several lists originally posted on this website. Our primary source of this information on the Regiment is Peter J. Gagné’s two-volume set, From Soldiers To Settlers: The Carignan-Salières Regiment in Canada, 1665-1668 (American-French Genealogical Society, 2025). As a result of our revision, most of the soldiers from our previous list of those who settled in Canada remain listed here; however, a few have been removed and some have been added, based upon Peter Gagné’s detailed research of the online archives. Our revised list includes soldiers known or presumed to have settled in Canada in 1668, soldiers and officers known to have returned to France in 1668 and then came back to Canada, and soldiers known to have died in Canada between 1665 and 1668 during this military mission. As a result, we gave our new list the title of the soldiers and officers “who remained in Canada”. Only the soldiers and officers whom Gagné lists as known or presumed to have returned to France in 1668 have been excluded from our list.
The Carignan-Salières Regiment was sent to Canada in 1665 by King Louis XIV of France to address the security needs of the French colony of New France as a result of repeated, devastating attacks by Iroquois warriors. By 1668, despite the mixed results of the military campaign, peace was established in the colony, and the Regiment demobilized and some returned to France. However, over 450 soldiers and some officers chose to stay and settle in Canada. Peace with the Iroquois, combined with the settlement of these soldiers and the arrival of the Filles du roi, led to a rapid growth in the colony’s population and solidified the continued existence of the French colony. Many of French-Canadian descent can trace their lineage to one or more of the soldiers of this regiment.
For over three decades leading up to 1665, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), especially the Mohawks (one of the five Iroquois nations), had been attacking the French settlements in what is now known as the province of Quebec. Gagné notes that the enmity between the Iroquois and the French started with the attack by Samuel de Champlain (and his First Nation allies) on the Iroquois in 1609. He cites historian Benjamin Sulte, who had written that by 1665, 400 French settlers had been killed by the Iroquois, when the average French population in Canada for the time period was about 1,000 people. In 1661, the French Governor of New France sent Pierre Boucher to Paris to present the colony’s plea for military protection. Finally, in 1664, word came that help was on the way. From June to September 1665, some 1,200 French soldiers and their officers arrived by ship in the port of Quebec City, the capital of a colony of some 3,500 French inhabitants.
Gagné tells us that the troops were composed of the combination of the Carignan Regiment and the Salières Regiment, a total of 20 companies, along with four companies detached from other regiments. In addition, many local Canadian militiamen joined the military effort and several French habitants enlisted as soldiers in the Regiment. The King placed the Marquis Alexandre Prouville de Tracy in command of the mission. He arrived with the four detached companies (Berthier, La Brisandière, La Durantaye and Monteil) from the Caribbean, whereas Colonel de Salières and the Carignan-Salières troops had voyaged from France.
We use the term “Canada” to signify the French colony in the Saint Lawrence valley, whereas New France was the larger area including both Canada, the Mississippi Valley/Louisiana and Acadia. A few soldiers/officers settled in Acadia, but the vast majority who settled remained in Canada. For many of the soldiers and officers on our list, we included a note of interest about them at the end of the listing, along with the name of his spouse, if any, and whether that spouse was a Fille du roi. As well, we included the soldier/officer’s full name and dit name (military nickname) as well as his company name and his rank (if known).
The link below connects to a downloadable pdf file.
Listing of the soldiers in the Carignan-Salières regiment who remained in CanadaSOURCE NOTES
Peter J. Gagné is a historian and the resource archivist with the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City, at the archives of the Quebec Seminary. He is the author of three important works in English on French Canadian history and of value to genealogists: “King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673” (2001); “Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles à Marier, 1634-1662” (2002); and “From Soldiers to Settlers: The Carignan-Salières Regiment in Canada 1665-1668” (2025). He has a Master in History from Laval University in Quebec City.
Gagné notes that no list of soldiers and officers of the Regiment will ever be perfect, as no contemporary list of the soldiers was ever made, and that the only historical list is one with mostly only nicknames of some soldiers who settled in Canada, made on an unknown date. As a result, we can never be certain of the identities of all from the Regiment who remained in Canada. Our listing is composed of soldiers and officers known or presumed to have remained in Canada, whether or not they left descendants.
Gagné mentions that when preparing the material for his book on the Carignan-Salières Regiment, he established different categories of evidence for each individual to determine if he was, or was not, a member of the Regiment. The categories include:
(1) A “documented” member: there is archival proof that clearly shows that the individual was a member of the regiment or one of its companies;
(2) An “accepted” member: there is no direct proof as above, but he is mentioned as a "soldier" during the time of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, and there is strong circumstantial evidence in support of membership;
(3) A “presumed” member: he is on more than one of the early lists of soldiers, with little circumstantial evidence, but there is no proof that could definitively eliminate him; and
(4) A “disproven” individual: there is archival proof that the person was not a member of the regiment (for example, he arrived in the colony too late, or he is not the person linked to a dit name, etc.).
He indicates he used the archival evidence of social interactions of soldiers in New France as part of his analysis in determining who was a soldier, such as attending as a witness for the marriage of another soldier, serving as godfather at the baptisms of another soldier’s child, or entering into a contract with another soldier. He indicates that the methodology he used to revise his list of Carignan soldiers included online research tools such as the archives of BanQ, the PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique) and Généalogie Québec.
More source notes from Peter Gagné's research are available here.