The Compagnie du Nord privatizes the struggle for Hudson Bay

The Hudson's Bay Company diverted the fur trade away from Quebec, prompting the French-backed Compagnie du Nord to compete in the bay. In an era when chartered companies could maintain troops and armed ships, this commercial rivalry readily became warfare. In 1686 d'Iberville, his brothers, and Canadian woodsmen joined an overland expedition that captured all three English posts on James Bay. The expedition also captured the sloop Craven, and at least one unarmed sailor was killed. That death complicates any purely heroic reading of d'Iberville. York Factory remained beyond their reach because it lay too far to the northwest for the same landward attack. The gains caught poorly defended company posts unprepared and demonstrated the reach and fragility of privatized warfare.