of this was the "Huron Carol", a Christmas hymn written by Jean de Brébeuf. A translated version of this song remains popular in Canadian churches to this day. Soldiers had a small but important presence at the mission. Twenty-three soldiers wintered at Sainte-Marie in 1644, but many of the Jesuits resisted the idea of a military presence. They feared the soldiers would "bring the worst of Europe" with them. The founding of the mission led to division amongst the Wendat, with conflict between those who converted to Christianity and those who maintained traditional beliefs. Infectious disease, an unintended result of first contact between the Jesuits, their farm animals and the Wendat, served to further the gap between the traditional Wendat and the missionaries. Epidemics of smallpox, which raged from 1634–1640, were brought by the increased number of children emigrating to the colonies with families from cities where the disease was endemic in France, England and the Netherlands. Also during this time, the rivalry between the Wendat and Iroquois began to reignite. The Wendat were weakened by their internal divisions and their losses from conflict. War and martyrdom With Iroquois aggression on the rise, an additional six soldiers were dispatched from France in 1649. The weakened Wendat nation was little match for the strengthened Iroquois, who had used their trading alliances with the Dutch to gain firearms. Eight of the missionaries—St. Jean de Brébeuf (1649), St. Noël Chabanel (1649), St. Antoine Daniel (1648), St. Charles Garnier (1649), St. René Goupil (1642), St. Isaac Jogues (1646), St. Jean de Lalande (1646), and St. Gabriel Lalemant (1649)—were killed in the Huron-Iroquois War. Owing to the proximity of their deaths to Sainte-Marie, the French recovered the bodies of Brébeuf and Lalemant to be buried at the mission. Burning of Sainte-Marie On June 16, 1649, the missionaries chose to burn the mission rather than risk it being desecrated or permanently overrun by Iroquois in further attacks. Father Paul Ragueneau wrote,"We ourselves set fire to it, and beheld burn before our eyes and in less than one hour, our work of nine or ten years." Before the burning, the survivors had decided that Brébeuf and Lalemant would be canonized as martyrs. Shoemaker Christophe Regnault had to extract the bones of the two men to save as relics. Regnault exhumed the bodies, placed them into a lye solution and wrapped the bones in linens. The men's flesh