to be too strongly defended. They encountered and seized the poorly defended company fleet, and took the captured goods back to England. The company lost 90% of its initial investment with the loss of the fleet. The company encountered numerous further difficulties with its exploitation of New France including territorial battles with the English. By 1631 the company had to find new investors willing to accept the risks. In order to attract people and capital, the company had to allocate portions of its trading monopoly to new subsidiary companies. These subsidiary partners, such as the future founders of the Compagnie des Habitants in Quebec, were made up of wealthy members of the elite from various parts of France, several of them being a part of the group of newly established colonists in Canada. Nevertheless, over the ensuing two decades this concept too ran into numerous problems, and France's attention turned to Continental Europe and the ages old rivalry with the Holy Roman Empire when in 1635 it joined the Thirty Years' War in Europe. Discontent with settlers in Quebec over the company's total control of the fur trade caused numerous problems, which led to control over the colony shifting for a time to the Canadian-based Compagnie des Habitants, and matters worsened during the 1650s when war with the Iroquois severely hampered the fur trade and threatened continued colonization. The situation changed when King Louis XIV finally came of age, ending the long and chaotic Regency during his minority, and in 1663 one of his first major acts as a reigning monarch was to dissolve both the Company of One Hundred Associates and the Company of Habitants, shifting the fur trading rights of North America to the French West India Company, taking direct control of New France as a Province of the Realm, and subsequently deploying the Carignan-Salières Regiment to Canada in 1665 (the first European Regular unit deployed to the Western Hemisphere) to deal with the Dutch and English-backed Iroquois menace once and for all, actions which substantially increased the stability and development of the Colony of Canada in the following decades. See also Hudson's Bay Company List of trading companies European chartered companies founded around the 17th century (in French) References Bibliography Levi, Anthony (2000). Cardinal Richelieu: And the Making of France. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. . New France Chartered companies Trading companies of France Defunct companies