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По словам военного историка Куинси Райта, в Европе 15 века было 5 тыс. независимых политических единиц. В основном вотчин и княжеств. Во времена 30 летней войны, начале 17 века, только 500. В эпоху Наполеона, в начале 19 века, 200. И в 1953 году менее 30. Объединение политических единиц было частью естественной агломерации. Более сильные правители захватывали земли соседей.

Champlain continued to communicate with the Indians by sign language for several hours. He took a professional interest in their boats, observing that Indians south of Cape Ann used pirogues, or dugouts, made from solid tree trunks by “burning and scraping with stones, which they use in place of knives.” Champlain appears to have tried his hand at steering a dugout, and found it “very liable to upset unless one is very skilled.” One imagines him struggling to stay upright as the Indians looked on with amusement.

The Peace of Vervins was also a European event. Major parts of it were ratified by rulers in other states. Elizabeth of England and leaders of the Low Countries all became formal parties to the peace in various ways. The main agreement at Vervins was followed by other treaties between England and Spain, France and Savoy, and also Spain and the Netherlands. Catholic kings in France and Spain, and Protestant leaders in England and the Netherlands grudgingly accepted an idea of coexistence. It was all very fragile, but it survived through the reign of Henri IV.

The 400 Spanish defenders fought with dogged courage. They retreated to the edge of the cliffs behind them, and resisted nearly to the last man. The British leader wrote that they “never asked for mercy, so all were put to the sword.” After the battle five or six Spanish soldiers were found alive in the rocks below. They were taken prisoner and returned with honor to their Spanish commander, who hanged them for not having fought to the death. The French, in tribute to the courage of the defenders, called the place the Pointe des Espagnols. It still bears that name.

Champlain tried to communicate with them, and with signs and sketches he began to have success. He took a piece of charcoal and drew a sketch of the Long Bay and Cape Ann. With gestures he asked the Indians “to show me how the coast trended.” They took the same piece of charcoal and sketched “another bay which they represented as very large. Here they placed six pebbles at equal intervals giving me to understand each marked a chief and a people,” all of the Massachusetts nation. The Indians drew a large stream and small inlet, which are today’s Charles River and Boston’s Back Bay.

European rulers had already drawn many lines on maps of the Atlantic Ocean, before and after the treaty of Vervins. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull that established a “line of demarcation,” running north and south one hundred leagues west of the Azores. All undiscovered lands to the east were decreed to belong to Portugal, and all to the west to Spain. The Portuguese were not happy about that, and a treaty at Tordesillas substituted another line, 370 leagues (1,110 nautical miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands, which gave Portugal a stronger title to Brazil. Other states rejected the treaty entirely. In 1598, Henri IV put Spanish leaders on notice that he would not be bound by old agreements that carved up the world between Spain and Portugal. He wanted a more open system.

Champlain served in one of the most hard-fought campaigns of the war: the siege of Crozon on the west coast of Brittany. At stake was a strategic peninsula that commanded the entrance to Brest, and control of western rivers. The tip of the peninsula was high ground, with steep rocky cliffs that made it a natural fortress. Today it is a quiet place, with long views across the water toward the French naval base at Brest. In the summer, French families picnic there, and children play among ruined fortifications.

Henri IV and Champlain lived in an age when western civilization was deeply divided by a common ideal of One True Faith. Many people in the western world shared this obsession, but they did so in different ways. By comparison with other Christians, Henri’s and Champlain’s way of faith was something special and distinct—even unique to a small circle of leaders in France. It was very much a product of their personal experience and their country’s history. Most of all it was a reaction against the cruelty, bloodshed, and oppression of the wars of religion. That experience made Henri IV and Champlain the men they were, and New France the place that it became.

On September 10, they came to a bay and small river that Champlain called Choüacoet, today’s Saco. The French crossed the river bar, anchored in a deep pool, and Champlain watched with interest as “many Indians came toward us on the bank of the river and began to dance.” A few hours later their chief Honemechin, arrived with two canoes “and went circling round and round our vessel.” Champlain wrote that he was “good-looking, young and active,” but the French were not able to communicate with him. He was of the Almouchiquois nation, and Champlain observed that their language “differs entirely from that of the Souriquois and Etchemins.” Their Etchemin guide Panounias “could understand only certain words,” and the Almouchiquois woman of Panounias had suddenly disappeared.