The filles du roi

A colony short of women

By the 1660s New France, the French colony along the St. Lawrence River, was still small. In 1666 it had about 3,200 French settlers, and only about a third of them were women. Most newcomers were young men: soldiers, workers and fur traders. With so few women, few new families formed, and the colony grew slowly while the English colonies to the south grew much faster.

The Crown pays the way

King Louis XIV, his minister Colbert and the colony's intendant, Jean Talon, wanted New France to grow from families, not only from new arrivals. So between 1663 and 1673 the Crown sponsored about 800 young women (historians' counts run from about 770 to 850) to emigrate. Many came from the Hôpital général in Paris, a charity institution, and many were poor or orphaned. The Crown paid for their recruitment, clothing and passage across the Atlantic, and many received a dowry: money or goods from the king to help set up a household.

Married within months

The women were on average about 24 years old. About 80 percent married within six months of arriving, often to former soldiers of the Carignan-Salières regiment who stayed in the colony, or to farmers. Marriage was their choice: a woman could turn down a suitor, and some signed a marriage contract and then cancelled it. Many couples had large families, which is exactly what the colony's leaders hoped for.

A lasting legacy

The filles du roi made up nearly half of all the women who settled in New France. Because the colony's later growth came mostly from births rather than new immigrants, their families multiplied over the generations. Today, according to Parks Canada, millions of people in Quebec, the rest of Canada and the United States count one or more of them among their ancestors.

Good to know

• The Canadian Encyclopedia gives about 800 women between 1663 and 1673; demographer Yves Landry's counts run from about 770 to 850, hence "about eight hundred."
• "Far more men than women" refers to French settlers; the Indigenous nations around the colony are not counted in those figures.
• The Crown paid recruitment, clothing and travel costs; many women also received a royal dowry (often 50 livres), so the video says "many got a dowry," not all.
• The old claim that the filles du roi were prostitutes (from the writer La Hontan in 1703) has no basis, according to Parks Canada.
• "Canada" in the opening question is the common name then for the St. Lawrence settlements of New France.
• New France was built on Indigenous lands, including the homelands of the Wendat, Innu, Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Abenaki.

For Grade 7 History learners (Ontario)

This fits Ontario Grade 7 History, Strand A (New France and British North America): know why New France grew slowly, how the Crown tried to build the population with the filles du roi, and how that shaped French Canadian families.

Answer to the comment question

What does "filles du roi" mean in English? It means "the king's daughters" (or "daughters of the king"). The name came from the king's sponsorship: the Crown paid their way and often their dowry, almost as a father would.