Though attached to the naval
department, they served on land, and were employed as a police within
the limits of the colony, or as garrisons of the outlying forts, where
their officers busied themselves more with fur-trading than with their
military duties. Thus they had become ill-disciplined and inefficient,
till the hard hand of Duquesne restored them to order. They originally
consisted of twenty-eight independent companies, increased in 1750 to
thirty companies, at first of fifty, and afterwards of sixty-five men
each, forming a total of nineteen hundred and fifty rank and file. In
March, 1757, ten more companies were added. Their uniform was not unlike
that of the troops attached to the War Department, being white, with
black facings. They were enlisted for the most part in France; but when
their term of service expired, and even before, in time of peace, they
were encouraged to become settlers in the colony, as was also the case
with their officers, of whom a great part were of European birth. Thus
the relations of the _troupes de la marine_ with the colony were close;
and formed a sort of connecting link between the troops of the line and
the native militia.[374] Besides these colony regulars, there was a
company of colonial artillery, consisting this year of seventy men, and
replaced in 1757 by two companies of fifty men each.
[Footnote 374: On the _troupes de la marine,--Memoire pour servir
d'Instruction a MM.
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