DENONVILLE, Jacques Rene de Bresay, Marquis de, French governor of Canada. In 1685 he succeeded De la Barre as governor of Canada, and retained that office for four years. He was a brave soldier, but his administration of the duties of his office was such as brought the French colony in Canada to the verge of ruin. Acting on the advice of Louis XIV, he, in 1687, sent forty-one of the warriors of the Five Nations across the ocean to be chained to the oar in the galleys of Marseilles, and followed up this act of cruelty with an unprovoked attack upon the Senecas. They and other Indians retaliated so successfully that, after the massacre of the French at Lachine, there was hardly a French post left between Three Rivers and Mackinaw. During the period of his governorship he found a most determined opponent to the French claims of territorial extension in Governor Dongan, of New York, who, in opposing Denonville and the French, was acting contrary to the instructions he had received from King Charles and James. It was Denonville who recommended the purchase of New York by the French.