But such was not their destiny. An intrigue of the French ministry drew these four sons from obscurity, and led them to the high places of the world. Pontchartrain, whose name is still borne by a lake in Louisiana, was then minister of finance to Louis XIV. To facilitate the movements of the army in the war then going on between France and Savoy, he proposed to the king the formation of a company which should contract to supply the army with provisions; and, the king accepting his suggestion, the company was formed, and began operations. But the secretary of war took this movement of his colleague in high dudgeon, as the supply of the army, he thought, belonged to the war department. To frustrate and disgrace the new company of contractors, he ordered the army destined to operate in Italy to take the field on the first of May, several weeks before it was possible for the contractors by the ordinary methods to collect and move the requisite supplies. The company explained the impossibility of their feeding the army so early in the season; but the minister of war, not ill-pleased to see his rival embarrassed, held to his purpose, and informed the contractors' agent that he must have thirty thousand sacks of flour at a certain post by a certain day, or his head should answer it.
The agent, alarmed, and at his wits' end, consulted the innkeeper of the Alps, whom he knew to be an energetic spirit, and perfectly well acquainted with the men, the animals, the resources, and the roads of the region in which he lived, and through which the provisions would have to pass. The elder sons of the landlord were in the field at the time at work, and he told the agent he must wait a few hours till he could talk the matter over with them. At the close of the day there was a family consultation, and the result was that they undertook the task. Antoine, the eldest son, went to Lyons, the nearest large city, and induced the magistrates to lend the king the grain preserved in the public depositories against famine, engaging to replace it as soon as the navigation opened in the spring. The magistrates, full of zeal for the king's service, yielded willingly; and meanwhile, Claude, the second of the brothers, bought a thousand mules; and, in a very few days, in spite of the rigor of the season, long lines of mules, each laden with a sack of flour, were winding their way through the defiles of the Alps, guided by peasants whom the father of these boys had selected.