MLYREDK
CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
8
THE GREAT FORTRESS
BY WILLIAM WOOD
Part III
The English Invasion
WOLFE AT LOUISBOURG. 1758
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys
f
THE
GREAT FORTRESS
A Chronicle of Louisbourg
1720-1760
BY
WILLIAM WOOD
HOLY REDEEMER LIBRARY, Wl
Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention
Psass o TBS HUNTBB-ROSB Co., LIMITED, TORONTO
TO
GEORGE MACKINNON WRONG
JUST CRITIC
GENEROUS FRIEND
0,2
PREFACE
LOUISBOURG was no mere isolated strong-
hold which could be lost or won without
affecting the wider issues of oversea dominion.
On the contrary, it was a necessary link in
the chain of waterside posts which connected
France with America by way of the Atlantic,
the St Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the
Mississippi. But since the chain itself and
all its other links, and even the peculiar
relation of Louisbourg to the Acadians and
the Conquest, have been fully described else-
where in the Chronicles of Canada, the present
volume only tries to tell the purely individual
tale. Strange to say, this tale seems never
to have been told before ; at least, not as one
continuous whole. Of course, each siege has
been described, over and over again, in many
special monographs as well as in countless
books about Canadian history. But nobody
viii THE GREAT FORTRESS
seems to have written any separate work on
Louisbourg showing causes, crises, and results,
all together, in the light of the complete naval
and military proof. So perhaps the following
short account may really be the first attempt
to tell the tale of Louisbourg from the founda-
tion to the fall.
W. W.
59 GRANDE ALLE,
QUEBEC, 2nd January 1915.
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE . . . , . . xi
I. THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE, 1720-1744 I
II. THE SEA LINK LOST, 1745 .... 24
III. THE LINK RECOVERED, 1748. ... 74
IV. LOST FOR EVER, 1758 , . . . .90
V. ANNIHILATION, 1760 . . . . . 134
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE .... 138
INDEX 140
ILLUSTRATIONS
WOLFE AT LOUISBOURG, 1758 . . . Frontispiece
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.
THE SIEGE OF LOUISBOURG, 1758 . . Facing page i
Map by Bartholomew.
SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL 30
From the original painting by John Smibert.
EDWARD BOSCAWEN ....,,102
From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
JAMES WOLFE 108
From the painting by Highmore.
CHAPTER I
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE
1720-1744
THE fortress of Louisbourg arose not from
victory but from defeat ; not from military
strength but from naval weakness ; not from
a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from
a half-despairing hope of keeping one last
foothold by the sea. It was not begun till
after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached
their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713. It lived a precarious life of only forty
years, from 1720 to 1760. And nothing but
bare ruins were left to mark its grave when it
finally passed, unheeded and unnamed, into
the vast dominions of the conquering British
at the Peace of Paris in 1763.
The Treaty of Utrecht narrowed the whole
French sea-coast of America down to the
single island of Cape Breton. Here, after
seven years of official hesitation and maritime
exhaustion, Louisbourg was founded to guard
G.F. A
2 THE GREAT FORTRESS
the only harbour the French thought they had
a chance of holding. A medal was struck to
celebrate this last attempt to keep the one re-
maining seaway open between Old France and
New. Its legend ran thus : Ludovicoburgum
Fu.ndatu.rn et Munitum, M.DCC.XX (' Louis-
bourg Founded and Fortified, 1720 '). Its
obverse bore the profile of the young Louis
XV, whose statesmen hoped they had now
established a French Gibraltar in America,
where French fleets and forts would command
the straits leading into the St Lawrence and
threaten the coast of New England, in much
the same way as British fleets and forts com-
manded the entrance to the Mediterranean and
threatened the coasts of France and Spain.
This hope seemed flattering enough in time
of peace ; but it vanished at each recurrent
shock of war, because the Atlantic then be-
came a hostile desert for the French, while it
still remained a friendly highway for the
British.
The first French settlers in Louisbourg
came over from Newfoundland, which had
been given up to the British by the treaty.
The fishermen of various nations had fre-
quented different ports all round these shores
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 3
for centuries ; and, by the irony of fate,
the new French capital of Cape Breton was
founded at the entrance to the bay which had
long been known as English Harbour. Every-
thing that rechristening could do, however,
was done to make Cape Breton French. Not
only was English Harbour now called Louis-
bourg, but St Peter's became Port Toulouse,
St Anne's became Port Dauphin, and the
whole island itself was solemnly christened lie
Royale.
The shores of the St Lawrence up to
Quebec and Montreal were as entirely French
as the islands in the Gulf. But Acadia, which
used to form the connection by land between
Cape Breton and Canada, had now become a
British possession inhabited by the so-called
* neutral French.' These Acadians, few in
numbers and quite unorganized, were drawn
in opposite directions, on the one hand by their
French proclivities, on the other by their
rooted affection for their own farms. Unlike
the French Newfoundlanders, who came in
a body from Plaisance (now Placentia), the
Acadians preferred to stay at home. In 1717
an effort was made to bring some of them into
Louisbourg. But it only succeeded in attract-
ing the merest handful. On the whole, the
4 THE GREAT FORTRESS
French authorities preferred leaving the Aca-
dians as they were, in case a change in the
fortunes of war might bring them once more
under the fleurs-de-lis, when the connection
by land between Quebec and the sea would
again be complete. A plan for promoting the
immigration of the Irish Roman Catholics
living near Cape Breton never got beyond
the stage of official memoranda. Thus the
population of the new capital consisted only
of government employees, French fishermen
from Newfoundland and other neighbouring
places, waifs and strays from points farther
off, bounty-fed engages from France, and a
swarm of camp-following traders. The regu-
lar garrison was always somewhat of a class
apart.
The French in Cape Breton needed all the
artificial aid they could get from guns and
forts. Even in Canada there was only a
handful of French, all told, at the time of the
Treaty of Utrecht twenty-five thousand ;
while the British colonists in North America
numbered fifteen times as many. The re-
spective populations had trebled by the time
of the Cession of Canada to the British fifty
years later, but with a tendency for the vast
British preponderance to increase still more.
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 5
Canada naturally had neither men nor money
to spare for Louisbourg ; so the whole cost
of building the fortress, thirty mi'lion livres,
came direct from France. This sum was then
the equivalent, in purchasing power, of at
least as many dollars now, though the old
French livre was only rated at the contem-
porary value of twenty cents. But the ori-
ginal plans were never carried out ; more-
over, not half the money that actually was
spent ever reached the military chest at all.
There were too many thievish fingers by the
way.
The French were not a colonizing people,
their governing officials hated a tour of duty
oversea, and Louisbourg was the most un-
popular of all the stations in the service.
Those Frenchmen who did care for outlandish
places went east to India or west to Canada.
Nobody wanted to go to a small, dull, out-of-
the-way garrison town like Louisbourg, where
there was no social life whatever nothing but
fishermen, smugglers, petty traders, a discon-
tented garrison, generally half composed of
foreigners, and a band of dishonest, second-
rate officials, whoce one idea was how to get
rich and get home. , The inspectors who were
sent out either failed in their duty and joined
6 THE GREAT FORTRESS
the official gang of thieves, or else resigned in
disgust. Worse still, because this taint was
at the very source, the royal government in
France was already beset with that entangle-
ment of weakness and corruption which lasted
throughout the whole century between the
decline of Louis XIV and the meteoric rise
of Napoleon.
The founders of Louisbourg took their time
to build it. It was so very profitable to spin
the werk out as long as possible. The plan
of the fortress was good. It was modelled
after the plans of Vauban, who had been the
greatest engineer in the greatest European
army of the previous generation. But the
actual execution was hampered, at every turn,
by want of firmness at headquarters and want
of honest labour on the spot. Sea sand was
plentiful, worthless, and cheap. So it was
used for the mortar, with most disastrous
results. The stone was hewn from a quarry
of porphyritic trap near by and used for the
walls in the rough. Cut stone and good bricks
were brought out from France as ballast by the
fishing fleet. Some of these finer materials were
built into the governor's and the intendant's
quarters. Others were sold to New England
traders and replaced by inferior substitutes.
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 7
Of course, direct trade between the opposing
colonies was strictly forbidden by both the
French and British navigation acts. But the
Louisbourg officials winked at anything that
would enrich them quickly, while the New
Englanders pushed in eagerly wherever a
profit could be made by any means at all.
Louisbourg was intended to be the general
rendezvous of the transatlantic French fishing
vessels ; a great port of call between France,
Canada, and the French West Indies ; and a
harbour of refuge in peace and war. But the
New England shipping was cioing the best
trade at Louisbourg, and doing it in double
contraband, within five years of the founda-
tion. Cod caught by Frenchmen from Louis-
bourg itself, French wines and brandy brought
out from France, tobacco and sugar brought
north from the French West Indies, all offered
excellent chances to enterprising Yankees,
who came in with foodstuffs and building
materials of their own. One vessel sailed for
New York with a cargo of claret and brandy
that netted her owners a profit of a hundred
per cent, even after paying the usual charges
demanded by the French custom-house officials
for what really was a smuggler's licence.
Fishing, smuggling, and theft were the three
8 THE GREAT FORTRESS
great industries of Louisbourg. The traders
shared the profits of the smuggling. But the
intendant and his officials kept most of the
choice thieving for themselves.
The genuine settlers and a starveling crew
they were wrested their debt-laden livelihood
from the local fishing. This was by no means
bad in itself. But, like other fishermen be-
fore and since, they were in perpetual bondage
to the traders, who took good care not to let
accounts get evened up. A happier class of
fishermen made up the engages, who were
paid by government to ' play settler ' for a
term of years, during which they helped to
swell the official census of uncongenial Louis-
bourg. The regular French fishing fleet of
course returned to France at the end of every
season, and thus enjoyed a full spell of French
delights on shore.
The Acadians supplied Louisbourg with
meat and vegetables. These were brought in
by sea ; for there were no roads worth men-
tioning ; nor, in the contemporary state of
Cape Breton, was there any need for roads.
The farmers were few, widely scattered, and
mostly very poor. The only prosperous
settlement within a long day's march was
situated on the beautiful Mira river. James
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 9
Gibson, a Boston merchant and militiaman,
who served against Louisbourg in 1745, was
much taken by the appearance of an establish-
ment ' at the mouth of a large salmon fishery,'
by one ' very handsome house, with two large
barns, two large gardens, and fine fields of
corn,' and by another with ' six rooms on a
floor and well furnished.' He adds that ' in
one of the barns were fifteen loads of hay, and
room sufficient for sixty horses and cattle.'
In 1753 the intendant sent home a report
about a proposed ' German ' settlement near
the ' Grand Lake of Mira.' A new experiment
was then being tried, the importation of
settlers from Alsace-Lorraine. But five years
afterwards Cape Breton had been lost to
France for ever.
The fact is that the French never really
colonized Cape Breton at large, and Louis-
bourg least of all. They knew the magnificent
possibilities of Sydney harbour, but its mere
extent prevented their attempting to make use
of it. They saw that the whole island was a
maritime paradise, with seaports in its very
heart as well as round its shores. But they
were a race of gallant, industrious lands-
men at home, with neither the wish nor the
aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They
io THE GREAT FORTRESS
could not have failed to see that there was
plenty of timber in some parts of the island,
and that the soil was fit to bear good crops of
grain in others. A little prospecting would
also have shown them iron, coal, and gypsum.
But their official parasites did not want to
see smuggling and peculation replaced by in-
dustry and trade. Nothing, indeed, better
proves how little they thought of making He
Royale a genuine colony than their utter
failure to exploit any one of its teeming natural
resources in forest, field, or mine.
What the French did with extraneous re-
sources and artificial aids in the town of
Louisbourg is more to the purpose in hand.
The problem of their position, and of its
strength and weakness in the coming clash of
arms, depended on six naval, military, and
governmental factors, each one of which must
be considered before the whole can be appreci-
ated. These six factors were the govern-
ment, the garrison, the militia, the Indians,
the navy, and the fortress.
Get rich and go home. The English-speaking
peoples, whose ancestors once went to England
as oversea emigrants, and two-thirds of whom
are now themselves the scions of successive
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE II
migrations across the Seven Seas, cannot
understand how intensely the general run of
French officials detested colonial service,
especially in a place like Louisbourg, which
was everything the average Frenchman hated
most. This British failure to understand a
national trait, which is still as strongly marked
as ever, accounts for a good deal of the ex-
aggerated belief in the strength of the French
position in America. The British Americans
who tried to think out plans of conquest were
wont to under-estimate their own unorganized
resources and to over-estimate the organized
resources of the French, especially when they
set their minds on Louisbourg.
The British also entertained the erroneous
idea that ' the whole country was under one
command.' This was the very thing it was
not. The French system was the autocratic
one without the local autocrat ; for the
functions of the governor and the intendant
overlapped each other, and all disputes had
to be referred to Quebec, where the functions
of another governor and another intendant also
overlapped each other. If no decision could
be reached at Quebec, and the question at
issue was one of sufficient importance, the now
double imbroglio would be referred to the
12 THE GREAT FORTRESS
Supreme Council in France, which would write
back to Quebec, whence the decision would
be forwarded to Louisbourg, where it would
arrive months after many other troubles had
grown out of the original dispute.
The system was false from the start, because
the overlapping was intentional. The idea
was to prevent any one man from becoming
too strong and too independent. The result
was to keep governors and intendants at per-
petual loggerheads and to divide every station
into opposing parties. Did the governor want
money and material for the fortifications ?
Then the intendant was sure the military
chest, which was in his own charge, could not
afford it. The governor might sometimes
gain his ends by giving a definite emergency
order under his hand and seal. But, if the
emergency could not be proved, this laid him
open to great risks from the intendant's sub-
sequent recriminations before the Superior
Council in Quebec or the Supreme Council in
France. The only way such a system could
be worked at all was either by corrupt collusion
or by superhuman co-operation between the
two conflicting parties, or by appointing a man
of genius who could make every other official
discharge his proper duties and no more.
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 13
Corrupt collusion was not very common,
because the governors were mostly naval or
military men, and the naval and military men
were generally honest. Co-operation was im-
possible between two merely average men ;
and no genius was ever sent to such a place
as Louisbourg. The ablest man in either of
the principal posts was the notorious inten-
dant Bigot, who began here on a small scale
the consummate schemes that proved so disas-
trously successful at Quebec. Get rich and
go home.
The minor governmental life of Louisbourg
was of a piece with the major. There were
four or five lesser members of the Superior
Council, which also had jurisdiction over He
St Jean, as Prince Edward Island was then
called. The lucrative chances of the custom-
house were at the mercy of four under-
paid officials grandiloquently called a Court
of Admiralty. An inferior court known as
the bailiwick tried ordinary civil suits and
breaches of the peace. This bailiwick also
offered what might be euphemistically called
' business opportunities ' to enterprising mem-
bers. True, there was no police to execute
its decrees ; and at one time a punctilious
resident complained that ' there was not
14 THE GREAT FORTRESS
even a common hangman, nor a jail, nor even
a tormentor to rack the criminals or indict
other appropriate tortures.' But appeals took
a long time and cost much money; so even
the officials of the bailiwick could pick up a
living by threats of the law's delay, on the
one hand, and promises of perverted local
justice, on the other. That there was money
to be made, in spite of the meagre salaries, is
proved by the fact that the best journeyman
wig-maker in Louisbourg ' grew extremely
rich in different branches of commerce, especi-
ally in the contraband,' after filling the dual
position of judge of the admiralty and judge
of the bailiwick, both to the apparent satis-
faction of his friend the intendant.
The next factor was the garrison of regulars.
This was under the direct command of the
king's lieutenant, who took his orders from
the governor. The troops liked Louisbourg
no better than the officials did. True, there
were taverns in plenty : even before Louis-
bourg was officially founded they had become
such a thriving nuisance that orders for their
better control had been sent out from France.
But there was no other place for the ordinary
soldier to go to in his spare time. The officers
felt the want of a larger outlook even more
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 15
than the men did ; and neither man nor
officer ever went to Louisbourg if he could help
it. When Montcalm, the greatest Frenchman
the New World ever saw, came out to Canada,
there was eager competition among the troops
at home to join his army in the field. Officers
paid large sums for the honour of exchanging
into any one of the battalions ordered to the
front ; and when volunteers were called for
from the ranks every single man stepped for-
ward. But no Montcalm came out to Louis-
bourg, and nothing but bounties could get a
volunteer. There were only between five and
six hundred regulars in the whole garrison
during the first siege, twenty-five years after
the foundation, and nearly half of these were
foreigners, mostly ' pay-fighting Swiss. '
The third factor was the militia. Every
able-bodied man, not specially exempt for
other duties, was liable for service in time of
war ; and the whole island could be drawn
upon for any great emergency at Louisbourg.
Between thirteen and fourteen hundred men
were got under arms for the siege of 1745.
Those who lived in Louisbourg had the ad-
vantage of a little slack discipline and a little
slack drill. Those in the country had some
practice in the handling of firearms. But,
16 THE GREAT FORTRESS
taken all round, it would be an exaggeration
to call them even quarter-trained soldiers.
The fourth factor was the Indians. They
belonged to the Micmac tribe of the great
Algonquin family, and probably numbered no
more than about four thousand throughout
the whole French sphere of influence in what
are now the Maritime Provinces. A few hun-
dred braves might have been ready to take
the war-path in .the wilds of Cape Breton;
but sieges were not at all in their line, except
when they could hang round the besiegers'
inland flanks, on the chance of lifting scalps
from careless stragglers or ambushing an occa-
sional small party gone astray. As in Canada,
so in Cape Breton, the Indians natur-
ally sided with the French, who Disturbed
them less and treated them better than the
British did. The British, who enjoyed the
inestimable advantage of superior sea-power,
had more goods to exchange. But in every
other icspect the French were very much
preferred. The handful of- French sent out
an astonishingly great number of heroic
and sympathetic missionaries to the natives.
The many British sent out astonishingly few.
The Puritan clergy did shamefully little com-
pared with the wonderful Jesuits. Moreover,
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 17
while the French in general made the Indian
feel he was at all events a fellow human being,
the average British colonist simply looked on
him as so much vermin, to be destroyed
together with the obstructive wilds that har-
boured him.
The fifth factor, the navy, brings us into
contact with world-wide problems of sea-
power which are too far-reaching for dis-
cussion here. 1 Suffice it to say that, while
Louisbourg was an occasional convenience, it
had also peculiar dangers for a squadron from
the weaker of two hostile navies, as squadrons
from France were likely to be. The British
could make for a dozen different harbours on
the coast. The French could make for only
this one. Therefore the British had only to
guard against this one stronghold if the French
were in superior force ; they could the more
easily blockade it if the French were in equal
force ; and they could the more easily anni-
hilate it if it was defended by an inferior
force.
The last factor was the fortress itself. This
so-called ' Gibraltar of the West,' this ' Quebec
by the sea,' this ' Dunkirk of New France,' was
1 See in this Series The Winning of Canada and The Passing of
New France, where they are discussed.
G.F. B
18 THE GREAT FORTRESS
certainly first of its kind. But it was first only
in a class of one ; while the class itself was far
from being a first among classes. The natural
position was vastly inferior to that of Quebec
or Gibraltar ; while the fortifications were not
to be compared with those of Dunkirk, which,
in one sense, they were meant to replace.
Dunkirk had been sold by Charles II to
Louis XIV, who made it a formidable naval
base commanding the straits of Dover. When
the Treaty of Utrecht compelled its demolition,
the French tried to redress the balance a little
by building similar works in America on a very
much smaller scale, with a much more purely
defensive purpose, and as an altogether sub-
sidiary undertaking. Dunkirk was ' a pistol
held at England's head ' because it was an
integral part of France, which was the greatest
military country in the world and second to
England alone on the sea. Louisbourg was
no American Dunkirk because it was much
weaker in itself, because it was more purely
defensive, because the odds of population and
general resources as between the two colonies
were fifteen to one in favour of the British,
and because the preponderance of British
sea-power was even greater in America than
it was in Europe.
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 19
The harbour of Louisbourg ran about two
miles north-east and south-west, with a clear
average width of half a mile. The two little
peninsulas on either side of the entrance were
nearly a mile apart. But the actual fairway
of the entrance was narrowed to little more
than a clear quarter of a mile by the reefs and
islands running out from the south-western
peninsula, on which the fortress stood. This
low, nubbly tongue of land was roughly
triangular. It measured about three-quarters
of a mile on its longest side, facing the harbour,
over half a mile on the land side, facing the
enemy's army, and a good deal under half a
mile on the side facing the sea. It had little
to fear from naval bombardment so long as
the enemy's fleet remained outside, because
fogs and storms made it a very dangerous lee
shore, and because, then as now, ships would
not pit themselves against forts unless there
was no rival fleet to fight, and unless other
circumstances were unusually propitious.
The entrance was defended by the Island
Battery, which flanked the approach with
thirty-nine guns, and the Royal Battery,
which directly faced it with thirty guns.
Some temporary lines with a few more guns
were prepared in time of danger to prevent
20 THE GREAT FORTRESS
the enemy from landing in Gabarus Bay,
which ran for miles south-west of Louisbourg.
But the garrison, even with the militia, was
never strong enough to keep the enemy at
arm's length from any one of these positions.
Moreover, the north-east peninsula, where
the lighthouse stood, commanded the Island
Battery ; and the land side of Louisbourg itself
was commanded by a range of low hillocks
less than half a mile away.
It was this land side, containing the citadel
and other works, which so impressed outsiders
with the idea of impregnable strength. The
glacis was perfect nqt an inch of cover
wherever you looked ; and the approach was
mostly across a slimy bog. The ditch was
eighty feet wide. The walls rose over thirty
feet above the ditch. There were embrasures
for one hundred and forty-eight guns all
round ; though not more than ninety were
ever actually mounted. On the seaward face
Louisbourg was not so strongly fortified;
but in the centre of this face there were a
deep ditch and high wall, with bastions on
each immediate flank, and lighter defences
connecting these with the landward face. A
dozen streets were laid out, so as to divide the
whole town into conveniently square little
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 21
blocks. The area of the town itself was not
much more than a hundred acres altogether
rather close quarters for several thousand
men, women, and children during a siege.
If reports and memoranda could defend a
fortress, then Louisbourg ought indeed to have
been impregnable. Of course every official
trust entails endless correspondence. But,
quite apart from the stated returns that go
through ' the usual channel of communica-
tion,' reams and reams of paper were filled
with special reports, inspections, complaints,
and good advice. The governor wrote home,
most elaborately, in 1724, about the progress
of the works. Ten years later he announced
the official inauguration of the lighthouse on
the ist of April. In 1736 the chief item was
the engineer's report on the walls. Next year
the great anxiety was about a dangerous
famine, with all its attendant distress for the
many and its shameless profits for the few.
On November 23, 1744, reinforcements and
provisions were asked for, because intelligence
had been received that the New Englanders
were ^oing to blockade Louisbourg the follow-
ing summer. At the same time, the discontent
of the garrison had come to a head, and a
mutiny had broken out because the extra
22 THE GREAT FORTRESS
working pay had not been forthcoming. After
this the discipline became, not sterner, but
slacker than ever, especially among the hire-
ling Swiss. On February 8, 1745, within three
months of the first siege, a memorandum was
sent in to explain what was still required
to finish the works begun twenty-five years
before.
But, after all, it was not so much the de-
fective works that really mattered as the
defective garrison oehind them. English-
speaking civilians who have written about
Louisbourg have sometimes taken partial
account of the ordinary Frenchman's repug-
nance to oversea duty in time of peace and
of the little worth of hireling foreigners in
time of war. But they have always ignored
that steady drip, drip, drip of deterioration
which reduces the efficiency of every garrison
condemned to service in remote and thor-
oughly uncongenial countries. Louisbourg
was remote, weeks away from exchanges with
Quebec, months from exchanges with any
part of France or Switzerland. And what
other foreign station could have been more
thoroughly uncongenial, except, perhaps, a
convict station in the tropics ? Bad quarters
were endurable in Paris or even in the pro-
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 23
vinces, where five minutes' walk would take
one into something pleasanter. Bad fortifica-
tions would inspire less apprehension any-
where in France, where there was at least an
army always ready to take the field. But
cold, cramped quarters in foggy little Louis-
bourg, between the estranging sea and an
uncouth land of rock, bog, sand, and scrubby
vegetation, made all the world of difference
in the soldier's eyes. Add to this his want of
faith in works which he saw being scamped
by rascally contractors, and we can begin to
understand why the general attitude of town
and garrison alike was one of ' Here to-day
and gone to-morrow.'
CHAPTER II
THE SEA LINK LOST
1745
ROME would not rest till she had ruined
Carthage. Britain would not rest till she
had seen Dunkirk demolished. New England
would not rest till she had taken Louisbourg.
Louisbourg was unique in all America, and
that was its undoing. It was the one sen-
tinel beside the gateway to New France;
therefore it ought to be taken before Quebec
and Canada were attacked. It was the one
corsair lying in perpetual wait beside the
British lines of seaborne trade ; therefore it
must be taken before British shipping could
be safe. It was the one French sea link
between the Old World and the New ; there-
fore its breaking was of supreme importance.
It was the one real fortress ever heard of
in America, and it was in absolutely alien
hands ; therefore, so ran New England logic, it
was most offensive to all true Britons, New
84
THE SEA LINK LOST 25
Englanders, and Puritans ; to all rivals in
smuggling, trade, and privateering ; and to all
right-thinking people generally.
The weakness of Louisbourg was very
welcome news to energetic Massachusetts.
In 1744, when Frederick the Great had begun
the War of the Austrian Succession and
France had taken arms against Great Britain,
du Quesnel, the governor of Louisbourg, who
had received the intelligence of these events
some weeks before the alert Bostonians, at
once decided to win credit by striking the first
blow. He was much disliked in Louisbourg.
He drank hard, cursed his subordinates when
in his cups, and set the whole place by the
ears. Moreover, many of those under him
wished to avoid giving the British Americans
any provocation, in the hope that the war
might be confined to Europe. But none dared
to refuse a legal and positive order. So in
May his expedition left for Canso, where there
was a little home-made British fort on the
strait between Cape Breton and the mainland
of Nova Scotia. The eighty fishermen in
Canso surrendered to du Vivier, the French
commander, who sent them on to Boston,
after burning their fort to the ground. Elated
26 THE GREAT FORTRESS
by this somewhat absurd success, and streng-
thened by nearly a hundred regulars and
four hundred Indians, who raised his total
force to at least a thousand men, du Vivier
next proceeded against Annapolis on the west
side of Nova Scotia. But Mascarene, the
British commander there, stood fast on his
defence, though his men were few and his
means small. The Acadian French in the
vicinity were afraid to join du Vivier openly.
The siege dragged on. The British received
a slight reinforcement. The French did not.
And in September du Vivier suddenly retired
without attempting an assault.
The burning of Canso and the attack on
Annapolis stirred up the wrath of New Eng-
land. A wild enthusiast, William Vaughan,
urged Governor Shirley of Massachusetts to
make an immediate counter-attack. Shirley
was an English lawyer, good at his own
work, but very anxious to become famous
as a conqueror. He lent a willing ear to
Vaughan, and astounded the General Court
of Massachusetts on January 21, 1745, by
first inducing the members to swear secrecy
and then asking them to consider a plan
for a colonial expedition against Louisbourg.
He and they were on very good terms.
THE SEA LINK LOST 27
But they were provincial, cautious, and natur-
ally slow when it came to planning cam-
paigns and pledging their credit for what
was then an enormous sum of money. Nor
could they be blamed. None of them knew
much about armies and navies ; most thought
Louisbourg was a real transatlantic Dunkirk ;
and all knew that they were quite insolvent
already. Their joint committee of the two
Houses reported against the scheme; where-
upon each House carried a secret adverse
vote by a large majority.
But, just before these votes were taken, a
Puritan member from a country district
wrestled in what he thought confidential
prayer with such loud ejaculations that an
eavesdropper overheard him and passed the
secret on. Of course the momentous news at
once began to run like wildfire through the
province. Still, the .' Noes had it,' both in the
country and the House. Shirley was dejected
and in doubt what to do next. But James
Gibson, the merchant militiaman, suddenly
hit on the idea of getting up a petition among
the business community. The result sur-
passed every expectation. All the merchants
were eager for attack. Louisbourg embodied
everything they feared and hated : interfer-
28 THE GREAT FORTRESS
ence with seaborne commerce, rank popery,
French domination, trouble with Acadia, and
the chance of being themselves attacked.
When the petition was presented to both
Houses, the whole subject was again debated.
Provincial insolvency and the absence of either
a fleet or an army were urged by the Opposi-
tion. But the fighting party put forth all their
strength and pleaded that delay meant rein-
forcements for Louisbourg and a good chance
lost for ever. The vote would have been a tie
if a member of the Opposition had not slipped
and broken his leg as he was hurrying down
to the House. Once the decision had been
reached, however, all did their best to ensure
success.
Shirley wrote to his brother governors.
Vaughan galloped off post-haste to New Hamp-
shire with the first official letter. Gibson led
the merchants in local military zeal. The
result was that Massachusetts, which then
included Maine, raised over 3000 men, while
New Hampshire and Connecticut raised about
500 each. Rhode Island concurred, but un-
graciously and ineffectually late. She nursed
two grudges against Massachusetts, one about
the undeniably harsh treatment meted out to
her great founder, Roger Williams, the other
THE SEA LINK LOST 29
about that most fruitful source of inter-
provincial mischief-making, a disputed boun-
dary. New York lent some guns, which
proved very useful. The remaining colonies
did nothing.
Shirley's choice of a commander-in-chief
wisely fell on William Pepperrell. There
was no military leader in the whole of New
England. So the next most suitable man
was the civilian who best combined the
necessary qualities of good sense, sound know-
ledge of men and affairs, firmness, diplomacy,
and popularity. Popularity was essential,
because all the men were volunteers. Pep-
perrell, who answered every reasonable test,
went through the campaign with flying colours
and came out of it as the first and only
baronet of Massachusetts. He was commis-
sioned as major-general by all three con-
tributing provinces, since none of them re-
cognized any common authority except that
of the crown. He was ably seconded by
many leading men who, if not trained soldiers,
were at least accustomed to the organization
of public life ; for in those days the word
politician had not become a term of reproach
in America, and the people were often repre-
sented by men of the highest character.
30 THE GREAT FORTRESS
The financial difficulty was overcome by
issuing letters of credit, which were afterwards
redeemed by the Imperial government, at a
total cost of nearly a quarter of a million
sterling. There was no time and there were
no means to change the militia into an army.
But many compensating advantages helped
to make up for its deficiencies. The men
volunteered eagerly. They were all very
keen to fight the French. Most of them under-
stood the individual use of firearms. Many
of them had been to sea and had learned
to work together as a crew. Nearly all of
them had the handiness then required for life
in a new country. And, what with con-
viction and what with prejudice, they were
also quite disposed to look upon the ex-
pedition as a sort of crusade against idolatrous
papists, and therefore as a very proper climax
to the Great Awakening which had recently
roused New England to the heights of religious
zealotry under the leadership of the famous
Geor&e Whitefield himself.
Strangely enough, neither Whitefield nor
his friend Pepperrell was at ail sure that the
expedition was a wise or even a godly venture.
Whitefield warned Pepperrell that he would be
envied if he succeeded and abused if he failed.
SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL
From the original painting by John Smibert
THE SEA LINK LOST 31
The Reverend Thomas Prince openly re-
gretted the change of enemy. ' The Heavenly
shower is over. From fighting the Devil they
needs must turn to fighting the French.'
But Parson Moody, most truculent of Puritans,
had no doubts whatever. The French, the
pope, and the Devil were all one to him ; and
when he embarked as senior chaplain he took
a hatchet with which to break down the
graven images of Louisbourg. In the end
Whitefield warmed up enough to give the ex-
pedition its official motto : Nil desperandum
Christo Duce. The Never Despair heartened
the worldlings. The Christ our Commander
appealed to the ' Great Awakened.' And the
whole saying committed him to nothing
particular concerning the issue at stake.
The three militia contingents numbered
4270 men. The three naval contingents had
13 vessels mounting 216 guns. In addition
to both these forces there were the transports,
which had considerable crews. But all these
together, if caught on the open sea, would be
no match for a few regular men-of-war.
New England had no navy, though the New
Englanders had enjoyed a good deal of ex-
perience in minor privateering against the
Spaniards during the last few years, as well
32 THE GREAT FORTRESS
as a certain amount of downright piracy in
time of peace, whenever a Frenchman or a
Spaniard could be safely taken at a dis-
advantage. So Shirley asked Commodore
Warren, commanding the North American
station, to lend his aid. Warren had married
an American and was very well disposed to-
wards the colonists. But, having no orders
from England, he at first felt obliged to refuse.
Within a short time, however, he was given a
free hand by the Imperial government, which
authorized him to concert measures with
Shirley ' for the annoyance of the enemy, and
for his Majesty's Service in North America.'
Warren immediately sailed for Canso with
three men-of-war and sent for another to
join him. His wait for orders made him
nearly three weeks later than the New Eng-
landers in arriving at the rendezvous. But
this delay, due to no fault of his own, was
really an advantage to the New England
militia, who thus had a chance of learning a
little more drill and discipline. His four
vessels carried 180 guns and 1150 men at
full strength. The thirteen Provincial armed
vessels carried more than 1000 men. No
exact returns were ever made out for the
transports. But as ' 68 lay at anchor ' in
THE SEA LINK LOST 33
Canso harbour, while others ' came dropping
in from day to day,' as there were 4270
militiamen on board, in addition to all the
stores, and as the French counted ' 96 trans-
ports ' making for Gabarus Bay, there could
not have been less than 100, while the crews
could hardly have mustered less than an
average of 20 men each. The grand total, at
the beginning of the expedition, could not,
therefore, have been less than 8000 men, of
all sorts put together over 4000 American
Provincial militia, over 1000 men of the Royal
Navy, quite 1000 men aboard the Provincial
fighting vessels, and at least 2000 more as
crews to work the transports.
May i, the first Sunday the Provincials
spent at Canso, was a day of great and multi-
farious activity, both sacred and profane.
Parson Moody, the same who had taken the
war-path with his iconoclastic hatchet, de-
livered a tremendous philippic from the text,
' Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy
.power.' Luckily for his congregation he had
the voice of a Stentor, as there were several
mundane competitors in an adjoining field,
each bawling the word of command at the full
pitch of his lungs. A conscientious diarist,
though full of Sabbatarian zeal, was fain to
G.F. C
34 THE GREAT FORTRESS
admit that ' Severall sorts of Busnesses was
a-Going on : Sum a- Exercising, Sum a-
Hearing o' the Preaching.'
On May 5 Warren sailed into Canso. The
Provincials thought the date of his arrival
a very happy omen, as it fell on what was
then, according to the Old Style calendar, St
George's Day, April 23. After a conference
with Pepperrell he hurried off to begin the
blockade of Louisbourg. A week later, May
21, the transports joined him there, and landed
their militiamen for one of the most eccentric
sieges ever known.
While the British had been spending the
first four months of 1745 in preparing 8000
men, the French authorities in Louisbourg,
whose force was less than 2000, had been
wasting the same precious time in ridiculous
councils of war. It is a well-known saying
that councils of war never fight. But these
Louisbourg councils did not even prepare to
fight. The news from Boston was not heeded.
Worse yet, no attention was paid to the
American scouting vessels, which had been
hovering off the coast for more than a month.
The bibulous du Quesnel had died in October.
But his successor, du Chambon, was no better
THE SEA LINK LOST 35
as a commandant. Perhaps the kindest thing
to say of du Chambon is that he was the
foolish father of a knavish son of that du
Chambon de Vergor who, in the next war,
surrendered Fort Beausejour without a siege
and left one sleepy sentry to watch Wolfe's
Cove the night before the Battle of the
Plains.
It is true that du Chambon had succeeded
to a thoroughly bad command. He had no
naval force whatever ; and the military force
had become worse instead of better. The
mutiny in December had left the 560 regulars
in a very sullen frame of mind. They knew
that acquisitive government officials were
cheating them out of their proper rations of
bacon and beans. The officials knew that the
soldiers knew. And so suspicion and resent-
ment grew strong between trfbm. The only
other force was the militia, which, with certain
exceptions, comprised every male inhabitant
of Cape Breton who could stand on two legs
and hold a musket with both hands. There
were boys in their early teens and old men in
their sixties. Nearly 1800 ought to have been
available. But four or five hundred that
might have been brought in never received
their marching orders. So the total com-
36 THE GREAT FORTRESS
batants only amounted to some 1900, of whom
1350 were militia. The non-combatants num-
bered nearly as many. The cramped hun-
dred acres of imprisoned Louisbourg thus
contained almost 4000 people mutineers and
militia, women and children, drones and other
officials, all huddled up together.
No reinforcements arrived after the first
appearance of the British fleet. Marin, a
well-known guerilla leader, had been sent down
from Quebec, through the bush, with six or
seven hundred whites and Indians, to join the
two thousand men whom the French govern-
ment had promised du Vivier for a second, and
this time a general, attack on Acadia. But
these other two thousand were never sent ;
and Marin, having failed to take Annapolis
by the first week in June, was too late and
too weak to help Louisbourg afterwards. The
same ill luck pursued the French by sea.
On April 30 the Renommee, a very smart
frigate bringing out dispatches, was chased
off by the Provincial cruisers ; while all sub-
sequent arrivals from the outside world were
intercepted by Warren.
The landing effected on May 12 was not
managed according to Shirley's written in-
THE SEA LINK LOST 37
structions ; nor was the siege. Shirley had
been playing a little war game in his study,
with all the inconvenient obstacles left out
the wind, the weather, the crashing surf in
Gabarus Bay, the rocks and bogs of the sur-
rounding country, the difficulties of entering
a narrow-necked harbour under a combina-
tion of end-on and broadside fire, the terrible
lee shore off the islands, reefs, and Lighthouse
Point, the commonest vigilance of the most
slovenly garrison, and even the offensive
power of the guns on the walls of Louisbourg
itself. Shirley's plan was that Pepperrell
should arrive in the offing too late to be seen,
land unobserved, and march on Louisbourg
in four detachments while the garrison was
wrapped in slumber. Two of these detach-
ments were to march within striking distance
and then ' halt and keep a profound silence/
The third was to march ' under cover of said
hills ' until it came opposite the Royal
Battery, which it was to assault on a given
signal ; while the * profound silence ' men
rushed the western gate. The fourth detach-
ment was to race along the shore, scale a
certain spot in the wall, * and secure the
windows of the Governor's Apartments.* All
this was to be done by raw militia, on ground
38 THE GREAT FORTRESS
they had never reconnoitred, and in the dead
of night.
Needless to say, Pepperrell tried something
quite different. At daybreak of the I2th the
whole fleet stood into Gabarus Bay, a large
open roadstead running west from the little
Louisbourg peninsula. The Provincials eyed
the fortress eagerly. It looked mean, squat,
and shrunken in the dim grey light of early
dawn. But it looked hard enough, for all
that. Its alarm bells began to ring. Its
signal cannon fired. And all the people who
had been living outside hurried in behind the
walls.
The New Englanders were so keen to land
that they ran some danger of falling into
complete disorder. But Pepperrell managed
very cleverly. Seeing that some French-
men were ready to resist a landing on Flat
Point, two miles south-west of Louisbourg,
he made a feint against it, drew their fire,
and then raced his boats for Freshwater Cove,
another two miles beyond. Having com-
pletely outdistanced the handful of panting
Frenchmen, he landed in perfect safety and
presently scattered them with a wild charge
which cost them about twenty in killed,
wounded, and prisoners. Before dark two
THE SEA LINK LOST 39
thousand Provincials were ashore. The other
two thousand landed at their leisure the follow-
ing day.
The next event in this extraordinary siege
is one of the curiosities of war. On May 14
the enthusiastic Vaughan took several hun-
dreds of these newly landed men to the top
of the nearest hillock and saluted the walls
with three cheers. He then circled the whole
harbour, keeping well inland, till he reached
the undefended storehouses on the inner
side of the North-East Harbour, a little be-
yond the Royal Battery. These he at once
set on fire. The pitch, tar, wood, and other
combustibles made a blinding smoke, which
drifted over the Royal Battery and spread
a stampeding panic among its garrison of four
hundred men. Vaughan then retired for the
night. On his return to the Royal Battery
in the morning, with only thirteen men, he
was astounded to see no sign of life there.
Suspecting a fuse, he bribed an Indian with a
flask of brandy to feign being drunk and reel
up to the walls. The Indian reached the fort
unchallenged, climbed into an embrasure, and
found the whole place deserted. Vaughan
followed at once ; and a young volunteer,
shinning up the flag-pole, made his own red
40 THE GREAT FORTRESS
coat fast to the top. This defiance was
immediately answered by a random salvo
from Louisbourg, less than a mile across the
harbour.
Vaughan's next move was to write a dis-
patch to Pepperrell : * May it please your
Honour to be informed that by the Grace of
God and the courage of 13 Men I entered the
Royal Battery about 9 o' the clock and am
waiting for a reinforcement and a flag.* He
had hardly sent this off before he was attacked
by four boats from Louisbourg. Quite un-
daunted, however, he stood out on the open
beach with his thirteen men and kept them all
at bay till the reinforcement and the flag
arrived with Bradstreet, who was afterwards
to win distinction as the captor of Fort
Frontenac during the great campaign of 1759.
This disgraceful abandonment and this
dramatic capture of the Royal Battery marked
the first and most decisive turning-point in the
fortunes of the siege. The French were dis-
mayed, the British were elated ; and both
the dismay and the elation grew as time wore
on, because everything seemed to conspire
against the French and in favour of the British.
Even the elements, as the anonymous Habitant
de Louisbourg complains in his wonderfully
THE SEA LINK LOST 41
candid diary, seemed to have taken sides.
There had never been so fine a spring for naval
operations. But this was the one thing which
was entirely independent of French fault or
British merit. All the other strokes of luck
owed something to human causes. Wise-
acres had shaken their heads over the crazy
idea of taking British cannon balls solely to
fit French cannon that were to be taken at the
beginning of the siege : it was too much like
selling the pelt before the trap was sprung.
Yet these balls actually were used to load the
forty-two pounders taken with the Royal
Battery ! Moreover, as if to cap the climax,
ten other cannon were found buried in the
North-East Harbour ; and again spare British
balls were found to fit exactly ! The fact is
that what we should now call the Intelligence
Department had been doing good work the
year before by spying out the land at Louis-
bourg and reporting to the proper men in
Bostdn.
The Bostonians had always intended to
take the Royal Battery at the earliest possible
moment. But nobody had thought that the
French would abandon it without a blow and
leave it intact for their enemy, with all its
armament complete. The French council of
42 THE GREAT FORTRESS
war apparently shrank from hurting the feel-
ings of the engineer in charge, who had pleaded
for its preservation ! They then ran away
without spiking the guns properly, and with-
out making the slightest attempt either to
burn the carriages or knock the trunnions off.
The invaluable stores were left in their places.
The only real destruction was caused by a
barrel of powder, which some bunglers blew
up by mistake. The inevitable consequence
of all this French ineptitude was that the
Royal Battery roared against Louisbourg the
very next morning with tremendous effect,
smashing the works most exposed to its fire,
bringing down houses about the inhabitants'
ears, and sending the terrified non-combatants
scurrying off to underground cover.
Meanwhile the bulk of the New Englanders
were establishing their camp along the brook
which fell into Gabarus Bay beside Flat Point
and within two miles of Louisbourg. Equip-
ment of all kinds was very scarce. Tents
were so few and bad that old sails stretched
over ridge-poles had to be used instead. When
sails ran short, brushwood shelters roofed in
with overlapping spruce boughs were used as
substitutes.
THE SEA LINK LOST 43
Landing the four thousand men had been
comparatively easy work. But landing the
stores was very hard indeed ; while landing
the guns was not only muctf harder still, but
full of danger as well. Many a flat-boat was
pounded into pulpwood while unloading the
stores, though the men waded in waist-deep
and carried all the heavy bundles on their
heads and shoulders. When it came to the
artillery, it meant a boat lost for every single
piece of ordnance landed. Nor was even this
the worst ; for, strange as it may seem, there
was, at first, more risk of foundering ashore
than afloat. There were neither roads nor
yet the means to make them. There were no
horses, oxen, mules, or any other means of
transport, except the brawny men themselves,
who literally buckled to with anchor-cable
drag-ropes a hundred pair of straining men
for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand
they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had
to take care ; and in the dense, obstructing
scrub they had to haul through by main force.
But this was child's play to what awaited them
in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog
they had to pass before reaching the hillocks
which commanded Louisbourg.
, The first attempts here were disastrous.
44 THE GREAT FORTRESS
The guns sank out of sight in the engulfing
bog ; while the toiling men became regular
human targets for shot and shell from Louis-
bourg. It .was quite plain that the British
batteries could never be built on the hillocks
if the guns had nothing to keep them from
a boggy grave, and if the men had no pro-
tection from the French artillery. But a ship-
builder colonel, Meserve of New Hampshire,
came to the rescue by designing a gun-sleigh,
sixteen feet in length and five in the beam.
Then the crews were told off again, two
hundred men for each sleigh, and orders were
given that the work should not be done except
at night or under cover of the frequent fogs.
After this, things went much better than
before. But the labour was tremendous still ;
while the danger from random shells bursting
among the boulders was not to be despised.
Four hundred struggling feet, four hundred
straining arms each team hove on its long,
taut cable through fog, rain, and the black-
ness of the night, till every gun had been towed
into one of the batteries before the walls.
The triumph was all the greater because the
work grew, not easier, but harder as it pro-
gressed. The same route used twice became
an impassable quagmire. So, when the last
THE SEA LINK LOST 45
two hundred men had wallowed through, the
whole ensnaring bog was seamed with a
perfect maze of decoying death-trails snaking
in and out of the forbidding scrub and
boulders.
Pepperrell's dispatches could not exaggerate
these ' almost incredible hardships.' Afloat
and ashore, awake and asleep, the men were
soaking wet for days together. At the end
of ' the longest haul they had nothing but a
choice of evils. They could either lie down
where they were, on hard rock or oozing bog,
exposed to the enemy's fire the moment it was
light enough to see the British batteries, or
they could plough their way back to camp.
Here they were safe enough from shot and
shell ; but, in other respects, no better off than
in the batteries. Most men's kits were of the
very scantiest. Very few had even a single
change of clothing. A good many went bare-
foot. Nearly all were in rags before the siege
was over.
When twenty-five pieces had been dragged
up to Green Hill and its adjoining hillocks,
the bombardment at last began. The opening
salvo seemed to give the besiegers new life.
No sooner was their first rough line of invest-
ment formed than they commenced gaining
46 THE GREAT FORTRESS
ground, with a disregard for cover which would
have cost them dear if the French practice
had not been quite as bad as their own. A
really wonderful amount of ammunition was
fired off on both sides without hitting anything
in particular. Louisbourg itself was, of course,
too big a target to be missed, as a rule ; and
the besiegers soon got so close that they simply
had to be hit themselves now and then. But,
generally speaking , it may be truthfully said
that while, in an ordinary battle, it takes a
man's own weight in cartridges to kill him, in
this most extraordinary siege it took at least
a horse's weight as well.
The approach to the walls defied all the
usual precautions of regular war. But the
circumstances justified its boldness. With
only four thousand men at the start, with
nearly half of this total on the sick list at one
rather critical juncture, with very few trained
gunners, and without any corps of engineers
at all, the Provincials adapted themselves to
the situation so defiantly that they puzzled,
shook, and overawed the French, who thought
them two or three times stronger than they
really were. Recklessly defiant though they
were, however, they did provide the breach-
ing batteries with enough cover for the pur-
THE SEA LINK LOST 47
pose in hand. This is amply proved both
by the fewness of their casualties and by
the evidence of Bastide, the British engineer
at Annapolis, who inspected the lines of in-
vestment on his arrival, twelve days before
the surrender, and reported them sufficiently
protected.
Where the Provincials showed their 'pren-
tice hands to genuine disadvantage was in
their absurdly solemn and utterly futile coun-
cils of war. No schoolboys' debating club
could well have done worse than the council
held to consider du Chambon's stereotyped
answer to the usual summons sent in at
the beginning of a siege. The formula that
' his cannon would answer for him ' provoked
a tremendous storm in the council's teacup
and immediately resulted in the following
resolution : ' Advised, Unanimously, that the
Towne of Louisbourg be Attacked this Night.'
But, confronted with ' a great Dissatysfaction
in many of the officers and Souldiers at the
designed attack of the towne this Night,' it
was ' Advised, Unanimously,' by a second
council, called in great haste, that the
Said Attack be deferred for the Present.'
This ' Present ' lasted during the rest of the
siege.
48 THE GREAT FORTRESS
Once the New Englanders had settled down,
however, they wisely began to increase their
weight of metal, as well as to decrease the
range at which they used it. They set to
work with a will to make a breach at the
North-West Gate of Louisbourg, near where
the inner angle of the walls abutted on the
harbour ; and they certainly needed all their
indomitable perseverance when it came to
arming their new ' North- Western ' or ' Tit-
comb's Battery.' The twenty- two pounders
had required two hundred men apiece. The
forty-two pounders took three hundred. Two
of these unwieldy guns were hauled a couple
of miles round the harbour, in the dark, from
that ' Royal Battery ' which Vaughan had
taken * by the Grace of God and the courage
of 13 Men/ and then successfully mounted at
* Titcomb's,' just where they could do the
greatest damage to their former owners, the
French.
Well - trained gunners were exceedingly
scarce. Pepperrell could find only six among
his four thousand men. But Warren lent him
three more, whom he could ill spare, as no one
knew when a fleet might come out from France.
With these nine instructors to direct them
PepperrelPs men closed in their line of fire
THE SEA LINK LOST 49
till besieged and besiegers came within such
easy musket-shot of one another that taunting
challenges and invitations could be flung
across the intervening space.
Each side claimed advantages and ex-
plained shortcomings to its own satisfaction.
A New England diarist says : * We began our
fire with as much fury as possible, and the
French returned it as warmly with Cannon,
Mortars, and continual showers of musket
balls ; but by 1 1 o'clock we had beat them all
from their guns.' A French diarist of the
same day says that the fire from the walls was
stopped on purpose, chiefly to save powder ;
while the same reason is assigned for the
British order to cease fire exactly one hour
later.
The practice continued to be exceedingly
bad on both sides ; so bad, indeed, that
the New Englanders suffered more from the
bursting of their own guns than from the
enemy's fire. The nine instructors could not
be everywhere ; and all their good advice
could not prevent the eager amateurs from
grossly overloading the double-shotted pieces.
' Another 42-pound gun burst at the Grand
Battery.' * Captain Hale is dangerously hurt
by the bursting of another gun. He was
G.F. D
50 THE GREAT FORTRESS
the mainstay of our gunnery since Captain
Rhodes's misfortune ' a misfortune due to
the same cause. But, in spite of all such
drawbacks on the British side, Louisbourg
got much the worst of it. The French had
to fire from the centre outwards, at a semi-
circle of batteries that fired back converg-
ingly at them. Besides, it was almost as
hard to hit the thin, irregular line of British
batteries as it was to miss the deep, wide
target of overcrowded Louisbourg. The walls
were continually being smashed from without
and patched up from within. The streets
were ploughed from end to end. Many houses
were laid in ruins : only one remained intact
when the siege was over. The non-combat-
ants, who now exceeded the garrison effectives,
were half buried in the smothering casemates
underground ; and though the fighting men
had light, air, and food enough, and though
they were losing very few in killed and
wounded, they too began to feel that Louis-
bourg must fall if it was not soon relieved
from outside.
The British, on the contrary, grew more
and more confident, both afloat and ashore,
though they had one quite alarming scare
ashore. They knew their navy outmatched
THE SEA LINK LOST 51
the French ; and they saw that, while Warren
was being strengthened, du Chambon was
being left as devoid of naval force as ever.
But their still greater confidence ashore was,
for the time being, very rudely shaken when
they heard that Marin, the same French
guerilla leader who had been sent down from
Quebec against Annapolis with six or seven
hundred whites and Indians, had been joined
by the promised reinforcements from France
and was coming to take the camp in rear.
The truth was that the reinforcements never
arrived, that Marin had failed to take Anna-
polis, and that there was no real danger from
his own dwindling force, even if it had tried
to relieve Louisbourg in June. But the
rumour ran quickly through the whole camp,
probably not without PepperrelPs own en-
couragement, and at once produced, not a
panic, but the most excellent effect. Disci-
pline, never good, had been growing worse.
Punishments were unknown. Officers and
men were petitioning for leave to go home,
quite regardless of the need for their services
at the front. Demands for promotion, for
extra allowances, and for increased pay were
becoming a standing nuisance. Then, just
as the leaders were at their wits' ends what to
52 THE GREAT FORTRESS
do, Marin's threatened attack came to their
aid ; and their brave armed mob once more
began to wear the semblance of an army.
Sentries, piquets, and outposts appeared as
if by magic. Officers went their rounds with
zeal. The camp suddenly ceased to be a dis-
orderly playground for every one off duty.
The breaching batteries redoubled their efforts
against the walls.
The threat of danger once past, however,
the men soon slipped back into their careless
ways. A New England chronicler records
that ' those who were on the spot have fre-
quently, in my hearing, laughed at the recital
of their own irregularities and expressed their
admiration when they reflected on the almost
miraculous preservation of the army from
destruction.' Men off duty amused them-
selves with free-and-easy musketry, which
would have been all very well if there had
not been such a dearth of powder for the
real thing. Races, wrestling, and quoits were
better ; while fishing was highly commendable,
both in the way of diet as well as in the
way of sport. Such entries as ' Thritty Lobb-
sters ' and * 6 Troutts ' appear in several
diaries.
Nor were other forms of gaiety forgotten.
THE SEA LINK LOST 53
Even a Massachusetts Puritan could recom-
mend a sermon for general distribution in the
camp because ' It will please your whole
army, as it shows them the way to gain by
their gallantry the hearts and affections of
the Ladys.' And even a city of the * Great
Awakening,' like Boston, could produce a
letter like the following :
I hope this will find you at Louisbourg
with a bowl of Punch, a Pipe, and a Pack
of Cards, and whatever else you desire.
(I had forgot to mention a Pretty French
Madammoselle.) Your Friend Luke has
lost several Beaver Hatts already concern-
ing the Expedition. He is so very zealous
about it that he has turned poor Boutier
out of his house for saying he believed
you wouldn't take the Place. Damn his
Blood, says Luke, let him be an English-
man or a Frenchman and not pretend to
be an Englishman when he is a French-
man in his Heart. If Drinking to your
Success would take Cape Britton you
must be in possession of it now, for it 's a
Standing Toast.
The day this letter was written in Boston,
54 THE GREAT FORTRESS
May 6, Warren had already begun the regular
blockade. Only a single ship eluded him,
an ably handled Basque, which stood in and
rounded to, under the walls of Louisbourg,
after running the gauntlet of the Royal
Battery, on which the French fired with all
their might to keep its own fire down. A
second vessel was forced aground. Her cap-
tain fought her to the last; but Warren's
boat crews took her. Some men who escaped
from her brought du Chambon the news that
a third French ship, the Vigilant, was coming
to the relief of Louisbourg with ammunition
and other stores. This ship had five hundred
and sixty men aboard, that is, as many as
all the regulars in Louisbourg. On May 31
the garrison heard a tremendous cannonading
out at sea. It grew in volume as Warren's
squadron was seen to surround the stranger,
who was evidently making a gallant fight
against long odds. Presently it ceased ; the
clustered vessels parted ; spread out ; and
took up their stations exactly as before, except
that a new vessel was now flying the British
flag. This was the Vigilant, which had been
put in charge of a prize crew, while her much-
needed stores had been sent in to the Pro-
vincial army.
THE SEA LINK LOST 55
The French in Louisbourg were naturally
much discouraged to see one of their best
frigates flying the Union Jack. But they still
hoped she might not really be the anxiously
expected Vigilant. Warren, knowing their
anxiety, determined to take advantage of it
at the first opportunity. He had not long to
wait. A party of New Englanders, wander-
ing too far inland, were ambushed by the
French Indians, who promptly scalped all the
prisoners. Warren immediately sent in a
formal protest to du Chambon, with a cover-
ing letter from the captain of the Vigilant,
who willingly testified to the good treat-
ment he and his crew were receiving on board
the British men-of-war. Warren's messenger
spoke French perfectly, but he concealed
his knowledge by communicating with du
Chambon through an interpreter. This put
the French off their guard and induced them
to express their dismay without reserve
when they read the news about the Vigilant.
Everything they said was of course reported
back to V/arren, who immediately passed it
on to Pepperrell.
Warren now thought the time had come
to make a bold, decisive stroke. He had just
been reinforced by two more frigates out from
56 THE GREAT FORTRESS
England. Titcomb's famous brace of forty-
two's had just begun to hammer in the North-
West Gate of Louisbourg. PepperrelPs lines
of investment were quite complete. The
chance was too tempting to let slip, especially
as it was safe strategy to get into Louisbourg
before the French could be relieved either
by land or sea. Still, there was the Island
Battery to reckon with. It was full of fight,
and it flanked the narrow entrance in the most
threatening way. Warren paused to con-
sider the strength of this last outpost of the
French defences and called a council of war
to help him. For once a council favoured
extreme measures ; whereupon Warren sent
in word to Pepperrell, asking for 1500 Pro-
vincials, and proposing a combined assault
immediately. The plan was that Warren
should sail in, past the Island Battery, and
attack the harbour face of Louisbourg with
every soldier, sailor, and ship's gun at his
disposal ; while Pepperrell carried the land-
ward face by assault. This plan might have
succeeded, though at considerable loss, if
Pepperrell 's whole 4000 had been effective.
But as he then had 1900 sick and wounded,
and 600 guarding his rear against the
rumoured advance of Marin from Annapolis,
THE SEA LINK LOST 57
it was quite evident that if he gave Warren
another 1500 he would have to assault the
landward face alone. Under these circum-
stances he very sensibly declined to co-operate
in the way Warren had suggested. But he
offered 600 men, both from his army and the
transports, for the Vigilant, whose prize crew
would thus be released for duty aboard their
own vessels. Warren, who was just over
forty, replied with some heat. But Pepperrell,
who was just under fifty, kept his temper
admirably and carried the day.
Warren, however, still urged Pepperrell to
take some decisive step. Both fleet and army
agreed that a night attack on the Island
Battery was the best alternative to Warren's
impracticable plan. Vaughan jumped at the
idea, hoping to repeat in another way his
success against the Royal Battery. He pro-
mised that, if he was given a free hand, he
would send Pepperrell the French flag within
forty-eight hours. But Vaughan was not to
lead. The whole attack was entrusted to
men who specially volunteered for it, and
who were allowed to choose their own officers.
A man called Brooks happened to be on the
crest of the wave of camp popularity at the
moment ; so he was elected colonel for this
58 THE GREAT FORTRESS
great occasion. The volunteers soon began
to assemble at the Royal Battery. But they
came in by driblets, and most of them were
drunk. The commandant of the battery
felt far from easy. ' I doubt whether strag-
gling fellows, three, four, or seven out of a
company, ought to go on such service. They
seem to be impatient for action. If there
were a more regular appearance, it would
give me greater sattysf action.' His misgiv-
ings were amply justified ; for the men
whom Pepperrell was just beginning to form
into bodies with some kind of cohesion were
once more being allowed to dissolve into the
original armed mob.
The night of June 7 was dark and calm. A
little before twelve three hundred men, wisely
discarding oars, paddled out from the Royal
Battery and met another hundred who came
from Lighthouse Point. The paddles took
them along in silence while they circled the
island, looking for the narrow landing-place,
where only three boats could go abreast
between the destroying rocks on which the
surf was breaking. Presently they found the
tiny cove, and a hundred and fifty men landed
without being discovered. But then, with in-
credible folly, they suddenly announced their
THE SEA LINK LOST 59
presence by giving three cheers. The French
commandant had cautioned his garrison to be
alert, on account of the unusual darkness ;
and, at this very moment, he happened him-
self to be pacing up and down the rampart
overlooking the spot where the volunteers
were expressing their satisfaction at having
surprised him so well.
His answer was instantaneous and effective.
The battery ' blazed with cannon, swivels,
and small-arms,' which fired point-blank at
the men ashore and with true aim at the boats
crowded together round the narrow landing-
place. Undaunted though undisciplined, the
men ashore rushed at the walls with their
scaling-ladders and began the assault. The
attempt was vain. The first men up the
rungs were shot, stabbed, or cut down. The
ladders were smashed or thrown aside. Not
one attacker really got home. Meanwhile the
leading boats in the little cove were being
knocked into splinters by the storm of shot.
The rest sheered off. None but the hundred
and fifty men ashore were left to keep up the
fight with the garrison. For once the odds
were entirely with the French, who fired from
under perfect cover, while the unfortunate
Provincials fired back from the open rocks.
60 THE GREAT FORTRESS
This exchange of shots went on till daylight,
when one hundred and nineteen Provincials
surrendered at discretion. Their total loss
was one hundred and eighty-nine, nearly half
the force employed.
Despairing Louisbourg naturally made the
most of this complete success. The bells were
rung and the cannon were fired to show the
public joy and to put the best face on the
general situation. Du Chambon surpassed him-
self in gross exaggerations. He magnified the
hundred and fifty men ashore into a thousand,
and the two hundred and fifty afloat into eight
hundred ; while he bettered both these state-
ments by reporting that the whole eighteen hun-
dred had been destroyed except the hundred
and nineteen who had been taken prisoners.
Du Chambon 's triumph was short-lived.
The indefatigable Provincials began a battery
at Lighthouse Point, which commanded the
island at less than half a mile. They had
seized this position some time before and
called it Gorham's Post, after the colonel
whose regiment held it. Fourteen years later
there was another and more famous Gorham's
Post, on the south shore of the St Lawrence
near Quebec, opposite Wolfe's Cove. The
arming of this battery was a stupendous piece
:A L
THE SEA LINK LOST 61
of work. The guns had to be taken round by
sea, out of range of the Island Battery, hauled
up low but very dangerous cliffs, and then
dragged back overland another mile and a
quarter. The directing officer was Colonel
Gridley, who drew the official British maps
and plans of Louisbourg in 1745, and who,
thirty years later, traced the American de-
fences on the slopes of Bunker's Hill. Du
Chambon had attempted to make an attack
on Gorham's Post as soon as it was estab-
lished. His idea was that his men should
follow the same route as the British guns had
followed that is, that they should run the
gauntlet between the British fleet and army,
land well north of Gorham's Post, and take it
by surprise from the rear. But his detach-
ment, which was wholly inadequate, failed
to strike its blow, and was itself very nearly
cut off by Warren's guard-boats on its crest-
fallen return to Louisbourg.
Gridley's Lighthouse Battery soon over-
matched the Island Battery, where powder
was getting dangerously scarce. Many of
the French guns were knocked off their
mountings, while the walls were breached.
Finally, the British bombardment became so
effective that Frenchmen were seen running
62 THE GREAT FORTRESS
into the water to escape the bursting shells.
It was now past the middle of June, and the
siege had lasted more than a month. The
circle of fire was closing in on the beleaguered
garrison. Their total effectives had sunk to
only a thousand men. This thousand lab-
oured harder in its losing cause than might
have been expected. Perhaps the mutineers
hoped to be pardoned if they made a firm
defence. Perhaps the militia thought they
ought not to be outdone by mutineers and
hireling foreigners. But, whatever the reason,
great efforts were certainly made to build up
by night what the British knocked down by
day. Two could play at that game, however,
and the British had the men and means to
win. Their western batteries from the land
were smashing the walls into ruins. Their
Royal Battery wrecked the whole inner water-
front of Louisbourg. Breaches were yawning
elsewhere. British fascines were visible in
large quantities, ready to fill up the ditch,
which was already half full of debris. The
French scouts reported hundreds of scaling-
ladders on the reverse slopes of the nearest
hillocks. Warren's squadron had just been
again reinforced, and now numbered eleven
sail, carrying 554 guns and 3000 men. There
THE SEA LINK LOST 63
was no sign of help, by land or sea, for
shrunken, battered, and despairing Louis-
bourg. Food, ammunition, stores were all
running out. Moreover, the British were evi-
dently preparing a joint attack, which would
result in putting the whole garrison to the
sword if a formal surrender should not be
made in time.
Now that the Island Battery had been
silenced there was no reason why Warren's
plan should not be crowned with complete
success. Accordingly he arranged with Pep-
perrell to run in with the first fair wind,
at the head of the whole fleet, which, with
the Provincial armed vessels, now numbered
twenty-four sail, carried 770 guns, and was
manned by 4000 sailors. Half these men
could be landed to attack the inner water-
front, while Pepperrell could send another
2000 against the walls. The total odds against
Louisbourg would thus be about four to one
in men and over eight to one in guns actually
engaged.
But this threatened assault was never made.
In the early morning of June 27 the non-
combatants in Louisbourg unanimously peti-
tioned du Chambon to surrender forthwith.
They crept out of their underground dungeons
64 THE GREAT FORTRESS
and gazed with mortal apprehension at the
overwhelming forces that stood arrayed
against their crumbling walls and dwindling
garrison. Noon came, and their worst fears
seemed about to be realized. But when the
drums began beating, it was to a parley, not
to arms. A sigh of ineffable relief went up
from the whole of Louisbourg, and every eye
followed the little white flutter of the flag of
truce as it neared that terrible breaching
battery opposite the West Gate. A Provin-
cial officer came out to meet it. The French
officer and he saluted. Then both moved
into the British lines and beyond, to where
Warren and Pepperrell were making their last
arrangements on Green Hill.
After a short consultation the British leaders
sent in a joint reply to say that du Chambon
could have till eight the next morning to make
his proposals. These proved to be so un-
acceptable that Pepperrell refused to consider
them, and at once sent counter-proposals of
his own. Du Chambon had now no choice
between annihilation and acceptance, so he
agreed to surrender Louisbourg the following
day. He was obliged to guarantee that none
of the garrison should bear arms against the
British, in any part of the world, for a whole
THE SEA LINK LOST 65
year. Every one in Louisbourg was of course
promised full protection for both property
and person. Du Chambon's one successful
stipulation was that his troops should march
out with the honours of war, drums beating,
bayonets fixed, and colours flying. Warren
and Pepperrell willingly accorded this on the
28th ; and the formal transfer took place next
day, exactly seven weeks since the first eager
New Englanders had waded ashore through
the thundering surf of Gabarus Bay.
The total losses in killed and wounded were
never precisely determined. Each side mini-
mized its own and maximized the enemy's.
But as du Chambon admitted a loss of one
hundred and forty-five, and as the Provincials
claimed to have put three hundred out of
action, the true number is probably about
two hundred, or just over ten per cent of the
whole garrison. The Provincials reported
their own killed, quite correctly, at a hundred.
The remaining deaths, on both sides, were due
to disease. The Provincial wounded were
never grouped together in any official returns.
They amounted to about three hundred.
This brings the total casualties in Pepperrell's
army up to four hundred and gives the same
percentage as the French. The highest pro-
G.F. E
66 THE GREAT FORTRESS
portion of casualties among all the different
forces was the fifteen per cent lost by the
French on board the Vigilant in less than five
hours' fighting. The lowest was in Warren's
squadron and the Provincial Marine about
five in each. The loss of material suffered by
the French was, of course, on quite a different
scale. Every fortification and other building
in Louisbourg, with the remarkable excep-
tion of a single house, was at least partly
demolished by the nine thousand cannon balls
and six hundred shells that hit the target of a
hundred acres peopled by four thousand souls.
On the 2Qth the French marched out with
the honours of war, laid down their arms, and
were put under guard as prisoners, pending
their transport to France. Du Chambon
handed the keys to Pepperrell at the South
Gate. The victorious but disgusted Provin-
cials marched in by the West Gate, and found
themselves set to protect the very houses
that they had hoped to plunder. Was it not
high time to recoup themselves for serving as
soldiers at sixpence a day ? Great Babylon
had fallen, and ought to be destroyed of
course, with due profit to the destroyers.
There was a regular Louisbourg legend, current
THE SEA LINK LOST 67
in New England, that stores of goods and
money were to be found in the strong rooms
of every house. So we can understand the
indignation of men whose ideas were coloured
by personal contact with smuggling and
privateering, and sometimes with downright
piracy, when they were actually told off as
sentries over these mythical hoards of wealth.
One diarist made the following entry immedi-
ately after he had heard the news : ' Sabbath
Day, y e i6th June [Old Style] they came to
Termes for us to enter y e Sitty to morrow, and
Poore Termes they Bee too.' Another added
that there was ' a great Noys and hubbub a
mongst y e Solders a bout y e Plunder : Som
a Cursing, Som a Swarein.' Five days later
a third indignant Provincial wrote : ' Y e
French keep possession yet, and we are forsed
to stand at their Dores to gard them.' Another
sympathetic chronicler, after pouring out
the vials of his wrath on the clause which
guaranteed the protection of French private
property, lamented that ' by these means the
poor souldiers lost all their hopes and just
demerit [sic] of plunder promised them.'
While Parson Moody was preaching a great
thanksgiving sermon, and all the senior
officers were among his congregation, there
68 THE GREAT FORTRESS
was what responsible officials called ' excessive
stealing in every part of the Towne.' Had
this stealing really been very * excessive ' no
doubt it would have allayed the grumbling in
the camp. But, as a matter of fact, there was
so little to steal that the looters began to
suspect collusion between their leaders and
the French. Another fancied wrong exasper-
ated the Provincials at this critical time. A
rumour ran through the camp that Warren
had forestalled Pepperrell by receiving the
keys himself. Warren was cursed, Pepperrell
blamed ; and a mutinous spirit arose. Then
it was suddenly discovered that Pepperrell
had put the keys in his pocket.
Meanwhile the fleet was making haul after
haul. When Pepperrell marched through the
battered West Gate, at the head of his motley
army, Warren had led his squadron into the
harbour ; and both commanders had saluted
the raising of the Union Jack which marked
the change of ownership. But no sooner had
the sound of guns and cheering died away
than the Union Jack was lowered and the
French flag was raised again, both over the
citadel of Louisbourg and over the Island
Battery. This stratagem succeeded beyond
Warren's utmost expectations. Several French
THE SEA LINK LOST 69
vessels were lured into Louisbourg and cap-
tured with stores and men enough to have
kept the British out for some weeks longer.
Their cargoes were worth about a million
dollars. Then, just as the naval men were
wondering whether their harvest was over
or not, a fine French frigate made for the
harbour quite unsuspectingly, and only dis-
covered her fatal mistake too late to turn
back. By the irony of circumstances she
happened to be called Notre-Dame de la
Delivrance. Among her passengers was the
distinguished man of science, Don Antonio de
Ulloa, on his way to Paris, with all the results
of those explorations in South America which
he afterwards embodied in a famous book of
travel. Warren treated him with the greatest
courtesy and promised that all his collec-
tions should be duly forwarded to the Royal
Academy of Sciences. Once this exchange
of international amenities had been ended,
however, the usual systematic search began.
The visible cargo was all cocoa. But hidden
underneath were layers and layers of shining
silver dollars from Peru ; and, underneath
this double million, another two million dollars'
worth of ingots of silver and ingots of gold.
The contrast between the poverty of Louis-
70 THE GREAT FORTRESS
bourg, where so much had been expected, and
the rich hauls of prize-money made by the
fleet, was gall and wormwood to the Pro-
vincials. But their resentment was some-
what tempered by Warren's genial manner
towards them. Warren was at home with
all sorts and conditions of men. His own
brother-officers, statesmen and courtiers, dis-
tinguished strangers like Ulloa, and colonial
merchants like Pepperrell, were equally loud
in his praise. With the lesser and much more
easily offended class of New Englanders found
in the ranks he was no less popular. A rousing
speech, in which he praised the magnificently
stubborn work accomplished by ' my wife's
fellow-countrymen,' a hearty generosity all
round, and a special hogshead of the best
Jamaica rum for the garrison of the Royal
Battery, won him a great deal of goodwill,
in spite of the fact that his ' Admiral's eighth '
of the naval prize-money amounted to some
sixty thousand pounds, while Pepperrell found
himself ten thousand pounds out of pocket
at the end of the siege.
Pepperrell, however, was a very rich man,
for those colonial days ; and he could well
afford to celebrate the fall of Louisbourg by
giving the chief naval and military officers a
THE SEA LINK LOST 71
dinner, the fame of which will never fade
away from some New England memories.
Everything went off without a hitch. But,
as the hour approached, there was a growing
anxiety, on the part of both host and guests,
as to whether or not the redoubtable Parson
Moody would keep them listening to his grace
till all the meats got cold. He was well known
for the length, as well as for the strength, of his
discourses. He had once denounced the Devil
in a grace of forty minutes. So what was the
surprised delight of his fellow-revellers when
he hardly kept them standing longer than as
many seconds. ' Good Lord ! ' he said, ' we
have so much to thank Thee for, that Time
will be too short. Therefore we must leave
it for Eternity. Bless our food and fellowship
on this joyful occasion, for the sake of Christ
our Lord. Amen ! '
News of the victory was sent at once to
Boston. The vessel bearing it arrived in the
middle of the night. But long before the
summer sun was up the streets were filled
with shouts of triumph, while the church bells
rang in peals of exultation, and all the guns
and muskets in the place were fired as fast as
men could load them.
The mother country's joy was less ex-
72 THE GREAT FORTRESS
uberant. There were so many other things
to think of nearer home ; among them the
British defeat at Fontenoy and the landing of
the Young Pretender. Nor was the actual
victory without alloy ; for prescient people
feared that a practically independent colonial
army had been encouraged to become more
independent still. And who can say the fear
was groundless ? Louisbourg really did serve
to blood New Englanders for Bunker's Hill.
But, in spite of this one drawback, the news
was welcomed, partly because any victory was
welcome at such a time, and partly because
the fall of Louisbourg was a signal asser-
tion of British sea-power on both sides of the
Atlantic.
London naturally made overmuch of
Warren's share, just as Boston made over-
much of Pepperrell's. But the Imperial
government itself perfectly understood that
the fleet and the army were each an indis-
pensable half of one co-operating whole.
Warren was promoted rear-admiral of the
blue, the least that could be given him.
Pepperrell received much higher honours.
He was made a baronet and, like Shirley, was
given the colonelcy of a regiment which was
to bear his name. Such * colonelcies ' do not
THE SEA LINK LOST 73
imply the actual command of men, but are
honorary distinctions of which even kings
and conquerors are proud. Nor was the
Provincial Marine forgotten. Rous, of the
Shirley, was sent to England with dispatches,
and was there made a post-captain in the
Royal Navy for his gallantry in action against
the Vigilant. He afterwards enjoyed a dis-
tinguished career and died an admiral. It
was in his ship, the Sutherland, that Wolfe
wrote the final orders for the Battle of the
Plains fourteen years after this first siege of
Louisbourg.
CHAPTER III
THE LINK RECOVERED
1748
LOUISBOURG was the most thoroughly hated
place in all America. The French govern-
ment hated it as Napoleon hated the Peninsula,
because it was a drain on their resources.
The British government hated it because it
cut into their oversea communications. The
American colonists hated it because it was a
standing menace to their ambitious future.
And every one who had to live in it no
matter whether he was French or British,
European or American, naval or military,
private or official hated it as only exiles
can.
But perhaps even exiled Frenchmen de-
tested it less heartily than the disgusted
Provincials who formed its garrison from the
summer of 1745 to the spring of the following
year. Warren and Pepperrell were obliged to
74
THE LINK RECOVERED 75
spend half their time in seeing court-martial
justice done. The bluejackets fretted for
some home port in which to enjoy their
plentiful prize-money. The Provincials fretted
for home at any cost. They were angry at
being kept on duty at sixpence a day after
the siege was over. They chafed against the
rules about looting, as well as against what
they thought the unjust difference between
the million sterling that had been captured
at sea, under full official sanction, and the
ridiculous collection of odds and ends that
could be stolen on land, at the risk of pains
and penalties. Imagine the rage of the sullen
Puritan, even if he had a sense of humour,
when, after hearing a bluejacket discussing
plans for spending a hundred golden guineas,
he had to make such entries in his diary as
these of Private Benjamin Crafts : ' Saturday.
Rec d a half -pint of Rum to Drinke y e King's
Health. The Lord look upon Us and prepare
us for His Holy Day. Sunday. Blessed be
the Lord that has given us to enjoy another
Sabath. Monday. Last Night I was taken
verry Bad. The Lord be pleased to strengthen
ly Inner Man. May we all be Prepared for
iis Holy Will. Rec d part of Plunder 9 Small
>oth combs/
76 THE GREAT FORTRESS
No wonder there was trouble in plenty.
The routine of a small and uncongenial
station is part of a regular's second nature,
though a very disagreeable part. But it
maddens militiamen when the stir of active
service is past and they think they are being
kept on such duty overtime. The Massa-
chusetts men had the worst pay and the best
ringleaders, so they were the first to break
out openly. One morning they fell in with-
out their officers, marched on to the general
parade, and threw their muskets down.
This was a dramatic but ineffectual form of
protest, because nearly all the muskets were
the private property of the men themselves,
who soon came back to take their favourite
weapons up again. One of their most zealous
chaplains, however, was able to enter in his
diary, perhaps not without a qualm, but
certainly not without a proper pride in New
England spirit, the remark of a naval officer
' that he had thought the New England men
were cowards But that Now he thought that
if they had a Pick ax and Spade they would
digg y e way to Hell and storm it.'
The only relief from the deadly monotony
and loneliness of Louisbourg was to be found
in the bad bargains and worse entertainment
THE LINK RECOVERED 77
offered by the camp-followers, who quickly
gathered, like a flock of vultures, to pick the
carcass to the bone. There were few pickings
to be had, but these human parasites held
on until the bones were bare. Of course,
they gave an inordinate amount of trouble.
They always do. But well-organized armies
keep them in their place ; while militiamen
can not.
Between the camp-followers and the men
Pepperrell was almost driven mad. He im-
plored Shirley to come and see things for him-
self. Shirley came. He arrived at the end
of August accompanied both by his own wife
and by Warren's. He delivered a patriotic
speech, in which he did not stint his praise
of what had really been a great and not-
able achievement. His peroration called forth
some genuine enthusiasm. It began with a
promise to raise the pay of the Massachusetts
contingent by fifteen shillings a month, and
ended with free rum all round and three
cheers for the king. The prospect thereupon
brightened a little. The mutineers kept quiet
for several days, and a few men even agreed
to re-enlist until the following June. Shirley
was very much pleased with the immediate
result, and still more pleased with himself.
78 THE GREAT FORTRESS
Kis next dispatch assured the Duke of
Newcastle that nobody else could have
quelled the incipient mutiny so well. Nor
was the boast, in one sense, vain, since
nobody else had the authority to raise the
men's pay.
But discontent again became rife when it
began to dawn on the Provincials that they
would have to garrison Louisbourg till the
next open season. The unwelcome truth was
that, except for a few raw recruits, no reliefs
were forthcoming from any quarter. The
promised regulars had left Gibraltar so late
that they had to be sent to Virginia for the
winter, lest the sudden change to cold and
clammy Louisbourg should put them on the
sick list. The two new regiments, Shirley's
and Pepperrell's, which were to be recruited
in the American colonies and form part of the
Imperial Army, could not be raised in time.
There even seemed to be some doubt as to
whether they could be raised at all. The
absence of Pepperrell from New England, the
hatred of garrison duty in Louisbourg, and
resentment at seeing some Englishmen com-
missioned to command Americans, were three
great obstacles in the way. The only other
resource was the colonial militia, whose
THE LINK RECOVERED 79
waifs and strays alone could be induced to
enlist.
Thus, once the ice began to form, the de-
spairing Provincial garrison saw there could
be no escape. The only discharge was death.
What were then known as camp fevers had
already broken out in August. As many as
twenty-seven funerals in a single day passed
by the old lime-kiln on the desolate point
beyond the seaward walls of Louisbourg.
' After we got into the Towne, a sordid in-
dolence or Sloth, for want of Discipline, in-
duced putrid fevers and dyssentrys, which at
length became contagious, and the people died
like rotten sheep.' Medical men were ignorant
and few. Proper attendance was wholly lack-
ing. But the devotion of the Puritan chap-
lains, rivalling that of the early Jesuits, ran
through those awful horrors like a thread of
gold. Here is a typical entry of one day's
pastoral care : ' Prayed at Hospital. Prayed
at Citadel. Preached at Grand Eatery.
Visited [a long list of names] all verry Sick.
[More names] Dy'd. Am but poorly myself,
but able to keep about.'
No survivor ever forgot the miseries of that
dire winter in cold and clammy Louisbourg.
When April brought the Gibraltar regiments
8o THE GREAT FORTRESS
from Virginia, Pepperrell sent in to Shirley
his general report on the three thousand men
with whom he had begun the autumn. Barely
one thousand were fit for duty. Eleven
hundred lay sick and suffering in the ghastly
hospital. Eight hundred and ninety lay
buried out on the dreary tongue of land
between the lime-pit and the fog-bound, ice-
encumbered sea.
Warren took over the command of all the
forces, as he had been appointed governor of
Louisbourg by the king's commission. Shirley
had meanwhile been revolving new plans, this
time for the complete extirpation of the French
in Canada during the present summer of 1746.
He suggested that Warren should be the naval
joint commander, and Warren, of course, was
nothing loth.
Massachusetts again rose grandly to the
situation. She voted 3500 men, with a four
pound sterling bounty to each one of them.
New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island followed well. New York and New
Jersey did less in proportion. Maryland did
less still. Virginia would only pass a luke-
warm vote for a single hundred men. Pennsyl-
vania, as usual, refused to do anything at all.
THE LINK RECOVERED 81
The legislature was under the control of the
Quakers, who, when it came to war, were no
better than parasites upon the body politic.
They never objected to enjoying the com-
mercial benefits of conquest ; any more than
they objected to living on land which could
never have been either won or held without
the arms they reprobated. But their prin-
ciples forbade them to face either the danger
or expense of war. The honour of the other
Pennsylvanians was, however, nobly saved
by a contingent of four hundred, raised as a
purely private venture. Altogether, the new
Provincial army amounted to over 8000
men.
The French in Canada were thoroughly
alarmed. Rumour had magnified the invad-
ing fleet and army till, in July, the Acadians
reported the combined forces, British regulars
included, at somewhere between forty and
fifty thousand. But the alarm proved ground-
less. The regulars were sent on an abortive
expedition against the coast of France, while
the Duke of Newcastle ordered Shirley to
discharge the ' very expensive ' Provincials,
who were now in Imperial pay, * as cheap
as possible.' This was then done, to the
intense disgust of the colonies concerned.
G.F. F
82 THE GREAT FORTRESS
New York and Massachusetts, however, were
so loth to give up without striking a single
blow that they raised a small force, on their
own account, to take Crown Point and gain
control of Lake Champlain. 1
Before October came the whole of the
colonies were preparing for a quiet winter,
except that it was to be preceded by the little
raid on Crown Point, when, quite suddenly,
astounding news arrived from sea. This was
that the French had sent out a regular armada
to retake Louisbourg and harry the coast to
the south. Every ship brought in further
and still more alarming particulars. The
usual exaggerations gained the-usual credence.
But the real force, if properly handled and
combined, was dangerous enough. It con-
sisted of fourteen sail of the line and twenty-
one frigates, with transports carrying over
three thousand veteran troops ; altogether,
about 17,000 men, or more than twice as
many as those in the contingents lately raised
for taking Canada.
New York and Massachusetts at once re-
called their Crown Point expeditions. Boston
was garrisoned by 8000 men. All the pro-
1 An account of this expedition will be found in chapter ii of
The War Chief of the Six Nations in this Series.
THE LINK RECOVERED 83
vinces did their well-scared best. There was
no danger except along the coast ; for there
were enough armed men to have simply
mobbed to death any three thousand French-
men who marched into the hostile continent,
which would engulf them if they lost touch
with the fleet, and wear them out if they kept
communications open. Those who knew any-
thing of war knew this perfectly well ; and
they more than half suspected that the French
force had been doubled or trebled by the panic-
mongers. But the panic spread, and spread
inland, for all that. No British country had
ever been so thoroughly alarmed since England
had watched the Great Armada sailing up the
Channel.
The poets and preachers quickly changed
their tune. Ames's Almanac for 1746 had
recently edified Bostonians with a song of
triumph over fallen Louisbourg :
Bright Hesperus, the Harbinger of Day,
Smiled gently down on Shirley's prosperous sway,
The Prince of Light rode in his burning car,
To see the overtures of Peace and War
Around the world, and bade his charioteer,
Who marks the periods of each month and year,
Rein in his steeds, and rest upon High Noon
To view our Victory over Cape Brittoon.
But now the Reverend Thomas Prince's litany,
84 THE GREAT FORTRESS
rhymed by a later bard, summed up the gist
of all the supplications that ascended from the
Puritans :
O Lord ! We would not advise ;
But if, in Thy Providence,
A Tempest should arise,
To drive the French fleet hence,
And scatter it far and wide,
Or sink it in the sea,
We should be satisfied,
And Thine the Glory be.
Strange to say, this pious suggestion had
been mostly answered before it had been
made. Disaster after disaster fell upon the
doomed French fleet from the very day it
sailed. The admiral was the Due d'Anville,
one of the illustrious La Rochefoucaulds,
whose family name is known wherever French
is read. He was not wanting either in courage
or good sense ; but, like his fleet, he had little
experience at sea. The French ships, as usual,
were better than the British. But the French
themselves were a nation of landsmen. They
had no great class of seamen to draw upon at
will, a fact which made an average French
crew inferior to an average British one. This
was bad enough. But the most important
point of all was that their fleets were still
worse than their single ships. The British
THE LINK RECOVERED 85
always had fleets at sea, constantly engaged
in combined manoeuvres. The French had
not ; and, in face of the British command
of the sea, they could not have them. The
French harbours were watched so closely
that the French fleets were often attacked
and defeated before they had begun to learn
how to work together. Consequently, they
found it still harder to unite two different
fleets against their almost ubiquitous enemy.
D'Anville's problem was insoluble from the
start. Four large men-of-war from the West
Indies were to join him at Chibucto Bay, now
the harbour of Halifax, under Admiral Con-
flans, the same who was defeated by Hawke
in Quiberon Bay thirteen years later, on the
very day that Wolfe was buried. Each con-
tributory part of the great French naval
plan failed in the working out. D'Anville's
command was a collection of ships, not a co-
ordinated, fleet. The French dockyards had
been neglected ; so some of the ships were
late, which made it impossible to practise
manoeuvres before sailing for the front. Then,
in the bungling hurry of fitting out, the hulls
of several vessels were left foul, which made
them dull sailers ; while nearly all the holds
were left unsecured, which, of course, helped
86 THE GREAT FORTRESS
to propagate the fevers, scurvy, plague, and
pestilence brought on by bad food badly
stowed. Nor was this all. Officers who had
put in so little sea time with working fleets
were naturally slack and inclined to be dis-
contented. The fact that they were under
sealed orders, which had been communicated
only to d'Anville, roused their suspicions ;
while his weakness in telling them they were
bound for Louisbourg almost produced a
mutiny.
The fleet left France at midsummer, had a
very rough passage through the Bay of
Biscay, and ran into a long, dead calm off
the Azores. This ended in a storm, during
which several vessels were struck by light-
ning, which, in one case, caused a magazine
explosion that killed and wounded over
thirty men. It was not till the last week
of September that d'Anville made the excel-
lently safe harbour of Halifax. The four
ships under Conflans were nowhere to be
seen. They had reached the rendezvous at
the beginning of the month, had cruised about
for a couple of weeks, and had then gone
home. D'Anville was now in no position to
attack Louisbourg, much less New England.
Some of his vessels were quite unservice-
THE LINK RECOVERED 87
able. There was no friendly port nearer than
Quebec. All his crews were sickly ; and the
five months' incessant and ever-increasing
strain had changed him into a broken-hearted
man. He died very suddenly, in the middle
of the night ; some said from a stroke of
apoplexy, while others whispered suicide.
His successor, d'Estournel, summoned a
council of war, which overruled the plan for
an immediate return to France. Presently a
thud, followed by groans of mortal agony, was
heard in the new commander's cabin. The
door was burst open, and he was found dying
from the thrust of his own sword. La Jon-
quiere, afterwards governor-general of Canada,
thereupon succeeded d'Estournel. This com-
mander, the third within three days, was an
excellent naval officer and a man of strong
character. He at once set to work to re-
organize the fleet. But reorganization was
now impossible. Storms wrecked the vessels.
The plague killed off the men : nearly three
thousand had died already. Only a single
thousand, one-tenth of the survivors, were
really fit for duty. Yet La Jonquiere still
persisted in sailing for Annapolis. One vessel
was burned, while four others were turned into
hospital ships, which trailed astern, dropping
88 THE GREAT FORTRESS
their dead overside, hour after hour, as they
went.
But Annapolis was never attacked. The
dying fleet turned back and at last reached
Port Louis, on the coast of Brittany. There
it found La Palme, a frigate long since given
up for lost, lying at anchor, after a series of
adventures that seem wellnigh impossible.
First her crew's rations had been cut down
to three ounces a day. Then the starving
men had eaten all the rats in her filthy hold ;
and when rats failed they had proposed to
eat their five British prisoners. The captain
did his best to prevent this crowning horror.
But the men, who were now ungovernable,
had already gone below to cut up one prisoner
into three - ounce rations, when they were
brought on deck again, just in time, by the
welcome cry of sail-ho ! The Portuguese
stranger fortunately proved to have some
sheep, which were instantly killed and eaten
raw.
News of these disasters to the French arms
at length reached the anxious British colonies.
The militia were soon discharged. The danger
seemed past. And the whole population spent
a merrier Christmas than any one of them had
dared to hope for.
THE LINK RECOVERED 89
In May of the next year, 1747, La Jonquiere
again sailed for Louisbourg. But when he
was only four days out he was overtaken off
Cape Finisterre by a superior British fleet,
under Anson and Warren, and was totally
defeated, after a brave resistance.
In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle gave
Louisbourg back to the French. The British
colonies were furious, New England par-
ticularly so. But the war at large had not
gone severely enough against the French to
force them to abandon a stronghold on which
they had set their hearts, and for which they
were ready to give up any fair equivalent.
The contemporary colonial sneer, often re-
peated since, and quite commonly believed,
was that * the important island of Cape Breton
was exchanged for a petty factory in India.'
This was not the case. Every power was
weary of the war. But France was ready to
go on with it rather than give up her last sea
link with Canada. Unless this one point was
conceded the whole British Empire would
have been involved in another vast, and
perhaps quite barren, campaign. The only
choice the British negotiators could apparently
make was a choice between two evils. And
of the two they chose the less.
CHAPTER IV
LOST FOR EVER
1758
THE ten years of the second French regime
in Louisbourg were divided into very differ-
ent halves. During the first five years, from
1749 to 1753, the mighty rivals were as much
at peace, all over their conflicting frontiers,
as they ever had been in the past. But from
1754 to 1758 a great and, this time, a decisive
war kept drawing continually nearer, until its
strangling coils at last crushed Louisbourg to
death.
Three significant events marked 1749, the
first of the five peaceful years. Louisbourg
was handed over to its new French garrison ;
the British founded Halifax ; and the Imperial
government indemnified New England in full
for the siege of 1745. Halifax was intended
partly as a counterpoise to Louisbourg, and
partly as a place-d'armes for one of the two
local footholds of British sea-power, Nova
90
LOST FOR EVER 91
Scotia and Newfoundland, which, between
them, narrowed the French line of communi-
cation with Canada into a single precarious
strait. The New England indemnity was
meant, in the first instance, to be a payment
for service done. But it was also intended
to soften colonial resentment at the giving
up of Louisbourg. A specially gracious royal
message was sent to ' The Council and Assem-
bly ' of Massachusetts, assuring them, * in
His Majesty's name, that their conduct will
always entitle them, in a particular manner,
to his Royal favour and protection.' This
message, however, did not reconcile the Pro-
vincial army to the disappointment of their
own expectations. Nor did it dispose the
colonies in general to be any the more amen-
able to government from London. They
simply regarded the indemnity as the skinflint
payment of an overdue debt, and the message
as no more than the thanks they had well
deserved. But the money was extremely
welcome to people who would have been
bankrupt without it. Nearly a quarter of a
million sterling was sent out in 217 cases of
Spanish dollars and 100 barrels of coppers,
which were driven through the streets of
Boston in 27 trucks.
92 THE GREAT FORTRESS
The next three years in Louisbourg were
completely uneventful. The town resumed
its former life, but in a still more makeshift
fashion. Nobody knew how long the truce
would last ; and nobody wanted to take root
commercially in a place that might experience
another violent change at any time. Never-
theless, smuggling flourished as vigorously as
before. British shipping did most of it.
Many vessels came from England, many from
Boston, some, and very active ones, from Hali-
fax. Joshua Mauger smuggled from France
to Louisbourg, from Louisbourg to ' Mauger's
Beach ' near Halifax, and from Halifax all
over Acadia and the adjacent colonies. He
also supplied the Micmacs with scalping-knives
and tomahawks for use against his own
countrymen. He died, a very rich man, in
England, leaving his fortune to his daughter,
who, with her spendthrift husband, the Due
de Bouillon, was guillotined during the French
Revolution.
The officials were naturally affected by the
same uncertainty, which made them more than
ever determined to get rich and go home.
The intendant Bigot was promoted to Quebec,
there to assist his country's enemies by the
worst corruption ever known in Canada. But
LOST FOR EVER 93
the new intendant, Prevost, though a man of
very inferior talent, did his best to follow
Bigot's lead.
French regulars still regarded the Louis-
bourg routine as their most disgusting duty.
But it became more tolerable with the increase
of the garrison. The fortifications were exam-
ined, reported on, repaired, and extended.
The engineers, like all the other Frenchmen
connected with unhappy Louisbourg, Bigot
alone excepted, were second- and third-rate
men ; and the actual work was done as badly
as before. But, on the whole, the place was
strengthened, especially by a battery near
the lighthouse. With this and the island
Battery, one on either side of the narrow
entrance, which the Royal Battery faced
directly, almost a hundred guns could be
brought to bear on any vessels trying to force
their way in.
The end of the five years' truce was marked
by voluminous reports and elaborate argu-
ments to prove how well Louisbourg was
being governed, how admirably the fortifica-
tions had been attended to (with the inade-
quate means at the intendant's disposal), and
how desirable it was, from every point of view,
for the king to spend a great deal more money
94 THE GREAT FORTRESS
all round in the immediate future. Fisheries,
shipbuilding, fortification, Indians, trade, re-
ligion, the naval and military situation, were
all represented as only needing more money
to become quite perfect. Louisbourg was
correctly enough described as an indispensable
link between France and the long chain of
French posts in the valleys of the Mississippi
and the St Lawrence. But less well explained
in America and less well understood in Europe
was the fact that the separate military chains
in Old France and New could never hold an
oversea dominion unless a naval chain united
them. Some few Frenchmen understood this
thoroughly. But most did not. And France,
as a whole, hoped that a vigorous offensive
on land would more than counterbalance
whatever she might lose by an enforced defen-
sive on the sea.
In 1754 Washington's first shot beyond the
Alleghanies broke the hollow truce between
the French and British colonies, whose lines
of expansion had once more inevitably crossed
each other's path. This proved to be the
beginning of the last ' French and Indian War '
in American history, of that ' British Con-
quest of Canada ' which formed part of what
LOST FOR EVER 95
contemporary Englishmen called the ' Mari-
time War,' and of that great military struggle
which continental Europe called the ' Seven
Years' War.'
The year 1755 saw Braddock's Defeat in
the west, the battle of Lake George in the
centre, and two pregnant events in the east,
one on either side of Louisbourg the expul-
sion of the Acadians, and the capture by
Boscawen of two French men-of-war with
several hundred soldiers who were to reinforce
the army that was soon to be commanded by
Montcalm.
The next year, 1756, saw the formal declara-
tion of war in Europe, its continued prosecu-
tion in America, and the taking of Oswego,
which was the first of Montcalm 's four victories
against the overwhelming British. But Louis-
bourg still remained untouched.
Not till 1757 was the first attempt made to
break this last sea link with France. There
was a very natural anxiety, among the British
on both sides of the Atlantic, to do conspicu-
ously well against Louisbourg. Fort Neces-
sity, Braddock's Defeat, and Montcalm's
daring capture of Oswego, coming with cumu-
lative effect, in three successive campaigns,
96 THE GREAT FORTRESS
had created a feeling of bitter disappointment
in America ; while the Black Hole of Calcutta,
the loss of Minorca, and, worse still, Byng's
failure to bring a British fleet into decisive
action, had wounded the national pride in
England.
But 1757 turned out to be no better than
its disconcerting predecessors. True, Eng-
land's ally, Frederick the Great, won consum-
mate victories at Rossbach and at Leuthen.
But that was at the end of a very desperate
campaign. True, also, that Clive won Plassey
and took Chandernagore. But those were far
away from English-speaking homes ; while
heavy reverses close at hand brought down
the adverse balance. Pitt, the greatest of all
civilian ministers of War, was dismissed from
office and not reinstated till the British
Empire had been without a cabinet for eleven
weeks. The French overran the whole of
Hanover and rounded up the Duke of Cumber-
land at Kloster-Seven. Mordaunt and his
pettifogging councils of war turned the joint
expedition against Rochefort into a complete
fiasco ; while Montcalm again defeated the
British in America by taking Fort William
Henry.
The taking of Louisbourg would have been
LOST FOR EVER 97
a very welcome victory in the midst of so
much gloom. But the British were engaged
in party strife at home. They were disunited
in America. And neither the naval nor the
military leader of the joint expedition against
Louisbourg was the proper man to act either
alone or with his colleague. Speed was of
prime importance. Yet Admiral Holbourne
did not sail from England for Halifax till May.
General the Earl of Loudoun was slower yet.
He drew in the troops from the northern fron-
tier, concentrated them in New York, and
laid an embargo on shipping to keep a secret
which was already out. Finally, he and Sir
Charles Hardy sailed for Halifax to keep
their rendezvous with Holbourne, from whom
no news had come. They arrived there before
him ; but his fleet came limping in during
the next ten days, after a bad buffeting on its
transatlantic voyage.
Loudoun now had nearly 12,000 men, whom
he landed and drilled throughout July. His
preparations were so meticulously careful
that they even included a vegetable garden,
which, though an excellent precaution in its
own way, ought to have been left to the com-
mandant of the base. So thought Sir Charles
Hay, who was put under arrest for saying
98 THE GREAT FORTRESS
that all the money was being spent in fighting
sham battles and planting out cabbages.
However, a reconnaissance of Louisbourg had
been made by Gorham of the Rangers, whose
very imperfect report induced Holbourne and
Loudoun to get ready to sail. But, just as
they were preparing to begin, too late, a New-
foundland vessel came in with captured French
dispatches which showed that Admiral La
Motte had united his three squadrons in Louis-
bourg harbour, where he was at anchor with
twenty-two ships of the line and several
frigates, the whole carrying 1360 guns. This
was correct. But the garrison was exagger-
ated by at least a third in the same dispatch,
which estimated it as numbering over 7000
men.
The lateness of the season, the strength
of the French, and the practical certainty of
failing to take Louisbourg by forcing the
attack home at any cost, were very sensibly
held, under existing circumstances, to be
sufficient cause for withdrawing the army.
The fleet, however, sailed north, in the hope
of inducing La Motte to come out for a battle
in the open. But, at that particular junc-
ture, La Motte was right not to risk decisive
action. A week later he was equally wrong
LOST FOR EVER 99
to refuse it. Holbourne's fleet had been dis-
persed by a September hurricane of extra-
ordinary violence. One ship became a total
wreck. Nine were dismasted. Several had
to throw their guns overboard. None was
fit for immediate service. But La Motte did
not even reconnoitre, much less annihilate,
his helpless enemy.
Pitt returned to power at the end of June
1757, in time to plan a world-wide campaign
for 1758, though not in time to choose the best
commanders and to change the whole course
of the war. This became possible only in the
Empire Year of 1759. The English-speaking
peoples have nearly always begun their great
wars badly, and have gradually worked up to
a climax of victory after being stung into
proper leadership and organization by several
exasperating failures ; and though now in the
third year of their most momentous struggle
for oversea dominion, they were not even yet
altogether prepared.
Nevertheless, Pitt wielded the amphibious
might of Britain with a master hand. Sea-
power, mercantile and naval, enabled him to
' command the riches of the world ' and
become the paymaster of many thousand
ioo THE GREAT FORTRESS
Prussians under Frederick the Great and
Ferdinand of Brunswick. He also sent a
small British army to the Continent. But
he devoted his chief attention to working out
a phase of the ' Maritime War * which in-
cluded India on one flank and the Canadian
frontiers on the other. Sometimes with, and
sometimes without, a contingent from the
Army, the British Navy checkmated, isolated,
or defeated the French in Europe, Asia, Africa,
and America.
The preliminary isolation of Louisbourg was
a particularly effective stroke of naval strategy.
Even before 1758 began the first French fleet
that left for Louisbourg had been shadowed
from Toulon and had been shut up in Car-
tagena. A second French fleet was then
sent to help the first one out. But it was
attacked on the way and totally defeated. In
April the first fleet made another attempt to
sail ; but it was chased into Rochefort by
Hawke and put out of action for the rest of
the campaign. The third French fleet did
manage to reach Louisbourg. But its admiral,
du Chaffault, rightly fearing annihilation in
the harbour there, and wishing to keep some
touch between Old France and New, sailed for
Quebec with most of his best ships.
LOST FOR EVER 101
Quebec and the rest of Canada were them-
selves on the defensive ; for Abercromby was
leading 15,000 men the largest single army
America had ever seen straight up the line
of Lake Champlain. Montcalm defeated him
at Ticonderoga in July. But that gave no
relief to Louisbourg ; because the total British
forces threatening the Canadian inland fron-
tier were still quite strong enough to keep the
French on the strict defensive.
Thus Louisbourg was completely isolated,
both by land and sea. It was stronger and
more extensive than during the first siege.
It had a better governor, Drucour, a better
and a larger garrison, more food and ammuni-
tion, and, what it formerly lacked altogether,
the support of a considerable fleet. Drucour
was a gallant soldier. His garrison numbered
nearly 3000 effective regulars, with about
1000 militiamen and some 500 Indians. Seven-
teen mortars and over two hundred cannon
were mounted on the walls, as well as on the
outworks at the Royal, Island, and Light-
house Batteries. There were thirteen vessels
in the fleet, mounting 590 guns, and carrying
over 3500 men. This made the French grand
total about 800 guns and 8000 men. But not
102 THE GREAT FORTRESS
all these were really effective. Ships at
anchor lose a good deal of their fighting value.
Crews are less efficient when ashore than when
they are afloat ; and the French ships were
mostly fought at anchor, while the crews
were gradually landed for the defence of the
crowded little town. Then, the Indians were
comparatively useless in a fort. The militia
were not good soldiers anywhere. Moreover,
the three kinds of regulars French, Canadian,
and foreign^-did not get on very well to-
gether ; while the fleet, as a whole, got on no
better with the army as a whole.
The British amphibious force presented a
striking contrast to this. Its naval and
military parts worked together like the two
branches of one United Service. The Army
and Navy naturally understood each other
better than the two services of less amphibious
countries ; and when a statesman like Pitt
and a first lord of the Admiralty like Anson
were together at headquarters there was no
excuse for misunderstandings at the front.
Boscawen and Amherst, both distinguished
members of distinguished Service families,
were the best of colleagues. Boscawen had
somewhat over, Amherst a little under, 12,000
men. Boscawen 's fleet comprised 39 sail,
EDWARD BOSCAWEN
From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds
LOST FOR EVER 103
from a QO-gun ship of the line down to a
i2-gun sloop. The British grand total there-
fore exceeded Drucour's by over three to one,
counting mere numbers alone. If expert effi-
ciency be taken, for the sake of a more exact
comparison, it is not too much to say that the
odds in favour of the British personnel and
armament were really four to one.
On the other hand, the French had the walls
of Louisbourg to redress the balance in their
favour. These walls were the crucial factor in
the problem. Both sides knew they were far
from being impregnable. But how long could
they withstand a regular siege ? If for only
one month, then they were useless as a pro-
tection to Quebec. If for two months, then'
Quebec and New France were safe until the
following year.
Boscawen left England in February. Am-
herst followed separately. One of the three
brigadier - generals in Amherst's army was
Wolfe, of whom we shall hear more pre-
sently. The rendezvous was Halifax, where
boat work and landing exercises were sedu-
lously carried out by the troops. Towards
the end of May Boscawen sailed out of Halifax,
though Amherst had not yet arrived. They
104 THE GREAT FORTRESS
met at sea. The Dublin, which had brought
Amherst across so slowly, then ' went very
sickly into Halifax,' while Amherst joined
Boscawen, and the whole fleet and convoy
bore away for Louisbourg. The French had
been expecting them for at least a month ;
as scouts kept appearing almost every day,
while Hardy's squadron of nine sail had been
maintaining a sort of open blockade.
On the night of June i the French look-outs
in Gabarus Bay saw more lights than usual
to the southward. Next morning Louisbourg
was early astir, anxiously eager to catch the
first glimpse of this great destroying armada,
which for several expectant hours lay in-
visible and dread behind a curtain of dense
fog. Then a light sea breeze came in from
the Atlantic. The curtain drew back at its
touch. And there, in one white, enormous
crescent, all round the deep-blue offing, stood
the mighty fleet, closing in for the final death-
grip on its prey.
Nearly a whole week went by before the
British landed. Each day the scouting boats
and vessels stood in as close as possible along
the shore. But they always found the smash-
ing surf too high. At last, on the 8th, the
LOST FOR EVER 105
whole army put off in three brigades of boats,
supported by the frigates, which fired at the
French defences. All three landing-places
were threatened simultaneously, White Point,
Flat Point, and Kennington Cove. These
landing-places were, respectively, one, two,
and four miles west of Louisbourg. The in-
tervening ground mostly hid them from the
ramparts, and they had to depend upon their
own defences. Drucour had sent out two-
thirds of his garrison to oppose the landing.
Each point was protected by artillery and en-
trenchments. Eight guns were mounted and
a thousand men stood guard over the quarter-
mile of beach which lay between the two
little surf-lashed promontories of Kennington
Cove. But Wolfe's brigade made straight
for shore. The French held their fire until
the leading boats were well within short
musket-shot. Then they began so furiously
that Wolfe, whose tall, lank figure was most
conspicuous as he stood up in the stern-
sheets, waved his cane to make the boats
sheer off.
It looked as if the first successful landing
would have to be made elsewhere, a bitter
disappointment to this young and ardent
brigadier, whose command included the pick
106 THE GREAT FORTRESS
of the grenadiers, light infantry, and High-
landers. But three boatloads of light in-
fantry pushed on against the inner point of
the cove. Perhaps their officers turned their
blind eye on Wolfe's signal, as Nelson did on
Parker's recall at Copenhagen. But, what-
ever the reason, these three boats went in
smash against the rocks and put their men
ashore, drenched to the skin. Major Scott,
commanding the light infantry and rangers,
followed them at once. Then Wolfe, seeing
they had gained a foothold where the point
afforded them a little cover, signalled the
whole brigade to land there in succession.
He pushed his own boat through, jumped in
waist-deep, and waded ashore.
This sudden change, quite unexpected by
either friend or foe, greatly disconcerted the
French. They attacked Major Scott, who
withstood them with a handful of men till
reinforcements came clambering up the rocks
behind him. With these reinforcements came
Wolfe, who formed the men into line and
carried the nearest battery with the bayonet.
The remaining French, seeing that Wolfe had
effected a lodgment on their inner flank, were
so afraid of being cut off from Louisbourg
that they ran back and round towards the
LOST FOR EVER 107
next position at Flat Point. But before they
reached it they saw its own defenders running
back, because the British were also landing at
White Point. Here too the defences were
abandoned as soon as the little garrison found
itself faced by greatly superior numbers afloat
and deserted by its fellow-garrisons ashore.
The retreating French kept up a sort of run-
ning fight till they got under the covering
fire of Louisbourg, when th,e pursuing British
immediately drew off.
Considering the number of boats that were
stove and the intensity of the first French
fire, the British loss was remarkably small,
only one hundred and nine killed, wounded,
and drowned. The French loss was still
less ; but, in view of the difference between
the respective grand totals, it was a good deal
heavier in proportion.
That night the glare of a big fire inside the
harbour showed that Drucour felt too weak
to hold the Royal Battery. Unlike his in-
competent predecessor, however, he took away
everything movable that could be turned to
good account in Louisbourg ; and he left the
works a useless ruin. The following day he
destroyed and abandoned the battery at Light-
house Point. Thus two fortifications were
io8 THE GREAT FORTRESS
given up, one of them for the second time,
before a single shot had been fired either from
or against them. Time, labour, and expense
had all gone for worse than nothing, as the
positions were at once used by the enemy on
each occasion. The wasted expense was of
the usual kind one half spent on inferior
construction, the other pocketed by the Louis-
bourg officials. Drucour himself was not at
all to blame, either for the way the works
were built or the way in which they had to be
abandoned. With odds of more than three
to one against him, he had no men to spare for
trying to keep the British at arm's length.
Amherst pitched his camp in a crescent two
miles long, facing Louisbourg two miles off.
His left overlooked the French squadron in
the south-west harbour next to Louisbourg
at the distance of a mile. His right rested on
Flat Point. Thus Louisbourg itself was en-
tirely surrounded both by land and sea ; for
the gaps left at the Royal Battery and Light-
house Point were immediately seized by the
British. Wolfe marched round the harbour
on the 1 2th with 1300 infantry and a strong
detachment of artillery. The guns for the
Royal Battery and other points inside the
harbour were hauled into place by teams of
JAMES WOLFE
From the painting by Highmore
LOST FOR EVER 109
about a hundred men each. Those for Light-
house Point were sent round by sea, landed,
with immense difficulty, more than a mile
distant on the rock-bound shore, hauled up
the cliff, and then dragged back over the
roughest of ground to the battery. It was,
in fact, a repetition of what the American
militiamen had done in 1745. Wolfe worked
incessantly, directing and encouraging his toil-
ing men. The bluejackets seconded his efforts
by doing even harder work. Their boats were
often stove, and a catamaran was wrecked
with a brass twenty-four pounder on board.
But nothing could stop the perfect co-opera-
tion between the two halves of the single
United Service. ' The Admiral and General,'
wrote Wolfe, ' have carried on the public
service with great harmony, industry, and
union. Mr Boscawen has given all, and even
more than we could ask of him. He has
furnished arms and ammunition, pioneers,
sappers, miners, gunners, carpenters, and
boats.'
While Wolfe was doing his eight days' work
of preparation at the Lighthouse Battery,
between the I2th and the 20th, Amherst,
whose favourite precept was ' slow and sure,'
was performing an even more arduous task
no THE GREAT FORTRESS
by building a road from Flat Point to where
he intended to make his trenches. This road
meandered over the least bad line that could
be found in that country of alternate rock,
bog, sand, scrub, bush, and marshy ponds.
The working party was always a thousand
strong, and shifts, of course, were constant.
Boscawen landed marines to man the works
along the shore, and bluejackets for any handy-
man's job required. This proved of great
advantage to the army, which had so many
more men set free for other duties. The land-
ing of stores went on from sunrise to sunset,
whenever the pounding surf calmed down
enough. Landing the guns was, of course,
much harder still. It accounted for most of
the hundred boats that were dashed to pieces
against that devouring shore.
Thorough and persistent as this work was,
however, it gave the garrison of Louisbourg
little outward sign of what was happening just
beyond the knolls and hillocks. Besides, just
at this time, when there was a lull before the
storm that was soon to burst from Wolfe and
Amherst, both sides had more dramatic things
to catch the general eye. First, there was the
worthy namesake of * the saucy Arethusa ' in
LOST FOR EVER in
the rival British Navy, the Arethuse, whose
daring and skilful captain, Vauquelin, had
moored her beside the Barachois, or sea-pond,
so that he could outflank Amherst's approach
against the right land face of Louisbourg.
Then, of still more immediate interest was the
nimble little Echo, which tried to run the
gauntlet of the British fleet on June 18, a day
long afterwards made famous on the field of
Waterloo. Drucour had entrusted his wife
and several other ladies to the captain of the
Echo, who was to make a dash for Quebec with
dispatches for the governor of Canada. A
muffling fog shut down and seemed to promise
her safety from the British, though it brought
added danger from that wrecking coast.
With infinite precautions she slipped out on
the ebb, between the French at the Island
Battery and Wolfe's strenuous workers at the
Lighthouse Point. But the breeze that bore
her north also raised the fog enough to let the
Juno and Sutherland sight her and give chase.
She crowded on a press of sail till she was
overhauled, when she fought her captors till
her case was hopeless.
Madame Drucour and the other ladies were
then sent back to Louisbourg with every
possible consideration for their feelings. This
112 THE GREAT FORTRESS
act of kindness was remembered later on,
when a regular interlude of courtesies followed
Drucour's offer to send his own particularly
skilful surgeon to any wounded British officer
who might need his services. Amherst sent
in several letters and messages from wounded
Frenchmen, and a special message from him-
self to Madame Drucour, complimenting her
upon her bravery, and begging her acceptance
of some West Indian pineapples. Once more
the flag of truce came out, this time to return
the compliment with a basket of wine. As
the gate swung to, the cannon roared again
on either side. Amherst 's was no unmerited
compliment ; for Madame Drucour used to
mount the ramparts every day, no matter
what the danger was, and fire three cannon for
the honour of her king. But the French had
no monopoly in woman's work. True, there
were no officers' wives to play the heroine on
the British side. But there were others to
play a humbler part, and play it well. In
those days each ship or regiment bore a cer-
tain proportion of women on their books for
laundering and other work which is still done,
at their own option, by women ' married on
the strength ' of the Army. Most of the
several hundred women in the besieging fleet
LOST FOR EVER 113
and army became so keen to see the batteries
armed that they volunteered to team the
guns, which, in some cases, they actually did,
with excellent effect.
By June 26 Louisbourg had no defences left
beyond its own walls, except the reduced
French squadron huddled together in the
south-west harbour. The more exposed ships
had come down on the 2ist, after a day's
bombardment from Wolfe's terrific battery at
Lighthouse Point : ' they in return making
an Infernall Fire from all their Broadsides ;
but, wonderfull to think of, no harm done us.'
Five days later every single gun in the Island
Battery was dumb. At the same time
Amherst occupied Green Hill, directly opposite
the citadel and only half a mile away. Yet
Drucour, with dauntless resolution, resisted
for another month. His object was not to
save his own doomed fortress but Quebec.
He needed all his resolution. The British
were pressing him on every side, determined
to end the siege in time to transfer their
force elsewhere. Louisbourg itself was visibly
weakening. The walls were already crumb-
ling under Amherst 's converging fire, though
the British attack had not yet begun in
G.F. H
H4 THE GREAT FORTRESS
earnest. Surely, thoroughly, and with an
irresistible zeal, the besiegers had built their
road, dragged up their guns, and begun to
worm their way forward, under skilfully con-
structed cover, towards the right land face of
Louisbourg, next to the south-west harbour,
where the ground was less boggy than on the
left. The French ships fired on the British
approaches ; but, with one notable exception,
not effectively, because some of them masked
others, while they were all under British fire
themselves, both from the Lighthouse and the
Royal Batteries, as well as from smaller
batteries along the harbour. Vauquelin, who
shares with Iberville the honour of being the
naval hero of New France, was the one excep-
tion. He fought the Arethuse so splendidly
that he hampered the British left attack
long enough to give Louisbourg a comparative
respite for a few hasty repairs.
But nothing could now resist Boscawen if
the British should choose to run in past the
demolished Island Battery and attack the
French fleet, first from a distance, with the
help of the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries,
and then hand - to - hand. So the French
admiral, des Gouttes, agreed to sink four of
his largest vessels in the fairway. This, how-
LOST FOR EVER 115
ever, still left a gap ; so two more were sunk.
The passage was then mistakenly reported to
be safely closed. The crews, two thousand
strong, were landed and camped along the
streets. This caused outspoken annoyance
to the army and to the inhabitants, who
thought the crews had not shown fight enough
afloat, who consequently thought them of
little use ashore, who found them in the way,
and who feared they had come in without
bringing a proper contribution of provisions
to the common stock.
The Arethu.se was presently withdrawn
from her perilous berth next to the British
left approach, as she was the only frigate left
which seemed to have a chance of running the
gauntlet of Boscawen's fleet. Her shot-holes
were carefully stopped ; and on the night of
July 14 she was silently towed to the harbour
mouth, whence she sailed for France with
dispatches from Drucour and des Gouttes.
The fog held dense, but the wind was light,
and she could hardly forge ahead under every
stitch of canvas. All round her the lights of
the British fleet and convoy rose and fell with
the heaving rollers, like little embers blurring
through the mist. Yet Vauquelin took his
dark and silent way quite safely, in and out
n6 THE GREAT FORTRESS
between them, and reached France just after
Louisbourg had fallen.
Meanwhile Drucour had made several sorties
against the British front, while Boishebert
had attacked their rear with a few hundred
Indians, Acadians, and Canadians. Bois-
hebert 's attack was simply brushed aside by
the rearguard of Amherst's overwhelming
force. The American Rangers ought to have
defeated it themselves, without the aid of
regulars. But they were not the same sort
of men as those who had besieged Louisbourg
thirteen years before. The best had volun-
teered then. The worst had been enlisted
now. Of course, there were a few good men
with some turn for soldiering. But most
were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind.
Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very
vigorous terms : ' About 500 Rangers are
come, which, to appearance, are little better
than la canaille. These Americans are in
general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cow-
ardly dogs that you can conceive. There is
no depending upon 'em in action. They fall
down dead in their own dirt, and desert by
battalions, officers and all.'
Drucour's sorties, made by good French
regulars, were much more serious than Bois-
LOST FOR EVER 117
hebert's feeble, irregular attack. On the night
of July 8, while Montcalm's Ticonderogan
heroes were resting on their hard-won field
a thousand miles inland, Drucour's best troops
crept out unseen and charged the British
right. Lord Dundonald and several of his
men were killed, while the rest were driven
back to the second approach, where desperate
work was done with the bayonet in the
dark. But Wolfe commanded that part of
the line, and his supports were under arms
in a moment. The French attack had broken
up into a score of little rough-and-tumble
fights bayonets, butts, and swords all at it ;
friend and foe mixed up in wild confusion.
So the first properly formed troops carried all
before them. The knots of struggling com-
batants separated into French and British.
The French fell back on their defences. Their
friends inside fired on the British; and
Wolfe, having regained his ground, retired
in the same good order on his lines.
A week later Wolfe suddenly dashed for-
ward on the British left and seized Gallows
Hill, within a musket-shot of the French right
bastion. Here his men dug hard all night
long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on
them at point-blank range. In the morning
n8 THE GREAT FORTRESS
reliefs marched in, and the digging still con-
tinued. Sappers, miners, and infantry reliefs,
they never stopped till they had burrowed
forward another hundred yards, and the last
great breaching battery had opened its annihi-
lating fire. By the 2ist both sides saw that
the end was near, so far as the walls were
concerned.
But it was not only the walls that were
failing. For, that very afternoon of the 2ist,
a British seaman gunner's cleverly planted
bomb found out a French ship's magazine,
exploded it with shattering force, and set fire
to the ships on either side. All three blazed
furiously. The crews ran to quarters and
did their best. But all to no purpose. Mean-
while the British batteries had turned every
available gun on the conflagration, so as to
prevent the French from saving anything.
Between the roaring flames, the bursting shells,
and the whizzing cannon balls, the three
doomed vessels soon became an inferno too
hot for men to stay in. The crews swarmed
over the side and escaped ; not, however,
without losing a good many of their number.
Then the British concentrated on the only
two remaining vessels, the Prudent and the
Bienfaisant. But the French sailors, with
LOST FOR EVER 119
admirable pluck and judgment, managed to
haul them round to a safer berth.
Next day a similar disaster befell the Louis-
bourg headquarters. A shell went through
the roof of the barracks at the King's Bastion,
burst among the men there, and set the whole
place on fire. As the first tongues of flame
shot up the British concentrated on them.
The French ran to the threatened spot and
worked hard, in spite of the storm of British
shot and shell. But nothing was saved, ex-
cept Drucour's own quarters. During the
confusion the wind blew some burning debris
against the timbers which protected the
nearest casemates from exploding shells. An
alarm was raised among the women and
children inside. A panic followed ; and the
civilians of both sexes had their nerves so
shaken that they thought of nothing but
surrender on the spot.
Hardly had this excitement been allayed
when the main barracks themselves caught
fire. Fortunately they had been cleared when
the other fire had shown how imminent the
danger was to every structure along the walls.
The barracks were in special danger of fire,
for they had been left with the same wooden
roof which the New Englanders had put on
120 THE GREAT FORTRESS
thirteen years before. Again the British guns
converged their devastating fire on the point
of danger, and the whole place was burned to
the ground.
Most of the troops were now deprived of all
shelter. They had no choice but to share the
streets with a still larger number of sailors
than those to whom they had formerly ob-
jected. Yet they had scarcely tried to settle
down and make the best of it before another
batch of sailors came crowding in from the
last of the whole French fleet. At one o'clock
in the morning of July 25 a rousing British
cheer from the harbour had announced an
attack on the Prudent and the Bienfaisant by
six hundred bluejackets, who had stolen in,
with muffled oars, just on the stroke of mid-
night. Presently the sound of fighting died
away, and all was still. At first the nearest
gunners on the walls had lost their heads and
begun blazing away at random. But they
were soon stopped ; and neither side dared
fire, not knowing whom the shots might kill.
Then, as the escaping French came in to the
walls, a bright glare told that the Prudent
was on fire. She had cut her cable during the
fight and was lying, hopelessly stranded, right
under the inner walls of Louisbourg. The
LOST FOR EVER 121
Bienfaisant, however, though now assailed by
every gun the French could bring to bear, was
towed off to a snug berth beside the Light-
house Battery, the British bluejackets showing
the same disregard of danger as their gallant
enemies had shown on the 2ist, when towing
her to safety in the opposite direction.
At daylight Drucour made a thorough
inspection of the walls, while the only four
serviceable cannon left fired slowly on, as if
for the funeral of Louisbourg. The British
looked stronger than ever, and so close in that
their sharpshooters could pick off the French
gunners from the foot of the glacis. The best
of the French diarists made this despairing
entry : ' Not a house in the whole place but
has felt the force of their cannonade. Between
yesterday morning and seven o'clock to-night
from a thousand to twelve hundred shells have
fallen inside the town, while at least forty
cannon have been firing incessantly as well.
The surgeons have to run at many a cry of
'Ware Shell! for fear lest they should share
the patients' fate.' Amherst had offered to
spare the island or any one of the French
ships if Drucour would put his hospital in
either place. But, for some unexplained
reason, Drucour declined the offer ; though
122 THE GREAT FORTRESS
Amherst pointed out that no spot within so
small a target as Louisbourg itself could pos-
sibly be made immune by any gunners in the
world.
Reduced to the last extremity, the French
council of war decided to ask for terms.
Boscawen and Amherst replied that the whole
garrison must surrender in an hour. Drucour
sent back to beg for better terms. But the
second British answer was even sterner
complete surrender, yes or no, in half an hour.
Resentment still ran high against the French
for the massacre at Fort William Henry the
year before. The actual massacre had been
the work of drunken Indians. The Canadians
present had looked on. The French, headed
by Montcalm, had risked their lives to save
the prisoners. But such distinctions had been
blotted out in the general rage among the
British on both sides of the Atlantic ; and
so Louisbourg was now made the scapegoat.
Drucour at once wrote back to say that he
stood by his first proposal, which meant, of
course, that he was ready to face the storming
of his works and no quarter for his garrison.
His flag of truce started off with this de-
fiance. But Prevost the intendant, with other
civilians, now came forward, on behalf of the
LOST FOR EVER 123
inhabitants, to beg for immediate surrender
on any terms, rather than that they should
all be exposed to the perils of assault. Drucour
then gave way, and sent an officer running
after the defiant flag of truce. As soon as
this second messenger got outside the walls
he called out, at the top of his voice, ' We
accept ! We accept 1 ' He then caught up
to the bearer of the flag of truce, when both
went straight on to British headquarters.
Boscawen and Amherst were quite prepared
for either surrender or assault. The storming
parties had their scaling-ladders ready. The
Forlorn Hopes had been told off to lead the
different columns. Every gun was loaded,
afloat and ashore. The fleet were waiting
for the signal to file in and turn a thousand
cannon against the walls. Nothing was lack-
ing for complete success. On the other hand,
their terms were also ready waiting. The
garrison was to be sent to England as prisoners
of war. The whole of Louisbourg, Cape
Breton, and Isle St Jean (now Prince Edward
Island) were to be surrendered immediately,
with all the public property they contained.
The West Gate was to be handed over to a
British guard at eight the next morning ;
and the French arms were to be laid down
124 THE GREAT FORTRESS
for good at noon. With this document the
British commanders sent in the following
note :
SIR, We have the honour to send Your
Excellency the signed articles of Capitula-
tion.
Lieutenant Colonel d ' Anthony has
spoken on behalf of the people in the
town. We have no intention of molest-
ing them ; but shall give them all the
protection in our power.
Your Excellency will kindly sign the
duplicate of the terms and send it back
to us.
It only remains for us to assure Your
Excellency that we shall seize every oppor-
tunity of convincing you that we are, with
the most perfect consideration, Your Excel-
lency's most Obedient Servants,
E. BOSCAWEN.
J. AMHERST.
No terms were offered either to the Indians
or to the armed Canadians, on account of
Fort William Henry ; and it is certain that
all these would have been put to the sword,
to the very last man, had Drucour decided to
stand an assault. To the relief of every one
LOST FOR EVER 125
concerned the Indians paddled off quietly
during the night, which luckily happened to
be unusually dark and calm. The Canadians
either followed them or mingled with the
unarmed inhabitants. This awkward problem
therefore solved itself.
Few went to bed that last French night in
Louisbourg. All responsible officials were busy
with duties, reports, and general superintend-
ence. The townsfolk and soldiery were rest-
less and inclined to drown their humiliation
in the many little cabarets, which stood open
all night. A very different place, the parish
church, was also kept open, and for a very
different purpose. Many hasty marriages were
performed, partly from a wholly groundless
fear of British licence, and partly because those
who wished to remain in Cape Breton thought
they would not be allowed to do so unless they
were married.
Precisely at eight the next morning Major
Farquhar drew up his grenadiers in front of
the West Gate, which was immediately sur-
rendered to him. No one but the officers
concerned witnessed this first ceremony. But
the whole population thronged every point of
vantage round the Esplanade to see the formal
surrender at noon. All the British admirals
126 THE GREAT FORTRESS
and generals were present on parade as
Drucour stepped forward, saluted, and handed
his sword to Boscawen. His officers followed
his example. Then the troops laid down
their arms, in the ranks as they stood, many
dashing down their muskets with a muttered
curse.
The French naval, military, and civilian
were soon embarked. The curse of Louis-
bourg followed most of them, in one form or
another. The combatants were coldly re-
ceived when they eventually returned to
France, in spite of their gallant defence, and
in spite of their having saved Quebec for that
campaign. Several hundreds of the inhabi-
tants were shipwrecked and drowned. One
transport was abandoned off the coast of
Prince Edwa d Island, with the loss of two
hundred lives. Another sprang a leak as she
was nearing England ; whereupon, to their
eternal dishonour, the crew of British merchant
seamen took all the boats and started to
pull off alone. The three hundred French
prisoners, men, women, and children, crowded
the ship's side and begged that, if they were
themselves to be abandoned, their priest
should be saved. A boat reluctantly put
back for him. Then, leaving the ship to her
LOST FOR EVER 127
fate, the crew pulled for Penzance, where the
people had just been celebrating the glorious
victory of Louisbourg.
The French loss had been enough without
this. About one in five of all the combatants
had been hit. Twice as many were on the
sick list. Officers and men, officials and
traders, fishermen and other inhabitants, all
lost something, in certain cases everything
they had ; and it was to nothing but the sheer
ruin of all French power beside the American
Atlantic that Madame Drucour waved her
long white scarf in a last farewell.
France was stung to the quick. Her sea
link gone, she feared that the whole of Canada
would soon be won by the same relentless
British sea-power, which was quite as irre-
sistible as it was ubiquitous in the mighty
hands of Pitt. So deeply did her statesmen
feel her imminent danger on the sea, and
resent this particular British triumph in the
world-wide ' Maritime War,' that they took
the unusual course of sending the following
circular letter to all the Powers of Europe :
We are advised that Louisbourg capitu-
lated to the English on July 26. We fully
128 THE GREAT FORTRESS
realize the consequences of such a grave
event. But we shall redouble our efforts
to repair the misfortune.
All commercial nations ought now to
open their eyes to their own interests and
join us in preventing the absolute tyranny
which England will soon exercise on every
sea if a stop be not put to her boundless
avarice and ambition.
For a century past the Powers of Europe
have been crying out against France for
disturbing the balance of power on the
Continent. But while England was art-
fully fomenting this trouble she was her-
self engaged in upsetting that balance of
power at sea without which these different
nations' independent power on land cannot
subsist. All governments ought to give
their immediate and most serious attention
to this subject, as the English now threaten
to usurp the whole world's seaborne com-
merce for themselves.
While the French were taken up with un-
availing protests and regrets the British were
rejoicing with their whole heart. Their loss
had been small. Only a twentieth of their
naval and military total had been killed or
LOST FOR EVER 129
wounded, or had died from sickness, during
the seven weeks' siege. Their gain had been
great. The one real fortress in America, the
last sea link between Old France and New,
the single sword held over their transatlantic
shipping, was now unchallengeably theirs.
The good news travelled fast. Within
three weeks of the surrender the dispatches
had reached England. Defeats, disasters,
and exasperating fiascos had been common
since the war began. But at last there was a
genuine victory, British through and through,
won by the Army and Navy together, and
won over the greatest of all rivals, France.
' When we lost Minorca,' said the London
Chronicle t just a month after the surrender,
' a general panic fell upon the nation ; but
now that Louisbourg is taken our streets
echo with triumph and blaze with illumina-
tions.' Loyal addresses poured in from every
quarter. The king stood on the palace steps
to receive the eleven captured colours ; and
then, attended by the whole court, went in
state to the royal thanksgiving service held
in St Paul's Cathedral.
The thanks of parliament were voted to
Amherst and Boscawen. Boscawen received
them in person, being a member of the House
G.F. T
130 THE GREAT FORTRESS
of Commons. The speaker read the address,
which was couched in the usual verbiage
worked up by one of the select committees
employed on such occasions. But Boscawen
replied, as men of action should, with fewer
words and much more force and point : ' Mr
Speaker, Sir, I am happy to have been able
to do my duty. I have no words to express
my sense of the distinguished reward that
has been conferred upon me by this House ;
nor cany I thank you, Sir, enough for the
polite and elegant manner in which you
have been pleased to convey its resolution
to me.'
The American colonists in general rejoiced
exceedingly that Louisbourg and all it meant
had been exterminated. But, especially in
New England, their joy was considerably
tempered by the reflection that the final blow
had been delivered without their aid, and that
the British arms had met with a terrible
reverse at Ticonderoga, where the American
militia had outnumbered the old -country
regulars by half as much again. Neverthe-
less Boston built a ' stately bonfire,' which
made a ' lofty and prodigious blaze ' ; while
Philadelphia, despite its parasitic Quakers,
had a most elaborate display of fireworks
LOST FOR EVER 131
representing England, Louisbourg, the siege,
the capture, the triumph, and reflected glory
generally.
At the inland front, near Lake Champlain,
where Abercromby now went by the opprob-
rious nickname of ' Mrs Nabbycrumby,' ' The
General put out orders that the breastwork
should be lined with troops, and to fire three
rounds for joy, and give thanks to God in a
Religious Way.' But the joy was more whole-
hearted among the little, half-forgotten garri-
sons of Nova Scotia. At Annapolis no news
arrived till well on in September, when a
Boston sloop came sailing up the bay. Cap-
tain Knox, that most industrious of diarists,
records the incident.
Every soul was impatient, yet shy of
asking. At length I called out, * What
news from Louisbourg ? ' To which the
master simply replied, and with some
gravity, ' Nothing strange.' This threw
us all into great consternation, and some
of us even turned away. But one of our
soldiers called out with some warmth,
* Damn you, Pumpkin, isn't Louisbourg
taken yet ? ' The poor New England man
then answered : ' Taken, yes, above a
132 THE GREAT FORTRESS
month ago ; and I have been there since ;
but if you haven't heard of it before, I
have a good parcel of letters for you now.'
Instantly all hats flew off, and we made
the neighbouring woods resound with our
cheers for almost half an hour.
f
Halifax naturally heard the news sooner
than other places ; and being then, as now,
a naval port and a garrison town, it gave full
vent to its feelings. Bells pealed. Bonfires
blazed. Salutes thundered from the fort and
harbour. But all this was a mere preliminary
canter. The real race came off when the
victorious fleet and army returned in triumph.
Land and water were then indeed alive with
exultant crowds. The streets were like a
fair, and a noisy one at that. Soldiers, sailors,
and civilians drank standing toasts the whole
night through. The commissioner of excise
recorded, not without a touch of proper pride,
that, quite apart from all illicit wines and
spirits, no less than sixty thousand gallons of
good Jamaica rum were drunk in honour of
the fall of Louisbourg. In higher circles,
where wine was commoner than spirits, the
toasts were honoured just as often. Governor
Lawrence, fresh from Louisbourg himself,
LOST FOR EVER 133
opened the new Government House with a
grand ball ; and Wolfe, whom all now thought
the coming man, drank healths, sang songs,
and danced with pretty partners to his heart's
content.
CHAPTER V
ANNIHILATION
\
1760
THE new garrison of Louisbourg hated it as
thoroughly as any of their predecessors, French
or British. They repaired the breaches, in
a temporary way, and ran up shelters for
the winter. Interest revived with the spring ;
for Wolfe was coming back again, this time
to command an army of his own and take
Quebec.
The great absorbing question was, Who *s
for the front and who for the base ? Both
fleet and army made their rendezvous at Louis-
bourg ; a larger fleet and a smaller army than
those of the year before. Two new toasts
were going the rounds of the Service : ' Here 's
to the eye of a Hawke and the heart of
a Wolfe I ' and ' Here 's to British colours
on every French fort, port, and garrison in
America ! ' Of course they were standing
toasts. The men who drank them already
m
ANNIHILATION 135
felt the presage of Pitt's great Empire Year
of 1759.
The last two weeks in May and the first in
June were full of glamour in crowded, stirring
Louisbourg. There was Wolfe's picked army
of nine thousand men, with Saunders's mighty
fleet of fifty men-of-war, mounting two thou-
sand guns, comprising a quarter of the whole
Royal Navy, and convoying more than two
hundred transports and provision ships ; all
coming and going, landing, embarking, drilling,
dividing, massing ; every one expectant of
glorious results and eager to begin. Who
wouldn't be for the front at the climax of a
war like this ?
Then came the final orders issued in Louis-
bourg. ' ist June, 1759. The Troops land
no more. The flat-bottomed boats to be
hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to sail
at the first signal.' ' 2nd June, 1759. The
Admiral purposes sailing the first fair wind.'
On the 4th a hundred and forty-one sail
weighed anchor together. All that day and
the next they were assembling outside and
making for the island of Scatari, just beyond
the point of Cape Breton, which is only ten
miles north of Louisbourg. By noon on the
6th the last speck of white had melted away
136 THE GREAT FORTRESS
from the Louisbourg horizon and the men
for the front were definitely parted from those
left behind at the base.
Great things were dared and done at the
front that year, in Europe, Asia, and America.
But nothing was done at dull little Louisbourg,
except the wearisome routine of a disgustingly
safe base. Rocks, bogs, fogs, sand, and scrubby
bush ashore. Tantalizing news from the stir-
ring outside world afloat. So the long, blank,
summer days wore through.
The second winter proved a little more com-
fortable than the first had been. But there
was less, far less, for the garrison to expect in
the spring. In February 1760 the death-
warrant of Louisbourg was signed in London
by Pitt and King George II. In the following
summer it was executed by Captain John
Byron, R.N., the poet's grandfather. Sailors,
sappers, and miners worked . for months
together, laying the pride of Louisbourg level
with the dust. That they carried out their
orders with grim determination any one can
see to-day by visiting the grave in which
they buried so many French ambitions.
All the rest of He Royale lost its French
ANNIHILATION 137
life in the same supreme catastrophe the
little forts and trading-posts, the fishing-
villages and hamlets ; even the farms along
the Mira, which once were thought so like
the promise of a second French Acadia.
Nothing remains of that dead past, any-
where inland, except a few gnarled, weather-
beaten stumps of carefully transplanted plum
and apple trees, with, here and there, a strag-
gling little patch of pale, forlorn narcissus, now
soothing the alien air in vain, round shapeless
ruins, as absolute and lone as those of Louis-
bourg itself.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THERE is no complete naval and military history
of Louisbourg, in either French or English. The
first siege is a prominent feature in all histories of
Canada, New England, and the United States,
though it is not much noticed in works written in
the mother country. The second siege is noticed
everywhere. The beginning and end of the story
is generally ignored, and the naval side is always
inadequately treated.
Parkman gives a good account of the first siege
in A Half-Century of Conflict, and a less good
account of the second in Montcalm and Wolfe*
Kingsford's accounts are in volumes iii and iv of
the History of Canada. Sir John Bourinot, a native
of the island, wrote a most painstaking work on
Cape Breton and its Memorials of the French
R6gime which was first published in the Trans-
actions of the Royal Society of Canada for 1891.
Garneau and other French-Canadian historians
naturally emphasize a different set of facts
and explanations. An astonishingly outspoken
account of the first siege is given in the anony-
mous Lettre d'un Habitant de Louisbourg, which
138
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 139
has been edited, with a translation, by Professor
Wrong. The gist of many accounts is to be found,
unpretentiously put together, in The Last Siege of
Louisbourg, by C. O. Macdonald. New England
produced many contemporary and subsequent
accounts of the first siege, and all books concerned
with the Conquest give accounts of the second.
Those who wish to go straight to original
sources will find useful bibliographies in the
notes to Parkman's and Bourinot's books, as well
as in Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical
History of America. But none of these includes
some important items to be found either in or
through the Dominion Archives at Ottawa, the
Public Records Office in London, and the Archives
de la Marine in Paris.
INDEX
Abercromby, General, defeated
by Montcalm, 101 ; on the
fall of Louisbourg, 131.
Acadians, prefer to stay in
Acadia, 3-4, 26, 81 ; their rela-
tions with Louisbourg-, 8,
116; their expulsion, 95.
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 89,
American Rangers, the, 116.
Amherst, General, in command
at siege of Louisbourg, 102-4,
108, 109-10, 113-14, 121 ; com-
pliments Madame Drucour,
1 12; the surrender, 122-6, 129.
Annapolis, siege of, 26, 36 ; and
the British victory at Louis-
bourg, 131.
Anson, Admiral, 89 ; first lord of
the Admiralty, 102.
Anville, Due d', his disastrous
expedition, 84-7.
Bigot, intendant of Louis-
bourg, 13; promoted to
Quebec, 92.
Boishebert, attacks British rear
at Louisbourg, 116, 117.
Boscawen, Admiral, 95 ; in com-
mand of fleet at siege of
Louisbourg, 102-4, 109, no ;
the surrender, 122-6 ; his re-
ply to parliament, 129-30.
Boston, its relations with
Louisbourg, 41, 53, 71, 72, 83,
92 J 3O prepares for French
140
invasion, 82-3 ; receives New
England's war indemnity, 91.
Braddock, General, his defeat,
95-
Bradstreet, Colonel John, at
first siege of Louisbourg, 40.
Byng, Admiral, his failure, 96.
Byron, Captain John, razes
Louisbourg, 136.
Canso, its surrender, 25; the
New England forcesat, 32, 33.
Cape Breton, under France, 3,
4, 8, 9 ; resources of, 9-10 ;
surrendered to Britain, 123,
136-7.
Cape Finisterre, naval battle
off, 89.
Chaffault, Admiral du, at
Louisbourg, 100.
Chambon, Governor du, de-
fends Louisbourg against
New England's attack, 34-5,
47, 5i. 54, 55, 60, 61 ; sur-
renders, 63-6.
Conflans, Admiral, and the re-
capture of Louisbourg, 85-6.
Connecticut, and New Eng-
land expeditions against the
French, 28, 80.
Crown Point, raid on, 82.
Drucour, governor of Louis-
bourg, his forces, 101 ; op-
poses the British landing,
INDEX
141
105-7; .his interchange of
courtesies with Amherst, m-
112 ; his object to save Quebec,
113, 116, 117, 121 ; surrenders,
122-6.
Drucour, Madame, at siege of
Louisbourg-, 111-12, 127.
Dundonald, Lord, killed in
sortie at Louisbourg, 117.
Estpurnel, Admiral d', his tra-
gic death, 87.
Farquhar, Major, receives the
surrender of the West Gate,
125.
Flat Point, on Gabarus Bay,
38, 42, 105, 107, 108, no.
Fort William Henry, massacre
at, 122, 124.
France, and Louisbourg, 5-6,
9, 10 ; her system of colonial
government, 11-13 ; her dis-
astrous expeditions to retake
Louisbourg, 82, 84-9; re-
ceives Louisbourg under
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
89. 93-4 100 J stung by the
second fall of Louisbourg,
126, 127 ; her circular to the
Powers of Europe on Britain's
sea-power, 127-8.
Freshwater Cove, on Gabarus
Bay, 38.
Gabarus Bay, 20; landing of
New England's army at, 36,
38-9> 43 ; and of Amherst's
army, 104-7, II0 -
Gallows Hill, battery erected
on, 117-18.
Gibson, James, 9; assists
Shirley in his plans against
Louisbourg, 27, 28.
Gorham, of the Rangers, his
report on Louisbourg, 98.
Gotham's Post, at Louisbourg,
60-1.
Gouttes, Admiral des, at de-
fence of Louisbourg, 114-15.
Great Awakening, the, in New
England, 30, 53.
Great Britain, and the first fall of
Louisbourg, 71-2, 90-1 ; gives
up Louisbourg to France,
89 ; her navy compared with
that of France, 84-5, 102,
127-8 ; rejoicing in at second
fall of Louisbourg, 128-30.
Green Hill, battery at, 45, 64,
113-
Gridley, Colonel, at first siege
of Louisbourg, 61.
Halifax, 85, 86 ; founded, 90-1,
92, 103 ; rejoicing in at the
British victory at Louisbourg,
132-3-
Hardy, Sir Charles, 97; his
blockade of Louisbourg, 104.
Hawke, Admiral, 100, 134.
Hay, Sir Charles, his criticism
of Loudoun's preparations,
97-8.
[olb
Hoi bourne, Admiral, his dis-
astrous expedition, 97-9.
He Royale, 3, 10. See Cape
Breton.
He St Jean, 13. See Prince
Edward Island.
Indians, in Maritime Provinces,
16 ; with Matin, 36 ; with
Drucour, 101, 116, 124, 125.
Island Battery of Louisbourg,
19, 20, 56, 93, 101, in ; the
night attack on, 57-60;
silenced, 61-2, 68, 113, 114.
142
THE GREAT FORTRESS
Kennington Cove, Wolfe's
landing - place on Gabarus
Bay, 105-6.
Knox, Captain, on the second
fall of Louisbourg, 131-2.
La Jonquiere, Admiral, his
defeat off Cape Finisterre,
87-9.
La Motte, Admiral, at Louis-
bourg, 98-9.
Lawrence, Governor, at Hali-
fax, 132-3.
Lighthouse Point, 21, 37, 58;
a battery erected at, 60-2, 93,
101 ; destroyed and abandoned
by Drucour, 107-8 ; erected
by the British, 108-9, in, 113,
xii.
Loudoun, Earl of, his prepara-
tions against Louisbourg,
97-8.
Louisbourg, 1-2, 7, 17, 74, 90,
134, 136 ; the building of the
fortress, 5, 6, 22-3 ; character
of the French population, 3,
4, 5, 8 ; its contraband trade
with New England, 7-8, 92 ;
its system of government, n-
14. 21, 35 ; army life in, 14-
10, 22, 35, 93 ; the ' Dunkirk '
of New France, 17-18 ; works
and fortifications of, 19-23,
93, 108 ; its position in rela-
tion to New England, 24-5 ;
its preparations against at-
tack, 34-6, 38 ; FIRST SIEGE
Royal Battery captured,
39-42 ; the bombardment,
45-50, 62 ; the blockade, 36,
54-5; the Island Battery
nignt attack, 57-60; Island
Battery silenced, 61-2 ; sur-
render of Louisbourg to Pep-
perrell and Warren, 63-6;
garrisoned by New Eng-
land men, 67-8, 74-80 ; given
back to France, 89, 90 ; La
Motte at, 98 ; its preparations
to withstand siege, 101-2;
SECOND SIEGE isolated by
Pitt, 100, 101 ; the landing of
the British, 104-7 , the siege,
108-21 ; surrendered to Am-
herst and Boscawen, 122-6 ;
the fate of the prisoners, 126-
127 ; serves as Wolfe's base
in siege of Quebec, 134-6 ;
utterly destroyed, 136-7.
Marin, guerilla leader, besieges
Annapolis, 36, 51.
Maritime War, the, 95, 100, 127.
Maryland, and war against the
French, 80.
Mascarene, Paul, defends An-
napolis, 26.
Massachusetts, and Shirley's
plan against Louisbourg, 25,
26-8 ; mutiny of the men of,
76, 77 ; and the extirpation of
the French from Canada, 80,
82 ; the royal message to, 91.
See New England States.
Mauger, Joseph, a Halifax
trader, amasses great wealth
by smuggling, 92.
Meserve', Colonel, his gun-
sleigh at Louisbourg, 44.
Micmacs, the, 16, 92.
Mira river, the French settle-
ment at, 8-9, 137.
Montcalm, Marquis de, French
commander in Canada, 15,
95, 96, 101, 122.
Moody, Parson, with the New
England forces at siege of
Louisbourg, 31, 33, 67, 71.
INDEX
143
Newcastle, Duke of, and the
New England army, 78, 81.
New England States, their
colonists compared with the
French, 4, 16; their contra-
band trade with Louisbourg,
7, 92 ; their erroneous ideas
concerning the strength of
French resources, n ; their
preparations against Louis-
bourg, 24-5, 26, 28-9, 30, 41 ;
their forces, 31-2, 33, 76 ; the
landing on Gabarus Bay, 38-
39, 43 > capture of Royal Bat-
tery, 39-42; hardships and
difficulties, 43-5 ; the bom-
bardment, 45-50, 62 ; some
irregularities, 51-2; and
gaieties, 52-3; the night
attack on Island Battery, 57-
60; the surrender of Louis-
bourg to Pepperrell and
Warren, 63-6 ; disappoint-
ment of the Provincials, 66-8,
70, 75. their discontent and
miseries in Louisbourg, 76-
80 ; the army disbanded, 81 ;
their fear of French invasion,
82-3, 88 ; their resentment in
connection with the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle, 89, 90-1 ;
effect of the second fall of
Louisbourg in, 130-1.
New France in 1720, 1-4 ; sys-
tem of government in, 11-13
and the Indians, 16-17; and
Louisbourg, 103.
New ^ Hampshire, and war
against the French, 28, 80.
New Jersey, and Shirley's plans
against the French, 80.
New York, and the New Eng-
land attack on Louisbourg, 29;
and French extirpation, 80, 82.
Paris, peace of, x.
Pennsylvania, and war against
the French, 80-1.
Pepperrell, Sir William, com-
mander of New England
army at siege of Louisbourg,
29, 30, 34, 38, 40, 45, 48, Sif
55, 56-7 ? 58, 63-6, 68; cele-
brates his victory, 70-1 ; made
a baronet, 72, 78 ; his troubles
with his army in Louisbourg,
74-7, 80.
Pitt, William, minister of War,
96, 102 ; his world - wide
campaign, 99-100, 127 ; his
Empire Year, 135, 136.
Prevost, intendant of Louis-
bourg, 93, 122-3.
Prince, Rev. Thomas, and the
New England attack on
Louisbourg, 31 ; his litany
on the threatened French in-
vasion, 83-4.
Prince Edward Island, 13 ;
surrendered to Britain, 123.
Quakers of Pennsylvania, their
principles, 81, 130.
Quebec, its relations with
Louisbourg, 11-12, 22, 36,
103, in, 113, 126, 134; on
the defensive, 101.
Quesnel, Governor du, much
disliked in Louisbourg, 25,
34-
Rhode Island, and war against
the French, 28-9, 80.
Rous, Captain, at siege of
Louisbourg, 73.
Royal Battery of Louisbourg,
19, 37, 93, 10 1 ; its capture
in New England siege, 39-
42, 48, 54, 58, 62 ; destroyed
144
THE GREAT FORTRESS
by Drucour, 107-8; erected
again by the British, 108-9,
114.
Saunders, Admiral, his fleet at
Louisbourg, 135.
Scott, Major, with Wolfe in
landing on Gabarus Bay, 106.
Seven Years' War, beginning
of, 94-5.
Shirley, Governor, of Massa-
chusetts, plans an attack on
Louisbourg, 26, 27, 28, 29,
32 ; his plan, 36-7 ; receives
a colonelcy, 72, 78 ; settles
grievances of the New
England army, 77-8 ; his
scheme against the French,
80.
Titcomb's Battery, the mount-
ing of guns at, 48, 56.
Ulloa, Don Antonio de, taken
prisoner at Louisbourg, 69.
Utrecht, treaty of, i, 2, 4, 18.
Vaughan, William, and the
New England attack on
Louisbourg, 26, 28, 57 ; cap-
tures the Royal Battery, 39-
40.
Vauquelin, captain of the
' Arethuse ' in the defence of
Louisbourg, in, 114; runs
the gauntlet of the British
fleet and reaches France, 115-
116.
Virginia, and war against the
French, 80.
Vivier, du, captures Canso, 25 ;
besieges Annapolis, 26, 36.
Warren, Admiral, aids New
England in her attack on
Louisbourg, 32 ; his fleet, 32-
33, 51, 62, 63; begins the
blockade, 34, 36, 48, 54-7,
63-5, 72 ; the success of his
stratagem, 68-9 ; his popular-
ity, 70; with Anson defeats
the French off Cape Finis-
terre, 89.
Whitefield, George, famous
preacher, 30 ; and the New
England attack on Louis-
bourg, 30, 31.
White Point, on Gabarus Bay,
105, 107.
Wolfe, General, with Amherst
at siege of Louisbourg, 103,
116 ; at the landing on Gab-
arus Bay, 105-6 ; erects
Royal and Lighthouse Bat-
teries, 108-9 ; defeats French
sortie and seizes Gallows
Hill, 117; at Halifax, 133;
at Louisbourg preparing for
the siege of Quebec, 134-5.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
of the University of Toronto
A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for
popular reading, designed to set forth, in historic con-
tinuity, the principal events and movements in Canada,
from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.
PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS
1. The Dawn of Canadian History
A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
2. The Manner of St Malo
A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE
3. The Founder of New France
A Chronicle of Champlain
BY CHARLES W. COLBY
4. The Jesuit Missions
A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada
A Chronicle of New- World Feudalism
BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO
6. The Great Intendant
A Chronicle of Jean Talon
BY THOMAS CHAPAIS
7. The Fighting Governor
A Chronicle of Frontenac
BY CHARLES W. COLBY
The Chronicles of Canada
PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION
8. The Great Fortress
A Chronicle of Louisbonrg.
BY WILLIAM WOOD
9. The Acadian Exiles
A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY
JO. The Passing of New France
A Chronicle of Montcalm
BY WILLIAM WOOD
,11. The Winning of Canada
A Chronicle of Wolfe
BY WILLIAM WOOD
PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA
12. The Father of British Canada
A Chronicle of Car leton
BY WILLIAM WOOD
13. The United Empire Loyalists
A Chronicle of the Great Migration
BY W. STEWART WALLACE
14. The War with the United States
A Chronicle of 1812
BY WILLIAM WOOD
PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA
15. The War Chief of the Ottawas
A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
16. The War Chief of the Six Nations
A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD
17. Tecumseh
A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND
The Chronicles of Canada
PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST
1 8. The 'Adventurers of England ' on Hudson
Bay ,
A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
BY AGNES C. LAUT
19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains
A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons
BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE
20. Adventurers of the Far North
A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
21. The Red River Colony
A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD
22. Pioneers of the Pacific Coast
A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
BY AGNES C. LAUT
23. The Cariboo Trail
A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
BY AGNES C. LAUT
PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM
24. The Family Compact
A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada
BY W. STEWART WALLACE
25. The Patriotes of '37
A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada
BY ALFRED D. DECELLES
26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia
A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT
27. The Winning of Popular Government
A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN
The Chronicles of Canada
PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY
28. The Fathers of Confederation
A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN
29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald
A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
BY SIR JOSEPH POPE
30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier
A Chronicle of Our Own Times
BY OSCAR D. SKELTON
PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS
31. All Afloat
A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
BY WILLIAM WOOD
32. The Railway Builders
A Chronicle of Overland Highways
BY OSCAR D. SKELTON
Published by
Glasgow, Brook & Company
TORONTO, CANADA
FC 162 .C47 v.8
SMC
Wood, William Charles
Henry, 1864-1947.
The great fortress :
chronicle of
AYS-4541 (mcab)
