OF
LOUISBUF^G
L ADAMS DRAK
^AMERICAN
HISTORY
I
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THE
TAKING OF LOUISBURG
174*
BY
SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE
AUTHOR OF " BURGOYNE'S INVASION OF 1777" ETC.
BOSTON MDCCCXCI
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
IO MILK STREET NEXT " THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE "
NEW YORK CHAS. T. DILLINGHAM
718 AND 720 BROADWAY
COPYRIGHT, 1890,
Bv LEE AND SHEPARD.
THE TAKING OF LOUISBUKG.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES .... g
II. LOUISBURG REVISITED 13
III. LOUISBURG TO SOLVE IMPORTANT POLITICAL AND
MILITARY PROBLEMS 24
IV. RESUME OF EVENTS TO THE DECLARATION OF
WAR 33
V. " LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN " .... 46
VI. THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL .... 59
VII. THE ARMY AT CANSO 73
VIII. THE SIEGE 80
IX. THE SIEGE CONTINUED . . . . . 101
X. AFTERTHOUGHTS 126
THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
1745
COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES
THE creation of great maritime fortresses,
primarily designed to hold with iron hand impor-
tant highways of commerce, like Gibraltar, or
simply to guard great naval arsenals, like
Kronstadt, or, again, placed where some great river
has cleft a broad path into the heart of a
country, thus laying it open to invasion, has long
formed part of the military policy of all .maritime
nations,
In the New World the Spaniards were the first
to emphasize their adhesion to these essential
principles by the erection of strongholds at
Havana, Carthagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz,
not more to guarantee the integrity of their colo-
IO THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
nial possessions, than to protect themselves
against the rapacity of the titled freebooters of
Europe, to whom the treasure fleets of Mexico
and the East offered a most alluring prey. When
Spain carried the purse, all the crowned heads of
Europe seem to have turned highwaymen.
With this single exception the seaboard defences
of the Atlantic coast, even as late as the middle
of the eighteenth century, were of the most trivial
character, nor was it owing to any provision for
defence that the chief ports of the English
colonies enjoyed the long immunity they did.
England left her colonies to stand or fall upon
their own resources. Fortunate beyond expecta-
tion, they simply throve by neglect. France, with
a widely different colonial policy, did a little better,
but with a niggardly hand, while her system was
squeezing the life-blood out of her colonists, drop
by drop. Had there been a Drake or a Hawkins
in the Spanish service, Spain might easily have
revenged all past affronts by laying desolate every
creek and harbor of the unprotected North
Atlantic coast. She had the armed ports, as we
have just shown. She had the ships and sailors.
COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES 1 1
What, then, was to have prevented her from
destroying the undefended villages of Charleston,
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston ?
Though she set about it so tardily, France was
at length compelled to adopt a system of defence
for Canada, or see Canada wrested from her con-
trol. In a most sweeping sense the St. Lawrence
was the open gateway of Canada. There was
absolutely no other means of access to all its vast
territory except through the long, little known,
and scarce-travelled course of the Mississippi a
route which, for many reasons besides its isolation,
removed it from consideration as an avenue of
att'ack._
Quebec was as truly the heart of Canada as the
St. Lawrence was its great invigorating, life-
giving artery. It is true that Quebec began to
assume at a very early day something of its later
character as half city, half fortress, but the views
of its founders were unquestionably controlled as
much by the fact of remoteness from the sea, as
by Quebec's remarkable natural capabilities for
blocking the path to an enemy.
Yet even before the memorable and decisive
12 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
battle on the Plains of Abraham, by which Canada
was lost to France forever, the St. Lawrence had
been thrice ascended by hostile fleets, and Quebec
itself once taken by them. Mere remoteness was
thus demonstrated to be no secure safeguard
against an enterprising enemy. But what if that
enemy should seize and fortify the mouth of the
St. Lawrence itself? He would have put a
tourniquet upon the great artery, to be tightened
at his pleasure, and the heart of the colony, despite
its invulnerable shield, would beat only at his
dictation.
We will now pass on to the gradual develop-
ment of this idea in the minds of those who held
the destiny of Canada in their keeping.
LOUISBURG REVISITED 13
II
LOUISBURG REVISITED
THE annals of a celebrated fortress are sure to
present some very curious and instructive phases
of national policy and character. Of none of the
fortresses of colonial America can this be said
with greater truth than of Louisburg, once the
key and stronghold of French power in Canada.
No historic survey can be called complete which
does not include the scene itself. Nowhere does
the reality of history come home to us with such
force, or leave such deep, abiding impressions, as
when we stand upon ground where some great
action has been performed, or reach a spot hal-
lowed by the golden memories of the past. It
gives tone, color, consistency to the story as noth-
ing else can, and, for the time being, we almost
persuade ourselves that we, too, are actors in the
great drama itself.
14 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
It is doubtless quite true that the first impres-
sions one gets when coming into Louisburg from
sea must be altogether disappointing. Indeed,
speaking for myself, I had formed a vague notion,
I know not how, that I was going to see another
Quebec, or, at least, something quite like that an-
tique stronghold, looming large in the distance,
just as the history of the fortress itself looms up
out of its epoch. On the contrary, we saw a low,
tame coast, without either prominent landmark or
seamark to denote the harbor, except to those who
The cape know every rock and tree upon it, lift-
Breton coast. j n g nown ere the castellated ruins that
one's eyes are strained to seek, and chiefly formi-
dable now on account of the outlying shoals,
sunken reefs, and intricate passages that render
the navigation both difficult and dangerous to
seamen.
On drawing in toward the harbor, we pass be-
tween a cluster of three small, rocky islets at the
Lighthouse l e ft hand, one of which is joined to that
shore by a sunken reef ; and a rocky
point, of very moderate elevation, at the right, on
which the harbor lighthouse stands, the ship chan-
LOUISBURG REVISITED 15
nel being thus compressed to a width of half a mile
between the innermost island and point.
The harbor is so spacious as to seem deserted,
and so still as to seem oppressive.
The island just indicated was, in the days of the
Anglo-French struggles here, the key to this har-
isiand kor, but the opposite point proved the
Battery. master-key. Neither of the great war
fleets that took part in the two sieges of Louis-
burg ventured to pass the formidable batteries of
that island, commanding as they did the entrance
at short range, and masking the city behind them,
until their fire had first been silenced from the
lighthouse point yonder. When that was done,
Louisburg fell like the ripe pear in autumn.
The old French city and fortress, the approach
to which this Island Battery thus securely covered,
Old rose at the southwest point of the har-
Louisburg. k orj or on t h e gfje opposite to the pres-
ent town of Louisburg, which is a fishing and
coaling station for six months in the year, and for
the other six counts for little or nothing. In
summer it is land-locked ; in winter, ice-locked.
Pack ice frequently blockades the shores of the
l6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
whole island until May, and snow sometimes lies
in the woods until June. Yet in Cape Breton they
call Louisburg an open harbor, and its choice as
the site for a fortress finally turned upon the
belief that it was accessible at all seasons of the
year. As to that, we shall see later.
As for the country lying between Sydney and
Louisburg, all travellers agree in pronouncing it
wholly without interesting features. And the few
inhabitants are scarcely more interesting than the
country. In a word, it is roughly heaved about in
Face of the a series of shaggy ridges, sometimes
country. rising to a considerable height, through
which the Mira, an arm of the sea, forces its way
at flood-tide. There is a settlement or two upon
this stream, as there was far back in the time of
the French occupation, but everything about the
country wears a forlorn and unprosperous look ;
the farms being few and far between, the houses
poor, the land thin and cold, and the people I
mean them no disparagement much like the land,
from which they get just enough to live upon, and
no more. Fortunately their wants are few, and
their habits simple.
LOUISBURG REVISITED I/
Louisburg is certainly well worth going nine
hundred miles to see, but when, at last, one stands
Remains of on the grass-grown ramparts, and gets
the Fortress. fa s ft^ ser j ous jd ea o f their amazing
strength and extent, curiosity is lost in wonder,
wonder gives way to reflection, and reflection leads
straight to the question, " What do all these miles
of earthworks mean ? " And I venture to make
the assertion that no one who has ever been to
Louisburg will rest satisfied till he has found his
answer. The story is long, but one rises from its
perusal with a clearer conception of the nature of
the struggle for the mastery of a continent.
Perhaps the one striking thought about this place
is its utter futility. Man having no further use
for it, nature quietly reclaims it for her own again.
Sheep now walk the ramparts instead of sentinels.
Upon looking about him, one sees the marked
feature of all this region in the chain of low hills
Dominating risin g behind Louisburg. But a little
Hills - back from the coast the hills rise higher,
are drawn more compactly together, and assume
the semi-mountainous character common to the
whole island.
1 8 THE TAKING OF LOU1SBURG
As this chain of hills undulates along the coast
here, sometimes bending a little back from it, or
again inclining out toward it, one of its
Green Hill.
zigzags approaches within a mile of
Louisburg. At this point, several low, lumpy
ridges push off for the seashore, through long
reaches of boggy moorland, now and then disap-
pearing beneath a shallow pond or stagnant pool,
which lies glistening among the hollows between.
Where it is uneven the land is stony and unfer-
tile ; where level, it is a bog. This rendered the
land side as unfavorable to a besieging force as
the nest of outlying rocks and reefs did the sea
approaches. A continued rainfall must have
made it wholly untenable for troops.
It is one of these ridges just noticed as breaking
away from the main range toward the seashore,
and so naturally bent, also, as to touch the sea at
The Fortified one en< ^ an ^ ^he harbor at the other,
Line. t h at foe French engineers converted
into a regular fortification ; while within the space
thus firmly enclosed by both nature and art, the
old city of the lilies stretched down a gentle,
grassy slope to the harbor shore.
LOUISBURG REVISITED 19
Not one stone of this city remains upon another
to-day. After the second siege (1758) the English
Demolition of engineers were ordered to demolish it,
the city. anc ^ SQ ar as p resen t appearances go,
never was an order more effectually carried out.
All that one sees to-day, in room of it, is a poor
fishing hamlet, straggling along the edge of the
harbor, the dwellings being on one side, and the
fish-houses and stages on the other side of the Syd-
ney road, which suddenly contracts into a lane,
and then comes to an end, along with the village
itself, in a fisherman's back-yard.
Not so, however, with the still massive earth-
works, for the British engineers were only able,
after many months' labor, and with a liberal use
of powder, to partly execute the work of demoli-
tion assigned them.
I spent several hours, at odd times, in wandering
about these old ruins, and could not help being
thankful that for once, at least, the destroying
hand of man had been compelled to abandon its
work to the rains and frosts of heaven.
Beginning with the citadel, in which the formali-
ties of the surrender took place, I found it still
2O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
quite well defined, although nothing now remains
above ground except some old foundation walls to
citadel or show where long ranges of stone builcl-
King's Bastion. j ngs once s t O od. Here were the differ-
ent military offices, the officers' quarters and the
chapel. The shattered bomb-proofs, however,
were still distinguishable, though much choked up
with debris, and their well-turned arches remain
The case- to snow now firmly the solid masonry
mates. resisted the assaults of the engineers.
In these damp holes the women, children, and
non-combatants passed most of the forty-seven
days of the siege. From this starting-point one
may continue the walk along the ramparts, without
once quitting them, for fully a mile, to the point
where they touch the seashore among the
inaccessible rocks and heaving surf of the ocean
itself.
These ramparts nowhere rise more than fifty feet
above the sea-level, but are everywhere of amazing
thickness and solidity. The moat was originally
eighty feet across, and the walls stood thirty feet
above it, but these dimensions have been much
reduced by the work of time and weather. A
LOUISBURG REVISITED 21
considerable part of the line was further defended
by a marsh, through which a storming column
would have found it impossible to advance, and
hardly less difficult to make a retreat. The
besiegers were therefore obliged to concentrate
their attack upon one or two points, and
Natural Ob-
stacles made these had been rendered the most
formidable of the whole line in conse-
quence of the knowledge that the other parts were
comparatively unassailable. In other words, the
besieged were able to control, in a measure, where
the besiegers should attack them.
Although the partly ruined bomb-proofs are the
only specimens of masonry now to be seen in
making this tour, the broad and deep excavation
of the moat and covered-way, and the clean, well-
grassed slopes of the glacis, promise to hold
together for another century at least. Brambles
and fallen earth choke up the embrasures. It is
necessary to use care i order to avoid treading
upon a toad or a snake while you are groping
among the mouldy casemates or when crossing
the parade. Those magical words " In the King's
name," so often proclaimed here with salvos of
22 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
artillery, have now no echo except in the sullen
dash of the sea against the rocky shores outside
the perishing fortress, and
" What care these roarers for the name of King?"
Still following the sheep-paths that zigzag about
so as nearly to double the distance, I next turned
back toward the harbor, leaving on my right the
bleak and wind-swept field in which, to
Graveyard,
Point Roche- the lasting reproach of New England,
fort.
five hundred of her bravest sons lie
without stone or monument to mark their last
resting-place. It is true that most of these men
died of disease, and not in battle ; yet to see the
place as I saw it, in all its pitiful nakedness,
isolation, and neglect, is the one thing at
Louisburg that a New Englander would gladly
have missed ; and he will be very apt to walk on
with a slower and less confident step, and with
something less of admiration for the glory which
consigns men to such oblivion as this.
To give anything like an adequate idea of how
skilfully all the peculiarities of the ground were
in some cases made use of in forming the
LOUISBURG REVISITED 23
defences, or in others, with equal art, overcome,
would require a long chapter to itself. In order
to render the main fortress more secure, the
French engineer officers selected a spot three-
fourths of a mile above it, on the harbor shore,
Ro al on which they erected a battery that
Battery. raked the open roadstead with its fire.
It was a very strong factor in the system of
defences as against a sea attack. This isolated
work was called the Royal Battery, or in the
English accounts, the Grand Battery. Yet, so far
from contributing to the successful defence of the
fortress, it became, in the hands of the besiegers,
a powerful auxiliary to its capture. But the whole
system of defence here shows that the marshes
extending on the side of Gabarus Bay, where a
landing was practicable only in calm weather,
were considered an insuperable obstacle to the
movements of artillery ; and without artillery
Louisburg could never have been seriously
attacked from the land side. Against a sea
attack it was virtually impregnable.
24 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
III
LOUISBURG TO SOLVE IMPORTANT POLITICAL AND
MILITARY PROBLEMS
HAVING glanced at the purely military exigen-
cies, which had at length forced themselves upon
the attention of French statesmen, and having
gone over the ground with the view of impressing
its topographical features more firmly in our minds,
we may now look at the underlying political and
economic causes, out of which the French court
finally matured a scheme for the maintenance of
their colonial possessions in Canada in the broadest
sense.
In creating Louisburg the court of Versailles
had far more extended views than the building of
a strong fortress to guard the gateway into Canada
would of itself imply. Unquestionably that was
a powerful inducement to the undertaking ; but,
in the beginning, it certainly appears to have been
POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 25
only a secondary consideration. For a long time
the condition of affairs in the colony had been far
French Colo- f rom satisfactory, while the future prom-
mai system. j se( j \fa\Q that was encouraging. , Com-
pared with the English colonies, its progress was
slow, irregular, and unstable. Agriculture was
greatly neglected. So were manufactures. The
home government had exercised, from the first,
a guardianship that in the long run proved fatal to
the growth of an independent spirit. There were
swarms of governmental and ecclesiastical depend-
ents who laid hold of the fattest perquisites, or
else, through munificent and inconsiderate grants
obtained from the crown, enjoyed monopolies of
trade to the exclusion of legitimate competition.
These leeches were sucking the life-blood out of
Canada. So far, then, from being a self-sustaining
colony, the annual disbursements of the
Its Unsatis-
factory Work- crown were looked to as a means to
make good the deficiency arising be-
tween what the country produced and what it con-
sumed. Without protection the English colonies
steadily advanced in wealth and population ; with
protection, Canada, settled at about the same time,
scarcely held her own.
26 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
Two very able and sagacious men, the intend-
ants Raudot, were the first who had the courage
to lay before the court of Versailles the true con-
dition of affairs, and the ability to suggest a
remedy for it.
These intendants represented that the fur trade
had always engrossed the attention of the Cana-
The Fur Trade dians, to the exclusion of everything
Monopoly. G \ SQ ^of Qn \y na( j fa e beaver skin
become the recognized standard for all exchanges
of values, but the estimated annual product of the
country was based upon it, very much as we should
reckon the worth of the grain crop to the United
States to-day. It was also received in payment
for revenues. Now, after a long experience, what
was the result of an exclusive attention to this
traffic ? It wag shown that the fur trade enriched
no one except a few merchants, who left the coun-
try as soon as they had acquired the means of
living at their ease in Old France. It had, there-
fore, no element whatever of permanent advantage
to the colony.
It was also shown that this fur trade was by no
means sufficient to sustain a colony of such impor-
POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 2/
tance as Canada unquestionably might become
under a different system of management ; for
whether the beaver should finally be-
Danger of Ex-
clusive Atten- come extinct through the greed of the
tion to it.
traders, or so cheapened by glutting the
market abroad as to lose its place in commerce
entirely, it was evident that precisely the same
result would be reached. In any case, the busi-
ness was a precarious one. It limited the number
of persons who could be profitably employed ; it
bred them up to habits of indolence and vice with-
out care for the future ; and it kept them in igno-
rance and poverty to the last. But, what was
worst of all, this all-engrossing pursuit kept the
population from cultivating the soil, the true and
only source of prosperity to any country.
Other cogent reasons were given, but these
most conclusively set forth what a mercantile
monopoly having its silent partners in the local
government and church, as well as in the royal
palace itself, had been able to do in the way of
retarding the development of the great native
resources of Canada. It was so ably done that no
voice was raised against it. And with this most
28 ^ THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
lucid and fearless expose" of the puerile use thus
far made of those resources the memorialist states-
men hoped to open the king's eyes.
They now proposed to wholly reorganize this
unsound commercial system" by directing capital
and labor into new channels. Such
The two Rau-
dotsoffera natural productions of the country as
Remedy. , .
masts, boards, ship-timber, flax, hemp,
plaster, iron and copper ores, dried fish, whale and
seal oils, and salted meats, might be exported, they
said, with profit to the merchant and advantage to
the laboring class, provided a suitable port were
secured, at, once safe, commodious, and well situ-
ated for collecting all these commodities, and
shipping them abroad.
To this end, these intendants now first brought
to notice the advantages of Cape Breton for such
an establishment. Strangely enough,
Cape Breton
brought to up to this time little or no attention had
been paid to this island. Three or four
insignificant fishing ports existed on its coasts,
but as yet the whole interior was a shaggy wilder-
ness, through which the Micmac Indians roamed
as freely as their fathers had done before Cartier
POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 29
ascended the St. Lawrence. Its valuable deposits
of coal and gypsum lay almost untouched in their
native beds ; its stately timber trees rotted where
they grew ; its unrivalled water-ways, extending
through the heart of the island, served no better
purpose than as a highway for wandering savages.
By creating such a port as the Raudots sug-
gested, the voyage from France would be short-
ened one half, and the dangerous navigation of the
St. Lawrence altogether avoided, since, instead of
large ships having to continue their voyages to
Quebec, the carrying trade of the St. Lawrence
would fall to coasting vessels owned in the colony.
A strong hand would also be given to
Acadia to be
helped. the neighbor province, the fertile yet
unprotected Acadia, which might thus be pre-
served against the designs of the English, while a
thriving trade in wines, brandies, linens, and rich
stuffs might reasonably be expected to spring up
with the neighboring English colonies.
These were considerations of such high national
importance as to at once secure for the project an
attention which purely strategic views could hardly
be expected to command. And yet, the forming
3O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
of a military and naval depot, strong enough to
guarantee the security of the proposed port, and
in which the king's ships might at need
A Military and
Naval Arsenal refit, or take refuge, or sally out upon
an enemy, was an essential feature of
this elaborate plan, every detail of which was
set forth with systematic exactness. For seven
years the project was pressed upon the French
court. War, however, then engaging the whole
attention of the ministry, the execution of this
far-seeing project, which had in view the demands
of peace no less than of war, was unavoidably put
off until the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, by giving
a wholly new face to affairs in the New World,
compelled France to take energetic measures for
the security of her colonial possessions.
By this treaty of Utrecht France surrendered
to England all Nova Scotia, all her conquests in
Hudson's Bay, with Placentia, her most important
Peace of establishment in Newfoundland. At the
utrecht. same time the treaty left Cape Breton
to France, an act of incomparable folly on the
part of the English plenipotentiaries who, with the
map lying open before them, thus handed over to
POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 31
Louis the key of the St. Lawrence and of Canada.
No one now doubts that the French king saw in
this masterpiece of stupidity a way to retrieve all
he had lost at a single stroke. The English com-
missioners, it is to be .presumed, saw nothing.
Having the right to fortify, under the treaty, it
only remained for the French court to determine
which of the island ports would be best adapted to
the purpose, St. Anne, on the north, or English
Harbor on the south-east coast. St. Anne was a
safe and excellent haven, easily made impregnable,
with all the materials requisite for building and
fortifying to be found near the spot. Behind it
lay the fertile cotes of the beautiful Bras d'Or,
with open water stretching nearly to the Straits
of Canso. On the other hand, besides being
surrounded by a sterile country, materials of every
kind, except timber, must be transported to
English Harbor at a great increase of labor and
cost. More could be done at St. Anne with two
thousand francs, it was said, than with two hundred
thousand at the rival port. But the difficulty of
taking ships of large tonnage into St. Anne
through an entrance so narrow that only one could
32 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
pass in or out at the same time, finally gave the
preference to English Harbor, which had a ship
channel of something less than two
English
Harbor hundred fathoms in breadth, a good
chosen. , r
anchorage, and plenty of beach room
for erecting stages and drying fish. It was, more-
over, sooner clear of ice in spring.
The first thing done at Cape Breton was to
change the old, time-honored name of the island
the very first, it is believed, which signalled the
presence of Europeans in these waters
Name
changed to to the unmeaning one of Isle Royale.
L ou i s b u r g .
English Harbor also took the name of
Louisburg, in honor of the reigning monarch.
Royalty having thus received its dues, the work
of construction now began in earnest.
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 33
IV
RESUME OF EVENTS TO THE DECLARATION.
OF WAR
WE will now rapidly sketch the course of events
which led to war on both sides of the Atlantic.
Having been obliged to surrender Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland, the French court determined
to make use of their colonists in those places for
building up Louisburg.
In the first place, M. de Costebello, who had just
lost his government of the French colony of
Placentia, in Newfoundland, under the terms of
the treaty, was ordered to take charge of the
proposed new colony on Cape Breton, and in
accord also with the provisions of that treaty, the
colonists pro- French inhabitants of Newfoundland
videdfor. we re presently removed from that
island to Cape Breton. But the Acadians of
Nova Scotia who had been invited, and were fully
34 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
counted upon to join the other colonists, now
showed no sort of disposition to do so. In their
case the French authorities had reckoned without
their host. These always shrewd Acadians were
unwilling to abandon the fertile and well-tilled
Acadian valleys, which years of toil had converted
into a garden, to begin a new struggle with the
Acadians wm wilderness in order to carry out certain
not emigrate, political schemes of the French court.
Though patriots, they were not simpletons. So
they sensibly refused to stir, although their
country had been turned over to the English. In
this way the French authorities were unexpectedly
checked in their first efforts to secure colonists of
a superior class for their new establishment in
Cape Breton.
How strange are the freaks of destiny ! Could
these simple Acadian peasants have foreseen
what was in store for them at no distant day, at
the hands of their new masters, who can doubt
that, like the Israelites of old, driving their flocks
before them, they too would have departed for the
Promised Land with all possible speed ?
Finding them thus obstinate, it was determined
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 35
to make them as useful as possible where they
were, and as a reconquest of Acadia was one of
those contingencies which Louisburg was meant to
turn into realities, whenever the proper
A Thorn in the
side of the moment should arrive, nothing was
English. , . 1111
neglected that might tend to the hold-
ing of these Acadians firmly to their ancient alle-
giance ; to keeping alive their old antipathies ; to
arousing their fears for their religion, or to strongly
impressing them with the belief that their legiti-
mate sovereign would soon drive these English
invaders from the land, never to return. For the
moment the king's lieutenants were obliged to
content themselves with planting this thorn in
the side of the English.
Acting upon the advice of the crafty Saint
Ovide, De Costebello's successor, the Acadians
refused to take the oath of allegiance proffered
them by the British governor of Nova Scotia
though they had refused to emigrate they said
they would not become British subjects. When
threatened they sullenly hinted at an uprising of
the Micmacs, who were as firmly attached to the
French interest as the Acadians themselves.
j6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
The governor, therefore, prudently forbore to
press matters to a crisis, all the more readily be-
why called cause ne was powerless to enforce obe-
Neutrais. dience ; and thus it came to pass that
the French inhabitants of Nova Scotia, under
English dominion, first took the name of neu-
trals.
Perceiving at last how they were being ground
between friend and foe, the Acadians began
hoarding specie, and to leave off improving their
houses and lands. A little later they are found
applying to the Governor-General of Canada for
grants of land in the old colony, to which they
might remove, and where they could dwell in
peace, for they somehow divined that they must
be the losers whenever fresh hostilities should
break out between the French and English, if, as
it seemed inevitable, the war should involve them
in its calamities. But that astute official returned
only evasive answers to their petition. His royal
victims to master had other views, to the success-
French Policy. ful igsue of wh}ch hig li eutenants were
fully pledged, and so it is primarily to French
policy, after all, that the wretched Acadians owed
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 37
their exile from the land of their fathers. What
followed was merely the logical result.
But in consequence of their first refusal to
remove to Louisburg only a handful of the
Micmacs responded to Costebello's call, by pitch-
ing their wigwams on the skirt of the embryo city.
Laborers were wanted next. For the procuring
of these the Governor-General of Canada, the
Marquis de Vaudreuil, hit upon the novel idea of
Laborers from tranS P rtin g eVei T y Car fr m France
the Galleys, those prisoners who were sentenced to
the galleys for smuggling. They were to come
out to Canada subject to the severe penalty of
never again being permitted to return to their
native land, "for which," said the cunning
marquis, " I undertake to answer."
" Lord Bacon, in one of his essays, makes the
following comments upon this iniquitous method
of raising up colonies : " It is a shameful and
unblessed thing," he says, "to take the scum of
people, and wicked condemned men to be the
people with whom you plant ; and not only so, but
it spoileth the plantations ; for they will ever live
like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and
38 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
do mischief and spend victuals : and be quickly
weary, and then certify over to their country -to
the discredit of the plantation."
Meanwhile, the sceptre that had borne such
potent sway in Europe dropped from the lifeless
hand of Louis the Great, to be taken up by the
"crowned automaton," Louis XV.
Pursuant to the policy thus outlined, which had
no less in view than the rehabilitation of Canada,
the recovery of Nova Scotia, the mastery of the
St. Lawrence, and the eventual restoration of
French prestige in America, France had in thirty
years created at Louisburg a fortress so strong
that it was commonly spoken of as the Dunkirk
of America. To do this she had lavished millions. 1
Beyond question it was the most formidable place
of arms on the American continent, far exceeding
strength of m tn ' s res P e ct the elaborate but anti-
Louisburg. quated strongholds of Havana, Panama,
and Carthagena, all of which had been built and
fortified upon the old methods of attack and
defence as laid down by the engineers of a pre-
vious century : while Louisburg had the important
advantage of being planned with all the skill that
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 39
the best military science of the day and the most
prodigal expenditure could command. When their
work was done, the French engineers boastingly
said that Louisburg could be defended by a
garrison of women.
The fortress, and its supporting batteries,
mounted nearly one hundred and fifty pieces of
artillery on its walls, some of which were of the
Armament of neav i est metal then in use. It was
Louisburg. deemed, and indeed proved itself, during
the progress of two sieges, absolutely impregnable
to an attack by a naval force alone. From this
stronghold Louis had only to stretch out a hand to
seize upon Nova Scotia, or drive the New England
fishermen from the adjacent seas.
In New England all these proceedings were
watched with the keenest interest, for there, at
least, if nowhere else, their true intent was so
quickly foreseen, their consequences so fully
realized, that the people were more and more
confounded by the imbecility which had virtually
put their whole fishery under French control.
As the situation in Europe was reflected on this
side of the Atlantic, it is instructive to look there
4O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
for the storm which, to the terror and dismay of
Americans, was now darkly overspreading the
continent.
The crowned gamblers of Europe had begun
their costly game of the Austrian succession.
Upon marching to invade Silesia, Frederick II.,
the neediest and most reckless gamester of them
all, had said to the French ambassador,
War of the
Austrian sue- "I am going, I believe, to play your
cession.
little game : and if I should throw
doublets we will share the stakes." Fortune
favored this great king of a little kingdom. He
won his first throw, seeing which, for she was at
first only a looker-on, France immediately sent two
armies into Bavaria to the Elector's aid. This
move was not unexpected in London. Ever since
England had forced hostilities with Spain, in 1740,
it was a foregone conclusion that the two branches
of the House of Bourbon would make common
cause, whenever a favorable opportunity should
present itself. England now retaliated by voting
a subsidy to Maria Theresa, and by taking into
pay some sixteen thousand of King George's
petted Hanoverians, who were destined to fight
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 4!
the French auxiliary contingent. England and
France were thus casting stones at each other over
the wall, or, as Horace Walpole cleverly put it,
England had the name of war with Spain without
the game, and war with France without the name.
It was inevitable that the war should now settle
down into a bitter struggle between the two great
rivals, France and England. On the 2Oth of
March, 1744, the court of Versailles formally
declared war. England followed on the 3ist.
Flanders became the battle-field between a hun-
dred and twenty-five thousand combatants, led,
respectively, by the old Count Maurice
English
defeated in de Saxe and the young Duke of Cum-
berland. In May, 1745, the French
marshal suddenly invested Tournay, 2 the greatest
of all the Flemish fortresses. The Duke of
Cumberland marched to its relief, gave battle, and
was thoroughly beaten at Fontenoy. This disaster
closed the campaign in the Old World. It left the
English nation terribly humiliated in the eyes of
Europe, while France, by this brilliant feat of
arms, fully reasserted her leadership in Continental
affairs.
42 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
But what had been a sort of Satanic pastime in
the Old World became a struggle for life in the
New. The people of New England, being natur-
ally more keenly alive to the dangers menacing
their trade, than influenced by a romantic sympa-
thy with the absurd quarrels about the Austrian
succession, anxiously watched for the first signal
of the coming conflict. They knew the enemy's
strength, and they were as fully aware of their
own weaknesses. Still there was no flinching.
The home government, being fully occupied with
the affairs of the Continent, and with the political
cabals of London, limited its efforts to arming a
situation in ^ ew ^ OY ^ & ln the colonies, and to keeping
New England. a f ew cru i sers j n the West Indian
waters ; but neither soldiers, arsenals, nor maga-
zines were provided for the defence of these
provinces, upon whom the enemy's first and hardest
blows might naturally be expected to fall, nor were
such other measures taken to meet such an
extraordinary emergency as its gravity would seem
in reason to demand.
Luckily for them, the colonists had been taught
in the hard school of experience that Providence
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 43
helps those who help themselves. To their own
resources they therefore turned with a vigor and
address manifesting a deep sense of the magnitude
of the crisis now confronting them.
The proclamation of war was not published in
Boston until the 2d of June, 1744. Having earlier
intelligence, the French at Louisburg had already
French seize begun hostilities by making a descent
canso. upon Canso, 3 a weak English post situ-
ated at the outlet of the strait of that name, and
so . commanding it, and within easy striking dis-
tance of Louisburg. News of this was brought to
Boston so seasonably that Governor Shirley had
time to throw a re-enforcement of two hundred
men into Annapolis, by which that post was saved ;
for the French, after their exploit at Canso, soon
made an attempt upon Annapolis, where they
were held in check until a second re-enforcement
obliged them to retire.
Governor Shirley lost no time in notifying the
captain Ryai ministry of what had happened, and he
don! Novem- particularly urged upon their attention
her, 1744- the defenceless state of Nova Scotia,
where Annapolis alone held a semi-hostile popula-
44 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
tion in check. To the end that the situation
might be more fully understood, he sent an
officer, who had been taken at Canso, with the
despatch.
At this time the incompetent Duke of New-
castle held the post of prime minister. When he
had read the despatch he exclaimed, " Oh, yes
yes to be sure. Annapolis must be defended
troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray where is
Annapolis ? Cape Breton an island ! wonderful !
Show it me on the map. So it is, sure enough.
My dear sir" (to the bearer of the despatch), "you
always bring us good news. I must go tell the
King that Cape Breton is an island."
It will be seen, later, that Shirley's timely ap-
plication to the ministry, on behalf of Nova Scotia,
involved the fate of Louisburg itself.
January, 1744.
Orders were promptly sent out to Com-
modore Warren, who was in command of a cruising
squadron in the West Indies, to proceed as early
as possible to Noya Scotia, for the purpose of pro-
tecting our settlements there, or of distressing the
enemy, as circumstances might require.
Shirley himself had also written to Warren,
THE DECLARATION OF WAR 45
requesting him to do this very thing, at the same
time the ministry were notified, though it was yet
too early to know the result of either application.
All eyes were now opened to Louisburg's danger-
ous power. But, come what might, Shirley was
evidently a man who would leave nothing undone.
1 LOUISBURG had cost the enormous sum of 30,000,000 livres or
.1,200,000 sterling.
2 PEPPERELL was besieging Louisburg at the same time the French
were Tournay.
3 CANSO was taken by Duvivier, May 13, 1744. The captors burnt
everything, carrying the captives to Louisburg, where they remained till
autumn, when they were sent to Boston. These prisoners were able to
give very important information concerning the fortress, its garrison, and
its means of defence.
46 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
V
"LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN"
HOWEVER Shirley's efforts to avert a present
danger might succeed, nobody saw more clearly
than he did that his measures only went half way
toward their mark. With Louisburg intact, the
enemy might sweep the coasts of New England
with their expeditions, and her commerce from
the seas. The return of spring, when warlike
operations might be again resumed, was therefore
looked forward to at Boston with the utmost un-
easiness. Merchants would not risk their ships
on the ocean. Fishermen dared not think of put-
ting to sea for their customary voyages to the
Grand Banks or the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Here
was a state of things which a people who lived by
their commerce and fisheries could only contem-
plate with the most serious forebodings. It was
fully equivalent to. a blockade of their ports, a
" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN " 47
stoppage of their industries, with consequent stag-
nation paralyzing all their multitudinous occupa-
tions.
Naturally the subject became a foremost matter
of discussion in the official and social circles, in
the pulpits, and in the tavern clubs of the New
public opinion England capital. It was the serious
aroused. topic in the counting-house and the
table-talk at home. It drifted out among the
laboring classes, who had so much at stake, with
varied embellishment. It went out into the coun-
try, gathering to itself fresh rumors like a rolling
snowball. In all these coteries, whether of the
councillors over their wine, of the merchants
around their punch-bowls, of the smutty smith at
his forge, or the common dock-laborer, the same
conclusion was reached, and constantly reiterated
Louisburg must be taken ! Yes ; Louisburg
must be taken ! Upon this decision the people
stood as one man.
It did not, however, enter into the minds of
even the most sanguine advocates of this idea that
they themselves would be shortly called upon to
make it effective in the one way possible. Such
48 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
a proposal would have been laughed at, at first.
The general voice was that the land and naval
forces of the kingdom ought to be employed for
the reduction of Louisburg, because no others
were available ; but, meantime, a public opinion
had been formed which only wanted a proper
direction to turn it into a force capable of doing
what it had decided upon. There was but one
man in the province who was equal to this task.
That some other man may have had the same
idea is but natural, when the same subject was
uppermost in the minds of all ; but where others
tossed it to and fro, like a tennis-ball, only this
one man grasped it with the force of a master
mind. 1 He was William Shirley, governor of
Massachusetts.
Governor Shirley soon showed himself the man
for the crisis. He was a lawyer of good abilities,
with a political reputation to make. He had a
wiiiiam clear head, strong will, plausible man-
shiriey. neFj an( j i mmO vable persistency in the
pursuit of a favorite project. If not a military
man by education, he had, at any rate, the military
instinct. He was, moreover, a shrewd manager,
" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 49
not easily disheartened or turned aside from his
purpose by a first rebuff, yet knowing how to yield
when, by doing so, he could see his way to carry
his point in the end.
The French, we remember, had made some
prisoners at Canso, who were first taken to
Louisburg, and then sent to Boston on parole.
These captives knew the place, but our smuggling
merchantmen knew it much better. They were
able to give a pretty exact account of the condition
of things at the fortress. We are now looking
backward a little. But what seems to have made
the strongest impression was the news that the
garrison itself had been in open mutiny during the
winter, most of the soldiers being Swiss, whose
loyalty, it was supposed, had been more or less
shaken. 2
Whether -William Vaughan, 3 a New Hampshire
merchant resident in Maine, first broached the
project of taking Louisburg to Shirley, cannot now
wiiiiam b determined, but, let the honor belong
Vaughan. primarily where it may, Vaughan's
scheme, as outlined by him, was too absurd for
serious consideration, however strongly he may
5O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
have believed in it himself. He seems to have
belonged to the class of enthusiasts at whose
breath obstacles vanish away ; yet we are bound
to say of him that his own easy confidence, with
his habit of throwing himself heart and soul into
whatever he undertook, gained over a good many
others to his way of thinking. Shirley therefore
encouraged Vaughan, who, after rendering really
valuable services, became so thoroughly imbued
with the notion that he was not only the originator
of the expedition, but the chief actor in it, that
the value of those services is somewhat obscured.
Governor Shirley's project now was to take
Louisburg, with such means as he himself could
get together. He, too, was more or less carried
away by the spirit which animated him, as men
must be to make others believe in them, but he
never lost his head. To a cool judgment, some of
Shirley's plans for assaulting Louisburg seem
almost, if not quite, as irrational as Vaughan's,
yet Shirley was not the man to commit any overt
act of folly, or shut his ears to prudent counsels.
Being so well acquainted with the temper and
spirit of the New England people, he knew that,
" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 5 I
before they would fight, they must be convinced.
To this end, he strengthened himself with the
proper arguments, wisely keeping his own counsel
until everything should be ripe for action. He
knew that the garrison of Louisburg was mutinous,
that its isolated position invited an attack, and
that the extensive works were much out of repair.
Moreover, he had calculated, almost to a
Counting the
chances of day, the time when the annual supplies
Success. . . .
ot men and munitions would arrive trom
France. He knew that Quebec was too distant
for effectively aiding Louisburg. An attack under
such conditions seemed to hold out a tempting
prospect of success ; yet realizing, as Shirley did,
that under any circumstances, no matter how
favorable or alluring they might seem, the enter-
prise would be looked upon as one of unparalleled
audacity, if not as utterly hopeless or visionary,
he determined to stake his own political fortunes
upon the issue and abide the result.
The garrison of Louisburg had been, in fact, in
open revolt, the outbreak proving so serious that
the commanding officer had begged his govern-
ment to replace the disaffected troops with others,
52 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
who could be depended upon. Shirley, therefore,
reckoned on a half-hearted resistance or none at
all. In a word, it was his plan to sur-
Shirley's Plan.
prise and take the place before it could
be re-enforced.
After obtaining a pledge of secrecy from the
members, Shirley proceeded to lay his project
before the provincial legislature of Massachusetts,
which was then in session. The governor's state-
ment, which was certainly cool and dispassionate,
ran somewhat to this effect : " Gentlemen of the
General Court, either we must take Louisburg or
see our trade annihilated. If you are of my mind
we will take it. I have reason to know that the
garrison is insubordinate. There is good ground
for believing that the commandant is afraid of his
own men, that the works are out of repair and
the stores running low. I need not dwell further
on what is so well known to you all. Now, with
four thousand such soldiers as this and the
neighboring provinces can furnish, aided by a
naval force similarly equipped, the place must
surely fall into our hands. I have, moreover,
strong hopes of aid from His Majesty's ships, now
" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN " 53
in our waters. But the great thing is to throw
our forces upon Louisburg before the enemy can
hear of our design. Secrecy and celerity are
therefore of the last importance. Consider well,
gentlemen, that such an opportunity is not likely
to occur again. What say you ? is Louisburg to
be ours or not ? "
The conservative provincial assembly deliber-
ated upon the proposal with closed doors, and with
Shirley's pian S reat unanimity rejected it. The sum
rejected. o ft a decision was this : " If we risk
nothing, we lose nothing. Should the enemy
strike us, we can strike back again. We can ruin
his commerce as well as he can destroy ours. Our
policy is to stand on the defensive. Very possi-
bly the men might be raised, but where are the
arsenals to equip them ; where is the money to
come from to pay them ; where are the engineers,
the artillerists, the siege artillery, naval stores,
and all the warlike material necessary to such a
siege ? Why, we haven't a single soldier ; we
haven't a penny. Surely your excellency must be
jesting with us. It is a magnificent project, but
visionary, your excellency, quite visionary."
54 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
To make use of parliamentary terms, the gov-
ernor had leave to withdraw, but those who
dreamed that he would abandon his darling scheme
at the first rebuff it met with, did not know
William Shirley.
The affair was now no longer a secret. Indeed,
it had already leaked out through a certain pious
deacon, who most inconsiderately prayed for its
success in the family circle. The project had been
scotched, not killed. Men discussed it every-
where, now that it was an open secret, and the
more it was talked of, the more firmly it took hold
on the popular mind. The very audacity of the
thing pleased the young and adventurous spirits,
of whom there were plenty in the New England
of that day. Vaughan now set himself to work
among the merchants, who saw money to be made
in furnishing supplies of every kind for the expe-
dition ; while on the other hand, if nothing was to
be done, their ships and merchandise must lie idle
for so long as the war might last. Little by little
the indefatigable Shirley won men over to his views.
People grew restive under a policy of inaction.
Public sentiment seldom fails of having a. whole-
" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN" 55
some effect upon legislatures, be they ever so
settled in their own opinions. It was so in this
case. Presently a petition, signed by many of
the most influential merchants in the
The Subject
again brought province, was laid on the speaker's desk,
up.
so again bringing the subject up for
legislative action.
This time the governor carried his point after
a whole day's animated debate. The measure,
however, narrowly missed a second, and, perhaps,
a final defeat, it having a majority of one vote
only ; and this result was owing to an accident
which, as it was a good deal talked about at the
time it happened, may as well be mentioned here.
It so chanced that one of the opposition, while
hurrying to the House in order to record his vote
against the measure, had a fall in the street, and
The Project was taken home with a broken leg.
adopted. There being a tie vote in consequence,
Mr. Speaker Hutchinson gave the casting vote in
favor of the measure, and so carried it.
If there had been hesitation before, there was
none now. In order to prevent the news from
getting abroad, all the seaports of Massachusetts
$6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
were instantly shut by an embargo. 4 The neigh-
boring provinces were entreated to do the same
thing. The supplies asked for were voted without
debate. Even the emission of paper money, that
bugbear of colonial financiers, was cheerfully con-
sented to in the face of a royal order forbidding it.
Those who before had been strongest in opposi-
tion now gave loyal support to the undertaking.
Free to act at last, Shirley now showed his
splendid talent for organizing in full vigor. The
work of raising troops, of chartering transports, of
collecting arms, munitions, and stores of every
kind, went on with an extraordinary impulse.
Common smiths were turned into armorers ; wheel-
wrights into artificers ; women spent their evenings
making bandages and scraping lint. Shirley's
board of war, created for the exigency, took sup-
plies wherever found, paying for them with the
paper money the Legislature had just authorized
for the purpose. The patience with which these
extraordinary war measures were submitted to
best shows the temper of the people. The neigh-
boring governments were entreated to join in the
expedition and share in the glory. Rhode Island,
" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 57
Connecticut, and New Jersey each promised con-
tingents. The other provinces declined having
anything to do with it, though New York made
a most seasonable loan of ten heavy cannon, upon
Shirley's urgent entreaty, without which the siege
must have lagged painfully. The governor had,
indeed, suggested, when the deficiency of artillery
was spoken of, that the cannon of the Royal Bat-
tery of Louisburg would help to make good that
deficiency ; but, as it was facetiously said at the
time, this was too manifest a disposal of the skin
before the bear was caught, though it is quite
likely that the notion of supplying themselves
from the enemy may have tickled the fancy of the
young recruits.
When the application reached Philadelphia,
Franklin expressed shrewd doubts of the feasi-
bility of the undertaking. The provincial assem-
bly did, however, vote some supply of provisions,
as its contribution toward a campaign which no-
body believed would be successful. New Jersey
also contributed provisions and clothing. This
was not quite what Shirley had hoped for, but
could not in the least abate his efforts.
58 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
1 SUGGESTIONS looking to a conquest of Cape Breton were made by
Lieutenant-Governor Clarke of New York, some time in the year 1743
(" Documentary History of New York," I., p. 469). He suggests taking
Cape Breton as a first step toward the reduction of all Canada. Then,
Judge Auchmuty of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Massachusetts printed
in April, 1744, an ably written pamphlet discussing the best mode of
taking Louisburg.
2 THE REVOLT occurred in December, over a reduction of pay. The
soldiers deposed their officers, elected others in their places, seized the
barracks, and put sentinels over the magazines. They were so far pacified,
however, as to have returned to their duty before the English expedition
arrived. Under date of June 18, one day after the surrender, Governor-
General Beauharnois advises the Count de Maurepas of this revolt. He
urges an entire change of the garrison.
3 VAUGHAN was a mill-owner, and carried on fishing also at Damaris-
cotta, Me. He knew Louisburg well. Conceiving himself slighted by
those in authority at Louisburg, he went from thence directly to England,
in order to prefer his claim for compensation as the originator of the
scheme. He died of smallpox at Bagshot, November, 1747. He insisted
that fifteen hundred men, assisted by some vessels, could take Louisburg
by scaling the walls. "A man of rash, impulsive nature." BeTknap.
" A whimsical, wild projector." Douglass.
* NEWS that an armament was preparing at Boston was carried to
Quebec, by the Indians, without, however, awakening the governor's
suspicions of its true object.
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 59
VI
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL
THE next, and possibly most vital step of all,
since the fate of the expedition must turn upon it,
was to choose a commander. For this important
station the province was quite as deficient in men
of experience as it was in 'materials of war : with
the difference that one could be created of raw
substances while the other could not. Here the
nicest tact and judgment were requisite to avoid
making shipwreck of the whole enterprise. Not
having a military man, the all-important thing was
to find a popular one, around whom the provincial
yeomanry could be induced to rally. But since he
was not to be a soldier, he must be a man held
high in the public esteem for his civic virtues. It
was necessary to have a clean man, above all
things : one placed outside of the political circles
of Boston, and who, by sacrificing something him-
self to the common weal, should set an example of
60 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
pure patriotism to his fellow-citizens. Again, it
was no less important to select some one whose
general capacity could not be called in question.
Hence, as in every real emergency, the people
cast about for their very best man from a politi-
cal and personal standpoint, who, though he might
have
" Never set a squadron in the field,"
could be thoroughly depended upon to act with
an eye single to the good of the cause he had
espoused.
In this exigency Shirley's clear eye fell on
William Pepperell, of Kittery, a. gentleman of
sterling though not shining qualities, whose
wealth, social rank, and high personal worth
promised to give character and weight
William Pep-
perell to com- to the post Shirley now destined him
for. He was now forty-nine years old.
Having held both civil and military offices under
the province, Pepperell could not be said to be
worse fitted for the place than others whose claims
were brought forward, while, on the other hand, it
was conceded that hardly another man in the
province possessed the public confidence to a
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 6l
greater degree than he did. Still, he was no
soldier, and the simple conferring of the title of
general could not make him one, while his
practical education must begin in the presence of
the enemy a school where, if capable men learn
quickly, they do so, as a rule, only after experienc-
ing repeated and severe punishments. That raw
soldiers need the best generals, is a maxim of
common-sense, but Shirley, in whom we now and
then discover a certain disdain for such judgments,
seems to have had no misgivings whatever as to
Pepperell's entire sufficiency so long as he, Shirley,
gave the orders, and kept a firm hand over his
lieutenant ; nor can it be denied that if the expe-
dition was to take place at all when it did, the
choice was the very best that could have been
made, all things considered.
That Shirley may have been influenced, in a
measure, by personal reasons is not improbable, and
the fact that Pepperell was neither intriguing nor
ambitious, no doubt had due weight with a man
like Shirley, who was both- intriguing and ambi-
tious, and who, though he ardently wished for
success, did not wish for a rival.
62 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
No one seems to have felt his unfitness more
than Pepperell himself, and it is equally to his
honor that he finally yielded to considerations
dkectly appealing to his patriotism and sense of
duty. " You," said Shirley to him, " are the only
man who can safely carry our great enterprise
through ; if it fail the blame must lie at your
door." Much troubled in mind, Pepperell asked
the Rev. George Whitefield, who happened to be
his guest, what he thought of it. The celebrated
preacher kindly, but decidedly, advised Pepperell
against taking on himself so great a responsi-
bility, telling him that he would either make him-
self an object for execration, if he failed, or of
envy and malignity, if he should succeed.
Shirley's pertinacity, however, prevailed in the
end. Pepperell's own personal stake in the suc-
cessful issue of the expedition was known to be as
great as any man's in the province, hence, his
., . , putting himself at the head of it did
Morale of the ~
Army. much to induce others of like good
standing and estate to join him heart and hand,
and their example, again, drew into the ranks a
greater proportion of the well-to-do farmers and'
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 63
mechanics than was probably ever brought
together in an army of equal numbers, either
before or since. Hence, at Louisburg, as in our
own time, when any extraordinary want arose, the
general had only to call on the rank and file for
the means to meet it.
Several gentlemen, who had the success of the
undertaking strongly at heart, volunteered to go
with Pepperell to the scene of action. Among
them were that William Vaughan, previously
mentioned, and one James Gibson, a prominent
merchant of Boston, who wrote a journal of the
siege from observations made on the spot, besides
contributing five hundred pounds toward equipping
the army for its work. 1
Pepperell's appointment soon justified Shirley's
forecast. It gave general satisfaction among all
ranks and orders of men. On the day that he
accepted the command Pepperell advanced five
thousand pounds to the provincial treasury. He
also paid out of his own pocket the bounty money
offered to recruits in the regiment he was raising
in Maine. Orders were soon flying in every
direction, and very soon everything caught the
64 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
infection of his energy. The expedition at once
felt an extraordinary momentum. Volunteers
flocked to the different rendezvous. In fact,
more offered themselves than could be accepted.
Again the loud burr of the drum,
" The drums that beat at Louisburg and thundered in Quebec,"
i
was heard throughout New England. The one
question of the day was " Are you going ? " In
fact, little else was talked of, for, now that the
mustering of armed men gave form and consist-
ency to what was so lately a crude project only,
the fortunes of the province were felt to be
embarked in its success. True to its traditions,
A crusade ^ e c ^ er gy preached the expedition into
preached. a crusac i e . Again the old bugbear of
Romish aggression was made to serve the turn of
the hour. Religious antipathies were inflamed to
the point of fanaticism. One clergyman armed
himself with a large hatchet, with which he said
he purposed chopping up into kindling wood all
the Popish images he should find adorning the
altars of Louisburg. Still another drew up a plan
of campaign which he submitted to the general.
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 65
" Carthage must be destroyed ! " became the
watchword,' while to show the hand of God power-
fully working for the right, the celebrated George
Whitefield wrote the Latin motto, embroidered on
the expeditionary standard,
" Never despair, Christ is with us."
Thus the church militant was not only repre-
sented in the ranks and on the banner, but it was
equally forward in proffering counsel. For exam-
ple : one minister wrote to acquaint" Shirley how
the provincials should be saved from being blown
up, in their camps, by the enemy's mines. He
wanted a patrol to go carefully over the camping-
ground first. While one struck the ground with
a heavy mallet, another should lay his ear to it,
and if it sounded suspiciously hollow, he should
instantly drive down a stake in order that the spot
might be avoided.
Such anecdotes show us how earnestly all classes
of men entered upon the work in hand. How to
take Louisburg seemed the one engrossing subject
of every man's thoughts.
Having glanced at the qualifications of the gen-
66 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
eral, we may now consider the composition of the
army. We have already drawn attention to the
excellent quality of its material. In embodying it
for actual service, the old traditions of the British
army were strictly followed.
The expeditionary corps was formed in ten bat-
talions. They were Pepperell's, 2 Wolcott's 3 (of
The Army by Connecticut), Waldo's, 4 Dwight's 5 (nom-
Regiments. j na Hy an artillery battalion), Moulton's, 6
Willard's, Hale's, 7 Richmond's, 8 Gorham's, and
Moore's 9 (of New Hampshire). One hundred and
fifty men of this regiment were in the pay of
Massachusetts. Pepperell's, Waldo's, and Moul-
ton's were mostly raised in the District of Maine.
Pepperell said that one-third of the whole force
came from Maine. Dwight was assigned to the
command of the artillery,' with the rank of briga-
dier ; Gorham to the special service of landing the
troops in the whaleboats, which had been provided,
and of which he had charge. There was also an
independent company of artificers, under Captain
Bernard, and Lieutenant-Colonel Gridley was
appointed chief engineer of the army.
Pepperell held the rank of lieutenant-general ;
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 6/
Wolcott, that of major-general ; and Waldo that
of brigadier, the second place being given to Con-
necticut, in recognition of the prompt and valuable
assistance given by that colony.
As a whole, the army was neither well armed
nor properly equipped, or sufficiently provided
it oesbadi w * tn tents, ammunition, and stores.
equipped. ^ QO muc h haste had characterized its
formation for a thorough organization, or for atten-
tion to details, too little knowledge for the instruc-
tion in their duties of either officers or men. It
is true that some of them had seen more or less
bush-fighting in the Indian wars, and that all were
expert marksmen or skilful woodsmen, but to call
such an unwieldy and undisciplined assemblage
of men, who had been thus suddenly called away
from their workshops and ploughs, an army, were
a libel upon the name.
Commodore Edward Tyng 10 was put in com-
mand of the colonial squadron destined to escort
the army to its destination, to cover its landing,
and afterwards to act in conjunction with it on the
spot.
The writers of the time tell us that " the winter
68 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
proved so favorable that all sorts of outdoor busi-
ness was carried on as well, and with as great de-
, s P atcn > as at any other season of the
year." The month of February, in par-
ticular, proved very mild. The rivers and harbors
were open, and the fruitfulness of the preceding
season had made provisions plenty. Douglass
thinks that " some guardian angel " must have
preserved the troops from taking the small-pox,
which broke out in Boston about the time of their
embarkation. All these fortunate accidents were
hailed as omens of success.
Thanks to the enthusiasm of the young men in
enlisting, and the energy of the authorities in
equipping them, the four thousand men called for
were mustered under arms, ready for service, in a
little more than seven weeks. In this short time,
The Provincial too > a hundred transports had been
manned, victualled, and got ready for
sea. The embargo had provided both vessels and
sailors. More than this, a little squadron of four-
teen vessels, the largest carrying only twenty
guns, was created as if by enchantment. Here
was shown a vigor that deserved success.
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 69
The Connecticut and New Hampshire contin-
gents were also ready to march, but Rhode Island
had not yet completed hers. By disarming Cas-
tle William in Boston harbor, or borrowing old
cannon wherever they could be found, Shirley
had managed to get together a sort of makeshift
for a siege-train. All being ready at last, after a
day of solemn fasting and prayer throughout New
England, the flotilla set sail for the rendezvous at
Canso in the last week of March. " Pray for us
while we fight for you," was the last message of
the departing provincial soldiers to their friends
on shore.
Equal good-fortune attended the transportation
of the army by sea to a point several hundred
miles distant, during one of the stormiest months
of the year. By the roth of April the whole force
was assembled at Canso in readiness to act
offensively as soon as the Cape Breton shores
should be free of ice. All this had been done
without the help of a soldier, a ship, or a penny
from England. At the very last moment Shirley
received from Commodore Warren, in answer to
his request for assistance, a curt refusal to take
7O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
part in the enterprise without orders, and Shirley
could only say to Pepperell when he took leave of
him, that his best and only hope lay in his own
resources.
But by this time the enthusiasm which had
carried men off their feet had begun to cool. The
excitements, under the influence of which this
or that obstacle had been impatiently brushed
aside, had given way to the sober second thought.
One by one they rose grimly before Pepperell's
troubled vision like the ghosts in Macbeth. Land
the troops and storm the works had been the
popular way of disposing of a fortress which the
French engineers had offered to defend with a
garrison of women.
1 GIBSON was very active during the siege, especially when anything of
a dangerous nature was to be done. He was a retired British officer. He
was one of the three who escaped death, while on a scout, May 10. With
five men he towed a fireship against the West Gate, under the enemy's
fire, on the night of May 24. It burnt three vessels, part of the King's
Gate, and part of a stone house in the city. Being done in the dead of
night, it caused great consternation among the besieged.
2 PEPPERELL'S own regiment was actually commanded by his lieuten-
ant-colonel, John Bradstreet, who was afterwards appointed lieutenant-
governor of Newfoundland, but on the breaking out of the next war with
France, he served with distinction on the New-York frontier, rising
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 7 1
through successive grades to that of major-general in ths British army.
Bradstreet died at New York in 1774.
3 GENERAL ROGER WOLCOTT had been in the Canada campaign of
1 71 1 without seeing any service. He was sixty-six when appointed over the
Connecticut contingent under Pepperell. Wolcott was one of the fore-
most men of his colony, being repeatedly honored with the highest posts,
those of chief judge and governor included. David Wooster was a
captain in Wolcott's regiment.
4 SAMUEL WALDO was a Boston merchant, who had acquired a chief
interest in the Muscongus, later known from him as the Waldo Patent,
in Maine, to the improvement of which he gave the best years of his
life. Like Pepperell, he was a wealthy land-owner. They were close
friends, Waldo's daughter being betrothed to Pepperell : s son later. His
patent finally passed to General Knox, who married Waldo's grand-
daughter.
5 JOSEPH D WIGHT was born at Dedham, Mass., in 1703. He served in
the Second French War also. Pepperell commends his services, as chief
of artillery, very highly.
6 JEREMIAH MOULTON was fifty-seven when he joined the expedition.
He had seen more actual fighting than any other officer in it. Taken
prisoner by the Indians at the sacking of York, when four years old, he
became a terror to them in his manhood. With Harmon he destroyed
Norridgewock in 1724.
7 ROBERT HALE, colonel of the Essex County regiment, had been a
schoolmaster, a doctor, and a justice of the peace. He was forty two. His
major, Moses Titcomb, afterwards served under Sir William Johnson, and
was killed at the battle of Lake George.
8 SYLVESTER RICHMOND, of Dighton, Mass., was born in 1698 ; colonel
of the Bristol County regiment. He was high sheriff of the county for
many years after his return from Louisburg. Died in 1783, in his eighty-
fourth year. Lieutenant-Colonel Ebenezer Pitts of Dighton, and Major
72 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
Joseph Hodges of Norton, of Richmond's regiment, were both killed
during the campaign.
9 SAMUEL MOORE'S New Hampshire regiment was drafted into the
Vigilant. His lieutenant-colonel, Meserve, afterward served under
Abircromby, and again in the second siege of Louisburg under Amherst,
dying there of small-pox. Matthew Thornton, signer of the Declaration,
was surgeon of Moore's regiment.
10 EDWARD TYNG, merchant of Boston, son of that Colonel Edward
who was carried a prisoner to France, with John Nelson, by Frontenac's
order, and died there in a dungeon.
THE ARMY AT CANSO 73
VII
THE ARMY AT CANSO
THE crude plan of attack, as digested at Boston,
consisted in an investment of Louisburg by the
The Plan of ^^ f orces an( ^ a blockade by sea. To
Attack. enforce this blockade, Shirley had sent
out some armed vessels in advance of the expedi-
tion, with orders to cruise off the island, and to
intercept all vessels they should fall in with, so
that news of the armament might not get into
Louisburg, by any chance, before its coming.
This was all the more necessary because Shirley
had indulged hopes, from the first, of taking the
shirie 's place by surprise, and so obstinately
project. was kg wedded t; O the notion that the
thing was practicable, that he had drawn up at
great length a plan of campaign of which this
surprise was the chief feature, and in which he
undertook to direct, down to the minutest detail,
74 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
where, how, and when the troops should land,
what points they should attack, what they should
do if the assault proved a failure or only partially
successful, where they should encamp, raise bat-
teries and post guards ; how the men must be
handled under fire, and even how the prisoners
should be disposed of, for Shirley, as we have
seen, was considerably given to counting his
chickens before they were hatched.
Being a lawyer rather than a soldier, Shirley
had written out a brief instead of an order clear,
concise, direct. But, lengthy as it was, the plan
A . had one redeeming feature, which turns
A Saving
clause. away criticism from the absurdities with
which it was running over. This was the post-
script appended to it : " Sir, upon the whole,
notwithstanding the instructions you have received
from me, I must leave it to you to act upon
unforeseen emergencies according to your best
discretion." The reading of it must have lifted a
load from Pepperell's mind ! It really looked as if
Shirley had meant to be the real generalissimo
himself, and to capture Louisburg by proxy.
Pepperell was still hampered, however, with a
THE ARMY AT CANSO 75
council of war, consisting of all the general and
field officers of his army, whom he was required
Peppereii's to summon to his aid in all emergencies,
council. jf it be true that j n a multitude of
counsels there is wisdom, then Pepperell was to be
well advised, for his council aggregated between
twenty and thirty members.
Pepperell seems to have conceived that he ought
to submit himself wholly to Shirley's guidance,
since he himself was now to serve his first
apprenticeship in war, for it was now loyally
attempted to carry out Shirley's instructions to
the letter. In all these preliminary arrangements
the difference between Shirley's brilliancy and
dash and Peppereii's methodical cast of mind is
very marked indeed. It would sometimes seem
as if the two men ought to have changed places.
Shirley had appointed the rendezvous to be at
Canso, which place had been abandoned soon
after it was taken from us ; first, be-
Why the
army was at cause it was the natural base for opera-
tions against Cape Breton, and next so
that if the descent on Louisburg failed, Canso
and the command of the straits would, at least,
76 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
have been recovered. It was, as we have said,
within easy striking distance of Louisburg. Out
in front of Canso, between the Nova Scotia and
Cape Breton shores, lay Isle Madame or- Arichat,
on which a few French fishermen were living.
Across the water from Arichat, at the entrance to
Importance of the BmS d>Or > la Y the villa g 6 f St "
st. Peter's. Peter's, the second in point of impor-
tance in Cape Breton, Louisburg being the first.
At Arichat everything that was being done at
Canso could be easily seen and communicated to
St. Peter's. At St. Peter's word could be sent to
Louisburg by way of the Bras d'Or Lakes. It
therefore stood Pepperell in hand to clear his
vicinity of these spies and informers without
delay, unless he wished to - find the enemy fore-
warned and forearmed.
Shirley had directed Pepperell to destroy St.
Peter's. Pepperell, therefore, sent a night expedi-
tion there, which, however, returned
The Ice Block-
ade at Louis- without accomplishing its purpose. But
burg.
his greatest fear, lest supplies or re-en-
forcements should get into Louisburg by sea, was
set at rest on finding that the field or pack-ice,
THE ARMY AT CANSO 77
which had come down out of the St. Lawrence,
and the east winds had driven up against the
shores of Cape Breton, formed a secure blockade
against all comers, himself as well as the enemy.
This contingency had not been sufficiently
weighed.
Meanwhile, Pepperell set to work fortifying
Canso. A blockhouse, ready framed, had been
sent out for the purpose. This was now
Canso fortified.
set up, garrisoned, and christened Fort
Prince William. Some earthworks were also
thrown up to cover this new post. In these occu-
pations, or in scouting or exercising, the troops
were kept employed until the ice should move off
the shores.
On the 1 8th of April a French thirty-gun ship
was chased off the coast, while trying to run into
. _. Louisburg. Being the better sailer, she
French .Cruiser
driven off. easily got clear of the blockading ves-
sels, after keeping up for some hours a sharp, run-
ning fight. Even this occurrence does not seem
"to have fully opened the eyes of the French com-
mandant of Louisburg to the true nature of the
danger which threatened him, since he has declared
78
that he thought the vessels he saw watching the
harbor were only English privateers. Perhaps
nothing about the whole history of this expedition
is more strange than that this officer should have
remained wholly ignorant of its being at Canso for
nearly three weeks.
The army had been lying nearly two weeks in-
active, when, to Pepperell's great surprise as well
as joy, Commodore Warren appeared
April 23, War-
ren's Fleet off Canso with four ships of war, and,
arrives.
after briefly communicating with the
general, bore away for Louisburg. At last he had
received his orders to act in concert with Shirley,
and, like a true sailor, he had crowded all sail for
Effect on the tne scene f action. His coming put
Army. t k e armv m g rea t spirits, for it was sup-
posed to be part of the plan, already concerted, by
which the attack should be made irresistible. And
for once fortune seems to have determined that
the bungling of ministers should not defeat the
objects had in view.
On the following day, the Connecticut forces
joined Pepperell. The shores of Cape Breton were
now eagerly scanned for the first appearance of
THE ARMY AT CANSO 79
open water, but even as late as the 28th Pepperell
wrote to Shirley, saying, "We impatiently wait
for a fair wind to drive the ice out
April 24,
Connecticut of the bay, and if we do not suffer for
Forces arrive. . .
want of provisions, make no doubt but
we shall, by God's favor, be able soon to drive
out what else we please from Cape Breton." The
consumption of stores, occasioned by the unlooked-
for detention at Canso, had, in fact, become a
matter of serious concern with Pepperell, whose
nearest source of supply was Boston.
8O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
VIII
THE SIEGE
OUR guard-vessels having reported the shores
to be at last free from ice, and the wind coming
fair for Louisburg, the welcome signal
Fleet sails
fromcanso, to weigh anchor was given on the
April 29.
29th of April. On board the fleet all
was now bustle and excitement. In a very short
time a hundred transport-vessels were standing
out of Canso Harbor, under a cloud of canvas, for
Gabarus Bay, the place fixed upon by Shirley for
making the contemplated descent.
Bound to the letter of his orders, Pepperell
seems to have first purposed making an attempt
to put Shirley's rash project in execution. To do
Night Assault this, he must have so timed his move-
given up. ments as to reach his anchorage after
dark, have landed his troops without being able to
see what obstacles lay before them, have marched
THE SIEGE 83
them to stations situated at a distance from the
place of disembarkation, over ground unknown,
and not previously reconnoitred, to throw them
against the enemy's works before they should be
discovered. And this most critical of all military
operations, a night assault, was to be attempted
by wholly undisciplined men.
Providentially for Pepperell, the wind died away
before he could reach the designated point of dis-
embarkation, so that this mad scheme perished
before it could be put to the test ; but early the
next morning the flotilla was discovered entering
Gabarus Bay, five miles southeast from the fort-
ress, and in full view from its ramparts. So, also,
the New England forces could see the gray turrets
of the redoubtable stronghold rising in the dis-
tance, and could hear the bells of Louisburg peal-
ing out their loud alarm. The fortress instantly
fired signal guns to call in all out parties. It is
said that there had been a grand ball the night
before, and that the company had scarce been
asleep when called up by this alarm. The boom-
ing of artillery, sounding like the drowsy roar of
an awakening lion, was defiantly echoed back from
84 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
the bosom of the deep, and borne on the cool
breeze to the startled foemen's ears the distant
roll of drum, and bugle blast, peopled the lately
deserted sea with voices of the coming strife.
Duchambon, commander of the fortress, in-
stantly hurried off a hundred and fifty men to
oppose the landing of our troops.
The fleet quickly came to an anchor, and the
signal was hoisted for the troops to disembark at
once. Before them stretched the lonely Cape
Breton shore, on which the breakers rose and fell
in a long line of foam. Though this heavy surf
threatened to swamp the boats, the men crowded
into them as if going to a merry-making.
Landing at
GabarusBay, It was a gallant and inspiring sight to
April 30. , 111
see them dash on toward the beach,
emulous who should reach it first, and eager to
meet the enemy, who were waiting for them there.
By making a feint at one point, and then pulling
for another at some distance from the first, the
boats gained an undefended part of the shore
before the French could come up with them. As
soon as one struck the ground, the men jumped
into the water, each taking another on his back
THE SIEGE 85
and wading through the surf to the shore. In
this manner the landing went on so rapidly that,
when the enemy finally came up, they were easily
driven off, with the loss of six or seven men killed,
and some prisoners. Before it was dark two thou-
sand men bivouacked for the night within cannon
shot of Louisburg.
Vaughan now led forward a party after the
retreating enemy, who, finding themselves pur-
sued, set fire to thirty or forty houses outside the
city walls.
On the next day, the work of landing the
rest of the army, the artillery and stores, was
pushed to the utmost, though the heavy surf
rendered this a work of uncommon difficulty.
Pepperell now pitched his camp in an orderly
manner next the shore, at a place called Flat Point
Cove, where he could communicate with the
transports and fleet, and they with him. He now
took his first step towards clearing the two miles
of open ground lying between him and Louisburg
harbor, with the view of fixing the location of his
batteries, and of driving the enemy inside the
walls of the fortress.
86 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG.
To this end four hundred men were sent out to
destroy the enemy's magazines situated at the
head of the harbor, Vaughan again marching with
them. This detachment having set fire to some
Royal Battery warehouses containing naval stores, the
deserted. smoke from which drifted down upon
the Royal Battery, the officer in command there,
convinced that the provincials were about to fall
upon him, spiked his cannon and abandoned the
works in haste, though not till after receiving
permission to do so.
In the morning, as Vaughan was returning to
camp with only thirteen men, the deserted
appearance of the battery caused him to carefully
examine it, when, seeing no signs of life about the
place, no flag flying or smoke rising or sentinels
moving about, he sent forward an Indian of his
party, who, finding all silent, crept through an
embrasure, and undid the gate to them. Vaughan
then despatched word to the camp that he was in
possession of the place, and was waiting for a
re-enforcement and a flag ; but meantime, before
either could reach him, one of his men climbed up
the staff, and nailed his red coat to it for a flag.
THE SIEGE 87
At about the same hour Duchambon was send-
ing a strong detachment back to the battery, to
complete the work of destruction that his lieuten-
ant ^ a d ^t unfinished. At least this is
vau ban
attacked. ^jg own statement. It was supposed
that the battery was still unoccupied or occupied
weakly, otherwise the French would hardly have
risked much for its possession. When this
detachment came round in their boats to the land-
ing-place, near the battery, Vaughan's little band
attacked them with great spirit, keeping them at
bay until other troops had time to join him, when
the discomfited Frenchmen were driven back
whence they came.
Thus unexpectedly did one of the most formi-
dable defences fall into our hands ; for though its
isolated situation invited an attack, and though
communication with the city could be easily cut
Advantage of off except b Y water ' the Prompt attempt
this capture. to recover the Royal Battery implies
that its abandonment was at least premature. Yet
as this work was primarily a harbor defence only,
it was evidently not looked upon as tenable against
a land attack, although it is quite as clear that the
88 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
time had not yet come for deserting it. But the
fact that it was left uninjured instead of being
blown up assures us that the garrison must have
left in a panic.
But whether the French attached much or little
consequence to this battery so long as it remained
in their hands, it became in ours a tremendous
auxiliary to the conquest of the city. By its
capture we obtained thirty heavy cannon, all of
which were soon made serviceable, besides a large
quantity of shot and shell, than which nothing
could have been more acceptable at this time.
And although only three or four of its heavy guns
could be trained upon the city, its capture
removed one of the most formidable obstacles to
the entrance of our fleet. It also afforded an
excellent place of arms for our soldiers, whose
confidence was greatly strengthened. In a word,
the siege was making progress. '
We cannot help referring here to the fact that
notwithstanding Shirley's idea had met with so
much ridicule it had, nevertheless, come true in
one part at least, since if the proposal to turn the
enemy's own cannon against them had seemed
THE SIEGE 89
somewhat whimsical when it was broached, it
certainly proved prophetic in this case, for within
twenty-four hours after its taking the guns of the
Royal Battery were thundering against the city.
Pepperell had at once ordered Waldo's regiment
into the captured battery. The enemy had not
even stopped to knock off the trunnions of the
cannon, so that the smiths, under the direction of
Major Pomeroy, 1 who was himself a gun-
Firing begun.
smith, had only to drill them out again.
Waldo fired the first shot into the city. It is said
to have killed fourteen men. The fire was main-
tained with destructive effect, and it drew forth a
reply from the enemy, with both shot and shell.
The siege may now be said to have fairly begun,
and begun prosperously. Both sides had stripped
for fighting, 'and it remained to be seen whether
Pepperell's raw levies would continue steadfast
under the many trials of which these events were
but a foretaste.
Louisburg was now practically invested on the
land side, the fleet, with its heavy armament,
remaining useless, however, with respect to active
co-operation in the siege itself, because its com-
QO THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
mander dared not take his ships into the harbor
under fire of the enemy's batteries. The army
and navy were acting therefore without that con-
cert which alone would have allowed their united
strength to be effectively tested. On its part, the
navy was simply making a display of force which
could not be employed, though it maintained a
strict blockade. In any case, then, the brunt of
the siege must fall on the army, since, as Warren
informed Pepperell, the fleet could take no part in
battering the city until the harbor defences should
first have been taken or silenced. And when this
was done, the siege must probably have been near
its end, fleet or no fleet.
Pepperell manfully turned, however, to a task
which he had supposed would be shared between
the commodore and himself. If he was no longer
confident under fresh disappointments, they devel-
oped in him unexpected firmness and most heroic
patience. Let us see what this task was, and in
what manner the citizen-general set about it.
That it was done with true military judgment is
abundantly proved by the fact that, when Louis-
burg was assaulted and taken in 1758, by the com-
THE SIEGE 93
bincd land and naval forces of Amherst and Bos-
cawen, Pepperell's plan of attack was followed
step by step, and to the letter.
The most formidable of the harbor defences
were the Island Battery, to which attention has
The Harbor Deen called in a previous chapter, the
Defences. Circular Battery, a work situated at the
extreme northwest corner of the city walls, and
forming the reverse face of the powerful Dauphin
Bastion, from which the West Gate of the city
opened, with the Water Battery, or Batterie de la
Greve, placed at the opposite angle of the harbor
shore. 2 The cross-fire from these two batteries
effectually raked the whole harbor from shore to
shore, but it was by no means so dangerous as
that of the Island Battery, where ships must pass
within point-blank range of the heaviest artillery.
Such, then, was the admirable system of harbor
defences still remaining intact, even after the fall
of the Royal Battery. Instead, therefore, of con-
centrating his whole fire upon one or two points,
in his front, with a view of breaching the walls in
the shortest time, and of storming the city at the
head of his troops, Pepperell was made to throw
94 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
half his available fire upon the batteries that were
not at all in his own way, though they blocked the
way to the fleet. 3
It will be seen that these circumstances imposed
upon Pepperell a task of no little magnitude.
They compelled him to attack the very strongest,
instead of the weakest, parts of the fortress, and
necessarily confined the siege operations within a
comparatively small space of the enemy's long line.
No time was lost in getting the siege train over
from Gabarus Bay to the positions marked out for
erecting the breaching batteries. The infinite
labor involved in doing this can hardly be under-
stood except by those who have themselves gone
over the ground. Every gun and every pound of
provisions and ammunition had to be dragged two
miles, through marshes and over rocks, to the
allotted stations. This transit being impracticable
for wheel-carriages, sledges were constructed by
Lieutenant-Colonel Meserve of the New Hamp-
shire regiment, to which relays of men harnessed
themselves in turn, as they do in Arctic journeys,
and in this way the cannon, mortars, and stores
were slowly dragged through the spongy turf,
THE SIEGE 95
where the mud was frequently knee-deep, to the
trenches before Louisburg. None but the rugged
yeomen of New England men inured to all sorts
of outdoor labor in woods and fields could have
successfully accomplished such a herculean task.
But such severe toil as this was soon put half the
army in the hospitals.
By the 5th of May Pepperell had got two mor-
tar-batteries playing upon the city from the base
of Green Hill, over which the road passes to
Sydney. Meantime, Duchambon, seeing himself
blockaded both by sea and by land, had hurriedly
sent off an express to recall the troops that had
gone out some time before against Annapolis, in
concert with a force sent from Quebec,
Nova Scotia
freed of in- little dreaming that he himself would
soon be attacked. 4 The first fruits of
Shirley's sagacity ripened thus early in relieving
Nova Scotia from invasion.
The 5th being Sunday, divine service was held
First sabbath * n thQ chapel of the Royal Battery,
in camp. Pepperell's hardy New Englanders list-
ened to the first Protestant sermon ever preached,
perhaps, on the island of Cape Breton, from the
96 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
well-chosen text "Enter into His gates with
thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise."
After their devotions were over, we are told that
the troops " fired smartly at the city."
Meantime, also, Colonel Moulton, who had been
left at Canso for the purpose, rejoined the army
after destroying St. Peter's. Two sallies made by
the enemy against the nearest mortar-battery had
been repulsed. Its fire, augmented by some forty-
two-pounders taken from the Royal Battery, already
much distressed the garrison, its balls coming
against the caserns and into the town, where they
traversed the streets from end to end, and riddled
the houses in their passage. It never ceased firing
during the siege. In his report Duchambon calls
it the most dangerous of any that the besiegers
raised.
On the 7th a flag was sent into the city with a
summons to surrender. Firing was suspended
Garrison sum- im ^ '^ s return, with Duchambon's defi-
moned. ant message, that inasmuch " as the
King had confided to him the defence of the fort-
ress, he had no other reply but by the mouths of
his cannon."
THE SIEGE 97
This check prompted a disposition to attack the
city by storm at once, but upon reflection more
moderate counsels prevailed, and the attempt was
put off. Pepperell went on with his approaches
toward the West Gate, under a constant fire from
all the enemy's batteries. And as every*collection
of men drew the enemy's fire to the spot, this
work could only be done at night, under great dis-
advantages. The balls they sent him were picked
up and returned from his own cannon with true
New England thrift, in order to husband his own
ammunition. While thus engaged with the enemy
in his front, he had also to keep an eye upon the
outlying parties of French and Indians in his rear,
who had been scraped together from scattered set-
tlements, and were lurking about his camp with
the view of raiding it unawares. On May 10, a
scouting party of twenty-five men from Waldo's
regiment was sent out to find and drive off these
Scouting Party marauders. While they were engaged
efeated. ^ j n pi unc iering S ome dwelling-houses at
one of the out-settlements, they themselves were
unexpectedly attacked by a superior force, and all
but three killed, the Indians murdering the pris-
98 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
oners in cold blood. On the following day our
men returned to the scene of disaster, and after
burying their fallen comrades, they burned the
place to the ground.
With these events the campaign settled down
into the stow and laborious operations of a regular
siege ; and here began those inevitable bickerings
between the chiefs of the land and naval forces,
which, in a man of different temper than Pepper-
ell was, might have led to serious results.
In Shirley, his lawful captain-general, Pepperell
had always a superior whose orders he felt bound
to obey to the best of his ability, cost what it
might. Fortunately, Shirley's power of annoy-
ance was limited by distance, though he kept up
Disagree- an animated fire of suggestions. In
Warren, however, the brusque and im-
pulsive sailor, Pepperell now found a tutor and
a critic, whose irritation at the subordinate part
he was playing showed itself in unreasonable
demands upon his slow but sure coadjutor, and
now and then even in a hardly concealed sneer.
As time wore on, Warren grew more and more
restive and importunate, while Pepperell continued
THE SIEGE 99
patient, calm, and methodical to the last. Warren
would call his fleet-captains together, hold a coun-
cil, discuss the situation from his point of vie'w,
and send off to Pepperell the result of their delib-
erations, with the final exhortation attached, " For
God's sake let us do something!" that "some-
thing " being that Pepperell should practically fin-
ish the siege without him, as we have already
shown. Warren was a man standing at a door
to keep out intruders, while the two actual adver-
saries were fighting it out inside. He might occa-
sionally halloo to them to be quick about it, but he
was hardly in the fight himself.
Pepperell would then get his council together in
his turn, and, smarting under the sense of injustice,
would submit the lecture that Warren had read
him, with its thinly veiled irony, and unconcealed
hauteur, to which the imputation of ignorance was
not lacking. The situation would then be again
discussed in all its bearings, from the army's stand-
point, which might be stated as follows : The fort-
ress cannot be stormed until we have made a
practicable breach in the walls. We must finish our
batteries before .this can be done. Or let the com-
IOO THE TAKING OF LOU1SBURG
modore bring in his ships and assist in silencing
the enemy's fire. The army is losing strength
every day by sickness, while the fleet is gaining
by the arrival of fresh ships. We cannot, if we
would, pull the commodore's chestnuts out of the
fire and our own too.
1 MAJOR SETH POMEROY of Northampton, Mass., was lieutenant-
colonel of Williams's regiment in the battle of Lake George, 1755, succeed-
ing to the command after Williams's death. At the beginning of the
Revolution he fought as a volunteer at Bunker Hill.
2 REFERENCE should be made to the plan at page 91. It will greatly
simplify the siege operations to the reader if he will keep in mind the fact
that the land attack was wholly confined within the points designated by
A and B on this plan, or between the Dauphin and King's bastions. For
our purpose, it is only necessary to add that the harbor front was defended
by a strong wall of masonry, joining the Water Battery, G, with the Dau-
phin Bastion, A. In this wall were five gates, leading to the water-side.
It was the point at which the city would be exposed to assault from ship-
ping or their boats.
8 THE ISLAND BATTERY could not materially hinder the progress of
the siege, and must have fallen with the city. The Circular Battery could
not fire upon the besiegers at all, as it bore upon the harbor, but Warren
insisted that he could not go in until these two works were silenced. If
the time spent in doing this had been wholly employed in battering down
the West Gate and its approaches, the city might have been taken with-
out the fleet, leaving out of view, of course, the supposition of a repulse to
the storming party. It is a strong assertion to say that the city could
not have been taken without the fleet, because no trial was made.
4 THE ATTACK upon Annapolis having failed, these troops tried to
get back to Louisburg, but were unable to do so. With their assistance
Duchambon thinks he could have held out.
THE SIEGE CONTINUED IOI
IX
THE SIEGE CONTINUED
THE routine of camp life is not without interest
as tending to show what was the temper of the
men under circumstances of unusual trial and
hardship. They were housed in tents, most of
which proved rotten and unserviceable, or in
booths, which they built for themselves out of
poles and green boughs cut in the neighboring
woods. The relief parties, told off each
Camp Routine.
day for work in the trenches, were
marched to their stations after dark, as the ene-
my's fire swept the ground over which they must
pass. For a like reason, the fatigue parties could
only bring up the daily supplies of provisions and
ammunition to the trenches from Gabarus Bay,
after darkness had set in. By great good-fortune,
the weather continued dry and pleasant ; other-
wise the bad housing and severe toil must have
IO2 THE TAKING OF LOUISHURG
told on the health of the army even more severely
than it did, while work in the trenches would
have been suspended during the intervals of * wet
weather.
A force like this, composed of men who were
the equals of their officers at home, not bound
together by habits of passive obedience formed
under the severe penalties of martial law, could
not be expected to observe the exact discipline of
regular soldiers. It was not attempted to enforce
it. Not one case of punishment for infraction of
orders is reported during the siege. But officers
and men had in them the making of far better sol-
diers than the ordinary rank and file of armies.
There were men in the ranks who rose to be
colonels and brigadiers in the revolutionary con-
test. 1 The hardest duty was performed without
spirit of the grumbling; the most dangerous service
Army. found plenty of volunteers ; and Pep-
perell himself has borne witness that nothing
pleased the men better than to be ordered off on
some scouting expedition that promised to bring
on a brush with the enemy.
This spirit is plainly manifest in the letters
THE SIEGE CONTINUED IO3
which have been preserved. In one of them
Major Pomeroy tells his wife that " it looks as if
our campaign would last long ; but ' I am willing
to stay till God's time comes to deliver the city
into our hands." The reply is worthy of a woman
of Sparta : " Suffer no anxious thoughts to rest in
your mind about me. The whole town is much
engaged with concern for the expedition, how
Providence will order the affair, for which religious
meetings every week are maintained. I leave you
in the hand of God."
There is not a despatch or a letter of Pepperell's
extant, in which this dependence upon the Over-
ruling Hand is not acknowledged. The barbaric
utterance that Providence is always on the side of
the strongest battalions would have shocked the
men of Louisburg as deeply as it would the men
of Preston, Edgehill, and Marston Moor. The
conviction that their cause was a righteous one,
and must therefore prevail, was a power still active
among Puritan soldiers : nor did they fail to give
the honor and praise of achieved victory to Him
whom they so steadfastly owned as the Leader of
Armies and the God of Battles.
IO4 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
There were not wanting incidents which the
soldiers treasured up as direct manifestations of
Divine favor. Moses Coffin, of Newbury, who
officiated in the double capacity of chaplain and
drummer, and who had been nicknamed in conse-
quence the "drum ecclesiastic," carried a small
pocket-Bible about with him wherever he went.
On returning to camp, after an engagement with
the enemy, he found that a bullet had passed
nearly through the sacred book, thus, undoubtedly,
saving his life.
The relaxation from discipline has been more or
less commented upon by several writers, as if it
implied a grave delinquency in the head of the
army. We are of the opinion, however, that it
was the safety-valve of this army, under the
extraordinary pressure laid upon it. So while we
may smile at the comparison made by Douglass,
who says that the siege resembled a " Cambridge
Commencement," or at the antics described by
Frolics in Belknap, 2 we need not feel ourselves
camp. bound to accept their conclusions. This
author says : " Those who were on the spot, have
frequently in my hearing laughed at the recital
THE SIEGE CONTINUED 10$
of their own irregularities, and expressed their
admiration when they reflected on the almost
miraculous preservation of the army from destruc-
tion. They indeed presented a formidable front
to the enemy, but the rear was a scene of confu-
sion and frolic. While some were on duty at the
trenches, others were racing, wrestling, pitching
quoits, firing at marks or birds, or running after
shot from the enemy's guns for which they
received a bounty."
In his unscientific way, Pepperell was daily
tightening his grasp upon Louisburg. Gridley, 3
who acted in the capacity of chief engineer, had
picked up from books all the knowledge he
Our Fascine possessed, but he soon showed a natural
Batteries. aptitude for that branch of the service.
Dwight, the chief of artillery, is not known ever
to have pointed a shotted gun in his life. Instead
of gradual approaches, of zigzags and epaule-
ments, the ground was simply staked out where
the batteries were to be placed. After dark the
working parties started for the spot, carrying
bundles of fascines on their backs, laid them on
the lines, and then began digging the trenches
IO6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
and throwing up the embankment by the light of
their lanterns. All the batteries at Louisburg
were constructed in this simple fashion. The
work of making the platforms, getting up the
cannon, and mounting them, was- attended with
far 'greater labor and risk.
In this manner a fascine battery covered by a
trench in front, on which the provincials had been
working like beavers for two days and nights, was
raised within two hundred and fifty yards of the
West Gate, against which it began sending its shot
on the 1 8th. This was by much the
The Advanced
Battery opens most dangerous effort that the besiegers
Fire May 18.
had yet made, and the enemy at once
trained every gun upon it that would bear, in the
hope of either demolishing or silencing the work.
It was so near that the men in the trenches, and
those on the walls, kept up a continual fire of mus-
ketry at each other, interspersed with sallies of
wit, whenever there was a lull in the firing. The
French gunners, who were kept well supplied with
wine, would drink to the besiegers, and invite
them over to breakfast or to take a glass of wine.
In two days the fire of our guns had beaten
THE SIEGE CONTINUED IC>9
down the drawbridges, part of the West Gate,
and some of the adjoining wall. Pepperell com-
plains at this time of his want of good gunners,
also of a sufficient supply of powder to make good
the daily consumption, of which he had no previous
cannon conception, but is cheered by finding
discovered. thirty cannon sunk at low-water mark
on the opposite -side of the harbor, which he
designed mounting at the lighthouse forthwith,
for attacking the Island Battery. Gorham's
regiment was posted therewith this object. Thus
again were the enemy furnishing means for their
own destruction. Foreseeing that this fortifica-
tion would shut the port to ships coming to his
relief, Duchambon sent a hundred men across
the harbor to drive off the provincials. A sharp
fight ensued, in which the enemy were defeated.
By this time another fascine battery situated by
the shore, at a point nine hundred yards from the
-walls, began raking the Circular Battery
Titcomb's f
Battery at of the enemy, in conjunction with the
Work
direct fire from our Advanced Battery.
It was called Titcomb's, from the officer in charge,
Major Moses Titcomb of Hale's regiment. These
IIO THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
two fortifications were now knocking to pieces
the northwest corner of the enemy's ponderous
works, known as the Dauphin Bastion. We were
now playing on Louisburg from three batteries
on the shore of the harbor, three in the rear of
these, and had another in process of construction
at the lighthouse, all of which, except the last,
had been completed under fire within twenty days,
without recourse to any scientific rules whatever.
In spite of Warren's watchfulness one vessel
had slipped through his squadron into Louisburg
unperceived, bringing supplies to the besieged,
capture of the An event now took place which, to use
vigilant. Pepperell's words, " produced a burst of
joy in the army, and animated the men with fresh
courage to persevere." The annual supply ship
from France, for which our fleet had been con-
stantly on the lookout, had run close in with the
harbor in a thick fog, undiscovered by our vessels,
and wholly unsuspicious of danger herself. When
the fog lifted she was seen and engaged by the
Mermaid, a forty-gun frigate, until the rest of the
squadron could come to her aid, when, after a
spirited combat, the French ship was forced to
THE SIEGE CONTINUED III
strike her colors. The prize proved to be the
Vigilant, a new sixty-gun ship, loaded with stores
and munitions for Louisburg. She was soon put
in fighting trim again, and manned by drafts made
from the army and transports.
By the 24th, two more heavy ships, which the
ministry had sent out immediately upon receiving
Shirley's advices that the expedition had been
decided upon, 4 now joined Warren, who at length
felt himself emboldened to ask Pepperell's co-op-
eration in the following plan of attack. It was
proposed to distribute sixteen hundred men, to be
taken from the army, among the ships of war, all
of which should then go into the harbor and
attack the enemy's batteries vigorously. Under
cover of this fire, the soldiers, with the
Warren pro-
poses to marines from the ships, were to land
and assault the city. Pepperell himself
was to have no share in this business, except as a
looker-on, but was to put his troops under the
command of an officer of marines who should
take his orders from Warren only.
This implied censure to the conduct of the
army and its chief, followed up the next day by
112 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
the tart question of " Pray how came the Island
Battery not to be attacked ? " seems to have
goaded Pepperell into giving the order for a night
attack upon that strong post. Indeed, Pepperell's
perplexities were growing every hour. On the
day he received Warren's cool proposition to take
the control of the army out of his hands, he had
been obliged to send off a flying column in pursuit
of a force which his scouts had reported was at
Mira Bay, fifteen miles from his camp. In fact,
trie forces which Duchambon had recalled from
Annapolis were watching their chance either to
make a dash into Louisburg, or throw themselves
upon the besiegers' trenches unawares.
Notwithstanding the hazard, it was determined
to storm the Island Battery. For this purpose,
four hundred volunteers embarked in whale-boats
on the night of the 27th, and rowed cautiously
round the outer shore .of the harbor
Island Bat-
tery stormed toward the back of the island, in the ex-
pectation of finding that side unguarded.
They were, however, discovered by the sentinels
in season to thwart the plan of surprise. The
garrison was alarmed. Still the brave provincials
THE SIEGE CONTINUED 113
would not turn back. Cannon and musketry were
turned on them from the island and city. Through
this storm of shot, by which many of the boats
were sunk before they could reach the shore, only
about half the attacking force passed unscathed.
In scrambling up the rocks through a drenching
surf, most of their muskets were wet with salt
water, and rendered useless. Not yet dismayed,
the assailants fought their numerous foes hand to
hand for nearly an hour. Captain Brooks, their
leader, was cut down in the melee.
Gallantry of
William One William Tufts, a brave lad of only
Tufts, Jr.
nineteen, got into the battery, climbed
the flagstaff, tore down the French colors, and
fastened his own red coat to the staff, under a
shower of balls, many of which went through his
clothes without harming him. Sixty men were
slain -before the rest would surrender, but these
were the flower of the army, whose loss saddened
the whole camp, when the enemy's exulting cheers
told the story of the disaster, at break of day.
About a hundred and eighty-nine men were either
drowned, killed, or taken in this desperate
encounter. It was an exploit worthy of the men,
I 14 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
but there was not one chance in ten of its being
successful. For once Pepperell had allowed
feeling to get the better of judgment by taking
that chance.
Pepperell could now say to Warren that his
proposal would not be agreed to. His effective
force had been reduced by sickness to twenty-one
hundred men, six hundred of whom were at that
moment absent from camp. As a compliance with
Warren's requisition for sixteen hundred men
would be equivalent to exposing everything to the
uncertain chances of a single bold dash, Pepperell's
council very wisely concluded that it was far
better to hold fast what had been gained, than to
risk all that was hoped for. They offered to lend
the commodore five hundred soldiers, and six
hundred sailors, if he would go and assault the
Island Battery, in his turn, but Warren's only
-reply was to urge the completion of the Light-
house Battery for that work.
The siege had now continued thirty days with-
out decisive results. So far Duchambon had
showed no sign of yielding, and Pepperell found
it difficult to get information as to the state of the
I
THE SIEGE CONTINUED I I 5
garrison. An expedient was therefore hit upon
which was calculated to test both the temper and
condition of the besieged thoroughly : for although
the capture of the Vigilant had been witnessed
from the walls of Louisburg, it had not produced
the impression that the besiegers had expected.
This was the key to what now took place.
Maisonforte, captain of the Vigilant, was still
a prisoner on board the fleet. He was given to
understand that the provincials were
Effect of
stratagem greatly exasperated over the cruel treat-
ment of some prisoners, who had been
murdered after they were taken, and he was asked
to write to Duchambon informing him just how
the French prisoners were treated, to the end that
such barbarities as had been complained of might
cease, and retaliation be avoided.
Maisonforte readily fell into the trap laid for
him. He unhesitatingly wrote the letter as
requested, it was sent to Duchambon by a flag,
( and was delivered by an officer who understood
French, in-order to observe its effect. The letter
thus conveyed to Duchambon the disagreeable
news of the Vigilant's capture, of which he had
Il6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
been ignorant, and it made a visible impression.
He now knew that his determination to hold out
in view of the expected succors from France, was
of no further avail. This correspondence took
place on the /th.
By the arrival of ships destined for the New-
foundland station, the fleet had been increased to
eleven ships carrying five hundred and forty guns.
On the Qth two deserters came into our lines, who
said that the garrison could not hold out much
longer unless relieved. On the nth, which was
the anniversary of the accession of George II., a
general bombardment took place, in
Lighthouse
Battery which the new Lighthouse Battery
joined, for the first time. The effect
of its fire upon the Island Battery was so marked,
that Warren now declared himself ready to join in
a general attack, whenever the wind should be fair
for it. For this attempt Pepperell pushed forward
his own preparations most vigorously. Boats were
got ready to land troops at different parts of the
town. The Circular Battery was abowt silenced.
All the 1 3th, I4th, and I5th a furious bombard-
ment was kept up. Our marksmen swept the
THE SIEGE CONTINUED 1 1/
streets of the doomed city, with musketry, from
the advanced trenches, so that no one could show
his head in any part of it without being instantly
riddled with balls. The artillerists at the Island
Battery were driven from their posts, some even
Island Battery takin g ref U S G f rOm OUr shells ty running
silenced. mto foe sea _ Our boats now passed in
and out of the harbor freely, with supplies, without
molestation. It was evident that the fall of this
much dreaded bulwark had brought the siege
practically to a close.
On the 1 4th the whole fleet came to an anchor
off the harbor in line of battle. It made a
splendid and imposing array. At the same time
the troops were mustered under arms, and
exhorted to do their full duty when the order
should be given them to advance upon the enemy's
works. In the midst of these final preparations
for a combined and decisive assault, an ominous
silence brooded over the doomed city. It was
clear to all that the crisis was at hand.
Duchambon felt that he had now done all that a
brave and resolute captain could for the defence
of the fortress. He saw an overwhelming force
Il8 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
about to throw itself with irresistible power upon
his dismantled walls, in every assailable part at
once. His every hope of help from without had
failed him. Food for his men and powder for his
guns were nearly exhausted. He was now con-
fronted with the soldier's last dread alternative of
meeting an assault sword in hand, with but faint
prospect of success, or of lowering the flag he
had so gallantly defended. The wretched inhabit-
ants, who had endured every privation cheerfully,
so long as there was hope, earnestly entreated him
to spare them the horrors of storm and pillage.
On the 1 5th, in the afternoon, while the two
chiefs of the expedition were in consultation
together, Duchambon sent a flag to Peppercll
proposing a suspension of hostilities until terms
of capitulation should be agreed upon. This was
at once granted until eight o'clock of the following
morning. Duchambon's proposals were then
submitted and rejected as inadmissible, but
The Fortress counter proposals were sent him, to
surrenders. wn ich, on the same day, he gave his
assent, by sending hostages to both Pepperell and
Warren, saving only that the garrison should be
THE SIEGE CONTINUED 1 19
allowed to march out with the honors of war.
For reasons to be looked for, no doubt, in his pride
as a professional soldier, and in his reluctance to
treat with any other, he addressed separate notes
to the land and naval commanders. As neither
felt disposed to stand upon a point of mere
punctilio, Duchambon's request was immediately
acceded to. A striking difference, however, is to
be observed between Pepperell's and Warren's
replies to the French commander. In his own
Pepperell generously, and honorably, makes the
full ratification of this condition subject to
Warren's approval. In the commodore's there is
not one word found concerning the general of the
land forces, or of his approbation or disapprobation,
any more than if he had never existed ; but in
Warren's note the extraordinary condition is
annexed " that the keys of the town be delivered
to such officers and troops as I shall appoint to
receive them, and that all the cannon, warlike and
other stores in the town, be also delivered up to
the said officers."
On the i/th Warren took formal possession of
the Island Battery, and shortly after went into the
I2O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
city himself to confer with the governor. In the
meantime, conceiving it to be his right to receive
the surrender, Pepperell had informed the governor
of his intention to put a detachment of his own
troops in occupation of the city defences that
same afternoon. This communication was imme-
diately shown to Warren, who at once addressed
Pepperell, in evident irritation, upon the " irregu-
larity " of his proceedings, until the articles of
surrender should have been formally signed and
sealed. The fact that he had just proposed
to receive the surrender of the fortress himself
was not even referred to, nor does it appear that
Pepperell ever knew of it. One cannot overlook,
therefore, the presence of some unworthy manoeu-
vring, seconded by Duchambon's professional
vanity, to claim and obtain a share of the honor
of this glorious achievement, not only unwarranted
by the part the navy had taken in it, since it had
never fired a shot into Louisburg, or lost a man
by its fire : but calculated to mislead public opinion
in England.
An unpublished letter of General Dwight,
written three days after the entry of the provincial
THE SIEGE CONTINUED 123.
troops, relates the closing scenes of this truly
memorable contest. It runs as follows :
"We entered the city on Monday last (i/th)
about five o'clock P.M., with colors flying, drums,
hautboys, violins, trumpets, etc. Gentlemen and
ladies caressing (the French inhabitants) as well
they might, for a New England dog would have
died in the holes we drove them to I mean the
casemates where they dwelt during the siege.
"This fortress is so valuable, as well as large
and extensive, that we may say the one half has
not been conceived. . . . Sometimes I am ready
to say a thousand men in a thousand years could
not effect it. Words cannot convey the idea of
it. ... One half of ye warlike stores for such a
siege were not laid in ; however, the Vigilant
(French supply ship) being taken and Commodore
Warren's having some supply of stores from New
England was very happy, and so it is that his
readiness has been more than equal to his
ability."
Governor Duchambon puts his whole force at
thirteen hundred men at the beginning of the
siege, and'at eleven hundred at its close. About
124 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
two thousand men were, however, included in the
capitulation, of which number six hundred and
fifty were veteran troops. The besiegers' shot had
wrought destruction in the city. There was not
a building left unharmed or even habitable, by the
fifteen thousand shot and shells that Pepperell's m
batteries had thrown into it.
When Pepperell saw the inside of Louisburg
he probably realized for the first time the magni-
tude of the task he had undertaken. On looking
around him, he said, with the expeditionary motto
in mind no doubt, " The Almighty, of a truth, has
been with us."
As the expedition began, so it now ended, with
a prayer, which has come down to us as a part of
its history. Pepperell celebrated- his entry into
Louisburg by giving a dinner to his officers.
When they were seated at table, the general
called upon his old friend and neighbor, the Rev.
Mr. Moody of York, to ask the Divine blessing.
As the parson's prayers were proverbial for
their length,, the countenances of the guests fell
when he arose from his chair, but to every-
body's surprise the venerable chaplain made his
THE SIEGE CONTINUED 125
model and pithy appeal to the throne of grace in
these words :
" Good Lord ! we have so many things to thank
thee for, that time will be infinitely too short to do
it : we must therefore leave it for the work of
eternity."
1 GENERAL JOHN NIXON is one of those referred to.
2 DOUGLASS (Summary), BELKNAP ("History of New Hampshire")
and HUTCHI'NSON (" History of Massachusetts Bay ") have accounts of
the Louisburg expedition. Douglass and Hutchinson wrote contempo-
raneously, and were well informed, the latter especially, upon all points
relating to the inception and organization. Of their military criticism it
is needless to speak. There is a host of authorities, both French and
English, most of which are collected in Vol. V. " Narrative and Critical
History of America."
3 RICHARD GRIDLEY subsequently laid out the works at Bunker
Hill and Dorchester Heights, in much the same manner.
4 SHIRLEY'S second messenger, Captain Loring, on presenting his
despatches, was allowed but twelve hours in London, being then ordered
on board the Princess Mary, one of the ships referred to.
126 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
AFTERTHOUGHTS
AND now comes the strangest part of the story.
We get quite accustomed to thinking of the
v American colonies as the football of European
diplomacy, our reading of history has fully pre-
pared us for that : but we are not prepared to find
events in the New World actually shaping the
course of those in the Old. In a word, England
lost the battle in Europe, but won it in America.
France was confounded at seeing the key to
Canada in the hands of the enemy she had just
beaten. England and France were like two
duellists who have had a scuffle, in the course of
which they have exchanged weapons. Instead of
dictating terms, France had to compromise mat-
ters. For the sake of preserving her colonial
possessions, she now had to give up her dear-
bought conquests on the continent of Europe.
Hostilities were suspended. All the belligerents
AFTERTHOUGHTS I2/
agreed to restore what they had taken from each
other, and cry quits ; but it is plain that France
would never have consented to such a settlement
at a time when 'her adversaries were so badly
crippled, when all England was in a ferment, and
she hurrying back her troops from Holland in
order to put down rebellion at home, thus leaving
the coalition of which she was the head to stand
or fall without her. France would not have
stayed her victorious march, we think, under such
circumstances as these, unless the nation's atten-
tion had been forcibly recalled to the gravity of
the situation in America.
In some respects this episode of history recalls
the story of the mailed giant, armed to the teeth,
and of the stripling with his sling.
As all the conquests of this war were restored
by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Cape Breton
went to France again.
Thus had New England made herself felt across
the Atlantic by an exhibition of power, as
unlooked-for as it was suggestive to thoughtful
men. To some it was merely like that put forth
by the infant Hercules, in his cradle. But to
128 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
England, the unnatural mother, it was a notice
that the child she had neglected was coming to
manhood, ere long to claim a voice in the disposal
of its own affairs.
To New England herself the consequences of
her great exploit were very marked. The martial
spirit was revived. In the trenches of Louisburg
was the training-school for the future captains of
the republic. Louisburg became a watchword and
a tradition to a people intensely proud of their
traditions. Not only had they made themselves
felt across the ocean, but they now first awoke to
a better knowledge of their own resources, their
own capabilities, their own place in the empire,
and here began the growth of that independent
spirit which, but for the prompt seizure of a
golden opportunity, might have lain dormant for
years. Probably it would be too much to say that
the taking of Louisburg opened the eyes of
discerning men to the possibility of a great
empire in the West ; yet, if we are to look about
us for underlying causes, we know not where else
to find a single event so likely to give birth to
speculative discussion, or a new and enlarged
AFTERTHOUGHTS I2Q
direction in the treatment of public concerns.
What had been done would always be pointed to
as evidence of what might be done again. So we
have considered the taking of Louisburg, in so
far as the colonies were concerned, as the event
of its epoch. 1
Nor would these discussions be any the less
likely to arise, or to grow any the less threatening
to the future of crown and colony, when it became
known that to balance her accounts with other
powers England had handed over Cape Breton to
France again, thus putting in her hand the very
weapon that New England had just wrested from
her, as the pledge to her own security. The work
was all undone with a stroke of the pen. The
colonies were still to be the football of European
politics.
Nobody in the colonies supposed this would be
the reward of their sacrifices that they should
be deliberately sold by the home government, or
that France, after being once disarmed, would be
quietly told to go on strengthening her American
Gibraltar as much as she liked. Yet this was
what really happened, notwithstanding the Duke
I3O THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
of Newcastle's bombastic declaration that " if
France was master of Portsmouth, he would hang
the man who should give up Cape Breton in
exchange for it."
King George, who was in Hanover when he
heard of the capture of Louisburg, sent word to
Pepperell that he would be made a baronet, thus
distinguishing him as the proper chief of the
expedition. This distinction, which really made
Pepperell the first colonist of his time, was nobly
won and worthily worn. After four years of
importunity the colonies succeeded in getting
their actual expenses reimbursed to them, which
was certainly no more than their dues, considering
that they had been fighting the battles of the
mother country. 2
Warren was made an admiral. The navy came
in for a large amount of prize money, obtained
from ships that were decoyed into Louisburg
after it fell, to the exclusion of the army. 3 This
disposition of the spoils was highly resented by
the army, who very justly alleged that, while the
success of the army without the fleet might be
open to debate, there could be no question what-
AFTERTHOUGHTS. 13!
ever of the fleet's inability to take Louisburg
without the army.
1 THE SURRENDER caused great rejoicing in the colonies, as was
natural it should, with all except those who had always predicted its
failure. For some reason the news did not reach Boston until July 2, in
the night. At daybreak the inhabitants were aroused from their slumbers
by the thunder of cannon. The whole day was given up to rejoicings.
A public thanksgiving was observed on the iSth. The news reached
London on the 2oth. The Tower guns were fired, and at night London
was illuminated. Similar demonstrations occurred in all the cities and
large towns of the kingdom. At Versailles the news caused deep gloom.
De Luynes speaks of it thus in his Memoirs: " People have been willing
to doubt about this affair of Louisburg, but unhappily it is only too cer-
tain. These misfortunes have given rise to altercations among ministers.
It is urged that M. Maurepas is at fault in having allowed Louisburg to
fall for want of munitions. The friends of M. Maurepas contend that he
did all that was possible, but could not obtain the necessary funds from
the Treasury." The government got ready two fleets to retake Louisburg.
One was scattered or sunk by storms in 1746, and one .was destroyed by
Lord Anson, in 1747, off Cape Finisterre.
2 THE AMOUNT was 183,649 to Massachusetts, .16,355 to New
Hampshire. 28,863 to Connecticut, and 6,332 to Rhode Island. Quite
a large portion was paid in copper coins.
3 AMONG OTHERS the navy took a Spanish Indiaman, having #2,000,-
ooo, besides gold and silver ingots to a large value, stowed under her cargo
of cocoa. The estimated value of all the prizes was nearly a million
sterling, of which enormous sum only one colonial vessel got a share.
THE END
INDEX
ACADIA (Nova Scotia), Louisburg
designed to protect, 29.
Acadians, refuse to emigrate, 34 ;
and refuse to become British
subjects, 35 ; why called Neutrals,
36 ; desire to remove elsewhere,
3 6 -
Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 127.
Annapolis, N. S., attempted capt-
ure of, 43 ; attack on, frustrated,
note 100.
Auchmuty, Robert, proposes the
taking of Louisburg, note 58.
BOSTON, defenceless condition of,
ii.
Bradstreet, Colonel John, at Louis-
burg, 70.
Brooks, Captain, killed at Louis-
burg, 113.
CANADA, the key to, 12 ; its politi-
cal and economic weaknesses, 24
et seq. ; compared with the Eng-
lish colonies, 25 ; the fur monop-
oly, 26 ; scheme for building up
the colony, 28.
Canso, seized from Louisburg, 43,
note 45 ; prisoners taken there
prove useful, 49 ; army rendezvous
at, 69 ; environs of, 76 ; works
thrown up at, 77.
Cape Breton Island, face of the
country, 16 ; mountains of, 17;
Gabarus Bay, 23 ; first sugges-
tions of its importance to
Canada, 28 ; natural products of,
29; advantageous situation as a
port of delivery and supply, 29 ;
left to Canada by stupid diplo-
macy, 30 ; its chief harbors, 31 ;,
the Bras d'Or, 31 ; called He
Koyale, 32 ; plan for getting
colonists, 33, 34 ; strategic points
on the straits, 76 ; ice blockade
of, 77 ; restored to France, 127.
Cape Breton Coast, approach to,
14 ; blockaded by ice, 77.
Circular battery of Louisburg, its
design, 93 ; silenced, 116.
Coffin, Moses, of Newbury, Mass.,
anecdote of, 104.
Connecticut in Louisburg expedi-
tion, 57; her forces join Pepper-
ell, 78.
DAUPHIN BASTION, of Louisburg,
93 ; destructive fire upon, no.
De Costebello, at Louisburg, 33.
De Saxe, Marshal, defeats the
English, 41.
Duchambon, commander of Louis-
burg, 84 ; recalls a detachment,
95 ; refuses to surrender, 96 ;
changes his mind, 117; and opens
a treaty, 118.
Dwight, Joseph, at Louisburg, 66
and note 71.
ENGLISH HARBOR (Louisburg), 31.
Expeditionary Army, its composi-
tion, 66 ; and equipment, 67, 68 ;
favoring conditions, 68 ; sets sail
for Louisburg, 69 ; at Canso, 69 ;
council of war, 75 ; sails for
Louisburg, 80 ; lands at Gabarus
134
INDEX
Bay, 84 ; not backed up by the
navy, 90 ; transportation of artil-
lery to the front, 94 ; it tells on
the men, 95 ; the camp and camp
life, 101 et seq.
FLAT POINT COVE, our army
camps at, 85.
Fontenoy, English defeated at, 41.
Franklin, Benjamin, has no faith in
Lcuisburg expedition, 57.
GABARUS BAY, the back door to
Louisburg, 23 ; Pepperell lands
at, 80, 81.
Gibson, James, volunteers for Louis-
burg, 63, note 70.
Green Hill, Louisburg shelled from,
95-
Gridley, Richard, engineer at Louis-
burg, 66; an apt scholar, 105,
note 125.
HALE, ROBERT, at Louisburg, note
7i-
Hodges, Joseph, at Louisburg, note
72.
Hutchinson, Thomas, gives casting
vote for attacking Louisburg, 55.
ISLAND BATTERY, situation of, 15;
its value to the besieged, 93 and
note 100 ; disastrous attack upon,
112, 113; its fire silenced, 116;
in our hands, 119.
He Royale, see Cape Breton, 32.
Isle Madame, or Arichat, 76.
LIGHTHOUSE POINT, 14; is seized
and fortified, 109.
Louisburg, the approach to, 14 ; the
harbor, 15; old city, 15; old
fortifications perambulated, 17;
hills back of, 17; natural de-
fences of, 18 ; demolition of the
works, 19 ; and present state of,
19 ; Citadel, 20 ; natural obstacles
to surmount, 21 ; bomb-proofs,
21 ; impregnable from sea, 21 ;
graveyard and its inmates, 22 ;
Royal Battery, 23 ; reasons why
the fortress was erected, 24 et
seq. ; to be a great mart, 28 ;
to help Acadia, 29 ; called
English Harbor, 31 ; chosen
for a fortress, 32 ; why called
Louisburg, 32 ; operations be-
gun, 33 ; prisoners shipped to,
from France, 37 ; strength and
cost of the fortress, 38 and note
45 ; could be defended by women,
39 ; its armament, 39 ; garrison
sallies out upon Nova Scotia, 44 ;
its fall the salvation of New Eng-
land, 47 ; schemes for its capt-
ure, 50 ; its garrison mutinies,
51 ; forces being raised against it,
56,57; early suggestions for its
conquest, note 58 ; is blockaded,
73 ; is invested, 89 ; its defences
as related to the siege, 93 ; prog-
ress of siege operations, 95 et
seq. ; summoned to surrender, 96 ;
breaching batteries, 106 ; progress
of siege, 109; a relieving vessel
gets in, no ; capture of the
Vigilant, no; stratagem tried,
115 ; its success, 11553 general
bombardment, 1 16 ; a suspension
of arms, 118 ; the surrender, 123 ;
the garrison, 123, 124; impor-
tance to Great Britain as a politi-
cal make-weight, 126 et seq. ; re-
stored to France, 127 ; many-
sided importance of the ccnquest
to the colonies, 128, 129 ; disgust
in the colonies at its restoration,
129; cost of the campaign, note
131 ; rejoicings, note 131.
MESERVE, Lieutenant-Colonel, his
services at Louisburg, 94.
Micmacs of Cape Breton, 37.
Mira River, settlements on, 16.
Moody, Rev. Samuel, his pithy
prayer, 124.
Moore, Samuel, at Louisburg, note
72-
Moulton, Jeremiah, at Louisburg,
note 71 ; destroys St. Peter's, 96.
INDEX
135
NEWCASTLE, Duke of, anecdote of,
44-
New England alarmed by the crea-
tion of Louisburg, 39 ; dreads the
beginning of war, 42 ; war is de-
clared, 43 ; menace to her com-
merce and fisheries, 46, 47 ;
aroused to take Loiiisburg, 54,
55 ; extraordinary war measures
in, 56, 57; quality of expedition-
ary army, 62, 63 ; enthusiasm in
enlisting, 64 ; reimbursed lor her
expenses, note 131.
Newfoundland, French removed
from, 33.
New Hampshire contingent, 69 ;
note 72.
New Jersey in Louisburg expedi-
tion, 57.
New York contributes to Louisburg
expedition, 57.
Nixon, John, note 125.
Nova Scotia (Acadia) turned over to
England, 30 ; invaded, 43 ; re-
lieved, 95.
PENNSYLVANIA in Louisburg expe-
dition, 57.
Pepperell, William, chosen to com-
mand, 60 ; his qualifications, 61,
62 ; impetus given by him to the
project, 63, 64 ; his regiment,
note 70 ; hampered by instruc-
tions, 75 ; finds Louisburg
blocked up by ice, 77 ; hails
Warren's arrival with joy, 78;
confident of driving the enemy
from Cape Breton, 79 ; finds
Shirley's plan impracticable, 83 ;
finds his task greater than he
had supposed, 90 ; his advances
A3MUIU AJtllLCl^, 1 1 *i , UU911C9 1U1-
ward preparations for a gsneral
assault. 1 16 ; grants an armistice,
1 18; his conduct contrasted with
Warren's, 119; made a baronet,
130.
Pitts, Ebcnezer, at Louisburg, note
Pomeroy, Major Seth, at Louis-
burg, 89; his record, note 100.
QUEBEC, as the bulwark of Canada,
n.
RAUDOTS, father and son, their
scheme for putting new life into
Canada, 26 ; it proposes a great
naval mart at Cape Breton, 28.
Rhode Island in Louisburg expedi-
tion, 5').
Richmond, Sylvester, at Louisburg,
note 71.
Koyal Battery, situation and impor-
tance of, 23 ; taken, 86 ; a' tempt
to retake it, 87 ; its importance to
Americans, 88.
Ryal, Captain, sent to England,
41-
ST. ANNE, described, 31.
Saint Ovide, at Louisburg, 35.
St. Peter's, destruction of, deter-
mined on, 76 ; is effected, 96.
Seacoast defences of Mexico, Cuba,
etc., 9; of the English colonies,
10, ii ; of Canada, n.
Shirley, Gov. William, saves Annap-
olis. 43 ; notifies ministry, 44 ;
writes Commodore Warren, 44 ;
grasps the situation, 48 ; his per-
sonal traits, 48, 49 ; determines
to take Louisburg, 50 ; applies to
legislature, 52 ; meets defeat, 53 ;
arouses public sentiment, 54 ;
carries his point, 55; sets to
work, 56 ; hears from Warren,
69 ; attempts to order plan of
attack, 73, 74.
Straits of Canso, 31.
TOURNAY, invested, 41.
Tufts, William, his bravery, 113.
Tyng, Commodore Edward, com-
mands colonial fleet, 67 ; nuie
7 2 -
UTRECHT, how the Peace of, affect;
the colonies, 30.
136
INDEX
VAUGHAN, WILLIAM, who he was
and what he did, 49, 50 ; note 58 ;
volunteers for Louisburg, 63 ;
leads a scouting party, 85 ; and
takes Royal Battery, 86.
Vigilant, French war-ship, taken,
no.
WALDO, SAMUEL, at Louisburg, 67
and note 71 ; occupies Royal
Battery, and fires first shot, 89.
War of the Austrian Succession, its
policy outlined, 40 ; produces war
between England and France, 41 ;
hostilities begin at Nova Scotia,
44-
Warren, Commodore Peter, orders
sent to, 44 ; arrives at Canso
and proceeds off Louisburg, 78 ;
takes the Vigilant, no; is re-en-
forced, in ; his plan for taking
the city, in ; agrees to a genenil
attack, 116 ; he ignores Pepperell,
1 19 ; made an admiral, 130.
Whitefield, Rev. George, 62 ; writes
a motto for the flag, 65.
Wolcott, Gen. Roger, 67 and note
7'-
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Celesta A Thousand a Year
Crooked and Straight Abel Grey
The Crook Straightened May Coverley
Mrs. Samuels has written many attractive books. The scenes and
incidents she portrays are full of life, action, and interest, and decidedly
wholesome and instructive.
SALT-WATER DICK STORIES By MAY MANNERING
Climbing the Rope The Little Spaniard
Billy Grimes's Favorite Salt-Water Dick
Cruise of the Dashaway Little Maid of Oxbow
Not all tales of the sea, as the title of the series would imply, but stories
of many lands by a lady who has been a great traveller, and tells what she
has seen, in a captivating way.
UPSIDE-DOWN STORIES By ROSA ABBOTT
Jack of all Trades Upside Down
Alexis the Runaway The Young Detective
Tommy Hickup The Pinks and Blues
VACAT.ON STORIES for Boys and Girls 6 vols
Illustrated
Worth not Wealth Karl Keigler or The Fortunes
Country Life of a Foundling
The Charm Walter Seyton
Holidays at Chestnut Hill
GREAT ROSY DIAMOND STORIES for Girls
6 vols. Illustrated
The Great Rosy Diamond Minnie or The Little Woman
Daisy or The Fairy Spectacles The Angel Children
Violet a Fairy Story Little Blossom's Reward
~ 'Id hu nil booksellers and sent by mail einxinnid OK rprpigt of nrlf*
LEE AJID SHEPA&E Publishers Boston
QTORIES HMERICAN v
0^-OF^H v HISTORY
Three Books. Cloth, illustrated. Price for each book, 50 cents. Boards,
30 cents net. By mail, 35 cents
First Series
STORIES OF AMERICAN HISTORY. By N. S. DODGB
As a reading-book for the younger classes in public and private schools
(by many of which it has been adopted), it will be found of great value.
" Nobody knows better than the author how to make a good story out
of even the driest matters of fact. . . . Here are twenty-two of such
stories; and they are chosen with a degree of skill which of itself would
hidicate its author's fitness for the task, even if we had no other evidence
of that fitness. There is no better, purer, more interesting, or more in-
structive book for boys." New- York Hearth and Home
Second Series
NOBLE DEEDS OF OUR FATHERS. As Told by Soldiers
of the Revolution gathered around the Old Bell of Independence.
Revised and adapted from HENRY C. WATSON
" Every phase of the struggle is presented, and the moral and
religious character of our forefathers, even when engasjed in deadly con-
flict, is depicted with great clearness. Thevoung reader indeed, older
readers will like the stories will be deeply interested in the story of
Lafayette's return to this country, of reminiscences of Washington, of
the night before the battleof Brandywine, of thefirst prayer in Congress,
of the patriotic women of that day, stories of adventure regarding Gen.
Wayne, the traitor Arnold, the massacre of Wyoming, the capture of
Gen. Prescott, and in other narratives equally interesting and important."
Norwich Bulletin
Third Series
THE BOSTON TEA PARTY and other Stories of
the Revolution. Relating many Daring Deeds of the Old
Heroes. By HENRY C. WATSON
"The tales are full of interesting material, they are told in a very
g_raphic manner, and give many incidents of personal daring and dt-scrip-
tions of famous men and places. General Putnam's escape, the fifj lit at
Concord, the patriotism of Mr. Bordtn, the battle of I.unker Hill, the
battle of Oriskany, the mutiny at Morristown and the exploits of Peter
Francisco are among the subjects. Books such as this have a practical
value and an undeniable charm. History will never be dull so long as
it is presented with so much brightness anci color." Philadelphia Record.
From DAVID S. KECK, A.M., Sv.pt. of Berks County Schools .
I received a package containing "Stories of American History,"
" Boston Tea Party," and " Noble Deeds of our Forefathers," and am
ready to say that the stories are all historical, and the matter is presented
in such simple and pleasing style that it will arouse patriotic feelings in
the heart of every American, and at the same time awaken a desire to
study history. I wish I could find at least a dozen of the books named
in every one of my schools, for I am positive they would be productiv*
of much good. ^ "
<-EE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston
p
THE
R EADERS
In Four Fully Illustrated Volumes
By CHAS. F. KING
Master Dearborn Grammar School, Boston ; President National Summer School,
Saratoga Springs ; Author of " Methods and Aids in Geography "
First Book HOME AND SCHOOL
24O pages Over 125 illustrations Price SO cents net
" Sight takes the lead as a channel of perception." SPENCER.
True concepts of real geography can only be formed through travel or from
pictures. Travelling is costly ; but an excellent and accurate substitute is found
in the pictures produced by the photographic camera. The photographer has been
round the world and made his report. We call upon him to aid us in telling
others what he has seen.
Supplementary reading is in great demand, but only books which combine the
useful with the interesting are worthy of being introduced into the school-room.
The four volumes of the Picturesque Readers now in course of preparation are
lot only intensely interesting, but they contain all the " Essentialsof Geography "
in so compact and vivid a form that they can be read by a bright child of ten in a
year as supplementary reading in school, or at home in a few weeks, thus meeting
the great demand " for less time in geography."
We call attention to the following
POINTS OF SUPERIORITY
1 Ample use of pictures over 100 large and elegant pictures in Vol. I.
600 illustrations in the series.
2 All pictures made from photographs, photographic slides, French and
English designs, or by the best American artists.
3 Written in narrative style.
4 Language adapted to children's comprehension.
5 Carefully prepared by personal narrative, wise selection and adaptation.
8 Equally well adapted for home reading and school purposes.
1 Properly graded for the different classes in grammar schools.
3 Containing a vast amount of information for old and young, for teacher
and taught.
9 A happy combination of the useful and interesting.
10 From these readers can be easily taught Geography, Reading, Spelling.
Dictation and Composition.
1 1 All mere map explanations and descriptions carefully avoided.
12 Costly in preparation, but cheap in price.
13 These books can be used in place of, or in connection with, geographies.
14 These fascinating geographical readers will take the place of the stupid sets
of map questions and columns of statistics.
LEE AND SHEPARD Miste 10 Ml Street BOSTON
JANE ANDREWS' BOOKS
THE SEVEN L.ITTLE SISTERS WHO
1.1 V K ON THE ROUND BALL, THAT
FLOATS IN THE AIR New Edition
with an introduction by Mrs. Louisa Per-
sons Hopkins School Edition c!<-ih 50 cts
THE SEVENL.ITTLE S1STEKFRO\ E
I Illili; SISTERHOOD <!K EACH
AND ALT, School Edition cloth 50 cents
TEV ROYS WHO LIVED ON THE
ROAD FKOM LONG AGO TO NOW
2i Illustrations cloth 8 t cents
THE STORIES MOTHER NATURE
TOLD HER CHILDREN School Edi-
tion 50 cents
G KOGRAPHIC AI. PL, AYS For Young
Folks at School and at Homo Price each
paper 15 cents 1. United States 2. Europe
3. Asia 4. Africa and South America 5.
Australia and the Isles of the Sea 6. The
Commerce of the World The above in one
volume cloth 80 cents
GRADED SUPPLEMENTARY READ-
JNG By Prof. Tweed late Supervisor of
Boston Public Schools 12 Parts ready No?.
1, 4, 7, and 10, 1st Year Primary. Nos. 2, 6,
8, and 11. 2d Year Primary. Nos. 3, 6, 9,
and 12, 3d Year Primary. In paper covers
4 cents each. By mail r> cents The 4 parts
for each year bound together in boards 20
cents each year
YOUNG FOLKS' TTISTORY OP THE
UNITED STATES liy Thomas Went-
worth Higginson With over 100 Illustra-
tions 1.20
YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF AMERI-
CAN' EXPLOREKS By Thomas Went-
Avorth Higginscn Illustrated cloth 1.2;)
HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH HISTURY
IJased on " Lectures on English History"
By the late M. J. Guest and brought down
to the year 1&-0 By F. H. Underwood
LL.D. School edition boards 75 cents
YOUNG PEOPL.E'8 HISTORY OF
ENGLAND
Y- >UN PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF IKE-
LAND Illustrated By George M.'ikepi ;;ce
Ti > wle School Edition boards CO cts each
STOK Y OF OUR COUNTRY By Mrs. 1 .
15. Monroe Cloth 80 cents Boards (K) cents
TME KIVG OF THE GOLDEN RIVER
Bv.TdmRuskin Cloth 25 cts Boards 20 cts
BUKGOYNE'S INVASION OF 1777
With an outline sketch of the American
Invasion of Canada 1775-76 By Samuel
Adams Drake Price 40 cents net.
Manual of Bible Selections and Respon-
sive Exercises for Public and Private
Schools By Mrs. S. B. Perry 60 cents net
HEROES OF HISTORY By George
Makepeace Towle Illustrated School Edi-
tion boards 60 cents per volume
VASC-O DI-: <}AMA : PI/.AKRO: M.ACIKLLAX:
MAKI o POLO: RALEGH: DUAKK
PROF. LEWIS B. MOVROK'S RKAJD-
JNGS Boards W) cents each
AIlSI ELLAXEOl'S READINGS: HCMOWmS
READINGS: Yocxa FOLKS' HI:AU:NG.S:
DIALOGUES AND DRAMAS
EXCELLENT QUOTATIONS KOK
HOME AND SCHOOL By Julia B.
Hoitt Cloth net 7o cents
CHAPTERS FROM JAXE AUSTEN By
Oscar Fay Adams Cloth net 75 cents
The following books are furnished in boards
Price 30 cents each
Stories of Animals By Mrs. Sanborn
Tenney 500 illustra.inns 6 vols. QUAD.
RUPEBS: BIKDS: FISHES AND REPTILES:
BEESANDOTIIEH INSECTS : SEA AND RIVER
SHELLS: SEA-UKCHINS AND CORALS
Young Folks' Book of Poetry Arranged
by I'rof. L. J. Campbell In three parts
Paper 20 cents each Complete in one vol-
ume cloth 80 cents
Miss West's Class in Geography By
Miss Sparhawk
Child's Book of Health By Dr. Blaisdell
Natural History Plays By Louisa P.
H jpkins
Robinson Crusoe Arranged for Schools by
\V. T. Adams
Arabian Nights' Entertainments (Selec-
tions) Arranged for School? by Dr. Eliot
Stories from American History By M. S.
Dodge
Noble Deeds of our Fathers as told by
Soldiers of the Revolution By H. C. Watson
The Boston Tea-Party and other Stories
of the Revolution By H. C. Watson
The Flower People By Mrs. Horace Mann
Lessons on Manners By Miss Wiggin
A Kiss fora Blow By Henry Clarke Wright
The Nation in a Nutshell By George
Makepeace Towle
Short Studies of American Authors By
T. W. Higgiuson
The Columbian Speaker By L. J. Camp-
bell and O. J. Root Jr.
Every-Day Business Its Practical Details,
arraiige.l'for Young People, by M. S. Emery
Roadinijs from the Waverley Novels
Edite.1 by Albert F. Blaisdell A'.M. Clotli
net 75 cents
Picturesque Geographical Readers By
Charles F. King 4 volumes Fully illus-
trated Volume T 50 cents net
FIRST STEPS WITH BRITISH ANU
AMERICAN AUTHORS By Albert F.
Blaisdell A.M. Net 75 cents
Copies for examination sent prepaid upon receipt of above Introductory net prices
LEE ANP SHEPARD Publishers Boston
University of California
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