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CHRONICLES OF CANADA Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton In thirty-two volumes

Volume 8

THE GREAT FORTRESS A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760

PREFACE Louisbourg was no mere isolated stronghold which could be lost or won without affecting the wider issues of oversea dominion. On the contrary, it was a necessary link in the chain of waterside posts which connected France with America by way of the Atlantic, the St Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. But since the chain itself and all its other links, and even the peculiar relation of Louisbourg to the Acadians and the Conquest, have been fully described elsewhere in the Chronicles of Canada, the present volume only tries to tell the purely individual tale. Strange to say, this tale seems never to have been told before; at least, not as one continuous whole. Of course, each siege has been described, over and over again, in many special monographs as well as in countless books about Canadian history. But nobody seems to have written any separate work on Louisbourg showing causes, crises, and results, all together, in the light of the complete naval and military proof. So perhaps the following short account may really be the first attempt to tell the tale of Louisbourg from the foundation to the fall.

W. W.

THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 1720-1744

The first French settlers in Louisbourg came over from Newfoundland, which had been given up to the British by the treaty. The fishermen of various nations had frequented different ports all round these shores for centuries; and, by the irony of fate, the new French capital of Cape Breton was founded at the entrance to the bay which had long been known as English Harbour. Everything that rechristening could do, however, was done to make Cape Breton French. Not only was English Harbour now called Louisbourg, but St Peter's became Port Toulouse, St Anne's became Port Dauphin, and the whole island itself was solemnly christened Ile Royale.

The shores of the St Lawrence up to Quebec and Montreal were as entirely French as the islands in the Gulf. But Acadia, which used to form the connection by land between Cape Breton and Canada, had now become a British possession inhabited by the so-called 'neutral French.' These Acadians, few in numbers and quite unorganized, were drawn in opposite directions, on the one hand by their French proclivities, on the other by their rooted affection for their own farms. Unlike the French Newfoundlanders, who came in a body from Plaisance , the Acadians preferred to stay at home. In 1717 an effort was made to bring some of them into Louisbourg. But it only succeeded in attracting the merest handful. On the whole, the French authorities preferred leaving the Acadians as they were, in case a change in the fortunes of war might bring them once more under the fleurs-de-lis, when the connection by land between Quebec and the sea would again be complete. A plan for promoting the immigration of the Irish Roman Catholics living near Cape Breton never got beyond the stage of official memoranda. Thus the population of the new capital consisted only of government employees, French fishermen from Newfoundland and other neighbouring places, waifs and strays from points farther off, bounty-fed engages from France, and a swarm of camp-following traders. The regular garrison was always somewhat of a class apart.

The French in Cape Breton needed all the artificial aid they could get from guns and forts. Even in Canada there was only a handful of French, all told, at the time of the Treaty of Utrecht--twenty-five thousand; while the British colonists in North America numbered fifteen times as many. The respective populations had trebled by the time of the Cession of Canada to the British fifty years later, but with a tendency for the vast British preponderance to increase still more. Canada naturally had neither men nor money to spare for Louisbourg; so the whole cost of building the fortress, thirty million livres, came direct from France. This sum was then the equivalent, in purchasing power, of at least as many dollars now, though the old French livre was only rated at the contemporary value of twenty cents. But the original plans were never carried out; moreover, not half the money that actually was spent ever reached the military chest at all. There were too many thievish fingers by the way.

The founders of Louisbourg took their time to build it. It was so very profitable to spin the work out as long as possible. The plan of the fortress was good. It was modelled after the plans of Vauban, who had been the greatest engineer in the greatest European army of the previous generation. But the actual execution was hampered, at every turn, by want of firmness at headquarters and want of honest labour on the spot. Sea sand was plentiful, worthless, and cheap. So it was used for the mortar, with most disastrous results. The stone was hewn from a quarry of porphyritic trap near by and used for the walls in the rough. Cut stone and good bricks were brought out from France as ballast by the fishing fleet. Some of these finer materials were built into the governor's and the intendant's quarters. Others were sold to New England traders and replaced by inferior substitutes.

Of course, direct trade between the opposing colonies was strictly forbidden by both the French and British navigation acts. But the Louisbourg officials winked at anything that would enrich them quickly, while the New Englanders pushed in eagerly wherever a profit could be made by any means at all. Louisbourg was intended to be the general rendezvous of the transatlantic French fishing vessels; a great port of call between France, Canada, and the French West Indies; and a harbour of refuge in peace and war. But the New England shipping was doing the best trade at Louisbourg, and doing it in double contraband, within five years of the foundation. Cod caught by Frenchmen from Louisbourg itself, French wines and brandy brought out from France, tobacco and sugar brought north from the French West Indies, all offered excellent chances to enterprising Yankees, who came in with foodstuffs and building materials of their own. One vessel sailed for New York with a cargo of claret and brandy that netted her owners a profit of a hundred per cent, even after paying the usual charges demanded by the French custom-house officials for what really was a smuggler's licence.

Fishing, smuggling, and theft were the three great industries of Louisbourg. The traders shared the profits of the smuggling. But the intendant and his officials kept most of the choice thieving for themselves.

The genuine settlers--and a starveling crew they were--wrested their debt-laden livelihood from the local fishing. This was by no means bad in itself. But, like other fishermen before and since, they were in perpetual bondage to the traders, who took good care not to let accounts get evened up. A happier class of fishermen made up the engages, who were paid by government to 'play settler' for a term of years, during which they helped to swell the official census of uncongenial Louisbourg. The regular French fishing fleet of course returned to France at the end of every season, and thus enjoyed a full spell of French delights on shore.

The Acadians supplied Louisbourg with meat and vegetables. These were brought in by sea; for there were no roads worth mentioning; nor, in the contemporary state of Cape Breton, was there any need for roads. The farmers were few, widely scattered, and mostly very poor. The only prosperous settlement within a long day's march was situated on the beautiful Mira river. James Gibson, a Boston merchant and militiaman, who served against Louisbourg in 1745, was much taken by the appearance of an establishment 'at the mouth of a large salmon fishery,' by one 'very handsome house, with two large barns, two large gardens, and fine fields of corn,' and by another with 'six rooms on a floor and well furnished.' He adds that 'in one of the barns were fifteen loads of hay, and room sufficient for sixty horses and cattle.' In 1753 the intendant sent home a report about a proposed 'German' settlement near the 'Grand Lake of Mira.' A new experiment was then being tried, the importation of settlers from Alsace-Lorraine. But five years afterwards Cape Breton had been lost to France for ever.

The fact is that the French never really colonized Cape Breton at large, and Louisbourg least of all. They knew the magnificent possibilities of Sydney harbour, but its mere extent prevented their attempting to make use of it. They saw that the whole island was a maritime paradise, with seaports in its very heart as well as round its shores. But they were a race of gallant, industrious landsmen at home, with neither the wish nor the aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They could not have failed to see that there was plenty of timber in some parts of the island, and that the soil was fit to bear good crops of grain in others. A little prospecting would also have shown them iron, coal, and gypsum. But their official parasites did not want to see smuggling and peculation replaced by industry and trade. Nothing, indeed, better proves how little they thought of making Ile Royale a genuine colony than their utter failure to exploit any one of its teeming natural resources in forest, field, or mine.

What the French did with extraneous resources and artificial aids in the town of Louisbourg is more to the purpose in hand. The problem of their position, and of its strength and weakness in the coming clash of arms, depended on six naval, military, and governmental factors, each one of which must be considered before the whole can be appreciated. These six factors were--the government, the garrison, the militia, the Indians, the navy, and the fortress.

Get rich and go home. The English-speaking peoples, whose ancestors once went to England as oversea emigrants, and two-thirds of whom are now themselves the scions of successive migrations across the Seven Seas, cannot understand how intensely the general run of French officials detested colonial service, especially in a place like Louisbourg, which was everything the average Frenchman hated most. This British failure to understand a national trait, which is still as strongly marked as ever, accounts for a good deal of the exaggerated belief in the strength of the French position in America. The British Americans who tried to think out plans of conquest were wont to under-estimate their own unorganized resources and to over-estimate the organized resources of the French, especially when they set their minds on Louisbourg.

The British also entertained the erroneous idea that 'the whole country was under one command.' This was the very thing it was not. The French system was the autocratic one without the local autocrat; for the functions of the governor and the intendant overlapped each other, and all disputes had to be referred to Quebec, where the functions of another governor and another intendant also overlapped each other. If no decision could be reached at Quebec, and the question at issue was one of sufficient importance, the now double imbroglio would be referred to the Supreme Council in France, which would write back to Quebec, whence the decision would be forwarded to Louisbourg, where it would arrive months after many other troubles had grown out of the original dispute.

The system was false from the start, because the overlapping was intentional. The idea was to prevent any one man from becoming too strong and too independent. The result was to keep governors and intendants at perpetual loggerheads and to divide every station into opposing parties. Did the governor want money and material for the fortifications? Then the intendant was sure the military chest, which was in his own charge, could not afford it. The governor might sometimes gain his ends by giving a definite emergency order under his hand and seal. But, if the emergency could not be proved, this laid him open to great risks from the intendant's subsequent recriminations before the Superior Council in Quebec or the Supreme Council in France. The only way such a system could be worked at all was either by corrupt collusion or by superhuman co-operation between the two conflicting parties, or by appointing a man of genius who could make every other official discharge his proper duties and no more. Corrupt collusion was not very common, because the governors were mostly naval or military men, and the naval and military men were generally honest. Co-operation was impossible between two merely average men; and no genius was ever sent to such a place as Louisbourg. The ablest man in either of the principal posts was the notorious intendant Bigot, who began here on a small scale the consummate schemes that proved so disastrously successful at Quebec. Get rich and go home.

The minor governmental life of Louisbourg was of a piece with the major. There were four or five lesser members of the Superior Council, which also had jurisdiction over Ile St Jean, as Prince Edward Island was then called. The lucrative chances of the custom-house were at the mercy of four under-paid officials grandiloquently called a Court of Admiralty. An inferior court known as the bailiwick tried ordinary civil suits and breaches of the peace. This bailiwick also offered what might be euphemistically called 'business opportunities' to enterprising members. True, there was no police to execute its decrees; and at one time a punctilious resident complained that 'there was not even a common hangman, nor a jail, nor even a tormentor to rack the criminals or inflict other appropriate tortures.' But appeals took a long time and cost much money; so even the officials of the bailiwick could pick up a living by threats of the law's delay, on the one hand, and promises of perverted local justice, on the other. That there was money to be made, in spite of the meagre salaries, is proved by the fact that the best journeyman wig-maker in Louisbourg 'grew extremely rich in different branches of commerce, especially in the contraband,' after filling the dual position of judge of the admiralty and judge of the bailiwick, both to the apparent satisfaction of his friend the intendant.

The next factor was the garrison of regulars. This was under the direct command of the king's lieutenant, who took his orders from the governor. The troops liked Louisbourg no better than the officials did. True, there were taverns in plenty: even before Louisbourg was officially founded they had become such a thriving nuisance that orders for their better control had been sent out from France. But there was no other place for the ordinary soldier to go to in his spare time. The officers felt the want of a larger outlook even more than the men did; and neither man nor officer ever went to Louisbourg if he could help it. When Montcalm, the greatest Frenchman the New World ever saw, came out to Canada, there was eager competition among the troops at home to join his army in the field. Officers paid large sums for the honour of exchanging into any one of the battalions ordered to the front; and when volunteers were called for from the ranks every single man stepped forward. But no Montcalm came out to Louisbourg, and nothing but bounties could get a volunteer. There were only between five and six hundred regulars in the whole garrison during the first siege, twenty-five years after the foundation, and nearly half of these were foreigners, mostly 'pay-fighting Swiss.'

The third factor was the militia. Every able-bodied man, not specially exempt for other duties, was liable for service in time of war; and the whole island could be drawn upon for any great emergency at Louisbourg. Between thirteen and fourteen hundred men were got under arms for the siege of 1745. Those who lived in Louisbourg had the advantage of a little slack discipline and a little slack drill. Those in the country had some practice in the handling of firearms. But, taken all round, it would be an exaggeration to call them even quarter-trained soldiers.

The fourth factor was the Indians. They belonged to the Micmac tribe of the great Algonquin family, and probably numbered no more than about four thousand throughout the whole French sphere of influence in what are now the Maritime Provinces. A few hundred braves might have been ready to take the war-path in the wilds of Cape Breton; but sieges were not at all in their line, except when they could hang round the besiegers' inland flanks, on the chance of lifting scalps from careless stragglers or ambushing an occasional small party gone astray. As in Canada, so in Cape Breton, the Indians naturally sided with the French, who disturbed them less and treated them better than the British did. The British, who enjoyed the inestimable advantage of superior sea-power, had more goods to exchange. But in every other respect the French were very much preferred. The handful of French sent out an astonishingly great number of heroic and sympathetic missionaries to the natives. The many British sent out astonishingly few. The Puritan clergy did shamefully little compared with the wonderful Jesuits. Moreover, while the French in general made the Indian feel he was at all events a fellow human being, the average British colonist simply looked on him as so much vermin, to be destroyed together with the obstructive wilds that harboured him.

The fifth factor, the navy, brings us into contact with world-wide problems of sea-power which are too far-reaching for discussion here Suffice it to say that, while Louisbourg was an occasional convenience, it had also peculiar dangers for a squadron from the weaker of two hostile navies, as squadrons from France were likely to be. The British could make for a dozen different harbours on the coast. The French could make for only this one. Therefore the British had only to guard against this one stronghold if the French were in superior force; they could the more easily blockade it if the French were in equal force; and they could the more easily annihilate it if it was defended by an inferior force.

The harbour of Louisbourg ran about two miles north-east and south-west, with a clear average width of half a mile. The two little peninsulas on either side of the entrance were nearly a mile apart. But the actual fairway of the entrance was narrowed to little more than a clear quarter of a mile by the reefs and islands running out from the south-western peninsula, on which the fortress stood. This low, nubbly tongue of land was roughly triangular. It measured about three-quarters of a mile on its longest side, facing the harbour, over half a mile on the land side, facing the enemy's army, and a good deal under half a mile on the side facing the sea. It had little to fear from naval bombardment so long as the enemy's fleet remained outside, because fogs and storms made it a very dangerous lee shore, and because, then as now, ships would not pit themselves against forts unless there was no rival fleet to fight, and unless other circumstances were unusually propitious.

The entrance was defended by the Island Battery, which flanked the approach with thirty-nine guns, and the Royal Battery, which directly faced it with thirty guns. Some temporary lines with a few more guns were prepared in time of danger to prevent the enemy from landing in Gabarus Bay, which ran for miles south-west of Louisbourg. But the garrison, even with the militia, was never strong enough to keep the enemy at arm's length from any one of these positions. Moreover, the north-east peninsula, where the lighthouse stood, commanded the Island Battery; and the land side of Louisbourg itself was commanded by a range of low hillocks less than half a mile away.

It was this land side, containing the citadel and other works, which so impressed outsiders with the idea of impregnable strength. The glacis was perfect--not an inch of cover wherever you looked; and the approach was mostly across a slimy bog. The ditch was eighty feet wide. The walls rose over thirty feet above the ditch. There were embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight guns all round; though not more than ninety were ever actually mounted. On the seaward face Louisbourg was not so strongly fortified; but in the centre of this face there were a deep ditch and high wall, with bastions on each immediate flank, and lighter defences connecting these with the landward face. A dozen streets were laid out, so as to divide the whole town into conveniently square little blocks. The area of the town itself was not much more than a hundred acres altogether--rather close quarters for several thousand men, women, and children during a siege.

If reports and memoranda could defend a fortress, then Louisbourg ought indeed to have been impregnable. Of course every official trust entails endless correspondence. But, quite apart from the stated returns that go through 'the usual channel of communication,' reams and reams of paper were filled with special reports, inspections, complaints, and good advice. The governor wrote home, most elaborately, in 1724, about the progress of the works. Ten years later he announced the official inauguration of the lighthouse on the 1st of April. In 1736 the chief item was the engineer's report on the walls. Next year the great anxiety was about a dangerous famine, with all its attendant distress for the many and its shameless profits for the few. On November 23, 1744, reinforcements and provisions were asked for, because intelligence had been received that the New Englanders were going to blockade Louisbourg the following summer. At the same time, the discontent of the garrison had come to a head, and a mutiny had broken out because the extra working pay had not been forthcoming. After this the discipline became, not sterner, but slacker than ever, especially among the hireling Swiss. On February 8, 1745, within three months of the first siege, a memorandum was sent in to explain what was still required to finish the works begun twenty-five years before.

But, after all, it was not so much the defective works that really mattered as the defective garrison behind them. English-speaking civilians who have written about Louisbourg have sometimes taken partial account of the ordinary Frenchman's repugnance to oversea duty in time of peace and of the little worth of hireling foreigners in time of war. But they have always ignored that steady drip, drip, drip of deterioration which reduces the efficiency of every garrison condemned to service in remote and thoroughly uncongenial countries. Louisbourg was remote, weeks away from exchanges with Quebec, months from exchanges with any part of France or Switzerland. And what other foreign station could have been more thoroughly uncongenial, except, perhaps, a convict station in the tropics? Bad quarters were endurable in Paris or even in the provinces, where five minutes' walk would take one into something pleasanter. Bad fortifications would inspire less apprehension anywhere in France, where there was at least an army always ready to take the field. But cold, cramped quarters in foggy little Louisbourg, between the estranging sea and an uncouth land of rock, bog, sand, and scrubby vegetation, made all the world of difference in the soldier's eyes. Add to this his want of faith in works which he saw being scamped by rascally contractors, and we can begin to understand why the general attitude of town and garrison alike was one of 'Here to-day and gone to-morrow.'

THE SEA LINK LOST 1745

Rome would not rest till she had ruined Carthage. Britain would not rest till she had seen Dunkirk demolished. New England would not rest till she had taken Louisbourg.

Louisbourg was unique in all America, and that was its undoing. It was the one sentinel beside the gateway to New France; therefore it ought to be taken before Quebec and Canada were attacked. It was the one corsair lying in perpetual wait beside the British lines of seaborne trade; therefore it must be taken before British shipping could be safe. It was the one French sea link between the Old World and the New; therefore its breaking was of supreme importance. It was the one real fortress ever heard of in America, and it was in absolutely alien hands; therefore, so ran New England logic, it was most offensive to all true Britons, New Englanders, and Puritans; to all rivals in smuggling, trade, and privateering; and to all right-thinking people generally.

The weakness of Louisbourg was very welcome news to energetic Massachusetts. In 1744, when Frederick the Great had begun the War of the Austrian Succession and France had taken arms against Great Britain, du Quesnel, the governor of Louisbourg, who had received the intelligence of these events some weeks before the alert Bostonians, at once decided to win credit by striking the first blow. He was much disliked in Louisbourg. He drank hard, cursed his subordinates when in his cups, and set the whole place by the ears. Moreover, many of those under him wished to avoid giving the British Americans any provocation, in the hope that the war might be confined to Europe. But none dared to refuse a legal and positive order. So in May his expedition left for Canso, where there was a little home-made British fort on the strait between Cape Breton and the mainland of Nova Scotia. The eighty fishermen in Canso surrendered to du Vivier, the French commander, who sent them on to Boston, after burning their fort to the ground. Elated by this somewhat absurd success, and strengthened by nearly a hundred regulars and four hundred Indians, who raised his total force to at least a thousand men, du Vivier next proceeded against Annapolis on the west side of Nova Scotia. But Mascarene, the British commander there, stood fast on his defence, though his men were few and his means small. The Acadian French in the vicinity were afraid to join du Vivier openly. The siege dragged on. The British received a slight reinforcement. The French did not. And in September du Vivier suddenly retired without attempting an assault.

The burning of Canso and the attack on Annapolis stirred up the wrath of New England. A wild enthusiast, William Vaughan, urged Governor Shirley of Massachusetts to make an immediate counter-attack. Shirley was an English lawyer, good at his own work, but very anxious to become famous as a conqueror. He lent a willing ear to Vaughan, and astounded the General Court of Massachusetts on January 21, 1745, by first inducing the members to swear secrecy and then asking them to consider a plan for a colonial expedition against Louisbourg. He and they were on very good terms. But they were provincial, cautious, and naturally slow when it came to planning campaigns and pledging their credit for what was then an enormous sum of money. Nor could they be blamed. None of them knew much about armies and navies; most thought Louisbourg was a real transatlantic Dunkirk; and all knew that they were quite insolvent already. Their joint committee of the two Houses reported against the scheme; whereupon each House carried a secret adverse vote by a large majority.

But, just before these votes were taken, a Puritan member from a country district wrestled in what he thought confidential prayer with such loud ejaculations that an eavesdropper overheard him and passed the secret on. Of course the momentous news at once began to run like wildfire through the province. Still, the 'Noes had it,' both in the country and the House. Shirley was dejected and in doubt what to do next. But James Gibson, the merchant militiaman, suddenly hit on the idea of getting up a petition among the business community. The result surpassed every expectation. All the merchants were eager for attack. Louisbourg embodied everything they feared and hated: interference with seaborne commerce, rank popery, French domination, trouble with Acadia, and the chance of being themselves attacked. When the petition was presented to both Houses, the whole subject was again debated. Provincial insolvency and the absence of either a fleet or an army were urged by the Opposition. But the fighting party put forth all their strength and pleaded that delay meant reinforcements for Louisbourg and a good chance lost for ever. The vote would have been a tie if a member of the Opposition had not slipped and broken his leg as he was hurrying down to the House. Once the decision had been reached, however, all did their best to ensure success.

Shirley wrote to his brother governors. Vaughan galloped off post-haste to New Hampshire with the first official letter. Gibson led the merchants in local military zeal. The result was that Massachusetts, which then included Maine, raised over 3,000 men, while New Hampshire and Connecticut raised about 500 each. Rhode Island concurred, but ungraciously and ineffectually late. She nursed two grudges against Massachusetts, one about the undeniably harsh treatment meted out to her great founder, Roger Williams, the other about that most fruitful source of inter-provincial mischief-making, a disputed boundary. New York lent some guns, which proved very useful. The remaining colonies did nothing.

Shirley's choice of a commander-in-chief wisely fell on William Pepperrell. There was no military leader in the whole of New England. So the next most suitable man was the civilian who best combined the necessary qualities of good sense, sound knowledge of men and affairs, firmness, diplomacy, and popularity. Popularity was essential, because all the men were volunteers. Pepperrell, who answered every reasonable test, went through the campaign with flying colours and came out of it as the first and only baronet of Massachusetts. He was commissioned as major-general by all three contributing provinces, since none of them recognized any common authority except that of the crown. He was ably seconded by many leading men who, if not trained soldiers, were at least accustomed to the organization of public life; for in those days the word politician had not become a term of reproach in America, and the people were often represented by men of the highest character.

The financial difficulty was overcome by issuing letters of credit, which were afterwards redeemed by the Imperial government, at a total cost of nearly a quarter of a million sterling. There was no time and there were no means to change the militia into an army. But many compensating advantages helped to make up for its deficiencies. The men volunteered eagerly. They were all very keen to fight the French. Most of them understood the individual use of firearms. Many of them had been to sea and had learned to work together as a crew. Nearly all of them had the handiness then required for life in a new country. And, what with conviction and what with prejudice, they were also quite disposed to look upon the expedition as a sort of Crusade against idolatrous papists, and therefore as a very proper climax to the Great Awakening which had recently roused New England to the heights of religious zealotry under the leadership of the famous George Whitefield himself.

Strangely enough, neither Whitefield nor his friend Pepperrell was at all sure that the expedition was a wise or even a godly venture. Whitefield warned Pepperrell that he would be envied if he succeeded and abused if he failed. The Reverend Thomas Prince openly regretted the change of enemy. 'The Heavenly shower is over. From fighting the Devil they needs must turn to fighting the French.' But Parson Moody, most truculent of Puritans, had no doubts whatever. The French, the pope, and the Devil were all one to him; and when he embarked as senior chaplain he took a hatchet with which to break down the graven images of Louisbourg. In the end Whitefield warmed up enough to give the expedition its official motto: 'Nil desperandum Christo Duce.' The 'Never Despair' heartened the worldlings. The 'Christ our Commander' appealed to the 'Great Awakened.' And the whole saying committed him to nothing particular concerning the issue at stake.

The three militia contingents numbered 4,270 men. The three naval contingents had 13 vessels mounting 216 guns. In addition to both these forces there were the transports, which had considerable crews. But all these together, if caught on the open sea, would be no match for a few regular men-of-war. New England had no navy, though the New Englanders had enjoyed a good deal of experience in minor privateering against the Spaniards during the last few years, as well as a certain amount of downright piracy in time of peace, whenever a Frenchman or a Spaniard could be safely taken at a disadvantage. So Shirley asked Commodore Warren, commanding the North American station, to lend his aid. Warren had married an American and was very well disposed towards the colonists. But, having no orders from England, he at first felt obliged to refuse. Within a short time, however, he was given a free hand by the Imperial government, which authorized him to concert measures with Shirley 'for the annoyance of the enemy, and for his Majesty's Service in North America.'

Warren immediately sailed for Canso with three men-of-war and sent for another to join him. His wait for orders made him nearly three weeks later than the New Englanders in arriving at the rendezvous. But this delay, due to no fault of his own, was really an advantage to the New England militia, who thus had a chance of learning a little more drill and discipline. His four vessels carried 180 guns and 1,150 men at full strength. The thirteen Provincial armed vessels carried more than 1,000 men. No exact returns were ever made out for the transports. But as '68 lay at anchor' in Canso harbour, while others 'came dropping in from day to day,' as there were 4,270 militiamen on board, in addition to all the stores, and as the French counted '96 transports' making for Gabarus Bay, there could not have been less than 100, while the crews could hardly have mustered less than an average of 20 men each. The grand total, at the beginning of the expedition, could not, therefore, have been less than 8,000 men, of all sorts put together--over 4,000 American Provincial militia, over 1,000 men of the Royal Navy, quite 1,000 men aboard the Provincial fighting vessels, and at least 2,000 more as crews to work the transports.

May 1, the first Sunday the Provincials spent at Canso, was a day of great and multifarious activity, both sacred and profane. Parson Moody, the same who had taken the war-path with his iconoclastic hatchet, delivered a tremendous philippic from the text, 'Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.' Luckily for his congregation he had the voice of a Stentor, as there were several mundane competitors in an adjoining field, each bawling the word of command at the full pitch of his lungs. A conscientious diarist, though full of sabbatarian zeal, was fain to admit that 'Severall sorts of Busnesses was a-Going on: Sum a-Exercising, Sum a-Hearing o' the Preaching.'

On May 5 Warren sailed into Canso. The Provincials thought the date of his arrival a very happy omen, as it fell on what was then, according to the Old Style calendar, St George's Day, April 23. After a conference with Pepperrell he hurried off to begin the blockade of Louisbourg. A week later, May 21, the transports joined him there, and landed their militiamen for one of the most eccentric sieges ever known.

While the British had been spending the first four months of 1745 in preparing 8,000 men, the French authorities in Louisbourg, whose force was less than 2,000, had been wasting the same precious time in ridiculous councils of war. It is a well-known saying that councils of war never fight. But these Louisbourg councils did not even prepare to fight. The news from Boston was not heeded. Worse yet, no attention was paid to the American scouting vessels, which had been hovering off the coast for more than a month. The bibulous du Quesnel had died in October. But his successor, du Chambon, was no better as a commandant. Perhaps the kindest thing to say of du Chambon is that he was the foolish father of a knavish son--of that du Chambon de Vergor who, in the next war, surrendered Fort Beausejour without a siege and left one sleepy sentry to watch Wolfe's Cove the night before the Battle of the Plains.

It is true that du Chambon had succeeded to a thoroughly bad command. He had no naval force whatever; and the military force had become worse instead of better. The mutiny in December had left the 560 regulars in a very sullen frame of mind. They knew that acquisitive government officials were cheating them out of their proper rations of bacon and beans. The officials knew that the soldiers knew. And so suspicion and resentment grew strong between them. The only other force was the militia, which, with certain exceptions, comprised every male inhabitant of Cape Breton who could stand on two legs and hold a musket with both hands. There were boys in their early teens and old men in their sixties. Nearly 1,800 ought to have been available. But four or five hundred that might have been brought in never received their marching orders. So the total combatants only amounted to some 1,900, of whom 1,350 were militia. The non-combatants numbered nearly as many. The cramped hundred acres of imprisoned Louisbourg thus contained almost 4,000 people--mutineers and militia, women and children, drones and other officials, all huddled up together.

No reinforcements arrived after the first appearance of the British fleet. Marin, a well-known guerilla leader, had been sent down from Quebec, through the bush, with six or seven hundred whites and Indians, to join the two thousand men whom the French government had promised du Vivier for a second, and this time a general, attack on Acadia. But these other two thousand were never sent; and Marin, having failed to take Annapolis by the first week in June, was too late and too weak to help Louisbourg afterwards. The same ill luck pursued the French by sea. On April 30 the Renommee, a very smart frigate bringing out dispatches, was chased off by the Provincial cruisers; while all subsequent arrivals from the outside world were intercepted by Warren.

The landing effected on May 12 was not managed according to Shirley's written instructions; nor was the siege. Shirley had been playing a little war game in his study, with all the inconvenient obstacles left out--the wind, the weather, the crashing surf in Gabarus Bay, the rocks and bogs of the surrounding country, the difficulties of entering a narrow-necked harbour under a combination of end-on and broadside fire, the terrible lee shore off the islands, reefs, and Lighthouse Point, the commonest vigilance of the most slovenly garrison, and even the offensive power of the guns on the walls of Louisbourg itself. Shirley's plan was that Pepperrell should arrive in the offing too late to be seen, land unobserved, and march on Louisbourg in four detachments while the garrison was wrapped in slumber. Two of these detachments were to march within striking distance and then 'halt and keep a profound silence.' The third was to march 'under cover of said hills' until it came opposite the Royal Battery, which it was to assault on a given signal; while the 'profound silence' men rushed the western gate. The fourth detachment was to race along the shore, scale a certain spot in the wall, 'and secure the windows of the Governor's Apartments.' All this was to be done by raw militia, on ground they had never reconnoitred, and in the dead of night.

Needless to say, Pepperrell tried something quite different. At daybreak of the 12th the whole fleet stood into Gabarus Bay, a large open roadstead running west from the little Louisbourg peninsula. The Provincials eyed the fortress eagerly. It looked mean, squat, and shrunken in the dim grey light of early dawn. But it looked hard enough, for all that. Its alarm bells began to ring. Its signal cannon fired. And all the people who had been living outside hurried in behind the walls.

The New Englanders were so keen to land that they ran some danger of falling into complete disorder. But Pepperrell managed very cleverly. Seeing that some Frenchmen were ready to resist a landing on Flat Point, two miles south-west of Louisbourg, he made a feint against it, drew their fire, and then raced his boats for Freshwater Cove, another two miles beyond. Having completely outdistanced the handful of panting Frenchmen, he landed in perfect safety and presently scattered them with a wild charge which cost them about twenty in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Before dark two thousand Provincials were ashore. The other two thousand landed at their leisure the following day.

The next event in this extraordinary siege is one of the curiosities of war. On May 14 the enthusiastic Vaughan took several hundreds of these newly landed men to the top of the nearest hillock and saluted the walls with three cheers. He then circled the whole harbour, keeping well inland, till he reached the undefended storehouses on the inner side of the North-East Harbour, a little beyond the Royal Battery. These he at once set on fire. The pitch, tar, wood, and other combustibles made a blinding smoke, which drifted over the Royal Battery and spread a stampeding panic among its garrison of four hundred men. Vaughan then retired for the night. On his return to the Royal Battery in the morning, with only thirteen men, he was astounded to see no sign of life there. Suspecting a ruse, he bribed an Indian with a flask of brandy to feign being drunk and reel up to the walls. The Indian reached the fort unchallenged, climbed into an embrasure, and found the whole place deserted. Vaughan followed at once; and a young volunteer, shinning up the flag-pole, made his own red coat fast to the top. This defiance was immediately answered by a random salvo from Louisbourg, less than a mile across the harbour.

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