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Title: The Great Fortress A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760
Author: William Wood
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6026] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 21, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT FORTRESS ***
This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan
CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
THE GREAT FORTRESS
A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760
By WILLIAM WOOD
TORONTO, 1915
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.
59 GRANDE ALLEE, QUEBEC, 2nd January 1915.
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 1720-1744
The fortress of Louisbourg arose not from victory but from defeat; not from military strength but from naval weakness; not from a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It lived a precarious life of only forty years, from 1720 to 1760. And nothing but bare ruins were left to mark its grave when it finally passed, unheeded and unnamed, into the vast dominions of the conquering British at the Peace of Paris in 1763.
The Treaty of Utrecht narrowed the whole French sea-coast of America down to the single island of Cape Breton. Here, after seven years of official hesitation and maritime exhaustion, Louisbourg was founded to guard the only harbour the French thought they had a chance of holding. A medal was struck to celebrate this last attempt to keep the one remaining seaway open between Old France and New. Its legend ran thus: Ludovicoburgum Fundatum et Munitum, M.DCC.XX ('Louisbourg Founded and Fortified, 1720'). Its obverse bore the profile of the young Louis XV, whose statesmen hoped they had now established a French Gibraltar in America, where French fleets and forts would command the straits leading into the St Lawrence and threaten the coast of New England, in much the same way as British fleets and forts commanded the entrance to the Mediterranean and threatened the coasts of France and Spain. This hope seemed flattering enough in time of peace; but it vanished at each recurrent shock of war, because the Atlantic then became a hostile desert for the French, while it still remained a friendly highway for the British.
The first French settlers in Louisbourg came over from Newfoundland, which had been given up to the British by the treaty. The fishermen of various nations had 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 (now Placentia), the Acadians preferred to stay at home. In 1717 an effort was made to bring some of them into Louisbourg. But it only succeeded in 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 French were not a colonizing people, their governing officials hated a tour of duty oversea, and Louisbourg was the most unpopular of all the stations in the service. Those Frenchmen who did care for outlandish places went east to India or west to Canada. Nobody wanted to go to a small, dull, out-of-the-way garrison town like Louisbourg, where there was no social life whatever—nothing but fishermen, smugglers, petty traders, a discontented garrison, generally half composed of foreigners, and a band of dishonest, second-rate officials, whose one idea was how to get rich and get home. The inspectors who were sent out either failed in their duty and joined the official gang of thieves, or else resigned in disgust. Worse still, because this taint was at the very source, the royal government in France was already beset with that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis XIV and the meteoric rise of Napoleon.
The founders of Louisbourg took their time to build it. It was so very profitable to spin the 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 [Footnote: See in this Series The Winning of Canada and The Passing of New France, where they are discussed.] 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 last factor was the fortress itself. This so-called 'Gibraltar of the West,' this 'Quebec by the sea,' this 'Dunkirk of New France,' was certainly first of its kind. But it was first only in a class of one; while the class itself was far from being a first among classes. The natural position was vastly inferior to that of Quebec or Gibraltar; while the fortifications were not to be compared with those of Dunkirk, which, in one sense, they were meant to replace. Dunkirk had been sold by Charles II to Louis XIV, who made it a formidable naval base commanding the straits of Dover. When the Treaty of Utrecht compelled its demolition, the French tried to redress the balance a little by building similar works in America on a very much smaller scale, with a much more purely defensive purpose, and as an altogether subsidiary undertaking. Dunkirk was 'a pistol held at England's head' because it was an integral part of France, which was the greatest military country in the world and second to England alone on the sea. Louisbourg was no American Dunkirk because it was much weaker in itself, because it was more purely defensive, because the odds of population and general resources as between the two colonies were fifteen to one in favour of the British, and because the preponderance of British sea-power was even greater in America than it was in Europe.
The 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.
Vaughan's next move was to write a dispatch to Pepperrell: 'May it please your Honour to be informed that by the Grace of God and the courage of 13 Men I entered the Royal Battery about 9 o' the clock and am waiting for a reinforcement and a flag.' He had hardly sent this off before he was attacked by four boats from Louisbourg. Quite undaunted, however, he stood out on the open beach with his thirteen men and kept them all at bay till the reinforcement and the flag arrived with Bradstreet, who was afterwards to win distinction as the captor of Fort Frontenac during the great campaign of 1759.
This disgraceful abandonment and this dramatic capture of the Royal Battery marked the first and most decisive turning-point in the fortunes of the siege. The French were dismayed, the British were elated; and both the dismay and the elation grew as time wore on, because everything seemed to conspire against the French and in favour of the British. Even the elements, as the anonymous Habitant de Louisbourg complains in his wonderfully candid diary, seemed to have taken sides. There had never been so fine a spring for naval operations. But this was the one thing which was entirely independent of French fault or British merit. All the other strokes of luck owed something to human causes. Wise-acres had shaken their heads over the crazy idea of taking British cannon balls solely to fit French cannon that were to be taken at the beginning of the siege: it was too much like selling the pelt before the trap was sprung. Yet these balls actually were used to load the forty-two pounders taken with the Royal Battery! Moreover, as if to cap the climax, ten other cannon were found buried in the North-East Harbour; and again spare British balls were found to fit exactly! The fact is that what we should now call the Intelligence Department had been doing good work the year before by spying out the land at Louisbourg and reporting to the proper men in Boston.
The Bostonians had always intended to take the Royal Battery at the earliest possible moment. But nobody had thought that the French would abandon it without a blow and leave it intact for their enemy, with all its armament complete. The French council of war apparently shrank from hurting the feelings of the engineer in charge, who had pleaded for its preservation! They then ran away without spiking the guns properly, and without making the slightest attempt either to burn the carriages or knock the trunnions off. The invaluable stores were left in their places. The only real destruction was caused by a barrel of powder, which some bunglers blew up by mistake. The inevitable consequence of all this French ineptitude was that the Royal Battery roared against Louisbourg the very next morning with tremendous effect, smashing the works most exposed to its fire, bringing down houses about the inhabitants' ears, and sending the terrified non-combatants scurrying off to underground cover.
Meanwhile the bulk of the New Englanders were establishing their camp along the brook which fell into Gabarus Bay beside Flat Point and within two miles of Louisbourg. Equipment of all kinds was very scarce. Tents were so few and bad that old sails stretched over ridge-poles had to be used instead. When sails ran short, brushwood shelters roofed in with overlapping spruce boughs were used as substitutes.
Landing the four thousand men had been comparatively easy work. But landing the stores was very hard indeed; while landing the guns was not only much harder still, but full of danger as well. Many a flat-boat was pounded into pulpwood while unloading the stores, though the men waded in waist-deep and carried all the heavy bundles on their heads and shoulders. When it came to the artillery, it meant a boat lost for every single piece of ordnance landed. Nor was even this the worst; for, strange as it may seem, there was, at first, more risk of foundering ashore than afloat. There were neither roads nor yet the means to make them. There were no horses, oxen, mules, or any other means of transport, except the brawny men themselves, who literally buckled to with anchor-cable drag-ropes—a hundred pair of straining men for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had to take care; and in the dense, obstructing scrub they had to haul through by main force. But this was child's play to what awaited them in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog they had to pass before reaching the hillocks which commanded Louisbourg.
The first attempts here were disastrous. The guns sank out of sight in the engulfing bog; while the toiling men became regular human targets for shot and shell from Louisbourg. It was quite plain that the British batteries could never be built on the hillocks if the guns had nothing to keep them from a boggy grave, and if the men had no protection from the French artillery. But a ship-builder colonel, Meserve of New Hampshire, came to the rescue by designing a gun-sleigh, sixteen feet in length and five in the beam. Then the crews were told off again, two hundred men for each sleigh, and orders were given that the work should not be done except at night or under cover of the frequent fogs. After this, things went much better than before. But the labour was tremendous still; while the danger from random shells bursting among the boulders was not to be despised. Four hundred struggling feet, four hundred straining arms—each team hove on its long, taut cable through fog, rain, and the blackness of the night, till every gun had been towed into one of the batteries before the walls. The triumph was all the greater because the work grew, not easier, but harder as it progressed. The same route used twice became an impassable quagmire. So, when the last two hundred men had wallowed through, the whole ensnaring bog was seamed with a perfect maze of decoying death-trails snaking in and out of the forbidding scrub and boulders.
Pepperrell's dispatches could not exaggerate these 'almost incredible hardships.' Afloat and ashore, awake and asleep, the men were soaking wet for days together. At the end of the longest haul they had nothing but a choice of evils. They could either lie down where they were, on hard rock or oozing bog, exposed to the enemy's fire the moment it was light enough to see the British batteries, or they could plough their way back to camp. Here they were safe enough from shot and shell; but, in other respects, no better off than in the batteries. Most men's kits were of the very scantiest. Very few had even a single change of clothing. A good many went bare-foot. Nearly all were in rags before the siege was over.
When twenty-five pieces had been dragged up to Green Hill and its adjoining hillocks, the bombardment at last began. The opening salvo seemed to give the besiegers new life. No sooner was their first rough line of investment formed than they commenced gaining ground, with a disregard for cover which would have cost them dear if the French practice had not been quite as bad as their own. A really wonderful amount of ammunition was fired off on both sides without hitting anything in particular. Louisbourg itself was, of course, too big a target to be missed, as a rule; and the besiegers soon got so close that they simply had to be hit themselves now and then. But, generally speaking, it may be truthfully said that while, in an ordinary battle, it takes a man's own weight in cartridges to kill him, in this most extraordinary siege it took at least a horse's weight as well.
The approach to the walls defied all the usual precautions of regular war. But the circumstances justified its boldness. With only four thousand men at the start, with nearly half of this total on the sick list at one rather critical juncture, with very few trained gunners, and without any corps of engineers at all, the Provincials adapted themselves to the situation so defiantly that they puzzled, shook, and overawed the French, who thought them two or three times stronger than they really were. Recklessly defiant though they were, however, they did provide the breaching batteries with enough cover for the purpose in hand. This is amply proved both by the fewness of their casualties and by the evidence of Bastide, the British engineer at Annapolis, who inspected the lines of investment on his arrival, twelve days before the surrender, and reported them sufficiently protected.
Where the Provincials showed their 'prentice hands to genuine disadvantage was in their absurdly solemn and utterly futile councils of war. No schoolboys' debating club could well have done worse than the council held to consider du Chambon's stereotyped answer to the usual summons sent in at the beginning of a siege. The formula that 'his cannon would answer for him' provoked a tremendous storm in the council's teacup and immediately resulted in the following resolution: 'Advised, Unanimously, that the Towne of Louisbourg be Attacked this Night.' But, confronted with 'a great Dissatysfaction in many of the officers and Souldiers at the designed attack of the towne this Night,' it was 'Advised, Unanimously,' by a second council, called in great haste, 'that the Said Attack be deferred for the Present.' This 'Present' lasted during the rest of the siege.
Once the New Englanders had settled down, however, they wisely began to increase their weight of metal, as well as to decrease the range at which they used it. They set to work with a will to make a breach at the North-West Gate of Louisbourg, near where the inner angle of the walls abutted on the harbour; and they certainly needed all their indomitable perseverance when it came to arming their new 'North-Western' or 'Titcomb's Battery.' The twenty-two pounders had required two hundred men apiece. The forty-two pounders took three hundred. Two of these unwieldy guns were hauled a couple of miles round the harbour, in the dark, from that 'Royal Battery' which Vaughan had taken 'by the Grace of God and the courage of 13 Men,' and then successfully mounted at 'Titcomb's,' just where they could do the greatest damage to their former owners, the French.
Well-trained gunners were exceedingly scarce. Pepperrell could find only six among his four thousand men. But Warren lent him three more, whom he could ill spare, as no one knew when a fleet might come out from France. With these nine instructors to direct them Pepperrell's men closed in their line of fire till besieged and besiegers came within such easy musket-shot of one another that taunting challenges and invitations could be flung across the intervening space.
Each side claimed advantages and explained shortcomings to its own satisfaction. A New England diarist says: 'We began our fire with as much fury as possible, and the French returned it as warmly with Cannon, Mortars, and continual showers of musket balls; but by 11 o'clock we had beat them all from their guns.' A French diarist of the same day says that the fire from the walls was stopped on purpose, chiefly to save powder; while the same reason is assigned for the British order to cease fire exactly one hour later.
The practice continued to be exceedingly bad on both sides; so bad, indeed, that the New Englanders suffered more from the bursting of their own guns than from the enemy's fire. The nine instructors could not be everywhere; and all their good advice could not prevent the eager amateurs from grossly overloading the double-shotted pieces. 'Another 42-pound gun burst at the Grand Battery.' 'Captain Hale is dangerously hurt by the bursting of another gun. He was the mainstay of our gunnery since Captain Rhodes's misfortune'—a misfortune due to the same cause. But, in spite of all such drawbacks on the British side, Louisbourg got much the worst of it. The French had to fire from the centre outwards, at a semicircle of batteries that fired back convergingly at them. Besides, it was almost as hard to hit the thin, irregular line of British batteries as it was to miss the deep, wide target of overcrowded Louisbourg. The walls were continually being smashed from without and patched up from within. The streets were ploughed from end to end. Many houses were laid in ruins: only one remained intact when the siege was over. The non-combatants, who now exceeded the garrison effectives, were half buried in the smothering casemates underground; and though the fighting men had light, air, and food enough, and though they were losing very few in killed and wounded, they too began to feel that Louisbourg must fall if it was not soon relieved from outside.
The British, on the contrary, grew more and more confident, both afloat and ashore, though they had one quite alarming scare ashore. They knew their navy outmatched the French; and they saw that, while Warren was being strengthened, du Chambon was being left as devoid of naval force as ever. But their still greater confidence ashore was, for the time being, very rudely shaken when they heard that Marin, the same French guerilla leader who had been sent down from Quebec against Annapolis with six or seven hundred whites and Indians, had been joined by the promised reinforcements from France and was coming to take the camp in rear. The truth was that the reinforcements never arrived, that Marin had failed to take Annapolis, and that there was no real danger from his own dwindling force, even if it had tried to relieve Louisbourg in June. But the rumour ran quickly through the whole camp, probably not without Pepperrell's own encouragement, and at once produced, not a panic, but the most excellent effect. Discipline, never good, had been growing worse. Punishments were unknown. Officers and men were petitioning for leave to go home, quite regardless of the need for their services at the front. Demands for promotion, for extra allowances, and for increased pay were becoming a standing nuisance. Then, just as the leaders were at their wits' ends what to do, Marin's threatened attack came to their aid; and their brave armed mob once more began to wear the semblance of an army. Sentries, piquets, and outposts appeared as if by magic. Officers went their rounds with zeal. The camp suddenly ceased to be a disorderly playground for every one off duty. The breaching batteries redoubled their efforts against the walls.
The threat of danger once past, however, the men soon slipped back into their careless ways. A New England chronicler records that 'those who were on the spot have frequently, in my hearing, laughed at the recital of their own irregularities and expressed their admiration when they reflected on the almost miraculous preservation of the army from destruction.' Men off duty amused themselves with free-and-easy musketry, which would have been all very well if there had not been such a dearth of powder for the real thing. Races, wrestling, and quoits were better; while fishing was highly commendable, both in the way of diet as well as in the way of sport. Such entries as 'Thritty Lobbsters' and '6 Troutts' appear in several diaries.
Nor were other forms of gaiety forgotten. Even a Massachusetts Puritan could recommend a sermon for general distribution in the camp because 'It will please your whole army, as it shows them the way to gain by their gallantry the hearts and affections of the Ladys.' And even a city of the 'Great Awakening,' like Boston, could produce a letter like the following:
I hope this will find you at Louisbourg with a bowl of Punch, a Pipe, and a Pack of Cards, and whatever else you desire. (I had forgot to mention a Pretty French Madammoselle.) Your Friend Luke has lost several Beaver Hatts already concerning the Expedition. He is so very zealous about it that he has turned poor Boutier out of his house for saying he believed you wouldn't take the Place. Damn his Blood, says Luke, let him be an Englishman or a Frenchman and not pretend to be an Englishman when he is a Frenchman in his Heart. If Drinking to your Success would take Cape Britton you must be in possession of it now, for it's a Standing Toast.
The day this letter was written in Boston, May 6, Warren had already begun the regular blockade. Only a single ship eluded him, an ably handled Basque, which stood in and rounded to, under the walls of Louisbourg, after running the gauntlet of the Royal Battery, on which the French fired with all their might to keep its own fire down. A second vessel was forced aground. Her captain fought her to the last; but Warren's boat crews took her. Some men who escaped from her brought du Chambon the news that a third French ship, the Vigilant, was coming to the relief of Louisbourg with ammunition and other stores. This ship had five hundred and sixty men aboard, that is, as many as all the regulars in Louisbourg. On May 31 the garrison heard a tremendous cannonading out at sea. It grew in volume as Warren's squadron was seen to surround the stranger, who was evidently making a gallant fight against long odds. Presently it ceased; the clustered vessels parted; spread out; and took up their stations exactly as before, except that a new vessel was now flying the British flag. This was the Vigilant, which had been put in charge of a prize crew, while her much-needed stores had been sent in to the Provincial army.
The French in Louisbourg were naturally much discouraged to see one of their best frigates flying the Union Jack. But they still hoped she might not really be the anxiously expected Vigilant. Warren, knowing their anxiety, determined to take advantage of it at the first opportunity. He had not long to wait. A party of New Englanders, wandering too far inland, were ambushed by the French Indians, who promptly scalped all the prisoners. Warren immediately sent in a formal protest to du Chambon, with a covering letter from the captain of the Vigilant, who willingly testified to the good treatment he and his crew were receiving on board the British men-of-war. Warren's messenger spoke French perfectly, but he concealed his knowledge by communicating with du Chambon through an interpreter. This put the French off their guard and induced them to express their dismay without reserve when they read the news about the Vigilant. Everything they said was of course reported back to Warren, who immediately passed it on to Pepperrell.
Warren now thought the time had come to make a bold, decisive stroke. He had just been reinforced by two more frigates out from England. Titcomb's famous brace of forty-two's had just begun to hammer in the North-West Gate of Louisbourg. Pepperrell's lines of investment were quite complete. The chance was too tempting to let slip, especially as it was safe strategy to get into Louisbourg before the French could be relieved either by land or sea. Still, there was the Island Battery to reckon with. It was full of fight, and it flanked the narrow entrance in the most threatening way. Warren paused to consider the strength of this last outpost of the French defences and called a council of war to help him. For once a council favoured extreme measures; whereupon Warren sent in word to Pepperrell, asking for 1,500 Provincials, and proposing a combined assault immediately. The plan was that Warren should sail in, past the Island Battery, and attack the harbour face of Louisbourg with every soldier, sailor, and ship's gun at his disposal; while Pepperrell carried the landward face by assault. This plan might have succeeded, though at considerable loss, if Pepperrell's whole 4,000 had been effective. But as he then had 1,900 sick and wounded, and 600 guarding his rear against the rumoured advance of Marin from Annapolis, it was quite evident that if he gave Warren another 1,500 he would have to assault the landward face alone. Under these circumstances he very sensibly declined to co-operate in the way Warren had suggested. But he offered 600 men, both from his army and the transports, for the Vigilant, whose prize crew would thus be released for duty aboard their own vessels. Warren, who was just over forty, replied with some heat. But Pepperrell, who was just under fifty, kept his temper admirably and carried the day.
Warren, however, still urged Pepperrell to take some decisive step. Both fleet and army agreed that a night attack on the Island Battery was the best alternative to Warren's impracticable plan. Vaughan jumped at the idea, hoping to repeat in another way his success against the Royal Battery. He promised that, if he was given a free hand, he would send Pepperrell the French flag within forty-eight hours. But Vaughan was not to lead. The whole attack was entrusted to men who specially volunteered for it, and who were allowed to choose their own officers. A man called Brooks happened to be on the crest of the wave of camp popularity at the moment; so he was elected colonel for this great occasion. The volunteers soon began to assemble at the Royal Battery. But they came in by driblets, and most of them were drunk. The commandant of the battery felt far from easy. 'I doubt whether straggling fellows, three, four, or seven out of a company, ought to go on such service. They seem to be impatient for action. If there were a more regular appearance, it would give me greater sattysfaction.' His misgivings were amply justified; for the men whom Pepperrell was just beginning to form into bodies with some kind of cohesion were once more being allowed to dissolve into the original armed mob.
The night of June 7 was dark and calm. A little before twelve three hundred men, wisely discarding oars, paddled out from the Royal Battery and met another hundred who came from Lighthouse Point. The paddles took them along in silence while they circled the island, looking for the narrow landing-place, where only three boats could go abreast between the destroying rocks on which the surf was breaking. Presently they found the tiny cove, and a hundred and fifty men landed without being discovered. But then, with incredible folly, they suddenly announced their presence by giving three cheers. The French commandant had cautioned his garrison to be alert, on account of the unusual darkness; and, at this very moment, he happened himself to be pacing up and down the rampart overlooking the spot where the volunteers were expressing their satisfaction at having surprised him so well.
His answer was instantaneous and effective. The battery 'blazed with cannon, swivels, and small-arms,' which fired point-blank at the men ashore and with true aim at the boats crowded together round the narrow landing-place. Undaunted though undisciplined, the men ashore rushed at the walls with their scaling-ladders and began the assault. The attempt was vain. The first men up the rungs were shot, stabbed, or cut down. The ladders were smashed or thrown aside. Not one attacker really got home. Meanwhile the leading boats in the little cove were being knocked into splinters by the storm of shot. The rest sheered off. None but the hundred and fifty men ashore were left to keep up the fight with the garrison. For once the odds were entirely with the French, who fired from under perfect cover, while the unfortunate Provincials fired back from the open rocks. This exchange of shots went on till daylight, when one hundred and nineteen Provincials surrendered at discretion. Their total loss was one hundred and eighty-nine, nearly half the force employed.
Despairing Louisbourg naturally made the most of this complete success. The bells were rung and the cannon were fired to show the public joy and to put the best face on the general situation. Du Chambon surpassed himself in gross exaggerations. He magnified the hundred and fifty men ashore into a thousand, and the two hundred and fifty afloat into eight hundred; while he bettered both these statements by reporting that the whole eighteen hundred had been destroyed except the hundred and nineteen who had been taken prisoners.
Du Chambon's triumph was short-lived. The indefatigable Provincials began a battery at Lighthouse Point, which commanded the island at less than half a mile. They had seized this position some time before and called it Gorham's Post, after the colonel whose regiment held it. Fourteen years later there was another and more famous Gorham's Post, on the south shore of the St Lawrence near Quebec, opposite Wolfe's Cove. The arming of this battery was a stupendous piece of work. The guns had to be taken round by sea, out of range of the Island Battery, hauled up low but very dangerous cliffs, and then dragged back overland another mile and a quarter. The directing officer was Colonel Gridley, who drew the official British maps and plans of Louisbourg in 1745, and who, thirty years later, traced the American defences on the slopes of Bunker's Hill. Du Chambon had attempted to make an attack on Gorham's Post as soon as it was established. His idea was that his men should follow the same route as the British guns had followed—that is, that they should run the gauntlet between the British fleet and army, land well north of Gorham's Post, and take it by surprise from the rear. But his detachment, which was wholly inadequate, failed to strike its blow, and was itself very nearly cut off by Warren's guard-boats on its crest-fallen return to Louisbourg.
Gridley's Lighthouse Battery soon over-matched the Island Battery, where powder was getting dangerously scarce. Many of the French guns were knocked off their mountings, while the walls were breached. Finally, the British bombardment became so effective that Frenchmen were seen running into the water to escape the bursting shells. It was now past the middle of June, and the siege had lasted more than a month. The circle of fire was closing in on the beleaguered garrison. Their total effectives had sunk to only a thousand men. This thousand laboured harder in its losing cause than might have been expected. Perhaps the mutineers hoped to be pardoned if they made a firm defence. Perhaps the militia thought they ought not to be outdone by mutineers and hireling foreigners. But, whatever the reason, great efforts were certainly made to build up by night what the British knocked down by day. Two could play at that game, however, and the British had the men and means to win. Their western batteries from the land were smashing the walls into ruins. Their Royal Battery wrecked the whole inner water-front of Louisbourg. Breaches were yawning elsewhere. British fascines were visible in large quantities, ready to fill up the ditch, which was already half full of debris. The French scouts reported hundreds of scaling-ladders on the reverse slopes of the nearest hillocks. Warren's squadron had just been again reinforced, and now numbered eleven sail, carrying 554 guns and 3,000 men. There was no sign of help, by land or sea, for shrunken, battered, and despairing Louisbourg. Food, ammunition, stores were all running out. Moreover, the British were evidently preparing a joint attack, which would result in putting the whole garrison to the sword if a formal surrender should not be made in time.
Now that the Island Battery had been silenced there was no reason why Warren's plan should not be crowned with complete success. Accordingly he arranged with Pepperrell to run in with the first fair wind, at the head of the whole fleet, which, with the Provincial armed vessels, now numbered twenty-four sail, carried 770 guns, and was manned by 4,000 sailors. Half these men could be landed to attack the inner water-front, while Pepperrell could send another 2,000 against the walls. The total odds against Louisbourg would thus be about four to one in men and over eight to one in guns actually engaged.
But this threatened assault was never made. In the early morning of June 27 the non-combatants in Louisbourg unanimously petitioned du Chambon to surrender forthwith. They crept out of their underground dungeons and gazed with mortal apprehension at the overwhelming forces that stood arrayed against their crumbling walls and dwindling garrison. Noon came, and their worst fears seemed about to be realized. But when the drums began beating, it was to a parley, not to arms. A sigh of ineffable relief went up from the whole of Louisbourg, and every eye followed the little white flutter of the flag of truce as it neared that terrible breaching battery opposite the West Gate. A Provincial officer came out to meet it. The French officer and he saluted. Then both moved into the British lines and beyond, to where Warren and Pepperrell were making their last arrangements on Green Hill.
After a short consultation the British leaders sent in a joint reply to say that du Chambon could have till eight the next morning to make his proposals. These proved to be so unacceptable that Pepperrell refused to consider them, and at once sent counter-proposals of his own. Du Chambon had now no choice between annihilation and acceptance, so he agreed to surrender Louisbourg the following day. He was obliged to guarantee that none of the garrison should bear arms against the British, in any part of the world, for a whole year. Every one in Louisbourg was of course promised full protection for both property and person. Du Chambon's one successful stipulation was that his troops should march out with the honours of war, drums beating, bayonets fixed, and colours flying. Warren and Pepperrell willingly accorded this on the 28th; and the formal transfer took place next day, exactly seven weeks since the first eager New Englanders had waded ashore through the thundering surf of Gabarus Bay.
The total losses in killed and wounded were never precisely determined. Each side minimized its own and maximized the enemy's. But as du Chambon admitted a loss of one hundred and forty-five, and as the Provincials claimed to have put three hundred out of action, the true number is probably about two hundred, or just over ten per cent of the whole garrison. The Provincials reported their own killed, quite correctly, at a hundred. The remaining deaths, on both sides, were due to disease. The Provincial wounded were never grouped together in any official returns. They amounted to about three hundred. This brings the total casualties in Pepperrell's army up to four hundred and gives the same percentage as the French. The highest proportion of casualties among all the different forces was the fifteen per cent lost by the French on board the Vigilant in less than five hours' fighting. The lowest was in Warren's squadron and the Provincial Marine—about five in each. The loss of material suffered by the French was, of course, on quite a different scale. Every fortification and other building in Louisbourg, with the remarkable exception of a single house, was at least partly demolished by the nine thousand cannon balls and six hundred shells that hit the target of a hundred acres peopled by four thousand souls.
On the 29th the French marched out with the honours of war, laid down their arms, and were put under guard as prisoners, pending their transport to France. Du Chambon handed the keys to Pepperrell at the South Gate. The victorious but disgusted Provincials marched in by the West Gate, and found themselves set to protect the very houses that they had hoped to plunder. Was it not high time to recoup themselves for serving as soldiers at sixpence a day? Great Babylon had fallen, and ought to be destroyed—of course, with due profit to the destroyers. There was a regular Louisbourg legend, current in New England, that stores of goods and money were to be found in the strong rooms of every house. So we can understand the indignation of men whose ideas were coloured by personal contact with smuggling and privateering, and sometimes with downright piracy, when they were actually told off as sentries over these mythical hoards of wealth. One diarist made the following entry immediately after he had heard the news: 'Sabbath Day, ye 16th June [Old Style] they came to Termes for us to enter ye Sitty to morrow, and Poore Termes they Bee too.' Another added that there was 'a great Noys and hubbub a mongst ye Solders a bout ye Plunder: Som a Cursing, Som a Swarein.' Five days later a third indignant Provincial wrote: 'Ye French keep possession yet, and we are forsed to stand at their Dores to gard them.' Another sympathetic chronicler, after pouring out the vials of his wrath on the clause which guaranteed the protection of French private property, lamented that 'by these means the poor souldiers lost all their hopes and just demerit [sic] of plunder promised them.'
While Parson Moody was preaching a great thanksgiving sermon, and all the senior officers were among his congregation, there was what responsible officials called 'excessive stealing in every part of the Towne.' Had this stealing really been very 'excessive' no doubt it would have allayed the grumbling in the camp. But, as a matter of fact, there was so little to steal that the looters began to suspect collusion between their leaders and the French. Another fancied wrong exasperated the Provincials at this critical time. A rumour ran through the camp that Warren had forestalled Pepperrell by receiving the keys himself. Warren was cursed, Pepperrell blamed; and a mutinous spirit arose. Then it was suddenly discovered that Pepperrell had put the keys in his pocket.
Meanwhile the fleet was making haul after haul. When Pepperrell marched through the battered West Gate, at the head of his motley army, Warren had led his squadron into the harbour; and both commanders had saluted the raising of the Union Jack which marked the change of ownership. But no sooner had the sound of guns and cheering died away than the Union Jack was lowered and the French flag was raised again, both over the citadel of Louisbourg and over the Island Battery. This stratagem succeeded beyond Warren's utmost expectations. Several French vessels were lured into Louisbourg and captured with stores and men enough to have kept the British out for some weeks longer. Their cargoes were worth about a million dollars. Then, just as the naval men were wondering whether their harvest was over or not, a fine French frigate made for the harbour quite unsuspectingly, and only discovered her fatal mistake too late to turn back. By the irony of circumstances she happened to be called Notre-Dame de la Delivrance. Among her passengers was the distinguished man of science, Don Antonio de Ulloa, on his way to Paris, with all the results of those explorations in South America which he afterwards embodied in a famous book of travel. Warren treated him with the greatest courtesy and promised that all his collections should be duly forwarded to the Royal Academy of Sciences. Once this exchange of international amenities had been ended, however, the usual systematic search began. The visible cargo was all cocoa. But hidden underneath were layers and layers of shining silver dollars from Peru; and, underneath this double million, another two million dollars' worth of ingots of silver and ingots of gold.
The contrast between the poverty of Louisbourg, where so much had been expected, and the rich hauls of prize-money made by the fleet, was gall and wormwood to the Provincials. But their resentment was somewhat tempered by Warren's genial manner towards them. Warren was at home with all sorts and conditions of men. His own brother-officers, statesmen and courtiers, distinguished strangers like Ulloa, and colonial merchants like Pepperrell, were equally loud in his praise. With the lesser and much more easily offended class of New Englanders found in the ranks he was no less popular. A rousing speech, in which he praised the magnificently stubborn work accomplished by 'my wife's fellow-countrymen,' a hearty generosity all round, and a special hogshead of the best Jamaica rum for the garrison of the Royal Battery, won him a great deal of goodwill, in spite of the fact that his 'Admiral's eighth' of the naval prize-money amounted to some sixty thousand pounds, while Pepperrell found himself ten thousand pounds out of pocket at the end of the siege.
Pepperrell, however, was a very rich man, for those colonial days; and he could well afford to celebrate the fall of Louisbourg by giving the chief naval and military officers a dinner, the fame of which will never fade away from some New England memories. Everything went off without a hitch. But, as the hour approached, there was a growing anxiety, on the part of both host and guests, as to whether or not the redoubtable Parson Moody would keep them listening to his grace till all the meats got cold. He was well known for the length, as well as for the strength, of his discourses. He had once denounced the Devil in a grace of forty minutes. So what was the surprised delight of his fellow-revellers when he hardly kept them standing longer than as many seconds. 'Good Lord!' he said, 'we have so much to thank Thee for, that Time will be too short. Therefore we must leave it for Eternity. Bless our food and fellowship on this joyful occasion, for the sake of Christ our Lord. Amen!'
News of the victory was sent at once to Boston. The vessel bearing it arrived in the middle of the night. But long before the summer sun was up the streets were filled with shouts of triumph, while the church bells rang in peals of exultation, and all the guns and muskets in the place were fired as fast as men could load them.
The mother country's joy was less exuberant. There were so many other things to think of nearer home; among them the British defeat at Fontenoy and the landing of the Young Pretender. Nor was the actual victory without alloy; for prescient people feared that a practically independent colonial army had been encouraged to become more independent still. And who can say the fear was groundless? Louisbourg really did serve to blood New Englanders for Bunker's Hill. But, in spite of this one drawback, the news was welcomed, partly because any victory was welcome at such a time, and partly because the fall of Louisbourg was a signal assertion of British sea-power on both sides of the Atlantic.
London naturally made overmuch of Warren's share, just as Boston made overmuch of Pepperrell's. But the Imperial government itself perfectly understood that the fleet and the army were each an indispensable half of one co-operating whole. Warren was promoted rear-admiral of the blue, the least that could be given him. Pepperrell received much higher honours. He was made a baronet and, like Shirley, was given the colonelcy of a regiment which was to bear his name. Such 'colonelcies' do not imply the actual command of men, but are honorary distinctions of which even kings and conquerors are proud. Nor was the Provincial Marine forgotten. Rous, of the Shirley, was sent to England with dispatches, and was there made a post-captain in the Royal Navy for his gallantry in action against the Vigilant. He afterwards enjoyed a distinguished career and died an admiral. It was in his ship, the Sutherland, that Wolfe wrote the final orders for the Battle of the Plains fourteen years after this first siege of Louisbourg.
THE LINK RECOVERED 1748
Louisbourg was the most thoroughly hated place in all America. The French government hated it as Napoleon hated the Peninsula, because it was a drain on their resources. The British government hated it because it cut into their oversea communications. The American colonists hated it because it was a standing menace to their ambitious future. And every one who had to live in it—no matter whether he was French or British, European or American, naval or military, private or official—hated it as only exiles can.
But perhaps even exiled Frenchmen detested it less heartily than the disgusted Provincials who formed its garrison from the summer of 1745 to the spring of the following year. Warren and Pepperrell were obliged to spend half their time in seeing court-martial justice done. The bluejackets fretted for some home port in which to enjoy their plentiful prize-money. The Provincials fretted for home at any cost. They were angry at being kept on duty at sixpence a day after the siege was over. They chafed against the rules about looting, as well as against what they thought the unjust difference between the million sterling that had been captured at sea, under full official sanction, and the ridiculous collection of odds and ends that could be stolen on land, at the risk of pains and penalties. Imagine the rage of the sullen Puritan, even if he had a sense of humour, when, after hearing a bluejacket discussing plans for spending a hundred golden guineas, he had to make such entries in his diary as these of Private Benjamin Crafts: 'Saturday. Recd a half-pint of Rum to Drinke ye King's Health. The Lord look upon Us and prepare us for His Holy Day. Sunday. Blessed be the Lord that has given us to enjoy another Sabath. Monday. Last Night I was taken verry Bad. The Lord be pleased to strengthen my Inner Man. May we all be Prepared for his Holy Will. Recd part of Plunder—9 Small tooth combs.'
No wonder there was trouble in plenty. The routine of a small and uncongenial station is part of a regular's second nature, though a very disagreeable part. But it maddens militiamen when the stir of active service is past and they think they are being kept on such duty overtime. The Massachusetts men had the worst pay and the best ringleaders, so they were the first to break out openly. One morning they fell in without their officers, marched on to the general parade, and threw their muskets down. This was a dramatic but ineffectual form of protest, because nearly all the muskets were the private property of the men themselves, who soon came back to take their favourite weapons up again. One of their most zealous chaplains, however, was able to enter in his diary, perhaps not without a qualm, but certainly not without a proper pride in New England spirit, the remark of a naval officer 'that he had thought the New England men were cowards—But that Now he thought that if they had a Pick ax and Spade they would digg ye way to Hell and storm it.'
The only relief from the deadly monotony and loneliness of Louisbourg was to be found in the bad bargains and worse entertainment offered by the camp-followers, who quickly gathered, like a flock of vultures, to pick the carcass to the bone. There were few pickings to be had, but these human parasites held on until the bones were bare. Of course, they gave an inordinate amount of trouble. They always do. But well-organized armies keep them in their place; while militiamen can not.
Between the camp-followers and the men Pepperrell was almost driven mad. He implored Shirley to come and see things for himself. Shirley came. He arrived at the end of August accompanied both by his own wife and by Warren's. He delivered a patriotic speech, in which he did not stint his praise of what had really been a great and notable achievement. His peroration called forth some genuine enthusiasm. It began with a promise to raise the pay of the Massachusetts contingent by fifteen shillings a month, and ended with free rum all round and three cheers for the king. The prospect thereupon brightened a little. The mutineers kept quiet for several days, and a few men even agreed to re-enlist until the following June. Shirley was very much pleased with the immediate result, and still more pleased with himself. His next dispatch assured the Duke of Newcastle that nobody else could have quelled the incipient mutiny so well. Nor was the boast, in one sense, vain, since nobody else had the authority to raise the men's pay.
But discontent again became rife when it began to dawn on the Provincials that they would have to garrison Louisbourg till the next open season. The unwelcome truth was that, except for a few raw recruits, no reliefs were forthcoming from any quarter. The promised regulars had left Gibraltar so late that they had to be sent to Virginia for the winter, lest the sudden change to cold and clammy Louisbourg should put them on the sick list. The two new regiments, Shirley's and Pepperrell's, which were to be recruited in the American colonies and form part of the Imperial Army, could not be raised in time. There even seemed to be some doubt as to whether they could be raised at all. The absence of Pepperrell from New England, the hatred of garrison duty in Louisbourg, and resentment at seeing some Englishmen commissioned to command Americans, were three great obstacles in the way. The only other resource was the colonial militia, whose waifs and strays alone could be induced to enlist.
Thus, once the ice began to form, the despairing Provincial garrison saw there could be no escape. The only discharge was death. What were then known as camp fevers had already broken out in August. As many as twenty-seven funerals in a single day passed by the old lime-kiln on the desolate point beyond the seaward walls of Louisbourg. 'After we got into the Towne, a sordid indolence or Sloth, for want of Discipline, induced putrid fevers and dyssentrys, which at length became contagious, and the people died like rotten sheep.' Medical men were ignorant and few. Proper attendance was wholly lacking. But the devotion of the Puritan chaplains, rivalling that of the early Jesuits, ran through those awful horrors like a thread of gold. Here is a typical entry of one day's pastoral care: 'Prayed at Hospital. Prayed at Citadel. Preached at Grand Batery. Visited [a long list of names] all verry Sick. [More names] Dy'd. Am but poorly myself, but able to keep about.'
No survivor ever forgot the miseries of that dire winter in cold and clammy Louisbourg. When April brought the Gibraltar regiments from Virginia, Pepperrell sent in to Shirley his general report on the three thousand men with whom he had begun the autumn. Barely one thousand were fit for duty. Eleven hundred lay sick and suffering in the ghastly hospital. Eight hundred and ninety lay buried out on the dreary tongue of land between the lime-pit and the fog-bound, ice-encumbered sea.
Warren took over the command of all the forces, as he had been appointed governor of Louisbourg by the king's commission. Shirley had meanwhile been revolving new plans, this time for the complete extirpation of the French in Canada during the present summer of 1746. He suggested that Warren should be the naval joint commander, and Warren, of course, was nothing loth.
Massachusetts again rose grandly to the situation. She voted 3,500 men, with a four pound sterling bounty to each one of them. New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island followed well. New York and New Jersey did less in proportion. Maryland did less still. Virginia would only pass a lukewarm vote for a single hundred men. Pennsylvania, as usual, refused to do anything at all. The legislature was under the control of the Quakers, who, when it came to war, were no better than parasites. upon the body politic. They never objected to enjoying the commercial benefits of conquest; any more than they objected to living on land which could never have been either won or held without the arms they reprobated. But their principles forbade them to face either the danger or expense of war. The honour of the other Pennsylvanians was, however, nobly saved by a contingent of four hundred, raised as a purely private venture. Altogether, the new Provincial army amounted to over 8,000 men.
The French in Canada were thoroughly alarmed. Rumour had magnified the invading fleet and army till, in July, the Acadians reported the combined forces, British regulars included, at somewhere between forty and fifty thousand. But the alarm proved groundless. The regulars were sent on an abortive expedition against the coast of France, while the Duke of Newcastle ordered Shirley to discharge the 'very expensive' Provincials, who were now in Imperial pay, 'as cheap as possible.' This was then done, to the intense disgust of the colonies concerned. New York and Massachusetts, however, were so loth to give up without striking a single blow that they raised a small force, on their own account, to take Crown Point and gain control of Lake Champlain. [Footnote: An account of this expedition will be found in Chapter ii of 'The War Chief of the Six Nations' in this Series.]
Before October came the whole of the colonies were preparing for a quiet winter, except that it was to be preceded by the little raid on Crown Point, when, quite suddenly, astounding news arrived from sea. This was that the French had sent out a regular armada to retake Louisbourg and harry the coast to the south. Every ship brought in further and still more alarming particulars. The usual exaggerations gained the usual credence. But the real force, if properly handled and combined, was dangerous enough. It consisted of fourteen sail of the line and twenty-one frigates, with transports carrying over three thousand veteran troops; altogether, about 17,000 men, or more than twice as many as those in the contingents lately raised for taking Canada.
New York and Massachusetts at once recalled their Crown Point expeditions. Boston was garrisoned by 8,000 men. All the provinces did their well-scared best. There was no danger except along the coast; for there were enough armed men to have simply mobbed to death any three thousand Frenchmen who marched into the hostile continent, which would engulf them if they lost touch with the fleet, and wear them out if they kept communications open. Those who knew anything of war knew this perfectly well; and they more than half suspected that the French force had been doubled or trebled by the panic-mongers. But the panic spread, and spread inland, for all that. No British country had ever been so thoroughly alarmed since England had watched the Great Armada sailing up the Channel.
The poets and preachers quickly changed their tune. Ames's Almanac for 1746 had recently edified Bostonians with a song of triumph over fallen Louisbourg:
Bright Hesperus, the Harbinger of Day,
Smiled gently down on Shirley's prosperous sway,
The Prince of Light rode in his burning car,
To see the overtures of Peace and War
Around the world, and bade his charioteer,
Who marks the periods of each month and year,
Rein in his steeds, and rest upon High Noon
To view our Victory over Cape Brittoon.
But now the Reverend Thomas Prince's litany, rhymed by a later bard, summed up the gist of all the supplications that ascended from the Puritans:
O Lord! We would not advise;
But if, in Thy Providence,
A Tempest should arise,
To drive the French fleet hence,
And scatter it far and wide,
Or sink it in the sea,
We should be satisfied,
And Thine the Glory be.
Strange to say, this pious suggestion had been mostly answered before it had been made. Disaster after disaster fell upon the doomed French fleet from the very day it sailed. The admiral was the Duc d'Anville, one of the illustrious La Rochefoucaulds, whose family name is known wherever French is read. He was not wanting either in courage or good sense; but, like his fleet, he had little experience at sea. The French ships, as usual, were better than the British. But the French themselves were a nation of landsmen. They had no great class of seamen to draw upon at will, a fact which made an average French crew inferior to an average British one. This was bad enough. But the most important point of all was that their fleets were still worse than their single ships. The British always had fleets at sea, constantly engaged in combined manoeuvres. The French had not; and, in face of the British command of the sea, they could not have them. The French harbours were watched so closely that the French fleets were often attacked and defeated before they had begun to learn how to work together. Consequently, they found it still harder to unite two different fleets against their almost ubiquitous enemy.
D'Anville's problem was insoluble from the start, Four large men-of-war from the West Indies were to join him at Chibucto Bay, now the harbour of Halifax, under Admiral Conflans, the same who was defeated by Hawke in Quiberon Bay thirteen years later, on the very day that Wolfe was buried. Each contributory part of the great French naval plan failed in the working out. D'Anville's command was a collection of ships, not a co-ordinated fleet. The French dockyards had been neglected; so some of the ships were late, which made it impossible to practise manoeuvres before sailing for the front. Then, in the bungling hurry of fitting out, the hulls of several vessels were left foul, which made them dull sailers; while nearly all the holds were left unscoured, which, of course, helped to propagate the fevers, scurvy, plague, and pestilence brought on by bad food badly stowed. Nor was this all. Officers who had put in so little sea time with working fleets were naturally slack and inclined to be discontented. The fact that they were under sealed orders, which had been communicated only to d'Anville, roused their suspicions while his weakness in telling them they were bound for Louisbourg almost produced a mutiny.
The fleet left France at midsummer, had a very rough passage through the Bay of Biscay, and ran into a long, dead calm off the Azores. This ended in a storm, during which several vessels were struck by lightning, which, in one case, caused a magazine explosion that killed and wounded over thirty men. It was not till the last week of September that d'Anville made the excellently safe harbour of Halifax. The four ships under Conflans were nowhere to be seen. They had reached the rendezvous at the beginning of the month, had cruised about for a couple of weeks, and had then gone home. D'Anville was now in no position to attack Louisbourg, much less New England. Some of his vessels were quite unserviceable. There was no friendly port nearer than Quebec. All his crews were sickly; and the five months' incessant and ever-increasing strain had changed him into a broken-hearted man. He died very suddenly, in the middle of the night; some said from a stroke of apoplexy, while others whispered suicide.
His successor, d'Estournel, summoned a council of war, which overruled the plan for an immediate return to France. Presently a thud, followed by groans of mortal agony, was heard in the new commander's cabin. The door was burst open, and he was found dying from the thrust of his own sword. La Jonquiere, afterwards governor-general of Canada, thereupon succeeded d'Estournel. This commander, the third within three days, was an excellent naval officer and a man of strong character. He at once set to work to reorganize the fleet. But reorganization was now impossible. Storms wrecked the vessels. The plague killed off the men: nearly three thousand had died already. Only a single thousand, one-tenth of the survivors, were really fit for duty. Yet La Jonquiere still persisted in sailing for Annapolis. One vessel was burned, while four others were turned into hospital ships, which trailed astern, dropping their dead overside, hour after hour, as they went.
But Annapolis was never attacked. The dying fleet turned back and at last reached Port Louis, on the coast of Brittany. There it found La Palme, a frigate long since given up for lost, lying at anchor, after a series of adventures that seem wellnigh impossible. First her crew's rations had been cut down to three ounces a day. Then the starving men had eaten all the rats in her filthy hold; and when rats failed they had proposed to eat their five British prisoners. The captain did his best to prevent this crowning horror. But the men, who were now ungovernable, had already gone below to cut up one prisoner into three-ounce rations, when they were brought on deck again, just in time, by the welcome cry of sail-ho! The Portuguese stranger fortunately proved to have some sheep, which were instantly killed and eaten raw.
News of these disasters to the French arms at length reached the anxious British colonies. The militia were soon discharged. The danger seemed past. And the whole population spent a merrier Christmas than any one of them had dared to hope for.
In May of the next year, 1747, La Jonquiere again sailed for Louisbourg. But when he was only four days out he was overtaken off Cape Finisterre by a superior British fleet, under Anson and Warren, and was totally defeated, after a brave resistance.
In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Louisbourg back to the French. The British colonies were furious, New England particularly so. But the war at large had not gone severely enough against the French to force them to abandon a stronghold on which they had set their hearts, and for which they were ready to give up any fair equivalent. The contemporary colonial sneer, often repeated since, and quite commonly believed, was that 'the important island of Cape Breton was exchanged for a petty factory in India.' This was not the case. Every power was weary of the war. But France was ready to go on with it rather than give up her last sea link with Canada. Unless this one point was conceded the whole British Empire would have been involved in another vast, and perhaps quite barren, campaign. The only choice the British negotiators could apparently make was a choice between two evils. And of the two they chose the less.
LOST FOR EVER 1758
The ten years of the second French regime in Louisbourg were divided into very different halves. During the first five years, from 1749 to 1753, the mighty rivals were as much at peace, all over their conflicting frontiers, as they ever had been in the past. But from 1754 to 1758 a great and, this time, a decisive war kept drawing continually nearer, until its strangling coils at last crushed Louisbourg to death.
Three significant events marked 1749, the first of the five peaceful years. Louisbourg was handed over to its new French garrison; the British founded Halifax; and the Imperial government indemnified New England in full for the siege of 1745. Halifax was intended partly as a counterpoise to Louisbourg, and partly as a place-d'armes for one of the two local footholds of British sea-power, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which, between them, narrowed the French line of communication with Canada into a single precarious strait. The New England indemnity was meant, in the first instance, to be a payment for service done. But it was also intended to soften colonial resentment at the giving up of Louisbourg. A specially gracious royal message was sent to 'The Council and Assembly' of Massachusetts, assuring them, 'in His Majesty's name, that their conduct will always entitle them, in a particular manner, to his Royal favour and protection.' This message, however, did not reconcile the Provincial army to the disappointment of their own expectations. Nor did it dispose the colonies in general to be any the more amenable to government from London. They simply regarded the indemnity as the skinflint payment of an overdue debt, and the message as no more than the thanks they had well deserved. But the money was extremely welcome to people who would have been bankrupt without it. Nearly a quarter of a million sterling was sent out in 217 cases of Spanish dollars and 100 barrels of coppers, which were driven through the streets of Boston in 27 trucks.
The next three years in Louisbourg were completely uneventful. The town resumed its former life, but in a still more makeshift fashion. Nobody knew how long the truce would last; and nobody wanted to take root commercially in a place that might experience another violent change at any time. Nevertheless, smuggling flourished as vigorously as before. British shipping did most of it. Many vessels came from England, many from Boston, some, and very active ones, from Halifax. Joshua Mauger smuggled from France to Louisbourg, from Louisbourg to 'Mauger's Beach' near Halifax, and from Halifax all over Acadia and the adjacent colonies. He also supplied the Micmacs with scalping-knives and tomahawks for use against his own countrymen. He died, a very rich man, in England, leaving his fortune to his daughter, who, with her spendthrift husband, the Duc de Bouillon, was guillotined during the French Revolution.
The officials were naturally affected by the same uncertainty, which made them more than ever determined to get rich and go home. The intendant Bigot was promoted to Quebec, there to assist his country's enemies by the worst corruption ever known in Canada. But the new intendant, Prevost, though a man of very inferior talent, did his best to follow Bigot's lead.
French regulars still regarded the Louisbourg routine as their most disgusting duty. But it became more tolerable with the increase of the garrison. The fortifications were examined, reported on, repaired, and extended. The engineers, like all the other Frenchmen connected with unhappy Louisbourg, Bigot alone excepted, were second- and third-rate men; and the actual work was done as badly as before. But, on the whole, the place was strengthened, especially by a battery near the lighthouse. With this and the Island Battery, one on either side of the narrow entrance, which the Royal Battery faced directly, almost a hundred guns could be brought to bear on any vessels trying to force their way in.
The end of the five years' truce was marked by voluminous reports and elaborate arguments to prove how well Louisbourg was being governed, how admirably the fortifications had been attended to (with the inadequate means at the intendant's disposal), and how desirable it was, from every point of view, for the king to spend a great deal more money all round in the immediate future. Fisheries, shipbuilding, fortification, Indians, trade, religion, the naval and military situation, were all represented as only needing more money to become quite perfect. Louisbourg was correctly enough described as an indispensable link between France and the long chain of French posts in the valleys of the Mississippi and the St Lawrence. But less well explained in America and less well understood in Europe was the fact that the separate military chains in Old France and New could never hold an oversea dominion unless a naval chain united them. Some few Frenchmen understood this thoroughly. But most did not. And France, as a whole, hoped that a vigorous offensive on land would more than counterbalance whatever she might lose by an enforced defensive on the sea.
In 1754 Washington's first shot beyond the Alleghanies broke the hollow truce between the French and British colonies, whose lines of expansion had once more inevitably crossed each other's path. This proved to be the beginning of the last 'French and Indian War' in American history, of that 'British Conquest of Canada' which formed part of what contemporary Englishmen called the 'Maritime War,' and of that great military struggle which continental Europe called the 'Seven Years' War.'
The year 1755 saw Braddock's Defeat in the west, the battle of Lake George in the centre, and two pregnant events in the east, one on either side of Louisbourg—the expulsion of the Acadians, and the capture by Boscawen of two French men-of-war with several hundred soldiers who were to reinforce the army that was soon to be commanded by Montcalm.
The next year, 1756, saw the formal declaration of war in Europe, its continued prosecution in America, and the taking of Oswego, which was the first of Montcalm's four victories against the overwhelming British. But Louisbourg still remained untouched.
Not till 1757 was the first attempt made to break this last sea link with France. There was a very natural anxiety, among the British on both sides of the Atlantic, to do conspicuously well against Louisbourg. Fort Necessity, Braddock's Defeat, and Montcalm's daring capture of Oswego, coming with cumulative effect, in three successive campaigns, had created a feeling of bitter disappointment in America; while the Black Hole of Calcutta; the loss of Minorca, and, worse still, Byng's failure to bring a British fleet into decisive action, had wounded the national pride in England.
But 1757 turned out to be no better than its disconcerting predecessors. True, England's ally, Frederick the Great, won consummate victories at Rossbach and at Leuthen. But that was at the end of a very desperate campaign. True, also, that Clive won Plassey and took Chandernagore. But those were far away from English-speaking homes; while heavy reverses close at hand brought down the adverse balance. Pitt, the greatest of all civilian ministers of War, was dismissed from office and not reinstated till the British Empire had been without a cabinet for eleven weeks. The French overran the whole of Hanover and rounded up the Duke of Cumberland at Kloster-Seven. Mordaunt and his pettifogging councils of war turned the joint expedition against Rochefort into a complete fiasco; while Montcalm again defeated the British in America by taking Fort William Henry.
The taking of Louisbourg would have been a very welcome victory in the midst of so much gloom. But the British were engaged in party strife at home. They were disunited in America. And neither the naval nor the military leader of the joint expedition against Louisbourg was the proper man to act either alone or with his colleague. Speed was of prime importance. Yet Admiral Holbourne did not sail from England for Halifax till May. General the Earl of Loudoun was slower yet. He drew in the troops from the northern frontier, concentrated them in New York, and laid an embargo on shipping to keep a secret which was already out. Finally, he and Sir Charles Hardy sailed for Halifax to keep their rendezvous with Holbourne, from whom no news had come. They arrived there before him; but his fleet came limping in during the next ten days, after a bad buffeting on its transatlantic voyage.
Loudoun now had nearly 12,000 men, whom he landed and drilled' throughout July. His preparations were so meticulously careful that they even included a vegetable garden, which, though an excellent precaution in its own way, ought to have been left to the commandant of the base. So thought Sir Charles Hay, who was put under arrest for saying that all the money was being spent in fighting sham battles and planting out cabbages. However, a reconnaissance of Louisbourg had been made by Gorham of the Rangers, whose very imperfect report induced Holbourne and Loudoun to get ready to sail. But, just as they were preparing to begin, too late, a Newfoundland vessel came in with captured French dispatches which showed that Admiral La Motte had united his three squadrons in Louisbourg harbour, where he was at anchor with twenty-two ships of the line and several frigates, the whole carrying 1,360 guns. This was correct. But the garrison was exaggerated by at least a third in the same dispatch, which estimated it as numbering over 7000 men.
The lateness of the season, the strength of the French, and the practical certainty of failing to take Louisbourg by forcing the attack home at any cost, were very sensibly held, under existing circumstances, to be sufficient cause for withdrawing the army. The fleet, however, sailed north, in the hope of inducing La Motte to come out for a battle in the open. But, at that particular juncture, La Motte was right not to risk decisive action. A week later he was equally wrong to refuse it. Holbourne's fleet had been dispersed by a September hurricane of extraordinary violence. One ship became a total wreck. Nine were dismasted. Several had to throw their guns overboard. None was fit for immediate service. But La Motte did not even reconnoitre, much less annihilate, his helpless enemy.
Pitt returned to power at the end of June 1757, in time to plan a world-wide campaign for 1758, though not in time to choose the best commanders and to change the whole course of the war. This became possible only in the Empire Year of 1759. The English-speaking peoples have nearly always begun their great wars badly, and have gradually worked up to a climax of victory after being stung into proper leadership and organization by several exasperating failures; and though now in the third year of their most momentous struggle for oversea dominion, they were not even yet altogether prepared.
Nevertheless, Pitt wielded the amphibious might of Britain with a master hand. Sea-power, mercantile and naval, enabled him to 'command the riches of the world' and become the paymaster of many thousand Prussians under Frederick the Great and Ferdinand of Brunswick. He also sent a small British army to the Continent. But he devoted his chief attention to working out a phase of the 'Maritime War' which included India on one flank and the Canadian frontiers on the other. Sometimes with, and sometimes without, a contingent from the Army, the British Navy checkmated, isolated, or defeated the French in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
The preliminary isolation of Louisbourg was a particularly effective stroke of naval strategy. Even before 1758 began the first French fleet that left for Louisbourg had been shadowed from Toulon and had been shut up in Cartagena. A second French fleet was then sent to help the first one out. But it was attacked on the way and totally defeated. In April the first fleet made another attempt to sail; but it was chased into Rochefort by Hawke and put out of action for the rest of the campaign. The third French fleet did manage to reach Louisbourg. But its admiral, du Chaffault, rightly fearing annihilation in the harbour there, and wishing to keep some touch between Old France and New, sailed for Quebec with most of his best ships.
Quebec and the rest of Canada were themselves on the defensive; for Abercromby was leading 15,000 men—the largest single army America had ever seen—straight up the line of Lake Champlain. Montcalm defeated him at Ticonderoga in July. But that gave no relief to Louisbourg; because the total British forces threatening the Canadian inland frontier were still quite strong enough to keep the French on the strict defensive.
Thus Louisbourg was completely isolated, both by land and sea. It was stronger and more extensive than during the first siege. It had a better governor, Drucour, a better and a larger garrison, more food and ammunition, and, what it formerly lacked altogether, the support of a considerable fleet. Drucour was a gallant soldier. His garrison numbered nearly 3,000 effective regulars, with about 1,000 militiamen and some 500 Indians. Seventeen mortars and over two hundred cannon were mounted on the walls, as well as on the outworks at the Royal, Island, and Lighthouse Batteries. There were thirteen vessels in the fleet, mounting 590 guns, and carrying over 3,500 men. This made the French grand total about 800 guns and 8,000 men. But not all these were really effective. Ships at anchor lose a good deal of their fighting value. Crews are less efficient when ashore than when they are afloat; and the French ships were mostly fought at anchor, while the crews were gradually landed for the defence of the crowded little town. Then, the Indians were comparatively useless in a fort. The militia were not good soldiers anywhere. Moreover, the three kinds of regulars—French, Canadian, and foreign—did not get on very well together; while the fleet, as a whole, got on no better with the army as a whole.
The British amphibious force presented a striking contrast to this. Its naval and military parts worked together like the two branches of one United Service. The Army and Navy naturally understood each other better than the two services of less amphibious countries; and when a statesman like Pitt and a first lord of the Admiralty like Anson were together at headquarters there was no excuse for misunderstandings at the front. Boscawen and Amherst, both distinguished members of distinguished Service families, were the best of colleagues. Boscawen had somewhat over, Amherst a little under, 12,000 men. Boscawen's fleet comprised 39 sail, from a 90-gun ship of the line down to a 12-gun sloop. The British grand total therefore exceeded Drucour's by over three to one, counting mere numbers alone. If expert efficiency be taken, for the sake of a more exact comparison, it is not too much to say that the odds in favour of the British personnel and armament were really four to one.
On the other hand, the French had the walls of Louisbourg to redress the balance in their favour. These walls were the crucial factor in the problem. Both sides knew they were far from being impregnable. But how long could they withstand a regular siege? If for only one month, then they were useless as a protection to Quebec. If for two months, then Quebec and New France were safe until the following year.
Boscawen left England in February. Amherst followed separately. One of the three brigadier-generals in Amherst's army was Wolfe, of whom we shall hear more presently. The rendezvous was Halifax, where boat work and landing exercises were sedulously carried out by the troops. Towards the end of May Boscawen sailed out of Halifax, though Amherst had not yet arrived. They met at sea. The Dublin, which had brought Amherst across so slowly, then 'went very sickly into Halifax,' while Amherst joined Boscawen, and the whole fleet and convoy bore away for Louisbourg. The French had been expecting them for at least a month; as scouts kept appearing almost every day, while Hardy's squadron of nine sail had been maintaining a sort of open blockade.
On the night of June 1 the French look-outs in Gabarus Bay saw more lights than usual to the southward. Next morning Louisbourg was early astir, anxiously eager to catch the first glimpse of this great destroying armada, which for several expectant hours lay invisible and dread behind a curtain of dense fog. Then a light sea breeze came in from the Atlantic. The curtain drew back at its touch. And there, in one white, enormous crescent, all round the deep-blue offing, stood the mighty fleet, closing in for the final death-grip on its prey.
Nearly a whole week went by before the British landed. Each day the scouting boats and vessels stood in as close as possible along the shore. But they always found the smashing surf too high. At last, on the 8th, the whole army put off in three brigades of boats, supported by the frigates, which fired at the French defences. All three landing-places were threatened simultaneously, White Point, Flat Point, and Kennington Cove. These landing-places were, respectively, one, two, and four miles west of Louisbourg. The intervening ground mostly hid them from the ramparts, and they had to depend upon their own defences. Drucour had sent out two-thirds of his garrison to oppose the landing. Each point was protected by artillery and entrenchments. Eight guns were mounted and a thousand men stood guard over the quarter-mile of beach which lay between the two little surf-lashed promontories of Kennington Cove. But Wolfe's brigade made straight for shore. The French held their fire until the leading boats were well within short musket-shot. Then they began so furiously that Wolfe, whose tall, lank figure was most conspicuous as he stood up in the stern-sheets, waved his cane to make the boats sheer off.
It looked as if the first successful landing would have to be made elsewhere, a bitter disappointment to this young and ardent brigadier, whose command included the pick of the grenadiers, light infantry, and Highlanders. But three boatloads of light infantry pushed on against the inner point of the cove. Perhaps their officers turned their blind eye on Wolfe's signal, as Nelson did on Parker's recall at Copenhagen. But, whatever the reason, these three boats went in smash against the rocks and put their men ashore, drenched to the skin. Major Scott, commanding the light infantry and rangers, followed them at once. Then Wolfe, seeing they had gained a foothold where the point afforded them a little cover, signalled the whole brigade to land there in succession. He pushed his own boat through, jumped in waist-deep, and waded ashore.
This sudden change, quite unexpected by either friend or foe, greatly disconcerted the French. They attacked Major Scott, who withstood them with a handful of men till reinforcements came clambering up the rocks behind him. With these reinforcements came Wolfe, who formed the men into line and carried the nearest battery with the bayonet. The remaining French, seeing that Wolfe had effected a lodgment on their inner flank, were so afraid of being cut off from Louisbourg that they ran back and round towards the next position at Flat Point. But before they reached it they saw its own defenders running back, because the British were also landing at White Point. Here too the defences were abandoned as soon as the little garrison found itself faced by greatly superior numbers afloat and deserted by its fellow-garrisons ashore. The retreating French kept up a sort of running fight till they got under the covering fire of Louisbourg, when the pursuing British immediately drew off.
Considering the number of boats that were stove and the intensity of the first French fire, the British loss was remarkably small, only one hundred and nine killed, wounded, and drowned. The French loss was still less; but, in view of the difference between the respective grand totals, it was a good deal heavier in proportion.
That night the glare of a big fire inside the harbour showed that Drucour felt too weak to hold the Royal Battery. Unlike his incompetent predecessor, however, he took away everything movable that could be turned to good account in Louisbourg; and he left the works a useless ruin. The following day he destroyed and abandoned the battery at Lighthouse Point. Thus two fortifications were given up, one of them for the second time, before a single shot had been fired either from or against them. Time, labour, and expense had all gone for worse than nothing, as the positions were at once used by the enemy on each occasion. The wasted expense was of the usual kind-one half spent on inferior construction, the other pocketed by the Louisbourg officials. Drucour himself was not at all to blame, either for the way the works were built or the way in which they had to be abandoned. With odds of more than three to one against him, he had no men to spare for trying to keep the British at arm's length.
Amherst pitched his camp in a crescent two miles long, facing Louisbourg two miles off. His left overlooked the French squadron in the south-west harbour next to Louisbourg at the distance of a mile. His right rested on Flat Point. Thus Louisbourg itself was entirely surrounded both by land and sea; for the gaps left at the Royal Battery and Lighthouse Point were immediately seized by the British. Wolfe marched round the harbour on the 12th with 1,300 infantry and a strong detachment of artillery. The guns for the Royal Battery and other points inside the harbour were hauled into place by teams of about a hundred men each. Those for Lighthouse Point were sent round by sea, landed, with immense difficulty, more than a mile distant on the rock-bound shore, hauled up the cliff, and then dragged back over the roughest of ground to the battery. It was, in fact, a repetition of what the American militiamen had done in 1745. Wolfe worked incessantly, directing and encouraging his toiling men. The bluejackets seconded his efforts by doing even harder work. Their boats were often stove, and a catamaran was wrecked with a brass twenty-four pounder on board. But nothing could stop the perfect co-operation between the two halves of the single United Service. 'The Admiral and General,' wrote Wolfe, 'have carried on the public service with great harmony, industry, and union. Mr Boscawen has given all, and even more than we could ask of him. He has furnished arms and ammunition, pioneers, sappers, miners, gunners, carpenters, and boats.'
While Wolfe was doing his eight days' work of preparation at the Lighthouse Battery, between the 12th and the 20th, Amherst, whose favourite precept was 'slow and sure,' was performing an even more arduous task by building a road from Flat Point to where he intended to make his trenches. This road meandered over the least bad line that could be found in that country of alternate rock, bog, sand, scrub, bush, and marshy ponds. The working party was always a thousand strong, and shifts, of course, were constant. Boscawen landed marines to man the works along the shore, and bluejackets for any handy-man's job required. This proved of great advantage to the army, which had so many more men set free for other duties. The landing of stores went on from sunrise to sunset, whenever the pounding surf calmed down enough. Landing the guns was, of course, much harder still. It accounted for most of the hundred boats that were dashed to pieces against that devouring shore.
Thorough and persistent as this work was, however, it gave the garrison of Louisbourg little outward sign of what was happening just beyond the knolls and hillocks. Besides, just at this time, when there was a lull before the storm that was soon to burst from Wolfe and Amherst, both sides had more dramatic things to catch the general eye. First, there was the worthy namesake of 'the saucy Arethusa' in the rival British Navy, the Arethuse, whose daring and skilful captain, Vauquelin, had moored her beside the Barachois, or sea-pond, so that he could outflank Amherst's approach against the right land face of Louisbourg. Then, of still more immediate interest was the nimble little Echo, which tried to run the gauntlet of the British fleet on June 18, a day long afterwards made famous on the field of Waterloo. Drucour had entrusted his wife and several other ladies to the captain of the Echo, who was to make a dash for Quebec with dispatches for the governor of Canada. A muffling fog shut down and seemed to promise her safety from the British, though it brought added danger from that wrecking coast. With infinite precautions she slipped out on the ebb, between the French at the Island Battery and Wolfe's strenuous workers at the Lighthouse Point. But the breeze that bore her north also raised the fog enough to let the Juno and Sutherland sight her and give chase. She crowded on a press of sail till she was overhauled, when she fought her captors till her case was hopeless.
Madame Drucour and the other ladies were then sent back to Louisbourg with every possible consideration for their feelings. This act of kindness was remembered later on, when a regular interlude of courtesies followed Drucour's offer to send his own particularly skilful surgeon to any wounded British officer who might need his services. Amherst sent in several letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen, and a special message from himself to Madame Drucour, complimenting her upon her bravery, and begging her acceptance of some West Indian pineapples. Once more the flag of truce came out, this time to return the compliment with a basket of wine. As the gate swung to, the cannon roared again on either side. Amherst's was no unmerited compliment; for Madame Drucour used to mount the ramparts every day, no matter what the danger was, and fire three cannon for the honour of her king. But the French had no monopoly in woman's work. True, there were no officers' wives to play the heroine on the British side. But there were others to play a humbler part, and play it well. In those days each ship or regiment bore a certain proportion of women on their books for laundering and other work which is still done, at their own option, by women 'married on the strength' of the Army. Most of the several hundred women in the besieging fleet and army became so keen to see the batteries armed that they volunteered to team the guns, which, in some cases, they actually did, with excellent effect.
By June 26 Louisbourg had no defences left beyond its own walls, except the reduced French squadron huddled together in the south-west harbour. The more exposed ships had come down on the 21st, after a day's bombardment from Wolfe's terrific battery at Lighthouse Point: 'they in return making an Infernall Fire from all their Broadsides; but, wonderfull to think of, no harm done us.' Five days later every single gun in the Island Battery was dumb. At the same time Amherst occupied Green Hill, directly opposite the citadel and only half a mile away. Yet Drucour, with dauntless resolution, resisted for another month. His object was not to save his own doomed fortress but Quebec.
He needed all his resolution. The British were pressing him on every side, determined to end the siege in time to transfer their force elsewhere. Louisbourg itself was visibly weakening. The walls were already crumbling under Amherst's converging fire, though the British attack had not yet begun in earnest. Surely, thoroughly, and with an irresistible zeal, the besiegers had built their road, dragged up their guns, and begun to worm their way forward, under skilfully constructed cover, towards the right land face of Louisbourg, next to the south-west harbour, where the ground was less boggy than on the left. The French ships fired on the British approaches; but, with one notable exception, not effectively, because some of them masked others, while they were all under British fire themselves, both from the Lighthouse and the Royal Batteries, as well as from smaller batteries along the harbour. Vauquelin, who shares with Iberville the honour of being the naval hero of New France, was the one exception. He fought the Arethuse so splendidly that he hampered the British left attack long enough to give Louisbourg a comparative respite for a few hasty repairs.
But nothing could now resist Boscawen if the British should choose to run in past the demolished Island Battery and attack the French fleet, first from a distance, with the help of the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries, and then hand-to-hand. So the French admiral, des Gouttes, agreed to sink four of his largest vessels in the fairway. This, however, still left a gap; so two more were sunk. The passage was then mistakenly reported to be safely closed. The crews, two thousand strong, were landed and camped along the streets. This caused outspoken annoyance to the army and to the inhabitants, who thought the crews had not shown fight enough afloat, who consequently thought them of little use ashore, who found them in the way, and who feared they had come in without bringing a proper contribution of provisions to the common stock.
The Arethuse was presently withdrawn from her perilous berth next to the British left approach, as she was the only frigate left which seemed to have a chance of running the gauntlet of Boscawen's fleet. Her shot-holes were carefully stopped; and on the night of July 14, she was silently towed to the harbour mouth, whence she sailed for France with dispatches from Drucour and des Gouttes. The fog held dense, but the wind was light, and she could hardly forge ahead under every stitch of canvas. All round her the lights of the British fleet and convoy rose and fell with the heaving rollers, like little embers blurring through the mist. Yet Vauquelin took his dark and silent way quite safely, in and out between them, and reached France just after Louisbourg had fallen.
Meanwhile Drucour had made several sorties against the British front, while Boishebert had attacked their rear with a few hundred Indians, Acadians, and Canadians. Boishebert's attack was simply brushed aside by the rearguard of Amherst's overwhelming force. The American Rangers ought to have defeated it themselves, without the aid of regulars. But they were not the same sort of men as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in action. They fall down dead in their own dirt, and desert by battalions, officers and all.'
Drucour's sorties, made by good French regulars, were much more serious than Boishebert's feeble, irregular attack. On the night of July 8, while Montcalm's Ticonderogan heroes were resting on their hard-won field a thousand miles inland, Drucour's best troops crept out unseen and charged the British right. Lord Dundonald and several of his men were killed, while the rest were driven back to the second approach, where desperate work was done with the bayonet in the dark. But Wolfe commanded that part of the line, and his supports were under arms in a moment. The French attack had broken up into a score of little rough-and-tumble fights—bayonets, butts, and swords all at it; friend and foe mixed up in wild confusion. So the first properly formed troops carried all before them. The knots of struggling combatants separated into French and British. The French fell back on their defences. Their friends inside fired on the British; and Wolfe, having regained his ground, retired in the same good order on his lines.
A week later Wolfe suddenly dashed forward on the British left and seized Gallows Hill, within a musket-shot of the French right bastion. Here his men dug hard all night long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on them at point-blank range. In the morning reliefs marched in, and the digging still continued. Sappers, miners, and infantry reliefs, they never stopped till they had burrowed forward another hundred yards, and the last great breaching battery had opened its annihilating fire. By the 21st both sides saw that the end was near, so far as the walls were concerned.
But it was not only the walls that were failing. For, that very afternoon of the 21st, a British seaman gunner's cleverly planted bomb found out a French ship's magazine, exploded it with shattering force, and set fire to the ships on either side. All three blazed furiously. The crews ran to quarters and did their best. But all to no purpose. Meanwhile the British batteries had turned every available gun on the conflagration, so as to prevent the French from saving anything. Between the roaring flames, the bursting shells, and the whizzing cannon balls, the three doomed vessels soon became an inferno too hot for men to stay in. The crews swarmed over the side and escaped; not, however, without losing a good many of their number. Then the British concentrated on the only two remaining vessels, the Prudent and the Bienfaisant. But the French sailors, with admirable pluck and judgment, managed to haul them round to a safer berth.
Next day a similar disaster befell the Louisbourg headquarters. A shell went through the roof of the barracks at the King's Bastion, burst among the men there, and set the whole place on fire. As the first tongues of flame shot up the British concentrated on them. The French ran to the threatened spot and worked hard, in spite of the storm of British shot and shell. But nothing was saved, except Drucour's own quarters. During the confusion the wind blew some burning debris against the timbers which protected the nearest casemates from exploding shells. An alarm was raised among the women and children inside. A panic followed; and the civilians of both sexes had their nerves so shaken that they thought of nothing but surrender on the spot.
Hardly had this excitement been allayed when the main barracks themselves caught fire. Fortunately they had been cleared when the other fire had shown how imminent the danger was to every structure along the walls. The barracks were in special danger of fire, for they had been left with the same wooden roof which the New Englanders had put on thirteen years before. Again the British guns converged their devastating fire on the point of danger, and the whole place was burned to the ground.
Most of the troops were now deprived of all shelter. They had no choice but to share the streets with a still larger number of sailors than those to whom they had formerly objected. Yet they had scarcely tried to settle down and make the best of it before another batch of sailors came crowding in from the last of the whole French fleet. At one o'clock in the morning of July 25 a rousing British cheer from the harbour had announced an attack on the Prudent and the Bienfaisant by six hundred bluejackets, who had stolen in, with muffled oars, just on the stroke of midnight. Presently the sound of fighting died away, and all was still. At first the nearest gunners on the walls had lost their heads and begun blazing away at random. But they were soon stopped; and neither side dared fire, not knowing whom the shots might kill. Then, as the escaping French came in to the walls, a bright glare told that the Prudent was on fire. She had cut her cable during the fight and was lying, hopelessly stranded, right under the inner walls of Louisbourg. The Bienfaisant, however, though now assailed by every gun the French could bring to bear, was towed off to a snug berth beside the Lighthouse Battery, the British bluejackets showing the same disregard of danger as their gallant enemies had shown on the 21st, when towing her to safety in the opposite direction.
At daylight Drucour made a thorough inspection of the walls, while the only four serviceable cannon left fired slowly on, as if for the funeral of Louisbourg. The British looked stronger than ever, and so close in that their sharpshooters could pick off the French gunners from the foot of the glacis. The best of the French diarists made this despairing entry: 'Not a house in the whole place but has felt the force of their cannonade. Between yesterday morning and seven o'clock to-night from a thousand to twelve hundred shells have fallen inside the town, while at least forty cannon have been firing incessantly as well. The surgeons have to run at many a cry of 'Ware Shell! for fear lest they should share the patients' fate.' Amherst had offered to spare the island or any one of the French ships if Drucour would put his hospital in either place. But, for some unexplained reason, Drucour declined the offer; though Amherst pointed out that no spot within so small a target as Louisbourg itself could possibly be made immune by any gunners in the world.
Reduced to the last extremity, the French council of war decided to ask for terms. Boscawen and Amherst replied that the whole garrison must surrender in an hour. Drucour sent back to beg for better terms. But the second British answer was even sterner—complete surrender, yes or no, in half an hour. Resentment still ran high against the French for the massacre at Fort William Henry the year before. The actual massacre had been the work of drunken Indians. The Canadians present had looked on. The French, headed by Montcalm, had risked their lives to save the prisoners. But such distinctions had been blotted out in the general rage among the British on both sides of the Atlantic; and so Louisbourg was now made the scapegoat.
Drucour at once wrote back to say that he stood by his first proposal, which meant, of course, that he was ready to face the storming of his works and no quarter for his garrison. His flag of truce started off with this defiance. But Prevost the intendant, with other civilians, now came forward, on behalf of the inhabitants, to beg for immediate surrender on any terms, rather than that they should all be exposed to the perils of assault. Drucour then gave way, and sent an officer running after the defiant flag of truce. As soon as this second messenger got outside the walls he called out, at the top of his voice, 'We accept! We accept!' He then caught up to the bearer of the flag of truce, when both went straight on to British headquarters.
Boscawen and Amherst were quite prepared for either surrender or assault. The storming parties had their scaling-ladders ready. The Forlorn Hopes had been told off to lead the different columns. Every gun was loaded, afloat and ashore. The fleet were waiting for the signal to file in and turn a thousand cannon against the walls. Nothing was lacking for complete success. On the other hand, their terms were also ready waiting. The garrison was to be sent to England as prisoners of war. The whole of Louisbourg, Cape Breton, and Isle St Jean (now Prince Edward Island) were to be surrendered immediately, with all the public property they contained. The West Gate was to be handed over to a British guard at eight the next morning; and the French arms were to be laid down for good at noon. With this document the British commanders sent in the following note:
SIR,—We have the honour to send Your Excellency the signed articles of Capitulation.
Lieutenant Colonel d'Anthony has spoken on behalf of the people in the town. We have no intention of molesting them; but shall give them all the protection in our power.
Your Excellency will kindly sign the duplicate of the terms and send it back to us.
It only remains for us to assure Your Excellency that we shall seize every opportunity of convincing you that we are, with the most perfect consideration, Your Excellency's most Obedient Servants,
No terms were offered either to the Indians or to the armed Canadians, on account of Fort William Henry; and it is certain that all these would have been put to the sword, to the very last man, had Drucour decided to stand an assault. To the relief of every one concerned the Indians paddled off quietly during the night, which luckily happened to be unusually dark and calm. The Canadians either followed them or mingled with the unarmed inhabitants. This awkward problem therefore solved itself.
Few went to bed that last French night in Louisbourg. All responsible officials were busy with duties, reports, and general superintendence. The townsfolk and soldiery were restless and inclined to drown their humiliation in the many little cabarets, which stood open all night. A very different place, the parish church, was also kept open, and for a very different purpose. Many hasty marriages were performed, partly from a wholly groundless fear of British licence, and partly because those who wished to remain in Cape Breton thought they would not be allowed to do so unless they were married.
Precisely at eight the next morning Major Farquhar drew up his grenadiers in front of the West Gate, which was immediately surrendered to him. No one but the officers concerned witnessed this first ceremony. But the whole population thronged every point of vantage round the Esplanade to see the formal surrender at noon. All the British admirals and generals were present on parade as Drucour stepped forward, saluted, and handed his sword to Boscawen. His officers followed his example. Then the troops laid down their arms, in the ranks as they stood, many dashing down their muskets with a muttered curse.
The French—naval, military, and civilian—were soon embarked. The curse of Louisbourg followed most of them, in one form or another. The combatants were coldly received when they eventually returned to France, in spite of their gallant defence, and in spite of their having saved Quebec for that campaign. Several hundreds of the inhabitants were shipwrecked and drowned. One transport was abandoned off the coast of Prince Edward Island, with the loss of two hundred lives. Another sprang a leak as she was nearing England; whereupon, to their eternal dishonour, the crew of British merchant seamen took all the boats and started to pull off alone. The three hundred French prisoners, men, women, and children, crowded the ship's side and begged that, if they were themselves to be abandoned, their priest should be saved. A boat reluctantly put back for him. Then, leaving the ship to her fate, the crew pulled for Penzance, where the people had just been celebrating the glorious victory of Louisbourg.
The French loss had been enough without this. About one in five of all the combatants had been hit. Twice as many were on the sick list. Officers and men, officials and traders, fishermen and other inhabitants, all lost something, in certain cases everything they had; and it was to nothing but the sheer ruin of all French power beside the American Atlantic that Madame Drucour waved her long white scarf in a last farewell.
France was stung to the quick. Her sea link gone, she feared that the whole of Canada would soon be won by the same relentless British sea-power, which was quite as irresistible as it was ubiquitous in the mighty hands of Pitt. So deeply did her statesmen feel her imminent danger on the sea, and resent this particular British triumph in the world-wide 'Maritime War,' that they took the unusual course of sending the following circular letter to all the Powers of Europe:
We are advised that Louisbourg capitulated to the English on July 26, We fully realize the consequences of such a grave event. But we shall redouble our efforts to repair the misfortune.
All commercial nations ought now to open their eyes to their own interests and join us in preventing the absolute tyranny which England will soon exercise on every sea if a stop be not put to her boundless avarice and ambition.
For a century past the Powers of Europe have been crying out against France for disturbing the balance of power on the Continent. But while England was artfully fomenting this trouble she was herself engaged in upsetting that balance of power at sea without which these different nations' independent power on land cannot subsist. All governments ought to give their immediate and most serious attention to this subject, as the English now threaten to usurp the whole world's seaborne commerce for themselves.
While the French were taken up with unavailing protests and regrets the British were rejoicing with their whole heart. Their loss had been small. Only a twentieth of their naval and military total had been killed or wounded, or had died from sickness, during the seven weeks' siege. Their gain had been great. The one real fortress in America, the last sea link between Old France and New, the single sword held over their transatlantic shipping, was now unchallengeably theirs.
The good news travelled fast. Within three weeks of the surrender the dispatches had reached England. Defeats, disasters, and exasperating fiascos had been common since the war began. But at last there was a genuine victory, British through and through, won by the Army and Navy together, and won over the greatest of all rivals, France. 'When we lost Minorca,' said the London Chronicle, just a month after the surrender, 'a general panic fell upon the nation; but now that Louisbourg is taken our streets echo with triumph and blaze with illuminations.' Loyal addresses poured in from every quarter. The king stood on the palace steps to receive the eleven captured colours; and then, attended by the whole court, went in state to the royal thanksgiving service held in St Paul's Cathedral.
The thanks of parliament were voted to Amherst and Boscawen. Boscawen received them in person, being a member of the House of Commons. The speaker read the address, which was couched in the usual verbiage worked up by one of the select committees employed on such occasions. But Boscawen replied, as men of action should, with fewer words and much more force and point: 'Mr Speaker, Sir, I am happy to have been able to do my duty. I have no words to express my sense of the distinguished reward that has been conferred upon me by this House; nor can I thank you, Sir, enough for the polite and elegant manner in which you have been pleased to convey its resolution to me.'
The American colonists in general rejoiced exceedingly that Louisbourg and all it meant had been exterminated. But, especially in New England, their joy was considerably tempered by the reflection that the final blow had been delivered without their aid, and that the British arms had met with a terrible reverse at Ticonderoga, where the American militia had outnumbered the old-country regulars by half as much again. Nevertheless Boston built a 'stately bonfire,' which made a 'lofty and prodigious blaze'; while Philadelphia, despite its parasitic Quakers, had a most elaborate display of fireworks representing England, Louisbourg, the siege, the capture, the triumph, and reflected glory generally.
At the inland front, near Lake Champlain, where Abercromby now went by the opprobrious nickname of 'Mrs Nabbycrumby,' 'The General put out orders that the breastwork should be lined with troops, and to fire three rounds for joy, and give thanks to God in a Religious Way.' But the joy was more whole-hearted among the little, half-forgotten garrisons of Nova Scotia. At Annapolis no news arrived till well on in September, when a Boston sloop came sailing up the bay. Captain Knox, that most industrious of diarists, records the incident.
Every soul was impatient, yet shy of asking. At length I called out, 'What news from Louisbourg?' To which the master simply replied, and with some gravity, 'Nothing strange.' This threw us all into great consternation, and some of us even turned away. But one of our soldiers called out with some warmth 'Damn you, Pumpkin, isn't Louisbourg taken yet?' The poor New England man then answered: 'Taken, yes, above a month ago; and I have been there since; but if you haven't heard of it before, I have a good parcel of letters for you now.' Instantly all hats flew off, and we made the neighbouring woods resound with our cheers for almost half an hour.
Halifax naturally heard the news sooner than other places; and being then, as now, a naval port and a garrison town, it gave full vent to its feelings. Bells pealed. Bonfires blazed. Salutes thundered from the fort and harbour. But all this was a mere preliminary canter. The real race came off when the victorious fleet and army returned in triumph. Land and water were then indeed alive with exultant crowds. The streets were like a fair, and a noisy one at that. Soldiers, sailors, and civilians drank standing toasts the whole night through. The commissioner of excise recorded, not without a touch of proper pride, that, quite apart from all illicit wines and spirits, no less than sixty thousand gallons of good Jamaica rum were drunk in honour of the fall of Louisbourg. In higher circles, where wine was commoner than spirits, the toasts were honoured just as often. Governor Lawrence, fresh from Louisbourg himself, opened the new Government House with a grand ball; and Wolfe, whom all now thought the coming man, drank healths, sang songs, and danced with pretty partners to his heart's content.
ANNIHILATION 1760
The new garrison of Louisbourg hated it as thoroughly as any of their predecessors, French or British. They repaired the breaches, in a temporary way, and ran up shelters for the winter. Interest revived with the spring; for Wolfe was coming back again, this time to command an army of his own and take Quebec.
The great absorbing question was, Who's for the front and who for the base? Both fleet and army made their rendezvous at Louisbourg; a larger fleet and a smaller army than those of the year before. Two new toasts were going the rounds of the Service: 'Here's to the eye of a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe!' and 'Here's to British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America!' Of course they were standing toasts. The men who drank them already felt the presage of Pitt's great Empire Year of 1759.
The last two weeks in May and the first in June were full of glamour in crowded, stirring Louisbourg. There was Wolfe's picked army of nine thousand men, with Saunders's mighty fleet of fifty men-of-war, mounting two thousand guns, comprising a quarter of the whole Royal Navy, and convoying more than two hundred transports and provision ships; all coming and going, landing, embarking, drilling, dividing, massing; every one expectant of glorious results and eager to begin. Who wouldn't be for the front at the climax of a war like this?
Then came the final orders issued in Louisbourg. '1st June, 1759. The Troops land no more. The flat-bottomed boats to be hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to sail at the first signal.' '2nd June, 1759. The Admiral purposes sailing the first fair wind.' On the 4th a hundred and forty-one sail weighed anchor together. All that day and the next they were assembling outside and making for the island of Scatari, just beyond the point of Cape Breton, which is only ten miles north of Louisbourg. By noon on the 6th the last speck of white had melted away from the Louisbourg horizon and the men for the front were definitely parted from those left behind at the base.
Great things were dared and done at the front that year, in Europe, Asia, and America. But nothing was done at dull little Louisbourg, except the wearisome routine of a disgustingly safe base. Rocks, bogs, fogs, sand, and scrubby bush ashore. Tantalizing news from the stirring outside world afloat. So the long, blank, summer days wore through.
The second winter proved a little more comfortable than the first had been. But there was less, far less, for the garrison to expect in the spring. In February 1760 the death-warrant of Louisbourg was signed in London by Pitt and King George II. In the following summer it was executed by Captain John Byron, R. N., the poet's grandfather. Sailors, sappers, and miners worked for months together, laying the pride of Louisbourg level with the dust. That they carried out their orders with grim determination any one can see to-day by visiting the grave in which they buried so many French ambitions.
All the rest of Ile Royale lost its French life in the same supreme catastrophe—the little forts and trading-posts, the fishing-villages and hamlets; even the farms along the Mira, which once were thought so like the promise of a second French Acadia.
Nothing remains of that dead past, anywhere inland, except a few gnarled, weather-beaten stumps of carefully transplanted plum and apple trees, with, here and there, a straggling little patch of pale, forlorn narcissus, now soothing the alien air in vain, round shapeless ruins, as absolute and lone as those of Louisbourg itself.
There is no complete naval and military history of Louisbourg, in either French or English. The first siege is a prominent feature in all histories of Canada, New England, and the United States, though it is not much noticed in works written in the mother country. The second siege is noticed everywhere. The beginning and end of the story is generally ignored, and the naval side is always inadequately treated.
Parkman gives a good account of the first siege in 'A Half-Century of Conflict', and a less good account of the second in 'Montcalm and Wolfe'. Kingsford's accounts are in volumes iii and iv of the 'History of Canada'. Sir John Bourinot, a native of the island, wrote a most painstaking work on 'Cape Breton and its Memorials of the French Regime' which was first published in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada' for 1891. Garneau and other French-Canadian historians naturally emphasize a different set of facts and explanations. An astonishingly outspoken account of the first siege is given in the anonymous 'Lettre d'un Habitant de Louisbourg', which has been edited, with a translation, by Professor Wrong. The gist of many accounts is to be found, unpretentiously put together, in 'The Last Siege of Louisbourg', by C. O. Macdonald. New England produced many contemporary and subsequent accounts of the first siege, and all books concerned with the Conquest give accounts of the second.
Those who wish to go straight to original sources will find useful bibliographies in the notes to Parkman's and Bourinot's books, as well as in Justin Winsor's 'Narrative and Critical History of America'. But none of these includes some important items to be found either in or through the Dominion Archives at Ottawa, the Public Records Office in London, and the Archives de la Marine in Paris.
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