Upon the seacoast, twenty-five miles southeast of Sydney, is a low
headland with a dark rocky island in the offing. This headland is Cape
Breton, originally named for the Breton French fishermen who
frequented it, and it in turn named Cape Breton Island. Just west of
Cape Breton is an admirable harbor which, being frequented in the
early days by English fishermen, the French named the _Havre aux
Anglais_, or the "English Port." Upon Point Rochefort, on its western
side, stood the famous French fortress and town of Louisbourg, which
was called "the Dunkirk of America." While grass-grown ruins and some
of the ramparts are still traceable, and visitors find relics, yet
little is left of this great fortress, once regarded as the "Key to
New France," or of the populous French town on the harbor which in the
eighteenth century had a trade of the first importance. It was twice
captured, after remarkable sieges and battles of world-wide renown,
causing the most profound sensations at the time, and now absolutely
nothing is left of the original place but an old graveyard on the
point, where French and English dust commingle in peace under a mantle
of dark greensward. There is at present a settlement of about a
thousand people around the harbor, mainly engaged in the fisheries.
The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 transferred Newfoundland and Acadia from
France to England, but the French held Cape Breton Island, and many of
their refugees came hither. It was not long before the French King,
Louis XIV., stirred by Admiral Walker's proclamation and anxious about
Canada, determined to fortify the "English Port" and make a commercial
depot there, and in 1714 the plan was laid out, the name being changed
to Louisbourg. In 1720 work began on a prodigious scale, the intention
being to make it the leading fortress in America, and for more than
twenty years France devoted its energy and resources to the completion
of the stupendous fortifications, attracting inhabitants to the place
by bounties, and creating a brisk trade by sea which soon drew
inhabitants for a large town. When completed, this town stood upon the
neck of land on the southwest side of the harbor enclosed by stone
walls having a circuit of nearly three miles. These walls were
thirty-six feet high and forty feet thick at the base, with a ditch
outside eighty feet wide. The fortress was constructed in the first
system of the noted French engineer, Vauban, and required a large
garrison. A battery of thirty guns was located on Goat Island, at the
harbor entrance, and at the bottom of the harbor opposite the entrance
was another, the Royal Battery, also of thirty guns. The land and
harbor sides of the town were defended by ramparts and bastions on
which eighty guns were mounted, the land side also having a deep moat
and projecting bastions, the West Gate on that side being overlooked
by a battery of sixteen guns. There was a ponderous Citadel, and in
the centre of the town the stately stone church of St. John de Dieu,
with attendant nunnery and hospitals. The streets crossed at right
angles, and five gates in the walls on the harbor side communicated
with the wharves. Such was the greatest stronghold in North America in
1745, the famous Louisbourg fortress.
The people of New England, whose commerce was being preyed upon by
privateers which found refuge in its harbor, and whose frontiers were
harassed by forays thence directed, we are told by the historian,
"looked with awe upon the sombre walls of Louisbourg, whose towers
rose like giants above the northern seas." But the Puritans were not
wont to lie still under such inflictions, nor to confine their efforts
to prayers alone. Massachusetts planned an attack, and the command of
the expedition was given William Pepperell of Kittery, a merchant
ignorant of the art of war. Then followed one of the most
extraordinary events in history. A fleet of about a hundred vessels
carried a force of forty-one hundred undisciplined militia upon a
Puritan crusade, which was started with religious services, the
eloquent preacher, George Whitefield, imploring a blessing and giving
them the motto, _Nil desperandum, Christo duce_. They rendezvoused at
Canso, meeting there Commodore Warren and the British West Indian
fleet by arrangement, and landing at Gabarus Bay, west of Louisbourg,
April 30, 1745. They did not know much about war, but they set fire to
some storehouses, and the black smoke drove down in such volumes upon
the Royal Battery at the bottom of the harbor that its scared French
defenders spiked the guns and fled in the night. The Puritans took
possession, beat off the French who attacked them, got smiths at work,
who drilled out the spikes, and soon from this, the key to the
position, they turned the guns upon the town. Then began a regular
siege, though most unscientific in manner. They captured a French ship
with stores and reinforcements, and by June had breached the walls
twenty-four feet at the King's Bastion, dismounted all the neighboring
guns, made the Goat Island Battery untenable, and ruined the town by
showers of bombs and red-hot balls. Upon June 15th the British fleet
of ten ships was drawn up off the harbor entrance for an attack, and
the land forces were arrayed to assault the West Gate, when the French
commander, knowing he could hold out no longer, decided to surrender,
and on June 17th, the forty-ninth day of the siege, he capitulated.
Thus the grand fortress fell, as the Puritan historian describes it,
upon the attack of "four thousand undisciplined militia or volunteers,
officered by men who had, with one or two exceptions, never seen a
shot fired in anger in all their lives, encamped in an open country
and sadly deficient in suitable artillery." He continues: "As the
troops, entering the fortress, beheld the strength of the place, their
hearts for the first time sank within them. 'God has gone out of his
way,' said they, 'in a remarkable and most miraculous manner, to
incline the hearts of the French to give up and deliver this strong
city into our hands.'" The capture was the marvel of the time, and
caused the greatest rejoicings throughout the British Empire; while
Pepperell, who was made a Baronet, attributed his success, not to the
guns nor the ships, but to the constant prayers of New England, daily
arising from every village in behalf of the absent army. This victory
at Louisbourg gave them an experience to which is attributed the
American success at Bunker Hill thirty years afterwards. Colonel
Gridley, who planned Pepperell's batteries, is said to have laid out
the hastily constructed entrenchments on Bunker Hill, and the same old
drums that beat in the siege of Louisbourg were at Bunker Hill, the
spirit which this great victory imparted to the Yankee soldiers having
never deteriorated.
The French were terribly chagrined at the loss of their great
fortress, and in 1746 they sent out the "French Armada" of seventy
ships under the Duc d'Anville, instructed to "occupy Louisbourg,
reduce Nova Scotia, destroy Boston, and ravage the coast of New
England." But storms wrecked and dispersed the fleet, and the vexed
and disappointed commander died of apoplexy, his Vice-Admiral killing
himself. Then a second expedition of forty-four ships was sent under
La Jonquiere to retake Louisbourg, but the English squadrons attacked
and destroyed this fleet off Cape Finisterre, Admirals Warren and
Anson gaining one of the greatest British naval victories of the
eighteenth century. The fortress which thus could not be retaken by
arms was, however, to the general astonishment, surrendered back to
France by diplomacy. The peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748 ended the
war by restoring Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island to France, and the
historian bluntly records that "after four years of warfare in all
parts of the world, after all the waste of blood and treasure, the war
ended just where it began." France then rebuilt, improved and
strengthened the idolized fortress, sending it a powerful garrison.
War was renewed in 1755,--the terrible French and Indian War. Halifax
was then the base of British-American operations, and fleets soon
blockaded Louisbourg. The French had twelve warships in the harbor and
ten thousand men in the garrison, but the British, bewailing the
shortsightedness that gave it up by treaty, were bound to retake it at
all hazards. They sent a fleet of one hundred and fifty-six warships
and transports from Spithead, the most powerful England had down to
that time assembled, carrying thirteen thousand six hundred men, with
Admiral Boscawen commanding the navy and General Amherst the army, the
immortal Wolfe being one of the brigadiers. Rendezvousing at Halifax,
this great force sailed against Louisbourg May 28, 1758, the troops
landing at Gabarus Bay, and beginning the attack June 8th, with Wolfe
leading. The French commander sank five of his warships to blockade
the harbor entrance. Wolfe closely followed Pepperell's method, got
batteries in position to bombard the city, and silenced the Goat
Island Battery by his tremendous cannonade. In time he had destroyed
the West Gate, the Citadel and barracks, and burnt three of the French
ships by his red-hot balls. Two more ships ran out of the harbor in a
fog to escape, and one was captured. Two French frigates alone
remained, and a daring attack in boats was made on these, and both
were destroyed. Breaches were rent in the walls, so that the place
became untenable, and finally, after forty-eight days of terrific
siege, Louisbourg, on July 26th, again surrendered to the British.
Then more rejoicings came throughout the Empire, Wolfe was made a
Major General, and the gain to ocean commerce by the downfall of the
fortress, which had been a refuge for privateers, was seen in an
immediate decline in marine insurance rates from thirty to twelve per
cent. The next year the great British fleet and army sailed away from
Louisbourg under Wolfe for the capture of Quebec and the final
conquest of Canada. Then went forth the edict of the conqueror that
the famous French fortress should be utterly destroyed. It was found
as a seaport to be inferior to Halifax, where the admirable harbor is
never closed by ice, and where the forts could make the place
impregnable. The Louisbourg garrison was withdrawn, and the people
scattered, many going to Sydney. All the guns, stores and everything
valuable went to Halifax. In 1760 a corps of sappers and miners
worked six months, demolishing the fortifications and buildings,
overthrowing the walls and glacis into the ditches, leaving nothing
standing but a few small half-ruined private houses, and thus the
proud Acadian fortress was humbled into heaps of rubbish. The merciful
hand of time, left to complete the ruin, has during the centuries
healed most of the ghastly wounds with its generous mantle of
greensward, and the neighboring ocean sounds along the low shores the
eternal requiem of proud Louisbourg.