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.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There is no complete naval and military history of
Louisbourg, in either French or English. The first siege
is a prominent feature in all histories of Canada, New
England, and the United States, though it is not much
noticed in works written in the mother country. The second
siege is noticed everywhere. The beginning and end of
the story is generally ignored, and the naval side is
always inadequately treated.
Parkman gives a good account of the first siege in 'A
Half-Century of Conflict', and a less good account of
the second in 'Montcalm and Wolfe'. Kingsford's accounts
are in volumes iii and iv of the 'History of Canada'.
Sir John Bourinot, a native of the island, wrote a most
painstaking work on 'Cape Breton and its Memorials of
the French 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.