1745.
LOUISBOURG BESIEGED.
SETH POMEROY.--THE VOYAGE.--CANSEAU.--UNEXPECTED SUCCORS.--DELAYS.--
LOUISBOURG.--THE LANDING.--THE GRAND BATTERY TAKEN.--FRENCH
CANNON TURNED ON THE TOWN.--WEAKNESS OF DUCHAMBON.--SUFFERINGS
OF THE BESIEGERS: THEIR HARDIHOOD; THEIR IRREGULAR PROCEEDINGS.--
JOSEPH SHERBURN.--AMATEUR GUNNERY.--CAMP FROLICS.--SECTARIAN
ZEAL.--PERPLEXITIES OF PEPPERRELL.
On board one of the transports was Seth Pomeroy, gunsmith at
Northampton, and now major of Willard’s Massachusetts regiment. He had
a turn for soldiering, and fought, ten years later, in the battle of
Lake George. Again, twenty years later still, when Northampton was
astir with rumors of war from Boston, he borrowed a neighbor’s horse,
rode a hundred miles, reached Cambridge on the morning of the battle
of Bunker Hill, left his borrowed horse out of the way of harm, walked
over Charlestown Neck, then swept by the fire of the ships-of-war, and
reached the scene of action as the British were forming for the
attack. When Israel Putnam, his comrade in the last war, saw from the
rebel breastwork the old man striding, gun in hand, up the hill, he
shouted, “By God, Pomeroy, you here! A cannon-shot would waken you out 91
of your grave!”
But Pomeroy, with other landsmen, crowded in the small and malodorous
fishing-vessels that were made to serve as transports, was now in the
gripe of the most unheroic of maladies. “A terrible northeast storm”
had fallen upon them, and, he says, “we lay rolling in the seas, with
our sails furled, among prodigious waves.” “Sick, day and night,”
writes the miserable gunsmith, “so bad that I have not words to set it
forth.”[89] The gale increased and the fleet was scattered, there
being, as a Massachusetts private soldier writes in his diary, “a very
fierse Storm of Snow, som Rain and very Dangerous weather to be so
nigh ye Shore as we was; but we escaped the Rocks, and that was
all.”[90]
On Friday, April 5, Pomeroy’s vessel entered the harbor of Canseau,
about fifty miles from Louisbourg. Here was the English
fishing-hamlet, the seizure of which by the French had first provoked
the expedition. The place now quietly changed hands again. Sixty-eight
of the transports lay here at anchor, and the rest came dropping in
from day to day, sorely buffeted, but all safe. On Sunday there was a
great concourse to hear Parson Moody preach an open-air sermon from
the text, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power,” 92
concerning which occasion the soldier diarist observes,--“Several
sorts of Busnesses was Going on, Som a Exercising, Som a Hearing
Preaching.” The attention of Parson Moody’s listeners was, in fact,
distracted by shouts of command and the awkward drill of squads of
homespun soldiers on the adjacent pasture.
Captain Ammi Cutter, with two companies, was ordered to remain at
Canseau and defend it from farther vicissitudes; to which end a
blockhouse was also built, and mounted with eight small cannon. Some
of the armed vessels had been set to cruise off Louisbourg, which they
did to good purpose, and presently brought in six French prizes, with
supplies for the fortress. On the other hand, they brought the ominous
news that Louisbourg and the adjoining bay were so blocked with ice
that landing was impossible. This was a serious misfortune, involving
long delay, and perhaps ruin to the expedition, as the expected
ships-of-war might arrive meanwhile from France. Indeed, they had
already begun to appear. On Thursday, the eighteenth, heavy
cannonading was heard far out at sea, and again on Friday “the
cannon,” says Pomeroy, “fired at a great rate till about 2 of the
clock.” It was the provincial cruisers attacking a French frigate, the
“Renommée,” of thirty-six guns. As their united force was too much for
her, she kept up a running fight, outsailed them, and escaped after a
chase of more than thirty hours, being, as Pomeroy quaintly observes, 93
“a smart ship.” She carried despatches to the governor of Louisbourg,
and being unable to deliver them, sailed back for France to report
what she had seen.
On Monday, the twenty-second, a clear, cold, windy day, a large ship,
under British colors, sailed into the harbor, and proved to be the
frigate “Eltham,” escort to the annual mast fleet from New England. On
orders from Commander Warren she had left her charge in waiting, and
sailed for Canseau to join the expedition, bringing the unexpected and
welcome news that Warren himself would soon follow. On the next day,
to the delight of all, he appeared in the ship “Superbe,” of sixty
guns, accompanied by the “Launceston” and the “Mermaid,” of forty guns
each. Here was force enough to oppose any ships likely to come to the
aid of Louisbourg; and Warren, after communicating with Pepperrell,
sailed to blockade the port, along with the provincial cruisers,
which, by order of Shirley, were placed under his command.
The transports lay at Canseau nearly three weeks, waiting for the ice
to break up. The time was passed in drilling the raw soldiers and
forming them into divisions of four and six hundred each, according to
the directions of Shirley. At length, on Friday, the twenty-seventh,
they heard that Gabarus Bay was free from ice, and on the morning of
the twenty-ninth, with the first fair wind, they sailed out of Canseau
harbor, expecting to reach Louisbourg at nine in the evening, as 94
prescribed in the governor’s receipt for taking Louisbourg “while the
enemy were asleep.”[91] But a lull in the wind defeated this plan; and
after sailing all day, they found themselves becalmed towards night.
It was not till the next morning that they could see the town,--no
very imposing spectacle, for the buildings, with a few exceptions,
were small, and the massive ramparts that belted them round rose to no
conspicuous height.
[Illustration: SIEGE OF LOUISBOURG
1745.
References:
_A. Landing of New England Men._
_B. Camp of Burr’s Regiment._
_C. ” ” Pepperrell’s ” ”_
_D. ” ” Willard’s ” ”_
_E. ” ” Moulton’s ” ”_
_F. ” ” Moore’s ” ”_
_G. First or, Green Hill Battery._
_H. Second Battery._
_I. Third Battery._
_J. Fourth, or Advanced Battery._
_K. Fifth, or Titcomb’s Battery._
_L. Lighthouse Battery._
_M. Island Battery (French)._
_N. Grand, or Royal Battery (French)._
_O. Burying Ground._
_P. King’s Bastion, or Citadel._
_Q. Barachois._
_R. West Gate._
_S. South Gate._
_T. Maurepas Gate._]
Louisbourg stood on a tongue of land which lay between its harbor and
the sea, and the end of which was prolonged eastward by reefs and
shoals that partly barred the entrance to the port, leaving a
navigable passage not half a mile wide. This passage was commanded by
a powerful, battery called the “Island Battery,” being upon a small
rocky island at the west side of the channel, and was also secured by
another detached work called the “Grand,” or “Royal Battery,” which
stood on the shore of the harbor, opposite the entrance, and more than
a mile from the town. Thus a hostile squadron trying to force its way
in would receive a flank fire from the one battery, and a front fire
from the other. The strongest line of defence of the fortress was
drawn across the base of the tongue of land from the harbor on one
side to the sea on the other,--a distance of about twelve hundred
yards. The ditch was eighty feet wide and from thirty to thirty-six
feet deep; and the rampart, of earth faced with masonry, was about
sixty feet thick. The glacis sloped down to a vast marsh, which formed 95
one of the best defences of the place. The fortress, without counting
its outworks, had embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight cannon;
but the number in position was much less, and is variously stated.
Pomeroy says that at the end of the siege a little above ninety were
found, with “a great number of swivels;” others say seventy-six.[92]
In the Grand and Island batteries there were sixty heavy pieces more.
Against this formidable armament the assailants had brought
thirty-four cannon and mortars, of much inferior weight, to be used in
bombarding the fortress, should they chance to fail of carrying it by
surprise, “while the enemy were asleep.”[93] Apparently they
distrusted the efficacy of their siege-train, though it was far
stronger than Shirley had at first thought sufficient; for they
brought with them good store of balls of forty-two pounds, to be used
in French cannon of that calibre which they expected to capture, their
own largest pieces being but twenty-two-pounders.
According to the _Habitant de Louisbourg_, the garrison consisted
of five hundred and sixty regular troops, of whom several companies
were Swiss, besides some thirteen or fourteen hundred militia,
inhabitants partly of the town, and partly of neighboring settlements.[94] 96
The regulars were in bad condition. About the preceding Christmas they
had broken into mutiny, being discontented with their rations and
exasperated with getting no extra pay for work on the fortifications.
The affair was so serious that though order was restored, some of the
officers lost all confidence in the soldiers; and this distrust proved
most unfortunate during the siege. The governor, Chevalier Duchambon,
successor of Duquesnel, who had died in the autumn, was not a man to
grapple with a crisis, being deficient in decision of character, if
not in capacity.
He expected an attack. “We were informed of the preparations from the
first,” says the _Habitant de Louisbourg_. Some Indians, who had
been to Boston, carried to Canada the news of what was going on there;
but it was not believed, and excited no alarm.[95] It was not so at
Louisbourg, where, says the French writer just quoted, “we lost
precious moments in useless deliberations and resolutions no sooner
made than broken. Nothing to the purpose was done, so that we were as
much taken by surprise as if the enemy had pounced upon us unawares.”
It was about the twenty-fifth of March[96] when the garrison first saw 97
the provincial cruisers hovering off the mouth of the harbor. They
continued to do so at intervals till daybreak of the thirtieth of
April, when the whole fleet of transports appeared standing towards
Flat Point, which projects into Gabarus Bay, three miles west of the
town.[97] On this, Duchambon sent Morpain, captain of a privateer, or
“corsair,” to oppose the landing. He had with him eighty men, and was
to be joined by forty more, already on the watch near the supposed
point of disembarkation.[98] At the same time cannon were fired and
alarm bells rung in Louisbourg, to call in the militia of the
neighborhood.
Pepperrell managed the critical work of landing with creditable skill.
The rocks and the surf were more dangerous than the enemy. Several
boats, filled with men, rowed towards Flat Point; but on a signal from
the flagship “Shirley,” rowed back again, Morpain flattering himself
that his appearance had frightened them off. Being joined by several
other boats, the united party, a hundred men in all, pulled for
another landing-place called Fresh-water Cove, or Anse de la
Cormorandière, two miles farther up Gabarus Bay. Morpain and his party
ran to meet them; but the boats were first in the race, and as soon 98
as the New England men got ashore, they rushed upon the French, killed
six of them, captured as many more, including an officer named
Boularderie, and put the rest to flight, with the loss, on their own
side, of two men slightly wounded.[99] Further resistance to the
landing was impossible, for a swarm of boats pushed against the rough
and stony beach, the men dashing through the surf, till before night
about two thousand were on shore.[100] The rest, or about two thousand
more, landed at their leisure on the next day.
On the second of May Vaughan led four hundred men to the hills near
the town, and saluted it with three cheers,--somewhat to the
discomposure of the French, though they described the unwelcome
visitors as a disorderly crowd. Vaughan’s next proceeding pleased them
still less. He marched behind the hills, in rear of the Grand Battery,
to the northeast arm of the harbor, where there were extensive
magazines of naval stores. These his men set on fire, and the pitch,
tar, and other combustibles made a prodigious smoke. He was returning,
in the morning, with a small party of followers behind the hills, when
coming opposite the Grand Battery, and observing it from the ridge, he
saw neither flag on the flagstaff, nor smoke from the barrack 99
chimneys. One of his party was a Cape Cod Indian. Vaughan bribed him
with a flask of brandy which he had in his pocket,--though, as the
clerical historian takes pains to assure us, he never used it
himself,--and the Indian, pretending to be drunk, or, as some say,
mad, staggered towards the battery to reconnoitre.[101] All was quiet.
He clambered in at an embrasure, and found the place empty. The rest
of the party followed, and one of them, William Tufts, of Medford, a
boy of eighteen, climbed the flagstaff, holding in his teeth his red
coat, which he made fast at the top, as a substitute for the British
flag,--a proceeding that drew upon him a volley of unsuccessful
cannon-shot from the town batteries.[102]
Vaughan then sent this hasty note 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’clock, and am waiting for a
reinforcement and a flag.” Soon after, four boats, filled with men,
approached from the town to reoccupy the battery,--no doubt in order
to save the munitions and stores, and complete the destruction of the
cannon. Vaughan and his thirteen men, standing on the open beach,
under the fire of the town and the Island Battery, plied the boats with
musketry, and kept them from landing, till Lieutenant-Colonel 100
Bradstreet appeared with a reinforcement, on which the French pulled
back to Louisbourg.[103]
The English supposed that the French in the battery, when the clouds
of smoke drifted over them from the burning storehouses, thought that
they were to be attacked in force, and abandoned their post in a
panic. This was not the case. “A detachment of the enemy,” writes the
_Habitant de Louisbourg_, “advanced to the neighborhood of the
Royal Battery.” This was Vaughan’s four hundred on their way to burn
the storehouses. “At once we were all seized with fright,” pursues
this candid writer, “and on the instant it was proposed to abandon
this magnificent battery, which would have been our best defence, if
one had known how to use it. Various councils were held, in a
tumultuous way. It would be hard to tell the reasons for such a
strange proceeding. Not one shot had yet been fired at the battery,
which the enemy could not take, except by making regular approaches,
as if against the town itself, and by besieging it, so to speak, in
form. Some persons remonstrated, but in vain; and so a battery of
thirty cannon, which had cost the King immense sums, was abandoned
before it was attacked.”
Duchambon says that soon after the English landed, he got a letter 101
from Thierry, the captain in command of the Royal Battery, advising
that the cannon should be spiked and the works blown up. It was then,
according to the governor, that the council was called, and a
unanimous vote passed to follow Thierry’s advice, on the ground that
the defences of the battery were in bad condition, and that the four
hundred men posted there could not stand against three or four
thousand.[104] The engineer, Verrier, opposed the blowing up of the
works, and they were therefore left untouched. Thierry and his
garrison came off in boats, after spiking the cannon in a hasty way,
without stopping to knock off the trunnions or burn the carriages.
They threw their loose gunpowder into the well, but left behind a good
number of cannon cartridges, two hundred and eighty large bombshells,
and other ordinance stores, invaluable both to the enemy and to
themselves. Brigadier Waldo was sent to occupy the battery with his
regiment, and Major Seth Pomeroy, the gunsmith, with twenty
soldier-mechanics, was set at drilling out the spiked touch-holes of
the cannon. There were twenty-eight forty-two-pounders, and two
eighteen-pounders.[105] Several were ready for use the next morning, 102
and immediately opened on the town,--which, writes a soldier in his
diary, “damaged the houses and made the women cry.” “The enemy,” says
the _Habitant de Louisbourg_, “saluted us with our own cannon,
and made a terrific fire, smashing everything within range.”
The English occupation of the Grand Battery may be called the decisive
event of the siege. There seems no doubt that the French could have
averted the disaster long enough to make it of little help to the
invaders. The water-front of the battery was impregnable. The rear
defences consisted of a loopholed wall of masonry, with a ditch ten
feet deep and twelve feet wide, and also a covered way and glacis,
which General Wolcott describes as unfinished. In this he mistook.
They were not unfinished, but had been partly demolished, with a view
to reconstruction. The rear wall was flanked by two towers, which,
says Duchambon, were demolished; but General Wolcott declares that
swivels were still mounted on them,[106] and he adds that “two hundred
men might hold the battery against five thousand without cannon.” The
English landed their cannon near Flat Point; and before they could be
turned against the Grand Battery, they must be dragged four miles over
hills and rocks, through spongy marshes and jungles of matted 103
evergreens. This would have required a week or more. The alternative
was an escalade, in which the undisciplined assailants would no doubt
have met a bloody rebuff. Thus this Grand Battery, which, says
Wolcott, “is in fact a fort,” might at least have been held long
enough to save the munitions and stores, and effectually disable the
cannon, which supplied the English with the only artillery they had,
competent to the work before them. The hasty abandonment of this
important post was not Duchambon’s only blunder, but it was the worst
of them all.
On the night after their landing, the New England men slept in the
woods, wet or dry, with or without blankets, as the case might be, and
in the morning set themselves to encamping with as much order as they
were capable of. A brook ran down from the hills and entered the sea
two miles or more from the town. The ground on each side, though
rough, was high and dry, and here most of the regiments made their
quarters,--Willard’s, Moulton’s, and Moore’s on the east side, and
Burr’s and Pepperrell’s on the west. Those on the east, in some cases,
saw fit to extend themselves towards Louisbourg as far as the edge of
the intervening marsh, but were soon forced back to a safer position
by the cannon-balls of the fortress, which came bowling amongst them.
This marsh was that green, flat sponge of mud and moss that stretched
from this point to the glacis of Louisbourg.
There was great want of tents, for material to make them was scarce 104
in New England. Old sails were often used instead, being stretched
over poles,--perhaps after the fashion of a Sioux teepee. When these
could not be had, the men built huts of sods, with roofs of
spruce-boughs overlapping like a thatch; for at that early season,
bark would not peel from the trees. The landing of guns, munitions,
and stores was a formidable task, consuming many days and destroying
many boats, as happened again when Amherst landed his cannon at this
same place. Large flat boats, brought from Boston, were used for the
purpose, and the loads were carried ashore on the heads of the men,
wading through ice-cold surf to the waist, after which, having no
change of clothing, they slept on the ground through the chill and
foggy nights, reckless of future rheumatisms.[107]
A worse task was before them. The cannon were to be dragged over the
marsh to Green Hill, a spur of the line of rough heights that half
encircled the town and harbor. Here the first battery was to be
planted; and from this point other guns were to be dragged onward to
more advanced stations,--a distance in all of more than two miles,
thought by the French to be impassable. So, in fact, it seemed; for
at the first attempt, the wheels of the cannon sank to the hubs in mud 105
and moss, then the carriage, and finally the piece itself slowly
disappeared. Lieutenant-Colonel Meserve, of the New Hampshire
regiment, a ship-builder by trade, presently overcame the difficulty.
By his direction sledges of timber were made, sixteen feet long and
five feet wide; a cannon was placed on each of these, and it was then
dragged over the marsh by a team of two hundred men, harnessed with
rope-traces and breast-straps, and wading to the knees. Horses or oxen
would have foundered in the mire. The way had often to be changed, as
the mossy surface was soon churned into a hopeless slough along the
line of march. The work could be done only at night or in thick fog,
the men being completely exposed to the cannon of the town. Thirteen
years after, when General Amherst besieged Louisbourg again, he
dragged his cannon to the same hill over the same marsh; but having at
his command, instead of four thousand militiamen, eleven thousand
British regulars, with all appliances and means to boot, he made a
road, with prodigious labor, through the mire, and protected it from
the French shot by an epaulement, or lateral earthwork.[108]
Pepperrell writes in ardent words of the cheerfulness of his men
“under almost incredible hardships.” Shoes and clothing failed, till
many were in tatters and many barefooted;[109] yet they toiled on with
unconquerable spirit, and within four days had planted a battery of 106
six guns on Green Hill, which was about a mile from the King’s Bastion
of Louisbourg. In another week they had dragged four twenty-two-pound
cannon and ten coehorns--gravely called “cowhorns” by the bucolic
Pomeroy--six or seven hundred yards farther, and planted them within
easy range of the citadel. Two of the cannon burst, and were replaced
by four more and a large mortar, which burst in its turn, and Shirley
was begged to send another. Meanwhile a battery, chiefly of coehorns,
had been planted on a hillock four hundred and forty yards from the
West Gate, where it greatly annoyed the French; and on the next night
an advanced battery was placed just opposite the same gate, and
scarcely two hundred and fifty yards from it. This West Gate, the
principal gate of Louisbourg, opened upon the tract of high, firm
ground that lay on the left of the besiegers, between the marsh and
the harbor, an arm of which here extended westward beyond the town,
into what was called the Barachois, a salt pond formed by a projecting
spit of sand. On the side of the Barachois farthest from the town was
a hillock on which stood the house of an _habitant_ named
Martissan. Here, on the twentieth of May, a fifth battery was planted,
consisting of two of the French forty-two-pounders taken in the Grand
Battery, to which three others were afterwards added. Each of these
heavy pieces was dragged to its destination by a team of three hundred
men over rough and rocky ground swept by the French artillery. This 107
fifth battery, called the Northwest, or Titcomb’s, proved most
destructive to the fortress.[110]
All these operations were accomplished with the utmost ardor and
energy, but with a scorn of rule and precedent that astonished and
bewildered the French. The raw New England men went their own way,
laughed at trenches and zigzags, and persisted in trusting their lives
to the night and the fog. Several writers say that the English
engineer Bastide tried to teach them discretion; but this could hardly
be, for Bastide, whose station was Annapolis, did not reach Louisbourg
till the fifth of June, when the batteries were finished, and the
siege was nearly ended. A recent French writer makes the curious
assertion that it was one of the ministers, or army chaplains, who
took upon him the vain task of instruction in the art of war on this
occasion.[111]
This ignorant and self-satisfied recklessness might have cost the
besiegers dear if the French, instead of being perplexed and startled
at the novelty of their proceedings, had taken advantage of it; but
Duchambon and some of his officers, remembering the mutiny of the past
winter, feared to make sorties, lest the soldiers might desert or take
part with the enemy. The danger of this appears to have been small. 108
Warren speaks with wonder in his letters of the rarity of desertions,
of which there appear to have been but three during the siege,--one
being that of a half-idiot, from whom no information could be got. A
bolder commander would not have stood idle while his own cannon were
planted by the enemy to batter down his walls; and whatever the risks
of a sortie, the risks of not making one were greater. “Both troops
and militia eagerly demanded it, and I believe it would have
succeeded,” writes the intendant, Bigot.[112] The attempt was actually
made more than once in a half-hearted way,--notably on the eighth of
May, when the French attacked the most advanced battery, and were
repulsed, with little loss on either side.
The _Habitant de Louisbourg_ says: “The enemy did not attack us
with any regularity, and made no intrenchments to cover themselves.”
This last is not exact. Not being wholly demented, they made
intrenchments, such as they were,--at least, at the advanced
battery;[113] as they would otherwise have been swept out of
existence, being under the concentred fire of several French
batteries, two of which were within the range of a musket-shot.
[Illustration: LOUISBOURG.
1745
From a Plan of R. GRIDLEY
Reference:
_A. Dauphin’s Bastion and West Gate._
_B. King’s Bastion, or Citadel._
_C. Queen’s Bastion._
_D. Princess’s Bastion and South Gate._
_E. Maurepas Bastion and East Gate._
_1111. Glacis._
_222. Ditch._]
The scarcity of good gunners was one of the chief difficulties of the
besiegers. As privateering, and piracy also, against Frenchmen and
Spaniards was a favorite pursuit in New England, there were men in 109
Pepperrell’s army who knew how to handle cannon; but their number was
insufficient, and the general sent a note to Warren, begging that he
would lend him a few experienced gunners to teach their trade to the
raw hands at the batteries. Three or four were sent, and they found
apt pupils.
Pepperrell placed the advanced battery in charge of Captain
Joseph[114] Sherburn, telling him to enlist as many gunners as he
could. On the next day Sherburn reported that he had found six, one of
whom seems to have been sent by Warren. With these and a number of raw
men he repaired to his perilous station, where “I found,” he says, “a
very poor intrenchment. Our best shelter from the French fire, which
was very hot, was hogsheads filled with earth.” He and his men made
the West Gate their chief mark; but before they could get a fair sight
of it, they were forced to shoot down the fish-flakes, or stages for
drying cod, that obstructed the view. Some of their party were soon
killed,--Captain Pierce by a cannon-ball, Thomas Ash by a “bumb,” and
others by musketry. In the night they improved their defences, and
mounted on them three more guns, one of eighteen-pound calibre, and
the others of forty-two,--French pieces dragged from the Grand
Battery, a mile and three quarters round the Barachois.
The cannon could be loaded only under a constant fire of musketry, 110
which the enemy briskly returned. The French practice was excellent. A
soldier who in bravado mounted the rampart and stood there for a
moment was shot dead with five bullets. The men on both sides called
to each other in scraps of bad French or broken English; while the
French drank ironical healths to the New England men, and gave them
bantering invitations to breakfast.
Sherburn continues his diary. “Sunday morning. Began our fire with as
much fury as possible, and the French returned it as warmly from the
Citidale [citadel], West Gate, and North East Battery with Cannon,
Mortars, and continual showers of musket balls; but by 11 o’clock we
had beat them all from their guns.” He goes on to say that at noon his
men were forced to stop firing from want of powder, that he went with
his gunners to get some, and that while they were gone, somebody, said
to be Mr. Vaughan, brought a supply, on which the men loaded the
forty-two pounders in a bungling way, and fired them. One was
dismounted, and the other burst; a barrel and a half-barrel of powder
blew up, killed two men, and injured two more. Again: “Wednesday. Hot
fire on both sides, till the French were beat from all their guns. May
29th went to 2 Gun [Titcomb’s] Battery to give the gunners some
directions; then returned to my own station, where I spent the rest of
the day with pleasure, seeing our Shott Tumble down their walls and
Flagg Staff.”
The following is the intendant Bigot’s account of the effect of the 111
New England fire: “The enemy established their batteries to such
effect that they soon destroyed the greater part of the town, broke
the right flank of the King’s Bastion, ruined the Dauphin Battery with
its spur, and made a breach at the Porte Dauphine [West Gate], the
neighboring wall, and the sort of redan adjacent.”[115] Duchambon says
in addition that the cannon of the right flank of the King’s Bastion
could not be served, by reason of the continual fire of the enemy,
which broke the embrasures to pieces; that when he had them repaired,
they were broken to pieces (_démantibulés_) again,--and nobody
could keep his ground behind the wall of the quay, which was shot
through and through and completely riddled.[116] The town was ploughed
with cannon-balls, the streets were raked from end to end, nearly all
the houses damaged, and the people driven for refuge into the stifling
casemates. The results were creditable to novices in gunnery.
The repeated accidents from the bursting of cannon were no doubt
largely due to unskilful loading and the practice of double-shotting,
to which the over-zealous artillerists are said to have often
resorted.[117]
It is said, in proof of the orderly conduct of the men, that not one 112
of them was punished during all the siege; but this shows the mild and
conciliating character of the general quite as much as any peculiar
merit of the soldiers. The state of things in and about the camp was
compared by the caustic Dr. Douglas to “a Cambridge Commencement,”
which academic festival was then attended by much rough frolic and
boisterous horseplay among the disorderly crowds, white and black,
bond and free, who swarmed among the booths on Cambridge Common. The
careful and scrupulous Belknap, who knew many who took part in the
siege, says: “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.” While the
cannon bellowed in the front, frolic and confusion reigned at the
camp, where the men raced, wrestled, pitched quoits, fired at
marks,--though there was no ammunition to spare,--and ran after the
French cannon-balls, which were carried to the batteries, to be
returned to those who sent them. Nor were calmer recreations wanting.
“Some of our men went a fishing, about 2 miles off,” writes Lieutenant
Benjamin Cleaves in his diary: “caught 6 Troutts.” And, on the same
day, “Our men went to catch Lobsters: caught 30.” In view of this
truant disposition, it is not surprising that the besiegers now and 113
then lost their scalps at the hands of prowling Indians who infested
the neighborhood. Yet through all these gambols ran an undertow of
enthusiasm, born in brains still fevered from the “Great Awakening.”
The New England soldier, a growth of sectarian hotbeds, fancied that
he was doing the work of God. The army was Israel, and the French were
Canaanitish idolaters. Red-hot Calvinism, acting through generations,
had modified the transplanted Englishman; and the descendant of the
Puritans was never so well pleased as when teaching their duty to
other people, whether by pen, voice, or bombshells. The ragged
artillerymen, battering the walls of papistical Louisbourg, flattered
themselves with the notion that they were champions of gospel truth.
Barefoot and tattered, they toiled on with indomitable pluck and
cheerfulness, doing the work which oxen could not do, with no comfort
but their daily dram of New England rum, as they plodded through the
marsh and over rocks, dragging the ponderous guns through fog and
darkness. Their spirit could not save them from the effects of
excessive fatigue and exposure. They were ravaged with diarrhœa and
fever, till fifteen hundred men were at one time on the sick-list, and
at another, Pepperrell reported that of the four thousand only about
twenty-one hundred were fit for duty.[118] Nearly all at last
recovered, for the weather was unusually good; yet the number fit for 114
service was absurdly small. Pepperrell begged for reinforcements, but
got none till the siege was ended.
It was not his nature to rule with a stiff hand,--and this, perhaps,
was fortunate. Order and discipline, the sinews of an army, were out
of the question; and it remained to do as well as might be without
them, keep men and officers in good-humor, and avoid all that could
dash their ardor. For this, at least, the merchant-general was well
fitted. His popularity had helped to raise the army, and perhaps it
helped now to make it efficient. His position was no bed of roses.
Worries, small and great, pursued him without end. He made friends of
his officers, kept a bountiful table at his tent, and labored to
soothe their disputes and jealousies, and satisfy their complaints. So
generous were his contributions to the common cause that according to
a British officer who speaks highly of his services, he gave to it, in
one form or another, £10,000 out of his own pocket.[119]
His letter-books reveal a swarm of petty annoyances, which may have
tried his strength and patience as much as more serious cares. The
soldiers complained that they were left without clothing, shoes, or
rum; and when he implored the Committee of War to send them, Osborne,
the chairman, replied with explanations why it could not be done.
Letters came from wives and fathers entreating that husbands and sons 115
who had gone to the war should be sent back. At the end of the siege a
captain “humble begs leave for to go home,” because he lives in a very
dangerous country, and his wife and children are “in a declining way”
without him. Then two entire companies raised on the frontier offered
the same petition on similar grounds. Sometimes Pepperrell was beset
with prayers for favors and promotion; sometimes with complaints from
one corps or another that an undue share of work had been imposed on
it. One Morris, of Cambridge, writes a moving petition that his slave
“Cuffee,” who had joined the army, should be restored to him, his
lawful master. One John Alford sends the general a number of copies of
the Rev. Mr. Prentice’s late sermon, for distribution, assuring him
that “it will please your whole army of volunteers, as he has shown
them the way to gain by their gallantry the hearts and affections of
the Ladys.” The end of the siege brought countless letters of
congratulation, which, whether lay or clerical, never failed to remind
him, in set phrases, that he was but an instrument in the hands of
Providence.
One of his most persistent correspondents was his son-in-law,
Nathaniel Sparhawk, a thrifty merchant, with a constant eye to
business, who generally began his long-winded epistles with a bulletin
concerning the health of “Mother Pepperrell,” and rarely ended them
without charging his father-in-law with some commission, such as buying 116
for him the cargo of a French prize, if he could get it cheap. Or
thus: “If you would procure for me a hogshead of the best Clarett, and
a hogshead of the best white wine, at a reasonable rate, it would be
very grateful to me.” After pestering him with a few other
commissions, he tells him that “Andrew and Bettsy [children of
Pepperrell] send their proper compliments,” and signs himself, with
the starched flourish of provincial breeding, “With all possible
Respect, Honoured Sir, Your Obedient Son and Servant.”[120] Pepperrell
was much annoyed by the conduct of the masters of the transports, of
whom he wrote: “The unaccountable irregular behaviour of these fellows
is the greatest fatigue I meet with;” but it may be doubted whether
his son-in-law did not prove an equally efficient persecutor.
[89] Diary of Major Seth Pomeroy. I owe the copy before
me to the kindness of his descendant, Theodore Pomeroy, Esq.
[90] Diary of a Massachusetts soldier in Captain Richardson’s
company (Papers of Dr. Belknap).
[91] The words quoted are used by General Wolcott in his
journal.
[92] Brown, _Cape Breton_, 183. Parsons, _Life of
Pepperrell_, 103. An anonymous letter, dated Louisbourg, 4
July, 1745, says that eighty-five cannon and six mortars
have been found in the town.
[93] _Memoirs of the Principal Transactions of the Last
War_, 40.
[94] “On fit venir cinq ou six cens Miliciens aux Habitans
des environs; ce que, avec ceux de la Ville, pouvoit former
treize à quatorze cens hommes.”--_Lettre d’un Habitant de
Louisbourg_. This writer says that three or four hundred
more might have been had from Niganiche and its neighborhood,
if they had been summoned in time. The number of militia
just after the siege is set by English reports at 1,310.
Parsons, 103.
[95] _Shirley to Newcastle, 17 June, 1745_, citing letters
captured on board a ship from Quebec.
[96] 14 March, old style.
[97] Gabarus Bay, sometimes called “Chapeau Rouge” Bay, is a
spacious outer harbor, immediately adjoining Louisbourg.
[98] _Bigot au Ministre, 1 Août, 1745._
[99] _Pepperrell to Shirley, 12 May, 1745._ _Shirley
to Newcastle, 28 October, 1745._ _Journal of the Siege_,
attested by Pepperrell and four other chief officers
(London, 1746).
[100] Bigot says six thousand, or two thousand more than the
whole New England force, which was constantly overestimated
by the French.
[101] Belknap, ii.
[102] John Langdon Sibley, in _N. E. Hist. and Gen.
Register_, xxv. 377. The _Boston Gazette_ of 3 June, 1771,
has a notice of Tufts’ recent death, with an exaggerated
account of his exploit, and an appeal for aid to his
destitute family.
[103] Vaughan’s party seems to have consisted in all of
sixteen men, three of whom took no part in this affair.
[104] _Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Septembre, 1745._ This is
the governor’s official report. “Four hundred men,” is
perhaps a copyist’s error, the actual number in the battery
being not above two hundred.
[105] _Waldo to Shirley, 12 May, 1745._ Some of the French
writers say twenty-eight thirty-six pounders, while all the
English call them forty-twos,--which they must have been, as
the forty-two-pound shot brought from Boston fitted them.
Mr. Theodore Roosevelt draws my attention to the fact that
cannon were differently rated in the French and English
navies of the seventeenth century, and that a French
thirty-six carried a ball as large as an English forty-two,
or even a little larger.
[106] _Journal of Major-General Wolcott._
[107] The author of _The Importance and Advantage of Cape
Breton_ says: “When the hardships they were exposed to come to
be considered, the behaviour of these men will hardly gain
credit. They went ashore wet, had no [dry] clothes to cover
them, were exposed in this condition to cold, foggy nights,
and yet cheerfully underwent these difficulties for the sake
of executing a project they had voluntarily undertaken.”
[108] See “Montcalm and Wolfe,” chap. xix.
[109] _Pepperrell to Newcastle, 28 June, 1745._
[110] _Journal of the Siege_, appended to Shirley’s report
to Newcastle; _Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Septembre, 1745_;
_Lettre d’un Habitant_; Pomeroy, etc.
[111] Ferland, _Cours d’Histoire du Canada_, ii. 477.
“L’ennemi ne nous attaquoit point dans les formes, et ne
pratiquoit point aucun retranchement pour se couvrir.”--
_Habitant de Louisbourg._
[112] _Bigot au Ministre, 1 Août, 1745._
[113] _Diary of Joseph Sherburn, Captain at the Advanced
Battery._
[114] He signs his name Jos. Sherburn; but in a list of
the officers of the New Hampshire Regiment it appears in
full as Joseph.
[115] _Bigot au Ministre, 1 Août, 1745._
[116] _Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Septembre, 1745._
[117] “Another forty-two pound gun burst at the Grand
Battery. All the guns are in danger of going the same way,
by double-shotting them, unless under better regulation than
at present.”--_Waldo to Pepperrell, 20 May, 1745._
Waldo had written four days before: “Captain Hale, of my
regiment, is dangerously hurt by the bursting of another
gun. He was our mainstay for gunnery since Captain Rhodes’s
misfortune” (also caused by the bursting of a cannon).
_Waldo to Pepperrell, 16 May, 1745._
[118] _Pepperrell to Warren, 28 May, 1745._
[119] _Letter from an Officer of Marines_ appended to
_A particular Account of the Taking of Cape Breton_
(London, 1745).
[120] _Sparhawk to Pepperrell,--June, 1745._ This is
but one of many letters from Sparhawk.