1745-1747.
DUC D’ANVILLE.
LOUISBOURG AFTER THE CONQUEST.--MUTINY.--PESTILENCE.--STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: HIS DIARY.--SCHEME OF CONQUERING CANADA.--NEWCASTLE’S
PROMISES.--ALARM IN CANADA.--PROMISES BROKEN.--PLAN AGAINST CROWN
POINT.--STARTLING NEWS.--D’ANVILLE’S FLEET.--LOUISBOURG TO BE
AVENGED.--DISASTERS OF D’ANVILLE.--STORM.--PESTILENCE.--FAMINE.--
DEATH OF D’ANVILLE.--SUICIDE OF THE VICE-ADMIRAL.--RUINOUS
FAILURE.--RETURN VOYAGE.--DEFEAT OF LA JONQUIÈRE.
The troops and inhabitants of Louisbourg were all embarked for France,
and the town was at last in full possession of the victors. The
serious-minded among them--and there were few who did not bear the
stamp of hereditary Puritanism--now saw a fresh proof that they were
the peculiar care of an approving Providence. While they were in camp
the weather had been favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a
cold, persistent rain poured down in floods that would have drenched
their flimsy tents and turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps,
robbing the sick of every hope of recovery. Even now they got little
comfort from the shattered tenements of Louisbourg. The siege had 146
left the town in so filthy a condition that the wells were infected
and the water was poisoned.
The soldiers clamored for discharge, having enlisted to serve only
till the end of the expedition; and Shirley insisted that faith must
be kept with them, or no more would enlist.[165] Pepperrell, much to
the dissatisfaction of Warren, sent home about seven hundred men, some
of whom were on the sick list, while the rest had families in distress
and danger on the exposed frontier. At the same time he begged hard
for reinforcements, expecting a visit from the French and a desperate
attempt to recover Louisbourg. He and Warren governed the place
jointly, under martial law, and they both passed half their time in
holding courts-martial; for disorder reigned among the disgusted
militia, and no less among the crowd of hungry speculators, who
flocked like vultures to the conquered town to buy the cargoes of
captured ships, or seek for other prey. The Massachusetts soldiers,
whose pay was the smallest, and who had counted on being at their
homes by the end of July, were the most turbulent; but all alike were
on the brink of mutiny. Excited by their ringleaders, they one day
marched in a body to the parade and threw down their arms, but
probably soon picked them up again, as in most cases the guns were
hunting-pieces belonging to those who carried them. Pepperrell begged
Shirley to come to Louisbourg and bring the mutineers back to duty. 147
Accordingly, on the sixteenth of August he arrived in a ship-of-war,
accompanied by Mrs. Shirley and Mrs. Warren, wife of the commodore.
The soldiers duly fell into line to receive him. As it was not his
habit to hide his own merits, he tells the Duke of Newcastle that
nobody but he could have quieted the malcontents,--which is probably
true, as nobody else had power to raise their pay. He made them a
speech, promised them forty shillings in Massachusetts new-tenor
currency a month, instead of twenty-five, and ended with ordering for
each man half a pint of rum to drink the King’s health. Though
potations so generous might be thought to promise effects not wholly
sedative, the mutineers were brought to reason, and some even
consented to remain in garrison till the next June.[166]
Small reinforcements came from New England to hold the place till the
arrival of troops from Gibraltar, promised by the ministry. The two
regiments raised in the colonies, and commanded by Shirley and
Pepperrell, were also intended to form a part of the garrison; but
difficulty was found in filling the ranks, because, says Shirley, some
commissions have been given to Englishmen, and men will not enlist,
here except under American officers.
Nothing could be more dismal than the condition of Louisbourg, as
reflected in the diaries of soldiers and others who spent there the
winter that followed its capture. Among these diaries is that of the 148
worthy Benjamin Crafts, private in Hale’s Essex regiment, who to the
entry of each day adds a pious invocation, sincere in its way, no
doubt, though hackneyed, and sometimes in strange company. Thus, after
noting down Shirley’s gift of half a pint of rum to every man to drink
the King’s health, he adds immediately: “The Lord Look upon us and
enable us to trust in him & may he prepare us for his holy Day.” On
“September ye 1, being Sabath,” we find the following record: “I am
much out of order. This forenoon heard Mr. Stephen Williams preach
from ye 18 Luke 9 verse in the afternoon from ye 8 of Ecles: 8 verse:
Blessed be the Lord that has given us to enjoy another Sabath and
opertunity to hear his Word Dispensed.” On the next day, “being
Monday,” he continues, “Last night I was taken very Bad: the Lord be
pleased to strengthen my inner man that I may put my whole Trust in
him. May we all be prepared for his holy will. Rcd part of plunder, 9
small tooth combs.” Crafts died in the spring, of the prevailing
distemper, after doing good service in the commissary department of
his regiment.
Stephen Williams, the preacher whose sermons had comforted Crafts in
his trouble, was a son of Rev. John Williams, captured by the Indians
at Deerfield in 1704, and was now minister of Long Meadow,
Massachusetts. He had joined the anti-papal crusade as one of its
chaplains, and passed for a man of ability,--a point on which those 149
who read his diary will probably have doubts. The lot of the army
chaplains was of the hardest. A pestilence had fallen upon Louisbourg,
and turned the fortress into a hospital. “After we got into the town,”
says the sarcastic Dr. Douglas, whose pleasure it is to put everything
in its worst light, “a sordid indolence or sloth, for want of
discipline, induced putrid fevers and dysenteries, which at length in
August became contagious, and the people died like rotten sheep.” From
fourteen to twenty-seven were buried every day in the cemetery behind
the town, outside the Maurepas Gate, by the old lime-kiln on Rochefort
Point; and the forgotten bones of above five hundred New England men
lie there to this day under the coarse, neglected grass. The
chaplain’s diary is little but a dismal record of sickness, death,
sermons, funerals, and prayers with the dying ten times a day. “Prayed
at Hospital;--Prayed at Citadel;--Preached at Grand Batery;--Visited
Capt. [illegible], very sick;--One of Capt.----’s company dy^d.--Am
but poorly myself, but able to keep about.” Now and then there is a
momentary change of note, as when he writes: “July 29^{th}. One of ye
Captains of ye men of war caind a soldier who struck ye capt. again. A
great tumult. Swords were drawn; no life lost, but great uneasiness is
caused.” Or when he sets down the “say” of some Briton, apparently a
naval officer, “that he had tho’t ye New England men were Cowards--but
now he tho’t yt if they had a pick axe & spade, they w’d dig ye way 150
to Hell & storm it.”[167]
Williams was sorely smitten with homesickness, but he sturdily kept
his post, in spite of grievous yearnings for family and flock. The
pestilence slowly abated, till at length the burying-parties that
passed the Maurepas Gate counted only three or four a day. At the end
of January five hundred and sixty-one men had died, eleven hundred
were on the sick list, and about one thousand fit for duty.[168] The
promised regiments from Gibraltar had not come. Could the French have
struck then, Louisbourg might have changed hands again. The Gibraltar
regiments had arrived so late upon that rude coast that they turned
southward to the milder shores of Virginia, spent the winter there,
and did not appear at Louisbourg till April. They brought with them a
commission for Warren as governor of the fortress. He made a speech of
thanks to the New England garrison, now reduced to less than nineteen
hundred men, sick and well, and they sailed at last for home,
Louisbourg being now thought safe from any attempt of France.
To the zealous and energetic Shirley the capture of the fortress was
but a beginning of greater triumphs. Scarcely had the New England
militia sailed from Boston on their desperate venture, when he wrote 151
to the Duke of Newcastle that should the expedition succeed, all New
England would be on fire to attack Canada, and the other colonies
would take part with them, if ordered to do so by the ministry.[169]
And, some months later, after Louisbourg was taken, he urged the
policy of striking while the iron was hot, and invading Canada at
once. The colonists, he said, were ready, and it would be easier to
raise ten thousand men for such an attack than one thousand to lie
idle in garrison at Louisbourg or anywhere else. France and England,
he thinks, cannot live on the same continent. If we were rid of the
French, he continues, England would soon control America, which would
make her first among the nations; and he ventures what now seems the
modest prediction that in one or two centuries the British colonies
would rival France in population. Even now, he is sure that they would
raise twenty thousand men to capture Canada, if the King required it
of them, and Warren would be an acceptable commander for the naval
part of the expedition; “but,” concludes the governor, “I will take no
step without orders from his Majesty.”[170]
The Duke of Newcastle was now at the head of the Government. Smollett
and Horace Walpole have made his absurdities familiar, in anecdotes
which, true or not, do no injustice to his character; yet he had 152
talents that were great in their way, though their way was a mean one.
They were talents, not of the statesman, but of the political manager,
and their object was to win office and keep it.
Newcastle, whatever his motives, listened to the counsels of Shirley,
and directed him to consult with Warren as to the proposed attack on
Canada. At the same time he sent a circular letter to the governors of
the provinces from New England to North Carolina, directing them,
should the invasion be ordered, to call upon their assemblies for as
many men as they would grant.[171] Shirley’s views were cordially
supported by Warren, and the levies were made accordingly, though not
in proportion to the strength of the several colonies; for those south
of New York felt little interest in the plan. Shirley was told to
“dispose Massachusetts to do its part;” but neither he nor his
province needed prompting. Taking his cue from the Roman senator, he
exclaimed to his Assembly, “_Delenda est Canada_;” and the
Assembly responded by voting to raise thirty-five hundred men, and
offering a bounty equivalent to £4 sterling to each volunteer, besides
a blanket for every one, and a bed for every two. New Hampshire
contributed five hundred men, Rhode Island three hundred, Connecticut
one thousand, New York sixteen hundred, New Jersey five hundred,
Maryland three hundred, and Virginia one hundred. The Pennsylvania 153
Assembly, controlled by Quaker noncombatants, would give no
soldiers; but, by a popular movement, the province furnished four
hundred men, without the help of its representatives.[172]
As usual in the English attempts against Canada, the campaign was to
be a double one. The main body of troops, composed of British regulars
and New England militia, was to sail up the St. Lawrence and attack
Quebec, while the levies of New York and the provinces farther south,
aided, it was hoped, by the warriors of the Iroquois, were to advance
on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain.
Newcastle promised eight battalions of British troops under
Lieutenant-General Saint-Clair. They were to meet the New England men
at Louisbourg, and all were then to sail together for Quebec, under
the escort of a squadron commanded by Warren. Shirley also was to go
to Louisbourg, and arrange the plan of the campaign with the general
and the admiral. Thus, without loss of time, the captured fortress was
to be made a base of operations against its late owners.
Canada was wild with alarm at reports of English preparation. There
were about fifty English prisoners in barracks at Quebec, and every
device was tried to get information from them; but being chiefly
rustics caught on the frontiers by Indian war-parties, they had little
news to give, and often refused to give even this. One of them, who 154
had been taken long before and gained over by the French,[173] was
used as an agent to extract information from his countrymen, and was
called “_notre homme de confiance_.” At the same time the
prisoners were freely supplied with writing materials, and their
letters to their friends being then opened, it appeared that they were
all in expectation of speedy deliverance.[174]
In July a report came from Acadia that from forty to fifty thousand
men were to attack Canada; and on the first of August a prisoner
lately taken at Saratoga declared that there were thirty-two war-ships
at Boston ready to sail against Quebec, and that thirteen thousand men
were to march at once from Albany against Montreal. “If all these
stories are true,” writes the Canadian journalist, “all the English on
this continent must be in arms.”
Preparations for defence were pushed with feverish energy. Fireships
were made ready at Quebec, and fire-rafts at Isle-aux-Coudres;
provisions were gathered, and ammunition was distributed;
reconnoitring parties were sent to watch the gulf and the river; and
bands of Canadians and Indians lately sent to Acadia were ordered to
hasten back.
Thanks to the Duke of Newcastle, all these alarms were needless. The
Massachusetts levies were ready within six weeks, and Shirley, eager 155
and impatient, waited in vain for the squadron from England and the
promised eight battalions of regulars. They did not come; and in
August he wrote to Newcastle that it would now be impossible to reach
Quebec before October, which would be too late.[175] The eight
battalions had been sent to Portsmouth for embarkation, ordered on
board the transports, then ordered ashore again, and finally sent on
an abortive expedition against the coast of France. There were those
who thought that this had been their destination from the first, and
that the proposed attack on Canada was only a pretence to deceive the
enemy. It was not till the next spring that Newcastle tried to explain
the miscarriage to Shirley. He wrote that the troops had been detained
by head-winds till General Saint-Clair and Admiral Lestock thought it
too late; to which he added that the demands of the European war made
the Canadian expedition impracticable, and that Shirley was to stand
on the defensive and attempt no further conquests. As for the
provincial soldiers, who this time were in the pay of the Crown, he
says that they were “very expensive,” and orders the governor to get
rid of them “as cheap as possible.”[176] Thus, not for the first time,
the hopes of the colonies were brought to nought by the failure of the
British ministers to keep their promises.
When, in the autumn of 1746, Shirley said that for the present Canada 156
was to be let alone, he bethought him of a less decisive conquest, and
proposed to employ the provincial troops for an attack on Crown Point,
which formed a halfway station between Albany and Montreal, and was
the constant rendezvous of war-parties against New York, New
Hampshire, and Massachusetts, whose discords and jealousies had
prevented them from combining to attack it. The Dutch of Albany, too,
had strong commercial reasons for not coming to blows with the
Canadians. Of late, however, Massachusetts and New York had suffered
so much from this inconvenient neighbor that it was possible to unite
them against it; and as Clinton, governor of New York, was scarcely
less earnest to get possession of Crown Point than was Shirley
himself, a plan of operations was soon settled. By the middle of
October fifteen hundred Massachusetts troops were on their way to join
the New York levies, and then advance upon the obnoxious post.[177]
Even this modest enterprise was destined to fail. Astounding tidings
reached New England, and startled her like a thunder-clap from dreams
of conquest. It was reported that a great French fleet and army were
on their way to retake Louisbourg, reconquer Acadia, burn Boston, and
lay waste the other seaboard towns. The Massachusetts troops marching
for Crown Point were recalled, and the country militia were mustered
in arms. In a few days the narrow, crooked streets of the Puritan
capital were crowded with more than eight thousand armed rustics from 157
the farms and villages of Middlesex, Essex, Norfolk, and Worcester,
and Connecticut promised six thousand more as soon as the hostile
fleet should appear. The defences of Castle William were enlarged and
strengthened, and cannon were planted on the islands at the mouth of
the harbor; hulks were sunk in the channel, and a boom was laid across
it under the guns of the castle.[178] The alarm was compared to that
which filled England on the approach of the Spanish Armada.[179]
Canada heard the news of the coming armament with an exultation that
was dashed with misgiving as weeks and months passed and the fleet did
not appear. At length in September a vessel put in to an Acadian
harbor with the report that she had met the ships in mid-ocean, and
that they counted a hundred and fifty sail. Some weeks later the
governor and intendant of Canada wrote that on the fourteenth of
October they received a letter from Chibucto with “the agreeable news”
that the Duc d’Anville and his fleet had arrived there about three
weeks before. Had they known more, they would have rejoiced less.
That her great American fortress should have been snatched from her by
a despised militia was more than France could bear; and in the midst 158
of a burdensome war she made a crowning effort to retrieve her honor
and pay the debt with usury. It was computed that nearly half the
French navy was gathered at Brest under command of the Duc d’Anville.
By one account his force consisted of eleven ships-of-the-line, twenty
frigates, and thirty-four transports and fireships, or sixty-five in
all. Another list gives a total of sixty-six, of which ten were
ships-of-the-line, twenty-two were frigates and fireships, and
thirty-four were transports.[180] These last carried the regiment of
Ponthieu, with other veteran troops, to the number in all of three
thousand one hundred and fifty. The fleet was to be joined at
Chibucto, now Halifax, by four heavy ships-of-war lately sent to the
West Indies under M. de Conflans.
From Brest D’Anville sailed for some reason to Rochelle, and here the
ships were kept so long by head-winds that it was the twentieth of
June before they could put to sea. From the first the omens were
sinister. The admiral was beset with questions as to the destination
of the fleet, which was known to him alone; and when, for the sake of
peace, he told it to his officers, their discontent redoubled. The Bay
of Biscay was rough and boisterous, and spars, sails, and bowsprits
were carried away. After they had been a week at sea, some of the
ships, being dull sailers, lagged behind, and the rest were forced 159
to shorten sail and wait for them. In the longitude of the Azores
there was a dead calm, and the whole fleet lay idle for days. Then
came a squall, with lightning. Several ships were struck. On one of
them six men were killed, and on the seventy-gun ship “Mars” a box of
musket and cannon cartridges blew up, killed ten men, and wounded
twenty-one. A store-ship which proved to be sinking was abandoned and
burned. Then a pestilence broke out, and in some of the ships there
were more sick than in health.
On the fourteenth of September they neared the coast of Nova Scotia,
and were in dread of the dangerous shoals of Sable Island, the
position of which they did not exactly know. They groped their way in
fogs till a fearful storm, with thunder and lightning, fell upon them.
The journalist of the voyage, a captain in the regiment of Ponthieu,
says, with the exaggeration common in such cases, that the waves ran
as high as the masts; and such was their violence that a transport,
dashing against the ship “Amazone,” immediately went down, with all on
board. The crew of the “Prince d’Orange,” half blinded by wind and
spray, saw the great ship “Caribou,” without bowsprit or main-topmast,
driving towards them before the gale, and held their breath in
expectation of the shock as she swept close alongside and vanished in
the storm.[181] The tempest raged all night, and the fleet became so 160
scattered that there was no more danger of collision. In the morning
the journalist could see but five sail; but as the day advanced the
rest began to reappear, and at three o’clock he counted thirty-one
from the deck of the “Prince d’Orange.” The gale was subsiding, but
its effects were seen in hencoops, casks, and chests floating on the
surges and telling the fate of one or more of the fleet. The
“Argonaut” was rolling helpless, without masts or rudder; the
“Caribou” had thrown overboard all the starboard guns of her upper
deck; and the vice-admiral’s ship, the “Trident,” was in scarcely
better condition.
On the twenty-third they were wrapped in thick fog and lay firing
guns, ringing bells, and beating drums to prevent collisions. When the
weather cleared, they looked in vain for the admiral’s ship, the
“Northumberland.”[182] She was not lost, however, but with two other
ships was far ahead of the fleet and near Chibucto, though in great
perplexity, having no pilot who knew the coast. She soon after had the
good fortune to capture a small English vessel with a man on board
well acquainted with Chibucto harbor. D’Anville offered him his
liberty and a hundred louis if he would pilot the ship in. To this he
agreed; but when he rejoined his fellow-prisoners they called him a 161
traitor to his country, on which he retracted his promise. D’Anville
was sorely perplexed; but Duperrier, captain of the “Northumberland,”
less considerate of the prisoner’s feelings, told him that unless he
kept his word he should be thrown into the sea, with a pair of
cannon-balls made fast to his feet. At this his scruples gave way, and
before night the “Northumberland” was safe in Chibucto Bay. D’Anville
had hoped to find here the four ships of Conflans, which were to have
met him from the West Indies at this, the appointed rendezvous; but he
saw only a solitary transport of his own fleet. Hills covered with
forests stood lonely and savage round what is now the harbor of
Halifax. Conflans and his four ships had arrived early in the month,
and finding nobody, though it was nearly three months since D’Anville
left Rochelle, he cruised among the fogs for a while, and then sailed
for France a few days before the admiral’s arrival.
D’Anville was ignorant of the fate of his fleet; but he knew that the
two ships which had reached Chibucto with him were full of sick men,
that their provisions were nearly spent, and that there was every
reason to believe such of the fleet as the storm might have spared to
be in no better case. An officer of the expedition describes D’Anville
as a man “made to command and worthy to be loved,” and says that he
had borne the disasters of the voyage with the utmost fortitude and
serenity.[183] Yet suspense and distress wrought fatally upon him, and 162
at two o’clock in the morning of the twenty-seventh he died,--of
apoplexy, by the best accounts; though it was whispered among the
crews that he had ended his troubles by poison.[184]
At six o’clock in the afternoon of the same day D’Estournel, the
vice-admiral, with such ships as remained with him, entered the harbor
and learned what had happened. He saw with dismay that he was doomed
to bear the burden of command over a ruined enterprise and a shattered
fleet. The long voyage had consumed the provisions, and in some of the
ships the crews were starving. The pestilence grew worse, and men were
dying in numbers every day. On the twenty-eighth, D’Anville was buried
without ceremony on a small island in the harbor. The officers met in
council, and the papers of the dead commander were examined. Among
them was a letter from the King in which he urged the recapture of
Louisbourg as the first object of the expedition; but this was thought
impracticable, and the council resolved to turn against Annapolis all
the force that was left. It is said that D’Estournel opposed the
attempt, insisting that it was hopeless, and that there was no
alternative but to return to France. The debate was long and hot, and
the decision was against him.[185] The council dissolved, and he was 163
seen to enter his cabin in evident distress and agitation. An unusual
sound was presently heard, followed by groans. His door was fastened
by two bolts, put on the evening before by his order. It was burst
open, and the unfortunate commander was found lying in a pool of
blood, transfixed with his own sword. Enraged and mortified, he had
thrown himself upon it in a fit of desperation. The surgeon drew out
the blade, but it was only on the urgent persuasion of two Jesuits
that the dying man would permit the wound to be dressed. He then
ordered all the captains to the side of his berth, and said,
“Gentlemen, I beg pardon of God and the King for what I have done, and
I protest to the King that my only object was to prevent my enemies
from saying that I had not executed his orders;” and he named M. de la
Jonquière to command in his place. In fact, La Jonquière’s rank
entitled him to do so. He was afterwards well known as governor of
Canada, and was reputed a brave and able sea-officer.
La Jonquière remained at Chibucto till late in October. Messengers
were sent to the Acadian settlements to ask for provisions, of which
there was desperate need; and as payment was promised in good metal,
and not in paper, the Acadians brought in a considerable supply. The
men were encamped on shore, yet the pestilence continued its ravages.
Two English prisoners were told that between twenty-three and 164
twenty-four hundred men had been buried by sea or land since the fleet
left France; and another declares that eleven hundred and thirty-five
burials took place while he was at Chibucto.[186] The survivors used
the clothing of the dead as gifts to the neighboring Indians, who in
consequence were attacked with such virulence by the disease that of
the band at Cape Sable three fourths are said to have perished. The
English, meanwhile, learned something of the condition of their
enemies. Towards the end of September Captain Sylvanus Cobb, in a
sloop from Boston, boldly entered Chibucto Harbor, took note of the
ships lying there, and, though pursued, ran out to sea and carried the
results of his observations to Louisbourg.[187] A more thorough
reconnoissance was afterwards made by a vessel from Louisbourg
bringing French prisoners for exchange under a flag of truce; and it
soon became evident that the British colonies had now nothing to fear.
La Jonquière still clung to the hope of a successful stroke at
Annapolis, till in October an Acadian brought him the report that the
garrison of that place had received a reinforcement of twelve hundred
men. The reinforcement consisted in reality of three small companies
of militia sent from Boston by Shirley. La Jonquière called a secret
council, and the result seems to have been adverse to any further 165
attempt. The journalist reports that only a thousand men were left in
fighting condition, and that even of these some were dying every day.
La Jonquière, however, would not yet despair. The troops were
re-embarked; five hospital ships were devoted to the sick; the
“Parfait,” a fifty-gun ship no longer serviceable, was burned, as were
several smaller vessels, and on the fourth of October what was left of
the fleet sailed out of Chibucto Harbor and steered for Annapolis,
piloted by Acadians. The flag of truce from Louisbourg was compelled
for a time to bear them company, and Joseph Foster of Beverly, an
exchanged prisoner on board of her, deposed that as the fleet held its
way, he saw “a great number of dead persons” dropped into the sea
every day. Ill-luck still pursued the French. A storm off Cape Sable
dispersed the ships, two of which some days later made their way to
Annapolis Basin in expectation of finding some of their companions
there. They found instead the British fifty-gun ship “Chester” and the
Massachusetts frigate “Shirley” anchored before the fort, on which the
two Frenchmen retired as they had come; and so ended the last
aggressive movement on the part of the great armament.
The journalist reports that on the night of the twenty-seventh there
was a council of officers on board the “Northumberland,” at which it
was resolved that no choice was left but to return to France with the 166
ships that still kept together. On the fourth of November there was
another storm, and when it subsided, the “Prince d’Orange” found
herself with but nine companions, all of which were transports. These
had on board eleven companies of soldiers, of whom their senior
officer reports that only ninety-one were in health. The pestilence
made such ravages among the crews that four or five corpses were
thrown into the sea every day, and there was fear that the vessels
would be left helpless in mid-ocean for want of sailors to work
them.[188] At last, on the seventh of December, after narrowly
escaping an English squadron, they reached Port Louis in Brittany,
where several ships of the fleet had arrived before them. Among these
was the frigate “La Palme.” “Yesterday,” says the journalist, “I
supped with M. Destrahoudal, who commands this frigate; and he told me
things which from anybody else would have been incredible. This is his
story, exactly as I had it from him.” And he goes on to the following
effect.
After the storm of the fourteenth of September, provisions being
almost spent, it was thought that there was no hope for “La Palme” and
her crew but in giving up the enterprise and making all sail at once
for home, since France now had no port of refuge on the western
continent nearer than Quebec. Rations were reduced to three ounces of
biscuit and three of salt meat a day; and after a time half of this
pittance was cut off. There was diligent hunting for rats in the hold; 167
and when this game failed, the crew, crazed with famine, demanded of
their captain that five English prisoners who were on board should be
butchered to appease the frenzy of their hunger. The captain consulted
his officers, and they were of opinion that if he did not give his
consent, the crew would work their will without it. The ship’s butcher
was accordingly ordered to bind one of the prisoners, carry him to the
bottom of the hold, put him to death, and distribute his flesh to the
men in portions of three ounces each. The captain, walking the deck in
great agitation all night, found a pretext for deferring the deed till
morning, when a watchman sent aloft at daylight cried, “A sail!” The
providential stranger was a Portuguese ship; and as Portugal was
neutral in the war, she let the frigate approach to within hailing
distance. The Portuguese captain soon came alongside in a boat,
“accompanied,” in the words of the narrator, “by five sheep.” These
were eagerly welcomed by the starving crew as agreeable substitutes
for the five Englishmen; and, being forthwith slaughtered, were
parcelled out among the men, who would not wait till the flesh was
cooked, but devoured it raw.[189] Provisions enough were obtained from
the Portuguese to keep the frigate’s company alive till they reached
Port Louis.
There are no sufficient means of judging how far the disasters of 168
D’Anville’s fleet were due to a neglect of sanitary precautions or to
deficient seamanship. Certain it is that there were many in
self-righteous New England who would have held it impious to doubt
that God had summoned the pestilence and the storm to fight the
battles of his modern Israel.
Undaunted by disastrous failure, the French court equipped another
fleet, not equal to that of D’Anville, yet still formidable, and
placed it under La Jonquière, for the conquest of Acadia and
Louisbourg. La Jonquière sailed from Rochelle on the tenth of May,
1747, and on the fourteenth was met by an English fleet stronger than
his own and commanded by Admirals Anson and Warren. A fight ensued, in
which, after brave resistance, the French were totally defeated. Six
ships-of-war, including the flag-ship, were captured, with a host of
prisoners, among whom was La Jonquière himself.[190]
[165] _Shirley to Newcastle, 27 September, 1745._
[166] _Shirley to Newcastle, 4 December, 1745._
[167] The autograph diary of Rev. Stephen Williams is in my
possession. The handwriting is detestable.
[168] On May 10, 1746, Shirley writes to Newcastle that eight
hundred and ninety men had died during the winter. The
sufferings of the garrison from cold were extreme.
[169] _Shirley to Newcastle, 4 April, 1745._
[170] _Ibid., 29 October, 1745._
[171] _Newcastle to the Provincial Governors, 14 March, 1746;
Shirley to Newcastle, 31 May, 1746; Proclamation of Shirley,
2 June, 1746._
[172] Hutchinson, ii. 381, _note_. Compare _Memoirs of the
Principal Transactions of the Last War_.
[173] “Un ancien prisonnier affidé que l’on a mis dans nos
interests.”
[174] _Extrait en forme de Journal de ce qui s’est passé
dans la Colonie depuis ... le 1 Décembre, 1745, jusqu’au 9
Novembre, 1746, signé Beauharnois et Hocquart._
[175] _Shirley to Newcastle, 22 August, 1746._
[176] _Newcastle to Shirley, 30 May, 1747._
[177] _Memoirs of the Principal Transactions of the Last War._
[178] _Shirley to Newcastle, 29 September, 1746._ Shirley says
that though the French may bombard the town, he does not
think they could make a landing, as he shall have fifteen
thousand good men within call to oppose them.
[179] Hutchinson, ii. 382.
[180] This list is in the journal of a captured French officer
called by Shirley M. Rebateau.
[181] _Journal historique du Voyage de la Flotte commandée par
M. le Duc d’Enville._ The writer was on board the “Prince
d’Orange,” and describes what he saw (Archives du Séminaire
de Québec; printed in _Le Canada Français_).
[182] The “Northumberland” was an English prize captured by
Captains Serier and Conflans in 1744.
[183] _Journal historique du Voyage._
[184] _Declaration of H. Kannan and D. Deas, 23 October, 1746.
Deposition of Joseph Foster, 24 October, 1746, sworn to
before Jacob Wendell, J. P._ These were prisoners in the
ships at Chibucto.
[185] This is said by all the writers except the author of the
_Journal historique_, who merely states that the council
decided to attack Annapolis, and to detach some soldiers to
the aid of Quebec. This last vote was reconsidered.
[186] _Declaration of Kannan and Deas. Deposition of Joseph
Foster._
[187] _Report of Captain Cobb,_ in _Shirley to Newcastle,
13 October, 1746_.
[188] _Journal historique._
[189] _Relation du Voyage de Retour de M. Destrahoudal après
la Tempête du 14 Septembre_, in _Journal historique_.
[190] _Relation du Combat rendu le 14 Mai_ (new style), _par
l’Escadre du Roy commandée par M. de la Jonquière_, in _Le
Canada Français, Supplément de Documents inédits_, 33.
_Newcastle to Shirley, 30 May, 1747._