The Expulsion Of The Acadians
We have now to turn back over a number of years to see what has been
happening in Acadia, that oldest and most easterly part of New France
which in 1710 fell into British hands. Since the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713 the Acadians had been nominally British subjects. But the
Frenchman, hardly less than the Jew, is difficult of absorption by other
racial types. We have already noted the natural aim of France to recover
what she had lost and her use of the priests to hold the Acadians to her
interests. The Acadians were secure in the free exercise of their
religion. They had no secular leaders and few, if any, clergy of their
own. They were led chiefly by priests, subjects of France, who, though
working in British territory, owned no allegiance to Great Britain, and
were directed by the Bishop of Quebec.
For forty years the question of the Acadians remained unsettled. Under
the Treaty of 1713 the Acadians might leave the country. If they
remained a year they must become British subjects. When, however, in
1715, two years after the conclusion of the treaty, they were required
to take the oath of allegiance to the new King, George I, they declared
that they could not do so, since they were about to move to Cape Breton.
When George II came to the throne in 1727, the oath was again demanded.
Still, however, the Acadians were between two fires. Their Indian
neighbors, influenced by the French, threatened them with massacre if
they took the oath, while the British declared that they would forfeit
their farms if they refused. The truth is that the British did not wish
to press the alternative. To drive out the Acadians would be to
strengthen the neighboring French colony of Cape Breton. To force on
them the oath might even cause a rising which would overwhelm the few
English in Nova Scotia. So the tradition, never formally accepted by the
British, grew up that, while the Acadians owed obedience to George II,
they would be neutral in case of war with France. A common name for them
used by the British themselves was that of the Neutral French. In time
of peace the Acadians could be left to themselves. When, however, war
broke out between Britain and France the question of loyalty became
acute. Such war there was in 1744. Without doubt, some Acadians then
helped the French--but it was, as they protested, only under compulsion
and, as far as they could, they seem to have refused to aid either side.
The British muttered threats that subjects of their King who would not
fight for him had no right to protection under British law. Even then
feeling was so high that there was talk of driving the Acadians from
their farms and setting them adrift; and these poor people trembled for
their own fate when the British victors at Louisbourg in 1745 removed
the French population to France. Assurances came from the British
government, however, that there was no thought of molesting the
Acadians.
With the order "As you were" the dominant thought of the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the highly organized and efficient champions of
French policy took every step to ensure that in the next struggle the
interests of France should prevail. Peace had no sooner been signed than
Versailles was working in Nova Scotia on the old policy. The French
priests taught that eternal perdition awaited the Catholic Acadians who
should accept the demands of the heretic English. The Indians continued
their savage threats. Blood is thicker than water and no doubt the
natural sympathies of the Acadians were with the French. But the British
were now formidable. For them the founding of Halifax in 1749 had made
all the difference. They, too, had a menacing fortress at the door of
the Acadians, and their tone grew sterner. As a result the Acadians were
told that if, by October 15, 1749, they had not taken an unconditional
oath of allegiance to George II, they should forfeit their rights and
their property, the treasured farms on which they and their ancestors
had toiled. The Acadians were in acute distress. If they yielded to the
English, not only would their bodies be destroyed by the savage Micmac
Indians, but their immortal souls, they feared, would be in danger.
The Abbé Le Loutre was the parish priest of the Acadian village of
Beaubassin on Chignecto Bay and also missionary to the Micmac Indians,
whose chief village lay in British territory not many miles from
Halifax. British officials of the time denounced him as a determined
fanatic who did not stop short of murder. As in most men, there was in
Le Loutre a mingling of qualities. He was arrogant, domineering, and
intent on his own plans. He hated the English and their heresy, and he
preached to his people against them with frantic invective. He incited
his Indians to bloodshed. But he also knew pity. The custom of the
Indians was to consider prisoners taken by them as their property, and
on one occasion Le Loutre himself paid ransom to the Indians for
thirty-seven English captives and returned them to Halifax. It is
certain that the French government counted upon the influence of French
priests to aid its political designs. "My masters, God and the King" was
a phrase of the Sulpician father Piquet working at this time on the St.
Lawrence. Le Loutre could have echoed the words. He was an ardent
politician and France supplied him with both money and arms to induce
the Indians to attack the English. The savages haunted the outskirts of
Halifax, waylaid and scalped unhappy settlers, and, in due course, were
paid from Louisbourg according to the number of scalps which they
produced. The deliberate intention was to make new English settlements
impossible in Nova Scotia and so to discourage the English that they
should abandon Halifax. All this intrigue occurred in 1749 and the years
following the treaty of peace. If the English suffered, so did the
Acadians. Le Loutre told them that if once they became British subjects
they would lose their priests and find their religion suppressed.
Acadians who took the oath would, he said, be denied the sacraments of
the Church. He would also turn loose on the offenders the murderous
savages whom he controlled. If pressed by the English, the Acadians,
rather than yield, must abandon their lands and remove into French
territory.
At this point arises the question as to what were the limits of this
French territory. In yielding Acadia in 1713, France had not defined its
boundaries. The English claimed that it included the whole region
stretching northeastward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence from the frontier
of New England. The French, however, said that Acadia meant only the
peninsula of Nova Scotia ending at the isthmus between Baie Verte and
the Bay of Chignecto; and for years a Canadian force stood there on
guard, daring the British to put a foot on the north side of the little
river Missaguash, which the French said was the international boundary.
There was much excitement among the Acadians in 1750, when an English
force landed on the isthmus and proceeded to throw up defenses on the
south side of the river. This outpost, which in due time became Fort
Lawrence, was placed on what even the French admitted to be British
territory. Forthwith on a hill two or three miles away, on the other
side of the supposed boundary, the French built Fort Beauséjour. Le
Loutre was on the spot, blustering and menacing. He told his Acadian
parishioners of the little village of Beaubassin, near Fort Lawrence and
within the British area, that rather than accept English rule they must
now abandon their lands and seek the protection of the French at Fort
Beauséjour. With his own hands he set fire to the village church. The
houses of the Acadians were also burned. A whole district was laid waste
by fire. Women and children suffered fearful privations--but what did
such things matter in view of the high politics of the priest and of
France?
During four or five years the hostile forts confronted each other. In
time of peace there was war. The French made Beauséjour a solid fort,
for it still stands, little altered, though it has been abandoned for a
century and a half. It was chiefly the Acadians, nominal British
subjects, who built these thick walls.
The arrogant Micmacs demanded that the British should hand over to them
the best half of Nova Scotia, and they emphasized their demand by
treachery and massacre. One day a man, in the uniform of a French
officer, followed by a small party, approached Fort Lawrence, waving a
white flag. Captain Howe with a small force went out to meet him. As
this party advanced, Indians concealed behind a dike fired and killed
Howe and eight or ten others. Such ruses were well fitted to cause among
the English a resolve to enforce severe measures. The fire burned slowly
but in the end it flamed up in a cruel and relentless temper. French
policy, too, showed no pity. The Governor of Canada and the colonial
minister in France were alike insistent that the English should be given
no peace and cared nothing for the sufferings of the unhappy Acadians
between the upper and the nether millstone.
At last, in 1755, the English accomplished something decisive. They sent
an army to Fort Lawrence, attacked Fort Beauséjour, forced its timid
commander Vergor to surrender, mastered the whole surrounding country,
and obliged Le Loutre himself to fly to Quebec. There he embarked for
France. The English captured him on the sea, however, and the relentless
and cruel priest spent many years in an English prison. His later years,
when he reached France, do him some credit. By that time the Acadians
had been driven from their homes. There were nearly a thousand exiles in
England. Le Loutre tried to befriend these helpless people and obtained
homes for some of them in the parish of Belle-Isle-en-Mer in France.
In the meantime the price of Le Loutre's intrigues and of the outrages
of the French and their Indian allies was now to be paid by the unhappy
Acadians. During the spring and summer of 1755, the British decided that
the question of allegiance should be settled at once, and that the
Acadians must take the oath. There was need of urgency. The army at Fort
Lawrence which had captured Fort Beauséjour was largely composed of men
from New England, and these would wish to return to their homes for the
winter. If the Acadians remained and were hostile, the country thus
occupied at laborious cost might quickly revert to the French. Already
many Acadians had fought on the side of the French and some of them,
disguised as Indians, had joined in savage outrage. A French fleet and a
French army were reported as likely to arrive before the winter. In
fact, France's naval power with its base at Louisbourg was still
stronger than that of Britain with its base at Halifax. When the
Acadians were told in plain terms that they must take the oath of
allegiance, they firmly declined to do so without certain limitations
involving guarantees that they should not be arrayed against France. The
Governor at Halifax, Major Charles Lawrence, was a stern, relentless
man, without pity, and his mind was made up. Shirley, Governor of
Massachusetts, was in touch with Lawrence. The Acadians should be
deported if they would not take the oath. This step, however, the
government at London never ordered. On the contrary, as late as on
August 13, 1755, Lawrence was counseled to act with caution, prudence,
and tact in dealing with the "Neutrals," as the Acadians are called even
in this official letter. Meanwhile, without direct warrant from London,
Lawrence and his council at Halifax had taken action. His reasoning was
that of a direct soldier. The Acadians would not take the full oath of
British citizenship. Very well. Quite obviously they could not be
trusted. Already they had acted in a traitorous way. Prolonged war with
France was imminent. Since Acadians who might be allied with the savages
could attack British posts, they must be removed. To replace them,
British settlers could in time be brought into the country.
The thing was done in the summer and autumn of 1755. Colonel Robert
Monckton, a regular officer, son of an Irish peer, who always showed an
ineffable superiority to provincial officers serving under him, was
placed in charge of the work. He ordered the male inhabitants of the
neighborhood of Beauséjour to meet him there on the 10th of August. Only
about one-third of them came--some four hundred. He told them that the
government at Halifax now declared them rebels. Their lands and all
other goods were forfeited; they themselves were to be kept in prison.
Not yet, however, was made known to them the decision that they were to
be treated as traitors of whom the province must be rid. No attempt was
made anywhere to distinguish loyal from disloyal Acadians. Lawrence gave
orders to the military officers to clear the country of all Acadians, to
get them by any necessary means on board the transports which would
carry them away, and to burn their houses and crops so that those not
caught might perish or be forced to surrender during the coming winter.
At the moment, the harvest had just been reaped or was ripening.
When the stern work was done at Grand Pré, at Pisiquid, now Windsor, at
Annapolis, there were harrowing scenes. In command of the work at Grand
Pré was Colonel Winslow, an officer from Massachusetts--some of whose
relatives twenty-five years later were to be driven, because of their
loyalty to the British King, from their own homes in Boston to this very
land of Acadia. Winslow issued a summons in French to all the male
inhabitants, down to lads of ten, to come to the church at Grand Pré on
Friday, the 5th of September, to learn the orders he had to communicate.
Those who did not appear were to forfeit their goods. No doubt many
Acadians did not understand the summons. Few of them could read and it
hardly mattered to them that on one occasion a notice on the church door
was posted upside down. Some four hundred anxious peasants appeared.
Winslow read to them a proclamation to the effect that their houses and
lands were forfeited and that they themselves and their families were to
be deported. Five vessels from Boston lay at Grand Pré. In time more
ships arrived, but chill October had come before Winslow was finally
ready.
By this time the Acadians realized what was to happen. The men were
joined by their families. As far as possible the people of the same
village were kept together. They were forced to march to the transports,
a sorrow-laden company, women carrying babes in their arms, old and
decrepit people borne in carts, young and strong men dragging what
belongings they could gather. Winslow's task, as he says, lay heavy on
his heart and hands: "It hurts me to hear their weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth." By the 1st of November he had embarked fifteen
hundred unhappy people. His last ship-load he sent off on the 13th of
December. The suffering from cold must have been terrible.
In all, from Grand Pré and other places, more than six thousand Acadians
were deported. They were scattered in the English colonies from Maine to
Georgia and in both France and England. Many died; many, helpless in new
surroundings, sank into decrepit pauperism. Some reached people of their
own blood in the French colony of Louisiana and in Canada. A good many
returned from their exile in the colonies to their former home after the
Seven Years' War had ended. Today their descendants form an appreciable
part of the population of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island. The cruel act did one thing effectively: it made Nova Scotia
safe for the British cause in the attack that was about to be directed
against Canada.