[Illustration: W^m Pepperrell]
_Decisive Events in American History_
THE
TAKING OF LOUISBURG
1745
BY
SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE
AUTHOR OF “BURGOYNE’S INVASION OF 1777” ETC.
BOSTON MDCCCXCI
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET NEXT “THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE”
NEW YORK CHAS. T. DILLINGHAM
718 AND 720 BROADWAY
Copyright, 1890,
By Lee and Shepard.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Colonial Seacoast Defences 9
II. Louisburg Revisited 13
III. Louisburg to Solve Important Political and Military Problems 24
IV. Résumé of Events to the Declaration of War 33
V. “Louisburg must be taken” 46
VI. The Army and its General 59
VII. The Army at Canso 73
VIII. The Siege 80
IX. The Siege Continued 101
X. Afterthoughts 126
[Illustration: ISLAND BATTERY, WITH LOUISBURG IN THE DISTANCE.]
THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG
1745
I
COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES
The creation of great maritime fortresses, primarily designed to hold
with iron hand important highways of commerce, like Gibraltar, or simply
to guard great naval arsenals, like Kronstadt, or, again, placed where
some great river has cleft a broad path into the heart of a country,
thus laying it open to invasion, has long formed part of the military
policy of all maritime nations.
In the New World the Spaniards were the first to emphasize their
adhesion to these essential principles by the erection of strongholds at
Havana, Carthagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz, not more to guarantee
the integrity of their colonial possessions, than to protect themselves
against the rapacity of the titled freebooters of Europe, to whom the
treasure fleets of Mexico and the East offered a most alluring prey.
When Spain carried the purse, all the crowned heads of Europe seem to
have turned highwaymen.
With this single exception the seaboard defences of the Atlantic coast,
even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, were of the most
trivial character, nor was it owing to any provision for defence that
the chief ports of the English colonies enjoyed the long immunity they
did. England left her colonies to stand or fall upon their own
resources. Fortunate beyond expectation, they simply throve by neglect.
France, with a widely different colonial policy, did a little better,
but with a niggardly hand, while her system was squeezing the life-blood
out of her colonists, drop by drop. Had there been a Drake or a Hawkins
in the Spanish service, Spain might easily have revenged all past
affronts by laying desolate every creek and harbor of the unprotected
North Atlantic coast. She had the armed ports, as we have just shown.
She had the ships and sailors. What, then, was to have prevented her
from destroying the undefended villages of Charleston, Philadelphia, New
York, and Boston?
Though she set about it so tardily, France was at length compelled to
adopt a system of defence for Canada, or see Canada wrested from her
control. In a most sweeping sense the St. Lawrence was the open gateway
of Canada. There was absolutely no other means of access to all its vast
territory except through the long, little known, and scarce-travelled
course of the Mississippi—a route which, for many reasons besides its
isolation, removed it from consideration as an avenue of attack.
Quebec was as truly the heart of Canada as the St. Lawrence was its
great invigorating, life-giving artery. It is true that Quebec began to
assume at a very early day something of its later character as half
city, half fortress, but the views of its founders were unquestionably
controlled as much by the fact of remoteness from the sea, as by
Quebec’s remarkable natural capabilities for blocking the path to an
enemy.
Yet even before the memorable and decisive battle on the Plains of
Abraham, by which Canada was lost to France forever, the St. Lawrence
had been thrice ascended by hostile fleets, and Quebec itself once taken
by them. Mere remoteness was thus demonstrated to be no secure safeguard
against an enterprising enemy. But what if that enemy should seize and
fortify the mouth of the St. Lawrence itself? He would have put a
tourniquet upon the great artery, to be tightened at his pleasure, and
the heart of the colony, despite its invulnerable shield, would beat
only at his dictation.
We will now pass on to the gradual development of this idea in the minds
of those who held the destiny of Canada in their keeping.
II
LOUISBURG REVISITED
The annals of a celebrated fortress are sure to present some very
curious and instructive phases of national policy and character. Of none
of the fortresses of colonial America can this be said with greater
truth than of Louisburg, once the key and stronghold of French power in
Canada.
No historic survey can be called complete which does not include the
scene itself. Nowhere does the reality of history come home to us with
such force, or leave such deep, abiding impressions, as when we stand
upon ground where some great action has been performed, or reach a spot
hallowed by the golden memories of the past. It gives tone, color,
consistency to the story as nothing else can, and, for the time being,
we almost persuade ourselves that we, too, are actors in the great drama
itself.
The Cape Breton Coast.
It is doubtless quite true that the first impressions one gets when
coming into Louisburg from sea must be altogether disappointing. Indeed,
speaking for myself, I had formed a vague notion, I know not how, that I
was going to see another Quebec, or, at least, something quite like that
antique stronghold, looming large in the distance, just as the history
of the fortress itself looms up out of its epoch. On the contrary, we
saw a low, tame coast, without either prominent landmark or seamark to
denote the harbor, except to those who know every rock and tree upon it,
lifting nowhere the castellated ruins that one’s eyes are strained to
seek, and chiefly formidable now on account of the outlying shoals,
sunken reefs, and intricate passages that render the navigation both
difficult and dangerous to seamen.
Lighthouse Point.
On drawing in toward the harbor, we pass between a cluster of three
small, rocky islets at the left hand, one of which is joined to that
shore by a sunken reef; and a rocky point, of very moderate elevation,
at the right, on which the harbor lighthouse stands, the ship channel
being thus compressed to a width of half a mile between the innermost
island and point.
The harbor is so spacious as to seem deserted, and so still as to seem
oppressive.
Island Battery.
The island just indicated was, in the days of the Anglo-French struggles
here, the key to this harbor, but the opposite point proved the
master-key. Neither of the great war fleets that took part in the two
sieges of Louisburg ventured to pass the formidable batteries of that
island, commanding as they did the entrance at short range, and masking
the city behind them, until their fire had first been silenced from the
lighthouse point yonder. When that was done, Louisburg fell like the
ripe pear in autumn.
Old Louisburg.
The old French city and fortress, the approach to which this Island
Battery thus securely covered, rose at the southwest point of the
harbor, or on the opposite to the present town of Louisburg, which is a
fishing and coaling station for six months in the year, and for the
other six counts for little or nothing. In summer it is land-locked; in
winter, ice-locked. Pack ice frequently blockades the shores of the
whole island until May, and snow sometimes lies in the woods until June.
Yet in Cape Breton they call Louisburg an open harbor, and its choice as
the site for a fortress finally turned upon the belief that it was
accessible at all seasons of the year. As to that, we shall see later.
Face of the Country.
As for the country lying between Sydney and Louisburg, all travellers
agree in pronouncing it wholly without interesting features. And the few
inhabitants are scarcely more interesting than the country. In a word,
it is roughly heaved about in a series of shaggy ridges, sometimes
rising to a considerable height, through which the Mira, an arm of the
sea, forces its way at flood-tide. There is a settlement or two upon
this stream, as there was far back in the time of the French occupation,
but everything about the country wears a forlorn and unprosperous look;
the farms being few and far between, the houses poor, the land thin and
cold, and the people—I mean them no disparagement—much like the land,
from which they get just enough to live upon, and no more. Fortunately
their wants are few, and their habits simple.
Remains of the Fortress.
Louisburg is certainly well worth going nine hundred miles to see, but
when, at last, one stands on the grass-grown ramparts, and gets his
first serious idea of their amazing strength and extent, curiosity is
lost in wonder, wonder gives way to reflection, and reflection leads
straight to the question, “What do all these miles of earthworks mean?”
And I venture to make the assertion that no one who has ever been to
Louisburg will rest satisfied till he has found his answer. The story is
long, but one rises from its perusal with a clearer conception of the
nature of the struggle for the mastery of a continent.
Perhaps the one striking thought about this place is its utter futility.
Man having no further use for it, nature quietly reclaims it for her own
again. Sheep now walk the ramparts instead of sentinels.
Dominating Hills.
Upon looking about him, one sees the marked feature of all this region
in the chain of low hills rising behind Louisburg. But a little back
from the coast the hills rise higher, are drawn more compactly together,
and assume the semi-mountainous character common to the whole island.
Green Hill.
As this chain of hills undulates along the coast here, sometimes bending
a little back from it, or again inclining out toward it, one of its
zigzags approaches within a mile of Louisburg. At this point, several
low, lumpy ridges push off for the seashore, through long reaches of
boggy moorland, now and then disappearing beneath a shallow pond or
stagnant pool, which lies glistening among the hollows between. Where it
is uneven the land is stony and unfertile; where level, it is a bog.
This rendered the land side as unfavorable to a besieging force as the
nest of outlying rocks and reefs did the sea approaches. A continued
rainfall must have made it wholly untenable for troops.
The Fortified Line.
It is one of these ridges just noticed as breaking away from the main
range toward the seashore, and so naturally bent, also, as to touch the
sea at one end and the harbor at the other, that the French engineers
converted into a regular fortification; while within the space thus
firmly enclosed by both nature and art, the old city of the lilies
stretched down a gentle, grassy slope to the harbor shore.
Demolition of the City.
Not one stone of this city remains upon another to-day. After the second
siege (1758) the English engineers were ordered to demolish it, and so
far as present appearances go, never was an order more effectually
carried out. All that one sees to-day, in room of it, is a poor fishing
hamlet, straggling along the edge of the harbor, the dwellings being on
one side, and the fish-houses and stages on the other side of the Sydney
road, which suddenly contracts into a lane, and then comes to an end,
along with the village itself, in a fisherman’s back-yard.
Not so, however, with the still massive earthworks, for the British
engineers were only able, after many months’ labor, and with a liberal
use of powder, to partly execute the work of demolition assigned them.
I spent several hours, at odd times, in wandering about these old ruins,
and could not help being thankful that for once, at least, the
destroying hand of man had been compelled to abandon its work to the
rains and frosts of heaven.
Citadel or King’s Bastion.
Beginning with the citadel, in which the formalities of the surrender
took place, I found it still quite well defined, although nothing now
remains above ground except some old foundation walls to show where long
ranges of stone buildings once stood. Here were the different military
offices, the officers’ quarters and the chapel. The shattered
bomb-proofs, however, were still distinguishable, though much choked up
with débris, and their well-turned arches remain to show how firmly the
solid masonry resisted the assaults of the engineers. In these damp
holes the women, children, and non-combatants passed most of the
forty-seven days of the siege. From this starting-point one may continue
the walk along the ramparts, without once quitting them, for fully a
mile, to the point where they touch the seashore among the inaccessible
rocks and heaving surf of the ocean itself.
The Casemates.
These ramparts nowhere rise more than fifty feet above the sea-level,
but are everywhere of amazing thickness and solidity. The moat was
originally eighty feet across, and the walls stood thirty feet above it,
but these dimensions have been much reduced by the work of time and
weather. A considerable part of the line was further defended by a
marsh, through which a storming column would have found it impossible to
advance, and hardly less difficult to make a retreat. The besiegers were
therefore obliged to concentrate their attack upon one or two points,
and these had been rendered the most formidable of the whole line in
consequence of the knowledge that the other parts were comparatively
unassailable. In other words, the besieged were able to control, in a
measure, where the besiegers should attack them.
Natural Obstacles made use of.
Although the partly ruined bomb-proofs are the only specimens of masonry
now to be seen in making this tour, the broad and deep excavation of the
moat and covered-way, and the clean, well-grassed slopes of the glacis,
promise to hold together for another century at least. Brambles and
fallen earth choke up the embrasures. It is necessary to use care in
order to avoid treading upon a toad or a snake while you are groping
among the mouldy casemates or when crossing the parade. Those magical
words “In the King’s name,” so often proclaimed here with salvos of
artillery, have now no echo except in the sullen dash of the sea against
the rocky shores outside the perishing fortress, and
“What care these roarers for the name of King?”
Graveyard, Point Rochefort.
Still following the sheep-paths that zigzag about so as nearly to double
the distance, I next turned back toward the harbor, leaving on my right
the bleak and wind-swept field in which, to the lasting reproach of New
England, five hundred of her bravest sons lie without stone or monument
to mark their last resting-place. It is true that most of these men died
of disease, and not in battle; yet to see the place as I saw it, in all
its pitiful nakedness, isolation, and neglect, is the one thing at
Louisburg that a New Englander would gladly have missed; and he will be
very apt to walk on with a slower and less confident step, and with
something less of admiration for the glory which consigns men to such
oblivion as this.
Royal Battery.
To give anything like an adequate idea of how skilfully all the
peculiarities of the ground were in some cases made use of in forming
the defences, or in others, with equal art, overcome, would require a
long chapter to itself. In order to render the main fortress more
secure, the French engineer officers selected a spot three-fourths of a
mile above it, on the harbor shore, on which they erected a battery that
raked the open roadstead with its fire. It was a very strong factor in
the system of defences as against a sea attack. This isolated work was
called the Royal Battery, or in the English accounts, the Grand Battery.
Yet, so far from contributing to the successful defence of the fortress,
it became, in the hands of the besiegers, a powerful auxiliary to its
capture. But the whole system of defence here shows that the marshes
extending on the side of Gabarus Bay, where a landing was practicable
only in calm weather, were considered an insuperable obstacle to the
movements of artillery; and without artillery Louisburg could never have
been seriously attacked from the land side. Against a sea attack it was
virtually impregnable.
III
LOUISBURG TO SOLVE IMPORTANT POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS
Having glanced at the purely military exigencies, which had at length
forced themselves upon the attention of French statesmen, and having
gone over the ground with the view of impressing its topographical
features more firmly in our minds, we may now look at the underlying
political and economic causes, out of which the French court finally
matured a scheme for the maintenance of their colonial possessions in
Canada in the broadest sense.
French Colonial System.
Its Unsatisfactory Workings.
In creating Louisburg the court of Versailles had far more extended
views than the building of a strong fortress to guard the gateway into
Canada would of itself imply. Unquestionably that was a powerful
inducement to the undertaking; but, in the beginning, it certainly
appears to have been only a secondary consideration. For a long time the
condition of affairs in the colony had been far from satisfactory, while
the future promised little that was encouraging. Compared with the
English colonies, its progress was slow, irregular, and unstable.
Agriculture was greatly neglected. So were manufactures. The home
government had exercised, from the first, a guardianship that in the
long run proved fatal to the growth of an independent spirit. There were
swarms of governmental and ecclesiastical dependents who laid hold of
the fattest perquisites, or else, through munificent and inconsiderate
grants obtained from the crown, enjoyed monopolies of trade to the
exclusion of legitimate competition. These leeches were sucking the
life-blood out of Canada. So far, then, from being a self-sustaining
colony, the annual disbursements of the crown were looked to as a means
to make good the deficiency arising between what the country produced
and what it consumed. Without protection the English colonies steadily
advanced in wealth and population; with protection, Canada, settled at
about the same time, scarcely held her own.
Two very able and sagacious men, the intendants Raudot, were the first
who had the courage to lay before the court of Versailles the true
condition of affairs, and the ability to suggest a remedy for it.
The Fur Trade Monopoly.
These intendants represented that the fur trade had always engrossed the
attention of the Canadians, to the exclusion of everything else. Not
only had the beaver skin become the recognized standard for all
exchanges of values, but the estimated annual product of the country was
based upon it, very much as we should reckon the worth of the grain crop
to the United States to-day. It was also received in payment for
revenues. Now, after a long experience, what was the result of an
exclusive attention to this traffic? It was shown that the fur trade
enriched no one except a few merchants, who left the country as soon as
they had acquired the means of living at their ease in Old France. It
had, therefore, no element whatever of permanent advantage to the
colony.
Danger of Exclusive Attention to it.
It was also shown that this fur trade was by no means sufficient to
sustain a colony of such importance as Canada unquestionably might
become under a different system of management; for whether the beaver
should finally become extinct through the greed of the traders, or so
cheapened by glutting the market abroad as to lose its place in commerce
entirely, it was evident that precisely the same result would be
reached. In any case, the business was a precarious one. It limited the
number of persons who could be profitably employed; it bred them up to
habits of indolence and vice without care for the future; and it kept
them in ignorance and poverty to the last. But, what was worst of all,
this all-engrossing pursuit kept the population from cultivating the
soil, the true and only source of prosperity to any country.
Other cogent reasons were given, but these most conclusively set forth
what a mercantile monopoly having its silent partners in the local
government and church, as well as in the royal palace itself, had been
able to do in the way of retarding the development of the great native
resources of Canada. It was so ably done that no voice was raised
against it. And with this most lucid and fearless exposé of the puerile
use thus far made of those resources the memorialist statesmen hoped to
open the king’s eyes.
The two Raudots offer a Remedy.
They now proposed to wholly reorganize this unsound commercial system by
directing capital and labor into new channels. Such natural productions
of the country as masts, boards, ship-timber, flax, hemp, plaster, iron
and copper ores, dried fish, whale and seal oils, and salted meats,
might be exported, they said, with profit to the merchant and advantage
to the laboring class, provided a suitable port were secured, at once
safe, commodious, and well situated for collecting all these
commodities, and shipping them abroad.
Cape Breton brought to Notice.
To this end, these intendants now first brought to notice the advantages
of Cape Breton for such an establishment. Strangely enough, up to this
time little or no attention had been paid to this island. Three or four
insignificant fishing ports existed on its coasts, but as yet the whole
interior was a shaggy wilderness, through which the Micmac Indians
roamed as freely as their fathers had done before Cartier ascended the
St. Lawrence. Its valuable deposits of coal and gypsum lay almost
untouched in their native beds; its stately timber trees rotted where
they grew; its unrivalled water-ways, extending through the heart of the
island, served no better purpose than as a highway for wandering
savages.
Acadia to be helped.
By creating such a port as the Raudots suggested, the voyage from France
would be shortened one half, and the dangerous navigation of the St.
Lawrence altogether avoided, since, instead of large ships having to
continue their voyages to Quebec, the carrying trade of the St. Lawrence
would fall to coasting vessels owned in the colony. A strong hand would
also be given to the neighbor province, the fertile yet unprotected
Acadia, which might thus be preserved against the designs of the
English, while a thriving trade in wines, brandies, linens, and rich
stuffs might reasonably be expected to spring up with the neighboring
English colonies.
A Military and Naval Arsenal proposed.
These were considerations of such high national importance as to at once
secure for the project an attention which purely strategic views could
hardly be expected to command. And yet, the forming of a military and
naval depot, strong enough to guarantee the security of the proposed
port, and in which the king’s ships might at need refit, or take refuge,
or sally out upon an enemy, was an essential feature of this elaborate
plan, every detail of which was set forth with systematic exactness. For
seven years the project was pressed upon the French court. War, however,
then engaging the whole attention of the ministry, the execution of this
far-seeing project, which had in view the demands of peace no less than
of war, was unavoidably put off until the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, by
giving a wholly new face to affairs in the New World, compelled France
to take energetic measures for the security of her colonial possessions.
Peace of Utrecht.
By this treaty of Utrecht France surrendered to England all Nova Scotia,
all her conquests in Hudson’s Bay, with Placentia, her most important
establishment in Newfoundland. At the same time the treaty left Cape
Breton to France, an act of incomparable folly on the part of the
English plenipotentiaries who, with the map lying open before them, thus
handed over to Louis the key of the St. Lawrence and of Canada. No one
now doubts that the French king saw in this masterpiece of stupidity a
way to retrieve all he had lost at a single stroke. The English
commissioners, it is to be presumed, saw nothing.
English Harbor chosen.
Having the right to fortify, under the treaty, it only remained for the
French court to determine which of the island ports would be best
adapted to the purpose, St. Anne, on the north, or English Harbor on the
south-east coast. St. Anne was a safe and excellent haven, easily made
impregnable, with all the materials requisite for building and
fortifying to be found near the spot. Behind it lay the fertile côtes of
the beautiful Bras d’Or, with open water stretching nearly to the
Straits of Canso. On the other hand, besides being surrounded by a
sterile country, materials of every kind, except timber, must be
transported to English Harbor at a great increase of labor and cost.
More could be done at St. Anne with two thousand francs, it was said,
than with two hundred thousand at the rival port. But the difficulty of
taking ships of large tonnage into St. Anne through an entrance so
narrow that only one could pass in or out at the same time, finally gave
the preference to English Harbor, which had a ship channel of something
less than two hundred fathoms in breadth, a good anchorage, and plenty
of beach room for erecting stages and drying fish. It was, moreover,
sooner clear of ice in spring.
Name changed to Louisburg.
The first thing done at Cape Breton was to change the old, time-honored
name of the island—the very first, it is believed, which signalled the
presence of Europeans in these waters—to the unmeaning one of Ile
Royale. English Harbor also took the name of Louisburg, in honor of the
reigning monarch. Royalty having thus received its dues, the work of
construction now began in earnest.
IV
RÉSUMÉ OF EVENTS TO THE DECLARATION OF WAR
We will now rapidly sketch the course of events which led to war on both
sides of the Atlantic.
Colonists provided for.
Having been obliged to surrender Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, the
French court determined to make use of their colonists in those places
for building up Louisburg.
Acadians will not emigrate.
In the first place, M. de Costebello, who had just lost his government
of the French colony of Placentia, in Newfoundland, under the terms of
the treaty, was ordered to take charge of the proposed new colony on
Cape Breton, and in accord also with the provisions of that treaty, the
French inhabitants of Newfoundland were presently removed from that
island to Cape Breton. But the Acadians of Nova Scotia who had been
invited, and were fully counted upon to join the other colonists, now
showed no sort of disposition to do so. In their case the French
authorities had reckoned without their host. These always shrewd
Acadians were unwilling to abandon the fertile and well-tilled Acadian
valleys, which years of toil had converted into a garden, to begin a new
struggle with the wilderness in order to carry out certain political
schemes of the French court. Though patriots, they were not simpletons.
So they sensibly refused to stir, although their country had been turned
over to the English. In this way the French authorities were
unexpectedly checked in their first efforts to secure colonists of a
superior class for their new establishment in Cape Breton.
How strange are the freaks of destiny! Could these simple Acadian
peasants have foreseen what was in store for them at no distant day, at
the hands of their new masters, who can doubt that, like the Israelites
of old, driving their flocks before them, they too would have departed
for the Promised Land with all possible speed?
A Thorn in the Side of the English.
Finding them thus obstinate, it was determined to make them as useful as
possible where they were, and as a reconquest of Acadia was one of those
contingencies which Louisburg was meant to turn into realities, whenever
the proper side of the moment should arrive, nothing was neglected that
might tend to the holding of these Acadians firmly to their ancient
allegiance; to keeping alive their old antipathies; to arousing their
fears for their religion, or to strongly impressing them with the belief
that their legitimate sovereign would soon drive these English invaders
from the land, never to return. For the moment the king’s lieutenants
were obliged to content themselves with planting this thorn in the side
of the English.
Why called Neutrals.
Acting upon the advice of the crafty Saint Ovide, De Costebello’s
successor, the Acadians refused to take the oath of allegiance proffered
them by the British governor of Nova Scotia—though they had refused to
emigrate they said they would not become British subjects. When
threatened they sullenly hinted at an uprising of the Micmacs, who were
as firmly attached to the French interest as the Acadians themselves.
The governor, therefore, prudently forbore to press matters to a crisis,
all the more readily because he was powerless to enforce obedience; and
thus it came to pass that the French inhabitants of Nova Scotia, under
English dominion, first took the name of neutrals.
Victims to French Policy.
Perceiving at last how they were being ground between friend and foe,
the Acadians began hoarding specie, and to leave off improving their
houses and lands. A little later they are found applying to the
Governor-General of Canada for grants of land in the old colony, to
which they might remove, and where they could dwell in peace, for they
somehow divined that they must be the losers whenever fresh hostilities
should break out between the French and English, if, as it seemed
inevitable, the war should involve them in its calamities. But that
astute official returned only evasive answers to their petition. His
royal master had other views, to the successful issue of which his
lieutenants were fully pledged, and so it is primarily to French policy,
after all, that the wretched Acadians owed their exile from the land of
their fathers. What followed was merely the logical result.
But in consequence of their first refusal to remove to Louisburg only a
handful of the Micmacs responded to Costebello’s call, by pitching their
wigwams on the skirt of the embryo city.
Laborers from the Galleys.
Laborers were wanted next. For the procuring of these the
Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, hit upon the novel
idea of transporting every year from France those prisoners who were
sentenced to the galleys for smuggling. They were to come out to Canada
subject to the severe penalty of never again being permitted to return
to their native land, “for which,” said the cunning marquis, “I
undertake to answer.”
Lord Bacon, in one of his essays, makes the following comments upon this
iniquitous method of raising up colonies: “It is a shameful and
unblessed thing,” he says, “to take the scum of people, and wicked
condemned men to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but
it spoileth the plantations; for they will ever live like rogues, and
not fall to work, but be lazy, and do mischief and spend victuals: and
be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the
discredit of the plantation.”
Meanwhile, the sceptre that had borne such potent sway in Europe dropped
from the lifeless hand of Louis the Great, to be taken up by the
“crowned automaton,” Louis XV.
Strength of Louisburg.
Pursuant to the policy thus outlined, which had no less in view than the
rehabilitation of Canada, the recovery of Nova Scotia, the mastery of
the St. Lawrence, and the eventual restoration of French prestige in
America, France had in thirty years created at Louisburg a fortress so
strong that it was commonly spoken of as the Dunkirk of America. To do
this she had lavished millions.[1] Beyond question it was the most
formidable place of arms on the American continent, far exceeding in
this respect the elaborate but antiquated strongholds of Havana, Panama,
and Carthagena, all of which had been built and fortified upon the old
methods of attack and defence as laid down by the engineers of a
previous century: while Louisburg had the important advantage of being
planned with all the skill that the best military science of the day and
the most prodigal expenditure could command. When their work was done,
the French engineers boastingly said that Louisburg could be defended by
a garrison of women.
Armament of Louisburg.
The fortress, and its supporting batteries, mounted nearly one hundred
and fifty pieces of artillery on its walls, some of which were of the
heaviest metal then in use. It was deemed, and indeed proved itself,
during the progress of two sieges, absolutely impregnable to an attack
by a naval force alone. From this stronghold Louis had only to stretch
out a hand to seize upon Nova Scotia, or drive the New England fishermen
from the adjacent seas.
In New England all these proceedings were watched with the keenest
interest, for there, at least, if nowhere else, their true intent was so
quickly foreseen, their consequences so fully realized, that the people
were more and more confounded by the imbecility which had virtually put
their whole fishery under French control.
As the situation in Europe was reflected on this side of the Atlantic,
it is instructive to look there for the storm which, to the terror and
dismay of Americans, was now darkly overspreading the continent.
War of the Austrian Succession.
The crowned gamblers of Europe had begun their costly game of the
Austrian succession. Upon marching to invade Silesia, Frederick II., the
neediest and most reckless gamester of them all, had said to the French
ambassador, “I am going, I believe, to play your little game: and if I
should throw doublets we will share the stakes.” Fortune favored this
great king of a little kingdom. He won his first throw, seeing which,
for she was at first only a looker-on, France immediately sent two
armies into Bavaria to the Elector’s aid. This move was not unexpected
in London. Ever since England had forced hostilities with Spain, in
1740, it was a foregone conclusion that the two branches of the House of
Bourbon would make common cause, whenever a favorable opportunity should
present itself. England now retaliated by voting a subsidy to Maria
Theresa, and by taking into pay some sixteen thousand of King George’s
petted Hanoverians, who were destined to fight the French auxiliary
contingent. England and France were thus casting stones at each other
over the wall, or, as Horace Walpole cleverly put it, England had the
name of war with Spain without the game, and war with France without the
name.
English defeated in Flanders.
It was inevitable that the war should now settle down into a bitter
struggle between the two great rivals, France and England. On the 20th
of March, 1744, the court of Versailles formally declared war. England
followed on the 31st. Flanders became the battle-field between a hundred
and twenty-five thousand combatants, led, respectively, by the old Count
Maurice de Saxe and the young Duke of Cumberland. In May, 1745, the
French marshal suddenly invested Tournay,[2] the greatest of all the
Flemish fortresses. The Duke of Cumberland marched to its relief, gave
battle, and was thoroughly beaten at Fontenoy. This disaster closed the
campaign in the Old World. It left the English nation terribly
humiliated in the eyes of Europe, while France, by this brilliant feat
of arms, fully reasserted her leadership in Continental affairs.
Situation in New England.
But what had been a sort of Satanic pastime in the Old World became a
struggle for life in the New. The people of New England, being naturally
more keenly alive to the dangers menacing their trade, than influenced
by a romantic sympathy with the absurd quarrels about the Austrian
succession, anxiously watched for the first signal of the coming
conflict. They knew the enemy’s strength, and they were as fully aware
of their own weaknesses. Still there was no flinching. The home
government, being fully occupied with the affairs of the Continent, and
with the political cabals of London, limited its efforts to arming a few
forts in the colonies, and to keeping a few cruisers in the West Indian
waters; but neither soldiers, arsenals, nor magazines were provided for
the defence of these provinces, upon whom the enemy’s first and hardest
blows might naturally be expected to fall, nor were such other measures
taken to meet such an extraordinary emergency as its gravity would seem
in reason to demand.
Luckily for them, the colonists had been taught in the hard school of
experience that Providence helps those who help themselves. To their own
resources they therefore turned with a vigor and address manifesting a
deep sense of the magnitude of the crisis now confronting them.
French seize Canso.
The proclamation of war was not published in Boston until the 2d of
June, 1744. Having earlier intelligence, the French at Louisburg had
already begun hostilities by making a descent upon Canso,[3] a weak
English post situated at the outlet of the strait of that name, and so
commanding it, and within easy striking distance of Louisburg. News of
this was brought to Boston so seasonably that Governor Shirley had time
to throw a re-enforcement of two hundred men into Annapolis, by which
that post was saved; for the French, after their exploit at Canso, soon
made an attempt upon Annapolis, where they were held in check until a
second re-enforcement obliged them to retire.
Captain Ryal sent to London, November, 1744.
Governor Shirley lost no time in notifying the ministry of what had
happened, and he particularly urged upon their attention the defenceless
state of Nova Scotia, where Annapolis alone held a semi-hostile
population in check. To the end that the situation might be more fully
understood, he sent an officer, who had been taken at Canso, with the
despatch.
At this time the incompetent Duke of Newcastle held the post of prime
minister. When he had read the despatch he exclaimed, “Oh, yes—yes—to be
sure. Annapolis must be defended.—troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray
where is Annapolis? Cape Breton an island! wonderful! Show it me on the
map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir” (to the bearer of the
despatch), “you always bring us good news. I must go tell the King that
Cape Breton is an island.”
January, 1744.
It will be seen, later, that Shirley’s timely application to the
ministry, on behalf of Nova Scotia, involved the fate of Louisburg
itself. Orders were promptly sent out to Commodore Warren, who was in
command of a cruising squadron in the West Indies, to proceed as early
as possible to Nova Scotia, for the purpose of protecting our
settlements there, or of distressing the enemy, as circumstances might
require.
Shirley himself had also written to Warren, requesting him to do this
very thing, at the same time the ministry were notified, though it was
yet too early to know the result of either application. All eyes were
now opened to Louisburg’s dangerous power. But, come what might, Shirley
was evidently a man who would leave nothing undone.
[1]Louisburg had cost the enormous sum of 30,000,000 livres or
£1,200,000 sterling.
[2]Pepperell was besieging Louisburg at the same time the French were
Tournay.
[3]Canso was taken by Duvivier, May 13, 1744. The captors burnt
everything, carrying the captives to Louisburg, where they remained
till autumn, when they were sent to Boston. These prisoners were
able to give very important information concerning the fortress, its
garrison, and its means of defence.
V
“LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN”
However Shirley’s efforts to avert a present danger might succeed,
nobody saw more clearly than he did that his measures only went half way
toward their mark. With Louisburg intact, the enemy might sweep the
coasts of New England with their expeditions, and her commerce from the
seas. The return of spring, when warlike operations might be again
resumed, was therefore looked forward to at Boston with the utmost
uneasiness. Merchants would not risk their ships on the ocean. Fishermen
dared not think of putting to sea for their customary voyages to the
Grand Banks or the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Here was a state of things
which a people who lived by their commerce and fisheries could only
contemplate with the most serious forebodings. It was fully equivalent
to a blockade of their ports, a stoppage of their industries, with
consequent stagnation paralyzing all their multitudinous occupations.
Public Opinion aroused.
Naturally the subject became a foremost matter of discussion in the
official and social circles, in the pulpits, and in the tavern clubs of
the New England capital. It was the serious topic in the counting-house
and the table-talk at home. It drifted out among the laboring classes,
who had so much at stake, with varied embellishment. It went out into
the country, gathering to itself fresh rumors like a rolling snowball.
In all these coteries, whether of the councillors over their wine, of
the merchants around their punch-bowls, of the smutty smith at his
forge, or the common dock-laborer, the same conclusion was reached, and
constantly reiterated—Louisburg must be taken!—Yes; Louisburg must be
taken! Upon this decision the people stood as one man.
It did not, however, enter into the minds of even the most sanguine
advocates of this idea that they themselves would be shortly called upon
to make it effective in the one way possible. Such a proposal would have
been laughed at, at first. The general voice was that the land and naval
forces of the kingdom ought to be employed for the reduction of
Louisburg, because no others were available; but, meantime, a public
opinion had been formed which only wanted a proper direction to turn it
into a force capable of doing what it had decided upon. There was but
one man in the province who was equal to this task.
That some other man may have had the same idea is but natural, when the
same subject was uppermost in the minds of all; but where others tossed
it to and fro, like a tennis-ball, only this one man grasped it with the
force of a master mind.[4] He was William Shirley, governor of
Massachusetts.
William Shirley.
Governor Shirley soon showed himself the man for the crisis. He was a
lawyer of good abilities, with a political reputation to make. He had a
clear head, strong will, plausible manner, and immovable persistency in
the pursuit of a favorite project. If not a military man by education,
he had, at any rate, the military instinct. He was, moreover, a shrewd
manager, not easily disheartened or turned aside from his purpose by a
first rebuff, yet knowing how to yield when, by doing so, he could see
his way to carry his point in the end.
The French, we remember, had made some prisoners at Canso, who were
first taken to Louisburg, and then sent to Boston on parole. These
captives knew the place, but our smuggling merchantmen knew it much
better. They were able to give a pretty exact account of the condition
of things at the fortress. We are now looking backward a little. But
what seems to have made the strongest impression was the news that the
garrison itself had been in open mutiny during the winter, most of the
soldiers being Swiss, whose loyalty, it was supposed, had been more or
less shaken.[5]
William Vaughan.
Whether William Vaughan,[6] a New Hampshire merchant resident in Maine,
first broached the project of taking Louisburg to Shirley, cannot now
determined, but, let the honor belong primarily where it may, Vaughan’s
scheme, as outlined by him, was too absurd for serious consideration,
however strongly he may have believed in it himself. He seems to have
belonged to the class of enthusiasts at whose breath obstacles vanish
away; yet we are bound to say of him that his own easy confidence, with
his habit of throwing himself heart and soul into whatever he undertook,
gained over a good many others to his way of thinking. Shirley therefore
encouraged Vaughan, who, after rendering really valuable services,
became so thoroughly imbued with the notion that he was not only the
originator of the expedition, but the chief actor in it, that the value
of those services is somewhat obscured.
Governor Shirley’s project now was to take Louisburg, with such means as
he himself could get together. He, too, was more or less carried away by
the spirit which animated him, as men must be to make others believe in
them, but he never lost his head. To a cool judgment, some of Shirley’s
plans for assaulting Louisburg seem almost, if not quite, as irrational
as Vaughan’s, yet Shirley was not the man to commit any overt act of
folly, or shut his ears to prudent counsels. Being so well acquainted
with the temper and spirit of the New England people, he knew that,
before they would fight, they must be convinced. To this end, he
strengthened himself with the proper arguments, wisely keeping his own
counsel until everything should be ripe for action. He knew that the
garrison of Louisburg was mutinous, that its isolated position invited
an attack, and that the extensive works were much out of repair.
Moreover, he had calculated, almost to a day, the time when the annual
supplies of men and munitions would arrive from France. He knew that
Quebec was too distant for effectively aiding Louisburg. An attack under
such conditions seemed to hold out a tempting prospect of success; yet
realizing, as Shirley did, that under any circumstances, no matter how
favorable or alluring they might seem, the enterprise would be looked
upon as one of unparalleled audacity, if not as utterly hopeless or
visionary, he determined to stake his own political fortunes upon the
issue and abide the result.
Counting the Chances of Success.
The garrison of Louisburg had been, in fact, in open revolt, the
outbreak proving so serious that the commanding officer had begged his
government to replace the disaffected troops with others, who could be
depended upon. Shirley, therefore, reckoned on a half-hearted resistance
or none at all. In a word, it was his plan to surprise and take the
place before it could be re-enforced.
Shirley’s Plan.
After obtaining a pledge of secrecy from the members, Shirley proceeded
to lay his project before the provincial legislature of Massachusetts,
which was then in session. The governor’s statement, which was certainly
cool and dispassionate, ran somewhat to this effect: “Gentlemen of the
General Court, either we must take Louisburg or see our trade
annihilated. If you are of my mind we will take it. I have reason to
know that the garrison is insubordinate. There is good ground for
believing that the commandant is afraid of his own men, that the works
are out of repair and the stores running low. I need not dwell further
on what is so well known to you all. Now, with four thousand such
soldiers as this and the neighboring provinces can furnish, aided by a
naval force similarly equipped, the place must surely fall into our
hands. I have, moreover, strong hopes of aid from His Majesty’s ships,
now in our waters. But the great thing is to throw our forces upon
Louisburg before the enemy can hear of our design. Secrecy and celerity
are therefore of the last importance. Consider well, gentlemen, that
such an opportunity is not likely to occur again. What say you? is
Louisburg to be ours or not?”
Shirley’s Plan rejected.
The conservative provincial assembly deliberated upon the proposal with
closed doors, and with great unanimity rejected it. The sum of its
decision was this: “If we risk nothing, we lose nothing. Should the
enemy strike us, we can strike back again. We can ruin his commerce as
well as he can destroy ours. Our policy is to stand on the defensive.
Very possibly the men might be raised, but where are the arsenals to
equip them; where is the money to come from to pay them; where are the
engineers, the artillerists, the siege artillery, naval stores, and all
the warlike material necessary to such a siege? Why, we haven’t a single
soldier; we haven’t a penny. Surely your excellency must be jesting with
us. It is a magnificent project, but visionary, your excellency, quite
visionary.”
To make use of parliamentary terms, the governor had leave to withdraw,
but those who dreamed that he would abandon his darling scheme at the
first rebuff it met with, did not know William Shirley.
The Subject again brought up.
The affair was now no longer a secret. Indeed, it had already leaked out
through a certain pious deacon, who most inconsiderately prayed for its
success in the family circle. The project had been scotched, not killed.
Men discussed it everywhere, now that it was an open secret, and the
more it was talked of, the more firmly it took hold on the popular mind.
The very audacity of the thing pleased the young and adventurous
spirits, of whom there were plenty in the New England of that day.
Vaughan now set himself to work among the merchants, who saw money to be
made in furnishing supplies of every kind for the expedition; while on
the other hand, if nothing was to be done, their ships and merchandise
must lie idle for so long as the war might last. Little by little the
indefatigable Shirley won men over to his views. People grew restive
under a policy of inaction. Public sentiment seldom fails of having a
wholesome effect upon legislatures, be they ever so settled in their own
opinions. It was so in this case. Presently a petition, signed by many
of the most influential merchants in the province, was laid on the
speaker’s desk, so again bringing the subject up for legislative action.
The Project adopted.
This time the governor carried his point after a whole day’s animated
debate. The measure, however, narrowly missed a second, and, perhaps, a
final defeat, it having a majority of one vote only; and this result was
owing to an accident which, as it was a good deal talked about at the
time it happened, may as well be mentioned here. It so chanced that one
of the opposition, while hurrying to the House in order to record his
vote against the measure, had a fall in the street, and was taken home
with a broken leg. There being a tie vote in consequence, Mr. Speaker
Hutchinson gave the casting vote in favor of the measure, and so carried
it.
If there had been hesitation before, there was none now. In order to
prevent the news from getting abroad, all the seaports of Massachusetts
were instantly shut by an embargo.[7] The neighboring provinces were
entreated to do the same thing. The supplies asked for were voted
without debate. Even the emission of paper money, that bugbear of
colonial financiers, was cheerfully consented to in the face of a royal
order forbidding it. Those who before had been strongest in opposition
now gave loyal support to the undertaking.
Free to act at last, Shirley now showed his splendid talent for
organizing in full vigor. The work of raising troops, of chartering
transports, of collecting arms, munitions, and stores of every kind,
went on with an extraordinary impulse. Common smiths were turned into
armorers; wheelwrights into artificers; women spent their evenings
making bandages and scraping lint. Shirley’s board of war, created for
the exigency, took supplies wherever found, paying for them with the
paper money the Legislature had just authorized for the purpose. The
patience with which these extraordinary war measures were submitted to
best shows the temper of the people. The neighboring governments were
entreated to join in the expedition and share in the glory. Rhode
Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey each promised contingents. The other
provinces declined having anything to do with it, though New York made a
most seasonable loan of ten heavy cannon, upon Shirley’s urgent
entreaty, without which the siege must have lagged painfully. The
governor had, indeed, suggested, when the deficiency of artillery was
spoken of, that the cannon of the Royal Battery of Louisburg would help
to make good that deficiency; but, as it was facetiously said at the
time, this was too manifest a disposal of the skin before the bear was
caught, though it is quite likely that the notion of supplying
themselves from the enemy may have tickled the fancy of the young
recruits.
When the application reached Philadelphia, Franklin expressed shrewd
doubts of the feasibility of the undertaking. The provincial assembly
did, however, vote some supply of provisions, as its contribution toward
a campaign which nobody believed would be successful. New Jersey also
contributed provisions and clothing. This was not quite what Shirley had
hoped for, but could not in the least abate his efforts.
[4]Suggestions looking to a conquest of Cape Breton were made by
Lieutenant-Governor Clarke of New York, some time in the year 1743
(“Documentary History of New York,” I., p. 469). He suggests taking
Cape Breton as a first step toward the reduction of all Canada.
Then, Judge Auchmuty of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Massachusetts
printed in April, 1744, an ably written pamphlet discussing the best
mode of taking Louisburg.
[5]The Revolt occurred in December, over a reduction of pay. The
soldiers deposed their officers, elected others in their places,
seized the barracks, and put sentinels over the magazines. They were
so far pacified, however, as to have returned to their duty before
the English expedition arrived. Under date of June 18, one day after
the surrender, Governor-General Beauharnois advises the Count de
Maurepas of this revolt. He urges an entire change of the garrison.
[6]Vaughan was a mill-owner, and carried on fishing also at
Damariscotta, Me. He knew Louisburg well. Conceiving himself
slighted by those in authority at Louisburg, he went from thence
directly to England, in order to prefer his claim for compensation
as the originator of the scheme. He died of smallpox at Bagshot,
November, 1747. He insisted that fifteen hundred men, assisted by
some vessels, could take Louisburg by scaling the walls. “A man of
rash, impulsive nature.”—_Belknap._ “A whimsical, wild
projector.”—_Douglass._
[7]News that an armament was preparing at Boston was carried to Quebec,
by the Indians, without, however, awakening the governor’s
suspicions of its true object.
VI
THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL
The next, and possibly most vital step of all, since the fate of the
expedition must turn upon it, was to choose a commander. For this
important station the province was quite as deficient in men of
experience as it was in materials of war: with the difference that one
could be created of raw substances while the other could not. Here the
nicest tact and judgment were requisite to avoid making shipwreck of the
whole enterprise. Not having a military man, the all-important thing was
to find a popular one, around whom the provincial yeomanry could be
induced to rally. But since he was not to be a soldier, he must be a man
held high in the public esteem for his civic virtues. It was necessary
to have a clean man, above all things: one placed outside of the
political circles of Boston, and who, by sacrificing something himself
to the common weal, should set an example of pure patriotism to his
fellow-citizens. Again, it was no less important to select some one
whose general capacity could not be called in question. Hence, as in
every real emergency, the people cast about for their very best man from
a political and personal standpoint, who, though he might have
“Never set a squadron in the field,”
could be thoroughly depended upon to act with an eye single to the good
of the cause he had espoused.
William Pepperell to command.
In this exigency Shirley’s clear eye fell on William Pepperell, of
Kittery, a gentleman of sterling though not shining qualities, whose
wealth, social rank, and high personal worth promised to give character
and weight to the post Shirley now destined him for. He was now
forty-nine years old. Having held both civil and military offices under
the province, Pepperell could not be said to be worse fitted for the
place than others whose claims were brought forward, while, on the other
hand, it was conceded that hardly another man in the province possessed
the public confidence to a greater degree than he did. Still, he was no
soldier, and the simple conferring of the title of general could not
make him one, while his practical education must begin in the presence
of the enemy—a school where, if capable men learn quickly, they do so,
as a rule, only after experiencing repeated and severe punishments. That
raw soldiers need the best generals, is a maxim of common-sense, but
Shirley, in whom we now and then discover a certain disdain for such
judgments, seems to have had no misgivings whatever as to Pepperell’s
entire sufficiency so long as he, Shirley, gave the orders, and kept a
firm hand over his lieutenant; nor can it be denied that if the
expedition was to take place at all when it did, the choice was the very
best that could have been made, all things considered.
That Shirley may have been influenced, in a measure, by personal reasons
is not improbable, and the fact that Pepperell was neither intriguing
nor ambitious, no doubt had due weight with a man like Shirley, who was
both intriguing and ambitious, and who, though he ardently wished for
success, did not wish for a rival.
No one seems to have felt his unfitness more than Pepperell himself, and
it is equally to his honor that he finally yielded to considerations
directly appealing to his patriotism and sense of duty. “You,” said
Shirley to him, “are the only man who can safely carry our great
enterprise through; if it fail the blame must lie at your door.” Much
troubled in mind, Pepperell asked the Rev. George Whitefield, who
happened to be his guest, what he thought of it. The celebrated preacher
kindly, but decidedly, advised Pepperell against taking on himself so
great a responsibility, telling him that he would either make himself an
object for execration, if he failed, or of envy and malignity, if he
should succeed.
Morale of the Army.
Shirley’s pertinacity, however, prevailed in the end. Pepperell’s own
personal stake in the successful issue of the expedition was known to be
as great as any man’s in the province, hence, his putting himself at the
head of it did much to induce others of like good standing and estate to
join him heart and hand, and their example, again, drew into the ranks a
greater proportion of the well-to-do farmers and mechanics than was
probably ever brought together in an army of equal numbers, either
before or since. Hence, at Louisburg, as in our own time, when any
extraordinary want arose, the general had only to call on the rank and
file for the means to meet it.
Several gentlemen, who had the success of the undertaking strongly at
heart, volunteered to go with Pepperell to the scene of action. Among
them were that William Vaughan, previously mentioned, and one James
Gibson, a prominent merchant of Boston, who wrote a journal of the siege
from observations made on the spot, besides contributing five hundred
pounds toward equipping the army for its work.[8]
A Crusade preached.
Pepperell’s appointment soon justified Shirley’s forecast. It gave
general satisfaction among all ranks and orders of men. On the day that
he accepted the command Pepperell advanced five thousand pounds to the
provincial treasury. He also paid out of his own pocket the bounty money
offered to recruits in the regiment he was raising in Maine. Orders were
soon flying in every direction, and very soon everything caught the
infection of his energy. The expedition at once felt an extraordinary
momentum. Volunteers flocked to the different rendezvous. In fact, more
offered themselves than could be accepted. Again the loud burr of the
drum,
“The drums that beat at Louisburg and thundered in Quebec,”
was heard throughout New England. The one question of the day was “Are
you going?” In fact, little else was talked of, for, now that the
mustering of armed men gave form and consistency to what was so lately a
crude project only, the fortunes of the province were felt to be
embarked in its success. True to its traditions, the clergy preached the
expedition into a crusade. Again the old bugbear of Romish aggression
was made to serve the turn of the hour. Religious antipathies were
inflamed to the point of fanaticism. One clergyman armed himself with a
large hatchet, with which he said he purposed chopping up into kindling
wood all the Popish images he should find adorning the altars of
Louisburg. Still another drew up a plan of campaign which he submitted
to the general. “Carthage must be destroyed!” became the watchword,
while to show the hand of God powerfully working for the right, the
celebrated George Whitefield wrote the Latin motto, embroidered on the
expeditionary standard,—
“Never despair, Christ is with us.”
Thus the church militant was not only represented in the ranks and on
the banner, but it was equally forward in proffering counsel. For
example: one minister wrote to acquaint Shirley how the provincials
should be saved from being blown up, in their camps, by the enemy’s
mines. He wanted a patrol to go carefully over the camping-ground first.
While one struck the ground with a heavy mallet, another should lay his
ear to it, and if it sounded suspiciously hollow, he should instantly
drive down a stake in order that the spot might be avoided.
Such anecdotes show us how earnestly all classes of men entered upon the
work in hand. How to take Louisburg seemed the one engrossing subject of
every man’s thoughts.
Having glanced at the qualifications of the general, we may now consider
the composition of the army. We have already drawn attention to the
excellent quality of its material. In embodying it for actual service,
the old traditions of the British army were strictly followed.
The Army by Regiments.