LOUISBOURG
[Sidenote: _Cape Breton Island under the provisions of the Peace of
Utrecht._]
[Sidenote: _Importance of the island to France._]
The Treaty of Utrecht provided that 'the island called Cape Breton,
as also all others both in the mouth of the river of St. Lawrence and
in the gulf of the same name, shall hereafter belong of right to the
French, and the Most Christian King shall have all manner of liberty
to fortify any place or places there.' It was an important provision.
Driven from Acadia and Newfoundland, with the reservation of certain
fishing rights along a specified part of the Newfoundland coast, the
French would have lost the seaboard altogether but for the possession
of these islands at the entrance of the river of Canada.
A French eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745 described, in
a contemporary pamphlet, the value of Cape Breton Island to France.
It was used, he says, to provide a place for the French settlers who
were leaving Newfoundland after the cession of that island to Great
Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, but 'this was not all. It was
necessary that we should retain a position that would make us at all
times masters of the entrance to the River which leads to New
France.'[1] Similar testimony to its value is given by an English
writer. 'Cape Breton Island is a subject no good Englishman can write
or read with pleasure. The giving of it to the French by the Treaty
of Utrecht may prove as great a loss to the Kingdom, as the Sinking
Fund amounts {192} to or even the charge of the last war.'[2] Cape
Breton, in short, kept open for France the mouth of the St. Lawrence,
and the story of New France became more than ever the story of that
river, and of the waterways which connected it with the far West, and
with the newborn French colony in Louisiana.
[Footnote 1: _Louisbourg in 1745_, the anonymous _Lettre d'un
habitant de Louisbourg_, translated and edited by Professor Wrong
(Toronto, 1897), p. 26.]
[Footnote 2: Oldmixon's _British Empire in America_ (1741 ed.), vol.
i, p. 37.]
From 1713, for thirty years, there was nominally peace between Great
Britain and France. In 1743, English troops assisted the Austrians
and defeated the French at the battle of Dettingen; but war was not
formally proclaimed between the two powers until the following year,
1744, when it lasted for four years, being terminated by the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. During the years of so-called peace, French
Governors, French priests, French explorers and border leaders lost
no opportunity of strengthening the French position in North America.
[Sidenote: _Controversy as to the boundaries of Acadia._]
Intrigue and covert force were notably at work in Acadia. By the
Treaty of Utrecht, King Louis ceded to Great Britain 'all Nova Scotia
or Accadie with its ancient boundaries.' What were the ancient
boundaries? They were left to be demarcated by commissioners of the
two nations; but no demarcation ever took place, and meanwhile French
on the one hand, and English on the other, construed the term
'Acadia' according to their respective interests. While Acadia was
French, the French widened, the English narrowed, the area to which
the name might apply. When Acadia became English, the contention was
reversed; and the French, who had included in Acadia a large extent
of mainland, claimed that the peninsula of Nova Scotia alone was
covered by the terms of the treaty.
[Sidenote: _The Acadians and French intrigues._]
Within that peninsula there were, at the time when the treaty was
signed, some two thousand French settlers--a simple peasantry,
uneducated, priest-ridden, of the same type as the _habitans_ of the
St. Lawrence; but more primitive, {193} more old-fashioned, clinging
to their homes, to their national traditions, to their faith. Under
the fourteenth article of the treaty, French subjects were given
liberty to remove themselves within one year; if they preferred to
remain and become subjects of the British Crown, they were to enjoy
the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion 'as far as the laws
of Great Britain do allow the same.' The Acadians themselves did not
wish to leave their farms and homesteads, nor did the English, when
they took over Acadia, wish to lose the white settlers of the
peninsula, who might reasonably be expected to become loyal and
valuable citizens. The French authorities, on the other hand, desired
to remove them in order to populate their own territories and deplete
the ceded lands. Thus from the outset the intention of the treaty was
frustrated, and the unfortunate Acadians suffered between two
masters. As years went on, English and French views alike changed.
The French, having by priestly influence rendered the Acadians
thoroughly disaffected to English rule, and having year by year
stronger hope of recovering Acadia, wished the Acadians to remain
where they were, a growing hostile population around a weak English
garrison. The English, on the other hand, seeing the impossibility of
securing the loyalty of the peasantry, wished to be rid of them, and
in the end deported large numbers of them to other lands.
[Sidenote: _Annapolis neglected by the home Government._]
The main agents of mischief were on the one side French priests,
political and religious fanatics, who threatened and cajoled their
flocks; on the other the British Government, which left Acadia to
take care of itself. It is deplorable to read the accounts given of
Annapolis, as Port Royal was now called, and of the state of its
garrison. What should have been the strong and thriving capital of a
British province, remained for years nothing more than practically a
very weak outpost in the enemy's country.
[Sidenote: _The Acadians and the oath of allegiance._]
A long time passed in vainly attempting to make the {194} Acadians
swear allegiance to the King of England. At length, in 1730, Governor
Philipps reported that he had succeeded in persuading each adult
member of the population to 'promise and solemnly swear on the faith
of a Christian that I will be thoroughly faithful and will truly obey
his Majesty George II'; but the adoption of this form of words had
little effect on the minds or the conduct of the French settlers.
Strength to insist on loyalty and to punish traitorous dealing was
not supplied from home; the Governors were unable to enforce their
proclamations, and the governed were irritated by orders which were
not carried into effect. Meanwhile, from 1720 onwards, Louisbourg
grew up in artificial strength, the Dunkirk of America, the most
powerful fortress on the Atlantic coast. Money and soldiers came out
from France, while the British possession almost under the guns of
the fortress was starved and neglected. To reconquer Acadia for the
French, writes the eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745,
'it was only necessary to appear before this English colony ... and
to land a few men'; and yet in 1745 Acadia had been in British
keeping for thirty-five years.
[Sidenote: _The Abenaki Indians._]
On the mainland, French policy was the same as in the Acadian
peninsula, nominally to keep the peace, secretly to incite the
natives to war. For generations the Abenaki Indians had raided at
frequent intervals the New England frontier; yet fear and the
necessities of trade might at length have kept them quiet, had it not
been for the instigation of the Canadian Government and its priestly
agents. In 1713, and again in 1717, Abenaki chiefs had come to terms
with Massachusetts; but there could be no peace as long as the
savages were carefully instructed that the English were the enemies
of their religion and the robbers of their lands. The savages were in
truth in a hard case. Peace meant the aggressive growth of the white
men's settlements, inevitable encroachment on the red men's heritage.
War {195} meant cutting off the New England trade, and inadequate
support from France. They sent to Quebec to ask what aid they might
expect from Canada. 'I will send you in secret,' said the Governor
Vaudreuil, 'tomahawks, powder, and shot.' It was such a reply as the
English Governors of New York had been wont to give to the Iroquois;
and the Abenakis, like the Iroquois, were little satisfied with it.
To fight the battles of France while the French looked on, was not
what the Indians wished or understood. Yet their priests taught them
to do it, and the Canadian Government stiffened their resolution by
sending in mission Indians from Canada.
[Sidenote: _Sebastian Rasle._]
[Sidenote: _His mission destroyed and himself killed._]
[Sidenote: _Peace between the Indians and New Englanders._]
The foremost French emissary among the Abenaki Indians at this time
was a Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rasle, keen in controversy,
uncompromising in zeal, a bitter foe of the English, but not so
utterly inhuman as were some of his colleagues. His mission was among
the Norridgewocks, high up on the Kennebec river, where the head
waters of that river flowing down to the Atlantic are at no very
great distance from the Chaudiere river which runs into the St.
Lawrence. Against this place, in August, 1724, a strong body of men
was sent from Massachusetts. They rowed up the Kennebec in
whaleboats, and, landing at some distance below the Indian village,
marched on it, and took it by surprise. Rasle was shot dead, the
Indians were killed or dispersed, their homes were burnt to the
ground; and the expedition returned in safety, having struck a strong
and relentless blow at a centre of French and Indian hostility to the
English colonists. War went on for some little time longer, and the
English raided the tribes of the Penobscot. At length, in 1726, the
Indians came to terms; and a peace was concluded which lasted for
many years, depots being established at various points, where the
natives could to their advantage barter furs with the traders of New
England.
[Sidenote: _The Indians were the tools of the French Government and
its agents._]
The principal point to notice in the dreary record of {196} murder
and pillage is the attitude of the Canadian Government and their
superiors in France. Letters were intercepted, proving beyond dispute
that the Indians were acting under the direct encouragement of the
French authorities. In time of peace and nominal friendship the old
struggle was ever going on. North America was a chessboard. On the
French side the Indians were in front, pawns in the game. Behind them
was the King temporarily in check, bishops or their representatives,
half-breed knights of tortuous movement, and the castles of
Louisbourg and Quebec.
[Sidenote: _Oswego._]
[Sidenote: _Fort Rouille or Toronto._]
The mouth of the Niagara river had long been held in intermittent
fashion by the French, and by 1720, in spite of jealous opposition on
the part of the Five Nation Indians, a permanent fort was built
there. The English in their turn, in the year 1727, established and
garrisoned a trading fort at Oswego, on the southern shore of Lake
Ontario,[3] Burnet, the Governor of New York, finding the necessary
funds, as the colonial Legislature would not vote the money. The
establishment of this station was a serious blow to French trade,
nullifying to a large extent the advantage of holding Niagara. In
vain the Canadians tried to incite the Five Nations to destroy it;
and in vain, in 1749, they planted a rival post, Fort Rouille, at
Toronto,[4] on the other side of the lake, to command the direct
route to Lake Huron by Lake Simcoe. To Oswego the Indians brought
their furs, and the traffic enriched the Iroquois and their English
neighbours in New York.
[Footnote 3: See the letter from Governor Burnet to the Board of
Trade, dated New York, May 9, 1727: 'I have this spring sent up
workmen to build a stone house of strength at a place called Oswego,
at the mouth of the Onnondage river, where our principal trade with
the far Nations is carried on. I have obtained the consent of the Six
Nations to build it.' Papers relating to Oswego in O'Callaghan's
_Documentary History of New York_, vol. i, p. 447.]
[Footnote 4: The name of Toronto appears before the founding of this
fort. On the old maps, i.e. on Delisle's map of Canada, published in
1703, Lake Simcoe appears as Lake Toronto.]
[Sidenote: _Crown Point._]
But, menacing as was this outpost on the lake to the {197} commercial
interests of Canada, greater danger threatened both New England and
New York from another move made by the French. Far up on Lake
Champlain, at the point where the lake narrows into a wide river,
stretching many miles to the south, there is a small isthmus on the
western side standing out boldly in the lake. It was known to the
English as Crown Point; and here in 1731, at the instance of a
well-known French officer, the Chevalier Saint Luc de la Corne, the
French built a fort commanding the strait, and named it Fort St.
Frederic. The English colonies protested, but did not use united
force to back their protests; and the position remained, fortified in
time of peace, an evidence of French claims and a base for future
attack.
[Sidenote: _War between England and France._]
[Sidenote: _An outpost at Canso overpowered by the French, who
threaten Annapolis._]
War began again in March, 1744, and in May the French commander at
Louisbourg took action. There was a small fishing village at Canso,
on the narrow arm of the sea which divides Nova Scotia from Cape
Breton Island. It was guarded by a blockhouse, garrisoned by about
eighty English soldiers. A far stronger force from Louisbourg came
against it, the garrison surrendered, and the place was burnt. The
Frenchman who commanded the expedition, Duvivier, a descendant of La
Tour, was then sent to attack Annapolis, and appeared before it in
August. Ill fortified, ill garrisoned, the little town had at least a
good English officer in charge--Major Mascarene, of Huguenot descent.
The French offered terms of capitulation, threatening the arrival of
more troops from Louisbourg; but these reinforcements did not arrive,
the Acadians did not rise in mass, and in September the besiegers
disappeared, having effected nothing.
[Sidenote: _New England and Acadia._]
Neglected by the British Government, Acadia was valued by New
England. Massachusetts had in past years taken and held Port Royal,
and knew well that English interests in America were not compatible
with the French regaining the Acadian peninsula. The taking of Canso,
the attempt {198} to take Port Royal or Annapolis, roused the
'Bostonnais,' and led to an enterprise second to none in colonial
history.
[Sidenote: _William Shirley._]
The Governor of Massachusetts at the time was William Shirley. A
Sussex man, son of a merchant in the City of London, bred to the law,
he had gone out to Boston in 1731, and in ten years' time, by
judicious pushing, became Governor of the colony. He was a layman
with military instincts, and, taking up the role of Cato, never
ceased to preach to the ministers at home and to his fellow colonists
on the spot, that Canada must be conquered, and the French driven
from North America. His policy was good and clearsighted, his
military ability was of no large order; but, like William Phipps,
while he loved himself, he loved his country also; and eventually,
after falling under a cloud, and being relegated to the government of
the Bahamas, he came back to end his days in Massachusetts as a
private citizen, and was buried at Boston in 1771.
[Sidenote: _His scheme for attacking Louisbourg._]
To this enterprising man, it is said, the idea of attacking
Louisbourg with colonial forces was suggested by William Vaughan, a
New Englander, interested in the fishing trade on the coast of Maine.
The scheme seemed a wild one. A fortress strong, as far as the newest
military skill and unlimited money could strengthen it, was to be
attacked and taken by untrained colonists. Yet there were solid hopes
of success, and the dream came true. The English prisoners, carried
from Canso to Louisbourg, had been sent on to Boston, and told of the
actual condition of the French. The garrison at Louisbourg was not
very numerous: they were ill commanded and mutinous. If the
fortifications were formidable, within them were the elements of
weakness.
[Sidenote: _The scheme adopted by Massachusetts._]
[Sidenote: _William Pepperell._]
Shirley called the Massachusetts Assembly together in secret session,
and propounded his scheme for an expedition against Louisbourg. The
scheme was rejected. Soon afterwards a petition in its favour was
presented from Boston and other coast towns: the question came again
before the {199} Assembly, and the proposals were carried by one
vote. All the English colonies down to and including Pennsylvania
were invited to help; but, though New York sent a little money and a
few guns, the enterprise was practically left to New England alone.
Massachusetts contributed about 3,000 men, Connecticut, 500; and
William Pepperell, shipbuilder and merchant of Kittery Point, Maine,
was named as commander. He was of Devonshire descent, a colonel of
militia, and, though he had little military experience, he was a man
of good judgement and common sense.
[Sidenote: _Admiral Warren._]
A request had been sent to England for ships of war, and Warren, the
English commodore at Antigua in the West Indies, was asked to bring
his squadron. When the message reached him, he was without orders
from home, and refused to sail; but almost immediately afterwards
permission came, and he left at once for the North American coast,
joining the expedition, which had already started, at their
rendezvous at Canso.
[Sidenote: _The expedition starts._]
It was on March 24, 1745 that the New Englanders left Boston; on or
about April 4 the transports began to arrive at Canso. They carried
men who knew little or nothing of scientific warfare, and for whom
amateur strategists had drawn up fantastic plans of campaign; but
they were colonists of tough English breed, their Puritan
proclivities had been strengthened by the Methodist revival, and the
great preacher, George Whitfield, had given to Pepperell for the
motto of the expedition 'Nil desperandum Christo duce.'
[Illustration: Map of Louisbourg]
[Sidenote: _Louisbourg and its surroundings._]
'Louisbourg is built upon a tongue of land which stretches out into
the sea and gives the town an oblong shape. It is about half a league
in circumference.'[5] The tongue of land in question is part of a
larger peninsula running out to the south and east from the coast of
Cape Breton Island. The little promontory, which was covered by the
{200} town and fortifications of Louisbourg, has an almost due
easterly direction, and it is prolonged to the east by reefs ending
in a small rocky island, on which the French erected a battery to
command the mouth of the harbour, the channel being about half a mile
wide. The harbour lay to the north and north-east of the town; on the
other side was the ocean. To the west of the whole peninsula, of
which the Louisbourg promontory was but a small part, is a large
semicircular bay, known as Gabarus Bay. Surrounded by the sea on all
sides but one, on that one side--the western side--the town was
strongly protected by a ditch and rampart, outside which was marshy
ground. Moreover, almost due north of the town, on the edge of the
harbour, was a battery, known as the Grand Battery, over against the
Island Battery which has been already mentioned. Nature, French
money, and French engineers had combined to make a stronghold, which
seemed almost impregnable.
[Footnote 5: From the anonymous _Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg_,
translated by Professor Wrong, pp. 27, 28.]
[Sidenote: _The French garrison._]
The garrison consisted of between 500 and 600 regular troops, with
1,300 to 1,400 militia.[6] Among the regulars were Swiss soldiers,
who had mutinied at the preceding Christmas time and infected their
French comrades with the spirit of insubordination. They mutinied, it
was said, about their rations, as to the 'butter and bacon' which the
King supplied. In Louisbourg, as elsewhere in Canada, peculation was
rife, and officers and commissaries made profit at the privates'
expense. The Governor, Duquesnel, had died in the previous October.
His successor, Duchambon, was not the man for a crisis. The walls
were there and brave men behind them, but confidence in a determined
and prescient leader was wanting; and, as the consequence of
maladministration, we read that 'the regular soldiers were
distrusted, so that it was necessary to charge the inhabitants with
the most dangerous duties.'
[Footnote 6: It is difficult to make out from the _Lettre d'un
habitant_ whether or not the 1,300 to 1,400 men included the
regulars, but probably not.]
{201} [Sidenote: _The English land in Gabarus Bay._]
[Sidenote: _The Grand Battery occupied by the English._]
Having waited for about three weeks at Canso, and rebuilt and
garrisoned the blockhouse, the New Englanders went on to their
destination. On April 30 the transports sailed into Gabarus Bay,
making for Flat Point, three miles due west of Louisbourg. A small
French force was detached to oppose them; but the boats made good
their landing, two miles further to the west, at a little inlet
called Freshwater Cove. Here the whole force of 4,000 men was
disembarked; and, two days later, a party under Vaughan, having
marched behind the town, found the Grand Battery deserted and
occupied it, turning its guns in due course upon their rightful
owners. The precipitate abandonment of this battery by the French, on
the ground that its defences were inadequate, proved a fatal blunder,
giving the besiegers a firm position in the rear of the town, whereas
the direct attack was over swamp and marsh.
[Sidenote: _Beginning of the siege._]
[Sidenote: _Capture of the 'Vigilant.'_]
The siege now began in earnest. Warren's squadron, which was at a
later stage reinforced from England, blockaded the harbour, and on
May 19 achieved an important success in capturing the _Vigilant_, a
large French ship of war, whose supplies of food and ammunition,
destined for the garrison, passed instead into the hands of the
besiegers. Warren could not however enter the harbour, as long as the
Island Battery commanded the entrance.
[Sidenote: _Spirit of the New Englanders._]
The bulk of the work fell on the land force, and well they did it.
Ill clothed, ill housed, suffering so much from exposure and
privations, that at one time out of 4,000 men little more than
one-half were fit for duty, without transport, dragging the guns
themselves across the morasses, without skilled engineers, and with
hardly any trained gunners, they none the less pushed the siege with
boisterous audacity, mingling religious fervour with schoolboy
recklessness. They fought better in this way--their own way--than by
adhering to strict military rule, and their commander, William
Pepperell, knew his men. His was a difficult task. {202} There was
some little friction between the King's man and the colonist, but, on
the whole, Warren on the sea and Pepperell on the land worked in
harmony, due in no small measure to the tact and good sense of the
New England commander.
[Sidenote: _The besiegers threatened from the mainland._]
There was a further danger to the besiegers, of attack from the
mainland side. Canadians and Indians were reported to be marching to
the relief of the garrison. They were a party sent from Canada to
besiege Annapolis, who drew off and marched for Louisbourg on
receiving an urgent message for help from Duchambon, but arrived only
in time to hear that the town had surrendered and to retreat again in
safety into Acadia.
[Sidenote: _Attempt on the Island Battery, which fails._]
As long as the Island Battery remained intact, it was or seemed
impossible to attack from the sea. Accordingly an attempt was made to
take it. At midnight, on May 26, a storming party put out in boats
from the Grand Battery, and rowed to the strongly fortified rock on
which the Island Battery stood. The result was an entire failure.
Firing under cover, the French wrecked many of the boats, and shot
down the soldiers who landed. The English lost 189 men, being nearly
half the attacking force, 119 of whom were taken prisoners. It was
clear that the battery could not be taken by assault, and the
besiegers proceeded gradually to cripple it by mounting guns on
Lighthouse Point, being the opposite side of the narrow entrance to
the harbour. These guns did good execution, and, while the Island
Battery lost its sting, the defences of the town on the land side
were steadily weakened by the besiegers' fire.
[Sidenote: _Final assault threatened._]
[Sidenote: _The town capitulates._]
At length Warren and Pepperell decided that the time had come to
assault the town simultaneously by land and sea. The French saw what
was intended; they were worn with fatigue and anxiety; their houses
were riddled with shot and shell; and the townspeople urged the
Governor to capitulate. Fair terms were granted by the English
commanders, who knew that their own position was none too secure. The
{203} garrison was allowed to march out with the honours of war, and
safe transport to France was guaranteed to the officers and men, as
well as to the inhabitants of Louisbourg, on the promise that none
should bear arms against England for the space of a year. On these
conditions Duchambon surrendered, and on June 17, after a siege of
forty-seven days, the English became masters of Louisbourg.
[Sidenote: _Warren and Pepperell._]
The capitulation was made jointly to Pepperell and Warren. The French
eye-witness of the siege is at pains to distinguish between them; for
Warren he has nothing but praise, for Pepperell the reverse. 'Mr.
Warren,' he writes, 'is a young man about thirty-five years old, very
handsome, and full of the noblest sentiments.' Against Pepperell he
brings charges of bad faith in carrying out the terms of the
capitulation, adding, 'What could we expect from a man who, it is
said, is the son of a shoemaker at Boston?' As a matter of fact,
Pepperell, on occupying Louisbourg, kept his undisciplined men well
in hand, much to their disgust, and little loot rewarded their weeks
of toil and suffering. To Warren's sailors, on the other hand, there
accrued a large amount of prize-money; for, by the device of keeping
the French flag flying after the surrender of the town had taken
place, various French vessels were decoyed and captured.
[Sidenote: _The success mainly due to the colonists._]
In after years, when the American colonies had taken arms against the
mother country, men argued as to whether the taking of Louisbourg was
due to the English sailors and their commander, or to the colonists.
As a matter of fact, neither without the other could have achieved
success, but the enterprise was conceived by the colonists, on the
colonists fell the brunt of the fighting, and to them, not to
England, the chief credit was due. 'The enterprise,' says the French
writer already quoted, 'was less that of the nation or of the King
than of the inhabitants of New England alone.' It was in truth a
wonderful feat, and till our own times it was never sufficiently
appreciated.
{204} [Sidenote: _Reception of the news in England, and at Boston._]
There was rejoicing in England; but England in the year 1745, the
year of the Jacobite rebellion, had other sights before her eyes, and
other sounds in the ears of her people. It may well have been, too,
that joy at success over the enemy of the nation was alloyed by
uneasy and unworthy consciousness of the growing strength and
self-confidence of the New England beyond the sea. But to Boston the
tidings were tidings of unmixed joy and pride. The Lord had risen to
fight for His chosen people, the dour and stubborn Puritan, and the
stronghold of the idolaters was laid low.
'Good Lord,' said the old and usually long-winded Chaplain Moody, in
his grace before dinner at the end of the siege, 'we have so much to
thank Thee for that time will be too short, and we must leave it for
eternity.'[7]
[Footnote 7: Quoted in Parkman's _A Half Century of Conflict_ (1892
ed.), vol. ii, p. 153.]
[Sidenote: _Sermon at Boston on the event._]
A General Thanksgiving was held at Boston on Thursday July 18, 1745.
At the South Church in that city the Rev. Thomas Prince, one of the
pastors, preached on the great New England victory. He took for his
text 'This is the Lord's doing: it is marvellous in our eyes'; and
his sermon, which has been preserved to us,[8] well illustrates the
view which the Puritans of Massachusetts took of their success. The
hand of the Lord was visible to them in every detail of the 'most
adventurous enterprise against the French settlements at Cape Breton
and their exceeding strong city of Louisbourg, for warlike power the
pride and terror of these northern seas.' The preacher recounted the
advantages which the island gave to France, its abundance of pit
coal, its commodious harbours, 'its happy situation in {205} the
centre of our fishery at the entrance of the Bay and River of
Canada.' He noted the natural and artificial strength of the walled
city, added to for thirty years, until Louisbourg became 'the Dunkirk
of North America, and in some respects of greater importance.' He
traced the finger of God in the circumstances preliminary to and
attending its capture; how the British prisoners, carried to
Louisbourg, on their return to Boston brought information 'whereby we
came to be more acquainted with their situation and the proper places
of landing and attacking'; how the New Englander had accounts 'of the
uneasiness of the Switzers there for want of pay and provision'; how
the weather was fair, the men were willing, supplies were plentiful;
how God guided the decision of the Court of Representatives, and
timed the arrival of 'the brave and active Commodore Warren, a great
friend to these Plantations.' The landing, the taking of the Grand
Battery, the 'happy harmony between our various officers,' even
disease, reverse, toil and labour, all were signs of a particular
Providence working out His great design and leading His people into a
place of shelter. Thus was Louisbourg taken 'by means of so small a
number, less than 4,000 land men, unused to war, undisciplined, and
that had never seen a siege in their lives.' 'As it was,' said the
preacher, referring to the Treaty of Utrecht, 'one of the chief
disgraces of Queen Anne's reign to resign this island to the French,
it is happily one of the glories of King George II's to restore it to
the British empire.' The measure of joy at the taking of Louisbourg
must also have been the measure of disappointment at its subsequent
retrocession by the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
[Footnote 8: _Extraordinary events, the doings of God, and marvellous
in pious eyes_. Illustrated in a sermon at the South Church in Boston
(New England), on the General Thanksgiving, Thursday, July 18, 1745.
Occasioned by taking the city of Louisbourg, on the isle of Cape
Breton, by New England soldiers, assisted by a British squadron. By
Thomas Prince, M.A. Pamphlet, Boston and London, 5th ed. 1746.
Dedicated to H. E. William Shirley.]
[Sidenote: _Subsequent career of Pepperell_]
Of the two men who led the English to victory on this memorable
occasion, Pepperell was made a baronet--the first colonist to receive
that honour: he lived to help his countrymen still further in their
struggle with France. Through his exertions a royal regiment was
raised in {206} America, and the New England shipping yards added a
fine frigate to the British navy. He died in 1759, holding the
commission of Lieutenant-General in the British army.
[Sidenote: _and Warren._]
Warren, in 1747, took part, as second in command, in Anson's naval
victory over the French off Cape Finisterre, and in the same year he
was elected member of Parliament for Westminster. He died in 1752, at
the age of forty-nine, one of the richest commoners in England; and a
monument to him stands in the north transept of Westminster Abbey. It
tells that he was a 'Knight of the Bath, a Vice Admiral of the Red
Squadron of the fleet, and member of the City and Liberty of
Westminster'; but it does not tell how close was his sympathy with
the English in America, married, as he was, to an American lady, and
owner of estates in Manhattan Island and on the Mohawk river; nor,
amid the verbiage of eighteenth-century adulation, is there any
mention of the part which he took in helping the New England
colonists to conquer Louisbourg.
[Sidenote: _The New Englanders garrison Louisbourg._]
[Sidenote: _Relieved by regular troops._]
The New Englanders garrisoned Louisbourg for the better part of a
year. The soldiers were discontented, with some reason. Their success
had brought them little or no profit: they wanted to be back on their
farms: the town which they occupied was dismantled and insanitary;
pestilence broke out, and 'the people died like rotten sheep.'[9]
Shirley came up from Boston to keep the soldiers quiet, but not till
April, 1746, were the colonists relieved by regular troops, sent from
Gibraltar. Warren then took sole command for a short time, being
succeeded by another sailor, Commodore Knowles.
[Footnote 9: Quoted in Parkman's _A Half Century of Conflict_, vol.
ii, p. 166.]
[Sidenote: _Preparations for invasion of Canada._]
[Sidenote: _The plan miscarries._]
Shirley intended the capture of Louisbourg to be but the beginning of
the end, the end being the conquest of Canada. The French Government,
on the other hand, were determined to recover their fortress. Each
was for the time disappointed. In the early months of 1746, the
colonies, {207} elated by their recent and great success, cheerfully
answered to the call for soldiers to invade Canada. The home
Government promised eight battalions, and had them ready for
embarkation at Portsmouth; the plan of campaign--the usual plan of
dual invasion by the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain--was duly
outlined; Quebec was thrown into a state of alarm and hurried
preparation, when, as so often before, all came to nothing, owing to
the shuffling and delays of the ministers of the Crown, in this
instance the incompetent Duke of Newcastle. The troops destined for
America were diverted to Europe; one more opportunity was lost; one
more nail was driven into the coffin of colonial loyalty. Realizing,
as the autumn of 1746 drew on, that an invasion of Canada was now out
of the question, Shirley determined to attack the French advanced
position at Crown Point with the New York and Massachusetts levies;
but this plan, too, was frustrated by news of a coming fleet from
France, and the fears of Quebec were transferred to Boston.
[Sidenote: _Failure of a counter expedition by the French._]
The fleet in question left La Rochelle at midsummer in the year 1746.
It consisted of twenty-one ships of war and a number of transports,
carrying 3,000 troops. The whole was under the command of the Duc
d'Anville. Disaster in the form of tempest and pestilence attended
the expedition from first to last. The ships were scattered on the
ocean, and it was not until the end of September that the admiral,
with three ships, reached Chebucto (now Halifax) harbour. Here, while
waiting for the rest of the fleet, he died; and the vice-admiral,
D'Estournel, arriving immediately afterwards, saw no hope for the
shattered expedition but to return to France. His officers, on the
other hand, urged an attack on Annapolis, and D'Estournel, in a fit
of mortification and mental distress, put an end to his life. The
command now devolved on the Marquis de la Jonquiere, a naval officer,
who had gone out on board the fleet to take over the {208} government
of Canada. He waited into October at Chebucto, the Acadians brought
him provisions, but his men still died of disease day by day. He
sailed for Annapolis, but encountered fresh storms off Cape Sable;
and at length the miserable remains of the fleet made their way back
to France, the loss of life having been, it was said, 2,500 men. In
the following year, 1747, La Jonquiere again set out from France in
another fleet, but again he failed to reach Canada; the ships were
encountered and defeated off Cape Finisterre by Anson and Warren, and
the outgoing Governor of Canada was carried a prisoner to England.
[Sidenote: _Canadian raids._]
The main operations of the war were supplemented by the usual series
of raids from Canada. In the winter of 1745, Fort Saratoga,
thirty-six miles from Albany, was attacked and taken by French and
Indians from Crown Point; the place was burnt, and its inhabitants
were carried into captivity. It was again reoccupied by the English,
but in 1747 was evacuated and burnt as indefensible, to the disgust
of the Five Nation Indians, who looked upon the proceeding as
evidence of weakness and cowardice. Another successful French attack
was made, in August, 1746, on Fort Massachusetts, standing on an
eastern tributary of the Hudson, on the line of communication between
Albany and the Connecticut river. In short, for three years, the
borders of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were harried by
Canadians and Indians, using the French fort at Crown Point as their
base.
[Sidenote: _French success at Grand Pre._]
But the most notable success in this petty warfare was achieved on
the Acadian frontier. The isthmus of Chignecto, which connects the
Nova Scotian peninsula with the mainland, was, at the time of
D'Anville's expedition, held by a comparatively strong force of
Canadians under De Ramesay. Fearing for the safety of Annapolis and
the rest of Acadia, Shirley sent reinforcements from Massachusetts,
consisting of some 500 men under Colonel Noble, who in December,
{209} 1746, reached the Basin of Mines, and occupied the village of
Grand Pre. They were quartered throughout the village, taking no
sufficient precautions against surprise; Ramesay therefore, on
hearing of the position, determined towards the latter end of January
to attack them. He had with him the best of the Canadian partisan
leaders; and unable, owing to an accident, to take personal charge of
the expedition, he placed the command in the hands of Coulon de
Villiers.
In the depth of winter, with sledges and snow-shoes, the French set
out; they started from the isthmus on January 23, on February 10 they
were on the outskirts of Grand Pre. Under cover of night, one party
and another attacked the detached houses in which the English were
lodged; Colonel Noble and over seventy of his followers were killed;
sixty were wounded, fifty-four were taken prisoners. The rest
capitulated, on condition of safe return to Annapolis; and on
February 14 they marched out, leaving Grand Pre in the hands of the
French, who in their turn shortly afterwards retired to their old
position at Chignecto. It was a brilliant feat of arms, but, like
most of these border attacks, had no lasting effect. Grand Pre was in
a few weeks' time reoccupied by the English; and not long afterwards
the French retired from the Acadian frontier into Canada.
[Sidenote: _Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle._]
[Sidenote: _Louisbourg given back to France._]
The war, known in history as the War of the Austrian Succession, had
brought to none of the combatants much honour or profit. On the
continent the Austrians and their English allies met with little
success, on the sea the French were equally unsuccessful. The end was
a peace, as between England and France, based on the principle of
mutual restitution, such a peace as left the seeds of future war.
England gave back Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island, France gave back
Madras, which had surrendered in 1746 to Labourdonnais. The treaty
contained the somewhat humiliating {210} provision, that English
hostages should be given to France until the restitution of
Louisbourg had actually taken place.
[Sidenote: _Foundation of Halifax._]
[Sidenote: _The peace from the English and from the colonial point of
view._]
In July, 1749, the French re-entered their fortress; and in the same
year a large body of settlers was sent out by the British Government
to Chebucto harbour, where the city of Halifax was founded. The
settlement was designed to be a rival to Louisbourg. Its foundation
was evidence that the Imperial Government was at length not wholly
indifferent to the value of Acadia; and Halifax is almost unique,
among English cities in America, in having owed its origin to the
direct action of the State. But no founding of new townships, we may
well imagine, could compensate the New Englanders for losing the
fruits of their victory. It is said that the first answer of King
George II, when pressed to give back Louisbourg to France was that it
belonged not to him but to the people of Boston. If these were his
words, he spoke truly; the Massachusetts men had won the town, and
England gave it away. Yet on no other terms could peace be secured;
and it is not easy to pass a fair criticism on the transaction. Then,
as now, England had to reckon with conflicting interests within her
Empire. Then, as now, she had self-governing colonies which
necessarily did not see eye to eye on all points with the mother
country. The horizon of New England was bounded by the Atlantic, and
the fate of a factory in the East Indies, or even international
arrangements on the continent of Europe, were beyond the colonists'
ken. They saw only that their blood and their money had been given in
vain, and that the fortress, which they had wrested from France, was
hers again. English statesmen, on the other hand, looked east as well
as west; and near home, across the Channel, was the spectacle of
campaigns that brought more loss than gain. As successful war in
Europe had given Acadia to the English, so want of success in the
{211} same quarter reacted on America. The account was made up, the
balance was struck, and the retrocession of Louisbourg was the price
of peace. But it was a heavy price to pay, for it seemed to have been
paid by the American colonists alone; and, had not another war soon
followed, and Louisbourg been again taken by a general whom the
Americans loved, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle might have passed into
history as not merely a disappointment but an irretrievable disaster.
[Sidenote: _Western discovery._]
French exploration in North America followed, as has been seen, the
line of the lakes and the rivers. From Louisiana, in the first half
of the eighteenth century, various expeditions were made in a
westerly direction--up the Red River, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and
its tributary the Kansas river--the object of the French explorers
being to enter into friendly relations with the Comanches and other
Indians of the western plains, and gradually to open up trade with
New Mexico and the city of Santa Fe; in other words, to reach Spanish
America, an object which did not commend itself to Spain.
[Sidenote: _Knowledge gained of Lake of the Woods and Lake
Winnipeg._]
[Sidenote: _Fort built in the Sioux country._]
Before the year 1700, the course of the upper Mississippi was known.
Nicolas Perrot, in or about 1685, is said to have established posts
where the river widens out into Lake Pepin; and further north, French
_coureurs de bois_, or _voyageurs_, as they began to be called,
gained information of the Lake of the Woods, and of the Lac des
Assiniboines, now Lake Winnipeg. The principal Indian tribes in the
regions of the upper Mississippi were Sioux; and, with a view to
making them friends to France, and penetrating through their country
to the western sea, the Jesuit traveller Charlevoix recommended, in
1723, that a mission should be established among them. A few years
later, in 1727, a company was formed for trading in the Sioux
country, and built a new fort on Lake Pepin called, after the then
Governor of Canada, Fort Beauharnois. The Sioux, however, {212}
proved intractable neighbours, and ten years later the fort was
abandoned.
[Sidenote: _Verendrye._]
In 1728, there was a small French outpost at Nipigon, at the western
end of Lake Superior, on its northern side--where the river Nipigon
flows from the lake of the same name into Lake Superior. The
commander was Pierre de Varennes de la Verendrye, son of a lieutenant
of the Carignan Regiment, who had settled at and been Governor of
Three Rivers. As a young man, La Verendrye had crossed the sea to
fight in the armies of France, and had been badly wounded on the
field of Malplaquet. He lived to leave his name high in the list of
western explorers. At his distant station on Lake Superior, he heard
the stories that Indians brought, mixture of fact and fable, of
waters to the west that led to the long-sought-for sea; he offered to
follow up the clue, and, with the usual opposition from jealous
Canadian merchants, and the usual barren authority from the French
Government to explore at his own expense, in return for the grant of
a monopoly of the fur trade to the west and north of Lake Superior,
he gave the rest of his life to western discovery.
[Sidenote: _The water-parting on the west of Lake Superior._]
As the water-parting between the basin of the St. Lawrence and that
of the Mississippi is hardly marked by any height of land, so the
divide between the chain of lakes which feed the St. Lawrence and the
more westerly waters, of which Lake Winnipeg is the centre, is a
slight rise of ground which it is difficult to distinguish on the
maps. A low range of hills runs round the western end of Lake
Superior, at the highest point not more than 1,000 feet above the
level of the lake. These uplands separate the tributaries of Lake
Superior and the St. Lawrence from the feeders of Lake Winnipeg.
There were two routes across the divide, one leaving Lake Superior at
Thunder Bay, near the point where Port Arthur now stands, and
following for a short distance the present line of the Canadian
Pacific Railway; {213} the other a little further south, leaving the
lake at or near Pigeon river, and going westward along the present
boundary line between Canada and the United States. On this latter
route was the Grand Portage, by which the _voyageurs_ crossed the
water-parting at about sixty miles distance from Lake Superior, and
reached Rainy Lake. Rainy Lake drains into the Lake of the Woods, and
the Lake of the Woods drains into Lake Winnipeg. This last great
lake, fed by the Saskatchewan, the Assiniboine, the Red River, and
many other rivers and lakes, finds its outlet by the Nelson river to
Hudson Bay, and a chain of posts carried from Lake Superior to Lake
Winnipeg would tend to divert the western fur trade from Hudson Bay
to the St. Lawrence.
[Sidenote: _Verendrye's journeys and forts._]
[Sidenote: _His sons near the Rocky mountains._]
In the summer of 1731, La Verendrye started west by the Grand
Portage; and in the next eight or nine years established posts along
the water line, from Rainy Lake to where the Saskatchewan river
enters Lake Winnipeg from the north-west. One of these forts or
stations was Fort La Reine on the Assiniboine river, which formed the
starting-point for an advance over the western plains through what is
now the State of Dakota. In 1742, two of his sons made their way from
the Assiniboine to the Missouri, crossed the latter river, and,
traversing the prairies in a westerly and south-westerly direction,
reached the country drained by the tributaries of the Yellowstone
river. How far they went is matter of conjecture, and doubt is thrown
on their claim to have been the first discoverers of the Rocky
mountains. It is stated that, on January 1, 1743, they came in sight
of high mountains, which are supposed to have been the Bighorn range
in Wyoming and Montana, an eastern buttress of the Rocky mountains,
lying in front of the Yellowstone National Park; but no mention is
made in the story of snowy peaks, such as would indicate discovery of
the great mountain barrier of America. The explorers {214} came back
in fifteen months' time. Their father died in 1749, and, like other
pioneers, they reaped but little fruit, in honour or in profit, from
all their labours. They did not find the western sea, they possibly
did not descry the Rocky mountains; but to La Verendrye and his sons
it must be credited that a new water area in the far west was fully
made known to the world, and that trade routes were opened beyond the
basin of the St. Lawrence and the basin of the Mississippi, reaching
to the great Saskatchewan river and to the waters which flow into
Hudson Bay.
[Sidenote: _The Rocky mountains._]
The Rocky mountains, as we know them, were not known in the
eighteenth century.[10] In 1793 Sir Alexander Mackenzie crossed them
far in the North, by the line of the Peace river, and reached the
Pacific Ocean on the coast of British Columbia; but the full
revelation of the main range dates from the year 1805, when Lewis and
Clarke followed the Missouri to its source, and thence made their way
over the mountain barrier to the western sea. In short, as long as
Canada was New France, and for years afterwards, it was for trading
and for colonizing purposes a region of inland waters; it was not
also, as it now is, a land of plains, with a background of giant
mountains, and behind them the further ocean. Yet it was to reach the
further ocean that Europeans first came into Canada, and the earnest
expectation of the earliest {215} explorers has in our own time found
more than fulfilment in a Dominion from sea to sea.
[Footnote 10: In Jeffreys' _American Atlas_, 1775, the Assiniboils
(sic) or St. Charles river is prolonged to the Pacific by a dotted
line, entitled the 'River of the West.' Below it a range of mountains
is traced from north to south, with the note, 'Hereabouts are
supposed to be the mountains of bright stones mentioned in the map of
the Indian Ochagach.' In Carver's _Travels through North America in
1766-8_, published in 1778, p. 121, the Rocky mountains 'are called
the Shining Mountains from an infinite number of chrystal stones of
amazing size with which they are covered, and which, when the sun
shines full upon them, sparkle so as to be seen at a very great
distance.' Morse's _American Geography_, 1794, shows the Rocky
mountains on the map of America. In the text they are called 'Shining
Mountains.' In Arrowsmith's _Map of North America_, dated 1795-6,
they are called Stony Mountains. In a later edition of 1811 the name
'Rocky Mountains' appears.]
NOTE.--For the substance of the above chapter, see
KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii;
PARKMAN'S _A Half Century of Conflict_;
Sir J. BOURINOT'S _Cape Breton_ (referred to above on p. 34, note);
and
_Louisbourg in 1745_, the anonymous _Lettre d'un habitant de
Louisbourg_, edited and translated by Professor WRONG, (Toronto,
1897).
{216}